Ah thanks for the useful links! Those articles are all quite fascinating. In the plaintext attacks article, I love the tactic mentioned here:

At Bletchley Park in World War II, strenuous efforts were made to use (and even force the Germans to produce) messages with known plaintext. For example, when cribs were lacking, Bletchley Park would sometimes ask the Royal Air Force to “seed” a particular area in the North Sea with mines (a process that came to be known as gardening, by obvious reference). The Enigma messages that were soon sent out would most likely contain the name of the area or the harbour threatened by the mines

I explained it poorly - what I mean to say is, two people trying to send the message ‘Hello’ for example both using the same public key would get the same output. So if you had a simple message like that, someone could work out by checking every word in the dictionary what your message was by checking if the output matched.

But I guess it’s a bit of a moot point - it’s unlikely that an encrypted message would ever be so simple. It could just as easily be much longer, and therefore basically impossible to guess the plaintext.

Ah I think of sort of get it!

The public key is used within a function by the person sending the message, and even someone that knew the function and the public key wouldn’t be able to decrypt the message, because doing so would require knowledge of the original prime numbers which they couldn’t work out unless a computer spend years factoring the public key.

My only other bit of confusion:

• If someone used a public key to encrypt the message “Hello”, maybe it would spit out something like Gh5bsKjbi4
• If someone else sent the exact same message I assume the outcome would also be identical, and therefore it would be possible by using common phrases to work out what was sent? I could type messages like Hi, Goodbye, Hola until I got to ‘Hello’ and realised it was the same output.
• However I assume that a message like ‘Hello, how are you?’ would result in a completely different output (despite Hello appearing in both) and thus trying to work out any messages in a brute force way like this would be pointless.

So using the formula in that guide, you get a numerical value for O. But surely someone else could follow the same process and also get the same answer? Unless the primes change each time? But then how would the sender and receiver know the way in which the values change?

But say (simplying greatly) the public key tells my computer to multiply my text by a prime number

If the prime number is already known from the public key, then why is any computation required? To decrypt it can’t I (or anyone else) just divide by the prime? Even with a significantly more complex calculation, can’t you just work the steps back in reverse using the instructions from the public key?

I guess something like this (data stored on glass plates ‘Project Silica’) would store the data safely for a much longer period. What I’m not entirely clear on is whether it would still be possible to read that data in the far future - it seems to rely on some kind of machine learning to decode it.

Do you reckon the physical copies would last longer than digital?

Ah gotcha! Yeah it’s pretty neat seeing the ways in which the instances intermingle. Some communities stay pretty niche and used only by local users with the same interests, whereas others are melting pots of every instance. I guess it’s a bit like a society with little towns and bigger cities.

Root federated?

Thanks, this is a good summary. It’s useful to know about the dynamically changing route - that explains a lot.

Ah yeah this and @[email protected] 's comment clarify the routing table thing. Before I was assuming they just blindly forwarded stuff until one router knows where to go, but if they have a rough idea from the IP address prefix that makes more sense.

That sounds like quite a messy and inefficient process! But I guess as long as it can be done quickly enough, it doesn’t really matter?

Oh wow, this unlocked a memory! Pretty sure I watched back in school. Quite informative, though it felt like it skipped a lot between leaving the host computer and reaching the destination - is it just the same process over and over until it reaches the right place?

Very useful information, thank you! I’ll look up some videos to watch the technique. Would using a teapot with an infuser have a similar effect to a gai wan?

Thanks for confirming that the tea doesn’t expire.

Once I’ve got a hang of it, I’ll bring some into work to share with the colleague that passed it on 😂

Personally I feel like piracy shouldn’t be criminalised in the way it is, and certainly any attempts to worsen the punishments should be fought against. However your reddit comment is quite bizarre to be honest… I think laws protecting children and animals against harm are a good idea!