Re: google reads your mail

Bill Sloman wrote:
> On 17/09/2026 1:39 am, Johann "Myrkraverk" Oskarsson wrote:
>> On 9/16/2026 9:57 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>> On 16/09/2026 11:08 pm, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
>>>> On 16/09/2026 7:37 PM, Bill Sloman wrote:
>>>>> On 16/09/2026 12:34 am, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
>>>>>> On 14/09/2026 4:18 PM, Don Y wrote:
>>>>>>> On 9/14/2026 12:42 AM, Johann 'Myrkraverk' Oskarsson wrote:
>>>>>>>> On 14/09/2026 11:48 AM, Don Y wrote:
>>>>>>>>> On 9/13/2026 2:41 PM, Edward Rawde wrote:
>>>>>>>>>> "Don Y" <[email protected]> wrote in message 
>>>>>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>>>>>> On 9/13/2026 8:51 AM, Edward Rawde wrote:
>>>>>>>>>>>> "Don Y" <[email protected]> wrote in message 
>>>>>>>>>>>> news:[email protected]...
>>>>>>>>>>>>> On 9/12/2026 11:20 PM, Edward Rawde wrote:
> 
> <snip>
> 
>>>>>> Oh, my original idea -- the one I was thinking of for the 
>>>>>> challenge --
>>>>>> is almost certainly /well known/ in the three letter agency world. 
>>>>>> But
>>>>>> given the brief overview of a tool used by a /security expert/, I 
>>>>>> forgot
>>>>>> which or maybe it wasn't named, it didn't seem to be a standard 
>>>>>> feature.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Then, if I make a custom implementation, there's no guarantee a three
>>>>>> letter agency tool will catch it.  Just add a little bit of twist, 
>>>>>> and
>>>>>> it may well bypass the filters the three letter agencies use.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Or trigger an alert if a /well known adversary/ has used it before.
>>>>>> It's kind of 50/50 that way.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> [When I worked for KCP, a "three letter agency" approached us to
>>>>>>> customize a version of our product.  It was easy to see how it could
>>>>>>> be used -- and abused -- so we declined their "offer".]
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>> I also feel no need to explain to the public at large how I'd do 
>>>>>>>> so, but
>>>>>>>> you are free to raise a challenge if you think it amounts to 
>>>>>>>> something.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> There are *countless* ways of "hiding information", especially if 
>>>>>>> the
>>>>>>> bandwidth (or, total amount of data) is unspecified.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Yes, you could for example use /Linear A/, and relatively few 
>>>>>> people in the world would be able to tell you're using English -- 
>>>>>> or another modern language -- rather than whatever language it was 
>>>>>> originally used for.
>>>>>
>>>>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_A
>>>>>
>>>>> None. Linear A doesn't seem to have been deciphered yet, and there 
>>>>> aren't enough sample of it around to suggest that it ever will be.
>>>>>
>>>>> There weren't all that many more example of Linear B, but enough.
>>>>
>>>> Dear Bill,
>>>>
>>>> /Linear A/ is a script, not a language.  I never implied it had been
>>>> deciphered, but you can absolutely use it to write English.  You even
>>>> get to make up your sound values.
>>>
>>> Not a trivial task.
>>
>> Are you referring to the decipherment of Linear A?  For some light read-
>> ing, you can pick /The Code Book/ by Simon Singh from your shelf.
> 
> Why would I bother?
> 
>> Alternatively, a bigger book on the same subject is /The Code Breakers/
>> by David Kahn.  Those two book should serve as an introductory material
>> on the subject, and the former is amusing -- I haven't read the latter
>> yet it is still on my shelf; it's a matter of tsundoku.  I hope you
>> don't need to look that word up, being erudite and all.
> 
> My wife had several Japaneses collaborators, and while our house 
> contains a lot of her books that I haven't read, I do read every book I 
> buy (or at least enough of it to realise that I shouldn't have bought it).
> 
> The nearest that I've got to a book in that area is "Security for 
> Computer Networks" ISBN 0 471 90063 by Davies and Price, and I only 
> bought it because I'd done a little bit of work with the authors.
> 
>>>> Now please direct yourself to the nearest juniour high school, and work
>>>> on improving your reading comprehension.
>>>
>>> Your own needs some work. I never claimed that linear A was a 
>>> language - it's a writing system. It will have been devised to write 
>>> down elements of at least one language - the roman alphabet we use is 
>>> used to write down several.
>>
>> You now need to explain and expostulate [1] to yourself why you used the
>> the word /none/.  You see, I was talking about using Linear A to write
>> English, and there are indeed people -- or at least people who claim
>> they are -- able to discover it's not the original language but a modern
>> one.  The books I referred to in the previous paragraph explain how, in
>> practice, such is done with statistical analysis.  Even though they're
>> not a good introduction to the practicalities of modern cryptanalysis.
> 
> I used the word "none" because anybody using the symbols of Linear A to 
> write modern English would have had to have made some arbitrary choices 
> about what the symbols represent in modern English.
> 
>> For that, you might want to read /Differential Cryptanalysis on Hash
>> Functions: Theory and Practice/ by Tao Xie, and Fanbao Liu; or other
>> books on the subject of modern code breaking.  I admit I haven't read
>> this one either.  It's on my tsundoku shelf still.
> 
> I certainly don't want to read either book. I'm interested in 
> communicating with people, not with communicating with some people and 
> freezing others out.
> 
>>> My late wife was a world class psycholinguist and I don't think a 
>>> junior high school would have much to teach me.
>>
>> Well, presumably she could have told you that it's not polite to assume
>> nobody can do something, just because you can't.
> 
> My wife was frequently impolite in just that way. The nobodies in 
> question were young kids and most of them acquire particular linguisitc 
> skills as they get older that they don't have when young.
> 
>>> American secondary education isn't wonderful, and it probably 
>>> wouldn't have taught me any more than Tasmanian secondary schools did 
>>> back when I was reading about the  decipherment of Minoan linear B.
>>
>> I take it you were reading /The Decipherment of Linear B/ by John Chad-
>> wick.  Have you thought about buying yourself the corpus of Linear A,
>> and attack the problem heads on?
> 
> Wrong, as usual. The decipherment of Linear B was in the news back then 
> - not as front page news, but in specialist magazines (some of which 
> made it even to Tasmania).
> 
> 
>>>> Best wishes, and happy reading!
>>>
>>> Wishing me into an American junior high school isn't a good wish. 
>>> I've been reading happily for many years now, but selectively, and 
>>> reading the nonsense they they serve up - about America being a 
>>> exemplary democracy - would not be a pleasant experience. 
>>> Occasionally amusing, but I'd have to hide my amusement.
>>>
>>
>> Oh, don't worry about the American juniour [sic] high school, you can
>> now study /popular culture/ in universities.  I bring you a link to your
>> very own University of Texas,
>>
>> https://texasconnect.utexas.edu/2025/09/29/swifties-trekkies-and-other-devotees-unite-in-ut-class-rhetoric-of-fandom/ 
>>
> 
> It's not mine. My wife got her Ph.D. in Psycholinguistics from the 
> University of Texas at Austin, and went on to do as post-doc at MIT 
> where she took part in seminars with Noam Chomsky and other 
> psycholinguistic heavyweights. Her supervisor at Austin was good value 
> but the rest of the faculty was mixed.
>>
>> and I wouldn't know how to react, if I were forced to take such a 
>> course in this day and age, when I hardly like any of the current crop 
>> of popular amusements, and mostly read [or listen to] space captain 
>> dramas.  At least that branch of literature still has men in the lead 
>> role, and
>> role, and manly adventures -- in space.
> 
> I started reading science fiction in the late 1950's and later found 
> that trying to put science fiction on TV or film dumbed it down to an 
> unacceptable extent. American science fiction does tend to be 
> unfortunately right wing. Ken MacLeod is Scottish and knows the 
> difference between a Leninist, a Trotskyist and Stalinist which make his 
> work less fatuous.
>> Now, if that isn't enough hobbies to get you started, you can always
>> create an account at cryptohack.org, and start doing -- in Python --
>> instead of reading.  I myself only started today, so don't read anything
>> from my current low score.
>>
>>    https://cryptohack.org/user/myrkraverk/
> 
> Why would anybody bother?
>>
>> And for that, I've added comp.lang.python to this discussion.  People
>> there are welcome to share their Cryptohack profiles, and we can have
>> a friendly competition in cryptographic practicalities!
>>
>> Best wishes, and happy deciphering!
> 
> Why would anybody bother?

That's great. An old curmudgeon and an asshole to the last. Your hostile 
attitude is very quaint and charming.

-- 
Everything I fight for leaves a bitter taste
Everything I cry for laughs into my face
Everything I scream for barely knows my name
Everything I'd die for will die just the same