8 ms·
Crypto for kids
- prgmatic 9y agoI hate to be "that guy" but, I don't think this is really what people want their kids reading: "SMUGGLER: Do you like booze? CITIZEN: Sure I do. And who are you? SMUGGLER: I'm the person who will sell you some booze. CITIZEN: What about cigarettes? SMUGGLERS: Sure thing. Cheap Ukrainian variety for $1 a pack. Also Slovenian Mariboro brand."
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- msla 9y agoDepends on how old the kids are. Are you necessarily assuming pre-teen?
- slavik81 9y agoPre-teen is a pretty broad category. A normal twelve-year-old is in Grade 7. That was the year I read Shōgun, which is basically your run-of-the-mill adult fiction novel. The content was never a concern, despite making the objections raised here look trivial in comparison. Frankly, I'm not sure there's any age at which mere references to alcohol are age-inappropriate, but if there is, it must be quite young.
- adammenges 9y agoI'm rereading the Harry Potter books, they get _dark_. Blood, death, and stabbing all happened in just what I read yesterday.
- __s 9y agoA lot of people don't want their kids reading Harry Potter
- ericzawo 9y agoA lot of parents don't want kids going on the internet and looking at violence or porn, But it will definitely happen. May as well encourage positive things like literature. Also the Harry Potter series is full of themes around heroism, friendship, perseverance, and other qualities you'd wish your children have. I can't wait to reread the series for my kids.
- baby 9y agoYeah and these people are insane and probably more toxic for their children than anything they're trying to ban. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_debates_over_the_Harry_Potter_series https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religious_debates_over_the_Har...
- snakeanus 9y agoThe characters are supposed to grow along with the audience in the Harry Potter to my knowledge.
- dpc59 9y agoNothing says healthy life for a 11 year old like living with your abusive aunt and uncle and having to fight the dark wizard that killed your parents.
- baby 9y agoThat's when the books were released every other year, now that all the books are out you can probably read them in a few weeks. I definitely grew up along the characters though :)
- bsder 9y agoIf you think Harry Potter is bad, let them read the Holy Bible cover to cover.
- baby 9y agoWe were reading the uncensored version of Robinson Crusoe when were kids for giggles (fucking trees, fucking goats, lots of fucking things). Or the George Sand letter: http://ciphermysteries.com/2010/05/16/george-sands-cryptography http://ciphermysteries.com/2010/05/16/george-sands-cryptogra...
- Rjevski 9y agoThe story doesn't condone nor endorse those things, so I see no problem. I don't see anything wrong with kids knowing there are bad things in this world - they're gonna discover it anyway sooner or later.
- andrewfromx 9y agois the Road to adulthood a slow freeway on-ramp that you have from 0-18 to get up to 65 MPH, or at 18 age are you dropped in the fast lane with no experience going even close to 65?
- toeicnw2848 9y agoDepends on which religion you grew up with. If you're fairly secular, it's gradual. If you're a Mormon, you get pushed out of a car doing 90.
- andrewfromx 9y ago^ exactly. And why do so many religious parents think that's going to work for their kid?
- kilceem 9y agoits a double edged sword. teach good morals and this(encryption) also teaches you can not trust everyone.
- txru 9y ago> Slovenian Mariboro That is a clever reference.
- selimthegrim 9y agoNice, I missed that one first time around too
- tomxor 9y agoI don't think this guys is trying to win any PC competitions, just look at his profile image :P https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/305718?v=4&s=400 https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/305718?v=4&s=400 But if i had kids i'd not blinding them with a PC view of the world. Kids or not, these are fun little stories even for adult non-cryptographers.
- jszymborski 9y agoIs smoking not PC now? 0_o
- lucideer 9y agoI'm not too sure about the PC status of the act of smoking, in isolation, but I would say that presenting yourself to kids as an educating figure who smokes is probably seen as less than PC to some.
- Quarrelsome 9y agowhat about being obese (for the sake of argument)?
- lucideer 9y agoLittle different since one is an action, the other a state/symptom/result/outcome. I guess there's an argument to be made against promoting/normalising activities that cause obesity, but I'd say current societal norms are set up to demonise smoking a lot more strongly.
- hashbig 9y agoAnd what does his profile photo have to do with being PC?
- tomxor 9y agocmon he totally looks stoned. I'm not judging, i just find it amusing :P
- bloaf 9y agohttp://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html http://www.lettersofnote.com/2012/03/i-am-very-real.html >It is true that some of the characters speak coarsely. That is because people speak coarsely in real life. Especially soldiers and hardworking men speak coarsely, and even our most sheltered children know that. And we all know, too, that those words really don’t damage children much. They didn’t damage us when we were young. It was evil deeds and lying that hurt us.
- Xeoncross 9y ago> those words really don’t damage children much Wait, who is this? Can they verify this claim? What does "much" mean anyway? Why damage children at all by choice?
- Zarel 9y agoDid you click on the linked source? It says it was written by Kurt Vonnegut, who is arguing that the value of accurately depicting reality to students is more important than protecting them from whatever imagined risk of reading harsh language there is.
- jacalata 9y agoThe rest of the questions seem valid though.
- mikeash 9y agoThey are, but they're equally valid the other way. Why start with the assumption that Puritan sensibilities are OK and require everything else to prove itself?
- jacalata 9y agoBecause Vonnegut made an affirmative claim that this doesn't hurt children, and the comment was challenging that claim. I didn't notice anyone making a claim that it definitely does hurt children.
- oskarth 9y ago> I hate to be "that guy" but, I don't think this is really what people want their kids reading: So don't be the that guy. Kids are a lot tougher than what the current helicopter parent trend would have you believe. Would you forbid your kids from reading something like Tintin too? There's no shortage of "glorification" of alcohol there - Captain Haddock's alcoholism is a recurring theme.
- mstade 9y agoI grew up on the Tintin series – love it! Also Asterix. I mean, magic potion that gives you super human strength, to take out the Romans? Yeah. Kids are smarter than we give them credit for. I think maybe we need to just give them the space to figure shit out on their own.
- theoh 9y agoAnother angle is: do you want your kid's first encounter with the idea of Ukraine or Slovenia to be a disparaging/pejorative stereotype? Even if it was a real factual representation it might encourage the kid to pick up or repeat unhealthy attitudes. My (european) childhood experience was definitely like that at times, race being the major topic about which slurs were innocently propagated by kids who didn't know any better...
- mi100hael 9y agoWritten by the creator of ZeroMQ, for those who are unaware.
- kodfodrasz 9y agoWow! It is just as good!
- vog 9y ago> Written by the creator of ZeroMQ, for those who are unaware. How is this relevant? Why is it important to be aware of that fact? Does this mean that the author is specifically well qualified for writing such a book? Does this imply he has deep knowledge about cryptography, or that he is trained to explain things suitable for children? Maybe it's just me, but to me this sounds as strange as assuming that a good actor is automatically also a good politician.
- foota 9y agoThat font is neat but not something I'd like to read for an extended period of time.
- elmigranto 9y agoAgreed. Try installing Reader extension for your browser, they usually let you set a font, its size, foreground and background colors, margins, etc. to your liking.
- JoeDaDude 9y agoPeople who want the younger set interested in this thing should check out The Manga Guide to Cryptography [1]. (Warning: Not yet published) [1]. https://www.nostarch.com/mangacrypto https://www.nostarch.com/mangacrypto
- leecarraher 9y agoyo damn kids and your composites primes and abelian groups, GET OFF MY LAWN
- otoburb 9y agoI'm stymied about parable 99. The nomenclature implies that Mr. Xi knew the basics of encryption. No mention whether the decryption function was provided or previously agreed upon (e.g. "let's agree on GPG"). I think the decryption function or method is the key to answering the question. Am I missing something else?
- partifex 9y agoI understood it to be using a one time pad for encryption. At the start the "alien" would give an arbitrary sequence of numbers like "2, 4, 6", claiming it's an encrypted solution. Suppose the winning lottery numbers turn out to be "5, 5, 5". The alien then retrospectively generates a one time pad such that Initial Sequence + One Time Pad = Correct Sequence, in this case "3, 1, -1".
- saulrh 9y agoThere are encryption schemes which allow you to choose the key to produce any arbitrary decryption from a given ciphertext. For a trivial example, consider the one-time pad scheme that's simply "plaintext XOR key" and "ciphertext XOR key"; by choosing a key that's equal to "plaintext XOR ciphertext" you can construct a key for any ciphertext from a plaintext or any plaintext from a ciphertext. Mr. Xi uses this to produce the just-released lottery numbers from the ciphertext regardless of the numbers or the ciphertext.
- modalduality 9y agoyup! they should have used a commitment scheme instead - for example, SHA256(winning numbers || 512-bit nonce). To reveal, reveal the winning numbers and the nonce and Mr X can check that the hash matches. The nonce is to introduce more entropy so Mr X can't just bruteforce the hash, but since finding any collision is difficult, it doesn't let the alien cheat by trying different nonces (unlike with different keys with encryption schemes).
- xenophonf 9y agoThe scammer gave Mr. X the key, and once the winning lotto numbers were published, the scammer provided the ciphertext. I assumed an encryption scheme that was commutative, like the XOR operator (one-time pad).
- Xophmeister 9y agoI'm inclined to believe that there is some secret message encoded in the string "1 13 20 32 54 78 99"...
- znpy 9y agoThe Cryptoclub: Using Mathematics to Make and Break Secret Codes: https://www.amazon.it/Cryptoclub-Using-Mathematics-Break-Secret/dp/156881223X https://www.amazon.it/Cryptoclub-Using-Mathematics-Break-Sec... My guess is that it would be a nice read for adults too.