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The one that Musk tweeted has "bitcoin style encryption" even though bitcoin doesn't use any encryption.

by UltraSane 1y ago

blueflow 1y ago
I guess that encrypting a hash with ECDSA (= to generate a signature) does not count as encryption?
- UltraSane 1y ago
  No, that is called signing and is not encryption.
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  - pixxel 1y ago
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- SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
  That's signing, it's not encryption. It's a private-key operation, so at best you could consider it decryption. In asymmetric cryptography, the private keys are used for decryption & signing, and the public keys are used for encryption & verification. Usually you want separate key pairs for signing/verification vs encryption/decryption, but some systems can safely share a key pair for these two sorts of operation.
- Benanov 1y ago
  Correct. With public/private key pairs, encrypting anything with the private key means that you use the public key to decrypt that same thing. This means anyone (as the key is public!) can decrypt the thing. So if you get the public key, and if the thing decrypts successfully, then you know that the corresponding private key was used to encrypt the thing. This is considered proof that the private key holder encrypted the thing / sent the message, and that's why everyone calls it "signing" instead of "encryption" - you send the cleartext thing along with the encrypted thing. For private messages, you encrypt with someone's public key and have them decrypt with their private key. You'd sign it with your key, and that person would verify the signature with your key. That's 4 keys you need to worry about. This doesn't even begin to consider key rotation, perfect forward secrecy, multiple recipients, etc.
vvpan 1y ago
When Musk tweets on technical topics one can tell that either he's just trying to fool people or is completely clueless himself.
- tialaramex 1y ago
  Gell-Mann amnesia effect applies - if you speak confidently about a topic where I know better I should judge your false confidence for other topics on which I know no more than you, because you're probably bullshitting just as much. Crichton claimed this effect was unique to popular newspapers - but actually I think today we can say it applies elsewhere, people will see that Musk hasn't the faintest idea how software engineering works and then go straight back to believing on aerospace.
- PeeMcGee 1y ago
  And the top 1000 replies for any stupid thing he says are nothing but positive reinforcement from boosted blue check bot accounts that bury any actual criticism.
  - insin 1y ago
    If you hide the boosted replies, you find Twitter's thread loading stopping after about 200 while it's trying to fill the space you made, so you're lucky to get more than a few non-boosted replies under one of his "popular" Tweets, they're bidding for a very limited space under there.
SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
It's at least as good as Bitcoin's encryption, so Musk's tweet is technically accurate.
anonym29 1y ago
I felt it was pretty probable that in his head, he was thinking "bitcoin style cryptography", which makes his claims much more technically accurate (even if the implementation ultimately ends up effectively handing over control of private keys to the service provider), and that he likely just had a brain fart in translating the idea from his head into written language, a common phenomenon that affects pretty much everyone at some point in time. Maybe I'm just being too generous to people suffering from the human condition. We should probably start holding everyone to the standard of absolute perfection all the time - never misspeaking, never making any typos - and start reflexively discarding any and all ideas that have any kind of minor mistake in them; that sounds like a much more rational and reasonable approach.
- JohnMakin 1y ago
  Except Musk and the chadsphere he surrounds himself with spends an inordinate amount of time promoting him as some kind of techno-genius. A first year CS student couldn't confuse those terms, and he makes embarrassing gaffes like that quite often. They go ignored because people make unlimited amounts of excuses for him for some reason, other than the very obvious conclusion - that he doesn't know wtf he is talking about. Even your corrected, generous version is wildly inaccurate.
  - anonym29 1y ago
    There hasn't ever been a single time in your entire life where you were thinking of one thing, but the words coming out of your mouth communicated something different, by mistake, even though you genuinely did understand the difference?
    - JohnMakin 1y ago
      Do you understand the post you are replying to? If you do, what does this question have to do with it?
      - anonym29 1y ago

The one that Musk tweeted has "bitcoin style encryption" even though bitcoin doesn't use any encryption.

blueflow 1y ago

I guess that encrypting a hash with ECDSA (= to generate a signature) does not count as encryption?

UltraSane 1y ago
No, that is called signing and is not encryption.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 1y ago
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- pixxel 1y ago
  [dead]
SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago
That's signing, it's not encryption. It's a private-key operation, so at best you could consider it decryption. In asymmetric cryptography, the private keys are used for decryption & signing, and the public keys are used for encryption & verification. Usually you want separate key pairs for signing/verification vs encryption/decryption, but some systems can safely share a key pair for these two sorts of operation.
Benanov 1y ago
Correct. With public/private key pairs, encrypting anything with the private key means that you use the public key to decrypt that same thing. This means anyone (as the key is public!) can decrypt the thing. So if you get the public key, and if the thing decrypts successfully, then you know that the corresponding private key was used to encrypt the thing. This is considered proof that the private key holder encrypted the thing / sent the message, and that's why everyone calls it "signing" instead of "encryption" - you send the cleartext thing along with the encrypted thing. For private messages, you encrypt with someone's public key and have them decrypt with their private key. You'd sign it with your key, and that person would verify the signature with your key. That's 4 keys you need to worry about. This doesn't even begin to consider key rotation, perfect forward secrecy, multiple recipients, etc.

vvpan 1y ago

When Musk tweets on technical topics one can tell that either he's just trying to fool people or is completely clueless himself.

tialaramex 1y ago
Gell-Mann amnesia effect applies - if you speak confidently about a topic where I know better I should judge your false confidence for other topics on which I know no more than you, because you're probably bullshitting just as much. Crichton claimed this effect was unique to popular newspapers - but actually I think today we can say it applies elsewhere, people will see that Musk hasn't the faintest idea how software engineering works and then go straight back to believing on aerospace.
PeeMcGee 1y ago
And the top 1000 replies for any stupid thing he says are nothing but positive reinforcement from boosted blue check bot accounts that bury any actual criticism.
- insin 1y ago
  If you hide the boosted replies, you find Twitter's thread loading stopping after about 200 while it's trying to fill the space you made, so you're lucky to get more than a few non-boosted replies under one of his "popular" Tweets, they're bidding for a very limited space under there.

SAI_Peregrinus 1y ago

It's at least as good as Bitcoin's encryption, so Musk's tweet is technically accurate.

anonym29 1y ago

I felt it was pretty probable that in his head, he was thinking "bitcoin style cryptography", which makes his claims much more technically accurate (even if the implementation ultimately ends up effectively handing over control of private keys to the service provider), and that he likely just had a brain fart in translating the idea from his head into written language, a common phenomenon that affects pretty much everyone at some point in time. Maybe I'm just being too generous to people suffering from the human condition. We should probably start holding everyone to the standard of absolute perfection all the time - never misspeaking, never making any typos - and start reflexively discarding any and all ideas that have any kind of minor mistake in them; that sounds like a much more rational and reasonable approach.

JohnMakin 1y ago
Except Musk and the chadsphere he surrounds himself with spends an inordinate amount of time promoting him as some kind of techno-genius. A first year CS student couldn't confuse those terms, and he makes embarrassing gaffes like that quite often. They go ignored because people make unlimited amounts of excuses for him for some reason, other than the very obvious conclusion - that he doesn't know wtf he is talking about. Even your corrected, generous version is wildly inaccurate.
- anonym29 1y ago
  There hasn't ever been a single time in your entire life where you were thinking of one thing, but the words coming out of your mouth communicated something different, by mistake, even though you genuinely did understand the difference?
  - JohnMakin 1y ago
    Do you understand the post you are replying to? If you do, what does this question have to do with it?
    - anonym29 1y ago