Ugh, quick, messy fingers. I wanted to mod this "Insightful". Clicked on "redundant".

So, posting to undo my bad deed. I could just comment "yeah, you're right" and be less publicly embarassed... But I deserve the shame :-P

You know... There were great hopes raised in my parents' day, when the hippies threatened the anachronic values of a dying, obsolete social construct.

Young people are always more likely to embrace change, difference, to agree that the risk to be different is worth it, that the old corrupt system is not worth pursuing anymore. Then they grow up. Then, the old hippies become the dwellers of old age care homes, and are as reactionary as their grandparents were.

Man, I got to use a PDP11 at my father's institute. I can assure you that lifting the machine would require industrial machinery. Also, the machine was rack-mounted with its disk... So that advice would not be very welcome :)

I often quote in this context a nice 1999 article, Why Johnny can't encrypt: a usability evaluation of PGP 5.0.Yes, it's old, but still interesting: What kind of shortcomings do crypto interfaces have in order to be used by a random Johnny?

There are over 8,000Km of America (how many miles would that be?) South of your border. The name "United States of America" means that, among the existing States in America, some decided to unite and become a nation — but that nation does not necessarily span all of America.

Having so many publishing venues available right now, with (thankfully) every day more of them available under open access licensing schemes, we can get to much more research in our field.

That, however, means that when I start reading on a subject related to my area of study, there are too many documents fighting for my attention. And I will undoubtedly miss many among them, just because of sheer probability.

Of course, the same will happen to my published works: They will no longer be _so_ unique, they will also depend on my luck for you to read them.

I recently posted a non-consensual photo of my newborn daughter, taken as she was brought out of the womb. Everybody congratulated us (for the baby, and for the photo, which was a great shot ;-) ).

I somehow doubt Twitter would have an issue with her image.

If your family has had a mezcal for 4 generations, it just means they don't drink alcohol, or have it really well hidden. Maybe they have had a temazcal (similar to a sauna, but with far more associated rituals to it) ;-)

Universidad Politécnico does not exist, in fact. There is a long-standing rivalry between "la universidad" (Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México) and "el poli" (Instituto Politécnico Nacional). Nowadays, I teach at UNAM and am a student at IPN :-)

Huichol is spoken in the West. Náhuatl is the dominant indigenous language in the center of the country, the different types of Mayan in the East. But there are over 60 distinct indigenous languages throughout the country.

Just like... Mexico City!

I am Mexican, living in Mexico City. My wife is an Argentinian, from a mid-sized province capital. She often finds it laughable how this city lacks any logic. Of course, until it becomes clear that most quirks come from agricultural, old villages that got slurped into the Blob. Then its shape is explainable... Not that it makes much sense, of course.

Others have replied, but I think I should do so as well: Yes, we don't use a PGP key to log in to thousands of machines, but we use it to validate package uploads that enter the archive. If I sign+upload a malicious binary package, it's just a matter of time until it reaches users.

Of course, there are some caveats: First, I must convince users to use my package. This is, my malicious code should not go in a very uninteresting package, it would go to one that I know that has many users. But, second, it should not attract too much attention, as others would likely find my backdoor. Say, if I wanted to reach maximum number of machines, I could update an "Essential" package, such as base-files. But first, the package is not mine (so my friend Santiago, the package maintainer, would jump at the unexpected upload). And it does not get updates often, so others would probably debdiff it and uncover my betrayal. And third, that would make my malicious package enter the unstable distribution. Were I looking for a real foothold on a large amount of computers, I'd have to wait probably around two years until it reaches a stable release.

That's why I said "thousands" and not "millions" :-)

Interesting thing you mention. Well, our migration was prompted by some theoretical advances; if you look at our slides at DebConf14 you will see some references to papers presented at the EuroCrypt 2012 conference talking about the relative strengths of different keys.

I don't contest that Zimmerman and Koch know how to communicate securely and what it takes, but maybe we are talking about a different threat model. One thing is identity assurance just for the sake of identity assurance, but in Debian we use it as a core infrastructural part: Get hold of my GPG key, and you have potential root access to thousands of computers. Of course, there are human checks in place, and it's quite unlikely you'd get away with yours... But it's possible.

You should really update your key. A 1024D key with a SHA1 primary signing algorithm is no longer considered safe.

(Data point: We did quite a work in Debian to migrate to 2048R with SHA256)

I am absolutely not surprised by this: A well-known kernel hacker has enough systemwide understanding for the ocassional glitch to become obvious. He also uses most probably a very specific subset of programs for his day-to-day activities — I (a very far cry from his skill levels) haven't changed my main tools in over ten years. I mean, a tiling window manager, Emacs, a browser... Specific little tools can vary, but they won't jeopardize my system's overall behaviour — This means, it won't mean me spending time head-scratching to keep working.

Now, a developer is a far cry from a systems administrator. A sysadmin values stability over all things. I don't want a random upgrade to become a lost hour understanding the new configuration format of foobard.

And of course, casual users... If my wife desktop had changed from GNOME 2 to GNOME 3 without me preparing her, I'm sure she would not have appreciated it.

America is swamped already by illegal migrants. Some of them started arriving in the XVII-XVIII century. We failed to protect the borders of our great, glorious nation — And yes, they overthrew us and reducted us. Nowadays, the USA is flooded with all those dirty white do-no-goodies. They walk and drive around what used to be our forests and plains, as if they were the lords of the land. And they now don't want to allow any further migration After teaching us that migration was just a natural phenomenon, after telling us that Europe is overcrowded and they needed to pursuit the Great American Dream... They want to deny that same dream to newer migrants...

YES. YES, completely with you.

Language and literature are not directly marketable. Highschool-level algebra is not directly marketable. Biology, physics and chemistry are not directly marketable. Same goes for geography, phylosophy, history, and basically every other subject we learnt at high school.

Still, it would be absolutely foolish to get rid of all that.

We don't send kids to school to make them marketable — We send them to get a general culture, to get a baseline of education in all major areas of knowledge. And, of course, I will argue over and over that nowadays the basic workings of a computer are as central to understanding our world as algebra.

So, yes, forget about marketability. Think about getting enoug foundations to understand the world and society they will have to develop in.