> Think about it, the key analogy is just terrible.
Because originally it was not really that much of an analogy: we only had what is now called "'symmetrical' encryption", but was just "encryption" back in the day (dating back to even Caesar perhaps). So the 'key idea' made complete sense: don't lose the one thing that could unlock things.
It was only more recently (in the relative, historical sense (~1970s)) that public and private "keys" became a thing, and the differentiation between symmetrical and asymmetrical encryption was made/invented.
The problem is arguably the symmetry in asymmetrical encryption - namely both "private" and "public" key are the same thing; the labeling "public" vs. "private" reflects your arbitrary choice of which of one you give away, and which one you keep for yourself.
It's surprising that we didn't invent any kind of physical padlock that accepts two keys, with the lock mechanism such that, when locked with one of the two keys, can only be unlocked by the other key. I can imagine obvious use cases for that, e.g. in shipping, but I guess this won't adopted because it makes the key management problem immediately obvious. But should such a thing existed, that would be the best (edit: just better - see my other comment explaining why "lock" is the dumb part here) analogy to draw terminology from.
> It's surprising that we didn't invent any kind of physical padlock that accepts two keys, with the lock mechanism such that, when locked with one of the two keys, can only be unlocked by the other key.
Key exchange blocks are basically this, except one of the two keys is perpetually locked inside the keyblock, and you must use the other to retrieve it (whereupon the key you just used is now locked in the block).
So not quite the same thing, but the closest example I know of.
> It's surprising that we didn't invent any kind of physical padlock that accepts two keys, with the lock mechanism such that, when locked with one of the two keys, can only be unlocked by the other key.
As mentioned in the video they're usually used in commercial settings. Also:
> One Way Cylinder Keying: Allows for the issuance of one key that can ONLY lock, one key that can ONLY unlock and one key that can BOTH lock and unlock the cylinder. Perfect for applications where one key holder should only have authorization to lock, while another should only have authorization to open and yet another can have the authorization to perform both functions. One way keyed products are supplied with 2 nylon head cut keys per product and 1 key order card per product.
> namely both "private" and "public" key are the same thing; the labeling "public" vs. "private" reflects your arbitrary choice of which of one you give away, and which one you keep for yourself.
It is not quite arbitrary. With RSA, you could potentially store only the modulus and the exponents, publishing one exponent and keeping the other one private (or making each privately known to different people, with both having the modulus). However, the way it is commonly stored is with the private key file includes both exponents and several other numbers, and the public exponent is usually 65537 which makes it easy to guess so you cannot effectively keep it secret. With some other kinds of cryptography (other than RSA), you can figure out the public key from the private key even without doing things like this.
But that's the "you need two keys at the same time" case, which is different. I'm talking about "each of them can lock alone, but once locked, only the other one can unlock".
The real problem is that lock and key is a fundamentally dumb analogy for a process that scrambles something.
> There is currently no such status as "associate member" defined in the EU treates although the idea of special status for not being a complete member was floating around for a while now.
See perhaps Article 217 of TFEU:
> The Union may conclude with one or more third countries or international organisations agreements establishing an association involving reciprocal rights and obligations, common action and special procedure.
> Association is already an established form of EU external relations. The Euro-Mediterranean Association Agreement with Morocco entered into force on March 1, 2000. The EU–Ukraine Association Agreement entered fully into force on September 1, 2017. Their substantive commitments and institutional structures differ, reflecting the relationships negotiated by the respective parties (Council of the European Union, 2000; European External Action Service, 2017).
> Article 217 does not prescribe a uniform degree of integration. Depending on its provisions, an association agreement may establish economic commitments, regulatory cooperation, joint institutions, and procedures for implementing shared objectives. The associated country's rights arise from the agreement rather than from a standardized legal status conferred by Article 217 itself.
> A 1993 study in the Netherlands examined collision experience at 181 intersections converted to roundabouts. Pedestrian collisions (all injury severities) dropped 73% and pedestrian casualties dropped 89%.
> Evaluations in Sweden concluded that single-lane roundabouts are very safe for pedestrians, at about a 78% reduction in injuries, and that multi-lane roundabouts are about as safe as other intersections.
> A 2002 study of collision experience at the roundabouts in Park City, Vail, West Vail and Avon, Colorado, showed 2 pedestrian crashes prior to the roundabouts operating with
over 164 million vehicle movements, compared to 1 pedestrian crash with roundabouts experiencing over 282 million vehicle movements.
> With the installation of a roundabout, this study finds that the before-after analysis results in a 40% decrease in all severity injury crashes for all roadway users, a 70% decrease in fatal and serious injury crashes for bikes and pedestrians, and a 15% decrease in total pedestrian bike and pedestrian crashes.
OK, so "worse for pedestrians" boils down to a statistic about body hits. If you are not struck, you are not having a worse pedestrian experience. My bad!
> The fact that you mention light-controlled roundabouts highlights that they do not, actually, "work perfectly fine".
I don't think anyone is claiming that roundabouts work in every and all situations: design handbooks often say they're good 'up to X vehicles per hour/day'.[1] But that does not mean they do not work, or not useful, for <X.
Intersections are an engineering problem, and there is a hardly ever an engineering solution that works everywhere and always. There is usually a spectrum of solutions for the various situations that are faced.
> They work where each direction has an approximately equal amount of traffic. However, usually, one direction (north/south, say) has a larger share of the traffic.
While it would slightly defeat the purpose in some ways, roundabouts with traffic lights are a thing:
So if one way has heavier traffic (at times), things could be signalized to allow (e.g.) that one direction primarily some of the time and the other three directions the rest.
> Finally, they're also (mostly) worse for cyclists and pedestrians.
Some data seems to conflict with this:
> A 1993 study in the Netherlands examined collision experience at 181 intersections converted to roundabouts. Pedestrian collisions (all injury severities) dropped 73% and pedestrian casualties dropped 89%.
> Evaluations in Sweden concluded that single-lane roundabouts are very safe for pedestrians, at about a 78% reduction in injuries, and that multi-lane roundabouts are about as safe as other intersections.
> A 2002 study of collision experience at the roundabouts in Park City, Vail, West Vail and Avon, Colorado, showed 2 pedestrian crashes prior to the roundabouts operating with
over 164 million vehicle movements, compared to 1 pedestrian crash with roundabouts experiencing over 282 million vehicle movements.
> With the installation of a roundabout, this study finds that the before-after analysis results in a 40% decrease in all severity injury crashes for all roadway users, a 70% decrease in fatal and serious injury crashes for bikes and pedestrians, and a 15% decrease in total pedestrian bike and pedestrian crashes.
> You'll still need an iPhone, the verification is linked to the specific iPhone, and the specific iPhone is linked to you.
Unless you use a friend's iPhone, or an iPhone you 'rented' for 5 minutes for $20 from someone on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace to take a picture on and then Airdrop to you.
If they airdrop it to you that typically requires you to have an iphone or a mac and airdrop users are able to be identified and tracked so the photo could still be linked to your device. The EU forced apple to use Wi-Fi Aware though, so unless that's similarly vulnerable people in the EU might be able to avoid those issues.
What? Just send the photo using literally any other method. Am I missing something, or did everyone just waste two minutes of their lives reading this?
I want to know the person who grows the celery seeds.
I bought a box 37 years ago, a tiny little box, and I've been using it to season soups, almost weekly that whole time.
There can't be more than one guy that grows those seeds, for the entire planet! So my questions are, first who is this guy, and second is the in the EU?
Also, has anybody else noticed this?
And if you think buying his celery seed farm, don't. It's a very limiting market.
Couldn't be bothered to read the article before commenting?
> James Bilson, global fixed income strategist at Schroders, said fiscal policy and debt sustainability are crucial for bond markets and the current rise in U.S. yields is not yet a sign of increasing sovereign credit risk.
> The cost of insuring U.S. sovereign debt against the risk of default, as reflected by credit default swaps, has fallen to its lowest since February, for example.
> "Combined policy is too loose to deliver sustained 2% inflation," he said. "This, in one line, is the root cause of the current weakness in bonds. Solve inflation, and many other problems become much easier too."
Well for one thing, different currencies have different rates of inflation. If one currency has 10% inflation and another has 1%, the second countries bonds at 5% will have a higher real return than the first, even if the risk of defaulting were the same, so the first country will have to offer a much higher coupon to find any buyers.
Also governments can influence demand, e.g. by mandating banks or pension funds buy their bonds, thereby pushing yields down, without changing the risk of default.
> If one currency has 10% inflation and another has 1%, the second countries bonds at 5% will have a higher real return than the first
It's not how it works. If both currency maintain change parity over time, then the inflation rate in one country compared to the other is irrelevant. “Real” (inflation adjusted) numbers make sense for consumers and local governments, but from an investing standpoint, the only thing that matters is the variation on FX rate.
And unlike what the myth of “inflation is the loss of value of a currency” says, those are actually very loosely correlated (and it tends to be anti correlated during inflation spikes due to central banks' interests rates).
Not sure, not my domain. My comment was just highlighting that comparing the yields on two sovereign bonds with the same maturity doesn’t necessarily mean one is riskier than the other, there are other factors.
The main complaint from Greece and Italy has been that Germany (and maybe even France) demanded (and got) strong monetary discipline for the Euro, so I'm pretty sure that the Euro itself isn't going to affect their debt much.
Italy recently issued USD-denominated bonds, which are directly comparable, and the yields are much higher. The 30y ones are at 6.21% YTM now, vs 5.37% for US 30y Ts. For comparison, Alphabet borrows cheaper than Italy: 6.02% on 2060 maturities.
It's wild to me that a private company in a volatile industry like Google can borrow so cheaply for such a long period. I get that they have been wildly profitable and powerful in recent years, but modern history is absolutely stuffed with companies that seemed invincible at one point but then were dead or dying a decade later.
Tech in particular has an awful lot of churn. There's isn't a single tech company in the world that I'm highly confident will be reliably printing money 34 years from now.
Yeah, but on the other hand the borrowing is relatively small compared to the company, so even if the company shrinks by 90% it will still be serviceable. Many western governments including the US have ridiculous debt loads at multiples of their GDPs; such high debt loads push up their interest rates. If you look at a less indebted country, like say Switzerland (22% of GDP, vs 115% for the US), then the premium paid by Alphabet over government bonds is a bit higher: 2.04% on 25y Alphabet CHF bonds vs 0.71/0.62% on 20y/30y Swiss government bonds.
* Excerpt: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2020/01/unauthorized-bread-a-...
* https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/41085118-unauthorized...
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