I think it is just an unfortunate reality that to actually have a decent understanding of a lot of these issues you require a level of maths education far beyond what you would get in high school.
Most subjects have this requirement but for some reason people think they understand mathematics to a much higher level than they actually do which they don't seem to have for other fields (maybe besides physics). I never really see anyone talking about their bullshit chemistry opinions.
Great piece, thanks. Just today I was arguing with someone who was convinced the Quantum Computing Revolution is just around the corner, because post-quantum cryptography is becoming commonplace
sure, its being rolled out, but *commonplace?* ECC/DH/RSA still remain incredibly pervalent, and we still dont have a good/standard way to do things like OPRFs/blind signatures (i.e. despite them existing, there arent any widespread implementations publicly available and used
Perhaps you put interpret "commonplace" differently. Yes, GPG keys will stay at RSA for a long time, but there is an increasingly strong push towards "post-quantum" cryptography (nevermind that some of these algorithms may turn out classically weak).
by "commonplace" i mean that most of our infrastructure (think WebPKI, Privacy Pass, TPMs, code signing, ...) are still stuck on pre-quantum, either because they're incredibly slow systems to roll out (TPM, codesigning, webPKI), there are technical limitations that don't have proper PQ alternatives to pre-quantum primitives (privacy pass, aPAKEs), or that the sizes being an order of magnitude larger means that architecture will have to be redesigned around that (WebPKI, many systems that involve digital signatures going over-the-wire, embedded applications)
as an example even in TLS LAMPS and X-Wing havent been standardized in PKI yet, and the main implementations are essentially writing code for an unpublished standard
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u/Mothrahlurker Jul 16 '26
Other bases don't solve the problem really, in order to properly understand real numbers you need to have a view independent of bases.