Zooko's Triangle

Re:Zooko's Triangle by whatwhatwhat on Saturday August 21, 2010 @11:23PM (#1624144)

And what if PGP were modded to use combinations of words out of the dictionary (human readable) as public keys? I have no idea how that would even be possible, but it seems to be theoretically possible, and that would satisfy all three requirements: security, decentralization, and human-meaningful.

I probably missed something.

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Re:Zooko's Triangle by SamReidHughes on Saturday August 21, 2010 @11:42PM (#1624162)

What is human-meaningful about destructively omnipresence stiff fathom bushwhacked parasailing jumbotron articulated sline comonad ephemeral xenophile butt headphones liquid turquoise soar classic pantheon?

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Re:Zooko's Triangle by whatwhatwhat on Sunday August 22, 2010 @12:01AM (#1624181)

I can read it to you over the phone? Or even more simply... I can just read it

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Re:Zooko's Triangle by randomtask on Sunday August 22, 2010 @12:25AM (#1624221)

Marc Stiegler's essay on Petname systems is a far better introduction (it's listed in the external links). http://www.skyhunter.com/marcs/petnames/IntroPetNames.html

He uses the term memorable rather than human-meaningful, which is a more accurate description I think.

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Re:Zooko's Triangle by benatkin on Sunday August 22, 2010 @12:31AM (#1624231)

Dictionary words can get mixed up on the phone. I sometimes find myself asking for words to be spelled out when I talk on the phone.

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Re:Zooko's Triangle by wmf on Sunday August 22, 2010 @12:25AM (#1624220)

In this context, human-meaningful really means human-chosen. With public-key crypto, you don't get to choose what your public key is.

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Re:Zooko's Triangle by endtime on Sunday August 22, 2010 @01:27AM (#1624270)

That would require either a drastic reduction in the size of the key space, or a drastic increase in key size.

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