And yet there are millions of people using the Internet and we have to protect them with the army we have. I hope we'll see something like Marlinspike's Notaries becoming widespread in our lifetime, though.

Have you considered generating these screenshots automatically? It seems like if you did, this would protect you against both typos and insiders.

When will it be?

When enough people are screwed by it to justify the requirement which will justify the resultant cost increases.

I think the solution is to formally verify your hardware with a prover that is aware of electromagnetic forces. Software has to assume correctness of hardware (rad-hard applications have to assume ridiculous hardware faults are possible, but that's to prevent solar flares from corrupting firmware, not Rowhammer).

Thought experiment; you are some sort of intrusion prevention system. You've detected that your hardware is untrustworthy. Now what?

"Formal verification makes your code invulnerable against a very specific (though very powerful) attacker"

Perhaps the DNI should consider offering some form of clemency for other people who brought "homework" out of their SCIF to turn themselves in.

This may be a good idea, but I think the DNI would be rather embarrassed if the true magnitude of the 'homework' problem were revealed.

It doesn't have to become public. It probably shouldn't.

People are scammed out dollars, bitcoins, and iTunes gift cards. Ponzi schemes happen everywhere. The real money in bitcoin-denominated crime is in theft and extortion anyway.

If people disagree, I'd love to know why.

I don't have data to back a disagreement, but I'd be interested in what data you'd show to back your assertion that the money's in theft and extortion?

In particular, I'd wonder what the cashflow behind dark drug markets looks like in comparison (not that I think that should be illegal, and yes, I accept that any data there would have to be estimates at best)

Extortion in the form of ransom-ware, theft in the form of stealing bitcoin from exchanges. (Mt. Gox, and a more recent case.)

Legitimate businesses in the bitcoin space make small margins on each trade/transaction/etc. (Drug dealers are obviously a little different, but they are in the business of unlicensed pharmaceuticals, not the business of Bitcoin.)

Thieves, on the other hand, will take the whole thing, and run.

> Extortion in the form of ransom-ware, theft in the form of stealing bitcoin from exchanges. (Mt. Gox, and a more recent case.)

This is exactly what I meant. I guess I could have been more clear about that.

I don't have any data to back the assertion, and honestly I kind of forgot the markets were still extant, I just happen to know that people are making millions in illicit profits from these two methods, and I've never heard of a successful preminer (which was how I interpreted "Ponzi scheme") other than Mr. Nakamoto.

For a sufficiently large monitor I'd expect you to generate multiple five-pointed stars on the first try.

Regarding your first point, the trouble (at least in this instance) is that this logic doesn't apply when you're looking for Roger Waters and calling everyone in the phone book with his name. Each time someone picks up the phone it probably won't be the person you're looking for, but you certainly had reason to believe they could be.

They didn't find a strange phenomenon and point out it might be ETI, in which case you're right, the hypothesis wouldn't make sense until you had ruled out basically everything else. They made a hypothesis about what ETI would look like, looked for it, and claim to have found things that could fit the bill.

The correct answer would have been to pick a reasonable assumption (before you ask, your own judgement determines what is reasonable) for what "useful" is, and to clarify that that was the assumption you were using.

We don't have to question whether or not anything means anything in order to engage with every topic every time, but I appreciate the exercise.

This is a strawman trying to confuse my claim with nihilism.