The one-time pad

A long, long time ago, on a blog right, right here, I briefly mentioned that I wanted to write a blog post about the one-time pad. Today is the day that I do so. 

The one-time pad is an elementary part of cryptography and I feel that every computer scientist should know about it. Don't worry, though, I'll keep this understandable for just about everyone. In fact, the one-time pad is very simple and could probably be explained to a seven-year-old.

Let's say that you have written a love letter that you want to be readable only by the target of your affections. In order to hide its content you take piece of paper with completely random letters, which we will call the key.

Now you take the first letter of your love letter and remember its position in the alphabet. Then, you take the first letter of the key and also remember its number. You add the two, and if the total is higher than 26, subtract 26. You end up with a number that can once again be translated back to a letter. This will be the first letter of your encrypted message. 

You do this for the second letter as well. And then for the third. In fact, you keep doing this until you have encrypted the entire love letter. You send this encrypted message to your beloved, who must also have a copy of the key; only people with the key can read your message. 

Do note that you do not loop around on the key. This means that the key must be at least as long as the message itself. Moreover, you cannot use this key again (or at least the part of the key you used, if the key is longer than the message, you can use the remainder it next time). This is really an important part of the strength of the one-time pad. 

In fact, the strength of the one-time pad is such that it is unbreakable. Actually, it has been mathematically proven that it cannot be broken without knowledge of the key. The proof goes something like this: there is any number of possible decrypted messages that the encrypted message could represent. Without any knowledge of the key, each of those is exactly equally likely to be the original message. This means that you can't discern between them in any way. Some might make sense while others may not, but there is absolutely no way to tell which of the decryptions that does make sense is the intended one.

It should be noted that in the way we did this above, we are "leaking" a lot of information because we are not encrypting spaces and punctuation, which compromises the strength of the encryption. There are of course ways to encrypt these as well. In fact, there is no reason we should stick to the traditional alphabetical encryption. Instead of using letters as a basis for the encryption, you could use "bytes of data represented in binary" and instead of asking the key to the message you could use a "bitwise xor". This way you would end up with system that has the same mathematical properties, makes more sense for computers and can represent any type of data. 

Though the one-time pad is very strong, it is not used all that much. This is because it isn't very practical. You need to share a key with the recipient, which needs to be as long as your message. If you can do this securely, why wouldn't you just send the message instead? With that in mind, the only practical use of the one-time pad is that you can share the key at a moment when secure communications are possible and send the message later, when they aren't. 

While the one-time pad may be the ultimate in symmetric encryption, most of the encryption we do today is actually asymmetric. This is when there are different keys for encryption and decryption. One of the two can be public knowledge while the other is kept secret. In order to sign something and prove that you have written it (and nobody has changed anything about it) you use a secret key to encrypt and a public key to decrypt your "signature". In order to make sure there are no eavesdroppers, you use a encryption key that is freely available that has a corresponding decryption that only the intended recipient has.

Using one-time pads isn't entirely trivial. First of all, your key needs to be truly random. Any kind of pattern in it reduces the strength of the encryption. True randomness actually isn't easy, especially not in the large amounts needed for a one-time pad. Computers actually often simulate randomness, which really doesn't cut it for this purpose. 

The second problem is sharing the key. We already mentioned this, but the problem here becomes that you may not know how much data you will want to send later on. This means that you might need to share a very, very long key just to be sure you can send enough long messages later on. And having a long key lying around is a problem in itself, as a stolen key loses all its value...

Finally, you really really really can't reuse (parts of) a key. This really can't be stressed enough. During the Second World War, the Germans actually used one-time pads. Except... they reused keys and thus the encryption wasn't unbreakable and was in fact broken. Because of this, the Allies were able to listen in on their communications...

Allright, that is about all that I feel everyone ought to know about the one-time pad. I do intend to write about the ways I would use pads in different situations some other time, but I don't yet know when that will be. The situations I am thinking of would be modern day espionage and and an interstellar empire, but nothing is set in stone yet.

Taiga on my Orange Pi PC

Recently, one of my hobby projects made it to a very nice first prototype state. It doesn't do much yet, but it is in a state where I can show it to people and personally I think it shows a lot of potential that is in the ideas I had. However, working on the prototype was kept simple because it was so basic; there were only a couple of tasks to work on. In order to keep the further progress of the project structured, I decided I need some form of an issue tracker. I have used Taiga.io for such a project in the past and it worked well. Unfortunately, though, their hosted version only allows a single private project and I already had one.

Remember all the Single-Board Computers I wrote about a while back? The Pi 2 is still actively running Kodi, the newest Pi 3 is driving an official Pi touch screen and some of the CHIPs are part of the project I mentioned while their versatility means I have ideas for quite a few more of them. However, the Pine and the Orange Pi have been idle since my last post about them. However, for the Orange Pi, this has recently changed.

I took the Orange Pi and installed Taiga on it. It is quite nice to have my own "dev server" and I'm quite happy about the current situation. I won't describe the exact procedure I followed to get where I am now, as it was basically following their guide for installing it. However, I will post a list of notes. Some of them will relate to installing it on the Orange Pi (or on an SBC or on an ARM based device) whereas others will just be my personal gripes with the installation or the guide.

• The guide uses the user "taiga" instead of telling you where to use your own username. This makes it easy to miss a spot if you are using a different user.
• To make matters worse, they chose the name of their software, so not every instance of the word should in fact be replaced by your user.
• I would probably have been better off creating a user and naming it taiga, though. The procedure installs quite a lot in the home directory and now that's under some other user.
• The procedure calls for installing postgresql 9.5, but Debian only has 9.4 on stable. By simply replacing the 5 by a 4 it works, as the minimum requirement is version 9.4. (Alternatively, I could have used 9.5 from unstable.)
• The guide installs python3 and then just uses Python 3.5. On Debian, you will have installed Python 3.4. This earlier version does simply seem to work for me.
• Installation of lxml is known to be problematic on the Raspberry Pi, but can be achieved by increasing the amount of virtual memory. For me, it worked without such hacks, though I do not know if this is due to running Armbian, running a headless image or using an Orange instead of a Raspberry.
• Circus isn't available in Debian stable, so I had to add the testing repositories and get it from there.
• Pay attention to the output of "service circus status". This is the only way to tell if the backend is actually running.
• I skipped everything that was even remotely optional, so I might revisit some of that in the future. The optional parts are sometimes somewhat out of order, which makes it seem you have to pick them up again before the end, but this isn't really the case.
• I currently use a .local domain. I think that means I use mdns, but it works on Windows (which mdns shouldn't) so I'm not 100% sure how this is working. It definitely isn't working from android, though, which is a shame. 

It's a real pity there is no "normal" installation procedure like running a script or installing a package. Nevertheless, I do now have the whole things running and I am quite happy with having my own development server.

Space Opera: some observations

With both Dark Matter and Killjoys having just begun their second season a week ago, I feel it's about time I take some time to write about Space Operas once again. Most of this could have been written during the first season of each of the shows, but I didn't actually do so then, so I'm doing it now.

Observations

With Space Opera having come back after such a long period of almost nothing, you basically say we are in a new generation of the genre. What are the things that stand out in this generation so far?

Tasers are hot

Whether it's the bad guys using them for torture and stealthy take-overs or the government trying to do things in a non-lethal way (but often still being more brutal than necessary), everyone is using tasers. Both Dark Matter and Killjoys went with more futuristic "Shock sticks", whereas The Expanse went with traditional tasers, giving the feel that the future isn't all that different after all.

Aliens are not

It's just humans everywhere. Aliens are nowhere to be seen. The only exception to this was Otherspace, which had non-corporeal aliens. However, the only times these aliens could be "seen" they were pretending to be human. Unlike Stargate Universe did some time ago, we do often get fully populated galaxies, it's just that all that population is human.

Space zombies

Everyone's doing space zombies in some sort or form. There's different stories behind each show's zombies but somehow space zombies are a craving that is shared by all the writers.

Space is gorgeous

Of course it depends on resolution and black-quality of your screen, but there's a lot more possible in sfx these days and it shows. Even the low-budget shows like Otherspace showed us some gorgeous outer-space shots. Dark Matter was the one coming up the poorest in this regard in my opinion, but even they upped their sfx game for the second season.

Interpersonal conflict is important

One of the ideas that Gene Roddenberry was very keen to build Star Trek on was the fact that the human race had grown beyond interpersonal conflict. Every other show has some form of this conflict, but there's a lot more of this in this generation if you ask me. Dark Matter is all about people who don't know themselves and trust is a big issue there. Killjoys has a closer team, but what happens between the team members is ultimately what drives much of the plot for the first season. The Expanse has people fighting everywhere, but one of the clearest examples might be the "main crew" which does a lot of fighting before they really start considering themselves a crew. Otherspace was just about a single crew, so much of what they do is getting on each other's nerves. It's always been there, but I feel it's even more there now.

Star Trek

I'm very much looking forward to what the new Star Trek will bring to the table early next year. Many of the observations above wouldn't quite fit the Star Trek brand, which is filled with aliens, doesn't really have a suitable place for taser and doesn't feature interpersonal conflict. It will be interesting to see where they take the genre, even if it's uncertain whether it will be suitable for watching by real Trekkies.

Other shows

The interest in the genre seems to have died down a bit. When the entire pie was on the table, everyone wanted a piece of it. Now, there are three solid shows eating that pie, leaving little for any new venture. Both the Blake's 7 remake and Space: 2099 seem to have died a silent death. Of the other things that were in various stages of development, nothing had been heard for some time, so I assume they aren't getting made. I also haven't been able to find anything hinting towards more new things being developed.

I can understand it. I mean, three shows is a lot and I doubt enough people would be willing to watch yet more Space Opera. That said, I would have loved to hear of more Space Opera, because I definitely would want to watch another series.

SBCs: All hands on deck!

The C.H.I.P.

Introducing: the C.H.I.P.

 Today I received the last of the Single-board computers I ordered. Despite ordering the devices spread over a year, they all ended up arriving within one week. The C.H.I.P. was the device that I was most excited about, so it's sort of appropriate that it arrived last. This way, it couldn't steal the thunder of any of the other packages.

There are many reasons why I was so excited about this delivery. I had waited for this device the longest. I had spent the most money on it. The device has the most interesting features in my opinion. The PocketC.H.I.P. is just pure awesomeness. And there's probably more reasons.

Top view and bottom view

The C.H.I.P actually has some of its most important components moved to its bottom side, including its processor. This happened late in development, as they changed to a larger version of the same processor. To protect the processor, the computer now comes with a case, which only covers its bottom. This is definitely true for all the Kickstarter C.H.I.P.s, but I'm not sure if the "store-bought" C.H.I.P.s will also have this case.

Safe and well

Additionally, the Kickstarter version of the C.H.I.P. also comes with a Composite cable. This is a cable you can just buy at many stores, but it seems to be a bit undermarketed. It is also the same cable you could use for analog video on your Rapberry Pi 2 or 3.

In NTC Pink!

Unlike many of the other boards, this board is definitely not trying to be another Raspberry. Fro example, it uses female GPIO headers, as opposed to the male headers we've gotten so used to since the original Raspberry. This has the advantage that they could actually mark all the headers on the board.

You'll have no reason to use the wrong header

 For comparison's sake, let's just put it side to side with a Raspberry (it's a model 2B).

They're quite different - at least, to the trained eye

I actually own three C.H.I.P.s now. There was one in my pledge, another in the PocketC.H.I.P. that was in my pledge, and then finally one extra I added after the Kickstarted ended. I also pre-ordered a couple more, so there's several more of these machines on the way. I guess I may have gone a little overboard...

The power of threes!

Compared to the Pi Zero

The Chip lives in the same product space as the Pi Zero. It's the closest product in size and cost, and its specs are in fact rather similar. Let's put the two side by side.

Fighting for <$10 mastery

 As you can see, they are actually rather comparable in size. The Pi Zero is thinner, but it's also slightly longer. In the end, the C.H.I.P. is a bit bigger, though.

That's TWO computers!

Putting the Zero on top of the Chip, shows how close in size they are. The Zero actually fits so nicely between the GPIO headers of the Chip that it almost looks like there's only one board there. When talking about height, though, the story is a bit different.

No competition there...

The extras

I backed at the "All the things" level, so there's more things that were in the package. Let's have a look.

All the things!

There's the two C.H.I.P.s, the HDMI extension board, the VGA extension board, the Composite cables (which we already looked at) and the PocketC.H.I.P. Though it's a bit outside of the scope of the single-board computer - and a bit more expensive, I really like the PocketC.H.I.P. so let's have a closer look at it.]

Not truly pocket-size, is it?

On the front, we see a fully featured keyboard and the screen. The screen has a resolution of 480x272 and has a resistive touch layer (so no multitouch!). Neither is exactly optimal, but they definitely kept the costs down. There's also the possibility of using your GPIO headers, as they seem to be connected to the holes at the top of the device.

On the other side...

The backside clearly shows the C.H.I.P. It is held in place by its GPIO headers, so you can get it out with some carefully applied force. You can also see the battery, which gives the device its portability. The battery is charged through the CHIP, which has the required circuitry for this.

Jumpin' 'n' Dashin'

Getting the PocketC.H.I.P. up and running was extremely easy. I just held down the power (and home) button for a couple of seconds and that was it...

The whole family

Since this was the last of the boards I was expecting, let's all pose together for a photo.

Clearly, if a board's green, it must be a Raspberry

Alright, alright. The raspberry belongs in there as well...

You see?

And finally

Before I end this blogpost, there's one more thing I've got to do. You see, I've completely forgotten the shot with the pen for comparison. So here you go:

Same pen as before.

SBCs: The saga continues

Today, the Orange Pi arrived. Of all the boards, this one will probably be the one that is the most challenging to get to work. Its main problem is that the software support and documentation is simply non-existent.

The model that I got is called the Orange Pi PC. I ordered it from China for about 17 euros including shipping, with of course the drawback that it takes a couple of weeks before it arrives. It is clearly modeled closely after the Raspberry Pi. It's specs are very reminiscent of the Raspberry. It trades the DSI connector for a microphone and a power switch, while it has a different type of power supply and has a processor that is significantly faster (at least, on paper). However, the rest of the specs closely match and the two boards are even exactly the same size.

I'm expecting to receive my pledge rewards for the CHIP tomorrow, so then I should have all the boards (and all within the span of a week). The next thing is to get "making". I've already managed to run Debian on both the Pine and the Zero, but I haven't had the time to get much further than that. Let's see what we can do with all these boards.

SBCs: And so it begins

Over the past year or so, I have invested money in a number of different Single-Board Computers (that's Raspberry Pi-like things or credit-card size computers). I Kickstarted both the C.H.I.P. and the Pine A64. I also ordered an Orange Pi recently and ordered a Raspberry Pi Zero as soon as it became readily available. It seems the delivery dates all magically converged. While the CHIP and the Orange Pi are currently in transit, I received both the Pine and the Zero today.

Let's start with the Pine A64.

The Pine A64

I hadn't realized quite how big this board is. I mean, a Raspberry Pi (a normal one, not the zero) fits in it twice!

Raspberry for scale

It's a pretty powerful board that was pretty cheap as well (though once you added shipping it was comparable in price to a Raspberry). When I backed the project, I thought that I would perhaps be able to use its hardware supported HEVC decoding to my advantage, but I learned later that it will be a challenge at best to get a grapics driver with hardware support working under linux.

The case does look really good, if you ask me

And once again, it's big...
That pen easily fits on top of the case

But of course the better known product is the Raspberry Pi. I didn't quite realize how small this thing was! (Well, not until a coworker showed me his Zero this morning.)

The Raspberry Pi Zero
That's the same pen, by the way

I don't know what I'll do with the Zero, but I definitely had to have it. And besides, I have to add to the comparison I wrote late last year once my CHIP arrives.

Raspberry for scale. I just love being able to say that.

Alright, I guess I'm off to see if I still have two SD cards lying around. And, more importantly, whether I can still find my card reader.

The Raspberry Pi Zero and Pine A64 side by side

Has a game aged well?

I recently read a bit on Reddit that talked about "video games becoming outdated". It said that it didn't understand the concept, since technology can go out of date, while art cannot. Today, I want to talk about the same general concept. However, I'll call it "aging well" and "not aging well".

So, the idea is that some games have aged well. What does that mean? It means that though it was made in a different time, it still holds up to the changed standards. It means that it feels like it could have been made more recently. It means that when playing it you aren't bothered by the signs that the game is old. It means that it doesn't feel like it was limited because of restrictions that are no longer there.

Other games have not aged well. The controls may feel wrong and even with some tweaking you aren't getting to what you're used to today. The story might not hold up to standards that are set these days. It may be that it simply looks really bad to someone used to more newfangled graphics. The pacing might not be what we've come to expect. Perhaps it's simply the learning curve that couldn't pass today.

It should definitely be said that this is a very personal and opinion-based thing. It's better possible to discuss why you feel that a game has or has not aged well than to debate whether red is more beautiful than green or not, but in the end it is still about an opinion. It's like how we can discuss why we like a game and whether it is a good game, but at the end of the day we're still going to have our own opinions (hopefully).

Of course, this whole concept is not limited to games only. The same terminology is often used when talking about film. Both tv shows (as well as their individual episodes) can age well or poorly. It''s all about whether or not it holds up today. Whether or not it feels antiquated. Both these media are rather young and still actively evolving. Music is also going through a lot of changes, so it could probably apply there as well, even if I don't see it. I don't know if it can apply to more traditional forms of art, such as sculpting or painting. I don't know so much about them, but at the surface it doesn't seem to be the same there.

That's my views on aging of games and a couple of other media as well. I'm not sure if I can really put a conclusion on it and if I try to summarize it, I just end up paraphrasing something from the second or third paragraph, so I'll just leave it at this: not all games have aged equally well.

Space Opera in 2015 [on tv]

For five years, we haven't had a single space opera on tv. The five years before that, there were only one or two series that were able to brave the executives. But finally, 2015 marked the return of the genre to our living rooms. And when it rains, it pours.

It's clear that the genre was wide open and many people were looking to fill that hole. Last year brought us 4 series: Dark Matter, Killjoys, The Expanse and Other Space. I'll just write about them all in turn.

Other Space

Other Space was the only of the four series that came to our screens in the first quarter of the year. It was released all at once in April on Yahoo Screen, as part of their original content offering. It takes space opera and marries it with comedy. It's more like Hyperdrive than Red Dwarf in the sense that it truly is space opera comedy, not comedy that happens to be set on a spaceship. However, even then it goes a step further than Hyperdrive. Instead of every detail serving comedy, there's a space opera story and space opera comedy, creating a mix that I don't think has ever been done before.

The show was clearly produced on a very low budget, but I'd say that adds to its charm rather than detracting from it. The show also showed that space scenes can look amazing these days, even when the money is limited. It's also eight episodes of half an hour each, making it a rather short watch. And on top of that Yahoo lost too much on their original content to continue with any of it, meaning that the chance of a second season seems rather remote. If you like the genre, I'd definitely recommend watching. Just fit it between the other things your watching.

Dark Matter

In June, the space opera program really started gaining traction. Dark Matter was the first of the non-comedy space operas. It is also the most traditional space opera that aired in 2015. It put a crew in a fancy ship and let them struggle with space travel and all that entails. It added a twist, though: the crew is suffering from group amnesia. Even though they are able to figure out who they are by the end of the first episode, they aren't too willing to truly assume the same identities and that's one of the things that influences almost every story.

Not every angle they took was truly interesting and every once in a while there seemed to be a bit of a plot hole as the writers seemed to forget about things in previous episodes (and thus didn't care to mention why this was approached in a similar way). However, the problems got less as the show settled into a good rhythm and by the end it was pretty good. It still didn't quite hit the sweet spot for me, but I was hungry enough for space opera to not care the least bit.

Dark Matter is due for another thirteen episodes this year, meaning that we'll definitely get to enjoy more space opera. That of course also means that the cliff hanger that ended the first season will not have to go unresolved.

Killjoys

Killjoys. This is the gem of the year, in my books. It premiered less than a week later than Dark Matter, but it takes quite a different approach with a rather small cast. Though it is implied that there's more to known space, the show sticks to a single star system. Like any good Space Western. Because that's what the show is. It may not be as literal in its Western part as the archetypal Firefly, but it but it does forego the exploration of the wide universe for the scavenge for the next paycheck in a smaller, known system. Oh, and much of that system lives on the outskirts of the law, with bounty hunters - or killjoys in local slang - running much of the show.

The show really took me in with these three characters living on one ship and going on the missions while also uncovering things about their own pasts and and going off on personal quests from time to time. This first season got into its groove quickly and really feels like a story with a beginning, a middle and an end. Though they did leave more than enough questions open for the future of the series, it did also wrap things up nicely.

Unlike any other space western I know of, Killjoys got its second season greenlit without a hitch. I mean, it has only had ten episodes, so it's not even at the length of Firefly yet, but things are looking well. I'm definitely looking forward to seeing more of this in 2016.

The Expanse

The year was closed off with the first four episodes of The Expanse. It's a little harder to write about a show that has barely begun, but so far it looks enjoyable if a little convoluted. The hopes for this series were high as it was rumored to be the show to fill the shoes that the reimagined Battlestar Gallactica left. However, I don't think it quite lives up to that standard. We'll just have to see where it goes. Visually, though, this show is just stunning.

The show is set in a relatively close future where humanity is active both on Mars and the meteor belt. The whole system is on edge as hostilities seem to be able to break out at just about any moment and in the mean time air and (more importantly, it would seem) water is a scarce commodity. There seem to be some plot holes in this whole setting in my opinion, but nevertheless this brings us a number of story lines that all have their interesting sides. However, it is still quite hard to pinpoint what it is all about with all these different threads.

Ascension

A special mention goes out to Ascension. It didn't get beyond a mini-series and in the USA it actually aired December 2014 (in Canada it was early 2015, so it still sort of counts), but it was quite worth the watch. I have no idea where the show would have gone if it had continued, but is a quite clever show and puts a nice twist on the space opera genre.

It revolves around a generation ship sent out into space some fifty years ago, traveling at near-light speeds. Basically, it hasn't encountered anything and it's really just about dealing with some of the problems of space travel, but more even about the challenges of a generation ship. A whole social structure emerged and the internal politics are a joy to watch. And yeah, there's some things I just can't tell because it would spoil part of watching...

The future

With two series being renewed for a second season and a third continuing its first into the new year, it looks unlikely that we'll be starved for space opera again any time soon. But it seems there is even more in the pipelines. Syfy mentioned working on four different space opera pilots nearly three years ago and only one of them has had any known result (Ascension, which was known as Sojourn back then), so I personally still hold some hope that more will be created from that avenue. Three years may be a lot not to hear anything, but for the creation of a tv series, it's really not all that crazy (though my hope may fade if we don't hear something soon now). In the mean time, there's talks of remakes for Blake's 7, Lost in Space and Space: 1999. Additionally, there also seems to be some decent progress on the tv version of Ringworld. And of course, Trek is coming back to the format of tv series in early 2017.