I was sitting at the doctor’s office and overheard an old man claim Harris was so stupid that she couldn’t figure out how to use a vacuum.

It broke MY brain trying to wrap my head around that one.

Let’s not also forget the fleet of passenger aircraft for distinguished persons, maintained by the military, with everything custom made and embroidered with presidential seals and produced in the USA and run through vigorous inspection to prevent microphone or pagers or something inside your soap dispenser.

There’s also no such thing as “Military Grade” Encryption. The government as a whole, as directed by NSA, uses the same encryption technology. If anything, one of the defining techniques is how said technology is implemented as a process. That means less about the algorithm and more about the hardware and handling. For example, when dealing with classified networking, one of the key differences is using dedicated hardware. These aren’t PC’s that can be hacked, they are devices whose specific role is to handle encryption, key loading, or key acquisition. They are hardened to prevent emissions from leaking and will dump keys, firmware, memory if tampered with. End devices can only accept keys with no way to retrieve them for reuse.

Advertisers that claim they are offering you “Military Grade” encryption just do regular NSA encryption methods in software, with no hardware component, and no handling process. Which would never be used in the military to secure classified data.

Also, most encryption used in these devices don’t use one key, they use key generators. Each device talking to another generates a unique, temporary session key. These session keys do not last long, so if any one key is compromised it limits any potential unauthorized disclosures. Capturing encrypted data for later cracking would prove to be a time and resource exhausted process that would provide too little information, too late. At this point it would be easier to actually try to steal the keys and hardware, rather than crack them.

I feel like starfield is an experiment in user driven content (mods) to sell a game. The issue with Skyrim is that there is really only one map, and before any map extension mod came out, there were so many mods out there that competed for space on the map. Even today, large world overhaul mods are constantly stepping on the toes of other mods. City redesigns are also a problem unless you’re really good at load orders and merging.

Starfield feels like each world is an open map, ready for people to start designing content: either a colony, a cave, or anything really. The story seems loose and open ended so that it won’t interfere with large collaborative content. It’s not a game they are selling, but a modding storefront. It’s like Skyrim Creations, but putting the horse (armor sold separately) before the cart.

Pagers are not guaranteed to be 1 way comms and bringing them into secure locations is a security violation. Additionally, depending on the classification, no unauthorized and undisclosed devices of any kind would be permitted, including any electronics or electronic media such as tapes, CDs, discs, etc. Even when I was issued a verified 1-way pager, I was specifically briefed I was not permitted to bring it into a classified location. Most of the highly classified SCIFS are shielded anyways, you can’t use it inside so it’s safer to leave it out, along with all other devices.

If your organization allows it, then (if federal) they are breaking the law and should be reported/up-channeled. If it’s corpo, you should bring up additional concerns with your security team.

Edit: Also, it goes without saying, current events are probably a good reason why pagers (and other devices) aren’t allowed in classified areas. While most focus on disclosure (getting out), we must not forget the risk of data/operations getting destroyed.

All valid concerns, but the fact is if you accept the weapon and anything happens, you are at fault.

We’ve had people get issued, and immediately, check and clear their weapon in the presence of an armorer in the bucket, and get in trouble for it misfiring, despite the fact that it should have been checked and cleared prior to change of hands and in addition to the fact that you hadn’t been issued ammo yet. It’s dumb, but people die over this, so they are very strict, even when it sometimes seems unnecessary.

We’ve had similar incidents with weapon safety (and other things) in the past that were more serious than what was going on in that picture. It all depends on the circumstances, and I’ve seen it go both ways. The point I was making is if there was anything more substantial, it would not just be ‘relieved of command’. No mention of an actual reprimand, which is more serious. I’m not saying it couldn’t ultimately lead up to that, but we don’t know that yet.

It was also a relief of command, not a court martial, not non-judicial punishment, not a demotion or and not a punitive action. It happened because it affected the image of the force, but not necessarily anything that is terribly bad. Relieving someone of command can be a precaution or a temporary measure, not always leading up to anything drastic. He will probably get additional training and a small mark on his record that will go away in a short time as long as the trend doesn’t continue. He may even still get to keep his command or just move somewhere else to command.

In some instances of private/public key systems, this is done. It’s mainly for the purpose of ensuring the recipient knows who the sender was and also ensuring the sender knows who the recipient is.

Quick primer: If you encrypt with your private key, everyone knows it was sent by you. If someone encrypts with your public key, they know you will receive it. Use your private key and someone’s public key together and you know only that person got it.

In practice, lately another step is added to negotiate a third temporary/session key. This ensures keys aren’t used forever, and if compromised a new one can be generated. This is more secure than encrypting twice, because you never know what data is sensitive and picking the wrong one requires the attacker to start from scratch.

No judgements, hope you and your doggo is happy.

Even if, still should do ice cream gig anyways.

A better example is to explain the chaos of having to go to the grocery store and pick up some hot dogs and buns. You know the pain.

100k voters attended. Not surprised it doesn’t look the same as 100k people.

I was a mix-up that was quickly resolved because the baby they gave my mom had the wrong bits. It happened again with my sibling. And my other sibling. For the exact same reasons. We all joke that none of us are really related.

But it really makes you think…

Close, but you are still trusting the device you own. If I were to compromise that device, I could capture that key and use it. Again, this is my limited understanding, but a zero trust solution works in such a way that the actual keys are not stored anywhere. During setup, new temporary keys are generated. A keypass binds to the temporary key for use of authentication. The temporary key can be revoked at any time for any reason, whether it’s due to a breach or routine policies. It can be as aggressive as it needs, and the implication is that if someone else (either you or an attacker) got issued a new temporary key then the other would not receive it. Using an incorrect temporary key would force an initialization again, using the actual keys that aren’t stored anywhere.

The initialization process should be done in a high trust environment, ideally in person with many forms of vetting. But obviously this doesn’t take place online, so there is the risk that your device is not trusted. This is why the process falls back on other established processes, like 2FA, biometrics, or using another trusted device. How this is done is up to the organization and not too important.

But don’t get too hooked on the nuances of passwords, keys, passkeys,etc. The entire purpose is to limit trust, so that if any part of the process is compromised, there is nothing of value to share.

Disclosure: Worked in military and this seems to be a consumer implementation of public/private key systems using vector set algorithms that generate session keys, but without the specialized hardware. It’s obviously different, but has a lot of parallels, the idea in this case is that the hardware binds to the private/public keys and generates temporary session keys to each unique device it communicates with, and all devices can talk with members of it’s own vector set. Capturing a session key is useless as it’s constantly being updated, and the actual keys are stored on a loading device (which is subsequently destroyed afterwards, ensuring the actual key doesn’t exist anywhere and is non recoverable, but that’s another thing altogether). My understanding of passkey systems is solely based on this observation, and I have not actually implemented such a solution myself.

From my understanding it’s the concept of trust. Basic passwords are complete trust that both ends are who they say they are, on a device that is trusted, and passing the password over the wire is sufficient and nobody else tries to violate that trust. Different types of techniques over time have been designed to reduce that level of trust and at a fundamental level, passkeys are zero trust. This means you don’t even trust your own device (except during the initial setup) and the passkey you use can only be used on that particular device, by a particular user, with a particular provider, for a particular service, on their particular hardware…etc. If at any point trust is broken, authentication fails.

Remember, this is ELI5, the whole thing is more complex. It’s all about trust. HOW this is done and what to do when it fails is way beyond EIL5. Again, this is from my own understanding, and the analogy of hardware passwords isn’t too far off.

It’s good that you were able to quote the regulations. You’re not wrong, I’m just apathetic; the question was more rhetorical. To be clear: I don’t have faith that this is strong enough to deter and/or that governing policies have enough teeth to enforce. I’d like to be wrong, but I’m not hopeful.

Or what? A slap on the wrist?

Given that Chinese fortunes aren’t fortunes and are usually proverbs…it’ll probably be something like “You can walk on water too, if it’s cold enough.”

You are exaggerating. You can complete the entire MSQ up to EW in less than 3 days in-game playtime. Source: You can find raiders with alts that have sprout icons, and I’ve done it myself twice.

But I get it, you need to know exactly what to do and skip cutscenes. You also can’t do any side questing and once you leave an area, never look back. Which most would rightly criticize me for suggesting. The story is good.

Honestly, if the concern is anything other than the story, it’s probably not the game for you anyways.

I’d also like to point out that most content is built to be relevant, so you’ll be doing content with the rest of the player base in just a few hours of playtime. We have the opposite queue problem in contrast to other games: You aren’t waiting for other new players to show up to complete content; you are waiting for the servers to fit you into a party that hundreds of other players of various levels want to also do.