My cousins in Norwich

Thomas Booth posted yesterday here then here on a "burial" at Norwich... in a well. This is from a 2004 excavation now a paper he cowrote.

Their genetics link best with us the Ashkenaz. I don't know whether these were closer to Littwak or to Galician; I am a Littwak, -ovitz not -berg. It is likely that, at AD 1200, they precede the split. Even then these were an inbred bunch who had (four) genetic defects common to our line today.

Since I doubt that Ashkenazim are East Anglian by origin I would assume that the defects - and the Ashkenazim - arose in the Low Countries and Rheinland first.

And since I further doubt these Jews fought their way across Avar and Slav territory before settling the lower Rhine, Khazar-theorists have some 'splainin to do.

Palaeocene

Extinctions happen and sometimes they are bad. After the Permian, a duet of two rapidly-following disasters did in 95% of life on Earth. After the Cretaceous, the only dinos left were birds. One question remains, how come dino-ancestors came out better over the Triassic but mammal-ancestors came out better over the Palaeocene.

Gregory Funston has an answer: the placenta. From Permian-Triassic the mammal-ancestors were still so reptilian we've been calling them the Mammal Like Reptiles since I was a boy in the early 1980s. As of the late Cretaceous we had already several clades of mammal as nourished the nonviable infant via the placenta - not via the egg, not even the pouch. A baby who could be sheltered for seven months and then breast-fed (outside a pouch) for three had the advantage.

The CoVID fudge-factory

For all the "it was duh lockdowns and deh vaxx" commenters I recommend Maxim Lott. (Much content has appeared today and yesterday; we've been short on it the last couple weeks. We don't make the news; we just report it.)

We learn that the US, under Trump and Fauci, did well at disclosing where an excess death occurred and whether it was CoVID. The largest discrepancies I note are Turkmenstan, Bolivia, Belarus, Algeria - in short, Third World hell holes which present themselves as Better Than That. Two disappointments here are Egypt and India from which I expected better.

Which is not to leave the US off the hook. Trump himself actually was Better Than That. But his voters aren't. The GOP base want the disinformation. A Republican aiming for higher office has to lie to his own voters or else he has to lie to the public at large.

Finally an orbiting gas station

We've needed a station for propellant and/or fuel for some time now. Up in GEO-on-up, which rides above the Van Allens, we want propellant / fuel for I_sp and not for thrust as much. Orbit Fab are on it, rather 300 km over it (GEO). With, er... hydrazine. h/t Chung.

I suppose toxicity isn't as much a problem if it's just for planet-to-planet space. But do we have to redo Europa Report? I suppose old-tech nations hoping to start space-programmes have to . . .

Orbit Fab seem to agree and are already thinking xenon among other propellants.

Gorbasm

As one of some Grodno ancestry I am not mourning the dictator. Anyone who posts a "RIP" - rather than "G-d have mercy" - has self-revealed as a durak.

UPDATE 9/2: In light of Ted Rall - yes, the US and what we might politely term "Global Commerce" played Gorb for a fool. On the other hand, Stalin had played the US and Global-Commerce for fools over the early 1940s. If we can all agree on the above, maybe the Russians and the West can someday reach some accommodation.

Scourge of the Slavelords, Liverpool edition

Thread here starts off poorly in its claim that the Brits were the greatest slavers as opposed to, say, the Portu Geese (or to the Sephardim if you want to class them as a "nation"). Admittedly this is a midwit / replyguy take. Anyway it's Joachim Voth and Ett Al (pdf). I also recommend Davis Kedrosky.

Main-claim is that slavery brought non-agricultural prosperity to Britain: industrial mills, steam-engines and the like. The more-slavish regions, in Britain, were the trade-ports: London, Liverpool. Beyond that, slaves didn't go.

The key seems to be not to keep the slaves on the island, but to trade in them between others' islands. A Sepharad would understand - or a Bengali. Or maybe an Irishman (h/t).

UPDATE/BACKDATE 8/31: Major h/t to Whyvert.

Formation

We had a few Earth-formation events in the literature lately. After most of our mantle became the Moon, asteroid impacts made the continents. But "impacts" are the limit to what the original article can post in its abstract for 3.6 Gya.

The continent in question is Pilbara now western Australia. There may have been additional hits 3.4 Gya; those seem meteoric. As they note, Pilbara is simply the place they've done the work so far; they might look on to Laurentia and to South Africa.

Now we hear from most of these guys (Christopher L. Kirkland, Tim E. Johnson, Michael I.H. Hartnady, and R. Hugh Smithies): not meteors, but comets. Here we can read the PDF: "Did transit through the galactic spiral arms seed crust production on the early Earth?". This is also Pilbara, with North Atlantic input. A run through the (younger) Milky Way might have perturbed our Oort and perhaps sent (faster) objects directly, with more velocity for the mass.

Either way - as with Theia - the rock or snowball that hit us wouldn't become the body in question - as with our Moon. It stresses a patch of the Archaean crust such that it floats higher than other patches. If big enough it stays floated. I suppose the model is Venus' Aphrodite and Ishtar highlands. Later, when water starts flowing (?back), tectonic forces (?re)emerge.

TOI-1452

Les Québecoises have taken a second look at TOI-1452. That's a TESS-telescope, transits-a-star object-of-interest. The object is in a binary; another, smaller star orbits their barycentre at 97 AU, whence it doesn't illuminate the inner-system much.

The article does well explaining why-not "TOI-1452 Ab". At ~100 light years away this is a high parallax system as may be read here, currently 32.782 ± 0.014 mas for TOI-1452 and 32.791 ± 0.014 mas (closer) for the other one which they call "TIC 420112587". The data are from Gaia EDR3, so the early-release.

As a transit TOI-1452's planet has a disc, therefore a volume. At 4.82 ± 1.30 M_⊕ and 1.672 ± 0.071 R_⊕, density is considered low. This might be accounted for by an opaque outer layer such as methane or water clouds might provide. The article is thinking: water. The paper admits low-density crust or even a subUranus helium envelope might also suffice. For that, both the article and the paper suggest this world as a Webb 'scope candidate.

Well... maybe. JWST has other priorities. 33 mas parallax is pretty low especially where another star is swamping the readings. I still want 55 Cancri, and Wolf 437 and maybe Gliese 832. Assuming we cannot simply hoist up new 'scopes.

Etewocrete

Back to Crete, the countryside which used to be "Minoan" stayed Ete[w]ocretan.

Crete like Cuba might be a horizontal island but it remains a long island, and a hilly one. Knossos was one place. Tristan Carter and Vassilis Kilikoglou looked to another place, now Malia. Under Linear-A administration, Malia used obsidian from Melos for agricultural work. Malia remained Neolithic under Linear-B administration.

There remained "Eteocretan" inscriptions well beyond Linear-B administration.

Related, I've noted a caesura in Cretan aristocracy. When literate Greeks return after the Fall of Troy, their writings are not Mycenaean in script or in language, as Cyprus would be; such Cretans were alphabetic in script and Doric in language. There's material trace that in this dark-age Crete fell under Semitic rule, specifically Canaani "Phoenician". Different men wear the crown; the same men wear the clogs. The farmers did end up Doric, but this didn't happen quickly.

Lenovo BIOS had a problem

I am back on this my main laptop / PC. It had a misadventure over the past four weeks. On 26 July Lenovo recommended a BIOS update (and McAfee). This "ECCN40WW", applied 1:45 PM that day, rebooted to... nothing. Then it kept trying and failing to reboot to BIOS.

I sent it to Lenovo in Houston under the (limited) warranty. Houston claimed battery-damage not subject to warranty. Such damage being impossible for me to prove one way or another, I paid for the battery and for the labour. It came back to me around noon today (I was napping 10 AM - 1 PM, not having aught better to do). Lenovo still wanted a BIOS update, "ECCN41WW" this time; this was done.

I'm still skeptic that a BIOS update such as I performed last month would torch the battery. But the machine is (now) 20 months old, so I dunno. I guess that is why warranties have to be paid-for after a year.

Now Microsoft is in on the game with "2022-07 Cumulative Update for Windows 11 for x64-based Systems (KB5015882)" so, allegedly, this is "downloading" now.

UPDATE 3:50 PM - Next up is Intel. Bluetooth and WiFi were installed; now, display. I note that I'm in Houston time, incidentally, tho' Mountain is claimed.

Yarmuk

Byzantine Emporia has summarised Kaegi. I recommend reading the comments. Byzantine Emporia I rate good at explaining the followup to the late 630s / 940s campaigns. However "Yarmuk" itself smells bad to me.

Kaegi took Arab sources at face value - as you can tell inasmuch his account assumed the armies were Muslim already. I don't think anyone seriously does this anymore.

Also the battlefield is a warfield, extending over most of what's now northern Jordan (and Golan). You know how we've found the Teutoberg Wald? The commenters note no such site can be found around Yarmuk.

Further those Syriac (and Armenian) sources I was hunting last winter don't play it up. Constantine III's abortive campaign is more important.

Babel's tower

Ari Lamm this morning delivered a midrash upon Genesis 11. This explains - through tafsir bi'l-tawrat - why Babel was bad.

Genesis 11's language is the language Schechem used against Dinah and Levi; also the language of Pharaoh when ordering the manufacture of bricks. Also here is the high height of the towers in Canaan. If you are of a "Book Of J" bent, this means Genesis 11 foreshadows Genesis 34 and Genesis 38:16, and then Exodus 1 and Exodus 5.

Several Deuteronomy parallels appear as well. The Canaanite towers are Deuteronomy 9:1. This part of that book may call back to earlier "J+E" redaction of Genesis-Exodus. I am less sure what to make of yazemu, as a non-Hebrew-reading Semite. Given everything else Lamm flags, I accept his parallel to zamam Deuteronomy 19:9. Shared language, would be my first thought.

I assume that non-Masoretic editions, starting with Qumran and the Samaritans, will back the MT here. UPDATE 9/30 Genesis 10-11 isn't in Qumran.

So far my post has avoided Lamm's dovetails between Genesis 10 and Genesis 11. I wonder about a pre-Genesis which had these in the reverse order. Say: some Iraqi saw a flood coming, so built the tower. Then Noah, building a boat, survived whilst the floodwaters undermined the tower. This could be Marsh-Arab folklore, like Elisha's axe.

Ceres should be great for fusion

Jupiter dragged Ceres from the icy parts. Last week we heard an explanation for her geology as we see her today: she has a metallic core with radioactives.

Most those elements are lead now. Maybe some bismuth - we like bismuth for Bisco superconductors. The core composition is something Hop David will want to know when he's digging that mohole down there.

Also to the point, if the radioactives sank through to the core, then some of them must have done some critical-mass meltdowns like in Gabon. That means, not just electrons and alpha-helium; but also, neutrons. The ice around the core is deuterium-rich and, probably, foamy with helium-3.

BRUHAUG 9/10 - just so we have a placeholder.

Olmec chakras

You know all that "Toltec" crap in the bad section of the bookstore? It turns out that some of these tantric secrets were, in fact, known in Mesoamerica. The Olmecs did yoga. Long before the Toltecs (or even the Maya).

It seems that some "contortions" are, in fact, good for messing up the flow of blood to the brain. Hallucinations may result. Watson's The Great Divide wins another round - the Americas were all about getting high. All that "Toltec" stuff might take a W of their own.

Here's also another excuse, if not precisely a win, for poor old Cristobal of Liguria. The "Indios" of the new world really weren't so different from their namesakes in the old world, especially if we stick with the Aryans. First soma; now tantra.

MOXI II

So far I've seen two low-scale methods to get oxygen from Mars: the MOXI reaction from carbon-dioxide and just nabbling it from the air. The latter method looked better. Lately - here's Plasma MOXI.

One concern the plasmologists raised, was storing all the oxygen (and carbon-monoxide). I'd think, however, that a deflated balloon should get the job done.

As with earlier MOXI, I like this for Venus also. Depending on the altitude Venus offers similar air-pressure. Also, it should enjoy a lot more (solar) energy, and no dust besides. Also-also these are lifting gasses in this atmosphere. I'd rather we research ballooning than stuff like this, anyway.

MOXI I 8/31: The original experiment works, after all. If you cared, which I don't.

Real Genius and DARPA

The Ray Gun Administration inherited the Deuterium-Fluoride chemical-fuelled MIRACL. Continuing to quote ToughSF: 2.2 MW output, with over 1 MW for 70 seconds in its longest test.

We eighties-kiddies all reasonably assumed that laser-power would follow the same Moore's Law as computer-power was following. The Val Kilmer (-supported) movie Real Genius assumes a laser as can output many more kilowatts than 2200. REWATCH 8/20: 6 MW

Kilmer's wadevawatt had drawbacks, which Laszlo Holyfeld spells out. The thing runs for, let's say, half a second; and can't be used more than once. Plus side, as such it doesn't have to get to orbit; high-alt aerofoil will get the job done. Still: it'll cost billions of 1985 Reaganbux. Which means: it's a weapon. As a hot blast it doesn't leave chemical signatures, as might be left by a rod of tungsten. The opening scene has it sold to some nebulous agency as fit to assassinate some Latino cartel boss (read: Ortega) from SPACE.

Well: okay, we've gotten better at getting heavy stuff into space for cheap since then. But. With that same hindsight, ToughSF reports that MIRACL is as good as it's gotten in the last four decades. Real Genius: Remastered requires several MIRACLs aiming the same 4 MW at the same spot at the same time. At this point we're better off with that tungsten rod.

And anyone seeking to (say) ignite a fusion-reaction or do long-distance communications should adjust assumptions accordingly.

UPDATE 8/17: ToughSF postpends this (pdf) from 2018.

ULA have seen Temple of Doom

If you don't like Elon, you're left with trashrockets and RocketLab. ULA exist but so far they've been on the 1960s track of wasting expensive boosters. Aviation Week report that ULA are looking into reusability - like Elon and da 'Lab. Irene Klotz has a summary.

ULA's first idea was to catch the BE-4 booster with a helicopter, like Rocket Lab do with their lighter boosters. The booster would be slowed with a parachute and, also, an aeroshell. But if the booster is light enough and the aeroshell inflates large enough... the aeroshell can float.

So all ULA have to do is to drop the booster in its shell into some deep lake somewhere - maybe even the ocean. The booster doesn't get corroded because the booster is bobbing up and down on a plastic raft.

The claim is twice as fast and twice as high as the Falcon 9, which needs to keep propellant on-board so as to reland. Most of us care more about "twice the cargo" if we're just doing LEO but, maybe the BE-4 is meant for between Van Allens. Another claim is that three reflights would turn a profit. Falcon 9, of course, reflies much more than that.

Space dirt

Nyrath's twitter is lately discussing Gundam's farms in space. A colony in middle-to-high Earth orbit might import raw material and export the crop, down to Earth's well or out to other systems.

Any crop as can be grown in space can, more easily, be grown on Earth - somewhere. This will hold true until our Sun makes another Venus of this place. So I don't care for this tech for feeding us Earthlings.

One exception: arthropod protein, from space. Never mind the chitin. We might consider space-grown bugs as isolated so less parasite-ridden than the bugs down here. We might (more so) consider space-grown mussels and oysters, against what we pull from the wharf in Kemah.

As far as that raw material, organics from space-sources should be assumed toxic - to the farms, even before the crop is seeded. The Mars boosters are always being confronted with the hydrogen-chlorine poisons on that planet (and the shortage of phosphor). Out in space we won't be pulling stuff up from Mars; we'll be lassoing comets. One possibility - to fix cometary material - might be enlisting fungi. Although, ctrl-F "chlor" doesn't come up with anything...

Also not coming up is Kalium, alias Potassium. This might have to be KREEP raised from our own Moon.

Another point made on these threads - or claim, anyway - is that the foodstuffs shipped from spaceport to spaceport will be dehydrated as far as possible. Inyalowda consider hydrogen as valuable. For that I'll replyguy that this depends on the exporter. Ceres, and points outward, can export. If Mercury and Venus can trap the solar-wind then they can export too.

M-O-O-N 8/15: ToughSF looks at the economics of hydrogen and carbon. This was for propellant although, I'd prefer these for live-support. Lunar propulsion should be railguns and aluminium-oxygen.

The Rachel Carson Right

In light of the CoVID vaxxxxxx "failing", here's Forrest Maready on viral poliomyelitis. Maready wrote a book on this. BOO, JONAS SALK.

I'll concede: one useful reminder in that book is that many diseases take their name from their symptoms. Take the "GRID", lately "AIDS". The main virus which biologists claim causes such, will take its own name, here "HTLV-III" lately "HIV". Likewise the Corona-Virus, the biologists claim, causes Sudden Acute Respiratory Sadness.

Are the biologists correct, or are 4chan contrarians correct?

Less useful in Maready's book, I think, is that Rachel Carson was right all along in Silent Spring to ban the DDT pesticide. DDT killed a major vector of several horrible parasites not least that causing the fever-n'-ague poorlynamed "malaria". Until the world banned DDT. For human-population control, some might suggest.

The environmentalists got everything they wanted in downstate New York. New Yorkers are getting poliomyelitis again. Deep down the Rightists know that viruses actually do have myelitic effects - or the Rightists used to know it, before they told themselves otherwise.

The Right is, as per usual, claiming that the common people have no agency and that they are refusing the vaxx⁹⁴ because of the war and that lying JohnsonFauci.

I'll just repeat that the Left vaccinates itself because the Left believes in its vaccine and - well, it's been over a year since most Leftists (and I) took this jab. We avoided thereby the sad fate of anti-vaxx Rightists.

Magnetic oxygen-generation

The University of Warwick can make oxygen with magnets. Beforehand, the Space Station has had to make it with electrolysis and then to get the bubbles out of the water.

The Space Station, famously, does not own a pinwheel; everything is microgravity. Plus even if the Station, or Axios, did get a pinwheel the astronauts would call dibs on the space, at least for medicine and for advance acclimatisation for return to Earth.

Here's one piece of bulky machinery, a centrifuge, which now no longer needs space on the Station.

Art is for money-laundering

If you got yourself an art-degree and you, also, didn't get a computer-science degree: it sucks to be you.

I just pulled public-domain Orientalist art (or previous) for my book-covers. The hardest job was Throne of Glass for which I did my own colouring, and Taprats for the graphic-design. I hired nobody.

The Twitterites burdened with MFAs on student-loan are, of course, blaming CORPORATIONS. These same corporations kowtow to Equity. This is the world you've chosen, d00dz.

Semi-independent authors like myself ... don't care. AI will make our graphic-design easier, cutting out the Equity, freeing up time for content.

Real artists will still do real art. Comic/graphic-novel artists will, I think, also do okay; if they tie their style with AI and boost their productivity thereby. I haven't looked into "NFTs".

As for the MFAs in Eldorado Springs? They will get along fine - unfortunately. They'll sell work on commission. Meaning: they'll sell other services, with some framed artwork as cover for that.

BACKDATE 8/14: May as well fill in the gap.

LAWYERS 8/15: All this said - if the AI is lifting from a living artist's style and the living artist didn't ask to "tie it with" the AI, then yes: that dev needs suing.

24 Hour Rule, astronomy edition

Upon receipt of news that you want to be true, or (less likely) news that trolls want to be true and are nagging you to acknowledge; I have been advised to sit upon the blogpost for a bit. A few weeks back, James Webb told us - well, told some data-analysts anyway - that certain galaxies were too redshifted for the liking of Big Bang / Λ-CDM theorists.

Zimmerman took this as a challenge to the Big Bang. Triton Station took this as a vindication of Modified Newton. I'm more on Triton's side on this one (whatever I personally think of either proprietor). UPDATE 11/25: Nah, Triton still sucks.

As a Catholic of course I accept the Big Bang. Luckily this hypothesis seems to be meeting its challenges better than certain other challenges our Church would rather not mention.

Back to JWST it turns out the data weren't adequately analysed. These things happen with fresh data. Hence, the need for the rule.

Dresden Codex

Here is a fair summary of the Dresden Codex, pages 69–74. The article is from 2001 so postdates Linda Schiele and her crew. The Maya glyphs should be comprehensible. As an astronomic table, cyphers will do even without knowing the language; pages 43b–45b were basically sussed out a century ago, as the authors point out.

I don't know if the language is Yucatec or Choltal, or something else.

The last date is 10.11.4.0.14 which is 8 January AD 1051...Gregorian. (Julian would be better, for at least two reasons.) Presumably this is when the autograph got inked.

Although, I expect the earlier dates for the Mars conjunction come from Classic archetypes. Other dates fall in years AD 664, 702, 741, 786, 817. Then a gap until 1012. That near-two-century gap implies, I suspect, that the archetypes were Choltal; I understand the Yucatec Maya did not suffer so hard from the collapse.

The terlits of Minos

h/t HBDChick: Minoan Yersinia. Also some salmonella aka paratyphoid aka (from a 2018 text) cocoliztli.

The archaeologi'context is EM3-MM1, in a cave now called St. ["Hagios"] Kharalambos. EM3 overlaps the 2200 BC climate event. Gunnar Neumann et al. note the burials were secondary - the remains moved from gravesite to gravesite. So - they reason - these bones may have been inhumed in 2200 BC and, at the outset of MM1, exhumed and rehumed.

These pathogens are from now-dead branches so unrelated to Justinian's Flea. It happens these branches couldn't even infect fleas. But they could infect food-supplies and, to put it delicately, the plumbing.

During the much later LM, Knossos has become famed for its running water, well in advance of Late-Helladic Greece and, really, of the Near East generally. I wonder if they inherited from the Middle people a mindset of hygiene.

Swahili

As I'm backdating all the t'ings I'll ask - when did the Swahili start up? That's the Bantu-based trade tongue along Mozambiq up through Nairobi-ish. Clearly nobody's speaking that before the Bantu showed up.

Ezequiel Koile et al have a chart. Its enumeration is... odd: for instance 14 goes to 12,13. Relevant here 14 also goes to 22,23 whence 18,19 on that eastern coast.

This is all East-Bantu so after 1000 BC. Alongside Fig. 2, we learn that 22/23 split from 18/19 more like 400 BC and then 22 and 23 split perhaps in the 200s. So: the Bantu had iron.

We're coming right up to the Hellenistic Era, here; and soon, the Parthians. It's all before the Late-Antique crash. When the first Greeks (or Yemenis) came south, they conversed in Swahili.

MGDL

The second part of al-Jallad's paper is invaluable as a collection of Aramaisms in Safaitic. One strikes my eye: mgdl.

This is some sort of construction within the fortified town al-Namâra - one assumes, a motte. The same consonant-cluster exists in Dadanitic. As al-Jallad points out, Aramaic-speakers in Roman Judaea knew the magdala tower.

But despite Al-Jallad: need this Namârene motte be magdala? Classical Arabic has migdal with an i and no trailing stop, like Qâric minbar and mihrab. I'm pondering South Arabian for the Classical Arabic. Another possibility is Canaan. Or maybe old Taymanitic mediating between all the pre-Classical Tihama.

I'd leave open the question in Safaitic precisely because it is not mgdl' or mgdlt.

Arabia in late February

Ahmad al-Jallad bolsters Marijn van Putten inasmuch as Qâric Arabic took its Aramaisms from... Aramaic, and not from Christian sources like Syriac. (Pace Mingana, and Margoliouth and Jeffery.) Al-Jallad cares more for Safaitic - Qâric is more Nabati, by script. But Safaitic is earlier, and south of the Nabataea, so the same rule should apply down there.

As usual the occasion is a burial, or a commemoration anyway (wgm not ngm), by one Ghayyarel for his grandfather also Ghayyarel. This he did "bi-Adar". The Safaitic script knows G from Gh and is careful to use Gh for these two guys, and G for the wgm. Al-Jallad is aware from elsewhere that Safaitic also knew a D from a Dh. You know who didn't? The Christians in upper Syria, that's who didn't. The Nabatis and the Qurrâ - famously - had to make do, with diacritic dots.

Al-Jallad notes that Safaitic Arabs had their own months and (more to the point) their own reckoning ("parapegma"), so flags this "Adar" as a rare Babylonism. Or, possibly - a Canaanism, even a Hebraism. Ghayyarel's family venerates El, not Allah.

African corridor

It used to be said that the Beringians took a corridor through the ice in order to get to the Americas proper. As Dillehay and others have overturned the timing, this thesis no longer holds. A route along Pacific isles would do, for a people certainly attuned to Alaskan islands already. Now falls another corridor - the Sangha River.

The Bantu languages are now seen to have entered a wider rainforest at an earlier time, the late 2000s BC. This is, of course, long before they had iron or domestic cattle.

Specifically the "Discussion" pinpoints a 3890 BP dispersion event, and then East Bantu 3150 BP. 2400 BP, meaning the 400s BC, still holds for millet agriculture aided with iron tools - both imports, probably from the same place which is the "Sahel" by which I'll infer, Berbers and Chads. A more-secure understanding is that the Central Africans by then were already solidly Bantu - for over a millennium.

"Totally SIKEd", indeed

On topic of quantum computers, we've learnt last night that they're coming faster than we might think. Back in the land of bad acronyms Pixy Misa also last night pointed to the SIKE-out. The [USA] National Institute of Standards and Technology, under the Department of Commerce, had last month picked up four 'gorithmiyoon as sufficiently quantum-proof. Four other Choresmioi got, I dunno, honorably-mentioned. One of those latter four, "SIKE", has just ingested a dishonorable-discharge.

What made a dinner of SIKE's duck was its classical encryption base, here elliptic-curve Diffie-Hellman [UPDATE 12/19 on account ellipses be hard yo]. "Supersingular Isogeny" D-H was supposed to quantum-proof the thing. Except that... SIDH is a long-known technique. By now several attack-vectors are, likewise, known. Mathematician Stephen Galbraith hacked SIDH in theory back in 2016, that SIDH has auxiliary points and that the degree of the secret isogeny is known. SIKE maybe obfuscated these but, if so, clearly not enough.

I don't pretend to understand any of these algos, despite Galbraith's best explanatory efforts. I can just about read a bibliography and look up strings on "Google Scholar". I read that the attack uses "genus 2 curves" against the ellipse which genus is 1. So I'll just parrot what Galbraith says: if Galbraith doesn't know the auxiliary points or the degree of the isogeny, he (at least) can't get in. Yet.

If someone does know these parameters and that the encryption is SIKE: the attack works by brute-force. Any script kiddie could break it from a single-core processor, in about an hour. Probably break it sooner after some tweaks. Note that these algos are supposed to outfox a quantum box, let alone your 2015 Acer Aspire laptop.

Off the SIKE lads go to fix their broken maths, like with a two-step key. Best-case, this will be like how Poincare "solved" a three-body problem between the asteroids and Jupiter, got pwned, then stumbled into chaos-theory. Galbraith is skeptical; he suspects he'll be able to get around some other dodge in this basis. Genus 3 curve?

CSIDH looks better, to him. Or, perhaps "and", the four finalists and three remaining candidates which NIST has already accepted - until someone maths their way into those too.

Nanotubes are coming

Lat April I took to mocking carbon nanotubes as far-fiction. This may have been premature. Organic nano's can be assembled by organic means, namely DNA.

They're talking about picking up upon 1970s-era superconductor theory, abandoned since the late 1980s Bisco and Rebco. But this should be usable for rope as well. Maybe rope first.

DIQK

P ≠ NP encryption relies upon the solution to a mathematical problem being easier to verify than to... solve in the first place. The classic public/private key methods assumed classic computers. Quantum computers are coming. Sensitive communications need quantum encryption to flummox quantum hackers.

The story goes that quantum keys will be safe to distribute over the wire (UPDATE 8/19 or in space) but as for the devices... well, that's the devices' problem(s). More exactly it's your problem if you've bought Huawei equipment.

A week ago we got an article about device-independent quantum key distribution. This assures that Winnie the Pooh can no longer steal your encryption. From theory to experiment in three decades so maybe we'll start seeing this in 2050.

Which puts the focus back into the algorithms.