Saturday, October 18, 2014

Coursera suggests we take a Cryptography course

Coursera is the favorite mental enhancer here at the K-Landnews.

Their online courses are still free, and still great. Perfect for refreshers, too, once you get to the age at which you need to keep notes and can no longer rely on what used to be a bottomless memory.

Okay, that age is different for each individual, but you get the point.

Coursera is also the only web site where we are happy to undergo some profiling. We can, and do, searches for classes but it is nice to have them send suggestions.

The other day, Cryptography figured prominently on the list.

We're good, we went.

Until the latest row over encryption broke out. We link to the response of the Electronic Frontier Foundation because...because we are tired of the same, old arguments for back doors.

Our notoriously foul-mouthed and volatile TheEditor snapped: You want a back door, you meet me in the bathroom! No, you cannot publish that.

Freedom of speech, dear TheEditor.

Grrrrr.

What do you think about Apple and Google being cited in arguments that their encryption helps pedophiles and terrorists?

Ha!

So, we'll volunteer one of the K-Landers to take a Coursera class on cryptography. Even if we won't make it all the way to end, we'll still know more about the subject than 99% percent of the population.

Life in the world of Apple and Android Apps has been becoming increasingly weird, given that even most of the most simple apps want full, or almost full, access to everything on your mobile device.

Thing is, if you treat people badly, they seem to tend to behave badly. Which, Freud didn't realize that, seems to be the most logical of traits.

After Cryptography, we'll do a refresher on making our own paper and ink before the European Union outlaws homemade writing implements. There must be some environmental handle to do that.

One more thing:
After proofreading the post, we are uncertain whether we should mark it as [satire] or [not satire].

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