Good evening, ladies and gentlemen.Welcome to BitPunk.fm's first Opt Out.Now, for the past few years, we've all been hearing an awful lot about the various ins.Now, there have been be-ins, and love-ins, and sleep-ins.
This is an opt-out, and an opt-out is a frame of mind.So for the next 40 minutes, I'd like you to sit back, laugh, learn, and forget about the other media.In other words, turn on, tune in, opt out.And tonight, boy, do we have quite a lineup.
Musical guest Scrotus is here.The OM is back with some advice on how to obtain different mental flow states. We've got Average Gary with a reading about the history of cryptography.With the news, we've got a special guest, Bugle News, everyone.
We aren't done yet, folks.Owen is here with a nice 30 second trippy loop.But it's not all fun.Since we're here in 1968, the Armed Forces Vietnam Network has some public service announcements for us.
And closing out the night, Josh has something to say to us about a medium we all love, radio.But first, you want to go to a cocktail party and hear what the people are saying?Well, let's go.Come on, gang, you're all invited.
You know, Marshall McLuhan says anyone who tries to make a distinction between education and entertainment doesn't know the first thing about either.But he also says he doesn't necessarily agree with everything he says.
The brain is a wonderful organ.It starts working the moment you get up in the morning and does not stop until you get into the office. The medium is the massage.
The medium is the massage.
Gentlemen, gentlemen, you can't fight in here.This is the war room.
Dear Dr. Leary, thank you for your help and advice.When I told you I was bugged with my job, you said to quit.So I did.And it made me feel more a part of things. Like no one was telling me what to do anymore, except you.
Won't you be my neighbor?You know, General Westmoreland says, without censorship, things can get terribly confused in the public mind.Television is more interesting than people.
If it were not, we would have people standing in the corners of our rooms.
We don't know who discovered water, but we're pretty sure it wasn't the fish.I believe it.I really believe it.Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!
Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!
Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!
Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to me!Suck it to
How I got it socked to me.By Henry Gibson.Pretty much in the usual way.
As these thoughts enter my mind, I am lying down on my stomach in a Thai massage parlor somewhere in the world.The brain state that I enter is very peculiar. very unusual.
I create many of my ideas during a Thai massage, which is a form of non-sleep deep rest.Not everyone is familiar with these states.They are very different when you are able to relax.Most people recognize only the basic states.
Tired, happy, energetic, focused, sleeping. But there are many states of mind.Many ways to be.There is the famous alpha.A slow state, energetic but relaxed and creative.As if time doesn't pass.As if the world has stopped and you are one.
You are merged with whatever you're doing, whatever you're creating.There is delta, a deep sea.And beta.That's the edge between wakefulness and sleep. I believe this is where I go during the Thai Massage.People often want to feel energy.
They think that is the way how they can be productive, how they can create something.They drink coffee or energy drinks and they hope they get everything done.But it's 10pm now.I'm not energetic.I didn't have coffee.
I am relaxed, but merged with myself, with the world around me.In my consciousness, there is no difference between my idea, my surroundings, my consciousness, my mind, the reality.
When I allow myself to explore these weird states, I become multitude.I become enriched by my own experience and enriching my own experience.Because I am the experience.These brainwave frequencies
are emerging as a resonance and the brain states are the result of this emergent resonance of the mind.Find the way to do it.Find your time sash.
We'll be right back after this important word.
And now for our musical guest, Scrotus.
The literature of cryptography has a curious history.Secrecy, of course, has always played a central role.
But until the First World War, important developments appeared in print in a more or less timely fashion, and the field moved forward in much the same way as other specialized disciplines.
As late as 1918, one of the most influential cryptanalytic papers of the 20th century, William F. Friedman's monograph, The Index of Coincidence and its Applications in Cryptography, appeared as a research report of the private riverbank laboratories.
And this, despite the fact that the work had been done as part of the war effort.In the same year, Edward H. Urban of Oakland, California, filed the first patent for a rotor machine.
the device destined to be a mainstay of military cryptography for nearly 50 years.After the First World War, however, things began to change.U.S.
Army and Navy organizations working entirely in secret began to make fundamental advances in cryptography.
During the 30s and 40s, a few basic papers did appear in the open literature, and several treaties on the subject were published, but the latter were farther and farther behind the state-of-the-art.By the end of the war, the transition was complete.
With one notable exception, the public literature had died.That exception was Claude Shannon's paper, quote, The Communication Theory of Secrecy Systems, end quote, which appeared in the Bell System Technical Journal in 1949.
It was similar to Friedman's 1918 paper in that it grew out of a wartime work of Shannon's.After the Second World War ended, it was declassified, possibly by mistake. From 1949 until 1967, the cryptographic literature was barren.
In that year, a different sort of contribution appeared—David Kahn's history, The Codebreakers.
It didn't contain any new technical ideas, but it did contain a remarkably complete history of what had gone before, including mention of some things that the government still considered secret.
The significance of the Codebreakers lay not just in its remarkable scope, but also in the fact that it enjoyed good sales and made tens of thousands of people who had never given the matter a moment's thought aware of cryptography.
A trickle of new cryptographic papers began to be written.
At about the same time, Horst Feinstil, who had earlier worked on identification friend or foe devices for the Air Force, took his lifelong passion for cryptography to the IBM Watson Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York.
There, he began development of what was to become the U.S.Data Encryption Standard.By the early 1970s, several technical reports on the subject by Feistel and his colleagues had been made public by IBM.
This was the situation when I entered the field in late 1972.The cryptographic literature wasn't abundant, but what was there included some very shiny nuggets.
Cryptology presents a difficulty not found in normal academic disciplines, the need for the proper interaction of cryptography and cryptanalysis.
This arises out of the fact that in the absence of real communications requirements, it is easy to propose a system that appears unbreakable. Many academic designs are so complex that the would-be cryptanalyst doesn't know where to start.
Exposing flaws in these designs is far harder than designing them in the first place.The result is that the competitive process, which is one strong motivation in academic research, cannot take hold.
When Martin Hellman and I proposed public-key cryptography in 1975, one of the indirect aspects of our contribution was to introduce a problem that does not even appear easy to solve.
Now an aspiring cryptosystem designer could produce something that would be recognized as clever, something that did more than just turn meaningful text into nonsense.
The result has been a spectacular increase in the number of people working in cryptography, the number of meetings held, and the number of books and papers published.
In my acceptance speech for the Donald E. Fink Award, given for the best expository paper to appear in the IEEE journal, which I received jointly with Hellman in 1980, I told the audience that in writing, privacy, and authentication, I had an experience that I suspected was rare even among prominent scholars who populate the IEEE award ceremony.
I had written the paper I'd wanted to study but could not find when I first became seriously interested in cryptography.
Had I been able to go to the Stanford bookstore and pick up a modern cryptography text, I would probably have learned about the field years earlier.
But the only things available in the fall of 1972 were a few classic papers and some obscure technical reports. The contemporary researcher has no such problem.
The problem now is choosing where to start among the thousands of papers and dozens of books.The contemporary researcher, yes, but what about the contemporary programmer or engineer who merely wants to use cryptography?Where does that person turn?
Until now, it has been necessary to spend long hours hunting out and then studying the research literature before being able to design the sort of cryptographic utilities glibly described in popular articles.
This is the gap that Perush Schneier's Applied Cryptography has come to fill.
Beginning with the objectives of communication security and elementary examples of programs used to achieve these objectives, Schneier gives us a panoramic view of the fruits of 20 years of public research.The title says it all.
From the mundane objective of having a secure conversation the very first time you call someone, to the possibilities of digital money and cryptographically secure elections, this is where you'll find it.
Not satisfied that the book was about the real world merely because it went all the way down to the code, Schneier has included an account of the world in which cryptography is developed and applied, and discusses entities ranging from the International Association for Cryptologic Research to the NSA.
When public interest in cryptography was just emerging in the late 70s and early 80s, the National Security Agency, America's official cryptographic organ, made several attempts to quash it.
The first was a letter from a long-time NSA employee allegedly, avowedly, and apparently acting on his own.
The letter was sent to the IEEE and warned that the publication of cryptographic material was a violation of the International Traffic and Arms Regulations, ITAR.
This viewpoint turned out not even to be supported by the regulations themselves, which contained an explicit exemption for published material, but gave both the public practice of cryptography and the 1977 Information Theory Workshop lots of unexpected publicity.
A more serious attempt occurred in 1980, when the NSA funded the American Council on Education to examine the issue with a view to persuading Congress to give it legal control of publications in the field of cryptography.
The results fell far short of the NSA's ambitions and resulted in a program of voluntary review of cryptographic papers
Researchers were requested to ask the NSA's opinion on whether disclosure of the results would adversely affect the national interest before publication. As the 80s progressed, progress focused more on the practice than the study of cryptography.
Existing laws gave the NSA the power, through the Department of State, to regulate the export of cryptographic equipment.
As business became more and more international and the American fraction of the world market declined, the pressure to have a single product in both domestic and offshore markets increased.
Such single products were subject to export control, and thus the NSA acquired substantial influence, not only over what was exported but also over what was sold in the United States.
As this is written, a new challenge confronts the public practice of cryptography. The government has augmented the widely published and available data encryption standard with a secret algorithm implemented in tamper-resistant chips.
These chips will incorporate a codified mechanism of government monitoring.
The negative aspects of this, quote, key escrow, end quote, program range from potentially disastrous impact on personal privacy to the high cost of having to add new hardware to products that had previously encrypted in software.
So far, key escrow products are enjoying less than stellar sales, and the scheme has attracted widespread negative comment, especially from the independent cryptographers.
Some people, however, see more future in programming than politicking, and have redoubled their efforts to provide the world with strong cryptography that is accessible to public scrutiny.
A sharp step back from the notion that export control law could supersede the First Amendment seemed to have been taken in 1980 when the Federal Register announcement of a revision to ITAR included the statement, quote, provision has been added to make it clear that the regulation of the export of technical data does not purport to interfere with the First Amendment rights of individuals, end quote.
But the fact that tension between the First Amendment and the Export Control Laws has not gone away should be evident from statements at a conference held by RSA Data Security.
NSA's representative from the Export Control Office expressed the opinion that people who published cryptographic programs were in, quote, in a gray area, end quote, with respect to the law.
If that is so, it is a gray area on which the first edition of this book has shed some light.
Export applications for the book itself have been granted, with acknowledgment that published material lay beyond the authority of the Munitions Control Board. Applications to export the enclosed programs on disk, however, have been denied.
The shift in the NSA strategies from attempting to control cryptographic research to tightening its grip on the development and deployment of cryptographic products is presumably due to its realization that all the great cryptographic papers in the world do not protect a single bit of traffic.
Sitting on the shelf, this value may be able to do no better than the books and papers that precedes it.But sitting next to a workstation where a programmer is writing cryptographic code, it just may.Woodfield Diffie, Mountain View, California.
And next on Opt Out, we've got the news, brought to you by Bugle News.But first, this public service announcement by the Armed Forces Vietnam Network.
Do you want to go home to see your wife or your girlfriend?Sure you do, and so do I. But casualties inflicted by the enemy would be the first thing to stop you.Did you know that BD is the second?
Avoiding the source is the most ideal way, but I know some of you won't listen to that.The only other way is immediate medical attention.If you're worried, see your medic.
Have you ever considered a better world?One in which smokers are respected, driving drunk is legal, and Dennis Porter is president?Well, that world is not only possible, but is here.
Bitcoin has already won, and while many are quickly waking up to this reality, some are getting it a bit slower than others.
In just a few moments, I will take you four years into the future to the year 2028, where you can see for yourself that Satoshi has been victorious. But before we jump there, I need to give you some context of a few things going on.
Donald Trump is president, as his second term is coming to an end, and the American economy is in peril.He's desperately looking for answers.Bitcoin's fourth halving has happened, devastating the American mining economy, tanking the S&P 500.
And Coinbase suddenly is down.People are questioning whether Bitcoin has won or not.He knows there is only one man he can call.
Thank God you picked up the phone, Dennis.I have a real problem and you are the only one who can solve it for me.
Donald, this isn't a problem.This is the halving, which Satoshi scheduled long before.I know this is your first time experiencing one, but things will be OK.It's normal for mining companies to go bankrupt in the bear market.
The economy will just have to deal with sound economics.The bull market is coming soon.
This Bitcoin economic stuff is so difficult.Why can't we just fork it so we can print it to bail out the mining companies?HBO said Peter Todd is Satoshi and he supports inflating the supply.We can't let China beat us.
The bitcoins need to be made here.
The reason you are so scared, Mr. President, is that you have not been listening to enough Bitcoin podcasts yet.If you do not listen to 40 hours of Bitcoin podcasts a week, you will not understand decentralization and game theory.
The game theory is sound, sir.You should convert all U.S.Treasury bonds to being Bitcoin denominated and stop shitcoining.
Just because America hasn't figured out how to make computer chips yet to compete with Bitmain doesn't mean that we can't boost American mining by deploying more inefficient renewable energy sources and give bit access to all American families so they can secure the network.
I know I haven't been listening to enough Bitcoin podcasts.I told myself that I was by watching myself talk on Fox News.I'm going to start with Lynn Alden because she's pretty hot.The American people have what it takes to survive the having.
In my last few months of office, before you get selected president, I will make sure America understands that we are a great country, the greatest country.I'm going to talk with the smartest Bitcoin podcasters in the world.
I know many smart podcasters.They may barely introduce me.
Well, I don't want to take up too much of your time, Mr. President.I know you have a lot of podcasts to listen to.How about before you start, why don't you go orange pill Melania real good?
If you have issues with performance, just have her whisper my name in your ear.
Nice try, Dennis.The only thing that gets me hard is hearing my own name.Thanks for your time.
If this future doesn't get you excited, I don't know what will.Bitcoin will rip to $2 trillion USDT per coin before the election is over, after Donald Trump begins listening to 40 hours of Bitcoin podcasts a week.
He will obsess over which cold security It's Bitcoin Reserve, and we'll learn that tariffs on Chinese Bitcoin miners might be problematic when Americans still can't make computer chips.This glimpse into the future is presented to you by Bugle News.
Thanks for listening, and make sure to only drive if you are drunk.
How safe are you when you're rolling a J? How about when you're completely wrecked or stoned?You probably think you have to be heavy if you smoke the weed.This is James Franciscus, and you probably think I've got a lot of nerve talking down to you.
Believe me, I'm not.I'm just giving you some questions.You'll have to supply the answers.Don't learn them the hard way.Remember, in a combat zone, how heavy is dead?
Tonight on It's a Mod Mod World, we're going to look at radio.So let's bring Josh in to talk about radio.Say hello, Josh.Hello, Josh. I'm not sure who invented water, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't the fish, says Marshall McLuhan.
We are not fish, but we, like the fish, are surrounded by an invisible medium.Specifically, radio waves.I'd like to talk about radio.I'm noticing a trend lately where people are tinkering with small radios called Meshtastic or Reticulum.
Now, despite their size, these radios are actually quite complicated.And like everything here on bitpunk.fm, I think there's too much attention paid to the digital aspects of radio, and not enough to the analog aspects.
After all, even these meshtastic radios have to interface to the analog domain at some point.
So I'd like to suggest that in order to better understand LoRa, which is the physical interface both Meshtastic and Reticulum use, we first focus on an older analog-style radio transmission.
Since the title of this issue is called Turn On, Tune In, Opt Out, we will focus today on the tune in aspect of radio.Specifically, how do we receive radio waves from the air?
Well, with no offense to surfers, I'm not sure how many of them are oceanographers.So, like the surfer, we want to understand radio waves intuitively.Get a feel for them instead of trying to understand them analytically.
Coincidentally, one of the main scientists that even Einstein admired also had this approach.His name was Michael Faraday, and he was the man credited with discovering electromagnetic induction.Marshall McLuhan had this to say about Faraday.
Michael Faraday, who had little mathematics and no formal schooling beyond the primary grades, is celebrated as an experimenter who discovered the induction of electricity.He was one of the great founders of modern physics.
It is generally acknowledged that Faraday's ignorance of mathematics contributed to his inspiration, that it compelled him to develop a simple non-mathematical concept when he looked for an explanation of his electrical and magnetic phenomena.
Faraday had two qualities that more than made up for his lack of education.Fantastic intuition and independence and originality of mind.So this should be pretty strong motivation that we can understand radio without complex equations.
Now, to receive a radio wave and listen to it, we need a device that has two interfaces.One interface needs to understand the radio medium.The other interface needs to understand the audio medium so that us humans can hear it.
What a radio receiver does is it catches ethereal electromagnetic waves from the air and converts them into acoustic waves suitable for the human ear. I mean, this is a very trippy device that bridges two planes of existence.
To celebrate this beautiful device, I offer this poem I wrote called Tune In, Drop Out. transmitting continuously a pirate station, jammed by overpowering neighbors, obnoxious broadcasters, but the signal faintly persists, stronger when you are near.
With fine adjustments, you focus your attention, sinusoidal waves resonate through your antenna.You hear yourself as the noise fades away. Now, the component on the radio receiver that exists in the electromagnetic field domain is the antenna.
Its job is to translate electromagnetic waves into alternating current.Just like there are different microphones that receive sound better in different environments, and so antennas are generally best when built for specific frequency ranges.
The antenna that works for Wi-Fi in your phone, for example, is different than the antenna needed for cellular connections, which is different for FM radio, which is different than Meshtastic or LoRa radios.
You need an appropriate antenna to catch the right wave.We'll cover this in a bit more detail later. All of this is to emphasize the physical and natural behavior, otherwise known as physics, of electromagnetic waves.
To drive this point, we will focus on one particular radio signal as an example, which is AM radio.
Yes, this fuddy-duddy old-time radio has a fascinating component, specifically with its antenna, which hopefully when I describe will give you insight into the physical radio world.Now, AM stands for amplitude modulation.
We won't get into modulation too much here, but just know that's the way the signal is encoded onto the carrier wave.The carrier wave is the frequency of the station.Let's take an example.
There's a radio station in the United States called KYW 1060 broadcasting from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.It used to have a signal that went something like this. K-Y-W, news radio, 1060.
The frequency is in the name, so it broadcasts at 1060 kilohertz or 1.06 megahertz.The length of this radio wave in meters is about 283.Well, how did I get that?Well, here is one equation for you.
The wavelength is the speed of the wave, which we assume to be the speed of light, divided by the frequency.See, that's not so bad. So for my fellow American friends, 283 meters is about 2.5 football fields.
Just close your eyes and imagine seeing an electromagnetic wave this large rolling by you in the sky. What kind of antenna should we use to receive this wave?Well, the simplest antenna is typically also the best.
If we take the 283 meter wavelength, divide it in half, we get about 181.5 meters.Imagine if we tap into this wire of 100, 180 so meters directly in the center. This is otherwise known as a half wave dipole.
And for most cases, it is theoretically an excellent antenna.If we have this antenna, the electromagnetic wave would efficiently induce an alternating current in the antenna wire itself.
You might've seen videos where an incandescent light bulb can be turned on just by holding it near an antenna in the right way.Just like that light bulb, this wave looks like a power source to the antenna.
But it's completely impractical, except for us radio nerds that have these giant antennas.Let's recap.So the antenna receives power from the air.We'd ideally like a half wave dipole, but that's not so practical.
So we can apply some tricks to the circuit to make it appear like an ideal antenna where it resonates the best.But the AM antenna is actually even crazier.
Because if you open an AM receiver, you will find an iron rod with a bunch of wire wrapped around it.So what's the deal with this?
It turns out that AM antennas like this are designed to receive the magnetic field of the electromagnetic wave, not so much the electrical portion.
Since the iron core is more susceptible to magnetic fields than air, an iron core is used to receive the signal.
It also helps in this case that the transmitter power in the case of KYW is 50 kilowatts, which means the antenna is receiving a very strong signal.Well, how do you tune into the signal?
Well, there is a variable capacitor that is connected to the coil.When you adjust the knob on the radio, you are physically changing the properties of the antenna such that it resonates at a different frequency. I mean, this is a crazy cool concept.
I mean, let's recap here, because what we're talking about, this is this is all very psychedelic.We have a transmitting radio station, in this case, KYW at 50 kilowatts broadcasting at 1060 kilohertz.We have a box. with a speaker and an antenna.
The antenna is an iron rod with some wire wrapped around it.
When adjusted properly, we are pulling energy out of the air to resonate this circuit such that we can demodulate it, which I didn't really talk about, demodulate the audio signal and listen to it.Now it gets even better.
If we were to rotate that radio such that the iron core rod is pointing at KYW, the signal will drop off and become quieter.It'll be loudest when the core is perpendicular to the wave. further reinforcing the physicality of electromagnetic waves.
The problem with digital radios is that digital is on or off.Radio, like life, is analog.There are gradients.
So without appreciating analog radio, we don't have an appreciation or an intuition where we can get instant feedback on how everything is working. So I recommend you get an analog AM FM receiver.
And at this point, just try to play around and develop a feel for how the receiver is working.Notice which orientation works best and where, for example. So let's bring this all back to mesh-tastic radios, which is what everybody wants to play with.
And so the physical nature of radio is the same concept for a 915 MHz mesh-tastic radio.900 MHz waves have a wavelength of about 33 cm.So a half-length dipole is 16.5 cm, a quarter-length is half that.
But, like I briefly mentioned before, different antennas have different properties for different bands.You might be used to seeing kind of a vertical stick antenna for your Meshtastic radio.But that might not be the best antenna for your use case.
What if you want to transmit or receive signals from only one direction?What if you want some gain on the signal?What if you need the antenna to be flexible in wooded terrains?
See, there are lots of very practical considerations, but hopefully with the example of AM radio, you will have a better feeling about radio waves in general.How does that grab you?
I still don't follow you.
Perhaps many of you don't have an AM radio on hand.Well, that's a pity, but I'm here to help you out.And I have recorded KYW from receivers in the world.Remember, KYW is in Philadelphia.
So I listened in from Bermuda, which is about 1,261 kilometers from Philadelphia.At night, I heard this.
During the day, I heard this.Hopefully this gives you a sense that radio waves can actually even be changed by the environment themselves, whether it's night or day.
How did I get these recordings?How do you repeat these results?Well, I went to map.kiwisdr.com.That's mikealphapapa.kiloindiawhiskeyindiasierradeltaromeo.com.
where you can click on all the receivers around the world and listen in the signals in from zero to 30 megahertz ish.In one spot, you can be omnipresent around the globe.
So if you don't have an AM receiver or an AM broadcaster around you, you can explore Kiwi SDR and get a sense of AM signals and how they work at different distances and different times a day. Play around with the map.Explore.
On some receivers, you can even decode SSTV signals if their software supports it.On others, you can click on nav text.Other digital modes, if you click on the top row, if the decoder supports it, it'll instantly decode.
Each receiver operator can describe their antenna setup.And so, you know, ask yourself, why do some receivers sound better than others?Compare signals in the same location.There's a lot going on here, and I just want you to play and explore.
But if you're overwhelmed, just focus on the AM signals that I mentioned.I hope I've inspired you to appreciate the physical nature of radio.And now you have some analog and digital tools to help you explore the invisible waves around you.
Do you like your job, Professor McLuhan? Do you like your job, Professor McLuhan?
All right, folks, that's our show tonight.Thanks again to all our contributors.If you'd like a cassette of this episode, mail a postcard to bitpunk.fm P.O.Box 273029 Fort Collins, Colorado 80525. and we will mail you a free tape.Free, you say?Yes.
But if you find value in it, I ask you return the value in terms of time, talent, or treasure.After all, this is a value for value production.
For example, you can help spread the word about bitpunk.fm, submit audio like our fine guests did tonight, or mail a cash donation back to the P.O.Box, boost this podcast, or mail me some cassettes.
I'll thank producers by adding their name to the J cards. Tapes are available while supplies last, handwritten postcards only, and say you want issue 0.4.Say goodnight, Josh.Goodnight, Josh.
