How's the WAS coming along?

Subject: How's the WAS coming along?
Author: Tomash
Posted on: 2017-07-26 22:35:00 UTC

I've got ... 8, mostly because almost all my operating's been under club calls.

I started working on CW at one point ages back and then sort of abandoned it. I'll get around to learning one of these days I swear. (It'll probably happen right around when I publish some PPC writing lol.)

btu de Tomash k

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Hello from TripleDES. by TripleDES on 2017-07-23 21:58:00 UTC Reply

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Hello, PPC.

I'd like to join the website and see what you guys have to offer. I don't want to say how I arrived here, but I'm very interested in the community and writing in general. I've been a long time writer and first started learning my trade on fanfiction, and it went from there.

If anyone wants to know what TripleDES means, my screen name is chosen after a now-obsolete symmetric cipher. Triple Data Encryption Standard was hastily implemented as an interim measure to bridge the gap between the older Data Encryption Standard and Advanced Encryption Standard. Despite its obsolescence, it continues to come back, and come back to this very day.

I log in through Tor, so I apologize if there's any ruffling of feathers from Tor use on this server, it's for my own protection and anonymity. To prevent impersonation, I will be signing all of my messages cryptographically with a Brainpool P-512 signing key which has been selfsigned with my master certification key.

Any data that has not been signed with a key that has been certified by a public key with the key fingerprint matching the one below exactly (in all cryptography, there is no close, there is only exact, or counterfeit) should be considered counterfeit. At this moment, I use SHA-512 as a digest for signing, please take this into account.

F509 6084 6B00 56D7 3D17 96AC 1AFD B5CF 1ED9 B926

My public keys with their attached signing, authentication, and encryption subkeys can be obtained from the PGP Public Key Server at:
https://pgp.key-server.io/0x1AFDB5CF1ED9B926
or through Tor, via a hidden service at:
http://gnjtzu5c2lv4zasv.onion/0x1AFDB5CF1ED9B926

You will need a copy of GnuPG 2.1 or GPG4Win 3.0 in order to verify my signatures, which can be obtained from:
For Windows:
https://files.gpg4win.org/Beta/
For Macintosh, Linux, BSD, et al:
https://gnupg.org/download/index.html

You can leave me confidential messages that only I can read by encrypting them with the attached public key and leaving them for me, and I will recover them when I check the board. Please note that I may delete and rotate encryption subkeys at regular intervals (usually when the encryption subkeys expire) to achieve a very crude form of forward secrecy, so be sure to synchronize your keyring with the keyserver!
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Hi there by Tomash on 2017-07-26 01:58:00 UTC Reply

Welcome to the PPC! Have two cents, so you can put them into discussions when they happen.

- Tomash, who's on mobile and therefore can't sign this

Re: Hi there by TripleDES on 2017-07-26 03:31:00 UTC Reply

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Great! I'm sure I'll have lots to say when they do.
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Hello, New Person! by The Triumvirate on 2017-07-25 15:34:00 UTC Reply

Welcome to our corner of crazy! Have a Cryptography book - I get the feeling you like ciphers and codes, and I do too, so this makes a good change from my usual gift of dice.

Re: Hello, New Person! by TripleDES on 2017-07-26 03:32:00 UTC Reply

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Thanks, I certainly do!
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Hiya! by RemnantShadow on 2017-07-25 10:17:00 UTC Reply

Hi there! Welcome to the PPC. For your newbie gift, have a replica of the ressurection stone.

Re: Hiya! by TripleDES on 2017-07-26 03:35:00 UTC Reply

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Fantastic, at least with a replica I can't end up despairing when finding out that the resurrections it brings back are akin to trialware!
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I am in awe of your techiness... OuO by twistedwindowpane on 2017-07-24 16:27:00 UTC Reply

I barely even know what half of this stuff is that you're talking about. But I want to learn. The techiest I am at this current moment is being an amateur ratio operator. Which isn't quite as techy as your techiness. Or at least, you seem to have quite an interest in making your posts secure, and the fact that you know what pretty much everything is doing to make them secure has led me to declare you "techy."

Since you are so techy, my newbie gift to you is a replica of Dr. Quarkblitz's robot from the Spear of Destiny mission packs. This replica functions similar to the replica Portal turret that the crew at Valve built, in that it looks extremely similar to the original, but just makes sounds and does not fire bullets as the original does. It is also programmable via an Arduino board! :D

Now for the less techy part. What fandoms and stuff are you in? What types of things do you like to write? Got any characters you think you want to make into agents? I'm curious to know.

Well, either way, it's nice to meet you, Your Royal Techiness! It's evident that you're going to be a great help to the PPC, even if you don't write a single mission.

-Twistey
----------
"Huh? What's this robot you're talking about?" Glad you asked! http://wolfenstein.wikia.com/wiki/Robot

Re: I am in awe of your techiness... OuO by TripleDES on 2017-07-25 04:46:00 UTC Reply

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Hi there,

Amateur radio is awesome, it's something I've wanted to get into myself in the future. Not enough attention gets paid to the radio these days, makes me feel nostalgic.

I appreciate the robot!

I'm a little cautious of the Internet: I just don't like giving away more to the open Internet than I absolutely need to. I might've mentioned this over the chat, but when I give data away, I view it as something of a transaction, whether that transaction is communicating with someone, communicating with someone on another person's behalf, or saying something publicly to the rest of the world, and when I make that transaction I prefer it to be an informed, conscious choice, rather than accepting private enterprises and data giants hoarding our data and information so it can be monetized as just a fact of using the Internet. I'd be happy to show you how the applications work if you're interested.

I do have plenty of characters that I've used for role-playing, and for my own writing (which I don't think I'll discuss here), but for this I'll probably have to make new ones, since I want to keep my different lives on the internet separate. One of the things that actually fascinates me about fictional characters is that they're actually in some ways a huge reflection of ourselves, and a ton of our own hopes, dreams, our self-image and how we view ourselves. Whether we mean to or not, lots of our psychology ends up getting wrapped up in our own fictional characters. So when I read about other people's fictional characters and start analyzing them, in a way, I'm reading about the people that write them, and the more naked their egos are in the stories they write, the easier it is to see through the story into the person writing it. Wish fulfilment characters actually are pretty fascinating because even if they're utterly disgusting to read about from an entertainment perspective, they're amazingly honest in terms of what they say about the person who's writing them.

At this moment I'm on the fence about writing missions myself, since I'm the type of person that prefers to build up, rather than punch down. If do write a PPC mission, it will be against my own Mary Sues that have never seen the judgement of the Internet and were written long ago, or ones I will write specially for the purpose of deconstructing them later. Best thing about that approach will be that it'll allow me to make them tailored to the kind of parody that I want to write, without needing to search through a lot of other people's badly written fanfiction to find something specific first. I think there are a lot of ways in which I could give back to the writing community besides that as well, although I'll have to stick around and see what you guys could use of my skills.

Two of my favourite continuities are Harry Potter and Star Wars, which have no shortage of fanfiction at all. I have other more esoteric favourites, but I'll let them come out as time goes on, or possibly over more private protocols.
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Replies, woo by twistedwindowpane on 2017-07-25 19:25:00 UTC Reply
1. It's a pretty cool hobby, and I especially love DXing (contacting folks outside your country) and SOTA (Summits on the Air). Despite being obscure, ham radio is very much alive.
  
  2. Have fun with it!
  
  3. Rather smart of you. Please do explain, I'm interested!
  
  4 (sentence by sentence reactions):
  a. Smart.
  b. That's a true thing. Entire stories can become wish fulfillments if the author isn't too careful.
  c. That is very very very very very very very true. And part of the reason why I've become a bit screwed up in the head as of late.
  d. I kind of do that too. The fact that we get wrapped up in our characters period sorta ties into the human want to be part of something special.
  e. It's even more obvious when the entire moral system is based around the characters. Then you've got something similar to an Ideology Sue.
  
  5. Oh huh! Never thought of it that way. I guess a good way to end a mission so that people don't get quite as mad would be something like adding a little list of the bad traits, then saying "however" and adding a little list of the good traits. By putting the good traits last, people will leave in a better mood than they would if you put the bad traits last. I also had the idea once to make up my own badfic for a PPC-ish story - may have to reassess whether or not I actually want to write that webcomic about two characters who do something similar to the PPC but aren't part of it.
  
  -Twistey

Ham Radio, writing missions, and crypto. by TripleDES on 2017-07-26 03:28:00 UTC Reply

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That's fantastic! Someday, I'll have to get a Ham radio license. I'm not in the most ideal position to do it at this moment, but I want to. When I do I'll have to see about building my own amplifier and my own equipment, since taking the DIY approach would be boss! Not sure if I would save any money by taking the homebrew route but it would be cool to do nonetheless. I think I would need to figure out where I could set up an antenna.

As for crypto, get ready for a bit of an infodump, I'll leave a bit of a primer below!

4 - Yeah, the main thing I realized is that the average fanfiction writer is probably at that awkward, transitory stage in their lives. As bad as the stuff they might churn out might be, it doesn't make me feel any better about myself picking on them, especially when making the mistakes you make the first time around as a writer and knowing and recognizing your old shames are what makes you grow up as a writer and improve. It's important to know when to deflate an ego and knock someone down a peg, but I don't feel right doing it to a thirteen year old behind their back and while anonymous, especially if it's in a fashion that could be construed as being mean-spirited. So that's probably why I'll be doing it to my own fanfiction, or writing my own grade of parody bad fanfiction. I can just imagine what my characters' reaction would be to getting stuck in a story full of extremely dated pepperjack, and going "This author likes plugging Will Smith? What is this, 1996? Someone shoot me before The Backstreet Boys show up."

5 - That's a pretty good idea, I very much like the idea of being positive. It's too easy on the Internet to be negative all the time and just spiral down into this cycle of hatred. That's not quite my style, so talking about what you liked rather than what you didn't is a great idea!

And now for the infodump...

PGP is one of the older and more feature-rich public key infrastructure systems, invented during the 1990s. A lot of people are familiar with using it for E-mail, but it's more than that. It is a system of public key infrastructure, so one key (the public key) encrypts and verifies, but it takes a different key (the private key) to decrypt and sign. You to put the public key in a place where everyone can get it, so they can encrypt to you or verify stuff that you've cryptographically signed with your private key, but as long as only you have the private key, only you can ever sign or decrypt. This way, for instance, I don't have to go all the way across the internet to deliver a shared key or a password to you, as long as you know that the key belongs to me. To help you with that, each key has a unique identifier, called a 'fingerprint' that can't be forged and is unique to that key. The rationale would be that you would hold a key signing party, and then get your friends to meet you, and both you and all your friends confirm that the key fingerprint belongs to you. This prevents what's called a 'man in the middle' attack by an active attacker giving a fake key in place of the real ones, then impersonating both sides of a conversation to each other. Some people like to certify each other by building a network of verified people that they know and trust, and can personally visit in person as a defense against this, but I personally don't suggest doing this.

A signature, or the "begin signed message" at the top and the jumble of seemingly random letters at the bottom is a code that can be verified to have only have been generated by my key. Should someone attempt to modify the message within "signed message" and "end signature" then what will likely happen is the verification will display "Bad Signature" or display an error. If that happens, then you will know immediately that someone has tried to tamper with my message. Since we haven't been able to undeniably attribute the key to me, if you were to download my public key and attempt to verify any of my messages, you'll probably get "Not Verified" or "Not Trusted" since at this moment there's no way for you to personally attribute the key to me and will have to take my word on faith: for now, we will have to trust-on-first-use. If my keys ever change in a way where the new key is not certified by the old one you'll know they've been forged and you're talking to someone posing as me, or someone is tampering with this website. Something like that would be very easily done, as the board has no Secure Socket Layering/Transport Layer Security.

If you're interested in taking the plunge, I could walk you through some of the functions - GnuPG is very complex and unintuitive (that's probably why it's never really seen widespread use in the 20+ years it's been around), so it does help if you have someone to help. The problem with it is that it was designed in an era when sheer power and features for users was seen as a selling point, and usability, including intuitivity, ability to be easily used, and tolerance to human error was never seen as important. We know now that back then everyone had their priorities backward, I guess hindsight is 20/20.

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Alrighty then! by twistedwindowpane on 2017-07-26 23:34:00 UTC Reply

About ham radio: I'm not too sure if starting with DIY would be a good idea, but any other PPC hams feel free to contradict me, as I don't know all that much about how to choose equipment.

About fanfiction: A few times, though, it's the person's own fault for not getting a beta reader/not using spellcheck/posting on the Internet when they know they're not in their right minds.) The FAQ For Other People, in my opinion, really helps explain (albeit in a snarky way) the situations when it is the author's fault after all. Yeah, do focus on the good parts, but don't sugarcoat or leave out the bad ones. If you're going to review someone's fic (this is starting to sound like you want to review instead of sporking), the objective is that the author learns. Sporking, however, is mainly just for our entertainment, which is why whenever I do missions, I'm probably going to make them Google Docs and have people request for me to share the docs with them. That purpose is the reason why we're super-snarky about the fics and try our best to keep them away from their authors, and why we tend to keep to ourselves and don't advertise the PPC in big, bold letters. But if an author finds our sporking, our purpose then becomes giving them insight and explaining why the sporking was needed. (Other folks, feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.)

About PGP: Ah! That's pretty interesting! I'm not sure I want to use it for my Internet stuff, at least currently, but I'll keep it in mind for later down the road, and that's also very cool information.

-Twistey
The FAQ For Other People:
http://ppc.wikia.com/wiki/FAQ:ForOther_People

I'm not the only ham on here?! by Tomash on 2017-07-26 02:08:00 UTC Reply

I have to admit to being pretty inactive because no HF antenna (I've got the variable capacitor for a QRP magnetic loop ... in another state) and since I've had other stuff going on.

I mostly do/did HF digital and light contesting. And DX is fun!

Shack wise, I've got a Baofeng and an Icom IC-7000 (which needs to get dusted off once the antenna situation is fixed). You?

73 de Tomash, KF5[yeah, right]

I was about to say, don't write your call sign! by twistedwindowpane on 2017-07-26 22:26:00 UTC Reply

I mean, because of QRZ and other things that allow people to look up callsigns and get names of people.

I'll have to go into my basement and check what kind of radio I have, but it's a pretty small one, since my dad (who has a license too and got me into ham radio) prefers QRP operation. I'm pretty much all-digital in terms of modes, and I like going after certificates like Worked All States and whatnot. I'm also in the process of learning Morse code, but haven't finished yet... Either way, that's pretty cool that there's another ham out here!

73 de Twistey

How's the WAS coming along? by Tomash on 2017-07-26 22:35:00 UTC Reply

I've got ... 8, mostly because almost all my operating's been under club calls.

I started working on CW at one point ages back and then sort of abandoned it. I'll get around to learning one of these days I swear. (It'll probably happen right around when I publish some PPC writing lol.)

btu de Tomash k

Don't remember, really by twistedwindowpane on 2017-07-27 17:24:00 UTC Reply

I do remember that my dad has completed WAS, but I don't know how far I am in it. I do, however, know that I'm at least signed up. I think. Sunspots haven't been good lately so I haven't done much ham radio while the conditions aren't good.

-Twistey

The sonespots have been pretty bad, yeah by Tomash on 2017-07-27 19:15:00 UTC Reply

I did Field Day a while back and barely got any contacts until the band opened up to Texas around 6, which was unfortunately when I had to leave :(.

- Tomash

Ah, that's a shame. (nm) by twistedwindowpane on 2017-07-27 20:13:00 UTC Reply
*sunspots (nm) by Tomash on 2017-07-27 19:19:00 UTC Reply

Sonespots? XD (nm) by twistedwindowpane on 2017-07-27 20:10:00 UTC Reply

Ham Radio by TripleDES on 2017-07-26 03:30:00 UTC Reply

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Horay, that's two Ham Radio operators out here! I'll have to tune in when I have equipment of my own.
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Quick follow up... by TripleDES on 2017-07-24 02:53:00 UTC Reply

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I know that I've spoken with some of you on the Discord Chat. Because Discord is a privacy nightmare due to content monetization and data collection, I'll probably be minimizing my presence on the Discord Server. I'm going to post this in case anyone needs something beta read, since this is primarily my way of communicating.

I make extensive use of Ricochet Messenger (https://ricochet.im) to chat with people one-on-one in real time. My Ricochet ID is as follows:

ricochet:2kkwiqmck2opvh36
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