We had a lot more matches than you’d expect, even though we were all unique.
A few of us had the same stickers because we gave them to each other. Think six degrees of separation type stuff. We’ve all gone to the same conferences, and we have similar taste in stickers, and maybe we even trade with each other. More than all the atoms in the universe, much less hackers in a room, whether you take things to the eighth power or not. (9999 / 10000) ^ (240 * 210 / 2) = about an eight percent chance of no match, so a better than 90% chance that we’d have at least one matching sticker.īut that doesn’t answer the original question: are our be-stickered laptops unique, like fingerprints or snowflakes? There, you have to match each and every sticker on the laptop - a virtually impossible task, and while there were eight of us in the room, that’s just not enough to get any real juice from the Birthday Paradox.
With eight of us in the room, that’s 240 stickers that could match each other.
#WHITE APPLE LAPTOP STICKER FULL#
So while you and I are unlikely to have the same birthday, in a room full of 42 people, it’s 90% likely that someone will have their birthday matched. Each additional sticker provides another shot at matching, and an extra shot at being matched. Here, the Birthday Paradox kicks in and helps us out. Real hackers have 20-50 stickers per laptop - at least in our sample of “real hackers”. If you’ve only got one sticker per laptop, that’s pretty slim odds, even when the laptops are of the same vintage. (None of us will see them all.) If a laptop lasts five years, that’s a pool of 10,000 stickers to draw from. Say, for argument’s sake, that globally there are 2,000 stickers per year that are cool enough to put on a laptop. Cut straight to nerds talking too much math.įirst off, you could wonder about the chances of two random hackers having the same sticker on their laptop. I jokingly suggested that with as many stickers as we each had on our trusty companion machines, they might literally be as unique as a fingerprint. Making a change INCLUDES putting the government back in its place, as the servant of the people.A discussion ensued about our crazy hacker ways the other night. It's not just about being able to make a change in the world, yada yada yada. The government works for me! I shouldn't have to worry about the government giving me trouble for something that is completely legal. The problem with your argument is that pick-pockets and thieves are there to get rich. You can still make changes in the world and not have to stick out like a sore thumb. People have this odd idea that they need to TELL EVERYONE who they are. Similarly, If you're doing things governments don't like, you'd far smarter just blending in rather than sticking out. Who's the pick-pocket going to target, the guy with the $20,000 Rolex, or the guy with the $20 Timex? One key to not getting robbed is to not wear all this flashy stuff that identifies you as someone worthy of being robbed. In one case, Mitchell said a hacker friend ended up missing a flight over stickers.Īnd much of stealth is just blending in. Mitchell said political stickers, for instance, can land you in secondary search or result in being detained while crossing a border. "Conferences, border crossing, airports, public places - stickers will/can get you targeted for opposition research, industrial espionage, legal or investigative scrutiny," Matt Mitchell, director of digital safety and privacy for technology and activism group Tactical Tech, told Motherboard in an online chat. That's all well and good, but a laptop lid full of stickers also arguably provides something of a red flag to authorities or hackers who may want to access sensitive information stored on that computer, or otherwise cause the owner hassle.
Maybe one shows off their employer, another flaunts that local cryptoparty they attended, or others may display the laptop owner's interest in Bitcoin. From a report: Plenty of hackers, journalists, and technologists love to cover their laptop in all manner of stickers.
From border crossings to hacking conferences, that Bitcoin or political sticker may be worth leaving on a case at home.
0 kommentar(er)
