
Supreme court of India to hear petition to ban WhatsApp - TheAuditor
http://m.timesofindia.com/tech/tech-news/Supreme-Court-to-hear-petition-seeking-ban-on-WhatsApp/articleshow/52887016.cms
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cnvogel
You know what depresses me about these articles, besides the obviously sad
point of a country banning strong encryption: Why are people so obsessed with
writing out huge numbers and making up arbitrary false statements, just to
impress the uninformed and uneducated? From the article:

> one would need a whopping 115, 792, 089, 237, 316, 195, 423, 570, 985, 008,
> 687, 907, 853, 269, 984, 665, 640, 564, 039, 457, 584, 007, 913, 129, 639,
> 935 key combinations > which is almost impossible for even a super computer.

These digits (it's the decimal representation of 2^256-1) don't add anything
to the content of an article.

> Decrypting a single 256-bit encrypted message would take hundreds of years,
> Yadav said.

This number ("undreds of years" might be true, false, too high, too low taking
anything from the number of CPUs/ASICs crunching to speculations on quantum
computers or breakthroughs in mathematics and cryptoanalysis into acocunt) is
just pulled out of thin air.

