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hiAndrewQuinnlast Thursday at 3:51 AM2 repliesview on HN

It's going to be stochastic in some sense whether you want it to be or not, human error never reaches zero percent. I would bet you a penny you'd get better results doing one two-second automated pass + your usual PII redaction than your PII redaction alone.


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ori_btoday at 3:20 AM

The advantage of computers was that they didn't make human errors; they did things repeatedly, quickly, and predictably. If I'm going to accept human error, I'd like it to come from a human.

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cyanydeezlast Thursday at 10:21 AM

I think the problem is most secrets arn't stochastic; they're determinant. When the user types in the wrong password, it should be blocked. Using a probabilistic model suggests an attacker only now needs to be really close, but not correct.

Sure, there's some math that says being really close and exact arn't a big deal; but then you're also saying your secrets don't need to be exact when decoding them and they absolutely do atm.

Sure looks like a weird privacy veil that sorta might work for some things, like frosted glass, but think of a toilet stall with all frosted glass, are you still comfortable going to the bathroom in there?

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