this post was submitted on 26 Jun 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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Contrast that to no one needing encryption for anything fifty years ago. Kinda feels like it solves a problem created by the internet in the first place.
'but encryption is a solution for a made-up problem'
Safety and privacy has always been a factor in people's lives. Being empowered to do something meaningful about it in modern times is a huge improvement in people's lives.
I had no need of encryption before the internet. Because no one does those things. The government doesn't have the resources to walk into everyone's houses, even if I weren't protected by the 4th amendment.
It's only with the advent of the internet and mass surveillance that I have any need of encryption. If I needed to speak privately with someone, I'd visit them. Or even just pick up a phone because wiretaps require a warrant.
Oh, my sweet summer-child.
Your local police may need a warrant for a wiretap, but do you think intelligence services care about that? Let alone foreign ones?
Legal requirements don't stop the really problematic entities from spying on you. Privacw was easier back in the day, because it required effort and manpower to surveil you.
Nowadays, an automated computer program can do it.
It didn't matter. The government has limited money for that shit. They couldn't even spy on everything they wanted to, much less the general population.
There you go, making my point for me. That program wouldn't be possible without the internet. So encryption became needed by us nobodies because of the internet.
It doesn't have to be the government. It can be a suspicious spouse, a nosy family member, a judgemental neighbor, an opportunistic burglar, even a murderer. You're thinking in way too narrow of a scope.
But to really drive the point home, since "no one" does those things, please leave your front door unlocked on Monday for me. Thanks!
People have been cheating for millennia without the benefit of encryption.
There are 350 million Americans. My door is unlocked most Mondays. Good luck. I don't even own a gun. Find me and you win.
Nah, people were always spied on. The internet actually made it possible (if you know what you are doing) to communicate safely under authoritarian regimes or if you are under investigation by the government, even across borders.
That was not really feasible in the Soviet Union etc.
Not like today. Today every single person carries a surveillance device and gps tracker on their person at all times. The fact that you can send messages that are encrypted isn't any different than the fact that two people could whisper fifty years ago. The government still knows everything you are up to, we can just hide a bit of data.
People were way more free when I was a kid than they are today. Encryption wasn't necessary for 99% of people. To the extent it was necessary, people had one time pads and shit like that. Today I'm concerned whether I'll be allowed to vote after facial recognition cameras catch me wearing a pride shirt.
Leave your damn phone at home and use a vpn.
It seems like you didn't fully read my post
I did. Encryption still solves a problem we didn't have fifty years ago. A handful of folks under direct state surveillance excepted.
The enigma machine is over 80 years old now. That was just the last machine before modern computing. There were all sorts of other machines and techniques for cryptography long before the modern era. The first forms of encryption are over 3500 years old.
well of course they existed. But I can't think of an example of a pre-internet era where forms of encryption of a grade high enough to stop law enforcement, and probably all/most government can read them, was easy and accessible enough that your average highschooler would without thinking about it encrypt a grocery list he's sending to his mom.
So easy a child could use it... or the current secretary of war (with some minor mistakes of adding in reporters into rooms etc...).
The enigma machine was for government use for a military purpose. Common people had no need of anything like that. If I somehow implied I thought encryption was invented for the internet, let me clarify that: I don't.
Encryption was needed 50 years ago, though. Encryption has always been needed, people we just optimistic about the world then and didn’t bother.
Nonetheless, Steve Wozniak was a Blue Boxer.
It was not needed by anyone other than governments. Mass surveillance was not possible, and you could correspond about criminal activities over the phone and through the mail and unless you were already under criminal investigation, no one could ever know.
Encryption has been around for hundreds of years…
It seems like folks are under the mistaken belief I thought encryption was something that post-dated the internet. I don't see what I might've said to give that impression, but that is not the case.