(the above happened because i realized at some point that even though diffie hellman key exchange _uses_ things like "elliptic curves" or "modular arithmetic" to work, you do not need to actually _understand_ those things to understand the basic idea, and I thought that was cool!)
anyway this is what your computer is doing every time you make a HTTPS connection, to figure out what secret key to use to encrypt the connection
@b0rk That is a really nice explanation, thanks!
Your remark that “you do not need to actually _understand_ those things to understand the basic idea” reminds me of a math SE question I answered a while back: “My little cousin (12year) asked me about how emails are encrypted … Is there a teacher here who knows how to make her understand how to factor a number in to primes and what a prime number is?”
I had to answer twice. First I answered the question that was asked: I do know how to explain prime and composite to kids. But if what the the kid wants is to understand how emails are encrypted, the prime number thing is an unimportant implementation detail. I suggested explaining Vigenère ciphers instead.
Julia Evans
Mark Dominus