Blair Fix

Download:  PDF | EPUB  When it comes to Bitcoin, there’s one thing that almost everyone agrees on: the network sucks up a tremendous amount of energy. But from there, disagreement is the rule. For critics, Bitcoin’s thirst for energy is self-evidently bad — the equivalent of pouring gasoline in a hole and setting it on fire. But for Bitcoin advocates, the network’s energy gluttony is the necessary price of having a secure digital currency.

Is Bitcoin More Energy Intensive Than Mainstream Finance?

Jeroen Ooms

A new package
[gpg](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/gpg/index.html) has
appeared on CRAN. From the package description:

> *Bindings to GnuPG for working with OpenGPG (RFC4880) cryptographic
> methods. Includes utilities for public key encryption, creating and
> verifying digital signatures, and managing your local keyring. Note
> that some functionality depends on the version of GnuPG that is
> installed on the system. In particular GnuPG 2 mandates the use of
> 'gpg-agent' for entering passphrases, which only works if R runs in a
> terminal session.*

The package features a beautiful
[vignette](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/gpg/vignettes/intro.html)
to get you started with using GPG in R. Some highlights from the
vignette below.

## Example: encryption

Suppose we want to send an email Glenn Greenwald containing top secret
information. His [homepage at the
intercept](https://theintercept.com/staff/glenn-greenwald/) shows
Greenwalds GPG fingerprint. Let's import his public key:

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
library(gpg)glenn <- '734A3680A438DD45AF6F5B99A4A928C769CD6E44'gpg_recv(glenn)
```
:::

We can now encrypt messages for this key:

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
writeLines("This is a secret message", "secret.txt")cat(gpg_encrypt("secret.txt", receiver = glenn))
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
-----BEGIN PGP MESSAGE-----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lkbq-----END PGP MESSAGE-----
```

You can safely send this message over any channel (email, twitter, etc).
Nobody in the world (not even ourselves) will be able to decipher this
message, except for Glenn Greenwald.

## Example: digital signatures

GPG is most widely used for digital signatures. For example the [Debian
page on CRAN](https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/) explains
that the backports archives on CRAN are signed with the key of Johannes
Ranke with key fingerprint **6212 B7B7 931C 4BB1 6280 BA13 06F9 0DE5
381B A480**. Let's import this key:

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
# take out the spacesjohannes <- gsub(" ", "", "6212 B7B7 931C 4BB1 6280  BA13 06F9 0DE5 381B A480")gpg_recv(johannes)
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
considered   imported  unchanged          1          1          0  
```

We can now verify the
[Release](https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/buster-cran35/Release)
file, which contains checksums for all files in the repository.

::: {.highlight}
``` {.chroma tabindex="0"}
# Verify the filelibrary(curl)curl_download('https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/buster-cran35/Release', 'Release')curl_download('https://cran.r-project.org/bin/linux/debian/buster-cran35/Release.gpg', 'Release.gpg')gpg_verify('Release', 'Release.gpg')
```
:::

``` {tabindex="0"}
                               fingerprint           timestamp hash pubkey success1 6212B7B7931C4BB16280BA1306F90DE5381BA480 2016-06-22 09:26:03 SHA1    DSA    TRUE
```

Looking good! We can trust the checksums in the Release file to be
legitimate.

Check out the package
[vignette](https://cran.r-project.org/web/packages/gpg/vignettes/intro.html)
for more examples!


A new package gpg has appeared on CRAN. From the package description: The package features a beautiful vignette to get you started with using GPG in R. Some highlights from the vignette below.Example: encryption  Suppose we want to send an email Glenn Greenwald containing top secret information. His homepage at the intercept shows Greenwalds GPG fingerprint.

Rogue Scholar Posts

Is Bitcoin More Energy Intensive Than Mainstream Finance?

Encryption and Digital Signatures in R using GPG