Why are all examples involving crypto always between “Alice” and “Bob”? Who first did that? Why did it stick?
@bloor Wikipedia has some answers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_and_Bob
@babelmonk ahha so it was A and B. That’s why at least their initial letters are as they are.
@bloor @babelmonk
There was a paper some years ago (Rolf Oppliger, 2017) which argued that we would be better off saying A and B. The argument was that the use of human names encourages people to oversimplify what really happens in electronic comms, e.g. in reality Alice pokes buttons on a smartphone messaging software, which on a particular input does a whole bunch of networking, hardware and software whatnot, to get a message to another software on another smartphone and ultimately to Bob.
@emmatonkin @bloor @babelmonk OTOH, names help humanize an abstract problem, increasing engagement
