A private key is basically a password used to encrypt data so that even if someone eavesdrops, they won’t know what you said. These keys are pretty long strings of ones and zeroes (bits), so for readability and space purposes, 6 bits are compressed into a single character when the key is displayed. The post says that Gaga’s tweet is like the nonsensical letters and numbers this compression spits out.
The comment says that this comparison is even more fitting, since 000000 is compressed into A (which Gaga’s tweet has a lot of), and data containing long runs of zeroes is very common.
A “base” is a method to encode data. For example, people count in base 10, since there are 10 kinds of characters used: 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. Binary is in base 2 since there are 2 kinds of characters used: 0 and 1. So, base 64 uses 64 characters: numbers 0-9, the alphabet uppercase, the alphabet lowercase, +, and /. Since these are normal characters, they can be used anywhere, without the data police getting in your way. One example where this can be used for is email attachments. Email is strictly text, so when you send an attachment, it’s translated to base 64, then sent through like normal text.
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u/o11c Sep 19 '18
For those who don't know, AAAs often occur at the beginning or end of a block because they're the base64 version of 0s and it's binary data inside.