Quote from: smooth on October 03, 2014, 10:54:04 PM

Quote from: robinwilliams on October 03, 2014, 10:48:34 PM

so there paying u to find flaws and ur just badmouthing them and saying tehy don't care?

No that is a mischaracterization. What happened was that a bounty was offered for revealing an exploit that was shown to be stronger than what we had already published. ~~The exploit turned out to have no obvious relevance to BCX~~, but nevertheless the requirements were met and the bounty was paid.

Agreed, except "a bounty" was paid and so far not "the bounty". Or at least last time I checked only 7.5 of 10 had been paid. Note smooth's group and jl777 paid instantly. It was explained to me that we have Christian leader who doesn't follow the Biblical instruction to pay wages daily upon agreed completion of work. A rich man floating on a poorer man's income is a sin according to the Bible. I used to do payables net 30 etc, until I became of aware of this Biblical verse and it shamed me.

Quote from: smooth on October 03, 2014, 10:54:04 PM

The exploit turned out to have no obvious relevance to BCX...

Smooth is referring to the fact that I have not shown any proof that the private keys can be cracked, I only pointed to some simultaneous equations that are revealed when the spender of the ring is revealed per my (or their published) algorithm. One case of the simultaneous equations has been shown by their mathematicians to be equivalent to Diffie-Hellman exchange thus proven to be uncrackable by current assumptions. However, not all of the cases were disproven. Thus he is factually stating any relevance to BCX is unproven and not obvious. He is not saying there is no possible relevance, although I am assuming he thinks the probability is exceedingly small thus the onus on someone other than them to prove it is relevant.

Note afaics the mathematical point of Taleb's Antifragility is that many improbable long tail events accumulate.

Yet I think the algorithm they paid a bounty for may have an obvious relevance to BCX. If a BCX chain attack gets hopelessly wound in a Gordian knot, my algorithm may be able in some cases to untangle the anonymity so that it can be determined which transactions actually spent the stolen coin base rewards. I don't know how realistic it is until it is coded, tested, and characterized.

Quote from: smooth on October 03, 2014, 10:54:04 PM

Useful contributions would likely take the form of code or well formed mathematical analysis. That is exceedingly rare here, but it does happen.

In case the issue of Linux comes up again, I will point out that I have personally made contributions to Linux. They took the form of recommended code changes coupled with test cases that clearly and explicitly demonstrated the benefit of the proposed code changes. If I simply posted about how this or that was a possible flaw without doing the work to support my claims, I would likely be ignored or ridiculed, as I have seen happen to many people in the Linux developer community.

Agreed. But you are conflating apples (Linux) and quarks (crypto-currency) because Linux is an effort to copy an existing operating system (Unix) and concept which was already fleshed out in the real world. Whereas, crypto-currency is still very much in the formative, research, experimentative, conceptual stage.

I am 80% certain that this cultural stance is going to be why XMR is beaten by another effort that understands better how to spur innovation by not suppressing or expecting a Cathedral style of progression.

Quote from: smooth on October 03, 2014, 10:54:04 PM

TFM: "Entanglement" is no more an issue than reversal of the often-untraceable transfer of coins after a long (but ultimately temporary) chain fork, particularly through exchanges and other intermediaries. In both cases, when the fork is resolved one way or another, some transactions will be unwound, and those who accepted coins as valid on the wrong fork without a sufficient number of confirmations (always a judgement call) are out of luck.

Shocking.

You are equating the ability for a user to wait for say 6 confirmations to have a mathematically quantifiable probability of assurance, with the risk of a coin vulnerability allowing spends of any age to be double-spent (reverting a spend is double-spending).