Top posts

Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 488 posts.

Crypto & Blockchain
Any year
241

Proof of X

I’ve spent a lot of time recently thinking about different proof-of-work mechanisms. When I say proof-of-work, I’m not talking about consensus algorithms like the ones that some crypto currencies use. I’m talking about social networks.

267

When Will We See Collisions for SHA-1?

On a NIST-sponsored hash function mailing list, Jesse Walker (from Intel; also a member of the Skein team) did some back-of-the-envelope calculations to estimate how long it will be before we see a practical collision attack against SHA-1. I’m reprinting his analysis here, so it reaches a broader audience. According…