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A comment on Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve?. Parent comment

Re:Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve? by jawns on Sunday July 05, 2020 @06:49PM (#23742795)
As the PROBLEM statement says:

> it would be difficult for them to quickly prove their authenticity

Yes, you could tell them something that happens tomorrow or the next day. But if time is of the essence and you can't wait until tomorrow, then the Temporal Password helps you _immediately_ demonstrate your authenticity.

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Re:Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve? by winstonewert on Sunday July 05, 2020 @06:59PM (#23742868)
They have a time machine. How can time be of the essence?
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Re:Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve? by celticninja on Sunday July 05, 2020 @07:44PM (#23743213)
No more Pym particles.
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Re:Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve? by yissp on Sunday July 05, 2020 @08:23PM (#23743475)
What if we generate a random number every, say, 5 minutes and maintain a log of them along with their timestamp. Then the time traveler could just look up a few entries immediately after their destination time and convince people by predicting them in advance. Not immediate but pretty quick.
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Re:Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve? by phroobster on Monday July 06, 2020 @01:48AM (#23745073)
The hash of the next bitcoin block can already be used for this. Easy tamper resistant random number every 10 minutes.
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Re:Ask HN: What weird or hard problems are you trying to solve? by ballenf on Monday July 06, 2020 @12:15AM (#23744640)
Wouldn’t the butterfly effect change the numbers? If not then the numbers need more entropy and less pseudo.
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