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A comment on About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key.

Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by timothya on Sunday May 17, 2015 @07:51PM (#9562243)
Meanwhile, on the original post, the author is acting like HN was tampering with the ranking of the article because it started doing poorly after people realized that a real key wasn't factored:

> "Update II : Amusingly enough, it seems Hacker News hand-diddled their story list to remove this discussion. Way to go Ydumbinator crew!" [0]

[0]: http://trilema.com/2015/full-disclosure-4096-rsa-key-in-the-...

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by Adlai on Sunday May 17, 2015 @10:11PM (#9562594)
It's worth noting that HN does adjust article rankings:

http://www.righto.com/2013/11/how-hacker-news-ranking-really...

Compare the gradual slide from the peak of other articles from the same time as the one in question:

http://hnrankings.info/9560839,9561606,9561693,9561599,95619...

Moderated forums aren't censored, but they do get... moderated. What else did you expect?

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by Dylan16807 on Monday May 18, 2015 @03:46AM (#9563215)
Sometimes moderation steps in, but that's not needed most of the time when user flagging exists.
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Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by zf00002 on Sunday May 17, 2015 @08:06PM (#9562284)
that's pretty much typical of mircea popescu.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by ikeboy on Sunday May 17, 2015 @09:53PM (#9562548)
Does he have any claim to fame beyond very elaborate trolling? I've been trying to figure out what's up with him recently.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by rewqfdsa on Sunday May 17, 2015 @10:14PM (#9562597)
Popescu is waging a pathetic little personal war against FetLife [1]. He's a textbook example of a self-deluded crypto-narcissist who, if there's any justice on this earth, will see his comeuppance. People like him always do.

[1] He's been scraping the profiles of young women (specifically) and posting links, names, and hometowns on his blog. Yes, as technologists, we know that this kind of indexing is trivial. That's no reason, as a decent human being, to terrorize innocent people.

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by Adlai on Sunday May 17, 2015 @10:14PM (#9562598)
Wealth.

Most of the publicly known early adopters don't spend as much (or any) time trolling about (and getting trolled) on IRC.

http://search.bitcoin-assets.com/?q=from%3Amircea_popescu

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by grubles on Sunday May 17, 2015 @11:30PM (#9562756)
Possibly some people have been exposed to mircea through hearing about his insane quotes such as:

  The most you can do, after having been educated/raped, is picking the what and the how for other, later, virgins.
http://trilema.com/2014/patriarchy-is-a-thing-because-nobody...

Or they have read his Guide To Beating Women blog post:

http://trilema.com/2011/cum-se-bate-femeia/

Or perhaps they have read how his site for betting with bitcoin screwed someone over for about $7,000 in bitcoin:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=339544.0

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by ikeboy on Sunday May 17, 2015 @10:23PM (#9562619)
Do we know how much he's actually worth?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by Adlai on Sunday May 17, 2015 @10:46PM (#9562671)
His >50% MPOE[1] stake is at least 1.4 million coins (valuated by the last trade).

If you're skeptical of numbers on webpages (c.f. "EmptyGox"), MPEx's trivially traceable addresses[2] currently contain around five thousand coins; tracking down the rest is left as an exercise for the skeptical sleth.

[1] http://mpex.ws/?mpsic=S.MPOE

[2] https://www.walletexplorer.com/wallet/MPEx.co

[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by sanswork on Monday May 18, 2015 @01:34AM (#9562964)
Maybe I'm reading it wrong but according to that there is ~10m shares outstanding at a price of 0.00028btc per share. Doesn't that make it worth around 2800 btc not 2.8m?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by Adlai on Monday May 18, 2015 @03:56AM (#9563239)
We're both wrong. One billion shares, half of which he can't sell:

  CL-USER> (* 1/2 (expt 10 9)
              (parse-float "0.00029087" :type 'rational))
  145435
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by ikeboy on Sunday May 17, 2015 @10:52PM (#9562682)
Oh, and who the hell is paying 50 btc to open an account at mpex?
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:About the supposed factoring of a 4096 bit RSA key by Adlai on Monday May 18, 2015 @12:25AM (#9562876)
crickets
[ Parent | on HN ]