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Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

tangleblog.com

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Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#31

Post by thisisit »

This is full of little gems. Like:

> We were just reached out to by a CoinDesk journalist that Ethan contacted in an attempt to rush out this publication. This may be the biggest scandal I have ever heard of from what has been portrayed as a professional 'responsible disclosure'. Ethan is clearly in complete conflict of interest and pushing this for his own gain, this is no longer about academic merits, but a desperate attempt by Ethan to make money.

I can be wrong but the suggestion here seems to be that Coindesk journalist reaching out to the Iota team was a ploy to force them to pay a bounty.

But, after devolving into a personal attack. They expect him to reply back a month later?

> Hi Ethan, I can't get a single reply from you, looks like you put me on ignore on Twitter.

This whole saga seems to be symptomatic of the cryptocurrency scene. Lot of expertise on money, economics, cryptography, programming language etc is out there. But, any criticism of cryptocurrency devolves into either personal attacks or a know-all attitude which ensures not many people want to lend their expertise.

Edit: After re-reading the blog post, I realized the agenda of this leak was to show evidence of conflict of interest. The correct link for the post should have been:

http://www.tangleblog.com/2018/02/24/full-emails-ethan-heilm...

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#32

Post by eastWestMath »

loxias wrote: post #4

Confirming basically everything I already suspected about IOTA -- don't trust anything crypto related that's not written by a professional. "You're gonna have a bad time." [Edit to add this plug for Zcash! Made with real cryptographers ]

I recognize one of the IOTA foundation's members. I won't say his ego wasn't out of control and several professors asked him to take down "papers" from arxiv for being sloppy.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#33

Post by fabianhjr »

> I have a feeling that you refuse to accept existence of cryptographic protocols not mentioned in the textbooks read by you.

That is a cringe worthy statement by someone doing a cryptographic decentralized project. The whole conversation is a trainwreck. :/

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#34

Post by emmelaich »

loxias wrote: post #4

Confirming basically everything I already suspected about IOTA -- don't trust anything crypto related that's not written by a professional. "You're gonna have a bad time." [Edit to add this plug for Zcash! Made with real cryptographers ]

> You're gonna have a bad time."

A major wake-up call for me in the crypto currency world was Gavin Andresen's ludicrous "validation" of Colin Wright as Satoshi.

When a so-called leader clearly does not even understand the basics you realise it's 98% shit. Sturgeon's law applies again. But I keep on forgetting that.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#35

Post by hatsunearu »

loxias wrote: post #28
hatsunearu wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

somehow they claim ternery is easier to implement in hardware when it's strictly false in every way.

I have a vague memory of once upon a time reading a paper alleging that if you could start everything over again from the beginning, that somehow ternary was more efficient than binary for a digital architecture, something having to do with power usage. But other than that it just sounds like nonsense.

Love to see that paper; seems like nonsense to me. If someone came up with a more optimized transistor architecture than CMOS I'd love to have a look at it.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#36

Post by ShorsHammer »

rdtsc wrote: post #22

> Hey Ethan, Did you receive the invite? We can also setup a chat with our ex-NSA post-Quantum hash function experts after we get the initial confusion out of the way. Best, David It is a great example of someone (the "expert") convincing a non-technical person that they are the "ninja rockstar 11x post-quantum hash function expert". I've seen this many times. Managers / owners don't have ability to assess who is an…

> We can also setup a chat with our ex-NSA post-Quantum hash function experts

Is there a modern secure hash function considered to be under threat from quantum computing? I was under the impression there isnt one.

It's scary to see marketing spiels thrown into technical discussions, it's even worse when the thread is released as some sort of defense and those less informed see the big words and appeal-to-authority name dropping.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#37

Post by hatsunearu »

IntronExon wrote: post #7
loxias wrote: post #4

Confirming basically everything I already suspected about IOTA -- don't trust anything crypto related that's not written by a professional. "You're gonna have a bad time." [Edit to add this plug for Zcash! Made with real cryptographers ]

One priceless line from Ethan Heilman to support that observation: Probably best not to use informal stackoverflow answers and Wikipedia for understanding the security of your system. Yowza.

Are you sober?

hahahaha fuck me, this is good stuff.

Re: Email exchange between MIT Media Lab and the IOTA Foundation [pdf]

#40

Post by loxias »

emmelaich wrote: post #34
loxias wrote: post #4

Confirming basically everything I already suspected about IOTA -- don't trust anything crypto related that's not written by a professional. "You're gonna have a bad time." [Edit to add this plug for Zcash! Made with real cryptographers ]

> You're gonna have a bad time." A major wake-up call for me in the crypto currency world was Gavin Andresen's ludicrous "validation" of Colin Wright as Satoshi. When a so-called leader clearly does not even understand the basics you realise it's 98% shit. Sturgeon's law applies again. But I keep on forgetting that.

The crypto world has certainly inspired me to pursue whole new fields of research. Not in cryptocurrencies, because while the idea of a distributed ledger I think is solid and here to stay, but because at least 90% of these "currencies" must have their value drop to zero given a long enough time frame -- there's simply no reason for the market to support anything else.

No, for the past half a year or so I've been trying to learn all I can about market microstructure, quantitative finance, anything that makes money off of high variance.

Because if there's one thing I will bet on, it's that there's a ton of risk and volatility here in these hills, and there's probably money to be made somehow while it all crashes and burns.

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