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Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

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Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

#31
post #29

Two monitors at the same time, friend. In seriousness, I'd be careful because as others have pointed out, some crypto systems would be vulnerable.

More than some, I think. Most strong crypto short of one-time pads makes use of NP (or at least problems solvable by NP problems, factoring is probably a little easier than NP).

NP is nice for crypto since it has P time checkable solutions - so just make the "password" an encoding of the solution and you're golden.

It's easy to check that a password is correct, and it takes EXP time to brute force. Hopefully the crypto implementation blocks IPs after some number of login attempts that is less than EXP :)

Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

#32
I've always thought that this would make a great plot for a science fiction novel. A computer science fiction novel. There would be lots of intrigue, as the guy was tracked down by the NSA and covertly outwitted his opponents using his proof, until a final showdown where he discovers the horrifying truth about who else knows that P=NP, and what happens to everyone else who's ever proven it.

So...should I look for a literary agent or try and bootstrap this myself by hiring a private press? ;)

Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

#33
post #5

Bid the spy agencies against each other. Make sure you tell the Americans that you are really working for them so they don't kill you and they also protect you from all the other people that want to kill you. Edit: Who I am kidding, the Americans would not want the other countries to know P=NP and talking to anyone else would be grounds for disappearance. So there would be no bidding war, you'd have to take what you…

Who I am kidding, the Americans would not want the other countries to know P=NP and talking to anyone else would be grounds for disappearance

Post it very publicly in many places, including 4chan. Hope that Anonymous gets hold of it, or that the spooks start whacking /b/tards or the /b/tards start whacking the spooks.

Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

#35

I've always thought that this would make a great plot for a science fiction novel. A computer science fiction novel. There would be lots of intrigue, as the guy was tracked down by the NSA and covertly outwitted his opponents using his proof, until a final showdown where he discovers the horrifying truth about who else knows that P=NP, and what happens to everyone else who's ever proven it. So...should I look for a l…

There's Sneakers (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0105435/) but that's just about factoring large numbers, and is pretty light on the CS (though Len Adleman, the "A" in "RSA", was a consultant on that film).

Yours sounds good too.

Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

#36

I've always thought that this would make a great plot for a science fiction novel. A computer science fiction novel. There would be lots of intrigue, as the guy was tracked down by the NSA and covertly outwitted his opponents using his proof, until a final showdown where he discovers the horrifying truth about who else knows that P=NP, and what happens to everyone else who's ever proven it. So...should I look for a l…

Someone already did this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Atrocity_Archives

basically, all the really clever computer science such as NP=P turns out to involve summoning demons etc in the book. If you want to read a ridiculous spin on computer science + fantasy, fun read.

Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

#37

I wondered along these lines recently. A relative is getting caught up in the "water-car", "Brown's Gas", Hydrogen internet scam.. Where you convert water to 2H2 + O2 and burn that to power the car, house, etc for "free". What would you do if it actually worked? How would you convince people? Where would you share it?

Convincing people is easy. Build a closed system, grab an inverter, sell power back to the power company, which in many places they are required by law to pay you for. Sell enough power back, you'll get attention.

The idea that demonstrating a net-positive process is hard is merely smokescreen tossed up by the perpetual motion scamsters. It's not. It's easy. It's as easy as it is to demonstrate that a gas generator produces power when you add gasoline and oxygen to the system. If you have a process that works, you can generate and sell power to prove your point and go from there. The fact that nobody can quite seem to manage this feat, despite the easy money it would represent if you actually had a solution, is proof enough that it simply doesn't work.

A system that pushed out a kilowatt and never stopped would be very easy to prove. It's only hard to prove something when you're sitting there fiddling with picowatts and arguing whether the power comes from the magic process or if you're simply translating magnetism into electricity or some other fiddly, on-the-edge-of-rounding-error sort of thing.

Also, any true net-positive process can be turned into this sort of thing, simply by feeding back the net-positive process onto itself. Any net-positive process should be able to produce a kilowatt, easily. (Arbitrary amounts of power, actually, but let's take something thinkably-small.) Again, the fact that they have to resort to fiddly little rounding errors is proof that they have nothing. Any interesting perpetual motion process would be able to power a nation, if it actually worked.

Re: Ask HN: P=NP, what do you do?

#39
I've always assumed it is a given that as soon as you make that discovery, all sorts of agencies would be hunting after you and you would have to run for your life. So my worry would be how to safely publish the information to get off the hook. I used to think publishing it to Usenet and sending lots of emails would do the trick, but I am not so sure anymore.
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