Crack the encryption on someone's DomainKeys implementation so that I can sign mail as coming from them. Then successfully spam the world.
Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
21–30 of 40 posts
Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
To those who might have missed what the parent is talking about, in 1995 a formula was discovered that lets you calculate the n'th bit of pi without calculating the previous n-1 bits. This surprised everyone. The consequence is that you can compute the n'th bit in essentially linear time, and essentially constant memory. By traditional methods, computing the quintillionth bit would be unthinkable. However, I doesn't…
The BBP algorithm is not only parallelizable, it's embarrassingly parallel. Each term in the series can be computed independently of the rest. In case you missed half of the joke: The PiHex project computed the quadrillionth bit of Pi back in 1998-2000... and was run by yours truly.
I sure did. Funny thing is, I was into this stuff back then (at one point me and another guy were chasing the record for the largest 7-tuple in arithmetic progression; we ended up with the second largest), so I'm sure I heard about your effort at the time. BBP survives in my memory a decade later, but not PiHex.
I have to say though, your original comment was definitely an obscure reference, even on HN :-)
Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
The BBP algorithm is not only parallelizable, it's embarrassingly parallel. Each term in the series can be computed independently of the rest. In case you missed half of the joke: The PiHex project computed the quadrillionth bit of Pi back in 1998-2000... and was run by yours truly.
I sure did. Funny thing is, I was into this stuff back then (at one point me and another guy were chasing the record for the largest 7-tuple in arithmetic progression; we ended up with the second largest), so I'm sure I heard about your effort at the time. BBP survives in my memory a decade later, but not PiHex. I have to say though, your original comment was definitely an obscure reference, even on HN :-)
I have to say though, your original comment was definitely an obscure reference, even on HN
I think a lot of people who have been here for longer than you were aware of my connection to PiHex -- it has come up a few times.
Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#24With apologies to Nate Lawson: delete any website, blog post, message board, or email thread that talks about Conficker.
Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#25Synchronize the system clock, set the volume to maximum, and then, at the right moment, and with perfect synchronicity, each computer would play back a prerecorded speech claiming to be a message from God...
Or Rick Astley.
Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#26fix the economy :)
Was thinking along those lines. Start transferring money from all accounts to all accounts. Stop when everyone has the same amount of money.
Should be fun for a while.
Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#27With apologies to Nate Lawson: delete any website, blog post, message board, or email thread that talks about Conficker.
the first rule of conficker...
Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#28Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#29Re: Ask HN: What would you have Conficker do?
#30Place billions of orders to small breweries around the world and have them shipped a select few small towns.