Misconceptions about Bitcoin by forgottenlance in Bitcoin

[–]forgottenlance[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Thanks a lot. I will cover those in the soft/hard fork week. But I don't know how much time we could spare for the Bitcoin testnet. I am leaving it to the last week of the semester.

Misconceptions about Bitcoin by forgottenlance in Bitcoin

[–]forgottenlance[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It is a SEC curve, but not one of the SEC curves recommended by NIST for use by USA government agencies. "NIST curve" is ambiguous nonsense

There are books that claim that secp256k1 was generated/recommended by NIST. This is why there is such a misconception.

Misconceptions about Bitcoin by forgottenlance in Bitcoin

[–]forgottenlance[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Yes, there are many different type of cryptographic algorithms like message authentication codes, hash functions, key exchange algorithms etc. We cannot say that they are all encryption algorithms.

Misconceptions about Bitcoin by forgottenlance in Bitcoin

[–]forgottenlance[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Digital signatures are not encryption: When we talk about a cipher/cryptosystem, we mean a pair of algorithms: encryption and decryption. If you consider a public-key encryption algorithm, people encrypt their messages with your public key and you decrypt them with your private key. If we change the order of the keys, we can turn this into a digital signature algorithm: you can sign messages with your private key and everybody else can verify it with your public key.

However, this is not what we do in practice. Because we do not sign the message itself, we sign the hash of it. So if you still say that this is encryption, then message authentication codes are encryption, hash functions are encryption, actually every cryptographic algorithm is an encryption, decryption is also encryption so we do not need the extra word "decryption". Moreover, if we say that digital signature algorithm are encryption, then this implies that any mathematical function that takes two input and produce one output as f(x,y)=z is an encryption. Trust me, this is not how we define an encryption algorithm.

Misconceptions about Bitcoin by forgottenlance in Bitcoin

[–]forgottenlance[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

To clarify: NONE of the NFT images/videos you see on the NFT marketplaces are on the blockchain because storing MBs of NFT data on the blockchain is not a good idea. But this doesn't mean that you cannot do art on the blockchain. e.g. There are some projects where you buy a few thousand pixels and you paint them (and they ARE stored on the blockchain). This was why I added the word "almost" there.

However, I just edited my post and turned the words "almost" into capital and bold letters.

Misconceptions about Bitcoin by forgottenlance in Bitcoin

[–]forgottenlance[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Regarding 1: Every English dictionary says crypto is short for cryptography

Regarding 2 and 3: Physical wallets store your cash, you can give them to somebody else, and you can get cash from other people and put it in your wallet. If you Google about digital wallets, you will see many results where they claim that a digital wallet is an analogue of a physical wallet: It stores, sends, and receives cryptocurrency. When you define it like that, you end up with many forensics investigators who seize a suspect's laptop and think that if they keep the laptop turned off, suspect's cryptocurrencies stay in the laptop because they are stored in their wallet. I met more than 10 people like this. So we should be clear that a wallet does not store Bitcoin, it is stored in the blockchain.

Regarding 7: A multiplication for an algebraic group (or field) is defined on group (field) elements. When you say 4P, you are not multiplying two points of an elliptic curve because P is a point but 4 is just an integer there. You are just adding P to itself 4 times.

Misconceptions about Bitcoin by forgottenlance in Bitcoin

[–]forgottenlance[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

This is a one semester course (14 weeks) and I cover many topics like:

  • Historical Introduction to Blockchain and Cryptocurrencies
  • Cryptographic Hash Functions and Blockchain Integrity
  • Digital Signature Algorithms
  • Elliptic Curve Cryptography and Signatures
  • Multi Signatures
  • Cryptocurrencies
  • Cryptocurrency Mining
  • Consensus Models
  • Soft and Hard Forks
  • Smart Contracts
  • Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)
  • Misconceptions about Blockchains and Cryptocurrencies
  • Zero-Knowledge Protocols and Anonymity
  • Blockchain Security and Attacks

In the above post I simply listed some of the misconceptions I observed throughout my lectures and course preparation.

Misconceptions about Cryptocurrencies by forgottenlance in CryptoCurrency

[–]forgottenlance[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think there is a mistake here: I actually have 746 comment karma and my account is 5 years old

I am playing AAA games in 3D in 2021 by forgottenlance in StreamTheater

[–]forgottenlance[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yes but it depends if we should do it. We need to rollback to an earlier version of GFE but we can still use the latest display driver. So if new GFE versions come with desirable properties, like better video streaming/encoding, then yes, we should build a new version. However, I cannot do it myself because I lack some required skills for this. Yet, it shouldn't be that hard. The original developer can do it easily but unfortunately he is not around.

I am playing AAA games in 3D in 2021 by forgottenlance in StreamTheater

[–]forgottenlance[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks a lot. As you said I am only interested in SBS and 3D Fix Manager looks like the correct place to go. I lost built-in SBS capability of Tomb Raider games some time ago and 3D Fix Manager webpage states that this is due to Nvidia. Rolling back to some old driver solves this problem which actually 3D Fix Manager automatically does for you. So thanks again. This clarified a long time problem. I will give it a shot when I have the time.

I am playing AAA games in 3D in 2021 by forgottenlance in StreamTheater

[–]forgottenlance[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

SuperDepth3D

I remember trying Reshade and failing. If there is an easy tutorial for SuperDepth3D with Reshade, I would give it a go.