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Combined display of all available logs of Matthews Lab. You can narrow down the view by selecting a log type, the username (case-sensitive), or the affected page (also case-sensitive).

07:12, 6 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Code assignments (Created page with "I'm a software engineer and while there are many out there who are better -- my skills are decent enough. When software engineers apply to jobs its common to be asked to do a "code assignment." This is where the company will give you some (basic) task, you'll write a solution, and based on some (undefined) standard they will advance you to the next stage. I've often seen discussions about take home code assignments online with people asking "what reasons can I give to re...") Tag: Visual edit
05:47, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 8.png
05:47, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 8.png
05:47, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 7.png
05:47, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 7.png
05:46, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 6.png
05:46, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 6.png
05:45, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 5.png
05:45, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 5.png
05:45, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 4.png
05:45, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 4.png
05:44, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 3.png
05:44, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 3.png
05:43, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 2.png
05:43, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 2.png
05:42, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:P2p mobile carriers 1.gif
05:42, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:P2p mobile carriers 1.gif
05:41, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:Timechain 2.png
05:41, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:Timechain 2.png
05:40, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:Timechain 1.png
05:40, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:Timechain 1.png
05:38, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:Work 2.png
05:38, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:Work 2.png
05:38, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page File:Work 1.png
05:38, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs uploaded File:Work 1.png
05:37, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Flood control (Created page with " = Captchas = The Internet has a big frigging problem. It can’t seem to tell the difference between person and machine. I’m going to jump right in and say that ‘captchas’ are NOT the answer. I repeat: captchas are not the answer. Go ahead and implement them if you want. Your users will hate you. I will hate you. Your family and extended family will hate you. Nobody likes having to fill in barely legible symbols to ‘prove’ that they...")
05:34, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Zk exchange (Created page with "'''7/12/2017: '''The protocol is flawed and contains a black mail risk. The other side cannot claim a refund without knowledge of the secret so even if the TXIDs can be validated with ZK-proofs the scheme still doesn’t work. I guess its back to the drawing board with this idea. '''Edit 5/9/2016: '''I’ve updated the scheme. I’ll update it again if I get time to think of a way to avoid using timelock encryption for the refunds since that will make it more secure. Al...")
05:33, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Work (Created page with "The type of work that I do can be divided into two main categories: # Proof-of-concepts (PoCs) and # Production projects When I’m working on a proof-of-concept the goal is simply to create a system that demonstrates a certain idea is possible. Usually this will be in the context of working on an idea that hasn’t been tried before or demonstrates that a solution to a problem is possible. For a proof-of-concept that is all about novelty: the result of the work is far...")
05:33, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Trust (Created page with "If one were to control a “funded” private key and agree to run a program that controlled the release of that private key, there would be nothing to stop the owner from failing to run that program. Some people aren’t honest and would seek to disrupt the process. And yet: if you were to repeat this same experiment at scale some people would still stay honest. Why is that? Well, not everyone is unethical (like the people in Japan who routinely return wallets with thei...")
05:32, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Timechain (Created page with " === By [http://roberts.pm Matthew Roberts] and [http://sn4t14.com Elías Snær Einarsson] === '''Update:''' April 20, 2017 - See “[http://roberts.pm/time_turner Turning back the clock on timechains - a follow-up]” for a discussion on security. Historically companies and individuals have struggled to uphold adequate security practices when it comes to the handling and storing of cryptocurrencies and th...")
05:31, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Thoughts on blockchain scalability (Created page with "After reading many papers on blockchain scalability over the years, I am starting to see the painful truth that none of these systems can be scaled. For years I thought that some genius researcher would find a way to do it, and we would get blockchains with on-chain Visa scalability with the same security properties as Bitcoin… but that just hasn’t happened. Here’s why that is currently impossible and maybe a path forwards… </spa...")
05:31, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Tech jobs (Created page with " = Chief Painting Officer = '''Company Inc.''' We’re amazing. We synergise business synergy leading to unique enterprise advantages. There’s at least 10 different ways to build market value and promote market goodness. We help to provide B2B for our DevOps customers leading to an innovation-first culture across our divisions. [At least 10,000 more words here] Incredible. Powerful. Adjusted. Flow charts. How do we know? We...")
05:29, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Synthetix (Created page with "Sythetix Exchange is a sophisticated Ethereum smart contract that allows investors to gain exposure to financial instruments without having to own the underlying asset. The main currencies it supports are it’s own native stable coin (sUSD) and Ether. Instruments that are bought in Synthetix are called ‘synthetic assets.’ If you come from a financial background you may have heard the term synthetic asset before and be tempted to think of these assets as equivalent....")
05:28, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Survivability (Created page with "Survivability of an organism refers to its ability to survive in a worst case scenario. Any animal that has been caged or raised in captivity has had its survivability reduced. A caged animal cannot survive in the wild as well as a non-caged animal because its survival instincts have been altered (and often even its ability to reproduce has been adversely affected.) An ICO-token is like a caged animal, removed from any cryptoeconomic context. In the cryptoeconomic wilde...") Tag: Visual edit
05:28, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Self improving programs (Created page with "Imagine for a moment that you wanted to pay someone to improve the speed of your software. How would you do it? If you’re like most software companies then you’ll mostly likely hire someone to do the job. This means spending time to find the right person you want, interviewing them, interviewing someone else if they’re not right… until hopefully you find the right person… well maybe. There’s still no guarantee that paying them will lead to any improvements t...")
05:24, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Security coin (Created page with "Here’s another idea for a cryptocurrency - a coin that rewards people for the practices they use to secure their cryptocurrencies on other blockchains. This can all be done without trust because many aspects of cryptocurrency security already depend on cryptographic proof. A brief list of things that a cryptocurrency like this might check for includes: * N factor auth and [https://trezor.io/ hardware devices] used for multi-sig signing. * [http://hackingdistributed.c...")
05:23, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Rand (Created page with "I WAS WRONG AND STUPIDLY SO. Okay, so I get obsessed with concepts easily. I admit that now. In 2021, I had the idea for an algorithm to ‘compress random data’ - and I spent about a year working on it. I literally built a super computer in my lounge room [for this algorithm.] I had additional ‘circuits’ installed in my house to run the super computer. The noise of starting the machine (which was in fact an old Dell m1000e chassis stuffed to the brim with high-c...")
05:21, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Permissioned resource coins (Created page with " == The problem with resource coins == Resource coins like Storj and Filecoin are systems that let anyone contribute their spare computational resources in exchange for payment. By using Storj, a person can lease out their extra hard drive space to other people and receive Storjcoins in return (a kind of special “utility token” in quotes…) The idea is very cool, but functionally it has problems. The most significa...")
05:20, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Pay for private keys (Created page with "A couple of years back I was working on a [http://roberts.pm/atomic_cloud_storage smart contract in Bitcoin that implemented pay for private key contracts]. The idea was that you can setup a contract to pay someone for releasing the details that allow a particular ECDSA Bitcoin private key to be extracted and payment is obviously conditional on the solution being correct. In Bitcoin this is really damn complicated for a number of reasons. The first reason is that transa...")
05:19, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page P2p mobile carriers (Created page with " = Abstract = A peer-to-peer marketplace for mobile plans would allow mobile service to be provided with minimal friction and lead to new innovations in the mobile system. In this post, I introduce a new protocol for sharing access to mobile plans with untrusted third-parties. The protocol uses secret contracts to share U/e/SIM credentials without revealing secrets to a third-party. Due to the way authentication is handled in the mobile syste...")
05:18, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page P2pd (Created page with "Last year I started work on a new async networking library for Python. I’d never written any ‘async’ code before and wasn’t sure how hard it would be. As it turns out: Python’s async library is quite good – but there’s still room for improvement in my opinion. In this post I’m going to talk about async networking in Python. The features I like and the ones I don’t. Then I’ll talk about the library I created to try improve networking in Python. <span...")
05:15, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Kidney swaps (Created page with "'''Update 26 May 2017:''' the 3 of 6 multi-sig scheme has an obvious race condition. This problem can be fixed by using a 4 of 7 scheme that looks like future, future, y1, xy, current, x1, and x2 public keys where xy becomes a special key with new consensus rules based on homomorphic secret sharing (will define this in more detail tomorrow.) 4 of 8 might also work where the keys would be future1, future2, y1, y2, current1, x1, x2, x3 but I’ll need to work out how to re...")
05:15, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Ico crapcoin checklist (Created page with "# Does the coin reward users for contributing resources towards the creation of a shared service that will benefit all users? # Can the resources contributed by users be verified by anyone? # Does the service always fall within an expected range of operation? # Is the coin new and no other coin offers the same service? # Is it impossible to substitute the use of the coin for another? # Does the business model for the coin make sense? # Does the team behind the coin have...")
05:13, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Hashcash for proving set membership (Created page with "Algorithms like merkle trees and bloom filters allow you to take a group of data items and construct a unique fingerprint of the set. The fingerprint can then be used as a way to prove that some or all members in the group are part of that “fingerprint.” These constructs are useful and you seem them used a lot in blockchains. The issue for me with these data structures is really the size of the meta data relative to the set size: Bloom filters suck because they only...")
05:12, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Exploit markets (Created page with "'''Update: 19/02/2017''' - added discussion on hacker news. I also added an example. '''Update: 21/02/2017''' - added discussion of obfuscated exploits, early disclosure penalties, incentives, and scalability** ----- Bug bounties suck. Researchers routinely don’t get paid for their work and vendors continue to get away with the same shitty behavior. It’s a system that lacks any kind of accountability and only benefits the company. Solution: Do it as a smart cont...")
05:11, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Events are arbitrary (Created page with "When I first got into Bitcoin my main area of interest was in smart contracts. I used to marvel at how the blockchain could be used to eliminate trust between people and I’d despair whenever an OP_CODE was removed (making the former harder to do.) But that’s only because I didn’t understand one subtle quality of how a blockchain works: '''events are arbitrary.''' The blockchain really only has two qualities worth mentioning: # It can securely order events on a ne...")
05:11, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Esim (Created page with "Try pandoc! Hello world pandoc --from markdown --to mediawiki Convert from markdown Input clear No file chosen If you've ever used a SIM card before then, you already know you need one to place calls. But what you might not know is a SIM card is actually a fully functional computer, complete with its own RAM, "disk space", and operating system [uuic-hw-spec][uuic-sw-spec]. The latest SIMs are called "USIMs" and they are universal integrated circuit cards (UICC) prog...")
05:09, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Dumb contracts (Created page with "'''Update: 7/12 -''' I merged the discussion of datachains into a separate article which is now here: http://roberts.pm/datachain. ----- When I first entered the Bitcoin space the term “smart contract” had a very specific meaning: it was any transactional protocol built on top of Bitcoin whose basic functionality did not have to depend on trusting a third-party. In other words, a smart contract had the same requirements for trust as Bitcoin did – that the result...")
05:08, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Digital life (Created page with "I consider blockchains to be of independent interest to biologists as the first example of a single-celled digital life form that embodies all 7 characteristics necessary to establish life. '''1. Living things are composed of cells.''' The blockchain consists of a number of cells called “blocks” that contain everything the organism needs for its survival. Survival is ensured by issuing incentives to humans for energy (necessary for metabolism), therefore blockchain...")
05:06, 3 January 2025 Robertsdotpm talk contribs created page Decentralized-virus-scanner (Created page with "A game of war for decentralized threat detection: * One side plays the attacker * The other side plays defence * The field is a virtual machine * The ombudsman is software that monitors the VMs health * The ombudsman is concerned with what has happened to the VM * Are key system files damaged? * Have files been locked / crypted by malware? * Are certain network resources hijacked? * Attackers submit vectors to disrupt the VM * Defenders submit vectors to protect the VM...")