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This is textbook scientific clickbait. Catchy title, then an article that says nothing other than affirming the status quo, while then making a claim that demon
by TheRealPomax 8y ago
This is textbook scientific clickbait. Catchy title, then an article that says nothing other than affirming the status quo, while then making a claim that demonstrates the title was a clickbait title.
"mathematicians show that the longer the input, the less likely it is that input can be factored" is the literal reason we use longer and longer keys as time goes on.
Shame on this author. These mathematicians did some nice work, and yet the author felt the need to sell snake oil based on it.
- smadge 8y agoI don’t understand your anger. The conclusion is that it was previously empirically believed to be the case but logically unproven that these polynomial representations of integers were unlikely to be factorable. If I understand this article correctly, it is now logically proven, shutting the door on that particular attack.
- TheRealPomax 8y agoBut it _doesn't_ shut the door: it leaves the door exactly where it already was. It was the case that to make it harder to crack, you make the number bigger. The proof shows that, yes, even if you try the polynomial trick, you're still bound to that limitation: the longer the polynomial, the less likely you'll find an factorisation. But that proof doesn't change anything. It's a good proof, and the author abuses it to make a claim that cannot be made. No doors have been shut, the status is still quo. Except the author got some ad revenue for writing a clickbaity article that made it onto hacker news.