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It's my perception that people seriously involved in mathematics, particularly sensitive things like crypto, must have a thick skin. It's a field that is all ha
by oinksoft 13y ago
It's my perception that people seriously involved in mathematics, particularly sensitive things like crypto, must have a thick skin. It's a field that is all hard skills and no soft skills, and I'm not sure it could practically be any other way. The professional is either intensely correct or incorrect, and often provably so.
Like in this case. I can call your ChicagoBoss application crap, say it is far from OTP design principle, baked with magic parse transforms, etc. and I'd be an asshole because it's a matter of design opinion, not provable fact. The author here has published a crack that absolutely proves that the CryptoCat guys were wrong, and that matters.
- davidw 13y agoIt's very easy to say someone is wrong, though, without calling them a shithead. Indeed, you could even go so far as to say that it fosters a more open, inviting atmosphere if you concentrate on what's right, and what's wrong, and let people have the freedom to be wrong without being labeled assholes, incompetents, and worse. This is why you don't find, in most scientific papers, descriptions of other scientists work as 'crap' or 'stupid', even if they do point out the most glaring of errors. It's left to the reader to assign the 'stupid' label. In this specific case, I agree that there's some justified anger at labeling something ready for public consumption that appears not to be. But I just get a sense of so many crypto/security discussions being a dick-waving contest.