I also had to just go to the paper. It was really difficult trying to get through the article. Needlessly hyped language like "proving lies" and hyperfixations on things like leaking boats... felt like the author was either out of their element or inexperienced with math comms. However, the article still provides a bit of context that the paper doesn't.
That said, this is honestly just a bad article that is needlessly sensationalized and fails to impart any real knowledge.
(Note: the original title was "Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies" before being changed by the admin)
I honestly think that Quanta Magazine just found the perfect formula to farm HN traffic. The titles are clearly carefully engineered for this audience: not the outright clickbait of university press releases, but vague profoundness that lets us upvote without reading the whole thing and then chime in with tangential anecdotes.
I don't think they're bad people, but I honestly think they end up on the front page multiple times a week not on the quality of the articles alone.
That's the case with many cryptographic explanations for laypeople, in my experience (as mostly a layperson).
Maybe all these elaborate analogies of Alice walking into a cave and Bob yelling which exit she should come out of, Alice wanting to sell Bob a Hamiltonian cycle trustlessly, Alice and Bob mixing buckets of paint and shipping them via the mail back and forth etc. are working for some people, but it's not me.
I also had to just go to the paper. It was really difficult trying to get through the article. Needlessly hyped language like "proving lies" and hyperfixations on things like leaking boats... felt like the author was either out of their element or inexperienced with math comms. However, the article still provides a bit of context that the paper doesn't.
That said, this is honestly just a bad article that is needlessly sensationalized and fails to impart any real knowledge.
(Note: the original title was "Computer Scientists Figure Out How To Prove Lies" before being changed by the admin)
I honestly think that Quanta Magazine just found the perfect formula to farm HN traffic. The titles are clearly carefully engineered for this audience: not the outright clickbait of university press releases, but vague profoundness that lets us upvote without reading the whole thing and then chime in with tangential anecdotes.
I don't think they're bad people, but I honestly think they end up on the front page multiple times a week not on the quality of the articles alone.
> That said, this is honestly just a bad article that is needlessly sensationalized and fails to impart any real knowledge.
There's a joke to be made here, since the issue is with zero-knowledge proof systems.
I recommend this whiteboard session as well o.o https://blog.zksecurity.xyz/posts/pudding3/
They do at least link to that in the 4th paragraph of the article. Many of these summary articles don't do that.
That's the case with many cryptographic explanations for laypeople, in my experience (as mostly a layperson).
Maybe all these elaborate analogies of Alice walking into a cave and Bob yelling which exit she should come out of, Alice wanting to sell Bob a Hamiltonian cycle trustlessly, Alice and Bob mixing buckets of paint and shipping them via the mail back and forth etc. are working for some people, but it's not me.