Seeing the link title I thought "nice, an HN like with focus on my domain and less bitcoins related crap". Wow, I couldn't be more wrong. "crypto, security and privacy" should not mean "bitcoin, bitcoin, and vaguely web security stuffs, and bitcoins". That plus the obviously fake upvotes… I won't even try to register, too bad.
At the risk of engaging in self-promotion, I've been toying with a blog for discussing crypto/privacy topics [1], because I do think there's an unfilled need for such. Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are within the scope as cryptographic technologies, but my idea is to keep it focused on the technical issues. There's not much content now, just news links to articles I've found interesting.
Creator, here! I agree, it's a little Bitcoin heavy at the moment... but you have to admit the cryptography sphere has been dominated by the recent Satoshi Nakamoto debacle, and it was only launched a few days ago.
My apologies for pre-populating the site with some articles and upvotes. I read that's how reddit got started so I figured I would give it a try.
I first submit Cryptanalys.is to HN a few days ago with just 8 posts from myself and no extra upvotes, and it didn't get a single pageview: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7339368
So yes most of the stories and karma values on there are not submit by real people... yet. Here's to hoping.
If you have any ideas on sources for better/more-interesting information I would love to hear them.
On thing is true: the site only begins and users can make it whatever they want. However, since you start by giving more karma to people in the Bitcoin community, you already drive the website to focus heavily on Bitcoin (also, look at the "library" page https://cryptanalys.is/library.php it is only Bitcoin related). Which is entirely okay! There are many people interested by that (and if it could relieve HN from the contant Bitcoin noise that would be awesome). You even say so in your FAQ: "Fellow Redditors and HNers may think of us as the cryptocurrency subreddit of Hacker News". That is a valid choice, and I think you should present your site like this rather than "Hacker News for crypto, security, and privacy".
> you have to admit the cryptography sphere has been dominated by the recent Satoshi Nakamoto debacle
No, I don't agree. I'm doing a PhD in the field of crypto, follow multiple mailing lists related to my field, watch for the new papers arriving on the IACR ePrint [1], follow many blogs and subreddits… and I can assure you the real crypto sphere don't give a damn about "the recent Satoshi Nakamoto debacle". Bitcoin enthusiasts do, however.
[1] http://eprint.iacr.org/ (btw, this is a very good source of security related original content).
PS: in your "what is this" at the top of the page you are not consistent with "r/subreddit" and "/r/subreddit" (leading '/'), you should fix that.
Cheers p4bl0, I appreciate your comments very much.
You're right, the site is heavily targeted towards cryptocurrencies, but my goal is to keep it filled with more of the high level talk surrounding cryptocurrencies. The articles about the search for Satoshi were a poor choice to list on the frontpage, I agree. Consdering there was next to no evidence in any of them.
I have just made a note to look for more information on http://eprint.iacr.org/ daily, and the /r/funny inconsistency has been changed to r/funny.
I must admit (if it wasn't obvious from my username) that I am primarily a Bitcoin fan. I posted the resources I know best about to the library.php page because I want it to be accurate.
You can now find eprint.iacr.org and iacr.org in the library under the Cryptography heading ;) (And I must say, I found it humorous that iacr.org does not employ TLS)
Again, I really appreciate your comments. Thank you for taking the time to look through the site. I wish you the best of luck in completing your PhD.
Articles like "Bitcoin's Satoshi Nakamoto Is Reportedly Worth Over $400 Million" or "Insuring the Bitcoin loss with another digital currency" have no relation to crypto (especially, cryptanalysis), security or privacy.
There is a downvote button, so presumably once more people start using the site those posts wont make it to the top so easily.
Right now it's just me myself and I researching the most popular stuff being talked about that's somewhat related to "cryptucurrencies, cryptography, and privacy" which those two titles fall under.
It doesn't interest me. For various reasons which mainly includes political ones.
> maybe you just have to accept that a lot of the HN and crypto audience is interested in bitcoin.
I entirely accept that (however I'd remove "and crypto" from your sentence to make it closer to the truth). I'm not complaining that people on HN post a lot of Bitcoin related content. It's a community website, not my own. If Bitcoin interest people in the community then it should be there. There is too much Bitcoin for my taste, but I just don't click on it and look for the other stuff that actually are of interest to me. And there are still a lot of interesting discussions on HN that are not about Bitcoin.
Bitcoin isn't really the point. If they put up a site claiming to be about "crypto, security and privacy", but 80% of the posts they attract (or post themselves because they don't have critical mass) are on a single topic, then either it's really not about "crypto, security and privacy", or they're doing a really bad job building out the site. It's not like there isn't a whirlwind of activity in cryptography outside of hashes, nor a lack of security incidents to discuss.
The site launched just a few days ago. I've been splitting my time the last few days between buying up marketing spaces and quickly skimming the crpyto/security world so the quality and depth of the articles certainly need some work, I agree.
