ApopheniaBTC - Bet and solve the challenges to win BTC.

[Tritonio]

Here's one more pic. It's a textual one:

Hi there, I enjoy things related to images in general, so I enjoy checking these pictures too.

My issue with your system is that an image can possibly have multiple distinct answers, and we would never know given the current method. Couldn't you: 1) encrypt the original image with a certain secret, 2) publish the hash of that secret together with the url of the encrypted image (so people can download the encrypted image for checking later), and then after someone gets the answer you 3) release the secret ?

Pro: You would be sure that I ain't changing answers during the whole process.
Con: Some times someone places an answer that SHOULD be correct but I had made a mistake and didn't include it. In some of this cases I edit the answers to include the missing answer. That system would make it impossible for me to correct legitimate errors on my correct answers. Also while you can see those answers click again on the big picture. It will clean up.

It's not worth it in my opinion. If you are worried that I am cleaning the answers for some reason, you have to worry even more about me telling my friends the correct answers or answering the pictures myself to steal the pot. I've given this a lot of thought and I think there is absolutely no way to make Apophenia provably fair. The biggest problem is the fact that I (or someone) will always know the answers.

Even the https://apopheniabtc.com/txs.php mostly exist to provide information and not give a false sense of fairness to people. Sure know it's probably hard for me to hide bets but I don't need to hide bets in the first place if I wanted to cheat.



I think I misunderstood what you were saying. Hehe.

When an image is solved or expired, you open it and click on it to load the clean version. Also when the correct answer is given, you can see ALL the correct answers in the image's window. Go to apophenia and click the "blue screen of death" picture. You'll notice that both "blue screen of death and bsod is mentioned in the answers section.

Is your method for modifying images available somewhere ? I realize I might be asking too much here..

No it's just a custom piece of code that I wrote while experimenting with different kinds of distorting images. the general idea is to convert pixels in the picture into triangles of the same color. Add a second shadow image, some transparency into some of those triangles and you've got the effect you see. Oh and as times passes, those triangles get smaller and smaller until they become the pixels they were created from and the whole pictures gets clear. Oh and the shadow image also moves towards the base image so it isn't visible anymore.

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[knowitnothing]

Here's one more pic. It's a textual one:

Hi there, I enjoy things related to images in general, so I enjoy checking these pictures too.

My issue with your system is that an image can possibly have multiple distinct answers, and we would never know given the current method. Couldn't you: 1) encrypt the original image with a certain secret, 2) publish the hash of that secret together with the url of the encrypted image (so people can download the encrypted image for checking later), and then after someone gets the answer you 3) release the secret ?

When an image is solved or expired, you open it and click on it to load the clean version. Also when the correct answer is given, you can see ALL the correct answers in the image's window. Go to apophenia and click the "blue screen of death" picture. You'll notice that both "blue screen of death and bsod is mentioned in the answers section.

(You did misunderstand most of it, so I removed that part of the answer from here).

The fact that you can distribute the answer is always ok to me, as that is not really easily solvable. But you can make it provably for the players (it is a different matter from the point in the previous phrase) by doing the method I just described.

Take the last image in your site, suppose you can modify it such that it turns out to be either "3" or "8". If someone makes a guess for 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, etc you change it as you wish to make it easier. If someone guesses "8" and it comes from an address you dislike, you can change the image such that all the previous guesses are valid, while invalidating "8" as a answer at the same time. I hope it is clear how currently it is not provably fair to anyone, but you can make it provably fair for the players.

Also note that I'm not attacking you, just pointing out a fact.

[Tritonio]

(You did misunderstand most of it, so I removed that part of the answer from here).

The fact that you can distribute the answer is always ok to me, as that is not really easily solvable. But you can make it provably for the players (it is a different matter from the point in the previous phrase) by doing the method I just described.

Take the last image in your site, suppose you can modify it such that it turns out to be either "3" or "8". If someone makes a guess for 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, etc you change it as you wish to make it easier. If someone guesses "8" and it comes from an address you dislike, you can change the image such that all the previous guesses are valid, while invalidating "8" as a answer at the same time. I hope it is clear how currently it is not provably fair to anyone, but you can make it provably fair for the players.

Aaaaah now I get what you're saying. I thought you were talking about me changing the correct answer but you mean me changing the picture. That's a problem with textual images only of course, I can't change a film image as this would be an obvious change. Also even in the textual images the text is big enough for any change to be visible. Don't forget that pictures are updated every ~10 minutes so the progression of every update is slow enough for big changes in the origin picture to be visible. But still, yeah, that can be solved without requiring people to download and compare successive progressions of the pictures. IIRC the random name of the pictures is some sort of hash of the contents+filename of the original picture but that picture is never released, only the B&W version of it so the hash doesn't match. I'll see what I can do about this.

(Nope, just checked the names are completely random.)

Also note that I'm not attacking you, just pointing out a fact.

Did I sound defensive in the striked-through text? If so, I didn't mean to. :-)

[PurpleTentacle]

I added your sig. What font and text color are you using?

[Tritonio]

I added your sig. What font and text color are you using?

I think you got it nicely but FYI this is the BBcode:

Code:

[size=14pt][glow=black,2]__[url=http://apopheniabtc.com?partner=forumsig][color=orange]ApopheniaBTC - Win [btc] for solving challenges![/color][/url]__[/glow][/size]

Instead of "forumsig" you put your bitcoin address of course.

[Welsh]

Are you going to be implementing hard pictures with higher pots?

[Tritonio]

Are you going to be implementing hard pictures with higher pots?

Yes and yes but I can't really tell you when. :-)

Well done to whoever solved frozen synapse!

[Tritonio]

Here is a new picture:


Please the read the hint. It's a special case this one. ;-)

[Welsh]

Are you going to be implementing hard pictures with higher pots?

Yes and yes but I can't really tell you when. :-)

Well done to whoever solved frozen synapse!

Sounds good! I can't believe someone guessed Frozen Synapse. It just looked like a blur too me.

[Tritonio]

Hint: Movie/Series title

 

[Tritonio]

Sorry for this. There was some problem with my bitcoin client and I didn't notice in time. Bets are not affected. Will fix that now.

UPDATING: Still downloading the blockchain. It's going slower than expected.

[Tritonio]

Movie/Series again. :-)

[Tritonio]

So, something funny happened. Two people guessed the correct answer 2 minutes apart. The SECOND guess managed to get confirmed by the network first though, probably because of the slightly higher fee! 0.0001 vs 0.0005.

Reminder:
1. The first judge of who gets checked for correctness is the bitcoin network. If you get into the blockchain first, you are checked first.
2. If more than one bets get into the same block together, the bets are checked by time submitted.

[tylerik1]

that was me =(

[Tritonio]

that was me =(

Bad luck really. :-|

I hope you are good in games:

[Tritonio]

So, it's getting somewhat easier and there are already 5 bets on it.

[Tritonio]

Something we haven't tried for some time:



I need the real name. (of the person)

[Tritonio]

This one is hintless but it shouldn't be hard IMO. ;-)

Well done to whoever solved the last one.

[Tritonio]

I had a possibly interesting conversation over email. I'm posting it here in case it interests someone:

Hello!

I know your site Apophenia now for a long time. I was wondering about the bluring algorithm.
Would it be possible to send me the source code of the algorithm? I'd like to find out if there is a way to "undo" it in a way (even if some parts are deterministically random).

If you know that there is a way then of course I understand, that you wont send it to me
But I though I'd ask anyway. It's a riddle on its own for me (to try to improve the image quality) ^^

Thanks and best wishes!

Hello there Peter.

I'd like to think it through before I send you the source so please give me some time for that. ;-)

But here is a pretty accurate description of what happens:

0. I am using mt_rand seeded with a secure hash of the contents of the picture.

1. The image is overlayed with an offset copy of itself. The offset of the overlay is both in the X and Y axis and the opacity of this overlay is fixed at some A%. These offsets are linearly reduced in as time passes till it reaches 0.

2. After being merged with this overlay into a single image, I randomly grab ALL pixels in the image and replace each one with a triangle. The color of the triangle is the same as the pixel. The triangle is defined by three points, one of them is the source pixel (the one that is getting replaced by the triangle, the other two are spread in a square around the source pixel, randomly. As time passes those two points are linearly moved towards the starting point.

3. After doing this for ALL pixels (that's 400x400 pixels), I do the same thing for a random subset of pixels but this time the triangles are B% transparent. This causes a glassy effect instead of a confetti effect. The bigger the subset, the more glassy it looks. If you ignore this step the final picture looks like confetti.

Things that are likely to change in this algorithm:
a. I am thinking about removing step 2.
b. I am thinking about making all three points of each triangle being randomized, not just two while holding one of them exactly on the source pixel. Probably using randomized polar coords.

I doubt there is way that would make the picture cleaner than squeezing your eyes since too much information is lost in step 3. If I served the files as png you could in theory find triangle edges (clean lines) and guess which of the three corners is the source corner and then recreate some source pixels in their proper positions. Then you could create a Voronoi diagram out of those points and paint it using the source color. I am not sure if this would actually help you recognize the picture but it would certainly provide a different visual representation ofr the picture. The bad news is that there are hundreds of visible triangles so guessing which corner is the correct one for those triangles would be very hard. And since there are JPG compression artifact in the resulting picture, detecting triangle edges based on their color would work for LOTS of overlapping triangles.

Oh also this picture is still open:



(no it's not open. I'll post a new one asap)

[Tritonio]

Must be getting easier now...