To verify stuff like pgp public keys. It would be nice to have a hash function that produces a hash that looks like a nickname.

E.g. "addviadale of light"

This would provide an easier way to detect spoofing attempts.
-- mofosyne, Jun 11 2015

Hidentity Hidentity_20-_20hidden_20identity
effectively does this, in a different context [Loris, Jun 11 2015]

Reminds me of Identicon https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Identicon
same thing but visual, used to identify anonymous commenters on blogs [notexactly, Jun 15 2015]

The only problem I can see (yet) is that the space of name-like strings is much smaller than the space of all strings, so a hashnick would have to be much longer than a traditional hash for the same level of entropy. But maybe you don't need as much entropy for this purpose.
-- notexactly, Jun 15 2015



random, halfbakery