[laumars]

I will admit that I'm not familiar with SHA3 nor BLAKE - in fact my OP demonstrates that I'm looking for more information about why BLAKE is a "better" hashing function. But I am actually quite aware of timing attacks, HMAC, and the other points you raised.

Maybe my "wealth of other content online" comment pissed a few people off - but equally I was pissed off that my original comment was downvoted so heavily with a few comments that weren't entirely accurate in response (I've often said the negative rep on HN gets over used and often causes more arguments - but that's another topic). Anyhow, I've removed my offending comment now and glad to see that the quality of responses have improved :)