I carry a few pens with me - different color ink for different days of the week - so I can see how much I wrote in a single day. Started doing it after I read about Neil Gaiman's writing habits.
bitcoin proof of work is not as impacted by quantum computers - grover's algorithm provides a quadratic speedup for unstructured search - so SHA256 ends up with 128 bits of security for pre-image resistance. BTC can easily move to SHA512.
symmetric ciphers would have similar properties (AES, CHACHA20). Asymmetric encryption atm would use ECDH (which breaks) to generate a key for use with symmetric ciphers - Kyber provides a PQC KEM for this.
So, the situation isn't as bad. We're well positioned in cryptography to handle a PQC world.
Came here to say the same. The shipit program relieved a major pain point that prevented me from getting into Linux at the time: dial-up networking. It was a clever idea :)
- Anonymous credentials (this is what Signal does) - maintain an encrypted blob representing a group chat (members list etc all stay encrypted and Signal cannot tell who is in a group chat). A normal client can provide a zkp that they are in a particular group chat (the decrypted blob contains this member for example) and have a message delivered to other group members. Both the client and the recipient can keep their identities encrypted and the zkp proves the membership of the plaintext client / recipient.
- Encrypt some metadata of a message sent to someone. You can build a ZKP that the plaintext behind the encrypted metadata satsifies some properties such as recipient is not in some blacklist (and so on). All this can be done by maintaining privacy because the metadata stays encrypted.
- Given an electronic medical record, you can prove that the record contains a vaccine without sending the record over the wire to some other party.
Lots more such ideas exist.
zkVMs are a good place to start playing with things.
He was an towering intellect and positively influenced any situation he was placed in - the odometer, the mapping of the gulf stream, counterfeit detection for paper bills are so far removed from his background in publishing, and later role as statesman - I can't think of anyone since who had such an striking impact; certainly no contemporary leaders who will be remembered so fondly 200 years from today.
>I can't think of anyone since who had such an striking impact
We ask for people to be more and more specialized. But problem-solving skills are a lot more universal than the specialization frenzy of today assumes.
I think the biggest hurdle to having universal geniuses nowadays is being allowed to work on problems where you're not certified or specifically educated on them in some sense.
We don't just let anybody have a crack at a problem anymore. How can you work on an odometer if you're not an automotive engineer? How can you work on anti-counterfeit measures if you're not a fraud expert?
IMO problem-solving abilities don't merely work well across disciplines, you might actually be able to detect similarities between problems across domains if you've worked on both domains.
would love to see some pics of your work. Since you seem to know about Japanese craft techniques - do you know what sort of adhesive is used in Japanese gold leaf application? I am not able to use bole or animal hide glue due (vegan) but was curious if the Japanese have some rice-paste based method.
Urushi is an adhesive. So for gold leaf the (egg shell) the idea is that you put down urushi, then put the gold leaf on it while it is still not cured. I tried rankaku - egg shell - and you just build up a base coast of lacqure then start placing the egg shell on a new thin, uncured coat. That is after you have prepared the quail egg shells. Then you add thin coats, curing and sanding after each, until the level of the urushi is up to the eggshell. The eggshell leaves U shaped channels with the sides of the U formed by two adjacent pieces of shell and that has to be filled but with thin coats. Sigh.
If you want to try urushi, you can go the hazmat suit method (apron, arm length gloves, etc.) Just have situational awareness. I had a friend who tried this. Her cell phone in her pocket rang and without thinking she reached in with her gloved hand and got it out. The urushi went through the pocket and she got a horrible rash! I just bit the bullet and got the rash.
I am no expert on urushi at all - I dabbled mostly. You can mix urushi with all kinds of things and there are perhaps 250 grades, including the most refined which is clear. Urushi was and is used in sword making. So the answer is out there, but I have not done any for a long time. I sort of remember mixing rice-paste and urushi at one point but I might be making that up.
I raised bronze and copper vessels and was trying to come up with ways to complete them. I found out about Jean Dunand, art deco guy, who decorated vessels with urushi and egg shell among other things. I highly recommend finding a good museum nearby and asking them if they have work and know of anyone who does restoration. Then follow those leads.
There are people out there who know and will share knowledge but I am out of touch. My sense is that many people who are interested in Japanese sword making (Katana) end up knowing about lacquer because it was used for handles.
Asian lacquerware, which may be called "true lacquer", are objects coated with the treated, dyed and dried sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum or related trees, applied in several coats to a base that is usually wood.
Thank you very much for your work Rich. I've seen your talks in person a couple of times and really admired the immense clarity of thought in every one of your ideas. And thank you very much for giving us Clojure - lots of fun memories.
LV is a very solid brand. I used them a lot but once I discovered Japanese tools I did a total switch and won't look back. Lots of Japanese stuff is entering the US market and the tools are very serviceable - I can easily take apart and sharpen, clean, tweak the planes for example.
> You may deposit or withdraw funds from your Account into or from Apple Cash. Transfers must be at least $1.00 and can be no more than $10,000. You may transfer no more than $20,000 per rolling 7-day period. We may place additional limits on the amount and frequency of transfers for the security of your Account
Seems to be just transfers to an Apple Cash account, which is primarily used for free Venmo-like peer to peer payments. Venmo has a similar $20k limit. I think if you're trying to transfer this much money, there are plenty of other transfer methods available.
I love clojure but do a lot more Rust now. I feel the language leadership is from the information-systems universe - thinking about databases, schemas that sort of thing - and I feel the language and tooling are very good for those sorts of things but there is really no energy or interest in expanding beyond those use cases so it feels like things are settled now and wont change.
Rust OTOH feels highly malleable and the tooling is always improving. The community seems to care about a good user experience across several domains - web, systems, networking, cryptography, desktop gui, and over the last 2 - 3 things are really coming together as coherent whole.
