A expected solution to a simple problem

Complexity is a unique field because most of the important problems are unsolved. There is a giant web of implications of open problems, their barriers, and their relations.

The importance of the Baker-Gill-Solovay result

Lets explore the necessity and use of Circuits as a computational model, and their use in MPC.

Why I think twitter is such a powerful platform.

Another long year stuck inside. I graduated finally, and got a real job!

Who wrote these rules?

Theres a few reasons. My first and main reason is the fans. People who read harry potter don’t seem to read any other non-fiction. I realized that this was true of me as well. I feel like it prevented me from finding multiple, more interesting stories than just one series

For the bitcoin class, I usually get to give one lecture. I use this time to present some blockchain case studies. Specifically, this story.

It has been a really long year, forced inside. Since I don’t have to bike to an office everyday, I found myself with a lot more time for reading. Here is some of what I read this year, mostly in the order that I read it.

The fact that there is no polynomial time integer factorization algorithm is something that will never not be suprising to me. All of the related problems are polytime. Primality testing is polytime. GCD is polytime. So why not integer factorization? Perhaps a polytime integer factorization algorithm exists based on GCD or on primality testing.

Recall Kolmogorov complexity. Consider the following problem, which I came up for the honors section of the complexity class:

What makes a definition a good one?

The random oracle assumption is a useful tool in cryptographic proofs, and this is about a mistake I made on its technicalities.

I have not seen this anywhere in other sources so I thought I would write it up. It is actually not that important. Usually people only care about transitivity.

Puzzle cubes are cool because its like holding a real algebraic object in your hand.

The world is a lot more boring when you realize somethings can’t exist.

I have been needing a use for an extra keyboard I had sitting in the closet.

I bought a Chromebook Pixel from 2013 during the Summer of 2016, since I wanted a new laptop, and these had deprecated in value incredibly considering they were $1200-1500 when they launched. I picked up the 64GB model for about $400. There are a lot of issues with this laptop and maybe I won’t do the same thing again. The display is incredibly bright and the image can often burn in if left on for too long. There is basically no cooling on this machine, so it was constantly at 85 celsius (I found a fix for this later) and the battery life was pretty terrible. My old C720, I could easily get 12 or 13 hours out of the thing. I have to charge this every day and be lucky to get 4 hours. Maybe I was just spoiled. I do like the 4:3 aspect ratio. It makes having two windows that partition the screen vertically more comfortable on a laptop. The resolution is also somewhat wasted on me. The fonts I mostly use are usually all monospaced and pixel perfect, so I don’t see an upgrade for 95% of what I do on this machine, but PDFs and webpages look like real paper, which is kinda neat I guess.

I’ve been messing around with some terminal based calculators. For my cryptography class, we had to do some huge computations. Ive noticed that GNU bc is actually pretty slow at this:

One of the counter-examples that was proposed by Cauchy to LaGrange’s functional idea was $e^{-x^2}$. This function, when integrated only has a series solution that cannot be represented in some closed form. You can however, evaluate it as a definite integral from $-\infty$ to $\infty$.

I’ve been messing around with my rubix cube and have seen a few different ways to solve it. This is just going to be my list of algorithms in case I forget, so I can so I can come back and remember them. First you have your cube scrambled. Pick a face and solve the cross on top. Then slip in the proper corner pieces. Then do the following algorithm to slot in a piece from the bottom side to the front-left slot.

So you start on your eternal quest for what is truth. You decide to enroll at a University since they seem to know a lot over there. You start at the Art department since its the prettiest building. You sit in a class but no one seems to be interested in giving any answers. People only ask questions for the sake of asking questions, as if thats the only thing to do. When you ask why no one tries to answer anything, they simply say “Not our department”, and then shove you in the direction of Philosophy.