Andres Gomez (kurono)

Founder at @Sakundi_io. PhD in Computer Sciences from Uni Frankfurt and CERN. Interests: blockchain, computer security, privacy, artificial intelligence.

[EL PAÍS América Colombia @ElPaisAmericaCo]

🔴ÚLTIMA HORA | La Corte Suprema dictamina que Santiago Uribe, hermano del expresidente Álvaro Uribe, fue el jefe de la estructura paramilitar Los 12 apóstoles, que en los años noventa ejecutó un plan de asesinatos en connivencia con agentes del Estado https://t.co/KvIlVZ6Kj0

[Iván Cepeda Castro @IvanCepedaCast]

Confirman condena contra Santiago Uribe

https://t.co/diE6zdBnx7

[Tails @Tails_live]

Tails 7.8.1 is out:

https://t.co/YkuDfUILqd

If fixes serious security vulnerabilities in the Linux kernel and in the Tor client.

[Camilo Prieto @CamiloPrietoVal]

En el río Nechí hay más de 150 dragas ilegales tipo dragón (cuestan ~7000 millones) y están construyendo 20 dragas más. ¿Dónde están el gobierno nacional y la autoridades locales para frenar esta barbarie? Quién sea el próximo presidente tiene que detener esta depredación.

[Denis @ImDenixSol]

This is my office today

Coding from the mountains above San José, Costa Rica. The whole Central Valley in front of me, breakfast still warm, laptop open

People ask why I'm building the Solana ecosystem from here. This is the answer

Where would you ship your next project from?

[Justin Drake @drakefjustin]

Today a crazy quantum story just got wilder.

On March 31, the Google Quantum AI team published a landmark result on Shor's algorithm for elliptic curve cryptography. Technically, the paper was a bombshell: a dramatic 10x improvement over the state-of-the-art. As a stunt and wakeup call to the blockchain space, those optimisations were illustrated on secp256k1, the elliptic curve underlying Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures.

But perhaps the most striking part of the paper was sociological, not technical. Instead of following standard academic process, the optimisations were kept secret, hidden behind a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof. Google's accompanying blog post mentions they "engaged with the U.S. government". The ZK proof demonstrates the existence of algorithmic improvements without leaking details. Academic censorship with ZK, a historic first!

As a co-author of the Google paper I witnessed some of the context surrounding this censorship. To be honest, multiple aspects of that context don't sit well with me. As much as I believe the general public ought to know more, I am limited in my ability to whistleblow. Though let me be clear about one thing: the Google team's professionalism has been absolutely exemplary, and they deserve nothing but praise.

Censorship has a way of backfiring. The Streisand effect, where an attempt to bury something only draws more attention to it, is exactly what's unfolding today. First, Google's key optimisation has been rediscovered by the French. And in a thrilling turn of events, a collaborative Shor-at-home challenge just launched. The initiative, available at ecdsa[.]fail, breached a new Shor world record in a matter of hours.

Let's start with the rediscovery. Just two months after Google's paper, French quantum expert André Schrottenloher cracks the main secret optimisation. His paper, titled "Optimized Point Addition Circuits for Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithms", landed on the arXiv today. Big congrats to André, who beat several other nerdsnipped experts to it. In a blog post also published today, Craig Gidney, the world expert on Shor optimisations, revealed that he'd been sitting on this very optimisation for a whole year under censorship pressure.

Interestingly, André missed a handful of minor optimisations, both from Google's original publication and from improvements found since. It's plausible there's still plenty of juice left to squeeze out of Shor, and this is exactly what the ecdsa[.]fail challenge is about. The verifier program developed for the ZK proof does double duty, automatically filtering for valid submissions. Dozens of compounding small and micro improvements are rolling in. As of the time of writing there's an 8.4% improvement to Google's circuit, as measured by the product of logical qubit count and Toffoli gate count. Nice!

The nerdsnipping ran deeper than anyone expected. Over the last few weeks it became clear it extended well beyond André and other quantum experts. Behind the scenes, a small army of amateurs quietly got to work. Inspired by Karpathy-style autoresearch, they turned AI on Shor. Ironically, the verifier program for the ZK proof makes an ideal reward function for AIs. The barrier to entry for this modern style of research is refreshingly low, with several non-experts, even a teenager, finding nice optimisations. Get in touch if you'd like to join a Telegram group with fellow autoresearchers :)

Part 2: neutral atoms and qday

The story doesn't end with Google. On the same day Google went public, a stealthy startup called Oratomic published its own Shor paper in a coordinated release. It made a splash, ultimately becoming the most upvoted paper on scirate[.]com, a website ranking arXiv papers.

Oratomic's claim was wild. By building on Google's logical optimisations and applying custom physical optimisations for neutral atoms, they claimed just 10K physical qubits were sufficient to run Shor's algorithm on secp256k1. That number is mind-bogglingly low.

Knowing essentially nothing about neutral atoms when Oratomic's paper landed, I was intrigued and decided to learn more about the tech. I fell straight down the rabbit hole and spent a couple hundred hours on the topic. I got a little obsessed and watched every YouTube video I could find and spoke to a bunch of experts.

My conclusion? The tech is real, very real. Even Google recently decided to start a neutral atom lab, a notable pivot from their sole focus on superconducting qubits. If you care about qday, i.e. the day a quantum computer will break the first piece of cryptography in production, neutral atoms demand your attention. I shared some of my learnings on Shor and neutral atoms in a 30min talk at the ZKProof cryptography conference. You can find it on YouTube by searching "zkproof neutral atom".

Here's an interesting observation about this duo of breakthrough papers: neither Google nor Oratomic say a word about what their results mean for qday. No timelines. Zero. Nada. That is especially baffling given that the whole point of whitehat quantum cryptanalysis is to inform qday estimations and help the general public make good decisions.

So let me attempt to partially fill the silence, similarly to what Scott Aaronson did in his April 29 post. Given everything I know, including scary non-public information, I now put the odds of qday by 2032 at 50%. 10% by 2030.

Anecdotally, the US government has its own date: 2035. Originating at the NSA and later adopted by NIST, it's when branches of the US government will be disallowed from using quantum-vulnerable cryptography. In plain language: with hindsight, that date is a joke and should be discounted entirely. I don't see how NIST avoids being forced to pull it forward by years.

Part 3: post-quantum cryptography

There are good reasons to sound the alarm today, but please do not panic. Rushing carelessly towards immature post-quantum cryptography is a recipe for disaster. IMO a good target date for migration is 2029, roughly 3.5 years out. 2029 happens to be the date selected by Google, Cloudflare, and the Ethereum Foundation.

These days most of my time goes to safely migrating Ethereum towards post-quantum cryptography as part of the broader lean Ethereum effort. There's a lot to do. We need to rip out and replace BLS signatures at the consensus layer, KZG commitments at the data layer, and ECDSA signatures at the execution layer.

The plan to get there is compelling, and is based on hash-based cryptography. Within the Ethereum Foundation we've developed a Swiss army knife called leanVM (github[.]com/leanEthereum/leanVM) powered by the magic of hash-based SNARKs. Thanks to truly exceptional work by Emile, Thomas, and others, its performance is derisked. Regarding security, leanVM is a jewel, a minimal zkVM crafted for end-to-end formal verification and maximum security.

Want to help? There are two $1M initiatives. First, the Proximity Prize (proximityprize[.]org). Solve a long-standing mathematical conjecture in coding theory, improve hash-based SNARKs, and go home a millionaire. Second, the Poseidon Initiative (poseidon-initiative[.]info), offers $1M for breaking Poseidon, the SNARK-friendly hash function.

[Adi el Grande @icardo8]

Las iglesias evangélicas de Colombia todas hicieron campaña por el candidato de extrema derecha Espriella, quien es abiertamente ateo.

El cristianismo evangélico no es una religión, es una operación psicológica (financiada por EE.UU.) para convertir a los latinoamericanos en esclavos. ¿Por qué se permite que las iglesias reciban financiamiento extranjero?

Lo mismo sucede en la Argentina.

[Daniel Mayakovski @DaniMayakovski]

"De joven, tomaba a los gatos, les ataba 5 petardos en el cuerpo y los explotaba, esperando que volasen... pero ya te puedes imaginar lo que pasaba".

Este psicópata se llama Abelardo de la Espriella, es el fascista elegido por EEUU para ser próximo presidente de Colombia en su nueva doctrina Monroe, en la cual está llevando al poder a la peor basura nazi de Latinoamérica a través de elecciones amañadas.

Estos son los criminales que genera el capitalismo y que son los abanderados de la "libertad" de EEUU, psicópatas que fácilmente podrían ser dictadores en potencia y exterminar a media población solo para agradar a su amo yanki.

[Stiven Pérez Hernandez @StivenPereZz]

Estábamos haciendo una manifestación para apoyar a Iván Cepda en el Museo de Arte Moderno en Medellín y unos seguidores de Abelardo de La Espriella lanzaron un bombillo que impactó a un niño de 8 años, esto es una tentativa de homicidio. @PoliciaColombia @IvanCepedaCast

Sigue👇🏻

[The New York Times @nytimes]

Breaking News: The House voted to end the war in Iran, as four Republicans sided with Democrats in a striking rebuke to President Trump. https://t.co/Oeeox0iq9q

[Leon Abboud @leonabboud]

Don’t listen to him, don’t come to the world’s most dangerous city

[Enrico Bottazzi @backaes]

Ironically, the verifier program for the ZK proof makes an ideal reward function for AIs.

So here's my 2 cents on the future of science:

1. Every discipline that has a clear reward function will see ai/autoresearch-driven breakthroughs

...

[Iván Cepeda Castro @IvanCepedaCast]

Gracias a la comunidad K-pop en Colombia.

Su fuerza imparable en redes y en las calles está movilizando la esperanza de
toda una generación.

Jóvenes como ustedes son los que transforman la política, la sociedad y nos llenan de esperanza en futuro. ¡Seguimos!

[El Espectador @elespectador]

“Quien habla con tanta cercanía del candidato presidencial de los 10 millones de votos, se llama Salvatore Mancuso”: Cecilia Orozco Tascón 🔗👇 https://t.co/FE1piRRqRg

[Camilo Romero @CamiloRomero]

Esta es la verdadera camiseta de Abelardo de la Espriella: la de Estados Unidos.

La camiseta de Colombia nos pertenece a los que amamos a nuestro país y lo defendemos, no a los vendepatria.

[RicardoGonzálezDuque @RicardoGonDuq]

¿Cuántos colombianos que tienen familiares migrantes en EEUU -a quienes el régimen de Trump generaliza como criminales y violadores- votarán por el lacayo Abelardo De la Espriella?

No pasen la pena de pasar a la historia como los esclavos que se oponían al fin de la esclavitud. Un voto por Abelardo es un voto por Trump, un voto contra los nuestros en EEUU.

[Gustavo Petro @petrogustavo]

Cuando un país interviene en las decisiones de otro país. Muere la libertad.

Invito a toda Colombia a votar en plena libertad y no volvernos ni esclavos ni colonia de nadie.

Luchó toda una generación joven de neogranadinos y neogranadinas al lado de Bolívar y Nariño para darnos Libertad y Soberanía.

Si el corazón del mundo pierde su libertad y soberanía se apaga la esperanza del mundo y de Colombia

[Anonymous @YourAnonCentral]

Really though? Are you sure? hmm

[El Espectador @elespectador]

#Opinión | “En una segunda vuelta así, no me parecerá nada indigno refugiarme en la vida privada y no votar o, si mucho, votar en blanco”: Héctor Abad Faciolince. 👉 https://t.co/9N5YoJgEO7

[La Silla Vacía @lasillavacia]

#LaSillaEnVivo | Los Kpopers (seguidores del Kpop) activaron redes para apoyar la campaña de @IvanCepedaCast.

El activismo digital de estos grupos es mundialmente famoso. En 🇨🇴 se movieron en el Paro de 2021.

Una guía si no tiene idea de qué hablamos 👇 https://t.co/MYrWg2izuU