Nafeez

engineer @cloudflare compute

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

abstractions above raw compute get compressed when the interface to build software changes

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

Discord Voice 🤝Cloudflare's Edge.
That crisp Discord voice calls. Now through Cloudflare's edge https://t.co/uFCUON6xFW

"Last year, we started migrating Discord voice and video traffic onto Cloudflare's edge network, which runs in over 300 cities."

Was fun to work on this with incredible teams on both the sides.

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

@tobimori @zebassembly Dunkin’ coffee

[Nassim Nicholas Taleb @nntaleb]

1/n
A physical book is a real object, anchored. If you read a particular edition, you remember not only the contents but the object itself: its cover, typography, smell, even where a passage sat on the page.
Books organize themselves in memory by place --the ancient method of loci.
Digital text does not exist.

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

@lilastories The many faces of the Bay. It’ll pass.

[Brad Spengler @spendergrsec]

What have we here: https://t.co/zGSbBfReMZ

[Justin Drake @drakefjustin]

Today is a monumentous day for quantum computing and cryptography. Two breakthrough papers just landed (links in next tweet). Both papers improve Shor's algorithm, infamous for cracking RSA and elliptic curve cryptography. The two results compound, optimising separate layers of the quantum stack. The results are shocking. I expect a narrative shift and a further R&D boost toward post-quantum cryptography.

The first paper is by Google Quantum AI. They tackle the (logical) Shor algorithm, tailoring it to crack Bitcoin and Ethereum signatures. The algorithm runs on ~1K logical qubits for the 256-bit elliptic curve secp256k1. Due to the low circuit depth, a fast superconducting computer would recover private keys in minutes. I'm grateful to have joined as a late paper co-author, in large part for the chance to interact with experts and the alpha gleaned from internal discussions.

The second paper is by a stealthy startup called Oratomic, with ex-Google and prominent Caltech faculty. Their starting point is Google's improvements to the logical quantum circuit. They then apply improvements at the physical layer, with tricks specific to neutral atom quantum computers. The result estimates that 26,000 atomic qubits are sufficient to break 256-bit elliptic curve signatures. This would be roughly a 40x improvement in physical qubit count over previous state-of-the-art. On the flip side, a single Shor run would take ~10 days due to the relatively slow speed of neutral atoms.

Below are my key takeaways. As a disclaimer, I am not a quantum expert. Time is needed for the results to be properly vetted. Based on my interactions with the team, I have faith the Google Quantum AI results are conservative. The Oratomic paper is much harder for me to assess, especially because of the use of more exotic qLDPC codes. I will take it with a grain of salt until the dust settles.

→ q-day: My confidence in q-day by 2032 has shot up significantly. IMO there's at least a 10% chance that by 2032 a quantum computer recovers a secp256k1 ECDSA private key from an exposed public key. While a cryptographically-relevant quantum computer (CRQC) before 2030 still feels unlikely, now is undoubtedly the time to start preparing.
→ censorship: The Google paper uses a zero-knowledge (ZK) proof to demonstrate the algorithm's existence without leaking actual optimisations. From now on, assume state-of-the-art algorithms will be censored. There may be self-censorship for moral or commercial reasons, or because of government pressure. A blackout in academic publications would be a tell-tale sign.
→ cracking time: A superconducting quantum computer, the type Google is building, could crack keys in minutes. This is because the optimised quantum circuit is just 100M Toffoli gates, which is surprisingly shallow. (Toffoli gates are hard because they require production of so-called "magic states".) Toffoli gates would consume ~10 microseconds on a superconducting platform, totalling ~1,000 sec of Shor runtime.
→ latency optimisations: Two latency optimisations bring key cracking time to single-digit minutes. The first parallelises computation across quantum devices. The second involves feeding the pubkey to the quantum computer mid-flight, after a generic setup phase.
→ fast- and slow-clock: At first approximation there are two families of quantum computers. The fast-clock flavour, which includes superconducting and photonic architectures, runs at roughly 100 kHz. The slow-clock flavour, which includes trapped ion and neutral atom architectures, runs roughly 1,000x slower (~100 Hz, or ~1 week to crack a single key).
→ qubit count: The size-optimised variant of the algorithm runs on 1,200 logical qubits. On a superconducting computer with surface code error correction that's roughly 500K physical qubits, a 400:1 physical-to-logical ratio. The surface code is conservative, assuming only four-way nearest-neighbour grid connectivity. It was demonstrated last year by Google on a real quantum computer.
→ future gains: Low-hanging fruit is still being picked, with at least one of the Google optimisations resulting from a surprisingly simple observation. Interestingly, AI was not (yet!) tasked to find optimisations. This was also the first time authors such as Craig Gidney attacked elliptic curves (as opposed to RSA). Shor logical qubit count could plausibly go under 1K soonish.
→ error correction: The physical-to-logical ratio for superconducting computers could go under 100:1. For superconducting computers that would be mean ~100K physical qubits for a CRQC, two orders of magnitude away from state of the art. Neutral atoms quantum computers are amenable to error correcting codes other than the surface code. While much slower to run, they can bring down the physical to logical qubit ratio closer to 10:1.
→ Bitcoin PoW: Commercially-viable Bitcoin PoW via Grover's algorithm is not happening any time soon. We're talking decades, possibly centuries away. This observation should help focus the discussion on ECDSA and Schnorr. (Side note: as unofficial Bitcoin security researcher, I still believe Bitcoin PoW is cooked due to the dwindling security budget.)
→ team quality: The folks at Google Quantum AI are the real deal. Craig Gidney (@CraigGidney) is arguably the world's top quantum circuit optimisooor. Just last year he squeezed 10x out of Shor for RSA, bringing the physical qubit count down from 10M to 1M. Special thanks to the Google team for patiently answering all my newb questions with detailed, fact-based answers. I was expecting some hype, but found none.

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

https://t.co/Uu99FyMkzn

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

Try Novacene instead of Claude over the weekend

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

Had a dream where Crichton wrote a book about Daniel Bernstein involving a cryptographic attack. 🦖

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

Distillation attack is a leading term. The attack part.

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

@anantshri Could be. However, it looks like doing that has been difficult so far.

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

If agents are going to be the primary “developers,” they can’t learn about production the way humans do (Slack ping, PagerDuty alert, someone pasting logs).

They need structured, machine-legible, real-time error streams.

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

@burkov @BiomedErs I started with understanding n-grams and how they were prevalent in solutions at that time. Would also read about distributional hypothesis in linguistics. Great paper.

[abeto @abeto_co]

Ever dreamt of having a job where you deliver mail to the residents of a tiny planet? Us too.

https://t.co/FNKiXFPk2K

#webgl #threejs

[Val Town @ValDotTown]

this summer @_404Wolf rebuilt our TypeScript editor tooling from scratch, building on @deno_land's LSP server, @Cloudflare Containers.

it's way better now. it was a huge project. read how he did it: https://t.co/w3B4VhrCDp

and all the code is open source!

[Nafeez @skeptic_fx]

IKEA website felt faster than it used to be. Then I checked cdn-cgi/trace.

ofc.

[Harrison Kinsley @Sentdex]

Quite the chart

[Ben @bensenescu]

Introducing OpenBrowser - an open-source, scale to zero, remote browser service enabled by @Cloudflare Containers. Once Containers are GA, you’ll be able to spin up an arbitrary number of remote browsers in your Cloudflare account for 75% less $ than services like @browserbase

[Elon Musk @elonmusk]

Question the quietness of the cosmos