Posted
Hello, it's been a bit -- after much drafting I have come to the conclusion that my Defining the Hacker series needs four parts instead of three, so that's caused an unfortunate delay (it's self-imposed, I just like discussing ransomware too much). To get myself back in a routine of posting on here, I thought I'd do another episode of 'What Tabs do I Have Open?'
As with last term, I'm working with Dr Shuai Wang and his PhD students on some cool zero-knowledge proof stuff (mostly using Rust and the Halo2 crate). This term I'm working with one of his PhD students on a transpiler between Python/Python-ish programs and Halo2. Very cool stuff!! The same PhD student is trying to evaluate the ease of writing these Pythonish (Pythonic?) ZK proof programs in comparison with existing ZK proof languages, so I'm participating in a user study where I compare the difficulty of writing proofs in his framework and in Cairo, a language which I had never heard of before. I'm really excited about it. As I mess around with Cairo I'm also reading the Cairo Book and looking at example programs.
Have I uploaded a real article since October? No! But I have been reading a lot of blog posts from other people on the Internet about various topics. Oli's another former King's student and I think he has some fun content about his current research projects at Imperial. Dan Luu has a great blog sharing his thoughts on writing, tech companies and culture, and other stuff. I find he has a good eye for identifying areas in life where people aren't logical (even things like baseball scouting). I like learning more about big tech and Silicon Valley from him too. Finally, I haven't read much from Ned Batchelder, but he seems like a cool guy, and he's the guy who wrote coverage.py so I like reading his updates about that.
Not one of my usual sites for learning about hacking! This is a really good website on learning Mandarin. Eventually I want to take real lessons, but right now I'm self-studying Mandarin (aka doing Duolingo and trying to find characters that are similar on the Cantonese signs I see around Hong Kong). I like lists, I like challenges, I like looking at what other people find difficult when I'm trying to learn a new language. I'd recommend checking out this site if you're a beginner at Mandarin like I am.
We're early on into a new US administration and the restructuring of the global order has been even more acute than in Trump's first term. The whole thing has not only brought added uncertainty into my personal life (my family, the stability of my country of origin, my status as an expat in Hong Kong), but it's also affected my planned investment strategy. I wouldn't consider myself a risky investor and it's concerning to view previously 'safe' investments as more volatile, so I've been reading more on the whole tariffs situation, strategy and other stuff like that. I'd never heard of Kyla Scanlon before, but I thought this article was well written, so I've signed up to her Substack. I will say though, I am still completely unsold on the idea that we're close to AGI (artificial general intelligence) and it's strange for companies and countries to be restructuring all of their operations in anticipation of it. Like, the best commercial product for 'replacing' an office worker right now is Microsoft Copilot and it's useless for more than the simplest tasks, not to mention the weirdness of any CEO actually wanting to 'replace employees with AI'.
Thanks for reading, and I look forward to posting the next part of DtH soon. Reach out whenever at ccarrieasmith [at] gmail [dot] com.