made the eurocrypt deadline
work
I managed to get my Eurocrypt submission done! It was a pretty difficult last-minute push. Between school starting and other submissions, a lot of my co-authors didn't have the time to put a polish on everything that I would've liked to have polished. We still managed to get a nice version together, though, and I uploaded a full-version to my website. Fingers crossed that we get some interested reviewers. :)
Other than the submission, there honestly wasn't much more I was focused on. I had a few meetings to move along in other parts of my job. For example, we started talking about how to revamp the cybersecurity programs at Stevens, since they're a little bit out of date. I already have some ideas of how to rearrange the content to hopefully make it more relevant to the students. We'll see how much of an impact I'm able to have in the curriculum design. (I hope a good bit, because I'd like to teach the redesigned courses in the future.)
There was also a NYC crypto social after the Eurocrypt deadline, and it was nice to see some of the people I hadn't seen all summer. There's a lot of anxiety and competition for jobs right now, so I feel pretty bad for the incoming and outgoing PhD students. It makes me very grateful that I was able to get a job at a place I like and in the NYC area, though.
non-work
There wasn't a lot that I did outside of work either. I continued to play Silksong. After getting the bad ending without even exploring all the major areas, I've just been collecting fleas and trying to get the true ending. It's a slow and steady process, because I'm not looking anything up. Not sure if I'll be able to stay strong, though. I'm running out of areas to go back to double-check.
I'm also almost done with The Fifth Season by N.K. Jemisin. I had tried to read this book a few times before, but never managed to get hooked by the beginning. Now that I'm 90% of the way through, I can say that it definitely pays off! I feel much more attached to the characters and curious about the world. I'm more impressed with the magic system and world-building than I was expecting to be. Hoping to finish it this coming week!
questions
Which laconic PSI protocols are also size-hiding?
Can one build laconic MPC from complexity-theoretic assumptions like PIR?
If so, which functionalities?
Are these the same functionalities as can be computed in a size-hiding way?
This is partially answered by some infeasibility results in LNO13
Thanks for reading to the end! Here’s another picture of our new kitten. He saved the other bed for his big brother, who he misses.
