third time is the charm
Note: This post was imported and originally posted on leaflet on 2025-06-06
I feel like this is slowly becoming easier. I think after I get really used to writing about my life, I'll try to mix in more opinion pieces. But for now, I'm not biting off more than I can chew and sticking the with the habit formation.
work
I had my S&P program chair orientation on Tuesday, and I'm really excited to get to be on the PC of it. There are a good number of papers that look interesting to me, so I'm hoping that I get assigned a good set of papers. Good luck to those who submitted!
Other than that, it's been kind of a grind on my DSO project. The goal is to have a finished draft sometime early next week. I've learned a lot about OPRFs and the way that constructions work just from diving deep into these few papers. I really can't explain how much I appreciate the opportunity to fund myself while having an excuse to learn about a new area of cryptography. I really hope I can continue the collaboration during my time at Stevens and get funding for student, especially considering the current funding cuts.
non-work
More often than usual this week, my partner and I have floated the idea of getting a second cat to join our little family. Although, we still have the self-control not to adopt the first cute cat we see on an adoption site. I have a suspicion, though, that it'll only be a matter of time. It's possible though that we delay the decision long enough to get a dog instead of a cat though, which would really be fun and interesting.
Also, my sister and her partner are visiting this weekend for the first time since I've been in Hoboken! I'm excited to show them our place and also show them around the neighborhood. I've very quickly grown to love the area, because it strikes a great balance of being densely packed, easy to get around, and plenty of open space to run/walk.
things i learned this week
A CNN survey found a shift turn in American public opinion saying that government should do more to solve problems
Someone built a DOGE tracker which nicely lays out a lot of activities the group has taken
Gil Kalai gave another talk about quantum skepticism, which I still didn't fully understand, although the Q&A I think was helpful
A Kurzgesagt video about a war against a parasitic insect that was both disturbing and interesting
A blog post about AI skeptics being nuts that definitely raises a lot of good points about AI's impact in coding. (Although I don't think many AI skeptic think it's a "fad," just that it won't live up to the hype)
An SCMP article reporting that China is decreasing some of its censorship for select users
questions
How much further could list-decoding PIR, that a recent upload discussed, be taken? Are there simple solutions in the computational setting?
Maybe the model has to change somewhat to allow preprocessing and avoid stronger assumptions though (?)
Also, there could be some overlap with Verifiable PIR (?)Is there's some
Is there's some common property between all of the "black-box resistant" cryptography?
Two papers (here and here) prove strikingly similar results about the limits of constructing PRCs from black-box crypto
I knew the one by Sanjam, Sam, and Mingyuan was coming, but I was surprised to see the other one on the same day! Congrats to the authors of both papers
Also, I'm surprised that large-alphabet PRCs get can have constant error rates — I'll have to look more into that
Prior to that, there was this Eurocrypt 2025 paper that shows Doubly-Efficient PIR cannot be construction in a black-box way
Some assumptions used for (sk-)DEPIR are also suspiciously close to those used to build PRCs 🤔
What are the most "standard" isogeny-based post-quantum assumptions?
Many papers I look at have lots (seemingly) bespoke assumptions that are used to justify the proposed protocol
Are there good ways to justify these as post-quantum other than reduction from NP-hard problems to specific regimes?
Thanks for reading to the end! I hope you enjoy another picture of our cat:
