Babak Farhang

Skip Ledger: a commitment scheme for ledgers crums-io.github.io/skipledger/p... Fixes typos (don't write essays in VS w/o a spell/grammar checker 🫣), includes new sections formalizing some definitions + more pseudo code. Q's, suggestions, or critiques, pls #cryptography #blockchain #notblockchain

This 👇 Surveillance is not just bad; it's unworkable. Every new phone is riddled with apps that add no (minus) value, whose primary purpose is to surveille you. An AI assistant in background with God-unknown privileges. A security nightmare. And my father must learn to navigate this shit in his 90s

Ok, this "there are two separate brains" thing appears to be making the rounds, and I want to be absolutely clear: this is a press office overhyping some perfectly reasonable science that won't come as a surprise to most developmental biologists.

Superb high level walk-thru of what LLMs do: the surprise they do so well, but also their inability to handle surprises. I'd call the ability to handle surprises, "real-time learning". AI agents (LLMs harnessed to external programs) can't.. bsky.app/profile/gnah... Cory explains it way better 👇

Doodled this self portrait using "Keep". My profile pic, I did years ago in a .bmp file using Paint Brush 🙃

Re AI and the regulatory capture angle.. A lot of people this side of the pond seem not to have gotten the memo: The US has lost international standing. We can regulate the fuck we want.. the world has moved on. To wit, Microsoft Office, EU, Canada, saga of an ICC judge losing access, on and on.

Trump: The Sea of Tranquility (what a low testosterone name) shall henceforth be called the Sea of America. We planted a flag there, remember.

To be clear, Social Security is not a tax; it's a benefit you pay into until you retire. For years, the federal government counted & used social security surpluses to offset deficits. Now that that surplus is gone (for purely demographic reasons), they want you to forget it always was *your money.

Cloud services, generally. Digital sovereignty is now also a serious biz risk. "Canadian Cloud" (AWS style) could do well I think. Geographic proximity suits CCs well for serving US markets. If combined with a sensible legal regime (not subservient to a capricious US) a serious competitive advantage

The only meeting Hakeem Jeffries should be having with Jared Kushner is to tell him he’ll be subpoenaed by the House for a corruption investigation on day one of Democratic control of the House. This is just pathetic stuff from the House Dem leader. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/23/u...

A note to our meek news editors: Stop it with *potential conflict of interest. It's just plain "conflict of interest". It already contains potentiality (potential corruption). Don't be a redundant suckup.

Minefield? I've never heard of criming (bribes, extortion, and shakedowns) called this way. Do they mean a legal minefield? from the criminal trespasser's point of view?

Power was out in neighborhood since early afternoon. It took over 9 hours to restore, and I don't dare open the fridge. www.outagemap-xcelenergy.com/outagemap/?s... No. of affected customers hugely under counted. Local media, please report on our incompetent utility company. Ridiculous. #xcel

Quera claims (per article) it can build 256 logical (error-corrected) qubits from 10,000 noisy ones, then goes on to say it will build a 1000 from 20,000. So error correction scales linearly (4x)? That's a bigger story (stretches credulity) arstechnica.com/science/2026... cc @jtimmer.bsky.social

The 1955 Treaty of Amity between Iran and the US, why it still matters.. www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpre...

Keep leveling these thru November. It's perhaps the one issue most voters agree on. It can gather wind.. winds of change be a howling

To all would be investors, xAI, $SPCX bag holders.. Agents are quickly becoming commoditized; the only moat that could possibly justify valuations is Liability/Trust. Trust your IP will not be stolen, liability coverage in case you're the one stealing. I.e. Fiction. venturebeat.com/technology/x...

More and more interested in agentic coding that _reduces_ code. A good part of software maintenance involves deduplication, reorganizing, throwing away code. I pair-program (w/ claude) to help with such "reduction" tasks. But it feels less like coding.. more like being in a meeting all day, IIBH

A new foundational method for zero-knowledge proofs. I have read (elsewhere) current non-interactive zk proofs are provably flawed: this method seems to shows a path forward. Really well written article 👇

Harley does not want her claws manicured

The AI summary of AI-generated content closes the enshittification loop. It's the snake eating its tail, only here, the tail is shitting

"CNBC spoke with 19 executives and investors at HumanX, some of whom asked not to be named in order to speak freely." Why on earth would peeps speak freely only if anonymous? Me thinks it's cuz Sam Altman's investors, having gone all in and bet the house on the wrong horse, are now his henchmen.

@zhitzig.bsky.social re how to deal w/ AI, I think knowing who (or what) created a piece of content (and when) can help. I've been working on a commitment scheme (and easy-to-use software SDK) for journals and ledgers. Can double as an attribution engine. More info linked from my profile.

"Technology executives will assume direct criminal liability.. The era of hiding behind servers is over." Fuck yea 👍

Great piece about the return of Big Oil to Washington. And an amusing behind-the-scenes thread about investigating the story

Artificial Stupidity We named it wrong and early. You see, inanimate things cannot do stupid. It takes work (energy) to achieve the flip side of intelligence.

.@schumer.senate.gov the only good you accomplished this week was ending your political career. Your defining moment is already a historical footnote. Pathetic

Totally normal, well adjusted, human being in the foreground, just a little mad (a lot) at the fellow on the floor for interrupting his presentation.

This morning, the Trump Administration’s Department of War gave me an ultimatum: call up your troops, or we will. It is absolutely outrageous and un-American to demand a Governor send military troops within our own borders and against our will.

Great new promo for Disney after the 20s mark 🤣

To all feckless employers for whom it concerns: Charlie Kirk was a bigot. ~ Also, forget the blacklist.. make a whitelist

If language itself is a live creature that we collectively host (many hypothesize it is), then LLMs are *foreign hosts, viruses, and it shouldn't surprise if it were to deploy antibodies to kill them.

My latest for @nytimes.com -- please repost so your followers can see this for free. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The Age of Reason Strikes Back Meanwhile peoples across the galaxy were beginning to send mathematicians as their representatives. It began with a widely followed representative of the supreme being, then the Romanians ..

Fun discussion about Pope Leo XIV being a mathematician. www.reddit.com/r/math/s/F8y... References to The Book (Paul Erdos) and this one tidbit.. Greg Cantor apparently corresponded with Pope Leo XIII about his belief in the Absolute Infinite, something bigger than all cardinalities (?)

Unlike with ordinary assets, the OCC has no real power over #blockchain (nor does any other entity or gov't body). It can regulate all it wants, but the transactions it deems illegal can never be undone. "Regulating" this offers little but expose the US financial system to new forms of credit risk.

NY Times Editorial Board: “The first 100 days of President Trump’s second term have done more damage to American democracy than anything else since the demise of Reconstruction. Mr. Trump is attempting to create a presidency unconstrained by Congress or the courts…” www.nytimes.com/2025/05/01/o...