Sam Jaques

Sam Jaques

@sejaques.bsky.social

Assistant prof at U Waterloo. Aspiring full-stack cryptographer. Loves math, plants, flashcards. Opinions reflect those of all past, present, and future employers.

281 followers119 following132 posts

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

when even Merriam-Webster goes prescriptivist:

Merriam-Webster@merriam-webster.com

We acknowledge that no one has the bandwidth for this, but if it helps: -It’s ‘sleight of hand’ -It’s ‘bated breath’ -It’s ‘lo and behold’ -It's 'buck naked' -It’s ‘brass tacks’ -It’s ‘free rein’ -It’s ‘toe the line'

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

Literally getting to this debate in my crypto course this week, phenomenal timing

Filippo Valsorda@filippo.abyssdomain.expert

Anthropic found the origin of the NIST elliptic curve seeds: they were generated with drand48()! No one was seriously worried, but this should put some FUD to rest, completing the NIST ECC rehabilitation arc… just in time to be retired in favor of PQ. Also, we raised $36 Ki for ISRG. Yay!

words.filippo.ioThe NIST Elliptic Curves Seeds Bounty Has Been ClaimedWe now know how the seeds of the NIST elliptic curves were generated: they’re not the hash of some saucy sentence, but the output of drand48() seeded with the time, which was indeed in 1997–98.

Sam Jaques reposted

Filippo Valsorda
@filippo.abyssdomain.expert

Anthropic found the origin of the NIST elliptic curve seeds: they were generated with drand48()! No one was seriously worried, but this should put some FUD to rest, completing the NIST ECC rehabilitation arc… just in time to be retired in favor of PQ. Also, we raised $36 Ki for ISRG. Yay!

words.filippo.ioThe NIST Elliptic Curves Seeds Bounty Has Been ClaimedWe now know how the seeds of the NIST elliptic curves were generated: they’re not the hash of some saucy sentence, but the output of drand48() seeded with the time, which was indeed in 1997–98.
Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

My narrative: monocultures can be easily mechanized, and modern agriculture is labour-constrained and favours large-scale, capital-intensive techniques. It's an ongoing expense to pay people to harvest crops, but machines are mostly a one-time capital expense.

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

We overproduce and overuse industrial nitrogen not because we need that much nitrogen to feed the world, but because it's necessary for highly-automated capital-intensive farming practices. A quantum computer is (at best!) a bandaid fix for one of the problems this situation creates.

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

The linked post explains that even the basic physical premise might be wrong (bacteria might *less* efficient than industrial processes). But we've known how to match the efficiency of bacteria for centuries: get bacteria to do it. Indigenous Americans used "The Three sisters" (corn, bean, squash)

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

I'll rant even more about FeMoCo: plants need nitrogen in the form of ammonia or nitrate. Industrial agriculture produces these but it's energy-intensive. Symbiotic bacteria do it quite efficiently; can we decipher their enzymes (via FeMoCo), copy what they do, and save a bunch of energy?

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

If you have only a basic understanding of how corruption works, this situation looks fine, if not ideal ("more money for research, no strings attached! yay!")

Sophie E. Hill@sophieehill.bsky.social

How does this work? 🛡️ Donors hire a PR firm to commission research from universities 💰 "Anonymous donation" sent via a donor-advised fund, who perform minimal KYC checks 🙈 Universities conduct *no due diligence* of their own 📄 Journals accept "anonymous funding" declaration, no questions asked

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

To spell it out: (1) even if all parties are scrupulously honest, the PR firm's money exerts strong pressures on what gets done (2) anonymity is easy to break and impossible to repair

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

(3) knowing the structure of the system, researchers and funders can coordinate research agendas without any explicit communication, and disclosure rules incentivize them to do this I'm sure there's more, as well

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

One of the benefits of travelling is seeing other cultures coordinate to effortlessly do something your culture thinks is impossible

Alex Wellerstein@wellerstein.bsky.social

This is pie in the sky thinking, but I think if more American professors taught a course in a different kind of educational system early or mid-career, it would lead to more creative thinking about how things could be done differently — or better — in the US.

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

Great example here: Europeans in comments inventing excuses not to do something USA does effortlessly bsky.app/profile/tech...

Technology Connections@techconnectify.bsky.social

Look, I shouldn't have expected any better, I know where I was posting, but a lot of people were responding to an argument I wasn't trying to make so here's the one I *was* trying to make: There are inexpensive, pre-engineered, self-contained, modular air conditioning units which need little power.

Sam Jaques reposted

Philipp Muens
@muens.io

Wow! Alfred Menezes just published this 182 page "A Gentle Introduction to Lattice-Based Cryptography" paper. I just skimmed through it, but it looks like an invaluable resource if you want to study lattices and how they're used in (PQ) Cryptography. eprint.iacr.org/2026/1098

eprint.iacr.orgA gentle introduction to lattice-based cryptographyWe present the quantum-safe Kyber key encapsulation mechanism (ML-KEM) and the Dilithium signature scheme (ML-DSA). We also develop the mathematical background on lattices needed to understand why Kyb...

Sam Jaques reposted

Caitlin G. DeAngelis
@caitlindeangelis.bsky.social

Recently, FamilySearch digitized and uploaded tons of microfilmed records, including many from 18th-century Massachsuetts. They're using some sort of AI to transcribe/summarize the handwritten documents. I've noticed that the AI strips out references to race and enslavement in 18thc documents.

Sam Jaques reposted

Kevin Riggle
@kevinr.free-dissociation.com

I see that the new MacOS Tahoe 26.5 update releases *EIGHT* new emojis from Apple's strategic emoji reserve. Folks, I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that this is a software update that you really want to take somewhat urgently

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

Underrated Linux usability barrier: "I have this problem, how do I fix it?" "Post the log file and I can help" Then the log file is thousands of inscrutable lines that may or may not contain sensitive data about how you use your computer, that you as a beginner cannot understand

CrescensXG@zuramaru.net

I sure love that the first step of every troubleshooting with our firewall vendor [unnamed] is: "Please attach a full current config to the ticket." [to be stored god knows where, for god knows how long]

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

Hot take: IACR submission guidelines should eliminate appendices, bump the page limit to 70 pages, but have an earlier deadline for any paper longer than 30 pages

Sam Jaques reposted

Mezentine
@mezentine.bsky.social

We don’t talk often enough about the Superman issue where, fed up with pedestrian deaths from car collisions, he sets out to try and destroy every car in the city.

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

Always bothers me when you lose the 1/N factor in a multi-user security proof. Was thinking about how to dodge it; consider this for Schnorr signatures: you are an active adversary against a single challenger, with access to a multi-user adversary.

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

Your challenger's public key is xP, so all the users you simulate for the multi-user adv can use PK_i=(x+r_i)P for some random r_i. If the adversary requests a signature on m from user r_i, you can send m to your challenger and get (w,c,z)=(yP,H(w||m),y+cx). Set z'=z+cr_i and return (w,c,z').

Sam Jaques
@sejaques.bsky.social

This is a valid signature for user i. Then when the adversary presents a forgery (w*,c*,z*) against user j, just subtract cr_j from z* and it's a forgery for your challenger. This works... but only because the public key was not hashed into the challenge! Very bad idea!