Robin’s note on “Is Substack the media future we want?
I think Anna hints at something here that I’ve struggled to describe, the way that blogs were somewhat hidden and when you discovered them it was like finding a treasure map; something intentionally obscured from view.
One idea that comes up a lot in certain technology circles, especially cryptocurrency, is the idea of a “zero-knowledge” proof, or ZKP. Here’s a quick analogy that might be helpful to explain how a ZKP works. Let’s say there is a wall of 1,000 locked safes. I want to verify that you own each safe. You could do that by unlocking all the safes, but that would reveal the combination to me, and you don't want me to know the secret. We seem to be at an impasse. One way out of this dilemma is for me to leave the room. I tell you, “I’m going to leave and come back in 1 hour. Please open all the safes.” If I come back and the safes are open, it's probably because you knew the combinations to each safe. You never had to tell me the secret (the safe combination), and I don’t have to know what the secret is to be satisfied that you know it. That’s the “zero knowledge” part.
For mathematicians and computer scientists, 2020 was full of discipline-spanning discoveries and celebrations of creativity. We'd like to take a moment to recognize some of these achievements.
1. A landmark proof simply titled “MIP* = RE" establishes that quantum computers calculating with entangled qubits can theoretically verify the answers to an enormous set of problems. Along the way, the five computer scientists who authored the proof also answered two other major questions: Tsirelson’s problem in physics, about models of particle entanglement, and a problem in pure mathematics called the Connes embedding conjecture.
2. In February, graduate student Lisa Piccirillo dusted off some long-known but little-utilized mathematical tools to answer a decades-old question about knots. A particular knot named after the legendary mathematician John Conway had long evaded mathematical classification in terms of a higher-dimensional property known as “sliceness.” But by developing a version of the knot that yielded to traditional knot analysis, Piccirillo finally determined that the Conway knot is not “slice.”
3. For decades, mathematicians have used computer programs known as proof assistants to help them write proofs — but the humans have always guided the process, choosing the proof’s overall strategy and approach. That may soon change. Many mathematicians are excited about a proof assistant called Lean, an efficient and addictive proof assistant that could one day help tackle major problems. First, though, mathematicians must digitize thousands of years of mathematical knowledge, much of it unwritten, into a form Lean can process. Researchers have already encoded some of the most complicated mathematical ideas, proving in theory that the software can handle the hard stuff. Now it’s just a question of filling in the rest.
Learn more: https://www.quantamagazine.org/quantas-year-in-math-and-computer-science-2020-20201223/
My friends didn't wait for me to ask. They showed up. They took over. They didn't ask.
My friends didn't wait for me to ask. They showed up. They took over. They didn't ask. When they all swept out of there four hours later, my place was a home. Not only was everything put away — but now it had a memory attached to it, a group memory, friends, laughing, dirty jokes, hard work. These are the kinds of friends I have. Be that kind of friend to others.
And I remembered a part of me that had been boxed up and filed away for a long, long time. “A reminder of my capacity for feeling”: that’s what I experienced. And it’s what I wish for you, too.
When you use Δ to send a block forward in time, you are in effect sending a series of linked ideas forward to your future self. Your future self then has the ability to contribute to this evolving strand of thought and send it forward in time again ad infinitum.
The grab-bag style is really interesting, where I just list out ideas and links to things that were interesting to me throughout the week. It’s essentially a forcing function for my attention. You have to to notice the things that you’re reading and thinking about, that are actually important, if you want to have any hope of pulling together enough interesting atoms for a functional structure.
I found my best friend in pieces: the sense of humor from the disco producer, the philosophical banter from the Twitter friend, the emotional support from the diamond maker. I found that all of the qualities I wanted in a best friend didn’t have to come from a single person.
I think one of the reasons Zoom school horrified so many people, is not because it was a big break in how education works but because it brought the reality of how education works, to the forefront it highlighted the American classroom as the consumer audience structure it is
Stephen’s comment on Parsing’s module namespacing and how they tried to mirror Combine’s
This is just a humble suggestion from a fan. I see that you have an public enum Parsers { } to use as a namespace, like Combine does with the Publishers type. But you've still defined sever...
I didn’t (and don’t) know the answer but the question rang deep and useful. It was a beautiful thing to hang out with each poem, poet, line for longer than I thought I could or should. And that’s saying something given that I set type one letter at a time.
This year’s Annual is themed “tend,” as in to care for or manage, to give your attention to, or to move toward a particular direction, an inclination or “tendency.”
Contributors include Rona Akbari, Zainab Aliyu, American Artist, Weeda Azim, neta bomani, fiona carty, Juliana Castro, R.C. Clarke, Rae Dand, Shea Fitzpatrick, Melanie Hoff, Madeline Hsia, Clemens Jahn, Lucy Siyao Liu, Omar Mohammad, Onelson Nicholas, lily nguyen, Emma Rae Bruml Norton, Lai Yi Ohlsen, Alice Otieno, William Pan, Elizabeth Perez, Ingrid Raphael, Charlie Reynolds, Michael Bell-Smith, and Austin Wade Smith.
Cover by Michael Bell-Smith.
4.5in x 7.7in paperback, 212 pages.
Ships internationally.
One of my biggest learnings this year was becoming aware of and starting to learn how to predict the nuance and conditionals around things that seem simple from the outside.
So, ultimately, I’ve taken the approach to not simply follow my personal preference, but to do whatever is more impactful for the company at each stage. Stop coding and delegate when you can’t see the forest for the trees. You want to build something bigger than yourself. I still want to help RevenueCat go public, but if we manage to do it, my responsibilities or title will not be that important anymore.
span of time when someone has lived is clearly stated, and you have to understand their lifeline through a hyphen. We make the future in the now. What are we going to do now? Time does work in a cyclical way. It's not as linear as we like to think that it is, and that's what astrology tends to highlight.
You can dream up any combination of dishes - values — that you like…but that doesn’t mean the restaurant — actual world — will serve them to you. something to appreciate about both spontaneity and routine, something to appreciate about both striving and settling, something to appreciate about novelty and familiarity. Values necessarily emerge from the bottom up, in an illegible patchwork that exceeds anything we could ever design.
You are here not because you are so great, but because your employer believes you can help them to advance the company’s being. Companies don’t want extra risks. Choosing Haskell is a very big risk itself, and it’s a crime to increase it by doing things wrongly. smart code limits your employer’s field of potential workers. This is certainly a risk, too, and this is how you affect the company even if you are not aware about those risks.
You are beloved and worthy of rest because you are human, not a robot. I know it’s hokey, but I’m trying to learn something from exercise science when it comes to thinking of rest as work, as essential as any workout. I’m doing it because I need to start January in a place where I’m ready to (co)write a book, but also because I’ve worked nearly non-stop for the last year, and it’s time to rest.
Many have told me how inspired they have been by the story of Christopher Jackson, who discovered a love for mathematics in a federal penitentiary. Chris is a featured contributor to Mathematics for Human Flourishing and his letters reveal his progression over several years. They also drive home the message of the book in many layered ways. Chris and I correspond regularly. He was excited when the book came out, and together with some other mathematicians, we worked on a research project that st
he is prone and snoring on the carpet, equidistant between my partner and me. It’s a mundane thing, and I look forward to a long life of such mundane things as this. I want to steal a friend’s idea of “holding office hours for chats with friends” next year by making more room for FaceTime and phone calls, which drain me and distract me so much less than being constantly alt-tabbing to Messages.app.