So, don't give up, you might be closer than you think.

From my exp CTO in small startup is marketing tool and it does not mean real "the CTO". In small org CTO is simply "do it all in no time" type of job, that includes hands on coding, infrastructure, but also hiring, overseeing and managing people. You also need to understand code lifetime and methodology of your choice, how to use it to provide good enough time estimates. And all of this will lead you to be probably replaced once organization grows.

How many years until graduation? If it's 2ish I would grind my teeth and get the paper.

In my opinion if breaking AES is to serve military (and hunt for secrets) then it would be done in secret.

> The rest of the team observed them in admiration.

They should have been included in building base, they also should spend time learning what state of the art is (since, as article says, they had time before requirements started flowing)

I remember people claiming things like github copilot were reproducing original code verbatim and this was the main source of concern. I would see this as a problem if my colleagues were copying code as if it was their own.

I guess it's great advice for newcommers who have enough time at hand, but would it not be better to pick one stack and stick to it?

yep, how much data is queried and how are queries written, I'd guess it's good to strech your muscles on tiny instances so you get a feel how different queries can consume available resources.

Many years ago I was thinking about logs monitoring to detect anomalies and wrote personal utility to achieve this.

Cheater detection sounds like very interesting problem