Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48005230

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47994272

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

Switch to Linux if you can, and come give Shufflecake a try ;)

https://shufflecake.net/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47149828

Points: 11

# Comments: 2

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46933013

Points: 2

# Comments: 1

Shufflecake ( https://shufflecake.net/ ) is a "spiritual successor" to TrueCrypt/VeraCrypt but vastly improved: works at the block device level, supports any filesystem of choice, can manage many nested layers of secrecy concurrently in read/write, comes with a formal proof of security, and is blazing fast (so much, in fact, that exceeds performances of LUKS/dm-crypt/VeraCrypt in many scenarios, including SSD use).

Disclaimer: it is still a proof of concept, only runs on Linux, has no security audit yet. But there is a prototype for the "Holy Grail" of plausible deniability on the near future roadmap: a fully hidden Linux OS (boots a different Linux distro or Qubes container set depending on the password inserted at boot). Stay tuned!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46396496

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

Regarding the coaxial cables, you seem to be an expert, so tell me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me a limitation of current designs (and in particular of superconducting qubits), I don't think there is any fundamental reason why this could not be replaced by a different tech in the future. Plus, the scaling must not need to be infinite, right? Even with current "coaxial cable tech", it "only" needs to scale up to the point of reaching one logical qubit.

https://gagliardoni.net/#20250714_ludd_grandpas

An abstract:

> "but then WHAT is a good measure for QC progress?" [...] you should disregard quantum factorization records.

> The thing is: For cryptanalytic quantum algorithms (Shor, Grover, etc) you need logical/noiseless qubits, because otherwise your computation is constrained [...] With these constraints, you can only factorize numbers like 15, even if your QC becomes 1000x "better" under every other objective metric. So, we are in a situation where even if QC gets steadily better over time, you won't see any of these improvements if you only look at the "factorization record" metric: nothing will happen, until you hit a cliff (e.g., logical qubits become available) and then suddenly scaling up factorization power becomes easier. It's a typical example of non-linear progress in technology (a bit like what happened with LLMs in the last few years) and the risk is that everyone will be caught by surprise. Unfortunately, this paradigm is very different from the traditional, "old-style" cryptanalysis handbook, where people used to size keys according to how fast CPU power had been progressing in the last X years. It's a rooted mindset which is very difficult to change, especially among older-generation cryptography/cybersecurity experts. A better measure of progress (valid for cryptanalysis, which is, anyway, a very minor aspect of why QC are interesting IMHO) would be: how far are we from fully error-corrected and interconnected qubits? [...] in the last 10 or more years, all objective indicators in progress that point to that cliff have been steadily improving

(disclaimer: I am co-inventor at a previous employer, I don't get royalties for it, just reporting)

https://iacr.org/news/item/27138

While human mistakes happen, this incident comes under very troubling circumstances.

Why does an e-voting system of an association like IACR not support t-out-of-n threshold decryption?

Why is a system where a single party can collude to invalidate the vote considered acceptable?

Wouldn't be wiser to freeze to the date of November 20th the eligibility status for voting instead of "calling to arms" IACR members who had previously decided to opt out from Helios emails?

Does the identity of some of the candidates to Director represent a problem for IACR?

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46013307

Points: 8

# Comments: 3

Sure, that's true, but I, personally, care mostly about one question: Who holds the keys to the kingdom? In this respect, I think the AT Protocol fails spectacularly, mainly due to the lack of a credible strategy to implement really self-custodian identities.

> You also mentioned an issue with the bluesky relay, but others already exist so it's not techincally tied to Bluesky. Heck, I think the fact multiple can exist at the same, while degrades the social aspect, still makes it decentralized.

Yes, but this is also true for Nostr, Diaspora, Mastodon, etc. The difference being, last time I checked (and of course things might have changed in the meantime) with AT Protocol it was only possible to self-host part of the infrastructure (and hosting the relay is insanely demanding).

> As for the identity management issue, they announced just last week that it's getting branched to an independent entity: https://docs.bsky.app/blog/plc-directory-org

This is another example of gaslighting from Bluesky that just makes me angry. How in the holiest of Hells does an "Identity directory controlled by a Swiss Association" make the whole thing better?

Sorry, not buying it. I don't have a horse in the race, but won't fall for the marketing.