I'm curious to know what the relative speedups are in Halo 2 with the move to PLONK internally...

Halo 2? Really?

For some reason that sounds familiar...

sarang: cryptobriefing.com/ciphertraces-mon…tool-isnt-effective-researcher-says

Looks like they updated it

Inge-: nice!

I have some logistical news to share; I won't be applying for community research funding for next quarter

I've been feeling major burnout for a while, and need to step back

Well deserved break.

Enjoy it, man, you have more than earned it!

Anyway, I'll of course continue research for this month, as planned

Thank you for all your hard work in so many areas of the projcet.

Much appreciated

Fortunately, the big-ticket items (CLSAG, Triptych, Arcturus, etc.) are in good shape

and BP+ should be finished before then too, barring any complications

This could be a great opportunity for other interested researchers to step up if they wish

are you definitely coming back?

I'm not sure what the long-term plans will be

enjoy your time sarang :)

yes, it's a well-deserved break and we wish you well, brother

suraeNoether: are you in #noncesense-research-lab?

I have questions on the quantum paper you co-wrote

switching over

😢

suraeNoether: coming back?

suraeNoether: I am making an announcement about that on monday

but since you've asked, I don't see a reason to keep it secret

for personal health reasons, i need to take a more traditional industry job for awhile; I'm accepting a position with Insight (who Isthmus works for, btw)

I still plan on contributing to MRL, but I'm not going to be asking anyone for a salary any time soon

I've very much loved working for Monero, but I'm a very different person this year compared to when I ran the Konferenco last year because of some personal health reasons, and I've found my priorities and appetite for risk has changed

For conflict of interest reasons, it's important that folks at MRL know that I'm working for Insight starting September 14th (aside from my contributions to this quantum paper)

we like transparency here at MRL :D

suraeNoether: appreciate the update and wish you guys all the health 🙏

Thanks kinghat[m]

The burnout is pretty bad, so I think this will be important for me

Fortunately there a lot of great research contributors :)

the crypto reporters are going to have fun with this i think. "Entire Moreno Research Team Out As Flaws Found, Chain Unravels!"

:(

This wasn't a result of that press release

I've felt burnout for a while

yep, and i had surgery about a month ago that i'm still recovering from. this has been in the works for a nontrivial amount of time.

oh i know

i realize the industry can be taxing too

i'll still be contributing, so will isthmus presumably. i'm still assisting clemson university with their creative inquiry project into monero.

Have some deserved rest sarang, hope to see you back :)

Thanks ErCiccione[m], much appreciated

i'm just not asking for salaries from you guys anymore, and i'm spending a more healthy amount of time on monero

and good luck to you suraeNoether, happy to see you around lately

thanks ErCiccione[m]

i still pronounce your name with hard Cs in my head like a weird nonsense italian name

"ehr-kee-kee-yo-nay"

ErCiccione[m]: how should your IRC name be pronounced?

It's always fun to hear people pronunciate it in weird ways :P

hehhe

that's closer :D

or tsio

I had assumed it was something like "air-chee-chee-oh-nay"

wow, i'm somewhat surprised at the convergence of pronounciations

that's impressive

i knew a guy who pronounced "caveat" as "kuh-veet"

hehe wow. Curious to see you all have it in mind in different ways

it's "air chee cho nay"

Ooh, I was close!

Super close!

this could be a whole monero coffee chat

sarang king of the MRL

"so how did *you* first pronounce sarang in your head?"

play the audio. Google says it perfectly

"Sarang" always gave me an asian vibe

Conclusion from #noncesense-research-lab talk: a practical quantum adversary would be very annoying

I thought a fun activity for Konferenco would be to have a list of handles and [separately] record each participant trying to pronounce each others' IRC usernames

o_0

You cheated Isthmus, with all those consonants in a row...

i'll take "thankfulForToday for 100. i'll take charuto for 500. i'll take sarang for 1000"

Is Zcash raiding the MRL?

taking Monero's PhDs ?

:)

Nooooo

is it true

?

Its Verge.. isn't it.

I'm not going to work for another crypto project, no

I don't think that would be good for burnout =p

sarang: "is it true" is just an old silly monero meme

With this Covid.. I think we are all burned out.. always attached to our devices. always trying to be productive.

and like jokes, the best memes are ones that need to be explained

Sorry Surae.. I did not know it.

vikrants: obscure 2015 reference. :P

I see

suraeNoether hope you get better from your surgery and things work out for you

knaccc thanks

Hmm so I was doing some more work on BP+ and realized something about data embedding

With BP, I have example code right now that can embed 32 bytes of secret data into existing proofs

and in fact, this can be extended to 64 bytes; I'm adding that now

With BP+, I think we could only embed 32 bytes of secret data

So if there were future applications that would use data embedding (nothing does right now by default, but certainly could be... that's the point!), that would be a small limitation

Notably, I think the BP+ embedding a bit trickier, since to unwind it the verifier would need to pull some extra algebra that isn't necessary for BP

This wouldn't affect verification times, since only the designated recipient knows the seed value used to recover the embedded data (via PRNG seeding)

64 would be enough to embed a secret el gamal ciphertext

Note that the hidden data is per proof, not per output (since outputs are aggregated into a single proof within a transaction)

The idea is that the sender and recipient use the same hidden data as a hash function seed, and use that to generate some proof elements in a way that's still uniformly distributed but hides the desired data

External verifiers proceed as normal

My existing Python code had 32 bytes hidden, but I'm updating to 64 bytes

Boo, the tests fail

What the heckin heck... this should be working

- every programmer all the time

(and the day after, it gets replaced by "how the heckin heck did it ever work"...

lol

Are any new news from ciphertrace?

sgp_ had contacted their CEO a few days ago

So sgp_ would be the one to know if the CEO responded

juding from what we've seen so far, would be better if someone other than the CEO responds...

Eh, they have no obligation to respond, just like they didn't have to do that interview

The questions were also very specific about methods, and they may not wish to divulge the answers

pretty apparent they don't wish to divulge much of anything, they only wish to get their name onto headlines and in front of peoples' faces

I still appreciate that Dave agreed to the interview at all

Sure, there may have been business incentives to do it, but we learned a few things at least

Ahh figured out the embedding problem

Only works for single-output proofs, boo

Oh well

suraeNoether: wait what do i have to do with tft and sarang?

I think suraeNoether was making a joke IIRC

nothing except handle pronunciation

sorry to tag you :\

oh, all good. yeah my alias can be a little bit weird to pronounce.

anyways, i hope the two of you (SNs) sort out the health issues, that definitely comes first, and hopefully, maybe one day you'll be back, stronger than ever. forcing yourself to do work you don't enjoy or that you don't get what you want out of it ultimately just leads to a worse situation, so it's definitely the right call to take a break and focus on other endeavours. you two are legends and i'm sure our

community is glad to have had you.