Like the 2022 @theonion.com amicus brief on parody and the First Amendment, further evidence that funny people can make serious points to the Supreme Court.
GIFT LINK:
www.nytimes.com/2026/04/16/u...
Thanks for the recommendation. I grew up in Kalamazoo around the time of these events, but had never heard of any of this!
Visas for international students were down 40% last summer, thanks to a slew of policies designed to throttle visa issuances and scare off students. Students from 40 countries are now outright banned.
https://www.cato.org/blog/trump-has-cut-legal-immigration-more-illegal-immigration
Trump has cut legal immigration more than illegal immigration, as I predicted. While illegal entries have fallen, they continued a prior trend, falling more before he came back. Meanwhile, Trump has drastically cut legal entries, reversing the prior upward trend. www.cato.org/blog/trump-h...
Some incredible beaver facts from the latest episode of Radiolab/Terrestrials:
* Can hold their breath for 15 minutes
* Willingly share their huts with mice, snakes, muskrats
* Their dams create "refugia" for plants and animals where they can survive forest fires
radiolab.org/podcast/the-...
“You shouldn't transition to post-quantum because you are confident quantum computing will happen; you should only avoid transitioning because you are confident quantum computing will not happen, and none of the experts are confident in that anymore.”
congratulations to the national champs, who trailed Northwestern by 16 points earlier this year
Two papers came out last week that suggest classical asymmetric cryptography might indeed be broken by quantum computers in just a few years.
That means we need to ship post-quantum crypto now, with the tools we have: ML-KEM and ML-DSA. I didn't think PQ auth was so urgent until recently.
A very nice explainer why "if you're so worried about quantum computers, why haven't they factored 21 yet?" isn't a very convincing argument. Look at the labels of the graph, and how extremely close the various lines are for factoring 21 and 2048 bit numbers. Polynomial scaling remains […]
So why was this case brought before the Court at all? For the same reason that Cowan’s racist invocation of “yellow peril” has survived to the present day, repeated in modern form by both the president and his solicitor general. Before the Civil War, America was a white man’s government. The Reconstruction Amendments were supposed to change that, to prevent not just the existence of masters and slaves but master classes and slave classes. Trump and those around him would like to change it all back. It is hardly surprising, then, that they would revive the same arguments against birthright citizenship that the framers heard in the 1860s.
John Calhoun said the U.S. was a "white man's government." John Bingham, one of the authors of the 14th Amendment, said that this was a "horrid blasphemy." The birthright citizenship case is ultimately about which America we are going to be. www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/0...
Securing Elliptic Curve Cryptocurrencies against Quantum Vulnerabilities: Resource Estimates and Mitigations Ryan Babbush,1, ∗ Adam Zalcman,1, † Craig Gidney,1, ‡ Michael Broughton,1 Tanuj Khattar,1 Hartmut Neven,1 Thiago Bergamaschi,1, 2 Justin Drake,3 and Dan Boneh4 1Google Quantum AI, Santa Barbara, CA 93111, United States 2Department of Computer Science, University of California Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720, United States 3Ethereum Foundation, Zeughausgasse 7a, 6300 Zug, Switzerland 4Department of Computer Science, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305, United States (Dated: March 30, 2026) The expected emergence of cryptographically relevant quantum computers (CRQCs) will represent a singular discontinuity in the history of digital security, with wide ranging impacts. This whitepaper seeks to elucidate specific implications that the capabilities of developing quantum architectures have on blockchain vulnerabilities and potential mitigation strategies. First, we provide new resource estimates for breaking the 256-bit Elliptic Curve Discrete Logarithm Problem over the secp256k1 curve, the core of modern blockchain cryptography. We demonstrate that Shor’s algorithm for this problem can execute with either ≤ 1200 logical qubits and ≤ 90 million Toffoli gates or ≤ 1450 logical qubits and ≤ 70 million Toffoli gates. In the interest of responsible disclosure, we use a zero- knowledge proof to validate these results without disclosing attack vectors. On superconducting architectures with 10−3 physical error rates and planar connectivity, those circuits can execute in minutes using fewer than half a million physical qubits. We introduce a critical distinction between “fast-clock” (such as superconducting and photonic) and “slow-clock” (such as neutral atom and ion trap) architectures. Our analysis reveals that the first fast-clock CRQCs would enable “on-spend” attacks on public mempool transactions of some cryptocurrencies. We survey major crypto…
> We demonstrate that Shor’s algorithm...can execute with either ≤ 1200 logical qubits and ≤ 90 million Toffoli gates or ≤ 1450 logical qubits and ≤ 70 million Toffoli gates
research.google/blog/safegua...
quantumai.google/static/site-...
really can't be said enough that this case was decided by the same court that decided plessy v. ferguson. if they could have found a plausible rationale to limit birthright citizenship they would have done it. but there is none! the text is as clear as constitutional language can be.
New from me: The first post of a series documenting the brazen lies DHS has told after abuse and violence by ICE and Bordrer Patrol officers.
First up: The bumbling, illegal raid on ChongLy Scott Thao and his family.
Last year, I thought we still had time to design PQ auth systems.
Now, based on the pace of progress and on statements like Google's, I believe
1. we need to finish rolling out PQ kex yesterday
2. we need to start rolling out PQ auth now
3. it's too late to ship any new non-PQ design or system
We just caught ICE in a bombshell lie.
They do NOT have the authorization they've claimed to arrest immigrants at 26 Federal Plaza.
Courthouse arrests must end now. There's never been a stronger case for why this rogue, lawless agency should be abolished.
The Vince McMahon meme listing Rosulek's "most opinionated choices" in the book's presentation: 1. all security definitions are distinguishing games; 2. the b=0 and b=1 branches are two separate games (rather than having the adversary guess a hidden bit b); 3. we don't write explicit reduction algorithms when adjacent hybrids are indistinguishable due to a cryptographic assumption.
Reading the "Message to Teachers" preface like...
Cover of “The Joy of Cryptography” by Mike Rosulek
Part of the table of contents including a chapter on post-quantum cryptography
new Joy of Cryptography just dropped (feat. Post-Quantum Crypto)
I want to continue a bit on this subject, which (so far) I see very little concern about. There are vast stores of private data that we’ve built up in various places, including messaging apps. A real “killer app” for Gen AI is to ingest them and turn that data into revenue.
One couple with a baby was held at gunpoint after federal officers slammed into their car while pursuing immigrants fleeing on foot. They then wrongly assumed the couple was part of a related protest, and blew their front door off its hinges in a SWAT raid. Bovino posted the raid on his Instagram.
Missed this when it came out a few months ago, but it's stunning reporting. Vividly captures how Trump and Miller have unleashed violence and chaos on these communities -- and how their lawless goons exact retribution on anyone who gets in their way, even unintentionally. Bovino should be in prison.
ICE detention deaths are now occurring at a rate of roughly one every four days. Three weeks ago that rate was one every six days. The pace is accelerating, and Congress has not launched a single investigation.
Awful. A teenager, dead by suicide in an ICE detention center. There is now a crisis of suicide inside the detention system; I have never seen anything like it. Suicide has happened before, but they were very rare. This is the third or fourth this year.
Absolute insanity - the Trump administration wants to pay nearly $1 billion of taxpayer dollars to a private French company to *not* build wind farms off the East Coast
Great episode of @chrislhayes.bsky.social's podcast with @davidjbier.bsky.social, whose work and testimony on immigration issues I've highlighted here before.
podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/w...
BALTIMORE—In surprise testimony in federal court Thursday, an immigration officer revealed that more than 100 asylum seekers were wrongfully deported in violation of a court-ordered settlement agreement in a long-running case that has gotten national attention.
talkingpointsmemo.com/news/exclusi...
ICE agents detained a Texas father trying to deliver milk to his infant daughter in the neonatal intensive care unit, disregarding his status as a DACA recipient. trib.al/BOeMew3
The Stephen F. Austin women are the Ladyjacks? Is “Lumber” the masculine part of that word?
When a federal judge (finally) put ICE officers under oath, they admitted that they are given daily detention quotas and rely heavily on a Palantir-supplied AI tool to select targets, without warrants and without enough evidence to obtain one. They simply go into neighborhoods and round people up.
Dear Temple Israel Family, Everyone is safe. All 140 students in our Susan and Harold Loss Early Childhood Center, our amazing staff, our courageous teachers, and our heroic security personnel are all accounted for and safe. As you have no doubt heard, Temple Israel was the victim of a terrorist gunman who was confronted and neutralized by our security personnel who are truly heroes. Our teachers followed their training and kept the children safe and calm. We are deeply and humbly grateful to our teachers, staff, security, law enforcement, and Shenendoah Country Club that welcomed us, fed us, and sheltered our staff, teachers, children, and parents. What incredible neighbors we have. What incredible police force we have This note is coming to you before we know anything about our future programming or services, or any investigation. We wanted you to know we are safe, and we love you all.
A statement from Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Michigan:
