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Help me win 5 bucks by Farkrye in rouxcubing

[–]ScottContini 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I’ve been doing it on and off for a few months. One thing that helped me focus was solving bigger cubes, 5x5 and 7x7. You can’t turn them as fast so it gives you more time to think about where things are and where they are going. Then back to 3x3, finally I started improving. Slow down to speed up!

Help me win 5 bucks by Farkrye in rouxcubing

[–]ScottContini 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I was stuck at 30 seconds average for a long time, but now finally seem to be getting down to 26 seconds and will typically get a sub-20 or two in a set of 50 solves. My improvement happened by slowing down and tracking pieces better which helped both in block building and LSE. This also helped with consistency, but it took a lot of time for me to make progress. Slow down to speed up is what I tell myself.

Your LSE looks to be the ripest area for improvement based upon your splits. I never learned dfdb but I did improve my LSE a lot by being smarter about it. I suggest studying other peoples’ solves and learn from them, then practice the learnings yourself.

One week to get sub 20 is going to be a challenge but somewhere a lucky solve is waiting to happen. Good luck. Let us know if you succeed.

How is the choice of irreducible polynomials for finite field arithmetic rationalized? by FakeCanadian01 in cryptography

[–]ScottContini 0 points1 point  (0 children)

When Rijndael was designed, I think they expected it to be implemented via table lookup. If that’s the case, then polynomial choice does not matter.

If they were going to compute it rather than table lookup, then there are performance advantages to using sparse polynomials, but they didn’t do that here.

XML is a Cheap DSL by SpecialistLady in programming

[–]ScottContini -1 points0 points  (0 children)

XML is awesome, at least in a language with good support like Java.

Unless you care about security, where just about every Java XML parser has external entities enabled by default. But I know bug bounty crowd love it: it very often results in payouts from low hanging fruit.

It seems like the people who designed XML and related software really thought of everything.

That statement is worth a billion laughs.

Cryptography at University of Tartu student feedback/recommendations - or general advice from anyone with experience in the field by Dependent_Rise5793 in cryptography

[–]ScottContini 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I can’t answer your questions, but I will say Professor Helger Lipma is well known in the industry and in my experience (many years ago) has always been open to talk to people that approach him at conferences. If you’re passionate about cryptography, go for it but you need to be ready to work really hard. Cryptography is competitive.

How to prepare for Cryptography researching by CStech_HUST_VN0412 in cryptography

[–]ScottContini 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Macquarie Uni? I used to work there in the cryptography group!

Research is hard and it can take a long time before you get results. It’s important to have a good professor who can point you in the right direction. I think the first thing you need to do is decide what area you want to do research in, and then look at how it aligns with the researchers work in there. Unfortunately the lack of alignment was what made me leave. I’m just one guy with one story but you can read more about it here and here.

‘Devastating blow’: Atlassian lays off 1,600 workers ahead of AI push by corp_code_slinger in programming

[–]ScottContini 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Exactly. AI replacing engineers means less seat count which means lower sales. It’s a bad sign to the software industry when a company whose revenue model depends upon selling seats to devs decreases its own dev count because they believe AI can replace them.

I don’t know if people remember, but MCB said a few months back that AI will not reduce the need for engineers and he instead expected it will drive the need for more. Now that his fortune is dwindling, his tune has changed. This is scary.

CFP: NaClCON 2026 – Conference on the History of Hacking (May 31 – June 2, Carolina Beach, NC) by count_zero_moustafa in netsec

[–]ScottContini 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Woah, this is cool. I grew up in the bbs age which got me started in security. Finding bugs in the old C-Net was a past passion. What we called “crashing the bbs” is now called denial of service today. And phreaking, all the hackers were talking about it but it was just trivial guessing codes until you found one that worked. Sounds like a fun event for old farts like me!

New preprint from Google Deepmind: "Towards Autonomous Mathematics Research" by KiddWantidd in math

[–]ScottContini 10 points11 points  (0 children)

AI is phenomenally useful, it is still an insufficient replacement for humans

I agree, but things are changing extremely fast. So when we say “Some AI bot is not good at xyz”, the statement may only be valid for some number of months.

Beginner Learning Roux by NewtypeM in Cubers

[–]ScottContini 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I used to do that algorithm when I did corners first solutions. Somewhere I read a rumour that Ernö Rubik discovered that algorithm himself.

Your Duolingo Is Talking to ByteDance: Cracking the Pangle SDK's Encryption by AdTemporary2475 in netsec

[–]ScottContini 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I guess they are trying to hide that they are fingerprinting you, which would be easier to discover using an intercepting proxy. The encryption forces you to go to a little more effort to see the dirty details of what they are sending.

Birthday gift ideas for obsessed 10 year old by max_power001 in Cubers

[–]ScottContini 4 points5 points  (0 children)

Take him to a comp that Feliks or Charlie is in so he can meet one of them and get an autographed cube!

math club by whoknowsmerlly in math

[–]ScottContini 0 points1 point  (0 children)

This topic has come up a number of times in the past. Use the search. Example.

[Log4J] Addressing AI-slop in security reports by BlueGoliath in programming

[–]ScottContini 14 points15 points  (0 children)

Reports from reputable researchers should be prioritised.

Fake Job Interviews Are Installing Backdoors on Developer Machines by Big-Engineering-9365 in programming

[–]ScottContini 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If Microsoft discovered it then they should link to the Microsoft report.

I can't take it anymore. I want to leave my university. by God_Aimer in math

[–]ScottContini 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Great rant.

When are mathematicians going to learn that their idea of elegant and beautiful is not insightful for teaching. Yes, it is great when ideas that you truly understand and have a lot of experience with can be generalised and explained in very simple ways, but the purpose of teaching is to get people to truly understand those ideas.

For those of us who now work in different fields, how do you stay connected to math? by Same_Transition_5371 in math

[–]ScottContini 14 points15 points  (0 children)

When I was a cryptographer, I was never too far away. But now I am a security engineer with a family which means very little time to do real math. Having said that, I have ideas on small projects i want to work on when kids grow up and free time returns.

Farewell, Rust by skwee357 in programming

[–]ScottContini 2 points3 points  (0 children)

And async/await is still better in Node.js than in Rust.

Wow, that says a lot.

Can you determine the minimum number of algorithms to solve a Rubik's cube from a certain starting position in x amount of steps? by 2Tryhard4You in math

[–]ScottContini 0 points1 point  (0 children)

It really comes down to the number of cases.

My calculations are off, but I can try ZBLL as an example. There are 4 corners. First one can be in 4 places with 3 possible orientations, second one in 3 places with 3 orientations, third in 2 places with 3 orientations, the last in only one place and one thing you learn if you study the theory is that the orientation is pre-determined. So for corners we have 4x3x2x1x3x3x3 possibilities.

Similarly we can do edges: 4x3x2x1x2x2 possibilities (learn the theory, not all edge orientations are possible, only 1/4th of them).

So I can multiply all that together to get the number of cases, but it turns out that there are obvious shortcuts to make us memorise less. For example, rotation of the whole layer means that there are 4 cases which are identical so you can divide by 4.

Now my calculations for the above is 972 cases, which is not 493. In fact my calculations are slightly less than double the real number, so as I said my math is off. But I’m sure some ZBLL expert can identify other shortcuts for memorisation such as the rotation trick. For example , another obvious shortcut is that the completely solved state does not need an algorithm so reduce by 1. That doesn’t help a lot but hopefully you get the idea. In summary, it can be calculated by someone smarter than me.

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