Nigel Smart

Another great video from Oxford Maths dept...

Great video from Oxford Maths showing how Uni maths is different from school maths. Basically maths at Uni is a different subject to that at school. You really need to go back to basics to learn what a number is, and then build up from there.

Map of where people come from who submit papers to the IACR eprint archive

eprint.iacr.org/geo/index.html

Zooming way out what is interesting is that North America (185) is much less represented than Europe (406) and Asia (234). Note this is counting locations/institutes as opposed to papers.

Quantum computers vs a dog...

eprint.iacr.org/2025/1237.pdf

RWC 2026 call for papers Real World Crypto Symposium

The Call for Contributed Talks is now open for RWC 2026! And the deadline for submissions is now Oct. 10, 2025.
rwc.iacr.org/2026/contrib...

🔐 You're invited!
Join us on 18 Nov 2025 in Leuven (Belgium) for the #IEEE Milestone Award Ceremony, honoring #Rijndael, the Belgian cipher selected as #AES, protecting billions worldwide.
📅 Register (free) by 25 Oct:
🔗 rijndael-ieeemilestone.cs.ru.nl/index
#CyberSecurity #Cryptography

We've published Volume 2, Issue 2 of IACR Communications in Cryptology. This now brings us over 200 articles published in six issues. cic.iacr.org/i/2/2 It may be time to overhaul the rest of IACR publishing. 🤔

Paris-based Zama, which is developing fully homomorphic encryption tech for blockchain and AI apps, raised a $57M Series B at a $1B+ valuation (Cate Lawrence/Tech.eu)

Main Link | Techmeme Permalink

Zama, a pioneer in Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) for blockchains, just raised $57M at a $1B+ valuation, becoming the first FHE unicorn! 🚀 This funding fuels their mainnet launch & ecosystem growth, enabling confidential dapps & securing sensitive data on-chain. #FHE #Blockchain #Privacy #Zama

Paris-based cryptography startup Zama secures €49 million to bring end-to-end encryption to public blockchains

French startup Zama, an open-source cryptography company building Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solutions for blockchain, today announced a €49 million Series B funding round to…

FHE Pioneer Zama Raises $57M, Becomes First Fully Homomorphic Encryption Unicorn The team said the fundraise pushes Zama’s total capital raised to over $150 million and values it at over $1 billion, making the firm the first unicorn involved with FHE.

Zama Raises $57M, Becomes First Unicorn Involved With Fully Homomorphic Encryption The team said the fundraise pushes Zama’s total capital raised to over $150 million and values it at over $1 billion, making the firm the first... @cosmicmeta.io #Unicorn

https://u2m.io/Lz404S5Q

Paris-based cryptography startup Zama secures €49 million to bring end-to-end encryption to public blockchains

French startup Zama, an open-source cryptography company building Fully Homomorphic Encryption (FHE) solutions for blockchain, today announced a €49 million Series B funding round to…

Predictions of £40bn hit to public finances from Brexit ‘correct’ Office for Budget Responsibility’s forecast of a 4 per cent productivity loss from leaving the EU has been largely borne out, says top economist

Catastrophic cost of £40bn to the UK economy from Brexit now effectively confirmed.

Probably less crazy than going to the US

Just a reminder to join us later today at 4PM CEST for FHE.org meetup with Alexandra Henzinger, graduate student at MIT presenting "Somewhat Homomorphic Encryption from Sparse LPN".

RSVP at lu.ma/opf2g5sj

#FHE #homomorphicencryption

Chatbots — LLMs — do not know facts and are not designed to be able to accurately answer factual questions. They are designed to find and mimic patterns of words, probabilistically. When they’re “right” it’s because correct things are often written down, so those patterns are frequent. That’s all.

British decline in one story.

Any state which finds itself incapable of managing a project as basic as rolling out a 20th century tech between its biggest cities needs to ask itself some profound questions about what hope it has of managing the technologies of the 21st.

Registration for the Leuven Isogeny Days 6 is now open!
📅 10–12 Sept 2025 @ KU Leuven
Morning: research talks
Afternoon: brainstorming sessions
More info: www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/projec...
#isogeny #isocrypt #erc #postquantum

Fitting all (well, most) of COSIC into one picture? Not easy, but we did it!
Curious about our research in #cryptography and #security?
Check out our work: www.esat.kuleuven.be/cosic/
#choosecosic #COSIC #KULeuven

*Swipes right*

The Guardian launches Secure Messaging, a world-first from a media organisation, in collaboration with the University of Cambridge Secure Messaging is a new innovation for confidential story-sharing and source protection, underpinning the Guardian’s commitment to investigative journalism. The Guardian has published the open sourc...

This is how you build secure systems: public source code, solid theoretical foundation, and third-party audits.

Impressive.

(Note: maybe we'll find flaws in this! And then they'll get fixed, thanks to transparency. That's also how secure systems work.)

www.theguardian.com/gnm-press-of...

Especially when combined with modern security techniques such as Zero Knowledge proofs. One can prove ones age (for example) based on a driving license without giving out any information more than you are over 18.

One hopes the UK will adopt privacy friendly versions.

Wherein even the King doesn't meet the definition of "White British" enough for the Torygraph.

Excited to do more research on the real-world security of MPC with @proofnerd.bsky.social, thanks to this grant. We plan to hire some interns for this next summer.

Congrats to all the other recipients so far, and to Zama for a smooth application process, ~1 month from announcement to notification!

"The psychiatrist earns three times what the psychiatric nurse earns. But when someone’s in crisis, who provides the hour-by-hour care? The person prescribing from an office, or the person who knows how to calm without condescension, how to approach without triggering fear?"

Dirty Work: The Return of Blue Collar ai is automating white-collar junior roles, but there are lots of blue-collar jobs out there, and many are resistance to the first wave of automation. status has to change.

Another great article from Lawrence Lundy-Bryan

stateofthefuture.substack.com/p/dirty-work...

GitHub - malb/lattice-estimator: An attempt at a new LWE estimator An attempt at a new LWE estimator. Contribute to malb/lattice-estimator development by creating an account on GitHub.

Eamonn and I received a Zama Cryptanalysis Grant to help with the lattice estimator github.com/malb/lattice.... We hope to hire interns to work on the estimator over two periods over the next 18 months.

Zama are still taking applications for this grant, see here: www.zama.ai/post/announc...

If you’re ready to challenge the state of the art of #cryptographic security, we want to hear from you. Feel free to reach out to us at grants@zama.ai.

4) Nadia Heninger @nadiaheninger.bsky.social and Miro Haller @mirohaller.bsky.social‬ (UC San Diego),

5) Sabine Oechsner @proofnerd.bsky.social‬ (VU Amsterdam) and Peter Scholl @schollster.bsky.social‬ (Aarhus University),

6) Victor Lomné (Ninja Lab)