Topic · across the network

Cryptography

Secrets kept by mathematics rather than by trust.

24: briefs
3: subjects
10:31: average
252 min: in total

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science.briefs Science

All 5 in science →

10:30

Alan Turing

Turing didn’t invent the computer — he proved what computation *is*, and where it must stop.

9:44

Shor’s algorithm is a quantum algorithm for integer factorisation, developed by Peter Shor in 1994. It runs in polynomial time in log N and places factorisation in BQP. It is asymptotically faster than the general number field sieve.

13:00

Colossus computer

Tommy Flowers built Colossus on a bet that thousands of valves could run reliably where convention said hundreds was the limit. It worked, breaking Lorenz traffic through the war's final years — then vanished into thirty years of secrecy.

13:00

P versus NP problem

Stephen Cook's 1971 paper didn't solve P versus NP — it proved one problem could stand for all of them, which is why the question cryptography rests on is still open.

13:00

Decipherment of ancient Egyptian scripts

Thomas Young worked out that Egyptian cartouches spelled foreign kings' names phonetically; Jean-François Champollion needed one more comparison, in September 1822, to see that the same was true of native Egyptian rulers all along.

technology.briefs Technology

All 17 in technology →

9:49

Blockchain

Satoshi Nakamoto

Blockchain is the public, distributed ledger Nakamoto built for bitcoin in 2008–2009. It uses cryptographic hashing, proof-of-work, and difficulty adjustment to prevent double-spending without central control. It works—but at high energy cost, low throughput, and contested governance.

9:28

Quantum computing

Quantum computing is not a faster computer—it’s a different kind of calculator, built for problems classical machines were never meant to solve.

9:55

Quantum network

Quantum networks are not a new internet — they’re a fragile, meter-scale lab technique pretending to be infrastructure.

10:28

Transport Layer Security

TLS does not make connections secure—it makes insecurity visible, one failed handshake at a time.

8:43

Advanced Encryption Standard

Joan Daemen and Vincent Rijmen · 1998

AES is a narrow, standardised, symmetric cipher mandated by NIST in 2001. It works reliably only when implemented correctly. It solves no problems beyond confidentiality of bulk data under fixed parameters. It demands careful key handling and side-channel mitigation — which it does not provide.