Local symmetry by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Appears to be a synonym for: gauge symmetry.
A local symmetry is a transformation that you apply a different transformation for each point, instead of a single transformation for every point.
TODO what's the point of a local symmetry?
Bibliography:
RSA vs Diffie-Hellman by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
As its name indicates, Diffie-Hellman key exchange is a key exchange algorithm. TODO verify: this means that in order to transmit a message, both parties must first send data to one another to reach a shared secret key. For RSA on the other hand, you can just take the public key of the other party and send encrypted data to them, the receiver does not need to send you any data at any point.
Based on the fact that we don't have a P algorithm for the discrete logarithm of the cyclic group as of 2020, but we do have an efficient algorithm for modular exponentiation. But nor do we have proof that one does not exist! Living on the edge as usual for public-key cryptography.
Diffie-Hellman vs ECDH by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
ECDH has smaller keys. youtu.be/gAtBM06xwaw?t=634 mentions some interesting downsides:
GNU Privacy Guard by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Generate public private key, test encrypt and test decrypt:
# Create your pubkey.
gpg --gen-key
gpg --armor --output pubkey.gpg --export <myemail>

# Encrypt using someone's pubkey.
gpg --import pubkey2.gpg
echo 'hello world' > hello.txt
gpg --output hello.txt.gpg --encrypt --recipient <other-email> hello.txt

# Double check it is not plaintext in the encrypted message.
grep hello hello.txt.gpg

# Decrypt.
gpg --output hello.decrypt.txt --decrypt --recipient <myemail> hello.txt.gpg
diff -u hello.decrypt.txt hello.txt
Onion service by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
This is a way to host a server that actually hide the IP of the server from the client, just like Tor hides the IP of the client from the server. Amazing tecnology!
This is why it enables hosting illegal things like the Silk Road: law enforcement is not able find where the server is hosted, and take it down or identify the owner.
In the context of cryptography, authentication means "ensuring that the message you got comes from who you think it did".
Authentication is one of the hardest parts of cryptography, because the only truly secure way to do it is by driving to the other party yourself to establish a pre-shared key so you can do message authentication code. Or to share your public key with them if you are satisfied with the safety of post-quantum cryptography.
Hash function by Ciro Santilli 37 Updated 2025-07-16
Applications:

Pinned article: Introduction to the OurBigBook Project

Welcome to the OurBigBook Project! Our goal is to create the perfect publishing platform for STEM subjects, and get university-level students to write the best free STEM tutorials ever.
Everyone is welcome to create an account and play with the site: ourbigbook.com/go/register. We belive that students themselves can write amazing tutorials, but teachers are welcome too. You can write about anything you want, it doesn't have to be STEM or even educational. Silly test content is very welcome and you won't be penalized in any way. Just keep it legal!
We have two killer features:
  1. topics: topics group articles by different users with the same title, e.g. here is the topic for the "Fundamental Theorem of Calculus" ourbigbook.com/go/topic/fundamental-theorem-of-calculus
    Articles of different users are sorted by upvote within each article page. This feature is a bit like:
    • a Wikipedia where each user can have their own version of each article
    • a Q&A website like Stack Overflow, where multiple people can give their views on a given topic, and the best ones are sorted by upvote. Except you don't need to wait for someone to ask first, and any topic goes, no matter how narrow or broad
    This feature makes it possible for readers to find better explanations of any topic created by other writers. And it allows writers to create an explanation in a place that readers might actually find it.
    Figure 1.
    Screenshot of the "Derivative" topic page
    . View it live at: ourbigbook.com/go/topic/derivative
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    This way you can be sure that even if OurBigBook.com were to go down one day (which we have no plans to do as it is quite cheap to host!), your content will still be perfectly readable as a static site.
    Figure 5. . You can also edit articles on the Web editor without installing anything locally.
    Video 3.
    Edit locally and publish demo
    . Source. This shows editing OurBigBook Markup and publishing it using the Visual Studio Code extension.
  3. https://raw.githubusercontent.com/ourbigbook/ourbigbook-media/master/feature/x/hilbert-space-arrow.png
  4. Infinitely deep tables of contents:
    Figure 6.
    Dynamic article tree with infinitely deep table of contents
    .
    Descendant pages can also show up as toplevel e.g.: ourbigbook.com/cirosantilli/chordate-subclade
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