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CS & research

Results ranged from applied AI in biology to pure math and protocol correctness. Time standards and AI cryptanalysis also drew attention.

What happened

• Researchers proved the maximum nonlinearity of 8-variable balanced Boolean functions is 116, answering a long-standing open problem negatively. arXiv cs.CR (Cryptography & Security) ↗

• Fast Tendermint's published round-change rule violates Agreement with one Byzantine process. The authors propose two repairs. arXiv cs.CR (Cryptography & Security) ↗

• Schneier says he is more optimistic than Matthew Green that AI systems will outperform humans at cryptanalysis, citing cryptographers' over-engineering. Schneier on Security ↗

• Time standards bodies will vote on a proposal letting UTC drift from Earth's rotation, avoiding future leap second adjustments. The Register ↗

• Researchers used AI protein design tools to create enzymes that cleave bonds stable for centuries. Ars Technica ↗

Articles the model saw · 5

• Researchers use AI to design proteins that cut up other proteins3

  Researchers used AI protein design tools to create enzymes that cleave bonds stable for centuries.

  Ars Technica4 days agoprotein-designaibiology

  Feed excerpt

  AI design tools make proteins that break bonds that are stable for hundreds of years.

• Leap seconds face judgment day as time lords prepare to vote3

  Time standards bodies will vote on a proposal letting UTC drift from Earth's rotation, avoiding future leap second adjustments.

  The Register4 days agotimeutcleap-second

  Feed excerpt

  Proposal would let UTC drift an hour from Earth's rotation, sparing computer systems awkward adjustments for centuries

• The Future of AI Cryptanalysis3

  Schneier argues he is more optimistic than Matthew Green about AI systems outperforming humans at cryptanalysis, citing cryptographers' over-engineering.

  Schneier on Security4 days agocryptographyaicryptanalysis

  Feed excerpt

  Matthew Green has been writing a rather pessimistic series of posts about the potential for AI systems to vastly outperform humans in cryptanalysis of both symmetric and public-key ciphers. I am more optimistic than he is. That is, I have stronger faith in the over-engineering cryptographers tend to do. I am trying to write this up in more detail.

• Revisiting Fast Tendermint: An Agreement Violation and Two Repairs3

  Researchers show Fast Tendermint's published round-change rule violates Agreement with one Byzantine process and propose two repairs.

  arXiv cs.CR (Cryptography & Security)5 days agoconsensusblockchainbyzantine

  Feed excerpt

  arXiv:2610.16442v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Fast Tendermint reduces Tendermint's good-case latency to two communication steps for n>=5f+1. We show that its published round-change rule violates Agreement: one Byzantine process suffices for every f>=1, and for f>=2 two Byzantine processes suffice without double signing. The failure occurs when a process advances past a round without recording the value that may have been decided there. The Quint specification that accompanies the protocol does not allow this kind of round skipping and is not affected; the violation lies in the published pseudocode. We present two repairs. Walk requires a process to leave each round on a quorum of that round's precommits and to precommit before leaving. It keeps the recorded valid state and removes the wait after a precommit quorum. Justify carries the evidence needed to accept a proposal in the proposal itself, removing both the recorded valid state and the proposer's synchronization wait. Both satisfy Agreement and Validity under asynchrony and Termination under the partially synchronous gossip model of Tendermint and Fast Tendermint. Both retain proposal timeouts. The main text presents the e…

• The Maximum Nonlinearity of 8-variable Balanced Boolean Functions is 1163

  Researchers prove the maximum nonlinearity of 8-variable balanced Boolean functions is 116, answering a long-standing open problem negatively.

  arXiv cs.CR (Cryptography & Security)5 days agoboolean-functionsmathcryptography

  Feed excerpt

  arXiv:2610.17897v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Does there exist an 8-variable balanced Boolean function with nonlinearity 118? This is a famous and long-standing open problem in Boolean functions. In this paper, we give a negative answer to this open problem, and prove that the maximum nonlinearity of balanced Boolean functions in 8 variables is 116, establishing the 8-variable instance of Dobbertin's conjectured recursion for the minimum Walsh peak of balanced functions. Equivalently, the covering radius of the Reed--Muller code RM(1,8) in 0-resilient Boolean functions is 116. We deduce the result by obtaining a quadratic form of polar rank 6, and reducing the problem to the existence of a 6-variable Boolean function with nonlinearity greater than 26 whose Hamming distance to a bent function is between 4 and 6.