Posts

Whenever I get my hands on a new device or machine, one of the first things I do is run openssl speed -evp <cipher> and log the throughput for 16k blocks, specifically from AES-256-GCM and ChaCha20-Poly1305 ciphers. These ciphers are widely used for VPNs and TLS, and both ciphers benefit from dedicated instructions and accelerated units present on modern CPUs: AES have dedicated instructions for performing rounds (AES-NI), while ChaCha20 benefits from SIMD with vector operations (AVX2, Neon). High throughput from modern CPUs regardless of clock speed immediately reflect this. ...

Paper: Godoy-Lorite, A. & Jones, N. S. Inference and influence of network structure using snapshot social behavior without network data. Sci. Adv. 7, eabb8762 (2021). (DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abb8762) DRAFT – Note: As I post more of my paper-reading notes into this site, most of them will not be as long or detailed as this one. This was one of our course requirements for a graduate class, and since it overlaps with my research interests and papers that I usually read, I might as well post it here. Ignore the poor math parsing for now. (01Nov2021) ...

While a lot of models with deterministic rules give rise to interesting results, for example Wolfram’s elementary cellular automata, it is also possible to produce lattice models that incorporates both some form of algorithmic rule set akin to cellular automata and stochasticity. For example, in the simplest variant of the Metropolis algorithm for solving the 2D lattice Ising model, at each iteration one picks a spin at random and flips it to favor a decrease in total energy, with a probability of flipping it regardless of not meeting the objective. In this post, we discuss a model similar to how the Ising model but with a slightly different rule set that is more relatable in the context of social systems: the classical voter model. ...

I used to have a WordPress site for an undergraduate image processing class (AP186) where we were required to write a blog post for each topic discussed in class. As with blog posts, students were free to write in the style they prefer, whether as personal as a reflection of what they learned to something as stiff as writing technical notes. I naively opted with the latter, thinking that it’s not that different than writing weekly notes. I ended up only having a full discussion for 7 out of 14 topics, and my grade for the class reflects that. ...