Daniel Dia
banner
danieldia.bsky.social
Daniel Dia
@danieldia.bsky.social
27 followers 85 following 40 posts
دانيال i do math, cryptography, comms, systems programming, and formal methods. Rustacean 🦀 “Pessimism of the intellect, optimism of the will.” — Antonio Gramsci
Posts Media Videos Starter Packs
Pinned
when I was younger I used to hate programming because I thought it was tedious and messy with no clear goal or purpose behind it.

when I discovered functional programming (Haskell, F*, etc.) and Rust, I started loving it again.

I quite literally owe everything to this (somewhat) obscure paradigm!
Fair, but then also if you’re reporting on such matters, it would be kind of foolish not to know the basic vocabulary of the field. I wouldn’t be very positive about a mathematical article misdefining what a function is, for example
It would be very cool to have a .meow domain name!
Petition to send him a dictionary
Dodo should be featured on the website!
Our applied cryptography class now has a mascot, Dodo, who attends every session. Here is Dodo next to the Phoenician alphabet, which he likes.
And this was for F*, which is supported best and is stable! Can’t imagine how horrendous it is with ProVerif or Lean4.

As I am working through the source code anyway, I am documenting the library as I go. This way I’ll eliminate the headache for generations to come…
No documentation whatsoever, no tutorials (or if there are any, they are barren or straight up empty), absolutely nothing on the hax Zulip chat, all in all it has been a battle against the source code that cost me my sanity.
I am currently working on a project involving formally verifying Rust code for correctness and some other funny properties.

for that I have decided to use the “hax” tool which allows you to verify Rust code in F*, which sounds amazing, right?

It does, but working with it has been absolute headache
Some “unusual” languages of various kinds you can look into: Prolog, Moo, Tamarin, HolyC (of course), FRACTRAN, Malbolge, binary lambda calculus, Shakespeare, etc.
Haskell for the win
🥸👍
if your functional programming language of choice doesn't shitpost on main it's not worthy of your time
I fully understand that this is logistically much more difficult to pull off in a course, but the current state of things is so bad that code from such students is unmaintainable, unreliable and frankly unreliable.

It runs on pure and concentrated thoughts and prayers.
only much later does one realize how unrealistic and frankly ridiculous some of these things are.

I feel like it is as, if not even more, important to teach them not how to write *any* code but how to write *good* code.

it is not sufficient for something to be correct or even optimal.
the way modern universities teach programming, especially C/C++ or Java (with OOP) is criminal.

it is such an absolutely lame and tasteless approach, feeding them absolute garbage disguised as an introduction to programming and/or data structures & algorithms.
“For those who come after.”
— Clair Obscur: Expedition 33
Hmm, yes, I see! Thank you for your answer
I get that we should always be cautious, but Signal’s code is open source. What backdoors are even possible, let alone visible?
Reposted by Daniel Dia
I made a Discord for my applied cryptography course and a sentence describing Grigori Perelman as the "OG tsundere" appeared within the first ten minutes
Use the bottom entrance, instead of going through the metal stairs, go behind the building where there is an open door. The external ones are closed 90% of the time, this one is open 24/7. You can use the elevator or the stairs to access the floor of your choosing.
Consider FS1 (building next to the generators after Oxy). Basically always empty, no classes, AC, electricity, etc.
after a lot of fighting with the UEFI and some very weird firmware issues, I am proud to announce that I permanently deleted Windows and installed Fedora on KDE Plasma!!!!

could not be happier right now

now both of my PCs (desktop and laptop) are running Fedora on KDE woohoo!
Reposted by Daniel Dia
On the Credibility of Deniable Communication in Court (Jacob Leiken, Sunoo Park) ia.cr/2025/1949
Reposted by Daniel Dia
I would sincerely appreciate it it if the EXTREMELY LOUD ARMED ISRAELI DRONE HOVERING RIGHT ABOVE CENTRAL BEIRUT AND AUB FOR THE PAST FOUR HOURS could kindly let me prepare for my cryptography class in peace
Reposted by Daniel Dia
Signal @signal.org · Oct 2
In 2023, Signal was the first mainstream messenger to enable post-quantum cryptography. We’re still ahead of the (elliptical) curve, implementing a new hybrid PQ ratchet ensuring Forward Secrecy & Post-Compromise Security even in a post-quantum world. signal.org/blog/spqr/
Signal Protocol and Post-Quantum Ratchets
We are excited to announce a significant advancement in the security of the Signal Protocol: the introduction of the Sparse Post Quantum Ratchet (SPQR). This new ratchet enhances the Signal Protocol’s...
signal.org
FINALLY!
Congrats Zed 🎉
Well done
zed.dev Zed @zed.dev · 20d
It's finally here. Zed is available on Windows.

Built from scratch, and rendering at 1 million pixels/millisecond.

Download it today 👇