這幾天在新聞看到有政府官員說在某個將至的敏感日子，有人發佈發布具煽動意圖的帖文，挑起市民對中央政府、特區政府及司法機構的仇恨，及意圖煽動組織非法活動。這則新聞讀起來真諷刺。

Recently I am picking up the knowledge necessary to understand what is going on in zk-SNARK. For those who are not familiar with this term, "zk" stands for zero-knowledge, and "SNARK" stands for succinct, non-interactive, argument of knowledge. What this term means is:

• zero-knowledge: this is a way for a prover proving "something" to a verifier in such a way that the verifer will not gain any additional knowledge than before the interaction. We will elaborate the "something" in the following bullet points.

• succinct: the proof is going to be short compared to the actual knowledge, and the verifier will be able to perform the verification quite fast. To be more concrete, if the knowledge m has a length of |m|, the proof may probably be O(log |m|) or even shorter.

• non-interactive: there won't be rounds of back and forth interactions between the prover and verifier. The prover will only send a single message to the verifier.

• Argument of Knowledge: This is the "something" mentioned in the first bullet point. Notice that this is not the knowledge itself, but a proof that demonstrate that the prover indeed knows the knowledge.

At times, when I observe two individuals, one brimming with motivation, purpose, courage, and wisdom, while the other seems to embody the concept of 'average,' I find myself pondering the root of this disparity. This contemplation is not merely an intellectual exercise but a philosophical journey that holds practical implications for shaping the future generation.

This week I read about Mastery by Robert Greene and listened to Luogic TalkShow 83: How to Become a Master. It is interesting to see how they approach a similar topic from two different angles.

Just finished reading Messari Thesis Report 2023 last week. I was impressed with myself that I could finish reading a 150+ page report. Of course, I am more impressed by Messari CEO Ryan Selkis and his team ability of compiling this report in the last two months of 2022. There are a few points I think worth mentioning, summarized from the report.

In the past three months I have been working on solving Advent of Code 2021 puzzles. I probably have spent 80+ hours in solving all 25 puzzles. Yes, that is pretty much a whole two weeks of full-time work cumulatively, and that is with the help of this subreddit forum and a lot of online resources 😳.

Introduction​

In the past two months I have been reading the book The Network State. It is a thought-provoking book. It first gives an detail explanation of what's going on in the past, and what's up to the current times (and it is not pretty), and giving a few predictions on how will these trajectories goes. At the end, he is proposing an alternative explanation of building a new type of society, which could eventually lead to being a state, and how to do that.

I want to blog again. This has been in my mind for a while: I wonder instead of being hired full time by a company, can I be a freelancer getting paid based on my contribution. This idea come from the realization that if I can get fully committed to my employer endeavor, it is great. But it has been the case that after working for my previous employers for a while, I become lukewarm at work, and it is too drastic to make a change in my position. So I play safe and continue to stay in my role for too long until I no longer could tolerate it.

前陣子和友人出來吃飯聊天。我們是三年前在一個共享空間裡認識的。那時他搞了個產品，搞了一陣子，他認為做不下去，然後和一位合伙做了另一家公司幫客戶做市場推廣的專項，其後其中一名客戶就幹脆聘了他進公司的電子市場部內。

這次吃飯，各自聊過近況後，話題都不其然又回到我們之前為之死去活來的東西－創業。他認為做初創的人都是自私的，他們都在犧牲著家人的福祉來成就自己，又覺得當時這麼辛苦，都不知為了什麼？一方面所有事情都要自己一手一腳操辦，不懂寫程式，得邊學邊寫；不知怎樣找客戶，得硬著頭皮去碰不知多少的門釘；都是一個人在孤軍作戰。另外，錢也賺不多，而又總有這麼多可控及不可控的因素可使你滿盤皆落索。這樣把自己人生遊戲的難度調到地獄級，有必要嗎？後來和合伙人一起，又總是有爭拗，對整體發展方向，做事方式，對有限資源投放的看法都可能有歧見，最終不歡而散。沒合伙人有沒合伙人的煩惱，有合伙人也有合伙人的麻煩。反觀現在打工，工時穩定，收入穩定，收入是創業時的 10 倍。當時為何要如此作賤自己？