Blog/October 2019/Oct 18th
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We celebrated the yom-ṭov of “sukkoth” this week, starting Sunday night. This time we were able to get some guests for the yom-ṭov and for the intermediate days, which was very nice. The menu for the holiday meal included our traditional stuffed-vegetables and noodles, among many other things. Nobody left the sukkah hungry!
During the week, neither of us worked. One day we went across the country to visit Sarah and Yarin, and had a “brunch” with them. We visited with friends other days. Daniela and Jeremy and the twins also seem to have had a good time. All in all, we all had a quite pleasant holiday week, even though there was thunder and lightning and rain here some days.
Intriguing tidbits:
- Someday soon your refrigerator may work by twisting wires instead of expanding coolant gas.
- Apple’s “Safari” web-browser is or will soon be sharing data with Tencent, the Chinese conglomerate. Happy to use “Firefox” instead…
- A theoretical cryptographic attack using a “quantum computer” with 20 million qubits. Don’t get too worried just yet: the most we’ve been able to put together is something like 2000 qubits if you believe D-Wave’s propaganda.
- Why your long password might not be as secure as you think it is.
I did do some noodling around with hardening 8th’s cryptographic primitives, in particular working on improving the randomness of the random number generators and making them less dependent on the operating-system’s “entropy source”. There’s some interesting takeaways there, if you’re into that sort of thing.
There’s only a couple more days of sukkoth and then we’ll have yet another holiday: “shemini ʿaṣereth”, which has the distinct disadvantage of sharing space with the made-up “holiday” of “simḥat torah”. Alas, we Jews apparently can’t enjoy a holiday which doesn’t have something specific we need to do.
Though we had rain at the beginning of the holiday, and it was very hot, the weather has moderated and cooled in the meantime. The downward trend in temperatures is supposed to continue through the upcoming week, even descending below seasonal averages by mid-week. I, for one, am looking forward to that!
This shabbat the three of us will hopefully enjoy:
homemade pitot,
tomato-onion soup,
“Aunt Nancy’s baked chicken”,
roasted potatoes and onions,
veggie cholent,
rice,
various salatim,
and honey cake.
Until next time,
shabbat shalom and ḥag sameaḥ!
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