Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 4hI enjoyed reading this interview with Yarri Kamara on her work in translation. She explains how important it is to know where the characters are coming from and how much personal experience and context shape a translation. 100
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 08/09/2026This is a great example of how STEM researchers can impact the world beyond just solving industry and military problems. 073
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 08/09/2026Fantastic thread on math’s over-indexing on problem solving but applies to theoretical CS and crypto as well (in fact I think TCS and crypto are worse than math in this regard). Took me a few years after my PhD to converge to this viewpoint as well but I always thought I was just odd 071
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 03/09/2026This is very kind Shriram, thank you. If this resonates at all with anyone, then this recent paper on trust infrastructures for grass roots organizing may be of interest: petsymposium.org/popets/2026/... It was led by Leah Rosenbloom (namisa.art/index.html) 063
Reposted by Seny KamaraThe Africa I Know® @theafricaiknow.bsky.social · 12/08/2026Africa’s first world champion of international draughts was a Senegalese man who never went to school. He died 48 years ago this month. His name deserves the memory. 121
Reposted by Seny KamaraLoïc Duthoit @loic-dht.bsky.social · 03/08/2026Tous les épisodes de la série de @franceculture.fr dédiée à Sophie Germain sont disponibles en podcasts sur l'application ou le site de @radiofrance.frradiofrance.frAvoir raison avec... Sophie Germain : un podcast à écouter en ligneAu sortir de la Révolution, alors que la recherche scientifique s’institutionnalise en France, la mathématicienne Sophie Germain émerge presque miraculeusement. Derrière le mythe de l’enfant autodidac... 0219
Reposted by Seny KamaraMurat (Distributolog) @muratdemirbas.bsky.social · 02/08/2026[new blog post] Towards Designing an Execution Control System with Metastability Resilience muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/08/towa...muratbuffalo.blogspot.com 0112
Reposted by Seny KamaraMatthew Green @matthewdgreen.bsky.social · 29/07/2026I wrote up a short blog post giving my thoughts on the new Anthropic cryptanalysis results against HAWK and AES. blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2026/07/29/s...blog.cryptographyengineering.comSome notes about Anthropic’s new resultsYesterday Anthropic published two new cryptanalysis results, both outputs of Claude Mythos, their (still) unreleased advanced model. The first of these results attacks a signature scheme called HAW… 47630
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 02/08/2026Diane Martel was a pioneering hip hop director whose work captured what our lives looked liked and shaped NY’s visual identity. Her work impacted me so I wanted to write about it. open.substack.com/pub/senykama...open.substack.comDiane Martel and the Martel AestheticLast September I learned that Diane Martel had passed away. 020
Reposted by Seny KamaraNPR @npr.org · 02/08/2026NPR asked an aspiring scientist in Philadelphia to interview an adult who is living his dream about his career in conservation science.n.prWe asked a first grader to interview his hero: A bird scientistNPR asked an aspiring scientist in Philadelphia to interview an adult who is living his dream about his career in conservation science. 4546102
Reposted by Seny KamaraClément Canonne @ccanonne.github.io · 01/08/2026"We're all worried," as what it means to do research (in my field, Theoretical CS) seems to be shifting, and shifting fast. What to do? Senior researchers must lead by example, knowing that not everything will pan out. What I'm suggesting below may not work everywhere, but here's my own advice: 1/ 620351
Reposted by Seny KamaraJP Aumasson @aumasson.jp · 31/07/2026www.bfswa.blog/p/llms-wont-...bfswa.blogLLMs won't break symmetric cryptoAnd Anthropic's cryptanalysis work is great 135
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 31/07/2026I visited Sorelle at Haverford a few years ago to give a talk. Beautiful campus and great students. 030
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 27/07/2026This is the second note in my series on power. It classifies power systems by what their participants can know and defines the power span, which is the set of systems an agent can generate by exercising its powers: www.senykamara.com/power/notes/...senykamara.comSeny Kamara | Notes on Power #2: Observations and Power Spans 051
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 27/07/2026Latex on Substack is just too painful, so I'm going to host my notes on power on my homepage. This is a more detailed version of #1: www.senykamara.com/power/notes/...senykamara.comSeny Kamara | Notes on Power #1: Power Systems 050
Reposted by Seny KamaraMurat (Distributolog) @muratdemirbas.bsky.social · 24/07/2026new blog post] Aurora DSQL: Scalable, Multi-Region OLTP muratbuffalo.blogspot.com/2026/07/auro...muratbuffalo.blogspot.comAurora DSQL: Scalable, Multi-Region OLTPThe Aurora DSQL paper finally dropped . Reading it yesterday was an interesting experience, because I spent two years (2022-23) working with... 0133
Reposted by Seny KamaraSophie Huiberts @sophie.huiberts.me · 22/07/2026I have been radicalized against my own worksophie.huiberts.meSmoothed Analysis is Bullshit* 3415
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 20/07/2026This is the first of my formal posts on power, where I define what I mean by a power system and apply it to a couple of examples. I’ll keep the formal ones labeled as “Notes on Power” in case you want to skip them and just read the more philosophical ones.open.substack.comNotes on Power #1: Power SystemsIn my last post, I described a situation that highlighted the difference between acting inside a system and controlling it. 040
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 05/07/2026I really enjoyed reading this essay from a cryptographer trying to make sense of their work and life experiences. Raises interesting questions, including whether doing crypto erodes your trust in people. open.substack.com/pub/vishady/...open.substack.comFully HumanReflections on trust and power, and how that has played into my experience as a cryptographer. 150
Reposted by Seny KamaraSophie Huiberts @sophie.huiberts.me · 04/07/2026Today I redesigned my website + started a blog :) sophie.huiberts.me/blog/2026/ha... 3405
Reposted by Seny KamaraMarco Z @ocramz.bsky.social · 04/07/2026We've opensourced a simulation-based distributed property testing framework for #rustlang (based on proptest) Use case : finding minimal counterexamples to "does it converge within T rounds?" WIP: checking traces of black-box tools like Jepsen . Open to feedback! github.com/unfoldml/pro...github.comGitHub - unfoldml/propsim: Property-based testing for distributed protocolsProperty-based testing for distributed protocols . Contribute to unfoldml/propsim development by creating an account on GitHub. 1264
Reposted by Seny Kamaradanah boyd @zephoria.bsky.social · 02/07/2026Cynthia Dwork & other privacy experts show why Trump Admin’s politically motivated decision to prevent the Census Bureau from using the best methods to protect confidentiality will end up with worse quality data, less publicly available data, and/or a privacy breach. scottaaronson.blog?p=9902scottaaronson.blogAn American privacy emergency: Guest post from Cynthia Dwork et al.Scott’s foreword: Cynthia Dwork is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science at Harvard, and a pioneer in the fields of differential privacy and algorithmic fairness. On my recent travels to… 315661
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 02/07/2026This is a deeply personal and touching essay from one of my colleagues at MongoDB 030
Reposted by Seny KamaraLachlan Kermode @ohrg.org · 28/06/2026The discussion of what makes for 'real' work here really effectively shadows an academic debate going on in the Marxology world currently about Alfred Sohn-Rethel's (mid-century Marxist) diagnosis of capital as a "real abstraction". 101
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 27/06/2026This is a fantastic essay from @jessica.bsky.social about what it means to do real work/research open.substack.com/pub/letterst...open.substack.comon doing Real worka working theory 2111
Reposted by Seny Kamarasorelle @friedler.net · 26/06/2026Are you curious about the environmental impact of AI? Install the AI Impact Tracker to estimate the environmental footprint of your ChatGPT usage, including energy, water, and CO2. chromewebstore.google.com/detail/ai-im... #FAccT2026chromewebstore.google.com 2199
Reposted by Seny KamaraPascal Junod @cryptopathe.me · 24/06/2026Genuine question for academic cryptographers: does it still make sense to work on non-PQ-secure primitives? 3101
Reposted by Seny KamaraHimanshu @h-vash.bsky.social · 23/06/2026Cryptography rearranges power. So let's start from the basics: what is power? ⬇️ 041
Reposted by Seny KamaraSuresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 22/06/2026Note that @reniebird.bsky.social also runs the (already very) successful CNTR summer school on AI policy: don't miss out on the extensive expertise you're getting from this group! 021
Reposted by Seny KamaraSuresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 22/06/2026This is very concerning 183
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 23/06/2026I've been thinking about power a lot, both because it underlies a lot of my work and because so many of the most consequential debates right now are fundamentally about it. This is the first post of a series where I try to make sense of it. open.substack.com/pub/senykama...open.substack.comWhat is Power?And can we reason about it precisely? 2115
Reposted by Seny KamaraAlondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 20/06/2026"Right now, in some underfunded lab, a scientist is chasing a question that sounds pointless, and a team somewhere else is a decade into a problem that may take another decade to crack... If we stop making that bet, we will pay for it in cures no one will know to miss." 17233
Reposted by Seny KamaraMayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @mayor.nyc.gov · 19/06/2026On Juneteenth, we honor the generations of Black New Yorkers whose struggle and determination brought us closer to justice. At Foley Square, Lorenzo Pace's sculpture stands as a powerful tribute to that legacy.youtu.beTriumph of the Human SpiritYouTube video by NYC Mayor's Office 213162656
Reposted by Seny KamaraThe Africa I Know® @theafricaiknow.bsky.social · 18/06/2026In the centre of Kinshasa, the capital of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, stands a statue of Patrice Lumumba. He was thirty-five when he became the first prime minister of an independent Congo, in June 1960. 121
Reposted by Seny KamaraSuresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 13/06/2026Anthropic just shut access to Fable & Mythos, their most powerful models. I wrote up what happened + the policy and psychodrama behind it (with all the links & receipts) here — the thread below is the TL;DR 🧵 blog.geomblog.org/2026/06/the-...blog.geomblog.orgThe "fable" of Anthropic and the USGNews moves fast. 12 hours ago I was enjoying the demolition that the US put on Paraguay when I heard that Anthropic had shut down access to ... 210435
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 13/06/2026This is very kind, and I only saw it six days after it was posted. When I write things down or give non-research talks, it feels like shouting into the void. I have no idea if anyone hears it, cares or values any of it. So comments like this are genuinely surprising and inspiring 0193
Seny Kamara @senykamara.com · 08/06/2026I don’t know why we don’t talk about this more. But I’m glad it resonated; and good luck with the final stretch 180
Reposted by Seny KamaraHimanshu @h-vash.bsky.social · 03/06/2026Just read through this blogpost "Contextualising Cryptography" by @senykamara.com. It hits some of the issues I have been facing in choosing the right problems for my research, even before starting my phd (advisor reveal post coming up soon). senykamara.substack.com/p/contextual...senykamara.substack.comContextualizing CryptographyWhat Is Cryptography For? 1123
Reposted by Seny KamaraSuresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 01/06/2026Agents prioritize task completion rather than whether they should act. This is a consequence of how they are trained. My student @victorojewale.bsky.social has been investigating this and just wrote a (prize winning) paper arguing why (and how) we need a notion of "informed abstention". Link below. 1124
Reposted by Seny KamaraSherrilyn Ifill @sifill.bsky.social · 05/05/2026WATCH: Last night I had the chance to sit down for an extended conversation with Jon Stewart to talk about the state of voting rights & democracy in this country. Class was very much in session! Thank you @thedailyshow youtu.be/SCse1FFEKLMyoutu.beSherrilyn Ifill - What Happened to the Voting Rights Act? | The Daily ShowYouTube video by The Daily Show 28935271
Reposted by Seny KamaraSimons Institute for the Theory of Computing @simonsinstitute.bsky.social · 30/04/2026Join us! simons.berkeley.edu/workshops/go... 184
Reposted by Seny KamaraShriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 17/04/2026Universities are amazing places. I can walk a few blocks from my office and spend the morning hearing @biella.bsky.social and @steveklabnik.com back-to-back at a humanities workshop about technology at a humanities workshop about technology. humanities.brown.edu/events/AILab... 2301
Reposted by Seny KamaraAlondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 15/04/2026“Silicon Valley would not exist without [taxpayer-] funded research.” www.thenation.com/article/soci...thenation.comHow Silicon Valley Is Turning Scientists Into Exploited Gig WorkersTech elites are enriching themselves by plundering STEM institutions—and offering researchers scraps. 214757
Reposted by Seny KamaraSuresh Venkatasubramanian @geomblog.bsky.social · 15/04/2026Michael Rabin just died. His contributions to theoretical CS are absolutely incredible (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael...). The Miller-Rabin primality test was the best method I knew for primality testing all the way upto 2002 when Agrawal, Kayal, and Saxena finally proved that PRIMES is in P.en.wikipedia.orgMichael O. Rabin - Wikipedia 0102
Reposted by Seny KamaraA. Jesse Jiryu Davis @emptysqua.re · 08/04/2026Yay, SIGMOD just published the paper I wrote with @muratdemirbas.bsky.social and Lingzhi Deng, it's about strengthening Raft's consistency and time-to-recovery lnkd.in/ef6qUJzwemptysqua.reLeaseGuard: Raft Leases Done Right!A new Raft enhancement for fast, consistent reads. 2264
Reposted by Seny KamaraShriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 06/04/2026My department is looking to hire a professor of practice in CS, with a focus on AI. Job posting below. If you have questions I'll do my best to answer them, else find someone who can! We are in Providence, easy commute access from Boston. jobs.chronicle.com/job/37970844...jobs.chronicle.comProfessor of the Practice in Computer Science with a Focus on Artificial Intelligence - Providence, Rhode Island job with Computer Science | 37970844The Department of Computer Science at Brown University is seeking applicants for a Professor of the Practice position at the assistant, associate, ... 1129
Reposted by Seny KamaraJames Ball @jamesrball.com · 03/04/2026I tend to get dogpiled every time I say this but: as someone *who likes bluesky and benefits from being here* we have a problem. The network is shrinking, not growing. It's shrinking a lot: only about 1.1m people a day even like a post. This time last year it was 1.6m. 8563771547
Reposted by Seny KamaraShriram Krishnamurthi @shriram.bsky.social · 03/04/2026Strongly recommend people try this. It's not only instructive, it's also fun. 1132
Reposted by Seny KamaraAlondra Nelson @alondra.bsky.social · 01/04/2026While Washington wages war on science, NASA just sent humans to the Moon's vicinity for the first time since 1972. Bravo #TeamNASA — proof that public science, when it's funded and trusted, still does extraordinary things. 3785180
Reposted by Seny KamaraA. Jesse Jiryu Davis @emptysqua.re · 01/04/2026What's an AI time horizon, how is it measured, and how fast is it growing? emptysqua.re/blog/review-...emptysqua.reReview: Measuring AI Ability to Complete Long Software TasksWhat we talk about when we talk about time horizon. 011