Just a quick note: we have a good idea of how many people make it through these challenges versus how many start. As long as that ratio stays remotely sane --- and as long as the whole Internet doesn't secretly turn out to be full of people who can bust out crypto attacks better than most vulnerability researchers can, which is a concern because an English professor finished these --- we'll donate $20 to PIH or Watsi for everyone who finishes.
Sean, Marcin, and I are watching the cryptopals at matasano address, so if you have questions or get stuck on one of the later problems, don't hesitate to ask; the worst that'll happen is we'll take too long to reply.
Update: We WILL get to you. We're definitely getting your emails. All of your emails. All of the emails. Give us a little bit though.
(Not necessarily responding to the parent comment directly.)
The wall between STEM and the humanities is, if not artificial, quite porous, and it's in the interest of every intelligent person to bring it down.
In general, there's been quite a bit of interest in quantitative approaches to the humanities lately. Try googling for J.E.H. Smith's proposal for a data-driven survey of world philosophy, or look into Franco Moretti's work on "distant reading" in Graphs, Maps, Trees. The latter was even profiled in the New York Times Magazine several years ago.
I also like to trot out the example of Hugh Kenner, a protege of Marshall McLuhan who was one of the 20th century's great scholars of Modernism, particularly of Joyce and Pound — and who was also a contributor to Byte.
I agree. I once asked a mechanic in my military unit a question about a car problem, it quickly turned into an hour-long lecture on thermodynamics and ambient heat. The guy is absolutely brilliant.
Thanks for opening this opportunity up to the community! :)
EDIT: Dumb question, but for scheduling purposes, what's an order-of-magnitude estimate for a block of 8 questions? Is this like a weekend-hackable thing, part-time during the week, month sabbatical, or what?
It is a freakin' blast watching people work through these. The pleasure is ours.
Regarding time commitments: it is hugely variable, mostly I think because different people put different priorities on finishing. The first set should go very quickly.
I would love it if these took a month of work, but people have gotten through them in a couple days, and there's some delay built in there because of email.
The bit about priorities is spot on. I got the first set done with Ruby in a week's spare hours. The execution speed (and some of your other posts) have me motivated to learn Go, so set two is on hold until I get comfortable with brute forcing ciphers in a statically typed language. If I were European I'd probably be done by now :)
If you already know ruby, have you considered using JRuby for this? I wouldn't besmirch anyone trying to pick up a new language, but I am curious to hear if there were any technical reasons for going with something else.
Just for the fun of it, really. I'm sure MRI or JRuby would suffice given properly considered execution strategies. Optimizations have been half the fun for me so far with MRI 1.9.
I've been having a blast, despite not putting any time into it (I'm on problem 14 or so because of work). The first two blocks of 8 shouldn't require much time (hours). The instructions so far are rather complete; you aren't left wondering (like on Project Euler sometimes) how to approach something. Most of my time has been spent code golfing.
I've been meaning to try these but have been avoiding the scheduling headache… but it just sounds like too much fun, so I finally sent you guys an email. I'll make time for it somehow. Thank you for doing this, you guys are awesome.
I sent an e-mail to you about 3 weeks ago asking if I could please try out the crypto challenge, and received no response. Should I try again or does your update refer to the fact that you're just backed up at the moment? Thanks!
EDIT: Apologies, it was only 10 days ago. So I'll assume you all are just a little backed up with the volume of requests.
Sean, Marcin, and I are watching the cryptopals at matasano address, so if you have questions or get stuck on one of the later problems, don't hesitate to ask; the worst that'll happen is we'll take too long to reply.
Update: We WILL get to you. We're definitely getting your emails. All of your emails. All of the emails. Give us a little bit though.