Viswanathan K's Thoughts

The latest season of Sherlock was terrible: the attempt to make Holmes a bit more human fell on its face; the plots were non-existent; and most important of all, there was no James Moriarty. As this article says : “Indeed, a truly great superhero comic is defined by the quality of the villains. Batman has the Joker; Superman has Lex Luthor; Spider-Man has Doc Ock; Iron Man has the Mandarin. In each of those cases (and many more), the best villains have become just as legendary as their corresponding heroes, and are almost always more interesting.” To this list, I would add: Sherlock Holmes has James Moriarty; and Harry Potter has Lord Voldemort. In any case, aren’t they like the yin and yang? Or as Moriarty puts it: “We're just alike, you and I, except you're boring. You're on the side of the angels.” Great villains don’t just liven up “banal stories about (heroes) saving the day and getting the girl while simultaneously standing for truth, justice, and the Ame...

Pretty much every security system of the digital age is rooted on a mathematical assumption , that certain classes of problems will take forever to solve (even by the fastest classical computers of the future, but not quantum computers) while at the same time any solution can be checked very quickly. A maze is a good example of such problems: depending on complexity and size, finding the path from A to B could take forever, but any solution can be checked very fast (in comparison). Here is the risk: what if that assumption is wrong ? What if a generic solution does exist to solve such problems quickly? In fact, there is a $1 million reward for anyone who can prove whether or not this assumption is correct (in mathematical lingo, this is called the “ P versus NP problem ”). In an episode of Sherlock , the modernized (and awesome) BBC version of the detective, his arch-enemy, James Moriarty says he has found a way to break into any security system anywhere in the world: “I c...