CC's blog

Review: Judgment at Tokyo

Thu, 15 Oct 2026 12:11:23 +0800

Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia

Author: Gary J. Bass
Publisher: Vintage
Published: 2023-10-17
ISBN-13: 9781101947111

東京大審：二戰審判與現代亞洲的誕生

Author: 蓋瑞．巴斯
Publisher: 讀書共和國╱衛城出版
Published: 2026-07-01
ISBN-13: 9786267835449

I read the Chinese translation published by Acropolis (衛城出版).

How do you get justice out of a multinational war, with so much violence in it?

By answering violence with more violence and punishing the perpetrators?

My AI Experience, August 2026

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 23:47:40 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

I’ve deliberately kept some distance from AI — not using the most powerful models or the latest tech. My expectation is that it won’t be long before all of this becomes like the “basic attack magic” in Frieren: universal, unremarkable, everyday.

Reading Notes: Babel

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 16:53:45 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

London, 1836. The entire city runs on a kind of silver-working magic. Silver bars can produce all sorts of effects — making carriages run faster, helping fishing boats catch more fish, or even serving as medicine. Each bar has two different languages engraved on its two faces, and the bar manifests the untranslatable gap between them.

Is Nolan a Project Management Genius?

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 17:02:14 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

Nolan’s The Odyssey cost $250M, was originally scheduled for 100 days of shooting, and wrapped in 91. After release, it crossed $250M at the global box office within three days — already profitable.

Is Night City Really a Dystopia?

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 19:51:20 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

I recently played Cyberpunk 2077 on a PS4, thanks to Chinyu for lending me the disc. Since I’d already watched someone play through the main storyline on YouTube years ago, this time I focused entirely on side quests.

Reading Notes: Moral Economics

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:23:08 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

Moral Economics: An Encyclopedia of Controversial Issues, by a Nobel Laureate Who Sold Kidneys

I recently picked up a hot-off-the-press copy of Moral Economics at the Songshan Cultural and Creative Park Eslite. The author is Alvin Roth, winner of the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics — I’ll call him Al for short. He’s best known for designing the kidney matching mechanism that pairs dialysis patients with willing donors.

Okinawa Trip Prep Notes

Sun, 21 Jun 2026 23:51:02 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

Naha City, Okinawa Main Island

Brief history

Ryukyu Kingdom period (1429–1879)

Okinawa’s main island, home to Naha, was once the capital of the independent “Ryukyu Kingdom” — Shuri Castle sits within present-day Naha City. The Ryukyu Kingdom flourished through entrepôt trade between China (Ming/Qing), Japan, and Southeast Asia. Culturally it was deeply influenced by China (via the tributary system), while retaining its own language and religion (Utaki worship). Notable sites: Shuri Castle, Tamaudun, Shikinaen Garden.

The Rat Poison Paradox

Tue, 05 May 2026 08:56:40 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

Rats have been a hot topic in Taipei recently. Residents report seeing more rats than before.

Lean and the Real Real Numbers

Sun, 19 Apr 2026 23:37:43 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

Economics textbook: Let’s introduce a new concept, the “supremum norm” of a matrix. Imagine a “real-valued” matrix — its “supremum norm” is the largest ¹ value among its entries. For example, the supremum norm of the matrix $\begin{bmatrix}1 & 3 \\ 2 & 4\end{bmatrix}$ is 4.

Writing Arrow's Impossibility Theorem in Lean

Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:45:15 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

Last time I talked about learning to write math proofs in the Lean 4 language.

2025 Book review

Sat, 28 Feb 2026 18:23:14 +0800

After much procrastination I finally got time to finalize my 2025 book review. I’m fortunate to have had a year to read more books than I could have imagined.

As my context window fills up, much memory faded and doing the 2024 style of review, which comments on all books, no longer makes sense. I’ll just list most of them and comment on just some.

What I realized is that what stays in my mind is not how useful the knowledge the book offered but how charismatic and entertaining the book is.

Lean Language Experience

Wed, 18 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

I was obsessed with math proving recently.

Review: Project Hail Mary

Fri, 21 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

The movie is coming out in 2026.

Review: Technology and the Rise of Great Powers

Mon, 10 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

International relations experts often think that great powers become great because they develop certain key technologies that strengthen national power. Perhaps productivity increases, or military capabilities become formidable, allowing expansion everywhere.

Review: Triumph of the City

Wed, 05 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

“Triumph of the City” is a great book. I’ve always wanted to read something about cities, and this book was very satisfying. The author is Edward Glaeser, one of the advisors of Jheng, Shao-Yu, who is a cool scholar I’ve been following.

Review: Lost Colony by Tonio Andrade

Tue, 07 Oct 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

I finished reading Tonio Andrade’s [Lost Colony: The Untold Story of China’s First Great Victory over the West]. The original was published in 2011, with the Chinese edition republished in 2017. Many Dutch names in it appear closer to colloquial pronunciations.

Review: The Bomber Mafia

Mon, 08 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

The Bomber Mafia

Author: Malcolm Gladwell
Publisher: Penguin UK
Published: 2021-04-27
ISBN-13: 9780141998381

失控的轟炸：人道與人性的交戰，造就二戰最漫長的一夜（含21幅珍貴歷史圖片）

Author: 麥爾坎．葛拉威爾
Publisher: 時報文化出版
Published: 2022-04-22
ISBN-13: 9786263351301

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

I first spotted this book in a bookstore a long time ago, meant to read it but never did, and eventually borrowed it from the library.

Data Derivatives

Mon, 18 Aug 2025 16:19:12 +0800

I’m proposing to name the class of applications like “age > 18” proofs as “Derivatives.”

Examples

ID Derivatives are claims derived from your ID. An “age > 18” proof is a claim about your age derived from an age attribute of your digitally issued identity.

Portfolio Derivatives are claims derived from your financial assets. A credit score about your financial health can be derived from multiple sources of assets you own – an IRS-signed tax statement, a bank balance from a TLS-secured webpage, and a merkle proof of your crypto balance. ¹

My First Vibe Coding Experience

Tue, 12 Aug 2025 16:04:05 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

I used to experience that kind of development workflow where “the model writes some code, the developer takes a look, and decides whether to accept it.”

Sybil Advantage in Quadratic Voting

Mon, 16 Jun 2025 09:10:37 +0800

Quick Quadratic Voting Recap

Quadratic Voting is a voting mechanism that allows voters to express different level of support by spending “voice credits” (VC) at an increasing cost. The key feature is that casting $X$ votes costs $X^2$ voice credits. For example, 1 vote costs 1 VC, 2 votes costs 4, and 3 votes costs 9.

This quadratic cost structure creates a crucial trade-off: voters can express strong preferences on issues they care deeply about, but at a rapidly increasing price.

Review: Why Japanese trains are so punctual?

Thu, 22 May 2025 20:10:55 +0800

Japanese / zh-TW

I’ve been wanting to read a book about trains. Why? Because while trains use essentially the same technology worldwide, the user experience varies dramatically from country to country. That difference isn’t technical—it’s cultural. The book 定刻発車―日本の鉄道はなぜ世界で最も正確なのか？ (“Depart on Time: Why Japanese Railways Are the World’s Most Punctual”) explores the historical and cultural factors behind Japan’s railway system.

Here are some of my favorite takeaways:

The Origins of Punctuality

One of the book’s most surprising insights is that Japan’s famed train punctuality didn’t start with trains. It goes all the way back to the Edo period, 400 years ago, when people coordinated daily life without clocks. Monks rang temple bells on time, guards followed strict shift rotations, and travelers gathered at prearranged hours. Punctuality was already a deeply embedded cultural norm—long before timetables existed.

What Do We Really Want From Open Source AI?

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 17:04:18 +0800

Recently, Deepseek’s release under an MIT license sparked a global conversation: Is it truly open source, or just another example of “open-washing”? The practice of marketing a product as open when crucial parts remain closed is unfortunately common, fueling skepticism among developers. Take OpenAI, which, despite its name, is not fully “open,” or Meta’s LLaMA, whose license prohibits commercial use—prompting many to question its true openness.

These examples highlight a bigger question: What qualifies as open source in the AI era? The newly proposed OSI AI definition sets a checklist: release model weights, training source code, and training parameters. Yet it stops short of mandating publication of training data, citing privacy and security concerns—a stance reflecting the OSI’s trademark pragmatism. Still, is that enough? Are we content with partial transparency?

2024 in Books: Shaping Technology, Society, and Progress

Mon, 13 Jan 2025 18:44:47 +0800

We thank Yahsin Huang for the review and helpful feedback

It’s that time again. This post is a bit overdue - my review of the books I read in 2024.

Some of these reviews are quick braindumps from memory, while others come from notes I took after reading, translated to English with GPT’s help. I’ve used GPT to polish the writing flow, though it can’t fix my messy thoughts. As I wrote more, I cared less about perfection. Consider this post as both a GPT-assisted output and a prompt for your own inspiration. While I’ve made my best effort to be accurate, there may be factual mistakes. I welcome feedback and discussions in DM, and I’ll do my best to respond, though I can’t guarantee timely replies.

Farewell PSE

Wed, 08 Jan 2025 16:36:13 +0800

December 31, 2024 marks my last day in Privacy and Scaling Explorations, a team supported by the Ethereum Foundation.

My journey with the Ethereum Foundation began in late 2017. As a former local community co-organizer, I was fortunate to be trusted by the smartest and most inspiring people in the ecosystem. Throughout these seven years, I had the chance to contribute to early prototypes of Ethereum Proof of Stake, and later zero knowledge proofs and many exciting cryptography applications.

Review: Growth: A Reckoning

Fri, 13 Sep 2024 00:09:10 +0800

Original post in Chinese. This post is machine translated and manually revised.

Thanks to Yahsin Huang and Anton Cheng for review and feedback.

A Year in Books: Exploring Economics, History, and Identity

Wed, 24 Jan 2024 00:50:57 +0800

We thank Yahsin Huang for the review and helpful feedback

I used to think that reading wasn’t my thing, but it turns out I read more books than I ever imagined I could.

I regret not writing down these reviews sooner. Most of the books were lent out to friends, so I have to rely on my memory here. Please take my recollections with a grain of salt, as they may not be entirely accurate.

Schwartz-Zippel Note

Tue, 17 Oct 2023 21:15:02 +0800

Schwartz-Zippel Lemma is frequently used in Snark interactive proofs.

For a non-zero, $m$-variate polynomial $P: \mathbb{F}^m \to \mathbb{F}$ with degree $d$, defined on a finite field $\mathbb{F}$, the lemma states

$$ \Pr_{X \in \mathbb{F}^m}{[P(X) = 0]} \le \frac{d}{|\mathbb{F}|} $$

The $|\mathbb{F}|$ is the size of the field, i.e. number of elements in it.

Let’s forget what $m$-variate polynomial is and focus on the univariate case.

$$ \Pr_{X \in \mathbb{F}}{[P(X) = 0]} \le \frac{d}{|\mathbb{F}|} $$

The Fiscal Theory of Price Level book

Thu, 14 Sep 2023 14:19:03 +0800

I fell into this rabbit hole of the fiscal theory of price level (FTPL). Professor John Cochrane published the book “The Fiscal Theory of the Price Level” earlier this year. I learned about the book on Twitter before it was renamed to X. After reading some introduction, I pre-ordered a copy.

The book’s content can help us better understand the crypto-currency and design systems. The theory looks sophisticated enough to address many academic challenges in macroeconomics but simultaneously simple enough to reason with some project ideas.

About CC

Fri, 06 Jan 2023 00:35:59 +0800

I’m interested in zero-knowledge proofs, applied cryptography, public good funding, and economics in general.

Previously at Privacy and Scaling Explorations team and Ethereum Foundation.

Projects

2021-04 Zkevm. It creates succinct validity proof for EVM.
2020-06 Hubble, a gas-efficient optimistic rollup
2020-04 MACI, a bribing-resistant voting infrastructure.
2020-02 Semaphore Authentication. Anonymous login.
2020 Trinity. Prototyping the Beacon chain on a new Python client
2017-11 Pyethapp Casper. Prototyping Casper on a Python client

Writings

Many of my past writings since 2016 were on Medium. Selected articles:

📝Quadratic Funding in plain words

Mon, 20 Jun 2022 21:45:09 +0000

This is my quick compilation of all the QF-related sources I’ve seen recently. The goal is to give high-level intuitions before diving into the math.

There are two challenges in public good funding:

How do you get the money?
How do you distribute the money when you get it?

In a private good situation, users pay for what they get. They can pay it now for the things they benefit from. Incentives send the right signal to the market.

CC's blog

Review: Judgment at Tokyo

Judgment at Tokyo: World War II on Trial and the Making of Modern Asia

東京大審：二戰審判與現代亞洲的誕生

My AI Experience, August 2026

Reading Notes: Babel

Is Nolan a Project Management Genius?

Is Night City Really a Dystopia?

Reading Notes: Moral Economics

Moral Economics: An Encyclopedia of Controversial Issues, by a Nobel Laureate Who Sold Kidneys

Okinawa Trip Prep Notes

Brief history

Ryukyu Kingdom period (1429–1879)

The Rat Poison Paradox

Lean and the Real Real Numbers

Writing Arrow's Impossibility Theorem in Lean

2025 Book review

Lean Language Experience

Review: Project Hail Mary

Review: Technology and the Rise of Great Powers

Review: Triumph of the City

Review: Lost Colony by Tonio Andrade

Review: The Bomber Mafia

The Bomber Mafia

失控的轟炸：人道與人性的交戰，造就二戰最漫長的一夜（含21幅珍貴歷史圖片）

Data Derivatives

Examples

My First Vibe Coding Experience

Sybil Advantage in Quadratic Voting

Quick Quadratic Voting Recap

Review: Why Japanese trains are so punctual?

The Origins of Punctuality

What Do We Really Want From Open Source AI?

2024 in Books: Shaping Technology, Society, and Progress

Farewell PSE

Review: Growth: A Reckoning

A Year in Books: Exploring Economics, History, and Identity

Schwartz-Zippel Note

The Fiscal Theory of Price Level book

About CC

Social

Projects

Writings

📝Quadratic Funding in plain words