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Cake day: August 18th, 2026

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  • For each operation my CPU’s ALU can do, I need to find a bit mask that turns it on only for the desired set of 8 bit opcodes. The bit mask is of the form [01_].[01_][01_][01_][01_][01_][01_][01_][01_] where 0 and 1 mean the bit has to match and _ means it doesn’t matter. The bit before the . is the xor of all the other bits in the opcode.

    The solver has to figure out both which opcodes represent each instruction and what bit masks are needed to give them the desired operations.

    EDIT

    I ultimately switched to a slightly different approach. It turns out the xor part of the mask isn’t very useful since the combinations I need aren’t super complicated. The trouble was that an operation could only trigger for a power of 2 of opcodes, so I added a secondary mask to each operation:

    Base mask: still [01_] x8\ Secondary mask: [01_x] x8 (x means both 0 and 1)

    For the secondary mask, 1 matches only if the current bit or the one to the left is true (left of the leftmost is the rightmost). 0 is the same but with nand in stead of or. x, requiring both, only matches if exactly one matches.

    Using 1 or 0 multiplies the number of matching opcodes by 3/4 (or a more complicated fraction if their areas of influence overlap), which allows much more freedom.

    Due to restrictions in the game and my "hard"ware, I’m only able to use [1_x] for the secondary mask, since a nand gate doesn’t respond right to being hooked up to a bunch of toggleable and inputs but xor/or gates do (xor is just as fast in game).




  • ::: spoiler

    Most so called inventions and discoveries are things that others have already done or will do anyway but get no credit for.

    I’m under the impression that in most of those cases it is a matter of duplication of work, rather than plagiarism as is being discussed here.

    For this problem, the reward is also 1 million dollars. Surely you’re not claiming it’s ok for Sam Altman to take the prize over someone who did the majority of the work.

    I say this as someone who releases all their software under open source licenses which maximize the ability to share under the condition that attribution and the ability to further share/alter is preserved.

    There is such a thing as malicious sharing of information/software/academic works, e.g. the distribution of proprietary software tools, plagiarism, etc. Harmful sharing ultimately limits the sharing of other information such as original authorship and source code. :::

    tl;dr

    If the Clay Math Institute knew for certain that Sam Altman was lying about authorship, they wouldn’t want to give him the prize. That makes these actions deceptive and by principles of radical sharing of knowledge, morally wrong.

    I appreciate your perspective, thanks for the discussion.


  • Knowledge cannot be stollen. That concept is human fabrication. Knowledge is meant to be shared and once share is flow freely.

    Stealing knowledge in an academic context means using it without credit, aka plagiarism, much unlike the common definition for media.

    Attribution doesn’t restrict the flow of information, it simply gives credit where it is due. Refusing to attribute a work, strictly speaking, limits the flow of authorial information.

    As stated by the article, if sharing work may be punished by a bad actor people will selfishly restrict the flow of useful information in response to protect themselves from plagiarism. Doing something that makes academics choose between further advancement of their field and their own self interest is the principle malfeasance.