I have been working through the implementation of the Raft consensus algorithm in Rust. Part of doing that properly is being able to test it: you need to throw concurrent histories at your implementation and ask whether they are consistent with what a correct register (or log, or key-value store) is supposed to do. That question has a precise name — linearizability — and answering it algorithmically turns out to be a genuinely interesting problem.

Elliptic curves are an essential part in modern day cryptography. But what are they? And how do they work? Although the theory behind Elliptic Curves is very complex, I try to delve into this subject here. I’m not a mathematician, so I do not know all the ins and out, nor do I know all the details. However, I try to write down the things I know about this matter hoping this is useful to you.