Improved guess-and-determine and distinguishing attacks on SNOW-V

In this paper, we investigate the security of SNOW-V, demonstrating two guess-and-determine (GnD) attacks against the full version with complexities 2384 and 2378, respectively, and one distinguishing attack against a reduced variant with complexity 2303. Our GnD attacks use enumeration with recursion to explore valid guessing paths, and try to truncate as many invalid guessing paths as possible at early stages of the recursion by carefully designing the order of guessing. In our first GnD attack, we guess three 128-bit state variables, determine the remaining four according to four consecutive keystream words. We finally use the next three keystream words to verify the correct guess. The second GnD attack is similar but exploits one more keystream word as side information helping to truncate more guessing paths. Our distinguishing attack targets a reduced variant where 32-bit adders are replaced with exclusive-OR operations. The samples can be collected from short keystream sequences under different (key, IV) pairs. These attacks do not threaten SNOW-V, but provide more in-depth details for understanding its security and give new ideas for cryptanalysis of other ciphers.

On Two-Stage Guessing

Stationary memoryless sources produce two correlated random sequences Xn and Yn. A guesser seeks to recover Xn in two stages, by first guessing Yn and then Xn. The contributions of this work are twofold: (1) We characterize the least achievable exponential growth rate (in n) of any positive ρ-th moment of the total number of guesses when Yn is obtained by applying a deterministic function f component-wise to Xn. We prove that, depending on f, the least exponential growth rate in the two-stage setup is lower than when guessing Xn directly. We further propose a simple Huffman code-based construction of a function f that is a viable candidate for the minimization of the least exponential growth rate in the two-stage guessing setup. (2) We characterize the least achievable exponential growth rate of the ρ-th moment of the total number of guesses required to recover Xn when Stage 1 need not end with a correct guess of Yn and without assumptions on the stationary memoryless sources producing Xn and Yn.

Category offense in theoretical and legal views of Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn

The article is devoted to theoretical and legal views of Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn concerning the concept offense. The author analyzes the process of emergence of law and human rights as its type, in the context of which the right to perform acts is particularly highlighted. The paper examines the scholars’ views with regard to the concept, types, elements of the offense and the circumstances excluding criminality of the act. General theoretical ideas of Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn are compared with the views of his contemporaries — representatives of the science of criminal law — in order to determine the degree of their development. In conclusion, the stance of Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn concerning the issue of punishment is given. The author notes that Kunitsyn quite objectively and naturally describes the process of emergence of law within which he places emphasis on human rights. This emphasis is particularly relevant today. The division of human rights into primary and derivative is a perfectly correct guess that has been accepted by the legal science as a whole. Formulating the concept of an act inconsistent with the law, Aleksandr P. Kunitsyn uses neither “crime” nor “wrong.” However, the word “offense” used by him only within the framework of the general definition refers to the private law interpretation of a wrongful act. Classifications of types of offenses offered by him surpass classifications offered by his contemporaries — representatives of the science of criminal law — by definition, conciseness and depth of thought. This is a very rare phenomenon, since in most cases it is the developments of the criminal law doctrine that precede the actual general theoretical ideas. His views on careless form of guilt did not have analogues among researchers of the phenomenon of crime.

Competition for novelty reduces information sampling in a research game - a registered report

Incentive structures shape scientists' research practices. One incentive in particular, rewarding priority of publication, is hypothesized to harm scientific reliability by promoting rushed, low-quality research. Here, we develop a laboratory experiment to test whether competition affects information sampling and guessing accuracy in a game that mirrors aspects of scientific investigation. In our experiment, individuals gather data in order to guess true states of the world and face a tradeoff between guessing quickly and increasing accuracy by acquiring more information. To test whether competition affects accuracy, we compare a treatment in which individuals are rewarded for each correct guess to a treatment where individuals face the possibility of being ‘scooped’ by a competitor. In a second set of conditions, we make information acquisition contingent on solving arithmetic problems to test whether competition increases individual effort (i.e. arithmetic-problem solving speed). We find that competition causes individuals to make guesses using less information, thereby reducing their accuracy ( H1a and H1b confirmed). We find no evidence that competition increases individual effort ( H2 , inconclusive evidence). Our experiment provides proof of concept that rewarding priority of publication can incentivize individuals to acquire less information, producing lower-quality research as a consequence.

Showing How Things Went On at Noningsby

Yes, Lady Staveley had known it before. She had given a fairly correct guess at the state of her daughter’s affections, though she had not perhaps acknowledged to herself the intensity of her daughter’s feelings. But the fact might not have mattered if it...

Unknowable Obligations

You face two buttons. Pushing one will destroy Greensboro. Pushing the other will save it. (Sorry, doing nothing also destroys Greenboro.) There is no way for you to know which button saves and which destroys. What ought you to do? Answer: You ought to make the correct guess and push the button that saves Greensboro. Second question: Do you have an obligation to push the correct button?

On the Psychology of Ampliative Inference

It is sometimes necessary to guess which probability distribution governs random sampling over a given event space. When the correct guess cannot be deduced from information available about the space, the problem is said to require ampliative inference. The most familiar form of ampliative inference is represented in the principle of maximum entropy. We examine this principle from a descriptive, psychological point of view.

Double-blind procedure: an assessment in a study of lithium prophylaxis

SynopsisFifty-seven patients with primary affective disorder who were in a double-blind outpatient study to evaluate the prophylaxis of lithium were questioned as to whether they believed they were receiving lithium or placebo. Research nurses who were ‘blind’ to the patients' medication and a close relative living with each patient were also questioned. Nearly all patients (96%) said they believed they were receiving lithium, ascribing this belief in 63% of the cases to a perceived improvement in condition. In only 14% of the cases on lithium was the presence of side-effects implicated in the patients' beliefs. One of the three nurses had a correct guess rate in excess of chance expectancy. All nurses tended to be more accurate in their guesses in the cases of patients who had been in prophylactic trials of over 15 months' duration than for patients with briefer periods in the study. Patients' relatives were, as a group, extremely accurate, their correct guess rate exceeding chance expectancy at the 0·001 level.

Treatment of Compulsive Gamblers by Electrical Aversion

Man has always been interested in predicting the outcome of various random events and at times has been prepared to risk his money, his wife and on occasions his life, on his ability to make the correct guess. There has been much speculation and concern about the effect of gambling on the national well-being, but there is little doubt that for the individual there is great satisfaction to be derived from making a correct prediction and winning something for nothing. Many charities and some governments benefit from this common desire.