First Principles Ep. 7 with Noam Nisan More than 30 years ago, Gödel Prize winner @noamnisan helped develop a proof technique he never expected anyone to use in the real world. Today, the sum-check protocol sits at the heart of some of the fastest modern SNARKs. Nisan traces its unlikely journey from early work on interactive proofs and IP = PSPACE to practical systems for verifiable computation. But Nisan’s career also tells a broader story about how research responds to technological change. When the web arrived in the 1990s, he deliberately left a field in which he was already a leading researcher to understand a new problem: How do you get independent actors on the internet to cooperate when they have different incentives? That question helped give rise to algorithmic game theory — and, decades later, brought Nisan back to questions around blockchain fees, token economics, and protocol design. Hosted by @Tim_Roughgarden with @SuccinctJT 0:00 Intro 1:28 Noam Nisan and the origins of verifiable computation 2:58 Why Noam Nisan left complexity theory 7:52 POPcorn, distributed computing, and early blockchain-like ideas 11:10 The birth of algorithmic game theory 16:14 Justin Thaler discovers the sum-check protocol 25:05 From arithmetization to LFKN 27:06 The story behind IP = PSPACE 30:40 Why sum-check matters for modern SNARKs 31:15 What is a SNARK? 38:52 The key idea behind sum-check: turning two into one 44:03 When SNARKs went from theory to practice 46:03 Why blockchains were the breakthrough use case 50:36 Noam Nisan’s move into blockchain economics 56:15 EIP-1559, transaction fees, and efficient blockspace 1:02:07 From theoretical computer science to real-world systems 1:08:49 Boiling down the sum-check protocol: Two become one 1:10:58 Is the sum-check protocol optimal?

Extra Star Piece Event underway! To celebrate the Jpn1 Zen-Nippon Nisai Yushun race, you can earn Star Pieces by winning eligible races during a Career once per day! For more details, please check the in-game notice. #Umamusume#

THREE PAKISTANI TAXI DRIVERS IN ROCHDALE, MOHAMMED SHAHZAD, NAHEEM AKRAM AND NISAR HUSSAIN, RAPED A SCHOOLGIRL BETWEEN 2001 AND 2006. ONE OF THE ATTACKS WAS FILMED IN THE BACK OF HUSSAIN'S TAXI. For decades, social workers and police have known that Pakistani men were using the taxi trade to rape little White girls in towns and cities across the country. Instead of taking action, they protected these men. Successive governments have allowed it to continue. In June 2025 Baroness Casey's national audit into group-based child sexual exploitation found that the taxi licensing system had been exploited by the rape gangs and told the government it needed urgent reform. The government accepted it. Rochdale was one of the towns she was writing about. Rochdale Council had licensed three men who raped a child. The likelihood is that it knew of many more men just like these three. Its own social workers knew taxi drivers were having 'sex' with children. They called one of the girls a 'prostitute'. The child was just ten years old. Greater Manchester Police knew the same. Since 1976 a council has had the power to take a badge off any driver it is not satisfied is fit and proper. There was no need for either a conviction or even a charge. It would be a lie to say the police failed to act. They did act. They closed down investigations and protected the rape gangs. Hundreds of towns and cities like Rochdale had the power to intervene. They had the knowledge. They knew children were being gang raped and trafficked across the country through a network of Pakistani gangs. They all made a political decision to sacrifice little White girls at the altar of multiculturalism and trade them for bloc votes from the Pakistani Muslim communities. Shahzad, Akram and Hussain drove Rochdale’s children for years after the council and the police knew what was being done to her in the back of a taxi. Rochdale Council will not say if or when it ever took their badges off them. No one knows just how many taxi drivers are members of the rape gangs. Heidi Alexander has been Transport Secretary since November 2024. Casey warned her in June 2025. She told the Commons the government was “taking this very seriously”, was reviewing whether councils follow existing guidance, and would hold those that do not to account. The councils are the problem she is asking to mark their own homework. In January 2026 Alexander's department proposed moving the badge from district councils to transport authorities. That was their solution. In Greater Manchester that would move Oldham’s licensing from the council that covered it up to the office Andy Burnham held while it was being covered up. In October 2026 the government said it was still deciding which model to use. It has also promised national minimum standards and a power to suspend a driver on the spot. Councils have had the power to suspend a driver on the spot since 1976. Why does a politician get to decide who drives the children at all? Especially when that politician relies on the bloc vote these men control for them to stay in power? AND TODAY. 263 councils in England decide who drives their children. Every one of them has had the power since 1976 to take a badge off a man without a conviction. Rochdale did not use it. Rotherham did not use it. Oldham did not use it. No law makes a council use it. Nothing Heidi Alexander has proposed would make them. A man banned from working with children can be handed a badge this week in any town in England. The councils that licensed the rape gangs are licensing the next ones.

NIS America president Kenzo Saruhashi says PlayStation is “hearing a lot of the feedback from customers” on the 2028 disc cutoff. He also runs Nippon Ichi Software, the Disgaea studio. Limited editions are a big part of NISA’s JRPG business. Those boxes still ship, he told Kotaku. After January 2028 a code-in-a-box SKU is one option. He says it is not the only one on the table. Sony said in July that new PlayStation games after that date go digital-only. Older disc titles can still be reprinted. CFO Lin Tao has already said the company will “cautiously move this forward.” Saruhashi is not claiming a reversal. He is saying the talk with Sony can still change. For a publisher that lives on physical collector sets, that is the update.

Nippon Ichi CEO Kenzo Saruhashi says they’re in “discussions” with Sony about the end of discs. At PAX West: “I think that they’re hearing a lot of the feedback from customers.” Code-in-a-box is one option. “It’s possible that the discussion may change in the future.” NISA’s business is limited editions. He says they still intend to keep making those. Disc manufacturing for new games is still slated to stop January 1, 2028. Clearly leaving the door open.