It turns out they intentionally drain a bit of the storage capacitor, and amplify that weak signal. Some of that amplified charge is then fed back to storage.
In my personal projects, I've used it to insert/delete transactions in a ledger. I wanted to be able to update/query the account balance fast. Like the article says, "fold operations".
Are we sure that the base reveals nothing about the factors if n is composite? I have never seen a proof of that.
Usually, zero knowledge proofs also require a prover who knows the answer (the factors in this case). This is just a primality test that can be performed locally.
Today, when I build a custom Linux kernel, and am playing with config vars to decide what is our isn't included in the build, I very much tend to think of it as assembling a kernel from various library pieces.
It turns out they intentionally drain a bit of the storage capacitor, and amplify that weak signal. Some of that amplified charge is then fed back to storage.