[pluto_modadic]

a simple example of partial homomorphic encryption (not full), would be if a system supports addition or multiplication. You know the public key, and the modulus, so you can respect the "wrap around" value, and do multiplication on an encrypted number.

other ones I imagine behave kinda like translating, stretching, or skewing a polynomial or a donut/torus, such that the point/intercepts are still solveable, still unknown to an observer, and actually represent the correct mathematical value of the operation.

just means you treat the []byte value with special rules

[paulrudy]

Thank you. So based on your examples it sounds like the "computation" term is quite literal. How would this apply at larger levels of complexity like interacting anonymously with a database or something like that?

[strangecasts]

There are FHE schemes which effectively allow putting together arbitrary logical circuits, so you can make larger algorithms FHE by turning them into FHE circuits -- Jeremy Kun's 2024 overview [1] has a good summary

[1] https://www.jeremykun.com/2024/05/04/fhe-overview/ - discussed previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40262626