The “Elevator” Strategy: Why Algorithmic Timing Rules Crush Synthetic Backtests—and Fail in Real Life

Paco Ruiz 2 Comments

Every algorithmic trader knows the high of finding a seemingly bulletproof trading rule. You write a short script, test it on a simulated price feed, and watch an equity curve climb with smooth precision.

That was the initial promise of the “Elevator” Strategy—a mechanical trend-following framework designed to treat stock prices like an elevator cab. The objective was simple: step on to ride smooth upward surges, and step off into cash before dropping into a basement drawdown.

Yet, when transferred from synthetic market generators to real-world stocks, the strategy’s glowing excess return completely collapsed.

Read More

Building a Traffic Wave Simulator with Claude and Gemini

Paco Ruiz Leave a comment

Traffic waves—those infuriating “phantom” jams where traffic stops for no apparent reason—are a fascinating study in emergent behavior. Recently, I set out to build an interactive simulation of this phenomenon. Rather than writing it entirely from scratch, I decided to test a multi-AI collaborative workflow: using Gemini (plus) and Claude (free) together, playing to their respective strengths across extraction, fast prototyping, and code refinement.

Here is how the project evolved from a single YouTube video into a fully functional simulation, along with the prompts, iterations, and lessons learned along the way.

Read More

The Banyan Mind: Why True Polymathy Is Defined by Output, Not Curiosity

Paco Ruiz Leave a comment

There is a prevalent myth surrounding polymathy today. Browse social media or modern discussions on “multipotentiality,” and you will find no shortage of people self-identifying as polymaths while complaining about being misunderstood by a world that demands specialization. They list dozens of interests, showcase a browser with fifty open tabs, buy equipment for hobbies they drop three weeks later, and lament that society continues trying to make them “fit into a box.”

Let’s be honest: that isn’t polymathy. That is consumption wearing a costume. It is dilettantism.

Read More

One Year, Ten Tools, One Winner: Why I Stopped Juggling AI Apps and Just Use Gemini Plus (for now)

Paco Ruiz 1 Comment

It is late July 2026 as I write this. A year ago I had several AI subscriptions running at once. Perplexity for research. A multi-model hub for “access to everything.” A couple of niche writing tools. I told myself this was rigor — using the best tool for each job. Mostly it was just tab-switching dressed up as strategy.

Here’s what that year actually taught me: the AI industry keeps selling a story where the endgame is one enormous, all-knowing black box that does your thinking for you. That story is wrong, or at least beside the point. What’s actually changed is something quieter and more useful — a single person can now move across disciplines that used to require a team. You don’t need to have memorized a citation style or a syntax spec to work like someone who has. The AI handles the narrow technical execution; you supply the judgment, the taste, the “does this actually make sense” instinct, because you are the one who has a soul inside.

But that only works if the tool gets out of your way. And that’s where most of my stack failed me.

Read More

The 500-Year-Old Secret to the Perfect Huarache (And Why Modern Brands Get It Wrong)

Paco Ruiz Leave a comment

We’ve all seen them: minimalist running sandals marketed as the ultimate connection to the earth, sporting high-tech buckles, proprietary webbing, and price tags north of $100. They promise the freedom of the legendary Tarahumara (Rarámuri) runners, but often deliver little more than blisters, loose straps, and a lighter wallet.

After years of casual research and experimenting with everything from paracord to leather thongs, I found the ultimate way to tie a DIY huarache using a standard flip-flop sole. Ironically, the breakthrough didn’t come from a modern outdoor gear lab. It came from a 18th-century painting of Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin—the Aztec visionary associated with Our Lady of Guadalupe (1531). In early colonial iconography, the precise wrapping geometry of traditional footwear reveals an elegant truth: ancient design relies on tension and wrapping paths rather than hardware.

Read More

How I Tamper-Proofed my Web Server

Paco Ruiz Leave a comment

Imagine building a world-class digital vault, complete with un-crackable elliptic curve cryptography and advanced quantum-resistant algorithms. You host it on a remote server, confident that no one can peer inside. But what happens if a malicious actor doesn’t try to crack the vault itself, but instead secretly slides a modified, compromised keyhole onto your front door while you aren’t looking?

In the web security world, this is a massive vulnerability. Traditional browsers blindly download and execute whatever code a remote server throws at them. If a server is compromised, your security app can be turned against you before you type your first keystroke.

To protect PassLok, KyberLock, and now Privacy Bar Mobile, I decided to flip the script. With Gemini’s help, I built a zero-trust, Authenticated Bootloader—a miniature cryptographic gatekeeper that turns your browser into a self-checking logic engine.

Here is the exact story of how I made my applications entirely tamper-proof, running smoothly both on the remote web and natively offline on your mobile home screen.

Read More

The Day Before Before Christmas

Paco Ruiz Leave a comment

This Christmas I ended up writing a short story about a Vietnam‑era vet working as a mall Santa, stuck reliving December 23rd until he stops a shooting.

You can read the finished story here:

Download the story as a PDF

This post is about how that story came to be, with the help of two different AI assistants, and how I tried to keep it from turning into “their” story instead of mine. I’ll cover:

  • How the original idea formed, including the initial brainstorming with AI (ChatGPT through ChatLLM)
  • Why I involved a second AI (Gemini) halfway through
  • Why I let a lot of AI‑written prose stand
  • Why I also pushed back when the story stopped feeling like mine
  • A process you can adapt if you like my story and want to write fiction this way

I won’t separate my remarks into rigid “this is what I did” and “this is what you should do” sections; instead I’ll just tell you what happened and point out the parts that feel generalizable. Warning: I used the same process to write this blog post you are reading.

Read More

PolyCrypt improved

Paco Ruiz Leave a comment

Abstract cryptographic visualization showing interconnected security patterns and encryption elementsWe are now in the era of Artificial Intelligence, and I’m using it to improve many things—including my cryptographic codes. I asked Gemini AI to analyze the PolyCrypt algorithm, which is designed to be human-computable, and it discovered several vulnerabilities. These issues are now resolved in PolyCrypt 2. Read on to see how these improvements were achieved.

Read More