It's saying roughly "I know enough to know that it takes years of study before you can read research papers in crypto. I am happy just to read canonical textboo

It's saying roughly "I know enough to know that it takes years of study before you can read research papers in crypto. I am happy just to read canonical textbook resources, even if they are from the 90s" I think you could have tried a little bit harder to understand it before posting. Obviously English wasn't the author's first language and there's a risk that the author might perceive an insult to his English language skills. It's really nice that HN is a discussion between people with a wide variety of native languages as I'm certain you'd agree.