I google bumped into this article a few months ago when I was trying to understand Zero Knowledge, so it was quite surprising (in a good way) to see this come up in HN today. Thanks.

Took me a while to understand the point of the time machine/simulation and verifier, which in a roundabout (to me!) way led to the conclusion that only the verifier could verify the ZKP and yet not leak information to others.

If anybody has an even-clearer explanation, I'm all ears!