> The post states that 800-bit claims would be 36 bits of work. I don't know what that means.

From the article: "Schnorr’s paper claims to factor ... 800-bit moduli in 8.4·10¹⁰ operations"

2^36 ~= 8.4·10¹⁰, so I guess "36 bits of work" means 2^36 operations. Analogous to how a password with 36 bits of entropy would require 2^36 guesses. My first time encountering the phrase "bits of work" as well, though.