enhanceur /ˌɒnhɒnˈsɜː(r)/ noun
Etymology: Early 21st century: from French, blend of enhance + -eur (agent suffix), modeled after saboteur. First documented usage in online forums discussing "reverse vandalism" and "guerrilla kindness."
Definition:
A person who secretly improves public spaces, systems, or situations without seeking recognition, often leaving others pleasantly confused about why things work better than expected.
(informal) One who commits acts of clandestine betterment; a benevolent phantom who strikes when nobody is watching.
Example sentences:
"The office enhanceur had struck again—someone had mysteriously fixed the perpetually jammed printer, replaced the dried-up pens with working ones, and nobody had seen a thing."
"After years of finding public toilets inexplicably cleaner than expected, Marcus began to suspect the existence of a secret society of bathroom enhanceurs."
"The park's enhanceur worked only at night, planting flowers in bare patches and repainting faded benches, leaving morning joggers to wonder if they'd imagined the previous decay."
Usage note: Unlike their destructive counterparts (saboteurs), enhanceurs suffer from a peculiar occupational hazard: nobody believes they exist. This has led to the common phrase "enhanceur's paradox"—the better you are at your job, the less evidence there is that you were ever needed.
See also: ninja janitor, guerrilla gardener, phantom fixer, anonymous benefactor
It is interesting how you can easily invest in weapons manufacturers, companies poisoning everyone with junk food, super hardcore pollutants, using child labor, or trade fossil fuels dug by murderers...
But if you dare to invest in financial privacy, it's suddenly boo boo child porn, terrorism, money laundering.
Yet people use it to buy coffee.
What a strange world.
Wow, EU/dec diplomacy. They should have read the Art of the deal.
"Yesterday’s trade deal between the US and the EU will cost the eurozone economy approximately $60.9 billion per year, according to Bloomberg’s calculations (see below). This is due to worsened export conditions for EU goods in the US.
However, on top of that loss, Brussels will also be footing the bill to America.
It has committed to purchasing energy resources from the US worth more than $217.4 billion annually. That’s more than ten times what the EU spent on Russian energy resources last year, so it will be difficult for American sources to simply replace Russian ones. Even if Russian deliveries dropped to zero immediately, the EU would still need to cut at least $195.7 billion per year in energy imports from other parts of the world (non-US) to fulfill the deal with Trump.
Given that the EU economy—or specifically the eurozone—is expected to shrink by $60.9 billion annually due to Brussels' trade agreement with Trump, demand from EU businesses for energy is also likely to decrease, further complicating the commitment to absorb American energy in the agreed volume of over $217.4 billion.
But that’s not all. Under the deal, the EU will also have to invest $547.8 billion in the US. On top of that, it will need to purchase large quantities of American weapons."
So there’s going to be a different problem with that age verification proposal of EU. You’ll need officially Google- (and Apple-) approved firmware, otherwise your phone’s processor won’t give an attestation and the age verification won’t go through. Goodbye Linux, goodbye GrapheneOS, goodbye LineageOS. Only corporate systems.
https://www.reddit.com/r/degoogle/comments/1mau7yl/eu_age_verification_app_to_ban_any_android_system/
Switzerland: Someone is suggesting a law change, with significant opposition from many parties and lack of clear support of the public (which will be needed in referendum).
Meanwhile in EU:
- EU censorship files:
https://xcancel.com/Jim_Jordan/status/1948730617803296910
- EU introduces mandatory strict age verification (basically ID card identification) for widely used services
- Constant introduction of various Chat Control proposals, breaking E2EE (same level of shit than proposed in Switzerland) - either on EU level or on state level (France, Ireland).
I think they want to harvest some EU funds to build infrastructure in EU (EuroStack), which they promote. This is not a privacy play, European Union is the last to care about privacy.
Proton, this is bad. Please stop. I have a lot of respect for you and I am a paying customer, but this is not a way to go. While it's admirable to have skin in the game and show the Swiss government you leave if they pass it, leaving to EU is surely a joke, because the current situation is much worse than what is just proposed (and will probably not pass) in Switzerland.
"Because of legal uncertainty around Swiss government proposals(new window) to introduce mass surveillance — proposals that have been outlawed in the EU — Proton is moving most of its physical infrastructure out of Switzerland. Lumo will be the first product to move.”
Proton
Introducing Lumo: AI where every conversation is confidential | Proton
Lumo gives you the power to solve problems big and small, while keeping your personal data confidential. Try it now.
The drivers licenses leaked today from the tea app have been uploaded to a searchable map.... Tea app is women only platform for background checking men on dating platforms. Now the users' background is public, which opens a can of worms or two...
KYC "for your own safety".
I bet the women using this app don't feel very safe today.
KYC is brutal anti safety feature. They could have used zero knowledge proofs with nullifiers (to prevent double registrations), but they chose to store the whole images...
Market: we are 17 minutes faster than our competition to deliver one of hundreds of thousands of items. We are just testing this under 30 minute autonomous delivery with drones, autonomous vehicles and robots.
State: please tell us everything we already know about you to get yet another magic state number (EORI), tell us what these glasses are made of (yes, it's probably already written on the declaration, but we'd rather we ask you, even though you have not seen the product yet), answer these seven questions and fill this form and we'll get it to you in two weeks. Oh, and you owe us 25% of the price for our "services".
I love smugglers.
Yes, Cryptocurrencies - Hack your way to a better life is not very well known, but it’s a great book for practical life with Bitcoin (I called it “Cryptocurrencies” on purpose, because we are shorting fiat, which needs stablecoins, although there’s a Bitcoin maximalist chapter explaining why you should not buy alts:).
But mainly it is my over 10 year take on what you can do with Bitcoin in your day to day life besides HODL hard. Most people when they read it say they had no clue. And I think it’s quite a fun read, although admittedly long ;).
View quoted note →I'm writing a new book. Fact checking it with various AI models. Surprisingly, ChatGPT is quite ok with it, but Gemini is hardcore Keynesian. I'm using logic and going from axioms, Gemini wants experimental data, logic isn't good enough. It identified the book is based on Austrian economics and partly on Ayn Rand's moral philosophy. And it does not like it a bit...
When asked to identify flaws, it has a very hard time pointing out what exactly is wrong (although it identified a few which I fixed). But it can't be right, can it? 😅
It's gonna be a great book.
Reformatter / Translator
AI-powered tool for reformatting OCRed books and translating them using Venice AI API (you can alternatively use different API that is OpenAI compatible, even local models). This tool processes OCRed text to fix formatting issues and recognition errors, and optionally translates the content.
GitHub
GitHub - jooray/reformatter-translator: A tool for reformatting OCRed books and translating them using LLM
A tool for reformatting OCRed books and translating them using LLM - jooray/reformatter-translator
Most people: Let us optimize so we use less energy.
Me: Let’s use more energy!
Before you start panicking about burning coal, etc. consider:
- we literally rate civilization development by how much energy they can harness (Kardashev’s scale).
- we need more energy to fight the effects of climate change - if it gets warmer, we need air conditioning and air conditioning needs energy.
- we have good technologies for renewable energy. Actually, great:
- Solar panel prices have fallen by approximately 90% in the last decade, even before adjusting for inflation, roughly 93% cheaper in real terms.
- Wind is also cheaper, although in recent years the price increased
- Batteries cost 97% less than three decades ago, just in 2024 they dropped 20%
The thing that most people don’t see, especially if they do naive calculations - increasing percentage of non-reliable energy (wind, solar) actually increases need for energy sources that adjust fast (mainly gas, but yes, also coal). Imagine the wind stops blowing suddenly or there’s a cloud coming over a solar farm. What do you do? Nuclear takes 24 hours to adjust…
There are several options - produce more and let Bitcoin miners consume the excess, or turn on the coal plant.
But this is centralized thinking. Batteries are also cheap. Constructing big battery farms is still not very feasible, but what is feasible is decentralization. Make your own energy (solar, wind), load up your home batteries. What you lose in the system due to battery storage you make in not needing distribution (that also has loss and other costs). It also add resiliency. Remember the blackouts in Czech Republic or Spain? The blackouts are localized in a decentralized system - not a single grid, but many compartmentalized production, storage and usage facilities.
And then let’s use the energy. Local AI inference, charge up the cars, max those ACs. Approaching Kardashev scale 1, one home at a time.
If you were skeptical about decentralized energy ten years ago, your numbers are totally out of date. Do the math.
Pro tip: Build the solar system from Bitcoin-collateralized loan. You are shorting fiat, fixing future price of energy for yourself, you get resilience, sovereignty. Pay the loan from what you save on energy, becoming your own energy provider.
The states are still thinking in dinosaur terms - one big grid, the overlords optimizing it. The future is decentralized.
Many people are making predictions, about AI and Bitcoin, the economy in general, etc.
Often they are insiders and see many things we are yet to see. The predictions are both doom and gloom. And the people are generally smart.
How seriously should we take these predictions?
1.) It is super hard to predict your own outcomes, let alone the industry and second or third order effects. They see the trends and they see what they are working on. The mistake is they often extrapolate, but they can't consider the effects of regime changes (not political regime, but the dynamics of a complex system). There are often critical points where everything changes.
2.) timeframes and probabilities are basically pure noise unless it's something they have ready and know they will be shipping short term. You can ignore it these parts of predictions completely.
3.) what is useful are often rough predictions of dynamics as a function ("when compute doubles, capabilities quadrupole" ... Maybe again up to a point)
4.) another useful thing is predicting possibilities. Possible futures that we can't imagine. While I'm very skeptical about probabilities and exact outcomes, it is good to know the landscape of possible futures. It will almost certainly not be exactly as described and usually many futures will happen at the same time ("some countries devolve into digital dystopias, some will see it as a market opportunity and switch to liberty - either as a whole or special zones"). I'm this way people predicting completely opposite outcomes can be all right at the same time.
How do you get thank you notes? I got one from
@No Good Kid in a form of a custom-designed Cashu note.
Even people who don't like European union interventions often say they like regulation of data roaming prices in Europe, it made roaming inside EU cheaper, you pay like at home.
I am not using an European operator, so I'm outside of this regulation. I pay somewhere around third to half of what you regulated people pay for both Europe and Americas.
Market gives better prices than regulators.
