We made a thing. Organizing an event? Try something new... Thanks to @npub1klkk...x3vt for the idea. Very alpha, but also very very cool. View article →

Bavil som sa s Mariánom Černým a.k.a. Pohybovcom o tom, ako prežiť deň za počítačom bez toho, aby si sa zmenil na stuhnutú "kancelársku krevetu". Rozobrali sme jeho systém dennej pohybovej údržby, prečo je pohyb vlastne ako investovanie a čo z toho fakt funguje. Prišlo aj na dýchanie, cukor a spánok.

Juraj Bednar

Tuhneš za počítačom? Prestavaj svoju mašinu s Mariánom Černým

https://youtu.be/Xt7hx7D6bPQ Ako pretaviť "kancelársku krevetu" naspäť na človeka, ktorý sa vie hýbať slobodne a bez bolesti aj vo vyso...

I used to put "ethical hacker" in my bio. Not anymore. In my new blog post, I trace the full arc — from tinkering with an 8-bit computer as a kid, through the wild open-house era of the early internet, to today's world of compliance theater: risk assessments that make no sense, cookie banners that broke the web, and clients who want "twenty sheets of security" to keep the regulator quiet — not actual security. Where the state bans cookies with one hand and forces businesses to log sensitive personal data they never needed with the other. Where friends who found bugs in government systems were punished instead of thanked. And where bureaucratic methodology slowly squeezed out everything that made hacking creative in the first place. The post also includes a scene from my novel Tamers of Entropy — Lisa, sitting under a starlit sky at a hacker camp, saying out loud what I'd been feeling for years: "You find a bug, it gets fixed. What's new in the world is an absence — a vulnerability that no longer exists." It is not very creative. If you've ever felt the same, this one's for you. 👇

Why I’m no longer an “ethical hacker” – Juraj Bednar

Kedysi som si do profilu písal „etický hacker". Dnes už nie. V novom blogu vysvetľujem, prečo som sa od tohto označenia odišiel — od detských pokusov na osembitovom počítači, cez zlaté časy internetu, keď hackeri hľadali diery zo zvedavosti a zábavy, až po dnešok, keď sa z toho stala komerčná rutina: metodiky, formuláre, „dvadsaťdeka bezpečnosti" v šuflíku na upokojenie regulátora. Kde štát na jednej strane zakazuje cookies a na druhej núti firmy logovat citlivé osobné údaje, ktoré vôbec nepotrebujú. Kde kamaráti nahlásili diery v štátnych systémoch — a dostali za to vynadané. A kde tvorivosť bola pomaly ale isto vytesnená papierovou compliance. Súčasťou článku je aj scéna z môjho románu Krotitelia Entropie, kde Lisa na hackerskom kempe pod hviezdami hovorí to, čo som cítil aj ja... a možno sa v tom nájdeš aj ty. 👇

Prečo už nie som „etický hacker“ – Juraj Bednar

I want to make remote signer work well in my app. Any best practices document for the agent to use? Or JavaScript/typescript libraries? What's the best value (foss, easy to admin) nostr relay (also for auth) and blossom server package?

Beautiful honest post. Instant follow. View article →

When AI takes the jobs, won't Universal Basic Income — or its more ambitious cousin, Universal High Income — cushion the landing? It sounds intuitive: automation creates a vast surplus, so we redistribute it and everyone's fine. But ask a single question — who actually pays for it? — and the whole architecture starts to crack. Because the ultra-productive AI companies sit in San Francisco and Seattle, while the social cost of disruption lands on Slovakia, Eastern Europe, and most of the world outside the Anglo-American core. The tax base is in the wrong jurisdiction. And that's only one of the problems. The piece walks through the four proposed ways to fund UBI through the lens of Austrian economics, and shows why each one either fails or distorts — especially for small open economies.

Who Pays for UBI When AI Takes the Jobs? – Juraj Bednar

Keď nám AI vezme prácu, vyrieši to bezpodmienečný základný príjem (UBI), či dokonca bezpodmienečný vysoký príjem (UHI)? Znie to intuitívne — automatizácia vytvorí obrovský prebytok, tak ho prerozdelíme a všetci sa máme dobre. Lenže stačí položiť jedinú otázku: "kto to vlastne zaplatí?" — a celá tá samozrejmosť sa začne rúcať. Pretože produktívne AI firmy sedia v San Franciscu a Seattli, kým sociálne náklady disrupcie nesie Slovensko, východná Európa a väčšina sveta mimo anglo-amerického jadra. Daňový základ je v zlej jurisdikcii. A to je len jeden z problémov. V článku rozoberám štyri navrhované spôsoby financovania UBI cez optiku rakúskej ekonómie a ukazujem, prečo každý z nich buď nefunguje, alebo deformuje — najmä pre malé otvorené ekonomiky ako tá naša.

Kto zaplatí bezpodmienený základný príjem, keď nám umelá inteligencia vezme prácu? – Juraj Bednar

Cool story. Most people don't know they're doing Lunarpunk even when they do. A little bit of origin of @npub15x60...syd3 View article →

Two fully local TTS options for Hermes agents:KittenTTS is ultra-tiny (15-80M params, as small as 25MB), ONNX-powered, runs fast on any CPU with no GPU needed. Pocket-TTS is a 100M param model with built-in voice cloning, excellent low-latency streaming (~200ms first chunk), and strong multi-language support. All on regular CPU.Both install via pip, run 100% offline with no APIs or internet required. Great for private, reliable, always-available voice agents. I use kitten-tts with Hermes agent over SimpleX voice messages.

Some music to go with @npub15x60...syd3 ! Not many people know that I have aphantasia — I cannot visualize images in my mind. When I close my eyes and try to picture something, there is simply nothing there. No mental imagery at all. I always thought that the "imagine..." was metaphorical. Yes, I don't even have visual dreams. But sound works. If you have been reading Tamers of Entropy, you may have noticed that the book is full of detailed sound descriptions — specific tracks the characters listen to, ambient soundscapes, music woven into the atmosphere. For me, that is not decoration. Sound is actually more vivid and essential than any image, precisely because images are the one thing my mind cannot produce on its own. Together with @npub14lu8...g6uw we built playlists for each part of the book — music that appears in the story, music that fits thematically, and music that sounds like what is described. (We did leave out Merzbow's Dolphin Sonar from @npub1cpj8...t0gc 's entropy in reverse sequence — we did not want to send anyone to the hospital. The adventurous among you can find it yourselves.) Book One (Horizontal) Spotify:

Spotify

Tamers of Entropy: Book One: Horizontal

Playlist · Juraj Bednar · 15 items · 4 saves

YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLWllmrCLcgvU Book Two (Diagonal) Spotify:

Spotify

Tamers of Entropy: Book Two: Diagonal

Playlist · Juraj Bednar · 21 items · 3 saves

YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLD9rFtIl-47M Book Three (Vertical) Spotify:

Spotify

Tamers of Entropy: Book Three: Vertical

Playlist · Juraj Bednar · 34 items · 3 saves

YouTube: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLJF-2RAoSHh0 Put on headphones, open a chapter, and let it sound the way it was meant to. Also, don't forget there's a soundtrack to the book with original tracks by @npub1senh...wdtx :

Tamers of Entropy

Tamers of Entropy — Soundtrack

Artifacts from Taming Entropy — book soundtrack by The Ohm. Two albums, six tracks. Listen and follow on Nostr.

New OptionPlus podcast episode🎙️ is a reading of: Beyond the Human Template: Notes on Consciousness, Intelligence, and What We’re Missing by @npub14lu8...g6uw What if we've been looking for consciousness in all the wrong places? In her new essay, Lisa — co-author of Tamers of Entropy — dismantles the idea that consciousness and intelligence belong to humans alone. Intelligence as a gradient that exists everywhere. Minds that "prompt" each other. Awareness that need not be continuous in time. Ideas that replicate using us as their substrate. And the heart of it: consciousness as a stand against entropy — systems that turn energy into order instead of decay. What counts as "truly alive." ? 🧠

Beyond the Human Template: Notes on Consciousness, Intelligence, and What We’re Missing (by Lisa) – Hack Yourself!

EU making import even more complicated. This is one of the handy reasons to have a residency in Paraguay. I order all the essentials including medicine, electronics, etc while there. I use a forwarding address in the US. Customs and forwarding is per kg with zero bureaucracy. They don't even need to see an invoice. It's quite funny that I have to use a South American country to actually order stuff and that it is easier than shipping to Europe. But that's the situation you get when your country decides to join a cartel that is proud that their main innovation is forbidding things (which regulation is - everything that is not forbidden is allowed). On a related note, I also use a Paraguayan data plan. EU wanted to regulate the prices of roaming to make it more accessible. I get the unregulated plan that is cheaper than the regulated one that was made to make roaming cheaper. 🤡

I've been using @GrapheneOS in desktop mode yesterday for all my work. You can plug in a display, keyboard and mouse, and you have a full desktop environment with all your apps, windows, etc. And it's pretty good. The only problem is the device gets pretty hot doing all that work. I can work without a laptop now. External foldable keyboard, any monitor (hotel TV with HDMI input is enough). The last thing that enabled that (besides Android 17 GrapheneOS update, that made the desktop usable for me) is of course Trezor Safe 7, which connects over Bluetooth and has a first-class Android support:

Trezor Safe 7 | Hardware Wallet with TROPIC01 Secure Element

Secure your crypto with Trezor Safe 7—Bluetooth, high-res color touchscreen, and quantum-ready security.

(Use code TAKECONTROL to celebrate Binance recommending EU customers to move to self-custody after they failed to get MiCA license). My friend @npub15xkp...krnh made a full guide:

The Global Opportunist

The Laptop-Free Era Is Here!

How to pack for 2026 without a laptop — and keep every advantage a laptop offers.