Running Omarchy

(some) people are pissed that billionaires are making their own Linux distro and financing its dev. (some) people are pissed that billionaires are making their own money and financing its dev. (some) people are pissed that .... But the truth is - we have made it (and I am well aware that I am out of their league by several orders of magnitude - not only in wealth). These are not oil billionaires, or hedge fund kids. These are tech people, some of them are cypherpunks. They have used their skill to shape the world and now, after years of running companies, and doing business and dealing with VCs, or investinge in fringe crypto stuff (and by "crypto" I don't only mean cryptocurrencies, but wider cypherpunk ecosystem, the new space for the mind), their github accounts start to shine. Yes, they are writing code augmented by non biological neural networks ("vibe coding"), but everyone is these days. But they're back at their keyboads, making stuff. They're doing it again. This time, they don't care if it's a financial success. They just want the better thing out there. I don't get the resentment, the bitter taste, the envy. Yes, they are different, unique, I am well aware of the pareto distribution of success and how brutal it is. And I can even accept (although I don't agree) that "it could have been us/me/my coder friend, we are better, we have better ideas". But it does not matter. They came from our world, and they're here to contribute to our world and make it better. And if you don't like what they're doing, there are two things you can do - you can choose not to use their thing. Or (better) - you can outdo them in what they're building and make something even better. Because these non-biological neural networks work the same for billionaires or for hobby coders out there. This timeline is amazing, even if I could have predicted the non-biological neural network revolution (I didn't, and I majored in "artificial intelligence"), I wouldn't see this coming - that we would be building new payment networks, new social networks, new protocols, new operating systems. And many other things that I would not even mention publicly. Cypherpunk and cryptoanarchy were a cringe philosophy even a few years back. At late Timothy C. May's memorial meetup at CCC, there were maybe 15 of us. It was and still is totally cringe philosophy (or I'd say strategy). (For those who don't know, CCC is the largest European hacker gathering, thousands of hackers). And now, many people are just building it, including billionaires, in their own free time, away from their lambos and yachts, behind github, with their favourite clankers, pushing out commits like all the rest of us. And it doesn't matter if they believe in cryptoanarchy, the strategy is how you use the tools. Even a Linux distribution is a cryptoanarchy tool, if you know how to use it. Most futures suck, this one just sucks less. (Yes, mutt is a cryptoanarchy tool too).

All I want for Christmas is a Signal sticker with Osho saying "people, they are retarded". Fun fact: yesterday I was accidentally unloaded at a shopping center and some people were unloading giant Christmas decorations from a truck. And no, this is not some draft post that I'd forgot to send in October and now it's magically posted, I'm well aware it's August. Which brings me back to Osho and the sticker.

Flint by @Seth For Privacy is super cool. I've been struggling with this. First there was the lnbank plug-in, but it was discontinued. Then I had to connect things like Blink or running everything under one store. I even built @Cashu Pay Server to solve this exact problem without @BTCPay Server , using Cashu mints and automelting to lightning address. Check out cashupayserver.org. It runs on any PHP hosting. But for more serious things I would run what Seth built here, after some more testing by the community. Btcpay is more robust and has more features. And does not depend on cashu mints. (BTW the name cashupayserver is not very well chosen, it's a lightning payment gateway that just uses mints for accepting and then sending lightning payments).

GitHub

GitHub - sethforprivacy/flint: Nodeless Lightning for BTCPay Server — per-store Spark wallets via the Breez Spark SDK, with automatic sweeps to on-chain Bitcoin or stablecoins

Nodeless Lightning for BTCPay Server — per-store Spark wallets via the Breez Spark SDK, with automatic sweeps to on-chain Bitcoin or stablecoins ...

Announcement of Flint on the legacy network: https://xcancel.com/i/article/2090847215132795192

In the age of AI, if you are not being copied, it means you are irrelevant. But the time to be copied is getting shorter. Being unique, relevant and good is hard.

I think I now understand the concept of Swissmaxxing. Next time with better setup. Grateful for paracetamol. This was the first time I spent more than a day in Switzerland and I'm starting to understand what you swissmaxers are talking about. The only downside - I had to refill my fiat debit card twice, it's quite expensive. I've also tried Bitblik with TWINT but the problem is I'm supposed to confirm the other party received the funds. I don't know if they did though, I tried paying a printed static QR code and the paper has no feedback about received payments.

Multisig lightning is not a magic pill. Although it's very cool. Take the case of a routing node. You introduce coordination risk, and if all the nodes in the routing node are running the same software, an attack would mean all required signatures - if you find vulnerability in software, it would just run the same vulnerable code three times. Sure you can run one node on openbsd, one on Linux and one on Mac for example. And that will reduce risk of compromised machine. But it's not free security. What if the vuln is in the coordination protocol for example?

If you have nothing to hide, you are a boring normie and should get at least some fun in your life. Please, have something to hide, for your own sake.

If you feel like you live in a future with all these magic files that allow you to talk to your computer in human language, I recommend upgrading your life by getting a 3D printer and making real world objects. The future is now.

Trying the hyped qwen3.8-27b. Unfortunately completely unusable on Apple silicon, too slow. And if I reach for the cloud, there are better models. The moe qwen3.6 was a sweet spot. Still slow, but usable.

Complex systems often show emergent behavior, which can't be explained by the components of the complex system themselves. A common mistake here is to assume that the components have to be intelligent, or complex themselves. You can have a complex organization of dumb components. And that's what we see all around us. That does not imply that the emergent behavior is intelligent or good though. You can have total dumb but complex reaction of the masses for example. I think this is one of the main misunderstandings how economy works and the illusion that it can be planned.

Ďalší väčší update mojej stránky Obľúbené produkty. Kúl geekoviny, meshcore nody, cestovateľské hacky, biohacking a pod.

Juraj Bednar

Obľúbené produkty

Na tejto stránke by som vám chcel ukázať niektoré moje obľúbené produkty. Niektoré linky sú affiliate (teda dostanem nejakú odmenu za pr...

P.S.: ColdCard som nikdy neodporúčal :)

I've been maintaining a list o my favorite products and services for a while in Slovak. Now it's published in English as well. Travel, apps, geek stuff, meshcore nodes, ...

Juraj Bednar

Favorite products

On this page I'd like to show you some of my favorite products. Some links are affiliate links (I get a commission if you buy), some links giv...

Hardvérová atestácia na end-to-end šifrovanú AI inferenciu Hype? Je to naozaj bezpečné? Dáva to zmysel pre niektoré použitia, alebo je lokálna AI jednoznačne lepšia? Obsahuje výsledky môjho auditu a spomínam aj skvelý projekt Andrew Millera, ktorý auditovaním prechádza množstvo poskytovateľov.

Hardvérová atestácia na end-to-end šifrovanú AI inferenciu – Juraj Bednar

Hardware attestation for end-to-end encrypted AI inference Hype? Is it secure? Does it make sense for some use-cases, or is local AI strictly better? Contains results of my audit, also mentioning @socrates1024's cool project auditing many providers.

Hardware attestation for end-to-end encrypted AI inference – Juraj Bednar