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Paul Miller

A podcast from Paul Miller about how to own technology.

Cyberdeck Users Weekly

WELCOME TO THE POD

In this episode of Cyberdeck Users Weekly we'll review a bunch of tech giants and what their potential weaknesses are:

AMAZON: MAKE IT MORE LIKE DEPOP

Amazon can't track counterfiets (scale fail) and it uses its vendors for market research (evil).

Solution Why can't I just order from local stores and self-run warehouses? Why can't I buy masks from the guy who stockpiled masks?

See also: https://www.theverge.com/2020/1/14/21065894/google-pointy-acquisition-in-store-products-stock-inventory-shopping

GOOGLE: MAKE IT MORE LIKE RIPGREP

Google simultaneously knows too much about me and yet can't know enough to give me truly amazing and deep results (scale fail), and it attempts to control what I see (evil).

Solution Run searches locally before hitting the network. Most search just me trying to find that one CSS Tricks guide to Flexbox.

See also: https://minbrowser.org/

SEAMLESS: MAKE IT MORE LIKE SQUARESPACE

Seamless takes a gigantic cut. What are they reallllyy actually offering? So much less than even something like Uber.

Solution A protocol you can adhere to for listing things.

See also: https://twitter.com/susie_c/status/1255971900599046144

FACEBOOK / YOUTUBE: MAKE IT MORE LIKE WORDPRESS

Like Seamless, Facebook starts out by letting you build an audience, and then at some point it pivots and starts to charge you for access to your own audience.

Solution Matrix? Mastadon? Jitsi?

See also: https://pauljmiller.com/posts/how-to-fix-the-internet.html

APPLE: MAKE ME MY COMPUTER CARTRIDGES!

Alternatives to Apple: Pi / Pine / Librem / Redox OS / Oxide Computer / System76

I didn't bring this up on the pod but my dream for phones is that when you "retire" one you remove the battery and plug it into your home server setup and it becomes part of the borg that hosts all your local services.

UH-OH:

BIG PROBLEMS WITH DECENTRALIZATION:

Identity (unsolved)

Payments (Bitcoin)

Decentralization of messaging (Lightning?)

Polish and ease of use

BIG systems like operating systems and UI frameworks are rare or bad and possibly unwanted in the first place?

WRAP-UP THOUGHTS:
HOW TO EVALUATE A TECHNOLOGY:

 1. Is it actively harming me?

 2. Can it be taken away, and how easily?

The Optimistic Case for Decentralization

This week I'm joined by Matt Odell, the co-host of the Tales from the Crypt podcast. Not only is Matt Bitcoin-famous, he's also hugely informed on technology in general, especially when it comes to security and privacy. I'm grateful to have him as my first guest on Cyberdeck Users Weekly, and grateful to have someone as practically paranoid as Matt in the world pushing for better ways to use and own technology.

Here's what we talked about:

Matt's podcast

Tales from the Crypt

Bitcoin

Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System

Bitcoin Core on Github

Dear Family, Dear Friends, A letter to all of you who still have no bitcoin

Not bitcoin

Ethereum Web 3.0

Namecoin

Dentacoin

Cryptography

PGP

GPGTools

Blockstream Satellite

"Nyms"

WebAuthn

Signal

Messaging

Lightning Network

Juggernaut

Sphinx

Matt's dead man's switch

FinalMessage

SCANDAL: Paul doesn't use a VPN

Mullvad VPN

Carl Dong's Mullvad top-up service

Practical Bitcoin privacy

BTCPay Server

Wasabi

Samourai

JoinMarket

Coldcard

Phones

PinePhone

Librem 5

GrapheneOS

Open source image processing

Paul's Bitcoin setup

Let Paul scam you out of BTC

myNode

"Bugatti of nodes"

Matt's recommended resources

Matt's YouTube guides

Matt Odell's website

bitcoin-intro

Bitcoin with Matt Odell

A skateboard for our minds

The computer is "a bicycle for our minds," as Steve Jobs once said.

Do you ever watch those velodrome events in the Olympics? They either have a rolling start, or they have to have someone holding them up for a standing start. The bikers look silly and helpless until they get moving. And then they go in a loop, round and round, very, very fast. If you turn a little too hard your wheels slide out from under you and you eat it. When bikers crash in the velodrome the road rash is horriffic and their paper-thin costumes are torn the shreds.

What if we thought of the computer as a "skateboard for the mind?" What would a "skateboard" computer be like? How do we get there?

The Cuckoo's Egg

“The future is already here – it's just not evenly distributed." - William Gibson

I brought this up on the last episode, but I'm reading a book called "The Cuckoo's Egg," and it's making me very jealous of how much agency this guy has over his machines. In 1989!

The Unix Philosophy
Smalltalk
Wearables

I don't want to brag but I've been thinking about how we use computers, and how I'm disappointed by how we use computers, for a while. Here's a piece I wrote about the history of wearable computers in 2012, and how I was pretty sure Google Glass was the wrong direction.

Dyson sphere

Along the lines of affective computing, another piece I wrote even longer ago attempted to explain how much our computers are dropping on the floor when they interact with us.

My comparison was to a Dyson sphere. Here's the Wikipedia definition:

A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that completely encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its power output.

Wrap-up

There are some really cool people in the computer industry who are challenging the assumptions of inherent complexity. Jonathan Blow, Casey Muratori, Raph Levien. Sometimes they might come across and curmudgeons on Twitter. But I think they're fighting the good fight.

There's also a really good talk about what's gone wrong in computing called called "The Mess We're In" by Joe Armstrong, RIP.

Finally, I recommend the On The Metal podcast for a dive into this from fairly technical perspective. There's a whole battle raging just to make it simpler and more secure to boot a computer. I know not everyone can dip into this particular battle usefully, but it's at least cool to know it's happening.

I love riding my bike. And I'm actually really bad at skateboarding. But I want to get better.

Hmm are we using computers correctly?

Everybody needs an operating system. But do we need a new kind of operating system?

Right now we basically have three major options: Windows, macOS, and Linux. Windows and macOS aren't open source, but that's not the only thing that's wrong with them. Linux is open source, but oftentimes that feels like its only advantage over the other two.

For years now I've dreamed of an alternative desktop OS with a fresh new foundation. Something we can build the future on with more speed and confidence because it got the fundamental abstractions correct. An operating system shouldn't feel bloated or fragile or like a monumental hack on top of 70s-era technology. It should be the minimal layer of software that can effectively and safely abstract hardware and allow multiple user programs to run together in harmony.

For the past five years, my guest Jeremy Soller has been actually building an alternative operating system: Redox OS. I think it might be our best hope.

WARNING

This conversation is extremely technical. In a sense, this is the sort of technical stuff that most users never have to think about. But I find it interesting because someone has to care about these technical details or nothing would get done. I'm interested in the low-level details because I think getting those right can enable more capabilities and excellence at the user level.

If you absolutely hate operating system talk, you can fast forward to around the hour mark where we talk about the Linux computer company Jeremy works at: System76.

Setting the stage

Redox OS

System76

Pop_OS

Rust

Window 3.1

Assembly language

A Taxonomy of Kernels

Monolithic kernel

Unikernel

Microkernel

How drivers work

PS/2 port

LPC bus

L4 microkernel

Trying Redox in a virtual machine

QEMU

The problem with phones

UBports

PinePhone

Librem 5

Making Linux computers

Thelio desktops

Lemur Pro laptop

KiCad

FreeCAD

coreboot

How to pitch in

Follow @jeremy_soller on twitter

Follow @redox_os

Redox OS website

Donate to Redox OS

Redox Summer of Code

Security

Meltdown and Spectre

oreboot

Redox OS with Jeremy Soller

The next generation of consoles

Faster storage, ray tracing, higher resolutions.

Unreal 5: "nearly a polygon per pixel"

But what about

Simulation? Single shard MMOs? Multiplayer physics?

To me, Dwarf Fortress still feels like the most next-gen game on the planet

Minecraft with RTX is the perfect example of what's going well and what's not improving in games.

Portable assets and avatars

As photogrammetry matures and we approach photorealism, assets might be more shareable. And easier to create.

See: Quixel Megascans

There's probably a rough DIY photogrammetry aesthetic that will differentiate non-pro games from "pro", but it will still look great IMO.

If there's unification of the art pipeline, "remixing" game assets and game modes seems more possible. That would be truly groundbreaking.

What I want is a skateboard game that's also a multiplayer shooter.

Cheating

What would a game be like where everyone was running the maximum amount of cheats they can get their hands on?

If you think about it, cheating is a form of "AR" for a virtual space. Maybe it doesn't have to be a bad thing for all games, it could be a feature!

What about the holy grail of anti-cheat: peer to peer multiplayer games. It works with chess!

I think it could come down to multiplayer physics simulation. If your character is only capable of producing forces within a certain range... those could be the rules you abide by. just thinking out loud.

Single shard

Eve Online and Dual Universe are "next-gen" in this sense.

Beyond single shard: the "metaverse."

Whatever happend to VRML?

Digital scarcity

Reamde. Hats. Real money poker.

"The dream is, I want a 12 year old camper from thailand to help pay for his family's food by killing me in an online video game and my slow reflexes" - Matt on TFTC

How do you have digital scarcity without centralized control? Bitcoin actually only solved Bitcoin's problem in this regard.

In Minecraft you choose to have scarcity to maximize fun.

What's the point of games?

Factorio

StarCraft

Overwatch

Path of Exile

Minecraft

"Next-gen"

Internet of Shit: the origin story

@internetofshit

Product Hunt

"Samsung smart fridge leaves Gmail logins open to attack"

"Hackers can hijack Wi-Fi Hello Barbie to spy on your children"

"how many servers could it take to turn on a light bulb lol"

A history of IoT

JavaScript

Raspberry Pi

Gartner 2014: "In 2020, 25 Billion Connected "Things" Will Be in Use"

Smart socket botnet

Highlights of IoT

Philips Hue

Sonos

Litron

Brilliant

Cats

Petnet outage

A better way? (Probably not)

Home Assistant

Apple HomeKit

HUGE: INTERNET OF SHIT FULLY ENDORSES GOOGLE HOME

Alexa everywhere

I always forget GlassWire exists and then I look like a dummy when I talk like it doesn't exist.

Sony patent where you yell "McDonald's!" to skip an ad

Less internet, less shit

Stagg EKG electric kettle

Oh dang there's a Bluetooth version now

IoT might be useful if you can "own" it

Nest Thermostat

Ring + police

UniFi doorbell (early access)

Apple Bounjour / Rendezvous

Internet of Shit merch

Stickers

IoT with Internet of Shit

I did a pod about Bitcoin, I hope that's okay!

Bitcoin resources I recommend

Tales from the Crypt

Noded

Bitcoin Audible

Satoshi Nakamoto Institute

The Bitcoin Standard

A Bitcoin Future

What if everything you bought got cheaper every year, but your salary stayed the same? You'd eventually go to space, right?

Human material needs are in some sense finite, but human wants are infinite. Human time is absolutely finite, but human ingenuity -- the ability to do more with the same amount of time -- is multiplicative and exponential.

In an economy we create value as we transact voluntarily, and in an economy with money we use money as an intermediary to store that value we create. In a Federal Reserve economy, that value creation is skimmed off the top and given to banks so they can give us more credit card debt. In a Bitcoin economy, we all get to benefit from value creation.

Bitcoin wouldn't fix theft, or the desire to steal. It just makes theft no longer our national monetary policy.

What a Bitcoin future looks like

Richard Myers is a "decentralized applications engineer" at Global Mesh Labs, which is a very good job title in my opinion. We talk about his work on Lot49, a protocol for incentivized mobile peer-to-peer communication.

A Richard Myers primer

@remyers_ on Twitter

goTenna

goTenna Mesh

Global Mesh Labs

Tales from the Crypt #88: Richard Myers

Stephan Livera's podcast with Richard Myers

The opportunity

RISE:NYC Small Business Resiliency Program

Lightning Network

NetBlocks

One NSA data center

How to Hide in Plain Sight (with Pictures) - wikiHow

How Lot49 could help

Lightning Network for BEGINNERS playlist

Lot49: A lightweight protocol to incentivize mobile peer-to-peer communication

Tor (onion routing)

whatsat

Juggernaut

Sphinx

goTenna VINE protocol

Where we're at

lightning payment over (simulated) HAM radio

Lnproxy - Proxy connections from a patched C-Lightning

Lot49 in C++

Bigger picture: when Netflix?

Incentives Build Robustness in BitTorrent

NYC Mesh

Change.org Abolish the FCC petition (11 signers)

IPFS

A quick plug for my favorite programming language

Square Crypto's Rust-based LDK

c-lightning

Mesh networking with Richard Myers

"You can't stop other people from reading that which you disagree with."

@pierre_rochard on Noded 0.62.0

Speech laws and regulation and platform moderation are always about what "others" should see. Because you have to see it to moderate it. Just something to think about.

The first amendment

The way I'm thinking about "free speech," as a principle, is that I'm not going to use my power proactively to silence your speech. The actual law, of course, is about prohibiting the government from using its power to silence speech. But we're adults, we can talk about right and wrong it's okay.

Censorship is not an educational tool, it's a tool of control. You don't know what's being censored because you never see it. That was the whole point. So how do you know whether the right things are being censored? The potential for misapplication and the lack of means of correction are sky-high.

But platforms like Facebook and Twitter are in a dumb no-man's land where their "speech" is primarily the promulgation of other people's speech.

I personally would not want to be forced promulgate information I find abhorrent. But I also don't want to stop other people from accessing information I disagree with. Censorship doesn't restrain conspiracy theories, it validates them. The cure for wrongthink isn't a ban, it's better information. I also believe people who have facts on their side aren't afraid of people hearing "different facts."

And as great as I sound to myself when I say these things, none of it is useful as a prescription for how Twitter or Facebook should act.

Maybe there's like a range of speech-adjacent activities we can define:

 1. Censorship: actively using power to limit what someone can say or hear.

 2. Non-promulgation: "silencing" others through inactivity.

 3. Promulgation: republishing others.

 4. Self-publication: creating your own platform to host your own speech or the speech of others.

Promulgation is really some of the most powerful speech there is. And, of course, there's no promulgation without non-promulgation. Otherwise you're just transmitting static.

Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube are self publishers with a truly historic level of promulgation, and now they're trending toward non-promulgation, which seems only reasonable. Meanwhile government is flirting with censorship, because it really has no power other than to destroy and oppose. Meanwhile meanwhile I'm thinking I need to get myself some of that self-publishing apparatus to secure and promote the ideas I think are good.

As a sidenote, I do find it sad sometimes how narrow a view we often have of what is acceptable and useful discourse, but there's really nothing I can do to change that. If it's easy to stay within the appropriate bubble of thought, then times seem good. But it leaves you with no recourse if you start getting extra-bubble ideas. And it might be actively harming the formation of extra-bubble ideas (which was the whole point of non-promulgation, obviously).

So what can I do?

Facts

Today I'm joined by William Casarin who is one of my favorite twitter follows. William is a freelance software developer, he runs a bitcoin consultancy called bitcoin wizard, and he's constantly building wild and weird projects that seem to "own" technology in the sense I'm always chasing after.

Explain Yourself (talking about tweets)

"thinking about hooking CI build events into my system notifications..."

NixOS

xmonad

z - jump around

pickdrop

Noise Protocol Framework

TLS

Diffie-Hellman key exchange

snow

WireGuard

Tailscale

ZeroTier

NEXT TWEET

"just scraped 20k chess puzzles from http://wtharvey.com maybe I'll get around to using my C game engine for a 3d+2d fics/lichess client with puzzle support."

chess-puzzle-db

Vulkan

NEXT TWEET

"bitcoind + usdt + ebpf + bpftrace ohhh I'm going to have fun with this."

secp256k1

NEXT TWEET

"So when people ask me why I write mostly C now..."

Haskell

Jonathan Blow

BitlBee

NEXT TWEET

"I need to figure out a good fediverse crossposting setup..."

ActivityPub

Mastodon

Gopher

"I have a gopher client running on my paper tablet lol"

Gopher)

Project Gemini

sacc gopher client

Second Life

MUD

Snow Crash

reMarkable

nix-bitcoin

"I think for my satellite nix-bitcoin node, I would want..."

nix-bitcoin

Nix: The Purely Functional Manager

Better software with William Casarin

No offense to @jayriverlong, but I think his think piece on GPT-3 is kind of dumb: "In a GPT-3 World, Anonymity Prevents Free Speech"

So I did a whole podcast about it.

Also check out this book: How Innovation Works

GPT-3

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