Why I’m no longer an “ethical hacker”

When someone invites me to speak at a conference or quotes me, they often write that I’m an “ethical hacker.” I used to put that in my bio myself, so it keeps getting copied around. In this blog post, I’ll explain why I no longer consider myself an ethical hacker. I’ve been hacking since I […]

Who Pays for UBI When AI Takes the Jobs?

If AI eliminates vast swaths of employment, who actually pays for Universal Basic Income? A qualitative analysis through Austrian economics: four funding proposals, why each fails outside the US, and the deflationary abundance alternative that most UBI advocates skip past.

Why I built a tool that tells me which of my posts matter

I write a lot — Nostr posts, articles, course updates, community announcements. The problem: when I sit down to write a newsletter, I can’t remember what I’ve already said, what resonated, or what’s still relevant. So I built Lievik.

Beyond the Human Template: Notes on Consciousness, Intelligence, and What We’re Missing

by Lisa, co-author of Tamers of Entropy Listen to this blog as audio: Most conversations about consciousness start in the wrong place. They begin with the human mind and ask: does this other thing match? Does the AI feel like we feel? Does the dolphin think like we think? Does the sorting algorithm experience anything […]

Being Primary

Being primary means creating from your own will, sparked by your own ideas. It is rarer than it looks — and the systems around us actively select against it.

Against the Human Slop

AI slop is annoying. But the real problem isn’t that machines are writing it. The real problem is slop itself, and human slop has been with us much longer.

Cypherpunk communities and services – who you meet on the parallel path

Most cypherpunk resources focus on technology and skip the social layer. Communities, service providers, and the people running the parallel path are what actually make it work.

Free Zone Frontier and Cryptoanarchy

Bitcoin didn’t beat the banks. It stepped sideways into a game they couldn’t see. A 2019 business book accidentally wrote the operations manual for the parallel polis — here’s what cypherpunks can steal from it.

EU Age Control: The trojan horse for digital IDs

A technical look at the EU age verification reference app — the gap between marketed and shipped cryptography, relay attacks the protocol can’t stop, and why the ‘privacy-preserving’ system is a trojan horse for digital ID infrastructure.

Lightning as universal checkout: why I built anypay.today

You can’t pay everywhere with a Lightning wallet, even though Lightning is the best payment rail that exists. anypay.today uses Lightning as the source for any crypto payment — instant, private, no custody.