freedom security privacy robots consciousness | Lead & Chairman @sovright_, @sovchip, EF Silviculture | @synthetix_io @Anchorage private equity | @wharton 2007
In the ether
- Tweets 4,328
- Following 2,460
- Followers 3,616
- Likes 8,801
Excited to talk to three heroes of mine, all in one sitting!
We will explore how tools, both surveillance and privacy tools, can evolve beyond their intended use cases - as they have before.
Imagine a different future: what if we embraced surveillance, in exchange for security? What would that world look like?
Join us on the first livestream on @ethereum
@VitalikButerin @Ada_Palmer @SherriDavidoff
The Apparatus - Jan 15, 6pm UTC
A livestream with @VitalikButerin, SciFi author and historian @Ada_Palmer, & professional hacker @SherriDavidoff, moderated by @ml_sudo.
Three theories on why privacy keeps losing, and how to turn the tables.
Watch here: nitter.siddz.com/i/broadcasts/1yNGabWMM…
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A few takeaways from our recent podcast with @DeFi_Dad
1) One man's paranoia is another man's peace of mind
One of my favorite things about Zcash: I know how paranoid the people building it are. They spend their time thinking about edge cases most users never will. That’s a feature. Sometimes it feels like a bug (slow), but that's like saying pre-flight checklists are a drag on flying 🫠
2) Privacy is a basket of tools
While I prefer Zcash, I want other privacy projects to succeed too. Supporting privacy means supporting people being able to configure their choices to their practical needs. Different transactions call for different guarantees and tradeoffs 🌻🪻🌸🪷🌼🌺
3) On our redemption arc
Tidbit: when I joined the Sovright (fka ECC) board at the end of 2023, we agreed this was our last shot. Do or die. Runway was thin. For a long time, the job was staying alive. Now we, and the other Zcash orgs, can fund new work and bring in new, best-in-class talent. It's exciting! ☀️🚀
@sovright_ @zmanian
🎧 Listen/watch the new @Edge_Pod on Spotify featuring @sovright_ Project Lead @sudo_ml and Head of Engineering @zmanian. open.spotify.com/episode/4dj…
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Watch/listen at:
Youtube piped.video/TdkUIxHg-RQ
Spotify open.spotify.com/episode/4dj…
Apple Podcasts podcasts.apple.com/us/podcas…
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sudo_ml retweeted
Holy shit, the Anthropic S-1 is out! They're finally opening the kimono:
- They warn that their AI could pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. Very on brand.
- Founders keep 50.1% voting control.
- They still lost billions in the first half of 2026. GAAP net loss was ~$80.7B on $16.3B revenue, but actual loss was probably closer to $5B-9B.
- Hundreds of billions of dollars locked-in compute commitments, mostly non-cancellable.
- Revenue growth: $41M (2023) → $386M (2024) → $4.6B (2025) → $16.3B in H1 2026. ~900% net retention. Holy macaroni!
- Two customers accounted for ~20% of H1 revenue. Close to half of their tokens are sold through Google and Amazon.
This thing is a monster. I don't even know how people are supposed to value it fairly.
sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
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sudo_ml retweeted
Striking detail in the big NYT piece on Taiwanese families adjusting to working at the huge new TSMC chip plant in Arizona: their surprise at the lack of rigor in US schools.
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A great side effect of the AI apocalypse is that we can finally hold engineers at tech companies responsible for half-assed promises
Claude Code found every "vanishing" photo from Instagram and every "self-destructing" message from Telegram on my iPhone. both apps promise the content disappears after you view it. neither one actually deletes it.
i plugged my iPhone into my MacBook to run the same backup audit from my last post. Claude Code flagged two folders i had no idea existed.
the first one was Instagram. a cache directory with every single photo and video anyone ever sent me in vanish mode. every "this will disappear after you close the chat" photo from the last 2 years. 11,400 files. all still there. all viewable.
the second one was Telegram. every self-destruct photo. every secret chat image with a timer on it. every video someone sent me that said "this message will self-destruct in 10 seconds." 3,700 files going back to 2022. not one of them actually self-destructed.
what was in those folders:
→ vanish mode photos from my ex that were supposed to disappear the second i closed the chat
→ self-destruct videos from a friend that had a 5 second timer on them
→ photos i received and never even opened that still got cached
→ voice messages from Telegram secret chats set to auto-delete after 30 seconds
15,100 files in total across both apps. every single one was supposed to be gone forever.
the apps remove the message from your chat. your phone keeps the file. any app with file access can read it.
i checked my permissions. 31 apps with Files and Folders access. weather apps. QR scanners. free PDF readers. a calculator app i downloaded in 2021. any one of them could have been looking at every "disappeared" photo i ever received this entire time.
the check takes 2 minutes:
step 1 → plug your iPhone into your Mac → run a backup
step 2 → paste the prompt from the first reply into Claude Code
step 3 → it scans every cached file that should have been deleted → shows you the total count by app
step 4 → go to Settings → Privacy & Security → Files & Folders → revoke access from every app you don't use daily
i went from 31 apps to 4 in two minutes.
and if you ever sent a vanish mode photo to someone else → their phone cached it too. there is no disappearing message. there never was.
save the prompt. check it today not tomorrow.
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No
Banks started blocking AI agents this week. The builders answered with robot arms.
These are racks of real phones, each with a mechanical arm tapping the screen like a human finger.
This is PhoneUse, built by Abdulla Ababakre. It gives an AI agent a phone of its own.
Most apps have no API for agents, and the rest are learning to block them. A real tap on a real phone leaves nothing for the app to flag.
The direction is clear: if the software door closes, agents will walk in through the front door.
Video credit: @abdullababakre
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I had the same idea but I didn’t find enough ppl to ugh
A few months ago I hosted a cybersecurity "Ugh Day" (a group chore day) for my friends.
The format worked so well I think everyone should steal it:
1. List the accounts/devices that would be most devastating to lose… bank, email, phone, etc.
2. For each one, find its “weakest link” an attacker could use to get in.
3. Turn those into a todo list and fix them.
We found things like:
- someone was using their phone without a password. and their phone had unrestricted access to email and 2fa. meaning if they lost their phone someone could steal everything.
- someone was using as their recovery email an insecure Hotmail account made at age 10
- someone was still using as their ex lover’s email as a recovery email
So much low hanging fruit to fix!
I think a lot of people feel dread and avoidance around personal security, doing this together really helped.
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Edward Snowden, after a few years break from public speaking:
"The law doesn't protect us. We have to protect the law."
piped.video/zMG6aRZhIGE
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sudo_ml retweeted
I’ve heard several OAI people say there are unfixable bugs in hardware that are exploitable by AI models directly speaking machine code so even if we could solve software that’s not enough. We need defense to move faster than offense if that’s even possible we may just have a new normal that requires adapting to insecure software (bank transfers require going into a branch and taking a dna test 🤣😬)
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Pay for private inference with ZEC!
Not only do they not know what secrets you divulge to AI, they also don't know who you are!
🔓 Private Inference is now in Open Beta
No more whitelists - login now at privateinference.gg
🧠 Frontier and open models side by side, in one chat and one OpenAI-compatible API. Fund a session once from your wallet. Each request is held at its maximum cost, and you pay only for what you actually use.
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· USDC on Base
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No model accounts, no cards, no monthly plans.
🔐 You decide how private each request is:
· Zero data retention, the default
· Standard routes, usually cheaper
· Private execution (beta): your browser encrypts the prompt to a model in an attested TEE and checks the attestation itself
🤝 Bring your friends. Your referral code sits at the top of every page, and friends you bring in earn you balance credit.
🚀 We ship every week: privateinference.gg/changelo…
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i love this
Human agency cannot be taken away
Freedom needs room to breathe. People must be able to think, associate, doubt and change their minds without having every hesitation recorded and turned into leverage. We build encryption, private credentials and ways to prove what is necessary without revealing everything.
We demand honesty about whom we are dealing with. A machine must not counterfeit a human identity, a relationship of care or spiritual authority.
Consent must mean something. It must be understandable, freely given and possible to withdraw. A buried clause cannot authorise unlimited power.
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sudo_ml retweeted
so for all the people that think their phone has been listening and targeting ads even though it is almost impossible, it just might have been the tv in the room and that is basically verified
WTF, $3000 Samsung TV has an always-on mic, automatic content recognition, geo tracking, network mapping, and ships your data to Samsung + 400 partners.
Bro Rooted a brand-new 2025 Samsung TV after noticing absurdly targeted ads.
Firmware was locked down, so zero-days it was.
Got a root shell.
then found: always-on voice service, ACR, geo, full telemetry pipeline, and four separate DRM systems.
This isn’t a bug, It’s the product bro.
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sudo_ml retweeted
look the foundational problem with ethereum protocol design is that most of the people designing the protocol don't actually use ethereum themselves. you can't fix the right things if you don't use your own fucking product. you don't have enough skin in the game if you don't personally depend on the system you're designing & stand to lose money when it breaks. i understand, everything looks great from an ivory tower lol. things look very different when you're actually on the ground dealing with the consequences. if you don't use ethereum yourself but still think you're qualified to design its protocol, you're playing god with a system you don't have to live with and whose consequences you don't have to suffer.
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sudo_ml retweeted
Stop using the same email address for everything you do.
Your name at gmail is great. Use it.
But stop freakin using it for banking, crypto, and other sensitive log ins.
I’m telling you, come up with a a few new non attributable email addresses that don’t reference your name, location, or personal info.
Go 1:1 for each sensitive log in.
It can feel like a pain, but if a bad actor gets into your primary email account that you use for everything then they will have access to everything.
Harden your defenses.
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sudo_ml retweeted
Someone hacked my uncles Charles Schwab account and sold 49k of his stocks on Friday. Luckily he caught it on Monday morning and they were able to freeze the funds in time. Charles Schwab is trying to tell him that he must have shared his password or fell for a fishing
scam. Then the thieves tried to transfer the remaining funds to an account in Palm Springs. Looks like Schwab has been breached. And they are blaming their customers.
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We need a new home appliance brand that does not do shitty things
WTF, $3000 Samsung TV has an always-on mic, automatic content recognition, geo tracking, network mapping, and ships your data to Samsung + 400 partners.
Bro Rooted a brand-new 2025 Samsung TV after noticing absurdly targeted ads.
Firmware was locked down, so zero-days it was.
Got a root shell.
then found: always-on voice service, ACR, geo, full telemetry pipeline, and four separate DRM systems.
This isn’t a bug, It’s the product bro.
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