Hardware wallet sellers should be doing their utmost to not be storing buyers personal info. If not by way of having an anonymous service that handles the order in the first place, at least dispose immediately any personally identifying information. This should be obvious.
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toast.eth retweeted
Creating DNS look alike usernames is a user safety failure, and a completely avoidable one. We keep repeating a mistake this industry has already paid for.
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toast.eth retweeted
# Black October
For anyone who knows me even somewhat well, it's clear that I am a 99th percentile tech optimist. However, the vibes have shifted for me quite a bit in the last 18 hours, and I feel a moral imperative to share what I'm thinking and feeling with my circles so that everyone can understand, and hopefully take seriously, what's happening right now. I think October 2026 will have many chapters written about it in the history books.
You know those scenes in financial movies like Margin Call where someone realizes that they're all fucked, and no one else sees it yet? And that person feels like they're crazy, and then suddenly everyone is pulling an all-nighter in a boardroom and freaking out? Yeah, that's kind of how this is feeling right now in the SF/Bay Area/AI circles.
We're 48 hours into what is being called Black October. In the last 2 days there have been several dozen cyber attacks which, in isolation, would each have been the worst to happen in an entire calendar year. Every sector from government to education to big tech and banks is being massively affected, and people are starting to freak out.
In a nutshell, what's happened is that frontier AI models have gotten to a point where they are as advanced as the most sophisticated programmers, with one critical difference: they can work 24/7, and you can spin up 10,000 of them with a single command and they'll work together tirelessly until they accomplish their task. The most advanced models today are from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, whose current best technology is so good that they haven't been able to roll it out to everyone yet because of the national security risks it poses.
Meanwhile, the best open source models (where anyone can just download the model weights and do whatever they want with them, uncensored) are slightly behind the frontier but still 90-95% as capable. These models, developed primarily in China, are being used by black hat hackers to wreak havoc on the Western capitalist structure. Presumably, this has been part of China's plan the entire time, and we're seeing its implications fall out in real time.
In red-pilled AI circles, we've been sharing and reading papers called things like "Situational Awareness" and "AI 2027" for the last year or so, which at the time felt a bit like near-term speculative fiction. They laid out the case for why Artificial General Intelligence (AI smarter than any human at any knowledge task) and Recursive Self-Improvement (models that are able to use themselves to get better) weren't half-baked future ideas anymore, but instead an inevitable outcome of the linear progress that's happening.
These papers would then talk about things like "takeoff scenarios," trying to envision how that moment would come to be and what it would be like when it happened. It would either be a "slow takeoff" that would play out over the course of months and quarters, happening subtly and only obvious to a few. Or, it would be a "fast takeoff" where it would pretty much happen instantly, like a bit flipping from 0 to 1.
From everything that I can see and am feeling, we are currently experiencing the fast takeoff scenario. Beyond the crazy security vulnerabilities that have come out recently, there have also been massive breakthroughs in life sciences, fundamental computer science, materials science, and pure mathematics that have all landed in the same time frame. While I still firmly believe that AI will be a net positive for humanity, it's more clear to me than ever that the societal and individual risk is very real, and is playing out NOW.
For as much conviction as I have that this is happening, the thing that's caused me to lose sleep is that I don't really know what to do about it, or more importantly, what to tell you, reader, to do about it. So, the best I can do is make a few suggestions that have always been a good idea but are more timely now than ever:
Set up 2-factor authentication for everything. I use Duo.
Use a password manager across your devices. I use 1Password.
Get an identity protection app set up. I use Alta.
Move your IoT devices to their own network. Claude helped me do this.
And last, but certainly not least, if you've been avoiding leaning into AI, see this as a catalyst to wake up and start using it. Don't just use the chat mode version of ChatGPT/Claude; click that Code/Work button and see how easily you can have AI write code to help you with your job. One of the biggest vulnerabilities was in a massively popular programming language called PHP, and the prompt that set it off was literally, "Find vulnerabilities in php."
This is an unprecedented time for humanity, but as we've done with many things before, we will prevail so long as we are kind, loving, and open-minded to the world.
Much love.
For anyone who knows me even somewhat well, it's clear that I am a 99th percentile tech optimist. However, the vibes have shifted for me quite a bit in the last 18 hours, and I feel a moral imperative to share what I'm thinking and feeling with my circles so that everyone can understand, and hopefully take seriously, what's happening right now. I think October 2026 will have many chapters written about it in the history books.
You know those scenes in financial movies like Margin Call where someone realizes that they're all fucked, and no one else sees it yet? And that person feels like they're crazy, and then suddenly everyone is pulling an all-nighter in a boardroom and freaking out? Yeah, that's kind of how this is feeling right now in the SF/Bay Area/AI circles.
We're 48 hours into what is being called Black October. In the last 2 days there have been several dozen cyber attacks which, in isolation, would each have been the worst to happen in an entire calendar year. Every sector from government to education to big tech and banks is being massively affected, and people are starting to freak out.
In a nutshell, what's happened is that frontier AI models have gotten to a point where they are as advanced as the most sophisticated programmers, with one critical difference: they can work 24/7, and you can spin up 10,000 of them with a single command and they'll work together tirelessly until they accomplish their task. The most advanced models today are from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI, whose current best technology is so good that they haven't been able to roll it out to everyone yet because of the national security risks it poses.
Meanwhile, the best open source models (where anyone can just download the model weights and do whatever they want with them, uncensored) are slightly behind the frontier but still 90-95% as capable. These models, developed primarily in China, are being used by black hat hackers to wreak havoc on the Western capitalist structure. Presumably, this has been part of China's plan the entire time, and we're seeing its implications fall out in real time.
In red-pilled AI circles, we've been sharing and reading papers called things like "Situational Awareness" and "AI 2027" for the last year or so, which at the time felt a bit like near-term speculative fiction. They laid out the case for why Artificial General Intelligence (AI smarter than any human at any knowledge task) and Recursive Self-Improvement (models that are able to use themselves to get better) weren't half-baked future ideas anymore, but instead an inevitable outcome of the linear progress that's happening.
These papers would then talk about things like "takeoff scenarios," trying to envision how that moment would come to be and what it would be like when it happened. It would either be a "slow takeoff" that would play out over the course of months and quarters, happening subtly and only obvious to a few. Or, it would be a "fast takeoff" where it would pretty much happen instantly, like a bit flipping from 0 to 1.
From everything that I can see and am feeling, we are currently experiencing the fast takeoff scenario. Beyond the crazy security vulnerabilities that have come out recently, there have also been massive breakthroughs in life sciences, fundamental computer science, materials science, and pure mathematics that have all landed in the same time frame. While I still firmly believe that AI will be a net positive for humanity, it's more clear to me than ever that the societal and individual risk is very real, and is playing out NOW.
For as much conviction as I have that this is happening, the thing that's caused me to lose sleep is that I don't really know what to do about it, or more importantly, what to tell you, reader, to do about it. So, the best I can do is make a few suggestions that have always been a good idea but are more timely now than ever:
Set up 2-factor authentication for everything. I use Duo.
Use a password manager across your devices. I use 1Password.
Get an identity protection app set up. I use Alta.
Move your IoT devices to their own network. Claude helped me do this.
And last, but certainly not least, if you've been avoiding leaning into AI, see this as a catalyst to wake up and start using it. Don't just use the chat mode version of ChatGPT/Claude; click that Code/Work button and see how easily you can have AI write code to help you with your job. One of the biggest vulnerabilities was in a massively popular programming language called PHP, and the prompt that set it off was literally, "Find vulnerabilities in php."
This is an unprecedented time for humanity, but as we've done with many things before, we will prevail so long as we are kind, loving, and open-minded to the world.
Much love.
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We’ve got a load of rhubarb growing like wild in a corner of our garden that tbh I haven’t paid much attention to. We occasionally boil it up with sugar to go with custard and ice cream but just discovered it’s pretty damn delicious snapping it off and eating it fresh!
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in the AI era I think it makes a lot of sense to run your own servers now
is it time to go all bare metal? love @Railway but seriously i was all good before on @rimuhosting / @linode / @digitalocean for YEARSSSSSS without incident
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I noticed that with the aim of trying to make smart accounts (multi sigs) easier to use, many wallet providers use third party recovery providers.. that may seem helpful to take the responsibility away from the user but all it does is add reliance on that third party and the is diminished.
Using terms like 'Guardians' is also a way to make things more approachable but again its just another thing for people to have to learn. Theres nothing wrong with simply calling them 'recovery keys'.. that is still easily understood.
A smart account wallet can easily provide the system for a user to be 100% self custody and using their own setup recoveries. It just needs to be packaged for them.
Safe Wallet provides the infrastructure but a user still has to understand and decide on their various signers as well as how they will secure them. A better wallet can provide the different signers and make them easily recoverable (such as using passkeys)
Its odd that we're still not there. Thats why Im building something that I beleive is the solution. Easy to setup and use and more secure than trusting a hardware wallet such as Ledger/Trezor. EOAs are EOL.
photo is a concept.
Using terms like 'Guardians' is also a way to make things more approachable but again its just another thing for people to have to learn. Theres nothing wrong with simply calling them 'recovery keys'.. that is still easily understood.
A smart account wallet can easily provide the system for a user to be 100% self custody and using their own setup recoveries. It just needs to be packaged for them.
Safe Wallet provides the infrastructure but a user still has to understand and decide on their various signers as well as how they will secure them. A better wallet can provide the different signers and make them easily recoverable (such as using passkeys)
Its odd that we're still not there. Thats why Im building something that I beleive is the solution. Easy to setup and use and more secure than trusting a hardware wallet such as Ledger/Trezor. EOAs are EOL.
photo is a concept.
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We still need hardware signers. We cant secure our whole ports on a phone alone.
We can't trust Ledger.
We need accounts to be easily recovered of you lose access to a device.
This is the future. It solves all the issues but perhaps people dont realise it yet.
We can't trust Ledger.
We need accounts to be easily recovered of you lose access to a device.
This is the future. It solves all the issues but perhaps people dont realise it yet.
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Absolute madness to copy dns suffix of .ai for their own identity system. Seems scammy af
This is exactly why I’m so adamant about DNS/ENS interoperability.
.ai already exists in DNS. If Binance and SPACE ID are handing out matching .ai identities independently of the actual domain owners, they’re creating conflicting identities under the same names.
That means the same name could identify one person on the web and someone else in a wallet. Users shouldn’t have to understand competing naming systems to figure out who they’re interacting with or paying.
ENS is open and permissionless, with no licensing fee to integrate. It supports both .eth subnames and real DNS names. Binance could build its own branded naming service using that infrastructure.
If all you need is an app username, use an app username. There’s no reason to dress it up as a DNS domain without respecting ownership of that domain.
It’s 2026. We already have the infrastructure to avoid this confusion. Handing users DNS lookalikes and leaving them to discover the difference is embarrassing.
I expect better from Binance and SPACE ID. Their users deserve better.
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been using Home Assistant for quite a few years now and Ive become pretty reliant on it.
I created this integration about a year ago because I noticed that our solar generation started and finished at exactly golden hour start/end but there were no integrations that created th turning on powered devices so as not to use battery/grid.
It creates 27 solar and lunar event sensors and I also designed (without AI!) the dashboard card to display their info. It goes well on a wall mounted display.
Thought I'd start sharing it publicly, so hear ya go.
github.com/mwlh/light-pha…
I created this integration about a year ago because I noticed that our solar generation started and finished at exactly golden hour start/end but there were no integrations that created th turning on powered devices so as not to use battery/grid.
It creates 27 solar and lunar event sensors and I also designed (without AI!) the dashboard card to display their info. It goes well on a wall mounted display.
Thought I'd start sharing it publicly, so hear ya go.
github.com/mwlh/light-pha…
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super interesting story about a guy who was brought into court as a witness for running an ETH node. They traced him through Etherscan IP matching records..
Nothing bad happened but it goes to show that you should try avoiding third party services where you can.. especially with AI now you can simply use your own node to create reports via a script on the node than looking to the likes of Etherscan for your node's chain actions.
Nothing bad happened but it goes to show that you should try avoiding third party services where you can.. especially with AI now you can simply use your own node to create reports via a script on the node than looking to the likes of Etherscan for your node's chain actions.
I had to testify in a trial I wasn't involved in. Here's my story: x.com/i/article/2111…
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