sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Jan 14

Ethereum

@ethereum

Jan 14

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: x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

6h

Ian Miers@secparam

12h

10 years ago, we launched Zcash, making a private version of Bitcoin. But the origins go back to the 80s, when, in the wake of the Watergate scandal, cryptographers first dreamed of private electronic cash, and the story runs through Satoshi’s invention of Bitcoin.

Zerocoin came three years before Zcash launched in 2016. We’d written it as a zk-mix for Bitcoin, and then a year later, Zerocash, which introduced SNARKs to cryptocurrency and is now the de facto approach to private payments on chain.

More than 30 years before that, in the early 80s, cryptographers first dreamed of private electronic payments. This was right after the invention of public key cryptography, the Watergate scandal, the Church Committee’s revelations of intelligence agency wrongdoing, and an ongoing fight between the nascent academic crypto community and the government over regulations and alleged backdoors.

It was also right as it became clear that the growth of the internet and electronic payments would pose a major surveillance risk. Today, there are a number of cryptographers who think crypto is simply math, devoid of purpose, and a number of folks in cryptocurrency who do not care about privacy (or perhaps even cryptography). That was not the case in the 1980s.

Starting with David Chaum, cryptographers first designed e-cash, a centralized private payment scheme that required a trusted bank to blindly sign special tokens. These went nowhere: existing trusted institutions, like banks, didn’t adopt the protocols, and no one wanted to trust magic internet money run by a strange company. Then Satoshi invented Bitcoin, overcoming the trust issue by inventing a blockchain. Bitcoin’s key innovation was the blockchain, which replaced a trusted bank with a public database anyone could participate in running. Because anyone could participate, it got off the ground without convincing a bank to run it. But because anyone could participate, there was no privacy: everyone could download the database of payments. And we couldn’t just use an e-cash scheme, as that required someone to keep a secret signing key, and the entire point of Bitcoin was that no one had to be trusted.

This is where Zerocoin, Zerocash, and Zcash come in. They replaced the e-cash system with a zero-knowledge proof and, this fact is not well understood by many, strengthened the privacy of e-cash schemes by giving the recipient full privacy even if the bank was malicious.

starmex

@starmexxx

Oct 26

starmex

@starmexxx

Oct 25

x.com/i/article/2114…

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Oct 27

Tay 💖

@tayvano_

Oct 26

WHAT?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 🤬

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Oct 27

Vini B 「thecoding.dev」

@vinibarbosabr

Oct 26

some people are mad about the $ZEC dev fund funding projects like this one (quoted post).

these people call themselves privacy + freedom advocates, but they are now only proving themselves as privacy/freedom larpers.

dev fund exists to fund community initiatives that would hardly receive funding from traditional methods (like in seed/private investment rounds).

the dev fund exists to fund development and foment zcash adoption as freedom + privacy-enabling money among different communities and geolocations. especially for those who need it the most.

zcash is money for everyone.
even for the people you (for some reason) hate.

if funding adoption awareness among a group of people who really needs privacy/freedom money is the death for zcash, then zcash deserves this death.

it isn't, though.
it's the very reason why zcash exists in the first place.

many zcash supporters (especially the ogs) understand that.

those who believe zcash is privacy/freedom money are not only not bothered about this, but understand the importance of funding and promoting zec for groups that are more exposed to social/political persecution. and they are excited about more people getting to now and use zec.

most people opposing it are tourists, speculators, and extractors.

they want zec to go up in price, but they do not support the mission of building freedom/privacy money for everyone.

big difference.

the thing they ignore is that zec's ability to sustainably go up in price depends on its adoption. and it means that some people they don't like will end up using the coin.

if supporting "highly polarizing groups" (as i saw some people describing this initiative) is wrong, there is no reason for zcash to exist. it's meant exactly for highly-polarizing and maginalized groups.

onward.

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Oct 26

DeFi Dad ⟠ defidad.eth

@DeFi_Dad

Oct 23

🎧 Listen/watch the new @edge_pod on Spotify featuring @sovright_ Project Lead @sudo_ml and Head of Engineering @zmanian. open.spotify.com/episode/4djqZT…

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Oct 26

starmex

@starmexxx

Oct 25

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 de 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.

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Oct 24

Vaibhav Sisinty

@VaibhavSisinty

Oct 23

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 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

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Oct 24

ananta

@meansinfinity

Oct 24

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.

sudo_ml

@sudo_ml

Oct 23

Private Inference

@P_Inference

Oct 23

🔓 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 lly use.

💸 Pay your way:
· USDC on Base
· cUSDC on Aztec, privately
· ZEC from any wallet
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/changelog