I’m glad you enjoyed that; it was meant to be a joke, but its also true. It wasn’t even considered money by anyone then so stealing it was not technically illegal. And its past the statute of limtations both civil and criminal. So I will be honest with you. I also use like 8 different identites to publish code, and this is just one of my persona. (Some people play a 16/f/ca on the internet, I play 10 people and sometimes more; some more ephemeral than others. And my operating system is designed to segregate my identities so I don’t make mistakes I used to make in uni. The reason is I contribute to projects like Tor and I don’t want to be fucked with even more by dead eyed intelligence officer sociopaths; I fucking hate those people. When people suggest I did something like hack them, its like dude, If I wanted to be a dickhead and hack people and waste my skill (or really a curse) on fucking with people I would be wearing a suite and working for intelligence.

But I rather try to use my curse to try to make positive changes, like while in Uruguay help them secure their infrastructure so my government couldn’t spy on them so easily.

I actually got into Bitcoin to fuck with libertarians before it was considered money; it was super early. Satoshi was still posting, and he even predicted libertarians would be the first people interested, and I had the same conclusion. So I wanted to demonstrate what perfect libertarian free market looks like: me taking your wallet and you can’t stop me. And it turns out, thats the best business model. And so I did things like that, lets say, until it was considered illegal.

It was funny watching them slowly realize why the federal reserve exists, and all the regulations they hate, like why they came to exist.

But unfortunately, my theory of pain causing them to learn, like a shock collar on a dog, it didn’t really work the people just kept their stupid ideologies.

After a while of that they were begging for regulations and governments to recognize what they were doing; unfortunately I think its very rare for people to learn lessons.

Was a waste of my time; but I was bored in Uni; I was a transfer student and I’m awkward and socially anxious so I only had a few friends and since I studied Genetics instead of computer science because I was programming in C by the start of middle school and tested out of a technology magnet school 2 years early because it was bullshit and couldn’t teach me anything. Just seemed to make more sense to study genetics, because I was never all that talented in biology.

I kinda regret this now, but I even contributed code to Bitcoin, especially early on, and inspired probably the piece that will essentially make it impossible to dismantle ever (sorry about that).

But because I worked on Bitcoin, my critique of it is far more nuanced and complex than anything I ever heard on a leftist podcast. I have more legitimate reasons to hate it, and I think the reasons often given don’t actually make sense if you really analyze them. I don’t want to get into specifics because I don’t want to launch a massive debate.

But communist could learn something from Bitcoin, they were able to create a circular economy and take a good portion of drug market, which is the way for example FARC funded their war.

Though what really fucking annoys me is all this blockchain talk, like its a good or cool invention. Its so fucking stupid; and shows they know so fucking little about the technology. If the blockchain were soo important than it would have been fucking blockcoin.

It was Bitcoin because the use of the Merkle Tree which is a fucking amazing invention, its what enabled Torrents. The Bit in Bitcoin is a nod to the Bit in BitTorrent. And unlike a blockchain which has almost 1 use case that is super fucking conditional that almost nothing actually needs one.

The technology that is the magic of fucking Bitcoin is asymmetric encryption. Full stop, its 99% that. That is without question the magic sauce, and it has so many fucking applications its absurd but tons of money gets dumped into stupid blockchain projects and real open source projects that like the internet relies on barely gets looked at.

Anyone who talks about blockchains outside of THE bitcoin blockchain has no fucking clue what they are talking about. But these idiots buy cryptocurrency and think they are cryptologists. Like Ive been to quantum cryptography conferences, and other cryptography conferences and I wouldn’t have the confidence these idiots do after buying a little crypto.

I also sold art for Bitcoin very early on, because I hated paypal and I didn’t want to setup VISA/Mastercard payment gateway. So it was a cool alternative.

Like arguably I said too much and will probably delete this post later, but there is so much more I literally just can’t say; but Ill say this, I tried my best to fuck over bankers, and defend open source hackers who cared about the essence of the idea; which I get.

But I can rattle off a list of problems with it that no one else talks about, and even pitch a solution that solves most of them. I just dont have time or resources to do it. I talked to Satoshi, he was an interesitng person. Did weird things to try to hide his English style.

But he made a list of goals, it was a very clear list. And every single one of them have failed. The project even by Satoshis standards is a failure. It was an experiment that failed and then capitalists using the liquidity of the aribtration of law (drug markets, etc) to speculate on.

Oh, please don’t feel less than for not knowing about crazy bullshit, people into technology believe; you are probably better off not knowing; but I will go ahead and try my best to explain it. I’m terrible at writing, my prose are awful, but I will do my best. If anything is unclear feel free to point it out and Ill try to explain it better.

I’m sorry its long, but I wanted to talk about a lot of angles on this topic.

If you want the shortest version, its like this: Its when people believe things like: Oh we don’t have to worry science will save us from X problem.

A good example of this I hear very often is, its okay we are stealing lithium from lands owned by indigenous people from Bolivia and overthrowing their government, and there isn’t even enough lithium to convert all cars to electric even if we used up all their drinking water and destroyed the beautiful lithium salt flats.

We are just doing that until we come out with X battery. And like “cold fusion” that X battery is always on the horizon, and so we continue coup the Bolivian government to try to install right wing fanatics who will give the US and EU the lithium.

I can name like 4 batteries that are often said that are coming out and so its okay to start producing EVs without any concern for the consequences; because they will be able to switch the battery with a cheaper, safer, and one made of more abundant resources.

Or like Elon Musk will save us, or some billionaire will save us.

There is also this like cult of tech “wizards” or not really sure what term to use, but basically people believe there are this group of tech geniuses that solve the worlds problems. And so you don’t have to worry because they will invent something and everything will be okay.

**Except the problem is; global warming, or better said climate instability, is a minor problem in a giant web of problems about to cause total cascading ecological collapse. And ecologists have been screaming about this but no one listens; a great review article published by nature **

This is an open access article, its a great read, doesn’t take a ton of knowledge of ecology or anything to understand it. I can summarize if for you though or answer any questions you have about it. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01157-x

There is no technological solution for this; the problem is fucking capitalism.If we don’t stop it, it will destroy the planet and not like in 50 years, like within the next 10. And the estimates ecologists and climate scientists give are always much more optimistic than reality; every time. I could be that people in power realize if people realize how fucked we are, society might start unraveling; like immediately.

**Basically ecosystems, niches where animals live, have feedback loops that keep them stable, like a buffer in chemistry. And these feedback loops have been falling apart at alarming rates. Meaning the ecosystems are going to start collapsing rapidly and like dominoes they will cause each other to change because its a giant complex system that we can’t even model on a fucking computer **(AI is bullshit btw. Its fucking laughable, we are not even remotely close to being able to model a brain, we have 3 interesting algorithms and a lot of bullshit marketing hype)

So there is no saving us through technology; it can help, it will be important, but its not going to save us. One of my goals in life is to become a drone pirate and steal packages just because I can think of many ways to do it without ever getting caught. Same techniques would probably be helpful in Palestine. And that technology being used to liquidate a society, will be used at home to liquidate undesirable populations. If they are going to test weapons, we should be testing defenses, or counter-attacks-- but never pretend that technology or programming or science alone will cause a cease-fire or stop the war

Sooo most technology or even science communities on the internet have this optimistic view that don’t worry about global warming, science will solve it. Like how we bred dwarf wheat as the population skyrocketed saving us from mass famine. And these old examples are always used to prove: that everything will be okay. But those examples don’t have any meaningful connection to our current situation.

Well to start I no longer see it as a skill, its something I naturally do, my friends are always shocked I will touch a machine for a few seconds and have it giving me an admin menu. I hacked a Bitcoin ATM in Romania is like 3 minutes (I helped the dude who just bought it and invited me to his grand opening, he spent 150k on it and was having a panic attack, so I had him immediately call the company and reported the bug, was paid 15k the same day, honestly was wayyy to little but since hackers are not in a guild we can’t collectively bargin for appropriate rewards).

So I see it as a curse now. Because if people know about how much I know about computer science they act weird around me. They get scared sometimes. There are many witch hunts when they get hacked from mostly using windows on the internet anytime past 2018+. Its why I prefer witch now because I’m cursed and I’m the weird girl who is sorta isolated and so subject to witch hunts regularly.

I have to downplay my interests and intelligence otherwise people feel uncomfortable around me, I have been accused of wild stuff, and even when not accused they will treat you differently, a suspicion. There is absolutely a stigma, less so in Berlin but lived most of my life elsewhere. I have to pretend to be someone different than I am, I have to avoid talking about the new thing I figured out, or talk about one of my major interests. Because it really does affect the way people treat me.

That is why I’m cursed with a fucking curse.

The witch hunts are frustrating but also insulting. Any hacker now gets minimum 10 years and its ALWAYS solitary, so torture. And I wouldn’t turn and work for them so I’d get 10 years in solitary. And thinking I would risk that for stupid bullshit is fucking insulting, suggests I don’t have a moral compass, and makes no sense because I have never been convicted, accused or caught hacking; its just a label that people apply to me. I never called myself a hacker, I reported a massive bug in middle school and it followed me my entire life.

Then its also insulting because its like I fucking open up electronics, JTAG or UART into firmware and rewrite it. If I wanted to hack you, you think you would know? Thats kinda the whole point, is to never let anyone know, otherwise its not really successful. So it implies I’m stupid enough and have no moral compass (which if I didn’t I would be in jail already, the only way to be my age and know what I know and not be locked in a cage is to have a system of ethics).

This is also why any news article you read that says “country” hacked x; is complete bullshit. They base this often on doing a strings command on the binary and seeing what languages are inside. But even I would throw other languages in my binary to confuse someone analyzing malware I wrote (I don’t write malware this is an example, but if I did, you wouldn’t know at all if it was on your computer, not even an expert would find it; because I would examine their computer to determine their skill level and not install it on computers of people who could potentially detect it; and thats not just me thats every malware writer)

Or binary analysis of code from other things found, and its like again you can store shit in a binary and never use it to misdirect.

So yeah, of course Id throw some North Korean phrases in; hacking is like that, you misdirect in 8 layers. Assuming otherwise is really not understanding it at all. And so when they say Russian hackers did this and its from binary analysis you can’t rely on that.

But Israel and US did write stuxnet; thats for sure, we know from other evidence.

So like it suggests I’m bad at what I do, while accusing me of stupid fucking things, like someone accused me of hacking the electrical grid and turning the light on and off outside her house in Morse code. I don’t even fucking know morse code, that is stupid old useless bullshit. Never interested me. Just 1 example of so many.

I can’t go through US border for example (if you don’t know you don’t have constitutional rights at the border crossings, even as a US citizen they only exist outside and inside, but the border they vanish). So anytime I cross a border (again never convicted, never accused, etc) I get all my technology taken away (phone, laptop, anything) and its never given back. I get strip searched often, sometimes they leave me in a cell for hours I was coming back from South Korea and was being asked if I was smuggling weed; and my brain broke, like I lived in California. Who the fuck would smuggle weed in that direction, it just the stupidest fucking shit; my SO gets it too by proxy; shes a scientist so they ask her questions like “you work in a lab, do you make bombs?” but I got mad at that border guard and basically called him a fucking moron but not explicitly implicitly and so I got left in a cell for 8 hours.

Its why I live in exile now; its just not worth crossing the border to go to a full on police state that I have always fucking hated. Recently I moved close to California in Tijuana to visit family and friends (well no family, they rejected me after I came out atheist, then later trans) but my friends who I consider family, and I have crossed a few times but cant bring any technology, I expect stupid questions, and it takes way longer, I have to go by foot otherwise they will tear up the car I’m in, and typically strip searched I think mostly for the humiliation honestly.

Its just extra-judicial punishment. I have experienced a lot some I wont even talk about on the internet.

I made a more in depth post on mastodon to avoid repeating myself to much just going to link to that if thats okay: https://mastodon.social/@ekis/111587352810957269

Has some more details about how I got labeled, and some of the extra-judicial shit I went through

It’s been coopted, eIther the common “hacker” as synonymous for “cracker” or the “Hacker News” type which tends to be less about “cool tech that moves civilization forward” and more “services to sop up value while offering gossamer-thin actual advances” and “chasing the almighty IPO or acquisition”

Hating labels is fine, there is no rule about being any political affiliation but leftists places are where many members are coming from because they agree with the core principle of caring about people other than just the people they know.

But yes education to me is the most important part of this project.

To answer that question, I need to ask a few questions; sorry if that is annoying.

What is your end goal? Like working for a company? Making websites? Are you a scientist or interested in data analysis? Game development? Having an idea of what trajectory you are interested in helps. If you have no idea still, that’s completely fine and I can still help you. Eventually we will want to chat over some platform like XMPP or whatever you are comfortable using; so I can walk you through building your first program. If I have time we can even do a screen share thing but I have a standard first program I always have people do to get started; feeling that rush from completing something is important.

Also important to note I have taught people who were very talented but decided they just didn’t like programming and that is okay too. When you do start your first programs you will need to decide if its something you enjoy or not.

I personally like that anarchist shot presidents but I can’t speak for everyone in the community. I love mutual aid, and I feel anarchist have been some of the most effective at demonstrating effectiveness of their tools in crises.

I personally worry that anarchism could enable corporate power or some other super organism style organization to take control. That is why I feel communism is necessary, because you can’t leave that power vacuum open, its better to have a system to organize things.

I kinda lean more anarcho-communism though; I would prefer a type of communism that let you do what you wanted; and while I have a lot of respect for Soviet science and sceintists; I don’t know if creating a superior man is a good goal; though our environment shapes us weather we want it too or not, so in some ways you can’t escape it, you either get changed passively or actively.

And I agree with Bookchin in a way, I don’t want to get into the details because it will definitely start a larger discussion (possibly even people yelling at me) than I can handle right now (I’m having some medical issues); but I have an idea for a decentralized communalism and communist project, I have sketched it out but never modeled it or anything. I considered writing a comicbook about it.

Many hackers and computer scientists are anarchist. Ill add it to the sidebar.

I like anarchist, I used to identify as one, but as I got older I see communism as the only way to stop total cascading ecological collapse, and we probably wont have enough time to fix it.

Like there are two major problems we face and we don’t really talk about: 1 is “the greatest generation” fucking booby trapped the entire fucking planet with planet killing bombs. I like to ask people “whats your favorite part of the nuclear triad” at parties, as you see people dont talk to me much at parties. So that needs to be resolved otherwise, the infrastructure and just probability of accidental explosions of not nuclear weapons, THERMOnuclear weapons which are entirely different beast. And the US specialized in dirty bombs so if one of theirs goes off accidentally, like that area would become an exclusion zone.

Sometimes I consider building a darknet website where you bet on witch silo is going to have a malfunction (one in Arkansas almost did in the 90’s; and we have dropped many from planes accidentally on US territory, and by sheer luck they didn’t explode) because wherever it happens, like if its Seattle for example or some place along the southern east coast, or San Diego where they are manufactured, it would dramatically change the political map of the US.

So we got that, and then we have total cascading ecological collapse https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01157-x

To be brief: climate change, or better said climate instability, is a small component in a web of problems that are about to fuck us so hard that the niche we live in as a species is going to close up or shrink so much that it will redefine what hell world means.

Honestly any belief is welcome, even liberals can come post, but we will make fun of them relentlessly and shame them. I don’t really care if it converts them but it would allow the community to demonstrate why some X liberal idea is fucking stupid and build a list of arguments that can be refined and used in later conversations.

If you are ever up for it Id actually like to talk to you more about Bookchin, he is an interesting fellow. Probably best by XMPP or Email; I think we could have an interesting discussion truly. Now I got to get on anonymous and get the guys books, I feel ignorant and not well read all of a sudden.

I go into Bitcoin to fuck with libertarians, no joke, but there are libertarians that I feel like could be political allies and are not insane corpratist, or want trillionaires to exist. Finding that common ground is important for creating a political coalition, just need a good way to filter out the ones that we could work with and avoid the rest because they seem mostly concerned about how you can have sex with a 16 year old in Germany and the UK but not in the US.

Thank you for the question, it let me learn more about Bookchin and I will definitely read his books; even if I disagree which I may not, it sounds interesting and he sounds like we start from the same foundation: anti-capitalism. So we have important common ground.