manofmanysmiles

No, definitely not. I have no inherent reason to trust the people working at the Internet Archive over let's say close friend. For me trust is always a human to human concept, and no amount of tech or institutions will change that.

The more people I hear making a claim, the more I'm likely to deem the claim(s) as true. This is even true regarding the claims that cryptographic algorithms have the properties that make them useful in these contexts. I say this as someone who has even taken graduate level classes with Ron Rivest.

I'm not sure what will happen in a court. I imagine the more people that start making claims using cryptography as part of the supporting evidence, the more likely people will start to trust cryptography as a useful tool for resolving disputes about the veracity of claims.

So you would not get any value from multiple people making such claims?

Motivation: Have evidence that some content existed at a particular time. For example, let's say a major website publishes an article, and later they remove it, and there is no record of it ever existing. If I host an ArchiveBox, I can look at it and see "Oh here is that article. Looks line it was published after all." However, why should you believe me I didn't just make it up?

If when I initially archived it, I computed a cryptographic hash of the content and posted that on a blockchain, then at a future date I can at least claim "As of block N, approximately corresponding to this time UTC, content that hashes to this hash exited."

If multiple unrelated parties also make the same claim, it is stronger evidence.

Is this sufficient explanation? I can expand on this more later.

I love this project. I "independently" "invented" it in my head the other day, and happy to see it already exists!

I'd love to see blockchain proof/notary support. The ability to say "content matching this hash existed at this time.

I'm exceptionally busy now but that being said, I may choose to contribute nonetheless.

I'd love to connect directly, and will connect to the Zulip instance later.

If we align on values, I may be able to connect you with some cash. People often call me an "anarchist" or "libertarian", though I'm just me, not labels necessary.

I think this guy has not worked with enough people who aren't that good at programming. GenAI lets me spit out reams of what to me is boilerplate, but to someone more junior might legitimately take weeks. It's a tool that right now empowers people who already are extremely effective. It is not a substitute for deep knowledge, wisdom and experience.

This is precisely the madness that I'm astounded by. Most people think this is sane, normal and moral.

And, I imagine most people reading this think I'm either insane, ignorant or uneducated, or will attach some other adjectives to further alienate me. It's okay, I already feel like an alien.

I'm not looking for an argument. I don't need to convince anyone.

I was hoping for a more receptive audience. Oh well.

It's amazing to me that people think they need other people to resolve disputes, or that "law" is some kind of magic...

And yet people keep thinking so, both selling it as magic, and buying it as magic, and not once taking the time to consider what the words on the paper might mean.

Is it just me, or are the videos that look like they're shot through the glasses extremely jerky and at a low frame rate?

For me, buttery smooth animation and synchronization of the physical and projected world are table stakes.

So you agree with me, that it's worth optimizing for objective metrics, and then work on subjective metrics afterwards?

Happiness being subjective is exactly why it is an important metric. We are conscious beings with subjective experiences. I don't care how many studies say that I'm objectively happy I read, if I'm not happy, the metrics are meaningless and perhaps even harmful to me.

That being said, optimizing for some of these collective benchmarks does create some baseline stability from which people can pursue and build their own rich, meaningful and happy lives.

They optimize for system health, not health of each node. However, a healthy system is great, though if all the nodes kill themselves, or tear the system apart, maybe it isn't so healthy?

I'm referring to slow suicide through "lifestyle choices", and war, both physical and cultural.

So work should be done on all levels of abstraction, from the system level down to the compute node, and even lower, to the energy, and maintenance of compute subsystems.

I think it's important to optimize life for metrics, but I think it's even more important to remember that we (conscious beings) are the ones living, so if we hate it, the metrics are either wrong or not relevant.

Imagine living somewhere and feeling miserable, and everywhere there are billboards and ads everywhere saying "Remember that you are happy! All the metrics are better! Oh you're not happy, you must be confused or wrong in some way."

So what's wrong with these metrics? That they are an aggregate, synthetic measurement attempting to measure something subjective, or at very least measuring qualities that may not be the causal factors for "happiness".

I'm not suggesting that these are the wrong metrics necessarily, but rather that work may need to be done in the soft and squishy world of "self development" or "spiritually", so that people may be able to create happiness and joy, and eliminate aspects of life that do not support that.

For example, learning about nutrition, exercise, healthy detox pathways, emotional health (through whatever lens appeals to each person), relationships, purpose, and more.

I think honestly there is a bit of a crisis of meaning: humans realized it's a rather challenging place to live, so we/they built technology and civilizations, and now many more people are living more "comfortable," "safe" lives, and in the absence of an external threat, are lacking in purpose. Some people think we need some external threat, so risks like damaging the environment are framed as a "war against climate change", because thus far, external threats have been good motivators. However, I'm sick and tired of being motivated and seeing life as a battle, and I know I'm not alone. In this period of objective peace and prosperity, I'd love if more people shifted their focus inward, to discovery fountains of love and creativity, and use that creative energy to shape the world and life towards further connection and play. This won't happen on a mass scale if most people are physically and emotionally unhealthy, fighting with family, fighting with people in war, and avoiding intentional inner development.

For those of you that think this doesn't matter, imagine trying to build something, and all of people you're working with have PTSD, or can't stay motivated for more than 5 mins without scrolling instagram?

Imagine camping on another planet looking up at an "aurora", or creating your dream movie by talking to an AI, or perhaps even living out your wildest dreams through VR, or for those that think this way, "hacking the matrix" and living it for real.

"Hacking the matrix" could be finding new properties of physics that make the impossible possible, it could be learning that we are in a simulation, or it could be something more "mystical", the real point is making a quantum leap in what is possible as a human.

This thread seems beaten to death, yet I feel strongly that I'd like to express this:

Groups of people that work together share a common purpose, that is aligned with the individual purposes of all the people that make up the group. A great leader helps remind people that they can cooperate and all win, and uses the clear purpose to cut through bullshit. There are few people in the world that can do this.

What is he accused of? I can't find any sources that say any more than that, he was arrested, and that the warrant was issued by a team investigating larger issues.

It was a genuine question. Any implications are either below my conscious awareness and unintentional, or creations of your own.

Since you didn't answer, I'll make a guess: you are expressing what is true, using written language as the best representation of what you've come to know through your life as an offering, a present to those other beings who are able to hear the divine words behind the coarse letters of the English language. Perhaps by speaking what is true, you help bring forth more of it into the physical world?

What say you?

I'll check out those links later.

You might be amused to learn my personal website is iamthatiam [dot] org

I really appreciate hearing the story that weaves all these computing choices together! Somehow that human element contains more actionable information than a dense data sheet, and I now I know I'll give Gnome and some of the apps mentioned a try!

Perhaps I'll try it in a VM on a M1 MacBook Pro, with Nix, to really have fun! I think personal computer software can be improved a lot with lessons from the Infrastructure as Code world, notably the ability to create reproducible, version controlled computing environments!

Let's say for a minute that what you're saying is true, that is, there are people in power that are aware of the etymology of words, and name things with symbolic insight, what are you hoping to accomplish by sharing this here?

I'd love to see what would happen if the board said "Okay fine, we won't sell anything to anyone in Europe."

I know, unrealistic, but a fun thought experiment.

Walk away from $21B profit on $86B revenue.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2024/08/apple-reports-third-q...

Unless I'm missing something, Secure Boot as designed is fundamentally broken.

Its root of trust is the BIOS/Firmware, which can be updated from a running OS. There is no hardware root of trust.

How Secure Boot Works

Secure Boot ensures that a device boots using only software trusted by the Original Equipment Manufacturer (OEM). Here's a high-level overview:

1. Power On and Initialization: The CPU initializes and runs the BIOS/UEFI firmware, which prepares the system for booting.

2. Platform Key (PK) Verification: The firmware verifies the Platform Key (PK), which is used to validate Key Exchange Keys (KEKs).

3. Key Exchange Keys (KEK) Verification: The KEKs validate the allowed (whitelist) and disallowed (blacklist) signature databases.

4. Signature Database Verification: The firmware checks the allowed (db) and disallowed (dbx) signature databases for trusted software signatures.

5. Bootloader Verification: The firmware verifies the bootloader’s signature against the db. If trusted, the process continues.

6. Kernel and Driver Verification: The bootloader verifies the OS kernel and critical drivers’ signatures.

7. Operating System Boot: Once all components are verified, the OS loads.

Apple Secure Boot Process

Apple adds hardware-based security with the Secure Enclave:

1. Secure Enclave Initialization: Separate initialization handles cryptographic operations securely.

2. Root of Trust Establishment: Starts with Apple's immutable hardware Root CA.

3. Immutable Boot ROM Verification: The boot ROM verifies the Low-Level Bootloader (LLB).

4. LLB Verification: The LLB verifies iBoot, Apple's bootloader.

5. iBoot Verification: iBoot verifies the kernel and its extensions. The Secure Enclave ensures cryptographic operations remain protected even if the main processor is compromised.

For more details, check out:

- <https://uefi.org/sites/default/files/resources/UEFI_Spec_2_8...>

- <https://www.apple.com/business/docs/site/Security_Overview.p...>

I would really love to have a hardware root of trust on a Linux or other open system, with a hardware security module of sorts that is programmable, so I decide what the root keys are, and is able to measure the firmware boot process, establishing a proper audit trail or chain of trust.

I can't remember the HN formatting rules, so expect an edit shortly to make this look better.

Edit: I did a little more poking. It's not quite as bad as I thought, because at least in theory, the BIOS will verify a digital signature of a BIOS update before flashing it.

What about HTTPS client certificate?

https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/t5/iis-support-blog/clie...

I don't know enough about this to know if it meets your need but I've used them to authenticate to servers in college.

Address the problem that people have a proclivity to do "bad". Call it mental health, resolving trauma, spiritual practice. When people are no longer wounded and "broken" internally, they will go out and sculpt the outer shared physical world to match their improved internal state, and all will be good.

I'm not sure this is possible, but I am sure that any attempt to control human behavior externally will fail.

I didn’t check the referenced document, but wouldn’t be easier to ask the authors what they intended? Ultimately the words are a representation of meaning in someone’s mind.

Thank you for pointing out Pharo! My mind is blown, and I can’t sleep!

In the last 15 minutes I’ve read a few blog posts and reddit threads and am saddened. It does seem there are many false or misleading claims, though there does appear to be steady progress, or at least the appearance of it.

I hope the language or another like it eventually can fill this niche. I’ve been dreaming of a similar language myself..

I am thrilled to see so much progress on V! I remember being excited about this language and seeing an immense amount of hatred, skepticism and doubt, and unfortunately being taken in by it.

Is this hatred still present?

Has anyone used the language extensively that can comment on its usability?

Although I strongly believe all information should be shared without censorship, it should be clarified what is happening here.

The people of the court are not ordering him to do something against his will. They are clarifying that the people of College of Psychologists are within their rights to revoke his license.

If you play with someone else's toys (in this case a license), they can take it back at any time, for any reason. The only wiggle room I see is if two people, with full knowledge of the details signed a valid contract where the right to hold the license was contingent on certain obligations.

This "other people's toys" mental model explains why "the government" gets away with taxing. Other people made the money, both the idea, and produced the paper, and as such they can decide how it is used. It never was an never has been the property of individual people.

I can see a future where “AI” Image generation is so good it provides perfect plausible deniability. There will be images of every type of every person that proving one is real becomes impossible.

For content creators, it may become irrelevant who provided the original source material. Someone can take your likeness, voice, etc and produce more content, possible better than the original. There may come a day where being the original doesn’t really matter, and producing the best fake is where the money’s at so to speak.

Sorry I didn't reply earlier. I an pretty disheartened with the "state of the world", or perhaps people's attitude towards it, and didn't even look at HN for a while.

I totally agree that my attitude may be off putting. I have a lot of trouble listening to people that speak with such certainty. How could anyone possibly know? What gives them the right to say such things? But what if some people really do know something? Should they couch every phrase with "I believe" or "it seems" or other words weakening their message? I'm sick and tired of that as well.

I am not really sure what is genuinely objective anyway. We as humans seek certainty and build models of reality, like the law of gravity, or model of the atom, so we can take actions with some certainty that that our actions will have the desired effects. In some fields, like physics, when confined to certain well defined "envelopes", the predictive power of our models appear to be about as objective as we can get. So far, gravity seems pretty darn solid. Of course, the boundary conditions are wild, once you start moving relativistically, or look at a sub-atomic scale. Let's not even start with quantum physics.

The only thing I know "objectively" is that I am conscious. I can observe, and I am experiencing something that we call reality. I appear to have senses, a body, thoughts, emotions, etc. However, this is also the most subjective possible claim, as it comes from me, the subject.

Now if I take this a bit further, can anything ever really be objective, when viewed from the position of a subject? I don't know. I observe and take in information and I believe this information changes my neurology, or perhaps something beyond (quantum interactions to a "beyond"), and I can use this information and the mental models to live my life and make decisions. If a lot of people use the same mental model, and show that with high probability it holds true (within an envelope of parameters of course), then we can considered it objective, but again viewed through our individual subjective points of view.

I can also say, I don't know if you, or anyone else I've interacted with is "real" or conscious. How could I? I only experience life through my own lens.

Spiritual teachers and books and knowledge passed on through the ages claim things like "We are all one consciousness", and all beings are in fact one. Maybe. I can't prove it, and I have not experienced it, even through lots of spiritual work such as meditation, plant medicines, other "energetic" practices.

Where does that leave me (or us), and the desire for "objective truth"? The way I approach it is that we must be extremely rigorous with our thinking and aware of the limits of rational thought. We must know what assumptions we are making and then use logic to slowly eat away at the foundations until perhaps truth will become self evident, as self evident as the undeniable (to me) knowledge that I am conscious.

I claim that morality is objectively true, because I do not wish to be harmed. You can't argue with me and claim that this isn't true. It is just true, within the bounds of my own experience. If I take that truth, and project it outwards, and make the assumption that you, and any other human is conscious, and make the assumption that they do not wish to be harmed, then I claim that that is the basis for morality. Anything is "right" as long as it does not go against the will of any other conscious being that has the ability to set boundaries. This can only be known but looking inward, and asking what morality means to you. I certainly hope this is true for everyone. It would be a good place to start.

The three words I used "morality", "consciousness" and "self" really describe the same phenomenon or experience I have, and have observed unambiguously within myself. I know I am conscious. It may be an "illusion", but even so it is 100% real to me, more real than any peer reviewed study or external knowledge. Even if a million or billion people say that morality is "doing the greatest good for the greatest number of people", I know that if that harms me, the harm is real. I experience it is real, and the only thing that would convince me otherwise would be direct experience of "the interconnectedness of all being", and through this experience realizing that I am not in fact harmed, and some "greater good" is in fact a greater good. Hoping, praying, doing scientific studies, measuring "happiness" or coming up with "objective metrics" of "the greater good" will never replace that inner knowing.

I'd feel remiss if I didn't mention taxes. As Thomas Sowell said, “What exactly is your ‘fair share’ of what ‘someone else’ has worked for?” For me this again is an undeniable truth. It is immoral to take from someone else what they paid for with their attention and effort. Imagine two men (or women) living on an island. Both are peacefully living isolated lives, eating coconuts. One of them gets hurt, and is no longer able to climb the coconut tree to get food. If the injured one does not get more coconuts, he will die. Is it okay for him to steal from the other? If you say yes, then I'm not sure we'll get much further :)

What if there are three? Or a hundred? What if by stealing one coconut, he can save 100% children from dying? Is it okay for him to steal?

I'd say it's perfectly moral to go to the other guy and say "Hey, I need a coconut. If you give it to me, we'll save a hundred children." At this point, it's up to the man with the coconuts to make his own moral decision. I'd hope he'd save the children, but it's wrong for anyone else to make that decision.

Even if I am wrong with all of this, I feel "in my heart" that if all people connected with this knowing within themselves, we'd collectively experiencing a very different eternal and internal world.

The chains of external government would become unnecessary and fall away if everyone governed themselves. I don't know what this world looks like exactly. I don't know specifically how people would organize and cooperate to do things that cannot be done as an individual, but I do know that taking the first step to not initiate force against any other being would go a long way.

What about the roads? What about the gangs of not enlightened people that wish to do violence? What about the weak/sick/poor people that cannot or will not take care of themselves?

A bunch of morally healthy happy people with all their needs met now have the opportunity and perspective to chose to help build roads, or protect the weak from the violent, and take care of the sick. They will not be forced to do so, but do so out of a place of compassion, strength and love.

We can try to coerce, force, and beat the world into submission externally, but how can we hope to achieve peace externally if we don't find it within first?

I hope that if nothing else, this is interesting to read. I don't expect, or even wish to "change you", just share my experience and my dream. I very much do wish to see a peaceful world, where humans collaborate on great works of art, travel to the stars, into the quantum realm, experience the fullness of reality, and cease to suffer. If any of this resonates, it's because a part of you has these same visions, same thoughts and same "conscious" experience as I do. Or put another way, you speak enough of the same language that a part of you recognizes a part of, and we realize we're not all alone, separate and different, but do share something fundamental and good.

Words are limiting, and I've done my best to share. If you want to read more of my writing, check out https://iamthatiam.org, or reach out on Matrix (see my website).

This may have already been said, but many of the authors/gurus/teachers from the “Vedic” tradition emphatically state how true spiritual work should and even must be done scientifically.

The science as described involves primarily data gathered from direct observation of one’s own experience, rather than studying the external physical world.

This goes very contrary to the statistically driven science most people are familiar with, even though certain hypotheses, experiments and results can be observed in larger groups.

However, if the scientific method is applied rigorously to matters of the spirit it will yield great dividends.

I came to “spirituality” by means of almost rabid skepticism, and extreme distrust towards anything not “based in reality”, or measurable with instruments, slowly exploring and asking questions about the nature of reality.

This extreme skepticism is so important, as belief or faith is the enemy of knowing. I believe the western mind (one with developed rational thinking), when applied to areas on the frontiers of consciousness and reality is an extremely potent tool.

One can marry the logic and reason with intuition, emotion and introspection and go very far into the unknown, bringing back wisdom to enrich one’s own life, and the lives those one shares this knowledge with.

I believe that as a species we’re in the verge of discovering a whole new layer to what it means to be human conscious beings.

I’m not really sure if there is a point to this comment. Perhaps I am just excited to see spiritual inquiry happening in the mainstream, with structure and discipline.

I am sick of strict materialism, and just as sick of the ungrounded beliefs, taken in faith by people involved in the so-called “new age movement.”

Wow, you’re right, thank you so much!

The “harm” is caused when people realize it is not moral for people to use violence against each other in the name of authority, and as a consequence cease to follow the commands of authority figures. No real harm is caused when this illusion disappears, hence the quotes. The power structure will disappear, and be “harmed”, but no human being will be.

Of course people are not mature enough to self govern yet. There would be chaos if all people playing the roles of police, military, etc stopped. That’s the primal terror and darkness we need to face individually, to confront the part of self that can do violence, and learn to govern it internally, and be the ruler of the kingdom of self.

When people are ready, these institutions will simply cease to exist, and be as absurd and illusionary any other superstition.

Did the site change to become this? So far that’s my best guess I’d what happened.