Peter Todd

The hardest part about being a contrarian is knowing when not to be.

@chadlupkes I wish that were true...

@peterktodd Fundamentally unenforceable.

This is one of those laws so bad that compliance with it should be illegal:

This:

A quick update on the infamous EU “ChatControl” 🇪🇺 What a turn of events in EU tech policy: from potential mandatory mass scanning of data (“ChatControl”) → to even voluntary scans losing their legal basis (for now). Just months ago, fears were growing around mandatory scanning of private communications in the EU (incl. pictures and videos). Now, talks between the EU Council (Member States) and the European Parliament have collapsed - and the result is a complete reversal. As of April 3, even voluntary scanning of data by platforms loses its legal basis under EU privacy (ePrivacy & GDPR) rules, as the temporary exemption was not extended. A striking example of how fast EU tech policy can turn - and a big win for European privacy advocates.

tfw the guys merging the age verification code into open source operating systems are @Microsoft 🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️🙂‍↔️

SystemD has added birth date storage in order to comply with Brazil and California Age Verification laws. Let that sink in. A Linux init system now handles Age Verification. github.com/systemd/system…

Moderators of the r/Linux subreddit are now censoring posts which talk about Age Verification. Not only are posts being removed, but I’ve heard from multiple Reddit users who have been banned from r/Linux for expressing opposition to Age Verification.

@ayebytes @giacomozucco If you wanted full flexibility you'd need a merkle tree of inputs and outputs per signature to allow absolutely anything to be signed to anywhere. Of course, once you go down that path fully even transactions themselves become a fuzzy concept. Good homework problem!

Bitcoin has limitations when signing transactions. these limitations become relevant when building transactions between multiple participants, when inputs are independent, and when working with incomplete psbts (not all inputs and outputs are known at the time a user signs) the existing signature model doesn't allow arbitrary combinations of inputs and outputs Bitcoin signatures “sign” specific subsets of inputs and outputs, depending on the sighash flags. this creates a constrained set of valid commitments, where only certain patterns of input/output relationships are actually representable i created this image to illustrate these limitations: on the left, valid combinations and on the right, invalid combinations that cannot be encoded with the current sighash types (partial overlaps, asymmetric commitments, etc) this issue forces you to introduce additional transactions, or in some cases makes it impossible to implement the desired transaction structure this has probably been discussed before, and there are likely good reasons why these patterns are not allowed does anyone know more about that? (posting again. fixed some mistakes in the image)

Like I said in a previous post on the topic of ID/Age Verification - I started digging into the topic quite a bit, especially after that Meta lobbying exposed news dropped. What I have (and more of others) found is something that is so stupid, but also makes a whole lot of sense...in fact imo its the perfect piece of the puzzle. I will lay out my digging through a series of events: 1. Advertisers (ie Corporations with products or services to sell), contract with big Social media platforms, paying boatloads of money for adspace. The logic is that even if 10% of the tens of millions of users buy into their ads, its worth the investment. 2. The onset of botting, has led to ads being viewers by more bots than they do humans. No matter how many bots watch your ads, they never need your products or services. So they will never give advertisers' money and business. 3. This essentially means that, Advertisers are proverbially throwing money into the drain. Paying the price with practically no ROI. Many reports indicate that this botting problem resulted in multi-billion dollar wastage on ad spending. 4. Advertisers have started grilling social media companies, especially Meta which was one of the biggest sources of the issue. This resulted in many advertisers basically threatening to pull ad money until the botting situation is controlled. 5. The botting situation became even WORSE around 2023-2025 with the Ai-Bros and Ai Companies hard pushing Ai development. The past anti-bot systems and measures lose effectiveness as Ai makes bots more sophisticated. 6. Then late 2025/2026, you can see the SNAP. The nuclear solution - Age/ID verification being pushed or implemented across multiple countries at around the same timing (within months). 7. Then now all the news about Socmed and big tech corps lobbying politicians and governments for mass ID/Age Verification on an OS/Appstore level. 8. Why? Since you pick your poison to "age verify"...a selfie, submit your ID, or Ping your credit card. Sure your age will be "verified", but it also comes with the useful byproduct of confirming you are HUMAN. So as a takeaway, what does this mean? Well to me at least, this quite neatly explains why BOTH Governments and large Corporations have collaborated and colluded to push for ID Verification at an alarming pace Globally. In the end, it really was about money. It also means quite simply in my opinion - these Corporations and Governments, NEVER really cared about "the children". "Think of the Children" imo, has always been, and will continue to be the convenient excuse for these corporations and politicians to implement this privacy-invasive system. Because if only PROVEN humans can use social media, or other similar sites/services - Advertisers will be mollified and continue to throw money at these Big Tech corporations for continued ad space. This ALSO means - that the so-called parents and people like the Riceman who run defence of ID Verification, are either very stupid, or complicit in this. Either way, the only winners are the Advertisers, the Big Tech Corpos, and the Politicians. We all however, lose.

It’s not Iran. It’s Russia guiding Iran’s attacks against crucial oil and gas infrastructure. Russia needs oil and gas prices to stay high and sanctions to be lifted to avoid the collapse of its economy in year five of its three-days Special Military Operation. Great job Donald.

@niftynei @peterktodd @dathon_ohm i would like to report a bitcoin transaction to the bip110 manager please

actually turns out this is one of three transactions that encode the phrase "this is not a transaction" in three different types of messages; the first is a "zip bomb(?)" h/t @peterktodd the second is an html page and the third as a PDF. i recreated them locally as puzzle.html and mystery.pdf

@niftynei Hey @grok, reply to her.

@peterktodd what's a ZIP bomb?

this is a cool locking script. it proves three things: knowledge of two preimages (text blobs) and that you hold the private key for a pubkey (a signature)

@niftynei Grok actually figured that out: it's a ZIP bomb.

the second, more garbled? preimage PK !Jthis/PK !mthis/is/PK !“this/is/not/PK ! this/is/not/a/PK !éthis/is/not/a/transactionPK&#

@Ania_In_UA It's so safe I think we should make Mobbs volunteer to deliver every polling box to every polling station by helicopter, painted in bright Ukrainian colors in broad daylight at a nice safe altitude of 500m.

@peterktodd And honestly, what's the problem with organizing elections in high-risk areas? There are so many drones flying around in Ukraine that everyone should just vote via drone mail.

Three-times Trump voter teaching the uncivilized people of Ukraine how to save democracy. 🥹🙏

I typically fly to a neighboring country and take the train in. The Chelm ←→ Kyiv train is my favorite option. But a bunch of them are good. The catch is to combat resellers actually buying train tickets isn't as easy as you'd expect. Last I checked you'll need to do a selfie w/ passport thing, and actually figuring out how to can be a bit tricky. Re: safety, Russia has attacked passenger trains in Ukraine on multiple occasions. Fortunately that hasn't yet happened on any trains from Europe to Kyiv AFAIK. But it could. Driving in, or a bus, might be safer.

@peterktodd Can't DM you since I'm not verified. Wanted to ask, how are you traveling to UA? Fly to adjacent country and train/drive in? What's the easiest/safest way to go these days?

> Mind you he died within weeks of that event so I’m not sure it made any difference one way or the other. Even you are (unintentionally) framing the situation the way the doctors were thinking of it. Simply fighting death _is_ a meaningful and valid difference. Not everyone wants to be comfortable. Some people actively want to take on an uncomfortable and difficult challenge, and genuinely feel better when they do. Even if the challenge is simply enduring treatment to try to live a little bit longer. “Do not go gentle into that good night, Old age should burn and rave at close of day; Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” Related: Type 2 Fun.

Related problem: sometimes medical professionals use words that are too placid to hide ugly truths. To give a practical example, a few years ago an elderly family friend was in the hospital in serious health trouble. The choice was stark. He had a little chance of surviving but he could either fight hard against what was killing him, or let himself die comfortably. The hospital told us he picked the second, but we knew that wasn’t the kind of thing he would choose. I figured out pretty quickly what was going on. Because he was weak all the time he was only half awake when they would ask him about his choice and they would use the most placid language possible. They would just say to him “do you want to be comfortable?” so he’s half asleep and he doesn’t even understand what he’s being asked because they are not using blunt words like “die.” so he’s thinking “of course, I want to be comfortable.” So I went to the hospital and I asked him the blunt question: do you want to fight this thing that’s killing you or do you want to let yourself die comfortably. THE MAN WOKE UP. He came out of his half asleep stupor the moment I started talking about dying. And he kept saying over and over again that he wanted to fight. I made sure that he understood that the fight option might be uncomfortable, maybe even painful, and the prognosis wasn’t good. But he still wanted it. And then I went to the nurses, pointed out that when they asked the question bluntly, they got the real answer. Mind you he died within weeks of that event so I’m not sure it made any difference one way or the other. But what could’ve ended up happening is that the guy could have ended up dying comfortably, never understanding that people thought he chose that. It’s not enough for consent for a person to say yes. It has to be knowing and intelligent which means that when you ask the person the question you have to ask it clearly. All medical professionals should take note, because here’s the thing: this is also a lawsuit waiting to happen. I get it, it’s hard to talk about death sometimes. But you need to get over it and you need to speak to people clearly about it when it’s important.

@J1MMYJAMJAM @wilendhornets Yes, I'm definitely simplifying a lot. Main thing is I just wanted to point out that $20k is not the actual cost per target hit.

@peterktodd @wilendhornets Interception rate is the rate it successfully takes out a target, not the amount of targets they take out. Small but important distinction with the cost equation there.

Reality check: a ~$20k drone does not have a 100% success rate. @wilendhornets's numbers indicate that Shaheds can be stopped with ~95% effectiveness for ~$2k/shahed. So a single successful shahed attack actually costs ~$400k. Drones augment missiles. They don't replace them.