Тег: Video

A couple of lectures on crypto

Ekaterina Schulmann in her program introduces a distinction between news, meaning that which attracts attention, and events, meaning that which has consequences. For example, when I announced the debates between Litreev and Milov, it was news, but the debates never took place because Navalny returned to Russia, and everyone stopped caring about trifles.

A bit later, I announced a doublet of lectures by Alexei Nefedov and Alexander Kotov as part of the Ural libertarian lecture series. There was no broadcast of the lectures on the day they were held, and I soon conveniently forgot about them. But this event had consequences: after a considerable amount of time, the Ural libertarians channel quietly uploaded the recordings of the lectures, and I finally watched them.

1. Alexei Nefedov. Bitcoin and the Theory of Money.

The lecture first analyzed why money appears in human collectives at all, what function it serves, which types of money achieve wider distribution, and which rely solely on state coercion. Then it briefly described how Bitcoin is designed and why this construction ensures its wide adoption and price growth. Finally, it explained why Bitcoin never actually became money, but instead turned into a defensive financial asset.

The parts about economics were clear and interesting enough for me. Where it concerned technology, I didn’t dive too deep, trying not to be intimidated by phrases like “quantum superposition.” I learned some specific new details, such as how the rules for the Bitcoin network’s operation are changed, or how the price forecast was built based on the stock-to-flow model.

It seemed to me that it would have made sense to expand the topic of altcoins a bit more, but Alexei is a Bitcoin maximalist and apparently believes that if you don’t talk about them, they will disappear on their own.

2. Alexander Kotov. Technological Solutions to Social Problems.

I hoped to hear ready-made recipes in the lecture, but it turned out to be more philosophical than practical. Interestingly, Alexander believes that state actions are not the cause of problems such as, for example, censorship in social networks, but that these are purely social problems. It seems to me that in the absence of a state, these problems would at least be less acute, because attempts to silence opponents are linked precisely to the task of political dominance, which is nonetheless a state phenomenon. Nevertheless, several interesting recipes were mentioned in the lecture, for example, regarding moderation in large social networks that would significantly reduce social tension—through subscriptions to rating agencies that would act independently of the social network’s administration and provide services directly to its clients.

The lecture turned out to be quite sobering; it became much clearer to me why there is such low mass adoption of decentralized social networks, and now I am not entirely sure that I want to bother with it myself—at least as long as centralized solutions provide some room for maneuver.

At the end, Alexander demonstrated how a hardware wallet works; it was curious but not very clear, however, it is evident that it is a fairly paranoid piece of hardware that is unlikely to allow the user to lose their money in a very stupid way. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough money to be that obsessed with security, but it was interesting to watch.

Online Anonymity: Recipes from Libertarian Band

Libertarian Band has released the second video in their series on agorism, and since I am no longer involved in production, I am personally very curious to see what they’ve put together this time.

It’s about methods for ensuring anonymity. Judging by the thoroughness of the presentation, Bitarch acted as the consultant. The set of recipes looks even more hardcore than in Svetov’s video on a similar topic.

In my view, the video feels like a “how to assemble a class five body armor” guide, with a hint that the real pros actually build tanks, but this will do for a start. In other words, it’s clear that if you want to, you can secure yourself very effectively, but it’s not very clear how to actually walk around town with all that. Perhaps it would have been better to structure the material differently: here are the possible threat levels, and here are the recommended protections for each threat, what the consequences of ignoring the recommendations are, and what the probability of getting caught is.

In this regard, from a purely screenwriting perspective, Svetov acted more competently, because he didn’t talk about abstract online anonymity, but tied it to a specific case involving a Chechen who beat up some “cosmonauts” at a rally. Perhaps in this case it would have made sense to tie it to the case of Bitarch himself. Like, if you want to be unrestrained in your expressions while communicating on VK and not have anything happen to you for it—here is a set of tools to satisfy this urgent need.

And so it goes: all it took was to look at the material of a favorite channel from the outside, and instead of an advertisement, it turned into a critical review.

A bit of economic crash course in cute animation

How useful do you think it would be to translate this into Russian?

L29Ah

In some places, there is quite a large amount of text, so subtitles alone are unlikely to suffice; the images will have to be redrawn. But the videos are truly pleasant, and it would be great if someone took them on. I’m posting the first two as they are, but the third one, about Keynesianism, was previously provided with Russian subtitles by one of my regular readers and donors, Viktor Parkhomets.

https://youtu.be/ODJPUdnRY8M

Libertarian Band. Cryptocurrencies.

I am pleased to present a new video from Libertarian Band — the guys have started the long-awaited series on the tools of agorism. And although I no longer write scripts for them, they are doing a great job, which I am very happy about.

The video provides a historical introduction to encryption and how this entirely state-driven affair suddenly led to cryptocurrencies—tools for liberation from the state—and concludes with recommendations on how to use them.

Infosec from Svetov, a brief review

Mikhail Svetov has released the long-announced video on methods for disappearing from radars and setting up anonymous and pseudonymous identities. The disclaimer states that tech-savvy people are unlikely to learn much new from it. I am not a techie; I learned something.

My pseudonymous identity was created with many vulnerabilities, so I do not expect it to withstand any close scrutiny, and I view my activity more as an intellectual game. If I suddenly need to create a new pseudonymous identity from scratch, I will use Mikhail’s advice. To the extent that I already apply the methods he proposed, I have no complaints: it really works. Therefore, one can cautiously assume that there will be no serious holes in the parts I haven’t tried.

I am glad that Svetov has reconsidered his position regarding the extent to which anonymous sources can be trusted. It is a pity that he had to make many mistakes and lose a lot of money to reach this conclusion, but what can you do—that is the price for excessive snobbery and the desire to keep one’s cloak white for as long as possible.

P.S. Viewers noted that in his tutorial, Svetov did not finish typing the command to update packages in the terminal, and as a result, only updated their list. The correct command looks like this:

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

Will there be a New Year under ancap?

Libertarian Band suddenly delighted us with a bonus New Year’s video, in which they examine the question mentioned in the title. Someone in the team is clearly a fan of Bazhenov, because the analysis is conducted from the perspective of economic mainstream. Thus, most of the video consists of discussions on how profitable holidays are for the state economy, which has a very indirect relation to ancap. However, in any case, such a video is clearly better than my dismal year-end review yesterday, and the conclusions drawn in the video are quite correct.

Happy New Year, if you so desire!

Who Benefits from the Fight Against Violence. A New Video from Libertarian Band.

Towards the end of the year, Libertarian Band finally put out the final video of the cycle on violence. It turned out to be somewhat relaxed and encouraging, just what is needed at the end of December. The idea is that yes, violence is certainly a problem, but it is a problem for many, and many stand to benefit from solving it. And since it looks technically solvable, and since both the goal and the means exist, it will, of course, be solved.

I have two main grievances with the entire cycle. First, it is quite abstract. The problem of violence in general is like the problem of poverty in general. People are more concerned with their personal safety and personal well-being, and discussing macro-parameters significantly reduces engagement. Second, the postulated division between self-defense and revenge is largely artificial. Accordingly, arguing that the former is virtuous while the latter is not will inevitably spark disputes: why exactly is it not, and where is the line? For instance, I am hit, I hit back, and I am told that I am wrong, that revenge is bad, and that I should use non-violent methods. I claim it was self-defense, and I am told that it cannot be self-defense if I have already been hit. Why is a one-second difference in the exchange of blows acceptable, but a one-day difference is not?

Nevertheless, personal safety correlates with the overall level of violence, just as personal well-being correlates with the overall level of poverty, and non-violent methods of conflict resolution are very effective in a vast number of cases. So, for the time being, the adepts of the approach promoted in this cycle remain my allies. Specifically, exactly until the general obsession with this approach reduces my own personal safety, and that is still a long way off.

Nonviolent State. A new video from Libertarian Band.

The team I previously had the honor of representing has released their latest video, partially based on my script, which in turn was based on Bitarch’s article of the same name. On boosty, I posted a whole series of iterations showing how the script evolved. The next video is already terra incognita; my work is not involved there, and I am curious to see what they come up with. If it turns out well, who knows, perhaps I will be able to hand over my main text channel to someone over time.

Readers are wondering why Bitarch’s share on my channel has grown so sharply. It’s quite simple: he purchased a subscription for such publications for 5,000 rubles per month. These terms turned out to be more convenient for me than pondering every time whether or not to post a particular piece of material he suggested for free. Similarly, I guaranteed to answer questions accompanied by donations, while all others will be answered as I can.

By the way, speaking of questions. I want to test a certain model. I have created a separate subscription level on boosty for 50 rubles a month. Subscribers will see all the questions I receive and will be able to mark in the comments which ones they would be interested in seeing answered. In this way, even if a question was not accompanied by a donation, a paid subscriber can promote it (Of course, subscribers of more expensive plans will also have this capability). As we know from economic theory, it is through the pricing structure that real human needs are determined. Let’s see how this works in our case.

Readings of Adam Smith, recording

While the Adam Smith Readings were taking place, I was commenting on them via text on Telegram and Facebook, but now the organizers have uploaded the final recordings to their YouTube channel, so those interested can watch specific lectures targetedly rather than watching a continuous recording of the broadcast.

Personally, I found the lectures by Lyudmila Petranovskaya on the ethical aspects of COVID discussions, as well as Evgeny Varshaver’s on the integration of migrants, to be the most interesting. Let me know in the comments what you enjoyed.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuhWCrj1ep6EW8b7AG13bqnFNMHho-Gjz

Balance of Violence. A new video from Libertarian Band.

Libertarian Band has released the fourth video from the series on the balance of violence potential. Since the video is titled Balance of Violence, it is not hard to guess that it occupies a central position in the series.

The key idea in the video is that the balance of violence potential is ensured not only by possibly equal armament—this is unattainable, as players with more resources will easily win an arms race. The factor of solidarity is far more important. The willingness to not allow violence to be used not only against oneself, but also against others—if one can speak of a silver bullet regarding the construction of a non-violent society—then this is the closest candidate.

Of course, the video is not reduced to this single thought; I won’t retell it in full, watch it for yourself. The technical quality of the video continues to grow, but don’t forget to feed the studio with your donations. A critical dependence on one large sponsor strongly disrupts the balance of the potential for independence in decisions, if one may put it that way.