37: Advanced Malware w/ Arjen

"How can we make maximum use of this technology without shooting ourselves in the foot too much?"

Arjen & Gigi take a walk in Madeira.

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This dialogue begins in the afterglow and exhaustion of another Sovereign Engineering cohort. Arjen has been living with NixOS, putting FIPS into the boot path before LUKS unlocks, and watching the SEC-08 demos turn from isolated hacks into pieces of a stranger, more coherent machine.

The center of the walk is the uncomfortable power of agents. If models can operate the whole computer, then they start to look less like tools and more like extremely capable malware that sometimes works in your favor. Gigi points to a new model for personal computer use: give agents broad access to the machine, but keep signing authority and key material outside their reach. Useful power at the edge, hard boundaries around the thing that matters.

From there the conversation loops back into TollGate and FIPS. Arjen talks through v2, local mints, e-cash as accounting for streamed resources, application keys, and the move from fragile intermediaries toward transports that can route through weird environments. Bytes, kilowatts, water, beer: the pattern is less about one payment rail and more about making access measurable, local, and hard to rug pull.

The final third drifts offline. Myco, Boris, Zapstore, the Offline Entropy Manual, the Offpunk Manifesto, and the local-first movement all become parts of the same instinct: build software that keeps working when the network disappears, when the store rug pulls you, or when you simply want to be AFK again.

In this dialogue:

• why post-cohort decompression has its own strange rhythm
• how clankers made NixOS feel usable without flattening its power
• what it means to run FIPS inside the initrd before LUKS unlocks
• how ZBD, Counter-Strike, sats in games, and fiatjaf sit in the prehistory of several later protocol moves
• why the flat earther meme is a surprisingly good visual metaphor for missing the shape of a system
• how TollGate changes when each access point can issue its own local e-cash
• why streamed accounting can apply to more than bandwidth
• what Johnathan Corgan is pushing toward with FIPS v2 and application keys
• why agents should be treated as advanced malware once they can run the computer
• how signer isolation lets the machine be useful without handing it the keys
• why local-first, offline-first, and AFK instincts are becoming practical engineering constraints
• how Myco uses nearby phones, mesh sharing, and FIPS to explore mobile transport
• why Boris is an attempt to make reading durable, local, and harder to shut out
• what the Offpunk Manifesto captures about disconnection as sovereignty
• why in-person collaboration still has a bandwidth that video calls and feeds cannot replace
• how John Vervaeke and distributed cognition keep showing up in the Sovereign Engineering design
• why the next residency experiment in Vietnam may need to be narrower, calmer, and easier for families
• why the closing answer is still simple: more SECs

Articles mentioned:

• A new model for personal computer use, and the advantage of being a Nym
• Offpunk Manifesto
• DHH: Future of Programming, AI, Agentic Engineering, Vibe Coding & Linux

Related dialogues:

• #17: Organic Tech w/ Arjen
• #24: Building FIPS w/ Johnathan Corgan
• #26: Zapstore w/ Franzap
• #30: Napplets w/ Sandwich
• #33: ASMap, nix, and nix-nostr w/ Julien
• #34: Female Engineering w/ Sherry
• #35: Drinking from the Firehose w/ SEC-08

People mentioned:

• Arjen
• Johnathan Corgan
• Cobrador
• fiatjaf
• Julien
• Justin Moon
• Sandwich
• Sherry
• John Vervaeke
• DHH

Projects & tech mentioned:

• Sovereign Engineering
• FIPS
• TollGate
• NixOS
• Napplets
• ZBD
• Minibits
• Myco
• Boris
• Zapstore
• Offline Entropy Manual
• Local-First Conf

Recorded at 965,919.