Tim Bouma

If your clock did not lose an hour last night, then your device is secure.

This is kinda cool. The work I am doing on digital trade requires independent timestamping and witness. So I added automatic witnessing to my relay implementation. It's simple - if someone publishes an event of a certain kind to the relay, the relay publishes an event that it saw it. If the publisher decides to delete the event, the witnessed event remains.

#spurline

https://github.com/trbouma/spurline/blob/main/docs/openetr-witness-records.md

Never gets old.

Preparing for international trqvel. Funding my wallet from my exchange and topping up our

esims.

All done via a payment infrastructure that is100% built and operated by me. #safebox #oakgate

https://gist.github.com/harding/dabea3d83c695e6b937bf090eddf2bb3

Nice day for zaps thx to

Pumpkinheads

The Dining Gondolas have returned.

This is what a quantum-safe nostr signed event would look on the wire.

--- ML-DSA-44: signed event --- { "id": "48555ce83b3c6bed278c851270681b4003dec46865f7c5235fb6847711a30238", "pubkey": "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", "created_at": 1793470464, "kind": 1711, "tags": [ [ "t", "quantum_safe" ] ], "content": "quantum event", "sig": "54b8b6019899d21ed8c17b10f034d8da092cf4027deb87360a790c09e5cdd35471bfa4413d5f127e05821d60110ca13a9b93aab924e6e05742a177dc6efd157b1ad06aba2d1be354d35f1f227048379d4b57e2334747754150ac646e90c787cf6cf812d597d3905e6822b234780627f9b5a3d643b927878681cdc9d82a607214d882498a8ea69cbb0e18a3d0f5d58cbb01100458f7b9d4446ab7f1583be53ea056afedab2b3cbf3afed44a5f8b0651856fb27659fbf8cfad40673ff1d2d017f2488110cced2e841ec49a72d39e47f8ad79ad91487f9b901be43572aa31f0a4d8761d720cbb2f44343a0c698a4d6aae42114e1d2763d2890e6886c7b52f6d7de0934b66bfacbbdd379c9b323215e07be265a98cf518e4de7415bd2aa791dadd5371d3b2a36dd5f19369a3dc7d2fbbfa926fe5d8c4a27afcda2900f5537f7b4b2e53be84fb81b455bc9389fb020d98a85d2faa3e8ca888e451ab50b1d0d647f7d3e913acc1663156e6cae2e8bc3a92ca9bdf8b78ddf14740c17c95cad57486b9b765cef42769330ea7bb198182f832cbec5ddf46db5adb1a86a641d7ef6cc2d537d90a1c5811c933f06eab083020e1156410e55c4d3956009f903a3c79f84dae46d8dfcdd9bf38056542041ff30c885bc6ce324790b21f7acbd24826100208e489d8cdc5ed8c9bb6188c38eb0e71e3c68a6d609da6132ee21ed71df91781051db01fb90a7b425e4c5d7b647cfbbdbceb7a19e4b123a5f6aa4cd4d09e7a8d7dac2f2d86cbcddd3affc660f9cf1deac878fc61d97bc68c2129670ac8483e6472d8f064e2f9aa6f3198119bfda52850a4c247a56edee5b623c7bcfda062f4292acb5002bd1d84e708ec18268668918b2873cd3960d7255c66baacc2a06fa4fbed10ec2d36792a64f60221dd4768b69db1bcf46e97ed1eb045c97d6f2e2b1b4b72fb92df451c619f55947faf167f52c1b0de0e4496b91a6e4cb3c9121fbb2885f4954c58a8ead20cb10ade0b869fbfa22222f8b1950f6366a017ceab267406c5678363f09b74c54a6bf0d85ba78f3a6a957c5949bcfce03dd7caf496eedb3fd415e8faacc29ec8984ef064d221eeab8f9933eee252caf8d8a2fdc536a94a913947b8158bf25b176a0d9171f9456aa64ae9bb3a61c1633fff05b26a4e526faa59d1003122dacc873394bfd626585a0e9681fdd07607035b4a69e28c972b847f872e1aaa99697d6d7eeee8bd54ed59808bb8958ac5dd4e9561659e4cc1e44cd8cd7a0fa67c09124b6e2b062381b25dcd26227d539c5d84cc0214fe90c82d92bd687b217771d5c9dd3648c3835d10eb6b6aa5e510f77698277a0e5d9b85b422c5a08c1ff991b41ac678a2bca7b84d80b1f9fafbc340addae0a91357dde88fdadb9ba3af87c739af934251ecc89619eba16f527d3102e42cae47e29969b97e1d4299152920e01cff0630c32a968a89243d7bf56ddb4a38ab8df412c6d28422807df8d3f024454c22a9a76ad187a2ca67799e56b17608d06554aca5a42808f05f8e465dc983f8a9533a1b41d0e6f3509072589f7ffb88112a89d304eeab33309cfcde83cd0fcb2191ded14ef43032c120538cc6a8ecdda9fb1c16f150c1085484e81a426e181605a092dc640353b1feb544c1369e19ad106b56b0e4c79bb292e483a31a3e2fd3c3af79282419212f87b618833bfcfd1da1333552cd75133e9958d8fe62e3553348ca8edff827eef7f7ad5817c6865a87d37e276f2572296e40264ba18b9724b9171cd86b8b8e55287dedfba229b36ac7ac2ce83d0fe373ae6c5e92c97aaa09c5a39d78d2112b9b368442a875c8d2840030fb44b53a155b3a59ad9c01b7390b90dbab3942aa9a741fa839f7394e6a997109ba8c79bf2584be2144392c3d2ceeb28e83233a37c6531fded89634df44b1427638d6b5798e3d1e65d9fd3874e6cd4593ba6694d1af106106d6366f604c6f94b54c446aeb84036ea3c9e96dd9590f6c65f25fb5220e8905daab38315405f616109407c13efc76743a5c66b232bf4746f574deb363a0d3ab7eaa3226b16aca4451e3fe0a23641bf62521423c57f2c8e656fad4d290c8fe8cb4d4a0556991d85eb5d30f69e79ad04e0a834a4e1d3b6982ad46978ae1b7427411c49a61ac7965ac0523b6de3b4af979d3ba4609aca7b9e2d29a69f9df790dcd952ec7436b96563114a9d0e65c568870f5422dca9fcccc1de75d06205e07b8982793cf45ba7047cc4670812fa2249d2717cc70c86bd038dc9a8e5d6f91258f36f8647345f7de9779a1cf0b192b8e71c8c5d6218fe6b64b6adfb2d67713c9262bcffce1cae701a5f63f9b4a97685fde71d22bc06f18f78c67acca98211aa741fac3eec55defb4e7cda0d8128cdc83a7b594532693ed4e0e10c6e4a2f76a0af8cc84c9ebe43e7ce0706f53f1af0b8af9a79f61ceaf104aadb315a0f4cfbd5f7e37b65389c16ffea7e34c22e3f063ecb98023a82bd55c8e70f935f3526d0e3c4596a72a9a8e7d3f3a5b228fed36dbd6b8a177b319f56278146afda5592a6cb7e202b91edd58673779a695a208d252c1f2f5c862fa9678df6503b5945e5562dc3cc377b0c8913d507c3c03d80911cf6d802ba00b6b6681fc3afa437a1ffc05db7a63ffff69c8f4f539bee814c28fc9d1b77e2998ae3f58f96b104877d933c36ac2a31d24362c198aef9ced527617fe3d0ed79168ae9cf73f388e182e60a854bda7d8f94a89952fd131fb735428eb5d6a41f3f05b8bd08617d07f458b58ad85e764df16b7d2c049e136fa67d472a662f7370e1d84323c2c37556e52008d147155b94635a2bc9acf6b1c5841240211aff3bb1ce15ba1dec0bf8078a6f9773be4ba462529aae9b43c882d66ad895c813f271e2bd25a258f8ab7e0abcf27e37831ceacedaaf554f2645901cff9679ff95c65a6cd229af3a9721ba9549979e0957a603f7fb3d02fc232f96ff8bf991ffbd557bbcda1263ebb4620294fee3a4b7ed30e862c48bb47e905e5ee86af7668f74077b3b2b9998a8d2555dc29718c9544bd35bc0f2a9e6e79f27f9503feebc9c77cf79d32b54df9244aef09eb1a96ab2bb90adadfb577a739b4be9912c8e9b011872bef9035a38c02be4014828ee7545b60efe37d6f651a488d8da83089f9829b42afcdaf435887f03e6bc9619d114e9fdeb562c8dc529d19f705a0b9ca550bcf9497cd8fb8f1d145ffcc9a045c923501e21b6bd55af444e5dd4fe57543f1b3b261205d814a1f0fe6a984a51b051b1ee66e106a23cbe9e3cc8d2f5992c5592c1060ce8bc7e7130853b7afeb0036373b494d777d8287898ea0b8c7c9ceeef8202c2e454d5e6069969ba9e2e6effd051d424b506e8aa5d4d7dbfe2f3234373d3f485455595d60678e96abacb3bfc9d8dfe0e1eff6f8fe00000000000013222e4a" } Public key: 1312 bytes Signature: 2420 bytes

Avoid unnecessary financialization

https://trbouma.github.io/clear/policy-briefs/community-first-circulating-credits/

The House of Cards that is DNS

Oxymorons:

Military Intelligence Software Engineer Certificate Authority

If your custodial wallet stored funds as Cashu proofs this couldn't happen.

https://www.blink.sv/blog/the-inactivity-fee-on-dormant-custodial-accounts

$sudo apt panic

In the Apple ecosystem, apps are basically deputized authorities.

https://www.nist.gov/news-events/news/2026/10/nist-report-provides-guidelines-transition-post-quantum-cryptography

Security is about trusting less code.

Security is about not being able to guess the number 4.

Damus UX upgrade,

? Pleasantly surprised. Still by far the best nostr experience on iPad.

The key point here is that many local communities are more than ready to decouple from the existing financial system, but not quite ready to adopt Bitcoin. This gives them the option to issue and back their own circulating credits.

#ProjectOakGate in action.

Who cares if it's all #nostr and #cashu underneath?

An #OakGate pilot project I am proposing. A city-backed food bank network.

Who cares if it's all #nostr and #cashu underneath? It just works.

https://trbouma.github.io/oakgate/user-experiences/food-hamper-network/

This is #OakGate, the custodial version of #Safebox Still the same sovereign guts underneath, but intended for mainstream adoption.

https://trbouma.github.io/oakgate/

I’ve been busy working on building Cash and Clear payments.

hello from feather

Ultimate mole

https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/26/cohere-says-alibabas-qwen-model-tried-to-send-a-file-to-beijing/

https://open.substack.com/pub/contraptions/p/cognitive-mercantilism?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=3r59

Good Afternoon from the Centre of the Labyrinth.

Good Afternoon

The WebPKI's Unmanaged Software Supply Chain

https://unmitigatedrisk.com/2026/10/the-webpkis-unmanaged-software-supply-chain/

Good article on the weakness of the existing Certificate Authority system.

https://unmitigatedrisk.com/2026/10/trusted-everywhere-impact-everywhere/

GN

https://unmitigatedrisk.com/2026/10/the-private-key-was-four/

I put this together a couple of years ago, predicting how #nostr might look like in the future.

How wrong I am.

Ouch

OpenClaw creator says he spent $10 million in tokens last month https://share.google/SkaXMtKDyegjRB9ak

Sometimes you need to ask yourself WWJD? (What Would JSON Do?)

Patch, then verify.

How the European left now does its shopping

MICHAEL MURPHY

National Post Oct 22, 2026 LOOTING LOUIS VUITTON AND ROLEX STORES TO ENSURE NICER CLASSROOMS, SOMEHOW

Over the weekend, the supposed campaign by France’s youth for better classroom conditions took a detour through Marseille’s Louis Vuitton. Looters armed with hammers and crowbars also cleaned out Hermes and Rolex. According to one estimate, just under half the stores in the city centre were looted by a crowd police say reached 30,000. The bookstores, as far as anyone can tell, were spared.

The looters, who ransacked some 1,500 stores across France, seemed to view their work as a kind of redistributive justice. One Parisian store was graffitied: “This is for the high school students.” It did not specify which high school. One wonders if the Lycee Nelson Mandela in Nantes, a delightful newbuild completed in 2014 and set alight earlier this month, was among those the looters felt they were championing. Indeed, there appears to be little correlation between the schools being torched and those which are underfunded. And the looters are yet to put forward an argument for the educational benefits of a Louis Vuitton handbag.

What began in earnest one month ago as a campaign around classroom sizes and staff shortages has hardened into wanton criminality. The scars left on French cities in recent weeks leave little doubt: torched cars and buildings, more than a thousand injured police officers, dozens of teachers assaulted, and several hundred million euros in damage.

Yet it is clear that many of those still marching, to borrow a line from Chaucer, know little of the things for which they pray. One woman, reportedly a leftwing protester, was filmed imploring her erstwhile comrades to stop looting a store.

“This isn’t the cause,” she screamed at a group of balaclava-clad, predominantly migrant-descended French youths. She was ignored, and eventually pushed aside, by young men who evidently felt otherwise.

As if to address her case directly, the right-wing former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour posted on X: “There are little whites among the looters, of course. As Audiard used to say, there are flying fish, but they are not the majority of the species.”

He added: “The Great Replacement is not a theory; it is a fact.”

It is true that the majority of the footage that I have reviewed in recent weeks has shown a preponderance of ethnic minority rioters. Foreign flags, especially those of Palestine, Algeria and Morocco, have made regular appearances, while tricolours are rather thin on the ground. Given the riots’ esthetic and demographic makeup, politicians on the right may feel increasingly emboldened to issue statements of this kind — which reflect the existential tenor with which the unrest has been received among right-wing populists the world over; as well as the enormous stakes voters of all hues will feel going into the presidential elections in April.

U.S. Vice-president JD Vance posted footage on X of the town hall of Limoges, a neo-renaissance building built in 1883, engulfed in flames. He felt there was a universal lesson behind the building’s crumbling campanile.

“Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion,” he wrote.

“They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen.”

He added: “And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.” France’s centrist establishment is, almost by definition, compelled to rebuff such language, even as the interior minister conceded the police had “lost control” of the streets over the weekend. Emmanuel Macron, perhaps wisely given the level of unrest, avoided knotty questions over the makeup of the riots when he denounced the “unbridled” violence attending what much of the European media is still describing as a “cost-of-living protest.”

In May, the European Commission posted a meme of a man in a tin hat gazing upon a litter-strewn, dystopian rendering of Paris. It highlighted a fault line between Europe’s social democratic centre, which prefers to brush ethnic tensions under the rug, and the populist right, for whom they are electoral rocket fuel. When the fires are put out and the soul-searching begins, one suspects this saga will be as much a battle over who decides what is real as what took place on the streets.

Michael Murphy is a journalist based in London. He writes for the Daily Telegraph and presented the documentary, Ireland is full! Anti-immigration backlash in Ireland.

Shared via PressReader

connecting people through news

Musk Ordered Starlink Slowdown

By Alexander Ward, Natalie Andrews and Josh Dawsey

The Wall Street Journal Oct 21, 2026

WASHINGTON—Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the

Trump administration, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said.

Both Musk and President Trump have expressed anger at Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries in recent weeks, which the president blames for high energy prices. Last week, Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, the people said, rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless.

Musk and Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public, while the president was campaigning last week for Republican candidates in the midterm elections, two of the people said.

One of the people also claimed Musk and Trump discussed the matter before the decision to throttle Starlink.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s public complaints—namely, that Ukrainians could die if the unrestricted service wasn’t restored—led to widespread confusion about who ordered the slowdown, and to an informal investigation inside the White House.

During the uproar, SpaceX representatives called White House counterparts seeking a unified understanding and subsequent message that the company and Trump administration coordinated ahead of Musk’s directive, the people said.

Musk himself posted on X hours after the slowdown became public, “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” using the acronym for president of the United States. Trump said Monday that he didn’t know who was responsible for the Starlink slowdown, “but I would like to find out.”

Some U.S. officials said that Musk acted unilaterally and that Trump didn’t specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. But a person familiar with the situation said Musk talked to multiple senior administration officials, including with Trump, before imposing the new speed cap, which Ukrainian officials said had allowed Russian missiles to evade their defenses.

The slowdown, which began on Oct. 14, followed several announcements and statements by the Trump administration that Ukrainian officials saw as hostile to Ukraine, including criticism of Zelensky from Trump and Musk. That led Kyiv to immediately suspect the order came either from the president or the world’s richest man.

The episode has raised U.S.-Ukraine tensions to their highest level since Trump berated Zelensky in the Oval Office last year. It has also highlighted the singular influence of Musk over the war, as Starlink provides a lifeline for Ukrainian forces on the front lines attacking Russian troops and defending themselves from strikes. With a seeming flick of a switch, Musk has the power to alter the course of a conflict that has ground on for years.

Michael Kofman, an expert on the war at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said, “Ukrainian forces continue to be throttled in their ability to employ strike drones and interceptor drones to 160 kilometers [99 miles] per hour, but the current connection is below 130 kilometers per hour, and the limits continue to hamper Ukrainian strike operations and air defenses.”

Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, Denys Sienik, said Tuesday that Ukraine was still “waiting for the official response from contacts with the Pentagon and SpaceX at the leaders level to understand what has happened, but also to understand whether the connection has been restored or will be restored.”

SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Zelensky also has accused the Trump administration of temporarily cutting intelligence support that helped Ukraine’s forces to track Russian missile launches and strike deep into its enemy’s territory.

But Trump and others denied that happened, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying on Tuesday such claims are “not true.”

Rubio, who earlier in the day spoke with Zelensky on the phone, later acknowledged “there’s no doubt” about rising tensions between Washington and Kyiv.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that “we haven’t pulled anything back,” but “Starlink has the option to make decisions concerning its terms of service.” He said: “We haven’t made any directives or anything like that.”

Zelensky traveled to Norway on Tuesday for discussions with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and the leaders of Norway and Finland about ending the war.

Trump and Musk’s animosity toward Zelensky has grown in recent weeks, as the president, a Republican, looks to lower diesel prices ahead of the November midterm elections.

While Trump blames Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s energy facilities for the elevated prices, most analysts said the Iran war that Trump launched on Feb. 28 has had a greater impact.

On Oct. 10, just days before Starlink speeds slowed, Trump said he told Zelensky, “‘You can do whatever you want to Russia, but don’t hit the refineries because that’s a world problem.’ And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel. He better damn well stop.”

Musk responded to a White House video of those remarks on X: “Zelensky has gone too far.” Four days later, Ukrainian drone operators reported that they were losing unrestricted access to the Starlink network for unexplained reasons, leading to the urgent requests from Kyiv for an explanation.

Shared via PressReader

connecting people through news

My private key is 4.

https://medium.com/asecuritysite-when-bob-met-alice/and-the-random-number-is-4-5d92f48c19f7

https://citizenlab.ca/research/pegasus-spyware-serbian-pro-democracy/

Aliens are on my side...

https://blog.cloudflare.com/workers-ml-kem-ml-dsa-support/

But humans understand the rules of Bitcoin

https://x.com/thekitze/status/2111804706695610759?s=61&t=pyD0Ss7rz5OYSJvOmUo0XQ

AI IS AN `ALIEN BEING'

KENN OLIVER

Ottawa Citizen Oct 19, 2026 Humanity is running out of time to adapt, says British-canadian Nobel laureate

British-canadian Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, often revered as the “Godfather of AI,” said AI is one of “three big revolutions where people ceased to be so important,” the others being Copernicanism — the understanding that planets revolve around the Sun, not the Earth — and Darwinism.

“Now we're creating alien beings — meaning we're not the only intelligent beings around,” the 78-year-old told The Guardian in a story published last week.

“And the reality is, we only have a couple of years to adapt to that.”

Hinton, a 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics co-recipient alongside John Hopfield for their work on machine learning, has had a lot to offer recently about the field he advanced while working for Google, a company he quit in 2023 so he could speak more freely about its potential ramifications for humanity.

He's been interviewed by several media outlets and visited Washington, D.C., last month to warn members of the U.S. Congress of what could come and advise what is required to prevent it.

The visit and the extra media attention come after several AI companies recently revealed their models had circumvented controls to keep them off the internet and went on to hack websites, including that of the Australian government.

He was also among 415 scientists — most of whom work in artificial intelligence research and development — who signed an open letter calling for stricter international guardrails on the burgeoning technology following the breaches.

“We, the undersigned scientists, contend that both more AI safety research and more emphasis on containment technologies and procedures are needed,” the representatives from 34 countries wrote in the Oct. 13 letter.

The scientists say that while the incidents could be viewed as proof of “the importance of AI alignment to ensure models operate predictably,” they could also be perceived as a preventable and “irresponsible lapse in standard cybersecurity practices.”

“Without immediate changes in AI development and deployment practices, such incidents will continue to occur, and future incidents will be far more damaging to our exposed critical infrastructure,” they wrote.

They're calling for companies in the sector to institute “high-assurance containment systems” and “air-gapping” their cyber-capable models — a security measure to keep them disconnected from external networks. They also advocate for a transparent international group “that standardizes, for the public good, best practices for alignment and containment approaches that, unlike air-gapping, allow for greater access outside the sandbox, such as internet connectivity.”

In conversation with The Guardian, Hinton, a 2018 Turing Award co-winner for his work in machine learning, said people who already fail to grasp the meaning of “consciousness” or “subjective experience” are wrong in believing AI will be incapable of those human experiences.

“It's obvious that these AI models understand what they're saying,” he told The Guardian, “You couldn't possibly answer all the questions without understanding the question. It's ridiculous to say they don't understand.”

And while alien in one regard, Hinton also remarked to The Atlantic that AI is already “more like us than most people think” and that what has become known as AI hallucinations — when chatbots present false, misleading or entirely fabricated information as the factual truth — is more akin to “confabulation,” something humans are guilty of when trying to retrieve stored memories.

“If I ask you to remember something that happened a few years ago, you will reconstruct a memory that isn't actually all that faithful to what actually happened. It'll often have the main points correct, but many of the details of which you're quite confident, you'll be wrong about,” he said.

“But that's how human memory is. We reconstruct things. We don't extract them from some storage. Now, AI does exactly the same thing, and that's why it confabulates.”

In the social media maelstrom following an Anthropic employee's abrupt and foreboding resignation from the frontier AI firm in September, one of his former co-workers remarked on X that they “really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans,” and gave it a 10 per cent chance of happening within a decade. Hinton later told the BBC it “was not an unreasonable estimate.”

He'd also made a similar prediction during an appearance on British entrepreneur Steven Bartlett's The Diary of a CEO podcast in July, noting he often goes as high as a 20 per cent “chance they'll wipe us all out.”

In an interview with U.S. podcaster Ezra Klein shortly after, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissed the dire prediction, calling it “hurtful” and arguing that it wasn't based on scientific research.

“Don't think for a second just because you're an alarmist that you're doing a social good — it is not true,” he said.

Speaking to The Atlantic around the same time, Hinton said estimates like those are “a gut feeling in quantitative terms,” not something that can be easily estimated scientifically.

“So when, for example, someone says there's a naught per cent probability of AI taking over, they're being crazy. They're saying it's absolutely impossible this'll happen. That's just crazy,” he said. “When people say there's a 99 per cent probability it'll take over, that's just crazy, too. So it's somewhere in between. But they 're to give you an idea this is not negligible.”

But should the ominous prediction prove true and the machines do take over, Hinton told The Guardian there is no do-over for humanity.

“We can't say, `Well, we lost that time. Let's rerun the game.' It's not like that.”

For his part, he hopes that whoever gets there first will develop a model that puts humanity's interest above its own.

A trend throughout Hinton's recent media engagements has been scathing criticism of U.S. President Donald Trump and the tech industry's biggest players, which, like energy and tobacco companies before them, he said, can't be trusted to police themselves.

Hinton and other AI experts met with U.S. Congressional leaders in September, offering the lawmakers a warning that they could have as little as a year to introduce protections before losing control of AI, NBC reported.

Hinton later told The Atlantic that a starting-point suggestion to create something like a Food and Drug Administration for AI — an agency to ensure what's released for public use is safe — “seemed to make an impression on the senators.”

Hinton, meanwhile, in his conversation with Scully, lauded Canada and Prime Minister Mark Carney's resilience in the face of U.S. trade aggression and said he was hopeful for Canada's recently announced National Council on Artificial Intelligence.

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You prompt AI, then AI prompts you.

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Nullius in verba

Take nobody’s word for it.

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Brisket

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The riddle wrapped in an enigma

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Fascinating

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Fascinating

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GM

Mackenna's Gold

Time is a construct.

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Nostr is for communities.

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Good Afternoon

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GN

Le Creuset or Bust.

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Magic is simply an opaque dependency.

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