Jons Mostovojs @jonn@social.doma.dev

I'm really excited about zkSNARKs. The ability to verify or certify the result of a computation **without having to recompute it** is an incredible superpower.

I think in the future zero-knowledge proofs will be as fundamental to computing as hash functions are today.

This is a talk earlier this fall about how we're compiling formal proofs in the lean theorem prover (https://leanprover.github.io/) to zk-SNARKs using the Lurk language (https://lurk-lang.org/): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IfPi8Qh3gOw

#Lean #lurk #rust

I wrote a guide to creating a setting for RPGs, from start to finish. I'll make a video about how it at some point. Hope folks find it useful.

https://cairnrpg.com/wip/2e/setting/

@jonn There's also the ridiculous pressure of appearing to be the only sane person in the room/bus/plane. Not everyone can stand that.

Which is why mask mandates are needed. And why I will mask up to also continue to signal to anyone looking around that there might be more than one sane person in the room after all.

#Google paid a city government in #Oregon to unsuccessfully try to keep its data center #water usage secret.

🚨 Today the numbers have been revealed, and the data looks devastating for the beautiful Columbia River Gorge as the company plans even more data centers.

📣 #BigTech continues to hoard billions of our tax money while destroying both our environment and our society. It's time to speak out.

#WaterIsLife

https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2022/12/googles-water-use-is-soaring-in-the-dalles-records-show-with-two-more-data-centers-to-come.html

And not to be outdone:

Here's the story of #Microsoft and their despicable efforts to erase an historic Black cemetery that was in the way of building another #Azure data center.

But hey, we're supposed to shut up and be grateful for their posting of trashed projects on #GitHub.

How about instead let's stop shilling for tax freeloaders in #BigTech and start holding them accountable to be responsible participants in society?

https://www.propublica.org/article/how-authorities-erased-historic-black-cemetery-virginia

Just here to experiment.. like I did with my sexuality in the late 90’s - early 00’s

I am very excited to announce that experimental #SecureBoot in #NixOS will be available out of tree through a Flake after https://github.com/nix-community/lanzaboote/pull/26 is merged. :)

Experimental means:

- tested in VM
- tested on well-behaved laptops, e.g. Dell/ThinkPad business models
- you have to bring your own keys
- enterprise workflow are not supported yet
- relies on unmerged RFC in #NixOS (RFC-0125)

Once we polish this, an in-tree experiment on NixOS unstable at some point and NixOS 23.05 will be available.

And then there is the story of when #JohnMastodon took to the stage, juggling bananas like the pro he was. It was unlike him to show off but what could he do? He had his audience, even if a flock of birds fluttered in annoyance at his increasing popularity.

@jonn @abnv you can also trust https://www.softwareheritage.org/ and nixpkgs-swh 🙂

As you may recall:

• The W3C is in part hosted by MIT but MIT intends to withdraw on Dec 31.
• A new W3C nonprofit needs to take over on Jan 1.
• MIT needs to transfer assets (member dues, contracts, IP…) to the new W3C for it to operate.
• I was elected to the W3C Board and am part of the negotiations.

We're two weeks away from cutover and the negotiations are going… poorly. 🧵

I have a story I've never told told about the of hubris of ignorance. My own.

It was ~2001, I was a preteen playing Starsiege Tribes. And somebody accused someone else of using auto-aim.
I lambasted them, saying the bandwidth and processing required to analyze video for that to work was impossible. That external input could never respond in real-time to make that possible.

Of course, it wasn't~impossible~. My mental model of how to accomplish that was ingestion of a video signal, instead of hooking into the program and sending weapon signals at the precise address of the user's character.
I was completely utterly wrong. But it was joyful to be so.

I remember how viscerally confident I felt typing those messages, bathed in the superiority of my cognition and knowledge in comparison to theirs. I thought I knew. Under the central bridge of the map "Raindance."

But I didn't. I was a child talking outside their remit. I wouldn't understand for years.

And in the most pleasurable debate moments of my life, especially earlier in my 20's, dunking on the idiots – I felt an ascendent joy.

While being wrong.

Because absolute confidence is often simply opium for fools. And conditional knowledge is doubtful guessing to the dense.

On one hand, dating someone who runs their own email server shows lasting commitment even during unpleasant periods. On the other hand, they're crazy.

It’s wild how much marketing Twitter is doing for Mastodon right now. Heres to hoping an unhinged billionaire buys Ticketmaster🤞🏻