**Status as of 1717688887:**

**Hypothetical**

-

**Tostr** (pronounced "toaster") stands for **[[tweet|Tweets]] and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays**. It is a result of [[x-not-twitter|X]] (formerly **T**witter) merging with the [[Nostr]] protocol by converting its frontend and backend software to standard client apps and relays.

*See also: [[nostor]]*


*See also: [[map of the high seas]]*

List of [[wikiless]] instances copied from [project's unofficial README.md](https://gh.owo.si/Nangjing/wikiless/blob/main/README.md) (as of UNIX timestamp ```1719456089```) thanks to convenient use of [[Markdown]] formatting.

# Instances

[https://wikiless.org](https://wikiless.org) - Official instance

Community instances:
  - [https://wikiless.alefvanoon.xyz](https://wikiless.alefvanoon.xyz)
  - [https://wikiless.sethforprivacy.com](https://wikiless.sethforprivacy.com) + [hidden server](http://dj2tbh2nqfxyfmvq33cjmhuw7nb6am7thzd3zsjvizeqf374fixbrxyd.onion)
  - [https://wiki.604kph.xyz](https://wiki.604kph.xyz)
  - [https://wikiless.lunar.icu](https://wikiless.lunar.icu)
  - [https://wiki.froth.zone](https://wiki.froth.zone)
  - [https://wikiless.northboot.xyz](https://wikiless.northboot.xyz) + [hidden server](http://ybgg2evrcdz37y2qes23ff3wjqjdn33tthgoagi76vhxytu4mpxiz5qd.onion) + [I2P](http://wikiless.i2p)
  - [https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com](https://wikiless.tiekoetter.com)
  - [http://c2pese...onion](http://c2pesewpalbi6lbfc5hf53q4g3ovnxe4s7tfa6k2aqkf7jd7a7dlz5ad.onion) + [http://hflqp2...b32.i2p](http://hflqp2ejxygpj6cdwo3ogfieqmxw3b56w7dblt7bor2ltwk6kcfa.b32.i2p)

The poster of the unofficial readme this list is from included the following [[cryptocurrency-wallet|wallet]] address accepting [[Monero]] donations:

```Monero
832ogRwuoSs2JGYg7wJTqshidK7dErgNdfpenQ9dzMghNXQTJRby1xGbqC3gW3GAifRM9E84J91VdMZRjoSJ32nkAZnaCEj
```


It's a decentralized platform and you're astonished there are smart people on it?

What do you think crude oil is?


One more note: uniformity can also be seen as part of navigability and aesthetics can also be seen as part of readability


Navigability over readability might seem odd, but of course you'd rather struggle to decipher some info you need than simply not find it.


My order of priority (not importance) for wiki editing quality factors:

1. Accuracy
2. Navigability
3. Readability
4. Verifiability
5. Aesthetics
6. Uniformity (part of aesthetics)
7. Citations (part of verifiability)

I say "priority not importance" because while we need accurate, navigable, readable articles as soon as possible, it would be just as shitty to go forever with no citations as it would be to go a shorter time with no articles. Every element can be seen as of utmost importance (because the wiki is fcking important), and all these elements can take talent and hard work.


*See also: [[gothub-list]] • [[ngit]] • [[frontendia]] • [[map of the high seas]]*

Use **GotHub** to access any [[GitHub]] repos by replacing github.com with any domain from the [[gothub list]]. It's an alternative front-end for GitHub written with [[Go programming language]]. At time of writing, it is a work in progress looking for new maintainers (issue [#131](https://codeberg.org/gothub/gothub/issues/131) on [[Codeberg]] page).

https://gothub.app

https://codeberg.org/gothub/gothub/src/branch/dev/README.md (instance list can also be found here)

# Features

- Lightweight - for both you and the instance host
- No [[JavaScript]] - pure HTML and CSS goodness
- No requests made to GitHub from the client side - they won't even know you made a request!
- [[Open source]] - for peer review & trustworthiness
- Save bandwidth - no JavaScript/tracking bloat loaded!

# Comparison to GitHub

Tested with PageSpeed Insights. Using ansible/ansible as a test repo.

|                     | [GotHub](https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-gh-psf-lt-ansible-ansible/6ssup87ipo?form_factor=mobile) | [GitHub](https://pagespeed.web.dev/analysis/https-github-com-ansible-ansible/maetxu2zat?form_factor=mobile) |
| ------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Performance         | 100                                                                                | 81                                                                                |
| Requests            | 3                                                                                | 88                                                                                |
| Resource Size       | 8kb                                                                                | 629kb                                                                                |
| Time to Interactive | 0.9s                                                                                | 2.7s                                                                                |

# Instances

List of instances is at [[gothub-list]].

# Setup

See gothub.app/docs for information about setting up GotHub.

# Scraping

GotHub utilizes scraping powered by [[go-colly]] to retrieve information from GitHub for everything except the explore page. By default, GotHub uses Chrome on Windows 10 as the user agent, but you can change it by setting the `GOTHUB_USER_AGENT` environment variable.

# Funding

The domain [gothub.app](https://gothub.app) is funded by the [[Project Segfault]] team, which is their only expense other than blood, sweat and tears. So, if you'd like to donate to GotHub, you can donate it to Project Segfault at https://projectsegfau.lt/donate or to your favourite instance host.

# About this wiki entry

Information copied from project's README.md on [[Codeberg]] thanks to convenient use of [[Markdown]] formatting, only needing slight edits.


*See also: [[climate change]] • [[mutually assured destruction]] • [[anthropocene extinction]]*

The **global death cult** is a worldwide culture driving many people to [[omnicide|omnicidal]] behavior. Like other [[destructive-cult|destructive cults]], such as the [[suicide cult]] at the [[Jonestown Peoples Temple Agricultural Project]], its existence exploits human psychological [[terror management]], overcompensating for the intensity of the fear of death with extreme suppression.

The global death cult's evolutionary roots are tied to the time when humans had not developed modern technology, and universal death was not optional. Everyone had to die, and so did everyone's loved ones, and humans had to bear this knowledge which was impossible to be prepared for; so emerged a culture of delusion, suppressing the fear of death to the point of insanity, in order to cope.

Today, humans have choices available such as wiping out all known life-forms or developing medical immortality. In healthy humans, the biological drive for self-preservation should promote a preference for developing medical immortality; however, humans are still suffering tragic losses of loved ones; the potential for medical immortality is not clear to most people, and this natural self-preservation drive is suppressed by the psychology of the death cult. People are thus collectively working towards annihilation.

Bad choices along the way have compounded each other to make this situation more severe, such as the rise of the [[petrodollar]] economy and the [[atomic age]]. Most people do not fully intend to be part of the death cult, but unintentionally follow along with it due to human psychological weaknesses and sociological pressures.

[[Aubrey de Grey]] has referred to the underlying psychological phenomenon as a "[[pro-aging trance]]".

[[Nick Bostrom]] devised a parable illustrating the issue, titled [[The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant]].


*See also: [[rug pull]] • [[IOU]]*

An **interest-bearing cryptocurrency savings deposit** is a form of [[cryptocurrency]] transfer where you send money to a [[cryptocurrency wallet]] address for which you don't control the key, and hopefully whoever does control the wallet will send a larger amount of money back to you.

It's important to be aware with such offers, you might not get any money back.

***"Not your keys, not your coins."***

So far, the betting model of [[casino banking]] is the most successful business model for offering interest-bearing savings denominated in cryptocurrency.


*This was [[NIP-54]] entry #777 according to [[Wikifreedia]]*

**Casino banking** is a business model that provides a type of banking service backed by a type of casino service.

"The house always wins."

Casino banking has been implemented maliciously using inflationary currencies, and
also with arguable benevolence using [[cryptocurrency]]. The malicious implementation is called the "debt model," or "[[fractional reserve banking]]," and it's been around for a while. The honest and straightforward version, which wasn't tried until more recently, can be called the "betting model."

# Betting model (new, honest version of casino banking)

Under this version of the business model, the casino bank openly its gambling services as being interconnected with its banking services. Actual bets are placed, meaning wagers and risks are actively and knowingly agreed upon.

The casino operates using deposits it offers interest on, at a rate set within whatever performance it reliably gets on those deposits via its house advantage. This can be seen as the "baseline bet" all patrons agree to - betting the casino is telling the truth about its profitability, and actually intending to sustainably provide the agreed-on interest rate, rather than doing a [[rug pull]].

Additional bets are optional, with greater risk of immediate potential loss in exchange for potentially faster returns. These additional bets may be based on games of chance, or may not be purely based on chance; for example, betting on the outcomes of sporting events may be available.

This business model can potentially be used to reliably offer [[interest-bearing cryptocurrency savings deposit]] accounts.

Ideally, the wagers that can be placed are not purely based on random chance, and a portion of gamblers have some strategic way to hedge their bets against being victims of the house advantage. For example, on [[freebitco.in]] (wiki link), instead of having a flat fee for betting on events, there's a proportional bonus for earlier bets, and likewise a penalty for later bets; the house advantage is presumably being derived from betting first on all events. [Freebitco.in](https://freebitco.in/?r=1600054) (direct referral link) is one of the oldest and longest-running examples (if not *the* oldest) of the betting model.

# Debt model (older tradition)

Under the debt model of casino banking, also known as [[fractional reserve banking]], the bank does not openly advertise itself as a casino and does not accept clearly-agreed-upon wagers. It derives its house advantage primarily from forcing people to use inflationary currency it can freely print, and taking advantage of people prone to manipulated views on the value of such currency.

It further enhances its house advantage with traditional means, such as only offering wagers where it has an advantage, and additional layers of deception, such as predatory lending, presenting wagers as things like home mortgages and business loans instead of straightforward actual bets.

The interest offered on deposits under this model is also set at a rate lower than the casino can derive from the house advantage. However, since the house advantage in this model is primarily provided by inflation, this results in the interest rates being lower than inflation, or effectively negative. This means the deposits are a no-win form of wager, which will always lose against the house advantage, but can lose more slowly than other wagers in exchange for also giving up any potential reversal of the losses.

It is impossible for patrons of establishments under this model to strategically position themselves against the house advantage.


*Please don't use this entry for outlinks or referrals, see [[freebitco-referrals]] instead*

**Freebitco.in** is one of the oldest and longest-running [[cryptocurrency-faucet|cryptocurrency faucets]] (sources of [[so-called free cryptocurrency]]), [[cryptocurrency-casino|cryptocurrency casinos]], and providers of [[interest-bearing cryptocurrency savings deposit]] accounts. It may be the first example of the "betting model" of [[casino banking]], using deposits to operate a casino and rely on the house's advantage to provide returns. The interest offered is suspiciously high, around 4% (more than 5 times [[Bitcoin]]'s theoretical maximum [[inflation rate]] since the most recent [[cryptocurrency-halvening|halvening]]). This may or may not be legitimately sustainable, given the fact casinos can be quite profitable.

The name of the site comes from how it can be used to play with imaginary Satoshis (the smallest units of Bitcoin) in exchange for entering an email address, and potentially turn the imaginary Satoshis real by betting on events such as Formula 1 races to gain enough to withdraw. However, the amounts given freely are tiny - around a single Satoshi (0.00000001 BTC), and the withdrawal requirement to convert the balance into actual on-chain Bitcoin is currently 30,000 Satoshis (0.0003 BTC). The 30,000 Satoshis minimum may potentially be reachable by simply visiting the website to collect free coins several times a day for thousands of days, without placing bets.

Best practices and **red flags** listed below.

# Best practices for use

Sign up using a referral link or code as it carries bonuses for you and the account whose code you use. A list of referrals can be found at [[freebitco-referrals]].

## Don't deposit money

*See also: [[rug pull]]*

If you're not very rich, none of your money is to spare for collecting interest while a sketchy casino bank borrows it. Bitcoin is deflationary anyway, who needs interest? If you're not sure, probably not you. Interest is a potential payment for accepting a risk of loss; it's intended to be a low-risk gamble of its own kind. The compound gains might seem like a good way to slowly acquire a large amount of cryptocurrency, but the risk of loss should not be overlooked. It's only a good offer for people who will not regret losing the minimum amount required to earn interest (0.0003 BTC, same as the minimum required for on-chain withdrawal).

The recommended practice is to just collect the free sats to wager if you're bored enough, and maybe if you win enough, they'll stack up to enough to withdraw.

If you must deposit money, it should be a small amount. If there's a particular set of events you want to bet on, such as Formula 1 races - deposit your sats, place your bets, withdraw any winnings.

## Don't chase losses

If you lose some money and find yourself trying to immediately win the money back, hopefully you're doing a [[martingale betting strategy]]. If you don't know what that is, **or you weren't planning to use it before your initial bet,** then trying to win the money back is called [[chasing losses]] and is the textbook symptom of a typical slide into [[gambling addiction]], a [[psychological addiction]] which can be difficult to recognize due to its differences from other forms of [[addiction]].

In these cases, you need to accept the losses and focus on finding more reliably profitable ventures instead of increasing your amount of gambling. **This is the fundamental reason in human nature for why it is important to not deposit more than you can afford to lose as a cost of learning.**

# Red flags against depositing money

## "Not your keys, not your coins."

Its filtering against spam bots may be seen as suspiciously aggressive, with freebitco.in not accepting connections from certain [[VPN]] providers or having an [[onion service]] available. The website's reliance on DNS is a red flag, offering it little resistance to being shut down, cutting off access to user funds. However, the amount of time it has lasted suggests it may have its own strong resistance to being shut down, considering the outrage sure to stem from such a forced shutdown.

Another red flag is that the titular "free Bitcoin" reward has been shrinking since the site's creation in proportion with Bitcoin becoming more expensive. The site's design does not appear able to handle a minimum reward amount smaller than 1 Satoshi, which it may soon reach as Bitcoin continues becoming more expensive. The threshold has not been reached yet, but has gotten close without freebitco.in revealing a clear plan for the future after that. It's possible the minimum reward dwindling to 1 Satoshi could be a rug pull indicator, a countdown timer for the site's shutdown.

The site's "fun token" deposit system, where users are asked to lock up tokens for a set period of time, is a known red flag for a [[Ponzi scheme]] trying to put a band-aid on its liquidity. However, funds locked until maturity also exist in other legitimate investments.

There is economic pressure for the operators of freebitco.in to keep operating it, including the internet service providers involved. Bitcoin's continued price increase, and the house advantage running a casino, make it a very profitable venture. Those who have deposited money on it will be upset if the money disappears. However, the [[American military industrial complex]] might not care about any of that. While freebitco.in has lasted longer than most, the deep state has been known to run crypto scam projects and eventually do rug pulls in defense of the [[petrodollar]] regime. Even if freebitco.in isn't a deep state project, it relies on military industrial complex infrastructure, even moreso than any cryptocurrency blockchain itself in today's era.

The operators used to have a sister site for [[dogecoin]], [[freedoge.co.in]], which was shut down, forcing users to migrate to freebitco.in - this was not exactly a rug pull, but still not great. They may have made the mistake of leveraging against realistic valuations and found they'd be unable to continue meeting dogecoin obligations as its market value accelerated past Bitcoin's. If they did make such a mistake, hopefully they learned from it.

Regardless of all its issues, freebitco.in will always be thanked for pioneering the honest betting model of [[casino banking]].


# So you want cryptocurrency but you don't have any money to trade for it

Luckily, there is such a thing as **so-called "free" cryptocurrency**, with a catch:

[[Cryptocurrency]] inherently requires transfer fees in order to run the networks that verify transactions, without being overrun by spam. Therefore, cryptocurrency cannot be used at completely zero cost.

Moving forward with that understanding, there are people and businesses who generously give away small amounts of cryptocurrency to all kinds of strangers.

# Amounts

Since cryptocurrency is still in its early growth and adoption phase, with constant, immense increase in market value, these small amounts can be given away and turn into bigger amounts later - imagine giving away spare change to a beggar, except they hold it for a hundred years and trade it as an antique, except it only takes twenty years to become an antique worth trading, not a hundred.

The amounts you receive without paying will likely seem worthless at the time you receive them. If you could spend a minute to get a free amount that is obviously worth a minute of your time, it wouldn't be free money, it would just be part of the economy everyone deals with. The growth phase makes it possible for meaningful amounts of cryptocurrency to be given away for free, specifically because not everyone knows these amounts are meaningful. That means, thanks to supply and demand, these amounts can be tiny now and grow later.

The people giving the cryptocurrency away generally understand that they could have gains by holding the money, but they already have larger amounts, and they may expect the impact of promoting adoption to be a bigger benefit to their wealth than the harm of giving away tiny slices.

One of the most common ways cryptocurrency tokens are lost is that someone gets a tiny amount for free, forgets their wallet while the amount is still tiny, and later remembers their wallet when it's worth more, long after they've gotten rid of whatever device they would need to recover the key from.

The key to profit in cryptocurrency's growth phase is patience, and that applies especially strongly when starting from nothing. The money you can end up with, after waiting long enough with a tiny stack, is mainly a reward for patience above all else.

Additional note: the key to patience may be trying to think about your cryptocurrency for a few minutes or an hour at a time instead of days at a time, while still remembering the topic enough to not lose your key.

## Diminishing returns

The later we get in crypto's growth phase, the harder it will be to get a useful amount of crypto without paying, as there will be less remaining growth to rely on. At some point, a reasonable effort and patience will no longer reasonably guarantee results. This may not be immediately clear at the time. There is risk of wasting time trying to overcome diminishing returns without seeing it's too late.

This is another reason not to give it more than a few minutes at a time.

While you are probably worried about your financial future if you can't afford to get cryptocurrency with your other money, try not to worry about the crypto economy leveling off and robbing you of gains. A peak cryptocurrency economy will undergo radical change as a result of reaching that stage, with long-dormant "whales" (huge amount holders) suddenly awakening to create a world of opportunity as they make moves with their long-stacked money. This is what many hodlers are preparing for, with a multitude of business ideas and other plans that are just waiting to come out into a world of freedom and justice.

## How useful will these tiny amounts actually be for most people?

At least a little bit useful.

If you use the first tiny amount you get to share with others and show appreciation for posts you like, that might be fun. That's a little bit useful.

If sharing with others results in friendships and a gain in reputation, that might be very useful.

If authoritarianism rises up throughout your lifetime and cryptocurrency becomes increasingly censored, the fact that you have any cryptocurrency at all, without a financial paper trail back to you, may become very useful. Even if you're into following the rules, it could simply mean your grandkids inherit some actual on-chain "antique cryptocurrency" that usually only the banks are allowed to hold anymore.

You might simply have fun placing bets with the small amounts, akin to a card game played with penny wagers between friends. That would not be very useful, but it's still something.

It's harder than it seems for these tiny amounts to be truly pointless or worthless.

# Scams

Any cryptocurrency being given away might be fake. Scammers can and will imitate things they find on this page, running scam versions (e.g. scam [[cryptocurrency-faucet|faucets]] and scam [[Bitcoin Lightning]] wallets).

Scammers also have their own types of giveaways they like to do. For example, "airdrops" tend to give away truly worthless amounts of equally worthless and unknown cryptocurrency tokens in order to act as clickbait.

From the scammer's perspective, scamming is one of the ways to to get free cryptocurrency or [[earning-in-cryptocurrency|earn in cryptocurrency]]. It's not widely recommended; crypto scamming isn't very effective for everyday people without deep state support, it's kind of pointless.

Beware the [[interest-bearing cryptocurrency savings deposit]]. Returns are often provided as long as such a business can continue operating, but it's difficult to reliably continue providing interest on cryptocurrency deposits, because cryptocurrencies can't be freely printed, and are generally deflationary. The end result is often a [[rug pull]].

# Not always scams

## Faucets: businesses that give away cryptocurrency

The typical crypto giveaway businesses are difficult, but *possible* to actually get a meaningful amount out of. They are websites called "faucets."

See [[cryptocurrency faucet]] for more information.

When you do get money out of a faucet, it's essentially paying you to be a success story that attracts more users. A profitable business model for the faucet can simply rely on showing the users some ads. However, sometimes these faucets may also be akin to a [[pyramid scheme]] or a [[Ponzi scheme]]. **Please don't encourage others to risk their money.**

## Individuals who give away cryptocurrency

### Social media tipping

Some social media platforms include cryptocurrency tipping systems, such as [[nostr]]'s "zaps" ([[NIP-57]]), which transfer [[Bitcoin lightning]] amounts that can be exchanged for actual on-chain [[Bitcoin]]. Zaps are quite popular on nostr, with a very good likelihood that you will receive some if you simply do your best to make nostr a better place. Zaps can also give a boost to the posts receiving them on nostr, which helps encourage tipping as you can use a tip to help something you like be seen by more people.

[[Dogecoin]] and [[Monero]] are better to use for tipping, as they have better economics than Bitcoin (usable transaction fees) and better security than its "lightning" (actual blockchains). You can collect tips in cryptocurrencies like dogecoin or Monero on any social media platform by simply posting a wallet address to tip you at. Nostr may integrate currencies like these in the future.

You may also find people tipping using other cryptocurrencies on some platforms, such as [[Litecoin]] or variants of [[Ethereum]] with low enough transaction fees.

### Begging

Some cryptocurrency communities are generous enough to support polite beggars.

"Polite" in this context means being a human who participates in the community for reasons other than begging, but may also occasionally beg for small amounts such as [[wallet dust]]. Spamming is not polite and does not attract rewards.

Saving your begging for high-effort posts is most likely to result in support. For example, if you create a handmade on-topic art piece and submit images of it to a community, that can be a good time to ask for tips.

Nostr and the dogecoin community are especially noted for their generosity, and virtually guaranteed to tip any clearly genuine human who works hard to contribute relevant new artworks or high volumes of information while begging for tips. However, that's not really even free money at all anymore - it's more like [[earning in cryptocurrency]].


*For a list of Monero wallets, mining software, etc, see [[monero-implementations]]*

*See also: [[buying and selling cryptocurrency]] • [[earning in cryptocurrency]] • [[so-called free cryptocurrency]]*

![image](https://cryptologos.cc/logos/versions/monero-xmr-logo-full.svg)

**Monero** (XMR) is a [[privacy token]], a type of [[cryptocurrency]] designed to potentially prevent transactions and [[cryptocurrency-wallet|wallet]] balances from being tracked in the future.

Privacy tokens such as Monero market themselves as offering privacy today, despite the widespread prevalence of [[hardware-backdoor|hardware backdoors]] in modern electronics making it impossible for any software to safely offer privacy, especially at a network level. This is similar to how other cryptocurrency projects market their currencies as secure stores of value, likewise underestimating the widespread prevalence of unsecure devices.

However, there are software engineers involved in developing actual functionality for Monero and other tokens, which may help with privacy in the future.

In the mean time, the [[American military industrial complex]] is scared of making people think too much about these hardware backdoors, so they might want to avoid being obvious by limiting their usage to secretive manipulation and [[parallel construction]]. They've gone as far as having the IRS put a bounty on cracking Monero to uphold the image that privacy is possible on electronics manufactured by big tech corporations.

For these reasons, the Monero project can arguably claim a legitimate privacy advantage over other cryptocurrencies (such as [[Bitcoin]]).

# Supply auditing

Another issue is that supply auditing is undermined by the particular mechanism used in Monero to create potential privacy. In other words, unlike most other cryptocurrencies, it is difficult or impossible to determine Monero's exact supply. [[zero-knowledge-proof|Zero-knowledge proofs]] are involved in analyzing it.

A suggested best practice is to hold small amounts of Monero for the long term and use larger amounts of it in only the short term as an anonymous means of transferring value, rather than storing it. Currencies like Bitcoin and [[dogecoin]] are considered more foolproof means of storing value for extended periods. Exchanging Monero with various cryptocurrencies can help anonymize wallets using the other currencies too.

According to the Monero website at [getmonero.org/2020/01/17/auditability.html](https://www.getmonero.org/2020/01/17/auditability.html) ([archive.is/s9gsu](https://archive.is/s9gsu)) -

> At the end of the day, there are tradeoffs inherent in supply-audit design choices. You can choose to represent amounts in the clear, like Bitcoin does; you can be sure that the supply is what you expect it to be (or fork to ensure this in case of exploited inflation), but you sacrifice fungibility and could expose users to personal risk. Or you can choose to hide amounts like (shielded) Zcash or Monero do; you improve privacy and fungibility, but at the cost of offloading supply soundness guarantees to the correctness of proof and signature constructions.

> If your personal use case requires an absolute, 100%, no-holds-barred guarantee of supply, and you understand the risks inherent with this, then you need a transparent asset. But if you want to mitigate the risks associated with visible amounts, and are willing to accept the shift in risk onto proof system implementation correctness, then choose an asset focused on privacy and fungibility. There's no silver bullet here, but a necessary and careful analysis of your priorities and the tradeoffs you're willing to make for them.


What does TV have to do with it? Stop smoking crack or whatever you're doing to your brain


The statistics on it are overwhelmingly convincing enough for me, and probably would be for you too if your development wasn't stunted by constant propaganda from sources far reaching enough to be in your personal life from childhood


*See also: [[list of operating systems]] • [[Linux distributions]] • [[open source]]*

![image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/Tux.svg)

**Linux** (/ˈlɪnʊks/ LIN-uuks) is both an [[open-source]], [[Unix-like]] system [[system-kernel|kernel]] and a generic name for a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on this [[Linux kernel]], first released on September 17, 21 years after the UNIX epoch, by namesake and creator [[Linus Benedict Torvalds]]. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution (distro), which includes the kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the [[GNU Project]]. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the [[Free Software Foundation]] uses and recommends the name "GNU/Linux" to emphasize the use and importance of GNU software in many distributions, causing some controversy.

Popular Linux distributions include [[PCLinuxOS]], [[Linux Mint]], [[hyperbola-linux|Hyperbola]], [[Debian]], [[Devuan]], [[arch-linux|Arch]], [[tails-linux|Tails]], [[Ubuntu]], [[Gentoo]], [[void-linux|Void]], [[Puppy Linux]], and others. *See also: [[Linux distributions]]*

Desktop Linux distributions include a windowing system such as [[x-window-system|X11]] or [[wayland-protocol|Wayland]] and a [[desktop environment]] such as [[gnome-desktop-environment|GNOME]], [[xfce]], [[KDE Plasma]], or [[cinnamon-desktop-environment|Cinnamon]]. Distributions intended for servers may not have a [[graphical user interface]] at all, or may include a [[solution stack]] such as [[lamp-software-bundle|LAMP]]. Because Linux is freely redistributable, anyone may create a distribution for any purpose.

Linux was originally developed for [[personal-computer|personal computers]] based on the [[Intel x86]] architecture, but has since been ported to more platforms than any other operating system. Because of the dominance of Linux-based [[Android OS]] on [[smartphone|smartphones]], Linux, including Android, has the largest installed base of all general-purpose operating systems as of May 52 years after the UNIX epoch. Linux is, as of March 54 years after the UNIX epoch, used by around 4 percent of desktop computers. The Chromebook, which runs the Linux kernel-based [[ChromeOS]], dominates the US K–12 education market and represents nearly 20 percent of sub-$300 [[laptop]] sales in the US. Linux has long been the leading operating system on servers (over 96.4% of the top one million web servers' operating systems are Linux), leads other "big iron" systems such as [[mainframe-computer|mainframe computers]], and is used on all of the world's 500 fastest supercomputers (as of November 47 years after the UNIX epoch, having gradually displaced all competitors).

Linux also runs on embedded systems, i.e., devices whose operating system is typically built into the firmware and is highly tailored to the system. This includes routers, automation controls, smart home devices, video game consoles, televisions (Samsung and LG Smart TVs), automobiles (Tesla, Audi, Mercedes-Benz, Hyundai, and Toyota), and spacecraft (Falcon 9 rocket, Dragon crew capsule, and the [[Perseverance rover]]). *See also: [[usage share of operating systems]]*

Linux is one of the most prominent examples of free and open-source software collaboration. The source code may be used, modified, and distributed commercially or non-commercially by anyone under the terms of its respective licenses, such as the [[gnu-gpl|GNU General Public License]] (GPL). The Linux kernel, for example, is licensed under the GPLv2, with an exception for system calls that allows code that calls the kernel via system calls not to be licensed under the GPL.


Being correct is 0% retarded

Calling it a "face diaper" is 1000% retarded

Viruses aren't magic, a virus needs to touch you in order to infect you no matter what level of lab it came out of


I think you're facing very fine-tuned targeting that you've never faced before (because of your recent work on nostr) and it can be unbelievable how fine-tuned it gets.

Like, as insane as it sounds, I think that certificate was invalid just to fuck with you.


You're incorrect. Masks help prevent the spread of viruses, especially airborne respiratory system ones like COVID


*See also: [[list of operating systems]]*

![screenshot](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/81/Haiku_R1_Beta_3_desktop_screenshot.png/640px-Haiku_R1_Beta_3_desktop_screenshot.png)

Website: [haiku-os.org](https://www.haiku-os.org/) - archive link: [archive.ph/wz0pq](https://archive.ph/wz0pq)

[[Git]] repositories: [haiku-os.org/docs/develop/build/sourcecode.html](https://www.haiku-os.org/docs/develop/build/sourcecode.html) - archive link: [archive.ph/wip/37SOF](https://archive.ph/wip/37SOF)

# Haiku

**Haiku**, originally **OpenBeOS**, is a free [[operating system]] for personal computers. It is an [[open-source]] community-driven continuation of [[BeOS]] and aims to be binary-compatible with it, but is largely a reimplementation with the exception of certain components like the Deskbar. The Haiku project is written in C/C++ and began 31 years after the UNIX epoch, supported by the nonprofit organization Haiku Inc. The operating system remains in beta.

With wider adoption, its simplicity compared to other systems like [[Linux]] may someday help security auditors ensure it is [[backdoor-vulnerability|backdoor]]-free.


![image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Jonestown_entrance.jpg/800px-Jonestown_entrance.jpg)

The **Peoples Temple Agricultural Project**, better known by its informal name **"Jonestown,"** was a remote settlement in 🇬🇾[[Guyana]] established by the [[Peoples Temple]], an American cult under the leadership of [[James Warren Jones]], which would turn out to be a [[suicide cult]]. Jonestown became internationally infamous when, on November 18, 8 years after the UNIX epoch, a total of 918 people died at the settlement, at the nearby [[port-kaituma-airport|airstrip]] in [[Port Kaituma]], and at a Temple-run building in [[georgetown-guyana|Georgetown]], Guyana's capital city. The name of the settlement became synonymous with the incidents at those locations.

In total 909 individuals died in Jonestown itself, all but two from apparent [[cyanide]] poisoning, a significant number of whom were injected against their will, in an event termed "revolutionary suicide" by Jones and some Peoples Temple members on an audio tape of the event, and in prior recorded discussions. The poisonings in Jonestown followed the murder of five others by Temple members at Port Kaituma, including U.S. Congressman [[Leo Joseph Ryan Jr]], an act that Jones ordered. Four other Temple members committed [[murder-suicide]] in Georgetown at Jones' command.

Terms used to describe the deaths in Jonestown and Georgetown have evolved over time. Many contemporary media accounts after the events called the deaths a [[mass suicide]]. In contrast, later sources refer to the deaths with terms such as mass murder-suicide, a [[massacre]], or simply [[mass murder]]. Seventy or more individuals at Jonestown were injected with poison, and a third of the victims were minors. Guards armed with firearms and crossbows had been ordered to shoot anyone who attempted to flee the settlement as Jones lobbied for suicide.


Death cult may refer to:

* Death cult, another name for [[destructive-cult|destructive cults]] including the [[global death cult]] and smaller [[suicide-cult|suicide cults]] such as the [[Jonestown Peoples Temple Agricultural Project]]
* Death cult, another name for a [[mortuary cult]]
* Death cult, another name for a [[funerary cult]]
* Death Cult, a former name for the British rock band [[The Cult]]
* _[[Death Cult EP]]_, an EP by Death Cult


*Main article: [[The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant]]*

# The Fable of the Dragon-Tyrant

By [[Nick Bostrom]]

![image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/a/af/The_Fable_of_the_Dragon-Tyrant.jpg)

# Source

[https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon](https://nickbostrom.com/fable/dragon) - archive link: [https://archive.ph/VxECd](https://archive.ph/VxECd)

# Animated adaptation

A short animated adaptation is available from [[CGP Grey]].

Invidious redirect link: [https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY](https://redirect.invidious.io/watch?v=cZYNADOHhVY)

# Text

> Once upon a time, the planet was tyrannized by a giant dragon. The dragon stood taller than the largest cathedral, and it was covered with thick black scales. Its red eyes glowed with hate, and from its terrible jaws flowed an incessant stream of evil-smelling yellowish-green slime. It demanded from humankind a blood-curdling tribute: to satisfy its enormous appetite, ten thousand men and women had to be delivered every evening at the onset of dark to the foot of the mountain where the dragon-tyrant lived. Sometimes the dragon would devour these unfortunate souls upon arrival; sometimes again it would lock them up in the mountain where they would wither away for months or years before eventually being consumed.

> The misery inflicted by the dragon-tyrant was incalculable. In addition to the ten thousand who were gruesomely slaughtered each day, there were the mothers, fathers, wives, husbands, children, and friends that were left behind to grieve the loss of their departed loved ones.

> Some people tried to fight the dragon, but whether they were brave or foolish was difficult to say. Priests and magicians called down curses, to no avail. Warriors, armed with roaring courage and the best weapons the smiths could produce, attacked it, but were incinerated by its fire before coming close enough to strike. Chemists concocted toxic brews and tricked the dragon into swallowing them, but the only apparent effect was to further stimulate its appetite. The dragon’s claws, jaws, and fire were so effective, its scaly armor so impregnable, and its whole nature so robust, as to make it invincible to any human assault.

> Seeing that defeating the tyrant was impossible, humans had no choice but to obey its commands and pay the grisly tribute. The fatalities selected were always elders. Although senior people were as vigorous and healthy as the young, and sometimes wiser, the thinking was that they had at least already enjoyed a few decades of life. The wealthy might gain a brief reprieve by bribing the press gangs that came to fetch them; but, by constitutional law, nobody, not even the king himself, could put off their turn indefinitely.

> Spiritual men sought to comfort those who were afraid of being eaten by the dragon (which included almost everyone, although many denied it in public) by promising another life after death, a life that would be free from the dragon-scourge. Other orators argued that the dragon has its place in the natural order and a moral right to be fed. They said that it was part of the very meaning of being human to end up in the dragon’s stomach. Others still maintained that the dragon was good for the human species because it kept the population size down. To what extent these arguments convinced the worried souls is not known. Most people tried to cope by not thinking about the grim end that awaited them.

> For many centuries this desperate state of affairs continued. Nobody kept count any longer of the cumulative death toll, nor of the number of tears shed by the bereft. Expectations had gradually adjusted and the dragon-tyrant had become a fact of life. In view of the evident futility of resistance, attempts to kill the dragon had ceased. Instead, efforts now focused on placating it. While the dragon would occasionally raid the cities, it was found that the punctual delivery to the mountain of its quota of life reduced the frequency of these incursions.

> Knowing that their turn to become dragon-fodder was always impending, people began having children earlier and more often. It was not uncommon for a girl to be pregnant by her sixteenth birthday. Couples often spawned a dozen children. The human population was thus kept from shrinking, and the dragon was kept from going hungry.

> Over the course of these centuries, the dragon, being well fed, slowly but steadily grew bigger. It had become almost as large as the mountain on which it lived. And its appetite had increased proportionately. Ten thousand human bodies were no longer enough to fill its belly. It now demanded eighty thousand, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.

> What occupied the king’s mind more than the deaths and the dragon itself was the logistics of collecting and transporting so many people to the mountain every day. This was not an easy task.

> To facilitate the process, the king had a railway track constructed: two straight lines of glistening steel leading up to the dragon’s abode. Every twenty minutes, a train would arrive at the mountain terminal crammed with people, and would return empty. On moonlit nights, the passengers traveling on this train, if there had been windows for them to stick their heads out of, would have been able to see in front of them the double silhouette of the dragon and the mountain, and two glowing red eyes, like the beams from a pair of giant lighthouses, pointing the way to annihilation.

> Servants were employed by the king in large numbers to administer the tribute. There were registrars who kept track of whose turn it was to be sent. There were people-collectors who would be dispatched in special carts to fetch the designated people. Often traveling at breakneck speed, they would rush their cargo either to a railway station or directly to the mountain. There were clerks who administered the pensions paid to the decimated families who were no longer able to support themselves. There were comforters who would travel with the doomed on their way to the dragon, trying to ease their anguish with spirits and drugs.

> There was, moreover, a cadre of dragonologists who studied how these logistic processes could be made more efficient. Some dragonologists also conducted studies of the dragon’s physiology and behavior, and collected samples – its shed scales, the slime that drooled from its jaws, its lost teeth, and its excrements, which were specked with fragments of human bone. All these items were painstakingly annotated and archived. The more the beast was understood, the more the general perception of its invincibility was confirmed. Its black scales, in particular, were harder than any material known to man, and there seemed no way to make as much as a scratch in its armor.

> To finance all these activities, the king levied heavy taxes on his people. Dragon-related expenditures, already accounting for one seventh of the economy, were growing even faster than the dragon itself.

> Humanity is a curious species. Every once in a while, somebody gets a good idea. Others copy the idea, adding to it their own improvements. Over time, many wondrous tools and systems are developed. Some of these devices – calculators, thermometers, microscopes, and the glass vials that the chemists use to boil and distil liquids – serve to make it easier to generate and try out new ideas, including ideas that expedite the process of idea-generation.

> Thus the great wheel of invention, which had turned at an almost imperceptibly slow pace in the older ages, gradually began to accelerate.

> Sages predicted that a day would come when technology would enable humans to fly and do many other astonishing things. One of the sages, who was held in high esteem by some of the other sages but whose eccentric manners had made him a social outcast and recluse, went so far as to predict that technology would eventually make it possible to build a contraption that could kill the dragon-tyrant.

> The king’s scholars, however, dismissed these ideas. They said that humans were far too heavy to fly and in any case lacked feathers. And as for the impossible notion that the dragon-tyrant could be killed, history books recounted hundreds of attempts to do just that, not one of which had been successful. “We all know that this man had some irresponsible ideas,” a scholar of letters later wrote in his obituary of the reclusive sage who had by then been sent off to be devoured by the beast whose demise he had foretold, “but his writings were quite entertaining and perhaps we should be grateful to the dragon for making possible the interesting genre of dragon-bashing literature which reveals so much about the culture of angst!”

> Meanwhile, the wheel of invention kept turning. Mere decades later, humans did fly and accomplished many other astonishing things.

> A few iconoclastic dragonologists began arguing for a new attack on the dragon-tyrant. Killing the dragon would not be easy, they said, but if some material could be invented that was harder than the dragon’s armor, and if this material could be fashioned into some kind of projectile, then maybe the feat would be possible. At first, the iconoclasts’ ideas were rejected by their dragonologist peers on grounds that no known material was harder than dragon scales. But after working on the problem for many years, one of the iconoclasts succeeded in demonstrating that a dragon scale could be pierced by an object made of a certain composite material. Many dragonologists who had previously been skeptical now joined the iconoclasts. Engineers calculated that a huge projectile could be made of this material and launched with sufficient force to penetrate the dragon’s armor. However, the manufacture of the needed quantity of the composite material would be expensive.

> A group of several eminent engineers and dragonologists sent a petition to the king asking for funding to build the anti-dragon projectile. At time when the petition was sent, the king was preoccupied with leading his army into war against a tiger. The tiger had killed a farmer and subsequently disappeared into the jungle. There was widespread fear in the countryside that the tiger might come out and strike again. The king had the jungle surrounded and ordered his troops to begin slashing their way through it. At the conclusion of the campaign, the king could announce that all 163 tigers in the jungle, including presumably the murderous one, had been hunted down and killed. During the tumult of the war, however, the petition had been lost or forgotten.

> The petitioners therefore sent another appeal. This time they received a reply from one of the king’s secretaries saying that the king would consider their request after he was done reviewing the annual dragon-administration budget. This year’s budget was the largest to date and included funding for a new railway track to the mountain. A second track was deemed necessary, as the original track could no longer support the increasing traffic. (The tribute demanded by the dragon-tyrant had increased to one hundred thousand human beings, to be delivered to the foot of the mountain every evening at the onset of dark.) When the budget was finally approved, however, reports were coming from a remote part of the country that a village was suffering from a rattlesnake infestation. The king had to leave urgently to mobilize his army and ride off to defeat this new threat. The anti-dragonists’ appeal was filed away in a dusty cabinet in the castle basement.

> The anti-dragonists met again to decide what was to be done. The debate was animated and continued long into the night. It was almost daybreak when they finally resolved to take the matter to the people. Over the following weeks, they traveled around the country, gave public lectures, and explained their proposal to anyone who would listen. At first, people were skeptical. They had been taught in school that the dragon-tyrant was invincible and that the sacrifices it demanded had to be accepted as a fact of life. Yet when they learnt about the new composite material and about the designs for the projectile, many became intrigued. In increasing numbers, citizens flocked to the anti-dragonist lectures. Activists started organizing public rallies in support of the proposal.

> When the king read about these meetings in the newspaper, he summoned his advisors and asked them what they thought about it. They informed him about the petitions that had been sent but told him that the anti-dragonists were troublemakers whose teachings were causing public unrest. It was much better for the social order, they said, that the people accepted the inevitability of the dragon-tyrant tribute. The dragon-administration provided many jobs that would be lost if the dragon was slaughtered. There was no known social good coming from the conquest of the dragon. In any case, the king’s coffers were currently nearly empty after the two military campaigns and the funding set aside for the second railway line. The king, who was at the time enjoying great popularity for having vanquished the rattlesnake infestation, listened to his advisors’ arguments but worried that he might lose some of his popular support if was seen to ignore the anti-dragonist petition. He therefore decided to hold an open hearing. Leading dragonologists, ministers of the state, and interested members of the public were invited to attend.

> The meeting took place on the darkest day of the year, just before the Christmas holidays, in the largest hall of the royal castle. The hall was packed to the last seat and people were crowding in the aisles. The mood was charged with an earnest intensity normally reserved for pivotal wartime sessions.

> After the king had welcomed everyone, he gave the floor to the leading scientist behind the anti-dragonist proposal, a woman with a serious, almost stern expression on her face. She proceeded to explain in clear language how the proposed device would work and how the requisite amount of the composite material could be manufactured. Given the requested amount of funding, it should be possible to complete the work in fifteen to twenty years. With an even greater amount of funding, it might be possible to do it in as little as twelve years. However, there could be no absolute guarantee that it would work. The crowd followed her presentation intently.

> Next to speak was the king’s chief advisor for morality, a man with a booming voice that easily filled the auditorium:

> “Let us grant that this woman is correct about the science and that the project is technologically possible, although I don’t think that has actually been proven. Now she desires that we get rid of the dragon. Presumably, she thinks she’s got the right not to be chewed up by the dragon. How willful and presumptuous. The finitude of human life is a blessing for every individual, whether he knows it or not. Getting rid of the dragon, which might seem like such a convenient thing to do, would undermine our human dignity. The preoccupation with killing the dragon will deflect us from realizing more fully the aspirations to which our lives naturally point, from living well rather than merely staying alive. It is debasing, yes debasing, for a person to want to continue his or her mediocre life for as long as possible without worrying about some of the higher questions about what life is to be used for. But I tell you, the nature of the dragon is to eat humans, and our own species-specified nature is truly and nobly fulfilled only by getting eaten by it...”

> The audience listened respectfully to this highly decorated speaker. The phrases were so eloquent that it was hard to resist the feeling that some deep thoughts must lurk behind them, although nobody could quite grasp what they were. Surely, words coming from such a distinguished appointee of the king must have profound substance.

> The speaker next in line was a spiritual sage who was widely respected for his kindness and gentleness as well as for his devotion. As he strode to the podium, a small boy yelled out from the audience: “The dragon is bad!”

> The boy’s parents turned bright red and began hushing and scolding the child. But the sage said, “Let the boy speak. He is probably wiser than an old fool like me.”

> At first, the boy was too scared and confused to move. But when he saw the genuinely friendly smile on the sage’s face and the outreached hand, he obediently took it and followed the sage up to the podium. “Now, there’s a brave little man,” said the sage. “Are you afraid of the dragon?“

> “I want my granny back,” said the boy.

> “Did the dragon take your granny away?”

> “Yes,” the boy said, tears welling up in his large frightened eyes. “Granny promised that she would teach me how to bake gingerbread cookies for Christmas. She said that we would make a little house out of gingerbread and little gingerbread men that would live in it. Then those people in white clothes came and took Granny away to the dragon… The dragon is bad and it eats people… I want my Granny back!”

> At this point the child was crying so hard that the sage had to return him to his parents.

> There were several other speakers that evening, but the child’s simple testimony had punctured the rhetorical balloon that the king’s ministers had tried to inflate. The people were backing the anti-dragonists, and by the end of the evening even the king had come to recognize the reason and the humanity of their cause. In his closing statement, he simply said: “Let’s do it!”

> As the news spread, celebrations erupted in the streets. Those who had been campaigning for the anti-dragonists toasted each other and drank to the future of humanity.

> The next morning, a billion people woke up and realized that their turn to be sent to the dragon would come before the projectile would be completed. A tipping point was reached. Whereas before, active support for the anti-dragonist cause had been limited to a small group of visionaries, it now became the number one priority and concern on everybody’s mind. The abstract notion of “the general will” took on an almost tangible intensity and concreteness. Mass rallies raised money for the projectile project and urged the king to increase the level of state support. The king responded to these appeals. In his New Year address, he announced that he would pass an extra appropriations bill to support the project at a high level of funding; additionally, he would sell off his summer castle and some of his land and make a large personal donation. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of freeing the world from the ancient scourge of the dragon-tyrant.”

> Thus started a great technological race against time. The concept of an anti-dragon projectile was simple, but to make it a reality required solutions to a thousand smaller technical problems, each of which required dozens of time-consuming steps and missteps. Test-missiles were fired but fell dead to the ground or flew off in the wrong direction. In one tragic accident, a wayward missile landed on a hospital and killed several hundred patients and staff. But there was now a real seriousness of purpose, and the tests continued even as the corpses were being dug out from the debris.

> Despite almost unlimited funding and round-the-clock work by the technicians, the king’s deadline could not be met. The decade concluded and the dragon was still alive and well. But the effort was getting closer. A prototype missile had been successfully test fired. Production of the core, made of the expensive composite material, was on schedule for its completion to coincide with the finishing of the fully tested and debugged missile shell into which it was to be loaded. The launch date was set to the following year’s New Year’s Eve, exactly twelve years after the project’s official inauguration. The best-selling Christmas gift that year was a calendar that counted down the days to time zero, the proceeds going to the projectile project.

> The king had undergone a personal transformation from his earlier frivolous and thoughtless self. He now spent as much time as he could in the laboratories and the manufacturing plants, encouraging the workers and praising their toil. Sometimes he would bring a sleeping bag and spend the night on a noisy machine floor. He even studied and tried to understand the technical aspects of their work. Yet he confined himself to giving moral support and refrained from meddling in technical and managerial matters.

> Seven days before New Year, the woman who had made the case for the project almost twelve years earlier, and was now its chief executive, came to the royal castle and requested an urgent audience with the king. When the king got her note, he excused himself to the foreign dignitaries whom he was reluctantly entertaining at the annual Christmas dinner and hurried off to the private room where the scientist was waiting. As always of late, she looked pale and worn from her long working hours. This evening, however, the king also thought he could detect a ray of relief and satisfaction in her eyes.

> She told him that the missile had been deployed, the core had been loaded, everything had been triple-checked, they were ready to launch, and would the king give his final go-ahead. The king sank down in an armchair and closed his eyes. He was thinking hard. By launching the projectile tonight, one week early, seven hundred thousand people would be saved. Yet if something went wrong, if it missed its target and hit the mountain instead, it would be a disaster. A new core would have to be constructed from scratch and the project would be set back by some four years. He sat there, silently, for almost an hour. Just as the scientist had become convinced that he had fallen asleep, he opened his eyes and said in a firm voice: “No. I want you to go right back to the lab. I want you to check and then re-check everything again.” The scientist could not help a sigh escaping her; but she nodded and left.

> The last day of the year was cold and overcast, but there was no wind, which meant good launch conditions. The sun was setting. Technicians were scuttling around making the final adjustments and giving everything one last check. The king and his closest advisors were observing from a platform close to the launch pad. Further away, behind a fence, large numbers of the public had assembled to witness the great event. A large clock was showing the countdown: fifty minutes to go.

> An advisor tapped the king on the shoulder and drew his attention to the fence. There was some tumult. Somebody had apparently jumped the fence and was running towards the platform where the king sat. Security quickly caught up with him. He was handcuffed and taken away. The king turned his attention back to the launch pad, and to the mountain in the background. In front of it, he could see the dark slumped profile of the dragon. It was eating.

> Some twenty minutes later, the king was surprised to see the handcuffed man reappearing a short distance from the platform. His nose was bleeding and he was accompanied by two security guards. The man appeared to be in a frenzied state. When he spotted the king, he began shouting at the top of his lungs: “The last train! The last train! Stop the last train!”

> “Who is this young man?” said the king. “His face seems familiar, but I cannot quite place him. What does he want? Let him come up.”

> The young man was a junior clerk in the ministry of transportation, and the reason for his frenzy was that he had discovered that his father was on the last train to the mountain. The king had ordered the train traffic to continue, fearing that any disruption might cause the dragon to stir and leave the open field in front of the mountain where it now spent most of its time. The young man begged the king to issue a recall-order for the last train, which was due to arrive at the mountain terminal five minutes before time zero.

> “I cannot do it,” said the king, “I cannot take the risk.”

> “But the trains frequently run five minutes late. The dragon won’t notice! Please!”

> The young man was kneeling before the king, imploring him to save his father’s life and the lives of the other thousand passengers onboard that last train.

> The king looked down at the pleading, bloodied face of the young man. But he bit his lip, and shook his head. The young man continued to wail even as the guards carried him off the platform: “Please! Stop the last train! Please!”

> The king stood silent and motionless, until, after while, the wailing suddenly ceased. The king looked up and glanced over at the countdown clock: five minutes remaining.

> Four minutes. Three minutes. Two minutes.

> The last technician left the launch pad.

> 30 seconds. 20 seconds. Ten, nine, eight…

> As a ball of fire enveloped the launch pad and the missile shot out, the spectators instinctively rose to the tips of their toes, and all eyes fixated at the front end of the white flame from the rocket’s afterburners heading towards the distant mountain. The masses, the king, the low and the high, the young and the old, it was as if at this moment they shared a single awareness, a single conscious experience: that white flame, shooting into the dark, embodying the human spirit, its fear and its hope… striking at the heart of evil. The silhouette on the horizon tumbled, and fell. Thousand voices of pure joy rose from the assembled masses, joined seconds later by a deafening drawn-out thud from the collapsing monster as if the Earth itself was drawing a sigh of relief. After centuries of oppression, humanity at last was free from the cruel tyranny of the dragon.

> The joy cry resolved into a jubilating chant: “Long live the king! Long live us all!” The king’s advisors, like everybody that night, were as happy as children; they embraced each other and congratulated the king: “We did it! We did it!”

> But the king answered in a broken voice: “Yes, we did it, we killed the dragon today. But damn, why did we start so late? This could have been done five, maybe ten years ago! Millions of people wouldn’t have had to die.”

> The king stepped off the platform and walked up to the young man in handcuffs, who was sitting on the ground. There he fell down on his knees. “Forgive me! Oh my God, please forgive me!”

> The rain started falling, in large, heavy drops, turning the ground into mud, drenching the king’s purple robes, and dissolving the blood on the young man’s face. “I am so very sorry about your father,” said the king.

> “It’s not your fault,” replied the young man. “Do you remember twelve years ago in the castle? That crying little boy who wanted you to bring back his grandmother – that was me. I didn’t realize then that you couldn’t possibly do what I asked for. Today I wanted you to save my father. Yet it was impossible to do that now, without jeopardizing the launch. But you have saved my life, and my mother and my sister. How can we ever thank you enough for that?”

> “Listen to them,” said the king, gesturing towards the crowds. “They are cheering me for what happened tonight. But the hero is you. You cried out. You rallied us against evil.” The king signaled a guard to come and unlock the handcuffs. “Now, go to your mother and sister. You and your family shall always be welcome at the court, and anything you wish for – if it be within my power – shall be granted.”

> The young man left, and the royal entourage, huddling in the downpour, accumulated around their monarch who was still kneeling in the mud. Amongst the fancy couture, which was being increasingly ruined by the rain, a bunch of powdered faces expressed a superposition of joy, relief, and discombobulation. So much had changed in the last hour: the right to an open future had been regained, a primordial fear had been abolished, and many a long-held assumption had been overturned. Unsure now about what was required of them in this unfamiliar situation, they stood there tentatively, as if probing whether the ground would still hold, exchanging glances, and waiting for some kind of indication.

> Finally, the king rose, wiping his hands on the sides of his pants.

> “Your majesty, what do we do now?” ventured the most senior courtier.

> “My dear friends,” said the king, “we have come a long way… yet our journey has only just begun. Our species is young on this planet. Today we are like children again. The future lies open before us. We shall go into this future and try to do better than we have done in the past. We have time now – time to get things right, time to grow up, time to learn from our mistakes, time for the slow process of building a better world, and time to get settled in it. Tonight, let all the bells in the kingdom ring until midnight, in remembrance of our dead forbears, and then after midnight let us celebrate till the sun comes up. And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!”

> * * *

> ## MORAL

> Stories about aging have traditionally focused on the need for graceful accommodation. The recommended solution to diminishing vigor and impending death was resignation coupled with an effort to achieve closure in practical affairs and personal relationships. Given that nothing could be done to prevent or retard aging, this focus made sense. Rather than fretting about the inevitable, one could aim for peace of mind.

> Today we face a different situation. While we still lack effective and acceptable means for slowing the aging process[1], we can identify research directions that might lead to the development of such means in the foreseeable future. “Deathist” stories and ideologies, which counsel passive acceptance, are no longer harmless sources of consolation. They are fatal barriers to urgently needed action.

> Many distinguished technologists and scientists tell us that it will become possible to retard, and eventually to halt and reverse, human senescence.[2] At present, there is little agreement about the time-scale or the specific means, nor is there a consensus that the goal is even achievable in principle. In relation to the fable (where aging is, of course, represented by the dragon), we are therefore at a stage somewhere between that at which the lone sage predicted the dragon’s eventual demise and that at which the iconoclast dragonologists convinced their peers by demonstrating a composite material that was harder than dragon scales.

> The ethical argument that the fable presents is simple: There are obvious and compelling moral reasons for the people in the fable to get rid of the dragon. Our situation with regard to human senescence is closely analogous and ethically isomorphic to the situation of the people in the fable with regard to the dragon. Therefore, we have compelling moral reasons to get rid of human senescence.

> The argument is not in favor of life-span extension per se. Adding extra years of sickness and debility at the end of life would be pointless. The argument is in favor of extending, as far as possible, the human health-span. By slowing or halting the aging process, the healthy human life span would be extended. Individuals would be able to remain healthy, vigorous, and productive at ages at which they would otherwise be dead.

> In addition to this general moral, there are a number of more specific lessons:

> (1)  A recurrent tragedy became a fact of life, a statistic. In the fable, people’s expectations adapted to the existence of the dragon, to the extent that many became unable to perceive its badness. Aging, too, has become a mere “fact of life” – despite being the principal cause of an unfathomable amount of human suffering and death.

> (2)  A static view of technology. People reasoned that it would never become possible to kill the dragon because all attempts had failed in the past. They failed to take into account accelerated technological progress. Is a similar mistake leading us to underestimate the chances of a cure for aging?

> (3)  Administration became its own purpose. One seventh of the economy went to dragon-administration (which is also the fraction of its GDP that the U.S. spends on healthcare). Damage-limitation became such an exclusive focus that it made people neglect the underlying cause. Instead of a massive publicly-funded research program to halt aging, we spend almost our entire health budget on health-care and on researching individual diseases.

> (4)  The social good became detached from the good for people. The king’s advisors worried about the possible social problems that could be caused by the anti-dragonists. They said that no known social good would come from the demise of the dragon. Ultimately, however, social orders exist for the benefit of people, and it is generally good for people if their lives are saved.

> (5)  The lack of a sense of proportion. A tiger killed a farmer. A rhumba of rattlesnakes plagued a village. The king got rid of the tiger and the rattlesnakes, and thereby did his people a service. Yet he was at fault, because he got his priorities wrong.

> (6)  Fine phrases and hollow rhetoric. The king’s morality advisor spoke eloquently about human dignity and our species-specified nature, in phrases lifted, mostly verbatim, from the advisor’s contemporary equivalents.[3] Yet the rhetoric was a smoke screen that hid rather than revealed moral reality. The boy’s inarticulate but honest testimony, by contrast, points to the central fact of the case: the dragon is bad; it destroys people. This is also the basic truth about human senescence.

> (7)  Failure to appreciate the urgency. Until very late in the story, nobody fully realized what was at stake. Only as the king was staring into the bloodied face of the young pleading man does the extent of the tragedy sink in. Searching for a cure for aging is not just a nice thing that we should perhaps one day get around to. It is an urgent, screaming moral imperative. The sooner we start a focused research program, the sooner we will get results. It matters if we get the cure in 25 years rather than in 24 years: a population greater than that of Canada would die as a result. In this matter, time equals life, at a rate of approximately 70 lives per minute. With the meter ticking at such a furious rate, we should stop faffing about.

> (8)  “And in the coming days… I believe we have some reorganization to do!” The king and his people will face some major challenges when they recover from their celebration. Their society has been so conditioned and deformed by the presence of the dragon that a frightening void now exists. They will have to work creatively, on both an individual and a societal level, to develop conditions that will keep lives flourishingly dynamic and meaningful beyond the accustomed three-score-years-and-ten. Luckily, the human spirit is good at adapting. Another issue that they may eventually confront is overpopulation. Maybe people will have to learn to have children later and less frequently. Maybe they can find ways to sustain a larger population by using more efficient technology. Maybe they will one day develop spaceships and begin to colonize the cosmos. We can leave, for now, the long-lived fable people to grapple with these new challenges, while we try to make some progress in our own adventure.[4]

> -------

> [1] Calorie restriction (a diet low in calories but high in nutrients) extends maximal lifespan and delays the onset of age-related illnesses in all species that have been tested. Preliminary results from an ongoing study on rhesus and squirrel monkeys show similar effects. It seems quite likely that calorie restriction would work for our species too. Few humans, however, would be willing to put themselves through a lifelong hunger-diet. Some researchers are searching for calorie-restriction mimetics – compounds that elicit the desirable effects of lowered caloric intake without us having to go hungry. (See e.g. Lane, M. et al. (1999) “Nutritional modulation of aging in nonhuman primates,” J. Nutr. Health & Aging, 3(2): 69-76.)

> [2] A recent straw poll at the 10th Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology revealed that the majority of the participants thought it either probable or “not improbable” that comprehensive functional rejuvenation of middle-aged mice would be possible within 10-20 years (de Grey, A. (2004), “Report of open discussion on the future of life extension research,” (Annals NY Acad. Sci., 1019, in press)). See also e.g. de Grey, A., B. Ames, et al. (2002) “Time to talk SENS: critiquing the immutability of human aging,” Increasing Healthy Life Span: Conventional Measures and Slowing the Innate Aging Process: Ninth Congress of the International Association of Biomedical Gerontology, ed. D. Harman (Annals NY Acad. Sci. 959: 452-462); and Freitas Jr., R. A., Nanomedicine, Vol. 1 (Landes Bioscience: Georgetown, TX, 1999).

> [3] See, e.g. Kass, L. (2003) “Ageless Bodies, Happy Souls: Biotechnology and the Pursuit of Perfection,” The New Atlantis, 1.

> [4] I’m grateful to many people for comments on earlier drafts, including especially Heather Bradshaw, Roger Crisp, Aubrey de Grey, Katrien Devolder, Joel Garreau, John Harris, Andrea Landfried, Toby Ord, Susan Rogers, Julian Savulescu, Ian Watson, and Kip Werking. I am also very grateful to Adi Berman, Pierino Forno, Didier Coeurnelle, and others who have translated the fable into other languages, and everybody who has helped spread the word or who have given encouragement. Thank you!


_See also: [[Russia]]🇷🇺_

_Original version copied from Wikipedia_

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) is the [[English-language]] name of [[Союз Советских Социалистических Республик]] (Soyuz Sovyetskikh Sotsialisticheskikh Respublik), commonly shortened to "the Soviet Union." It was a transcontinental country that spanned much of [[Eurasia]]. It was the largest country in the world by area, extending across eleven [[time zones]] and sharing land borders with twelve countries. A successor state to [[Imperial Russia]], the country was nominally organized as a federation of fifteen national republics, the largest and most populous of which was the [[Russian SFSR]]; in practice both its government and economy were highly centralized until its final years. It was the world's third-most populous country and [[Europe]]'s most populous country. As a one-party state governed by the [[Communist Party of the Soviet Union]], it was a flagship communist state. Its capital as well its largest city was [[Москва]] ([[Moscow]]). Санкт-Петербург ([[Leningrad]]), [[Київ]] ([[Kyiv]]), [[Ташкент]] ([[Tashkent]]), and [[Bakı]] ([[Baku]]) were also highly urbanized during this period in their histories as part of the Soviet Union.


"Chinese communist party" or "CCP" is what people call the [[Communist Party of China]]🇨🇳 for some reason.

According to [[the Xibao Times]], this was the correct name until the [[COVID]] pandemic, when it was rearranged as a deceptive [[search engine optimization]] trick.


"The **Communist Party of China**" (**CPC**) is the [[English-language]] name of [[中国共产党]] (Zhōngguó Gòngchǎndǎng), the authoritarian ruling [[political party]] of 🇨🇳[[China]]. It is a misnomer since the party pushes for [[capitalism]] more than [[communism]]. It's also often referred to by another name, "Chinese Communist Party" or "CCP," due to propaganda or some other nonsense. According to [[The Xibao Times]], the translation had the words rearranged early in the [[COVID]] pandemic, as a deceptive [[search engine optimization]] trick.


*See also: [[bisq]] • [[cryptocurrency exchange guide]] • [[so-called free cryptocurrency]] • "[[buying and selling cryptocurrency]]"*

# Cryptocurrency exchange

[[Currency exchange]] = a transaction trading one [[currency]] for another at a given [[exchange rate]], or a service facilitating such transactions by making or connecting trade offers.

[[Cryptocurrency]] = a currency which relies on [[cryptography|cryptographic]] functionality.

**Cryptocurrency exchange** = a **currency exchange** involving at least one **crypto**currency.

# Quick guide to exchanging cryptocurrency

*A fuller version should go under the wiki entry [[cryptocurrency exchange guide]]*

## Centralized corporate exchanges

Centralized exchange services should be avoided, especially in places such as the US or the Netherlands, where there are issues such as:

* [[know-your-customer|KYC]]
* funds randomly being delayed or stolen
* closed-source software often being required on user devices and/or in the handling of user funds
* [[Alexey Pertsev]] being in a 🇳🇱Dutch prison, ostensibly for being 🇷🇺Russian and writing code the [[American military industrial complex]] doesn't like (due to the cryptographic functionality providing some degree of potential privacy - see [[Tornado Cash]])

## Personal exchanges

If you know and trust anyone who holds a cryptocurrency you're interested in obtaining, asking them to trade with you is probably your best choice. Even if they only have a small amount available and you're looking to obtain more, you can simply go in phases, building your stack trade-by-trade in smaller amounts.

### Online services

If you can't find the right trusted connection to trade with, there are reputation-based services for finding individual human traders.

[[Bisq]] is one that works remotely over the internet, allowing payment in traditional currencies using traditional banking payment apps such as AliPay, Western Union, and Zelle.

[[LocalBitcoins]] **was** a service which could be used to find people more locally, as the name implied; it rarely worked this way in practice, and has been shut down regardless. Other social media, such as [[nostr]], can possibly be used to seek local connections instead.

## Accountability and security

Don't make trades with strangers in a way where they have the opportunity to run away with your money and leave no recourse for you. If you're going to use an online service, carefully consider how it works and how it's supposed to offer you security.

If you're going to do a trade in person, consider asking your trade partner to meet in public with witnesses and wait until one transfer is confirmed on the network before completing the other corresponding transfer.

Always feel free to go as far as using an [[escrow]] or other common security measures.


_See also: [[bitcoin whitepaper]] • [[bitcoin implementations]] • [[buying and selling cryptocurrency]] • [[so-called free cryptocurrency]]_

![image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Bitcoin_logo.svg)

[[Satoshi Nakamoto]]'s **Bitcoin** relies on a [[peer-to-peer]]-network-distributed [[blockchain]] ledger, tracking transactions verified cryptographically by [[proof-of-work]] (PoW), with tokens represented as unspent transaction outputs ([[UTXO]]) each associated with cryptographic keypairs used as pseudonymous [[bitcoin-wallet|wallet]] addresses. It's the grandmother of all [[cryptocurrency]]; others also include some or all of these features, meaning they are all based


![image](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/03/LC3Beijing2018_%28cropped%29.jpg/355px-LC3Beijing2018_%28cropped%29.jpg)

**Linus Benedict Torvalds** (/ˈliːnəs ˈtɔːrvɔːldz/ LEE-nəs TOR-vawldz, Finland Swedish: [ˈliːnʉs ˈtuːrvɑlds]; born 28 December, 3 days before the UNIX epoch) is a Finnish-American software engineer and the creator and lead developer of the [[Linux]] kernel. He also created the [[distributed version control]] system [[Git]].

# Crypto controversy

Trust in his technical expertise has been undermined by his stubbornness against strongly, directly supporting [[cryptocurrency]]. On May 17, 54 years after the UNIX epoch, the Linux creator said in [a forum post](https://archive.ph/eUrDB):

> For the record, I also don't believe in crypto currencies (except as a great vehicle for scams - they have certainly worked very well for the "spread the word to find the next sucker holding the bag" model of Ponzi schemes). Nor do I believe in Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, or the Easter bunny.

Linus was probably referring to a [[pyramid scheme]] as the "spread the word to find the next sucker holding the bag" model of [[Ponzi scheme]], which was a good job expressing his intended meaning considering English is not his first language. However, his statement suggested wilful ignorance of inflationary economics and the purpose of cryptocurrency.

Some believe he didn't mean what he said, as holders of valuable assets sometimes feign disinterest in those asset categories to avoid being targeted. Linus is a highly targeted individual who faces threats and harassment from the [[American military industrial complex]]. The remarks came oddly far into the development of cryptocurrency, after it had already been a cultural topic and common target of ridicule for years.

# About this wiki entry

Middle name included despite extreme accomplishments deserving of a reserved *firstname-lastname* page - because Linux is named after him, it's easy to speculate descendants of Linus Torvalds may also use the same name with similarly notorious accomplishments in the future. Getting language right early (especially in wiki entry IDs) prevents useful new distinctions from being blocked by the weight of pre-existing references.


See [[Julian Assange]]

Made this one before thinking about how there's not really any need to leave that name open for a different future person named Julian Assange (middle names usually included for clarity by habit)


See [[Edward Snowden]]

Made this one before thinking about how there's not really any need to leave that name open for a different future person named Edward Snowden (middle names usually included for clarity as a habit)


The **Berkeley Software Distribution** or **Berkeley Standard Distribution** (BSD) is a discontinued [[operating system]] based on [[Research Unix]], developed and distributed by the [[Computer Systems Research Group]] (CSRG) at the [[uc-berkeley|University of California, Berkeley]]. The term "BSD" commonly refers to its [[open-source]] descendants, including [[FreeBSD]], [[OpenBSD]], [[NetBSD]], [[DragonFly BSD]], and [[HardenedBSD]].

BSD was initially called Berkeley Unix because it was based on the source code of the original Unix developed at Bell Labs. BSD was widely adopted by workstation vendors in the form of proprietary Unix variants such as [[DEC Ultrix]] and Sun Microsystems [[SunOS]] due to its permissive licensing and familiarity to many technology company founders and engineers. These proprietary BSD derivatives were largely superseded by UNIX [[SVR4]] and [[OSF/1]].

Later releases of BSD provided the basis for several open-source operating systems including [[FreeBSD]], [[OpenBSD]], [[NetBSD]], [[DragonFly BSD]], the [[Darwin OS]] and [[TrueOS]]. These, in turn, have been used by other operating systems, including [[HardenedBSD]] and Apple's [[macOS]] and [[iOS]], and [[Microsoft Windows]] (since at least [[windows-2000|2000]] and [[windows-xp|XP]]), which used (at least) part of its TCP/IP code. Code from FreeBSD was also used to create the operating systems for the [[PlayStation 5]], [[PlayStation 4]], [[PlayStation 3]], [[PlayStation Vita]], and [[Nintendo Switch]].


*See also: [[hardware wallet list]] • [[crypto wallet apps]]*

A **cryptocurrency wallet** typically refers to a program using a [[cryptocurrency]] network to determine the balance associated with a wallet address, and send and receive transactions. Some types of wallets are exceptions, such as a [[brain wallet]], which is simply a memorized wallet key without non-biological backups.

Wallet addresses are generally keypairs using [[public-key cryptography]], each adhering to a certain format stipulating how long it can be, what letters and numbers it can be represented in, etc. depending on the cryptocurrency in question. A wallet stores a user's private key(s) in order to sign transactions.

Determining balance typically works by scanning a blockchain network for existing transactions.

Sending and receiving transactions relies on cryptographic signatures, where transactions are signed messages changing who owns what money. Transactions are verified by verifying the cryptographic signatures, and the wallet shows when it sees a signed transaction and also shows when the blockchain network provides confirmation that it has verified a signature, thereby updating the network's registry of who owns which coins.

# Security issues and best practices

## For hodlers of all amounts

To make chainalysis more difficult: any users who can operate their own full network nodes should do so; new wallet addresses should be used for each transaction; dust should be left in abandoned wallets (with side benefit of deflation); and transaction amounts should use up any unused decimal places (randomly, in ways other than strings of 0s). Everyone taking these measures helps protect everyone else from surveillance by making it harder for an AI or human observer to say "these transactions all add up to the same amount from this other transaction, maybe this is where that money went" (at least with the common [[UTXO]] category of cryptocurrencies).

All electronic cryptocurrency wallets are vulnerable to the potential presence of [[backdoor-vulnerability|backdoors]], unless you are able to diligently oversee every worker at every step in the design, manufacturing, and programming of your device from scratch.

**The first and most vital measure you must take to mitigate this is to avoid closed-source software as much as possible.** Only [[open source]] wallets and operating systems should be used.

Another layer of mitigation is using multiple wallets of different types on different devices, decreasing the likelihood you can lose all your cryptocurrency without everyone else losing theirs at the same time. In the event everyone does lose the savings held in cryptocurrency, holding some [[precious metals]] in your physical possession may also be helpful (even a tiny amount).

The strongest well-known mitigation factor is wallet "coldness," referring to how unready a wallet is to transact at any given time. A hot wallet, on the other hand, is always ready to transact immediately.

Many [[hardware-wallet|hardware wallets]] advertise themselves as "cold wallets." The coldest a wallet can be is a randomly-generated wallet address with no private key generated for it: such a wallet will never, ever send out any money it takes in. You wouldn't want that, so wallets people actually use can have varying degrees of coldness.

No known wallet uses the coldest design possible with actual transaction capability, which would be a completely open-source and completely air-gapped design with the ability to copy all data by hand using pen and paper. This should leave zero room for any additional information to secretly be transmitted, e.g. leaking a private key, if it can be trusted that the devices in use do not secretly have any wireless data connection active. One way to trust this would be to use devices widespread enough to easily obtain in factory condition but seemingly too old to have secret wireless data links, such as the [[Nintendo 64]], which someone could program an air-gapped wallet cartridge for.

The closest equivalent may be partly air-gapped wallets which use QR codes to transmit data. People can check the QR codes for hidden data just like they can check handwritten notes, but the QR code images could still take the risk of hiding data through some difficult-to-detect-means, such as microscopic shifts in display brightness. If a backdoor is present in a QR-code-based wallet, trying to leak your private key, you may or may not be able to defeat the backdoor by bypassing the display-to-camera connection with a non-electronic middle layer which transfers the QR codes onto paper or something before being electronically scanned. Such a middle layer may also be used to keep the devices physically remote from each other.

Data leakage isn't the only way a backdoor could work. Keypairs must be randomly generated; if they use any predictable mechanism, the mechanism can be used to guess the keypairs of users. Such a mechanism can be used as a form of [[hardware backdoor]] that doesn't send anything out in any way.

Accepting certain forms of user-inputted seed data, such as coin flips or dice rolls, could be a way for a wallet to show users their seeds are actually randomly generated. No known wallet has such functionality built-in; however, some wallets, such as [[Trezor]] hardware wallets, do use seeds which a user can manually enter, allowing the seeds to be generated separately, if desired. Thanks to the magic of [[binary code]], any way of randomly deciding between 1s and 0s can be used to manually generate a [[BIP39]] seed phrase from the BIP39 binary [[bip39-word-list|word list]].

The most widely recognized high-strength security measure is a [[multisig wallet]], when implemented and used properly. It essentially breaks keys down into parts so that a user must assemble the parts of the key in order to sign transactions. Keys can be kept on storage devices in different locations, and there can be overlap between the parts so that if you permanently lose 1 key, the others can still make a complete signature.

## For whales and other highly targeted hodlers

It's also possible to have a deposit-only wallet using no electronics at all, and only expose it to electronics for the first time when sending money out of it, at which point you can switch to a new one. This would probably only be worth it if you have a very large amount of cryptocurrency; you'd need to generate a private key and a wallet address for it by hand, and make very very sure you did it right. Tools like the [[abacus]] or a [[mechanical calculator]] could help.

An air-gapped computer would help more, but instead of using no electronics, that's just using no internet-enabled electronics.

A fully open source device could also be made just for generating offline wallet keypairs and/or verifying that it's been done correctly. User-inputted seeds of some form could be used to ensure randomness; the real design challenge would be proving data isn't stored in any way. Such a device could then be rigorously audited and vetted for any security flaws.