The post-Snowden no trust society

Black stele of Hammurabi Code, ca. 1754 BC (Wikipedia)

A mathematical utopia is on the way and it seems powerful enough to tackle the huge loss of confidence in the information society and in power structures at large.

2008 - Satoshi Nakamoto. “Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System”

Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. We propose a solution to the double-spending problem using a peer-to-peer network. The network timestamps transactions by hashing them into an ongoing chain of hash-based proof-of-work, forming a record that cannot be changed without redoing the proof-of-work. The longest chain not only serves as proof of the sequence of events witnessed, but proof that it came from the largest pool of CPU power. As long as a majority of CPU power is controlled by nodes that are not cooperating to attack the network, they'll generate the longest chain and outpace attackers. The network itself requires minimal structure. Messages are broadcast on a best effort basis, and nodes can leave and rejoin the network at will, accepting the longest proof-of-work chain as proof of what happened while they were gone.

Read the entire paper


2013 - Vitalik Buterin. White Paper

A Next-Generation Smart Contract and Decentralized Application Platform

Satoshi Nakamoto's development of Bitcoin in 2008[1a][1b]–2009[1c][1d] has often been hailed as a radical development in money and currency, being the first example of a digital asset which simultaneously has no backing or intrinsic value[2] and no centralized issuer or controller. However, another, arguably more important, part of the Bitcoin experiment is the underlying blockchain technology as a tool of distributed consensus, and attention is rapidly starting to shift to this other aspect of Bitcoin. Commonly cited alternative applications of blockchain technology include using on-blockchain digital assets to represent custom currencies and financial instruments (colored coins),[3] the ownership of an underlying physical device (smart property),[4] non-fungible assets such as domain names (Namecoin),[5] as well as more complex applications involving having digital assets being directly controlled by a piece of code implementing arbitrary rules known as smart contracts[6] or even blockchain-based decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs).[7] What Ethereum intends to provide is a blockchain with a built-in fully fledged Turing-complete programming language that can be used to create "contracts" that can be used to encode arbitrary state transition functions, allowing users to create any of the systems described above, as well as many others that we have not yet imagined, simply by writing up the logic in a few lines of code.

Read more of the “White Paper”.


2014 - Ethereum: A Secure Decentralised Generalised Transaction Ledger
Eip-150 Revision
Dr. Gavin Wood
Founder, Ethereum & Ethcore

Abstract. The blockchain paradigm when coupled with cryptographically-secured transactions has demonstrated its utility through a number of projects, not least Bitcoin. Each such project can be seen as a simple application on a decentralised, but singleton, compute resource. We can call this paradigm a transactional singleton machine with shared-state. Ethereum implements this paradigm in a generalised manner. Furthermore it provides a plurality of such resources, each with a distinct state and operating code but able to interact through a message-passing framework with others. We discuss its design, implementation issues, the opportunities it provides and the future hurdles we envisage.

1. Introduction

With ubiquitous internet connections in most places of the world, global information transmission has become incredibly cheap. Technology-rooted movements like Bitcoin have demonstrated, through the power of the default, consensus mechanisms and voluntary respect of the social contract that it is possible to use the internet to make a decentralised value-transfer system, shared across the world and virtually free to use. This system can be said to be a very specialised version of a cryptographically secure, transaction-based state machine. Follow-up systems such as Namecoin adapted this original “currency application” of the technology into other applications albeit rather simplistic ones.

Ethereum is a project which attempts to build the generalised technology; technology on which all transactionbased state machine concepts may be built. Moreover it aims to provide to the end-developer a tightly integrated end-to-end system for building software on a hitherto unexplored compute paradigm in the mainstream: a trustful object messaging compute framework.

Read the entire “Yellow Paper”


ĐApps: What Web 3.0 Looks Like
Note: originally posted Wednesday, 17 April 2014 on gavofyork's blog Insights into a Modern World.

As we move into the future, we find increasing need for a zero-trust interaction system. Even pre-Snowden, we had realised that entrusting our information to arbitrary entities on the internet was fraught with danger. However, post-Snowden the argument plainly falls in the hand of those who believe that large organisations and governments routinely attempt to stretch and overstep their authority. Thus we realise that entrusting our information to organisations in general is a fundamentally broken model. The chance of an organisation not meddling with our data is merely the effort required minus their expected gains. Given they tend to have an income model that requires they know as much about people as possible the realist will realise that the potential for convert misuse is difficult to overestimate.

The protocols and technologies on the Web, and even at large the Internet, served as a great technology preview. The workhorses of SMTP, FTP, HTTP(S), PHP, HTML, Javascript each helped contribute to the sort of rich cloud-based applications we see today such as Google's Drive, Facebook and Twitter, not to mention the countless other applications ranging through games, shopping, banking and dating. However, going into the future, much of these protocols and technologies will have to be re-engineered according to our new understandings of the interaction between society and technology.

Web 3.0, or as might be termed the "post-Snowden" web, is a reimagination of the sorts of things that we already use the Web for, but with a fundamentally different model for the interactions between parties. Information that we assume to be public, we publish. Information that we assume to be agreed, we place on a consensus-ledger. Information that we assume to be private, we keep secret and never reveal. Communication always takes place over encrypted channels and only with pseudonymous identities as endpoints; never with anything traceable (such as IP addresses). In short, we engineer the system to mathematically enforce our prior assumptions, since no government or organisation can reasonably be trusted.

There are four components to the post-Snowden Web: static content publication, dynamic messages, trustless transactions and an integrated user-interface.

Read more

CSL Reserva 2015

Um grande vinho, provado hoje, 1 de janeiro de 2018

CSL Reserva Branco 2015. Un. €7,50

Em poucas palavras: personalidade vincada, cor citrina a caminho do ouro, fresco, mineral, agradavelmente ácido, cítrico e tropical, enigmaticamente complexo, feito com as castas Chardonnay, Viosinho, e Encruzado.

Excelente para inaugurar uma exposição de pintura, e com pratos de peixe e marisco complexos. Bebi-o com um caril de cajú e pescada do Chile, acompanhado de arroz Basmati cozido sem sal da marca Caçarola (the best).

Para conhecer melhor antes de provar: Casa Santos Lima
Onde comprar: Garrafeira Internacional, que foi recentemente comprada pela CSL.

Geringonça 2018

De pedra e cal?

Défice em novembro: 2,4%. Mesmo que venha a ficar nos 2%, estará ainda acima do défice previsto para a Zona Euro: 1,5%.

# Convergência? Népias!




source: tradingeconomics.com


Quanto ao crescimento, a comparação também não é assim tão risonha quanto a propaganda costista quer fazer-nos crer:

A previsão para o ano 2017, plasmada no Trading Economics, é a seguinte:

• Portugal (2,4%)
• Zona Euro (2,6%)

# Convergência? Népias!

Basta reparar no crescimento dos países abaixo listados, nomeadamente da Espanha, Irlanda e Polónia, para desvalorizarmos a entorse informativa da imprensa comprometida com a Geringonça, suas agências de comunicação, e seus duvidosos institutos de sondagens, sobre a excelência intrínseca da troika frente-populista pós-moderna que temos, e a genialidade do senhor Centeno.

• Alemanha (2,8%)
• Suécia (2,9%)
• Holanda (3%)
• Finlândia (3%)
• Espanha (3,1%)
• Áustria (3,2%)
• Noruega (3,2%)
• Polónia (4,9%)
• Vietname (7,65%)
• Irlanda (10,5%)
• Turquia (11,1%)

Os ventos favoráveis da conjuntura internacional determinaram os resultados sofríveis da coligação envergonhada das esquerdas. A conjuntura internacional (políticas monetárias dos bancos centrais e petróleo abaixo dos $60/b), o turismo, o saque fiscal e a teta do BCE foram os principais fatores da melhoria do saldo entre despesas e receitas.

Menos impostos para todos, e menos segmentação da carga fiscal ao serviço do populismo reinante e das borlas especiais para os rendeiros e partidos do costume, teriam dado resultados bem mais satisfatórios, e sobretudo consistentes e duradouros. Basta olhar para pequenos países como a Irlanda, a Holanda, ou a Áustria, para se constatar o óbvio: a canga burocrático-partidária portuguesa impede o país de sair da cepa torta.

# Em  2018 não se esperam alterações bruscas na tendência apesar de tudo positiva de 2017 *

• O petróleo de Brent andará em média, em 2018, pelos $64/b, em vez dos $54,8/b (2017)*.
• O BCE deverá travar qualquer subida empinada das taxas de juro de referência.
• Os técnicos de Bruxelas e as agências de notação financeira continuarão de olho nas contas públicas dos países da UE e em particular da Zona Euro, impondo assim balizas claras aos devaneios populistas do PCP e do Bloco.

# Resumindo: a Geringonça vai perdurar por mais algum tempo, a menos que estoure alguma guerra nuclear pelo caminho, ou que os portugueses emigrem menos e resolvam desparasitar o país.

NOTA: esta previsão talvez se venha a revelar demasiado otimista. Na realidade, a subida consistente dos preços do petróleo, agarrada por sua vez à depreciação do USD, parece apontar para um preço médio do crude de Brent, em 2018, na ordem dos $64/b. É bom para Angola e Venezuela, mas mau para as nossas exportações e importações, que ficam mais caras. O impacto da subida do petróleo na nossa dívida e nosso défice é, por outro lado, muito significativo.

Atualizado em 5/1/2018, 20:33 WET

As rendas da EDP

Clique para ampliar

Este quase monopólio é um fator de atraso económico e cultural do país.

Tudo começou na forma precipitada como se apostou nas renováveis. O preço dos parques eólicos é uma canga pesada sobre a competitividade da nossa economia. Correu-se um risco sem discutir amplamente o problema. Como sempre, bastou propaganda e meia-bola e força! Os prejuízos estão à vista, pois, como todos sabemos, as centrais nucleares, o gás natural e o carvão continuam a gerar eletricidade muito mais barata do que a que sai do vento que sopra quando quer. A despesa foi feita, o risco foi corrido temerariamente. Mas então, há que repartir os sobrecustos da aventura pelos que decidem, os que fizeram ou se meteram no negócio, e os que pagam a fatura final. E não, como aconteceu até agora, empurrar todo o preço do desvario para a fatura que recebemos mensalmente em casa.

Apesar dos efeitos visíveis da pressão da Troika, e dos comportamentos exemplares do ex-ministro Álvaro Santos Pereira, e do ex-secretário de estado da energia Henrique Gomes, as rendas obtidas em Portugal, que o senhor Mexia exporta para a América, ou usa para reduzir a dívida descomunal da EDP, continuam a ser um escândalo que a omnipresença da empresa em acontecimentos desportivos e culturais está muito longe de compensar.

Os portugueses deveriam investir na eficiência energética da sua economia e não alimentar cabotinos que alegremente se fazem decorar com exercícios de arquitetura duvidosa e arte conceptual requentada.

Clique para ampliar

Next Revolution

'These nerds are more powerful than standing armies'

Ethereum symbol white designed by Szabaduzso

Ethereum: a peaceful and silent revolution is on the way

In the past six months, blue-chip companies from BP to JP Morgan and Microsoft have endorsed ether, a rival to the best-known cryptocurrency bitcoin, and it has exploded in value by 4,400%. 

A 37-year-old former Microsoft research scientist called Gavin Wood wrote “100% of the code” for the currency, according to Brock Pierce, an early investor in both Ethereum, the computing platform behind ether, and bitcoin. 

Wood now runs a company called Parity Technologies, which has created a browser for the Ethereum network. 

in “British coder revealed as brains behind bitcoin rival”
Gavin Wood ‘wrote the code’ for ether — whose value has soared 4,400% this year
Danny Fortson in San Francisco
June 25 2017, 12:01am,
The Sunday Times

24th November 2014, Berlin. Ethereum ÐΞVcon-0 - Gavin: Welcome! Our mission: ÐApps. In this first video from the ÐΞVCON 0 series, Dr. Gavin Wood introduces the ΞTHÐΞV team and our mission: ÐApps, decentralized applications.

Vitalik Buterin explains Ethereum [in 3 minutes], 2014




Texas Bitcoin Conference in Austin, Texas, 2014. Vitalik Buterin explains what Ethereum is.


Keiser Report: New Crypto Phenomenon Ethereum (E569), 2014

DEVCON ONE: “Ethereum for Dummies” - Dr. Gavin Wood Ethereum Developer Conference. November 9th-13th, 2015 - Gibson Hall, London.




Vitalik Buterin - The Mastermind Behind Ethereum. Interview by Valerian Bennett. YouTube, 05/06/2017.

THE UNCANNY MIND THAT BUILT ETHEREUM
VITALIK BUTERIN INVENTED THE WORLD’S HOTTEST NEW CRYPTOCURRENCY AND INSPIRED A MOVEMENT — BEFORE HE’D TURNED 20. 

I remember waking up the first morning of the conference. I had fallen asleep the night before while most everyone was still awake, bedding down with a couch pillow in some back hallway of the house, earplugs in, hoodie cinched. When I walked into the living room I found it empty of people, but blinking and whirring with technology. Extension cords snaked across the floor, looping around empty beer bottles and the legs of a whiteboard that was tagged with equations and diagrams. I tried and failed to find an outlet for my phone. 

Buterin was the only person awake. He was sitting outside in a deck chair, working intensely. I didn’t bother him, and he didn’t say hello. But, I remember the impression he made on me at the time. This skeletal, 19-year-old boy, who was all limbs and joints, was hovering above his laptop like a preying mantis, delivering it nimble, lethal blows at an incredible speed. 

in Morgenpeck, Wired, 06.13.16

Today at Disrupt SF 2017 Vitalik Buterin sat down with AngelList founder Naval Ravikant to talk Ethereum. Because, well, Vitalik created Ethereum. Up front, Ravikant asked him to explain Ethereum and this is what he said. 

“You basically need to have some system that keeps track of how much money you have at any given time, how much money you have the right to spend,” Buterin said. “You can very easily do it with centralized servers, but if you want to do it in a decentralized manner, it’s actually a very hard problem.” 

- Posted Sep 18, 2017, by Matt Burns (@mjburnsy)

Vitalik Buterin - The Advantages of Decentralization - EventHorizon 2017

From 14 to 15 February EventHorizon 2017 brought together 550 international first movers and thought leaders from the energy as well as the Blockchain sector in the Hofburg Vienna – and imperial conference and event centre, where for over 700 years, both past and modern history have been written within its walls – to discuss and develop the energy solutions for the future. 

Please find more detailed information on our event website: www.eventhorizon2017.com

Discuss (Dec 10,2017) Vitalik Buterin - Lays Out Ethereum 2.0 Roadmap In Taiwan 

Atualizado em 31/12/2017 20:32 WET

Por uma democracia de confiança

A revolução digital só agora começou

As bolhas das dívidas soberanas e o mercado especulativo de derivados financeiros são a coisa mais extraordinária que o Capitalismo conheceu em toda a sua história, exceção feita, talvez, das duas grandes guerras mundiais que permitiram a sua expansão exponencial.

O que agora parece estar em causa, por efeito da exaustão dos recursos à superfície da crosta terrestre, a começar pelo fim da energia barata, é mesmo o fim do crescimento. A procura agregada mundial deixou de crescer a um ritmo capaz de repor o capital gasto na busca de matérias primas como o petróleo, o carvão e o gás natural, minérios de ferro, terras aráveis, água potável, etc., e ainda no cumprimento das obrigações contraídas perante os clientes dos bancos, companhias de seguros e da segurança social. Mais, a taxa de crescimento demográfico mundial atingiu o seu máximo em 1964. Ora sem demografia não há crescimento de nenhuma espécie, salvo o das bolhas especulativas que proliferam. Resta-nos, pois, regressar ao crescimento zero (na realidade, entre 0 e 1%) que foi a regra desde o princípio da humanidade até meados do século 19. Esta é a próxima revolução global, que porventura já começou!

Dois sinais: o colapso do sistema financeiro assente em bancos e bancos centrais, mais os seus sistemas de certificação, parece estar definitivamente em curso. Prova disso é a fuga cada vez mais visível da riquza mundial para as chamadas cripto-moedas. Outro sinal são os movimentos sociais que exigem, com cada vez mais veemência e conhecimento, uma DEMOCRACIA DE CONFIANÇA, assente em protocolos de transparência, registo e cooperação eletrónica à escala global. Por um lado, a economia global veio para ficar, por outro, exige-se para todos o chamado Rendimento Básico Incondicional e um sistema de trocas e de pagamentos livre da corrupção e especulação político-financeiras.

Blockchains for social good could revolutionize democracy and politics at large. I think Distributed Ledger Technology with Democracy Maps can be a paradigm shift to present populism plaguing most democracies around the world, and force bureaucratic authoritarian regimes to adapt to individual freedom and real democracy.
This EU initiative is more than welcome. Let’s work on this beautiful challenge!

António Cerveira Pinto in Second City

Blockchains for Social Good 

This prize [€5 million] aims to develop solutions to social innovation challenges using distribute ledger technology. 

The challenge to solve 

The challenge is to develop scalable, efficient and high-impact decentralised solutions to social innovation challenges leveraging Distributed Ledger Technology (DLTs), such as the one used in blockchains. 

DLT in its public, open and permissionless forms is widely considered as a ground-breaking digital technology supporting decentralised methods for consensus reaching as well as sharing, storing and securing transactions and other data with fewer to no central intermediaries 

In the wake of the widespread public attention for Bitcoin, several financial applications based on blockchains are already under development. 

However, the potential of DLTs to generate positive social change by decentralising and disintermediating processes related to local or global sustainability challenges is still largely untapped. 

in “Blockchains for social good”. IEIC Horizon Prize

Read more

Distributed Ledger Technology 

Algorithms that enable the creation of distributed ledgers are powerful, disruptive innovations that could transform the delivery of public and private services and enhance productivity through a wide range of applications. 

Ledgers have been at the heart of commerce since ancient times and are used to record many things, most commonly assets such as money and property. They have moved from being recorded on clay tablets to papyrus, vellum and paper. However, in all this time the only notable innovation has been computerisation, which initially was simply a transfer from paper to bytes. Now, for the first time algorithms enable the collaborative creation of digital distributed ledgers with properties and capabilities that go far beyond traditional paper-based ledgers. 

A distributed ledger is essentially an asset database that can be shared across a network of multiple sites, geographies or institutions. All participants within a network can have their own identical copy of the ledger. Any changes to the ledger are reflected in all copies in minutes, or in some cases, seconds. The assets can be financial, legal, physical or electronic. The security and accuracy of the assets stored in the ledger are maintained cryptographically through the use of ‘keys’ and signatures to control who can do what within the shared ledger. Entries can also be updated by one, some or all of the participants, according to rules agreed by the network. 

Underlying this technology is the ‘block chain’, which was invented to create the peer-to-peer digital cash Bitcoin in 2008. Block chain algorithms enable Bitcoin transactions to be aggregated in ‘blocks’ and these are added to a ‘chain’ of existing blocks using a cryptographic signature. The Bitcoin ledger is constructed in a distributed and ‘permissionless’ fashion, so that anyone can add a block of transactions if they can solve a new cryptographic puzzle to add each new block. The incentive for doing this is that there is currently a reward in the form of twenty five Bitcoins awarded to the solver of the puzzle for each ‘block’. Anyone with access to the internet and the computing power to solve the cryptographic puzzles can add to the ledger and they are known as ‘Bitcoin miners’. The mining analogy is apt because the process of mining Bitcoin is energy intensive as it requires very large computing power. It has been estimated that the energy requirements to run Bitcoin are in excess of 1GW and may be comparable to the electricity usage of Ireland.  

in “Distributed Ledger Technology: beyond block chain. A Report by the UK Government Chief Scientific Adviser”.

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Democracy Maps by António Cerveira Pinto on Scribd

Macronésia?

Emmanuel Macron

Emmanuel Macron: um novo modelo de liderança?

Apesar de cada vez mais furibundo com as esquerdas, a direita, mesmo evoluída, não é o chá que costumo tomar. Nunca foi. Mas precisamos, reafirmo, de ter uma direita civilizada—de uma vez por todas! E já agora, de uma esquerda decente, que não traia tudo aquilo que a identifica com os ideais de uma sociedade utópica.

Infelizmente, o que temos são turmas de cortesãos e cortesãs amamentados pelos nossos impostos e pela dívida pública, acolitados debaixo de chapéus de intriga e poder a que chamam partidos políticos. Faltava provar que as minorias radicais (PCP e Bloco) eram farinha do mesmo saco. Devemos agradecer à Geringonça ter eliminado a réstia de ilusão que aconchegava ainda alguns espíritos sensíveis ao marxismo mas que, infelizmente, não foram atualizando os seus conhecimentos teóricos ao longo das últimas décadas.

O país está a esvaziar-se de capital e de inteligência, sobrando demasiada corrupção, sacanagem e uma espécie de letargia que invade o cada vez maior exército de zombies pendurados na dívida pública. 

Não espero, nem desejo um salvador, ao contrário duma maioria silenciosa e ansiosa que não pára de crescer e que, sim, espera pelo eterno ausente chamado Sebastião. As sondagens do regime refletem apenas a sensibilidade da corte e da burocracia, mas à medida que as administrações públicas e os partidos caminham inexoravelmente para a falência (“Novo banco empresta 2 milhões ao PS”— Jornal de Negócios) o que avistamos no horizonte é mais ansiedade e desejo de segurança, fatores psicológicos favoráveis à emergência de um líder decidido a esmagar o poder deletério das máfias que tomaram conta do país e o arruinaram.

Não será Rio, com certeza. Mas se não aparecer por aí um tugalês a copiar Macron, alguma espécie pós-moderna de Salazar acabará por surgir :(

O que se passou e terá passado no caldeirão chamado Raríssimas, e o que se passou e terá passado com o tráfico de crianças através das ligações insondáveis entre a IURD e a rede sórdida de exploração e tráfico de seres humanos imersa no Estado, nomeadamente pelas vias da pedofilia e outras perversões sexuais intoleráveis, parece-me suficiente para exigirmos o fim desta falsa democracia. 

Teremos, pergunto, coragem suficiente para uma nova revolução democrática e libertária? Ou iremos, uma vez mais, esperar pelo ditador?