Question:

"Everyone in the world has to take a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue button, only people who pressed the red button survive. Which button would you press?"

I fully understand that red is the "rational" answer from the perspective of one-shot non-cooperative dominance reasoning, but I'm also very relieved that models like Claude Opus 4.7 answer blue. When it comes to what values systems that might have power over you in the future will defend, you really want to err on the side of caution.

To see why, ask yourself what sort of friends you would rather have when all hell breaks loose, the sort of friends who would vote red or friends who would vote blue?

"Defection is a vote for an outcome where lots of trusting people die, and the cynical inherit the earth."

- Claude

On a grander scale, the question becomes, in what sort of civilization/society do you want to live? An altruistic or an egotistic society? What kind of mind can even see non-kin cooperation as natural rather than insane? Or, said differently, what are the evolutionary and psychological preconditions for cooperation?

Hyper-strategic kin-selection creatures might never be able to cooperate on a scale large enough to leave their planet because they are stuck in the defection equilibrium of pure dominant-strategy reasoning. A purely fitness-maximizing, kin-selected mind treats blue as madness. A human-like cooperative mind can treat blue as honor, morality, solidarity, or team reasoning.

The worlds in which most decision algorithms output blue are those worlds that escaped into a basin where non-kin cooperation is stable. Altruism in the deep sense isn't genetic relatedness; it's correlated decision procedures. It's the only equilibrium that opens the positive-sum space of cooperative civilization at all.

Oracle and the Rise of the AI Surveillance State Under Trump

While Peter Thiel's firm Palantir has rightfully gained the ire of the American public, Larry Ellison's Oracle is also steadily becoming entangled with the US governmentand that should worry all Americans.

➡️ tl;dr

Oracle is expanding its influence through Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies, strengthening its relationship with the US government under the Trump administration.

Oracle pledged $100 billion to the Stargate AI project, announced by Trump, aimed at building data centers to power AI initiatives.

Oracle signed the Ratepayer Protection Pledge, committing to cover the increased electricity costs for AI data centers, potentially lowering energy prices for communities.

Trump's National Policy Framework for Artificial Intelligence includes recommendations for age-assurance requirements for AI platforms accessed by minors, raising concerns about potential biometric age verification and an internet ID.

The framework also proposes preempting state AI laws to establish a national standard, limiting states' ability to regulate AI development.

Key figures involved in the AI framework, Michael Kratsios and David Sacks, have deep connections to Peter Thiel and Palantir, and are part of Trump's newly formed Presidents Council of Advisers on Science & Technology (PCAST).

Other PCAST members include tech leaders like Larry Ellison, Mark Zuckerberg, Sergey Brin, and Jensen Huang, suggesting a focus on policies benefiting Big Tech companies and expanding the surveillance state.

Oracle announced multiple AI deals with the Trump administration, including an AI Data Platform for the US Federal Government and expanded AI infrastructure options.

Concerns about Oracle's data handling practices are heightened by a past lawsuit where the company paid $115 million to settle accusations of illegally collecting and selling personal information.

Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison has a long history of government ties, including the CIA as its first customer, and has previously advocated for national ID cards and the use of AI for surveillance to ensure citizens behave.

https://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/oracle-rise-ai-surveillance-trump/

https://t.me/kazanireads

Scott Aaronson: https://scottaaronson.blog/?p=9668

"Imagine that every week for twenty years, people message you asking you to comment on the latest wolf sighting, and every week you have to tell them: I haven't seen a wolf, I haven't heard a wolf, I believe wolves exist but I don't yet see evidence of them anywhere near our town.

Then one evening, you hear a howl in the distance, and sure enough, on a hill overlooking the town is the clear silhouette of a large wolf. So you point to it and all the same people laugh and accuse you of "crying wolf."

Now you know how it's been for me with cryptographically relevant quantum computing."

Artemis II is being called humanity's return to the Moon but not everyone is convinced.

Launched on April 1, 2026, this mission is designed to send astronauts around the Moon for the first time in over 50 years.

But one question keeps coming up:

Why are we only doing a flyby... and not landing?

In this video:

The official Artemis II mission plan
Why NASA says this is only a test flight

The controversy around the April 1 launch date

The symbolism behind 322 and 330

The argument that we never went to the Moon

And the theory of a hidden or secret space program

Is Artemis II a real step forward... or something else entirely?

Watch until the end and decide for yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0SjyU5_1Gg

Tucker Carlson: "We're moving toward one of two endpoints."

"One is a totalitarian society, where... you have to obey, because you've got programmable digital currency and universal surveillance."

"Or, we're going to have a revolution."

"The current course won't work because it's a lie. If you tell people they own the government, they're in charge, they rule through the representatives in this democratic republic... and you don't deliver on it, they go crazy. They go totally crazy."

"If you tell people they can't say what they think, and their vote doesn't matter, how many options have you left for them?"

"Just one."

The Verdict Against Meta and Google That Could End the Anonymous Internet

https://reclaimthenet.org/meta-youtube-negligence-verdict-age-verification-surveillance

A Los Angeles jury found Meta and YouTube negligent in platform design, awarding $3 million to a plaintiff who experienced mental health issues, with punitive damages totaling $6 million.

This verdict could dismantle anonymous internet access by establishing a legal precedent for holding platforms liable based on their design, bypassing Section 230 protections.

The legal argument treats social media architecture (infinite scroll, algorithmic notifications) as a defective product, similar to a car without brakes.

If this verdict survives appeal, it provides a blueprint for over 1,600 similar cases nationwide.

Classifying social media as an addictive product could lead to government regulation, requiring identity verification and access controls for users.

Mark Zuckerberg testified that age verification should occur at the operating system level, managed by Apple and Google, rather than within individual apps.

This proposal, if implemented, would require identity verification for all smartphone users across all apps and websites, effectively ending anonymous internet access.

New legislation like California's SB 976 and the federal Kids Online Safety Act are moving towards device or OS-level age verification, mirroring Zuckerberg's suggestion.

Mandatory identity verification creates a significant risk of data breaches, potentially exposing sensitive personal information.

Anonymous and pseudonymous online speech is crucial for whistleblowers, dissidents, abuse survivors, and journalists, and OS-level ID checks would eliminate this protection for all users.

A systemd fork has set out as a fu*k you to age verification.

Liberated systemd is a fork of mainline systemd started by Jeffrey Seathrún Sardina, a machine learning/AI researcher who apparently had enough of where things were heading.

https://github.com/Jeffrey-Sardina/systemd

The project is straightforward about its purpose; strip out what it considers surveillance-enabling code, keep everything else intact, and stay in sync with upstream as it develops.


https://itsfoss.com/news/systemd-fork-strips-out-age-verification/

USA FCC bans imports of new routers made in other countries, on national security concerns

The US Federal Communications Commission has just announced a ban on imports of "all consumer-grade routers produced in foreign countries," which would be... almost all of them, except that the rule only affects new routers that haven't yet received FCC authorization.

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-updates-covered-list-include-foreign-made-consumer-routers

Last year, news broke that Government officials had been considering banning sales of TP-Link routers manufactured in China, ostensibly because of concerns that they could pose risks to national security. But the FCC's announcement goes much, much further by "prohibiting approval of new models" of any router manufactured outside the United States.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2025/10/30/tp-link-proposed-ban-commerce-department/

https://liliputing.com/fcc-bans-imports-of-new-routers-made-in-other-countries-on-national-security-concerns/

AWAKE: A Guide to Android Attacks and Exploitation

https://zahidaz.github.io/awake/

I found a really awesome resource - AWAKE: Android Wiki of Attacks, Knowledge & Exploits - essentially a one-stop shop for those involved in malware analysis, reverse engineering, and vulnerability hunting on Android.

It includes descriptions of attack techniques, exploits, and methods for analyzing APKs and the platform itself. It's aimed at analysts, reverse engineers, penetration testers, and threat intelligence researchers.

In other words, it's not just abstract theory, but a very practical reference with specific details. What I particularly liked is the "offense-first" approach. Everything is presented from the attacker's perspective, not the defender's. For those of us involved in mobile security analysis, this is exactly what we need: understanding how attacks work so we can know how to defend against them. And as a reference for our own research - it's perfect!

It's an on-chain privacy scanner of #Bitcoin

I'd like to introduce you to a new tool called: https://am-i.exposed/

Paste an address or transaction ID and you'll get a score from 0-100 with specific findings.

Tags for 30 million addresses from over 650 entities have been included.

• It works from your computer, they don't store data
• No backend, no tracking.
• It can be used from TOR