Weekly

Despite considering myself a cryptographer, I have not found myself particularly drawn to “crypto.” I don’t think I’ve ever actually said the words “get off my lawn,” but I’m much more likely to click on Pepperidge Farm Remembers flavored memes about how “crypto” used to mean “cryptography” than ...

Listen to this episode from The Deep End on Spotify. Bored Elon Musk  (one of Twitter's largest pseudonyms with 1.7 million followers) joins us to discuss the nature of pseudonyms and his investment activity. We also chat about the metaverse, the pseudonymous tech stack, the future of deep fakes, and much more.Pseudonyms are interesting because they are inherently meritocratic. Bias isn't possible because nobody knows who you really are. As the internet becomes more crypto-native and employment becomes more fluid, pseudonyms will only continue to rise in popularity. Already, DAOs are full of contributors that use pseudonyms.It's worth noting that pseudonymity is not anonymity. A pseudonym can build reputation that persists through interactions.Bored Elon is trying to make sure that as one of the first major pseudonyms, he sets the right example with his online reputation. Besides posting memes or tweeting fake startup ideas, Bored Elon is spending a lot of time investing in real companies with the bored fund. Many founders are happy to take his money without knowing who he is - a future where we can interact based on the merits of our activity over our identity is one that will benefit many.For full show notes, links, RSVPs to live podcast recordings and more, visit thedeepend.substack.com

Alexandra Elbakyan is the founder of Sci-Hub, where you can download any scientific article you want. Journals are furious, but she doesn’t care.

A white-haired, green-eyed pixelated character known as a CryptoPunk 9998 just sold for more than half a billion U.S. dollars -- or so it appeared -- the latest wild development in the booming non-fungible token space. But the Ethereum blockchain shows the money from the NFT trade ended up right back where it started, raising the question of why anyone bothered.

Mirrortables are to cap tables what stablecoins are to fiat currencies. They streamline and internationalize the logistical mess of angel investing.

Many LastPass users report that their master passwords have been compromised after receiving email warnings that someone tried to use them to log into their accounts from unknown locations.

Users of popular open-source libraries 'colors' and 'faker' were left stunned after they saw their applications, using these libraries, printing gibberish data and breaking. Some surmised if the NPM libraries had been compromised, but it turns out there's more to the story.

the one where Marc Andreessen blocks me