sidcode

PhDing in Robotics and AI | creating cyber-physical commons: code, culture, capital, coordination | ex @KERNEL0x @initc3org @GoldmanSachs

[sidcode @sidcode_]

Metanoia - going beyond one's way of love and life as a result of spiritual growth from horizontal conversations

@Kernel0x @cryptowanderer @vsinghdothings @anggxyz @polats @sachin12eth
Thank you, thank you for this serendipitous time capsule of an adventure!

[sidcode @sidcode_]

@InferenceActive this definition of a world model is getting too close to that of 'act, infer, serve'

[Kosta Derpanis (sabbatical in Zurich) @CSProfKGD]

.@ylecun’s definition of what is a world model.

[sidcode @sidcode_]

@afixfornix or a third possibility- academic reviews for robotics papers are stricter than applied AI

https://t.co/eKGk1eg7Fm

[Guanya Shi @GuanyaShi]

I’m so tired of writing rebuttals to this kind of “lack of novelty” review: “This paper trivially combines A, B, and C, so the algorithmic novelty is limited.”

Technically, most (if not all) robotics papers are convex combinations of existing ideas.

I still deeply appreciate A+B+C papers—especially when they deliver:

- New capabilities: the “trivial combination” unlocks behaviors we simply couldn’t achieve before

- Sensible & organic design: A+B+C is clearly the right composition—not some arbitrary A′+B+C′

- Nontrivial interactions: careful analysis of the dynamics, coupling, or failure modes between A, B, C

- Rehabilitating old ideas: A was dismissed for years, but paired with modern B/C, it suddenly works—and teaches us why

- System-level & "interface" insight: the contribution is not any single piece, but how the pieces talk to each other

- Scaling laws or regimes: identifying when/why A+B+C works (and when it doesn’t)

- Engineering clarity: making something actually work robustly in the real world is not “trivial”

- New problem formulations: sometimes the real novelty is in the reformulation—only under this view does A+B+C make sense.

Maybe worth keeping these in mind when reviewing the next A+B+C paper : )

[sidcode @sidcode_]

A few more days left to support the people and infra (such as @_SEAL_Org @zachxbt etc) who keep many ecosystems protected.

April hacks prove that things will get worse. Let's not give these attackers a chance to treat our collective protocols and wallets as an open bug bounty.

[Giveth @Giveth]

https://t.co/P8n7UQNYHC

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

"Even more bugs are inevitable, software is all going to become probabilistic now" is cope. "AI bug-finding means we have to embrace closed-source now" is a psyop.

Writing buggy code has moved from hard to trivial. Writing secure code has moved from impossible to hard.

[Adam Kerr @zero_to_seed]

@rohit4verse I don’t understand the ambition to be a one person billion dollar company. Building is a fun team sport.

[web3nomad.eth | atypica.ai @web3nomad]

the real lesson: DNSSEC saved this. the attacker had DNS control but couldn't forge the signing keys — so the auth chain broke and browsers rejected it.

web3 infra sitting on web2 DNS registrars is the actual attack surface. this keeps happening (cowswap, now https://t.co/onZM6fLheh). the fix isn't trust — it's making the fallback cryptographically sound.

[Feross @feross]

🚨 Two major supply chain attacks today, hitting both PyPI and npm simultaneously.

Socket detected and confirmed malicious code in lightning versions 2.6.2 and 2.6.3 on PyPI, and intercom-client version 7.0.4 on npm. Both attacks use nearly identical tooling. Both are live right now.

lightning is one of the most popular deep learning frameworks in the Python ecosystem, with millions of downloads per month. intercom-client is Intercom's official Node.js SDK, with roughly 360K weekly downloads. These are not typosquats. These are the real packages.

The payloads are almost identical across both attacks:

• Both inject an ~11MB obfuscated JavaScript file (router_runtime.js) and a setup script that downloads and executes the Bun runtime from GitHub

• Both harvest GitHub tokens, npm tokens, AWS/Azure/GCP credentials, Kubernetes secrets, Vault tokens, and CI/CD environment variables

• Both exfiltrate stolen credentials through the GitHub API

• Both execute automatically, lightning on import, intercom-client on install

The lightning attack goes further. It uses stolen GitHub tokens to commit poisoned files to every branch of every repository the token can write to, impersonating Anthropic's Claude Code as the committer ([email protected]). It also infects local npm tarballs by injecting a postinstall hook and bumping the patch version, so the next publish silently ships malware to downstream users.

In both cases, the attackers appear to have compromised maintainer accounts and used them to suppress disclosure. On the Lightning-AI GitHub, the pl-ghost account closed Socket's disclosure issue within one minute and posted a meme. On the Intercom GitHub, the nhur account closed, redacted, and retitled security reports to "N/A." Both accounts show bursts of suspicious branch-creation activity consistent with the Shai-Hulud worm's credential-probing pattern, including misspelled Dependabot impersonation branches.

The attackers posted an onion link in the Lightning-AI issue thread claiming affiliation with "Team PCP" and referencing LAPSUS$. Socket has not verified these claims. The intercom-client attack also shows direct Shai-Hulud hallmarks, including repos created with descriptions reading "A Mini Shai-Hulud has Appeared."

Socket's AI scanner flagged the malicious lightning versions 18 minutes after publication.

If you use either package:

• Remove lightning 2.6.2/2.6.3 and intercom-client 7.0.4 immediately

• Downgrade to lightning 2.6.1 / intercom-client 7.0.3

• Rotate all credentials in affected environments

• Audit repos for unauthorized commits from [email protected] and unexpected files in .claude/ or .vscode/

• More advice in our full research posts...

This is the same attacker campaign operating across two language ecosystems simultaneously. The playbook is credential theft, repo poisoning, and worm-style propagation. The scope is still being determined.

Developing story...

[sidcode @sidcode_]

@meesha_learns @aiandchai Sometimes conversing with attention is all you need

[sidcode @sidcode_]

One of the best designed thesis presentations out there

[Peter Tong @TongPetersb]

I defended my thesis today! Sincere thanks to my advisors @sainingxie @ylecun and committee members: @mengyer @YiMaTweets @LukeZettlemoyer @liuzhuang1234. I could not have wished for a better PhD life, and I want to thank everyone who was part of this journey.

Slides Link: https://t.co/UoD65snQLX

[vitalik.eth @VitalikButerin]

@revrfg @commitwtf This is cool!

Need an interface to use this to sign up for events imo 😀

[sidcode @sidcode_]

nice name choice

[Robert Yang @GuangyuRobert]

Introducing Project Sid: the first simulations of 1000+ truly autonomous agents collaborating in a virtual world, w/ emergent economy, culture, religion, and government

Humans are the only species to land the moon, because we can cooperate at a vast scale

Can AI do the same?

[sidcode @sidcode_]

@Kernel0x There's something special about the magic of a meal shared with friends!

[sidcode @sidcode_]

@CuriousCharjan @Kernel0x Awesome, DM me to coordinate :)

[Carl Cervone ☕️ @carl_cervone]

crypto has created a substrate for funding "long tail public goods" on an internet-wide scale

short tail public goods are the things we all recognize as valuable. they deserve and often get the lion's share of funding.

but every short tail public good started out on the long tail once upon a time

crypto-native mechanisms like quadratic funding provide money + signal to promising efforts on the long tail, accelerating their ascent to the left side of this curve

we are only a few years in, but there are already dozens of projects that have crossed over

even more exciting is that many of the projects that are now short tail public goods are becoming long tail allocators in their own right

@gitcoin @buidlguidl @hatsprotocol @Giveth are all examples of this

if you are a long tail public good, wear it as a badge of honor: 2024 will be the year of the long tail public good 🫡

[Carl Cervone ☕️ @carl_cervone]

I’m sharing my RetroPGF voting strategy to provide transparency to projects and other badgeholders regarding the impact I care about and how I value it

Ballot is ready to go, will cast it tomorrow. Feedback on the strategy is welcome; shilling is not 🔴

https://t.co/0D2owiLJR2

[Kernel @Kernel0x]

Kernel appears in 15 ballots in Optimism's RetroPGF 3.

Here is an excerpt on Ether’s Phoenix, an inspiration for RetroPGF, from the Kernel (hyper)textbook.

🔴 Feel your heartbeat and lift your head, friend. Look out to the far horizon, for the phoenix awaits. 🔴

It is fire which does not consume, but gives flight to what is true; to what cannot die; to what was not born; to what gives you life in return for how you choose to recycle.

This essay’s purpose is to start your regen journey. We’ll do so by turning to the trees, and asking a man who cuts them for a living what they truly have to teach. 'Sprout Lands: Tending the Endless Gift of Trees' by William Bryant Logan is where we hope to catch a glimpse of Ether’s playful phoenix.

This is not a series of instructions. It is a web of co-relations. Kernel cannot tell you exactly how to regenerate your environment, but we can discover together why it is a virtuous goal.

‘Regen’ is neither regressive nor progressive. It does not make the twin mistakes of thinking we can conquer our environment, nor of imagining that we are separate from our environment and can return it to some pristine state by retracting our participation.

There is no escape. There is no ‘right’ way. There is no ‘good’ solution. There are no righteous few. There is no ‘them’. There are none who are not complicit.

There is attention. There is awareness. There is thanksgiving. There is reciprocity. There is awe. There is humility. There is listening, learning, and love.

“(Trees are) a living cathedral dedicated to the power of sprouting. As often as you cut it, all by itself it grows its pillars again.”

So, we begin with what may seem like heresy: trees are for cutting. However, this does not give us a free licence, and it does not mean trees are for cutting in some existential sense. It means that our relationship with trees revolves around cutting, its right rhythm, and the sort of respect and reverence required for life to be continually revived in generation after generation.

Ether’s Phoenix is the idea that an abundant future of public goods will indefinitely and retroactively reward the contributors who helped create it.

Moreover, as the Optimism team puts it in their blog: “It is also a mindset: that optimism prevails, that better systems are possible, and that humankind will be rewarded for its cooperative revolution.”

However, even well-intentioned religions and traditions, who create potentially good future attractors can fail to move towards them over time. Something more than an 🔴optimistic 🔴mindset is required.

Logan and the trees offer us a further consideration: “The work in which head and heart and hand participate, at once, yields the only objective knowledge. It employs the ratiocinative capacity, the ability to discriminate and choose.”

It is not only mind. It is not only heart. It is not only hands.

It is all three in concert, with reverence for this world as it is, and how it resists even the faintest glimmer of our own projections.

Moreover, there is a tekne (both technique and art) to understanding how our present actions may affect the future. Such craft combines scientific knowledge, lived experience, and tender care.

In attuning to the consequences of our actions, we are more capable of understanding what the right decision is, at the right time, in the right place.

[sidcode @sidcode_]

@Kernel0x @cryptowanderer @vsinghdothings @anggxyz @polats @sachin12eth If someone wants to try out these riddles, here's where to begin-
https://t.co/x21MyZx8xm

If you are wondering what @Kernel0x is about, here's a writeup by the wonderful @heyjess_sun @aliyajypsy @vsinghdothings https://t.co/8RFFhstq8N

[sidcode @sidcode_]

Metanoia - going beyond one's way of love and life as a result of spiritual growth from horizontal conversations

@Kernel0x @cryptowanderer @vsinghdothings @anggxyz @polats @sachin12eth
Thank you, thank you for this serendipitous time capsule of an adventure!

[Kernel @Kernel0x]

T-4 days until KB8 apps close on December 1st.

We will accept late apps through 12/15, but the block may fill at any time.

The spirited, the creative, the curious, the builders are encouraged to please apply.

KB8 begins on January 12th.

Apply now 👇
https://t.co/XbBjz0L89Y

[Kernel @Kernel0x]

Kernel is building a custom internet age institution, one peer-learning environment at a time.

♾KB8♾ is our current time capsule, with applications for the block closing Dec 1st. Why should you apply?

1) Each Kernel Fellow joins as an individual, first.

Kernel Fellows represent 50+ countries, top institutions, and vocations like technologist, (circus/DAO) director, (product/industrial) designer, (bestselling/internet) author, (hardware/software) engineer, and ecologist. 40% of us belong to underrepresented groups.

Kernel primarily attempts to welcome KB8 fellows as individuals first, encouraging one another as peers.

2) Personalized building/creating support

Each fellow has something to build or create. Kernel fellows have created projects like @sherlockdefi, @pushprotocol, @halofi_me, @Showtime_xyz, @llama, @jokerace_xyz, and @verses_xyz. Nearly 100 Kernel Fellows have raised significant funding ($1mm-$10mm).

Fellows have also started DAOs, written PhD theses, launched art collections, and planted gardens. Each has meaningful space within a Kernel block.

3) Learn a wider lens of technology

Crypto is a part of the greater evolution of technology, economics, and society. Kernel draws from library science and time designers as much as from cryptographers and technologists.

The wider lens of technology (Gr: 'techne' - art, skill, craft) is key. We explore eight @Kernel0x modules in KB8 with technical and personal inquiries, in efforts for our personal growth to match our technical excellence.

4) Kernel Firesides x Office Hours

Each week, we host two capstone events.

Kernel Office Hours on Wednesday to support *you* & your work, via deep-time with peer mentors: @jack__sanford, @0xzak, @Sim_Pop, @jenilt, @_juliettech, @johnx25bd, + 20 more.

Kernel Fireside on Thursday to learn *collectively*, on topics like internet age institutions, the evolution of trust, gift-giving, and local financial systems. Guests include @owocki, @ljin18, @xochitlcazador, @brewster_kahle, @maira, @keikreutler, @samecwilliams, and @VitalikButerin.

5) Host or join a ‘Convo’

Kernel Fellows propose convos on any topic. If it’s over an IRL meal or a class, Kernel funds it. We never underestimate the magic of a meal (or a learning session) shared amongst friends.

6) Engage in peer-learning

Subjects as wide-ranging as solidity, smart contract auditing, token primitives, mindful movement, death, poetry, indigenous protocols, open data, de-school, and gratitude filter through Kernel via the 1,800 fellows who come before you.

7) Building a better web starts with you

Kernel provides a reflective and supportive environment for honing your unique strengths and aligning your work to your gifts. We hope it is a place where you pursue your life's [current] work and find it supported by the environment.

8) Take a step back from the highs and lows.

Relationships are an antidote to both FUD and FOMO. We offer an environment where the priority is the way in which we interact with each other. This extends well beyond Kernel.

We'd love to hear from you in KB8. Please apply if interested ♾️