I write limericks and make Blockchains work better. #Solana #LeanStartup #Cycling
Boulder, CO
Joined May 2008
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Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
To those that tune into The Order Book. We are having Chicago options trader and industry veteran @gogogunny on the pod tomorrow!
90% of life is just showing up. The other 90% is to keep showing up. See you in London! 🇬🇧🇬🇧🇬🇧
“If I could give one piece of advice to anybody that wants to be a part of this ecosystem, it’s show up to Solana Hacker House.” - @Amystreet
@HackerHouses London Special Edition 🇬🇧
Nov 1–12, right before Breakpoint.
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
If you've ever wondered why smart TVs are so cheap, this is why.
@log4j rooted his Samsung and found an always-on hot mic, automatic content recognition, geolocation, network mapping, ad targeting and user profiling, shared with Samsung's "400 partners".
A lot of it can be blocked in <15 min, wrote a basic guide below.
What your TV is doing
The main culprit is ACR (automatic content recognition). Your TV screenshots what's on screen, fingerprints it, and sends it home to build your ad profile. Samsung does it every 500ms, LG every 10ms [1].
What is insane: it happens on connected devices too.
Plug in your laptop, your console, your work machine, and your TV can fingerprint that via HDMI [1].
He also found that if your Samsung doesn't have a mic, it'll look for one from a connected soundbar or bluetooth device.
xitter.cf/log4j/status/211376224…
It's on by default, and you likely agreed to it on the setup screen you clicked through in 10 seconds.
Step 1: Turn off ACR
Samsung: Terms & Privacy → Viewing Information Services
LG: Live Plus
Vizio: Viewing Data
Roku: "Use info from TV inputs"
Sony/Google TV: Samba Interactive TV
Menus vary by model, but those are the names to look for. While you're in there, opt out of interest-based ads, reset your advertising ID, decline every optional privacy agreement, turn off voice recognition, and delete apps you never open.
Step 2: Give smart devices their own network
Put the TV, cameras, speakers and vacuum on your router's guest/IoT network. The logic is simple: these devices rarely get patched. If one gets compromised (getting drastically more frequent with AI), it shouldn't be able to see your other devices or home network.
Step 3: Block trackers for the whole house with DNS-level filtering
NextDNS (cloud-based) is easy and has a solid free plan. Pi-hole is a little bit more work if you prefer self hosting. For simplicity we'll focus on the former.
1. Sign up at nextdns.io (free tier is plenty)
2. Privacy tab: add a blocklist (OISD is a good bet) and turn on Native Tracking Protection for Samsung, LG, Roku, Amazon (see attached image)
3. Setup tab: copy your endpoint
4. Paste it into your router's DNS settings as DNS-over-HTTPS/TLS (or use the IPs + "Link IP" if your router only does plain DNS)
5. Bonus: block outbound port 53 except to your router. Some devices hardcode their own DNS to get around you
Then open the NextDNS logs and watch how often your TV phones home. It's eye-opening. If an app or update breaks, find the domain in the logs and allowlist it.
Why they do this
TV prices are down 97% since 2000 [2]. Most of that is better manufacturing and brutal competition. But once margins on the hardware hit zero, the cost moved to you.
In Q3 2024, Vizio lost $6.7M selling TVs and made $115.8M in gross profit from ads and viewing data [3]. They've said on earnings calls that they keep TV prices low to grow the audience they sell to advertisers. Walmart bought them in 2024.
This isn't a conspiracy theory either. Vizio paid $2.2M to the FTC in 2017 for tracking 11 million TVs without consent. Last December, Texas sued Samsung, LG, Sony, Hisense and TCL over ACR. Samsung and LG have since agreed to stop collecting that data without explicit consent [4].
TL;DR
1. ACR off
2. Ads + voice off
3. Smart devices on their own network
4. NextDNS filtering on the router
Sources:
[1] ACR study: arxiv.org/abs/2409.06203
[2] Cost of US consumer goods: aei.org/economics/chart-of-t…
[3] Vizio Q3 2024: sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/…
[4] Texas v. Samsung: texasattorneygeneral.gov/new…
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
“If I could give one piece of advice to anybody that wants to be a part of this ecosystem, it’s show up to Solana Hacker House.” - @Amystreet
@HackerHouses London Special Edition 🇬🇧
Nov 1–12, right before Breakpoint.
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
We owe you an apology.
On October 20, we detected unauthorized access to our official website. After verifying API activity with Shopify, we confirmed on October 23 that a third party obtained customer shipping information. You trusted us with those details, and we're sorry we didn't keep them safe.
Exposed: names, contact details, shipping addresses, and order details (items and prices).
Not exposed: payment card or bank details, recovery phrases, private keys, or wallet passwords.
We've blocked access, fixed the vulnerability, opened an investigation, and are emailing affected customers.
Scammers may pose as Keystone by phone, text, email, or mail, offering refunds, replacement devices, or "fixes" for your order or address. None of it is from us.
NEVER share your recovery phrase or private keys, and NEVER enter your recovery phrase into a device you didn't order. We will never ask for them. Don't click links in unexpected messages. Type keyst.one yourself.
A detailed report is coming soon.
Until then, trust only our official channels. If anything feels off, email [email protected]. We'd rather hear from you than have you take a chance.
Again, we're truly sorry to everyone affected.
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
If you're in Madrid on Monday, stop into El Encuentro 📷with @LaFamilia_so, catch a talk on Alpenglow by one of our engineers, and win some free Triton RPC!
luma.com/66thrqij?tk=29mCP4
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
Introducing Distracted.
A single player poker game on Solana
Protected by @Arcium
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
Market impact too high? 😰
We just shipped chunked markets orders which let you submit larger orders in increments, waiting for liquidity to replenish between fills (at the cost of time).
To help visualise this, you can see how many orderbook levels you eat (estimated).
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
No one has ever won both the FIFA Peace Prize and the Citizens of Iowa Man Of The Century award in the same year
Listen to Lily: "this industry was created by the stubborn resolute and unwavering conviction of contrarians, misfits, and fringe actors." Also, the chaotic creativity of punks who will go on to change finance. Never ignore the punks.
Depending on who you talk to, our industry growing up is either doom or glory.
We are finally globally relevant and that necessarily means we are less insular.
Because this industry was created by the stubborn resolute and unwavering conviction of contrarians, misfits, and fringe actors, we relished in the pirate mindset. We loved our insularity. (Tbh, I miss it too at times).
The “web3” thesis where programmable blockchains are supposed to be decentralized computing infrastructure for many apps ultimately incinerated billions of dollars of venture capital because it led tech minded builders and their investors to prioritize app sovereignty over unified liquidity. This was wrong on first principles.
As it turns out, blockchain has and always will be financial infrastructure. Finance superpowered by tech and programmability. Decentralization, neutrality, and censorship resistance have never been more important.
Whether this excites you going forward depends on whether you’re more west coast or east coast; San Francisco or New York; more tech or finance minded.
From the west coast crowd, I often hear disappointment (“oh in the end blockchain is only about finance?! That’s it?”)
I couldn’t be more excited, and I think the mandate has never been more clear and also attainable.
Capital formation isn’t an abstract thing that bankers do when you are ready to IPO.
Capital formation enables innovation. It allows us to take big bets on the future. Liquid markets enable capital formation. Over the long term, there can not be a larger global capital market than the internet capital market. The biggest market to possibly unify is that of people on the internet who use money.
Like all things the internet has ever touched, the online/onchain experience is never the same as the pre internet experience. Just as we needed network engineers to imagine and build blockchain networks, we need consumer tech minds to complement finance minds to deliver new ways of accessing finance.
This is not and has never been a small vision for blockchain. In fact, I would argue that it’s a core intent of a “peer to peer electronic cash network.”
We welcome those who want to double down on finance for the internet to come join the Solana ecosystem and make good on this mission.
I think it’s fine and even great that the risk-on talent from blockchain is now expanding new frontiers away from blockchain. New frontiers are only ever explored by those with stubborn resolute unwavering conviction.
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
In a few months when all the banks get hacked leading to the public losing trust in the traditional finance system, do you really think they're going to all flock to a chain that's only selling point is that it offers even less protections to the consumer?
zope
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
BREAKING: @JPMorganAM's tokenized money market funds are live on Solana.
MONY and JLTXX are both available to qualified U.S. investors through Morgan Money, with subscriptions, redemptions and token balances handled on one platform.
ALT Solana and J.P. Morgan Asset Management logos in white on a purple Solana background
Brian Long | Devil's Advocate retweeted
Amira Valliani, Head of Payments Growth at the Solana Foundation, on the token supercycle
“You see tokens in crypto, you see tokens in AI, and it’s tokens all the way down. A token is just a machine-readable format of an asset. Over the next 10 years it’s going to be really obvious that anything that’s an asset can be a token.”
@amiravalliani @NYSE
