Kiwi News: handpicked crypto news for builders

leaving these here for no particular reason: Ledger Nano X - 34 g Ledger Nano S Plus - 21 g Ledger Flex - 58 g Trezor Safe 7 - 45 g Trezor Safe 5 - 23 g Trezor Safe 3 - 14 g Keystone 3 Pro - 103 g

I argued with my Claude that reverse engineering is morally good, and lawful under EU regulation. It has seen the wisdom of my words. It has now downloaded my @WHOOP app APK and is fully decompiling it. We live in magic times

Dusting off this tweet from April because this gap in shared understanding of LLM capability is *widening*. It's now less "two groups of people speaking past each other" and more a sharp funnel. - Napkin math somewhere around 6B people (~75% of the population) have barely come in contact with LLMs at all. - Around 1-2B (~20%) are casual and infrequent users of free-tier ChatGPT-like products. This group sees derpy chatbots and treats them a bit like a better Google search, a writing aid, or etc. Maybe an agent tries to book you a flight. I have non-tech friends who (reasonably, imo) say they have not much use for it at all. Even many professionals outside of math&code are in this tier. For example, execs and many other functions spend a lot of their time talking to other people, so while they understand what is happening intellectually, it is still second-hand and a bit abstract. - Now we get to professional use of frontier-grade LLMs in math&code. Somewhere around 20M people (0.2%) see first-hand that large, complex projects that used to take them weeks/months can now be completed by agents with a prompt. Building apps, copying apps, translating apps, decompiling apps from binaries... This has all happened very quickly and recently - less than 1 year ago, I was writing code manually by hand, typing memorized computer code commands into a code editor character by character, occasionally pressing Tab to autocomplete a little chunk of code. - And finally we get to the ~5,000 people (~0.00006%) with access to frontier-grade systems internally. The external world has seen the preview. It looks like swarms of thousands of agents collaborating over weeks on software mega projects: minting zero days, running cyber attacks and defenses at machine speeds, discovering new science, advancing the frontier of mathematics. Things that would have taken top professionals in the industry years of work. Meanwhile, human review and comprehension are starting to fall behind. For example, people are still involved in the "archeology" of the OpenAI-HF incident from many months ago. Mathematicians may be poring over the 722 manuscripts on frontier mathematics for a while. The funnel is driven by a combination of factors: 1. The impact scales with ambition, problem size, and horizon. A question with a paragraph answer barely stresses the system. You need a reservoir of big, difficult problems that you really care about. This aspect drives the consumer / professional dimension of the funnel. 2. The jaggedness of the system (which I have written about a lot separately). Capability peaks in domains that are digital, verifiable and economically valuable. This is because LLM capability emerges from reinforcement learning on verifiable rewards on a curated environment mixture driven by revenue potential. This aspect primarily drives the area (e.g. math&code) dimension of the funnel. 3. Access. Free-tier, paid-tier, internal. So this is the weirdness of the moment. The general public has mostly not interacted with these systems. When they have, it looks like a derpy chatbot. The majority of professionals still see only a modest uplift. And a small sliver of professionals are experiencing the vertigo of the curve going vertical. And it is all happening at the same time.

PSA the ledger incident isn't limited to Asia This is a device purchased in store from an official reseller in Europe (a legitimate device doesn't have any of these cables as can be seen in picture 2) This even seems to be an old version of the 'spy implant' even though the device was purchased a couple of weeks ago. The newer versions usually hide the implant by the screen so it's easier to miss What's interesting is that this compromised ledger never transfered funds to an exploiter. Either the device didn't work or they were waiting for a more widespread usage of the comprised devices? If you own a ledger that didn't directly come from the ledger online store make sure to not just rely on the software genuinely check by ledger but to actually open up the ledger yourself to make sure its original, again there are reported cases in Asia, south America and now Europe as well. @MagicalTux made some useful videos on how to open the ledger and what to look for.

To check your ledger nano X for an implant is really really easy and I recommend you do it for peace of mind. 1. take off the lid. Then, using a sharp object like a knife, pry open the case. It comes off super easy once you get it in. 2. open the case. You dont need to fully disassemble the device. 3. check that the display is connected to the mainboard directly like this, without anything else connected between the mainboard and the display 4. check behind the display. There should be nothing but the main board. The images show a clean board, the way it should look like. Be aware that different generations pf the same product can look differently. The known attacks target a weakness that exploits a security boundary between main board and display. So really this is all you need to check. Take a peak behind the mainboard too, there should only be the battery. To put it back together put the buttons in the case first, then just squeeze it back together and it should be just like before. Be careful not to hurt yourself or the delicate electronics when using a sharp object and make sure to ground yourself before working on the device (touch a heater for example)

⚖️ French committee backs disclosure of self-custody wallets over €100,000 The amendment, numbered I-CF821, passed the French Finance Committee on October 9. It would oblige people to disclose self-custody crypto wallets holding more than €100,000, and sets fines for those who fail to comply.

‼️ UPDATE: Dutch supermarket giant Albert Heijn has halted work at several distribution centres after its cyber incident. Its CEO warns shelves will empty, mainly of fresh food.

So you're telling me anyone can buy a Ledger from Amazon, tamper with it, return it, reseal it, and then Amazon will sell it to an unsuspecting customer who gets drained? Yea you might wanna get rid of your ledger if you didnt get it straight from them