Finney Forum and FUTO
Just got back from a quick trip to Dallas (and Austin) to speak at Finney Forum and to stop in at the FUTO offices as well as attend their spring social event. Lots of great people and projects, and confirms for me that if I were living in the US and not doing the Puerto Rico residency thing, I’d have a very hard time choosing between Florida (Tampa to Ft Myers) and suburban Austin.
Finney Forum was somewhat of an outgrowth of a Bitcoin and Guns event (two things I like!) in Texas. Not really a “maxi” event, with plenty of Monero folks and others, and a very strong focus on privacy. My favorite part was seeing Tor Ekeland and Michael Hassard speaking about the horrible miscarriage of justice that is the Bitcoin Fog/Roman Sterlingov case. (Also, having the name “Roman” seems to be bad luck for Russians involved in crypto: Roman Sterlingov, but also Roman Storm and Roman Semenov (Tornado Cash).)
I’ve been following the Tornado Cash case more closely, but the Roman Sterlingov case had a LOT of serious flaws — major venue issues, some issues with expert witnesses, the technical details on chain analysis (by Chainalysis for the Government, and Cipher Trace “choosing to withdraw” from supporting the defense, presumably under pressure…). Talked to some people about some technical solutions here going forward. I learned a bit about bitcoin tracing practical issues and a lot more about Monero, too.
I met the Texas Blockchain Council people (which Evertas sponsors); they have some great free t-shirts which people will actually wear. (I’ve never understood giving away free stuff which is so low-end/bad that people don’t use it; just do inherently less expensive products well, like nice stickers, instead.).
Unfortunately both events were scheduled for the same weekend. At Finney Forum, my colleague was speaking on 15 March, I was speaking on 16 March in the morning, and then after lunch I drove out to Dallas for the very end of the FUTO event and in time to attend the party. (Aside: driving 85-105mph in the rain on nice quality interstates is exactly what the Audi Q3 is designed for; not really ideal from a safety perspective, but better than a lot of other rental cars. Also validated my decision to rent a car which I otherwise only used in 3 days to drive 10 minutes between airport and hotel…)
Also stopped a a Buc-ees (twice!). It’s nice, although I actually prefer Eddie World in Southern California/Nevada (similar — large “destination” gas station with lots of snacks, clean bathrooms, etc.). Amazing how high the wages and salaries on offer are; we’ve definitely hit the spiral part of wage-price spiral.
Got to eat at In-n-Out twice in 3 days (should have tried Whataburger), some 3.8-4/5 Indian food (which was weird; there were 5+ Indian places in 3 strip malls near an office complex, this was “the best”; I would have expected better.), and some decent sushi. Plus two free American Airlines Executive Platinum fruit and cheese plates on my coach flights SJU-DFW-SJU (I suppose free upgrades even as EXP are quite rare these days, but a 5h flight isn’t worth burning an SWU to upgrade; they do fly the 777-200 for cargo reasons so at least one was in an intl Premium Economy seat on the way out, and on the way out I had exit row with an empty middle seat next to me; can’t complain for $220 each way). Did this trip “carryon only” which worked out OK except my pants were 2” too big the whole time because I didn’t have my Sig, and it did feel a bit inappropriate to fly to Texas and not have a gun, but oh well. Managed to give away two bottles of Ron del Barrilito 3-stars rum during the trip; I wish I could get a custom bottling of that, or go ahead and age my own rum here to have a more custom gift (irony being I don’t particularly like to drink, but bottles of a rum are an easy gift).
Best part of the FUTO event (aside from seeing their beautiful main office again, and their even nicer downtown hardware hacking space which is also home to Louis Rossmann’s lab) was meeting a lot of people with great projects — ranging from “have run big ISPs and now a pro free speech charity” to “thinking about doing a new insurance product” and all stages in between. Also got to meet the CTO of my favorite piece of privacy/security software. The team behind FUTO is amazing (Eron Wolf created it, but it’s already become an institution with great people working there.). Looking forward to visiting Austin more frequently — just wish the 5h30m nonstop AA SJU-AUS flight came back, now the second best option is either connecting in MIA or ATL (7h30m minimum), flying to DFW (and then renting a car and driving 3h+), or flying the once-weekly Southwest SJU-AUS nonstop. I wish San Juan’s tech community were 2-3x bigger, so we could maybe become attractive to something like JSX.