My Website
I'm Phoenix! I'm an agency-maximizing consequentialist and a software engineer. I like peer-to-peer systems. More generally, I like attempts to hack a better world into existence by prefiguring robust, permissionless interconnectivity within the cracks of the present. I also like Minecraft, and I'm working on creating an open source reimplementation of Minecraft beta 1.0.2.

Not Minecraft Beta 1.0.2

Not Minecraft Beta 1.0.2 is an in-progress open-source reimplementaion of Minecraft beta 1.0.2, the first version of Minecraft beta. Plans include multiplayer with client-side prediction.

image description: screenshot of minecraft-like game. it has a wavy field of grass blocks and a HUD. the hand model is currently a photograph of my IRL hand, LOL. I have built a smiley face out of glass blocks.

The main technologies used so far are:

  • The Rust programming language
  • WGPU (for graphics)

It's in a relatively early state, however, I've solved sub-problems in ways I'm proud enough of that I'm preparing blog posts on them, including:

  • Renderer
  • GUI
  • Mesh patching
  • In-RAM world data
  • Physics
  • Font integration

Check it out so far!


Repnet

Repnet is a fundamentally different take on currency. Both dollar-style and bitcoin-style currencies see currency as tokens people own. For distributed systems theory reasons this means they both rely on the imposition of an objective view on economic ownership. This is a form of centralization, and produces problematic effects and centralized management. Repnet instead sees currency as relationships between people, like a graph of directed springs representing trust and promises, oscillating and breathing back and forth as economic activity occurs, through which automated chains of arbitrage can facilitate large-scale indirect reciprocity. This is more decentralized because it can more gracefully cope with partial disagreements, which is conducive to many nice properties.

image description: a directed graph of nodes, each labeled with a letter, and with each connection being an arrow pointing one way or the other with a decimal number over it. arrows extend beyond the borders of the image, suggesting that this is just one random patch of an indefinitely extending network

Repnet-powered markets sound great and I think it's plausible, novel, and helpful. However, for now, I'm trying to gradually bootstrap this into existence by applying it to existing peer-to-peer systems, to let people more reliably form mutualistic relationships between their computers as an alternative to centralized corporate infrastructure.

My strategy is currently as follows:

  1. Develop a minimum viable set of repnet software components in the form of a prioritizing reverse-proxy. This would let you slap this software in front of existing peer-to-peer software, like IPFS, and participating computers would automagically start trading network-time with each other.
  2. Keep maximizing agency
  3. ???
  4. Jupiter converted into fully sentient nanobot swarm

Join me!


Index

Blog posts and more!

1.8k words v1.0.0 pub feb/25/2022
1.1k words v1.0.0 pub jan/29/2023
(hub page) rev dec/31/2022
(hub page)

Contact

Email kahlo.phoenix@gmail.com
Fediverse https://cyberplace.social/@phoenixk
GitLab https://gitlab.com/gretchenfrage
GitHub https://github.com/gretchenfrage
Resume /resume
You know if you think about it, email is the world's oldest most widely used federated social media network. That of course makes it a cautionary tale about how federation is not sufficient.