# Why Hackers Won’t Save the World  And That’s a Good Thing. - Jaromil Dyne.org

- Channel: [Ethereum Cypherpunk Congress](https://streameth.org/ethereum-cypherpunk-congress)
- Date: 2025-11-09
- Duration: 24:54
- Topics: web3, privacy, now, crypto, cryptography, blockchain, data, security, human right, rights, tech, technology, internet, open source, free, freedom, ethereum, hackers, ethics, cypherpunk, dev, developer, dapp, decentralization, bitcoin, computer, surveillance, cyber, peer2peer, p2p, love, solidity, zk, zero knowledge, education, academy, w3pn, Education
- Watch: https://streameth.org/watch/yt-mRVr1ItVd-8
- YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRVr1ItVd-8

## Description

Hacker & philosopher Jaromil director of Dyne.org unpacks 20+ years of free/open-source building: from Linux distros and encryption tools to European research on identity, data privacy, and circular economy. 

We talk fun (yes, dance), burnout, why privacy is personal integrity, the comfort trap of spyware-by-default devices, today’s cypherpunk (powered by an explosion in applied cryptography), and a hopeful future where humans still understand machines - not the other way around.

Timecodes 
00:00 – Introduction: Who is Jaromil? Hacker, philosopher & Dyne.org director
01:03 – What Dyne.org Does: Free & open-source software, interdisciplinarity & sustainability
03:40 – Optimizing Code, Not Hardware: Making software efficient and long-lasting
05:30 – Dyne.org Projects Overview: Linux distros, encryption tools, EU research, and community
06:45 – Why Fun Matters in Privacy: Avoiding burnout & keeping joy in hacker culture
07:50 – Purpose Over Tech: Building software for people, not for hype or “tech for tech’s sake”
09:30 – Philosophical View on Privacy: Integrity, safe space, and friendship as privacy in action
11:00 – Privacy as Resistance to Self-Censorship: Why privacy enables growth and authenticity
12:30 – How the Web Changed: From early hacker culture to comfort-driven surveillance
15:20 – The Spyware Normalization: Why convenience made us accept being tracked
17:40 – Cypherpunk Today: Disillusionment, creativity, and the new wave of applied cryptography
21:20 – Bright Future (and Its Risks): Determinism, AI, and keeping humans in control of machines
23:50 – Closing Thoughts: Hope, awareness & keeping the hacker spirit alive


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This conversation is part of Privacy Academy Interviews – a peer-to-peer knowledge project exploring the most important ideas in Web3, privacy, and digital freedom.
Learn more: https://academy.web3privacy.info

A W3PN Media House production.
Directed by Federico Marchi https://x.com/BabyBitProd
Interview by Peter Farbey https://x.com/0xfarbey

Let privacy be with you!

## Transcript

I'm uh Yarm. I'm a hacker also a philosopher. My organization is Dor and I love web 3 privacy. Okay. Hi Terrell. Thanks for coming. >> Cheers. >> Uh for people who don't know much about you, can you tell a few words like what do you do? >> I'm a hacker. So I Yeah, I develop free and open source software like to put my hands into a lot of code and I do that since long more than 20 years and um I'm uh the director of the Dinark Foundation. So we are like this hacker community. We do a lot of uh stuff for fun with software that has an impact on society not for the profit of it and I have a lot of fun doing that. [snorts] For work uh I work as an applied cryptographer now for about 15 years. So I'm uh living through my identity crisis because I'm trained as a philosopher >> but I do a lot of math. But I think there is a relationship in between >> 100% and Bertrron Russell proved that. >> Yeah. >> That he is great. Yeah. In making this history of all the philosophy and he's a mathematician. >> Yeah. >> So uh okay let's >> thanks my identity crisis is gone. [laughter] >> Yay. That's why we are making this interview. You know >> we fix people. >> It was instant therapy. Instant therapist like with hands hitting your hour now. Now you're free. >> Okay. Tell a bit more about D work like what does it do? Like can I join? Um yeah there are a lot of uh online channels. Uh we use free and open source software. We do free enterprise software everywhere but you will find us also like on crappy platforms like discord because we want people to discover free software. So we are let's say open to the outside to join and find out that matrix is much better than discord and telegram but you will find us on all these channels you can join chat and they are project based. So the the foundation has three pillars. One is free and open source software say that one is interdisciplinarity. So we don't want to be only hackers among hackers techies. So we believe hackers can be hackers of different fields like curiosity is the main requirement. And so in our teams project teams we value also the contribution of people that are not just into code of instance. We have designers, we have uh uh philosophers, artists, uh you know, you name it, economists, sociologists. And um and the third pillar is environmental sustainability, which for us means to optimize our code to run also on existing infrastructure. So when we do a new software we try not to require new fancy hardware but we look on how to use a system of structure in the best possible way. We do that also studying old computers. So we support the museum of uh archaeology informatica which is informatic archaeology and working uh computers historical computers which is in cosensa in Italy and we worked uh and the team there worked to like uh restore old computers and make them work and study the code of the computers and through this we learned a lot of uh things on how to make uh you know code better rather than uh crappier. So we try to suck less what we do and here I quote also a friendly community of suckless. So we're minimalists and uh and we work for the European Commission since 2012. I think it was the first contract. So we are a European research organization. We have one success story, one flagship project. We've done quite a lot in the field of identity uh private data privacy as well now in circular economy. So we work around digital product passport development in various verticals and trying to understand how to make circular economy work on our screens as well because planning recycling planning repurposing is uh is an important part of uh making our society sustainable. So tracing life cycle of objects and uh yeah you will find other projects like we do two Linux distributions two Linux distributions one is dev one dev-one.org And another one is Dabolic which is 100% free endorsed by the GNU and FSF projects. We do fryer which is a collection of more than 130 video plugins for uh uh for unique systems which you would find also in fpag and KDM live and other like uh things we do to which is like an encryption file encryption software used also on mission critical operations and uh go to our software page. we have like alone in in privacy we have like yeah 10 12 projects and uh it's sometimes difficult to categorize everything that we have done in front and uh the community is large but it's also like theatic around projects we have like a welcome channel that you can join where you will find hundreds of friendly hackers so yeah uh if you're curious dine.org dyme.org And there you will find some links to navigate through. You'll notice there are no cookies on that page. So yeah, we don't distribute free cookies. No. And it's good for your health. It's fascinating the amount of things you are making. Like huge thanks for that and also like collaborating with us and helping us privacy now as well. Huge kudos for that. >> Web privacy rocks. You finally brought some fun into the web three. >> Well, that's really nice to hear. Um, yeah, oh, let's talk about the importance of fun because there are so many privacy maxes there so much doom and gloom in the space like how do you keep this like funny attitude even though you're in crisis but I don't feel it personally from talking to you. No, not >> it might be there. >> Oh, yeah. Ah, that's the reason. [laughter] >> Okay. >> Russell, I'll take one every morning. >> Yeah. One page. >> Uh, yeah. So, how do you keep this attitude? And how can one also obtain it maybe because maybe people are just, you know, more pessimistic, but they don't like it and they maybe want to turn to the brighter side, but they don't know how. historically is not easy. I mean we are not living through the best period in time and there are many many depressive things happening in the world right now. So >> on the other side one could say that they always have happened and perhaps now we know more about what is happening in the world that we did before. um a a receipt for happiness I don't have but um one thing is uh trying to do what you love in your lives and uh yeah whether that is sustainable or not you know discover it in journey and team up don't be alone so uh we are groupies we are team players we we work in teams and and interdisciplinarity I think is very important. So do not fall into rabbit holes alone and with people thinking like you always bring some some diverse point of views into your project. Argue argue we are meant to talk like and uh yeah and and and to go. So yeah how do you keep this good spirit? It's a good question. It depends also like how do you wake up in the morning, you know? Sometimes I'm not like that great person to speak to, but um I love what I do. Like I really love code. I love coding in C and that's what I do all my lives. I love using Emacs as an editor and that's what I do and it makes me happy. It makes me comfortable and um yeah, what makes me unhappy is sometimes uh being forced to abide to priorities that are not line like learn new software that I didn't intended to use or update my setup because someone changed the init system on of an operating system or face a lot of uh you know security bugs because I'm forced to use something that I don't like. I prefer to stay with what I like and uh you know follow a train of thought that is purpose-driven and not tech driven. And so talk to people about uh uh what they need and develop software for a purpose and not for the sake of you know tech because I think tech tends to make us tech for tech like grat art gratia artists you know like is sort of tech for the beauty of tech uh tend to make us depressed and for the rest yeah I love a lot of regga since the beginning >> my just early years. So, I I love dancing. I I recommend everyone dance. Dance a lot >> and uh that that helps. >> Well, then it's certainly good advice. >> Yeah, that isn't philosophy, I have to say. [laughter] Uh um Oh, your take on privacy from like philosophers perspective? >> Well, I don't know if it's a philosopher perspective, but perhaps it's a bit fold. I believe privacy is personal organizational interpersonal integrity is a condition for the integrity of a person and this is often neglected or forgotten. Uh privacy is what uh allows me to be in a safe space alone or with someone. Uh own my mistakes. Uh do things violate all possible code of conducts without being judged because I'm not in public because I'm not offending anyone because I'm uh um I'm not uh judged. So I think uh privacy is a condition for uh also uh growing and facing your own limits, facing your own mistakes and um not being afraid of being held accountable of developing liabilities out of your stupid mind farting out stupid ideas sometimes and say them loud. This is also what friendship is, you know, like a real friend can take all the BS from you and still be friend. And uh yeah, I think a friendship is it is a private relationship and uh yeah, that is what privacy is in my opinion and it is also a philosopher perspective because it's a condition of subjectivation. So it's uh it's uh privacy is a shield against desubjectivation as defined by fo and it is very necessary without that we end up self censoring we end up not being ourself that's a beautiful answer thank you uh I wanted to ask you about your like historical perspective so you've been in a space for 20 years making stuff how do you think like web had changed like through this time from the time you started till like now and what's the perspective? Well, many things changed. Um well, there were there were a few fewer hackers like when I started the hacking was not hype. uh was having radio amateurs, it was BBS, it was lot of cyber security but not uh it was not yet a cultural phenomenon was uh not and um yeah now we are uh we are post hype. I think we can assume finally that hackers will not save the world. We had some marters that tried to save the world and faced martydom for that. And um I think it was wrong to think that a hacker alone a hacker mindset technocratic mindset could do that. uh uh so I think we have gone through at least two transformations of uh what is the vision of a hacker community and now we can go back to the basics to uh but avoid to do a mistake and embrace interdisciplinarity. So try to see the purpose behind our actions which also like activists that try to save the world have done do it uh without um the sort of uh ego drive and uh you know also the sort of uh messianic vision of uh one role, one person, one vision that saves the world. Um I think some things have stuck with us. Uh we cannot stand injustice, cannot stand uh systems that are broken by design, mistreat people and uh make our life impossible by by you know placing one mistake after the other. That hasn't changed. So hackers like you know logically like working systems or broken systems that you can fix and uh we are doing more there's so much more people interested in hacking today like in because those systems are everywhere. So what has changed is that now um computing is so pervasive is everywhere. So is um uh making one interested easier like is more likely that someone gets interested in what what is running in our TV, our screens and behind our life support systems and our homes and our cities. And what has changed also is that we got uh used to our privacy being violated in all possible ways. So I come from a time in which if your computer opened a connection to the outside without you asking it was called spyware. So the session should be open on your command and uh now it's unthinkable because as soon as I just like touch my phone it will open connections to pull information and update I don't know how many I mean I I have a DNS visualization software you can visualize like you touch it and does like and it contacts like two 20 30 end points and I don't have many apps installed. And uh so all these sessions are open without our will just for our comfort because we need to be up to date and uh we back then we did not give up this uh this uh thing. I mean I want to update when I ask you to but I'm not I don't want to be constantly connected and uh yeah many things happened you know like uh maps driving us through the world have appeared and have become completely connected. Um so we we slide into that pit of comfort and we cannot get up anymore. Many of us can't because it's comfortable to give up your privacy. So that this has changed a lot. I see a lot of people like just user drawing proprietary interfaces. uh spy, we are spy like PCs full of spyware like you know uh operating systems like mainstream operable systems like Apple or Microsoft Geniuses or Android or that are unfocus paid good designers to do it but uh they make us give up a lot of pencil so that has changed just don't notice anymore it's just a comfort I did grow out and become depression. [snorts] [laughter] Well, I appreciate it. I mean, the tendency is not really good. I mean, everyone feels that the world is going to a really weird right swing crazy direction. So, it's u I mean, it's not super new. It's just [laughter] >> it's just another like point of view on that. I totally agree with it. But then the thing is like uh what like you you've mentioned hackers and that like post hype thing and what do you think about cyher punk like because there is some sort of revival now or this term and how do you feel it is now to be a cipher punk and how is this it is different from the 80s when actually like popped up? Well, there are certain assumptions that proven false. You know, in the 80s, we had this idea of uh you know, early the early cyber punk movies were the lawn mower man or the you know, Matrix and uh now we know that uh you know our reality is uh is not so beautiful. What has what is cypher punk today is uh is also downhill of a so like is the result of an incredible acceleration in the science of cryptography. So applied cryptography also like mathematical cryptography um became very accelerated in the last 10 years for various factors raise of crypto and uh and so there are so many new discoveries and possibilities. We discover more prime numbers in the last five years than in the the preceding 2000. So there are so many possibilities and it makes it very creative today to be a cipher part. And I think uh punk by definition is a person that is disillusioned by the society of spectacle is disillusioned by the promises of a society for which you can be anyone you want. A punk by definition is someone that is born out of a um of a working family and knows that will not redeem him or herself to any status uh just because society is good with you is it's people that did not believe in the American dream. Ultimately those are punks. And um and today a cyberpunk is a person that is disillusioned I believe to all these fables about you know computers helping us changing the world that sees beyond the Maya veil of this of these lies and uh and works with cryptography and with immense creative power of cryptography to establish uh deterministic relationship with computing which is no way is not obvious and create new things because the possibilities are limited but um yeah the limit is is our perception of purpose. So beyond the self-proclaimed I'm a cyber punk, I mean I want to see really what people do no in in a critical sense also like to to better their situation and society with cryptography. So I think uh there are still a few cipher punks but many people are trying to understand the the power of cryptography. Yeah, I mean that's a very huge topic. Unfortunately, we have to round up. So I have just one last question for you and it will be about future but about bright future. Uh so imagine we won we have the internet of our dreams free secure resilient whatever you feel it. uh how would you describe it and how the life would change if we have this internet of how it brings? Well, um in the future I believe we will face one threat is the fact that computing systems will not be deterministic and uh if we would be on the good side of history uh this should be not made possible. So we would have a a computing infrastructure whether it's distributed on the internet that still provides deterministic outputs deterministic outcomes. Determinism is a condition that generates a link between cause and effect and allows us to understand why we are in a certain condition in a certain space or given certain uh results. If we don't have that then machines understand us more than we understand machines. So in a bright future it will be still us understanding machines and the systems we will be building it will be about us understanding machines rather than machines understanding us. Unfortunately the current profit models are going the other way. So it's more profitable to build a machine that understand humans without humans understanding machine. So yeah, nice wishful thinking. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um well yeah I feel that it's kind of here already. I feel like often interacting with llams I feel that sometimes they know more about me than I know about myself. So we are somewhere in nearby I think. But yeah, let's hope we'll get to the other side of things. Okay, we have to round up now. Thanks for coming. Ciao. >> [groaning]