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Mixmaster is dead, long live wardriving
by Major Variola (ret) 11 Dec '04

11 Dec '04

At 07:47 PM 12/9/04 -0800, Joseph Ashwood wrote: >> If the Klan doesn't have >> a right to wear pillowcases what makes you think mixmaster will >> survive? > >Well besides the misinterprettaion of the ruling, which I will ignore, what >makes you think MixMaster isn't already dead? OK, substitute "wardriving email injection when wardriving is otherwise legal" for Mixmastering, albeit the former is less secure since the injection lat/long is known. And you need to use a disposable Wifi card or at least one with a mutable MAC. Or consider a Napster-level popular app which includes mixing or onion routing.

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RE: Blinky Rides Again: RCMP suspect al-Qaida messages
by Trei, Peter 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

J.A. Terranson wrote: > (4) I have yet to meet a full dozen people who share my > belief that while stego *may* be in use, if it is, that > use is for one way messages of semaphore-class messages > only. I really do not understand why this view > is poopoo'd by all sides, so I must be pretty dense? For semaphores and codewords, stego isn't needed. Simply agree on a signal - if a post appears in alt.anonymous.messages with the subject "To JAT", the intended recipient has got all the info he needs. Stego is needed only when the message is too complex to have a codeword. Even without software, 'numbers station' type transmissions can be sent anonymously through the net.

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Re: "Word" Of the Subgenius...
by John Kelsey 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

>From: Steve Thompson <steve49152(a)yahoo.ca> >Sent: Dec 7, 2004 1:26 PM >To: cypherpunks(a)al-qaeda.net >Subject: Re: "Word" Of the Subgenius... ... >Tim May has probably gotten all strange in the last few years, living in >his remote hilltop home, waiting to see the end that will not come since >the y2k crisis turned out to be nothing more than a financial boondoggle >for the companies that believed all the hype. Maybe, maybe not. The thing I always find interesting and annoying about Tim May's posts is that he's sometimes making really clearly thought out, intelligent points, and other times spewing out nonsense so crazy you can't believe it's coming from the same person. It's also clear he's often yanking peoples' chains, often by saying the most offensive thing he can think of. But once in awhile, even amidst the crazy rantings about useless eaters and ovens, he'll toss out something that shows some deep, coherent thought about some issue in a new and fascinating direction. ... >Steve --John

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[p2p-hackers] Re: Memory and reputation calculation
by Tim Benham 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

> From: MULLER Guillaume <muller(a)emse.fr> > Date: Fri, 10 Dec 2004 09:33:39 +0100 > To: p2p-hackers(a)zgp.org > > Hi all, > > Right, I would have cited Dellarocas' papers also because he is the only=20 > one I know that worked on this subject. > > However, IMHO, his claim that size of history doesn't matter is false.=20 > He took this conclusion in very a specific domain that is eBay-like=20 > market-places with very specific assumption (cf. cited paper). > > My idea is that size of history DOES matter. Let's imagine a system=20 > (even eBay-like) where every agent *knows* that the history is a list of=20 > the X last encounters experiences. Then it is easy to see that cheating=20 > 1/X times is a strategy that pays off (particularly in systems where=20 > ratings might be noisy). > > IMHO, the key point with respect to the history is that others should=20 > not be able guess its size. If it has a fixed size, I believe it doesn't=20 > matter if (and only if) other can guess its size (and therefore cannot=20 > use strategy as described above). > > However, I'm sorry I didn't have time to make any experimentations, but=20 > I'd like to hear if anybody has. (1) You'll never eliminate cheating. (2) Making the size of the history file a secret is probably unworkable. Better to make deletion from the history non-deterministic, so the longer a record has been been in the list the more likely it is to get dropped. A potential cheater would never be certain when the incriminating evidence would be gone. If which records were disreputable was known then their lifetime could be extended. cheers, Tim

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Complaints About TSA Screenings Skyrocket
by R.A. Hettinga 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110247168313594059,00.html> The Wall Street Journal December 8, 2004 Complaints About TSA Screenings Skyrocket By AMY SCHATZ Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL December 8, 2004; Page D4 WASHINGTON -- For months, top Transportation Security Administration officials have pledged to improve customer service at airport checkpoints. It doesn't appear to be working. The number of complaints and comments filed by passengers skyrocketed in October, according to a recent federal report. Almost 700 passengers called, wrote or e-mailed about rude or discourteous service -- more in one month than in the past six months combined. Complaints and comments rose sharply in almost every category, suggesting that the agency's customer-service woes are far broader than widely publicized reports about female passengers complaining about being groped at security checkpoints. TRAVELER FEEDBACK More passengers filed comments about screening in October than the previous three months combined Comments October July to September Customer treatment 690 359 Screening procedures 385 300 Time to clear security 70 62 Handling personal property 809 1,400 Damage claims on handling of luggage* 438 1,108 Total complaints 2,392 3,229 *At security checkpoints Source: DOT Air Travel Consumer Report for July-Oct. The number of "contacts" from the public about inappropriate screeners more than doubled, to 385 complaints from 150 in September, when new procedures were put into place that instruct screeners to touch intimate areas of a passenger's body to ensure no explosives or guns are hidden. More passengers also complained that their personal property was mishandled, with 809 complaints in October, compared with 436 in September. TSA improved in just one area: The number of claims for bags damaged at checkpoints fell slightly to 438. TSA is required by Congress to report figures about its customer service, and those numbers are included in a monthly report about airline on-time data and passenger complaints released by the Department of Transportation. A TSA spokeswoman said the agency's figures include complaints, comments and questions received from the flying public, and don't necessarily suggest customer service is worsening. The sharp increase shows TSA has been effective in telling customers how to contact the agency, said spokeswoman Amy von Walter. "We see this as a positive," she said. "We encourage comments. We want to hear the good and the bad, so we can refine our procedures." TSA declined to release a breakdown of the figures that showed the complaints versus questions or compliments. Not only are the total numbers up, but so is the rate of complaints per passenger. TSA received 1.61 comments for each 100,000 passengers about mishandled property in October, compared with 0.88 the month before. The rate was even worse for passengers concerned about discourteous TSA employees: The agency received 1.38 complaints for each 100,000 passengers about rudeness in October, compared with 0.23 in September and 0.27 in August. TSA says it has responded to some complaints by retraining screeners to be more open about what they are doing and why, particularly during pat-down searches. So far, TSA has no plans to relax its revised pat-down rules that went into effect in late September, allowing full-body searches. TSA is in a bind: Its metal detectors won't catch hidden explosives, but the agency can't afford to replace them. The expensive "puffer" machines can detect the whiff of explosives by shooting puffs of air at passengers as they walk through. The agency also hasn't gotten past the serious privacy issues surrounding its other option: new X-ray technology that clearly slows guns or explosives hidden on a passenger's body, but also produces an image of the passenger, sans clothing, to screeners. A version of that technology is being tested on volunteers at London's Heathrow Airport, but it has been met with mixed customer response. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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Airport-Screening Rules Are Eased
by R.A. Hettinga 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

<http://online.wsj.com/article_print/0,,SB110265033103496694,00.html> The Wall Street Journal December 10, 2004 POLITICS AND POLICY Airport-Screening Rules Are Eased By a WALL STREET JOURNAL Staff Reporter December 10, 2004; Page A5 WASHINGTON -- Bowing to passenger outrage over pat-down procedures at airport checkpoints, the Transportation Security Administration will alter its rules beginning Monday to allow passengers to lower their arms during screening. The change is minor and TSA officials say they have no plans to rescind pat-down procedures that require screeners to touch passengers' chest and groin areas while checking for weapons or explosives. Nevertheless, it represents an attempt by the TSA to improve its image among travelers. The agency also backed off a plan announced in late November that would require airports to immediately report any suspicious activities, even routine problems such as unruly or drunken passengers, to TSA headquarters. That reporting now will be optional. -- ----------------- R. A. Hettinga <mailto: rah(a)ibuc.com> The Internet Bearer Underwriting Corporation <http://www.ibuc.com/> 44 Farquhar Street, Boston, MA 02131 USA "... however it may deserve respect for its usefulness and antiquity, [predicting the end of the world] has not been found agreeable to experience." -- Edward Gibbon, 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire'

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tangled contexts
by R.W. (Bob) Erickson 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

Process and perception This capacity for making high order discriminations about relationships between objects in our world, can be taken as the proper function of our cognitive competency. The attribute of intentionality, to this way of thinking, is best understood as "work product" of a discrete sub-module of our brain. We infer agency from our observations. What is agency? Well first and foremost, it is that which is recognizable to the competencies in process, that form these judgments. Does this sound circular? Surely it is circular in a crucial sense. All that we "know" comes to our attention as the work product of process in various competencies. Ultimately the "authority" of these high order discriminations comes not from a judgment about the correlation between our perceptions and the state of the "objective" world, but instead from their immediacy. This is to say that we do not perceive and then make judgments, our first awareness of every "thing" is located in the moment that the competent module forms some thing out of the possibilities. These awareness's are not in the semantic domain. Our knowing of particular attributes precedes the semantic transform that tags and packages up insights, for storage and shipping. We know what we know and we apologize for not being able to convey this knowing more effectively. That we are able to communicate at all, is a testament to the power of trial and error and the phenomenal similarity of our minds. This similarity is not accidental. Even as each person is an absolutely unique instance of humanity, what we are, is the embodiment of a phenomenally complex tangle of historical accomplishments that is fundamentally common to us all. Creativity emerges via the capacity/ability to merge contexts Biological instrumentality: The complex objects of our knowings come to our awareness as circumstances demand, literally selected by their features. Apprehension of the world via a sophisticatedly evolved biological instrumentality is an entropy hack. Life is the opportunistic bloom of a viral exploitation of regularity in the universe. In the beginning there was sequence, and it begat pattern and context space. Within every context space there is a tree of combinatorial consequences some leaves of which are potentially lucky. Blind evolution isn't trial and error testing of mistakes (mutations), it is the random testing of legal combinations So who set up the game, where did the rules come from, and the design language? The dynamic core of our consciousness consists of transient alignments of Feature Value - Action loops that compete for selection in a flicker-dance-sort of associations and sensory stimuli. Perception is a physics hack. Timing is everything. Three dimensionality is accessible to us via a cross mapping within the temporal manifold. Propagation of coherent correlations between map-mapped sheets of neurons act as a massively parallel delay line with multiple taps. Because both spatial and temporal coherence is preserved, the network sorts up the objects of perception and tracks them real time. Reality is best fit. Misperceptions happen, but its better than being blind. Our competency at this is not postulated, it is stipulated that the high order discriminations we perceive as qualia are exactly as amazing as the incredible complexity of the neurological stack that gives us them. Intentionality is an emergent design goal in secondary consciousness. (before getting upset about intentional language, remember that it works because reality fits.) Phenomenal transform is a semantic label for a context shift. If you insist on thinking of it as a happening, what's happening is that we find ourselves switching lexicons when we discuss certain things. Its not a description of a change of state in the object, it is a handle for referring to a pragmatic feature of discourse about it. The important thing to realize is that this sorting out of the features of the objects of our perception usually is done before we are aware of the process, but this does not mean that the process is different for hard discriminations, just that they are taking longer than the ~400ms self context loop, that feeds a product of the net's immediate state back into itself. Think convolving and converging. Discrimination occurs opportunistically, our competencies do not require conscious attention. In the formation of PV Action loops each project become one of the factions in our interior parliament. We have lots of timing to tap. Response times, flicker fusion times, saccades, pulse, peristalsis, menstruation. The royal road to cognitive illumination is the path of chronus. --bob "me, I'm just a lawn mower"

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Timing Paranoia
by R.W. (Bob) Erickson 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

One of the tools currently being used in the cognitive sciences is the measurement of reaction time to stimulus. It turns out that the length of time it takes to given situations is a credible proxy for how difficult the discrimination is to make. Imagine a paranoia involving mysterious e-mail delays and the length of time it takes to catagorize

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Cypherpunks archives online
by Nomen Nescio 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

There were some talk about archives here recently. I found two here: http://www.mail-archive.com/index.php?hunt=cypherpunks And this does indeed seem to be an active archive of the list: http://www.mail-archive.com/cypherpunks%40minder.net/

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Re: "Word" Of the Subgenius...
by Major Variola (ret) 10 Dec '04

10 Dec '04

At 11:21 AM 12/9/04 -0500, Tyler Durden wrote: > >Well, May seemed to try to make the case that all of those "useles eaters" >were in large part responsible for the very existence of the state, and that >collapse of the state meant the inevitable downfall of huge numbers of >minorities (why he focused on them as opposed to white trailer trash I don't >know). > >But he was definitely advocating that racist viewpoints fall naturally out >of a crypto-anarchic approach. Tyler: A rational person has to admit that many parasitic folks of all albedos are able to exist because they occupy a govt-funded niche. Without a welfare govt, those people would either 1. subsist on private (ie voluntary) charity, 2. become useful by necessity 3. die of starvation 4. die during attempts to coerce others with violence. Depending on your beliefs about human demographics/nature, you will assign variable percentages to these outcomes. It *is* racist to think that genotypes in each bin will differ *IFF* you *don't* ascribe this outcome to culture associated with genotypes. But culturism is not racism, its recognition of how behavior and evolution work. I subscribe to and will defend culturism. (I speak for myself, not TM (tm), though I may or may not be a duly appointed pope of the church of strong cryptography; though recently I've been trending towards being an Earthquaker, who believes in tectonics, esp. during seismic events. Our vatican is in Parkfield BTW :-)

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