- cypherpunks-legacy - lists.cpunks.org

[liberationtech] Why Skype (real-time) is losing out to WeChat (async)
by Nathan of Guardian 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

I know in the LibTech and broader global activist/NGO community, there is still quite a bit of focus on Skype. However, during my recent time in India with the Tibetan community there, I have seen Skype, on mobiles at least, almost thoroughly replaced by WeChat, a WhatsApp/Kakao clone made by TenCent, the same Chinese company who created QQ. To my personal horror, we have gone from a somewhat secure Skype with a questionable backdoor policy, to a non-https, China-hosted service who is a known collaborator with the Chinese government. The only I thing I felt productive to do (other than scream and pull out my hair) was to think about why this is happening from a user perspective. Why is a text messaging/push-to-talk model winning out over an instant messaging/VoIP model, in places like Africa and Asia, regardless of known increased risk and decreased privacy and safety? Other than the typical "users are dumb" answer, I think there are some deeper useful factors to consider. Overall, I think we are seeing that when smartphones are plentiful, but bandwidth is still a challenge, we need to think about communications in a more asynchronous model than real-time. I don't think this community should get too caught up in building "Skype replacements". I think more we should think about what features otherwise great, secure apps like Cryptocat, RedPhone, TextSecure, Gibberbot, etc are missing to make it possible for them to replace the functionality and experience users are expecting today. Why Skype/real-time is losing 1) Noticeable impact on mobile battery life if left logged in all the time (holding open sockets to multiple servers? less efficient use of push?) 2) Real-time, full duplex communications requires constant, decent bandwidth; degradation is very noticeable, especially with video 3) App is very large (a good amount of native code), and a bit laggy during login and contacts lookup 4) Old and tired (aka not shiny) perception of brand; too much push of "pay" services 5) Requires "new" username and password (aka not based on existing phone number), and lookup/adding of new contacts 6) US/EU based super-nodes may increase latency issues; vs China/Asia based servers Why WeChat (and WhatsApp, Kakao, etc) async are winning 1) Push-to-talk voice negates nearly all bandwidth, throughput and latency issues of mobile. 2) Push-to-talk is better than instant messaging for low literacy, mixed-written language communities; The "bootstrap" process for Skype is very text heavy still 3) Apps feel more lightweight both from size, and from network stack (mostly just using HTTPS with some push mechanism) 5) Shiny, new hotness, with fun themes, personalization, and focus on "free" 6) Picture, video, file sharing made very easy - aka a first order operation, not a secondary feature; chats are a seamless mix of media 7) Persistent, group chat/messaging works very well (since its just async/store and forward, its very easy to send many-to-many) 8) Identity often based on existing phone number, so signup is easy, and messaging to existing contacts is seamless 9) More viral - you can message people not on the service, and they will be spammed to sign up for the service Anyone want to call b.s. on this theory? Is my thinking headed in the right direction? Should we try to turn Gibberbot into a more-secure WhatsApp/WeChat clone? All the best from the Himalayas, Nathan -- Unsubscribe, change to digest, or change password at: https://mailman.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/liberationtech ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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(no subject)
by MaciLaci 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

# Mail sent to leave-scientificmarketing-13171175q was converted to these commands: unsubscribe scientificmarketing cypherpunks(a)toad.com confirm end # This is the text of the message that triggered the action:

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Fingerprint Scanners Still Easy to Fool
by brian-slashdotnews＠hyperreal.org 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/25/1315254 Posted by: michael, on 2004-06-25 14:11:00 Topic: security, 237 comments from the mission-possible dept. [1]Anlan writes "A Swedish student wrote her [2]Master's thesis about current fingerprint technology. After a thorough literature study some live testing took place. Simple DIY fingerprint copies were used (detailed how-to in the thesis). Have current commercial products improved as much as proponents claim? Well, this qoute from the abstract says it all: 'The experiments focus on making artificial fingerprints in gelatin from a latent fingerprint. Nine different systems were tested at the CeBIT trade fair in Germany and all were deceived. Three other different systems were put up against more extensive tests with three different subjects. All systems were circumvented with all subjects' artificial fingerprints, but with varying results.' You can guess how happy the sales people at CeBIT were - most systems claim to be spoof proof..." IFRAME: [3]pos6 References 1. mailto:slashdot1@lange.cx 2. http://www.ep.liu.se/exjobb/isy/2004/3557/ 3. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=2936&alloc_id=8587&site_id=1&request_id=3363465 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Is business the real Big Brother?
by Denis Russell 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dave, This evening BBC transmitted an interesting program concerning privacy and surveillance. Probably not a lot new to most IP readers, but the compilation is compelling. The program is described at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5015826.stm> and is online to watch until 2nd June at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/ programmes/?id=money_programme>. Enjoy - if that's the right word. Denis. Is business the real Big Brother? By Adam Harcourt-Webster BBC Money Programme Monitoring and surveillance of employees and customers by big business is now commonplace. Some German shoppers already have their purchases tracked It's increasingly a feature of our daily lives, because businesses have found that it makes good business sense. But is corporate snooping out of control? ... ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] Is business the real Big Brother?
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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[p2p-hackers] ANN: Tahoe-LAFS 1.9 Released!
by Brian Warner 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.9.0 The Tahoe-LAFS team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 1.9.0 of Tahoe-LAFS, an extremely reliable distributed storage system. Get it here: https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/quickstart.rst Tahoe-LAFS is the first distributed storage system to offer "provider-independent security" b meaning that not even the operators of your storage servers can read or alter your data without your consent. Here is the one-page explanation of its unique security and fault-tolerance properties: https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/about.rst The previous stable release of Tahoe-LAFS was v1.8.3, which was released September 13, 2011. v1.9.0 offers a new mutable-file format (more efficient for large files), a file-blacklisting feature, and a new "drop-upload" feature. See the NEWS file [3] and known_issues.rst [4] file for details. WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? With Tahoe-LAFS, you distribute your filesystem across multiple servers, and even if some of the servers fail or are taken over by an attacker, the entire filesystem continues to work correctly, and continues to preserve your privacy and security. You can easily share specific files and directories with other people. In addition to the core storage system itself, volunteers have built other projects on top of Tahoe-LAFS and have integrated Tahoe-LAFS with existing systems, including Windows, JavaScript, iPhone, Android, Hadoop, Flume, Django, Puppet, bzr, mercurial, perforce, duplicity, TiddlyWiki, and more. See the Related Projects page on the wiki [5]. We believe that strong cryptography, Free and Open Source Software, erasure coding, and principled engineering practices make Tahoe-LAFS safer than RAID, removable drive, tape, on-line backup or cloud storage. This software is developed under test-driven development, and there are no known bugs or security flaws which would compromise confidentiality or data integrity under recommended use. (For all important issues that we are currently aware of please see the known_issues.rst file [2].) COMPATIBILITY This release is compatible with the version 1 series of Tahoe-LAFS. Clients from this release can write files and directories in the format used by clients of all versions back to v1.0 (which was released March 25, 2008). Clients from this release can read files and directories produced by clients of all versions since v1.0. Servers from this release can serve clients of all versions back to v1.0 and clients from this release can use servers of all versions back to v1.0. This is the fifteenth release in the version 1 series. This series of Tahoe-LAFS will be actively supported and maintained for the foreseeable future, and future versions of Tahoe-LAFS will retain the ability to read and write files compatible with this series. LICENCE You may use this package under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or, at your option, any later version. See the file "COPYING.GPL" [4] for the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2. You may use this package under the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, version 1 or, at your option, any later version. (The Transitive Grace Period Public Licence has requirements similar to the GPL except that it allows you to delay for up to twelve months after you redistribute a derived work before releasing the source code of your derived work.) See the file "COPYING.TGPPL.rst" [5] for the terms of the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, version 1. (You may choose to use this package under the terms of either licence, at your option.) INSTALLATION Tahoe-LAFS works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, *BSD, and probably most other systems. Start with "docs/quickstart.rst" [6]. HACKING AND COMMUNITY Please join us on the mailing list [7]. Patches are gratefully accepted -- the RoadMap page [8] shows the next improvements that we plan to make and CREDITS [9] lists the names of people who've contributed to the project. The Dev page [10] contains resources for hackers. SPONSORSHIP Atlas Networks has contributed several hosted servers for performance testing. Thank you to Atlas Networks [11] for their generous and public-spirited support. And a special thanks to Least Authority Enterprises [12], which employs several Tahoe-LAFS developers, for their continued support. HACK TAHOE-LAFS! If you can find a security flaw in Tahoe-LAFS which is serious enough that we feel compelled to warn our users and issue a fix, then we will award you with a customized t-shirts with your exploit printed on it and add you to the "Hack Tahoe-LAFS Hall Of Fame" [13]. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is the ninth release of Tahoe-LAFS to be created solely as a labor of love by volunteers. Thank you very much to the team of "hackers in the public interest" who make Tahoe-LAFS possible. Brian Warner on behalf of the Tahoe-LAFS team October 31, 2011 San Francisco, California, USA [1] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/NEWS.rst?rev=5356 [2] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/docs/known_issues.rst [3] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/RelatedProjects [4] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/COPYING.GPL [5] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/COPYING.TGPPL.rst [6] https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/quickstart.rst [7] https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev [8] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/roadmap [9] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/CREDITS?rev=5356 [10] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/Dev [11] http://atlasnetworks.us/ [12] http://leastauthority.com/ [13] https://tahoe-lafs.org/hacktahoelafs/ _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers(a)lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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Fingerprint Scanners Still Easy to Fool
by brian-slashdotnews＠hyperreal.org 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Link: http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/06/25/1315254 Posted by: michael, on 2004-06-25 14:11:00 Topic: security, 237 comments from the mission-possible dept. [1]Anlan writes "A Swedish student wrote her [2]Master's thesis about current fingerprint technology. After a thorough literature study some live testing took place. Simple DIY fingerprint copies were used (detailed how-to in the thesis). Have current commercial products improved as much as proponents claim? Well, this qoute from the abstract says it all: 'The experiments focus on making artificial fingerprints in gelatin from a latent fingerprint. Nine different systems were tested at the CeBIT trade fair in Germany and all were deceived. Three other different systems were put up against more extensive tests with three different subjects. All systems were circumvented with all subjects' artificial fingerprints, but with varying results.' You can guess how happy the sales people at CeBIT were - most systems claim to be spoof proof..." IFRAME: [3]pos6 References 1. mailto:slashdot1@lange.cx 2. http://www.ep.liu.se/exjobb/isy/2004/3557/ 3. http://ads.osdn.com/?ad_id=2936&alloc_id=8587&site_id=1&request_id=3363465 ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07078, 11.61144 http://www.leitl.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE http://moleculardevices.org http://nanomachines.net [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature]

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Is business the real Big Brother?
by Denis Russell 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Dave, This evening BBC transmitted an interesting program concerning privacy and surveillance. Probably not a lot new to most IP readers, but the compilation is compelling. The program is described at <http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/5015826.stm> and is online to watch until 2nd June at <http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbctwo/ programmes/?id=money_programme>. Enjoy - if that's the right word. Denis. Is business the real Big Brother? By Adam Harcourt-Webster BBC Money Programme Monitoring and surveillance of employees and customers by big business is now commonplace. Some German shoppers already have their purchases tracked It's increasingly a feature of our daily lives, because businesses have found that it makes good business sense. But is corporate snooping out of control? ... ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as eugen(a)leitl.org To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ip Archives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/ ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE [demime 1.01d removed an attachment of type application/pgp-signature which had a name of signature.asc]

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[IP] Is business the real Big Brother?
by David Farber 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

Begin forwarded message:

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[p2p-hackers] ANN: Tahoe-LAFS 1.9 Released!
by Brian Warner 06 Jul '18

06 Jul '18

ANNOUNCING Tahoe, the Least-Authority File System, v1.9.0 The Tahoe-LAFS team is pleased to announce the immediate availability of version 1.9.0 of Tahoe-LAFS, an extremely reliable distributed storage system. Get it here: https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/quickstart.rst Tahoe-LAFS is the first distributed storage system to offer "provider-independent security" b meaning that not even the operators of your storage servers can read or alter your data without your consent. Here is the one-page explanation of its unique security and fault-tolerance properties: https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe-lafs/trunk/docs/about.rst The previous stable release of Tahoe-LAFS was v1.8.3, which was released September 13, 2011. v1.9.0 offers a new mutable-file format (more efficient for large files), a file-blacklisting feature, and a new "drop-upload" feature. See the NEWS file [3] and known_issues.rst [4] file for details. WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? With Tahoe-LAFS, you distribute your filesystem across multiple servers, and even if some of the servers fail or are taken over by an attacker, the entire filesystem continues to work correctly, and continues to preserve your privacy and security. You can easily share specific files and directories with other people. In addition to the core storage system itself, volunteers have built other projects on top of Tahoe-LAFS and have integrated Tahoe-LAFS with existing systems, including Windows, JavaScript, iPhone, Android, Hadoop, Flume, Django, Puppet, bzr, mercurial, perforce, duplicity, TiddlyWiki, and more. See the Related Projects page on the wiki [5]. We believe that strong cryptography, Free and Open Source Software, erasure coding, and principled engineering practices make Tahoe-LAFS safer than RAID, removable drive, tape, on-line backup or cloud storage. This software is developed under test-driven development, and there are no known bugs or security flaws which would compromise confidentiality or data integrity under recommended use. (For all important issues that we are currently aware of please see the known_issues.rst file [2].) COMPATIBILITY This release is compatible with the version 1 series of Tahoe-LAFS. Clients from this release can write files and directories in the format used by clients of all versions back to v1.0 (which was released March 25, 2008). Clients from this release can read files and directories produced by clients of all versions since v1.0. Servers from this release can serve clients of all versions back to v1.0 and clients from this release can use servers of all versions back to v1.0. This is the fifteenth release in the version 1 series. This series of Tahoe-LAFS will be actively supported and maintained for the foreseeable future, and future versions of Tahoe-LAFS will retain the ability to read and write files compatible with this series. LICENCE You may use this package under the GNU General Public License, version 2 or, at your option, any later version. See the file "COPYING.GPL" [4] for the terms of the GNU General Public License, version 2. You may use this package under the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, version 1 or, at your option, any later version. (The Transitive Grace Period Public Licence has requirements similar to the GPL except that it allows you to delay for up to twelve months after you redistribute a derived work before releasing the source code of your derived work.) See the file "COPYING.TGPPL.rst" [5] for the terms of the Transitive Grace Period Public Licence, version 1. (You may choose to use this package under the terms of either licence, at your option.) INSTALLATION Tahoe-LAFS works on Linux, Mac OS X, Windows, Solaris, *BSD, and probably most other systems. Start with "docs/quickstart.rst" [6]. HACKING AND COMMUNITY Please join us on the mailing list [7]. Patches are gratefully accepted -- the RoadMap page [8] shows the next improvements that we plan to make and CREDITS [9] lists the names of people who've contributed to the project. The Dev page [10] contains resources for hackers. SPONSORSHIP Atlas Networks has contributed several hosted servers for performance testing. Thank you to Atlas Networks [11] for their generous and public-spirited support. And a special thanks to Least Authority Enterprises [12], which employs several Tahoe-LAFS developers, for their continued support. HACK TAHOE-LAFS! If you can find a security flaw in Tahoe-LAFS which is serious enough that we feel compelled to warn our users and issue a fix, then we will award you with a customized t-shirts with your exploit printed on it and add you to the "Hack Tahoe-LAFS Hall Of Fame" [13]. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This is the ninth release of Tahoe-LAFS to be created solely as a labor of love by volunteers. Thank you very much to the team of "hackers in the public interest" who make Tahoe-LAFS possible. Brian Warner on behalf of the Tahoe-LAFS team October 31, 2011 San Francisco, California, USA [1] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/NEWS.rst?rev=5356 [2] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/docs/known_issues.rst [3] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/RelatedProjects [4] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/COPYING.GPL [5] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/COPYING.TGPPL.rst [6] https://tahoe-lafs.org/source/tahoe/trunk/docs/quickstart.rst [7] https://tahoe-lafs.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tahoe-dev [8] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/roadmap [9] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/browser/trunk/CREDITS?rev=5356 [10] https://tahoe-lafs.org/trac/tahoe-lafs/wiki/Dev [11] http://atlasnetworks.us/ [12] http://leastauthority.com/ [13] https://tahoe-lafs.org/hacktahoelafs/ _______________________________________________ p2p-hackers mailing list p2p-hackers(a)lists.zooko.com http://lists.zooko.com/mailman/listinfo/p2p-hackers ----- End forwarded message ----- -- Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a> http://leitl.org ______________________________________________________________ ICBM: 48.07100, 11.36820 http://www.ativel.com http://postbiota.org 8B29F6BE: 099D 78BA 2FD3 B014 B08A 7779 75B0 2443 8B29 F6BE

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