July 2015 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

speaking of Bitcoin ... the july4th split
by coderman 12 Jul '15

12 Jul '15

sometimes even consensus not enough, [ failure at 95% agreement! ] SPV is a compensating measure that addresses block size without reifying incompatibilities. however, with drawbacks and risk, as taken on chin in this one: https://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2015-07-04-spv-mining """ Summary: Some miners are currently generating invalid blocks. Almost all software (besides Bitcoin Core 0.9.5 and later) will accept these invalid blocks under certain conditions. The paragraphs that follow explain the cause more throughly. For several months, an increasing amount of mining hash rate has been signaling its intent to begin enforcing BIP66 strict DER signatures. As part of the BIP66 rules, once 950 of the last 1,000 blocks were version 3 (v3) blocks, all upgraded miners would reject version 2 (v2) blocks. Early morning UTC on 4 July 2015, the 950/1000 (95%) threshold was reached. Shortly thereafter, a small miner (part of the non-upgraded 5%) mined an invalid block--as was an expected occurrence. Unfortunately, it turned out that roughly half the network hash rate was mining without fully validating blocks (called SPV mining), and built new blocks on top of that invalid block. Note that the roughly 50% of the network that was SPV mining had explicitly indicated that they would enforce the BIP66 rules. By not doing so, several large miners have lost over $50,000 dollars worth of mining income so far. All software that assumes blocks are valid (because invalid blocks cost miners money) is at risk of showing transactions as confirmed when they really aren't. This particularly affects lightweight (SPV) wallets and software such as old versions of Bitcoin Core which have been downgraded to SPV-level security by the new BIP66 consensus rules. The immediate fix, which is well underway as of this writing, is to get all miners off of SPV mining and back to full validation (at least temporarily). As this progresses, we will reduce our current recommendation of waiting 30 extra confirmations to a lower number. """

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Re: progression of technologies
by John Young 11 Jul '15

11 Jul '15

This is productive discussion for addressing what's happening now and coming up in the race between law and technology, cartoonishly in the press as between whales and germs, more realisticly, the two swapping places, running different races, taking short-cuts, indicting, pleading, inforning, lying, bribing, cheating, rigging races, hiring assassins and stand-ins, dual hats, wild cards, lone wolves, entrapment, duplicity, megadeath threats, hacks, injections, implantations, porous treaties, incessant violations, and above all evergrowing heaping piles of dung of the devil. Concentration of wealth by lawful cheating is comparable to explosively squeezing the pit to see if the atmosphere ignites. At 03:19 PM 7/11/2015, you wrote: >On 10 July 2015 at 10:58, <dan(a)geer.org> wrote: > > Well, now we are into dueling Supreme Court cases; see > > > > http://caselaw.findlaw.com/us-supreme-court/533/27.html > > > > Kyllo v. United States (2001) > > > > Despite the Court's attempt to draw a line that is "not only > > firm but also bright," ante, at 12, the contours of its new rule > > are uncertain because its protection apparently dissipates as > > soon as the relevant technology is "in general public use," ante, > > at 6-7. Yet how much use is general public use is not even hinted > > at by the Court's opinion, which makes the somewhat doubtful > > assumption that the thermal imager used in this case does not > > satisfy that criterion. In any event, putting aside its lack > > of clarity, this criterion is somewhat perverse because it seems > > likely that the threat to privacy will grow, rather than recede, > > as the use of intrusive equipment becomes more readily available. > >Yes! That's the case I was obliquely referring to. Sorry, I kind of >glazed over that part of your argument in the article. > > > That reads, to me, that what the public adopts limits what I can > > do or expect. > >I guess where we quibble is I'm skeptical that the general public (as >defined by the courts?) will (ever?) adopt the types of tools you >refer to (uniquely identifying individuals based on electromagnetics, >tracking tire pressure sensors.) I don't think the 'general public' >has adopted thermal imagers. These will make their way into >industry... (advertisers tracking WiFi probes in malls obviously). > >So my wonder now is if industry adopting a technology is sufficient >for the courts to qualify as 'general public'. But this, at best, only >affects exotic technology. We're already fighting this battle. > >Automated license plate readers have never (?) been challenged >(successfully?). They are an extension of "a police officer just >watching a highway" which is legal. And the courts like extensions of >things that are already done - see bulk collection of metadata! > >You're right - collection of this data by personals or corporations, >and selling it, is indeed the right battleground. I'm don't think the >answer is correlation, but the collection, as you say in the last >paragraph. > >-tom

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Re: cypherpunks Digest, Vol 25, Issue 9
by ksenia bellman 11 Jul '15

11 Jul '15

on the topic of Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures: There unusually a lot of btc discussion on the list lately: technical (the fork), philosophical and practical. On the philosophical/political side: btc is great, I like it, I use it, but, come on, we all know that by design (increasing difficulty of the chain and proof-of-work system) btc is determined to be a space race. Before you can maintain the network with simple hardware, and get btc for it, now you have to be a mining rig. We know that btc is good for P2P financial transactions, but the first important question now is: How do you earn bitcoin? (as an individual, you can't mine, if you are not a programmer or a designer, how do you earn btc?) It becomes less and less of a question how do you spend btc, but still, unless I mined a lot in the past or bought it for cash, where do I get it? Secondly, the rhetoric we hear often in the mainstream btc discussion is "it is a solution for banking the Unbanked" This talk is obviously dodgy - lets say "the unbanked wants to be banked" if you have an account with nothing in it, and no way of filling it in, there is no point. The only good thing about btc walled vs bank account when its empty is that there is no one is proposing you to get an overdraft or a loan. But still, empty btc wallet is pretty useless. Rather decent response to poitical btc frenzy I found in this post - https://blog.caseykuhlman.com/entries/2014/bitcoin-somaliland.html?utm_sour… Another mainstream talk is: its not about bitcooin, it is all about blockchain technology. Thats correct, it can be useful for some stuff. But what drives me up the walll is a hype around it mixed with vagueness. "We can build all this amazing socio-technical systems with it" and very rarely, amongst general public (not blockchain devs) you come across concrete ideas of a design. What exactly does this weird data structure does in a very specific social context? What are exact detailed functions it has, how does it integrates with other layers - software and hardware. So the talk "some devs will write cryptographically verifiable scripts for us which interact on the blockchain and it will give the world some cool ways of interaction" is just dangerous. Similar rhetoric brought humanity things such as Facebook. The only thing which i consider right in the blockchain discussion that "ok, it allows adding some features to a system that can be useful in some particular cases" On the technical side: fork, xt-code etc - I would like to organise and stream a panel discussion on WCN <http://www.worldcryptonetwork.com/> channel soon-ish. I dont want to turn cypherpunk list into a Bitcoin Talk :) but will ping a link here and the time we will schedule it. On 8 July 2015 at 01:22, <cypherpunks-request(a)cpunks.org> wrote: > Send cypherpunks mailing list submissions to > cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org > > To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit > https://cpunks.org/mailman/listinfo/cypherpunks > or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to > cypherpunks-request(a)cpunks.org > > You can reach the person managing the list at > cypherpunks-owner(a)cpunks.org > > When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific > than "Re: Contents of cypherpunks digest..." > > > Today's Topics: > > 1. Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (grarpamp) > 2. "Google is to surveillance capitalism what GM was to > managerial capitalism" (Razer) > 3. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Juan) > 4. Re: Hacking Team has been hacked (hard) (Razer) > 5. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Sean Lynch) > 6. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Lodewijk andré de la porte) > 7. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Sean Lynch) > 8. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Lodewijk andré de la porte) > 9. Re: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] (Juan) > > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > > Message: 1 > Date: Tue, 7 Jul 2015 15:21:50 -0400 > From: grarpamp <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> > To: Cpunks List <cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org> > Cc: bitcoin-dev(a)lists.linuxfoundation.org > Subject: Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in > [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc] > Message-ID: > <CAD2Ti28Tw7Kz+RoW3DYqEPbB4KfS= > TiTSwbtneL7ps1QsKvzvw(a)mail.gmail.com> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8 > > > Then again maybe I am missing the key reasoning for this fork. > > People often miss the fundamental reasons Bitcoin exists, > the various conjoined ethos behind its creation. This is to be > expected, it's so far ouside any thinking or life process they've > ever had to do or been exposed to. It's also partly why figuring > out what to do or code or adopt, is hard. And certainly not made > any easier by the long term need and the current value at stake. > > Creating a system in which a Botswanan can give a few bits > of their impoverished wages to their friend in Mumbai without > it being gated, permitted, hierarchied, middlemanned, taxed, > tracked, stolen and feed-upon until pointless... this simply > doesn't compute for these people. Their school of thought is > centralization, profit, control and oppression. So of course they > see txrate ramming up against an artificial wall as perfectly fine, > it enables and perpetuates their legacy ways. > > Regardless of whichever technical way the various walls are torn down, > what's important is that they are. And that those who are thinking > outside the box do, and continue to, take time to school these > legacy people such that they might someday become enlightened > and join the ethos. > > Otherwise might as well work for ICBC, JPMC, HSBC, BNP, MUFG > and your favorite government. Probably not as much fun though. > > > ------------------------------ > > Message: 2 > Date: Tue, 07 Jul 2015 13:32:35 -0700 > From: Razer <Rayzer(a)riseup.net> > To: cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org > Subject: "Google is to surveillance capitalism what GM was to > managerial capitalism" > Message-ID: <559C3763.1000205(a)riseup.net> > Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8" > > > > Big Other: Surveillance Capitalism and the Prospects of an Information > > Civilization > > > > Shoshana Zuboff, Berkman Center for Internet & Society; Harvard > > Business School > > > > April 4, 2015 > > > > Abstract: > > This article describes an emergent logic of accumulation in the > > networked sphere, ‘surveillance capitalism,’ and considers its > > implications for ‘information civilization.’ Google is to surveillance > > capitalism what General Motors was to managerial capitalism. Therefore > > the institutionalizing practices and operational assumptions of Google > > Inc. are the primary lens for this analysis as they are rendered in > > two recent articles authored by Google Chief Economist Hal Varian. > > > > Varian asserts four uses that follow from computer-mediated > > transactions: ‘data extraction and analysis,’ ‘new contractual forms > > due to better monitoring,’ ‘personalization and customization,’ and > > ‘continuous experiments.’ > > > > An examination of the nature and consequences of these uses sheds > > light on the implicit logic of surveillance capitalism and the global > > architecture of computer mediation upon which it depends. This > > architecture produces a distributed and largely uncontested new > > expression of power that I christen: ‘Big Other.’ It is constituted by > > unexpected and often illegible mechanisms of extraction, > > commodification, and control that effectively exile persons from their > > own behavior while producing new markets of behavioral prediction and > > modification. Surveillance capitalism challenges democratic norms and > > departs in key ways from the centuries long evolution of market > > capitalism. > > > > Number of Pages in PDF File: 15 > > > > Keywords: surveillance capitalism, big data, Google, information > > society, privacy, internet of everything > > http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2594754 > >

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Bitcoin philosophical musings and pressures 7 years in [drifted from: txrate, forking, etc]
by grarpamp 11 Jul '15

11 Jul '15

> Then again maybe I am missing the key reasoning for this fork. People often miss the fundamental reasons Bitcoin exists, the various conjoined ethos behind its creation. This is to be expected, it's so far ouside any thinking or life process they've ever had to do or been exposed to. It's also partly why figuring out what to do or code or adopt, is hard. And certainly not made any easier by the long term need and the current value at stake. Creating a system in which a Botswanan can give a few bits of their impoverished wages to their friend in Mumbai without it being gated, permitted, hierarchied, middlemanned, taxed, tracked, stolen and feed-upon until pointless... this simply doesn't compute for these people. Their school of thought is centralization, profit, control and oppression. So of course they see txrate ramming up against an artificial wall as perfectly fine, it enables and perpetuates their legacy ways. Regardless of whichever technical way the various walls are torn down, what's important is that they are. And that those who are thinking outside the box do, and continue to, take time to school these legacy people such that they might someday become enlightened and join the ethos. Otherwise might as well work for ICBC, JPMC, HSBC, BNP, MUFG and your favorite government. Probably not as much fun though.

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Bitcoin User??? A Euro worth of BTC for your thoughts...
by grarpamp 10 Jul '15

10 Jul '15

If you are interested in improving Bitcoin, and making about a Euro (4.2 mBTC) in return, read on... We are researchers conducting a Bitcoin user study and are seeking participants. Bitcoin users are kindly invited to participate. Our survey is anonymous and takes under 10 minutes to complete. As a reward you receive BTC. The goal of this survey is to learn about user perceptions regarding Bitcoin and will cover aspects such as key management, wallet usage and risk perception. As we believe that these results will be valuable to the entire community, we will publish our results and make them available to everyone. This is the link to the survey: https://www.soscisurvey.de/BTC_study/?r=932181 SBA Research SBA Research was founded in 2006 as the first Austrian research center for information security by the TU Wien, the Graz University of Technology and the University of Vienna. Funded largely by the national initiative for COMET. Along with many other international academic and business research partners we jointly work on challenges ranging from organizational to technical security. We are 100 strong. https://www.sba-research.org/ SoSci Survey SoSci Survey can help you carry out your professional online survey: create online questionnaire, send invitations (including follow-ups), Data download (SPSS, GNU R, Excel). It was designed specifically for scientific surveys and is continuously developed for daily research practice. The software supports a project manager and allows flexibility in the design of questionnaires. The most demanding and complex designs can be realized. https://www.soscisurvey.de/

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Re: From: What: [and who?]
by coderman 10 Jul '15

10 Jul '15

On 7/10/15, Mirimir <mirimir(a)riseup.net> wrote: > ... > OK, how many remember waiting for a subpoena during Jim Bell's trial? > > Me, I'd subscribed through a remailer ;) i knew the domain should have stayed on Al-Qaeda.net ... Crypto Wars 2.0 and you're worried about receiving an email list? :P

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Re: From: root@hackingteam.it To: vince@hackingteam.it [and who?]
by BizDevCon 10 Jul '15

10 Jul '15

Yup, same here. â BizDevCon -------- Original Message -------- Subject: Re: From: root(a)hackingteam.it To: vince(a)hackingteam.it [and who?] Time (GMT): Jul 10 2015 07:17:57 From: list(a)sysfu.com To: cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org On Fri, 10 Jul 2015 00:00:20 -0700, Tom <tom(a)vondein.org> wrote: > Wouldn't it have been enough to post the url? > > http://ptrace.fefe.de/fpalm30c3.jpg I actually appreciate content posted in message, get tired of having to fire up a browser for links. Also every click on a browser link is a potential attack whereas plain-text in an email is not.

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Re: [cryptography] Supersingular Isogeny DH
by coderman 10 Jul '15

10 Jul '15

On 7/8/15, Marcel <tiepelt(a)dev-nu11.de> wrote: > ... > So my question is, why do i need to random values m_A and n_A to compute > the torsiongroup E[l_A] and respectively the kernel K_A ? > > Why does is not suffice to use only 1 point to generate E[l_A] and > Kernel K_A ? it is late, and i may mis understand, yet the two are requisite for peers arriving at a shared secret by way of these constructed isogeny; and the random values necessary to not give too much (confirm secret values, without exposing secret values) i found this paper a helpful expansion on the subject: http://cacr.uwaterloo.ca/techreports/2014/cacr2014-20.pdf "In this paper, we mainly explore the efficiency of implementing recently proposed isogeny-based post-quantum public key cryptography..." specifically the graph on page 5. note that the key exchange relies on finding a path connecting vertices in a graph of supersingular isogenies - thus a pair on both ends, not just a pair arrived at among both participants. if this is clear as mud, i will try tomorrow on a fresh brain :) best regards,

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Deathrow Democracy
by jim bell 10 Jul '15

10 Jul '15

Months ago, I discovered a TV-show in the making, called "Deathrow Democracy". Apparently it is a fictionalized treatment of Sanjuro's 'Assassination Market', as well as my 'Assassination Politics' essay. I just found they have a Facebook page at: https://www.facebook.com/deathrowdemocracyThey have a web page at: http://deathrowdemocracy.com/Teaser #1 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okmZdquYCjETeaser #2 at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OnDaDlOJDTY It appears that they are scheduled to release something on July 31, 2015. Jim Bell

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Re: Hacking Team has been hacked (hard, and long)
by Razer 09 Jul '15

09 Jul '15

On 07/08/2015 03:55 PM, coderman wrote: > On 7/8/15, Razer wrote: >> ... that may be from the day when >> people paid by the byte for internet service. Should I post the >> entirety? It's kinda long. > > JYA and me and history prefer verbatim, > and long since gone the days when bandwidth bytes begged brevity > > now, just /s TL;DR or ignore... [ and yes the whole thing :P ] > > > best regards, The bounceback to RiseUp mail triggered the possible ***SPAM*** indicator. Something that never happens with person-person emails. Apparently I'm NOT alone in the previously stated sentiment, or perhaps it's the number of links in the post. RR

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