April 2020 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: Video chat software / options
by Douglas Lucas 23 Apr '20

23 Apr '20

Does anyone have experience with, or thoughts on, Kast and TwoSeven? For use cases of either a one to one video chat, small group video chat, or large group video chat. Are these mostly for just drunk people with masks on partying or could they be repurposed for more formal situations like a virtual panel with audience attendees etc?

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WHO, World Bank, Wuhan Virology institute, CDC, NIH and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was leaked
by b0z0＠SDF.ORG 22 Apr '20

22 Apr '20

#Archive On Today's dawn, April 21, 2020, the databases of WHO, World Bank, Wuhan Virology institute, CDC, NIH and Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation was leaked Here are the archives. WHO https://archive.is/JIJ2b World Bank https://archive.is/0XJEL Wuhan Virology Institute https://archive.is/UtQGz US CDC https://archive.is/lyApN NIH https://archive.is/WkHpk Gates Foundation https://archive.is/j6sgo b0z0(a)sdf.lonestar.org SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org

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Fwd: CUSTOMIZE your Trump Gear
by John Young 22 Apr '20

22 Apr '20

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Secure Video Conferencing... BlueJeans, etc... Is that true?
by grarpamp 21 Apr '20

21 Apr '20

On 4/20/20, bo0od <bo0od(a)riseup.net> wrote: > it doesnt matter if its mentioned in wikipedia or not, but the questions > should be asked before checking any service: > > - Is it based on free/libre software? > - How much they value your privacy through lets say decentralization or > ability to host your own service or its working over Tor and I2P ...etc > > well if we try to apply both of these points on BlueJeans service we > gonna have DirtyJeans. > > Website blocking Tor users access thats just first indication of > horrible service: > > Access Denied > You don't have permission to access "http://www.bluejeans.com/" on this > server. > Reference #18 >>> https://bigbluebutton.org/ >>> https://videoconferencing.guide/ >>> https://cubicgarden.com/2020/04/17/illegal-zoom-bombing-is-out-of-control/ >> BlueJeans' website >> https://www.bluejeans.com/ >> says so >> "Empower Your Remote Workforce with Secure Video Conferencing" Marketing propaganda, flower and weasel words, learn to recognize the spin, avoid the lure. >> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BlueJeans >> does not say anything It does in fact say something, everything, right on the tin... "Verizon announced on April 16th, 2020, that it will be acquiring BlueJeans" Did you now forget Verizon the biggest Government Spy and Apologist next to AT&T literally giving away your and whole worlds call content, and CDRs, and internet traffics to spy and "enforcement" and liberation repression agencies. "Headquarters: San Jose, California, U.S." Did you read "Surveillance Valley by Yasha Levine", follow the Facebook, Youtube, Twitter, Reddit, Instagram, etc coordinated censorship regime coming from all these "headquarters" of corporates partner with Government to do the deeds. "cloud-based ... service" Spy platforms... Google, Microsoft, Amazon. "Periyannan was the CTO of Blue Coat Systems" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Coat_Systems#Use_by_repressive_regimes "Ramakrishnan was an entrepreneur-in-residence at Accel Partners" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accel_Partners Spies with Venture Capital... the dangerous combo. "Over the 2012 holiday season, BlueJeans partnered with the Military Association Benefits Group and Military Comm Networks to provide free video conferencing for U.S. soldiers and their families." Partners in order following copout, murder[ers], criminal States against liberation. BlueJeans... secure? HA joke on you. But hey it comes with proprietary "Dolby Voice" so it must be good right? Ever hear of free and other opensource audios library like... https://xiph.org/vorbis/ Did you also forget how Bitcoin-BTC got acquired by Blockstream, Lightning, FakeToshi-Nchain_Patent-Bitcoin_SV-BSV... yet you wonder why all of them still have zero encryption privacy in their transactions and protocols... no GovCorp influence surveillance there either right. Distributed opensource software volunteer developed peer to peer around the world does not need any such "acquirement"... in fact it should resist and fork away from it at all costs. Unless you are the one hiring them such that they are solely beholden to you, closedsource and companies must always be viewed as extremely suspect and sandboxed away from your liberations. They are not so beholden, and their GovCorp dollars and powers always corrupts. What does history say. Some of these commercial packages cost more a month than it would for you to run your own hub node on your own machine and line. Explore any of the opensource voice/video apps posted on the list first instead, use over your own encrypted channels. You want features, ease of use, open security audits, more HW/SW platforms, interoperability, some security privacy minded hub node hosting community, etc... Then send all the licensing and subscription money that you would otherwise have paid to those closed companies (including the cost of your loss of privacy and freedom the datamining metadata surveillance censorship selling you out advertising etc), to the opensource app dev teams, and build that, instead. Pick among the opensource, send them a monthly stipend, use it, you'll feel better contributing too.

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Cryptocurrency: Craig Wright Bashes Cypherpunk, Crypto Love Line, LowFreqTV: 44.6 PhoenixCryptoTV
by grarpamp 21 Apr '20

21 Apr '20

Faketoshi, Self Badged Lawman, Central Banker, Wannabe Lawyer, No-Privacy Shill, Global Regulator, Freedom Downtime, Tracing and Lockdown Advocate, etc... Craig Wright... trends insane asshole, goes Full Four Horseman, bashes everything, including cypherpunks, again, lol... how can this be Satoshi? Web3TV: I Chased Craig Wright (aka "Faketoshi") 2 Canada 4 an Interview: Bitcoin, Satoshi & Crypto Community https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TN3f11SNVTA w Craig Wright https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_XfvWQfWMSM w Calvin Ayre https://007nerd.com/dr-craig-wright-interview-for-ccn-part-1/ https://007nerd.com/craig-wright-interview-2-plus-notes-commentary/ https://007nerd.com/i-chased-craig-wright-to-toronto-for-an-interview-full-… https://twitter.com/nrdgrl007 https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCqiUMgIOlmyuzoZK5_5wwg/videos web3tv nrdgrl007 crypto love line Janice & John McAfee: Anonymity is a Necessary Feature of Privacy!!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u39_YWU88yw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCWepEio4nWxv82nDrYdY4EQ/videos LowFreqTV: 44.6 PhoenixCryptoTV https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q7NUcCSMlG0 Intro: 44.6 PhoenixCryptoTV https://phoenixcryptotv.com/ Published on Dec 4, 2019 We are the first and only TV crypto channel. You will find everything related with cryptocurrencies and more. You can see us in Phoenix area at 44.6 broadcast TV. " Dr. Craig Wright Interview for CCN – Part 1 By nrdgrl007 June 3, 2019 Interviewing Dr. Craig Wright for CCN A few months ago, I started to notice what I thought was an imbalance in media coverage of Craig Wright and his blockchain BSV. It’s not that I was sold on BSV’s value or utility, I just wondered: was it possible that in all of the talk about “BSV is a cult” and “don’t drink the Kool-Aid” – that those (like me) who support BTC and multiple alt-coins could be alternatively brainwashed? I wanted to give people the opportunity to make up their own minds about Wright and his coin without injecting my bias. I wanted to ask Wright some questions and get his answers. Period. At the same time, I started to realize that Wright – like anyone – is a human. I thought it was unkind for humans to treat each other in the way much of the press was treating Wright. Even though Wright himself is not innocent, and he typically slams those he disagrees with, two wrongs do not make a right. I know that in Wright’s shoes, my feelings would be hurt. I wanted to do something. I reached out to my editors at CCN and asked: If I could get Wright to talk to me, could we publish an interview with him? Emphatically, they responded: yes! So I reached out to Wright’s team on CoinGeek and quickly Ed Pownall responded, also yes! I sent over some questions. Unfortunately, before Wright responded, and before I could write the article, Wright publicly slammed CCN while at Oxford, and I had to conduct a second interview. You can read the transcript of that interview here. In both pieces, Wright’s answers are in red. I have not edited them. This piece is my first interview with Craig Wright. Are you Satoshi Nakamoto? Are you Satoshi Nakamoto? Wright: I created Bitcoin and published the Bitcoin white paper under the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto. Can you please tell us exactly what that means? To be clear, does it mean that you – with some help from people like Hal Finney and Dave Kleiman – invented the Bitcoin we know today as BTC? Is it a reference to your assertion that Bitcoin SV is the real Bitcoin? Does the pseudonym “Satoshi Nakamoto” refer to a team of people who you lead or worked with? Or is your claim singular? Wright: As I’ve said before, I had some input and help from other people. But I am the creator of Bitcoin. Do you have any idea why the media and social media personalities are so obsessed with saying and “proving” that you are not Satoshi? Good journalism represents multiple sides of story without demonstrating inherent bias, why is perspective lacking in this case? Wright: Media outlets and social media personalities like controversy and conflict. It feeds them traffic. Also, many powers in the current crypto world have a vested interest in me not being Satoshi because my vision is for Bitcoin to be the world’s single electronic cash and single blockchain. When my vision succeeds, all the other altcoins and supposed other blockchain projects become moot and will disappear. That undermines the needs for many of the crypto media and social media influencers, who thrive because of a multi-coin world. Please Explain why This Isn’t Adding Up… If it’s okay with you, I’d like to address some of the most prevalent reasons people and the press have provided as “evidence” that you’re not Satoshi Nakamoto to give you the opportunity to explain and tell your side of the story… A CCN article says that there are certain philosophical differences between you and Bitcoin’s creator. Namely, the article says that Satoshi didn’t hate the Liberty Reserve and even floated the idea of Bitcoin integrating with the Liberty Reserve, but in your 4/24 blog post, you said that Bitcoin was designed to ensure that the Liberty Reserve – among others – were the real target. Can you please explain why you changed your mind, if you did? Or can you shed some light on why this is not a philosophical difference at all? In 2010, Liberty Reserve was being used legally in Australia, where I was living at that time. It was linked to the National Australia Bank and Westpac. When I (as Satoshi) posted in 2010 about the idea of Liberty Reserve integrating with Bitcoin, there was nothing definitively bad known about Liberty Reserve and it had not yet been found out to be a criminal hub. It was only later that learned Liberty Reserve cared more about facilitating criminal use of Bitcoin than simply being an exchange. In 2010, we still had no value for bitcoin. Bitcoin was an economic system and remains secured through the economics of exchange. It needed something for exchange value. At the same time, we had managed to push Second Life (with its Linden dollars) to allow exchange with Bitcoin, but not many people use Linden dollars. Even now, there is evidence that Liberty Reserve wasn’t just for criminals; it just started devolving into criminal usage because its operators did not care about compliance with anti-money laundering regulations and thought they were above the law. If Liberty Reserve had bothered to protect its customers by following AML laws, they would not have created the problems which led to their collapse. I want money to be neutral but also subject to law. If Liberty Reserve had acted within the law, I would have no problem with them. I have the same feeling about today’s crypto exchanges; I have no problem with them if they start acting within the law. People wonder why I don’t like bucket shops, such as Binance. Mt. Gox caused massive damage to the industry. And when Liberty Reserve closed, it took billions of dollars away from people. I was a client and customer of Liberty Reserve. I used them to pay for legitimate goods and services, as well as for trading Bitcoin. David Kleiman and I both lost a lot of money because of the collapse of the Liberty Reserve. I personally lost millions in US dollar and Euro value. So, if you’re wondering why I am a little bitter, I don’t like people stealing my money and I don’t like people turning it into a joke. More importantly, Liberty Reserve’s collapse led to many people losing huge amounts of Bitcoin, and Liberty Reserve’s operators did an exit scam as they were collapsing. Binance CEO Changpeng Zhao and John McAfee, among others – claim that the real Satoshi “can digitally sign any message to prove it.” And a 2015 Forbesarticle says, “Until someone signs a statement with the one PGP key people know is linked to the Satoshi who wrote the original Bitcoin paper, it’s hard to trust any claims.” Have you signed any messages with that key? And if not, why? Do you have any plans to do so in the future? Can you tell us when? Signing with a PGP key does not definitively prove that you are Satoshi. That only proves that someone owns or controls a key. Proof of being Satoshi or creating Bitcoin has nothing to do with ownership or control of keys. That was never the intention of Bitcoin. This narrative about proving identity by signing a message comes from people who seek to create something that is very different from bitcoin. The CEO of the bucket shop you reference is running a money-laundering operation. He benefits from getting people to believe that signing with a PGP key changes the way the law works. They want to do things such as saying that Ross Ulbrecht is innocent because keys that were captured with him have been used later, and therefore he cannot be responsible for Silk Road crimes. Proof of identity has nothing to do with signing, and this is a misunderstanding of how Bitcoin works. Bitcoin is pseudonymous and requires differentkeys for every use. In fact, the Bitcoin white paper documents how you do notre-use keys: “The receiver generates a new key pair and gives the public key to the sender shortly before signing.” So this entire argument about (proof of Satoshi by signing with a private key) is from a group of people who seek to change the narrative, who try to bamboozle people into believing that Bitcoin is about getting around law and ignoring evidence, who they think all that matters is a cryptographic key. E-Gold was like that. But Bitcoin was never designed to be anything like E-Gold. In 2016, the International Business Times (IBT) conducted stylometry analysis to compare your writings with those of Satoshi. The chief scientist at Juola said that he doesn’t believe you authored the bitcoin white paper. Can you explain why there are stylistic differences between your known writings and those associated with Nakamoto? I’m flattered that someone went to all the trouble to try stylometry analysis. But the whole idea of it is somewhat absurd. People write in different styles all the time for any number of reasons: subject matter, audience, purpose, mood, even age. Do you write your resume for a job in the same style you text a friend to join you for a drink? Interestingly, my law thesis and my statistics thesis have been “judged” to be written by completely different people. I know that this is not the case. You’ve been very vocal about obtaining and filing for blockchain and crypto-related patents. Some opponents claim that your patent-seeking behavior doesn’t reflect Nakamoto’s cypherpunk ethos. They use this as “proof” that you’re not Satoshi. Is the notion of intellectual property ownership contrary to cypherpunk ethos? If so, how has your thinking evolved from the early days of Bitcoin’s development? Satoshi Nakamoto did not follow a cyberpunk ethos. That is a fake narrative that took hold just because early followers of Bitcoin were cyperpunks and cryptoanarchists. In truth, Bitcoin was never designed to bypass law. It is exactly the opposite. Bitcoin was designed to create an immutable evidence trail that could not be degraded into something like EGold I was on the cyberpunk mailing list. But I also respect the law. On April 24th, cypherpunk Jameson Lopp released information comparing your online activity with Satoshi’s from 2009-2010. Crypto Insidersays: “Upon clear comparative analysis, it appears that Craig Wright can’t be Satoshi Nakamoto.” Lopp does say that his study is not conclusive evidence of anything, but just another piece of the puzzle. Can you explain the error (if there is one) in Lopp’s analysis? Lopp seeks to create an anarchist system outside the law. His so-called analysis is one of the word I’ve ever seen. He fails to even note that blog posts are not written and loaded at the same time stated. Blog posts are often pre-written, and like my current ones, set to be published at a later time. Consequently, the date and times of blog publishing has nothing to do with my sleeping activities, and cannot necessarily be correlated to the dates and times when emails are being sent. BSV & Satoshi “Libel” Lawsuits Next, I’d like to ask a few questions about your pending lawsuits and your plans to prove your identity. Also, I’m hoping you can help readers (and myself) understand a little bit more about Bitcoin SV. Can you please provide a couple of specific examples of how BSV aligns with the Bitcoin White Paper and is the real Bitcoin? Please use as little technical language as possible. This reporter is a non-tech person, just seeking to understand and explain it as simply as possible to readers. Bitcoin is set in stone. It doesn’t change the protocol. Adding things like SegWit changes the white paper’s definition of a coin (which is a “chain of digital signatures.”) The SegWit fork created an air drop of a new coin (SegWit coin) that is no longer Bitcoin. Bitcoin does not fork. There are no protocol changes in Bitcoin. That is what set in stone means. Miners can vote on rules, not protocol. To change rules, this alters the way that blocks are discovered but not transactions. The basic protocol in Bitcoin is one that is set and remains forever. This is important to ensure Bitcoin is reliable money forever. Bitcoin also must massively scale on-chain, in order to support higher transaction volumes and more transaction fees for miners. As block rewards continue to halve every few years, miners need to earn more in transaction fees so they remain profitable and continue sustain the chain. That is a critical aspect of Bitcoin’s original vision, not Layer 2/Lightning Network disasters which take the transactions off the chain. Is your current lawsuit against Peter McCormack and Vitalik Buterin – among others – only a libel/defamation suit? Or will you prove that you are Satoshi conclusively to a judge? In an interview with Bloomberg, you told the reporter that this lawsuit “will give me the chance to prove my credentials in front of a judge rather than being judged by Twitter.” What credentials will you be seeking to prove? And can you tell us anything about the evidence you’ll present or how you plan to do so? The cases are for libel. I will present my evidence to the court, and not talk about it in advance. But I will explain why I chose to fight these battles in court rather than online. Social media battles never get you anywhere, because people just make up information and fight with memes. But evidence law has been developed over centuries to make decisions based only upon real evidence that can be authenticated and is reliable. Also using the court system is a way to reject the “code is law” movement, which is driven by misguided anarchists who have no true understanding of Bitcoin. Bitcoin is designed to work within law and was never designed as an anarchist system, and was not developed for people to buy and sell drugs or other illicit material. Therefore, I choose to win my disputes in court, with real evidence and real law. Until you get your day in court, the court of public opinion is the only one that matters. Obviously, claims like the ones McCormack, McAfee, and Vitalik made against you and your integrity cost you heavily, with Binance, Kraken, and Shapeshift all delisting BSV and temporarily tanking the coin’s price. I can understand your intense frustration at influential people in the crypto space slandering your name and your coin. Can you provide any information, proof, or evidence now – to all the Twitter and other social media judges out there – that might help to change the narrative or at least cause some readers to question their preconceived judgements about you and your claims? You’re wrong in saying the court of public opinion is all that matters. Truth is what matters, and truth always wins out in the end. Libel cases are all about truth. It is better to have one source and that will be the UK court – of course those who don’t really want to know the truth will stick to their guns but that will become increasingly irrelevant in the face of that decision. Binance, Kraken and ShapeShift made a big mistake in ganging up against BSV. By delisting BSV because they do not like me personally, they hurt the public market and investment value of many people around the world who have nothing to do with me. That’s market manipulation. BSV will recover and grow because it is the original Bitcoin. People should form their feelings about BSV because of its long term utility to build real value, not because of speculation and not based on decisions of some unethical exchanges. A CoinGeek article says, “BSV is the only real Bitcoin because it follows Satoshi’s Vision and as such is the only one that can scale to meet whatever the future can throw at it. Evidence of this will be amply available at the upcoming CoinGeek conference in Toronto on May 29-30.” Can you tell us anything about that evidence now? Bitcoin must massively scale. That is the original vision and only BSV can accomplish this. The CoinGeek Toronto conference will be full of scaling news and businesses explaining why BSV’s massive scaling plan leads them to build their enterprise applications on BSV. Come to Toronto to see. You correctly predicted the downfall of Tether, so I have to ask if you have some predictions about what will happen to other coins if/when you prove that you are Satoshi Nakamoto. In a recent article, a Bitcoinist journalist asks the question: “would we all eschew Bitcoin if we foundout that he had been the inventor?” He concludes that we – the bitcoin community – would not. Do you have any predictions about what will happen to Bitcoin (BTC) if/when you, Dr. Wright, definitively prove that you are Satoshi Nakamoto? (both what will happen to the community and the price of the coin).Do you anticipate the price of BSV to increase significantly following the upcoming CoinGeek conference? How about after your lawsuit against those who defamed you on social media?In your vision of the future, is there room for more than one blockchain and more than one cryptocurrency? Or will one (presumably BSV from your lens) super-cede all others? This is the mistake you and everyone else is making – focusing on price. We do not focus on the price of other coins or even of BSV. We focus on building Bitcoin to be the global blockchain and the world’s new money. When that comes, everything else follows – including real price value. But you have to build real utility. And yes, Bitcoin [BSV] will be the single global blockchain and the dominant electronic cash for the world. Do you have any plans for the 1.1 million BTC in the Tulip Trust? Should we expect to see it move on January 1st, 2020? I don’t ask you about your finances, and people should stop asking me about mine. Following UP Of course, I had to follow up, and I video recorded that interview. You can read a transcript of that interview, along with a few of my thoughts on the topic here. I will continue to write about it and provide a link to my CCN article when it’s published. " " Craig Wright Interview 2 – Plus Notes & Commentary By nrdgrl007 June 8, 2019 Previously, I posted a transcript of a conversation I had with Dr. Craig S. Wright. I was interviewing the man who claims to be Satoshi Nakamoto – inventor of Bitcoin and author of the Bitcoin white paper – for CCN. The intent of my interview was to ask Wright some direct questions and get his direct answers, not to interject my own biases upon him. I haven’t seen Wright address a lot of the questions I asked him, so I wanted to give our educated readership the opportunity to make up their own minds about Wright’s claims… This post is going to be different though. This time, I am still providing Wright’s unedited responses (in red), along with my original questions and statements (in gray), but I’m also adding my commentary, in pink. I hope you’ll enjoy! Setting up for the video interview, Ed Pownall tells me to let him know when my camera guy arrives. I tell him: I’m my camera guy. He’s disappointed. I’m freelance and working solo. I never misled them and said otherwise, but I guess it’s not what they were expecting. I feel bad about that. My confidence starts off low. I set up my tripod, move some furniture to in front of the CoinGeek screen so we can sit and have a casual conversation. Ed gets Dr. Wright. Wright comes in, Ed introduces us. He says, “she’s freelance, but for CCN” – reiterating that I’m obviously low-budget. Ugh! Craig sits. I’ve forgotten to mic us. I quickly plug in my mics, and we start recording. Interview Transcript Nicole: “I’m Nicole with CCN, and I’m here today with Dr. Craig Wright in Toronto at the CoinGeek Scaling conference. Dr. Wright, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me today” Wright: “You’re welcome” Nicole: “And for your invitation to the CoinGeek conference here in Toronto.” Wright: “Again, you’re welcome.” Nicole: “And for anyone interested in the questions and answers from my previous correspondence with Dr. Wright, I will have a link to the full text of that conversation in the description and a transcription of this conversation as well. So that being said, I do have some follow-up questions.” “And first, shortly after you initially agreed to talk with me – at Oxford discussing your detractors and cryptomedia, you singled out CCN, and uh said CCN is ‘owned by a group of people who are backing alt-chains, who are backing multiple coins, who are backing unregulated and uncontrolled exchanges’ ” Craig: “You mean like most of the exchanges, or sorry, bucket shops.” Nicole: “okay, Yes, as you said in our previous correspondence, that was a term that you used. So, my question is…” Craig: “It’s not just a term. It’s actually a term in law. Um, these aren’t regulated by definition they’re bucket shops. They do wash trading, they facilitate illegal trades, in fact, um I think at the moment 30% of the trade through Binance and Bitfinex actually happens to be, Islamic Migrab and also Syrian fighters. So basically, 30% of the current funding in Bitfinex is actually terrorist funding. Doing the analysis and whatever else and about 17% is in people smuggling. So basically what that is is taking older women and forcing them into labor, and younger women and forcing them into sex slavery. And they wash the money and trade it through that, so what you’re really seeing is Tether used as a means, now that Liberty Reserve has been gone and e-Gold is gone – of taking those people’s funds and legitimizing them. So yes, their bucket shops.” [We’re only two minutes in and he’s already run away with the conversation. This is going to be rough.] Nicole: Okay, okay, well, that is… Craig: “And I notice you’ve got ‘hardcore cypherpunk’” [he’s referring to my shirt, which says ‘hardcore cypherpunk’], “but does that mean you don’t want law at all?” Nicole: “No, sir…” Craig: “Good” Nicole: “It just means I support privacy-enhancing technologies.” Craig: “So, privacy requires law by definition. Anonymity is different. So, what these other people want is anonymous. They don’t want privacy. They don’t want to be traced. Why they want not to be traced is very simple: because you go to jail for a long time when you get women addicted to heroin so that you can make them sex slaves, and that’s where a lot of this money is going. When you’re saying you support privacy, do you support people forcing sex slavery?” [Who would say ‘yes’ to this question??] Nicole: “No, of course not.” Craig: “So, there’s your question. So, do you support the right for terrorism?” Nicole: “I suppose that would depend on the definition of terrorism.” [To be clear, the word ‘terrorism’ refers to politically-motivated violence. I know this because I’ve studied the subject academically. But in casual use, ‘terrorism’ often refers to any kind of sensational violence or action against a governing body or ‘state’. And really, just about everything is political in one way or another. Under some understandings, creating a new currency system to undermine the central banks would absolutely be considered terrorism, and I want to be very clear: I absolutely support that (ie Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies). Also, a lot of ‘terrorism’ charges are trumped-up drug charges. The state can and has argued that money spent on purchasing drugs funds cartels and cartels enact political violence. Therefore, if you’ve ever purchased ‘illegal’ drugs, you’ve funded terrorism. Since I do support humans’ right to put whatever they want into their own bodies, I cannot unequivocally say that I don’t support the right for terrorism.] Craig: “So, women and children – I spent some time in the Congo where there were 12-year-olds with guns. Do you support that?” [12 is pretty young, but kids grow up a lot faster in other parts of the world. Of course I think kids should be kids and not be given guns and taught violence from a young age, but some of that is cultural, and I try not to inject my cultural bias or pass judgement on others. Hence, me doing this interview in the first place.] Nicole: “Um, no, but actually my question…” Craig: “Do you support where people in Rwanda had their arms cut off because they weren’t the right racial group?” Nicole: “Of course not.” Craig: “That’s terrorism. Do you support funding them?” [All of those examples are ‘terrorism,’ but he’s also leaving some out.] Nicole: “No” Craig: “Do you support the terror groups that have come into the US – for people who have nothing to do with any of this including blowing up an Islamic mosque because they didn’t agree with the hardcore radical group?” [For the record, I never support violence or harming other humans or beings. Motivation is irrelevant.] Nicole: “Actually, I’m not wanting to argue with you on the exchanges or even really discuss it. What I’d like to know is why you singled-out CCN? If there was a catalyst while you were at Oxford, if there was a catalyst that sort of led to that…” Craig: “It’s your own hit-pieces. Look at what your media is. You’re supporting pumping coins on wash exchanges. That enables – it enables these people to get things like Tether out. It enables crime. None of this is about building an ecosystem. It is funded by criminals who basically want to get their money in and out. So a good percentage of this comes from Russian State. There’s a reason why the Russian state loves Ethereum and ICOs. Because there’s a lot of money coming out of there that is actually tainted. So, let’s see articles, what article have you said about building an ecosystem – not cryptoshitties or something like this – real building; real securities, where people are protected. Not some guy who like in Token2049 sat there and said “I raised 50 million US dollars. I was able to democratize finance because I was able to get money from all these people who would never invest or be able to in a regulated system. They gave me 50 million dollars, and my project, well, there was no hype for it, but it’s okay. I can sit here until I have another idea with that 50 million dollars now.” Do you know that’s called fraud? That guy raised money on a promise. He actually actively sat there saying how he raised money in small amounts from pensioners, from the unemployed, from disabled people, whatever else – who weren’t able to act – who weren’t actually registered investors and said he’s able to steal from thousands of people because it’s democratizing finance, and you guys gave him a big write up – in the past. And said his wonderful idea about this huge thing he’s building that never got built, never hired someone. He took all $50 million dollars and is retired. That’s what you built. Now, where is your thing about someone actually building a regulated exchange? Where people aren’t ripped off?” Nicole: “Everyone from CCN is an independent journalist…” Craig: “Um-Hmm” Nicole: “and every piece is independent, unique to that person. It’s not necessarily speaking to CCN’s ownership or CCN as a whole.” Craig: “But they allow it. It’s an organization. What you’re saying is: ‘We’re CCN. We don’t care. It’s independent. We let anything go out there no matter how scammy and fraudy apart from one thing.”… apart from one thing. Where are the articles on the real exchanges, the ones that are regulated, the ones that make sure that people don’t lose their money?” [CSW doesn’t seem to understand that not all media organizations are propaganda arms, like CoinGeek. I’m not saying CoinGeek doesn’t put out some good information. In fact, I’m sure they do. It’s just that 100% of what is printed on that site is immediately discredited because it’s all part of a machine, designed to make people reading it want to buy BSV and dump any and all other coins and holdings. CoinGeek is not a news site. News sites are supposed to be unbiased, and report only on news, without passing judgment. Journalists from different political persuasions report op-ed pieces, and as long as they uphold journalism standards, unbiased outlets publish them. CCN is an unbiased outlet. Different contributors have different opinions. That’s allowed.] Nicole: “Well, perhaps that’s something I should look into. Do you have some suggestions for exchanges I should consider?” Craig: “I would love to give you some real ones.” [I’m dead serious here. I do want to know which exchanges CSW thinks are not ‘bucket shops.’ I’d like to look into this and do some reporting on it. There are holes in crypto-media, and I’d like to do my part to fill them. I’m not placating him. I want his input. No matter what else he is, he’s a smart person, and it would be unwise to completely disregard anything he says.] Nicole: “So, I do want to move to our next question, and that is, in our email correspondence, you talked about the importance of know your customer and anti-money laundering laws.” Craig: “Correct” Nicole: “So, why didn’t you, why didn’t you build those into Bitcoin?” Craig: “I did. This is what people are trying to remove. Bitcoin is a system where the identity is firewalled. Read the whitepaper. That’s the, there’s a section in there. The core taking out allows all this. Right now, you’ve seen, if you’d been through any of this yesterday, dev day, Ryan talked about identity systems that can be built right on top of bitcoin. Totally private. No one knows who you are, apart from the KYC entities, apart from the businesses. Allowing you to have full traceability but privacy at the same time. That was right there in the beginning. The nature of bitcoin has an immutable evidence trail. You don’t reuse addresses, but you still have fungibility under the law.” “Fungibility actually means – it’s a legal term – and it means that you are able to trace money. Monetary tracing is actually a requirement of money. It goes right back. So money is legal and fungible when it’s exchanged for valuable consideration without knowledge of fraud. To have no knowledge of fraud, you can’t have an anonymous coin. You need to be able to go to the person and say, ‘Here’s your coffee; here’s my money’ that’s a valuable exchange. If someone gifts you money right now, if someone walks up, that you know even, and gives you 50,000 dollars in US dollars, and says it’s a gift, it’s not fungible. Under law, the police can walk in and say, give me that back. By law. It’s always been that way.” [I can tell CSW thinks I’m younger and dumber than I am. He just defined ‘fungibility’ for me, and I’m a fintech journalist. Fungibility is one of Aristotle’s principles for ‘sound currency.’ I know what it means. Further, he’s kind of splitting hairs here. There is nothing illegal about cash currently. Cash is anonymous, and the government certainly knows that people conduct illegal transactions in cash – heck, even the government conducts illegal transactions using cash. But he has a larger point about governments that are far more corrupt even than the US government, so I’ll let him go ahead and make it…] Nicole: “So, um, can you tell us about the value proposition of bitcoin if it cannot be used anonymously the same way that cash is? Okay, there’s nothing illegal about cash, currently.” Craig: “The value proposition of bitcoin is exactly the same. What we’re doing in SC is the value proposition. The reason e-Gold was shut down was because it became an anonymous crime coin. That goes to zero. What happens one day when they finally get confidential transactions and all the rest working? And you’ve already got the money laundering laws etcetera.” “In Europe, they’re clarifying so that if by the 20thof January next year, you don’t have all these things in place, you’re a criminal – that simple. So if you’re not going to do that, it doesn’t just end in a slow, decline where you can get out. It ends like [snaps fingers] that. You’ll have no value. When those dates hit, and the first exchange is taken down, and it will be – quicker than lightning, quicker than eighteen months, I guarantee you this. Within the next eighteen months, the first exchange is going to get taken down, and when it goes down [snaps fingers lighter this time] that’s BTC. Whatever it is now, 8000 or whatever US dollars, and mere possession will be a crime, exchanges will be a crime, ownership will be a crime. Like e-Gold. E-Gold was worth a lot of money one day, the next day zero, Liberty reserve, zero. It goes one day valuable, next day, nothing.” “Now, Bitcoin on the other hand, has a way of tracing. The Value proposition is we can distribute money globally to anyone legally, cheaper, faster, quicker. We can have micropayments. We can enable people in countries like Africa and India. People who can’t get bank accounts today. Not this bull from people like Samson Mao saying people under 2 dollars a day shouldn’t have bitcoin. They’re the people who should have bitcoin. There are billions of people right now who cannot get money, who cannot get bank accounts, who cannot register their ownership and goods, who cannot sell online, who cannot buy, sell, and trade like we do here in the west and we take for granted.” [Maybe I’m naive, but I think the Bitcoin community as a whole is a little too strong for this. When cryptocurrencies were made illegal in China, the demand and value went up because the people feared their government so much that they desperately wanted decentralized currency. Bitcoin thrives on political unrest. And the value of a commodity would not go to zero because owning that commodity is illegal. Think about that. Decreased supply and increased demand does not equate to lower values of the commodity in question. Take drugs for example.] [Drugs are illegal. Owning them is a crime. But because collectively as a society, anyone who operates in the underground knows that you exchange currency (or whatever value you and the other party or parties agree upon) for drugs. Different drugs have different values depending on physical location and availability of the substance. You can’t openly trade them in marketplaces like Amazon; that’s true. But that doesn’t mean their value goes to zero. I have a feeling Bitcoin will be the same way if the events CSW describes do transpire.] Nicole: “the unbanked” [I’ve just let him know that I actually do follow him and at least have some knowledge of what he’s talking about here. I’m not just a silly girl, doing a silly piece. If you watch the video, look at his face. He’s surprised.] Craig: “The unbanked. All of them who can access on not these old phones like people think but feature phones will be able to do this simply. Not because people sit there going that’s unsecure, because it’s unsecure for large amounts of money, but people who only have a few dollars don’t want to pay $4 in fees or $40 in fees. They don’t want to pay a cent.” [He has a point. Bitcoin was designed with migrant workers who send money across international borders in mind. They aren’t sending thousands or tens of thousands of dollars. They send hundreds, maybe, MAYBE single thousands. They shouldn’t have to pay high fees to the banks or institutions. That is everything that’s wrong with the world. The rich continue to get richer on the backs of the poor who continue to get poorer. I’m glad CSW sees and acknowledges that. He makes some humanitarian points that I do not disagree with, and I think that’s worth noting.] ” If you’ve spent any time in Africa or India or whatever else then what you will see is people, women, children, etc who go into stores and buy boxes of matches so that they can sell individual matches. That’s trade in commerce. But they can’t do that unless they have a way of doing it. People trade, right now, for things like fish and whatever else in markets. And they can exchange on mobile phones, but they can’t pay for it and lock it in. With bitcoin they can.” “The aspect everyone is missing, that you’re forgetting, ‘code is law’ is stupid. It is the dumbest thing you ever want to do because people matter. Bitcoin was designed with all these escrow contracts and whatever else, not to get rid of people, to integrate us, to build society. Someone like you could build a reputation as an arbitrator and then people can come to you to sort problems. Not fix the code. Not cold impersonal computers that are set no matter what. People you can talk to and explain problems. Things happen. What happens if you set up a contract and something goes wrong? Do you want a way of negotiating your way out? Do you want to say, I’m sorry I broke my leg, I couldn’t make it, please give me another day? Is that reasonable.” Nicole: “Of course it is.” [I too think ‘code is law’ is stupid. So do a lot of people who work in the blockchain space, including Vlad Zamfir and to a lesser extent even Vitalik Buterin. But it is important to note that while some people are trying to build smart contracts into everything, not everyone is. Human mediators will still have to play a huge role in the world after blockchain is widely implemented. No, we (humans) won’t operate cash registers or toll booths, but any industry that does involve human labor will have to include human arbitrators. Few people are saying otherwise. People do matter, but this argument is a classic CSW bamboozle.] Craig: “My child got sick. I couldn’t make it, I’m an hour late, please don’t close my contract. Is that reasonable?” Nicole: “Yes, of course I think it is. I’m sorry. I do have to move on. I have so many questions and such a small amount of time. So I do have some questions to follow up about Satoshi.” Craig: “Mm, hmm.” Nicole: “So you’ve said that signing a message with a PGP key won’t prove anything, and I can understand that. But, wouldn’t it be more convincing…” Craig: “To whom?” Nicole: “To naysayers” Craig: “To people who want the idea of ‘code is law,’ yes. To people who want to say mere possession is ownership, to people who want to say Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t be in jail because he didn’t break the law because other people have his keys. And they can sign them proving that he doesn’t have the keys so therefore it’s not him.” Nicole: “I understand your argument but I mean for people who argue that you are not Satoshi…” [I do completely understand his argument, btw. He’s saying that if YOU somehow had Satoshi’s private keys and signed a message using Satoshi’s PGP-key, that only means that you have the keys, not that you’re Satoshi. I think it’s funny because if Craig Wright ever gets access to those keys and then signs a message using them, I think the same people who are saying now that ‘proof is in signing a message with those keys’ will be saying, ‘signing a message with the keys doesn’t prove that he’s Satoshi, only that he has the keys.’ And then CSW is going to say ‘that’s what I said!’ Cryptographic evidence though would go a long way for persuading the public, and I think if CSW actually had it, he would provide it. He’s too thin-skinned to be just tolerating this when he could do something about it.] Craig: “No, what you’re saying is for people who don’t want me to be Satoshi because they want anonymity. You know how much funding there is to make a criminal store? You know Mr. Maxwell used to be an anti-seg member, and leader of Ulsich and others, and what his really saying, and I’m happy for you to put this on, and I’m happy to go into court and libel and we’ll present evidence. What Mr. Maxwell and others really want is they want ransomware, and extortionware that cannot be traced, that’s what anonymity is for them. They want to lock company computers and force people to pay. Right now, bitcoin ends up in jail for a lot of hackers and criminals. When they do this, they tried it, Mr. Maxwell helped. He’s got a background in this stuff. So, unfortunately, he’s also a weasel and when Aaron Schwartz went to jail, Mr. Maxwell managed to weasel out by coming to Canada and whatever else. But criminals like this want a system that enables them to anonymously make money, anonymously steal, corrupt, basically engage in every dirty thing society has and there’s a lot of money out there for that.” Nicole: “So, I understand that’s why you’re not signing a message with the PGP key. You have…” Craig: “No, No, I’m not signing with the PGP key because that’s not evidence. We have a system called law and evidence. Evidence doesn’t come because I’ve got a key and I possess something. I’m going to court. ..” Nicole: “Okay, that’s what my next questions is about. So, you say that ‘evidence law has been developed over centuries to make decisions based only upon real evidence that can be authenticated and is reliable.'” [This was fun. He’s interrupted me several times at this point, and I finally took my chance to cut in on him. I was laughing on the inside.] Craig: “Yes.” Nicole: “So, what kinds of evidence could someone provide to prove identity as Satoshi?” Craig: “Everything I’ve put out there. Like it or not, my entire history that is easily discredited. So if you want to be Satoshi, you need an entire history going back to 2005 with everything that matches my life. You need to have stopped working in 2009 in January. You need to have been working on digital money before that. You need to have a foundation in law, mathematics, computer science. You need to actually not be a cypherpunk. You need to be able to show all of that. And here’s the thing, if you can discredit one little bit, if you can show one little bit of my history that’s fake, I get to wear an orange suit. If you get to yell out there and say you’re Satoshi, I get to put you in an orange suit.” [I’m not sure about this. It does confuse me that Craig is risking prison time to prove he’s Satoshi. I wonder if he’s terminally ill and agreed to all of this with nChain because he knows he won’t have to spend decades behind bars, but that’s just speculation. I also wonder who else is saying he or she or they are Satoshi that Craig is suing. I’m pretty sure CSW is the only person publicly claiming to be Satoshi right now. The people he’s suing are just saying that Craig is not Satoshi. Unless he means he’s going to sue everyone who says ‘we are all Satoshi.’ If that’s the case, I’ll expect my summons any day.] Nicole: “So you say that you need to not have been a cypherpunk, and that was something that came up in our first conversation. You said that…” Craig: “James A Dulld was a cypherpunk, and unfortunately, he twisted many of the arguments. The typical anti-government bit was where I stated how I alighted James’ rant and the bit that no one seems to link is James’ rant. So the ‘alighted’ statement means to cut short or curtly. It’s my wife likes to point out that I should use words that people understand. I read too many old books. And unfortunately there’s all these words that people think are misspelled that are actually real words.” [I’m actually not offended by his defining the term ‘alighted’. I didn’t know what it meant. My eyes are rolling a bit because he’s talking about reading old books and using fancy words, but he is an academic and some degree of pomposity is to be expected.] Nicole: “So, in 2016, you told Andrew O’Hagan, the author of The Satoshi Affair that ‘we were all using pseudonyms, that’s the cypherpunk way.'” Craig: “Umm, I wouldn’t believe everything the way – Andrew wanted to make a book that painted everything in his three parts so Andrew didn’t sign the NDA and Andrew didn’t end up doing what he was sort of initially bred for, which I wouldn’t have been out. He would have been following us as we produced patents over the next decade uhh, but Andrew wanted to basically. He already had a story and he fitted me into it. So like my mother made a statement. My mother said I dreamed big and came up with whacky ideas when I was a child. Andrew put that down as ‘Craig’s mother says he lies.’ So it’s basically, you take something that has a grain of truth and you make it into a fiction.” [He wasn’t expecting me to bring up the Satoshi Affair, or Andrew O’Hagan. It’s old news, but I haven’t been able to find Wright’s response to the whole thing, so I think it’s still worth talking about. No one has given me guidelines for anything that’s off-limits during this interview. To go further into the O’Hagan piece though, it’s long, but anyone who follows the Satoshi story should read it. I was lucky enough to stumble upon it because another CCN journalist mentioned it in a Slack channel general discussion board about a week before I conducted this interview. HUGE shout out to Greg Thompson!] Nicole: “Okay, so I’m sorry just a question. You said that you did not create bitcoin as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis…” Craig: “You can’t have it as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis because it started, and I’ve said this, before in 2007. Beginning of 2007. So it isn’t a reaction. Read the Genesis block article. It isn’t a reaction to that. Because a reaction to a statement by Chancellor Dali, saying ‘I am going to nationalize the banks unless they do what I say.’ He said that. He said, ‘I will renationalize the banks if they don’t do what I say.'” Nicole: “So you did tell, I’m sorry, perhaps you did tell Andrew O’Hagan that you saw the crisis coming. Is that true?” Craig: “No, it’s not true.” [Note: Andrew O’Hagan: I expect you’ve moved far beyond this and are not following this story anymore. Even if you are, it’s highly unlikely you’ll stumble across my rambling notes on my interview with CSW, but on the off-chance you see this, please contact me! I have so many questions for you. If you want an NDA, I’ll sign one. You can tell me things off-the-record, and I’ll take them to my grave. (This goes for anyone else too btw). If anyone reading this knows or can contact Andrew O’Hagan, I’ll be eternally grateful.] Nicole: “Alright, so…” Craig: “Andrew, we talked about a few things, and I said there are a lot of problems in the economic system at the time. Credit fault swaps were problematic especially with the inability to actually value assets, and we discussed those things. That’s not the same as what he put down.” [He’s back-pedaling. CSW doesn’t want to call O’Hagan a liar directly. Something is going on here, but we’re almost out of time, and I have to wrap it up. I want to investigate this more.] Nicole: “So one more question and then I know you have to go.” Craig: “Mhmm.” Nicole: “Mike Hearn once asked Satoshi if the Electronic Funds Transfer law would apply to Bitcoin. And Satoshi said, ‘I’m not a lawyer, and I can’t possibly answer that.'” Craig: “So I finished my masters in law in sort of the 2008, beginning of 2009. Now everyone says that means I’m a lawyer. I wasn’t. It was in 2013 that I did college of law. So I followed up, and I did my training to be a barrister and soliciter years later. Now, as an academic who teaches law, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m certainly not an American lawyer or your lawyer. Now, at the time, in 2009, I was not a lawyer. You became a lawyer not by doing a law degree but by doing practice. And it was on;y when I went to the college of law and did barrister training and etc and then became I’m now what is called an academic lawyer, so I’m a member of the society of legal scholars and other such things there. So when I spoke to everyone in the past I was not a lawyer. I know that’s a distinction that many people don’t get. So an academic who teaches law, may not be a lawyer unless you have done practice training, you’re not a lawyer. Do you see the difference?” [There is a difference between having a law degree and being a lawyer. The difference is in practice. He’s not wrong, but he’s deflecting. BSV (Bitcoin Satoshi Vision) is hinged upon Craig’s claim that he’s Satoshi. Much of the small community that supports that token would vanish if they didn’t believe that claim. For every question I could ask about contradictions between Craig and Satoshi, Craig would have an answer, a way to discredit the discord. That’s his job, and he’s good at it.] Nicole: “Yes, I do. Okay, well, I know that you have to go. I have so many more questions, but we are out of time. So thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today.” Craig: “You’re welcome.” After the Interview… I ask Craig if it would be alright if I send my remaining questions through Ed Pownall to him, and he says yes. I haven’t done it because after analyzing all of the data from our two interviews, I’m certain there’s no question that would really stump him. Craig and Ed are talking about the CCN hit piece on BSV that ran that morning. Craig hasn’t seen it yet. Ed wonders why there’s anything to criticize when the value of BSV has only been going up. They’re not talking to me, but I chime in anyway. “I’m not writing a hit piece,” I look at Craig and say. I won’t quote him because I’m not sure of his exact words when he responded, but I think it was something like: ~ I know, and I have nothing against you personally. “Nor I you,” I tell him, and I don’t. Truly, I wanted to write this piece because I thought there were questions that he deserved a direct forum to answer. And not from BSV’s propaganda arm. I thought there was a media imbalance in coverage about CSW and his coin. I still do. I wanted to try and be a part of the solution. Finally, and I’ve said this before, I think it’s important that when we criticize people, we try and remember their humanity. Craig Wright is a human. He deserves some human kindness, even when he doesn’t show it. Two wrongs do not make a right, and someone has to take the first step to be the bigger person. I want to see more compassion in the way people treat each other. I’m trying to demonstrate the empathy and kindness that I think is too often missing in the digital age. Love wins. " " I Chased Craig Wright to Toronto for an Interview. Full Text Transcription. By nrdgrl007 June 3, 2019 When I first approached Dr. Craig S. Wright’s team for an interview with him on behalf of CCN, they were very courteous and responsive. I emailed them questions, and Ed Pownall told me I’d have responses shortly. However, before I got them, Craig Wright publicly slammed CCN (and other crypto media) while he was at Oxford. CCN responded. Weeks later, Mr. Pownall contacted me again. He asked if we could still do the interview. I said of course, but when I pitched it to my editors at CCN, they said we needed to ask some follow-up questions. Of course we did. Reading over Wright’s responses to my initial questions, I knew I needed to get the follow-up in-person. As luck would have it, in our initial correspondence, Wright told me to come to Toronto to find out (some answers). So I contacted Mr. Pownall and asked if I could get a press pass and an in-person video interview with Craig Wright. He said yes to both. So I went. CCN will publish the video I captured for them and my accompanying article this weekend (6/7/19). I will admit though, the video is not the highest quality since I was alone and filming with my iPhone on a tripod. Further, there are times when Wright walks all over me and doesn’t answer the questions I asked. The following is the transcript of my interview with Dr. Craig S. Wright, the man who created Bitcoin SV, and according to him the original Bitcoin as well. It is a direct interview. I asked him questions, and he answered. Craig Wright Video Interview Transcription Nicole: “I’m Nicole with CCN and I’m here today with Dr. Craig Wright in Toronto at the CoinGeek Scaling conference. Dr. Wright, thank you so much for agreeing to meet with me today” Wright: “You’re welcome” Nicole: “And for your invitation to the CoinGeek conference here in Toronto.” Wright: “Again, you’re welcome.” Nicole: “And for anyone interested in the questions and answers from my previous correspondence with Dr. Wright, I will have a link to the full text of that conversation in the description and a transcription of this conversation as well. So that being said, I do have some follow-up questions.” “And first, shortly after you initially agreed to talk with me – at Oxford discussing your detractors and cryptomedia, you singled out CCN, and uh said CCN is ‘owned by a group of people who are backing alt-chains, who are backing multiple coins, who are backing unregulated and uncontrolled exchanges’ Craig: You mean like most of the exchanges, or sorry, bucket shops. Nicole: okay, Yes, as you said in our previous correspondence, that was a term that you used. So, my question is… Craig: It’s not just a term. It’s actually a term in law. Um, these aren’t regulated by definition they’re bucket shops. They do wash trading, they facilitate illegal trades, in fact, um I think at the moment 30% of the trade through Binance and Bitfinex actually happens to be, Islamic Migrab and also Syrian fighters. So basically, 30% of the current funding in Bitfinex is actually terrorist funding. Doing the analysis and whatever else and about 17% is in people smuggling. So basically what that is is taking older women and forcing them into labor, and younger women and forcing them into sex slavery. And they wash the money and trade it through that, so what you’re really seeing is Tether used as a means, now that Liberty Reserve has been gone and e-Gold is gone – of taking those people’s funds and legitimizing them. So yes, their bucket shops. Nicole: Okay, okay, well, that is… Craig: “And I notice you’ve got ‘hardcore cypherpunk’” [he’s referring to my shirt, which says ‘hardcore cypherpunk’], “but does that mean you don’t want law at all?” Nicole: “No, sir…” Craig: “Good” Nicole: “It just means I support privacy-enhancing technologies.” Craig: “So, privacy requires law by definition. Anonymity is different. So, what these other people want is anonymous. They don’t want privacy. They don’t want to be traced. Why they want not to be traced is very simple: because you go to jail for a long time when you get women addicted to heroin so that you can make them sex slaves, and that’s where a lot of this money is going. When you’re saying you support privacy, do you support people forcing sex slavery? “ Nicole: “No, of course not.” Craig: “So, there’s your question. So, do you support the right for terrorism?” Nicole: “I suppose that would depend on the definition of terrorism.” Craig: “So, women and children – I spent some time in the Congo where there were 12-year-olds with guns. Do you support that?” Nicole: “Um, no, but actually my question…” Craig: “Do you support where people in Rwanda had their arms cut off because they weren’t the right racial group?” Nicole: “Of course not.” Craig: “That’s terrorism. Do you support funding them?” Nicole: “No” Craig: “Do you support the terror groups that have come into the US – for people who have nothing to do with any of this including blowing up an Islamic mosque because they didn’t agree with the hardcore radical group?” Nicole: Actually, I’m not wanting to argue with you on the exchanges or even really discuss it. What I’d like to know is why you singled-out CCN? If there was a catalyst while you were at Oxford, if there was a catalyst that sort of led to that… Craig: It’s your own hit-pieces. Look at what your media is. You’re supporting pumping coins on wash exchanges. That enables – it enables these people to get things like Tether out. It enables crime. None of this is about building an ecosystem. It is funded by criminals who basically want to get their money in and out. So a good percentage of this comes from Russian State. There’s a reason why the Russian state loves Ethereum and ICOs. Because there’s a lot of money coming out of there that is actually tainted. So, let’s see articles, what article have you said about building an ecosystem – not cryptoshitties or something like this – real building; real securities, where people are protected. Not some guy who like in Token2049 sat there and said “I raised 50 million US dollars. I was able to democratize finance because I was able to get money from all these people who would never invest or be able to in a regulated system. They gave me 50 million dollars, and my project, well, there was no hype for it, but it’s okay. I can sit here until I have another idea with that 50 million dollars now.” Do you know that’s called fraud? That guy raised money on a promise. He actually actively sat there saying how he raised money in small amounts from pensioners, from the unemployed, from disabled people, whatever else – who weren’t able to act – who weren’t actually registered investors and said he’s able to steal from thousands of people because it’s democratizing finance, and you guys gave him a big write up – in the past. And said his wonderful idea about this huge thing he’s building that never got built, never hired someone. He took all $50 million dollars and is retired. That’s what you built. Now, where is your thing about someone actually building a regulated exchange? Where people aren’t ripped off? Nicole: Everyone from CCN is an independent journalist… Craig: Um-Hmm Nicole: and every piece is independent, unique to that person. It’s not necessarily speaking to CCN’s ownership or CCN as a whole. Craig: But they allow it. It’s an organization. What you’re saying is: ‘We’re CCN. We don’t care. It’s independent. We let anything go out there no matter how scammy and fraudy apart from one thing.”… apart from one thing. Where are the articles on the real exchanges, the ones that are regulated, the ones that make sure that people don’t lose their money? Nicole: Well, perhaps that’s something I should look into. Do you have some suggestions for exchanges I should consider? Craig: I would love to give you some real ones. Nicole: So, I do want to move to our next question, and that is, in our email correspondence, you talked about the importance of know your customer and anti-money laundering laws. Craig: Correct Nicole: So, why didn’t you, why didn’t you build those into Bitcoin? Craig: I did. This is what people are trying to remove. Bitcoin is a system where the identity is firewalled. Read the whitepaper. That’s the, there’s a section in there. The core taking out allows all this. Right now, you’ve seen, if you’d been through any of this yesterday, dev day, Ryan talked about identity systems that can be built right on top of bitcoin. Totally private. No one knows who you are, apart from the KYC entities, apart from the businesses. Allowing you to have full traceability but privacy at the same time. That was right there in the beginning. The nature of bitcoin has an immutable evidence trail. You don’t reuse addresses, but you still have fungibility under the law. Fungibility actually means – it’s a legal term – and it means that you are able to trace money. Monetary tracing is actually a requirement of money. It goes right back. So money is legal and fungible when it’s exchanged for valuable consideration without knowledge of fraud. To have no knowledge of fraud, you can’t have an anonymous coin. You need to be able to go to the person and say, “Here’s your coffee, here’s my money” that’s a valuable exchange. If someone gifts you money right now, if someone walks up, that you know even, and gives you 50,000 dollars in US dollars, and says it’s a gift, it’s not fungible. Under law, the police can walk in and say, give me that back. By law. It’s always been that way. Nicole: So, um, can you tell us about the value proposition of bitcoin if it cannot be used anonymously the same way that cash is? Okay, there’s nothing illegal about cash, currently. Craig: The value proposition of bitcoin is exactly the same. What we’re doing in SC is the value proposition. The reason e-Gold was shut down was because it became an anonymous crime coin. That goes to zero. What happens one day when they finally get confidential transactions and all the rest working. And you’ve already got the money laundering laws etcetera. In Europe, they’re clarifying so that if by the 20thof January next year, you don’t have all these things in place, you’re a criminal – that simple. So if you’re not going to do that, it doesn’t just end in a slow, decline where you can get out. It ends like [snaps fingers] that. You’ll have no value. When those dates hit, and the first exchange is taken down, and it will be – quicker than lightning, quicker than eighteen months, I guarantee you this. Within the next eighteen months, the first exchange is going to get taken down, and when it goes down [snaps fingers lighter this time] that’s BTC. Whatever it is now, 8000 or whatever US dollars, and mere possession will be a crime, exchanges will be a crime, ownership will be a crime. Like e-Gold. E-Gold was worth a lot of money one day, the next day zero, Liberty reserve, zero. It goes one day valuable, next day, nothing. Now, Bitcoin on the other hand, has a way of tracing. The Value proposition is we can distribute money globally to anyone legally, cheaper, faster, quicker. We can have micropayments. We can enable people in countries like Africa and India. People who can’t get bank accounts today. Not this bull from people like Samson Mao saying people under 2 dollars a day shouldn’t have bitcoin. They’re the people who should have bitcoin. There are billions of people right now who cannot get money, who cannot get bank accounts, who cannot register their ownership and goods, who cannot sell online, who cannot buy, sell, and trade like we do here in the west and we take for granted. Nicole: the unbanked Craig: The unbanked. All of them who can access on not these old phones like people think but feature phones will be able to do this simply. Not because people sit there going that’s unsecure, because it’s unsecure for large amounts of money, but people who only have a few dollars don’t want to pay $4 in fees or $40 in fees. They don’t want to pay a cent. If you’ve spent any time in Africa or India or whatever else then what you will see is people, women, children, etc who go into stores and buy boxes of matches so that they can sell individual matches. That’s trade in commerce. But they can’t do that unless they have a way of doing it. People trade, right now, for things like fish and whatever else in markets. And they can exchange on mobile phones, but they can’t pay for it and lock it in. With bitcoin they can. The aspect everyone is missing, that you’re forgetting, code is law is stupid. It is the dumbest thing you ever want to do because people matter. Bitcoin was designed with all these escrow contracts and whatever else, not to get rid of people, to integrate us, to build society. Someone like you could build a reputation as an arbitrator and then people can come to you to sort problems. Not fix the code. Not cold impersonal computers that are set no matter what. People you can talk to and explain problems. Things happen. What happens if you set up a contract and something goes wrong? Do you want a way of negotiating your way out? Do you want to say, I’m sorry I broke my leg, I couldn’t make it, please give me another day? Is that reasonable. Nicole: Of course it is. Craig: My child got sick. I couldn’t make it, I’m an hour late, please don’t close my contract. Is that reasonable? Nicole: Yes, of course I think it is. I’m sorry I do have to move on. I have so many questions and such a small amount of time. So I do have some questions to follow up about Satoshi. Craig: Mm, hmm. Nicole: So you’ve said that signing a message with a PGP key won’t prove anything, and I can understand that. But, wouldn’t it be more convincing… Craig: To whom? Nicole: To naysayers Craig: To people who want the idea of code is law, yes. To people who want to say mere possession is ownership, to people who want to say Ross Ulbricht shouldn’t be in jail because he didn’t break the law because other people have his keys. And they can sign them proving that he doesn’t have the keys so therefore it’s not him. Nicole: I understand your argument but I mean for people who argue that you are not Satoshi Craig: No, what you’re saying is for people who don’t want me to be Satoshi because they want anonymity. You know how much funding there is to make a criminal store? You know Mr. Maxwell used to be an anti-seg member, and leader of Ulsich and others, and what his really saying, and I’m happy for you to put this on, and I’m happy to go into court and libel and we’ll present evidence. What Mr. Maxwell and others really want is they want ransomware, andextortionware that cannot be traced, that’s what anonymity is for them. They want to lock company computers and force people to pay. Right now, bitcoin ends up in jail for a lot of hackers and criminals. When they do this, they tried it, Mr. Maxwell helped. He’s got a background in this stuff. So, unfortunately, he’s also a weasel and when Aaron Schwartz went to jail, Mr. Maxwell managed to weasel out by coming to Canada and whatever else. But criminals like this want a system that enables them to anonymously make money, anonymously steal, corrupt, basically engage in every dirty thing society has and there’s a lto of money out there for that. Nicole: So, I understand that’s why you’re not signing a message with the PGP key. You have Craig: No, No, I’m not signing with the PGP key because that’s not evidence. We have a system called law and evidence. Evidence doesn’t come because I’ve got a key and I possess something. I’m going to court. .. Nicole: Okay, that’s what my next questions is about. So, you say that evidence law has been developed over centuries to make decisions based only upon real evidence that can be authenticated and is reliable. Craig: Yes Nicole: So, what kinds of evidence could someone provide to prove identity as Satoshi? Craig: Everything I’ve put out there. Like it or not, my entire history that is easily discredited. So is you want to be Satoshi you need an entire history going back to 2005 with everything that matches my life. You need to have stopped working in 2009 in January. You need to have been working on digital money before that. You need to have a foundation in law, mathematics, computer science. You need to actually not be a cypherpunk. You need to be able to show all of that. And here’s the thing, if you can discredit one little bit, if you can show one little bit of my history that’s fake, I get to wear an orange suit. If you get to yell out there and say you’re Satoshi, I get to put you in an orange suit. Nicole: So you say that you need to not have been a cypherpunk, and that was something that came up in our first conversation. You said that Craig: James A Dulld was a cypherpunk, and unfortunately, he twisted many of the arguments. The typical anti-government bit was where I stated how I alighted James’ rant and the bit that no one seems to link is James’ rant. So the alighted statement means to cut short or curtly. It’s my wife likes to point out that I should use words that people understand. I read too many old books. And unfortunately there’s all these words that people think are misspelled that are actually real words. Nicole: So, in 2016, you told Andrew O’Hagan, the author of The Satoshi Affair that “we were all using pseudonyms, that’s the cypherpunk way” Craig: Umm, I wouldn’t believe everything the way – Andrew wanted to make a book that painted everything in his three parts so Andrew didn’t sign the NDA and Andrew didn’t end up doing what he was sort of initially bred for, which I wouldn’t have been out. He would have been following us as we produced patents over the next decade uhh, but Andrew wanted to basically. He already had a story and he fitted me into it. So like my mother made a statement. My mother said I dreamed big and came up with whacky ideas when I was a child. Andrew put that down as Craig’s mother says he lies. So it’s basically, you take something that has a grain of truth and you make it into a fiction. Nicole: Okay, so I’m sorry just a question. You said that you did not create bitcoin as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis Craig: You can’t have it as a reaction to the 2008 financial crisis because it started, and I’ve said this, before in 2007. Beginning of 2007. So it isn’t a reaction. Read the Genesis block article. It isn’t a reaction to that. Because a reaction to a statement by chancellor Dali, saying I am going to nationalize the banks unless they do what I say. He said that. He said, I will renationalize the banks if they don’t do what I say Nicole: So you did tell, I’m sorry, perhaps you did tell Andrew O’Hagan that you saw the crisis coming. Is that true? Craig: No, it’s not true. Nicole: Alright, so… Craig: Andrew, we talked about a few things, and I said there are a lot of problems in the economic system at the time. Credit fault swaps were problematic especially with the inability to actually value assets, and we discussed those things. That’s not the same as what he put down. Nicole: So one more question and then I know you have to go. Craig: Mhmm Nicole: Mike Hearn once asked Satoshi if the Electronic Funds Transfer law would apply to bitcoin. And Satoshi said, “I’m not a lawyer, and I can’t possibly answer that.” Craig: So I finished my masters in law in sort of the 2008, beginning of 2009. Now everyone says that means I’m a lawyer. I wasn’t. It was in 2013 that I did college of law. So I followed up, and I did my training to be a barrister and soliciter years later. Now, as an academic who teaches law, I’m not a lawyer, and I’m certainly not an American lawyer or your lawyer. Now, at the time, in 2009, I was not a lawyer. You became a lawyer not by doing a law degree but by doing practice. And it was on;y when I went to the college of law and did barrister training and etc and then became I’m now what is called an academic lawyer, so I’m a member of the society of legal scholars and other such things there. So when I spoke to everyone in the past I was not a lawyer. I know that’s a distinction that many people don’t get. So an academic who teaches law, may not be a lawyer unless you have done practice training, you’re not a lawyer. Do you see the difference? Nicole: Yes, I do. Okay, well I know that you have to go. I have so many more questions, but we are out of time. So thank you very much for agreeing to talk to me today. Craig: You’re welcome. After the Interview… I stayed to attend some of the lectures, interview Calvin Ayre (which I will also post), talked to a lot of BSV proponents, and attended the after-party. I’ll write about all of that. But this was just the direct transcript of my interview with Dr. Craig S. Wright, who – no matter what else he is or has done – was involved in Bitcoin earlier than most of us, and is a highly intelligent human being. .. We are ALL Satoshi. "

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Starbleed: Hidden bug in FPGA chips can help hackers steal critical data
by grarpamp 21 Apr '20

21 Apr '20

On 4/19/20, jim bell <jdb10987(a)yahoo.com> wrote: > https://gulfnews.com/technology/hidden-bug-in-fpga-chips-can-help-hackers-s… https://www.digitalmunition.me/starbleed-bug-impacts-fpga-chips-used-in-dat… The Unpatchable Silicon: A Full Break of the Bitstream Encryption of Xilinx 7-Series FPGAs. https://www.xilinx.com/support/answers/73541.html https://www.usenix.org/system/files/sec20fall_ender_prepub.pdf As usual, "[ir]responsible disclosure" in full effect... you have to leave your ass wide open till August for the details, so the corp and researchers can profit spin and pomp, and so the CIA NSA Mossad and every other thug on the planet with a brain has plenty of time to exploit you. Xilinx is of course wholly untrustable closed source. #OpenHW, #OpenFabs, #OpenAudit "If an attacker has access to the bitstream and breaks its confidentiality, he can reverse-engineer the design, clone intellectual property, or gather information for subsequent attacks e.g., by finding cryptographic keys or other design aspects of a system. If the adversary succeeds in violating the bitstream authenticity, he can then change the functionality, implant hardware Trojans, or even physically destroy the system in which the FPGA is embedded by using configuration outside the specifications. In their study, the researchers could successfully break the bitstream encryption of Xilinx 7-Series and Virtex-6 devices. They then broke the authenticity of the encryption too by encrypting arbitrary messages. Decrypting Bitstream Content Briefly, the researchers used MultiBoot address register WBSTAR to enable the FPGA boot with a different memory address. They then manipulated bitstream to write a single 32-bit word to the register in decrypted form. Hence, they redirect the decrypted bitstream content to the register to read it following a reset. Repeating this process allows an attacker to retrieve the entire bitstream content. Though, retrieving one word at a time may take several hours. For example, it took 3 hours and 42 minutes for the researchers to decrypt and read Kintex-7 XC7K160T bitstream. Breaking Encryption Authenticity In a subsequent attack, the researchers used FPGA as a decryption oracle to encrypt arbitrary messages. Repeating the process allowed them to encrypt the entire bitstream with legit encryption and validation."

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RE: Did Appelbaum Meet Snowden in Hawaii Before Leak?
by Lennie B 21 Apr '20

21 Apr '20

> This book does not appear to have been liberated yet... Astro Noise: A Survival Guide - for Living Under Total Surveillance I was able to obtain a copy of Astro Noise in pdf format by using sci-hub with astro noise’s doi:10.1086/694142 recently if anyone wanting to read it as well. Harcourt, B. E. (2017). Laura Poitras. Astro Noise: A Survival Guide for Living under Total Surveillance. New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2016. 256 pp. Critical Inquiry, 44(1), 188–195.doi:10.1086/694142 url to share this paper: sci-hub.se/10.1086/694142

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Emperor Bill Gates: "mass public gatherings will not come back "at all" until we have mass vaccination" - [PEACE]
by Zenaan Harkness 20 Apr '20

20 Apr '20

"Our" "elite" "leaders" continue to show their true "the elites should have a bigger say in who gets elected" colours: Emperor of the World, Bill Gates, Says There Won’t Be Any Public Gatherings for Next 18 Months. Who Died and Made Him King? https://www.anti-empire.com/emperor-of-the-world-bill-gates-says-there-wont… .. Bill Gates laying down the law: In a new interview, Bill Gates authoritatively states that mass public gatherings will not come back "at all" until we have mass vaccination. Who made him king of the world? https://t.co/u2nTgFZcRg pic.twitter.com/Vmq5udBVJn — Roosh (@rooshv) April 4, 2020 .. The United States Became ‘Starship Troopers’ in Less Than a Month Edward Slavsquat https://www.anti-empire.com/the-united-states-became-starship-troopers-in-l… .. What do you have to do to fight in this "benevolent" war? That’s the best part: Nothing. All you are required to do is sit at home and tweet face mask selfies and call the cops when you see your neighbors taking out the trash. Of course, it is also your duty to trample any dissenting voices. In fact, COVID Gauleiter Anthony Fauci announced on Friday that “the Bug can actually be spread even when people just speak,” so probably all voices are highly discouraged. Keeping silent saves lives. The unspeakable self-inflicted devastation that we will all have to endure as a result of this unequaled bravery will serve as a testament to the glorious and very necessary nature of the war. After all, many, many people will have to sacrifice their lives in order to defeat the Bug. (The Bug will never be fully defeated, of course, but there will be many forthcoming victories, which will be commemorated by national holidays such as Non-Essential Shopping Day.) We’re all in this together and we must all do our part. ..

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Hidden bug in FPGA chips can help hackers steal critical data | Technology – Gulf News
by jim bell 20 Apr '20

20 Apr '20

https://gulfnews.com/technology/hidden-bug-in-fpga-chips-can-help-hackers-s…

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Measure Pi Challenge - π as we "know" it is wrong beyond the 2nd decimal place! - [SCIENCE]
by Zenaan Harkness 19 Apr '20

19 Apr '20

π or "pi" is the ratio of the circumference of a circle, to its diameter. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pi The value of π, as almost universally taught, is not correct, or to be more precise, is only correct to three (as in 3) significant digits only, that is, the fourth digit (3rd decimal place) and onwards is incorrect, and significantly so. :D OK muffas, this is within the ability of many of us to actually measure, so it's time for some science - the original measure pi challenge :) We are taught all sorts of things about pi, and many of them are (and to use the excessively flowery language of the Russian MOD) "not correct". Say what?!#!?? Yes you heard correct - pi as we've all been taught since Archimedes in about 250 B.C. (B.C. already!) is wrong. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedes Oh, and a hat tip to Harry Lear who gave us all the heads up at his Measuring Pi Squaring Phi web cite ;) : http://measuringpisquaringphi.com/ Measure Pi Challenge ==================================================== To kick off this challenge, a meek and humble experiment was in order, no doubt which y'all will handily improve upon, so let's get this ball rolling: One tempered glass tabletop of an apparently circular form and ~1.2m diameter (chamfered) and with visibly extremely smooth surfaces including, most importantly, the external (beyond the chamfer) circumference surface. Also in use are some lengths of wood, set square, metal 1 meter ruler and two metal tape measures (and calculator, pen and duct and paper tape). 0) Ensure length(s) of wood are sufficient length (plus a goodly bit) for the full perimeter/circumference of the table to roll along. 1) Tape a "circumference origin" marker X at one point on the perimeter of circular glass tabletop. Do this on the left hand side of the glass/circle, not the right hand side ;) 2) Stably secure wood length(s) on floor of kitchen/hallway, e.g. with duct tape or through-floor bolts. Again, make a "linear origin" mark Y (with tape and/or pen, or perhaps a jackhammer) near one end of your length of wood on the floor. 3) With a second person to help steady the glass tabletop, carefully align circumference origin X with linear origin Y. 4) Carefully roll the tabletop along the wood, one revolution (i.e., until the circumference origin X lands back on the wood. Mark this second linear point (on the wood), we'll call this point Z. 5) Next, measure the diameter of the tabletop. Once you have measured the distance from Y to Z, you have an approximation of the circumference of your tabletop. Divide circumference by diameter, to get YOUR value of pi! Whatever your results are, they are. For bonus points, use other, better, alternative, or improved, ways to measure pi. Here's the results of tonight's measurements, and see some of reduced size vanity images of this test run. We did more than one set of measurements: - firstly with a 1 meter metal ruler - then with each of two metal tape measures The metal ruler turns out to have markings up to 1.005 meters, that is, it has an extra half centimeter beyond the 1m mark. Neither of us noticed this at first, and the circumference of this tabletop is heading for 4m, and so this extra 5mm was added into the (linear) circumference measurement 3 times when using this metal ruler - in other words, we had an extra 1.5cm on the circumference (not including margins of error), and an extra 0.5cm on the diameter (which albeit partially, but certainly not completely, cancel each other out). Terms: C = circumference D = diameter ~ (tilde) means "about" Initial bodgy (with extra half centimeters included) measurements were: C = 3836.5 mm +/- 2 mm (4 measurements, at +-1/2mm error each) D = 1219.5 mm +/- 1 mm (2 measurements, at +-1/2mm error each) and so when subtracting out the extra 1.5 and 0.5 cm respectively, we get: C = 3821.5 mm +/- 2 mm D = 1214.5 mm +/- 1 mm The assumed error margin of +/- 2mm and 1mm respectively (+/- 1/2 mm per measurement, remembering that errors are cumulative) may seem high, but at least accounts for using a metal ruler with 1mm markings, 4 times for the (linear) circumference measurement and twice for the diameter. pi is simply C/D, so we have (using the program "bc", with scale=10): 3821.5 / 1214.5 = 3.1465623713 And considering the extremes of possible error margins (not counting human error of course): 3823.5 / 1213.5 = 3.1508034610 3819.5 / 1215.5 = 3.1423282599 So the results from these measurements does appear to be above 3.14159, and converges closer to Harry Lear's value of pi 3.1446, than the traditional value of pi 3.1316: 3.1465623713 - 3.144605511 ~= 0.002 3.1465623713 - 3.141592654 ~= 0.005 Harry Lear appears to be on to something. Now using metal tape measure #1: C = 3854 D = 1226 pi = 3854 / 1226 = 3.1435562805 and with say +-0.5mm error: 3854.5 / 1225.5 = 3.1452468380 3853.5 / 1226.5 = 3.1418671015 Tape measures can be considered better, since we don't need to make multiple readings and "line up" our measurement instrument (ruler) for each additional segment, to get our final lengths. And in this case, using the first tape measure and including maximum possible errors applied in opposite directions, although we are closer to traditional pi, we still does not reach it! Comparing the two πs again, we are still closer to new pi than old pi: 3.1435562805 - 3.144605511 ~= -0.00105 3.1435562805 - 3.141592654 ~= 0.00196 And finally a third set of measurements in this test run, using metal tape measure #2: C = 3851 D = 1225 pi = 3851 / 1225 = 3.1436734693 and with say +-0.5mm error, the extremes are: 3851.5 / 1224.5 = 3.1453654552 3850.5 / 1225.5 = 3.1419828641 Again, we are much closer on average to new pi 3.1446, than to the old pi 3.1416, and apparently not reaching old pi, where, in this set of measurements, it is consistently outside our margin of error. Confirming the distance from old and new pi, with tape measure #2, we remain closer to new pi: 3.1436734693 - 3.144605511 ~= -0.00093 3.1436734693 - 3.141592654 ~= 0.00208 ---------------------------------- To be wrong about something so fundamental as the pi ratio of the circumference of a circle to is diameter (or radius), for so long, is simply stunning! The "scientific community" prides itself in its ever increasing accuracy in measurement in many domains, from the micro to the macro, and all the while this one sneaky little constant has been so taken for granted, it has slipped under the radar (intentionally?) for over 2000 years. So, 3 significant digits of pi "as we know it" are correct: 3.14 The fourth significant digit, which begins after the second decimal place, is significantly wrong (and of course, if this is so, so are all subsequent digits). Apparently.

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