December 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Right we have bargained away
by jim bell 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/right-to-jury-trial-penal… The Bill of Rights exists to protect individuals. It protects the right to free speech, the right to due process, the right to counsel, and the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, just to name a few. If a government official tries to deprive an individual of one of those constitutional rights, then the courts are supposed to intervene. But that’s not what happens when it comes to one of the most important rights for criminal defendants—the right to a jury trial. Instead of protecting defendants’ right to have their guilt or innocence decided by their peers, judges routinely punish defendants for exercising that right. Specifically, judges regularly impose longer sentences on those defendants who insist on going to trial than on those defendants who plead guilty. A 2018 report shows that, on average, defendants who insist on a trial receive sentences three times longer than those of defendants who plead guilty. This practice is so common that it even has a name: the “trial penalty.” The executive branch of government has followed the courts’ lead; many prosecutors pressure defendants to bargain away their right to a jury. They will offer defendants concessions—such as dropping some criminal charges or recommending leniency at sentencing—in return for a guilty plea. Plea bargains dominate the system. Only 3 percent of convictions are the result of a trial—the rest come from guilty pleas. As the Supreme Court put it, “Criminal justice today is for the most part a system of pleas, not a system of trials.”

1 0

Burn Notice
by professor rat 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

Telegram Founder Expresses Support for Toncoin Project Durov noted the continuous evolution of the TON technology. moxie ·Dec 24 Telegram stores all your contacts, groups, media, and every message you've ever sent or received in plaintext on their servers. The app on your phone is just a "view" onto their servers, where the data actually lives. Almost everything you see in the app, Telegram also sees 2/

1 0

El salvador bitcoins missing
by professor rat 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

A good working definition of fascism is modern technology and science put to work for radical reaction. But its not as if we weren't warned repeatedly here on this list about the proverbial " Fork in the Road " between Cryptoanarchy and the Dossier society. You don't get half-pregnant with this stuff - and trying to straddle any political barbed-wire fence will soon leave you politically impotent. I had thousands in Btc up to a few months ago - I barely have two sats to deadpool Jackass Dorsey today. So the Big God route eluded us then - that's no matter - tomorrow we'll run faster - stretch out our hands further. The revolution is dead - long live the revolution!

1 0

agricultural technofascism
by professor rat 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

This may be reckoned from wider publication of the fascist " Manifesto of the Communist Party " in 1850. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.h… in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable. 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. ( SNIP as I agree) 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

1 0

Cryptocurrency: Chivo "Wallet", El Salvador Bitcoins Missing, Algorand, BCH
by grarpamp 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

> https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302383-hundreds-of-salvadorans-claim-… https://duckduckgo.com/?q="chivo+wallet" https://bitcoinist.com/from-the-ground-devastating-problems-with-the-chivo-… https://coingeek.com/shocker-bitcoin-in-el-salvador-is-fake/ https://www.siliconrepublic.com/enterprise/el-salvador-bitcoin-digital-wall… https://finance.yahoo.com/news/el-salvador-develop-blockchain-infrastructur… https://cryptosrus.com/did-you-know-el-salvadors-chivo-app-runs-on-algorand/ https://chivowallet.com/ https://wallet.chivo.com/ "Chivo Wallet" appears to be GovWare, not opensource, and supposedly uses Lightning L2 Network which has its own issues, but may be using something else under the hood as well... Algorand. And is likely running on malware infested shitphones, likely by many clueless people unfortunately. Not your platform, not your wallet, not your keys, not your bitcoin. Quality opensource true bitcoin wallets exist, Salvadoreans should be using those instead, leaving Chivo only to be used for the "dollar". If they want something "Bitcoin" that scales to their size at least for today, they should be using Bitcoin_Cash-BCH. However at least one of the most popular BCH wallets is not opensource, which is a big PR problem, same as many BTC wallets are not opensource either. Editorial 17 December 2021 Kurt Wuckert Jr Meet Juan. Juan is a Salvadoran everyman: the representative on Chivowallet.com showing just how disruptive he can be by using bitcoin* while living on about $4,000 per year working hard factory or agricultural labor. Bitcoin on mobile phone Like many Salvadorans, Juan is concerned about the purchasing power of the local currency. Actually, no, he probably isn’t because El Salvador uses U.S. dollars, and despite some of the very real problems with U.S. fiat, the dollar is a welcome cornerstone of stability in a country where the President is cited for bringing the military into the chambers of their legislature to make sure they know who’s boss! Freedom is a laser-eyed, fascist military manFreedom is a laser-eyed, fascist military man, right guys? While internet service is uncommon everywhere except the capital, murder, assault, rape, armed robbery and other violent crimes are quite common. Gang activity, such as extortion, violent street crime, as well as narcotics and arms trafficking, is widespread. Due to the lack of resources, local police often fail to respond effectively to serious criminal incidents. So what is Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele focusing on? BITCOIN*! Bitcoin on mobile phone Tired of missing out on big gainz, Juan uses bitcoin* with the Chivo wallet! Well, kind of. He’s actually using Lightning Network* when he spends an average of $8.00 on a typical meal in the capital of El Salvador. Actually, probably not that either given that most of the country is rural and lacks basic infrastructure and smartphones are still quite uncommon outside the capital. You see, BTC doesn’t work for poor people since MasterCard re-engineered it through their Silicon Valley incubators. Bitcoin on twitterJust ask Blockstream executives! In reality, Chivo Wallet only pretends to use bitcoin* or Lightning Network* while actually setting up a custodial payments account on their centralized Lightning Network* node and settling using an internal proprietary process that actually negates the use of the blockchain at all. It’s ok though because he is still holding bitcoin* to protect himself from inflation in his poverty-stricken nation, right? Well, with wages and cost of living the way they are, Juan probably isn’t able to save anyways. He just needs a low-friction way to pay his bills and buy essential items. So, Lightning Network* it is… Actually, it’s not that either Chivo Wallet isn’t using BTC or Lightning Network* at all. El Salvador, while pretending to be BTC maximalists, actually signed a deal with the Algorand blockchain to handle their national blockchain infrastructure because BTC and Lightning Network* are both incapable of handling the traffic of a country the size of El Salvador, and the hype around “Bitcoin* Beach” and the rest of their marketing nonsense is little more than a ploy for Bukele to attempt to join the technocratic elite of what he’s guessing will be the future! But how do we know this? CryptosRUS reported: “Little do people know that when El-Salvadorians buy a cup of coffee with Bitcoin* via the Chivo app, that is being done via Algorand payment rails. There are different parties involved, but Algorand underpins the app.” And who are those “different parties?” DCG portfolio companies of course! BitGo, Bitso and others handle a bunch of the processes while the blockchain that is actually used for finality is Algorand deployed at the national level. El Salvador is working with @koibanx to leverage #Algorand for government blockchain infrastructure. Felicidades to the Koibanx team on their continued progress in #LatAm! 👉 https://t.co/4G1162TF1D pic.twitter.com/yPrHhcmJBd — Algorand (@Algorand) August 31, 2021 So what does this mean? Well, it means (gasp!) the small blockers have lied to us all again while hyping up a complete non-story while compromising their morals and the underpinnings of bitcoin in an attempt to pump their bags to the detriment of people (like Juan) who could actually use some very real help in the world! So, let’s get back to Juan. He can’t really save any money because his economy is terrible, and due to economic controls and generations of war, there isn’t a whole lot of hope either. And rather than actually fighting to bring real economic opportunity, he’s being paraded out for the benefit of technocratic elites at the hand of the elites that rule his homeland with an iron first. I’m sorry, Juan. We really have been trying to help this whole time by protecting the Bitcoin protocol so that it wouldn’t have to run on Algorand, Mastercard or any other rails at all. We wanted you to be able to do peer-to-peer commerce with every sat beholden to proof of work with instant and reliable transactions and a system that builds trust by securing your property rights in places where fascist dictators can’t take them away from you. We have taken bumps and bruises too, but Bitcoin SV is ready to help you actually fix your nation’s maliciously broken economy. We just have to keep working to secure all of our freedom! Curious about those asterisks? *They are using Algorand. Cope.

1 0

Journalist as filthy cosseted criminal
by professor rat 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

Ferret-arse and Wicked-leaks want to formalize the media tradition of lying to start wars as seen in the 80’s with Claire Sterling at the NYT then Michael Gordon and Judith Miller. Journalist as filthy criminal cosseted by the powers-that-be. The NYT article was read and appreciated by Alexander Haig and William Casey, but its arguments were dismissed by the CIA's Soviet analysts; Lincoln Gordon one of three members of a senior review panel at the CIA charged with bringing non-intelligence professional and academic review to the agency discovered comparing CIA intelligence reports and the book at Casey's request that at least some of Sterling's claims had come from stories that the CIA itself had planted in the Italian press.

1 0

El salvador bitcoins missing
by jim bell 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2302383-hundreds-of-salvadorans-claim-… "Hundreds of Salvadorans claim that money has gone missing from their digital wallets following El Salvador’s adoption of bitcoin as legal tender. In September, the government gave each citizen US$30 in bitcoin via each person’s Chivo wallet – a digital account set up by the government. The currency could be used for shopping, or to pay taxes. But hundreds of citizens are claiming that their payments haven’t been received by stores, and that funds have disappeared from their accounts. A Salvadoran …

1 0

Distributed, P-P, encrypted, alternate OS plug ins as you requested
by professor rat 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

20 years ago this December https://marc.info/?l=cypherpunks&m=100872510706876&w=2

1 0

Our plug-in babies!
by professor rat 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

Opera will integrate the Polygon blockchain in their Web3-ready browser and its built-in crypto wallet on Android in the first quarter of 2022. The integration will enable Opera’s users’ in-browser access to over 3,000 dApps on the Polygon network.” Some marquee DApps coming to the Opera browser include automated market maker SushiSwap, stablecoin-focused decentralized exchange Curve, and borrowing and lending protocol Aave, as well as popular land-based blockchain games The Sandbox and Decentraland, and non-fungible token (NFT) marketplaces such as OpenSea. Opera, which has had its own built-in crypto wallet since 2018, already supports Ethereum’s Web3 application programming interface but suffers from high gas transaction fees, according to Polygon. ..<<< In the developing labyrinth progress will be slower, but sure, toward distributed, P-P, encrypted, alternate OS plug ins that will accomplish all we seek to achieve.

1 0

Zero-knowledge technology as the holy grail of blockchain scaling.
by professor rat 25 Dec '21

25 Dec '21

Polygon (MATIC), a layer-two network designed for scaling and application infrastructure development on Ethereum (ETH), has been making the rounds among blockchain enthusiasts as of late. >From its $1 billion investment into zero-knowledge technology to co-launching a $200 million Web 3.0 social media initiative up to integrating with Opera's web browser to make its decentralized apps accessible to 80 million Android mobile users, the network's momentum is going strong. https://cointelegraph.com/news/here-s-how-polygon-is-challenging-the-limita…

1 0