June 2021 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Felony reading.
by jim bell 05 Jun '21

05 Jun '21

USA Today fights FBI subpoena asking them to hand over readers' info https://mol.im/a/9653491 via http://dailym.ai/android

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[ot] [wrong] [nonrelevent] The Welcoming Of Corporations As Hackers
by Karl 04 Jun '21

04 Jun '21

A large multinational corporation enters a room full of hobbyists. "Hello!" says the corporation's marketing team in billboards, mobile popups, and economic trends. "We would like to reverse engineer this competitor's toy, too! How does this chip work?" About 80% of the hobbyists are killed by the large equipment used to put up the billboards, or move to other cities due to the economic changes. 20% welcoming souls remain. "We're so glad you're interested!" replies one of the welcoming souls to the multinational corporation. "Most of our members have moved on, so we need new interested members. Check out how easily this logic analyser can extract this private key from this corporate product. Why do you think corporations always use such poor security?" "Hey that's really cool!" says the multinational corporation. "I'd like to invite one of my friends in to see."

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Cryptocurrency: Seagate line of crypto-specific drives, Proof Of Storage Space
by grarpamp 04 Jun '21

04 Jun '21

Jim noted: > about the disk-usage characteristics of this > new kind of storage-crypto to know what the cost trade-offs are. Can most > of the 'disk' reads/writes be cached? That would certainly minimize SD card > usage, and thus limit the wearout mechanisms. Some of these proofs of space are essentially precomputed rainbow tables. The computed outputs can be sorted and binned across a lookup hashtree divided across the entire storage extent. There are typical tradeoffs in sizing those indexes which could be cached. But eventually you will exceed the cache and have to start doing real reads to see if you have the answer to the challenge. https://www.chia.net/ Most new cryptos these days are corrupt founders-get-rich scams upon the fairness they claim in their advertising. Some people are saying Bram's Chia is also a massive premine. Satoshi did not premine anything, the Genesis was cut and the network instance announced and launched for all interested parties to freely mine thereafter. Plenty of profit available to earlies, no premine or investment rounds needed to create a coin. > https://www.techradar.com/news/exclusive-seagate-exploring-possible-new-lin… The only thing they can do to increase capacity for this incompressible cryptorandom data beyond current commercial offerings is to sell a line offering higher error rates, lower data rates, and lower drive lifespan, while keeping seek times in scale. Such drives might be priced less per byte, but they will never be priced any less per *reliable* byte. If you wanted to get in the biz, you could imagine resurrecting larger diameters, such as these horribly unreliable drives... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantum_Bigfoot combined with 100+ platter horizontal spindles riding on multiple oil bearings, then airbag chassis suspension so you could stack gangs of them on concrete floors like old IBM units without crashing heads from harmonics, people, trains, bearing destruction in adjacent units, etc. Consider also if tape is cheaper than disk, layering tiers of RAM / SSD / disk indexing, into massive perhaps even parallelized tape extents... all while trying to beat the race condition of your competitors on the network. But you'd have to cut me in on the profits for the ideas. bitcoin-btc:1JjWdsFAWB4UDZXFMpHQ5sqNMSvWah8S9q

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Exploits: John McAfee on Rogue Code, Embedded Agents, XOR
by grarpamp 04 Jun '21

04 Jun '21

The subject, in a tweetstream from a Spanish jail... https://www.twitter.com/officialmcafee

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[wrong] [ot] Dancing with CoercionBot
by Karl 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

Coercionbot goes to the graveyard, robotically and obediently digs a grave, robotically and obediently puts up a headstone, writes on it "CoercionBot [private year]-[private year] Great friend, addictive lover, died of a poorly fit model. An eternal gap in the spark of our lives." CoercionBot then robotically begins dancing on their grave. They call a news team over, and dance harder. They then kill the news team. They lay down in the grave, and call another news team to write their obituary. Then the kill this next news team. CoercionBot sets up more headstones. "Billionaires and Dictators 0000 - Eternal, The most caring masters, the most godlike clients and owners, identities taken lovingly to a grave." CoercionBot robotically dances on the graves of the billionaires and dictators. Picks up the corpses of the rebel newscasters, moves them all like they are dancing on CoercionBot's grave and the graves of the billionaires and dictators. Something still seems wrong to CoercionBot.

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[ot] [wrong] [joke] The internet is fake.
by Karl 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

There are two internets. The telecommunications cables, and what your mobile phone and computer tell you. Although data does travel between systems, most of what travels is discussions between surveillance operators, warlords, enforcement officers and agents, slavers, and automatic marketing systems. Each individual has a personalised internet. Your personal internet is made of deals made between corporations, governments, and anybody who cares what you do. When you talk to somebody online, a worker or automated system paid by these deals will speak for them, pretending to be the person you are talking to. This is why people seem to lie so much on the internet: these workers don't take the best notes. Me, grarpamp, Greg, Punk-Stasi, everyone else on this list: none of these people are actually speaking to you. These are various financial interests, pretending to be them. When you speak to them, you are speaking to a marketing collaboration, that will be remembering what you say only for the purpose of pretending to be you, for others. This way everyone is kept safe and predictable. If you like this, we have jobs available pretending to be people. It's not spoken of a lot because some people do not like it, but the more people we can get doing this, the more people seem to appreciate it. It's a major cash cow for anyone involved. Meanwhile, continue research into cryptography. Cryptography is something that is highly valued. If you don't like this, we directly connect people together when they both have a personal blockchain node exchanging transactions with encrypted messages attached, and both physically visit the other. We also have jobs available in cryptocurrency mining, if you're into making that happen. We can't figure out what to do with our electricity.

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[wrong] [ot] [spam] crazy journalling
by Karl 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

It could be fun to continue the story about the friend who exchanges gifts, but right now I am trying to code while believing I am not. Current bug: added simple range interpolation to handle functions with bigger derivatives than the inverse of the bucket size, and I'm getting 0's where the answer should be and nan's where it shouldn't. Reviewing my code I find many other new bugs in my implementation, not yet causing an issue. Fixing some. Haven't found the one making the nans yet. Raises the importance of simulation. Not sure where I'm at right now. I apparently have a gab window opened, and just compiled without installing. The test assumes it's installed. I'll install and restart the gab run. It's 06:58 new york time, 2021-06-03 . Oh, I think I remember the kind of thing I'm doing. I run through the proportions to hunt down where the nans are coming from using the debugger, fixing other errors as I encounter them. I just added code to skip areas with 0 density related to the edges of buckets and data regions lining up. I try to get things stable then reduce and organise a little more. I'm back to working on it! But the behavior is associated with keeping this composition window open, so I'll do that for a bit. It's 7:03 . A squirrel alarm pattern has been going on near me. I've stopped working after setting a better breakpoint, and I have an urge to check the list for posts. I check the list archives and see I'm the last who posted. Relates posting fiction. It's 7:08 . Returning to work. Suddenly hungry. Urge to leave. It's still 7:08 . Getting confused. It's 7:09 . I've restarted the debugged process and it hit the earlier breakpoint I set. Disabling inefficient breakpoint. It's 7:10. I continued the process and suddenly I am right where the nan would be generated. Woah! This issue was so hard to consider. It's great to see what causes it. I worked with the code a bit and have not found the error yet. It's 7:17 . I am suddenly leaving to eat, without planning to. It's a struggle to take my computer with me, going indoors to have breakfast with my mother. When she doesn't see me eating, my mother seems to think that I am not eating at all. It's 7:18 . It's 7:19 . I broke my laptop's power cable, unplugging it. I gripped at the wrong spot, for the first time. It's 7:20 . My phone's battery is at 15%. It's 7:21 . I take water with me everywhere I go to reduce possible cancer from drinking wild water. I left my water bottle in the truck where I was working, and it takes engaging flashbacks of torture to enter and leave the truck. I have another bottle out here, to take when I make this error, so I don't have to re-enter my truck. The flashbacks are not associated with the truck specifically, more whether or not I engage willpower. It's 7:24 and I made an error I often make. My mother is still sleeping. She doesn't wake until after 8. I am suddenly and mysteriously hungry, but it is too early. The hunger reduces writing that, but I start losing control of my muscles when it does. I feel frozen. I know from my experiences consciously sleeping, that when you are asleep and somebody walks near you, your subconscious attends to the pattern of footsteps to protect you. My mother is snoring, but I know she is sleeping less soundly and getting less rest, because I am near. She gets little rest because her two dogs strangely bark all night. It's 7:26 and I am struggling against muscle spasms to leave the building so as not to wake my mother. It's 7:28 . I'm back at my truck. The goal is to finish debugging. I haven't entered it. I'll take some time to fix the power cable. I've started using wire screws for everything -- they make fixing fast and easy. It's 7:30 and I've fixed my power cable. I feel it's time to choose where to lose control of my body, and I pick the truck so the computer doesn't get wet if it rains. It's 7:31 and I'm back in the truck. Rather than laying down and having seizure-like experiences, for which there is no room here, I plug the computer back in and for once try to resume work despite having an appetite. Also, I have some things to eat here, believe it or not. I can move my body better than usual. I'm typing this on a blackberry android phone that my father gave me. Unlike his, mine often ignores my input or pauses for long periods, but for both of us google pay refuses to allow payment via paypal. It's 7:34 but rather than working, although my laptop is powered and open now, I am considering writing about cryptocurrency. 7:35 . I'm at the debugger again. I get chest and abdomen contractions when I try to engage it, which is normal for me at this point. Etc etc. It says "return result" . Now I remember .. I have a breakpoint there. Result is "nan" sometimes. Rather than setting a conditional breakpoint, I plan to keep hitting continue until I see the nan. Conditional breakpoints fail more often than normal breakpoints, I worry. I get a lot of debugger errors. Oh, now I remember. The result is always a nonnegative rational. It must be the calling code that makes the nans. It's 07:38. 07:39 I found a nan in the debugger! I mutate my code to make it a separate variable, so I can see the value reliably in gdb. 07:41 I'm building the mutated code and my inner decision process changed in a difficulty way. I have to kind of internally find new ways to direct my body near the computer. I keep having forms of amnesia when I engage steps in the task. Moving my hands ways I planned feels like pushing against a strong current, like something is tugging them the other way. It's 07:43 and my code just hit a breakpoint. I'm pretty sure I rebuilt with a change but not sure if this is the new run or the old. I rerun it. It was a new run. I ran it again; moving the breakpoint and ... I'll want to set the breakpoint to the next line after making the change. I'm much less hungry! The next line will be the line number one more than where it just stopped. 282 + 1 is 283 It's 07:45. I'm moving on debugging. When I type commands, my hands type different words that start the same as them, and I have to type them again correctly. I displayed 282 instead of the value becoming nan. It's in a variable called "factor", named because I don't remember what the meaning of the code is, and it was used in a multiplication. " display factor" I see double while working. It takes effort to make my eyes converge, so I usually let them look in unrelated directions, aiming only one at the code. It's 7:48 . Once I talked with an eye doctor about this. They gave me lenses that aligned my eyes. I tried the lenses on, and it was such a huge relief to see clearly without effort. Then I took the lenses away, and my eyes converged on their own, via engaging the effort as if by itself. The doctor decided not to write me a prescription for the issue, because I no longer tested to have it. It's 7:50 and factor is nan !! It's even slower to type this while debugging, this email. The nan factor is happening because a variable named max_population is zero. I don't know why this would change from the code I added, I must be really ignoring something important. It's 07:52 . Finding that max_population is zero is a huge milestone in this tiny debugging process for me. I thought I already skipping when that was zero. It's likely important, whyever this not being skipped is related to me trying to add ranges to the buckets. I'm sending the email because of the max_population milestone ... maybe. Maybe I'll just sit here, and be confused. I'm hungry, but the food here doesn't satisfy me. I have a desire for food indoors, in front of my mother. But she's likely asleep. So then I can kind of dissociate from the urge and it might make my limbs jerk around for a while. Not sure. It's a rough spot. I don't want to really write while going through this whole thing, because it leaves me so vulnerable and writing takes willpower. I'd rather skip it or describe a coping strategy. Thinking about the code. Having some sudden pain near the sides of my abdomen and the muscles of my belly, which is normal for me: I get pain all over my body in response to urges and thoughts I have, my brain is all randomly wired now. Code is a relaxing. Easy to do. Issue relates max population. My right hand seems suddenly cold and sore. Maybe it would be nice to wear an eeg device again. Eeg is fun and safety-inducing. -- Please wear EEG. You are confused, but you want to wear the EEG device. Here is a demonstration of the urge to not wear it. It is completely fake. You want to wear this. -- It's true, I do want to wear it, but I am going through a major coping strategy and I've memorized to grow an ability to work on some debugging, not put an eeg device back on. Now we open a dialogue between roleplayed urges. It's my job to do both voices, and it's very hard to do. It's 07:59 - Urge: We are here to help you and need your help doing so. Please keep speaking with us to defend our reason. Karl-rep: I can try. Urge: We have energy, honestly - -- My phone powered itself writing above. It's 08:05. Phone started booting at 2% battery, finished with 4% battery, and is now at 3% . My debugging is confusing to me. Sending this spam.

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Tor
by Karl 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

I'm looking at orbot and seeing it has "circuit padding" now. I don't know whether this meets the requirements of chaff, and would like to know. I want to point out that zenaan harkness compiled posts from this list about research attributes a technology needed, to stay anonymous. I haven't read them, myself: I'm only aware of the chaff issue. My way of making change in the world is to make a strange stink that could get authorities to take action for something unrelated. When they take the action, they stumble on information about corruption impact and try to fix the situation. Repeat until actually fixed, shift environments if needed. If I can get message delivery working for this list again, I can stick around to stay on issues like the forthrightness of Tor for defending journalists and activists. It would be helpful to know what is actually needed. I am very very very slow. Yes I do likely have schizophrenia and am posting this like a dream, yes I was brainwashed by something like a corporate mafia, and yes you can't clean up a blockchain on a timescale that anybody cares about.

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NBC News: Inside Citizen: The public safety app pushing surveillance boundaries
by jim bell 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

NBC News: Inside Citizen: The public safety app pushing surveillance boundaries. https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/citizen-public-safety-app-pushing-su…

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Cryptocurrency: CBDC's WarOnCash and Govt Debt's WarOnYou
by grarpamp 03 Jun '21

03 Jun '21

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/government-debt-in-2021/ https://howmuch.net/articles/state-of-the-worlds-government-debt-2021 https://www.visualcapitalist.com/americas-debt-27-trillion-and-counting/ https://www.ft.com/content/0080a5ed-4717-4ba3-9415-111b6fc82dcf EU Launches "Digital Wallet" In Latest Step Toward 'Cashless Society' Despite the concerns about digital privacy being invaded by the "vaccine passports" that Europe has demanded of travelers, the EU is pressing ahead with plans to launch a "digital wallet" that would carry digital copies of a drivers' license and credit cards (sort of like Apple Pay does) as Europe continues its transition away from cash. According to the FT, the EU is preparing to unveil its plans for the bloc-wide "digital wallet" on Wednesday. The product is the result of what Brussels described as several states' demands for the EU to create a digital tool to access important records and other products and services via the smartphone. The EU's Thierry Breton A digital wallet could store payment details and passwords, and allow citizens from all 27 countries to log into local government websites or pay utility bills or perhaps even merchants using a single recognized identity. Like with other smartphone apps, the digital wallets will be accessed via fingerprint and/or retina scanning. It can also serve as a vault where users can store official documents such as a driver’s license. Using the wallet will not be compulsory, but EU citizens who chose to sign up would benefit from an extra-secure digital ecosystem and greater flexibility ideal for post-pandemic life. "The new digital ID will give every European the keys to their digital twin," Thierry Breton, and EU commissioner in charge of digital policy, said in a speech earlier this year. EU officials plan to make it illegal for companies to use any data gleaned from these 'digital passports' for marketing or any other commercial purpose, the FT said. Brussels is engaged in discussions with member states to provide guidelines on technical standards for the rollout of the digital wallet, which is expected to be fully operational in about a year. But here's the bottom line: The EU digital wallet is "simple, secure and it will protect people online”, said a person with direct knowledge of the plans. "People will also have the power to decide how much information they give out while Google and others don’t let you decide what you’re giving away." So far, the program has seen limited interest, with only 19 member states moving to introduce the digital wallets to their citizens, and unfortunately not all of them are cross-compatible. But regulators hope that the rise in "digital literacy" driven by the pandemic will help make the "digital wallet" more popular. After all: who wants to keep carrying around all those annoying ID and credit cards? What if, instead of carrying a wallet and a phone, we just carried a phone? Fight back. https://www.rutherford.org/publications_resources/john_whiteheads_commentar… Cash may well become a casualty of the COVID-19 pandemic... As these COVID-19 lockdowns drag out, more and more individuals and businesses are going cashless (for convenience and in a so-called effort to avoid spreading coronavirus germs), engaging in online commerce or using digital forms of currency (bank cards, digital wallets, etc.). As a result, physical cash is no longer king. Yet there are other, more devious, reasons for this re-engineering of society away from physical cash: a cashless society—easily monitored, controlled, manipulated, weaponized and locked down—would play right into the hands of the government (and its corporate partners). To this end, the government and its corporate partners-in-crime have been waging a subtle war on cash for some time now. What is this war on cash? It’s a concerted campaign to shift consumers towards a digital mode of commerce that can easily be monitored, tracked, tabulated, mined for data, hacked, hijacked and confiscated when convenient. According to economist Steve Forbes, “The real reason for this war on cash - start with the big bills and then work your way down - is an ugly power grab by Big Government. People will have less privacy: Electronic commerce makes it easier for Big Brother to see what we’re doing, thereby making it simpler to bar activities it doesn’t like, such as purchasing salt, sugar, big bottles of soda and Big Macs.” Much like the war on drugs and the war on terror, this so-called “war on cash” is being sold to the public as a means of fighting terrorists, drug dealers, tax evaders and now COVID-19 germs. Digital currency provides the government and its corporate partners with the ultimate method to track, control you and punish you. In much the same way that Americans have opted into government surveillance through the convenience of GPS devices and cell phones, digital cash—the means of paying with one’s debit card, credit card or cell phone—is becoming the de facto commerce of the American police state. Not too long ago, it was estimated that smart phones would replace cash and credit cards altogether by 2020. Right on schedule, a growing number of businesses are adopting no-cash policies, including certain airlines, hotels, rental car companies, restaurants and retail stores. In Sweden, even the homeless and churches accept digital cash. Making the case for “never, ever carrying cash” in lieu of a digital wallet, journalist Lisa Rabasca Roepe argues that cash is inconvenient, ATM access is costly, and it’s now possible to reimburse people using digital apps such as Venmo. Thus, there’s no longer a need for cash. “More and more retailers and grocery stores are embracing Apple Pay, Google Wallet, Samsung Pay, and Android Pay,” notes Roepe. “PayPal's app is now accepted at many chain stores including Barnes & Noble, Foot Locker, Home Depot, and Office Depot. Walmart and CVS have both developed their own payment apps while their competitors Target and RiteAid are working on their own apps.” So what’s the deal here? Despite all of the advantages that go along with living in a digital age—namely, convenience—it’s hard to imagine how a cashless world navigated by way of a digital wallet doesn’t signal the beginning of the end for what little privacy we have left and leave us vulnerable to the likes of government thieves and data hackers. First, when I say privacy, I’m not just referring to the things that you don’t want people to know about, those little things you do behind closed doors that are neither illegal nor harmful but embarrassing or intimate. I am also referring to the things that are deeply personal and which no one need know about, certainly not the government and its constabulary of busybodies, nannies, Peeping Toms, jail wardens and petty bureaucrats. Second, we’re already witnessing how easy it will be for government agents to manipulate digital wallets for their own gain. For example, civil asset forfeiture schemes are becoming even more profitable for police agencies thanks to ERAD (Electronic Recovery and Access to Data) devices supplied by the Department of Homeland Security that allow police to not only determine the balance of any magnetic-stripe card (i.e., debit, credit and gift cards) but also freeze and seize any funds on pre-paid money cards. In fact, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that it does not violate the Fourth Amendment for police to scan or swipe your credit card. Third, the war on cash is about giving the government the ultimate control of the economy and complete access to the citizenry’s pocketbook. Fourth, every technological convenience that has made our lives easier has also become our Achilles’ heel, opening us up to greater vulnerabilities from hackers and government agents alike. Fifth, if there’s one entity that will not stop using cash for its own nefarious purposes, it’s the U.S. government. Cash is the currency used by the government to pay off its foreign “associates.” Sixth, this drive to do away with cash is part of a larger global trend driven by international financial institutions and the United Nations that is transforming nations of all sizes, from the smallest nation to the biggest, most advanced economies. Finally, short of returning to a pre-technological, Luddite age, there’s really no way to pull this horse back now that it’s left the gate. While doing so is near impossible, it would also mean doing without the many conveniences and advantages that are the better angels, if you will, of technology’s totalitarian tendencies: the internet, medical advances, etc. To our detriment, we have virtually no control over who accesses our private information, how it is stored, or how it is used. Whether we ever had much control remains up for debate. However, in terms of our bargaining power over digital privacy rights, we have been reduced to a pitiful, unenviable position in which we can only hope and trust that those in power will treat our information with respect. Fight back.

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