July 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Tor protect I mean CIA
by zeynep＠keemail.me 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Ohh big surprise! hahahahahahahahahahaha "Someone who sent a form to russian intelligence via tor saw the ip address routed by the cia relay"

1 0

A lot of cypherpunk airbrushing going on
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

These revisionist cypherpunk histories keep popping up and being shot down. And the longer they go on ( from Mange through Gupta to Wright & Backstabber ) the more OG's need to be airbrushed out. This actually befits an inverse-Marxist approach where the Austro-Hungarian, Lunar Right have about as much respect for empirical fact as the average member of a Communist Party. But its not something we anarchists could ever countenance.

2 1

David is now dead - thank fuck
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

David Graeber towards the end of his life. Graeber – a figurehead of Occupy Wall Street and, prior to that, a participant in the alter-globalisation movement – apparently saw no contradiction between his professed (neo-)anarchism and his efforts to join the British Labour Party in support of Jeremy Corbyn . . . " https://anarchistnews.org/content/anarchists-and-neo-anarchists One of Corbyn's election planks was 10k more police and Corbyn's pick for Treasury was a fan of Lenin and Trotsky. JFC .

1 0

CHAUM as mental cripple
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

'Chaum is also building into PrivaTegrity another feature that's sure to be far more controversial: a carefully controlled backdoor > that allows anyone doing something "generally recognized as evil" to have their anonymity and privacy stripped altogether.' [...] Those of us who have been in the field for a while will (hazily) remember that back in the 80's, Chaum invented the first practical cryptocurrency. However, he patented his 'blind signature' algorithms, which were the heart of the system, and he and the DigiCash corporation (which was created to exploit the patents) were extremely restrictive in their licensing. Reportedly, this was because Chaum was concerned that Bad People might use it for money laundering.The system saw very little use. Much more detail can be found in the cypherpunks mailing list archives. ....which is a long way of saying that for Chaum to cripple his system with a back door seems consistent with his earlier reported behavior. Peter Trei https://marc.info/?l=cryptography&m=145223202406590&w=1

1 0

HAL, do you read me?
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

A lot of our discussion is influenced by the ideas of David Chaum. He pioneered technology which could protect individual privacy while allowing very flexible sorts of credentials and guarantees. He has also played a big role in the various proposals for digital cash. But I think that Chaum has gone off in the wrong direction in the last few years. . . " https://marc.info/?l=cypherpunks&m=85281390301195&w=1

1 0

Chaum in Time: untraceable cash "root of all evil"
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

'Paper money is, I hate to say it, the root of all evil', says DigiCash Founde Chaum, who argues that the traceability of electronic cash will mean the end of some tiypes of crime. 'What kidnapper would take a ransom payment by check? Once you build the infrastructure for electroni cash, the incremental cost of replacing paper cash is small. And the social benefits could be amazing." Who was it that said "A liberal statist with a privacy fetish?" https://marc.info/?l=cypherpunks&m=95279369520812&w=1

1 0

The year is 2036
by Douglas Lucas 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Today historians look back on what got humanity through the 2020s. "It was a bunch of angry ravings on the cypherpunk email list," Dr Thoughtful Brain told Exasperated Quarterly. "Randos insulting other randos clinched liberation." World nonleaders of anarchism plan to establish an international holiday celebrating the hard work of cypherpunks blotting out insightful knowledge with useless rants. Asked for details on cypherpunk ideology, Dr Brain said the focus was on building fandoms for computery celebrities selected for amplification by corporate media. "The list went for years without a single line of code posted," he said. During the conversation, an environmentalist shoved his way in and demanded this writer report on declining oxygen resulting from plankton extermination. Cypherpunks responded with the subject line: "Fuck oxygen, whatever that is. Computers don't use it. Off topic."

2 2

This would appear to be orthogonal to anarchism
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

Honestly Dave - this conversation can no longer serve any useful purpose. https://www.snb.ch/en/mmr/papers/id/working_paper_2021_03 " . . . How to issue a central bank digital currency David Chaum, Christian Grothoff and Thomas Moser Issue 2021-03 . . ."

1 0

Some great ideas here
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

But the market is treating them worse than " Satoshi Vision ' https://xx.network/archive/praxxis-emerges-from-stealth/ " . . . Using Elixxir, financial transactions denominated in Praxxis coins can be executed efficiently without leaking metadata. Alternatively, Praxxis can provide identified check-like wallet transactions. The full technical details of the Praxxis approach will be included in a forthcoming whitepaper currently being prepared for release later this year. . . . " That was 2019 btw.

1 0

David Chaum's spectacular wallow in bullshit
by professor rat 25 Jul '22

25 Jul '22

No way to talk about Prof Gun-Sirer " . . . It’s a nice cocktail-party line for academics to say they want to change the world. They’re not trying to save anything. In the blockchain space, we’re sort of clear on what the incentives are. It isn’t so clear in academia. . . " A poor workman blames his tools " . . . In those days, we were working on these distributed and decentralized systems. We converted our beautiful conference room into a “decentralized cash” lab, and worked on into the evenings. It was a passion – but you know, in those days computers weren’t really up to it. . . " ( Chaum ) Jesus Fucking Christ - make it stop!

1 0