July 2022 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Russia Delivers a Scathing Setback to Crypto
by jim bell 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

Russia Delivers a Scathing Setback to Crypto https://share.newsbreak.com/1gp0afkg Hardly a week goes by without the young crypto industry receiving some bad news. The industry is currently playing a guessing game which consists of trying to guess which crypto company or crypto platform is next to be impacted by the liquidity crisis affecting prominent crypto lenders like Celsius Network, Voyager Digital and BlockFi. This cash crunch crisis comes from the fall in cryptocurrency prices that led to a collapse of more than $2 trillion in the crypto market since November. The damages are substantial. Celsius and Voyager have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy and their customers don't even know if they will be able to get their money back. Other platforms like Babel Finance, CoinLoan or CoinFlex have suspended withdrawals, thus preventing their customers from having access to their funds. BlockFi was bailed out by cryptocurrency exchange FTX.com. Another difficulty for the sector is how to bring back retail investors, many of whom fled the crypto sector after suffering colossal losses? Some investors even lost everything following the crash of sister tokens Luna and UST in May. Three Arrows Capital, also known as 3AC, a crypto hedge fund was forced into liquidation. As if that were not enough, bad news has just arrived from Russia. Indeed, President Vladimir Putin has just signed a tougher law against cryptocurrencies after it was passed by the Russian National Assembly or Duma on July 8. This law banned any payment for assets, goods, products and services with digital means or any utility tokens. It is the latest legal arsenal adopted by Moscow to prevent cryptocurrencies from being used as a means of payment. Crypto and Sanctions The Minister of Finance Anton Siluanov had introduced a draft On Digital Currency in parliament for regulation of the sector in February. The Russian government, however, didn't follow the recommendation of the Central Bank of Russia, which called in March for an outright ban on cryptocurrencies and the entire crypto industry in the country. The institution recommended a ban on trading, mining, and paying for goods and services with cryptocurrencies. The Russian war in Ukraine may play a big role here. In the face of NATO sanctions, there has been a surge of interest in how Russia might use cryptocurrencies to sidestep sanctions. Selected Russian banks were disconnected from the SWIFT, a secure messaging system used by financial institutions, brokers, and investment firms. Russia's economy has suffered under the sanctions with the ruble's value plummeting. According to government figures,

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A Beginner’s Guide to Quantum Programming
by jim bell 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

A Beginner’s Guide to Quantum Programming https://share.newsbreak.com/1govv8d9 A new guide on programming quantum algorithms leads programmers through every step, from theory to implementing the algorithms on IBM’s publicly accessible 5-qubit ibmqx4 quantum computer and others. The guide covers the fundamentals, along with a summary of the main quantum algorithms and instructions on how to implement them on publicly available quantum computers As quantum computers proliferate and become more widely available, would-be quantum programmers are left scratching their brains over how to get started in the field. A new beginner’s guide offers a complete introduction to quantum algorithms and their implementation on existing hardware.“Writing quantum algorithms is radically different from writing classical computing programs and requires some understanding of quantum principles and the mathematics behind them,” said Andrey Y. Lokhov, a scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the recently published guide in ACM Transactions on QuantAnother section looks at the various types of quantum algorithms. From there, the guide dives into the 20 selected algorithms, with a problem definition, description, and steps for implementing each one on the IBM or, in a few cases, other computers. Extensive references at the end of the guide will help interested readers go deeper in their explorations of quantum algorithms. The study was funded by the Information Science and Technology Institute at Los Alamos National Laboratory through the Laboratory Directed Research and Development program. Reference: “Quantum Algorithm Implementations for Beginners” by Abhijith J., Adetokunbo Adedoyin, John Ambrosiano, Petr Anisimov, William Casper, Gopinath Chennupati, Carleton Coffrin, Hristo Djidjev, David Gunter, Satish Karra, Nathan Lemons, Shizeng Lin, Alexander Malyzhenkov, David Mascarenas, Susan Mniszewski, Balu Nadiga, Daniel O’malley, Diane Oyen, Scott Pakin, Lakshman Prasad, Randy Roberts, Phillip Romero, Nandakishore Santhi, Nikolai Sinitsyn, Pieter J. Swart, James G. Wendelberger, Boram Yoon, Richard Zamora, Wei Zhu, Stephan Eidenbenz, Andreas Bärtschi, Patrick J. Coles, Marc Vuffray and Andrey Y. Lokhov, 7 July 2022, ACM Transactions on Quantum Computing. DOI: 10.1145/351734 - - - -

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Homeland Security Is Buying Its Way Around the Fourth Amendment
by jim bell 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

Homeland Security Is Buying Its Way Around the Fourth Amendment https://share.newsbreak.com/1goc7w5v American taxpayers pay to be spied upon. That's one takeaway from new documents obtained by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), which has been examining how federal agents spent millions to purchase massive troves of cellphone location data and dodge Fourth Amendment requirements. As part of a lawsuit against the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), the ACLU obtained thousands of previously unreleased records showing how DHS agencies—including Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE)—are purchasing and accessing "huge volumes of people's cell phone location information quietly extracted from smartphone apps." These agencies are "sidestepping our Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable government searches and seizures," suggests the ACLU. In 2018, the U.S. Supreme Court held (in Carpenter v. United States) that under the Fourth Amendment, law enforcement must have a warrant before accessing a suspect's phone location data from cellular service providers. But federal authorities have been getting around this by purchasing aggregated cellphone location data from data broker firms like Venntel and Babel Street. And they're spending millions of taxpayer dollars doing it. This was first revealed by the Wall Street Journal back in 2020. The ACLU then set out to learn more, filing a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request and later suing to force DHS, ICE, and CBP to respond. "Although the litigation is ongoing, we are now making public the records that CBP, ICE, the U.S. Secret Service, the U.S. Coast Guard, and several offices within DHS Headquarters have provided us to date," the ACLU announced yesterday. Cellphone location data purchased by DHS is aggregated. It doesn't directly link the names or personal information of cellphone users to specific location data. But there's still a lot of privacy-infringing information that can be gleaned from such information, says the ACLU: In the documents we received over the past year, we found Venntel marketing materials sent to DHS explaining how the company collects more than 15 billion location points from over 250 million cell phones and other mobile devices every day. With this data, law enforcement can "identify devices observed at places of interest," and "identify repeat visitors, frequented locations, pinpoint known associates, and discover pattern of life," according to a Venntel marketing brochure. The documents belabor how precise and illuminating this data is, allowing "pattern of life analysis to identify persons of interest." By searching through this massive trove of location information at their whim, government investigators can identify and track specific individuals or everyone in a particular area, learning details of our private activities and associations.

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[ot][personal][spam] trying to make my unihertz titan boot
by Undiscussed Horrific Abuse, One Victim of Many 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

There's normative open source android firmware, I have a gift phone that doesn't work yet, and I have a little experience debugging firmware now from coreboot. Just a little bit. I'm thinking if it doesn't work, I can in the worst case copy some assembly from the working firmware, to maybe provide a usb device or light an led, and possibly bisect problems to troubleshoot. If I can keep it up. We'll see. The unihertz thread shows ValdikSS got treble_experimentations to work from a release on January 18th, 2021. There's a strange inconsistency, unfortunately: the instructions say twrp can be used, but the twrp post is later that year. Still, it makes sense to try the last release prior to Jan 18, 2021.

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[spam] [personal] information on the Unihertz Titan, a mobile phone
by k 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

I have this phone. It's more rugged than my existing phone. I'd like to maintain it with sequential images of the storage and firmware, in the hope of keeping it revertible to a stable state when it gets funny. [i also have a pinephone in the mail. the titan was a surprise gift.] Titan information on changing IMEI etc: https://unihertz-titan.neocities.org/ Company forum, flashware download from above site mentions it came from this forum: https://www.unihertz.com/pages/forum [javascript from shopify.com] NOTE: this forum says it is pending construction. very strange, like a timewarp. links to official facebook, twitter, reddit. Forum posts found on xda, crackberry, androidforums. Maybe reply with an http paste of the neocities site.

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There Are Three Separate Cases in Federal Court Accusing JPMorgan Chase of a Culture of Fraud
by Gunnar Larson 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Pam Martens <alerts(a)wallstreetonparade.com> Date: Tue, Jul 19, 2022, 11:03 AM Subject: Once Daily Digest Email To: <alerts(a)wallstreetonparade.com> Wall Street On Parade has posted a new item: There Are Three Separate Cases in Federal Court Accusing JPMorgan Chase of a Culture of Fraud https://wallstreetonparade.com/2022/07/there-are-three-separate-cases-in-fe… By Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 19, 2022 ~ Jamie Dimon, Chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase JPMorgan Chase is the largest federally-insured bank in the United States. It is also one of the largest trading houses on Wall Street. That’s the Faustian bargain the Clinton administration entered into with Wall Street when it repealed the Glass-Steagall [...] If the hyperlink above is not active, please paste it into your browser and press "Go" to read the full article. You received this e-mail because you asked to be notified when new updates are posted. If you ever wish to stop receiving these emails from us, just email me at pamk741(a)aol.com with the word "Unsubscribe" in the subject line. Best regards, Pam Martens, Editor, Wall Street On Parade

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Libertarianism and high-tech creates a revenge of the nerds
by professor rat 20 Jul '22

20 Jul '22

As surely as power follows wealth, those who make money decide that society, having rewarded their random combination of brains and luck in one sphere, should pay attention to them in another. And so, high-technocrats are beginning to try to influence the world beyond VDTs. But what will result if the people who want to shape public policy know nothing about history or political science or, most importantly, how to interact with other humans? https://www.motherjones.com/politics/1996/07/cyberselfish/ Reposted for information purposes only

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Calling all geeks, nerds, crypto-anarchists, libertarians and cypherpunks
by professor rat 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

On one side are the geeks, nerds, crypto-anarchists, libertarians and cypherpunks -- mistrustful of government, suspicious of all attempts at regulation, believers in the ability of technology, in and of itself, to solve society's ills (maybe with a little marginally legal hacking on the side, just to keep the political pot boiling). Austin Hill, president of Zero-Knowledge, opened the conference like a true techno-believer, quoting John Gilmore as saying, "I want to guarantee [privacy] with physics and mathematics, not with laws." Opposing the technologists are the believers in law above all else . . . " https://www.salon.com/2000/04/13/libertarians/ 22 years ago and over a year before I called Mongo an ’ anarcho-phoney ’ to his face

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Doug Mastriano a threat to democracy & good-taste
by professor rat 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

@letsgomathias · Jul 15 New: Gab was key to the Tree of Life synagogue massacre. The site’s owner is a raging anti-Semite. The GOP nominee for PA gov, @dougmastriano, paid Gab $5k for “campaign consulting.” Now every new account on Gab automatically follows Mastriano. https://huffpost.com/entry/doug-mastriano-gab-andrew-torba_n_62d08787e4b02d… Show this thread <<< Reposts not etc

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Homeland Security records show 'shocking' use of phone data, ACLU says
by jim bell 19 Jul '22

19 Jul '22

Homeland Security records show 'shocking' use of phone data, ACLU says https://share.newsbreak.com/1gj8uwno In just three days in 2018, documents show that the CBP collected data from more than 113,000 locations from phones in the Southwestern United States — equivalent to more than 26 data points per minute — without obtaining a warrant. | Lindsay Whitehurst/AP Photo Updated: 07/18/2022 03:30 PM EDT The Trump administration’s immigration enforcers used mobile location data to track people’s movements on a larger scale than previously known, according to documents that raise new questions about federal agencies’ efforts to get around restrictions on warrantless searches. The data, harvested from apps on hundreds of millions of phones, allowed the Department of Homeland Security to obtain data on more than 336,000 location data points across North America, the documents show. Those data points may reference only a small portion of the information that CBP has obtained.These data points came from all over the continent, including in major cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Denver, Toronto and Mexico City. This location data use continued into the Biden administration, as Customs and Border Protection renewed a contract for $20,000 that ended in September 2021. The American Civil Liberties Union obtained the records from DHS through a lawsuit it filed in 2020 . It provided the documents to POLITICO and separately released them to the public on Monday . The documents highlight conversations and contracts between federal agencies and the surveillance companies Babel Street and Venntel. Venntel alone boasts that its database includes location information from more than 250 million devices. The documents also show agency staff having internal conversations about privacy concerns on using phone location data.

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