March 2024 - cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Is Now the Right Time to Invest in Bitcoin?
by Gunnar Larson 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

Is Now the Right Time to Invest in Bitcoin? https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-09/bitcoin-btc-price-should… Love it, hate it, or hodl it, there’s no denying that Bitcoin is back.

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World Bank to Provide Egypt With $3 Billion After IMF Deal
by Gunnar Larson 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

World Bank to Provide Egypt With $3 Billion After IMF Deal https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-10/egypt-economy-world-bank… The World Bank will provide Egypt with $3 billion in support now that the North African nation has secured an expanded International Monetary Fund program, Finance Minister Mohamed Maait said Sunday.

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N.Y. Republicans Pick a Former Police Detective to Challenge Gillibrand - The New York Times
by Gunnar Larson 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

All this and we have two NYPD body camera FOIL requests open. ---- https://www.nytimes.com/2024/02/22/nyregion/gillibrand-sapraicone-gop-elect… N.Y. Republicans Pick a Former Police Detective to Challenge Gillibrand Mike Sapraicone, who runs a security firm and positions himself as a moderate, was elevated as the preferred Republican nominee. Two more conservative candidates vowed primary challenges. Mike Sapraicone, in a dark blazer with a United States flag pin on his lapel, speaks to a television reporter. Mike Sapraicone, who runs a private security firm, won the support of 84 percent of delegates at the New York Republican Party’s convention.Credit...Heather Ainsworth for The New York Times Nicholas Fandos By Nicholas Fandos Feb. 22, 2024 Republicans mounting a long-shot bid to unseat Senator Kirsten Gillibrand of New York selected Mike Sapraicone, a wealthy private security executive, as their preferred nominee at a party convention on Thursday. Mr. Sapraicone, 67, has fashioned himself as an affable moderate, vowing to outwork Ms. Gillibrand and find solutions to the migrant and affordability crises that the state’s ruling Democrats have struggled to combat. “It’s about time we had a voice in New York we haven’t had,” he said in an interview, accusing Ms. Gillibrand of having not been “seen or heard” since her unsuccessful run for president in 2020. The message easily won over the state’s political establishment, which believes Mr. Sapraicone represents Republicans’ best chance to compete in New York. Eighty-four percent of delegates voted in his favor on Thursday at the convention in Binghamton. But the show of support apparently failed to clear his path. Rather than drop out, two conservative Republican runners-up, Josh Eisen and Cara Castronuova, signaled their intent to petition onto the ballot and allow primary voters to have the final say in June. That would set up a potentially messy fight that could expose the deep ideological fissures dividing the party. It threatens to force Mr. Sapraicone not only to tap his campaign treasury but also to adopt more conservative positions on subjects like abortion and former President Donald J. Trump that could hurt the party in November. “Today the party bosses spoke,” Mr. Eisen said. “The rest of the G.O.P. gets the last word in the June primary.” The stakes may be higher than they appear. Few Republicans actually believe the party can defeat Ms. Gillibrand in a state that has not sent a Republican to the Senate since the 1990s. But party leaders privately say a serious, palatable nominee could help lift Republicans in more winnable races down the ballot, including for key House districts. Image Senator Kirsten Gillibrand looks slightly pensive inside the Capitol, with a handful of people behind her in a blurred background. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand is widely expected to win re-election in November, but Republicans hope that a viable candidate can help the party in down-ballot races.Credit...Valerie Plesch for The New York Times Mr. Sapraicone, whose name arose as a potential candidate in the special House election to replace George Santos on Long Island, formally entered the Senate race on Friday. He has a compelling biography and deep personal resources that could lift his campaign. The Republican spent 20 years in the New York Police Department and now runs Squad Security, a private firm that employs 600 active-duty and retired cops, according to its website. But Mr. Sapraicone enters the contest with some baggage. He has repeatedly donated to Democrats over the years. And he was among a group of former police detectives accused in a 2021 lawsuit of having coerced a false confession and suppressed exonerating evidence that kept a man behind bars for decades. Mr. Sapraicone’s likely primary challengers wasted little time going on the attack, portraying him as squishy on conservative priorities. “He has questionable views about guns, questionable views on Second Amendment, he’s unclear about his position on Trump,” Mr. Eisen said before the vote. Mr. Eisen, 52, may be the most formidable threat. The founder of a successful translation business, he also has private funds to pump into his campaign and has the endorsement of former Gov. George E. Pataki. In an interview, Mr. Eisen described himself as a “Second Amendment purist.” He said federal prosecutors who indicted Mr. Trump for trying to overturn the 2020 election outcome had overreached and were attempting to criminalize the techniques of a “scrappy New York real estate guy.” “He was just literally following legal maneuvers that were legitimate,” he said of Mr. Trump. “They might not appeal to everybody’s tastes.” Ms. Castronuova, a conservative reporter for Newsmax, appears to be making her own play for Mr. Trump’s support. She has pushed her ability to generate “viral media attention,” defended Jan. 6 rioters and has the endorsement of Roger J. Stone Jr., a longtime adviser to Mr. Trump. “Just like parents should have a choice about what vaccination is put into their child’s body, the voters should have a choice about the candidate that goes into the general election for Senate!” she wrote in a text message. Given Mr. Sapraicone’s commanding vote totals at the convention, any Republican challenger will have to secure thousands of signatures from voters across the state to make it onto the primary ballot. Party leaders were already working to kneecap Mr. Eisen. They recirculated old news accounts showing he had received sanctions in court for harassing legal opponents and using racial slurs. (Mr. Eisen said he was “not proud of everything I say all the time” but played down the matter as “business disputes.”) They also pointed to a handful of donations he made to far-left Democrats, including Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Jamaal Bowman of New York. “He’s going nowhere in the G.O.P.,” said Jerry Kassar, the chairman of the Conservative Party, a longtime partner to the Republicans in New York. He said both issues “disqualified him.” Mr. Sapraicone has an even more prolific history of supporting Democrats. Though he has given more to Republicans, Mr. Sapraicone has donated $140,000 to Democratic candidates and causes in New York since 2017, according to state and federal election records. Gavin Wax, the president of the New York Young Republican Club, singled out one donation on Thursday: a $1,000 contribution from Squad Security to the New York attorney general who just defeated Mr. Trump in a civil fraud case. “While President Trump is fighting against a politicized persecution of him by Letitia James the @NewYorkGOP under Ed Cox is rushing to coronate anti-Trump RINO @MikeSapraicone,” Mr. Wax wrote on X. There were signs Mr. Sapraicone was already feeling the pressure. In the interview, he said he was, in fact, a big supporter of Mr. Trump and called the 91 criminal counts brought against the former president “horrendous.” Mr. Sapraicone explained that he was a proponent of background checks for firearm purchases — “I know some people don’t agree with that, but that’s important” — but not of a ban on semiautomatic weapons, like the ones frequently used in mass shootings. And while he said he would oppose a federal abortion ban, he called for more restrictions on the procedure in New York, a state where abortion rights are seen as sacrosanct. “I don’t like what you hear in New York, where we say you can have an abortion right to term, you don’t have to notify your parents if you’re a minor and regular doctors can do abortions,” he said. Ms. Gillibrand, 57, is likely to make many of those issues centerpieces of her campaign for a third full term. She has one of the Senate’s most liberal voting records, and is a staunch supporter of abortion rights and gun safety measures and a virulent critic of Mr. Trump. She also has a daunting $9 million in campaign cash on hand. A spokesman for the senator, Evan Lukaske, said Ms. Gillibrand looked forward to campaigning on her record and “winning re-election this fall.”

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‘Wait for a Better Entry Point,’ Says Top Analyst Gregg Moskowitz About Palantir Stock - TipRanks.com
by Gunnar Larson 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

https://www.tipranks.com/news/palantir-is-a-winner-but-wait-for-a-better-en… The stock has been gaining more ground last week due to a recent positive development. On Wednesday, the company announced that it has been awarded a $178 million contract extension by the U.S. Army for the TITAN.

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PayPal Stock: I Believe In The Turnaround Plays (NASDAQ:PYPL) | Seeking Alpha
by Gunnar Larson 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

https://seekingalpha.com/article/4677139-paypal-pypl-stock-believe-turnarou… The main drivers of improved EBIT, which trickled down to the company’s bottom line were cutting down on sales & marketing, and technology development, while G&A went down only slightly, but still contributed to that improvement. I’m not sure if I agree with cutting down investments in technology development. This will improve margins in the short run, but if we look at the long-term picture, the slowdown in development and innovation will keep the company struggling to gain back its lost market share to other payment platforms. I am not sure the company should be making cuts in the innovation and development segment of expenses, but we will have to wait for the next couple of quarters to see how these have progressed.

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US military ship heading to Gaza to build port - BBC News
by Gunnar Larson 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-68526503 Meanwhile, an aid ship laden with some 200 tonnes of food is expected to set sail from a port in Larnaca, Cyprus on Sunday afternoon, Cypriot media report.

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Alaska Airlines flight carrying pets arrives with cargo door open as carrier and Boeing face $1B lawsuit
by Gunnar Larson 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

FBI, why am I not hearing from Oregon? Gunnar --- Embattled Alaska Airlines is at the center of a second aviation drama after a plane arrived at an airport gate in Portland, Ore. last Friday with its cargo door open. The cargo hold was stowing passenger’s pets, according to local TV station KOIN, although none of the animals were injured. The plane had flown in from Los Cabos, Mexico. Boeing and Alaska Airlines are already amid a $1B lawsuit over plane safety <https://nypost.com/2024/03/02/us-news/alaska-airlines-boeing-sued-1-billion…>. The chair of the National Transportation Safety Board also warned that the January incident could be repeated <https://nypost.com/2024/02/07/business/boeings-mid-air-door-blowout-can-hap…> . https://nypost.com/2024/03/08/lifestyle/alaska-airlines-flight-carrying-pet…

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Re: [spam][crazy][fiction][random] Non-Canon MCBoss Spinoffs
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 10 Mar '24

10 Mar '24

On 7/31/23, Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many <gmkarl(a)gmail.com> wrote: > very very bad mcboss jokes > > Q: Why was MCBoss licking his cigar like an icecream cone? > A: The computer system was experimentally swapping people’s minds in > order to try to raise profits faster, and he thought he was a little > kid at an icecream store. >

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Palantir and WFP partner to help transform global humanitarian delivery | World Food Programme
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

https://www.wfp.org/news/palantir-and-wfp-partner-help-transform-global-hum… Today, Palantir Technologies (Palantir) and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) announced a five-year partnership aimed at helping WFP use its data to streamline the delivery of food and cash-based assistance in life-saving emergency relief operations around the world. WFP will use Palantir’s Foundry software platform to bring together data sources from across the organization, enabling staff at headquarters and in field locations to access and analyse programmatic and operational data in a secure, unified environment. By connecting proven methods of delivering food assistance with dynamic data, WFP aims to reduce the cost of operations while continuing to serve its beneficiaries. The sheer scale of WFP’s operations, assisting some 90 million people in about 80 countries, means that even small efficiencies in operational and supply chain management can lead to dramatic savings. WFP generates vast amounts of data through the purchasing of 3 million metric tons of food every year and the delivery of 15 billion rations across dozens of development projects worldwide. Making this data accessible across the organization will help WFP become even more efficient in multiple programme areas, including cash-based transfers, supply chain optimization, and nutritional requirements. The partnership with Palantir underlines WFP’s strong commitment to digital transformation as it strives to meet the goal of ending world hunger by 2030. Building upon Palantir’s world-class data integration technology, WFP will develop new analytical tools to seize digital opportunities, improve real-time decision-making, and enhance global operations.

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Litigating Universal Cognitive Liberty
by Gunnar Larson 09 Mar '24

09 Mar '24

Check out my recent article: https://litigationfinancejournal.com/litigating-universal-cognitive-liberty/ Litigating Universal Cognitive Liberty Freedom of thought is recognized by the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Interestingly,, cognitive liberty is not recognized as an international human right. Some want to change that, making the argument that humanity has the right to be free to think whatever they want (freedom of thought). The Ottawa Citizen reports < https://ottawacitizen.com/news/national/defence-watch/military-leaders-saw-… > that the Canadian armed forces have launched ?psychological operations? as an experiment in government propaganda to counter civil disobedience. International human rights scholars are quick to point out that the lack of protection of cognitive liberty in such instances is due to the relative lack of technology capable of directly interfering with mental autonomy at the time the core human rights treaties were created. Similar to a ransomware attack, the technology behind such operations can be abused. Canada is said to have exploited advanced technologies without the authority to do so. Even worse, it is alleged that Canada forcefully abused technology in the unsanctioned production of reports that appeared to be aimed at cognitive activities of Canadians. - Other reports highlight similar technologies being explored by the New York City Police Department. - In 2021 < https://gothamist.com/news/city-settles-lawsuit-protesters-who-accused-nypd… >, members of the National Lawyers Guild won $650,000 in litigation financed fees from abuse of the technology in New York. The semantics empowering freedom of thought as a human right hold new opportunities for modern international recognition of the right to cognitive liberty.

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