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Ex-F1 Boss Sues HSBC For £5.5M For Wrongly Selling Bonds
by Gunnar Larson 05 Aug '24

05 Aug '24

Ex-F1 Boss Sues HSBC For £5.5M For Wrongly Selling Bonds <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1863047?nl_pk=a94fc…> By Sophia Dourou Former Formula One team boss Eddie Jordan has sued HSBC for £5.5 million ($7 million) for losses suffered as the result of the bank's allegedly false and negligent advice over a bond in which he invested tens of millions of pounds. Read full article » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1863047?nl_pk=a94fc…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1863047?nl_pk=a94fc…>

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[crazy][crazy] Design for a Time Lock Blockchain
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 03 Aug '24

03 Aug '24

Time lock cryptography is an old problem apparently originally described by Tim May, I had no idea. A solution to this was described at https://people.csail.mit.edu/rivest/pubs/RSW96.pdf long ago. Basically, a ciphertext is constructed such that it takes n operations of squaring a number (modulo) to recover it, So, a time lock blockchain might perform these squaring operations as proof of work, to mine its currency. Demand would be produced by people paying to encode time lock messages. Each block would announce decrypted messages. To keep the mining effective, as the time lock protocl and the security of the chain depend on the network being the strongest source of computation that exists, it could be important to make it very clear to miners how to improve the mining algorithm and tune it for new hardware. Rather than hiding it away in mining apps, a good focus might be on figuring out what parts can be factored into user control, and how to ease users writing their own GPU kernels, FPGA layouts, etc, with minimal training. It's obvious that this solution is obvious. However, it is not mentioned at https://crypto.stackexchange.com/questions/606/time-capsule-cryptography in my "internet", and the site gives me errors when I try to log in to post. First steps might include cloning code for an existing blockchain, and coding the Rivest algorithm into the mining and verification code. A websearch shows some of the existing attempts: - drand has timelock cryptography https://drand.love/docs/timelock-encryption but it fails if nodes are compromised since they hold the private material in a multiparty manner, whereas Rivest's solution does not have this failure uhhhhhhhhhhhhhh I ran into https://eprint.iacr.org/2023/189.pdf which mentions a number of other approaches to this, _none_ of which were mentioned on stack exchange ?? this is apparently an old and popular problem for 30 years. thinking the stack exchange is broken and others aren't logging in either or something. there are apparently a number of existing solutions to this, but it is not immediately obvious what their security guarantees are. > the LCS time-lock puzzle released in 1999 by Ron Rivest was anticipated to remain secure for 35 years, but was successfully solved fifteen years early in 2019 via two independent methods [csa19]: once by simply running sequential operations on a single core of a modern CPU for 3.5 years, and again by running the computation for only 2 months on dedicated FPGA hardware. Rabin and Thorpe take the alternative approach and propose the idea of relying on Pedersen distributed key generation, Feldman verifiable threshold secret sharing, and ElGamal encryption [RT06]. Therein multiple parties implement a “Time-Lapse Cryptography Service” by publishing public keys and then releasing the related private keys at given times. To the best of our knowledge such a Time-Lapse Cryptography Service has never been implemented and deployed in practice. Moreover this setting requires explicit action by a threshold of members to compute the decryption operation. In other words, the work required by the network is linear in the number of ciphertexts to decrypt. In [LJKW18] a timelock scheme is built on top of the concept of computational reference clocks using extractable Witness encryption, and a practical instantiation relying on Bitcoin is presented. However, this scheme relies on multilinear maps which have not yet been securely constructed. In [CDK+21] IBE and Witness encryption are again used to achieve a novel notion of “Encryption to the Current Winner” (ECW) where the receiver of an encrypted message is determined by the current state of a blockchain and is not yet known at the time of encryption. Ultimately this scheme is then transformed to achieve a different notion of “Encryption to the Future” (EtF) towards parties selected at arbitrary points in the future, unlike classical timelock or Timelapse encryption where any party knowing the ciphertext can decrypt once the specified time has passed. In direct contrast to our timelock definition which permits anyone to decrypt after the designated time, in EtF only some party with certain rights (the future winner) not yet determined in the present can decrypt ciphertexts. Notice that the setting is also quite different between both works, assuming dynamic committees with the strong assumption that “YOSO”—You Only Speak Once. This has not yet been implemented nor deployed in practice to the extent of our knowledge. Threshold networks have also been used as an encryption “recipient.” For example, Ferveo [Ano21] and Shutter [shu22] are systems where users encrypt their transactions for threshold networks (which can also be the validator set of a blockchain). Once encrypted transactions are included in a block, they get decrypted by the network, thereby preventing front-running. In comparison, our scheme does not rely on the threshold network to perform an operation per ciphertext, rather simply to emit one value per round and the decryption happens publicly. Anyone can compute a valid decryption of a ciphertext encrypted for this round.

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[ot][aiml] Merge Higher-Performing Models Without Compute Across Modes?
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

from March via X (my X feed content is restabilizing after the change) https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.13187 https://github.com/SakanaAI/evolutionary-model-merge <https://github.com/SakanaAI/evolutionary-model-merge?tab=readme-ov-file> The Open LLM Leaderboard is now dominated by merged models, showcasing its potential for democratizing foundation model development. https://huggingface.co/spaces/HuggingFaceH4/open_llm_leaderboard 1. Automated Model Composition: We introduce Evolutionary Model Merge, a general evolutionary method to automatically discover optimal combinations of diverse open-source models for creating new foundation models with user-specified capabilities. This approach harnesses the collective intelligence of existing open models, enabling the creation of powerful models without the need for extensive training data or compute. 2. Cross-Domain Merging: We demonstrate that our method can discover novel ways to merge models from disparate domains (e.g., non-English language and Math, non-English language and Vision), potentially exceeding the capabilities achievable through conventional human design strategies. 3. State-of-the-Art Performance: We showcase the effectiveness of our method by automatically generating a Japanese LLM with Math reasoning capability and a Japanese Vision-Language Model (VLM). Notably, both models achieve state-of-the-art performance on various benchmarks, even without explicit optimization for those tasks. 4. High Efficiency and Surprising Generalizability: We observe that our 7B parameter LLM surpasses the performance of some previous 70B parameter Japanese LLMs on benchmark datasets, highlighting the high efficiency and surprising generalization capability of our approach. We believe this model can serve as a strong general-purpose Japanese LLM.

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GOP Senators Slam 'Burdensome' FDIC Bank Board Proposal
by Gunnar Larson 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

GOP Senators Slam 'Burdensome' FDIC Bank Board Proposal <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1864362?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> By Emilie Ruscoe Republicans on the U.S. Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs asked the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. to withdraw proposed rulemaking on corporate governance, contending Wednesday that the proposal would "harm the safety and soundness" of the U.S. banking system. Letter attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1864362?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1864362?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…>

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BNY's Pershing Hit With $1.4M FINRA Recordkeeping Fine
by Gunnar Larson 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

BNY's Pershing Hit With $1.4M FINRA Recordkeeping Fine <https://www.law360.com/compliance/articles/1864195?nl_pk=ab5ce197-c1fb-4d8e…> By Emilie Ruscoe Bank of New York Mellon subsidiary Pershing will pay the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority a $1.4 million fine to resolve claims that it misstated interest rates for variable rate securities on millions of account statements for more than 12 years. Letter attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/compliance/articles/1864195?nl_pk=ab5ce197-c1fb-4d8e…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/compliance/articles/1864195?nl_pk=ab5ce197-c1fb-4d8e…>

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DOD Defends Designating Tech Firm As Chinese Military Co
by Gunnar Larson 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

DOD Defends Designating Tech Firm As Chinese Military Co. <https://www.law360.com/governmentcontracts/articles/1864575?nl_pk=4126fe73-…> By Ali Sullivan The U.S. Department of Defense defended its decision to designate light section and ranging technology firm Hesai Technology Co. Ltd. as a Chinese military company, telling a District of Columbia federal judge that there exists "substantial evidence" that the company is affiliated with the Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology. Motion attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/governmentcontracts/articles/1864575?nl_pk=4126fe73-…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/governmentcontracts/articles/1864575?nl_pk=4126fe73-…>

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Lewis Brisbois Slams RICO Claims Alleging 'Sham' Suits
by Gunnar Larson 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

Lewis Brisbois Slams RICO Claims Alleging 'Sham' Suits <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1864866?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…> By Lauren Berg Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith LLP has urged a California federal judge Tuesday to toss Chinese investors' accusations that its attorneys filed lawsuits to cover their failure to read "draconian" contract terms that led the investors to lose their $92.5 million stake in a $2.5 billion Los Angeles mixed-used development. Motion attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1864866?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/legalethics/articles/1864866?nl_pk=153d4a8a-6fb9-4a5…>

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NY Appeals Court Upholds Trump Gag Order
by Gunnar Larson 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

NY Appeals Court Upholds Trump Gag Order <https://www.law360.com/capitalmarkets/articles/1864651?nl_pk=abe82add-2a33-…> By Phillip Bantz A New York appeals court on Thursday rejected Donald Trump's bid to strike down a gag order that bars him from threatening court and district attorney staff in his criminal hush money case ahead of his scheduled sentencing next month, as the former president renewed his bid to vacate his conviction following the U.S. Supreme Court's immunity ruling. 3 documents attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/capitalmarkets/articles/1864651?nl_pk=abe82add-2a33-…> |

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Crypto-Forex Co. Defaults In Fla. Civil Fraud Lawsuits
by Gunnar Larson 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

Crypto-Forex Co. Defaults In Fla. Civil Fraud Lawsuits <https://www.law360.com/capitalmarkets/articles/1861597?nl_pk=abe82add-2a33-…> By David Minsky A purported foreign exchange currency broker based in Hong Kong defaulted Thursday in three Florida state court lawsuits alleging multimillion-dollar frauds due to lack of counsel, although a Miami judge allowed the former CEO to respond to the complaints against him as a self-represented party. 6 documents attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/capitalmarkets/articles/1861597?nl_pk=abe82add-2a33-…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/capitalmarkets/articles/1861597?nl_pk=abe82add-2a33-…>

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More 'Equitable' Banking? This Ex-Biden Official Has A Plan
by Gunnar Larson 02 Aug '24

02 Aug '24

More 'Equitable' Banking? This Ex-Biden Official Has A Plan <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1864798?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> By Jon Hill A former Biden U.S. Treasury Department official on Thursday outlined a progressive policy agenda that could provide a road map for bank regulators in the next administration, saying there's more that can and should be done to make the banking system stronger and fairer. 1 document attached | Read full article » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1864798?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…> | Save to favorites » <https://www.law360.com/banking/articles/1864798?nl_pk=feb6bbba-7878-4d39-be…>

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