- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

recommendation for offline Markdown renderer (for GitHub .md)?
by Zenaan Harkness 06 Jul '20

06 Jul '20

Anyone got a strong recommendation for an offline Markdown renderer which can at least do a passable job rendering GitHub's .md style? grip uses GitHub API, contacts the server on every render, seems to not even cache CSS files... Also!: GitHub supports inlining section files (very useful for reducing file size/ dividing one large file) with this: <file name="section_2.md"> So having that work with an offline renderer would be gold™...

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Fw: debmirror: apt update performed "unsandboxed"? ~=> file path not readable
by Zenaan Harkness 06 Jul '20

06 Jul '20

In case this is of interest. ----- Forwarded message from Zenaan Harkness <zenaan(a)freedbms.net> ----- From: Zenaan Harkness <zenaan(a)freedbms.net> To: debian-user(a)lists.debian.org Date: Mon, 6 Jul 2020 20:49:52 +1000 Subject: debmirror: apt update performed "unsandboxed"? ~=> file path not readable This was a question, but after some digging, answered itself (see near bottom), via a short recursive path analysis script showing that one path component of the path hierarchy failed to have world-readable perms (a dir in the middle), so in case it's useful for some: Local debmirror mirror, InRelease is out of date so setting Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false but getting "unsandboxed" notice/warning: # apt update -o Acquire::Check-Valid-Until=false ------->> 20200706@20:16:10 <<------- Get:1 file:/public/debian/sid sid InRelease [146 kB] ... Ign:2 file:/public/debian/sid sid/main amd64 Packages Err:3 file:/public/debian/sid sid/main Translation-en File not found - /public/debian/sid/dists/sid/main/i18n/Translation-en (2: No such file or directory) Get:4 file:/public/debian/sid sid/contrib amd64 Packages [70.1 kB] Reading package lists... Done N: Download is performed unsandboxed as root as file '/public/debian/sid/dists/sid/InRelease' couldn't be accessed by user '_apt'. - pkgAcquire::Run (13: Permission denied) E: Failed to fetch file:/public/debian/sid/dists/sid/main/i18n/Translation-en File not found - /public/debian/sid/dists/sid/main/i18n/Translation-en (2: No such file or directory) E: Some index files failed to download. They have been ignored, or old ones used instead. Now when checking that file which is purpotedly causing the "unsandboxed" 'download', we get this: # ll /public/debian/sid/dists/sid/InRelease ------->> 20200706@20:19:22 <<------- 93K -rw-r--r-- 1 zenan zenan 143K 20200627 16:32.03 /public/debian/sid/dists/sid/InRelease Clearly that file is readable by all users.. hmm. So let's analyze the full path: $ zfile /public/debian/sid/dists/sid/InRelease ------->> 20200706@20:25:42 <<------- ---- Analyzing "/public/debian/sid/dists/sid/InRelease" type: /home/zenan/bin/zfile: line 9: type: /public/debian/sid/dists/sid/InRelease: not found f: /public/debian/sid/dists/sid/InRelease Drwxr-xr-x root root / drwxr-xr-x root root public lrwxrwxrwx root root debian -> /Library/Lpools/zen/p1-setups_misc/repos/debian Drwxr-xr-x root root / drwxr-xr-x root zenan Library drwxr-xr-x root root Lpools drwxr-x--- zenan zenan zen Drwxr-xr-x zenan zenan p1-setups_misc Drwxr-xr-x zenan zenan repos drwxrwxr-x zenan zenan debian lrwxrwxrwx root root sid -> d00 lrwxrwxrwx zenan zenan d00 -> d00-sid+tst+src-64 drwxr-xr-x zenan zenan d00-sid+tst+src-64 drwxrwxr-x zenan zenan dists drwxrwxr-x zenan zenan sid -rw-r--r-- zenan zenan InRelease -rw-r--r-- 1 zenan zenan 146310 Jun 27 16:32 /Library/Lpools/zen/p1-setups_misc/repos/debian/d00-sid+tst+src-64/dists/sid/InRelease /Library/Lpools/zen/p1-setups_misc/repos/debian/d00-sid+tst+src-64/dists/sid/InRelease: ASCII text text/plain; charset=us-ascii {namei|readlink|/usr/bin/file} -f {file}... And we notice that /public/debian is a symlink and further down, this suspicious dir: drwxr-x--- zenan zenan zen Culprit identified! A quick chmod a+rx /Library/Lpools/zen and the show is back on the road. And the swanky recursive path analyzer (bash script): https://github.com/zenaan/quick-fixes-ftfw/blob/master/bin/zfile ----- End forwarded message -----

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what should be the goals of an 'evolved" technological & scientific society?
by таракан 06 Jul '20

06 Jul '20

Question: what should be the goals of an 'evolved" technological & scientific society? - buying and selling the most 'popular' keywords ? - making super shiny HTML5 websites for the bags sold by Karshadian (whatever his the correct name I don't care) - watching (mostly stupid) videos on small devices everywhere at any moment of the day - ordering pizzas with a mobile device? - securing the money of the ones who steal fortunes? - making all people under strict surveillance, using all sort of monitoring devices? - putting 'IoT' smart (sic) devices into the asses of old people to measure the frequencies of their farts ? - etc... Not really, an evolved society should try to seek new ways of interacting with the universe, seeking answers about their origins, building robots to serve and help them, researching more knowledge and maybe more wiseness. And before all, travelling in space, exploring the solar system and their galaxy. Needless to say we are far from that and everyday we get seperated from that evolved society by millions of kms. Our society is people-focused... democracy as they claim... each 'people' is a god' with a beautiful body that smells good and a younger skin, a unique and beautiful creature which deserve the right to dignity and above all, a brand new smartphone provided with plenty of super programs. There are 7 billions of beautiful asses on that planet, superbs, polished and clean who 'stays at home to be safe' but is that really what we should have expected from a really 'evolved' society ? Not at least a bit more ambitions than this? Over all this, there should be a debate if digittal technology is really the most advanced thing we could do? We certainly need something like that but do we really need stuff like javascript which seems to consume the energy of so much young talents (sic). Computer are fascinating but so far all projects about 4th and 5th generations of computers were abandonned (the computers you dialog with, not program ) and since Android is becoming slowly but surely the OS of the future... I see this is a dead-end there is surely a need for something else than digital technology but what ?

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Renowned Cryptographer Says His Patent Was an Obstacle for Hal Finney
by Bob Hettinga 05 Jul '20

05 Jul '20

https://cointelegraph.com/news/renowned-cryptographer-says-his-patent-was-a… Renowned Cryptographer Says His Patent Was an Obstacle for Hal Finney Okamoto explains why his “electronic cash” patent may have presented obstacles to Hal Finney’s plans to make his own electronic currency. Jul 04, 2020 Okamoto explains why his “electronic cash” patent may have presented obstacles to Hal Finney’s plans to make his own electronic currency. Tatsuaki Okamoto explains why his “electronic cash” patent might have presented an obstacle to Hal Finney in his ambition to create his own electronic currency. Six key patents Sometime before Dec. 6, 2004, Hal Finney did a search in a patent database on “blind-signature based cash systems”. On his site he posted a list of six such patents: “This might be useful for those considering implementing electronic cash.” Four of the patents are authored by David Chaum, the other two by Okamoto and his colleague at Nippon Telegraph Kazuo Ohta. Ecash patents by Dr. Okamoto & his Nippon Telegraph colleague Dr. Kazuo Ohta. Source: finney.org (via WayBack Machine) Okamoto currently serves as director of the Cryptography & Information Security Lab at NTT Research and holds over 100 patents. We asked him to explain why his patent might have presented an obstacle to Hal Finney and other cypherpunks in their ambition of creating a decentralized currency, considering that his patent involves an intermediary. Okamoto’s ecash & Nakamoto’s Bitcoin Okamoto kindly prepared diagrams elucidating the differences between the ecash system outlined in his patent and Bitcoin (BTC). Diagram: Electronic Cash described in Patent 49775595. Source: NTT Research Diagram: Bitcoin. Source: NTT Research Both solutions use public keys as pseudonymous identities and private keys to authorize transactions. However, in Okamoto’s proposal, a trusted party varies transactions, whereas Bitcoin is trustless, with all nodes verifying transactions. Trustless system — no trivial achievement Considering this key difference, one might ponder — why Finney and other pioneers were so paranoid about patent infringement? One obvious answer is that Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin proposal was the first successful framework for a trustless electronic cash system. Coming up with it was not a trivial achievement; almost 30 years passed between the introduction of Chaum’s DigiCash and Nakamoto’s Bitcoin. Did “Okamoto” give ideas to Finney for “Nakamoto?” Many believe Finney to be Satoshi Nakamoto or at least part of the team that was behind the moniker. Besides his interests, expertise and early Bitcoin involvement, another fact strongly supports this theory — being a neighbor of Dorian Satoshi Nakamoto. Considering that Google cannot return a single query for Satoshi Nakamoto before the Bitcoin proposal was publicized, this coincidence is eerie. If Finney, indeed was behind the pseudonym Satoshi Nakamoto, his familiarity with the works of Tatsuaki Okamoto might have also played a role in the choice of the alias. Okamoto told Cointelegraph that he was never a part of the famous cryptographic mailing lists and did not know Hal Finney personally.

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Bulgarian Military: Russia increased the range of electromagnetic damage of its EMP weapons
by jim bell 05 Jul '20

05 Jul '20

Bulgarian Military: Russia increased the range of electromagnetic damage of its EMP weapons. https://bulgarianmilitary.com/2020/07/05/russia-increased-the-range-of-elec…

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Rabushka: "as a result of the American Revolution, the tax burden tripled"
by Zig the N.g 05 Jul '20

05 Jul '20

Sadly, it is looking like the Bat-Soup Stasi is right agin - the "American" revolution was nothing but a ruse to create chaos and war debts, for greedy bankers, after which "the colony's tax debt tripled"! Now that's funny - in a true, and black comedy style of funny. Unlike the article's title though, the American revolution was no mistake whatsoever, but an extremely well calculated ploy by a few greedy and power hungry men to claim that which was not theirs, on the blood and deception of the people (admittedly by way of at least a pretence of a worthy cause of "The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States."): Was The American Revolution A Mistake? Gary North via The Daily Reckoning, https://dailyreckoning.com/was-the-american-revolution-a-mistake-2/ https://www.zerohedge.com/political/was-american-revolution-mistake ..So as a result of the American Revolution, the tax burden tripled. The debt burden soared as soon as the Revolution began. Monetary inflation wiped out the currency system. Price controls in 1777 produced the debacle of Valley Forge. ..“There Was No British Tyranny, and Surely Not in North America” Only after the price control laws were repealed in 1778 could the Army buy food again. But the hyperinflation of the Continentals and state-issued currencies replaced the pre-Revolution system of silver currency: Spanish pieces of eight. The proponents of independence invoked British tyranny in North America. But there was no British tyranny in North America. In 1872, Frederick Engels wrote an article, “On Authority.” He criticized anarchists, whom he called anti-authoritarians. His description of the authoritarian character of all armed revolutions should remind us of the costs of revolution. A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. ..After the American Revolution, 46,000 British Loyalists fled to Canada and other places controlled by the crown. They were not willing to swear allegiance to the new Colonial governments. They retained their loyalty to the nation that had delivered to them the greatest liberty on Earth. They had not committed treason. The revolutionaries are not remembered as treasonous. The victors write the history books. The Boston Tea Party: A Protest Against Lower Tea Prices What would libertarians — even conservatives — give today in order to return to an era in which the central government extracted 1% of the nation’s wealth? Where there was no income tax? Would they describe such a society as tyrannical? That the largest signature on the Declaration of Independence was signed by the richest smuggler in North America was no coincidence. He was hopping mad. Parliament in 1773 had cut the tax on tea imported by the British East India Co., so the cost of British tea went lower than the smugglers’ cost on non-British tea. This had cost Hancock a pretty penny. The Tea Party had stopped the unloading of the tea by throwing privately owned tea off a privately owned ship — a ship in competition with Hancock’s ships. The Boston Tea Party was, in fact, a well-organized protest against lower prices stemming from lower taxes. So once again, I’m not celebrating the Fourth of July today.

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Ars Technica: 5G was going to unite the world—instead it’s tearing us apart
by jim bell 05 Jul '20

05 Jul '20

Ars Technica: 5G was going to unite the world—instead it’s tearing us apart. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/07/5g-was-going-to-unite-the-world…

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Encryption-Busting EARN IT Act Advances in Senate
by jim bell 05 Jul '20

05 Jul '20

https://www.wired.com/story/security-news-encryption-busting-earn-it-act-ad…

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A Brief Totally Accurate History Of Programming Languages
by Zig the N.g 05 Jul '20

05 Jul '20

A Brief Totally Accurate History Of Programming Languages https://medium.com/commitlog/a-brief-totally-accurate-history-of-programmin… One Hundred Percent Inspired by Facts Casper Beyer May 23, 2019 1800 Joseph Marie Jacquard teaches a loom to read punch cards, creating the first heavily multi-threaded processing unit. His invention was fiercely opposed by silk-weavers who were worried about robots taking their jobs. 1842 Ada Lovelace gets bored of being noble and scribbles in a notebook what will later be known as the first published computer program, only slightly inconvenienced by the fact that there were no computers around at the time. 1936 Alan Turing invents everything, the Queen is keen on him but Turing fancies the lads over her, as a result of this so she has him castrated. The Queen later got over it, unfortunately he had already been dead for centuries (internet-time) at that time. 1936 Alonzo Church also invents everything with Turing, but being across the pond he was not fancied nor castrated by the Queen. 1957 John Backus creates FORTRAN which is the first language that real programmers use. 1959 Grace Hopper gets tired of sparring with Chuck Norris and invents the first enterprise ready business oriented programming language. Because enterprise ready software needs to have long and boring names she decides to call it the “common business-oriented language” or COBOL for short. 1964 John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz decide programming is too hard and they need to go back to basics so they drop line numbers, they call their programming language BASIC. 1970 Niklaus Wirth makes Pascal become a thing along with a bunch of other languages, this guy really liked making languages. He also invents Wirth’s law which makes Moore’s law obsolete because software developers will write so bloated software that even mainframes cannot keep up. This will later be proven to be true with the invention of Electron.js and the abstractions built on top of it. 1972 Dennis Ritchie got bored during work hours at Bell Labs so he decided to make C which had curly braces so it ended up being a huge success. Afterwards he added segmentation faults and other developer friendly features to aid productivity. Still having a couple of hours remaining he and his buddies at Bell Labs decided to make an example program demonstrating C, they make a operating system called Unix. 1980 Alan Kay invents object oriented programming and calls it Smalltalk, in Smalltalk everything is an object, even an object is an object. No one really has time for his small talk. 1987 Larry Wall has a religious experience, becomes a preacher and makes Perl the doctrine. Everyone was onboard with up until the new testament. 1983 Jean Ichbiah notices that Ada Lovelace programs never actually ran and decided to create a language with her name. The language rings true to the name and remains obscure. 1986 Brac Box and Tol Move decide to make an unreadable version of C based on Smalltalk which they call Objective-C. To this day no one is able to understand the syntax. 1983 Bjarne Stroustrup takes a quick trip in his DeLorean back to the futurem while there he notices that C is not taking enough time to compile. Meaning developers don’t have enough time to mess around while claiming the code is compiling. In response to this he adds every feature he can think of to the language and names it C++. Programmers everywhere adopt it so they have genuine excuses to watch cat videos and read xkcd while working. 1991 Guido van Rossum writes a cooking book about eggs and spam. 1993 Roberto Ierusalimschy and friends decide they need a scripting language local to Brazil, during localization an error was made that made indices start counting from 1 instead of 0, they named it Lua. 1994 Rasmus Lerdorf makes a template engine for his personal homepage CGI scripts, he releases his dotfiles on the web. The world decides to use these dotfiles for everything and in a frenzy Rasmus throws some extra database bindings in there for the heck of it and calls it PHP. 1995 Yukihiro Matsumoto is not very happy, he notices other programmers are not happy. He creates Ruby to make programmers happy. After creating Ruby “Matz” is happy, the Ruby community is happy, everyone is happy. Sidenote: Thank you Matt, I was a Rubyist for a couple of years and I was indeed very happy. 1995 Brendan Eich takes the weekend off to design a language that will be used to power every single web browser in the world and eventually also Skynet. He originally went to Netscape and said it was called LiveScript but Java became popular during the code review so they decided they better use curly braces and rename it to JavaScript. Java turned out to be a trademark mess that would get them in trouble so JavaScript gets renamed to ECMAScript during standardisation and everyone still calls it JavaScript. 1996 James Gosling invents Java, the first truly overly verbose object oriented programming language where design patterns rule supreme over pragmatism. Its super effective, the manager provider container provider service manager singleton manager provider pattern is born. 2001 Anders Hejlsberg re-invents Java and calls it C# because programming in C feels cooler than Java. Everyone loves this new version of Java for totally not being like Java. 2005 David Hanselmeyer Hansen creates a web framework for Ruby called Ruby on Rails, people no longer remember that the two are separate things. People are becoming less happy. 2006 John Resig writes a helper library for JavaScript. Somehow everyone thinks it’s a language on its own and make careers of copy and pasting jQuery codes from the internets. 2009 Ken Thompson and Rob Pike decide to make a language like C, but with les sspeed and more safety equipment and making it more marketable with Gophers as mascots. They call it Go, make it open source and fund it by selling Gopher branded kneepads and hardhats separately. 2010 Graydon Hoare also wants to make a language like C, he calls it Rust. Everyone demands that every single piece of software be rewritten in Rust immediately. Graydon wants shinier things and starts working on Swift for Apple. 2012 Anders Hjelsberg wants to write C# in web browsers, he designs TypeScript which is JavaScript but with more Java in it. 2013 Jeremy Ashkenas wants to be happy like Ruby developers so he creates CoffeeScript which compiles to be JavaScript but looks more like Ruby. Jeremy never became truly happy like Matz and Ruby developers. 2014 Chris Lattner makes Swift with the primary design goal of not being Objective-C, in the end it looks like Java. James Iry, whom I can only assume is a fellow computer science historian made some similar observations back in 2009. http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-mostly-wrong.htm…

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SciTechDaily: New Research Advances U.S. Army’s Quest for Ultra-Secure Quantum Networking
by jim bell 04 Jul '20

04 Jul '20

SciTechDaily: New Research Advances U.S. Army’s Quest for Ultra-Secure Quantum Networking. https://scitechdaily.com/new-research-advances-u-s-armys-quest-for-ultra-se…

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