- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Timelock encryption
by George Violaris 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

Some interesting reading regarding timelock encryption. Given crypto breakthroughs through cryptocurrency and smart contracts, it is interesting to be able to apply such techniques in fields such as insurance, bonds, trading, etc. The big issue up to now with these is that a trusted third party, e.g, a server, was required to keep track. However now with bitcoin and blockchain technologies, this kind of research is starting to change. - Gwern.net - Self-Decrypting Files: https://www.gwern.net/Self-decrypting-files Rabin & Thorpe - Time-Lapse Cryptogrpahy: http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cat/tlc.pdf / http://www.eecs.harvard.edu/~cat/papers/tlc-poster.pdf Tibor Jager - How to Build Time-Lock Encryption: https://eprint.iacr.org/2015/478 Jia Liu and Saqib A. Kakvi and Bogdan Warinschi - Extractable Witness Encryption and Timed-Release Encryption from Bitcoin ./gv

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RFD: Harrison and Appelbaum - Whistleblowers and Wikileaks
by grarpamp 10 Oct '17

10 Oct '17

https://roomfordiscussion.com/interview/sarah-harrison-jacob-appelbaum-wiki… Whistleblowers & Wikileaks “Days later, Harrison said goodbye to Snowden and flew to Berlin. She had been with him in Moscow for four months. On what was said to be legal advice, she declined to return to the UK. The German capital and East Berlin in particular was now a hub for a growing number of Snowden exiles: Poitras, journalist Jacob Appelbaum and Harrison. For anyone with a sense of history this was ironic. Stasiland had become and island of media freedom” (The Snowden Files, L. Harding, p.333). This was 4 years ago, but how is the situation today for the people who helped Edward Snowden? How has WikiLeaks changed since then? Is Edward Snowden still in a critical situation? What about Chelsea Manning and all the other whistleblowers? Where do we draw the line between truth telling and treason? This and much more will be discussed on the 12th of October at Room for Discussion with two of the main figures that were in the eye of the cyclone during the Snowden case in 2013! We will have the honour to interview Sarah Harrison (one of the closest advisers of Julian Assange) and Jacob Appelbaum (former ‘evangelist’ of the Tor Project and hacktivist) on the current state of whistleblowers and of Wikileaks. We hope to see you there! Practical Information Guests: Sarah Harrison & Jacob Appelbaum Interviewers: Paolo Destilo & Valentina Gianera Time: 13:00 – 14:00 Date: 12th of October

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Carbon fiber bombs
by jim bell 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

Check out this post in the South Korea vibe: South Korea developing graphite 'blackout bombs' to paralyse North's electrical grid https://www.yahoo.com/newsroom/vibes/south-korea/v-50a3291a-1aa0-3389-b071-… Sent from Yahoo Mail on Android

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Re: IBM OpenPOWER9 CPU [re: Closed Intel / AMD Firmware]
by Steven Schear 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

Agreed that the POWER series are at (or perhaps above) most people's price point. Its a shame non-SOC ARM PCs aren't common to avoid the easily hidden backdoors afforded by integrated processors. Warrant Canary creator On Oct 8, 2017 7:22 PM, "grarpamp" <grarpamp(a)gmail.com> wrote: > On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 3:11 PM, Steven Schear <schear.steve(a)gmail.com> > wrote: > > Why not switch to much more open CPUs (e.g. POWER8/9) which are already > > comparable to much of Intel's higher end server chips. > > Power8 is an intermediate generation now on phaseout, where > Power9 seems more part of a fuller openpower initiative that might > stand up to Intel / AMD. The entire early 9 production output was > being vacuumed up by military / big data / compute, and retail is > taking a while to evolve. It's good stuff however power is still an > expensive platform for non enterprise end users to just buy > casually, and to pay electric on, but the openness might win. > Power9 scaleout SO is rather less than scaleup SU versions. > > If you want me to switch and get in the game early, perhaps > with review coinmining and shell ftw, you know what to do... ;) > BTC:1CQYSaF8Cqx5ZSgaKG9LE8UrEJAkWqFpLa > > https://wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation > https://wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9 > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12351319 > https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/06/inside-future-google > -rackspace-power9-system/ > https://blog.rackspace.com/the-latest-zaius-barreleye-g2-ope > n-compute-openpower-server > https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/09/19/power9-rollout-begin > s-summit-sierra/ > https://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/07/15/open-sourced-bios- > helps-power8-compete-x86/ > http://www.theplatform.net/2015/03/23/inside-the-rackspace- > openpower-megaserver/ > https://www.servethehome.com/?s=openpower > https://www.anandtech.com/SearchResults?q=openpower > http://www.storagereview.com/search/node/openpower > https://hn.algolia.com/?query=power9&sort=byDate&prefix&page > =0&dateRange=all&type=story > > https://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ > https://raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html > https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956257 > http://tyan.com/campaign/OpenPOWER/ > > https://github.com/open-power > https://github.com/openbmc > > https://wiki.freebsd.org/POWER8 > https://www.freebsdnews.com/2015/03/04/freebsd-power8-its-alive-2/ > https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=279189 > https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2015-01-2015-03.h > tml#FreeBSD-on-POWER8 > https://reviews.freebsd.org/search/query/oIdoWWKTe71p/ > > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.8-More-POWER9 > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Power-Ch > anges-Linux-4.12 > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Talos-2-Teaser > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2- > POWER9-Pre-Order > https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2- > FSF-RYF-Possible > > http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom > https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/only-a-short-time-left- > to-pre-order-the-talos-ii-pre-orders-end-september-15th > > Minimum to boot and scale cost users roughly $3300 incl 2x cpu, ps, 32gb. >

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dark web briefest intro - was Re: educate me Please
by Zenaan Harkness 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

----- Forwarded message from Zenaan Harkness <zen(a)freedbms.net> ----- > Hi Zee, What is the reality of this dark web? If it doesn't show > on Google, then how can you find it? ... As to the dark web - it certainly exists. As we see on the news, every 2 or 4 years the authorities take down one or other of the largest dark web "market place" websites - so evidently these places attract a lot of people. And then there are the smaller sites they take down which usually don't hit the front page of the news. There are all sorts of dark web sites - market places, forums, simple websites, ssh gateways (apparently a lot of people access their normal web servers over ssh), and apparently a lot of ways to slip up for those doing something illegal - and Tor is designed so that the large state-level authorities can pretty much always uncover someone if that's what they want to do; Tor is not secure against GPAs (Global Passive Adversaries), and is absolutely not secure against an active adversary. One of the key features that the Tor company/group has never implemented is chaff-filled network - that is, you specify "I want to allocate 100 KB/s to my node, and I want that divided equally amongst my outward connections, and any peer node that "randomly drops" packets, becomes less trusted by me. I asked the devs directly (or someone else did, can't remember for sure), and the reason came back "our funding proposals for this feature have never been approved" - which makes sense, since the CIA, DIA, DOD and NSA fund the creation of the Tor network, they don't want to fund features which make it much harder for them to uncloak users they are targetting. A volunteer could also try to implement this feature, but it's a lot of work, and even the I2P folks have not yet even tried to implement it. So, even if you were researching data/info for a book you are writing, you really need to spend a lot of time reading about the security aspects, to find out what can give you even a small modicum of "reasonable plausible deniability" for your research activities. For example: - run an exit node (carries its own risks, but one of the better ways to achieve plausible deniabililty) at home - alternatively, or in addition, configure your node as a bridge/ Tor-network entry node, and invite a handful of friends to use it as their gateway to the Tor network (the alternative, if you don't run your own node, is that Tor browser picks a random node to use to enter the Tor network, and there's a damn good chance the CIA or FBI are running that node) - don't run Tor browser on Windows - don't run Windows of any version - learn Qubes OS or Tails OS and use that - experiement for a few months with something completely innocuous - running a website promoting information about Marijuana or something, and once you're comfortable, then move on to something more innocuous - if you choose to run a Tor node (can increase the security, can reduce it if you stuff up the config) there are plenty of folks on the Tor mailing lists who will answer questions, and plenty of links to read to Stay Safe (C)(R) - if you intend to run a dark web website that some authorities really would not like - say e.g. promoting homosexuality to the Saudi's - then you should really be running your own ISP with multiple internet links (e.g. Telstra and Optus), so that any virtual servers you link into the dark web are relatively robust; then, never allow your website to get too popular - keep it to a very manageable number of invitees - never make your invites over the clear net (normal internet) only invite truly trusted friends in person, face to face, with mobile phones turned off and out of reach of all recording devices (including of course, all phones); to invite random people, do so on a dark web forum only. - if you're going to run a dark web website, you really, really, really need to know how to configure firewalling, web server, https certificates, ssh for admin access etc etc, in such a way as to be truly, actually, secure, if there's any chance your website is going to be targetted by the local authorities from your own jurisdiction, you need to not make even 1 single mistake - that mistake will bring you undone! Good luck :) Zen ----- End forwarded message -----

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IBM OpenPOWER9 CPU [re: Closed Intel / AMD Firmware]
by grarpamp 09 Oct '17

09 Oct '17

On Sun, Oct 8, 2017 at 3:11 PM, Steven Schear <schear.steve(a)gmail.com> wrote: > Why not switch to much more open CPUs (e.g. POWER8/9) which are already > comparable to much of Intel's higher end server chips. Power8 is an intermediate generation now on phaseout, where Power9 seems more part of a fuller openpower initiative that might stand up to Intel / AMD. The entire early 9 production output was being vacuumed up by military / big data / compute, and retail is taking a while to evolve. It's good stuff however power is still an expensive platform for non enterprise end users to just buy casually, and to pay electric on, but the openness might win. Power9 scaleout SO is rather less than scaleup SU versions. If you want me to switch and get in the game early, perhaps with review coinmining and shell ftw, you know what to do... ;) BTC:1CQYSaF8Cqx5ZSgaKG9LE8UrEJAkWqFpLa https://wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenPOWER_Foundation https://wikipedia.org/wiki/POWER9 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12351319 https://www.nextplatform.com/2016/04/06/inside-future-google-rackspace-powe… https://blog.rackspace.com/the-latest-zaius-barreleye-g2-open-compute-openp… https://www.nextplatform.com/2017/09/19/power9-rollout-begins-summit-sierra/ https://www.enterprisetech.com/2014/07/15/open-sourced-bios-helps-power8-co… http://www.theplatform.net/2015/03/23/inside-the-rackspace-openpower-megase… https://www.servethehome.com/?s=openpower https://www.anandtech.com/SearchResults?q=openpower http://www.storagereview.com/search/node/openpower https://hn.algolia.com/?query=power9&sort=byDate&prefix&page=0&dateRange=al… https://raptorcs.com/TALOSII/ https://raptorcs.com/content/base/faq.html https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14956257 http://tyan.com/campaign/OpenPOWER/ https://github.com/open-power https://github.com/openbmc https://wiki.freebsd.org/POWER8 https://www.freebsdnews.com/2015/03/04/freebsd-power8-its-alive-2/ https://svnweb.freebsd.org/base?view=revision&revision=279189 https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2015-01-2015-03.html#FreeBSD-on-… https://reviews.freebsd.org/search/query/oIdoWWKTe71p/ https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Linux-4.8-More-POWER9 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Power-Changes-Linux-4.12 https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Raptor-Talos-2-Teaser https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2-POWER9-Pre-Order https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-2-FSF-RYF-Possible http://www.fsf.org/resources/hw/endorsement/respects-your-freedom https://www.fsf.org/blogs/licensing/only-a-short-time-left-to-pre-order-the… Minimum to boot and scale cost users roughly $3300 incl 2x cpu, ps, 32gb.

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Julian Assange Told Young Catalans What Chat Apps To Use To Avoid Spanish Authorities
by Cecilia Tanaka 08 Oct '17

08 Oct '17

Cute news! <3 https://www.buzzfeed.com/ryanhatesthis/the-story-of-the-catalan-independenc… ====== Public Long OT PS to ZH: - Zenaan Harkness, stop sending fake messages and spam from MatchSeniors.com and similar dating sites using my name. It's always disgusting to notice there are so hypocrite, vile and stupid people like you in the world. You could use all your free time to help people instead of trying to hurt me and others. Sorry, the mud will always be mud. You can try to cover other persons' shine with your dirtiness, your lies, but you can't do it for much time and, if necessary, there will be return. ------- "Don't let anyone rob you of your imagination, your creativity, or your curiosity. It's your place in the world; it's your life. Go on and do all you can with it, and make it the life you want to live." - Mae Jemison

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FreeBSD 2017Q2 Report
by grarpamp 08 Oct '17

08 Oct '17

https://www.freebsd.org/news/status/report-2017-04-2017-06.html

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Anarchist AI: The Last Invention Of Man
by grarpamp 08 Oct '17

08 Oct '17

http://nautil.us/issue/53/monsters/the-last-invention-of-man https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15419619 Nautil.us Issue 053: Monsters The Last Invention of Man How AI might take over the world. By Max Tegmark The Omega Team was the soul of the company. Whereas the rest of the enterprise brought in the money to keep things going, by various commercial applications of narrow AI, the Omega Team pushed ahead in their quest for what had always been the CEO’s dream: building general artificial intelligence. Most other employees viewed “the Omegas,” as they affectionately called them, as a bunch of pie-in-the-sky dreamers, perpetually decades away from their goal. They happily indulged them, however, because they liked the prestige that the cutting-edge work of the Omegas gave their company, and they also appreciated the improved algorithms that the Omegas occasionally gave them. What they didn’t realize was that the Omegas had carefully crafted their image to hide a secret: They were extremely close to pulling off the most audacious plan in human history. Their charismatic CEO had handpicked them not only for being brilliant researchers, but also for ambition, idealism, and a strong commitment to helping humanity. He reminded them that their plan was extremely dangerous, and that if powerful governments found out, they would do virtually anything—including kidnapping—to shut them down or, preferably, to steal their code. But they were all in, 100 percent, for much the same reason that many of the world’s top physicists joined the Manhattan Project to develop nuclear weapons: They were convinced that if they didn’t do it first, someone less idealistic would. The AI they had built, nicknamed Prometheus, kept getting more capable. Although its cognitive abilities still lagged far behind those of humans in many areas, for example, social skills, the Omegas had pushed hard to make it extraordinary at one particular task: programming AI systems. They’d deliberately chosen this strategy because they had bought the intelligence explosion argument made by the British mathematician Irving Good back in 1965: “Let an ultraintelligent machine be defined as a machine that can far surpass all the intellectual activities of any man, however clever. Since the design of machines is one of these intellectual activities, an ultraintelligent machine could design even better machines; there would then unquestionably be an ‘intelligence explosion,’ and the intelligence of man would be left far behind. Thus the first ultraintelligent machine is the last invention that man need ever make, provided that the machine is docile enough to tell us how to keep it under control.” They figured that if they could get this recursive self-improvement going, the machine would soon get smart enough that it could also teach itself all other human skills that would be useful. The First Millions.....

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Huxley on Soma
by juan 08 Oct '17

08 Oct '17

"Most highly publicized of these [new drugs] are the three new tranquillizers, reserpine, chlorpromazine and meprobamate. None of these drugs is perfectly harmless; but their cost, in terms of physical health and mental efficiency, is extraordinarily low. In a world where nobody gets anything for nothing tranquillizers offer a great deal for very little. Miltown and chlorpromazine are not yet soma; but they come fairly near to being one of the aspects of that mythical drug. A more promising candidate for the role of soma in its third aspect is Iproniazid Still more promising, according to a distinguished pharmacologist of my acquaintance, is a new compound, still in the testing stage, to be known as Deaner" We see then that, though soma does not yet exist (and will probably never exist), fairly good substitutes for the various aspects of soma have already been discovered. There are now physiologically cheap tranquillizers, physiologically cheap vision-producers and physiologically cheap stimulants"

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