- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Re: [bitcoin-dev] Height based vs block time based thresholds
by Troy Benjegerdes 05 Jul '17

05 Jul '17

On Wed, Jul 05, 2017 at 08:06:33AM +0000, Gregory Maxwell via bitcoin-dev wrote: > On Wed, Jul 5, 2017 at 3:50 AM, Luke Dashjr via bitcoin-dev > <bitcoin-dev(a)lists.linuxfoundation.org> wrote: > > I've already opened a PR almost 2 weeks ago to do this and fix the other > > issues BIP 9 has. https://github.com/bitcoin/bips/pull/550 > > > > It just needs your ACK to merge. > > These proposals for gratuitous orphaning are reckless and coersive. > We have a professional obligation to first do no harm, and amplifying > orphaning which can otherwise easily be avoided violates it. > > It is not anyones position to decide who does and doesn't need to be > "woken up" with avoidable finical harm, nor is it any of our right to > do so at the risk of monetary losses by any and all users users from > the resulting network instability. > > It's one thing to argue that some disruption is strictly needed for > the sake of advancement, it's another to see yourself fit as judge, > jury, and executioner to any that does not jump at your command. > (which is exactly the tone I and at least some others extract from > your advocacy of these changes and similar activity around BIP148). > > I for one oppose those changes strongly. > > > Not having a mandatory signal turned out to be a serious bug in BIP 9, > > I have seen no evidence or case for this. There are a lot of claims floating around right now that appear to only be testable when there is real money on the table. In general I completely agree with the sentiment we have a professional obligation to first do no harm. This also means we need to acknowledge that there are professional traders who's obligation is to take as much money as possible from everyone else, and these traders have a vested interest in pushing reckless and coercive (to the unsophisticated user) propaganda, as well as code which they can exploit to trigger market volatility. Fortunately the market appears to have reacted to this by producing at least one other implementation (BTC1) that increases the capacity for legacy (non-segwit) transactions. I would say the bigger danger we face is that the market may react to sophisticated market manipulation that fleeces the sheeple with government regulation. If you happen to believe in the value of an algorithmically fixed money supply, and hold a lot of bitcoin, then check your propaganda, or you might find a bigger wolf with guns knocking at your door holding a "save the sheeple" banner. Stop trashing the competition, and let the people with money at risk make their own decisions. If I want big blocks, I should have that choice. If I want small blocks, I should have that choice. If I want bitcoinclassic with no segwit, I should have that choice. Just because you think you know what's best doesn't mean it is. It might just mean you hold bitcoin and I don't, and I don't really care to hand you any wealth because of your religious beliefs in 21 million coins. What I do care about is testing and validating this code that anyone in the world can download and create their own new money, with a new algorithm for the money supply.

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flying chair - Sweden's Alex Borg from AmazingDIYProjects nails it
by Zenaan Harkness 05 Jul '17

05 Jul '17

Sweden's Alex Borg from AmazingDIYProjects designs: KgLUUNfsGvg and flies for some minutes: OkGyz0m8TuA his flying chair on a circuit around trees. Let the races begin :) (Youtube IDs above, put https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= prior to the above IDs to download.)

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Five Eyes Bent On Killing Crypto
by grarpamp 05 Jul '17

05 Jul '17

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/06/australia-to-target-encrypted-m… https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/five-eyes-stress-sharing-info… https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/06/five-eyes-unlimited This week, the political heads of the intelligence services of Canada, New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the United States (the "Five Eyes" alliance) met in Ottawa. The Australian delegation entered the meeting saying publicly that they intended to "thwart the encryption of terrorist messaging." The final communiqué states more diplomatically that "Ministers and Attorneys General [...] noted that encryption can severely undermine public safety efforts by impeding lawful access to the content of communications during investigations into serious crimes, including terrorism. To address these issues, we committed to develop our engagement with communications and technology companies to explore shared solutions." What might their plan be? Is this yet another attempt to ban encryption? A combined effort to compel ISPs and Internet companies to weaken their secure products? At least one leader of a Five Eyes nation has been talking recently about increasing international engagement with technology companies — with a list of laws in her back pocket that are already capable of subverting encryption, and the entire basis of user trust in the Internet. Exporting Britain's Surveillance Regime Before she was elevated to the role of Prime Minister by the fallout from Brexit, Theresa May was the author of the UK's Investigatory Powers bill, which spelled out the UK's plans for mass surveillance in a post-Snowden world..........cont.....

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Tails prevents MAC changes as design feature
by didukno 04 Jul '17

04 Jul '17

I have issues with network interfaces, like wlan0, changing back to what the system wants. This is not what I want. Case: - Start Tails (MAC Address Spoofing: On) - Plug in network card (wlan0) - macchanger assigns wlan0 random MAC string - Bring wlan0 down - Set new MAC string (macchanger or other tools) - Bring wlan0 up - macchanger changes new MAC string to Tails' NIC-only MAC string This did not happen in older versions and may very well be a bug. If not, what development decisions have gone into making this change and why are they better than me changing my MAC and having the system respect that? Why continue with the insecure model of changing NIC only? Willfully leaking network device manufacturer info is irresponsible. didukno

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Bitcoin: South Korea Soon To Come Online
by grarpamp 04 Jul '17

04 Jul '17

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/south-korea-preparing-legalize-bitcoin/ http://www.koreaherald.com/view.php?ud=20170703000867 https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/6kzmhp/south_korea_is_preparing_t… North Korea Soon To Go Offline https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/07/03/north-korea-launches-missile-nearing-ja…

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Rojava: Reddit Overview
by grarpamp 04 Jul '17

04 Jul '17

https://www.reddit.com/r/rojava/top/?sort=top&t=all

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Vulnerability of OpenSource Software download mechanisms: VLC
by Fabio Pietrosanti - Lists 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

Hello, as we move to improve the status of encryption of the internet and at all levels internet companies diffuse the uses of HTTPS encryption and integrity protection methods there are still a variety of massively diffused pieces of software that can be subject to malware injection trough MITM techniques. VLC, Videolan Client, the most used opensource video player have their entire website in HTTP, their download page in HTTP and the mirror providing the downloading in HTTP. However they are refusing to implement HTTPS arguing that because their .exe are digitally signed with authenticode they are safe https://trac.videolan.org/vlc/ticket/18472 . Please help me explain them how digital attacks works, or please someone make a MITM video-screencast to show them how urgent and important is to upgrade all of the connections to HTTPS. -- Fabio Pietrosanti (naif) HERMES - Center for Transparency and Digital Human Rights http://logioshermes.org - https://globaleaks.org - https://tor2web.org - https://ahmia.fi

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Re: [Cryptography] actual journalism, was LRB article, Satoshi's Trump Card
by James A. Donald 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

On 03/07/2017 4:31 PM, Ben Laurie wrote: > Confused by this - Merkle trees inherently don't grow to enormous depth. The bitcoin hash chain grows to enormous depth, and arguably it is a Merkle tree that testifies to all transactions everywhere that ever taken place in bitcoin. If you say it is not a Merkle tree, then fine. A scalable crypto currency has to employ a Merkle trees instead of whatever we call the thing that Bitcoin uses.

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GPG: Deprecated hash + local "game over" exploit
by Steve Kinney 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

Greetings, A couple of days ago Shawn pointed out offlist that my GPG installation was using SHA1 when signing messages. Although seven hash functions are included in GnuPG 1.4.16, SHA1 is still the default. For most purposes this is no cause for panic, but it's "untidy" at best and might occasionally bite someone in the ass. The simple cure is to append this to gpg.conf: personal-digest-preferences SHA256 SHA512 digest-algo SHA256 I wonder when the gpg guise will get around to updating the default hash... On a related note, gnupg-agent stores typed pass phrases for 10 minutes, as a convenience when reading or signing multiple files or documents. Only one little thing: It stores typed pass phrases until the machine is powered off, regardless of configuration settings per the gnupg-agent man page. Last time I checked, this bug was dismissed by Debian as a non-issue, saying that exploiting it would require physical access to the machine and "physical access is game over." That's an excuse to leave the bug in place, not a reason. I am sure present company can provide several examples of cases where the presence of gnupg-agent in its present broken condition "is game over" for the user. Four years ago I noticed this problem, exhausted "sane" remedies, and found an effective work-around that denies gnupg-agent access to pass phrases when using Enigmail or GPG itself. http://pilobilus.net/gnupg-agent_work_around_for_linux_mint.html :o)

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Rojava: YPG SDF Blasting ISIL's Fabled City of Raqqa FTW
by grarpamp 03 Jul '17

03 Jul '17

https://twitter.com/AzadiRojava https://twitter.com/Gargaristan/status/880133821664022528 https://twitter.com/KufriusMaximus http://www.ypgrojava.org/In-Pictures:-Recent-days-of-the-great-battle-for-R… In Pictures: Recent days of the great battle for Raqqa liberation

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