- cypherpunks - lists.cpunks.org

Fwd: [tor-relays] Proselytizing Tor at the General Strike
by grarpamp 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

https://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-relays/2017-February/011959.html ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Kenneth Freeman <kencf0618(a)riseup.net> Date: Sat, Feb 18, 2017 at 3:44 PM Subject: Re: [tor-relays] Proselytizing Tor at the General Strike To: tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org On 02/15/2017 06:00 PM, Kenneth Freeman wrote: > On February 17, the day before Presidents Day, a general strike shall be > held against any and all things Trump. If Boise is having an activists > workshop, then there are plenty of tranches of fertile ground nationwide > to plant Tor browsers, relays, and exit nodes. (I meant the day before Presidents Day weekend, of course.) Nearly 200 people turned out for An Evening of Resistance Building, several of whom I introduced to Tor. I was even asked about the t-shirt. Speaking as a privacy advocate, it was an evening well spent. _______________________________________________ tor-relays mailing list tor-relays(a)lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-relays

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Google’s Artificial Intelligence Getting ‘Greedy,’ ‘Aggressive’
by Razer 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

Garbage In Garbage Out... "Will artificial intelligence get more aggressive and selfish the more intelligent it becomes? A new report out of Google’s DeepMind AI division suggests this is possible based on the outcome of millions of video game sessions it monitored. The results of the two games indicate that as artificial intelligence becomes more complex, it is more likely to take extreme measures to ensure victory, including sabotage and greed. The first game, Gathering, is a simple one that involves gathering digital fruit. Two DeepMind AI agents were pitted against each other after being trained in the ways of deep reinforcement learning. After 40 million turns, the researchers began to notice something curious. Everything was ok as long as there were enough apples, but when scarcity set in, the agents used their laser beams to knock each other out and seize all the apples. Watch the video battle below, showcasing two AI bots fighting over green apples: Video The aggression, they determined, was the result of higher levels of complexity in the AI agents themselves. When they tested the game on less intelligent AI agents, they found that the laser beams were left unused and equal amounts of apples were gathered. The simpler AIs seemed to naturally gravitate toward peaceful coexistence. Researchers believe the more advanced AI agents learn from their environment and figure out how to use available resources to manipulate their situation — and they do it aggressively if they need to. “This model … shows that some aspects of human-like behaviour emerge as a product of the environment and learning,” a DeepMind team member, Joel Z Leibo, told Wired. “Less aggressive policies emerge from learning in relatively abundant environments with less possibility for costly action. The greed motivation reflects the temptation to take out a rival and collect all the apples oneself.” The second game, Wolfpack, tested the AI agents’ ability to work together to catch prey. The agents played the game as wolves who were being tested to see if they would join forces as strategic predators; if they jointly protected the prey from scavengers they would enjoy a greater reward. Researchers once again concluded that the agents were learning from their environment and figuring out how they could collaboratively win. For example, one agent would corner the prey and then wait for the other to join. Researchers believe both games show an ability in artificial intelligence entities to learn quickly from their environments in achieving objectives. The first game, however, presented an added bit of abstract speculation. If more complex iterations of artificial intelligence necessarily develop aggressive, greedy ‘impulses,’ does this present a problem for a species already mired in its own avarice? While the abstract presented by DeepMind does not venture to speculate on the future of advanced artificial minds, there is at least anecdotal evidence here to suggest AI will not necessarily be a totally logical egalitarian network. With complex environments and willful agents, perhaps aggression and self-preservation arise naturally…even in machines." Link, with more links: http://theantimedia.org/artificial-intelligence-human-like/

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[graffiti] Lie Lie Land
by Cecilia Tanaka 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

It would be a good graffiti to Trump's Wall. :) http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/street-artist-unveils-lie-lie-land-sk… Other cute art suggestions: https://www.buzzfeed.com/kassycho/here-are-21-cartoons-people-are-sharing-i… https://www.buzzfeed.com/krishrach/people-are-sharing-dr-seuss-cartoons-in-… https://www.buzzfeed.com/davidmack/i-got-this ------- "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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What IS "Fascism"?
by Razer 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

>From the publisher of Right-Wing Watch. [My note: If you read this carefully you will note that one of the endearing traits of Fascism is "Shapeshifting". It really has no fixed ideology. It morphs to suit whatever society it infests. It relies on popular opinion of whatever is 'wrong' about a society and utilizes reactionary behavior to accomplish it's goals. No political ideology is required. It's parasitic to political ideologies using the (snigger) "Little Man"(Wilhelm Reich) to make the "Big Man" bigger.] http://www.wilhelmreichtrust.org/listen_little_man.pdf A reading: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DeIgAlIxI0I Originally published in 1997. [Author’s Note: I am skeptical of efforts to produce a “definition” of fascism. As a dynamic historical current, fascism has taken many different forms, and has evolved dramatically in some ways. To understand what fascism has encompassed as a movement and a system of rule, we have to look at its historical context and development–as a form of counter-revolutionary politics that first arose in early twentieth-century Europe in response to rapid social upheaval, the devastation of World War I, and the Bolshevik Revolution. The following paragraphs are intended as an initial, open-ended sketch.] Fascism is a form of extreme right-wing ideology that celebrates the nation or the race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties. It emphasizes a myth of national or racial rebirth after a period of decline or destruction. To this end, fascism calls for a “spiritual revolution” against signs of moral decay such as individualism and materialism, and seeks to purge “alien” forces and groups that threaten the organic community. Fascism tends to celebrate masculinity, youth, mystical unity, and the regenerative power of violence. Often, but not always, it promotes racial superiority doctrines, ethnic persecution, imperialist expansion, and genocide. At the same time, fascists may embrace a form of internationalism based on either racial or ideological solidarity across national boundaries. Usually fascism espouses open male supremacy, though sometimes it may also promote female solidarity and new opportunities for women of the privileged nation or race. Fascism’s approach to politics is both populist–in that it seeks to activate “the people” as a whole against perceived oppressors or enemies–and elitist–in that it treats the people’s will as embodied in a select group, or often one supreme leader, from whom authority proceeds downward. Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive to seize state power. It seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society to its ideological vision of organic community, usually through a totalitarian state. Both as a movement and a regime, fascism uses mass organizations as a system of integration and control, and uses organized violence to suppress opposition, although the scale of violence varies widely. Fascism is hostile to Marxism, liberalism, and conservatism, yet it borrows concepts and practices from all three. Fascism rejects the principles of class struggle and workers’ internationalism as threats to national or racial unity, yet it often exploits real grievances against capitalists and landowners through ethnic scapegoating or radical-sounding conspiracy theories. Fascism rejects the liberal doctrines of individual autonomy and rights, political pluralism, and representative government, yet it advocates broad popular participation in politics and may use parliamentary channels in its drive to power. Its vision of a “new order” clashes with the conservative attachment to tradition-based institutions and hierarchies, yet fascism often romanticizes the past as inspiration for national rebirth. Fascism has a complex relationship with established elites and the non-fascist right. It is never a mere puppet of the ruling class, but an autonomous movement with its own social base. In practice, fascism defends capitalism against instability and the left, but also pursues an agenda that sometimes clashes with capitalist interests in significant ways. There has been much cooperation, competition, and interaction between fascism and other sections of the right, producing various hybrid movements and regimes. Author’s postscript, December 2016. In the nineteen years since I wrote “What is fascism?,” right-wing politics have continued to evolve, and my thinking about fascism has evolved as well. In particular, my concept of fascism has broadened with regard to the following points in the above sketch: 1. “Fascism…celebrates the nation or race as an organic community transcending all other loyalties…” I now believe the category of fascism should be extended to include some movements for which nation and race are secondary or irrelevant, but which promote a myth of collective rebirth around a shared culture or ideology, notably membership in a religious group. This includes certain totalitarian branches of the Christian right, Islamic right, Jewish right, and so on. 2. “Fascism seeks to organize a cadre-led mass movement in a drive to seize state power.” Some fascist movements, notably the European New Right and currents influenced by it, have deferred state power as a goal in favor of a “metapolitical” strategy. This means a long-term effort to transform the political culture, as a precondition to transforming institutions and systems of power. 3. Fascism “seeks to forcibly subordinate all spheres of society…usually through a totalitarian state.” Over the past half century, diverse branches of the far right—including several branches of neonazism—have rejected big centralized states in favor of various moves to decentralize political power. These currents represent forms of what I have called “social totalitarianism,” which seek to impose total ideological control through local governments and/or non-state institutions, such as church and family. I believe this represents a major shift in fascist politics, and one that has been overlooked by many scholars. 4. “[F]ascism defends capitalism against instability and the left…” Some writers have argued that German National Socialism challenged the basic economic principles of capitalism, by replacing the system of industrial wage labor with a system of slave labor in which workers on a mass scale were intentionally worked to death. This interpretation, coupled with the rise of anticapitalist ideology among some neofascists, has raised the question whether fascism might in some circumstances replace capitalism with another form of class rule—or with a chaotic breakdown of socio-economic systems. For more in-depth discussions of what fascism means and how it relates to recent political developments, see my essays “Two Ways of Looking at Fascism” [http://sdonline.org/47/two-ways-of-looking-at-fascism/] (2008), “Is the Bush Administration Fascist?” [http://newpol.org/content/bush-administration-fascist] (2007), and “Trump: A fascist upsurge is just one of the dangers” [http://threewayfight.blogspot.com/2015/12/trumps-impact-fascist-upsurge-is-…] (2015). - See more at: http://www.politicalresearch.org/2016/12/12/what-is-fascism-2/

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[WAR] Immigrant Crime Rates in Germany - the numbers
by Anti Fag 18 Feb '17

18 Feb '17

> Marina Brown catskillmarina at gmail.com > Thu Feb 9 20:33:52 PST 2017 > > Eh, one day these rightists will be given the choice > between jail and acting like humans. I think you misspelled 'rightsists'. Those who believe in, and defend, the rights of all humans. > > I 'spect that Donald will have a nice trip to the Hague. Imprison those who defend human rights, you say. Very "tollerant" and "human" of you.

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[WAR] [RUS] Trump administration/ Mattis, misunderstand "strength"
by Zenaan Harkness 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

What we, all of us need is a world leadership which knows strength, just not the current "historically normal" concepts of nation strength: - We must move from military strength to moral strength, from "economic standing at all costs" to dignity for those we interact with, for without granting this dignity to others, how can we EVER hope to live in dignity ourselves? - We must shift from economic bullying to the long plan which includes not only "the other side", but how that other side will be strengthened and enriched in the future, not just ourselves - debt based credit expansion (vs credit based credit expansion) fiat system, is mathematically DESIGNED to cause cyclical disasters or "financial / system resets", and thereby motivate or justify war and all manner of other evils. This must stop. - We desperately need a new think of abundance, moving away from the war inducing "zero sum, limited resources" conversations which rule the banking world and the mindset of most power brokers today, besides causing a very aggressive approach to nature and her abundant resources. - The moral high ground has been desecrated by the USA especially, and many other nations - Russia herself knows all too well the depths to which we humans go in murdering our brothers in the name of the ideology of the day. No one is perfect. To expect those leaders who genuinely apply themselves to their tasks to the best of their ability, to somehow do even more, that nothing is ever enough, that "there's no point", is nothing but the defeatest ideology of the enslaved. We look t our 'leaders' to fix things up, we look to our nations to protect us, when we should avail ourselves of those things, the tools of communication, of training ourselves and our family in the arts of life and survival which interest us. We have the capacity for communication, but how often do we truly make efforts to connect our brain, heart and will, in the direction of actual communication? What does it take to communicate in a way which could uplift this world (that means other people in this world, our fellow humans)? How might we uplift or assist or steer those who are doing what they can - Trump in America, Hanson in Australia, Putin in Russia and others around the world? We from the peanut gallery find it SO DAMNED EASY to throw mud on those who try - some laugh at Farage and Hanson for their "lack of applomb" or "insufficient education", at Trump for his "enthusiastic tweeting" or Putin for his ... well I can't think of anything to personally attack Putin for, his insufficient ability to influence foreign nations perhaps? Folks, we have the fellow humans that we damn well have! What can I do to support those "leaders" in my neck of the woods who are trying to do what they can to improve our lot generally? This takes work - putting personal attention and contemplation into understanding the way things are now, envisioning the way things 'should be according to me', and communicating with others to share, inspire and otherwise assist in those shifts our world needs to see. ------------------ In the USA, Trump is under attack right now - with Pizzagate dominoes speeding up, with the entire modern NeoCon empire not going the way the ultra-oligarchs wanted it to go, we see the first scalp taken down by Obama and his current "shadow Democratic party 'Whitehouse'", Michael Flynn, who recently resigned on nothing but a flimsy pretext. Did he fall for some personal compromise? Did he take a fall for team Trump, to parry the fire aimed at Trump? Hopefully one day we will find out the truth. (See eg here: http://theduran.com/this-us-navy-commander-and-fox-news-send-out-a-veiled-m… http://theduran.com/dennis-kucinich-tells-america-to-wake-up-the-deep-state… http://theduran.com/can-donald-trump-trust-secret-service-keep-safe/ http://theduran.com/general-flynns-accusers-broke-law/ http://theduran.com/breaking-flynns-resignation-white-house-says-crimea-ret… http://theduran.com/george-soros-speaks-global-elites-davos-says-trump-dict… http://theduran.com/cnn-imagines-assassination-donald-trump-mike-pence-vide… ) Putin/ the Russians have (thankfully) lobbed a whole bunch of soft balls to Trump since his inauguration particularly. I am proud to the point of tears - the Russian diplomatic game is so far ahead of every other nation I'm embarrassed for us Aussies, the USAians and many others. (Here's a great example of Putin giving all the space needed to Trump, to help Trump handle what he's going through right now: http://theduran.com/putin-trump-summit-delayed-for-months/ See also: http://theduran.com/kremlin-spokesman-dmitry-peskov-talks-donald-trump-us-r… ) Yes, nation states are a long way from Utopia, but as some anonymous bastards have said here and there, we have the world we have right now, not the one we want, so we begin here, now. ---------------- OK. FFS. Whether you like Breitbart or not, the current (since the 8 Nov 2016 USA elections frankly), have been close to the finest opportunity in modern history to TAKE DOWN TWITTER AND FACEBOOK, those evil tools of the joo establishment! If you can't see that, grab your nearest petri dish and grow a second neurone already! We live in so much technological abundance that far too often we fail to see the mountains of opportunity, in ANY AND EVERY area of personal interest or expertise that might float YOUR particular boat! This is a most incredible time in history. ---------------- ---------------- What can we move for, communicate for, aim for? - Trumps most "challenging big ticket campain promises" could be the perfect opportunity to get some direct democracy happening - a step on the way to "every law is vetoed if not approved at referendum by the people" (needing say only 10K digital signatures to add 'this law' to the next 'veto' referendum). - Given the record of JFK and his Federal Reserve reclaim attempt, Lincoln and his greenbacks attempt, Qaddafi and his Arabic-wide dinar attempt, and many more, referendum of and by the people might be THE ONLY WAY for any "leader" to fundamentally SHIFT the Western Jew-controlled fiat "financial system" into something more humane, something which no longer relentlessly funnels endless wealth into the hands of a few "elite predators hooked on pizza". - Given Trump's current relentless trolling of CNN and lame stream media fake news, WHERE is the P2P network that is adequate to the task of OVERNIGHT SHIFT of 500 million people off of Twitter? Seriously, this is just one "tweet too many by Trump, violating Twitter's policy" away from happening, but it won't succeed if the tech falls over and we don't have an easy answer for folks "use X"! If we start with the proposition "Trump is doing what he can to create a better USA", then, in that context, what can we do to encourage moves to dignity, morals, and sane rational and end game abundant long thinking?

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[coreboot] coreboot community meeting minutes for February 16, 2017
by Eugen Leitl 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

----- Forwarded message from Martin Roth <gaumless(a)gmail.com> ----- Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2017 16:41:16 -0700 From: Martin Roth <gaumless(a)gmail.com> To: coreboot <coreboot(a)coreboot.org> Subject: [coreboot] coreboot community meeting minutes for February 16, 2017 Message-ID: <CA+e+Ov4E0maX+5PhvepdaGhRMYKBCHcqssF9io78-LYopRgnLw(a)mail.gmail.com> Here are the meeting minutes of today's coreboot community meeting. Info about the next meeting (March 2) is at the bottom. ################################################################## General coreboot news * coreboot is working on joining the Software Freedom Conservancy in a fiscal sponsorship agreement. Work on this is moving forward, and is speeding up. Several announcements about this should be posted soon. - Summary by Martin; there will be a blog post - goal is April, or early May at the very latest Infrastructure Issues & News * Updated coverity tools from 8.5.0.5 to 8.7.0 - coreboot's coverity testing is run twice a week by Jenkins - Tested projects: flashrom, ChromeEC, vboot, Memtest86+ - All other projects are tested daily or when commits happen * Having problems with merging users in gerrit - We plan to email people with multiple existing accounts and merge them, but due to gerrit upgrades, there are currently issues that we need to figure out before we can make progress on this. * Discussions on the current Mailing list vs switching to a forum * coreboot is evaluating the idea switching from the mailing list to a forum package. A poll on this will be posted shortly. - Switch to reddit? - Switch to google groups? - Look for a forum software package that integrates well with the mailing list. - Skepticism was expressed about ditching the mailing list. * Because jenkins builders build in tmpfs, memory was getting filled, and builds were failing. We've taken steps to mitigate this. * IRC/Mattermost - Mattermost was set up to help make it easier for people who aren't familiar with irc - To reduce spam on irc, only allow registered nicks to talk? - How big is the spam/abuse problem? - Deprecate IRC channel? - Not being planned right now, but in the future? - Mattermost's default channel doesn't have irc bridged. It sounds like the latest version of mattermost can add multiple default channels, so we can add the irc channel as a default. Development * Review of commits - Martin has been busy and hasn't been able to review things as much - The best way to get a quick review is to post in chat/irc asking for reviews on specific patches. - How do we get more people to review patches? * Discussion *Add coreboot storage driver* https://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2017-February/thread.html#83218 - How will a decision on this be made? - If we're going to come to any conclusion, the decision will probably need to be made by Stefan. Interesting External news items * Raptor engineering looking for support in porting openbmc for the ASUS KGPE-D16 board - http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=KGPE-D16-OpenBMC-Effort and https://firmwaresecurity.com/tag/coreboot/ coreboot community meeting related * Attendance has been spotty. Is this worthwhile? - Yes - The community meeting is useful to people - Ten participants today \o/ * Very few people actually add agenda items. * Is the time the issue? Should we try switching time again? * Announcing it on IRC (about one hour before it begins) helps * We should announce it on the mailing list, the day before too * Several people weren't aware that we had bi-weekly coreboot conference meetings. ################################################################## Next meeting is March 2, 2017 Check the coreboot calendar for the time in your timezone: https://www.coreboot.org/calendar.html Join using the bluejeans web app or the phone bridge: https://bluejeans.com/616384323 Phone bridge call in numbers: https://www.bluejeans.com/numbers Meeting ID: 616384323 Current agenda & history: https://coreboot-meeting.pads.ccc.de/CommunityMeetingTopics -- coreboot mailing list: coreboot(a)coreboot.org https://www.coreboot.org/mailman/listinfo/coreboot ----- End forwarded message -----

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modest proposal
by Mirimir 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

How about we change the name of this list, to better reflect its use?

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Fully Distributed Torrenting [was: Pirate Bay Blocked]
by grarpamp 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

On Thu, Feb 16, 2017 at 10:01 PM, Razer <g2s(a)riseup.net> wrote: > piratebay.red mirror isn't in Sweden Don't know if that one, or any of dozens the "the pirate bay" domains, other than .org / .se / .onion are operated by "the pirate bay". Maybe yes, maybe no. If no, maybe they a true mirror via api, or a scrape, or an import of some scrape / dump appended with subsequent submissions... but still not technically "the pirate bay". And a number of them have interface and or dataset differences, or are broken. Though the hydra meme and model of random popups is certainly fine for those that like playing whack a mole, it's really legacy. Torrenting data itself, once you have the infohash and queried DHT / PEX for peers, and joined into swarm, is reasonably distributed among contributing peers. (Availability there is human, not algorithmic decision, which other networks try to solve.) But what tools are there to publish the torrent name and infohash into a fully distributed index, and to search the names and retrieve infohash from it? And to learn and maintain an in flux list of random active nodes you need to contact to bootstrap your client's DHT? That's not TPB central server index and search model. And decentral bootstrap isn't in clients like vuze or transmission. It's more like a blockchain (or just a log) index, over darknet.

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Fwd: [ PFIR ] Zuckerberg Cut a Line About Monitoring 'Private Channels' From His Facebook Manifesto
by Cecilia Tanaka 17 Feb '17

17 Feb '17

Whoops! :P ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: PFIR (People For Internet Responsibility) Announcement List < pfir(a)pfir.org> Date: Fri, Feb 17, 2017 at 12:59 AM Subject: [ PFIR ] Zuckerberg Cut a Line About Monitoring 'Private Channels' >From His Facebook Manifesto To: pfir-list(a)pfir.org Zuckerberg Cut a Line About Monitoring 'Private Channels' From His Facebook Manifesto http://gizmodo.com/zuckerberg-cut-a-line-about-monitoring- private-channels-1792462516 On Thursday, Mark Zuckerberg published an updated founder's letter for Facebook, his first since the company went public in 2012. Largely summarizing the CEO's previous comments, the sweeping manifesto was newsworthy while containing little news. In at least one version of the text, however, Zuckerberg wrote about using artificial intelligence for online surveillance--a line stricken from the final draft. - - - --Lauren--

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