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Death Challenge Foundation and The Death Dive - Jump From Stratosphere With No Spacesuit
by Zenaan Harkness 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

I guess if this is real (and it looks like it), it will be interesting to see peoples' reactions. Z http://tass.ru/en/press-releases/844584 Man To Jump From Stratosphere With No Spacesuit Press Releases December 16, 16:05 UTC+3 Unless the World Votes To Save Him, He Faces Certain Death LONDON, Dec. 16, 2015 /PRNewswire/. Death Challenge, Inc., a new business venture that practices commercially sustainable philanthropy, announced today the official date of the most spectacular and perilous event ever to be broadcast live. Death Challenge 1, The Death Dive (http://DeathChallenge.com) will take place on Good Friday, March 25th, 2016, in the same week as World Water Day. At 3.33pm Greenwich Mean Time (GMT), "The Challenger", who will remain anonymous and masked, will risk his life by jumping out of a jet from the stratosphere, 9.53 miles (15.3 km) above the Earth, and diving 50,300 feet with NO spacesuit, NO pressure suit, NO oxygen and NO parachute into shark-filled waters – all in a bid to STOP Death by Dirty Water. (http://DeathbyDirtyWater.org) "This is a cause close to The Challenger's heart," (http://DeathChallenger.com) says company spokesperson, Aideen Doherty. "Having spent extensive time in the areas of the world most affected by waterborne diseases, he has witnessed firsthand the dramatic effects of this solvable problem. The Challenger also suffered from a near-fatal illness after drinking dirty water during his travels. Nearly 2 million children die annually from dirty water; therefore, in order to bring an end to this crisis, The Challenger is willing to risk his own life." An event without parallel or precedent, the Death Dive will be streamed live to a global pay-per-view audience, all of whom will be able to vote whether or not to "Save The Challenger" by offering lifelines. Both the online audience and those at the dive site itself can purchase votes before and during The Challenger's historic leap of faith, saying "YES" or "NO" to three possible lifelines. Crucially, no lifelines will be accepted by The Challenger unless one billion votes are purchased globally, symbolic of the approximate number of people not having access to the most basic ingredient of life – clean water. In Lifeline One (active at 25,000ft–20,000ft), a circling aircraft will toss out a parachute which The Challenger will try to chase down and put on under near-impossible conditions. In Lifeline Two (active at 20,000ft–15,000ft), a rescue skydiver will pursue the exhausted and oxygen-deprived Challenger in an attempt to complete the first-ever mid-air hook up without any safety equipment. In Lifeline Three (active at 15,000ft–7,000ft), an aircraft will release a tow rope, which The Challenger will try to grab and use to skysurf into the water. If The Challenger misjudges the skytow, he could collide with the aircraft or take out its wing or tail controls. If The Challenger blacks out upon exiting the jet, there is an additional option to release a rescue team to provide him with oxygen. However, this lifeline will only be activated if 7.125 billion votes are first secured – the equivalent of the entire human race voting to save one man and all the people of the world without access to clean water. Other ways to contribute to the global success of Death Challenge (http://savethechallenger.com) include pay-per-view tickets to watch online, VIP tickets to watch the event from an aircraft or boat at the dive site – or underwater with sharks at the point of impact – and a special option to purchase a ride to the Stratosphere with The Challenger. "The risks of the jump are more than monumental," says company spokesperson, Aideen Doherty. "As he jumps, The Challenger will face insanely low air pressure, freezing temperatures and oxygen starvation, all which can lead to imminent death." The Challenger is one of the world's most experienced extreme athletes, having completed just under 20,000 skydives, more than 5,000 high dives and thousands of hours of cage-free dives with Great White sharks over the past 30 years. He will use multiple extreme disciplines in an attempt to survive a dive more than 260 times higher than the current world record – approaching twice the height of Mount Everest. The Challenger is the first to risk his life in The Death Challenge. Death Challenge 1, The Death Dive, is a Category 10 event, deemed by experts to offer zero chance of survival. Death Challenge 1 will also feature and be supported by musical entertainment from new and well-known artists. Death Challenge will continue to showcase extreme athletes in high-risk events to raise the awareness of and bolster Death Challenge's philanthropic efforts to end many of the world's worst social, economic, and humanitarian problems. Death Challenge Inc., Death Challenge Foundation and The Death Dive will be audited and verified by an international accounting firm. For more information about Death Challenge and how the world can put an end to Death by Dirty Water, please visit: http://DeathChallengeDay.com Editor's Note: For media enquiries and press kit materials please contact: pressoffice(a)deathchallenge.com About the Death Challenge Brand Death Challenge, Inc., Death Challenge Foundation, and Many People, One Voice collectively engage in commercially sustainable philanthropy that aim to raise awareness of and provide support needed to end many of the world's worst social, economic and humanitarian problems. Death Challenge will showcase extreme athletes in high-risk events to help spotlight and support various causes. The first event, titled Death Challenge 1, aims to STOP Death by Dirty Water. CONTACT: pressoffice(a)deathchallenge.com

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Opponents launch 11th-hour campaign to veto CISA bill
by grarpamp 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: Henry Baker <hbaker1(a)pipeline.com> Date: Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 1:10 PM Subject: Opponents launch 11th-hour campaign to veto CISA bill FYI -- "it's a surveillance bill by another name." -- Senator Ron Wyden Go to the following web site; they will connect you to a number of people at the White House who are getting irritated by so many calls! https://www.obamadecides.org/ ----- https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151215/06470133083/congress-drops-all-p… Congress Drops All Pretense: Quietly Turns CISA Into A Full On Surveillance Bill by Mike Masnick Tue, Dec 15th 2015 9:28am Remember CISA? The "Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act"? It's getting much much worse as Congress and the administration look to ram it through -- and in the process, removing any pretense that it's not a surveillance bill. https://www.techdirt.com/blog/?tag=cisa As you may recall, Congress and the White House have been pushing for a "cybersecurity" bill for a few years now, that has never actually been a cybersecurity bill. Senator Ron Wyden was one of the only people in Congress willing to stand up and directly say what it was: "it's a surveillance bill by another name." And, by now, you should know that when Senator Wyden says that there's a secret interpretation of a bill that will increase surveillance and is at odds with the public's understanding of a bill, you should know to listen. He's said so in the past and has been right... multiple times. https://www.wyden.senate.gov/news/press-releases/wyden-cybersecurity-bill-l… https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151207/17063433015/final-text-cisa-appa… Either way, a version of CISA passed the House a while back, with at least some elements of privacy protection included. Then, a few months ago it passed the Senate in a much weaker state. The two different versions need to be reconciled, and it's been worked on. However, as we noted recently, the intelligence community has basically taken over the process and more or less stripped out what few privacy protections there were. And, the latest is that it's getting worse. Not only is Congress looking to include it in the end of year omnibus bill -- basically a "must pass" bill -- to make sure it gets passed, but it's clearly dropping all pretense that CISA isn't about surveillance. Here's what we're hearing from people involved in the latest negotiations. The latest version of CISA that they're looking to put into the omnibus: 1. Removes the prohibition on information being shared with the NSA, allowing it to be shared directly with NSA (and DOD), rather than first having to go through DHS. While DHS isn't necessarily wonderful, it's a lot better than NSA. And, of course, if this were truly about cybersecurity, not surveillance, DHS makes a lot more sense than NSA. 2. Directly removes the restrictions on using this information for "surveillance" activities. You can't get much more direct than that, right? 3. Removes limitations that government can only use this information for cybersecurity purposes and allows it to be used to go after any other criminal activity as well. Obviously, this then creates tremendous incentives to push for greater and greater information collection, which clearly will be abused. We've just seen how the DEA has regularly abused its powers to collect info. You think agencies like the DEA and others won't make use of CISA too? https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20151214/08492533071/dea-loses-big-drug-c… 4. Removes the requirement to "scrub" personal information unrelated to a cybersecurity threat before sharing that information. This was the key point that everyone kept making about why the information should go to DHS first -- where DHS would be in charge of this "scrub". The "scrub" process was a bit exaggerated in the first place, but it was at least something of a privacy protection. However, it appears that the final version being pushed removes the scrub requirement (along with the requirement to go to DHS) and instead leaves the question of scrubbing to the "discretion" of whichever agency gets the information. Guess how that's going to go? In short: while before Congress could at least pretend that CISA was about cybersecurity, rather than surveillance, in this mad dash to get it shoved through, they've dropped all pretense and have stripped every last privacy protection, expanded the scope of the bill, and made it quite clear that it's a very broad surveillance bill that can be widely used and abused by all parts of the government. There is still some hesitation by some as to whether or not this bill belongs in the omnibus bill, or if it should go through the regular process, with a debate and a full vote on this entirely new and different version of CISA. So, now would be a good time to speak out, letting your elected officials and the White House know that (1) CISA should not be in the omnibus and (2) that we don't need another surveillance bill. In the meantime, if Congress were actually serious about cybersecurity, they'd be ramping up the acceptance and use of encryption, rather than trying to undermine it. ----------------- http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/263174-opponents-launch-11th-hour-c… Opponents launch 11th-hour campaign to kill cyber bill By Cory Bennett - 12/14/15 03:54 PM EST Privacy advocates have launched a last-ditch campaign to block a major piece of cybersecurity legislation that could soon be added to an expected omnibus spending deal. The bill would encourage companies to share more data on hackers with the government. Fight for the Future, which has been leading a coalition of digital rights and civil liberties groups opposing the measure, on Monday launched an online petition urging the White House to veto the final legislation. The group also included a widget that allows people to call the White House to express their opposition. https://www.obamadecides.org/ Privacy advocates have long argued that the legislation would allow the intelligence community to collect more private data on Americans. Technologists and numerous technology companies have expressed similar concerns. But many industry groups, lawmakers and even the White House counter that the bill is the necessary first step in the fight against hackers. Privacy provisions in the measure will ensure personal data is not shared throughout the government, they say. "Now is when we'll find out whether President Obama really cares about the Internet and freedom of speech, or whether he's happy to roll over and allow technologically illiterate members of Congress break the Internet in the name of cybersecurity," said Evan Greer, campaign director at Fight for the Future. Lawmakers are on the cusp of having a final text ready and hope to have the bill on President Obama's desk before the year's end. http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/262985-week-ahead-congress-poised-t… Negotiators have been working since the Senate passed its Intelligence Committee-originated bill in October, six months after the House passed two complementary bills: one from the Intelligence panel, another from Homeland Security. On Monday, privacy advocates said that lawmakers had decided to attach the bill to an omnibus spending bill that is expected as soon as Monday. Most observers believe the tactic gives the cyber bill its best shot of getting through Congress in 2015, as only a handful of legislative days remain before the upcoming recess. But several people with direct knowledge of the talks cautioned that no final decision had been made. Multiple lawmakers have expressed opposition to the strategy, arguing that the final cyber text should get a standalone vote in both chambers. Their resistance threatens to kill the omnibus strategy. If the cyber bill does roll through Congress, Fight for the Future called on the White House to reject the measure. Throughout the final negotiation process, digital rights groups have warned that lawmakers were omitting the most stringent privacy clauses, a claim the bill's backers reject. http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/262713-cyber-bill-deal-looms-as-neg… http://thehill.com/policy/cybersecurity/262864-house-leadership-reviewing-c… "This administration promised to veto any information sharing bill that did not adequately protect Internet users' privacy, and the final version of this bill doesn't even come close," Greer said. "It's time for President Obama to deliver on his word." _______________________________________________

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Linux Foundation announces project to "advance blockchain technology"
by Zenaan Harkness 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

With so many altcoin standards to choose from, just as well we shall shortly have another :) Zenaan ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: "LWN.net Daily Summary" <lwn(a)lwn.net> Date: Fri, 18 Dec 2015 04:00:19 +0000 (UTC) Subject: LWN.net Daily Summary for December 18, 2015 http://lwn.net/Articles/668359/ Linux Foundation announces project to "advance blockchain technology" [Announcements] Posted Dec 17, 2015 17:35 UTC (Thu) by jake The Linux Foundation has announced[1] a new collaborative project[2] to "develop an enterprise grade, open source distributed ledger framework" to allow developers to build "robust, industry-specific applications, platforms and hardware systems to support business transactions". Twenty companies have joined the effort: Accenture, ANZ Bank, Cisco, CLS, Credits, Deutsche Börse, Digital Asset Holdings, DTCC, Fujitsu Limited, IC3, IBM, Intel, J.P. Morgan, London Stock Exchange Group, Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group (MUFG), R3, State Street, SWIFT, VMware, and Wells Fargo. "Many of the founding members are already investing considerable research and development efforts exploring blockchain applications for industry. IBM intends to contribute tens of thousands of lines of its existing codebase and its corresponding intellectual property to this open source community. Digital Asset is contributing the Hyperledger mark, which will be used as the project name, as well as enterprise grade code and developer resources. R3 is contributing a new financial transaction architectural framework designed to specifically meet the requirements of its global bank members and other financial institutions. These technical contributions, among others from a variety of companies, will be reviewed in detail in the weeks ahead by the formation and Technical Steering Committees." [1] http://www.linuxfoundation.org/news-media/announcements/2015/12/linux-found… [2] https://blockchain.linuxfoundation.org/

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Opponents launch 11th-hour campaign to veto CISA bill
by grarpamp 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/12/19/1415251/us-budget-bill-passes-with-c… https://twitter.com/aantonop/status/677933077276962816 https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3xg9v1/cisa_has_passed_post_your_… https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3xgvwk/cisa_passage_proves_need_f… https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/3xdqme/andreasmantonopoulos_on_tw…

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Re: [Cryptography] What should I put in notifications to NSA?
by grarpamp 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

On Sat, Dec 19, 2015 at 11:42 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> wrote: > Math doesn't have a moral conscience. No one argues this, yet one must recognize there is a delay line involved following first implementors. > All that you can do is decide which > use cases you are going to address. If selling to governments for certain of their use cases and inherent reduction in delay is such decision. > There is far too much seditious talk in the US to start > with and it does not sound any different to me to the treason talk from > countries All depends on whether one views state, and maintainership of state, even given necessary change, as a higher cause than the people, or any other cause. Is not various necessary change throughout the world being unduly held up by state. Sell crypto to it for its purposes if you wish. You will surely make dollars and friends there for your purposes.

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Assange believes too late for any pervasive privacy
by Zenaan Harkness 20 Dec '15

20 Dec '15

Feels like a sell out. I suspect he feels he's being pragmatic. https://www.rt.com/news/325524-assange-privacy-rt-10/ Game for privacy is gone, mass surveillance is here to stay – Assange on #RT10 panel Published time: 10 Dec, 2015 18:13 Edited time: 11 Dec, 2015 03:16 Humanity has lost its battle for privacy and must now learn to live in a world where mass surveillance is becoming cheaper for governments to implement, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange said during a panel dedicated to RT’s 10th anniversary. Assange addressed the panel on security and surveillance hosted by RT in central Moscow on Thursday via videoconference from the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he has remained holed up for the last three years in order to avoid extradition to Sweden. When offered a chance to comment on the session’s topic – “Security or Surveillance: Can the right to privacy and effective anti-terror security coexist in the digital age?” – the whistleblower asked the moderator, and host of The Big Picture Show on RT American, Thom Hartmann: “How long have you got, Tom?” implying he has a lot to say on the issue. But it was Assange’s only joke during the event, as his reply turned out to be gravely serious and in many respects depressing. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k3rFNQ8ytnE “In thinking about this issue I want to take quite a different position, perhaps, from what you would expect me to have taken… I think that we should understand that the game for privacy is gone. It’s gone. The mass surveillance is here to stay,” he said. Mass surveillance is already being implemented not only by major world powers, but also by some medium and small-sized countries, he added. “The Five Eyes intelligence arrangement [of Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US]… is so evasive in terms of mass surveillance of domestic and international telecommunications that while some experts can achieve practical privacy for themselves for limited number of operations… it’s gone for the rest of the populations,” the WikiLeaks founder stressed. International terrorists are among those “experts” capable of making their communications invisible for security agencies, he added. Privacy “will not be coming back, short of a very regressive economic collapse, which reduces the technological capacity of civilization,” Assange said. “The reason it will not come back is that the cost of engaging in mass surveillance is decreasing by about 50 per cent every 18 months, because it’s the underlying cost that’s predicated on the cost of telecommunications, moving surveillance intercepts around and computerization and storage – all those costs are decreasing much faster at a geometric rate than the human population is increasing,” he explained. Mass surveillance and computerization are “winning” the competition with humanity and human values and they’re “going to continue to win at an ever-increasing rate. That’s the reality that we have to deal with,” the WikiLeaks whistleblower added. The focus should now switch from defending privacy to understanding what kind of society will be built in these new, changed conditions, he said. The WikiLeaks founder reminded the panel of the historic examples of East Germany and other societies, in which people adapted to living under the scrutiny of the authorities. “If you look at societal behavior in very conformist, small, isolated societies with reduced social spaces – like Sweden, South Korea, Okinawa in Japan and North Korea – then you’ll see that society adapts. Everyone becomes incredibly timid, they start to use code words; use a lot of subtext to try and sneak out your controversial views,” he said. According to Assange, the modern world is currently moving “towards that kind of a society.” Privacy is among values “that simply are unsustainable… in the face of the reality of technological change; the reality of the deep state with a military-industrial complex and the reality of Islamic terrorism, which is legitimizing that sector in a way that it’s behaving,” he stressed. Assange encouraged those present on the panel as well as the general public to “get on the other side of the debate where it’s going” and stop holding on to privacy. The panel discussion was part of an RT conference titled 'Information, messages, politics:The shape-shifting powers of today's world.' The meeting brought together politicians, foreign policy experts and media executives from across the globe, among them former director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn, the Green Party’s Jill Stein and former vice president of the Parliamentary Assembly of the OSCE, Willy Wimmer.

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Fwd: [Cryptography] What should I put in notifications to NSA?
by grarpamp 19 Dec '15

19 Dec '15

On Wed, Dec 16, 2015 at 2:55 PM, Bill Cox <waywardgeek(a)gmail.com> wrote: > I don't think requiring registration of open-source crypto violates our > constitutional rights, but I know this is debatable. I'd just comply with > the law and send a simple email. It's unconstitutional in the same way gun laws and surveillance laws and etc laws are. But let's all keep on happily and quietly complying so they can give us more unconstitutional laws and silly paper violations to comply with. Kudos. (Also of note is the difference between laws that compel you to act, punish you for not acting, or punish you for acting in offensive manner such as against persons or property The former two being curiosities.)

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Re: [Cryptography] What should I put in notifications to NSA?
by grarpamp 19 Dec '15

19 Dec '15

On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 9:15 AM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> wrote: >> Seriously?! >> >> How about linking to... >> http://fuckoff.com/ >> >> And if you're still worried, >> develop stuff anonymously, >> in/over anonymous networks. >> >> And if they still care to bother to find you, >> then your country's obviously shit and >> you need a new one. > > > I'm not the type of crypto hacker that develops a strong encryption scheme > just to disable NSA mass surveillance. > > I'm trying to be the type of crypto hacker that develops a strong encryption > scheme to disable NSA mass surveillance and then sells the same scheme to > the NSA to secure all those documents that Snowden and Manning leaked. If you want to support / enable your government in that fashion and purpose, that's your choice. Maybe after thinking more on all the questionable things it is doing under secrecy, you and others might make a different choice.

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Re: The USA Fake Of The Moon Landings
by Razer 19 Dec '15

19 Dec '15

juan: > On Fri, 18 Dec 2015 18:38:52 +0000 > Razer <razer(a)riseup.net> wrote: > >> Don't cherrypick my writings dick. > > I didn't cherrypick anything. I merely highlighted what you > said. Feel free to call people who challenge any official story > nutjobs, but don't expect much sympathy from me... This is 'highhlighting'... Notice the rest of what you said below... > > > ps: your message came from razer@riseup, not rayzer@riseup. I replied > (automatically) to razer@ and the reply bounced... > > 550 5.1.1 <razer(a)riseup.net>: Recipient address rejected: User unknown > Now here's the rest of what I said: > One of the things my dad bequeathed me was an Omega "Moon Watch"... at > least that's the way Omega advertised them. What was unique about the > one I had vs the advertised store variety was the fact that it was an > old fashioned wind-up, as opposed to the retail version, a self-winder. > > Why the difference? As my dad put it "We didn't know if a self-winder > would work in zero-gravity", and they weren't willing to take the risk. > > If the moon landing was a hoax, it was such an intricate one it would > have cost more to execute then actually landing someone on the moon. -- RR "You might want to ask an expert about that - I just fiddled around with mine until it worked..."

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Re: [Cryptography] What should I put in notifications to NSA?
by grarpamp 18 Dec '15

18 Dec '15

On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 11:29 PM, Phillip Hallam-Baker <phill(a)hallambaker.com> wrote: > I am working on staging the code for the Mesh on SourceForge. > > https://sourceforge.net/projects/mathematicalmesh/ > > There is this bit to do: > > You must notify BIS and the ENC Encryption Request Coordinator via > e-mail of the Internet location (e.g., URL or Internet address) of the > publicly available encryption source code or provide each of them a > copy of the publicly available encryption source code. If you update > or modify the source code, you must also provide additional copies to > each of them each time the cryptographic functionality of the source > code is updated or modified. In addition, if you posted the source > code on the Internet, you must notify BIS and the ENC Encryption > Request Coordinator each time the Internet location is changed, but > you are not required to notify them of updates or modifications made > to the encryption source code at the previously notified location. In > all instances, submit the notification or copy to crypt(a)bis.doc.gov > and toenc(a)nsa.gov. > > > What do folk normally do here? I was thinking of giving them the URL > of the repository and a statement to the effect that by complying I do > not wave my first amendment rights Seriously?! How about linking to... http://fuckoff.com/ And if you're still worried, develop stuff anonymously, in/over anonymous networks. And if they still care to bother to find you, then your country's obviously shit and you need a new one. cc cpunks due to metzdowd thought police

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