Punk, thanks for your reply. On Mon, Aug 3, 2020, 4:43 PM Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 <punks@tfwno.gf> wrote:
On Mon, 3 Aug 2020 15:26:50 -0400 Karl <gmkarl@gmail.com> wrote:
It sounds to me like James is not considering these businesses to be heros.
Thing is, my message makes sense only if you know who James is. Take into account for instance James' message from last week or so about the arch-criminal elon musk. You can get some more info about James' political views here :
"Child protective services abducting children from Christian families and selling them to gays"
"The silicon valley meritocracy exemption has collapsed, and now silicon valley is collapsing because of affirmative action"
"The pope worshiping naked pagan idols."
et cetera...
I'm pretty sure like libertarians are counter to top-down control,
that's correct. REAL libertarians opposed top-down control.
don't really know.
Punk, in your other email you mentioned receiving bitcoin (in a way I felt confused and pain for James when reading).
Not sure what you mean? I don't think there was anything confused in that message =). I'm also pretty sure that James is clever enough to appreciate every bit of sarcasm contained in that message.
I don't see how to tell that the website is the same person, but maybe I need to read more cpunks threads to see? Blog looks really influenced by political fragmentation to me, since I'm on the left. Reads like it's being taken seriously, not sarcastic, to me, which is terrifying but normal. Not sure if it's polite for me to read it. Thanks for your explanation. No tone cues for sarcasm on the internet.
So you know, I didn't receive a
bitcoin address in that email. Did you know bitcoin is designed to resist all censorship?
Is it?
Yes. It exceeded all government, corporate, and likely military norms of security at the time of its initial big rise. I know that all bitcoin transactions are public, Right. That aids censorship resistance. You can put things on a blockchain that nobody can delete, change, or even hide. You could also use cryptography to make those things private, and mixing layers to increase your anonymity, but that's not what I mean to worry about here. and I know that 'miners' get to decide which transactions are included in
the chain.
Partly true. _Any one_ miner can accept a transaction for it to get included in the chain, and they make money by doing so. Once one is accepted it is broadcast to every node on the network and permanently stored by all of them. The protocol stated that every proper bitcoin node provide it when asked, forever. I also know that mining isn't too 'distributed' What's relevent is that it is still distributed enough to defend information in the face of a nation state adversary. The 'distributed' reducing problem reflects a situation where the corporate and government spookies attacked the development and mining communities, halting the expected curve of software development as demand increased. It is an incredibly hard fight for them because cryptocurrencies are incredibly lucrative and widely supported. and that the supposed creator of bitcoin wasn't bothered by mining being
done in the NSA datacenter.
This would be because the protocol was designed to be robust in the face of arbitrary groups mining. The NSA has to play by the rules of the network, or they are kicked out and ignored automatically. So it doesn't really look like "bitcoin is designed to resist all
censorship". Rather, it looks like whatever 'censorship resistance' bitcoin now has is accidental and won't last.
It was actually designed to resist censorship. The way it keeps working in the face of issues is a little complex: 1. Bitcoin is hugely valuable and is designed to rise in value exponentially 2. The design is such that censoring it e.g. by miner collusion also lets people steal money 3. There are more creative thieves than creative censors 4. When the protocol is attacked, it becomes obvious on the network: the whole network is told 5. So, people are increasingly financially motivated to protect the essentials of the protocol, and many fixes have gone in over the years. If fixes ever stop completely, somebody loses a lot of money and takes action on it. You need to run a "full node" to participate in the censorship-free network. And due to the harm to the communities the situation does slowly get a little more confusing and a little more delicate. It is still impossible enough to erase things on the Bitcoin blockchain, for now, that if you could afford it you could broadcast a video of all the world leaders having a naked orgy and it would never go away.
On Mon, Aug 3, 2020, 1:25 PM Punk-BatSoup-Stasi 2.0 <punks@tfwno.gf> wrote:
On Mon, 3 Aug 2020 21:12:40 +1000 jamesd@echeque.com wrote:
-BLM support from EVERY MAJOR CORPORATION ON THE PLANET
That's your beloved capitalist libertarian heros James. You wouldn't be complaining about the actions of the Capitalist Masters of
the
Universe would you?
K - There is proof inside many peoples' electronics. Proof that a marketing group would contract development of a frightening virus. A virus that responds to peoples' keystrokes and browsing habits, and changes what people see on their devices. A virus that alters political behavior en masse, for profit.