Hello all, This is my first time posting, but I've been subscribed for months and I even occasionally read some of the mails. I've been reading the really old Usenet messages from people like Tim May (RIP) and while I think a lot of it is inane BS, a lot of it is very interesting especially in the pre-bitcoin speculation about what a digital currency would be like. I have two questions, why did the group die and what needs to happen to bring it back? Afterall, you can still get usenet access for free if you look for it and as long as you know how to create filters/killfiles, the spam problem really isn't that bad. FD
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Saturday, May 30, 2020 5:49 PM, Faux Dameron <fauxdameron@mailfence.com> wrote:
... I have two questions, why did the group die
i asked a similar question around a decade ago. i don't have a definitive answer, but some opinions... there is no one causative factor; many combined: - early progress in privacy tech leading to a languishing (or at least a decline). "we won the crypto wars!" (hah :) - sustainability; there was insufficient passionate new blood to sustain what was "the cypherpunks" of that era. or said another way, the passionate coders of future privacy tech moved in circles that overlapped, but were not defined by, the cypherpunks. - centralization; it is a strong attractor! when you've got development idioms and norms all built around github and package repos and "free" services, each somewhat or very opposed to decentralized cypherpunks ethos, the result is a drain away from core cypherpunks (if there is a thing) into other endeavors. this is pervasive and persistent. - sophistication; the state of the art moved on from the realm of amateur practitioner to applied graduate level computer science and information theory. the incremental gains in privacy effectiveness required increasingly complicated constructs. the ideal constructions with severe performance constraints suffered and died due to lack of adoption. usability and privacy are complicated in ways we continue to discover - requiring mastery of many domains to implement effectively.
... and what needs to happen to bring it back?
i had hope the Snowden leaks would revive a passionate cypherpunks groundswell. in one sense, it did: end-to-end secure open source tech is widely available, most of the internet is encrypted - it's hard to overstate how monumental this is! but it is also clear this progress was made outside of whatever "cypherpunks" is today. if that didn't do it? perhaps email lists are simply too archaic for modern popularity :) if slack remade IRC, what does a shittier, web'ified maillist look like? (a forum?)
... as long as you know how to create filters/killfiles, the spam problem really isn't that bad.
agreed. but try to convince everyone of that! best regards,
Hoping that Cecilia comes back after she recovers from her surgery, because after I mentioned trojan network victimization to her over telegram, my phone erased the chat history on its own and I have not gotten a reply or read-receipt from her since. It's possible various forms of censorship have reduced the list activity. I've noticed infosec gatherings are not what you hear of them as being in the past either. I suspect the two disparate meanings of the word "hacker" may not have treated everybody well. It would be great if this list were archived on a blockchain and the transaction log monitored for new posts to publicize to it. This would help people overcome censorship. I use a bare-minimum nodejs tool to sync folders with the bsv blockchain, and might be able to do the rest of that end of it, but I'm struggling around interoperating with mail agents. I'm not sure how to get list messages in raw form, and it's a psychologically hard task to pursue for me. But really the people who don't need a UI don't trust nodejs (with good reason), and there wouldn't be one. Is anybody using anything more reliable than email? Additionally, it's notable that few are still using PGP signatures, myself included, which is incredibly insecure. If we all signed the previous messages on the list when posting, missing messages would be more obvious. This would be a pretty small change to an aware email client. It's hard to explain why I don't use PGP, but it is not my preference to refrain from it. On Sat, May 30, 2020, 2:52 PM coderman <coderman@protonmail.com> wrote:
‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐‐‐‐‐ On Saturday, May 30, 2020 5:49 PM, Faux Dameron <fauxdameron@mailfence.com> wrote:
... I have two questions, why did the group die
i asked a similar question around a decade ago. i don't have a definitive answer, but some opinions...
there is no one causative factor; many combined:
- early progress in privacy tech leading to a languishing (or at least a decline). "we won the crypto wars!" (hah :)
- sustainability; there was insufficient passionate new blood to sustain what was "the cypherpunks" of that era. or said another way, the passionate coders of future privacy tech moved in circles that overlapped, but were not defined by, the cypherpunks.
- centralization; it is a strong attractor! when you've got development idioms and norms all built around github and package repos and "free" services, each somewhat or very opposed to decentralized cypherpunks ethos, the result is a drain away from core cypherpunks (if there is a thing) into other endeavors. this is pervasive and persistent.
- sophistication; the state of the art moved on from the realm of amateur practitioner to applied graduate level computer science and information theory. the incremental gains in privacy effectiveness required increasingly complicated constructs. the ideal constructions with severe performance constraints suffered and died due to lack of adoption. usability and privacy are complicated in ways we continue to discover - requiring mastery of many domains to implement effectively.
... and what needs to happen to bring it back?
i had hope the Snowden leaks would revive a passionate cypherpunks groundswell. in one sense, it did: end-to-end secure open source tech is widely available, most of the internet is encrypted - it's hard to overstate how monumental this is! but it is also clear this progress was made outside of whatever "cypherpunks" is today.
if that didn't do it? perhaps email lists are simply too archaic for modern popularity :)
if slack remade IRC, what does a shittier, web'ified maillist look like? (a forum?)
... as long as you know how to create filters/killfiles, the spam problem really isn't that bad.
agreed. but try to convince everyone of that!
best regards,
participants (3)
-
coderman -
Faux Dameron -
Karl