Rumors of the death of Cypherpunks are greatly exaggerated

[David Honig]

At 02:19 PM 11/29/01 -0800, Tim May wrote:
>
>Fact is, lists and other fora have lifecycles just like anything else. 
>The peak for the list was no doubt in the 1993-4 period, when Clipper 
>was hot news, and when many ideas were being exposed to lots of others 

There is also the FAQ-ization of a contentful group.  You yourself
have (rightfully, usefully) pointed to your cryptnomicon tome
and cypherpunk archives rather than regurgitate something already written.


>Anyway, to those who wander away because the owner of "toad.com," a site 
>that is not even part of the regular CDR system, declares us irrelevant 
>I have just one message: good riddance.

The toadlist is infested with spam, and most posters have migrated to
something
more pleasant like lne.com (blessed be the lne.com folks).


>And several of these lists are avowedly "non-political." How absurd. 
>What's the point of a crypto list if there's no political angle? Yeah, 
>maybe a handful of people want to chat about pure math and programming 
>tricks...but not a lot, judging by the very low volumes of such 
>discussions even on the "non-political" lists. And without political 
>issues, what's the motivation to even talk about remailers, data havens, 
>digital cash, etc.?

There are lists which are more exclusively technical.  The value of this
list is conversing with tech saavy futurists with an interest in social
aspects.  


>The fact that John is now pulling the plug is one of the few surprises 
>of recent years....I thought his site at toad had gone away several 
>years ago! That's when he announced he was shutting it down. 
That he let 
>it dribble on a dumping ground for those not smart enough to find the 
>cyberpass.net, algebra.com, sunder.net, lne.com, or Choate's site 
>doesn't mean his node was "the list."

Yes!  His contribution was very useful and generous at a critical time, 
but it is not a negative thing at all that he closes that spamchannel.


>But rumors of the death of 
>Cypherpunks are greatly exaggerated.

Cypherpunks never die, they just get tarred and gzipped.