Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 09:50:04PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 6:55 PM, Steven Schear  wrote:
> > What I meant,  if you are holding and sharing an entire file of some really
> > sensitive content and depend on networking technologies known or assumed to
> > have flaws which can expose your IP address you have relinquished ability to
> > deny it.
> 
> Yes, if the file isn't encrypted, of if rubberhose decrypt policies
> are in effect, and the pointer to your node strongly confirms
> presense or leads to inspection.

For the next Manning wikileaker (or leak seeder), is the problem
space of

"number of known trusted peers in a chaff-filled link network model
required for 'reasonable protection' against 5-eyes global passive
network monitoring"

known?

Perhaps rather than "peers" do we need to go to "#N trusted peers
each with at least #M trusted peers other than myself"?

What about for "global active network monitoring"?


Another way to view this same question:

Up until now there has been a presumption by some that with the
five-eyes global network monitoring (whatever specific form it
presently bullies) to be reasonably countered, that some level of
neighbour to neighbour (street level, physical) network of the
people is required.

Is the case or not?


Without being able to at least discuss the problem space reasonably
succinctly, it feels like we're grasping around at straws in the
dark.

We know the general problem space, next step, can we reason about it
and make any conlusions?



> > Whereas is this content has been published, using something like Freenet, so
> > no single user of the content distribution system has more than a fragment
> > of that content and what they each have is not only encrypted (and you don't
> > have the key) but its bit interleaved and your software has no idea what
> > part(s) of the content you hold nor where those other parts reside (for that
> > your software must possess the file's "treasure map" which can be closely
> > held). This offers good plausible deniability.
> 
> Sure. File sharding is interesting obfuscation defense in depth,
> but has *lots* of overhead. If the network is "flawlessly" encrypted
> and anonymous, as well as the disk storage managed by its nodes,
> it's probably not needed... users can insert / fetch, or run nodes, safely.
> 
> Descriptions also depend on if the design provides both transport and
> user application all in one (Freenet, Mojo), or just rides on top of
> an already secure transport network (Ricochet over Tor, IRC over I2P).

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 09:27:21PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> "Filesharing" could be designed lots of ways, doesn't have to
> be "bittorrent protocol" proper. Though if it was compatible
> with BT clients you'd have millions of instant users / nodes
> in your encrypted anonymous ecosystem.

A nice carrot in principle, but let's cleanly separate the layers,
like Shrek's onion-boy. A plugin for ones fav bt client is the least
of the problem space.

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 09:27:21PM -0400, grarpamp wrote:
> On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Steven Schear  wrote:
> > These trackers
> 
> These *websites* are not actually "trackers" and have generally
> shifted away from providing tracker service ever since legal pressure
> made bundling services riskier, and a new independantly operated
> layer of services providing the tracker function with opentracker
> as bootstrap / fallback, for the DHT via PEX etc... has arisen.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opentracker
> 
> The proper term for these websites is searchable "indexes (DB's)",
> bundled with community bling forums.
> 
> In reality it is the "indexes" that...
> 
> > need to adopt distributed hosting tech, like IPFS or NetZero,
> > so there are no single points of pressure/failure and the operator IP and
> > identity have a reasonable chance of staying private from technical
> > snooping.
> 
> The bootstrap of tracking (where to first securely linkup with peers
> for DHT) also needs fixed.

Yes, and many a seemingly-worthy attempt has been attempted.

Consensus is adequate if you are certain you're not "entrapped in a
deceptive small-world scanerio".

Other than that, the only sure option is actual fellow humans, at
least one of which you trust to have a reasonably 'accurate' network
view.

For those who are unsure, humans are those funny creatures that on
occasion wear sneakers to transport USB sticks and other devices
between your precious computers - if you check closely, you may find
that you yourself, whatever and whoever you consider yourself to be,
are in fact also human - but be extra careful and paranoid, as
competent deceptions have been known to occur.


> "Filesharing" could be designed lots of ways, doesn't have to
> be "bittorrent protocol" proper. Though if it was compatible
> with BT clients you'd have millions of instant users / nodes
> in your encrypted anonymous ecosystem.

Azureus/Vuze (Java) is highly plugin-ready, having many plugins
already (excessively many some would say) and so its plugin API is
well and truly street tested over many years.

And anyway, STEP 1 we must have a sane architecture, NOT "overlay net
that only runs TCP" for just 1 example (Tor).

I.e., the Unix design philosophy - no more monolithic, independent
projects thanks. In the latest Git-rev-news newsletter e.g., the git
guys proposed, discussed, and ultimately merged a (C language) "SWAP"
macro - and yet nowhere can be seen any mention of "what do the Linux
kernel guys do" - guys, are you serious? I guess for some,
programming is just entertainment, a means to enthrall oneself - but
I hope some round these parts take at least a mild passing interest
in prior art in Unix, Linux and the rest...

Need some discussions about each layer (and the layers themselves),
and eliminate that which can be easily eliminated from the design
space.

-   hash/id layer: identify nodes, content items, possibly routes,
etc (if you feel competent in creating a competent hash/ ID
layer, please join the ongoing Git discussion - see previous
email for more)

-   DHT/ basic data store layer (Demonoid / bittorrent genre):
various key-data pair lookups and searches (nodes, content 
items,
users, bloggers etc)

-   network and transport layers - UDP at the least, perhaps 
ethernet
frames?

-   distributed cache/data store layer/ ala freenet, gfs, etc


Principles, protocols:

-   version things, so the protocol for a layer can be enhanced over
time/ transitioned, e.g. Git and ID/GUID hashing

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[grarpamp]

While it might be agreed that Tor has certain non-code / monetary
/ political issues, why discriminate on that when the code of all
current overlay networks does not do much to defeat GPA's
and Sybil's that are well known to be in existance.
Let's see something on the market that claims resistance
to those, then we can talk secondary issues.
Till then, use what you've got for what it's good at,
and code what you don't.

The world won't have [another] Appelbaum for some while to
come. Yet there are others, and welcoming room for more
new others... philosophers / visionaries / activists / teachers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pin6DhQee48

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 05:31:00PM -0700, Razer wrote:
> 
> 
> On 05/21/2017 04:07 PM, grarpamp wrote:
> > https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/05/17/1830228/popular-torrent-site-extratorrent-permanently-shuts-down
> > https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-shuts-down-for-good-170517/
> >
> > ExtraTorrent is the latest in a series of BitTorrent giants to fall in
> > recent months. Previously, sites including KickassTorrents,
> > Torrentz.eu, TorrentHound and What.cd went offline.
> > Clearnet = Fail.
> 
> 
> Demonoid is welcoming them and registrations are open.
> 
> https://www.reddit.com/r/DemonoidP2P/comments/6brez4/extratorrent_users_welcome_to_demonoid_ask/

I see what you did there - you snuck a sneaky "P2P" in the URL.

Very sneaky.

I was about to chastise the lack of any mention of whether this
"Demonoid" thing you promote was darknet, or at least "fully P2P"...

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Zenaan Harkness]

> On May 21, 2017 4:09 PM, "grarpamp"  wrote:
> 
> > https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/05/17/1830228/popular-torrent-site-
> > extratorrent-permanently-shuts-down
> > https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-shuts-down-for-good-170517/
> >
> > ExtraTorrent is the latest in a series of BitTorrent giants to fall in
> > recent months. Previously, sites including KickassTorrents,
> > Torrentz.eu, TorrentHound and What.cd went offline.
> > Clearnet = Fail.


On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 05:04:34PM -0700, Steven Schear wrote:
> These trackers need to adopt distributed hosting tech, like IPFS or
> NetZero, so there are no single points of pressure/failure and the operator
> IP and identity have a reasonable chance of staying private from technical
> snooping.
> 
> Warrant Canary creator


(Please bottom post. Please please. Thanks in advance...)

There are two primary groups of overlay-net nodes:
-   "unlimited bandwidth" nodes
-   "set/specific limit" nodes

The subtlety of the effects of network integration of these two types
of nodes into any overlay network might be optimised, i.e. considered
algorithmically as different node types, even though most all of the
network connection/participation params would otherwise be identical.

-   Permanent connected, fixed-throughput rate nodes are ideal for
distributed store.

-   When the "available permanent rate" drops below a certain 
figure,
the node may be optimally useful for DHT style data store.

-   "Latency <-> stealth" tradeoff setting is another end-user
preference of course.

-   Randomly connected nodes, which make available significant cache
store, and also have high-speed net connection (when connected)
should still be readily employable by the network overall (it's
just algorithms)

No matter the generosity of some nodes, ultimately the freenet and
other discussion histories appear to show that "optimizing for the
end-users personal data-type preferences" (e.g. movies, books,
software etc), is the minimum-friction route to maximum participation
- all algorithms should well account for this fact of human nature.

Git shows us (many of) the benefits of a content-addressable mid
layer - whether we build torrents, or p2p libraries (clearnet or
darknet), blogs or websites, or other databases, having all content
be uniquely and unambiguously addressable (planet-wide) is a
facility we need not discard at this point in our computing history.

When SHA began to dominate and MD5 became viewed as "gee, that's
obviously not very good", it was far too easy for the lesson to be
ignored and random software to hardcode an algorithm that would be
"good enough forever", like I dunno, Git for a random example.

So we face the lesson again: no algorithm is certain to withstand the
test of time, and we can almost say with certainty that all
algorithms today could fail the test of theoretical future "quantum
computers".

Primary questions re content-addressability are:

-   what is Git transitioning to, and is Git's upcoming new hash
mechanism adequate for global content addressing?

-   what is robust in the face of hash-algorithm changes?

-   what are the interactions between some definitive chosen hash
system (either Git's or otherwise), and other existing systems
like bittorrent?

Our juicy future beckons...

Re: Biological Collapse

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 07:18:14PM -0400, Steve Kinney wrote:
> 
> 
> On 05/21/2017 06:24 PM, grarpamp wrote:
> > http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone
> 
> [ ... ]
> 
> the Krefeld
> > Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate,
> > as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they
> > returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total
> > mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a
> > particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in
> > 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons,
> > the group -- which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades
> > -- found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites. Such
> > losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird
> > living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last
> > quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist
> > at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with
> > the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost
> > hopes that it's not representative -- that it's some strange
> > artifact."
> > 
> > https://phys.org/news/2017-05-seas-coastal.html
> > https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01362-7
> 
> It is representative, a not-strange artifact of the proliferation of
> modern "bird and mammal friendly" super-insecticides used in agriculture
> and landscape applications.  Collapsing bird populations reflect an
> entire food chain under chemical attack.
> 
> http://www.tfsp.info/
> http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v511/n7509/full/nature13642.html
> http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/popular-pesticides-linked-drops-bird-population-180951971/
> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-songbirds-are-being-wiped-out-by-banned-pesticides-804547.html
> 
> Four years ago:
> 
> https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/29/bee-harming-pesticides-banned-europe
> https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/victory-for-bees-as-european-union-bans-neonicotinoid-pesticides-blamed-for-destroying-bee-8595408.html
> 
> I have seen claims that Europe's bird populations are already rising in
> the hardest hit areas, but four years is /very/ early to look for
> results.  It took 40 years for the North American brown pelican to
> recover from the impact of DDT exposure.
> 
> Suppression of insect food resources by toxin-intensive factory farming
> is an obvious explanation of collapsing bird populations.  But as far as
> I know, nobody is even looking at the impact of endocrine disruptors and
> carcinogens (like glyhphosate) on wild birds populations.

Surely compulsory usage logging, centralised db and public publishing
should be mandatory at this point (i.e. possible to achieve
legislatively) now that glyphosate is out of patent in all countries?

The usual proxy of course is sales, but increasing locality data
accuracy should be high on the agenda for "the greens" if they want
to achieve something useful with the decaying State infrastructure.

Would be quite the feather in the political wanna be's cap... trivial
to implement in this day of tech abundance too.

Re: China hacks US CIA, Kills 20 Informants

[grarpamp]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 10:55 PM, juan  wrote:
> sounds like propaganda - the source is obviously a US gov't
> propaganda outlet.

Well true, but where there is propaganda, there is some
element of truth, and those precarious bullshit games
[for games sake] are the sort of things that lead to war
and people dying for no reason :(

Re: Swedish Prosecutors Have Dropped The Julian Assange Rape Investigation

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Mon, May 22, 2017 at 01:20:28PM +1000, Zenaan Harkness wrote:
> John Pilger lays it all out succinctly (version at The Duran adds
> their own short commentary to Pilger):
> 
> http://theduran.com/john-pilger-speaks-out-on-julian-assange-and-sweden/
> 
> http://johnpilger.com/articles/getting-julian-assange-the-untold-story

Pilger's example of a lowball questions asked to Assange (on a radio
show I think) "Are you a sexual predator?" inspired the beginning of
a "lowball Q compendium":

https://github.com/zenaan/doc/blob/master/lowball_questions_and_suggested_answers.yaml

Re: Swedish Prosecutors Have Dropped The Julian Assange Rape Investigation

[Zenaan Harkness]

On Fri, May 19, 2017 at 09:23:36PM +0100, oshwm wrote:
> On 19 May 2017 19:45:06 BST, juan  wrote:
> >On Fri, 19 May 2017 09:23:20 -0300
> >Cecilia Tanaka  wrote:
> >
> >> #
> >https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/19/world/europe/julian-assange-sweden-rape.html
> >> 
> >
> > Interesting. Now the nazi swedish government, a bunch of
> > lackeys/accomplices of the US nazis, looks slightly less bad. 
> >
> > Good for Assange I guess. 
> >
> 
> So now that he's no longer being prosecuted by the Swedes, he's
> available for extradition to the US

Not as long as he remains under diplomatic immunity/ in the
Ecuadorian consulate (of course) (presumably ...)


> - wonder if that Grand Jury has
> recently finished putting its case together?

I believe that's not relevant to the USA extraditing Assange - the
USA prosecutor only has to "allege" some "national security threat"
with the evidence being wikileaks.org "Helicopter Gunship"
publication, and once extradicted then jailed "on remand" for as many
years as they choose to use to "finish putting its case together".

Australian "government" is also not averse to retrospective
"criminal" laws opportunistically used to stop dissidents or popular
uprisings (Pauline Hanson jailed on retrospective criminal charge for
not having the required number of members to "legally" form a
political party, escept she did, and they changed the law to make the
previous number not enough, thus screwing her over and ultimately
jailing her to stop her political movement...), and so I imagine the
USA "government" is likely to do the same.


I.e.: flagrant and repeated violations of the rule of law, abhorrent
destruction of anything even remotely resembling "democracy" and so
ultimately nothing but sheer thuggery power dressed up as The State!


John Pilger lays it all out succinctly (version at The Duran adds
their own short commentary to Pilger):

http://theduran.com/john-pilger-speaks-out-on-julian-assange-and-sweden/

http://johnpilger.com/articles/getting-julian-assange-the-untold-story

Re: China hacks US CIA, Kills 20 Informants

[juan]

On Sun, 21 May 2017 22:36:52 -0400
grarpamp  wrote:

> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html
> 
> Both the CIA and the FBI declined to comment on reports saying the
> Chinese government killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 CIA sources 


sounds like propaganda - the source is obviously a US gov't
propaganda outlet. 




> from 2010
> to 2012 and dismantled the agency's spying operations in the country.
> It is described as one of the worst intelligence breaches in decades,
> current and former American officials told the New York Times.
> Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a
> double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the
> Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be
> in contact with foreign sources. The Times reported Saturday citing
> former American officials from the final weeks of 2010 till the end of
> 2012, the Chinese killed up to 20 CIA sources.

China hacks US CIA, Kills 20 Informants

[grarpamp]

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/20/world/asia/china-cia-spies-espionage.html

Both the CIA and the FBI declined to comment on reports saying the
Chinese government killed or imprisoned 18 to 20 CIA sources from 2010
to 2012 and dismantled the agency's spying operations in the country.
It is described as one of the worst intelligence breaches in decades,
current and former American officials told the New York Times.
Investigators were uncertain whether the breach was a result of a
double agent within the CIA who had betrayed the U.S. or whether the
Chinese had hacked the communications system used by the agency to be
in contact with foreign sources. The Times reported Saturday citing
former American officials from the final weeks of 2010 till the end of
2012, the Chinese killed up to 20 CIA sources.

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[grarpamp]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 6:55 PM, Steven Schear  wrote:
> What I meant,  if you are holding and sharing an entire file of some really
> sensitive content and depend on networking technologies known or assumed to
> have flaws which can expose your IP address you have relinquished ability to
> deny it.

Yes, if the file isn't encrypted, of if rubberhose decrypt policies
are in effect,
and the pointer to your node strongly confirms presense or leads to inspection.

> Whereas is this content has been published, using something like Freenet, so
> no single user of the content distribution system has more than a fragment
> of that content and what they each have is not only encrypted (and you don't
> have the key) but its bit interleaved and your software has no idea what
> part(s) of the content you hold nor where those other parts reside (for that
> your software must possess the file's "treasure map" which can be closely
> held). This offers good plausible deniability.

Sure. File sharding is interesting obfuscation defense in depth,
but has *lots* of overhead. If the network is "flawlessly" encrypted
and anonymous, as well as the disk storage managed by its nodes,
it's probably not needed... users can insert / fetch, or run nodes, safely.

Descriptions also depend on if the design provides both transport and
user application all in one (Freenet, Mojo), or just rides on top of
an already secure transport network (Ricochet over Tor, IRC over I2P).

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[grarpamp]

On Sun, May 21, 2017 at 8:04 PM, Steven Schear  wrote:
> These trackers

These *websites* are not actually "trackers" and have generally
shifted away from providing tracker service ever since legal pressure
made bundling services riskier, and a new independantly operated
layer of services providing the tracker function with opentracker
as bootstrap / fallback, for the DHT via PEX etc... has arisen.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opentracker

The proper term for these websites is searchable "indexes (DB's)",
bundled with community bling forums.

In reality it is the "indexes" that...

> need to adopt distributed hosting tech, like IPFS or NetZero,
> so there are no single points of pressure/failure and the operator IP and
> identity have a reasonable chance of staying private from technical
> snooping.

The bootstrap of tracking (where to first securely linkup with peers
for DHT) also needs fixed.

"Filesharing" could be designed lots of ways, doesn't have to
be "bittorrent protocol" proper. Though if it was compatible
with BT clients you'd have millions of instant users / nodes
in your encrypted anonymous ecosystem.

Re: [Cryptography] Photojournalists & filmmakers want cameras, to be encrypted

[M373]

It seems the advent of this would add impetus to implementing the option
for crypto signatures to ease and solidify confirming authenticity when
creating a video, either at production level or recording from a capture
device/sensor/camera.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/2131716-ai-can-doctor-videos-to-put-words-in-the-mouths-of-speakers/

ICE confirmed using cell site simulators to capture undocumented immigrants

[M373]

This is unsurprising but it's now confirmed via search warrant
documentation that ICE is using a cell site simulator/IMSI catcher
described as a Hailstorm or a Stingray
http://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/local/detroit-city/2017/05/18/cell-snooping-fbi-immigrant/101859616/
to surveil and prosecute undocumented immigrants. Journalists and ACLU
https://www.aclu.org/news/aclu-seeks-documents-ices-use-cell-phone-trackers
(probably others) are making FOIA requests and will likely need to sue.

Cell site simulators were kept mostly secret for about a decade after
introduction for domestic use and local departments were required by FBI
or manufacturer to conceal their use from judges and defense counsels.
https://gizmodo.com/ice-agents-are-using-stingray-surveillance-tech-to-capt-1795377902
In some cases, such as St. Louis, prosecutors dropped charges against
defendants who had cell site simulators used against them. Cell site
simulators are *strongly* suspected of being used against protesters in
Chicago, St. Louis/Ferguson, and Minneapolis, and known to have been
used in Standing Rock
http://geekswobounds.org/sites/default/files/Security%20at%20Resistance%20Camps.pdf

http://gwob.org/security-at-resistance-camps-lessons-from-standing-rock/ ,
including delivering malware payloads. ICE joins dozens of state and
local law enforcement agencies, and FBI, USMS, ATF, DEA, IRS, FCC, NSA,
and various military entities.
https://www.aclu.org/map/stingray-tracking-devices-whos-got-them 
https://theintercept.com/surveillance-catalogue/
http://graphics.wsj.com/surveillance-catalog/

Given the military-industrial-surveillance complex and that a moderately
skilled hacker can construct one, they are no doubt in use by private
security and intelligence agencies, as well, with G4S and
Academi/Xe/Blackwater certainly coming to mind.

So use the crypto (Signal or others), to the extent that it protects
content in transit. Some cell site simulators' imitation convinces
phones to decrypt the carrier's encryption. If a device can be infected
then even measures like Signal may be circumvented. We need more
privacy-by-design and hardened devices.

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Razer]

On 05/21/2017 04:07 PM, grarpamp wrote:
> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/05/17/1830228/popular-torrent-site-extratorrent-permanently-shuts-down
> https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-shuts-down-for-good-170517/
>
> ExtraTorrent is the latest in a series of BitTorrent giants to fall in
> recent months. Previously, sites including KickassTorrents,
> Torrentz.eu, TorrentHound and What.cd went offline.
> Clearnet = Fail.


Demonoid is welcoming them and registrations are open.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DemonoidP2P/comments/6brez4/extratorrent_users_welcome_to_demonoid_ask/

Re: Biological Collapse

[grarpamp]

> entire food chain under chemical attack.
> impact of DDT exposure.
> impact of endocrine disruptors and carcinogens (like glyhphosate)

No doubt. Ever since dawn of industrial age humans
been pumping manufactured not-found-in-nature reactive
molecules and waste by the megaton into nature.
Top that off with a nice layer of outright nuclear
background radiation laid down from the 40's-80's.
That anything can reproduce anymore with all the
induced pressure and not-yet-expressed mutations...

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Steven Schear]

These trackers need to adopt distributed hosting tech, like IPFS or
NetZero, so there are no single points of pressure/failure and the operator
IP and identity have a reasonable chance of staying private from technical
snooping.

Warrant Canary creator

On May 21, 2017 4:09 PM, "grarpamp"  wrote:

> https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/05/17/1830228/popular-torrent-site-
> extratorrent-permanently-shuts-down
> https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-shuts-down-for-good-170517/
>
> ExtraTorrent is the latest in a series of BitTorrent giants to fall in
> recent months. Previously, sites including KickassTorrents,
> Torrentz.eu, TorrentHound and What.cd went offline.
> Clearnet = Fail.
>

Re: "All fossil-fuel vehicles will vanish in 8 years..."

[Razer]

On 05/21/2017 01:15 PM, grarpamp wrote:
>>> Lern2wrench.
>> You can't "Wrench" them when they're 30 years old. They've fallen apart.
>>
>> I mean... I MEAN... If you really love that hole in the pavement
>>
>> in it for humans.
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Harvester_Travelall
>
> Looks cool, probably a lot of them in Cuba.
> Just like code, you can wrench on it, debug it, hacker it,
> maker it, hobby it, mod it and trick it out with bling.
> Humans do that just because they can.

IH marketed them to midwest farmers as part of a package deal (the
Central Valley of California was another hotspot and that's where alot
of the specialty wrecking yards for them are) 'for the misus' if they
bought the combine or big tractor.

It was always 'power everything'. Brakes. Steering... No such thing as a
wind-down back window. Unlike the pickup trucks which were essentially
the same vehicle  'capped  off' at the back of the front seat and a
pickup truck bed instead. There was also a "Travelette" that had seating
for four and small pickup truck bed. Quite a few were HIgh clearance 4
wheel drive versions Forestry services loved them. Literally
unbreakable, and repairable by the side of the road if something did go
wrong, and IH also supplied them to railroads where they were outfitted
with drop-down rail wheels for moving work crews around.

The running joke was alway "If the serial number was one number
different it might have been a combine instead". They came with a "Line
Setting Ticket" with the complete rundown if everything installed (like
a big rig might), and they weren't cheap. In 1965 a basic travelall
listed fr the same price as a base caddy... (Wait for it...) $10k. I'm
sure they were heavily discounted when the farmer bought the Combine


Mine was originally a 3 speed with overdrive (horse trailer towing
vehicle) but it chucked a gear (1965-1985... 30 years) and I stuffed a 4
speed from a similar year Dodge pickup in it... which gave it a 'stump
puller' 1st gear because of the differential gear ratio mismatch. So low
I didn't need the clutch. I could rev the engine and just push the
shifter up by the 1st gear gate, and it would drop in. The truck would
lift on it's suspension about a foot, and it would start rolling. After
that it was 'gravy' to shift without the clutch. Try doing that with any
mdern transmission that uses shitty little needle bearing capped into an
aluminum housing and you'll be replacing the transmission before long.

The only problem was once you bought one... Unless something
particularly tragic happened, you never had to buy one again. That's
what killed it, and the pickup truck sales too. But in 1983 when I
needed a new rear axle for one that "Mushroomed" on brake drum removal,
the factory  still had one ... undoubtedly overmanufactured for warranty
purposes and then written off, but they had one. There's no such thing
as 'overmanufacturing for warranty purposes anymore, and if it's done
the parts are ditched as soon as written off.

That's one reason why maintaining a 'New Millennium" car like it's a
'classic', will fail. To expect an aftermarket that will still have an
"axleshaft" for a 30 year old vehicle is laughable.

Rr

Re: Biological Collapse

[Steve Kinney]

On 05/21/2017 06:24 PM, grarpamp wrote:
> http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone

[ ... ]

the Krefeld
> Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate,
> as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they
> returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total
> mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a
> particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in
> 2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons,
> the group -- which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades
> -- found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites. Such
> losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird
> living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last
> quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist
> at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with
> the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost
> hopes that it's not representative -- that it's some strange
> artifact."
> 
> https://phys.org/news/2017-05-seas-coastal.html
> https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01362-7

It is representative, a not-strange artifact of the proliferation of
modern "bird and mammal friendly" super-insecticides used in agriculture
and landscape applications.  Collapsing bird populations reflect an
entire food chain under chemical attack.

http://www.tfsp.info/
http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v511/n7509/full/nature13642.html
http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/popular-pesticides-linked-drops-bird-population-180951971/
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/american-songbirds-are-being-wiped-out-by-banned-pesticides-804547.html

Four years ago:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/apr/29/bee-harming-pesticides-banned-europe
https://www.independent.co.uk/environment/nature/victory-for-bees-as-european-union-bans-neonicotinoid-pesticides-blamed-for-destroying-bee-8595408.html

I have seen claims that Europe's bird populations are already rising in
the hardest hit areas, but four years is /very/ early to look for
results.  It took 40 years for the North American brown pelican to
recover from the impact of DDT exposure.

Suppression of insect food resources by toxin-intensive factory farming
is an obvious explanation of collapsing bird populations.  But as far as
I know, nobody is even looking at the impact of endocrine disruptors and
carcinogens (like glyhphosate) on wild birds populations.

:o/











signature.asc
Description: OpenPGP digital signature

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[grarpamp]

https://yro.slashdot.org/story/17/05/17/1830228/popular-torrent-site-extratorrent-permanently-shuts-down
https://torrentfreak.com/extratorrent-shuts-down-for-good-170517/

ExtraTorrent is the latest in a series of BitTorrent giants to fall in
recent months. Previously, sites including KickassTorrents,
Torrentz.eu, TorrentHound and What.cd went offline.
Clearnet = Fail.

Hacking and Making the Body for Humanity

[grarpamp]

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2016/mar/12/sxsw-neuroscientists-home-hacking-your-brain-with-electronics

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k9Rm-U9havE

https://www.neuralink.com/

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Steven Schear]

What I meant,  if you are holding and sharing an entire file of some really
sensitive content and depend on networking technologies known or assumed to
have flaws which can expose your IP address you have relinquished ability
to deny it.
Whereas is this content has been published, using something like Freenet,
so no single user of the content distribution system has more than a
fragment of that content and what they each have is not only encrypted (and
you don't have the key) but its bit interleaved and your software has no
idea what part(s) of the content you hold nor where those other parts
reside (for that your software must possess the file's "treasure map" which
can be closely held). This offers good plausible deniability.

Warrant Canary creator

On May 21, 2017 2:24 PM, "grarpamp"  wrote:

> Mojo was being developed contemporanously with Freenet and shares some of
> its distributed features. It was sort of like Freenet + a resource based
> currency.

True.

> You do not want a filesharing system as it removes any hope of
> plausible deniability for content.

Huh?

If it's encrypted and anonymous it's deniable by all, and even billed
for "filesharing" is fine, at least currently, due to legal free speech
uses riding within. Though if you bill it for "illegal copyright
infringement',
you yourself might take heat for "incitement", but the network itself would
still be safe. Such network nodes themselves, like I2P / Tor / Freenet,
operate freely because of that principle, and it's been proven out
successfully so far for maybe 15-20 years. Strongly encrypted + strongly
anonymous + decentralized works in this space. Unfortunately, few qualify...

Napster, gnutella, limewire, kazaa, bittorrent, whatever... when run over
clearnet... of course they all get shutdown. Due to some combination
of centralized, not encrypted, not anonymous no deniability there.

Wikipedia is a bit scattered, but here's some references...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P

Biological Collapse

[grarpamp]

http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/05/where-have-all-insects-gone

Scientists have tracked alarming declines in domesticated honey bees,
monarch butterflies, and lightning bugs. But few have paid attention
to the moths, hover flies, beetles, and countless other insects that
buzz and flitter through the warm months. "We have a pretty good track
record of ignoring most noncharismatic species," which most insects
are, says Joe Nocera, an ecologist at the University of New Brunswick
in Canada. [...] A new set of long-term data is coming to light, this
time from a dedicated group of mostly amateur entomologists who have
tracked insect abundance at more than 100 nature reserves in western
Europe since the 1980s. Over that time the group, the Krefeld
Entomological Society, has seen the yearly insect catches fluctuate,
as expected. But in 2013 they spotted something alarming. When they
returned to one of their earliest trapping sites from 1989, the total
mass of their catch had fallen by nearly 80%. Perhaps it was a
particularly bad year, they thought, so they set up the traps again in
2014. The numbers were just as low. Through more direct comparisons,
the group -- which had preserved thousands of samples over 3 decades
-- found dramatic declines across more than a dozen other sites. Such
losses reverberate up the food chain. "If you're an insect-eating bird
living in that area, four-fifths of your food is gone in the last
quarter-century, which is staggering," says Dave Goulson, an ecologist
at the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom, who is working with
the Krefeld group to analyze and publish some of the data. "One almost
hopes that it's not representative -- that it's some strange
artifact."

https://phys.org/news/2017-05-seas-coastal.html
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-01362-7

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[grarpamp]

> Mojo was being developed contemporanously with Freenet and shares some of
> its distributed features. It was sort of like Freenet + a resource based
> currency.

True.

> You do not want a filesharing system as it removes any hope of
> plausible deniability for content.

Huh?

If it's encrypted and anonymous it's deniable by all, and even billed
for "filesharing" is fine, at least currently, due to legal free speech
uses riding within. Though if you bill it for "illegal copyright infringement',
you yourself might take heat for "incitement", but the network itself would
still be safe. Such network nodes themselves, like I2P / Tor / Freenet,
operate freely because of that principle, and it's been proven out
successfully so far for maybe 15-20 years. Strongly encrypted + strongly
anonymous + decentralized works in this space. Unfortunately, few qualify...

Napster, gnutella, limewire, kazaa, bittorrent, whatever... when run over
clearnet... of course they all get shutdown. Due to some combination
of centralized, not encrypted, not anonymous no deniability there.

Wikipedia is a bit scattered, but here's some references...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anonymous_P2P

Re: "All fossil-fuel vehicles will vanish in 8 years..."

[grarpamp]

>> Lern2wrench.
>
> You can't "Wrench" them when they're 30 years old. They've fallen apart.
>
> I mean... I MEAN... If you really love that hole in the pavement
>
> in it for humans.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Harvester_Travelall

Looks cool, probably a lot of them in Cuba.
Just like code, you can wrench on it, debug it, hacker it,
maker it, hobby it, mod it and trick it out with bling.
Humans do that just because they can.

Re: "All fossil-fuel vehicles will vanish in 8 years..."

[Razer]

On 05/20/2017 07:19 PM, grarpamp wrote:
>> In the US, after 10 years you can no longer get many parts for you car
>> from the dealer.  < emphasis
>> They intentionally obsolete them, ostensibly to get
>> allegedly 'cleaner ones' on the road, but really, force-obsoleting cars
>> after 10 years instead of having ones that could run indefinitely
> While legal and consumer environment may generate incentive,
> carmakers have no natural incentive but to sell.
> Any shit design, poor aging, or parts dropout is their own
> whole car preferential sales technique.
>
> But still, you can get limited parts selection from dealer 10+ years out,
> at their price. And 30+ years on cheap aftermarket, including
> complete rebuild kit for common models. Same for junkyards.
>
> Lern2wrench. May also be net environmentally better vs production,
> and much cheaper. Do the math.

You can't "Wrench" them when they're 30 years old. They've fallen apart.
By design.

I mean... I MEAN... If you really love that hole in the pavement you
pour money into, you can pour EVEN MORE MONEY into it trying to replace
parts that never fail in the designed life of the 'hole'. For instance,
my Travelall, which had ONE smog device, an OG PCV valve that wasn't
even listed as an available part because you took it apart and cleaned
it, and was, like the rest of the vehicle, intended to literally last
forever (which eventually put IH out of the small truck biz), at 30
years it had wheel rim failures (split circumferentially on the inside
of the rim mimicking a blowout), the power steering idler arm snapped
(fortunately I was parking at the time and not going 60mph), and the
door latches? Door bolts ... due to sagging hinges making the latches
unreliable at first, then non-functional. And any door/hinge assembly
you're liable to find at a junkyard or recycler is just as worn.

You CAN have the hinges rebuilt of course (Until their attachment point
on the 'hole' fails). And the brake calipers bored out by specialty
machine shops with matching Stainless Steel pucks installed like is
common with old Corvettes and Jaguars.

Just sayin' Spend all your money so you can scoot around in a little
metal box that isolates you from the society around you, and by
extension, those bombs falling (enter name of 3rd world nation here),
AND can't even be recycled?

That's 'progress'... towards something. But I just don't see a future in
it for humans.

Rr

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[Steven Schear]

Warrant Canary creator

On May 20, 2017 10:46 PM, "Steve Kinney"  wrote:



On 05/21/2017 12:32 AM, grarpamp wrote:
> Rewards seem nice, yet not everyone who wants to play
> can pay, or the math overhead is crushing, or it becomes
> centralized. Definitely worth trying, especially if it fits some
> usage model.
>
> Another form is to just let the network use whatever
> CPU, RAM, DISK, NET that you're not currently
> using, or give it whatever limits you want. In short,
> set it and forget it. Let the network figure out how
> to best use your node to support the network.
> Maybe it's a strictly filesharing network,
> or a general purpose network.
> That's on the "Hey I just want to donate
> this because it's cool like Seti@Home, etc."

Now I think you're describing Freenet.  How doth Freenet suck, let me
count the ways... massive computational overhead was the main thing,
last time I tried it which was ages ago.  It really needed its own
dedicated box to "just work."  But it does distribute files, increase
the availability of more popular ones (via increased redundancy of
storage), and is censorship resistant due to distributed storage of data
which itself is encrypted and anonymized.

I think a project that aims to improve on the implementation of the
basic ideas in Freenet could be a big winner.

:o)

Mojo was being developed contemporanously with Freenet and shares some of
its distributed features. It was sort of like Freenet + a resource based
currency. You do not want a filesharing system as it removes any hope of
plausible deniability for content.




> Users actual use of the network would
> be through different apps... be it submitting
> infohashes, or compute jobs, etc.
>
> Does eliminating all the reward tracking overhead
> provide substantial resources back to support
> free use.
>
> ie: Most people and their computer resources sit idle,
> probably more than enough to provide back whatever
> multimedia they want to consume.
> If true, all balances out, no need to bother track accounting
> with "pay to play" style system?
>
> I like "pay to play" as it offers at least some
> firm guarantee to the consumer offeror.
>
> But an accounting free system is more fun as in free beer :)
>
> Hybrids might work too.
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yottabyte
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(data)
>
> 100M users donating 10GiB slack space is about 0.93 EiB
> of non redundant storage, excluding overhead.
>
> Example, at 4x redundancy, that probably easily covers
> lossless versions of all movies (at least 1080p)
> and all audio (FLAC), all wikipedia, all OS and apps.
>
> Approaching mini-NSA scale... not a bad start.
>

Re: Torrenting The Darknets

[juan]

On Sun, 21 May 2017 01:45:20 -0400
Steve Kinney  wrote:


> Now I think you're describing Freenet.  How doth Freenet suck, let me
> count the ways...

actually freenet seems like the best project of its kind. It's
not garbage produced by the pentagon, and it tries to be really
decentralized. 

> massive computational overhead was the main thing,

I never experienced that, although it would be nice if they
didn't use java. 


> last time I tried it which was ages ago.  It really needed its own
> dedicated box to "just work." 

nonsense.


> But it does distribute files, increase
> the availability of more popular ones (via increased redundancy of
> storage), and is censorship resistant due to distributed storage of
> data which itself is encrypted and anonymized.


yes, the concept is pretty 'cypherpunk'.


> 
> I think a project that aims to improve on the implementation of the
> basic ideas in Freenet could be a big winner.
> 
> :o)
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > Users actual use of the network would
> > be through different apps... be it submitting
> > infohashes, or compute jobs, etc.
> > 
> > Does eliminating all the reward tracking overhead
> > provide substantial resources back to support
> > free use.
> > 
> > ie: Most people and their computer resources sit idle,
> > probably more than enough to provide back whatever
> > multimedia they want to consume.
> > If true, all balances out, no need to bother track accounting
> > with "pay to play" style system?
> > 
> > I like "pay to play" as it offers at least some
> > firm guarantee to the consumer offeror.
> > 
> > But an accounting free system is more fun as in free beer :)
> > 
> > Hybrids might work too.
> > 
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exabyte
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zettabyte
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yottabyte
> > https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orders_of_magnitude_(data)
> > 
> > 100M users donating 10GiB slack space is about 0.93 EiB
> > of non redundant storage, excluding overhead.
> > 
> > Example, at 4x redundancy, that probably easily covers
> > lossless versions of all movies (at least 1080p)
> > and all audio (FLAC), all wikipedia, all OS and apps.
> > 
> > Approaching mini-NSA scale... not a bad start.
> > 
> 

Re: Fwd: [Webinar] Decrypting the WannaCry ransomware: Why is it happening and (how) is it going to end?

[grarpamp]

> I think whoever blasted this hack off may never touch their money.
> Apparently all the infections come with instructions for payment
> to be made to one of only three static wallets.. and everybody has
> their eyes on the block chain :P

There's enough cryptos, exchange points, tumblers and anon
networks out there to make John Gotti rise up and dance a happy jig.

> They've only brought in like $60k or something from 200k infections.
> Horrible return on infection ratio...

Until they daytrade it in cryptos for a year reaching $1M+.
Move it out saying they kept no logs, pay their tax on $0 basis.
Or keep and use it as crypto.

> there many statists in the blockchain community

Really? Damn, who knew.

> Any bets on whether ending cryptocurrency (esp. bitcoin)
> privacy & fungibility will be near the top of the discussions?

Come on, heads of state have been making sideways public comments
at crypto for years, and now at crypto currencies... "damn swiss bank
account on your phone". You have any idea how much lack of sleep
this dilemma is causing them?

Unfortunately rhetoric is getting stronger, like from that
bitch May in the UK and the retirees in US Gov.

Cryptos need to up their deployment and political game.

> hobble currencies ... advantage investments ... achieve political ends

Sounds like cryptocurrencies job... already happening in
some parts and directions.