Re: Truth is a bitter pill to swallow: Lessons on the death of Fidel Castro

[Kurt Buff]

The thought that SA was unable or incompetent to stand up to the
Mozambiquan/Cuban forces is untrue.

The SA troops basically kicked the crap out of the Cuban forces
whenever/wherever they met, but SA was pressured by the USA to back
down, with the promise that the USA would fill in. Didn't happen, of
course...

Regardless, it would have been harder for SA if there had been much
larger Cuban forces deployed - the engagements with Cuban forces were
fought mostly with conscripts, with SA saving their regular troops for
a possible larger conflict, which didn't eventuate.

If it had brewed up, the quality of the SA forces (i.e., individual
and small unit professionalism and discipline) would have been just
fine, but logistics and supply, and warfighting doctrine and tactics
would have presented real difficulties. SA at that time didn't train
their forces at large scale, with the battalion being the permanent
force size (vs. say the USA, where the division is the permanent unit
size).

This article (which makes the above mistake, is otherwise useful),
gives a decent overview of Fidel Castro's life and tenure:
http://libertyunbound.com/node/1631

Kurt

On Sun, Nov 27, 2016 at 11:13 AM, Razer  wrote:
> From Facebook. A pretty definitive history of the Cuban Revolution:
>
> [Note: Sam "Momo" Giancana is mentioned in this article. Mike Ruppert
> brought up one of his CUBAN MAFIA operations in "Crossing the Rubicon" as
> Heroin smuggling to the docks in New Orleans. As Ruppert put it. Hardhat
> divers would work the 'legs' of oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico off the
> coast of Lousyanna removing containers of Heroin the CIA's hardhat divers
> put there and bring it into port on the workboats. My dad, a regional
> coordinator for the ADL in the SE US and US Army intel since WWII lit up
> when I mentioned Giancana's name in passing ,,, Everyone in spookworld knew
> this was happening. The Cubans who fled here when Castro took power were te
> oligarchs, Mafioso affiliated with the CIA, and later, all the thugs Castro
> released from prison and told to go to the US. Many are sitting in prisons
> in the Southeast US for the rest of their lives for crimes committed in the
> US and no place to exile them to... Tsk... tsk.]
>
> "Truth is a bitter pill to swallow: Lessons on the death of Fidel Castro and
> his revolutionary freedom-fighter legacy in the world.
>
> (Please bear with me. I have tried to condense all the researched material,
> but this is still a lengthy post..well worth the read though)
>
> History can be a very useful tool. The need to always research the truth,
> and understand its relevance is the key to defeating fascism wherever its
> ugly head pops up. The true revolution is the evolution of consciousness. If
> you rely on the mainstream media or utterances of "elected" U.S. government
> officials, you will never truly 'see', or understand, what is happening all
> around you, nor will you ever break free of the chains of mental, as well as
> economic and physical slavery.
>
> Cuba was one of the last colonial possessions under Spanish rule just 90
> miles south of Florida. As Spain’s Imperial power was in decline, Washington
> had imperial ambitions to expand its influence on Cuba. Cuba had the
> potential to produce unlimited profits for U.S. business interests. Even
> organized crime got into the picture when they became a major player in Cuba
> in the early 1930’s. The Mafia managed to expand their gaming industry,
> prostitution and drug trade operations to Cuba to avoid harassment from the
> U.S. government [Citation: "Havana Nocturne: How the Mob Owned Cuba and then
> Lost it to the Revolution", an excellent expose of how the mafia operated in
> Cuba, by T.J. English]. Cuba was to be their base of operations as they were
> looking to expand into other Caribbean nations. During that time, Cuba was
> under the leadership of President Fulgencio Batista, a good friend to
> organized crime, who had close political ties to Washington and its
> multinational corporations. Cuba became a cesspool of corruption, illegal
> drugs and prostitution which became a playground for the rich and famous
> while the majority of ordinary Cubans lived in extreme poverty. This is an
> historical account of Cuba before 1959, a time period that explains why
> Cuba’s Revolution was a long time in the making.
>
> We all know the story of how Cuban leader Fidel Castro established the first
> communist state in the Western Hemisphere, leading an overthrow of the
> corrupt military dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista in 1959, ruling over Cuba
> for nearly five decades, and irking the great American superpower after
> nationalizing U.S.-owned businesses in Cuba without compensation since 1960.
> What you don't know is what led to it.
>
> The U.S. has been intervening in Latin America since President James Monroe
> established the Monroe Doctrine, a foreign policy that prevented European
> powers from colonizing any sovereign nat

Re: 10 judges are nuts.

[Kurt Buff]

On Thu, Feb 23, 2017 at 7:38 AM, Razer  wrote:
>
> On 02/23/2017 05:37 AM, jim bell wrote:
>
> Court rules assault weapons are not protected under Constitution
> http://dailym.ai/2mmUuqG via
>
>
> They aren't. You know why? When the Second Amendment was written, at 50
> yards or so, you could literally outrun a musketball. If it didn't bounce
> off your coat.

You do know that black powder muskets and rifles are *still* used to hunt
deer and black bear, and elk, right? And that at least the latter two
usually weigh more than adult humans?

More to the point, the Second Amendment is all about military weapons.
Consider that much of the cannon used by the revolutionaries was privately
owned.

Get a grip, son - your struggle against reality is showing.

> Besides, "Your puny AK-47 is useless. So, we need to have at
> least some of our volunteer resistance show up with Stinger missiles, some
> anti-aircraft batteries, maybe a submarine or two?" I hear Soros has a
fleet
> of A-10 Warthogs he might call into service too if you talk to him purty.

You have truly gone off the deep end. Don't think that American
revolutionaries can't whip up, or don't have, effective weapons beyond
simple firearms? You might want to think again.

And, if Soros *does* own some Warthogs, well, more power to him. I wish I
were rich enough to do so. It's my favorite military aircraft.

I'll not bother with rebutting the rest of the strawman arguments from
popehat, but will provide a few quotes from the period before and during
the ratification of the Constitution:

No freeman shall ever be debarred the use of arms.
 ---Thomas Jefferson: Draft Virginia Constitution, 1776.

Before a standing army can rule, the people must be disarmed; as they are
in almost every kingdom in Europe. The supreme power in America cannot
enforce unjust laws by the sword; because the whole body of the people are
armed, and constitute a force superior to any band of regular troops that
can be, on any pretence, raised in the United States. A military force, at
the command of Congress, can execute no laws, but such as the people
perceive to be just and constitutional; for they will possess the power,
and jealousy will instantly inspire the inclination, to resist the
execution of a law which appears to them unjust and oppressive.
 ---Noah Webster, An Examination of the Leading Principles of the
Federal Constitution (Philadelphia 1787).

I particularly like the following:


*Who are the militia? Are they not ourselves? Is it feared, then, that we
shall turn our arms each man gainst his own bosom. Congress have no power
to disarm the militia. Their swords, and every other terrible implement of
the soldier, are the birthright of an American...[T]he unlimited power of
the sword is not in the hands of either the federal or state governments,
but, where I trust in God it will ever remain, in the hands of the people.
   ---Tenche Coxe, The Pennsylvania Gazette, Feb. 20, 1788.*

The whole of that Bill [of Rights] is a declaration of the right of the
people at large or considered as individuals...[I]t establishes some rights
of the individual as unalienable and which consequently, no majority has a
right to deprive them of.
 ---Albert Gallatin to Alexander Addison, Oct 7, 1789, MS. in N.Y.
Hist. Soc.-A.G. Papers, 2.

[C]onceived it to be the privilege of every citizen, and one of his most
essential rights, to bear arms, and to resist every attack upon his liberty
or property, by whomsoever made. The particular states, like private
citizens, have a right to be armed, and to defend, by force of arms, their
rights, when invaded.
 14 Debates in the House of Representatives, ed. Linda Grand De
Pauw. (Balt., Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1972), 92-3.

Re: the tor scam - Re: AP deconstructed: Why it has not happened yet, and will not

[Kurt Buff]

On Tue, Aug 7, 2018 at 5:21 PM, jim bell  wrote:
> https://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/03/us/postal-service-confirms-photographing-all-us-mail.html
>
> "But Mr. Donahoe said that the images had been used “a couple of times” by
> law enforcement to trace letters in criminal cases, including one involving
> ricin-laced letters sent to President Obama and Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg
> of New York. The images of letters and packages are generally stored for a
> week to 30 days and then destroyed, he told the A.P."
> [end of quote from article]
>
>
> About that article.
>
> I think it's curious that they claim to "destroy' the images after "a week
> to 30 days".   If there are about 1 billion mailed items each year, and it
> takes 50 kilobytes to store an image (wild ass guess, and assuming some
> compression), that would amount to 50 terabytes of data:  A bit more than 4
> of the largest-capacity of hard drives currently sold.
>
>
> https://www.wdc.com/products/internal-storage/wd-gold-enterprise-class-hard-drive.html?gclid=CjwKCAjwhqXbBRAREiwAucoo-yp9zBDxr1hrojtP7nXAw8Trmtx4-9N8m5DAecI3hqQeTEyGeHWYjBoCg_IQAvD_BwE
>
> Think about it.  If YOU had access to this data, would YOU erase it, if the
> storage only cost about $2000 per year?
>
>   Jim Bell

It's going to be about an order of magnitude more than that - not
because of the size of the images, but because they're going to OCR
and index all of it, but I'm sure they're already OCRing already,
because automation.

The images are pretty useless without it the indexing.

But still - let's say that you're off by three orders of magnitude,
and it costs $2m/year to store it, that's chump change for a very good
surveillance system, and if you do network graphs and frequency
analyses, etc, well, now you're cooking with gas.

And, USPS might (or might not) destroy the data, but they don't
mention whether or not they pass it all on the some TLA or other as
well as passing on to LEO's on-demand. Wouldn't put it past them...

Kurt

The beauty of owning the assembly line

[Kurt Buff]

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2018-10-04/the-big-hack-how-china-used-a-tiny-chip-to-infiltrate-america-s-top-companies

Re: HuffPost: Julian Assange Faces Federal Charges. But Let's Not Forget What We've Learned From WikiLeaks.

[Kurt Buff]

On Tue, Nov 27, 2018 at 11:33 AM jim bell  wrote:
>
> On Sunday, November 25, 2018, 7:05:09 PM PST, Zenaan Harkness 
>  wrote:
> >Sadly, global warming is a complete hoax, to impose a global tax, to
> fund a global "one worl order" or "new world order".
>
> And there is a likely (at least partial) solution at hand:
>
> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/511016/a-cheap-and-easy-plan-to-stop-global-warming/
>2013
>
> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603974/harvard-scientists-moving-ahead-on-plans-for-atmospheric-geoengineering-experiments/
>  2017
>
> https://www.technologyreview.com/s/610007/were-about-to-kill-a-massive-accidental-experiment-in-halting-global-warming/
> 2018
>
> https://www.aps.org/publications/apsnews/201710/hand-hubris.cfm 2017
>
> https://www.technologyreview.com/video/609390/climate-disruption-technical-approaches-to-mitigation-and-adaptation/
>  2017
>
> (Full disclosure:  I have a Bachelor's degree in Chemistry from MIT, Class of 
> 1980).
>
> While I am not sufficently convinced that, quantitatively, "global warming" 
> ("climate change"), or more specifically AGW (Anthropogenic Global Warning) 
> is a genuine problem,  I'd say it would be irresponsible to not prepare for 
> the possibility that this sulfur-injection protocol will be necessary, or at 
> least useful.  It should be quite cheap. Further, there are likely to be 
> various (positive) feedback-loops associated with global warming, such as the 
> thawing of permafrost, whose magnitude aren't well-understood.
>
> I suspect that the main opposition to this idea comes from people who see 
> "climate change" as simply an opportunity to increase government control over 
> the world.  They think that they've found themselves one hell of a problem, 
> but a problem which would be threatened,  like garlic or a silver bullet, or 
> a gold cross, to a vampire.
>
>Jim Bell

So, the solution to warming is smog? Really? Perhaps if injected at a
high enough altitude it won't affect lungs, but it seems like SO2
isn't something we want to pump into the atmosphere...

Kurt

Re: Are You Ready for the 'Inevitable' Clampdown on Tech and the Media? - shared from Reason.com

[Kurt Buff]

On Fri, Dec 7, 2018 at 4:04 PM jim bell  wrote:
>
> https://reason.com/r/1wOM When Apple's CEO Tim Cook says "the free market is 
> not working," bad things are coming.

Anyone with half a brain and a thought to look has long ago figured
out that Tim Cook is a technocrat who wouldn't know a free market if
it jumped up and down on his bunions.

Kurt

Outstanding - the biter bit

[Kurt Buff]

It won't last, but it's gotta taste sweet while it lasts

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2021/04/in-epic-hack-signal-developer-turns-the-tables-on-forensics-firm-cellebrite/

 "For years, Israeli digital forensics firm Cellebrite has helped
governments and
 police around the world break into confiscated mobile phones, mostly by
 exploiting vulnerabilities that went overlooked by device
manufacturers. Now,
 Moxie Marlinspike—creator of the Signal messaging app—has turned the
 tables on Cellebrite."

Re: SpyVeillance: USPS Postal Service Runs iCOP Covert Ops Program Spying Americans Social Posts

[Kurt Buff]

They gave it to her - I think she should do with it as she will...

Or is it more "Finders Keeper"?

Kurt

On Wed, Apr 21, 2021 at 3:08 PM grarpamp  wrote:
>
> https://www.wbrz.com/news/woman-finds-tracking-device-on-car-louisiana-state-police-wants-it-back

Re: The Internet of Things will host devastating, unstoppable botnets

[Kurt Buff]

I foresee a not-for-profit venture that seeks out any and all devices
that aren't protected and seeks to permanently disable them.

Perhaps called BrickerBot...

Kurt

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 5:35 PM, Razer  wrote:
> Bwahahahahahaaahackcoughgasp-wheze!
>
>
>> Bruce Schneier takes to the pages of Technology Review to remind us
>> all that while botnets have been around for a long time, the Internet
>> of Things is supercharging them, thanks to insecurity by design.
>>
>> Botnets are useful for denial of service attacks, but they're also an
>> indispensable part of the spam ecosystem, clickfraud, extortion, and
>> other bad news.
>>
>> Cheap IoT gadgets are manufactured by absentee proprietors and large,
>> respected companies who ignore urgent warnings about their defects (or
>> punish people who complain by remote-bricking their gadgets), leading
>> to nightmarish breaches.
>>
>> Worse, IoT manufacturers use antiquated DRM laws to threaten security
>> researchers who reveal the defects in their products with brutal
>> lawsuits and even jail-time (and this will be a risk for any device
>> controlled by a browser).
>>
>>> . Once you know a botnet exists, you can attack its
>>> command-and-control system. When botnets were rare, this tactic was
>>> effective. As they get more common, this piecemeal defense will
>>> become less so. You can also secure yourself against the effects of
>>> botnets. For example, several companies sell defenses against
>>> denial-of-service attacks. Their effectiveness varies, depending on
>>> the severity of the attack and the type of service.
>>>
>>> But overall, the trends favor the attacker. Expect more attacks
>>> like the one against Dyn in the coming year.
>>
>>
>> Botnets of Things [Bruce Schneier/MIT Technology Review]
>
>
> Clickthru boingx2 (some other links on-page):
> http://boingboing.net/2017/04/12/forever-day-bugs-2.html
>
>

Re: The Internet of Things will host devastating, unstoppable botnets

[Kurt Buff]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 11:20 PM, grarpamp  wrote:
>> I foresee a not-for-profit venture that seeks out any and all devices
>> that aren't protected and seeks to permanently disable them.
>
> Would also break every tort, damaging, conspiracy to commit, and
> computer crime law on the books, and get itself shutdown, prosecuted,
> and sued for loss of and so on.

Since when has that stopped those who believe they are the righteous?

Re: FreeBSD

[Kurt Buff]

On Wed, Apr 12, 2017 at 10:35 PM, grarpamp  wrote:
> FreeBSD: Not a Linux Distro
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwbO4eTieQY
>
> https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=freebsd+raspberry+pi

Somewhat dated, but still relevant:
http://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01

Re: The Internet of Things will host devastating, unstoppable botnets

[Kurt Buff]

Who said anything about state authorization?

On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 10:32 AM, grarpamp  wrote:
> On Thu, Apr 13, 2017 at 10:13 AM, Razer  wrote:
>> Some makers don't respond.
>
> Then brick their products till they pay or fix their gear.
> No need for any state authorized "nonprofit" doing the exact same thing.

Re: Tracking pixels can conduct surveillance for targeted attacks

[Kurt Buff]

With Firefox and its kin (Cyberfox, and possibly PaleMoon),
RequestPolicy will do that.

I've seen sites that have as many as 20-30 different content providers
for all sorts of things that are exposed by RequestPolicy.

No such beast for Chrome that I've been able to detect.

Unfortunately, RequestPolicy isn't compatible with the new-ish
multiprocess capability in FF/CF.

Kurt

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 4:08 PM, Steve Kinney  wrote:
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-
> Hash: SHA1
>
>
>
> On 04/18/2017 05:26 PM, Mirimir wrote:
>> On 04/18/2017 12:38 PM, Razer wrote:
 Malicious hackers can use tracking pixels to help them gather
 intelligence for attack campaigns, both mass and targeted in
 scope.
>>
>> 
>>
>> Well, prudent folk don't render HTML, or download embedded stuff
>> :)
>
> I haven't seen one of these in many moons.  Decently designed mail
> readers that render HTML do not pull in remote content unless
> expressly directed to.  "Normal" website based trackers use
> Javascript; it is transparent to the (naive) user and can harvest a
> much more detailed profile of the viewer's browser than that
> volunteered by HTTP request headers.
>
> Javascrpt filters that block calls for offsite scripts and halt
> execution of scripts embedded in HTML cover most of the JS
> surveillance vector.  I do occasionally dissect web pages to see what
> they're made of, with special attention to spyware, but I have never
> seen a 1px "web bug" (yes, they have a name) in an HTML document.  Not
> to say they can't be used, but as far as I can tell they rarely are.
>
> An option to block all 3rd party image content by default would be a
> good addition to a tool like NoScript.  Many users would be shocked -
> SHOCKED, I TELL YA! - to learn how often they are visiting Cloudflare,
> Amazon, and image hosting sites like Photobucket or Imageshack while
> viewing "independet, owner operated" websites.
>
> :o)
>
>
>
>
>
> I do occasionally dissect
> -BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-
> Version: GnuPG v2.0.22 (GNU/Linux)
>
> iQEcBAEBAgAGBQJY9px2AAoJEECU6c5Xzmuq0g0IAMAr9n7mbDXL+wMuInw+9xk1
> GXX21A14rrpTin/kiyDQ20QcuoJkMiLzhRkyG8qFdaInExxK7jQPqVOHZ6frD8KH
> /B+ShUo5HBGj4mUZiLXAYKjbkJ0CO3Zqqn0XeDaErQ2zOsovX2AqS1jdTs/67ITM
> PoipIOVf8dOVBXu2bdlfHFvXeGCKEN6q9Aq30miKP0e1hEAJBinS8SlFH7+3q9XX
> h6/mnnxlqXZmSMN1A0ovPqOagVUwwDYdN+d5gWwCOZhIxETFXOfWVyTym0b8i85o
> LDs8VpA3QpiHR/KoNja5NC+mnA9K4joThjSqpPH/vOk62CkD7zsyzzY3S2DOamY=
> =6ZhE
> -END PGP SIGNATURE-

Re: Satoshi's Trump Card

[Kurt Buff]

On Thu, Jun 29, 2017 at 12:15 PM, grarpamp  wrote:
> Satoshi is estimated to have at least 1M BTC to leverage at
> will, anon, with zfg. Any disagreeable fork can be tranflooded
> back to self and even whaled around for years to come.
> With agreeable things endorsed and supported similarly.
> Satoshi has been moved to arise from silence before.
> Do not tempt the phoenix guarding the message in the genesis block.
>
> https://coingeek.com/risks-segregated-witness-opening-door-mining-cartels-undermine-bitcoin-network/
> https://www.reddit.com/r/btc/comments/6k5ptu/more_from_jonald_fyookball_continued_discussion/
> https://coingeek.com/temp-title-matt/
> https://coingeek.com/craig-wright-segwit/
> https://coingeek.com/author/eliafram/
> https://twitter.com/justicemate
> https://medium.com/@jonaldfyookball/mathematical-proof-that-the-lightning-network-cannot-be-a-decentralized-bitcoin-scaling-solution-1b8147650800
> https://medium.com/@johnblocke/bring-on-the-chain-split-8a295a62cee6
> https://i.redd.it/hmlxsqj6xd5z.png
>
> http://satoshi.nakamotoinstitute.org/
> https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/jun/25/booming-stock-markets-distract-from-threat-of-excessive-lending

https://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n13/andrew-ohagan/the-satoshi-affair

Re: Welcome To Anarchast!

[Kurt Buff]

On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 1:22 AM, Kevin Gallagher
 wrote:
> Here is where I start to have questions. To my understanding, anarchy is the
> rejection of heirarchies. Isn't anarcho-capitalism therefore an oxymoron?

No, anarcho-capitalism is grounded in the understanding that free
trade among free people is a the only road to peace and prosperity.
People arrange themselves in hierarchies all the time, and it's no
crime if they do so freely. It's often a benefit. This is as opposed
to anarcho-syndicalism or various other flavors of anarchism, which
are grounded in the belief that money and trade are evil and that love
and unicorn farts are sufficient to sustain life.

> The existence of currency inherently creates a heirarchy based on the amount
> of currency one owns, does it not?

No, it does not. There are lots of things to unpack in that
statemen/questiont, but I'll just mention two:
 - Currency isn't money, as such
 - Fiat currency creation is used by anti-capitalist forces to
enrich the few at the expense of the rest of us, destroying capital in
the process.

Reading some Murray Rothbard or Ludwig von Mises for starters, would
be an eye opener for you.

Kurt

Re: Welcome To Anarchast!

[Kurt Buff]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 7:13 AM, Kevin Gallagher
 wrote:
> Thanks to everyone for your replies!
>
> On Jul 11, 2017 9:16 PM, "Kurt Buff"  wrote:
>
> On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 1:22 AM, Kevin Gallagher
>  wrote:
>> Here is where I start to have questions. To my understanding, anarchy is
>> the
>> rejection of heirarchies. Isn't anarcho-capitalism therefore an oxymoron?
>
> No, anarcho-capitalism is grounded in the understanding that free
> trade among free people is a the only road to peace and prosperity.
> People arrange themselves in hierarchies all the time, and it's no
> crime if they do so freely.
>
>
> For the life of me I can't think of any heirarchies that aren't, at least in
> part, founded on deceit or force (or both). Can you please give an example
> of one?

Go into almost any small business with a few employees. By small, I
mean under 500 employees. If the employees are happy, you have your
answer.

> It's often a benefit. This is as opposed
> to anarcho-syndicalism or various other flavors of anarchism, which
> are grounded in the belief that money and trade are evil and that love
> and unicorn farts are sufficient to sustain life.
>
>
> I do not know these schools of anarchism, but that doesn't seem like a fair
> assessment.

It is fair.

>> The existence of currency inherently creates a heirarchy based on the
>> amount
>> of currency one owns, does it not?
>
> No, it does not. There are lots of things to unpack in that
> statemen/questiont, but I'll just mention two:
>  - Currency isn't money, as such
>  - Fiat currency creation is used by anti-capitalist forces to
> enrich the few at the expense of the rest of us, destroying capital in
> the process.
>
>
> Reading some Murray Rothbard or Ludwig von Mises for starters, would
> be an eye opener for you.
>
>
> Fair enough. I will give some of this a read. If I have any questions, can I
> reach out to you after I have read some?


Sure. If you're really going to read, I'd start with
https://www.mises.org. In particular, if you're looking for a quick
start, you could do worse than these, which are all free, and
available in several formats:
 The Anatomy of the State:
 https://mises.org/library/anatomy-state
 Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays
 
https://mises.org/library/egalitarianism-revolt-against-nature-and-other-essays
 For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto:
 https://mises.org/library/new-liberty-libertarian-manifesto
What Has Government Done to Our Money?
 https://mises.org/library/what-has-government-done-our-money

If you want the master works, then these are the place to dive in - again, free:
 Human Action:
 https://mises.org/library/human-action-0
 Man, Economy and State, with Power and Market
 https://mises.org/library/man-economy-and-state-power-and-market



Kurt

Re: Welcome To Anarchast!

[Kurt Buff]

On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 12:47 PM, John Newman  wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 12:08:00PM -0700, Kurt Buff wrote:
>> On Wed, Jul 12, 2017 at 7:13 AM, Kevin Gallagher
>>  wrote:
>> > Thanks to everyone for your replies!
>> >
>> > On Jul 11, 2017 9:16 PM, "Kurt Buff"  wrote:
>> >
>> > On Tue, Jul 11, 2017 at 1:22 AM, Kevin Gallagher
>> >  wrote:
>> >> Here is where I start to have questions. To my understanding, anarchy is
>> >> the
>> >> rejection of heirarchies. Isn't anarcho-capitalism therefore an oxymoron?
>> >
>> > No, anarcho-capitalism is grounded in the understanding that free
>> > trade among free people is a the only road to peace and prosperity.
>> > People arrange themselves in hierarchies all the time, and it's no
>> > crime if they do so freely.
>> >
>> >
>> > For the life of me I can't think of any heirarchies that aren't, at least 
>> > in
>> > part, founded on deceit or force (or both). Can you please give an example
>> > of one?
>>
>> Go into almost any small business with a few employees. By small, I
>> mean under 500 employees. If the employees are happy, you have your
>> answer.
>
> Just because someone is happy at their work, doesn't mean they
> aren't a wage slave.
>
> "Anarcho-capitalism" has more in common with fascism and post-industrial
> feudalism than any real ideal of freedom and life without coercion.
> For a fair idea of how it might play out, just look back 150 years
> to the gilded age - the government was a fuck of a lot smaller, the
> masses were dirt fucking poor, and they were kept that way by private
> squads of pinkertoon goons hired by the bosses. This is
> "anarcho-capitalism".

You have a dim and rather confused vision of history.

Kurt

Re: Welcome To Anarchast!

[Kurt Buff]

On Thu, Jul 13, 2017 at 8:31 AM, \0xDynamite  wrote:
> On 7/11/17, Steve Kinney  wrote:
>> "Capitalism can not exist without armed State authorities to define and
>> enforce the so-called rights of absentee landlords.  Anarcho-capitalism
>> is a contradiction in terms, just a super fashionable name for direct
>> rule by gangs of billionaires who get to do literally anything they want."
>>
>> The only reason to add the prefix an- or anarcho- to the name of a 19th
>> century political theory or ideology is to make it sound hip and
>> fashionable.
>
> No, that is not true.  Capitalism, as an economic method, is devoid of
> power absent that given strictly by "law of supply and demand".  The
> current capitalism you see today is a result of conquest and
> usurptation of massive amounts of unearned labor in the form of fossil
> fuel and nuclear energy.
>
> Marxos

More accurately, what we have today isn't capitalism but corporatism.

Someone who had a glimmer of a clue once said something along the
lines of: "Capitalism follows the logic of the cancer cell".

That's not accurate, but it's close. Corporatism is the proper target
- eliminate the laws and practices that enable corporations, and
especially those that shield them (and their owners) from liability
and responsibility, and we'd be much better off.

Kurt

Re: [pf...@pfinr.org: [ PFFR ] Google Employee's Anti-Diversity Manifesto Goes 'Internally Viral']

[Kurt Buff]

On Mon, Aug 7, 2017 at 3:27 PM, jim bell  wrote:
> The United States Congress, and
> at least the very large majority of state legislatures, are based on the
> "first past the post" voting system.   That system while not initially
> obvious, invokes an effect called "Duverger's Law":
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duverger%27s_law
>
> "In political science, Duverger's law holds that plurality-rule elections
> (such as first past the post) structured within single-member districts tend
> to favor a two-party system and that "the double ballot majority system and
> proportional representation tend to favor multipartism".[1][2] The discovery
> of this tendency is attributed to Maurice Duverger, a French sociologist who
> observed the effect and recorded it in several papers published in the 1950s
> and 1960s. In the course of further research, other political scientists
> began calling the effect a "law" or principle."
> "Duverger's law suggests a nexus or synthesis between a party system and an
> electoral system: a proportional representation (PR) system creates the
> electoral conditions necessary to foster party development while a plurality
> system marginalizes many smaller political parties, resulting in what is
> known as a two-party system."
>
> This, Duverger's law, strongly protects the formation and maintenance of the
> two-party system, and the two parties which make up the majority.People
> who are in favor of a third-party system, for example the Libertarian party
> (or Green Party, or just about anything else) are deterred from voting:
> Generally, they are told that they are "throwing away their vote".
>
> I have long advocated a different system:  Every candidate for a
> Congressional Office "wins", but the weight of their influence is based on
> the proportion of their vote in the general election.  If, for instance, the
> Democrat gets 50% of the vote, he gets 0.50 Congressional votes.  If the
> Republican gets 40% of the vote in the general election, he gets 0.40
> Congressional votes.  If the Libertarian gets 10% of the vote, he gets 0.10
> votes.  The second- and third-party candidates are given relatively small
> offices, back in the home district (or state), and can phone/fax/email their
> votes in.  Modern electronic communications makes all this practical.
> The advantage of this system is that nobody's vote can be said to have been
> "wasted".  .  And, I believe that this system would allow the Libertarian
> party to gradually increase in side and influence, unlike the current system
> limited by Duverger's Law.  It would also effectively force both the D's and
> R's to become more libertarian.
>
> Jim Bell

At what point, and why, do you limit the number of candidates for
voting purposes? Why stop, e.g., at three? Why not 5 or 20? And do
these extra "winners" get a salary? Is the salary for the district
divided amongst the winners? Do any of them get assistants?

Seems rather complicated.

Instead, I propose a much simpler system: It's long past time to
vastly increase the number of Representatives, and limit them to 1
paid assistant. If we were to apportion House members as originally
conceived (something like 1 Representative per 100k eligible voters),
we're certainly have a lot more representative House (as it were),
with lots more members to vote for, and much smaller voting districts.

More efficient? Oh heaven forbid! But certainly more representative.

One could even add a number of fillips that you mentioned - move the
Capitol to, say, somewhere near the geographic center of the lower 48
(or even all 50, which I think might place it on a floating platform
off the West Coast - heh), or mandate that Congress assemble via
videoconference, in open halls to which their constituents have
access. But those are mostly icing on the cake.

Kurt

Re: Future historians will recall the war between 4chan and LaBeouf, Rönkkö & Turner

[Kurt Buff]

On Thu, Aug 31, 2017 at 2:03 PM, John Newman  wrote:
>
>
> On Aug 30, 2017, at 9:35 PM, Razer  wrote:
> On 08/30/2017 05:54 PM, jim bell wrote:

> Further, the jury is going to want to know why somebody in the crowd struck
> the vehicle.  Malice?
>
> If you hit my vehicle... with a car or object, you ARE NOT entitled to run
> me over, maliciously or in 'perceived self-defense'. Case closed. Guilty of
> vehicular homicide. Intent unproven sans admission.
>
> So, what is your theory as to how a jury could convict the driver?  Seems to
> me, the jury would want to convict the person who struck the car.
>
> Are you fucking serious ?
>
> Even if someone hits your car with a baseball bat,
> plowing into a group of people and killing someone is NOT
> an appropriate response. This nazi-murder-by-car apologetics
> is fucking head-scratching, to say the bare minimum.

Defense Lawyer:
 "Ladies and gentlemen of the jury - The defendant was in his vehicle,
 unarmed and surrounded by hostile actors, and someone started
 pounding on his vehicle. The defendant, believed that he was about
 to have his windows smashed and himself dragged out of the vehicle
 and beaten or even killed.

 "He panicked, and performed the only action he could come up with
 to save his skin - he advanced at a high rate of speed to clear the way.
 Unfortunately, someone died as a result. This is tragic, but he was clearly
 acting in self defense."

Jury:
 "???"

I haven't seen the videos (the site that Jim Bell referenced make
reference to Trump as the God Emperor, which makes me itch something
fierce - I couldn't stay on that site long enough to watch them), but
just suppose that the videos show that the car was indeed surrounded,
and that at least one person did start banging on it with some
implement or other.

How do you think a jury would vote in that case?

It's not out of the realm of possibility that a reasonable jury would
vote Not Guilty - self defense.

Kurt

Re: YubiKey

[Kurt Buff]

https://github.com/hillbrad/U2FReviews

On Wed, Nov 29, 2017 at 8:25 PM, John Newman  wrote:
> Does anyone have any experience with a YubiKey? Specifically using it
> with the PAM module you can download from their site and tying it to
> logins for Linux/*BSD/MacOS ?
>
> I've got lots of experience (from jobs) using RSA SecurID tokens, tying
> them to sshd/login/sudo/etc with pam and the securid PAM module, and it
> works really well.. I understand YubiKey is not going to print out a
> stream of changing digits for me, but nor will it require an RSA SecurID
> server and all that goes along with it.. And also I've read you can
> store your GPG private keys on the yubikey, which sounds cool.
>
> Is it worth the buy? Anyone using it for any of the above (or other)
> purposes? I suppose I should do some more reading, just curious if
> anyone loved it or hated it or whatever..
>
> thanks!
>
> --
> GPG fingerprint: 17FD 615A D20D AFE8 B3E4  C9D2 E324 20BE D47A 78C7

Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet

[Kurt Buff]

On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:31 PM, g2s  wrote:
>
>  Original message 
> From: Michael Nelson 
> Date: 12/8/17 6:22 PM (GMT-08:00)
> To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org
> Subject: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet
>
>> The mapping between Bitcoin and energy is missing the point...
>
> Not if the point is a dead planet.
>
> That's ALL I care about. Cars, which you mention, are another much thornier
> issue because they've been made a social necessity and that will take time
> to undo. As with another not often acknowledged source of carbon based
> pollution due to humans... The factories that make damn near everything
> consumer industrial societies have.
>
> But unlike those things, bitcoin generates huge amounts of pollution due to
> its electric demands, and, bluntly, it isn't necessary in any way shape or
> form.


Neither are coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, sex and any number of other
things that offend the sensibilities of the overly sensitive, and they
aren't likely to disappear either...

Kurt

Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet

[Kurt Buff]

On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 7:24 AM, g2s  wrote:
>  Original message 
> From: Kurt Buff 
> Date: 12/8/17 8:42 PM (GMT-08:00)
> To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org
> Subject: Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet
>
> On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:31 PM, g2s  wrote:
> >
> >  Original message 
> > From: Michael Nelson 
> > Date: 12/8/17 6:22 PM (GMT-08:00)
> > To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org
> > Subject: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet
> >
> >> The mapping between Bitcoin and energy is missing the point...
> >
> > Not if the point is a dead planet.
> >
> > That's ALL I care about. Cars, which you mention, are another much thornier
> > issue because they've been made a social necessity and that will take time
> > to undo. As with another not often acknowledged source of carbon based
> > pollution due to humans... The factories that make damn near everything
> > consumer industrial societies have.
> >
> > But unlike those things, bitcoin generates huge amounts of pollution due to
> > its electric demands, and, bluntly, it isn't necessary in any way shape or
> > form.
>
>
> Neither are coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, sex and any number of other
> things that offend the sensibilities of the overly sensitive, and they
> aren't likely to disappear either...
>
> Kurt
>
> You denigrate your point by stating sex isn't necessary. Ropes whips and ioT 
> glow in the dark vibrators aren't, but sex is as necessary to the survival of 
> humans as sleep is.
>
> Rr

Artificial insemination.

And I find that most who decry the use of "unnecessary things' by
others because of the danger to the planet, also tend to be against
perpetuation of the species anyway.

Kurt

Fwd: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet

[Kurt Buff]

On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 11:57 AM, g2s  wrote:
>  Original message 
> From: Kurt Buff 
> Date: 12/9/17 11:37 AM (GMT-08:00)
> To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org
> Subject: Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet
>
> On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 7:24 AM, g2s  wrote:
> >  Original message ----
> > From: Kurt Buff 
> > Date: 12/8/17 8:42 PM (GMT-08:00)
> > To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org
> > Subject: Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet
> >
> > On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 7:31 PM, g2s  wrote:
> > >
> > >  Original message 
> > > From: Michael Nelson 
> > > Date: 12/8/17 6:22 PM (GMT-08:00)
> > > To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org
> > > Subject: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet
> > >
> > >> The mapping between Bitcoin and energy is missing the point...
> > >
> > > Not if the point is a dead planet.
> > >
> > > That's ALL I care about. Cars, which you mention, are another much 
> > > thornier
> > > issue because they've been made a social necessity and that will take time
> > > to undo. As with another not often acknowledged source of carbon based
> > > pollution due to humans... The factories that make damn near everything
> > > consumer industrial societies have.
> > >
> > > But unlike those things, bitcoin generates huge amounts of pollution due 
> > > to
> > > its electric demands, and, bluntly, it isn't necessary in any way shape or
> > > form.
> >
> >
> > Neither are coffee, tea, chocolate, sugar, sex and any number of other
> > things that offend the sensibilities of the overly sensitive, and they
> > aren't likely to disappear either...
> >
> > Kurt
> >
> > You denigrate your point by stating sex isn't necessary. Ropes whips and 
> > ioT glow in the dark vibrators aren't, but sex is as necessary to the 
> > survival of humans as sleep is.
> >
> > Rr
>
> > Artificial insemination
>
> sik fuk

IVF, too. It's quite normal, so really, sex isn't "necessary". Sure is
fun, though.

> > And I find that most who decry the use of "unnecessary things' by
> others
>
> You think I include myself out? Really?
>
> Hahahaha!

No, I think you belong squarely in the category of moral pecksniffs
who would deny "unnecessary things" to others to "save the planet".

> Tell you what. Save evolution the work. Extinct yourself now...
>
> Rr

Too late - I already have two children. I just wish I had more. Also,
I burn wood in my fireplace, and have both a car and a big ol' pickup
truck, and I commute with the latter to work, getting roughly 9-10
mpg.

Kurt

Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet

[Kurt Buff]

On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 2:24 PM, z9wahqvh  wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 9:22 PM, Michael Nelson 
> wrote:
>>
>> The mapping between Bitcoin and energy is missing the point, from the
>> point of view of understanding the system. The correct mapping is between
>> Bitcoin and the *price* of energy.
>>
>> If electricity were 10 times as expensive, Bitcoin mining use of electric
>> power would drop by a factor of 10 (for a given BTC price). The point of
>> spending money on mining is to be competitive. The absolute amount of power
>> is irrelevant.
>>
>> This means that if governments raised the price of electricity, or
>> resources used for generating it, then BTC would never be a problem. Not
>> trivial to do, admittedly, but the point here is to understand the system.
>
>
> it has nothing to do with the price of energy. the price of energy is never
> mentioned in the analyses that worry about Bitcoin's energy use, and for
> good reason.
>
> the problem with Bitcoin is that it uses an enormous QUANTITY of energy to
> verify each new transaction. That amount has nothing to do with the price of
> energy. It is a quantity of energy, measured in kilowatt hours or whatever
> quantity you want (they currently use "TeraWatt hours," because it uses that
> much). It takes a certain amount of coal or oil or solar power to generate
> those kilowatt hours, and the number is rising steeply:
>
> https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
>
> There is no mention of price in the equations that produce this analysis,
> nor should there be.
>
> IF coal and oil did not pollute and we had infinite free energy, this would
> not be a problem. But they do, and we don't, and it is, and it's getting
> worse.

You gloss over the fact that if coal and oil didn't pollute, and we
had infinite free energy, bitcoin would be (relatively)
[use|worth]less, and we'd not have to worry about most any shortage at
all.

Michael drew the correct conclusion.

Bitcoin is produced in relation to other economic goods, and under the
constraints of the costs of energy and computer infrastructure. If
those costs go up, production of bitcoin goes does, and if other
economic goods become more valuable relative to bitcoin, then again
production of bitcoin goes down.

Kurt

Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet

[Kurt Buff]

On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 7:10 PM, g2s  wrote:
>
>  Original message 
> From: Kurt Buff 
> Date: 12/9/17 2:50 PM (GMT-08:00)
> To: cypherpunks@lists.cpunks.org
> Subject: Re: Bitcoin... Destroying the planet
>
> On Sat, Dec 9, 2017 at 2:24 PM, z9wahqvh  wrote:
>> On Fri, Dec 8, 2017 at 9:22 PM, Michael Nelson 
>> wrote:
>>>
>>> The mapping between Bitcoin and energy is missing the point, from the
>>> point of view of understanding the system. The correct mapping is between
>>> Bitcoin and the *price* of energy.
>>>
>>> If electricity were 10 times as expensive, Bitcoin mining use of electric
>>> power would drop by a factor of 10 (for a given BTC price). The point of
>>> spending money on mining is to be competitive. The absolute amount of
>>> power
>>> is irrelevant.
>>>
>>> This means that if governments raised the price of electricity, or
>>> resources used for generating it, then BTC would never be a problem. Not
>>> trivial to do, admittedly, but the point here is to understand the
>>> system.
>>
>>
>> it has nothing to do with the price of energy. the price of energy is
>> never
>> mentioned in the analyses that worry about Bitcoin's energy use, and for
>> good reason.
>>
>> the problem with Bitcoin is that it uses an enormous QUANTITY of energy to
>> verify each new transaction. That amount has nothing to do with the price
>> of
>> energy. It is a quantity of energy, measured in kilowatt hours or whatever
>> quantity you want (they currently use "TeraWatt hours," because it uses
>> that
>> much). It takes a certain amount of coal or oil or solar power to generate
>> those kilowatt hours, and the number is rising steeply:
>>
>> https://digiconomist.net/bitcoin-energy-consumption
>>
>> There is no mention of price in the equations that produce this analysis,
>> nor should there be.
>>
>> IF coal and oil did not pollute and we had infinite free energy, this
>> would
>> not be a problem. But they do, and we don't, and it is, and it's getting
>> worse.
>
> You gloss over the fact that if coal and oil didn't pollute, and we
> had infinite free energy, bitcoin would be (relatively)
> [use|worth]less, and we'd not have to worry about most any shortage at
> all.
>
> Michael drew the correct conclusion.
>
> Bitcoin is produced in relation to other economic goods, and under the
> constraints of the costs of energy and computer infrastructure. If
> those costs go up, production of bitcoin goes does, and if other
> economic goods become more valuable relative to bitcoin, then again
> production of bitcoin goes down.
>
> Kurt
>
> A total evasion of the point. Point being Dead planet" sooner than later.
>
> Rr

You don't define what you mean by "kill the planet", nor "dead
planet", but not even if every country launched all of their nuclear
weapons at once could we kill the planet. It's not even certain such
an event would kill all humans.

At this stage in our technology, we simply can't do it.

Kurt

Re: Anarchocrapitalism, "libertardianism", et al.

[Kurt Buff]

On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 7:26 PM, g2s  wrote:
> “Capitalism is the extraordinary belief that the nastiest of men, for the
> nastiest of reasons, will somehow work for the benefit of us all.” -John
> Maynard Keynes
>
> There IS NO SUCH THING as "kinder, gentler capitalism. Stop lying to youself
> and admit it. You're a greedy scumbag.
>
> Rr

Capitalism is the belief that free men in free exchange of privately
owned resources (including especially themselves) will result in
prosperity, peace and more freedom.

Authoritarianism (of which corporatism, communism, fascism, socialism,
progressivism, etc. are branches, some more virulent than others),
holds that men must be forced to be free, that ownership of self and
resources is a crime, and that the hierarchs are justified in killing
anyone who believes differently.

Remember - when a law is passed, it's with the firm understanding that
anyone who refuses to obey it is worth killing. Therefore, more laws
means more reasons for the state to kill, or to use the threat of
death. to enforce it.

Kurt

Re: Anarchocrapitalism, "libertardianism", et al.

[Kurt Buff]

On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 10:33 PM,   wrote:
> On 1/4/2018 1:56 PM, Kurt Buff wrote:
>>
>> Capitalism is the belief that free men in free exchange of privately
>> owned resources (including especially themselves) will result in
>> prosperity, peace and more freedom.
>
>
> g2s is trying to manufacture tribalism on the basis of covetousness, envy,
> and theft.
>
> Libertarianism is a response to this effort
>
> The left wing effort to turn econonomic categories into tribes was never
> terribly successful, and now the left is more focused on trying to generate
> tribalism on the basis of sexual identity and race, generate tribalism on
> the basis of actually existent tribes.
>
> Which is a lot more successful.
>
> Also a lot more likely to lead to genocide.
>
> Libertarianism is paralyzed by this turn, which renders libertarianism
> irrelevant.
>
> Instead of stealing the bakery, or price controlling baker's inputs and
> outputs, they demand the baker cheer at a gay wedding.
>
> Which, on the face of it, does not directly lead to mass murder the way
> stealing, covetousness, and envy does.
>
> But fighting over status is just as likely, indeed more likely to turn
> deadly as fighting over stuff.
>
> It has become apparent that there is no stopping point.  Males are just
> naturally superior to women in the male sphere, and white males are just
> naturally superior to nonwhites in most spheres.
>
> This results in endless, and endlessly escalating efforts, to crush this
> natural superiority.  And this endless escalation has no stopping point but
> genocide.
>
> OK, white men cannot jump and cannot dance, and our running is seriously
> underwhelming, but in most spheres, obviously superior.  In particular and
> especially, white males are superior soldiers to any other race by far.
> Notice the hilarious underperformance of the black posterboys of both sides
> in the civil war.  Similarly, notice that any military that incorporates
> females as soldiers never wins a war against a military that does not,
> irrespective of the races.  You might argue that the Vietnam war was a
> counter example to this, but that was a proxy war between the blue empire
> and the red empire, whites fighting over browns, rather than with browns.
>
> Today's chinese art is obviously superior to today's white art, but this
> reflects our current decadence.  China is coming out of a dark age, while we
> are sliding into a dark age.   Some blame the Jews for the current
> undeniably crappy state of white art.  But the Chinese always had good art,
> even in their dark age.We have done better in the past than now, but OK,
> whites are not obviously better than East Asians at art, and it is plausible
> that East Asians are better at art than whites.
>
> Whites, on the other hand, are better at technological creativity than
> anyone, even East Asians (though the Japanese are pretty good), and, closely
> related to this, better at war.  The current technological superiority of
> East Asia is substantially dependent on white and Eurasian emigres, among
> them emigres fleeing the tribal violence and political repression in
> California and Silicon Valley.
>
> The current white inferiority at war is the result of women in the military.
> If we return to the early nineteenth century style army, where logistics are
> classified as camp followers rather than soldiers, and part of the duty of
> camp followers is getting soldier's dicks wet, where the soldiers are all
> male and the camp followers disproportionately female, we will return to
> winning.

I used to be much more an admirer of Rand - nowadays not so much.
However, sometimes quotes from her are so very apropos:

“Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”
-- Ayn Rand
The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism

"Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It
is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to
a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and
characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal
body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged,
not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and
actions of a collective of ancestors.

Racism claims that the content of a man’s mind (not his cognitive
apparatus, but its content) is inherited; that a man’s convictions,
values and character are determined before he is born, by physical
factors beyond his control. This is the caveman’s version of the
doctrine of innate ideas—or of inherited knowledge—which has been
thoroughly refuted by philosophy and science. Racism is a doctrine of,
by and for brutes. It is a barnyard or stock-farm version of
collectivism, appr

Re: Anarchocrapitalism, "libertardianism", et al.

[Kurt Buff]

On Thu, Jan 4, 2018 at 11:32 PM, Zenaan Harkness  wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 03, 2018 at 11:21:25PM -0800, Kurt Buff wrote:
>> On Wed, Jan 3, 2018 at 10:33 PM,   wrote:
>> > Whites, on the other hand, are better at technological creativity than
>> > anyone, even East Asians (though the Japanese are pretty good), and, 
>> > closely
>> > related to this, better at war.  The current technological superiority of
>> > East Asia is substantially dependent on white and Eurasian emigres, among
>> > them emigres fleeing the tribal violence and political repression in
>> > California and Silicon Valley.
>> >
>> > The current white inferiority at war is the result of women in the 
>> > military.
>> > If we return to the early nineteenth century style army, where logistics 
>> > are
>> > classified as camp followers rather than soldiers, and part of the duty of
>> > camp followers is getting soldier's dicks wet, where the soldiers are all
>> > male and the camp followers disproportionately female, we will return to
>> > winning.
>>
>> I used to be much more an admirer of Rand - nowadays not so much.
>> However, sometimes quotes from her are so very apropos:
>>
>> “Racism is a doctrine of, by and for brutes.”
>> -- Ayn Rand
>> The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism
>>
>> "Racism is the lowest, most crudely primitive form of collectivism. It
>> is the notion of ascribing moral, social or political significance to
>> a man’s genetic lineage—the notion that a man’s intellectual and
>> characterological traits are produced and transmitted by his internal
>> body chemistry. Which means, in practice, that a man is to be judged,
>> not by his own character and actions, but by the characters and
>> actions of a collective of ancestors.
>
> It is politically correct to acknowledge that the black man is
> genetically predispositioned to physical prowess - running for
> example.
>
> To acknowledge genetic features such as the sloped/slanty eyes of the
> asian, is also accepted as politically reasonable.
>
> But to ever suggest that the genetic characteristic of mental (as
> opposed to physical) aptitude is ascribed to the white fella's
> genome, is an immediate cause for summary lynching;
>
> as the "enlightened" Ayn Rand here apparently vehemently belittles,
> “Racism is … crude primitive collectivism … [and ascribing/ saying
> that] intellectual traits are produced and transmitted by internal
> body chemistry”;
>
> Aka, acknowledging that genetics plays any part, whatsoever, in
> mental aptitude, is one of the greatest sins of our time!
>
> Quite incredible when you think about it, becuase either the fact is
> true, or it is not, and in either case, the age of reason was meant
> to result in humans who simply enquire as to what the fact truly is,
> rather than how quickly can we crucify someone who ponders or tests
> such a trait, to determine its veracity.
>
> Simply astounding, but this is the "modern" world where white skinned
> folk (men in particular) are vilified in general, even for broaching
> such subjects.
>
>
> Welcome to The Ministry of Truth.

All human characteristics can be plotted and fall on a bell curve,
including intelligence. this is also true of definable
sub-populations.

I'm guessing that you fall within 1/2 standard deviation from the mean
for intelligence, one way or the other.

Let us presume that, for the purposes of argument, that the median for
African-Americans is shifted left 1/2 standard deviation (which I
don't believe to be true, but bear with me).

If both of my assumptions are correct, that means that millions of
African-Americans are smarter than you.

That must really burn, to know that.

Kurt

Re: Senators: CIA has secret program that collects American data

[Kurt Buff]

Frank Church would like a word with them.

Kurt

On Thu, Feb 10, 2022 at 6:25 PM jim bell  wrote:

> https://news.yahoo.com/senators-cia-secret-program-collects-011409001.html
>
> The CIA has a secret, undisclosed data repository that includes information 
> collected about Americans, two Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee 
> said ...
>
>
> Thursday. While neither the agency nor lawmakers would disclose specifics 
> about the data, the senators alleged the CIA had long hidden details about 
> the program from the public and Congress.
>
> Sens. Ron Wyden of Oregon and Martin Heinrich of New Mexico sent a letter to 
> top intelligence officials 
> 
>  calling for details about the program to be declassified. Large parts of the 
> letter and documents released by the CIA were blacked out. Wyden and Heinrich 
> said the program operated “outside the statutory framework that Congress and 
> the public believe govern this collection.”
>
> There have long been concerns about what information the intelligence 
> community collects about Americans. The CIA and National Security Agency have 
> a foreign mission and are generally barred from investigating Americans or 
> U.S. businesses. But the spy agencies’ sprawling collection of foreign 
> communications often snares Americans' messages and data incidentally.
>
>
>
>

Re: Puri.sm Librem 5 Phone Ships, Pine64 Pinephone Coming, Linux and BSD Phones

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

https://medium.com/@thegrugq/secured-android-smartphone-32b28ae3fbd8

On Mon, Sep 30, 2019 at 12:03 AM grarpamp  wrote:
>
> https://www.pine64.org/
>
>
> https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2019/09/purisms-librem-5-phone-starts-shipping-a-fully-open-gnulinux-phone/
> https://puri.sm/posts/first-librem-5-smartphones-are-shipping/
> https://pureos.net/
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AuT2w6BkT-k
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gvnt78mK-Ac
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHcHi0TBFv4
> https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC64-PJ-yoF7aJ9pIHWEbrTQ/videos
>
> Support the Digital Rights Movement... Get this phone !
>
> Purism announced their first Librem 5 smartphones were rolling off the
> assembly line and heading to customers. "Seeing the amazing effort of
> the Purism team, and holding the first fully functioning Librem 5, has
> been the most inspirational moment of Purism's five year history,"
> said their founder and CEO Todd Weaver.
>
> On Wednesday they posted a video announcing that the phones were now
> shipping, and Friday they posted a short walk-through video. "The
> crowdsourced $700 Linux phone is actually becoming a real product,"
> reports Ars Technica: Purism's demand that everything be open means
> most of the major component manufacturers were out of the question.
> Perhaps because of the limited hardware options, the internal
> construction of the Librem 5 is absolutely wild. While smartphones
> today are mostly a single mainboard with every component integrated
> into it, the Librem 5 actually has a pair of M.2 slots that house
> full-size, off-the-shelf LTE and Wi-Fi cards for connectivity, just
> like what you would find in an old laptop. The M.2 sockets look
> massive on top of the tiny phone motherboard, but you could probably
> replace or upgrade the cards if you wanted...
>
> [Y]ou're not going to get cutting-edge hardware at a great price with
> the Librem 5. That's not the point, though. The point is that you are
> buying a Linux phone, with privacy and open source at the forefront of
> the design. There are hardware kill switches for the camera,
> microphone, WiFi/Bluetooth, and baseband on the side of the phone,
> ensuring none of the I/O turns on unless you want it to. The OS is the
> Free Software Foundation-endorsed PureOS, a Linux distribution that,
> in this case, has been reworked with a mobile UI. Purism says it will
> provide updates for the "lifetime" of the device, which would be a
> stark contrast to the two years of updates you get with an Android
> phone.
>
> PureOS is a Debian-based Linux distro, and on the Librem 5, you'll get
> to switch between mobile versions of the Gnome and KDE environments.
> If you're at all interested in PureOS, Purism's YouTube page is worth
> picking through. Dozens of short videos show that, yes, this phone
> really runs full desktop-class Linux. Those same videos show the dev
> kit running things like the APT package manager through a terminal, a
> desktop version of Solitaire, Emacs, the Gnome disk utility, DOSBox,
> Apache Web Server, and more. If it runs on your desktop Linux
> computer, it will probably run on the Librem 5, albeit with a possibly
> not-touch-friendly UI. The Librem 5 can even be hooked up to a
> monitor, keyboard, and mouse, and you can run all these Linux apps
> with the normal input tools...
>
> Selling a smartphone is a cutthroat business, and we've seen dozens of
> companies try and fail over the years. Purism didn't just survive long
> enough to ship a product -- it survived in what is probably the
> hardest way possible, by building a non-Android phone with demands
> that all the hardware components use open code. Making it this far is
> an amazing accomplishment.

Re: OpenBSD FreeBSD: Why and How

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

https://www.over-yonder.net/~fullermd/rants/bsd4linux/01

On Wed, Nov 13, 2019 at 6:03 PM grarpamp  wrote:
>
> https://sivers.org/openbsd
> https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21521774
>
> https://openbsd.org/
> https://freebsd.org/

Re: Cryptocurrency: Anonymous to Invest $75M of Crypto to Develop Privacy Coins and Anon Tech

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

What is justice?

If it is not visiting upon those who do wrong the same wrongs that
they commit, what is it?

Kurt

On Sat, Nov 16, 2019 at 11:38 AM coderman  wrote:
>
> ‐‐‐ Original Message ‐‐‐
> On Saturday, November 16, 2019 6:16 PM, jim bell  wrote:
> ...
>
> Not clear who says this, but let's remember that "murder" is simply a killing 
> that the government declares is illegal.  If the attackers at Waco (the Feds) 
> had fired first, which we know happened, the Branch Davidians who shot back 
> in self-defense...would have been labelled as guilty of murder!   Merely for 
> self-defense.
>
>
> a false dichotomy; it would be better if no one was killed at all!
>
>
> Except you don't even attempt to quantify the amount of killing that would be 
> involved in these two hypothetical situations.  I wrote my AP essay about two 
> months prior to the OKC bombing on March 19, 1995.   Later, I frequently 
> pointed out that if the choice is between killing 168 'innocent' people who 
> just happened to be in a building two years later, hundreds of miles away 
> from Waco, and killing (for example) the top 30-40 Feds responsible for Ruby 
> Ridge and Waco, what should an intelligent, well-meaning person choose?   The 
> fact that the latter choice was then not possible doesn't mean that it cannot 
> be compared as a moral choice.
>
>
> again, false dichotomy; these are not the only two possibilities - better to 
> not kill anyone!
>
>
>
> Also, you can claim you are merely saying "better to err towards never 
> killing", but that doesn't mean that nobody is dying!
>
>
> if this is about universal healthcare, then i agree: people are needlessly 
> dying without being explicitly murdered, and we should fix this too! ;)
>
>
>
>  Sure they are, the people you have chosen to say should not have the ability 
> to defend themselves.  You can morally choose to be a pacifist for yourself; 
> I suggest that you cannot force other people to make that choice for 
> themselves.
>
>
> i agree. i cannot force anyone. i can only highlight the fallacy of using 
> murder to right wrongs. expedient? sure. but call it vengeance, not justice 
> nor moral.
>
> best regards,
>

Re: Crypto Basics: SSH Protocol

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

First:
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9780596008956.do
Second
https://www.amazon.com/SSH-Mastery-OpenSSH-PuTTY-Tunnels/dp/1642350028
Maybe third
http://shop.oreilly.com/product/9781597492836.do


On Tue, Jan 7, 2020 at 1:55 PM grarpamp  wrote:

> https://gravitational.com/blog/ssh-handshake-explained/
>

Re: OregonLive: Man hijacks Portland airport monitor to play video games, until PDX officials declare ‘game over’

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

We want to know, was he playing a flight simulator?

On Thu, Jan 16, 2020 at 8:44 PM jim bell  wrote:

> OregonLive: Man hijacks Portland airport monitor to play video games, until 
> PDX officials declare ‘game 
> over’.https://www.oregonlive.com/trending/2020/01/man-hijacks-portland-airport-monitor-to-play-video-games-until-pdx-officials-declare-game-over.html
>
>
> Jim Bell's comment:.  "Naughty, naughty"
>
>
>
>

Re: Jim Bell questions the headline below.

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

Indeed - I'd lay some money on China not being able to fight the
previous 3 virii...

Kurt

On Tue, Jan 28, 2020 at 7:40 PM jim bell  wrote:
>
> China Is Perfectly Prepared to Fight the Last Virus
> https://news.yahoo.com/china-perfectly-prepared-fight-last-220036969.html
>
>
>
> As I said, I question this headline, but I suppose we will find out, huh?

It's an ill wind...

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

Consider, if you will, a possible outcome of the current bio-crisis.
(I want it over, swiftly, and with as little damage to humanity as
possible, I really do, but it doesn't look promising at the moment)

We're seeing some congress critters self-quarantining. I think it
likely that more will do the same.

And yet, they (and some of you, even it not not so much me) want the
work of the Congress to continue.

How to resolve this?

One solution is teleconferencing. Votes, meetings, etc., could be
carried out this way, and work (such as it is) can get done. Think of
the transparency (if not voluntarily achieved, perhaps attained with
the help of some volunteer work by technologically sophisticated
persons of flexible morals).

If this goes on for a while, there's no reason why they (the
accumulated they of Congress and staff) wouldn't become acculturated
and accustomed to this new way.

At that point, what's to stop the congress critters and their remoras,
with suitable encouragement, to permanently relocate to their own
districts.

It would certainly make lobbying more difficult, being in view of
their constituents, rather than sequestered in the summer hellhole
that is DC.

I have a dream...

Kurt

Re: It's an Ill Wind

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 7:29 AM Peter Fairbrother  wrote:
>
> 2- It's an Ill Wind
>
> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRc389TvG8
>
> So now we know: first, that the UK government is actually deliberately
> trying to infect over 40 million UK citizens, and in doing so expecting,
> on their figures, 400,000 deaths.

Uh, no, they're only not quarantining or taking other measures. That
is not the same as "trying to infect"

Some of your analysis is OK, but this statement is false. I don't hear
of government agents with spray bottles of viral concoctins chasing
down their subjects on the streets, or invading their homes, in order
to infect them.

Kurt

Re: It's an Ill Wind

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 8:06 PM Peter Fairbrother  wrote:
>
> On 14/03/2020 23:28, Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH wrote:
> > On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 7:29 AM Peter Fairbrother  wrote:
> >>
> >> 2- It's an Ill Wind
> >>
> >> https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XRc389TvG8
> >>
> >> So now we know: first, that the UK government is actually deliberately
> >> trying to infect over 40 million UK citizens, and in doing so expecting,
> >> on their figures, 400,000 deaths.
> >
> > Uh, no, they're only not quarantining or taking other measures. That
> > is not the same as "trying to infect"
>
> To my mind it is; "Trying to" is to deliberately do something in order> to 
> obtain a desired effect. If the "something" happens to be "nothing",
> it doesn't change that IMO.


The limits of an impoverished mind, I suppose, incapable of
differentiating between action and inaction.

> Remember those philosophy problems with a train and someone on the track
> and a set of points?

Yes, a classical false dilemma.

> Well to my mind one way is clear and the other way has a million bodies
> on it, and just because the points are presently set to the million
> bodies doesn't mean that deliberately choosing not to change the points
> avoids being responsible for the outcome.
>
> Especially when changing the points is your responsibility.

Ever hear the phrase "Not my monkey, not my circus"? It applies here,
or at least it should. The point of government is to prevent crime,
not tragedy.

> > Some of your analysis is OK, but this statement is false. I don't hear
> > of government agents with spray bottles of viral concoctins chasing
> > down their subjects on the streets, or invading their homes, in order
> > to infect them.
>
> But there's more, they won't let others change the points: head teachers
> want to close schools, but the government is planning to send them to
> jail if they do.
>
> To my mind that pretty much IS the equivalent of chasing down their
> subjects on the streets with spray bottles of viral concoctions.

Too much government, not enough freedom. Pournelle's Iron Law of
Bureaucracy applies.

> Maybe I took too much poetic license. But I don't think so.

And I do think so.

Kurt

Re: It's an Ill Wind

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Sat, Mar 14, 2020 at 8:55 PM Peter Fairbrother  wrote:
>
> On 15/03/2020 02:46, Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH wrote:
>
> The point of government is to prevent crime,
> > not tragedy.
>
> There I must disagree. The point of government is precisely to prevent
> tragedy.
>
> As in protection against invasion by foreign hordes, or for that matter
> viruses.

I slightly misspoke - the mission of government is to prosecute crime,
not prevent it, because ultimately prevention is impossible.

But here we see the problem with your scope of government - everything
unfortunate becomes defined as a tragedy, and therefore legitimizes
all government intrusion into the private sphere.

War, that is, invasion by a foreign power, is a species of crime.
Illness is not.

Kurt

Re: It's an Ill Wind

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 2:18 AM grarpamp  wrote:
>
> On 3/14/20, Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH  wrote:
> > Uh, no, they're only not quarantining or taking other measures. That
> > is not the same as "trying to infect"
> >
> > Some of your analysis is OK, but this statement is false. I don't hear
> > of government agents with spray bottles of viral concoctins chasing
> > down their subjects on the streets, or invading their homes, in order
> > to infect them.
>
> Governments murder people all the time, literally on news every day.
> Doesn't matter whether it's via spy poison dart umbrella,
> spraying humancide from a lorry in the streets,
> carpet bombing the "enemy",
> shooting sleepy people,
> stealing and starving them to death,
> etc.
>
> Rest assured, if govt has a gameable angle on plague,
> they're going to leverage it. History full of game examples.

Re: It's an Ill Wind

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 2:18 AM grarpamp  wrote:
> On 3/14/20, Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH  wrote:
> > Uh, no, they're only not quarantining or taking other measures. That
> > is not the same as "trying to infect"
> >
> > Some of your analysis is OK, but this statement is false. I don't hear
> > of government agents with spray bottles of viral concoctins chasing
> > down their subjects on the streets, or invading their homes, in order
> > to infect them.
>
> Governments murder people all the time, literally on news every day.
> Doesn't matter whether it's via spy poison dart umbrella,
> spraying humancide from a lorry in the streets,
> carpet bombing the "enemy",
> shooting sleepy people,
> stealing and starving them to death,
> etc.
>
> Rest assured, if govt has a gameable angle on plague,
> they're going to leverage it. History full of game examples.

Indeed yes, but not in this case. Accuracy in speech and thought is
the desideratum, and Peter failed to meet it.

Kurt

Re: It's an Ill Wind

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Sun, Mar 15, 2020 at 2:30 PM grarpamp  wrote:
> On 3/15/20, Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH  wrote:
> > I slightly misspoke - the mission of government is to prosecute crime
>
> If that were in fact true, then govts would have to prosecuted
> themselves out of existance, not least of which for some of their
> own crimes against humanity below.


You are preaching to the choir.

> > unfortunate becomes defined as a tragedy, and therefore legitimizes
> > all government intrusion into the private sphere.
>
> Yes that is one obvious game govts play.
> And you suckers keep falling for it time after time.

You suckers? You don't include yourself in the psyops game?

> > War, that is, invasion by a foreign power, is a species of crime.
>
> Their own govt power is, as often and more, and in many
> ways, in fact the initiating invader. Stop framing your
> minds away from that fact.

Again, preaching to the choir.

> > Illness is not.
>
> Here a lots of illness crimes done by sick government...



Focus, man, focus. Yes, biowarfare is real, and has been practiced by
governments and individuals. In this case, the evidence isn't there,
any more than was evidence in 1918.

> > Indeed yes, but not in this case.
>
> It is exactly the case. Doesn't matter if govts created
> virus or not. They're still on TV 24x7 leveraging their
> propaganda game, FUD trolling for your worship, cutting favoritive
> licenses over free market competition, etc. Govt plays game
> for itself to some extent in *every* case.

Let's keep this on target. The US government, at least, did not, and
probably the Chinese did not either, absent better evidence,
deliberately create the virus or infect anyone. We can take lots of
issue with how it's been handled, but we've seen no evidence in this
case that the infection is deliberate. Nor do we see, at least in the
US (China is up for debate on this point), the government withholding
care. Poor planning and execution, yes, and Trump trying to downplay
it, yes, and Trump trying to keep proceedings secret, yes, but not
much else.

> Government is standalone competing entity, a virus,
> one that you should not let win, lest you succumb.

I don't know how old you are, but I've been studying and teaching
freedom for a long, long time. Don't teach grandpa to suck eggs.

Kurt

Re: Video chat software / options

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

I've been seeing Jitsi mentioned a fair amount - don't know anything about
it, beyond what you'll see here:

https://jitsi.org/

Kurt

On Sat, Apr 18, 2020 at 12:32 PM Douglas Lucas  wrote:

> Hey cypherpunks,
>
> So what video chat options are there that are less privacy violating and
> social graphing than Zoom, Skype, etc, while still being at least
> somewhat available to the everyday user? Imagine two use cases:
>
> 1. Audiovideo chat between Alice and Bob: they want to watch an online
> movie together whether by sharing a screen or some other method, and
> then have sexy times later by same audiovideo chat. Imagine further that
> Bob uses Linux laptop and knows more or less what he's doing, while
> Alice uses Windows or Apple or her standard-issue smartphone or w/e and
> doesn't want to spend her little weekend time off paidwork trying to
> configure stuff to meet some faraway incel's expectation of flawless
> fantasy security.
>
> 2. A video panel or Q&A being hosted by your local friendly anarchist
> bookstore. Maybe it needs 3-5 people on a panel talking, their famous
> faces visible on the screen along with their audio while they debate
> each on internecine leftist conflicts that distract from far more
> rational propaganda of the deed, while the 20 people in the audience,
> including people of all sorts of demographics who have a hard enough
> time paying their bills online, have their audio and video forcibly off
> so there's not random beeps and bloops and toddler singing during the
> panel, but the audience could still type in Q&A questions or whatever.
> It would also be cool if there was a film screening option -- imagine an
> anarchist bookstore that prior to covid19 had been doing weekly film
> screenings offline in their brick and mortar location, but now wants to
> do something similar online, while making it hopefully accessible for
> people without intense computer skills.
>
> How are Signal and Wire for the above?
>
> My big picture understanding has for a long time been that, 1. perfect
> security is snake oil, the top spy agencies can crack anything if they
> want given enough time and targetting interest, but that's not typically
> relevant to the above use cases unless you're a Supreme Court justice or
> an incel fantasizing about being James Bond, 2. encryption makes data
> packet size much bigger, and large data size is already a problem with
> video in cleartext, so there never has been a really good solution to
> this problem. However #2 was my understanding as of like 5 years ago, so
> I'm curious if some new solution has come out.
>
> It looks like EFF is fairly useless and using Zoom themselves. I suppose
> if they're not gonna go after something meaningful, like how the
> corporate voting gear in the US is closed source, they have to spend
> that sweet Papa Omidyar cash and prestige somehow and produce little
> guides about how to toggle your Zoom settings. Afte
>
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/what-you-should-know-about-online-tools-during-covid-19-crisis
> https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2020/03/cc-backgrounds-video-calls-eff
> https://ssd.eff.org/
>
> Guides by Riseup Networks don't have much on video understandably
> https://riseup.net/en/security/resources
> https://riseup.net/en/security
>
> Prism Break mentions something called Jami I've never heard of
> https://prism-break.org/en/all/
>
> And yeah, Signal and Wire...? I know everything is fucked but using
> something less bad for the use cases outlined above seems better than
> diving headfirst into whatever the worst popular solutions are.
>
> Thanks!
>
> Doug
>

Re: How to achieve 1 meter accuracy with Android Was: Re: Dropgang vulnerabilities

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Thu, Feb 28, 2019 at 5:17 PM jim bell  wrote:
> On Thursday, February 28, 2019, 12:16:48 PM PST, Punk  wrote:
> On Thu, 28 Feb 2019 09:15:51 +1000
> jam...@echeque.com wrote:
>
> >> If you are in the city, everything is on CCTV.  But you are not going to
> >> drop something valuable in the middle of the city.
>
>  >   Yet the majority of customers live in the city. Also, surveillance in 
> the city means surveillance when you enter and leave the city.
>
> Depends very much on the city.  In the big (relatively) city closest to me, 
> Portland Oregon, there are many hundreds of streets that 'leave the city'.  
> Sure, they could all be camera'd, but what good would that do?  The pictures 
> could be stored, and would be, but how could it be known if any specific 
> frame represents a "useful" image?
>
> Eventually, some kind of AI could be developed, but I doubt whether this 
> would find most activities which would be useful to identify.  Placing or 
> retrieving a dead-drop would be one of the most undetectable events that 
> could occur:   Drive to a block, get out, walk around in a large grassy area, 
> bend over, pick up something, walk away, drive away.  How much video of this 
> would surveillance have to catch to determine that the person surveilled was 
> doing something suspicious...particularly if they didn't already know 
> something was going on.
>
> This reminds me that 23 years ago, I first learned about "3M Louvered Film",  
>  
> https://www.3m.com/3M/en_US/industrial-manufacturing-us/display-enhancement-and-protection-films-industrial-manufacturing/light-control-films/
>  a plastic sheet product that prevents viewing at angles greater than a 
> pre-defined amount.  It's now generically available.   
> https://www.shinetsu.info/vc_film
>
> This stuff could be placed over a car's license plate, so that a camera well 
> above (or to the side, or both) couldn't read the plate.
> To be sure, that's not necessarily an unmixed blessing.  While it effectively 
> makes a car look like it doesn't have a (readable) license plate, that in 
> itself might be considered suspicious.
>
> A few weeks ago, I realized that cemeteries would be excellent locations for 
> placing dead-drops.  (no pun intended, but I'll take what I can get !).  
> There are few people who visit cemeteries, but the idea of a person visiting 
> a grave is very plausible.  And, some amount of 'searching' is to be 
> expected, so it doesn't look suspicious.  Further, there are plenty of 
> gravestones which can be used as markers for the placement and retrieval of 
> those dead-drops, even more precisely than WAAS GPS or L1+L5 GPS.
>
> The war continues.
>
>  Jim Bell

Riffing a bit on the cemeteries: Pick a famous grave near you - some
recently deceased celebrity, say Jim Morrison (as opposed to an
ancient celebrity, such as US Grant) that attracts a lot of people.

And, FWIW, there's a fair amount of tradecraft shown in The Americans,
a pretty good TV series set in the '80s.

Kurt

Re: centralized corrections

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Tue, Mar 26, 2019 at 4:35 PM coderman  wrote:
> > Or the global cost of decentralized abuses.  Which could be, and used to 
> > be, worse.  Name your abuse of choice: it's worse when it's being done 
> > everywhere to / by everyone.
>
> let's play a game: centralized power to redress cultural wrongs.
>
> assuming that Stephen is speaking of social concerns; a centralized action 
> designed to redress cultural norms could be righteous, right?
>
> who can say "Brown v. Board of Education" was not the arc of history?
>
> these are the seductions of centralization - when they accomplish easily what 
> is hard fought directly.
>
> to think that centralized power is only utilized for righteous ends is to 
> succumb to the fallacy.
>
> no, decentralized malicious actions are not as bad as centralized ones. they 
> are, by definition, limited. e.g. within the realm of direct intervention.
>
>
> best regards,

Three quotes from a man of wisdom, which seem apropos here:

The danger is not that a particular class is unfit to govern. Every
class is unfit to govern. - Lord Acton

It is bad to be oppressed by a minority, but it is worse to be
oppressed by a majority. For there is a reserve of latent power in the
masses which, if it is called into play, the minority can seldom
resist. But from the absolute will of an entire people there is no
appeal, no redemption, no refuge but treason. - Lord Acton

There is no worse heresy than that the office sanctifies the holder of
it. - Lord Acton

Kurt

Re: CNBC: Zuckerberg backs stronger Internet privacy and election laws: 'We need a more active role for governments'

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

It's the natural reaction of all monopolists in the market they dominate.

It protects their position.

On Sun, Mar 31, 2019 at 10:08 AM jim bell  wrote:
>
> CNBC: Zuckerberg backs stronger Internet privacy and election laws: 'We need 
> a more active role for governments'.
> https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/30/mark-zuckerberg-calls-for-tighter-internet-regulations-we-need-a-more-active-role-for-governments.html
>
>
>

Re: Corrupt governments are inherently inept

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

It's worth keeping in mind Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy:
"In any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people:
those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and
those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education
would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union
representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most
incompetent. The Iron law states that in all cases, the second type of
person will always gain control of the organization, and will always
write the rules under which the organization functions."

Kurt


On Wed, Apr 3, 2019 at 3:53 PM Ryan Carboni <33...@protonmail.com> wrote:
>
> Corrupt governments are inherently inept, or at least appear so. There is a 
> decisional overhead in maintaining the illusion of corruption or maintaining 
> a certain level of BS that would avoid outraging people enough to take 
> action. The complexity in decision making was partially what destroyed the 
> Soviet Union, virtually all sectors of society was lying to each other to 
> maintain an illusion and the ability of the central government to enforce 
> their plans rapidly eroded.
>
> The US government is extremely corrupt. Take Trump for instance, why would 
> the media keep mentioning he is corrupt, and yet Congress does nothing about 
> it? Congress is the most powerful branch of government, ignoring Congress’s 
> capability to censure or remove their own members, a 2/3 vote would allow 
> Congress to take any action for any reason, exemplified by the Supreme Court 
> decision in Nixon vs. United States (a different Nixon oddly enough). 
> Congress can impeach the entire Supreme Court on a whim, impeach the entire 
> Executive Branch even.
>
> So what does it say? Maybe Trump really is corrupt, he got rich from money 
> laundering or so the media says. Where did the profits from Operation Fast 
> and Furious go, to the ATF or to the gun runners themselves? ( 
> https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/08/us/atf-tobacco-cigarettes.html ) I suppose 
> only Congress has oversight over that matter. But the United States is 
> rapidly crumbling, and US politics have become a circus. The whole thing is a 
> distraction, clearly. Every major city has rising unemployment, with homeless 
> people looking more and more able to work, even the city I live in is in 
> debate about adding maybe several dozen units for housing the homeless (which 
> says a lot about everyone’s sanity or the size of the local homeless 
> population).
>
> So. The US government can’t do anything about Trump? Just a bunch of leaks 
> and exaggerated statements condemning Trump with no evidence? Even if the 
> evidence had to be secret, Congress can’t be trusted with it? Or if Congress 
> can be trusted with it, do they lack the spine to maintain a functioning and 
> free society?
>
> I wonder what happened to the ATF agents involved with violating federal law 
> and smuggling cigarettes. Maybe they pulled a John Connolly, forged informant 
> reports and accepted bribes. Or they used fake informants and forged the 
> paperwork to pay off other officials. It certainly seems outrageous, it 
> sounds like the whole ATF could be potentially corrupt, or just a few bad 
> apples. But what does it say about the “good” people if they don’t notice 
> what is happening around them when they are practically in the thick of it?
>
> Sent from ProtonMail Mobile

Re: WIRED: A Cisco Router Bug Has Massive Global Implications

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Tue, May 14, 2019 at 10:30 AM John Young  wrote:
>
> What's the security benefit of Red Balloon's
> attacks? Is this not a type of extortion or maybe
> angling for bragging rights, a bribe to keep
> quiet or a buy-out from deep-pocketed targets.
> Hard to distinguish white hats from black and
> gray (also Red Hat), sanctimony from villainy.
> All emulating national security racketeering, or
> more like religious whipsawing fear and salvation.
>
> Leaking secrets has become a masturbation porn
> racket too, always was, mea culpa.

The security benefit is to shame/encourage/force Cisco to fix the problem.

The unknown is just how long these problems have been known to hostile
forces, however one might define them.

That Red Balloon gets some bragging rights is fine by me.

Kurt

Re: WIRED: A Cisco Router Bug Has Massive Global Implications

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

On Wed, May 15, 2019 at 12:55 AM grarpamp  wrote:
>
> > The security benefit is to shame/encourage/force Cisco to fix the problem.
>
> Cisco's been shipping bugs and exploits since day one.
> Bugs upon sploits upon bugs, all up and down
> their stack from HW to SW. It's not even funny.
>
> Then there's all the enterprises that don't even
> bother running the management plane out of band...

One of the reasons why I prefer Juniper to Cisco.

Plus Juniper is based on FreeBSD.

Kurt

Re: Human evolution was a failure

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

The fact that you are writing contradicts your statement.

Kurt

On Sun, Jun 23, 2019 at 2:16 PM Ryan Carboni <33...@protonmail.com> wrote:
>
> Human evolution was a failure. Comprehension based on cause and effect led to 
> early tools. That was quickly superseded by social obedience.
>
> Eventually that is replaced by massive pathological institutional lying and a 
> lack of interest in making things simpler because that might be one's job 
> would be economized away.
> "We must protect confidence in our institutions"
> *engages in actions that are inherently untrustworthy*
>
>
> Sent with ProtonMail Secure Email.
>

Re: BOO! "Why the Ghost Keys `Solution’ to Encryption is No Solution"

[Kurt Buff - GSEC, GCIH]

"principled and pragmatic solutions"

Pragmatic == no detectable principles

So, which is it - primciples or pragmatism?

Kurt

On Sun, Jul 21, 2019 at 2:14 PM grarpamp  wrote:
>
> On 7/21/19, Razer  wrote:
> >>> https://www.justsecurity.org/64963/criminal-prosecutions-and-illegal-entry-a-deeper-dive/
> >>> learn something
>
> Well, what is it that people should learn and or
> support and or do from reading your linked post?
>
> Join the US Democratic Party and pray for Hope and Change?
> Join the US Republican Party and their flavor of Freedom?
> Get caught up in game of debating their charade of Fake Laws?
> Keep trying to forcibly make others do what you want,
> where they have applied no such force to you or to others?
>
>
>
> "
> About Us
> Just Security is an online forum for the rigorous analysis of U.S.
> national security law and policy. We aim to promote principled and
> pragmatic solutions to national security problems that decision-makers
> face. Our Board of Editors includes individuals with significant
> government experience, civil society attorneys, academics, and other
> leading voices. Just Security is based at the Reiss Center on Law and
> Security at New York University School of Law.
>
> We are grateful for support from the Open Society Foundations,
> Atlantic Philanthropies, New York University School of Law, and
> individual donors.
>
> The views expressed on this site are attributable to their individual
> authors writing in their personal capacity only, and not to any other
> author, the editors, or any other person, organization or institution
> with which the author might be affiliated or whom the author may
> advise or represent in legal proceedings.
> "