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User: elewton

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Comments · 90

  1. Re:Complete idiocy on More Encryption Is Not the Solution · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Setting up GPG is easy. The difficulties associated with secure key management increase significantly with time.

  2. Re:A real shame on EFF Looks At How Blasphemy Laws Have Stifled Speech in 2012 · · Score: 1

    Neither group had an acceptable reason (either may have been valid).

    They appear to have been motivated by the delusions of religion and ideology, respectively.

  3. Re:Dupe story on The Downside of Warp Drives: Annihilating Whole Star Systems When You Arrive · · Score: 3, Interesting
  4. Re:This is basically how US elections work on Validating Voters For Open Source Governance, In Person · · Score: 1

    Posting to undo accidental mod.

  5. Re:Let's get Godwin out of the way on European e-ID Announced · · Score: 1

    I am quite capable of identifying myself, when I choose to, with my speech alone.

    The papieren are for the verification of my identity by a third party for the other agent in the transaction. These agents compel citizens to carry third party verification and can compel transactions.

  6. Re:Why? on Europe Agrees To Send Airline Passenger Data To US · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Not true. I have very much enjoyed visiting the U.S. and would like to go to New York again for a show next year.

    At the moment, however, I would feel safer visiting China or or Cuba (where their citizens are treated poorly), than the U.S., which kidnaps and tortures foreign citizens.

    The U.S. has joined Iran, North Korea etc. on my list of "Places that are too dangerous to visit right now."

  7. Re:Don't see it happening on Former TSA Administrator Speaks · · Score: 4, Insightful

    This vegetarian kept talking about how bad abattoirs are and the ethics and dangers of intensive meat production, and I was like, "Dude, you don't even eat meat!"

  8. Re:False positives on Drones, Dogs and the Future of Privacy · · Score: 1

    Only the Daily Mail for reference, but...
    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1092230/How-garden-moss-smells-like-cannabis-attracted-police-raid-pensioners--local-drug-gang.html

    In all seriousness, though, they might just plant a baggy on your property. Good luck.

  9. Re:Thank you Chinese government on Inside the Great Firewall of China's Tor Blocking · · Score: 1

    It's not actually a real problem.

    I've developed a method for reducing unpleasant stimulus by avoiding it, rather than interfering in the communication of others. I'm hoping to make millions by patent trolling.

  10. Re:Crack Team? on Liquid Metal Capsules Used To Make Self-Healing Electronics · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I don't know about *MOST* users lives. Most the people I know who use cocaine seem to do so infrequently, and as part of a balanced diet. That seems to be representative of coke users in general; problem users seem to represent 5%-15% of the population, similar to a lot of drugs, though the problematic effects are fairly severe, as is dependence.

    Crack cocaine is also a very different drug from base cocaine.

    I don't use either, and don't want to.

  11. Re:Genocide on Fighting Mosquitoes With GM Mosquitoes · · Score: 3, Insightful

    We shouldn't eradicate them. We should keep thousands of samples from all over the world frozen and maintain a limited breeding population in zoos.

    But the wild population? The one that keeps killing HUMANS? We should probably get rid of that. We do a ton of damage to the environment and wipe out a great many species just by existing as is. We can worry about mosquitoes after we solve all the other problems.

  12. Re:I applaud this. on Film Studios Seeking Complete Block of Newzbin2 in the UK · · Score: 1

    Tentatively agreed. I hope this will lead to more people defaulting to encrypted and proxied connections.

    Especially if an Ubuntu distro already set up to do this becomes widely used.

  13. Re:Yes on Ohio Emergency Responders Stage Mock Zombie Invasion · · Score: 1
  14. Re:BTC? Stamps? Gift Cards? on Wikileaks Suspends Publishing Of Cables Due To "Financial Blockade" · · Score: 2

    That's why anyone using Bitcoin seriously at the moment should use an exchange to instant sell their Coins for a more stable currency, and buy Bitcoins only exactly when they want to transfer them.

    Holding Bitcoins is for speculators.

  15. On the micro scale on Analysis of Galaxy Spin Reveals Universe Might Be Left-Handed · · Score: 1

    Does anyone know whether this is likely to have an effect on scales other than the galactic?

    For instance, on small chaotic systems.

  16. Re:Can't be right on Telecomix Releases 54GB of Syrian Censorship Logs · · Score: 1

    FUUUUCK.

    Tired and forgot to anonymise. It's been nice knowing y'all.

  17. Re:Can't be right on Telecomix Releases 54GB of Syrian Censorship Logs · · Score: 1

    Don't worry. Islam is just as (IMHO more) barbaric than the Old and New Testaments.

    While we're posting biased but well sourced links: http://www.wikiislam.net/

    Posted AC to reduce the probability of my murder.

  18. First as a therepeutic drug... on Developer Seeks FDA Approval For Therapeutic Game · · Score: 3, Funny

    Then as a recreational one.

    If a game can have a medically recognisable affect, it falls under the purview of those who would regulate your private activities for reasons of their morality.

    If this is approved, what's the over/under on how long it takes before it is used as a justification for government interference with a tool that is used to bring pleasure in a manner contrary to a morality?

  19. Re:Well, what did you expect? on 8 Ways To Circumvent the PROTECT-IP Act · · Score: 1

    Probably meant Namecoin; the distributed DNS alternative.

  20. Re:Well yeah on Chief NSA Lawyer Hints That NSA May Be Tracking US Citizens · · Score: 1

    And, just as it is reasonable to expect that sociopaths will spy on you for their own advantage, it is reasonable to expect that sociopaths will steal your stuff if you make it easy.

    A predictable percentage of humans qualify for ASPD or whatever they're calling it these days. Anybody trusting a significant number of humans should take appropriate precautions.

  21. Re:Stolen or Copied? on 8GB of Data Stolen From Italian Cybercrime Unit · · Score: 1

    What thing did they take that doesn't belong to them? I see that they made unauthorised copies of data, and know that this is a crime in many jurisdictions, but see no thing that has been taken.

  22. Re:I'm enjoying the schadenfreude. on EFF Stops Accepting Bitcoin, Regifts All Donations · · Score: 1

    I'm shocked by the number of people who take pleasure in Bitcoiners' recent misfortune. A lot of people are putting effort into something they care about, and snide little shits on the internet lol it up.

    I don't hold a significant number of Bitcoins (50+change), but I have found them utterly fascinating for the last year, and will read anything published about them. The concept of a low-friction trading platform could revolutionise many industries, and change a lot of people's lives for the better.

    It's entirely possible that the spread of Bitcoin will make a few millionaires or billionaires (in USD), but that doesn't seem especially important. All paradigm shifts have moved wealth from those who profit from inefficiencies to those who introduce the more efficient system. Like every single human on the planet, I had the opportunity to mine Bitcoins from the beginning, to buy and hold when they were extremely cheap, but I was too stupid to do so.

    If you haven't made a few 10s of thousands of USD from Bitcoin, you were also too stupid to invest in the new technology.

    I'm still too stupid to make significant amounts of money from trading, so I voluntarily use Bitcoin as a tool, not expecting my coins to increase in value. It works extremely well.

    Would you like to watch a train wreck in slow motion? Would that much human suffering excite you? Do you watch WWII documentaries before lovemaking?

  23. Re:How does it actually work? on BitCoin, the Most Dangerous Project Ever? · · Score: 1

    No. Your client is your authority. Unless you have the light client, it will not accept an invalid block. An extremely powerful attacker may be able to confuse a light client.

    If any one miner goes offline, they simply cease to process transactions. The blockchain goes on in every other miner's GPU.

    Individual coins really are the least important part of Bitcoin. The blockchain is all.

  24. Re:Huh? on BitCoin, the Most Dangerous Project Ever? · · Score: 1

    Yep. They see public keys transferring BTC to each other. If the humans behind those public keys don't pay attention, they might be linked with their public key and consequently their transactions. Bitcoin laundering is possible, in which BTC are transferred to a pool, sloshed around and reissued to whatever addresses you want over time, currently with a 0.5% fee.

    The miners are not a Central bank because they cannot meaningfully change the algorithm; they're are more similar to Western Union or similar (and massively more efficient.)
    MyBitcoin.com is more similar to a bank, as is the client you run on your PC.

    The only entity that can claim to have been the central bank of Bitcoin is the possibly fictional Satoshi Nakamoto who created the protocol in the first place. His role as that authority has ended.

  25. Re:How does it actually work? on BitCoin, the Most Dangerous Project Ever? · · Score: 2

    1) and 2) are both examples of the double spending problem for cryptocurrencies, which is the very problem Bitcoin is trying to solve. A chain of transactions is maintained by every Bitcoin "miner" who performs proof of work on the transaction data. If they "solve" the block of transactions first, they are rewarded with the transaction fees and the BTC that are being issued until 21000000 is reached (50 per block, approximately every ten minutes.)

    3) At the moment it grows forever. Useless data can be pruned, and light clients are possible.

    4) I think each coin is signed over to the new public key that is its owner. That signing is the transaction.

    5) "Making" BTC cheaply isn't really meaningful. A miner might be able to get their hash rate above everyone else's by implementing SHA256 much more efficiently, using ASICs for example, but said miner would need to possess a significant fraction of the computing power of the network to cause difficulties.
    The production rate is stipulated by the initial algorithm which adjusts the difficulty of the proof of work to keep blocks generation to 1/10minutes. Shenanigans (attempting to award yourself BTC arbitrarily) will not be accepted by other nodes.
    It works if you have a new identity for every transaction and amuse yourself all day by sending bitcoins to your millions of alter-egos. If these are all free transactions, they will probably end up looking like spam and taking a long time. Attach 5 mBTC to speed up a transaction.

    6) This will definitely happen. The people who run the botnet will make coins.

    I'm very bullish about cryptocurrency, and excited about Bitcoin at the moment, so do your own research and take my assurances with a grain of salt.