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Has anyone read Infinite Jest?

The whole book feels like Chekhovs gun but it is fun to read!

(I haven't finished it)


No idea, but he does for some reason promote ZCash instead of Monero, and won't even speak of Monero, which is certainly odd.


Maybe some people are taking advantage of the anonymity of Monero for illegitimate means.

He might not really be against anonymous digital money, but he does have a reputation to protect. So maybe he has to draw the line somewhere.

Or maybe he doesn't want to draw attention to Monero because he wants to protect it's utility.


>Maybe some people are taking advantage of the anonymity of Monero for illegitimate means.

Zcash focuses on anonymity too.


Though, from what I remember, zcash does not have full anonymity across all transactions, meaning that if you do sent anon one, you are visibly standing out from the other transactions (though if it's untraceable, it might not be a problem?). Compared to monero where all txs are anonymous.

Something along these lines


more interested in snowden's bitcoin and other altcoin holdings. "till the sun goes out" he said. that tells me hes a cryptocurrency billionaire.

just asking so I can forward this to the Russian mafia to give to Putin. Putin will want his half of all of Snowden's cryptocurrency holdings. Thus, all who donated to Snowden likely donated to Putin.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx9GH6L7VwI

This one has connected with me recently on that more tribal level!


HN. Your new definitive guide to Techno.

Good one!


Thanks for sharing!


I was just thinking about this I think you're right. Such small differences in phrasing can have a big difference.

I think a great response would be "That sucks, do you THINK if you spoke to them something would change?" Rather than "have you tried to speak to them?"

The first is a question, that will prompt them to think and then maybe act. The second is a question that is a little accusatory (you should have already spoken to them about it)

Conversation is hard!


You realise GTA V is the most profitable piece of media, ever?


What the hell - what country?

You need to move ASAP.


He's being inflammatory by trying to imply that temporary pandemic restrictions are permanent laws banning those things. Everything isn't becoming illegal, society has just decided the lives of our at-risk citizens are more important than a temporary halt to social life.


"Temporary"? It's been A YEAR and tens of thousands of businesses and families going bankrupt. And there is no end in sight to this.


Okay, pretty annoying comment by him!


Gross. "Society" hasn't decided this. A fringe cohort of bureaucrats, skilled at dressing up pseudoscientific police state tactics as public health, have rammed it through against the objection of the most accomplished experts on the topic.

And it's not to protect "our at risk citizens" but to protect our affluent citizens. Since all of the ostensible attenuation of horizontal interdiction depends on resources which poor people simply don't have, the acuity is spread is necessarily wealth-stratified in such a configuration.

And the consequences haven't been "a temporary halt to social life", but death, disease, and misery visited about marginalized and unhoused communities under the euphemistic guise of an "essential" working class.


Many western countries have banned those things because of covid restrictions.


I suppose he mean temporarily because covid restrictions..


After a year it’s not reasonable to call the restrictions temporary.


In reasonable countries these businesses still get at least some compensation. That makes it a temporary restriction, the government would not be interested in paying it forever.


"Temporarily" like a f**cking YEAR. Some business owners committed suicide over this, so I guess its safe to say permanent for them at least.


I wonder if the DOJ will try to indict the man behind Signal for similar reasons.


I know it sounds paranoid, but it's why I don't trust Signal for information that I want to defend against nation-states. In the US, if the govt couldn't circumvent their messages then they would find a way to take it down. Any warrant canaries could be required to be left untouched by secret FISA courts.


Not every threat model is one where the NSA is what you need to worry about. The vast majority of people in the world live in countries were Signal will help protect them.


Not saying I do not believe this , but do you have a citation or an example?


Edward Snowden provides proof and documentation.

Lavabit provides a direct example.


When lives are on the line, it's dangerous to wait for peer-reviewed papers or solid evidence to come out. Think of how many years the NSA spied on everything before Snowden leaked it. There were rumors for years, but no solid proof. It's better to be more paranoid and have good OPSEC.

I'm not saying I don't use Signal, because I do. It would work fine against cops or the federal government as a citizen. But if lives depended on it, it would merely be part of my communications toolbelt.


What do you use?


If needed, I'd prioritize good OPSEC and prevent association of the communication device with me. Purchase a laptop from Craigslist with cash, disconnect its power when close to an area I frequent. Use macchanger to change the mac address of my device when in use, use a yagi antenna so I don't have to get too close to the open WiFi access point. A host of other activities meant to make association more difficult.

Defense in depth is important. It's also unnecessary for most people most of the time, which is why I generally don't do it and just use Signal for interpersonal communication. But it's still good for people to know that depending on one system like Signal for security has risks so they can make their own determination on if it's worth it to harden their communication systems.


That sounds very secure, yeah. But what messaging platform would you use? XMPP+OMEMO, matrix, etc? Or PGP?


That depends entirely on the need. I would bet that any sort of decentralized chat system communicating to nonstandard servers would be closely scrutinized.

For one-to-one communication, ideally I'd set up either some sort of special code with the receiving end and just use http. If more information relaying is needed, a one-time pad would be good. I'd try to keep the messages short in case there's a hole in the system somewhere. Again, depending on your needs, relying on one protocol like matrix or pgp could be risky. Good OPSEC can make up for a leaky security system.

For one-to-many communication, proxies and device disassociation are priority above all else. You can assume interception of those messages generally.


After the PIN drama and decision to protect data using SGX, I am 80% convinced Signal and NSA are on the same team.


I really don't think these types of restrictions will succeed in western countries when you have people like Elon Musk and Jack Dorsey heavily involved.

If crypto only had the underground attention it had 5 years ago, maybe.


Western countries don't need capital controls because they have widely accepted reserve currencies.

This is a developing country risk



I have to agree it does feel more like a forum. I wonder how HN achieves this.


I think there are a few reasons it feels more like a forum than social media:

- No social network of friends/follows/circles

- No advertising

- No notifications on replies/threads

- Good moderation



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