They’re rebranding American Christian milenaranism. Much like the second coming and/or the rapture, the AGI god will be here Real Soon Now, so please pay your tithes and trust that the church fathers are doing the right thing.
Much like the older cults it mirrors, it isn’t capable of delivering on its promises, but it is capable of doing substantial amounts of regular damage in the meantime, and that’s the only thing worth freaking out about.
Proton continuing to do pointlessly stupid and self-destructive things:
https://infosec.exchange/@malwaretech/113257047424000919
They're basically admitting they didn't pay an influencer to spread misinformation about public wifi in order to sell VPN products, they just stole her likeness, used her photo, and attributed completely made up quote to her.
But it was a joke guys! We did a satire! I’m totally certain I know what satire is!
There’s nothing confused about his ideology. Anything to do with porn or sex work will get kicked to the curb without a second thought, but fascists and bigots will be defended up to the point where they try to restart sectarian violence in Ireland (which was the final act of kiwi farms, from recollection. Presumably even the ceo couldn’t defend them at that point, though I bet he tried).
Dude doesn’t give a shit about free speech, or lament the power he’s ended up with. He just really loves fascism.
I am horrified and somewhat embarrassed that I understood what all that stuff was.
TESCREAL was chosen, at least in part, because it would be easier to search for. TREACLES matches all sorts of other stuff.
the US government has enough computing power to decrypt your internet traffic even if you use a VPN
No. Not even slightly.
I see you are completely unfamiliar with any of the issues here. I appreciate they are complex, but I don’t have the time or patience to educate you right now, even assuming you’re willing to learn.
You realise that all electronic currencies will necessarily involve transaction logs stored in someone else’s computer? Even Zcash and monero, which have clever anonymous transactions, allow selective disclosure of the details of those transactions if you ever find yourself at the wrong end of a criminal investigation or tax audit. Moreover, their anonymity guarantees are not perfect (the IRS has certainly paid big bucks to chainalysis for de-anonymisation, for what that’s worth).
Unless someone magically invents a software artefact that can’t be duplicated (don’t hold your breath, I’m serious about the magic) there’s no escape from this fundamental requirement.
So I realise that this is very euro-centric and the majority of people on earth don’t get this sort of convenience, but… fast and easy interbank transfers and contactless debit and credit card payments just do all the stuff that most people want out of electronic cash, and transaction logs are a small price to pay for a substantial reduction in risk.
The problem isn’t just the nature of blockchains, the problem is the uses to which such systems will be put. The explosion in ransomware fuelled by bitcoin et al isn’t something that can be replicated with physical cash at the same scale, for example (consider why you want electronic cash in the first place). Similarly, the need to “be your own bank” will always expose you to a greater risk of fraud and theft and loss, because being a bank is harder than people seem to think.
The technology involved is (almost) irrelevant.
Happily there are plenty of good examples of how such a system would work in practise… Web3 is Going Just Great, Attack of the 50 Foot Blockchain or Amy Castor perhaps.
It’s shit like this that discourages from ever running any sort of service that interacts with the general public. I’m already exhausted by the sheer grinding tedium of the amount of visible tone policing on the internet, and it somehow never occurred to me that it was just the tip of some vast beige fatberg clogging up all the pipes.
Anyway, thank you for hiding the awful realities from the rest of us o7