AI is a bubble
This insightful article from Mises Institute makes the case that Artificial Intelligence is misunderstood,
It's promoted as this buzzing trend that will take-over every industry. When in fact, all the evidence points to the opposite. They are losing money and nearly all commercial application have failed.
-OpenAI, leader in LLMs loses $5 billion a year, and there is no path to profitability.
"The losses only expand with the more customers the company signs up and the better their model gets."
-Air Canada tried to use AI for customer service, but it made so many mistakes, that it sent waves through the industry. It gave out discounted airfare causing the company to bleed out and the court ruled against them.
-Google’s new AI summary at the top of the search page takes roughly 10 times more energy to produce than the search itself and has near zero end-user utility according to numerous reliable polls.
-Many of the AI demos have been proven to be fake by whistleblowers, from OpenAI to Google.
-AI has ruined search engine results with worthless dribble
Don't make the mistake that others are by investing in this. Let's dive into this amazing article on the rampant corruption of money-losing AI,
https://mises.org/mises-wire/artificial-intelligence-next-easy-money-bust
Odysee is on cloudflare, and the subscriptions/delivery is disconnected from the Arweave wallet. You could be on there for social purposes and marketing, but not self-sovereign.
I will present to you 3 solutions,
Solution 1,
Host a website with your videos and have a third party CDN. Use a service that isn't as mainstream on cloudflare, such as Bunny.net has CDN streaming videos with anonymous bitcoin. This is a centralized service, but isn't literally the same thing as everyone else.
Solution 2,
Bastyon has videos (like peertube) for their pkoin crypto you can buy on tapbit. It's using nodes paid to stream it just like peertube, so you don't have to setup a whole thing. Then you can link from your website (or Nostr) to Bastyon videos
Solution 3,
Upload to Arweave directly using the ArDrive CLI.
You can then post the videos on nostr or your website with links for different countries.
If you are up for the technical challenge, you can get an ArNS domain name and then update an RSS feed with the Arweave videos, but this RSS feed part is fairly difficult if you don't know how to use the Linux command line. Hopefully in the future, myself and others will come up with graphical apps to do the backend work for people.
3 Layers of Freedom
Layer 1: User of an External Service
This is the worst one, you're just using someone else's service. You obey and they are god. This includes all Big Tech, gmail, proton, telegram, twitter, whatsapp, ect. Unfortunately, this is the only thing the vast majority of people ever experience.
Layer 2: Federation / Self-hosting
Any service that can cross-communicate to servers that different people control. Identity is usually based on the domain of the server you're using. You don't have to self-host here, but how much freedom you get depends on your relationship with the hoster. Examples of this are Email, XMPP, Matrix, Mastodon, and Lemmy.
Layer 3: Transcend Locations
This is any service where user identity, data, and content delivery are separated from physical locations, to provide censorship and self-ownership that transcends traditional internet structures. Examples include Nostr (micro-blog), Arweave (websites), Session (delivery), Bastyon (video delivery), Farcaster (professional networking), Lens (art), Yacy (search), and almost all cryptocurrencies. It would also include legal systems based on PGP.
Layer 3 is controversial. You're not only asking people to learn new technology, but then place value in this completely new system. For example, to accept that Bitcoin or Monero have financial value for trade. Or to learn how Arweave domains and hashs work to view content. This has a huge opportunity for pessimists to try to knock it. Often pessimists will dispute the entire premise of layer 3, by clinging to value systems in layers 1 or 2. Or they may be heavily invested in one particular solution, and thus try to haze alternatives.
Careful, as there is a lot of misrepresentation to gain market share as they develop. Images on Nostr are layer 1 regular websites. Channels on Farcaster are a censorable layer 1 service. SimpleX's identity links are really layer 2 masquerading as a layer 3. (But I acknowledge Session's flaws)
Ok here's my point:
I recommend people: avoid layer 1 whenever possible. Have a layer 2, a little digital home: self-host email, a website, and your messenger communications. But stay open to all different kinds of layer 3s, this is the end goal. Layer 3 is not only a technology battle, but a cultural one.
Thanks for writing in for an educational opportunity.
First, for DDoS you don't have to use cloudflare, there are other alternatives for a CDN. And you don't have to point the A-record of your domain to a CDN, you can use CDNs that are just third party images. This makes it harder to ddos you but not impossible. Solutions such as Bunny CDN accept anonymous bitcoin.
As far as IPFS goes, I don't think it will be popular because it has socialism built into it. If one runs a pinning service, you're automatically serving up not just your customers' sites, but also random other people which raises the computer resources required. Because IPFS has delivery separated from payments of filecoin, its unlikely people will subsidize the delivery. However, I am optimistic about ArNS Arweave gateways.
Be honest, you're using Big Tech because:
a) You think it's hard to switch
b) You think there won't be the software you need on Linux
c) You think nobody is using encrypted messengers
d) You say privacy is a nice idea, but I don't really need it
e) You tell yourself you'll learn later, which turns to never.
But every one of the statements is a lie.
It's NOT hard to switch,
Linux is easy man, my mom uses it, and she's older than computers existing. Linux Mint looks just like Windows. System76 PopOS can be made to look just like Mac iOS. The same way Apple has an "Apple store" for software, Linux also has an app store! And you can even use it in a graphical box. You don't need the command line.
The software you need IS on Linux.
Linux has software for web browsing, chat, and editing text (even microsoft word files can be opened). Adobe Photoshop is actually HARDER to use than open source GIMP, and it does the same things. Kdenlive is FASTER to render videos than Adobe Premiere of EQUAL OR BETTER QUALITY.
You don't have to go cold turkey, if you want to still chat with your friends on Discord, WhatsApp, Telegram, that stuff all works on Linux and Degoogled phones. But you'll be surprised at who you will meet on freedom apps..
You are scared away because you think there's no help, no support group. But there's more of a Linux community than anywhere else, because the people genuinely care. Our SimpleX room has 600 people, and you will get replies. We also host an active Linux group on Session. There's the Linux.org forums. There's dozens of companies with paid support including mine.
You tell yourself you'll learn under better circumstances later, but eventually you have to realize that nobody is coming to save you.
The political situation is only getting worse. The data collection and the overreach from big tech is only further chipping away at your freedoms every day. You think you have Bitcoin, but without privacy you don't even own those private keys. You think you have a Nostr account, but you need open source operating system for that to have meaning. Otherwise, it's just the same as a big tech platform because Google, Microsoft, and Apple see your private key, your conversations, and the sum of every thought in your brain. They own your life.
But it doesn't have to be this way. I'm telling you that you have way more power than you realize. You're telling yourself you're not good with tech, but you're smart enough to read my words on Nostr now. That's better than like 95% of people out there. You know to an Amish farmer, you're pretty slick.. It's all about what you're used to.
Every one of the those starting statements is a lie. And the only obstacle is in your mind.
Love you bro, stay safe.
Glad to hear you are looking to learn. Distro Tube and Chris Titus on youtube (via invidious) or odysee (via librarian) are great ways. farside.link has the front-end links
Also our website has a lot of info on the Linux section:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/categories/linux.html
Hey you don't need "vi", it's total bullshit. I didn't learn it either. The people who push for that are stuck up.
You don't even need the command line. Linux Mint can be installed dual boot and easily learned in the graphical enviornment without commands.
Distro Tube and Chris Titus on youtube (via invidious) or odysee (via librarian) are great ways. Farside.link has the front-ends to those.
Also our website has a lot of info on the Linux section:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/categories/linux.html
Good to hear you're making efforts. Just as a heads up, MeWe is on amazon or cloudflare, I forget which. MeWe is like saying "Instead of abolishing the Fed, we should have a different more reliable fed chairman". It's just trusting a different person.
Beyond nostr, there's also bastyon, farcaster, lens, and the fediverse
You're wording it like a single event battle,
"who fired first" And there are generals saying it is offensive, which is enough justification to fear it.
It's them forming on the left border over time. The USA would not tolerate Russia building bases with drones in Mexico. And flying the drones into the US
Leaked Chainalysis Monero Tracing
There's a video that's being so weakly censored that it might be on purpose, of an internal meeting of Chainalysis presenting to law enforcement of how they trace Monero.
I'm NOT going to link to the video because it's got some IP addresses of the malicious nodes that Chainalysis runs, which will bring unwanted pressure on our clearweb Linux tech support website. The goal of our organization is NOT to get you to run a darknet market, it's to get fundamental privacy rights with technology.
But I must say this, the way Chainalysis was effective in catching darknet market guys, was when they swapped Monero to Bitcoin. And so the people who push for Bitcoin only, are really pushing for a world where you need a ph.D in computer science to be private.
Now you're saying "oh but I'm not running a darknet market, so why do I need that level of privacy?" But if Bitcoin goes to the moon like you say it will, there will be tax implications of this. Everytime you buy a coffee, there's capital gains tax up or down. This will crush the use of it in the real world as money, unless it's private enough that it can't be enforced.
If Bitcoin becomes as popular as you say it will, there will be a violent response from the state to crush it. And so I'm telling you if you don't care about privacy for people with low technical skills, then Bitcoin is really just an ETF.
If the goal is just to store value, there already is a gold ETF. And if there's no privacy, if fiat's value collapses, one has to pay the absurd tax on the hyperinflation. How's that preserve value if you're bleeding out capital gains from them printing? Ironic a guy named “god” is saying he wants to obey because he’s powerless
Wouldn't you agree that having more privacy would increase the comfort of people to use cryptocurrency for real world cash over speculation when it's bought in their name?
In this case, they were ruling out Monero spend outputs as not the real decoys. However, this Monero only information doesn’t have any value, until it exits Monero into something tangible. This happened to the darknet market guy they traced when he switched to Bitcoin, and the swap website had these poison outputs.
Bitcoin is ok. I'm just saying the "Bitcoin only" hazing narrative
You’re correct cash is popular. However, cash has local theft risk and can’t be used online.
Ecash is custodial is it not? That’s the opposite of privacy, a third party can see all.
Coffees could be private with bitcoin lightning layer 2, but how many people are going to fork over $500+ to setup a self-custody node? That's my point
TradeOrge is on cloudflare but cheap. There's a few swap sites:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/swaps/index.html
However keep in mind that buying KYC bitcoin and swapping for XMR is riskier than buying KYC XMR, because you could be on the hook for crimes done with that bitcoin after you no longer control it
First off, it's not just privacy but also issues with custody on lightning. Most people aren't willing to spend the time or money (or can't afford) to self-custody lightning. We documented the issues with custodial bitcoin in an earlier post with Hayek. And how it mirrors problems with the fractional reserve banking system.
Second, regarding this situation, they were able to rule out Monero outputs by running malicious nodes, but those outputs had no meaning if it stayed within Monero itself. As soon as someone swapped it for Bitcoin at a business that can be given a supenea, then it is a lead, and in this case, got a vendor doing XMR->Bitcoin in colombia.
If they are running that many monero nodes, they are running that many lightning nodes, and custody is a huge issue then
Correction, this dude wants privacy to make it functional as real world money, when the tax reporting requirements would crush the average person’s interest in getting all of this data, and reduce arbitrary enforcement
Yes on-chain btc fees are crazy low now, which I assume is due to low use. If true, that is not a good argument for scaling.
And no, I am NOT saying darknet market evasion is the reason for privacy. I'm saying if users have to actually calculate the capital gains/loss on every little purchase, they will avoid using Bitcoin for cash to not have to do that. The only way to make them feel that they do not have to, is if it's private against advanced adversaries.
All the deep state has to do is to make an example of ONE REGULAR person for SMALL amounts, and the entire bitcoin lightning as cash concept will be killed. They can promote that person in the media all day.
Yeah but if all you do is HODL KYC bitcoin, then how's that really improve people's freedoms?
It's not getting people off banks, which is the real issue. It's not private. It's just a new gold ETF.
Cryptocurrency is unique to stop fractional reserve banking. Just helping with inflation can be done with anything. People could hedge inflation with gold ETFs and it would be similiar
To quote Seth, I am not a monero maxi, I am a freedom maxi.
Bitcoin has a key role by being on exchanges, as XMR will be delisted someday
This being said, I encourage you to learn about all your options and technology. As again, my goal is getting people off banks. The whole inflation/saving thing is only one of many benefits.
the article starts off by talking about using drones to bomb russia. you're going to reply that it's after the invasion, but they don't say. Then there's quotes of high ranking military guys warning Putin that they are doing offensive attacks. So that in and of itself is enough. Check the Zerohedge article, it's got the exact quotes with the points.
All the time people write me and say:
"Hello! I want to buy your email, phones, or Linux support but I don't want to KYC to get crypto"
I reply, "But once you pull Monero or even Bitcoin Lightning off the exchange, it's not tied to you anymore. And there's no capital gains tax if you spent it at the same price." Then I suggest Haveno, and they don't feel comfortable doing that. And in the end, they end up doing nothing.
How does it make sense that you don't want to KYC just to get crypto, so you keep using KYC banks and cards?
Getting crypto is part of the experience for you to become private.
To say you want "privacy without crypto" is like saying you want to lose weight, but you're too lazy to walk up the entrance stairs of the gym. "Hello! I want exercise without strenuous stairs"
I try to make it as easy as possible for you. Here's my article on where to buy crypto, with different options for different countries including credit cards, peer-to-peer, and exchanges: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/crypto/index.html
Anyone can make a small business. You're talking to me right now on Nostr. Your name has "Tea" in it, do you sell tea? You can start.
Pick whatever you love, and do it
Of course I think of the epic last line after I post it,
If Hayek were alive today, he'd say "Not your keys, it's a shitcoin"
nostr:nevent1qqs9xu38ennqvqdd0dm5e8g5rlrlhegf4f8jr0enqqn4hqefcc52mgqpzpmhxue69uhk2tnwdaejumr0dshszrnhwden5te0dehhxtnvdakz7qgmwaehxw309aux6u3wd96xsatjw3ehw6r9de5hqtn9v5hs4v4mz8
Before Bitcoin was officially released,
Friedrich Hayek warned of the dangers of custodial bitcoin wallets
In his book, he laid out the boom-bust credit cycle, which happens when banks create money through lending. For example you deposit $1, but they lend it out. Now you think you have $1, and so does that other guy.
Some hate altcoins, because they are just venture capitalists printing money out of bullshit. But what people should be more aware of, is that 90% of the US money supply comes from private banks doing fractional reserve lending. And this is far more dangerous than the measly Federal Reserve, because it creates malinvestment, that causes depression when it bursts.
When you use custodial bitcoin wallets, these are really fractional reserve bank accounts, and the very thing you hate, (printing money) is being done in a sinister new way....
Because the more volatility that comes from these credit busts, the less cryptocurrency will be used as real world money. Which causes capital flight on the "real" lightning liquidity, making it even harder to self-custody due to the cost of capital. You see, Bitcoin's enemy isn't altcoins, it's fake Bitcoin.
If Hayek were alive today, he'd say "Not your keys, not your economy"
The issue with fiat money is the money itself is debt.
Debt exists in time.
So yes you’re correct you borrow against time, but the bond yield curve is really a measurement of how much money exists now vs the future. When the liabilities are now, and the assets are in the future, it’s a bust.
It’s not “impossible to avoid”, the answer is the money supply has to be an asset... and not debt
The fate of Bitcoin will be its users decisions and not the technology. The blocksize was arbitrarily limited and that can easily be undone, even today. And even without that increase, the users can culturally switch to non-custodial solutions.
I agree on Monero
Custodial Bitcoin services are really banks where you are told you have an amount in your account, but they don't actually have it allocated to just you. They can lend it out or earn interest on it. And in fact are very motivated to do so.
Fractional reserve banks follow the same model. It's called "Austrian economics", which studies the increase in the money supply created by banks lending.
Different industries could experience drawdowns, but under a supply based economy (real money), there is no logical reason for unrelated industries to be connected. Capital flees one industry to go to another.
While as under fractional reserve banking, the money created leads to malinvestment, where they think there will be all of this return, but in fact, it’s due to the artificial credit boom.
Under the system Austrian economics proposes, people are not stopped from lending to each other. The primary difference being that those who are lending, know their funds are tied up and can not access them for a given period of time. This prevents them from thinking they can use these assets to pay down debt.
The yield curve inverts during a credit crunch, as more money is needed in the present than exists.
The assets are in the future, but the liabilities are due now.
!!! HOT SPECIAL !!!
Pixel 9 cheaper than Google
Normally DeGoogled vendors charge more, we charge LESS.
Google Store: $799
Simplified Privacy: $740
Brand New
Wintergreen
128G
Very Limited Supply at this pricing, act fast.
Still in original packaging
You pick: get it still sealed or have us flash GrapheneOS.
Pay in Bitcoin or Monero.
Keep your name off the IMEI hardware, that cell towers see where you are 24/7.
Keep your name off the cloud, we use end-to-end encrypted messengers.
Get a 1 year warranty from Google (for a replacement phone)
Get a 1 week warranty from us (for crypto back)
Get a PGP signed receipt, backed by a binding arbitration deposit with XMRBazaar
Help fund Simplified Privacy's Open Source development, we got a big project in the works.
Now is your opportunity to get privacy and save money.
Reach out, ask questions:
Session: Support
Signal: +855 68 504 905
SimpleX & others: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/contact.html
this is true for any phone, none of them are open source hardware. Yes google is less trusted than others. There's pros and cons. Graphene now is the only one with esim without google play services, while calyx still has it
seth don't podcast no more
and watchman is censoring monero to shill his bitcoin course on cloudflare/google payment gateways, and he ain't on nostr.
we're doing a podcast soon. for now hit up the articles @Schroedinger
So my source on this is Tuxsudo, who did an interview with Watchman,
Apparently watchman censored the interview post-recording, saying that "cake wallet didn't fit his vision" or something along those lines.
I am speculating that the reason is so watchman can sell courses. Now can I be wrong on the real motivation? yes.
If you have a time when watchman taught Monero, I'd love to hear it.
Now regarding doug, you are entitled to your opinion sure. I think though he's doing a lot of good education-wise with getting good people on there
!!! Warning:
"Hackers abuse Google sheets to impersonate tax authorities"
If the government emails you asking for money, I can finally legally advise you (for security purposes) to ignore them.
There's a new 0-day in negligent Google sheets that is YET ANOTHER reason to completely abandon their invasive Workspaces. The bug allows hackers to remotely mass email, by enabling a Python script to masquerade as a PDF on Windows, from Google sheets. [1][2] Hackers have been abusing this to impersonate government officials and ravage private businesses in many countries. And since use of their Workspace products is so common among many institutions, this has serious risks for stolen funds (on top of regularly scheduled government theft).
According to Bleeping Computer, "Google Sheets is used as a command and control server, pinging it to get new commands to execute on the infected device and as a repository for stolen data". [2] This is surprising to see this type of attack has not been fixed, given that a year ago Chinese hackers abused Google Sheets as a command and control in a similar way. [4]
Not only is it the government, but hackers are also targeting insurance, aerospace, transportation, academia, finance, technology, industrial, healthcare, automotive, hospitality, energy, media, manufacturing, telecom, and social benefit organizations. [1]
The Google sheets bug is only able work if you're using Microsoft Windows. Ironically, Google came under heat a year ago for trying to have Chrome force the operating system to attest that it's a "secure environment" (called Web Environment Integrity API) [3], which would lock Linux users out of many services as there's no company to verify identities.
But now, ironically Google sheets is only vulnerable on what they told us was the secure environment of Windows. Just imagine if Chrome's plans to haze Linux had went through, how much worse this current situation would be.
So I once again urge you to transition to Linux. And:
For your safety, please ignore emails from governments
Sources: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/google-sheets/hacked.html
The Fountain podcast app is corrupt bullshit
It's NOT "Powered by the Bitcoin Lightning Network"
It's a custodial bank account, closed source app, hosted on Amazon, with Gmail verification, letting you insert an RSS feed to one government domain.
Unlike the Arweave RSS system I presented yesterday,
Which is true and genuine freedom and censorship resistance by transcending physical locations with the files served on a 30+ gateway global CDN, going directly peer-to-peer,
With Fountain, you're putting your private Nostr key in a closed source mobile app, served to you by the censorship oppressors Google and Apple. They use the word "open" on their website, but their github doesn't have the code itself: https://github.com/fountain-fm
You think you're using peer-to-peer Bitcoin? It's a custodial bank account.
Look at this bullshit:
"Fountain charges a 4% transaction fee on top of every payment you make to a podcast but you can join Fountain Premium to reduce your fees to just 1%. We also charge 10 sats for comments and replies to reduce spam."
In Summary:
--Not Bitcoin, it's a bank account.
--Zero Censorship Resistance, Regular Files
--Insert Private Nostr key into closed source
--Heavy integration with Big Tech
--Surveillance of who is listening
--Leeching Bitcoin fees for RSS feeds and Nostr, which are both peer-to-peer without Fountain
You're being manipulated to reject real solutions like Arweave RSS, so these institutions can maintain power and control.
Yes it is. However, I disagree with Odysee owning the subscriptions. The issue is the end-user is separated from the protocol by Odysee's app acting as the middle man.
Instead, I advocate creators interact with the protocol directly using the gateways and a wallet, and then fans can follow via RSS. We outlined this here: https://simplifiedprivacy.com/arweave-amazing/ar.html
This is true, I do not fully agree with this decision, however I do see some rationale behind it as outlined in that article. The main protocol is Proof of Work, so you can not get voted out.
Arweave is a decentralized business taking in revenue. It does NOT compete with Bitcoin for general purpose money. In fact, Arweave sucks for money with slow transactions and horrible privacy. Arweave transactions are linked to the same wallet you used for your content, which everyone can see
Nobody in their right-mind would use Arweave to buy a bag of coffee. But nobody in their right-mind would deny the great value that Arweave offers to HOST a website selling coffee, that then collects Bitcoin from customers.
So Arweave enables Bitcoin businesses to defy oppressive censorship. Which after these Samarai wallet and Telegram incidents, they seem to be interested in doing. So while I dislike shitcoin venture capitalists printing money, at least they are doing a Proof of Work single-business coupon that improves my life, with no downside for me beyond education.
We outlined the benefits here:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/arweave-amazing/ar.html
Depends on what you do with the nostr account. If you got 100k followers and your entire business and social life depend on it, that's a different story than a random key you just made 5 minutes ago.
My mission is to empower 100 women to reclaim their bodies and holistic health while embracing ageless vitality. Together, we will elevate your life force, reach your fullest potential, and trust your highest self.
I am excited and I'm not even a woman.
So we just got the Arweave RSS going for the website, we're going put out some educational content shortly on how to use the protocol to update your domains. It's fairly easy to just upload, but to update the same feed is a little technical. Do you have any Linux experience? That's a good place to start because their best wallet uses the command line. You'd be typing things such as:
ardrive upload "your file name here"
I don't hate fees, I hate middlemen acting as banks. The issue with banks is fractional reserves that create new money out of thin air. This warps the economy and creates boom bust cycles as outlined as Fredrick Hayek.
Instead, users should directly interact with Miners and the protocols.
I'm not a socialist, I'm a libertarian.
I don't care if the devs charge a fee to use it, I hate middlemen acting as banks. The issue with banks is fractional reserves create new money out of thin air. This warps the economy and creates boom bust cycles as outlined as Fredrick Hayek.
Instead, users should directly interact with Miners and the protocols.
Your disrespectful attitude doesn't change the underlying fact that self-custody self-liquidity Bitcoin lightning is harder and more expensive to use for a new user than alternatives. Since when is it logical to call better products shit?
You've only demonstrated the ability to type the word shit, with no real argument. I predict your next strategy will be to walk away as though engaging with real debate was beneath you, as a cover for your pathetic logic.
It's code that functions by taking in revenue and paying out in a trustless way. That's a business without a manager.
Bitcoin "Core" had a core team of devs too, (who did nothing but purposefully wreck it) so just having devs doesn't make it centralized unless you're saying Bitcoin is/was centralized as well.
Further, Bitcoin is free floating also, as are all assets including the US dollar. Value is subjective and exists in the mind of consumer. This can not be fixed in time.
It's your subjective view that data isn't needed to be stored on-chain. As governments crack down, as what just happened with Telegram, the need for data to be removed away from a single company or location is a need that SOME desire.
This is the purpose of Nostr, but Nostr relays don't store images, video, audio files. Now can they using Bitcoin? Sure, but that's not programmed into it. Therefore, it requires trust. Trust is centralized.
Further, Nostr relays are centralized as admitted by Fiatjaf on his Cloudflare blog:
https://fiatjaf.com/87a208d9.html
On the other hand, with Arweave, all the gateways are the same with content, but different ISPs and coordinators. This is clearly objectively more decentralized than Nostr's Cloudflare and Hetzner relays.
Further, you make no reference to Nostr or the entire internet's dependence on Cloudflare. I suppose you think it's good that this one company controls and sees all data?
And finally regarding your speculation point,
Bitcoin also has speculation, as does anything with value. You're talking right now using an electronic device, one COULD speculate on electronics. Does this mean there is no value in electronics?
Revolutionary Privacy from New RSS feed!
Normally websites force you into submission,
Which usually means a rectal exam by Cloudflare, Google capcha, and AWS,
Instead with Arweave, the visitor picks the terms.
Arweave has:
No Forced Locations
No Lag
No DDoS
No Cloudflare
No Censorship
No Tor Ban
No IP Logs
No Cost to View
No Government
No New Software
No New RSS Reader
The SAME RSS readers work! You do not have to download any new software.
You get as much speed and privacy as you want.
The ONLY obstacle is in your mind. Let's dive in and learn:
Germany:
https://privacy.arweaveblock.com/arweave-amazing/ar.html
New York:
https://privacy.exodusdiablo.xyz/arweave-amazing/ar.html
India:
https://privacy.arns-gateway.com/arweave-amazing/ar.html
media wants to eliminate criticism of politicians by showing videos or audio of them doing or saying something. and deepfake education is the path to reduce the power of this. For example Joe Biden falling down a staircase
We have a Layer 1 node and will be adding lightning to it later,
what is the Bitcoin Layer 1 minimum requirement to open channels for minimum liquidity?
Could one:
borrow a million sats,
Setup the L2 node
Send a million sats with the new node to a swap website for L1
And repay the loan
And if so, how long can one keep that open for?
Thanks for this explanation. If one uses foreign liquidity, and they go out of business, the seeds can be backed up and restored on a new node? (to not lose the L2)
Russian Nostr:
Make Money Off Telegram's CEO being Jailed!?
I must say this first:
I promote the USE of cryptocurrency, and less so gambling on price.
However,
it's a struggle to get people to give a shit about freedom tech.
So,
With this extreme pessimism in mind, I pitch this amazing social network as an investment.
Bastyon is dubbed the "Russian Nostr",
Unlike Nostr, which is easily banned by Russian & Chinese authorities because it uses websockets to relays with known government domains… Bastyon nodes use torrents for files which functions completely independent of government DNS and works on nodes with constantly changing IPs.
Given the effectiveness at Bastyon’s proven ability to penetrate government firewalls in China and Russia, we can essentially guarantee that Bastyon will beat out Farcaster, Nostr, and Lens for the RUSSIAN MARKET when many Russians won’t or can’t even access the competition. In fact, even many US Big Tech companies are completely shut out of Russia. Even if just 1 or 2% of Telegram’s userbase moves over to posting on Bastyon, the coin would have to dramatically increase to even allow them to post daily.
Let's dive in to this trend:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/bastyon-telegram/investment.html
It depends on how you define censorship
Is it state-level? There having no government domains helps.
Is it individual? There Nostr wins, as there's no vote on illegal content like Bastyon has for child porn and such
The "Center for Countering Digital Hate" has a plan to silence criticism of the government
Here's how their plan works:
Step 1) They use AI to make politicians do fake stuff (nicknamed "deepfake")
Step 2) They infiltrate left-leaning media to spread their "educational materials".
They'll say "Look at these deepfakes! That is possible! So we must educate the public on election disinformation"
Step 3) They put in people's minds that all digital evidence can easily be manipulated.
And since everyday voters can not ever access first-hand sources or interview key-people,
Then:
The everyday person can't trust online sources
Therefore:
They can only trust authorities telling them what is real.
You see, the book 1984 had them literally burn books,
The new strategy is to propagandize people to the point that they won't accept what's written.
Why does WordPress suck?
a) Slower for visitors
You're selling less business, people are walking away from your malware that loads slow.
Search engines punish slow speed.
b) Slower to make
I hope you like carpel tunnel. WordPress forces you to go in a browser and manually modify shit with a mouse, which is proven to hurt your hands in the long term. Plus it's slow load speeds to work on something constantly reloading on a remote server, so you're urinating on your own time. On top of network issues with Tor
c) Leeching Big Tech malware.
You're leaking to the government your income, your sales, and reducing your freedom of speech. While it's technically true WordPress is "open source", it has malware Google fonts by default on the front end, jsdeliver to function, and Cloudflare and Google on the backend. Then to do most tasks, you to install 3rd party plugins which are often closed source and have security vulnerabilities. This is because WordPress suffers from mission creep, where they want to do everything.
d) Hypocrite
You say you want decentralization, but your customers think you're a hypocrite. Most uBlock Origin users immediately see the google fonts and JSDeliver and know you're using WordPress. Now you're trying to sell them on your expertise, but you're using amateur tools.
e) WordPress plugins need constant updates for security, but your setup has a unique combination of plugins. Therefore, as time passes by, the probability of a unique failure increases, which costs more money to solve.
Instead, ditch bloat WordPress, and go with Hugo.
Hugo is a static site generator. This means it generates static content locally on your computer, then you upload and serve a finished static thing. On the other hand, malware WordPress has a live database, and then dynamically creates that content on the site while your visitors wait for it to load.
With Hugo, you don't need any coding knowledge to easily and effortlessly format text, add pictures, and change the layout of your articles, on your local offline computer with the keyboard like an alpha male, as opposed to a worthless carpel tunnel bitch clicking a mouse in a remote browser using Big Tech malware.
Consider reaching out to Simplified Privacy's on-staff graphic designer to help you transition your content over to Hugo, to become a master of your domain. (DM me)
Hugo theme depends on the person's taste, that's art
Filezilla or other FTP clients would work for windows.
I hear you on getting people off it. It's a battle for anyone doing freedom tech. including nostr, monero, messengers, ect.
Keep in mind that the bulk of these WordPress sites don't just suck because it's WP, but the content
It's very amusing that in the same thread, some people attack me for requiring too much technical skill to switch off WordPress.
And others bitch that Hugo is too normie, and build your own function
Who decides what to censor as spam?
Nostr and Lens solve the "spam and scam" problem by having the client decide. For example Amethyst for android will hide posts from accounts that others report as scams. These "others" are defined by people you follow, but this essentially puts it up to a community vote of large influencers to silence you.
On Lens, once you're labeled spam, you appear in the "show more" of comments. This is a huge turn-off to new users with no followers, who are treated like lower class citizens.
Farcaster solves it in a similar way, but by having the official team label it, and then since their client is so large and influential, their list is often distributed to other clients. This is absolutely horrible and way too centralized. While it's true that posts to your followers would still show up, they are effectively silencing your comments.
Session has zero censorship for mass DMs in the way I use it, even under outright sanctions. The nodes don't even know I am the sender, and I'm assigned new receivers if they drop me. That's why I like it. But the market likes simpleX more because it rotates encryption keys, so it's tough to get new followers. Can't fight the market.
Bastyon solves the problem by a community vote for outright illegal content, to get it off the nodes, such as child porn and narcotics sales. The voters are picked based on their total upvotes, called "reputation". I disagree with this approach, as if we're going to vote, it should be the nodes hosting it (like Arweave does)...
Files on Arweave have an unofficial vote, where the nodes can opt out of storing it. And if all the miners chosen in a block opt out, then there's no financial penalty for dropping the content. But if they have the content and others don't, then they have a financial advantage to mine that block over competitors. This approach is good for websites, but for a social network with permissionless replies, it's way too passive.
Therefore:
I disagree with all these solutions.
In my view, the best way to handle spam (in a permissionless system) is to allow the original poster to decide which replies are spam. Then the end user can decide to toggle on or off "criticism and spam" for the replies. After all, if you're following someone, you trust their judgment on the subject they are speaking about. And this decentralizes the decision to each individual poster.
Now I do the ironic thing, and turn it over to my replies. Do you think this approach is right?
I hear you, and I personally think if the relays filter at a low threshold it should be fine, but if they up that, then you'd likely want a majority of the client devs (including mobile) to be on-board in education of whats going on
How you can be deanonymized through Tor
Tor is an excellent tool for privacy, and we do not recommend you avoid it. However, there are many limitations to be aware of and ways of using it that can compromise your anonymity on Tor. This post will discuss just a few of the ways, but there may be others that the public is unaware of. For example in 2017, the FBI dropped a case against a school worker accused of downloading child pornography because the FBI would have rather let him go than reveal the source code for how they deanonymitized him through Tor. [1]
The techniques we will cover include:
1) JavaScript based attacks
2) Cookies
3) Compromised Exit Nodes
4) Compromised Middle Relays
5) Compromised Entrance Guards
6) Opening Files Outside Tor
7) Ultrasonic Sounds
JavaScript Attacks
JavaScript can be used to identify a user through Tor in a number of different ways. This is why Tor Browser comes pre-bundled with the “NoScript” plugin. This plugin can either reduce or disable JavaScript’s ability. When the plugin is set on the “Safest” setting, JavaScript is completely disabled. This level of security is required to completely stay anonymous and secure on Tor.
The first way that JavaScript can identify a user is if a malicious website were to inject code into Mozilla Firefox (the foundation upon which the Tor Browser bundle is built). An example of this exploit was demonstrated as recently as 2022 by Manfred Paul at a Pwn2Own hacking contest of getting a user’s real IP address through Tor. [4a] [4b]
But this is not a one time bug or incident, as Mozilla Firefox has a history of being vulnerable to these types of malicious JavaScript injections. Malicious script hacks caused Tor to have to patch to correct them in 2019 [5], 2016 [6], and 2013 [8].
Back in 2016, cybersecurity researcher Jose Carlos Norte revealed ways that JavaScript could be used to identify Tor users through its hardware’s limitations. These advanced techniques fingerprinted the user’s mouse movements, which are tied to hardware restrictions and potentially unique operating system settings. Norte additionally warned how running CPU intensive code could potentially identify the user’s PC based on how long it takes to execute. [7]
The point of all of this is that all of these vulnerabilities did not work when NoScript was set to the safest mode of disabling JavaScript.
Browser Alone doesn’t stop cookies
Another security issue with Tor is pre-existing cookies, which could compromise your anonymity. For example, let’s say you previously signed on to your Amazon account from the same computer you are now using Tor Browser in (but using a different browser). If you now visit an Amazon page using Tor Browser (or maybe even receive a forwarded Amazon URL), you could potentially be connected to the Amazon cookie already on your computer and be deanonymized instantly. This would immediately connect the Tor traffic with you.
Remember though that Tor Browser is only one of a few options for using Tor. The way around this cookie issue is to use Tor in a virtual machine with the Whonix operating system or the USB operating system version of Tor called Tails.
Compromised Tor Exit Nodes
Your traffic enters Tor encrypted and stays encrypted through its journey throughout the mixnet until it gets to the final stop, which is the exit node. Here the exit node communicates with the “regular” clearnet without Tor’s onion encryption to access a website on your behalf.
Outside of Tor on the “regular” clearweb internet, most websites use httpS encryption. This is shown with a padlock in the top by the URL. If the website is http, without the “s,” then it’s unencrypted plain text data. Anything you do using an unencrypted http website with a Tor exit node can be snooped on and seen. However, this risk is relatively low because of the high percentage of websites that use httpS.
The biggest risk is that the httpS encryption can be removed using SSL stripping. This is when the Tor Exit node acts as a man in the middle, faking the server with which you’re trying to authenticate and downgrading the connection to httpS. For example in 2020, a malicious actor took control of over 23% of all Tor exit nodes and started doing SSL stripping to steal Bitcoin being sent on mixing websites. [9] [10]
To prevent against these types of attacks, upgrade the Tor security level to safest, which requires the use of HTTPS encryption with “HTTPS-Only”. Also pay attention to the top icon by the URL bar, to make sure there’s always a padlock showing it’s using this encryption.
You can click on the icon to see your Tor connection route and the certificate authority. Certificate authorities are the entities that validate the authenticity of the HTTPS encryption to this IP address. On a side note, these certificate authorities can act as a censor by removing an entry’s IP address, and this is one of the flaws that many cryptocurrency blockchains are actively working to solve.
Another way to prevent malicious Tor exit nodes from stealing your data or cryptocurrency is to avoid using exit nodes by using primarily Onion services. If you only login to Onion websites, then you never exit Tor. This doesn’t mean completely avoiding clearweb sites, but try to only browse them and not login. It’s the login/password credentials that malicious exit nodes steal with SSL stripping.
Malicious Middle Relays
The next type of risk is malicious middle relays — the hop between an entrance guard and an exit node. For example, the malicious group KAX17 had been identified as having run up to 35% of the middle relays and 10% of the overall Tor network before the official Tor project removed 900 of its servers. [15] [16]
While malicious exit nodes often want to steal Bitcoin or data, the goal of malicious middle relays is to deanonymatize users by seeing the path of their traffic. This is especially true on Onion hidden services because it doesn’t even use exit nodes.
There are a few things you can do to reduce this risk. We will go over them in the entrance guard section, because they are the same methods.
Malicious Entrance Guards
Entrance guards can see what IP address is connecting to the Tor network, but can’t see the traffic itself as it’s onion layer encrypted. However, they can gather some information, such as the time, size, and frequency of the data packets.
Researchers from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Qatar Computing Research Institute wrote in a 2015 paper that if one of their malicious machine learning algorithm servers gets randomly picked to be a user’s entrance guard, then it may be able to figure out what website that user is accessing. The MIT researchers are able to do this by analyzing the patterns of packets from a pre-determined list of websites and seeing if they match the traffic their malicious entrance guard snoops. [17] [18]
According to MIT News, the MIT machine learning algorithm has above an 80% chance to be able to identify what hidden services a given Tor participant is hosting, but there are two conditions. First the host has to be directly connected to its malicious entrance guard and second the hosted site was on MIT’s predetermined list. [18] And finding who is the host of controversial materials is often of more interest to oppressive regimes than just who are the website’s visitors.
How can you avoid this?
There are a few ways you can reduce your risks with malicious entrance guards and middle relays.
First, use your own hosted ob4s bridge as an entrance guard to avoid ever having both a malicious relay and guard. Our company can help you set this up on a cloud server (VPS) or you can do it on your own.
And second, you can enter Tor with a VPN first.
Opening Files Outside of Tor
If files are opened outside of Tor Browser, they could have code that executes and reveals back to an adversary your real IP address. To avoid this, one can use a dedicated virtual machine like Whonix, which forces all traffic in the VM through Tor. Another option is the Tails operating system on a USB stick, which automatically erases everything after you’re done.
However, if you want to use a PDF outside of Tor, then you’ll need to convert it to plain text. One great Linux tool to do this inside Whonix’s command line is PDFtoText. You can install it with this command:
sudo apt install poppler-utils
Then use it with this:
pdftotext -layout input.pdf output.txt
The -layout flag keeps the original layout. input.pdf is the original file, and output.txt is what you want the output to be named.
Ultrasonic Cross Device Tracking
As University of California Santa Barbara cybersecurity researchers presented at a BlackHat European conference, malicious websites can identify users through Tor using sounds invisible to the human ear. [20]
The way this works is that many popular phone apps use Silverpush’s ad system, which can receive high frequency audio without the phone’s owner being aware of it. Audio of this type could be broadcast maliciously from a Tor website.
Silverpush enables the sale of your location data
These doctoral researchers warned of the dangers Silverpush presents by being connected to wide-spread platforms such as Google Ads. To demonstrate this, the researchers played video of their lab experiment, which de-anonymatized a laptop through Tor Browser, as a result of an Android’s mic next to the laptop’s speakers, while being signed in to a Google account. [34]
While the researchers presented a Chrome browser app that can stop this, we do not recommend it for Tor use because of fingerprinting (and Tor Browser is Firefox based). The best solution is to turn off the speakers and any phones around you when visiting controversial or private websites. Also consider a degoogled phone with a custom operating system, such as Graphene or Calyx, which would allow you to modify when apps have microphone privileges.
Conclusion
In this article, we covered a variety of different ways your identity can be revealed through Tor. To summarize your best defenses are:
1) Disable JavaScript with Tor’s Safest Setting
2) Use a custom private entrance bridge (ob4s) for an entrance guard that you control. Our company can help you set this up, or do it on your own.
3) Use Whonix or Tails when you need JavaScript or for doing anything outside a browser, such as opening unknown software or files
4) Before connecting to Tor, first use a high quality VPN with OpenVPN (Wireguard won't be faster for Tor)
5) Avoid resizing Tor Browser because of fingerprinting
Consider sharing what you learned. And of course, here's the sources:
https://simplifiedprivacy.com/how-you-can-be-deanonymized-through-tor/index.html
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