regnull

There is a long way from “we don’t fully understand the side effects” to the “extinction of human race”.

There is nothing ever “definitely” about Russia. It could be as simple as “look what we can do”.

How about you stop strategizing and just say what you want to say?

I guess we don't want to wait to find out.

The original plan was to do Crimea 2.0, just walk in and put a soldier on every corner. No one would resist.

That didn't go down as planned. The current plan is Grozny 2.0. Demolish cities with artillery and then capture the ruins.

Perhaps you are not aware, but Kasparov was a major figure in Russian politics since 1990s.

For those of you who say "we can't provoke Russia" and "we can't risk a nuclear war", I'd like to ask, how far are you willing to go to prevent a nuclear war? I assume you are OK with losing Ukraine. How about Poland? Baltics? Finland? Western Europe? Alaska? And yes, there was calls in Russia to "get Alaska back". What's that? You say "it can't happen"? The same thing was said about Ukraine before, and yet here we are. Imagine this situation: Putin overruns one of the Baltic countries, a NATO member. Then he says, if anyone intervenes, there will be a nuclear war. What then? Avoid the war at all costs? It didn't work that great in history, it wouldn't work now.

He can only suffer a major failure once. Being an authoritarian is a tough job. Sharks are always circling.

Time for a shameless plug. I'm working on a decentralized, end-to-end encrypted email, and it is currently functioning, with support for POP3/IMAP clients, as well as a web client.

The idea is keep the identity registry on a blockchain, so your identity cannot be taken away from you. Messages between users are always encrypted, in transit or at rest. We also have a gateway that allows you to use the system as a regular email, and proxy server that translates our internal API (protobufs, gRPC) to the legacy email protocols, SMTP/POP3/IMAP.

https://ubikom.cc

Ubikom is encrypted email service based on decentralized identity. All messages are encrypted while in transit and at rest. Unlike other secure email services out there, our identity registry is blockchain-based, and will be eventually available to everyone, which means you don't need to worry that your email provider goes under.

Well if you google for SMIME adoption numbers, you mostly find articles about why exactly SMIME is dead. I would guess it hasn't solved the issue. Our approach is to make it impossible to send a message that is not secure (signed and encrypted). We also have a decentralized registry of encryption keys.

I'm working on https://ubikom.cc, end-to-end encrypted email service based on the concept of self-sovereign identity. Basically, you keep the encryption key, and all your messages are encrypted, on the wire or at rest. The core platform is open-source, the code is available here: https://github.com/regnull/ubikom

Billions of users use GMail (or similar services). These companies are making money by selling ads, and their "free" email service is just another way to improve ad targeting. Furthermore, your account can be disabled at any time and for any reason. Sure, you can switch to Protonmail, Tutanota, etc. because they are "good" companies. But why do you have to trust to any of them? Keep your encryption key, and have communication providers move around encrypted bytes on your behalf. Store your identity on a blockchain (maybe), so that no one can take it away.

That's the idea. If you'd like to work on something like this, get in touch. lgx (at) ubikom.cc

Like being accused, exonerated, and then taking a victory lap over all the major publications to the sympathetic audience. Damn you America! Just like China, no?

Also:

"The FBI documents alleged that Chen received $19 million from China's Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech).[9] [23] On January 22, 2021, MIT's President released a second statement pointing out that these funds went to not Chen, but to MIT itself to support a departmental research collaboration with SUSTech which Chen simply directed on MIT's behalf.[25] [26]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gang_Chen_(engineer)

SUSTech, lol.

It's weird it took them so long to disable streaming. One of the first things you do in this case is roll back the last software and config updates, even innocent looking ones.

I would file it under "things you want to believe are true are actually true" category. It gets clicks.

Here's what I don't understand. I the example the author gives, a sandwich is $11, and at let's say 9% profit margin the restaurant makes $1 on it. Why not make the sandwich $12 and double your profit? Sure it doesn't make a huge difference for the customers.

Yes. In fact, we decided to go blockchain way (for now) with some hesitation. It just seemed like the best way to address the decentralized identity piece for now. But there are downsides, for sure.

I see bits and pieces of this idea floating around, but I don't think anyone has combined them into a complete platform yet.

Your identity is your private key. It can't be taken away in a way how your Google account can be just disabled one day. We also have a way to retain control if your private key gets compromised - you can have a parent key, which can then be used to disable your compromised key and re-assign your name to another key. Since you never use your parent key (presumably kept in a safe offline place), it gives you some degree of protection.

I'm working on a decentralized identity-based communications project. Think of this as an email (or instant messaging, social network, etc.) where your "account" is yours forever and cannot be taken away. We have email part functioning and there are some real users. At this point, I'm working on the decentralization part, where the identity registry will be put on a blockchain (likely custom Ethereum-based blockchain, to keep it free for users). Join us if you want to make the world a better place by fighting censorship and personal information collection. We are 100% open source:

https://ubikom.cc https://github.com/regnull/ubikom

Hate to be a pedant, but Izvestiya was a propaganda branch of the Supreme Soviet, not the communist party. Whatever the minor difference it can make.

> if the president lets go of Taiwan, the CCP would be overthrown tomorrow

Haha, no. CCP will just present it as a victory for some weird reason, and everyone will just keep applauding. There might be some resentment, but not open one.

It sounds like they are trying to have it both ways. On one hand, they need to do something. On the other hand, they can say, well we couldn’t identify the perpetrators, so oops, we tried.

The facts are, Nikita Khrushchev was humiliated by the outcome of the Cuban missile crisis. Oswald lived in USSR, came back to the US to discover that nobody really cares, and was eager to gain some sort of celebrity status. He was also nuts. Could the Soviet Union know about his plans and give him some help? Possibly. This would also explain the secrecy around the documents. Any decisive knowledge that a foreign country had a major role in an assassination of an American president would lead to a war between two nuclear nations. We probably wouldn't know until the last documents are declassified.

> none of the “crimes” happened on US soil

He is charged with helping Chelsea Manning to hack into a government computer which did happen on US soil.

“ they charged him with conspiring to commit unlawful computer intrusion based on his alleged agreement to try to help Ms. Manning break an encoded portion of passcode that would have permitted her to log on to a classified military network under another user’s identity.”

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/11/world/europe/julian-assan...

Haha, yeah. "For all intents and purposes", "virtually", and don't forget the weird "stranger on stranger". Perhaps if the perpetrator knows you, it makes it better?

Should be easy to find out using a google search, no? Here you go:

https://www1.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statist...

Total crimes, 2020: 1817, 2021: 2268

Quite a bit of an increase. 2021 is not over yet.

I was working on something quite similar for the last year. It’s an email system based on digital identities, where every piece of outgoing mail is encrypted and signed. It works with the existing email infrastructure by having a gateway which does encryption for the incoming mail and decrypts the outgoing mail. There is also a IMAP/SMTP bridge to allow any existing email client to work with the system.

Eventually the identity registry will be decentralized, choosing the right blockchain is the tricky part.

https://ubikom.cc

Is that the same Dmitry Sklyarov who was arrested by the FBI back in 2001, triggering a protest campaign?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Elcom_Ltd.

Ah, memories.