Okay, sure, let's do this. "nomadic identity" 1. No one has ever even come close to explaining how using a did: uri is supposed to work2. Even assuming it works, no one can explain how it's different than oidc3. Even assuming it was different, what hap...

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@by_caballero @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus i agree that it’s problematic, but i think the millions of people who are getting screwed over by ransomware is a more urgent issue

bumblefudge

@ariadne @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus my argument is that there is no OBJECTIVELY ethical employment under capitalism. we might actually agree on lots of these topics, just don't tell me i'm objectively wrong in the few corner-cases where we disagree on strategy (or tactics)

bumblefudge

@ariadne @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus yeah ransomware is real real bad, i totally agree. censorship-resistant payment channels are extremely dangerous, and i don't actually think they're a net-positive addition to the world. but politics, like monetary policy, like engineering, is all tradeoffs all the way down, there is no objective right answer to hard problems like sanctions avoidance and ransomware protection!

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@by_caballero @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus any strategy which enables something as terrible as ransomware is objectively wrong and i will call it as such.

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@by_caballero @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus sanctions avoidance is also a criminal activity and frankly i am disinterested in helping people like Putin launder their money. that is not the kind of “social justice” i am interested in.

bumblefudge

@ariadne @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus that's giving technology a lot of credit-- ransomware didn't suddenly flourish cuz digital cash was invented, it flourished because the megacorps that sell people software with vulnerabilities and tell them to put all their data in it aren't liable when the hackers ransom them. without digital cash they'll just use physical cash or gold bricks or some other means of paying the ransom

bumblefudge

@ariadne @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus again, neither am i, we just disagree on how directly i'm helping putin by doing what i do (you still haven't asked). even if i were a core protocol dev on a cryptocurrency, from there to my directly contributing is a subjective jump. not one i fault you for making, just one i politely and subjectively disagree with, because i don't take clients that i consider helpful to putin . if you knew the number of clients i've lost over these issues...

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@by_caballero @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus digital cash enabled the automation needed to make ransomware scale, and i will concede that the largest waves came from 0day vulnerabilities that were kept secret by the intelligence sector. but ransomware is directly evil and it exists on the backbone of digital cash.

i shed no tears when eGold and liberty reserve were shut down by the DHS.

bumblefudge

@ariadne @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus lol me neither. and i actually agree that crypto contributes to the scaling of a seriously sketchy underworld. but is it the root cause? where in this picture does the long history of mossad and US intelligence funding ransomware R&D and literally growing the 0day market to price out enemies fit in? the more we talk the less we disagree, it seems

Ariadne Conill 🐰:therian:

@by_caballero @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus i went to a cyberweapon convention where everyone who attended had to have a security clearance last year. it was sure fascinating stuff.

i don’t disagree that the root cause is elsewhere, but cryptocurrency created a choke point which is significantly more difficult to defeat verses the old days where we would just shut down the illicit payment processors like eGold.

if i heard dissidents saying send us cryptocurrency, or abortion clinics saying send us cryptocurrency to pay for abortions, i would be willing to believe that there is a possible good for cryptocurrency, but i don’t see that.

instead i see spam and ransomware and ddos for hire. services which cannot exist in a traditional finance ecosystem.

bumblefudge

@ariadne @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus well, *I* have seen crypto used for funding abortions and smuggling people out of oppressive regimes and feeding people in gaza but I'm the first to admit that data is not the plural of anecdote and i'm disappointed with the ratio of censorship-resistant capital flows i'm happy about to flows i'm unhappy about. no one is paying journalists to cover the former... but plenty of journos get paid to downplay or scandalize the latter.

bumblefudge

@ariadne @hrefna @JessTheUnstill @jenniferplusplus cyberweapon convention sounds awesome, btw, i'd love to hear more about that as my pegasus/ransomware intell mostly comes from niche war-crimes investigative journalism. i need to AFK for the day very soon but next time i'm in a virtual room with you i'm gonna ask more about that!