Hacker News Reader

confeiton Arrest Of U.S. Citizen For Assisting North Korea In Evading Sanctions

- What was the title of your talk?

- "Blockchain and Peace", I've given it before.

- Does any of the talk mention (looks down at paper) "smart contracts".

- Probably yes. There is a slide on trusted lending circles in India.

- Can you explain to me, when someone sets up one of these (looks down at paper) "smart contracts", can they benefit from this?

- Well, yes. Or they can lose. You see --

- Thanks.

> GRIFFITHS presentation was called "Blockchain and Peace", and he discussed, among other things how a blockchain technology, including a "smart contract" could be used to benefit the DPKR.

confeiton Arrest Of U.S. Citizen For Assisting North Korea In Evading Sanctions

Two things I find plausible: He was under public and private surveillance, if not for his work, then for his first-degree contacts and targeting by other countries. Imagine the US state coming to you for a friendly chat: "Sir, we are aware you want to go to North-Korea to present on this 'blockchain' and 'smart contracts' thingamabob. This is a very bad idea. We only allow certain journalists and those futhering our national interest to go, you should have googled that.". "Hey, that's unfair! You really mean I am not allowed to go present public data on a conference, just because I happen to have a U.S. passport and hacker knowledge?". "Well, national interest wink-wink?" "No, thanks.". It would be fair to describe that as "sought permission and was denied."

Also of note that the complaint does not seem to have the actual presentation the guy did. The FBI must have been really nervous and interested in a certain line of questioning and topic. According to statement the audience left with a better understanding of blockchain and smart contracts then they had before. I don't think the guy held a presentation about "How to use Cryptocurrency-1 to launder money and evade sanctions". The 1 unit of Cryptocurrency-1 transfer from NK to SK could have been a hacker asking themselves: "Is this possible? Can I actually do this? What happens?". Well in this case you get the FBI-equivalent of blowing out the power in the neighborhood.

Of course, after the conference, some shady NK government employees came up to him and asked him more pointed questions (almost like an agent at the early defcons singling out Asian participants). It states they discussed "proof of work", not that the suspect was given a free (or paid) consultancy gig. I think they had nothing about the conference, so they had to wriggle all this out of him during an interview. FBI damn good at this. They got all the facts they needed to make this a convincing complaint. But reality is not straightforward.

I think you can think of plenty of other computer software nerds who got fucked by the law for doing what they do, and not murdering their wives.

confeiton Arrest Of U.S. Citizen For Assisting North Korea In Evading Sanctions

Fair enough. Just offering an alternative/oldskool reading of this situation (this thread started out surprisingly negative against a mindset that used to be common among hackers). Laws on sharing information can sometimes be at odds with the hacker spirit of freeing information, for instance in the case of Aaron Swartz.

confeiton Information Is Physics

Information is physics: Information (bits) can be viewed as energy. This view allows use of tools and formulas from statistical physics and relate these to information theory (Shannon Entropy == Energy Entropy). It then becomes possible to describe and quantify the information flow between systems, or the thermodynamic cost (heat generation) of computation/flipping bits. It allows for units of measurements such as temperature and pressure to be applied to information.

Physics is information: Energy can be viewed as information. Some researchers investigate the notion of "it from bit": that all of physical reality is the result, and derives its essence, from yes-no bit strings/Turing programs. This view offers answers to the limits of physical inference machines such as the human brain. It leads to the field of digital physics, offering a notion of a computational universe, applying our knowledge of algorithmic information theory, such as the distribution of random strings, to physical reality.

confeiton Arrest Of U.S. Citizen For Assisting North Korea In Evading Sanctions

I get your point, but then again, classified information is protected and different from the technical information shared in this case, and how to poison a water supply is on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_supply_terrorism

confeiton Arrest Of U.S. Citizen For Assisting North Korea In Evading Sanctions

Hacker arrested for sharing information.

confeiton Instagram’s Explore Recommender System

Just read it as "Powered by big data" or "Powered by software" or "Powered by mathematics". It sounds fake and dumb. If it sounds fake and dumb to you, a ML practicioner, then maybe this article was not written for you. If you read the article itself, you get the feeling that AI was tacked on at the last minute, likely with an intent that has nothing to do with knowledge sharing.

confeiton Shannon Labs – $100K Fellowship to support independent researchers

That's why I called it naughty and not blatant manipulation. Now if this were an ICO or a company looking for an easy flip in the overhyped AI market, it would be different.

confeiton Shannon Labs – $100K Fellowship to support independent researchers

Because you also used a voting ring (next to astroturfing). Admire the hustle, though a bit too naughty.

confeiton Shannon Labs – $100K Fellowship to support independent researchers

Cryptocurrency.

confeiton Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

I just realized that doing the above sourcing on google.cn would probably not have yielded any good results. This means Google itself is part of the censored content. That is pretty scary!

confeiton Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Rain

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Aurora

https://googleblog.blogspot.com/2010/01/new-approach-to-chin...

Google enlisted the help of the NSA after their internal code repository was hacked. (And before the NSA hacked Google for surveillance purposes).

> [...] we detected a highly sophisticated and targeted attack on our corporate infrastructure originating from China that resulted in the theft of intellectual property from Google.

> These attacks and the surveillance they have uncovered--combined with the attempts over the past year to further limit free speech on the web--have led us to conclude that we should review the feasibility of our business operations in China. We have decided we are no longer willing to continue censoring our results on Google.cn, and so over the next few weeks we will be discussing with the Chinese government the basis on which we could operate an unfiltered search engine within the law, if at all. We recognize that this may well mean having to shut down Google.cn, and potentially our offices in China.

https://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/19/technology/19china.html

> Lanxiang, in east China’s Shandong Province, is a huge vocational school that was established with military support and trains some computer scientists for the military. The school’s computer network is operated by a company with close ties to Baidu, the dominant search engine in China and a competitor of Google.

> “I think it’s impossible for our students to hack Google or other U.S. companies because they are just high school graduates and not at an advanced level. [...]

confeiton Google Plans to Launch Censored Search Engine in China, Leaked Documents Reveal

1. It is because we/I expect better from Google. Google has such a huge responsibility, being the gateway to the world's information, and we trust them with that position. For-profit and deliberate blocking access to information erodes that trust. I would not care about other companies doing this, but seeing I care about Google doing this shows me that Google has a great PR/goodwill they've build up over the years. With this move I am left wondering if that is deserved, or if it was merely manipulating me for fanboy profit.

2. I think that is because they love working there, they hold their employer to a very high standard, and they don't want to take a pay cut to work for another (perhaps US-only) company with morals more aligned to theirs.

Doing (or even thinking about) ethical business, puts you at a disadvantage over those that care more about profit and increasing their power. Losing prospective profits by doing the right thing is not a popular choice for a commercial business, so the incentives are there to just sell out your soul and go along with censorship (or spying on your users). For Facebook, this went on for years, until they found themselves in a mess. This mess was the result of 1000s of decisions made by all employees (not just upper management). I commend Google's employees for standing up for their beliefs and vision for the company. Only in a very Ayn Rand world is this sabotage. I am sure the big chief in charge of foreign markets views it as sabotage, but luckily Google is not run by only Eric Schmidt's.