fear-anger-hate (u/fear-anger-hate)

fear-anger-hate commented on Visualizing All ISBNs annas-archive.org/blog/al... · Posted by u/RyanShook

sebstefan · 8 months ago

>$10,000 bounty

>There is much to explore here, so we’re announcing a bounty for improving the visualization above. Unlike most of our bounties, this one is time-bound. You have to submit your open source code by 2025-01-31 (23:59 UTC).

>The best submission will get $6,000, second place is $3,000, and third place is $1,000.

>All bounties will be awarded using Monero (XMR).

? Why are they using crypto, and, weirdly enough, specifically the crypto people use for buying drugs, to award this?

Is it some kind of scam?

fear-anger-hate · 8 months ago

They use monero because what they are doing (copyright infringement) will get you in to big trouble anywhere in the western world. Without cryptocurrencies much of the modern large scale archival efforts wouldn't be possible, or at the very least would significantly increase risks for the people participating in it. For me this alone is a good enough reason to admit that there are valid reasons for existence of privacy coins.

The harm they may cause in the short term via tax avoidance or being used to buy drugs is minimal, but the possibility that because of them archivists are able to fund servers for data that future historians wouldn't have otherwise been able to get their hands on? Priceless.

fear-anger-hate commented on Google’s TOS doesn’t eliminate a user’s Fourth Amendment rights, judge rules [pdf] ww3.ca2.uscourts.gov/deci... · Posted by u/coloneltcb

rmbyrro · 10 months ago

The harshness of sentence is not for the action of keeping the photos in itself, but the individual suffering and social damage caused by the actions that he incentivizes when he consumes such content.

fear-anger-hate · 10 months ago

Assuming the person is a passive consumer with no messages / money exchanged with anyone, it is very hard to prove social harm or damage. Sentences should be proportional to the crime. Treating possession of cp as equivalent of literally raping a child just seems absurd to me. IMO, just for the legal protection of the average citizen, a simple possession should never warrant jail time.

fear-anger-hate commented on Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI futurism.com/the-byte/man... · Posted by u/CharlesW

rich_sasha · a year ago

I guess renders or cartoons of child pornography is equally banned, so I guess that's not a defence here, as the law stands.

fear-anger-hate · a year ago

I think they are legal in the US as long as the render or drawing is not depicting a real person.

fear-anger-hate commented on Man Arrested for Creating Child Porn Using AI futurism.com/the-byte/man... · Posted by u/CharlesW

stackghost · a year ago

>Or does this give pedophiles a way to satiate their desires indefinitely with only AI-based content, and lead to a lower portion abusing actual kids?

By that logic, if I see regular porn I would not be interested in having sex.

I assure you this is not the case, and your premise is flawed.

fear-anger-hate · a year ago

Way to dismiss a solid argument based on an anecdote. I wouldn't be so quick to conclude that porn has nothing to do with seeking out real life sex, especially given how it has been widely studied that the amount of sex young adults are having has been steadily going down since the end of 90's.

fear-anger-hate commented on WormGPT – The Generative AI Tool Cybercriminals Are Using slashnext.com/blog/wormgp... · Posted by u/mikpanko

fear-anger-hate · 2 years ago

I saw a twitter thread about the "WormGPT" a few days ago and was annoyed to see how much engagement it seemed to get given how obvious nothing burger it was. The few examples of its code output were laughably bad.

Hackforums has been the place where skiddies sell overhyped shit to other skiddies for well over a decade, I can guarantee that absolutely no one there is training their own AI. Everything that the article mentions, GPT3 turbo or GPT4 can already do and it wouldn't surprise me one bit if it turned out most of the stuff being sold at HF turned out to be just glorified frontends for gpt3 turbo or some open source LLM.

fear-anger-hate commented on Coinbase halts operations in Japan coinbase.com/blog/halting... · Posted by u/timr

espadrine · 3 years ago

> How else would I pay a cybercriminal without Crypto?

You don’t. That is the point of laws.

In good faith, the commenter specifically mentions the DoJ. People want laws against cybercriminality because it hurts them. Your argument is similar to answering “I hope AR-15 rifles get abolished” with “well, how else can I do a mass shooting?”

fear-anger-hate · 3 years ago

Illegal doesn't necessary mean that something is morally wrong. I'm all for making ransomware actors life harder, but it should not come at the cost of also affecting regular drug buyers/sellers.

fear-anger-hate commented on The situation at LastPass may be worse than they are letting on twitter.com/cryptopathic/... · Posted by u/wyxuan

tommieb · 3 years ago

What I find concerning is PKDBF was used, even https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PBKDF2 quotes PKDBF1 and PKDBF2,and that is recommended to use PKDBF2. Is there any evidence to show that they indeed rolled their own encryption rather than use a de-facto standard AES algorithm? Or is there something that is missing.

fear-anger-hate · 3 years ago

PKDBF is just the password derivation function to better protect the vault against dictionary attacks. The vaults are still encrypted with AES-256.

fear-anger-hate commented on Python malware starting to employ anti-debug techniques jfrog.com/blog/pypi-malwa... · Posted by u/lukastyrychtr

tasty_freeze · 3 years ago

Those things you named are just one of the checks it made. The python part of it was also an encode bzip file that offers a bit of debugging headache, then it downloads a pyc file which was run through an obfuscator, which more of a python headache. Your "in fact" is not a fact.

fear-anger-hate · 3 years ago

The methods this malware uses for anti debugging wouldn't cause headache for anyone that isn't completely new to the subject. Download 10 random python malware samples and you'll notice that probably at least 8 of them follow this exact same packing and execution pattern. Discord hook and laughable end payload are a good indication that whoever wrote this is probably some high school kid.

The only surprising thing about this article is the claim that these type of malware haven't been spotted in pypi before. That would suggest that there isn't much of credible actors trying to spread through pypi at all.

fear-anger-hate commented on Python malware starting to employ anti-debug techniques jfrog.com/blog/pypi-malwa... · Posted by u/lukastyrychtr

hybridtupel · 3 years ago

> Malware that is more stealth-conscious would just stop running without any indication, instead of interacting with external processes.

I always wondered if we could just use this against the malware. E.g. just run a useless process which is named/looks like a debugger and the malware stops itself. Of course that's nothing to be relied on on its own but maybe as an additional layer of defense?

fear-anger-hate · 3 years ago

Some EDRs do stuff like adding russian keyboard layout as an alternative, which stops a fair share of 'malware as service' type stealers.

fear-anger-hate commented on BlockFi files for bankruptcy as FTX fallout spreads cnbc.com/2022/11/28/block... · Posted by u/kgwgk

rahen · 3 years ago

> Sure, but you can't use DeFi to trade fiat for crypto.

Of course you can, both ways.

- https://bisq.network

- https://learn.robosats.com

fear-anger-hate · 3 years ago

Bisq is a really impressive project. Upon first hearing about it I was a bit skeptical at how a decentralized peer to peer exchange would work in practice, but now that I've used it a few times with no issues, it really does seem like the best way to do fiat <--> crypto exchanges. Really hope that bisq and other similar services get the recognition they deserve now that the trust in cex's has taken a fall.