Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes, the only munition available on a t-shirt!
Did PGP did that too? I know DeCSS did this. Did they borrow the idea from PGP?
Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
161–170 of 194 posts
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#162There’s something… different about how people (techie people are most of my sample) would write before the 00’s. I’m not sure if it has to do with the medium, or the constraints of the time, but reading it always fills me with something I can best describe as peace/nostalgia. The belief that technology honestly can change the world for the better and that the most influential people driving it have good motives inste…
The dot com boom is a reasonable point in time to make the cut. But it's never a single event. Ever other posters referenced 9/11, which was definitely another major event.
I'd add Columbine as another event, which occurred in 1999 [1]. That seemed to have a lasting affect on that cohort, which was also the group that got hit hard in the 2008 downturn.
But maybe a better line is the rise of Facebook, which shifted the story from the promise of tech to the promise of social connections.
Of course, technology will never be able to safe us, and the human condition is what it is. So, really, while a small passionate group seemed excited back in the mid 90s, it was always false gold.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Columbine_High_School_massacre
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#163Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am with you. But I think I know what it is, you touched on it and almost had it. It was indeed peace, we almost had it, world peace - feeling utopian and all loving in the 90s. Then came 9/11. It’s the single point in history where just about everything to do with American society can be defined to be before and after. Doesn’t matter what you think about the event and it’s authenticity as described, the fact of the…
>Then came 9/11 The rising pessimism and negativity since 2008/09 is a global phenomenon. I think it's wrong and very US-centric to attribute that to 9/11. The 2008 financial crisis and the rise of social media has probably more to do with the rise of millennial pessimism and negativity.
I wouldn’t understate the role of companies like Google that pioneereed “exploiting idealism as a PR strategy.” The IPO listing claimed “Google is not a conventional company and does not intend to become one” and their recruiting tag line was “Do cool things that matter.” They leaned hard into social issues like gay marriage and paid lip service to FOSS and hacker pet topics. But over time they’ve shown willingness to sacrifice any amount of user privacy, willingness to censor and suppress, willingness to illegally collude against labor, and willingness to embrace special rules to protect elites in their club.
People nowadays complain that gay pride parades have gotten too corporate, but especially by companies that are willing to exploit people in other ways. But this is simply the playbook Google pioneered, to take good will around certain social issues and use it as a decoy while you pick people’s pockets and put your boot on their face. I don’t think we can understate the extent to which good causes have been infiltrated by bad corporate actors and how much that had undermined our trust in our communities.
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#164Earlier quoted context omitted.
We had worse crises before that didn’t change societies so deeply During the Red Scare, loyalty review boards were instituted and civil servants insufficiently 'American' were sacked in the thousands.
But there isn't a singular date to associate with the Red Scare... that's more a nebulous period of time. It was also a gradual process. The West was already preparing for the oncoming cold-war with the USSR before the end of WW2. The loyalty boards and Hollywood blacklisting were definitely a change is society, but it was so slow moving that I wouldn't compare it to a shift like 9/11. The world wasn't really differe…
Change can still be change without being sudden.
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am with you. But I think I know what it is, you touched on it and almost had it. It was indeed peace, we almost had it, world peace - feeling utopian and all loving in the 90s. Then came 9/11. It’s the single point in history where just about everything to do with American society can be defined to be before and after. Doesn’t matter what you think about the event and it’s authenticity as described, the fact of the…
> America as a country has been locked in this sort of country wide PTSD since and have changed completely. Population wise, that was the case for a number of years after 9/11. In terms of government policy, it's still the case. But in terms of the former, it's fading away as more time passes. People who were born in 2001 are or will turn 20 this year. Just like events like the attack on pearl harbor and the Cuban mi…
They won't remember the transition or really realize it happened, but the cultural echoes last a hell of a lot longer than direct memory of the event. Hell, the reverberations of the civil war still echo today.
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#166Earlier quoted context omitted.
Today's analogy is bitcoin... Will all Bitcoin just be lost one day, because all keys get lost? I am aware that "there are solutions", but are they (really) enough? Isn't "breaking in" required at some point? Another endgame for Bitcoin is that all Bitcoin are stolen through the one tool which helps with ("unbreakable") encryption: Hacking / social engineering. Besides that we hab substantial discussions about why PG…
More and more Bitcoin is going to be held by custodians, like crypto exchanges, retail trading apps like Robinhood, and even traditional banks. Handling your own Bitcoin keys will end up being a niche cypherpunk thing, like using command-line PGP. It's actually a perfect analogy, because most popular "E2EE" chat apps are also custodial with your keys.
You don't own your bitcoin then (if you are not the only one who has the key) - Elon Musk pointed that out. The custodian owns your Bitcoin (and can run away with them or also lose the key).
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#167Earlier quoted context omitted.
By now the concept of competing for attention, for the limited 3-4 hours of free time you have a day is well known. To maximize engagement and clicks you just have to appeal to the shittiest parts of human nature - anger, fear, low attention spans. A few people figured out how to make the equivalent of cocaine (e.g outrage porn news, gamified social media) and now there is no going back - you compete with cocaine whe…
>> in an increasingly zero-sum world I don't understand this part - what do you mean by that? Why would the world be increasingly zero-sum?
Most of the developed economies of the world have seen lower productivity growth since the booms after WW2 and have never recovered to previous levels. There are some arguments to be made that much of our current economic growth is artificial as well. The IT revolution has also not made much of a dent in overall productivity growth, at least as of yet - I don't know whether this is an artifact of how its measured, or the growth is yet to come, or perhaps there really isn't any growth. The bigger point is that our economies are simply not designed to work in a world where there is low growth [1]. In a zero growth world, the only way to make money is to take it from someone else, so you get more zero-sum behavior. The slow growth is also in line with what folks from the WEF are saying [2]
[1] https://www.strongtowns.org/the-growth-ponzi-scheme
[2] https://investmentmonitor.ai/global/the-urgent-case-for-stak...
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#168Earlier quoted context omitted.
Tor is the anonymous net. It might be not perfect against targeting state-level attackers, but generally it works and delivers its promise.
The fact it is state built and state funded doesnt give me confidence that it protects you against state level adversary.
They built it for their spies, so they can exchange information without traces. And they popularize it, so metadata analysis becomes useless. It's unlikely to have vulnerabilities, because other states could find and use them.
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
It won’t be the first time in history, Americans and with them the “western” world turned a blind eye to who’s backs their hedonistic party was carried over. If you look at what was life like. What people cared about. What songs sang about. What households looked like. War was as far a concept from the average American. Sure we had the gulf war early 90s. We had Bosnia during Clinton years. But most Americans were mo…
> We had Bosnia during Clinton years. Oppose them or support them, it was literally American bombing campaigns that stopped the Bosnian genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
Admittedly the Yugoslav wars are not my strong suit in history, but if protecting genocide is all that is American, it makes you wonder where have we been the past decade when it came to Yemen. Same with the Uyghurs in China. Same with the civil war in Syria. I can list a few more...
Feels like there was something more that led America to Bosnia, and it wasn't just our benevolence and saving the world from itself.
Re: Why I Wrote PGP (1999)
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> We had Bosnia during Clinton years. Oppose them or support them, it was literally American bombing campaigns that stopped the Bosnian genocide and the ethnic cleansing of Kosovo.
Admittedly the Yugoslav wars are not my strong suit in history, but if protecting genocide is all that is American, it makes you wonder where have we been the past decade when it came to Yemen. Same with the Uyghurs in China. Same with the civil war in Syria. I can list a few more... Feels like there was something more that led America to Bosnia, and it wasn't just our benevolence and saving the world from itself.
> Feels like there was something more that led America to Bosnia, and it wasn't just our benevolence and saving the world from itself.
There was a lot of pressure to "do something" in the Balkans, and the military wasn't averse to showing off its goods, so something was done. Imagine the media pressure with Yemen x1000. That was Bosnia and Kosovo (probably mostly because it was in Europe).
Also, US military has intervened militarily in Syria, many times, and even with troops on the ground. Did you miss it?
The Uyghurs are a poor analogy, because despite the intense oppression they're under, they're not being mass-murdered. And a humanitarian intervention in China due to Uyghur situation is just not in the cards, because realism.
So sure, Bosnia+Kosovo interventions weren't just "benevolence". It was a convergance of factors (power dynamics, US President open to idea, media+public pressure, limiting intervention to air campaign, etc). But it wasn't an oil pipeline or some ridiculous conspiracy, either, like I sometimes hear.