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GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

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Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#391

Post by joshmanders »

blagie wrote: post #379
chii wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> As an individual or a small business, ones does not have an alternative to Microsoft Word, github, or Facebook. Google Docs, gitlab or bitbucket, and as for social network there's plenty out there. None of those are real monopolies. They _might_ be best in class, but there's no rule that says you must be allowed to use the best in class service.

Let me make this simpler, since there are a lot of comments like yours: 1) If I want to exchange redlined documents with lawyers, I need Microsoft Word. I cannot run a successful business which deals with law firms without Microsoft Word. Most businesses need to deal with law firms. If Microsoft shuts me out of Word, I cannot have a business. 2) If I want to promote my local business, I need to be on social media pla…

> 1) If I want to exchange redlined documents with lawyers, I need Microsoft Word. I cannot run a successful business which deals with law firms without Microsoft Word. Most businesses need to deal with law firms. If Microsoft shuts me out of Word, I cannot have a business.

I find your reasoning here disingenuous. I have been running a business for almost 2 decades, dealing with law firms and everything and I haven't used Word since I was in high school.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#392

Post by mindslight »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #322
throwaway290 wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is not used to launder money? What separates pre-sanctions Tornado from any other tech that can feasibly be used for something evil (e.g. cash money, PayPal, any cryptocurrency, e2ee messengers)? Should we ask the government to publish a registry of approved technologies to ensure own safety?

> What separates pre-sanctions Tornado from any other tech that can feasibly be used for something evil (e.g. cash money, PayPal, any cryptocurrency, e2ee messengers)? I don’t have the technical answer. But from the instant tumblers became a thing everyone with AML experience saw the endgame. It’s providing, as a service, a function directly analogous to real-world layering. It does nothing else. And nobody involved…

The fundamental problem is that "money laundering" is an oxymoron, because money is fungible. So the government has created an always-applicable law, pinky-swore to only use it to prosecute "bad guys" (like many federal add-on laws), and is now expanding their scope to persecute a project that mitigates a general security vulnerability that exists in most cryptocurrencies, because the existence of that vulnerability hinders criminals.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#393

Post by xmonkee »

dogman144 wrote: post #337
revscat wrote: post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honestly, I don’t care what happens to crypto bros. They put profit before environment. Fuck em.

PoW uses less energy than global dishwasher usage. Do you feel similar sentiments against Home Depot and dishwasher users? Facebook data centers aren’t pretty either in this regard. Edit - additionally, tornado runs on eth, which is soon to be env-friendly PoS.

Are you seriously claiming crypto is more useful than dishwashers?

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#394

Post by clucas »

moritonal wrote: post #384
dogman144 wrote: post #312

The commenters saying be reasonable, they were sanctioned, GitHub had to do this, should look into the last time code was made illegal or similar turmoil and what the developer community did in response…It was not accepting sanctions or govt failures to understand code as “well that’s that.” - Phil Zimmerman (PGP) was under criminal investigation for arms exports by releasing the code for consumer encryption. The cas…

Isn't it hypocritical to celebrate when platforms kick off the people we don't like, then mourn when they kick off the ones we do?

No it isn't.

Here's an analogy: Is it hypocritical to say "we shouldn't punish people who sell marijuana," but also say "we should punish people who sell heroin?"

Maybe you disagree with the person's preference for what should be punished, but saying "we should punish this behavior but not that behavior" doesn't make a person a hypocrite.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#395

Post by krono »

catlifeonmars wrote: post #237
krono wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not decentralized in any practical manner when everyone's local clone is pointing to the same, now no longer available, origin. This could have been mitigated by having a pre-determined fallback origin (which could very well be something they had in place - I'm not familiar with this project).

> It's not decentralized in any practical manner when everyone's local clone is pointing to the same, now no longer available, origin. On the contrary, removing the common, centralized origin makes the project decentralized by definition.

Some form of distributed authority could have been implemented as a more practical alternative to the scattered remnants that they might be left with now.

You're right, of course. My previous post was written up a bit too hasty :)

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#396

Post by anonporridge »

dogman144 wrote: post #312

The commenters saying be reasonable, they were sanctioned, GitHub had to do this, should look into the last time code was made illegal or similar turmoil and what the developer community did in response…It was not accepting sanctions or govt failures to understand code as “well that’s that.” - Phil Zimmerman (PGP) was under criminal investigation for arms exports by releasing the code for consumer encryption. The cas…

Has it ever been the case that the majority of the developer community stand behind this kind of resistance to government power?

It seems like it's always been a tiny minority of idealists who put their own lives on the line to do what they believe is right in the face of the beast bearing down on them.

The majority has always been (and probably will always be) weak minded corporate yes men.

What is distasteful is the so called "hacker" community being filled with corporate yes men.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#397

Post by DoctorOW »

moritonal wrote: post #384
dogman144 wrote: post #312

The commenters saying be reasonable, they were sanctioned, GitHub had to do this, should look into the last time code was made illegal or similar turmoil and what the developer community did in response…It was not accepting sanctions or govt failures to understand code as “well that’s that.” - Phil Zimmerman (PGP) was under criminal investigation for arms exports by releasing the code for consumer encryption. The cas…

Isn't it hypocritical to celebrate when platforms kick off the people we don't like, then mourn when they kick off the ones we do?

I don't think so. If someone's making the community worse I'll be happy to see them go. If I value someone's contributions, I will miss them.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#398

Post by jahewson »

dogman144 wrote: post #312

The commenters saying be reasonable, they were sanctioned, GitHub had to do this, should look into the last time code was made illegal or similar turmoil and what the developer community did in response…It was not accepting sanctions or govt failures to understand code as “well that’s that.” - Phil Zimmerman (PGP) was under criminal investigation for arms exports by releasing the code for consumer encryption. The cas…

Counterpoint:

The automatic opposing of govt sanctions is pretty shameful for a nuanced technical audience.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#399

Post by SpicyLemonZest »

tromp wrote: post #373
SpicyLemonZest wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, there's a lot of obvious strategies that money processors in similar positions employ. They could confirm the identity of their users so that known criminals can be filtered and blocked. They could manually audit large transactions and require documentation demonstrating that they're legitimate. I understand why they don't want to do things like this, but I'm just not sympathetic; it sounds to me like a group o…

I don't see how blockchain devs can do any of these things. Nodes and miners run the network, not devs.

Tornado Cash in particular is (was?) a smart contract, so they could straightforwardly have built in an auditing service as an oracle.

Re: GitHub deleted accounts of people who contributed to Tornado Cash repos

#400

Post by hattmall »

andrewjmyers wrote: post #377
dogman144 wrote: post #337

Earlier quoted context omitted.

PoW uses less energy than global dishwasher usage. Do you feel similar sentiments against Home Depot and dishwasher users? Facebook data centers aren’t pretty either in this regard. Edit - additionally, tornado runs on eth, which is soon to be env-friendly PoS.

So I'm actually interested in these figures. Bitcoin alone is estimated to use 150 terawatt-hours of electricity annually. The US Department of Energy estimates that there are 80 million households with dishwashers in the US (although they believe 16m never use them, but we will ignore that). It appears that the average dishwasher uses 251kWh annually (at the avg of 215 cycles per year). So this would put the US annu…

518 million seems reasonable to low for the entire world and you are leaving out commercial places.
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