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Culture War Roundup for the week of January 29, 2024

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I brought up the wholesale surveillance concern here https://www.themotte.org/post/851/culture-war-roundup-for-the-week/183482?context=8#context

It's not a complete response to your comment though.

The number of people that government spy agencies can harass is much more scalable. The Canadian truckers had their bank accounts frozen less than 2 years ago! We need digital privacy so that a government bureaucrat can't change a 1 to a 0 and lock a million dissidents from their bank accounts.

Scalable harassment is worrying, though I don't see how this is a function of privacy really? Like how would you solve the de-banking problem? Is the problem that it was too easy for the government to figure out who all of the protestors were and then work backwards to find their financial accounts and lock them down?

On the other hand, let's say I had cryptocurrency on my computer. (I don't, by the way). I would take extreme measures to keep this secure because everyone in the whole world could potentially steal my coins.

Irony of ironies, the extremely technically competent anarchist friend who had his self-hosted personal email hacked was because the attacker was an organized criminal who knew he had millions of dollars worth of cryptocurrency. The level of sophistication deployed by the attacker was astounding, which included producing faked search warrants. The attacker also already somehow had copies of his driver's license and we have no idea how he got it. They were not successful in stealing his Bitcoin but they came very close and this criminal continues to pop up in his life from time to time using information he gathered.

See also that a Bitcoin core developer was hacked recently https://www.theblock.co/post/198688/bitcoin-developer-pgp-exploit

Might still happen! (I didn't want to explain why I think crypto is dumb in my top-post)

Yes. His life is in danger. He thinks getting a gun himself will solve this problem. He probably actually needs fulltime private security, though I think he is not there yet.

He's a Bitcoin maximalist. There's not much I can do about it.

He needs to divest from the thing making him and his family a human money piƱata

Right?

I mean you call him a human money pinata, but he's a millionaire and I assume you are not. What does a guy who is like you but with no conscience look like? That guy doesn't know, because he's still a millionaire and you still presumably are not. I have also considered how easy it would be to rob a bitcoin brewster, but I am a bad person at heart. And yet I also note that I have only once seen that story in the news, the story of some guy with tons of crypto losing it all to sociopaths holding his family hostage. Neither you nor I have taken his money yet, so I don't think that guy is going to be swayed by your advice even if you pitched it yourself as opposed to through a guy on a forum you hateread. If I were a betting man I'd say safety wasn't one of his concerns.

I guess start getting the dox of major Bitcoin holders and acquire a bullet proof vest shotgun and a wrench. If you are morally capable of this and as a motizen you,of course, have an IQ of at least ~130 this plan robbing unguarded bitcoin rubes should be free eats. Get on it.

Lol fucking what? How did you manage to climb on another high horse when you were already chortling from the back of a shire gelding? "If I'm morally capable of this?" I straight up said neither of us is doing this, that was my point. You are busting up laughing your ass off at how unsecured crypto is and how much danger this guy is in, but terrible people like us think terrible things all the time without acting on them. This guy isn't in danger from the imagination of some nut who derives his self esteem by misunderstanding arguments on reddit satellites.

Uhh, considering a hacker has his exact address and all of his dox including his driver's license and knows he has millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin I think that safety should probably be one of his main concerns right now considering how easily this hacker could have executed the said plan already. The main obstacle to me or you robbing this guy of everything he has he 1. not knowing who he is/who has the money and 2. where he lives. The hacker has already solved both of these issues and the man is now a sitting duck.

Uh huh. I don't see how that changes someone's disposition, but I would actually be willing to put money on this if you insist.