Privacy tech company Aleo has launched a data privacy-oriented blockchain and developer kit to make writing zero-knowledge proofs in web applications easy and scalable. The startup is releasing its first round of software tools to let developers write private applications for the web using a new programming language called Leo, […]
Benjamin Powers
31 posts
Political and social upheaval around the world can lead to internet censorship and interference by powerful actors. The Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) is allowing people around the world to monitor internet censorship and interference in their countries in a decentralized manner for free. It has created the world’s […]
Nym now allows bitcoin transactions and has an incentive program for people running its nodes. It is also enabling plugins that will allow users to plug in wallets and applications to run their traffic through its mixnet. What is a mixnet? Nym is a start-up software project working to obscure […]
Twetch, a micropayment-based social network that runs on the Bitcoin SV blockchain, has introduced an encrypted direct-messaging function that lets users send each other money in the chat. Released Wednesday, Twetch Chat adds a layer of privacy and security to the Twitter alternative and is in line with a trend toward more […]
Hedge fund manager Arca is stepping up its campaign to overhaul Gnosis, claiming the decentralized exchange and prediction market platform has deviated from its original mission. The post describes Gnosis’ $12.5 million 2017 token sale (which valued the project at $300 million) as an “interest-free loan.” After borrowing the money, […]
After laying off a third of its staff in April, the project is looking for ways to increase the “diversity of funds” in its budget. Source link
YouTube has long struggled with disinformation, misleading content and outright scams on its site. Despite lawsuits and Google’s own ad policies, cryptocurrency scam ads are still making it through the gates and circulating for days. In April the CEO of Ripple, Brad Garlinghouse, filed a lawsuit against YouTube, alleging the […]
Next time your phone rings and the caller ID says it’s your bank, telecom company or employer’s IT department, it might be someone else. That’s because little-discussed types of SIM cards offer the ability to spoof any number, can be encrypted and in some cases allows the user’s voice to […]
The teenager arrested for allegedly masterminding the recent Twitter hack comes from a community that’s been targeting crypto users for years. The group’s attacks have one big thing in common: They take advantage of human fallibility rather than code vulnerability. These so-called social engineering attacks are growing in sophistication, and […]
When I answer the phone, Zephyr Teachout quickly explains our call might be shorter than planned. Both she and I are at the whim of her two-year-old toddler, who is sleeping and could wake at any time. Teachout, a law professor at Fordham University in New York, is best known […]
The FBI and local officials have arrested three individuals who allegedly committed the largest hack in Twitter’s history. Florida resident Graham Clark was arrested Friday morning, according to Florida news channel WFLA. State Attorney Andrew Warren filed 30 felony charges, including organized fraud, communications fraud, fraudulent use of personal information […]
The community behind “secret contracts” is moving forward after months of delay. The Secret Network, an open source network that protects data for users of decentralized applications, known as “Secret Apps,” has started a token burn and is welcoming players such as Binance, Staked and Figment to its testnet of […]
Last week the Court of Justice of the European Union (CJEU) struck down a key data-sharing agreement between the United States and European Union, with possible implications for U.S. blockchain companies that serve EU customers. The 2016 agreement, known as the Privacy Shield, lets American companies self-certify they are complying […]
Wednesday’s Twitter hack would seem to spell regulatory doom for Bitcoin, which is widely distrusted in Washington. Some lawmakers – and U.S. President Donald Trump himself – associate it with crime. In 2019 Trump tweeted he is not a fan of bitcoin and that “unregulated crypto assets can facilitate unlawful behavior.” […]
Multiple bills that threaten encryption are moving through the U.S. Senate and could pose a threat to technology that protects users’ privacy, industry pros say. These bills include the Lawful Access to Encrypted Data (LAED) Act and the Eliminating Abusive and Rampant Neglect of Interactive Technologies (“EARN IT”) Act. While […]
A Colorado company is betting it can make the decentralized web more accessible with a no-frills server you can install in your own home. Start9 Labs’ Embassy server, housed in a Raspberry Pi, sets up its own private internet network and comes with its own operating system as well as […]
The crackdown on alleged hate speech is intensifying as social media platforms either expand their policies or step up enforcement of their terms of service. Reddit banned over 2,000 subreddits as part of a focus on what it deemed hate speech, including The_Donald as well as the subreddit for the […]
What’s in a name? The power to render someone mute. Last week, Scott Alexander, the author of the influential rationalist blog Slate Star Codex (SSC), abruptly shut down (perhaps temporarily) his blog in advance of a New York Times (NYT) story on him and SSC that would include his real […]
Facebook, Accenture, IoTeX, Nvidia and six other companies are joining the Linux Foundation’s Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC), increasing the size of the privacy-focused group by 60 percent. The addition of members IoTeX, which leverages blockchain to secure the internet of things, and R3, an enterprise blockchain company, nearly doubles the […]
Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, recently re-tweeted a call for fact checking through open source tech rather than new intermediaries, like Twitter. Dorsey’s message came at the end of May, after Twitter factchecked tweets by President Trump about mail in voting, leading to Trump to sign an executive order attacking […]
Alethea AI, a synthetic media company, is piloting “privacy-preserving face skins,” or digital masks that counter facial recognition algorithms and help users preserve privacy on pre-recorded videos. The move comes as companies such as IBM, Microsoft, and Amazon announced they would suspend the sale of their facial recognition technology to […]
Coronavirus is ravaging the globe, canceling presidential primaries in the U.S. and calling into question the wisdom of having lawmakers, many of them elderly, sitting close together as votes are held in Congress. Lawmakers, especially Democrats, have sought to expand mail-in voting, and perhaps give some voters the opportunity to […]
Researchers in Australia have identified a bug that caused that country’s contact tracing app to malfunction, it was announced Monday. Governments around the world have introduced contact tracing apps to track the spread of the coronavirus. But, as in Australia, so far it’s unclear how much of a benefit these […]
When Shoshana Zuboff returns my call 15 minutes late, it’s because her previous call with an organization in Israel dropped halfway through and it took them a while to reconnect. Such is the peril of functioning in quarantine, even as tech companies exert more power than ever. Rather than having […]