Moxie Marlinspike

I don't think the article accurately represents anarchism / Marlinspike's philosophy.

The article seems to be trying to say that anarchist values are the root of Signal, but this is a barrier to pragmatism or general adoption.

It describes anarchism, or, the principles of it that Marlinspike adopted (which aren't inherently anarchist. Though Marlinspike is of course an anarchist), as "far out on the political fringe." It says explicitly "sticking to anarchism would imply an almost certain defeat." It implies Marlinspike agrees by dropping his quote on anarchist failure.

However, in the quoted article from Marlinspike, he absolutely doesn't imply something being anarchist relegates it to failure. From his article https://moxie.org/stories/promise-defeat/

> Anarchists are best known for their failures... And yet, far from trying to suppress these histories, these are the stories that anarchists recount. ... This is unusual. American Patriots do not speak, with a gleam in their eyes, of the incredible number of battles that George Washington lost (and he lost almost as much as anarchists do). ... The difference between the ways Nationalists and Anarchists talk about their histories seems critical.

> Will there ever be a night — one glorious evening — when the world is won? Where suddenly civilization, the spectacle, class, racism, and patriarchy all simultaneously topple and remain in ruins? ... It seems unlikely to happen in one moment. ... The George Washingtons of the…

I'm bored, so I'll respond. But where to begin?

First, the most basic role of money is to be a medium of exchange. With reasonable overhead and in acceptable time, people need to be able to exchange money for goods and services. Crypto fails this in every practical way. If I want to buy pizza with bitcoin, my overhead exceeds the value of the pizza, the average time to make the purchase is longer than the average time to order, have it made, delivered, and get eaten by my family. (Have you ever SEEN hungry teenagers tear into pizza.) Also if people started trying to buy pizza with bitcoin, you'd quickly run into the problem that the maximum number of transactions per second on the bitcoin network is a fraction of the number of pizzas sold per second.

Yes, yes. This is all improvable. I've heard that for years. But these issues are not new, and haven't gone away.

OK, what next? You are making a big deal out of the fact that there are poor people in horrible third world countries who want to use crypto to escape authoritarian oversight. At best this is a red herring, I lean towards calling it disingenuous. A far more important use case for crypto is crooks trying to get paid for their ransomware attacks without themselves being caught by law enforcement. And the third world has benefitted far more from payment networks like M-PESA than all of crypto.

Besides, the single best way to help the poor people in horrible third world countries is to continue the…

One of my friends lived in a squat in Melbourne for a few years. They sort of ran it, meaning they would put the place on couchsurfing.com to attract more people. They had anywhere between about 4-20 people living in the house at any time, each staying anywhere from a few days to a few months. The place was a little bit run down, and had no electricity or running water, although they did have gas and were able to cook food. They used candles to light the place at night, and would retrieve water from a nearby public tap and shower at a nearby university. They'd also dumpster dive all their food. The place was actually pretty awesome and had a really great community feel, albeit run-down and mouse-infested. There was lots of artwork and poetry printed directly on the walls.

They'd often have lots of people over and spontaneous parties were common, though they had to keep the noise down since the owner could theoretically come at any point and kick them all out, and in the end that's exactly what happened. The owner was actually pretty nice about it, and was impressed at what they'd done with the place, but kindly asked them to leave, which they obliged. The house is actually still there and my friend hasn't lived there for years so I'm not sure why the owner kicked them all out.

On another note, Moxie (of Signal/Open Whisper Systems fame) has some pretty cool stories about his adventures in squatting - https://moxie.org/stories/together-two/

I stopped reading after this: "PGP is an insecure [1] and outdated [2] ecosystem that hasn't reflected cryptographic best practices in decades [3]."

The first link [1] suggests avoiding encrypted email due to potential plaintext CC issues and instead recommends Signal or (check this) WhatsApp. However, with encrypted email, I have (or can have) full control over the keys and infrastructure, a level of security that Signal or WhatsApp can't match.

The second link [2] is Moxie's rant, which I don't entirely agree with. Yes, GPG has a learning curve. But instead of teaching people how to use it, we're handed dumbed-down products like Signal (I've been using it since its early days as a simple sms encryption app, and I can tell you, it's gone downhill), which has a brilliant solution: it forces you to remember (better to say to write down) a huge random hex monstrosity just to decrypt a database backup later. And no, you can't change it.

Despite the ongoing criticisms of GPG, no suitable alternative has been put forward and the likes of Signal, Tarsnap, and others [1] simply don't cut it. Many other projects running for years (with relatively good security track records, like kernel, debian, or cpan) have no problem with GPG. This is 5c.

[1] https://latacora.micro.blog/2019/07/16/the-pgp-problem.html

[2] https://moxie.org/2015/02/24/gpg-and-me.html

[3] https://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2014/08/13/whats-matter-with-pgp/

Not so puzzling; see also this classic post from Moxie Marlinspike, founder of Signal: https://moxie.org/2013/06/12/we-should-all-have-something-to-hide.html

> Over the past year, there have been a number of headline-grabbing legal changes in the US, such as the legalization of marijuana in CO and WA, as well as the legalization of same-sex marriage in a growing number of US states.

> As a majority of people in these states apparently favor these changes, advocates for the US democratic process cite these legal victories as examples of how the system can provide real freedoms to those who engage with it through lawful means. And it’s true, the bills did pass.

> What’s often overlooked, however, is that these legal victories would probably not have been possible without the ability to break the law.

Some of my favorites...

* Tantek Çelik -> http://tantek.com and https://indieweb.org

* Aaron Parecki -> https://aaronparecki.com and https://indieweb.org

* Patrick (patio11) McKenzie -> http://www.kalzumeus.com

* Moxie Marlinspike -> https://moxie.org

* Scott Hanselman -> http://www.hanselman.com

* Joel Spolsky -> https://www.joelonsoftware.com

* Jeff Atwood -> https://blog.codinghorror.com

* Gina Trapani -> http://ginatrapani.org

* Matthew Hodgson -> http://matrix.org and https://riot.im

* Armin Ronacher -> http://lucumr.pocoo.org

* Jeffrey Zeldman -> http://www.zeldman.com

* Eric Meyer -> http://meyerweb.com