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Cake day: August 3rd, 2023

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  • Yes, I am aware of such technology - they announced similar capabilities in our existing surveillance system. I know that it is most likely not as advanced as China’s, because that’s how it usually is here. However, it is not clear just how good it is in practice - at least in some cases, they’ve been overselling it (at least in regards to recognizing obstructed faces). So I am not sure just how dangerously accurate said gait recognition is, especially since they have much better facial recognition to depend on.



  • Samourai was a Bitcoin wallet attempting to improve the currency’s privacy. Its devs were arrested this year.

    Localmonero was a platform where people could post listings for buying or selling Monero without KYC. There was also an identical sister site Agoradesk for Bitcoin. They abruptly shut down this year, probably afraid of similar prosecution (it happened pretty soon after the Samourai case).

    Chainalysis is a company that US government works with, attempting to track and deanonymize crypto transactions. Recently a presentation of theirs leaked, disclosing some of their methods (which were very interesting for the Monero community in particular).






  • To be fair, the idea of “alternative to banking” is still very much alive. BTC and LTC are very much used as currencies, even though BTC has fees too high for small transactions. Monero was developed specifically with utility rather than investment in mind - now reading about how exactly anonymity is enforced there (especially after the Chainalysis leaks), it’s pretty interesting. I kinda hope we invent something better than blockchain-based currencies that is equivalent in uncensorability, but right now it’s the closest we got.