July 2023 - cypherpunks@lists.ogf.org

Fwd: NY-DFS Proposed Guidance on Character and Fitness (Extension Appeal)
by Gunnar Larson 06 Jul '23

06 Jul '23

---------- Forwarded message --------- From: Scott, Kathleen (DFS) <Kathleen.Scott(a)dfs.ny.gov> Date: Wed, Jul 5, 2023, 11:32 AM Subject: RE: NY-DFS Proposed Guidance on Character and Fitness (Extension Appeal) To: Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> Cc: cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org <cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org>, Tomczak, Christine (DFS) <christine.tomczak(a)dfs.ny.gov>, dfs.sm.BankingComments < BankingComments(a)dfs.ny.gov>, Dean, Peter C (DFS) <Peter.Dean(a)dfs.ny.gov> Dear Mr. Larson The Department has not extended the deadline on comments on the proposed Character and Fitness guidance. Very truly yours Kathleen Scott *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> *Sent:* Sunday, July 2, 2023 6:38 AM *To:* Scott, Kathleen (DFS) <Kathleen.Scott(a)dfs.ny.gov> *Cc:* cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org; Tomczak, Christine (DFS) < christine.tomczak(a)dfs.ny.gov>; Harris, Adrienne A (DFS) < Adrienne.Harris(a)dfs.ny.gov>; letitia.james(a)ag.ny.gov; dfs.sm.BankingComments <BankingComments(a)dfs.ny.gov> *Subject:* Re: NY-DFS Proposed Guidance on Character and Fitness (Extension Appeal) You don't often get email from g(a)xny.io. Learn why this is important <https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification> *ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails.* Dear Ms. Scott: Today xNY.io - Bank.org asks NY-DFS to please reconsider deadline for public comment concerning "Proposed Guidance on Assessment of the Character and Fitness of Directors, Senior Officers, and Managers" mentioned here: https://www.dfs.ny.gov/industry_guidance/industry_letters/il20230509_guidan… . xNY.io - Bank.org asks if the NY-DFS will extend deadline for public comment to August 5, 2023 from June 30, 2023. As requested by NY-DFS, today we provide evidence of any documented exceptions to compliance with the "Suggested Questions to Facilitate Initial and Ongoing Assessment of Designated Persons’ Character and Fitness." As Ms. Tomczak can confirm, xNY.io - Bank.org has a FOIL Request No. 2022-090560 - Larson (NY-DFS Apple Card Investigation) appeal pending since October 13, 2022. This last Friday, Bloomberg reported, "Goldman Sachs Is in Talks to Exit Apple Partnership, WSJ Says" https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-06-30/goldman-sachs-is-in-talk… . xNY.io - Bank.org is seeking NY-DFS' extension for public comment to August 5, 2023 so that the New York Banking community has time to complete Q2-23 earnings call disclosures. Furthermore, xNY.io - Bank.org has collated 19 references comprising 205 highlights that touch on the five key areas below: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FTRRFFhQHDxf-oR9WOZz0a2gRtC9ZWVO. -Harassment and Discrimination Policies -Conflict of Interest Policy -Insider Trading Policy -Records Management Policy -Corporate Opportunity Policy As documented in the above 19 references, we feel extra time for public comment is warranted to ensure that xNY.io - Bank.org did not play a significant role or otherwise contribute in a meaningful way to the conduct that led to regulatory action or proceeding without ample notice. Per point one of NY-DFS' "Suggested Questions to Facilitate Initial and Ongoing Assessment of Designated Persons’ Character and Fitness," can you kindly acknowledge that you have reviewed and understand our 'third' appeal seeking extension for public comment to August 5, 2023? Sending you the very best from Chelsea. Thank you, Gunnar -- Gunnar Larson xNY.io | Bank.org MSc - Digital Currency MBA - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-917-580-8053 New York, New York 10001 On Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 7:02 PM Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> wrote: Dear Ms. Scott: Thank you for your response. Wishing you a great weekend ahead. Gunnar Gunnar Larson xNY.io - Bank.org 917-580-8053 On Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 4:59 PM Scott, Kathleen (DFS) < Kathleen.Scott(a)dfs.ny.gov> wrote: Dear Mr. Larson, The Department has reviewed your request and at this time is not extending the deadline for comment on the proposed guidance. For the avoidance of doubt, please note that the proposed guidance is not asking anyone to complete the sample questionnaire. The sample questionnaire is merely provided for review and comment by entities regulated by the Department. Very truly yours, Kathleen Scott *From:* Gunnar Larson <g(a)xny.io> *Sent:* Wednesday, June 28, 2023 12:05 AM *To:* Scott, Kathleen (DFS) <Kathleen.Scott(a)dfs.ny.gov> *Cc:* dfs.sm.BankingComments <BankingComments(a)dfs.ny.gov>; cypherpunks(a)cpunks.org *Subject:* NY-DFS Proposed Guidance on Character and Fitness (Extension Appeal) You don't often get email from g(a)xny.io. Learn why this is important <https://aka.ms/LearnAboutSenderIdentification> *ATTENTION: This email came from an external source. Do not open attachments or click on links from unknown senders or unexpected emails.* Ms. Scott: NY-DFS recently asked for public comment concerning "Proposed Guidance on Assessment of the Character and Fitness of Directors, Senior Officers, and Managers" mentioned here: https://www.dfs.ny.gov/industry_guidance/industry_letters/il20230509_guidan… . xNY.io - Bank.org asks if the NY-DFS will extend deadline for public comment to August 5, 2023 from June 30, 2023. As requested by NY-DFS, today we provide (in a separate attachment) evidence of any documented exceptions to compliance with the "Suggested Questions to Facilitate Initial and Ongoing Assessment of Designated Persons’ Character and Fitness." We have collated 19 references comprising 205 highlights that touch on the five key areas below: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1FTRRFFhQHDxf-oR9WOZz0a2gRtC9ZWVO. -Harassment and Discrimination Policies -Conflict of Interest Policy -Insider Trading Policy -Records Management Policy -Corporate Opportunity Policy xNY.io - Bank.org is seeking NY-DFS' extension for public comment to August 5, 2023 so that the New York Banking community has time to complete Q2-23 earnings call disclosures. As documented in the above 19 references, we feel extra time for public comment is warranted to ensure that xNY.io - Bank.org did not play a significant role or otherwise contribute in a meaningful way to the conduct that led to regulatory action or proceeding without ample notice. Per point one of NY-DFS' "Suggested Questions to Facilitate Initial and Ongoing Assessment of Designated Persons’ Character and Fitness," can you kindly acknowledge that you have reviewed and understand our appeal seeking extension for public comment to August 5, 2023? We hope to hear from you before June 30, 2023 given obvious factors. Sending you the very best regards. Thank you, Gunnar -- Gunnar Larson xNY.io | Bank.org MSc - Digital Currency MBA - Entrepreneurship and Innovation (ip) G(a)xNY.io +1-917-580-8053 New York, New York 10001

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Cryptocurrency: "Auditablity [of the Coinbase]" Is Moot Arg Against Coin Privacy, Formal Verification, Risk, ZK, BTC Is Not Fungible
by grarpamp 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

If a privacy coin protocol works in its formally verified and audited design, software, and operational protocols, then you do NOT need to count coins in the coinbase, you do NOT need "transparency" into the blockchain or the database ledger, you simply know through exhaustive formal audit, rigorous design and testing, simulation, opensource, etc that it works, you don't need to "see" it. In fact, Bitcoin and all other cryptos have never been subjected to such high audits. You have foolishly elevated the meme of "transparency" that you see into making assurances and trust that it cannot provide. Assured protocols eliminate the need to put such exclusionary weight and arguments upon "transparency", thereby enabling coin privacy. If you are "trusting" the software, instead of validating the software protocols, then you absolutely cannot rationally be placing $Trillions of money into it. Given that nothing's properly validated today anyways, there's no reason left not to do privacy coins, and every reason to begin doing them well. Expect that Zero Knowledge systems will become much bigger component elements in the space, and that "transparency" aka non-privacy will fall out of favor, not least due to its obvious risk and plan of severe detriment, and very current harm, upon Human Freedom. Got DEX yet? You're going to need it to shift out of all that Bitcoin-BTC into the coming privacy coins that will soon overtake it... Bitcoin-BTC is NOT fungible. Why Satoshi made Bitcoin transparent and not privacy oriented? (self.Bitcoin) submitted 9 hours ago by Advanced_Code1443 Hello, been in the space for a coulple years now, I probably know the answer to the question but wanted to talk with you guys about it. Was pondering the recent BlackRock's ETF filing and its conseguences for the future of the industry and I stumbled upon this problem. Why did Satoshi make Bitcoin transaparent? Was it because he wanted the protocol to be actually adoptable and not only a nieche currency? Let me know what you guys think and, most important, if some one actually knows or remeber the reason behind this feature, since I believe it is expressed somewhere... maybe in the original forum... 12 comments share save hide report [–]NervousNorbert 9 points10 points11 points 9 hours ago (0 children) Why did Satoshi make Bitcoin transaparent? It's not clear what you mean by "transparent". If you mean why he didn't make transactions harder to trace, the simple answer is that he invented the whole tech and there were no techniques to conceal money flows properly back then. So Satoshi didn't sit and think "I can choose to make it traceable or untraceable. I think I'll go for traceable." He understood that traceability is a problem and suggested various measures against it in the whitepaper. 14 years later we have a few techniques to conceal transaction sender, recipient and amount, but they all come with significant trade-offs that may include much larger transaction byte size, and more difficult to audit money supply. These things are hard and involve cryptographic innovation that takes years – you couldn't expect Satoshi to just code it up in a few years on his own before Bitcoin was even public. Those 14 years since inception has given Bitcoin many improvements in privacy, however, and it's still a major focus for many developers. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]iconoclast63[🍰] 6 points7 points8 points 9 hours ago (1 child) Unless the blockchain is open source and public the system would require trust. Unless Bitcoin is trustless and open it's not really an innovation. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]Umpire_State_Bldg 1 point2 points3 points 9 hours ago (0 children) Bob logged into a KYC exchange and bought some Bitcoin. Then Bob sent the Bitcoin to a receive address which had never been used before. To whom did Bob send those Bitcoin? * Alice * Himself * Illinois Nazis * His brother * Marcellus Wallace, who don't like to be fucked by anybody except Mrs Wallace * The babysitter * Lance, the heroin dealer * A terrorist organization * A woman who sells very nice socks from Peru * The St. Helen of the Blessed Shroud Orphanage * Joe Walsh Answer: * Nobody knows (except Bob) permalink embed save report give award reply [–]Relai_Alexredditor for 3 months 1 point2 points3 points 9 hours ago (0 children) Why did Satoshi make Bitcoin transaparent? The network being open to everyone check anything means, no trust is necessary. Was it because he wanted the protocol to be actually adoptable and not only a nieche currency? Bitcoin is still a niche currency. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]pablo_in_blood 1 point2 points3 points 8 hours ago (0 children) The form of digital trust that was essentially invented with bitcoin requires transparency. It’s a public ledger. That’s the whole point. Privacy mechanisms can be (and have been) built on top of that but they aren’t the core innovation that made bitcoin what it is. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]bitusher 1 point2 points3 points 7 hours ago (0 children) Bitcoin transactions onchain are not "transparent" but pseudonymous. This essentially means you can choose between degrees of transparency or privacy. Being able to audit the supply and give people the choice is essential. Day to day transactions were never meant to happen onchain regardless. These are supposed to occur on other layers like lightning payment channels which is very private by default. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]BellSouthUY 1 point2 points3 points 9 hours ago (0 children) LOL but that can be said about any invention. "Why didn't they think about this in the original draft". There was no perceived need for privacy coins in a world where coins didn't exist. The problem had to be created before the solution. permalink embed save report give award reply [–]looneytones8 0 points1 point2 points 8 hours ago (0 children) auditability permalink embed save report give award reply [–]StrawGreeter 0 points1 point2 points 6 hours ago (0 children) Why Satoshi made Bitcoin transparent Bitcoin's transparency is limited to a single link from a transaction input back to the transaction output being spent. This link provides proof that a transaction output is either unspent, or spent only once permalink embed save report give award reply [–]BusinessBreakfast3 0 points1 point2 points 3 hours ago (0 children) So that we can practice "don't trust, verify"

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THE ARCH-typical Marxist-Commie anticapitalist - KNOW your ENEMY!
by professor rat 05 Jul '23

05 Jul '23

https://www.counterpunch.org/author/3abre/ Reposts not invitations down screaming brainrot avenue

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Fewer Retirees Taking Crucial Pension Advice, Insurer Says
by Gunnar Larson 04 Jul '23

04 Jul '23

Fewer Retirees Taking Crucial Pension Advice, Insurer Says By Martin Croucher More and more workers have cashed out their pensions without seeking financial advice in the past five years, an insurer said Monday. Read full article » https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1695465?nl_pk=4fb41…

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Most Whistleblowers To FCA Don't Report Anonymously
by Gunnar Larson 04 Jul '23

04 Jul '23

Most Whistleblowers To FCA Don't Report Anonymously By Joel Poultney The majority of whistleblowers who filed reports to Britain's finance watchdog in the first quarter of 2023 did not make allegations of misconduct anonymously, according to statistics from the Financial Conduct Authority. Read full article » https://www.law360.co.uk/financial-services-uk/articles/1695400?nl_pk=4fb41…

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Porter needs killing ( my 2k sats )
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 04 Jul '23

04 Jul '23

https://a16z.com/author/porter-smith/ There he goes! GET HIM!

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Happy Birthday Julian Assange
by pro2rat＠yahoo.com.au 04 Jul '23

04 Jul '23

Many happy returns to prison. With the wisdom of hindsight Julio's break from the Pooter now reveals a tragedy preceding his comrade-chefs, Asylum-seeking in Minsk. If only the Czar of Nazi propaganda knew! https://reason.com/2011/02/03/julian-assange-and-israel-sham/ Reposts since the course of true KGB love never did run smoothly.

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Its good the Crypto Wars are so terrible
by professor rat 04 Jul '23

04 Jul '23

Otherwise we might become too fond of them Channel 4 News @Channel4News · 8h “No way to create a backdoor that only the good guys can walk through.” Signal President Meredith Whittaker says the Online Safety Bill will cause “unprecedented paradigm-shifting surveillance” - in a discussion with @cathynewman and former UK Tech minister Damian Collins. https://twitter.com/i/status/1675922360237694978 Reposts not the nineties calling to get their backdoor entries back or Mongoloid forks in the freedom road

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Apple Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap After Spending More than Half a Trillion Dollars on Stock Buybacks Since 2013
by Gunnar Larson 03 Jul '23

03 Jul '23

https://wallstreetonparade.com/2023/07/apple-hits-3-trillion-market-cap-aft… Apple Hits $3 Trillion Market Cap After Spending More than Half a Trillion Dollars on Stock Buybacks Since 2013 Frightened Wall Street TraderBy Pam Martens and Russ Martens: July 3, 2023 ~ According to S&P Dow Jones Indices, component companies of the Standard & Poor’s 500 spent $922.7 billion in 2022 buying back their own stock. That was $41 billion more than the S&P 500 companies spent in 2021, which came in at a lofty $881.7 billion. One of the companies leading the stock buyback parade is Apple. Of the $922.7 billion spent on stock buybacks in 2022 by all companies in the S&P 500, Apple represented 10 percent of that spending with $90.2 billion in buybacks of its own stock. On Friday, June 30, 2023, Apple, the iPhone manufacturer, closed the trading day in New York with a market value (market capitalization) of just over $3 trillion, an historic record. Apple’s $3 trillion market value is eight times that of the second largest mobile phone manufacturer, Samsung. We decided to dig into the 10-K forms that Apple is required to file with the Securities and Exchange Commission to see just how much help the company has had with propping up its share price by buying back its own stock. What we found stunned even us. Over the past decade, and including the first quarter of this year, Apple has juiced its share price by buying back a total of $573.4 billion of its own stock. The breakdown is as follows, per fiscal year: Apple’s Stock Buybacks 2023: First Quarter: $19.2 billion 2022: $90.2 billion 2021: $85.5 billion 2020: $72.5 billion 2019: $67.1 billion 2018: $73 billion 2017: $33 billion 2016: $30 billion 2015: $35 billion 2014: $45 billion 2013: $22.9 billion The second most valuable company in the world is Microsoft, which closed on Friday with a market cap of $2.53 trillion. According to its 10-K filings with the SEC, it has bought back $150.9 billion of its stock over the same span of time, that is, fiscal years 2013 through 2022 and the first quarter of 2023. To put that into perspective, Apple has bought back $422.5 billion more of its own stock than Microsoft. This raises the question, where would Apple’s stock price actually be without all of those stock repurchases? Microsoft’s Stock Buybacks 2023: First Quarter: $5.5 billion 2022: $28 billion 2021: $23 billion 2020: $19.7 billion 2019: $16.8 billion 2018: $8.6 billion 2017: $10.3 billion 2016: $14.8 billion 2015: $13.2 billion 2014: $6.4 billion 2013: $4.6 billion On June 14 we reported that “Headlines are sprouting up at various news outlets, touting that the S&P 500 is in a new bull market. But, in fact, almost all of the gains in the S&P 500 Index year-to-date have come from just seven stocks: Apple (ticker AAPL), Alphabet (GOOG), Amazon (AMZN), Meta Platforms (formerly Facebook, ticker META), Nvidia (NVDA), Microsoft (MSFT), and Tesla (TSLA).” Alphabet and Meta Platforms are also spending big buying back their own stocks. In fact, if you add the share buybacks in 2022 of Alphabet ($59.3 billion), Meta Platforms ($27.93 billion) to the amounts spent buying back their own stock by Apple ($90.2 billion) and Microsoft ($28 billion) in 2022, these four companies represented 22 percent of the dollar amount of all stock buybacks in the S&P 500 last year. (As noted above, total stock buybacks of S&P 500 companies in 2022 tallied up to $922.7 billion.) In her 2016 book, “Makers and Takers: The Rise of Finance and the Fall of American Business,” Rana Foroohar called out Apple’s use of borrowed money to finance buybacks. She wrote: “…Apple’s behavior is no aberration. Stock buybacks and dividend payments of the kind being made by Apple – moves that enrich mainly a firm’s top management and its largest shareholders but often stifle its capacity for innovation, depress job creation, and erode its competitive position over the longer haul – have become commonplace. The S&P 500 companies as a whole have spent more than $6 trillion on such payments between 2005 and 2014, bolstering share prices and the markets even as they were cutting jobs and investment.” In a column in the Washington Post in June 2018 (paywall), Steven Pearlstein warned that “The most significant and troubling aspect of this buyback boom, however, is that despite record corporate profits and cash flow, at least a third of the shares are being repurchased with borrowed money, bringing the corporate debt to an all-time high, not only in an absolute sense but also in relation to profits, assets and the overall size of the economy….” Pearlstein said that the upshot of all of this debt-financed stock repurchasing is that “Corporate America, in effect, has transformed itself into one giant leveraged buyout.”

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[bigml] sweep.ai is yet another autocoder
by Undescribed Horrific Abuse, One Victim & Survivor of Many 03 Jul '23

03 Jul '23

via reddit via twitter, apparently r/MachineLearning lets visitors read it again? uses chatgpt, works on whole repositories https://github.com/sweepai/sweep <b>Sweep</b> allows you to create and review GitHub issues with ease. Simply describe any issue and Sweep will do the rest. It will plan out what needs to be done, what changes to make, and write the changes to a PR. Supported languages: Python, Javascript/Typescript, Rust, Go, Java/C#, C++ and anything else GPT-4 supports --- ## ✨ Demo For the best experience, [install Sweep](https://github.com/apps/sweep-ai) to one of your repos and see the magic happen. [Demo](https://github.com/sweepai/sweep/assets/44910023/365ec29f-7317-40a7-9… ## 🚀 Getting Started ### 🖥️ Sweep Chat Sweep Chat allows you to interact with Sweep locally and will sync with GitHub. You can plan out your changes with Sweep, and then Sweep can create a pull request for you. 1. Install [Sweep GitHub app](https://github.com/apps/sweep-ai) to desired repos 2. Run `pip install sweepai && sweep` 3. This should spin up a GitHub auth flow in your browser. Copy-paste the 🔵 blue 8-digit code from your terminal into the page. Then wait a few seconds and it should spin up Sweep Chat. You should only need to do the auth once. 4. Pick a repo from the dropdown at the top (the Github app must be installed on this repo). Then start chatting with Sweep Chat. Relevant searched files will show up on the right. Sweep Chat can make PRs if you ask it to create a PR. <img src="https://github.com/sweepai/sweep/blob/856ff66c2dbeaf39afbf6d8c49a620dfa7027…"> 💡 You can force dark mode by going to http://127.0.0.1:7861/?__theme=dark. #### From Source If you want the nightly build and or if the latest build has issues. 1. `git clone https://github.com/sweepai/sweep && poetry install` 2. `python sweepai/app/cli.py` ### ✨ Sweep Github App Setting up Sweep is as simple as adding the GitHub bot to a repo, then creating an issue for the bot to address. 1. Add the [Sweep GitHub app](https://github.com/apps/sweep-ai) to desired repos 2. Create new issue in repo, like "Sweep: Write tests" 3. "👀" means it is taking a look, and it will generate the desired code 4. "🚀" means the bot has finished its job and created a PR For more detailed docs, see [🚀 Quickstart](https://docs.sweep.dev/start). --- ## 📘 Story We were frustrated by small tickets, like simple bug fixes, annoying refactors, and small features, each task requiring us to open our IDE to fix simple bugs. So, we decided to leverage the capabilities of ChatGPT to address this directly in GitHub. Unlike existing AI solutions, this can solve entire tickets and can be parallelized: developers can spin up 10 tickets and Sweep will address them all at once. ## 📚 The Stack - GPT-4 32k 0613 (default) / Claude v1.3 100k - ActiveLoop DeepLake for Vector DB with MiniLM L12 as our embeddings model - Modal Labs for infra + deployment ## 🌠 Features * Automatic feature development * PR auto self-review + comment handling (effectively [Reflexion](https://arxiv.org/abs/2303.11366)) * Address developer comments after PR is created * Code snippets embedding-based search * Chain-of-Thought retrieval using GPT Functions ## 🗺️ Roadmap We're currently working on responding to linters and external search. For more, see [🗺️ Roadmap](https://docs.sweep.dev/roadmap).

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