In light of the recent action against Samourai, should we be concerned about the future of JoinMarket or the livelihood of its developers?
I know that JoinMarket is much more decentralized than Samourai and there probably isn't a single-point-of-failure piece of infrastructure to target, but I haven't studied the code so don't know the details. But it'll probably be fine?
But the "law enforcement" are targetting developers specifically, and that's just one call to Microsoft and GitHub will hand over all it knows about the contributors.
A lot of JoinMarket lead devs, including me, are already public persons, we have spoken about it in conferences on stage etc, so it's too late anyway, nobody will need to call Microsoft or somebody. I hope it will be ok, so no point to worry, can't do anything about that anyway.
But code is open, anybody under nym could fork it and development will continue.
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it will probably be the last coinjoin implementation standing.
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Devs need to be nyms only. I'm amazed that isn't the norm yet.
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Nyms are not enough. GitHub can still log your IP, which they will then take to your ISP and snatch you.
Means you should only use GitHub over Tor. And, as someone who does exactly that, I can attest that it's a pain.
Plus, you better use Tor for every service where you use that nym (SN, Nostr, Shitter), because you can be sure they will check them all fishing for your real IP.
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This is why Jack has been pushing so hard for a Nostr implementation of Github.
We need an open source, relay-based system for hosting open source repositories.
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There was issue about GitHub over Tor for JoinMarket in the past actually. https://github.com/JoinMarket-Org/joinmarket-clientserver/issues/1302
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Good points. Do VPNs like Mullvad solve this? It seems like decentralized git alternatives are also necessary now.
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No, they don't. Your privacy rests at the behest of the VPN company. Even Mullvad, who don't collect personal info from you, could be tracing your entry IP and hand over that information to the authorities.
Don't use VPNs for identity privacy!
VPNs are for:
  • working around Netflix's region-locked content
  • securing communication from eavesdroppers (content privacy)
And I don't get that one about Git alternatives. Git is perfectly decentralized, perhaps you meant GitHub?
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Thanks! Yeah, I meant GitHub.
I guess Satoshi is the ultimate example to aspire to. Whatever he did to remain pseudonymous seems to have worked.
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And, as someone who does exactly that, I can attest that it's a pain.
Using Tor for almost everything... I agree, it's a pain and it's a way to understand how fuck up is "the internet" today. Be safe out there!
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Code is free speech and protected under the US constitution. Writing code is not running a service.
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Code is free speech but you still have to fight and prove your innocence in court... in the meantime you can stay in jail.
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Tell that to the Tornado Cash guys.
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