I've also been feeling that way on an intuitive level. I don't like the Republicans, but I can't stand the Democrats. A decade ago they used to at least pay lip service to a few good things like opposition to war and some individual freedoms. I actually became a libertarian from the left. But now they're very pro-war and maybe as bad on free speech etc. as the Republicans due to their focus on identity politics. However, I have to keep reminding myself that the Republicans will do plenty of harm if they gain a lot of power, and in fact it may be an improvement if the Democrats get the House (but not the Senate) in the upcoming election because it'll make it harder for anything at all to get done. Even though it'll be absolute hell to have to listen to a Democratic Speaker for 2+ years...

If the Democrats gain both the House and the Senate in the upcoming election, then I'm calling it right now: Trump will get so amazingly frustrated that he will do something massively stupid/illegal and end up getting impeached (via the support of many Republicans). I'm not sure whether this would be good from a libertarian perspective.

Kavanaugh is better than anyone who a Democrat would nominate, so that's one good thing, though it's still disappointing. I don't even really trust him on the 2^nd amendment -- probably he would support all sorts of incremental regulations. Though maybe his experience with his nomination will make him more radical, which might be interesting.

Only a few local sections don't have sources now.

Unlike the Donator/VIP memberships, I do plan on reducing the cost of copper membership if the price rises a lot, so that shouldn't happen. (Though the membership price doesn't float automatically.)

I suggested something like that previously.

I do think that some alert system would be good, though the old alert system's propagation method and especially its single-key authentication was really bad, so I don't mourn its loss specifically. A new system could work by polling DNS TXT records + signatures (eg. alert.bitcoincore.org.    TXT    "predefined_alert=2 time=... sig=ABCD+/012..."), with many domains+keys controlled by many people and perhaps a requirement that at least a few of them agree before displaying an alert.

I don't care about traffic much; I just want there to be a good forum. (In fact, maybe lower traffic would currently be more helpful for that, on the whole.) I don't do any collection/analysis of traffic stats beyond the public stats. That traffic bump is very clearly due to the hype from/driving that massive bubble, though, and it's happened many times before.

I think that a lot of people stumble onto bitcointalk.org, but many of them (perhaps on average the best among them, who have the most "better things to do") don't bother to register and participate. The YouTube idea was motivated in large part by the idea that you'd be targeting people smart/thoughtful enough to watch a smart/thoughtful video, and then they'd get engaged enough by the video that they'd go to the trouble of registering and participating on the forum. I want good, long-term users, not anything that would even show up in a traffic graph.

I don't think that advertising would generally be helpful, and the forum has never advertised. In the vast majority of cases, the only ads that would work would be things that would offer immediate gratification, and those would tend to attract the wrong sorts of people. Maybe some very-highly-targeted ads could be constructive, but it's not something that I'm going to think about anytime soon.

I've done a bit of work toward SEO optimization of the forum over the years, though a lot more could be done. Lately it's been a bit more in my mind, mostly because it annoys me that those clone sites sometimes appear above bitcointalk.org in search results. That really shouldn't happen.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], banks, funds, or anything else that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

If you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.02.
- The bidding starts at 0.02.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.

No ICOs/investments.


Sorry, I'm still not convinced.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
4 0.10 ChipMixer
1 0.08 ni23457
2 0.08 lightlord
2 0.06 modernbuddha

Here's a draft of a welcome message for new users. The user will see it on the screen confirming their registration, and it'll also be available in the help center at any time.

Some text in the intro was obviously inspired by xtraelv's signature, which I really like.

Please provide your suggested additions/changes. However:
 - I don't want to put in a lot of exact numbers such as all of the merit/activity thresholds, since then I need to remember to update them.
 - I don't believe in creating definitive rule lists.
 - There's no need for this to be a complete explanation of everything on the forum. It's just the basics.

---

Welcome to bitcointalk.org, the Bitcoin Forum! You can access this welcome message from the "help" link in the top menu bar at any time.

As a member of the forum, you are surrounded by legends; phenomenal successes and catastrophic failures. The forum was created by Satoshi Nakamoto and saw the first exchange, the first altcoin, and the first ICO, but also catastrophic software flaws, massive thefts, and incredible scams. You too have an opportunity to become part of the forum's history: whether and in what way you do so is up to you.

Table of contents

• The purpose of the forum
• Forum rank
  • Posting images and wearing signatures
• Common rule violations
• Languages
• Beware of scams
• Getting help

The purpose of the forum

This forum exists to provide a platform for the free (but ordered) exchange of ideas. If you have an idea to express, then it is probably possible to do it here as long as you follow the rules.

A lot of people come here primarily looking to make money. The forum administration is very happy that people are able to use the forum in order to better themselves; indeed, one of the reasons for Bitcoin's creation was to break the artificial barriers which prevent so many people around the world from attaining prosperity. However, if your attempts to make money conflict with the forum's primary goal of enabling discussion, then you are swimming upstream, and you will not be sucessful in the end.

If you view the forum as some sort of "job" where you complete some basic tasks and get paid, then you will almost certainly be disappointed, and the forum administration will not be sympathetic. If you do make money using the forum, then it will be through innovation and entrepreneurship, not any sort of mindless busywork.

Forum rank

When you start out, you are a Newbie, and you will run into various annoying limits. These limits will be reduced to the point where you shouldn't usually notice them after you have participated in the forum for a few weeks. If you are on the forum to talk, then that's all you really need to know about rank. Don't worry about it too much, and you will eventually rank up.

If you want to maximize your rank, then you need to increase two statistics which are listed on your profile:

• Activity, which is maximized by posting once per day on average. Posting more than that is useless in raising your activity.
• Merit, which is gained by making good posts.

If you make ten thousand posts in a week, your activity will be capped and you will still be a Newbie. If you make ten thousand useless posts over any period of time, you will gain zero merit and you will still be a Newbie. You can rank up only by making good posts consistently. It's quality over quantity.

When trying to write quality posts, a lot of people act as though they're writing a book report for school: putting facts that we already know into their own words. Nobody wants to read that, and you will not get merit for it. Moreover, the length of your post and the quality of your English are only minor factors. In trying to write a quality post worthy of merit, you should offer new ideas, personal experiences, or perspectives that other forum users will actually find new and interesting.

Posting images and wearing signatures

Users of Newbie rank cannot post images or wear signatures. If you want to do these things, then you can either rank up (explained above) or pay for a copper membership.

Common rule violations

These are the most common rule violations that newbies make. There are other rules than these.

• Plagiarism: If you copy some text from somewhere, then you should have a good reason for it, and you must link to the source. Doing otherwise is plagiarism. Changing a few words around doesn't matter. If we find that you plagiarized, then you absolutely will be permanently banned, even if we find it years after you did it.
• Multi-posting: Do not post twice in a row in a topic. Instead, edit your old post.
• Low-content posts: Do not post low-content garbage like "agreed!", "nice project!", etc. You can be banned for this, and it's also pointless if you want to increase your rank, since you will never get merit for such posts.

Languages

If you are fluent in any language other than English, then it is highly encouraged for you to post in your local board. These boards often have tight-knit communities which will be able to help you, and in some ways you might be at an advantage compared to English-only posters.

In the English sections, only English is allowed. It is not necessary to speak perfect English, though you should be understandable. Try your best. If you're unsure whether your English is good enough, ask in your local board or in the Beginners & Help section

Here are the local boards:

AUTOMATIC_LIST_OF_LOCAL_BOARDS

Beware of scams

This is a pseudonymous forum which emphasizes personal freedom and therefore also personal responsibility, so scammers are common. When trading, it's best to assume that everyone is trying to scam you, and act accordingly. Use an escrow, and take note of each user's trust ratings next to their posts and on their profiles. When you are more familiar with people around the forum, you should define your own trust list rather than using the default.

Getting help

First, search for your problem to see if anyone has asked about it before. If you don't find anything on it, ask in the Meta section. If you don't speak English well, either ask in your local section or PM the moderators of your local section.

If you think that a post is breaking the rules, use the "report to moderator" link on it. Do not PM moderators directly.

Did you read the full disclosure? 0.14.x would always crash, but 0.15.0-0.16.2 could in some circumstances not crash, accepting the creation of counterfeit BTC as if it were normal.

As I've said before, I'm not really worried about it. Especially at those high prices (plus the risk of being red-tagged), it's enough of a barrier that it should still serve its intended function of creating a significant cost/barrier for garbage-posters.

BTW, if any merit source goes rogue and sells a ton of merit, then I will probably go through the transaction graph and undo all of the transactions touched by that sold source-merit. Merit ain't no immutable cryptocurrency!

The bug fixed in Bitcoin Core 0.16.3 was really bad. IMO it was the worst bug since 2010. If it had been exploited in a 0-day fashion, significant & widespread losses (due to acceptance of counterfeit BTC) would've been likely, and Bitcoin's reputation would've long been tarnished. Furthermore, since a ton of altcoins are based on Bitcoin Core, this would've affected a huge swath of the crypto space all at once.

Everyone's human, and secure software engineering is largely an unsolved problem. The Bitcoin Core devs have done a remarkably good job over the years; in fact, in this case they were able to recognize that a bug report for a DoS attack was actually a critical consensus bug, and then they managed to roll out a fix in a way which ending up protecting Bitcoin. I am thankful for their work and diligence. However, the fact that this bug was introduced and then allowed to exist from 0.14.0 to 0.16.2 was undeniably a major failure, and if all of Bitcoin Core's policies/practices are kept the same, then it's inevitable that a similar failure will eventually happen again, and we might not be so lucky with how it turns out that time.

Finger-pointing would not be constructive, but neither would it be sufficient to say "we just need more eyes on the code" and move on. This bug was very subtle, and I doubt that anyone would've ever found it by actually looking at the code. Indeed, the person who found it did so when they were doing something else and ended up tripping the assertion. Furthermore, this bug probably wouldn't have been found through standard unit testing, since this was a higher-level logic error. (By my count, something like 18% of the entire Bitcoin Core repository is tests, but that still didn't catch it.)

Perhaps all large Bitcoin companies should be expected by the community to assign skilled testing specialists to Core. This vulnerability could've been detected through more sophisticated testing methods, and currently a lot of companies don't contribute anything to Core development.

Perhaps the Core release schedule is too fast. Even though it sometimes already feels painfully slow, there's no particular "need to ship", so it could be slowed down arbitrarily in order to quadruple the amount of testing code or whatever.

Perhaps there should be more support and acceptance for running older versions, or a LTS branch, or a software fork focused on stability. The official maintenance policy says that the current and previous major release is supported, but that doesn't seem to be closely followed. In this bug, backports were written for 0.14.x and 0.15.x, but as of this writing no binaries have been released for those, even days after 0.16.3's release. SegWit didn't have any backports when it was released, even though users would've needed to enforce SegWit in order to achieve full security if SegWit had activated as quickly as originally hoped. Sometimes fixes are backported to an old version's git branch but no release is actually made. If 0.13.x is not currently supported, then there was no supported version without the vulnerability. This might indicate that the maintenance period isn't long enough; there are a few hundred people still using 0.13.2, and they were the only Bitcoin users completely safe from this vulnerability.

I do not think that it would be constructive to turn to any of the full node total-reimplementations like btcd, which are very amateur in comparison to Bitcoin Core.

I don't know exactly how this can be prevented from happening again, but I do know that it would be a mistake for the community to brush off this bug just because it ended up being mostly harmless this time.

Knots actually focuses on being less stable / more experimental than Core. Maybe a more stable software fork is needed.

I wonder if the recent Core bug will move the market. It might be the worst bug since 2010, though luckily it wasn't actually exploited and is unlikely to cause future trouble.

0.16.3 was announced a few days ago, but if you're running a node and haven't already updated, then you really must do so as soon as possible. The bug fixed in 0.16.3 is more severe than was previously made public. You can download 0.16.3 from bitcoin.org or bitcoincore.org or via BitTorrent, and as always, make sure that you verify the download.

If you only occasionally run Bitcoin Core, then it's not necessary to run out and upgrade it right this second. However, you should upgrade it before you next run it.

Stored funds are not at risk, and never were at risk. Even if the bug had been exploited to its full extent, the theoretical damage to stored funds would have been rolled back, exactly as it was in the value overflow incident. However, there is currently a small risk of a chainsplit. In a chainsplit, transactions could be reversed long after they are fully confirmed. Therefore, for the next week or so you should consider there to be a small possibility of any transaction with less than 200 confirmations being reversed.

Summary of action items:
 - You should not run any version of Bitcoin Core other than 0.16.3^*. Older versions should not exist on the network. If you know anyone who is running an older version, tell them to upgrade it ASAP.
 - That said, it's not necessary to immediately upgrade older versions if they are currently shut down. Cold-storage wallets are safe.
 - For the next week, consider transactions with fewer than 200 confirmations to have a low probability of being reversed (whereas usually there would be essentially zero probability of eg. 6-conf transactions being reversed).
 - Watch for further news. If a chainsplit happens, action may be required.

More info: https://bitcoincore.org/en/2018/09/20/notice/

(^*Almost everyone will use 0.16.3, but source-only backports have also been released as 0.14.3 and 0.15.2, it's also OK to use Knots 0.16.3, etc.)

I think that LN will eventually be an important part of the overall ecosystem, but there are some downsides:

First, the biggest downside of LN is that the recipient has to have their LN node online and listening at the time of the transaction in order for the transaction to occur. This is fine for payments to web stores etc., but I think that it will largely preclude usage of LN for more peer-to-peer transactions (eg. forum trades). It would not be good if people were expected to use only LN, since that would result in almost all individuals using trusted-third-party wallets in order to accept payments.

Second, LN often does not integrate easily with existing BTC payment systems. For example, I would have to almost completely rewrite the bitcointalk.org payments system in order to make it work with LN. (Someday I'll do it, but not soon.)

Third, it's possible that the network will end up excessively centralized. If 90% of LN channel-value goes through a small handful of nodes, then that would be a real problem. That sort of centralization could lead to: 1) a lot of people getting their funds locked up for a long time; 2) possibly a slippery-slope to further centralization, eg. "gatekeepers"; and 3) possibly even losses if too many unilateral channel-closes are necessary at one time network-wide. However, the degree of centralization in your channels is completely controllable at your end. If you want to avoid channels which go through a certain highly-popular node, you can do so (possibly at higher cost), and then you will be immune to problems related to that node. You can never be forced to accept centralization with LN. So ultimately this ends up being a software problem of properly informing end-users of centralization and risk. Depending on how the network ends up looking, this might or might not be a difficult problem to solve.

In a few years, the majority of transactions will probably go through LN, but I think that it's currently a bit over-hyped. LN can only be part of the overall picture, and it'll take quite some time to figure out how to get it to fit smoothly and safely into everyone's lives.

Yes, Satoshi always did UASF-style softforks. AFAIK future softforks, including Schnorr, are likely to use BIP 8, which is basically a UASF with an optional miner-enabled fast-track. So miners will be able to speed things up, but not block anything.

It was thought that BIP9 would be a faster and safer way of doing softforks than the Satoshi-style method, but boy did that turn out to be wrong. It was definitely not intended to be a way of letting miners "vote"; miners are not and should not be a decision-making body for Bitcoin.


Those were arguments that the anti-SegWit people used, but they're not true:
 - SegWit's security doesn't depend on miners, but rather on the economy. (Otherwise the UASF attempt wouldn't have made any sense...)
 - SegWit outputs are interpreted by pre-SegWit nodes as being spendable by anyone, but that doesn't really mean anything. P2SH outputs were also interpreted as more-or-less spendable by anyone by pre-P2SH nodes.
 - The signature is not removed. Between SegWit nodes, every transaction must be accompanied by its signatures or it's invalid.

The schedule is defined by the Senate majority. If McConnell wants, he can bring a final nomination vote to the floor on the same day as the President makes the nomination. It would be highly unusual, but so was ignoring the Garland nomination or invoking the nuclear option on Gorsuch; McConnell doesn't care. If Kavanaugh loses the vote and the GOP loses the Senate, I suspect that he will force someone else through in this way during the Senate's lame duck period.

This is well-addressed by the verification procedures you should follow.


No, deleting old stuff is never necessary. If any adjustments are necessary, the new version will do it for you.

If it becomes clear that the allegations are true, then this should disqualify Kavanaugh simply because that would mean that he's currently blatantly lying about it. All of the other arguments regarding the particulars of the case are irrelevant in the face of that fact, assuming he's guilty.

If the government was full of a bunch of honest philosophers who really cared about doing things the right way, then IMO there's enough evidence to halt the process and look into it carefully. But we all know that both sides are acting 100% in bad faith at all times, and are only looking to win as much as they can. With that reality in mind, and even though I don't like Kavanaugh, I feel that if the Republicans back down now in any way, it'd set a bad precedent for completely derailing things based on fairly weak accusations, since a complete derailment is a possible result of any delay.

The best-case scenario IMO is that we quickly get solid evidence that Kavanaugh is guilty, and then he's replaced by someone better who is then confirmed before the Democrats have any possibility of taking back the Senate. The worst-case scenario is that this drags on for a long time, the Democrats end up getting a more anti-constitution justice, Kavanaugh is proven innocent after the fact, and a strong precedent is set for winning by throwing weak allegations around.

That draft BIP is only for the details of the signature algorithm itself, since there is no standardized way to do Schnorr signatures. It's the equivalent of the SEC 1&2 standards which specify how to perform the ECDSA signing currently used in Bitcoin. That BIP needs more time for review before it is finalized, and then a separate BIP will be needed for actually integrating it into Bitcoin. I'm not following its progress too closely, but I wouldn't expect it this year.


It's far simpler than SegWit, there's even less reason for controversy around it, and it won't be done using the BIP9 process which caused SegWit's unnecessary delays. I could see the Schnorr softfork completing next year.