You bet. Same with any other of these big companies looking at getting involved in crypto - Microsoft, Amazon, Facebook, Apple, etc. You can absolutely bet that all your transactions and purchases will be used to build a profile of your spending habits and purchases which will be used to target you with ads and other products, as well as sold off to 3rd parties and potentially even governments to use for tax reasons.

I also have concerns with these big companies even when their intentions seem good. For example, the new HTC phone which will have a built in wallet and potentially also be able to run a node. I would be very surprised if their code for this is open source, and you can almost guarantee they will be tracking your transactions.

Given that LoyceV's data have shown that the 1 merit restriction is working, I don't see why we wouldn't increase that limit to 10, at least on a trial basis. It would improve the signature spam situation further, whilst also making it much more difficult to buy merit or have users ranking up their alts.

The other option, as you say, is to have some restriction on the projects themselves. If they employ spammers, then after a certain number of offences they would be shutdown or banned. This would be much more labour intensive though, and it would likely require and entire team of people to monitor every signature campaign.

I mean, not only to people not care their data is being leaked, hacked and sold, but they are quite happy to give increasing amount of personal data away for free. It's not just Facebook/Google/Apple knowing your name, email, phone number, address, job, location (in real time), friends, schedule, etc. Although this is bad enough, and more than enough data to steal someone's identity or figure the optimum time to rob their house, people are now actively bringing surveillance devices in to their houses, and paying for the privilege, in the form of Amazon Alexa or Google Home or similar devices.

These devices record everything that is said (and in some cases record video 24/7 as well) and send it to some unknown database for storage. We have no idea what that data is being used for, but I would bet every satoshi I own that it is being analysed and sold to third parties. Talking a lot about feeling ill or unwell? I'm sure your health insurance company would be interested to know that. Talking about money worries? I'm sure anyone you are contacting about a loan would pay for that kind of information.

It absolutely boggles my mind that people are so willing to give away every intimate detail of their lives. The same could be said for half the users on this forum who send their KYC documents to some anonymous bounty campaign in exchanges for a few cents worth of the newest trash token.

Except it wasn't a whale at all, the coins won't be sold, and the price won't be affected.

All these funds belong to Coinbase, who have recently upgraded their cold storage infrastructure and were moving all their coins from their old cold storage to their new system. These movements were announced a few weeks ago prior to them happening, and they have now announced the movement has finished:

https://blokt.com/news/coinbase-talks-about-the-largest-crypto-transfer-on-record

I had already pretty much left the discussions already but I will agree not to go back. As pointed out, there is absolutely zero to be gained from continuing to engage someone who doesn't address the arguments but instead either posts walls of ad-hominem attacks or locks his thread to prevent hearing any points of view that contradict their own. Not even the flat-earthers are that bad.

I have absolutely zero doubt cryptohunter will take this as him/her "winning" and "the gang" being "owned", and will then spam this nonsense across the 4 (? 5? 6?) threads (s)he is derailing.

Here is the post in which I explain to you what scare quotes are (please note the timestamp):



Here are just a selection of posts from you, after my aforementioned post, that continue to perpetuate your lie that marlboroza misquoted you:



My timeline matches just fine. Just because you don't like something, doesn't make it not true.

He did the same thing on this one (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5086816.60) after launching a tirade of nonsense about me. He's wrong, he knows it, he knows everyone else knows it, but wants to remove their ability to point it out.

It's why I've pretty much bowed out of this issue/drama - if someone is so scared of what their opponents have to say that they have to forcibly silence them, then there is no point even having a discussion with them. If they want to live in their echo chamber with their fingers in their ears and ignore all sense and reason, then you might as well just leave them to it.

Agreed. But until we are at stage that they do, we are unlikely to see the general excitement or buzz that pooya87 is talking about. The average bitcoin user probably doesn't know much about Lightning Network, and the average forum user is here for altcoin bounties and not much else. The level of ignorance surrounding segwit is still very high - it will be a long time before knowledge and discussion about LN is commonplace.



Thanks for that - I'll check them out after the festive season.

The video is impressive, but as he says, the wallet is not released yet. It also gives no indication about how easy and quick or complicated and time consuming it was to initially configure and connect to a node.

Palace are currently 2-1 up against City following 2 goals in 3 minutes and absolute BANGER of a goal from Townsend: https://streamja.com/LoPv. Did you see that? He must have a foot like a traction engine.

If it stays like this, Liverpool will go 4 points clear at the top of the table. LFC_Bitcoin currently praying to every god in existence. No on in our league predicted a Palace win.

Edit: Now 3-1 to Palace! Wild.

There are many other open source and end-to-end encrypted instant messengers you can use, but I appreciate the problem is getting all your friends/colleagues/whoever to use them too.

Signal is the one I use. It is free, open source, and available for in android, iOS and desktop versions. It also supports voice, image, video and file sharing. There is also Wire which pretty much does the same things.

Is there a wallet that the average person (i.e. not someone on this forum) can use to make a payment over LN right now?

I'm all for LN, but buying and sending bitcoin is already fairly daunting to the average non-technical person. From what I've experienced myself of LN (granted it was a few months ago I last played around with it), it requires a fair amount of knowledge and set-up which would turn a less technical user away. Until it is as easy as sending a normal transaction (i.e. scanning a QR code), it's probably not going to gather a huge amount of attention. Has there been a wallet developed (or in development) that makes it this easy yet?

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Edit: Good to see your account back pooya87. Love the new avatar.

Congrats suchmoon on your admission to the inner circle gang cartel mafia Order! I'm interested to see which reward you pick.

Foxpup, I am still waiting for my delivery of deadly mist. Actually, I'm also waiting for the delivery of all the Christmas presents I ordered online too - my postmen keep mysteriously dying. I'm on to the 4th one this month. Something about an "unknown but highly toxic respiratory disease". Please advise.

I for one will continue to refuse to use anything that Facebook gets their grimy, privacy-invading hands on. Sure, this might be another example of blockchain technology going more mainstream, but you can absolutely guarantee that if you use this, your addresses and transactions will be added to Facebook's ever growing profile of information on you, and then sold to highest bidder with absolutely no regard for your privacy, anonymity or security.

You cannot delete your own topics as you would also then delete any replies that are present, and other people's replies are not yours to delete. If you really want, edit the title and content to "Deleted" or something similar, move the topic to the archival board and lock it.

The one place that is has occurred to me (note: occurred - I've not put any serious thought in to this) would be in the distribution of controlled drugs. Where I work, controlled drugs (opiates, ketamine, benzodiazepines, etc) come from manufacturer to the hospital pharmacy, and then from there are distributed to the main ward or theatre reception, and then from there are split as required to individual wards or theatres and locked in secure cupboards. At each stage of this process there is a manual count of stock between the deliverer and receiver, and both sign off that the numbers are correct. When a drug is to be used, again two members of staff must count the stock in the cupboard and sign off that records are correct. When stock is low, an order from the ward or theatre is placed with their main reception, which collaborates these orders and puts in a bigger order to hospital pharmacy, which then does the same with the manufacturer.

A distributed database could maybe help this in two ways - firstly by streamlining the whole "two member of staff signing off ", which is generally done on paper and then centrally collated, and secondly by displaying levels of stock in real time available for all to see to automate the ordering process. I suspect the reason that I have never seen this suggested before is that all these people shilling their "healthcare ICO/blockchain project" have never actually worked in healthcare, and have no idea of the real world challenges or issues.

This drama just keeps getting better. This is far better entertainment than any TV show. Genuinely laughed out loud at the "Dindu tribe".


Since I seemed to get left out of the whole weird sex thing that was going on earlier...:

Read OP's post history. He posted 2 weeks ago about his ICO that he is launching himself - he specifically says that it will have no whitepaper, done as cheaply as possible, and he will not be hiring any professional team members to help him. He is then completely vague about what is coin will actually do or achieve, other than to promise it totally has a "real world use". Having received no replies about his obviously in-no-way-new-or-different-to-the-hundreds-of-other-coins coin, he decides it is the forums fault rather than his.



The sane, experienced people are very much here, and very much avoiding yet another trash token.

As I mentioned in the other thread, I'm against fines because it is discriminatory. If we are setting a new a rule, it should be the same rule for everyone, regardless of wealth. There shouldn't be an option that allows those more well off to buy themselves out of a punishment.

Out of any of those options, I would be the least against a signature ban, but only for users that weren't obviously plagiarizing just to get paid from a signature campaign - these spammers should still receive an outright permanent ban. In those who do get a signature ban, it should be either permanent or based on them earning x amount of merit. I don't think it should be temporary - most would just abandon their account until the ban is up, which is no real punishment at all. They should have to work for its reversal. 100 merit is on the lower end of what I would go for personally, but I appreciate my views are probably quite skewed here. Perhaps @LoyceV or @DdmrDdmr could provide us with some numbers - how many users have earned over 100 merit since the system was introduced?

Another possibility to earn their signature back would to be make x good reports - this would need to have an additional requirement of >x% accuracy to prevent spamming the report button. Say 5000 reports with >95%?

Having said all that, my preferred option is still the status quo - zero tolerance.

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Edit: Spelling mistake.

I report any new topics in Bitcoin Discussion that are simply a copy and pasted article, or a link to an article, without any original thoughts or opinions. They are always deleted. If the user becomes a repeat offender, I mention this in my reports and the user is eventually banned.

The most recent user to fit this criteria was Reviewmaster1 - I noticed he was banned just this morning. I have 17 good reports against him, and that is in keeping with the kind of ball-park figure that has been needed in the past.

I would encourage you (and everyone else for that matter) not to give up on reporting. It is repetitive, monotonous and thankless, but until theymos appoints some dedicated sub-board mods, it's all we've got.

This post is simply brain storming - I'm not saying I do or even would support the ideas that follow.

I do not think it should be linked to payment at all. As mentioned, this is creating one rule for the rich and a stricter set of rules for the poor, and gives off the message that you can "buy" your way out of problems (to an extent). Bitcoin, and by extension, this forum, should be equally accessible to all, regardless of financial background.

I do think there are different "levels" of plagiarism, if you will. Compare the newbie bounty campaign spammer with >10% of their posts plagiarized solely for meeting their campaign requirements to the legendary with 1 or 2 posts out of thousands which were plagiarized but were posted to provide info or answer questions asked by others. Having said that, the former massively outnumbers the latter.

I think an argument could be made (not that I'm making it per se) for some leniency for this (very rare) latter group of users, if the user is a clear net positive to the forum. As ETFbitcoin said, this could be quantified by their rank, earned merits, or recognition from other members. Their number of good reports could also be a useful metric in this regard. Whether the user is a net positive could also be a decision for staff (as a collective group) to make on an individual case-by-case basis.

In terms of these users, then a punishment like a 6 or 12 month signature ban, or penalising of ranks and merits, for the first offence only seems appropriate. A second offence would result in permanent ban as it does now.

Having said all that, I think the cases that this would apply to are in the single digits, compared to the thousands and thousands of accounts being perma-banned for plagiarism. It would require a lot of time and energy from the admins/mods to set up this new system for the benefit of a tiny handful of users, and that time and energy could be much better spent elsewhere. The bottom line remains the same - if you don't want to be banned for plagiarism, then don't plagiarize.