As a general rule, good programmers can write good code in whatever language they happen to use; and bad programmers will write bad code in any language they try.  Moreover, no formulaic technique will turn idiots who don’t know what they’re doing into software engineers.

Bitcoin Core is the gold bitcoin standard for reliable Bitcoin software.  It is written (primarily) in C++.  Programmers such as gmaxwell, sipa, and others who write excellent code for this project have no need to switch to another language, unless they find technical reasons which would make another language a better tool for the job.  Also, they have no need to be taught “certain practices”—whatever they do, it is evidently working.

I myself write in C.  In my experience, one ready means for me to find a fool who has scant, shallow understanding of technology is to wait for someone to give me a popular speech about “memory-safe languages”, or whatever.

On the flipside, the idiots who created the software disasters in this thread could have been writing in pure Haskell—they still would have created disasters!  Morons who even think of using client-side validation code for financial transactions are innately incapable of writing good code.

There is no magic bullet for creating the software engineering of which HeRetiK speaks.  And those who believe that the former exists, will never do the latter.

One exception to the aforestated general rule is such a thing as smart-contract code which lives on the blockchain.  That code must be absolutely free of bugs—including as of compiler bugs, etc., which can undermine even perfectly-written code.  For any relatively complicated program, the only means to guarantee bug-free code is to mathematically verify its properties.  That is why I am so excited about the Bitcoin Simplicity research, as discussed above; but that is still in the early research stages.


I think the first step is for people to stop grabbing onto crypto-nonsense, from fly-by-nights who bang out shoddy code for Bitcoin, to ICOs of any kind.  There is an incentive to write awful quality code, when people actually buy into it.  As LoyceV observed only a few posts ago:

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(P.S.:  Please trim your quotes.  Thanks.)

Five-nines?  That’s all?  I’d thought my post demonstrated a fascinating new mathematical discovery of sarcasm-probability exceeding 1.0.

Such surpassing of tautological limits is easy.  Here, I will treat you to an exemplary demonstration:


Well, you caught me red-handed there.  Yes, I am Quickseller.  I have a one centimeter long penis, and I live in my mother’s basement.  I divide my lonesome existence between scamming people, account-selling, sockpuppeting, and frenzied exercise of my psychotically obsessive hatred for Lauda.  My only friend in the whole wide world is OgNasty, my soul-brother, who is just like me except that he wishes he could have sex with women.

suchmoon, that’s an awfully nice account you have there.  Default-trusted!  Mmm, tasty.  Would you please sell it to me?  Thanks.    I will give you 1000000 BTC for it (well, not really—scamming here, gotcha! ).

Anyway, it’s too bad you caught me like that.  Now, I will need to start myriad forum threads making wild accusations against you on the basis of no evidence whatsoever.  Watch out!

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Your avatar seems to have mistaken who said what.  No matter.  It’s good to this thread finally devolve to laughter, seeing as how it started with a sick joke.

Attention, hype-merchants and hype-addled fools alike:  It is time for you to get schooled by a Jr. Member caught up in a random “Bitcoin Discussion” thread:


/thread

Being new here...  Oh, never mind.

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I’m so glad my words amused the three of you.  Now, would somebody please explain this to owlcatz?

Ribald feline puns come to mind; but for the sake of forum decorum, I shall restrain myself to this:

Lauda, you’re one of the first people who caught my eye when I started lurking here and scratching through the forum archives.  I was astonished to see a cat in odd goggles pouncing on spammers and scammers as if a lioness on the hunt.  I characteristically admire the strong, the unwavering, those who make demands and meet them—they who sign in boldface, “...will not be compromised.”  In a man, that is the mark of a general; in a woman, ’tis the uncommon quality common to countess and queen.  And I know well the rule that a cat’s practical efficiency may be judged by polling the opinions of vermin.

Your strength on the prowl as a “GrumpyKitty” is matched only by a sinuous style which marks you as a pretty kitty, no less.  I’ve hereto “meowed” at your fearsome growl.  It’s not only my pleasure, but also a rare honour to have here made you purr; moreover, the discovery that cats can blush is both personally and scientifically fascinating to me.

Cheers.

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If some of your time could be cleared up from wastage by “*you-know-who*”, may I suggest that you spend both time and sMerit in Dev & Tech.  There, the merit system has evolved into a de facto peer review system for technical accuracy and usefulness.  Given the amount of misinformation and disinformation spewed across the Net about technology in general and Bitcoin most of all, this is important.  Users can almost automatically trust the technical accuracy of any post awarded merit by achow101 (moderator), DannyHamilton, or LoyceV.  There are a few other excellent posters and merit-givers; I here list only those who seem to be the very most active, so as to avoid slighting the expertise of others.  (Obviously, any post awarded merit by gmaxwell is sterling information; alas, his overt forum presence is a rarity.)

Dear suchmoon, sarcasm shill:  A little help here, please?

No, you sleazy dodger, the Master Ethical Mature Expert was referring to the payola you get for shilling for so-called “BitcoinTalk rules”.

Being new here, I may not yet know THE TRUTH of all the subtle undercurrents in whatever backroom dealings you Legendaries do to oppress the new users.  But I’m not blind.  The evidence of your “rules” graft is right there in your signature!  Your sarcasm-grift only adds insult to injury.

If it involves anything worse than downloading terabytes of porn .torrents, and thusly giving himself carpal tunnel syndrome—well, I am not sure I want to finish that sentence.  The images flashing through my mind are already too unpleasant.  From his persistent “LOOK, I’M A MAN!!” posturing, it’s patently obvious that Mr. Nasty has abnormal difficulty with women.  The habits and histories developed by such males tend to be unpleasant, indeed.


Quickseller’s m.o. is so terribly predictable, in that and every other way.  Is there anybody stupid enough to find him credible?  No, wait—don’t answer that.


Yes, I saw that.  Surely, the excuse will be that unrelieved tumescence in the human male can make for exceedingly poor judgment.  Not that that would be a valid excuse for Quickselling his soul and his trust.  Such things must go cheaply for the author of those words.


Uh-oh.  Given how dumb they are, I guess I’m in trouble.  I have some experience for an apt comparison:

Very well.  Then, I shall only spread truths about him:  The truths which SaltySpitoon said are offtopic in this thread; and also, the quintessential truth that despite his too-desperate attempts to prove his manhood with silly graphics and empty posturing, Mr. Nasty will never be able to get the girls like I can.

(I omit Quickseller from that latter discussion, on grounds that I seriously question his interest in womankind other than for scamming purposes.)


Wow, I should read upthread.  That very well may be the single most twisted misapplication of the legal system which I have ever seen!  Worse, I include statements by lawyers in that assessment.


Thanks.  I will.  But as a most memorable ladyfriend once told me, I am “mad, bad, and dangerous to know”.

(Hey, word-reading people, is there any chance that you could fill in for the semi-literate morons QS/OG dynamic duo?  Thanks.)


What!?  You mean that to be like you, I must expend hours and years of my life on grim, thankless tasks to help protect the forum for the benefit of others?  That’s so much work.

Is there any way I could shortcut all this “work to help others” stuff by purchasing a DT account from Quickseller?

Drat.  Who let literate sorts of word-reading people into a Quickseller thread?  You folks risk running down my reserve of sMerit.

Well, first of all, this is a bad way to end your posts:



I myself have a firm general policy of never awarding merit to a post which asks for it.  That’s in poor taste, at best.  It doesn’t matter whether whether the post has substance, or is just begging.

Based on this, I doubt you be begging or fishing for merit:


However, I still would not award merit to a post which ended by asking for merit.

(N.b. that none of my own posts has ever done so—and look at how much merit I’ve earned.  No, really.  It’s not necessary.)

Now, as for the substance of your posts:  I believe you suffer the problem of not being a fair judge of your own posts.  Considering here in turn the three examples you provide:


Well, you see, many hardcore Bitcoiners (the ones with plenty of sMerit to give) will think that post is flat-out wrong—just frivolous hype!  The moment I see anything saying “Blockchain 2.0” or whatever, I stop reading.  To illustrate by contrast, this is an example of a post to which I myself awarded merit, by a Jr. Member with 42 activity who joined on 27 January 2018:


Each point is right on the money, although this post’s author forgot to mention that unlike Blockchain 10.0 trashcoins, Bitcoin Core has the best developers.  (I will forgive her.  She’s new here.)

Unmeritorious as your Blockchain n.0 is in concept, your “Blockchain 2.0” and “Blockchain 3.0” were smart contracts and “DAPPs”, respectively.  Here is an example of a post (by a Legendary) to which I awarded merit earlier today:


In my reply to that, I mentioned cutting-edge research into mathematically provable smart contracts for Bitcoin; I suggest you go read.

N.b. that the foregoing is not about whether I “agree” with your post.  I sometimes award merit to posts I disagree with, but which I believe to be cogent and well-informed.  Rather, I think the post you uphold as an example is ill-informed and misleading—based on hype, and spreading it.  I would not award merit for that.

Now, on to the next one:


Again, not something which will even remotely interest Bitcoiners.  I’ve never speculated on the altcoin market.  (I have owned exactly one altcoin—a privacy coin I bought into for ideological and practical reasons, not for speculative “investment”.)  I’ve therefore never needed to hedge.  Indeed, I think the best altcoin “hedging” advice is given by the personal text (also signature) of JayJuanGee:  “How much alt coin diversification is necessary? 0%”.  That makes me wish I could award merit to personal text.


Mildly interesting.  Surely well-intended.  I actually saw that when it was posted.  But I don’t believe the idea is very well thought out.  “Likes” are cheap; the merit system is intended to be meaningful.  The system you propose does not look workable to me, for various practical reasons I don’t think are worthwhile to spend time discussing.  And then, there’s this:


I don’t think there is any problem with “tension between old/new members”.  I say that as a relatively new, low-ranked member myself.  Mostly, I see the “tense” people as whiners.  The merit system needs to not give a damn about those; otherwise, the idea of “merit” is per se meaningless, and the system will fail.

Now, this I deem meritorious:


If you made a post saying only that, it would get merit from me!  I am sickened by the transparently obsequious flatterers who try to game a system they obviously hate by showering it with fake praise.  And uselessly obvious advice is just that.  (I myself have partly drafted an advice post on how to earn merit; but as you may imagine, it says something more than “write better English”.)

Also, this is generally the right attitude:


I wish I could split your post in half.  Awarding merit is, among other things, an endorsement of the basic validity of the post; it is especially so on the technical forums, but in some degree here, too.  I would award merit to half your OP in this thread; but the other half presents altcoin junk I don’t want my name associated with, etc.  Too bad.

I feel sorry for Michael Cassio.

A friend of a friend reliable unidentified source said that an unidentified individual close to you/Lauda said that you’re the same person.

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Objection, facts not in evidence:  Despite lame attempts, Mr. Nasty has shown no ability at snark; nor has he demonstrated any aptitude for making anyone other than himself look stupid.

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QS is in quite a predicament when all his psychotically obsessive anti-Lauda threads backfire on him.  He does not know how to quit while he’s ahead—that point being, before he starts spewing obscene nonsense.  I guess he ain’t too bright.

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Hahah, I missed that.

So, what you’re telling me is that to get hated like Lauda, I’d need to spend years building trust as a pillar of the community—like Lauda.  Fair enough.

Being new here, I could not expect to achieve that overnight.

Just don’t let Mr. Nasty escrow it.

I am jealous of Lauda.  What is Lauda doing right, which I am not?

I’m smart.  I’m sexy.  I’m dangerous.  People value my forum contributions.

I did earn my own dedicated troll sock in this very thread.  In the forum at large, I even get the occasional threat PM from idiots who apparently wish to not post here anymore:


And yet, I neither get Iago-hate megathreads aimed at me, nor win serious enmity from two-bit semiliterate swindlers who delude themselves that this makes them look tough instead of ridiculous:


Being new here, perhaps I may be expecting too much of myself.  Yet I still feel that I am underachieving.

Lauda, you are one of the most trusted users on this forum.  I myself would trust you with my life’s savings.  I will also trust your sage advice.

I’ve always believed that character can be judged by the enemies one makes as well as by the company one keeps.  The hate directed against you, Lauda, is positive proof of your efficiency in crushing scammers, liars, and other criminal scum such as any healthy society must excrete as its waste products.  How can I do more like you?  What more can I do to help society by beating the Quicksellers of the world until they devote the whole of their pitiful existences to mouth-frothing, obsessive hatred of me?

Please advise.  Help me, Lauda.  I am beginning to lose confidence in myself.

Thanks for the heads-up about this new honour.  On 14 February, I totally missed that—I’d been trying to refocus on tech stuff, whilst giving an occasional poke at threads where I’m already involved.  I haven’t been watching the frontpage of Meta.

Now, I’ve got 15 20 pages of Quickseller mudslinging and oh-so-mysterious trolling to catch up on.  Or skip over.  Life is too short.


Methinks Iago would need to crack a book and learn who Iago is.

Part of the problem with intelligent flames is that they can go right over the heads of their targets.  Perhaps if I expressed myself in gutter language, the message would not need translation for gutter-natives and basement-dwellers alike.

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Thanks.  Though as my current 98 activity level implies, I’ve only been active for a small fraction of the time since I created this account.  I ran away for eight months when I saw how much spam there was.  Thus you may understand my appreciation for people like Lauda, who clean things up.

As for getting doxed, I dare Quickseller and his schizoid Sybil army to try.  That’s not empty bravado:  I say about that the same as I do about hacking.  The NSA could probably do it to me; Internet troll canaille can’t.

People get doxed when they make mistakes.  Everybody makes mistakes.  I make mistakes.  Therefore, I remove the human element so as to leave nowhere for mistakes to be made.  Not even one person besides myself IRL knows that I am “nullius”.  Not even one person online knows the IRL identity of “nullius”.  I use Tor behind a network-isolating gateway which prevents all leaks; and I use a dedicated browser instance for the Bitcoin Forum.  I pay for online services using thoroughly anonymized bitcoins—not that any bitcoins could ever be traced to me in the first instance, since I’ve never bought any on a exchange which does KYC.  Etc., etc.

I have a deadman switch to handle cases in which I may want for the connection to be made; but otherwise, to find me, you’d need to break some pretty strong crypto.  I think Quickseller would have as good a chance of doxing Satoshi.  Hah.  That’ll happen.

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Yet those who live in stone houses may do as they damn well please.  Funny how that works.

Thanks, but no—such posts as this are what drew me to this forum.  (I could not give that one merit, because I’d already sent its author a total of 50 merits within the past 30 days.)


’Twould be a business doing pleasure with you.

Having splashed you with some merit for posts which actually deserved it, I will now start the drip.  I’m told that I can be a tease.

In large part, my confidence in your ability to lose your bet against yourself is predicated on the thrill-skill required to work oneself into such win-win predicaments.  Now comes the hard part (so to speak) of delivering on your loss.  Cheers.

Hello, Alia, you sly meretrix.  When I first saw this thread, I thought to challenge you on a friendly wager for which of us would reach 100 merit first—or to make it interesting, on double stakes, for which of us would reach 200 first.  Given the splash you made with a two-day-old account, I expected that surely, I would see you here with us other “outliers” someday.  Yet now, I must call on you to do your duty in making the forum great again.  For unto you is the destiny of becoming an historic forum first:  The first-ever and only user to perform public sexual favours after losing what was effectually a bet against her own posting prowess.

Alas, you’ve been slacking off.  Though you made an earnest start, your rate of earning merit has dropped off sharply; and the days now fly by as we approach the 30-day deadline of 2018-03-01 00:52:43 UTC.  Bad girl.

Now, as of the moment I post this, I have exactly 48 sMerit—all legitimately earned by me through meritorious posting, and as yet unspent (unlike the 145 merits I have already distributed to others).  By astonishing coincidence, you have 52 merit.  My current sMerit and your merit sum to exactly 100; thus, I could force you to honour your word with a single click.  The thought itself is less pleasing to me than my ability to tease you about it:  For as a vocal defender of the merit system’s integrity, I shall do no such thing.  I send outlandish amounts of merit in one shot only to Core developers.

Wherefore I have spent several hours of my time combing your post history, searching for posts I deem meritorious.  From that list, I’ll be slowly dripping merit on you.  It will total only a limited amount.  You will get more from me if you make new meritorious posts.  I’ll be watching.

I will not link to the posts I chose.  Those who are curious may watch my merit history page; but I don’t wish to set up any specific posts as “click here to send the hot girl merit” targets for less thoughtful readers.  Rather, I will generally describe the types of Alia posts which merit my attention:

• Cogent posts of moderate length about Bitcoin, money, monetary policy, and the social-political implications of these things.  I don’t agree with all your arguments, but they are well-made.  These are the primary type of “new user” posts through which the merit system should divide the wheat from the tares.  You made several—a few weeks ago.  I encourage you to make more.
• Scam warnings for newbies.  You made some of those as a newbie, which is impressive.  Better still, in one case, you disposed of scammer pretenses with a sarcastic quip.  Dry, withering contempt cracked as a one-line whip:  That made me smile.
• More generally, posts which bared an exquisite wit.  Alia, o Alia, whatever will entice you to expose that more, more oft?  Words worthy of ogling:  We need more of those.
• A post which mocked Quickseller, the Bitcoin Forum’s resident Iago.  We definitely need more of those.
• A post which advertised your erotic services on the basis that you’re “a crypto enthusiast and expert—something rare for camgirls”.  Though I doubt your expertise draws more customers than your other assets, I myself like your style.
• A post questioning how to teach children about Bitcoin—I presume, forward-looking.  So, you are not a mere hedonist:  You’re a real person, whatever unknowns may lie behind your forum persona; and you broach topics (plus raise concerns) people should contemplate.  (You made a newbie mistake by creating a duplicate thread, not realizing you could move your original thread to the correct forum; but that’s no big deal, when you were a Newbie.)
• Miscellaneous other bits which made me think, We need more posts like this.  We need more people like this.

Alia, the forum needs for you to lose your bet against yourself—and not simply for the promised payout.  Foremost, it needs those posts.  Moreover, it needs for this story to reach its climax.  Let Legendaries a few years hence reminisce over the legend of the girl who bet she couldn’t earn 100 merit in a month, and thus wound up publicly demonstrating a merit infographic fetish.  For you, such a unique forum achievement would also come with bragging rights (just as I boast being only member of this forum who has ever received +50 for a flame, as a cry from the one being burnt).  Put out, but don’t let yourself down here!

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Finally, I must make clear that I contemplate the foregoing with a certain level of detachment:  For I am not one of your potential clients.  That’s nothing personal; I don’t doubt that you must grace your clients with delectations worth every satoshi.  Whereas I myself have never paid for that which I’ve always had for free, whenever I wanted it.

As with the process of earning forum merit, the trick to that is no secret:  All things come to those who are wanted.

Thus to your service offerings, I will make a counter-offer.  Should you wish to experience hardcore literary cybersex, anatomically expressed at conversational speed in properly punctuated full sentences, then my special rate for you will be 0.005 BTC/hour.  Given a counterparty who can keep up with me, my cyber sessions usually last an hour or two from foreplay through denoument.  Also, should you desire an erotic pen pal, then my price for you is 0.01 BTC per letter—and I do mean letter, in the old-fashioned sense.  Some of my best erotic letters have taken many hours to compose; I consider them a form of art, and I take art seriously.  If collected and published, my secret epistolary relationships would make for genuine literature; but secrets wrapped in ciphers they shall remain, for I don’t kiss and tell.

My longstanding policy is to chat only via XMPP with OTR, though I may be willing to consider trying Tox; for correspondence, I require PGP mail—preferably with your elliptic curves, though I wouldn’t mind doing modular exponentiation with your public exponent.  I expect that “a crypto enthusiast and expert” should be algorithmically aroused by the proposition of so much cryptography.  Don’t just “trust the numbers”:  Lust for the numbers!  For my part, besides the thrill, I find that my reliance on old-school cypherpunk staples relieves me of certain concerns; vide the Bitmessage vulnerability warning you currently see displayed at the top of this page.

This offer is open only to Alia, as identified by PGP and/or OTR fingerprints countersigned by 1Sexyb1p8byGxunfTfHvL9SXsWqHyEPVk.  (If but only I touch your fingerprints, I’ll have your keys to new realms of passion.)  For others, the rates would be (much) higher; serious inquiries only, please.

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For the record, I see reflected in your posts that there is more than meets the eye.  But that’s not pertinent here.  I am simply doing my own part to make the forum great sexier.

This needs to be in a stickied FAQ somewhere:


In the abstract, what the so-called “attacker” did was no different than a smart lawyer finding a gaping loophole in a contract.  It was fully authorized use of a computer network in the exact manner which the network was declared to be intended.  Per the legally binding terms of the DAO:  “The terms of The DAO Creation are set forth in the smart contract code existing on the Ethereum blockchain at 0xbb9bc244d798123fde783fcc1c72d3bb8c189413.  Nothing in this explanation of terms or in any other document or communication may modify or add any additional obligations or guarantees beyond those set forth in The DAO’s code.”

Following those terms was not an “attack”.  It most certainly was not a “theft”!  It was only the fully foreseeable result of declaring that “code is law”, and then writing low-quality code-law with unknown, unverifiable properties.  If you dare do that because you want a flashy media event with bucketloads of investor money suddenly pouring in, then prepare yourself for your doom by meditating on the cosmic (and comic) inevitable consequences:


This is why I am so enamoured with the Bitcoin Simplicity concept, which I linked to above.  It is serious research with the goal of producing mathematically provable contracts.  We need advanced smart contracts which have no code-loopholes, just as verifiably as “2+2=4” has no loopholes.  For in Bitcoin, code truly is law.  In Bitcoin, there shall never be the disgusting sham of a so-called “irregular state change”.  In Bitcoin, there is no central authority with the ability to mandate such a thing!

(I do think that centrally managed pretenders with mathematically unverifiable “smart” contracts are fully suitable for use as toys, such as CryptoKitties.)


More of the same, probably for awhile.  The people who do such things are not very creative.

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Edit 2020-11-17:  Fixed broken image, added image attributes.  No previous edits, and no other changes.

A few weeks ago, I promised this explanation to hatshepsut93; and I half-wrote it at the time.  I am making this its own topic, because that’s not the first time here I’ve seen people either ask about this, or make this mistake without even realizing it.  For those in a hurry, a code snippet is below.

Roll a six-sided die with output d between 1 and 6, inclusive.  Convert the results d to a 2-bit number b, using the equation b = (d - 1) % 4, where “%” denotes “modulo”.

Here is how all potential inputs map to all potential outputs:


As you can see, the output numbers 2 and 3 each have one way of being chosen; whereas the numbers 0 and 1 each have two ways of being chosen.  That is to say, 0 and 1 are twice as likely as 2 and 3.

This is “modulo bias”; and it must be avoided anytime you need to pick a uniformly distributed output number from a range which mismatches the range of inputs.

Now, consider the common use case of generating a random alphanumeric password.  Picking a password alphabet in ASCII order in the 62-character range of [0-9A-Za-z] using a random_octet % 62 (0x3e), we obtain:


Observe that the eight characters [0-7] can be picked 5 different ways, whereas the others [8-9A-Za-z] can only be picked 4 different ways!  As a result, each character in [0-7] will be picked 5/256 = 1.953125% of the time, whereas each of the others will be picked only 4/256 = 1.5625% of the time.  (The decimals given are exact.)  Although that doesn’t look like much, it is a relative difference of 8 characters being a whopping 25% more likely than the other 54 characters.  You do not want a password with those properties!

Please keep handy and adapt as needed the following algorithm for avoiding modulo bias, here presented as a C snippet which I here copy with minor modifications from from FreeBSD’s libc (it was copied from OpenBSD, and probably somewhere else before that).  The code comment (not written by me) explains how it works.  Over the course of years, it will save you many instances of shooting yourself in the foot:

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[This thread is self-moderated, based on experience; it is for on-topic technical discussion only.]