Wow, someone in the Bitcoin Show office has a loooooot of Bitcoins! Close to half million dollars?!!! Just listened to the podcast, it's pretty good and accurate.
Not for long, if they keep forgetting to log out of mybitcoin on other peoples' computers. |
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So to make what could be a longer story shorter think about how you would want to find out about bitcoins if you didnt have a clue. Would you want to wade through many thread of repetitive crying about things that arent important on the larger scale of things or would you want to get information from people who know what you are trying to find out. While this board is always entertaining it does not paint a very good picture of what bitcoins are and what the potential could be. This makes it very hard to send people here and get them to understand what is going on.
We're trying to start a Bitcoin Q&A site on Stack Exchange. You guys should join and help get it off the ground, so we'll actually have a decent place to send people who are curious about Bitcoin. |
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Very true, but the conclusion I came to from seeing this is that the community that has grown around Bitcoin is a testament to the fact that Bitcoin really isn't something that will be adopted by the masses. It's not that the Bitcoin community looks like a bunch of kooks, its that most of them are.
I don't think the kooks are a majority, they're just very vocal. The trolls are as big of a problem as the kooks are. Normal people are definitely interested in Bitcoin, we just have to shut the kooks and trolls up so that the normal folks will tend to stick around. Once Sirius stops dragging his feet, this forum is supposed to be removed from the bitcoin.org domain, moved it to bitcointalk.org, and the "forum" link will presumably be removed. He has the new domain now, he just hasn't actually done the move yet. There's also an effort to get a Bitcoin Q&A site on Stack Exchange. This will help a lot, as we'll finally have a user support site with decent moderation. You guys should join and help get it off the ground. |
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Just committed to this. It looks like we're a little behind on high-rep users: we've got 113/200 total users, but only 45/100 high-rep. Unfortunately I wasn't registered on Stack Exchange before this.
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lets get the stackexchange up, then the technical part will instantly migrate there. heck, everything of value will migrate there, probably.
really looking forward.
Alright, I'm in. |
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Just what IS the topic of this thread?
It starts to make a lot more sense if you ignore posts by and replies to bitcoinporn. |
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Anonymity does not necessitate a lack of moderation. Those sections of 4chan that are actually moderated are excellent places for discussion. I found out about Bitcoin from a 4chan post.
Fair point. However, the current state of this forum doesn't exactly inspire confidence that an anonymous section would be properly moderated. I'm impressed that you see exactly what's going on, but then somehow believe that its simply a PR issue? As I really like what you have written I'd appreciate you letting me know if I'm missing something - I've spent the past month and half going from being really excited about Bitcoin as an elegant technical triumph (and something fun to follow) to realizing that participating in Bitcoin largely means having to mingle in mud with "Shut da gubment down!" armchair economists and other fringe types who've read enough to spit out libertarian platitudes, buzzwords like "fractional reserve banking" and "fiat" (in almost every damn sentence), but don't make much sense. Clearly this isn't everyone, and there are many folks on here far smarter than me, but - and this is what bothers me - there are an awful lot that don't seem to be. When I think of the face of Bitcoin I can't help but visualize an angry Uncle Jesse from the Dukes of Hazzard with an added slackjaw and lazy eye. And if, as someone who came here with earnest interest, I do, I am pretty darn sure that that the uninitiated will too.
You're right that it's not just that the "Bitcoin PR" folks aren't doing it right. Our PR department, so to speak, has suffered a hostile takeover by those who have no clue how to do PR properly, if they even care. It's not even a "too many anarchists" problem, it's a "too many tactless fools" problem. I don't think this is an inevitable result of the nature of Bitcoin. The core developers come across as fairly reasonable people, after all. I see this forum as the focal point of the image issue. Everyone looking for more information about bitcoin goes to bitcoin.org, which directs them here, where they see all the tactless fools who have set up camp. The forum admins have made sure that this place is a welcoming environment for tactless fools, who need not fear having their nonsense censored. |
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It's still onerous.
It may well be. Either way, it clearly isn't working. I'm still here, obviously. Thing is, I'd like to be able to use my coins to buy things from the overwhelming majority of people that "aren't hardcore enough for the internet". I'm sure you agree, even though you probably don't have the guts to back down from the idiotic position you've taken. The chan-tards alone don't have much to offer, unless all you're after is drugs and child porn. |
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This is why serious exchanges of ideas are best done on anonymous boards: neither reputation nor authority get in the way of ideas. Maybe in the future I'll add an anonymous section to the forum.
Great idea. This place isn't enough of a cesspool, let's make it even more like 4chan. |
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If you can't handle the Internet and you can't pick out the valuable information within with trolls, criticism, hatred, stupidity...
then you don't belong on the internet.
The Internet is for letting loose what's in your head. Whether what you say is stupid or not, you say it anyway. We aren't here to preserve your precious little feelings.
If someone doesn't like what you post, they will be sure to tell you in the subsequent post.
An idea that can pass the toughest internet trolls is an idea that might actually work.
Bitcoin: Only for the most hard-core channer veterans. Yeah, that'll work. |
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The real travesty of people not taking good advice (which just happens to come from Jesse Kang again) has gone on in relative obscurity in the 'Newbies' area. Take a look at some of her early posts regarding the Newbie restriction policy with regards to merchants: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?action=profile;u=21320;sa=showPosts;start=120A tl;dr summary snipped from her copious writings might be: 'The current "newbie" policy is poorly conceived at best, and a potential disaster for the currency at worst. Even the use of the disparaging term "newbie" is hardly better than calling them "marks"... Simply put, if you want people to join your club- you don't create new obstacles to put in their path. ' But really - don't just tl;dr it - read it and weep - especially if you're a moderator or admin. That topic deserves to be posted on reddit for their amusement - but really... can't we just fix it? Please!? It's worth noting that she made that criticism when the policy was much more onerous than it is now. At the time, you needed 50+ posts to be let out of the newbie area. The time requirement may have been higher as well, I don't remember. As for fixing it, I don't think this forum can be fixed. I believe the best course of action is to move this forum to another domain and completely dissociate it from bitcoin.org, which is the de-facto face of the Bitcoin project. This is supposedly going to happen, but it's taking a long fucking time. It would be nice to have a well-run merchant/consumer support forum, but having no official forum at all is better than Bitcoin associated with this cesspool. |
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is there some technical reason why there must not be too many blocks / they must have a minimum size?
Newly found blocks need sufficient time to propagate through the network, otherwise miners will end up creating invalid blocks. 10 minutes was determined to be about the right amount of time to minimize invalid blocks. |
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(07:54:46 AM) cacheson: cuddlefish: hey, remember that solution you proposed a while back to prevent 50%+ attacks by pools? is anyone still working on that? (08:03:54 AM) cuddlefish: cacheson: I might (08:04:07 AM) cuddlefish: cacheson: don't know much about mining (08:05:36 AM) cacheson: cuddlefish: I'm talking about this thread: http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137.0(08:05:53 AM) cacheson: cuddlefish: no replies for a month, was just wondering if there was anyone still working on it (08:06:13 AM) cacheson: cuddlefish: seems particularly relevant right now (08:06:18 AM) cuddlefish: cacheson: I won't code it (08:06:23 AM) cuddlefish: but please do (08:06:24 AM) cuddlefish: please (08:06:28 AM) cuddlefish: i'd use your pool (08:06:33 AM) cacheson: cuddlefish: :/ (08:06:34 AM) cuddlefish: with my CPU netbook miner  (08:07:18 AM) cacheson: cuddlefish: I don't know any more than you do about the gritty details of mining than you do. less, considering that you came up with the idea. but anyway, I'll take that as a "no, no one is working on it" (08:07:46 AM) cacheson: cuddlefish: er... mangled that message, but you get what i mean (08:12:32 AM) cuddlefish: cacheson: k |
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Remember, it still takes 6 confirmations until a transaction is deemed valid, so even if someone has 50% of hashing power they still only have 1.5625% chance of getting 6 blocks in a row!
Wrong, and in big block letters too. They don't have to get 6 blocks in a row, they just have to get more blocks than the rest of the network during whatever window of opportunity they have to pull off their attack. See this thread for a method of performing a double-spend attack in 2 hours. |
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Tycho earns thousands of dollars per day legit by running the pool.
Why risk ruining a good business?
So this whole supposedly decentralized, resilient crypto-currency comes down to this? "We trust this one guy. Why would he want to screw us over?" Why not just use E-Gold or something and quit wasting electricity? Also, remember that you're not just trusting Tycho. You're trusting anyone capable of compromising his systems, or of performing a rubber-hose attack against Tycho himself. You think he's going to side with us if the Russian mob starts threatening his family? He's even proposed countermeasures & paid bounties for people to monitor him and nobody took up the challenge.
What good would that do? I've been watching Deepbit's hashrate hover above and below 50% of the total network this morning. Most of the miners are probably asleep right now. As for the rest, if they can't get their shit together to keep things balanced, what makes you think they would do anything about an attack in progress? It would only take about 2 hours to pull off.Cuddlefish had a much better idea to solve this problem, but it doesn't seem like anyone's working on that either. No posts in that thread for a month now. |
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You know, as long as they are up on that chart, that is proof that they are using their resources productively. I'd be more suspicious is deepbit suddenly dropped to a small sliver, that could mean that they are diverting hashing power to an attack.
The chart just pulls hashrate numbers from the pool websites, then divides by the overall network hashrate to get the percentages. During an attack, the total network hashrate would drop, but the attacking pool would probably continue to report its usual numbers (unless the attacker intentionally changed them). The "other" category might even go negative, since it just represents the portion not accounted for by the reported pool hashrates, though I'm not sure how that would show up on the chart. |
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Yes, but listen. IT IS FIXABLE. And smart minds are working on it. It is only the current manifestation of the pool system that allow these pool attacks to work. http://forum.bitcoin.org/index.php?topic=9137.0It is possible to have pools work with zero pool attack risk. It is being worked on by smart people. The new system will probably be adopted soon (within 6 months). That thread hasn't been touched in the past month. Who, exactly, is working on this? The fact that this shit is still going on, combined with the ridiculously pollyannaish mentality of most bitcoin users, is seriously alarming. |
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Now its reset.
Sorry for thiserror.
It's locked now, for me at least. |
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And please excuse my stubbornness, but I have to ask, since this is the point of my thread. Have you held in your hand, or have in your bank account, dollars, euros, or whatever your original currency, earned from this massive mining? All I ask is a simple yes or no.
Yes, I have transferred USD from my MtGox account to my "real" bank account via Dwolla. |
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