Yes that's a helpful distinction to make. I am aware of these differences (lossy and lossless alike, you could argue that lossy should make use of a different expression to compression, as the actual concept of compression, i.e. with air or a liquid, involves no loss, these are imperfect metaphors and not really properly defined technical terms).

And because computer nomenclature frequently borrows physical concepts to use as metaphors, your assertion "this is not actually compression" isn't as absolute as you suggest. It actually is compression, just not in commonly accepted technical jargon, in the English language. For all you and I know (I don't speak foreign languages or know their computing jargon so well, do you?), the way that file compression and efficient data encoding is described in one language or another may well use the same word for encoding as is used for improved encoding efficiency. I used the expression "compression" just to make sure as many people as possible reading would understand.

Er, the numbers for Segwit I gave are no different to any other numbers provided by anyone else. 1MB tx block, 3MB witness/signature block.

Sure, the estimates for how much today's 1mB blocks trnnaltes to that have change (1.75 MB at first, now 2.1 MB). That's because they're estimates. Estimates based on how people are using the blockchain at a given moment in time (i.e. the balance between tx data and signature data). What do you want, for the whole of Bitcoin to keep using it excatly the same every day, so you can have an estimate that never changes, even though that estimate is  based on changes in use?



Not data compression, that's not what I mean. I used the "compression" expression to simplify the explanantion, but I guess I'll have to explain seeing as you've come to the wrong conclusion.

Data compression on computer disk or media files (mp3, DivX etc) just looks for patterns in data, and then keeps 1 copy of the pattern instead of every copy. Then a map of where the copies occur must be made to re-assemble the original data. If the map gets damaged, there goes your data, as there's no way to re-assemble without the map. That's what happened to your hard drive, the map got corrupted.

All I mean when I'm talking about compressing transactions is encoding the exact same information in less space, but without depending on a map charting the repetitions in the data. When the shrinking of the data doesn't need a map, the risk you're referring to is no longer an issue.


If you are able to read code, you should read it. There's no room for misunderstanding if you can just read what it does, the code doesn't have differences in interpretation like humans can have when describing something. As a software developer, you can easily put your misunderstanding to rest by just reading and thinking through the code.

And sure, Segwit adds some complexity. But not really that much more, if you can understand how Bitcoin already works, Segwit is easy to understand. It's often said (by detractors) that Segwit changes millions of LoC (lines of code), but that's a bit of a trick. Segwit adds alot of LoC: but not to existing Bitcoin code. Segwit is more testing code than it is any changes to the main codebase, and as a software developer, I'm sure you understand why more testing code is diligent.

Really, you're saying "Let's start a court case about who owns the copyright to the original Bitcoin logo"


You're paying for that, right? It sounds like a waste of time and money, when the pragmatic thing to do would be nothing.

But where's the force though?

On-chain capacity can be improved with efficiency increases. The vaunted improvements to tx encoding would give us 20-30% more blockspace, so the 2.1 MB Segwit would become more like the equivalent of 2.5 MB, but still only actually using 2.1 MB. Schnorr signatures would give us a similar amount of extra space in the witness blocks.


So when the Bitcoin devs have solid proposals to:

• Increase on-chain capacity directly from 1MB to 2.1MB
• Increase transaction block efficiency to the equivalent of 2.6MB using the encoding we use now (which would be only 1.05 MB)
• Increase witness block efficiency to the equivalent of 3.75MB using the encoding we use now (which would be only 3 MB)

Now, what's wrong with compressing an aggregated additional 1.25MB of transactions into the 4MB Segwit permits? Getting 5.25MB worth of transactions, while still only using 4MB total?


And why would you say "that's forcing everyone off-chain". On-chain is important, but so is the blocksize. If we can improve the efficiency of on-chain and keep the blocksize the same, adding more blocksize becomes even more effective, the gain ratio is the same improvement every extra MB in blockszie that gets added.

And what's wrong with doing those efficiency improvements before the blocksize is hiked? We already know the arguments against hiking the blocksize right now, what are the arguments against improving the amount of space each transaction uses to achieve more on-chain capacity? I've never heard someone even try to make an argument against the idea.


And again, the Bitcion devs cannot be construed as "forcing people off chain" when you consider that space-efficiency improvements are available and realistic, or when you concede that the blocksize is getting upped by Segwit. This "forcing" description makes zero sense, the devs are just being cautious and diligent, that's all.

OK, how come the testnet Lightning software looks pretty easy to use already? I've seen nothing more than a couple of screenshots on this forum, and I could figure out how it worked just from that, without even using it.


So, remind us why highly qualified and expensive IT consultants will be needed to run Lightning nodes for businesses, when I can figure it out from a coupe of screenshots? On an early version of the software?

It's a clever (or not so clever) interpretation that this journalist is presenting here.


The so-called "Segwit data" already exists in all Bitcoin blocks, today (well, the "wit" part does, but not the "seg" part does not, but it's not even data, just a way of organsing the data). And always witness data always existed in Bitcoin, Satoshi made it that way, Bitcoin couldn't work without it.


"Segwit" data is simply the signatures for the transactions. The signature proves the owner of the BTC sent it, Bitcoin couldn't work without "witness data" (which just means "signatures")

The only difference in Segwit is the "Seg" part, not the "wit" part. Segwit puts the signatures in their own block, so that the signatures can't be switched to their inverse "low-S" form (a bit like how 2x2=4 and -2 x -2 = 4 also).

That's it. There is no mystery about "worrisome Segwit data" when you actually know what it is.

"The One is the Many, and the Many are the One"


Successful systems in the real world resemble that paradox rather closely. (and it has a strange correspondance to an atom being both whole and indivisable, yet composed of increasingly indiscernible quantum phenomena)


100% communism does not work. Everyone shares socks and toothbrushes, has no free will to experiment, and the elite (who are not part of "everyone") abuse the top-down system, presenting their draconian power as "efficient"

100% capitalism does not work. Everyone wants to charge everyone else for every microsecond of valuable service, and power concentrates in the hands of the few.


The real world is more complex than a simplistic adherence to these 2 philosophies which are not the principles that their followers often present them as. The real solution is a constantly changing mix of capitalism, and communism, and progress, and conservatism. All are required for both protecting oneself and advancing oneself. And overall anarchism is needed to allow all the philosophies to find a natural balance of where their boundaries should begin and end between individuals and the organisations they choose to join.


Bitcoin is no different in that regard. The BU proponents tried to push a progressive capitalist approach, where things that should be changed very carefully by expert hands are given instead to any and all non-experts (i.e. simply let miners and users choose the blocksize, where the miners can simply flood the network with fake users to get the blocksize they prefer)

And your 1MB4EVA approach is a combination of conservatism and communism (ironically, considering your espousals above). 1MB4EVA eschews all sensible progress "because conservatism", delivers it through the communist 51% wins mechanism (the 2 wolves and 1 sheep voting on what's for dinner).


Bitcoin must strike that balance between the One being the Many and the Many being the One.

To succeed, Bitcoin needs conservatism.

To succeed, Bitcoin needs progress.

To succeed, Bitcoin needs bottom-up capitalism.

To succeed, Bitcoin needs top-down communism.


And it must all be in the right balance, applied in the right areas. And it's hard to do, arguably Core aren't doing it perfectly. But they've been thinking in that way perhaps without even looking at it this way at all.



All Core have done is planned and behaved with one philosophy above all: pragmatism. What works, works. When you reason it through. And what doesn't work, does not.

Whether it conforms to any of the -isms is irrelevant, making a fetish out of any philosophy will end in tears, history abounds with examples.

That's just numbers on a page, no proof at all. Where's the proof?


I ask again, if you were any business, large or small, how much would you pay for Google advertising? My answer would be "close to zero", because it's just not effective advertising at all when the user can so easily ignore it.

Are huge corporations really so uninterested or ignorant as to how ineffective web advertising is? Really? C'mon, you people are just believing anything that's served up to you in a bar chart. I suppose you believe the accounts "information" that your governments publish for how tax revenue is spent, too?

Taaki's a strange character IMO.

He gets alot of publicity, through very mainstream establishment channels, and always as a poster-boy for "darkweb anarchy" and "flaky drugged-up intellectualism" (somewhat like Bitcointalk users iamnotback, trainscarwreck and dinofelis; all meandering talk and no action). And I think that's because he's playing the perfect role that the establishment media prefer to present when it comes to self determined crpytographic tools (like Bitcoin) and anarchism; the BBC can put him on a news magazine as a talking head, looking strung-out and sounding jsut that little bit incomprehensible and incoherent. That's goin to be unappealing to some, and perhaps even frightening, and certainly elicits a "change the station" response from such people. I seem to remember Amir Taaki forming a part of a Guardian article doing the same. I have been comporting myself increasingly dapper and clean shaven ever since, I'm considering beginning to wear full on Carlton turtle necks and bow ties, not even joking.


Is Amir Taaki a knowing dis-info agent though? He'd have to be a fairly extraordinary actor if so, so I'd lean towards him being a "useful idiot", as the intelligence services parlance goes. Even still, it's yet another reflection of Plato's allegory of the Cave, which is fast resembling a hall of mirrors the more I look. At the least, Amir Taaki is a self selected shadow against the wall of the establishment-run theatre that imprisons our interpretations of the world we live in.

Adam Back (Blockstream CEO and original cypherpunk) was the originator of the extension blocks idea, not Jeffreys and Poon. And Adam Back abandoned further pursuit of his own idea for extension blocks, because it has problems.


Extension blocks creates a 2 tier network, and in a way Segwit does the same. But the Segwit 2 tier structure is far preferable to the 2 tiers with Extension Blocks.


Segwit allows for 2 block types: transaction blocks and witness blocks. The transaction blocks are just the same 1MB blocks we have now, hence why Segwit works as a backwards compatible soft fork. The new witness blocks that Segwit permits cannot contain transaction data, only the signatures for the corresponding transactions in the 1MB block.

So, the 2 tiers with Segwit are like this:

• Nodes that handle both block types, transaction blocks and witness blocks
• Nodes that handle only transaction blocks

So, the way to make your node part of the more complete blockchain (i.e. transaction blocks and witness blocks) is just to use version 13.1 or newer. And because using the new version comes with heaps of other benefits anyway, it's basically win-win, apart arguably from the extra large blockchain we'll have (but that's a compromise everyone knows must happen anyway, and it comes with it's own benefits, i.e. more on-chain transaction capacity)


With Extension blocks, the 2 tiers are like this:

• Nodes that handle both block types, the original 1MB blocks and all or some extension blocks
• Nodes that handle only the original 1MB blocks

The problem with this is that any number of extra parallel blockchains can be branched off from the main-chain using the Jeffreys/Poon proposal. When you receive a transaction from someone sending it from an extension blockchain, you must download the whole of that extra blockchain, upto the block the sender is sending the BTC from. Otherwise, how can your Bitcoin software verify the BTC is the real thing?

Because of this flaw, it can be argued that this idea is at least as bad as Emergent "Consensus" (what a misnomer that expression was), or perhaps even worse. It's maybe even worse for Bitcoin network decentralisation than the original draft of BIP 101 (20MB blocks with exponential growth) proposal.

If the extension block chains are unknown and unknowable in size and number, until you need to download a whole extra blockchain because you need to receive money from that extra blockchain, how can anyone ever know how big the whole set of blockchains actually is?


That's the real issue here. Extension blocks give miners the ability to create an infinite amount of additional Bitcoin blockchains, all potentially needed by the regular user. It gives miners too much power over the network, in a different way, but similarly to EC/BU would do. No wonder miners like it.

You've responded to me today (in this thread), and the vast majority of the year previous.

It's not my fault your example Lightning channel chain in the OP was not sufficiently funded and interconnected to provide enough fund liquidity to service 1 specific hop, you designed that, presumably without understanding the implications properly. That you got it wrong is an objective fact, not an insult.

You can tell when jonald's lying: his mouth moves (another objective fact, and hence not an insult)

The following thread gives Windows instructions:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1860802.0

Choice edits of those steps wll of course work for Linux, although I'm not sure it would be so simple for MacOS

It's a hybrid, it works as either peer to peer or as hub and spoke, depending on the way channels naturally form into an overall network. It's no different to TCP/IP in terms of network topographical properties. This topography and state (that you chose, remember) doesn't lend itself well to A paying F inherently, because of it's specific state and topography, and nothing to do with any fundamentals of Lightning. It's a jonald_fyookball fail, not a Lightning fail.

Have you really been objecting to LN frequently and consistently "because centralisation" in ignorance of this fact jonald?

I have a question that precludes the basis of your report.



Bearing in mind the known involvement of ivy league/red brick universities with both recruiting to and producing reports and/or research for the various intelligence services, can you confirm (or deny ) any previous or present involvement in conducting any such work for state intelligence or military intelligence (pertaining to the British state or otherwise) of:

• The authors of this report
• The presiding senior faculty members

We await your response. Bear in mind that Cambridge University is one such establishment for which these allegations have been substantiated.

Except you constantly take me off ignore to (try) to trash my posts, lol

(and to repeat-repeat-repeat your instructions to everyone that I should be placed on ignore)


And you only do it because I don't have to try to trash your posts, I succeed.

Not this world.


If someone can cheat in the competition, that's not open or free competition.


And we're all here, really, because the information has got out that the central banks (and commodities markets) are basically a trick. That's called fascism, not capitalism.

We're a part of Bitcoin to free the world from the unfair competition, not because the competition is fair. Do keep up, amanda85

*ahem*


You've changed your tune since, when was it, less than 2 weeks ago?


One day it's "Rothschild created Bitcoin" the next it's "John Nash was Satoshi"


What's next? I suppose you're going to tell us that Rothschild (the whole family ) is, er, was, John Nash?

I'm genuinely looking forward to your explanation of this, as it's proof positive that you talk so much rubbish that you can't even remember your own nonsense from 2 weeks ago  

"I'm Satoshi, and so's my wife!"

FYI jonald


Eazy-E (your avatar) was not much of a feminist. He was a rapper in NWA. Just in case you need to get your persona straight.

What the Romans did was very clever.

The Christian Revolution likely did happen, and likely was very successful. The Romans fought back hard, using very strong propaganda, that is the (circumstantial) evidence.

But to regain control, they simply exerted control over the story of Jesus. They used the power they still had to change Jesus from a simple philosophical revolutionary, who likely preached only to change the way people thought and their way of life, into an exaggeration of the truth (older copies of the New Testament like the Dead Sea Scrolls help to confirm this, there is no mention of Jesus being supernatural or religious in the Dead Sea Scrolls).

The Romans knew they could not defile Jesus' character, so instead they added to it. They falsely claimed that Jesus was the Son of God, born divinely to a Virgin (a stolen story from Moses, Mithra, Ganesh, etc etc). Christian followers, 50 or 100 years later, were not unhappy to hear this false claim, Jesus would have become a very important hero. But the trick was that the Church was established from this distortion of the story, and false stories like Paul on the Road to Damascus were established to link Jesus and the Church (which Jesus likely had nothing to do with) with the power of Rome. Aspects like the crucifixion story and the Easter resurrection were likely dramatic embellishments also (crucifixion seems like a retelling of the escaped slave in Plato's Allegory of the Cave being stoned to death because he told the truth, and the resurrection was actually originally set at Christmas, to deliberately coincide with and distort the Pagan tradition of observing the Sun (Son, geddit?) lying still on the horizon for 3 days from December 24th to December 26th, then beginning to rise on the horizon again)

The resonance and power of Jesus was hijacked, used for brainwashing into blind obedience, and not for the philosophy of freedom that the real Jesus likely represented and became originally known for. And how clever the Roman's distortions were, even 2000 years ago.