this

the story of the internet was always a story of the freedom of expression and the freedom to innovate mutually reinforcing one another (and I may venture to make a similarly bold prediction as this Saylor character), and always will be

well, yeah, but it's difficult to categorize it as anything much, I'm just trying to explain it without using any technical detail.

@Brewmaster is, I'm guessing, referring to the fact that ASIC boost is still being used, but in the publicly noticible form, not the secret way that was possible (and which Antminer coughed to putting in their firmware) until segregated witness was activated for Bitcoin (which happened 3 years ago)

ASIC boost is really just a mining hardware optimization that didn't depend on any bug or design vulnerability in Bitcoin, or on the hashing algo Bitcoin mining uses

yes (well, kinda), and it happened more recently


the Antminer company (who develop and sell mining ASICs for cryptocurrencies) admitted that they had been producing mining machines that were capable of using an exploit to improve the effective hashrate of their products, they had been keeping it secret, but the introduction of a new type of bitcoin transaction called 'segregated witness' somehow forced the fact into public knowledge (something to do with a patent dispute iirc)

Antminer claimed to have created the firmware "just for fun", but some people doubt this, as it provided double-digit % increases in effective hashrate to their miners (but not 1000's of %, which you appear to be scared about)

1. this is somewhat old news
2. unlicensed operators in Germany are just putting their machines in new locations instead (and changing the company name/branding)

Germany is indeed a big market for ATMs, so it makes it quite easy for the machines to hide amongst the crowd

no no no

Coinswap

Anyone trading whitelisted BTC would be quite crazy if they didn't use Coinswap to take advantage of the extra liquidity they can bring to the market (LBMA scheme is woefully illiquid, they claim 5% of the world's gold supply is in the system, and that's clearly their marketing figure, the real number is likely lower)


And so the system would really just become a huge swapping service between clean and dirty coins, all hidden behind the faux-virtue and Bitcoin transaction scripts

This is essentially the "speculative asset vs money" argument


People consistently forget the unique properties Bitcoin has as money:

• difficult to block/censor transactions
• difficult to confiscate
• transaction types will become increasingly indistinguishable from one another

...and so people (who want any of the above qualities) will always use Bitcoin as money (as they do now), regardless of the speculative asset properties


And because Bitcoin is still in the "speculative asset" bracket of consideration, whitelisting schemes can appear to be functioning, at least in the meanwhile and within that narrow framing


But if you forget that Bitcoin transactions are:

• actually scripts
• the types of scripts will proliferate in future

....then you can forget about the effectiveness of such schemes. It's highly likely that even without any new script operations being enabled in the code, that money can seamlessly transfer between the whitelisted pool of coins and the majority of the rest without the blockchain recording that it happened.

That is indeed sad news.


This part is most interesting, and it's not the least of the criticism concerning Mozilla's management. I certainly got tired of all the pointless "simplification" of the UI, but am less critical of e.g. the changes to the plug-in API, which Mozilla were also criticized for publicly.

It's hard to see what positive outcome us regular web users can encourage, if the problems are coming from the top down, then the solution is typically lateral. But using this does not mean I will be using Chrome, certainly not

hmmm, maybe you can get notifications about updates (or version tags) at github.com/goatpig/bitcoinarmory (you'd need to sign up to github I guess)


really, you're already asking in the right place: goatpig is the main dev for Armory, and this sub is where all the public discourse about Armory happens.

maybe the services which still don't support segwit are in favour of small blocks? it would be strange if not, as that's exactly what they can hope to achieve by not using segwit: smaller blocks

The issue is that the pay-per-physical-copy model was more profitable compared to the Crowdfunding model, artists (especially established artists) who, frankly, became quite wealthy in the pay-per-copy era aren't happy with the new deal. The moguls (i.e. the record companies & movie studios) are even more belligerent/desperate, as the writing is on the wall for them. Artists will always exist, but the moguls will not (their only talent is in controlling the product, and *ahem* the means of production).

What's needed is a way to maximize revenues, and I believe it's possible, but voluntary donations is not it.

---

Some kind of cryptographic mechanism can be devised, such that music/film fans must pay the price that the artists want for their work before the digital copy is made available.

That maybe sounds impossible, but there is (I believe) a way of doing just that.

yes, I oversimplified that. non-segwit signatures are 4x more expensive, but in a typical (1 input 2 outputs) transaction, the signature makes up less than half of the total actual size, and so it has less effect on the total weight of a transaction (only the signature's size is discounted for segwit transactions, as you say above).

4x cheaper segwit transactions are only possible for transactions with much bigger signatures (i.e. pay-to-script-hash, which in practice means multi signature addresses and other more complicated contracts), and only when compared to a non-segwit transaction with an equivalent P2SH script (i.e. the contract).

examples are scant. usually high-end design software of various kinds are praised for their good UI's, then some management genius decides to either:

1. make that good UI the most expensive option, or
2. get rid of it completely, as if the users weren't good enough for it


but maybe I'm too cynical. tell me an example of a good UI, DaveF (I recommend against replying "macOS")

well, you're both providing a pretty accurate description of the internet itself, circa 1992-97.

you know what the worst kind of software/network protocols are? the ones the focus on UX/front-end before the engineering problems. Your observations only prove that Bitcoin is being developed according to best practices, at least in this facet

I absolutely concur with this



With Segwit, everyone gets to express their preference according to what they believe is best, whether just individually or for the Bitcoin network overall.


Do you want:

• Small blocks? don't use Segwit
• Big blocks? use Segwit

But small blockers must pay 4x more for transactions that consume more weight in the blocks. Very nice compromise, IMO

well, you've got the right idea, absolutely

I guess it depends on what you mean by "market supply", the miners coins may well not be hitting the exchanges in a way that affects the published price, but the miners are almost certainly selling a great deal of them outside of the exchanges (profit margins are slender in cryptocurrency mining, and operating costs are both high and payable in fiat). Although the marketplace for BTC (strictly speaking) includes OTC sales, it's just that these are private sales, not public.

It's quite likely that the BTC sold by miners therefore do not (at least in the instant where they are sold initially) affect the market price, but maybe this is what you are arguing, that the supply trading on exchanges is more static than is implied by the block subsidy halvings? Sounds like a bullish argument

right

there are a huge number of circumstances under which any company can lose access to it's data or to their computer system, internet attackers is only one such possibility. Regular data backups insure you against all types of data loss problems.

If your company has no usable backups when whatever catastrophe hits you, you are responsible for that.

This company sound like they're begging to go out of business; what sort of going concern can afford a 400 BTC ransom, but not a few hundred dollars/year for data backup? Sounds like a potential scam in fact, maybe they're intending to use some kind of insurance policy or bankruptcy/asset stripping scam to defraud someone. It's interesting that this is a travel company, an industry for which there is no immediate future. Getting out while minimizing losses by any means necessary may seem attractive to owners of travel/tour operators right now.

then

step 4) Anonymous Someone takes the money, then reneges the deal, asking for more


do they go back to 3a) and 3b) after that happens?

Step 1. Someone anonymous does something outrageously egregious to cause harm to you (or someone you) know/love
Step 2. Anonymous Someone asks you to give them something worth $10 million in return for undoing the bad thing


Q. Is step 3:

3a) Give them the $10 million. Why wouldn't you trust them?
3b) Give them nothing and take the hit. They've already proved they're total assholes

@theymos

Please consider implementing 1 (or both) of the following:

1. Extensive real-time Turing tests for newbies
2. Bitcoin Fidelity bonds for all users (forfeited upon consistent breaking of forum rules or failing the Turing test)


I have a suspicion that many new (and possibly old) users would not pass the Turing test, including this latest prodigious new user "OrganixProtocol"

please confirm in simple, unequivocable terms that you are trolling