could you re-do the example with percentages that aren't above 100% please

yes, online is infinitely safer as far as cheating is concerned.  even with all the scandals and collusion and what not, it's still on average much safer, and you can also much better quantify the unsafe areas.

This thread has far less videos of Maru in boxes than I had hoped for.

I have a theory that live games without shufflers have slightly more aces come on the board than would otherwise be dictated, because the winning hand has an ace more often than any other card, and usually the winning hand is scooped up last, putting it on the bottom of the deck before the shuffle.  And in standard "riffle, riffle, box, riffle, cut" shuffle, the bottom card ends up being somewhere between the 20th and 30th card a much higher percentage of the time than other locations, and in a 9 and 10 handed game, 4 or 5 of that 10-card range are the board cards.  Thus aces should come out more often.  The problem of course is that in situations where the ace is there, people are less likely to HAVE an ace, and thus the hand is less likely to see a flop to begin with.  But I still think that even with that side effect, aces still show up on the board some tiny tiny amount higher than would be dictated by true randomness.  It doesn't matter though, since any time I'm actually in a live game without machines, I am just watching the dealer shuffle anyway, and using my shuffle tracking skills to attempt to know if the card is going to a certain player or is likely to come up on the board.  Knowing that the 6c is probably going to be coming out on the board much more often than it should (not for certain, since there is obviously an error rate in my tracking ability) is really useful when you get dealt red sixes.

Two things.  First, I seriously doubt that double spends on a $2 candy bar are going to be common enough that they'll be a problem.  At worst, the seller bumps the price up 10 cents to cover the cost of fraud and nobody really cares.

Second thing is a simply solution is a phone wallet that automatically creates a transaction to split up its funds into addresses each with only a small amount in them, and then what you would do is send the machine a QR of your private key for one of the addresses and a public key for returning change, and it creates the transaction and sends you the change.  This way it knows the transaction is valid, and it can wait 5 or 10 seconds and see if a double spend transaction shows up on the network.  At least this way, it will be somewhat more confident than it would be by you send it the transaction, but obviously, the only true confidence is a couple of confirmations.

I am looking for a Samsung Galaxy S4 i9505 with 64gb internal disk space.  Do you know if you will have one within a few months?


Edit:  He contacted me after I posted this, and was very kind and always quick to communicate.  He said that he would be able to get me a 64gb version, shipped from Russia.  I replied fantastic, how much, and please send me a list of users or services you would be willing to use for escrow if you don't want to use XXXX or XXXX (people I trust and have used for escrow in the past).  Since then he has not communicated with me at all.  I am by no means saying he is scamming anybody, but his behavior is awkward enough, especially given his former quick communications, and the fact that he's been online often since my last few messages-- all that is enough to make me feel like I should at least tell others that this has been my experience.  If you do business with him, I would recommend requiring escrow.

Almost everybody I've told about bitcoin has said it sounds like a ponzi.  I have trouble with that because I never thought that at the beginning.  I read up on it, and it was immediately apparent to me how useful it was.  The whole early adopter issue in my mind was "well, that's the risk/reward for any startup venture; a few people happening to REALLY benefit from it doesn't make it any less of a good idea".  But apparently that's a really big problem for some people.  Then we get in discussions about how to make it more fair, and they slowly realize that fiat is even worse, but they still don't like bitcoin, so the conversation just stops.  I've tried to respond with "well there's litecoin and others which had a lot of users right at the beginning, so the early adopters were much more evened out" but all they hear is "there's an even less popular internet money that TRULY nobody uses, and already almost nobody uses bitcoin anyway".

I get very frustrated trying to talk to people about bitcoin.

You don't need a new client.  You can just disable these things in the config file.  Jesus Christ.  This isn't some hard-coded bullying, it's actually a USEFUL addition that allows users and miners to control those variables, which was NOT previously an option.  The 53 ubc or whatever it was is set as a DEFAULT setting so "dumb" users don't have to do anything to make sure that their transactions will always be relayed by all miners regardless of circumstances.  Read the fucking pull.  Jesus.  This is a GOOD update that gives users MORE control.  You don't even understand what's happening-- you're boycotting a figment of your imagination FFS.

There is a third option which erases most of the cons of anonymity you listed.  Go anonymous in that your IRL is never divulged, but create a strong identity and presence with your forum handle.  Be active and have great customer service and do everything you can to reach out to your userbase and the community.  Be as transparent as you can possibly be with revealing yourself, use cryptographically "provable" techniques for your service whenever possible.  Help users verify things.

It may take longer, but you will gain trust and reputation and eventually have a flourishing service.

(At which point you can pull a Pirate and disappear with our monies, having pulled a very successful long con.)

You idiots know it's just a default setting that can be changed, right?

You can just change this in the config, and connect to a few nodes in pools that accept non-standard tx's.

You idiots know it's just a default setting that can be changed, right?

You can just change this in the config, and connect to a few nodes in pools that accept non-standard tx's.

Micon, do you know if you guys have any plans in the (admittedly far off) future of changing the software over to cryptographically provably fair shuffling algs?

LOL is puffpuff really BFL Josh???  Oh man that would be funny.  Hey Josh, yeah, they have some down time, but you know what they also have, a product that has been delivered to their customers.

i'll jump on this boat... err, island

Really?  You got caught being wrong and you're still looking for a reason to throw a hissy fit?  Dude, shut up.

ya, before bitcoins and before popular exchanges were set up, a friend of mine used to play second life and follow people around in less popular areas, because apparently the money drop-offs were just people leaving second life lindens in really obscure areas and counting on it not being found.  but ya, bitcoin in MMO's would be siiiiiick.  can you imagine EVE with fucking bitcoins!?

OP, the simple answer is that bitcoin *addresses* are tracked, but there is nothing that associates your IRL identity with an address.  If you use an exchange that knows your IRL and cash out to an address, the police can ask the exchange and the exchange can say "we think this address probably belongs to him", but all you have to do then is send to one other address, and claim you bought something from somebody, and bam, no more link to you IRL.

If you REALLY want to be anonymous, you have to set up fake accounts on exchanges, and move money in and out of them to the point where the original paper trail is simply too long and too obscure to follow.

But you are absolutely correct that it is possible to follow every transaction, it's just difficult to link an IRL identity with an address, and since you can create as many addresses as you want on whim, and create fake transactions to yourself over and over again, it's possible to obscure your bitcoins to the point of anonymity.

The possessive "its" does not contain an apostrophe.

You can pretty much lock any file in a single point in time by adding somewhere in it:  "The hash of bitcoin block number [most recent block] is [hash], and the sha256 hash of this document, in the form you now have it, [presumably a PDF or something], will provide a raw hex private key for an address which I will send [X.XXXX] bitcoins to, and shortly thereafter send them back to the originating sending address.  This document listing the hash of block [most recent block] proves that it was created after that time, and the transaction to the hash of this document itself proves that it was created before that time."  Bam, locked in a single window of time for all eternity.

blocks will always be created, it's just once the limit is reached, the only reward for a new block will be the transaction fees.  blocks will never stop being created.