I actually Googled this because it seemed like I should know it (thought it was a set of proposals for a new Core version). It's an altcoin they're literally calling Bitcoin 2.0 which uses Scrypt instead of SHA.

Never, never, never, never, never-ever - NEVER feed a barn cat. First one was okay... it's still with us - someone's former housecat and mostly alright, but clingy as Hell even though it catches its food. Spends most of its day outside our door, meowing as loud as able. Second was a bit too aggressive, but tolerable and fairly non-clingy... ended up pregnant - 5 disappeared, one was dead in a flowerpot, cat kept running away from the kittens and called our bluff of not wanting to take in 6 new cats. She visits every few weeks, but has mostly moved on. Third was a psycho missing half its tail and a toe (which it made up for by having six toes on another paw). Scratched daughter more than a few times and bit hard into flesh when happy. He was kicked out with prejudice. There's a fourth one - enormous, mangy, orange fuck - who occasionally glares at us at a distance, like it's casing the house and plotting to murder us in our sleep. He'll attack any other cats which come near it.

Dogs are too loud, needy, and the one we have sheds at an unbelievable rate (takes a while to get its fur out of the carb's air filter on the mower). Ferrets are kind of fun... wouldn't mind having a ferret around... maybe a trained guard ferret. Nobody'd expect a ferret to run up their pants and bite their balls off. -Or just a few fish.

Major changes today, which go into effect immediately (but, of course, do not apply retroactively):
*As you can tell by the thread title, the project's open again. We'd like to get caught up with the queue ASAP, with a goal of being completely up-to-date within a month. At that time, there's a fair possibility that this project will end, though there may be a few more episodes to do until negotiations are finished.
*Potential transcribers must reserve an episode, then transcribe the first five audio minutes - and only the first five audio minutes. Then, submit the transcript link to me through PM, NOT in this thread. It will only pay .005BTC (after being proofread, which shouldn't take me long at all). If the transcript takes only a short time for me to proofread, you'll have permission to transcribe the rest of the episode for .075BTC (excluding the previous .005BTC payment).
*If you're approved, you can then reserve full episodes after you finish that transcription without having to have the first five audio-minutes green-lit, but these will still only pay .075BTC/transcript.
*If you're not approved, you will still receive the .005BTC, but not allowed to reserve any future episodes nor be paid the .075BTC for the one you started.

The preceding does not apply to already-approved transcribers. However, this applies to all episodes reserved after today:
*The decaying payment mechanism is back in effect, though a good bit looser than last time. From now on, when an episode is reserved, you have 72 hours to submit it. After that period of time, .005BTC will be deducted at the start of every 24 hour period which elapses. (Obviously, you wouldn't be deducted .2BTC for submitting four days after reserving, only .05BTC) For new transcribers, that 72h period will not start until you're green-lit to finish transcribing the episode you reserved.

The end goal is to dramatically reduce the amount in which this project is to be subsidized and move to a model where reader tips bring in at least half of the pay for transcripts. This would coincide (ideally) with transcripts and a tip address (or a %split from the overall episode tip address) being integrated into the LTB website, but we must be up-to-date, first. This will likely push the viability of working as a transcriptionist for pay to low-wage nations. I wouldn't expect pay exceeding $30/episode, and likely, only ~half of that will be paid up-front, while the rest will trickle in as tips.

Buy more land, preferably a perfect square lot. Plant plenty of trees. House should be in the middle of the plot. Ideally, the house would sit on a kind of "elevated crater," though I'm sure those partially-underground houses (earth houses, I think they call them) do well to keep the noise out. The more and larger the barriers between you and your neighbors, the better. Maybe if there's a really awesome neighbor, you can create a two-way underground friendship tube which you close off when they move.

Broken English is a serious issue when p2p business is done. Escrow borders on being impossible to provide adequately. GTranslate can usually do a superior job if they write in their native language, but OTOH, if they don't write it themselves, it's more difficult to learn. Then again, nobody corrects them because it'd likely end up a flamey thread-jacking where the person correcting is some stuck-up Western asshole (funny part is it usually isn't the person who was corrected who calls them that).

"Do nothing" is the best bet, I guess. Try to understand them or just skip over it if you don't think it's worth reading.

Dunno. I'm pretty grateful when someone corrects my piss-poor Spanish. I don't want to go around telling people to stuff my body into a container of alcohol when I mean to ask where the whiskey is.

On average, it'll be included in a block (confirmed the first time) within ten minutes, with each confirmation thereafter taking an average of ten minutes, though this can easily run into 40-50 minutes in unlucky times (on the flip-side, you can also see a transaction confirmed 6 times within ten minutes, too). If it took an hour to be included in a block, there's a good chance the transaction queue is bogged down from heavy use due to the current price volatility and you might want to consider including higher fees with your transactions.

To deeper penetrate "why," though - it's because confirming a block is a semi-random process to prevent cheating in mining. If you mean "why" relative to other cryptos, well... that'll take longer to answer, because there are both drawbacks and benefits to choosing 1m target conf times over 10m, and the same for 10m over 1h. Short answer is "it's considered near-optimal by TPTB."

Anyone can hold collateral. It doesn't require any special equipment. It's ridiculously good pay for the time, usually, but in cases where there's a dispute and a weak contract, it can easily take up waaaay more time than it's worth, especially when there's a language barrier.

Actually - I forgot to mention something pretty important - multi-sig escrow, where you don't even have to worry about the escrow agent running off with the money (unless either the buyer or seller are colluding with the escrow agent to scam one of the other guys). Forbes has an article on multi-sig and some of the implications here: http://www.forbes.com/sites/johnvillasenor/2014/03/28/could-multisig-help-bring-consumer-protection-to-bitcoin-transactions/

Escrow is when an uninterested third-party (the escrow agent) holds something important to at least one of the other parties. Escrow agents can be either one person or a group of people acting as some type of organization (web services are always still handled by human beings in case of dispute, though).

Usually on this forum, it's used where someone wants to sell something, but the buyer doesn't want to pay upfront because he doesn't fully trust the seller. Instead, the seller finds a reputable escrow agent who will hold his money which the buyer must also agree to use. Then, the escrow agent is basically just a contract enforcer. He ensures the contract (this could be as simple as the seller saying "I'll sell you two working 1H-IEN4-KL LCD monitors for 1BTC") is fully enforced. When the escrow agent is satisfied that the contract has run successfully to its end (or when the buyer tells the escrow agent escrow can be released to the seller), the escrow agent will send the coins or whatever to the seller.


Escrow can't protect you from everything and is constrained by the contract. They often act as arbitrators in case of dispute, where they'll settle on who breached contract and what the outcome of that should be, which may or may not be in your favor. A weak purchase agreement like the simple example I gave is an example of abusing escrow due to how much is left up in the air (Who pays shipping on returns? What happens if there's a dead pixel? etc). Oftentimes, purchase agreements are really vague, so you're relying on the escrow agent just "doing what's right," which is obviously very subjective.

There are a bunch of other uses for escrow, though. If a lender wants collateral from a lendee, the lendee would want that collateral held by an escrow agent so they know the lender won't just run off when given the collateral. If someone has a giveaway where they offer to give .05BTC to charity each time someone posts an original photograph of a llama spitting, they might want to pre-pay donations into escrow so the people taking pictures of llamas know their efforts won't be wasted.

Interesting. I missed the thread until seeing it from bump today. Would've made loan without interest mandate.

You've received no mining income at all?

How does Thailand in particular get through so many of these "undemocratic democracy enforcements" with relatively little bloodshed? Clearly, there's a LOT of bitterness, but it seems like most bloodshed tends to occur at protests which border on getting out of hand, where the military steps in (sometimes prematurely and perhaps unnecessarily), not from any type of widespread armed rebellion where they fight it like a traditional war. Is it really just a mutual understanding that civil war would absolutely devastate the country short-term and long-term no matter the outcome?

Without extreme reputation (and often even with), loans are all about collateral, and you'll need to offer up something like 150-200% equiv, with something not particularly easy to sell taking a 50-95% hit in valuation for lenders (where their skillset and investment profile probably doesn't cross over to running or selling poker sites). The lending subforum is practically a digital pawn shop, so if a pawn operator wouldn't offer you much for it, a lender in the subforum here probably wouldn't, either.

I'd guesstimate the value of a poker site being called worth 4BTC @ FMV as worth ~1BTC as collateral, which'd make up enough collateral to get you a ~.5-.75BTC loan. A rushcard is probably useless (if even familiar) to potential lenders on the subforum, so worth nothing. ID is really only useful to a lender if he thinks he can successfully sue, which then brings on a whole bunch of other restrictions (he must be in the same jurisdiction as you and preferably pretty close within that jurisdiction) and proof requirements (proof of liquid assets [which would be set aside as collateral for the loan], reputation proof that you won't go "scorched earth" to prevent court-mandated restitution). Keep in mind, lenders have no interest in hurting you (so it doesn't matter if they can spend money creating a website calling you a rat-faced scammer if you don't pay) - they just want their money back.

Fwiw. For these reasons, collateral accepted tends to only include that which is physical and liquid (PMs, "common" vehicles, mining hardware) if the lender and lendee are physically close or cryptocurrencies if not. Most wouldn't even consider physical collateral due to the added risks and time to get the loan pushed out and collected on -- escrow can solve this, but finding a mutually-trusted escrow agent near you is probably a crapshoot, too. At any rate, you'd probably have better luck going to the most unlikely source of a loan from someone physically near, like the mafia or a drug dealer. Of course, then you can start working up the chain of likelihood.... bank, co-workers, family, friends, boss.

This will probably come concurrently with the imminent ban on homosexuals, though I have no idea if it's considered "manly" or "gay" in Russia to eat the fried penis of a homosexual.

The "retro" look initially turned me off to it. I'm pretty sick of seeing it and have bad gameplay and writing associated with it. This time, I was pleasantly surprised.

Oh - that just adds to the story's appeal for news agencies to run.

Maybe it's not as fantastic as demanding twelve magic gold-producing octopi which he considers equal in market value, but then nobody would take his other points seriously (as opposed to now, where almost nobody takes his other points seriously).

I'm going to go way out on a limb here and suggest his goal wasn't to actually get 28kBTC in restitution, and I'd be shocked if he gave a quarter damn about what the courts think is "legal."

I'm sympathetic, honestly. Mostly amused, though. Would love to see this fellow get a radio show. There aren't many people who'd come out and say someone like Stack or McVeigh were heroes they want to dedicate a "memorial grove" to, whether they were nutty enough to believe it or not.

From you, I am not picking up the distinct odor of unfettered idealism. It's the principle, man - the principle!

Oooooh... You know, we're all kind of slaves to the Genesis Block. Man self-controlled by his own block, too heavy to lift. Sure there's a good Godalogy in there somewhere. I wonder if in the future some time, fork attempts will be called uprisings. In dystopian future "Corporate Bitcoin," it could involve armed uprisings to take out "Oldcoin" nodes and miners.

Good, loud headphones, Sneaky Sound System. I'm not joking.

Y'know... their reasoning's fairly sound. I don't think they should have authority to do such a thing, but it doesn't seem particularly unreasonable a position for a conservative nation stuck in the 20th century, clinging to extreme luddite worldviews which will maintain them as a footnote in history, lagging in global GDP growth and continuing to treat their citizens as some type of abominable dog-children while the prestige of holding the highest public offices in Belgium does not rise any more than that of the local rat-catcher.

*cough*

But yes, extrapolating from the apparently-accepted axioms was done in proper fashion, I think.

Ah. "One gun, one vote."

I thought you'd moved to the US. Just a visit? You should overstay your tourist visa next time.