They did have a history, but his parents didn't know about it... We took over his apartment while he went SouthWest for some educational book-selling cult. He was short in paying his tab (he left money under his mattress before leaving, but it was way less that what was owed) and had outstanding bills (cable and something else) we had to pay to re-start service. Going to his parents was only for the money owed. Room-mate went ahead and sold a bunch of Magic cards he had (tried to talk him out of that one - guy didn't seem to care about anything but drugs and trading card games), and I went ahead and took advantage of all the liquor hanging around (which was a nice surprise since I was still underage).

BestBuy's your best bet for 50% by far. You could probably snag them within a couple hours hanging around the OTC IRC room asking. (fwiw)

I tried to learn when I was a kid.... all I remember is go and booru, so if there's some kind of liquor in Japan called Five-Ball, I'm all set.

You've been sitting around here for over a day. Don't you know you're free to leave? Why do you keep dicking around with us, "turning yourself in," for a crime you won't specify? We can't detain you just because you walk in and say you killed someone. If you're just looking for a place to sleep, I can refer you to any of a handful of shelters within walking distance, but right now, you're just costing a whole lot of honest folks' money, and unfortunately, that's not a crime here.

Call their parents, ask parents for the money in an I-don't-mean-to-be-a-bother-but... way, let parents extract money from scammer if they want.

I had a drug-dealing room-mate when I lived a while in NC. Someone skipped out on a tab (~$500). Room-mate went to his parents' condo and explained the situation honestly. It took around an hour but was surprisingly effective.

Heh. That's actually from the text overflowing the box. It comes from the game trying to create "substantial" (in USD value) BTC loans. My thinking was that it'd be ridiculous for someone to ask for a $.02 loan in BTC. When BTC price is very low, it takes so much BTC to be "substantial," it takes up more space than it's allowed and displays blank.

Wait a couple weeks for the loan offers to reset. Might need to wait four weeks. It needs a higher BTC price. I'm not sure how to solve this outside either checking for BTC price and disallowing BTC-denominated loans if price is too low, or just pushing out the date p2p lending's unlocked. Then again, I haven't even simulated the formula for how it'd look mid-game and late-game (I changed the formula around in 00043 to require loans be more substantial).... so'll need to check and might just come up with a new formula altogether which maybe solves both problems (early loans needing way too much BTC, late loans being relatively insubstantial in amount).

I've been having a Hell of time with the block generation rewrite. I remembered what I forgot... Part of the trouble is just staying focused enough to get my mind wrapped around all this, the second will be worrying about how much processor power this will take.

Here's what I'm thinking the difficulty & block generation formulas should look like:

//determine #blocks network "should" generate
NetworkHashPerHour=NetworkHashrate*60*60
UserHashPerHour=UserHashrate*60*60
PctChanceHashSolvesBlock=1/(CurrentDifficulty*4295032833)
//Thank God for Pieter.
PctChanceNetworkSolvesBlock=NetworkHashPerHour/PctChanceHashSolvesBlock

//determine #blocks network "does" generate
//"25" is arbitrary, meant to be a balance between being an okay estimate without over-straining PC by rolling too often (if more than 25 blocks have ever been generated in a single hour, lemme know and I'll adjust this)
If random(1.00,100.00) > (100*PctChanceNetworkSolvesBlock)/25, then add 1 to NetworkBlocksSolvedLastHour, add 1 to BlocksGenerated
^do 25 times
//PctChance is ~24% each roll (.24*25=6) if NetworkHashrate and CurrentDifficulty were perfectly aligned
//BlocksGenerated tracks... blocks generated since the last difficulty reset.

//determine #blocks user generated of those
PctChanceUserSolvesBlock=UserHashRate/NetworkHashrate
If UserBlocksSolvedLastHour < NetworkBlocksSolvedLastHour AND random(1.00,100.00) > (100*PctChanceUserSolvesBlock)/25, then add 1 to UserBlocksSolvedLastHour, add 1 to BlocksGenerated
^do 25 times

//determine future difficulty
//RawHour tracks how many hours have passed since the start of the game
When NetworkBlocksSolvedLastHour > 2015, set CurrentDifficulty to LastDifficulty*((336/(RawHour-RawHourLastReset))+1)
//Definitely not right...


Need to double-check to make sure pool formulas are right as-is.

Only one hash solves the block. The other ~17,455,423,616,072,785,539,150 hashes are wasted. It's binary - you can't contribute to solving a block; you either solve it or you don't. If you have a 100PH/s farm and somehow mine for a year without finding a block, then scrap your equipment, you've literally contributed nothing toward solving transactions, contributed nothing to the difficulty target, and the equipment may's well have never existed except to benefit from the luck of others in your pool.

I'd guess there could be a kind of clearing house requiring a % of issued containers of Tide being represented as coins held physically as collateral. If someone needed to do laundry and ran out of detergent (or the dealer/launderer demanded physical detergent instead of the IOU), they could hit up the closest clearing house warehouse and redeem one of their Tidecoins, similar to what's done with that biogas/cryptocoin company whose name escapes me. They refine fuel from cow manure...

[WIP!] New workflow schedule. One of these formats will stick, eventually. Seem to work most efficiently when I separate the thinking and doing of writing process.

Focus of 00045-0006 is to give users more options to affect the environment. Right now, a lot of things just "happen" to them; it's more EvP (and EvE) than PvE, which I don't think is accurate for the early adopter the game has the user playing, especially with the change to price calculations made lately. The user should be drowning in cash and given plenty of opportunities to see their dreams crumble by their own hand.

00045 (Q1 2015)
000475 (Q1 or Q2 2015)
0005 (pre-alpha!) (Q2-Q4 2015)
000525 (Q3 or Q4 2015)
00055 (Q4 2015 or Q1-2 2016)
000575 (Q1-3 2016)
0006 ()
*Feature Creep* projects will be completed "whenever"


Personal finance mechanics
Minor feature: rewrite lending formula to always require a substantial value of BTC or demand USD instead of BTC (self-explanatory).

Major feature: User debt (user can go in debt, as indicated on the lending screen)
Components

• Negative USD & BTC balances must be zeroed and added to new, positive debt-tracking variables
• Debt balances must accrue interest on the start of each month
• Debt must cause the p2p lending icon to expand and morph.
• Too much debt results in a non-explicit game-lose scenario (the debt icon has taken up too much space for the user to be able to play effectively), with the exchange rate box being one of the last to be covered
• Merge p2p Lending screen into Offers/Communication screen
• Disallow BTC debt from automatically being taken
• User BTC debt must be negotiated each time via BTCTalk and is not guaranteed

Offers/Communications mechanics
Major feature: Bitcointalk (speculation, used mining hardware)
Components

• Copy BTCTalk elements to recreate forum style
• Create dictionary pool of speculation thread components (threads are procedurally generated)
• Create "SignalToNoise" variable, 0-100, starting at 20 and moving slightly and randomly each time tick (luck is a factor)
• Game factors in SignalToNoise, AdoptionTrend, and TOTHEMOON variables to create threads out of thread components
• Generate used CPU & GPU hardware offers by combining "new" price, a 15% "off the lot" discount, and further discount factoring in HW age.
• Generate used ASIC offers solely by their value in mining.

Major feature: GLBSE
Components

• Try to recreate look of GLBSE 1.0 from memory (uhh, without the PGP)
• Create dictionary of GLBSE business components ("ad libs")
• Piece together to generate needed variables to form businesses the user can invest in
• Pirate offers a way to invest with less clicks....
• User can start their own business (they roll the ad libs until they find a business plan appropriately amusing)
• User fills out personality survey to guide business (there are no right or wrong answers, just answers with good or bad consequences) and goes to event window for major decisions
• Really need to figure out JS chart generation

Game economy mechanics
Minor feature: "Post-tx slippage" (transactions have both an immediate effect on the price, but can also weaken or even reverse current trends, but which are "corrected" further down the road)
Components:

• User transactions on the exchange will trigger short-term changes in the "TOTHEMOON" variables. (AdoptionTrend unaffected)
• Game will guesstimate the effects of "post-tx slippage."
• AdoptionTrend checkpoints will include a new variable marking whether or not it is so large that the change is unstoppable
• "Unstoppable" trend changes will also attempt to correct any user-created market manipulation (intentional or otherwise) using the guesstimated "post-tx slippage" effects and multiplying the "TOTHEMOON" variables appropriately.

Mining mechanics
Minor feature: Time-unlocked GPU releases
Components

• Release new GPU models using historical time-frame
• Decrease price of "old" GPUs each time a new GPU model is released (decrease MV of relevant current user equipment by %)

Minor feature: Rewrite block generation events
Components

• Block generation checks need to roll 6 times with 1/6 %chance each roll
• Try to remember why this won't fix the problem and re-fix it (dammit)
• Apply fix to every single time-tick event both in Stats & Main, fix weekly mining income formulas to account for change

Minor feature: Co-location
Components

• Add variable tracking whether or not co-location's enabled
• Duplicate existing time-based events (yep... all of them, including duplicating the duplicates checking whether or not the user uses a pool... and then do the same thing for all of "Stats'" unique time-tick formulas ), originals having the condition that co-location not enabled, new ones with condition that it is
• Determine formula adjustments needed and apply to the duplicated time-tick events

Minor feature: Convert fire event to use HW age instead of being random
Components

• Track amount of time between date of HW purchase and "now" (use "RawDay" variable)
• Create %chance of fire event by looking at per-slot HWAge variable each time tick

Minor feature: User contribution to global hashrate (no explanation needed)



Major feature: FPGA & ASIC introduction
Components

• Create separate drop-down in HWInv for FPGAs & ASICs when unlocked
• New FPGAs and ASICs come with a lead time of 2 weeks to infinite
• FPGAs and ASICs are sold by brand and version number -- each time a new version comes out, the third-last-released version goes out of production
• Users are permitted five new hardware cluster slots specifically for ASICs and FPGAs. If all slots are filled, old FPGA/ASIC hardware must be sold before more can be ordered.
• Pre-production ASIC/FPGA "place in line MV" is determined by lead time estimated remaining and consumer confidence.
• Post-production ASIC/FPGA MV is NOT affected by age, only by their value in mining.
• Places in line can be purchased on Bitcointalk and sold on the HWInv page ("bail")

Casino mechanics


UI
Minor feature: Convert casino to tabbed window (no explanation necessary)

Major feature: Communications/Offers menu
Components

• Create horizontally-tabbed window with slots for Bitcointalk, GLBSE, personal businesses, email/Skype, IRC, and p2p lending

*Feature Creep* UI Overhaul ("Main," "Stats," "HWInv," "Exchange," "Options," "Land")


Other
*Feature Creep* Procedurally generated music (music mood influenced by game events, maintaining a stable beat throughout and transitioning seamlessly)
Components

• Create a beat using time-ticks
• hard-limit game ticks/second to something a weak PC can maintain (PCs outside specs advised to disable music )
• Fill out time between ticks using samples (each sample is its own file, pitch adjusted by the game's audio engine if reasonable, otherwise full "ticks" made in FL) made for the default 1x speed but which sound alright at 400% tempo increase
• User can change out instruments used (money sink!)
• User can purchase additional melodies, bridges, etc (money sink!!)

Squish list:
1) *Feature Creep* There's an audible "pop" between sound transitions (audio or audio engine??).
2) Wk I/O page's lending income is.... not right.
3) I broke mining income calculation somehow. ETA: If personal hashrate significantly exceeds 1/6 of global hashrate (as determined by difficulty), you will always mine 1/6 of all available blocks per day. This is partly due to user hashrate not being accounted in global hashrate and also due to a longstanding issue where users cannot mine more than one block per hour (there should be six rolls taking place, not one). ETA2: This bug requires a complete re-write of the block generation code to be fixed. Need more time.

Thanks. At any rate, people will probably still buy laundry detergent except the most paranoid weirdos insisting there's some kind of detergent manufacturers' conspiracy pumping up the world's largest drug exchange. If Shrem left "Tide" - keeping in mind it wasn't company policy to aid money laundering (AFAIK) - "Tide" would probably be fine if it ever re-opened, so long as Shrem was still left out of operations. This isn't like a company decision to close a factory because employees uninionized or a decision to operate a factory in a disputed geographical region, this is Charlie Shrem being Charlie Shrem (or maybe Charlie Shrem being Yankee, but probably not Charlie Shrem being BitInstant - and the LEOs apparently didn't look at it that way, either).

Maybe. Probably just variance, though. The "gaps" between new blocks and new work, and when work actually reaches you will cause a drop in your effective overall hashrate (your miner will continue trying to solve or submit old work, but they'll be stale by the time they reach the mining pool) - but as long as you're on DSL or better, it shouldn't make any significant impact (unless you have an enormous mining farm where a .1% loss in effective overall hashrate translates to an >$500/mo loss, and then maybe you'll want to think about ways to reduce latency as much as reasonably possible).

For normal miners, I wouldn't be concerned about latency unless a ping to the server takes >100ms. A significant farm, maybe >50ms - and a mega-farm, maybe >15ms (they should probably be running their own pool). Fiber connection to a server within a couple hundred miles should have a ping around 5-20ms, cable will probably be 15-40ms, DSL probably 60-120ms (3G 80-250ms, 4G 40-140ms, satellite 80-500ms).

ETA: to add to W2W's earlier post - stratum is MUCH more gentle with latency than how it used to be. You won't need to be getting each piece of work from the server now and basically just keep going without constant communication until you receive news to switch (and hopefully, you've submitted all your completed work prior to getting news to switch) - so getting the news to switch ASAP and making sure your own work is submitted prior to that is still important, but bandwidth requirements and the overall effect of latency is much reduced.

Bill buys all his bitcoin from a large mining farm nearby from a guy he knows (Ned), who is neither a registered money transmitter nor does he even bother to record the transactions.

A law enforcement agency (LEA) with assset forfeiture powers are made aware of the transactions and, in one way or another, records a few transactions occurring. The LEA determines Bill's entire stash of bitcoin was obtained illegally, as well as Ned's USD. Ned deposits his cash at the bank, so that's gone, but what about Bill's bitcoin? Let's say Bill keeps his coin on a hot wallet on his PC and does not use any obfuscation to enter his password in, or perhaps he keeps the password in a "password journal" next to his PC. What would be the best way for the LEA to proceed in seizing Bill's bitcoin while acting in an arguably legal manner without giving Bill a chance to move the coins to a secure cold wallet (assume seizing his PC and other electronics in the house aren't enough to stop Bill)? I'm mostly curious about how the timing of this operation on the LEA's side would work out.

Let's say the LEA eventually drops the case against Bill and Ned (because the LEOs are feeling generous, and Bill and Ned seem too White to be in prison, anyway), but do not drop the case against their property.

Bonus question: does Bill have any chance of recovering the coins if he does not have a paper trail showing purchases came from money transmitters using USD for which he is able provide credible and legitimate sourcing from?

Maybe. Free energy... .... Is heat considered free energy? -Anyway, we'd be able to mine far, far, far deeper than we can now (probably split the Earth apart), and with unlimited fuel (and unlimited fuel means practically unlimited labor), we'd probably get off this rock and onto many others - or stay in space and have drones bring us whatever we'd like. Time on Earth with unlimited energy would be pretty quick, I'd guess. Either we all die are we rapidly advance to some type of super-race floating in space and having drones fly into the sun... would be interesting to see what happens with suicide rates when we practically have everything.

What's up with the camo and wary, constipated look from the menfolk?

Pirate was initially trusted because he was well-known in IRC/WoT for a high volume of successful currency exchanges. The ponzi (or whatever it was supposed to be) came significantly later. A fair amount of the initial scammer accusations came from butt-hurt lenders (including yours truly) who were being negatively affected either because lendees were arbing by pretending to take out loans for something reasonable and instead just dumping it in Pirate's scheme (causing us to put all our eggs in one basket without knowledge) or because they offered deposit programs and couldn't come anywhere near the rates Pirate was offering while Pirate was well-trusted. Eventually, the lending and securities sections (there was no LTO subforum back then, IIRC) turned into one big cascade of Pirate Pass-Throughs. Once things started hitting GLBSE and MPEx, the scammer accusations were much more numerous and loud, growing each day until...

Yeah, man - ever since the Internet. All sorts of people clacking away on their keyboards, looking at the worrying amount of police brutality and mis-re-appropriation going on - and they're sick of it, so they vent and relieve the stress so when they finally do encounter a police officer, they can exchange polite howdie-dos and mosey on to their destination (outside the weirdos filming shouting "AM I BEING DETAINED?!" at an officer who pulled him over for going 120mph on a dirt road). Every day at work, we make fun of whoever was pulled over that day by those blood-sucking cock-fuckers... and if "dey shoot mah dogs, dey gon' haffa go through me, 'cause dey like my sons."

Laundry detergent (specifically, Tide) aids money laundering. USD can be serial-tracked each time it's moved around by banks, but Tide isn't. Even if most people DID think poorly of aiding money laundering, and the head of Tide (the market leader in laundry detergents) plead guilty to aiding money laundering by posting Facebook tips detailing the best practices in Tide-weed exchanges, only Tide has a chance of being affected (and the head of Tide, obviously), while it probably won't have any impact on whether or not normal people are going to use Tide ("What does it cost?" "What are its benefits?" [and yeah, I'm assuming almost all people don't spend time wondering what other people will think their laundry detergent brand selection says about them, which could be off-base]). We're still thinking too much like speculators.

Sure. Go ahead and accept BTC for payment and accept zero-conf transactions. Sell digital goods like Steam codes where the exchange is instant.

It doesn't happen very often because the market regularly prunes stupid people out.

ETA: No cheating by having the service check against the tx queue for double-spends.

Assuming you have more than a few kb/s up and down, all that matters is latency. FIOS will probably get you ~20-40% latency reduction, but it doesn't really matter with wired broadband connections because they're already extremely low (unless the network in your particular area is way over-sold or the cable connection's going further out than it really ought to be allowed, which is always possible [but unlikely if you're in an urban-enough place to have FiOS], and you won't know until you take the plunge).

tl;dr - you're fine with anything but satellite ISP and dial-up. 3G is probably fine, 4G is good. ISDN is probably fine. T1 would be great. DSL is probably okay, but DSL performance (esp latency and reliability) varies greatly by the exact area you're installing: you can use the same DSL provider and have excellent service on one block, exceptionally shitty service on the next (the same is true with cable, but usually to a much lesser extent).

NO, REALLY, TL;DR - you're fine either way.