Anyone who reports a post is simply bringing very public information to the attention of the moderation team. It is a very common response by the mods to a complaint about a moderator action is that multiple people reported a post or a thread for breaking the rules.

I would not personally be worried about any retaliation for reporting a post. I have in the past publicly reported spammers and without any kind of retaliation. (I have experienced retaliation when some people were called out as a scammer, even when PN7 made no such assertion).

You are describing something that a very specific person could cause to be on the blockchain, but would not be easily accessible to anyone besides yourself.

I might argue that you could potentially find a nearly arbitrary x amount of data (with some size limitations) using a complex algorithm to find the data. You could probably do the same thing with a series of 600k 1MB chunks of random data.

As you mentioned, it would cost millions of dollars in TX fees to publish data of copyrighted material. Most copyrighted material is already available online, but people don’t pirate it because it is very cheap to access most copyrighted data legitimately (for example via Netflix, or Spotify).

I posted the below in a similar thread.
Tl;dr Plead is a service that specializes in allowing financial type apps the ability to access bank account information without the app having access to the underlying bank credentials. If Coinbase has a data breach, your bank account credentials will be safe (balances as of the breach may be compromised). Obviously if Plead suffers a data breach, your credentials would potentially be compromised.

 

Being able to filter posts by "keyword" efficiently would require a full text search index be added to the forum database.

My guess is that theymos has concluded that adding the above index is too expensive for the benefit it would provide.

Anytime you add an index to a database, it will become more expensive to add an additional row (such as a post) that is affected by the index. There are already a lot of indexs on the forum database that affects posts, such as the topic ID, the board ID, if a post is an OP, and the UID of the person making the post.

If there was a sufficient benefit, I don't think it would be especially difficult to implement. I am not particularly familiar with SMF, but I don't think it would be terribly more complex than automatically running a SQL query based on the text being searched, and creating an HTML template to display the results. The search text would need to be escaped, but that is true for all searches.

The above would at least be the solution if the forum was deployed via a flask app. It was suggested that the new forum software be build on Django (which is very similar to flask). I am not really sure why this option was not used. A flask app that can host a basic forum could probably be built in a week or two. Some of the additional required features might take a little bit longer, but only because they are so numerous. Each of the requirements would essentially be building SQL queries that do each of the required features, and possibly expanding/adjusting the database schema. Using flask or Django would not even require the forum using a server (except for its database).

Most reputable casinos, including online bitcoin casinos have a self-exclusion process. For example, PrimeDice (now stake) has a self-exclusion policy that states that in effect any bets placed by someone evading a self-exclusion restriction will be graded as a losing bet, and that it will not be possible to withdraw any balance on their platform while a self-exclusion ban is in place.

PD has had its share of people cause problems on its site, and I suspect at least some of this was driven by the presence of problem gamblers, either because a problem-gambler was trying to make up their losses via alternative means (scamming), a scammer was taking advantage of problem gamblers with too-good-to-be-true offers, or a naive person sees one someone take advantage of a too good to be true offer from a scammer, and ends up getting scammed themself.

Policing problem-gamblers, and enforcing self-exclusion bans is something that major casinos have an interest in doing.

There are on-off ramps between LN <--> on-chain BTC in which you can send(receive) a LN payment to(from) the service, and the service will make an on-chain(LN network) payment on your behalf. There is generally a cost to this that exceeds on-chain TX fees (the service is aiming to make a profit). This may or may not result in a net savings over sending coin back and forth between your phone and your home computer, and absent these net savings, the cost may be sufficiently low that the value gained from only having a specific amount of coin on your phone is worth the additional cost.

The forum does not complete any kind of KYC on its users. This means it is impossible to determine if someone creating an account really belongs to a distinctly different person than making the referral. It also means if someone refers someone, it is possible the person being referred already has a forum account, either one they use regularly or one that has gone unused for years.

I’m not sure.

If this is an option, I would assume it is at least somewhat obvious as to how to verify your account this way. Coinbase may want to know your ongoing bank balance before they allow you to buy bitcoin with your bank balance that they don’t have immediate access to.

I didn’t create a zero to hero thread, but I did create a zero to legend thread, and even hosted a giveaway. It was a lot of fun.

Some people that put a lot of effort into their time at the forum are proud of being able to rank up to the highest rank. The overwhelming majority of legendary accounts were grandfathered into their rank. Very few people that were not legendary when the merit system was implemented are not legendary members today, even if they have the required activity and have remained active.

My understanding is that Plaid is a service that financial related apps will use in order to allow the end user to connect their bank information to the app. This allows a random person to create an app that accesses bank information that users can use without having to trust the random person with sensitive bank username and passwords.

I believe Coinbase uses Plaid to access bank balance information. They want to know if a bank account has available funds prior to attempting to debit the bank account. This prevents losses by Coinbase when they lock in the price when someone uses funds in their bank account to buy bitcoin.

Bitcoin core is generally something that is safe to run, although all software potentially has bugs and vulnerabilities. Security vulnerabilities have been found in bitcoin core before, although they have generally been quietly reported so they could be fixed before the bugs become public.

You can look at tests that are performed on the code, (and run them yourself if you like), and can see which parts of the code doesn’t have any tests performed on. It is very rare for software to have 100% test coverage, and even when it does, chances are that there are edge cases in which tests are not run.

This obviously doesn’t mean the code is deficient or that it contains vulnerabilities, it just means that it hasn’t been tested. To “test” code, you check to make sure it performs the task it is intended to run, and produces the output it is intended to produce.

Relying on WiFi or Bluetooth of your home computer would reduce the risks I described, although there is the potential any of these could be spoofed.

I would not describe relying on my WiFi as relying on a "third-party" device, as I control my wireless router, and if it stops working, I can trivially create a new WiFi network with the same name.

My setup would automate the keeping an appropriate amount of coin on your phone. Since you are interacting with a direct channel to your home computer, you would not pay any transaction fees sending coin to/from your phone. Once you have the scripts written, there would be no additional setup each time you leave your house, provided your home computer is on and online.

If you are spending coin with your phone, you are presumably planning on spending them at a physical location, and you wont necessarily know the specific amount you are going to spend, or who you are going to send the coin to.

Sure, there are always risks when using third-party services. The difference in my eyes is that Coinbase (for example) is in the specific business of handling coin on behalf of their customers, which includes processing crypto withdrawals. if Coinbase screws up too much, they will eventually go out of business.

Relying on geofencing on the other hand will rely on your phone's GPS. Apple is not in the business of handling their customer's coin. They are not even in the business of providing precise location data to phone owners, or even location data in general. It is also possible that your phone's location is currently wrong, and when this gets fixed by Apple, your phone will think it is not in the correct geolocation when it is in the intended correct location.

Fair enough. Although if your security model is that you need a geolocation in addition to a PIN, you are assuming a PIN is insufficient.
For some reason I was thinking the amount allowed outside of a particular geolocation would be $50 in BTC. Fixing the amount to x amount of BTC, rather than $x worth of BTC would address this issue.

Yes, that would work. Although you would need one additional backup if you were to rely on this.

I do think a LN wallet with a channel open with your home computer that automatically sends/receives a LN tx when you leave a location would be best. If you have the private key to the address where your phone's channel will end up at when the channel is closed, you can simply broadcast an old channel state if you lose your phone.

The geolocation is dependant on a third party agreeing you are in a specific location. So if for whatever reason apple (in the case of iPhones) does not agree you are in the geolocation of your home, you will be unable to access your coin. Or, an adversary could steal your phone and take it it to your front yard in order to steal all of your coin (without even having to break into your house).

There is also the risk of tricking your phone that the price of 1 bitcoin is $0.01, which would allow an unlimited amount of coin to be spent.

It would be very ill-advised to prevent someone from being able to spend all of their coin that is in their wallet unless a criterion is met (being within a geofence) as they could potentially mean the end-user is unable to spend all of their coin. Someone with login access to an iOS device can arbitrarily change the time/date, so it would be trivial to override any $/unit_of_time limitation. It would also be necessary to prevent someone from being able to access their private keys while outside of the geofence, or else an adversary could simply access the private keys and spend the entire unspent UTXO set controlled by a seed.

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I do have one solution:
The current implementation of iOS allows automation based on certain criteria, including leaving a location and arriving at a location.

If you have a LN wallet on your phone, and a LN node on a home computer, you could create an automation that causes your phone to create a LN invoice that requests x BTC (potentially based on the current price) and sends that invoice to your home computer whenever your phone leaves a particular location. You could also create an automaton that automatically sends the remaining unspent coin whenever your phone arrives at a location.

Separately, you could create a script that approves/pays a LN invoice received from whatever information channel you designate to receive payment requests from your phone, when certain criteria are met. Your script can also automatically receive a transaction from your phone when it arrives to your home geolocation.

If your phone wallet is a LN node with a direct open channel connected to your home computer, moving the coin back and forth will be free. If your phone wallet is bluewallet (a custodial wallet), or does not otherwise have a direct LN channel open with your home computer, you will have to pay tx fees to move the coin back and forth.

The OP is describing a common employment scam.

The scam works like this:
Someone is hired to receive payments to their personal bank account from a third party. Often the payments being received are checks being mailed to the "employees" residence.
The "employee" is to deposit the check into their personal bank account.
The "employee" then is to either wire the funds to the "employer", buy gift cards, or send cash to the employer, less a percentage cut for the employee.
The check is either drawn on a non-existent bank account, or is fraudulent, or will otherwise result in the "employees" bank ultimately reversing the deposit.

Replace receiving a check with receiving a PayPal transaction, or an ACH payment, nad replace send cash with send bitcoin, and you have what the OP is trying to facilitate.

Both Roobet and Stake appear to be licensed. I think most likely that both are regulated by their licensing agency, and both also almost certainly self-regulate to certain standards.

Both also appear to have resources for those that are addicted to gambling, such as the ability to self-exclude themselves from gambling on their respective websites.

Further, the low house edge of both Roobet and Stake allows their customers to gamble more before the EV of their customers' cumulative bets is such that their bankroll will decline to zero.

There are plenty of things that traditional casinos do to entice gamblers that crypto casinos do not do.

My understanding is that an invoice requires the specific amount of bitcoin (or coin) to be paid. I understand that if any other amount is attempted to be paid, the transaction will not be valid.

The reason for this is that both parties to a channel need to agree on the proposed new channel balance and the specific new channel balance amount needs to be known in advance.

0.00014165 BTC.

The invoice amount is the amount that will be received by the LN node (or your bluewallet account). Most services that hold bitcoin on your behalf with deduct any transaction or withdrawal fees from your account balance, not the withdrawal amount.

I am not even 100% sure they are not two different people.

interiawp appears to have been selling a script capable of stealing a key after so many transactions being "sent" by that key appear on the blockchain (or are otherwise available to the person using the script).

The script is not coded particularly well, and the math involving eliciptal curves is above my pay grade, so I am unable to determine if it actually works or not.