If they complain about amounts, tell them to complain to me. It's best if sources try to exhaust their source allocations, even if it means giving posts higher amounts than is typical. If you have 150 source merit and you only see 3 merit-worthy posts in a month, then I'd rather you over-give each of them 50 merit than let the merit expire. That way there are more people capable of sending merit, and the "merit economy" is less top-down.

If a DT member tags you for something stupid involving merit (ie. probably anything less than selling merit), then they're not going to be a DT member for much longer.

Aside from that, if people complain about whether things deserve merit at all, then that's something to perhaps think about, but if you conclude that they're wrong, then that's that. You don't need to stress about it or defend yourself constantly. It's conceivable that someday you and I will end up disagreeing too much about this stuff and I'll remove your source status, but it's really not a big deal.

The topsendban list is just a first indication of abuse, and many excellent people are on it. Your place on there acts as a sort of benchmark: eg. chandra12 has a similar score there, but whereas you are an extremely active merit-giver with a diverse selection of posts merited (most of which anyone would agree with), chandra12 only has two large merit sends. His behavior in comparison to yours while having a similar topsendban score is what creates a strong abuse impression.

I appreciate the work of you and other sources who take it seriously!

Accounts on sites that require KYC such as bank accounts, PayPal, etc. are assumed to be hacked unless you explain why they're not hacked.

I don't really understand how this can happen. Browsers are supposed to warn you before resubmitting POST forms.

You can also use spaces, but then your post is more limited in length because each space beyond the first is converted to   internally and therefore counts as 6 characters.

The Russians did something very similar in 1992: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Znamya_(satellite)

Seems like just a publicity stunt.

The forum sells ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page. This income is used primarily to cover hosting costs and to pay moderators for their work (there are many moderators, so each moderator gets only a small amount -- moderators should be seen as volunteers, not employees). Any leftover amount is typically either saved for future expenses or otherwise reinvested into the forum or the ecosystem.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], banks, funds, or anything else that a person can be said to "invest" in; I may very rarely make exceptions if you convince me that you are ultra legit, but don't count on it. Ads may be rejected for other reasons, and I may remove ads even after they are accepted.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Nine of the slots are for sale here. Ads appear only on topic pages with more than one post, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 days.
- Sometimes ads might be up for longer, but hopefully no longer than 12 days. Even if past rounds sometimes lasted for long periods of time, you should not rely on this for your ads.

Stats

Exact historical impression counts per slot:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adstats

Info about the current ad slots:
https://bitcointalk.org/adrotate.php?adinfo

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

If you have never purchased forum ad space before, and it is not blatantly obvious what you're going to advertise, say what you're going to advertise in your first bid, or tell me in a PM.

Post your bids in this thread. Prices must be stated in BTC per slot. You must state the maximum number of slots you want. When the auction ends, the highest bidders will have their slots filled until all nine slots are filled.

So if someone bids for 9 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.02.
- The bidding starts at 0.02.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time. Unless I say otherwise, I typically try to end auctions within a few days of 10 days from the time of this post, but unexpected circumstances may sometimes force me to end the auction anytime between 4 and 22 days from the start. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I reserve the right to reject bids, even days after the bid is made.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else, and I might even give you a negative trust rating. I will send you the payment information via forum PM from this account ("theymos", user ID 35) after announcing the auction results in this thread. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me. They might even have somewhat similar usernames. Be careful.

---

[1]: For the purposes of forum ads, an ICO is any token, altcoin, or other altcoin-like thing which meets any of the following criteria: it is primarily run/backed by a company; it is substantially, fundamentally centralized in either operation or coin distribution; or it is not yet possible for two unprivileged users of the system to send coins directly to each other in a P2P way. The intention here is to allow community efforts to advertise things like Litecoin, but not to allow ICO funding, even when the ICO is disguised in various ways.

Note that bids with invalid values (ie. not evenly divisible by 0.02) get rounded down to the nearest valid bid.


Still no. I'd probably only be comfortable with BiblePay if a lot more info, news, and third-party reviews of your practices come out. As-is, I'm not particularly convinced by your responses to my previous concerns (though admittedly I don't have time to spend more than a few minutes looking at it), and I see a lot of red flags. If I was convinced that BiblePay was like "Litecoin with a bible theme and a donation thing", then I'd probably allow it.


Yes, usually.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.12 Gunthar
1 0.12 ni23457
2 0.12 Cloudbet
2 0.12 RachelGreen
3 0.10 ChipMixer

It doesn't bypass the Cloudflare captcha, only the forum's own captcha. Whether you get a CF captcha depends on whether / how much the forum is currently being attacked and CF's idea of your IP's reputation.

There are some possible ways that I could allow bypassing the CF captcha, but they're all troublesome in various ways. Maybe I'll look into it if there are a lot of complaints about CF's captcha.

Agreed, the US doesn't need to topple every evil regime. But Saudi Arabia gets substantial support from the US; the reason that Saudi Arabia is able to have such an evil regime at all is probably because of US support. The US is basically Saudi Arabia's mercenary force. The US should absolutely stop supporting Saudi Arabia for this and many other human rights abuses.

Trump is going to roll over for the Saudis, as would any of the last few previous presidents. They're too valuable in economic and military terms. It's incredibly hypocritical and pathetic.

Fixed, thanks.

No, it just displays it differently.

Maybe https://timecryptonews.com/ ?

Biden would do very well against Trump if he still has enough energy at his age. (He's only 3 years older than Trump, but he looks/acts far older.) Biden isn't stained quite as much by the insane parts of the Democratic party, and he knows how to punch back without looking as crazy as Trump sometimes does. IMO Biden could win a decent chunk of the Republican base from Trump.

I don't think that the Democratic establishment will ever let Sanders win the primary, and I suspect that he couldn't win against Trump, though maybe he'd have a better chance than Cory Booker or Kamala Harris. Warren couldn't win.


That'd be pretty funny, but it could also happen on the other side. Several Republicans are already calling for a primary challenge, and when they lose, they might take it as far as going independent. Jeff Flake even said that he'd prefer a Democrat over Trump in 2020. It's a huge ordeal to get on the ballot in even one state, but they could target just a few swing states with the specific goal of derailing Trump. I wonder if they're already setting up for it (maybe indicated by public records).

It'd be interesting if we had a third party win electoral votes. I've always wanted to see congress pick the president.

In the "Railroaded" series of videos, it's implied that bitcointalk.org was at one time owned by Mark Karpelès. This is wrong. Mark provided free hosting for bitcointalk.org from 2011 to 2013, which I announced publicly:

Mark never had any ownership or control over bitcointalk.org's operation.

Cory Booker is obviously going for it, though he doesn't seem too popular. Kamala Harris is about the same. The media recently developed a crush on Beto O’Rourke, so he's a new possibility. The Democratic establishment is clearly setting up Joe Kennedy to run at some point, but analysts seem to think that he won't run in 2020.

If the election happened ~now, I don't think that Booker, Harris, any Clinton, Cloony, Avenatti, or Zuckerburg could win against Trump. Oprah would stand a chance, but boy would that be sad. Michelle Obama would win. Don't know about O’Rourke.

It's not good to have an exact algorithm planned out, since then someone could make an ASIC for it in advance.

Current consensus seems to be that in case of a miner attack, something based on SHA-3 would be used, since it's very similar to SHA-2 and therefore a minimally-significant change. There's an old sample pull request. It should be modified slightly at the last minute to ensure that there are no stockpiled ASICs for it, though; for example:

That's just an example of how you'd try to do something a bit different to ensure that nobody has any stockpiled, maybe-somewhat-configurable ASICs hidden up their sleeves.

It'd be nice if there was a defined procedure for selecting one quickly. The exact algorithm isn't that important as long as nobody knows it in advance and it keeps the necessary properties for a PoW, but you don't want to waste time arguing about it. Maybe you'd have the interested devs write down their suggested algorithms, confirm that they all look reasonable, select two using verifiable randomness, compose or mash-up the two selected, and then fill in any random constants in the algorithm with new verifiable randomness.

Some have proposed automatically generating new PoWs, but then it's still possible to design ASICs which can adapt to the general random scheme. For example, you could have the PoW be sha3(concat(random_salt, sha3(in)) where random_salt automatically updates every year or whatever based on the hash of a block 1000 blocks deep, but then people would just design an ASIC which can accept a configurable random_salt.

Preparedness could be a lot better. I especially advocate for the creation of a clear set of criteria which indicate miner abuse so that they don't get away with something very incremental like freezing "obviously stolen" coins.


I've heard that before, maybe on the mailing list. Not a bad idea IMO. IIRC it can also be done as a softfork if miners are cooperative.

If you initiate the connection, then you send a version right away, and so when you receive a version in return, you don't want to send another one. If the peer initiates the connection, then you ignore them until you receive a version, and when you do, you then need to respond with a version of your own. That's what that if statement is about.

Very old versions would immediately send a version as soon as the TCP connection was opened, regardless of whether it was incoming or outgoing. The comment is maybe a little confusing because it's sort-of talking about changing this ancient behavior.

This topic has been moved to Trashcan. DMCA takedown.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4459048.0

Skimming it, it seems like a good summary of stuff that's been discussed around here for years.

AFAIK a lot of mining has moved out of China geographically due to Chinese government crackdowns, though a lot is still owned by Chinese companies. That said, the specific country doesn't matter much: I don't distrust the Chinese government all that much more than the EU in this area, for example. The main issue is geographical centralization and mining centralization in general.

The location of the physical mining hardware is more important than pool management location, since miners can change their pools. I don't know much about the distribution of mining hardware, though.

If a majority of mining power tries anything, then the only correct response is an immediate hardfork to change the PoW. I don't think that anyone disagrees with that.

Some notable people have long advocated changing the PoW preemptive to any actual attack because of too much centralization already. However, there is no known long-term solution to mining centralization. (This has been discussed to death on the forum and elsewhere.) It's not clear that an anti-ASIC algorithm is possible, and even if it is, that'll probably just allow for different monopolies (eg. Intel, botnet operators, or others). Changing to a different ASIC-friendly algorithm may well increase centralization after a while, since the big mining companies (eg. Bitmain) are big because they're the best at making mining chips, so they'll probably end up having a first-to-market advantage on new ASICs. You can prevent trustless pooling, but that'd mostly just force people to use even-more-centralized trusted pooling, which isn't preventable AFAIK. So preemptively changing the PoW will temporarily fire the current miners, but at best it'll make the problem no better long-term, and it'll almost certainly result in a persistent fork which will do a lot of damage to Bitcoin.

Currently we have a sort of mutually assured destruction situation. If there's a preemptive PoW change, then that'll make a huge, not-worthwhile mess (though survivable). But if miners do an attack, then there will be an immediate PoW change, firing them and at least forcing them to start over from scratch hardware-wise. This MAD situation could maybe be considered quite solid if all actors were rationally self-interested, though authoritarian regimes can get in the way of rational self-interest. Still, I think that this is reasonably stable, and the best we can do for now. To strengthen the MAD and prepare, I encourage people to be as ready and threatening as possible in case an immediate PoW change becomes necessary: for example, I've said several times (and I mean it) that if the Bitcoin Core devs fail to respond adequately to a miner attack, I'll propagate the necessary hardfork myself. But I oppose a preemptive PoW change unless there's some sort of new long-term solution.

I still think that my 3-way hybrid PoW could work, but a lot of people disagree.

I've written a lot of PHP. It's not terrible, but I definitely wouldn't recommend it for new programmers. PHP was originally designed as basically a Web framework on top of C, and it still feels like it. When I'm writing PHP, I feel like I'm writing C + thousands of extra functions and macros. The procedural style is satisfying to some extent, but it gets messy quickly, and the further you get from C (eg. classes), the more clunky it feels. Also, PHP has a bunch of weird default behavior which is supposed to make things easier for newbies, but it's just a big headache. For example, it always takes you a long time to figure out how to get error handling working sanely for your application.

PHP and JavaScript are both total messes as languages, though they have very different styles.

If I wanted to make a new Web app, I might use JavaScript just because it's so immensely popular for that work, even though it's flawed, or I might use a Web framework for a newer language like perhaps Python. I wouldn't make a new app in PHP.


You can, but there are some major inconveniences with it, so it's not all that common.