Medium is blocking the image proxy (ip.bitcointalk.org) from accessing its images. I don't try to bypass blocks like these.

I could allow Medium images to be hotlinked directly rather than being proxied through ip.bitcointalk.org. Medium blog owners wouldn't have access to the IP logs from this, right? Does anyone think that this would be a bad idea?

In 100 years, I could imagine a society where young people are expected to find a gender identity in the same way as they find other aspects of themselves, and maybe their gender identity changes a few times over their lives. Imagining such a society doesn't bother me at all. I think it's totally workable on a cultural level, I don't see anything inherently wrong with the idea, and there have been a few cultures in history which have kind-of worked like this. But right now, our culture is very far from working like this, so people who try to live like that today are unfortunately going to face a lot of difficulties.

IMO it's more likely that the current focus on flexible gender identity as an important thing which is and should be relevant to everyone's daily life will be looked back upon in 100 years as a sort of fad which eventually disappeared. That is, in 100 years there will still be transgender people, and I hope they are better able to thrive than transgender people today, but it's unlikely IMO that anyone is going to be introducing themselves alongside their pronouns, for example. I'm not especially rooting for or against this outcome, but it just seems to me that the recent movement on gender identity is mostly pushed by a relatively small group of ideologues, and it's not relevant or useful enough to the average person for our culture to actually permanently shift in such a major way.

Especially in people younger than ~20, I think that transgenderism today is often (but not always) a result of depression. It's a way to escape one's life, imagine oneself as a completely different person, and attract attention. But because it makes life 100x more difficult, it feeds the depression rather than helping it. This, I believe, is why the suicide rate among transgender people is so high: it's not primarily because they're harassed for being transgender, but because they were clinically depressed from the start. (This is just a guess which I have no evidence for.)

There are also people who are not depressed, are thinking perfectly well, but just prefer the idea of being the other gender. Some people are born with genes which give them poor athletic performance, but that doesn't mean that they have to like it or give up on ever running fast or whatever. With effort alongside modern abundance & technology, it's possible and IMO downright virtuous to fight against nature to get what you want out of life. It would be widely considered offensive today (for understandable but ultimately irrational reasons), but I do think it'd be similarly fine for someone to prefer to be another race and work toward being recognized as a member of that race.

---

The most important thing is for everyone to display tolerance and compassion. If you act hatefully toward LGBT people, or exclude them when you could include them without much cost, then you're being an asshole. But when LGBT people get angry at people for accidentally "misgendering" them, or when they intentionally try to put people into difficult situations as some political statement, etc., then they're being assholes. The most difficult situations are where there is no solution that will make everyone perfectly comfortable, like the question of which locker room transgender students should use, and in these cases it's especially important to treat everyone involved with compassion, not dismissing anyone's feelings as bigoted or unreasonable.

Thank you for the additional context. In light of that, I agree that the post contains data that is too security-sensitive, and it should therefore not be allowed.

In general, we consider doxxing to be linking of a pseudonymous identity with a real-life identity:
If that ID was claimed to belong to some forum member, then that'd be doxxing. But because it stands alone, we don't consider it doxxing.

Separately, it's not allowed to post things that are especially security-sensitive:
If those images contain info which would be very useful in stealing that person's identity or committing similar fraud, then perhaps they should not be allowed under this rule. I don't think they contain such info, though I'm not 100% sure.

Also separately, if info about some person is posted with the implication that some sort of violence should be committed against them, then that would not be allowed because incitement isn't allowed. For example, this would be too much like incitement: "Here's a bad person's photo. Maybe someone should do something about them." I read (via Google Translate) light_warrior's post as (disappointingly) hateful, but I don't read it as incitement.

So I don't think that the post should be deleted.

Occasionally, someone who didn't win a slot in the auction still wants a slot very badly and PMs me. In these cases, I sell the 10th slot, and the factoids end up having "0 chance at the moment" for that round. This is not the normal way that things are supposed to work, so the 10th slot is sold at a premium. Recently I've been applying a premium of 20% over the highest (post-flattening) bid in the auction, so 43 mBTC in the most recent case, though somebody bought the 10th slot two rounds in a row, so perhaps I will increase the premium if someone requests the 10th slot again next round.

There are three separate issues here:
 - Plagiarism is bannable on bitcointalk.org because copying something just to boost your post count (or similar) demonstrates utter contempt for the whole concept of a discussion forum. You copying something like that is completely different, so it would not be bannable.
 - If you copy something and pass it off as your own, some people might consider this unethical and worthy of negative trust. In this case, I would personally consider this ASCII art too simple to expect you to credit the author.
 - Copying something could be a legal issue for you due to copyright. At least under US law, that ASCII art is too simple to be copyrightable.

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.

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. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything 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.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon May 20 (US Eastern time) to noon June 23. (34 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between May 11 and May 16, but May 12 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon May 19. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

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

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, 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 mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) 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 @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC 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, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between May 11 and May 16. Times closer to 8:00AM May 12 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

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.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 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.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/slot Person
1 40 Tibu *
1 40 Panxora_COO *
2 36 nicosey *
4 32 Hhampuz
1 32 MoonbetEcosystem
* = Price paid will be flattened

I was asked to weigh in regarding moderation policy in this case:

This is an unusual, borderline case. In most contexts, constantly posting links to your own site would be considered excessively spammy regardless of what was on the site. In most contexts, so much copy/pasting (even "laundered" via a site you own) would be considered plagiarism. But because the Meetups and Press boards are more-or-less meant for the sort of aggregation that he's doing, and because it looks like he was given permission to post these press releases on his site, I'm leaning toward thinking that his activities look more like contributing (ie. working toward the purposes of the Meetups and Press boards) and less like spam/plagiarism, especially since he doesn't have very high posting volume and he doesn't have a paid sig.

My conviction that this is the best result is not strong, but that's where I fall for now.

(I am somewhat sympathetic to the idea that the Press board should be closed, but that's a separate question.)

Godex_io was previously cleared to bid, but his bids will no longer be accepted. This change is due to an issue on my end rather than any issue with Godex_io. Apologies for making this change so late in the auction.

Current auction status:
Slots mBTC/slot Person
1 40 Tibu *
1 40 Panxora_COO *
2 28 BK8.Official
1 28 MoonbetEcosystem
4 28 Hhampuz
* = Price paid would be flattened if the auction ended now

The auction continues.

This month 128 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

April fools! I hope that people had fun. It's always funny how many people are actually fooled.

Credit to Halab and Cyrus for the idea. The triva questions were from the OpenTriviaQA database by uberspot.

How the IQ score worked was that it was impossible to go above 200 or below 0, and it was supposed to be centered around 100, so it got easier to lose points and harder to gain them the higher your IQ got above 100, and vice-versa for below 100. The questions themselves all had the same weight. It was very easy to cheat (not least because the answers were all public), but just for fun, here are all of the final IQ scores: https://bitcointalk.org/af2022.txt

Thanks!


Received & donated, thanks!

April fools!

---

In order to improve the overall forum experience, going forward we are only going to allow smart people to post. To determine your intelligence, you will be required to answer a question every time you post (or edit your post). Your answers will be used to calculate your IQ, and starting next week, everyone with an IQ below 120 will be banned.

Let's make Bitcointalk.org into the ivory tower of excellence that it was always meant to be!

I'm touched that so many people voted for me. There are many people who deserve to be called "heroes of good" more than me, but I will try to live up to it.

I decline any prize; if there is BTC allocated to me, please donate it to Razom.

Thanks to icopress for organizing this event, and congratulations to the winners!

Why does "Market Rebellion" know anything about this? My instinct is that this rumor will turn out to be false. But assuming it's true:

Bitcointalk.org has long been on Russia's block list, so all current Russian users are using VPNs, etc. If Russia bans all non-Russian IP, then that would make it much more difficult for Russian users to access the rest of the Internet, though there's not much that we can do about that. For example, creating a Tor hidden service wouldn't help them at all.

For Russians to access the Internet, they'll have to personally have some non-wired connection to the regular Internet via Starlink, cross-border laser/radio communication, etc.; or they'll have to proxy their connection via multi-homed devices which have both one of those non-wired connections as well as a Russian IP. Those latter multi-homed devices could act as Tor bridges or VPNs, but keeping these online for long may become difficult because devices with Russian IPs are presumably located in Russia and can easily be shut down by Russian authorities once discovered. The architecture of Tor bridges was not set up for this "cut off an entire country" threat model, and probably won't work well long-term.

A more resilient way of bypassing this kind of censorship is a distributed database like Freenet. These systems function based on an entirely different premise from the normal Internet, so they can't be used to access the normal Internet, but they would allow for more robustly communicating through Russia's firewall. One multi-homed Freenet node could anonymously transfer data from the outside world into Russia, and then this data would be replicated among many Russian-only nodes.

Freenet and similar systems can probably be pretty easily blocked by detecting and blocking all of their traffic, so an even better way of bypassing censorship would be a wireless mesh network combined with a Freenet-like distributed database. I don't know of any well-established software for doing this, though.

---

In all of the many years I've been admin, I don't think that anything has touched/disturbed me more than knowing that there are many veteran forum members whose countries are currently at war. It's insane that we have several people here who are literally under artillery bombardment and are being forced to defend their homes from soldiers. How is humanity so messed up that an entire bureaucracy and chain of command filled with hundreds of thousands of people are helping to commit this atrocity? And while Ukrainians are the biggest victims of this war, of course, the average Russian person is a victim too: economic cannon fodder in Putin's war.

The Russian section was the first non-English section created (created when Satoshi was the forum's head administrator), and Russian-speakers, including many Ukrainians, were some of the earliest adopters of Bitcoin. This war is a tragedy in many more important ways, but it's specifically a tragedy for the Bitcoin community. My greatest hope is that applied cryptography (of which Bitcoin is probably the most successful example) will enable Russians to resist and eventually overthrow their authoritarian government in ways that give them some chance of continuing their lives. It's not reasonable to expect Russians to resist in ways that lead to almost-certain death or imprisonment.

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.

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. Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads; these people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

Design & ad restrictions

Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. No ICOs^[1], loggable mixers^[2], banks, funds, or anything 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.

See the ad design rules for info on designing forum ads.

When advertising a new service, you should always check with me in advance whether your service is OK. I will sometimes accept bids of people who don't do this, but such people are taking the risk of being rejected at the last minute. It's also a good idea for you to have me check your ad's HTML+CSS in advance, especially if this is your first time advertising.

Duration/timing

 - Ad slots won in this auction will run from noon April 14 (US Eastern time) to noon May 20. (36 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between April 5 and April 8, but April 7 is most likely.
 - You must pay within 48 hours of the auction ending. Only Bitcoin is accepted. If you fail to pay in time, your ad slots may be resold, and in cases where I feel that you're acting in bad faith, I may even give you a negative trust rating.
 - You must send me a valid ad (ie. one not breaking any of the styling or other rules) before noon April 13. If you fail to send a valid ad in time, then the ad round will start without you, and you will be "burning time". You can still send an ad after the deadline, and usually this ad will be put up fairly quickly, but no particular timeline is guaranteed after the deadline.
 - If extended downtime or similar issues cause your ad not to be displayed for a long time, we generally give prorated refunds (USD-denominated) for the lost time, but this is not guaranteed.

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

Auction rules

New members are likely to have their bids rejected unless they PM me first, telling me what they're going to advertise. New members might also be required to pay some amount in advance. Additionally, 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 mBTC per slot. (10 mBTC = 0.01 BTC.) 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 @ 50 mBTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 40 mBTC and 1 slot @ 50 mBTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 50" means 2 slots for 50 mBTC each. Not 2 slots for 50 mBTC 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, like "5 @ 10 and 1 @ 50".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC.
- The bidding starts at 2 mBTC.
- The auction ends at an arbitrary time between April 5 and April 8. Times closer to 8:00AM April 7 (US Eastern time) are more likely.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.

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.

Price flattening

At the end of the auction, after the winning bids are all determined, I will do a "price flattening" operation. This has no effect on which bids actually win, but is instead just meant to make the prices actually paid by bidders more equal. For each bid, in order of lowest to greatest price/slot, I will reduce each bid's price/slot to the highest value which is equal to or only the minimum increment greater than the next-lower bid. This allows you to bid higher prices without worrying so much, but you still mustn't bid more than you're willing to pay. Example:


Payment, etc.

You must pay for your slots within 48 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.
[2]: A loggable mixer is a service marketed primarily for improving transaction privacy which accepts full custody of cryptocurrency for a time and has the technical ability to log where the cryptocurrency comes from and goes to (even if they promise not to log).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
1 50 Tibu
1 48 MoonbetEcosystem
2 42 nicosey
2 42 yahoo62278
2 40 Panxora_COO
1 36 Hhampuz

How did you people who are complaining about Ukrainian neonazis feel about the Freedom Convoy being smeared in the media for being neonazis because a handful of them apparently were? It's the same thing. You can't judge a whole country/movement based on just a few non-representative anecdotes.

I'm sure that the Ukrainian government is corrupt and has oppressed many people within its borders at various occasions, BTW, which is why I wouldn't donate to their official BTC addresses or anything like that. Just because one side is bad doesn't mean that the other side is good. But that doesn't justify Putin's invasion. If government corruption or bad domestic policies justified war, then everyone would be at war with everyone. IMO the US's invasion of Iraq was far from a justified war, and Ukraine is way better than Iraq was.

Note that bids from Tibu, MoonbetEcosystem, nicosey, and WOW_Crypto will be accepted.

Bids must be evenly divisible by 2 mBTC. When someone breaks this rule, I accept the bid, but I round down to a valid amount.

Current auction status:
Slots mBTC/Slot Person
1 50 Tibu *
1 48 MoonbetEcosystem *
2 42 nicosey *
2 40 Panxora_COO *
4 36 Hhampuz
* = If the auction ended now, the amount paid would be reduced due to the price flattening rule.

The auction continues.