I fixed it. The default Gentoo NTP configuration file is wrong. It says:
But this actually breaks ntpd...

Update: Here's a video of Elizabeth talking about her platform.

I've decided to support Elizabeth T. Ploshay for the upcoming Bitcoin Foundation individual board seat election. In my opinion, legal support and lobbying should be one of the Foundation's main areas of focus, and Ploshay's experience in Washington as a congressional staffer should be very useful in this area. Even though she's worked in Washington, she seems mostly libertarian, and she supports a reactive approach to government; she doesn't want to bring up legal issues preemptively. She strongly supports decentralization, and she doesn't want the Foundation to have centralized control over the Bitcoin network or ecosystem. Ploshay is the most qualified candidate for this position, and she also has the best and most clearly-presented platform.

Some quotes from the Foundation forum:

#bitcoin-otc does have something like a default trust list, in fact. You're not allowed to rate people if you don't have a positive rating, so everyone in the WoT needs to be indirectly trusted by nanotube.


Then replace DefaultTrust with other users in your trust list. The main purpose of the trust system is to prevent newbies from falling for obvious scams, so there needs to be some sort of default trust list.


Those people don't actually use the trust system much AFAIK, so adding them to DefaultTrust would be pointless. DefaultTrust is not a list of trustworthy people. It's a list of people who give accurate ratings and trust people who give accurate ratings.

I hope the FBI releases detailed information about how they traced the hidden service. There are many known practical attacks against Tor hidden services, but AFAIK none of them have ever been used in a real criminal case.

I wouldn't be caught dead running an illegal hidden service. The people who used Freedom Hosting instead of running hidden services themselves were smart -- someone else got caught instead of them.

In order to collect more money for the creation of good forum software and for other useful purposes, the forum is selling ad space in the area beneath the first post of every topic page.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, or animation (no marquee or blinking). Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser. Ads will be prefixed with "Advertisement:". Ad text may not contain lies, misrepresentation, or inappropriate language. Ads may not link directly to any NSFW page. Ads may be rejected for other reasons.

There are 10 total ad slots which are randomly rotated. So one ad slot has a one in ten chance of appearing. Seven 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.

The ad lasts at least 7 days starting from when I put it up. (However, if you look at the ad history you'll see that ads frequently get 1-2 extra days, but this is random and definitely 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

Ad blocking

Hero 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 counts 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.

Auction rules

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

So if someone bids for 7 slots @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 7 slots. If the two highest bids are 7 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 6 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 0.25.
- The bidding starts at 0.50.
- I will end the auction at an arbitrary time no more than 12 days from now. (I will probably end the auction 1-3 days before the ads are scheduled to go up.)
- 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 also post periodic status updates which should help make things clear.

You must pay for your slots within 24 hours of receiving the payment address. Otherwise your slots may be sold to someone else.

Auction ended. Final result:

Slots BTC/Slot Person
3 5.5 cnbtcnews
1 5.5 lucif
1 5.5 AtlasATS
1 5.5 fible1
1 5.25 796

I improved modSettings. It's only updated once every few minutes now instead of once every 5-10 seconds. Hopefully that'll make things faster.

Here are the current candidates for the individual seat:
Elizabeth T. Ploshay
Edward Clements (edd)
Duncan Goldie-Scot
Nilam Doctor
Christian Kammler
Ben Davenport (bpd)
Trace Mayer
Luke Dashjr (Luke-Jr)
Dmitry Murashchik (Rassah)
Aaron Lasher (chalash)
Noah Silverman (noah977)
Pedro Fernandes
Ryan Deming
Joerg Platzer (joecooin)

Elizabeth Ploshay is my favorite candidate so far, though I still need to do more research. I wish there had been more active forum users nominated.

Edit: Updated list. This should be the final candidate list.

You should. None of the existing candidates are very well-known AFAICT. It might be too late to nominate yourself, though...

Is there any way to test for this? I thought that SSDs were built to last several years, even under extremely heavy load.

Fixed.

That's how modSettings should work, but it's actually also used for things like a timestamp of the last ban added, so it changes pretty frequently.

I think that the site becomes slow every 90 seconds when the modSettings cache expires and every visitor then needs to do an expensive query. Does this seem to match your observations?

SMF handles modSettings really badly.

All users can use Patrol.

Patrol only shows newbie posts, though. It's mostly intended for moderators and people who want to help with moderation.

There's a different page which shows all posts (actually only the last post of each topic):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=recent

Yes, I rearranged the trust lists to remove that rating from the default trust network. TF later removed his rating, though.


Is there a thread about this?

That's definitely not possible with Script, which is deterministic. I very much doubt that it's possible in any other way without a trusted third party, voting, etc.

Then there would be too many inaccurate negative ratings. I don't want there to be any inaccurate negative ratings in the default trust network.

Someone in DefaultTrust is like a moderator responsible for cultivating a good trust network. They need to make sure that anyone trusting them sees many accurate ratings and no inaccurate ratings. Actual trustworthiness is important, but I can quickly respond to any abuses, so it isn't the most important factor in my decision to add someone to DefaultTrust.

The default trust network needs to work in this (somewhat counter-intuitive) centralized way, but you don't need to use the trust system in this way. You can use it more like a web of trust, adding only people who you trust to your trust list.

No, numbers aren't translated.