Bloomberg was utterly destroyed in the debate, especially over the #MeToo stuff, which Democrats are sensitive about. He looked like a lost Republican who somehow found his way onto a Democratic debate stage. (Which is in fact sort of what happened...)

Now the question is whether Bloomberg is at 16% in the polls mostly due to real support that was only sparked by his spending, or mostly due to throwing boatloads of money at very-low-information voters who won't be affected by this or any debate. If the former, this debate performance will probably sink him, and maybe Biden or Pete will take up the "not Bernie" mantle. (Note that Pete has the most delegates at the moment, even though the media has seemingly forgotten about him.) If the latter, Bloomberg can continue on, but it'll be challenging for him in the general, since a huge segment of his party will hate his guts, and it's looking like Trump will be able to tear him to shreds. On the other hand, if he can buy the Democratic nomination, I'd feel as though he might also be able to buy the presidency. One major thing he'd have in his toolkit would be that he could use his money and market knowledge to make the stock market do whatever he wants -- probably he'd be able to create a huge crash & continuous downward trend starting a few months before November.

Since I want a contested convention, I'm hoping that someone other than Sanders wins Nevada, though I'm not sure who that'd be. Maybe Biden can pull it off? He had a decent debate performance.

Those are possible under the current framework. For limited numbers, you can just stop accepting codes after a while. For random winners:
 1. Have people send you a Bitcoin address along with their code instead of their mailing address. Also have them save a copy of their code just in case.
 2. Every time you receive a code, publish a hash of it.
 3. Choose a winner from the public list of hashes using an acceptable method. The winner should contact you with a signed message using the Bitcoin address you negotiated before. As a fallback, they can also just give you their code again, since only they should have it, though I'd be uneasy using this as the primary method of authentication.

I think that this feature is very niche. Maybe I'm wrong, but I expect to get on average fewer than 1 giveaway-creation request per month. So I don't want to create a big, complicated system for it.

If it's Bloomberg vs Trump, it'll be weird. Bloomberg will be able to throw an unlimited amount of money at this, and a ton of people absolutely despise Trump (some for good reasons, others for bad reasons), so he could win. But Bloomberg is basically George W. Bush's third term. I used to call myself a progressive ~15 years ago, and I would've despised Bloomberg even more than Trump. Furthermore, Trump will probably attack Bloomberg from the left on several issues (eg. Trump doesn't care about the deficit, unlike Bloomberg, so he could support both tax cuts and welfare expansions). Bloomberg vs Trump will be an ex-Republican running basically as a Republican, but in the Democratic party, versus an ex-Democrat running basically as a Democrat, but in the Republican party.

Bloomberg is definitely the worst-case scenario for Bitcoin, BTW. Bitcoin represents everything that Bloomberg is against, and he is very effective (unlike Trump), so as president he'll be able and eager to ramp up regulations to 11 with the explicit goal of squeezing Bitcoin to the point where it can only exist in the shadows.

Nobody's seen such a giveaway, so you wouldn't have known about it. I set it up previously for a giveaway that someone was going to do, but which never happened (yet?).

Previously, I set up a very simple system for letting someone do a giveaway without creating a link between your forum account and your mailing address, but this particular giveaway either hasn't happened yet or it completely fell through (not sure), so the system was never used. In case anyone else ever wants to do a private giveaway, you can do it like this:

 1. PM me with a list of all user IDs eligible to receive something in the giveaway, or an exact set of conditions which users must meet in order to be eligible (eg. "any user who joined before <x time> with merit above <y> and activity above <z>").
 2. I will create a URL like https://bitcointalk.org/giveaway.php?id=123 for you (note: 404 currently). Everyone who wants to receive something in the giveaway has to go to that URL and get a giveaway code.
 3. They send the giveaway code to you along with their mailing address, and you'll verify the code at another bitcointalk.org page. You also have to keep a list of already-used codes so that people can't reuse them. You should publish some out-of-band way of accepting codes, such as an email address or a Google Forms form: if you only accept codes via forum PM, then people have to create throwaway accounts to PM you, which is annoying. You absolutely must not send someone an item without a code, even if they PM you from an account you can see is eligible for the giveaway, since otherwise someone could also send you their code anonymously and end up getting 2 items.

This breaks the link between recipients' forum accounts and their addresses: bitcointalk.org doesn't know the address sent to the giveaway operator, and the giveaway operator can't tell from the giveaway code which user they're talking to, only that they're eligible for the giveaway. In order to identify someone, data from both bitcointalk.org and the giveaway operator would have to be combined. Codes will be completely deleted from the bitcointalk.org server & all backups after about 6 months. Note however that the giveaway operator will have a list of addresses, and they will know that all of those addresses belong to people on the list of eligible people, so if there are only a few dozen recipients and a few hundred eligible users, it's very far from "anonymous". (There are some more fancy things that I could've done to make the whole thing a bit better. Blind signing could be used to make it secure even if bitcointalk.org was compromised, for example. But it's a pretty niche feature, so I just wanted to whip something together quickly.)

I'm not sure that anyone will ask to set up this sort of giveaway, but I wanted to mention the possibility. If more than a few people ask me to set these up, I'll probably make it so that anyone can set them up themselves.

The thread is restored.

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

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 11 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

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 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 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, like "5 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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.
- 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. 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 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.
[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).

I don't know what grovsta is going to advertise, so his bid is rejected.

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
2 0.08 BetBTC
1 0.07 Play Royal
1 0.07 dai100905
1 0.07 HatuSS
1 0.06 SwC_Poker
3 0.06 Stunna

A woman president would also do that.

His homosexuality & husband is an interesting political question. IMO it's easy for a lot of people, even slightly socially-conservative people, to read "he's gay and gay-married" written on paper and not care too much. But if anyone (a superPAC, maybe) dares to attack him by blasting the airwaves with images of him kissing his husband or similar, this might evoke a disgust reaction even in a lot of social liberals, and maybe this'd be enough to kill his campaign. It's difficult to predict, since a lot of people who are honestly very strongly for gay rights (and who will tell pollsters as much) might experience some subconscious disgust at seeing it right in their faces, and this subtle but perhaps-widespread effect could have a significant impact on a Pete vs Trump race.

I find it difficult to understand the mindset of strong social conservatives, so I could easily believe that I'm underestimating just how much his homosexuality will motivate conservatives to oppose him, as well.

I will not accept your bids; see the PM I sent you.

Auction status:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
2 0.08 BetBTC
1 0.07 Play Royal
1 0.07 dai100905
7 0.07 grovsta **May be rejected - awaiting info**
1 0.06 SwC_Poker
6 0.06 Stunna

The auction continues.

After Pete's shocking victory (or "victory") in Iowa, it'll be really interesting if he wins in NH as well. The polls are currently very close.

Even if he wins, it's a bit difficult to imagine him winning a majority of delegates, since he has roughly zero support among black Democrats. If he wins in NH, it makes a contested convention much more likely, though: maybe a roughly-even split in delegates between Bernie, Pete, and Bloomberg, with scattered delegates among the rest. That'd be interesting.

If Pete somehow becomes the nominee, I feel like he'd do well against Trump, since IMO he's the candidate who most projects a calming, "return-to-normalcy" vibe, which will appeal to a lot of swing voters. That said, maybe minority Democrats wouldn't turn out for him enough? I don't understand why he's so monumentally unpopular among that demographic. Maybe his polling there would improve if he became the nominee?

Policy-wise, he's probably about the same as Biden or Bloomberg. I certainly don't want him to be president, though I'm hoping he wins NH and this leads to a contested convention.

It's a DDoS.

I don't think they'd do it to themselves intentionally. In Chinese culture, there's traditionally a belief that "luck" is actually sort of a skill, so the Chinese people are much more willing to blame the government for natural disasters and such. In other words, to the Chinese, this epidemic tends to come across as a direct failure of the government even before you consider any government response; it's not merely an uncontrollable event that the government might or might not rise to the challenge in handling, as we'd see it in the West. (In part, this is why the Chinese government likes to cover up these sorts of issues.)

Their program of social credit & surveillance is IMO their most effective path toward controlling their population.

AFAIK, the technology is more-or-less there for creating a custom virus. The real technological barrier seems to be that although you can modify parts of a virus, it's not clear what you'd want to change in order to get any particular result. There isn't one "incubation time" knob that you can tweak on the virus, for example. If you wanted to take SARS and increase the incubation time & spread rate, I think you'd have to use tens of thousands of human test subjects in order to conduct trial-and-error modifications of the virus. I wouldn't exactly put it past the Chinese government, but natural emergence seems more likely. If they can't keep the actual virus from spreading, how are they going to keep a big scientific program with large-scale, evil human testing under wraps?

Veganism is pointless IMO, and vegans who don't do research on nutrition are probably at a higher risk of deficiencies. But except for B12, vegans can meet all of their DRIs it without eating a truckload of vegetables per day. For example, you need 677g of ground beef = 1558 calories to get 100% DV of iron, whereas you can get the same 100% DV with:
 - 2.8 cups of cooked spinach = 504g = 116 calories; OR
 - 2 cups of cooked soybeans = 350g = 603 calories; OR
 - 2.7 cups of cooked lentils = 541g = 617 calories; etc.
A vegan is probably going to be eating a lot of that sort of stuff anyway just to get enough calories.

If you eat a healthy and varied (meat+fruit+vegetables+grains) diet, not getting too many of your calories from sugar or refined grains, then your diet is likely not to be so deficient in anything as to cause serious problems. If you track your diet, then you might think at first that you're deficient in a lot of micronutrients, but this is often just because your source of nutrition info doesn't have all of the micronutrient data for your foods. You have to use the USDA Standard Reference database for everything you eat in a day in order to get a complete picture. This is pretty difficult, but it's worthwhile to do for a few days to get some idea of your nutrient intake. (On FoodData Central, uncheck "branded" on the left after searching. Use closest approximations for things not in the Database. Note that many zero-calorie things like tap water, tea, coffee, and table salt contribute nutrients to your diet.)

Most people will be under the DRI in a few areas -- exactly which depending on diet --, though this won't necessarily ever lead to noticeable health issues. I'd guess that 90% of people are below the DRI on potassium, omega-3, choline, and fiber. None of these things tend to be in multivitamins in appreciable quantities, though...

Vegans must supplement B12, which is almost impossible to get enough of from vegan sources. In the US, milk is becoming less popular in favor of plant milks, and this could lead to calcium deficiency in some cases. Even though iodine is added to table salt, iodized salt is not used in packaged food, it's not that common in food otherwise, and I suspect that low-level iodine deficiency may be common.

I'm skeptical of supplements that contain a bunch of random herbs. Maybe <herb X> has some tenuous evidence for doing something good when consumed as an herbal tea every now and then, but who knows what taking some lowest-cost "filler" form of it daily for months/years will do...

LOL, the Dems are getting down to work screwing Bernie early in the process, I see! I was disappointed not to see the results last night, and a bit shocked not to see them even this morning, but the fallout from this chaos will be even more entertaining.

This month 126 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

I think that Bernie has a very good chance of winning vs Trump if he's the nominee. Current polling shows him beating Trump in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and North Carolina. You definitely can't rely on polls at this stage, since many people polled are replacing "Biden" or "Bernie" with just "not Trump" in their minds right now, and once the election actually gets under way, they'll be faced with actually voting for a particular candidate. But I think that Sanders has a good chance of speaking to working-class voters in these areas. These voters are not all that ideologically opposed to socialism, and they'd find many of Sanders' economic policies attractive. Effective attacks against Sanders for these voters would focus more on immigration, gun rights, and general social issues (ie. if they feel like Sanders projects an "it's not OK to be a straight white male" vibe, that won't go down well). I'm not sure that Trump will be able to attack Sanders well enough to overcome the appeal of some of the economic issues, especially if the economy starts to falter before then (which IMO is not unlikely). And while there are a lot of moderate Democrats who despise Sanders (ie. people who love Bloomberg and who now think of Bush's presidency longingly), are they actually going to swing any states? They probably won't even vote for Trump: they'll just stay home.

This map starts with the Cook Political Report ratings, and then I assigned three of the toss-ups (NC, AZ, FL) to Trump, and the remaining two toss-ups of WI and PA I assigned to Sanders, which is where he polls the best vs Trump currently and where I think he has the best chance of making his message resonate. That puts him over the top.

The Cook ratings probably assume a more moderate Democrat, but will inserting Bernie actually change anything? Is that really going to help Trump win Nevada or Michigan, for example? I doubt it. If anything it might allow Sanders to pick off some of the states which Cook rates as Republican, like maybe OH.

With Biden, I think that Trump wins all 5 Cook toss-ups and therefore the election.

---

All that being said, Democratic establishment is going to try every trick in the book to stop Bernie from being the nominee. It'll be sort of like Trump's nomination, but the Democratic party's establishment is more powerful than the Republican party's establishment, Bernie himself seems less able to push back against this establishment, and of course there are also many other differing factors, so Bernie could definitely be defeated. At this point I'd say that there's less than a 50% chance of Bernie being the nominee.

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

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 11 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

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 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 @ 0.5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 0.4 BTC and 1 slot @ 0.5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 0.5" means 2 slots for 0.5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 0.5 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, like "5 @ 0.1 and 1 @ 0.5".
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- The bidding starts at 0.01.
- 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.
- 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. 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 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.
[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).