I cringed less than I thought I would at the Republican convention. The average quality of the speakers was higher than the Democratic convention, and there was more substance. The Republican convention aimed for a less fancy production, but because they aimed lower, they had fewer glitches. Without analyzing content at all, I'd say that the Republican convention was slightly better presented.

The Democratic convention mentioned almost no policies, instead going for a vague sense of patriotism, nationalism, unity, etc. I actually think that this is quite an effective message, especially for people in swing states and outside of the Democratic base. I think that a lot of "lifelong Republicans" who supported eg. George W Bush will be very comfortable in Biden's Democratic party. Most voters don't actually care about policy much, but instead vote based on general feelings, and you could see both conventions speaking to this. The Democratic convention was emotionally speaking to people who simply can't see Trump alongside people like Roosevelt or Lincoln, who see Trump as an aberration in the American legacy, whose nationalism does not allow for someone like Trump to be a "legitimate" American president. The Republican convention was emotionally speaking to several different core conservative constituencies: people who can't stand leftist culture, evangelicals, people who despise socialism on an emotional level, etc. I think that the former message is far more likely to attract cross-over voters.

The Republican convention mentioned quite a few more concrete policy goals/achievements than the Democrats, though many were contradictory. Some example policies:
 - Trump didn't start any wars
 - He stood up to many enemies, eg. Iran
 - He rebuilt the military
 - He stands behind Israel
 - He's for an America First foreign policy (including military and trade)
 - He cut taxes
 - He protected the US from coronavirus as well as could be expected
 - He appointed conservative judges
 - He helped small business through deregulation, etc.
 - He promoted law & order, cracking down on riots
 - He promotes free speech, civil liberties, and diversity of thought
 - He's skeptical of Big Tech
 - He actively supports Ambrahamic religions
 - He supports diversity, and is not racist or sexist

The most effective messages IMO are:
 - Attacking Biden from the left on issues such as criminal justice. The convention did this a bit, such as with the Alice Johnson and Daniel Cameron speeches, but they could've done this a lot more and better. Biden is basically a Bush-era Republican, and Trump should be attacking him like he attacked Jeb Bush.
 - Talking about a return to normalcy, not a "new normal". This is what people want, even if you think that it may be unrealistic.
 - Being anti-war.
 - Trying to appear as pro-diversity as possible to try to soften the perception of Trump as racist and sexist. They did a decent job at this.
 - Trying to appear very stable and presidential to try to soften the perception of Trump as unhinged. They did a bit of this with the pardons, citizenship ceremonies, and just using official sites as locations.

There was a strong law & order message. I'm not sure how effective this is. It appeals to some people, but it turns off others, and it also depends heavily on the location of the listener and the mood of the country. The law & order messaging totally backfired on Trump after George Floyd, but Trump made a lot of unforced errors there (eg. the Lafayette Square thing), and the mood of the country was different.

There was a strong message of "Biden is Bernie Sanders in disguise." This is a very ineffective message. Nobody believes this, and even if they did, it wouldn't seriously bother enough people who are not already firmly behind Trump.

I don't think that it's completely ineffective to throw out many contradictory messages and see what sticks. People tend to hear what they want to hear and ignore the rest. Pro-war Trump supporters will be enthusiastic that he's been sticking it to Iran, while anti-war Trump supporters will be enthusiastic that he's avoided starting any major wars, and each will ignore the contradictory messaging. It's probably better at pumping up support from people who already lean toward Trump than attracting cross-over voters, though.

Both Pence's and Trump's speeches sucked, and will not move anyone to Trump. There actually were several good speeches/segments, but they got much less coverage than the bad speeches.

---

As expected, both conventions were mostly boring & shallow infomercials. I don't think that there's much value in diving deep into the content of any speeches or anything like that; the vast majority of voters don't watch these conventions at all, fewer still watch the whole ~8 hours, and only a tiny number are swayed much by the content. Where there's any value at all in analyzing these conventions, it's in how the convention shapes the media narrative for a few weeks, and in indicating how the leaders of the campaign are looking at things.

It seems to me that both campaigns have effective-looking strategies. Neither has a complete disaster of a campaign strategy (which I thought might be the case for Trump). The Biden campaign is more-or-less trying to become the Republican party circa 2012. They want to keep their base of minorities and leftists while drawing a lot of nationalists who can't stand Trump and people longing for stability above all else, though they won't excite anyone. It could work. The Trump campaign wants to keep their base ultra-excited, reduce turnout among potential Biden voters by lowering their already-low excitement below the threshold where they'd actually vote, stem the bleeding in traditional Republicans, and possibly draw in some people who are more hopeful for positive change rather than just hoping for a return to the pre-Trump status quo. That could also work.

After having viewed both conventions, I think that the Biden campaign strategy -- appealing broadly but shallowly using simple emotions -- is slightly superior, especially since I think that economic and virus conditions will likely worsen before election day. Biden is the alternative waiting in the wings for anyone who feels that a change is needed. But I could see the Trump campaign strategy working, especially if Trump holds a gun to the head of the FDA in order to get a vaccine approved before election day and the economy also holds it together until then contrary to my expectations. Then people won't feel such anti-Trump pressure, and the almost nonexistent pro-Biden pressure might result in a Trump victory.

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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.07 Exolix
7 0.06 sportsbet.io
1 0.06 lightlord

Removed. A service with this reputation should not have been allowed to advertise, but because the bidder was fairly established and had no negative trust, I didn't do enough research, and I missed the scam accusations and the other account. Apologies.

It's best to PM me high-priority things like this, since I notice PMs more quickly than Meta posts with vague titles.

I will donate the 0.08 BTC from this to some charity or charity-like-thing which accepts BTC. Any suggestions for a particular charity? (If there's no consensus in about a week, then I'm just going to donate it to The Water Project.)

Update: 0.0679971 BTC donated to Royse777's Project Covid-19, and 0.0120029 BTC donated to The Water Project.

The whole convention had a real fascist flavor. The core theme could be summed up as "strength through unity." Tammy Duckworth's speech in particular made me think of Starship Troopers...


I was apparently in a masochistic mood, since I watched most of the convention. It was certainly better than past conventions, but only because it was shorter and more focused. Lots of glitches, and the whole thing was very fake-feeling. As I read back through the schedule now, the only things that I can really remember as being well-done were:
 - Several of the professionally-produced "commercials", like the John Lewis biography.
 - The roll call was less painful than usual, though still boring and pointless.
 - Jill Biden's speech was well-delivered, and the content may have struck a chord with some people.
 - Barack Obama's speech. The man is one fine orator, and the content was generic but probably attractive to many people.
 - The short thing with Cory Booker and other Dem candidates near the end. It was super fake, but I still chuckled.
 
The constant weaponizing of Beau Biden's death disgusted me. I'm not sure if most people would notice this, though, since most people wouldn't have sat through the whole convention to see them bring it up literally dozens of times.

While Biden's acceptance speech didn't stick out as a disaster, the content was shallow, and it was delivered rather poorly. Since it was pre-recorded, if that's the best take that they were able to get, then it continues to indicate to me that Biden isn't in great condition.

Policy-wise, it's clear that the Democratic party wants to become the old Bush-era Republican party, but with some identity politics smeared on top. Pro-war, pro-status-quo, supporters of the administrative state, corporatist, blind nationalists, etc. If I was eg. a Bernie supporter, I'd be incredibly disappointed, and I'd feel little reason to support the party.

Maybe it makes some sense electorally, but I don't think that Biden's "strength through unity" message is very attractive to most Americans, who are at their core deeply divided. How are you going to unite a country where a third of people think that a different third of the country are deplorables, and vice-versa? Most people want to crush the opposition, not to unify. Traditionally this'd be "fixed" by starting a war or something, but I'm not even sure that having a big outside enemy to unify against would remove the division very much in today's world.

I'd guess that the convention was mildly effective. Among the handful of people who watched it, it will increase turnout for Biden supporters, and the nationalist message might've attracted some boomers and gen-Xers who were on the fence. It was a particularly effective message for the midwest swing states, which are quite nationalist. Since almost nobody watches these conventions, the effect of this one event is limited, but it shows the direction that the Biden campaign is going in, and this direction is IMO a reasonably intelligent way of playing the cards they have.

I'll be interested to see how the Republican convention compares. On the one hand, the Democrats were preparing for this for longer, though on the other hand Trump's biggest area of expertise is TV production. The Trump campaign really needs to stop making "Biden is a radical socialist" their main line of attack, since this is totally not how Biden is portraying himself, and the argument therefore rings false even to someone who's only barely paying attention. Trump can't win with only a pumped-up base. It's looked to me for a while as though the Trump campaign is actively trying to lose, so I'm not expecting much. If it's a big disaster, I hope that it's at least an amusing disaster.

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).

Auction ended, final result:
2 0.08 DogecoinMachine
1 0.08 24kcasino
1 0.08 CardCoins
2 0.08 lightlord
3 0.07 sportsbet.io

I changed the way geoip lookups are done to make it more accurate, and I re-did geoip lookups for the last 6 months of logs when the IP was still available. Thanks for mentioning the low accuracy.

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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
2 0.07 lightlord
4 0.06 DogecoinMachine
1 0.05 lightlord
2 0.05 BetBTC

This month 140 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
5 0.07 DogecoinMachine
4 0.07 Stunna

Twitter called it a "social engineering attack", which makes me think that it was something simple like: the attacker called Twitter support, said, "Hey, it's <Elon Musk / Bill Gates / etc.>. Wouldn't you know it, I lost my 2FA device and my password. Could you help me?" And then the Twitter support person was like, "Sure, just give me your birthday for verification and I'll have this fixed right away, sorry for the inconvenience!"

Support people want to help the person they're talking to as quickly as possible. They're usually the weakest link, not any technical flaw. You see this same sort of social engineering used in SIM swapping attacks, common against Bitcoiners. (There's a victim of SIM swapping on the front page of /r/Bitcoin right now.)


The DMs from all of those people might indeed be worth more than the $100k he got from the simple doubling scam.

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).

Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.09 Dsdaq
1 0.08 cat_rush
5 0.08 DogecoinMachine
2 0.08 sportsbet.io

I'm not going to accept your bids.

cat_rush and Dsdaq are both approved. Current auction status:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.08 cat_rush
5 0.08 DogecoinMachine
3 0.08 sportsbet.io

The auction continues.

I will not accept advertising for hex.win.


These bids may be rejected - I'm waiting for more info.

Current auction status:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.08 cat_rush **TENTATIVE
5 0.08 DogecoinMachine
3 0.08 sportsbet.io
1 0.08 Dsdaq **TENTATIVE
1 0.07 BetBTC
(More than 9 slots are included above due to the possibility of one or both tentative bids being rejected.)

The auction continues.

Bitcointalk.org is not subject to Hong Kong / China jurisdiction, so would not be required to produce data in any case. If some police wants data without a subpoena, they have to convince me that a serious non-victimless crime (eg. scamming) probably occurred. I certainly wouldn't help them if it looks like they're going after political enemies.

But if you're in Hong Kong or other dangerous places and you're worried about this, then you shouldn't trust anyone to protect you: not me, not anyone. Use Tor everywhere, and on bitcointalk.org practice the privacy-enhancing measures mentioned on the privacy page.

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).