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 June 23 (US Eastern time) to noon July 29. (36 days.)
 - This auction will end sometime between June 13 and June 17, but June 16 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 June 22. 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 June 13 and June 17. Times closer to 8:00AM June 16 (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. Potential advertisers are common targets of scams and spearphishing. You might receive false payment information from scammers pretending to be me, etc. 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
2 16 CrashinoAffiliates
4 16 Hhampuz
3 14 Panxora_COO

I don't think that this should be eligible for a security bounty in any case because things are essentially working as intended: you're supposed to be able to move topics out of Auctions, and you're supposed to be able to edit posts outside of Auctions.

Edits are not allowed in Auctions mainly to prevent people from being able to edit their bids, in replies. I suppose there is a potential issue with collusion between the OP and auction participants, and perhaps there are edge cases where the OP could somehow do evil by editing or deleting their own posts in the thread, so I made it no longer possible to move your topics out of Auctions.

Taking the localism issue in isolation: The less power any particular government has, the less total harm any one of them can do, and the less incentive there is for outside forces to corrupt the governments. But because we're talking about a prohibition on any government creating a bad law, rather than the creation of some federal law/program, I do find the argument against localism somewhat appealing here. Would I support restricting the 1st or 2nd amendments (which I unreservedly support) to only federal laws rather than federal+local laws? I think that I would in fact support limiting the scope of the 1st or 2nd amendments in this way, as it would reduce the scope of the federal government's power, though when I consider this isolated, extreme example, it makes me a lot less comfortable.

On the abortion issue in particular, I'm even more happy with localism because there is never going to be anything approaching a nationwide consensus on the abortion issue, so localism here gives people an opportunity to vote with their feet.

Your "between doctor and patient" point is why I said in my previous post that pro-abortion people are bad at messaging. That comes across as being utterly dismissive toward an act that anti-abortion people honestly see as downright murder. You are never in a million years going to convince anyone with that sort of messaging. If you want to be more effective at convincing people, you should drop the "just a medical choice like any other" language and instead:
 - Give arguments for why abortion is not murder even in the 2nd trimester (eg. data on brain development).
 - Point out that if anti-abortion people actually believe abortion is murder, then it makes no sense to allow abortions in case of rape or incest, which are overwhelmingly seen in polling as acceptable situations for abortions.
 - Give stories of people whose lives were in some way saved from tragedy because they could have an abortion.
 - Give stories of people who died or whose lives were ruined because they were prevented from having an abortion.

I'm not sure that the draft is actually at all indicative of the final decision. It'd be very natural for one of the conservative justices to write a draft where they imagine a "dream decision" where they get exactly what they want using exactly the justification they want. The liberal justices probably also have drafts which they've been working on for years where they get exactly what they want. The leaked draft does have 5 names attached, but that part could very easily be faked.

I don't have a very strong opinion on this issue one way or the other. I'm opposed to abortion, but I'm not sure if my idea of utopia would have any legal barriers to abortion.

Legally:
As I understand it, Roe v. Wade was based primarily on the argument that prior to the third trimester, the 14th amendment's right to privacy prohibits any government in the US from interfering with the mother's personal health decision. What I like about this argument is that I like the court interpreting the 14th amendment very broadly. You really should be able to use the same argument to fight against drug laws, vaccine mandates, etc. The existence of this contradiction between Roe v. Wade and many non-abortion-related anti-personal-freedom laws could be used to weaken those latter laws, which would be good in my book.

What I don't like about Roe v. Wade is that it inserts the federal government into what was previously a local issue, and I prefer localism. The trimester system is also obviously completely arbitrary. The court decided that the fetus is basically just a part of the mother's body before the third trimester, with zero personhood. I hate these sorts of arbitrary lines which nobody will ever agree on. Conservatives believe that Roe allows for murder, and some liberals think that Roe didn't go far enough, allowing mothers' rights to be infringed via abortion restrictions in the third trimester.

Politically:
The Democrats were always going to use this as a campaign tool. Since everything else is going so poorly for them, this is about the only thing they have. I hope you all like this issue, because we're going to be hearing about abortion 24/7 until November.

Polls have shown two contradictory things:
 - The majority of Americans oppose overturning Roe.
 - The majority of Americans support certain restrictions on abortions which would be prohibited by Roe. (For example, "Do you support banning abortions once the fetus has a heartbeat," and many similar questions like that.)

This shows that Americans don't actually understand what Roe is. The abortion debate will therefore primarily be a battle of defining what the Court actually did. Are they an extremist court who have overturned a long-standing status quo that we've all lived with for decades? Or have they just allowed common-sense restrictions on abortions - restrictions which the majority of Americans believe in? There's a lot of room for either side to succeed or fail on their messaging here. My perception is that the pro-abortion side has historically been worse at messaging, but that may be because I am mildly anti-abortion.

Democrats hope that this will turn things around for them, but abortion usually scores pretty low on polls of top issues among voters, and it's a more important issue for Republicans than Democrats. On the other hand, abortion tends to be a more important issue for the key suburban-women demographic, and this might be the "something, anything" that will get the Democratic base to turn out.

My guess is that this will be a noisy issue, but it won't actually have a big effect in elections.

This month 122 users were eligible.

Old:

New:

It's momentarily funny to watch some leftists freak out about this, but this is probably a bad thing long-term. Elon might end up improving Twitter as a platform, but I don't consider Twitter to be particularly important. And Twitter will end up being a massive distraction for Elon, whose genius could be better applied to so many other things. It's impossible to run this sort of platform while pleasing everyone, so he's going to end up hated by the public and targeted by politicians in the same way as Zuckerberg, even if Elon's policies for Twitter are somewhat different than Zuckerberg's for Facebook. He's going to piss off 70% of people no matter what he does. This also seems like part of a trend of Elon becoming increasingly interested in politics, and playing the political game is a massive waste of anyone's time.

It'll probably end up being a huge waste of money, as well. Twitter has always been a garbage company for investors, and it's hard to imagine him improving Twitter's business enough to make it worth what he paid.

If I were a Twitter user, one thing I'd be worried about is that Elon's statements make it sound like he might want to "KYC" everyone to eliminate "bots". This I think goes in exactly the wrong direction. One of the main reasons social media has been so poisonous to society is that people feel like they are constantly on a stage. We need more outlets where people can say what they actually think and see what others actually think, without any fear of being "cancelled". We need more anonymous communication, not less.

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.

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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!