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661  Economy / Auctions / Re: Advertise on this forum - Round 283 on: July 29, 2019, 01:22:14 PM
Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.08 theskillzdatklls
2 0.08 bluebet
2 0.08 lightlord
4 0.07 sportsbet.io
662  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Mueller report sent to AG // UPDATE MAR 24 // Update **NO COLLUSION ** on: July 26, 2019, 01:04:02 AM
I listened to parts of it today.

After hearing what I was able to listen to, and reading about the immediate reactions to the hearing, this is what I was able to conclude:

*The 5 minute segments of questioning each congressmen/senator gets for questions is insufficient for high profile hearings/drama such as the Kavanaugh hearings and the Mueller hearing. Neither side is able to have sufficient time to lay a sufficient foundation to lay any hard hitting blows on the witness, which makes it more difficult to establish the credibility of the witness.
*Mueller's reputation took a hit. He was clearly not as sharp as a credible witness in court would be (who is testifying as an expert witness). He was clearly not intimately familiar with the report and was unable to recall even what should be basic facts regarding the origins of his investigation, such as who Fusion GPS is. He was also unable to explain the basis for holding Trump to the standard that innocence must be "proven". The highlighting of the anti-trump partisions on his team also didn't play well for his credibility. He was not able to even recall which president appointed him originally to be FBI director.
*Similar to the above, it appears Mueller may had not actually been in charge of the investigation. His unfamiliarity with the report (after reportedly preparing extensively for his testimony) makes it look like one of the anti-trump partisions may have been running the show. If one of the "angry democrat" lawyers was something closer to being in charge, it would remove credibility to the assertion that someone as neutral as his record in prior administrations would suggest was running the investigation.
*Trump (and to a lessor extent, Pelosi) emerged as a winner after today's' hearing. Today likely threw cold water on any impeachment push that may have existed, or that may emerge in coming months. Mueller specifically avoided using the word "impeachment" and refused to give Democrats sound bites from the report to use in political ads. The two above points also make Trump look good and Democrats generally look bad. Pelosi emerged as a possible winner because she will not have to deal with as much of a risk of the House (trying to) impeach Trump, nor having to deal with the likely political ramifications of impeaching him (especially without a conviction in the Senate, which is near certain).

When I watched the hearing, I was surprised that Republicans were losing so bad. I'd expected the hearing to be worthless for both sides. Today, I'm surprised that the consensus seems to match your view, that it was actually the Republicans who came out a bit ahead... Not sure what to think about that.
663  Other / Meta / Re: Question about forum finances (again, 2017) on: July 25, 2019, 11:52:32 PM
Code:
2017
Income: $996,494 + $6257 donations
Expenses - Forum software project: $246,138
Expenses - Mods and others: $261,433
Expenses - Hosting etc: $49,726

2018
Income: $473,247 + $479 donations
Expenses - Forum software project: $272,250
Expenses - Mods and others: $204,547
Expenses - Hosting etc: $43,907

Tax is not included for 2017. Because bitcointalk.org is tax-wise a disregarded entity, it's difficult for me to calculate the tax costs attributable to forum activities. I'll do it some other day.
664  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Boris Johnson is the new Prime Minister of UK. on: July 24, 2019, 04:17:18 PM
Regardless of what he says, I would be shocked beyond belief if the UK isn't still in the EU on Nov 1.
665  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Mueller report sent to AG // UPDATE MAR 24 // Update **NO COLLUSION ** on: July 24, 2019, 04:10:47 PM
Mueller is testifying in congress today.

I watched the first couple of hours before I couldn't stand it anymore. Congressional hearings are always cringy and boring.

From what I saw, the Dems seem to have come out somewhat ahead, partly because Mueller was more on their side to begin with, and partly because the Republicans performed poorly. The Republican strategy was to entirely discredit the report, but this is too difficult to get across in few-minute snippets. It comes off more as a conspiracy theory. A better strategy would've been to reference over and over again Volume I's strong support for the Trump campaign not being involved in any Russian conspiracy. Volume II's legalistic arguments would then be overridden in many people's minds with the idea, "If he didn't commit an underlying crime, how can he be guilty of obstruction?" Also, although Volume II pretty clearly argues that Trump is guilty of obstruction (without actually saying so), there are plenty of snippets which could've - in isolation - been used to support Trump, and Republicans should've used this.

I don't know if this hearing will have much effect, though. Partisans will be unmoved, and how many undecided people are going to watch even snippets of this? The stated purpose was to get the public onboard impeachment, and we're still very far from that. Articles of impeachment would at this point still be a win for Trump.
666  Other / Meta / Re: Donation page must be updated on: July 18, 2019, 12:40:19 AM
Removed BadBear, thanks.
667  Economy / Auctions / Advertise on this forum - Round 283 on: July 17, 2019, 11:01:20 PM
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.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, custom fonts, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). 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.

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, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 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

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

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 @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- 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. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I 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:

Code:
This:
Slots  BTC/Slot  Person
    6      0.20       A
    1      0.16       B
    1      0.08       C
    1      0.08       D

Becomes:
Slots  BTC/Slot  Person
    6      0.10       A [step 4: reduced to 0.09+0.01=0.10]
    1      0.09       B [step 3: reduced to 0.08+0.01=0.09]
    1      0.08       C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
    1      0.08       D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged]

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).
668  Economy / Auctions / Re: Advertise on this forum - Round 282 on: July 17, 2019, 10:59:05 PM
Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
1 0.06 theskillzdatklls
8 0.05 sportsbet.io
669  Other / Meta / Re: Bitcointalk - About Privacy on: July 12, 2019, 08:04:24 PM
BTW, email is a big privacy issue in general. It's too expensive (mainly time-wise) to create new email addresses, but if you use the same one, it creates tons of links. Ideally, you should use one email per service. I've had two ideas in this area:

First, you could create a simple email forwarding service like this:
 - Without registration (but maybe with a tiny fee via eg. Lightning), take a user's email address, generate a random key, and use the random key to encrypt the email address.
 - Also encrypt the email address with a server secret.
 - Give the user an email address of the form ENCRYPTED_EMAIL.DECRYPTION_KEY@asdf.com
 - When the service receives email at a forwarding address, it decrypts the email first using its server secret, and then using the provided decryption key. Then it forwards the email to the email address
 - To destroy forwarding addresses, users could provide the service with both their forwarding address and target address, and the service could then send a confirmation email.

This would be convenient, and it'd fix the problem of services being able to connect users across multiple sites through email-address reuse. But it trusts the forwarder not to log the per-email decryption keys or give up the server secret key. Though if multiple services like this existed, you could chain emails through them to increase security.

My second idea is:
 - The user would be using his own software (like eg. Thunderbird or perhaps prontonmail). From this software, the user could instantly create low-capacity throwaway accounts on the server. Each throwaway account could be (or behave similar to) a POP3 account with low capacity (eg. 50MB) and quick message expiration (eg. 60 days).
 - The client software would use Tor and careful polling to download all of the messages on its throwaway accounts without leaking to the server info about which accounts are connected. To improve anonymity and efficiency, you could perhaps use PIR, or the server could publish hourly/daily bloom filters meant to match email addresses which received mail in the time period. The client software would collect all of the messages into a single inbox for the end-user. Since it polls frequently, the client wouldn't have to worry about the low limits on the individual throwaways.
 - The server could anonymously require a small one-time for each throwaway account by using blinded bearer certificates.

With this, the server shouldn't ever be able to connect any of the accounts together. You could also send mail from the throwaways.

The main thing necessary for this second idea is a really smart email client meant to juggle many throwaways. You also need a cooperative server allowing quick account creation (like cock.li), ideally via an API.
670  Other / Meta / Re: Bitcointalk - About Privacy on: July 12, 2019, 05:34:47 PM
What exactly is considered a throwaway email? I am asking because there was some talk a few days ago about emails who expire and get registered a 2nd time and could lead to users having their bitcointalk password reset with the expired and re registered email.

Use https://cock.li/
671  Economy / Auctions / Advertise on this forum - Round 282 on: July 07, 2019, 04:43:16 AM
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.

Ads are allowed to contain any non-annoying HTML/CSS style. No images, JavaScript, custom fonts, or animation. Ads must appear 3 or fewer lines tall in my browser (Firefox, 900px wide). 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.

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, and only for people using the default theme.

Duration

- Your ads are guaranteed to be up for at least 7 days.
- I usually try to keep ads up for no more than 8 or 9 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

Ad blocking

Hero/Legendary members, Donators, VIPs, and moderators have the ability to disable ads. I don't expect many people to use this option. These people don't increase the impression stats for your ads.

I try to bypass Adblock Plus filters as much as possible, though this is not guaranteed. It is difficult or impossible for ABP filters to block the ad space itself without blocking posts. However, filters can match against the URLs in your links, your CSS classes and style attributes, and the HTML structure of your ads.

To prevent matches against URLs: I have some JavaScript which fixes links blocked by ABP. You must tell me if you want this for your ads. When someone with ABP and JavaScript enabled views your ads, your links are changed to a special randomized bitcointalk.org URL which redirects to your site when visited. People without ABP are unaffected, even if they don't have JavaScript enabled. The downsides are:
- ABP users will see the redirection link when they hover over the link, even if they disable ABP for the forum.
- Getting referral stats might become even more difficult.
- Some users might get a warning when redirecting from https to http.

To prevent matching on CSS classes/styles: Don't use inline CSS. I can give your ad a CSS class that is randomized on each pageload, but you must request this.

To prevent matching against your HTML structure: Use only one <a> and no other tags if possible. If your ads get blocked because of matching done on something inside of your ad, you are responsible for noticing this and giving me new ad HTML.

Designing ads

Make sure that your ads look good when you download and edit this test page:
https://bitcointalk.org/ad_test.html
Also read the comments in that file.

Images are not allowed no matter how they are created (CSS, SVG, or data URI). Occasionally I will make an exception for small logos and such, but you must get pre-approval from me first.

The maximum size of any one ad is 51200 bytes.

I will send you more detailed styling rules if you win slots in this auction (or upon request).

Auction rules

You must be at least a Jr Member to bid. If you are not a Jr Member and you really want to bid, you should PM me first. Tell me in the PM what you're going to advertise. You might be required to pay some amount in advance. Everyone else: Please quickly PM newbies who try to bid here to warn them against impersonation scammers.

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 @ 5 BTC and this is the highest bid, then he'll get all 9 slots. If the two highest bids are 9 slots @ 4 BTC and 1 slot @ 5 BTC, then the first person will get 8 slots and the second person will get 1 slot.

The notation "2 @ 5" means 2 slots for 5 BTC each. Not 2 slots for 5 BTC total.

- When you post a bid, the bids in your previous posts are considered to be automatically canceled. You can put multiple bids in one post, however.
- All bid prices must be evenly divisible by 0.01.
- 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. I have a small bias toward ending auctions on Fridays, Sundays, and Mondays.
- If two people bid at the same price, the person who bid first will have his slots filled first.
- Bids are considered invalid and will be ignored if they do not specify both a price and a max quantity, or if they could not possibly win any slots

If these rules are confusing, look at some of the past forum ad auctions to see how it's done.

I 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:

Code:
This:
Slots  BTC/Slot  Person
    6      0.20       A
    1      0.16       B
    1      0.08       C
    1      0.08       D

Becomes:
Slots  BTC/Slot  Person
    6      0.10       A [step 4: reduced to 0.09+0.01=0.10]
    1      0.09       B [step 3: reduced to 0.08+0.01=0.09]
    1      0.08       C [step 2: same as the next-lowest, unchanged]
    1      0.08       D [step 1: the lowest bid is always unchanged]

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).
672  Economy / Auctions / Re: Advertise on this forum - Round 281 on: July 07, 2019, 04:38:26 AM
Auction ended, final result:
Slots BTC/Slot Person
3 0.02 SlavaVendo
3 0.02 lightlord
2 0.02 sportsbet.io
1 0.02 Nifflerco
673  Economy / Scam Accusations / Re: SCAM: Bitcoin SV (BSV) - fake team member and plagiarized white paper on: July 07, 2019, 04:26:40 AM
Again, it would be great to know if Wright's statements had truth behind them or not:

Of course not, do you really need to ask?

 - I was made a forum admin in 2011, after Satoshi left. (Silk Road also appeared after Satoshi left.) I didn't have any special access to bitcoin.org until around 2013, and in fact I didn't even have any access to the bitcointalk.org DNS until 2013.
 - I've never bought or sold anything on Silk Road, Hydra or similar sites; nor did I have anything whatsoever to do with their operation; nor AFAIK did I even have interactions with anyone involved in running these sites. While I am opposed to drug laws, I have never used illicit drugs, and in fact I also abstain from alcohol & nicotine. Furthermore, since the beginning I have warned over and over again that Tor is not secure against active government attacks: I wouldn't be found dead running one of these sites.
 - I never had any interaction with CSW. I don't have any keys related to CSW's (probably fictitious) SSS thing.

CSW's whole shtick is to just lie constantly. He's so brazen about it that some people think, "there must be some truth there," but really it's 100% nonsense.

I admit I was a little tempted to troll the world by roleplaying CSW's allegations as totally true...
674  Other / Meta / Re: 502 Bad Gateway on: July 02, 2019, 05:04:11 PM
Incapsula is better than CloudFlare, no idea why he didn't give another try.

I've looked into them. They're at least 10x more expensive, they offer roughly the same tech as Cloudflare, and I was very unimpressed with the people I talked with there. Also, I've tended to be more annoyed with Incapsula sites as an end-user. They seem to be even more anti-Tor than Cloudflare.
675  Other / Meta / Re: Cloudflare - Pain In The Ass on: July 02, 2019, 04:12:56 PM
The Internet is fundamentally broken. We need DDoS protection at the network layer, or else you're going to continue seeing 99% of the Internet hiding behind a few centralized third-parties. It's absolutely ridiculous. Realize also that Cloudflare can see all traffic unencrypted. They're almost certainly an NSA honeypot already, but even if not, their many screwups make them unworthy of this kind of trust. (Their Argo tunnel doesn't fix this trust issue at all, BTW.) However, since the Internet is broken fundamentally, mitigating it is too difficult for it to be a good idea for me to devote resources to it at this time.

I don't have time to work on this at all, but if someone created a non-profit dedicated to producing decentralized anti-DDoS solutions, I'd donate to it. On github I see two very immature projects in this area:
 - gatekeeper is intended for large organizations, and blocks attacks at the network/transport layer. However, I've found that SYNPROXY gateways plus upstream UDP blocking is sufficient for this on bitcointalk.org's scale, and gatekeeper also requires access to BGP, which isn't common unless you're pretty big.
 - AntiDDOS works at layer 7, which is where my homebrew DDoS protection broke down. But it doesn't have a good IP classification system, it's based on (and assumes the existence of) a single final application server, and it's too simple/incomplete overall.

(BTW, this problem is an example of centralization being used as an ever-increasing crutch for systems that are technologically flawed. It has parallels to scaling of cryptocurrencies and other supposed-to-be-decentralized systems.)
676  Other / Meta / Re: DT update log on: July 01, 2019, 06:18:07 PM
This month 104 users were eligible.

Old:
Code:
theymos
HostFat
gmaxwell
TECSHARE
phantastisch
OgNasty
malevolent
qwk
Vod
Anduck
Tomatocage
mprep
Dabs
Foxpup
philipma1957
babo
Cyrus
Flying Hellfish
monkeynuts
Welsh
TMAN
TookDk
Mitchell
Micio
vizique
Ticked
Blazed
yogg
dbshck
hybridsole
greenplastic
hilariousandco
EcuaMobi
arulbero
Avirunes
Lydian
mindrust
Piggy
buckrogers
Lesbian Cow
redsn0w
willi9974
cryptodevil
Rmcdermott927
teeGUMES
owlcatz
nutildah
dazedfool
minerjones
sapta
tmfp
BitcoinPenny
yahoo62278
LFC_Bitcoin
ezeminer
MaoChao
mhanbostanci
bones261
LoyceV
actmyname
Last of the V8s
LeGaulois
kzv
TheFuzzStone
Jet Cash
bL4nkcode
Lafu
polymerbit
Hhampuz
xtraelv
crwth
Kryptowerk
krogothmanhattan
roycilik
Halab
micgoossens
PHI1618
kenzawak
Silent26
Veleor
theyoungmillionaire
o_e_l_e_o
chimk
iasenko
pandukelana2712
coinlocket$
asche
DdmrDdmr
anonymousminer
Alex_Sr
morvillz7z
fillippone
taikuri13
abhiseshakana
Coolcryptovator
DireWolfM14
mikeywith
1miau
DIKUL
ICOEthics

New:
Code:
theymos
HostFat
dooglus
gmaxwell
TECSHARE
phantastisch
OgNasty
SebastianJu
malevolent
qwk
Vod
Anduck
mprep
Foxpup
philipma1957
Cyrus
Flying Hellfish
Welsh
TMAN
Lauda
TookDk
Mitchell
Micio
Ticked
yogg
by rallier
dbshck
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677  Other / Politics & Society / Re: 2020 Democrats on: June 30, 2019, 01:50:08 PM
After the debates this week, I would move Biden down at least two spots as to winning the primary. He has already raised a lot of money, so I don't see him ending his campaign before the early primaries, but he was very ill-prepared for the debate, and his long record makes him vulnerable to attacks, as democrats were previously farther to the center than they are now, and his record reflects this.

Agreed, though it's not over yet. Post-debate snap polls among debate watchers showed only a slight drop in his favorability, and even though he lost the most, he maintained his "who would you vote for right now?" lead. And of course most people didn't watch the debate. But if he did this poorly in a debate, with plenty of opportunity for preparation, how is he going to succeed on the rest of the campaign trail?

I've heard a conspiracy theory, which starts to sound slightly believable, that he's intentionally making himself a punching bag for Kamala Harris. Based on media coverage, it's clear that the establishment wants Kamala Harris, who is currently pretending to be an ultra-leftist even though her record shows that she has no real beliefs. (If she won the presidency, she'd probably be like a clone of Hillary Clinton, but even worse.) Anyway, Harris performed very well in the debate, and snap polling shows that she gained by far the most in overall support out of the 20.

Warren did well enough in the debate from a Dem perspective, but there's ~no way that Warren could win against Trump. She's too far left, a poor communicator, and the native American thing will weigh her down forever.

Buttigieg performed well. He'd be a good alternative to Biden in the "stable" lane, but he may be too non-extreme for this primary.

Gabbard did pretty well, but the media is ignoring her. Sadly, she'll find it almost impossible to win in these conditions. It's interesting that she went on Tucker's show right after the debate; maybe she'll get a significant number of Republicans/independents voting for her in the primary.


Fortunejack now gives Trump a ~45% chance of winning the election.

You have to keep in mind that a lot of people are predicting a recession sometime before the election. If there's a recession, Trump's likelyhood of winning goes way down. I also think that Harris's ability to constantly lie with convincing emotion, and her fairly thin record, would give her a decent chance against Trump.

Currently I'd guess:
Code:
Prob winning primary  CondProb against Trump  Candidate
                  .2                    .525      Biden
                  .5                    .675     Harris
                  .1                    .625    Sanders
                  .1                    .175     Warren
                  .1                    .725  Buttigieg
= 40.5% chance of winning for Trump. Note that I boosted each candidate's conditional probability from my present-conditions guess to take into account a 25% probability of a recession.
678  Other / Politics & Society / Re: SP500, BTC, Gold and many other assets hit new high. What's the implication? on: June 26, 2019, 05:07:06 AM
I think that the market has long been dominated by the aftereffects of quantitative easing, and the current thing is just another ripple of that. There's simply a worldwide glut of money.

In QE, the Fed bought MBSes and treasuries, which basically amounted to printing $3 trillion and giving it to everyone who was holding those things; namely, banks and various investors (mostly institutional). For comparison, M3 money supply is currently $14.5 trillion. What do these groups do when they get tons of money? They're investors, so they reinvest it, especially in bonds/stocks, but also in things like BTC. They don't buy food or gadgets or whatever. IMO this is why stocks have been going up at an unnatural rate for a while even though the CPI doesn't grow out of control. Eventually the money makes its way out to ordinary shareholders, but shareholders also have a tendency to reinvest rather than spend, so the process of money escaping the investment universe is slow.

The Fed has been slowly unwinding QE, though they're talking about stopping that (after eating only about a quarter of what they printed). They also continue to print money in their open market operations.

I don't know how this will play out long-term. I suppose that the inflation in investment-asset prices will eventually have to leak into CPI, but it might be gradual enough to not cause a catastrophe. It might end up being a sort of loan, paid to investors, and paid by holders of dollars over the next several decades.
679  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Why do you think Trump changed his mind over the strike on Iran? on: June 24, 2019, 09:14:42 PM
I think that his many war-hawk neocon advisors basically ordered the airstrike for him, but he realized that it was insane and called it back. From reporting about the inside of the Administration, I get the sense that everyone is just doing whatever they want, often ignoring what Trump says, and Trump himself is a pretty weak force on most issues. I'm glad that he pushed back on this one, but I still see the machine of war moving constantly in the direction of Iran.
680  Alternate cryptocurrencies / Tokens (Altcoins) / MOVED: [ANN][ICO]WaykiChain - Trillions Of Betting Market Underlying Blockchain 3.0 on: June 24, 2019, 05:25:49 PM
This topic has been moved to Trashcan. DMCA takedown.

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