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941  Other / Meta / Re: How does the ~ (exclusion) work in the new Default Trust? on: February 12, 2019, 03:42:42 AM
To illustrate, consider this trust list with max-depth 3:
Code:
A
  B
    C
      X
D
  E
    X
F
  X

The system processes it by depth. So it goes through this as first (A, D, F), then (B, E, X), then (C, X), then (X).

If A or D exclude X, then X will still have 0 net inclusions (+1 from F) and therefore be included. If they exclude F, then this doesn't help because F is at the same depth. If A and D exclude X, then X will have -1 net inclusions and therefore be excluded. Excluding F still doesn't help/hurt.

If F changes his trust of X to distrust of X, then X has -1 net inclusions at depth 1, so his net inclusions of 1 at depth 2 and 1 and depth 3 don't matter: he's excluded at depth 1. Whether or not B, C, or E are included/excluded by anyone here doesn't matter.

If instead E and C both change their trust of X to distrust of X, then X still has 1 net inclusions at depth 1, so his net inclusions of -1 at greater depths don't matter.
942  Other / Meta / Re: How does the ~ (exclusion) work in the new Default Trust? on: February 12, 2019, 03:02:18 AM
So if a scammer made it onto default trust (it is inevitable in a decentralized system rife with scammers), would excluding everyone that included that scammer remove the scammer from default trust?

If you ignore the "DT1 voting":
 - ~ing everyone who trusts user X without ~ing X himself often won't result in X being excluded from trust networks.
 - ~ing X himself without ~ing anyone who trusts X might result in X being excluded from trust networks.
 - ~ing X himself and everyone who trusts him might result in X being excluded from trust networks, but to the exact same degree as the above option. It doesn't function as some sort of "super-exclusion".

If you take DT1 voting into account, then there's one exception: if you're on DT1 and your exclusion causes someone to drop off of DT1, then this could help you in your goal.
943  Other / Meta / Re: Where did this thread go? on: February 11, 2019, 09:37:27 PM
That one was a duplicate of this: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5107569.0
944  Other / Meta / MOVED: yurez83 - Alleged breach of copyright and plagiarism on: February 11, 2019, 09:26:16 PM
This topic has been moved to Trashcan. Duplicative & dox outside of Investigations

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5108717.0
945  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Bezos allegedly extorted w/Dick pics by Nat'l enquirer on: February 11, 2019, 03:41:34 AM
I'm uncertain about Bezos. The Washington Post has a clear anti-Trump and left-leaning bias, but maybe Bezos purchased it because he wanted to prevent a major newspaper from dying, and he actually does give them a lot of independence. Maybe any pro-Bezos bias by the Post is more of a subconscious thing by their employees than anything (ie. if they know who butters their bread, it'll affect their thinking whether anyone realizes/wants it or not). Ignoring the Washington Post, do we actually know of many instances of Bezos personally attacking good things or promoting bad things? I remember a few things which gave me slightly negative impressions of him, but I don't remember anything major, and I can't find anything with a quick search.

Reading his Medium post makes me tend to respect Bezos more. (Which is the intent, of course.)

It's certainly within the capabilities of several government intelligence agencies to do this spying, but would they? I doubt that Trump would've given some official presidential order to spy on Bezos. Does he have sufficient personal connections within Intelligence to do it off the books? My impression is that Intelligence hates him; in fact, if they did this, I'd consider it most likely that their goal was to set Bezos against Trump.

But far more likely than a major technological attack is that Sanchez's security was shit and someone going through piles of hacked accounts stumbled across this. Or something like that. (Some sources are saying that she just gave the info to others...)

In any case, it doesn't look good for the Enquirer, having a multi-billionaire past the point of caring & out to destroy them.
946  Bitcoin / Wallet software / Re: Electrum replacement needed. on: February 08, 2019, 12:37:32 AM
Wasabi is probably the next best, though it's certainly missing a ton of features compared to Electrum. Nothing lightweight comes close to Electrum's features.

Wasabi recently passed bitcoin.org's strict criteria for being listed.
947  Other / Meta / Re: Publication of copyright photos without permission (plagiarism), personal data.. on: February 07, 2019, 06:29:14 PM
 - That's not plagiarism.
 - If there is dox outside of the investigations section, report it with that as the reason.
 - If someone is threatening violence against you, report it with that as the reason.
 - If you have a copyright claim, you have to PM/email me a valid DCMA takedown notice with all required elements, including your address, a declaration under penalty of perjury, etc. Note that I will forward your notice to the affected users.
 - The forum is not under EU jurisdiction.
948  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Trump condemns socialism in SOTU on: February 07, 2019, 02:32:38 PM
That was one hell of a SotU. I couldn’t believe the way Trump controlled the room. Then today the Fed stated their next rate change might be a decrease. So much winning...

Everyone like SOTU addresses. The speech is the end result of a lot of work by a team of speechwriters working along with the entire administration, and they're given the rare opportunity to have a captive general audience for an hour or more. So they always have a high approval rating, though the effect doesn't last long.

It was impressive that he got so much Democrat applause, and I appreciated the digs at socialism and endless wars. But overall I found it pretty typical for a SOTU. Unfortunately, everyone (including the president) will probably forget about it in a couple of weeks.
949  Other / Meta / Re: A question to Theymos in regards to Satoshi's Forum account on: February 07, 2019, 02:03:06 PM
Email changes weren't always logged, and I wasn't always a forum admin, so I don't know that.
950  Other / Off-topic / Re: Random thought: Logging as a key design principle in relational databases on: February 06, 2019, 04:02:30 AM
A very old idea of mine that I've never come to implement has been for an online forum to keep a record of all prior versions of an edited post.

Epochtalk works like that. I think that currently the edit logs are all public, though users may end up being too uncomfortable with that.
951  Other / Serious discussion / Re: The idea of taking away all of Satoshi's bitcoin? on: February 05, 2019, 10:48:11 PM
Try actually reading the thread...
I never said any such thing. bitcoin.com again proves that it is absolutely worthless by completely fabricating that quote.
952  Other / Meta / Re: DefaultTrust changes on: February 05, 2019, 10:46:22 PM
Is stingers still a merit source?

Not anymore. That's clear abuse, awarding merit for political reasons rather than any idea of quality. Only because he was a source, I effectively undid those merit sends. If he had not been a merit source, I still would've blacklisted anyone who got into DT1 through that type of shenanigans.

I hadn't read into the thread deeply enough to see that stuff. Those are better arguments against the trustworthiness of H8bussesNbicycles & co., but note that the current negative-trust-ratings were sent long before that. Before February, the thread looks like politics to me.

I'm wondering whether you specifically disapprove of account dealers being tagged--not necessarily your opinion on the matter, but whether you'd consider that an inappropriate use of the trust system.

Since some people view account sales as fundamentally untrustworthy, I think it's an appropriate use.

I have no problem with your (theymos) conclusion that "H8bussesNbicycles's thread looks like [politics] to me", but isn't there a bit of a problem with the self-moderation aspect of certain kinds of threads, especially when dealing with seemingly meta issues? 

For example, I had 6 posts deleted from that thread so of course, now I don't even attempt to participate or pay attention to postings in that particular thread, since I could not even contribute if I wanted to, except if I were to exclude Lauda from my trust list, then they might allow my posts, and I thought that my posts were innocuous, even though obviously the contents of my posts likely distracted from the message that they want to promote in that thread and spread through the forum if they are able, inaccurate as some other members might find such thread messages to be.

I don't find it unreasonable to have a restrictive selfmod thread. You can guess from the banner & deletion stats that it's going to be a restrictive, single-viewpoint thread. You could always start another topic.

That said, using selfmod topics in a deceptive way can be an appropriate reason for negative trust.
953  Other / Meta / Re: Can users be banned for using known English proverbs and sayings? on: February 05, 2019, 07:14:02 PM
If you don't have the intent to pass off someone else's work as your own in order to pad your post count/size, then you don't deserve a ban, at least.

By university standards, well-known quotes should be in quotation marks, but need not be cited. Sayings don't need quotation marks.
954  Other / Meta / Re: DefaultTrust changes on: February 05, 2019, 07:06:50 PM
However if he tried to actually "game" the system to his advantage (not saying he did) should THAT be tagged?

With gaming the system I mean influencing DT list for his own sake or agenda and not for legitimate reasons. See Thule et al.

If the "gaming" takes the form of strategically sending a lot of merit, creating sockuppets, and stuff like that, then no. That sort of gaming might get me to blacklist people, in fact. But if it looks more like politics, then that's OK, and that's what H8bussesNbicycles's thread looks like to me.
955  Other / Meta / Re: DefaultTrust changes on: February 05, 2019, 06:57:48 PM
I do not view it as appropriate for trust ratings to relate primarily to non-trust matters. By giving someone negative trust, you're basically attaching a note to all of their posts telling people "warning: do not trade with this person!". If we can get DT working well enough, in the future I'd like to prevent guests from even viewing topics by negative-trust users in trust-enabled sections, so you have to ask yourself whether your negative trust would warrant this sort of significant effect.

In particular, in my view:
 - Giving negative trust for being an annoying poster is inappropriate, since this has nothing to do with their trustworthiness. If they're disrupting discussion or never adding anything, then that's something for moderators to deal with, and you should report their posts and/or complain in Meta about it.
 - Giving negative trust for merit trading and deceptive alt-account use may be appropriate, but you should use a light touch so that people don't feel paranoid.
 - You should be willing to forgive past mistakes if the person seems unlikely to do it again.
 - It is absolutely not appropriate to give someone negative trust because you disagree with them. I'm disappointed in the reaction to this post. Although H8bussesNbicycles is perhaps not particularly trustworthy for other reasons, the reasons many people gave for neg-trusting him are inappropriate. You can argue that what he's advocating is bad on a utilitarian level, but he would disagree, and his advocacy of a certain Trust philosophy doesn't by itself mean that he's an untrustworthy person. DT selection is meant to be affected by user lists, and it is totally legitimate to try to honestly convince other (real) people to use a list more in-line with your views.
 
I'm not going to blacklist people from DT selection due to not following my views, since a big point of this new system is to get me less involved, but if a culture somewhat compatible with my views does not eventually develop, then I will consider this more freeform DT selection to be a failure, and I'll probably get rid of it in favor of enforcing custom trust lists.



Now for this month's DT construction:

Old:
Code:
theymos
dooglus
gmaxwell
OgNasty
SebastianJu
qwk
Vod
mprep
Cyrus
monkeynuts
Welsh
ibminer
TMAN
Lauda
TookDk
Mitchell
vizique
Blazed
yogg
greenplastic
hilariousandco
EcuaMobi
Lesbian Cow
cryptodevil
suchmoon
achow101
owlcatz
JohnUser
minerjones
tmfp
BitcoinPenny
yahoo62278
zazarb
LoyceV
actmyname
The Pharmacist
DarkStar_
TheFuzzStone
Jet Cash
marlboroza
Lafu
Hhampuz
xtraelv
krogothmanhattan
Halab
iasenko
coinlocket$
asche
Coolcryptovator
ICOEthics
New:
Code:
theymos
HostFat
gmaxwell
TECSHARE
phantastisch
OgNasty
SebastianJu
qwk
Vod
mprep
Dabs
Cyrus
monkeynuts
Welsh
TMAN
Lauda
Mitchell
vizique
Blazed
yogg
TheNewAnon135246
greenplastic
hilariousandco
EcuaMobi
Lesbian Cow
cryptodevil
suchmoon
achow101
owlcatz
JohnUser
sapta
tmfp
BitcoinPenny
yahoo62278
zazarb
bill gator
LoyceV
actmyname
WhiteManWhite
The Pharmacist
LeGaulois
DarkStar_
TheFuzzStone
Jet Cash
marlboroza
Lafu
Gunthar
Hhampuz
xtraelv
krogothmanhattan
Halab
theyoungmillionaire
o_e_l_e_o
iasenko
coinlocket$
asche
Alex_Sr
taikuri13
Coolcryptovator
ICOEthics
956  Economy / Reputation / Re: VIP Member hacked? on: February 05, 2019, 05:44:52 PM
After investigation, I consider the evidence to be most strongly consistent with the hypothesis that his email account was hacked and then used to take his forum account.

He has the same email address as before, but it's @gmx.com, and we all know how secure that is. The forum account was first newly-accessed via email-reset rather than by password. IP evidence is also generally suggestive of it not being the same person. I also find his general behavior to be suspicious.

I asked him some challenge questions related to data I have and the real BTC_Bear should know, but his answers were only half-correct, and are more consistent with having access to a bunch of emails going back to at least 2011 than having actually lived it.

However, while he definitely wouldn't have enough evidence to recover the account if he didn't already have access to it, I have enough doubt that I'm not willing to lock the account at this time. There are plausible explanations for the above evidence against him, and if he is a hacker, he's done an unusually large amount of research, at least. I'd say that there's a 25% chance of him being the original BTC_Bear.

I don't have alternative contact info for BTC_Bear or I'd try contacting him. He was very active on #bitcoin-otc IIRC; maybe someone can try asking nanotube or the other #bitcoin-otc regulars.

BTW, I'd like to take this opportunity to recognize & thank the original BTC_Bear (whether or not he is the current account owner), who on several occasions went to considerable effort to contribute to the forum in the early days.
957  Other / Off-topic / Random thought: Logging as a key design principle in relational databases on: February 05, 2019, 05:09:35 PM
I've dealt with relational databases for well over 10 years. One thing which I've realized in the past few years but which I've never really seen mentioned in any of the books or guides about this (though maybe I've just missed it) is the following principle of effective relational database design: You should always start designing a relational database schema from the perspective of logs. For example, instead of having an "email_address" column in a users table which gets updated from time to time, you should have a table like email_log (user_id, time, email_address), and the user's current email address will be their newest entry in that log.

On countless occasions I or someone else had not done this, and I'd regretted it. Structuring things in this log-based way:
 - Promotes application-level database consistency, since you can't as easily update data outside of the intended contract.
 - Gives you access to a more complete picture of each piece of data, which you often want later.
 - Makes normalization the default.
 - Starts you off on a good footing performance-wise, since insertions into a log table are usually near-free and non-locking. Because two processes never need to write the same data at the same time, contention is kept to a minimum. Locking/contention is in practice the biggest performance issue for many applications, such as websites.

Now, sometimes it's too annoying to always do this. If your idea of a "user" is the end result of a dozen or more logs, then it may be difficult or performance-poor to perform more complex queries on the data. In this case, you can create more traditional "caching" tables using triggers on the log tables (or at the application level, or by using DBMS support for materialized views). Since these tables are only derived from the real data, in some cases it may be acceptable to do this on a "best-effort" basis, for example by only updating the caching tables occasionally or by using low levels of transaction isolation when dealing with the caching tables.

It's fairly common I think to do the reverse of the above paragraph, where you have triggers on the main tables which fill up log tables, but I don't regard this as ideal because it removes most of the advantages I listed earlier.

If logs become too large to be performant or convenient, it often requires no changes to the application to just delete all non-latest log entries older than <some time>.
958  Other / Politics & Society / Re: Elizabeth Warren Doesn't Understand Wealth Taxes on: February 04, 2019, 05:31:19 PM
If any wealth tax is imposed, that's basically the end of the US as a major economy. While Warren's proposal would only affect a tiny percentage of the population, it'd probably directly lead to economic and societal collapse, massively encouraging wasteful spending and discouraging savings, risk, and investment. It's also a slippery slope to ever-increasing wealth taxes.

It could be worse...


AOC's 70% progressive-income-tax proposal is very bad, but it's a lot better than any wealth tax. The economy could basically continue, though very fettered, under such a system.
959  Other / Meta / Re: Suggestion: length limitation to trust ratings on: February 03, 2019, 05:25:38 PM
For feedback longer than the 600 characters, I prefer that you consolidate it into posts somewhere. Even if the comments are good, long comments kind of monopolize the page.

Can the three times activity be increased maybe with the rank?

Some people are near to the cap https://bpip.org/r/trustsent.aspx

If anyone runs into it and thinks that they should be allowed to continue, PM me and I'll think about the issue more. I could whitelist certain individuals, or I could make it expand significantly at higher ranks.
960  Other / Politics & Society / Re: So, let's talk about that new abortion law... on: February 03, 2019, 05:02:13 PM
When I was younger, I used to be totally pro-choice, but now I'm mildly pro-life. When I was pro-choice, it was based mainly on:

1. The "evictionism" argument: the woman's body is fundamentally hers to do with what she wishes. If eg. you live at the south pole and someone barges into your house and must stay for 9 months or else die from the cold, your property rights allow you to refuse them, especially if their presence creates risks for you.
2. Unborn children aren't developed enough to be moral agents with rights. If you treat them the same as full humans because they can (at certain points) feel pain, have a heartbeat, etc., then you might as well consider animals as full humans too.

My opinion on the evictionism argument was changed by the counter-argument that it's more as if you hit someone with a car far from civilization, and they're going to die if you don't shelter them in your house. By bringing a child into life knowingly or through carelessness, you've created a sort of tort against both them and your partner which obliges you to at least try to keep the child alive until birth.

I still somewhat agree with #2, which is why I'm only mildly pro-life. If the subject has never been able to form thoughts objecting to it, I can't consider it fully murder, at least.

That said, I find it very problematic on an intellectual level to set hard timeline-borders such as "it's totally OK 1 second before birth, but murder 1 second after birth". If you believe that abortion is OK just before <time X> then the only consistent position is to believe that it's not much worse just after <time X>. So in the Northam controversy, I actually find his "post-birth abortion" position more intellectually honest than many of the more extreme pro-choice advocates, even if I strongly disagree with him. I think that you have to define "moral agency" as a continuous function over time, starting at conception and ending at some point in the future, perhaps even after birth. So perhaps killing the fetus should be treated as "75% murder" both 1 second before and 1 second after birth, for example. I'm not advocating any specific function, though -- I suppose it should be based on the local cultural standards and the available scientific data.

It's frustrating when one side of this issue totally fails to perceive the other side's legitimate arguments. Many people scream "you're killing babies!" or "you want to control women's bodies!", completely closing their minds to the opposing arguments.

These sorts of tricky issues which will never have a single universally-agreed-upon answer is a major thing which attracted me to David-Friedman-style anarcho-capitalism, which in a very natural way allows for different people with different ideologies to have different laws.



My instincts have developed as I've gotten older. The thought of abortion used to not bother me at all, but now it makes me uncomfortable even very soon after conception. But we must remain aware that this sort of instinctual discomfort is an external factor enforced by evolution, and it is disconnected from rationality.

Also, from a utilitarian perspective I totally reject over-population arguments. Humans create usable resources on net through innovation - practically-speaking, resources are not some limited pool which we all fight over in a zero-sum way. The more people, the better.

the shift from abortion being a rare last resort, kind of intervention, to a method of contraception in lieu of others.

Agreed, while I don't think that this kind of thinking is all that common, where it exists it is really unpleasant.
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