I wonder if the ransomer will be stupid enough to treat XMR as an absolute black box, and go immediately sell it on an exchange. Because if the ransomee combines data with the exchange, they can basically prove that the funds came from the ransom in that case.

Unless major problems come up, I'm going to reconstruct DT1 again using the published criteria on Monday, so set up your trust lists before then. After that I'll probably switch to doing it near the beginning of each month.

Found & fixed it now, thanks.

I added it for mobile devices only using CSS media queries, but it seems to only work on the very newest browsers.


Does it still do that? I never saw that.

New page with info on the DT1 live "voting": https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;dtview


All of the "DT1s" would also have to be of Member rank, which isn't trivial.

Anyway, there are many conceivable ways to abuse the system, but if it happens, you can just shoot me a PM and I'll fix it, probably in less than 24 hours. To do it in a way that's non-obvious, where I wouldn't blacklist the accounts, would require tons of time and sMerit, and is unlikely. I'm inclined to let the current criteria go for a while and see if "unknowns" actually start habitually getting into it, in which case changes would be needed.


It doesn't. The algorithm would never work that way.

Damn, I'm found out. While personally training Lauda in the dark arts of forum moderation, we fell deeply in love. I couldn't bear to see her endure the torture of trust drama while doing unspeakable deeds for me, so I invented this complicated algorithm as an excuse to add her back in even though I could've just unilaterally added her to DT at any second. Truly, my cowardice knows no bounds.

You can just copy/paste his whole name, and it is stored as a user ID.

Good idea, done. But don't worry too much about this stuff when sending merit or you're going to go crazy.

---

Since it already changed, I just reconstructed DT1 again, and maybe I'll do it again in a couple of days. Many people can get eligibility just by setting a trust list, so things could change quickly at the beginning. Then I'll aim to do it roughly monthly.

To illustrate, this is how the current DT1 was arrived at:

Static part: calculated only periodically
Each number includes the previous criteria.
2431 members
100 members
90 members
90 members
23 members
23 members, giving a final DT1 of:

Dynamic part: recalculated constantly
(Omitting lists for undisputed ones.)

theymos: Total votes 9 = included
HostFat: Trusted by theymos; distrusted by gmaxwell, TMAN, Lauda, achow101, owlcatz, The Pharmacist. Total votes -6 = excluded.
dooglus: Total votes 8 = included
gmaxwell: Trusted by theymos, OgNasty, Cyrus, TMAN, Lauda, achow101, The Pharmacist; distrusted by HostFat. Total votes 6 = included.
OgNasty: Trusted by theymos, SebastianJu, greenplastic, achow101, krogothmanhattan; distrusted by TMAN, Lauda, suchmoon, owlcatz, BitcoinPenny, The Pharmacist. Total votes -1 = excluded
SebastianJu: Total votes 4 = included.
qwk: Total votes 5 = included
Cyrus: Total votes 7 = included.
monkeynuts: Total votes 6 = included.
TMAN: Trusted by Lauda, greenplastic, owlcatz, BitcoinPenny, The Pharmacist, krogothmanhattan; distrusted by OgNasty. Total votes 5 = included.
Lauda: Trusted by gmaxwell, qwk, TMAN, Blazed, suchmoon, owlcatz, JohnUser, BitcoinPenny, The Pharmacist; distrusted by HostFat, OgNasty. Total votes 7 = included.
Mitchell: Total votes 9 = included.
Blazed: Trusted by Cyrus, monkeynuts, TMAN, Lauda, Mitchell, suchmoon, BitcoinPenny, The Pharmacist, krogothmanhattan; distrusted by zazarb. Total votes 8 = included.
greenplastic: Total votes 2 = included.
suchmoon: Trusted by dooglus, Lauda, Blazed, owlcatz, The Pharmacist; distrusted by OgNasty. Total votes 5 = included.
achow101: Total votes 2 = included.
owlcatz: Trusted by TMAN, greenplastic, suchmoon, BitcoinPenny, krogothmanhattan. Total votes 5 = included.
JohnUser: No trusts/distrusts on DT1. Total votes 0 = included.
BitcoinPenny: Total votes 4 = included.
zazarb: Total votes 2 = included.
actmyname: Trusted by TMAN, Lauda, Blazed, suchmoon, The Pharmacist; distrusted by theymos. Total votes 5 = included.
The Pharmacist: Trusted by qwk, TMAN, Lauda, Blazed, suchmoon, owlcatz; distrusted by OgNasty, zazarb. Total votes 6 = included.
krogothmanhattan: Trusted by monkeynuts, TMAN, greenplastic, BitcoinPenny; distrusted by owlcatz. Total votes 4 = included.

So the final result is:
theymos
HostFat
dooglus
gmaxwell
OgNasty
SebastianJu
qwk
Cyrus
monkeynuts
TMAN
Lauda
Mitchell
Blazed
greenplastic
suchmoon
achow101
owlcatz
JohnUser
BitcoinPenny
zazarb
actmyname
The Pharmacist
krogothmanhattan

For years I've been unhappy with how DefaultTrust ended up as a centralized and largely-untouchable authority, but I was reluctant to change it because the alternatives seemed too messy. However, I've finally decided to try some changes, and we'll see how it works.

#1
As a special exception to the normal algorithm for determining a user's trust network, if you are on the default trust list ("DT1") but more other DT1 members distrust you than explicitly trust you, then it is as if you are distrusted by the default trust list for all purposes except for this very DT1-composition determination.

So if someone on DT1 is doing something stupid, you can ask other DT1 members to distrust them.

See here for live info on this "DT voting".

#2
You can view any page as if you were using the default trust settings by putting ;dt at the end of the URL. Eg. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=trust;u=35;dt

#3
I will periodically (maybe every month) be reconstructing the default trust list to include everyone who matches these criteria:
 - If rank was determined solely using earned merit, then you must be of at least Member rank.
 - You must have been online sometime within the last 3 days.
 - Your trust list must include at least 10 users, not including ~distrust entries.
 - You must not be banned or manually blacklisted from selection.
 - You must have posted sometime within the last 30 days.
 - You must have at least 10 people directly trusting you each with an earned merit of at least 10, not including merit you yourself sent. These "votes" are limited.
 - You must have at least 2 people directly trusting you with an earned merit of at least 250, not including merit you yourself sent. These "votes" are limited.

Unlike the previous policy, I will not generally be trying to cultivate a good list; that will be left to the DT1 members themselves. However, I reserve the right to remove you and blacklist you from future selection if you engage in egregious and obvious abuse, or if multiple known alt accounts could be selected.

Currently not that many users are eligible. If hundreds of users would be selected in the future, I plan to instead choose a random subset of about 100 eligible users each time. This DT1 reconstruction may even automatically happen on a schedule in the future, but it doesn't currently.

---

A major goal of this is to allow retaliatory distrusts and ratings to actually have some chance of mattering so that contentious ratings have an actual cost. If someone is obviously scamming, then any retaliatory rating should not last long due to the DT1 "voting", but if you negative-rate someone for generally disliking them, then their retaliation against you may stick. In borderline cases, it should result in something of a political battle.

This is inspired partly by something that David Friedman said once (though I can't find the quote), that one of the requirements for a peaceful society is the credible threat of retaliation in case you are harmed. As DT was organized previously, one or both sides of a dispute was usually unable to effectively retaliate to a rating, at least via the trust system itself. Now your ability to effectively retaliate will tend to increase as you become more established in the community, which should discourage abuse generally. (Or that's the idea, at least.)

All that being said, I still discourage retaliatory ratings, and with these changes I encourage people to try to "bury the hatchet" and de-escalate rather than trying to use any increased retaliatory power you now have. Also, it's best to make your own custom list, and you must do this if you want to be on DT1.

I am never completely tied to anything, but let's try this for at least a few months and see how it works.

What happened yesterday was that Marina Uni renamed the topic to something English, moved it to an English board, and then reported it. A moderator in that board, not being aware of any of this context, then trashed it for being off-topic.

I restored it and temporarily banned Marina Uni for moving the topic to where it would be off-topic. OPs do not own the replies to their topics, and unless it is self-moderated, they have no right to have the replies deleted.

Today I finished rewriting the forum's payment processing code, partially with LN acceptance in mind. I can now add LN support with only a little more work. However, I ended up deciding not to accept LN at this time because I think it'd end up being too much of a headache:

First, Internet protocol designers often underestimate the fragility of the Internet, and don't realize that DDoS protection is probably the single largest issue facing any site large enough to be noticed. You can't just expect sites to run some non-standard public-facing server like it's nothing. Most affordable anti-DDoS services don't even support anything but HTTP(S). I know how to set up an effective layer 4 anti-DDoS system on my own, having run the forum behind such a system for years, but most people can't do that, and it's a big hassle which I'm not going to endure just for LN. (In reality, if I was going to set up LN now, I'd put it on its own VPS and just not care if it gets taken down. But this isn't a good solution.)

Second, because the forum's use-case is in many ways perfect for LN, the forum's LN node could be called on to do a lot of LN routing. So I'd then become a service provider for something new that I don't have time for, where many people will be adversely affected if I decide to bring my LN node & payments down for a few days for tinkering or whatever. LN will make money across many tiny fees, but since the total value is likely to be minuscule, this'll probably be more of an accounting annoyance than anything.

So anyone who wants to accept LN payments in a fully-participating manner basically needs to enter a new side business with a whole new set of paying (but not-very-well-paying) customers who might get annoyed at you for various reasons, and a whole new set of technical concerns. This does not appeal to me...

I suspect that the only people who will accept LN payments in its current state are enthusiasts who are too small or too enthusiastic to care about those issues, plus maybe the very largest of businesses which have both the motive and ability to deal with this. For LN to see wide adoption in its current state, I'd expect it to only be through a proliferation of trusted-third-party LN-based payment processors, which is very much not ideal. In order to avoid this, I recommend one of these solutions:

 - Create a system where third-parties can trustlessly proxy incoming LN payments. It's OK if the final recipient needs to run an always-on daemon, just as long as it's not public. Bonus points if the final recipient doesn't need to open any ports, or if you can do something to allow offline recipients.
 - Restructure LN to be inherently DDoS-resistant. For example, instead of having one public node IP/onion, a unique onion with restrictive data limits could be automatically created and given to each new person you interact with (eg. included in invoices). Also, make LN refuse to route transactions by default.
 - Rather than LN, put more focus on other off-chain systems such as sidechains.

I can't think of how he could use an address to advance his position. The courts will block him virtually before his address is finished if he tries to build it via a national emergency, and if he just makes it a "campaign ad" for the wall, probably the relevant polling will be worse for him after the address than before.

Personally, I don't really care about the wall. It's a waste of money, but there are hundreds of examples of much more egregious wastes of money in government. If there was a deal where $26 billion of aggressive war spending was cut in order to spend $25 billion on a wall and save $1 billion, I'd be very happy with that, for example.

I think one side will cave before the end of February once federal employees really stop receiving paychecks and people don't receive their anticipated tax refunds. Probably Trump will be the one to cave (likely accepting the original $1.6 billion and calling it a win), since polling shows that most people attribute the shutdown to him. If Trump can resist the crushing political pressure for several months, Democrats might eventually give in, but the whole event could provide them with effective political ammunition against Trump even as far into the future as 2020.

I like the shutdown because it makes people think, "The government has been (partially) shut down for a long time, but the sky hasn't fallen. Maybe we can shrink government permanently." So I hope it stays shut down as long as possible.

There's also the much more meaningful debt ceiling deadline in March which Trump could try blocking, if the dispute lasts that long.

Whenever a merit source's source amount is adjusted upward or downward, it is immediately completely replenished. This'll be a factor.


How I handle PMs:

 - I try to at least skim all PMs. Rarely I might misplace some, but usually not.
 - If I feel ready to immediately resolve your PM, and I feel that it is a reasonable request worth my time, then I do it. Often this is replying to questions or doing simple tasks, but sometimes I'll have already been working on / thinking about it for days/weeks/months and your PM will get me to devote a few hours to finally resolving the thing right then and there. If even newbies ask questions which I consider reasonable, I usually answer!
 - If I am not ready to act on your thing, often due to uncertainty or lack of immediate time, then your issue enters my "leaky queue". Unfortunately, a lot of these things never end up getting done. (But I do try to get to the most important ones.)

---

You have to do a lot more than disagree with me to get me to dislike you. And even if eg. MemoryDealers came to me with some reasonable issue with his usage of the forum, I'd handle it like I would for anyone else.

It says "Administrator" under my name, not "President". Anyone is free to PM/email me.

It's amusing that grin is going to out-cash BCH, using real science instead of dumb parameter fiddling. grin can scale costlessly, and it's also reasonably private like physical cash.

In the far future, I see either a BTC-only ecosystem using various off-chain systems to scale (maybe a grin sidechain), or BTC as digital gold and grin as cash. But there's really no place for BCH's strictly inferior tech.

I further modified seclog.php so that by default newbies & brand-new members are hidden unless they are whitelisted, copper member, etc.

No, I mean that I just now added this stat to the page in order to illustrate that the rate is not unusual:

People often see the big wall of seclog events and freak out, but it's a noisy log covering 30 days, and a high number of events is normal. OP's issue is not part of any wider trend.

The rate is not unusual. I added an extra stat to that page.

1 grin is created per second on average, forever. Similar to XMR. Not ideal IMO, but it does tend to be deflationary long-term.

The foundations of Bitcoin were set in stone 10 years ago today with the creation of the genesis block, and Bitcoin version 0.1 was officially released a week later. Version 0.1 was amazingly complete, and even more impressively, it had very few bugs. It also had great forward-compatibility, with explicit support for future softforks in the form of the OP_NOPn opcodes. Before anyone knew how a decentralized cryptocurrency would even work, Satoshi was figuring out how to add to Bitcoin things like smart contracts and payment channels. This is incredible, and a lot of people look at Satoshi's amazing accomplishments with Bitcoin and say stuff like, "Satoshi must be a crypto super-genius, the next Einstein." This, I think, is very much missing the point.

When Satoshi was working on Bitcoin in 2007-2009, almost all of the core ideas of Bitcoin were well-known in the cryptography community. In 1996, a summary of previous academic work on electronic cash was published, talking at length about most of the low-level cryptographic primitives used in Bitcoin and using familiar terms like "double spending". Hashcash proof-of-work was well-known, and I remember reading about it prior to Bitcoin as an idea to prevent email spam. git uses the same unbreakable chain of hashes as Bitcoin's block chain, and was first released in 2005. Satoshi made one major leap: combining all these pieces to prevent double spending through a PoW block chain. This was impressive, but the same flash of brilliance could've happened to anyone who was following this stuff.

Satoshi is not awesome because he was watching the crypto world and had a brilliant idea. He's awesome because upon having this idea, he carried it out. You know what I would've done if this idea had come to me? I probably would've mentioned it to a few people, maybe written some very basic code if I was feeling especially ambitious. You know what Satoshi did? He spent 2+ years contemplating every possible aspect of the system he could think of, and wrote code that worked brilliantly in the real world. Satoshi's code was good, but anyone who had read a good C++ book could've written similarly-good code. Anyone who had taken an intro crypto course or read a few books on the subject would understand Satoshi's usage of crypto primitives. The task of creating Bitcoin required a small flash of brilliance, moderate skill, and an unbelievably huge amount of dedication to thinking about, coding, and testing the system until it worked exactly as envisioned.

Satoshi's lesson is that you don't need to be the next Einstein in order to change the world. Nor do you need to have much money, or influence with the world's "movers & shakers". You just need to put in the effort. Satoshi, probably just an ordinary hobbyist like anyone here, saw that something was lacking in the Universe, and he fought tooth-and-nail for 2+ years until this imperfection was corrected. This is what makes Satoshi and his work my greatest inspiration.

Bitcoin has come a long way in 10 years, but it still has much more room to grow, with both major challenges and major opportunities ahead. How Bitcoin moves forward - how Satoshi's work continues - is for as many people as possible to take personal responsbility for improving the Bitcoin ecosystem, creating interesting things, and changing the world for the better. Since we've long passed the moon, I hope you'll join me in aiming for the stars.