Lol, never. There is sexual fantasy and reality. Everyone who watches porn at least once would fantasize about something. Now just for the sake of comparing, let's assume that indulging in a sexual activity with ones wife or gf is reality, there is ample room for fantasy here, but still connected to reality.

With sex bots the whole notion of reality is gone, it is just trying out plain or complicated fantasies on a dead, non-breathing object. Too much diversion from reality which would end up in a person becoming highly psychologically unstable. AI sex bots is a possibility in the near future and it wouldn't be a surprise if sex bot brothels start to pop up.

Then there is VR porn. IMO, this industry is going to boom in the next few years. Not same as sex bot in the sense it is fantasy applied virtually rather than on an inanimate object.

They do pay, but India and China have the lowest electricity prices and most importantly China is the world's top most producer of renewable electricity, hydro and coal power.

China is leading with bitcoin mining, bitcoin trading volume, manufacturing of bitcoin equipments. As far as the Chinese government thinks bitcoin mining operation is not affecting their economy they wouldn't mind sharing their excess, cheap electricity with miners.

Apart from Garzik, I haven't heard of any other developers working on Segwit2x. Segwit was coded by the core developers over a considerable period of time with many testings and successfully activated on Litecoin. Segwit2x lacks developers and the whole coding is being hurriedly carried out to push the 2 MB hard fork agenda.

Majority of miners have shown the intent to signal Segwit2x by July 21 and if a large number of miners doesn't back out then Segwit would get activated through Segwit2x. On the other hand, if Segwit2x fails, UASF would activate Segwit and Bitmain had earlier threatened the network with UAHF if Segwit2x fails.

The agenda of this mining cartel is quite simple, not to activate Segwit, but to fork the network either through Segwit2x (three months after Segwit activation) or by threatening the community with a possible UAHF.

I don't think the second part of Segwit2x would get any economic majority and the same thing with Jihan's illusionary UAHF. If he wants to pull off a hard fork with minority, let him do it, another altcoin to the list of thousands, and bitcoin would be free of the likes of Jihan, Ver, and CSW who apart from trying to control the network, have nothing substantial to contribute to the network.

Most of the newbies don't really put an effort to understand what is happening to the network. They just focus on the word split and start worrying about its impact on bitcoins price, they have the right to be concerned, but when you look at the broader picture, once Segwit gets activated, it would be smooth sailing.

1. That is why storing your bitcoins offline is the best option. As far as you have the private keys and your funds are not stored in exchanges, I don't think your coins would split in two, you have the full freedom to choose a chain of your choice. Some exchanges would give you the option to split your coins into two chains or move to a single chain, some exchanges based on their rules would split your coins without your consent, and maybe exchanges like Coinbase would only list a single coin.

2. In case of a split, all exchanges would stop buy/sell options maybe up to 24 hours to prevent any issues arising from replay attacks and network instability/vulnerability.

3. The split might be short-lived, based on economic majority, one chain would get the better of other and split would be over. Or it could go over a longer period of time, Ethereum Classic vs Ethereum is an example.

4. A soft fork adds new rules to the existing rules in the network, but a hard fork removes the existing rules and adds new so I guess a HF would make old transactions to be erased from the blockchain. Maybe I am wrong.

It is not BIP 148 (UASF) vs Segwit. It is UASF vs Segwit2x.

The purpose of both UASF and Segwit2x is to activate Segwit, but the latter is designed to hard fork the network three months after activating Segwit.

I think most of the bitcoin users want Segwit to be activated, be it through UASF or Segwit2x. If UASF does it then there would be a chain split, but it would be good for the community in the long run, no future uncertainties. If Segwit2x does it then a split in August would unlikely happen, but I don't agree with hard forking the network, a few individuals having the power to enforce their propaganda on the whole bitcoin community, too much centralization, and forcing bitcoin through random periods of uncertainty.

If UASF activates Segwit, awesome, if Segwit2x does it, okay (they would be having a hard time getting support for their 2 MB part)

The first part of Segwit2x is a soft fork, 2 MB part is the hard fork. If I am right there would be no hard fork around August, but yeah a minute chance of chain split is there.

1. Segwit2x activates Segwit with 80% majority before August 1 and then tries to hard fork the network around November (this is not likely going to happen, majority of the bitcoin community wants Segwit to be activated, hard forking the network wouldn't get much support).

2. Segwit2x has shown the intent to start signalling Segwit by July 21, if a few miners back out and they lose majority, UASF would be deployed on August 1 and there would be a chain split.

In August, Segwit would get activated either through one of the soft forks. The possibility of a chain split can't be ignored.

As a precaution, just don't keep your bitcoins in exchanges or online wallets, store it offline, your coins wouldn't get affected in any way if a split happens in August.

https://freetibet.org/about

China is now fooling around with Sikkim.


http://www.firstpost.com/india/sikkim-border-dispute-another-war-with-india-will-be-an-economic-blunder-for-china-3796365.html

A war is highly unlikely, but if that happens, a full-fledged war between India and China, something like this would happen, when elephants fight, it is the grass that suffers.

Blockchain wallet is a bit buggy, sometimes their authorization email is down for all users, but I just tried to log into my account and received authorization email (using gmail) and 2 FA code on my mobile immediately, this is a problem at your end. Sometimes the email may take up to 30 minutes to arrive. Clear your browser cache and cookies and try again or use a different browser. Authorization email delivery issue usually gets resolved on its own.

As far as 2 FA code is concerned, you can disable 2-step Verification via SMS in the security settings. Reverify your number and then enable 2 FA, it should work.

The recent phishing trend and wallet authorization basics, https://blog.blockchain.com/2017/05/02/phishing-trend-wallet-auth-basics/

Always check whether the email is from, no-reply@blockchain.info

Either through Segwit2x or UASF, bitcoin would have Segwit activated by August 1. The glitch in Segwit2x testing was attributed to mempool being empty due to testnet and someone intentionally messing up with the chain before the developers intended to start the test, but yeah the concern over how the mainnet deployment plays out is real. The whole coding process of Segwit2x has been a rushed affair, if some serious bugs pop up when it is added into the main network then there would be serious implications for the whole bitcoin community.

UASF is a much safer option than Segwit2x, but it looks it would be Segwit2x activating Segwit, the hard fork isn't a matter of concern right now, most probably it wouldn't even happen.

Yeah once Segwit gets activated further side solutions can be implemented to make bitcoin unstoppable. Segwit is the stepping stone.

1. Governments of countries that are legalising bitcoin might decide to buy small portions of bitcoin as a reserve. In such a situation, bitcoin price would hit the moon. Hoarders wouldn't definitely part with their bitcoin even at this point. Bitcoins are divisible, governments trying to buy all of the bitcoin in circulation would result in making millionaires out of people who own even a few satoshis.

2. Just hoarding doesn't give bitcoin value, it needs to be in circulation to keep the speculation and demand in alignment. Governments move to buy all bitcoins would end in bitcoin breaking all the records making millionaires even billionaires in the process and then the their move to hoard all the bitcoin would kill the demand and speculation. The governments would be shelling out billions to own a dead bitcoin. Would they do it? No.

The market cap of all cryptocurrencies was around $116.5 billion in mid-June and today less than $78 billion today so yeah it could be said that cryptocurrencies are going through a temporary depression. Ethereum took the worst hit and it is expected, market is being flooded with ICO sell orders. Bitcoin and altcoin prices are correlated to some extent. Compared to altcoins, bitcoin is still more stable, there would be some uncertainty in the market until August 1.

https://themerkle.com/what-is-the-willy-bitcoin-trading-bot/

At that time, Mt Gox was the most popular bitcoin exchange, so manipulating the price through a single source was easy. Right now it is spread out. Newbies are the panic sellers, August 1 uncertainty, coins being moved offline, and then a price drop and the short-term investors start panicking and dumping. Yeah whales could easily manipulate an uncertainty to buy low and sell high. Sensible approach would be to just hold on to your bitcoins and let things settle down.

Voting by wealth is plutocracy, a smaller version of aristocracy.

Voting by hash power is meritocracy, need merit or it is just a  forced sub division of plutocracy.

Democracy has a simple explanation, by the people, for the people, to the people, simplest form, but gets complicated when governments interfere.

PoW to PoS to PoA, guess its possible to change the algorithm to proof-of-activity, never good at technicalities.

Voting is just an illusion, end product is always dependent on how an user prefers to use it, economic majority.

Bitcoin has its roots strongly held and believed on decentralization, disrupting the network, a coup, is just the beginning of a centralized bitcoin network, and then they blame the LN/side solutions that are an optional choice. A decentralized network has to give the users a choice.

Most of the bitcoin users don't give a shit about what's happening to the network, they are capable enough to grasp the implications, but money clouds their vision, short term profit, long term a dead coin.

Minority is enough to start with a change, underdogs. Segwit activated, good, HF, Jihan is gonna realize he is dreaming a dreamer's dream.

1. It is possible if the sender is drunk or high on something ...We do messup with the keyboard sometimes. Not deliberately, btc.com pool mined it, no prediction on who the miner blocks it, just random, and the random person got lucky.

2. Bitcoin is no PayPal, you sent it, its gone, over. The miner or the recipient can easily get away with a transaction not meant to be theirs.


That is some good moral sense.

Yeah, a major portion of bitcoin mining would get restricted to a particular country or an organization, as far as they are mining, no problem, but when they start using their mining majority to enforce their propaganda on the community, it is a problem.

LN would make transactions instant with the lowest fee. With bigger blocks, you order a coffee, drink, wait for the transaction to get confirmed, pay. With LN, you order a coffee, confirmed, pay, and drink. Just an example of not online, but how offline merchant payments would become a lot more feasible.

Which wallet do you use? Around 145 GB to synchronize blockchain. Obviously if bitcoin gets adopted on a large scale, the above figure wouldn't be limited to three digits. Increased block size, on chain transactions would get confirmed quickly with less congestion, but the network is always growing. The purpose of bitcoin is instant worldwide transaction with lowest fee, a side solution needs to be integrated into the network for this, that's what I meant by bigger block size isn't enough.

Segwit 2 MB, Segwit2x 4-8 MB. Right now remove spam dust transactions and 2 MB is more than enough for transactions to get confirmed, implement side options, bitcoin users would have the freedom to choose what method of transaction they want to use. Fork the network, users don't have a choice. It's as simple as that.

I am not against bigger blocks, but not at the cost of bitcoin network being controlled by a single entity or a couple of individuals.

1. Manufacturer of mining equipments want to control the network. Can it be more centralized?

2. There was ghash pool that hit 51%, and there is Chinese mining cartel with more than 51% combined.

3. Chinese government isn't in favour of bitcoin, a centralized decision to ban bitcoin in China would end up in taking down half of the decentralized bitcoin network.

Spam attacks, threatening the community because you own half of the network, is this the way to find a scalable solution?

Increasing block size is just a temporary solution. LN, sidechain/drivechain, extension blocks is a necessity if bitcoin needs to be used as an appropriate medium of exchange.


Let the economic majority decide.

Majority of humans possess these four characteristics, a few idle minds don't.

1. Self-awareness begins where self-sufficiency ends. You would never be aware of yourself if you are not self sufficient.

2. Conscience is a moral sense of right and wrong. If you aren't self-aware how do you know what is right and wrong. There is a proverb, conscience is like a dog which doesn't bite, but barks incessantly. Having a conscience leads to independent will.

3. You aren't aware of yourself, you can't distinguish between right and wrong, you don't have an opinion of yourself, then there is no independent will. Being aware and having a conscience is the way to independent will.

4. Einstein had said:


To imagine you have to be synched with the above three steps. All the major inventions in this world are the works of creative imagination (infinite) backed by infinite intelligence turned to reality.

This is ultimate freedom. Now why God exists in human mind is quite simple,

Some people end up finding God in one of these endowments, some people think they found God without any of these endowments, atheists blame God without having any of these endowments, atheists blame God after having ultimate human freedom.

Would there be a lack of people integrating God into their self-awareness, conscience, will, imagination? No. So God will exist in human minds. And if they prefer to worship or follow this God they are free to do so because they have considered it equal to their ultimate freedom. Nothing wrong in it.

Private Decryption Key For Original Petya Ransomware Released

The creator of the Petya ransomware, Janus has released the master decryption key. This key can decrypt all the files that have been encrypted by all three versions of Petya, red, green, and yellow. This key is unusable against the modified version of Petya, Notpetya that targeted computers of critical infrastructure and corporations in Ukraine as well as 64 other countries.

http://thehackernews.com/2017/07/petya-ransomware-decryption-key.html?m=1

https://twitter.com/JanusSecretary/status/882663988429021184

https://bitcoin.org/en/faq#who-controls-the-bitcoin-network

All users are free to choose what software or version they want to use. Adding some new rules to the existing protocol (core) is a soft fork while removing the existing rules is a hard fork. Now a hard fork isn't backwards compatible, users would be forced to use this version whether they like it or not.


https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Consensus

Could a single person make changes to it? Guess that's what is happening, bitcoin is open source, but with centralized mining the users doesn't have much choice.


https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Economic_majority

https://bitcoincore.org/en/team/