No matter the algorithm, there will almost certainly eventually exist an ASIC that is either more efficient or less expensive than a GPU or a CPU. A different algorithm might have a smaller gap, sure, but given how competitive mining is, that gap, however small, will always be enough to push away non-ASIC miners. Once the mining community has ASICs, it becomes impossible for a government, etc. to spend millions of dollars to get better equipment than the mining community. Instead, they have to compete on even footing - matching dollar for dollar what the network already has. If we make it past this point without an issue, there will be no need to change the algorithm.

Even if the network as a whole spends hundreds of millions of dollars on equipment, if that money wasn't spent on ASICs, governments, etc. can do a 51% attack just by spending a few million dollars on research and development of an ASIC.

Yeah, the line of thinking there is pretty retarded. I was very disappointed when I learned that this was done.

If anyone has any problems from the authorities, though, please have your lawyer contact theymos. Better yet, make your local police department aware of the situation before there is ever an issue.

Let us know how this turns out. I'll be very interested in their response.

Partly, yes.

Uhh... That's a very strange interpretation of what I've said. The creation of the trust system had nothing to do with BFL, as far as I know.

Scammer tags are no longer handed out except in the most extraordinary of cases because the trust system is supposed to be a replacement for the scammer tag system. Instead of only being allowed to trust theymos' judgement of whether or not someone is a scammer, you're allowed to add other people's opinions to the list of people you trust, since you clearly think that theymos' opinion on who a scammer is is too narrow.

Yes, because that's how bad your rep is. I look forward to others submitting similar requests to BFL.

Yes.

but only because I could care less that BFL indirectly pays me anything and my opinion on the matter has remained consistent.

Yeah, this is true in practice. However, it would be easy to argue in court that you didn't know what the package was, so of course you signed for it!

Matthew, I hate to say it, but they have a point. You've turned into Bruce Wagner and everyone wants to stay as far away from anything you're involved in as they can. I hope this thread causes a BFL supporter to submit a request for another charity and prove you wrong, though.

Can I get verification of this from someone that isn't an alt of buyer? In the meantime, please click the report to admin button and theymos will take care of it eventually...

Some added info and perspective:
http://www.fincen.gov/news_room/speech/pdf/20130613.pdf

Those are fairly rare.

You know what I mean, Matthew...
I won't disagree. More mods would be nice to have. I've seen some really good reports, so I think we have some good candidates. Now you just have to convince theymos.

I don't, but I know theymos enough that I think that it is incorporated in at least some manner. I suspect that only one deletion in a topic per day or some such counts, though.

Well, that's true, but it was still plenty of work adding it. And it is useful.

That would require a policy change, not more mods.

There is actually a huge benefit to having few moderators that work many hours: more consistent decisions. You'll be hard pressed to find other forums that have such consistent decision-making as we have here.

Not to mention, I think the mods would eventually rebel when they realize that the forum is making over $4k/week and they aren't seeing a single cent. In fact, I was considering quitting right before this was implemented because of that. I even burned out and stayed away from this forum for almost a month because of the time commitment. Now that I'm paid, I can actually justify the time commitment.

bitblu: OK

Handled.

Handled. Thanks!

Two things with this:
1) This was before the upgrade to the report system. It was hard to keep track of what had and hadn't been handled.
2) This was also before we started being paid.

Matthew, I always cleaned your threads when I was online and I was made aware of an issue. In fact, we make more money if we handle these issues, so if I saw that now I would scope that up in a heartbeat.

Many things happen behind-the-scenes that you don't see. Typically, in these cases, we first send them a warning. If they don't stop, we ask theymos to consider a ban. Sadly, with theymos being so busy and unwilling to delegate banning decisions, this part can take awhile. Because the issue is not spamming, we're also not allowed to delete the posts.

Like I said, it's only bad like that when you're the only mod who is online. We have plenty of time on our hands when someone else is online, though.

I've been curious how other forums that are this size or bigger handle things, so I'll check them out. Thanks!

We moderate far more than you might think. In the past day, we've received about 50 unique reports and we have to research every one of them. When only one mod is online, they can easily only have time to handle just the reports, and we're still expected to find stuff on our own that wasn't reported. Trust me, it's an actual job.

As far as upgrades go, theymos has done pretty well so far. Most recently, he added the trust system. He should seriously be paying himself just for that, but so far he really hasn't been* (as far as I know?).

*Not counting his mod payments to himself, which is for his moderating, not forum upgrades.

It's very useful to have a node that can receive connections because we are losing those all the time. Thanks to you, other people can connect to the Bitcoin network.