I've made it a personal goal of mine to remove as much spam in the last few years within my sections that I can. I've finally been able to setup a workflow that helps moderation, and finally tackling some of the problematic issues in the Altcoin section, mainly my sections at the moment. I'm hoping to have done most of it by the end of the year, so everything is much more clean. I've probably removed over 10,000+ posts this year. I know there's a few other users reporting also, so I do think we'll eventually get on top of it, and only deal with current problems.

I'm hoping we can get the community back to reporting like they used too. I know the reasons why they've stopped, but hopefully that'll change in the future, and I know the Altcoin sections are some of the more criticized due to the amount of spam there. Hopefully, I can somewhat alleviate that opinion, and show there's a massive effort going on behind the scenes, which hopefully in return encourages users that their efforts are also not being wasted.

Right, but a lot of them didn't scrape them or wasn't around at the time. I can't remember when each scraping website was operational, but ninjastic.space as an example doesn't have the original post, and only scraped the edited version.

There's definitely criteria/guidelines that most moderators are aware of, but there is a element of discretion. theymos has made it quite clear in the past that he doesn't believe in set in stone rules, because they're easier to exploit or abuse, which I'd agree. Unfortunately, a trade off of that is sometimes we have situations like this where some moderators view things differently.

However, if anything this can encourage moderators to have a little talk about how to deal with these things in the future, and establish some sort of general view on it.

If you or anyone else needs some advise on reports, I'll try to help as much as possible so feel free to give me a message. I personally love to see more reporters actively reporting.

How would you measure a view to a reply within a thread? The replies are all loaded at once, and as far as I know you wouldn't be able to differentiate between loading the page, and scrolling over a post. You could potentially get individual post counts for each page, but I don't see the benefit to that. At least, not with the current forum software, and the languages it uses. Possibly to add something like this with Javascript or React. However, it would drastically change how forum pages are loaded. It's a pretty huge undertaking, and affects things like ignored users too.

Also, as for the suggestion of showing who's viewed your posts; some users probably prefer to have privacy of what they're viewing, and therefore not made public. Obviously, the forum likely logs what you're viewing, but for that information to be public? I imagine it'd cause more drama than being useful, especially when concerning scam accusations, and what not.

It's a pretty insubstantial thing to add which probably wouldn't have too many uses, and those that did use it probably wouldn't use it beyond it being a gimmick, and would likely forget it even exists after the initial novelty factor has worn off. Also, displaying a ton of users would likely limit the usefulness of it anyhow, since thousands of users could be viewing your thread.

Which, would take a whole lot of work to get that to display. How, would you even determine what counts as a view. Someone, opening a thread, and then exiting isn't exactly viewing all the posts to a thread.

Right, however even if you determined scrolling down, and the post being read by the user; programming that would be difficult, I'm not even sure there's much you can do for it unless you want to heavily impact the performance of the forum. Usually, the forums pages are loaded, and then that's it. There's no dynamic element to it, whereas this would require a dynamic page in order to look out for certain actions that would count as a view.

They can do that several other ways; including a referral link in the signatures or simply looking at thread views, and taking something like 10% of that figure for an estimate. However, ultimately what matters to them is that sales are going up, since they've been advertising. However, signatures definitely work; I've gotten many personal messages asking for more information about what's in my signature.

The same problem exists though, without drastically changing how the forum functions; this wouldn't be possible, since at the moment every page is loaded at the same time, and therefore every reply is loaded at the same time. You don't need to actually read/view a reply for it to count in the current implementation.

Possible with Javascript, but not with php as far as I know. I think it goes without saying why we don't want to see Javascript being added to the forum just for the sake of a cosmetic feature. Most users here likely have Javascript disabled, which would technically render this feature useless anyhow.

Yeah, I noticed. Although, unfortunately I couldn't find any archives which showed exactly what the threads were about, at least one's I checked. Since a lot of the scraping sites used today, weren't around or didn't scrape the content in time. I'm wondering how it went unnoticed for so long. I personally didn't see it at the time. Especially, considering the bumping system back then was like every other part of the forum if I remember correctly.

I mean, you don't create that many threads, that quickly, and not be considered a spammer. Generally, users make more ordinary posts, rather than threads since threads are generally more substantial when made. That's a huge amount of threads opened. Although, the curious part for me is why they decided to go back, throughout all their history, and edit every single post.

Anyway, I've tried to offer some explanations, but ultimately I wasn't the one that marked them bad, and dealt with them like you probably expected. Hopefully, this doesn't put you off of reporting too much though, since it would be a huge miss. I know you're actively reporting elsewhere on the forum also; so it would be a big loss to those sections too. I don't think I've seen you quite as active on the altcoin sections recently, until yesterday. Where I was like Oh, Ratimov is back .

It's one of the reasons I left the below reports unhandled, one of them because the other replies might be worth reviewing, but the other because it did have replies. Therefore, I thought giving you a soft bad would be the better approach. Obviously, other moderators always have the ability to decide to take action though.

Right, I believe these are the one's I was referring too. I do remember that the one thread had quite a lot of low quality replies, that might have needed deleting in themselves.  


Yeah, it's one of the downfalls to having no hard rules, and allowing moderator discretion. I believe the system is better than hard rules most of the time though.

It might be that the global moderator determined that the user did try deleting or covering up their posts in an attempt to hide something, and that every post could potentially be worth something if there was ever a scam accusation launched. Although, for me personally the threads which have no active accusations, and no replies, I remove.
Yeah, I see that. Although, there were a few threads in there that you reported which had posts from other users that I left unhandled. I don't know how many, I just remember one or two. I left those unhandled at the time. However, I do believe you might've continued reporting after I had gone offline so may have not seen all examples. Generally, for a few of those examples I'd delete them. Some of them are reserve posts, which could be fairly useful to have around...maybe? Especially, if they've been quoted in the thread, with the existing content, since upon clicking on that quote it'd take you to the now edited post. Although, things like:


Usually get deleted. In fact I reported several of these types of post in that exact thread recently, all deleted. Some sections do tend to vary in how they handle certain situations though. Myself, and Mprep should be fairly consistent on most things, since I know they dealt with a ton of my reports back in my reporting days, and I got a feel for how they take action on certain reports. Obviously, there will be difference of opinion from time to time. For example, I've reported empty threads in the past, and they were always removed.

I processed a lot of the reports, and removed the threads, not just from this user though there was several others reported at the time, and not just this user. Probably handled 100-200 of the reports. However, I only removed those that did not have any replies at all, had not trust references directed towards the thread itself, i.e one's which basically offered no value whatsoever. I left some in the queue towards the end of the night, due to needing to attend to some real life things as well as further investigation on a few which had trust ratings which I would've looked at later if they were still in the queue.

Having said that, I wasn't the one to mark any of the reports bad. In fact, I left the one's which did have replies as a soft bad, by just leaving them unhandled, because I can see it from both points of view. The global moderator who handled these reports, must have thought they could've been significant to the history of the user, in some way I imagine.

Generally, we don't allow users to remove their own threads, and I guess this could potentially be abused, and whoever marked them bad could be thinking along those lines. However for me, since there was no replies or any trust references/flags left on the one's I handled, I thought they were insignificant enough to be removed. Maybe, whoever handled them had a different point of view to that, however it depends since the examples you've given all that activity from other users.  

Also, the user in question has clearly tried to hide his post history. Now, there's nothing stopping users from doing that I suppose, but they can't remove the threads themselves. I usually, weigh this up, and generally if the threads don't have any replies, and they've been inactive for years, and has no scam accusations or trust references left, I usually remove them.

These are the exact one's I was thinking about leaving as unhandled, as a soft bad. Since, technically many would agree they're spam, insignificant, but because other users have posted, there is some significance there. I imagine the moderator who handled these after me, thought along the same sort of line. Even though, an argument could be made that the posts that have replied themselves, are pretty bad quality in certain circumstances.

Here's some examples where keeping these around might be a good idea:
1. Users that want to research old projects that they had interest in
2. Scam report, multiple years after
3. Users who've asked substantial posts, when at a time the thread itself was substantial enough getting punished by the thread being removed. Since, technically most users wouldn't be bothered by this thread since they'll never stumble upon it, I think it feels a little harsh on the users losing posts because of it
4. Anything with replies from users generally isn't removed.

This thread talks about various different methods, but mainly focused around metal washers. The advantages are mainly durability. Obviously, paper isn't exactly water proof, is sensitive to heat, and has some concerns regarding the ink used. So, hammers your seed into metal or potentially engraving it, could have some benefits for longevity.

Personally, I wouldn't recommend using a steel card or something provided by a company, when you can source the material yourself for much cheaper, and it doesn't have their branding on it which could potentially be a security concern in itself if any ever happened upon it. Whereas, with things like washers, they can easily go unnoticed even if someone does stumble upon them.

I'll probably be having a break in terms of betting, the events coming up don't particularly take my fancy. I'll still get some predictions out. Obviously, the next big event for me would be Izzy vs Alex again. Izzy has some value there too, considering he was winning their last fight up until literally the final moments .

While, I might not be a massive fan of Gane, I've got to give him credit here. That's the best possible way to welcome back Jon Jones into the UFC. I thought that was quite funny, especially since Jon Jones is known to commit quite a lot of fouls himself.

Right, although I have a funny feeling we'd actually beat them, the wiping the floor comment from me was definitely a joke, but maybe I need to make these jokes more often . Honestly, I've lost interest with football this season, for a lot of reasons, but of course Liverpool not playing all that well, has definitely impacted it. Although, I've watched them when they were much worse than this, so definitely not the only reason. However, today was one of those games I'll always remember, and will likely be talking about it for years to come.

I haven't enjoyed a football game like that for quite some time. It makes me a whole lot more hopeful for next top four also, everything seems to be clicking just in time. We're a serious threat to Spurs now, and honestly I think if everything goes right from now on, i.e we keep everyone fit we can challenge for that third spot. As long as we secure a European spot, preferably the Champions League I'd be happy considering the season we've had up to this point.

The thing is; I actually thought we were the better team in the first half, but it was genuinely quite competitive. Man Utd looking for the counter attack, and we had most of the ball. That goal before first half was crucial to carrying the momentum over to the second half.

We've got a game in hand over Spurs too, and there's been signs for the last few games that we're finally clicking as a team. The defense is probably our weakest point still,  but it was much better today. The high line which has been failing for a while, was actually executed perfectly today.

Right, if any one of you successfully predicted 7-0 I want you to give me the lottery numbers, please. What about that lads, biggest margin we've ever beat Man Utd, while they're on their run. Everyone wrote us off, and we just absolutely destroyed them. A lot of their players shouldn't have even been on the pitch, I thought the ref was hiding from some of the drama that occurred. Luke Shaw, kneeing a player on the floor shouldn't be allowed. That wouldn't be allowed in UFC, let alone football.

Like I said, the signs have been there, and I think a lot of people forgot that we've had a ton of injury problems for a long time now. They're all coming back. I was expecting a good performance, obviously I wasn't expecting what I've just witnessed. I haven't enjoyed football as much as today for probably over a year.

Anyone have the pre match odds on a 7-0 win for Liverpool? Got to be something like 250 to 1, right?

You'll need to provide more information; what exactly are you looking to bruteforce. There's been no real developments in bruteforcing, since it's literally the least effective way of attacking something. Are you looking to brute force a password that you've lost or are you asking about certain encryption?

If you're looking for a way of recovering your password, there's services out there or there's btc-recover. However, unless your password is very weak or you know most of it, bruteforcing isn't going to get you anywhere, and will likely be a waste of resources.

Shev, and Ricci via decision let me down for £10k. Imagine how annoyed I'm at that . Bloody, Jessica Penne, and whatever that performance was, and of course Val letting me down. Well, it wasn't too be, probably the closest I've been in a number of weeks though.

Jon Jones proved exactly what I thought of Gane, he's too one dimensional. Unfortunately, other than Pav there's not a whole lot of competition for Jon Jones in the division. Especially, since most of the others are strikers like Gane. I imagine, Jon Jones keeps the belt for as long as he wishes to stay in the UFC.

Good night of fights though, enjoyed myself. I just can't get over that Shev submission, and Ricci winning via that arm bar too. Sometimes, I hate that I go for methods of victory instead of just outright wins. Obviously, I'd still have lost the Val fight, but she was dominating up until that point.

Crypto users, not that I'm aware of. There's probably easier ways than to use the camera specifically, since the camera would likely yield unreliable results. It would likely be easier to just install an app which monitors the screen rather than utilizing the camera or compromising the keyboard, which the majority of users use Gboard. However, when users report that they've lost their Bitcoin on their phone, I don't think any official, actual fair reviews have looked at what caused it.

Yeah, it's pure speculation, and I mainly wanted to highlight it's a possibility, and exactly how. There's been reports here which were pre installed by the manufacturer. Although, they tend to be for serving adverts or gathering data.

However, since we know malware is a problem on devices, whether preinstalled or not; it's only a matter of time before we hear about a crypto related attack.

I know the event starts soon, but I've decided against putting Viviane Araujo on my betting slip, I've actually switched to Ribas to get the decision. The only concern is Ribas tends to get dropped quite a bit in previous fights, but ultimately throws a lot of volume. I've got her at 2.50 for the decision, where as Viviane was over 3.00 via decision. I haven't changed anything else.

Valentina Shevchenko has pretty good odds for winning via decision at over 3.00, since the bookies are expecting her to finish the fight. If you guys think Grasso will be a better opponent than the odds suggest, but don't think she'll quite cut it; going for the decision for Val might be a good bet.

Likely rumours, tend to get them a lot in the bigger fights. Anyhow, damaged skin will be pretty superficial once they're in the cage.

These days, Android lets you know when your camera is being used, however the question is do you trust Google? Also, it's worth mentioning, that a lot of phones are actually not unaltered stock Android, instead the manufacturer will install their own system applications on the phone. For example, I used to have a phone which had certain survivial tools preinstalled on it. That came preinstalled on their phones, so I knew that the operating system they were delivering the phones with was altered by them. So, obviously the next step is uninstall, and install a custom ROM on it.

However, it's quite possible that the manufacturer could actually disable this notification when applications are using your camera. I only know this since, a custom ROM implemented it incorrectly, and it wasn't displaying. So, it isn't out of the possibility that a malicious vendor, or manufacturer could do this. If you aren't buying directly from the manufacturer itself, then the third party could easily install a custom ROM intended for malicious purposes.

In short, yeah I believe a malicious actor could potentially monitor your camera for malicious purposes, and it's probably been done.

It comes down to this; do you trust:
- The Manufacturer
- Whoever you bought the phone from
- Google
- Custom ROM developer

You can verify if your Android is stock through a few ways. A lot of ROMS have issues being a certified Google device, however that can be faked. There's also a lot of ROMs which don't change certain things like the version they used. For example, a lot of custom ROMS are built via AOSP treble, and that leaves behind some custom settings, but also some fingerprinting in terms of version name etc.

The preinstalled applications aren't open source, the operating system is at least open source. Things like the SIM card tool, and a number of other system applications aren't open source. Maps, Play Store etc aren't open source. Technically, any one of these could compromise the isolation that Android typically has, since it's been implemented by Google themselves, and a lot of the are system applications which have a little more capability compared to ordinary user installed applications.

Right, my attitude is anything that you can't verify yourself, shouldn't be entirely trusted. Now, going back to the question of the OP; Would I feel comfortable generating a seed on a phone? It entirely depends on the use, if it's a hot wallet only used for storing small amounts, probably. If it's for a cold storage wallet, I'd probably explore alternatives before resorting to this. I'd feel more comfortable with Google Play removed, and a lot of the Google services, i.e using a custom ROM, mainly due to privacy issues rather than malicious suspicions though. Since, ultimately I'm not a massive target.

Also, worth noting the very camera application on your phone, likely is closed source. I use OpenCamera as an alternative, but you don't get features that come with the preinstalled camera application. You can use adb to potentially remove any unwanted applications that can't be uninstalled from within the operating system.

Ultimately, it depends on how far you want to go down the rabbit hole. We know, keeping a clean slate in terms of privacy, and security from the big companies like Google is almost impossible. Almost all of this implies to your computer hardware as well though. Since, you have to ultimately trust Microsoft, Intel, AMD, and the manufacturer. You can replace the operating system, just like a phone, but you ain't replacing the machine code that the computer runs on.

Not too worry you or your friend too much, most of this is rather into it; it's not exactly something that a normal user will worry about, and honestly most people aren't even thinking about this sort of stuff, and plenty of users here have mobile phone wallets which haven't been compromised.

So, it's probably safe enough, unless you're a very big target to malicious attackers or companies. Even, then it's based on pure speculation. Most of us trust our computers to generate our private keys.

Anyhow, what I would recommend your friend do is; make sure he formats it with random data, and not simply using the format option via the operating system or recovery partition.

The thing is; it's one thing having the money for developing a gambling website or casino, but having the bankroll to make sure you can cover any winnings in the early days is also a requirement. The alternative is you can limit the amount your users can win, even fiat companies do this, but you have to make sure that you can handle the amount of money being wagered. If not, you've been rather irresponsible.

The staff don't come cheap either. You need a security expert, you need developers, chat moderators, odds makers, and likely a legal team. Since, the average person isn't going to know the laws around delivering content to multiple countries around the world. Also, you have to store secure data, and you need both security, and the legal process to do so.

You don't need a billion dollars though, that's a bit far fetched .

Any sophisticated casino software is going to cost you quite bit. I once got quoted £20k for a project which was far less complicated than a full fledged casino. It wasn't related to gambling, but including a mini game of sort. So, you need quite a bit of money for the software development itself, you need to hire people to make sure it operates smoothly, you ideally need to advertise, and you need the bankroll to cover any potential winnings. It's very likely going to be above, and beyond a million dollars.

Right, which I believe a lot of the sites open today, and are well renowned actually risked their reputation in order to get started. Unless, you're operating a rather low wagering site, i.e restricting user registrations, as well as wagers, you basically need to be a multi millionaire.

Generally, once they're large enough. However, quite a few casinos fail, and if you aren't careful it can get rather messy quick. I mean, definitely be prepared for law suits too which you should probably be factoring into your costs. I'm not saying you intend on getting sued, but if you've made any errors, then it can easily lead to a law suit. The big fiat companies have been sued multiple times, sometimes successfully.

Yeah, Neal can be pretty slick when he wants to be. If you bet on values, rather than looking at the statistics of each fighter, then 4.50 on Geoff Neal is decent. It's probably worth mentioning Neal beat Belal Muhammad previously, who's known for his wrestling. While, I don't particularly rate Belal all that highly, I know a few people were suggesting he was a contender for a while. Although, I'm pretty sure I don't remember seeing a takedown in that fight. My thinking with Rakhmonov is he's going to look for those takedowns, and mitigate the striking of Neal.

Don't get me wrong, if this is a striking match Neal wins all day, probably on volume alone. Neal, chucks arms, and legs out there like there's no tomorrow. I just feel it's that classic match up; striker vs wrestler. I might be wrong, and maybe I'm a little too confident on that pick, especially given the odds.

Look, I'll say this; I don't think Neal is going to beat Rakhmonov, but he's probably the best value underdog of the night.

Yeah, he's not my most confident pick of the night. If I was to order them in terms of confidence on getting the win:

1. Bo Nickal
2. Shavkat Rakhmonov
3. Tabatha Ricci
4. Valentina Shevchenko / Jon Jones
5. Mateusz Gamrot
6. Farid Basharat
7. Viviane Arajo


I'm not sure it's all that risky, but we'll find out tonight. He's fairly low on my ranking I suppose, but that's only because the one's above him are massive favourites, and should get the win. I know there's a lot of Gane supporters here, and by no means do I think he's a terrible fighter, I just don't think he's the fighter that everyone claims him to be. He's got good footwork for a heavyweight, and decent striking. However, he's very one dimensional, and when you put a striker against a wrestler it's usually the wrestler that comes out on top.

Yeah, I would never claim that anyone is unbeatable. I just don't want to risk it on my accumulator .

I'm not entirely aware of American's stand on blocking those countries to services; have they made a blanket ban on accepting the services or connections of people from those countries?

I can sort of understand the reasoning behind him being concerned. He suggests that it isn't worth risking the jail time or fines, but he doesn't necessarily support censorship, because lets face it for the majority of people they don't want to risk jail time or fines over something like this. I know there's an argument that being scared into complying, and then using his position to convince others is support censorship.

Given his position as a Core developer though, it's a odd one.

To be fair, most governments do censor their citizens. Whether, that's Bitcoin or something else. China, is known for censoring certain social medias, and news sources. It's no different for the US.

Technically, if mining is illegal in the country that they reside in; yeah, it would be illegal, and therefore they could be held liable for breaking the law, if they are validating blocks. Although, I'm not aware of many countries that have outright banned mining. However, it's potentially something that could happen, obviously it wouldn't be right, but usually censorship isn't anyway.


The thing is; if there isn't enough people that care, and kick up a fuss it'll likely lead to this. I don't know if the government would be threatened enough or if they'd just prefer to regulate Bitcoin so that they can profit from people using it, but tighter restrictions will likely be put in place around the majority of the world. Mainly, for them to profit from it.