I like the phrase, “I take full responsibility”, as well as your expressed desires to learn and to improve your posts.  Thus, I will take all these at face value; and I will assume that you speak in good faith.

Whereas if your priority here be truly to “increase [your] knowledge regarding the technology, concepts and culture related to [the] blockchain and cryptocurrency”, then my negative feedback should not be a problem for you.  Go ahead!  Learn!  A red tag won’t stop you from learning; and the knowledge will be beneficial to you.

I will keep an eye on your account.  It will not take much of my time to occasionally glance in on your post history and especially, your merit page.  If I see consistent evidence that you’ve been sincere in what you told me here, then eventually, I will consider changing my feedback to neutral or removing it.

Since my feedback specifically pertained to a wrong way to seek merit, one of the most important criteria will be whether you earn merit the honest way.  That is:  Whether you earn merit for posts which a reasonable person may award merit to.  I do not mean posts which I would award merit to.  Some reasonable people might award merit to posts which I would not.  I can recognize that.  No reasonable person would award merit to spam, junk one-liners, gibberish, factually incorrect information, or otherwise objectively low-quality posts.  Also, no reasonable person would award merit as a wiseacre, as charity, or for other nefarious non-reasons.

If you don’t earn merit the honest way, then my trust feedback is almost irrelevant anyway:  You’d be permanently stuck in the low ranks.⁰  My objective here is that, if you show yourself capable of advancing, I do not wish to hold you back or impair your future forum success.

I will not set a specific timeframe.  That could be misinterpreted as a date on which I will remove the tag; and really, the only timeframe is that I do not commit to checking on your account indefinitely.  Also, there is no need to contact me about this—actually, don’t contact me about this.  You’ve said some good words here.  Now, I’m more interested in your behaviour going forward.

---

My advice on where to start fulfilling your expressed desire to learn:

The Beginners & Help forum is a good place to ask beginner-level learning questions.  (Yes, I checked your post history; I did not find any posts from you there.)  Read this before posting.  Also, I strongly suggest learning to ask smart questions.

(Note that as I stated in my negative feedback, intelligent questions often do earn merit.  A beginner-level question can be intelligent.  Stupid questions are not meritorious.  Neither are lazy questions, which show you couldn’t be bothered to do some basic reading and thinking, and redundant questions, which show you didn’t look around enough to see that a hundred other people had already asked the same thing.)

And don’t just talk:  Listen!  Read!  I myself spent untold hours lurking and reading forum archives before I even created an account.¹  Other people have probably asked about many of the same things which may pique your curiosity.

Another excellent starting resource is Bitcoin.ORG.  People in Beginners & Help can suggest more reading material, if you ask intelligently.

The foregoing should conclude my involvement in this discussion.  Good luck, if you deserve it.

---

0. I expect that as the merit system develops, an ill image will befall accounts with low rank, activity so disproportionate as to be absurd, and little or no merit.  Actually, I think this process may be in the early stages already.

1. If I had instead simply created an account and started posting daily one-liners in spam megathreads, I would now (and for some time passed) be a Legendary.  This is why we need the merit system.

On principle, +1 for sincere national pride to quash self-serving exploitation of one’s own “community” as a wretched excuse.

Did you even read the posts?  Evidently not.  The user who gave +50 positively declared that he was a friend of the other user.  The user who got +50, got it for a post complaining about how “very unjust” it was that he needed 150 merit to rank up.  Why are you positing in this thread some hypothetical scenario which is so clearly inapplicable in this case?


No, you are doing the sleazier equivalent:  You are insinuating it while avoiding saying so outright.  Otherwise, you would have no logical reason to post in this thread.

The target is 10 minutes.  However, that is only a probabilistic target.


Or more—or less.


Two reasons:

0. The generation of a block is probabilistic; so how long it takes is dependent on luck.  Most of the time, generation time will be close to 10 minutes (a bit more, a bit less).  If one miner gets lucky, the time may be significantly shorter.  If all miners altogether get unlucky, then the time may be significantly longer.

1. Collective global hashpower (exahashes/second) is not constant.


Lady Luck.  Who controls random results?  As aforesaid, it is a probabilistic process.  The time to generate a block is neither controlled by nor predictable to humans.


Yes.  The evidence is that blocks are being generated.  Time to do so is expected to fluctuate randomly, while usually being close to 10 minutes.


The probabilistic nature of the process.

Damned if they know.

Thread: Re: Merit Sistemi (page 13)

---

https://web.archive.org/web/20180222021356/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818404.msg28927677#msg28927677

Merited by Cean (50), Neo-- (36), Kripto_adam (4)

---

https://web.archive.org/web/20180222021418/https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818404.msg28928170#msg28928170

Merited by Leonbtc (18)

---

P.S., good catch, Tyrantt.

I request that this not become a “generically list your favourite languages” megathread technically unsuitable even for Off-Topic.

If you propose a language, please explain substantively why you think it will meet OP’s needs.  Better still, suggest an approach for learning that language.  Best of all, explain why picking a language is not the way to start.  —Also best of all, discuss others’ substantive posts.⁰  See upthread for examples of all these things.

Thank you.

---

(0. And I do hope to reply to some of the better posts upthread.)

Clickbait for hardcore Bitcoiners:

https://petertodd.org/2016/opentimestamps-announcement

https://opentimestamps.org/


No.  First off, the existing investment in ASIC hardware benefits Bitcoin security insofar as it locks miners into mining Bitcoin (or scamforks—hmmm).  If Bitcoin miners were forced to dump their existing investments in the trash and restart from scratch, they may very well decide to play the market with altcoins—especially since they might feel betrayed (and in the case of some of the better miners, they might have a point).  Moreover, the existing ASIC base provides a formidable hashpower which could not be rebuilt overnight.  Meanwhile, network would be relatively weak.  Lesser hashpower equals lesser resistance to anybody obtaining 25%/33%/51% of it.

There is a trade-off involved:  Mining is now much too centralized; and installed base obviously benefits incumbents.  But on the other hand, a switch would most benefit whomever could rapidly build out a new installed base.  That very well could be the same incumbents.

So as for what I meant.  As for what you said:

Any alt already using the hypothetical new Bitcoin POW would be potentially crushed out of existence, unless the new POW could be merge-mined.  Then, both blockchains would share a mutually beneficial symbiosis; and the existing alt would receive a security boost from the flood of new miners.  Of course, I don’t see great prospects for this unless the coins are not economic competitors; observe that Namecoin, inventor of merged mining, does not compete with Bitcoin as a currency.

Core developer gmaxwell is prophetic.  In one of the earliest posts to which I awarded merit, he wrote of how DHTs...


There is no such thing as a “magic bullet to every technological problem”.  Unlike DHTs, the blockchain is actually robust and secure (including Sybil-resistant) in the use case for which it is the right tool for the job.  The blockchain is a work of genius.  But it is still only the right tool for the right job.

Don’t believe the hype.  Ignore the buzzwords.  Know the facts—I am pleased that this thread has helped you do that.


Exactly.

Not that it’s relevant, but what are you talking about?  All the posts I quoted and archived were made within about the past 36 hours.  Again, not that that’s relevant.

/offtopic

The exact nature of the verification is described here:
https://www.reddit.com/r/GirlsGoneBitcoin/wiki/verification

Alia’s verification tag means not only that she is a verified girl, but also that she is verified to be the same girl as you see in the photos she says are her.  theymos has been around this Internet thing for awhile.  He has probably seen every scam of this nature.  He won’t be fooled.  If he verifies that Alia is the sexy girl in the photos, I’ll take his vouch.

The trust feedback here on the forum is “neutral” for reason that verification is only that she’s the girl in the photo.  Positive forum trust means much more than that; theymos couldn’t give that out to a bunch of girls just because he had verified that they were girls and matched them with their photos.


It looks to me more like Alia is trying to present her customers with an innovative win-win proposition:  Either you win some money, or you see her strip to a degree determined by your losses.  If you win, you win; if you lose, then the more you lose, the more she strips.  It’s hard to argue with that as “win-win”.  (Extra emphasis added because like sarcasm, double entendre is so oft missed on the Internet.)

@nascrypto, you did not mention in your posts here that you have you have multiple negative trust feedback for merit begging, e.g.:


Now, observe that the following three posts are consecutive in your post history (archived snapshot):

• 2018-02-20 05:55:10Z: Archived from this thread; this is the post which caused you to be “red-tagged” by another person and by me:
  
  
  Quote from: nascrypto on February 20, 2018, 05:55:10 AM
  Thanks for the explanation. Yet it's very difficult for a newbie to collect merits. Still, I'll try to increase my knowledge regarding the technology, concepts and culture related to blockchain and cryptocurrency. Once I gather enough information, I can start contributing with rich contents and earn merits. But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits.
  
  
  Red colour is here added.  In the post as it appears now, that text is crossed out; in the post as archived by me at 2018-02-21 06:16:51Z, it is not crossed out.  (It is good you did not try to delete it; though I infer a likelihood you knew it was archived.)
• 2018-02-20 08:44:43Z: Archived from the thread titled, “Re: 🌎 [AIRDROP] [ICO] ConnectJob - The Uber of Services 🌎”:
  
  
  Quote from: nascrypto on February 20, 2018, 08:44:43 PM
  Insert Quote
  #Proof of ownership:
  - Telegram: @naacrypto
  - Twitter: @nas_crypto
  - https://www.facebook.com/nas.crypto.1
  
• 2018-02-21 11:33:14Z: Archived from this thread:
  
  
  Quote from: nascrypto on February 21, 2018, 11:33:14 AM
  Quote from: The Pharmacist on February 20, 2018, 06:03:08 AM

  Quote from: nascrypto on February 20, 2018, 05:55:10 AM

  But, at the same time, the seniors can encourage us with some free merits .
  

  No.  
  
  You go ahead and do whatever soul-uplifting research you need to do, and whenever you start writing something worth reading, then you might earn some merits.  I don't hand them out to spam monkeys for free.  Do you feed your neighborhood skunks?  
  
  Didn't think so.
  
  

  
  Understood.... I just corrected my comment. I didn't beg for merit. My intention was that the seniors can be a bit generous with the newbie and encourage them with their initial posts.
  

Your following posts consist of another post in this thread saying similarly (archived), and then another application for an airdrop (archived).

A question for you, based on reasonable inferences:  Between 06:16:51Z and 08:44:43Z today (2018-02-21), did you receive any sort of denial of eligibility for an airdrop bounty campaign (or other adverse consequence) due to having negative (red) trust?

That is a very important question.

This matter is off-topic here.  Although I do think my posting the foregoing here is a salutary instruction to others who might ask for “some free merits ”, I will not substantially discuss this further in this thread.  Should there be anything further to discuss, then I will create a thread in Reputation.

Owing to my obsession with something called evidence, I have a quick question:  Did anybody besides troll sock #1794966 “actisstupidname” actually see me in DT?  The only thing I see when I restore unmodified DefaultTrust settings is that somebody excluded me.  If I was in DT, I never knew it.

Don’t forget, “actisstupidname” suggested that I was an alt of Satoshi.

Well, there goes your credibility.

Being new here, I’m still learning who’s who.  Thank you for putting yourself in your proper place, #662570 “HabBear”.


Yes, indeed.  It is abusive to fight against spam, scams, trust abuse, and merit abuse.  And I’m the Queen of England Lauda.

I will now commit to gambling twice as much as I’d hereto intended, on one condition:  That in Ciphersex 101 [NSFW], you briefly explain authentication, integrity, and confidentialty in your own words, Alia.  That is to say:  In your own sexy words.

Just to keep things here interesting.  And sexy.

---

Wendigo never did appreciate the finer things in life:

I intended, and may perhaps make some replies upthread.  Sorry, I lost track of the discussion.

Whereas now, I am compelled to call out an object example of just how we get so much bad code, causing so many losses:

“I want to learn coding / with blockchain whats the best language?”

Some excerpts of my reply:



Seriously.  This world is infected with the notion that everybody and his dog is entitled to learn programming.  People take it as an affront if you do not encourage this, and an outrage if you suggest that they are just not capable.  Then—surprise, surprise—“Re: Bad Code Has Lost $500M of Cryptocurrency in Under a Year”.

“If you have NO experience start with HTML and CSS, slowly work your way into JS.”  Please tell me you do not code anything which touches money, ever.

FWIW, one of the characteristics I respect about Core is its reputation for being—shall we say, a bit of a harsh environment.  Not a “welcoming environment”.  So-called “welcoming environments” are welcoming to the rot of lowering standards.

Preliminary note:  This is a recurrent question on this forum, a genuine FAQ.


First, realize that you have a profound responsibility when you write code which handles Other People’s Money.

I am all for helping more people become Bitcoin users.  But we do not need more coders.  We need fewer and better coders working on Bitcoin and “cryptos”.  Whereas most people are innately incapable of ever becoming good coders, just as I myself am innately incapable of ever becoming an Olympic gymnast.

Do I discourage you?  I intend to!  You should be discouraged from learning to code machinery which handles Other People’s Money, unless you have such a keen ability that nothing I say could possibly discourage you.  People who have such an ability always do know themselves that way.

If you think you’re up to it, and you want to take on an awful responsibility:  First, learn much, much more about computing generally.  Read up on the fundamentals of applied cryptography.  Then, learn Bitcoin technical concepts inside and out.  By the time you get through all this learning, you won’t need to ask for advice on picking a language:  You’ll know enough to do that yourself.

I do not recommend selecting a “beginner’s language” for anything whatsoever to do with Other People’s Money.  Use a “beginner’s language” if you want to do casual programming, making little games or performing little practical tasks on your own computer.  If you want to handle Other People’s Money, then you need to be a serious programmer.  Serious programmers usually don’t start with a “beginner’s language”; certainly if they have the aptitude, they don’t need to.  If you read up on the concept of, say, pointer arithmetic, and you feel that little light bulb go on in your head—then why wouldn’t you start by playing with pointers?

---

This is how we eventually obtain such threads as, “Bad Code Has Lost $500M of Cryptocurrency in Under a Year”.  See especially the discussion downthread of Ethereum.

If that’s how you need to learn to code, then YOU SHOULD NOT BE CODING.  Most of all, you should stay the hell away from Other People’s Money.

Think:  Would you trust a surgeon who started his formal studies by doing “surgery” on pineapples with a kitchen knife, then worked up from there?

We will stop getting “Bad Code Lost XYZ” threads, when people take the coding of financial software as seriously as they take the practice of medicine, engineering of bridges and tunnels, and other professional tasks where errors result in PEOPLE GETTING HURT.

---

Edit:  Cross-reference:  Re: Bad Code Has Lost $500M of Cryptocurrency in Under a Year

That’s not relevant.  I think big:  I want for Bitcoin to compete with Visa.  For that, we need to increase peak TPS throughput by five orders of magnitude.  The blockchain will never do that—not unless Bitcoin Jesus blesses us with gigabyte blocks /s (got a supercomputer for your node? /s).  I expect that Lightning will, after it matures.

For an engineering analogy of why Lightning is important, see this article (forum discussion where I found the link).


Certainly, Bitcoin will remain dominant.  But it could not do so without the best developers, the best new ideas—and scaling both vertically (Lightning) and horizontally (sidechains).

Alia, I will sort of take you up on your offer.  I’m not interested in watching you gamble, because I don’t need to pay to see you naked—and most of all, because I am not interested in losing money.  But given the “method” you describe, I am interested in making money at what sounds like a moderate risk.  Most importantly, I want to be able to laugh at a few of the other posters on this thread.

The initial amount will be at or near the minimum you state.  I do understand that there is a risk that I may lose money (duh—gambling).  I will need to make a separately anonymized coin in the correct amount for this; that may take me a day or two to get around to, since I’m busy right now.  I’ll contact you privately.

As a separate matter, I ask you for a personal gambling deal:  We will flip a fair coin on terms of “heads I win, tails you lose”.  If you lose, then you strip naked and I fuck you.  Thus actually, you win either way.  Deal?

---

She’s a girl, /r/GirlsGoneBitcoin verified by theymos.  That is noted by theymos on her trust page.  Welcome to the Internet:  Presume that anyone claiming to be a girl must be a 200 kg. male nerd, unless verified to be a girl by a trusted party such as theymos.

HTH, HAND.  Smart-alec.

---

After reading that—or rather, attempting to read it, I can have only one response:


No, wait:  I need the maximum level now, right now.  Then, I need to contact the management of Bitcoin and ask them to clean house.  Where can I contact the management of Bitcoin?

(The ironically misnamed Sexie is a prolific trash poster.  Post history is a gold pyrite mine for cheap laughs; but you’ll want to claw your eyes out afterwards.)

---

It’s the Internet, Alia.  You expect for people to read the rules?  You expect for people to not be mentally challenged?  What are you, some kind of elitist like me?

Well, that sounds like the whole purpose of timelock.  Not a negative.  Don’t use any timelock scheme if you may need the money in a hurry.  Use a timelock if and only if it makes sense; just don’t use one from Coinbase, because...


This.  If you don’t have private keys, then you’re not using Bitcoin.  Coinbase is a bank.  Be your own bank.

If you need a point-and-click timelock solution suitable for beginners, there exist easy-to-use services which do this with multisig.  They can’t cheat you, because your signature from your private key in your possession is needed for release of funds.  I have seen at least one service desiged such that either your key plus timelock expiry will release funds eventually (so they can’t freeze your funds), or your key plus their key will release funds immediately.  I won’t name any services, because I haven’t used them and can’t vouch for them.  Search.  Or perhaps someone helpful who has used these services will chime in...

If you need a timelock involving no other parties and you know what you’re doing, then—well, you would not be asking about Coinbase.