.

[whiskers75]

I'm pretty dissapointed that some of the money will go for an automated ad auction system, that will only work on a dying forum software, and will need to be ported to the new custom one after that. Is that really necessary?

The auction system is written in Node. It will be able to be used with the new software without much modification.

\o/

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[MakeBelieve]

I can't wait for the new software are we expecting to see this a year from now or some time next year?

[hilariousandco]

I can't wait for the new software are we expecting to see this a year from now or some time next year?

Around a year they said.

[MakeBelieve]

I think we can expect some delays with such a big project but I think it will be worth it when it comes out even if the money was a little high its welll worth it if we have the best forum around.

[guybrushthreepwood]

I think we can expect some delays with such a big project but I think it will be worth it when it comes out even if the money was a little high its welll worth it if we have the best forum around.

Whatever happens people will still complain, unless it is completely revolutionary in forum technology, but whatever it looks like people will probably be disappointed. How can a million dollar years in the making forum live up to the hype?

[Raize]

A plug and play open source forum in Node.js might actually be worth $1 million dollars. Most of the widely used forums today are built in PHP so this could be just as big for Node.js as it is for the forum. Additionally, if this code is open source and integrates with BTC, it has wider applications.

*Puts on his tinfoil hat*

Since Augusto and Goat aren't directly saying it, I'll just be blunt so folks know why there is some flak about spending the money...

Federal (specifically DoD, but others as well) projects often come with an NDA for the developers to not share government work in their portfolios. Whenever I hear someone talk about NDAs, I assume government work. Given that this is going to be an open source forum that has some form of BTC and Trust integration, it would likely be highly valuable to various entities within Darknets as well. If designed intentionally with exploits in the open source version that are patched in the live version, an aspiring three-letter agency could use the success of a Node.js forum to promote adoption in some of these remoter areas of the web. Then, at a specified integration-point, they could exploit said software causing turmoil for hapless Darknet administrators.

*Takes tinfoil hat off*

Regardless of whoever is designing this software, security should be the primary focus or else you're going to get some really bad (and IMHO, quite-deserved) flak. I'd highly recommend keeping the existing security bounties and possibly even integrating or accounting for them during development of the project.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

Seeing that nobody else has asked it, I guess I will.

wangbus, are you John K.?

Also, since you are Staff, thus allowed to peruse the entire forum's back-end database due to you needing to know what this one encompasses so to better build the next one, do you have access to our private PMs? If you don't, get it, for there's a wealth of information that could be gleaned there to augment a $1M USD payday.

~TMIBTCITW

PS: I devised a formula to determine the "intrinsic value" of this forum: IV = IV/F x F in which IV stands for intrinsic value and F represents BitcoinTalk. Somebody check my maths please, for I'm prone to errors after eating an entire 16" pizza from Rosati's (or sometimes on an empty stomach).

[Wangbus]

A plug and play open source forum in Node.js might actually be worth $1 million dollars. Most of the widely used forums today are built in PHP so this could be just as big for Node.js as it is for the forum. Additionally, if this code is open source and integrates with BTC, it has wider applications.

*Puts on his tinfoil hat*

Since Augusto and Goat aren't directly saying it, I'll just be blunt so folks know why there is some flak about spending the money...

Federal (specifically DoD, but others as well) projects often come with an NDA for the developers to not share government work in their portfolios. Whenever I hear someone talk about NDAs, I assume government work. Given that this is going to be an open source forum that has some form of BTC and Trust integration, it would likely be highly valuable to various entities within Darknets as well. If designed intentionally with exploits in the open source version that are patched in the live version, an aspiring three-letter agency could use the success of a Node.js forum to promote adoption in some of these remoter areas of the web. Then, at a specified integration-point, they could exploit said software causing turmoil for hapless Darknet administrators.

*Takes tinfoil hat off*

Regardless of whoever is designing this software, security should be the primary focus or else you're going to get some really bad (and IMHO, quite-deserved) flak. I'd highly recommend keeping the existing security bounties and possibly even integrating or accounting for them during development of the project.

I feel the same about Node as well and I spent a long time a little over 2 years ago getting into Node and had great success with the technology in many situations. I'd like to add that I've never done NDA government work and security is very high priority in what we're doing.

Oh yeah... I'm not John K and I haven't been given access to the database yet but will need it very soon. We will follow standard ethics for private data and not transmit information to the public. This will indeed be the highest of priorities.

[qwk]

I haven't been given access to the database yet but will need it very soon. We will follow standard ethics for private data and not transmit information to the public. This will indeed be the highest of priorities.

I don't see the need for giving you access to database content at all.
Schema and content of specific internal tables should be sufficient.
If this is your highest priority, you should at first determine what kind of data exactly you need to see.

[tysat]

...
Also, since you are Staff, thus allowed to peruse the entire forum's back-end database due to you needing to know what this one encompasses so to better build the next one, do you have access to our private PMs? If you don't, get it, for there's a wealth of information that could be gleaned there to augment a $1M USD payday.
...

Not sure if you're guessing that all staff is able to look at the database or not... but we can't, AFAIK only an admin has access to that.

[augustocroppo]

This is the forum administrator perpetrating the biggest charity fraud in Bitcoin history. There is not going to be any new forum software. The only thing which will improve in the next months is the auction system. The only and solely interest of the administrator is to gather more and more money. Everything else is cheap talk and the new forum will certainly never be produced. Do you all think a forum software worth 1,000,000 USD? Do not be a fool! I come from a country where politicians overpay contractors to misappropriate public funds. This is exactly what is being done here, overpayment to let the administration misappropriate the donated funds without being held accountable. Do you think this is unlikely? Please, ask the administrator the proof of payment. Ask him why he cannot provide such proof. Ask him to open the books and you will find amazing how that request is ignored.

[tysat]

AC brings up a really good point... we still haven't seen any proof of the payment.

theymos or wangbus,

Please show us the transaction(s) where the $350,000 payment was sent.

[Phinnaeus Gage]

A plug and play open source forum in Node.js might actually be worth $1 million dollars. Most of the widely used forums today are built in PHP so this could be just as big for Node.js as it is for the forum. Additionally, if this code is open source and integrates with BTC, it has wider applications.

*Puts on his tinfoil hat*

Since Augusto and Goat aren't directly saying it, I'll just be blunt so folks know why there is some flak about spending the money...

Federal (specifically DoD, but others as well) projects often come with an NDA for the developers to not share government work in their portfolios. Whenever I hear someone talk about NDAs, I assume government work. Given that this is going to be an open source forum that has some form of BTC and Trust integration, it would likely be highly valuable to various entities within Darknets as well. If designed intentionally with exploits in the open source version that are patched in the live version, an aspiring three-letter agency could use the success of a Node.js forum to promote adoption in some of these remoter areas of the web. Then, at a specified integration-point, they could exploit said software causing turmoil for hapless Darknet administrators.

*Takes tinfoil hat off*

Regardless of whoever is designing this software, security should be the primary focus or else you're going to get some really bad (and IMHO, quite-deserved) flak. I'd highly recommend keeping the existing security bounties and possibly even integrating or accounting for them during development of the project.

I feel the same about Node as well and I spent a long time a little over 2 years ago getting into Node and had great success with the technology in many situations. I'd like to add that I've never done NDA government work and security is very high priority in what we're doing.

Oh yeah... I'm not John K and I haven't been given access to the database yet but will need it very soon. We will follow standard ethics for private data and not transmit information to the public. This will indeed be the highest of priorities.

AH HA! Caught you! You forgot the period after the K, thus you could still be John K.. 

Seriously, thanks for taking the time in addressing my concern. BTW, get yourself a bigger pad, for I've seen bedrooms larger than where you live.

Later, bud.

~Bruno Kucinskas

[Kouye]

Theymos is free to make use of the funds as he best sees fit, in my view.

All depends on if you donated to theymos personally or to a community forum.
My guess is that most donators thought they were providing funds for a rising community, not giving it away to its current administrator.

Oh yeah... I'm not John K and I haven't been given access to the database yet but will need it very soon. We will follow standard ethics for private data and not transmit information to the public. This will indeed be the highest of priorities.

You mean a full, direct access to the whole database?
If so, I hope you are currently posting here through a vpn...

Please show us the transaction(s) where the $350,000 payment was sent.

If that was a scam (which I don't beleive it is at that point, to be honest, and I do have an easy trigger), I'm 99.99% sure that theymos would have sent a fake TX to cover up, that's really basic stuff. He can post a txID, I'll still be as dubious as before. Pretty useless, in my opinion.

[escrow.ms]

Please show us the transaction(s) where the $350,000 payment was sent.

Not sure if he did exchange or what but theymos said this in his previous post.

This transaction doesn't significantly affect taxes AFAIK. By "selling" bitcoins in this way, a lot of USD income was made via capital gains, but it immediately became an expense. The net income is zero for this transaction. Appropriate taxes (determined by a professional) will be paid, of course.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I haven't been given access to the database yet but will need it very soon.

Access to the database should be the very last thing just to transfer over the data. Why do you need access for the auction site? All you need to do is login people in, you can find that in the code, you don't need access to the database.

I agree with gweedo and this is the first time, I saw a developer asking database of a live website to develop something, SMF 1.1.19 is available for download all over the internet.

@Wangbus are you not able to make that auction mod with help of demo forum and database?

[MakeBelieve]

Is that why the site went down the other day? it said it couldn't connect to database.

[hilariousandco]

Is that why the site went down the other day? it said it couldn't connect to database.

It does that from time to time with workload, but I think Theymos took it down briefly for an update or something the other day.

[MakeBelieve]

Is that why the site went down the other day? it said it couldn't connect to database.

It does that from time to time with workload, but I think Theymos took it down briefly for an update or something the other day.

Is there any discussion on this then? I didn't hear of anything which was announced.

[theymos]

Yesterday it happened due to a SMF bug triggered when too many people access the site at one time under certain conditions. I fixed that bug. A few days ago it happened when I added a feature that required me to keep the messages table locked for longer than I expected. (The change is that all edits are now logged, whereas previously they were only sometimes recorded in DB backups.)

[Phinnaeus Gage]

I agree with gweedo and this is the first time, I saw a developer asking database of a live website to develop something, SMF 1.1.19 is available for download all over the internet.

@Wangbus are you not able to make that auction mod with help of demo forum and database?

Interesting! Isn't this akin to somebody paying a developer to redo his very large website based on it currently using Wordpress as its CMS? Simply download the latest version that the site is using and build from there. Once built, all the content is migrated to the new site, and probably only then would the developer need assess if/when troubleshooting is warranted.

I'm not that versed in such matters, so somebody please call me if I erred in my assessment, expanding upon the quoted text.

I've been known to give theymos shit every now and then, but overall I still kinda trust him, notwithstanding the TF episode.

Update: This just leaked: theymos' first choice was Smartronix: http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2009/07/18m-being-spent-to-redesign-recoverygov-web-site/ 

~Bruno Kucinskas