[XMR] Monero Speculation

[smooth]

This is getting OT but "desktop" is increasingly irrelevant.

Desktop in this context also means laptops.

I was including laptops. Computing is moving almost entirely to mobile (including broadly tablets and chromebooks) and the cloud. More mobile devices are sold every year than the installed base of computers, and the former is still growing (the latter not significantly). The cloud runs on Linux almost entirely, although in most cases the end user has no access to that. But at least the operator/provider of the service isn't running a spyware OS. They will often be running in a spyware virtual machine though.

Overall it is a rather bleak picture in Orwellian terms, but it is important not to focus too much on one increasingly narrow segment at the expense of understanding the entire landscape.

[generalizethis]

This is getting OT but "desktop" is increasingly irrelevant.

Desktop in this context also means laptops.

I was including laptops. Computing is moving almost entirely to mobile (including broadly tablets and chromebooks) and the cloud. More mobile devices are sold every year than the installed base of computers, and the former is still growing (the latter not significantly). The cloud runs on Linux almost entirely, although in most cases the end user has no access to that. But at least the operator/provider of the service isn't running a spyware OS. They will often be running in a spyware virtual machine though.

Overall it is a rather bleak picture in Orwellian terms, but it is important not to focus too much on one increasingly narrow segment at the expense of understanding the entire landscape.

I always wonder why a company doesn't cut out a niche as the "Privacy" tech company and offer users a series of tech solutions that are easy to use and Big Brother free. If people are willing to die for liberty, they're probably willing to pay for it too. Seems like privacy solutions require a huge cost in time and proficiency which is not readily available (or available at all to the less tech savvy) the same way a few extra bucks are.  

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS spending your life learning the ins and outs of computer privacy" seems like a terrible paradigm if your goal is to end the threat of an Orwellian world.

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS easy to use computer that is spy free and is updated by the seller for a nominal fee" seems like a paradigm that could work.

[explorer]

This is getting OT but "desktop" is increasingly irrelevant.

Desktop in this context also means laptops.

I was including laptops. Computing is moving almost entirely to mobile (including broadly tablets and chromebooks) and the cloud. More mobile devices are sold every year than the installed base of computers, and the former is still growing (the latter not significantly). The cloud runs on Linux almost entirely, although in most cases the end user has no access to that. But at least the operator/provider of the service isn't running a spyware OS. They will often be running in a spyware virtual machine though.

Overall it is a rather bleak picture in Orwellian terms, but it is important not to focus too much on one increasingly narrow segment at the expense of understanding the entire landscape.

I always wonder why a company doesn't cut out a niche as the "Privacy" tech company and offer users a series of tech solutions that are easy to use and Big Brother free. If people are willing to die for liberty, they're probably willing to pay for it too. Seems like privacy solutions require a huge cost in time and proficiency which is not readily available (or available at all to the less tech savvy) the same way a few extra bucks are.  

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS spending your life learning the ins and outs of computer privacy" seems like a terrible paradigm if your goal is to end the threat of an Orwellian world.

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS easy to use computer that is spy free and is updated by the seller for a nominal fee" seems like a paradigm that could work.

As a rule, that secure company becomes corrupted through force or greed or subversion of some kind,  sooner or later.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I always wonder why a company doesn't cut out a niche as the "Privacy" tech company and offer users a series of tech solutions that are easy to use and Big Brother free. If people are willing to die for liberty, they're probably willing to pay for it too. Seems like privacy solutions require a huge cost in time and proficiency which is not readily available (or available at all to the less tech savvy) the same way a few extra bucks are.  

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS spending your life learning the ins and outs of computer privacy" seems like a terrible paradigm if your goal is to end the threat of an Orwellian world.

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS easy to use computer that is spy free and is updated by the seller for a nominal fee" seems like a paradigm that could work.

There were people who thought cloakcoin had good privacy tech as well.

It sounds great in theory, but privacy will always require a certain degree of technical understanding, especially as the "privacy niche" becomes more profitable to mainstream consumers. Just because something is advertised as "privacy tech" or "spy free" doesn't mean it actually is, but consumers will dive on it because they don't know any better.

[generalizethis]

I always wonder why a company doesn't cut out a niche as the "Privacy" tech company and offer users a series of tech solutions that are easy to use and Big Brother free. If people are willing to die for liberty, they're probably willing to pay for it too. Seems like privacy solutions require a huge cost in time and proficiency which is not readily available (or available at all to the less tech savvy) the same way a few extra bucks are.  

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS spending your life learning the ins and outs of computer privacy" seems like a terrible paradigm if your goal is to end the threat of an Orwellian world.

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS easy to use computer that is spy free and is updated by the seller for a nominal fee" seems like a paradigm that could work.

There were people who thought cloakcoin had good privacy tech as well.

It sounds great in theory, but privacy will always require a certain degree of technical understanding, especially as the "privacy niche" becomes more profitable to mainstream consumers. Just because something is advertised as "privacy tech" or "spy free" doesn't mean it actually is, but consumers will dive on it because they don't know any better.

Maybe Assange and Snowden could be the CEO or Anonymous could give them a seal of approval.

My problem is that it is out of the realm of possibility for most people and that list is getting shorter and not longer. So how do we make privacy mainstream? At least for devices. We already have the currency answer and a few more. 

[ArticMine]

This is getting OT but "desktop" is increasingly irrelevant.

Desktop in this context also means laptops.

I was including laptops. Computing is moving almost entirely to mobile (including broadly tablets and chromebooks) and the cloud. More mobile devices are sold every year than the installed base of computers, and the former is still growing (the latter not significantly). The cloud runs on Linux almost entirely, although in most cases the end user has no access to that. But at least the operator/provider of the service isn't running a spyware OS. They will often be running in a spyware virtual machine though.

Overall it is a rather bleak picture in Orwellian terms, but it is important not to focus too much on one increasingly narrow segment at the expense of understanding the entire landscape.

I always wonder why a company doesn't cut out a niche as the "Privacy" tech company and offer users a series of tech solutions that are easy to use and Big Brother free. If people are willing to die for liberty, they're probably willing to pay for it too. Seems like privacy solutions require a huge cost in time and proficiency which is not readily available (or available at all to the less tech savvy) the same way a few extra bucks are.  

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS spending your life learning the ins and outs of computer privacy" seems like a terrible paradigm if your goal is to end the threat of an Orwellian world.

"Easy to use computer that is spy ready VS easy to use computer that is spy free and is updated by the seller for a nominal fee" seems like a paradigm that could work.

FLOSS alone is not enough to provided protection; this is the main reason why the FSF released GPLv3. It is also a critical difference between Android and Chrome OS. While an Android device can be made into a telescreen, a Chromebook cannot.  The key difference is the presence of GPL V3 code deep in Chrome OS.

As for cloud services that provide privacy this is possible and exists today. The key technique that is common to privacy respecting cloud services is to encrypt the data on the client side. The service provider simply never sees the data in the clear. Of course this pre-supposes that the client device itself is secure.

Here are some examples:
https://mega.co.nz/ Cloud storage and sharing
https://protonmail.ch/ Secure Email and cloud storage. This company had a very successful Indiegogo campaign over 5x its goal
https://www.senditonthenet.com/ File upload and sharing

There are more starting all the time.

Of course we also have
https://mymonero.com XMR wallet
https://blockchain.info/ XBT wallet

As for secure clients one can of course splurge on the Purism Librem15 https://www.crowdsupply.com/purism/librem-laptop. The crowd sourcing campaign is again well over the target. Fully configured  this Libre Laptop can set one back 3300 USD. One can add a blu-ray player, that can only be used to play MPAA blu-ray disks, using the installed OS, by breaking the DRM! It is critical to understand that a computer or device cannot have two masters. It can either protect the privacy of the user and secure the user's XMR or protect the 19th century business models of organizations such as the MPAA but not both!

So there is hope.

Edit:

...
As a rule, that secure company becomes corrupted through force or greed or subversion of some kind,  sooner or later.

Not with the zero knowledge on the cloud providers part model of the examples above. In fact the cloud provider could in fact be using Windows Server on Azure and the privacy of the client data is secure, since neither the service provider, Microsoft or Microsoft's spy partners would have access to the client data in the clear.

[opennux]

Not sure how "valuable" fragments of data would be when masternode blinding rolls out and spreads inputs across numerous masternodes instead of each round flowing through one node entirely (granted, probabilities still are on the low side of being selected each round to gain meaningful analysis). And yes, the only person you can ever really trust is yourself.

That is why the data will be shared. This if anything creates more incentive for entities such as data brokers (on the commercial side) and intelligence agencies (on the government site) to aggregate data from many masternodes, and shifts power away from individual masternodes even if they are ideologically driven (unlikely in a mature state). After all, if I'm a masternode, my thinking can be that if the data is spread out among many masternodes, there is not much harm in getting some extra money selling mine.

In fact the economics suggest that all masternodes will share data with these entities either knowingly or unknowingly.

People not understanding this could read up on Schelling Point and Nash Equilibria.

[opennux]

In your mature scenario, Darkcoin would already be broken if that's the case (with every single masternode owner sharing data for $).

Yes that is my point. The design is broken. It can't work longer term. That is my opinion.

This does not mean that "DRK [the coin] is dead" after all the technology is still evolving and who knows how it might be improved. It might even evolve into something useful and valuable that has nothing to do with privacy. I have no idea. The current design is a fail IMO.

And that's where we'll continue to disagree. You assign very high probabilities to your scenario playing out with the majority (if not all) masternode owners sharing data whereas I assign low probabilities of this being as large of an issue as you make it sound like it will be--strictly from an incentive trade off between data revenue streams vs risk of value loss to underlying holdings.

Which was my point earlier in the thread. Many people (and continously more it seems) speculate on smooths/ArcticMine's/etc. scenario. And if you apply game theory, not just to the scenario of masternodes, but also to the whole meta-speculation aspect of a coins value in this thread here, then it looks like it's going one way (probability wise) and I suggest one should act accordingly.

[opennux]

In your mature scenario, Darkcoin would already be broken if that's the case (with every single masternode owner sharing data for $).

Yes that is my point. The design is broken. It can't work longer term. That is my opinion.

This does not mean that "DRK [the coin] is dead" after all the technology is still evolving and who knows how it might be improved. It might even evolve into something useful and valuable that has nothing to do with privacy. I have no idea. The current design is a fail IMO.

And that's where we'll continue to disagree. You assign very high probabilities to your scenario playing out with the majority (if not all) masternode owners sharing data whereas I assign low probabilities of this being as large of an issue as you make it sound like it will be--strictly from an incentive trade off between data revenue streams vs risk of value loss to underlying holdings.

The problem is that it is set up as a many-way prisoner's dilemma. The data trackers won't go to a masternode convention and try to get a collective body of masternode operators to make a collective decision to share data. They will go to individual masterede operators and pay for data. The only rational decision for an individual operator is to accept the money. His individual decision to do so won't harm the privacy of the coin much at all. In fact according to your arguments about probabilities across multiple rounds and blinding making each operator individually insignficant, it won't hurt at all.

I suppose there is another possibility, which is that masternodes all end u being operated by the same party, in which case they can, possibly, make a rational decision to refuse. That's not very decentralized though is it?

Majority of nodes are run on amazon AWS VPS systems or the like. You wouldn't even have to go to each player directly, but go straight to the hosting service.

[generalizethis]

In your mature scenario, Darkcoin would already be broken if that's the case (with every single masternode owner sharing data for $).

Yes that is my point. The design is broken. It can't work longer term. That is my opinion.

This does not mean that "DRK [the coin] is dead" after all the technology is still evolving and who knows how it might be improved. It might even evolve into something useful and valuable that has nothing to do with privacy. I have no idea. The current design is a fail IMO.

And that's where we'll continue to disagree. You assign very high probabilities to your scenario playing out with the majority (if not all) masternode owners sharing data whereas I assign low probabilities of this being as large of an issue as you make it sound like it will be--strictly from an incentive trade off between data revenue streams vs risk of value loss to underlying holdings.

The problem is that it is set up as a many-way prisoner's dilemma. The data trackers won't go to a masternode convention and try to get a collective body of masternode operators to make a collective decision to share data. They will go to individual masterede operators and pay for data. The only rational decision for an individual operator is to accept the money. His individual decision to do so won't harm the privacy of the coin much at all. In fact according to your arguments about probabilities across multiple rounds and blinding making each operator individually insignficant, it won't hurt at all.

I suppose there is another possibility, which is that masternodes all end u being operated by the same party, in which case they can, possibly, make a rational decision to refuse. That's not very decentralized though is it?

Majority of nodes are run on amazon AWS VPS systems or the like. You wouldn't even have to go to each player directly, but go straight to the hosting service.

A major company would never risk losing revenue with a scandal as big as colluding with governments and revealing personal data! The people would never stand for it and there's no way a company could handle the economic backlash as citizens unite and boycott their services all the way to bankruptcy court....  

[GreekBitcoin]

In your mature scenario, Darkcoin would already be broken if that's the case (with every single masternode owner sharing data for $).

Yes that is my point. The design is broken. It can't work longer term. That is my opinion.

This does not mean that "DRK [the coin] is dead" after all the technology is still evolving and who knows how it might be improved. It might even evolve into something useful and valuable that has nothing to do with privacy. I have no idea. The current design is a fail IMO.

And that's where we'll continue to disagree. You assign very high probabilities to your scenario playing out with the majority (if not all) masternode owners sharing data whereas I assign low probabilities of this being as large of an issue as you make it sound like it will be--strictly from an incentive trade off between data revenue streams vs risk of value loss to underlying holdings.

The problem is that it is set up as a many-way prisoner's dilemma. The data trackers won't go to a masternode convention and try to get a collective body of masternode operators to make a collective decision to share data. They will go to individual masterede operators and pay for data. The only rational decision for an individual operator is to accept the money. His individual decision to do so won't harm the privacy of the coin much at all. In fact according to your arguments about probabilities across multiple rounds and blinding making each operator individually insignficant, it won't hurt at all.

I suppose there is another possibility, which is that masternodes all end u being operated by the same party, in which case they can, possibly, make a rational decision to refuse. That's not very decentralized though is it?

Majority of nodes are run on amazon AWS VPS systems or the like. You wouldn't even have to go to each player directly, but go straight to the hosting service.

A major company would never risk losing revenue with a scandal as big as colluding with governments and revealing personal data! The people would never stand for it and there's no way a company could handle the economic backlash as citizens unite and boycott their services all the way to bankruptcy court....  

LOL are you even serious? It is happening all they time! Yes they dont like it and sometimes they try to avert it but they simply cant do anything else.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2rzvfu/peter_todd_on_twitter_with_bitstamp_on_amazon_aws/

http://venturebeat.com/2014/03/18/snowden-slams-amazon-for-leaking-customer-data-to-the-nsa/

http://www.wired.com/2014/02/amazon-cloud-size/

It is so obvious that i am sure, NSA is laughing at us for being unable to persuade you guys for like a year now, of the stupidity of masternodes.

[generalizethis]

  = me not so serious.

It's pretty simple. If you allow a human point of failure besides the user themselves, this point will fail. A good privacy coin needs to be only dependent on the user himself for their privacy to be broken or safe. Darkcoin will fail because it imagines that its incentive scheme is greater than an incentive scheme(s) that a government can offer, or imagines the government won't ever use heavier coercion schemes.

This is a spy agency's wet dream: a broken crypto-system that no one believes (at least the users) is broken that they can pick and choose their targets and wait for the target to slip-up so they can point to that as the reason of arrest or can manufacture proof that the user failed and the system is still not broken--see England's handling of Enigma.

If I was paranoid, I'd believe this (the broken system strategy) is already happening with BTC.

[nioc]

There was just an approximately 35 btc market buy on Polo up to 172

[illodin]

I think smooth's point regarding off-chain/on-chain privacy leads to an important question: if you're going to depend entirely on off-chain privacy, why not just use bitcoin?

Because with bitcoin you can't do it trustlessly and decentralized.

Bitcoin plus dark wallet is probably better than DRK, assuming it gets popular enough, and maybe already. For one thing it has stealth addresses and DRK does not.

Except that Darkwallet transactions can be deanonymized, and there's likely nothing they can do to fix it.


Wrt instamine - in the big picture, we are all still instamining. When/if the mass adoption and wall street level investing occur, it doesn't matter much whether the instamine lasted for 2 days or 2 years.

[onemorebtc]

Except that Darkwallet transactions can be deanonymized, and there's likely nothing they can do to fix it.

what does drk do which darkwallet is unable to adopt?

please dont say MN:
 - darkwallet could adopt a MN like concept if they want (using the dw wallet itself as a kind of MN is just the first possibilty which comes to my mind)
 - i see the MN concept as a not-yet-proven fail
 - i think mn is invented with the only intention to get all people to hoard coins so the instaminers may drop them more safely

although i dont like Amir because of bitcoinca stuff i think he is way(!) more competent as a developer than Eduffield

[rpietila]

I would like to advise caution concerning the exchange rate development. It is not likely to push through the recent high of 194k any time soon. There are not nearly enough people involved in the coin yet to warrant such development. I hate to make forecasts on timing, but have to: I believe it'll take 2-3 months before there is enough new interest for going higher.

Also we have still some weak hands eager to sell their coins between 115k-194k (the low limit is the price at the "announcement", which I don't believe will be visited except briefly at max, the high limit is the previous high, a medium-strong resistance). If these holders are not shaken out slowly, they will cap the rally by selling when their coins are much more expensive.

Staying in this area slowly confirmes that we have moved from downtrend to uptrend, continues to give time for the community to get back / strengthen their positions, enables my friends and the investors to start taking their positions, and provides time for an efficient marketing system to be developed.

Festina lente!

[rfcdejong]

I would like to advise caution concerning the exchange rate development. It is not likely to push through the recent high of 194k any time soon. There are not nearly enough people involved in the coin yet to warrant such development. I hate to make forecasts on timing, but have to: I believe it'll take 2-3 months before there is enough new interest for going higher.

Also we have still some weak hands eager to sell their coins between 115k-194k (the low limit is the price at the "announcement", which I don't believe will be visited except briefly at max, the high limit is the previous high, a medium-strong resistance). If these holders are not shaken out slowly, they will cap the rally by selling when their coins are much more expensive.

Staying in this area slowly confirmes that we have moved from downtrend to uptrend, continues to give time for the community to get back / strengthen their positions, enables my friends and the investors to start taking their positions, and provides time for an efficient marketing system to be developed.

Festina lente!

I agree, the value shouldn't go up too fast. I stopped accumulating while going down and i stopped buying other then some arbitrage between polo and trex.

[dEBRUYNE]

I think smooth's point regarding off-chain/on-chain privacy leads to an important question: if you're going to depend entirely on off-chain privacy, why not just use bitcoin?

Because with bitcoin you can't do it trustlessly and decentralized.

Bitcoin plus dark wallet is probably better than DRK, assuming it gets popular enough, and maybe already. For one thing it has stealth addresses and DRK does not.

Except that Darkwallet transactions can be deanonymized, and there's likely nothing they can do to fix it.


Wrt instamine - in the big picture, we are all still instamining. When/if the mass adoption and wall street level investing occur, it doesn't matter much whether the instamine lasted for 2 days or 2 years.

Everyone with just a little bit of brain will see that this argument is utter bullshit.

[generalizethis]

I think smooth's point regarding off-chain/on-chain privacy leads to an important question: if you're going to depend entirely on off-chain privacy, why not just use bitcoin?

Because with bitcoin you can't do it trustlessly and decentralized.

Bitcoin plus dark wallet is probably better than DRK, assuming it gets popular enough, and maybe already. For one thing it has stealth addresses and DRK does not.

Except that Darkwallet transactions can be deanonymized, and there's likely nothing they can do to fix it.


Wrt instamine - in the big picture, we are all still instamining. When/if the mass adoption and wall street level investing occur, it doesn't matter much whether the instamine lasted for 2 days or 2 years.

Everyone with just a little bit of brain will see that this argument is utter bullshit.

To be fair, drek supporters think a point of human failure (that isn't the user) is trustless if you call it a masternode.

[wpalczynski]

Well said.

= me not so serious.

It's pretty simple. If you allow a human point of failure besides the user themselves, this point will fail. A good privacy coin needs to be only dependent on the user himself for their privacy to be broken or safe. Darkcoin will fail because it imagines that its incentive scheme is greater than an incentive scheme(s) that a government can offer, or imagines the government won't ever use heavier coercion schemes.

This is a spy agency's wet dream: a broken crypto-system that no one believes (at least the users) is broken that they can pick and choose their targets and wait for the target to slip-up so they can point to that as the reason of arrest or can manufacture proof that the user failed and the system is still not broken--see England's handling of Enigma.

If I was paranoid, I'd believe this (the broken system strategy) is already happening with BTC.