delete

[TheFascistMind]

EDIT: Let me rephrase what you propose:

I have a fair coin and BCX asserted he can control the outcome of independent throws. So, I throw the coin 10 times and get 0001011010. Since the throws are independent, that should happen only once in 1024 throws. THERE MUST BE SOMETHING WRONG.

Correct. We would need to add up all the probabilities of every permutation, which is what I noted in my prior message.

However, your analogy is inapplicable. Do you know why?

Of course my analogy is inapplicable for a number of reasons. I do not pretend that is a model of the problem, but only exemplifies what you agree here (that absolute probabilities are meaningless).

But since I'm trying to get on the same wavelength with you, I'll ask: "Why is that?"

Afaics, because the probability of any trial is always 0.5 in your coin toss. Thus in your analogy there is no stratification of event classes. Whereas I showed that event is in a very rare class (given the Poisson distribution). Thus we wouldn't be including much less rare events in our consideration when summing all the probabilities of the event class we are interested in.

The details matter. Which is why I can't entirely trust closed source proclamations. Skepticism (independent verification and attempting to find an exception) is the basis of the scientific method. I would be a puppet or a clown otherwise.

Edit: I never wrote anything implying there must be something wrong. I am just skeptical of the claim that a rare event hasn't occurred. I am trying to convince myself that BCX doesn't have an attack sneaking up on us. I am playing devil's advocate trying to not blind myself with overconfidence. I think what may motivate BCX is defeating overconfidence. Or maybe he is just full of shit. I dunno. I was surprised to see him come back in the thread and reiterate his original 22 days estimate. It makes me laugh that posters here think he is being inconsistent when he wrote 22 days long before this thread started, if I remember correctly. And he never promised fireworks upon reaching the 72 hour deadline. Where is the inconsistency? I was also surprised to see him challenge the owners of this forum to prove that Moneroman88 is BCX. The DDoS on poloniex is baffling. There is some game theory going on here that I don't see. Ah maybe everyone is correct, he is just profiting on the movement in the price. And then I would be a pawn.

[1713561801]

1713561801

[1713561801]

1713561801

[1713561801]

1713561801

[Spoetnik]

scroll scroll scroll

and now i want to know WHO is "Risto" ?
AND !
WHY should i give a flying fuck ?

at least i know who BitcoinExpress is ! ...and i can attest to his past statements as being pretty damn solid.

[PestoQuinty]

scroll scroll scroll

and now i want to know WHO is "Risto" ?
AND !
WHY should i give a flying fuck ?

at least i know who BitcoinExpress is ! ...and i can attest to his past statements as being pretty damn solid.

I think u got it all mixed up...

[Cryptobro]

It makes me laugh that posters here think he is being inconsistent when he wrote 22 days long before this thread started, if I remember correctly.

No one else has claimed BCX mentioned "22 days" other than BCX and yourself.
Can you elaborate more on it? Narrow the search for me if I go looking for it.

[xulescu]

For the fourth time, the burden of proof rests on you to prove material change. You cannot prove lack of material change in a stochastic environment because you need infinite data. That is not the case with proving change.

Of course the probabilities are not 0.5. But they also don't matter much. Since both my semantic simile and your argument assume independence, order does not matter. Thus all permutations are in the same class of rarety.

Furthermore, if only counts of "short" vs "long" gaps matter, then instead of x seconds times 8 + y seconds times 4 you also need to include small deviations. Such as, for example, x-1, x+1, x times 6 + y times 4, and all the permutations of each of these. So you are integrating over all partitions on 12 elements, which is a gigantic set when you generalize enough to learn the blockchain in any meaningful way. The blockchain has too little data to believe your statement with even 60% confidencence. We're talking 0.1 sigma deviations here and a combinatorially monstrous set, with only a quarter of a million of data points. Not gonna happen.

On the contrary, my position is that given the amount of entropy there is in the blockchain so far, and adding time dependence to the combinatorial mess (because independence is false), we cannot say that there is something wrong with meaningful certainty.

Finally, over all this academic modelling exercise that we went through, the reality is, as I mentioned in my first post and smoothie detailed, that even if you were right on the modelling, what we know about how timestamps work and how they are somewhat adversarially arbitrary for you as the modeller, your conclusion holds no epistemic water.

You are right on the Maths. You are wrong on many levels on your modelling. Even if you were right on the modelling, you are still wrong on what conclusions you can draw from the results.

Your argument is "something could be wrong". My counterargument above is "even if that was the case, you don't have enough entropy to draw that conclusion". Smoothie's corrolary is "even if you are right, it doesn't make much of a difference".

Thank you for responding calmly earlier and compelling me to articulate my position.

Edit: answering your edit

[TheFascistMind]

I hold that the Poisson distribution is not justified for a number of factors, including variation in hash rate, geographics and clustering (nonuniformity) of block finds.

I am spending so much time on this because I am generally interested from the standpoint of altcoin development. Thus modeling the block chain is an interesting topic.

Variation of hash rate indeed would violate the Poisson assumption of "the average frequency of occurrence for the time period in question is known". I don't understand how you think geographics affects the model? Isn't clustering modeled by Poisson?

I also hold that you can choose any consecutive 12 gaps and you will get a probability within a factor of 5 from your example's with confidence over 90%.

90% of the time? Really? That is profound. Then we should be able to look at any 120 minutes and find 9 occurrences most of the time.

Wait I will find a block chain explorer and verify your claim anecdotally. BRB...

[Viper1]

It makes me laugh that posters here think he is being inconsistent when he wrote 22 days long before this thread started, if I remember correctly.

No one else has claimed BCX mentioned "22 days" other than BCX and yourself.
Can you elaborate more on it? Narrow the search for me if I go looking for it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=709197.msg8038023#msg8038023

The interesting thing about all this talk about anomolies in the blockchain, is that you'd really have to go and compare things to how it was operating prior to July which is when BCX first started "playing" with it.

[TheUsualStuff]

4 times in 1.5 hours. 3 months ago. Prob lots more times, not really interested in staring at it longer.


111083   2014-07-02 12:34:33 (3 months ago)   23745   6   5a7b9f85576f7fa233bf26136f4bb04c6d2b7f2fe45369d7ee898a7c8a67e312
111082   2014-07-02 12:34:23 (3 months ago)   332   1   206bfef0b9c4879cb86a79c55976bf858b1dac5e5ced2f5951e6307291762596
111081   2014-07-02 12:34:00 (3 months ago)   1052   2   600d7d9f0ce11927608ee8ab015d68d19213a8abfad57838793467312671f06e
111080   2014-07-02 12:34:00 (3 months ago)   2307   2   19afd9e24ed461a5d3df71a3a0542bb291973a4a35e9870b297902bc6491d52c

30 minutes

111054   2014-07-02 12:06:15 (3 months ago)   332   1   58c9694ae3c8c219f88f15b560ef7f863d7caec14aba0a85a5979691be168eb5
111053   2014-07-02 12:06:26 (3 months ago)   4542   2   96a032abc59270c680f35767445850ac84576f28c12b745e11712269164d7f81
111052   2014-07-02 12:05:59 (3 months ago)   332   1   83eb435ed4851b463515b574b707d65fa9310c65e8df3485cf947b4fd89eb8b1
111051   2014-07-02 12:05:36 (3 months ago)   23993   2   d2c8d8f54a725093addbe824269eb288c7a7355e62f26a13cd1313629a75d994

40 minutes

111013   2014-07-02 11:20:08 (3 months ago)   3002   2   582d9455918fed0285b742b6cda1413b43944d1ae2577f6ddec5f616bf13dc6b
111012   2014-07-02 11:19:48 (3 months ago)   332   1   5e0d1c38a911fcf9f7d3bde985a13b8f9cdb0e27df4553da2ff43c317206fb25
111011   2014-07-02 11:19:43 (3 months ago)   332   1   63c481e4eedad60e3b2526cee67ad35c284c0dd80fd931af53274feb81b78bc1
111010   2014-07-02 11:19:36 (3 months ago)   331   1   86886a411e5ee4886b6979a704ca5866369da1d803a0d33699e09859a1b8a8ea

ten minutes

110999   2014-07-02 11:10:34 (3 months ago)   331   1   66ce7489994b30c1128609c99340b91b6002f49018f7f97d9fbc42c8fe9ebbfd
110998   2014-07-02 11:10:03 (3 months ago)   2223   2   e6f39c9954ca256cb44138102b22bf60d3b67874f116789a879ac0c2aa82bc75
110997   2014-07-02 11:09:31 (3 months ago)   331   1   efba3ba1b70fda6dd7677f872aa1fa83345e9d8668ac702670f5be467049bcd4
110996   2014-07-02 11:09:39 (3 months ago)   5584   2   300c1b2934e60040d256556dd580610fb50640339d46d077005d906ea0b7b016

...

...

90000   2014-06-18 00:28:57 (4 months ago)   331   1   e7b31b49633084bae03c9b6e0ea592e3a9e7a86625d094f21ef9268d2020f83c
89999   2014-06-18 00:28:53 (4 months ago)   331   1   4edc506643a50cd79fe3c7117a2054b2661e05cd9b4e2071c1f6d5ac4e04281d
89998   2014-06-18 00:28:49 (4 months ago)   692   2   1aa0404dc484ccb9f7df07918203e26c44442a5fd3708e20534fae1909095379
89997   2014-06-18 00:28:32 (4 months ago)   13996   2   22f56466512b866b4eabed7d1d2cabcb71e1fcabb6b15a808a54f4fdfd5b3af3
89996   2014-06-18 00:28:21 (4 months ago)   18119   3   bb8a5303e7d8b36cfbb8864b25ef88f454c09b0c45a5a9c5c74f0e2ba5a6499f

[Cryptobro]

It makes me laugh that posters here think he is being inconsistent when he wrote 22 days long before this thread started, if I remember correctly.

No one else has claimed BCX mentioned "22 days" other than BCX and yourself.
Can you elaborate more on it? Narrow the search for me if I go looking for it.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=709197.msg8038023#msg8038023

The interesting thing about all this talk about anomolies in the blockchain, is that you'd really have to go and compare things to how it was operating prior to July which is when BCX first started "playing" with it.

Thanks for that. I had seen that post before but not taken it in I guess.

[TheFascistMind]

Picked the most recent 12.

http://chainradar.com/xmr/blocks

242773    14-10-02 05:35:56
242772    14-10-02 05:35:56
242771    14-10-02 05:35:42
242770    14-10-02 05:34:35
242769    14-10-02 05:32:59
242768    14-10-02 05:31:30
242767    14-10-02 05:30:29
242766    14-10-02 05:28:55
242765    14-10-02 05:26:41
242764    14-10-02 05:25:48
242763    14-10-02 05:25:24
242762    14-10-02 05:22:34

That looks roughly to be one occurrence of 3 in one minute, one occurrence of 2 in one minute, and 7 occurrences of roughly 1 per minute (slightly longer than a minute so my summary is not a precise model).

p = (1³ / 3!e) × (1² / 2!e) × (1¹ / 1!e)⁷ = 0.001%

So that is within a factor of 5, and note my model above isn't incorporating the effect of the slow blocks. So that anecdotally confirms your claim.

However the math above is wrong because for a perfect distribution the probability would be even less.

p = (1¹ / 1!e)¹² = 0.0006%

Instead we shouldn't be be comparing 12 gaps. Rather for the example above there are 9 intervals of one minute, so the probability for a perfect distribution over 9 intervals is as follows.

p = (1¹ / 1!e)⁹ = 0.01%

Thus the example we were considering was only 4 intervals of one minute. So let me test your claim again as follows.

242773    14-10-02 05:35:56
242772    14-10-02 05:35:56
242771    14-10-02 05:35:42
242770    14-10-02 05:34:35
242769    14-10-02 05:32:59
242768    14-10-02 05:31:30

That looks roughly to be one occurrence of 3 in one minute, and 3 occurrences of roughly 1 per minute (slightly longer than a minute so my summary is not a precise model).

p = (1³ / 3!e) × (1¹ / 1!e)³ = 0.8%

Sorry that fails your claim. Let's test another.


242767    14-10-02 05:30:29
242766    14-10-02 05:28:55
242765    14-10-02 05:26:41
242764    14-10-02 05:25:48
242763    14-10-02 05:25:24

That looks roughly to be one occurrence of 2 in one minute, and 3 occurrences of roughly 1 per minute (slightly longer than a minute so my summary is not a precise model).

p = (1³ / 2!e) × (1¹ / 1!e)³ = 1.25%

Sorry that fails your claim.

Now you see why independent verification is important. Ball in your court. What is my mistake?

[TheFascistMind]

4 times in 1.5 hours. 3 months ago. Prob lots more times, not really interested in staring at it longer.


111083   2014-07-02 12:34:33 (3 months ago)   23745   6   5a7b9f85576f7fa233bf26136f4bb04c6d2b7f2fe45369d7ee898a7c8a67e312
111082   2014-07-02 12:34:23 (3 months ago)   332   1   206bfef0b9c4879cb86a79c55976bf858b1dac5e5ced2f5951e6307291762596
111081   2014-07-02 12:34:00 (3 months ago)   1052   2   600d7d9f0ce11927608ee8ab015d68d19213a8abfad57838793467312671f06e
111080   2014-07-02 12:34:00 (3 months ago)   2307   2   19afd9e24ed461a5d3df71a3a0542bb291973a4a35e9870b297902bc6491d52c

Fail. You don't pay attention. The event was two of those, plus two with two blocks in a minute, and all four of the intervals consecutive.

[TheUsualStuff]

Of course you haven't, you are a Moron, let alone discover an exploit on real code.

I always get a laugh out of your newbie accounts too fearful of BCX to post under your primary names LOL


~BCX~

And I get a laugh at you egotistical maniacs that are too thick headed to realize that running around with your name on your tee shirt was cool in the 70s, 80s, and somewhat into the 90's. Even consider asking someone who they were privately instead of calling them fearful? The social landscape on the internet's changing, just because you're the one with 'jimmy' on his tee shirt doesn't mean I have to hop on your bus.

When I'm not on the playground, I generally ask other human beings their name after interacting with them for a while. Maybe even not the first day. Maybe they'll come back tomorrow with new clothes on and then I'll ask them their name.

Anyways, I don't know who you are, but you clearly have nothing to contribute. No questions, explanations, or anything to share in general. I feel it only fair that I let you and anyone else I decide to ignore to know publicly that they're on my ignore list. You're on my ignore list, which is composed of shitcoin developers, nekomata and Come-from-Above so far.

Best of luck to you in whatever you enjoy, but I won't hear it from you.

[nutildah]

You are right on the Maths. You are wrong on many levels on your modelling. Even if you were right on the modelling, you are still wrong on what conclusions you can draw from the results.

Your argument is "something could be wrong". My counterargument above is "even if that was the case, you don't have enough entropy to draw that conclusion". Smoothie's corrolary is "even if you are right, it doesn't make much of a difference".

My theory is BCX has the ability to manipulate either block lengths or the timestamps for minutes at a time.

In the days since the "attack" I've regularly checked block intervals to see if there is anything suspicious still going on, and there's not. So, likely there was some sort of manipulation taking place at the time and not now.

If you were watching Minergate like a hawk like I was you would have noticed the time between blocks was much more varied then than it is now.

[TheUsualStuff]

Fail. You don't pay attention. The event was two of those, plus two with two blocks in a minute, and all four of the intervals consecutive.

I apparently do fail and don't pay attention. I'll go and hunt for these!

[TheFascistMind]

The social landscape on the internet's changing...

Anyways, I don't know who you are, but you clearly have nothing to contribute. No questions, explanations, or anything to share in general.

If his attack is real (and he may be bluffing) and XMR doesn't recover (i.e. he can't gain by buying it cheap), then we can surmise his contribution is "forced evolution". Consider an alternative meaning, wherein the evolution involves teaching the community not to be sheep. Afaik, BCX is apparently involved in "operation shitcoin cleanout". Apparently many people complained to him that XMR is a shitcoin. Apparently he claims he found some vulnerabilities, but he didn't particularly feel motivated to attack XMR, possibly meaning he didn't feel it was a shitcoin. But perhaps his appraisal was near to some threshold and some events pushed him over the edge and he decided to force the XMR community to prove it is worthy or insolent. Just one possible theory for the chain of events.

It could also be that Moneroman88 pushed him into a corner to defend his reputation. Then when I published the idea about private keys, he decided to issue a deadline. So perhaps that was the event that forced him to put pressure on the developers to hunt down an alleged problem.

Edit: again I am not alleging any proof that there is an attack. I am still analyzing and trying to determine if there is any evidence of abnormalities.

[nioc]

Afaics, because the probability of any trial is always 0.5 in your coin toss. Thus in your analogy there is no stratification of event classes. Whereas I showed that event is in a very rare class (given the Poisson distribution). Thus we wouldn't be including much less rare events in our consideration when summing all the probabilities of the event class we are interested in.

The details matter. Which is why I can't entirely trust closed source proclamations. Skepticism (independent verification and attempting to find an exception) is the basis of the scientific method. I would be a puppet or a clown otherwise.

Edit: I never wrote anything implying there must be something wrong. I am just skeptical of the claim that a rare event hasn't occurred. I am trying to convince myself that BCX doesn't have an attack sneaking up on us. I am playing devil's advocate trying to not blind myself with overconfidence. I think what may motivate BCX is defeating overconfidence. Or maybe he is just full of shit. I dunno. I was surprised to see him come back in the thread and reiterate his original 22 days estimate. It makes me laugh that posters here think he is being inconsistent when he wrote 22 days long before this thread started, if I remember correctly. And he never promised fireworks upon reaching the 72 hour deadline. Where is the inconsistency? I was also surprised to see him challenge the owners of this forum to prove that Moneroman88 is BCX. The DDoS on poloniex is baffling. There is some game theory going on here that I don't see. Ah maybe everyone is correct, he is just profiting on the movement in the price. And then I would be a pawn.

@TFM

You are correct.

I never claimed fireworks or an instant death at the 72 hours mark.

I stated 22 days back in July.

There is no reason why other than chaos.

The same denials, taunts and eventually the same defeat will also come XMR's way.

Lastly I am not Moneroman88.

In fact I again openly invite any Global Mod, Badbear or Theymos to Permaban me if I am Moneroman88.


~BCX~

Again our confusion stems from what you say.

Yawn.. this isn't nearly as entertaining as I thought it would be.

Is Monero being attacked or not? If someone is performing a TW attack is there any way to tell?

From my experience with time warps attacks it takes a couple of days before the symptoms start to occur, but when they do....the chaos is sweet.


~BCX~

Can you see where one might come to the conclusion that symptoms will occur in a couple of days bringing chaos?

Why do you believe that the chaos you intend to cause is sweet?

[TheFascistMind]

Yawn.. this isn't nearly as entertaining as I thought it would be.

Is Monero being attacked or not? If someone is performing a TW attack is there any way to tell?

From my experience with time warps attacks it takes a couple of days before the symptoms start to occur, but when they do....the chaos is sweet.


~BCX~

Can you see where one might come to the conclusion that symptoms will occur in a couple of days bringing chaos?

Why do you believe that the chaos you intend to cause is sweet?

Are we sure there are no symptoms already?

[TheUsualStuff]

The social landscape on the internet's changing...

Anyways, I don't know who you are, but you clearly have nothing to contribute. No questions, explanations, or anything to share in general.

If his attack is real (and he may be bluffing) and XMR doesn't recover (i.e. he can't gain by buying it cheap), then we can surmise his contribution is "forced evolution". Consider an alternative meaning, wherein the evolution involves teaching the community not to be sheep. Afaik, BCX is apparently involved in "operation shitcoin cleanout". Apparently many people complained to him that XMR is a shitcoin. Apparently he claims he found some vulnerabilities, but he didn't particularly feel motivated to attack XMR, possibly meaning he didn't feel it was a shitcoin. But perhaps his appraisal was near to some threshold and some events pushed him over the edge and he decided to force the XMR community to prove it is worthy or insolent. Just one possible theory for the chain of events.

All I see is a guy with 'tony' written on his shirt punching a 5 month old baby in the face. I wouldn't read into things a guy like that has to say IRL, or even want to know that fellas name, so why would I do that on the internet?

Anyone can use their identity to make wild claims about anything happening in real life, honestly I just don't have the time of day to listen to every single wild claim of the world falling down.

What I do see is yourself spewing a lot of interesting math that I don't understand yet on a forum, and that math needs to be backed up by data that can be found by physically looking at a blockchain. Seeing as how your time may best spent doing mathematics, and realizing mine can best be spent by assisting you with data I've decided to contribute. Even if that's all I have to contribute, at least it helps you put more of something useful on this thread. By helping you do your math, I can learn something .. so it's worth it for me.

Still looking btw.

[nioc]

Yawn.. this isn't nearly as entertaining as I thought it would be.

Is Monero being attacked or not? If someone is performing a TW attack is there any way to tell?

From my experience with time warps attacks it takes a couple of days before the symptoms start to occur, but when they do....the chaos is sweet.


~BCX~

Can you see where one might come to the conclusion that symptoms will occur in a couple of days bringing chaos?

Why do you believe that the chaos you intend to cause is sweet?

Are we sure there are no symptoms already?

would not symptoms that caused chaos be readily apparent?

Maybe BCX needs the video I posted for you a while back that you were none to thrilled about

[TheFascistMind]

But perhaps his appraisal was near to some threshold and some events pushed him over the edge and he decided to force the XMR community to prove it is worthy or insolent. Just one possible theory for the chain of events.

Remember Risto issued the 4 - 8% proclamation of the likelihood of a BCX attack while the 72 hour deadline was ongoing. One could ponder if this might have caused BCX to not call off the threatened (unconfirmed) attack. There was some progress on trying to find any vulnerabilities, so perhaps one could ponder if he might have called off the threat citing progress and cooperation.

The reason for not just handing over the vulnerability and fix, may be to illustrate the competence and to teach the community.