Bitcoin 20MB Fork

[amincd]

I wonder why we dont follow hardware for computing block sise cap ?

Ssd drives tend to double size every two years

We could double block cap every two years worth of blocks

So we don't have to fork next time, and we don't go x20 in one tine

The limiting factor is bandwidth, not storage. Bandwidth costs for running a full Bitcoin node are far more than storage costs. Also, Bandwidth, according to the most often quoted estimate, grows by 50% per year, versus nearly 60% for storage and cpu processing. Gavin's proposal has the block limit grow by 40% per year.

Yeah, give people enough rope and they will hang themselves:

Name:    Muuurrrrica!
Date Registered:    December 07, 2014, 06:13:18 PM

Name:    homo homini lupus
Date Registered:    December 07, 2014, 05:53:10 PM

Name:    Pecunia non olet
Date Registered:    December 07, 2014, 05:55:09 PM

LOL

Nice find

[1714494090]

1714494090

[1714494090]

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[1714494090]

1714494090

[DooMAD]

Jeebus, four pages since I last posted about 12 hours ago.  This thread is crazy, heh.

Dumb post by someone who couldn't even bother to read the Bitcoin Whitepaper.  Here's a snippet for the uninformed.

"
Long before the network gets anywhere near as large as that, it would be safe for users to use Simplified Payment Verification (section Cool to check for double spending, which only requires having the chain of block headers, or about 12KB per day. Only people trying to create new coins would need to run network nodes. At first, most users would run network nodes, but as the network grows beyond a certain point, it would be left more and more to specialists with server farms of specialized hardware. A server farm would only need to have one node on the network and the rest of the LAN connects with that one node.

The bandwidth might not be as prohibitive as you think. A typical transaction would be about 400 bytes (ECC is nicely compact). Each transaction has to be broadcast twice, so lets say 1KB per transaction. Visa processed 37 billion transactions in FY2008, or an average of 100 million transactions per day. That many transactions would take 100GB of bandwidth, or the size of 12 DVD or 2 HD quality movies, or about $18 worth of bandwidth at current prices.
If the network were to get that big, it would take several years, and by then, sending 2 HD movies over the Internet would probably not seem like a big deal.

Satoshi Nakamoto
"

Important parts are highlighted.
Nowhere did satoshi say to raise blocklimit ahead of demand 20-fold.

This would imply that you'll be in favour of a fork when we do come close to hitting the 1MB limit then?  Could have sworn you weren't in favour of a fork under any circumstances.    

I would be in favour of a fork as soon as the blocklimit starts making trouble - but by then still not 20-fold.  

I don't think hitting the limit will even produce any big trouble for a long time. I think btc could  operate within 5 MB blocks for the next 3 to 5 years (or even longer) without slowing down adoption even a little.

I think Gavin must have something in his water that affects his brain.

So rather than having several 20+ page threads about this fork which should future-proof Bitcoin for the foreseeable future, you want to have several 20+ page threads each time we raise the block limit by a couple of megs?  How many forks do you want?  You've effectively just gone from being anti-fork to saying let's have a fork every time we hit the same pointless limit. 

[Eamorr]

So there's still no decision then eh?

I'm reminded of the old phrase "a bad decision is better than no decision at all".

This fork issue will culminate in a crisis if it's not addressed decisively. Of course trying to get the Bitcoin tech community to agree on anything is like herding cats.

[DooMAD]

I just see no 'sweet spot' where some realistic threshold of 'Joe Sixpack' users can use Bitcoin for every day stuff and yet the system remains small enough to be sufficiently decentralized and defensible from subversion.  There is always going to be some point where there is exclusion.

Even back when I first started using the system I was so aware of the cost of doing transactions which remain forever the responsibility of infrastructure operators (including myself) to maintain that I moderated my usage out of consideration.  I find it highly irritating that people demand this level of security for day-to-day purchases.  Similarly, the argument that everyone somehow 'deserves' this level of security is absurd to me.  I don't request nor desire Bitcoin level security for any but the most critical transactions that I do.

I am a huge fan of 'sidechains' which should be on the near horizon.  Assuming they approximate the design goal, they offer all the advantages of both Bitcoin and alt coins.  With a properly functioning 2-way peg, a 'sidecoin' is for all intents and purposes a 'bitcoin'.  A sidecoin user must induce a lock-up of BTC which minimizes the economic impact on Bitcoin (though if sidechains are successful which I find very possible they could increase demand for Bitcoin significantly.)

Sidechains offer a theoretical and solid scaling potential to Bitcoin that make sense to me.  If people want to have a conversation about blocksize based on this solid scaling mechanism (or really any other one), I'm listening.  As I've mentioned several times on this thread, the current 20MB idea looks a to me a lot like some combination of a poorly considered hale Mary and a desperate and deceptive propaganda campaign.

People knock sidechains because they are 'not as secure' as Bitcoin.  That to me makes as much sense as knocking a bus shelter because it is not as secure as a nuclear bomb proof bunker.  That is a GOOD thing!  It simply does not need to be, and it just makes the bus shelter and expensive pain-in-the-ass to use.  And anyway, a properly implemented sidechain should be very close to Bitcoin's level of security anyway.  And it should help support Bitcoin in times of failure of mining support from simple economics to boot.

(FWIW, I have never had any interest in researching or obtaining alts.  I love the fact that many of them are exploring interesting ideas and have nothing against them in principle, but I've not yet given up on Bitcoin as something with the potential to be the solid core of a workable autonomous and solid crypto-currency solution.)

The trade off will be, if we carry on without change and start to regularly hit the block size limit and unconfirmed transactions start to pile up, the users who don't feel as strongly about decentralisation will change to a system that confirms their transaction first.  If we start haemorrhaging users, then the reputation of the network itself could suffer and the general opinion could propagate that Bitcoin is slow and doesn't scale well enough.  If the only people left still transacting are the ones who weren't prepared to compromise because of concerns over centralisation, however justified they might seem, then things could get pretty bleak.  To me, that's a more pressing concern than big business taking over and destroying fungibility.  

Most of the pro-fork camp aren't oblivious to the fact that we'll be making compromises too.  But scenarios about increased centralisation aren't enough to convince me that we shouldn't be raising this limit.  And in the event of such fungibility scenarios becoming likely, I'm pretty sure we'd all be rallying to fight against it.

See, I'm visualizing sidechains as a (frankly, near perfect) solution to give the masses (and their network effect) all of the power of Bitcoin and much more while not damaging it with pointless bloat which reduces the pool of potential infrastructure support.  I imagined some sort of a network of subordinate chains as a scaling mechanism very soon after I read the whitepaper and saw the scaling difficulties.  This is why your otherwise logical conceptions of the realities of 'network effect' are not swaying me an why I and so many others are at loggerheads.

Alts are not 'subordinate' chains.  They are entirely independent.  They are competition, and that's fine and good, but I'd much rather see a solution which works in a symbiotic manner with Bitcoin.  I see some real difficulties with the simplistic conception of support for stand-alone native Bitcoin as we move forward and feel that sidechains can not only resolve the 'scaling' issues, and not only provide vastly better access for the masses, but also provide a support backstop in times when miners cannot make a dime (other than by exploiting the userbase.)

And if this fork included sidechains as well, that would be fantastic.  But the simple matter is, sidechains/multichains/treechains/cross-chain transactions/etc aren't ready yet.  Maybe they will be ready before the current limits become an issue that affects the efficiency of the network, but there's a chance they won't.  We have no way of knowing whether we'll see a sudden spike in adoption and/or transactions and I don't want to see us hit a wall for the sake of trying to avoid the issue of centralisation that may never even materialise.  

I think the reason this topic is so divisive is simply because none of us know for certain what's going to happen.  Both forks have their potential merits and pitfalls.  Either choice could conceivably turn out to be wrong.  So at the end of the day, if the fork does go ahead, we'll leave it to the market to decide their respective fates  (I'm still pro-fork, though.    ).

[Buffer Overflow]

Nice find

RoadStress takes credit for that find, not me.

[cbeast]

Initially, at least, I'll only use a sidechain which can recognize an attack and freeze peg operations until the attacker gets tired of wasting his effort and goes away.  If it even takes that to protect the sub-system.  In the mean time I'll expect many designs to be able to operate just fine but just cannot inflate or deflate while an attack is underway.

In my conception of the world one of the marvelous things about sidechains is that they are much more free to adapt to various kinds of threats (and service more types of needs.)  Indeed, that is one of the ways that sidechains support Bitcoin...by creating an endless whack-a-mole for entities trying to attack crypto-currencies more generally.   only totally critical thing is that native Bitcoin itself remains solid and well defended.

You sure are putting a lot of faith in side chains.

This is in no small part due to the people who are behind them.  Also, as I've said, I've been thinking about them for some time and the advantage/dis-advantage ratio is huge as I see it.  Lastly, the theory is simple which usually means that it is practical.

Keep believing, Brother. But don't force your religion on me.

The only totally critical thing is that native Bitcoin itself remains solid and well defended.

Greed is the only thing needed for that. Engineers will sort out the details.

As I've said before, I'm open to a conversation about blocksize as long as there is a well defined problem and proposed solution regarding scaling.

How magnanimous of you to allow others to define the problem and solution for you to criticize. Where's your well defined problem and solution?

I'm cool with things as they are.  The only valid argument I see is that mainstream VCs won't fork over any more money for us early adopters to put into our pockets unless they can have some assurance that they can subvert the system.  Boo-hoo as far as I'm concerened.  I've pocketed enough of their money already and am willing to try for the best of both worlds.  That is, to shoot for a Bitcoin that is worth having as well as a pocket full of green.

I'll disagree with you why Bitcoin price went down. It's not because there aren't enough investors, it's because exchanges are unregulated and it's too easy and tempting to cheat the system. Many, if not most of the exchanges are playing right out of the central bank's playbook using fractional reserve.

I've made no bones about the fact that I myself have serious concerns about 4-7 tps even when most native Bitcoin transactions are sidechains balancings and user 'safe deposit box' style transactions if/when crypto-currencies are more than a tiny tiny part of the world's financial activity.

You have an interesting prediction on the future of transactions. In fact, the goal is for Bitcoin proper to scale as needed for the types of payments it best serves. It will be much higher than 4-7 tps. Bitcoin only needs to serve where cash would best serve because Bitcoin is cash.

As I've said, Bitcoin means different things to different people.  Bitcoin is much more like gold bricks to me.  Most useful when never touched.  Unlike gold, BTC can be inventoried, split, and moved with relative safety.

Bitcoin absolutely is like gold. Its original moniker was gold related according to Satoshi. Gold used to be money. Money used to be saved, but people still spent some. It didn't sit untouched.

None of you pro-fork people have given anything to hint at where you want to stop with your simplistic 'increase block size to scale' scheme, or where you want to draw the line with exclusions.  

That's like asking scientists when they will be done discovering stuff.

It would be cool if Hawking figured out the secrets of the universe before he kicks the bucket, but it won't make a difference one way or another to my financial statement.

He was wrong about black holes. Don't get me wrong. Hawking is truly inspirational in ways that even Sagan couldn't reach. But finding an equilibrium for block size and all the network variables involved will be a continuous and unending effort, just like science. If Hawking does solve the secrets of the 'Verse, then we won't need money anyway because we will then walk among the stars.

All I hear is 'faith based' assertions that market forces will make everything work out.  Start talking numbers and we'll start analyzing.

You contradict yourself. Market forces use numbers by definition. Besides, you are the one with faith based in side chains that will make everything work out.

It's always been a no-brainer to me.  I'm no where near certain that they will solve some of the economic problems necessary for infrastructure support, but it's by far the best hope.  The alternative is to start over from scratch on Bitcoin.  No alt I've seen seems to be targetting the role I see as important (to my amazement.)  I'm for trying Bitcoin first and seeing if it can be made to work in spite of the resistance from within (be it ignorance or malice.)

Many have tried to start over from scratch. There are teams developing Bitcoin exodus strategies in the very unlikely event of catastrophic failure of Bitcoin. Altcoins are providing empirical data that can help with Bitcoin's development.

In the mean time, we have one chance to stay within the constraints of what is achievable behind TOR and realistically likewise hardening methods.  I'm not interested in throwing it away... especially when there is no need and a very promising solution is around the corner.

TOR has nothing to do with the Bitcoin protocol. TOR was compromised recently. If it was used, it would be in very limited fashion.

I've never trusted TOR as many of my posts here in trolltalk make clear.  That's why I phrased things as I did.  Onion routing generally is adds overhead that can dwarf a small payload such as a Bitcoin transaction and other kinds of cloaking (specifically steganography) can add much more.

I think it more likely than not that at some point there will be the long promised 'cyber 9/11' and some big changes to the global internet even here in the 'free world'.  I've no intention of walking away from my stash just because some douche-bag government administrator and media echo-chamber says that a peer-2-peer internet fosters terrorism or whatever.  If it never happens then that is fine and great, but it means that crypto-currencies are just toys and never did become indispensable tools for wealth protection.  If it does then I want to be prepared and have my wealth protected by the most robust solution available.

Bitcoin will be using alternative payment channels in the future. There will be a place for p2p then, but block production by miners will always need to be visible.

[AtheistAKASaneBrain]

Initially, at least, I'll only use a sidechain which can recognize an attack and freeze peg operations until the attacker gets tired of wasting his effort and goes away.  If it even takes that to protect the sub-system.  In the mean time I'll expect many designs to be able to operate just fine but just cannot inflate or deflate while an attack is underway.

In my conception of the world one of the marvelous things about sidechains is that they are much more free to adapt to various kinds of threats (and service more types of needs.)  Indeed, that is one of the ways that sidechains support Bitcoin...by creating an endless whack-a-mole for entities trying to attack crypto-currencies more generally.   only totally critical thing is that native Bitcoin itself remains solid and well defended.

You sure are putting a lot of faith in side chains.

The only totally critical thing is that native Bitcoin itself remains solid and well defended.

Greed is the only thing needed for that. Engineers will sort out the details.

As I've said before, I'm open to a conversation about blocksize as long as there is a well defined problem and proposed solution regarding scaling.

How magnanimous of you to allow others to define the problem and solution for you to criticize. Where's your well defined problem and solution?

I've made no bones about the fact that I myself have serious concerns about 4-7 tps even when most native Bitcoin transactions are sidechains balancings and user 'safe deposit box' style transactions if/when crypto-currencies are more than a tiny tiny part of the world's financial activity.

You have an interesting prediction on the future of transactions. In fact, the goal is for Bitcoin proper to scale as needed for the types of payments it best serves. It will be much higher than 4-7 tps. Bitcoin only needs to serve where cash would best serve because Bitcoin is cash.

None of you pro-fork people have given anything to hint at where you want to stop with your simplistic 'increase block size to scale' scheme, or where you want to draw the line with exclusions.  

That's like asking scientists when they will be done discovering stuff.

All I hear is 'faith based' assertions that market forces will make everything work out.  Start talking numbers and we'll start analyzing.

You contradict yourself. Market forces use numbers by definition. Besides, you are the one with faith based in side chains that will make everything work out.

In the mean time, we have one chance to stay within the constraints of what is achievable behind TOR and realistically likewise hardening methods.  I'm not interested in throwing it away... especially when there is no need and a very promising solution is around the corner.

TOR has nothing to do with the Bitcoin protocol. TOR was compromised recently. If it was used, it would be in very limited fashion.

Tell me when TOR has ever been compromised by itself and not involving javascript/flash/other useless plugins that you should have OFF exploits, .
I don't think it has ever happened.

[cbeast]

Tell me when TOR has ever been compromised by itself and not involving javascript/flash/other useless plugins that you should have OFF exploits, .
I don't think it has ever happened.

http://securityaffairs.co/wordpress/27193/hacking/attacks-against-tor-network.html

The security advisory explains that bad actors were leveraging a critical flaw in Tor to modify protocol headers in order to perform a traffic confirmation attack and inject a special code into the protocol header used by attackers to compare certain metrics from relays to de-anonymize users. The advisory reports that 115 malicious fast non-exit relays (6.4% of whole Tor network) were involved in the attack, the servers were actively monitoring the relays on both ends of a Tor circuit in an effort to de-anonymize users.

[Buffer Overflow]

None of you pro-fork people have given anything to hint at where you want to stop with your simplistic 'increase block size to scale' scheme, or where you want to draw the line with exclusions. 

What's wrong with simplicity? I'm a huge fan of the KISS principal.

[sangaman]

Two hypocritical arguments I've seen brought up in this thread in one form or another multiple times:

1. Arguing that using what Satoshi wanted (a temporary 1 MB cap as an anti-spam limit) is not a valid point in favor of raising the block size limit, because it's an appeal to authority and therefore invalid. But then the same people, or at least same people arguing in favor of preserving the 1 MB limit, will claim that a hard fork of bitcoin could not be the "real" bitcoin or even that it would be an attack on the real bitcoin. Which is it? Should the original (post-limit being added) protocol of bitcoin be dogma? Or is putting weight on the original vision of Satoshi an invalid appeal to authority?

Personally, I think Satoshi's stated opinions and original plans/views for bitcoin should be taken into consideration but not be the end-all be-all. Not to appeal to authority, but he was clearly someone who knew a lot about what he was doing and I'll give him and others much more knowledgeable than I the benefit of the doubt in situations that are ambiguous to me.

2. The "if it aint broke don't fix it" mentality. I think this is shortsighted, but it is also somewhat self-defeating. The 1 MB limit is a anti-spam prevention measure that currently does not seem to be preventing much of anything. The average block size is still comfortably under half of that limit. When the limit was first introduced, it looks like average block sizes were something around 1% of the limit. It was put in place to prevent extremely abnormally sized blocks, even though they had not been a problem up to that point. You could say the 1 MB limit was fixing something that wasn't broke.

Given the average block sizes of today, removing the 1 MB cap wouldn't be "fixing" anything in the short term because it wouldn't change anything. Rather, it would prevent the cap from becoming something it was never meant to be - an arbitrary limit that massively restricts bitcoin long term with wider adoption. What we need to do and what I hope happens, is put a plan in place soon that intelligently addresses the block size limit and which can be executed before 1 MB blocks become commonplace. If we wait until it is really a problem, we've waited too long and a fork will be even more difficult to execute.

That's all very fine, but the optics to anyone looking in (especially newcomers) isn't very good.

What makes you think this? My feeling is that newcomers won't care or understand what the block limit is at. I'd think they just want something that works and, consequently, the only way bitcoin can work for a large number of newcomers is if the block limit is increased.

[tvbcof]

What makes you think this? My feeling is that newcomers won't care or understand what the block limit is at. I'd think they just want something that works and, consequently, the only way bitcoin can work for a large number of newcomers is if the block limit is increased.

What do you mean by 'works'?

[bambou]

What makes you think this? My feeling is that newcomers won't care or understand what the block limit is at. I'd think they just want something that works and, consequently, the only way bitcoin can work for a large number of newcomers is if the block limit is increased.

What do you mean by 'works'?

something they'll never use, especially not in africa.

[wilth1]

Which fork are the pool nodes going to take?

[sangaman]

What makes you think this? My feeling is that newcomers won't care or understand what the block limit is at. I'd think they just want something that works and, consequently, the only way bitcoin can work for a large number of newcomers is if the block limit is increased.

What do you mean by 'works'?

Works as a decentralized, peer-to-peer means of exchange and money transfer without dependence on third parties. If people can't use the blockchain regularly to at least some extent, bitcoin is not "working" as far as I'm concerned. D&T illustrated this point well, as a user base of just a few million people would be able to make a transaction once a month or less and this is not practical for conducting personal finance, even if you don't count all the "cup of coffee" type transactions.''

In my opinion, if bitcoin can't function as a way for people to take their finances into their own hands, without having to rely on permission from governments and/or services from third parties, then it will have lost its greatest way to provide value to the world. That's why I use bitcoin and why I first got into bitcoin. Bitcoin as a scarce token of value only interests me to the extent that it can be used in a global, decentralized payment network. If it can't be used that way for the vast majority of people, then it no longer "works" in my opinion.

[tvbcof]

What makes you think this? My feeling is that newcomers won't care or understand what the block limit is at. I'd think they just want something that works and, consequently, the only way bitcoin can work for a large number of newcomers is if the block limit is increased.

What do you mean by 'works'?

Works as a decentralized, peer-to-peer means of exchange and money transfer without dependence on third parties. If people can't use the blockchain regularly to at least some extent, bitcoin is not "working" as far as I'm concerned. D&T illustrated this point well, as a user base of just a few million people would be able to make a transaction once a month or less and this is not practical for conducting personal finance, even if you don't count all the "cup of coffee" type transactions.''

In my opinion, if bitcoin can't function as a way for people to take their finances into their own hands, without having to rely on permission from governments and/or services from third parties, then it will have lost its greatest way to provide value to the world. That's why I use bitcoin and why I first got into bitcoin. Bitcoin as a scarce token of value only interests me to the extent that it can be used in a global, decentralized payment network. If it can't be used that way for the vast majority of people, then it no longer "works" in my opinion.

In that way I agree.  For my day-to-day needs, mainstream financial systems solve 99.9% of my problems just fine.  I posted something related just now here:

  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=948726.msg10396848#msg10396848

Bitcoin 'failure' to me means that Bitcoin loses it's ability to 'work' in the corner cases where mainstream financial solutions do not.  I see a failure in this respect to be a distinct possibility when I look at the population numbers and other factors.  Chief amoung these other factors, the kind of resistance we can expect to a solution which has the potentials of an autonomous monetary solution.

I suggest that the only rational way that Bitcoin has much of a chance of providing even the kinds of corner-case functions that people like me appreciate would be to provide a solid backing for more flexible solutions to use.  This is my opinion, of course, but at the risk of tooting my own horn a little to much, I seem to have a better than average knack at sensing these types of dangers/opportunities.

To much abstraction in a complex system can be a problem, but so can to little.  The human brain consists of, among other things, a brain stem and a cortex with various areas dedicated to various things.  The brainstem is protected deep within the brain and has priority blood flow circuits and such.  It is responsible for the involuntary and necessary functions of modulating breathing, gut function, blood pressure, etc.  To some extent, damage to areas of the cortex can be addressed by moving responsibilities around, but it is futile without the actual brainstem functions which maintain life itself.  This is a good design and one that I feel worthwhile to consider for a world-wide crypto-currency system which is also very complex.  That is what 'sidechains' resting on a 'native Bitcoin core' mean to me.

 - edit: slight

[thejaytiesto]

What makes you think this? My feeling is that newcomers won't care or understand what the block limit is at. I'd think they just want something that works and, consequently, the only way bitcoin can work for a large number of newcomers is if the block limit is increased.

What do you mean by 'works'?

something they'll never use, especially not in africa.

There are millions of old phones in africa. Software for these phones and infrastructures is being worked on so they can access btc too. The idea is to go worldwide, anything else is failure.

[Cryddit]

Tell me when TOR has ever been compromised by itself and not involving javascript/flash/other useless plugins that you should have OFF exploits, .
I don't think it has ever happened.

NSA programs for identifying Tor traffic on the internet: Stormbrew, Fairview, Oakstar, and Blarney.  These are partnerships with telecoms companies carrying the traffic, which identify encrypted packets fitting the Tor protocol and identify users sending and receiving that traffic.

XKeyscore is a database developed by the NSA that monitors all traffic sent and received by identified nodes, whether that traffic is Tor-encrypted or not.  IE, using Tor identifies your PBX (that is, your telephone line or cell account, not your IP address or your MAC which could change) for total monitoring. Xkeyscore also monitors traffic and identifies new targets for monitoring based on the content of their searches and the content of the web pages they're reading.  According to the NSA's tortured definitions they have not "collected" this information nor identified particular people for monitoring until a human being retrieves the stored information or designates a particular person - they claim in short that as long as it's their programs doing it as opposed to their live people, it's not a constitutional violation.  

Quantum (or QUANTUMINSERT if you're on the other side of the Atlantic Puddle) is a set of fake Internet backbone servers, placed by the NSA via partnership with the telecoms companies.  Quantum servers' position on the backbone means that they are usually capable of reacting before the legitimate servers to which requests are targeted.  Their response is typically to redirect monitored traffic (including the non-Tor traffic of monitoring targets) to or through FoxAcid servers.  China apparently uses the same technology to monitor and interfere with their dissidents, but I don't know what name they use for it, nor whether they share information with the NSA.  

FoxAcid is a set of fake Internet servers to which traffic gets rerouted in real time, effectively interposing a "Man in the Middle" into Tor and other traffic.  Usually this does not imply the ability to decrypt Tor packets; FoxAcid servers' main purpose w/r/t Tor is serving malware to the Tor computers.  When successful, this downgrades encryption, enables later tracking, or causes the computer to "leak" identifying information.  Arguably, FoxAcid cannot directly eavesdrop on a Tor session if you're not running something vulnerable.  In practice, it attacks targets that have run Tor traffic in the past, while they don't have all that vulnerable crap shut down.  Also in practice, these are the guys who have strong-arm capability over the people who manufactured or sold your computer.  You could be running something vulnerable at the hardware level and not know it. Finally, FoxAcid is also used to manage the NSA botnet of infected computers; that is, when a malware-infested machine makes a 'callback' for new malware, instructions, or to report on what you're doing, a FoxAcid server takes the call.  

EgotisticalGiraffe was one such malware delivered by FoxAcid; it was an exploit of a type confusion vulnerability in E4X, a library that the Tor Browser Bundle used for XML extensions for Javascript.  The type confusion resulted in XML-encoded javascript being executed even when Javascript was turned off.  It was not fixed until Firefox 16.0.2, after the Snowden Papers explained the exploit.

DireScallop is another FoxAcid payload.  It is executed from Javascript, and used to stop commercially-available security systems from preventing other malicious payloads from making permanent changes in security configuration on the target systems.

In Early August, 2013, the FBI was running more than half the Tor nodes, including the Tormail nodes.  When you're running more than half the nodes, traffic analysis really isn't all that hard. http://www.metafilter.com/130629/Possible-FBI-infiltration-of-TOR

In December 2013, a Harvard student used an anonymous account to access Tor, and used Tor to post a fake bomb threat to avoid a final exam.  The FBI found via logfiles that realtime traffic from offcampus did not correlate any Tor packets with the exact time when the threat was posted, got a list of Harvard computers that had used the Tor protocol in the timeframe in question, went through them one by one to find the one from which the threat had been sent, identified the person who had been using it at the time via non-Tor logged traffic, and arrested him.

2012: In "Operation Torpedo", the FBI used Metasploit to send Flash malware called 'Decloaker' to nodes that had recently been observed to use the Tor protocol, resulting in unmasking "a majority" of the Tor users on the net at that time.  This was not reported until December 2014:  http://www.wired.com/2014/12/fbi-metasploit-tor/

Here are three direct links to images of Snowden documents published in Der Speigel.  Guess what:  They're using traffic shaping and correlation attacks to de-anonymize Tor users!  "WELL DUH!"  
http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35538.pdf
http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35543.pdf
http://www.spiegel.de/media/media-35542.pdf

September, 2013: A GCHQ program named FLYING PIG is discovered; it cannot decrypt SSL packets, but can identify SSL traffic that is encrypted using the same keys.  This was quickly extended to correlate Tor packets.  Details are unknown; this may be fixed now that DUAL_EC_DRBG is no longer used and it may not.  Interestingly, this came out in the context of an MITM attack in which the NSA was impersonating Google while engaged in economic espionage against Peterobaras, a Brazilian company.  

TUMULT, TURBULENCE, and TURMOIL:  NSA programs that monitor traffic at the wire or channel level.  They parse packets, without regard to where from and where to, looking for associative information -- for example, email lists from Google, YahooMail and other mail services - contact lists from LinkedIn - buddies lists from social media services - usernames appearing in the same thread (and especially in quoted messages, the way I quoted yours above) in forums like this one - etc - essentially anything that identifies people as having contact or friends in common.  So if somebody has both you and any of the same people you communicate with via Tor on the same mail list or buddies list, guess what - they already know that you have something to do with them!  

Welcome to life in my fishbowl, friend; they already know I'm a troublemaker, and now that I've hit this many keywords in one message, which they know you're reading, and which they know is a reply to your message?  They know you're a troublemaker too.  Have a nice day.

[Cryddit]

To anybody who thinks maybe they weren't being monitored before my outburst above and are being monitored now?  

That's crap.

There is absolutely no way this forum is not being closely monitored.  I presume that everyone participating here, including those participating via Tor, are fully aware (or at least should be aware) that this is true.  My 'educational' post above changes nothing.  

Cryddit

[Buffer Overflow]

To anybody who thinks maybe they weren't being monitored before my outburst above and are being monitored now? 

I run a Tor relay 24/7. I'm used to being red flagged.

[traincarswreck]

We seem to function on the belief that the important, significant, relevant and most logical arguments, positions, points, etc. get identified immediately (or at all) and get filtered to the top, or at least where they need to be. Having proof that this is obviously not at all truth or reality, I must suspect not only are we ignoring many key points but many people refuse to present their arguments positions points etc.

MOST people here (and in the "linked" thread from OP) are functioning from the "mysterious" religious birth of Satoshi and ignoring the overall reality of the relation of bitcoin to the history of money (and therefore the future of it). I myself await sanity, and a proper position within the community so I may properly contribute.  Until then all I see is the illogical dialog between religious peoples that will do anything to not face reality.

Bitcoin to me is not about letting the less knowledgeable masses have a vote in the direction of mankind, but rather to filter to the top those that are obviously the most beneficial thinkers to our collective positions. We have not begun to address this, but we all recognize problems with seemingly "unidentifiable" causes.

There are those that would point out my comments do not address the problem of the OP, and there are probably a few, and only a few, who do nothing but point out the exact problem/solution that this post identifies.

A concrete example to me, is talking about bitcoin as a store of wealth.  Creating a bucket to hold something that is dear to us is one thing, but attempting to adjust the parameters of the bucket so that what is stored becomes inherently more valuable seems like lunacy to me.  Decentralization is ultimately the un-pooling of wealth. Trying to create something that gravitates wealth and then attempting to decentralize its implementation seems like we are not at all addressing the totality of reality.

Cliffs: if each bitcoin is worth unimaginable amounts of something (dollars?), we fucked up.

Wealth, money, currency, centralization/decentralization, economy, health, progress, evolution

What do these words mean in relation to each other and in relation to the past, present, and future of "humanity"?

I wrote my solution here, as my ears were burning from previous posts, and because apparently unknowleadgeable people get to have a vote anyways: https://thewealthofchips.wordpress.com/2015/02/08/solving-bitcoins-block-size-problem/

Let me know when we are ready to address the next evolution of games in relation to smart contracts.