Mind reading:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-3613443/The-device-eavesdrops-voices-head-Mind-reaching-machine-soon-turn-secret-thoughts-speech.html
Can this be true or is it fake?
Topic: Economic Totalitarianism - page 18. (Read 345758 times)
sockpuppet1 ought to toss in some comments now... 
There is a huge distinction in the law between using a password, and using publicly visible biometrics:
The government is dancing between the raindrops. The 5th Amendment states that you cannot be compelled to testify against yourself. You have the right to remain silent. So how do they get around this?
Even worse is what courts have done with this regarding telephones. If you use a fingerprint scanner as a security feature on your computer or cell phone, they can trace it and throw you in prison until you do as the court demands because they regard any biological evidence as an exception. In other words, you are not being forced to testify against yourself. They are taking bodily evidence to find you guilty.
Courts can and do order people to unlock their phones with their fingerprint. Providing a password is different from providing a fingerprint. So you might want to forget biotechnology for security. The legal implications are far different from a password.
Even worse is what courts have done with this regarding telephones. If you use a fingerprint scanner as a security feature on your computer or cell phone, they can trace it and throw you in prison until you do as the court demands because they regard any biological evidence as an exception. In other words, you are not being forced to testify against yourself. They are taking bodily evidence to find you guilty.
Courts can and do order people to unlock their phones with their fingerprint. Providing a password is different from providing a fingerprint. So you might want to forget biotechnology for security. The legal implications are far different from a password.
And so Google is busy working on a way to coax us to stop using passwords and use biometric and publicly available information for logins, which of course the lazy sheeple will love:
Quote from: http://techcrunch.com/2016/05/23/google-plans-to-bring-password-free-logins-to-android-apps-by-year-end/
Google’s plan to eliminate passwords in favor of systems that take into account a combination of signals – like your typing patterns, your walking patterns, your current location, and more – will be available to Android developers by year-end, assuming all goes well in testing this year. In an under-the-radar announcement Friday afternoon at the Google I/O developer conference
...
With Project Abacus, users would instead unlock devices or sign into applications based on a cumulative “Trust Score.” This score would be calculated using a variety of factors, including your typing patterns, current location, speed and voice patterns, facial recognition, and other things.
Google has already implemented similar technology on Android devices (running Android 5.0 and higher) called “Smart Lock,” which lets you automatically unlock your device when you’re in a trusted location, have a trusted Bluetooth device connected, when you’re carrying your device, or when the device recognizes your face.
Project Abacus is a bit different. It runs in the background on your device to continually collect data about you to form its Trust Score.
This score is basically about how confident it is that you are who you say you are. If your score isn’t high enough, apps could revert back to asking for passwords.
...
With Project Abacus, users would instead unlock devices or sign into applications based on a cumulative “Trust Score.” This score would be calculated using a variety of factors, including your typing patterns, current location, speed and voice patterns, facial recognition, and other things.
Google has already implemented similar technology on Android devices (running Android 5.0 and higher) called “Smart Lock,” which lets you automatically unlock your device when you’re in a trusted location, have a trusted Bluetooth device connected, when you’re carrying your device, or when the device recognizes your face.
Project Abacus is a bit different. It runs in the background on your device to continually collect data about you to form its Trust Score.
This score is basically about how confident it is that you are who you say you are. If your score isn’t high enough, apps could revert back to asking for passwords.
And the facial recognition is becoming much more accurate:
http://www.nestmann.com/orwell-could-never-have-predicted-this
Edit: I will propose a better technical solution in which we don't need to rely on Google to snoop on all our activity in order to build a trust profile.
We should use a 4 - 5 digit passcode to unlock our screen. The mobile phone can store this passcode one-way encrypted. So this means the authorities or even a hacker will be able to unlock our phone with sufficient computer power to break the one way encryption (perhaps at most a few weeks of computing time, but probably much less). But the average person who grabs your phone, won't be able to unlock it:
Quote from: http://cointelegraph.com/news/who-will-keep-you-safe-a-comparison-of-bitcoin-wallets-that-arent-digital
Hacker potential: Complex generation of a 4-digit PIN for Trezor described above is enhanced in the event of unsolicited attempts to discover it. With each incorrect attempt, the waiting time to try again increases by a factor of 2. With 6561 possible combinations, discovery of the PIN is unlikely.
Trezor’s website contains a large amount of information on a range of possible attack situations. The full list is available here.
Trezor’s website contains a large amount of information on a range of possible attack situations. The full list is available here.
Except for sensitive data and activities such as conducting a Bitcoin transaction or access the files, data, and apps/sites you designate as highly confidential, will require a different 4 - 5 passcode and also you will need your "Ledger Unplugged" NFC smartcard present. So that means the password is stored encrypted on the smartcard, which means no virus can access it. The authorities would need access to and to hack the smartcard. So this means you don't carry your smartcard around with you generally when you are also carrying your sensitive data with you. Or you have two smartcards, one for "secure against all authorities" which you almost never carry, and another one you carry in your wallet all the time for confidentiality against most hackers but not against the authorities.
So then all you need to remember are two 4 or 5 digit passcodes. And you back up your 24 word private key using a metal wallet that you store in a safe, so even if you lose your smartcard, then you can recover everything by buying a new smartcard:
https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/cryptosteel-the-ultimate-cold-storage-wallet
If you are concerned about your metal wallet being stolen, then use multi-signatures and store metal wallet backups of the private key at more than one secure location.
Some more useful links:
http://cointelegraph.com/news/who-will-keep-you-safe-a-comparison-of-bitcoin-wallets-that-arent-digital
https://choosecase.com/
Incompetence, ignorance and socialism all go hand in hand 
This and capitalism is full given its prevalence on the globe 
Though of course too large a state presence in the economy and politics is not good. 
Incompetence, ignorance and socialism all go hand in hand
I got into a conversation during the week with one on the brightest minds in
the UK: 1st Class Honours; highly placed in a national business exam; the
sort of person you expect to rise to the top. Here's the strange thing -
why wouldn't this person seek promotion up the management structure? Holding back
because of tax or student loans? So I had a look at their Student Loans
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36388011) and take-home-pay.
Very rough summary: just below £42000 marginal nett income is (100-20-12-9)%
and above £42000 it is (100-40-2-9)% that is (Pay -tax -NI -Student Loan.)
The figures vary, depending, but you get the picture. I can't be certain, but
if things fell badly the marginal rate of deductions might rise as high as
61% for a narrow range of annual pay, not including deductions for pension etc.
It looks like the addition of student debt is just enough to move most graduate
jobs onto the wrong part of the Laffer curve. The trade off in stress, social life,
vs financial rewards isn't worth it. Which is why, I'd guess, that employers
are complaining about skill shortages. So, they either relax, enjoy life in an
undemanding job, or leave for the USA, and work 100 hours a week for a salary
well into six figures. Some choose one life, some another.
In the bigger picture, human resources, skills, and knowledge are what gives
nations compeditive advantages in the knowledge economy, so this is not going
to end well for the UK. How to fix it? I have no idea.
BTW, ask MA this question:
Why blame Socialism when Incompetence explains so much?
the UK: 1st Class Honours; highly placed in a national business exam; the
sort of person you expect to rise to the top. Here's the strange thing -
why wouldn't this person seek promotion up the management structure? Holding back
because of tax or student loans? So I had a look at their Student Loans
(http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-36388011) and take-home-pay.
Very rough summary: just below £42000 marginal nett income is (100-20-12-9)%
and above £42000 it is (100-40-2-9)% that is (Pay -tax -NI -Student Loan.)
The figures vary, depending, but you get the picture. I can't be certain, but
if things fell badly the marginal rate of deductions might rise as high as
61% for a narrow range of annual pay, not including deductions for pension etc.
It looks like the addition of student debt is just enough to move most graduate
jobs onto the wrong part of the Laffer curve. The trade off in stress, social life,
vs financial rewards isn't worth it. Which is why, I'd guess, that employers
are complaining about skill shortages. So, they either relax, enjoy life in an
undemanding job, or leave for the USA, and work 100 hours a week for a salary
well into six figures. Some choose one life, some another.
In the bigger picture, human resources, skills, and knowledge are what gives
nations compeditive advantages in the knowledge economy, so this is not going
to end well for the UK. How to fix it? I have no idea.
BTW, ask MA this question:
Why blame Socialism when Incompetence explains so much?
Yurop moving full speed ahead down the drain
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/eu-passed-tax-id-numbers-for-everyone/
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/eu-passed-tax-id-numbers-for-everyone/
That's rather scary for the Yopeens (that's genuine Ebonics for Europeans in Philadelphia dialect), that will make it harder for anyone to free themselves from a BIG European Superstate.
Perhaps a whole lot of people will take careful note if there is a Brexit. Were I British (nor do I know all the facts), I would vote "AMF" (Adios Mothaf***ers). If the UK leaves, others will take note and likely become more interested in not having BRUSSELS always telling them what to do, what taxes to pay, etc.
In the USA, we all have a number (Social Security number, which originally meant NOT to be an ID number..., sure, sure), but I would *guess* that Brussels will keep growing their tendency to becoming a powerful & scary centralized Superstate.
That does seem to be a pattern seen in places sympathetic to Socialism.
sockpuppet1 ought to toss in some comments now...
* * *
Yet Yurp keeps letting in Muslim rapefugees. WHAT is going on inside their little old brains...?
Yurop moving full speed ahead down the drain
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/eu-passed-tax-id-numbers-for-everyone/
https://www.armstrongeconomics.com/international-news/europes-current-economy/eu-passed-tax-id-numbers-for-everyone/
If Only ...
http://anonhq.com/media-will-not-report-anonymous-shuts-new-york-stock-exchange-fed-reserve-world-bank-vatican/
also this ...
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/map-tracks-governments-hack-activists-reporters/
"An informal group of security researchers calling themselves the Digital Freedom Alliance this week launched a collaborative software project to https://digitalfreedom.io/map/" target="_blank">aggregate and map out/a> government hackers' attacks against journalists, activists, lawyers and NGOs around the world. The project, whose https://github.com/digitalfreedom/data-targetedthreats/blob/master/targetedthreats.csv" target="_blank">code is hosted on Github, collects data about state-sponsored malware infections from public sources like the University of Toronto's https://citizenlab.org/">Citizen Lab, https://targetedthreats.net/">TargetedThreats.net, and security firms' research. It then organizes that data into a map that breaks down the attacks by date, target type, the family of malware used, as well as the location of the command and control server used to coordinate each malware campaign. "I was tired of the Hacking Team-types claiming that there are no solid evidences of abuses, when there are plenty," says Guarnieri. "You get most of them plotted in that map.""
http://anonhq.com/media-will-not-report-anonymous-shuts-new-york-stock-exchange-fed-reserve-world-bank-vatican/
also this ...
https://www.wired.com/2016/05/map-tracks-governments-hack-activists-reporters/
"An informal group of security researchers calling themselves the Digital Freedom Alliance this week launched a collaborative software project to https://digitalfreedom.io/map/" target="_blank">aggregate and map out/a> government hackers' attacks against journalists, activists, lawyers and NGOs around the world. The project, whose https://github.com/digitalfreedom/data-targetedthreats/blob/master/targetedthreats.csv" target="_blank">code is hosted on Github, collects data about state-sponsored malware infections from public sources like the University of Toronto's https://citizenlab.org/">Citizen Lab, https://targetedthreats.net/">TargetedThreats.net, and security firms' research. It then organizes that data into a map that breaks down the attacks by date, target type, the family of malware used, as well as the location of the command and control server used to coordinate each malware campaign. "I was tired of the Hacking Team-types claiming that there are no solid evidences of abuses, when there are plenty," says Guarnieri. "You get most of them plotted in that map.""
He was not careful w.r.t. running arguably afoul of laws preventing the use the word "dollar" in ways that might offend the US Treasury.
This is one of the reasons I created the following linked thread to make sure I understood well the laws that might govern the creation of an altcoin:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/the-altcoin-topic-everyone-wants-to-sweep-under-the-rug-1218399
I agree with what you say, in that von NotHaus was risking a lot by making the currency similar, but the Liberty Reserve is a completely different case (von NotHaus was sentenced, but not to 20 years, ffs).
"Anonymity well I tried"
Maybe anonmity is not that important for your average user. But, the ability to keep what is yours from being taken by thebanksters, TPTB, your local hacker, is an absolute. The unconditional control of any CC must remain with the individual.
Maybe anonmity is not that important for your average user. But, the ability to keep what is yours from being taken by thebanksters, TPTB, your local hacker, is an absolute. The unconditional control of any CC must remain with the individual.
Mass privacy is very important. That is why Monero and Zcash matter. We'll never have mass anonymity. Fuhgeddaboudit.
Privacy doesn't mean privacy from the authorities. Sorry. Politics and technology will never allow it. I tried to search for the absolute technology for anonymity and I can promise you it does not exist to be found. I promise you.
The control over an individual's CC will remain with the individual, but the control over the CC protocol will remain with the global elite. This will always be the case. Accept it. This is the reality of the world we exist in.
You say the protocol will remain with the global elite ... will that include your version of a CC, should it ever come to fruition?
If I bring my design to fruition, the intent is that it can't be centralized, because the power remains in the hands of the each spender to choose where they sent their unprofitable PoW share. But the bottom line is that Iron Law of Political Economics guarantees that in effect the global elite control the minds of the people, e.g. which wallet software the spenders choose, etc..
You'll never create a protocol that is immune to political economics. Not even the base protocols of the Internet are immune.
But yeah, I'd attempt to give us the best that can be achieved in terms of decentralization.
I am just being honest. I don't want to fool people with ideological bullshit.
I was thinking earlier about the legal system vs crypto. Does anyone think user defined mixing will be a weakpoint of Monero in the legal department? As in, a fixed mixed count would have been preferable if attempting to design around the law when user defined is pretty similar to active mixing.
It seems kind of obvious that governments would be far more likely to consider active mixing as an act of laundering (darkcoin), while if anonymity is part of the protocol itself, it's just a shortcoming of government auditing. Both Monero and Zcash are safer legal-wise (than Darkcoin), although you would likely have to enforce a fixed mix count instead of variable if you really wanted to be safe in Monero.
I believe perhaps the global elite will kill off any system which doesn't mandate a viewkey on each mixed transaction, wherein some elected foundation or body is given responsibility for whom has the private key(s) to the viewkey. Better perhaps a multisig viewkey would be best where these would be given to multiple authorities (e.g. each of the major powers or regions national security agencies), and then a quorum of them would have to agree in order to view a transaction.
Thus I think the level of mixing (above 0) is irrelevant.
I just don't believe you snub the global elite and expect to not get your ass wiped in the mud.
I had hoped for an absolute technological immunity, but I studied all the technology deeply and I am very, very confident to tell you that it is impossible. The global elite will remain in control of the Iron Law of Political Economics.
Mass privacy is very important and Monero should stop being delusional and realize how they have to structure their system in order to be accepted.
I guess they might just attack the users and catch them at the on/off ramps and destroy interest in coins that obscure the blockchain from the authorities.
How can a user living in a country where use of cryptocurrencies are unregulated be controlled?
There will exist no such place. Name one. Just one.
Moreover, the protocol is controlled by the Chinese mining cartel, so all the regulation can be done from China. Your coins can be confiscated China regulates their ASIC mining farms. If Monero scales up, it will also be captured by the Chinese cartel.
With the rise of decentralized exchanges, controlling all on and off ramps seems impossible. Some countries may choose to be welcoming instead of hostile.
The Internet will be regulated. China is the model. They will assume the throne of the financial capital of the world in 2033.
You can waste your time disbelieving (and end up in jail and/or all you wealth confiscated). Meanwhile I will get my ducks aligned so I am congruent with the reality.
... the only person more wrong on BTC than Anonymint is Armstrong.
You and Armstrong are both wrong on the future of BitCON:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.14854131
As for the price action I predicted, stay tuned...
I think Armstrong will end up being correct about bitcoin (not surviving the other side of 2020) let's see..
It is not clear if it will destroyed or merely turned into a tool to confiscate wealth, and a better Paypal for the masses. My bet is the totalitarian variant of the future. Click the link above to find out why. Men need a tyrant.
[...]
It is not clear if it will destroyed or merely turned into a tool to confiscate wealth, and a better Paypal for the masses. My bet is the totalitarian variant of the future. Click the link above to find out why. Men need a tyrant.
I think Armstrong will end up being correct about bitcoin (not surviving the other side of 2020) let's see..
It is not clear if it will destroyed or merely turned into a tool to confiscate wealth, and a better Paypal for the masses. My bet is the totalitarian variant of the future. Click the link above to find out why. Men need a tyrant.
I very much doubt it becomes a "better" Paypal for the masses for the simple reason that it isn't better.
I would be bet on failure over widespread usage of a coopted system. In fact I'd lay significant odds on that bet. (Though failure is somewhat difficult to define precisely -- let's say significant loss of value and usage.)
I see even an oligarchy controlled Bitcoin as better than Paypal, because:
1. Bitcoin is a global politik; and thus even the Chinese mining oligarchy (cum banksters pulling the strings behind the curtain) can't do anything which isn't politically correct globally.
2. Thus Bitcoin will retain many attributes that Paypal as a corporate offering can't provide such as inability to deny any person in any account equal opportunity to access, inability to enforce holdbacks, block certain industries, and other arbitrary shit Paypal does which make my head want to explode. Bitcoin is a trojan horse launched by the global elite to subvert any localized attempt to block/control the shift to digital currency.
3. Thus I predict enormous adoption for Bitcoin, but just remember it will be owned and controlled by the global elite (aka the banksters). And the global socialism will enforce a global confiscation/expropriation of those with wealth, in the coming years. It will be a bittersweet success.
[...]
3. Thus I predict enormous adoption for Bitcoin, but just remember it will be owned and controlled by the global elite (aka the banksters). And the global socialism will enforce a global confiscation/expropriation of those with wealth, in the coming years. It will be a bittersweet success.
3. Thus I predict enormous adoption for Bitcoin, but just remember it will be owned and controlled by the global elite (aka the banksters). And the global socialism will enforce a global confiscation/expropriation of those with wealth, in the coming years. It will be a bittersweet success.
Meh, hardly anybody wants Bitcoin, and the only ones who do will just flee it and use something else if it becomes government controlled. Using Bitcoin now is a pain in the ass and something a relatively small number of people do at great inconvenience and only out of necessity (generally speaking holding it for as short a time as possible). They'll have no trouble switching to Zcash or whatever else if necessary for their purposes. The rest will just stick with actual Paypal and similar products.
The only ones with any real wealth in Bitcoin are speculators who treat Bitcoin like a Wall Street product (and often store it in easily-confiscatable form on exchanges anyway). Well yeah maybe their Bitcoin will get confiscated. Not really any different from any other Wall Street product, and not at all surprising (to me). A few of the smartest ones will probably be able to escape confiscation, again not so different from traditional finance.
For the moment Bitcoin is only a gambler's paradise, but the conversion to instant microtransactions is the key to launching it into mass adoption.
That is why the block chain size debate has been so contentious, because it is a battle over who (Chinese mining cartel + Blockstream, all controlled behind the curtain by the banksters) owns Bitcoin as it is scaled out.
It's pretty evident from the establishment embracing Bitcoin and things like this CME news, that TPTB will use Bitcoin as a golden parachute to escape the death trap fiat system they created. They know it's extremely hard to do business using gold, and you would need to implode civilization back to the dark ages to make gold work again, so Bitcoin is their go to play to keep the wheels turning at an above caveman level.
Ever since humans stopped being hunter gatherers and settled land, it created abundance. That's when the predator class arose to skim the abundance. It's in TPTB' best interests to keep a high level of civilization running in order to skim it instead of having civilization implode back to ancient Babylon. That would likely just implode their own standard of living as well once the caviar supply lines run out.
Yes, they create catastrophes to benefit from them, but I don't think they want ones so big that they become completely unpredictable and threaten their own power structure. They always have some type of golden parachutes in mind, and Bitcoin is seemingly the only viable thing around for digital transactions in the coming great reset. The world supply lines are very intertwined, and if you cannot do digital transactions on an international level because nobody trusts any of the currencies, then you immediately go back to the 1800's. Do TPTB want to live in the 1800's? Probably not. They have to devise something to keep the wheels of the world turning.
Ever since humans stopped being hunter gatherers and settled land, it created abundance. That's when the predator class arose to skim the abundance. It's in TPTB' best interests to keep a high level of civilization running in order to skim it instead of having civilization implode back to ancient Babylon. That would likely just implode their own standard of living as well once the caviar supply lines run out.
Yes, they create catastrophes to benefit from them, but I don't think they want ones so big that they become completely unpredictable and threaten their own power structure. They always have some type of golden parachutes in mind, and Bitcoin is seemingly the only viable thing around for digital transactions in the coming great reset. The world supply lines are very intertwined, and if you cannot do digital transactions on an international level because nobody trusts any of the currencies, then you immediately go back to the 1800's. Do TPTB want to live in the 1800's? Probably not. They have to devise something to keep the wheels of the world turning.
Agreed, but they didn't create Bitcoin as the primary escape hatch from fiat collapse (which will instead be the one world currency reserve unit basket), but rather because they want to subvert any one nation's control over the digitalization of currency. They don't want a bastardized fragmentation of the digitalized commerce world. That is all good. The bad part is they control the global politik, and thus they control Bitcoin. They can easily incorporate capital controls and expropriation into the politics of regulation of Bitcoin and then they can easily implement it since they are funding and arranging the Chinese mining cartel and Blockstream's $74 million funding.
Edit: my take on the opportunities ahead:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.14855669
Hey guys I have a question that just popped up in my mind. What if the price of Bitcoin doesn't increase much after the halving and with the cut in half block rewards and increasing difficulty, do you think the Chinese miners will go bankrupt or they will manage to break even and get a slight profit? Can the Chinese government offer the mining farms preferential electricity pricing lower than the average for the country?
The first to go bankrupt are the marginal miners, not the ones with the lowest electricity costs and the highest efficiencies due to very large economies-of-scale in mining farms.
The halving will INCREASE the centralization of Bitcoin's hashrate (to China's mining farms), not decrease it.
Satoshi designed the distribution curve this way. Who is your hero, who is your daddy who sold you to the banksters?
Dude c`mon, you cant just talk about bitcoin like that. Even if what you say is true, the benefits massively outweigh the drawdowns.
Oh the benefits of being raped by the banksters.
Bitcoin is largest of the scams. It is pulling $1 million a day out of pockets and handing it to some corruption in China.
Dude c`mon, you cant just talk about bitcoin like that. Even if what you say is true, the benefits massively outweigh the drawdowns.
How many millions of people will be helped by remittances? They can just buy bitcoin at 1 atm, send the money home, and their family cash it out.
They pay like maximum 5% fee, and dont have to worry about paperworks and capital control.
I was just at a WU checkpoint and saw yesterday a grandma receiving money from her daughter that sent her as she was living outside.
Now imagine the money how much money goes to corporate bureocrats and useless midddleman in that transaction. Bitcoin by all means is much
better because it lets the money stay in the hands of the people.
There's no single entity with 51% of the hash rate, so there's only a problem if you're working under the assumption that mining pools must be colluding because they happen to reside within the same arbitrary borders and communists made them do it... or something like that, anyway. 
Here's the state of the network over the last 24 hours:
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/hashdist.png
I remain unconcerned.
Here's the state of the network over the last 24 hours:
http://www.teamhellspawn.com/hashdist.png
I remain unconcerned.
You are disingenuously spreading lies and you know it.
It has been explained to you numerous times that it is not the pools that are the only point of centralization but also the mining farms. There is one cattle farmer in China who is investing in a mining farm large enough to mine 30% of all BTC that is stolen from us via printing-coins-out-of-thin-air (aka coinbase block reward) to pay miners.
Also it is entirely illogical to claim that cartels and oligarchies do not cooperate with each other, when in fact all throughout history of mankind they always do, because it is the only way they can control the pricing and reap more profit for themselves. It has already been explained to you numerous times that the Chinese mining cartel prevented the timely increase of the block size by refusing to mine on Bitcoin Classic or XT. This is because they prefer to support Blockstream's Segregated Witness which will provide much smaller and delayed block size increases, so that they can drive transaction fees sky high. Also they support Blockstream's SegWit, because it changes the Bitcoin block chain protocol in such a way (insidious soft fork versioning) as it will make it virtually impossible for anyone to stop the mining cartel from changing the protocol in the future at-will.
Thus the Chinese mining cartel is already speaking and acting as a cooperating oligarchy and they have already 51% attacked Bitcoin's protocol, when they blocked the block size increases which would have kept our transaction fees low.
This is very dangerous for our future, because it means in the future when the Chinese government says to these mining farms in China (which control more than 50% of Bitcoin's network hashrate) that they must change the protocol to require that every transaction include a signed government issued identification number or that every signed transaction must include a tax contribution to China or the world government, then the miners will have no choice but to comply because otherwise they will find their $100 millions investment in mining equipment padlocked and confiscated by the government.
What kind of delusional fantasy world do you live in DooMAD.
Like clockwork, the truth is normally found at neither extreme but somewhere in the middle. I agree about doing nothing is not a solution.
Having said that, that the war is already started, doing nothing is not a solution. Even if you actually believe this Armstrong guy is right, not everyone is a day trader. It doesn't matter about chasing money left on the table. All that matters is making sure you have something that has some type of fundamentals which isn't going to zero the day the great reset happens. You know that day is coming soon. You also know that Bitcoin will likely function perfectly fine when the day comes.
1. I agree doing nothing is not a solution. I am trying to do something, but my design requires that there be very significant transactions since the unprofitable proof-of-work share (not a block solution!) is sent with each transaction. So if I launch the thing with nearly no adoption and just HODLers, then it can be easily attacked by botnets. Thus before I can make the CC, I need to first create something that could drive a lot of demand for the use of the CC. That is why I conceived JAMBOX. But then I realized that the concept of JAMBOX (which basically means replacing the web browser with a mobile app browser) is actually a better career choice for me to work on than a CC. It also enables me to work on creating a new programming language, which will bring me great respect+admiration amongst my peers and will also secure my finances at the tail end of my career (which I desperately need is some stability in my life at 51 and trying to recover from a 10 year illness which REKTed my life/career, 4 years acute and as well I need to pay back my meager angel investors with some gains for them if I don't create a CC or let them take investment share in JAMBOX corporation). Btw, @keean who I met recently at the Rust forum (and is now in my contacts list at my LinkedIn, so you can view his CV) is discussing with me in private collaborating on a new programming language. He has published research papers with the famous FP guru Oleg. He already has a prototype of a language he had designed and maybe we could reuse some of that for the 10 programming language features I have concisely enumerated as crucial for the next popular programming language that will eat all the others to a great extent in terms of popularity. That is an amazing accomplishment for me that a person as accomplished and well connected (in the UK!) has agreed with me that the features I listed are very much needed and not offered by any other programming language on earth. He also approves of my recent invention to solve the major computer science problem known as the Expression Problem. We agreed the best strategy is open source it and hope others will join to help us, which we think is likely given his pedigree and also the features we are targeting. So I am on a major positive upswing in my career (and also apparently/hopefully health), but this is still far away from implementing JAMBOX and then after that a CC.
2. The reason I don't want to accelerate by jumping straight to the implementation of a CC, is because:
- I'm hedging my bets in terms of where I place my effort and thus my risks of failure.
- We have time, the collapse in earnest is not until 2018. Bitcoin will continue to function and not likely be regulated with capital controls before that, although 2018 will come very fast if measured in programmer man-hours needed to complete such ambitious projects.
- I don't want to put myself in a desperate position where I need to P&D in order to be financially stable.
- The LOC required will be immense over time, and I don't want to code it all the crappy languages we have now. It is like I am restarting or resetting my career, so it is time to do it right and with the right programming language.
- If I do a CC, I want it to be something truly different and adopted by millions and hopefully a billion users. My ambitions are very high. To match those ambitions, I need to do this development in a very high quality way and draw in these extremely smart people who are outside of CC.
- Smooth can't help me as much as someone who has a high, visible pedigree because he is anonymous (note I have my eye on Paul Phillips whom I have exchange some cordial messages on mailing lists in the past and because he wants to create the "perfect" programming language and he has the kind of extrovert personality that I love, as well as probably being raw IQ smarter than myself!). Also because he will consume most of the funding because his rate is very high. it doesn't help as much to raise more money in a crowdfund if the co-developer is anonymous. And fluffypony et al are already consumed/committed to their projects. There are so many talented developers out there, but most of them see no point in working in CC; whereas, with my programming language and app browser initiatives I may be able to pull in top developers from outside of CC. The @keean result is my first confirmation of my strategy. He also a very amicable person, as well as being extremely knowledgeable about programming, design patterns, and PL design.
3. About monsterer's criticisms of my unprofitable proof-of-work design, the salient refutations are there in the last few pages of the decentralization thread where I specifically rebutted him on his point about there being no proper incentives. I am too rushed (overloaded with tasks) to go dig up the link, you all can find it if you are really interested. Essentially monsterer's argument was that the profit from mining has to be greater than the potential profit from double-spending with a 51% attack. My refutation was that a) there is no level of maximum profit from double-spending attack, because there is no limit to the value that can be transacted in a block; and b) that motivation to supply the honest proof-of-work isn't driven by profit in my design but rather because it is mandatory. And btw, did monsterer disappear? The possible weakness in my design is that the spender will merely offload the computation of the proof-of-work to a server and thus the mining hashrate becomes concentrated. But even so there is a major distinction in the control and economics of that, which I will detail in a white paper. The problem with IOTA is not that the PoW is unprofitable, but rather that the structure of a DAG does not enable a single longest chain of truth, thus afaics the only way to force convergence to consensus is to use centralized servers and checkpoints. I will explain better the mathematical criticism of Iota in the future. I don't have time for the meticulous diversions right now.
We have a nice thread that proposes AnonyMint's view that Bitcoin IS in fact destroyed at the very moment, by Chinese mining operations.
The decentralization is destroyed because Satoshi designed it to do that failure, but the functionality/operation of the coin is not (yet) destroyed.
Please understand carefully the distinction.
Yes Bitcoin IS basically ALIVE if you are referring to the functioning of the coin. But the control of the block chain is becoming ever more centralized and controlled by a small group of mining farm owners. And with this control, they have already started to do their 51% attacks on Bitcoin in order to control the block size and drive transaction fees sky high.
But don't worry that they are raping us and will be raping us more in the future. We love when the banks rape us by getting QE from Bernanke. We love the miners to do the same thing to Bitcoin. We love to bend over and take it in our ass. That is why we are Bit(ret)ards.
I destroyed this logic fail from smooth in the past. Did you miss it?
You did not because you insist China will always have some type of competitive edge over the "inferior" west due to ingenuity or corruption.
The centralization is due to economies-of-scale of mining farms. It doesn't matter where it happens. It just happens to be that China is very conducive thus it is happening there. But if China wasn't the low-cost leader on corrupt free electricity or cheap hydropower, then it would still be happening where ever it is. Because this is a fact of the INSOLUBLE economics of Satoshi's design.
Come on r0ach, you are smarter than this.
China is a logistics nightmare and maybe they have a hard landing never to be heard from again once the shit hits the fan.
Even if that were a possibility (and it is not), it still would be irrelevant.
China's main fear is domestic political dissent for a reason. The top is all crooked and the bottom is eventually going to riot and send the country into chaos while all the leaders flee to Vancouver.
In your dreams. Even if that were plausible (and it is not), then still would be irrelevant.
The reason it is implausible is because China is an economic powerhouse that will reap huge economic growth as it allows its economy to diversify. They don't have the problems with huge number of retirees and people on social welfare and unemployment insurance. The West can't compete because of the burden of the cost of socialism.
China's economy will have a reset in 2020, but the Chinese are not going to abandon their culture. They will continue with the model of top-down organization. That is just the way Chinese people think. Do a little research on how their thinking about organization of society and capital differs from ours in the West.
Have you ever seen charts that show the wealth of a nation as a function of IQ? It always shows higher IQ countries having more wealth, except in the case of authoritarian socialist regimes, then the IQ makes no difference and wealth of the nation plummets. Due to China being a logistics nightmare, they will have to go more hardcore authoritarian than any other country on earth, and it will implode any type of ingenuity and it's impossible for them to keep up with other countries. The second we put up tariffs it's over.
The sad reality is we are entering a new world order where even very great totalitarianism of China will be much more profitable than the abject failure of socialism in the West.
Get used to it. The ideals of our founding fathers are dead. They won't be coming back to the world for many decades from now. You and I will be dead by then.
Sorry to give you the bad news.
But that doesn't mean BTC won't be pumped again to pull more money into that trap. Fundamentals of it as true hedge against fiat/governmment isn't necessarily correlated to its price performance.
Bitcoin is largest of the scams. It is pulling $1 million a day out of pockets and handing it to some corruption in China.
Neither Smooth or I agree withAnonymintTPTB_need_war (aka sockpuppet1) about BTC mining having a predictable endgame. It's entirely plausible that commoditization of sha256d could make most big mining farms extinct, with the only miners remaining being people that use the waste heat to power some other type of utility: water heaters, central heating, industrial use, etc.
I destroyed this logic fail from smooth in the past. Did you miss it?
Electricity is nearly an order-of-magnitude less efficient way to create heat. No one is going to compete with nearly free electricity in China (due to corruption) by paying more to heat their homes.
Even if Chinese mining farms were not getting political favors in exchange for promising to follow the government's edicts on regulation of mining (which of course they will do as any rational person will do because if they don't someone else will avail of the offer from the government and of course the government of China wants to control Bitcoin, duh!), it would still be the case that Chinese mining farms will always have greater economies-of-scale which will make it impossible to compete with them by getting part of the electricity for heating your home for free, because again you could heat your home in much more efficient ways especially factoring in the capital cost of the latest generation competitive ASIC mining equipment, as compared to for example adding better insulation to your walls or double paned windows, etc..
100%. We are headed into a top-down managed world. Take off your rosy spectacles and study the history of mankind and what happens at junctures like the one we are in now.
The usual term is commodification, meaning affordable and
efficient consumer-level ASICs
14nm fabs are only owned by Intel, Samsung, and TMSC. Intel will probably be the first to 10nm, perhaps up to a year ahead of the others. It takes years to ramp up production to meaningful volumes. Commodization doesn't mean that consumers can get the most efficient hardware at reasonable prices. The cutting edge will always belong to the mining farm which places large guaranteed orders years in advance.
I'm not playing your "move from one pump and dump to next pump and dump" scam game. Better to just hold what actually has fundamentals. I'm not buying garbage IPO scams issued by Eastern Europeans, issued for profit with no technical viability, whose entire purpose is to defraud people. If I wanted to do that, I would just use fiat.
Bitcoin is largest of the scams. It is pulling $1 million a day out of pockets and handing it to some corruption in China.
And you should really put more attention to what TPTB is saying.
Neither Smooth or I agree with
I destroyed this logic fail from smooth in the past. Did you miss it?
Electricity is nearly an order-of-magnitude less efficient way to create heat. No one is going to compete with nearly free electricity in China (due to corruption) by paying more to heat their homes.
Even if Chinese mining farms were not getting political favors in exchange for promising to follow the government's edicts on regulation of mining (which of course they will do as any rational person will do because if they don't someone else will avail of the offer from the government and of course the government of China wants to control Bitcoin, duh!), it would still be the case that Chinese mining farms will always have greater economies-of-scale which will make it impossible to compete with them by getting part of the electricity for heating your home for free, because again you could heat your home in much more efficient ways especially factoring in the capital cost of the latest generation competitive ASIC mining equipment, as compared to for example adding better insulation to your walls or double paned windows, etc..
You might risk the utility company diverting hash voting power for nefarious means in such a scenario, but what are the odds the utility companies of the US, North Korea, Iraq, Iceland, and whoever else all collude?
100%. We are headed into a top-down managed world. Take off your rosy spectacles and study the history of mankind and what happens at junctures like the one we are in now.
You're the only one I've read use the term commoditization for Bitcoin mining's future--what do you mean? And can you clarify how it fixes the centralization problem?
The usual term is commodification, meaning affordable and
efficient consumer-level ASICs
14nm fabs are only owned by Intel, Samsung, and TMSC. Intel will probably be the first to 10nm, perhaps up to a year ahead of the others. It takes years to ramp up production to meaningful volumes. Commodization doesn't mean that consumers can get the most efficient hardware at reasonable prices. The cutting edge will always belong to the mining farm which places large guaranteed orders years in advance.
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