Topic: What skill sets should non-professional BTC-ers try to acquire? - page 2. (Read 1861 times)

Try using gpg4usb from this website.

http://www.gpg4usb.org/download.html

It's portable and easy to use. All you need to do is unzip the zip file and double click the exe file in the unzipped folder. It's got a built in text editor and simple buttons on an intuitive GUI that do almost anything you need. I tried gpg4win but found this easier to use.

Either email is OK.  My website has nothing on the Home Page now.  Reasonably soon (hah...) I will put up material for public interest (maybe a GnuPG tutorial, gold information (coin properties, etc.), Peru pictures, Bitcoin matters, etc.).  While none of that sounds impressive here, most people I know are not that computer literate.

I have other plans too for the website.  Perhaps a (free) "club" for people with similar interests.  And of course private areas (like a mySQL database or two).

Thank you very much (again) for your help, I'll get a message back to you before really long, but it's past midnight, and I need to eat dinner.......


EDIT:

My email is now visible at my Profile.

Ok. I don't know what you're trying to do yet, but go ahead. Now send me an encrypted message or sign one and I'll verify. BTW, your email in your profile is hidden.

...

Dabs has a message, or will soon.  Thank you, Dabs, it looks like your suggestion worked great re GPG.

Pretty soon I hope to master this version of PGP (GPG is from Germany, see my post just above for Dabs's link for Windows computers).

You can find my email at my Profile here at bitcointalk.  If interested in email encryption, PM me or send me an email.

Thanks to everyone who has responded!

Thank you, Dabs.  My evening's work (um, after the New Year's celebrations) yielded only a GPG/email working withing my new website's boundaries only.

I run windows, so I will try that http://gpg4win.org/download.html for windows.

Then:

Saturn643's comment: The simplest way to encrypt emails with GPG/PGP is to just write the email in another text editor, encrypt that text using whatever GPG software you are using, and then copy and paste the encrypted text into the email as the message.

So, I will do some homework and be back...

Nice!  Very constructive thread here.  There is certainly a multitude of different paths one can take while attempting to master bitcoin.  It's a technology that is evolving at a pace that rivals Moore's Law and new, innovative applications of the technology are being developed everyday.  With that in mind, I would suggest researching some of the innovations being developed around turing capabilities and smart contract applications.  That seems to be the direction that the technology will inevitably pursue.

There was a short documentary on bitcoin released last year? 2014? Or something. Some really old stuff in there, but it's good to know a little history, plus it was entertaining to watch. Try here: http://bitcoindoc.com/ I think I found somewhere else where you can get it for free (may be not legal, depends, dunno. hehe. didn't care at the time.)

As for GPG, https://gnupg.org/download/index.html

http://gpg4win.org/download.html for windows
http://gpgtools.org/ for mac

Go send me an encrypted email and I'll reply. I'll leave it as an exercise for you to find my public key and my email address. Or you can encrypt a message and send it in a PM. A lot of bitcointalk members do that.

As for other skill sets, I think, if you managed to do okay with SQL, you'll pick up bitcoin fast. All my resources were from this forum or anything I can find in google or the wiki.

The rest, well, I believe a lot of old timers were basically self taught. While this forum has a lot of noise, you'll find good stuff around here.

There were definitely some good suggestions here--I took absolutely no computer science courses when I was in college.  Most of what I took was chemistry, biology, and the pharmacy-related courses.  I had to use computers extensively but never really learned about them. 

With respect to bitcoin, a little bit of cryptography would be useful.  Math and statistics (I had a lot of that).  And any adult who hasn't gone to college I think owes it to themselves to take at least one course in computers.  I'm thinking of doing it myself one of these days.  And the suggestion of Tor is useful, though I haven't made myself familiar with it.  I don't use the darkweb.

welcome to capitalism of the real world... thank god bitcoin is here to change things

They should know how to do research. Study the rise and fall patterns and utilize it to their advantage.

It's all a gamble in a sense.

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saturn643 wrote:

If you are on linux you should be able to just install GPG through the package manager. The site I linked has the docs and man pages so you can use the command line. If you are on windows I recommend you actually use GPG4USB. It can be portable and it works well and is simple to use.

Looks fairly simple I suppose, I will check up on it soon (emphasis mine, on Windows).  Thanks!

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VPNs may be a tad complicated, Denker, but thank you too, I will look into that as well.

Yes totally agree.
There are several good VPN providers out there who offer really a great service.
And often you can pay them with Bitcoin!

This link can be helpful to get some informations.
https://torrentfreak.com/anonymous-vpn-service-provider-review-2015-150228/

Well if you are trying to gains some skill sets that non-professional BTC-ers should acquire, here are a few.
If you are bitcoiner, you need understand the basics of various subjects regarding finance, law and computer science.

1. Be aware of the numerous wallets
  - Bitcoin Core QT, MultiBit HD, Electrum, Bread Wallet, Blockchain.Info, etc.

2. Understand and Utilize Encryption of your Hard-drive and Files
 - Encrypt your Files and make backups to make sure they can be restored.
 - Be familiar with Tor, Relays, and Exit Relays.
 - PGP/GPG (Get one) There is numerous tutorials on how to set it up.
 

3. Be Familiar with Financial/Tax Laws and Legality Issues
 - You should understand the current situation of Bitcoin in your own country.
 - bitcoin is considered a various forms of assets across different areas of the world so be knowledgable.

These are a few vital subjects you should brush up on.

If you are on linux you should be able to just install GPG through the package manager. The site I linked has the docs and man pages so you can use the command line. If you are on windows I recommend you actually use GPG4USB. It can be portable and it works well and is simple to use.

The simplest way to encrypt emails with GPG/PGP is to just write the email in another text editor, encrypt that text using whatever GPG software you are using, and then copy and paste the encrypted text into the email as the message. There are of course software and extensions to make this easier but that is really the simplest thing to do.

Yup. The darknet has a lot of shady stuff there. However Tor is useful for privacy and circumventing censorship and not just for darknet stuff.

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Thank you, Saturn643, I have looked at the site for GPG's version, at that site it is not really clear for me what to do.  But, that's just me.

I will keep digging around to learn more about BTC beyond the basics I guess I already have.

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There may be another way for me.  With the help of my son-in-law, I just bought an opened my own ".com" (actually a ".io").  There is nothing there yet, as I work to acquire the skills to put some content into it.  One of my social media contacts has filled me in with a link to be able to hook it into BITCOIN.  Details later if interested.

Also, my new website (web host) will allow not only email, but apparently ENCRYPTED email, by that same group offering GPG, and it may be dirt-simple for me to encrypt emails once I learn how.  That would be great, I would acquire one of the skills I seek pretty quickly if so.

I'll post up my website when there is something there.  This is all brand new for me, and I do realize that opening, creating and running a website means little for most of the highly competent computer people here, but it is a nice step for me.  A step into the "Knowledge Age"...

*   *   *

I also would like to thank commentators (at this thread and another) for comments about the the Darknet.  It looks like a huge part of it involves really sleazy stuff like scammers, spammers, child porn, drug sales and many other dirty activity while offering little in the way of skills acquisition or legitimate business, etc.

Maybe I will learn TOR just for my own "personal privacy jiujitsu", but unless I become convinced otherwise it looks like the Darknet ain't for me.

I enjoy working with the bitcointalk community, thank you all.  And, Happy New Year to the lot of you!

For PGP you can use the GPG software

As for learning stuff about Bitcoin, you should of course start with the whitepaper. Then a good place for technical are the developer docs on Bitcoin.org.

For Tor you should start with their docs too.

franky1

That's an interesting little suggestion, thanks.  Alas, few of my friends and email correspondents are into BTC, I just kind of got here on my own.  I guess I could give everyone a blockchain.info wallet (or tell them I will give them $5 in BTC if they start one) to implement your idea.

I am also interested in PGP for securing email correspondence, something I was able to do all those years ago, but have not yet found a easy and free way to do that now.  


[Sidebar: 15 - 18 years ago I was able to use all of this cool software like OLAP, SPSS and PGP for free or cheap, it was all EASY!  Now I have not been able to find any of those three for cheap & easy...  Software availability is going BACKWARDS in many cases, grr...]

i also think the same way, i am thinking what skill sets should i get. of course one of the best skill is how to 100% secure ur wallet and how to retrieve it. to be honest, after reading for so long, i am still very blur about it n the amount of work is really crazy as well. do anyone really follow these advices?

if you want PGP just for identification..
you could always just create a bitcoin address and give people the public key.. then when you sign messages they will know its really you

not sure if there are lots to learn about btc unless you wanted to do an industrial bitcoin mining company to which you may need to learn hashes, scripts, Splitting and Sharing Keys and etc.

But consider web development course if you were to make a career in btc and create an eCommerce site with bitcoin option and learn internet marketing/SEO skills.
or maybe a gambling site as well.