mircea_popescu: "Even if Neo ends up failing and Cyprus central bankers win this battle, they've managed to change the world forever. The Bitcoin awareness in Cyprus will not go away even if Neo fails and that counts for something. I know I was part of that as an investor and helped build that to some extent. On the other hand MPEx will go down in history as the clown who badmouthed the competition and riding some donkey in Egypt."
mircea_popescu: we're lucky there's no hard ai.
mircea_popescu: person 1 : "I personally don't believe that Neo&Bee is a scam, but very well said. Just becuase there is an easier way to steal money that the scammers passed up doesn't mean it's not a scam."
bounce: "stuff you buy at the drugstore"
Mats_cd03: buying things from the paranoid, i imagine
bounce: why would they? they're running entire banks dedicated to laundring and everything else they instituted AML/KYC CYA BS elsewhere for.
Mats_cd03: maybe the cia uses -otc from time to time
bounce: there's too many agencies anyway. whatwasitagain, 1200-odd agencies with some sort of "terrism" link?
benkay: what, you're going to rep the DHS now ThickAsThieves ?
Jason: ThickAsThieves: that's what i'm trying to do. they won't tell me what i did for 'security reasons' :-p.
Jason: won't even let me email them. :p
Jason: blackwhite: can't initiate the email
Jason: i did and never got a response. i'll try again. maybe they changed stuff around
Jason: blackwhite: i did try twitter and my tweet (twat? whatever they call it) went ignored, too
Jason: blackwhite: as I remember it, in 2013 they didn't have phone support?
Jason: just, being banned with no explanation of what might have caused the ban and being unable to contact support? well... yeah.
ThickAsThieves: why the half-measure?
ThickAsThieves: not the app
ThickAsThieves: btw this Square news, it's only for their online marketplace right?
Jason: blackwhite: well, my account was banned in 2013 for being 'high risk'. when I contacted support, they simply didn't respond to me. luckily, all of this happened before I switched my entire business to Square (my account was several months old, though). had I of completely switched to Square before I was banned with no explanation, it would have probably ruined my business.
blackwhite: i just work there
Jason: blackwhite: i hear you're the squareup man?
artifexd: That doesn't surprise me in the least.
ThickAsThieves: the RENT is too damn high!
benkay: yeah they definitely need less programming that's for sure
pankkake: oh, right. not a thing I'd tell my parents either
pankkake: getting fired isn't hard either
mircea_popescu: pankkake the girl won't approve.
pankkake: benkay: why not? unless you don't have enough to pay the bills
benkay: i'm staring at my email, billing by the quarter hour, waiting for someone to drop the ball hard enough for me to call off a deploy on my own.
benkay: i'd rather be hacking on a bitcoin thing and not getting paid right now.
ozbot: The Lost Boys (4/10) Movie CLIP - One of Us (1987) HD - YouTube
joecool: mircea_popescu: many of the girls you post in here lack shoes, i am trying to solve a shortage of shoes in pictures
benkay: but this zone is filled with scammers who won't substantiate their claims.
ThickAsThieves: whether incidental or not
mircea_popescu: and perhaps, if i feel in a good mood, "get in the wot"
mircea_popescu: course gotta have the business first.
benkay: gotta have the business first tho. no sense in "its gonna work 'cause bitcoin"
mircea_popescu: just the fact that nobody can chargeback you and pp can't hold your wallet at ransom and that;s enough for anyone sane.
blackwhite: yeah they are doing it in beta
benkay: either that or he's playing some crazy game i don't understand.
benkay: in conclusion, i have determined that the PMs incompetence is undermining his malice.
benkay: mind you i've already sent the executive team the 'deploy briefing' email i'm in the habit of sending out before deploys...
benkay: 'HOLD THE PHONES B I FORGOT TO INFORM ADMIN STAFF ABOUT DEPLOY WAIT WAIT WAIT'
bounce: can't you stuff flash in pdfs these days?
mircea_popescu: If Danny really wanted to scam people, he would have done that right after the IPO but he didn't. He went ahead and invested money in setting up the office, hiring staffers, media campaigns, buying POS devices, sending his hired staffers to conferences and so on.
ThickAsThieves: this is the 3rd or 4th offering i think
bounce: too bad for the US' alies then that the f22 is too advanced to be exported even to NATO partners
mircea_popescu: in spite of it trading around 50ish for the entire interval ?
mircea_popescu: but the same someone didn't buy 30 btc worth of rent all week
Mats_cd03: anyway, a final word regarding the f-35 vs f-22 conversation...
gribble: tinc wiki: <http://www.tinc-vpn.org/>; download - Tinc: <http://www.tinc-vpn.org/download/>; Tinc (protocol) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tinc_(protocol)>
bounce: so TISAC, then
mircea_popescu: if people's understanding of cuisine are on par with their understanding of basic economy, suddenly food in the us is explained.
bounce: re strangecoin, I get the feeling I can stop reading after this: ``Of course, when I give you a dollar for a burger that's not really a zero sum transaction, because otherwise we wouldn't be motivated to enter into the transaction in the first place.'' -- conflating currency-mediated transactions with barter
mircea_popescu: artifexd i dunno, it's been illo tempore policy that people accidentally spamming or otherwise unintentionally misbehave contribute to the port fund
artifexd: What is the precedent for asciilifeform's donation? I don't see anything about it in http://trilema.com/2013/bitcoin-assets-rules-and-regulations/
mircea_popescu: prolly pay for the wiki
asciilifeform: where do these go anyway
mircea_popescu: afaik it was up to the malfeasant
bounce: http://www.alternet.org/fail-400-billion-military-jet-cant-fly-cloudy-weather?paging=off¤t_page=1#bookmark http://www.pogo.org/blog/2013/02/why-the-f-35-lightning-cant-fly-in-lightning-yet.html and perhaps http://www.pogo.org/blog/2014/02/heres-what-60-minutes-didnt-tell-you-about-the-f-35.html
asciilifeform: entire US gross national product would be spent on the land boat. Of course
asciilifeform: before moving. After months of experimentation with expensive agents, they
pLambert: guesses as to whether it will repeat a third time?
asciilifeform: while the bill was railroaded through.
asciilifeform: commercial arguments rolled the project over all opposition as one day
asciilifeform: millions of workers. The combined force of industrial, political, military and
asciilifeform: would devastate any land over which it happened to hover. But by now the Armywanted it as badly as any of the dozens of states, thousands of companies and
asciilifeform: In the first design, _Leviathan_ was to run on wheels, thus promoting
asciilifeform: it would be capable of fast movement around the countryside.
asciilifeform: would be a monster platform, some fifty miles across and equal in area to the
asciilifeform: The _USS Leviathan_ would not be anything like an ordinary carrier. It
pLambert: oh shit, he is repeating the whole thing again
asciilifeform: The major ship-building and steel companies were behind it, as were several of
asciilifeform: The idea of a land ship of that size may seem ridiculous now, but it was
asciilifeform: up costing every man, woman and child in the United States over twenty grand.
asciilifeform: _Leviathan_ was the most successful commercial defense project ever; it ended
asciilifeform: argue eloquently for his monster. He pointed to valuable spin-offs: the
asciilifeform: entire US gross national product would be spent on the land boat. Of course
asciilifeform: before moving. After months of experimentation with expensive agents, they
asciilifeform: while the bill was railroaded through.
asciilifeform: commercial arguments rolled the project over all opposition as one day
asciilifeform: millions of workers. The combined force of industrial, political, military and
asciilifeform: would devastate any land over which it happened to hover. But by now the Armywanted it as badly as any of the dozens of states, thousands of companies and
asciilifeform: In the first design, _Leviathan_ was to run on wheels, thus promoting
asciilifeform: it would be capable of fast movement around the countryside.
asciilifeform: would be a monster platform, some fifty miles across and equal in area to the
asciilifeform: The _USS Leviathan_ would not be anything like an ordinary carrier. It
asciilifeform: The major ship-building and steel companies were behind it, as were several of
asciilifeform: The idea of a land ship of that size may seem ridiculous now, but it was
asciilifeform: up costing every man, woman and child in the United States over twenty grand.
asciilifeform: _Leviathan_ was the most successful commercial defense project ever; it ended
mircea_popescu: ally, a successful strike would deeply wound American prestige, especially if it went unanswered. Domestically, the deaths of six thousand crewmembers would generate almost unbearable political pressures for revenge. Our entries into WWII and the Global War on Terror were sparked by less.
mircea_popescu: Specifically, our bargaining chip against Beijing is to make things uncomfortably apocalyptic. The point is less what the carrier can do and more what an attack on it promisesfull retaliation, and a war that may quickly get out of hand. As ASPI analyst Harry White observed last month [11], the idea is that anyone who attacks as valuable an asset as a US carrier should expect a significant response. Internation
mircea_popescu: Like the US garrison in West Berlin, aircraft carriers are relatively defenseless, but they have a separate function as a highly visible warning about US resolve. Today, a strategy of mobile tripwires is neither credible nor prudent, but it is worth studying because it may actually be implemented.
kakobrekla: <ThickAsThieves> kako, it was me that suggested the wiki and categories, thx for making it < get to werk then!
mircea_popescu: bounce in the end this isn't such a very good argument.
bounce: explains it better than I could. if reduced at absurdum it's inevitably too expensive to ever fly well, and it very much looks like lockheed martin deliberately aimed for that because a project that looks it'll succeed Real Soon Now but never really does is the ultimate goose with the golden eggs for the military industrial complex
kakobrekla: <mircea_popescu> kakobrekla: the brick and mortar trick is still something new in btcland << hardly. mtgox had them, bitcoin foundation had them (before running of to the uk at any rate) < perhaps, but thats is not the reason people fell for them
bounce: where's that piece reporting on the incoming chief de mission that dug a bit and found fscktons of rot?
Mats_cd03: if murica didnt want politicians building airplanes, they shoudnt have elected politicians to build airplanes
Mats_cd03: (fastest fixed-wing craft in the army iirc due to two rotors)
bounce: if I'd wanted to be mean I'd point out that the space shuttle looked spiffy enough but didn't do a very good job of shuttling, n'mind at a suitably low price tag. not that hard to argue it set humanity's progress toward colonising space back a good score years or so.
Mats_cd03: its certainly not as efficient as the chinook
Mats_cd03: jurov for some relative value of short, it doesnt go very far and i dont think you can carry much of a payload either
ThickAsThieves: “And because we don’t know all the algorithms, because we don’t know the end factorial and all of the different ways they may interact, there are negative consequences that occur as a result. That introduces a market risk. That market risk has an unquantifiable cost. We saw it in one instance with the flash crash. We see it every day with little mini-flash crashes.”
ThickAsThieves: “The risk isn’t so much about the small investor,” Mr. Cuban said. “The risk is all these different high-frequency traders playing a game with their algorithms, trying to trick each other, to get in front of each other to make that trade.
asciilifeform: what does it need to do, fly the 'full spectrum dominance' squid flag?
bounce: leadership isn't easy to come by, no. random democratic and/or republican countries haven't managed it in a long time for the usual positions either
jurov: wait, the VTO is only for short distance move?
bounce: alright, an inequality, and there's an epsilon, but sheesh.
mircea_popescu: the usual problem is that there's no capable criminals to make a guild in the first place, nothing else.
mircea_popescu: but in general, the crime guild does much better a job of regulating crime than any other guild.
bounce: oh I get the point that there'll be some equilibrium or other (pterry's vetinary letting the crime guild regulate the crime) but I don't think the equation is that simple
mircea_popescu: bounce it's a balance point. the whole idea is that stable situations are stable, and derivation from that mean is unstable.
bounce: f35 is a brilliant scam, actually. getting permission to deliver production planes when the prototype hasn't had its maiden flight
bounce: yeah no, I don't think it's straight up incentive, or at least not as strong as implied as there's strong pull the other way too. eg gangs don't extinguish themselves
bounce: it'll be inferior to the harrier, like as not.
mircea_popescu: bounce and wide availability and a commodified market reduces the pull.
the20year2: corrupt politicians vying for money to their districts makes alot more sense
Mats_cd03: well no i think the project is cool and i dont have a lot of problems with pouring R&D money into potentially useful technology
jurov: i heard funny hypothesis that f35 is chinese inside job to bleed usg dry
bounce: whether it's her girlish friends pulling her in or a pimp looking for more meat to sell is a different mechanism but with the same effect; question then is which'll be stronger
the20year2: compared to the f22/yf23?
mircea_popescu: thinking the girl acts of her own volition is a little rich.
mircea_popescu: but that's not the real edge. the guy selling it to her is more likely to not bother, is the real edge.
the20year2: The airplane that does nothing more than the plane we built in the early 90s for $200m/unit
pLambert: is F35 the one which was designed to fight against russians and has never been used?
mircea_popescu: bounce take whores. if there's a whore on every corner and prices are low, is your pretty daughter more likely or less likely to start cutting class for to taking it up the tail ?
bounce: re minimum crime, how does upping the crime rate increase the incentive not to go into crime?
the20year2: Which I have a problem with, when programs like LCS and the F35 are front and center taking up significant sums of money for low results
benkay: mircea_popescu: naw man i like 'em effeminate and making dinner not deep in the server room.
mircea_popescu: pLambert his intuition is correct, in that the us has no economy, and no technical ability. cutting the army is like cutting its own throat.
the20year2: Granted, in my personal opinion (As controversial as it is), it's like every other government program, cutting things that are important, expanding things that buy votes
pLambert: this guy bitching about "sequestration", has the US defense budget actually gone down at all? I thought we were still spending more every year?
benkay: the20year2: logs, man. gotta read 'em. sometimes just like 20 lines back.
Mats_cd03: but they like having american money flowing into local economies
Mats_cd03: funny enough, some countries wont admit to liking having american troops on their soil
mircea_popescu: if some guy in my neighbourhood decided to go around telling everyone he's the bestest there is, i'd also expect him to send a nubile young woman around for purposes with some frequency.
mircea_popescu: pLambert i suspect it was part of the marshall plan
benkay: no options, no statement, thestringpuller. who cares, anyways? it's a scam under investigation by the SEC. doomed, I tell you (to enjoy the new scion TC!)
jurov: thestringpuller MPOE is suspended
mircea_popescu: thestringpuller since the option thing is ended ima report it end of month line normal assets.
pLambert: "In 1974, one could easily find company-sized organizations in U.S. Army Europe" wth does the US have so many troops in Europe?
the20year2: to secure europe from the evil russian bear?
mircea_popescu: anyway, just some retired something or the other harping about how expensive and hard it is.
mircea_popescu: yeah, that's what the planning mostly planned for.
the20year2: Very much correct, it was always assumed to go nuclear within 24hrs of the outbreak of conflict
mircea_popescu: that the us army at no point past ww2 had a standing chance in europe.
mircea_popescu: "On alert, this tattered, morally compromised army was to clear post in under an hour, move to its defensive positions on the West German border with the Warsaw Pact, fight outnumbered five to one and win. Such odds were daunting."
benkay: vegetables in the mail for bitcoin
mircea_popescu: (they recently had a case about how illegal all this is)
mircea_popescu: the20year2 that data is corrupted, and milk is a fine example.
the20year2: Median supermarket margins in the US are 15%
mircea_popescu: that's a 95% margin for the supermarket.
mircea_popescu: meanwhile, independent romanian farmers sell 5% milk for 0.5 lei, and 1.5% milk is on sale in the supermarkets for... 6 lei.
the20year2: Certainly is if the population is to continue to grow, if you continue on with less efficient methods of food delivery people starve
mircea_popescu: the20year2 moreover, that's phase 2 material. obviously the supermarket can train the clueless consumer in a number of ways to build a moat around itself.
joecool: it still works for some merchants that don't have access to their own in-house mailing list
mircea_popescu: had it succeeded to make it so "all the buyers are on groupon", it's model of "give us everything for free" would have worked on the merchants.
mircea_popescu: many lines aren't amenable to the supermarket model, but groupon tried to bring them into the same economics.
mircea_popescu: this allows them to buy everything very cheap and sell it as expensive as they want.
mircea_popescu: specifically : supermarkets exist to scam consumers, because the supermarket is large, so it can tell any small farmer to stfu and get lost
mircea_popescu: more complicated than that. the groupon business model was basically to try and create a scale advantage on both ends.
joecool: except they don't do anything but hold the money for awhile and gamble before paying the merchants
benkay: that's essentially net 45. think of the float you could be making on our backs!
benkay: fifteen days after the postmark date, we expect to see remuneration.
benkay: then we bill you.
benkay: this in fact is how we run our shop. we sit down, figure out what crazy ideas you have, how to make them into an actual thing, and then work on it at a predetermined rate for a period of time.
benkay: this is very similar to the constant ongoing mining fiasco and how product tends to get delivered (in my extremely limited experience): "you ship a thing. it shows up on my door. if it works, 30 days later i send you a check. otherwise, get out of my face."
mircea_popescu: "There is an empirical problem with the debate over United States military strategy towards China: aircraft carriers are dead, but they can still be seen patrolling the Western Pacific."
benkay: another thing is, as i said to my colleague recently re a contractor: "ain't nobody motivated by money in the bank."
asciilifeform: ...and folks who don't even bother, and scamplan from beginning.
benkay: it's the estimation, constraints, fractal nature of coastline, overreaching ambitions, unmanaged expectations...
benkay: sure, it's never the actual software.
ozbot: Looks like Darkwallet was a scam [x-post TheHub] : Bitcoin
ThickAsThieves: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/21ud3m/looks_like_darkwallet_was_a_scam_xpost_thehub/
nubbins`: new regulation requires all cars to have under-the-nuts-view cameras by 2015
Mats_cd03: i'll take a copy of the zip if you'd upload it
mircea_popescu: i can forward you the entire thing if you're curious
mircea_popescu: nubbins` it's worse than that. the lolcats have the power to decide if your airbang opens
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'For Science' (tm) post the sha of payload
nubbins`: i don't want my airbag to have the power to decide whether i'm allowed to alter photographs :(
mircea_popescu: the box was never logged into, ever.
asciilifeform: all one needs is to pwn one machine from which someone at least occasionally logs on to the box
asciilifeform: spam behaves just like other 'multilevel' crapola, in that the objective is typically... to find more places to send spam from.
mircea_popescu: in this case, i doubt the people working at the ro firm actually have access to the server tho
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: 'he either buys a beer for whatever famished kid working in whatever poor quality website design shop to obtain credentials, or perhaps just simply is the famished kid in question' << sadder than that. the creds typically come from an idiot inside a given shop who bit a trojan hook himself.
ozbot: Spam and malware, let’s be cool together. pe Trilema - Un blog de Mircea Popescu.
Mats_cd03: interesting idea, there, about playing chicken with national security
ozbot: Are Aircraft Carriers the New West Berlin?
Mats_cd03: http://nationalinterest.org/print/commentary/are-aircraft-carriers-the-new-west-berlin-10128
nanotube: benkay: the implication would be that output would be sorted by volume? :)
kanzure: so at minimum they have to pretend they have limits in order to not reveal that their cold storage sytsem isn't cold
Mats_cd03: yc needs better security experts on their staff
kanzure: well they have rate limits on amount of bitcoin they can send at a time on coinbase because of how they claim their cold storage system works
Mats_cd03: the next thing that poster is going to say in a week is, the password reset form doesnt have a rate limit either and oops, a quarter of the accounts have been looted cause an attacker bruteforced the idiots