mircea_popescu: asciilifeform no, they did not. see, it wasn't a free market, but at the other end of things
asciilifeform: the -really- free market
asciilifeform: actually gru usually bought on the free market
mircea_popescu: 're thinking theft.
mircea_popescu: except the price in that edge case is infinity.
asciilifeform: if 'watch' is a west german tank engine, and i'm 'gru', then it is worth 100x the price, no?
mircea_popescu: (trivially, your curiosity as to what's inside a watch isn't worth the pirce of a watch)
blackwhite: so regarding the bitcoin as property. What does that mean if I get bitcoin for the work I am doing?
mike_c: good handicappers at the racetrack know a shitload more than me about horses.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform hence the "mine google" approach
asciilifeform: e.g. the ones who 'know', with a good degree of confidence, that difficulty will drop on day x, because they can personally pull the plug on a chinese minerfarm - etc
mike_c: that is the case for all parimutuel wagering
asciilifeform: perhaps i'm thick, but it still seems to me like the biggest winners on bitbet ought to be folks sitting on the right side of an information asymmetry.
thestringpuller: that's one of the best trilema articles I've read
mircea_popescu: course, i think they were talking of something else. inasmuch as there can be "something else" in the swamp.
Duffer1: they have yet to figure out who gets what percentage...
pankkake: there's always FreeDOS
asciilifeform: plenty of industrial systems, etc. still run on dos 5 and later - but, fortunately, the source (largely asm) was leaked years ago.
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: Microsoft releases source code << carefully calculated insult to the public - dos 1.1
nubbins`: why is the table a table?
nubbins`: well, y'know why is anything the way it is?
nubbins`: colloquially, it's used the same way
pankkake: nubbins`: why isn't "over" the same as "more than"?
mike_c: the btc one
nubbins`: they now allow "over" as a synonym of "more than"
El3k0n: ThickAsThieves The world financial system implodes
mircea_popescu: novusordo that's not realisation. when you sell it, you report the income.
mircea_popescu: i dunno who'd live in a jurisdiction that takes any other tack to the problem, or why.
mircea_popescu: seems to me the only sane treatment of btc is as any other intangible, taxable only upon realisation.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform the difference between cement and btc is that i can hit you over the head with the cement.
asciilifeform: ianal, but nothing shocking here - usg is treating btc the same as gold, cement, bags of xxxxx good
ThickAsThieves: it doesnt really say how to determine an exchange rate other than to be consistent
novusordo: took them that long to come up with this?
ThickAsThieves: Yes, the fair-market value of the currency (in U.S. dollars) on the date the payment was received is considered to be income. For more information on exchange rates, see the notice.
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: who needs tournament. the coin would suffice - 'Быть всегда впереди - вот награда твоя!' ('to be always ahead - this shall be your reward!' from well-known sov. song)
wao-ender: like betting what weather would be tomorrow.
mircea_popescu: wao-ender this is going to take a year rather than a weekend.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform could even have tournaments. who makes the most out of 100 btc or w/e
mircea_popescu: something like "x on winner, half x on loser for all bets" or w/e other strategy
mike_c: yeah, right after i said that i second thought it. lot of the big profits comes from unexpected results.
mircea_popescu: perhaps in the sense of varying it 0 - x, binary like
mike_c: not bad at all. plus you could surely do better by varying your budget on the bets.
mircea_popescu: so 66.2 theoretical, 66.16 practical.
mircea_popescu: spikes on the graph
mike_c: thx. it is cool to look at some of the big winners for the house. the mtgox closure caused a huge one. 0.07 btc -> 1.36 btc
mircea_popescu: blame the blockchainz.
mike_c: not one of the first 3
mircea_popescu: mike_c the point about "it dun really matter so much to correctly identify the house" stands too, for the angle discussed in chat.
mircea_popescu: ha! the house clears 10% ? i had it pegged at about 8%
mircea_popescu: 1. take first 3 bets. 2. exclude one. 2.1 either the 1st, if it has the same exit addy as one of the other 2, and the two have same weight, or else the 3rd.
mike_c: not the same weight
ozbot: Local artist using Ellen DeGeneres portrait as a face for pro seal hunt - Entertainment - The Telegr
nubbins`: http://www.thetelegram.com/Living/2014-03-25/article-3661866/Local-artist-using-Ellen-DeGeneres-portrait-as-a-face-for-pro-seal-hunt/1
mircea_popescu: usually in the 99,995+-2 range
mircea_popescu: mike_c the one you exclude a) always has the same output as one of the remainder two and is either made at weight 100k
ozbot: Man who tried to choke daughter gets one year probation - Local - The Telegram
mircea_popescu: mike_c the correct selection for house bets is to take the first three bets of any wager, and exclude one of them
nubbins`: http://www.thetelegram.com/News/Local/2014-03-25/article-3662653/Man-who-tried-to-choke-daughter-gets-one-year-probation/1
mircea_popescu: now i look at the market, prices fell an average of 40% across all product classes.
mircea_popescu: also in the news, i took about a week off because of all the press nuttery, during which i stopped buying raw materials
mircea_popescu: you give me the btc
nubbins`: mircea_popescu is there a way to exchange btc for whatever the fuck rift uses for currency?
ThickAsThieves: is there a block visualizer website?
pankkake: no, it's the same machine, with 12 drives wired. the setup is clearly ghetto (especially the pci-e extenders to reach the drives outside…)
asciilifeform: pankkake: helps to remember that there is really no such thing as a digital circuit
pankkake: I suppose I should blame the hardware… though both are raid6
pankkake: I am transferring my data from old to new drives, and I started a checksum verification of the tranferred files, for fun. turns out, a lot weren't transferred correctly
benkay: now that's usin the noggin
kakobrekla: and you will get them all
benkay: and i'm not seeing any pagination handles in the 'resolved' rss
kakobrekla: theres no 'closed' feed
kakobrekla: sorry, the resolved rss feed
benkay: kakobrekla: is there a convenient way to get a list of all resolved bets besides scrolling down the search page?
mike_c: hah. nothing wrong with that either :) unless vince mcmahon has some bitcoin
BingoBoingo: I'm still iffy on the whole NBA thing. Might as well open a bet on who wins the whole Wrestlemania thing.
BingoBoingo: mike_c: I Mr. Stern still the commissioner?
the20year3: Got a email back the 13th from the bank saying "We are ready to close" , the contract's closing date was the 24th as requested by the bank. 24th has come and gone and still no closing
mike_c: BingoBoingo: but no point shaving possible here, just 5:1 odds on the eastern conference. that's a good bet.
the20year3: Put an offer on a house about 3-4 weeks ago, telling them we could close in a week
the20year3: man these banks are idiots
mircea_popescu: better w/o the xyz
BingoBoingo: mike_c: You know I dun really do the basketball thing http://www.thedrinkingrecord.com/2014/03/13/an-overview-of-betable-sports-part-2-basketball/
benkay: kakobrekla, mircea_popescu: where's the bitbet api again?
thestringpuller: what has the government done with our money
mike_c: paging BingoBoingo: http://bitbet.us/bet/796/an-eastern-conference-team-will-win-the-nba/ let's get some action!
benkay: also relevant to Bitcoin: http://amultiverse.com/comic/2010/08/24/welcome-to-the-deathzones/
ozbot: Scenes From A Multiverse » The Crystalline Entity
MisterE: wow that sparked quite the debate about bitbet
novusordo: on the host computer
novusordo: the screen will say something like "enter word 1"
novusordo: and also prompts to enter random words between the actual ones
novusordo: so apparently the trezor has a better recovery system than I thought
nubbins`: gazing upward with hope and joy in their eyes
mircea_popescu: all these folks looking for a mom.
mircea_popescu: i like big women too, but these seem big in all the wrong ways in all the wrong places.
mircea_popescu: aren't they a little... porky ?
nubbins`: crumb took a lotta flak over the years
jurov: they know how to appreciate true womanhood
jurov saves the crumbs woman to later delight of his lesbian friends
nubbins`: "R. Crumb's ideal woman: the 'true amazon'"
mircea_popescu: i believe the guy never saw a russ meyer film.
mircea_popescu: http://theartofattraxion.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/robert-crumb-history-of-women-w-magazine-3-1.jpg
ozbot: Robert Crumb’s History of Women « TheArtofAttraxion X Because your body is a canvas.
Mats_cd03: me neither, although it makes sense - its not actually illegal in a lot of jurisdictions (the paper, anyway)
nubbins`: mircea_popescu: for that matter, i don't think the chemist generally lays the blotter at all
ThickAsThieves: you now have the visually transmitted virus
nubbins`: Mats_cd03: i haven't been keeping track of the clones at all
nubbins`: mircea_popescu: as it happens, the best i've tried has been white-on-white (no design at all)
mircea_popescu: nubbins` isn't it traditionally reserved for the girlfriend of the chemist making the dope ?
davout: aw the paste is gone
mircea_popescu: davout well i can't find it now. some kid from the "community" of self-proclaimed experts wrote some sort of article/"white paper" on how bitcoin exchanges should do x y z to get their risk of blowing up in line with the risk of the average 20yo getting hit by a bus
Mats_cd03: is the cats meow
ozbot: Cash theft from RNC locker remains unsolved - Newfoundland & Labrador - CBC News
nubbins`: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/cash-theft-from-rnc-locker-remains-unsolved-1.2585148
asciilifeform: i suppose it also matters what is meant by death. i.e. many fiat corps would become fiat corpses, and rather indistinguishable from gox, if disconnected from usg printer.
mircea_popescu: because you know, little train engines that can, these people.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform yeah something based on how likely it is for the avg 20yo to bite it
mircea_popescu: supported by evidence this strange view oif his, seeing how bitcoin exchanges have the life expectancy of trisomic neonates
asciilifeform: safety rate of the average human << ?
mircea_popescu: davout from what i recall, some random idiot opining was claiming that getting the average bitcoin exchange at the safety rate of the average human would be a great gain in security.
davout: but i do agree that the improvement of natural selection is a good thing
mircea_popescu: asset-based corps dampen management incompetence, allowing outright thieves to run for a longer time than the yshou;d
nubbins`: they have buses in romania?!
mircea_popescu: davout which makes the bad actors quickly visible
davout: imho ZA corps are quite vulnerable to issues related to management since basically the management *is* the company
nubbins`: "In the end, the rioters traded the sole hostage in exchange for two cigarettes before surrendering to police."
davout: your evaluation of the relative risk
mircea_popescu: which they are.
mircea_popescu: the argument boils down to "fully distributed, non-asset hodling btc corps are a better risk class"
davout: mircea_popescu: doesn't your argument boil down to : "assets are risky because they can depreciate" ?
davout: mircea_popescu: how would bb buy anything in the first place ?
Neil: I'm not disputing the setup, I actually like it.
mircea_popescu: so what's in scope is running the court system of bitcoin
mircea_popescu: then two years later wynn hotels hit a slow patch, get sold for scrap
Neil: Trying to understand what's "in-scope" and what isn't. I personally don't think it's clear. I respect your desire to run a clean, auditable (via blockchain) operation. But the future isn't clear at all, to me anyway.
mircea_popescu: this also means the share will go up, say 100x
mircea_popescu: this obviously will force a modification o the contract, making bitbet a nz0 now.
mircea_popescu: the forums will be extremely excited at this development.
Neil: Just saying "where's the flexibility"?
Neil: Walking down a one-way street isn't useful either.
Neil: So as a prospective investor, given the terms, I'm thinking "Where can this go, how can it expand?" And it seems limited. Which may not be a bad thing.
mircea_popescu: people keep changing things randomly because of this unwarranted and unwelcome expectation that "new and therefore better"
mircea_popescu: well evolution and morphing aren't the same thing.
Neil: But as a random Joe sixpack reading the specs, and not knowing who you are etc., it's not really clear how bitbet can evolve, indeed even if it can.
mircea_popescu: the correct way for this to work would be for someone (respected and competent as a bookie) to start a fund
Neil: Suppose bitbet decided to do fixed odds betting (taking on risk on the house). Is that "within the spec"?
Neil: mircea_popescu: So, somehting I've wondered. Do the "bitbet" terms at MPEX prevent bitbet branching out into other revenue streams?
mircea_popescu: if anything, the fascinating thing with that 200 is that it didn't land on the no side of berkshire
Neil: Clearly the market is thin. No, I have no idea either, but clearly there are limits in our fun little world. Which is good :)
Neil: Then please explain how 200 BTC come in, and nothing else happens.
Neil: Friction of trusting a dude with the initials MP, friction of knowing the bet exists and the odds, friction of knowing the odds can change underneath you, friction of tying your money up for 1 year, ... I could go on.
Neil: The Berkshire bet is another example, I think. The odds are higher that 3% (perhaps 15%) but friction prevents realization.
Neil: (i.e. no new bets have come in to counterbalance). I don't believe the "market" odds moved that much overnight. Friction is high.
Neil: The outcome odds before and after are massively different. But both stuck.
Neil: "You" talk about the dynamic of bitbet settling to reasonable odds, but a counterpoint is the example fo the recent 200 BTC bet on the 10k USD bet.
mircea_popescu: he got to pay the house 2 btc for this presumption
mircea_popescu: i suppose in a way it was a gamble, guy risked 2 btc on the theory "bitbet bettors are idiots"
Neil: mircea_popescu: Though I think he actually got some contra bets late in the game, which meant he came out near break-even, by luck of said coin toss!
Neil: The dude betting 100 BTC both ways on some coin toss was a great specimen of how not to make money on bitbet.
Neil: Where the minimum is 0.5 and where larger size is no more than double smaller size, with > 1 month to go sounds OK, but would like a concrete example before finally comitting
Neil: nubbins`: I'd prefer more evenly weighted. The 0.5 was to eliminate trash.
Neil: mircea_popescu: Happy to entertain any other bet, of over 0.5 BTC per side, where someone has bet both ways. I'm not holding my breath, given the performance so far...
mircea_popescu: you can take most of that out on the market as is.
mircea_popescu: but your claim mostly consists of a large "bitcoin wont be over 10k" leg with a tiny "this other thing" leg
mircea_popescu: so just because he went on long odds you're telling me bitbet is broken ? dude wanted the long odds, what can i say
mircea_popescu: i'll take even odds on the proposition that 1k4fs makes money *irrespective* of result
mircea_popescu: but then i'd have to hedge it somehow because clearly it's contingent on how the bet plays out.
Neil: Well that depends on what they are. That 1K4Fs makes money right?
mircea_popescu: i dun see the problem with it, seems a legitimate controversy.
jurov: in slovakia the main topic was protection of traditional family recently, including changing the constitution
jurov: yes, the politics around here tends to get divorced from reality
asciilifeform: 'ever-amusing Russian Liberal Democrat leader Vladimir Zhirinovsky has proposed dividing up Western Ukraine between Poland, Hungary and Romania. Poland quickly responded that it has no interest in annexing former Eastern Poland. I can't blame them.'
ozbot: ClubOrlov: Ukrainians on the verge of a nervous breakdown
VanCleef: do you like ethereum mircea or na?
mircea_popescu: aha. perrrfect reference then
asciilifeform: 1987: 'Eventually, Rust saw Moscow. At first, he wanted to land in the Kremlin. But then he decided to try to land in Red Square, which was full of people... Rust was soon arrested, and convicted of illegally crossing the Soviet Border, and "hooliganism." He was sentenced to four years in prison. The case caused quite a stir in Russia. For a while, Red Square was jokingly referred to as Moscow's "third airport
mircea_popescu: well ok, this'll have to wait then.
mircea_popescu: rather than simply discard it.
Neil: A bettor other than bitbet. Bitbet gives one side to the originator of course, so I don't even understand your example. Of course, you may have smart decision makers who decide whether a given proposition is more likely to turn out + or -, but that's beside the point. Real-life non-bibet bettor in size (say > 0.5 BTC each side)? Just one example?
mircea_popescu: an example which is put there deliberately, by design, by me,
mircea_popescu: a) bitbet house bets both sides on all bets, always ; b) in spite of giving away one of the addresses, bitbet house still actually makes bank some months, and overall is just about even ; c) ergo, double betting can be productive.
gribble: Mathias Rust - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathias_Rust>; Kremlin Caper: Mathias Rust's Landing on Red Square | People ...: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wue02Y0lS38>; BBC News - Mathias Rust: German teenager who flew to Red Square: <http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20609795>
Neil: mircea_popescu: http://bitbet.us/bet/619/bitcoin-difficulty-at-or-above-2b-before-feb/ 16tA0 (apologies for remebering wrong above) bets 11 and 8 (19 total) gets less than 14 back. I claim that is typical, and can support with more examples. Can you give me even one example of a two-way bet like this, for similar amounts in size, that was a profit for the bettor?
mircea_popescu: and what's good for people who really believe "make mone yat home by cashing these checks" and "inhearitence!!!" is also good for... "investors"
nubbins`: there might be something to this
mircea_popescu: Mats_cd03 Neil not that there's anything wrong with intuition, it's how great things start. it still has to be actually checked with data.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform that hypothesis was only seriously considered by the baesian cultists.
asciilifeform: spam is misspelled because that selects for idiots << novel hypothesis. traditional thought holds that it is to evade (or, optionally, throw out of calibration) bayesian filter.
Neil: I don't have anything against bitbet. I like the site. Just saying it how I see it.
mircea_popescu: Mats_cd03 spam is not misspelled because the spammers can't hire editors. spam is misspelled because that selects for idiots, and they are looking for idiots (false positives are very expensive for them)
VanCleef: just another scam
Neil: 50% doesn't weaken the point? OK.
Mats_cd03: i just read the copy on rockminer.com
Neil: Yeah that just gets it started, and one is given to the bet originator, so it's not the house really.
mircea_popescu: during some months it comes AHEAD, which means the dual-betting system actually works.
mircea_popescu: the house bets BOTH SIDES on ALL BETS
Neil: mircea_popescu: But of course. I'm not stupid. The 16% is a good example: the house wins the more people rationally take all that is available "for (near) free".
mircea_popescu: Neil are you aware that the house wins on some bets ?
VanCleef: erm i thought rockminer was ipoing tomorrow noon china time and they just announce that the ipo is already over and all shares have sold
Neil: OK. One example to the contrary will suffice. Happy to post 1 example to support my position.
mircea_popescu: but this aside : why would you figure my stake would *prevent* me from agreeing with the facts ?
mircea_popescu: and it'd seem they're not really that factual.
mircea_popescu: the trouble is that i'm not disagreeing with you, i'm discussing those facts.
Neil: mircea_popescu: Given your stake in the process I don't expect you to agree with me. But I think the facts speak for themselves. If someone believes 2-way betting pays they're welcome to continue doing it.
mircea_popescu: you can select any arbitrary pair of yes/no bets and pretend they're made by the same person
mircea_popescu: suppose there's a 500 btc bet on yes
mircea_popescu: unless i'm doing this badly, should the bet come out as yes he's making ~300 btc
nubbins`: The bet resolves as YES if 1K4Fs will lose on his two-way bet
Neil: mircea_popescu: Don't be daft. One can't take the opposite of his bet.
Neil: It doesn't really matter how the chips land.
mircea_popescu: and so we're doing research rather than derpage.
mircea_popescu: it helps even more if you publish your method along the dataset, then op can apply it to other sets see if behaviour converges