deadweasel: you'll find the hurdles
gribble: The operation succeeded.
bitcoinpete: ;;later tell benkay thanks for the inspiration!
ninjashogun: unless there is some inherent conceptual hurdle that people can't understand.
ThickAsThieves: common man also cant figure out to not open exe files from their email
bitcoinpete: i'll just quietly leave this here: http://bitcoinpete.com/2014/there-is-no-bitcoin-2-0/
ninjashogun: I would very humbly suggest that in the long term it might be.
ninjashogun: ThickAsThieves, but why such a strong statement above? "bitcoin really isnt for the masses"
ThickAsThieves: they use debit/credit cards
ThickAsThieves: like i said, you are comparing the wrong thing
mircea_popescu: (the first nymphlet to drink piss)
ninjashogun: So we've identified two differences (1) transactions are final (2) there is a history of transactions somewhere. Is there anything else that would be a conceptual hurdle for everyone using bitcoin?
gribble: Undine - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undine>; Undine (novella) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undine_(novella)>; Undine (alchemy) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Undine_(alchemy)>
deadweasel: do the undo
mircea_popescu: there's undo in mountain dew ?
ninjashogun: But this is true with a wallet as well. When you hand someone cash you don't expect to be able to unhand them that cash.
ThickAsThieves: the difference really is that transactions are final
ninjashogun: ThickAsThieves, I'm not sure why bitcoin can't be for the masses. A wallet is an extremely close analogy with a physical wallet. The only major difference is the history. Isn't it?
ThickAsThieves: i also told them not to do anything i said
ThickAsThieves: bitcoin really isnt for the masses
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, I guess I had a different market in mind, not the true bottom third of the Pyramid of society.
mircea_popescu: paypal is not a website, and the government is not some twerps.
asciilifeform: petent at dealing with the human cattle : fastfood providers, supermarkets, the government. Both as employers and providers these specialised bureaucracies have the necessary tools, including cattle prods (or whatever theyre called now, non-lethal something or the other) to correctly handle them. They have the chemicals, theyve done the research, know the behavioural patterns, have the walls all built to
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: 'Honest toil not so much, but honest cunning aplenty in this fabled subsection of the population, the offensively stupid poor. The costs of the strategic mistake of dealing with them are huge. Up until recently it was practically impossible to become embroiled into any sort of dealing with the subgroup, their ownership being strictly assumed and their lives strictly subsumed by the corporations com
ThickAsThieves: yeah but can i just buy them with PayPal?
ThickAsThieves: i was like, dont you buy stuff online all the time?
ThickAsThieves: last night a couple asked me the easiest way to buy bitcoin, I said Coinbase, you just need to enter your checking account info, and the wife was all, I'm not putting my checking account info in some website!
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, so if someone were to create something idiots could (actually) use then it would be (for them) as thought only it existed. Apple often does this and practically claims competing technology doesn't even exist.
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, so for their purposes, it might as well not exist. For example, for the purposes of most people in the world, bitcoin doesn't actually exist (theyu can't buy it at a western union currency exchange, or know how to install software for it.)
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, link to "see mp's piece on why it is unwise to become embroiled in the making of products for idiots." ?? This is about the opposite of what I've always heard.
benderp: with the bells
benderp: asciilifeform: link the goats again!
ThickAsThieves: idiots also suck all the joy out of a task
asciilifeform: fundamentally different problems. ones which only the folks with the cattle prods are properly equipped to handle.
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: see mp's piece on why it is unwise to become embroiled in the making of products for idiots.
thestringpuller: asciilifeform do you believe there is a hardware hole in most mobile devices?
benderp: ninjashogun: if you can't be bothered to respond to private conversations that you start, I don't see why I should arse myself to respond to your PMs.
ThickAsThieves: in the vulva
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, I was just thinking how mircea's current insights would imply that that is what you could actually sell to dumb users for a huge markup (e.g. $199), since they know what a leather wallet is and know that bitcoins are money. and that's it.
ozbot: The Germans Have Figured Out How to 3-D Print Cars | Autopia | Wired.com
ThickAsThieves: well theyll get bigger
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: i might theoretically, at some point, make something that fits this description, but the current product has nothing to do with bitcoin or wallets
asciilifeform: ninjashogun: i think you have the wrong address. that'd be 'trezor' et al.
moiety: mircea_popescu: and they are so ugly. what ever happened to aston and jaguar
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, I thought that the signing thing was a natural step away from an offline wallet?
ninjashogun: so if you could make it so dumb that the user just thinks of it "as a wallet" with "bitcoins in it" and takes it out to spend from it.
ninjashogun: It seems for the bitcoin device that you guys were building (asciilifeform) the real money is in making it SO dumb that the user doesn't have to understand how bitcoin, signing, or a wallet works.
mircea_popescu: but they had mass production for a century
moiety: even more of a side note -- i think it's a real shame loosing the individuality and decorativeness of design :( cars is a good example!
ninjashogun: There is actually one take-away from the above insights that mircea_popescu 's quote led to here.
ThickAsThieves: i'd add to the list too
mircea_popescu: as the dollar shave "ceo" clearly illustrates
mircea_popescu: moiety i would say in present day considerations shoving the items is more of a concern
moiety: so mircea_popescu, ThickAsTheives, can we conclude modern day styling is getting more minimalistic and less decorative because people are lazy/no servants/no time?
asciilifeform: and then there are the poor schmucks who just want a portable posix box that mostly works.
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, they pay extra for a GUI, instead of enough for someone to do it properly.
ninjashogun: asciilifeform, that they pay EXTRA but becuase they're not actually having someone competent do it.
ThickAsThieves: rather than frilly
ozbot: Main/The Roaring Twenties - Television Tropes & Idioms
benderp: <asciilifeform> afaik the only software today 'specifically targeted at mac
ninjashogun: the top one is a good example. Dreamweaver.
mircea_popescu: yes, it was me talking about the 20s.
ThickAsThieves: it's quote from the 20s?
asciilifeform: afaik the only software today 'specifically targeted at mac users' is the nickel-and-dime chumpatron where these folks pay $20/each for a hundred little gui utilities that'd be a 1-line bash script on an ordinary computer
mircea_popescu: in the 20s ?!
ThickAsThieves: <mircea_popescu> (Side point- Art Deco's fascination with streamlining household objects whose actual wind resistance is irrelevant proved popular because levelling incomes led for the first time to a group of people who could afford good design but not household servants. It seems that a streamlined Art Deco lamp is easier to dust than a frilly Victorian one...) /// Nonsense.
ninjashogun: benderp - it may have been a bad example. I mean if you survey the software that's specifically targeted at Mac users.
benderp: everyone i know who can afford a macintosh pays an accountant if they're not on salary, ninjashogun.
ninjashogun: wn software - but not enough to hire full accountants and managers to do the same work!
ninjashogun: mircea_popescu, you can also see a lot of that in Apple computers. For example, they are supposed to be very "easy to use" (yet are expensive). But this hides the fact that a lot of people use it to run accounting software that's also dumbed down to their level, and a load of similar extra-expensive things that let them manage their lifestyle. It's becaues they make enough money to buy Macs and to buy expensive dumbed-do
mircea_popescu: (Side point- Art Deco's fascination with streamlining household objects whose actual wind resistance is irrelevant proved popular because levelling incomes led for the first time to a group of people who could afford good design but not household servants. It seems that a streamlined Art Deco lamp is easier to dust than a frilly Victorian one...)
moiety: the forum??
moiety: youre definately the loudest ninja i have ever met!
ninjashogun: davout - but you can't just call it debt if they're not going to do it. For example, the fact that Python 3 isn't source code compatible with Python 2 isn't technical debt that they're postponing. It's a design decision.
ninjashogun: davout - I don't necessarily call backwards compatibility "improving their OS". In fact, in many cases compatibility and objective improvement are at odds.
davout: ninjashogun: "improving their OS" and "creating a new solid OS" sounds like a difference in degree, not in kind
Perlboy: microsoft basically dropped their pants license wise.
ninjashogun: davout - that is a fairer example. Their backwards compatibility is a 'debt' because they are actually taking it on as a commitment. It's clearly a slightly lower debt than they would have if they had a goal of creating a real operating system like Unix and BSD's
ninjashogun: Perlboy, their safes?
davout: ninjashogun: it can be debt in the sense that they have to keep backwards compatibility up to some level
ninjashogun: Perlboy, their web page?
ninjashogun: Perlboy, their servers?
davout: ninjashogun: except if you're considering the expense of time required to switch useful applications to better OSes
asciilifeform: mircea_popescu: seriously, winblows is mandatory, and that's the 'reasoning'
ninjashogun: davout - on the other hand if your prototype is pyrite and you're prototyping a gold bracelet (the way many startups prototype an MVP then intend to build scallability) then it can be considered a "debt".
ninjashogun: davout - just like, if you make a bracelet out of pyrite, you do not have the "debt" of whatever it would take to re-make in Gold. You just have a pyrite bracelet.
moiety: ninjashogun, dear, when you begin by talking about incompetence of managers and people that make food... you cannot really switch to a whole company that is comprised of millions of them. #consistency
ninjashogun: davout - that's silly :) The term "technical debt" is an analogy, i.e. you get features now but at a commitment of future time. If that future time is not a real commitment, then there is no actual debt involved.
Perlboy: umm, so, there's nothing wrong with windows being used for all banking applications
davout: ninjashogun: just because you're never going to repay it doesn't change the nature of a debt, it's still a debt
ninjashogun: Another example is ATM's that run Windows. On some level that is such an obvious display of incompetence that it should make most people here shiver.
asciilifeform: and the Official Party Line of usg is... wait for it...
asciilifeform: they include people who don't even work for ms
moiety: i think its time to break out the alcohol or sanity pills or something
Perlboy: hack it together and we'll have to rewrite every X years
Perlboy: so it's the age old opportunity cost thing
moiety: asciilifeform! i used gribbles lasers! they were required
Perlboy: ninjashogun, true, but then it's been rewritten what, 4 times now (3.11, 95, XP, 8)?
ninjashogun: That WITHOUT sarcasm, in fact those architects (the totally incompetent windows ones) have built immense value over hte past thirty years.
ninjashogun: But on the other hand, millions of people use Windows for hours every day, and have used it to run most aspects of the economy.
benderp: and yet ninjashogun those are the 'architects' out there in the wild, delivering value by your standards.
ninjashogun: Look, I know that on some level what you say make sense. For example, on some level Windows is completely broken in every single conceivable way and has had the opposite of architects working on it for the past thirty years.
Perlboy: ninjashogun, no they are typically promoted either a) Because they stroked egos and didn't create any issues [or covered them up to people who would be concerned] or b) Were found to be incompetent but were stuck in the organisation so were promoted to a position where they couldn't fuck things up
mircea_popescu: davout are you trying to get me in trouble with the law ?
ninjashogun: moiety - I've worked at government agencies. My God! The inefficiency. It was horrendous.
ninjashogun: Perlboy - you say that, but the 'shit' skils that let them 'float' are vitally important to the companies they're at. They do more for the mission than most lines of code that are written at most organizations.
mircea_popescu: people generally overrepresent the importance and power of corrupt government.
ninjashogun: moiety - are there that many incompetent managers in the world though? Don't nearly all of them produce hte basic results they're there to do on some level?
Perlboy: if i did such things in australia i'd start waiting for the black helicopters
Perlboy: mircea_popescu, ok, nice article though i'm glad there's someone like you able to push back
mircea_popescu: anyway, not going to comment on that particular wrinkle further.
ninjashogun: I'm not Icahn, there to criticize a $74B company (eBay) when he couldn't run a company any better.
ninjashogun: I thnk a bunch of companies "suck" and are "idiots". I hate paypal and wish it would die. But I don't actually SAY that, or actually SAY they're incompetent.
ninjashogun: moiety - fair enough. I should have been clear that I was being satirical, and not using my own definition of competent. I think basically 100% of people are competent at what they do.
Perlboy: mircea_popescu, nice article http://trilema.com/2014/interacting-with-fiat-institution-a-guide/ just a slight comment "(unfortunately the Australian equivalent of the US SEC has been uniquely unhelpful in this matter so far).". Patrick Harnett appears to have a +64 number which would make him NZ :)
moiety: ninjashogun: imo, you get people competent and incompetent in every field. competence is not something that comes with status. There are plenty of incompetent management in the world
moiety: eww mircea_popescu no one wants to see that much of their or anyone else's boss
benderp: i blame the incompetent teachers.
ninjashogun: no they can't. You just said only a vanishingly thin percentage of "everyone" is competent.
mircea_popescu: it just doesn't go any further.
mircea_popescu: dorks have their own shortener to paste their links about how a spurious ceo is ending cancer by shoving things up his butt live on cam.
moiety: people can be competent at producing food, building things... all the things you said ninjashogun
mircea_popescu: i would say this is the definitive example.
ninjashogun: No, it's not ridiculous. By any definition of "competent" for which benderp's statement holds true (" a vanishingly thin slice of everyone is competent, and everyone else is constantly justifying their incompetence to themselves and each other.") it is absolutely true.
ninjashogun: benderp - suppose you removed everyone from the world who is not "competent". You would be left with nobody making your clothes, producing your food, building your highways, collecting your taxes, installing your Internet connection, or keeping any of the factories, buildings, schools, infrastructure, going.
benderp: mircea_popescu: more credence accrues every day to the notion that consumer organizations accepting bitcoin only do so as they begin to circle the drain.
benderp: nonsense ninjashogun. a vanishingly thin slice of everyone is competent, and everyone else is constantly justifying their incompetence to themselves and each other.
ninjashogun: very interesting article - http://jangosteve.com/post/380926251/no-one-knows-what-theyre-doing
dexX7: i give luke much credit. he may be a troll (it's only what i heard several times), but his pool is remarkable for the different transaction policies and the only one to push non-standard stuff..
benkay: he's no troll - 100% authentic!
benkay: BingoBoingo: just the best troll this channel has ever seen.
BingoBoingo: benkay: What was his deal anyways. That's like the fifth person I've been accused of being this week.
BingoBoingo: Well, it is always important to point out this is the record
BingoBoingo: Maybe jimmothy is Thermos, or nefario?
mircea_popescu: the name is satoshi. who is this andressen
Shakespeare: "The participants could then each do a standard algorithm to generate consistent state. This might seem like a fantasy, but Byzantine algorithms like Bitcoin [Andreesen 2014] and Namecoin show that such systems are possible today."
Shakespeare: the whip covering his butcrack makes it look odd
asciilifeform: and, finally, his moment arrived! von Kármán surrendered his orange ticket, took a deep breath, and said, "God, explain turbulence." Theodore von Kármán spent the rest of eternity burning in Hell.'
asciilifeform: 'Aerodynamicist Theodore von Kármán died and went to heaven. In his registration packet was a bright orange ticket. Said Saint Peter, "You may get in line to ask God Himself one question." von Kármán ran to join the far end of the orange ticket queue. It was a long line, a *very* long line. Eons passed by and, sure enough, eventually in the distance he espied a giant glowing throne. More eons passed by
praeconium: Random Walk is there, I don't look into getting model right :) I just want to implement my ideas.
mircea_popescu: nubbins` note that they have sequenced the human genome, but haven't figured out the winglets.
mircea_popescu: which you won't likely, because it's a lot harder to predict turbulent flow than any one other thing
mircea_popescu: roughly speaking, the risk of the exchange goxing you is high enough that your quant profits are irrelevant
BingoBoingo: praeconium: Your best bet may be making #bitcoinquant then lurking here and directing interested people to your channels
dexX7: there is a company that offers a quantitative model about btc (if that's the correct wording).. let me see, if i can find it
praeconium: I used rtbtc, but they used mtgox API
jborkl: rtbtc was good, but the serviced gox and bitstamp
praeconium: I am mainly interested to see how they go about acquiring hist and realtime data since there is so much variety.
jborkl: mtgox-troll would be the best
dexX7: praeconium: ##econometrics seems to be the most "professional" one re: investments and bitcoin, about bitcoin trading talk there is #bitcoin-pricetalk + #bitcoinmarkets
mircea_popescu: i guess that didn't work out then
BingoBoingo: benkay: Sure, but for some a physical campus with ammenities like horsehair robes and doors locked from the outside can provide motivation
praeconium: Is there a channel where people trading on quantitative models talk?
praeconium: Do You trade other coins? I know I am not in right channel..
mircea_popescu: "Subject: These users are now making more money in 1 hour than in their 9-5 dead-end job" "What could you do with $106 an hour?" << my spambox rules.
BingoBoingo: "They were asking for voluntary cooperation. All he had to say was "no thank you." You can bet if they had any legal or authoritative standing they wouldn't be asking they'd be taking/demanding."
mircea_popescu: hei guise, what the fuck does that toxic mean ?
mircea_popescu: "Based on the toxic and self righteous writing style, i'm pretty sure it's him. He would never admit it though, as the account has always made fun of anyone calling it a man."
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Getting the scale right, etc
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: I'm kind of wondering why it isn't standard already. One's own face ought to offer better anatomical context at the range than those circles
asciilifeform: BingoBoingo: cheap led vga projectors are common now, i imagine very soon you'll be able to project your face on the target at your local target lane.
mircea_popescu: "At least MP is an asshole equally to everyone, there is some amount of credibility in that."
asciilifeform: so perhaps i'll teach the penal battalion.
asciilifeform: people teaching everything from number theory to marksmanship complain about this.
asciilifeform: grls have this thing that they do, where they pretend to make you teach them maths, but they just pulsate
BingoBoingo: Ah, isn't that kind of the operation you are running atm?
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: I dunno if you've answered yet, but what are the plans for MP University? http://trilema.com/2014/fata-morgana-ii-or-dont-you-just-hate-it-when-you-come-up-with-an-idea-and-a-title-and-then-discover-you-need-an-introduction-which-keeps-swelling-so-eventually-youre-stuck-publishing-it-as-a-sta/
dexX7: "Why is Havelock Investments in the SEC's crosshairs? I made an account with them, but never bought anything. Should I be worried?" "Can you get in trouble for just a few mBTC?" ...
dexX7: someone here from http://satoshibox.com/? add the option to add a file hash/signature or whatever
ozbot: AbsoluteZero2 comments on MP was approached by the SEC about Bitcoin exchanges; handled it very prof
nubbins`: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/20sg7l/mp_was_approached_by_the_sec_about_bitcoin/cg6knxx
nubbins`: i thought that was just the name of a miles davis song D:
Duffer1: more americans thoroughly unaware of their complete irrelevance
BCB: mircea_popescu: I'd be standing in the crowd during your perp walk
mircea_popescu: BCB well so then how would we meed in this counterfactual future you propose ?
asciilifeform: (we don't even know if he leases the bear, or keeps it on retainer, or it lives in his bed)
BCB: asciilifeform: they don't need a trial. Just and indictment
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform sucks for the us.
asciilifeform: the trial is about as likely as mr. putin personally hand-feeding preet bharara to bear
BCB: mircea_popescu: I don't think you'll have a choice in the matter.
mircea_popescu: BCB well cause i don't intend to visit the us till they dissolve the homeland security crap and put the people responsible on trial.
BCB: mircea_popescu: SEC will fly you on their private jet
kakobrekla: nubbins` it seems bet was altered by the mods
asciilifeform: 'endless war and endless underfeeding for the sake of war, slave populations toiling behind barbed wire, women dragged shrieking to the block, cork-lined cellars where the executioner blows your brains out from behind. So it appears that amputation of the soul isn't just a simple surgical job, like having your appendix out. The wound has a tendency to go septic.' (orwell's 'notes on the way')
BCB: asciilifeform: cork-lined - they are actually cement
nubbins`: the fuck?
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Is the cellar a wine cellar?
nubbins`: that's actually not the bet i submitted
asciilifeform: BCB: would you personally travel to a place where there's a cork-lined cellar waiting for you?
nubbins`: house bet there too
nubbins`: there we go
mircea_popescu: carsam type in the lower box to talk
BingoBoingo: electrocuting someone in the throes of Delirium tremens wouldn't be sporting at all
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: Ethanol is a crude anti-convulsant and is rather neuroprotective against these things.
novusordo: mircea_popescu: yeah, I looked at the CSS because I thought it was a fall-back font
BingoBoingo: asciilifeform: But it took so much more electricity to electricute the first street drunk verus than the first idiot
asciilifeform: i recall reading that it caused great public wankage at the time
asciilifeform: people don't seem to grasp the fact that the situation in 'shall be delivered' is as inevitable as that first street drunk who electrocuted himself in the 1870s (?)
asciilifeform: meatspace courts are supposed to operate on principle of 'least astonishment' (someone cough up the right term plz) ?
mircea_popescu: btc will pose some very srious problems to legal systems based on caselaw, perhaps enough so to make them unworkable in practice
mircea_popescu: very theoretically.
asciilifeform: arguably any case involving stolen btc could, theoretically, bake crypto-signature precedent
mircea_popescu: for what it's worth the opinions i have re likely romanian court reaction would be that should a signature be repudiated you have about 2:3 chances to get the judge to process the pgp part of the text.
asciilifeform: but, IANAL, and not sure how settled the case law is.
asciilifeform: i vaguely recall that pgp 'counts' in the usa
asciilifeform: sure, but in the 'microscope is backwards-compatible with hammer' sense.
mircea_popescu: you can trivially print out gpg signed contracts, sign on the paper, and register them
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform what's the princeling to do with it ?
asciilifeform: then you're stuck with strictly reputation-based contract
asciilifeform: if your local princeling believes pgp to be the work of satan
BingoBoingo: ;;google the drinking record digital signatures
mircea_popescu: nubbins` but otherwise you can just you know... show him a mpex contract
gribble: PGP/GPG Guide | Bingo Blog: <http://www.thedrinkingrecord.com/pgpgpg-guide/>; Signature Thursday: Geany a GUI text editor for GPG tasks | Bingo ...: <http://www.thedrinkingrecord.com/2013/10/31/signature-thursday-geany-a-gui-text-editor-for-gpg-tasks/>; Contact and Credentials | Bingo Blog: <http://www.thedrinkingrecord.com/contact-and-credentials/>
BingoBoingo: ;;google the drinking record GPG
nubbins`: surely there's an article written on this, anyone got a title handy??
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo clearly they're stonewalling you
BingoBoingo: I still can't believe Illinois did not invite me to their hearing on Virtual currencies as an honored distinguished guest, and that news of it happening didn't even reach me until it is two hours too late to start driving and make it on time.
nubbins`: figured i'd sweeten the pot a bit
nubbins`: i sent one along immediately after submitting the bet
mircea_popescu: BCB As the wolly-haired Melanasians of Papua, New Guinea once said, (Makes a series of clicking and popping sounds)
ThickAsThieves: "Today, however, founder Tim Sweeney is announcing a new business model: Epic will charge just $19 a month, and 5 percent of a game developer's gross revenue, for access to the complete Unreal Engine set of tools and even its source code."
BCB: mircea_popescu: you command of the english language is impressive