BingoBoingo: Depends on who finds the shortcut. If someone manages to math in a way that a GPU hashes like an army of buttfuries, they may just quietly collect coins. coins.
greenspan_fan: as an example, if you were paypal, could you afford to design, build, and power enough asics to wreck the network?
ozbot: Things that matter these days ; things that don’t matter these days. pe Trilema - Un blog de Mirce
mircea_popescu: http://trilema.com/2013/things-that-matter-these-days-things-that-dont-matter-these-days/
asciilifeform: this is predicated on the assumption of brute force, though.
mircea_popescu: the computational cost of the network has been calculated, on trilema, it was scary back then. it's way worse now.
mircea_popescu: people are currently desperate to buy stuff to wreck the network with
asciilifeform: recommended reading: the different ways in which self-proclaimed alchemists were treated in various times and places.
greenspan_fan: how much would it cost to get enough hashing power to wreck the network? how long would you have to disrupt the network before it becomes far less valuable?
asciilifeform: the common factor between btc and gold, etc. is (no surprise to anyone, i hope) - behaviour as a closed (i.e. conserved) system, and easily verified as such
greenspan_fan: the things I'm thinking of are either flaws in the protocol, flaws in the software, concerted regulation or an attack via a sufficiently powerful adversary
greenspan_fan: the uncertainty comes from the second part, because it's a new protocol and it's difficult to predict what might impact your ability to exchange it
greenspan_fan: btc will continue to be valuable because it has previously been valuable and there's the expectation that, over some acceptable time period, you can exchange it
chetty: yeah you have, the use today of whatever you stored
mircea_popescu: if there's no future you've not lost anything.
chetty: storing value is actually a bet isn't it? That there will be a future to use it in.
asciilifeform: to complete the picture, 'dragon' turns out to be a peculiarly-shaped active volcano.
mircea_popescu: roughly we're in the situation of "dragon moved in hillside next to village"
greenspan_fan: trying to define why something is valuable is hard enough without also restricting the ability to spend it
greenspan_fan: mircea_popescu you're right, it does seem to beg the question...
mircea_popescu: no, it does not "store value" any more than "empathy" as used by the libertard is either human or virtuous.
asciilifeform: we can talk about 'storing energy' and come to rational conclusions about physically-real things (e.g. organisms.) and then we can talk about storing 'value', and end up with pseudo-scientific strange...
benkay: or rather it's astronomically difficult to do so.
greenspan_fan: I can't spend "knowing how to make an engine", but knowing that I can do that (and having the plans/information to do so) stores value
benkay: it's arguably only contextual in a world in which nobody can really ant their hard work away.
greenspan_fan: perhaps things that would fall under the category of intellectual property?
greenspan_fan: wouldn't the degenerate case be a strangelet?
benkay: but the "you" here can vary, and does not include pizzas
mircea_popescu: greenspan_fan not clear, but er is the clap.
asciilifeform: to go back to the 'peasant never saw a gold coin' scenario. a peasant, correct. how about a shipyard?
benkay: i expect a new whore at the door
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform> time to digest a meal: ~6 hours. does that mean that one should be able to go without meal for ~72 yrs << yes, if they were a payment processor.
greenspan_fan: Well, given the above, I expect that btc is just a placeholder for something that will have numerous quantitative technical improvements.
benkay: "stench of the cube farm"
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform if one takes a conceptual hawala rather than any particular historical implementation, no.
asciilifeform: is there a scenario with 'paper & pencil btc' that does not reduce to simply 'Hawala' ?
mircea_popescu: this was actually tested back in the old days of mpoe, works just fine.
benkay: now, you're dependent on the technical ability of your counterparty to track and not double-spend.
benkay: not that this actually prevents anyone from exchanging btc, provided they're sufficiently trusty
mircea_popescu: otherwise btc is just borkt and needs fixing
mircea_popescu: obviously presuming liniarty and so on and so forth, but just for the sake of it.
mircea_popescu: thus therefore, tolerable btc outage should be something like 2 years.
greenspan_fan: OK, so the contention is that things that are faster to process (such as cash or credit) are expected to allow for retail level/immediate transaction, while btc is more of a long term store of value, right?
Duffer1: software changes, it'd be annoying sure and the media shitfest will be epic, but neither of those things matter
greenspan_fan: in the interim between breach, patch being devised and patch being promulgated, you'd have zero activity
greenspan_fan: well yeah, but there comes a point when subverting btc is the most profitable use of a breakthrough, hence the first thing it'd be used for
mircea_popescu: what's the thinking ?
greenspan_fan: but how do you coordinate moving to the new system? and what if that takes too long?
mircea_popescu: and you can do whatever you want on the old chain.
mircea_popescu: if it IS known however the code will just be patched to take it out, and people will move on the new system for cause
mircea_popescu: if your crack is not known, then maybe for a while you can benefit from it.
greenspan_fan: if you're able to break SHA-256 you'd end up w/ a majority of the hashing power if you were smart
greenspan_fan: there's a few things like mathematical breakthroughs re: hash functions or serious bugs in the client that could tank the price
greenspan_fan: but it's also pretty experimental, is the thing
mircea_popescu: bullocks would be ok, but the "six digits or less" is equal to saying in that other context "60 kgs or over"
mircea_popescu: bitcoin is like, you know, reactionary, conservative, evil, sane. you're either rich or smart or invisible.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform and perhaps we'll be fucking rid of all the forum investors.
asciilifeform: perhaps if the public exchanges perish, people will be cured of the habit of treating 'btc price in X' as a scalar.
greenspan_fan: it kinda depends if it's past the point where adoption is widespread enough to sustain an economy w/o needing easy conversion between fiat and btc
Chris_Sabian: look the last 2 steep rises, april and nov-dec. the price shot up then peaked and dropped to ~1/2 value
mircea_popescu: speculation of the sort and type that the exchanges enable and reddit/forum/.etc support is about as fundamental to bitcoin as druggies were.
greenspan_fan: the concern is that speculation is pretty fundamental to current price and exchanges facilitate that
greenspan_fan: people immediately bought on the dip
Chris_Sabian: save the drop in price from 135-88-120
mircea_popescu: people imagine exchanges are fundamental to bitcoin price. they'll close, no ill effects to be recorded.
greenspan_fan: there were ill effects, but it was kinda priced in at that point
mircea_popescu: sorta mess) is jumping on board the "o no malleability is preventing us
Bugpowder: I built the gene in the mouse video... the fish video is 2 more series of evolution better...
moiety: A Japanese-American Team created green-fluorescent cats as proof of concept to use them potentially as model organisms for diseases, particularly HIV.[42] I volunteer to look after them
Bugpowder: BTW this work won the 2008 Nobel prize.
moiety: it is really cool, i started an album after the illustrating science challenge last year
ozbot: Green fluorescent protein - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bugpowder: I think I put it there many years ago
Bugpowder: Then a friend made a pallete of different color bacteria and painted the plate with a dilute solution of them. Waited 48 hours and that was the impressive result
Bugpowder: mircea_popescu: That was made by the former
Bugpowder: Then you just sort millions of cells over and over again till you enrich the color you want.
mircea_popescu: Bugpowder did you obtain the painting by smear selected bacteria or by smearing uniform bacteria with particular mutagen ?
Bugpowder: OR you can insert the gene into the hyper somatic recombination region of B cells (this is how antibody diversity is generated in your own immune system), and then let the B cells mutate the protein for you
Bugpowder: but a few work... Just need to find them.. by flipping 2-3 letters at a time
Bugpowder: This is how one gene, GFP, the green fluorescent protein
Bugpowder: and you can put them under a fluorescent light to see if you A) fucked the protein up or B) changed its color slightly. Take your best hits, sequence the gene to see what you've got, then repeat the process.
Bugpowder: each bacteria that got one of the mutant genes in it will grow an independent colony
Bugpowder: then you mix the genes into a bunch of bacteria, and dilute the solution really far down, then spread it over many agar plates
Bugpowder: So you do a PCR reaction (make billions of copies of the DNA), but use primers that have these selective random patches at the points in the sequence you want to sample the variation space in
Bugpowder: though some represent the same letter
mircea_popescu: but isn't it 3^4 then ?
Bugpowder: but you mutate base on the codons
Bugpowder: Well, it's not exactly the same game but similar enough
mike_c: hah, yeah, i read that. but that is a minor consideration against the order of magnitude changes when it goes up.
benkay: mike_c: the basic gist is that you can't spend it when btc price is going up 'cause derp, but then when you don't spend it in time you get a reaming from investors.
mike_c: benkay: recently? don't think so. i've been around for a couple discussions on the topic.
benkay: mike_c: did you see mircea_popescu's point a few days ago about the flipside of "you can raise it but you can't spend it"?
Apocalyptic: who does use opera these days anyway
mircea_popescu: drama chick after performance : "how come people on stage never throw tomatoes @ the audience"
mike_c: yes, that one i didn't want to bother serving locally. but i will probably change that b/c their server is down more than mine.
mike_c: thanks moiety. there is more to come on that page.
moiety: i was just reading the income page - nice page mike_c
benkay: highchart js is the long-loading one.
benkay goes back to the ragel documentation
benkay: i think the assettes crashed your server, mike_c.
mike_c: Apocalyptic: thanks. also, i believe awhile ago you mentioned you were interested in the income investments section, so check out http://www.btcalpha.com/income/. it's version 1, but still some useful info i think.
moiety: there he is lol hi kakobrekla
benkay: talking about the scoop, mike_c :0
mircea_popescu: so say so in the piece noob :D
ozbot: Panacea Opens The Books - Btc Alpha
mircea_popescu: aka the "We must spy because you're sueing us about our spying" defense.
mircea_popescu: "A number of government lawyers involved in lawsuits over the NSA phone-records program believe federal-court rules on preserving evidence related to lawsuits require the agency to stop routinely destroying older phone records"
mike_c: 1) stop withdrawals. 2) use your 'unlimited account' to buy btc at 260. 3) use whatever you have left in the sofa cushions to process some withdrawals and restore some confidence 4) sell some of your cheap coins and use funds to process more withdrawals. 5) goto step 4.
benkay: at least in their minds...
moiety: this is how gox is protecting itself from closure. If they don't let anyone withdraw ever again, they can't ever really close
bloctoc: wondering if that's where mtgox needs the price to be to recapitalize.
bloctoc: if you look at 24 hour chart, there seems to be a willingness to buy at 261
benkay: "stopping the drop"?
bloctoc: I apologize if it's already been discussed, but does anyone seen significance in mtgox stopping the drop today?
moiety: lol i had a parrot that meowed and did the phone
moiety: how many bips are there?
asciilifeform: will be interesting to see what becomes of the empty throne.
asciilifeform: after that, they go somewhere else...
mircea_popescu: the argument isn't "o wow look btc is broken", the argument merely is "o hey, remember when gavin was a total asshat in 2012 ?"
asciilifeform: but i'm trying to enumerate the possible cases
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform ono. it pulls up something from the stack.
mircea_popescu: just establishing your credentials to bitch at them >D
mircea_popescu: either way.
moiety: lol i would love it if they did
moiety: i love how they went on location as probably too embarrassed to strip pff anywhere else
mircea_popescu: me either, but i told em to drop by here.
asciilifeform: trying to figure out the point
mircea_popescu: ThickAsThieves this is a sore spot power rangers would rather not go into.
mircea_popescu: in his defense they "updated" the site like 5x in the interval, because you defo need moar logos and shit
mircea_popescu: which was put together suspiciously quickly.
mircea_popescu: this got him exactly squat, showing about how important control of the new releases was
mircea_popescu: gavin put in code that made everyone downloading the latest versiion vote "yes" cause he wanted to see a yesz.
mircea_popescu: supposing of course the tiny shitty pictures aren't lifted.
mircea_popescu: well they're ok girls, whadda ya want.
ThickAsThieves: there's something missing too
benkay: they're excited about growth
benkay: the ones who argue a) satoshi hoard and b) implementation-as-specification are right
gribble: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tittybong | tittybong. a place in Australia but also the act of the female appendage leaping from it's cotton, underwired prison. Can be used as an expression of pleasure...or ...
mircea_popescu: who do you think will fight it in the US ? those currently involved in X right ?
mircea_popescu: OF COURSE they would fight it tooth and nail. imagine someone invents a solution to all X problems tomorrow.
asciilifeform: the kind with 'kolhozes on mars'
mircea_popescu: benkay tell you a secret : if all the people who had been up to this point claimed to be employed at or interested in bitcoin's business had recognised it and moved over,
Duffer1: which is ironic since his latest book (which was frankly aweful) featured the cryptocurrency idea prominently
benkay: makes sense, right? nerds want to have other nerds idolized by nerd-tokens.
benkay: although in his vision it was the reputation system that cracked 'em open, not the breaking of the fiat bank.
benkay: when A. is basically all about what the world looks like after the hidebound states fall over
benkay: it was interesting to see the Accelerando guy take his stance on bitcoin being evil
Duffer1: the over all story is well worth the overlong theories of possible future technical/civil/economic possibilities
chetty: haha just reading about them, seems very timely stuff
benkay: Kim Stanley Robinson. he gets a wee-bit preachy and long in the mouth (like Rand) but has a very vivid story about the different groups who emigrated and why and what they all did with themselves.
Duffer1: i've read them, proud to say i didn't skip any pages
benkay: chetty: did you ever read the Red/Green/Blue Mars books?
chetty: A Fatwa has been issued against living on Mars by clerics who say that trying to set up home there would be un-Islamic.
moiety: im just catching up i see there are three guys
asciilifeform: (from the 'weird soviet crap' dept. of my brain)
asciilifeform: there's a whole field of weird analogue computers using light, that mostly died out some time last century
asciilifeform: which i realized the next day.
asciilifeform: incidentally, 'there are no new ideas', etc. and this is but a minor generalization of shamir's TWINKLE/TWIRL
asciilifeform: i don't insist that this is a useful mechanism, that necessarily does 'the job'. only that 1) i never found any trace that it was proposed before 2) i cannot see a 'textbook' reason why it ought not to work
mircea_popescu: i'm a very theoretical physicist. i have no fucking idea of the formulas involved in physics, but i can tell you when you're wasting your time.
asciilifeform: pull the rotator slides one by one
mircea_popescu: (tyhrough the rotation)
mircea_popescu: you won't be able to establish the path of light after you've measured its position
mircea_popescu: known since about the 1900s
mircea_popescu: but you can't determine the path for very good reasons
asciilifeform: if you can determine the path, you have answer.
mircea_popescu: recall the early highschool physics "and now the light makes spots, and now the light makes lines"
mircea_popescu: i tell you, the most happening is "wow, look, likght does THAT too ?!"
mircea_popescu: derp, they never do.
asciilifeform: and then we can go cry
asciilifeform: damnit, you want that i draw the whole picture, and then some bozo maps knapsack to the discrete logarithm problem
mircea_popescu: you will end up with separation issues at the region boundries i bet.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform that's sans the chiral bits :)
mircea_popescu: i bet you the most that comes out of this is some new quantum effect.
asciilifeform: (incl. how to get the answer out.)
asciilifeform: endgame is an exercise for the alert reader.
mircea_popescu: "make porn appear on the screen"
asciilifeform: each region rotates the light by d1, d2, ... dk degrees.
asciilifeform: in the pipe, slides containing each a matrix of regions of optically rotating substance (chiral whatever)
mircea_popescu: i guess ima clean it up and put it on the t.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform i was going to say, basically this game is the game of fucking life.
ozbot: Anonimity : not for the poor. pe Trilema - Un blog de Mircea Popescu.
benkay: hey mircea_popescu where's the essay in which you explain why proles can't afford privacy?
mircea_popescu: when do you measure the noise ?
mircea_popescu: because measuring the noise has a cost in itself.
mircea_popescu: and then noised.
mircea_popescu: random selections from the poems given out,
asciilifeform: random selections from dictionary, then permuted a character at a time before start?
mircea_popescu: they all start as natural language constructs
asciilifeform: from whence do the strings come?
mircea_popescu: even if the xy atm has no xylophone.
asciilifeform: if the current buffer at any time does not match the beginning of any useful word, switch.
asciilifeform: or, failing that, simply the set of necessary words (all words from his poem slate)
asciilifeform: well, consider a bot. he can contain whatever, so he has an embedded dictionary (for the natural language of the poems)
asciilifeform: and it's not clear, from this description, that the ideal strategy is any kind of problem
mircea_popescu: he wins with the highest score once all players have read all strings.
mircea_popescu: if the player completes a line or a poem, more bonuses.
mircea_popescu: the word on itself is worth something. if the word is actually part of one of the player's poems on their table, it's worth more.
mircea_popescu: whenever a player has read a natural language word (ie, from the dictionary) out of the string (exact match, no mixing of letters or anything scrabble-ish) he now has that word.
mircea_popescu: each player has a pre-given "Table" consisting of a number of natural language poems. these are actual literature.
mircea_popescu: each player gets the same copy of the same list of strings. at any point each player has the choice of either reading one more character from their current string or advance ot the next string.
mircea_popescu: the game board consists of an endless set of strings, which all start as natural language constructs and are "decayed" by bit flipping by an actual rng.
mircea_popescu: "all players get copies of the same strings" say.
asciilifeform: 'read one character at a time' << from another player's slate?
mircea_popescu: you have to write the scripts for this.
asciilifeform: the final reports are worth reading
asciilifeform: rather than between players directly
asciilifeform: this sound like fun, but the contest was a robot-writing one
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform obviously player can only eat a word if the whole word has been read.
BingoBoingo: I just caution against the spring anchored portable poles unless you like driving drunk girls to the ER at odd hours of the morning because they flew into a wall.
mircea_popescu: for a cost. or skip the string, for a larger cost.
mircea_popescu: you define actual words in the dictionary as "good stuff", and each player gets a selection of poems to complete. words themselves are worth points, filled lines are worth more points, filled poems even more.
moiety: thats just along the road from me!
asciilifeform: they sorta did.