mike_c: ah :) i guess i'm saying i wouldn't want algebra or java to be the spec.
herbijudlestoids: "What tear gas taught me about twitter and the NSA"
benkay: i went to the bathroom
benkay: mike_c: it's the difference between algebra and java.
herbijudlestoids: sorry, was raging to my team about the shittiest con call i was just on
92AAAD6TI: are you saying that a graph is defined by how its nodes are labeled and not their relationships?
benkay: mike_c: you can compile a formally defined state machine into a parser in the language of your choice. it's not an academic exercise.
benkay: 'cause WHOOO BOY have you read the textual spec?
benkay: the english definition's been written by those who are capable of writing english definitions and not state machines, and its time for someone to write the state machine
mike_c: it's the definiton & spec of what goes on in those states that is more needed.
mircea_popescu: it's a state machine whether we know/admit/notice this or not.
mircea_popescu: the wet being water isn't an implementation detail, is it ?
mike_c: it being a state machine is an implementation detail. a definition and spec would make the world better.
mircea_popescu: mike_c what'd be the alternative ?
mike_c: yeah, so, i believe all the hairiness would be in implementing what goes on in those states anyway. i'm not sure structuring the high level stuff around states would neccesarily make it much cleaner.
mike_c: take the blockchain validator for instance.
mike_c: what are a couple states the machine would pass through? I don't see it.
decimation: yeah that sounds legit. I wish the same brain who invented bitcoin were around to help perfect it.
BingoBoingo: Archival fail, or why paper doesn't make the best "paper" wallets http://www.themaneater.com/stories/2014/2/12/mold-destroys-600000-library-books/
benkay: it's a formal definition of bitcoin, as opposed to the ad-hoc cpp hairball-as-canonical-thinger
benkay: what's more, a state machine approach satisfies the "spec" that mircea_popescu has been going on for lo these many forevers
benkay: i believe (and i'm open to suggestions and corrections from those wiser and more experienced than myself) that the appropriate implementation path for both the blockchain validatoin and the network client is a state machine describing the valid states of the validator and network client respectively, the messages they can process and what states those messages kick each machine into
benkay: (outta my face - where's the source?!?!)
decimation: these can and ought to be split into modules
benkay: there's the network client, the thing responsible for connecting to the bitcoin/litecoin/altcoin network downloading blocks and broadcasting txns
benkay: if i might offer a different perspective, there are several disparate concerns that could be tackled independently and independent of language wars.
mircea_popescu: a shoddy bitcoin #1 is actually quite useful, you can have bitcoin #2 all prepared in the background.
BingoBoingo: Making a minimal functional client for the purposes of documenting a spec might make a rather ultimate battlegound in the C vs. LISP wars
mircea_popescu: decimation as a point of strategy, the would-be dev team power ranges may be foolish, but they're useful fools.
BingoBoingo: An interesting contest might be to see who can develop a cryptocurrency incorporating features agreed to be essential to bitcoin in the least amount of code (self contained so any calls that would be to external libraries have to be brought in)
decimation: yeah the concept of forth on javascript is hilarious, but it's a fun toy
decimation: I played around with the javascript forth interpreter here: http://www.forthfreak.net/jsforth.html
decimation: after reading enough of the loper blog I'm beginning to fantasize about bitcoin written in forth
benkay: nor do i, but it's clearly the right thing to do and an extremely useful tool to know (BNF, that is)
BingoBoingo: The problem is Derp php coders making website.
benkay: decimation: are you interested in working on a BNF rendering of the bitcoin network protocol?
BingoBoingo: As I understand the narrative, this is a n00bier database problem than 11 months ago.
mircea_popescu: and anyone else claiming to be the dev team is roughly in the position of various people on the forum claiming to be financiers.
mircea_popescu: decimation i merely observed that whoever is doing that is the dev team
decimation: You also said in the past that the 'dev team' ought to write a complete api/interface spec
mircea_popescu: but you should write it, save me the trouble.
decimation: Is there a coherent analysis of this supposed transaction problem somewhere?
asciilifeform: i still predict that gox et al will eventually 'repay' the chumps in a scamcoin minted for the purpose.
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Of course. And should they weather this storm to scam again, the retardedness of their excuse makes their herp all the more evident.
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo you know that a) gox is lieing about it being a problem and b) all the other scammers happy to follow suit
mircea_popescu: decimation i was under the impression i had said exactly that :D
decimation: why not declare the whole thing part of the romanian central bank to be mined an paid when it advantages Romania?
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Rendering the Gox and Stamp, two cans and a string exchanges with these corrected transactions (corrected because leading zeros in signatures suck).
mircea_popescu: it'd be "private", as in romanian govt gives to some random third party the place and gets in exchange some nothing at all.
asciilifeform: "To this day pots of late-Roman gold are periodically dug up in England during excavations of Roman villas; the residents of these villas were unable to derive any benefit from their hoards as their empire collapsed and the Dark Age closed in around them." (further from herr Orlov)
decimation: well that makes their state funded gold mine even more retarded
mircea_popescu: BingoBoingo maybe we're not talking about the same thing. what exactly is "hammering the fiat/btc" interface ?
mircea_popescu: (for instance, the leu is worth in dollars/euros/whatever else exactly as much as romania says it is worth)
mircea_popescu: romania has since been stockpiling gold, it holds more per capita than most countries, and it enjoys the advantages
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Well, that depends. 11 months ago there was a ridiculously central database derpocolypse. Nao there is a more subtle derpocolypse that doesn't seem as critical, but happens to hammer the fiat/BTC interface players hard while actual BTC cared about working too much to make those mistakes.
mircea_popescu: nah, the local cb guy nixed the euro long ago, much to everyone's wtfitude. turns out he was right.
mircea_popescu: decimation but it has. romania for instance is on the gold standard.
asciilifeform: for the $1, bought a keychain in a 'dollar store' when we landed. still got it.
BingoBoingo: mircea_popescu: Well, after the great fork of 11 months ago a blaming Hearn because redditards suck at picking primary key values for databases seems reasonable. (I mean both "crises" are essentially database problems)
asciilifeform: i (and countless other people) got a boyhood education in fiat. when my folks were packing for the u.s., i traded in a shoebox full of rubles for $1.
herbijudlestoids: mircea_popescu: not sure if the netsplit caused my bot to miss any ticks, but otherwise cant think of any reason why it would only have one
decimation: One must wonder, if each country in the world is truly soveirgn, why hasn't it occured to any of them to reinstate the gold standard?
decimation: it's the biggest scam going
asciilifeform: ifetimes some tin-pot pseudo-nationalist leader will print up ugly slips of paper with pictures of dead people, Masonic symbols and big numbers, and attempt to charge people for using them as a medium of exchange in all transactions, and your great-grandchildren need to know, from an early age, that it is a scam. It is an official scvam, backed up by the threat of violence, but it is still a scam."
asciilifeform: en they will probably think that anyway, because by then you probably will be. But it certainly won't be helpful to hold on to multiple shoeboxes full of old currency, because then your great-grandchildren will think that you are in fact insane, because no sane person would be hoarding such trash. It is important that they don't think that, because the lesson is an important one: chances are that during their l
asciilifeform: "... And so, you too should hold on to a few dollar, or euro, or ruble or yuan notes, in the highest denominations available at the time they all become worthless, as a keepsake. Then you will be able to show them to your great-grandchildren and say, 'Can you imagine, this ugly piece of paper was once a prized possession!' And your great-grandchildren will no doubt think that you are a little bit senile, but th
asciilifeform: -ruble note, which seemed like a lot of money to me at the time, and was very surprised to hear that it was completely worthless and that I could take one and use it as a bookmark (which I did). It was not until the 1990s that Russia again issued a note in that denomination, which likewise became worthless soon after it was printed."
asciilifeform: "You should hold on to some cash, for purely didactic purposes. I remember my great-grandmother, who passed away when I was seven, and I remember playing with her little hoard of kerenki - ruble notes in ridiculously high yet worthless denominations that had been issued by the Russian Provisional Government, under the leadership of Prime Minister Alexander Kerensky... ... I was quite taken with the ten-thousand
decimation: ascii the disadvantages gold has are advantages for bitcoin
herbijudlestoids: definitely some of those bars look like someone clearing the book and then retail nublets executing much smaller orders at market after the book is cleared
herbijudlestoids: also i was looking at (what i assume is the daily) chart of MPOE on mpex.co
herbijudlestoids: mircea_popescu: lets say i place a huge at market MPOE buy order into the book and it clears the book for like twenty levels. what price does assbot report the tick completing at?
decimation: sure; the fantasy is that fiat will hold value at its quantity approaches infinity
herbijudlestoids: so all we need for the realtime thingy is someone running altcoind and a webserver essentially?
herbijudlestoids: isnt the number of altcoins simply block height * 512?
herbijudlestoids: just going through the log
decimation: it will be a long time before states give up on the fiat fantasy - even while everyone is banking ducats
mircea_popescu: yeah, i see great future for the fiat system.
mircea_popescu: asciilifeform and consequently making an android masturbator will be illegal because it could be used to plug the claw ?
asciilifeform: most of the new cards have it.
asciilifeform: 'suspicious,' naturally, will mean that the heuristic suspects the luser of operating a (btc market, etc) card spoofer.
decimation: well, if you believe mancur olson the state are the stationary bandits who have grown fat and lazy
asciilifeform: prediction: at some point ATMs will require the user to stuff his hand in a 'monkey trap.' if the transaction is deemed 'suspicious', the clamps close.
herbijudlestoids: on the plus side, i own ~200 ATC
asciilifeform: btc <-> the code. code -> rfid emitter.
mircea_popescu: <asciilifeform> incidentally, if the avaricious idiots move everybody to RFID cards sans crypto challenge/response << even if it has a challenge system, if it's made by the bank ppl... heh. glwt.
punkman: when the merchant pays $30 to the processing bank, they don't turn around and give it to visa
mircea_popescu: seems that your link supports the notion it is indeed visa fining.
asciilifeform: pankkake: take-home lesson - found a hole? sell it to spammers and stfu. play your part in the food chain.
asciilifeform: (at one time, and perhaps still, the courts there presumed guilt on the part of the complaining card holder)
asciilifeform: like the british folks who were jailed for refusing to pay fraudulent charges on their accounts.
asciilifeform: these are a dime a dozen.
pankkake: "Serge Humpich is a person who discovered a serious flaw in the Carte Bleue system used in France for credit cards. He was convicted in 2000 to a ten months suspended sentence. He was 36 at the time, and lost his job as a result of the case."
asciilifeform: so rsa card would have to somehow cost less than the customary plastic turd, for them to even consider it.
asciilifeform: then 'prove you're not a camel.'
asciilifeform: i (and millions of others) get spam cards in the mail. anyone who can discover some very accessible biographical data can activate said card, should he break the mailbox, and borrow $.
decimation: No, it's depressing. Who is the greater criminal? The carder or the banks who enable him?
decimation: It seems obvious that some sort of portable public key device is the solution for secure finance
asciilifeform: (i could draw a picture of why, but i'll leave it as an exercise for the alert reader.)
asciilifeform: incidentally, if the avaricious idiots move everybody to RFID cards sans crypto challenge/response (as appears to be the plan) - every ATM becomes a btc-ATM.
asciilifeform: fact is, 'carding' could disappear overnight if the card issuers wished it. (even in countries with ubiquitous old-style magnetic readers. devices which present the correct magnetism, using one-time account #s, are trivial.)
punkman: Visa fines the processors too, but on a different scale
asciilifeform: yeah, it would be quite surprising if 'amazon' were reamed to the same depth as a corner shop.
mircea_popescu: it used to be 8% in romania for a while, until the card people finally gave up_
mircea_popescu: small time merchants with a shop or w/e are being reamed, but that doesn't really show in the bottom line
asciilifeform: the merchant loses whatever $ was stolen, plus some.
mircea_popescu: nobody cares, nobody checks, the bitcoin algo is quite efficient at stabilizing issuance in spite of hash volatility
mircea_popescu: those who make bills also sell them for pennies on the dollar to those who have the means to pass them
asciilifeform: to those who can process them industrially.
Shakespeare: pankkake if you write that code to spit out total current ATC, i can add it to the home page... assuming it's as simple as that
asciilifeform: 'carders' traditionally sell the stolen credentials for (pennies on the dollar) 'clean' money
mircea_popescu: there's really no difference
asciilifeform: the rarity of phony bills is purely an ROI issue.
asciilifeform: when you counterfeit paper, some poor schmuck is stuck with the job of 'passing' it
asciilifeform: electric theft involves considerably less physical labour.
Shakespeare: all the rooms are full, end of story
mircea_popescu: srsly, it costs 12 cents to make them and the world isn't awash in fakes ? just... how.
asciilifeform: punkman: national mints are doomed to reinvent the blockchain. that is, if anti-counterfeiting were an actual thing, instead of a psychological 'security theatre.'
Shakespeare: there is a fnite amount
pankkake: if you get cash out of an ATM, can it be tracked further?
mircea_popescu: pankkake can you also write an irc bot so we can set the number of coins arbitrarily /
pankkake: I mean, I would suppose the biggest hurdle is having an exchange
mircea_popescu: cause of all the security elements asciilifeform
pankkake: they support openex?
asciilifeform: and they cost >20?
mircea_popescu: and basically you could put whatever in there
Shakespeare: "Please provide a URL that shows the total number of coins in real time."
mircea_popescu: well technically bills these days are more expensive to make than their face value, so it is a sort of pillage
asciilifeform: quite the opposite
mircea_popescu: it's merely a transfer towards the issuer.
punkman: if you have proof of incinerated bills you can get them replaced
Shakespeare: for all the coins ever
Shakespeare: then we're almost at $1m
mircea_popescu: dude check it out lol. i wonder what all the people with jobs must be thinking
benkay: repression of the people, iirc.
mircea_popescu: benkay except not in a million years has ripple done anything of the sort lol
mircea_popescu: benkay you can not pull the wool over our eyes sir, we know all about it said he knowingly.
benkay: for clarity - there is no movement.
mircea_popescu: there is that.
pankkake: sex is probably too mainstream for them
mircea_popescu: the cascadian movement produced weird music and a lot of new lice infections.
benkay: there is no movement.
pankkake: does the cascadian movement produce anything besides weird music?
benkay: death to the tyrant
mircea_popescu: yeah them bitches look poor
BingoBoingo: jurov: Well I mean there is substantial overlap in that most spammers are kids and most faucet users are kids. Sure there are spammers occasionally who make something through spam, but generally they are people who can find new networks (MySpace, Facebook, Linkedin) to spam before their game gets stale and the money goes missing
jurov: that they are useful to drain unqualified cheap workforce pool
BingoBoingo: I mean spam doesn't even pretend to offer a return ever. Solving captchas though offers some satoshis every nao and then.
mircea_popescu: check out the shit france has.
BingoBoingo: davout: I imagine the answer is not less botnets and spammers, but more lite/doge miners and captcha solving occupying their time now.
davout: "oh sure, I'll send you these $3000 to pay attorney fees to unlock the prince's inheritance, if you could just western union me a couple hundred bucks so i can fix my bike to get to the bank"
BingoBoingo: davout: It isn't gmail. I'm finding there are generally just less spam emails in general these days
davout: I've always wanted to try to reverse-scam these guys, sadly gmail has a good spam filter
davout: i happen to have a nigerian uncle that's in urgent need of 5 BTC to unlock the last presidents inheritance
pankkake: so monaco has no 75% tax. Monaco is now 2nd in the Ligue 1 http://www.lequipe.fr/Football/ligue-1-classement.html
mircea_popescu: that's a new angle : if you read the stuff crypto-whatever wannabe exchange publishes, you're roughly in the same set with idiots and grannies that still read the spam emails they get, tune in for cnbc newscasts etc
pankkake: but the title say it escapes :)
mircea_popescu: "It seems like neither Cryptostocks or the issuer behind this have the time to read throu the contracts before they publish it these days, "
ozbot: [Cryptostocks]CFBTC - Crypto Fund BTCless seems CS/the issuer did a misstake
davout: no the URL says "n'échappera pas"
pankkake: well, it does, the URL is wrong
pankkake: yup Monaco does not pay the 75% tax: http://www.lefigaro.fr/sport-business/2013/12/13/20006-20131213ARTFIG00394-l-as-monaco-n-echappera-pas-a-la-taxe-a-75.php
davout: mircea_popescu: explain the difference
pankkake: I haven't followed the details
davout: mircea_popescu: yes the french govt by imposing this 75% income tax on high salaries
jurov: and theatrical injuries
pankkake: it's not the same
pankkake: we call them rugbymen
jurov: they don't american football in fr
BingoBoingo: pankkake: Hire an alternate to identify as pankkake. Look for College footballers and handeggers who missed the cutoff to go pro.
BingoBoingo: There's plenty of failed athletes desperate enough for the cash to allow pocketing quite the spread
asciilifeform: pocket the difference, and watch.
asciilifeform: the solution to the 'idiot X pays Q btc for fistfight' is: pay idiot Y, R btc, to present himself for fistfight to idiot X, where R < Q.
benkay: surely you know the routine
benkay: yeah also nowhere near well enough capitalized to dress 'em all nicely either
benkay: man the worst part of working at a cafe with a great view on a busy corner is all the tail walking by i'm separated from talking to by a pane of glass
BingoBoingo: Related to the Utopia bust http://valleywag.gawker.com/the-biggest-bullshit-job-titles-in-tech-1521536472/@sarah-hedgecock
BingoBoingo: jurov: Of course. What boggles me is they had a full 900 BTC allegedly.
davout: if the original point is to go there with the goal to end up kcking their ass by tricking them into thinking you're evil so they will be the ones picking the fight is manipulation
mircea_popescu: im an evil motherfucker.
jurov: why evil? they deserve it
davout: tricking people in thinking you'll be easy prey to beat them up afterwards is still evil mircea_popescu
jurov: one has just imagine being in their skin
mircea_popescu: ya re-0read the whole thing lol
mircea_popescu: just so happens that stuff seeming soft can in fact be as hard as coffin nails, somewhere in there.
mircea_popescu: jurov i don't suppose you're liable to go around deciding to beat people because "they're on your turf" and obviously they seem like townfolk so perhaps they're not quite as hard as all that.
mircea_popescu: Jere_Jones well so there you go : DON'T LOSE YOUR KEY OMFG BBQ
jurov: <mircea_popescu> beat the shit out of the entire village youth << oh my what am i doing around such people again?
mircea_popescu: Shakespeare no, you had it right the 1st time. nits.
benkay: the former
mircea_popescu: the former.
Jere_Jones: Question: Exactly which WOT is the "So you want to start a business" post talking about? I know of the #bitcoin-otc wot and the mywot.com site.
Shakespeare: these guys are nits
mircea_popescu: in short : the "positive" tidbits are extremely easy to miss, because they depend on other positive tidbits
mircea_popescu: ok but see ? that's the problem.
mircea_popescu: ow all the ways movies cant be made. Thats what theyve been doing with their years and the investors money up to that point : not coming one iota closer to knowing how movies can be made, but establishing vast inroads into the obviously endless topic of how they cant in fact be made. Noobs bereft of this very valuable (in that its very expensive) knowledge aint got a prayer."
mircea_popescu: in it, you will find : "Much like nobody knows how to make movies was generally true in Hollywood, nobody knows how to make Bitcoin businesses is generally true in Bitcoin. Nevertheless, this does not logically follow into so then everyone has the same chances, noobs and veterans alike. Such a proposition could not be further from the truth, because the veterans have the sizable advantage that they kn
mircea_popescu: for instance, the link to http://trilema.com/2013/youre-gonna-have-to-learn-that-variety-speak/ has been pasted by me here 3 times, and by others more times.
mircea_popescu: Jere_Jones it's mpoe-prs, and the problem with "Thou shalt do" is that a) there's a lot less of that available than you'd want, and b) people are well impervious to listening anyway.
Jere_Jones: I see a lot of "That's dumb", "They are unqualified", "They shouldn't do that". With the exception of your "So you're thinking of starting a bitcoin business" post on bitcoin-talk (which I have read multiple times), there is almost no "Thou shalt do".
mircea_popescu: <pankkake> why? << mothers are to blame because in their quest to protect their offspring they manage to fuck up the offspring's risk evaluator.
pankkake: I liked the mistery though
mircea_popescu: part of the problem here would be that none of those things you use the term loosely for are anywhere in range for meaningful commentary.
Jere_Jones: The possibility exists that I am simply too inexperienced to know wisdom when it slaps me in the face like a trout.
Jere_Jones: mircea_popescu While a useful tidbit is occasionally passed along, I mostly see a lot of self-righteous "I told you so" comments about any business (I'm using the term loosely) that is less than an absolute success.
mircea_popescu: the net result being that the doods' all gather up to beat these atrociously obnoxious town bois
Shakespeare: Did you know I share the same birthday as Tony Danza and Shirley Temple?
mircea_popescu: we used to do this thing whereby we'd dress up nice and clean, go to some disco in the sticks, a village somewhere
davout: mircea_popescu: i understand that they imagine it, i sense there's an opportunity to arbitrage between reality and their imagination
mircea_popescu: they also imagine they can just start "a security" and it'll all just fall into place
mircea_popescu: <davout> do people really imagine they can go to some foreign country and simply beat up some guy in a public place like a train station and not gete in trouble? <<< yes.
Shakespeare: <mircea_popescu> mothers are to blame. --- O! I said this to #ActM only minutes ago "Bastard begot, bastard instructed, bastard in mind ... in everything illegitimate."
mircea_popescu: <pankkake> actually, I was scammed by my banker << you know the luis de funes movie re scammed by banker ?
ozbot: tears For Fears Original 1980's video in HQ Mothers Talk - YouTube
BingoBoingo: Looks like there aren't too many Altcoins on https://openex.pw/index.php?page=trade&market=111 standing between ATC and the moon.