thimbronion: Damn. spandrell is going full urbit-tard.
thimbronion: https://urbit.org/understanding-urbit/ << this page is filled with lies: "Urbit OS is completely sealed from the system it runs on, sort of like WASM or the JVM. We sometimes call it an ‘overlay OS’."
thimbronion: They're telling people to run their "completely sealed from the system" digital citadels on cloud servers.
thimbronion: has it's own blockchain nao lol
thimbronion: asciilifeform: thanks. I don't know what "jets" are but if more software, I don't need to read further.
thimbronion: I don't know what exactly it is that makes people susceptible to altcoinism, but it seems to strike the fomo'd "smart" crowd the hardest.
asciilifeform: thimbronion: 'jets' were/are the single most audacious part of the orig. circus. but rather laborious to explain, you can search the #t logs if curious.
asciilifeform: thimbronion: imho it is rather clear what makes folx susceptible to altcoinism. they want 'replay history, but this time i'ma be in Right Place, Right Time, become important' etc
thimbronion: asciilifeform: the funny thing being that it's *not even close to too late* to get into Bitcoin.
asciilifeform: the part where the success rate, for these attempts is historically 0 -- is not a problem for the ~pusher~. the latter usually does find a way to profit (from the chumps , rather than directly)
asciilifeform: thimbronion: they dun want 'get in', they want '$mil from empty space'
asciilifeform: from the pov of the folx who stood and watched while usd-btc exch rate was gaining zeros to the left of the decimal point -- it does seem 'too late'
thimbronion: asciilifeform: this betrays a certain limit to the imagination, I would guess.
asciilifeform: thimbronion: elaborate ?
thimbronion: asciilifeform: a form of cynical 4 year cycle "startupism."
asciilifeform: thimbronion: the altcoinists -- sure . but i was speaking of the fact that the exch rate prolly aint growing another 0 -- or rather, not w/out the dollar price of archaetypical sandwich also growing a zero.
snsabot: (asciilifeform) 2020-05-05 asciilifeform: thimbronion: i watched ruble die as a boy. suddenly had whole sack full of'em, felt 'rich'. until a little later, when noticed it wouldn't buy even candy bar
asciilifeform: so from that pov 'the time to get on the train was 2009' etc
thimbronion: asciilifeform: much easier to imagine it gaining another zero sometime soon than imagining it having gained any zeros at all.
asciilifeform: thimbronion: oh i'm quite certain it'll gain zeros. but at same time as $ price of petrol, rent, etc..
thimbronion: asciilifeform: to be sure.
asciilifeform: no limit, in principle, to the # of zeros it'll gain, either. depends only on usg's printing press.
asciilifeform: simply -- this aint the sort of gain the typical btc enthusiast is interested in experiencing.
asciilifeform: rather, folx want the 2009-2017 kind . where btc from 0 to ~20k, while their $-denominated expenses ~constant .
thimbronion: Doesn't the best play ultimately lead back to btc though? Say you pull off you're scam. What are you going to do? Leave the ill gotten gains in fiat?
thimbronion: *your
asciilifeform: i actually have nfi whether all of the altscammers park their gain in btc, or some liquidate to usd/eur/etc
asciilifeform does not very actively follow the subj
asciilifeform: i seem to recall that the ethereum perp sold 1000s of btc for usd, to put in own pocket.
thimbronion: I think at least a few dips have been due to scammers selling btc.
thimbronion: It's been long enough now though that many can see that was a bad choice.
asciilifeform: i suspect that they are required to sell , as part of their typical bargain with usg
thimbronion: asciilifeform: possibly - but if short-sighted enough to scam, also short-sighted enough to sell. In any case, if buying fiat continues to be the requirement, either the scams need to get bigger, or there will be a shortage of scammers.
asciilifeform: erry time usd-btc exch rate becomes 'dangerously high' (~10k seems to be the tripwire, ever since 'system' established) usg dumps (or presses on a compliant asset to dump) a truckload of coin. does not even have to be cosmic qty of coin; simply enuff to trigger margin calls and set the idjit dominoes falling
snsabot: (asciilifeform) 2020-08-10 asciilifeform: imho also not coincidence that that was roughly when leveraged 'paper btc' was introduced.
thimbronion: certainly but if that's they case why shoot themselves in the foot shutting down Bitmex?
asciilifeform: after the crash, normally same folx buy up said coin at discount, and then 'rinse, repeat' ad infinitum.
asciilifeform: thimbronion: shutting down an exchange is a traditional , low-effort means for usg to score some coin
asciilifeform: ( recall e.g. 'btc-e' )
thimbronion: But shutting down casinos makes it harder to flood the market with paper btc.
asciilifeform: nah. notion is to drive chumps to the remaining, properly usgistic casinos. (e.g. 'coinbase')
asciilifeform: y'know, the ones where 'send passport photo and cockprints if you want to keep yer balance' etc
thimbronion: Ah - didn't know you could shortsell on coinbase.
asciilifeform: last i knew you couldn't (at least not via the public knobs) . at least Officially .
asciilifeform: it's the other kind of casino.
asciilifeform: usg would prefer that shortselling happen via 'paper btc' at nasdaq etc . where they can directly manipulate (e.g. 'today terrorism temperature is high, trading is closed!')
thimbronion: asciilifeform: for sure. we shall find out soon if that strategy plays out as they expect.
asciilifeform: worked for ~3y so far .
thimbronion: Indeed, however the system is not in stasis, due to the 4 year halvings.
asciilifeform: thimbronion: the halvings dun seem to have any macroscopic effect on ~anyffin
asciilifeform recalls, before erry single one, 'repent, sinners, halvingocalypse approaches', followed by 0 effect visible to unarmed eye
thimbronion: Decrease in supply has no effect on price?
thimbronion: Either the fake supply must be increased, or demand must go down.
asciilifeform: 0, because most coin simply does not circulate
snsabot: (asciilifeform) 2020-05-05 asciilifeform: it worx because there's a neverending supply of a) dumb shits who see 'paper gold' as == to actual b) greedy shits who want 'leverage'
thimbronion: I can't imagine there's no cost even to creating a fake supply. My argument is simply that the system is not in stasis.
thimbronion: So things can't continue as they are forever.
asciilifeform: the fake supply is increased . and the cost is paid by the 'leverage' idjits , of whom apparently inexhaustible supply .
asciilifeform: nuffin continues 'forever', entirely true. but can continue for rather long time. e.g. usd-au exch rate has been under control via this mechanism for ~century .
asciilifeform: ( via 'paper gold' method. )
thimbronion: Isn't the price of a house in gold roughly the same as 100 years ago?
thimbronion: er, let's say, a steak
thimbronion: house isn't same house as 100 years ago.
thimbronion: steak admittedly also not the same
asciilifeform: could ask q 'price of sq. metre in $city' or similar, but not trivial to answer
asciilifeform: per this randomly-picked www, doesn't look like a straight line at all..
thimbronion: Not a straight line, but also it appears that a house is cheaper in gold today than 100 years ago.
asciilifeform: and indeed you ~cannot buy the steak of 100y ago -- for any amt of $ -- today (i.e. w/ 0 feedlot, antibiotic, sr-90, etc)
thimbronion: The real battle may simply be how much it costs to convince people that they're not living in filth and destitution.
asciilifeform: filth, destitution, and, not unimportantly, debt
asciilifeform: in usa, even 50y ago, was not uncommon to pay off house 100% in 5-10y
thimbronion: Indeed, the land has been stolen.
thimbronion: Most have not yet realized.
thimbronion: transition from acting like a slave but not knowing it and knowing it will be interesting.
asciilifeform: on the contrary, afaik plenty of folx in usa realized.
asciilifeform: many even in 1930s realized. 100% of reactions (e.g. 'elected fdr') simply deepened the hole. as typically happens w/ idjit mass .
thimbronion: No successful peasant revolution, ever.
asciilifeform: not even possible to draw an other than comedic ~picture~ of one. it's rather like to ask for 'successful child revolution'
thimbronion: asciilifeform: and I think I'm essentially in agreement with you wrt sandwich zeros and btc zeros, which is why I've made at least some efforts to get as far away from civilization as possible. Ultimately may not be enough, but I am making an effort.
thimbronion: Will treasure every additional month/year of freedom I can extract.
asciilifeform: thimbronion: 1 other boojum re 'costs of house' -- ~half of the total cost of 30y credit , is the interest. which 'because reasons!111' not reflected in ~any 'historic prices' wank page , at all
thimbronion: asciilifeform: good point - I guess only Chinese with suitcases of cash are paying the 1920 price.
asciilifeform: a 300k$ house, to someone with 300k$ in his pocket, costs $300k$ (+tax etc) . but to typicalplebe, ~600k$ (plus a substantial chance of paying for 29y and ending up w/ 0 house, because lost job & defaulted )
thimbronion: Also property tax, which I assume is a lot higher now.
thimbronion: lekythion project status: Spent the weekend doing the work to resolve several issues working together to cause the lisp image to hang while attemping to download urls in the log. Pro-tip: don't try to download content of indeterminate size into memory. Also spent some time figuring out how to organize a cl project so as to ease the pain of restarting the system.
thimbronion: alethepedia project status: gregorynyssa has done some work implement some heuristics to generate a map of encyclopedia entries by line number in a db. There is more work yet to be done as the heuristics have yet to be applied to all available volumes.
gregorynyssa: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/alethepedia/2020-10-11#1000753 << I can set up a temporary subdomain to host the intermediate results of the analysis.
snsabot: Logged on 2020-10-11 20:10:14 thimbronion: alethepedia project status: gregorynyssa has done some work implement some heuristics to generate a map of encyclopedia entries by line number in a db. There is more work yet to be done as the heuristics have yet to be applied to all available volumes.
gregorynyssa: http://logs.nosuchlabs.com/log/alethepedia/2020-10-11#1000728 << G Edward Griffin made this precise point in one of his videos. back in ancient Rome, an ounce of gold was worth a tunic, leather belt, and pair of sandals. today, it is worth a suit, a belt, and a pair of Oxfords.
snsabot: Logged on 2020-10-11 13:46:19 thimbronion: Isn't the price of a house in gold roughly the same as 100 years ago?
gregorynyssa: Using username "root".
gregorynyssa: root@192.168.219.119's password:
gregorynyssa: Access denied
gregorynyssa: root@192.168.219.119's password:
gregorynyssa: Access denied
gregorynyssa: root@192.168.219.119's password:
gregorynyssa: there is some problem with my client. sorry.
thimbronion: gregorynyssa: no worries