[Artifexd] A better ircd [RFC]
This is a RFC stage spec. It means it is not yet mature, and you are more than welcome to help refining it. The preferred avenue is through making comments below.
1. At startup, programi reads from local configuration filesii :
A public/private keypairiii ; a "for" key fingerprintiv ; a local salt.
A list of IPs, each with an associated public key, a "for" field containing a key fingerprint, a pgp-signed document by the for key certifying the validity of the IPs public key with an expiration unixtimev in case the for field differs and a nickname.
A list of key fingerprints, with associated trust ratings as signed integer and a comment, signed by the "for" key.
2. Program connects to each of the IPs listed on port 1337, sends a Hello packet encrypted to that IPs public key containing its public key, its "for" fingerprint, a signed certificate for the IP fingerprint if necessary, a session salt derived from hashingvi some source of entropyvii with its local salt and a nonce. Each subsequent packet will increment that nonce by 1.
3. While functioning, program will accept connections on 1337 by listed IPs only.
4. While functioning, program will maintain a bundle of current public messages, composed of the "for" key fingerprint, a timestamp, a text field. Every second, for each IP in its list, program will add a a hash of the timestamp with the proper session salt for each session, encrypt the bundle to that session's destination IP and send it over.
5. While functioning, program will process bundles sent by open sessions, decrypting the sent bundle, verifying timestamp hash matches timestamp, and updating its own bundle to insert any missing messages. Any errors or unexpected conditions dropped to log.
6. While functioning, program will display current bundle of messages to user, something like :
FB0A C0EB 867C 3172 ADCF 5DD1 46FD 816F 1020 ED78 for 6160 E1CA C8A3 C529 66FD 7699 8A73 6F0E 2FB7 B452 1420477939 Hi there
The "fingerprint for fingerprint" part should be maskable by the user, through allocating any arbitrary nickname he wishes to any fingerprint or combination thereof.
7. While functioning, program will accept messages from the user, format them accordingly and insert them in its current bundle.
8. Private message functionality should be implemented as direct-link exceptions : messages received from an IP and originating from that same IP are to be treated as private messages to the user, not included in the public bundle and reported separately.
9. Program will not communicate the IPs of any of its correspondents to any of its correspondents. Program will not respond to any requests coming on port 1337 from IPs not in its list.
10. Program will compile the Web of Trust based on the signed lists received from its correspondents and display it to the user.
UPDATE, Jan 6th : As per discussion on b-a, Artifexd will be in charge of this project.
———You can write it in whatever you please as long as it compiles on linux. [↩]These must be text files. [↩]Steal gpg code - any version prior to the Snowden defection. [↩]Full fingerprints are always used, everywhere, throughout. [↩]There should be a special, fixed format for these. [↩]All references to hashing require sha-512, no exception. [↩]Such as urandom. [↩]
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Category: Job Board
Monday, 05 January, Year 7 d.Tr.
Ars gratia artis sau cum era, or The function and the functioning of art part deux
So the artisti I commissionedii actually delivered! Turns out a week really and truly is ten days after all!
Here you go :
Just in case you're wondering, the actual text of the commission below :
Bunii :
1. Satoshi Nakamoto. Pe asta nimeni nu l-o vazut la chip, asa ca nu se stie. Fa-l ceva gen masca lu' Guy Fawkes. E asa un fel de intelept abscons, ca rol, mniezo' tatal.
2. Mircea Popescu. Asta-i asa un fel de nemilos, oarecum inscrutabil, bine informat, aproximativ ingeru' mortii ar veni ca idee. Sa nu te puna Motanu' sa ma scoti Isus ca e de ris in Bitcoin asta cu isusii.
3. Hannah. Daca o faci in chip de manticora pe care-o calaresc io, e perfect. (Manticora e animalu' ala din cimitire, corp de leu, gheare de pasare, coada de scorpion etc).
4. Nick Szabo. Ti-as da o poza mai acatarii da' nu exista. Asta-i asa un fel de intelept retras, unii banuie c-ar fi chiar 1 da' nu-i cazul. Fa-l gen mag.
Raii :
4. Gavin Andersen. Asta e asa aproximativ genu' rezistentului prin cultura. Stie ca ii mizerabil ce face, da' pina este slanina nu-i pasa si dupa aia se preface ca chestii.
5. Mike Hearn. Asa-i un jeg de om, genu' Adrian Paunescu minus talentu'. Un fel de Viorel Lis sa zic. Daca-l faci tras in teapa e perfect.
6. Peter Murck. Un fel de Goebbels discret. Fa-l in costumatie de nazist, mai ales chipiul.
7. Peter Smith. Principala lui calitate e de prostituata gay. Daca-l faci asa frumos cu strungareata si-n costum de bunny girl ie absolut ideal pentru nevoile lui.
8. Brian Armstrong. Nime-n drum da' cu mari figuri si pretentii, genu' ala de project manager care se crede VP. Cam la limita intre rai si nebuni asa.
9. Wences Casares. Aceeasi chestie pe varianta latino.
Nebunii :
10. Luke jr. Asta-i pur si simplu dement. In costum de claun, pe uniciclu, de-alea.
11. Vitalik Buterin. Genu' de copchil frustrat care vrea sa se bage-n seama asa ca da cu cacat pe clanta, faze de orfelinat.
12. Andreas Antonopoulos. Tipu' de retardat gras. N-am idee cita psiho stii ori te-o interesat, da' e genu' ala fixat oral care n-are alte aspiratii decit sa bage-n el si "sa fie bine". Fa-l cumva sa fie mort, ori in groapa ori sicriu ori ceva ca e o gluma despre cum l-am omorit eu.
Translation left as an exercise for the reader, but in any case I should hope this will cultivate and inspire.
PS. Artist insists I must publish a more generous size, so instead of the original 800 px there's now a 1280 px wide larger size behind the click. E. N. Joy.
———Cristina Moise [↩]The function and the functioning of art. It doesn't say "part oneux" in the title because you never know with these things when they're going to have parts. [↩]
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Category: Bitcoin
Wednesday, 09 September, Year 7 d.Tr.
Argentina for business
It's a very mixed bag, really.
Unlike the US, Argentina uses the European approach to notarization.i Unlike Europe, Argentina uses a pricing scheme straight out of Feudalism. A banal power of attorney, that's twenty to thirty euro pretty much everywhere save Switzerland (they don't use the euro) costs a whopping 1`390 peso in Buenos Aires. At official rates that'd be almost two hundred dollars - in a country where that is more than weekly average income. Pensions were recently raised from ~3`000 to ~3`800 pesos, and the government looks quite unable to pay. In short - if you intend to do paperwork, expect these muppets to expect you to pay as if they're actually gilding the shit.
The administration is stubborn and dumb whenever this favours it, slow and inept at all other times. A banal company registration, which can be done remotely in most sane jurisdictions for a cost of fifty to a hundred bucks will take two months here in the best of cases, can readily extend to half a year - not kidding! - and will readily run you a grand. There are numerous tax authorities with a finger in the pie (similar to the US, where the city imagines it can tax a business without providing immunity from federal taxes to the same business), and they proceed in that manner that killed Naggum, ie, you did X thing, you must have made Y moneyz, and you owe us therefore K on it - we don't need to prove anything, and we don't care what your papers say, pay up. Except of course should your papers say you need to pay more than that, which changes everything. In short, the Argentine government is trying to burn both ends of the candle every time there's a candle to burn, and then pretend no candles could even in principle exist when you're holding it to their feet. I threatened to sue the government within my first month here, which produced genuinely puzzled looks from the drones involved, as if they actually failed to comprehend what that could conceivably mean - a mental blockage shared for that matter by the fleas on the public treasury all the way up - the top lawyers of this, as any other Argentine government fail to comprehend that someone could in fact sue them, and win, and take their shit.
The population is commercially inept on an epic scale, something I have not personally encountered since rural Romania in the 90s - except the Argentines, unlike the Romanians, perceive themselves as cosmopolitan, educated, refined, important scl etc. Tell a Romanian he lives in a poor country befouled by incredibly stupid inhabitants, he will (correctly) agree with you. Tell it to an Argentine, he's going to have an aneurysm. In any case : no property has sold in the past year, the populace still hangs on to its bizarre notions that a 1`000 sqft apartment in a condoii is "worth" 150`000 or more. 150`000 whats ? US Dollars. Of course! Why would a property in a peso land be worth dollars ? Oh, because the peso is shit, they readily explain to you. Well, if the peso is shit, why do you imagine your real estate is worth anything at all ? Uh...oh... same blank sort of expression as seen from government clerks above, showing quite clearly that no place is cursed with a government below its intellectual means, but all places always and forever get exactly the sort of government that best mirrors the shortcomings, imbecilities and mental disorganisation of the population at large. Because if it didn't, you'd run it out with pitchforks, wouldn't you. But you don't. So... there you go.
Rents are even funnier a business : unlike anywhere in the civilised world, the Argentines rent unfurnished.iii The entire town's filled with incredibly dingy old Dodge trucks doing what's known as "fletes", which is to say cart shit from one place to the next. Because yeah, it makes all the motherfucking sense in the world to associate furniture with the mobile vulgus rather than with the real estate, and cart everything every couple of years up and down stairs.
Logic functions in this manner to the Argentine : his brain sports a a very low ceiling, boxing in the things that may ever be mentally examined, protecting from consideration and the light of day not only the common idiocy of all people (like for instance the proposition that they themselves are fucking dumb) but also banal things like "the government may be sued" or "you don't have to cart all that furniture up and down every other year, you know". Within that very narrow remaining space, if you never consider two thirds or more of the points involved in any case, then yes the paradoxical, oft patently insane conclusions they arrive at, and the paradoxical, oft patently insane behaviours they exhibit "make perfect sense". In their own world, were it to ever exist without imploding (something Argentina does with clockwork regularity), it'd all make sense, and they'd be sane, normal people.
What's more, they don't simply rent. First they feel obligated to require stuff of the prospective tenant, such as for instance "a warranty", in the shape of a similar property. Got that ? To rent something in Buenos Aires you must create a sort of hypotecarial arrangement on something just like it. Why would you be renting then, if you already had what you were looking for ? Oh, "it's for security". Sure it is. Stuffing yourself in an old Russian fridge and pulling in the door would also be for security, wouldn't it now. Quite fucking securely dead, in there.
The strongly nutty flavour of this notion is only brought in its finest light by considering that it provides no actual recourse. Suppose you rent to someone and he "breaks your house". How would someone break bare walls is beyond the consideration here, I don't even wish to go into the discussion of the insanity it promisesiv. So what do you do now ?
You've say a claim for 8`000 pesos, which seems excessive if any sort of "actual damages" standard's to be enforced, and you pursue it in court. It will take anywhere from eighteen months to six years. It will cost anywhere from 12`000 (remember the $100+ PoA ?) to... whatever, 42`000. Whatever a dumb Argentine posing as a lawyer thinks he may take you for a ride's worth.v So now, you're out 20 to 50k, over six years, for an 8k wait a second... not worth it, is it ? If you count the trial risk and the interest, it's not worth bothering with, even before you stop to consider that when I came here the peso was 10.5 to the dollar and now it's 12.5 to the dollar - the 20 to 50k you paid will probably be worth 100 to 150k by the time you actually get them "back" nominally.
Yet they insist. And it's not the case that some insist - they all insist. Isn't it baffling ? An entire population dead bent on something that a) even should they get it wouldn't do anything for them and b) they won't likely get. It's nothing short of an icecream franchise requiring you to get a tattoo for them to sell you icecream. Who the hell gets tattoos to satisfy the idiotic demands of the icecream lobby ? And moreover, if you've not sold any icecream for a year, what makes you suspect you're even involved with icecream at all, to borrow a John Cleese line.
This isn't of course to say there isn't money to be made here - there's a huge mountain of money to be made, principally out of the business of enslaving and exploiting these unrepentant imbeciles, until three generations later they've come to their senses, more or less. That exact process alf readily despises as you know, "color revolutions" invented by the CIA to break down a country's national sovereignity. Well... truth is a lot more complicated than that - in many places, in most places really national sovereignity is implemented as "being incredibly stupid in our own special way", which is of course neither "their own" in any sense nor to any degree special. This has to be broken down, there's absolutely no other way about it, simply because people by and large aren't inclined to live in Africa. Yet the stupid people involved, being identical to all stupid people by the virtue of their stupidity - the only truly global, universal human quality - will at first refuse outright, while being asked nicely. Then they'll get all pissy and recalcitrant when force is being brought to bear, and finally they'll get all lazy and complacent once that has run its course and the country is set on workable, if imperfect principles. It would, obviously, be better for everyone if the stupid people involved weren't actually stupid, sure. It'd also be better for everyone if bridges, computers, sheep and dental fillings could all be spherical.
Anyway : if you're looking for a country with an incredibly incompetent, weak and ineffectual government, inhabited by superficially very nice and friendly people who hide under that veneer stupidity unconsidered since before the Concordat of Worms in copious amounts, do consider Argentina. Just don't expect any sort of infrastructure, or the ability to hire help - you'll be stuck in short order importing foreigners not because you don't speak the local language, but because the locals don't actually use the language for any purpose other than passing the time.vi.
———That is to say : in the US anyone can be a notary, pretty much on their say-so. The system is balanced so as to favour ubiquity and ease of use, therefore you obtain your notary license through a process similar to obtaining your driver's license. In Europe however, becoming a notary is a specialisation in law school, like being a dentist is a specialisation in medical school. The system is balanced so as to favour skill and competence (at least in theory), and consequently people who go through those motions are granted a (arbitrary thus legally dubious, but then again what statute isn't legally dubious) monopoly on the practice of notarizing documents : only they are special enough to do it. This is surrounded by all sorts of otherwise plainly spurious claims as to the value they supposedly add through their practice, so as to cover for the value they obviously syphon, to pay for office space (sumptuously decorated is the fashion, at least in Eastern Europe, as per the universal "frantic activity as a defense from impotence" guidelines), families, retirements et al.
The very unfavourable comparison between the two approaches probably suggests that MDs' monopoly on "treating diseases" is headed, at least in the saner parts of the world, exactly towards the position notarization finds itself. Most honest practitioners at the fringes of the practice (GP, psychiatry etc) already admit that the special pleadings put forth by the profession are spurious, and the ones that don't are obviously angry about it, so there isn't much to see here. Whatever a medical doctor's "training" may be, it is a fact that any intelligent and cultivated patient can find more about his own condition within a week of study than his GP / attending physician will ever know, ever. Plenty of middle class patients afflicted with exotic diseases have already found this out for themselves (some as early as the 90s, if they happened to work in CS), and so... the medical monopoly is not long of this world, enjoy while it lasts. Or go into surgery, dentistry, the technical parts of the profession - those aren't going anywhere. [↩]Argentines practice liberally the same insanity Romanians came up with. Apparently it's the sort of insanity that comes quite naturally to the sort of people (and they're a lot more similar than either could even begin to imagine - probably due to the ruinous Italian influence). [↩]There are some exceptional cases where they try to ply furnished "temporario" arrangements on unsuspecting tourists, at five to ten times the actual market price. [↩]That there's something present where reality warrants no presence does not simply mean that it's going to turn out there's really nothing there. Never, this. Not ever.
What will turn out on examination is that there's some sort of "cultural" ie patently insane thing there, and it's being defended tooth and nail. Such as for instance they have all agreed you may never fuck two women, or wear mixed fibers, or fart, or who knows what the fuck else, and if you do - weeeell! [↩]They are very honest people, the Argentines, in a very peculiar way. They will never, ever, ever steal from you. You can leave a brick of pesos in plain sight on a table in any office of any kind, leave, come back, you'll find your money where you left it - and all of it. On the other hand, they will readily steal from you in "permitted" manners, such as for instance if you leave a performance warranty with someone ? Heh, that's gone. You're not getting it back, forget it.
Basically they've indentified some classes where plain theft is a-ok, and good luck challenging it, the low ceiling's right there and quite concrete. They did nothing wrong! That approach in turn allows them to enforce a very strict observance of ethics everywhere else. It's basically a sort of Saturnalia arrangement. [↩]Which they love to do, by the way, you can stop someone in the street and chat them up for half an hour, they won't mind. Heck, they queue with such abandon that one suspects it's their primary social outlet. Never before have I seem people who seemingly enjoy queuing. Then again, never before have I seen people with so little ability to do anything whatsoever, and so little inclination to do even the little they could perhaps be capable of [↩]
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Category: La pas prin lume
Thursday, 12 March, Year 7 d.Tr.
Apropos de nothing
Here's an image to start off this article.
You won't know wtf it is until you read the article to see the image to end off this article, but that won't very much help either. Also, try to resist the temptation of just scrolling over text to get to the pictures, I hear it's bad for your mind.
So I went to the dancing place for poor people, last night.i Buncha dudes in black jackets outside, one of them asks me if I know how this goes ? Rather neutral more than anything, I suppose it might have been the first time he saw a guy in a suit with a girl in a cocktail dress trying to get in. Just trying to make sure the gringo didn't make a wrong turn or something. I tell him I'm really just there to have a drink, he bids me go right in, and points me towards this little hole in the wall where they sold tickets. Fifty pesos a head, no discount for women, comes to about three dollars and maybe some change.
After which is teh securidad. Because securidad, you understand. So they make one go through a metal detector gate. It looked pretty beat up and as it never beeped, for anyone, I just assumed it's there for show. It probably read minds or something, because as I went past it screamed holy murder. Far from being broken, it was so acutely tuned it picked up : set of keys (solid copper) ; money clip (twenty grams of steel if that) ; the fucking zippers on my boots (!!!) and so on. So a guy with a handheld device went over the magical foreigner who actually possesses metal, unlike apparently every single of the twenty dudes and five or so girlies going in at the same time, and then a different dude patted me down. This one was actually competent, which is always refreshing to see in Argentina. They also had a female guard to pat down the girls. A female guard. If I were tasked with providing the security cover for such a venue I'd definitely put slightly more effort into making sure the womenz aren't smuggling weapons, but hey, what do I know.
The inside was a thing of wonder, at least to my eyes. There was one floor, about 500 m2 or so, with a bunch of bars to the sides, a stage sort-of in the center, and maybe a hundred or two people milling about or seated on the benches lining half the walls. That was it.
The way you do "dance hall for poor people" where I'm from is that you make the general population go on the bottom floor, yes, but you also have a second level looking down. A level where the dudes that aren't miserable utter fucking failures in this life sit, with the express purpose of picking from the crowd. Because that's the fucking point of one of these things, the women born out of idiots work their butt off waiting tables or whatnot to afford an outfit that'll show their tits and some tits to show, then await the Saturday breathless and go break themselves on the main floor like their life depended on it. Which, in sane places, it does. If one's lucky (good's not even worth the mention, of fucking course she's gonna be good) they get invited upstairs and this ascension is exactly like when God calls upon you and lifts you in the air, only better.ii
The way they do "dance hall for poor people" here is that "Argentina no es un pais pobre" and consequently they're not poor, they're just drinking the most objectionable fuel oil at 30 pesos a drink (about two dollars for FIVE SHOTS in a plastic container) and mill around in a puke scented room for different reasons altogether. So I went once around the room, took in the bevy of babes that'd need to be washed twice and elongated thirty percent to become members of this species, was hit upon by some dude (no, srsly) who insisted to shake my hand which is also the first time I shook hands with someone carrying honest work calouses on their hand in at least a decade and then got out.
Altogether a rather informative excursion in what the ideology of poverty denial yields down the road. Methinks you'll see enough of this in the not so distant future at a mall very near you. On the way towards the downtown ran into a concrete pole upon which two items were afixed. One included a poorly xeroxed picture of an indistinct child with an indistinct man, apparently together in a standard bathroom tub, and an explanation that the child was abducted by the fellow, and if you have any information please call this number. The other included a well printed image of a dude surrounded by a bunch of gendarmes or however you call the chickenshits that "work for the government" in ballistic vests and those ridiculous get-ups, with the leyenda that "la sola prepotencia es la de el estado", ma pis pe el de estado.
The moral of this entire thing being, that it's not actually necessary for things to work in order for those things to be. In this perspective, people chiefly exist to insulate the demented productions of their "culture" from the constraints of reality, at the not insignificant cost of their own existenceiii. May it serve them well, and may they be happy with it!
———For the practically inclined, Brazil y Salta. [↩]Such reports as have reached us as to the quality of God's moves as well as the parameters of His penile endowment fail to impress. [↩]This is the fundamental Faustian proposal : the devil will gladly provide you with a state. The price for which service is, of course, everything. [↩]
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Category: Zsilnic
Sunday, 04 October, Year 7 d.Tr.
Apple : first greatest biggest etc.
The pressi is full of "Apple Just Had The Most Profitable Quarter Of Any Company Ever", because it posted something like 16 bn dollars for Q1. There are a coupla observations I wish to make on this score :
I. Apple is keeping up with inflation. At market cap of 700bn that means the Q1 USD inflation was something like 2.28%, which seems a little low but who am I to argueii. What this means is that.. well... every single other US company you may be holding stock in underperformed. Apple didn't make anyone any money : everyone else lost the owners some money. Some, like Chevron, managed to lose quite a lot, others, like Walmart, lost merely a bunch. All in all, each and every one of the ~2bn worth of Dow Jones or the ~8 trillion worth of NASDAQ lost you money. Not that much, a few cents to the dollar, but still - if you're in the business of investing this simply won't do.
Yes, yes, I know, inflation is difficult to grasp intuitively, your hundred dollar bill is just as good as it was before and all that jazz. At some point you will have to decide whether you wish to interact with reality or your own personal fictitious world, and should you decide for the latter note that there's absolutely no need to go to all these lengths with stock exchanges and stuff like that. Just write something down on a piece of paper and think really hard about that, it'll be just as good.
II. The USG spent about 1 trillion to do that. Yes, that's right, it spends grossly 4 trillion per year to make things like Apple possible. Things like Apple ? What's that mean, what other things ? Well... basically... Apple. A few tiny similar items, but by and large, the bubble pretty much converged, which is what bubbles doiii. Seems a pretty atrocious efficiency, spend 1 trn to get 0.016 trn, but then again in terms of government policy it definitely isn't the worst, nor are there many better examples of judicious use of public funds. Certainly not recently.
Ever heard that quip about how "it's easy to have positive results in an economic sector, all you have to do is wreck the larger economy" ? Well... it's your country, after all. Not in the sense that you built it, of course, as you didn't, nor in the sense that you could build another just like it if you felt so inclined, as you can't. But nevertheless, have fun, the world doesn't particularly mind. Or care.
III. No, you still can't buy Russia. Sorry about that.
Anyway, I'm looking to short AAPL, provided that a) the deal is fully Bitcoin based and b) you won't either expect me to pay any sort of "tax" to the USG, or pretend like you're paying for me as part of the deal. Ideally I'd prefer a traditional short mildly leveraged over any sort of option. Thanks!
———Not even the trade press, of any particular trade. Just, generally, anything and everything. The atmosphere is generally reminiscent of the All-Union Victory of Socialism of the 70s, but I won't bore you with that. [↩]If you prefer the book metric, on a book value of 111.39 that means more like 14.54% for Q1, or 72% annualized, which is probably a little high, especially if you consider Apple is leveraged about 5:1. For which reason a 2.9ish% figure is probably more accurate - and roughly what US Q1 inflation actually was.
Yes, yes, I know : derps like that Souflakis videogame character (the Greek "Minister of Finance" NPC) think they can " distinguish deflation from prices reductions due to increasing returns and falling average costs of production. Etc. etc." Good for them, some people can distinguish good phases of the moon from bad, and good days to plant crops or initiate travel from bad. You'd think their time is soundly gone by a few centuries, but I guess Greece sticks to tradition. [↩]For very good reasons, bubbles behave in finance exactly like bubbles in a liquid : they join together until the largest possible one is formed which then pops.
Bubbles are, in fact, attempts at monetization of a good without monetary value, and in this sense an unsupported political ploy. Which is why the inflating as well as the bursting of bubbles are political activities, and why the "victims" of the failed attempt to take over political power go begging to political power to resolve their "problems" (and why the wisest course is that taken by the Dutch authorities post tulip-crisis : STFU ; ESAD). [↩]
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Category: Actiuni si Optiuni
Wednesday, 28 January, Year 7 d.Tr.
And there was another auction, and there was another record, and so on.
Here's the transcript :
(13:57:52) Mod says: oh yeah, well the carrier phesant actually :]
(13:58:02) Mircea says: heya good folk
(13:58:04) Grundin says: what's carrier peasant?
(13:58:05) Mod says: but yeah, there was a dance with a craft-table that I
missed. lol.
(13:58:24) Grundin says: oh, twas nothing, i usually do all 20 of them
(13:58:26) Mod says: OH my mistake that was Grenadine
(13:58:26) Mircea says: so ima leave now, go to the secret storage in the
sky where good stuff is kept
(13:58:28) Mircea says: and be right back
(13:58:44) Mod says: nice
================================================
Sun 25-Oct-2015 14:03:47 Mircea Mircescu
------------------------------------------------
(14:03:47) >Welcome to the gossip channel! 4 players in this channel.
(14:03:47) >Some are wise ; others are otherwise.
(14:03:55) Mircea says: so then! let's see here
(14:04:05) >Mircea Mircescu dropped a Petrified Bubble.
(14:04:11) Mircea says: isn't it pretty ?
(14:04:27) Grenadine says: is it really old or really scared?
(14:04:40) Mircea says: lol don't know
(14:04:46) >Mircea Mircescu dropped a Small Grotesque Altar.
(14:04:55) Mircea says: anyone figured out the eulerian durability btw ?
(14:05:27) >Mircea Mircescu dropped a Glowing Pin.
(14:06:03) Mircea says: sooo if everyone's had a chance to inspect the
virtual goodness, let us proceed to auction@
(14:06:41) Mircea says: this magnificently grotesque altar, the associated
prick and one unpoppable bubble, going all together at the low
introductory price of 4 mn.
(14:06:45) Mircea says: do i hear four ?
(14:06:50) Foxy says: 4mn
(14:06:51) Mod says: 4
(14:06:55) Grundin says: 10
(14:07:01) Daniel says: 20 mn
(14:07:05) Mircea says: and i heard four. how about ouch. 10 million from
the jewltelman!
(14:07:10) Mircea says: 20 heard!
(14:07:15) Foxy says: 30
(14:07:21) Grundin says: 50
(14:07:21) Daniel says: 50 mn
(14:07:23) Mircea says: and 30 from the fetching lady in the skirt
(14:07:26) Mircea says: 50 heard!
(14:07:28) Grundin says: 100
(14:07:36) Mircea says: do i o may god the hundred million popped@!
(14:07:46) Mircea says: can anyone surpass the record setting hundred
million ?
(14:07:52) Grenadine says: 110
(14:07:54) Mircea says: going once
(14:07:57) Mircea says: oh110 heard!
(14:08:05) Mircea says: isn't this fun!
(14:08:10) Mircea says: money money money
(14:08:16) Mircea says: so 110 going once. do i hear 120 ?
(14:08:16) Grenadine says: lol
(14:08:25) Daniel shrugs
(14:08:35) Mircea says: 110 going twitchy
(14:08:35) Grundin cackles
(14:08:50) Mircea says: if you have more than that say now because the
last line sends it all away!
(14:09:05) Mircea says: aaaaandsold to the fetching lady in the skirt!
(14:09:12) Grundin says: cngrats
(14:09:15) Foxy says: congratulations Grenadine
(14:09:15) Mircea says: congrats grenadine!
(14:09:15) Grenadine says: whee
(14:09:19) Mod says: Congrats Grenadine!
(14:09:25) Mircea says: wow this was fast, isthegame going adolescentine ?
(14:09:35) Mircea says: listen, you gonna sell that bauble ?
(14:10:19) Grenadine says: yeh. i don't particularly want ze bubble, so
will auction it solo
(14:10:25) Mircea says: o goody.
(14:10:29) Mircea says: go for it.
(14:10:39) Grundin says: may i ask what's the bubble for?
(14:10:52) Daniel says: ingredient to make lapidary table thing
(14:10:54) Mircea says: apparently it's an ingredient for making the
lapidary tool
(14:11:07) Grenadine says: ooh it's pretty
(14:11:21) Foxy says: yes, it's needed to build the lapidary table
(14:11:51) Grenadine says: one petrified bubble going on the block,
starting at 600,000 coppers
(14:11:54) Mircea says: check it out, the popuylation is 2f:4m.
(14:11:59) Daniel says: 2 mn
(14:11:59) Mod says: i got 600k for it.
(14:12:02) Mircea says: you'd expect new players would be a lot easier
like this...
(14:12:06) Mod says: 3M
(14:12:08) Mircea says: 10mn
(14:12:16) Grenadine says: whoa there horsies
(14:12:22) Grenadine says: 10mn going once
(14:12:22) Mod says: haha
(14:12:25) Foxy says: 12mn
(14:12:26) Mircea says: lolnow you know what it's like!
(14:12:32) Mircea says: 20mn
(14:12:43) Foxy says: 25mn
(14:12:46) Grenadine says: twenty million for the shiny bit!
(14:12:51) Grenadine says: holy hell, 25!
(14:12:53) Mircea says: mmmmmm 30.
(14:12:57) Foxy will not sell the recipes, lol
(14:13:10) Foxy says: or at least not for less than the bauble
(14:13:11) Grenadine says: 30 from the crazed auctioneer!
(14:13:18) Mircea says: lol. that's ok, recipes drop!
(14:13:21) Grenadine says: 30 going once!
(14:13:21) Foxy says: 32mn
(14:13:24) Foxy says: sure
(14:13:27) Foxy says: once in a blue moon
(14:13:31) Mircea says: 35mn!
(14:13:31) Foxy says: so do the baubles I guess
(14:13:44) Grenadine says: thirty five million heard!
(14:13:49) Foxy says: 37mn
(14:14:02) Mircea says: 40mn
(14:14:05) Grenadine says: 37 million to the chick who copied my outfit!
(14:14:12) Grenadine says: 40 heard
(14:14:14) Mircea says: i thought you just went to the same zara
(14:14:18) Grenadine says: lol
(14:14:26) Foxy says: 45mn
(14:14:32) Mircea says: alright, im out.
(14:14:37) Foxy says: lol
(14:14:42) Grenadine says: 45 going once!
(14:15:00) Grenadine says: going twice!\
(14:15:26) Mircea says: after runningall thoseauctions, you'd expect i'd
get to win onesometime too!
(14:15:39) Grenadine says: sold to Foxy for 45 million!
(14:15:52) Foxy says: kind of yya
(14:15:54) Foxy says: yay
(14:15:55) Foxy says: lol
(14:16:05) Mod says: Congrats Foxy!
(14:16:11) Foxy says: thanks Mod!
(14:16:21) Mircea says: congrats!
(14:16:36) Mircea says: so now since we're here, anyone selling anything
else ?
(14:16:51) Foxy says: thanks Grenadine
(14:17:00) Grenadine says: likewise!
(14:17:09) Mod says: Anyone wanna bid for some STs?
(14:17:15) >You ask Grenadine to trade with you.
(14:17:17) >Grenadine agrees to trade with you.
(14:17:24) Mod says: I've got 50 I'd be willing to part with.
(14:17:24) Mircea says: shiny teeth ?
(14:17:28) Mod says: haha
(14:17:35) >Grenadine gave Mircea 110000000 Copper.
(14:17:35) >Trade complete
(14:17:36) Foxy says: I gotta go right now
(14:17:50) Mircea says: oh tove. yes, ima bid 500k fo em
(14:17:56) Daniel says: 1 mn
(14:18:01) Mod says: ok 500k to Mr. P.
(14:18:02) Mircea says: what q is it ?
(14:18:06) Mod says: 1M heard.
(14:18:09) Grundin says: and looks like i've got 3500 flotsams of q ~78
for sale
(14:18:11) Mod says: 85 qual.
(14:18:23) Mircea says: im out.
(14:18:41) Mod says: 1M going once...
(14:19:07) Mod says: Anyone else want in? Now is the time! We haven't
found any claims for this yet...
(14:19:10) Grundin says: 1.2M
(14:19:18) Mod says: 1.2M to the man in the blue shirt.
(14:19:31) Mod says: two bidders folks. 1.2M is the current offer.
(14:19:42) Mod says: Do I hear 1.5?
(14:19:51) Daniel says: nah
(14:19:55) Mod says: 50 STs, 85 qual.
(14:20:11) Mod says: Daniel P. Barron is out.
(14:20:22) Mircea says: you can sell it then, g is all that's left.
(14:20:24) Mod says: Going once for 1.2M to Grundin...
(14:20:36) Mod says: Ok Sold!
(14:21:06) Mod says: Thanks all!
(14:21:08) Mircea says: so now... 430k on that flotsdam!
(14:21:25) Grundin says: yes, moment
(14:21:39) Daniel says: 600k
(14:21:41) Grenadine wonders when market sunday will include some sort of
bizarre eulorian goat
(14:21:50) Mircea says: im out
(14:21:50) Grundin says: so, i hear 600k for 3500 flotsam?
(14:22:02) Mircea says: however once this is settled i will auction off 21
sparks!
(14:22:06) Grundin says: mod6 thanks too
(14:22:11) >You started checking your storage with Heina.
(14:22:14) >You started checking your storage with Heina.
(14:22:36) >You got 21 A Very Small Sparkle from the storage.
(14:22:37) Grundin says: 600k for 3500 flotsam to Daniel once?
(14:22:55) >Mircea Mircescu dropped 21 A Very Small Sparkles.
(14:23:00) Grundin says: ..twice...
(14:23:17) Grundin says: ..and sold!
(14:23:25) Grundin says: thanks
(14:23:30) Mircea says: soo ladies and gents!
(14:23:35) Mircea says: of the altar-y persuasion
(14:23:46) Mircea says: i have before me 21 small sparkles, q 176.
(14:23:46) Grundin says: daniel gotta pull it all out of torage first, a sec
(14:23:54) Mircea says: as you perhaps know, these are needed 3 to the
supplication.
(14:24:18) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:24:25) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:24:26) Mircea says: their base value is 79k at q 100, making this
batch worth just a shade under 11 million at the merchant
(14:24:41) Mircea says: consequently. do i hear 11 million ?
(14:24:41) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:24:52) Daniel says: 11 mn
(14:24:58) Mircea says: 11 mn heard!
(14:25:01) Grenadine says: 12 million hiar
(14:25:05) Mircea says: and 12
(14:25:07) Daniel says: 21 mn
(14:25:12) Mircea says: aaaand 21
(14:25:18) Grenadine says: 25
(14:25:20) Daniel says: 30 mn
(14:25:22) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:25:24) Mircea says: 21 million is a o wow sweet. 25i mean 30!
(14:25:30) Mircea says: THIRTY MILLION!!!
(14:25:33) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:25:35) Mircea says: going ooonce.
(14:25:36) Grenadine says: 45
(14:25:37) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:25:40) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:25:48) Mircea says: forty o may gawd... forty five million
(14:25:49) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:25:54) Daniel says: 50 mn
(14:25:55) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:26:02) Mircea says: this is enough to buy preztles for the rest of my
life 50 mn!
(14:26:05) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:26:09) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:26:11) Grenadine says: preztles lol
(14:26:13) Mircea says: now my dog can have that breat implant opperation
he always wanted!
(14:26:20) Grenadine says: 65 million
(14:26:21) Mircea says: 50 million going once!
(14:26:23) Daniel is out
(14:26:26) Mircea says: 65 millionheard!
(14:26:36) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 138 Flotsams.
(14:26:43) Mircea says: if anyone objects do it now, else the nouveau rich
fruit-girl gets it!
(14:26:47) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:26:51) Mircea says: who's your banker honey ?
(14:26:56) Mod says: haha
(14:27:00) Mircea says: lol
(14:27:05) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:06) Grenadine says: well i never!
(14:27:08) Mircea says: sold! to grenadine for abushel o' coppers!
(14:27:10) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:11) Mircea says: lol
(14:27:12) Mod says: Congrats Grenadine
(14:27:15) Mod says: !
(14:27:16) >Mircea Mircescu picked up 21 A Very Small Sparkles
(14:27:16) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:20) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:23) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:26) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:30) Mircea says: this was some crazy action out here in the vegas
of gaming.
(14:27:30) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:35) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:35) >You ask Grenadine to trade with you.
(14:27:37) >Grenadine agrees to trade with you.
(14:27:38) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:42) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 140 Flotsams.
(14:27:46) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:50) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:27:52) Mircea says: lol grundin' is still grindin' the flotsams :D
(14:27:54) >Mircea gave Grenadine 21 A Very Small Sparkles.
(14:27:54) >Grenadine gave Mircea 65000000 Copper.
(14:27:54) >Trade complete
(14:28:00) Mircea says: thank you!
(14:28:00) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:28:06) Grenadine says: ty kindly
(14:28:07) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 154 Flotsams.
(14:28:09) Daniel says: it's easier with a crafting table
(14:28:10) Mircea says: anyone else had anything else ? Mod ?
(14:28:12) Mod says: Thanks everyone, great auction!
(14:28:15) >Grundin Goldskull dropped 40 Flotsams.
(14:28:22) Mod says: I'm good! Thanks for asking.
(14:28:25) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:26) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:27) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:29) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:29) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:30) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:30) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:31) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 138 Flotsams
(14:28:31) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:32) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:32) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:33) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:33) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:33) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:34) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:34) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:35) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:35) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:36) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:36) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:36) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:37) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:37) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 140 Flotsams
(14:28:37) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:38) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 154 Flotsams
(14:28:38) >Grundin Goldskull picked up 40 Flotsams
(14:28:44) Mircea says: cool beans. well, thanks all for your delicious
coins and ima go cut more grass now!!
(14:28:48) Mircea says: i mean mow
One way to look at this would be to say that this Sunday's auction resulted in 110`000`000 copper coins for S.MG, which is more than the previous 100`000`000 record, set on Sunday the 30th of August.
Another way to look at this would be to say that the current record setting auction provided a 110`000`000 / 4`290`009 = 2564.09% mark-up, against the previous record setting auction's 909.09%.
Yet another way to look at this would be to observe that the current auction's total proceeds actually are 110 + 45 + 1.2 + .6 + 65 = 221.8 million, of which just a shade over 50% private deals, whereas the last time it was a total of 110 + 4.2 + .4 + 1.75 = 116.35, of which 94.5% was driven by S.MG directly and only 5.5% by private trade.
The exact significance of all these events in financial and macroeconomic terms is of course at the latitude of each and every armchair expert to discern, debate and decide - but it must be observed that Eulora doth in fact provide the raw data for that entire enjoyment.
So enjoy!
« The Great Gatsby
The Drafts Auction »
Category: S.MG
Sunday, 25 October, Year 7 d.Tr.
And then you never knew what this was...
Yet products have started to disappear, and many have left, and the night is falling. Everyone agrees it serves them right, a crowned genius is to be born ; the orchestra began with a graceful indignation : space, infinity of harmonic sadness.
The man had started talking to himself, and from the tower spied afield lords with lordly hair. Colors and smoke of autumn, the poet's lament - water is cold, leaves rain, years have passed and yet here's the street. O, woman, mask of color, coquetish pinata of refinements! There are some maidens with translucent cheek, and yet they sleep alone, alabasterly serene.
There are a few corpses in the city, my love. This is all I came to tell you. Push the armchair closer to the stove, I want to listen to the storm through the chimney, or to my days, all the same - now that's a symphony I'd like to learn. In the park regrets are crying again whilst I pass by your very street, recalled by no-one. The window's a poem in lead and round sparks, and I quite foreign to my land. Yet in a quiet evening, a bird shall pass.
Oh, come no longer, it's too late. The velvety pansies died atop the whitish marble. Secret notes wasted, sad, funeral perfumes. From all I write, my love, transpires all too well a shared, deep disinterest in all affairs of yours and all affairs of men.
Here I am. Solitary. The city at night, construction yards at rest, imposing corpse upon imposing bier. I'm uglier, I'm gaunt, the wind begins to moisten glass. Autumn tears posters and flowers. For all the noise, mind comprehends naught. Whatever, whomever once lived - nothing remains. But if there isn't who to talk to, there's writing.
"There's the ravens" I said to myself and then sighed. Relatively, pardon. Excelsior, thin branches with white flowers lift me from error, occidented ideals. There's times when I have it all - silentious, tender psychosis. Now the park stands, devastated, fatal, eaten by phthisis and cancer, stained in raw flesh. Now begins the hospitality kinescope.
For all these nights I hear the rains, I hear matter crying. I'm by myself and my mind flies to those lacustrian dwellings. A pain without a name. Today I'm no longer me, and my mind hurts. Hail Venus, full of flower, closely resembling a violet grapery. There's alphorns blowing in the hollows - don't cry, have no fear, just listen! Hear that call from below, of earth that entreats us.
The summer's season is finite. Both autumn and winter are coming together, cheap sandals in hand, across the rivers of sickly schoolchildren. The candles weep out your years too, but mostly mine. There's a lengthy desertion rumouring all around. The trees, on the street, and above. The whole place's uneasy, as if someone snowed in the cemetery.
What truly sad love, to lie, for want, with those who die. A girly props a snowy pole, while the boulevards stretch at night. I know not one single thing, for days now, years. In ethereal aromas, poetry or destiny, whereupon the world you're shining, come! I come.
I've noted similar aspects to my own thoughts in you. Oh, the violet twilight.
Oh brother, it's so late, and still I'm not dead. Everything's as sad, today as yesterday, deluge of dureri. While the leaded caskets slept deeply, and leaded flowers and funeral garments, I sat alone in the crypt... and it was windy... Asleep, upturned, my plumbed love screeched. I called it out, alone with the dead, and it was cold. Its wings hung low.
I must now drink, to lose knowledge no one has. Otherwise, it's hard on earth. You're reading, nasally, a decadent poem, faintly cadaverous ; I foresee the rosy trucks of their purple loads ; she carries it across the cangrenous gardens.
Recall that day I said you were beautiful, bloody red lips and glittering eyes ? My darling with corpsly visage, maiden forgotten in the tower, eternally weeping over the balcony - I carry you in my dream. With all my senses inervated fantastically, Poe, and Baudelaire, and especially Rollinat sucked. Nobody, nobody, nobody. All the better.
For a long, long time now I've known two poplars. To this day they're in my way. Perhaps tomorrow, if I'm gone, they won't be seen by anyone. I was supposed to expect you, seeing how I'm lost among divers solitudes without egress. Let it put us to sleep for oblivion instead.
Slowly in dreary rain a chest curved by coughing turns round a corner. Blood in hand, Ker Chief.
For you, I am a monster, brooding my longing of a new time. In your world I barely fit, but before long I'll be going for the throat. There, where's no one, and no words further needed, there night surprised us, being nothing the whole day.
So what if astral bodies turn ? It snows in the big city, and the night's full of orgy. Nocturnal women only hold the corners, like gold supporting orchestral fanfare. There's ghosts mortgaged in piles atop. The blizzard is fighting a terrible battle down by the abbatoir, and losing to warm blood pouring through the gutter. The crows like so many fleas walk over the red icy bridge, and guzzle the sop. My darling, it's me! It's me, and as the night falls wolves come closer to your frozen door.
Nocturnal books, which aren't women, who shall read you, hooks of iron. Pale, the nervous autumn died singing and playing the lute. The days flow towards the graveyard, resigned, one by one. Once there they gather and pool like a very expectant molasses. Time's powdered me among the books, there's dusty embankments where you come no longer. Leave the room empty, leave the lamp smoky, let be.
I can no longer sing romance. All's quiet among me. Oh God! The sheer necessity of wine! Life peters on without a clear direction. This age's made me so very cultured I forget myself all over people. Of late I've learned so very much I'm up to a point notable. There could be room for many reforms, I thought by myself as I was without anyone.
Oh, lost fools gesturing down avenues. They are to take from the skies what's not to be found among the stars. What fear without cause arrived ? The very joys of subconscious life!
Ad infinitum.
« In Desperation of Cause, or Eulora November 15th Auction
A Blast From The Past, or, The Molotov Cocktail Guide. This is how you win. »
Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte
Friday, 13 November, Year 7 d.Tr.
And then she went splat! on the asphalt.
Motto : Cut my tongue out, I've been caught out
Like a giant juggernaut.
Happy hours, golden showers
On a cruise to freak you out.
When "When I Grow Up" came out Shirley Manson spent a year or so as the most exalted Destkop Image on my revered Main Box. It was the spring of 1999, "everyone"i was excited by the entirely ridiculous concept of "y2k"ii and she had just met her maker the previous Autumn.
Here's what it looked like :
She never grew up, and she never was stable. She does make the occasional (and usually anonymous) appearance here, like for instanceiii in :
The other category of women able to confuse are kiddos. Unripe girls, 12 to 16-18 (depending how worn out), that haven't yet finalised their socialisation, and as such are still smooth on the surface, still possessed of a neotenic naturalnessiv that allows them to spontaneously create the pseudopodes discussed above. Supported by the universally positive reaction due to their age, lolis are perfectly capable to convince four different adults that they're special in the same one evening, something I have witnessed with my own eyes and verified experimentally, no metaphores here.
or a spoken bit in [NSFW] Fata-n oglinda
"Ba pula! Ce pula meav ?! De unde le scoti ?!"
I wasn't sexually inexperienced when we met, by any means. On the contrary. She, however, was - jivina era virginavi.
I don't know whether she loved me or not. She certainly obeyed me, and in retrospect actually worshipped me. She challenged me, constantly, because I suspect the only respite she ever hadvii from her own demons was at that point when her entire individuality just melted and washed away under the crush of unadorned masculinity.viii There, pressed against the wall, grasping for breath in my fist, tiny feet dangling a foot above the ground, there she had a moment's peace.
I'm pretty sure that on some level she also despised me, or perhaps just hated herself with a burning passion. In any case, she did spend a lot of time and energy trying her hand at that ancient game of epater le bourgeois which the motto very aptly references. Why exactly me as Mr. Jourdain is entirely unclear, and for that matter rather nonsensical on the face. Perhaps the fact that I had the books and had read the books, that I had power that was, securely, obviosuly my own creation ran her counter over. Perhaps if she could blow me away it'd finally mean she's on to something.
She was definitely looking for something, with all the furious, outrageous singlemindedness of the autistic child. She never found it, so she just looked harder.
And harder, and harder, until one day, when she went splat! on the asphalt.
I went, much later, to see the spot. I was fully expecting a crater, an indentation still visible in the basalt of the pavement. I expected the very ground to be visibly, painfully hurt. Because yes, she was a hundred-and-change pound juggernaught, no question about it.
There was nothing there. I don't think she'd have expected any different.
———The idiot everyone. [↩]There are two horns to understand the concept of y2k as used here. One is Alf's "never happened", a recurrent theme in republican discourse, perhaps best summarized by the man himself :
The buggers' traditional defense is to pretend that the event was a non-event - or, if this is impractical, to continue living in an imaginary world where they 'scooped' the story first, and all of the 'unsanctioned' discussion never happened.
The other's Naggum's earlier statement :
To take but one simple example: suppose you thought of the new millennium when you wrote your application back in 1972 -- not only wouldn't you be invited to the party, those who knew you had done it right from the start and who probably laughed at you at the time would positively hate you now, and they sure as hell wouldn't tell people about you. and the more stupid they are, the more important it would be to pretend that nobody was smart enough to see the next millennium coming.
Yes there existed people in 1999 that didn't have the problem, and who looked down upon the problemidiots with all the condescending amusement sane people deploy upon the same idiots reincarnated into dullards drooling excitedly over the white iSomething.
They existed, and they weren't all over fifty or graybeards. Et in Arcadia ego. Plenty of teens in that Arcadia with me, for that matter. Age has relatively little to do with sanity, this notion that sanity "comes later", at some ulterior point when "you're more experienced" is rank nonsense. Whether someone will ever be sane is generally set in stone by the age of about 16, if not earlier. Certainly for women at least a couple years earlier. [↩]There are better examples but somehow I can't find them. Trilema has outgrown memory, it's a sad day today. [↩]It's Latin, shut up. [↩]It may seem strange, but Romanian cussing allows a female to reference "her own cock". It would be unthinkably misogynistic to do otherwise. [↩]Speaking of which, here's a funny reddit snippet I feel compelled to preserve because Trilema will certainly outlive Conde Nast and all its "products" :
justcool393 Illumanati Gold Member 3 points 15 days ago
Oh look, it's Mircea "Online, it's the women that rape" Popescu. He even has the audacity to try to charge to read his bullshit (you can just set your cookie through a form on their site to 99999, which is way more that you should be reading of his stuff).
Part and parcel of the present dispute is to clearly make the point that Gavin Andresen does not have the authority to enact or create a hardfork of the Bitcoin network, nor any sort of significant clout, cachet, power to influence the matter etc.
Yes, we know you are very smart. Please enlighten us on how to use a thesaurus. Other than that, Gavin does have a lot of authority (being like the 4th top contributor to the code and all) and his opinion does hold weight.
This will be useful for the Bitcoin network first and foremost, because Gavin is, by and large, a mentally retarded doofus...
You don't have an argument here. He's playing with the cards he has here (their bad considering how half of the ecosystem he is in is full of scammers).
...displaying a shocking amount of Dunning-Kruger syndrome in his assorted dabblings in economics and other hard fields.
I mean, that is a pretty common thing with bitcoiners, so he isn't exactly unique in that regard.
This will secondarily but perhaps still notably be useful for Gavin himself. Finally liberated from all that influence he is incorrectly perceived to carry he will be free to live the rest of his life in the relative peace his brain was constructed to handle. To understand his situation, imagine a mentally retarded child living happily in the sands of New Mexico. A rich old man dies in New York, and on the strength of original research, it is considered that the mentally retarded child is the sole inheritor. News makes its way to the happy desert residence that same evening, by telegraph, but the poor monkey knows nothing of it outside of dim rumors. He is not collected enough to understand what "inheritance" rightly means or anything. He does have some sort of an idea as to "being rich" = "lots of icecream", but that's as far as it goes. All sorts of people, much better placed to understand what it all means, all try their hand at, you know, "being friendly". And "neighbourly". And only meaning the best and having the kid's interest at heart.
Words cannot describe how much of an asshole you are.
His life, as you might well imagine, turns into the sort of nightmare only homo homini lupus can bring on its brother, and the child lives hell (parce-que l'enfer, c'est l'autres).
Using Latin where it doesn't belong doesn't make you any smarter. /r/iamverysmart round 2
Once the news makes it through that really, it was all a mistake, no such inheritance exists (as in fact it does not), the simpleton is free to return to his simple prior life, and be happy again.
Help Gavin be a happy idiot, stop trying to make him fulfill shoes too large for his little peabrain.
You still do not have an argument here. I don't know where you thought you got one from.
"The community" of people that need things can not fork Bitcoin to provide for their needs at the expense of the actual community of people that create things and own things.
Well, the community needs more of these things to process more transactions.
Bitcoin isn't here to make it easier for you to do what you want to do...
Well shit, I guess somebody should stop bashing Bitcoin for being hard to use, because that's a feature!
Bitcoin is here to make it trivial for others to prevent you from doing what you want to do every time that's stupid.
Weak hands.
This means that someone who wishes to pay for very little with Bitcoin will be forced to use something else, so to speak is forced to "give his seat" to someone richer. This is exactly the point and the intent of Bitcoin : to force the poor to yield to the rich, unversally, as a matter of course.
So what's wrong with the legacy financial system? I can't go a day on /r/Bitcoin reading about how Bitcoin will finally give the poor power over their money or something like that.
You may not like this, but that is entirely an emotional problem of yours, which you're welcome to resolve any way you can : stop being poor, take a lot of pills, whatever.
If only people could just stop being poor.
Run along now, back to playing in the mud with the other naked kids in your village. Bitcoin's just not for your kind.
Oh, you cannot be making this shit up.
VII. The miners decide.
The first and most obvious is that irrespective of what miners mine, each single full node will reject illegal blocks. This is a fact. If all the miners out there suddenly quit Bitcon and go mine Keiser's Aurora scamcoin instead, from the perspective of the Bitcoin network hash rate simply dropped and that's all. There's absolutely no difference between Keiser's scamcoin and Gavin's scam coin as far as the network is concerned...
Except transactions won't be processed and double-spends can successfully occur. But yeah, other than being unable to function, it'll be completely the same!
...while one's a scammer that I humiliatingly defeated in the past whereas the other a scammer that I humiliatingly defeat in the future, this makes no difference for Bitcoin.
Congratulations, would you like to get a cookie? Seriously, no one in the world gives a damn.
At least, to people who understand economy to any degree.
Which is hardly anyone in the bitcoin space.
And since we're on the topic, let's learn a little German together.
German is a very simple language. Someone posessed of Latin and familiar with declension will be able to learn it without expending much effort. This is common knowledge, and mentioned as such by German professors before every class.
It all starts innocently enough with der, die, das, den, des, dem etc, without omitting reminders as to how logically everything follows from there. Let us consider the German Language Book, a wonderful tome published in Dortmund. It uses a discussion of the habits and culture of the Hottentots (auf Deutsch : Hottentotten) to painlessly teach the reader God's own language.
In this book kangaroos (Beutelratten) are caught and caged (Kotter). The cages are covered with a fabric (Lattengitter) to keep them from the elements. The cages are then logically called fabric-covered-cages (Lattengitterkotter), and when they actually contain a kangaroo will be known as Lattengitterkotterbeutelratten.
One day the Hottentots caught a terrorist (Attentater), accused of having murdered the mother (Mutter) of a Hottentot. She was logically known as the Hottentottenmutter. As it happens her retarded son had a speech impediment (Stottertrottel), so she was also known as Hottentottenstottertrottelmutter, making her assassin the feared Hottentottenstottertrottelmutterattentater.
After his arrest, he was, by force of necessity, preliminarily held in one of the cages (Beutelrattenlattengitterkotter). He breaks free, and a search ensues. He is caught, and the apprehending agent reports to the tribal chief :
- We have captured the assassin (Attentater).
- Oh year ? Which ?
- Das Lattengitterkotterbeutelratterattentater.
- Oh you mean the Hottentottenstottertrottelmutterattentater.
- The very same!
The execution of the Hottentottenstottertrottelmutterlattengitterkotterbeutelrattenattentater scheduled for the next day was delayed briefly for reasons unknown.
In any case, as you can readily observe, German is not only simple but also very logical, all that's required is a little elbow grease.
PS. There do exist longer German words than that.
So now you know. [↩]You ever see Cat on a Hot Tin Roof ?
- Something hasn't happened yet.
- What's that?
- A click in my head.
- Did you say, "click"?
- Yes, sir. That click in my head that makes me feel peaceful.
[↩]This, like it or not, is how the female brain works. This is why your wife/girlfriend's being a bitch to you : because you're coming up short. You're not delivering manhood. Yes, I know that your jurisdiction doesn't allow for manhood. So ? [↩]
« So I'm going to be a total asshole for a moment here
Strategy for the antisocial struggle. »
Category: Lifespiel
Thursday, 26 February, Year 7 d.Tr.
An image worth ten thousand words of sadness.
Here it is :
Yes, I've just found my ~SeCoNd~ Remarkable grass claim. Which is unfortunate, because
Each of these requires no less than ten Bandar Toolkit Bundles.i. Which wouldn't be too bad, even if each requires six tools and each tool a special type of crafted slag piece plus some other trims, and in turn each special slag piece requires five slags and Improbable Oil, which requires in turn Leaky Treebark Flask which needs Treebark Shavings and rope and whatnot. The only real problem in this endless pile of prerequisites is the Wooly Mushroom that's needed to make the oil that's needed to shape the slag that's needed to make the tools that are needed six to the toolkit. Sixty fucking mushrooms per claim! 120 total. Where am I going to get that many mushrooms ?! Not to even mention the Spicy Moss that goes THREE PER!!!
FORTY-ONE Grubthread Silk ? You have GOT to be kidding me. Each of those is a coupla Swarming Grubs which are reasonably rare, and a coupla Alchemist Cheap gins, which I could make if I had Samovars (Demeaning Harnesses, blessfully, I've got a pile), but I can't make Samovarsii because other than the dozen shaped pieces of slag each needs (see above) there's call for one Slithy Toveiii, and as far as I know a) nobody can mine these currentlyiv and b) I own the grand total sum of all extant such wonders in game, and it comes to a pile of exactly one. Which is our last one. Who wants to open that last can o' beans!
I would guess 82 gins take at least a Samovar and a half, if not outrigt two - even if you have the LTFs (which I do, cuz I'm that good), but... oh, did I mention how each gin needs one Two Leaf Clover, of which we have just about none ? Mmmyeah. Need those too. And as far as I know nobody's managed to find one yet.
Ah, but what of the joy of the Suspect Ointment ? Obviously, it's made with a Samovar, and it wants Tuber Milk, Mollusc Cheese and Dulce de Leche. Doesn't that sound appealing ? TM needs a lot of Improbable Oil, which isn't all that bad, just a tad shy of terrible. Add 33 Wooly Mushrooms from here. Per claim. But guess what the Cheese Needs ? Oh, that's right, you've guessed it : Slithy Tove! And Dead Molluscs, which we also don't have. The DDL is just more TM, so add more mushrooms etc from there, too!
Fortunately I've got pretty much everything else.
To recap : need immediately asap 120 + 66 + 14 = 200 WM ; 360 SM + 162 TLC + 70 DM + a minimum of 50 ST plox kthx bai.
Shouldn't be much more than... I dunno, 200k for the mushrooms, 100k for the moss, 200k for the clovers and i guess 150-200k for the molluscs. Plus another 3-500k for the Toves, so I guess we're talking over a million here, and that's just the things I don't already have.
On the bright side once I finally get to dig these up there should be at least 20-30k grass floating around (hey, maybe I get lucky and it comes out as a million or something), which should be about 10k Coarse Frangible Threads (after no less than 70k seconds spent with the braiding, so about a full crafter day). Which 10k+ CFT is enough for more than a thousand fully loaded Small claim builds, which should keep a few serious miners busy for maybe a week or so.
Don't you just love the simplemost, lowermost, firstermost tier of Euloran economy ?
———Seriously, who came up with that idea! [↩]Incidentally, remember when Foxy Foxster had a Samovar blessed during that event ? Best. Move. Ever. [↩]Speaking of which, Diana Coman seems really advanced in the quest for a client side bot for crafting and perhaps mining. I intend to pay her - in Slithy Toves! Making this the first time in the history of humanity when a programmer worked for Slithy Toves. Fancy that. [↩]The process to managing the feat of mining ST probably involves getting an as precise as possible map of resources and then probing all the "unknown" spots with Chetty Sticks. Which I could make, seeing how I have a decent supply of a coupla hundred Particularly Promising Branches, except there's call for a dozen Flinty Toothpaste, which - you've guessed it! - needs Samovars. [↩]
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Eulora Sunday Event - July the 19th »
Category: Trolloludens
Monday, 13 July, Year 7 d.Tr.
Advanced fucking
Generally speaking, in order to be worth fucking a woman must be able toi both orgasm on command and refrain from orgasm without command. Some manual self-stimulation and a shortish delay may be involved with the former, but a woman that's convinced herself she can't bring herself off has rather ample mental issues sunken under the observable surface, with this bizarre notion playing the role of the iceberg's tip. In adult women that are otherwise emotionally and mentally stable the point may not be worth addressing, but if you're dealing with a delicious stripling or rambunctious fillyii it's probably advisable to get to the bottom of things. Also note that there actually exist women that enjoy a rather boyish sexual construction, and so may actually be unable to refrain, especially past a certain point. This is rare (and generally identified in the field by identifying that point - it's not a declaratory but an empirical matter).
The foregoing given, it is also the case that a competent woman will have learned to control her gag reflex, and so can comfortably swallow any item of the approximate size and shape of your erect penis (with the mention that depending on the exact conformation of her larynx and the shape and size of your penis, this may actually not be possible - don't force things because that's a delicate spot and a lot of horrifying damage may result). Whether she has or she hasn't, she can still choke herself on your penis, which is to say, place the head so that it obstructs her glotis and she can neither swallow nor draw breath.
The foregoing also given, it is a fact that asphyxia helps an orgasm along. Something about oxygen deprivation coaxes the brain into a muchly enhanced subjective experience of the behaviouriii in question, although the exact physiologyiv involved is unclear.
All the foregoing so given, we can now discuss a particularly satisfying sexual practice. Lie down on a comfortable surface - such as for instance a dead sperm whalev. Have the woman suckle on your penis for a bit, then tell her to come and choke herself while she's doing it. The sheer spectacle of her driving herself quite spastic over your penis is absolutely worth it.vi (You may help matters along by keeping the scruff of her neck firmly in place once she's in contractions.)
Be careful not to ejaculate while she's in the middle of it, however, because she will probably aspirate your secretions all the way into her lungs, rendering toxic pneumonia more than likely.
———"Must be able to" does not necessarily equal "always must", just like a person being able to drive does not imply the person necessarily spends every waking hour behind the wheel. [↩]These terms of art will not be defined in the present tract. [↩]The orgasm is an inborn primate behaviour. Not "a sudden discharge" nor a "physical and emotional sensation" nor a "point during sexual activity" nor "the moment of greatest pleasure". More generally, if you bother to review the various dictionaries available online you will no doubt be shocked, appalled and dismayed at the shocking, appalling and dismaying quality of the so called "definitions" on tap. I would be much surprised if you can find not a correct definition in each dozen, but a dozen correct definitions in total!
I think languages commonly spoken by dogs, geese or horses actually find themselves in better repair. [↩]Physiology is the [study of] normal functioning in living systems. Pathology, on the contrary, is the [study of] disfunction in living systems. Thus saying "that's physiological" is the expert's way of telling you not to worry, whereas "that's pathological" simply denotes abnormality - it's not a superlative. [↩]Physeter macrocephalus. [↩]Incidentally, this is why she must be able to orgasm on command : because it's her job and up to her. People have very little control over the internal states of other people, and so accepting the nonsensical proposition that her orgasm is your job is nothing short of accepting slavery. Unless this is your actual object (in which case you're much better served by an actual and plain understanding as to that effect), you do not wish to put yourself in such an absurd position. [↩]
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Category: 3 ani experienta
Tuesday, 20 January, Year 7 d.Tr.
A Trip You May Have Taken, redux
This is a re-write of Chris Ballas' A Trip You May Have Taken. I'm doing it because in spite of the author's manifest best effort, and in spite of the author's resplendent qualifications exactly geared towards helping him succeed in that effort, nevertheless the overwhelming pressure of the drony, neotenic subculturei he finds himself immersed in overwhelms, and jarringly shows through in many places, as this bevvy of passive-agressive and generally neuroticii junk. It's the sort of thing people pay through the nose for, but whatever - I like him, he can have it for free.
He pulls over at the curb. All the shades are pulled down, the place looks dead. The house -- the shack, really -- is on the beach.
He gets out of the car.
"Tracy," he calls out, not expecting much.
He walks to the screen door. It's locked, but the inside door is wide open. He smells pot, and something that is not pot, and something that is feces. He had never seen this place, yet it is, somehow, exactly as he imagined it would be. It is also worse.
"Tracy!"
Tracy appears in the front yard, behind him. "What are you doing here?" she shrieks. "You weren't supposed to come until Thursday!" She looks exactly like a crack addict.
She runs to the back door, cursing. A man who looks like anyone from Cops except the cops comes and unlocks the screen.
"You're Tom, right? My name's Sam. Pleased to meet you, I've heard a lot of great things about you that for all intensive purposes I feel like I knows you." There is no geographic reason he should speak with a drawl, but he does. For that matter, there's no socio-political or philologico-philosophical reason he wouldn't be wearing a shirt, either. He isn't.
"Where's Tracy?" He walks past Sam. The house is filthy. There's some broken glass from what could have been a crack pipe, pushed to the corner of the room, resting on the scratched floor. What still is a crack pipe sits hopefully on the TV, waiting for someone to hold it. Tracy returns.
"You can't just come by whenever you want! You can't force me to do anything, I told you I wanted to do this but not yet! Fuck! My girlfriend's boyfriend just got locked up, and she needs me--" She yells more words at him. It's altogether unclear whether she thinks they're dating or simply lacks a different track for the occasion.
"Get your stuff, we're going."
"Son of a bitch!" she screams. Eyes on the audience, she slaps a beer bottle off the counter. It smashes into the sink. More glass. She walks off, grandstandingly, while screaming something about a car and a guy from Arkansas. She has an ample supply of words at the ready, if scant else. The way this story ends - she's alone, nothing of her own but her madness and her own happy happy memories of her ruined life. The state buries her in a numbered grave, or her loving family throws her a nice funeral, all very sad and virtuous and angry and relieved. The story ends, eventually... but not just yet.
"Tracy, let's go! Now!"
Apparently that was on Sam's cue card.
"Don't worry about it man, I'll go talk to her. I'm really glad you came, she really needs help right now. Do you want a beer or something?"
Somehow Sam has a beer at the ready. Perhaps it came out of a holster. Sam pops the tab and hands it over, the man takes it for no reason. Sam goes off to make things right, crunching some broken glass underneath his bare feet. His feet do not care enough to bleed. There is more screaming.
A man knocks hard at the screen door; Tom locks it cooly. The man looks like a ex-football player turned pro beer drinker. Big chest, bigger gut. No sleeves. He cups his hand over the screen to look in, then jumps back when he sees Tom standing there. "What's going on in there? Open this fucking door!"
Tom takes one step back, enough to give himself a good six feet, and puts a hand on his belt.
"Who the fuck are you? Where's Tracy?!" Beercunt yanks at the screen door. "Open this goddamn fucking door or I'm going to fucking smash it--" when it bursts open under his own weight.
"Everything okay boss ?"
Another guy that looks like an ex football player, subtract the gut, add a thin tie and cheap suit.
"Everything but the fat fuck on the floor. Why'd you have to knock him out anyway ?"
"He looked like trouble. What do you want me to do with him ?"
The man looks from one to the other, then at the the busted hinges hanging from the door, bits of wood still affixed.
"I dunno, prop him against a pole or something."
The fat fuck on the floor slowly turns and looks up. He seems very confused.
"Who the fuck are you ?!"
"I'm her brother."
"Oh, sorry man, that's cool. Things have been out of control here lately, people, crack, the cops, last week someone set fire to my--"
"Not that it's any of your business, but I'm getting my sister out of here. Now get lost."
"Ok." - and with he picks himself unsteadily off the floor and makes himself scarce. Tracy reappears.
"Fucking--"
"Shut up. Get in the car."
Sam is overly helpful, he puts her bag in the trunk, goes inside, gets another bag and puts that in, too. Then suddenly he stops, reaches in, and grabs a bottle of pills. He looks around.
"I don't know how you all are getting back home, but... you know she's got an open warrant, right?"
"No, I did not know that."
"It's not a warrant," she says, "the PO violated me because I had a hot urine, but she wasn't allowed to do that because I was already in treatment for it, so I spoke to her supervisor, a guy named Marins, or Marinis, Marins, something like that, I have his name inside with the other papers, and they told me that I had to get a doctor's note verifying that I am in treatment and that I am prescribed the Xanax for my anxiety, one four times a day. I never abuse my medications, I take it only as prescribed. My doctor knows that. That's why he trusts me with the Xanax. But I couldn't get to him because they don't allow walk ins, and the last prescription he wrote by mistake he wrote two times a day instead of four times a day, so the PO said that she had to technically violate me but since she knew that I was telling the truth about the Xanax I wouldn't be arrested. But then she got transferred, and she never changed the order--"
"Tracy," says Sam, "just get in the car. Your brother really cares about you, don't give him a hard time."
"Whatever."
Sam looks at him. "She really needs help. She's been diagnosed bipolar schizoaffective, she takes Seroquel but she's supposed to be on lots of other shit, but, you know, she doesn't take them. I always try to get her to take them, and I make sure she doesn't abuse them, and I makes sure she gets to her appointments. She's really lucky to have a brother like you, to come out and do this for her. " He pauses. "Do you want some beers? You know, for the road?"
"No, thanks." He shakes Sam's outstretched hand, but then Sam won't let go. "Look, could you do me a really big favor? It would really help me out a lot. I'm trying to get this apartment but the landlord needs me to verify that--"
The man pulls his hand back. "Sorry, I can't help you."
"No, wait, hold up, it's really not a big deal, all I need is a letter--"
The man's face turns stern.
"So that's it? After all the help I gave you here? I gave you my beer. I moved all this--"
"Dude - I've done all I came here to do. Get lost and I won't have to do any more than that."
The engine revs happily. Sam glares.
"Wait," she yells, "I forgot something, I have a pair of pants inside I have to return to--"
He gets in, the car starts. "Wait," she says, "I forgot my cigarettes-" while trying to open the door past the man in the suit seated in the back, next to her. She doesn't manage, and the car drives off.
Barely a hundred miles later, she says, "I need a beer. We need to stop somewhere."
He shakes his head in disbelief. "Yeah, sure."
"No, seriously, I'm going to have a seizure, I'm coming off it, I'm in withdrawal."
He turns and looks at her. No particular reason, he wouldn't know what withdrawal looked like, if he cared about it one way or the other. The look has some effect, as she seamlessly switches discoursive modes.
"Please, I'm not kidding here, I was taking like 12 Xanax a day, I'm going to have a fucking seizure--"
"I knew I shouldn't have brought the Mercedes." He makes a gesture, the car eases into a gas station. The man in the thin tie brings back a sixpack. She offers him some, but is politely refused.
Within another hundred miles -- "I need to pee." Christ almighty, he's with a three year old. Car stops, and while he wonders whether the Mercedes comment brought about the biological urge, the guy in the suit escorts her to the bathroom. The driver notices that the shiny knob of the window crank is now missing.
"Motherfucker!"
But just then, the woman and the man are returning in the strangest arrangement : he's holding her by the scruff of the neck in his right hand, feet off the ground, kicking and screaming. He's holding an immense, three by four foot cheap poster showing Marilyn Monroe, in aluminum framing in the other hand. He pushes the door open.
"What the fuck is this ?!"
"It's all right", she starts. "Don't worry about it. No one will need it."
"What the fuck happened here!"
"She came out holding that, boss. I didn't know what to do. She said she needs it or something and that she wanted me to hide it. Made no sense at all. I didn't know what to do."
"Take that thing to the fucking shop and tell them it fell off the wall or something."
"Come on, I really like it, this is my favorite photo in the whole world. I love Marilyn Monroe, she inspires me, she inspires me to get clean, this photo always reminds me of--"
"If I hear one more word out of you," he snarls, "just as much as a peep, I swear to god I'm giving you a belting on the side of the road."
The suit's coming back, sans inspiration.
"How did that go ?"
"He said he's calling the police."
"So ?"
"I told him I'm the police, and so he said thank you officer and that was that."
"Now give me her purse."
Oddly, she doesn't struggle or protest. The silver knob is waiting sagely, stuffed in the bottom of the purse. The man puts it in the coin slot, and throws the purse out the window. She, remarkably, keeps quiet throughout.
"Call Harrison, see what the fuck about that warrant."
"Hey, Jams, this is Cops. Yeah Jimmy Cops, listen, I'm here with the boss, and he wants a warrant check. That's right." then towards the front seat "Name ? Or what we got ?"
"Give it here." then in the phone "It's Francine A. Hayek. H-A-Y-E-K." and then after a pregnant pause, "No, just a name coincidence." And then "Aha... aha... yeah ok. Send Alex the details... nah, it's good from there. Thanks."
He glares at her.
"When I get out," she says, looking out past the highway into her dreams, "I'm going to move back to the beach, and I think I'm going to get a job working with vets from Iraq who have, like, PTSD, people who are self-medicating."
He says nothing. She eventually looks over at him, honestly perplexed.
"You don't even fucking care about the vets, do you? You voted for Bush, but you don't even--"
"Shut up," he says. "All the time."
"You don't know what it's like for us."
He actually turns in the seat, facing her. "Us vets? Are you a vet now?"
She rolls her eyes, "You just don't fucking get it". Takes a drag from the cigarette and blows it out the window. "You know what your problem is? You don't fucking care about anything, or anyone. That's your problem."
"That's it, gag the stupid fucking bitch and put her in the trunk."
The car stops, there's a light scuffle, the tell-tale screech of duct tape being peeled. The car starts again, and melts in the distance. The purse sags where it landed, slowly, by itself.
———The US isn't a culture, in the grand, oft capitalized sense of that term. It's merely a subculture, which is why it best finds its needs served by a pigdin.
PS. Anthropologists usually take care to point out that "subculture" and "subcultural" are terms of art, and thus not deprecatory. This is true : when the doctor says you have cancer, he doesn't mean you're a bad person. Yet it still means you should put your affairs in order, for you're not long of this world.
The other prong of that "not deprecatory" bit stems out of a very pedestrian "because all things are the same thing, because socialism", and so the life experiences and world impressions formed by pan troglodytes in the cis-Lualaba and the Ride of the Valkyries are equal, and on and on with that insanity. It is obviously politically motivated - people would still like to study anthropology notwithstanding its major political implications, so they pretend like said implications don't exist and that's that - problem solving skills typical of the Ivory Tower.
As I myself don't share their problems, internal or external, I also see very little need for or utility in their "solutions", and thus as far as I'm concerned the term subculture is exactly and I should hope painfully deprecatory. It simply means "you're the kids that weren't good enough to sling dope", in a different field. [↩]If you subscribe to the simple classification that divides mental issues in those of psychotic and those of neurotic issue. [↩]
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Category: Cuvinte Sfiinte
Tuesday, 17 March, Year 7 d.Tr.
A Tale of Two Breakfasts, or, The Whore's Broth
Who names a bar "Cheers" ?
TV executives.
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Here's what you don't know or understand about Facebook : everything. »
Category: Zsilnic
Tuesday, 20 October, Year 7 d.Tr.
A sjsqd walks into a pub...
BingoBoingo !up sjsqd
sjsqd Thank you. I'm writing some articles on the bitcoin foundation via Let's Talk Bitcoin and happened upon the Bitcoin foundation during a search. Would anyone be interested in discussing it with me?
jurov Just ask.i
sjsqd I couldn't find much reference to the original foundation in the documentation but is it correct to title it as the 'pirate' bitcoin foundation?
asciilifeform The first thing to know is that there are two foundations.
jurov The original one is the pirate one.
fluffypony altfoundation :p
nubbins` What jurov said.
sjsqd Is this thread official in nature? https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=934517.0
assbot Introducing new "the only official foundation of Bitcoin" [sign up as president] ... ( http://bit.ly/1aLAPen )
nubbins` The only official statements are PGP.
PeterL This new foundation works on the assumption that the previous one does not exist.
sjsqd Ah ok. I have done quite an amount of research on the foundation but never seen this page.
nubbins` If you check the mailing list archives on the .foundation website, there's a bunch of stuff there.
sjsqd Will do nubbins`. Do you know if anyone from the previous foundation is aware of it?ii
asciilifeform The more heavily-advertised 'foundation' (Vessenes, Hearn, Andressen, et al) was a scam from day one.
nubbins` ^
sjsqd The goal of my articles is to try and ascertain how transparently the foundation currently operates. Which I'm not aware anyone else has done so far.iii It's certainly interesting to see two foundations with the same name (: I will look at the mailing list, if I have further questions is there any email address I could use or is this IRC channel the best method of communication?
PeterL This chan is best.
nubbins` Think of them as the foundation and the phoundation, with the other guys being the ph
BingoBoingo That foundation has never really had any transparency. Vessenes birthed it in the shadows and snuck out the same way.
sjsqd Ok great, I will keep a record of this channel in my notes then.
nubbins` This foundation is more interested in uh... making the codebase not a steaming pile of shit, instead of campaigning/rallying/whatever. The latest foundation release is 0.5.3.1. Think of it as a LTS stream.
sjsqd Given the current state of foundation communications it is actually quite difficult to ascertain exactly what it is tasked with doing.iv I'm still quite new to bitcoin, is the client that you release an alternative client?
nubbins` It's the official foundation client, based on the original 0.5.3 source code, with plain ol' unix patches applied to de-turdify it.
jurov No it's the original client. It should be stripped to bare minimum first.
sjsqd I guess the term official/alternative isn't the best to use... but I assume the client you work on is different to bitcoin core?
nubbins` Rach patch is intended to be small enough that a human can read and understand it.
sjsqd But works with Bitcoin just the same as any other client (multibit etc) does?
ben_vulpes It's just the old code.
nubbins` The goal is to trim the fat from the oldest still-working code base, rather than add more fat to the same, which is how the current "bitcoin core" release came to be.
asciilifeform Starting point was phoundation's release circa 2012.v
sjsqd Ahh ok understood.
ben_vulpes No "gavinblocks". Someone removed the "alert" feature. DNS is on the chopping block, etc.
nubbins` Win32 "features" removed.
asciilifeform Already zapped. In the process of removing the idiot hardcoded seed list.
ben_vulpes A right, asciilifeform excised the DNS. No win32, no QT.
sjsqd Very interesting
nubbins` Slowly bringing it closer to the ideal of "one program to do one task". Ripping qt was ++.
ben_vulpes The question under consideration is "what precisely does it mean to bitcoinate?" The goal is to do that and nothing more.
sjsqd Ok I will save everyone's time and look through the mailing list, I might return with some further questions later on. Thanks for your time.
jurov You can peruse the searchable logs here, too.
nubbins` ^
BingoBoingo "But works with bitcoin just the same as any other client (multibit etc) does?" local cash -> food.
asciilifeform In Dubai, famously, there are 'gold atm' - where you run a card and get 100g bricks out. But do you pay for food with these ?
sjsqd Haha yes there are 2-3 of them, no I don't own any gold.
asciilifeform But if you did - would you think of paying for groceries with it ?
sjsqd No I'm very sceptical of gold for a number of reasons. I personally believe that the entire gold/silver/etc markets are manipulated like crazy and I've seen firsthand how depending upon culture people will dump their life savings into buying some gold when they get married or as an investment and then it sits in a cupboard.
asciilifeform And this is the only reason you wouldn't want to pay in a restaurant with gold? Would you want to pay with diamonds? plutonium? rembrandts ?
sjsqd It's inconvenient obviously. That's why I want to pay with bitcoin or something similar.
asciilifeform For a meal.
sjsqd I only ever pay with cash or my card. Ad my card has been cloned once, and I've had tons of issues with my bank. I hate operating hours of banks (even though you can access full bank services till like 10PM at nighttime here).
asciilifeform Try to understand why Bitcoin is more analogous to diamonds or rembrandts than to the national currency you grew up with. Even though surface appearances may deceive, and idiots are spending their coin as if it were toilet paper.
sjsqd Yes I kind of understand that Bitcoin is more of a long term cryptocurrency (my view anyway) than a day-to-day currency for a number of reasons.
PeterL Save in BTC, spend dollars.xi
sjsqd There is almost nowhere to even spend it here (beyond paying web hosting bills etc) so I am pretty much saving it right now.xii
asciilifeform This is actually good fortune, that you've nowhere to blow it just yet. Once you understand the above, it will never occur to you to carry Bitcoin on your person in the street, or spend it in a restaurant.
sjsqd The local currency here hasn't ever really fluctuated. It is permanently tied to the USD, 3.68 AED - 1 USD. The same rating for something like 2 decades. Fuel price rarely changes.xiii
PeterL And you don't see being tied to usd as a problem?
sjsqd I obviously do, but have little choice in the matter.
PeterL Save in Bitcoin, then you don't have to be tied to USD.
sjsqd I'm not wealthy (at all) so its more an incapability of keeping more Bitcoin at the moment. I haven't really spent any, only to show friends how it works. On a recent flight I used the plane's WiFi which cost like 1 USD and managed to teach a friend in pakistan as well as a friend in Dubai how to set up a wallet on their phone and sent money from 37,000 feet. Obviously sent them some dust just to show them how it works, but beyond having to scrape into my savings to pay for a VPS here or there I actually don't have any way to spend it here yet and I don't carry any worthwhile amount on my phone.
danielpbarron You should better teach them how to run a full node.xiv
sjsqd That depends on people's technical ability though.
danielpbarron The whole "crypto on your phone" thing is more of a hinderance than a help.
sjsqd Because it doesn't contribute network resources?xv
danielpbarron They need to refine technical ability then; don't give them fire without teaching fire safety.
lobbes Crypto on phone' defeats the purpose of Bitcoin, which is a secure store of value that only you can access (if you know what you are doing).
sjsqd As much as I understand what you're saying its difficult to explain to people the fire safety aspect. Ubuntu is fairly easy but is a long way from any sort of plug and play operation. Unless people understand how to compile software its too difficult.xvi
danielpbarron So is a noose. Just slip it over head. Understanding these things is like understanding how to ride a horse in the 1800s. If you don't know how, you are practically illiterate. Paying for things with phones is NOT an application of Bitcoin!xvii You have Apple pay and Paypal and whatever app of choice for that.
sjsqd Here there are interesting applications of bitcoin besides paying for things with phones. Money remittance specifically. 90% of the population are foreignxviii and send a shit ton of money through methods like Western Union or their banks.
sjsqd Do you think there is an altcoin more suited for that?
danielpbarron No.
sjsqd I would never, ever personally use anything branded by Apple in a million years. I don't care if its a lifeboat on the Titanic.xix
danielpbarron But you use windows...
sjsqd Mainly because Adobe won't release their software on Linux just yet.xx Windows is kind of a necessary evil if you want to play modern video gamesxxi or use 'creative' software.
danielpbarron You won't use Apple to literally save your life but you'll use windows to save your job.. ok..
sjsqd My opinion anyway. I do some photography work so using Adobe is pretty much mandated. Unless you want to deal with the limitations of GIMP.xxii Or deal with Apple's Aperture software. I understand open source could probably do a better job but we haven't quite reached that point yet. Having said that, my disdain for Adobe is growing on a daily basis.
danielpbarron That doesn't excuse you using bitcoin on your windows computer.
sjsqd TBH, if I had the choice I'd have a separate computer for Linux and a separate computer for Windows.
danielpbarron You do! My laptop cost 250 bucks on Ebay. And even that is a bit pricy.
sjsqd I have a laptop and I am moving *towards* that, but at the moment I have a family member in intensive care unit and I'm writing articles about the bitcoin foundation as well as waiting for legalization of my residency status (its been 3 years of not being a resident so far). So its kinda taken a back seat. I will be moving all my financial things onto Ubuntu or something similar fairly soon though.
danielpbarron Ubuntu is not recommended.
sjsqd Debian?
danielpbarron Maybe. Don't use Gnome if so.
sjsqd Jeez. Debian is a challenge.
danielpbarron Lol Debian is easy.
sjsqd I've run a few debian VPS servers before. It's all about balancing convenience vs security I suppose. Screen. I hate screen. It's great functionally but it confuses the hell out of me. The biggest thing I've noticed about computer security is that its almost impossible to get decent biometric security.xxiii
jurov Biometric is overrated.
danielpbarron You do realize debian can have a desktop environment, right?
sjsqd Yeah I tried it once on a VPS but it didn't end well. The problem I have with Debian is that unless you run some specific version (I usually run the latest version) most of the documentation on the internet is kinda only 75% there.xxiv and unless you're familiar with how to compile etc it gets pretty confusing quickly.
danielpbarron Not that I'm recommmending Debian, but it uses a package manager that downloads binaries, not source. I would recommend gentoo over Debian.
sjsqd To be fair when it comes to interviews I'd rather hear the full conversation rather than what someone else has cut up from the discussionxxv. Yeah apt-get is easy enough to use, but when you need to install a custom altcoin wallet for instance that is when I get stumped. Although I did manage to compile a few wallets on Ubuntu successfully.
danielpbarron Well don't do that.
sjsqd When I get the time I will probably get a harddrive, install a barebones Debian installation on different partitions for each altcoin so they are completely separate.
danielpbarron Save yourself the trouble and don't install any altcoins.
sjsqd Then how am I going to walk around with my augmented vision paying for things in 20 years time if Bitcoin isn't the ideal cryptocurrency?xxvi
danielpbarron http://trilema.com/2014/the-woes-of-altcoin-or-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-cryptocurrencies/ So for the benefit of all the derps derping about "cryptocurrencies" : there is no such thing. There's Bitcoin and that's it, because there can only be one.
assbot The woes of Altcoin, or why there is no such thing as "cryptocurrencies" pe Trilema
lobbes What others have said: save in Bitcoin, spend in (local currency).
sjsqd For now that is how I'm operating (especially given no one accepts Bitcoin here except like 1 pizza restaurant). But in the future if I can receive 100% of my pay via cryptocurrency I will. I personally have little interest in cash.
danielpbarron Via Bitcoin*.
thestringpuller I wouldn't save in bicoin during a bubble.
sjsqd On the topic of altcoins, I do see that many of them have ended up as scams and so on.
danielpbarron On the topic of altcoins, they are all scams.
sjsqd But there are a few that have been ok so far. DNOTES is quite interesting, they've put together the first long term savings plan. I have no doubt it is manipulated via bots, but then again, what isn't nowadays?
danielpbarron That doesn't make sense.
sjsqd Well that is what the limitation (in my eyes) is of most altcoins and bitcoin itself. No communication and no marketing, unless you want to dig through 2000 page threads on bitcointalk, stay on IRC 24/7 or use reddit 24/7.
danielpbarron Yes! Stay on irc 24/7! Forget the forum -- forget reddit; those are distractions.
lobbes ^ yes
thestringpuller They make logs for a reason...
sjsqd Yes but most people outside of extreme enthusiasts are not going to look through logs.xxvii
danielpbarron So? Screw them. What did Noah do when nobody else would get on the Ark? He.. GOT ON THE ARK.
PeterL Focus on the log for this chan, yes, that is how you will learn.
asciilifeform What do you need the remaining people for ?
thestringpuller This is akin to someone pretending to be involved in history and but didn't read any history books. This doesn't work.
sjsqd Except a history book is just a summary of events in most cases. Even if its provides sources, its a summary. To find out what is happening with bitcoin or xyz altcoin it isn't important to read through thousands of pages.
jurov If someone takes an effort to do a marketing toward you, they're after your money or soul. Get used to it.
sjsqd Wouldn't surprise me. I did save some money a few years back in a bonds thing backed by the government. A decent whack of money, sat there for an entire year and I got 50 USD in interest. Not worth it at all. All my bank accounts get chewed out the ass with fees and such.
PeterL Important stuff shows up on qntra.net if you don't want to wade through the logs.
sjsqd Yes I will be adding it to my reading list.
danielpbarron I cashed out some bonds that my grandma got me when I was born; did the math and realized it should have been worth many ounces of gold instead of a measly 1k or whatever it matured to. Best gift for a baby? Golden pacifier or something.xxviii
PeterL That inflation will kill you on long-term investing.
sjsqd I'm not even that familiar with how traditional currency or banking works. But in terms of whether I trust a computer or a human more I trust a computer.xxix E very time I have an issue with a bank it requires dealing with 20 humans and I'm pretty sure their jobs are going to disappear within a few years. If I want to use my debit card from another country here I had to try 5 different ATM machines the other day. "DO NOT HONOR". Miraculously it works on a different machine though.
PeterL You should get in the wot too.
danielpbarron Think of FIAT like illegal drugs and you'll have an easier time. If you want just a 20-bag, it costs a much higher premium than if you bought a whole ounce. You should better keep savings in Bitcoin, and find local street dealers to sell you FIAT as needed.
sjsqd Not only that, I'm paying like 20 USD just to withdraw cash. So it *should* work unless the Internet is down. I went on a work trip to lebanon once, tried to use my ATM card twice and it lagged out. Of course I didn't get any cashxxx but the bank took my money anyway (I got it back after filing forms etc). I do get the hesitation towards altcoins, but I do think that at least 2-3 of them will shine above the rest. There are only a few BTC sellers here so its economically unfeasible to use bitcoin like that yet. I should probably note that I only just moved back here anyway, so I'm not 'set up' just yet.
danielpbarron A few is all it takes to keep it competative, no? Buy a months worth at a time.
sjsqd That and its a free market.
danielpbarron This ties into the "don't buy groceries with bitcoin" thing. Buy a months worth of FIAT with bitcoin, and use that to buy groceries.
sjsqd I wouldn't buy them just yet because cash still works just as well. But potentially in 5 years time, if bitcoin or similar is stable enough, I would use it 100%.
danielpbarron Well you can't bring your cash across borders.
sjsqd Exactly. And I got permanently banned from using paypal for life too, after several thousand USD worth of transactions and 0 complaints. I used one of those bitcoin exchanges recently and added all my bank accounts (I have 3 in 3 different countries) and thought "oh wow this is cool I can now manage all my money from one place sort of" (keep in mind the bank accounts were verified via the usual 0.01 transaction shit). Then I get a message asking for a copy of my ID as well as a video interview, because I tried to buy $50 USD worth of Bitcoin.
danielpbarron Kinda the point of why bitcoin will eventually win.
sjsqd Exactly. Although Windows isn't the absolute best solution for computer security, I run a software firewallxxxi, as well as malware bytes, an adblocker that blocks malicious sites. And keep my system 100% updated at all timesxxxii.
danielpbarron It's not even a mediocre solution; it's not even a consideration.
* danielpbarron slaps sjsqd around a bit with a large update.
sjsqd And I also barely own any cryptocurrency, so at this point in time running linux exclusively to keep my internet money safe is too inconvenient to be worth it (although I will be moving to a better system very soon)
danielpbarron A lot of these things were discussed in here recently; you should definitely get to reading the logs
sjsqd I would actually prefer running some form of cloud OS (provided it was encrypted) for a portion of my holdings. I like the idea of my phone being shot at by terrorists and just kinda shrugging, and walking into a phone store and purchasing a new phone, logging in and getting access back in 3.
danielpbarron No no no bad! You are really very stupid! The only redeeming quality about you is that you ended up here somehow.xxxiii
sjsqd That would be for day to day usage.
thestringpuller Damn I wish I could have bashed that.
sjsqd Haha, its actually been very many years since I spammed an IRC channel.
danielpbarron That is a luxury afforded to you because you are new. Now your task is to read the log for at least 6 months.
jurov You will never be safe if you treat technology as magic. "Just throw this spell to it".
ben_vulpes Re "the goal of my articles is to try and ascertain how transparently the foundation currently operates" : the goal of your articles is to apparently rack up pageviews. You yourself may ascertain whatever you may ascertain.
sjsqd I will definitely write about this bitcoin foundation in my articles at some point. I'm not motivated by money, it is just nice to be able to write something and get at least a little appreciation for it. All I do is tweet the link to the article and post it onto /bitcoin/ subreddit. I don't spam my article URLs or anything like that (I provided it here because it was relevant to show what I was writing). I don't think anyone has to read my articles or consider my viewpoint, its just my way of writing about the foundation. As there are many issues with the foundation (andresen edition) I was invited to post on the let's talk bitcoin website. So that is purely the reason I ended up writing for this series of articles I will probably keep them on let's talk bitcoin, but for future articles or if I come up with anything else to write at the same time I might consider qntra.net
danielpbarron Yeah, prepare to be hated and banned.
ben_vulpes Look into qntra.net
jurov It depends whose appreciation you want. Those stupider than you or those more intellinget than you?
ben_vulpes "It's all calculated automatically as far as I'm aware"
Thursday, 05 March, Year 7 d.Tr.
A proper social site for the BDSM community
I. Use javacript to
Locally generate a (RSA) public-private keypair. Store both as base64 modulii in separate cookiesii.
Decrypt all elements sent encrypted to the local privkey and inject them into the DOM.
Encrypt all submitted elements (text and pictures) going out through POST requests. Keep state of the list of foreign keys to which material should be encrypted.
II. Use whatever you use to host a website interfacing with I. above. The website should at a minimum offer
a plaintext meet and greet space,
a means for users to sort and be sorted into groups,
a means to readily update content once intended recipients change.
All binary resources (ie images, videos, whatever) should be proxied via single use URL (once a GET request is served for that URL, it is inactivated. All text resources should be injected in the DOM locally, after having been decrypted locally via js.
This arrangement is not particularly bandwidth intensive (at least in the case of text, encryption serves as de-facto compression) and not particularly CPU intensive (users do most of the heavy lifting locally, so you get to leverage the pooled CPU of the community). It is very much legally immune : the operator can never be served a supoena of any particular utility, seeing how the website database servers merely host encrypted material to which the operator does not hold the key.
Open for comments.
———See Hanewinkel's tool for this purpose - notice that he also has a javascript encryption implementation on the other page there. [↩]Note that the hardening of the privkey bearing cookie is a very iffy problem - I sadly don't know enough about the whole webshitstack to specify this correctly. Please help. [↩]
« The triviality of slaying the surviving socialist beast
A new Lordship List ? »
Category: Job Board
Thursday, 23 April, Year 7 d.Tr.
A new software licensing paradigm
The problem with commercial software licenses isn't, as you might think, that they are commercially motivated. Sure, someone somewhere's making money off of it. So they should, if it's any good, because nothing's worth doing that's not worth paying for. The problem however is that they're wholly dependent on a meanwhile obsolete paradigm of organising commerce. You might as well defend yourself by building a physical wall around which you dig a ditch which you fill with water. Cool story, but it didn't even work too well against cannonballs, and we have rockets and helicopters now. What's that moat going to do ?i
The problem with FOSS software licensesii is that they aim to use the same mechanisms that make commercial software licenses powerful (ie, a reliance on the enforcement borne out of the obsolete, fiat-contract) but without any of the actual underpinings that make such an approach work (control of capital, through which of the means of production, through which of the pseudo-democratic political process). The recent decay of "open source" as perhaps best typified by the systemd rot is simply that old wrathbird coming home to roost. Of course they were going to let a bunch of excited kids work their excitement into perhaps some sort of useful stuff, and of course they were going to come and root through that, find the eggs and keep them.
To remedy these defects - wilful as they may be they do not reflect either our will nor our best interests - and to enforce once and for all a properly functioning networkiii, here's a proposed alternative software license :
I. You do not have, nor can you ever acquire the right to use, copy or distribute this software ;
II. Should you use this software for any purpose, or copy and distribute it, to anyone or in any manner, you are breaking the laws of whatever soi-disant "sovereign jurisdiction" you may be deemed to be located within, and you promise to continue doing so in the indefinite future.
Short and sweet. Let the whole old world burn, it wasn't any good to anyone anyway.
———If you think that protecting yourself with obsolete fiat contracts is not quite as laughable as Bashar al-Assad digging a water filled ditch around Syria, you've not spent too much time thinking about these matters. But then again, neither has Oliver Bussmann, and he's convinced UBS he knows about Information even! Sure, you'll starve in the near future, but at least you'll starve in good company. Just like all those dukes, counts, princes and fursts overfilling Paris in the XIXth century - at least you'll have your honor! Meanwhile your daughter won't, but... parents can't think of everything now can they. [↩]People that have been looking at this for too long from too close to the point they've given themselves mechanical myopia tend to imagine there's some sort of difference between open source and rmsource. There isn't, not really. [↩]Freedom is not a matter of rights. Freedom is that which is traded to slavery by virtue of the accounting mechanism of rights.
Similarly, "net neutrality" is not in any way related to network freedom. To best understand the competing paradigms : the artificial perspective - as proposed by the obsolete governments and the rest of the numerously various paper fiat arrays - revolves around the "rights" of the "owners" of hardware, and the "intentions" of the writers of software. In this perspective, using a computer "against the will of its owner", even if you're using it exactly in the manner it allows itself to be used, is "criminal" whatever that may mean anymore.
Exactly contrary to that, the natural perspective : if you don't want me to use your server to print all the nude photos your users entrusted you, write your software and provision your hardware in such a way that I can't. Because if I can, then it is not my right but my freedom to do so.
A parallel with human sexuality is not unwarranted here. At a past time when the ownership of female humans was the principal method to control capital formation and the political process, the same sort of dead hand fictions proposed that they in fact control the usage of women, that anyone owning a woman does so only as a sublicense from their sovereign ownership of all women, and may proceed only in furtherance of the regulation they emitted as to how women may be used and may not be used and so on and so forth. Specifically excluded from all this - the woman in question. Particularly "criminal" at the time - using a woman in the manner she herself wishes to be used.
Times have changed, women are now worthless, but computers aren't, and these same dead hand fictions propose anew : that they own all computers, that if you own a computer it's only a sublease from them, subject to furthering their regulations and so on and so forth. Specifically excluded from all this - what the code actually says and does. Particularly "criminal" - using a computer in the manner it itself allows to be used.
I will never subscribe to this point of view. I own my women, as well as my computers, outright and immediately. Anyone wishes to dispute this point better bring along a [large enough] army, for I'm not merely willing to kill in its defense : I am entirely willing to destroy the entire world, if the choice ever comes between destroying the entire world and having as much as a hair snipped off my freedom. [↩]
« BitBet (S.BBET) January 2015 Statement
MP's rant on specification work ; As to why all dictionaries suck ; A challenge for you »
Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc
Tuesday, 03 February, Year 7 d.Tr.
A new Lordship List ?
As reported by Mike's excellent tool, the current list is as follows :
Rating
To
To Avg.
To Count
To Rank
Timestamp
Notes
1
justusranvier
1.9
13
337
Aug. 12, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
mthreat
1.3
8
832
Aug. 12, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
fluffypony
1.7
40
109
Aug. 12, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
dignork
1.4
17
363
Aug. 12, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
fabianb
1.7
12
402
Aug. 12, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
mod6
2.0
27
137
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
joecool
2
38
84
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
punkman
1.0
22
362
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
nanotube
3.6
205
2
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
davout
2.1
22
159
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
dub
1
7
1,050
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
artifexd
1.3
8
830
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
diametric
1
3
1,886
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
chetty
1.8
8
601
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
pete_dushenski
1.1
18
439
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
namworld
1.8
24
177
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
pankkake
0.9
14
703
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
apocalyptic
1.4
54
87
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
thestringpuller
1.9
15
297
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
mike_c
2
15
277
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
jurov
1.9
38
95
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
moiety
1.4
10
605
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
bingoboingo
1.7
35
119
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
nubbins`
1.7
27
163
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
thickasthieves
1.9
23
172
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
asciilifeform
2.1
21
173
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
ben_vulpes
1.7
30
148
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
mircea_popescu
2.0
112
16
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
1
kakobrekla
1.9
79
37
April 11, 2014
#bitcoin-assets
As far as substractions are concerned, I'd propose taking off justusranvier, fabianb, dub, joecool, nanotube, namworld, pankkake, apocalyptic, moiety, thickasthieves, broadly on the grounds that they don't seem specifically alligned with the Republic to any degree. Haven't been seen around in ages, aren't doing anything whatsoever - keeping them on the list probably bothers a lot of other people who would meet a similar bar but aren't actually on the list. Nanotube's exclusion specifically is important because he has an immense downstream list, and it happens a shade too often that people we don't know can self voice on the grounds of that relationship. None of these would, at least to my mind, be exclusions with prejudice, which is to mean exactly what it means in court : should they later find the time, interest and inclination to contribute substantially (as I have no doubt any actually could), there's going to be more revisions.
As far as additions are concerned, I'd propose cazalla (Qntra editor in chief.), danielpbarron (Lots and lots of logistics work.), trinque (Current deedbot maintainer.), mats (Lots of paralegal work, other open projects.), hanbot (MPOE-PR, F.MPIF manager etc.).
Comments welcome!
« A proper social site for the BDSM community
MP's very brief foray into a poetry forum »
Category: Bitcoin
Friday, 24 April, Year 7 d.Tr.
A lingering suspicion.
Let's set the stage with a picture worth ten thousand screams.
So, what are thei female traits ?
For instance, they're more pain resistant than males, right ? You have also noticed this, right ? And it's readily explained, they'd better be, they have to give birth. It all makes sense, there's Biology to the rescue. It's adaptative. Boys should be pain-avoidant to avoid killing each other, and girls should be pain-tolerant to get themselves knocked up.
And they have tits. This should be obvious, I mean, sure you also have nipples, just like they do, and areola and everything. But they're different!ii And it makes a difference! Sure there's ALSO that one time when I fucked a perfectly normally developped 30 yo woman that just happened to weigh a hundred pounds and have less tit than me. But that doesn't change anything, wasp bites and your dad's hot C cup be damned! Tits are a female trait! It says so in the Bible, even!iii Should insurance cover male breast cancer therapy or is that all fraud ?iv
And they're also more conservative than males, who have a greater appetite for risk. Makes sense, as a guy, you gotta compete for cunt, because one of you is enough for dozens of themv whereas females gotta take care of the litter to protect all that time and baby fat they put into it. Makes perfect sense, and don't vote for Pelosi she's insane for this reason and will ruin things.vi
And they're also naturally subservient, because hey, since they gotta be the slaves of their kids anyway they got slavery in the blood. Makes perfect sense, right ? Yeah, ok, I agree.
Let's move on :
Are Certain Behaviors-- And Jobs-- More Masculine? And Out Of Our Control?
The problem isn't the data, but the words.
None-- read it again, none-- of the studies found any link between the behavior and fetal testosterone. All of them found the link between the behavior and finger lengths, which are proxies for fetal testosterone.
But what if finger ratios aren't actually proxies for testosterone?
"Then those studies are crap. Another example of science overreaching. All that research money wasted."
Oh, no, Murdock, it's much worse than that. The studies are valid, the data are solid-- finger ratios do indeed correlate well to these behaviors-- but all of the inferences you've invented about them are wrong.
A recent article discovered that in birds, the correlation was between digit length and estrogen receptors. If that turned out to be true for humans, what are you going to do with all the stories about "masculine" traits? You can't simply say, "oh, it doesn't have to do with testosterone after all." You must now explain why it does have to do with estrogen. Are these feminine behaviors? What?
There are other studies which similarly find the testosterone/finger story to be suspect or even backwards.
So the data aren't wrong-- they're right; they're just about something else. The social implications of the studies-- the very point of doing the studies-- are wrong. You can't dismiss the studies because they're still true-- you have to go back and explain how you got it backwards.
Anyone who had taken a moment to look at the whole hypothesis-- masculine--> testosterone--> finger lengths--> behaviors would have said, "there are way too many loose connections to take this seriously." But no one would have taken you seriously. "Science" is three dimensional: "look at the stack of studies that find a relationship between testosterone and behaviors!" No one questions the intervening proxy (digit span) because to do so is perceived to be unrigorous. When you say, "I don't believe this testosterone link" they politely say, "look at the stack!" but if you say you don't buy the digit length, they roll their eyes: another amateur who doesn't understand how science is done. They do this because there's no other argument to make. "This is how we've been doing it for decades, and it's a quite satisfactory method." Yeah. That's what they said about missionary, too.
Because there are so many researchers, and so many in the public willing to run with it, and so much time in between, there's no one to point to as responsible. You can't blame Cambridge University for the obviously preposterous notion that masculine traits make for better traders any more than you can blame the head of BP for the oil spill. Both situations are your fault. You wanted what they were offering, even though it was bad for you.
Either we're going to kill Iraqis, or we're going to kill ducks. It's the world's one and only truth, the law of equivalent exchange. For every barrel of oil, you need to replace it with a barrel of blood.
C.
But they are to blame, because when they presented you with their products, they knew exactly what you were going to do with them.
V.
I'm telling you this not because I care about finger lengths, but because you are being corrupted.
The article doesn't even have to spell it out for you: they just have to write "there's a relationship to testosterone " and we'll make the cultural/social value judgments ourselves. But they leave nothing to chance; thus Time Magazine.
That's not an unfortunate, unexpected by product of science-- it is the very point of it. In order for you to obtain this knowledge, you have to lose some other knowledge of equivalent value.
Once it's happened, once you've allowed this into your brain, there is no escape, ever, any more than there is an escape from oil. No matter what else they discover, you will always have the suspicion that trading-- and lesbianism and risk taking and hand eye coordination-- are masculine traits.
Until, of course, new guys come in with a new story to tell. "Thanks Dr. Kohut, we'll take it from here."
VI.
The science error of our generation is this: If A is strongly associated with B, and B is strongly associated with C, then A is strongly associated to C.
That's not just wrong, it is extremely wrong. If that seems counterintuitive to you, then you are the problem. Not in the way Robespierre was the problem, but in the way the French were the problem. "Sounds about right to me. And there's a guillotining at 6:94!"
It's not your fault, you weren't trained to understand this, indeed, you were trained specifically not to understand this. "Let's look closely at the statistics" (not the words.)
Science in the service of social policy is all about giving you everything you need to lie to yourself.
Word.
Do we still agree ?
Mind that when Einstein agrees with Newton that p = m v, Einstein has a little rider in his mind there going "for slow large objects" that Newton doesn't actually disagree with - Newton doesn't even perceive it. They're both remarkable physicists, they both contributed significantly to the fieldvii and they both agree. So it must be so, right ?
Who's agreeing with who here, are you agreeing with me that there's no difference between the genders that's predicated upon a difference between the sexes ? Or am I agreeing with you that since what we want are females and slaves, those females that make excellent slaves actually make excellent slaves ?viii
An ought has yet to flow from an is. "Evidence based medicine", "Policy informed by science" or any other attempts at rebranding won't likely change this.
———You know, "the" ? As in, THE female traits ?
Not like in, "what are female traits", which implies you have to first figure out whether there even is such a thing, but as in "what are THE female traits, which implies that yes of course there are some and it's your job to find them. Women can't ride a horse, right ? By which you mean they can't ride it properly, isn't it ? Oh, they can ? Must mean there's something else then, wouldn't you say ?
Do not feel too bad about this. I am as guilty as anyone, myself. Definitely. Let me tell you a story : I grew up in a certain place, as everyone grows up in a certain place - it's always definite, specific, precise. Nobody grows up in a house "that had curtains", they are always an insanely detailed, specific, particular type which you remember. You might think you do not, but if you are confronted with the exact material you'll suddenly discern it, and you might have no appreciation for the level of detail until you go and make a computer game.
So - people there are generally miserable drivers ; but women especially so. It is true, it is a fact, do not dare dispute the actual experience of the informant. I was there, I saw it, I am a trained scientist, I know how to discount bias and how to account for experimental results. If I tell you I saw it you can take it as you take everything else I say, I know what I'm talking about. I saw it.
I am also culturally aware, plugged into the globalist matrix, I know this isn't supposed to be the case. So what do you do ? What do you do, when data experimentally obtained stubbornly shows robustness that is plainly contradictory to accepted paradigm ? For a while, you fiddle with the data, eventually you have enough of that shit and crack the paradigm one across the eyes.
And so I tried to fiddle with the data. It got me nowhere, which is to say it got me to the statistical impasse : "while it's true that women generally suck at driving, this says nothing about any individual woman's driving ability", and so if you want to be my driver go ahead and test for it. It's objective, right ? I sit there with you, you drive a little, I get an idea if you're ok or not. I've seen a hundred drivers or more before, how much more objective than this could it get ? Obviously, I never had a woman driver (which isn't to say no woman ever drove me around, of course not, relax, I know, you have black friends too), but that doesn't mean anything, right ?
Right. So why would it be that women suck at driving (even if this says nothing about any individual woman!) ? Gee... I dunno. They're too risk averse. They're too anxious, which means they go into things too fast, too early, they hold the damned wheel too tight. This is a female trait, right, holding on to the wheel to the white of your knuckles, in a society where the expectation is you suck at it. Female trait. Definitely. There's something in them, and we'll concoct some bland or another, vaguely social-scientistical explanation.
Then I went to the United States and the scientist in me kicked into high gear. Yes, yes, all their food is shit, but looky! See this string of correctly parked cars over five straight miles of 42nd street ? I took pictures of this. Yes, people were amused, because who the fuck cares about such ? I do. I notice. You would notice too if it had never happened in your entire existence that you walked for fifty paces on a sidewalk with parked cars out in the street, parked so that the wheel-to-sidewalk distance for the lot is within six inches! Not one, not two. Not even six! Can you imagine this, by the way ? This guy, parks so that he grates the wheel on the curb. Next guy, a "normal" three inches away. The next guy, one. The next gal, almost a foot out. The next etc! You do not believe me ? Fie upon you, infidel. A casual walk would reveal more than one car in fifty or so is parked in such manner that the curb corner cuts mid-tyre! Cars parked with one wheel up and one down, you name it!
At which point the driver of the insanity was immediately obvious : US girls are expected to drive well. That's it. At the sweet age of fifteen they'd better learn how to drive, what are they, retarded ?! And they get a car, and they use it. Not less than boys, neither of these, and so there you go. Romanian women usually get their first car at the ripe old age of twenty-something, and it is a boyfriend's. You know ? (If at this point you don't notice the horse-car continuity there is no helping you.)
So... what are the female traits ? Well, I'll tell you what the female traits are : women can't do math.
In the US, that is. In Romania they'd fucking hang you by your feet and bastinado the devils out of you if you can't add, but in the US... math is hard, and the female trait is being "creative" which is to say "artistic" so they couldn't possibly. Add. They couldn't possibly add.
The female trait is that it sucks living in your country, how about that. [↩]Because now quantitative arguments can be used to patch up leaky qualitative arguments, that's how it works,
"Jane you're totally a total slut!11"
"Weren't you naked in the pool at that frat party with a bunch of dudes jacking off on you ?"
"That's still less than what you did!"
[↩]Adam got his nipples because God anchored him to a tree by the pectorals while cutting off his penis rib or somesuch. [↩]Oh, the answer to this is obvious, right ?
How do you feel about insurance-mandated yearly mamographies for males ? Hey, wait a minute. Where did that obvious go! It was right here, wasn't it ? I saw it! [↩]Ever wondered what the "lamb" you eat is ? Hint : male.
Ruminant herds only need one male in maybe a hundred or less females, and so all young females grow up and all young males go steak. In fact, the reason artificial insemination even exists as a technology is that it reduces the carrying costs of livestock, thus improving efficiency. What's that you say, it threatens to bleed over into human lifestyles, given that ten million people of which five milion males is ten million votes, whereas eleven million people of which a hundred thousand males is... eleven million votes ? Aww, don't think that way, please. Nobody would purport to treat humanity as a herd. That is nazi talk.
They might do that a little to dem niggas, but that's all. No such thing ever grew and spread, ever, in like the entire history of the world since we were at war with Eastasia. [↩]She has in fact ruined things, does that mean she ruined them because menopausal women have no business in politics ? What are the menopausal female traits ? [↩]"of Physics". Because that's a field, right ? Physics ? Hello ? [↩]How about the slaves that make excellent females ? You're not gay, are you ? [↩]
« The peak of insanity.
The Great Gatsby »
Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc
Saturday, 24 October, Year 7 d.Tr.
A bunch of assholes.
Here, check this out :
Pretty good, huh ? They've even put some hearts in there, did you notice ?
So now that we've laughed together, let's also think together. On one hand, these two kids, they exist. I have no idea what their names are, nor will I ever likely know, nor do I actually care all that much. Nor do you. They exist. They, like you, extend the world a hand every morning. Their extended hand is never perceived. They will die, after a time, and there won't be a mark left behind. Like their parents and their parents' parents in turn.
Tanzania is perhaps an interesting place. Judging by the complex beach towel arrangement it probably has interesting food you never had, all sorts of folk tales you never heard and generally speaking a rich context of whatever kind you might be interested in. Except, of course, you aren't. Because iphone or USG "elections" or HomeImprovers Weekly or whatever's captivating your attention. Fine, so be it, they'll die ignored as far as you're concerned.
What about the immigrants ?
"Oh noes, we has nowhere to go oh noes! We be refugees from like horrors and things!"
"How about Tanzania ?"
"Wut!!!1"
Yeah, that's right, I'm enough of a dumb loser to downgrade to a shithole like Argentina, because why the hell not. But these assholes, heck, they're too good for any of that. They gotta go UP in the world, dontcha know. They have the right to having a chance and whatnot, in the shape of fat dripping from other people's taxes.
So, no, thank you very much Tanzania. And Hungary. None of that. They wanna go to the Western Welfaristan, to "refugee" over there specifically. Like this guy I knew whose house caught fire so he took refuge in the bar across the street. Hey, might as well hydrate yourself in case of a fire, amirite.
Here's a thought : set the whole troop of "refugees" on fire with fucking flamethrowing tanks, and go visit Tanzania.
That Tanzania where a coupla kids live who either are entirely clueless as to the entire "refugee" dynamic, or else are outright mocking it. Either of which two alternatives speaks volumes in their favour, if you stop and think about it.
« Nude Nuns With Big Guns
What is a fractal ? »
Category: La pas prin lume
Sunday, 13 September, Year 7 d.Tr.
A Blast From The Past, or, The Molotov Cocktail Guide. This is how you win.
Motto :
mircea_popescu hmmm... listen, is it me or have the us
protestors forgotten the ancient art of the molotov cocktail ?
mircea_popescu i've not seen a single one, wtf is this ?
mircea_popescu tlp's "throw rocks" is an EUPHEMISM.
you're not throwing fuelbombs, you'll lose.
[MPEX] [S.MPOE] 6100 @ 0.00053727 = 3.2773 BTC [-]
BingoBoingo They forgot. Apparently in ferguson there
were unsuccessful attemps
BingoBoingo Seems like they googled and got disinfo recipes
mircea_popescu darn.
mircea_popescu well, ima write a monograph, one minute.
How To Make One
You will need :
One soda bottlei ;
One straw - yes the kind you drink from ;
One shoelace - yes, the sort you do your shoes withii ;
Two packin peanutsiii ;
Gasoline. You get this by busting open tanks of cars you've taken over. The average tank (12 or so gallons) should be enough for at least one hundred if not twice that many bombs.
With picturesiv :
How to make :
Pull the shoelace through the straw ;
Remove the bottle cap and cut a hole through it so that the straw goes in as neatly as possible ;
Stick the styrofoam (aka packing peanuts) into the bottle ;
Fill the bottle with gasoline, without spilling a single drop anywhere ;
Screw the cap back on, so that the straw is one inch out of the cap.
That's it, you're done. Set it on the ground somewherev in the shade and move on to making the next one. ))
Why It Works
The reason electric cars suck, which somehow nobody seems to want to mention, is very much related to why the Molotov Cocktail works : the caloric power of gasoline.
In whitey terms it's 47 KiloJoules per gram, but in more practical terms it's as powerful as ten iPad batteries, fully charged. Per gram. A taser delivers ~10 Joules per hit, a Molotov Cocktail delivers ~270`000 Joules per hit, you do the math. How many twenty-seven thousand Taser holding shitheads in combat gearvi does one need to counter one protestor throwing Molotovs ?
So there you go, hit them where it hurts. The Soviet Russian army's main line of offensive bombs are fuel bombs, why do you think that is ? This shit works ; what da police got doesn't.vii
How To Use Them
There are two principal uses for the Molotov Cocktail :
Position interdiction. The way da police works is that they get orders - because there's a lot of them and none really wanna be there, so they need a boss man to tell them what to do then they all do it. If you notice them forming a line, throw a few cocktails at the ground. They can't stand in fire, and they can't just move because they feel like it, they'll have to get a new order. It's cheaper for you to throw a coupla bottles than it is for them to get new ordersviii, and thus chaos ensues, and thus you win.
Materiel interdiction. One of those fancy tanks they use costs millions upon millions of dollars, but they can and have been turned off with just a well placed bottle shot. It costs you nothing to get some more straws from Walmart (you're not buying these, are you ?), they can't afford to replace the machinery. This isn't even a matter of budgets or anything, dumbass whitey can write any numbers he wants on paper but it won't produce more machines. Burn them down, let the fatasses walk, see how far that gets them.
In Closing
Here's a quote :
If you hold a protest and you aren't throwing rocks it will fail. I'm not telling you to throw rocks, I'm explaining why your march won't work.
The reason "peaceful protests" don't work anymore is because now the protests are slower than the media coverage. When they threw the tea in Boston Harbor it was urgent, immediate, and by the time the press could interpret it it had already been digested by the public. But now even before the protest reaches critical mass the media, whose agents outnumber the protestors 100 to 1, has packaged and produced it, like a reality show, and by the time Naomi Klein got there I had already been told to expect someone like her. Do you see? She had already appeared before she got there. Yes, I can take pride in thinking for myself but if I'm going to be honest, all I'm doing is reacting to what I'm told.
He doesn't tell you to throw rocks because he's a chickenshit, pretending to be against "the system" from the inside. Meanwhile on the ground : you did well kicking "the media" out, congrats. Now hit them where it hurts.
Burn that mutha down.
———Alternatively you can use paper cups with straw lids like they have at various fast food joints (Starbucks etc), but these are more dangerous to handle, because paper is flimsy and flammable. Make sure you prepare them in a place without any sources of fire (this is important : liquid gasoline doesn't burn, the fumes however do, and they can carry the flame a surprising distance) ; make sure there's at least four inches of straw out of the cup when you light it ; make sure you throw them within two seconds of lighting. Absolutely no weakass throw / spilling on yourself (easier than you think, if you squeeze the cup it deforms and the lid comes off) / other lameass shit like that. Throw like a pro or stick to the soda bottles.
And speaking of this : if you manage to get any fuel on yourself, whether actually on fire or not yet, change clothes immediately. Never be naked with these, it's bad for you. Simply walk to the nearest loser, punch him out, take his pants and tshirt (also good advice in general - I can't fucking belive you people don't switch clothes multiple times a day, what the fuck is wrong with you ? Ever heard of "plausible deniability" ?
Stop being unprofessional, protests are srs bzns. [↩]If you can't find shoelaces, use any string that's similar enough, cut to length.
Make sure you use cotton / natural fiber. Synthetics melt, which will impede the proper functioning of your Improvised Flammable Device aka Molotov Cocktail. You can readily test whether any fabric is synthetic or natural fiber by approaching a flame (lighter, match) within an inch of it (no contact). Synthetics visibly melt, natural fiber couldn't care less. [↩]If you can't find peanuts specifically, get that much styrofoam, doesn't really matter what from. Break it off the large chunks of white crap they use to package TVs. [↩]Yes, I've deliberately picked a straw picture with "watermark" on. It's protected under copyright laws, you know ? They think this matters. [↩]The reason it must sit for a bit after making is that the peanuts must dissolve. If your peanuts don't dissolve you've got shit peanuts, get better ones.
Speaking of which, the correct way to do this is to have specialist teams that make the bottles, leaving them at convenient / strategic locations ; and different teams that do the throwing. You need a sixteen year old to throw worth a shit, but a nine year old can make the Molotovs if he's disciplined enough to follow simple orders. [↩]Why do you think they wear that shit, by the way ? It wouldn't be because they are afraid of you, would it ?
I've never seen anyone who wasn't a chickenshit go around in a carpace like some god damned beetle. [↩]Yeah, that's right, it's the law. They're required by law to only use shit that doesn't work, ask around.
Whenever you see a police hofficer doing something that works you can double down and split the aces, he's breaking the law. [↩]Ever heard the term "DDoS" before ? Congrats, you're doing it. [↩]
« And then you never knew what this was...
The rabbi, and the ewe. »
Category: Activism
Friday, 13 November, Year 7 d.Tr.
Your cookies are borkt. Seriously.
Let's start with a conversation :
mircea_popescu So since pretty much anyone here has a better knowledge of webstuff than I do, here's a question : Inasmuch as you're going to do a site with accounts, which people can log in over http (stupid as this may be)i wouldn't the best practice be, that upon user registration you generate a user salt and a nonce, send these as a hashed cookie, and upon each subsequent login you a) check if the user has the old cookie ; b) hash the salt, store it, increment the nonce, store it ; c) send a new cookie ? If your salt+nonce -> cookie process is deterministic you can even verify it's the same actual user to any arbitrary degree of fineness (such as, same ip or w/e). The question being, is anyone currently doing this ? (Obviously in this case by "login" I mean, any http request to your server at all)ii.
[A little later]
pankkake Most websites, and almost all frameworks I've seen, only use a cookie that isn't refreshed, and is either left to expire stupidly, or never expiring. If you add a signed timestamp to the cookie, maybe you can limit logins from old stolen cookies.
mircea_popescu So then this'd be beyond my comprehension. Why in the fuck ? Obviously you have to chain cookies if you're using that retarded method of keeping track of user state.
KRS- Good luck with that cookie strategy if you are using multiple web servers.
mircea_popescu What'd be the problem ?
pankkake It's a signed cookie, not session cookie; and managing sessions over multiple servers is possible too. But usually the process is that you have an auth cookie (lifetime = high), and a session cookie (lifetime = short) and we're only talking about the auth cookie.
nubbins` Managing sessions over several servers is commonplace.
mircea_popescu So is the session cookie changed on each pageload ?
pankkake No, it doesn't change, that's the point. Unless you store session data in it, but usually it's just a secret ID.
mircea_popescu Well that's fucktarded.
KRS- Load balanced web servers would associate that cookie to one particular web server, if the load balancer stategy isn't carefully chosen (if possible) when the load balancer shifts traffic the cookie could become invalid beecause another web server doesn't know about the cookie.
nubbins` ^ have seen this. Had to troubleshoot a web app once where there was a round-robin load balancing setup. each new page request launched a new session, up to a max of 3 (the number of servers).
mircea_popescu KRS- Inasmuch as they all run your code they all know about the cookie.
KRS- I've dealt with this problem before. You have to carefully pick a load balanced strategy or pick another session persistence.
mircea_popescu Why so much derp ;/
[A little even later-er]
pankkake http://docs.pylonsproject.org/projects/pyramid/en/latest/api/authentication.html see reissue_time, it looks like those guys thought of it too :) Sadly the gpg over http projects seem to go nowhere.
Now, let's try to specify this thing.
1. Users create new accounts on your site through whatever process, such as mailing you their last electricity bill and pictures of random wall patterns, or their amputated thumb and foreskin. If you're not a medieval outfit somehow inexplicably stranded on the Internet 500 years after your expiry date, the process will include PGP signatures.
2. Users "log into" their accounts, which is to say they register new stateful sessions with your webserver over the stateless protocol known as http[s]. This could be done in whatever manner it's currently done, which definitely sucks but doesn't make up a topic of this conversation.
On the server side you generate a salt for each user (S), and null a nonce (N).iii, which are a) stored ; b) put through C(S, N, Xiv) which generates a cookie which is sent to the client.
3. Users make requests to your server, which is to say, log into it. By, for instance, accessing a page.
On the server side, you take your S, N (and if X is not null, the observer X), calculate the C, compare it to the C the client reports. If they don't match you redirect the client to 2. If they do match you hash the S (with a salt!), obtaining S'. You increment N, obtaining N'. You adjust X if needed. You calculate the new C(S', N', X') and send it to the client.
This very simple yet universally ignored security model ensures :
No cookie stealing. You can publish everyone's cookies in plain view for all the good it's going to do anyone.
Much easier to limit session riding. Something as simple as a confirm page becomes an unsurmountable obstacle to the attacker.
New login kills old cookies, definitely. This may seem like hardly worth the mention until you consider all the edge cases of cookie expiration. It will save you time and code, yo!
You can display a definite and binding pagecount for that session somewhere your client can see it on the page and appreciate your unmatched security focus. Because unlike all the other idiots out there saying the words "security focus", you demonstrate the actual thing. Big, big difference.
Just scratching the surface here. Seriously people, stahp! What r u doing ?!
———Don't start with "but herp MP, https!" Https is http for the needs of this conversation. [↩]That's right : whenever your user is "logging in" you're in fact looking at a registration event. Whenever he's asking for a new page, any new page whatsoever, you're looking at a login event. The fact that common parlance in the field is blind to this reality doesn't exactly plead in the favour of that group's intelligence, at least not in the eyes of security people. [↩]There is no benefit to using a value other than null. The salt should ideally be obtained by hashing the output of an actual RNG. PRNGs are not nearly as good, and besides, RNGs are not expensive - any webserver handling user "logins" should have a dedicated RNG. Which does not mean "an Intel diddled on-chip piece of crap", by the way. [↩]X may be whatever information about the user's system you may wish to obtain. It could be their IP. It could be the content of a hidden form field. It could be anything you wish it to be and it can definitely be null. [↩]
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Category: Meta psihoza
Sunday, 02 February, Year 6 d.Tr.