Introducing the Bitcoin ISP

The Bitcoin ISPi is a provider of hosting services for discerning customers (a list which already includes MPEx, No Such lAbs, Minigame, Qntra, Trilema and diametric).

You too can become a customer, provided :

You are in myii L2 WoT.

That's it.

Note that Bitcoin ISP does not offer any sort of shared servers : no VPS, no "cloud", no bullshit. You will be getting bare metal (with a Linux flavour of your choice preinstalled if you wish), root and IPMI/KVM credentials and that's basically it. Note that Bitcoin ISP may be able to offer support, on a case by case basis, but you shouldn't rely on it. Either be a competent sysadmin yourself, hire your own sysadmin independently or ask in #bitcoin-assets, plenty of people there willing to do work for hire on a per-project basis so it's unlikely you won't find any.iii

Note that Bitcoin ISP exclusively works with datacenters and providers that explicitly advertise their willingness and history of disobeying "rules", "laws" and assorted derpage - what is commonly known in Internet parlance as "bulletproof" hosting. While this provides a reasonable basic layer of protection that you may rely on if you are in the right, and that will readily sink the sort of spurious claims random Internet scammer with a budget is often seen to make, it does not constitute an open ended license to do absolutely anything may cross your mind. If what you are contemplating is of dubious legality according to one or more pretend-sovereigns of the fiat kind, it behooves you to ask. If you simply proceed without asking, you run the significant risk of damaging your reputation with the only entity that matters in the world today, which is Bitcoin, The Most Serene Republic Of ~.

In any case, Bitcoin ISP will be publishing a monthly report at the end of this month, after which arrangements to be listed on MPEx will be made. See you on the tubes!

PS. If you consider your legitimate interestsiv harmed or unfairly hindered by the activity of someone hosted by Bitcoin ISP, your only avenue is to voice your concerns in #bitcoin-assets. This does require you to have a WoT registration. The world had been on notice that it must be duly registered in the WoT for a long time now. You are not an exception, no matter how much you wish to think yourself exceptional.

———Soon to become a Bitcoin registered company, trading as S.BISP on MPEx. [↩]To check, put your name in the 2nd box and click "Trust To". [↩]As the expression goes, "if you can't find what you want, either you didn't want it hard enough, or you tried to haggle over the price". [↩]Note that this is strictly different from your "legally defined" interests. We really don't give a shit what the pretend-sovereigns do or say, and we do actually have the means to enforce this. If you are indulging the delusion that you can go complain to your "democratically elected national government" about the activity of wilful subjects of the Most Serene Republic, you are facing the following gamut :

your soi dissant sovereign is more than willing to fleece you, so you will pay through the nose for his "services".

your soi dissant sovereign is neither actually sovereign nor is he able to actually do anything effectual, and so he won't.

you will likely piss off one or more Bitcoin people, and that right there's the end of your future.

If you are interested in actually obtaining redress, such as it may be available, rather than wasting your meagre resources on the altar of propping up the position of a dead entity in a battle it's already lost, you will follow procedure. [↩]

« Blazing Saddles

Corina Chiriac - Recital Mamaia'86 »

Category: Bitcoin

Friday, 08 May, Year 7 d.Tr.

Internoc24 LLC aka internoc24.com is a scam, or how Milan & Dragan Slatjovic stole ~700 euro from me.

For reasons I can't fathom, the Slatjovic brothers enjoy a good reputation online.

On that basis, I ordered three dedicated serversi from internoc24.com on November the 18th, notwithstanding a hefty 40 euro set-up fee for each server. I also sprung for "Bronze SLA", which promised 8 hour maximum response time on tickets. The bill was paid the same hour - it notably came just a shade shy of 2 Bitcoins.

An hour or so later, I put in a ticket discussing IP set-up (as they neither specify the IP count coming with dedicated servers nor make it obvious how one'd go about buying them).

The next day, having recieved no answer to this ticket - 8 hour SLA notwithstanding - I put in another ticket pointing out that really, I won't be standing for the sort of nonsense.

A monkey responded within minutes, informing me in the characteristic broken English of "customer support" monkeys everywhere that my ticket doesn't count because the SLA only covers "support tickets", not "sales tickets". Amusingly enough, the ticket they had by that point ignored for well over 36 hours was exactly a "support ticket" ; the ticket they uselessly answered within minutes was the "sales" ticket.

Upon my pointing this out, the monkey in question came back (also within minutes, also in the characteristic monkey English, also without bothering to check anything) with a fantastic theory about how they're not responsible for fulfilling the contractual obligations they undertook because they've not "accepted" something or the other. Ostensibly, the very terms in their tender that I had earlier accepted by paying their bill. Check out the fanciful commercial law in effect on the planet of the Apes!

So I told the monkey in question a few things, at which point Dragan Slatjovic himself came out of the woodwork, with some etrange verbiage which I didn't really punish mostly because I imagined that the entire problem was created by the monkey in question.

Next up, the esteemed CEO of the Internoc24 scam himself proceeded to apply the bait-and-switch maneuver! You see, the servers that they had sold me... they don't actually have. Why not ? Oh, because aliens came from the dog and ate the homework, and they didn't have time to update the list! Leave aside that the list had not been updated then, three days later, like it's not updated today, a month later, like it'll never be updated - would I want some other servers for more money instead ?ii

I shrugged amusedly at the "CEO" sitting on a couch in a messy room somewhere and spending his time trying to nickle and dime me twenny euros at a time and ok'd his petty chisel so we could proceeded to the next item on the nutty list : must use Cloudflare! Fancy that, I'm buying dedicated servers so that some schmuck can tell me what to run on them. This is the future you've built, I hope you're proud of your jwz-y selves. Anyway, I told the guy in no uncertain terms what exactly are the odds of me ever running NSA's alt-Tor, which yielded the funniest bit in the entire exchange yet :

Dragan Slatjovic // Staff

Thanks for reply.

I dont know you reason behind this, but we accept this. But please note, that any Datacenter have the right to suspend any Services if massiv DDOS Attacks are received.

An another personal Note is about your Blog Entry:

http://trilema.com/2015/internoc24-or-the-crisis-and-its-resolution/

We from Management stand behind what our Sales Manager wrotes to you.

We from Management and also our Sales Manager do our best to speak friendly and respectfull to our customer, but it also be expected from the customer to our Stuff. We dont tolerate such communication. You can not place any order and after this make trouble. You place an order while you need something and if you make some trouble (or if you try such communication) you never get what you need. Not from us, not from other Companys.

A separate note is that this communication is internal and we dont allow to publish this without ask us before.

>> Legal Note>> confidential and maybe legally privileged. If you are not the

>>>> intended recipient, you should notdisclose, copy or use any part of

>>>> it -- please delete all copies immediatelyand notify Internoc24 LLC.

>>>> Any information, statements or opinions containedin this message

>>>> (including any insertions or attachments) are given by theauthor.

>>>> They are not given on behalf of Internoc24 LLC unless

>>>> subsequentlyconfirmed by an individual other than the author who is

>>>> duly authorised torepresent

>>>> Internoc24 LLC

I think, by the evil communication and your occurrence, we declined to work with you. We dont often make such decision, but in this case, we dont have any other option.

Please let us know your BTC Adress and an official Emailadress, i forward this Ticket to our Billing Department, to make an exception and proceed a gateway releated refund of your payment. They also send you more information about the needed documents for the refund. (This are needed to prevent money laundering)

-------------------------------------------

Best Regards,

Dragan Slatjovic [Chief Executive Officer]

Internoc24 LLC

Company No. 5095819

-------------------------------------------

To which I replied with a terse

Mircea Popescu // Client

Alright.

1JPvucRfu3ZzEvfBUQTJwsxMrZjeTqD6zR

on November the 21st, and followed up with

Mircea Popescu // Client

I don't see any refund so far.

I'm going to give you folks a coupla more days to make good, after which I'm calling you out on my blog and you're welcome to spend as much as you've got on marketing to try and fix the unfixable.

Don't bother adding more words here, I won't be reading.

Today being the 7th of December I'd say I've been more than reasonable. You can see as well as I can that there's been no refund - and so here we are.iii

In conclusion : scam is a scam, fake servers advertised for bait & switch, no capacity, no support even when you pay for it, lulzy notions of "ownership" over their appalling communications and, perhaps most important for the readership - if you try paying with Bitcoin they'll just try and keep your payment. Period. If you're not me and can't afford to sue, consider whatever you send them a 100% loss.

———Dual Intel Xeon X5450 - 20GB RAM - 2x 1000 GB SATA. [↩]If you're curious about a blow-by-blow of the nonsense, it's actually here : Internoc24, or : the crisis, and its resolution. [↩]This doesn't mean, of course, that the Slatjovic scambrothers / Internoc24 gets to keep the 700 euros - I'll be selling the claim to whichever hungry London barrister offers more for it, so they can blow five to ten k for this just in legal costs. Idiots are, after all, the reason lawyers live well in the first place. [↩]

« Gender politics and the war on will.

Further views from Noesunpaispobre »

Category: Meta psihoza

Monday, 07 December, Year 7 d.Tr.

In which you don't know what's a Mnesarete, among other things

Cthulhu kinda interestin :

Mnesarete The pics are indeed kinda interesting but god help me if I can stomach the text, "As we are sucked in ever more by the screens we carry around, even in the company of friends and family, the hunched pose of the phone-absorbed seems increasingly normal."

Cthulhu What's wrong with it ?

Mnesarete What "we", no, it's not everyone sporting a shitty posture and being completely retarded and dependent. It's the writer, and derps like the writer, and fuck him for it. How about, "I looked at these photographs and realized how much I'd rather not be one of these idiots. Shame on me."

Mnesarete Instead he's trying to spread it around, it's all okay.

Cthulhu Haha. You realise this is self-impossible.

Cthulhu I bet he doesn't even wear high heels,

Cthulhu or belong in an abusive relationship that'll kill him.i

Mnesarete But he IS in an abusive relationship (which could kill him, iono how precisely to get some data on this, but people addicted to their phones die all the time texting while driving, not looking where they're walking, etc).

Cthulhu Sure.

Mnesarete He's the one in the actual abusive relationship.

Cthulhu These are the options : be in one or think you're in one. You can be insane or think you might be. You can have cancer or think you might have it.ii

Mnesarete That "might" seems important, and for some reason it was elided from the first, which seems the controlling, seminal, phrase. Sure, it's healthy to question or to admit possibility. It's another thing altogether if it's actual, positive conclusion that you're in the state.

Cthulhu I doubt there is such a state thing. "Are you in prison ?" "No." "How do you know ?" "They didn't tell me I was." "Ahok."

Mnesarete Not at all. "What is a prison?"

Cthulhu A prison is a word.

Mnesarete I can tell you I'm not in a word given a word is an intangible construct made by the species of which I'm a member to express something.

Cthulhu You don't understand how the world works, Mr. Putin. But the objection is right, the might was elided from the first. The reason for this is that the with-might statement is meaningful in our context, and the plain is statement is meaningful (on the basis of what else we've seen of him) in his contextiii. I presume the two formulations equivalent.

Mnesarete Ah. Well in any case, fuck him, I hope his phone melts or what's the worst that could happen with those things.

Cthulhu The worst that can happen with those things is that you meet someone.

———Just the day before, she had stumbled in her four inch heels on the transition between a concrete surface and sudden uneven pavement, landing in a very proper Texas dip and while not turning her ankle, ruining the shoes. She was harshly reprimanded, and convicted to nothing but high heels at all times including to bed, a minimum of three hours' walking plus jump rope. You ever tried this, by the way, jump rope in heels ?

Considering some of her shoes are display six inch heels that were really never intended even to stand in for more than maybe a minute, she took it for an extermination march (the "abusive relationship" part is my anasymfrazomenic addition, she just said it'll kill her, which I agreed with), which is incidentally how you get women in business, such as the business of ballet : torture, to death. [↩]She's a little on the hypochondriasis side. [↩]In case you were wondering : symfrazomena is Greek for context, much like Chronos is Greek for time. Thus therefore, while an anachronism is a breaking of the time contextualization (such as for instance depicting the Last Supper as happening around an European table), an anasymfrazomenism is breaking context in general. [↩]

« Narcissistic Personality Inventory

The Aviator »

Category: Trilterviuri

Sunday, 18 October, Year 7 d.Tr.

In numele lui Trompi!

Intro :

punkman Is Trompi the Romanian Dumboi?

mircea_popescu Nah. Trompi is a putative divinity introduced by a comic strip. He's more mysterious than the FSMii in that outside of me and those guys nobody even references it.

Reference-o :

This April 2011 article,

Explicatie venita de nicaieri : Tr. folosit in sintagme precum n. Tr. dinsus nu inseamna nota Trilemei, cum v-ati putea in mod eronat astepta, ci nota lui Trompi. Idem d. Tr. nu noteaza anii numarati de la aparitia Trilemei decit printr-o pura coincidenta. Cu aparitia lui Trompi.

which translates to

Explanation coming from nowhere : Tr. seen in constructions such as n. Tr. above do not denote "Trilema note" as you might erroneously expect, but Trompi's note. In the same manner, d. Tr.iii does not mark the years counted since the apparition of Trilema except by pure coincidence. With the apparition of Trompi.

~

This comiciv, which reads as follows :

Mo: Ce faci Foca?v

Foca: Bine Mo, uite...vi

Mo: In numele lui Trompi! Ce Satana ai acolo?vii

Foca: Faceam curat si am gasit o sticla de Chateau Lafite din 1787viii

Mo: Si pune-mi o halba.ix

Foca: Mediocrule! Asta nu-i sifon. Se degusta, nu se bea de sete.x

Anonim: Au ma doare-n pula.xi

Mo: Si pune-mi un shot.xii

Foca: Ahmmm... nu.xiii

Mo: Te rog dulce ca o savarina.xiv)

Foca: Nu. Ca tu te-mbeti instant ca ness-ul, alcolic anonim! Si dup-aia iar nu mai scap de tine.xv

Mo: Hai ma lopitaule mascat, ca nu ma-mbat dintr-un shot.xvi

Foca: Juri?xvii

Mo: Sa mi se arda sursa.xviii

Foca: Un singur shot...xix

Mo: Singur, atat de singur...xx

Foca: Mmmm... daxxi

Mo: Foca... Foca tu stii de ce beau eu?xxii

Foca: De ciuda.xxiii

Mo: Da! Da' mie nu mi-e ciuda ca sunt eu suparat. Mie mi-e ciuda ca-s altii fericiti.xxiv

Ore-o :

So there you go.

———You know, self-propelled Disney cartoon elephant. [↩]Flying Spaghetti Monster [↩]Article bylines go something like " Monday, 28 September, Year 7 d.Tr. ". [↩]As you can see, "Published on Dec 1, 2012 Category Entertainment License Standard YouTube License".

But really, it came out January 2011, youtube just sucks balls. [↩]How you doin', Foca ? [↩]Alright, Mo, looky... [↩]In the name of Trompi! What the devil's that ? [↩]I was cleanning up and I found a bottle of Cheateau Lafite (you know, the original Rotschild domains) from 1787. [↩]Sooo... pour me a pint ? [↩]You exercise in mediocrity you! This isn't fizz. It's to be sipped not thirstily chugged. [↩]Much like FM radio consists of a modulated carrier wave, whose modulations encode the message, Romanian constists of a modulation of cock references, which modulations encode the... eh nevermind.

Anyway, the guy goes "my cock hurts", which is a big fucking deal as far as the praxis is concerned, but otherwise means "I couldn't care less." [↩]So pour me a shot. [↩]Mmmm...no. [↩]I ask sweetly like a savarin! (You probably know the cake in question as "rum baba". [↩]No. Because you get drunk instantly like instant coffee, anonymous alcoholic that you are. And then I won't be able to rid myself of you agai. [↩]Come, you masked cutting-board you, I won't get drunk on a shot.

("Lopitau" is not really a Romanian word at all, but a Hungarian word transcribed and used as if it were Romanian. This is perfectly legal usage in the language, because Romanian, just like the Latin it continues and inherits, really and actually sees itself as the only possible language. All others attempts are simply... broken Romanian, so really, doing that is only fixing things.) [↩]You swear ? [↩]Should my power supply burn out! [↩]A single shot... [↩]Alone, so very alone... [↩]Mmmmkay. [↩]Foca.... Foca, you know why I drink ? [↩]Schadenfreude. [↩]Yeah! But I'm not schadenfreude because I am myself upset. I'm schadenfreude because others are happy. [↩]

« The saddest thing, or a classification of rape

How the world worked back when the world worked »

Category: Zsilnic

Tuesday, 29 September, Year 7 d.Tr.

In Desperation of Cause, or Eulora November 15th Auction

I know of no reason the 15th of Novemver should ever be forgot.

As you're probably aware if you've been following virtual macroeconomic news from independent sources (as opposed to the alternative), we've been having one hell of a time trying to get the Altar / Sacrifice cycle going.

Having tried everything else, I surmise it's time to try some shock therapy. Consequently, Sunday November the 15th, at 6 PM GMT, there will be offered for auction on behalf of S.MG the following mega packages :

Very Many Chickens (perhaps 1024 of them!), a bundle of Sacrificed Chickens at quality 10`954 (base value, 9`999`979 coppers).

A Credible Pile of Rocks, a bundle of Sacrificed Rocks at quality 18`088 (base value, 9`999`991 coppers).

Turkish Delights, a bundle of Sacrificed Delights at quality 26`821 (base value, 9`999`978 coppers).

Each of these will be auctioned independently, the minimum bid is ten million ECU for each. Note that it should not be possible for one to click on this bundle and loot just the token - if that happens we're probably looking at a bug and you'll get your bundle back. The loot pools have also been shored up significantly.

See you Sunday!

« Come see the retard chamber!

And then you never knew what this was... »

Category: S.MG

Friday, 13 November, Year 7 d.Tr.

I'm not sure I can truly convey the lulz...

... but I can certainly try.

So : a teacher (who isn't ever going to make enough money to pay the rent - while spending a TON of time "working", in one of the highest risk environmentsi on planet US) ; a guy with no houseii (which in the US means pooriii ) ; a derpy looking adolescent ; a guy that "doesn't want tribute but honesty" ; a guy from Herdenssonville, NC ; a guy who has no other picture of himself than one in which there's also a girl which was cut off (minus some of the hair) ; an apologetic beta maleiv and a great sense of humor, caring guy looking for a loving relationship all sign up for a website where poor Indonesian adolescents (who also don't own a house) try to pass themselves off as women on the strength of nudies stolen off teh webs, for the benefit of poor white men over fifty who pretend like they're rich because they live in [what used to be] a rich country (much like they pretend they're healthy&successful because "their" sports team won).

With me so far ? Good! So these guys all tell the same joke. It goes something like "Here I am".

Did you laugh ?

If you didn't laugh you will never be a writer.

———Teachers interact with a large number of children at that dubious time in human development called puberty. Puberty always and everywhere manifests in the same tropes ; these just happen to be the highest crime the US knows, on account of "quick, pick something to scapegoat so we don't notice the shit we're in" and "fucking kids" coming up. By comparison, digging up uranium or flying to the Moon are activities involving much less risk - and compensation in case of undesirable occurences. Teaching however - much like participating in illegal racing with stolen police cars while drunk - carries a fine in case of undesirable occurences. You have to be a particular sort of estrogen-addled cuckold to pick teaching over drunk racing cop cars, in this context. [↩]Or what else would "willing to relocate" mean ? [↩]Because as far as everyone knows - including people who actually know quite a lot - the only pretense to wealth of your average US citizen is based on his "home equity", which is obviously a number that is all but set by the central planning commission of the US Fed. Think about it, "saving in house" is not merely giving your government the power to inflate away your savings, but with it the twin power of simply melting away the "equity value" as it sees fit. Quick, find further painful bits to put in the tiger's mouth! [↩]If that classification annoys you, ask me more about it - I promise I will spit in your drink. [↩]

« How do the aparatchicks live ?

MPIF (F.MPIF) January 2015 Statement »

Category: Rautati si Mizerii

Thursday, 05 February, Year 7 d.Tr.

If you go on a Bitcoin fork, irrespective which scammer proposes it, you will lose your Bitcoins.

Some random scammeri, pretending great import and high office in Bitcoin like all the scammers coming before himii (all of which the hostile eye of the mainstream media, as well as the dim, unseeing eye of the mass "follower" presented as actually important, for a brief time, back in the day - and generally for pay) is going to create a "Bitcoin killer".

Unlike the MtGox coins, Aurora coins, Etherium coins, Ripple coins, Paycoins and whatever other scammy "better than Bitcoin", "Bitcoin replacement" etc peddled to dateiii, the current scammer is brasher in his attempt (as scammers are wont to be, they call this "being innovative" on their dedicated scammer forums), and he actually claims to be seriously involved in Bitcoin development, at the behest of a fake "Bitcoin Foundation". These claims are both false, on the strength of the historical record, and both are squarely rejected by the actual Bitcoin Foundation.

What's left is the nude reality of the matter : if you, either misguided by some scammer's malice, or simply through ignorance, actually modify your Bitcoin client to accept the nonconformant transactions, the result will be that any Bitcoin you hold will be slowly (or perhaps not so slowly, depending on your use habits) replaced by worthless scam-Bitcoins, that will not be accepted by the main players in Bitcoin anymore than they'd accept something you've drawn yourself.

The fate of this fork will be exactly the fate of all attempted forks to date : the savvy Bitcoin holders will sell their fake-Bitcoins on the fake network, while double-spending (and thus invalidating) their sale on the actual network, thereby keeping their actual Bitcoin safe.iv The proceeds of this "victimless"v crime will be used to purchase more legitimate Bitcoins on the legitimate network, thus draining away value from the holders of Bitcoin fakes, into the pockets of the legitimate Bitcoin holders. Which of these two do you wish to be... well... now that you consider the matter, it's pretty obvious, right ? Certainly, not all will consider the matter, but if your morals are in their right place you will at least let them know, if you can get to them.

To make it perfectly clear : in no case will MPEx accept this fake Bitcoin, as it's not accepted any other fake Bitcoin to date, and for the exact reasons. Moreover, my budget to sink this scam exceeds the budget of everyone involved on the supporting side.vi That is all.

———One Gavin Andresen, known principally for his costumed clown services, where he goes to various conferences dressed as this or that for the amusement of the participants. [↩]Trendon Shavers thought he was very important, Mark Karpeles thought he was very important, Max Keiser thought he was very important, Andreas Antonopoulous thought he was very important before his untimely death, Vitalik Buterin thinks he is very important, Josh Garza thinks he is very important, the list is endless. [↩]That all miserably failed, needless to say, to a chorus of lulzy stuff like

[↩]The reverse is not possible, by the way : this scammer's fork is, as designed, forced to accept transactions on the legitimate Bitcoin network, but the legitimate network could never accept transactions based on movements on the fork. [↩]In the sense that its only victims are the gullible idiots empowering a scammer, something you're never ever supposed to do, by the way. Note that this is not the first time when "everyone" supported a scammer, and when "the consensus" seemed to be that nonsense is now quite sensible. This did exactly nothing to alleviate the 100% loss of those involved - whose voices you do not hear precisely because that is the fate of the gullible, the scammer following crowd. [↩]If you're curious, just do a count. [↩]

« Oil theory

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), November 2014 and December 2014 Joint Statement »

Category: Bitcoin

Tuesday, 06 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

I think you drastically overestimate the military importance of nuclear weapons.

Since I fucked up the math in channel, which drove me to spend half hour poring over the details to make sure everything's correct, I hurry to save the results here.

I. World Uranium reserves stand ati about about 6*10^9 kgs. Just about 0.72% of this is usable for the purpose. Uranium molar mass is ~250 [grams/mol] which means ~ 6*10^9 * 1000/250 * 6*10^23 atoms in total.

II. Energy output is ~200 MeV per fission event. The total ideally available energy is thus 6*109 * 0.0072 * 1000 / 250 * 6*1023 * 200 * 106 = ~2 * 10^40 eV.

III. Land surface is ~1.50 * 1014 square meters, so on average there's a total of ~1.3 * 1026 eV available per square meter, ~21 or so MJoules. This means that if there's water on the floorii, eight or so milimeters high, all-out nuclear war will dry it off.iii Guess what, the Sun does the same in an afternoon.iv Big whoop.

This, of course, provided you manage to mine all the uranium there isv, and manage to fission it in such a way that no atom escapes your wrath, and further provided that the sea is magically off limits to the enemy.vi

Consider also the problem of costs.

For one thing, the US total current arsenal is around 547 "megatonnes"vii, worth 4.1 PJoules or 2.6 * 10 31 eV each. Therefore the entire US atomic armaments (all 1.4 * 1034 eV's worth of it) come to almost 0.0001% of what's contemplated here. Provided, of course, they even work.

For the other thing, a single Trident missile (which is, as alf well points out, not at all the whole story) costs 30 to 40 million dollars, and delivers 15-20 TeraJoules, ideally. The delivery costs of fissile material involved in the Operation Dry Bathroom Floors would alone count for something like... 4 to 5 trillion dollars.viii The 2015 US budget is in total a shade under 4 trillion, so it wouldn't cover delivery. To get an idea of what this means : the US couldn't afford to pay for the taxi. Not the show, not the dinner, and definitely not the girl. Just... the taxi.

tl;dr Contrary to what is generally propagandized, there isn't a way to use nuclear weapons effectually on the field. The only effectual use for them is in mass media, for propaganda purposes. That's it.

———It is important to note that Uranium is pretty much only found in the crust, and because it is principally an alpha emitter it is perhaps naive to imagine large deposits await unknown. Certainly much more naive than the same expectation about fossil fuel reserves, and last I checked that's not commonly held. [↩]Room temperature water costs about 2.6MJ per liter to dry off, and a liter of water stands a milimeter tall on a square meter surface. [↩]We're making the generous assumption that all that energy can in fact be transferred. This is ludicrous, of course. [↩]The Earth receives something to the tune of 200 PetaWatts from the Sun, and if the afternoon is four hours long this comes down to 2.88 * 1021 Joules, or 1.8 * 1040 eV. Same deal. [↩]Mostly in Australia. [↩]Which it very much isn't. In fact atomic submarines are by far the most hardy elements in case of nuclear war. [↩]Pro-tip : whenever someone's using some sort of "special" unit for banal stuff, it's because they're trying to scam you. [↩]Provided of course the supply of these things is absolutely elastic, and you can buy ten million for the same price you paid for one.

Actually, strike that : provided of course the US can even produce anything whatsoever anymore. I seem to recall a pellet of a billion or so dollars "lost" in Iraq, I seem to recall last the Pentagon humbly proposed to audit Blackwater the Grand Master of that wholly sovereign Templar order threatened to simply kill any auditors. I am altogether unconvinced that the USG can have anything it wants for any price. Period. [↩]

« That spiffy selection thing.

Views From A Shithole, or Periplus Through Stupidity »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Monday, 11 May, Year 7 d.Tr.

I made an art!

I think it's great. The art. Which I made.

Is made by me.

Totally.

« Eulora 2nd event, Crafting As A Business and other considerations

Ok, so what is Eulora disrupting ? »

Category: Zsilnic

Tuesday, 23 June, Year 7 d.Tr.

How to fix your local trackbacks ?

If you're anything like me, you keep a blog like the sum total of human knowledge, and use newer articles to build upon older articles. In this approach to writing, the fact that newer articles send trackbacks to older articles is very useful, because the list of trackbacks on an older article can for instance indicate the more important nodes to the reader, among other benefits. As the blog grows this accumulated set of notations becomes quite invaluable.

Obviously Wordpress does a shit job of this task as it does a shit job of any other task. In this case, it will simply omit, for no apparent reason, to send some trackbacks. Notwithstanding that they're going from your own blog on your own server to your own blog on your own server, a good chunk get lost en route (imagine what happens when there's an actual internet between source and destination!). Pretty much the only guarantee Automattic offers is that if you write an article F with links to articles A, B, C, D and E, only some of A, B, C, D and E will receive the trackback. Certainly not all, and there's no good way to tell which. Talk about code that's poetry!

To fix this, you have to delve into the perl :

Step 1. Traverse the database to produce a list of pingbacks that weren't properly sent.

<?

// Index of post at which script last ran. Script won't look

// through earlier posts. You'll have to update the value yourself.

$last_run = 0;

// Db connect data.

$db_name = '';

$db_user = '';

$db_pass = '';

$table_prefix = '';

$nconnection = mysql_connect("localhost", $db_user, $db_pass );

mysql_select_db($db_name, $nconnection);

// Part one : select all the posts that contain a link to your own blog.

// Replace the url with your own.

$local = "http://trilema.com/";

$query = 'SELECT YEAR(post_date), post_name, post_content FROM '.

$table_prefix.'posts WHERE post_type ="post" AND post_content LIKE

"%<a href=%" AND ID > '.$last_run;

$record = mysql_query($query);

while ( $row = mysql_fetch_array($record, MYSQL_NUM)) {

$post_url = $local.$row[0]."/".$row[1];i

$dom = new DOMDocument();

@$dom->loadHTML($row[2]);

$xpath = new DOMXPath($dom);

$hrefs = $xpath->evaluate("/html/body//a");

for ($i = 0; $i < $hrefs->length; $i++) {

$href = $hrefs->item($i);

$url = $href->getAttribute('href');

$parse = parse_url($url);

echo 'curl -A "Mozilla/5.0" -r 0-4096 --connect-timeout 30 ';

echo '--max-time 10 "http://';

echo $parse['host'];

echo '/xmlrpc.php" --header "Content-Type: text/xml" --data ';

echo '"<?xmlversion="1.0"?>'

echo '<methodCall><methodName>pingback.ping</methodName>';

echo '<params><param><value><string>';

echo $post_url;

echo '</string></value></param><param><value><string>';

echo $url;

echo '</string></value></param></params></methodCall>"'."\n";

}

}

?>

This will output a lengthy list of curl commands. You probably want to save it as a file on your server, say fix_trackbacks.php, after which you can call it from command line, perhaps with something like

$curl http://your.domain/fix_trackbacks.php >> fix_trackbacks.sh

(Make sure you edit the values of $db_name, $db_user, $db_pass and $local.)

Step 2. Connect to the server (via ssh), set the executable bit on the .sh script you just created ($chmod +x fix_trackbacks.sh) and then execute it (./ fix_trackbacks.sh >> result.txt).

Step 3. Once you're done, don't forget to set the $last_run variable to the ID of your latest post, so you don't have to go hunting for the correct value whenever you remember you need to run this again next. Or, alternatively, you could simply automate its function.

And in this manner, a very short half hour to an hour later, you'll be exactly in the position you should have been from the ver ybeginning. If only Computer Science weren't afflicted with the terrible curse of playing social security net for the kids that aren't smart enough to sling dope.

PS. There's probably a less... kludgy way to do this same thing, but I'll be damned before I'm paying any "Wordpress expert" a bent nickle, and I'll be triple damned and twice hexed before I'm paying any actual engineer to delve into the depths of that pile of encoded idiocy and figure out how the data structures work. It's a whole world of duct tape and chewing gum out there!

———Note that if your url scheme isn't domain/year/article like Trilema's, you'll have to fiddle with this string a little. [↩]

« Old story

A Trip You May Have Taken, redux »

Category: Meta psihoza

Monday, 16 March, Year 7 d.Tr.

How to be good at poker

There's an older Romanian article published here under the title Cum devii un jucator de poker bun, which Pete Dushenski has recently translated on his blog. I am so flattered by his effort that I shall take the time to give my own translation below, for his - and anyone else's - benefit.

As to authority, which is the thing that should open any article of this kind : I am not the best Romanian poker player, I know tens better than me, and there probably are hundreds. It's unlikely there are thousands, but I won't say it's impossible. I am not a professional player (which is to say I don't make my living at it), I have played with tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars on the table, I have won tens and hundreds of thousands, I have lost tens and hundreds of thousands. I never played, never lost nor ever won millions, nor do I intend to - I believe a limit's welcome in all fields.

Of all these better Romanian poker players than me I have no knowledge of any one that keeps a blog (another example of a field which could use it). There do exist various things made deliberately to prepare chumps for the chumpatron, as there exist various blogs on which various cocklets speak about things they do not understand nor will ever understand (thus preparing chumps for the chumpatron unintentionally), As such, my authority to speak on the topic flows from the usual syllogism : if you are willing to accept my authority as sufficient then you can read a Romanian article on the topic at hand, and if you're not willing to accept my authority as sufficient then you can not read a single article on this topic in Romanian, as there isn't one.

The situation is not similar in the English language space, for instance, as there exist numerous blogs kept by guys who are better than me. How honest and serious they are it is up to you to decide, I won't go into the discussion as I'm not interested in foreign language spaces.

Defining the terminology, or that thing with which this kind of article should continue.

By poker we mean any of the numerous variants, even if generally people prefer playing either some kind of stud or else Texas Hold'em. It's in the end irrelevant what exact variant is contemplated, the game's about the same at the abstraction level we find ourselves.

By player we mean someone who wins or loses within the rules of the game. Poker (like any game of chance) can very well be adapted to working as bait for one fraud or another, but we're not discussing conmen employing poker in their conmanship, we're discussing players.

By good we mean someone who is capable of regularly winning more than they lose, the difference exceeding the average income in his demographic group. So, a junior high kid that makes a hundred lei a month on average playing poker is a good player by our definition, because allowances aren't really a hundred leis a month just yet, as far as I know. A Sudanese living in Sudan making about a hundred dollars a month on average is a good poker player, by virtue of the fact that Sudanese salaries are something short of a hundred dollars.

By this reasoning, to be a good poker player in Romania you have to make about 25`000 lei a year playing poker, and to be the same "internationally" you'd need about a hundred thousand. But each year after year, that's the big thing, stability. We average all years the year you die and it has to come out above that threshold. The fact that you managed to exceed it a year or two in a row after which you've lost your life playing cards does not qualify you as a good player.

There exists the theory (which I do not credit) that playing cards is an addiction, like smoking tobacco. You might imagine how much credence such notions carry with someone who has been smoking a few cigarettes a week for almost two decades now. As far as I'm concerned, heroin and barbiturates are the only addictive substances, unlike alcohol, nicotine, superspecial cunt, hash, Internet, playing cards of any kind and so on and so forth. The test is simple : take a putative addict and separate him utterly and suddenly from his putative adiction. If he dies (like opiate addicts die, no discussion possible) it's an addictive substance. If he doesn't die then there's no addiction involved, the guy in question is simply being a dumb cunt.i

And now, seven hundred introductory words later, looky that we're ready to go into the subject.

I. To become a good poker player you need about a decade of your life. That means two college degrees and a half, or a Medicine and a Law degree. It is, in other words, very much work.

Of course, at the age of all imaginary possibilities also known as "adolescence" it may well seem that on the contrary, playing cards is a simple and effective means of avoiding work. These cocklets will never become good poker players, no matter what happens. Most of them won't die in their own beds, either, but that's a different discussion that fails to interest us. In actual reality living off poker is about on par with living off blogging : they who can accomplish such wonders are few and far between, the ability required of them roughly equivalent with what's required to finish two or three degrees - and as a valedictorian, not barely making the cut in some third rate diploma mill.

On the other hand it's an interesting life, that keeps you young (in spirit, because otherwise it undermines you physically something fierce), you always meet new people, you constantly bask in the feeling of living your life to the fullest, it doesn't compare with a paper shipwreck in an office somewhere. It's not like counting your life in years, or decades. The poker player counts his life minute by minute most often, and rarely knows Tuesday from Thursday exactly because he's focused on narrower intervals.

I feel the need to underscore this : he who has the talents and abilities required to become a good poker player will become a good anything else : engineer, lawyer, medic, banker, what you will. Almost all alternatives are better paid, per unit of effort and per unit of personal worth. If you're after money, this profession (for it is a profession, even if not necessarily found in the bureaucratic classifications) is not the best choice.

In short : it's not for everyone, it's not a way to avoid work (on the contrary, it's a way to work more), it's not a way to make more money (on the contrary, it's a way to make relatively less money).

II. To become a good poker player you need a partner. Ideally it's a beautiful woman that loves the cock, who also loves you loyally and passionately, encourages and supports you, has independent income sufficient to support both of you (so secretaries, sales clerks and other unqualified workers are right out), does not want children, does not want to learn to play cards, is not bothered by not seeing you for days at a stretch and makes killer cocktails. In case you're holding your head and going "Oh God!" : I can assure you that such women exist. I know three. I would guess the whole world contains maybe a thousand, which means that about a thousand dudes (as a degree of magnitude) have the opportunity to become good poker players from the ideal position, on the button with pocket rockets in the hole.

Unideally, anything that can keep you going for ten years without fail. For more and more people this means their mother forced into a sort of surrogate, such as for instance this cocklet. This solution doesn't actually work, for reasons we'll get into below, but meanwhile the fact that these days it's socially acceptable and even common for thirty year old kids to still be suckling on the financial tit of their parents leads to more and more people than ever in history trying to become good poker players. This does not mean more people end up good players than before, it simply means it's easier than ever to live off it, if you're a good player yourself.

III. In becoming a good poker player intelligence is entirely a secondary matter. I know it seems hard to believe, the cinematographically convenient representations as seen through movies and sitcoms have created this aura of hyperintelligence. It's a false image, that hyperintelligence is a marotte. After all, if you were to credit the cinematographically convenient representation, email'd be a pretty fucking weird thing, wouldn't you say ?

Discipline is by far the most important quality of the good poker player, intelligence being a distant second and at great contest with intuition (which intuition is a mystical something that I have no way to explain but nevertheless saw with mine own eyes, in myself as well as others so I'm not about to contest its existence). This is the reason why a partnership with one's parents is toxic : the man dependent on his mother does not have the resources of adulthood at his disposal, and thus no way to achieve actual discipline. All they can build are fakes (and uncoincidentally, the link I gave you illustrates the problem perfectly : the hyperintelligent cocklet - for he is hyperintelligent - sucks it exactly for lack of discipline incumbent upon an unhealthy relationship with his mom). Accuracy forces me to introduce here a bizarre exception : the incestuous relationship between the daughter and the step father can work perfectly for the needs of the girl in this direction, I've seen this with mine own eyes and as such can't deny it, no matter how wildly... inappropriate, let's say, it might seem.

IV. To become a good poker player you're stuck spending about four years (ie, the smaller degree) learning by heart the number tables of the job. What's my odds of full house if there's five players and someone else has a straight ? But what if it's a straight to the king and I want queens fulla kings ? What if the straight's to the queen ? But what's the odds for a straight flush to the queen of diamonds if I hold aces fulla tens ?ii All numbers, in all situations, by heart. By. Fucking. Heart. All. Absolutely all.

A relatively smarter method of satisfying this boot camp is playing bridge. It has the advantage of being much cheaper than poker, and comes with an opportunity to socialize with intelligent men and women more or less on their own feet (for I've not seen that many waitresses playing bridge). It also has the disadvantage that you learn, aside from the many things useful in poker, a lot of useless crap. It is still the avenue best fitted for the patient, given that perhaps your passion for the table isn't quite as deep as you judged it to be, and this much more... comfortable game, more tolerant and more loving of mankindiii might actually satisfy you for the rest of your life. It is unadvisable for the agitated and assorted cholerics, given that playing poker rather than bridge gives beginners a valuable opportunity to be scared of their own stupidity, an experience which (coupled if at all possible with some serious beatings with sticks) will serve them immensely for the rest of their life, whether they quit poker or not.

V. After you've got the small degree (but only after, let's be quite clear on this point, only after you know the numbers like a prayer) you can move on to the large degree, the real thing. Forget everything and focus on the other players. What's he telling you about what he thinks his numbers are ? A good poker player can play and win consistently against amateurs without as much as looking at his cards. It's not a line, it's a truth : his own cards he can evaluate statistically, the others' cards he can read straight out of their faces, after which he compares a known something (their cards) with a likely something (his cards) and overall derives a profit. This in the end is the best way to test both your ability and your relationship : take your partner and strip her without looking outside of her eyes. I mean, of course, strip poker, but honestly there's not necessarily much need for the entire cards distraction.

Because in the end this life can be lived even without being a good poker player.

PS. Out of intellectually bankrupt puritanism, the majority of "developed" states implement fiscal policies based implicitly and sometimes explictly on the theory that professional playing is a social ill that must be destroyed. Apparently men marrying men are fine, but god help you if you play cards. As such they tax winnings (often astronomically) but do not allow deduction of losses - should I win ten thousand today and lose nine thousand tomorrow I'm not ahead by a thousand like logic seems to imply, but behind by four because the state's trying to steal half of the ten.

This nonsense should be taken apart, but practically it seems improbable, especially given that the same states (completely outside any sort of control) have come to where they charge to their own income account nine tenths of the retail price of cigarettes, for instance. The practical solution is tax avoidance, of course, and it's applied with gusto and for good cause by absolutely everyone.

———See also fatlogic. [↩]Not out of my ass, that's the final hand in Cincinnati Kid, and would have ruined absolutely anyone on an purely odds approach - the odds are something like one in fifty million. Intuition alone can save you there, and if you ain't got that... [↩]Yes, card games have their own personalities, like dogs or horses. Poker is like a cat of impredictably-variable size, now it purs now it's a tiger. [↩]

« Misopiny

Where did your years go ? »

Category: Lifespiel

Friday, 30 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

How an economy functions ; how the pretense of an economy functions.

Settle down, we're going for a ride.

Real

Fake

Q: What was Revlon ?

Q: What was Myspace ?

A few factories + the things that go with that.

A website + the things that go with that.

How much was it worth ?

How much was it worth ?

About ten thousand man-years' worth of labour.i

About a billion dollars.

What happened to it ?

What happened to it ?

It went bankrupt (except obviously "not really").

It went bankrupt (except obviously "not really").

Where did the ten thousand man-years go ?

Where did the billion dollars go ?

They were lost.

They never existed.

What did they make ?

What did they make ?

Items.

Public goods.ii

How did you acquire their products ?

How did you acquire their products ?

By paying.

You didn't, they acquired you, as a product.

How do you make a replacement ?

How do you make a replacement ?

Either ten thousand people spend a year working, or one guy spends ten thousand years working, or something in between these extremes.

It self-regenerates.

What happened to the economy when Revlon went bankrupt ?

What happened to the economy when Myspace went bankrupt ?

The productive capacity of the economy degraded somewhat which eventually, after plenty of intricate back and forth, resulted in a weakening of the value of the currency.

The exposure of the virtual economy in real economic terms diminished, resulting in a strengthening of the virtual currency.iii

What decides whether there was going to be a replacement made ?

What decides whether there was going to be a replacement made ?

If the young, the ambitious, the hungry found it within themselves to take a risk on making a new Revlon rather that any of the myriad of other things ready to carry their investment of youth, ambitious, hungry, there'd be another Revlon. Otherwise, not. That's how the atrocious 70s hair and bizarre sexual practices of the 50s went out - opportunity cost.

If the people in charge of committing the appearance of financial support to pretenses of reality judge the risk of taking a bath (ie, the smoke and/or mirrors being exposed for what they are) is well offset by the gain of perceived reality, seriousness, "brick and mortar"-ness, there'd be another Myspace. Otherwise, not.

What can the government do to create more Revlons ?

What can the government do to create more Myspaces ?

Nothing directly. Indirectly better education, better infrastructure in general seems to correlate.

Nothing indirectly. Just make it.

Does the government think it should make another Revlon ?

Does the government think it should make another Myspace ?

No.

Yes.

Why not ?

Why ?

Because it can't possibly be their job to decide how the resources of society are to be employed, nor is it feasible for them to acquire sufficient information to allow even vaguely efficient deployment of such.

Because the society has absolutely no resources and finds itself entirely adrift in a meaningless sea of ireality. Consequently it's the job as well as the duty of government to create the Schelling points of pretense, given that if they don't do it, nothing exists. It's not a question of allocating actually existing resources - none exist, all allocation is purely imaginaryiv ; it's not a question of collecting information - nobody has anything real to say, they're merely waiting to hear the party line to echo so they can be "right" in the sense of coherence.

What happens when someone opts out of the system ?

What happens when someone opts out of the system ?

That person doesn't get to wear make-up.

The value of the system diminishes (on a power-law).

How long can this go on ?

How long can this go on ?

Either forever, but not like this ; or else for short intervals in various mutually-incompatible if somewhat contiguous forms. Much like the human body can go on "forever", but only if you agree to count the eventual worms it will feed as "the human body".

Forever. A watch dropped into a black hole takes forever to strike midnight, and similarly a society lost in fiction will never, ever, subjectively hit the wall.

Who has better sex ?

Who has better sex ?

People other than you.

"You"s other than people.

———The minimum wage wasn't quite 15 dollars yet back in 1984. [↩]The soviet-era proxy for this nebulous notion is "Fabrica de impachetat fum", aka The Smoke Packaging Plant.

Public goods are not merely valueless in the sense that no one's willing to pay for them ; they are also pointless. A company that produces "US presidents" is not producing anything whatsoever - if it didn't, they'd still have presidents. For as long as the last guy's walking around there's going to be a president, and once the last guy croaks the point is moot anyway. (For extra credit : what does this say about the average US college ?)

[↩]No, you still can't buy Russia. [↩]Think Hitler moving around imaginary regiments that existed on paper only and ordering attacks, "das war ein Befehl!11"-style. That's what we're talking about, der Steiner-Angriff while the Russians are covering Berlin with artillery fire. [↩]

« Filth

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), October 2015 Statement »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Saturday, 07 November, Year 7 d.Tr.

House of games

Holy cow this shiti's bad. Incredibly, incredibly bad. Fedinitely worse than lightweight bad like I dunno, Cannibal Holocaust or whatever.

For one thing, and in no particular order, the cinematography looks like it's direct-to-video (in '87, which means "it looks like it was filmed through gauze"), the whole stagework looks like they recycled the decors from A Walk On A Soundstage - Among The Papier Machee, volume 8, and the make-up and blocking... good lord. Mamet's wife has that short cropped "rape & attempted suicide survivor" look sterile women and Depeche Mode wore towards the end of the decade. I suspect it actually caused Gorbachev's stain and probably the collapse of the Soviet Union to boot it looks so god awful.

The acting's worse, but that's sort of expected given all those involved still had day jobs at the time (from what I hear, mostly bussing in the same pizzeria). The screenplay however... oh my god you can't believe the atrocious, purple, literotica-level nightmare. At some point, the woman actually says to her friend "this lighter looks like someone gave it to you". They're supposedly refined edumancated women sharing a meal in an upscale restaurant (if you can suspend your disbelief in the face of their trampy outfits and trampier mannerisms). It's about as incongruous as writing the dialogue between Condolezza Rice and Michelle Obama as "Hey, can you smell whitey penis ?" "Sorry, I burped."

Then later some derp for no reason and through no internal logic flashes a pistol at the heroine (she's unconvincingly playing the shrink, he's unconvincingly playing the patient) and the only reply on everyone's lips here at MP's House of MST3K was "hey, that looks like someone gave it to you!" But no, completely impervious to its own grotesque ridiculousness the film hams right through, and she resolves the crisis exactly as illogically as it sprung up. Oh and she wrote a book, did I mention this ? I musta forgot - but they didn't, every side character makes sure to mention her damned book as if that was still an achievement in `87, with the direct result of making you think the shebang was written by someone who was very impressed with having written a book, or bad film treatment as the case may be.

And then, to crown this misery, the whole thing's read with all the voice craft of Emanuelle. Literally, the average, not the best, the average porn flick of the 80s has better voice work. I think that puts it somewhere between regional network ads and small university phone system.

But the truly sad part about all this being that the most esteemed Chris Ballas recommended this film in passing as some sort of excellent depiction of what psych work "is really like". Not the idea that he saw something in here bothers. The idea that he actually sat through more than fifteen or so minutes of this thing bothers. It jars. It is actually irks me, this thought.

———House of Games, 1987, by the very inept David Mamet, with his incredibly inept wife and that guy that plays extras in mobster movies when they really need a lot of people for like a wedding or a funeral or something (Joe Mantegna). [↩]

« Game theoretic game theory

Maripostas »

Category: Trilematograf

Tuesday, 24 March, Year 7 d.Tr.

Here's who doesn't belong in Bitcoin : you.

Oh, there needs to be a rist of leasons, right, the image above isn't worth ten thousand reasons already. Fine, fine, anything for the web.

List of Over 9000 Reasons Of Here's Who Doesn't Belong In Bit-cion : You.

Derp actually cares about fiddy cents. You don't have to be me, and ngaf one way or the other about 1kx that. You can't however be in Bitcoin if fiat subdivisions are of interest to you, and for the best of reasons : there's only ever going to be 21 million Bitcoinsi and there's already unknown-how-many gazillions of paper bits printed. Fiat necessarily is the subdivision of Bitcoin, that's the only conceivable reason it might continue to exist. Dollars and pounds sterling are ALREADY Bitcents. You can't have two layers of poverty support baked in.

Derp can't do basic arithmetics. Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency. Cryptography rests upon advanced math. Advanced math is more advanced than arithmetics (or statistics, for that matter).

Derp is on fucking reddit. No, really, that's enough. You can't be an investment banker and spend your time shmokin'weed shmoking wizz doin' coke, drinkin' beers drinkin' beers, beers, beers.ii

Derp has absolutely no fucking idea about anything, but moos about it anyway. This alone makes it impossible for derp to have any money, of any kind, ever. Period and full stop, it has nothing to do with Bitcoin, this guy'd have been picking cotton in the South or shining shoes in the North two centuries ago. Not because of "oppressive society" or anything to do with the outside : strictly because inside, structurally, he belongs with the cows.

Derp actually thinks he matters. Somehow, magically, the nickle and dime idiot going away will do anything but help the place he left. What the fuck is this nonsense ? What, like that one time the poor fuck who spittled inside a beer bottle he brought from home for three hours left the strip joint and everything wilted ? Never happened, everyone's happy to see him leave : the girls, the guys, the chairs even.

Derp actually imagines he could even in principle know what the solutions for his problems are. This is pure surrealism, something along the lines of, "a cow walks into the ER and says doc, here's my diagnosis, here's what you should do next". They don't even have ERs for cows for fucks sake! Nobody cares enough.

Derp derps about "we". What fucking we ? There is no we.

The list could go on forever, but really, who cares. Suffice it to say that in this case, 7000 > 9 or whatever.

O, wait. Food delivery ? "Pays" for food delivery ?

With what, his methane ?iii

———Meanwhile there's already seven billion bipedals polluting Bitcoin's green own Earth. Fortunately, only about 21 million or so of them own more than a dollar to their name (which criteria pointedly excludes most UStards, by the way) - so problem solved. If you're stuck throwing pennies, Bitcoin isn't for you. Like other things aren't for you. [↩]Here's a memory aid :

[↩]Yes, the notion that this derp has any money whatsoever is ridiculous on the face. He has exactly the same money the cows depicted above have. Yes, his owner ensures he gets whatever feed is economically feasible to feed him, at some intervals. Yes he has some "control panels" connected to nothing in particular in front of him, to keep him entertained. Idiots like him are easily amused : give them some nicely printed paper they'll shuffle and sort it forever, and even tell themselves that they're "ordering" the food that comes anyway, always the same, always at the same time, handed out by the same people. Yet he's in charge of his fucking life and everything, just ask him.

So is the cow. Orders feed with methane. Problem ? [↩]

« There's a one Bitcoin reward for the death of Pieter Wuille. Details below.

Procedural Dungeon Generation for Eulora »

Category: Bitcoin

Saturday, 12 December, Year 7 d.Tr.

Here's what you don't know or understand about Facebook : everything.

Obviously after the previous article inflicted ego wounds on roughty speaking the entire population of web-grazing cows, I was in for some hate mail.

I'm not going to say any words at you idiots. Yes, I know, "you were successful". "Viral marketing". You never had a quarter million likes, so shut the fuck up.

Yes, I know, "it's not like this where you live". Totally, that matters.

Here's what you don't know : everything. Here's what you don't understand : everything. Shut the fuck up, sit the fuck down, it's not your world and you're not even an extra in it. Fucking racist...

« A Tale of Two Breakfasts, or, The Whore's Broth

The problem with altruism... »

Category: Meta psihoza

Tuesday, 20 October, Year 7 d.Tr.

Here's part n of our endless saga, aptly titled "The People Know Shit" or alternatively "Nothing's Dumber Than The Voice In The Crowd".

What's anon talking about ? Why, the Berkshire bet, of course.

Which, on one hand, has attracted exactly jack shit in "publicity". If you review the collected works of everyone, from soi dissant Mainstream Media to the last "social" basement on the topic of Bitcoin, you will find every single stupidity, irrelevancy or idiocy that ever happened, might have happened, was announced as definitely happening but then never occured. In triplicate. In quadruplicate. In infinityplicate.

Everything about a minor player in USD paymentsi graciously contributing a coupla hundred BTC's worth (over three years! in dollars!) so that ESPN Events allows them to pretend like they own a game ; everything about some flavour of the month scammer making whatever statements, retractions, corrections, plea bargains, threats, promises, entreaties and whatnot ; everything about impact thrice removed and possibilities entirely theoretical, about the author's own banal feelings and stunted thoughts (whole lot of these, actually), about imaginations, delusions, aspirations, implications - about absolutely everything and absolutely anything "having to do with Bitcoin" except not actually in any sense related at all.

The one thing omitted ? Why, the most important thing that happened this year in Bitcoin : some 30something actual entrepreneurii actually challenged fiat's most famous old hand. And then that most famous old hand had to suffer the humiliation & indignity of pretending like no shorts could be found for his birthday partyiii. Because anything but the old, dying wolf having to confront the young, independent wolf face to face. Anything but that carnage, oh please!

And then, it looks like the young'un is going to lose! Think about this for a minute, would you ? A kid challenged the emperor. And then the kid put something like a million bucks on the table. How many kids do you know that can do that ? With their own money! And now the kid looks like he's gonna lose. And this isn't a story ?

Of course it's a story. It's a great story, and it's being told far and wide, but it's not publicity. The people doing the publicity aren't picking it up, for the obvious reason. I'm not paying them to do it, for one. (Oh, what, you think the stuff you read in the news is there because it's news ? Nigga, puhleaze. If you're not paying you're the thing being sold.) It doesn't fit their agenda, for another. ("If you built a business it's not your business", remember ? They don't exactly want independent rich people. The sort of guys that made themselves and if it comes to it may actually change the world, god forbid! They'd much rather push a different angle.)

So... no publicity. Plenty of word of mouth, yes, and everyone with a clue knows about it, yes, but publicity is exactly the opposite of this. Publicity is getting everyone without a clue to know about it, while the people with a clue studiously or otherwise ignore it. We couldn't be in more different worlds.

But leave "great publicity" aside, let's move on to nobody's going to bet against it. Really ? My thousand BTC goes on the Yes side together with a hundred and some BTC. The No side ? Eh, about five times that. "Nobody"'s getting pretty thick, isn't it ? I guess what was obvious in March is the opposite of what's obvious in December, but that's okay : the crowd has meanwhile been replaced. What's the half life of sheep, two seasons ?

So not that much wisdom in the crowd after all, huh. Not exactly the font of all knowledge, not really worth the worship it's getting these days. Yet all the while, as experts opine and crowds know and publications publicize and so on and so forth... I'm doing my own thing.

To be honest, I'm quite pleased with this arrangement. Name another place on Earth where you can lay out a million dollar bet and have it covered five to one. Tall order even for Vegas, isn't it. But wait! There's more! All cash. That's right : if I win, I will take home about what, 5.5k * 700 at least... wait a second... four million dollars ? In cash ? That's to say, I will actually take it home, each and last dime of it ? No banks involved whatsoever ? Wow. But wait! Is there even more ? Yes there is! There's even more! Read Bush's lips : tax free. I will pay exactly bupkiss tax on it, irrespective what any government may think. And it can't even be confiscated or anything. Hm...

Obviously, it's not too damned likely I'll win. And that's fine. I don't mind having had the shot at four million in cash, on a bet. When's the last time you had something like that ? When's the last time you knew someone who had something like that ? Not claimed. Actual. Cryptographically provable, actually, but let's not get into details that might require one to use the higher functions.

This, incidentally, is exactly, but exactly how Bitcoin works. Yeah, we might not make it out on the other end of it. Sure, sure. Neither will you. Nobody makes it out the other end. Meanwhile, the shot, the shot... who do you know who can take his four million home ? Put it in his pocket, take it home. Cross any border. Pay, for anything. Anything whatsoever. Who do you know that doesn't need a bank ? Who do you know that's completely immune to taxation, confiscation, inflation and the rest of the endless list of government-sponsored theft ? How many people do you know that "fuck you, I do what I want" ? Outside of cartoon characters, I mean ?

There's a lot "the people" don't know. There's a lot the crowd's never experienced. Frankly, I wouldn't want it any other way.

———As to Bitcoin relevance : Bitpay has about as much to do with Bitcoin as Cuisinart has to do with groceries. So you use mixers and shit in your kitchen, where the groceries go ? Bravo! So you do things with dollars at the periphery of Bitcoin via Bitpay ? Bravo! 'Bout same thing, seriously.

As to size : MPEx December was ~600 BTC. Bitpay December disappointed (and in typical BS fashion, they suddenly forgot all the grand promises and authoritative declarations as to the future made prior - don't expect a "we said we were going to X but we failed" blogpost from the sort of hype-and-hope venue, it's contrary to the "business model"). In any case there's not a coupla million bucks free and clear from the 0ish% they get to keep from the receipts for that month.

So... yeah. A minor player at the periphery of Bitcoin. [↩]There's a difference between men who own their own money and boys who hang around the VC trough. Guess which are the entrepreneurs and who are the Mary Sues ? [↩]Seinfeld has a pretty decent bit on how the Berkshire stockholder meetings go :

To me, the thing about birthday parties is that the first birthday party you have and the last birthday party you have are actually quite similar. You know, you just kinda sit there...you're the least excited person at the party. You don't even really realize that there is a party. You don't know what's goin' on. Both birthday parties, people have to kinda help you blow out the candles, you can't do it...you don't even know why you're doing it. What is this ritual? What is going on? It's also the only two birthday parties where other people have to gather your friends together for you. Sometimes they're not even your friends. They make the judgement. They bring 'em in, they sit 'em down, and they tell you - 'these are your friends! Tell them thank you for coming to my birthday party.'

[↩]

« X.IDIFF retirement

Timeo Danaos, or let's enjoy the Romanian language together. »

Category: 3 ani experienta

Friday, 09 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

He who gets married....

asciilifeform BTW that cazalla thread would make for great reading alongside of the 'why not have children' thread from during c3.

mircea_popescu It's not for everyone. Actually... there's that chinese dizident.

asciilifeform Which thing is for everyone? Only death, afaik, is definitely 'for everyone.'

mircea_popescu Not even death. Definitely not for woody allen & co.

asciilifeform That article is a tough cookie for my puny brain. Consider brief spoiler ?

mircea_popescu It's insanely hard to translate, because as written it's nearly pure poetry.

asciilifeform I get this.

mircea_popescu But I shall endeavour.

So here we go :

So, concrete example : the Chinese have some sort of dissidenti, I didn't exactly understand for I don't read the language, don't trust translations and don't have the patience to research, but some sort of dissident, I grok the concept. Who was preoccupied by the forced abortions that the Chinese government imposes on various pregnant women. Like for instance this one we had hereii, who cut up a codger because she was a whore and he was a customer and she thought to herself it'd be a good idea to cut the pig up, put aside some sausage for the coming winter. Well... and now she's pregnant, being impregnated in prison through the workings of the holy spirit, and so requests to be freed for a year so she can give birth in peace in Austria or wherever en route to Indonesia because that's the ideal motherland of these gypos, heat, filth and corruption.

So, the dissident was of the oppinion that what the fuck is the government sticking barbed wire in their cunts, instead of letting them foal I'm sorry, the miracle and so forth, we're all equal, children exist as such from the very moment they start drying up on bathroom tile and etcetera assorted pseudorefinement like only an imbecile could conceive. Oh sorry, did I say conceive ?

Anyway, the Chinese whacked him across the head, I have no idea exactly how but if it comes to it I could probably imagine. And this guy, the dissident, went crying to mommy US embassy, because hey, ever since they came up with embassies every jerkoff can be a "dissident". It's all very simple, you sit in the embassy and dissideate. That sucker Rizeaiii and those misfortunate Chechens just didn't know how to do it right, see the suckers ? Instead of going to sit in the embassy like is normal and expected if you're a pointless fuckwit. Like Mircea Badea aka Dinescu.iv

Alright, and as the dissident was sitting and dissideating by himself in the US embassy, suddenly he made up his mind to leave. He did, alright ? He decided himself to leave. Because due to reasons. So the USians announced it - as they really felt deeply the need for one of these schmucks around, eating their smoked salmon and grilled young virgin Chinese vulvas or whatever else they had for putting in the mouth at that embassy. So they announced that the guy's leaving to some Chinese hospital to be there in safety and prosperity. You know, like Yulia Timoshenko, as it were.

And I believed them, because I have this habit of the dumb man, to believe what the USians lie. Because I was born at night and apparently blackness comes off the night directly on one's brain or something. Aaaalright. Except more recently it was heard that the guy in fact left because the Chinese flexed an' said that unless he comes out towards his mother's cuntv they're gonna do three-four abortions on his wife whether she's pregnant or not. Which has then been denied by obviously everybody, through which everybody we understand the US side, because it ruins their whole fantastic story for cartoons-watching idiots.

At which point I was losing my temper already, because fuck their stupid mouths of imbeciles that can't decide what they want already. The USians don't know exactly what their policy towards China is, and can't make up their mind.vi The Chinese can't figure out if this way or that, they keep babbling.vii This smoked salmon "dissident" - for he knows not how to shoot the policemanviii - can't make a decision already. Is he going to the embassy ? Is he staing home ? Just getting in the way of people, basically. One of those idiots stopping in the doorway, we have them here too, they go go go, open a door, jbaNG! Stuck there like by thunder, full blown paralysis. Their little brain engineix stopped. Until you reset them with a kick to the buttside they don't comprehend who they were, what were they doing, what time it was and who was president. Stuff like that. The agape of my cock.x

And since I've lost my temper, let's make a rule : whosoever gets married no longer has the right to dissidence. Dissidence is for men, not for perambulatory cockheads entered in the country's reproductive register. Once you've married some chick you're done with pretense and discontent about "the social order". Not your place to comment, you get in the line as the line is and mind wiping fresh shit off the lightbulb or wherever else it may end up in a normal household with small children.

I believe it's clear enough, what I don't understand is why exactly is it not obvious ? I mean sure, if you marry some sort of Natasha of the Glade like Lenin had for a wife (and iirc Stalin, back in the day of bank robbing and being a common criminal, like any serious revolutionary communist in his youth) you can mind your dissidence onwards, as you're of the same kind. But if you take one of these dumb hos that keep getting kidnapped by the enemy... brother! What do you see yourself as, Mario ? Either learn to keep getting new ones as those dudes keep arresting them, give them children, if they take her you take another make even more children in which case they have a disincentive to keep arresting them, or else shut the fuck up and the uneployment queue is over there.

What the shit is this!

———Russian word used by a Romanian do discuss universal matters in English with Chinese examples. Globalisation is here, it's this thing riding your naked, hooved, bit-chewing mother. Like so :

Cheers! [↩]"Timisoreanca" is a toponym, denoting a female from the geographical region of the city of Timisoara. "Banatu' de Frunte" is a layered and multireferential joke, which could be summarized by saying that the part of the country Timisoara finds itself in is called "Banat", because it was historically run by a Ban, sort-of like you'd call some place "the Duchy" for having been historically... a duchy. Then these twerps imagine they're very great and special, which is a pile of ridicule we're not going into, but it's roughly like Wisconsin thinking itself the foremost state because cheese - a notion petrified in the expression "Banatu'i fruncea", id est, the Banat is the forehead. Which is good, ken ?

Moreover, the case of a young woman who was pretending to be studying, and consequently living (for free) in the campus, while also turning tricks, got together with her boyfriend and killed an elder, richer male gypsy guy (who in turn had spent many years during the communist regime in that most disgusting position of a police informant - which worked exactly like the US "justice" works, to wit, he'd sell people gold bands for wedding rings, and then call the police on them - because imagine this, in "democratic" Romania it was illegal to get a fucking wedding ring). So this was in the press at the time, all about the tramp murder. [↩]Actual dissident, resisting the communists (which is why you've never heard of her - your communists don't like such people) back in the day. Elisabeta Rizea. [↩]Mircea Dinescu is a leftover piece of scum from the communist days. He was moderately talented in his youth, which went nowhere, and otherwise an abject character, but careerist enough to still be around, sort-of.

Mircea Badea is a mentally retarded Romanian version of that guy with the stupid political TV show, I forget his name - in any sense a three decade later version of the same schmuck. Amusingly enough, either of the two would be insulted by the comparison, except Dinescu's original name was actually Badea. [↩]This is how Romanian is spoken, what can I do. [↩]Meanwhile they figured it out. Here it is :

[↩]Technically, fonfaie denotes speech that overly involves the nose, as seen with many types of retard. [↩]This is a reference to Trilema's most amply debated article at that time, which says some rather unflattering things about an entire generation. [↩]Creierasu' = small brain. Motorasu' = small engine. Works better in original. [↩]For the record "uluitii pulii mele" is a splendid expletive. [↩]

« The Producers

The greatest failure in modern legal history, the story of Joshua Dratel »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Tuesday, 26 May, Year 7 d.Tr.

Have some chocolate cake.

Master Tucker Max explains his very bad moviei :

Well, I thought I understood how the Hollywood system worked. I was still arrogant enough that I thought truly understood the system. And you could think of it the same way as starting a company, like a first time entrepreneur saying I know how to do a startup. You may think you know, but you don't know until you've done it, right? I thought I knew how Hollywood worked. I thought I knew how the set would work, etc. So we picked our own director, and we ended up picking a director who essentially sold us in the room that he would act a certain way and do a certain set of things on the movie, but when it came time to do it did something totally different. And by the time we got to that point in the process, there was no way to unfuck the decision. And then because he didn't live up to what he said he would do, I instead of, what I should've done is said, "Okay, we are where we are. We can't change it. I need to figure out how to make the best situation possible out of this." What I did was the wrong thing. I got fucking pissed and I got angry and I didn't deal with those emotions. So instead they kind of came out in the way I acted towards him and towards a lot of other people, and it negatively . . . a movie set's a very sensitive, delicate artistic place and you can't act like that there. And I did because I was fucking pissed off because this guy had fucked me. And it negatively impacted the movie in a lot of ways, and I can't even watch the movie because I can see on screen in scenes where I know what's going on in the background and I know someone's fucking up a scene and I know it's at least partially my fault and it drives me nuts. It drives me nuts because I didn't have to act that way. Even with the bad decision, I could have just swallowed it in the short term and gotten the best product out and then dealt with the director later. I didn't. I was short sighted in that way.

Question for you : is he right or is he wrong ?

slave How could he be "right" or "wrong" in that? He's describing how he felt about something.

Master "what I should've done".

slave Ah. No. If he realized he picked a shitty director he should have fired the guy and scrapped the whole thing until he had enough dough and the right director to do what he wanted.

Master "The one thing I learned with the movie was to never, ever do any sort of creative endeavor unless I have full, complete, real creative control, because if you don't have any creative control, you essentially have no control. This book, I finished it, I turned it into Simon and Schuster, and I said, "Print it the fucking way I did it, don't change a fucking thing." And they said, "Yes Tucker, whatever you want". What are they going to say to me, right? Hollywood doesn't work that way. Hollywood doesn't give a fuck. If you don't write the check in Hollywood, you don't matter. That's true even for Steven Spielberg. He gets more control than I do, but he still gets the boot on the neck in Hollywood. That's a battle I've been fighting the last six years. That's why I cancelled two TV shows because both times they were going to do something stupid and I wasn't going to deal with it."

slave Otherwise wth is this, "I wanted to knit an afghan but it turns out I bought celery instead of knitting needles but w/e, I should have figured out how to make the best of it."

Master He's actually right, I would say. Why did he get the bad director ?

slave Because he doesn't know how to interview for a good one.

Master Point in case :

Well, the big thing that I would say would be that the co-writer Nils [Parker] and I would direct it. We had a director on the last one, and he just didn't - we thought he understood the vision, and we thought he got it, and it turns out he didn't...it seems like a little thing, but it makes a difference if you understand movies. Like, I think the movie is lit really poorly. I think it looks like - you know, I mean, we spent $7 million on the movie, which is not a small amount - it's not a huge amount for a movie by any stretch, but definitely more than enough to make a movie look professional, you know? And that version looked very indie and very gritty, and I just thought it looked like sh*t. Like, it didn't look good. And that's the director's fault...he fuc*ed up; he lit it incorrectly. And that seems like a small thing, but it makes a huge difference. Like, that's one thing I would do differently. And I don't know, there's probably a million other little things that we would do differently, but that's, like, the big thing.

That's like, really, the big thing ? Oookay >D The problem isn't that he's smart and the director lied to him. That's what he likes to think, that he's MP sitting on MP's throne and some scammer worked his butt off for 2 years to get through the gates and well, ran off with some BTC. He's not that. He's a dumb kid who has no idea, and what he SHOULD have done was to use that film to learn. Build and test hypotheses.

slave Still not seeing how this makes him "right".

Master He should in fact have made the best of it.

slave Interpreting "make the best of it" that way is takin' a loootta liberties. This shit never crossed his mind, it's not what he meant by several thousand miles. But anyway, nitpick.

Master Certainly not. But that is the other way this is all about the meta problem. He actually is right and not aware of it. This is what that means. What "idea" ? You can't have an idea. It's not a thing, not something to "have". It's not like a chocolate cake, you get your hands on it that's that, it's yours.

slave :) I sees!

———I don't think you can begin to believe how bad that thing is. [↩]

« MiniGame (S.MG), January 2015 Statement

More beat around Whore Street »

Category: Trilterviuri

Monday, 02 February, Year 7 d.Tr.

Good morning!

And happy national day!

« MiniGame (S.MG), November 2015 Statement

BitBet (S.BBET) November 2015 Statement »

Category: Zsilnic

Tuesday, 01 December, Year 7 d.Tr.

Gerald Davis is wrong. Here's why.

Gerald Davis, aka deathandtaxes, is a man who had tried to run a Bitcoin business as a law abiding US citizen, and has been shut down for his troubles, by that Behemoth. No consideration whatsoever given to his stellar reputation (which he has thoroughly earned and entirely deserves). No consideration whatsoever given to his culture and intelligence (I have no doubt that one could not find, anywhere in the basements where these rats dwell, drawing paychecks against the public treasury, anyone more qualified to think about Bitcoin). No consideration given to his absolutely clean business practice. He was just shut down, and that's that.i

I have no idea what he's been doing for a living in the years elapsed since then - if anything, then definitely not anything related to Bitcoin as a free entreprise. Maybe he's working a garden or teaching yoga. Maybe he's earning his living as a Bitcoin expert in the pay of those who do not wish to see Bitcoin free entreprise generally, and certainly not to the degree displayed by the free world. Whichever of these it is, he's free to enlighten the world - I am curious like anyone's curious. What he can't do is pretend like "it doesn't matter". It does.

He has graced the retard forum with a lengthy essay, which is the subject of our discussion here. I will quote, and comment.

Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ...

Today at 01:31:00 AM #1

Permanently keeping the 1MB (anti-spam) restriction is a great idea ... if you are a bank. When those in favor of keeping the limit in place, say that Bitcoin can still be a financial backbone of sorts they don't know how right they are. The problem isn't a limit in general but that 1MB is so low that under any meaningful adoption scenario it will push all individual users off the blockchain to rely on trusted third parties. In essence you will probably be priced out of the blockchain and the blockchain becomes yet another network you will never have direct (peer) access to, just like FedWire, SWIFT, and other private closed transfer networks.

The tendecy of fundamentally etatist writers to reference the USD and generally fiat considerations has been grilled before. This goes deeper than that : Davis pointedly omits to mention MPEx.

Mere preeminence given to the very obsolete piles of fiat crap we're here to not merely replace, but out and out render impossible for all time is insulting to the intelligence of free men, and little more. The pretense, however, that the Bitcoin success does not exist where it patently does, now that's disgraceful. That's how reputations are ruined. That is how one knows the paid agents of the enemy from the mere gullible, the mere bumbling idiots. It's one thing to sort the graduate class of Princeton according to height, first the white boys as a group, then the black boys as another group. It's stupid, it's racist, it's nothing you'd want to see. But to pretend the black boys do not at all exist, that's too much.

Meanwhile : MPEx is the thing that sent the SEC packing. Who else, of all these "community minded" Cominform herd ? Who else ?

MPEx popped the Pirate bubble. And you, all of you, and yes Gerald, you included in that "you". You "the community" of gullible idiots, you "the community" of bumbling fools are still yet to apologize. Not your fault, right ? Great. And if MPEx the "private closed transfer networks" weren't here to fix your problems for you, Bitcoin would have been forgotten entirely by 2013. "We don't know that", right ? Yes, that's right : you don't know that. That and plenty of other things, including exactly what your name is, every other day.

MPEx was here, to bust the MtGox bubble, and to bust the scam foundation, and generally to keep the light shining. Yes, it's a "private closed transfer network". Who exactly do you think is going to stand up to the banks of this world, to the powers of this world ? Gerald Davies ? Charlie Shrem ? Gavin Assassinsen ? How do you know who can beat back Omidyar on his own chosen field ? Oh let me guess, "the community", right ? Please, send some changetips, it'll totally work.

MPEx is there, like it or not, want it or not. Whether you're able to come to terms with its continued existence, and its continued successii. Whatever your emotional issues clouding the matter. It's there. And the list starts with it.

It's there, and the list starts with it to everyone's benefit so far.

There is no realistic scenario where a permanently capped Bitcoin network can have meaningful adoption and still enable direct access to the blockchain. To be clear by direct access I mean an individual transacting on chain without relying on intermediaries or trusted third parties.

Scenarios as discussed by the conclave of the inept are not a meaningful point of concern. What this is normally called is "appeal to ignorance", such as "there is no realistic scenario where swallowing pills cures poxes". Sure, there isn't. All sorts of "there isn't a realistic scenario" held the stage across the ages, such as "there's no realistic scenario where washing hands before delivering baby reduces peripueral fever".

Much more importantly, the intellectual situation of the author belies a fundamental incongruity with the new world we're here to help birth : he argues as to purposes. This is irrelevant. We're not here for a purpose, we're here for a cause, the difference is marked and all important. Arguing as to what "the effects" of this or that may be is exactly the mode of pseudologic that got you in the bind you're in, and in the bind out of which Satoshi aimed to extract you. It's the paper bag, or if you will the meta-problem.

Here's the scenario one could "not think of" : Joe dies. Joe does not want to give Obama most of his wealth. Instead of having his life's work inherited by the emperor, like in the final days of the Roman empire, he'd much prefer to have it inherited by his son, so that son can start his accumulation with a head start, and one day amass enough power to change the world in his own taste. Joe, in other words, is not retarded, he's not about to exchange power for the mere fetish of power. So a transaction is broadcast, splitting his fortune on the blockchain, according to his wishes. Has an individual "transacted on chain without relying on intermediaries or trusted third parties" ? I guess not. Technically, Joe has not, he's dead, and I've not had the foresight to name the heirs, so they have not, either.

Let's try again. I wish to buy a house. You wish to sell me a house. I pop open my wallet, and send you the half a Bitcoin or whatever it is houses like ours cost at this point in time. Has an individual transacted ? Definitely. Does this completely dispell the "doesn't exist a scenario" scenario ? Surely. Does that make a difference ?

No, it does not. It does not, for a most prosaic reason : Gerald Davis is a contemptible worm. He is not merely lying : he is intelligent and informed enough to know he's lying, and does it nevertheless. The fact that he's done it in the first place, the fact that he does not fear public ridicule more than he fears his masters, the fact that he's - provedly - willing to fuck a goat with cameras rolling satisfy that point : no, he's not going to stop. Because the only thing you can do, once you've lost your good name, is to continue whatever you did that lost it. Right ?

Can we stop talking about a cup of coffee please?

Yes please, can we stop talking about all the relevant things and instead focus on bugaboos and nonsense ? How is the welfare state supposed to advance its agenda while people keep focusing on the sensible points! Also in this line, "XII. The current 1Mb limit is arbitrary. We want to change it. Please ignore the fact that the discussion is about whether to change or not to change, and please ignore that the onus is on whoever proposes change to justify it. Instead, buy into our pretense that the discussion is about "which arbitrary value". Because we're idiots, and so should be you!".

You may have heard someone say something like "Every $5 starbucks coffee doesn't need to be on the blockchain so there is no need to raise the limit". The implied message is that while the cost of the limit is that trivial purchases will be knocked off chain you will still have direct access to the blockchain for everything else, but the 1MB restriction puts such a chokehold on transaction capacity that even larger more meaningful transactions will eventually be knocked off as well.

This is nonsense of the first degree : if at some point the incentives are in fact of the nature of changing anything, discussion of changing that something may be had.

Discussion of changing something may not be had on the strength of mere possibility, perceived by marginal elements, outcast elements, loud nobodies. To make it perfectly clear : you might change the color you've painted your walls. At some point. When you think it's been long enough since you last painted them. When you want to change it for whatever reason. The opinion of some random pickpocket that was arrested in front of your house, and of some bum that would like to move from pissing on your dumpster to living in your bedroom do NOT figure at any point in this equation. Because it is your house, and neither Gavin, nor Gerald, nor the rest of these schmucks have any sort of involvement whatsoever with, again, your house.

As a greater and greater portion of the overall transaction volume occurs off chain with third parties (aggregators) those entity will make arrangements with each other to allow cross entity off chain transactions and then settle the difference. With as little as 250,000 txns per day, it doesn't take a very large transaction volume before settlements between these trusted third parties alone fill the block space. At that point it doesn't matter if you want to use a third party or not, you no longer have meaningful direct access to the blockchain because it will be space will be priced to a point where individual transactions are just not economical anymore.

This directly reduces to "If Bitcoin is unwilling to implement the changes the USG wants implemented, then other (which ? we don't know, magical future "other") services will come along that will!" I'm sure they will. Actually, they already exist. You know, Western Union and Visa and Paypal and what have you. Square, Circle, Derpy. They, however, will not be successful. The USG can't magically invent its own Bitcoin to replace Bitcoin, as much as it would love to. How will these magical future things settle ? Oh, on Bitcoin ? And how would they prevent anyone so inclined from popping up a node, making their own wallet, whatever ? Oh, they couldn't ?! So then... what is the argument again ?

The argument, again, is the contemptible scum calling white black and black white. The first 170k blocks took 1 Gb. The next 170k blocks took 35Gb. If the next 170k blocks take 1.25 Tb then the only certain matter is that no ordinary individual will be participating to direct, on the blockchain transactions by 2020 2010. Simply because he won't be able to store the - hold your breath why don't you - 1.25 * 35 (6 * 365 * 24 * 6 / 170000) = 914 Terabytes required by then. Just downloading that much would cost something between 45`000 and 90`000 dollars.iii Yes, that's right. And yeah, I'm sure they'll go down a lot before the decade's out. It certainly looks like where things are headed, zek-side.

So, yeah, what can I tell you, let's talk about how becoming bigger makes everything bigger and pretend we don't notice that our proposal makes things untenable. Who exactly, of the "community" of wholly astroturfed "support" can afford 90k, or 45k, or even as much as one crisp new thousand dollars bill to pay for a private gavincoin wallet ? Oh, but that's not a problem because... wait, what were we discussing ?

We'll now skip a lot more of this "let's try to misrepresent sanity as somehow afflicted by all the evil results of our proposed nonsense", as it's pretty tedious to keep re-reading the same recycled crap.

The issue is that a 1MB restricted Bitcoin network provides so little transaction capacity (probably a lot less than you think)

The issue is not yet that.

The issue is that USGavin has no authority to cause a fork. That is the issue, currently.

Whether 1 MB provides too little, too much, not enough or so on capacity will become an issue once someone who isn't on the dark side raises the point.

Until and unless that happens, the issue is and remains whether the Princeton graduate, Amherst Mass residing, "Africa saving" USG tool has any space to open his fucking mouth among Bitcoin folk. And. He. Does. Not.

If you think this type of scenario is impossible then you probably don't realize how tiny the current transaction capacity is. We are talking a mere 10,000 or so transactions per hour. What happens in transaction demand is 10x or 100x that. 90% or 99% of it will occur off chain and that tiny on chain capacity will be swallowed up by just settlements between third parties.

Ever heard that statistic about how "1% of the world's population controls 40%of the world's wealth" ? Well a) it's perfectly true and b) it's exactly how finance works. The day where 1% of Bitcoin transactions by count happens on chain will be also be the day where 40% of the Bitcoin transactions by value happen on chain.

Much more importantly :

if you can afford to trade on the chain today and

if you do not willingly give your bitcoins over to some scammer and

Bitcoin grows to where 99% of the transactions are forced to happen off-chain

Then you will necessarily still afford to trade on chain.

That's what it is : the scary 90% 99%s etc do not affect you. They are a point of concern to all the other schmucks, the ones that are underweight Bitcoin. This includes the poor in whatever muddy shithole just as well as it includes the United States Government. Which, for all its "full faith and credit", is desperately underweight Bitcoin, and desperately rues the day when you will make your power felt.

That's what's at stake here : redistribution, from us, to "them". Whether they're misrepresented as "they of the future" or "they of the past" or whatever else, this cartoon explains it best :

There are they who are massively unrepresented in Bitcoin. Normally they'd just inflate it away, to make things "fairer". But they can't, because Bitcoin is specifically designed to kill that. As a political gesture, intentionally, purposefully and deliberately. Because that is evil. So they're stuck arguing all sorts of insanities, as to the cast votes of future babies, as to the "inexistent scenarios" that are plain as day, as to "fairness" and generally, exactly what the beggar says.

Exactly what the beggar says, so he can continue smoking dope and "hanging around" while you wake up to go to work, to pay your college debt (which college he got for free, but whatever man).

The good news is that it's once again not a matter of what you think. Whether you fall for this scam or not (and on the historical record of 'the community' you most probably are going toiv ) will strictly have an impact on your own personal bottom line. Whether your own son or your own daughter will matter or not in the future is what is being discussed here. The meta problem, the greater, systemic problem is already settled : I already declared MPEx will not tolerate this fork, and without MPEx no fork of this network can succeed, should it have complete agreement of everyone on the forums and everyone else. That is what a consensus system really is.

The average txn size is going to be larger due to factors like uncompressed keys being used, more complex scripts, and a limited number output selection.

This inadvertently brings us to some of the real sore spots behind the recent failure of the proposed scamcoin. Specifically : Gavin not being able to push his destruction of Bitcoin through means that all the crud they've accumulated over the past few years, in a pointed, direct and quite obvious attempt to weaken and eventually destroy Bitcoin will be naturally shaken off.

(It actually gets a lot worse than that, because Bitcoin 0.5.3 is currently being maintained, and by a much saner set of developers - meaning that all the expert effort put into subversion since then is as good as lost. The irony hasn't escaped anyone, of course).

Good riddance.

1MB doesn't can't even keep up with existing non-retail payment networks.

Going back to that coffee meme, the implied message is that 1MB is fine unless for everything else. You know substantial stuff like paying your mortgage, business deals, major capital expenditures, or paying a supplier for inventory. This just isn't the case though. Do you know anyone who pays for coffee with a bank wire? The FedWire service (run by US federal reserve) processes ~150 million bank wires annually. The FedWire service only operates in the US. Internationally the largest clearinghouse is SWIFT and it processes more than 5 billion transfers annually. The US ACH network is even larger with 19 billion transactions annually (excluding converted checks). There are also about 2 billion international remittances annually (western union, moneygram, and other networks). A 1MB restricted Bitcoin network couldn't even keep up with these transfer networks even if you forget about retail sales completely. The idea keeping the 1MB restriction, only keeps limits the utility of small payments is simply incorrect.

What is incorrect ? The idea that "innovation" consists of mimicking the already present and the proposition that it is incumbent upon Bitcoin to adapt to "the world as it is". Rather exactly the opposite : the world as it is, in all its details and to whatever degree it takes, whoever bleeds and whoever cries, will adapt to Bitcoin. Entirely and perfectly or else it gets the hose again.

So, if Bitcoin needs to ever change, it will change for Bitcoin reasons, and at the behest of Bitcoin people. Not "because US Fed", and not "because Gavin Assassinsen". These considerations about what the world does or doesn't do, likes or doesn't like, bla bla... Nobody cares.

Bitcoin reasons. Bitcoin people. Fuck fiat with a bent pitchfork.

The future cost of the network will need to rise to ensure that attacks are not economical and non-economic attacks are prohibitively expense relative to the benefit for the attacker. It may not rise linearly but it will need to rise. If someday one Bitcoin is worth $10,000 and we are still only spending $300 million a year on security we probably are going to have a problem. Now advocates of keeping the limit may argue that the majority of the network cost won't be paid by fees for many years but the reality is that with the limit on potential transactions there are only two other ways to balance the equation and that is much higher fees or much lower security.

If Bitcoin can't pay for its own security, it is best to find this out sooner rather than later. Moreover, from my unique vantage point I have seen sovereigns try to pose a problem for Bitcoin, and I have seen them fail miserably and without exception. I am not terribly concerned, and unlike pretty much everyone else publicly involved in discussing Bitcoin, I actually know what I'm talking about.

Nice going on the FUD and all that, but so far, the Bitcoin side of the score table has run the counter over a few times, and the US side of the scoring table is still at zero. Notwhitstanding the epic differential in resources spent for this result.

———And if you're curious to see how that personal failure of his (in standing up to the bullies) was received, sure, here you go :

Puts Shrem's misadventure in some perspective, one should hope. [↩]Guess what ? The entire conclave of fiat VC powered derps, the Bitpays and Coinbases and whatnot of this world have not managed together the income that MPEx manages alone. And yet... they pay tax to the USG. MPEx pays tax to Bitcoin's sovereign. [↩]Current badwidth costs are from 50 to 100 dollars per terabyte, providing of course you are me - which is to say very rich and powerful, and thus able to shrug and go "retail is for suckers" in any direction. [↩]Where is that scamcoin, by the way ? Gone the way of the "honor program" and Gerald's honor ? Aww. [↩]

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Category: Bitcoin

Friday, 06 February, Year 7 d.Tr.