One hundred million Eulora coins. Or in other words, one Bitcoin.

(18:05:15) Mircea says: I will return shortly

================================================

Sun 30-Aug-2015 18:09:03 Mircea Mircescu

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

(18:09:03) Welcome to the gossip channel! 5 players in this channel.

(18:09:03) Welcome to Eulora! May your stay be preposterously prosperous.

(18:09:15) Mircea says: soo here we go!

(18:09:25) Grenadine says: Foxy after ze bidding

(18:09:32) Mircea Mircescu dropped a Small Grotesque Altar.

(18:09:44) Mircea Mircescu dropped a Glowing Pin.

(18:09:48) Mircea Mircescu dropped a Widow's Whisp Berries.

(18:09:50) Mircea Mircescu dropped a Worthless Putrid Leather.

(18:09:53) Mircea Mircescu dropped a Three-Pointed Thorn.

(18:10:01) Mircea Mircescu dropped a Spicy Moss.

(18:10:04) Mircea Mircescu dropped a Polished Small Stone.

(18:10:45) Mircea says: we have here, ladies in drab and gents in blue, an official minigame auction bundle of great fabled import! To with : one altar, one million durability! One glowing pin! to write your own name on your own armpit with!

(18:11:44) Mircea says: and a colection of never seen before prize winning products of the soil : thorns, stones, berries, leather and something else which I momentarily forget

(18:11:49) Mircea says: ah yes I know, and lecitin!

(18:12:17) Mircea says: If everyone's had a chance to examine the vaporware in question, we shall presently start the bidding at

(18:12:22) Mircea says: what the hell was it

(18:12:32) Mircea says: eleventy million copper coins!

(18:12:39) Mircea says: hm that can't be right.

(18:12:45) Mircea says: 11ty milion! there we go.

(18:12:48) Grundin says: 15 copper

(18:12:49) Mircea says: who's got 11 ?

(18:12:51) Daniel says: 20 mn

(18:13:04) Mircea says: 20 mn heard from the indistinguishable gentleman over there.

(18:13:08) Mircea points broadly

(18:13:16) Mircea says: do I hear 22 ?

(18:13:16) Grundin Goldskull takes a seat.

(18:13:24) Foxy says: 22 mn

(18:13:31) Daniel says: 30 mn

(18:13:35) Mircea says: 22 mn from the fair haired lady by the fruit box.

(18:13:38) Mircea says: and 30 mn! Do I hear 33 mn ?

(18:14:00) Grenadine says: 33 mn

(18:14:03) Mircea says: only 33 extremelty expensive and very rare coins for these items here

(18:14:11) Mircea says: 33 mn from the lady of the grasses!

(18:14:20) Mircea says: and thorns.

(18:14:25) Mircea says: 33 mn going once.

(18:14:28) Mircea says: do I hear 35 mn

(18:14:29) Daniel says: 40 mn

(18:14:40) Mircea says: 40 mn from the no nonsense gent

(18:14:51) Foxy says: 44mn

(18:14:51) Mircea says: 40mn going once!

(18:15:00) Mircea says: 44 mn from the mathematically apt lady

(18:15:04) Mircea says: do I hear 50 mn!

(18:15:12) Grenadine says: 50 mn

(18:15:19) Mircea says: 44 mn going ha!

(18:15:29) Mircea says: half a hundred million coins! Going half a once!

(18:15:36) Grenadine says: lol

(18:15:36) Mircea says: do I hear 55 mn ?

(18:15:36) Foxy says: half a ounce

(18:15:53) Mircea says: 50 mn going twice!

(18:15:54) Daniel says: 55 mn

(18:16:04) Mircea says: 55 million heard! Hold evertything!

(18:16:09) Mircea says: who's got 60 ?

(18:16:21) Mircea whispers: have you counted it ?

(18:16:33) Mircea says: 55 million going twice!

(18:16:37) Foxy says: 60mn

(18:16:39) Grenadine says: 60 mn

(18:16:47) Mircea says: 60 mn heard omai god my head's spinning

(18:16:47) Grundin says: I counted it for them

(18:17:04) Mircea says: 60 mn heard twice going half a once! Anyone got 65 mn ?

(18:17:22) Foxy says: uhm, so is that mine or grenadine's lol

(18:17:23) Grundin says: that's less than 10%

(18:17:23) Foxy says: ?

(18:17:28) Grenadine says: Foxy yours.

(18:17:32) Foxy says: ok

(18:17:33) Mircea says: 60 mn going twice for one of the two ladies.

(18:17:35) Daniel says: 66 mn

(18:17:37) Mircea points : that one

(18:17:45) Mircea says: and 66 million heard!

(18:17:50) Mircea says: who's got 75 ?

(18:18:01) Mircea says: does anyone even have that much copper ?!

(18:18:10) Mircea says: eulora is a planet made of haldf copper by mass.

(18:18:13) Mircea says: 66mn goingtwice!

(18:18:20) Grenadine says: 75 mn

(18:18:23) Mircea says: ye possesed of the ha!

(18:18:26) Mircea says: 75 mn heard.

(18:18:35) Mircea says: this is the first time I ever hear such a thing, too

(18:18:41) Mircea says: in all my weeks as auctioneer

(18:18:49) Mircea says: 75 going twice!

(18:18:55) Daniel says: 100 mn

(18:19:08) Mircea says: oh my god almighty, he said the word. ONE FULL BITCOIN!

(18:19:31) Mircea says: anyone want this pile of items enough to part with 110 thousand thousand copper coins ?

(18:19:44) Mircea says: 100 mn going twice.

(18:19:58) Foxy says: I'm out

(18:20:00) Mircea says: if you have the 110 and want the stuff, say now because next thing out of my mouth sends it to a new home

(18:20:24) Mircea says: and the winner is Daniel ! with a record setting ONE HUNDRED MILLION COINS bid!

(18:20:27) Mircea says: congratulations!

(18:20:31) Daniel says: woo!

(18:20:32) Foxy says: congrats

(18:20:39) Grenadine says: wowza, congrats

(18:20:44) Grundin mumbles inflation!!!

(18:20:55) Foxy says: congrats to Grundin too

(18:20:58) Mircea says: lol

(18:21:02) Grundin says: :)

(18:21:10) Mircea says: trade me Daniel

(18:21:15) Daniel asks to trade with you.

(18:21:17) You agree to trade.

(18:21:23) Mircea says: for you have totally slain a giant here

(18:21:28) Daniel gave Mircea 100000000 Copper.

(18:21:28) Trade complete

(18:21:54) Mircea says: and with this, the official auction is closed! Private auctions to follow!

(18:22:02) Mircea says: Daniel you wanna auction off any parts ?

(18:22:46) Daniel says: I do have a couple packages to auction, not from what I just won.

(18:22:52) Mircea says: alrighty, go ahead

(18:23:00) Daniel says: didn't foxy have stuff to auction?

(18:23:00) Mircea says: auction winner gets first pickings.

(18:24:47) Daniel says: hm, well then

(18:24:49) Mircea listens to the sound... ofsilence

(18:25:26) Foxy says: oops, sorry, I guess I don't have in the end, since people are not interested in rare items I gather...

(18:25:30) Foxy says: so will leave that for later.

(18:25:40) Daniel says: I want your ordinary claims

(18:25:46) Daniel says: the leather and whatnot

(18:25:46) Foxy says: they are still for sale at the prices set there if someone wants them on the spot

(18:26:09) Mircea says: mkay, well, in that case, ima auction a pack of 100 improved cruddy hoes.

(18:26:11) Foxy says: oh, the rare ones are not for sale (never were), as for the others I can sell them to you the same as usual if that's fine.

(18:26:24) You started checking your storage with Heina.

(18:26:32) You got 100 Improved Cruddy Hoe from the storage.

(18:26:37) Mircea Mircescu dropped 100 Improved Cruddy Hoes.

(18:26:46) Mircea says: here they are. q 28506.

(18:26:56) Mircea says: so starting the auction off at 2.8mn.

(18:27:11) Mircea says: anyone got 2.8mn ?

(18:27:59) Mircea says: awww no 2.8 mn ?

(18:28:01) Foxy says: uhm, lolz

(18:28:09) Daniel says: 3 mn

(18:28:16) Mircea says: 3mn heard. anyone got 3.3 ?

(18:28:33) Grenadine says: 3.3 here

(18:28:39) Mircea says: 3mn going o hey 3.3mn heard

(18:28:45) Mircea says: anyone got 3.6 ?

(18:28:59) Foxy says: 3.6

(18:29:01) Mircea says: 3.3 going once,

(18:29:09) Mircea says: 3.6 heard. anyone got 3.75 ?

(18:29:25) Grenadine says: 3.75

(18:29:27) Mircea says: 3.6 going once

(18:29:44) Mircea says: 3.75 heard. anyone got 3.9 ?

(18:29:57) Mircea says: 3.75 going once...

(18:30:09) Mircea says: twice

(18:30:10) Daniel says: 4 mn

(18:30:21) Mircea says: 4mn heard! anyone got 4.1 ?

(18:30:38) Mircea says: 4mn going once...

(18:30:47) Grenadine says: 4.1

(18:30:48) Mircea says: going twice

(18:30:53) Mircea says: 4.1 heard. anyone got 4.2 ?

(18:31:05) Mircea says: 4.1mn going once...

(18:31:07) Daniel says: 4.2 mn

(18:31:16) Mircea says: 4.2 heard! anyone got 4.25 ?

(18:31:27) Mircea says: 4.2mn going once...

(18:31:35) Mircea says: and going twice...

(18:31:57) Mircea says: and 100 imp hoes sold to Daniel the eater of worlds for 4.2 mn!

(18:32:04) Mircea Mircescu picked up 100 Improved Cruddy Hoes

(18:32:06) You ask Daniel to trade with you.

(18:32:07) Daniel agrees to trade with you.

(18:32:20) Foxy says: lolz, daniel will be really busy

(18:32:31) Mircea says: takes a while to grind down 3mn worth of tool huh

(18:32:33) Mircea gave Daniel 100 Improved Cruddy Hoes.

(18:32:33) Daniel gave Mircea 4200000 Copper.

(18:32:33) Trade complete

(18:32:43) Mircea says: Ok anyone else got an auction ?

(18:32:49) Daniel says: was the first auction supposed to come with a grotesque altar?

(18:32:55) Daniel says: because that's the thing I really needed lol.

(18:32:57) Foxy says: well, either grind that or the altar, but both surely takes longer, lol

(18:33:03) Mircea says: its right over there Daniel

(18:33:04) Foxy says: it is here daniel

(18:33:12) Daniel says: oh lol.

(18:33:33) Foxy says: do you auction anything, daniel ?

(18:33:37) Daniel says: ok I have somethin to auction

(18:33:42) Daniel says: behold

(18:33:43) Mircea says: go for it

(18:34:05) Mircea says: im going to auction some slag after you do.

(18:34:13) Daniel says: I also have a key to go with it

(18:34:19) Daniel says: not shown for obvious reasons

(18:34:27) Foxy says: oh, well done

(18:34:27) Foxy says: lol

(18:34:35) Mircea says: o wow!

(18:34:47) Mircea says: well done!

(18:34:58) Foxy says: it's even minable really

(18:35:00) Mircea says: so you trading the clover AND the recipe ?

(18:35:09) Daniel says: yeah

(18:35:12) Daniel says: and a key

(18:35:15) Grenadine says: 34.5 four leaf clovers!

(18:35:16) Daniel says: to a locked claim

(18:35:27) Grundin Goldskull stands up.

(18:35:29) Mircea says: 69 I see ?

(18:35:43) Mircea is definitely interested!

(18:35:45) Grenadine says: well ya but they only have two leafs

(18:35:50) Daniel says: "base value" is something like 110k, let's start the bidding at 200k

(18:35:54) Mircea says: ahaha Grenadine

(18:35:57) Foxy wonders if anyone wants the location of lotus harlots

(18:36:00) Mircea says: 250k

(18:36:10) Daniel says: 250k heard, can I hear 300k?

(18:36:39) Daniel says: 250k going once

(18:36:59) Foxy says: 300k

(18:37:10) Daniel says: 300k heard from the lady over there!

(18:37:17) Mircea says: how much you wanna hear ?

(18:37:22) Daniel says: lol

(18:37:33) Mircea says: no, you gotta say, next bidding step

(18:37:33) Daniel says: can I hear 350k?

(18:37:41) Mircea says: alright. 350!

(18:37:48) Daniel says: 350k heard now!

(18:37:57) Daniel says: let's see if anyone wants to do 400k ?

(18:38:27) Daniel says: 350k going once!

(18:38:34) Foxy says: 400k

(18:38:39) Mircea says: im out.

(18:38:48) Daniel says: and we're up to 400k !

(18:39:03) Daniel says: does anyone want exclusive rights to clovers for 450k?

(18:39:10) Daniel says: (because I have no interest in mining it myself)

(18:39:19) Foxy says: ha ha, exclusive until the next one finds them

(18:39:24) Daniel shrugs

(18:39:26) Foxy says: + getting them at lousy quality

(18:39:27) Foxy says: lolz

(18:39:32) Daniel says: 400k going once

(18:39:55) Daniel says: 400k going twice !

(18:40:06) Mircea says: you mean exclusive to the clovers you mine or exclusive to the clovers you sacrifice ?

(18:40:14) Mircea says: or wait, were the clvoers from before actually from mining ?

(18:40:22) Daniel says: I did not lie

(18:40:33) Foxy says: I think he mixed them or something given the quality

(18:40:41) Foxy says: he said the ones from sacrifice were like 2k quality

(18:40:42) Daniel says: 400k sold to foxy !

(18:40:43) Mircea says: 140 is mined isn't it ?

(18:40:52) Daniel says: yeah these ones are mined

(18:40:53) Mircea says: wow 2k qual srslt ?!

(18:40:53) Foxy says: maybe mixed with some from the merchant?

(18:40:57) Foxy says: oh

(18:41:05) Mircea says: well done foxy!

(18:41:06) Daniel says: the others ones were 300+ quality and were indeed from sacrifce

(18:41:10) Foxy says: thanks

(18:41:12) Mircea says: aha

(18:41:33) Mircea Mircescu dropped 1200 Slags.

(18:41:45) Foxy says: thanks

(18:41:47) Mircea says: ok so I got here 1200 slag, of a very fine quality indeed. Merchant offers 1360 for each

(18:41:50) Foxy Foxster picked up 69 Two Leaf Clovers

(18:41:52) Foxy Foxster picked up an Ordinary Two Leaf Clover Ennumeration

(18:41:59) Foxy says: just about to grab the slag too, lol

(18:42:11) Mircea says: that puts the whole lot at over 1.6mn, but let's start at 1.5.

(18:42:22) Mircea says: anyone wanna pay 1.5 for my pile of disgusting smelly stuff ?

(18:42:28) Grundin says: 1.6

(18:42:36) Mircea says: 1.6 heard from the money guy. Anyone wanna do 1.75 ?

(18:42:51) Mircea says: 1.6 going once

(18:43:08) Mircea says: 1.6 going twice

(18:43:09) Daniel says: 1.75

(18:43:17) Mircea says: 1.75 heard. anyone got 1.85 ?

(18:43:30) Mircea says: 1.75 goingonce...

(18:43:41) Mircea says: and going twice...

(18:44:05) Mircea says: and sold for a very nice price to the official Euloran auction winner.

(18:44:08) Mircea says: congrats daniel!

(18:44:10) Daniel says: haha

(18:44:14) Grundin says: eh keep it

(18:44:28) Daniel asks to trade with you.

(18:44:30) You agree to trade.

(18:44:47) Mircea is mindboggled slag won't fetch 15% on open outrcy.

(18:45:01) Daniel gave Mircea 2000000 Copper.

(18:45:01) Mircea gave Daniel 250000 Copper.

(18:45:01) Trade complete

(18:45:12) Foxy says: kind of too much of it around, lol

(18:45:32) Foxy says: uhm, I have about 900 at 199 or some such, lolz

(18:45:43) Foxy says: (had 1k)

(18:45:45) Mircea says: alrighty then, musta been my bad

(18:46:02) Mircea says: so anyone auctioning anythingelse ?

(18:46:13) Foxy says: does anyone want rare items?

(18:46:17) Mircea says: like for instanceSOME GRASS ?

(18:46:20) Daniel says: yeah I want rares

(18:46:21) Grundin says: did not knew there will be anything interesting for a casuall.. otherwise I'd have kept more coins for myself.

(18:46:34) Daniel says: your credit is good here lol

(18:46:37) Foxy says: ahaha, grass is an idea. Lemme see.

(18:46:37) Mircea says: money is money Grundin

(18:46:53) Mircea says: everything's interestin', why not.

And so it went!

« The function and the functioning of art.

No Such lAbs releases V for Victory. »

Category: S.MG

Monday, 31 August, Year 7 d.Tr.

One. February. Three.

There to say is what not cursive.

« F.DERP January - February 2015 Combined Statement

L'aile ou la cuisse »

Category: Zsilnic

Saturday, 07 March, Year 7 d.Tr.

On the Elaine Shi and Andrew Miller scam ring

Subject: Gross breach of ethics, potential legal liability at UMD CS dept.

From: Mircea Popescu

Date: Fri, June 26, 2015 4:41 am

To: wdloh@umd.edu, stern@umd.edu

Cc: bkadams@cs.umd.edu, fatima@cs.umd.edu, speters@cs.umd.edu, jstory@cs.umd.edu

Dear sirs,

It has come to my attention that two individuals claiming association with

the institution you represent, specifically one Elaine Shi and one Andrew

Miller are advertising a "CMSC 818I: Science of Crypto-Currency, Spring

2015" course. Properly speaking this would be a discussion of Bitcoin, a

subject matter which they are in no way qualified to discuss to any degree

- a state of affairs signalled for instance by their unfamiliarity with

the proper terminology, complete absence from the Web of Trust, failure to

make any sort of contact with the Bitcoin Foundation and so on.

This notwithstanding, the two in question exhibit the unmitigated audacity

to propose that 20% of the mark will be based on (unpaid) contribution to

a so called "Ethereum project", which other than being a private concern

is a widely known scam, its fraudulent nature being widely discussed up

until that point where it finally folded, after which everyone lost

interest.

The exact equivalent would be a situation in which an assistant professor

and a PhD student in the Mathematics department start a "Science of A

Certain Herbal Extract Supplements" course, whereby a fifth of the mark

depends on your students doing unpaid work for a commercial multi-level

marketing scam known as "Forever Living". That they would have the cheek

to actually discuss "Academic Integrity" on the same page, in terms that

readily reduce to "you must provide us with something of actual value we

can pawn off to our private concern" is mere icing on the cake.

Leaving aside the ample legal liability this episode has created for your

institution - no, students are not actually slave labour, no it's not

actually legal to whore them out in this manner just yet, etc - the

intellectual respectability of the University of Maryland has received a

significant blow from which it conceivably may never recover.

Please kindly let me know as to the results of your investigation into the

matter, and as to the measures that have been taken against the two

fraudsters involved.

All the best,

Mircea Popescu

Because yes, stupidity does have consequences.

« Eulora third event - Sunday, June 28th

The actual state of the Bitcoin network »

Category: Zsilnic

Friday, 26 June, Year 7 d.Tr.

On terrorism

Terrorism is a particular use of violence. It is distinguished from the process of law in that violence is applied arbitrarily - chance dictates who the victims will be, rather than through a codified, rationally predictable process. The intended reflection of the process of law in the mind of the bystander is, "that could never have been me". Contrariwise, the intended reflection of terrorism in the mind of the bystander is, "that could have been me just as well".

Generally, the propaganda of statal agents that intend to govern through the manipulation of Justice through the application of some process of law or other tends to offer terrorism as bad (an ethics consideration) or evil (a moral consideration). Symmetrically, the propaganda of statal agents that intend to govern through some manipulation of Freedom through the application of some terrorism or other tends to offer the process of law as bad, or evil. Thus, the three socialist regimes whose meaningless yet destructive scuffle is remembered as World War Two took turns : the westernmost to represent terrorism as bad and evil and the process of law as right and proper ; the central to represent terrorism as right and proper and the process of law as bad and evil, with the easternmost keeping out of the matter entirely and shuffling among the two paradigms as circumstance dictated.

Terrorism and process of law are not in any sense married to the state. When wielded by agents hostile to the state, they can and sometimes do result in the destruction of same. If handled ineptly, however, they can result in the unintended strengthening of the enemy. The circumstances which decide which way that wheel spins are many and varied, but let's consider some historical examples.

Tsarist Russia, an autocratic, legalistic construction built on top of a weak, gullible and dependent people was effectually destroyed by terrorism over a few short decades. The circumstance that the legalistic construction rested on a very narrow pool of possible candidates for leadership ensured the effectuality and efficiency of terrorism as an anti-statal weapon.

Austro-Hungary, an autocratic, legalistic construction built on top of a large diversity of reasonably competent and independent but utterly disloyal people was similarly destroyed by terrorism, arguably over the course of one summer. The same circumstance, aggravated by the brittle balance of power on the continent yielded the same eventual results, only bloodier.

The United States, a republican, arbitraryi construction built on top of competent, reasonably independent people was destroyed by the process of law. Starting in the 60s, a strangely misguided "civil rights" movement (that festered soon after into the most colorful nonsense) infected the legal system with such absurdities as to render it unusable for any purpose, and that was that. It is true that well after the trunk was rotten, a fundamentally terrorist strike took out the brain so to speak, or what was left of it. Nevertheless, it would be wrong to ascribe the fatality to that incidental : the country was doomed well prior. A fit of coughing isn't the cause of death for the consumptive, even should death follow immediately after.ii

The Roman Empire, a republican, arbitrary construction built on top of competent but dependent people was sunk by the process of law. It took about century, partly because everything took longer millenia ago, partly because the Roman Empire was much larger and much more important (in all lights and over all fields) than anything prior or since but nevertheless, ever growing taxes to pay for ever expanding "rights" drove ever decreasing quality of work - as it is always the case - and soon enough

From the foundation of the city till the reign of the Emperor Gratian, the foot wore cuirasses and helmets. But negligence and sloth having by degrees introduced a total relaxation of discipline, the soldiers began to think their armor too heavy, as they seldom put it on. They first requested leave from the Emperor to lay aside the cuirass and afterwards the helmet. In consequence of this, our troops in their engagements with the Goths were often overwhelmed with their showers of arrows. Nor was the necessity of obliging the infantry to resume their cuirasses and helmets discovered, notwithstanding such repeated defeats, which brought on the destruction of so many great cities. Troops, defenseless and exposed to all the weapons of the enemy, are more disposed to fly than fight. What can be expected from a foot-archer without cuirass or helmet, who cannot hold at once his bow and shield; or from the ensigns whose bodies are naked, and who cannot at the same time carry a shield and the colors? The foot soldier finds the weight of a cuirass and even of a helmet intolerable. This is because he is so seldom exercised and rarely puts them on.

I consider the point well proven. It is consequently upon the enemy of the state, who would see such destroyed, to think well as to which of the two approaches best serve his position.

Particularly noteworthy is the circumstance that most extant states of interestiii are in charge of very ineffectual, gullible and dependent people. It is oft observed, in the vein of Warren Buffett, that your average successful Westerner, should he find himself abandoned to his own devices in the world, would choke in his own vomit in short order. This observation is factually correct : highly specialised, mentally confused scions of a long rotten philosophy do not have either the intellectual vigor nor the general disposition to construct defensible chains from prime principles. They are consequently dependent on shortcuts to the truth, in the shape of whatever's cheapest : statal propaganda, artificially phased group noise, whatever's handy.

Terrorism, while intellectually appealing an approachiv, and widely deployed by less subtle thinkers in the Middle East, has the universal effect on the weak and the dependent to encourage them to seek the group, and so perversely reinforces the state ideologically just as it weakens it physically. It is for this reason that Western states have sought to create or if not practical to create merely invent terrorist threats. Conversely, using the process of law has all the attributes of plumbing : by the time one's done, they're covered in so much shit as to defy description and hinder recognition.

While the disappearance of the state as a going concern - its collapse from perceptible experience into remembered history alongside similar constructs like phlogiston, heavenly hosts or centaurs - is neither something that can be avoided nor should be avoided, it's altogether unclear whether the forceps of terrorism or the suction cup of legal process are the more adequate tools for helping entropy along.

———Hey, the only place in the world where anything could be a law, and most everything also managed it. [↩]Notably, Japan's terrorism did not manage to hurt the US, in spite of inflicting significant damage. Back then the country was still healthy, Roosevelt's canker nothing but a superficial wound yet, and so it drew together instead of falling apart. [↩]Ie, in the West. [↩]Because in representing the "you could have been him" to the Westerner it tends to confront him with the absurdity of the situation he finds himself in, where there's no actual difference to be had between "terrorism" and "process of law", and as such it's a very honest, truthful approach to the problem. [↩]

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[RFC] The Gavin Assassinsen Memorial Mining Pool Implementation »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Sunday, 18 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

On owning things

Since the Killer Micro Revolutioni, value has drastically shifted away from material items towards ideal items, exactly in the manner the Industrial Revolution shifted value away from agricultural products towards industrial products.

One way to phrase the problem would be that "prices are sticky". More generally - that for a good while the last time this happened people overvalued the old stuff, misrepresenting or outright failing to even represent the change undermining the old value equation. Your average feudal lord was surprised to discover the burgher richer than himself, much for the same reasons Mises would have been surprised had he lived to see me take girls to the river. Much like people today tend to not understand the importance of intangibles.

A fine example of this is the general failure to grasp the overpowering importance of the WoT, as displayed by say Swanson, or Locklin, or the list goes on. Endlessly, on. Another fine example however came to light in chat recently. Like so :

funkenstein_ This guy wrote a couple papers over a year ago, claiming vulns in mining. Totally bogus. If any of you care I can write it up.

mircea_popescu I'd read it.ii

funkenstein_ vixra.org/abs/1504.0072

Friday, 10 April, Year 7 d.Tr.

On how I ended up suing Phoenix NAP, LLC ; on how Ira R. Cadwell's mom Stephanie's going to lose her Chula Vista home ; on how Marcus Bohn is going to catch a lot of shit for that ; on assorted other drama.

What a title, huh ? Well... let's get the show on the road.

So, CWIE Holding Company, Inc is a tax shelter operatedi by Bohn for the Cadwell family. Among its holdings one finds Phoenix NAP, which runs a datacenter in Arizona, worth perhaps a million or two ; CCBill, which people involved in porn during the silver ageii probably still remember as the hands-down shittiest of the shitty processors only the desperate ever used ; and all sorts of other junk.

All this would be uninteresting, save the circumstance that for many years the otherwise unremarkable Arizona datacenter enjoyed the great honor of hosting Trilema, and the occasional side projectiii.

Now, when you run a major blog, you are guaranteed to see periodic attacks. The web is ample, idiots abound, the expectations of every head of anonymous cattle so overwhelmingly inflated that if you're not getting at least one piece of maculature aspiring to the status of legal menace a year (plus social engineering attacks, plus normal attacks, plus plus plus) you're definitely doing things wrong. Moreover, when you run a blog like Trilema, which more than once changed the course of history for various groups of people, you'd better expect some blowback.

Which is exactly why, when the datacenter reported a confused complaint as to imaginary "trademark rights" being infringed by the series of articles discussing the abject failure of Bitlove, LLC to implement anything even remotely similar to security on their Fetlife product, I barely noticed. Yet there's little more active than a mendacious asshole scorned, and so some dude purporting to be representing Bitlove, LLC actually filed a proper DMCA notification. To which I promptly filed a counter-notification, as the law provides.

This is where the events took a most bizarre turn. The datacenter informed me that they will not forward the counter-notification to the complainant, unless I amend it. Imagine that! I told them to stuff it, they told me that they won't be sending it, I told them that if they do or if they don't is entirely their problem - if it ever comes to it they'll be liable under the law, but it probably isn't ever coming to it so whatever, suit yourselves. For that matter, the counter-notification had been prominently displayed right under the notification itself on the pages in dispute, so it's not like anyone could pretend they "didn't know" and convince anyone.

So after that I waited the 10 legal days to see if James Huesmann actually speaks for Bitlove or is just lying on the Internet. It turned out that James Huesmann wasn't actually speaking for Bitlove, but merely lying on the Internet, as nothing was actually filed with the court. So I put the material in question back online. As the law provides.

This all happened late February / early March, and so as you might imagine I had forgotten all about it. Whatever, another bunch of Bitdaytrade idiots doing stuff "from the ground up with security in mind" and "bcrypt is the best on the market, the thing market" inept posturing online. So many of these, so little time...

Except Friday evening I came back from lunch to a bunch of emails from the person in charge of the smooth function of this particular part of the MP empire, explaining that the DC paged him about how they're going to nullroute the Trilema IP and what do I want to do about it. Well... what does one do about something like that ? Shrug, mostly. I did send instructions to another person, in charge of another particular part of the MP empire, telling them to proceed with a legal case against Phoenix NAP, LLC, CWIE Holding Co, Ira R. Cadwell and Marcus Bohn, seeking the various damages available for DMCA fraud and assorted misbehaviour.iv

I must say that at this point it is entirely unclear to me whether the original lying scumbag (James Huesmann) made a different complaint, or whether other people made phone calls, nor do I particularly care, to be honest. For one thing, it will all come out through court mandated discovery, and for the other... what possible difference does it make ?v There's even the remote possibility that a bunch of agitation on Facebookvi resulted in the datacenter being flooded with emailsvii, a sort of DSEviii. Whatever it may be, some points probably deserve a little sublineation.

I. Access to the disputed material was at no point disrupted. Sure, I took the lists off for two weeks, two months ago. What's two weeks do ? Sure, Trilema was offline for a weekend. So what of it ? For one thing, archives exist. Anyone that gave a shit (which is roughly "nobody" rounded to the closest million) could have trivially found copies. Or, for that matter, made the lists himself. It's not like the original article didn't include exact recipes for how to extract Fetlife's entire database off the web, it's not like they ever fixed the hole in question.ix For the other thing... seriously, you are going to supress information ? On the Internet, in 2015 ? Just how stupid are the sort of muppets who flock to Fetlife ?

II. This dispute has made me significantly richer. Because some silly people somewhere on the web conveniently found a clink in a corporation's armor for me to exploit, and because I am equipped to exploit it, some unfortunate US outfit is going to pay me in legal settlements more than I paid it in fees for delivered work and services over a decade. If anyone imagines this sort of nonsense is sustainable, that someone should probably run for Congress.

III. This dispute has made the people who don't like you stronger, and the people who do like you weaker. It's not just that the poor datacenter lost a customer it couldn't really afford to lose (and if you think independents can afford lost custom in 2015 you should probably run for a wall). It's not just that very badly written legislation makes it impossible for them to even conduct business.x It's also that I went and hired a bulletproof host nowxi. The dollars that used to go to Phoenix NAP so Phoenix NAP could pay the sort of derps who derp on Facebook about how spooks are people too and wives aren't the chattel property of their husbands a salary, and pay the US Congress taxes do not go to Phoenix NAP anymore. Consequently, there's less money for derps to derp on Facebook about how spooks are people too and wives aren't the chattel property of their husbands, and less money for the US Congress to enforce - and in short order even pass - legislation.

Instead, those dollars now go to some people who principally work to tear the entire derps-and-Congress assemblage down. And so soon enough more spooks won't be people and more wives won't have clits, and an Internet hero is you for having made it all not merely possible but outright necessary!

Well done, if this was the goal, but somehow I suspect the matter wasn't even considered at all, so used is the muppetry with their imaginary lala-land where there's no alternative, and the powerful will submit to whatever indignities rank stupidity may come up with. Wake up and smell the coffee, yo. That wet dream is not actually how the world works. I have the option whether to pay any tax or not. I have the option whether to follow any law or not. Stop wasting your time with posturing and start polishing the knob, because otherwise in a decade or two it'll be you in the reservations and the Indians calling the shots.

IV. Frantic activity is not much of a cover-up for impotence. The true driver of all this "we protest Trilema for making a fool of Fetlife" is exactly the same mental process that drives "Dancing Man", and "kickstarter successes" where some randomly selected derp gets paid a chunk of change for inventing a can of Pepsi or whatever : the derps wish to convince the world, and in convincing the world convince themselves that their appreciation is valuable, and their displeasure dangerous. Because if it were the case that indeed their upvote was worth something, and their downvote had some sort of impact, then they themselves could be said to have value. Some, perhaps not much, but some. Some! Which some is a whole heck of a lot better than none whatsoever, which just so happens to be the case.

For this great cause no sacrifice is too great, they'll literally do anything, say anything, think anything it takes. Does the world have to reduce to "the country", does the world have to reduce to "the mall", to Windows, to whatever it may have to reduce, fine, great, no problem. They'll do it.

The only problem is that... well... it doesn't take. Factually, the unreserved appreciation, esteem, love of the entire world of muppets is not worth much, with their boundless ire following close behind. It's not just that the "social media" clicks aren't worth squat. It's that the very people behind those clicks are not actually worth squat. Whether they like or don't like, whether they agree or disagree, whether they love or hate - it's not even a statistic. They could be gone tomorrow - indeed they will be gone tomorrow - and nobody will even notice.

So... yeah, tl;dr : Trilema was briefly offline because I raped some idiots again. This time I also get paid for having done it.

Oh, and since I moved hosts anyway, I'm also going to publish the full Fetlife Meat List (ie, women under 30). Wasn't going to bother with dumping the rest originally, but now I feel obliged to do something for all those $$$ the legal dept's going to be bringing in. I'm a fair man, after all.

———More or less delinquently [↩]Porn made people very, very rich for a few years right after the collapse of the Berlin Wall. The sudden explosion of technology and the shift in societal mores (compare late '80s depictions of "common sexuality" in mainstream media with the same a decade later) resulted in absolutely fabulous profits being reaped out of a very eager, entirely virgin market. You'd pay the women a few thousand dollars a head (in currently inflated dollars, more like 10-15k) and sell the scene for a million or two. Large fortunes were made (and of course - squandered) in this grandiose golden age.

Success brings imitation, and by the time the collapse of the United States rolled around (September 11, 2001), the tubes were already awash in bare cunt, cleanly shaved, closely splayed. This pushed prices down, but it also widened the market. If a 1995 scene would be seen by a hundred thousand people each paying ten bucks for the priviledge, a 2005 scene would be seen by ten million chipping in ten cents a head. Obviously, the 2005 million was split among a lot more pornographers, making their per-capita income significantly less than what the golden age golden boys brought home, which is why this gets to be called the silver age.

Amusingly enough costs stayed the same throughout, and perhaps counterintuitively, if you're naive. If you're not naive you probably figured out on your own that while "the easiest way to separate a woman from her clothes is with a camera", and while cocksuckers will suck cock for whatever it pays, a grand or a dime or a half-eaten sandwich, nevertheless the market saturation drives the complexity of the offer. And so yes, models' pay nosedived while the workload exploded - a lousy girl took home $2`000 for half hour's work in the 90s, and about half that (nominally, otherwise a fifth or less in real terms) for a full day's hard work a decade and change later - but none of this translated into profits for their masters. You could get away with one girl sort-of fingering herself almost in the general area involved, at some point. At some other, later point you needed five girls, a pile of (less expensive, more numerous) gear and three dudes (and you had to - horror of horrors - pay the dudes!) for even a hope at a faint whiff of market success.

This is all done, by the way. Every girl twelve or older is a porn queen these days, every woman under 30 that's not seriously touched in the head has done at least some cam work in the nude (and a good chunk of the touched ones also), the market is so badly driven in the ground the only people still making any sort of profit at it are the likes of Google. Which in the end is unsurprising, who in his right mind would pay to see women naked ? There's a vast oversupply of naked women, seeing how they're all naked under their clothes. The only short stock in the sex market is the erect penis - which is why human sexuality has in all times and places gravitated around it. The entire porn market only existed because inept regulation (societal, rather than governmental, but what difference does it make ?) drove specific inefficiencies which were eventually unwound. And now are gone. That's it. [↩]Fain was hosted there, so was Qntra, etc. [↩]For instance, consider the incidental that CCBill does billing for Fetlife. There's a word for "breaking federal statute to further business interests of associates", and it ain't a pretty word at all. [↩]To me, I mean, not to whether a nice old lady from California gets to keep her house. [↩]Judging by a sudden uptick in FB referrals. Normally FB is completely unable to drive any sort of traffic worth the mention, but that Friday it was almost like in the top 10 referrers for the day or something. [↩]What's known as "Internet Brigading" - the situation where a lot of people with no money and no practical importance complain loudly, as if anyone cares what the stupid poor say or think on any topic. [↩]Distributed Social Engineering attack. Much like the DDoS, it takes advantage of the limited ability of the receiver to process incoming communications. Much like the traditional social engineering attack, it takes advantage of the countless ways in which the memory hole effect makes people unable to act rationally. [↩]Chew on this one for a moment : a company whose exclusive claim to... not revenue, obviously, but let's say value is the list of muppets it managed to trick into believing its ridiculous claims has done exactly nothing to protect that list from being extracted by anyone who could be bothered. For months.

Obviously I'm now leaning on everyone to stop providing them with liquidity, which generally means that they're going out of business in a year or two anyway, but even ignoring that part : would you wish to invest or otherwise become involved with an outfit this clueless ?

I get it, a list of three million abject chumps, naive enough to believe Bitlove seems superficially valuable from a marketing point of view - who knows what you could manage to sell them if Baku managed to sell them "security". Nevertheless, consider that whatever you invest into climbing to the top of the pile, where dubious photo studios and assorted knick-knack merchants peddle their 5.99 to 19.99 wares probably has to amortise before 2017. This leaving aside that no, they don't have 3 million users. Not even close. 50k active is probably a generous estimation. [↩]It is very badly written. The way the DMCA is intended to work is so that large concerns (like, say, Disney) can effectively swat tiny pirates, the sort of people who sell a truckload of fake figurines or whatever. To make sure it works that way and no other, it has draconic provisions against small concerns pretending to avail themselves of its magical powers against their enemies. It doesn't however bother to say this, it's not titled "A Law To Help Disney - Don't Fuck With This If Your Name's Bitlove For It Will Fuck You Up Horribly". It would be helpful if it were so named, but that would be... unacceptable. So it doesn't say it. Because that's what "the consumers have come to expect" : not to not be fucked with a spiked club in the ass good and hard, but to not be told that they are. Whatever works, I guess.

As a result of all that, it's just not feasible for a million-and-a-half outfit to afford the sort of legal counsel they would need to be able to navigate the situations they actually encounter in the field, exactly for the reasons a cab company can't run its fleet on NASA astronauts. There's just no way. For which very plain reason the whole duct-tape-spit-and-chewed-gum construction is based on the hope that nobody leans. There's somebody trapped there in that tower of junk, making fifteen an hour while trying to discern who might be leaning. The process is obviously error prone - if a beaver and a tank happen in the same vicinty at the same time what's the guy to do ? Fear the beaver, of course, because while small enough to not be able to do any real damage, it is nevertheless familiar. What's a tank anyway ? [↩]Actually a couple. The server you're currently seeing is provided by by offshoreseovps.com, which seems like a reasonably competent outfit. I also have backups spun up and ready with abusehosting.ru (site's mostly in Russian but they support English via email ok) and a few others.

Probably worth noting that I did pay for a server with kevlarhost.com and godmodehost.com, both of which simply absconded with the money, so steer clear of those. I also reviewed anonymoushosting.in, which is very cheap (I usually pay 150-200 for a server, this is more like 25) and while the tools available are very limited (directadmin is really not whm), they'll still do the job as long as you're patient. If you're new and your site is small they may actually be a better option. [↩]

« On owning things

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Category: Zsilnic

Wednesday, 15 April, Year 7 d.Tr.

Old story

Since we were talking about history in #bitcoin-assets (and Apple, and the Chinese scam, and everything else), here's an old log :

**** BEGIN LOGGING AT Wed Sep 12 00:09:29 2012

gigavps ping

mircea_popescu hey

gigavps what do i need to do to get a listing ready for mpex

gigavps I would like to tighten the contract up

mircea_popescu well, we need to talk things through, hammer a definitive contract, we publish it

mircea_popescu and then that's about it.

gigavps there will be no more issuing after the upgrade

gigavps i'm done playing that game

mircea_popescu ok so run me through this entire story end to end so that i get a fresh page in my head

mircea_popescu then i ask some q's then i send you a draft

gigavps i am setting up a new contract that Gigamining owners can upgrade to

gigavps in turn, they reliquinish all rights to the Gigamining bond

mircea_popescu so it'd be a straight swap then

gigavps only people who own gigamining can upgrade to teramining

gigavps there are two "paths" for upgrading

gigavps 1. a free path

gigavps which is a 1-1 swap from gigamining to teramining

gigavps 2. a paid path

gigavps which would get the bond holder 4 teramining bonds for every 1 gigamining bond + a .3 BTC fee per bond

mircea_popescu ok. one second here.

gigavps sure

gigavps shoot

mircea_popescu basically the thing is : once you have the terra asset, you can distribute the shares any way you want to anyone you wish. be it as a straight swap for a glbse asset

mircea_popescu or a mix with some money etc. neither of these are problems.

gigavps ok

gigavps i was assuming no problems

mircea_popescu the things that can be problems are the things that have already turned to be sort-of problems to you.

mircea_popescu so. traditionally mpex assets have a minimum value.

mircea_popescu actually, you ever read a mpex contract ?

gigavps i've glossed them over

mircea_popescu ok so let's go over main points.

mircea_popescu you can set an arbitrary minimal value.

mircea_popescu this is a value you guarantee you will pay if the opperation folds up.

mircea_popescu it can be as low as you want, but it's not a good ideea to make it unreasonably low

mircea_popescu it's also a bad ideea to make it too high, as it will choke you.

gigavps ok

mircea_popescu so this is one point to consider, where to fix that.

mircea_popescu another thing, how do yo usell them ? till now i've been doing rolling blocks

mircea_popescu such as, a block at x price, another a little more expensive etc.

mircea_popescu would you prefer equal price, one block ?

gigavps i will not be selling them per se

mircea_popescu aha, so it will be fully allocated.

gigavps as in, i am not selling to the general public

mircea_popescu right. ok, no problem here then.

mircea_popescu the other thing is, up till this point i've been doing non voting shares, on the rule that owner always keeps 50%.

mircea_popescu you don't want these to be shares, do you ?

gigavps nope

gigavps debt only

mircea_popescu right. so your statement to the buyer is :

mircea_popescu i will deliver the output of this much mh/s for as long as you hold this security, in monthly installments.

mircea_popescu that about right ?

gigavps weekly, but yes

mircea_popescu so weekly, sure. in general it's monthly to let management focus on managing

mircea_popescu you sure you're happy with weekly ?

gigavps weekly is reasonable

mircea_popescu alright. in truth you don;t have THART much math to do for it.

mircea_popescu how many of these you issuing ?

gigavps well, there will be 160k bonds equaling 3.6Th

gigavps but not all will be issued

mircea_popescu what do you mean ?

gigavps because if they take the free path, i keep 3/4

gigavps currently, there are 40k bonds

mircea_popescu makes no difference in this discussion who OWNS them,.

mircea_popescu they're issued tho. you just own them.

gigavps right

gigavps so 160k

mircea_popescu ok. so you plan on 160k and they're 25Mh/s each

gigavps at 22.5Mh/s each

mircea_popescu 22.5 ?

gigavps they are 22.5Mh/s each because I am really going to be doing 90% PPS on 25Mh/s

mircea_popescu so then forget that, just do 100% on22.5 mh/s

mircea_popescu it's clear.

mircea_popescu clear-er.

gigavps exactly

mircea_popescu right. ok.

mircea_popescu you understand the value of these will necessarily slowly float down, as the diff goes up (if it does)

gigavps correct

mircea_popescu however, do yo actually currently hold the hashes ?

gigavps dividend will also drop along the way

gigavps i have 165Gh at the moment with another 25Gh on the way

gigavps and i usually run about 110% PPS

mircea_popescu you need 3.6th if my math isn't off ?

gigavps right

gigavps you cannot repeat this please

mircea_popescu so you're in effect leveraging yourself 20:1 on hash here. do you understand finance ?

mircea_popescu im not repeating anything, im like the pope.

gigavps i will be running 6Th when asic arrives

mircea_popescu suppose bfl pulls a runner and nobody gets asics.

mircea_popescu diff drops to 1mn

mircea_popescu you are royally fucked.

gigavps possibly

mircea_popescu what's your plan for that scenario ?

gigavps i have been to BFLs offices multiple times in the last couple of months

mircea_popescu man. understand me here. i don't care if bfl is your sister.

gigavps i am highly confident in their ability to deliver

mircea_popescu we plan all contingencies. you see ?

gigavps yes

mircea_popescu this way we know wtf to do.

mircea_popescu there's not much that can be done here, is there. nobody has the capital to insure it credibly.

mircea_popescu do you see any solution ?

gigavps yes

mircea_popescu im all ears.

gigavps BFL is getting insurance

mircea_popescu from whom ?

gigavps per contracts i am having them sign

gigavps professional liability insurance

mircea_popescu that's good. will you be able to show contracts ?

gigavps NO

mircea_popescu ok, that doesn't help us.

mircea_popescu are you concerned if i ask in -onepercent if anyone wants to take the insurance end this mgiht ammount to a leak of information ?

gigavps you cannot repeat what i have told you

mircea_popescu i'm not going to.

mircea_popescu i was going to ask "hey, does anyone want to sell me a 3 month hash based put option".

gigavps let's finish our discussion first

mircea_popescu (it was 3 months for bfl, or when is the term ? october ?)

mircea_popescu alright.

gigavps they should be delivering in early november

gigavps i'll know more at the end of the month

mircea_popescu thing is this : your propostion as quoted, "i'll deliver 22.5mh/s per share" does not work

mircea_popescu we'll have to either introduce verbiage "provided bfl delivers so and so" or else buy insurance.

gigavps i will not issue the bonds until BFL has delivered

mircea_popescu aha

mircea_popescu delivered fully, delivered some, delivered one unit ?i

gigavps i am the first to be delivered to

gigavps in full

mircea_popescu ok, then under that arrangement this is no problem whatsoever.

mircea_popescu any concerns you want to raise ?

gigavps good

gigavps i'll look over the contracts on your site

gigavps what's the link?

mircea_popescu actually, i'll send you a draft for your own thing

mircea_popescu it'd be a lot better to look over that, neh ?

gigavps awesome

mircea_popescu think it through, we have plenty of time till november.

gigavps how do i get to mpex

mircea_popescu http://trilema.com//bitcoin/mpex.php?mpsic=S.DICE

mircea_popescu or else http://trilema.com//bitcoin/mpex.php for main site

mircea_popescu or mpex.us

gigavps sweet

gigavps thanks

mircea_popescu np.

mircea_popescu your email ?

gigavps me@iamjamesgibson.com

mircea_popescu haha nice domain there.

gigavps thanks

mircea_popescu what do you see as a name ?

gigavps for the bond

mircea_popescu yes

gigavps ?

gigavps teramining

mircea_popescu well technically it will be a fund, so F.

mircea_popescu hmm... you lose your name tho.

gigavps f.tera

gigavps f.teramining

mircea_popescu you're giga to everyone

mircea_popescu this is valuable

gigavps that's fine

gigavps i don't want everyone to know who i am anymore

mircea_popescu haha bruised a little huh ?

gigavps most people think if you are famous, you are rich

mircea_popescu F.TERA then, it's better than longer variant.

mircea_popescu yeah. tis not true, but they do think so.

gigavps so why a fund?

mircea_popescu and hate you for being rich.

gigavps and not a bond?

mircea_popescu well, it's not shares, it's not options, and a bond pays out, which you don't. so it's a fund

mircea_popescu bond must have set maturity date

gigavps ahhh

gigavps yeah, don't want that

mircea_popescu they all do, expire on 1st of Nov or w/e

mircea_popescu yeah. ok so an hour or two you'll get a draft to look over.

gigavps kk

gigavps thanks for the help

mircea_popescu it's what i'm for.

gigavps if you need some help with the front end of your site, let me know

mircea_popescu hehe there's some teams working on making broker sites

mircea_popescu apparently it's slow going.

gigavps i know a little about web development...

mircea_popescu i saw, really liked your giga farm site.

gigavps :)

mircea_popescu o, one thing... has nothingto do with any of this but

gigavps shoot

mircea_popescu you prolly should drop your pirate rating. it's pissing people the fuck off.

gigavps yeah, i did

gigavps i have no rating for P now

mircea_popescu that's healthier.

mircea_popescu i mean i can appreciate the emotional and other complexitiers, but you're also a business.

mircea_popescu gotta think of the future and of the looks of things.

gigavps yeah

gigavps i tried to stay away from posting too many things in support or against P

gigavps in the forums

mircea_popescu suppose you made a mistake. people make mistakes. it happens.

gigavps yep

gigavps best i can do is learn from them and not repeat them

mircea_popescu something like that.

gigavps well, i'm waiting to hear from P before deciding what is to come next with him

mircea_popescu who knows. reeses has a point on one angle, as in, "i've waited longer than this on overdue accounts, and the ppl paid"

mircea_popescu so have i.

mircea_popescu and for comparable sums, at that.

gigavps right

mircea_popescu yet... i have serious doubts you'll hear anything.

mircea_popescu but timewill tell.

gigavps exactly

Sep 12 01:23:32 * gigavps has quit ()

**** ENDING LOGGING AT Wed Sep 12 02:01:25 2012

The problem with knowing secrets is that in order for them to remain secrets, you have to keep on keeping them secret. This particular guy - originally a well respected member of the community (chiefly on account of being less retarded and less incompetent than what was average for the time) went rogue soon after this exchange, which is, fundamentally, his attempt to stick MPEx investors with the bill for his various GLBSE scams.

At any rate : an unqualified dedication to keeping secrets will, as the years go by, expose you to the unpleasant (and, I'd wager, unforeseen) circumstance where you're keeping secrets for criminals. And not even jolly good likable criminals - just random scum that at some point or other tried to scam you and failed.

Governments resolve this problem historically by delaying publication, some decades. In the age of the Internet, I say a coupla years should be enough for anyone.

———Talk about prescience, huh ? Strategic superiority, that's that it manifests itself as : prescience. [↩]

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Category: Bitcoin

Sunday, 15 March, Year 7 d.Tr.

Okcupid.com, the dating site.

Constant mention in the very logs eventually drove me to make an account and check the site outi. For no reason I can discernii I spent 20 bucks or so for a "premium account", as well as 20 bucks or so for a bundle of ten "boosts" (hey - they have a cool lightning icon!), but more of this later.

First off, some groundwork : okcupid.com, like match.com, tinder and pretty much everything else in the "online dating" "market" is owned by IAC/InterActiveCorpiii (along with a whole raft of "information" spamproducts - the likes of ask.com, about.com and all sorts of nonsenseiv nobody I ever knew ever used). IAC/InterActiveCorp started life as a spinoff from the Home Shopping Networkv back in the 80s, which might or might not explain the appalling quality of their online propertiesvi. They bought and sold various TV stations throughout the 90s, eventually moved on to buying and selling websites sometime after the .com bubble burst. This is not necessarily an ill thought-out business model : given the very peculiar market inefficiencies driven by the VC circus' own cash problemsvii, there's carcasses scattered around worth more than nothing (but significantly less than what the "investors" would want them to be worth at a minimum). If these people can be convinced to let go of their world-changing, revolutionary blow-ups for free, maybe the scrap metal and assorted leftovers could be worth something. This is essentially the business model of a rat, if rats could buy college dorms from fraternities post-party. Otherwise, it's a sort of garbage collecting, not entirely a meritless activity.

Nevertheless, whatever merits it may have, it's still essentially dealing in garbage, which is known in web 2.0 terms as "traffic" or no wait, that was the web 1.0 term. In web 2.0 it's "visitors" and "uniques" and "engagement" and something or the other else, I forgot. Basically, crushed PET bottles and crushed cans and whatnot, but instead of calling it generically "garbage" we're now going to say different words for all the many types. Whatever.

So informed, we can now proceed to the meat of the question. So, okcupid claims, from what I've seen, between a low of 130`000 and a high of 210`000 users on the site at all times. Without exception. This means that between 5 am on Christmas Day and 7 pm on Friday, December the 18th okcupid.com receives a differential in attention of just about 50%. If this makes any sense to you whatsoever, you're much more open minded than I - because on the strength of this metric alone I conclude that nobody seriously gives a shit about okcupid.viii

Out of those 130k to 210k "users", a number which to my eyes must be padded 90% or more by weight, through one week going December 15th to December 22nd my profile received exactly 0 attention. To be specific : not one single okcupid user clicked the associated like button (which might be explained by the fact that not one single okcupid user visited the profile). This may strike you as obvious, on the grounds of your direct experience online [with spamsites very similar to InterActiveCorp's]. Nevertheless, dating is a zero sum game : whenever someone dates someone else, that someone else also dates, the very someone in question! This is inescapable.ix Consequently, if the average user looks at say ten others on average, then necessarily the average user will have been seen by, on average, ten other users.

But who knows, perhaps the trouble's that "men hunt and women nest" or somesuchx, so making a male profile guarantees the observed results, and were I to somehow [how ?!] find a female that's just as cool and fascinating and everything as myself the observed results might have been different.

In any case, the site purports to match people according to fine criteriaxi, so if you'll only take the time to answer these questions they'll work some magic and spit out women you'd actually be interested in. Or something. I did, just for the record, fill in a hundred or so of those things, which led me to two discoveries. One's that jesus fuck people are boring and insufferable, what IS with these questions. Do yourself the favour, especially if you're trained enough in sociostatistics to know a bad poll when you see one, and read some of the questions. I think I skipped over three thirds for being malformed, nonsensical, pointless or liable to mislead through ambiguity etc. Not to mention irrelevant - tons and tons of inquiries that'd only make sense from the perspective of a 48 yo woman that's "dating" for the exclusive and express purpose of maintaining her present amorous entanglement with her cats.

The other discovery I made is that holy shit, who the fuck cares what women think. So she wants creationism taught in schools ? Who the fuck asked her ? Oh, that's right, Okcupid, that officious intermeddler, asked her. Well... as it happens I don't care what the answer might be. I operate on the general assumption that people are stupid, which is why I am rather strictly interested in women under 30 : they'll be just as stupid as everyone else, but a lot more trainable than people who've had decades to sit around with their stupidity and expertly justify it to themselves.xii

Thoughout this adventure in radio silence, I used a total of 5 "boosts", which are tokens okcupid assures will buy you exposure (for a cost of about $2 each). Generally, when you use one you see lots and lots of faces appear on a right side overlay (that's annoyingly getting in the way of actually using the site), claiming however many hundreds of users are seeing your profile RIGHT NOW! Whether they do or they don't we'll never know. What we do know however is that ~1`200 such views resulted in exactly zero visitors to the profile, exactly 0 likes, exactly zero messages and exactly zero interest of whatever kind.xiii

All the foregoing notwithstanding, after about a week of sitting by passively and admiring the ineffectual pointlessness of okcupid's matching engine, I brought out the big gunsxiv, in the shape of some awking.xv

The results were pretty interesting. Out of ~100`000 or so pings my profile received about 1`000 visits (the usual 1% that underpins all the web), which resulted in a half dozen or so likes (from people I wouldn't consider) and some rather amusing conversations. Let's talk a little about that.

There's no end of these abominations. I have no idea who translated "female emancipation" with "be as infantile and obnoxious as you possibly can", but they suck, seriously now.

In any case, always remember : talking to strangers is no place to activate your independence circuitry. Especially not as a woman. Especially not as low value blob of old age. Whenever you talk to strangers you beg, which is why the expression goes "I beg your pardon". It's not an idle turn of phrase, it's the nude and rude reality of the matter. Keep it in mind.

No, the fact that someone in your position should have could have had a family to derp at doesn't excuse you, nor does it give you blank license to act as you feel entitled to act, and it sure as hell doesn't transform the whole of the internet into your diffuse daughters-in-law and nephews. Whether that's what you need or not makes exactly zero difference : that's not what you have.xvi

Apparently I should be ashamed of the plain old fact that aged women are sexually worthless. This is ridiculous on the face, but there's a deeper layer here. The woman is reasonably cunning - the reason she does it is that it works. And the reason it works is that you're stupid, statistically speaking. If I was a 50something looking for submissive bois I'd lead exactly the same way.

Anyway, to end up on a positive note (yes okcupid is worthless, both from an investment perspective and from a "I wanna date" perspective, but then again you already knew that) : one's own network still works, here like anywhere else. Build your own network. That's where the money, sluts and everything else is at.

———it's it was okcupid.com/profile/mirceapopescu, but it's apparently dead meanwhile. It's been so long I honestly have no idea what killed it. Maybe that's how they're begging for more money or something. I'm not keeping a dead link on though, hence the edit. [↩]The chief advantage a paid account offers seems to be the ability to visit others' profiles invisibly. It is beyond my meagre faculties to comprehend why in the world would anyone on a dating site would wish to reduce their visibility, but nevertheless, that's the service and they're advertising it heavily - scarcely can a paying member find a page that doesn't somewhere importantly announce that "you are browsing visibly". Oh, I am ? Wow.

No idea who thought this one up, but they might want some vacation time. [↩]NASDAQ: IACI [↩]Yes, ask.fm included. [↩]Yes, yes, the people with the ridiculous cable infomercials. All of them.

Would you like a knife to cut through shoe ? [↩]Which are indeed numerous, incidentally - a casual scan uncovers tens of thousands of "different" spamsites scattered across 50 or so language spaces. [↩]They're way, way oversupplied. The reasons they're oversupplied are not hard to understand : the US Government exists as a focus of a scam, which consists of exchanging value from the thirld world for empty promises. Yes, exactly like a century ago, except the seat of lying moved from a swamp on the Thames to a swamp on the Potomac. Always a swamp.

To maintain the facade (yes, this is the "order" every Fed governor since forever has been trying to maintain : the facade protecting the fundamental scam of "buy these paper things for your oil and your bread, they're totally worth it!") they have to share some of the loot, and this results in the unfortunate situation where people who have no merit in the creation of the wealth they're disposing of get to dispose of wealth they had no merit in creating.

Depending on the culture (which is to say, depending on the particular set of insanities and hang-ups of the chosen scapegoats [yes, always and forever the situation of one who spends what he didn't make is that of the scapegoat, ie sacrificial item]) this unholy disposition takes different forms, but only very superficially different- after all, there's a limited number of ways you can decorate a goat. Add some glittery shit to it, maybe some flowing ribbons, what the hell are you going to do ? (Note that the question doesn't inquire as to what you might be convincing yourself you're doing, in the heat of events. It's neutral, it inquires as to what you might do that I'd notice. "Brand name" glittery shit still goes in the "glittery shit" box, to be mixed indistinctly, horrible dictu!, with all the rest of the indistinguishable glittery shit.)

The way it plays out in the US is that you get a little bit of real estate inflation, a whole lot of "personal worth" inflation, even more "paying kids to sit around and talk all day" and still there's a lot of fake money sloshing around looking for a use. What are you going to do with them ? You can't pay to scribble your name down on a building over at Stanford (one of the arbitrarily "more important" places where kids get paid to sit and idly chat all day long) because John from three houses down has a billion of the same useless paper things "in his account" and so he's driven the price of that through the roof. What's one to do, what's one to do, well... maybe if you gave your million to Madoff Barry Diller (or to Madoff Marc Andreessen, or to Madoff Paul Graham, or to any other Madoff out there - no shortage of these after all) so maybe they turn your "million" into a "billion". Note that this is a strictly uneconomic, purely nominalistic adventure. There's no business involved whatsoever, and for that matter there is exactly no difference between sucking cock to get your WoT rating turned from 1 to 2 on one hand or sucking cock to get your "million" turned into "billion".

If you're having trouble getting your head around this, the following scene in City Hall might serve as an easily digestible primer :

Frank Anselmo : Off-ramp and a subway stop already budgeted for.

James Wakeley : But I'm left holding the bag.

Paul Zapatti : What are you complaining about? The bag's full of cash. Minus a year. You can weather a year.

Frank Anselmo : You can weather 100 years.

James Wakeley : I've got partners. You're my partners!

Frank Anselmo : You're holding so many options on land... ...you could buy Brooklyn. You could probably buy Staten Island too. Paul Zapatti : Would you excuse us, please?

James Wakeley : Of course. I got an appointment anyway.

Paul Zapatti : Good. Then it works out nicely. [ass slap]

Paul Zapatti : You sure Bank Exchange is all set?

Frank Anselmo : We got everything we wanted.

So... yeah. Business, partners, bla bla. Same idea.

The way it plays out in Argentina is that the federal government goes and borrows money in Europe. They're also running a scam (hey, it's a government, what'd you expect!) but theirs is a less valuable one, called desarollo in native cant. They don't have any access to the better paying "Western World" ie "We are Constantinople" scam, a situation that gave rise to no end of frustrated bitterness in the dry bosom of Argentina's Old Whore In Chief, and puzzled looks of incomprehension over by the Potomac.

Nevertheless, their swindle still pays something, and once that someting hits the country they share bits with "the poor" (it's all roleplaying, remember that) in exchange for "the poor" not doing anything else with their life - god forbid something productive! No, they must all live in Buenos Aires and vote for the feds! They waste most of the rest, but in any case : print lots and lots and lots of pesos - which mostly end up in the housing market.

So in this sense, the USG is better than the FGA, but it has absolutely nothing to do with the G whatsoever. There's nothing the G could do better or could abstain from doing that'd change anything. The people involved are somewhat different, so that if you give 300 mn UStards free wealth they don't have to earn they will get teenaged girls to strut around half-naked while "singing" and "spend" "10s of thousands" on bottles of fizzy wine, while also pushing the prices of a closet into the stratosphere. Meanwhile, if you're giving Argentine morons free wealth they don't have to earn they will simply "invest" in minuscule condo units and get themselves law degrees (seriously - everyone here's a non-practicing, licensed lawyer and owns a tiny 500sqft "3 room" apartment).

While the Chinese keep shipping goods for free (oh, sorry, you thought your paper was payment ? lolololol) the delusion carries, or as the Argentines put it "hay mas futuro". Once the boats stop showing up...

Never mind about that - it's not like you can fix it anyway. It's not the job of a scapegoat to turn into a king. You just keep bleating and admiring the glitz in your chintz, Prikoke - the future's not yours to see. Just feel. [↩]If you have trouble digesting this, consider a discussion of another "electronic" item people actually give a shit about, or at least enough so as to actually riot in case it went away :

"Once the clock strikes midnight and EBT cards are charged, you can see our results start to tick up," says Tom Schoewe, Wal-Mart Stores Inc's chief financial officer.

We could safely say that the differential between that magical "a little bezzle just turned into dole" monthly moment and its polar opposite is a little more than 50%, or at least James LaFond seems to think so. If anything, I'd expect more pronounced cyclicity and seasonality to be visible in dating activity by actual humans, at least for the very simple reason that ~everyone who is in the market would be pushing hard after work a week pre-Christmas, and still alone butshitfaced drunk the morning after. [↩]It also is a source of some amusement in sociology circles, given the well known fact that men report their average sexual encounters well above what the women say. [↩]How sexist and unenlightened, wouldn't you say ? But more of this later. [↩]The nonsense was the subject of an earlier post. [↩]Yeah, that's right, what the fuck do you think idiots do all day ? Try and figure out how to fix their stupid brain ? No such luck. One hundred percent of the time their preoccupation is, "and in THIS situation, what do I say or do so as not to have to fix my stupid brain ?"

Young cunts are a lot more fixable on the simple merit of not having had so long to fuck themsleves over that way. The older they get, the more complicated the arguments required to bring them to sanity, and for that matter the more constrained their ability to follow such arguments. Not to mention the obvious time problem : if you've spent two years to fix a filly you've got a sane woman at your side for at least half a decade. Why would you then put in five to ten to maybe even twenty years to undo the damage that same filly did to herself over five to ten to twenty years only to get a sane woman for... the remainder ? Gee, tough call, pay 2 get 50 or pay 22 get 28. What'd you go for, 2500% ROI or 78% ROI ?

Yes, it's true that with an ungodly stroke of luck you can run into perfectly sane women aged 50something, or anything else. I know this personally, for having had it happen to me. In such a case the ROI'd be infinity, nominally, except if you have to go searching for them. They're so god damned rare you're better off extracting olive oil from North Pole sea water. [↩]The profile in question craftily includes a link that can be measured. And it has. No one clicked it. [↩]They're really only big guns for the web audience, but moving on. [↩]If you don't know the answer to this question : it spits out a file (that's what cat does), sorts it so that it contains unique lines (sort -u), then passes it to curl line by line. What curl does is that it connects to okcupid.com claiming to be Mozilla (that's what the -A switch does), and claiming to be logged in (that's what the --cookie switch does, passes along some cookies, you can get these from the browser), and then spits out the resulting page into some sed processing that takes out everything but the name of the few "you might also be interested in" profiles that okcupid produces every time you check a profile.

Obviously (is it obvious to you ?) this can be then run recursively, producing a list of ever-expanding recommended chicks. Also obviously (is it obvious to you ?) okcupid will notify them that you've checked them out (there's a special visitors tab for that). [↩]And more generally, there's no credit given. You have to pay upfront. Woe upon you if you failed to make a left at the right place, it makes no difference that now you can't pay for what you actually wanted anymore, and there are no accomodations available. [↩]

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Category: Meta psihoza

Sunday, 27 December, Year 7 d.Tr.

Ok, so what is Eulora disrupting ?

Given the raging success of the previous "Ok, so what is Bitcoin disrupting ?", I guess it's time to make this a series.

I. Real Economy. Unlike every single other MMORPG out there, Eulora coins are hard coins - each worth one satoshii. So no, if you find a Sword of The Zodiac +12 the game didn't just make it up out of the ether - it's accounted for, somehow, somewhere.ii Every penny you win came out of someone else's unfortunate trials, every penny you lose will be picked up by someone else somewhere later. In fact, the S.MG report to come for this month will actually list player assets as a liability on the bottom line, right above shareholder equity. That's real virtual economy for you, in point of fact a lot more real than any virtually real economy out there, such as for instance the economy of the United States. This would be what I call disruption.

II. Real Open Source. To quote from #eulora,

thestringpuller diana_coman: hacking the game through the client?

diana_coman thestringpuller kind of, I guess, lol. For the moment more like trying to figure out the code with the hope to improve a bit the game experience afterwards as in: automate repetitive tasks.

thestringpuller Reminds me of Eve.

diana_coman Wasn't Eve anti-bots?

thestringpuller So is WoW but it didn't stop people from using them. Tis like dinosaur island without the geneticism. (dumb facebook puzzle thing)

diana_coman well of course, but as far as I understood Eulora is actually pro-bots

mircea_popescu diana_coman Eulora is actually pro. and ima write an article detailing it.

To quote from the in-game help,

Eulora is free as in freedom. The source code for each release is available for anyone to download - and modify! In fact, we don't even release binaries, instead we retain independent contractors to compile (and sign) binaries on the basis of our source releases.

Whatever modifications you may wish to make to _your_ client should work just fine, just as long as you don't break the communication with the server. Make sure you keep backups somewhere, and always remember : modding is not merely tolerated in Eulora, but outright encouraged. If you make something cool show it to us, we'll most likely help you spread the word - and there might even be a job offer waiting for you. If you feel like taking a first step, the text you're now reading probably resides on your HDD in the /data/help.xml file. If you modify that file and restart your game, you should see here whatever you wish to see here. Give it a spin, it's fun!

This committment to freedom goes a lot further than merely not being batshit-insane when it comes to modding, unlike pretty much every other publisher out there. We don't censor words. You can, as far as the game is concerned, be as much of an asshole as you can possibly stand. You probably won't make too many friends that way - but then again Eulora does not require you to make friends. You can play and will be able to play and enjoy playing it forever without the undue pressure to "form groups", "parties" and so on. In any case, there are no GMs, no bans, none of that crap. Hopefully the game can stay that way.

It's not that MiniGame is not following the dismal road uniting Elite and Blizzard, it's not that MiniGame is not making it difficult for a "linux version" to even exist. There is no such thing as a "linux version", linux IS the version, stuff's written in C after all.

Time to put this entire "platform" bullshit to rest : if Eulora is not running for you the way you want it to run for you, the reason is strictly and can only ever be strictly that you didn't feel like making it do whatever you want to make it do. Play it in text mode if you feel like it, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn't be able to!

And this is what I call disruptive. Yes, I'm aware it's very, very banal. But banality that's unthinkably uncommon is the very definition of disruption.

3. Real Representation. As has been pointed out to me, the Eulora player models do not currently wear anything under their skirts - so if you jiggle the camera enough you can get a screenfull of a roughly pixelated something that may well be a gluteal cleft adorned by an anus. The reason, I imagine, is that the modeller could not be bothered to put even more work into the things (they're pretty marginal atm), and so they were left in a rather natural state. There's nothing wrong with this. I do not care. If you do care there is something wrong with you. If you think children of any age seeing nude adults is a problem "for their mental well being", your own mental well being is in dire straits. You really imagine cavemen went around wrapped to the chin in hotel bedsheets like women in '70s US movies ?

As I've instructed Advertising to deal with publishers wanting to know if we're interested in adult or non adult placement,

mircea_popescu tell 'em we do not intend to futher the nonsensical distinction between "adult" and "non adult". The game isn't specifically either, and we don't care about which side.

To make it perfectly clear : if you think there is something called "adult" which by virtue of being "adult" is "unsuitable for children" you're broken in the head. There's no difference between this proposition and the proposition that we shouldn't discuss Christmas on the Internet, because you've lied to your children about it and think we owe you any cost and any inconvenience so that your lie might not be discovered. Get lost and fuck you, if you wish to lie to your children you will have to keep them in a hole you dug undeground with your own hands - I'm not coming to your house to dig a hole for you to keep your children in. I have better things to do with my time, and if you weren't terminally stupid so would you.

That, I would say, is disruptive.

So there you go. Enjoy disruption.iii

———Currently, MiniGame is selling them for that much. Full convertibility (ie, where MiniGame is also buying them for that much) is intended once the game goes gold and its version number no longer starts with 0.

Nevertheless, because of the particular mechanism used to sell game coins, a certain level of implicit convertibility already exists. Specifically : MiniGame does not sell to random people, but only to selected merchants, which so far has been a list of two names : Mircea Mircescu (for my own use) and Grundin Goldskull (selected through a process where whoever wanted to buy the most coins got to be the official coin buyer). Should such a selected merchant run out of game coins to sell, he has the option to buy more from MiniGame, but not the obligation. He can also buy from players, if players offer them cheaper. And if players do offer them cheaper, he is at liberty to discount them in his own offerings to people buying from him. And so if the game currency inflates, you will be seeing game currency merchants offering it at 70% or 50% or 5% or whatever else the nominal price, wich will tell you all you need to know.

Practically speaking Eulora has a "black" market by design and deliberately, busy at work delivering the very valuable function of all "black" markets ever, which is to say keeping the true value of money known. And yes, this implies yet another thing Eulora is disrupting - the stolid, unthinking orthodoxy proposing that "black" markets are bad. Yes, they are - if you're both stupid and a thief. For people who aren't either stupid or thieves, actually functioning markets are required. Never trust a place without a black market, it's going to suck more than Soviet Russia ever did. [↩]This doesn't mean the players can't pay more for an item than its game-accounting value (ie, what the merchant pays). Of course they can - but they do so at their option, and in full knowledge of what's going on. Do you want Wooly Mushrooms enough to pay 175% on them, which is to say 1`365 for quality 100 ones or else 1`528 for quality 112 ones ? Go right ahead! Maybe you're right to do so and maybe you aren't, but you certainly know what you're doing.

How much is a Sword of The Zodiac +12 really worth ? In a system where money is actually meaningful, and meaningfully usable to do what money does, which is to say, quantify value and utility ? No Stones of Jordan here, just plain old satoshi. Much better a deal. [↩] [↩]

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Category: S.MG

Wednesday, 24 June, Year 7 d.Tr.

Ok, ok, you had me :D

The first actually funny April Fool's joke I've seen in a long, long time.

Probably funnier because it's not actually all that funny at all. Not if you're any of the many idiots (some of which named, a majority anonymous) that aspire to be us yet couldn't in a million years come up with the strings required, even were they supplied with a whole planet and all the time in the world.

No shoe's ever making any shoemakers. Funniest joek in teh werld, just as long as you aren't yesterday's shoes.

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Category: Zsilnic

Wednesday, 01 April, Year 7 d.Tr.

Oil theory

So I'm by no means an energy trading specialist. Not even close. My interest in that field is peripheral and vague. I am also not a Middle Eastern politics specialist, also not even close. In fact, my interest there is also peripheral and vague, sort-of like you care about sperm whales. "Oh, there exist sperm whales ? And they go around on wheels chewing nonpareils ? How interesting." sort of thing.

Nevertheless, there is a theory that I wish to air, mostly because I can't evaluate on my own - is it something like the whales on wheels or is it more like the Earth spinning around the Sun rather than the reverse ? By all means, actual specialists in either field please, chip in, be it publicly or privately. It goes like so :

Oil does not come out of the ground naturally, is the unfortunate fact of the matter. Extracting oil is an industrial process, and that industrial process has costs, like any other. The cost to extract one barrel of oil varies, from about 170 dollars in Venezuelai to about fifty-something in Saudi Arabia. Pretty much every producer worth the mention out there falls somewhere on this range, from fifty to a hundred and more.

The current price of oil is ~47 for WTI, ~50 for Brent. In any case oil is currently being sold for prices under production cost, by all producers. This rare situation, giving the "Peak Oil" agitation a few short years back the very chilling "Global Warming" treatment, is the result of a very amusing interplay of unforeseen consequences, illustrating just how much of governmental policy is essentially built on a "nobody could have foreseen using a plane as a rocket". (Hint : all of it.)

So : ever since the normalisation of relations after the Oil Shock ('73), the agreements between OPEC and NATOii included a fixed minimal allocation of oil to be sold "no matter what". Price was not specified, on the general assumption of all those involved that Peak Oil, and so generally speaking there's no need. The exact amount can be discerned by simply looking at outputs.

The current winter has been very mild, and unexpectedly so, which means energy reserves are not drawn as quickly as expected. The US industry (notwithstanding an 8th consecutive quarter of "growth" reported by Wall Street on the strength of sheer inflation) is weaker than it has ever been, and not likely to ever recover. These factors together worked to bring the actual NATO oil need under its allocation for the first time in the forty years since that allocation exists, and otherwise for the first time since the Industrial Revolution some centuries ago. It's really an incredible, history bending first, this. For the first time ever, what used to be the growing body of the West no longer can absorb all energy available and grow on it. Peak Oil indeed, just... a different kind. But anyway.

Normally the Saudis would have denounced or modified this agreement, but they do not for a number of reasons. One is that the dim, anemic but also only attempt by the US to reindustrialise is centered among the "alternative energy" flag, which is entirely predicated on oil being scarce and thus expensive. Things like Obama's signature "we'll take oil, make fertilizer, pay Monsanto, ferment the corn, make ethanol, change all the engines to less efficient types, because this indirect path creates more jobs than simply distilling the oil" entirely relies on oil not ever going under 100 a barrel, and that in inflation adjusted dollars, so it'd be about 140 by now. The scheme barely works even then, but it's beyond ridiculeiii with a barrel under 50 2015 dollarsiv.

The US side meanwhile doesn't say anything because hey, cheap oil!!1 (the anti-industrial politicos don't say anything because they figure, in their very dim witted approach to figuring, that this would hurt Russia, at which they're very shake-child-fists angry because it made a mockery of their precious NGO "activists"/nulities, whom they nevertheless whiteknight with all the dedication displayed by the average Internet-enabled chronic masturbator). Russia doesn't particularly mind, because on the mid and long term the destructuring of the US's only [half]serious attempt at reindustrialisation is doing more for its strategic goals than anything it could directly do, and on the short term it really makes no difference, in fact if anything it seriously strengthened Putin's political position (especially in things he wants that aren't easy to get, like get the country more industrially independent, but without using Stalin's methods to achieve such). China doesn't actually believe in interacting with the lower beingsv, so what would it say.

Cheap oil will therefore continue for at least a year, its most important effect being the unexpected, unprepared for and uncontrollable de facto ballooning of derivatives. The way this works is that if you have ten dollars' worth of actual oil, atop which fifteen dollars' worth of sensible derivatives are carried, the pile of two hundred dollars' worth of insane derivatives are anchored to reality at a ratio of 1:8 or 1:13, depending on how stringent you are with your "banking sector stress tests". Should the oil volume fall to a third, and its price by half, and the derivatives by 80% you now have the much more economically sound situation of a dollar and a half's worth of oil plus three dollars' worth of oil derivatives. Upon which more economically sound situation the same pile of two hundred dollars' worth of insane derivatives are anchored at a ratio of 45:1. Obviously reality doesn't work that simply, because there's also precious metals (heh) and real estate (heh-heh) and other things (like you know, Sony's Intellectual Property, a good anchoring for tons of speculative debentures etc).

In short : nothing could have been worse for the US in 2015 than very cheap oil, and it's getting it. Good luck and all that.

Comments welcome below.

———That country is completely nuts, incidentally. It is perfectly possible for their costs to reflect more of the antieconomic nature of their social arrangements than have anything to do with the topic of oil extraction. Speaking of which, here's a still open exercise. [↩]Calling it the "US" would be a misnomer. There's layers in the cake the US presents to the world, one's the US proper, a wider one's the 5Eyes spying conglomerate, wider still is the NATO military conglomerate, an even wider one is the "Democracy" ideological conglomerate (notably, there's no difference between "democracy" as used by the US propaganda and the same "democracy" used by the Soviet propaganda - they're both propaganda items, chosen for the positive feelings likely to evoke in the naive target, otherwise unrelated to reality), the sort of folks making a lot of hay about the "public opinion" composed of their own agenda items and how outraged it is, and so on. In this case, it seems to me the proper layer's the third. [↩]Which will readily explain why all the "comedians" avoid ridiculing it. [↩]About 15 cents in 1973 dollars. [↩]You perhaps forgot, having the short memory of white worms, but the original reason the Chinese imperial government didn't want to sign trade agreements with the English two centuries ago was that such a deed would imply some sort of similarity between the white worms in question and the Celestial Throne, a concept thoroughly incomprehensible for the locals at the time. At this time. [↩]

« MPEx (S.MPOE) December 2014 Statement

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

Category: Actiuni si Optiuni

Tuesday, 06 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

Oglaf is still the biggest thing happening in English and other considerations

Earlier this month :

Earlier this week :

There are two fundamental premises that underpin libertard "thought", or more properly said verbal outpour. One is the proposition that "people matter". The other is that "here is everywhere".

Obviously, these aren't propositions in the proper sense of the term, but mere chants, oft repeated bits of nonsense much akin to the frog's rippit, or the buzzing noise coming out of amplified but untuned antenna. Like the imaginary "noise" one perceives if absolute silence endures, the underpinnings of libertard thought are purely psychogenic and not specifically meaningful.

For that matter, they're readily contradicted in practice. This, incidentally, has exactly nothing to do with Bitcoin, or anything else specifically. The proposition that "people matter" is readily contradicted for instance by the Internet at largei :

The only problem is that... well... it doesn't take. Factually, the unreserved appreciation, esteem, love of the entire world of muppets is not worth much, with their boundless ire following close behind. It's not just that the "social media" clicks aren't worth squat. It's that the very people behind those clicks are not actually worth squat. Whether they like or don't like, whether they agree or disagree, whether they love or hate - it's not even a statistic. They could be gone tomorrow - indeed they will be gone tomorrow - and nobody will even notice.

One could of course have as many examples as one cares to.

The proposition that here is everywhere is readily contradicted by everything all the time, no point to even quote. Take rape : most women that had sex last night had sex with a man that did not bother to ask. This is a fact, and there is an endless stream of similar such facts. Nobody asked Daphna Waxam anything, for another instance. Again, the list could go on endlessly, but to what end ? There's no end!

The reactions - for we are discussing psychology here, and of the lowest kind - are purely psychogenic as well. To the first type of contradiction, the libertard immutably answers along the lines of "the consumers have come to expect", more generally speaking impotent overactivity. So he demands "trilema be banned", my twitter account be suspended, an end to "gamergate" and "fat hate" and what have you.

To the second type of contradiction the libertard answers catatonically, if equally immutably. There isn't some sort of occult force at work that impels the drastic ignorance of the outside world as exhibited by the libertard. Really, he has no choice, because even admitting an outside world invalidates the "everywhere is here" tenet and one can't stay a libertard without that pillar.

I have little doubt that in the solipsistic libertard world, where "people are valuable" because "people say so" things like VC capital squandered on worthless "ventures" because "userbase" make sense. I also have little doubt that for as long as "everywhere is here" that sense can perpetually endure, and we'll all just sit around, "making shit happen" and consensus-this and whatnot, forever. Preferably for an interval not even discussed or considered, because even saying "forever" has a whiff of a flavour of heretic contradiction of the "everywhere is here" principle.

The only problem with this utopia is that, for actually live, intelligent, active individuals it appears inescapably boring. There's only so much masturbation one can endure before one has enough of the crap. And yes, I'm aware that "everywhere is here" should take care of it, and I'm sure plenty unfortunate souls put up with the misery because you've managed to sell them on the ridiculous notion that "no alternatives exist". Then one day they accidentally read Candide or something.

In short - I am perfectly aware as to why it is Bitcoin is perceived as an actual life-and-death sort of threat by a great many libertards, and to why they feel so driven to... "fix it", and then fix the having fixed it too (it was always like this! Bitcoin-xt is how Satoshi himself intended for Bitcoin to be, notwithstanding the man's actual statements to the contrary - he's lost touch with his inner satoshiness!)

It won't work.

———The quote comes from an article detailing the collapse of Bitlove LLC, a scummy company offering "Fetlife", a website for BDSM people. How "the press" failed to connect the dry run for the later Ashley Madison debacle is to this day a daily source of amusement to parties in the know. [↩]

« I killed one, I'm publishing another, who the hell knows what's going on anymore.

Naivity in finance »

Category: SUA care este

Monday, 24 August, Year 7 d.Tr.

Nude Nuns With Big Guns

Nude Nuns With Big Gunsi is a very convenient illustration of a very large and utterly taboo problem. Or should we say festering wound of modernity.

It goes like this : the "criminal element" (which is to say, creative people) lacks any interest whatsoever in the normative elucubrations of the state. This would immediately render the state moot, if they actually had something to say. As a general rule, they do not.

Meanwhile the "intellectual element", which is to say cultivated people, do in fact have things to say. They would readily render the state moot as well, if they actually had the means to say it. As a general rule, they do not.ii

On this very precarious crux, of keeping the cultivated mute and the voluble dumb, every modern state rests, and has rested for as long as there was such a thing as state. Thus such atrocities as discussed by Toom and others need not necessarily wonder and amaze you. If you spend any time thinking about it, they should come out as the nude naturality that they actually are. And yes, it is perhaps true that Bitcoin provides the means to finally and perhaps definitively untie this unholy knot and be rid of state as thing of this world and as possibility altogether. But so far, we're not really there yet.

And now with applicaton : Nude Nuns With Big Guns could have been an exceptional surrealist thing, perhaps in the vein of Jarmusch's Dead Man or Daisies. It is not. Guzman had what neither Chytilova nor Jarmusch had, which is the ability, the resources requisite to film reality. Nude if it so happens, bleeding if it so happens, however it may be.

Yes Jarmusch got Depp, which certainly helps in making a movie, so you don't end up with the review reading "with nobody in particular". Yet while that helps, it is not requisite (for instance Visconti managed without), and comes at a fabulous, asphixiating cost : you now must make a movie that will see release. Wide release. And so you... because the state, you see ? You can no longer film reality. You have to film fantasy, as the state wishes it to be. "Word problems are too difficult and frustrate the chitlins" ; you can't have cunt on the TV, that sorta thing.

Yes Chytilova got to do "what she wanted", except not really, and the ridoinculous discussion about how Daisies "glorifies food wastage" should really be all the illustration you could possibly need.

Meanwhile both of these, and many others just like them, had ideas. Had something to say. Guzman does not. He, like any other two bit pornographer, has the nude sluts burning a hole in his screens and dripping stain juice on his couches and everywhere else. Dialogue is an after thought. What plot ? What point ? The man with the burning dough in his pocket does not have the time to find a girl to spend it with so he ends up patronizing "strippers", getting literally the lousiest bang for his buck he could conceivably obtain even if he aimed for lousy ; whereas the guy with a girl in his lap doesn't have the time to find anything worthwhile to do with her, so he ends up married with children. Bravos natiune, halal sa-ti fie! as that ancient expression goes.

It's truly and inexcusably a miserable state of affairs.

———2010, by Joseph Guzman, with nobody in particular. [↩]This is, contrary to what you'd like to believe and they'd love to lead you to believe, strictly because of interior limits they have set for themselves. Nobody's "repressing" them, nobody's forcing them. They're abject of their own nature through their own volition ; which they then obscenely deny in an outrageous display of indescriptible internal filth.

Interior limits they've set for themselves. Partly because cowardice and intellectual preocupations are comorbid universally and throughout in the human species ; partly because it's always easier to live with the dumb than do something useful ; partly because - eh who the fuck cares, even.

Intellectuals suck, that's all there is to it. [↩]

« The great Nedeflorena show

A bunch of assholes. »

Category: Trilematograf

Saturday, 12 September, Year 7 d.Tr.

Nocturnal revelation

Some years ago, back when I inquired into these matters for the first time, the motto / cri de guerre / whatever you'd call it of the British conservatives was, "we oppose change for change's sake".

This seemed to me very clever at the time, and hence, for I read it as "we oppose change for the reason that change unopposed is basically a lemon market, and it will engage into a vicious spiral towards the lowest common denominator [as aptly represented by Labour]".

This is a very good point, if you think about it. It directly states that the entire reason there even exist "reformists" in the first place is that some other people took care of the things that matter long enough so that they managed to accumulate into some sort of value the scumbags aim to now squander. Without such care being taken, there'd scarcely be any perceived need for "reform". It directly cleaves the intellectual base of the socialists, in that if indeed one aims to realise the stated goals of socialism, as improbable as such may in fact be, his best chances nevertheless are to be had... in the conservative camp.

As I was falling to sleep tonight, a sad ugly thought occurred to me. You see... my reading's not required by the phrase in question. In fact, there's an alternative available : "we oppose the kind of change that is merely change for its own sake", or in other words "we aim to avoid furious activity as a cover for impotence". You know, like Obama's change, like the soviet shuffles, like bureaucratic reform and corporate shake-ups. The revolving door of idiocy where Iuri, the ex minister of defense, is for his sins punished to lead the main defense contractor whereas Ivan, the ex CEO of the defense contractor, is for his sins punished to lead the defense ministry.

This much more banal, much more vulgar and in its banal vulgarity much more adequate and worldly interpretation is in all likelihood the correct one, huh. Obviously to anyone but yours truly, too intelligent at the time to realise how naive intelligence tends to be. And the world is suddenly a much smaller place. Again.

PS. This is what growing old is, by the way : the unyielding, ever-expanding, bitterly sad realisation that the people who came before you weren't as much idiots in the general sense, but moreover utter idiots in the "scraped off someone's boot after a trip through swampland" sense.

« The strange case of the unentropic entropy and other bedtime stories of primes and people.

Subject: Important notice from SEC »

Category: Gandesc, deci gandesc

Saturday, 06 June, Year 7 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), September 2015 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

--

0

Domain renewal, 4 yrs

0.22212852

Total

0

Total

0.22212852

S.NSA assets

Account

01.08.2015

Net change

31.08.2015

Cash

456.23675136

0.22212852

456.01462284

Tangibles

8.20505811

0

8.20505811

Intangibles and goodwill

8.31827553

0.22212852

8.54040405

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.08.2015

Net change

31.08.2015

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

The "routing of PCB Units 'A' and 'B' is nearing completion" observation last month turned out to have been overoptimistici. Nevertheless, board A is "tentatively routed", and will be sent to fabrication asap.

Other than this, Stan's been also working at a demonstrably-correct [1] implementation of RSA in Ada/SPARK, both for Cardano itself as well as for the planned gossipd and other republican business.

Phuctor is unfortunately homeless. The story of how it lost its home is, of course, in the logs. It would require some engineering to contain the currently disastrous effects of unscheduled reboots - this is not trivial and in light of overpowering priorities eslewhere remains undone. Alternatively it could have a decent server that doesn't magically reboot for no reason all the time - in spite of much effort put into this from various angles no progress has yet been made.

V has also, to quote its author, "this particular animal appears to have acquired a life of its own ; while I do not personally agree with all of the design decisions taken by the authors of variant versions (e.g., 'vit'), in many respects their functionality is a considerable advance vs. that of my original - in particular, mod6 has one which produces flow graphs ~precisely~ as specified in the original thread."

The problem of a real Bitcoin client that works on pogo is still widely open. Workii was sunk into trying to fit bitcoind into limited RAM. In the course of attempting to make the 'mempool jettison' thing work, it was discoveredthat apparently transactions never end up cleared out of memory at all.iii The power rangers never properly fixed this issue, but instead they re-wrote the relevant part of the mechanism entirely, probably introducing an entirely unrelated set of bugs yet-to-be-illuminated. It is a matter of some concern that by all appearances no one has noticed this, or discussed the matter in public. In any case, something needs to be done here, and that something is not a trivial "missing delete", either.

There's also a version of bitcoind that logs 'peculiar' (per certain heuristics) transactions from the mempool. This is presently unreleased, in part because it's not clear anyone actually needs it for anything.

———To quote the engineer in charge,

ascii_field understand also that 'nearing completion' usually means something like '99.8% routed!111!!!'

mircea_popescu aha.

ascii_field which can a very long grind, to route the remaining 4 'rats nest' wires

ascii_field because every time it is another 4!

ascii_field fucking travelingsalesmanproblem

[↩]Several variants were built with custom (instrumented) allocators in place of the customary one etc. [↩]This matter is still dubious - and one of the best ways C gurus could spend their time to help Bitcoin would certainly be taking the memory allocation part apart. [↩]

« Apropos de nothing

MPEx (S.MPOE) September 2015 Statement »

Category: S.NSA

Tuesday, 06 October, Year 7 d.Tr.

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

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

--

0

--

0

Total

0

Total

0

S.NSA assets

Account

01.10.2015

Net change

31.10.2015

Cash

456.01462284

0

456.01462284

Tangibles

8.20505811

0

8.20505811

Intangibles and goodwill

8.54040405

0

8.54040405

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.10.2015

Net change

31.10.2015

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

Some work on auditing GPG codebase (v 1.4.x). As detailed in the log, it's exactly the sort of piece of shit you'd expect coming out of the "FOSS" movement, may their parents be perpetually unproud of the whole lousy lot of them. More work needed, at any rate.

A test bed for PCB A mostly constructed, a memory allocator (of the static buffer, SBRK-less variety) being written for use in Cardano (and in 'P'i ) as MPI needs a heap and no allocator presently exists which meets the apparently very stringent requirements of sanity.

Also some schedulling re-arrangements, to perhaps give better priority to creating a finished product.

We are now approaching the end of a second year's work on a project which was initially intended to take a few months. These two years have been principally applied to spending [a little] of the investor's money to discover that there's nothing usable in the whole huge pile of smoldering sludge and assorted debris which calls itself "IT". Supposedly this stands for information technology, but the only information included is the perhaps banal if apparently controversial point that idiots shouldn't really be allowed next to any kind of tools.

I am very impressed that we're still here, and for that heroic feat I credit competent managementii and dogged engineering determination. And so, here we are, on we go.

———Obviously, if you want to use crypto anything, you gotta write your own tools. This would be a subset of Thing 4, you can think of it as a replacement for PGP -- roughly in the sense Stoya is a replacement for your ex-wife. [↩]Hey, anyone computed our burn rate, yet ? Awww. So I guess S.NSA doesn't really need to be acquired to survive, does it ? Which is a bad thing, from a certain perspective, right ?

Fuck the whole lot of you. [↩]

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

The Minuscule Crab of Doom and the Sympathetic Spool of Drool - an endlessly complex machine to shred your dreams to pixie dust! »

Category: S.NSA

Saturday, 07 November, Year 7 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), November 2015 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

--

0

--

0

Total

0

Total

0

S.NSA assets

Account

01.11.2015

Net change

30.11.2015

Cash

456.01462284

0

456.01462284

Tangibles

8.20505811

0

8.20505811

Intangibles and goodwill

8.54040405

0

8.54040405

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.11.2015

Net change

30.11.2015

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

Engineering work for November :

carried out the unpleasant but necessary task of properly V-ifying the field arithmetic code extracted from GPG earlieri. This is so that a maximally-large portion of the Cardano firmware is V-pedigreed from an audited subset of classical GPG 1.4.10.

likewise, for the RSA decrypt/sign and a few other essential routines from same.

produced a simple heap memory allocator suitable for our application; presently undergoing testing.

work on testing all of the above on a [deleted] microcontroller, in one of the manufacturer-supplied dev boards.

A good fraction of the above work will be packaged for public release in the first releasable version of P, which still needs a good bit of massageii. It will also figure into a yet unofficial implementation of gossipdiii.

I can understand concern from investors. Nevertheless, the facts of the matter were throughout and remain to this day that a) No Such lAbs' finances are sound, and b) a lot of engineer work is being done. It is unfortunate that these don't yet translate into anything more palpable, yet such is the sordid situation of the physical world we all inhabit. I remain convinced that eventually they will.

———Ref: MPI sans the mud. as well as No Such lAbs (S.NSA), October 2015 Statement. [↩]The part where instructions for a simple virtual machine result in bignums arithmetically copulating and being juggled on a stack is not that hard. The part where actual useful routines are implemented in said bytecode (e.g., Miller-Rabin) is slightly trickier. [↩]Pretty close, actually, to a publicly-presentable state. Uses 512-byte UDP packets, but as per the old thread, you can change the protocol id field to something random and unassigned, provided that you are running as root on a reasonable unix, and thereby use raw IP. [↩]

« Ever heard of Ion Iliescu ?

MPEx (S.MPOE) October-November 2015 Statement »

Category: S.NSA

Friday, 04 December, Year 7 d.Tr.

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

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

--

0

Total

0

Total

0

S.NSA assets

Account

01.11.2014

Net change

31.12.2014

Cash

459.97832582

0

459.97832582

Tangibles

4.46348365

0

4.46348365

Intangibles and goodwill

8.31827553

0

8.31827553

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.11.2014

Net change

31.12.2014

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

As you can see, no expenses these two months. I give the voice to the engineer mostly in charge :

What follows is the combined S.NSA broadcast for November and December of 2014.

During this period, your humble servant was heavily occupied with certain duties by way of which he earns his daily bread. The less said about this rather dreary subject, the better. It will suffice to note that the time (normally consisting of his nights and weekends) entirely lost [1] to S.NSA adds up to nearly a month's worth on the whole.

Now for the good news!

(A) Pertaining to the Instrument (see October and earlier broadcasts):

Carried out a series of experiments with the centroid-finder camera (see earlier broadcasts); continued to refine the necessary image processing code for this component.

Motion controller for the x-y-z-r axes now functions correctly.

Presently engaged with fitting axis limit sensors (of the optical interrupter variety) to the apparatus. Rather lengthy process, because it requires disassembly of the carcass (see the first broadcast pertaining to the Instrument), drilling, and reassembly (which entails re-alignment for proper orthogonality.)

Tested solenoid valve (see October broadcast) for proper function (e.g., timing) and machined appropriate hose barbs.

Plan is for Instrument is to be readied for 'firing in anger' by the end of January 2015.

(B) A small detour:

In October, I witnessed the travails of a certain project (which I may have accidentally instigated, and ended up contributing a small amount of labour to...) involving a message board and PGP-signed code snippets [2]. Shortly after this, also witnessed DDOS artists taking an unusual interest in self and associates. This led me to succumb to a small temptation: reviving a certain idea that I have experimented with, on and off, for some time [3] pertaining to a decentralized secure communication mechanism.

In a sense, it is a project directly and intimately linked with Cardano, and probably ought to be unveiled together with it. [4]

... Perhaps earlier, if my stamina permits, because it may be a direly necessary 'parachute'. [5]

I do not at present time have a formal written description of the apparatus (draft nicknamed 'kapelle', as in 'die rote kapelle') but interested readers are invited to study the pertinent thread in #b-a (see earlier note) and likewise an article on Mircea Popescu's site, describing an eerily similar apparatus of his own independent invention. [6]

- ----

October/December BOM:

There is no BOM for this reporting period. All work has been conducted using materials purchased during earlier periods, or, in the case of theoretical labours, no materials at all.

- ----

[1] Even managed to pick up the flu. That's what leaving your house gets you! This tidbit is included here solely on account of being the reason for the skipped November broadcast.

[2] See Jurov's article, http://explo.yt/post/2014/10/29/some-dangerous-idea

[3] briefly discussed here: http://btcbase.org/log/?date=23-11-2014#931948

[4] http://btcbase.org/log/?date=16-12-2014#954208

There is also a certain amount of program code in common between the two problems.

[5] Probably shouldn't print this! How screwed is #b-a in the short term? Perhaps worth a return letter?

[6] http://trilema.com/2015/open-a-better-ircd-rfc

Meanwhile the project discussed under B seems to have taken off of its own accord. It will receive all the support it can receive, for clearly it is a very important tool in the present circumstances.i

———Leaving aside the well documented weakness of freenode, ircd itself may well be going the way of linux. [↩]

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

F.DERP December 2014 Statement »

Category: S.NSA

Wednesday, 07 January, Year 7 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), May 2015 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

--

0

--

0

Total

0

Total

0

S.NSA assets

Account

01.05.2015

Net change

31.05.2015

Cash

456.23675136

0

456.23675136

Tangibles

8.20505811

0

8.20505811

Intangibles and goodwill

8.31827553

0

8.31827553

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.05.2015

Net change

31.05.2015

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

As expected, 32 RNG units were received from MacroFab Corp on May 27th and were tested forthwith. Five of the 32 units tested turned out to be defective (3 exhibited harmonics in the 2nd noise generator, a fourth sawtooth pattern, a fifth no output whatever). The producer has agreed to replace these, but the episode is indicative of the extreme care that is required in assembling the Cardano. While expensive and slow, full testing will probably be required seeing how a nonfunctioning RNG is the end of any practical cryptography. The passing units will now enjoy a life of ent.

As in the great days of the Studio System, NSA's star male lead spent a lot of time loaned out to other studios this Spring. The critically panned "RSA In The Soup!" trilogy was just packaged recently, while filming for the Thermonuked Chicken Saga continues.

See you next month!

« BitBet (S.BBET) May 2015 Statement

MPEx (S.MPOE) May 2015 Statement »

Category: S.NSA

Tuesday, 02 June, Year 7 d.Tr.

No Such lAbs (S.NSA), March 2015 Statement

S.NSA incoming and outgoing

Incoming

Outgoing

Description

Value

Description

Value

--

0

Total

0

Total

0

S.NSA assets

Account

01.03.2015

Net change

31.03.2015

Cash

459.97832582

0

459.97832582

Tangibles

4.46348365

0

4.46348365

Intangibles and goodwill

8.31827553

0

8.31827553

Total assets

472.76008500

S.NSA liabilities

Account

01.03.2015

Net change

31.03.2015

Shareholder equity

472.76008500

0

472.76008500

Total liabilities

472.76008500

S.NSA has a total of 4`737`075 authorised shares outstanding. The total assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009980 BTC. The cash+tangible assets per share implied value is thus 0.00009804 BTC.

S.NSA realised no operating revenue this period. The P/E implied value per share is so far 0 BTC.

S.NSA has Special Stock Warrants outstanding issued as per the IPO agreement, as follows :

#

Fingerprint

Shares

BTC

Par

1

17215D118B7239507FAFED98B98228A001ABFFC7

3`315`952

331.5952

1

2

6160E1CAC8A3C52966FD76998A736F0E2FB7B452

1`421`122

142.1122

1

T

4`737`074

473.7074

1

Miscellaneous

Since this month's letter is intricate and most of it not either very interesting or easy to follow, I'll proceed to a summary.

There were two major points of activity. One, was evaluating a new provider of small run populated boards, which was broadly discussed in channel. In summary, they delivered bad parts on account of what they claim to be a caching error of the web application, replaced the parts at their own costs with apologies, the replacements seem to work. The test was on a sub board (chosen for being both easy to verify and easy to fail as it's not a very common design), the production of the whole shebang will be attempted on this platform and we'll see. In any case actual Cardano is getting a lot closer - if the run succeeds it'll be a simple matter of massaging the software, packaging and it's ready for delivery. This makes it possible if not certain that next month may see income for S.NSA and in my estimation certain that this year will.

The other was supporting the Bitcoin node infrastructure, which wandered from subcritical to outright critical sometime early this year. So far this effort has been broadly productive, to quote :

(B-1) I have produced a total kernel-and-userland build system and complete Linux runtime for 'PogoPlug' computer using 'buildroot', a classical mechanism for crafting minuature Linuxen for use in routers and other low-cost embedded hardware. This system, entitled 'pogotron', builds on most reasonable Unixen and produces a binary image suitable for loading on a PogoPlug using TFTP or flashing into the on-board NAND. The Linux kernel I used is based on a recent 3.18 but stripped of all - in my view - unnecessary aspects. These include devices which are not present, such as video controllers, but also devices which I consider undesirable (USB HID mice, keyboards), features such as loadable kernel modules, etc. A 'pogotron' presently weighs less than 5 MB.

(B-2) In the course of attempting to replicate the static build 'auto.sh' (based on my 'portatronic') recently released by therealbitcoin.org - I discovered a most peculiar bug. It is triggered exclusively (it appears) on Gentoo. At present time, I cannot rule out the possibility that I may have found a bug in GCC. Or perhaps 'bug' is not the right term - a misfeature. This particular affair is discussed at great length in #bitcoin-assets and interested readers are invited to follow the (still-ongoing) thread there.

(B-3) At present time, I am testing an experimental non-leaking 0.5.3.1 on PogoPlug. It is presently built with the pseudo-static 'portatronic' (see last month's broadcast) and is currently running on a heathen linux. At the time of this writing, it has synced 121100 blocks without OOM-crashing once.

The work sourcing out the correct product for this task as well as a lot of other trims should also be mentioned, as should be the efforts of the many people who have graciously contributed their time and expertise in verifying builds, reproducing compiles, hunting for bugs, various logistics tasks (we, for instance, have thousands of the units in storage ready to go, as well as numerous prototype and test units running, etc etc).

None of this incremental utility can readily be discounted nor would it be rational to attempt. The work figures in the S.NSA letter strictly because we have donated a significant amount of engineering time and expertise to this public interest - and make no mistake about it, a healthy network of Bitcoin nodes outside of the control of the various enemies of Bitcoin is the first and foremost public interest in this space. Miners are financially motivated to run their gear, nodes however are politically motivated only, and politics is a very finicky matter - one at which our adversaries excel, and the soi dissant "community" sucks, incidentally.

We will continue to protect and defend Bitcoin, even if this effort is not necessarily productive in the most direct, shortest term perspective available. We will also continue work to bring useful products to market - geared not towards needs as the market may introspectively perceive them, but towards actual needs as deductively obtained from a mature and comprehensive consideration of the fundamentals involved. No Such lAbs' vocation is not as a producer of trinkets in a commodified, consumer-driven space, but as a thought leader and market creator. We intend to remain true to it.

« MPIF (F.MPIF) March 2015 Statement

What's a bad poem ? »

Category: S.NSA

Saturday, 04 April, Year 7 d.Tr.