Messages

226

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« on: November 15, 2015, 02:37 PM »

^ Heh! But don't forget... 667 is the neighbour of the Beast!

227

Living Room / Re: Is Excel the most dangerous software in the world?

« on: November 15, 2015, 02:36 PM »

Sigh... and go figure... I had 23 instances of Excel open today, and it decided to crawl... Some were blocked files, but either way - it sucks.

228

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: November 15, 2015, 02:33 PM »

Maybe its in your country.  Shows up for me still.

How about this version - is it blocked?

-wraith808 (November 15, 2015, 11:57 AM)

Ah, that's better!

229

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 15, 2015, 02:30 PM »

Just for interest:

http://motherboard.v...itcoin-to-judge-judy

tl;dr - A scammer nails 2 people who both end up in Judge Judy's courtroom. Judge Judy makes a fool of herself as usual and... no spoilers.

230

Living Room / Re: Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

« on: November 15, 2015, 11:49 AM »

Ahh, now it all makes sense - it seems that it was because of Snowden that all those people in Paris were massacred yesterday: Edward Snowden and spread of encryption blamed after Paris terror attacks

-IainB (November 15, 2015, 10:16 AM)

Reading some of the accusations was rather amusing.

But really, they're off-base. They should be blaming elementary school teachers that start children down the dark path to literacy and education by teaching them the alphabet and how to read. Damn teachers, I tell you! Kill 'em all before we have a total collapse of civilisation~!

I can't believe that the French security services would have known for some time that the Bataclan was a defined prime Islamic terrorist target and yet apparently have done nothing to anticipate it and protect French citizens...

-IainB (November 15, 2015, 10:16 AM)

I can.

Nah, it must have been Snowden's fault.

-IainB (November 15, 2015, 10:16 AM)

Nope. It all started with those dastardly pre-school and kindergarten teachers and their damn alphabets & stuff!

Maybe French citizens should start pressing for the right to carry arms, to avert such "workplace accidents" as this?

-IainB (November 15, 2015, 10:16 AM)

I've heard that argument made in quite a few places, and I've not really read much on the event. It seems to be gaining momentum.

Roughly translated: "Whoops! Ha-ha. Oh you spotted that did you? Silly me."

-IainB (November 15, 2015, 10:29 AM)

HAHAHAHA~!

Nicely put! 

231

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: November 15, 2015, 11:37 AM »

^ Seemed Appropriate

-wraith808 (November 15, 2015, 06:24 AM)

"This video is not available." 

That was quick.

232

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: November 15, 2015, 12:19 AM »

Death metal cannot compete with real death. It will continue in the shadow of the terrorism in Paris at the performance of the Eagles of Death Metal band.

-Arizona Hot (November 14, 2015, 01:52 PM)

No comment other than...

Voted the heaviest riff by some heavy metal magazine that I don't remember:

Voted the most instantly recognizable riff of all time:

And then there's one of those tunes that really sparked off a lot of what we have now:

And I noticed the front page of YouTube now:

233

Living Room / Re: Is Excel the most dangerous software in the world?

« on: November 15, 2015, 12:12 AM »

^ For Excel connected to a database, maybe opening that many instances might be a problem. I don't do that, so I don't know that case.

But I regularly have 5, 10, 20, 50 instances of Excel running, and I don't have that many problems.

Yes, I do sometimes run into the memory error, but it's not very common. I can usually solve that by closing other applications, with the main culprits being Internet browsers, e.g. Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.

Just my own experience.

234

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 15, 2015, 12:05 AM »

@Ren: IIRC, you mentioned having an Australian bank account (in another thread) so I would have thought that apart from time taken to verify ID, (with a passport I assume), you would have been OK.

Was there something else I've missed reading in their FAQ/T&C?

-4wd (November 14, 2015, 06:40 PM)

Dammit. I'd share the issue if it were only for me, but I don't want to shed any light on Asher's situation. Sorry.

It is possible, but it is significantly more difficult. I'd mentioned Asher, so I don't want to disclose anything further. Suffice it to say that there's nothing notorious or nefarious going on. It's just that we both shared some common problems that made getting verified account significantly more difficult than for most people. It's a normal, average, every day kind of thing.

Thanks for the more detailed response. Of course I'm not looking to get into anything illegal or even shady. Nevertheless I was curious about the idea of "cleaning" the wallet occasionally.

-Deozaan (November 13, 2015, 06:12 PM)

I didn't figure that were up to anything nasty or dangerous.

But these things are good to know for everyone.

The long and short is that if anyone wants to "clean" some money, they can. And that's a good thing. Your personal financial affairs are your business, and nobody should be able to stop you from doing with your money whatever you want to do. Financial freedom is a good thing. 

235

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: November 13, 2015, 05:45 PM »

Cripes... this V8 chainsaw thing is apparently a "thing"!

More out there! :O

236

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 13, 2015, 05:32 PM »

If you want to get rid of any linkage, it's pretty easy. You can deposit coins in an exchange, then withdraw a few days later. That isn't a guarantee, but it vastly increases the probability that you don't receive any of your "old" coins.

-Renegade (November 11, 2015, 11:11 AM)

Can you go into a little more detail about this? Perhaps specifically with how this would work with Coinbase? I was under the assumption that any bitcoins I deposited into Coinbase went into a wallet that belonged to me. So sending them all to Coinbase and then withdrawing them a few days later would just link everything to one address, and then everything from that address would come out into my new wallet, still linked.

Or do you mean sell them all off for fiat currency and then re-buy them all a few days later? Or something else entirely?

-Deozaan (November 13, 2015, 03:20 PM)

Let's do an example.

Say I buy something from you -- a pair of nuclear powered anti-fart underwear -- but the cops are coming down on people for that. You want to "clean" your bitcoins, so you:

• Deposit BTC in Cryptsy
• Buy LTC from Cryptsy
• Pull out LTC to a new LTC wallet on your computer
• Transfer LTC to BTC-e (then delete or abandon that LTC wallet)
• Sell LTC for BTC on BTC-e
• Transfer BTC from BTC-e to your "clean" wallet

Rinse and repeat as you like across different exchanges. The more you do, the "cleaner" it gets.

In more linear terms:

Deposit > Buy crypto > Crypto wallet > Deposit > Sell crypto for crypto (BTC or other) > Clean wallet

Or:

BTC > LTC > DOGE > XYZshitcoin > BTC

All done in different places.

You can sell for different cryptocurrencies at different exchanges. If you're using Bter, BTCChina and others, the trail will get very cold very quickly. Tracing anything would require the full cooperation of all the exchanges, which isn't likely to happen.

You can even transfer between different accounts on 1 exchange, making it all the more difficult.

You never touch fiat currency at all. Fiat has stronger AML and KYC regulation on it, which makes it harder to do with your own money what you want to do.

And you can always buy/sell through Localbitcoins, which will only make things harder if anyone wants to track anything.

That's just 1 way.

There are "mixers" that will mix coins for a fee. The end result is that it's impossible to tell where the coins came from.

For Coinbase, just pull them out and do the above, then send coins back.

However, what I've described above takes some effort, and really isn't necessary unless you're doing some really, very seriously shady stuff. Or anything seriously illegal, like contract killing.

You can completely screw up any kind of "tracking" by doing 1 simple step from above and depositing into a new wallet. If anyone is tracking you, like an ad company, or marketing company, you've just screwed them by creating an entirely new wallet that isn't linked to you. They could try to do pattern matching, but honestly... that's grasping at straws and they're unlikely to ever be able to do that, ever.

(I am missing some highly technical points above, but I've been conservative. For more information you can look into how wallets treat "change". Also look into "dust". It's probably not worth your time.)

237

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 13, 2015, 02:00 PM »

Just an update to my CoinJar experiment:

ID verification was completed within 3 hours of uploading relevant info, this now lets me transfer up to AU$2500/day into the CoinJar account.
One bank account linked and verified within 6 hours, two remaining bank accounts linked and verified within 48 hours.

Linking a bank account isn't necessary since you can still deposit to your CoinJar account by using BPAY^w, (up to 24 hours to process), or POLi^w, (up to 48 hours to process).

If nothing else these guys are ridiculously efficient.

-4wd (November 12, 2015, 08:27 PM)

Asher and the guys at Coinjar have worked ridiculously hard against incredible resistance to get things working. I've talked to him about some of those problems on a number of occasions.

What's funny is that both Asher and I have the same problems in using Coinjar due to neither of us being Australian. There are extra hurdles there. He's a good sport about it though.

238

Living Room / Re: Do we have any musical people on DC?

« on: November 13, 2015, 01:49 PM »

Dollars to donuts, this will intrigue a few people here:

239

Living Room / Re: Kickstarter Highlight: Onion Omega

« on: November 12, 2015, 02:32 AM »

^ Behold... it cometh...

240

Living Room / Re: Interesting "stuff"

« on: November 12, 2015, 02:25 AM »

A Relativity teaching tool: Gravity Visualized - YouTube

-IainB (November 10, 2015, 08:46 PM)

That's funny. I just watched that yesterday.  

241

Living Room / Re: Is Excel the most dangerous software in the world?

« on: November 12, 2015, 02:24 AM »

I'm pretty sure "Excel" = 666 in some kind of numerology.

242

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 11, 2015, 11:11 AM »

I understand that the transaction fee is very small and how great that is compared to our current systems (PayPal, credit cards, etc.). But my question still remains:

I've read/heard that they're completely optional, but I can't figure out how to make a transaction without including transaction fees. Are transaction fees optional or aren't they?

-Deozaan (November 10, 2015, 03:41 PM)

Yes. Fees are optional.

However, miners may not include the transaction, and it could take a while for it to be included. By including a transaction fee, you basically guarantee that your transaction will be included in the next block.

How do you do this? Just send all your bitcoins to a new wallet? Wouldn't that essentially link all those addresses to one address (the new one) all at once?

-Deozaan (November 10, 2015, 04:46 PM)

Yes - you can just send all your BTC to a new wallet. That would be visible on the blockchain.

If you want to get rid of any linkage, it's pretty easy. You can deposit coins in an exchange, then withdraw a few days later. That isn't a guarantee, but it vastly increases the probability that you don't receive any of your "old" coins.

Also, you can deposit in an exchange, buy LTC, sell those on another exchange, and then get totally different BTC.

There are many ways to sever that connection on the blockchain.

243

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 10, 2015, 08:49 AM »

Is there any cheap (regarding transaction + exchange fees) and reliable exchange platforms where I can use my paypal account to buy bitcoins? I need about 50$ (orig currency: €) until friday so it shouldn't take to long to approve the payment method. Not something from china if possible...

-highend01 (November 10, 2015, 07:21 AM)

People ask that all the time. I don't know the answer, but I do have "an" answer.

Try Localbitcoins.

https://localbitcoins.com/

I think that's probably the best way to get smaller amounts of bitcoins.

You can also check to see if there is a Bitcoin ATM near you.

244

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 10, 2015, 08:47 AM »

@Deozzan - Check your wallet. I just sent you about $10 in bitcoins. By the time you see this message, it will be in your wallet.

-Renegade (November 09, 2015, 01:30 AM)

Wow, thanks!

-Deozaan (November 09, 2015, 11:35 AM)

You're welcome! Now, go forth, and do transactions~! 

If you privately send me some bitcoins, and then I turn around and send some of it back to one of your public addresses, won't that link your public address to the private addresses, just by following the chain back a bit?

-Deozaan (November 09, 2015, 11:35 AM)

With your empty wallet, yes, but not necessarily if you already have a well-used wallet. Again, wallets can have many addresses, and unless you specifically pick an address to send from, it's more or less random which address (envelope) gets used.

I guess there's a link there, but there's no proof that a payment to that public address came from me unless I publicize the address I'm paying from. And there's no proof who the owners of the other addresses belong to. Right?

-Deozaan (November 09, 2015, 11:35 AM)

Right.

I'm not quite sure that's entirely the case, as there's a fixed number of BTC to mine. So (yes many years in the future), after all the coin has been mined there would be no point in continuing to mine ... So the currency would become worthless because no one would be processing the transactions. Unless there is something else going on in the way of verification ... Got a map of this one Renegade??

-Stoic Joker (November 09, 2015, 10:46 PM)

Yep!

Every 4 years (about) the reward for miners halves. So, while it is 25 BTC per block now, in a bit it will be 12.5 BTC.

There is a soft limit on the number of miners out there. This is going to be a bit difficult for some people to grasp, but it really is very, very simple. Here goes...

Miners mine for rewards. This is critically important.

Miners mine for rewards. It bears repeating.

The reward for finding a block has a value.

The cost to find a block has a value.

As the cost to find a block approaches the value of the reward, more miners will begin to stop mining. As it goes above, there will be a sharp cut-off of miners who stop, i.e. Only professional miners that have planned for this scenario will continue, along with amateur miners who are simply in it for fun on a small scale.

So, that is the "soft limit" on how much mining is done.

But that only explains the block reward partially.

In addition to the block reward, miners also receive transaction fees for finding a block.

As Bitcoin becomes more popular, there will be more transactions, and more fees. So you can imagine the declining reward as a \ line on a graph, and the increasing transaction fees as a / on a graph. Exactly how those plot doesn't particularly matter. (See below.)

What will happen is that even when the block reward reaches zero, the transaction fees will have long ago surpassed the block reward in terms of value.

So the intersection of those two lines on the graph represents the point in time when the transaction fees become larger than the block reward.

Hence, a block reward of zero reaches zero importance in terms of value to miners.

I'm confused about transaction fees. I've read that they're completely optional, but I can't figure out how to make a transaction without including transaction fees. Maybe that's because the client I'm using (Bitcoin Core) doesn't allow that? It has an option I've checked to "send as zero-fee transaction if possible" but when I click send the confirmation screen shows the fee added in there automatically anyway.

The fees are fairly minimal. But when I'm only sending a few cents (in USD) anyway to get a feel for how it works, it kinda sucks losing even a penny of it in fees. Feels kind of like handing a dollar bill to a friend, then having him hand it back and it only being worth 98 cents.

-Deozaan (November 09, 2015, 11:52 AM)

That's because Bitcoin is transparent, where dollars, euro, and other fiat currencies are opaque.

Don't think in terms of $$$ or BTC. That's always the wrong way to think about things. The value XYZ is an arbitrary number that could mean anything.

Instead, think of $$$ or BTC in terms of **PURCHASING POWER**. That is the real measure that we should think of.

So, if I give you $1 today, in 1 year you have $0.92~$0.97 (about) in terms of actual purchasing power thanks to inflation.

(The central banks aim at 2% inflation per year, but they are failing miserably.)

But, it's worse than that.

If you take your (let's say) $0.95 and go to purchase anything using your credit or debit card or Paypal, etc., there are transaction fees. Those can be as low as 2.5% (sometimes lower, but it depends - they can also be much higher). So, assuming 2.5%, the $1 I gave you gets you $0.92625 of purchasing power.

And that assumes that you don't carry a balance on your credit card, which can easily have an interest rate of 30% or more.

And that doesn't even get into Quantitative Easing... The inflation rate is currently being artificially surpressed because all the central banks are engaged in QE. That is, all the major fiat currencies are being devalued (debased) at the same time, giving it the appearance that inflation isn't as bad as it actually is. If/when the bubble goes pop, it's going to be devastating.

The example to look at is the Swiss Franc. A while back the Swiss decoupled the Swiss Franc from the euro. Previously, it had been pegged to the euro. The unpegging sent the franc soaring by 30% against the euro (and other currencies).

That was a major event in terms of what it showed, although it was rather small in scale as Switzerland is a small country. If that happened to the Chinese RMB, the Japanese JPY, or the USD, it would be a global bloodbath.

Anyways... the small transaction fee in bitcoin transactions is extremely tiny. The only difference is that you can see it and that nothing is hidden from you.

If you could readily see the cost of using fiat currencies, you would be horrified.

245

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 09, 2015, 10:11 AM »

@Renegade
Does that mean by posting that address above you can now no longer do private transactions?

-phitsc (November 09, 2015, 07:58 AM)

Well, if anyone looks at that address, they can see what goes in and out of it. However, that doesn't mean that they know where it comes from, or where it goes.

or does one usually own multiple addresses?

-phitsc (November 09, 2015, 07:58 AM)

Yes. A wallet contains many addresses. However, once you start getting up into the thousands of addresses, it's a good idea to create a new wallet to "clean out" your old one.

or is there such a thing as private and public addresses?

-phitsc (November 09, 2015, 07:58 AM)

All addresses that have transactions associated with them are listed on the blockchain. However, that doesn't mean that you know who owns them.

So, it's "pseudononymous" as opposed to anonymous.

e.g. I can create an address and not tell anyone about it, so nobody knows it. However, if I do a transaction with that address, then it is listed on the blockchain, but nobody knows that I own it.

Concerning addresses: as long as I write down my address (or addresses) somewhere, I can always get back my bitcoins? (even if the machine 'hosting' my wallet dies)

-phitsc (November 09, 2015, 07:58 AM)

Yes and no.

No, because you're describing it the wrong way.

But, yes... with the following qualifications.

You need to write down your private keys -- those will "unlock" your addresses, and then you can always get your bitcoins back.

Make certain to back up your wallet (it contains your private keys) multiple times. You can never be too paranoid.

Does one usually install multiple wallets on different machines/devices, all working with the same address?

-phitsc (November 09, 2015, 07:58 AM)

That's possible, but please, please, please... don't even think about that until much later when you understand everything much, much better. I'm not going to explain any of that because it's just too much to go over.

But yes... it is possible.

The practical answer is "no". You would create multiple wallets with different addresses.

e.g.:

1) "Big" wallet with 100 BTC -- This wallet is offline in "cold storage"
2) Desktop wallet with 5 BTC -- This wallet has a small amount of BTC. It's the equivalent of keeping $2,000 or so in your sock drawer or home safe at home.
3) Mobile wallet with 0.82 BTC -- This is just like your normal wallet that you take with you everywhere. It doesn't have "all" your money/BTC, but it has enough for you to buy gas, groceries, lunch, beer, etc.

Is it possible to manage / work with multiple addresses using the same wallet?

-phitsc (November 09, 2015, 07:58 AM)

Yes. Wallets actually create new addresses behind the scenes, and you'd never even know that they were there unless you started to dig down deep.

e.g. I have address ABC with 1 BTC in it. I spend 0.4 BTC on something, so that 0.4 BTC goes to Joe's address (XYZ), and the remaining 0.6 BTC goes into a new address in my wallet (DEF) that collects "unspent change".

You can think of "addresses" a bit like "envelopes of money" that you keep in your wallet. Or imagine that your wallet is a magic wallet that can create infinite "pouches" inside of itself with infinite space, kind of like Dr Who's TARDIS.

246

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 09, 2015, 01:30 AM »

@Deozzan - Check your wallet. I just sent you about $10 in bitcoins. By the time you see this message, it will be in your wallet.

You can do anything you want with that, and **NOBODY** can stop you. Nobody.

That could just as well be any amount of money you can imagine. $10,000. A million. 10 million. And you could send it to anyone you want without any interference.

And it would cost you almost nothing.

It cost me about $0.01 to send it to you.

Jack all. Nothing. Near zero transaction fees.

I only asked that you PM me so that the transaction would be just between you and me.

Bitcoin is "pseudoanonymous". That means that it's not 100% anonymous, but close. As long as nobody knows our addresses, they can't track us.

If you don't know what to do with it, send it to mouser as a donation. He'll put it to good use.

But, do play around with it. Send $0.50 or $1 to a few people here just to see how fast and easy it is.

Here's an address for me where you can send some just to test:

1F1Eiruf9yzCH49jvjxtajVuzV6mBP3tef

But do check it out and see just how easy it is. Try it a few times.

Maybe someone else (that has participated in this thread) can post an address for you to send $0.50 or so.

You'll see just how easy it is.

Heck, it's fun~!

BTC FTW!

247

DC Gamer Club / Re: GamerGate: 'Press must tackle misogyny,' says developer

« on: November 09, 2015, 01:14 AM »

Saw this:



Says a fair bit.

248

Living Room / Re: silly humor - post 'em here! [warning some NSFW and adult content]

« on: November 08, 2015, 08:47 PM »

^ You might want to look for what Mark Passio has to say on solipcism. Interesting stuff.

249

Living Room / Re: Our experiences with LED light bulb replacements

« on: November 08, 2015, 08:45 PM »

Buddy replaces lighting in a garage.

250

Living Room / Re: Does anyone here use Bitcoins?

« on: November 07, 2015, 03:23 AM »

Well, now I have a bitcoin wallet. Too bad I don't have anything to do with it.

-Deozaan (November 06, 2015, 02:46 AM)

PM me your address.