conformal

> - If Bitcoin nodes have native support for acting as WebSocket servers, this would make Dark Wallet completely server-less.

we are working on this with btcd - the wallet and gui are decoupled from the blockchain maintenance. all blockchain-related operations can be done via json/websockets.

i guess everyone wants to go sexy vs conventional lately.

is miley cyrus setting trends in computing now?

this sounds similar to torwallet, except that you don't need to trust ppl running a service. it's a fine idea and will be possible without a browser plugin in the next month or two... ;)

seriously?

it's been possible to operate a variety of wifi cards in host AP mode for like 10 years or more. have a search and you'll see this is easily doable.

i think your suggestion that bitcoin was created by one or more government agencies is a pretty good bet. it could be some other large, shady organization, but the tech is pretty highbrow and uses a lot of crypto. i have been overseeing the development of the alternative full-node bitcoin implementation, btcd, and it seems pretty clear that there was an enormous amount of novelty, insight, planning and countermeasures included in the initial release. it is unlikely that the initial 0.1.0 code was coded by a single person, but it seems pretty obvious that all the comments were removed.

without having this post balloon in size, i'll leave you with an interesting scenario:

let's say you were a member of some shadowy group and you were tasked with moving funds around the world but you didn't want intelligence services to be able to watch those funds move, e.g. via the SWIFT system. your only alternative is to move funds some other way, using an alternate system. moving physical goods around always carries risks at customs checkpoints and it is slow. this leaves some kind of an electronic value-transfer system. since one of your own group members may be a spy or otherwise untrustworthy, the system must assume everyone is untrustworthy. the obvious way to deal with untrustworthy parties is cryptography. a classic way to pass messages semi-anonymously is to "write on a wall" somewhere that you tell your counterparty to look, but others do not know to check.

if you had such a private / closed-loop value transfer system, the only real caveat is settlements in fiat currency, which all "normal" ppl use to settle transactions. if you aggregate these fiat settlements episodically using a fixed exchange rate, it effectively decouples actual meaningful transactions from the fiat transfers, obfuscating the actual transactions.

the idea of unification you reference is more of a process of simplification, with an eye to creating additional explanatory value.

one of the best examples is that of the ptolemaic system of astronomy: prior to galileo speculating that the earth moved around the sun, everyone thought the earth was the center of the universe and that objects in the sky just naturally moved in non-linear spirals (epicycles) that needed endless corrections to be "correct". once galileo's system was applied, the complexity of making tons of extra corrections to track the path of some star was drastically reduced: these changes were now attributable to the earth's motion around the sun, and further the sun's motion in the galaxy.

you may be right that there is indeed an ultimate simplification, but nobody knows where the rabbit hole ends.

we're already at the point where ppl don't buy new PCs because they are still fast enough.

getting to the point where silicon development stops and full-on quantum computing begins has been a long time coming. these d-wave machines are still a long ways from a proper quantum computer.

it's a decoy.

or it might be a decoy decoy... =)

we use zurb and it is appropriate to see this in a zurb blog post: zurb has what you need and not a whole lot else, so they clearly subscribe to this philosophy.

less is more.

totally agree. they seem to claim that their software gives legit dma and compromised device protection, which is a big claim.

there is no information about how this tech actually accomplishes this on their site. i suspect it's "stuff everything in the TPM because you can trust hw crypto" from normal memory, but this is just a guess. i would expect that the hw assurance claim is tied to storing id info in the TPM as well.

even the most finely pedigreed animals need to be positively reinforced with more treats.

private schools are an exercise in toadyism and pedigree, despite some truly intelligent people attending them.

is that a bell i hear ringing? i'm already salivating...

not looking forward to having this discussion with my wife come baby time. i don't like to share anything online and she loves to have pictures up all the time.

it sucks that so many net-based businesses make privacy so hard.

unfortunately, the US, its various security services and most of the elected officials are less-than-excited about the idea of a _truly_ free society. currently, the 1st world state has an enormous amount of control over the day-to-day lives of its citizens, moreso than at any other point in history, imo. some things are particularly hard for the state to do vs historically, e.g. institute mandatory military service of some sort, but others have become much easier, e.g. wage economic warfare on opposing states, drone strike small groups.

bitcoin definitely goes a ways towards fixing some of these problems and i think the author is right to cite it as an epic experiment.

posting your personal account of someone's crimes against you in a blog is not a fair or reasonable way to deal with what is clearly a very serious matter. it sounds like what happened was awful and these types of incidents are common in many predominantly male professions, e.g. law, finance.

i was recently seriously harassed and more-or-less sexually assaulted by an acquaintance's wife at a wedding in a swimming pool. as a man, i doubt that any police department would take me seriously if i wanted to press charges. this does not mean that i am going to take to the internet and post my account of it. nobody wins by doing this.

this trend of women posting their account of a sexual assault online is alarming because of what hawkharris describes: it could be false and then is plastered all over the net, irrevocably damaging the reputation of the accused.

there is less money in mathematics than in the sciences, unless you're the NSA or similar ;)

that said, i have a history as a math and physics geek and am disappointed to see a more limited patronage of mathematics compared to the sciences. mathematics would not have advanced the same way it did without substantial patronage from the european ruling class.

totally agree here. avoiding these pointless high-impact incidents is paramount to PR for the US as a travel destination.

it is a win for both the US and travelers when this process goes smoothly.

overall, i am reminded of how sad i am to be a US citizen when i hear these stories. i have been harrassed by security personnel on a few occasions but have managed to avoid being stuck in the "private screening" room. the irony of having someone who is of puertorican decent and does not speak english as their first language giving me shit when coming into the US from the caribbean is not lost on me.

unfortunately, the characterization of people in the US being (1) ignorant, (2) rude and (3) obnoxious is rather accurate. the USG should make an effort to have competent people manning the border since it makes the US look _awful_ when stuff like this happens. obama, or whoever is president, should make this shit a priority since we look like a bunch of fucking jerks when it comes to CBP/ICE.

canadian CBP are a bag of cunts, as i can confirm myself.

sorry, but fuck canada. if you don't let me through your border, your country is unbelievably fucked.

maybe dismissing parliament one more time will help mr harper.

he was using many cards with many addresses and billing names. i didn't have a system in place to catch this behavior at the time, and it was totally on me for not having proper countermeasures in place.

iirc there were like 15 different billing addresses and card numbers in a few month period. once i saw that i knew i was going to get fucked on chargebacks.

his fraud scheme was so creative i'm not going to describe it here, for wont of someone decided to imitate it.

it's ridiculous that banks can just close your account without giving any explanation. i have had this happen a couple times and it's very irritating.

while i can appreciate that any business can choose to not do business with any 3rd party for whatever reason, the inability to bank can be crippling, especially if you get blacklisted by chexsystems et al.

just to elaborate here: the OP will likely need to file subpart F income for his UK-based controlled foreign corporation (CFC). this means that any income he generates from the UK entity passes through to his US taxes.

additionally, he will need to file a TD 90-22.1 with the department of treasury by june 30th of the year after the account has more than USD 50K in it.

tax avoidance is a complex beast and simply incorporating a business in another jurisdiction does not in any way exempt you from US tax liability.

i've run a few other businesses in the past that had some serious credit card and paypal fraud problems. to give you an idea of how bad it can get, i have been charged back USD 30K in credit card charges by a single customer who was running an extremely creative fraud system. the secret service ending up getting him, which was vindicating, but you can't get blood from a stone...

i'll have another think about it, but i expect that accepting credit cards is not going to happen. additionally, the fees would have to be pretty hefty for running such a payment gateway since it would (our fee) + (credit card processing fees).

you're quite the payment wizard, dobbsbob.

can you comment on the kind of fees you ended up generating when you were experimenting in Argentina? i expect that fees would be different depending on the direction you went from ARS.

a bank account in an hour? opening a bitcoin business account in the US takes easily 1.5 hours, if not twice that.

haters gon hate :)

nice response

your scenario sounds like an ideal use case for a service we recently released, Coinvoice (https://coinvoice.com/). Coinvoice allows you to invoice in USD and receive Bitcoin (BTC) without forcing your customers to use BTC.

i have myself had a number of issues with banks in the past and can speak to the irritation it can cause when you're trying to do business. Bitcoin is a great way to get around banks that are uncomfortable with your line of business or that add too much complexity to your business.

open source ftw =)

it is worth considering that bitcoind itself, as a single project, has created a nasty fork and may very well do so again in the future.

better code that is actually readable and commented means a lower likelihood of a bitcoin daemon forking against itself. it also means that it is quicker to maintain existing code and extend it to add new features.

i think it's a pretty good line - got all of you talking, didn't it? =)

actually, we chose the title because it made us giggle a bit more than "your dad's". the phrase "not your mom's" is relatively common and normally applied to stuff like sandwiches, jeans, or some other somewhat-sexist object.

my mom coded cobol for harris bank for many moons :)

it's been pretty apparent to me for some time now that "the war on drugs" is actually a mechanism to drive _up_ the price of street drugs, and i would go so far as to claim this is done intentionally.

without ridiculously stiff penalties for drug crimes, the sky-high premium placed on the drugs themselves would be unreasonable. a higher price on street drugs leads to a similar near-linear relationship with the amount of USD exported outside the US. in this way "the war on drugs" is actually a mechanism to increase demand and circulation of the USD.

softening the penalties for drug "crimes" makes a lot of sense, just look at portugal and other areas that have decriminalized/legalized possession of small amounts of drugs. i hope the US continues along the current vector of softening its approach with drug "crimes".