thisiswrong

By reading the top comments here it feels like Cameron's fascist gvt also has a "super flagger" up-voting status on HN. I mean come on, it feels like I'm on Reddit [1] all over again. Only a sock puppet [2] would say this:

> I'm from Algeria and the UK showed great hospitality to extremists calling for killing us from the foggy London streets. They allowed that in the name of democracy and freedom of speech. Easy being a democracy when what the extremists do isn't harming you.

> It took the fhit to hit the san for them to wake up and do something about it.. How about freedom of speech now when terrorist actions are conducted on the UK soil

[1] http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20140226/11344026358/reddit...

[2] https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2014/02/24/jtrig-manipula...

> In the US, at least, a bank would have a very hard time doing something this irresponsible.

Did you completely miss out the part where Goldman Sachs drafted gvt regulation to its advantage and conducted insider market manipulation that led to the 2008 crash ?

This article lacks so much information that it could just be said in one Tweet. Are the 'reporters' at Bloomberg so scared to attempt getting into the technical details ? A big of tech-insight would have been a nice read.

It's definitely interesting to note the phenomenal increase of money being thrown at those innovating on the edges of bitcoin. The financial world are starting to grasp the disruptiveness of the invention and now they want in.

The Google search monopoly - such a flawed system. Its 'secret' search algorithms are gamed by insiders and blackhats alike. Competitors now attack each other by building bad links & pointing them at whichever site they choose.

In return, hard-working webmasters get hit by massive traffic drops with each algorithm update. Then Google releases the 'disavow tool' - which supposedly 'helps' legitimate websites recover from these traffic drops, but only increases everyone's workload. All this to be in 'compliance' with Google. Yes, Google. Fuck you.

Are you serious? Why would you even say that?

People like you are the problem. Linking to something, just like talking about something, is protected in most countries by free speech. The simple fact that this journalist was arrested is disgustingly totalitarian and should be of great concern. To everyone.

Why would you want this to go all the way up the rotten vines of a corrupted court system that only gives favorable rulings to those with ties to the rulers?

Actualy, the NSA - just like the CIA, is known to carry out false flag acttacks to achieve a certain outcome. This point should not be overlooked.

In this case Meetup is a perfect NSA 'false-flag' target because it's not a financial institution (NSA ally), and yet is used by millions of people. Thus millions of people starting to ask if GCHQ/NSA will keep them 'safe' online.

> Saddam Hussein faced the consequences of law too

Rather - Saddam Hussein faced the consequences of trying to sell his country's oil in something else than the dollar [1]. As did Gaddafi [2].

[1] http://www.theguardian.com/business/2003/feb/16/iraq.theeuro [2] http://rt.com/news/libya-all-about-oil-818/

You are very detached from reality if you think the mainstream media is here to inform (rather than dis-inform) the people.

Why would they need to do that? The mainstream media's role is to make people politically apathetic and scared of terrorists™.

> Should there be the same laws kick in if they drive the price up, by say, adding fake orders on their exchange? I don't even think that should be illegal.

I strongly agree, and I do believe that there's price manipulation going on with the Gox situation at the moment. Is it just an attempt by Gox to make some money back? Or is it something far bigger aimed at damaging the reputation of BTC? Don't forget that Karpeles has recently been vulnerable to manipulation from the USG [1].

But It's surprising that you wouldn't want BTC, when on the road ahead lies Open Transactions, distributed exchanges, and so much more innovation that will take your above statement and put it directly into code. Thus making these wall-street tactics obsolete.

[1] http://thegenesisblock.com/warrant-for-mt-gox-wells-fargo-ac...

Maybe because the french encourage healthy competition [1] rather than US-style 'free-market' monopolies like Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Comcast...

[1] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/04/business/France-Takes-Aim-...

> The median position of a bunch of half-informed individuals plied with advertising is not something I have a lot of confidence in.

And here lies the problem. In the US the 1% actively disinforms the 99% through media manipulation and bad education. Thus you can't have direct democracy when people can't think for themselves. The whole system is rotten.

In most European countries citizens are educated from a young age how to think rationally and how to interpret information. You still have subtle media manipulation like sky-news but nothing as blatant as fox-news&hollywood. Switzerland has a very good history of referenda - because the population isn't intentionally misinformed and under-educated.

> When there are conflicts between people we need to somehow resolve them, and a systematized way of doing that is called government.

Certain governments seem to making, not resolving conflicts between people. And they purposefully make these said conflicts in order to generate profit for tiny segments of the population. Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Ukraine, Venezuela, [...Iran?].

I get your initial point, but the past century has shown that democracy needs to be direct and NOT delegated. Algorithms and distributed blockchains could very well facilitate the dawn of a more decentralized and democratic world.

> How would you even express babysitting or lawnmower-borrowing as a program?

What if all you needed to do was sent x btc to 13cyfKGfbyyuyiJVLj8S1QZ34x281X1neh which would trigger a lawnmower algorithm [1] to scan all available wifi connected lawnmowers, and send an idle one to mow your lawn - while compensating the anonymous owner for 'lending' you his machine.

The implications of distributed blockchains are so huge that it's very hard to predict how people are going to innovate on the edges. One thing is sure though - bitcoin (the invention) effectively renders centralized institutions obsolete. Banking, notaries, government, voting, legislation, data-storage...

[1] " Each Ethereum contract has its own internal scripting code, and the scripting code is activated every time a transaction is sent to it. The scripting language has access to the transaction’s value, sender and optional data fields [...] " http://cryptonomics.org/2014/02/01/ethereum-turing-complete-...

Andreas is an impressive character. Only by listening to him speak will you understand the passion [1] and potential this guy has. He is well versed and articulate and has a background in distributed systems. Like some of us here he once worked for thieves & sociopaths (banking/defense), and dropped it all to dedicate himself to bitcoin. He has a strong presence in the bitcoin communities and visits many meetups.

I strongly recommend listening to some of the early episodes of him, Stephanie, and Adam on 'Lets Talk Bitcoin'. There's some deep topic discussions and interesting projections - most which turned out to be true.

[1] https://soundcloud.com/mindtomatter/e72-powerful-perspective...

> Even if they don't happen to take place in the richest nations on earth.

Germany 1930s - hyperinflation; Argentina 1990s - hyperinflation; USA 2010s - quantitative easing.

These can also be real problems even for the richest nations.

As you correctly mention - Iraq [1] & Libya [2] were essentially currency invasions and NOT oil invasions. Millions of innocent lives lost to keep the USD propped up. Wars that would make no sense under BTC.

[1] http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,998512,... [2] http://www.thenewamerican.com/economy/markets/item/4630-gadh...

"Allow for some non-intrusive advertising"

This is what scared me about Add Block by default on browsers. Essentially what's happening is the monopolies (Google & FB) get to keep their profitable business models while all small time content publishers get stripped of revenue. WTF !?

Where's the Anti trust regulation? You'd think they were conspiring to kill independent content creation. Or are they?

Really? Don't you see the Trojan horse here? I tend to feel that this is a European version of FISA 'improvement' act.

Merkel and Holland are politicians of a special kind. Politicians & their intelligence thugs caught in bed conspiring with foreign agencies/corporations against the people they represent. France quietly pushing through military legislation authorizing spying on its citizens [1].

We should not allow governments to have any more control over the internet. Look how much damage has already been done. Instead we need to build decentralized systems [2] and mesh networks [3] to route around censorship and government/corporate control.

[1] http://www.examiner.com/article/france-overtakes-nsa-spying-... [2] http://torrentfreak.com/how-the-pirate-bay-plans-to-beat-cen... [3] http://openlibernet.org/

> China kicking out Google doesn't seems so crazy now. The American government is a worldwide aggressor that cannot be restrained.

You're touching on something here. What you're saying is that Google = American government [1]. With the rise of open fascism in the US, the merging of strategic corporations (mostly the technology, entertainment, and banking monopolies) with government interests is become more and more obvious - and scary for that matter.

[1] http://cryptome.org/2013/08/assange-google-nsa.htm

Wow this makes a lot of sense. I personally believe that this is yet again another one of BTC's large dips that will eventually recover onto it's upwards path.

But then if people panic and see how hard it is to get back into fiat from BTC won't they just go into relatively stable altcoins instead? For example DOGE is skyrocketing as we speak and it's USD price was totally unaffected by BTC's recent plummet. http://coinmarketcap.com/

> If it goes down, I'll say "GREAT. Now's the chance for reddit and twitter and G+ and others".

You cheer on centralized corporate systems that have business models based on censorship, vote manipulations, surveillance, arbitrary policy changes, and spam.

While you cheer them on, I will be saying now's the chance for democratic distributed blockchain based replacements for the Twitters, Gmails, and Facebooks. Think Bitmessage, Namecoin, Ethereum, NXT, Bitcloud...

http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1vd2r1/we_want_to_r...

Correct. Hence the higher USD price of BTC on MtGox. The extra price represents the opportunity cost of having to wait 3 months to withdraw fiat. Simply said: ''I'll only sell my BTC on Gox if i get more than on Bitstamp - because ill have to wait a long time to get access to those dollars''.

And thank the lord that governments like those of the UK don't already send out unlawful extrajudicial domain termination requests to registrars. Thank god systems like NameCoin and P2P distributed websites are not being developed as we speak by internet visionaries.

>Right now, connections to the web look like a tree, where a whole bunch of connections get funneled through an ISP

This is very true. More so if you look at countries like the UK where ISPs have recently been consolidated into MAFIAA-complying monopolies that censor just about anything that Hollywood and the government ask them to. It's scary how close ISPs are to the 'governements' of the UK and USA. Obamas' recent NSA 'reform' proposal even suggested that ISPs be in charge of surveillance & storage of Metadata instead of the NSA! WTF? Fascism.

Mesh networks have a big role to play in decentralizing the the post-NSA internet. Micropayments through bitcoin and cryptocurrencies will encourage individual nodes to provide bandwidth to users [1]. Smartphone apps like OpenGarden [2] and systems like the Athens Wireless Metropolitan Network (AWMN) [3] are the frontrunners of the new internet.

[1] https://crypto.cs.virginia.edu/courses/14s-pet/2014/01/30/aw... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Garden [3] http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/08/mesh-internet-pr...

This is why it's time for a post-Google internet. No matter what you say about copyright, crucial videos like these are of high public interest and must be available to all individuals. Sadly the state of our current internet allows powerful interests to arbitrarily censor content, justifying their actions with copyright, or worse - 'protecting' children.

Sure you did. Keep on telling that to yourself buddy. Meanwhile we'll stick to reality: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Mockingbird

While you provide some solid arguments, I feel that you are overlooking certain key elements. I myself feel that the likelihood of Argentina switching to BTC after its upcoming financial collapse is quite low. However I feel that certain niche sectors of the economy could well jump to using BTC.

The points that you overlook are: [1] The USD is currently being deflated like never before and could potentially collapse without warning. Thus making it increasingly unattractive to hold over long periods. [2] Argentina's online economy has recently suffered a huge blow with taxes for online purchases outside of the country. BTC is already becoming the international 'money of the internet'. [3] Most importantly, Bitcoin volatility has been decreasing over time as the price & adoption increases. This is something that shouldn't be overlooked as it has huge implications for the pricing of goods and services in BTC. [4] Finally, there are many ways to do fast transactions in BTC. Have you ever tried sending BTC from one android wallet to another? It comes through instantly. Granted that larger BTC transfers would still require more confirmations though. Off-blockchain transaction services could also kickoff soon. [1] http://mises.ca/posts/blog/murdoch-tweets-about-money-printi... [2] http://www.npr.org/2014/01/23/265195791/argentina-imposes-he... [3] http://elidourado.com/blog/bitcoin-volatility/ [4] http://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/11602/how-does-bi...

You tell me!? The USD is being deflated like crazy & prone to collapse anytime soon [1]. While Bitcoin has seen 1000% annual increases.

[1] http://mises.ca/posts/blog/murdoch-tweets-about-money-printi...

This time round things could be very different. Remember how the Cyprus savings confiscations in 2013 provoked a previously unseen rally on bitcoin [1]. When Argentina's financial system implodes a significant part of the economy could well switch to bitcoin [2]. For many in Argentina this would be a better option than 'rebooting' yet again into fiat.

[1] http://siliconangle.com/blog/2013/03/21/bitcoin-value-hits-7...

[2] http://www.latinvex.com/app/article.aspx?id=1170

> It is time for a reboot, this time with much more focus on security.

Here's a helping hand for those that don't know where to start: http://prism-break.org/