nullymcnull's comments

OK, so when you're talking about seizure of equipment, with all the tools and past encodes just sitting there on the machine for the taking, you're really far afield of the kind of argument you had seemed to be making. I understand now why you seem to assume that the adversary is near-omnipotent here - because you're assuming that the user is a dolt who is doing most of the hard work of damning themselves for the state.

An effective dissident is going to employ some reasonable opsec practices and have multiple layers of security, they're not going to be foolish enough to think that one program is a magic bullet.

They're not claiming that mixing is required to let people withdraw securely or anything; it was never implemented before, the original SR never had it implemented the way that people assumed they did, etc. They seem to be claiming that attempts to implement the mixing led to technical problems which has buggered up withdrawals rather fundamentally.

With weeks having passed, it should have been easy to implement some sort of emergency measure that would let them transfer money back to people who wanted it. Instead they continued doing business as usual - money in, but not out - while implementing things like this withdrawal countdown system, which arguably seems calculated to try and maintain some confidence and keep the BTC rolling in.

It seems very likely that this is in fact a big scam, particularly given the shady behaviour of prominent and admin-affiliated vendors also happening, but the blockchain info linked isn't in and of itself definitive proof of anything much right now.

Seems a little premature to point at the blockchain and say "STOLEN!". Most people won't be able to make much sense of that. The whole situation is complicated.

More info: http://www.reddit.com/r/SheepMarketplace/comments/1rpy1t/i_w... http://www.sheepmarketscam.com/

tl;dr: For a week or so, many users have been unable to withdraw BTC from Sheep. Admins have been claiming technical problems as they try and implement an automatic tumbler (money laundry to obfuscate transactions) - which (conveniently) could be claimed as a legit reason for all the huge transfer activity seen in the blockchain. They implemented a countdown timer for withdrawals, which for many users and vendors has now counted down to 0, yet withdrawals still aren't happening. They've set a minimum withdrawal amount of 1BTC, which given the insane price of BTC right now seems really outrageous.

Most damning, several vendors who are admins, moderators, or closely affiliated with admins, are reported to have suddenly started doing something which is very frequently seen in drug market cons: Offering far larger quantities than they ever have before, at unusually low prices (50% or less than their previous pricing), and requiring FE (immediate and upfront release of funds to them rather than going through escrow). Frequently done to rope in the maximum amount of hopeful suckers before bailing with the money.

The market is still up and running right now, although their forums are down with this message: "We are enabling a spam filter for the forums, as the number of posts had got out of control. We will be enabling the forum once this is in place. Please try to stay calm. This is a temporary measure, and we will keep everybody updated when we have further information".

Yes, I believe if you just blindly click through the initial install for the extension, the limited whitelisting (for 'unobtrusive ads') will be in effect. That's the whole idea, isn't it - to whitelist for the majority of users who don't read the fine print or tweak things, while still allowing anyone who cares to shut it off.

I think you misunderstand. AdBlock doesn't force this whitelisting, it merely defaults to using it.

A little late, but I believe this is the paper mentioned: https://socrates1024.s3.amazonaws.com/consensus.pdf

  C# is basically Java with some minor differences 

Just about everyone I see saying this stopped seriously following or working with C# back at 2.0 or earlier. The changes since then have produced a very different beast than Java. Whether it has origins in NIH syndrome is entirely besides the point - MS was bolder with the language and the framework than Java's sluggish committees, and at the end of the day has built the better mousetrap.

IMO any novice who isn't Windows phobic would be better off learning it than Java, in part because it will expose them to a wider range of language constructs and capabilities (pseudo-functional bits, task parallel stuff, etc).

That said, a total novice would probably be better off dabbling in a dynamic language like Python than taking on either Java or C#. Nothing like a REPL for getting your feet wet.

Not sure what you mean by 'poorly researched'. Whatever it's flaws, it produced a hell of an innovative idea (or rather, a conglomeration of ideas into something innovative), and it has grown into something undeniably huge. Something people are building businesses upon. Something that is trading at over $900 USD/unit right now, despite countless rounds of naysayers decrying its intrinsic worthlessness and foretelling it's doom.

Meanwhile these guys are merely riding on the huge waves which that 'poorly researched' paper left in its wake, trying to catch some press-coverage-by-association with their shoddy research. I'm failing to see the irony here, this is apples and oranges stuff. Really seems like you just wanted to sneer at 'Bitcoin supporters'.

At the current exchange rate, they would be losing ~$1400 USD to 'clean' $700. Nobody launders money at such a drastic loss.

Given that they say their minimum 'deposit' is 1 BTC, even finding a handful of extremely gullible marks will be quite lucrative for them. That's all the motive necessary. It goes without saying that no one who sends BTC to this address is going to see anything back.

A good question that neither this crap article, nor the BBC article it links to on the specific BitTorrent claim, makes any attempt the answer. One would have to go to the single source of the claims - Sandvine - to figure it out. The closest the BBC article comes is this:

  The latest figures suggest that, as well as its share falling,
  there could be less overall BitTorrent traffic on the network.

Could be. How helpful!

Obviously an article proclaiming the "death of BitTorrent" in describing a protocol that continues to represent at least 7% of all traffic is pointless linkbait. If that's "dead", I wonder how we should characterize marketplaces (3.95%) and gaming (3.41%)? The web is clearly on its deathbed at a mere 10%, as well.

The BBC article suggests that BitTorrent's decline may be because "The use of 'dark nets' such as Tor and encrypted digital lockers is growing in popularity." I think that pretty much tells us all we need to know about how useful and accurate these articles are.

What's really sad about this is that all of these federal agencies, the journalists reporting on them, and the public at large, continue to take it as a given that the polygraph is a useful and reliable tool that does what it says on the tin. Yet there remains precious little credible science to support that.

It's downright absurd that people are having their info passed around these agencies, and being treated as inherently suspect, simply for investigating methods of 'fooling' what is ultimately a glorified stage prop.

a - Not sure what's creepy about this. Seeing legit reviews from people I actually know, or at least bothered to add to a social service, would likely be more useful to me than J Random Reviewer. Also, back-of-book reviews are trying to sell you the book - no kidding. Are we supposed to consider that a sinister intent?

b - I don't understand. If someone is an unwanted 'stalker' to me, they aren't likely going to be a facebook friend. Even if they were, I think I'll be OK seeing their faces 'everywhere'.. seeing as how I can distinguish fairly well between image and reality.

c - So governments will not only manage to make Mandatory World ID happen, they'll be somehow forcing people to "sign their TCP packets" with them? If that's not intended to be a wildly exaggerated parody, you really may need to loosen the tinfoil wrapped around your head up a bit.

Pfft. Most big ticket games continue to be the familiar standalone titles without any in-game purchasing models. Sure, DLCs and 'season passes' and the like are more common. But the vast majority of money that a big AAA title is going to make continues to be made in the first few weeks of its release. Being profitable initially still means a great deal indeed. It's still what franchises are made, or broken upon. You have to really be drinking the kool-aid to believe that the fundamental economics of gaming have been upended by a few obnoxious trends du jour.

I don't think you understand what QNX is or where it's used then. QNX will not be seeing serious competition from Android or iOS anytime soon in the domains it has locked up - ones which require hard real-time.

I feel like you're reading a different HN than I am. Can you link some concrete examples of someone 'making fun' of either losethos's mental illness, or his OS?

have you turned on showdead and seen some of his recent comments here on HN yet? seriously, you seem more interested in getting up on a soapbox and making wild generalizations about how the community 'makes fun of mental illness' - something I can't say I've seen much evidence of, quite the contrary in fact - than in actually familiarizing yourself with the guy in question.

You're way off base here - consider turning on showdead and reading some of his posts, or even just googling the guy, before making wild assumptions. Nobody is snarking on losethos and designating him mentally ill because he wrote an OS. losethos is genuinely mentally ill.

I'm not sure there's enough substance buried in the racist drivel to be worth bothering in this case. More than a few of us here are old enough to have spent afternoons typing in BASIC programs with lots of DATA sections from the back pages of computer magazines.

I'm struggling to understand how an anecdote about that brings much that is 'relevant' or 'salient' to a discussion of truly oddball languages like BANCStar.

Maybe there's an interesting discussion to be had about that. But OP asked:

> What are some of your favorite programming/security/sysadmin mailing lists and IRC chaneels?

He is looking for open channels, and you leave a pointless comment about some elite closed channel you're a part of. Then you further crapped up the thread trying to rationalize this with some chin-stroking about the 'tragedy of the commons'. That being the case I think it's totally fair (if not charitable) to characterize your response as arrogant.

My apologies, for both my tone and for overlooking your reference back.

I think 'vast majority' of drugs is overstating it a bit, but still - I very much understand where you're coming from and do not disagree.

I regret saying that "Opiates are actually quite safe, as drugs go." I think it has some validity in it's hastily-written context, mostly concerned with countering the article author's cluelessness on his subject. In moderate dosage and without mixing substances, it's basically true - though I'm admittedly coming at it from the perspective of a long-time recreational drug user, hardly that of an upstanding mentor to the young and impressionable here. It's obviously a reckless thing to say in any context, and I would certainly hope that no-one takes it as guidance.

Did you read the quoted sentence before replying? I'm not unaware that the consequences of high doses are respiratory shutdown and death.

All I'm trying to get across is that taking a moderate dose of an opiate is exceedingly unlikely to suddenly kill the naive user, as the article suggests - less so than with say, coke or meth, which can interact poorly with a wider range of health conditions and other substances.

None of which is to say that I endorse the use of opiates or recommend them. I am generally all for responsible drug use, but nearly everyone who thinks they can responsibly 'manage' the use of heavy opiates ends up losing that gamble eventually. And the costs are very, very high.