Gold collapsing. Bitcoin UP.

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Maybe someone from BU can help this guy get BU running on a Raspberry Pi, no idea if he has to build it himself:

 

[Richy_T]

TL/DR: non-upgraded miners are unlikely to have their blocks orphaned should segwit be activated.

I dunno, if I were a miner and a bit less than scrupulous and I knew another miner was not upgraded, I might make sure to send transactions his way that would cause his blocks to be orphaned.
[doublepost=1485018725][/doublepost]

Would be great if someone like Konrad S Graf could do a nice rebuttal of this, to be shared.

It's a dangerous argument because it's so seductive. Why are so many faux libertarian and cypherpunks in favour of central planning?

I think many people fail to make the leap from "I want to be free" to "everyone should be free".
[doublepost=1485019325,1485018587][/doublepost]

They are too naive and inexperienced to understand that a market equilibrium will form, and they think their intervention is needed to preserve bitcoin and protect it.

Meet the new cypherboss, same as the old boss.

 

[AdrianX]

Reading the posts on r/bitcoin you get a feeling that the BS/Core narrative is heavily dependent on being supported by censorship.

There is so little critical analysis.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/5p5inu/segwit_the_swiftest_safe_path_forward_segwit/
[doublepost=1485022638][/doublepost]

TL/DR: non-upgraded miners are unlikely to have their blocks orphaned should segwit be activated.

I was lead to believe that this wouldn't be the case.

In order for segwit to remain effective it needs to maintain greater than 51% hash power.

If it ever fell below 51% all segwit transaction could become anyone can spend transactions on the Bitcoin network. So by forcing all miners to upgrade you make it impossible for that to happen. (That's necessary to call segwit bitcoin.)

Much like the soft fork for a 1MB limit can not be undermined because all miners who writer pre 1MB soft fork limited blocks will be orphaned. So to must segwit protect it's blocks from being orphaned by the Bitcoin network by forcing compulsory miner adoption.

 

[Richy_T]

But more than anything, I want you all to consider my proposal of using Bloomfilters as the default for every transaction. Explain why the idea is so stupid and has no place in bitcoin (It's a few posts above.)

I think there is definitely some optimization to be had there. Maxwell's comments on the supposed weak benefits of x-thin amply demonstrate that (it results in a much less than 50% saving? Well, the rest of the protocol must be a bit crappy then). Not sure if your solution is the correct one though. I need to get around to studying the source and actually doing some measurements (I don't completely trust Maxwell's claims anyway since he is such an inveterate liar)
[doublepost=1485024421,1485023809][/doublepost]

your argumentation doesn't take into account that a Hardfork takes the whole networks with it, while a Softfork adds an optional feature.

I think you're on to something here. There aren't really soft-forks at all. Just optional features. Just like encoding text or pictures in the blockchain is not a soft fork, it's just something you can do. Thus Segwit is an optional feature that utilizes Bitcoin (by sending coins to some limbo that Core hopes to control) and not really an upgrade to Bitcoin at all.

The only real way to upgrade Bitcoin is via a hard fork.
[doublepost=1485024743][/doublepost]

About 60% of nodes are segwit ready many of those nodes may be shells.

Has anyone looked at the IPs to see how likely this is? I'd imagine working with the class Cs would give a good idea.
[doublepost=1485024946][/doublepost]

@albin The cypherpunks have been waiting all their lives for a chance to fail as badly with digital cash as they failed with encrypted email.

The big problem with encrypted email is that everyone seems to want to bolt it on to an existing email client rather than wanting to build something that works from the ground up.

Edit: Didn't realize I had got so far behind. Sorry for the comment spam.

 

[awemany]

@Zangelbert Bingledack : My above argument against SW and 'fixing' malleability does indeed seem to poke a nerve. Have a look at this beating-around-the-bush response to it here.

 

[albin]

Buttcoin stumbles upon the truth!

https://www.reddit.com/r/Buttcoin/comments/5p74gj/rbitcoin_is_now_officially_the_new_hashtalk/

 

[AdrianX]

It's happening, mining heat is not going to waste. Chinese miners better find a use for that heat soon or they'll be less efficient.

https://news.bitcoin.com/south-florida-distillers-bitcoin/

I'm going to get me some of that.

I was also considering the viability of heating an industrial aquaponics Farm in Africa with mining heat.

 

[freetrader]

Argument by confidential information:

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

Of course it is, but you do not need to invalidate old tx format, just add a new one: the old one may coexists.

I'm not so sure of that: if it's incentivated to reduce the UTXO, in the long run every tx would be smaller since there would be less inputs to choose from.
Also, the size of the whole blockchain is not so important since most of it can be pruned, while it's the UTXO size is most important one, and that set must be all inside RAM to mine efficiently.

1. Really? I thought the advantage of SW as a HF was that you would finally solve the Malleability and Quadratic Hashing problem for ALL transactions. If you keep the old format, I think this shouldn't be the case

2. I'm not sure with this, but can't explain why. / Pruning: you still need to propagate the blocks / the transcactions and you need to do an initial sync. So I'm not sure if the UTXO is so important. Nodes can keep it on disk, and I don't see the problem when miners have to have 16-32 Gigabyte RAM in ten years.

After all, what I did not see untill yesterday someone mentioned on reddit: Favoring the use of more inputs and less outputs means favoring the violation of privacy, as the melting of inputs is the most important approach to blockchain surveillance.
[doublepost=1485093965][/doublepost]

To be honest I'm not convinced it will do anything to reduce utxo whatsoever, apart from maybe some outlier cases where people are unnecessarily creating extra outputs for no good reason. The reason is because the sender of a tx doesn't just arbitrarily decide what inputs he has and what outputs he needs to create to send money to the correct parties, and while there are behaviors that maybe could slightly streamline these figures, the pricing difference between inputs and outputs doesn't inherently create substitution, because they are literally the most logically extreme example of goods with no substitution effect. Unless there is some utility left on the table to consolidate outputs, eventually the bottleneck becomes the cost of outputs anyway, and the utxo-shrinking effect is no different than just higher costs across the board deterring usage.

Yes. You can imagine UTXO like coins and notes. And it is not the economic policy that decides which coins we use but the prices. Imo the size of the UTXO is fundamentally bound to the price of bitcoin and its distribution. If we had thousand people in the world using Bitcoin and Bitcoin was worth 1 Dollar, we for sure had a very low UTXO set, as there is only a limited scope to break all existing Bitcoins into fractions in a economically sensefull way. On the other side, if you have 1 Million people using Bitcoin and all Bitcoin in existence worth 100 billione dollar, you need a very large UTXO-set to use Bitcoin in an economically sensefull way.

So the idea alone, to regulate the creation of UTXO, is a central planner's hybris. That it comes in a package that adds a lot of other things makes it really hard to accept.
[doublepost=1485094039,1485093430][/doublepost]

@albin The cypherpunks have been waiting all their lives for a chance to fail as badly with digital cash as they failed with encrypted email.

Just want to say, as I'm trying to catch up: Great quote. Should be on a T-Shirt.
[doublepost=1485094668][/doublepost]

@lunar Western governments have spent about half a century using welfare and warfare to mix a bunch of incompatible cultures together and the only thing (barely) keeping a lid on the violence it is the ability to keep each culture sedated with handouts.

Sorry to say, but you have no clue of history. Multiculturalism is not an ideology, it is not good or bad, it has been standard in nearly every cultur of every epoche, maybe except ancient china / japan, both of which have been neither successfull nor peacefull nor harminic societies.

The roman emperium was a child of multiculturalism (greek people with their very different culture / religion) stranding in Italy, and it was in its basic constitution build on multiculti as it incorporated different people, different cities, different goods in its emperium and its laws.

The roman empire of german nation in the medieval century was a child of multiculturalism: barbaric people of middle / northern europe melting with italian people, the mix of tribalism with law, of magic worldviews with christianity, and so on.

The lovely spanish culture is a child of multiculturalism, of christians and muslims

And so on. It is not that it has been always easy, always without violence always harmonic. But it has always been. 500 years ago you would have find no city with more than 10,000 inhabitants where there have beeen no foreign people and no very different cultures mixes in one place. In a typical german city of 1600 you had germans, jews, italians, roma (sinthi), and the society as itself was structured horicontally so that every group itself had different sugroups with very different cultures.

I would go as far as to say that every progress in the history of humankind is based on some contact and mix of "incompatible cultures", while every degression of the state of human affairs, like the Nazis, the Chinese cultural revolution, the USA in 2017 and so on, has been a child off a projection of other problems on the co-existence of different cultures. The typical scheme, as can be seen today, is that many people are stupid, uneducated, lazy and in general unsatisfied with their live (because sex, relationships, sickness) but are not able to see this, so they need someone to project their anger, and this is mostly the foreign. Second part of the scheme is that there are leaders which take this hidden anger and frustration, pull it on minorities, enflame the hate, just to be in power.

 

[sickpig]

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

After thinking again about what @awemany wrote about the "malleability fix" I think it's really something to think about again, before allowing any change in that direction.

If I wanted to introduce a layer on top of Bitcoin, which resembled the current monetary system and (again) decoupled valuable items and paper money, I wouldn't introduce that system as "the FED 2.0". I would try to find something that "needs to be fixed", a "software bug". Coincidentally, that "fix" allows us to never touch the blockchain again with our transactions. Maybe that should be explored more and presented to the miners, the miners voting for SW might be cutting the branch they are sitting on.

The wording in the early Lightning presentations always made me puke a little, guys with no known contributions to Bitcoin come up with "Bitcoin doesn't scale, here we present you the fix". (And, I know it's been repeated often, the lightning whitepaper is not touching the central issue of Lightning, which makes me suspect, that the plan actually always was the centralized "Big hub - many connected clients" system.)
Find an alleged problem, present the solution, undermine the system. And it seems the endless repetitions of "malleability bug" worked, as the resistance against "layer 2" systems, which aim to undermine Bitcoins principle of PoW are actually seen as "ok" in all fractions.

The discussion has to be flipped around. Raise the blocksize, implement single hop payment channels for microtransactions, go back on track with the plan that existed from the beginning.
Now, in a situation, where Bitcoin works again, the LN guys can come again and present some calculations and scenarios. They should be the applicants for implementing a change. Not the ones who want to preserve the existing system.

And 1 MB Bitcoin is still better than SW. The amount of work that went into SW from the day it was announced, propaganda wise, is a huge red flag. It isn't about an "uncontentious" fix and different opinions about the favorised update process and/or priorities. It might very well be the try to change Bitcoin forever. In favour of BS investors.

Multiculturalism is not an ideology, it is not good or bad, it has been standard in nearly every cultur of every epoche, maybe except ancient china / japan, both of which have been neither successfull nor peacefull nor harminic societies.

That is not correct. Today it is an ideology. Multiculturalism was seen as a solution to undermine nationalism in parts of the left. There is a difference between the fact, that multiple cultures exist parallel in a society and the ideology which tries to artificially create a multicultural society.

And I strongly disagree with you, that China and Japan weren't or aren't successful and harmonic. Actually, modern Japan is a pretty good example for a successful culture without much diversity. And (I've never been there, so that's second hand knowledge) from what I've been told, the society is pretty peaceful over all.

I agree with you, that "multiculti" as "the contact between different cultures" has been the standard in the history of mankind. But there is a huge difference between contact and forced immigration. The Roman Empire integrated many different cultures, but whoever wanted to succeed in Roman politics and military played by the Roman rulebook. And cultures, that weren't compatible with the Roman Empire were simply annihilated. There wasn't a big immigration movement, where Germans replaced the existing Roman population (although Rome definitely was "a melting pot") and their rules. Different cultures lived under the protection of Rome, as long as their culture was no threat to Rome's power.

while every degression of the state of human affairs, like the Nazis, the Chinese cultural revolution, the USA in 2017 and so on, has been a child off a projection of other problems on the co-existence of different cultures.

First, I can't understand how one can put the "USA 2017", the Nazis and the cultural revolution into one category. That's just complete bullshit.
Second, you could make the reversed argument: Almost every war was the "contact" of different cultures.
The soviet union was as multi-cultural as it gets. No racism, no nothing. Still, Stalin (a Georgian) killed millions of people, without caring about their culture. I would put that in the same list as the 3rd Reich. If you want to find a common denominator for the Nazis and the communists in China and Russia, it would be atheism, collectivism and a strong government.
And if you talk about technological progress: Some of the most impressive engineering happened in Germany during world war 2. Without diversity meetings and all the other bullshit, people like to paint as necessary for success.

And in the last century, before the rise of China, I would argue, that one culture was the most successful: "White Christianity." If you like it or not, everywhere on the world, where there was progress, white Christians had the power.

About the "USA 2017": As of now I'm very happy with the results. If Donald Trump manages to reach half of his set goals, the USA healed a lot of inflamed wounds in their country. I was sceptic about his real leadership abilities (maybe a result of the propaganda on all MSM channels), but he seems to have his shit together.

I don't get why everybody is running around like headless chicken, fearing for "bad times to come". We all know very well, that for years, or better centuries, the western governments degraded. The deep state got deeper and deeper. Your tax payments now pay for gender study professors who want to prove, that your tax dollars are part of their oppression and that you should pay double if you are of race X and gender Y. The MSM got more and more integrated into the government and how they wanted stuff to be presented.
Now there is someone who actually seems to at least raise some questions. And people are all afraid. That's how elections should work. Something should happen.
The hypocrisy of the left is sad: Before Trump, the Nato and the CIA were the devil themselves. Now, when a "fucking white male" starts to question them, they are suddenly "very important" and "he is an idiot".

Maybe some politicians in Europa take notes and start to rethink, if their strategy of "bad white heterosexuals make everything bad" really helps them win elections. But if I look at Europe and the upcoming elections in France and Germany I don't really see that. They don't comprehend, what they are facing, the arrogance and ignorance is astonishing.

That doesn't mean, that everything Trump does or say is good. It can turn out either way in many fields. But I'm happy, that somebody stopped the "one way, no alternative" politics.
There are alternatives and there is hope, that the West has the chance to stop their governments and their "feel good democracy".

edit: Oh, and another point about Trump: People complain, that the US is now "divided". Guess what, it was divided before, but one part didn't flip out, when they didn't get their way for eight years. Because they had to work instead of flying for a one-day protest to Washington because somebody threatens their tax-paid privileges.

 

[Zarathustra]

Yes, multiculturalism is as old as civilization/patriarchy, and the war is the father of all (civilized/patronized) things. Anarchy was different. To live beyond dunbar's numbers - in a hypercollectivist environment - you need organized violence (church and state). That kind of human 'progress' (collectivism) always resulted in a collapse of the society. The next one with 500 nuclear reactors around the northern half of the planet, which no one will be able to cool anymore.

Show me the place
where the word became a man
Show me the place
where the suffering began (Leonard Cohen)


There is a crack in every thing - that's how the light gets in .... (Leonard Cohen)

 

[Christoph Bergmann]

That is not correct. Today it is an ideology. Multiculturalism was seen as a solution to undermine nationalism in parts of the left. There is a difference between the fact, that multiple cultures exist parallel in a society and the ideology which tries to artificially create a multicultural society.

Where is an "artificial creation" of a multicultural society? I don't see this. Nowhere.

And I strongly disagree with you, that China and Japan weren't or aren't successful and harmonic. Actually, modern Japan is a pretty good example for a successful culture without much diversity. And (I've never been there, so that's second hand knowledge) from what I've been told, the society is pretty peaceful over all.

The models of both ancient China as ancient Japan did not survice. With modern Japan however you make a point.

I agree with you, that "multiculti" as "the contact between different cultures" has been the standard in the history of mankind. But there is a huge difference between contact and forced immigration. The Roman Empire integrated many different cultures, but whoever wanted to succeed in Roman politics and military played by the Roman rulebook. And cultures, that weren't compatible with the Roman Empire were simply annihilated. There wasn't a big immigration movement, where Germans replaced the existing Roman population (although Rome definitely was "a melting pot") and their rules. Different cultures lived under the protection of Rome, as long as their culture was no threat to Rome's power.

Somehow, yes, I agree, to live in freedom and peace at the same place, different cultures need to play by the same set of rules. At least for some parts. But historically, the truth is that the Germans indeed migrated to rome, replaced the Roman population to some part and changed the rules.

WRT "replace the existing population" - this is a narrative spun by current rightist, which has nothing to do with the reality in Europe. If you mean this serious, I'm finished.

First, I can't understand how one can put the "USA 2017", the Nazis and the cultural revolution into one category. That's just complete bullshit.

Ok, this was more or less fun More about this later.

Second, you could make the reversed argument: Almost every war was the "contact" of different cultures.
The soviet union was as multi-cultural as it gets. No racism, no nothing. Still, Stalin (a Georgian) killed millions of people, without caring about their culture. I would put that in the same list as the 3rd Reich. If you want to find a common denominator for the Nazis and the communists in China and Russia, it would be atheism, collectivism and a strong government.

Yes, it are very difficult reasons, and it is absolutely true that you can't push it down on the cultural effects. I would rather argue that both Russia and German madness in early 20th century have been an attempt to make "the one culture", be it teutonic, be it communistic. So it is again the absence of multiculturalism in work ... but there are way more factors. One which is too often obverseen is imo the media ... every new media needs war and slaughters and madness and stupidity before society becomes able to deal with it. Books - civil wars in Europe; television / radio - Nazis and communists. Now the internet ...

And if you talk about technological progress: Some of the most impressive engineering happened in Germany during world war 2. Without diversity meetings and all the other bullshit, people like to paint as necessary for success.

Thank you! One of the reasons germans lost was because it kicked its most brillant scientists out of the country because they were rooted in another culture.

And in the last century, before the rise of China, I would argue, that one culture was the most successful: "White Christianity." If you like it or not, everywhere on the world, where there was progress, white Christians had the power.

Ok. And?

About the "USA 2017": As of now I'm very happy with the results. If Donald Trump manages to reach half of his set goals, the USA healed a lot of inflamed wounds in their country. I was sceptic about his real leadership abilities (maybe a result of the propaganda on all MSM channels), but he seems to have his shit together.

I'm not an American, I don't follow the US politics closely, but all that I know is that Trump is the GMaxwell of US-politics. He is openly lying, he says "bring back the jobs" while Obama reduced unemployment from 9 to 4 percent, and he declares war to the media for telling the truth about the numbers of visitors of his inauguration. There a clear pictures and hundreds of reports about a very low number of people, and what does his press boy say:: "It was the best visited inauguration ever. Period." Welcome 21th century truth. Not my thing, and no matter what he does, no matter what Hillary and so on does - this is a symptom of a broken society and a broken world.

I don't get why everybody is running around like headless chicken, fearing for "bad times to come". We all know very well, that for years, or better centuries, the western governments degraded. The deep state got deeper and deeper. Your tax payments now pay for gender study professors who want to prove, that your tax dollars are part of their oppression and that you should pay double if you are of race X and gender Y. The MSM got more and more integrated into the government and how they wanted stuff to be presented.

Everywhere the same narratives. This is really scary. You know, the world has so many problems, but what do people do? Spend so much time complaining that there are a handfull of paid people researching how words affect relationships between genders. There is so much corruption, so much waste of tax money, so much shit going an - and the people complain about gender studies. Sorry, this is another stupid rightist narrative to create senseless hate against intellectuals and to show how degenrate the world is. It is just a pitch for rightist egomanic hatedriven politic.

The same with media: Yes, media is broke, journalists have become brothers of the power, too often, but the reason is no moralic degenration, but an economy which has turned the monetary flow completely to the platforms and away from content-producers. And if you look at the alternatvies, breitbart or all these fucking rightwing hate driven conspiracy rapefugee troll shit, you should really be happy that there are still media with jouirnalists who learned how to write, how to check facts, and who should get some kind of media ethics in university courses.

I'm a journalist, I know so many journalists, many people I studied with and I think which are stupid and slimy and carrieristic get jobs at big media, because they are so. But they are so miuch better than the alternatives, than Putin's RT and so on.

The hypocrisy of the left is sad: Before Trump, the Nato and the CIA were the devil themselves. Now, when a "fucking white male" starts to question them, they are suddenly "very important" and "he is an idiot".

Maybe some politicians in Europa take notes and start to rethink, if their strategy of "bad white heterosexuals make everything bad" really helps them win elections. But if I look at Europe and the upcoming elections in France and Germany I don't really see that. They don't comprehend, what they are facing, the arrogance and ignorance is astonishing.

Another right wing narrative. White heterosexuals are still the dominating class in the west, they still rule the whole world expect of China and Japan, in Germany, 90 percent of employers still prefer white male heterosexuals against every other applicant, white male hetereosexuals still earn way more money than every other group of people, the write the code that rules the world, they are absolutely dominant in every board of every company and in every political party.

But some Putin fanboys who are caught be rightist narratives think that the white heterosexual male are discriminated. Why? Because there are attempts to eliminate the discrimation of every human not "white heterosexual male".

Finding nearly every incarnation of this kind of hateful rightist narrative in my favorite forum is disturbing

 

[Dusty]

1. Really? I thought the advantage of SW as a HF was that you would finally solve the Malleability and Quadratic Hashing problem for ALL transactions. If you keep the old format, I think this shouldn't be the case

I'm unable to understand your point: segwit as a SF leaves the old transaction format in place and hence it does not solve the quadratic hashing problem: it just ignores it for old transaction format like it has always been, but the problem is limited by the small size of the block. You do not suffer from that problem for segwit transactions, but you are not obliged to use them.

2. I'm not sure with this, but can't explain why. / Pruning: you still need to propagate the blocks / the transcactions and you need to do an initial sync. So I'm not sure if the UTXO is so important. Nodes can keep it on disk, and I don't see the problem when miners have to have 16-32 Gigabyte RAM in ten years.

Yes, you still need to propagate full blocks (or at least, all the transactions in them), but the big difference is the amount of prunable data, and the working set of data to download for the initial sync: if we would have UTXO commitment in the block header a new client could sync without having to download the whole blockchain but only the block headers and the UTXO set and from then on it gets everything that goes into new blocks.

The bigger the blocks (and hence the whole blockchain), the more having UTXO commitment in each block header is important, and I think this is why core decided to sidestep this in order to push their narrative of "small blocks for more decentralization".

 

[lunar]

Even within the same nominal race, people with opposite political views have measurable differences in their brain:

We were talking about this over a beer last night. Based around the concept that the language a person thinks in affects their world view. 'if you only have a hammer everything is a nail'.

For example If I want to tell you in English about a dinner with my friend, I may not have to mention their gender, but I do have to tell you something about the timing of the event. I have to decide whether we dined, have been dining, are dining, will be dining and so on. Whereas Chinese, (I have read) does not oblige its speakers to specify the exact time of the action, because the same verb form can be used for past, present or future actions. This does not mean that the Chinese are unable to understand the concept of time. But it does mean they are not obliged to think about timing whenever they describe an action. Obviously these structural differences channel the mind to be focused on of certain aspects of the world more than others. Habitual styles of thinking.

Amongst many other things language channels our mind to frame the perception of the world in variables that are not universal. Time, location, shape, position, memory and even colour are not unique frames of reference.

For example Germans instinctively ascribe feminine attributes to an object such as a bridge whereas the Spanish ascribe masculine ones, simply due to the specific gender of the definite article. Some languages don't even use the same point of reference for location "on the left" "behind" are dependent on the geography rather than the person/object as they are in english. How do you describe green to a person that has no word separation between green and blue?

As @Justus Ranvier points out, multiculturalism has many barriers that extend beyond even language to religion and politics that frame everything we do or say. Nevertheless I still believe these are dynamic and porous barriers that are not insurmountable.

Again my belief is that the internet and technologies like instant translation services are breaking these walls down at a rate of change comparable with the invention of the printing press.

Something to bare in mind when speaking to someone from a different tribe.

Interesting times.

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

Where is an "artificial creation" of a multicultural society? I don't see this. Nowhere.

Everywhere in the West. The creation of a multicultural society is an openly defined goal of many parties in Europe.

The models of both ancient China as ancient Japan did not survice. With modern Japan however you make a point.

Neither did Rome's multicultural society. No society or system lives forever.

every new media needs war and slaughters and madness and stupidity before society becomes able to deal with it. Books - civil wars in Europe; television / radio - Nazis and communists. Now the internet ...

Interesting thought, but I think that's mostly coincidence, not a cause. Television and radio weren't a factor in the Russian revolution. Of course, the Nazis used any tool they could, which included the mass media.

I find it much more likely, that Communism and Nazism filled a spiritual void, left by the vanishing influence of the church. Add an existence of a working class, that didn't own land, to that and I think that explains a lot. (That's more in regards to Germany, not so much the Russian situation.)

Thank you! One of the reasons germans lost was because it kicked its most brillant scientists out of the country because they were rooted in another culture.

I doubt that that played a huge role. Apart from that, yes you have a point. The USA definitely had an advantage because they collected a lot of brilliant people from different backgrounds. And "Arian physics" certainly didn't help the Germans.

Ok. And?

It wasn't "multicultural societies". It was the "western culture" (which already is a broad term), which successfully included some minorities and foreign cultures. But there was a clear, leading culture. No chaos of cultures.

He is openly lying, he says "bring back the jobs" while Obama reduced unemployment from 9 to 4 percent,

http://money.cnn.com/2016/02/06/news/economy/obama-us-jobs/

(Certainly not part of a Trump friendly media.)

There a clear pictures and hundreds of reports about a very low number of people, and what does his press boy say:: "It was the best visited inauguration ever. Period."

That's just gossip. I don't give a fuck if there were 10 or 10 million people. That's just completely uninteresting.

Spend so much time complaining that there are a handfull of paid people researching how words affect relationships between genders.

It is sweet, that you think that. And actually you show exactly what the problem is. People are fed up, that these few people "who just study" shove their opinions into every part of society. Companies are forced to create diversity reports etc. And apart from this stuff not being in any way scientific (there is a great documentary about this bullshit in Norway on YT, which led to the closing of a tax funded gender studies center), it is politically motivated propaganda.

against intellectuals

It is a disgrace for real intellectuals. Actually I find the state of the arts at universities very sad. There were great philosophers and I hate the "everybody must study MINT" mindset.
But the fine arts castrated themselves by allowing these bullies with their retarded bullshit to be their voice.

The same with media: Yes, media is broke, journalists have become brothers of the power, too often, but the reason is no moralic degenration, but an economy which has turned the monetary flow completely to the platforms and away from content-producers. And if you look at the alternatvies, breitbart or all these fucking rightwing hate driven conspiracy rapefugee troll shit, you should really be happy that there are still media with jouirnalists who learned how to write, how to check facts, and who should get some kind of media ethics in university courses.

Actually I find Breitbart to be as good or bad as the rest of the media. The same with Russia Today. There are facts, that aren't reported by the rest of the media, that are now reported by these outlets. They lie as much as the others, so what? Because they are against the mindset of a certain elite, the lying is suddenly wrong? Btw, the journalists at Breitbart and RT also went to universities and learned how to check facts and write.

But they are so miuch better than the alternatives

Name one.

White heterosexuals are still the dominating class in the west

White heterosexuals aren't a class. That's the funny thing. The left is actually the racist side. They divide people in regards to their gender and their race.
Tell a homeless white heterosexual, that he can be happy to be part of the dominating class.

they still rule the whole world

Complete bullshit. A few white men might rule the world. But not "the white men".

How would you like it if I showed you, that Jews are highly over represented in higher paid jobs and in positions of decision makers? Would you write "Jews are the dominating class in the West"?
But I don't think that people should blame Jewish people for their success, like the left likes to blame white men. They should try to understand, why a minority managed to bring up so many successful people, what they did right.

in Germany, 90 percent of employers still prefer white male heterosexuals against every other applicant,

No idea who made that survey. But here they cited a survey from the US:
http://www.zeit.de/2014/23/muetterquote-managerin-familie/seite-2
Childless women had the best chance to get a job. AFAIR there was a investigation about VC money for startups in the US and women had it way easier to get funded.

And, btw. I've never in my life been asked whether I'm homo- or heterosexual..

From an economic perspective, if you apply your sexist and racist qualifiers on people, I would argue, that white women in the West overall have the highest standard of life. Every statistic supports that, life expectancy, poverty, homelessness, experience of violence...

And because you like to talk about the truth and the media: The media tries for years now to push their lie of the "gender pay gap". There is no gender pay gap, it is a complete fabrication, debunked a million times. And still, it's repeated. On large display at a failed presidency run by a fucked up alcoholic warmonger.

Because there are attempts to eliminate the discrimation of every human not "white heterosexual male".

See, that's the point. There is no discrimination against any human in the western world except for white and Asian men. Find me one law, that discriminates women or black people. On the other hand, if you try to get into some colleges in the US as a white male or, worse, as an Asian male, you have to do way better than your black fellow students.
Explain that to an 18 year old with Asian parents: "Yeah you're in the top of your class and your friend has worse grades. But because you have the wrong color of skin, we will allow him to attend our college and not you."
Again, who the fuck is racist here?

And if you have a women's quota you are discriminating against men. You favor worse qualified women to fill a position because of their sex.
Who the fuck is sexist here?

Finding nearly every incarnation of this kind of hateful rightist narrative in my favorite forum is disturbing

Well, that's another point. The wording "hateful rightist narrative" isn't enough any more.
Claims of the other side being "sexist, racist, **ist" don't work so well any more. And that's something that, granted, arrogant, people like Trump managed to do. The left destroyed every attempt to have any discussion what so ever. Apparently you need to have a very strong "Fuck you" mindset to survive this mob.

Don't find it disturbing. Try to think about some of the facts. And don't be so fearful, you're not an idiot. I guess you understood, that something went very wrong in the last years. And that it's not just "putin fanboys" that try to hinder progress, peace and prosperity.

I don't have a problem to have discussions with about anybody from the political spectrum, even if I find the positions disgusting. I had discussions with communists, far right people and everything in between. Sadly, from my personal experience, people who have any connections to the media and/or have a fine arts degree, often tend to be the ones who aren't open to discussion with anybody outside their filter bubble. And the large scale seems to support my
observation. Say one wrong word and they set their mind to "danger mode" and just start yelling these "*ists" words.

But, again, your reaction sadly is the same the media and politicians have. And that's why they don't find a way to stop Le Pen etc. They just live in their filter bubble and they never step outside.

edit: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/C2ttv2IXUAA-88n.jpg:large

 

[satoshis_sockpuppet]

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

Ok, that's all very much offtopic, even for this thread.

Bitcoin related again:

So, I asked myself, does anywhere out there exist some kind of collection of arguments for/against BS rise, SW and LN?
I think it's tiring to repeat the same stuff over and over and you forget a lot of stuff in the storm of misinformation and propaganda.
If not, I guess it's time to start something like that? BS ramped up their SW propaganda lately.

 

[awemany]

The bigger the blocks (and hence the whole blockchain), the more having UTXO commitment in each block header is important, and I think this is why core decided to sidestep this in order to push their narrative of "small blocks for more decentralization".

So much this. Why is it that in the last three years, we have seen lots of efforts for off-chain stuff, and potentially quite dangerous off-chain stuff at that (and, yes I am now getting more and more firmly against 'fixing' malleability until we have a clear path forward on open-ended blocksize and a clear picture on what we would gain/lose by 'fixing' it). Whereas nothing on the comparatively simple UTXO commitment front?

Ok, Ptodd and Mr Bittorrent are discussing that on the ML. At least I have seen that. So the idea is out there.

But UTXO commitments should be a priority.

Oh, I also must say that I welcome Jorge Timon (jtimon is his reddit handle, correct?) at least starting to ask what could be done about Segwit to let it pass. This shows a) that we're a force now that is being taken serious by them and b) Blockstream might have learned to take the propaganda job away from Greg.

I am still very reluctant regarding 'fixing' malleability and SegWit, but at least it is good that he seems to appear to be more willing to talk.

With Greg, there were moments where it seemed like he wanted to talk/discuss/bargain , but he always pulled back from that in the last moment.

I am willing to entertain the idea that Jorge Timon is a more reasonable guy.

 

[Bagatell]

Am I wrong in thinking that UTXOs are most used by offchain services - Factom, Counterparty etc.?

 

[Dusty]

UTXO is used for everything: it's the relevant data of the blockchain.
Sll the rest is useful mostly for historical purposes and to prove that the actual UTXO set is the correct one.