On periphery and the peripheral. Ephemerides are also mentioned.
* Now talking on #bitcoin-assets
herbijudlestoids mircea_popescu: thoughts on the freenet distributed WoT?
mircea_popescu Which one is this ?
herbijudlestoids https://wiki.freenetproject.org/Web_of_Trust
ozbot Web of Trust - Freenet Wiki
ThickAsThieves What I want is basically like a openID or sign in with Facebook kinda thing but as a WoT.
mircea_popescu AFAIK nanotube was working on something like this since about 2012. Is this his ?
herbijudlestoids Nope.
mircea_popescu Then shrug. People before tech.i
herbijudlestoids Well maybe but I dun think so.
mircea_popescu (Reason I hilited him is cause eventually once he gets through the logs he can tell me lol)
herbijudlestoids ThickAsThieves: seems like "invictus" is pushing keyhotee pretty hard for this, blockchain based.
ThickAsThieves Keyhotee will fail. The name is horrible.
mircea_popescu O this is that ancient thing that never went nowhere.ii
herbijudlestoids Sounds like there is some room there for something.
ThickAsThieves Oh he also made bitshares. For "Many alt-companies with creative profit models."iii
herbijudlestoids But firstlyiv, how do you convince people to adopt it?
ThickAsThieves You wrap it into bitcoin services, appify it, I dunno.
mircea_popescu Lel.
herbijudlestoids For example, if everyone in -otc continues to use the centralised version, because they dont want to lose their existing rep, then what
mircea_popescu herbijudlestoids I will continue to use otc, because I do not use solutions of nobodies. This is the end of any other attempt, full stop. In order to become somebody you become somebody, the steps are laid out. THEN you go about making things. This BS where 20something dork "comes up" with some sort of "revolutionary" thing and everyone cares is not unlike manga.v
herbijudlestoids Just in the hypothetical that a somebody made something good.
mircea_popescu Not only it never happens, it never should happen and by god I'm here to ensure it never does. "Nobody" definitely didn't make something good. He made something that looks good to idiots.
herbijudlestoids Teehee.
mircea_popescu I tell ye. There's more to "good" than meets the eye. It's just that you're new here and haven't gone through the training process.vi
herbijudlestoids Let's just say that you made a nice distributed WoT.
mircea_popescu You did not.
ThickAsThieves You, not you.
Vexual Say what?
mircea_popescu ThickAsThieves lol.
herbijudlestoids *You*, MP, not you as in the hypothetical you.
mircea_popescu But it's absurd, I don't code.
ThickAsThieves Maybe you paid some other somebody to do it.
mircea_popescu The very proposition belies fundamental ignorance of the entire thing, which is why I object.
herbijudlestoids Godanget, I dunno, somebody who you dont think is a retard.
mircea_popescu Okay. So you mean "someone in your WoT".
herbijudlestoids So let's say that make it and it's good.
mircea_popescu Okay.
herbijudlestoids Now how do you drive teh adoptionz.
Vexual MP is very adverse to starting with 0.
mircea_popescu That'd be something I can't explain to you. But compare and contrast (by which I mean meditate upon) the alt coin with max keiser's alt coin and you'll perhaps... you'll come to something.
herbijudlestoids I'm too retarded?
Vexual Never too retarded, might have to reword the question.
mircea_popescu No, it's not intelligence you lack, it's the experience that'd inform that intelligence.
ThickAsThieves Well I was gonna say, why is driving adoption so integral to the goal. Make it because it's worth being made.
mircea_popescu Why. Because people today grow up in this echo chamber. "You guise think drugs are cool rite ? Cause there's these bath salts here..."vii
herbijudlestoids Well if the inertiaviii of the existing system means nobody uses it, then it fails at its fundamental goal of being a distributed WoT that derives its value from having lots of credible ratings.ix
mircea_popescu Your fundamental presumption is that everyone is at all times in the position to make anything. This is false. The declaration of love that sunk Cleopatra is not something every Roman citizen could have made any time they felt like it. Only Caesar and Antony, and only at proper times. Most of the possibility of the world is locked away from most people most of the time.x
ThickAsThieves What if you let people port trust, and they get a note on their account. Trust History from OTC WoT.
herbijudlestoids I was thinking of something like that, maybe you can model existing WoTs as nodes in the graph.
ThickAsThieves Maybe our wot supports WoTs.
herbijudlestoids Ok well in that case its horizontally compatible and doesnt depend on any adoption, in fact would be quite useful in case for example catastrophe strikes the existing WoT server it might be stored on someone else's computer.
mircea_popescu I have a copy of the current WoT. So can you. It uses the MPEx "make your own backups if you're worried" model.
herbijudlestoids Do you just wget the viewratings.php?
mircea_popescu Nono, look in the wiki there's a link to backups.
herbijudlestoids Ah ok thx. So you just cron those or something.
mircea_popescu Within reason.
Vexual How does a Cardano make MPEx better?
mircea_popescu I have no idea. The disadvantage of making tools for a reason rather than towards a purposexi is that it's really up to the users to figure out how to wring all the utility out of them. Linus really had no idea what Linux is good for.
ThickAsThieves So it's a WoT of WoTs then. Maybe each WoT chain comes with its own level of trust too.
herbijudlestoids Ok so the existing server eats shit somehow, and you have your backup, someone wants to sell you 50 BTC and they screw you somehow, you want to let others know by giving that person a negative rating but you can't. You have to fire up mpwot.com and convince people to use it.
mircea_popescu Wait wait. Who says I'm trading without a WoT ?
herbijudlestoids So the WoT goes down and liquidity vanishes?
mircea_popescu Liquidity in the periphery. This is how financial networks work : when standardisation goes down the periphery eats it.
herbijudlestoids Right, I guess you don't need the WoT for everyone. Just people you don't already know.
mircea_popescu Which incidentally shows you a different path into why the periphery can not be the standardisation driver. Which is exactly homologuous to what I said earlier.
herbijudlestoids Teehee you said homo.
ThickAsThieves So what you're saying is, the best way to model reputation systems, is like how they work IRL?! :)
Vexual :)
mircea_popescu Lol.
Vexual Welcome to Earth herbi.
herbijudlestoids Anyone know if the existing WoT software is open source?
mircea_popescu It is.
herbijudlestoids Sounds like all it needs is an extra piece of functionality, so each WoT node can talk to other WoT nodes and rate them.
mircea_popescu It has that already. Write an irc bot. Talk to gribble.
herbijudlestoids So ThickAsThieves what's missing? Sounds like functionality is there.
ThickAsThieves CSS. As usual.
mircea_popescu Nothing is missing lol. What the fuck, are we stupid or something ? Been using this thing for years, I promote it as the solution, something's missing ? Cause why.
herbijudlestoids He was saying just before you came in that he wanted a distributedier WoT. I just assumed the functionality wasn't there.
mircea_popescu Yeah well.xii
ThickAsThieves So why don't I use WoT to log into things?
mircea_popescu Because things suck.
Vexual Coz your house aint smart.
mircea_popescu Takes all of five minutes to steal gribble id code. Meanwhile all the fuckwitted UK people employed at the business of pretending to be women and pretending to be famous and important and into tech spend all their time making retarded websites encouraging little boys to waste their life similarly. Because then if there are many idiots in the same boat it wouldn't have been a waste.xiii And I think exactly the same of Friedcat and co, too. When I say it's a sad story this is what I mean.
herbijudlestoids So really what you want, ThickAsThieves is a REST API. So that people can query whichever shits they want in web services?
ThickAsThieves MP! Youre gonna love this! qz.com/174757/bitcoin-company-offers-stock-denominated-in-bitcoin/
ozbot Bitcoin company offers stock denominated in bitcoin – Quartz
mircea_popescu Lol derp.
ThickAsThieves From your friends at quartz!
mircea_popescu Actually from the same fuckwit. This is what we're reduced to : I tell him on twitter to get over himself, he's no longer in highschool. He proceeds to try and prove to the world that no, I am wrong. Indeed he is in highschool.xiv
ThickAsThieves "Eventually Bitcoin Kinetics will become a Decentralized Autonomous Organization run completely by smart contractsxv, 3D printers & shipping centers, making it run on its own."
mircea_popescu Welcome to 2011, we needed GLBSE.
ThickAsThieves Decentralized Autonomous Organization. WTF.
mircea_popescu They mean "mpex" and don't know how to say it. Seeing how this has been going on for years already.xvi
ThickAsThieves Why did they just like, throw in 3D printers into that statement. WTF.
herbijudlestoids HAHA. 3d printers. Teh futyah.
mircea_popescu Because words. This is what the periphery does : words. They wanna be just like NYC. They can't be trusted with defining what being NYC actually means, but they can be trusted to implement a very broken, ridiculous version of what they heard it may be like.
ThickAsThieves Xerox should take over 3d printer market while they can. Start selling as necessary to business.
mircea_popescu They can't. The 3d printer market is composed of no market.
ThickAsThieves But business!
Vexual When thers a 3d pixma ill but it.
herbijudlestoids Seems quite useful for prosthetics and things like that.
mircea_popescu Yeah but it's more the hopes and aspirations of a bunch of nuts and the creative effort of some geeks. Too meristemxvii-y for business yet.
wao-ender I think 3d printer market is already divided. Bigger part is owned by Stratasys.
mircea_popescu The trick in this discussion is the hidden axiom that "a bunch of people buying and selling isn't necessarily a market".
wao-ender Ah, I didn't read whole discussion, sry.
ThickAsThieves Yknow it really would suit Xerox though.
mircea_popescu Maybe, on the hardware part of things, but in general concepts pose the larger problem. If they did try to take it they may end up doing something idiotic, like I dunno, spending all their money on facebook ads. Cause of conceptual confusion engendered by the "market".xviii
ThickAsThieves Also Xerox has spent a long time becoming a sales and repair company. New tech not so much.
mircea_popescu Exactly. Cost more to explain to xerox employees wtf this is supposed to be than to just make a new Xerox.
- This, incidentally, appears to be a rarely held view among engineers even if it happens to be correct. The reason it appears to be rarely held is the deluge of nobodies among the actual engineers, skewing the base meaninglessly towards meaninglessness. Otherwise the actually qualified and competent people who actually do useful things are in agreement on the point.
The conceptual driver for it is a confusion between the scientific worldview (which holds that it matters little who makes a verifiable or falsifiable claim, and it matters a lot to either verify or falsify it) and engineering (which is NOT a scientific endeavour). The practical driver for it is the self-interest of the nobodies on the pro side (who spend the entirety of their resources on misrepresenting their actual status and generally confounding the limits between them and the genuine article) and the complacency of the actual engineers on the absent counter side (who, obviously, have better things to do than put nobodies in their place, as explained in the link), all this occuring on the sad backdrop of a complete abandonment of its role by management and authority. [↩]
- 2001. Yeah I got people helping me. Thank you, people helping me! [↩]
- Name one company out there with an actual "model", explain what a "profit model" is, compare and contrast with business model. Be explicit. Use examples.
Isn't it a sad day when the hapless word "creative" is strewn about simply to cover for the author's complete lack of anything in the head, including the vaguest hint of intelligence, spitirual life, medium schooling ?
Isn't it an even sadder day when you realise that the absolutely only venue where the cerebrally vacuous would encounter a plain statement of their cerebral vacuity would be Trilema ? The fucking point of school is to tell children exactly how stupid they are and why precisely. Nobody is doing schooling in the English language since at least three decades past, do they ? [↩]
- Firstly, you see ? Firstly, how you convince the girls you're a Casanova riding two stallions. Then, how you lose your virginity. In that order.
Why ? Because no schooling anymore, that's why. [↩]
- In that it is refulation and wish fulfillment on his part, ie, daydreaming. It has no relation to reality whatsoever. Yes, even if some relations could occasionally be misrepresented as having been observed. That's purely an artefact of broken observation.
If you're fluent in Romanian you might appreciate the older MGM/HB article. If not, you'll have to do your own research : see who and what Fred Quimby was, and how did the animation studio do with and without him. [↩]
- By which I mean that process which takes one from 200 to 20 Bitcoin. Again and again and again and again, until one finally fucking learns : there is more to "good" than meets the eye. Especially so if we're discussing the eye of the blind. [↩]
- This of course in reference to our discussion of pornography the other day. [↩]
- Stop calling it that. Every revolutionary kid with his head full of stupid imagines the structure of the world protecting him from hurting himself is "inertia", which in his feeble brain is nothing short of the worst despise-word there is.
It's not "inertia", it's that thing that keeps you on the road, and the building by the parking lot and so on and so forth. Learn to love it for you have no other mother than this "inertia". [↩]
- Worst.Fundamental.Goal.Definition.Ever. WFGDE! [↩]
- And this is a motherfucking good thing, too! [↩]
- This is a big fucking deal. The write-up is, of course, an ancient article in Romanian. [↩]
- In fact there's even automated ratings put in there back in 2011, by machines identifying them as such. Check the backups. [↩]
- Yes, that Kate/Craig Wood imbecile really got my goat. Here's a newsflash, Craig : You, personally, deliberately, substantivelly ARE EVIL. You are what evil is. Not because you're too fucking stupid to manage to come to terms with the fact that you are a boy, but because you're such a sniveling cur you will readily abuse children to feed your own fucking insecurities you despicable, miserable piece of utter shit.
All children are insecure about their sexual identity. ALL OF THEM. It's part and parcel of being a child, and it resolves into adulthood. Provided, of course, that child molesters like Craig Wood don't get at the kid first, to rape him with a spiked baseball bat. Because if child molesters like Craig Wood do get at the kid first, and rape it with a spiked baseball bat, then there's nothing there in that bloodied, pulpy mess to develop into adulthood anymore. And child molesters like Craig Wood can be happy because look, he's not the only fuckwit that couldn't resolve to maturity! Look at all the other kids he's raped, that also can't! He's okay now! Leaving aside the part that had Craig Wood not raped a bunch of kids, those kids would not have become trapped in the same prison Craig Wood CHOSE to trap himself in.
Shame on you, Craig Wood, for being a sniveling, despicable, miserable piece of utter shit that rapes little boys with a spiked baseball bat. I hope you die in a similar manner. [↩]
- Dude, I totally care that ZeroHedge runs badly researched pieces of crap. It does so very much to hurt the market leader and so very little to ruin what little credibility the reporting venue was struggling to gain in the first place... [↩]
- For the difference between self-enforcing contracts and smartness, see A deal can be anything. [↩]
- If you're not the sort that reads and understands contracts, you could be served by simple text :
With the advent of Bitcoin the last rope grounding Internet to Real World, ie bank accounts has been severed. From here on there’s absolutely no need for an Internet something to be “based” anywhere.
So, unless somewhere that wants an Internet something to be based there makes an excellent offer, that Internet something just… isn’t based anywhere.
Taking bids. They’d better be very good.
And since we're on the topic of "smart contracts" : the reason the intellectual leader of this space has not said a word about "smart contracts" is not that the intellectual leader of this space happens to just have never heard about them and desperately needs some peripheral lamers to fix this oversight, nor is it that he just is too fucking stupid to even understand what they are and needs you to know better than him.
Instead, it's because much in the manner of the failed-revived-failed again-revived again colored coins nonsense, the intellectual leader has reviewed the thing and judged - correctly! - they're uninteresting. You are not, on the strength of your mere existence as self-proclaimed "rational agents" at liberty to either doubt that corectness or proceed in ignorance of it. You're rationally required to proceed towards understanding why exactly that is, and the path to this understanding does not consist of passive-aggressive "oh, I will just pretend like the world doesn't exist on my bullshit page nobody cares about, maybe MP gets riled and forces sense into me". MP really doesn't give a shit, MP is not your mom and dad, if you go cutting or drop out of school or snort the wall paint off three quarters of the house he may make a blogpost laughing at you but that's pretty much all. Outside of your economic value as a comedy goldmine MP couldn't care less. [↩]
- This is the part of a plant where growth takes place. Completely different from the entire rest of the plant, in that it's quite undifferentiated. [↩]
- This is the part of the entire discussion which is perhaps the most opaque, on the grounds of me not doing a very good job of compressing what I mean in a few words. So let's go into detail :
In box A we have a group of twenty teenagers which all lied to their parents about various school activities over the weekend, and organised a weekend outing on a riverside, together. For the purpose of bathing in the sun and water nude, having sex, smoking pot, grooming, chatting, building and playing with their social hierarchy, generally having fun and hanging out. In box B we have a group of twenty teenagers which are stuck in a barracks somewhere in a jungle, polishing rifles. In box C we have a group of twenty teenagers who just so happen to be both colored and illiterate, trying to support their families through the use of rocks at convenient angles and velocities in the savannah. There is no running water. In box D we have a group of twenty teenagers who are all virgins, wash obsessively, have never been outside the eye of a coupla watchful adults, have no friends - in a word they're rich.
Now, in which of these groups is there a market for sex ?
Obviously in box A the market, if it exists, would be purely command economy. The politbureau, whatever it may be, orders around the roles for everyone in a large sexual play which involves everyone, and whether this command economy implements leninist socialism or hitlerist socialism will depend more on the testosterone/estrogen balance than anything else. Meanwhile in box B the economy, if it exists, will be purely crisis. Any seller is on the surface in a monopolistic position, able to extract any price she wants, unless she pushes this too far and ends up gangbanged and then killed. And then the cycle restarts. All this while in box C the economy is also pure crisis, but of the other kind : it'd be best for all involved if there wasn't all that much sex going on, hence bizarre religious beliefs to give practical impetuus to this otherwise abstract observation. So the girls get their clitorises cut off and all that nice stuff. Whereas in box D... if there's a market, the elaborate confusion driving some of the participants makes the results improbable. You think those kids are getting much done if they somehow (how ?!) end up in a massage parlour where the girls also turn tricks on the side ? Myeah.
So there you have it : while a deal can be anything, not anything is "a market" for any definition of market you may be happening to hold. And since the exact meaning, ie, ulterior implications of something "being a market" strictly depend on what exactly the definition was, well... you're stuck. The word "market" being so stretchy is exactly how groups like Xerox end up in trouble if they try to get involved in "markets" they don't understand. Time Warner's famous Myspace failure is an excellent example of exactly this, and I should hope nobody feels the need to throw away another billion dollars on re-learning this well documented lesson. [↩]
