Continut platit no more.

Wednesday, 23 December, Year 7 d.Tr. | Author: Mircea Popescu

Well over five years agoi, when Trilema introduced something not yet seen on the Internetsii, the very notion caused a splashiii. It was unthinkable! Impossible! Nonsensical! I must be crazy! And not understand how the world works! Etc!

A year later, The New York Times copied the modeliv. Before that, the survivors of the .ro media wars lined up to bid for my sales datav. Clearly, it was I that didn't understand etc.vi

It was a pretty decent ride - the widely known Bitcoin addressvii collected a rather reasonable 247.78241666 BTC, worth ~108`365.162102084 USD at today's open market rateviii which is, ironically, more than what anyone ever made out of selling content online in this intervalix, not to mention just about enough to buy a house pretty much anywhere in the world. A house pre furnished and with women included in most parts of the world, actually.

Nevertheless, both my circumstances and circumstances in general have changed significatly since that fateful 2010 Summer. For one thing, what's sensible for a tiny exotic market like Romania is not necessarily sensible for a large and fragmented market such as the billion or so English speakersx. For another thing, I'm worth a cool billion now, give or take, which is roughly speaking a billion more than I was worth in 2010. Not that I was ever poor, but millions and billions aren't really the same thing - the guy with a roll worth a grand is not as likely to pick up a nickle as the minimum wage waiter, which is how tipping works in the first place. This says nothing of the value of a penny, earned or saved, but it does say something about laziness and the human nature.

For yet another thing, the sort of content I publish has changed markedlyxi, and that means the marketing thereof ought to probably also change, whether one's stubborn or not. Lastly - for many years buying Trilema credits was the only economical activity in Bitcoinxii, but now that Eulora exists and it's doing so very well, that consideration significantly pales in importance.

Not exactly for these reasons, but for very good causes that lie at the root of them, Trilema will henceforth be freely accessible.xiii No more paid content.

The only losers in this move are, of course, the 2nd echelon of content producers - the people who aren't nearly good enough to pen their own Trilema, but nevertheless find themselves in the unenviable position where producing content is still the best relative use of their time. Apparently the universe really hates anyone coming second, because look how it works : the guy coming out first doesn't actually need to get paid, and nobody can rationally compete with free. This, incidentally, is how we get power laws, always and everywhere the enemies of quality of all kinds - from quality of product to quality of life.

I am sorry to contribute to that rampant problem. Nevertheless, weighing all considerations together it... well to be frank, it comes out second. What can you do ?

Enjoy, I guess.

A, ps : if you would like to donate, donate to The Most Serene Republic.

———
  1. Holy shit, I'm that old, am I ?! []
  2. No, this wouldn't be the first time Trilema did something like that.

    For instance, have you ever wondered why it was that wikileaks finally decided to publish the cables ? They were going to do the usual "sit on the goodies and work them over with the Guardian" routine they do, except an "unknown" Romanian blogger decided to publish a subsection. Sixteen hours later they caved and published.

    Oh, you've never heard of this incident ? Too bad. What else have you never heard of ? []

  3. The article in question clocks over 300 comments, for instance. []
  4. Poorly.

    The way Trilema's paid content implementation worked was that new users could read articles, up to five a week ; past that they had to pay. Literally, had to, the server delivered a notice and nothing else.

    The way the NYT butchery worked was that you were served the content with a css overlay, that you were more than welcome to ignore. Technology is hard, especially for the sort of incompetent nitwits that find their life's work inside a corporation. []

  5. The winner's still undisclosed, mind you. []
  6. In fairness, these were very special times, the detailed characteristics of which might make the topic of paid consultancy work, except I'm not really in that market since Bitcoin. Suffice it to say that post dot-com bubble the actors were confronted with the uneasy choice of either doubling down on the "online advertising" scam ; or else trying to somehow patch up the "UGC is worth money" scam that had just blown up ; or come up with a genuine business model. They toyed briefly with answer c), discovered it's really not that easy (in the sense that MP can do it, but that doesn't help the mediocre horde one wit) so went all in a) with hysterical results (what's CTR by now, 0.000001% ? oh I know, you're on the third generation of falsified metrics, nice, well done, keep going) and are just about ready to pretend like 2001 was too long ago for anyone to still remember anything and therefore b) is ready for another spin. []
  7. 16crkmdoaK6Tq8NP3FVK7Uxq5Dwdicb3c3 []
  8. Not that anyone's selling, nor would anyone sell on the open market - you really gotta suck a lot of cock to get the chance to buy a little coin these days. []
  9. Oh, you don't think so ? Ask David Thorne. []
  10. Hey, did you know most English speakers aren't white ? In fact, there's more people speaking English in China than there are in the United States. []
  11. Trilema started off as the erudite work of a fellow deeply disinterested in the actual workings of the world. Today I'm anything but, Bitcoin's rekindled my passionate desire to kill people, something that had been laying dormant in silent peace since my youth. []
  12. This is a fact.

    Paying BTC to someone in exchange for some socks he bought with fiat, or paying BTC to someone in lieu of rent when that someone has to turn around and pay expenses of all sorts in fiat is no sort of "Bitcoin economy", not anymore than derping around on social media is some sort of "new economy". At the end of the day you still have to, have to find some way to convert those to fiat and pay your rent, which means you're dicking around.

    Trilema credits on the other hand were the first, and for a long time the only, and for a slightly shorter time the most notable Bitcoin economic activity. Mind that if what you think is something along the lines of "this isn't much", all you're doing is commenting on how little Bitcoin had on its side early on, and no more. There isn't an avenue available through which you might talk fiat parasites on Bitcoin into some sort of relevancy, for the exact same reasons you can't parlay "companies" that outsource their economic activity abroad into economic agents. []

  13. This measure does not in any way change my rights in the work (discussed, today as always, in the attached Copyright Notice). It has no legal effect whatsoever, but it does have the practical effect that you can read even if you're poor (and consequently shouldn't be reading). []
Category: Meta psihoza
Comments feed : RSS 2.0. Leave your own comment below, or send a trackback.

8 Responses

  1. This is the sole flaw in Bitcoin; a man can be a billionaire in it, yet still be under the control of the consensus of others for the form/function of his money. If this were not the case, Bitcoin would be perfect, and totally unassailable.

  2. @Irdial Well, there is a butt in the header image...

  3. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    3
    Mircea Popescu 
    Wednesday, 23 December 2015

    @Irdial Money is necessarily a consensus function. In fact that's the only sane definition of money : "the consensus function of value".

    I am not persuaded this is a flaw. One could very similarly claim the same about sexuality, "this is the sole flaw of cunt, a woman can have the best cunt in the world yet still be under the control of the consensus of others as to its usage". Well... of course. That's the fucking point of the cunt in the first place, it gets you to meet people so to speak.

    Bear in mind that without forced interaction, there's no such thing as interaction in the first place. By definition, again, because that's precisely what force is : the measure (not "a" measure, but THE measure) of interaction.

    Note also that the only unassailable thing in this world is boredom. To put this very complex consideration in readily digestible terms : I do keep women, but this doesn't mean they couldn't leave. They could. What'd I do, chain everyone to a wall so that they actually CAN'T leave, and then spend my life with a bunch of women that spent their life chained to a wall ?

    The secret nobody wants to share about security is that security is a psychotic delusion, just like any other psychotic delusion. It doesn't exist in the world. Attempts to enact it in the world result without exception in very broken things, and as security is usually referencing things you care about, its always-failed implementation will necessarily break the very things you care about.

    The more traditional statement of this problem is the Catholic doctrine of the impossibility of salvation without the possibility of sin. It's really the same thing : I want an unassailable Bitcoin like I want slavegirls actually chained to the wall, and like they want adamantine hymens, and like the sinner wants a lobotomy.

    Don't worry about being assailable, just make sure it's always assailed by the wrong people for the wrong reasons, that's all.

    @BingoBoingo Some butts are better than others!

  4. The single flaw with Bitcoin is that its function, unlike a Linux running under your own hands, is under the control of other people. The current group of other people are going to implement Segregated Witness, no matter what anyone thinks, and how much Bitcoin they have. It may be a good or bad thing. Before this, you had a CIA agent and an NSA operative trying to completely centralize Bitcoin which was an unambiguously bad thing. Many years from now, there will be other people, probably even worse who will try to destroy Bitcoin.

    Operating systems by comparison, can run for generations unchanged. Bitcoin needs to be more like that; something that is flexible to the user, but immutable between users like math and basic protocols are. Consensus with enemies and people who have problems understanding the true nature of man as he relates to other men is unsatisfactory.

    The final solution to this problem must be a form of Bitcoin that is irrevocable, and that cannot be corrupted; one that is more like a basic protocol. Note how I avoid talking about scale. This may come across as wishful thinking, but the idea of Bitcoin itself was exactly that for decades.

    Physical money relies on others for its perception of value, but not its form. Bitcoin relies on others for its perception of value, and its form (which in its case, means parameters). Ideally it is the latter that must be removed from the hands of people you describe so well in these blog posts.

    Bearing this in mind, that other people are a requirement for money to even exist, does it not make sense to exert more control over the current form of Bitcoin? With a billion dollars in cash to hand, you could personally take control of quite a bit, at a minimum, of perception. You've already done some good work derailing the CIA/NSA coup by simply threatening to do so, and for all we know, you are already doing this in private. If so, well done.

    You can be sure that if the Rothchilds were in charge of Bitcoin, they would never allow anything to threaten, alter without permission or destroy the thing that makes their wealth real. As for being assailed by the wrong people, the assumption can't be that it won't always be assailed by the wrong people; the wrong people are the majority, well meaning or not.

  5. Mircea Popescu`s avatar
    5
    Mircea Popescu 
    Thursday, 24 December 2015

    The single flaw with Bitcoin is that its function, unlike a Linux running under your own hands, is under the control of other people.

    Yes, well, the thing is that until you find a manifested transcendent (ie, God walking the earth) you're stuck with this model.

    The current group of other people are going to implement Segregated Witness, no matter what anyone thinks, and how much Bitcoin they have.

    Note that this is a much stronger statement than the previous one, and the leap from one to the other is unwarranted. While the in-principle discussion stands, this recourse to practicality sinks on its own weight. What the group of derps you refer does or doesn't do is about as relevant to Bitcoin as what the impoverished hordes of Namibia think about medicine is relevant to medicine.

    The socialist delusion is that, by and large, "this is everything". It may be particularly hard to escape from inside, but it is nevertheless untrue. The world women inhabit is not the world, but the gyneceum - a demented summary of the world sufficient for the intellectual needs of children up to about the age of five (seven-ish for the relatively dull ones).

    which was an unambiguously bad thing.

    If only. For many years now RMS added

    [[[ To any NSA and FBI agents reading my email: please consider ]]]
    [[[ whether defending the US Constitution against all enemies, ]]]
    [[[ foreign or domestic, requires you to follow Snowden's example. ]]]

    to all his emails. Why do you think that was, if it were truly that unambiguous ?

    Many years from now, there will be other people, probably even worse who will try to destroy Bitcoin.

    Actually as per the latest qntra, the latest addition are Hussein Bahamas' own lackeys.

    Operating systems by comparison, can run for generations unchanged.

    This is a quaint bit of nonsense you only find yourself dabbling in for lack of experience with the topic. You imagine it being as you think it should, for not knowing how it actually is.

    In the sad, cold, actual reality of the matter however, we've recently discovered the cancer runs indeed deep. Refer to #b-a discussion of OSen, and of glibc, and of other things.

    It's not nearly as rosy as you think it [should] be.

    Bitcoin needs to be more like that; something that is flexible to the user, but immutable between users like math and basic protocols are. Consensus with enemies and people who have problems understanding the true nature of man as he relates to other men is unsatisfactory.

    Not only is this a lofty goal, but I think - even leaving aside the more or less obvious unsustainability of it - I think it's misstated.

    Consider the simpler case of women that can't afford underwear. In this group there will appear voices who put forth the notion that underwear's bad anyway - it gives you candida, or makes the delivery of your unavoidably eventual child more painful, or that child dumb or whatever else.

    Should they somehow (how ? through application of the public force ? special panty gendarmerie ?) be prevented from thinking this ? From saying it ? Tax their husbands and force the wives to wear knickers whether they can afford them or not ?

    Bull, I say. What women that can't afford wearing panties think about the wearing of panties is not interesting as far as panties are concerned and that's all.

    The final solution to this problem must be a form of Bitcoin that is irrevocable

    We are currently dealing with a zombified rogue state that attempted to be "a country of laws, not men" and got itself killed by flying too close to that unyielding Sun. Just for this practical reason, you won't ever see me supporting this notion. Moreover and more generally, the cure for cancer is not more cancer and laws are a stupid fucking idea. Corruption is your salvation, not more puritan bullshit. The puritan bullshit is how you got in the mess in the first place.

    Physical money relies on others for its perception of value, but not its form.

    This is historically inaccurate, and as it happens money is a complex enough system to wear the macular seal of that inaccuracy in its very living body, much like living organisms wear the sigil of their environment. You're perhaps aware that gold coins aren't usually surrounded by a smooth, but a serrated edge. The historical reason for this is the historical practice of "sweating" the currency - which is putting a lot of coins in a leather bag with some abrasive material and shaking it a while. This process produces lighter coins and reusable precious metal dust. Ridges allow a third party to evaluate the extent of the damage (or in other words they throw a monkey wrench in the economical feasability of the particular fraud).

    Ideally it is the latter that must be removed from the hands of people you describe so well in these blog posts.

    As much as you might despise the hands of others, know that unless you live like a hermit food is always going to come from others' hands. This is a fact, and inescapable. Ironically, the attempts to escape took a brief hiatus during the "democracy" dark ages of thought. Before revolutionary France, however, they were something of a permanence in the preoccupation of sovereign individuals.

    Bearing this in mind, that other people are a requirement for money to even exist, does it not make sense to exert more control over the current form of Bitcoin? With a billion dollars in cash to hand, you could personally take control of quite a bit, at a minimum, of perception.

    I want more automatons spinning around on this Earth like I want more bureaucrats like I want more fungus. No, it does not make sense, control is poison - and it kills exactly the parts you don't want it to.

    People, the long and the short of the matter is, people must save themselves - as in that brief Russian parable alf quotes now and again : 'the salvation of the drowning is work for the hands of the selfsame drowning'.

    You can be sure that if the Rothchilds were in charge of Bitcoin, they would never allow anything to threaten, alter without permission or destroy the thing that makes their wealth real.

    And with the same cut I'm also sure that if they were, I'd rout and then hang them.

    There is no spoon. Bend your mind.

  6. Am trăit s-o văd și pe asta.

  1. [...] be trolling, which is scandalously just. [↩]At the time Trilema was a paid blog. This ended recently. [↩]Basically the proponent is signalling that he aims to avoid responsibility for his [...]

  2. [...] more there, their democracy along the entire pile of indigestible nonsense that they pretend "is everything" comes, in the end, to the crutch that's supposedly taken over the world. Like that [...]

Add your cents! »
    If this is your first comment, it will wait to be approved. This usually takes a few hours. Subsequent comments are not delayed.