taoeffect

Net Neutrality

Whenever James Corbett takes a position on something, I pay attention.

Why? Because James is one of the few journalists worth paying attention to.

However, like everyone, James has his blind spots and biases. For James, an avowed anarchist, it's government (the good parts).

Today James tweeted an interview on an anti-Net Neutrality article by Jeffrey A. Tucker, who had this to say:

taoeffect

The NSA-Activist Duality ☯

The Activist wants to protect people, but in doing so acknowledges their methods also protect bad people.

The NSA wants to protect people, but in doing so acknowledges their methods also harm good people.

taoeffect

Generalized Sharding Protocol For Blockchains

The following was sent to [bitcoin-dev] on October 9, 2017 under the subject "Generalized sharding protocol for decentralized scaling without Miners owning our BTC".

---

Dear list,

In previous arguments over Drivechain (and Drivechain-like proposals) I promised that better scaling proposals — that do not sacrifice Bitcoin's security — would come along.

taoeffect

$200 in BTC for MSM Blocker Browser Extension

Here's what it does:

• Once every 4 hours, it scans headlines on homepages of NYTimes, Fox News, Huffington Post, CNN and Washington Post
• If there is a headline that contains the same word on 2 or more of the sites (excluding articles like "a", "the" and pronouns), it uses some type of fuzzy-filtering to grey out all appearances of all versions of this headline on all social networks, especially twitter.

It must work in Firefox 57+, and ideally it would work in other browsers as well (via WebExtensions). Released under some open source license.

If you like this idea and want to pitch in, feel free to post a comment below or tweet at me.

taoeffect

Anyone-Can-Spend Transactions Creep Into Bitcoin

An increased use of anyone-can-spend (ACS) transactions in Bitcoin has potentially dangerous repercussions for its future.

ACS in Drivechain

DISCLAIMER: This is my current understanding, and as Drivechain evolves it might change.

Normal bitcoins cannot be stolen by anyone. You need the private key to spend them. Even a 51%+ coalition of miners cannot spend them (but they can censor them).

taoeffect

"Voice or Exit"? How about Voice AND Exit

We can fix this, and it doesn't require us turning our back on the old system. In fact, it makes it much more difficult for new and improved systems to emerge if we don't work together with those who are trying to improve the old system.

Do you think Trump would be cool with liquid democracy or sovereign city-states? What about Hillary?

I think both would make it very difficult to make any radical improvements. By choosing either we are simultaneously limiting our options to move forward and experiment with new systems. In fact, we increase the likelihood that new systems will simply be outright banned.

So this election, if you agree, #VoteThirdParty.

taoeffect

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taoeffect

"Instantly" Understand U.S. Monetary Policy

Well, maybe. If any of this is confusing, see the Resources section at the bottom.

U.S. Economic Policy In A Nutshell

Quick terms (might differ a bit from other sources):

• "T-bills"/"treasuries"/"bonds" (there are multiple types) = a promise (from the US government) to repay an amount of cash at a specific future date, with interest. These are not intended to be used as money to buy goods/services, but are a mechanism for "the fed" to manipulate interest rates, the amount of cash flowing through the economy, and the amount of cash that the government has to spend on things.
• "Reserves" = cash (typically cash that a bank actually has).

taoeffect

Clarifying The "Free ETC" Coinbase Confusion

I do not work for Coinbase and do not in any way speak for or represent them. This post was hastily written and is probably full of typos!

This is my attempt to clarify the possibilities that might be going on, based on various Coinbase employee statements.

First, I should highlight that there has been a good amount of confusion created by the replay attacks going on between the "two" Ethereum chains. So much so that it seems to have confused just about everyone, including me, as to the details of what's going on with Coinbase's ETH/ETC (and other ETH/ETC).

I put "two" in quotes because at the moment it's more like there are "1.25 Ethereum chains" because of the replay attacks, which are causing almost every transaction to get mirrored on the other chain. Replay attacks are possible because Ethereum's hard fork did not take steps to make Ethereum transactions invalid on the original chain. Instead, all transactions are valid on both chains unless specia

taoeffect

This is probably poorly written. I just want to put these thoughts in a single collection in case it's helpful and return to work.

The Need For Public Discussion

What we need from Ethereum's leadership and its community is what Vitalik exemplifies when he says:

I recognize that there are very heavy arguments on both sides

And: