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Biggest computer war in the history of computers is tomorrow
Tomorrow, November 15 @ 04:40UTC, the biggest computer battle that has ever happened will take place.
The Bitcoin Cash network is secured by about 5EH of compting power (5,000,000,000,000,000,000 dSHA256 hashes/second). At the moment, a malicious actor, Craig Wright, is controlling about 75% of that power. He intends to cause a hard fork on November 15 and make BitcoinSV the leading Bitcoin Cash implementation.
His goal appears to be to destroy Bitcoin Cash. His twitter feed (seriously, check this out) has become crazy over the last few weeks. He appears to want to take away the permissionless aspect of Bitcoin Cash. Transactions that use 'non-allowed' op codes would become recoverable by miners (of which, he is conveniently, the majority miner). He also talks of recovering funds from addresses that have been inactive for a long time. I believe that the end goal is to recover Satoshi's coins.
In just under 24 hours, the war will start. It is likely that hashrate will be diverted from BTC to defend this attack. This will result in lower hash rate for BTC, slower block times, and likely transaction congestion.
During this time, block reorgs on the bitcoin cash network are likely. Transactions may be undone during the attack. It is also possible that only empty blocks will be mined, preventing any transactions from occurring.
There is also speculation that 'poison blocks' will be used as part of the attack. The new SV client allows upto 128MB blocks. However, the current software only has a throughput of ~22MB before other limits come into play. It is speculated that Craig Wright will use malicious pre-computed blocks to 'poision' the network. These blocks would take a long time to validate on honest nodes giving CW an advantage.
This is going to be an epic battle. It's the most expensive computer attack to ever be launched and is going to be a critical moment for the future of all cryptocurrencies, not just Bitcoin Cash.
It's going to be interesting... information during the attack can be found here: https://reddit.com/r/btc and here: https://cash.coin.dance/
EDIT: Ars just picked it up.
Damn it, don't fucking make me stick up for Gab!
This is the dumbest, stupidest, most counterproductive, most self-destructive goddamn thing they could possibly have done. If I didn't already trust the government about as far as I can throw my bathtub--which is cemented to the floor--I would not have believed anyone in that position could possibly be that stupid.
Seriously, this is "Dealing With Nutbar Extremists 101" level shit here. When a group of people have utterly divorced themselves from reality and built an entire narrative around being oppressed and discriminated against, don't actually do anything to oppress or discriminate against them! Jesus!
What this idiot has done will be written down in history books, if indeed there are any historians left to write them and any literate people left to read them, as the pivotal, galvanizing moment for the United States' 21st century anti-Civil-Rights movement. This is going to kickstart a dark, twisted, blasphemous, zombified parody of all the 60s and 70s rallies that brought real, positive change to the nation. It's all gonna go to hell.
And why? Because some self-aggrandizing empty suit, some shortsighted, amoral political hack, decided to wipe his ass on the Constitution and do exactly what the fuck the kind of people who flock to Gab would do in the first place: advocate for lawbreaking violence (yes, this is a type of violence, it's a clear intimidation attempt) because "muh ideological purity!"
I don't think most people understand why this is so dangerous. The *least* bad part about this is that they've now turbocharged the aforementioned narrative. They have, in a word, turned Gab into martyrs. More dangerous is the precedent being set here; there is no reason that, say 10 years down the road when it's all gone to shit and we have Gab-denizens in charge, they can't and won't refer to this to shut down speech *they* don't like. Never, ever give yourself any powers or leeway you couldn't stand being used against you when the tables turn, as they always, always do. Especially not when your use of them is "this is dirty but I have to do it for great justice" and the opposition's use of them will be accompanied by nothing more self-reflective than a long string of maniacal, gleeful cackling.
But worst of all, this has undermined the legitimacy of government attempts to stifle actual violence and hate movements. From now on, any attempt to put a lid on any of it, all the way up to outright calls for genocide, is going to be viewed as suspicious, in any context, no matter who does it, and no matter what it is they're opposing. This asshole in Pennsylvania has played right into the lunatics' hands, and there is not a desk big enough to slam my face into that can express how utterly disgusted I am.
Let us not mince words: this is an intimidation attempt, a deliberate ploy to create a chilling effect, a fishing expedition in the worst way, and yes, very likely a Constitutional violation.
It's also--have I said this enough yet?--fucking stupid. What you do with toxic, asocial idiots like, well, like the kind of people who need a place like Gab, is...you let them go. You let them concentrate there, out of the way of civilized society, and you close the lid. Like a roach motel; Nazis check in, they don't check out, but because they want to stay in the motel. The correct course of action is to use the place as the internet's septic tank for white nationalists, and of course monitor it veeeeery very closely. Contain it, as you would any other plague virus, and make no mistake, what Gab is peddling is a memetic plague.
Hell, if I were this guy, I would have half a dozen agents make fake accounts there, blend in, and exfiltrate as much information as possible out of that place, the more ridiculous the better. And plaster it all over, too, using the advantage of exposure available to a government entity. Remember that guy, name I forget, who was fucking his mother in law or something? That kind of thing. Spread it around like cream cheese on the world's best bagels and make sure everyone gets a bite.
And of course, watch the place like a hawk and intercept anyone planning to, for example, shoot up a synagogue or something. Good grief, the best argument for these neo-Nazi pukes not having the brains Madokami gave a tree stump is that they willingly congregate on the open internet and openly discuss plans to harm or kill other people! THAT is something the government has both legal and moral authority to go after! This could have been like shooting particularly ugly, stupid, morally repulsive fish in a barrel!
In time, the contagion would have become self-limiting, and eventually burned itself out. Mockery, slow resource starvation, and simple waning interest would have done for it, reducing Gab to the racist online equivalent of "old man yells at cloud.jpg." But no. No, they went and did this stupid shit instead. I hope the ACLU and the EFF and all the other progressive groups come out in support of Gab, and you know what? I will be standing right there with them.
The Constitution, the law of the land, the backbone of the US, what we should always aspire to even if we ain't there (and even if it's only possible to approach asymptotically) is worth more than this. It's one thing when private businesses refuse to do business with them because they find them odious; it's quite another when the government steps in. Congratulations, PA AG: you've sunk to the level of Gab's userbase, and in doing so you may have doomed us all.
RIP Blizzard
"Do you guys not have phones?"
Yeah, I got a toaster too, I'm not interested in running games on either of them.
Diablo was a great game. You can still run it in a VM. The idiots (and I'm using that in the medical sense) at Blizzard may own the legal rights to the name, but they have no moral right whatsoever to shit all over something that they did not make and clearly do not respect or even understand.
Well none of that is new - what is new is they went full retard and appear to have *deliberately* given all the folks that were still trying to give them money, all the Blizzard fans with Stockholm syndrome trying to pursuade them to be reasonable, a big old middle finger. In the most public way possible.
And in response they were boo'd, at Blizzcon, by a room full of said Stockholm syndrome afflicted fans, folks that had just spent considerable time and money to attend what amounted to a gigantic ad, at that their own expense.
I feel the end is here for Blizzard, overdue as it is. But they're already somewhat zombie like, is it possible for them to die? Or will they simply be forced to assume their true form, an ad agency and "intellectual property" vampire with neither brains nor talent left to do anything else?
Upcoming Hard Fork on Bitcoin Cash
On or around November 15, 2018 Bitcoin Cash will undergo its 3rd hard fork. There has been quite a bit of drama over this upcoming fork. On one side we have Bitcoin ABC, and the other we have BitcoinSV.
When Bitcoin Cash was forked from the original Bitcoin on August 1, 2017, it did so with the Bitcoin ABC code. When that happened, the Bitcoin ABC implementation became the de facto reference client. In my opinion, while Bitcoin ABC has done great work on progressing the Bitcoin protocol, their communication and community involvement leaves something to be desired.
Bitcoin ABC has proposed and implemented a few changes for the upcoming fork. The biggest and most controversial of these changes is something called Canonical Transaction Ordering (CTOR). In the current implementation, transactions can be included in a block in any order. If/When CTOR is accepted, then transactions will have to be ordered in a specific way.
CTOR offers some advantages with block propagation. There are a number of technologies (Compact Blocks, Thin Blocks, Graphene) that allow faster block propagation. Essentially, when a block is found, the block needs to be propagated to the rest of the network. As blocks get larger, the time to transmit the block also increases. In order to propagate blocks to the network in a timely fashion, Bloom Filters are used. Having a fixed order of transactions inside a block means that the order of transactions don't have to be transmitted to propagate a block. This results in a significant (>50%) reduction in data required to transmit a block.
On the other side, we have BitcoinSV. Craig Wright is BitcoinSV's Lead Scientist. He has been claiming for several years now that he is the real Satoshi. Gavin Andresen (one of the earliest Bitcoin coders) even agreed that Craig Wright was Satoshi. Craig started a company called nChain that has been working on their own implementation. They are closely affiliated with Coingeek who operates a mining operation/pool.
There have been criticisms of both sides. Criticisms of Bitcoin ABC's CTOR include that it's too big of a change too fast. Changes to consensus rules should happen very slowly and be tested very thoroughly. Impact on CPU usage is not fully understood at this time and if there are any bugs in the CTOR implementation that could result in an unintended chain split.
On the other side, we have BitconSV and Craig Wright. Craig is a character. He constantly makes outrageous claims and consistently fails to provide any proof to his claims. Any papers he produces contain mostly plagiarized content. His personality would definately fall into the 'asshole' category. BitcoinSV did not have any publicly released code until several weeks ago -- Way too late to be taken seriously IMO.
Craig has made claims that there will be no chain split. He has stated that his BitconSV implementation will win and he 'will prevent' a chain split from happening and will use his hash power offensively if required.
So here we are, two weeks away from the date the fork must occur, and no one really knows what will happen. We are about to witness the first true 'Nakamoto Consensus' hash war. It's going to be exciting to watch.
My predictions: Bitcoin ABC will easily win (will be clear winner in less than one hour). BitcoinSV was released way too late in the game to be taken seriously. They do not even have a testnet. How can we even know that it will work as advertised?
However, will the minority chain persist? There is intentionally no replay protection as part of this fork, so a transaction submitted to one chain will be valid on the other chain. People have stated that they will be replaying transactions from each chain to the other. There are still ways to force your coins to split however.
My prediction on persistance is that the minority chain will persist for quite some time (months-years), much like Bitcoin Gold persisted. It will have very little value, but it will have some value.
There's never a dull day in Bitconland.
DRAMA UPDATE!!!: Craig Wright says that he will blacklist any address that uses a new op code introduced by Bitcoin ABC. Very un-satoshilike.
Linkage again: Sunday, 2018/10/28
This is a problem that repeatedly appears. Some known processes depend on a local chemical gradient to work properly, i.e. to properly localize action. Others seem to require coordination of distant connections between particular objects. Neither has an obvious analog in program logic, which implies that this is the wrong order of abstraction. Probably the correct physical analog is the neural column. Since a neural column is composed of thousands of neurons the arguments used above don’t apply. Unfortunately I don’t understand the properties of a neural column anywhere near as well, so it’s much less useful as a model.
Abandoning the analog, then, the active foreground object must register itself centrally so that it can be found by not-currently-linked objects that become active. The links established are two way, but stronger from the new object to the foreground object than in the reverse direction.
Now being the foreground object is a very transient condition.
… … ...
I note a bit of confusion here. The foreground object is not the same as the top object. The top object is the active object that contains all the other active objects. New objects need to be linked both to the top object and the foreground object. This enables “state specific memory” as it means that, e.g., being in a location makes it more likely that other things learned in that location will be brought to mind, but as the link is weak it does not itself suffice. Of course it could be reinforced in the location sufficiently enough that merely thinking of the location would re-activate the memory.
State Specific Memory: Saturday, 2018/10/27
All this makes the “state” of state specific memory quite crucial, and I haven’t yet defined it. To say “it’s all those things that current memories get attached to” is true, but not very useful. I tend to conceive of “state”, in this sense, as the active world image, but this is also a bit vague. Experiments have shown that consciously being aware of something isn’t necessary for it to participate in state. It doesn’t seem useful to conceptualize it as an object, though it is the top container of active objects. Perhaps it’s pure epiphenomenon, and not a real thing at all, but in that case one needs to explain how the activity of the rest of the system could create the illusion that “state” exists, i.e. would provide the effects.
Still, state existing as phenomenon rather than as epiphenomenon seems to create numerous problems. E.g. it seems to exist in innumerable variations and seems to experience partial activation. The only problem it really seems to solve is limiting the necessity for centralized communication. So I need to address that.
Possibly an answer lies in the hierarchical embedding of objects. So, for example, kitchen remains kitchen whether or not the cat is currently being fed. There’s a time linked variation in the “current state of activation” of kitchen. In other words, objects need to allow for components that are not always active (or even present).
The result of this is that objects being linked into any nested subcomponent of the current foreground or top active object are linked into the entire chain, with the strongest link at the lowest level. Repeated stimulation will over time strengthen some links. Links that are not strengthened (unless above a threshold of strength) will decay. Perhaps there can also be degrees of strengthening, so that rubber will be strongly linked with tires, but linked to carts much more weakly.
Separation/Connections: Friday, 2018/10/26
The “separation” of neurons needs consideration. Clearly sensations that are physically close should be considered close, and likely have direct physical contacts at the neuron level, but other linkages are more difficult. On the other hand, these other linkages probably only happen at a higher level (i.e. at a more abstract level). A snarl combined with teeth being bared is at a relatively high level, white spot combining with white spot to for partial image that will be parsed as a tooth is at a much lower level. At what level is centralized communication needed, and on what basis should this be decided? Well, what’s the purpose of communication? One answer is to create links between objects, so perhaps only top level objects need to link … but this seems insufficient. Actually, the proposal seems roughly equivalent to “frames”, with lots of things left hanging, and that is known not to suffice.
I think that what is needed to solve this problem is the “state specific memory”. When a signal is already a part of the “state” then it doesn’t need the centralized communication, but can simply strengthen and expand the current one. Only when a new signal is being associated with the state does it need to communicate centrally to determine to what stat it is to be added. Since this will generate lots of false or “noisy” connections, it’s important that weak connections fade over time.
Connections: Thursday 2018/10/25
The co-occurrence of objects even in description is sufficient to create the perception of a connection. Consider how this is used in the “Grandfather’s Clock” song. It is not without reason that Crowley said that the basic rule of ritual magic is “invoke often”.
These seem to all be things that are implemented via Hebbs Law1, but the mechanism is obscure. When there is a synaptic connection, then the mechanism is reasonably clear, but when there’s no connection except synchronicity it’s harder to explain. It does take many repetitions, so even a weak connection would be reinforced, rather like math tables … in fact probably exactly like math tables … but that doesn’t explain the mechanism. We know that physiologically it’s connected somehow to the hippocampus, so some specialized mechanism is quite appropriate. It has to be done via “passive monitoring”, i.e. via receiving signals from the active neurons … but probably only at a rather high level. And we believe that unusual wiring in this area is behind synethesia.
So … I am assuming that when a cluster of sensations above threshold of strength is activated that a signal is sent to a central function that receives the signals sent during a small interval of time2 and establishes or reinforces a connection between them. This appears as if it might strengthen the perception of boundaries between different clusters of sensation. It would also seem to foster the creation of composite objects. Perhaps it also enables the invention of new composite objects from known pieces.
Persistence: Wednesday 2018/10/24
The persistence of objects means not only that they continue to exist when you can’t observe them, but also, and more primitively, that when you are watching them they remain the same object1. This will probably be inherent in what it means to be an object, but such a concept cannot predate the concept of object.
Within and Without: Tuesday 2018/10/23
The distinction between within and without is not easy. Even many adults haven’t really managed it, as denoted in phrases such as “You made me love you.” or “You made me so angry”, where internal actions are attributed to external causes, even though others would react to the same stimuli in different ways. This is probably because episodic events tend to be externally attributed, though of course denial of responsibility is another reason. But originally denial isn’t a reason as the mere existence of a separation between “me” and “not me” isn’t yet given, much less the bounds.
