Re: accelerating eats the world
On 03/21/2018 07:36 PM, Morlock Elloi wrote: It doesn't seem likely that the Chinese (4 mints in China mainland control 50+% of the hash power) will agree to such fork (even if it is technically feasible, which I doubt), that is capable of removing arbitrary transactions in the past - that would make everyone unsafe (like while the legislature is in session :) They have already killed the block size change proposal (by effectively telling 'Bitcoin core developers' to go f*ck themselves.) It's *technically* feasible, as Blockchain history is what a majority of computing power says it is. That's one of the weaknesses of the system, but the original assumption was that mining would be decentralised, so "a majority" would be thousands of small miners with no common interests in changing history. That's *not* the case today, where Bitcoin mining is very centralized. Also, there's precedent - e.g., the Ethereum blockchain was forked to cancel the DAO heist. In general, 51% of the computing power can rewrite the history. The cost is another matter, which will be a practical impediment. However: The laws against possession of child pornography are not likely to be going anywhere. Maybe it's just time to get some popcorn and sit down & enjoy the show - presumably, the slow burning into nothingness of the red Bitcoin herring. Brute force is out of question, as re-calculating everything would mean stopping all Bitcoin transaction activity for the period roughly equal to the age of the oldest incriminating insertion - who would pay for those terawatt hours? There may be more to come. The currently discovered child pornography was in plaintext payloads. There are thousands, if not millions, encrypted non-transactional payloads in the Bitcoin blockchain. What if some of these are also illegal porn or something equivalently criminalized? The perpetrators may simply publish individual keys, at their own pace, and make any repair attempts a bad joke. Come to think of it, that would be ideal poison pill for the Bitcoin. Maybe someone is on it as we speak ... it's easy: there are dozens of commercial services that you can pay to insert anything in the Bitcoin blockchain (like https://inthebitcoin.com ) Interesting times ahead. The takeaway is that you don't want something in the loop of social interactions that majority does not understand and that doesn't have corrective strategy. Humans are simply not bright enough to create fool-proof technologies. Just go to some Bitcoin meeting and listen to blathering of CEOs and CTOs. Or, given that a majority of stakes on the blockchain *can* change history, and a majority of stakes with very strong financial interest (as in who's already wasting most electricity) might want to keep their toys, these images *will* be removed - along with forever removing all credibility of blockchain as an "indelible" or unchangeable public ledger. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission # is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: accelerating eats the world
It doesn't seem likely that the Chinese (4 mints in China mainland control 50+% of the hash power) will agree to such fork (even if it is technically feasible, which I doubt), that is capable of removing arbitrary transactions in the past - that would make everyone unsafe (like while the legislature is in session :) They have already killed the block size change proposal (by effectively telling 'Bitcoin core developers' to go f*ck themselves.) Brute force is out of question, as re-calculating everything would mean stopping all Bitcoin transaction activity for the period roughly equal to the age of the oldest incriminating insertion - who would pay for those terawatt hours? There may be more to come. The currently discovered child pornography was in plaintext payloads. There are thousands, if not millions, encrypted non-transactional payloads in the Bitcoin blockchain. What if some of these are also illegal porn or something equivalently criminalized? The perpetrators may simply publish individual keys, at their own pace, and make any repair attempts a bad joke. Come to think of it, that would be ideal poison pill for the Bitcoin. Maybe someone is on it as we speak ... it's easy: there are dozens of commercial services that you can pay to insert anything in the Bitcoin blockchain (like https://inthebitcoin.com ) Interesting times ahead. The takeaway is that you don't want something in the loop of social interactions that majority does not understand and that doesn't have corrective strategy. Humans are simply not bright enough to create fool-proof technologies. Just go to some Bitcoin meeting and listen to blathering of CEOs and CTOs. Or, given that a majority of stakes on the blockchain *can* change history, and a majority of stakes with very strong financial interest (as in who's already wasting most electricity) might want to keep their toys, these images *will* be removed - along with forever removing all credibility of blockchain as an "indelible" or unchangeable public ledger. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
Re: accelerating eats the world
On 20-03-2018 22:43, Morlock Elloi wrote: Heavy involvement of technology in social interactions keeps producing new challenges, that someone needs to deal with. That someone is getting more and more busy. The latest event is discovery that someone was/is burning child pornography into ... blockchain. To be more specific, into Bitcoin blockchain: https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf As everyone knows, the blockchain is immutable and lasts forever. Possession of child pornography is widely classified as felony, usually with no exceptions for 'accidental possession'. This means that something has to give: either possessing Bitcoin blockchain is a felony (those images will *never* be removed), or inadvertent possession of child pornography is not a crime (which will give rise to new child pornography storage medium: blockchain.) Or, given that a majority of stakes on the blockchain *can* change history, and a majority of stakes with very strong financial interest (as in who's already wasting most electricity) might want to keep their toys, these images *will* be removed - along with forever removing all credibility of blockchain as an "indelible" or unchangeable public ledger. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
accelerating eats the world
Heavy involvement of technology in social interactions keeps producing new challenges, that someone needs to deal with. That someone is getting more and more busy. The latest event is discovery that someone was/is burning child pornography into ... blockchain. To be more specific, into Bitcoin blockchain: https://fc18.ifca.ai/preproceedings/6.pdf As everyone knows, the blockchain is immutable and lasts forever. Possession of child pornography is widely classified as felony, usually with no exceptions for 'accidental possession'. This means that something has to give: either possessing Bitcoin blockchain is a felony (those images will *never* be removed), or inadvertent possession of child pornography is not a crime (which will give rise to new child pornography storage medium: blockchain.) Discussions, meetings and other activities spent on this issue will burn huge amount of work hours, without creating any value except patching the broken system. # distributed via : no commercial use without permission #is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject:
