Thimbron

The fuck up happened roughly here: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-06-22#1487195.

I am persuaded by lobbes's explanation of why my key old key¹ is fucked.

That said, I will attempt to put it into my own words, and in general write down all my thoughts about it.

At some point I created this signed text file.  This text file, which served as a gpg contract, contains the text "I agree."  It does not specify to what the agreement pertains, or to whom (other than myself, which is indicated by the fact I signed it).

In the context that this agreement was signed, it was intended to be an agreement to distribute qtnra shares to my account on Coinbr: http://btcbase.org/log/2016-06-06#1477615.  Although I no longer have the logs, I probably pm'ed jurov the account name, then pm'ed the link to the signed agreement.  It didn't really make sense to me at the time, but I did it anyway, not realizing that jurov was joking, even though asciilifeform lol'ed on the next line.

Once this contract was published in #bitcoin-assets, it became clear to me that I had made a mistake.  The most obvious problem with the contract was that it's scope was not limited, so it could be interpreted to mean that I agree to anything.  One could object and say, "Well, but who would ever pay attention to such a stupid contract?"  The following hypothetical illustrates why this contract is still a problem.

Let's say I had at that point decided to continue to try and use the key.  Let's say I wanted to sign an agreement to ship 5,000 bags of potato chips (all the potato chips I have) to Jim in Chicago.  A competitor (Julie) could legitimately claim that I had actually already agreed to ship 5,000 bags of potato chips to Atlanta, and as evidence show the retarded "I agree" contract to the Chicago recipient.  How would Jim be able to determine which agreement I would follow through with, clearly not being able to follow through with both of them?  It would be a hassle for him to contact me and ask me "WTF?"  and he would also think I was pretty dumb for having signed such a document.  He might also think Julie something of an annoyance, but mostly he would just not to bother with the whole mess.

I believe this example demonstrates the principle spelled out by lobbes above.

Now, what should the text of the contract have been to avoid these problems?

I² request that jurov³ allocate Qntra shares to my account on CoinBr <account id here - forgot it> for all disbursements for the next year starting on June 6th, 2016.

This updated agreement limits the scope of this contract to the participants, includes the details of the agreement (my account name on CoinBr), and limits the time period of the contract.  Now, with these limitations, if someone were to wish to do business with jurov and (had I rated him) wished to inquire about his trustworthiness for some related type of contract I can answer that he performed according to the contract, whereas with the original contract this was not possible.

I think another aspect I misunderstood was the global nature of the contract.  It wasn't just something between myself and jurov.  It would likely be reviewed by anyone wishing to do business with myself in the future, for the rest of my days.  At the moment I can't think of a more abstract way to put this.

1. I used to go by gernika.  I have a new key registered to thimbronion. [↩]
2. we know who I am since it's signed by me [↩]
3. we know who he is because he has to sign a string with his key to get voice [↩]

Today I found a potentially interesting way to contact mainland Chinese.  I found a Chinese language exchange Discord chat room.   At the time of day I happened to drop in there were few Chinese online, but it was pretty late.  I was able to have some brief discussions in Chinese.  Overall the server seems pretty active, and I intend to come back when more people are likely awake in China.   The Discord crowd seems pretty young, but also pretty genial and earnest.  Also it is interesting to learn that at least some people can access Discord from inside China.

The most memorable conversation, sadly, was in English, and was between a French girl and Winston (a Chinese high school kid) about plastic surgery.  Winston was all about getting eye lid surgery, and the French girl was trying to tell him everyone is uniquely beautiful in their own special way and  Chinese girls are considered hot in France.

Kevin Pham is a crypto twitter personality who is known as one of the most maximalist of the maximalists. Prior to his focus on Bitcoin, Kevin was known as a whistleblower from within Wells Fargo bank (from the linked article it appears he went public after quitting his job there) on issues related to taking advantage of vulnerable customers by coercing them into opening up accounts that they didn’t actually need and incurring additional fees.

At this point I can’t remember why I started reading Kevin on twitter - other than that I agreed mostly with his maximalist philosophy and that he was active in attacking Ethereum, which itself is an attack on Bitcoin. He does have a talent for tweeting simple restatements of maximalist principles in relation to whatever nonsense the crypto crowd is currently pursuing.

Recently he as shifted his focus somewhat towards Cody Wilson’s 3d printable gun/free speech thing. This is the wrong way to go. Firstly, this gun is worthless, as are most guns, in any sort of drawn out conflict with a tyrannical government since the chokepoint is not guns but bullets, which cannot yet be manufactured at scale in a way that isn’t fatally vulnerable to traditional ground and air forces.

The most serious problem facing those who would be sovereign is the lack of any sort of modern secure computer - that is to say a computer that is not designed to be infiltrated by intelligence agencies (and thus anyone else with enough resources, really).

He is wasting his time with this freedom of speech/2nd amendment bs instead of focusing attention on the real problem. This bad turn might be due to a general lack of knowledge about history, or perhaps technology, but in any case it’s bad.

Mi vida me empezó¹ a cambiar

La noche que te conocí
Tenía poco que perder
Y la cosa siguió así

My life began to change
The night that I met you
I didn’t have much to lose
And the thing happened like this

Yo con mis sostén² a rayas

Y mi pelo a medio hacer³
Pensé: éste todavía⁴ es un niño
Pero, ¿qué le voy a hacer?

I with my striped top
And my hair half done
Thought: this guy is still a boy
But, what am I going to do?

Es lo que andaba buscando⁵
El doctor recomendando
Creí que estaba soñando, ooh, ooh
¿De qué me andaba quejando⁶?

No sé qué estaba pensando
Voy pal cielo y voy pateando⁷ ooh, ooh

It is the thing that I was casting about for
The doctor recommending
I thought that I was dreaming, ooh, ooh
What was I complaining about?
I don’t know what I was thinking
I’m going to heaven, and I’m going kicking

Me enamoré, me ena-ena-namoré
Lo vi solito y me lancé⁸
Me ena-na-namoré
Me ena-na-namo

I fell in love, I fell in love
I saw him alone and I jumped
I fell in love
I fell in lo…

Mira qué cosa bonita
Qué boca más redondita
Me gusta esa barbita

Look, a cute thing
What a mouth more round
I like this little beard

Y bailé hasta que me cansé
Hasta que me cansé, bailé
Y me ena-na-namoré
Nos enamoramos

And I danced until I was tired
Until I was tired, I danced
We fell in love

Un mojito, dos mojitos
Mira qué ojitos bonitos
Me quedo otro ratito

One mojito, two mojitos
Look what cute eyes
I stay a while longer

Contigo yo tendría diéz hijos
Empecemos por un par⁹
Solamente te lo digo
Por si quieres practicar

I will have 10 children with you
We start with a couple
I only tell you this
In case you want to practice

Lo único que estoy diciendo
Vayámonos¹⁰ conociendo

Es lo que está proponiendo, oh, oh
Nos vamos entusiasmando
Todo nos va resultando
Qué bien lo estamos pasando, oh, oh

The only thing I’m saying
Let’s go knowing
It is the thing being proposed
We go looking forward to
Every thing that happens to us
How great it is what is happening to us

Nunca creí que fuera así
¿Cómo te fijarías¹¹ en mí?

Toda la noche lo pensé
Este es pa’ mí o pa’ más nadie
E-es pa’ mí o pa’ más nadie

I never though that it would be like this
How could you choose me?
All night I thought
This is for me or for no one

1. Incidentally I’m able to insert all these neat accented characters in Vim using ctrl-k + <accent character> + <ascii character> [↩]
2. bra - or maybe women’s top [↩]
3. half-done is a guess - haven’t seen this usage of infinitives before [↩]
4. still [↩]
5. andaba + <gerund> messing around doing x [↩]
6. quejar is to complain [↩]
7. kicking [↩]
8. jump, plunge [↩]
9. pair [↩]
10. Let us go - imperative [↩]
11. to fixate on [↩]