jedunnigan

>Bitcoinica

They partnered with Alpha Point some time ago. A cursory google search will confirm that.

Well, there may be one way. But it's not user friendly at all.

When the driver presses lock/unlock on the fob, the car first sends a signed message with a session secret. The fob checks the signature, takes the secret and creates a _single use_ auth token and signs it with the private key stored on the fob. That signed auth token is then sent from the fob to the car to lock/unlock the car.

To check if there was a MITM you would have to pull the door handle to see if your keypress was successful. If it was successful, you don't need to worry if the key was grabbed by a MITM, they can't use it even if they tried. If it was unsuccessful for some reason (e.g. the MITM knew it was single use auth token so they didn't pass the token onto the car in hopes you might not be paying attention and will press the button a second time) then there should be a manual override outside and inside the car that clears the valid auth tokens and allows you to lock/unlock/start the vehicle without sending any RF transmissions. A slot that you insert the key would work.

To avoid the pawn favoritism you could first select a category of piece, then a specific piece of that category and then finally select a legal move for the piece in question. I think this would be the most even handed way to make the game more entropic.

No, you have missed the essence of my post. Technology doesn't pick a side. I'm not arguing against that.

In the relationship between Bitcoin and it's users/developers/miners/nodes there are of course the ideologies of each individual interacting with the protocol (libertarian, anarchist, etc...). Then of course there is the protocol itself. Then you can step back and look at the whole set of individuals each having their own (potentially hostile) philosophies, but still interacting with the protocol in the same way (i.e., they are following the rules) to achieve distributed consensus. How do you categorize that phenomena (embedded was the wrong word choice)? That is the question that I was referring to with the comment "philosophy of Bitcoin."

Now, let's address some points in your post.

>If the developers or miners could freely enact change on the network, then there would be a fuzzy line between the design and the implementation, and you could lay the philosophy on the implementation.

Not one miner is in control? The two largest pools (Discus, ANT) are both located in China. Ghash just shut down it's cloud mining to take back control of the hashing power because of low prices.

Eligius, a pool known for extending the will of Luke Jr. (submits to Bitcoin Core frequently) can change IsStandard to exclude OP_RETURN or Mastercoin transactions or whatever else. That is emergent behavior that is a result of someone's will.

Blockstream has a handful of core devs and many influential minds in the space on their team to work on sidechains. Who knows what that will end up causing? Maybe a split in allegiances and a hard fork? You give Bitcoin more credit then is due. It still requires human input, after all.

edit: we are arguing different points here, let's leave it at that.

Philosophical inquiry doesn't necessitate an adjudication on morality, politics or regulatory climate. It can simply be a formalization of concepts observed in a system.

Bitcoin doesn't exist without human input, it requires active agents to engage it. So even if the rules are set in the code there is an element of humanity embedded in the protocol. Just look at the core developers. I can guarantee you they have a philosophy on what should and should not be done during maintenance and major upgrades to the protocol.

But if you want to reduce the definition of philosophy to those things you mentioned, I'm happy to rephrase: the philosophy of Bitcoin is thus that there is no philosophy. Think of it this way: if you have a rule that says you have no rules, you still have one rule that there are no rules.

So one might argue that that is a philosophy in and of itself. An agnostic one that is founded on technical specification, not moral imperative.

Interesting, thanks!

Don't bother with the laser, just drive down the street and pass a car with HID headlights that aren't pointed directly towards the ground. At least in that situation your response will be to slow down (and hopefully the people behind you will see your brake lights).

But if someone can manipulate a LIDAR signal to confuse the car into thinking the road ahead is clear when it is not, well then the attack becomes much different.

I don't have a firm enough understanding of how the LIDAR and laser's work in these vehicles, but it occurs to me that it might be possible for a malicious actor to confuse the cars and cause accidents. That's concerning.

I wasn't commenting on what is better or worse. I was simply stating that there is a tangible effect on the decentralization of the network when you have a limited number of nodes. For example, maintaining privacy becomes much harder as these nodes become major "pipelines" for fresh first hop transactions. The list goes on, but in reality it depends on how many there are, a number we can't predict. FWIW, I think your number is generous.

This is likely an erroneous argument with little evidence to support it. Violence between street dealers and drug consumptors is unlikely to be the largest source of drug related violence. After all, if the street dealers started killing their custies than no one would buy from them. It's bad for business.

Instead, most heinous drug violence happens between cartels and gangs at the levels of production and [major] distribution [pipelines]. These darknet markets are usually filled with well off youth buying drugs for themselves and their buddies who alternatively would have been unable to source the drugs or would have texted their neighborhood dealer to meetup in a McDonalds parking lot.