Author Archives: RomanInUkraine

How to get started with Bitcoin.

A number of people have asked me this question, so I’m posting this guide to save myself some typing:

THREE IMPORTANT FACTS ABOUT BITCOIN

1- It’s decentralized. This is important because unlike other attempts at electronic currencies to rival fiat money, there is no business to shut down, no server to confiscate, and no person or small group of people to put in jail. That’s not to say Bitcoin is illegal. It is to say that so far, governments have been pretty good to finding reasons to shut down centralized competition to their currency monopolies (see Egold, Liberty Reserve, Bernard Von Nothaus).

2- It’s open source. There are no secrets in the protocol. A good computer programmer can look at the Bitcoin source code and see exactly how it works. Changes are adopted voluntarily. When a change isn’t backward compatible, there is a long period of debate and consensus building before its adoption. If there exists as-yet-undetected vulnerability in the Bitcoin protocol, it can’t really be exploited without revealing it. The code will then be patched to fix it.

3- Bitcoins are divisible down to eight decimal places — a hundred million parts.

THREE VOCABULARY WORDS

Blockchain – This is the ledger of all Bitcoin transactions. ALL of them. Since bitcoin is decentralized, every user on the Bitcoin network needs to either download the blockchain or have access to a third party service which has downloaded it.

Block – Transactions aren’t written to the ledger one at a time. They are written in groups called Blocks. The network keeps adjusting such that a block will be written every ten minutes.

Bitcoin Mining – A lot of computer do a lot of math which helps ensure bitcoin transactions are honest. As an incentive for people to do this math, the protocol awards new bitcoins to computers which successfully do these math problems. Solving these problems takes the form of a competition. When a problem is solved, a new block is added to the blockchain. The rate of new Bitcoins is predictable and diminishing. The last new bitcoins will be generated in over a hundred years.

GETTING STARTED IN THREE (BIG) STEPS

STEP 1 of 3 – Set up a Bitcoin wallet.

Some (not all) of your choices:

Bitcoin-qt – This the standard wallet which downloads the entire blockchain.

Electrum – This is a light client which connects to a server that stores the blockchain. It has a cool recovery feature if your computer blows up.

Blockchain.info or Coinbase.com – These are web-based wallets. If you’re going to store any significant amount of bitcoins on web-based wallets, enable two-factor authentication. The website will offer instructions on how to do that.

For beginners, I recommend installing Electrum on a laptop or desktop computer. I’m not 100% certain, but if you prefer a mobile device, you may be limited to web-based wallets.

STEP 2 of 3 – Buy Bitcoins.

If you want to just test the waters, the easiest way to do this might be to find a real live person, either an acquaintance or through the Craigs-list-like service Localbitcoins.com. Some people will accept money transfers. Others will want to meet in person. Localbitcoins.com offers a cool escrow service to help.

For people who are either serious or very shy, use an exchange. Here are a few:
Vircurex.com (?)
Coinbase.com (US)
bitstamp.net (european)
bitcoin.de (european)
btc-e.com (Russian) (See What happened to BTC-E)

There are hundreds of them. Most will accept bank transfers. If you don’t want the hassle and expense of bank transfers there are other options.

Some exchanges are starting to accept credit cards. Some Bitcoin ATMs are going online, and other solutions are being developed for in-person cash purchases.

For beginners trying to test the waters, I recommend a friend. If you want to eventually make serious purchases, research exchanges, you’ll have to do so sooner or later.

STEP 3 of 3 – Learn to store your Bitcoins offline before making a serious purchase.

For beginners, I recommend doing this with the electrum client (see below).

FOR THE BITCOIN-QT CLIENT:

1) Make sure your computer is secure and virus free.
2) Install the client.
3) Look at the “receive Bitcoins” tab. Copy and paste those addresses (the long, alphanumeric numbers) into a text file and save it. Alternatively email them to yourself. Share any one of them when you want someone to send Bitcoins to your off-line wallet.
4) Send Bitcoins to those addresses. Confirm that you’ve received them, and close the Bitcoin client.
5) Find a file called ‘bitcoin.dat’ and back it up. You can also follow these steps for creating a paper backup. To simply make and electronic backup, copy the ‘bitcoin.dat’ file to a flashdrive (or to TWO flash drives), and put them in separate safe places.
6) Erase the ‘bitcoin.dat’ file.
7) DO NOT LOSE YOUR BACKUP!!!

To recover bitcoins from offline storage, copy the ‘bitcoin.dat’ file back it where you erased it from and open the client.

FOR THE ELECTRUM CLIENT:
(I recommend this for beginners, because there’s a built-in paper backup feature. There are other solutions, but this is the one I’m familiar with.)

1) Make sure your computer is secure and virus free.
2) Install the client. Make sure you copy down the randomly generated list of words. Put that list of words somewhere safe.
3) Go to the “receive” tab of your client. Copy and paste those addresses (the long, alphanumeric numbers) into a text file and save it. Alternatively email them to yourself. Share any one of them when you want someone to send Bitcoins to your off-line wallet.
4) Find the file named ‘electrum.dat’, and erase it.
5) DO NOT LOSE THE PAPER COPY OF THOSE WORDS!

To recover bitcoins from offline storage, run an Electrum client with a missing ‘electrum.dat’ file. Choose “recover” when it starts. Enter that list of words.

Pro tip: If you want to be super careful in erasing your electronic wallet data, find a tool to securely erase the bitcoin.dat or electrum.dat file. You can also open them in a text editor, edit them aggressively, and save them, prior to erasing.

Good luck!

Libertarian transhumanism

I wasn’t aware of “transhumanism” under that name until just now.

I consider it well within somebody’s right to pursue. I doubt anyone here would disagree, but beyond that, it’s mostly the realm of fantasy and science fiction.

My comment from a very geeky online discussion about “Libertarian transhumanism“.

The gap between the ultimate vision of “post humanism” and the contemporary examples generally offered as progress down that road remains enormous. It will remain enormous.

FYI: I’m far from a Ludite. I’m a sci-fi fan, a former computer programmer. I even took a lot of artificial intelligence classes at Stanford.

I believe the “singularity” which transhumanists await in much the same way that early Christians awaited the messiah will never come, and the gap between inanimate and teleological may narrow, but it will remain.

My strongest evidence for skepticism is the simple Turing test. From a distance, it seems like an extraordinarily simple task. A computer just needs to repeatedly arrange series of about 100 characters in such a way that one can’t discern whether a human or machine is doing the arranging. Yet for all our technological glory, no machine is even close to accomplishing this simple task.

Four Monument Controversies

1) Polish town tears down statue marking the rape of millions of German women by Russian soldiers. (more)

2) Tearing down the Lenin statue in L’viv, 1991:

[youtube]UdBB_cZ4y0E[/youtube]

3) Jewish groups in Vienna want to remove Ivan Franko memorial because of his anti-semitic writing. (more)

4) Yuri Kulchitsky monument installed in L’viv. (more)

Yuri Kulchitsky, if I understand correctly, was the Kozak from L’viv oblast who, after military victory, brought Turkish coffee to Vienna. The monument stirred some controvery. It was explained to me that the initiative to plan, finance and install the monument didn’t pay homage to the right bureaucrats in the city administration, and they’re now defending their bureaucratic turf by trying to organize a protest. Their message concerned the monument’s ugliness and its backers insufficiently consulting “the people.”

BJJ & MMA in Lviv

Brazilian Jiu Jitsu is exploding all over L’viv. A couple months ago, I started training again at my friend Oleh’s new club. We are now at capacity. I know of a second club that opened in L’viv. I trained there once to meet the guys. They haven’t even finished renovations and they’re also at capacity.

A few of my training partners compete in MMA. Here are some pictures from a recent fight:

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[Show slideshow]
***

I love it. I love the culture, the competition, the toughness and pride that it gives to young people.

***

Edit: Found this video of the fight —

[youtube]NtOiitW0skQ[/youtube]

Planning Holodomor in Gaza?

“October 24, 2012 “Information Clearing House” – Nazareth – Six and a half years go, shortly after Hamas won the Palestinian national elections and took charge of Gaza, a senior Israeli official described Israel’s planned response. “The idea,” he said, “is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.”

Although Dov Weisglass was adviser to Ehud Olmert, the prime minister of the day, few observers treated his comment as more than hyperbole, a supposedly droll characterisation of the blockade Israel was about to impose on the tiny enclave.

Last week, however, the evidence finally emerged to prove that this did indeed become Israeli policy. After a three-year legal battle by an Israeli human rights group, Israel was forced to disclose its so-called “Red Lines” document. Drafted in early 2008, as the blockade was tightened still further, the defence ministry paper set forth proposals on how to treat Hamas-ruled Gaza.

Health officials provided calculations of the minimum number of calories needed by Gaza’s 1.5 million inhabitants to avoid malnutrition. Those figures were then translated into truckloads of food Israel was supposed to allow in each day.”

more: http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article32848.htm

***

This is very, very, very, very disturbing.

Yes, the Israeli plan provides a minimum number of calories. It’s like slipping a noose around someone’s neck and saying “don’t worry, I’ll give you a chair to stand on.” They’ve established a system through which Palestinians are a pen-stroke away from an artificial famine.

Nov 1st Visit to Cemetery in Horodok

I went to Horodok on Friday to light candles by the graves of relatives, including my great grand-father Theodore Stec, who on his deathbed was still hoping to learn the fate of his son (my grandfather) and two grand daughters (including my mother) who had fled into the chaos of war-torn Europe to escape the Bolsheviks. “If he could have imagined that you’d be here,” my aunt said as I struggled with the matches.

Its a Nov 1st tradition apparently to light candles for the departed. The whole cemetery shimmered with candle light.

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Also, a gigantic rabbit:

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China ‘to rent five per cent of Ukraine’

More: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10332007/China-to-rent-five-per-cent-of-Ukraine.html

This has to be regarded as a play on the US dollar. Most likely, China wants to dump its dollars for tangible goods. In this likely case, Ukrainians are the dupes, unless they quickly pass the dollars along for other goods.

This action also illustrated the stupidity of the dialogue against land ownership. One of the arguments occasionally made against allowing Ukrainians to sell their land is that they’d give control of it to foreigners. Well, guess what. The same thing happens when the government owns land, only in this latter case, regular people don’t get any money whatsoever.

Lviv’s “Nostalgia” Restaurant is run by lowlife thieves

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We ordered lunch off the menu, then I went inside and asked the waitress for desserts. (I had to go find her because she was too lazy to check on diners.)

When the bill came we noticed that the desserts were rather expensive. I went to the bar with the bill and paid. (Again, I had to walk because the waitress was too lazy to check on customers).

While they counted my change, I took a menu from the bar and checked dessert prices. That was when the waitress “noticed” that they had overcharged us for dessert — by almost double.

These petty criminals have no business sitting in a restaurant, much less running one.