"People who do math don't have credit card debt."

[freebeard]

My question is, how quickly can Bitcoin transactions clear given that a limited number of transactions are processed in batches, and that authenticating the transactions requires a compute-intensive solution?

All following IIRC...

Bitcoin has a heartbeat of 10 minutes. Fee-less transactions have to survive six passes through the resolver to be perfected. Transaction fees move you up the queue. It's like Bonneville; "Speed costs money, how fast do you want to go."

A cup of coffee? Who cares. A major appliance? After 10 minutes the odds of the transaction being falsified are low, diminishing to zero. Buying a house, or an island or something? It's worth waiting it out.

All foregoing subject to I & I Recalling Correctly.

https://duckduckgo.com/?t=palemoon&q=bitcoin+side+chains

For any e-currency to survive, it needs to get to the point that I can pay for groceries almost instantly, and for next to no transaction cost.

No wiggle room at all? Harsh.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

No wiggle room at all? Harsh.

If I'm not happy, ain't nobody happy.

JK, I'm the opposite of that. It's more a continuation of my rant about the new chip cards being a step backwards in usability. I'm used to an unbroken progression in technological usability.

[freebeard]

I'm used to an unbroken progression in technological usability.

You'll learn.

For one example... I think the Mac OS Finder is totally borked. In Column View if you change the sort it totally changes the column layout. I think they've fallen away from the 1984 Human Interface Guidelines under Tim Cook.

The Vulture was great today:
I, Robot? Aiiiee, ROBOT! RSA TLS crypto attack pwns Facebook, PayPal, 27 of 100 top domains
Intel to slap hardware lock on Management Engine code to thwart downgrade attacks
FREE zero-day for every reader: AT&T's DirecTV kit has a root hole
Hey, we've toned down the 'destroying society' shtick, Facebook insists
Google's Project Zero reveals Apple jailbreak exploit
That last one:

Beer's step-by-step explanation is in the readme file of his PoC (linked in the Project Zero post):

First, he used a proc_pidlistuptrs bug to disclose the address of arbitrary ipc_ports;
Second, he triggered an out-of-bounds read for “various kalloc sizes” to identify “the most commonly-leaked kernel pointer”;
Next, he sent Mach messages to gather “a pretty large number of kalloc allocations;
With enough Mach port allocations, Beer gathered a page “containing only my ports”. The port address disclosure provided “a port which fits within particular bounds on a page. Once I've found it, I use the IOSurface bug to give myself a dangling pointer to that port”;
”I free the kalloc allocations made earlier and all the other ports then start making kalloc.4096 allocations (again via crafted mach messages);”
Careful reallocation (1 MB at a time) made garbage collection trigger and “collect the page that the dangling pointer points to”.

Beer continued that “the bsdinfo->pid trick” let him build an arbitary read to find the kernel task's vm_map and the kernel's ipc_space, allowing him to reallocate the kalloc.4096 buffer with a fake kernel task port.

Great stuff, you don't get that just anywhere. OTOH they have stories like:

How fast is a piece of string? Boffin shoots ADSL signal down twine

3.5Mb/s? The trick is to use salt water.

[Ecky]

Security is really dragging a lot of things down, and it's hard to avoid, given that so many people will lie/cheat/steal if given the opportunity. Many of them I don't even blame; not everyone can be born in a wealthy country.

A lock can be picked. A password stored locally can be stolen. Verification can be faked. To be reasonably safe, it's a matter of making it so annoying that nobody bothers, or hiding the key where nobody would know to look.

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by freebeard

You'll learn.

Microsoft has taught me this plenty of times. Windows 7 was great, Windows 8 took everything great about 7 and changed it. Same with Win 98 and ME, same with XP and Vista...

Originally Posted by Ecky

Many of them I don't even blame; not everyone can be born in a wealthy country.

If you can excuse the bad behavior of anyone, you must excuse the bad behavior of everyone.

We are all products of genetics and environment, and none of those things were in our control. Even if we decide to change our environment, that is due to prior genetics and environmental conditions that were not under our control.

As far as security goes; I'm not content to merely pose enough of a hassle to thieves that they chose my neighbor to victimize. My goal is always to apprehend.

[freebeard]

Originally Posted by Ecky

...hiding the key where nobody would know to look.

This is called security through obscurity. It works until it doesn't.

If you can excuse the bad behavior of anyone, you must excuse the bad behavior of everyone... My goal is always to apprehend.

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

For any e-currency to survive, it needs to get to the point that I can pay for groceries almost instantly, and for next to no transaction cost.

Plain old cash does that. And I don't need to spend money on computers or smart phones to use it. Heck, I don't really even need a wallet :-)

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by freebeard

I think the Mac OS Finder is totally borked. In Column View if you change the sort it totally changes the column layout. I think they've fallen away from the 1984 Human Interface Guidelines under Tim Cook.

Whereas I think anything from Apple is totally borked - at least if I'm correctly guessing the meaning of "borked". Their "Human Interface Guidelines" seems to have used a different definition of human than the one that includes me. From the first Macs - which had me wanting to take a baseball bat to the one the guy a couple of cubicles over set up to exclaim "yabba dabba doo!" every few minutes - to the more recent iPads with the motion sickness inducing fisheye effect, they've always seemed more intent on cute than function.

[Xist]

But their store employees are geniuses!

[redpoint5]

Originally Posted by jamesqf

Whereas I think anything from Apple is totally borked ... they've always seemed more intent on cute than function.

[RANT]

Exactly my sentiment. My dislike began in middle-school when I was required to drag the floppy disk icon to the trash to eject the disk, and persisted when the iMac integrated the computer with the display, rendering both useless if either is to be upgraded. The iPod had less features, higher price, and worse connectivity options than any competing product (must install iTunes to transfer music!).

Work provides me with an iPhone, but the restrictions continue to aggravate me.

Apple products are like the Wiffle Ball of technology (with all due respect to the ushering in of new technology concepts).

[/RANT]