02:13:26	evilmquin:	[Global Notice] Seems we're having connectivity problems to some of our servers. Please bear with us while we look into it
08:18:03	gmaxwell:	seems the bitcoin foundation switched in the middle of their board election during the runoffs to use some completely insane "blockchain voting system"
08:18:35	gmaxwell:	run by something called "swarm" which is some crazy flavor of the week altcoin/fundraising platform or something.
08:18:44	gmaxwell:	In any case, miners get to pick the foundation board members it seems.
08:19:07	gmaxwell:	For example, censoring payments to 1MG6SSwK2qSASM2QgBez2g4YFe3ib4d2eL will block Olivier Janssens from being selected.
08:19:43	gmaxwell:	the site is too buggy for me to even get up the interfaces for each of the candidates.
08:21:45	[nsh]:	* [nsh] sighs
08:27:26	fluffypony:	BLOCKCHAIN ALL THE THINGS!
08:37:23	gmaxwell:	another property of this system is that its really easy to sell your vote.
08:58:47	phantomcircuit:	gmaxwell, iirc the modification to the voting rules was not properly passed either
08:59:34	gmaxwell:	is anyone else able to get the information out of this thing? for me it seems that it's only possible to vote for Olivier Janssens right now, everyone else it just returns that its not ready yet.
09:00:34	kinlo:	the vote is for "industry" members only?
09:00:52	kinlo:	or is there another reason why I didn't get an invite...
09:00:56	gmaxwell:	no, it's for general members.
09:01:10	gmaxwell:	If you have an active indivigual membership you should have gotten an invite.
09:01:26	gmaxwell:	invites for the runoffs may still be going out.
09:01:53	kinlo:	I've got an active membership
09:01:59	kinlo:	what's the subjectline?
09:04:07	gmaxwell:	e.g. "Deadline to Confirm Your Membership to Vote in Runoff Election is TODAY Mon, Feb 23 at 11:59pm EST"
09:05:14	barjavel.freenode.net:	topic is: This channel is not about short-term Bitcoin development | http://bitcoin.ninja/ | This channel is logged. | For logs and more information, visit http://bitcoin.ninja
09:05:14	barjavel.freenode.net:	Users on #bitcoin-wizards: andy-logbot Quanttek CoinMuncher coinheavy kyuupichan p15 bepo arubi hktud0 rusty paveljanik toffoo NewLiberty [7] prodatalab zooko antgreen nuke__ Dr-G2 LarsLarsen bobke melvster d1ggy Visheate Emcy_ bbrittain jaromil jcorgan wumpus BrainOverfl0w roasbeef phedny so hguux__ otoburb MRL-Relay azariah HM2 btc___ helo andytoshi throughnothing @ChanServ brand0 Alanius davout Hunger- NeatBasis mr_burdell bliljerk101 DoctorBTC nanotube d9b4bef9
09:05:14	barjavel.freenode.net:	Users on #bitcoin-wizards: comboy SubCreative a5m0 harrow fenn paperbot Anduck guruvan epscy Apocalyptic CryptOprah leakypat iddo TD-Linux K1773R huseby indolering warptangent amiller veox Eliel s1w ryan-c Graet luny ahmed_ jessepollak kinlo dignork starsoccer cornus_ammonis lechuga_ Iriez Adrian_G wizkid057 PRab copumpkin gmaxwell warren gnusha heath midnightmagic grubles wiz jbenet mappum c0rw1n cluckj tromp cryptowest binaryatrocity go1111111 waxwing jaekwon pigeons
09:05:15	barjavel.freenode.net:	Users on #bitcoin-wizards: eric kanzure petertodd JonTitor catlasshrugged Keefe Taek BananaLotus Oizopower sipa maaku sneak platinuum PFate cfields Muis forrestv michagogo Krellan catcow mariorz nsh kumavis Zouppen artifexd null_radix yrashk Xzibit17 coryfields grandmaster sdaftuar ajweiss phantomcircuit NikolaiToryzin fanquake smooth Pan0ram1x shesek tromp_ dgenr8 OneFixt devrandom tripleslash Cory bedeho dc17523be3 btcdrak GreenIsMyPepper espes__ Logicwax dasource
09:05:15	barjavel.freenode.net:	Users on #bitcoin-wizards: coiner delll_ Starduster airbreather MoALTz GAit bosma hashtag_ hashtag [nsh] Adlai` justanotheruser spinza face BlueMatt stonecoldpat gwillen isis sl01 dardasaba Fistful_of_Coins jgarzik ryanxcharles PaulCapestany nickler morcos weex Luke-Jr berndj [d__d] ebfull dansmith_btc yoleaux cursive gavinandresen Meeh fluffypony gribble optimator asoltys_ livegnik crescendo
09:06:12	kinlo:	right, those pesky html mails
09:06:19	kinlo:	seems my spamfilter was overly active
09:07:36	gmaxwell:	yea, they got flagged as spam for lots of people; doesn't help that they'd used mass mailing services.
09:11:54	gmaxwell:	reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2x3ffk/bitcoin_foundation_runoff_voting_live_stats_2015/
09:14:34	kinlo:	so I missed all deadlines to register :)
09:14:42	kinlo:	wont be voting in other words
09:14:54	gmaxwell:	kinlo: Yup, alas. Sorry I didn't mention it here previously.
09:15:01	kinlo:	you're not to blame
09:15:09	kinlo:	I have no idea on whom to vote anyway
09:15:31	kinlo:	last time I took the time to read all candidates proposals, but for now most names are meaningless
10:29:02	phantomcircuit:	ERROR: AcceptToMemoryPool : nonstandard transaction: non-final
10:29:10	phantomcircuit:	where is this garbage coming from
10:30:06	gmaxwell:	phantomcircuit: add logging?
10:39:55	gmaxwell:	lol, gotta love reddit downvoting: http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2x3687/bitcoin_foundations_runoff_election_conducted_100/cowjkx1
10:53:16	stonecoldpat:	is there any technical description for how the voting thing works with swarm?
10:54:16	sipa:	magic blockchain sprinkles
10:54:25	sipa:	fixes the universe
10:54:37	gmaxwell:	stonecoldpat: I can't find any writeup (why would you want your cryptosystem subject to review???)
10:55:08	gmaxwell:	stonecoldpat: it looks like there is an xcp issued asset for each candidate and you send them to yes or no addresses.. but it's hard to tell.
10:55:47	gmaxwell:	(so much for transparency, the indirection through xcp means that no normal bitcoin software can see whats going on)
10:56:00	sipa:	how do you do the voting?
10:56:27	gmaxwell:	JS webwallet, it's super glitchy. Seems I can't vote.
10:56:27	sipa:	do you need a counterparty client?
10:56:50	gmaxwell:	well calling it a webwallet is a streach it seems to be an ajax front end to a server there isn't much client side code.
10:57:00	sipa:	wtf
10:57:25	sipa:	what's the point of using a decentralized system through a centralized client...?
10:57:42	sipa:	(even if using a blockchain for this would make sense at all)
10:59:47	gmaxwell:	well the helios stuff was via a centeral server but it was all user-auditable. (I even did the audit steps for it, they were trivial)
11:04:35	stonecoldpat:	lol... magic blockchain sprinkles... the blog post made it sound like a quick knock up of a voting system and i think you guys just confirmed that
11:28:14	Adlai`:	Adlai` is now known as adlai
11:44:48	fluffypony:	[12:39:55] lol, gotta love reddit downvoting <- well you *did* insult the Holy Blockchain, you know how Reddit takes that
11:55:49	gmaxwell:	http://envisage-project.eu/proving-android-java-and-python-sorting-algorithm-is-broken-and-how-to-fix-it/ sort busted in python, hope no one has made any normative cryptographic protocols that depeneded on sort behavior in java or python.
12:03:51	hearn:	gmaxwell: seems like it causes a crash rather than incorrect results?
12:05:14	hearn:	though KeY looks interesting
12:07:44	hearn:	it's sort of disappointing how often these provers require apparently redundant annotations though
12:07:52	hearn:	the loop invariants there could have been automatically deduced
12:10:34	gmaxwell:	Most of these tools basically cannot read code and require effectietly rewriting the software in their own language... so thats one of the major limitations; since the faithfulness of the analysis depends on hand translation.
12:11:20	gmaxwell:	might be best to think about it as going through engineering diagrams with a pocket calculator to double check all the figuring. ... which is a completely reasonable practice on a sufficiently critical system.
12:29:02	justanotheruser:	Is there ane reason for voting to be decentralized?
12:30:07	sipa:	if it could be done without other compromises, perhaps - decentralization means no central party can obstruct the voting
12:31:16	hearn:	justanotheruser: electronic voting protocols mostly focus on auditability and other properties rather than hard-core decentralisation
12:31:18	sipa:	but here it comes at the cost of privacy, vote secrecy, influencing the outcome, and inability to sell off your vote
12:31:29	hearn:	arguably bitcoin focuses on decentralisation to the extent it does for political reasons that don't apply very well to the matter of voting
12:32:43	justanotheruser:	yes, auditability seems more important
12:33:08	sipa:	there exist perfectly good cryptographic voting algorithms which have all these properties
12:33:56	sipa:	using a blockchain is inefficient and a step back in so many ways, just for thr price of being able to call it "decentralized" (even though it's just done through a centralized website you need to trust, lol)
12:33:57	hearn:	i would not say they are perfectly good :) I have some of my own designs for this space
12:35:38	midnightmagic:	'first meaningful vote ever done on blockchain technology'
12:35:47	sipa:	first and hooefully last
12:35:47	midnightmagic:	* midnightmagic washes mouth of bad flavour
12:36:55	justanotheruser:	sipa: which one? How can you have a decentralized set of people come to consensus on what votes have been made?
12:37:27	justanotheruser:	Couldn't some just ignore anothers votes
12:37:32	sipa:	justanotheruser: it's just not decentralized
12:38:02	justanotheruser:	so what is its censorship prevention mechanism
12:38:07	sipa:	but cryptographic voting protocol that offer secrecy, auditability, inability to influence votes, and inability to prove afterwards what you voted for exist
12:38:32	sipa:	it's called anonimity
12:38:46	stonecoldpat:	justanotheruser: a good read http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End-to-end_auditable_voting_systems
12:39:25	midnightmagic:	then meatspace problems get in the way
12:39:29	hearn:	most existing voting protocols have the issue that they are not resistant against malware on the voting devices
12:40:02	sipa:	hearn: fair enough, but if we're talking about that, we shouldn't be using a javascriot webbased client for surr
12:40:12	sipa:	javascript, sure
12:40:27	hearn:	i quite agree!
12:40:42	hearn:	my own idea involved sending someone a book of QR codes containing encrypted votes (or hashes of them) through the mail
12:40:52	hearn:	the paper would be thick enough that no camera could observe the other side of each page
12:41:08	hearn:	the idea is you flick through the book to find an appropriate QR code for your vote, and hold it up to the camera so the device never knows what vote you are actually casting
12:41:17	hearn:	the endpoint is blind to the contents of the vote for the entire time
12:41:29	hearn:	it works best for simple yes/no votes rather than complicated leadership elections with runoffs, etc
12:41:56	stonecoldpat:	the problem then is coercion - someone can stand in the background to make sure you vote in a certain way
12:41:59	justanotheruser:	stonecoldpat: Just reading that it seems someone can't prove to anyone else that their vote wasn't counter
12:42:02	justanotheruser:	*counted
12:42:07	stonecoldpat:	if you live in northern ireland, that would certainly be the case
12:42:15	sipa:	justanotheruser: yes, and that is a feature
12:43:23	sipa:	if you're able to prove your vote to someone else, you can sell your vote
12:43:46	justanotheruser:	yeah, I'm just saying that there isn't a censorship prevention mechanism
12:44:00	stonecoldpat:	there is, its a receipt-based system
12:44:01	hearn:	stonecoldpat: you're supposed to be voting from home, right
12:44:13	hearn:	so i figure someone literally watching over your shoulder is not a big deal
12:44:13	sipa:	there is a mechanism against biased censorship
12:44:22	stonecoldpat:	you can see that your voted was accounted for, but you can't prove to someone else how oyu voted
12:44:45	sipa:	justanotheruser: the server can go.doen, meaning no votes at all happen
12:44:51	sipa:	*go down
12:45:00	sipa:	that's about it
12:46:48	sipa:	stonecoldpat: the receipts don't help against censorship; if the server knows your ip address and refuses connections from you, you are censored
12:47:03	sipa:	the receipts provide auditability after the fact
12:47:39	hearn:	yeah mostly you want to connect to the servers via tor
12:47:44	sipa:	indeed
12:52:38	midnightmagic:	well.. it is a pretty big deal when the someone watching over your shoulder is a family member expecting you to vote the right way
12:53:08	midnightmagic:	there's a lot of presumption of personal agency in those protocols
12:59:09	stonecoldpat:	sipa: fair point, i wasn't thinking about connections being refused
12:59:48	stonecoldpat:	where I live, the political parties will personally drive you to the ballot to vote, I can't imagine what they would try to do if you voted at home, so that worries me
13:09:12	sipa:	midnightmagic: yeah, i think electronic voting is strictly inferior to paper-based go-alone-into-a-room voting in terms of privacy and transparency
13:09:23	sipa:	but it's so convenient
13:29:06	instagibbs:	I can't even figure out *how* to vote. I will sell my vote to someone who will vote for the person who votes to never do blockchain/swarm voting again.
13:29:38	instagibbs:	I am registered. I got the email. When I log in it's just some web page I can't navigate
13:33:39	instagibbs:	oh.... you click that "paper wallet" backup thing, then it appears. wtf?
14:20:37	gavinandresen:	sipa: I agree, paper voting’s long track record of being good enough at preventing massive fraud (assuming the organization controlling the voting is honest) makes it superior to new, untested electronic voting systems.
14:20:59	gavinandresen:	sipa: However, I also think it is OK to experiment with newfangled stuff when the stakes are low.
14:21:29	gavinandresen:	… and in my opinion the election of 2 Foundation board members is low-stakes. We’re not talking president of the World Bank here....
14:23:16	gavinandresen:	Whether or not the Swarm voting system is good or not, I have no idea, I stepped away from running-the-Foundation stuff as quickly as I could after it had enough money to hire people to do that stuff.
14:31:28	sipa:	gavinandresen: experimenting i'm all for; but using a blockchain for voting is outright silly, compared to the existing alternatives
14:32:41	gavinandresen:	there are lots of things I thought were silly that turned out to be interesting
14:33:01	sipa:	name me one advantage it has, and i may be convinced
14:33:01	gavinandresen:	More things that were silly that actually are just silly, of course
14:33:22	gavinandresen:	it’s got a nifty PR smell
14:33:36	sipa:	sipa has left #bitcoin-wizards
14:33:47	gavinandresen:	engineers always underestimate the value of public relations........
14:34:05	gavinandresen:	(myself included, I think it’s silly)
14:34:16	hearn:	BF should probably be positioning itself as "we do cool things with cryptography" rather than the block chain specifically
14:34:58	sipa:	really, there is a difference between trying different approaches that have different tradeoffs, and using something that is clearly worse in every single way
14:38:33	gavinandresen:	mmm. Well, if it was my decision Foundation members would get paper ballots with a unique nonce that they could either mail back in or use the nonce to vote at a web page. But I’m not excited about experimenting with voting on a blockchain.
14:40:19	sipa:	I don't get it. The whole point of the blockchain was needed because no identity was wanted in the system. In voting, you have identity, so you don't need the massive compromises and costs a blockchain brings. Why do you want the worst of both worlds?
14:40:46	kinlo:	sounds to me it is indeed a bad idea
14:42:05	gavinandresen:	I’ll play Devil’s Advocate a little more: your view of the blockchain is wrong. It is a global, secure, public ledger, appropriate for any application that requires a secure ledger of what happened.
14:42:10	gavinandresen:	Identity is orthogonal
14:42:39	gavinandresen:	And if you can issue identity tokens associated with transactions on the ledger, then it is a perfectly reasonable permanent record of a vote.
14:42:50	kinlo:	are you then claiming the blockchain is not just for bitcoin but for much more?
14:43:00	gavinandresen:	(I don’t actually know if I believe all that, so don’t press me too hard :)
14:43:30	kinlo:	personally I see the blockchain for bitcoin only
14:43:32	gavinandresen:	kinlo: sure, why not? Currency had to be the first application to make the incentives work, but why not more?
14:43:48	kinlo:	and only the bitcoin blockchain is the only useable blockchain
14:44:07	gavinandresen:	kinlo: do you like the idea of a decentralized DNS?
14:44:53	kinlo:	gavinandresen: because I prefer to think in different categories, I'd prefer to use those things somewhat seperated, not coupling it to bitcoin transactions. IE, it is ok to store other data in the blockchain, but let's not use bitcoin for that
14:44:59	sipa:	sipa has left #bitcoin-wizards
14:45:18	kinlo:	gavinandresen: yes I like the idea of decentralized dns
14:45:44	gavinandresen:	kinlo: do you think NameCoin did the right thing in creating a separate currency to try to incentivize that system?
14:45:54	gavinandresen:	(I think that was a huge mistake)
14:46:12	kinlo:	I think the whole idea of a sidechain was ideal for that
14:46:30	gavinandresen:	I agree, but sidechains are a good way of using the bitcoin blockchain for other things
14:46:48	kinlo:	the merged mining was the best part: getting the security (at least partially) from the bitcoin blockchain, but still not storing all that stuff in the main chain
14:46:51	gavinandresen:	I’m not suggesting storing lots of data in the UTXO or even spent TX sets....
14:47:44	kinlo:	that's basicly my point, OK to use the blockchain's mechanism of ordering blocks, but not all data needs to go to the utxo or use the same rules in validation as bitcoin does
14:48:05	gavinandresen:	There is the question “does SWARM have a reasonable architecture for doing voting on a chain” <— I have no idea, haven’t looked. And the separate question “Does voting on a chain make sense?” <— sipa’s objection, I think.
14:48:05	kinlo:	and there can only be one blockchain, so the sidechains need to be coupled somehow
14:49:20	kinlo:	I haven't looked in all the details, just figured out today that my spam filter ate all foundation mails so I didn't even knew in time about the voting at all
14:53:53	instagibbs:	the key is that *deciding on the true state of the ledger* does not use identities. I still think voting on blockchain is silly, unless you have to use some PoS-ish scheme(and even then probably better ways of doing it)
15:01:49	kanzure:	so your argument against sipa was "it sounds cool"?
15:03:38	kanzure:	gavinandresen: btw i dunno if i snagged you to mention this but if you have future livestreamed things that you would like transcripts of, i can arrange that: http://diyhpl.us/wiki/transcripts/bitcoin-devcore-2015/gavinandresen/
15:46:27	grubles:	grubles is now known as grub1es
15:46:58	grub1es:	grub1es is now known as grubles
15:47:28	s1w:	s1w is now known as Guest94640
17:01:52	maaku:	gavinandresen: the question is not whether Swarm has a good architecture, but whether they _can_. You simply cannot have a fair election on a blockchain. Not with foreseeable technology.
17:02:07	maaku:	It's mud on the foundation's face to even go down this route.
18:08:44	jcorgan:	"blockchain" has become the new cargo cult technology; you can use it for everything, because, Bitcoin!
18:23:14	justanotheruser:	jcorgan: well even if Bitcoin fails, we still have the blockchain
18:23:28	kanzure:	blockchainium is a well-known variant of computronium
18:24:21	justanotheruser:	There was some guy on #bitcoin asking "doesn't every decentralized program need a blockchain". I'm starting to think that isn't an isolated case
18:26:22	kanzure:	i suspect that as more people learn about blockchain things, they should be advised to compensate in their reasoning for their greater knowledge of blockchain things compared to their other (prehaps lacking?) knowledge of other software. that way, they wont inadvertedly accidentally end up misapplying wrong technology to the wrong problems.
19:33:31	ajweiss:	"i'm not sure if a blockchain makes sense here, perhaps you should look into singly linked lists..."
19:34:18	ajweiss:	"you may find that the time complexity of insertions is far easier to manage"
21:11:01	Guest94640:	Guest94640 is now known as s1w
22:44:43	xenog:	xenog has left #bitcoin-wizards
22:51:06	nuke__:	nuke__ is now known as nuke1989
23:48:43	gmaxwell:	so... 100k of UTXO bloat that will never go away for this swarm debacle (595 voters, 40 bytes utxo, 4 candidates). Presumably no one but the users have the private keys to the ballots (or otherwise...)
23:50:37	lechuga_:	lol