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He's a frickin genius because he found ways to break the law with impunity for his own profit ? I'm surprised by HN sometimes.

noir_lord 5y ago
You can respect the ingenunity if not the morality of it. His solution was a clever hack because he worked around the law without apparently breaking it directly - clever. That said gambling systems are specifically one class of software I refuse to work on.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- hnbad 5y ago
  I think the lawyer who convinced the gov't that the operation was legal being a former MP and this taking place in a nation of less than 100,000 people is a crucial element to the story. Incidentally both gambling AND fintech (including crypto) are on the list of industries I refuse to do work with. So I guess BTC gambling would have been off the table for two reasons.
noduerme 5y ago
Uh, excuse me, but this whole story demonstrates that I went to extreme lengths to never break any laws, no matter how large or small the jurisdiction. Had I been willing to bend laws, I'd surely be a lot richer today.
- skrebbel 5y ago
  Come on, cURL'ing to a foreign server to get a random number and not just reading /dev/urandom is logically identical. It's a hack, just like calling into GPL'ed code over HTTP is a hack to avoid "linking" the GPL'ed code. It doesn't really suddenly turn a site from gambling site into a non-gambling site. I mean, I have mad respect for the hustle with the former MP etc. I agree with what you say in that you did not actually break the law - because you found a loophole (made a loophole? hustled it? again, I'm impressed). You ran a gambling site from IoM though :-)
  - noduerme 5y ago
    What's so funny is - I was in a peer group of early btc founders who were starting random Bitcoin hustles and didn't care at all about laws. No one at that time had even approached the IoM about whether BTC was currency - nor would they have, because trying to find legal haven was the furthest thing from their minds. And so not surprisingly, the IoM didn't have a ready answer when I asked them whether gambling with Bitcoin was actually gambling. But the letter of the law was that gambling occurs _in the jurisdiction where_ the random chance takes place. So it really was different from hitting a local RNG, legally. It added a nice little feature too, which was that every spin and deck could be stored on a separate server that would show them all at the end of the day. This was a little before "proven randomness" took off in btc casinos, but I made the RNG reports available daily for analysis (without explaining the whole infrastructure, obviously). [edit] I just want to say that yes, you're obviously right, and yeah, I ran a casino from the IoM... without anyone knowing if that was okay or not... and it was just a moment in my life. of which I'm proud, I guess. I was living illegally in a small apartment in Alhama de Granada after violating my EU visa. hah. It was a great, great piece of software and I don't know if I'll ever write anything that good again. But it didn't really change my life or anything.
    - dcposch 5y ago
      Are you actually an LA taxi driver, like it says in your bio? What a story.
      - noduerme 5y ago
        I used to be. I got a web design job in San Francisco when I was 18 out of high school but I burned out and quit when I was 21. Drove a taxi so I could write and play music. Did it for a couple years. It was a good education. I feel old. Taxis don't even exist anymore.
    - kapep 5y ago
      > But the letter of the law was that gambling occurs _in the jurisdiction where_ the random chance takes place "where the random chance takes place" could easily be interpreted as where the random number is _used_ and not where it has been created. Creating random numbers is not "chance" per se (in this context). Using random numbers to e.g. determining a winner would be the chance in my opinion.
- hnbad 5y ago
  Sure, you're not breaking any laws, just intentionally violating the spirit of the law for personal gain. This isn't a court of law. I can understand trying to avoid language that makes it sound like you may have been in violation of the law to a judge or jury, but you literally described that what you did was intended to keep operating a service that had been banned by using an absurd technicality in the definition of the ban. I'm honestly surprised it worked (though having a former MP of the tiny nation you were operating in as a lawyer might have helped) considering that your service still facilitated online gambling directly and was advertised as such, despite the randomness source being on a remote server rather than local. In other words, using a non-local randomness source (like a remote server you cURL into or a webcam pointed at a bunch of lava lamps) is functionally indistinguishable from a local dice roll or other source of entropy. This "hack" is so flimsy it likely wouldn't hold up in court in a nation that is actually interested in pursuing such violations that has a population larger than a small city.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I suspect your anger derives from the fact that this would not be possible to get away with now, in any way shape or form, only ten years later. And truly the world is way more locked down now than it was then when people were like, "Bitcoin? What's that? you want to pay me to write a legal brief?" so, yeah. I feel sorry for kids ten years younger than me. When I did it, the only thing I was really afraid of was getting arrested if/when I stepped back on American soil. There was redundancy so I could run the whole thing in Costa Rica if I had to cold shutdown the IoM servers. And the coin was in private wallets, mostly on my laptop. But I was very concerned about breaking any laws, anywhere. I was the only one to implement ID verification and fully block American players. Call it a hack or whatever, they wanted my business and I needed their servers, and I split up my code so it would be legal according to their laws. Not too different from what a lot of companies do.
    - hnbad 5y ago
      I'm not angry, I'm hostile. That you think the only possible position from which to take issue with what you did is FOMO speaks volumes. I'm not arguing that you violated any laws. You made it very clear that you went to great lengths to avoid doing anything that could have resulted in consequences to yourself. EDIT: Since HN's rate limiting won't let me reply for a few hours, I'll just address the replies inline: I'm not jealous. I'm sure noduerme made a sizable chunk of money with the whole operation at the time but their profile says they're now working as a taxi driver and sold all their bitcoin before the peak. They probably have a lot of other interesting stories to tell and that's nice. But dismissing any hostility or criticism as jealousy is thought terminating and frankly below even HN's standards. Based on their backstory in the replies, I can see where their attitude comes from, but they severely underestimate how big of a problem gambling addiction is and how much of the profit of the gambling industry relies on it. It's nice if the casino their parents worked at turned away obvious addicts but the word "obvious" is doing a lot of work here and there are also clear business reasons you don't want obvious addicts in your establishment the same way bars will be happy to have repeat customers buying drinks for five hours every day but will turn them away if they get blackout drunk or unsightly. "Not doing it for the money" may give you a clean conscience but it doesn't change the consequences of your actions. It's also important to point out that online gambling is by its nature functionally anonymous for the gambler (even if you record IDs for legal reasons). The online casino isn't going to turn away the addict until they can no longer pay or have to resort to fraud to keep up the habit. And even if the casino implements limits, the proliferation of online casinos makes it considerably easier to go hopping than if you have to physically drive somewhere. Gambling addiction not only ruins the lives of the addict but also impacts their friends and family, not just financially. It's true that not every person who gambles is an addict but the line between an expensive hobby and a managed addiction is hard to draw until you undeniably cross it. But if you need a comment on HN to explain to you why gambling and especially online gambling is bad, a comment on HN isn't going to be enough to convince you.
- rualca 5y ago
  > (...) but this whole story demonstrates that I went to extreme lengths to never break any laws, No, not really. It shows that you went to great lengths to find ways to exploit a loophole where, even though you are clearly breaking the spirit of the law, you argue that it doesn't break the letter of the law. I get it that you have a vested interest in keeping up the plausible deniability thing, but you know it and everyone knows it that you went through great lengths to put up a tech infrastructure which meets absolutely no requirement other than exploiting a loophole. I mean, you explicitly expressed your personal concerns in this very discussion regarding what you personally chose to describe as testing "legally grey areas". Who do you expect to fool?
  - noduerme 5y ago
    I just really wanted to launch my software. Which when I began coding it, seemed completely legal and possible in Costa Rica. As the laws started to change - and even before Bitcoin came on the scene - I looked for how to do it without running afoul of anything. So it's not like I set out with a plan to exploit all the legal loopholes in the world, I just adapted my code and split it apart as necessary. I never even meant to take Bitcoin, let alone make it the only currency in the casino. It was just the only option if I wanted to launch. I had very little money and had written a giant gaming platform. I wanted it to see the light of day.
    - rualca 5y ago
      > I just really wanted to launch my software. Come on. Cut the bullshit. > Which when I began coding it, seemed completely legal and possible in Costa Rica. As the laws started to change - and even before Bitcoin came on the scene - I looked for how to do it without running afoul of anything. So it's not like I set out with a plan to exploit all the legal loopholes in the world, I just adapted my code and split it apart as necessary. You are clearly and unequivocally stating that you set to exploit all the legal loopholes once your "grey area" was made black and white in Costa Rica. Please, spare the thread from all that nonsense. You're not fooling anyone.
      - 5y ago
concordDance 5y ago
"the law"? There is no "The law", just a bunch of different jurisdictions with different laws. He didn't break Switzerland law. Does Switzerland's law not matter for some reason?
Cthulhu_ 5y ago
No laws were broken, else they'd be in jail. It's how the big companies that HN worships get away with not paying taxes. Morally dubious? For sure.
- maccard 5y ago
  > No laws were broken, else they'd be in jail. Just because OP isn't in jail doesn't mean they didn't break the law. Laws are broken all the time.
  - noduerme 5y ago
    No. I'm not in jail because I did everything by the book. Everyone else thought it was the wild west.
- void_mint 5y ago
  > No laws were broken, else they'd be in jail. Generous to assume that all that break laws go to jail.
dna_polymerase 5y ago
The breaking the law consists entirely of not acquiring a license. Otherwise everything they did was perfectly legal.
- noduerme 5y ago
  finally, someone understands :)
nickthemagicman 5y ago
You mean like the people who smoked marijuana before it was legal? Or the people who got same sex married before it was legal? Or the slaves who escaped slavery before it was legal? Should the slaves have just not try to free themselves because it was "illegal"? The law does not equal morality.
void_mint 5y ago
Is your assertion that, because you deem his actions immoral, they did not require intelligence?
nix23 5y ago
>He's a frickin genius because he found ways to break the law with impunity for his own profit ? Obviously he did not break the law, finding holes like that is the number one job of a tax-lawyer.
mellavora 5y ago
I respect both the legality and the morality of it. First, he did comply with all applicable law. No laws were broken. Second, he did not break the spirit of the law. The law clearly allows gambling from the Isle of Man. Third, he did not conflate the law with morality. What is the morality of a 400,000 GBP 'licensing' fee? Laws around licensing are weird. Another poster mentioned that pouring wine than liquor into a glass is illegal, but liquor then wine is fine. Not much moral sense in that reg.
- noduerme 5y ago
  Thank you. And yes, it's incredible the morally bankrupt things you see under color of law if you try getting into that business. Side story, I was once invited to be a guest of the now deposed dictator of Ghana when I casually floated to his lawyer who I met in a casino in Prague the idea of making them the next offshore gambling capital of the world. I did a little research on the country and then respectfully declined. In my view, I never broke a law or did anything immoral (since I was extremely transparent about the odds of every game and I made sure to only take adults from countries where gaming online was legal... who wanted to play, and knew the rules). And not conflating morality with legality -- while respectfully considering both -- is just a precondition to being an individual in a complicated world.
abstractbarista 5y ago
Yes. Gambling should be legal anyway.

noir_lord 5y ago

You can respect the ingenunity if not the morality of it. His solution was a clever hack because he worked around the law without apparently breaking it directly - clever. That said gambling systems are specifically one class of software I refuse to work on.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
hnbad 5y ago
I think the lawyer who convinced the gov't that the operation was legal being a former MP and this taking place in a nation of less than 100,000 people is a crucial element to the story. Incidentally both gambling AND fintech (including crypto) are on the list of industries I refuse to do work with. So I guess BTC gambling would have been off the table for two reasons.

noduerme 5y ago

Uh, excuse me, but this whole story demonstrates that I went to extreme lengths to never break any laws, no matter how large or small the jurisdiction. Had I been willing to bend laws, I'd surely be a lot richer today.

skrebbel 5y ago
Come on, cURL'ing to a foreign server to get a random number and not just reading /dev/urandom is logically identical. It's a hack, just like calling into GPL'ed code over HTTP is a hack to avoid "linking" the GPL'ed code. It doesn't really suddenly turn a site from gambling site into a non-gambling site. I mean, I have mad respect for the hustle with the former MP etc. I agree with what you say in that you did not actually break the law - because you found a loophole (made a loophole? hustled it? again, I'm impressed). You ran a gambling site from IoM though :-)
- noduerme 5y ago
  What's so funny is - I was in a peer group of early btc founders who were starting random Bitcoin hustles and didn't care at all about laws. No one at that time had even approached the IoM about whether BTC was currency - nor would they have, because trying to find legal haven was the furthest thing from their minds. And so not surprisingly, the IoM didn't have a ready answer when I asked them whether gambling with Bitcoin was actually gambling. But the letter of the law was that gambling occurs _in the jurisdiction where_ the random chance takes place. So it really was different from hitting a local RNG, legally. It added a nice little feature too, which was that every spin and deck could be stored on a separate server that would show them all at the end of the day. This was a little before "proven randomness" took off in btc casinos, but I made the RNG reports available daily for analysis (without explaining the whole infrastructure, obviously). [edit] I just want to say that yes, you're obviously right, and yeah, I ran a casino from the IoM... without anyone knowing if that was okay or not... and it was just a moment in my life. of which I'm proud, I guess. I was living illegally in a small apartment in Alhama de Granada after violating my EU visa. hah. It was a great, great piece of software and I don't know if I'll ever write anything that good again. But it didn't really change my life or anything.
  - dcposch 5y ago
    Are you actually an LA taxi driver, like it says in your bio? What a story.
    - noduerme 5y ago
      I used to be. I got a web design job in San Francisco when I was 18 out of high school but I burned out and quit when I was 21. Drove a taxi so I could write and play music. Did it for a couple years. It was a good education. I feel old. Taxis don't even exist anymore.
  - kapep 5y ago
    > But the letter of the law was that gambling occurs _in the jurisdiction where_ the random chance takes place "where the random chance takes place" could easily be interpreted as where the random number is _used_ and not where it has been created. Creating random numbers is not "chance" per se (in this context). Using random numbers to e.g. determining a winner would be the chance in my opinion.
hnbad 5y ago
Sure, you're not breaking any laws, just intentionally violating the spirit of the law for personal gain. This isn't a court of law. I can understand trying to avoid language that makes it sound like you may have been in violation of the law to a judge or jury, but you literally described that what you did was intended to keep operating a service that had been banned by using an absurd technicality in the definition of the ban. I'm honestly surprised it worked (though having a former MP of the tiny nation you were operating in as a lawyer might have helped) considering that your service still facilitated online gambling directly and was advertised as such, despite the randomness source being on a remote server rather than local. In other words, using a non-local randomness source (like a remote server you cURL into or a webcam pointed at a bunch of lava lamps) is functionally indistinguishable from a local dice roll or other source of entropy. This "hack" is so flimsy it likely wouldn't hold up in court in a nation that is actually interested in pursuing such violations that has a population larger than a small city.
- noduerme 5y ago
  I suspect your anger derives from the fact that this would not be possible to get away with now, in any way shape or form, only ten years later. And truly the world is way more locked down now than it was then when people were like, "Bitcoin? What's that? you want to pay me to write a legal brief?" so, yeah. I feel sorry for kids ten years younger than me. When I did it, the only thing I was really afraid of was getting arrested if/when I stepped back on American soil. There was redundancy so I could run the whole thing in Costa Rica if I had to cold shutdown the IoM servers. And the coin was in private wallets, mostly on my laptop. But I was very concerned about breaking any laws, anywhere. I was the only one to implement ID verification and fully block American players. Call it a hack or whatever, they wanted my business and I needed their servers, and I split up my code so it would be legal according to their laws. Not too different from what a lot of companies do.
  - hnbad 5y ago
    I'm not angry, I'm hostile. That you think the only possible position from which to take issue with what you did is FOMO speaks volumes. I'm not arguing that you violated any laws. You made it very clear that you went to great lengths to avoid doing anything that could have resulted in consequences to yourself. EDIT: Since HN's rate limiting won't let me reply for a few hours, I'll just address the replies inline: I'm not jealous. I'm sure noduerme made a sizable chunk of money with the whole operation at the time but their profile says they're now working as a taxi driver and sold all their bitcoin before the peak. They probably have a lot of other interesting stories to tell and that's nice. But dismissing any hostility or criticism as jealousy is thought terminating and frankly below even HN's standards. Based on their backstory in the replies, I can see where their attitude comes from, but they severely underestimate how big of a problem gambling addiction is and how much of the profit of the gambling industry relies on it. It's nice if the casino their parents worked at turned away obvious addicts but the word "obvious" is doing a lot of work here and there are also clear business reasons you don't want obvious addicts in your establishment the same way bars will be happy to have repeat customers buying drinks for five hours every day but will turn them away if they get blackout drunk or unsightly. "Not doing it for the money" may give you a clean conscience but it doesn't change the consequences of your actions. It's also important to point out that online gambling is by its nature functionally anonymous for the gambler (even if you record IDs for legal reasons). The online casino isn't going to turn away the addict until they can no longer pay or have to resort to fraud to keep up the habit. And even if the casino implements limits, the proliferation of online casinos makes it considerably easier to go hopping than if you have to physically drive somewhere. Gambling addiction not only ruins the lives of the addict but also impacts their friends and family, not just financially. It's true that not every person who gambles is an addict but the line between an expensive hobby and a managed addiction is hard to draw until you undeniably cross it. But if you need a comment on HN to explain to you why gambling and especially online gambling is bad, a comment on HN isn't going to be enough to convince you.
rualca 5y ago
> (...) but this whole story demonstrates that I went to extreme lengths to never break any laws, No, not really. It shows that you went to great lengths to find ways to exploit a loophole where, even though you are clearly breaking the spirit of the law, you argue that it doesn't break the letter of the law. I get it that you have a vested interest in keeping up the plausible deniability thing, but you know it and everyone knows it that you went through great lengths to put up a tech infrastructure which meets absolutely no requirement other than exploiting a loophole. I mean, you explicitly expressed your personal concerns in this very discussion regarding what you personally chose to describe as testing "legally grey areas". Who do you expect to fool?
- noduerme 5y ago
  I just really wanted to launch my software. Which when I began coding it, seemed completely legal and possible in Costa Rica. As the laws started to change - and even before Bitcoin came on the scene - I looked for how to do it without running afoul of anything. So it's not like I set out with a plan to exploit all the legal loopholes in the world, I just adapted my code and split it apart as necessary. I never even meant to take Bitcoin, let alone make it the only currency in the casino. It was just the only option if I wanted to launch. I had very little money and had written a giant gaming platform. I wanted it to see the light of day.
  - rualca 5y ago
    > I just really wanted to launch my software. Come on. Cut the bullshit. > Which when I began coding it, seemed completely legal and possible in Costa Rica. As the laws started to change - and even before Bitcoin came on the scene - I looked for how to do it without running afoul of anything. So it's not like I set out with a plan to exploit all the legal loopholes in the world, I just adapted my code and split it apart as necessary. You are clearly and unequivocally stating that you set to exploit all the legal loopholes once your "grey area" was made black and white in Costa Rica. Please, spare the thread from all that nonsense. You're not fooling anyone.
    - 5y ago

concordDance 5y ago

"the law"? There is no "The law", just a bunch of different jurisdictions with different laws. He didn't break Switzerland law. Does Switzerland's law not matter for some reason?

Cthulhu_ 5y ago

No laws were broken, else they'd be in jail. It's how the big companies that HN worships get away with not paying taxes. Morally dubious? For sure.

maccard 5y ago
> No laws were broken, else they'd be in jail. Just because OP isn't in jail doesn't mean they didn't break the law. Laws are broken all the time.
- noduerme 5y ago
  No. I'm not in jail because I did everything by the book. Everyone else thought it was the wild west.
void_mint 5y ago
> No laws were broken, else they'd be in jail. Generous to assume that all that break laws go to jail.

dna_polymerase 5y ago

The breaking the law consists entirely of not acquiring a license. Otherwise everything they did was perfectly legal.

noduerme 5y ago
finally, someone understands :)

nickthemagicman 5y ago

You mean like the people who smoked marijuana before it was legal? Or the people who got same sex married before it was legal? Or the slaves who escaped slavery before it was legal? Should the slaves have just not try to free themselves because it was "illegal"? The law does not equal morality.

void_mint 5y ago

Is your assertion that, because you deem his actions immoral, they did not require intelligence?

nix23 5y ago

>He's a frickin genius because he found ways to break the law with impunity for his own profit ? Obviously he did not break the law, finding holes like that is the number one job of a tax-lawyer.

mellavora 5y ago

I respect both the legality and the morality of it. First, he did comply with all applicable law. No laws were broken. Second, he did not break the spirit of the law. The law clearly allows gambling from the Isle of Man. Third, he did not conflate the law with morality. What is the morality of a 400,000 GBP 'licensing' fee? Laws around licensing are weird. Another poster mentioned that pouring wine than liquor into a glass is illegal, but liquor then wine is fine. Not much moral sense in that reg.

noduerme 5y ago
Thank you. And yes, it's incredible the morally bankrupt things you see under color of law if you try getting into that business. Side story, I was once invited to be a guest of the now deposed dictator of Ghana when I casually floated to his lawyer who I met in a casino in Prague the idea of making them the next offshore gambling capital of the world. I did a little research on the country and then respectfully declined. In my view, I never broke a law or did anything immoral (since I was extremely transparent about the odds of every game and I made sure to only take adults from countries where gaming online was legal... who wanted to play, and knew the rules). And not conflating morality with legality -- while respectfully considering both -- is just a precondition to being an individual in a complicated world.

abstractbarista 5y ago

Yes. Gambling should be legal anyway.