8 ms·

Most people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox since circa 2011 when their stunning incompetence was at it's height. Sadly the

Most people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox since circa 2011 when their stunning incompetence was at it's height. Sadly there were plenty of media shill articles when Btc skyrocketed to $1,000 last year who were promoting them as the "Biggest Bitcoin exchange" without pointing people to relevant bitcointalk threads on what a nightmare that site has been over the years. If you read MagicalTux's personal blog you'd know to never trust anything he's coded too. http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-what-about-some-ssh/ http://blog.magicaltux.net/2010/06/27/php-can-do-anything-wh...

imperialdrive 13y ago
I've been around. What is bitcoin?, and who cares about whatever the hell 'Mount Gox' is?? Can we all get back to work on something meaningful to the future, family, or nature... someone we don't know about made up a currency, and some other company we also don't know about made up an 'exchange' of this 'currency' and now we still don't know what's going on and some 'bitcoins' are missing... the most it's all worth is a laugh
- Rumudiez 13y ago
  A laugh and a few good tens of millions of dollars that people actually do value and will pay that much for. Maybe cryptocurrencies aren't in your favor, but their value and growth isn't something to scoff at.
- Crito 13y ago
  I mean, you are the one that decided to dive into the middle of a bitcoin discussion. I typically find it rather easy to ignore things that do not interest me, maybe you should work on that.
- VMG 13y ago
  > I've been around. What is bitcoin? From https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf‎ https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf‎: Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. Of course, the coins are only yours if you hold the private keys. A promise of some Japanese exchange to send you an amount of Bitcoin in the future is not the same as owning a Bitcoin. It's pretty interesting, you should read it.
  - imperialdrive 13y ago
    I think you had the only decent reply. Thank you. I know bitcoin, and was really just fishing for others that may share my view on the current state of affairs for the digital crypto currency. Some of us have been around just long enough to be aware that the field of technology doesn't create a buffer from unclean people and business characters. Also, that just because a lot of smart/clever people made something that a lot of people believe in, that at some point it passes the point of no return or is immune to failure. I think bitcoin failing may be good, could wake a lot of people up, many mistakes won't be made a second time, and the freed up focus and brainpower will go towards a better generation of technology to benefit humanity.
    - VMG 13y ago
      Currently, this event looks like about the third or fourth-largest crisis of the currency and has had very moderate on the valuation, although this might change in the coming weeks. Many people in the field are very ethical and think that an improvement to the current financial system is of great benefit to humanity.
- SimHacker 13y ago
  Maybe you should go back around to wherever you've been around, and not be around here, where you have nothing of value to contribute and no interest in the discussion at hand. The way things work, in case you didn't learn that by being around, is that you don't post messages complaining you're not interested in a topic to discussions about that topic. So stop being around here.
- jafaku 13y ago
  Bitcoin is a technological breakthrough, you are just being ignorant about it.
wpietri 13y ago
I clicked through and thought you were being too harsh. I mean, it can be fun to make toy implementations of things as an exercise. Doing an SSH server in PHP would be entertaining if you liked PHP. You'd learn something. And then I read that his hacked-together-in-3-days ssh server was for use in production. In a hosting service. Wow. Just wow.
- dspillett 13y ago
  > And then I read that his hacked-together-in-3-days ssh server was for use in production. In a hosting service. That sounds like a brilliant technical guy, capable of running with a daft idea to completion (unlike me, with my collection of at-best-half-built personal projects), who should have some layers of protection between him and Real World Production...
  - outworlder 13y ago
    That reminds me: "Now, people who Get Things Done but are not Smart will do stupid things, seemingly without thinking about them, and somebody else will have to come clean up their mess later. " http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html
    - eldavido 13y ago
      I think it's different. Inexperienced (young) programmers don't know what's been tried, and what's available. I've been dealing with this a lot at work recently, where we ended up doing poor reimplementations of off-the-shelf stuff due to a mix of ignorance, and honestly, a bit of hubris. It's a good attitude to have in academia/non-production critical work, but the GP is right, production demands a more conservative approach, especially when money/safety is at stake. The type of ignorance Joel writes about (see parent) is different, it's more like "slavishly following design patterns" and "writing copy-and-pasted, improperly factored code". Both are ignorance, but the first is better called "NIH", whereas Joel's is, "writing bad code".
- chii 13y ago
coldtea 13y ago
>Most people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox since circa 2011 when their stunning incompetence was at it's height. And still, even 2 weeks ago, tons of people defended MtGox in HN threads, and said how it's a temporary glitch and they are very good exchange and such. Even when it was pointed to them that it's a service build by a guy with no actual knowledge of exchanges and no prior experience at finance services whatsoever -- a mere PHP developer (not to knock the language) that had done nothing spectacular before (no Carmack, or Fitzpatrick or your favorite coder hero). People trusted their money to a guy that literary calls himself "MagicalTux" -- which to me seems like investing to the hobo on the corner, people call Crazy Bob.
- waterlesscloud 13y ago
  Does this mean we shouldn't trust "coldtea" to develop anything? I'm the last person to defend Karpeles' competency, but his internet alias has nothing to do with it.
  - coldtea 13y ago
    >Does this mean we shouldn't trust "coldtea" to develop anything? Of course you shouldn't. If you were to here him (well, me) you'd ask for my CV -- if not an interview also. And if it was like "developed some random toy stuff" you wouldn't hire me to develop a money exchange playing with other people's millions of dollars. And if you were to assess if you will put $10,000 in a financial online service made by me, my past work in the area, my general competence would be quite important. Else, don't be surprised if you lost it all. The chances were way higher than if you had put that money in Citibank, you just ignored the signs. And for me, not giving the impression I'm a 20-something script kiddie with a fancy handle would also be quite important. I mean, it might be prejudice, but "Ives, Rockefeller and Berstein" as a financial service just feels more secure than "$uper7eetMoneyMakah", "LuvFlamingoes" or "MagicalTux".
    - LuvFlamingoes 13y ago
      Oi!
SimHacker 13y ago
What you wrote made me think, "What would anyone in their right mind write on their blog that would make people think something like that?" So I clicked through, and read the first four words, that struck me in the face like a four layer wedding cake: You were right. Then I read the rest of the sentence, and that was like a ton of frosting being poured on the cake from a dump truck. Point well taken, sir!
danielweber 13y ago
people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox There are a lot of forums on the Internet. It's not confidence-building, at all, to tell people "if you hang out on the right forum you know what's safe." Especially because "the right forum" is not written in stone.
- puredemo 13y ago
  That's what makes it fun..
taspeotis 13y ago
Oh lawdy [1]: Of course normal frameworks are a no-go. Using someone else’s framework will make your world slightly better, but until you create your own full framework, you won’t understand what I mean. The next step is to build applications with your framework. The kind of applications that will change the world... Should have tagged the post with NIH. [1] http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/09/19/striving-for-a-better-world/ http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/09/19/striving-for-a-better-...
- grey-area 13y ago
  The worst thing is he still runs multiple other companies: https://www.autovps.net https://www.autovps.net https://www.kalyhost.com https://www.kalyhost.com https://www.tibanne.com https://www.tibanne.com http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/12/22/incorporation-in-japan/ http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/12/22/incorporation-in-japan... If he was not dealing with other people's real money and data this experimentation and shotgun approach would be fine.

imperialdrive 13y ago

I've been around. What is bitcoin?, and who cares about whatever the hell 'Mount Gox' is?? Can we all get back to work on something meaningful to the future, family, or nature... someone we don't know about made up a currency, and some other company we also don't know about made up an 'exchange' of this 'currency' and now we still don't know what's going on and some 'bitcoins' are missing... the most it's all worth is a laugh

Rumudiez 13y ago
A laugh and a few good tens of millions of dollars that people actually do value and will pay that much for. Maybe cryptocurrencies aren't in your favor, but their value and growth isn't something to scoff at.
Crito 13y ago
I mean, you are the one that decided to dive into the middle of a bitcoin discussion. I typically find it rather easy to ignore things that do not interest me, maybe you should work on that.
VMG 13y ago
> I've been around. What is bitcoin? From https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf‎ https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf‎: Abstract. A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution. Digital signatures provide part of the solution, but the main benefits are lost if a trusted third party is still required to prevent double-spending. Of course, the coins are only yours if you hold the private keys. A promise of some Japanese exchange to send you an amount of Bitcoin in the future is not the same as owning a Bitcoin. It's pretty interesting, you should read it.
- imperialdrive 13y ago
  I think you had the only decent reply. Thank you. I know bitcoin, and was really just fishing for others that may share my view on the current state of affairs for the digital crypto currency. Some of us have been around just long enough to be aware that the field of technology doesn't create a buffer from unclean people and business characters. Also, that just because a lot of smart/clever people made something that a lot of people believe in, that at some point it passes the point of no return or is immune to failure. I think bitcoin failing may be good, could wake a lot of people up, many mistakes won't be made a second time, and the freed up focus and brainpower will go towards a better generation of technology to benefit humanity.
  - VMG 13y ago
    Currently, this event looks like about the third or fourth-largest crisis of the currency and has had very moderate on the valuation, although this might change in the coming weeks. Many people in the field are very ethical and think that an improvement to the current financial system is of great benefit to humanity.
SimHacker 13y ago
Maybe you should go back around to wherever you've been around, and not be around here, where you have nothing of value to contribute and no interest in the discussion at hand. The way things work, in case you didn't learn that by being around, is that you don't post messages complaining you're not interested in a topic to discussions about that topic. So stop being around here.
jafaku 13y ago
Bitcoin is a technological breakthrough, you are just being ignorant about it.

wpietri 13y ago

I clicked through and thought you were being too harsh. I mean, it can be fun to make toy implementations of things as an exercise. Doing an SSH server in PHP would be entertaining if you liked PHP. You'd learn something. And then I read that his hacked-together-in-3-days ssh server was for use in production. In a hosting service. Wow. Just wow.

dspillett 13y ago
> And then I read that his hacked-together-in-3-days ssh server was for use in production. In a hosting service. That sounds like a brilliant technical guy, capable of running with a daft idea to completion (unlike me, with my collection of at-best-half-built personal projects), who should have some layers of protection between him and Real World Production...
- outworlder 13y ago
  That reminds me: "Now, people who Get Things Done but are not Smart will do stupid things, seemingly without thinking about them, and somebody else will have to come clean up their mess later. " http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000073.html
  - eldavido 13y ago
    I think it's different. Inexperienced (young) programmers don't know what's been tried, and what's available. I've been dealing with this a lot at work recently, where we ended up doing poor reimplementations of off-the-shelf stuff due to a mix of ignorance, and honestly, a bit of hubris. It's a good attitude to have in academia/non-production critical work, but the GP is right, production demands a more conservative approach, especially when money/safety is at stake. The type of ignorance Joel writes about (see parent) is different, it's more like "slavishly following design patterns" and "writing copy-and-pasted, improperly factored code". Both are ignorance, but the first is better called "NIH", whereas Joel's is, "writing bad code".
chii 13y ago

coldtea 13y ago

>Most people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox since circa 2011 when their stunning incompetence was at it's height. And still, even 2 weeks ago, tons of people defended MtGox in HN threads, and said how it's a temporary glitch and they are very good exchange and such. Even when it was pointed to them that it's a service build by a guy with no actual knowledge of exchanges and no prior experience at finance services whatsoever -- a mere PHP developer (not to knock the language) that had done nothing spectacular before (no Carmack, or Fitzpatrick or your favorite coder hero). People trusted their money to a guy that literary calls himself "MagicalTux" -- which to me seems like investing to the hobo on the corner, people call Crazy Bob.

waterlesscloud 13y ago
Does this mean we shouldn't trust "coldtea" to develop anything? I'm the last person to defend Karpeles' competency, but his internet alias has nothing to do with it.
- coldtea 13y ago
  >Does this mean we shouldn't trust "coldtea" to develop anything? Of course you shouldn't. If you were to here him (well, me) you'd ask for my CV -- if not an interview also. And if it was like "developed some random toy stuff" you wouldn't hire me to develop a money exchange playing with other people's millions of dollars. And if you were to assess if you will put $10,000 in a financial online service made by me, my past work in the area, my general competence would be quite important. Else, don't be surprised if you lost it all. The chances were way higher than if you had put that money in Citibank, you just ignored the signs. And for me, not giving the impression I'm a 20-something script kiddie with a fancy handle would also be quite important. I mean, it might be prejudice, but "Ives, Rockefeller and Berstein" as a financial service just feels more secure than "$uper7eetMoneyMakah", "LuvFlamingoes" or "MagicalTux".
  - LuvFlamingoes 13y ago
    Oi!

SimHacker 13y ago

What you wrote made me think, "What would anyone in their right mind write on their blog that would make people think something like that?" So I clicked through, and read the first four words, that struck me in the face like a four layer wedding cake: You were right. Then I read the rest of the sentence, and that was like a ton of frosting being poured on the cake from a dump truck. Point well taken, sir!

danielweber 13y ago

people who've been around bitcointalk and bitcoin-otc know not to use MtGox There are a lot of forums on the Internet. It's not confidence-building, at all, to tell people "if you hang out on the right forum you know what's safe." Especially because "the right forum" is not written in stone.

puredemo 13y ago
That's what makes it fun..

taspeotis 13y ago

Oh lawdy [1]: Of course normal frameworks are a no-go. Using someone else’s framework will make your world slightly better, but until you create your own full framework, you won’t understand what I mean. The next step is to build applications with your framework. The kind of applications that will change the world... Should have tagged the post with NIH. [1] http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/09/19/striving-for-a-better-world/ http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/09/19/striving-for-a-better-...

grey-area 13y ago
The worst thing is he still runs multiple other companies: https://www.autovps.net https://www.autovps.net https://www.kalyhost.com https://www.kalyhost.com https://www.tibanne.com https://www.tibanne.com http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/12/22/incorporation-in-japan/ http://blog.magicaltux.net/2009/12/22/incorporation-in-japan... If he was not dealing with other people's real money and data this experimentation and shotgun approach would be fine.