Live data from Hacker News

Silk Road 2.0 Launches

forbes.com

141–150 of 243 posts

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see the Silk Roads of the world making much difference with regard to the drug war. Right now Silk Road is the eBay of drugs, where convenience is it's competitive advantage. I can get some drug without visiting a shady person in some shady place, but the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US the bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. A huge part of the US war on drugs takes place amo…

> I'd be more excited about an Etsy of drugs I think you mean more of an Amazon Marketplace of drugs. > the drugs (in general) are still coming to the US the bloody, violent way via paramilitaries, druglords, etc. If the information and payment infrastructure is good enough, it should make producers and shippers invisible to other producers and shippers, including the paramilitaries and drug-lords.

For what it's worth, you can currently buy drugs on both Amazon marketplace and Etsy. It's not even a hypothetical.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#142

Never, ever, ever trust anyone or anything that suddenly reappears after a major bust by the authorities. NEVER . Move on.

One would think that they'd start moving to technologies that are decentralized using technologies such as distributed hash tables. This puts the onus on the users to have a client app that helps host the transaction system for everyone else. The clients would openly share the buy and sell orders and then communication would moved to an encrypted channel that supports perfect forward secrecy. The only part that osten…

You don't need the ledger to be centralized either. A bitcoin style blockchain stores transaction histories tied to a specific set of keys/wallets. In the future I imagine some sort of reputation system will be maintained using this.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#143

I am serious here too: I don't support the website's initiative. I endorse the technical aspect of it as a way to test whether the design is optimal and achievable, but in no way would I ever support drug dealers.

An honest question: Why not?

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#144
post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alright. Let's assume the massive difference in quantity of violence is substantial. We're talking 10s of thousands dead via cartel trade vs. 2 alleged attempted hits on the silk road. Even then that was the operator of the marketplace defending users, it wasn't a vendor killing another vendor to gain a competitive advantage.

But your analysis specifically excluded the source of all of this violence, the wholesale procurement of the drugs by the end user dealers. None of that is different with the Silk Road.

That's the locus of the violence. The source of the violence (and of most of the other harms) is the prohibition.

Alcohol and tobbacco dealers aren't involved in shootings in the streets - instead we find them in their shops, carefully following laws and doing business peacefully. Nor are their customers suffering from adulterated goods, or committing robberies to afford black-market prices.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#145
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I will never understand why Silk Road is easier than just hitting up your dealer

I've never used SR (or similar site), but there's plenty of drugs which I couldn't get locally if I wanted them - I'm sure they are sold near me, but I wouldn't know how to find them. Heroin, LSD... etc. Hitting up a dealer is only easy if you know how to find a dealer. (Personally I've looked for mushrooms in the past with absolutely no joy. So I've never done mushrooms.) For all drugs, it's quite possible that onli…

Unrelated, but have you ever tried mescaline via san pedro? One of the good legal psychedelics if you're thinking about shrooms.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#146

I'd never buy heroin from a website, but I see the Silk Road as cyber-civil-disobedience, and I hope the persona of DPR and the site itself are as unsinkable as they claim. The drug war is a ghastly thing, and the number of people we lock up in the US is more shameful than our foreign policy. You can begrudge the first DPR his lame security, shady murder contracts, and ill-gotten fortune, but he's the product of our…

I didn't produce him, or it. Thus I feel no shame.

But you pay taxes that finance the government stupidity and violence.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#147
post #39
post #6

I have a sneaking suspicion that it's a honeypot. Just a hunch.

The Silk Road seizure demonstrated that the only reasonable way to participate in any online drug market is to assume the market itself is compromised and untrustworthy. That means you never upload identifying information in cleartext (e.g., buyers encrypt their addresses with the seller's public key), and you run all bitcoins sent to or received from such a site through a third-party mixer. Of course, there still ha…

What good does that do if the sellers are also fake?

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#148
post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've never used SR (or similar site), but there's plenty of drugs which I couldn't get locally if I wanted them - I'm sure they are sold near me, but I wouldn't know how to find them. Heroin, LSD... etc. Hitting up a dealer is only easy if you know how to find a dealer. (Personally I've looked for mushrooms in the past with absolutely no joy. So I've never done mushrooms.) For all drugs, it's quite possible that onli…

Unrelated, but have you ever tried mescaline via san pedro? One of the good legal psychedelics if you're thinking about shrooms.

I've never used any psychedelic, legal or not - a quick Google makes mescaline via cactus sound fairly complicated..

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#149
post #132
post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but that is where most of the enforcement is and therefore most of the violence.

Wow, this is incredibly uninformed. For one thing, no one's bothering to attack the US border, whereas in Brazil the government is fighting numerous active paramilitary groups which are basically all just fighting each other for control of the drug trade.

Yeah didn't really think that through before writing, majority is the wrong word. I didn't mean attacking the border, I just meant that a lot of the violence occurs near the border as most cartels set up shop in locations most appropriate for later distribution into the U.S.

Re: Silk Road 2.0 Launches

#150
Is there a place he could run this from and be safe? Like a country without extradition where it would be difficult for US gov to come in and arrest you anyway.

The single dumbest thing the last DPR did was continue living in the US

Post reply on HN