Please remove mitsuhiko/* • Hacker News Board

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#311

Post by Ologn » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 8:58 PM UTC

jasonpbecker wrote: post #292

Ologn wrote: post #231

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bitcoins are worthless precisely because the Subjective Theory of Value is wrong. Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith and all the early economists thought the Subjective Theory of Value was wrong. Because it is wrong. Bitcoin is a little scam which justifies itself against the backdrop of a much bigger scam. Gold is valuable because it takes effort to find, mine and refine. People want to exchange other valuable things for…

Except that gold's value is not evenly remotely tied to its use value. If it were, gold would be worth a small fraction of its current price.

Precious metals are a commodity like any other commodity. They are valuable because people had to spend effort finding and mining them, and because people find them useful enough to exchange other valuable commodities for them. Their price, measured across decades going thousands of years back, is tied to their use value.

It is true the prices can be manipulated over the short term - in 1979, the Hunt brothers made silver go from $6 an ounce to $48 an ounce before it crashed back down. Over the long term though, the value of commodities are tied to their value - how hard it is to find and mine gold, and whether people find it useful enough to exchange other valuable things for it.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#312

Post by eli » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 8:59 PM UTC

zaroth wrote: post #252

bewaretheirs wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the US, if a payment is "available" to you, it must be reported as income at the time it becomes available. Failure to cash a paycheck doesn't mean you don't owe tax on it. See IRS publication 525, page 2, "constructively received income": http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p525.pdf There's some fuzziness and legal room here but the safe thing would be to declare it as income.

Yes, it's true you're supposed to pay taxes for money earned in the year it was earned, not just when you happened to deposit the check. That has little to no bearing for this situation. First, the money isn't available since it hasn't even been sent to you. Until you sign-up for the service, and provide a bitcoin address for the funds to be sent to your private key, they are not available. But more importantly, sinc…

Either the service is just funneling money to software authors, or they are collecting it themselves and holding it unless and until authors want it. So if it's the latter, then they are raising money using someone else's name and reputation. Either way, that's not at all cool.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#313

Post by marcell » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:01 PM UTC

art2 wrote: post #194

What is staggering is that one would assume that this service was created with the aim of helping open source developers, but when the developers ask personally to make a reasonable change to how the site is functioning, the owners decline. So the reason the site exists is something different. I don't think it's fraud. It's probably the weird culture of the (younger) part of the Bitcoin community, for whom the Bitcoi…

> For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]".

Not true (anymore?). The top 3 comments are now:

- "I think [mitsuhiko] complaint is 120% fair..."

- "It seems like tip4commit is trying to ram a Bitcoin service down peoples throats..."

- "This has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all. It's people being jerks..."

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#314

Post by eli » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:04 PM UTC

ubernostrum wrote: post #5

I do not normally rant, but tip4commit and its ilk are some of the most infuriating people in the world to deal with, since they're opting other people's projects into something that has all sorts of legal/taxation consequences and think that "we have no way to remove you once you get opted in" is an acceptable answer. I'd push complaints further up to GitHub, since I'm sure something in the way this works violates t…

Set aside the legal/tax questions since it just brings out the armchair lawyers.

It is simply not cool to use a project's name to collect money from its fans without their permission. And without any promise that the money will make it to the intended recipient. And certainly without any indication of what happens to the money that doesn't make it to the recipient.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#315

Post by krick » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:04 PM UTC

wyager wrote: post #294

art2 wrote: post #194

What is staggering is that one would assume that this service was created with the aim of helping open source developers, but when the developers ask personally to make a reasonable change to how the site is functioning, the owners decline. So the reason the site exists is something different. I don't think it's fraud. It's probably the weird culture of the (younger) part of the Bitcoin community, for whom the Bitcoi…

Or maybe it's just a cool hackathon project using Bitcoin and the Github APIs... Seriously, what is the big deal with this? The developers are more than able to simply ignore the donations. Anyone who wasted time complaining in that Github thread could have clicked "mark as spam" in a fraction of the time and been done with it.

I guess the real reason was Armin's sincere indignation (quite justified in my opinion) about some random site on the web making use of his project name in some questionable way that appears like it is encouraged by the project maintainer himself. Emails are minor nuisance as you always can create one more filter to get rid of known spam. And then "shit just hit the fan", so all discussion that follows is more about making noise and threats about throwing lawyers in each other than really trying to solve anything.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#316

Post by DanBC » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:05 PM UTC

aaronmusk wrote: post #282

It's a bit sad and annoying to see educated people with uneducated opinions on something that is as clear as my command line. The guys are not impersonating anyone nor taking any money from anyone. Google is opt-out tool and I don't see anyone complaining. There is absolutely nothing wrong with people bringing extra attention to someone's project and if contributors are going to make money in the process, that's epic…

> Google is opt-out tool and I don't see anyone complaining.

I see plenty of people complaining. That's why "Right to be forgotten" has so much traffic in EU.

> Instead of complaining, come up with ideas to make it better

People have suggested ways to make it better. The project has ignored them.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#317

Post by stkhlm » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:08 PM UTC

tokenizerrr wrote: post #300

jchrisa wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The non-sketchy version of this would only accept tips for repos that had a bitcoin address committed to a well-known location in their repo. And it would send the tips directly to that address. No possibility of scamming, and opt-in by its nature. Is there already something like this?

That seems to go against the idea of tip4commit, the idea is that contributors (through pull requests etc) can be compensated as well automatically. Same if there's multiple contributors to a project the compensation is split between them based on the amount of commits they make.

Couldn't that be fixed by having contributors creating a specifically named repo with the address in a file? Still opt in. It could be opt in for the maintainer too, following jchrisa's suggestion, meaning the maintainer could veto payments.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#318

Post by meepmorp » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:09 PM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #253

DanBC wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> No one is collecting money for you. The guy just collects money and promises to give it to you if you ask. Until you ask it's his money. Did you see the bit of US tax law helpfully posted elsewhere in the thread?

I just did. What a bizarre construct. Totally unenforceable. You'll get 'civil forfeiture'-d 50 times at random before IRS will charge you with that and wins. Besides it's not uncashed check. It's verbal (or even virtual) promise made by person in another country. If Nigerian prince offers you 500000$ you just need to claim do you have to pay taxes on that?

> I just did. What a bizarre construct. Totally unenforceable. Y

Oh, well thank god for that.

Whoever might have legal issues with this can just tell the relevant authorities in their country that scotty79 on HN says it's bizarre and totally unenforceable, and that'll shut them right up, won't it.

And, also, hey who gives a shit if the people involved in the various projects want their project associated with this. If there's no legal means to prevent it, then it's 100% ok because there's no such thing as just respecting the wishes of the people involved and being a decent person. After all, those people for put their code out there in public, so they have it coming and fuck them if they don't like it.

Can you seriously not see why people have a problem with this? And why it'd be good for the folks running the site to not automatically include whoever they please in their scheme, and to allow projects to remove themselves if asked?

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#319

Post by comboy » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:09 PM UTC

mpyne wrote: post #295

jnbiche wrote: post #119

These kinds of episodes are making me increasingly depressed. On one hand, I'm incredibly disappointed in the ethics and morality of some of the people who have latched on to Bitcoin. And sadly, I'd have to include tip4commit in that group, particularly since they are "opt-out" and yet have been spamming people after each commit [ubernostrum points out below that they aren't even "opt-out", since they're not honoring…

Bitcoin is a scheme designed to create a deflationary store of value by wasting electrical energy, co-opted by a vast amount of people who really did look at it like "tulips" and who continue to operate today as if it's a pump-and-dump. You are certainly right to point out that there are a lot of Bitcoin developers and users who are not assholes and have good intentions, but Bitcoin is not the vehicle that's going to…

I do love Bitcoin criticism from people who've done their homework. Thanks.

I don't think Bitcoin is meant to be your direct mean of payment for coffee. Centralized solutions are cheaper than decentralized ones. In case of Africa for example, you can have many different competing centralized payment systems. But you can fund them with bitcoin, not depending on government printed money. In developed countries, we have CCs and some wanna-be payment systems, but there's very little competition, mostly because it's very expensive to create such company. You cannot start a new VISA in your garage. That's because of how banking system is constructed. But you can start payment system backed by bitcoin in your garage. More competition = lower transaction fees.

And given your background I'm assuming you already know counterarguments to "deflationary store of value by wasting electrical energy" and just used it to make your point.

Re: Please remove mitsuhiko/*

#320

Post by eli » Sat, Nov 01, 2014, 9:12 PM UTC

marcell wrote: post #313

art2 wrote: post #194

What is staggering is that one would assume that this service was created with the aim of helping open source developers, but when the developers ask personally to make a reasonable change to how the site is functioning, the owners decline. So the reason the site exists is something different. I don't think it's fraud. It's probably the weird culture of the (younger) part of the Bitcoin community, for whom the Bitcoi…

> For example, the currently highest-voted comment on /r/bitcoin for the story [0] says "I disagree with him [mitsuhiko]". Not true (anymore?). The top 3 comments are now: - "I think [mitsuhiko] complaint is 120% fair..." - "It seems like tip4commit is trying to ram a Bitcoin service down peoples throats..." - "This has nothing to do with Bitcoin at all. It's people being jerks..."

On the other hand, the whole thread has been killed by an /r/bitcoin mod apparently for inciting anti-bitcoin sentiment. http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2kz9x0/please_remov...