added Missive for 2015-09-14

_posts/2015-06-29-monero-missive-for-the-week-of-2015-06-29.md

@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@ Hello and welcome back to the Monero missives. I am Riccardo, fluffypony and wit
 
 Hello everyone, welcome back. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 It has been too long since our last conversation and that's my fault because I went on a little Monero tour of Europe, but now I am back. 
 
@@ -35,7 +35,7 @@ It has been too long since our last conversation and that's my fault because I w
 
 The magical mystery Monero tour. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Exactly. 
 
@@ -43,7 +43,7 @@ Exactly.
 
 So now we are here to find out what the mystery is all about. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Yes, as some of them wondered what happened in Europe. 
 
@@ -51,7 +51,7 @@ Yes, as some of them wondered what happened in Europe.
 
 We saw some pictures from Brussels, I don't know where those were, with the tiny elevator. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Yes, it was Brussels and I was going to put more pictures up, but then between running around, being super busy and also Bitcointalk being down for like ages, I just gave up on that idea. So I'll try and put some photos up. I didn't unfortunately take much in the way of photos of the actual meetups and bitcoin friends, but that also because not everyone wants their picture taken and plastered all over Bitcointalk. Apparently I am the exception to that. 
 
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ So basically to sort of give everyone a bit of overview. The reason I went to Eu
 
 That's a lot of talking. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 So, it's a lot of talking. Thankfully for the most part it was the same talk that I gave at all three. I mean, sorry, at all 4 of the meetups/conferences. Then obviously the OpenAlias talk was different, but it was more like a soft introduction to OpenAlias and a bit of a discussion about how we provide lookup privacy and that sort of thing.  
 
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@ So, it's a lot of talking. Thankfully for the most part it was the same talk tha
 
 Gotcha. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 So let me run through them one at the time and give a bit of an executive summary 
 
@@ -77,7 +77,7 @@ So let me run through them one at the time and give a bit of an executive summar
 
 That's sounds good, I am interested to hear what happened. Take it away 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 So the Brussels meetup was pretty amazing. It was organized by Binaryfate. One of the guys behind XMR.TO and it was very kindly hosted. The venue was provided by Peter Hintjes, the guy behind ZeroMQ and it was really, really good. We had quite a nice turnout. It was myself and David who were there and who spoke. Then also BinaryFate spoke and then there was also a talk by Thomas Spass about privacy and fungibility from a legal perspective. Which was very interesting as well. So, what sort of came out of those initial talks, the one by BinaryFate and the one by Thomas about privacy and fungibility was really an overview of why fungibility is such an important aspect of a currency and also why or what the consequences could be of Bitcoin not having fungibility. That's not to say Bitcoin is going to fail and I don't want to give anyone the impression that there was some sort of negativity towards Bitcoin, because there wasn't. It's just, you know, let's talk about this. 
 
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@ That was kind of the end of the Brussels meetup and then pretty much from there,
 
 Oh cool, there is a lot of them there. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 So that was nice and then pretty much from there went back to Berlin (a few days after that) and then we had the Berlin Meetup. Which was on a Sunday, sort of late afternoon / early evening. It was a public holiday, so I think a lot of people were not in the right frame of mind to go to a meetup, but we had a nice turnout nonetheless. We were joined by Risto (Risto Pietila) and some of his friends from Finland and one of Risto's associates, Ally, gave a nice talk on Monero as a private store of value (as a private store of wealth) after I had given my presentation, which was quite interesting. Then Risto spoke a little bit as well. I am very hesitant to talk about Monero as an investment, because I don't believe it's an investment. I believe it should be used and should be useful. If you buy Monero and then expect it to magically go up, you probably end up getting burned, because that is not the way it works. Normally when people ask me how can make money with Monero I encourage them to contribute to the ecosystem. Create an application, website or whatever. That's where you going to make money, not from buying, holding and hoping something happens. So I am always kind of hesitant with conversations like that, but there was a lot that I learned from Ally and Risto's presentation that I hadn't thought of before in terms of how Monero can be useful to certain classes of people as a private store of value. They also spoke about cryptocurrency in general being a new asset class. That also lent itself quite nicely to a general discussion of why the privacy in Monero is so important to fungibility of private store of value. So that was Berlin and afterwards we went out for some food and beer. Well, never have I walked so much in my life as I did in Europe. Everyone walks everywhere and everyone drives everywhere. That's always fun, but you get used to it. Then a few days later we had the Bitcoin meetup, there were 3 speakers: Myself, one of the gals that works on Ethereum and the lady that started up Zipcar, which is a car sharing service, but one of the first ones. 
 
@@ -97,7 +97,7 @@ So that was nice and then pretty much from there went back to Berlin (a few days
 
 Oh yeah, I use Zipcar. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 She's just written a book and she spoke a little bit about how she envisions Bitcoin and general blockchain technology being used in the future. Then the gal from Ethereum spoke about creating an almost like a chain of authenticity or custody, so that you are able to take a product and then know it's supply chain and then know where comes from. Like if I am buying organic wine does it really come from an organic farm and do they get their stuff from another organic farm. I know that there is a large movement at the moment to have verifiable supply chains. Who knows, maybe there is something interesting that will happen in that space. Whether it needs to be decentralized is a different conversation, but I do think there is scope for cryptographically verifiable supply chains amongst certain groups and in certain spaces. Then I spoke about OpenAlias, which everyone knows about. I spoke a little bit about the cottage industries that are starting to pop up that are providing OpenAlias services. I mean you can purchase OpenAlias identities and so on. That's what I think is quite cool, I think there is a lot of scope there. That was pretty much Berlin.
 
@@ -107,7 +107,7 @@ Then I went to the Netherlands, to Amsterdam. Which was quite exciting, because
 
 Did you borrow a bicycle? 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 No I didn't, come on, I am South African I just drove everywhere. But that was fun. Then Bitcoinference was on that weekend and it was a Saturday and a Sunday. Also, nice turnout. It was the whole day, there were like 5-7 speeches/talks every day and lots of really interesting stuff as well. There was one talk from a professor at one of the Universities who was speaking about the definition of money, whether bitcoin qualifies as money and how we define money. He also spoke about how bitcoin has many of the properties of money, but he feels that the lack of privacy and therefore the lack of fungibility makes Bitcoin not money, because it just doesn't have enough of the properties. 
 
@@ -115,7 +115,7 @@ No I didn't, come on, I am South African I just drove everywhere. But that was f
 
 Well, wouldn't you know! 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 The funny thing is, he said all of that and I was the next speaker. Unfortunately his speech got moved up, because he had to leave (he was supposed to be after me). So right after doing this entire talk how Bitcoin could be money if it was more private, he is like: "Ok, thank you very much" and off he goes. I talk next and I am like: "Well, thank you for the introduction, I am so sorry he is not going to be around to hear my talk". Which was kind of sad, but anyway. I did manage to record my slides and my audio, so I am going to put that up. It will go up with this missive, so that people can download it and have a listen to the presentation and see the slides at the same time. Bitcoinference also recorded me and they will put together a more complete video for all of the presentations. It's definitely well worth watching that presentation on whether Bitcoin is money and so on. So that will go up so that at least people can see the talk and get a bit of a feel for what the audience was asking afterwards and so. 
 
@@ -123,7 +123,7 @@ The funny thing is, he said all of that and I was the next speaker. Unfortunatel
 
 Just as a little primer, did you talk about Monero at the Bitcoinference or was it sort of a general privacy talk? 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 No it was about Monero, it was entirely about Monero. It wasn't anything else, like unrelated. It was 100% about Monero. A lot of the conversations that we had, especially afterwards and some of the things I speak about in that talk are about Monero as it relates to other efforts. With Bitcoin privacy for instance. As it relates to other altcoins that are trying to do privacy and also as it relates to some of the future advances that are being done, especially in the Zerocoin/Zerocash space. I try to be as realistic as possible and acknowledge Monero's weaknesses and failings which I think is important in general so that people at least got a realistic view and that people understand how Monero works a lot better and how Monero could be useful to people. Again, not as a replacement for Bitcoin, but just as something that can be useful along with Bitcoin.
 
@@ -131,7 +131,7 @@ No it was about Monero, it was entirely about Monero. It wasn't anything else, l
 
 Yeah, I'm interested to hear how what you said during the presentation and how the concept was received in general. So yeah, I look forward to seeing that post
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 We also had a couple of people that are Monero contributors that were there. One guy came from Sint-Petersburg in Russia. He has contributed to Monero Core and he is doing some Monero related stuff.  So that was quite nice to meet him in Amsterdam. So it was really a nice to meet people you normally only see their nickname on a screen. You don't even see their real name. So it was really special and I really enjoyed meeting people face to face.
 
@@ -139,7 +139,7 @@ We also had a couple of people that are Monero contributors that were there. One
 
 Awesome.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 So meeting the people that contribute to the Monero ecosystem is definitely something that I would like to keep doing in the future. 
 
@@ -147,7 +147,7 @@ So meeting the people that contribute to the Monero ecosystem is definitely some
 
 So after you presentation, was their anything else worthy of reporting? 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Oh there wasn't really anything else major that I did afterwards. However, I went to the next day. But I went to Arnhem. It's quite a little hub for Bitcoin activity in the Netherlands. I think that's because Arnhem is smaller than Amsterdam and so they're able to cover more of the shops and also the Bitcoin advocates are then able to use the places more. Obviously Amsterdam is so large that if 100 places accept Bitcoin then no one is going to all of those 100 places. They just keep going to the 3-4 places they like. I think in a smaller town it's easier to have a more broad coverage.
 
@@ -155,7 +155,7 @@ Oh there wasn't really anything else major that I did afterwards. However, I wen
 
 I haven't heard about that town.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Neither had I but I was quite pleasantly surprised when I got there.I could go to different places  and pay with BTC. It really is quite a vibrant buzzing cryptocurrency community there. So anyone who is going to the Netherlands,  you got to do Amsterdam obviously but Arnhem is worth making the trip. It's an hour by train and from Amsterdam and it 's definitely worth going there and meeting up with some of the Bitcoin guys going to some of the places. We went to a really nice Mexican restaurant that accepts bitcoin for example. They had fantastic food and really nice mojito's so if you heading for Europe and then try to seek up Bitcoin accepting places just purely to keep giving them the feeling it's worthwhile accepting it.
 
@@ -163,7 +163,7 @@ Neither had I but I was quite pleasantly surprised when I got there.I could go t
 
 I think they weren't open to accepting Monero yet?
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Well, we had lots of conversations with the places that are already accepting Bitcoin, especially at the place where the Bitcoin embassy is in Amsterdam.
 
@@ -171,7 +171,7 @@ Well, we had lots of conversations with the places that are already accepting Bi
 
 A bitcoin embassy?! That's awesome!
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Well, it's not like them accepting Monero will make them any less of an Bitcoin embassy. By the way, it's more the restaurant that's attached to the Bitcoin embassy, not the embassy themselves
 
@@ -185,7 +185,7 @@ So that's kinda Fluffypony's trip to Europe.
 
 The Magical Mystery Tour  in a nutshell
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Yes, unfortunately I didn't make any T-shirts for it to wear, with all the places I've gonna be performing at. 
 
@@ -205,7 +205,7 @@ Yes, it was Paris after Brussels.
 
 Ok, Paris after Brussels. It sounds like there was just a language barrier there. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 No, it was good and there was really good feedback afterwards but I think there were some people that struggled to follow what I was saying because I didn't really slowed down. I gave it like I normally gave it. I didn't make the connection between being in Paris and people speaking French. For some reason my brain blanked out on that. I thought I was speaking to an English audience and I like remembered it afterwards.
 
@@ -213,7 +213,7 @@ No, it was good and there was really good feedback afterwards but I think there
 
 Oh you know,  you get caught up in the moment presenting. It's a general exciting thing so yeah...and from their was it Amsterdam next or am I missing something?
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 No, Berlin was in between then Amsterdam. 
 
@@ -221,7 +221,7 @@ No, Berlin was in between then Amsterdam.
 
 Yeah, I already forgot what happened there. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 We had a meetup there and It was cool. 
 
@@ -229,7 +229,7 @@ We had a meetup there and It was cool.
 
 And then the coinference. I just like saying "coinference" I think. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 I was like "man, when I read the name...This guy has the best domain...bitcoinference.com.  You can't get better than that, if you will have a Bitcoin conference". He really  scored there.
 
@@ -237,7 +237,7 @@ I was like "man, when I read the name...This guy has the best domain...bitcoinfe
 
 Awesome! It sounds like it was a great trip and you got to spread the Good Word of Monero. One of the question I had was...You were doing your general presentation about Monero to audiences that hadn't either heard of it or had heard of it but only knew  it as how generally people think of altcoins. I mean what was the sense from these people? Were they like "oh, why do we need this? I get the privacy thing but can't bitcoin eventually do that?" Anything that really stands out from that? Because we are sort of in an echo chamber in the Monero community. We all believe in this different concept like privacy and fungibility and the utility of having a secondary currency...We've seen the conversations on the various fora of what the Monero community thinks of sidechains for example. So being in this echo chamber we miss a perspective. SO I'm curious if anything really stood out like "oh, that's something that we haven't heard of in the echo chamber" ? 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 I think some of the things that jumped out at me are that there is a general misconception that Bitcoin is private enough. I think that the Bitcoin core maintainers are quite happy to acknowledge that Bitcoin is not private at all. I understand that there are a lot of Bitcoin purists that can't imagine that there could be anything else that could also be useful on any level, but I think for the most part there is a general acknowledgment at least amongst technical people I speak too that Bitoin is amazing and literally is THE ONLY cryptocurrency right now. But then Monero could also provide some value  someday as a truly fungible cryptocurrency. It's important speaking too people and having a chat with them. Some of the stuff that surprised me is those people didn't realize what we really mean when we speak about privacy within Bitcoin. We are not talking about how to privately buy drugs. We're talking about no one can determine my net worth or not being implicitly linked to a crime through blockchain analysis, whereas with Bitcoin I could receive tainted funds without wanting to or realizing it. So there is all stuff like that that came out.
 
@@ -247,7 +247,7 @@ The other thing we had a lot of conversations about was the fact that within Bit
 
 Privacy theater?
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 So privacy theater and decentralized theater is basically when something put on a show of being private and being decentralized. I"ll give you an example: there is a lot of conversation recently about ripple. Is it a cryptocurrency and it is decentralized? The reality is that there is a lot that you can do to sort of run your own component within the ripple network, but it's not decentralized. At best we can say ripple is distributed. But distributed and decentralized are different things. So obviously Ripple can claim to be decentralized and then they can say "look anyone can run you this or that" but that's not the same as being truly decentralized. What happens is that you end up with in that case decentralized theater where people might mistakenly expect or assume that Ripple is decentralized. The same goes for a  lot of these altcoins, and altcoins are particularly bad at this, that have centralized mixing build into their wallet and then they pretend that they are somehow private. What they sometimes even do is hosting a couple of servers and use an API  and a website to handle the mixing. And then they go like "see, it's hosted on more than one server" but again that's not the same as being decentralized, that's merely distributed. So there again we've got privacy theater and decentralized theater because the privacy that they are adding is not privacy to the level of being fungible. 
 
@@ -257,7 +257,7 @@ The fungibility thing is a big one because there are lots of solutions for being
 
 Interesting, interesting...
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 ...but I do talk about JoinMarket and all those other things in my presentation so there's that.
 
@@ -265,7 +265,7 @@ Interesting, interesting...
 
 So check out the presentation!
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Pretty much. And that's about it.
 
@@ -273,7 +273,7 @@ Pretty much. And that's about it.
 
 Awesome! Well, thank you for the recap and thanks for fitting the Monero meetups and all that stuff into your family vacation tour thing. It definitely adds a level to any trip.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 It wasn't just work or pleasure. It was a good trip and there were lots of projects that I'm working on at the moment where the developers and some of my business partners are scattered around Europe. So being able to meet up with those guys as well was advantageous. So well I mean things are looking good and we've had lots of positive feedback and I'm sure when people watch the presentation they also hopefully learn a little bit about Monero's inner workings if they don't understand it already. 
 
@@ -281,7 +281,7 @@ It wasn't just work or pleasure. It was a good trip and there were lots of proje
 
 I think I might be still a freshmen when it comes to that. Maybe I graduate to sophomore class soon. 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Well, I mean you are a developer so you know...
 
@@ -289,7 +289,7 @@ Well, I mean you are a developer so you know...
 
 Oh yes, much develop.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 I'm just saying...Gingeropolous, lead developer of Gingeropolous Software Incoproated
 
@@ -299,7 +299,7 @@ Yeah, yes, that's me!
 
 Well, now that you're back from the Mystery Tour, we've got a lot of missive to post, that's for sure. I assume we post this one first because everyone is full of anticipation about what happened. So this will go up first so if you are listening now, you are obviously listening now...So after this one we will post the other ones that are in the hopper. So yeah, tune in next week! 
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Now we can go back to a normal schedule. 
 
@@ -307,7 +307,7 @@ Now we can go back to a normal schedule.
 
 Yeah or a schedule, either way
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 But it would be really a schedule. 
 
@@ -317,7 +317,7 @@ I just want to make sure that everyone knows that when you write dates you put t
 
 No no, you measure them in English units and metrics units so when you send probes to Mars you screw up and loose hundreds of millions of dollars
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Yeah, oh dear we just overshot everything
 
@@ -327,7 +327,7 @@ Yeah, oh dear we just overshot everything
 
 Yes, but I agree year-month-day is the way to do it. Makes file searching so much easier indeed.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Indeed, exactly right?
 
@@ -335,7 +335,7 @@ Indeed, exactly right?
 
 Yeah, it's incredible!
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Ok cool thanks for the chat and we'll chat again next week
 

_posts/2015-08-31-monero-missive-for-the-week-of-2015-08-31.md

@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ Hello everyone and welcome to another Monero Missive. I am Riccardo, fluffypony,
 
 Good morning everyone, this is Gingeropolous. How are you doing? But it is not morning. It could be afternoon for you, I keep forgetting that.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Could be evening
 
@@ -33,11 +33,11 @@ Could be evening
 
 Ya
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Could be middle of the night. So a lot have people seen the website and for example they have seen that parts of the website are complete and have content and other parts don't. We often get questions from people who want to help and they can’t necessarily contribute to Monero core, and they don’t have funds to contribute to the dev donation fund, so they prefer in some other way. They don’t want to create peripheral projects of their own.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 One of the key areas that does need attention and will always need attention is the website. So what we wanted to do is chat a little bit about what is needed on the website right now and what will be needed on the website in the future and how you can get involved in helping us make the Monero website even better than it is.  Because it is meant to be a repository of terminal knowledge about Monero. That is what we want to it to be.
 
@@ -45,7 +45,7 @@ One of the key areas that does need attention and will always need attention is
 
 Indeed, time to fill up a lot of these, such as the “knowledge base” and  “user guides”. Just fill it up.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Just make it
 
@@ -53,7 +53,7 @@ Just make it
 
 I have come across these works in progress and I just wonder, how to get words on the page. I know the github version of these pages exist. But when I get to github I just wonder how do I make a commit? I don’t know
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 So lets talk very briefly about the technology of the Monero website. It is not important to know all the ins and outs, just as long as you know how to work on it. The website does not use something like wordpress or any of the common content management systems, it uses a system called Jekyll. Jekyll takes the content we write using a system called markdown and it turns it into HTML. So essentially the entire site is this flat static thing and we never need to worry about getting hacked with a SQL injection or anything like that. Its also very nice from a performance perspective.
 
@@ -61,7 +61,7 @@ So lets talk very briefly about the technology of the Monero website. It is not
 
 I don’t know what a SQL injection is. Let us assume that those that know what a SQL injection is are happy. Moving on...
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 The long and the short of it is that it is not a point and click system. Markdown is a pretty easy system to work with for performing simple operations. If you are doing things that are more complex, it takes some figuring out. The parts of the website that need work and have close to nothing in them essentially all are “knowledge base” sections. Primarily there are 4 main sections that have next to nothing in them and those are:
 
@@ -81,7 +81,7 @@ Moneropedia on the other hand is something that needs a lot of work. On the webs
 
 Okay so the account page is basically the template of what we are looking for
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Yes, this is what we would like things to look like. Now behind this page is not a bunch of HTML it is a markdown file. Om github you can see the account markdown file and get a good idea just by looking at the example. We will add some functionality to the site over the next week so that people can click and see and suggest changes easier. Now if you are not familiar with github and you don’t care to take the time to learn how to use git and directly contribute by making pull requests, then you can go to the right hand side of the Monero site github to submit a new issue. You can literally just type your suggestion in plain text into that area and suggest that. Then we can take that content, and properly format it into markdown and so on. This way people can help without having to spend time learning how to use markdown or github. The fastest way to get there is https://github.com/monero-project/monero-site
 
@@ -89,7 +89,7 @@ Yes, this is what we would like things to look like. Now behind this page is not
 
 Easy enough
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Now the same thing goes for developer guides and user guides. We have had a lot of people complain about a lack of documentation. They say I want to use the wallet API or daemon API but say “oh there is no documentation”. Someone needs to build the documentation. Its not always something the developers can tackle. Now those that have built things on top of Monero, please right down what you have learned. This way new developers do not need to spend days on IRC trying to muddle through it.
 
@@ -97,7 +97,7 @@ Now the same thing goes for developer guides and user guides. We have had a lot
 
 It is as easy as writing down content and an issue on github so that it can be added to the website. For example on the github page you can find he transcription of 3/19/15 missive which was transcribed by a community member who took the time to write it down. It is easily done
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 We are trying to make it easy for people to submit content. It is important to have a certain quality in terms on quality and grammar and spelling. Good flow and a consistent feel is also important. But frankly if you write a guide or any other content, someone else can come along to make changes and edits to assist with that. Its just a matter of getting content up there in the first place
 
@@ -105,7 +105,7 @@ We are trying to make it easy for people to submit content. It is important to h
 
 It is much easier to edit something that create it. If you are inspired to create something don't be worried about needing some sort of polished gem that is worthy of being on our beautiful Monero website. Just make something happen and we will all work together to make it website worthy.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Now a lot of people have expressed some interest in helping with translations.  We are almost at the stage where we are ready to switch over to translated version of the website. Please if you can help do so, the front being the most important. In the next weeks we will be ready to switch over to the multi- language version and move some things over to Transifex. This will make it easily for people to assist with translations
 
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ Now a lot of people have expressed some interest in helping with translations.
 
 Someone recently made a post stating that we found out Transifex is free for open source developers.
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 The nice thing about Transifex as well is that if someone submits a translation, someone else can always come along better to make edits to make better translations. Hopefully not only the content but also the intent of the website and posts in the translation.
 
@@ -121,7 +121,7 @@ The nice thing about Transifex as well is that if someone submits a translation,
 
 So in general this call for content and help for edits is a reminder that Monero is not your typical cryto-currency where the devs do everything. This is our coin, its a community coin. Don’t sit around screaming at the website yelling “why is there no content”. Do something!
 
-#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+#### Riccardo
 
 Just make it! Just to reiterate Monero is starting to achieve a level of visibility that is really outstripping its usability to some degree. People are become ever more interested in it while we are still working on the fundamentals.  Having a website that is easy to navigate, that has content, terms and explains to people how to get going is critical. We have done a lot of that but there is tons more. When it comes to translation, we should not use terms that are too technical. When we do need to use technical terms we should make sure there is a Moneropedia entry (even a short one) to define that so there is no confusion.
 

_posts/2015-09-14-monero-missive-for-the-week-of-2015-09-14.md

@@ -0,0 +1,433 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Monero Missives for the Week of 2015-09-14
+summary: An interview with the creators of MoneroDice, a new Monero gaming site
+tags: [monero missives, external]
+author: Riccardo Spagni (fluffypony)
+---
+
+<div class="text-center"><iframe style="border: none" src="//html5-player.libsyn.com/embed/episode/id/3798493/height/360/width/640/theme/standard-mini/direction/no/autoplay/no/autonext/no/thumbnail/yes/preload/no/no_addthis/no/" height="600" width="600" scrolling="no"  allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen></iframe></div>
+
+To download the podcast directly please [use this link to the MP3](http://traffic.libsyn.com/monero/Monero_Missives_Podcast_for_the_week_of_2015-09-14.mp3), or [this link to the AAC/MP4](http://traffic.libsyn.com/monero/Monero_Missives_Podcast_for_the_week_of_2015-09-14.mp4), or [this link to the FLAC](http://traffic.libsyn.com/monero/Monero_Missives_Podcast_for_the_week_of_2015-09-14.flac).
+
+In this week's episode we feature a brand new external project: [Monero Dice](https://monerodice.net/), and interview its founders and operators, Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni, and rznag.
+
+Until next week!
+
+# Podcast Transcription
+
+#### Riccardo "fluffypony" Spagni
+
+Hello everyone and welcome to yet another Monero Missive. I am Riccardo (fluffypony) and with me today I have Gingeropolous
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Hello everyone, this is Gingeropolous
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+And also today we have rznag, joining us from sunny Europe.
+
+#### rznag
+
+Hi.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+So, we are going to cover another external project. This is a brand new external project, and it's one that I have started so I suppose Gingeropolous is going to be interviewing me...surprise!
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+So basically after the demise of cryptocoinsdice, which you may recall, was the first dice site to support Monero, and then the owner decided to do a runner with everyone's money. There was a gap that opened up for a reliable Monero dice site, and I thought, well hey, you know, let me take that up and run with it.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Don't run with it!
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+haha good one, let me take that up and –walk- with it, in a circle, not going anywhere. With that said...
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+In a ring signature
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+To that end rznag and I have gotten together and we are launching Monero Dice, a very unexpected name, very original. We were going to call it Dark Flarb Dice, but unfortunately we were worried about copyright issues
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Why not Dice-aro?
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Dice-aro, because no one would be able to spell it.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Hmmm
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+So, Gingeropolous - have you played around with the test site?
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+No I have not. I have mainly played dice with that bastard Tippero, he's taken a lot of my Monero. Well, what are some of the interesting and unique features of your dice site?
+
+#### rznag
+
+It's for Monero. 
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Well that is unique and interesting
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+And we will not run.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+How do we know you will not run? What is your anti-run mechanism?
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Well, you see, I think what you better ask yourself is, would a rznag, and a fluffypony make off with Monero?
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Would you make off with Monero? I hope not. So rznag, why don't you tell us about the provable fair features of Monero Dice?
+
+#### rznag
+
+Okay. Provably fair? You can check out the source for single draws or if you, if you roll your dice, you will see that hash that and can calculate it for yourself to see that it is fair.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Cool, cool...I don't know how to do that
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+It's very complicated, very technical. We promise, I give you the fluffypony guarantee that it's, that it's fair. Okay? Okay, well I mean, the other thing is we got an autoroll system, so traditionally if people wanted to play a bunch of successive roles on a dice site, then they would have to write an API, or write a little program that uses API or whatnot, and we forego that by having an autoroll system, that is designed to allow ordinary folk to click a button and off it goes. And it doesn't do martindale, martingayle, whatever that stupid thing is called, but it just does rolls, you know? In a row, successive, forever, however many you want.
+
+#### rznag
+
+And as long as you have credit.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yes, till you run out of money.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Hmm, alright, I have logged in now. So, so say I wanted to get rich, how would I do that by investing in Monero Dice?
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+If you wanted to get rich I think we are in the wrong industry.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Well I mean. You know
+
+#### rznag
+
+You should deposit some Monero, roll the dice, and then you should have luck perhaps, that's the thing, perhaps not. So it could work out, but most not.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Yea, but can people bankroll Monero Dice? I mean, that's apparently a thing.
+
+#### rznag
+
+Yes, we have an invest feature. You can, invest into the bank and then if other players lose, the money goes into the bankroll, and is split into for the investors.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Okay
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+And obviously there is no guarantee of making money  because you are basically contributing to the bankroll. So if the site makes a loss, then the investors lose as well, and if the site makes a profit, then the investors profit. But it's important to understand that, and I think that this is key – that when you are dealing with a gambling site, which effectively this is, or a gaming site, that the house edge is the thing that balances out. So the house edge is the thing that makes sure that we don't shut down after two weeks, because we've bled money.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Right, right
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+But at the same time, the house edge can work both ways. So I mean we can, we can sort of lose money for a time and then get back up
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+So how would I know that my funds are actually secure on this dice site, you know if I have to deposit my Monero in order to play.
+
+#### rznag
+
+You can secure your account with 2 Factor Authentication to have a basic security mechanism on your account, and also we are storing funds in a cold wallet system, so we don't have much in our hot wallet.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Okay
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Which is of course beneficial, because it wouldn't be the first time that a site got “hacked” and just disappeared with money.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Okay, so cold storage and 2 factor authentication. So, I'm not critiquing you guys for your efforts, but you know this is one of those comments that is sure to come to fruition due to the nature of cryptocurrency space now, and all of the “investors”- or the critics that don't develop themselves, but just hope that others will make them rich. fluffypony, you're a core developer of Monero, so, the first thing that's going to come up is "Oh the core developer is not developing the core, and he's just making these dice sites...why!?" "Why? Why is this happening?"
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+So look, it's a valid point, and I think it's important to understand. We had a discussion, on Bitcointalk the other day where a very dear friend of mine, a guy that's close to my heart, Blockafett, came into the Bitcointalk thread, and he had such gentle and soothing words to say, and we got into a discussion about Monero investors. And I think this is important to understand, cause I explained our role as a core team, and how it relates. And this is such an important thing to understand because as a core team, our role as stewards of Monero is to push this technologically interesting project forward. However, obviously we want to make money, but the way we are going to make money is not by adjusting the emission curve, or by mining, -accidentally- mining 5% of the entire emission in the first 36 hours. You know, by means of an example unrelated to anything else. But that's not the way you make money - it's a cryptocurrency, it's not an investment opportunity. There's no sort of reward for buying Monero, there shouldn't be a reward for buying any currency. And unfortunately, because Bitcoin went through a stage where it spiked from being well under a dollar to being over a thousand dollars over a period of a couple of years, you end up with this um, this, this line of reasoning that people have which is, if Bitcoin can do it, we can too, and can you imagine if you owned 100 000 Bitcoin when it was still really cheap and blah blah blah. But, that's the wrong way to look at it - it's a medium of exchange and it's a store of value. If the valuation of that store of value changes over time, that's great, congratulations, you've by virtue of that earned some money, but that's not really the point. The point is, money should be made regardless of how that valuation changes, unless you are a currency trader. So, currency traders will, you know, set up hedgefunds, and, and do day trading between the Euro and the Dollar, or whatever.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Right
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+And they'll make money through that. But ordinary people and you're really wealthy people like Warren Buffet, and Mark Zuckerburg and whoever - the way they make money is not by currency trading. So investing in a cryptocurrency is fundamentally stupid, if that's what you are trying to do ...I don't know how else to put it. The way they make money is buy building stuff like Zuckerburg made Facebook, or stole Facebook from the Winklevoss twins or whatever the case is. You know, and Buffet as well, I mean, Buffet goes and invests in companies and yada yada. 
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Yea
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+So that's his thing, and the reason that we're moving forward with Monero Dice is precisely for that reason. I'm not trying to make money, and rznag's not trying to make money by buying a whole bunch of Monero and then saying, “well I hope it goes up in value.” Instead we're going, “hey, let's make money by building something that makes money.”
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Mhhmm
+
+#### rznag
+
+The services and there's an environment that push the cryptocurrency as a result.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yea
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Yea, build an environment to actually use the currency as a currency.
+
+#### rznag
+
+Yea
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yea, not try and get rich by fudging some numbers in the cryptocurrency's emission curve.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+But, that works so well!
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+No, apparently it does. That's why it keeps happening.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Its kind of related, but is there a cut of proceeds that's going to funnel down to the core, or is it that because fluffypony is involved, that it's going to the core.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yea, well, that's pretty much it. So, the earnings that I make from this will go to core development, definitely right now and for the foreseeable future. Obviously if at some stage in the future, core development is self-sustaining, then, I probably won't need to give 100% of my earnings to core development, but since the core team's mostly paying for core development out of our pockets, it really, you know it doesn't make sense for me to withhold any of my Monero Dice earnings.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Gotcha. I thought of a potential other interesting question that's not finance related. In terms of actually developing this sort of application, how much knowledge of the Monero core is necessary - is this all RPC, API...whatever...
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+JSON
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+At the interface level. Is this at the interface level of dealing with Monero, or does it go further than that.
+
+#### rznag
+
+No, it's just at interface level. It's RPC and, RPC, API, JSON, we communicate directly with the daemon and the wallet and get data from there by API. So, in the end, not something very complicated.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Gotcha, but apparently something that's very easy to run with.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yes...run away!
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Bastards
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Let's qualify what we, what we mean when we say run away, not run
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Yea, I'm sorry
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+But, I think the other thing that's come out of this, that's been quite cool is that rznag's written a little test system in Python that uses the the Tippero Python Library, and that's great for system automators, or merchants, or developers that are using Monero. The whole ecosystem's starting to build up now, where there are a lot of libraries with tools to test them, and so, I think the more that stuff happens over time, the easier it's going to be for integrators to just like say, “ok, I'm going to take this library and use it”, rather than sitting in #Monero-dev IRC channel and asking for help.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Right, right, awesome. Is this software opensource? Is this on GitHub?
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+It is not. One of the things that I'd like to do at a later stage, is put the-the secret sauce that's in the provably fair stuff, to sect that out and put that on Git-Hub. Because I do think that, when it comes to being provably fair, the fundamental aspect of it is, “is there a piece of code that I can compare?” And secondly, are the hashes made available now and maybe even in perpetuity. Really, it should be simple for someone to grab a piece of code, put the-the hash in and go, “okay cool, that's the output that I expected.”
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Gotcha. Somewhat related to that, I finally stumbled upon the “provably fair” part of it. In the settings, I see hash of current server seed, current notch number, and, your current seed. So, this all looks fine and well, I have no idea what it all is. So how could I go like, “oh look at these numbers, this is probably fair.”
+
+#### rznag
+
+Okay, you can recalculate all of that numbers, the hashes, and verify at the end it's provably fair. With these numbers and so on, you can recalculate it, and see that we did the correct calculation.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Oh, the calculation for what? That's what I'm lost on.
+
+#### rznag
+
+For when rolled, for the result of your dice roll. We show random, but it's not that random, not completely random.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Alright, so hash of the current server seed, that is, a hash of a current server seed, which makes absolutely zero sense to me.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Okay, so the way it works is, you've got, the server seed, and you've got your individual user seed. Okay? And then you've got the nonce.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Okay.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+And then what happens is that nonce, that nonce increases or changes for every roll. Okay?
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Yea
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+So, the server seed is global, everyone shares the same server seed that server seed can reset under various circumstances and it can roll-over. And your user seed can also change, reset, whatever, based on either user request or based on certain circumstances, and the way it works is, every single role, it takes the server seed, it takes your seed, it takes the nonce, and squishes them all together and uses that as the seed for the roll. And in the next roll, it will do the same thing.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Ok, so that's how the random is generated
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yea, and that's super simplified, but it gives you an idea of the relation. So, even though it is random and you can't go and predict the roll in advance, it also means that you can after the fact, go and verify it quite easily
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Okay, so, theoretically, if I knew how to squish the numbers together, I could take this information, in the settings column, and then squish it, and get an output, and then go back to the, the actual rolling, and then perform the same thing there and see my odds and go, “ah, they are similar, or they are the same.” Right?
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yes, that is correct.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Okay, okay, so for those out there that know how to squish the numbers together, you can do it.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+You can be a number squisher too.
+
+#### rznag
+
+Get your code on Github
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yes, eventually, one day, soon™. Thanks very much for the chat and rznag, thanks for joining us
+
+#### rznag
+
+Yes, thank you too. 
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Yea, thank you guys for the chat, and thanks everyone for listening. I hope you enjoy these Monero Dice; roll away, invest away, number squish away, do what you will.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Don't run away
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Yea, trust that this one's not running
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+It is running, but we're not running...there is, there's running that is happening, but it's not the bad running, it's the good running.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Good luck people translating this to other languages, I hope that there's as much nuance with –running- in other languages.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Allright
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+And tune in next week, there'll be, who knows, another external project, another what-ever-the-other-one's are called.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Dev Diary.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Dev Diary, that's one, and what's that final one?
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Monero Missive.
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Oh, yea, okay. I'm sure they're all Monero Missives. Anyhoo, find out next week, what we'll talk about. Alright.
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Yea
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Well, I think that the caffeine worked today folks, so I hope you have a good day, 
+
+#### Riccardo
+
+Cheers
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Or a good night.
+
+#### rznag
+
+Bye
+
+#### Gingeropolous
+
+Bye