Generally, votes are overrated. Especially if you’re not mainstream, by definition most people won’t support you, won’t agree with you, won’t understand you.

Some things may be downvoted because they’re too stupid. But occasionally, you might be downvoted simply because you’re a bit too early. Like, if you’d said “being gay is not crime” or something 50 years ago, you might have got downvoted… Just a thought.

Maybe what you’re thinking is like an XMR version of Bisq’s “Get your first BTC” room?

https://bisq.wiki/Getting_your_first_BTC This dilemma is real and understandable, while it’s not clear what would be the best solution:

For new users, Bisq requires between 0.002 and 0.007 BTC for traders to make their first trade: […] It can be difficult for new bitcoiners to acquire their first coins, so this requirement is often a barrier for new Bisq users. The Get your first BTC room offers one possible way to get this initial bitcoin without signing up for a centralized exchange.

Basically the same thing for Haveno, I guess.

Another bad experience related to Mastercard: https://monero.town/post/1791576

Cake Pay should be fine for most gift cards, I don’t think they usually ask for KYC for those.

So perhaps your recent bad experience with Mastercard EUR cards are rather exceptional?

Thanks for warning. Saw https://monero.town/post/872283 too. Guess Cake Pay may be convenient for those who are fine with KYC. Another option, that Stealths thing is more expensive (higher fees), so basically if you want to buy a gift card here or there, you’ll have to choose between (possible) KYC and higher fees. Or so it seems…

According to @azalty@monero.town, Cake Pay works fine if you’re fine with KYC, and otherwise you may just lose your money: https://monero.town/post/872283

If you’re a privacy advocate not fully supporting KYC but want to try this anyway, then try a small amount, because you may lose all your money. Another recent option is more privacy-friendly and KYC-free, but the fees are higher with them.

Thank you so much! These minor details are really helpful :D Happy holidays!

Exactly how does you activate it? Ordering itself is kyc-free (and even Tor-friendly?) but you’ll need to show your IP to activate it, of course?

Visa International (Just fyi): The supported country list by Stealths and the similar list by Tremendous are slightly different. The differences (if real) might be mostly relevant to Chinese users.

These three are included in Stealths’ list, but not included in Tremendous’ list:

China, Hong Kong (*Taiwan is in both lists), Swaziland

These countries/areas are not inluded in S’s list, but are included in T’s list:

Bosnia and Herzegovina, Burundi, Congo (*Flag of Congo-Brazzaville is shown), Eswatini, Pakistan, Panama, Saint Helena, Saint Pierre and Miquelon

The scary part is, that the US can do something like this if it wants to. A service provider saying “We’re privacy-friendly. Your email address is all we ask.” could end up this way. Think about so-called bullet-proof hosting providers or so-called trusted no-long VPN providers.

The only safe way, if any, may be that you never show them your IP… (much less any identifying information)

Cool! A new instance is always welcome due to rate control problems :)

For privacy reasons, it’s recommended to use random instances randomly:
This is a Javascript-less randomizing portal
http://7tcuoi57curagdk7nsvmzedcxgwlrq2d6jach4ksa3vj72uxrzadmqqd.onion/
And this is a list for normal users
https://searx.space/

Knowing a few unlisted instances can be a forte (less likely to be rate limited)

Another thing, less known but possibly interesting is https://4get.ca/ its image search may be powerful, though the site started to show an in-house captcha

https://metager.de (German) https://metager.org (English) -> One quick way to view Tor-blocking sites: ANONYM ÖFFNEN is handy for non-Tor users too, because it filters a lot of annoying things (unnecessary JS, Cookies). Onion available except this proxy is clearnet. It’s like ixquick from like 10 years ago (no more existing)

Allegedly the “evil hacker” had stolen 2,675.73 XMR, and now allegedly someone “returned” 2,696.73. This feels suspicious, especially 0.73. Thoughts?

PS nitter.net unblocked Tor again. A Tails-friendly link just in case Tor will be re-blocked
https://nitter.oksocial.net/watchfund/status/1732391070216908886

A fun project would be: factor Mersenne numbers! Naive trial division -> optimize your code by only trying valid candidates (you’ll learn about quadratic residues, Jacobi symbol etc.) -> You’ll soon realize that trial division only goes so far, motivated to learn new approaches. The P−1 method may impress you, it’s powerful. Enjoy coding that. -> But then, you’ll be frustrated by even stronger opponents here and there beyond M100, which the P−1 method can’t factor. Now you’ll be so ready, even determined, to learn ECM. At this point, you’ll find using elliptic curves is actually not so difficult, because it’s just like P−1. And yay, 20- or 30- digit numbers are no longer your enemies, they’re just small fish, elliptic curves rule!

Before you know it, you’ll have a clear, intuitive vision about “an elliptic curve over a finite field”. Try to understand why ECM works. Try to count the number of points. Everything you experience with ECM is related to ECC too.

I’m not that good; know enough to know that I don’t really know much. Just a hobbyist; posted ℍappy ℍamilton Day! here.

Thanks for joining monero.town :) Not only it’s a good crypto—it is a great privacy tool, recommended e.g. by privacyguides.org, accepted (as donations) by the Tor Project (which is endorsed by the BBC, the New York Times, etc. and now also by Amnesty International), by Tails.net, and many other privacy advocates.

You might be thinking about “investment” but the implications of Monero is much, much bigger—among other things, you may question today’s privacy invasion by some oppressive governments or monopolizing companies like Google.

Gandhi said that whatever you do in life will be insignificant, but it’s very important that you do it, 'cause nobody else will.

Also, if you happen to be a math geek or a cypherpunk, this thing is based on Elliptic (Ed25519)—something deep and fascinating for number theorists to study!

I value the freedom of free software. A fork is good in that context.

PoS has at least one good aspect: it’s perceived as “green”. Other than that, afaik PoS tends to imply that only a few rich people can determine whether something is okay or not. The Monero network, on the other hand, is carefully designed so that any one with any CPU can participate (at least in principle). This design philosophy feels good.

Ah, incoming is now bigger intentionally! Thanks for sharing this :)

donation-less builds floating around, which I will not link, out of respect for the XMRig dev.

I wouldn’t recommend a random build “floating around”, not because doing so is disrespectful to the original dev, but because it might be dangerous.

If a random anonymous person A says, “Use this build B. It’s better!” and a user C does so without suspecting a thing, C is likely to be in big trouble sooner or later: even if A is an ethical hacker and B is a good build, such a mental attitude of C seems dangerous, especially when the tool is crypto-related. Because Person A could trivially share good source code (donation just commented out), but compiled different (evil) source code and share them with the said good code 😓
If 1% is big for you, or you have privacy concerns about remote connections for donation, well, you might want to think about something obvious: blocking remote connections is easy when xmrig just needs to talk to 127.0.0.1.

How many Monero users does it take to change a light bulb?

An unknown number. Share a Monero address; ask for donations for a new light bulb. You may or may not get enough donations from one or more anonymous kind persons.

Don’t worry about e2ee: Even if you get the most expensive plan from e.g. Proton, it’s not e2ee unless both parties use Proton. There is a free, “easy” way to realize true e2e: OpenPGP in Thunderbird (convenient), GnuPG (more secure), etc.

As for mailbox.org: I used it before but it showed Google reCaptcha, which was an obvious red flag:
cf. [Security and GDPR Issue] ProtonMail includes Google Recaptcha for Login, every single time. #242

Also, technical score of mailbox.org has been relatively low, not improving: https://internet.nl/mail/mailbox.org/1080449/ (Don’t worry too much about this score, though. It’s only technical; human factors (philosophies, trust, etc.) are more important when it comes to privacy.) This is not a recommendation. DYOR; ultimately, believe your own intuition.

• Tuta (free): you can send only like 6 email per day. Otherwise, Tor-friendly. No onion. Support forum on Reddit 😞 Germany.
• Posteo.de: 1 €/mo affordable. Nothing fancy. Support via PGP like that’s common sense. Germany. Non-crypto anonymous payments w/ various options (e.g. a prepaid CC): they don’t even ask your name (much less address, cell phone number).
• Disroot.org: Free, pop/smtp, community-based, trusted even by the Tails team. w/ onion. Netherlands.
• Cock.li: Free, pop/smtp etc. Very Tor-friendly w/ fast onion. It’s good if you think it like disposal. Irresponsible in a way (aka Freedom), but actually 10-year-old & stable. Romania.
• Proton (free): bloated, very mixed opinions, yet better than Google. w/ onion (slow). Switzerland. A simple feature like Plain Text view is missing (HTML by default: not serious about privacy).

–out-peers 64 --in-peers 32

Note: For some reason, starting from v3.7, p2pool docs say --out-peers 32 --in-peers 64 (in is bigger); probably just typos. The doc also says: “If your network connection’s upload bandwidth is less than 10 Mbit,” use 16 & 8 instead.

For the sake of fairness and transparency: 1% of your hashrate will be “donated” if you use an official Xmrig binary file. However, it is free software and you’re free to study how the program works, and change it anyway as you wish, if you’d like to.

Your P2Pool wallet adress is public, periodically move mined funds to a new, truly private XMR wallet

While doing this periodically is not absolutely necessary, there is some practical consideration: when there are many, many coins in your wallet, it’s technically impossible for you to spend (send) them in one go. If this situation ever happens to you, just send funds little by little (output will be consolidated). Feather Wallet may be convenient, where you can see and control individual coins, just like in Electrum. Happy studying, happy ethical hacking, happy mining, and happy holidays! Have happiness that money can’t buy :)