You can roll back transactions for whatever duration of time you were able to outspend the network. Critically, that can include your own transactions.
You mine quietly, outpacing the regular network, creating your own longer chain. Perhaps you do this for an hour, several hours, or a day. The only transactions on this chain are those in which you send your own coins to yourself -- maybe plus some random transactions from the mempool you throw in to help cover your own tracks. Meanwhile you spend those same coins (UTXOs) on the "honest" chain.
Once you are satisfied, you publish your longer chain. By the rules of the network the longest chain is the true one. Honest miners immediately begin building their blocks on top of your dishonest version of events. Since you are now working together with them, blocks are produced quickly. The honest chain dies.
Chaos would ensue.
Anybody who received coins on the dead chain can try to republish the transaction to the mempool and hope it gets mined again, so they get their money again. But if the sender is fast, they might realize they have a double-spend opportunity here, and submit a higher-fee transaction in which they sent those coins to themselves. It's a race. Of course, for your own UTXOs that were already spent in the dishonest chain, the race has already been won. Those double spends are successful.
if you split the network, you can add your own machines, that can rewrite the history arbitrarily from the future of that split.
As for "a few minutes", it depends on which one we're talking about. BTC, yes -- but disrupting the global BTC network requires only a few minutes of time. Just dump everything into unusable addresses, and watch the reaction.
No, you cannot do that. Transactions would still need to be signed by the corresponding owners. All you could do is reorder (and thus invalidate) some transactions, drop some transactions, or add some that weren't originally included.
> Just dump everything into unusable addresses...
Nope; that's not possible. You wouldn't have the signatures to do that even with 51% hashing power.
You're right about the dumping; I was thinking more about the case where you controlled the protocol on the machines of a partitioned network (eg., so you release a new version of btc which uses exploitable crytography, etc.).
In the case of a mere 51% at scale, hijinks are still quite possible from replays, reorderings, etc.
I was more preoccupied by the case where the state's acting in its own borders with control over the network, major miners, most machines on the network -- at this point basically no gaurentees remain
> the case where you controlled the protocol on the machines of a partitioned network (eg., so you release a new version of btc which uses exploitable crytography
Such a change would be treated as a "monopoly money" fork by those wanting to transact, and ignored. "No I don't want your fake money; send me real BTC or GTFO". This is why miners cannot arbitrarily change the protocol in their favour even today.
Ext4 is probably the worst filesystems for such task. 1e9 files is really not that much.
Old Reiserfs3 really excelled in this, Gentoo Portage had many tiny files. Today Btrfs has features like extends, where tiny (or empty) files are stored together in single inode.
For distributing image with several files(such as this example), SquashFs is the best option.
I am also against the Ukraine war and believe a peaceful settlement is possible. NATO (the US) is using Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian, though having to fight two wars at once is causing them to rethink their position.
ICJ did rule against Russia, and it makes sense since they invaded, but the roots of the conflict go back to attacks on Donetsk like you say since 2014 and various aggressive moves by NATO since 1991 in violation of the gentleman's agreement.
Basically, the US should not be supplying arms to these conflicts.
> various aggressive moves by NATO since 1991 in violation of the gentleman's agreement.
gentleman's agreement, which was never acknowledge by the US and was with the previous regime, unlike the written agreement _Russia_ signed recognizing Ukraine's independence and sovereignty, with their 1994 borders. And NATO wouldn't have expanded East if the countries in Eastern Europe didn't feel a need to join a defensive alliance.
Don't you know. Russians never mastered the art of written treaties. The Soviets were confused and thought that pinky swear (after all of the deception of cold war) is guarantee of future power sharing :D
Maybe not 1/2 years ago, but look at the hundreds of videos of Ukrainian citizens being forcedly taken from the streets and thrown into the frontlines only to die shortly after. There were many voluntaries when the war started, now UA forced recruitment attempts are met with civilians filming and trying to stop them.
The roots of the conflict go back to attacks on Donetsk and moves by NATO since 1991
All I can tell you is -- just because intellectual-sounding people like Chomsky, Mearsheimer et al; not to mention Putin himself -- whom you are apparently cribbing from, knowingly or otherwise -- say things like this, doesn't make it so. If you actually walk back and look at the event chronology you'll find there's no substantial basis for either of these narratives.
NATO (the US) is using Ukraine to fight Russia to the last Ukrainian,
The implication you are making here is that the Ukrainians at large have no real agency in the situation, and basically have no idea why they're actually fighting.
If you report a minor robbery to the police in any large American city and you aren't a public figure, there is functionally a 0% chance of them following up on it much less solving it. The only benefit for reporting is if you plan to make an insurance claim. If not, there is no point to reporting a minor robbery to the police.
Robberies and property crimes are hugely underreported in official statistics because the first time you try to report one you realize that it makes a bad situation worse by wasting your time after the event. That is what they're talking about.
Other benefits of reporting it, other than insurance, is that it makes these kinds of statistics more accurate, and that in the unlikely event that they "accidentally" solve the case, it'll be easier for you to get your stuff back. The latter can happen if they arrest someone for some other reason and find what appears to be a bunch of stolen property or something. It's not likely, but it seems like it'd still be worth reporting the crime.
But you make a good point that a lackluster police response does lower the incidence of reporting crimes, effectively doctoring crime statistics. You'd have to evaluate whether this trend has increased or decreased relative to historical periods when factoring that into any comparison, though.
> If you report a minor robbery to the police in any large American city and you aren't a public figure, there is functionally a 0% chance of them following up on it much less solving it.
I have known people that had stolen things returned because the police found the items while investigating/arresting the thief for other crimes. It seems foolish to not bother with filing a report just because they aren't actively investigating every report they receive.
Ah yes, wokeism. The reason games have loot boxes, battlepasses, and NG+ locked behind buying the "deluxe edition".
I'm forever baffled how gaming consumers are able to muster such anger at changes in representation and character design while continuing to get nickel and dimed by monetization experts at these companies. I don't think this is intentional misdirection on the part of gaming publishers, but if they did want to channel anger away from the core ways they're exploiting their audience they would be hard pressed to find a better distraction.
I am talking about career of a game developer, not customers. Indie games also have loot boxes, it is a great way to monetize..
It is really bad move to work for "woke" companies as cis hetero white guy with some experience. You have to work much harder. And promotions to senior positions are limited...
Here is an example from centre of Prague. 400 euro per month, 20k compensation
https://www.sreality.cz/detail/pronajem/byt/2+kk/praha-smich...