coindesk is on it:

The New York Observer has published a near 15,000-word story that takes a detailed look at the alleged historical "bad blood" between decentralized payment network startups Ripple Labs and Stellar, and the impact of this relationship on events in the wider bitcoin ecosystem.

http://www.coindesk.com/history-ripple-stellar-tell-all-report/

Who was it that said controversy is a good thing?  Was it the guy who no longer works here because most of the community was not satisfied with his work? I believe so...

-Controversy is a good thing if we are unified in our message

-Controversy is POISON if it divides the community

At the time of this message, 68% of voters think Bingo is a bad idea.  Please don't make the wrong decision.  If it will only take 80 hours to implement, instead, try using those hours on tooltips, help messages, a help section in the menu bar.  Even something simple like a link to the bitshares wiki would be useful.  Better yet, link context based help messages to appropriate section in the wiki.  What the hell do all those voting options means?  Well gee, how about a link to voting explained section in the wiki? This ISNT rocket science....

Imagine if BitShares was TurboTax.  Do you think Intuit would take a dump without any help messages and expect to keep their customers?  Surely you can do your taxes from the command line, why wouldn't anyone want to do that? You can Google your way to the answer, if you don't get distracted by a competitor along the way.

I'm a few versions back, so some of these points may be out of date.  But last I checked, the market was still....how do you say 'not sexy.'  Like a fat old toothless hag.  I want a smooth seamless trading experience like Bter. That alone will bring more gamblers to our system than some shitty bingo game.  I like bingo.  But I don't want it on BitShares when basic functions are lacking.  Where are multi-tabbed markets??  I can't trade GOLD, EUR and USD at the same time.  Where is the common panel where I can see all my feeds? Traders need to trade in multiple markets at once - and they need to see when prices move in one common dashboard type panel that's available from everywhere in the app.  Traders need to get in on the action as soon as the price moves.  They can't (and they wont) be bothered clicking back and forth all day.  If it takes 5 clicks to go from one market to another, no one will do it except the religious.  Online poker players don't play on one table at a time, and neither do traders. Multi-tabbed markets will bring move volume than some controversial gimmick. Minimizing the amount of button clicks needed to perform functions is UI design 101.

We are getting sharedropped by PLAY.  Why disrespect their community with this idea? Let them handle gaming.

Its quite amazing all these brilliant ideas that went into BitShares, while the basics keep getting fucked up.  It doesn't matter how far ahead of the curve it is, as long as BitShares can't get the basics right, it will remain a toy for overgrown children, and not a serious investment for mainstream adoption.  If its not easy, no one will use it except the people already using it.

 

exactly right

The website needs HTTPS ASAP.

Now the downloads are served from bitshares.org directly over HTTP (http://bitshares.org/resources/downloads). Before they were at least served via GitHub download links which used HTTPS. Please correct this since otherwise users are vulnerable to man-in-the-middle attacks.

....downloading the client binaries from the website is currently insecure. The best way to solve it would be to implement HTTPS on bitshares.org as soon as possible. Until then, a better-than-nothing fix is to point the download links to the binaries hosted on GitHub (protected by HTTPS), get rid of the SHA1 hashes on bitshares.org (because that provides a false sense of security since they can be changed by a MITM attacker of bitshares.org serving its own SHA1 over HTTP), and just tell people to refer to the SHA1 hashes on https://github.com/BitShares/bitshares/releases if they want to verify the binaries downloaded from a source other than GitHub. This is of course not a great solution, because victims visiting a MITM-modified bitshares.org may not pay attention to (or realize the security implications of) the fact that they are downloading the executable via HTTP. I don't want to hear about a user complaining that their money was stolen even though they downloaded THE client from the official "bitshares.org" website, which gives us a bad name.

   arhag has identified a significant attack vector.  Let's bang a gong or something. This sounds serious.

I listened to this one again. Dan's comments about his philosophy and the future of the block chain are worth rereading. Impromptu partial transcript below:

Max Wright: Share for us what your idea of the philosophy of freedom and the philosophy that you brought to bitshares….

Dan Larimer: The philosophy of freedom, for me, is all about “don’t do unto other people what you don’t want other people doing to you.” That’s the non-aggression principle. But if you apply that consistently, you can derive my entire worldview and philosophy. I use technology as a means of reaching the ends. A means of reaching that freedom, that ideal, of implementing that technology in society. There are a lot of places online where Libertarians rant, “the government is doing this, the government is doing that. Let’s petition them, let’s ask them, let’s beg them.” Some people say that we should fight violently and overthrow them. But I am very much of the mindset that the free market needs to be able to provide security--needs to be able to protect our life, liberty and property against all aggressors. That means that the free market needs to produce solutions that can protect us against today’s governments, without requiring that today’s governments disappear first. The solution needs to be so powerful and so effective that they work today, even in the middle of what many people consider to be a “big brother” government, a “1984” surveillance society.

Max Wright: Let’s talk about where this technology is going.

Dan Larimer: Where the Internet and block chain technology can take us as a society, where every transaction you do is settled on a block chain. Where every dispute that you have is resolved on a block chain. Where your reputation and identity are managed on a block chain.  Where your voting happens on a block chain. And where all laws -- that you agree to follow -- you can sign to, and post it on a block chain. Whenever you go to do business with someone, you bump your phones together and it verifies that you've got compatible arbitration agreements automatically. And when you make that purchase, you've got a signed record, a signed receipt of what it is that you are buying and what terms you agree to. So you've got these verifiable, provable signatures, you've got built-in arbitration, you are only accountable to your own laws, and every member of society can be bonded by posting a bond on the block chain in security against compliance with the laws that you have agreed to follow. And all of this stuff can be done in an entirely voluntary manner that does not depend upon initiating force or violence against anyone. It can be done in an entirely legal way because it only depends upon free speech and voluntary association. So I envision that block chain technology will allow us to create a world where the incentives for being part of the... block chain community, that the efficiencies you gain are so strong, that your profits are so much higher, that being rejected or shunned by that community forces you to deal with people outside it -- people who have to charge higher fees, require security deposits for your utilities, for your rent, everything under the sun. The cost of doing business outside the system will be higher than the cost inside the system. I can see this creating a self-reinforcing virtuous cycle, where the more people that join and participate and start doing commerce entirely on a block chain -- merchants and consumers -- never having to lead back to the fiat world. You’ll start to see a growing snowball effect until it gets to the point that no one will dare being a government official because they would be excluded because they are participating in the initiation of violence against others. So these things are possible. I believe there is a solution. I do not believe that violence is a necessary response to violence -- that you must create governments in order to have law and order. I believe that good people don’t have to resort to bad things just because bad people exist.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wczMKASQk6s

He charged just 1% transaction fee with a 50 cent cap.

Who is "he"?

 

Good idea.

Nice argument.


EDITS:

Block chains are all about public data and transparency. Everyone who has been online and maintained connection with the real public chain has no reason to trust or even consider an alternative chain that challenges the public record. It is indisputable which chain is the real chain and which is a secret the impostor.

What this means is that the “Nothing-at-Stake” attack can only be carried out against a new client with no prior knowledge. [consistent use of hyphens]

99% Ninety-nine percent of all businesses accepting payments will be using full clients that keep in sync at all times. [you don't start a sentence with a number]

Those that spout Nothing-at-Stake...

You have nothing to fear from the so-called Nothing-at-Stake attack.  Let's [not lets] talk about the numerous risks of centralizing mining pools that have already executed a double spend attack on Bitcoin.  Let's [not lets] talk about economic sustainability.  Let's  [not lets] look at the plank in the eye of Proof of Work before considering the relative spec of in Proof of Stake.