Introduction to DiMECASH: Why solutions like this one matter.

DimECASH (stylized with almost all capital letters) is a method of hacking readable text and off-chain references into cryptocurrency transactions. This is done with a system of interrelated hacks always involve simply sending specially formed transactions rather than relying on Operational-Return codes. The system can function on Base58Check based currencies and requires little programming knowledge or infrastructure (somethings can be done from a smart phone with generic wallet software).

What DiMECASH means in laymen’s terms is now people who use bitcoin can voluntarily add text to their transaction. Previous technology allowed programmers to add isolated transactions which could be interpreted as text, but were never quite the same as a financial transactions and were limited in length.

A race is underway between Corporate Sponsored blockchain service providers and cryptocurrencies such as Ethereum which have traditionally provided a Smart Contract feature. The DiMECASH system doesn’t concern itself with creating new software or competing to solve the challenges that these efforts face. Instead, the system focuses on readability, usability, and faster adoption by the general public.

It might be helpful to compare DiMECASH to a check register. Sure you could have learned to download all of your transaction from your bank into your Quicken program about 15 years ago, but you could have also simply bought checks that came with large notation fields (or even simply used multiple lines for each transaction), such as:

check no. 301 May 15th
Rib Shack $17.43
Lunch with Kevin from ABC-CORP
(empty line)
check no. 302 May 17th
Food Lion $2.17
milk and cheese for Pam K.
(empty line)
check no. 304 VOID—————–
(empty line)
check no. 305 May 18th
Rent for last month $662.50
ETC…..

So now if we apply this example to an opened and shared ledger, we can do something similar

DCxRiBxSHACKxMAYxFiFTEENTHzzYDy2ur 0.000001
DCxLUNCHxWiTHxKEViNxFRoMxABCvtDgVb 0.000001
DCxSoMExACTUALxADDRESSzzzzzzVjhx3d 5000.00039692

DCxFooDxLioNxMAYxSEVENTEENTHZz8qx8 0.000001
DCxMiLKxANDxCHEESEzzzzzzzzzzck2hKa 0.000001
DCxFoRxPAMxK1zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzZ9ye99 1753.35672352


Of course this is just an example. it would not make sense to public such mundane yet personal information into the blockchain.

The technology to do this is straightforward enough, the “obviously unspendable” will always show up in the same order and an auditor can always understand that each single multi-part transfer was send from one single entity.

Though this system might seem trivial at first, I would suggest that people think hard about how this practice could change the ecosystem of the currencies. Cryptocurrency Whales can now talk to each other via the currency and better collaborate. Charities and non-profits can now accept money in ways where the giver’s intentions for the money is world-readable and can then send the money to others in a way that is equally transparent and audit-able.

Anyway, if you want to visit a proof-of-concept, check out https://dime.cash

Here is an example transaction:
https://chain.so/tx/DOGE/13cba37ad839edf4ff5c33ec0eff4d00e2d53f868f2d101c99dbe2f05263d499

We are doing Crypto all wrong

I think that it is time to have a real discussion about Cryptocurrency. For years, bitcoin and its descendant coins have been used in a myriad of ways by people or computers that may or may not know each other. They did so without the help of smart contracts, AI, special mining rigs, hardware wallets, or any of the many other solutions which are on the market today or are just around the corner. We need to invest much less in complicated perceived software requirements and much more in actually using what is available.

This about it this way: Crypto is money just like Fiat money issues by a government. No one looks at a stack of $100 bills and wishes that the physical piece of paper could verify the identity of its recipient, that would be silly. Yet we seem to be focusing our interest in blockchain technology in the idea that it is lacking in some way. Paper money is produced in a special way that makes counterfeiting very difficult and thus has some fraud prevention added into it. Bitcoin and the alt-coins all already have certain traits and characteristics that make them uniquely well suited to certain tasks. Part of why paper money works is that people can verify its authenticity with some degree of certainty without the help of a third party. Yet when we begin to think about Cryptocurrencies, we are immediately bombarded with third-party solutions. Some of these will turn out to be incredible, but many of them will end up being a waste of money.

It seems to me that a better way to invest in Cryptocurrency is to stop worrying about the price of bitcoin, or EOS, or Ethereum, and find a quiet but stable currency and try to bring it into your actual life somehow. Many many more people need to actually come into possession of some small amount of currency and understand the basics of how the system works. I am not suggesting that the casual user need to deeply understand proof-of-work versus proof-of-stake, but simply how wallets and exchanges work.

Finally, I believe that I have discovered something that will make the process of using Cryptocurrency as actual money work even better– by making small changes to transaction amounts and sending other very small modifying transactions, we can attach meaning more directly into the ledger. I have been experimenting with a system of doing this for many months now and believe that it and other similar organic blockchain hacks are so open and so flexible that we are going to reach a tipping point where existing technology will form a fundamentally new and opened way for us to connect with each other and liberate our social media experience. My instinct tells me that we already today have 99% of the technology that we need for this and what needs to come next is simply training. The transaction becomes a communication of financial value, data, or both. While I have a few web solutions which can be used to reveal how this system works, it is not dependent on anything that I would produce or hold a claim to. In fact, the only way I could every be paid for people using the system that I devised is if they send me a tip. Someone could copy my ideas and without some effort I would not even know it. Others may have been doing very similar things for years, and again I may not even know. The ledger is like a radio station transmitting signals into space, but by calibrating our sensors, we can find all of the signals and can quite easily see that data.

Consider the monk, or the stenographer, or telegraph operator. These people created and transmitted messages in ways that seem crude to us today. In those cases, the need for greater technology pushed the creation of tools. But today, the technical landscape has changed so quickly that our push for innovation today is based on speculation, not need. The problem is that we are looking in all the wrong places. The really good solutions are elegant and simply and quite often are also stumbled upon because someone is trying to use one tool for a new purpose. Rather than relying on an expert class of thinkers, we need to simply try to solve problems.

I can’t say if the way that I do things will take off, or is best, or is even particularly good. For the most part, it doesn’t really matter. The system is good enough for me and any message that I would have written will be readable and verifiable as long as the very popular alt-coin that I use (Dogecoin) is around. I can’t say the same for a private blockchain solution. The messages that I send can be transmitted from any sort of wallet account, now I just need people to transmit the messages back to me, but that might not be so hard to do, as long as I focus on the general public instead of on experts. No need for complicated solutions, but rather very simple implementations, and a few small innovations.

John Rigler
john@rigler.org

You can learn about my system at https://dime.cash. Feel free to connect on Linked-In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jrigler/

Hello WordPress, my old friend…I’ve come to type on you again…because it seemed to be the thing…that would really make my soul sing…etc.etc.etc.bridge.repeat…

I have forked a version of litecoin into something which I call DimeCash. It is not intended to function as a currency, and will be altered at the publicly shared source level to discourage monetization. DimeCash intends to act as a public message system that simply exploits oddities of the proof-of-work blockchain first realized as bitcoin. The system has three main parts:

  1. Obviously Unspendable Ledger Addresses are appropriated as Human-Readable Anchors
  2. Small Hashes and Coded Systems are transmitted as the least significant part of a transaction.
  3. Bash functions are used as a record format and may or may not change the systems state if executed.

    ———first angry comment (received by USPS mail)

This is a terrible idea. No no no. Don’t do it. Have you heard of Opt-Return Codes? They are so good. This is bad. This idea is so wrong that it caused me to:

Begin() {
: to.type.stuff funny;
: because it is not.good.like.Opt-Return-Codes
pwd
hostname
: see you can run commands too
}
————————————–from command line————
dime@dime.cash [~/www/Rude.Replies]# cat Begin-14878.1
Begin ()
{
: to.type.stuff funny;
: because it is not.good.like.Opt-Return-Codes;
pwd;
hostname;
: see you can run commands too
}
bash 4.2> declare -f Begin | sum
14878 1
dime@dime.cash [~/www/Rude.Replies]# declare -f Begin > Begin-14878.1
dime@dime.cash [~/www/Rude.Replies]# cat Begin-14878.1
———————————
Just kidding, I made up the angry comment above. Clever, yea. Anyhow…

We are left with a file called Begin-14878.1. I can now use my trusty python script to come with a Deadlycoffee Anchor…..

dime@dime.cash [~/www/Rude.Replies]# unspendable D DCxDEADLYxCoFFEExDoTxCoMxxxx 30
DCxDEADLYxCoFFEExDoTxCoMxxxxBYwAyV

Now I can go to my favorite Dogecoin Browser and enter the above Fake Unspendable (Warning Will Robins, send only pennies) Irretrievable Proof-of-Burn address.

https://dogechain.info/address/DCxDEADLYxCoFFEExDoTxCoMxxxxBYwAyV

If you follow the link, you will see a QR code. If you send 1.00014878 DogeCoin to the address with a DogeCoin App. on your phone then this blog post, plus the DogeCoin Blockchain, will create a record. The hash is used as a stub. The fact that the Address points back to this website creates a very strong contextual link. If asked why you send 1.00014878 to a readable Dogecoin address, and someone saw this blog post, then your only reply would be to affirm that you saw this or that you had no knowledge of any deeper meaning to your actions. In other words, while a strong link between the transaction above would point to this article, it does not implicate any particular person as the “author”.
Neither you nor anyone else could present an alternate explanation for 14878 that would be as compelling as the one presented above. A five-digit number would more likely be a hash reference or ZIP code than a sequential reference to a field in a database.
Check out DimeCash, the website: https://dime.cash


abcd-minded bash functions

Lately, I have been thinking deeply about blockchain. I have determined that we are doing this all wrong. It seems to me that the following four functions which I tweeted out are a blockchain. WordPress seems to have trouble with some of the letters and symbols that I used, but all four are visible on twitter.  In order to generate these, I used the terminal on my Macintosh laptop and vi (my favorite editor). Starting with å (Opt-a), I have each function as its own block. The triangle (opt-j) function is called at the end of each function and writes it to a local file which is hashed by the sum command into a filename. The next function will error out if that file is not present. Once all four files are on your computer, you can simply run each function in order: opt-a, opt-b, opt-c, opt-c. You will then see a mysterious gibberish language that any Joyce Scholar should love to unravel. This can also be seen (in these examples) by simply reading the functions below.
I think this represents a new approach to converging language and code and can be actually more accessible and definately more fun that traditional coding.More importantly, I do believe that I have created a blockchain that is both secure and accessible. So the act of trying to figure this out and creating your own additional or alternate functions would be worth the effort. This system has no specific backend, but could easily be dovetailed into another system. For example, I made sure that each function was under 240 characters and posted each individually into twitter. I challenge you guys to tweet back to me with your own versions at:j0hnrigler. I also challenge you to pick up a copy of Finnegans Wake and begin to explore its secrets yourself, and maybe even try to unravel what I am saying about the world around me. Have fun.

Underpinnings of a Secular, yet Religious Cryptocurrency

In the first season of the TV show “Silicon Valley”, we met a character named Peter Gregory who is a venture capitalist able to generate millions by speculating on the relationship between cicadas and sesame seeds.  Peter Gregory is widely considered to be based on either Paul Graham, Peter Thiel, or both.  Both of these real life venture capitalists speak in quite unique ways that at first seem a bit confusing.  And interestingly enough  both Thiel and Graham promote two very similar lines of thought:

What idea do you hold that you hesitant to share with your peers? – Graham

Tell me something that is true that very few people agree with you on. – Thiel

They posit, that it is these ideas that can at times be the most fruitful, important, and that we all keep such things tucked away in our heads for far too long.

Well I am going to risk telling my idea here for all to read, because while it is a bit risky, if you example the video below, I think you will find that it makes sense.

I don’t particularly believe in any supernatural thing, yet I believe that religion is important, complicated, and wildly misunderstood.  It is inextricably linked to our culture, true life experience, or gestalt.  I believe this so strongly that I promote a secular view of religion.

Let me explain in more detail.  I was raised in a family that attended church each week and overall I greatly gained from the experience.  However, when I reflect back on my childhood, I remember adults describing magical things to me.  I never believed these things and didn’t perceive that they believed them either, even though that it what they claimed.  It was as if I was being taught some sort of strange lesson about everyone together pretending to believe things that no reasonable person would ever believe.  Had I learned this lesson better and internalized it, no doubt my life would have been a bit easier and would probably be measurably happier and healthier.

The church I was taken to was part of what is commonly called Mainline Christianity, specifically PCUSA.  This church once was very different, more Calvinistic, but by the time I came around, it had been transformed into something quite secular.  I remember as a child watching a television show with my father where Adam (and maybe Eve) simply rose up from a sandy beach and started walking around.  I asked my father (who was himself a good preacher’s son) how this could be.  He simply told me that it was a story, that it was symbolic.  It seemed nice and so I never gave it another thought.

The church was good for me because I was socially awkward at school and the social setting was good for me.  I preferred to be around adults because they made more sense than the other children.  Looking back as an adult, I now see that the church was far from perfect, but at the time it was very nice.

When I got older and went to college, I did not attend church, but did study the sociology of religion and even researched the relationship between the Catholic Church and a community of Creoles in a small town near my University.  By this time, I was on my own and simply went on to experience the world as what I now call a ‘secular person’.  I learned about other religions in college and especially liked Taoism, which is often not called a religion at all, but rather a way of life, or of perceiving the world.

Years later, as I revisited some of these experiences with my family, it became clear that my experience was much what they had hoped it would be and was similar to that of my siblings and their friends.  In other words, thought I had attended and enjoyed church, it was very much a secular experience all along.

It is only is the last decade or so that I have come to fully understand that this is not the typical American religious experience and perhaps my experience was one of a certain time and place that was vanishing even as I was wandering away from it to experience other things.  I had always had an aversion to the evangelical versions of Christianity that I was exposed to, but I simply chose to avoid these, as they seemed preposterous.

After watching a number of Netflix DVDs about atheism, I decided to formally tell the world that I was in fact, an atheist.  This was greeting almost no fanfare from those around me, with the exception of some heavy religious inlaws whose opinions I had already discounted. Here is a video that I watching and feeling good about because a well-spoken adult was finally confirming what I had imagined all along:

I also became involved with a Unitarian Universalist Church, which was quite accommodating to atheists and even allowed atheistic clergy.  As an outspoken atheist, I would begin to argue with Christians from time-to-time,  but I eventually outgrew this phase.  Now I generally tell people that if they have a special question about how I could be an atheist, that they could simply google the question, perhaps with the word ‘science’ added, and whatever answer they get would probably be close enough.  I take no joy in winning such arguments these days.

It is difficult for me to understand how common or uncommon my experience has been.  My atheist friends have never heard of such thing, but I really think that most people like me simply can’t be bothered to register an opinion on the matter (and may in fact be wise in that way).  Demographically, I am solidly a ‘None’ as well as an atheist and this is why I have become really interested in the term ‘secular’ and often identify myself as such.  This is only after making sure that everyone understands that I am not trying to be vague about my lack of belief in the supernatural for social gain or stability (again, honesty before wisdom).

“Nones” on the Rise

Being in information technology and having studied humanities and the philosophy of religion also informs how I see these ideas.  It is why I am a secular blockchain/cryptocurrency evangelist.  I believe that we should start allowing some organizations to claim church-hood along with existing religious organizations.  I see great benefit in using a common opened ledger.  Actually, I don’t see any organization stopping this behavior.  New ideas seem strange, but once implemented, often then seem perfectly reasonable.  The trick is to understand how to make this jump.  In this case, I am interested in promoting first the idea that secular religion can be dignified and implemented rather than 501c3 charitable organizations.  I see no law or tradition that restricts this, it is simply a matter of making claims of a generic secular religiosity.

But maybe I am getting ahead of myself.  I don’t claim that my own sort of religious ideas are about nothing, but I am not sure that it must be about anything in particular.  My ideas about religion are based on what I see around me.  Large and well-organized denominations spread out into residential areas and serve communities as people can conveniently fit attendance into their life.  The churches are a confluence of a denominational agenda which target certain geographical areas and the people that can make the church a part of their lives.  Historically religion has of course been very different, at times compulsory, manipulative and destructive.  Most people that I know in the atheist community, and much of liberal religion spend a considerable amount of time and energy on the healing process of past religious abuse.  I count myself so lucky to not need such things , but also end up with a very abstract, legalistic, and bare-bones interpretation of what religion could be.  I see religion as the institution of last resort which can give a group of average people an edge.  Religion has also been historically a way for politics and the wealthy to at the very least communicate and direct the populace.  Of course, too often and in extreme cases, again religion can be a source of great manipulation.  I believe that non-supernatural religion, however, can be transparent and transformational in a way that can be quite helpful at this time.  I believe, in a sense, that a Jubilee can be triggered, with all levels of wealth participating.

Charles Taylor has been involved in politics,  economics, and philosophy. In his ponderous tome “A Secular Age” he promotes a worldview were I see myself right alongside people who call themselves traditionally religious.  Although he doesn’t mention it in the speech below, his “Immanent Frame” offers more than enough intellectual fire-power to fill in the blanks needed anchor a universal, indisputable sort of secular religious currency.  This works for both the religious and the secular and allows us a common order, a shared record, and even a common way to respond to a national crisis in a fast and indisputable way.

And if you still are curious about how these puzzle pieces fit together, I strongly recommend getting a copy of “Gardens of Democracy”.  Taylor’s arguments very much remind me of a “Garden Brain” where society is to be tended to grow in a healthy and prosperous way:

So finally, I would like to discuss blockchain technologies.  Bitcoin is the first most obvious implementation of this technology and is now known for how its value goes and down in wild swings.  For me, however, the most important thing about bitcoin is that anyone in the world can look at its shared ledger.  Bitcoin accounts and wallets are expressed as numbers rather than names, but once a name is disclosed, then all of the transactions can be seen.  The ledger is stored in a way that is indisputable on a distributed network of computers.  All of the computers must agree and if any computer tries to change the ledger, it will be immediately ejected from the system.  A system knows as the Byzantine Generals uses codes and mathematical puzzles to pull this off.  For me, this is more than enough of a system upon which to build a secular (or supernatural if desired) system which would allow for efficient propagation of the benefits of religion.  Some of the primary benefits of this system is that church leaders and or board members are considered clergy and are therefore allowed tax exempt parsonage stipends as well as tax exempt love gifts.

Here is an example of a view into one of these ledgers, this transaction is for 2 bitcoins:

https://blockchain.info/address/3QXvniiMkd9Hf9tgqnyQ4cqszTDoWRnNSv

A group of five people could easily create a special sort of mark into the ledger by passing a very small amount of coin or token to each other.  This could be done with any currency.  If they make a complete loop where all five pass the currency to each other within a few minutes, then that loop could be seen on the register.  By formally connecting one of their ids into an agent such as myself who would then report to the IRS as a religious denomination of X blockchain religion, they would be essentially making what could be construed as a legally binding claim of religious practice.  Five people wouldn’t transfer coin to each other in this way in this sort of loop on accident, repeatedly, while connecting to special accounts.  If a group meets once a month and does this action for each meeting, then they would be acting in a way which would signal the IRS or any one else concerned of their intention.  This is how I propose to form blockchain religion.  The currency then could be used to make exemption religious payments and would thus begin to create standards for such behavior.  The net result would be that this behavior is either accepted and exemption would be greatly expanded, or religious exemptions would be reformed wholesale and benefit would be shifted to charitable organizations.  In either way, an inequality would be remedied.  I will close with a video of the FBI discussing blockchain, so that one could imagine how the technology could be seamlessly integrated into an official reporting system:

Thoughts about DevOps

I have had quite a few DevOps interviews lately, and it is just about to come off of my resume completely. I think that I genuinely confuse people, because I have a security patent from IBM, I seem to make little dashboard widgets, I talk in very abstract ways about agile thinking (functional scripting no less) but have not been a paid ‘developer’, but rather an Operations Person. Actually making code run consistently and streamlining processes, migrating from one solutions to the next, and then downloading, installing, and supporting all the fancy packages that you guys need has just always seemed more important to me. When I first started at IBM, there was so much work to do that was fulfilling that didn’t necessarily involve writing code.

I bring your legacy solutions directly to the door of Amazon and roll forward with a reasonable plan to get your entire infrastructure ported over to it, shut down your servers and pack them up to ship away, but I am not a developer. I am IT infrastructure, and if your team if of a certain size, then you really need a couple of guys like me. I live in the shell and code or learn new stuff like docker or aws because I enjoy it, but I really think that your dream Linux Admin/DBA/aws/Java coder is much rarer than you might imagine.

So maybe there are two very different sorts of DevOps people that need to be working together, like we always have.

http://insights.wired.com/profiles/blogs/what-is-devops#axzz4oca6v6Es

Exploring BlueMix

I just got a trial BlueMix account from IBM.  I will begin to play with it.  I like to map out such efforts in a special shell solution which I call sbshell.  Generally, I iterate between the shell and editor to begin to create a functional library.  In many cases, shell will not be part of the final solution, but it gives me a good place to start and allows me to quickly turn incidents and problems into working prototypes.

 

john@purple:/var/www/html$ sb.init
Reload web...
Reload site5...
Reload web...
Reload svg...
> sb.vi bluemix  

This creates an initial set of bash library files named ‘bluemix’, the first is local to my user, and the second is global. Both libraries are sourced into the environment after each save. I will then create a bluemix function that will run successfully, but will just ssh into my remote instance by default. In it I will store everything that I know about bluemix and begin to add functionality. It is like a scratchpad that becomes a launchpad.

#!/bin/bash

-() { return; }
---() { return; }

bluemix() {

--- bluemix
  - Image ID:c3432649-385b-4b7a-909d-80ba79d5e84b
  - flavor ID:1
  
ssh linux1@148.100.5.125
}

The build just finished a new instance that I created, so I grabbed a bit of information that might be useful later and set up my ssh keys.

john@purple:~/.ssh$ bluemix
Last login: Wed Jul 19 14:48:00 2017 from 173.175.254.4
==============================================================================
Welcome to LinuxONE Community Cloud!

This server is for authorized users only. All activity is logged and monitored. 
Individuals using this server must abide to the Terms and Conditions listed here: 
https://developer.ibm.com/linuxone/linuxone-community-cloud-terms-conditions/. 
Your access will be revoked for any non-compliance.
=============================================================================
[linux1@bleugren ~]$ 

So now I have a pretty basic Jailshell to begin working from and some rough documentation of what I did. If come back and structure the
lines that start with ‘-‘ a bit better, then I can overload the – function to act in certain ways, the following line could be caused to execute a curl against the api, if I were to be allowed access to imageId. What is nice is that I don’t have to fully define that functionality right now.

- bluemix.imageId c3432649-385b-4b7a-909d-80ba79d5e84b

This way of thinking and coding is to supplement work in other languages, such as Nodejs or python and make Enterprise level connections which can be, for instance, scripted in conjunction with an ansible hostlist.

Enterprise DevOps (like System Administration) is often done it tiny burst between meetings or incidents, and I may work on something one day and not look at it again for two weeks.  These conventions may seem trivial, but over time I am able to keep track of many different projects.

[ note: I recommend getting a free trial of bluemix, it was easy to configure and get to a point where docker was installed and available. ]

 

Functional Scripting tricks

As I code and work more and more in this field of Information Technology that is now begin called DevOps, I begin to develop certain tricks that I form into a style.

Here are a few to play with:

- () { return; }

Now you can use the ‘-‘ at the beginning of a line as way
to leave comments. You should probably use this for structured comments that you might want to grab via reflection.

color() {
# The next line is functionally a comment too.
- alp color white red green blue
# If you overload the '-' function, then
# the color comment will become a function call
 if [ -n $1 ]; then
     case $1 in
       white)  FG='00m' ;;
       red)    FG='31m' ;;
       green)  FG='32m' ;; 
       blue)   FG='34m' ;;
      esac;
      printf "\033[$FG";
  fi
}

You can experiment around with what symbols you can overload in this way. So far, I found:

, . - + @

In what my structured comment line, I begin with the word ‘alp’. I will now define what ‘alp’ does.

# alp creates a function for each option defined
alp ()
{
- alp $1 $2
T=/tmp/$$
echo "$1.$2() { $1 $2; }" > $T
source $T
rm $T
}
alp color red
alp color blue
alp color white
alp color green

Now you have four new functions, one for each color.

declare -f color.red
color.red ()
{
    color red
}

So this is how I play with bash. It is very similar to how one might approach golang, python, or other functional languages.