jabgrabdthrow

It's a reentry bug - native ETH always calls the recipient contract's code on transfer, which can call back into the current function. If you manage native ETH do accounting in the wrong order, you can "withdraw" multiple times.

It doesn't "go missing", presumably the hacker will drain it into Bitcoin via any anonymous exchange accounts they have. Everyone loses big time (except the attacker if they manage to launder some of the coins). Watch for a wave of rebranding.

> How severe could this attack be - does it pose an existential threat to The DAO (or Ethereum, more broadly)?

We will see. The group behind TheDAO has a lot of pull - if Ethereum successfully rejects calls for a hard fork that will damage it severely in the public's eye, but will be the ultimate proof of concept.

> How is this attack being perpetrated? Has the attack vector been previously anticipated? Why is this unexpected?

Why, take a look: https://blog.slock.it/no-dao-funds-at-risk-following-the-eth...

Copied:

""" No DAO funds at risk following the Ethereum smart contract ‘recursive call’ bug discovery Our team is blessed to have Dr. Christian Reitwießner, Father of Solidity, as its Advisor. During the early development of the DAO Framework 1.1 and thanks to his guidance we were made aware of a generic vulnerability common to all Ethereum smart contracts. We promptly circumvented this so-called “recursive call vulnerability” or “race to empty” from the DAO Framework 1.1 as can be seen on line 580: // we are setting this here before the CALL() value transfer to // assure that in the case of a malicious recipient contract trying // to call executeProposal() recursively money can’t be transferred // multiple times out of the DAO p.proposalPassed = true; Three days ago this design vulnerability potential was raised in a blog post which subsequently led to the discovery of such an issue in an unrelated project, MakerDAO. This was highlighted in a reddit post, with MakerDAO being able to drain their own funds safely before the vulnerability could be exploited. Around 12 hours ago user Eththrowa on the DAOHub Forum spotted that while we had identified the vulnerability in one aspect of the DAO Framework, the existing (and deployed) DAO reward account mechanism was affected. His message and our prompt confirmation can be found here. We issued a fix immediately as part of the DAO Framework 1.1 milestone. The important takeaway from this is: as there is no ether whatsoever in the DAO’s rewards account — this is NOT an issue that is putting any DAO funds at risk today. """

He means men naturally will choose to pay for sex when there are no other options, so its inevitable! /s

Prostitution should be legal, but this argument is horrible

No, you made a shitty title, blame yourself.

Doesn't sound snarky, more like armchair therapist possibly projecting their own issues. Exploring fresh ideas is fun and relaxing for some people.

Sounds like a specific failure of the "you" in your statement and not a general criticism of startups as a path to autonomy =]]

What? They would disagree that the point of terrorism is psychological warfare? You could just say "too soon", no need for emotional arguments.

> Much like slaves, stress for modern humans is constant and never ending.

> While the constant amount of stress, the feelings of helplessness, lack of balance, etc, simply persist if not increase.

I think you are projecting. If you have internet access and the depth of knowledge of most people that read HN, then you have the tools to be self-sustaining and carefree. All you've said is you personally have hobbies you find relaxing but are unhappy with niches you've found for spending the rest of your time.

Yeah, respect web 1.0 internet infrastructure gatekeeper database homesteading!!

This only works under the assumption that your activity would have had absolutely no impact on the market. The real world is complex and interconnected, and everyone is monitoring each other closely.

Perhaps, but I think even untainted econ undergrads talk about everything in terms of rates instead of quantities.

I think a large fraction of raid targets would be armed even if you made guns illegal.

An honest debater attacks the strongest points, not the weakest ones. All you've done is given the parent comment the experience to make all examples in a list roughly equally bad.

How is drug use a character trait? More than half of Americans drink alcohol. Nobody gets addicted to anything on purpose...

> people find the easiest and cheapest ways to protect profit. Delivering actual value is neither easy, nor cheap.

Isn't using patents and other anticompetitive protections easier and cheaper than delivering value? Sounds like you are agreeing that the patent system is bad.

The analogy is roughly, 1) gov. makes law 2) markets acts opposite way as law intended 3) consumer requests more laws. "The no gun zone law didn't work, let's make the no gun zone bigger" vs "The local ISP monopoly law backfired, let's let the government invent more rules for ISPs"

Oddly those are my two of my three go-to examples of government intervention fucking the consumer...

Nothing is free in reality, not even poison. What are you trying to say?

It's only misleading if you thing "blockchain" is not generic but means "The Bitcoin Blockchain". Is this a common understanding?

Those are fraud, not just "manipulation".

> translation of precise requirements

I think code can be recursively defined as "the translation of precise requirements to code". Seems like it's word games and everyone just wants to name the "last automatable thing" after what their current role is

I'm not sure if this is supposed to be a criticism of bitcoin's utility or not, but if it is I think you missed the point. The point is she has more currency units now than before, because she didn't have to pay the bid bad bank, even if she had to use local fiat to buy bananas.

I agree you own that hardware. I don't think the ISP is the owner. I just think that the piece of hardware you own is only useful if you have the private keys. That configuration is a physical property of the object you bought. Are you suggesting we should force that manufacturer to tell us some private knowledge he has?

Don't try to make a "freedom" argument here. Vote with your Value and buy an unlocked piece of harware.

The fed "gives" the proceeds of the monopoly on taxation, which is the only backing bonds have. Some people like to call this "free" because anyone could trivially use it to create value for themselves.

> you and I have agency and free will.

I don't buy this argument, I only feel like I have free will, as a model of my brain would. How could you convince me otherwise?

> Is this just another name for a ledger with auditable history?

Yes.

> Can a blockchain exist without mining or without a currency/coin?

Yes, but the interesting ones use currency/coins because you can use incentives other than the legal system to secure the database.

> What keeps people interested in a blockchain (and currency) once all of the easy mining is done eg, for people joining later?

Securing databases without using the legal system in order to outmaneuver some issues intrinsic to legal systems.

> - I see that transaction costs for bitcoin keep rising, is that related to the size of the blockchain?

It is related to many things. In bitcoin's case, the primary cost is the consensus algorithm, ie the network has to "outpay" any potential attacker.

> I thought bitcoin was supposed to be decentralised – doesn’t a group of centralised developers have the ability to change everything about the currency?

This is a nuanced topic, we could go in depth about "what does 'decentralized really mean", or even worse, "what does 'bitcoin' really mean" but I find this too hard to think about.

The first organization to figure out how to make a proper free-market prediction market platform will make a killing.

Casinos seem like a perfect way to make it happen as they already have special regulatory exemption for a transaction type BB doesn't like.

No guarantees. Why do you need guarantees? What's the cost of downloading the competitor's app? Even make your own non-discriminatory rideshare service, but if it's not sustainable, don't force the cost on others.

Everything has a guaranteed failure rate higher than 0, so is all insurance unprofitable?

The warranty example is bad because warranties end instead of getting renewed. They'd happily renew the insurance for the cost of a new product minus epsilon.

It's assuming you'll still experience the perception of having a choice. It predicts your actions but doesn't tell you, how would that be different from choices you're making if you actually did have free will (in both cases you say "I think I have free will" whether or not you do)?

Since you have imperfect information about yourself (this neuron talked to this neuron by these rules) you don't attribute the cause of your own behavior to anything other than "I did that".

I think the example from 1.3 is much more clarifying than the one-box vs two-box problem, there's no "predictor" involved

"Useful proof-of-work" is still less desirable for the coin holders than proof-of-stake, so capital will move out of this coin and into a POS coin