EDIT : Thanks to everybody for pointing out the few mistakes/improvements that can be made in this new-player level guide.
For the sake of summarizing here :
- Intel documents are NOT worth 250k. I didn't check them on the flea before writing this and for some reason I always remembered them at 250k. Game is in maintenance so I can't check the real price. That being said, it's still profitable to craft USB into Intel, it's just not x2 profitable.
- Scav case : moonshine / intel docs, some people seem to say they've never been profitable. I personally *did not* measure those, I eyeballed it. I'm working on so much shit that I didn't bother. On average I think that I'm in a net positive, but it's as believable as people saying they're not : without proof we can't really say for sure. That bein said, it's certainly more profitable to run lower-tier scav runs that are *faster* when you're online, and to run a moonshine or intel when you log off. It's more efficient to get a lot of runs while you can re-start them every time.
- Crafting moonshine : It's not profitable to spam it ; I was under the assumption that the average player who will read this will usually not play for 4-5 hours straight and will end up collecting yesterday's moonshine, craft a new one, and that's it. If that's you're rythm then yes, spam it. If you intend to play more than one craft worth's of time, then you will craft moonshine faster than you can spend it, and it's not really worth to sell it on the flea except to up your market reputation for a small loss (about 10k). So in short : craft moonshine to be able to start a moonshine run for when you log off, but you don't *need* more than that.

Check this out

Here is some actual data on the lavatory !!

Hey everybody !

I know it can be a struggle to get a stable economy in this game, especially when you die a lot. Today I'm gonna try and give a few guidelines on how to make money safely, efficiently, fast, or in any other way we can think of.
If you're struggling to stay above the 15-20 million rouble treshold, this guide is definitely for you.
Very often I'll hear newer players say "Damn I can't seem to make money, I keep loosing. Every time I take gear I die instantly". There is some truth in that. Today I'll help you improve your survival rate, but most importantly I'll unbalance the other side of the equation. When you complain about losing a lot of money, I will help you spend less by a significant margin, as well as earn more. You'll also get rid of gear fera naturally.
Remember this throughout this very, very long read : It all depends on how you want to play, and how much. Some of these tips will not fit how you want to play the game, and like Nikita always says : this game is supposed to be fun before anything else.

1. Hideout

Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Moderate but very stable.
Maxing your hideout should be one of your top priorities, probably before telling your mom how much you love her every now and then. If you're not doing either of those, the big gamer in you knows what to do.
Early wipe, save your fuel for when you're online and playing. If you're playing, your generator should definitely be running and all your stations should be crafting something.
Once you have Medstation 1, Workbench 1 and Lavatory 2, you really have no reason to turn your generator off when you're playing.
Once you have the bitcoin farm, you should never turn off the generator.
Medstation :
Craft salewas and/or IFAKs permanently. They cost 8k and sell for 15k. That's a net profit of about 25k / hour for salewas, as well as never having to buy any.
Lavatory :
Always be crafting Bleach. If you have 2 empty blue fuel, use those empty cans to craft a Magazine case.
You can then keep the magazine cases until you've enough for your liking and sell those for a good profit.
The bleach you will use to buy the 6B47 helmets which are better than the SSh-68 helmets. Buying from 2x bleach barter at ragman level 1 means you get the helmet for 18k (instead of 33k on the market). This helmet has better head coverage, less slow/negative effects, less weight, has a slot for a mount, has +11 ergonomics AND is cheaper than the 22k SSh-68. That being said, it has a slight noise reduction that the Ssh does not have. If you wear headphones I'd say this is negligible but debatable. I prefer to have the extra protection and ergonomics for sure, considering it's slightly cheaper.

You can also barter for that helmet and instantly sell it back for a profit (five times) and level up ragman money requirements.
Bleach can also be traded for the Blackjack backpack at level 4, as well as the TTV rig at level 2. You should definitely do it.
Sell excess bleach on the flea market when the prices are around 10.5k or more. (around midnight Central European Time).
Workbench :
You can buy Power Cords and craft Wires forever and always make a profit. Buy in the morning and sell in the evening for better profits (CET timezone). For even more profit, you can craft gunpowders and ammo which tend to also be ridiculously pricy at night.
Buying grenades from Peacekeeper and crafting green (Eagle) gunpowder is a good way to make a lot of money and level up Peacekeeper.
Intel Center :
You main objective is to get this one to level 3 for reduced fees and better quest rewards, but also access to the bitcoin farm at level 2.
If you need FiR for quests, craft that. When you're done craft Intel Documents at all times (buy the USB), and use it for scav case or sell for a x2 profit. ( 3x40 for USB = 120, documents sell for 250)
Bitcoin Farm :
Once you have it, spend all your money on GPU until its maxxed, then level it up even more. The BTC farm is definitely worth it. At 50GPU you need to connect every 15 hours to clic. If you can't, keep it level 2 and connect every 24 hours to clic. Even at level 1 its worth. But its much, much faster at higher levels.
From 0 to 50 GPUs it takes about 30 days to pay for itself. GPUs should not be sold until you maxxed it.
Water Collector :
Must be running at all times. Buy the components if you don't have them.
Booze Generator :
Must be running at all times. Buy the components if you don't have them.
Scav Case :
Always have it running on moonshine, and use intel documents once you're done crafting one.
Nutrition Unit :
It's not really worth crafting sugar to put in the Booze gen, as the price for chocolate is pretty much = the price of sugar. So buy the sugar instead and craft something else. I tend to craft Hot Rods when the prices are good (morning) and then use them to barter 5.45 BS Ammo with Prapor or sell for a profit.

If you do all that, you should have about 150k an hour fairly easily. Don't forget to check it between every raid.

2. Traders

Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Quite good.
Once your mom has received all the love she deserves and your hideout is taken care of, you should have max traders (traders are a requirement for most of the hideout anyway).
Traders level 4 will net you much better prices on most mods and open very good barter trades.
Buy as much as you can from barter trades. You can buy almost everything from it, and it's usually at least 25% cheaper to buy the requirements and then do the barter. Ragman4 has the CPC Armored Rig which is level 5 armor, you'll get it for about 200k instead of 250k on the flea. The Slick is also much cheaper. The Blackjack backpack is literally half priced.
You can also NOT use what you barter and just sell it back to a dealer (sometimes the same from which you bartered) for a profit as well as having 2 times the loyalty money increase (from bartering then from selling).
Another good example is buying a Recbat 14k from the market, getting an ADAR for skier, selling it to Mechanic and winning 8k just like that. You can find every single barter that nets a profit yourself and just buy-resell and you'll probably make another 100k every reset, if you really are struggling and have the patience. I personally advise to just use the equipment for yourself unless you're levelling traders, but I wouldn't go as far as buying all profitable items every reset.
Every trader at every level has good barters. You can make a full decent kit at level 1 traders for about 40k roubles on barter, instead of 90 if you buy it all. (Paca for masks, helmet for bleach, ADAR for recbatt, salewa from craft, backpack, etc. all barters)

Bleach is beautiful and is coveted in the real world for its ability to cure diseases.

3. Modding

Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Very profitable.
Don't mod out of your reach. Don't mod Meta. If money is an issue for you, having +1 ergo won't change your life.
For example,
Priced at 10k roubles
Priced at 45k Roubles

See where I'm going with this?
If you have money, sure, go for the Shift. If you wanna have fun and try, sure, go for it as well. But if you're struggling, buy 4 cobras and mod 4 guns for the price of 1% recoil which will not make you a gamer god anyway.
Also, do NOT buy mods from the flea market when you see you can buy them from traders. Look at the top of the market, if the mod is greyed out, look at the price. It means you don't have access (yet). If the price is too inflated for you, find another mod. There are always other mods. You can make 2 AKMs that have a difference of 2% recoil and 4 Ergonomics and have a 150k price difference. It's up to you. When money is the issue, this was the answer.

Note : Some guns are inherently much more expensive. Guns shooting 5.56 or 5.45 tend to be more expensive than 7.62. AKMs are VERY good budget guns. They're a bit harder to handle, but you can get a fully modded AK for 150-200k, where as you will have an entry level M4 for that price. 7.62 PS ammo is also incredibly cheap while being decent. Play 7.62 if you're struggling with money. It's not meta, but it's far more than enough, trust me. You'll rarely lose fights exclusively because you had PS ammo in an AKM. Rarely.

4. Statistical loadout balance

This is fairly simple yet overlooked a LOT. To be accurate, you need data. Personally I kept it in an excel spreadsheet, if you're hardcore you should do something similar.

A somewhat relevant spreadsheet I used a wipe ago to measure some of my stats
What you need to know about yourself for this :

Your survival rate per map
How much you usually extract with, on average, per map
How much you usually go in raid with, on average, per map

These will help us measure how much you fuck up or not.
Lets make it simple.
If you have a 500k loadout and you usually extract with 100k, at 10% survival rate, that means you will spend 500k x 10 = 5.000.000 roubles over 10 raids on average, die 9 times, and earn 100k once. This very obvious example shows the loss.
Basically we're gonna try and balance that equation so that you never lose money on average. You'll have ups and downs obviously, but over a week or two, it'll smooth things out for you, like math always does in a pleasant conversation with a girl.

So what can you do to improve that equation ?

4.1 Improve survival rate

Seems simple enough, DIE LESS. You do not need to be good, smart, or special to die less. If you die a lot, do something different. If you die less, try more of that. Explore statistical advantages through different gameplay.
What can you do to die less practically? Here is a list of checkboxes you can tick depending on your money, skill, mood, or any other factor like the map and sheer luck:

Fight from a bigger distance. People miss more from far (so will you, but killing less is irrelevant when you want to die less)
Fight with better gear (supressed, better armor, better ammo, etc.). Its expensive, but it technically helps
Don't fight at all. Avoid fights, run away from gunshots. 99.3% of people who didn't get shot survive a raid.
Wait more, play slowly. If you go with the flow of players, you'll be with the players. Avoid that "wave" and stay behind it. When you come across players trying to extract to where you spawned, hide.
Play with friends if you have any. If not, your mom loves you and so do I. I do coaching so do a lot of other decent players, look it up.
Whenever you die, look at what killed you. Did you take a risk ? Did you lack skill ? Were you out of position ? Were you unlucky ? Try to be as OBJECTIVE as possible even in the frustration. It's pretty much always your fault if you died, avoid toxicity and learn something from that instead. If you took a fight with good gear and ammo and just lost, its probably skill/positioning. It's fine. Learn the game, fight differently, and with time it'll get better. If you were in the open, don't go in the open. If you were sprinting in the middle of interchange and got ambushed, well. Don't do that. Learn.

Do all that, it'll give you a LOT of data to actually improve by just doing something different without really being fastestronger, just smarter.
And I repeat : you can do some of it, all of it, it depends on what you like, what you're comfortable with, and the time/investment you're putting in the game. It's okay to play at your own pace.

4.2 Reduce gear cost

The second part of our "profit equation" above is how much gear you take with you. Using previous tips, reduce that cost. Barters, cheaper mods, etc.

4.3 Increase extracted value

This one is not as tricky as it sounds. Basically there are two ways to extract with more money in the backpack :

Know what/where to loot
Have a bigger backpack.

The goal is to pay for the gear you will loose when you die while making a profit on top. That one time you extract if you have a MBSS backpack, you'll need items worth like 50k per slot to break even. If you take a tri-zip, suddenly it's only 30k per slot. If you take a blackjack and blackrock from good old ragman, suddenly it's 10k per slot. So you can break even by looting crickents and DVD players almost.
See where I'm going ? Always take a tri-zip or bigger unless you're doing something special. That way you can afford to loot shitty areas, take less risk, and survive more while having a little less value.
We'll cover that in a minute, but there are ways to loot high value items, moderate value and low value. Those have also different risk/reward.

All of those are also map specific. In woods I'll often go with a 6B3TM armored rig for 40k, no helmet, 20k headphones and a sniper rifle. Rest is pouched so does not count. That's less than 100k investment. All players tend to have low value gear so I never extract with a lot either so it balances out. But on Woods, my survival rate is 20% instead of my overall 40%. So I know it's not a map I can reliably make money on, because I measured that accurately over time. This example is very common and should make sense to you.
Same goes for interchange where I have more about 50% survival but will tend to go in with 600k worth of gear, but will also often extract with over 500k quite regularly. Different ratios, different values, different purposes.
You can measure your own data if you're willing to do so, or you can eyeball it. Eyeballing it is much faster but very inaccurate because you will tend to include emotions in the mix when you die. You'll remember losses ~2x more than your wins (that's somewhat scientifically proven), and if you're eyeballing your loadout you might think you have 600k but really you might have only 450k. I would advise to go hardcore and measure it all for price, initial loadout, losses and earnings, for each map.

5. Money runs

Now money runs are vast and numerous. All include different levels of risk and reward. It's up to you once again to find what you're willing to do for the time it takes, the fun it will give you and how much it will actually help you. You can always try them all for ~50 raids the sake of trying something different and see how your data is impacted. it doesn't have to be 50 in a row if you don't want to. As long as you keep track of it it can be over a whole wipe. You'd have your data ready for the next wipe :) Faster is better though.

5.1 Hatchling runs

Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Very Variable. Mentally exhausting.
Those are incredibly money efficient. You're investing a gear of 0 value, so whatever you extract with is 100% win, so you cannot possibly lose money that way. Is it fun? Is it rewarding? I don't care, to each is own. Statistcally speaking, hatchling runs are an efficient way to make money.
They do however require a little bit of knowledge, but not skill. You'll be much more efficient at doing these kind of runs if you know where to go, what to look for, and how to get there depending on your spawn. That being said, such knoweldge is easily found ; it's nothing complex, it just takes time to learn. Once again, depends on how much you're willing to invest (if not roubles, time).

5.2 Scav runs

Safety Score : 100%
Reward : Low-ish
Scav runs are also incredibly efficient for the same reason as hatchlings. Except those have a cooldown. Statisticall speaking I have noticed you should always run your scavs as fast as possible on the map where you extract both the fastest and most frequently.
The explanation is simple, lets make it simpler :
The scav is a button that makes you earn free money. When you press it the button becomes unpressable for some time, when you release the button you earn money (sometimes).
That means you want to release the button as often as possible. And for that, you need to release it as fast as possible. It's that simple. So make scavs incredibly fast. I'm talking "Run through" fast.
Unless you're looking for FiR items or doing something specific like annoying a streamer, you should literally run straight to the extract every single time, and loot what you have that doesn't make you go out of your way too much. Usually I suggest factory, go in, kill a random scav, loot it, get out.
Two weapons is at LEAST 50k, 100 if they have a scope. There you go. That's 100k every 20 minutes (or less with intel center). That's MUCH BETTER than going up to 150-200k but taking 30 minutes to extract, and taking more risk by spending more time in the map. Every second you're in someone can shoot. Nobody can shoot you in the hideout.
The exception to that rule is Scavs with a pilgrim which you can take on your favourite loot-run map, probably interchange or reserve. There you should just fill everything you can and extract once you're full, no matter what you have. 30 crickents and an extra gun is fine.

5.3 Stash runs

Safety Score : Very
Reward : Okay
Those are very very safe and can be done with a pistol and a backpack only. Very cheap, quite unchalleneged, for a moderate reward. Just go on a map that you like and run around and loot all stashes until you're full, then get out. You can vary the map/route depending on the traffic of players. Interchange and shoreline are good contenders for that.
It'll net you easy money. Not great money, but definitely safe.

5.4 Loot Runs

Safety Score : Moderate
Reward : Quite alright
Once you have better knowledge/skill you can start having a specific route in a specific map, depending on a specific spawn. So it'll take time to learn. Usually very similar than a hatchling run except this time you bring moderate gear and go for moderate loots. For example, instead of going for fast techlight, in-and-out interchange, you can decide "alright I'll loot 100% of Oli and the computers in the back", it'll take time, but it'll make good loot. More money than stashes, definitely will see scavs to kill, and most probably some more pvp. More risk. If you win that PvP you have even more loot as well. But overall good reward.
Loot runs need to be "scheduled" and thought of after several tries, so you know how much you can take per person depending on backpack size. For example you can't say "lets loot oli" if you have a 5-man with blackjacks, you'll all be empty. Adapt.

5.4 PvP

Safety Score : Insane
Reward : Unreliably moderate
This one is pretty obvious. Very risky, unpredictable rewards. Usually better than loot runs when you survive. I won't elaborate on this, because if you're reading this far you're probably struggling in PvP. And the rest of this guide already covers a fair bit.

6. Insurance

Safety Score : "Meh"
Reward : Very profitable.
Now this is very, very important. Always insure your gear. Always.
If you die you will get stuff back, pretty much for free. If you're really struggling people won't loot your "trash", so you WILL get it back.
If you play in a group it's very likely that people will hide your stuff too.
And most importantly : you can insurance fraud. This is the best way to balance the equation we talked about earlier. If you find a decent-ish gun, replace yours. You drop your initial investment by a significant margin, you will definitely get it back, and if you extract it's a flat profit. Weapons don't take inventory slot, so if you have two weapons that are not yours initially they will usually pay for your whole gear. I have quite often left my super-mega-modded HK just for an average M4 or other weapon that I can fight with, just so I can reduce my investment by 350k and up my reward by like 200k instantly. Replace your headphones all the time too, that's an easy -30+30k, same with helmets. even if it's a bit broken or slightly worse.
If you're struggling with money, try to leave every raid with at least 3-4 pars of your equipment that aren't yours initially.
But value the risk behind this. I won't leave my slick for a Paca at the third minute of a raid just to have that extra 28k. I won't leave my meta-modded HK for a naked mosin. But if it seems decent/doable, do it. It will pay off. Because even if you die, you still get your shit back, and gun is usually the most expensive part of the gear.

7. Final notes

It's all about balance. Find what works *for you* and try shit out. Really, try. You'll die, you'll learn, you'll adapt with data to back that up. I find it crazy that people will die and not try to learn from it. That's how you will improve as a player.
First you gotta get smarter, then you'll get better. And with time, skill, mechanics, gamesense, all that will improve on the side. Earning more will snowball in your favour. And if you know you're statistically okay, you will have a much smaller gear fear and enjoy the game more.

Sorry for the wall of text, you guys should be used to it with me by now :D I made these guides in video but not in english, so here I am typing it all for you guys.
Enjoy :)

Who can legally use Atari Token?

Why Osana takes so long? (Programmer's point of view on current situation)

I decided to write a comment about «Why Osana takes so long?» somewhere and what can be done to shorten this time. It turned into a long essay. Here's TL;DR of it:

The cost of never paying down this technical debt is clear; eventually the cost to deliver functionality will become so slow that it is easy for a well-designed competitive software product to overtake the badly-designed software in terms of features. In my experience, badly designed software can also lead to a more stressed engineering workforce, in turn leading higher staff churn (which in turn affects costs and productivity when delivering features). Additionally, due to the complexity in a given codebase, the ability to accurately estimate work will also disappear.
Junade Ali, Mastering PHP Design Patterns (2016)

Longer version: I am not sure if people here wanted an explanation from a real developer who works with C and with relatively large projects, but I am going to do it nonetheless. I am not much interested in Yandere Simulator nor in this genre in general, but this particular development has a lot to learn from for any fellow programmers and software engineers to ensure that they'll never end up in Alex's situation, especially considering that he is definitely not the first one to got himself knee-deep in the development hell (do you remember Star Citizen?) and he is definitely not the last one.
On the one hand, people see that Alex works incredibly slowly, equivalent of, like, one hour per day, comparing it with, say, Papers, Please, the game that was developed in nine months from start to finish by one guy. On the other hand, Alex himself most likely thinks that he works until complete exhaustion each day. In fact, I highly suspect that both those sentences are correct! Because of the mistakes made during early development stages, which are highly unlikely to be fixed due to the pressure put on the developer right now and due to his overall approach to coding, cost to add any relatively large feature (e.g. Osana) can be pretty much comparable to the cost of creating a fan game from start to finish. Trust me, I've seen his leaked source code ~~(don't tell anybody about that)~~ and I know what I am talking about. The largest problem in Yandere Simulator right now is its super slow development. So, without further ado, let's talk about how «implementing the low hanging fruit» crippled the development and, more importantly, what would have been an ideal course of action from my point of view to get out. I'll try to explain things in the easiest terms possible.

else if's and lack any sort of refactoring in general

The most «memey» one. I won't talk about the performance though (switch statement is not better in terms of performance, it is a myth. If compiler detects some code that can be turned into a jump table, for example, it will do it, no matter if it is a chain of if's or a switch statement. Compilers nowadays are way smarter than one might think). Just take a look here. I know that it's his older JavaScript code, but, believe it or not, this piece is still present in C# version relatively untouched.
I refactored this code for you using C language (mixed with C++ since there's no this pointer in pure C). Take a note that else if's are still there, else if's are not the problem by itself.
The refactored code is just objectively better for one simple reason: it is shorter, while not being obscure, and now it should be able to handle, say, Trespassing and Blood case without any input from the developer due to the usage of flags. Basically, the shorter your code, the more you can see on screen without spreading your attention too much. As a rule of thumb, the less lines there are, the easier it is for you to work with the code. Just don't overkill that, unless you are going to participate in International Obfuscated C Code Contest. Let me reiterate:

Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

This is why refactoring — activity of rewriting your old code so it does the same thing, but does it quicker, in a more generic way, in less lines or simpler — is so powerful. In my experience, you can only keep one module/class/whatever in your brain if it does not exceed ~1000 lines, maybe ~1500. Splitting 17000-line-long class into smaller classes probably won't improve performance at all, but it will make working with parts of this class way easier.
Is it too late now to start refactoring? Of course NO: better late than never.

Comments

If you think that you wrote this code, so you'll always easily remember it, I have some bad news for you: you won't. In my experience, one week and that's it. That's why comments are so crucial. It is not necessary to put a ton of comments everywhere, but just a general idea will help you out in the future. Even if you think that It Just Works™ and you'll never ever need to fix it. Time spent to write and debug one line of code almost always exceeds time to write one comment in large-scale projects. Moreover, the best code is the code that is self-evident. In the example above, what the hell does (float) 6 mean? Why not wrap it around into the constant with a good, self-descriptive name? Again, it won't affect performance, since C# compiler is smart enough to silently remove this constant from the real code and place its value into the method invocation directly. Such constants are here for you.
I rewrote my code above a little bit to illustrate this. With those comments, you don't have to remember your code at all, since its functionality is outlined in two tiny lines of comments above it. Moreover, even a person with zero knowledge in programming will figure out the purpose of this code. It took me less than half a minute to write those comments, but it'll probably save me quite a lot of time of figuring out «what was I thinking back then» one day.
Is it too late now to start adding comments? Again, of course NO. Don't be lazy and redirect all your typing from «debunk» page (which pretty much does the opposite of debunking, but who am I to judge you here?) into some useful comments.

Unit testing

This is often neglected, but consider the following. You wrote some code, you ran your game, you saw a new bug. Was it introduced right now? Is it a problem in your older code which has shown up just because you have never actually used it until now? Where should you search for it? You have no idea, and you have one painful debugging session ahead. Just imagine how easier it would be if you've had some routines which automatically execute after each build and check that environment is still sane and nothing broke on a fundamental level. This is called unit testing, and yes, unit tests won't be able to catch all your bugs, but even getting 20% of bugs identified at the earlier stage is a huge boon to development speed.
Is it too late now to start adding unit tests? Kinda YES and NO at the same time. Unit testing works best if it covers the majority of project's code. On the other side, a journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. If you decide to start refactoring your code, writing a unit test before refactoring will help you to prove to yourself that you have not broken anything without the need of running the game at all.

Static code analysis

This is basically pretty self-explanatory. You set this thing once, you forget about it. Static code analyzer is another «free estate» to speed up the development process by finding tiny little errors, mostly silly typos (do you think that you are good enough in finding them? Well, good luck catching x << 4; in place of x <<= 4; buried deep in C code by eye!). Again, this is not a silver bullet, it is another tool which will help you out with debugging a little bit along with the debugger, unit tests and other things. You need every little bit of help here.
Is it too late now to hook up static code analyzer? Obviously NO.

Code architecture

Say, you want to build Osana, but then you decided to implement some feature, e.g. Snap Mode. By doing this you have maybe made your game a little bit better, but what you have just essentially done is complicated your life, because now you should also write Osana code for Snap Mode. The way game architecture is done right now, easter eggs code is deeply interleaved with game logic, which leads to code «spaghettifying», which in turn slows down the addition of new features, because one has to consider how this feature would work alongside each and every old feature and easter egg. Even if it is just gazing over one line per easter egg, it adds up to the mess, slowly but surely.
A lot of people mention that developer should have been doing it in object-oritented way. However, there is no silver bullet in programming. It does not matter that much if you are doing it object-oriented way or usual procedural way; you can theoretically write, say, AI routines on functional (e.g. LISP)) or even logical language if you are brave enough (e.g. Prolog). You can even invent your own tiny programming language! The only thing that matters is code quality and avoiding the so-called shotgun surgery situation, which plagues Yandere Simulator from top to bottom right now. Is there a way of adding a new feature without interfering with your older code (e.g. by creating a child class which will encapsulate all the things you need, for example)? Go for it, this feature is basically «free» for you. Otherwise you'd better think twice before doing this, because you are going into the «technical debt» territory, borrowing your time from the future by saying «I'll maybe optimize it later» and «a thousand more lines probably won't slow me down in the future that much, right?». Technical debt will incur interest on its own that you'll have to pay. Basically, the entire situation around Osana right now is just a huge tale about how just «interest» incurred by technical debt can control the entire project, like the tail wiggling the dog.
I won't elaborate here further, since it'll take me an even larger post to fully describe what's wrong about Yandere Simulator's code architecture.
Is it too late to rebuild code architecture? Sadly, YES, although it should be possible to split Student class into descendants by using hooks for individual students. However, code architecture can be improved by a vast margin if you start removing easter eggs and features like Snap Mode that currently bloat Yandere Simulator. I know it is going to be painful, but it is the only way to improve code quality here and now. This will simplify the code, and this will make it easier for you to add the «real» features, like Osana or whatever you'd like to accomplish. If you'll ever want them back, you can track them down in Git history and re-implement them one by one, hopefully without performing the shotgun surgery this time.

Loading times

Again, I won't be talking about the performance, since you can debug your game on 20 FPS as well as on 60 FPS, but this is a very different story. Yandere Simulator is huge. Once you fixed a bug, you want to test it, right? And your workflow right now probably looks like this:

Fix the code (unavoidable time loss)
Rebuild the project (can take a loooong time)
Load your game (can take a loooong time)
Test it (unavoidable time loss, unless another bug has popped up via unit testing, code analyzer etc.)

And you can fix it. For instance, I know that Yandere Simulator makes all the students' photos during loading. Why should that be done there? Why not either move it to project building stage by adding build hook so Unity does that for you during full project rebuild, or, even better, why not disable it completely or replace with «PLACEHOLDER» text for debug builds? Each second spent watching the loading screen will be rightfully interpreted as «son is not coding» by the community.
Is it too late to reduce loading times? Hell NO.

Jenkins

Or any other continuous integration tool. «Rebuild a project» can take a long time too, and what can we do about that? Let me give you an idea. Buy a new PC. Get a 32-core Threadripper, 32 GB of fastest RAM you can afford and a cool motherboard which would support all of that (of course, Ryzen/i5/Celeron/i386/Raspberry Pi is fine too, but the faster, the better). The rest is not necessary, e.g. a barely functional second hand video card burned out by bitcoin mining is fine. You set up another PC in your room. You connect it to your network. You set up ramdisk to speed things up even more. You properly set up Jenkins) on this PC. From now on, Jenkins cares about the rest: tracking your Git repository, (re)building process, large and time-consuming unit tests, invoking static code analyzer, profiling, generating reports and whatever else you can and want to hook up. More importantly, you can fix another bug while Jenkins is rebuilding the project for the previous one et cetera.
In general, continuous integration is a great technology to quickly track down errors that were introduced in previous versions, attempting to avoid those kinds of bug hunting sessions. I am highly unsure if continuous integration is needed for 10000-20000 source lines long projects, but things can be different as soon as we step into the 100k+ territory, and Yandere Simulator by now has approximately 150k+ source lines of code. I think that probably continuous integration might be well worth it for Yandere Simulator.
Is it too late to add continuous integration? NO, albeit it is going to take some time and skills to set up.

Stop caring about the criticism

Stop comparing Alex to Scott Cawton. IMO Alex is very similar to the person known as SgtMarkIV, the developer of Brutal Doom, who is also a notorious edgelord who, for example, also once told somebody to kill himself, just like… However, being a horrible person, SgtMarkIV does his job. He simply does not care much about public opinion. That's the difference.

Go outside

Enough said. Your brain works slower if you only think about games and if you can't provide it with enough oxygen supply. I know that this one is probably the hardest to implement, but…
That's all, folks.
Bonus: Do you think how short this list would have been if someone just simply listened to Mike Zaimont instead of breaking down in tears?

BTC/BCH core difference for a newcomer

Greg Maxwell caught brigading with paid accounts

I've just confirmed. We can fight against cheat makers - go after their money.

[Table] IAmA dark web expert, investigative journalist and true crime author. I’ve met dark web kingpins in far flung prisons and delved the murky depths of child predator forums. I’ve written six books and over a dozen Casefile podcast episodes. AMA (part 1/2)

Source | Guestbook
Note: Some answers were repetitive, but were not edited out.

Questions	Answers
Have you ever gotten into legal trouble by exploring the dark places of the internet? Like, "sorry, officer, I was only surfing drug markets and child molester forums for my next journalism piece..." Do you worry about that? Do you have to take extra steps to protect yourself?	I'm very careful not to go anywhere that it is illegal to visit. You will hear loads of stories about how easy it is to "stumble upon" child porn, but the fact is that those sites usually have names like "Preteen cuties" so you know exactly what they are, and in order to access them you have to register. So you have to make a very deliberate choice to log into them. I have no interest whatsoever in viewing any child abuse material, so I don't go into those places. When I was researching The Darkest Web, I went to the discussion forums that didn't allow any images (though they did link to sites that did), and even there I turned off images.
	As for the drugs, weapons etc, there is nothing illegal about surfing them and looking around.
	I do get a bit nervous every time I visit the US, especially when I was invited to a "friendly" lunch with Homeland Security once (it was reasonably friendly as it turns out, it was also terrifying)
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Why did homeland security want to talk to you?	They said it was about the murder-for-hire stuff, but some of the questions leaned toward something else
Is there anything that really concerns you about the dark web? Some of the things already discussed are beyond barbaric and that is only the stuff that has been found out about and been picked up by the media and your fantastic work. Do you think the public should expect worse and more horrific revelations from the dark web or is it just "more of the same" for lack of a better term and do you think the authorities are getting better in shutting this inhumanity down and catching the people responsible?	I am definitely not against people taking back their online privacy and I actually think that buying drugs from the darknet markets is a safer and more sensible option than buying them from the dodgy dealer down the road. However the one thing that is really disturbing is that the dark web has provided a place for child predators to find each other and form communities where they support and egg each other on. Imagine a few years ago, someone who was into hurtcore could never tell anyone else and would be unlikely to ever come across another person with the same perversions. Now it is as simple as finding the relevant site on the dark web. When there are suddenly hundreds of people who all think and act in the same way, it normlalizes what they are doing.
	One of the guys who got caught, Matthew Falder, was a sadist who used to crowdsource "ideas" for torturing the children and teens he was blackmailing into doing heinous things for him online. But apparently he was a "normal" intelligent popular guy
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But how does everyone participate in those illegal sites without getting caught? You said in other comments that you tried to stay away from underaged sites because they were illegal. Can't they be tracked down, even with tor and a vpn? The thing that I don't understand is that even on the dark web people say you should stay away from illegal sites, but how are pedos not getting caught?	they are getting caught, but the way they are getting caught is through painstaking detective work, looking for clues in photos, befriending them online and getting them to reveal things about themselves (what is known as social engineering). It takes a long time and many resources.
	I say don't go there because (a) it is illegal and (b) you really shouldn't want to go there
Iirc you attended the trial of the person behind the horrific hurt core website that was exposed a few years back. I was wondering if there was anything in particular that happened during the trial that particularly shocked or horrified you that isn't really public knowledge or talked about? Reactions from the judge or perpetrator during the trial etc. As I remember it the guy was a fairly young loner who lived with his parents but would probably never have been expected to be behind the horrific vile things which he was found to be. Also, how did you get into investigative journalism/writing?	I wrote in one of the other replies above about the little mute girl that has stayed with me. Also, at the insistence of the prosecution, the judge had to watch "Daisy's Destruction" which was a video of torture of a toddler. He put it off for two days and when he came back he was white. He didn't have the sound on, which is considered the worst part, but he still looked shell-shocked. I don't envy him.
	I'll cut'n'paste re your last question: I was in London, working for one of the most conservative law firms in the world when the Global Financial Crisis hit. I liked the job but it struck me when people were losing their livelihoods that I was working for the bad guys. I'd always wanted to be a writer so when I came back to Australia I quit law and enrolled in a writing course planning to be a novelist, but I discovered I was better at journalism. I first wrote for newspapers here about Silk Road and it grew from there
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Thanks for the reply.. that really must've been horrific for all involved from investigation to trial and for all of the victims (apart from the scum responsible of course). I guess it would be naive to assume that the end of this site did anything other than drive this depraved community even further underground. That is the part which is really scary to me but I suppose all we can do is have faith that the authorities are always close on the tail. Thank you for your work on reporting on this and raising this stuff more into the public consciousness and making people more aware of what kind of evil still lurks.	It was the most disturbing two days of my life, made all the worse because they read out hours of interactions from the site where the children still had not been identified or the predators caught.
	Hurt2theCore was not the last site of its kind and there are still hurtcore sites to this day on the dark web. The one hopeful thing is that there are international task forces that seem to work together really well (unlike when it comes to drugs and every law enforcement agency wants to take the lead and they all withhold info from each other). There are a lot of resources allocated to identifying predators and their victims. Sometimes this has involved some very controversial tactics, such as taking over the sites and letting them run, so that they can use social engineering techniques to identify those who are using the sites and who are actually abusing children
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So daisy's destruction is real? Was it referred to by that name court? I always thought it was a myth	Yes, Daisy's Destruction is real, it was referred to by name in court and the judge had to watch the 12 minutes of it that were hosted on Hurt2theCore.
	The "myth" part is that it shows a murder. The toddler, Daisy, lived, though she suffered such horrific injuries she will never be able to bear children. Hopefully she was young enough that she will grow up without the memory.
	However, Scully did murder at least one child, whose body was found under the floorboards of his house. it is not known whether he filmed her murder as no video evidence of it has come to light.
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Thanks for answering. I actually watched a really good video on Hurt2theCore on youtube once, I think it was by a guy called Nexpo. It was really detailed and informative about the whole case - I forgot those details. Thanks again for replying, this AMA is really informative!	I think I recall that one, it was from a few years ago.
	An excellent podcast that came out recently is "Hunting Warhead", highly recommend a listen. It is a tough listen, but exceptionally well-told and respectfully handled
How do you detach yourself from your work? I'm an investigator for a law firm and I've had a lot of difficult working on wrongful death cases recently. Also, how did you first end up getting published? Any tips for people interested in that field? Thanks!	I don't detach. When I was researching hurtcore, it was harrowing and affected me deeply. Writing that part of the book was a very slow process because I just couldn't be in that headspace for very long at a time. Once the book was written I didn't go back there.
	I already had a reputation as a blogger and a freelance journalist when i pitched my book on Silk Road. I got an agent and it was auctioned off, with Pan MacMillan getting the rights. At the time, Silk Road was still going strong, and the book I wrote was about this new frontier of drug dealing that was changing the world. I was writing it "from the inside" as I had been an active part of the community for two years. However, right as I submitted the final manuscript to my publisher, Silk Road was busted and Ross Ulbricht arrested, so i had to quickly change the narrative to a "Rise and Fall" thing!
How many times have you approached law enforcement with information and how many times has the approach resulted in action? and... are there times where you know something nefarious is happening but history and the evidence at hand tells you it's not worth the effort?	There is no point in approaching law enforcement to say "I have come across this site". If I've found it, you can guarantee law enforcement has found it as well.
	The only time I've approached law enforcement was when I had information that they did not, which was when a friendly hacker provided me with a back door into the Besa Mafia murder-for-hire site. I got to see all the messages and orders etc. Of course LE knew about the site, but they did not have the details of the people who had hits taken out on them. We tried desperately to tell police in several countries that real people had paid real money to have other real people killed, but they just weren't interested. We sounded like crazy people talking about dark web hitmen, who were scams anyway and nobody was dead, so why should they be interested? They became much more engaged when one of the people WE HAD PREVIOUSLY TOLD THEM ABOUT later turned up dead
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By law enforcement, do you mean only local or else the big agencies? I feel like I wouldn't tell my local police department because they wouldn't really know what to do. It would have to the the bigger agencies.	FBI in US. NCA in UK. AFP in Australia. Nobody was very interested, although the FBI did visit at least one of the targets to let her know she was a target. She still wound up dead
What are some of the most prevalent uses of the dark web that AREN'T all shady and nefarious?	We might be getting into semantics here, but people use Tor, which is the most possible darknet that is used to access the dark web, just for private browsing and ensuring that commercial interests aren't following them everywhere to bombard them with ads for some thing they looked up.
	Some of the news organizations have a dark web presence so that whistleblowers can upload information safely. Even the CIA has a site on the dark web so that people can anonymously tip off matters of national security.
	Other than that, there are just forums, where you don't have to worry that every single stupid thing you post will be saved in posterity forever, to be trotted out years later when you run for congress or something
After everything you've seen, does anything surprise you anymore or are you just numb to it at this point? Do you think there should be more education/exposure about the dark web than there is now or would that just be counter-productive as people would just find another place to hide? I'm curious to hear any favourite stories about the Psychonauts.	I am not numb and I hope I never become numb. I really don't visit the horrible dark places very often, unless I'm researching something specific, and even then I don't look at pictures or videos. Most of the crime is pretty benign - I'm not fazed by people wanting a safer way to buy drugs.
	I think there needs to be ongoing discussions about online activity and its misuse in general, but most crime still happens on the clearnet. The dark web is not nearly as large or prevalent as people fear.
	For a long time, a dealer provided free LSD to anyone who wanted it for personal use (ie not sale) and to any organizations who were doing psychedelic therapy.
	One psychonaut got busted and spent time in prison... only he still had bitcoin in a wallet and by the time he was released he was a millionaire. He would have just spent it on drugs otherwise :)
I know law enforcement has to delve into the predator side of the dark web. With what you've seen do you think it should be mandatory or an industry standard that law enforcement officials seek professional help? I couldn't imagine investigating that daily and not thinking less of humanity at some point.	I'm pretty sure they do. I worked for Legal Aid for a while, and i know there were pretty strict rules in place for the lawyers who had to defend child abusers.
	When I was at the trial for Lux, owner of Hurt2theCore, I met a cop whose job it was to watch all the videos and befriend the predators in an attempt to get them to slip up and reveal something of themselves. She said she had a little filing cabinet in her brain where she put all that stuff, and that making an arrest made it all worthwhile. She had made several arrests personally. She was a sex offender's worst nightmare :)
What’s one of your personal favorite investigations and what made it unique for you?	By far the Besa Mafia murder-for-hire case. What made it unique was that, first, I was provided a back door into the Besa Mafia site by a friendly hacker, so i had information that nobody else had. But then I became "friends" for want of a better word with the owner of the site, Yura. Besa Mafia, of course, was not killing anyone, but Yura made a LOT of money scamming would-be murderers out of their money. We entered into a weird relationship over the years where i would report on his activities and he would try every trick under the sun to stop me from doing so, so that he could keep scamming people. He even offered me a job, helping him, because he had become so busy. He also provided me with names and details of people who had hits taken out on them so I could pass them on to law enforcement.
	It all became horribly real when one of the people who had a hit put out of them wound up dead. It wasn't Yura of course, but the guy had paid him $13K before giving up on the site and doing it himself. The thing was WE HAD TOLD THE FBI about the hit and the $13K and they visited the victim, but then put it into the too-hard basket when she couldn't think who might have paid that much to kill her.
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Wow. That’s actually pretty cool. Reminds me of an old saying. “Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”	It's a seriously bizarre relationship. When I was hired as a consultant by CBS for a 48 Hours expose on dark web hitmen, he actually agreed to meet me in London. But he thought that CBS was going to advertise his site as the real deal and he got excited and sent them details of two people who had hits put out on them. CBS sent them straight to the police and very shortly after two arrests were made and it was all over the news, where they called his site a scam. Yura got so pissed about it, he never turned up to our meeting. They had even hired an Academy Award-nominated master of disguise makeup artist to disguise him!
are "red rooms" actually a prevalent thing, or just a widespread misconception or rumor? I ask in part because it's very easy to see, for instance, Mexican cartels dismembering people alive, etc, just on the clearnet. Hell, a couple days ago I saw a video posted of a cartel member cutting out a dude's heart while the guy was alive, and he ATE it. He fucking ATE it. So it seems plausible...	The most popular myth of all is Red Rooms, where people – usually women – are tortured to death live on camera while those who have paid to watch type in torture commands in a chat box. Think the movie Hostel, with webcams. In this sense these have never been proven to exist. I get where you are coming from with the cartels, and the recent news item where they found those shipping containers set up with torture rooms freaked me out and made me wonder!
	There is some truth to this rumour, but the execution is not like you see in the movies. Most notably, because it involves children, not adults abused on demand for paying pedophiles, but not to the point of death
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The news about those shipping containers really made me speculate, since for every one person who gets caught doing something evil, there must be at least several more people who are very honed in their 'profession' doing the same evil deeds and worse, yet who evade being captured for decades. Anyway, based on morbid things I've seen, karma comes around eventually...	I know, right? It really freaked me out, and then when I read that they already had intended victims for them but the police got to them first and put them in protected custody.. IMAGINE SEEING THOSE PICTURES AND KNOWING YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE IN THEM!! I would retire to a deserted island somewhere
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Your line of work could easily result in something like C-PTSD down the road a little ways. I have a morbid curiosity, and have seen worse than those shipping containers had to offer. I'm sure you have as well. So one more question from you, if you don't mind: what are some proactive approaches to mental health you take to safeguard your sanity?	A lot of wine. Cuddle my dog
Hi, there! This has been fascinating to read; thank you so much for sharing! I'm curious: why do you think so many people who don't want to engage with disgusting and illegal content like hurtcore find it so interesting to read about? Do you have any insight into your readership and the ethics associated with reading about these kind of topics?	I think morbid fascination with the dark is exceedingly common - just look at how many people can't get enough about serial killers! In some ways it is probably a self-defense mechanism - the vast majority of true-crime readers are women. People like to be armed with knowledge. We also like to be spooked and scared.
	As for my books, I don't really go into much gory detail, but the horror still shines through
Out of all 9-5 jobs out there, why this? What’s your motive?	I got disenchanted by being a lawyer and I had wanted to be an author since childhood. The lawyering put me in a strong enough financial position that I could quit to do a uni course for a couple of years. My plan was to become a best-selling novelist, but my first chick-lit novel was nothing special. However, during the course, I found I did really well at journalism and was soon making a living as a freelance journo before I finished the course. My first major feature was on the Silk Road drugs market, which I had discovered thanks to a friend who was using it. Once I got in there I became fascinated by everything about it and started contacting the owner, users, vendors etc asking for stories (I was upfront about who I was). I began the first serious dark web blog - allthingsvice.com - and also became the go-to freelancer for Australian dark web stories. Then I pitched my first book and got a healthy advance for it.
	I like working for myself, working from home and delving into things. Right now I have my dream job (though it wouldn't hurt to pay a bit more. I'm certainly not making anywhere near what I used to make lawyering, but I make enough to get by and I live pretty simply)
Did you ever do any writing on Brian Farrell and his role in Silk Road 2.0? I was Brian's cellmate for all of 2017 at Sheridan Federal Prison and heard all of his crazy stories. Was just curious as to the validity of them all.	DoctorClu! I did write briefly about him in Silk Road, but it wasn't all positive. I remember being frustrated by the shitshow that was Silk Road 2.0 in the beginning, right after SR1 shut and when DPR2 took off and Defcon got all dramatic. It settled down after a bit and lasted a year, when it was revealed THEY HAD A FUCKING UNDERCOVER HOMELAND SECURITY OFFICER ON STAFF THE WHOLE TIME. But yeah, anyhow, they are probably true. I'd love to hear them :)
Was there ever something on the dark web that made you surprised ( in a good way) and smile ?	So many things. Back in the day of the original Silk Road, I became obsessed with the forums, the people behind it, the intelligent discourse about the War on Drugs and philosophy. I found it amusing that drug dealers ran sales and giveaways. There were book clubs and movie clubs.
	One of the most important people from that era was Dr Fernando Cauevilla, who became a member of Silk Road as "DoctorX". He was a real doctor who provided genuine, free, non-judgmental advice about drug use to the members of the site. It was quite an amazing time.
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Did Ulbricht get taken down the way we were told in the news? What happened to all the Bitcoins?	His arrest went down the way we were told in the news. How they located the server has never been disclosed (other than a fanciful explanation that NOBODY could believe). This explanation may be tested if Variety Jones runs a Fourth Amendment argument at his trial
	The bitcoin in the wallet on Ross' computer was auctioned off by the Feds. He may have other bitcoin wallets stashed somewhere but nobody knows
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Book/movie clubs on the silk road?	Yeah, they would set reading and then everyone would come back and discuss the book, or they would have a time when everyone watched the same movie at the same time and chatted about it in real time
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Haha that's amazing! I don't suppose you remember any of the books in question?	They used to be a lot of philosophy books, especially on agorism. A Lodging of Wayfaring Men was one of the books. I remember V for Vendetta on a movie night
You don't seem to be pushing your most recent project and you're actually answering all the questions people ask, so I've got ask...are you some sort of government plant meant to destabilize reddit? This isn't how AMAs are supposed to work. You come in, you half ass a few questions, hawk whatever you're here to hawk, and then leave after 20 minutes. That's how it's done.	lol I'm a genuine redditor from way back, and I love talking about the stuff I do. I did find that after I answered a question in an AskReddit thread a while back that blew up, the sales followed. But that was organic and I don't think you can force it to happen - Reddit can spot that a mile awy
What are some of the best things about the dark web? And can anyone get on it? Things you can buy that you can’t buy normally online?	I really enjoy some of the forums, especially the psychonaut forums where people who like to trip on psychedelics get together and talk drugs and philosophy. There's a real "be kind to one another" vibe.
	Getting on the dark web is easy, but not getting scammed when buying things takes a lot of homework. Yes, you can buy most things, but the most popular things are drugs and digital goods, i.e. things that depend on repeat custom and are easily transferable from seller to buyer
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[deleted]	You're doing the Good Work my man. I'd give you one of those awards if i knew how
What would you define the word "Safe" when it come to the internet (both www and dark web) world and are there any tips that I should follow to keep myself safe?	It really depends on what YOU mean by safe. Tor, which is the darknet that provides access to the dark web will keep you safe from prying eyes and surveillance.
	If you mean keep your information safe, the old-fashioned advice is to never reuse your password and to enable 2-Factor authentication wherever you can. Your information is quite likely somewhere on the dark web thanks to high-profile hacks of major organizations, but provided you don't re-use usernames and passwords, you really don't have to worry too much about it.
	If you mean keeping yourself and/or any kid safe from predators, the only thing is to ensure you are educated about the approaches and methods they use.
Has Covid affected the Dark Web in any real way? Also I just read through all of the post comments, what incredible story’s. I would totally buy a book about the Silk Road or Yaru!	re covid on the dark web, here's some notes I made for an interview I did recently:
	* when Trump first hyped hydroxychloroquine as a potential miracle cure for COVID-19, drug dealers on the dark web seized on the claim.
	* Listings quickly popped up on the most popular darknet markets
	* A vendor on Whitehouse Market sells 100 Pills for $90, calling it a “Miracle Drug For Coronavirus” and suggesting buyers purchase in bulk to sell at a mark-up locally.
	* Another makes the dubious claim “This drug will help people to beat Corona Virus” There are 11 listings on Empire Market currently, although more than half are from the one seller, who is a well-known and trusted vendor on the site.
	* There were also people claiming to be selling infected blood or plasma of recovered COVID victims
	* The infected blood stuff is just bullshit IMO Just because something is listed doesn’t mean it is genuinely for sale
	* There's been some claims to be selling vaccines
	* At the beginning there were also loads of listings for PPE
	* some just used it as a marketing tactic - “fight off the virus with edible cannabis” or “relax with Xanax” and others as an excuse to raise their prices
	* However, sales are low compared to sales of other drugs on the site, so it is difficult to say whether it’s something that will really catch on
	* It didn’t take long for complaints to come in and market owners to clamp down on anything claiming to be a miracle cure or vaccine
	* users were discouraging other users from profiting off the pandemic and requested markets provide health and safety information
	* All the major markets forbid anything being sold as a cure for COVID. They flagged keywords and vendors would be told to take any listings down. They also put out PSAs telling people not to buy
	* Monopoly: threatened to ban and.. “You are about to ingest drugs from a stranger on the internet - under no circumstances should you trust any vendor that is using COVID-19 as a marketing tool to peddle already questionable goods”
	* It was a business decision. They don’t want anything that will attract attention or that might cause desperate people who wouldn’t normally use the DNMs to find their way there
	* The idea behind DNMs generally is educated and responsible drug use. They really don’t want people dying - bad publicity and no repeat custom
	* However the dark web is rife with scammers and people willing to prey on the desperate so there are still scams out there
	* The only way I could ever see it becoming a thing is if there is a well-known potential cure/vaccine that is not being made widely available and could plausibly find its way onto the black market
Hi Eileen :) My question is about how you construct your Casefile episodes - I assume there is an extensive amount of outlining but do you write the final draft like a script specifically thinking about his voice? And about how long are they as far as - for example - does one hour equal 50-60 pages? Thank you.	I initially write them as if I'm writing an article or book, but then go back and edit them to be read out and yes, when I do that, I do have his voice in my head lol. One episode is usually around 12,000 words. It then goes to another editor who edits the episode to be even more "casefileaa' before it finally goes to Casey
Have you been exposed to things in your investigations that have made you second-guess what you do? If so, what has made you keep going back?	i've definitely had days where I question everything, but to be honest, I don't really hang around the horrible really dark places much. I did delve into the child predator forums when I was writing The Darkest Web, but I don't make it a habit to go there. The psychonauts are much more friendly
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To continue with that- have you clicked images, links that make you a suspect in certain scenarios?	Oh absolutely. Sometimes I go to a "Fresh Onion" site, which is a site that crawls all the .onion addresses (dark web URLs end in .onion rather than .com, org etc) and alerts you to any new ones. Sometimes they don't have any description, so you take a big risk clicking on any of those. The most dangerous button on the dark web is the "Random Onion" button, so I avoid that.
	I'm pretty careful about what I click, but the moment something looks questionable I nope the fuck right out of there
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Have you ever felt that you may be a suspect whether it be ok a drug site, a pedo site, etc. Have you ever been contacted by someone regarding your surfing habits?	Well my actual surfing habits are protected by Tor, which means they are hidden from prying eyes, so no I haven't been contacted about them. I am very open on the dark web about who I am and what I'm doing there - I use the name OzFreelancer on all of the markets and forums. I don't go to the sites that host child abuse images - you can't un-see that shit and I don't need it in my head.
	As noted in another reply, I was contacted by Homeland Security on one of my visits to the US and taken for a "friendly" lunch.
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Psychonauts are more friendly than most people. Something about regular mind altering experiences makes you want to be less of a cunt.	Yeah, I call The Majestic Garden a little corner of sunshine and rainbows on the dark web :)
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More about The Majestic Garden please? What is grown there?	It's a place where people talk about and source psychedelics - most notably LSD, the 2C family, DMT and MDMA. Talk about and sourcing harder drugs is forbidden. In fact the admins snuck in an autocorrect so that any time someone wrote the word "cocaine" it would post as "a raging hardon" :D
Do you fear that seeing all this stuff might turn you emotionally blunt? I'm not watching any of this stuff on purpose (even the clearnet stuff), because I fear that the more you see of it, the more normal it gets, and ultimately, the more it will fuck you up. To quote the movie 8mm... "If you dance with the devil, the devil don't change. The devil changes you."	No, I can't even watch "3 Guys 1 Hammer" in its entirety, let alone look at the really dark materials on the dark web. When I was researching The Darkest Web, going into the predator forums did the opposite of making me blunt. It was the shortest section of the book but took the longest to write because it was so emotionally draining
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I have to ask, what is "3 Guys 1 Hammer"?	It's a video of two teenagers murdering an innocent man with a hammer that went viral on the gore sites of the regular internet. It's truly horrible.
	The teens killed over 20 people. I wrote about them in my book Psycho.com (excuse the plug)
I heard somewhere that you foster dogs. Is that something you do to counter all the terrible humans you encounter in your research - everyone knows how dogs are better than people. How many dogs have you fostered and which one was your favourite?	After my dog died I knew I didn't want to have another dog as I wanted to travel more. So I thought fostering dogs would be the answer as you give them love for a few weeks and then they go to their forever home. My first foster, Roy, was a big fat failure and now he lives here and sleeps in our bed and is the most spoiled dog alive
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Did you then just decide to quit travelling? I don't know anything about Roy, but I already think I love him.	Nah, he has family he can stay with when I go away, but any major travelling has been thwarted by COVID for now anyway. I'm in a hard lockdown city.
	And I'm sure Roy would love you too, u/suckmyhugedong
Given how much you know about the dark web, what kind of crazy awful nightmares have you had? This could be a really good one. Thank you	Probably the worst thing was delving into the forums where child predators gathered. I never looked at any videos or photos, but just seeing their discussions sickened me. The one thing that keeps coming back to me came out of the sentencing hearing that I attended of Lux, owner of Hurt2theCore, considered the most heinous website in history. In court they read out a conversation between him and an abuser who made videos of torture of the mute disabled child in his care. They were joking "at least she won't be able to tell anyone" . the abuser wasn't caught, at least by that stage
As an indie author, how have you sourced freelancers? Did you seek out those that have specific expertise or did you work with editors from your time as a traditionally published author?	I learned to do everything myself before I started outsourcing.
	I work with a professional editor who happens to be a friend of mine from back when we did a writing course together. I've been doing my own covers, but now that I have some royalties coming in, I've engaged a professional cover artist from Reedsy to develop a brand and more professional-looking covers for me. It is the hardest thing to find people you really want to work with and who are in budget.
	I still haven't got the hang of email lists, newsletters or a website - they are all in a total mess at the moment and I'd love to find someone who can do them, but again it is that problem of finding the right person who is within budget
is it true that most of the internet is in the "dark web"? if so about how much percent is it?	By far the biggest myth is that it 10x larger than the Internet. I mean, this should be common sense anyway, but it gets propagated by tabloid media all the time. It stems a lot from people using the terms "deep web" and "dark web" interchangably when they are different things.
	The statement that 90% (or thereabouts) of the internet is hidden is true, and it is called the deep web (not the dark web). The 90% that is hidden is all those pages you won’t get to using google or any other search engines. There’s nothing scary about that – in fact it works in your favour.
	The easiest example is your bank. The bank’s major page is available to anyone who searches the web (part of the 10%, also known as the “clearweb”). But once you log in, all those pages you can access that contain your personal details? Not searchable on google. Each one of those pages is part of the 90% of the deep web. Business and government intranets also make up part of the deep web. Honestly, it’s nothing to worry about.
	The dark web – the hidden services available through Tor and other anonymising programs – makes up a tiny fraction of the deep web. A really, really tiny fraction. It is infinitely smaller than the clearweb.
Do you think human trafficking happens on the dark web? Last year (I think) there was a really bizarre story here in the UK about a model who was supposedly kidnapped to order, drugged and transported overseas by a group called "Black Death". The official story is that BD doesn't exist, and the kidnapper was a fantasist. Is it likely that humans are bought and sold into slavery over the dark web?	There are no slick websites with auctions for slaves on the dark web, but I have no doubt that human traffickers use dark web encryption to communicate.
	(here comes the second plug for the thread) - I wrote about the kidnap of Chloe Ayling and the Black Death Group in Murder on the Dark Web
What ever happened to the plural of mongoose storyline? it seems like after he was arrested in the united states, his case just fizzled away. did you ever find out any more information about yuri after he cancelled the interview with a news program? what happened with peter scully's case? i read that there was a fire where a lot of evidence against him was held and it all went up in smoke. are there any character and/or personality storylines that you feel haven't been told or are still a complete mystery? eg. tony76	1. He is still in the MCC in NY and awaiting trial. It has taken a long time because he had terrabytes of information to go through and things would have slowed down due to covid. I understand he is running the Fouth Amendment argument that Ulbricht probably should have run in the first place
	2. I last heard from Yura just a few weeks ago. He is still scamming. There are some more programs in the works about him
	3. Yes there was a very convenient fire, but he still got sentenced to life and i hope he rots in hell
	4. I am madly curious to know what is happening with the extradition of James Ellingson, aka “MarijuanaIsMyMuse”, aka "redandwhite", MAYBE aka Tony76. I would LOVE to know that full story!
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Wow, this shit is a blast from the past. I used to love following the darknetmarket drama. Did you write about PoM and tony76 in one of your books? Ever since reddit shut down /darknetmarket I've been out of the loop.	Yes, I wrote about them in The Darkest Web
	I was in touch with PoM/Mongoose when he went on a posting rampage on MyPlanetGanja, then visited him in Bangkok prison several times. Wrote all about it :)
This may have been answered by a previous post pertaining to native language barriers to specific sites on the dark web, but in your investigations, did you come across content/pages/forums from warzones? Middle East, Burma, Afghanistan, etc? If yes, what was the most memorable bit?	There are loads of sites in foreign languages, but it is too difficult for me (a one-language numpty) to attempt to translate through AI, and it is not worth hiring a translator when they could just turn out to be Cat Facts

Forex Trading in Kenya.

Someone posted on here a few days ago asking about forex and forex trading in Kenya, I have gone through the responses and clearly, most people don’t have an idea. It is 3am in the morning and am in a good mood so let me make this post. This will be a comprehensive and lengthy post so grab a pen and paper and sit down. We’ll be here a while.
FIRST OF ALL, who am I..?
I am a forex trader, in Nairobi, Kenya..i have been actively involved in forex since I found out about it in Feb 2016 when I somehow ended up in a wealth creation seminar (lol) in pride inn Westlands, the one close to Mpaka Rd. Luckily for me, it was not one of those AIM global meetings or I’d be on Facebook selling God knows what those guys sell. I did not take it seriously till August of the same year and I have been active ever since.
I don’t teach, mentor or sell a course or signals, I trade my own money. I am also posting from a throwaway account because I don’t want KRA on my ass.
What the fuck is forex and forex trading.
In simple plain English, forex is like the stock market but for currencies. Stock Market = Shares, forex = currencies. If you want more in-depth explanation, google is your friend.
These currencies are pegged on specific countries, united states- dollar, UK- pound, euro zone- euro, Switzerland- Swiss franc, Kenya- Kenya shilling.. you get the point. Now, there are specific events and happenings between these economies that affect the movement and values of the currencies, driving their value (purchasing power up and down). Forex trading exploits these movements to make money. When the value is going up, we buy and vice versa (down –sell)
Is forex trading illegal in Kenya? Is it a scam?
Illegal, no. scam, no. All the banks in the world do it (KCB made about 4 billion from trading forex in 2019)
Have there been scams involving forex in Kenya?
Yes. Here is one that happened recently. This one is the most infamous one yet. Best believe that this is not the end of these type of scams because the stupidity, greed and gullibility of human beings is unfathomable.
However, by the end of this post, I hope you won’t fall for such silliness.
What next how do I make it work..?
Am glad you asked. Generally, there are two ways to go about it. One, you teach yourself. This is the equivalent of stealing our dad’s car and hoping that the pedal you hit is the brake and not the accelerator. It is the route I took, it is the most rewarding and a huge ego boost when you finally make it on your own. Typically, this involves scouring the internet for hours upon hours going down rabbit holes, thinking you have made it telling all your friends how you will be a millionaire then losing all your money. Some people do not have the stomach for that.
The second route is more practical, structured and smarter.
First Learn the basics. There is a free online forex course at www.babypips.com/learn/forex this is merely an introductory course. Basically it is learning the parts of a car before they let you inside the car.
Second, start building your strategy. By the time you are done with the babypips, you will have a feel of what the forex market is, what interests you, etc. Tip..Babypips has a lot of garbage. It is good for introductory purposes but not good for much else, pick whatever stick to you or jumps at you the first time. Nonsense like indicators should be ignored.
The next step is now the most important. Developing the skill and building your strategy. As a beginner, you want to exhaust your naivety before jumping into the more advanced stuff. Eg can you identify a trend, what is a pair, what is position sizing, what is metatrader 4 and how to operate it, what news is good for a currency, when can I trade, what are the different trading sessions, what is technical analysis, what is market sentiment, what are bullish conditions what is emotion management, how does my psychology affect my trading (more on this later) an I a swing, scalper or day trader etc
Mentors and forex courses.. you have probably seen people advertising how they can teach and mentor you on how to trade forex and charging so much money for it. Somehow it seems that these people are focused on the teaching than the trading. Weird, right..? Truth is trading is hard, teaching not quite. A common saying in the industry is “Those who can’t trade, teach” you want to avoid all these gurus on Facebook and Instagram, some are legit but most are not. Sifting the wheat from the chaff is hard but I did that for you. The info is available online on YouTube, telegram channels etc. am not saying not to spend money on a course, if you find a mentor whose style resonates with you and the course is reasonably priced, please, go ahead and buy..it will cut your learning curve in half. People are different. What worked for me might not work for you.
Here are some nice YouTube channels to watch. These guys are legit..

Advanced stuff

After a short period of time, you will be able to sniff out bs teachers with relative ease. You will also discover some of your own and expand the list. Two tips, start with the oldest videos first and whichever of these resonates with you, stick with till the wheels fall off.
How long will it take until things start making sense
Give yourself time to grow and learn. This is all new to you and you are allowed to make mistakes, to fail and discover yourself. Realistically, depending on the effort you put in, you will not start seeing results until after 6 months. Could take longeshorter so there is no guarantee.
Social media, Mentality, Psychology and Books
Online, forex trading might not have the best reputation online because it takes hard work and scammers and gurus give it a bad name. However, try to not get sucked into the Instagram trader lifestyle as it is nowhere close to what the reality is. You will not make millions tomorrow or the day after, you might never even make it in this market. But that is the reality of life. Nothing is promised, nothing is guaranteed.
Your mentality, beliefs and ego will be challenged in this market. You will learn things that will make you blood boil, you will ask yourself daily, how is this possible, why don’t they teach this in school..bla bla bla..it will be hard but growth is painful, if it wasn’t we’d all be billionaires. Take a break, take a walk, drink a glass of whatever you like or roll one..detox. Chill with your girl (or man) Gradually you will develop mental toughness that will set you up for life. Personally, I sorta ditched religion and picked up stoicism. Whatever works for you.
Psychology, this is unfortunately one of the most neglected aspects of your personal development in this journey. Do you believe in yourself? Can you stand by your convictions when everyone is against you? Can you get up every day uncertain of the future? There will be moments where you will question yourself, am I even doing the right thing? the right way? It is normal and essential for your growth. People who played competitive sports have a natural advantage here. Remember the game is first won in your head then on the pitch.
Books: ironically, books that helped me the most were the mindset books, Think and grow rich, trading for a living, 4 hour work week, the monk who sold his Ferrari..just google mindset and psychology books, most trading books are garbage. Watch and listen to people who have made it in the investing business. Ray Dalio, warren, Bill Ackman and Carl Icahn.
This is turning out to be lengthier than I anticipated so I’ll try to be brief for the remaining parts.
Brokers
You will need to open up an account with a broker. Get a broker who is regulated. Australian ones (IC Market and Pepperstone) are both legit, reliable and regulated. Do your research. I’d avoid local ones because I’ve heard stories of wide spreads and liquidity problems. International brokers have never failed me. There are plenty brokers, there is no one size fits all recommendation. If it ain’t broke..don’t fix it.
Money transfer.
All brokers accept wire transfers, you might need to call your bank to authorize that, avoid Equity bank. Stanchart and Stanbic are alright. Large withdrawals $10k+ you will have to call them prior. Get Skrill and Neteller if you don’t like banks like me, set up a Bitcoin wallet for faster withdrawals, (Payoneer and Paypal are accepted by some brokers, just check with them.)
How much money can I make..?
I hate this question because people have perceived ceilings of income in their minds, eg 1 million ksh is too much to make per month or 10,000ksh is too little. Instead, work backwards. What % return did I make this month/ on this trade. Safaricom made 19.5% last year, if you make 20% you have outperformed them. If you reach of consistency where you can make x% per month on whatever money you have, then there are no limits to how much you can make.
How much money do I need to start with..?
Zero. You have all the resources above, go forth. There are brokers who provide free bonuses and withdraw-able profits. However, to make a fulltime income you will need some serious cash. Generally, 50,000 kes. You can start lower or higher but if you need say 20k to live comfortably and that is a 10% return per month, then you can do the math on how big your account should be. Of course things like compound interest come into play but that is dependent on your skill level. I have seen people do spectacular things with very little funds.
Taxes..?
Talk to a lawyer or an accountant. I am neither.
Family? Friends?
Unfortunately, people will not understand why you spend hundreds of hours watching strangers on the internet so it is best to keep it from them. Eventually you will make it work and they will come to your corner talking about how they always knew you’d make it.
The journey will be lonely, make some trading buddies along the way. You’d be surprised at how easy it is when people are united by their circumstances (and stupidity) I have guys who are my bros from South Africa and Lebanon who I have never met but we came up together and are now homies. Join forums, ask questions and grow. That is the only way to learn. Ideally, a group of 5-10 friends committed to learning and growth is the best model. Pushing each other to grow and discovering together.
Forex is real and you can do amazing things with it. It is not a get rich quick scheme. If you want a quick guaranteed income, get a job.
And now it is 5am, fuck.
This is oversimplified and leaves out many many aspects.
Happy to answer any questions.

Mining algorithm differences between currencies

Bitcoin is effectively a much-needed alternative for this potentially Orwellian future where governments are able to surveil all financial activity, tell people who they can and can’t transact with, and easily steal from individuals through bail-ins or the inflation tax. ... ( see a deeper explanation of this point here ). Bitcoin has made Satoshi Nakamoto a billionaire many times over, at least on paper. It's minted plenty of millionaires among the technological pioneers, investors and early bitcoin miners. If you still can’t figure out what the heck a bitcoin is, this simple explanation for a five-year-old may help you … We’re sitting on a park bench. It’s a great day. The most important way Bitcoin is like cash: You can spend it. Because Bitcoin is digital and divisible into really small units, when you want to buy something, you can use a computer or smartphone, take a picture of a QR code or paste in a bitcoin address, enter the amount you want to give the clerk, and hit send. Very easy. This is the Best, Most Simple Explanation of How Bitcoin Works Before you start buying bitcoin or downloading your first bitcoin wallet, it’s best to know how exactly the whole ecosystem works, and what bitcoin is. by Shivendra Shukla 2nd May, 2017. Share Tweet. What exactly is ...

How Bitcoin Works in 5 Minutes (Technical) - YouTube

Bitcoin Simple Explanation for kids. As parents its our responsibility to teach our children about the 4rth Industrial revolution. The world is going digital... What is Bitcoin - A simple non technical explanation about the concept of Bitcoin for beginners. For the complete text guide visit: http://bit.ly/2DvHagt Joi... Baffled by bitcoin? Confused by the concept of crypto-currencies? Well, fear no more. In 190 seconds we explain what bitcoin actually is, where the idea came... The Difference Between Bitcoin and Ethereum — Simple Explanation Jon Cursi Clips - Duration: 4:23. Jon Cursi 166 views. 4:23. Bitcoin Basics (Part 1) - "Explained For Beginners" - Duration: 24:27. Earn Money with Bitcoin Vault Mining City App - A Free Step by Step Guide 2020 - Duration: 3:55. Mining City Global 836 views

A simple explanation of Bitcoin “Sidechains” Richard ...

StableCoin

Easy explanation of bitcoin

Easy explanation of bitcoin

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Easy explanation of bitcoin

Easy Explanation of Bitcoin and Why It's Important

Easy Explanation of Bitcoin and Why It's Important

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What is The History of Bitcoin: Super Easy Explanation

There are many 'types' of decentralization. But there is a most important type of decentralization. The one Satoshi talked about when he described Bitcoin as a decentralized monetary system. This is an Easy to Understand explanation of decentralization and how non mining nodes don't to increase it

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[Guide] How to make money in EFT

Check this out

1. Hideout

2. Traders

3. Modding

4. Statistical loadout balance

4.1 Improve survival rate

4.2 Reduce gear cost

4.3 Increase extracted value

5. Money runs

5.1 Hatchling runs

5.2 Scav runs

5.3 Stash runs

5.4 Loot Runs

5.4 PvP

6. Insurance

7. Final notes

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[Table] IAmA dark web expert, investigative journalist and true crime author. I’ve met dark web kingpins in far flung prisons and delved the murky depths of child predator forums. I’ve written six books and over a dozen Casefile podcast episodes. AMA (part 1/2)

Forex Trading in Kenya.

Mining algorithm differences between currencies

How Bitcoin Works in 5 Minutes (Technical) - YouTube