Silk Road forums
Support => Feature requests => Topic started by: WinterMoon on December 07, 2012, 03:13 pm
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Howdy!
Currently, the message from SR that appears in the address block at checkout reads: Please enter your name and address as it would be written on a letter
I wouldn't mind seeing that message changed so it reads more like: Please enter your name and address as it would be written on a letter. For your protection, we recommend that you encrypt your address using PGP. Or, allow the vendor to post a custom message.
Buyers who already know PGP would probably not be offended by the change in language. Buyers who are unaware that encryption even exists might at least pause to inquire about encryption. PGP helps to keep the entire community safe so I would view this as a positive change. Just an idea ~ thank you.
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You have a very good point. However, the Feature requests board is never considered by anyone.
So you just wasted few seconds of your life by posting this.
+1 for the idea tho...
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You have a very good point. However, the Feature requests board is never considered by anyone.
So you just wasted few seconds of your life by posting this.
+1 for the idea tho...
thanks for the +1 :)
my idea probably infringes personal freedom & personal responsibility too :(
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You have a very good point. However, the Feature requests board is never considered by anyone.
So you just wasted few seconds of your life by posting this.
+1 for the idea tho...
Quite the contrary, my good man -- I have considered it. Considered it in depth, no less! I even have a list of the most useful feature suggestions I found throughout time, sitting there, repeated, lost, forgotten, ignored... poor things. I gathered them all together, sifted through for what I thought could be implemented without access to SR or the database or anything of that sort, and then sat and considered for a time how to accomplish this.
Dedicated SR client that scrapes the website? Sure, that'd work. It would even be more secure than the javascript implementing, plugin-supporting monstrosity we only use for a single site basically (Tor browser, i.e. Firefox). But who'd trust it? Hrmph, nobody.
Firefox plugin? Sure, could do a lot of it that way, but who's going to want to trust that? That's ironically probably even less secure, because it would require javascript to be pretty fully enabled for SR I think...
... it was at this point I realized there was no way to be compensated for any of this work, since I'd have to release it anonymously. It was at that point I went back to ignoring the feature requests. :-X
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You have a very good point. However, the Feature requests board is never considered by anyone.
So you just wasted few seconds of your life by posting this.
+1 for the idea tho...
Quite the contrary, my good man -- I have considered it. Considered it in depth, no less! I even have a list of the most useful feature suggestions I found throughout time, sitting there, repeated, lost, forgotten, ignored... poor things. I gathered them all together, sifted through for what I thought could be implemented without access to SR or the database or anything of that sort, and then sat and considered for a time how to accomplish this.
Dedicated SR client that scrapes the website? Sure, that'd work. It would even be more secure than the javascript implementing, plugin-supporting monstrosity we only use for a single site basically (Tor browser, i.e. Firefox). But who'd trust it? Hrmph, nobody.
Firefox plugin? Sure, could do a lot of it that way, but who's going to want to trust that? That's ironically probably even less secure, because it would require javascript to be pretty fully enabled for SR I think...
... it was at this point I realized there was no way to be compensated for any of this work, since I'd have to release it anonymously. It was at that point I went back to ignoring the feature requests. :-X
Sorry, my mistake. Never considered by any of the administrators.
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Good ideas all around.
If they'd release a proper API it wouldn't be hard too implement a secure, OS, SR client. I even read an old message from DPR the other day from maybe a year and a half ago where he stated that they were going to start work on an API (and various other features). It was actually in the message where he explained why SR was going to begin gouging vendors with a 12% fee.
Found it: http://dkn255hz262ypmii.onion/index.php?topic=3415.msg28622#msg28622
What I'd like to do is double the commission rate to 12.5% for 1 month and see how sales respond to this. If our rate of growth slows, or even shrinks, then at least we'll know that it is too much and can scale it back, but if it doesn't affect sales, then we'll have doubled our revenue without any major consequence and can start investing in some of our "back-burner" projects such as internationalizing the site, developing an api, possibly starting an insurance pool, and getting normal updates and features online faster.
Well it's been over a year, the commission is around 10% for most of my sales, where are the new features?
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"Do you haz teh codez?" :P
That's actually pretty funny... I mean that's what I was going to do -- write an API that collected all its data by scraping the site so that you could do whatever you wanted. Sort any way, display any way, whatever you felt like using the library for. Started thinking about things like emulating push updates for orders or messages (what do vendors do, anyway -- do they seriously like refresh the site every 10 minutes or something???), auto-decrypt-print-discard the address so all you had to do was slap it on a box in a clean room...
... started wondering how much that kind of functionality would be worth to vendors who seriously spend all their fucking time dealing with this place... and then realized I'd have to actually have a seller's account to do it properly. I'm sure you've seen bad software. Everybody writes bad software -- it's what happens when you a) don't test exhaustively, or b) don't use it yourself.
Ah well.
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what do vendors do, anyway -- do they seriously like refresh the site every 10 minutes or something???
Yes.
I would pay money for a quality, secure (and therefore open source) SR client application. I think most vendors would. The SR interface is a pain in the ass. Anything would be useful - Firefox plugin, Winforms application, Android app.
Frankly, I'd vote for an android app. This may not be a good idea for everyone, but some of us are sophisticated and capable enough to securely run a mobile operating system.
(Try cracking my mobile: AES encrypted with a custom SE android kernel that I compile. Plus a tcpdump whitelist script (yes you can compile tcpdump for android) to alert on anomalous traffic. I. Do. Not. Fuck. Around.)
Some things I'd need:
1) push notifications of messages and orders and the ability to manage both from the application. This alone would save me 90% of the time I waste on SR.
Some things I'd like:
2) Export Account history/sales data to csv. You know how fucking hard BTC bookkeeping is? (obviously the data would be sterilized first - just need transaction amount, shipping amount, exchange rate at time of sale, exchange rate at time of withdrawal)
3) Integrate with GPG lib.
4) Plenty of other things I'm forgetting.
#1 wouldn't be too hard to implement right now. The rest would take some work. Not sure #2 could be done at all without an official API.
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what do vendors do, anyway -- do they seriously like refresh the site every 10 minutes or something???
Yes.
I would pay money for a quality, secure (and therefore open source) SR client application. I think most vendors would. The SR interface is a pain in the ass. Anything would be useful - Firefox plugin, Winforms application, Android app.
Frankly, I'd vote for an android app. This may not be a good idea for everyone, but some of us are sophisticated and capable enough to securely run a mobile operating system.
(Try cracking my mobile: AES encrypted with a custom SE android kernel that I compile. Plus a tcpdump whitelist script (yes you can compile tcpdump for android) to alert on anomalous traffic. I. Do. Not. Fuck. Around.)
Some things I'd need:
1) push notifications of messages and orders and the ability to manage both from the application. This alone would save me 90% of the time I waste on SR.
Some things I'd like:
2) Export Account history/sales data to csv. You know how fucking hard BTC bookkeeping is? (obviously the data would be sterilized first - just need transaction amount, shipping amount, exchange rate at time of sale, exchange rate at time of withdrawal)
3) Integrate with GPG lib.
4) Plenty of other things I'm forgetting.
#1 wouldn't be too hard to implement right now. The rest would take some work. Not sure #2 could be done at all without an official API.
API's for SR have been on my mind ever since I became a vendor. I think safety would be the biggest concern. Imagine "You have a new sale at Silk Road!" popping up on your Android while your in a crowded environment. lol
Dank
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what do vendors do, anyway -- do they seriously like refresh the site every 10 minutes or something???
Yes.
That's just... I don't know. Almost insulting.
I would pay money for a quality, secure (and therefore open source) SR client application. I think most vendors would. The SR interface is a pain in the ass. Anything would be useful - Firefox plugin, Winforms application, Android app.
I like money as much as the next guy... I may seriously do this. I have no experience with Android app development and hadn't even considered it, though now that you mention it, it would definitely let you guys be "out of the office," so to speak, wouldn't it.
Frankly, I'd vote for an android app. This may not be a good idea for everyone, but some of us are sophisticated and capable enough to securely run a mobile operating system.
(Try cracking my mobile: AES encrypted with a custom SE android kernel that I compile. Plus a tcpdump whitelist script (yes you can compile tcpdump for android) to alert on anomalous traffic. I. Do. Not. Fuck. Around.)
Jesus man. That level of caution is just beautiful, I don't know how else to characterize it :)
Some things I'd need:
1) push notifications of messages and orders and the ability to manage both from the application. This alone would save me 90% of the time I waste on SR.
Some things I'd like:
2) Export Account history/sales data to csv. You know how fucking hard BTC bookkeeping is? (obviously the data would be sterilized first - just need transaction amount, shipping amount, exchange rate at time of sale, exchange rate at time of withdrawal)
3) Integrate with GPG lib.
4) Plenty of other things I'm forgetting.
#1 wouldn't be too hard to implement right now. The rest would take some work. Not sure #2 could be done at all without an official API.
Obviously push notification would be a simulation without SR support; it would be a pull (check) every 1-5 mins, but really, who needs their damn order filled within 5 minutes of being placed anyway.
#1 is actually the harder thing, in my mind. #2 would be trivial, provided SR has a page that displays the necessary data. Scraping the site is pretty easy (as in ripping the data from the page and internalizing the structure in a way useful for the application). I mean I have something that can browse listings and send messages and all the stuff involved with scraping that data already (I like toying with code, I often do it for pleasure). Exporting that to a csv file for spreadsheets or whatever is ridiculously easy. If there's no source for that information though, then #2 isn't just hard, it's impossible.
#3... well I'm not really sure what you mean. Integrate with it? I mean I can write a 2 line program that declares it uses the shared library, opens it, and voila, there you go. It's integrated. But obviously I don't think that's what you mean, heh.
If I'm being serious, an android app would take me a long time. I've got 0 experience with that and would need to learn everything involved. And if I'm going to be responsible for people's safety (as in not getting caught), I'd need to feel like I knew the average Android system inside and out. It may not even be possible with most ROMs. Even CyanogenMod I have little "huh? Wtf did it do that for?" things with. Fortunately I'm not stupid enough to send text messages about my drug habits or take pictures of orders with my phone, so I let it go.
Frankly I could literally give you #1 in less than a week if you didn't want a fancy GUI and I had a vendor's account, but I don't. It's pretty hard to write a program to interact with pages I've never seen. I'm not baiting for somebody to let me use their account or something, please don't misunderstand: I'm just saying it's an issue that I don't really see much of a way around.