Nostr notes by ImmutableManty

I don't have a source handy, but my understanding is when ...

2024-06-08T05:46:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…hnf4
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I don't have a source handy, but my understanding is when money is put into the ETF, they do have to buy Bitcoin within "a certain amount of time" (not sure how much time, maybe daily or so).

Plus obviously holding any large portion in cash is a quick way to become insolvent given Bitcoin's volatility, and I don't think any of the ETF managers are *that* stupid, even if it was a legal option.

This is the best description of LLMs I've heard yet. Like a ...

2024-06-05T00:45:10Z

This is the best description of LLMs I've heard yet.

Like a human dumba**, AI can do some work for you and accelerate your productivity, but you still have to verify the work, because you can't assume much of the quality or accuracy.

quoting
nevent1q…lhj6

I like this idea, but lack of encrypted messaging (Signal/Matrix) ...

2024-05-28T06:42:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…wd4m
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I like this idea, but lack of encrypted messaging (Signal/Matrix) makes this a no-go for me.

I second the recommendation of GrapheneOS to at least prevent some of the tracking.

Having a simpler phone would be great, but a good second choice is to limit what apps you install so you have less distractions available.

There have been several times where I've picked up my phone because I'm slightly bored, stared at the home screen for a few moments, and put it back down after nothing grabs me. After that happened a few times, I've started reaching for my phone less often.

Hey @npub1a00…9q3h, any plans for a dumb display with this ...

2024-05-27T22:38:49Z

Hey daylightco (npub1a00…9q3h), any plans for a dumb display with this tech? I'd love to be able to plug something into my laptop so I can use it outside in the sun.

This is why I've decided I want to minimize (and eventually ...

2024-05-26T08:02:50Z

This is why I've decided I want to minimize (and eventually eliminate) my USD debt, even if that might not make the most sense mathmatically.

(That and the whole "banks loan dollars into existence" thing; I have no desire to contribute to debasement/inflation by continuing to borrow money.)

Better to stay humble and stack sats.

quoting
nevent1q…ncs9
There is no such thing as going negative fiat.

If you take out USD loans, you’ve created future demand for dollars.

What you resist persists.

This is 100% correct, except this is basically the true ...

2024-05-13T00:16:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…n6m9
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This is 100% correct, except this is basically the true definition of a prepper (most people incorrectly think prepping is just about guns, MREs, bunkers, and so on).

Real prepping means analyzing what things you are dependent on for your basic needs and determining how to increase your resilience in case e.g. supply chains are disrupted as you said.

Another comment already mentioned jackspirko (npub1587…kv0n), and I second this; on The Survival Podcast he does an excellent job of analyzing a wide range of topics with an eye towards building more resiliency in case of disruption or disaster.

From what I've seen in the past, the primary chokepoint for ...

2024-05-11T05:59:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…9xcc
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From what I've seen in the past, the primary chokepoint for GrapheneOS has not been funds, but developers. Relevant here because it seems they often don't have enough devs to maintain current releases, much less think about new ones.

If they refused to merge a PR adding support for a new device without a good reason, that'd be one thing, but I don't think that has happened. (Disclaimer: I haven't followed development super closely, so some of this could be inaccurate or out-of-date.)

I think many people also overestimate the competence of "bad guys" like Google (or the US federal government); sure they have a lot of power and can do many bad things, but they are not omnipotent. Obviously I can't *prove* that there isn't some kind of hardware "watcher" that runs even alongside GrapheneOS, but why would Google spend money and dev time on this when they already have control of the entire OS 99% of the time?

I'm much more concerned about the millions of normies using stock Android, which *definitely* sends tons of data to Google, or iOS, which probably isn't much better. Sure I'd love to have an entirely open, auditable hardware platform, but in the meantime I think anyone who switches from Android/iOS to Graphene is taking a step in the right direction.

Agreed, there is no reason to do this. Not necessarily malicious, ...

2024-05-08T15:08:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…67mp
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Agreed, there is no reason to do this. Not necessarily malicious, sometimes people just have bad ideas and/or justify them with bad reasoning.

OP, please release the source code as soon as possible; no one cares if it's ugly or half-broken or whatever.

When the app is released I might test it out briefly, but for something as important as encrypted comms I won't consider using it regularly until source is available (and ideally it has reproducible builds too).

I get the desire here, but disappearing messages really just add ...

2024-04-23T14:41:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…fdgx
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I get the desire here, but disappearing messages really just add a level of inconvenience without doing much to increase security. No matter how secure the system, one can always take screenshots, or worst case take a picture of the screen. (And for personal relationships as you describe, the difference between a signed message and a screenshot is going to be slim to nil.)

I'm pretty sure this is actually one of the ...

2024-03-31T04:04:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…4qjd
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I'm pretty sure this is actually one of the procedurally-generated creatures from No Man's Sky.

"The elite would never allow..." As many ...

2024-03-24T01:37:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…c097
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"The elite would never allow..."

As many red-pilled/black-pilled people often do, OP assumes government / "the powerful" have near-unlimited power, which is absolutely false. If "they" can't stop movies from being pirated (much less certain other content which is actually abominable), how do you expect them to stop Bitcoin?

Besides which, even if the NSA did create Bitcoin (which I give about a 0.0001% chance; I don't think they did, but obviously we can't prove it), I don't care. My node still relays blocks, and there are miners all over the world willing to include my transaction in the next block if I pay a high enough fee. Good luck trying to stop me.

If the NSA *did* create Bitcoin and they *were* trying to create something they could control, then they really screwed up bad, because they can't control it. And worse, we now have a valid alternative to CBDCs, which we were heading towards without Bitcoin, so rather than helping push us towards CBDCs, they would have saved us from them. 😂

Unspent Bitcoin is not useless: 1. My HODL'd Bitcoin prevents ...

2024-03-23T16:30:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…0n5g
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Unspent Bitcoin is not useless:
1. My HODL'd Bitcoin prevents my long term savings from being debased.
2. My HODL'd Bitcoin decreases the reservation demand for the US Dollar, making it slightly less easy for them to get away with money printing.
3. My HODL'd Bitcoin means they can't steal *my* purchasing power to fund immoral things like wars, welfare, subsidies, the ATF, and much more.

As for actually spending sats, the main factor is Gresham's Law: I will always spend dollars before sats (even if I have someone like Strike instantly convert those dollars to sats to pay a Lightning invoice). If/when I can no longer convert dollars to sats, then I'll earn and spend sats directly.

As for when I'll spend my long-term savings (which would be the same question if the stack was instead gold, or real estate, or stocks, etc.), that is an open question. I'm not really a fan of "retirement", I don't intend to quit working, so the goal is to cashflow even most large purchases I might want to make. Otherwise maybe I'll come across something that I'm willing to trade a small portion of my stack for: a small business, a 2nd/3rd/4th house, or a private island lol. Anything left over I can give away or pass on to my future kids.

I don't know if I've ever thought "I have enough ...

2024-03-23T15:55:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…gd0n
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I don't know if I've ever thought "I have enough Bitcoin." 😂 Maybe once or twice after hearing a super bullish price prediction, but usually that wears off pretty quick, because "what if it takes 50 years to get there?"

I need to stack harder. 😤

My response to "I don't do CrYpTo" is always "oh ...

2024-03-23T15:50:08Z

In reply to nevent1q…a7r2
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My response to "I don't do CrYpTo" is always "oh me either, I only care about Bitcoin." I'm sure it won't sink in right away, but I want to always be planting the seed that Bitcoin is not cRyPtO. 🫡

The last bite before he hands over the rest of it. 😂

2024-03-22T02:00:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…lj0q
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The last bite before he hands over the rest of it. 😂

Airbnb's KYC process is obnoxious. Every time I think ...

2024-03-21T22:57:27Z

Airbnb's KYC process is obnoxious. Every time I think I've finished, they throw another "just one more thing" at me. 🙄

Has anyone built a no-KYC (or minimal-KYC) alternative yet? Nostrbnb, perhaps? (Payments would be in sats over Lightning of course.)

I had the same question, but according to ...

2024-03-20T06:37:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…8x8x
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I had the same question, but according to https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/content-addressing/ IPFS also uses SHA256 (at least "by default"), so *I think* you could use the same ID and let the client choose whether to get a file from a Blossom server or from IPFS. Would be great if OP can confirm though.

"The moon landing was faked." Let's leave aside that ...

2024-02-17T16:11:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…0ucf
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"The moon landing was faked."

Let's leave aside that you're assuming much more government competence than warranted (both in pulling this off originally and in keeping it secret for 50+ years).

The best argument against this comes from the excellent xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1074/

This demonstrates a problem that can often happen: people begin ...

2024-02-17T16:06:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…0ucf
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This demonstrates a problem that can often happen: people begin to wake up and realize "the government doesn't care about me" and "inflation is theft" and "government schools are about indoctrination and conformity" all of which are true. But then they go to the extreme of saying "anything the government says is a lie, therefore any and every 'conspiracy theory' is true." So they start believing stupid stuff like "the earth is flat" or "we never landed on the moon" and so on.

The goal should never be to swap out one set of unexamined beliefs for another. Instead, we should *think critically* and never accept any theory unquestioned just because it comes from our favorite source.

Inflation is neither "good" nor "necessary", regardless of the fact the government says otherwise. But if the government says the sky is blue, I'm not just going to reflexively say "no it's brown!"

Not to mention it's not even good for "the economy" ...

2024-02-10T16:15:48Z

In reply to nevent1q…un5j
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Not to mention it's not even good for "the economy" (inflation encourages bad investments, when what we need are *good* investments). 🙄

Nostr event nevent1qqs2zc29kzjpchpawzxe33mus4f3hywmhxenqn0l4uckhwtgfsflh0czyr27vvh6ujq0ah3l6t0gpl3hsz28quxjqczewhpl0nslwfp76nhrklawpua

2024-01-28T07:42:02Z

https://www.whatbitcoindid.com/podcast/the-bullish-case-for-ordinals

I definitely don't agree with petermccormack (npub1pre…eujk) on everything, but he did a great job in this interview of explaining what is also my position on ordinals/inscriptions: I just don't care. No, they aren't an attack on #Bitcoin (because the transactions follow the consensus rules), and it'd be impossible to block them anyway (at best you could make it harder or more expensive). Neither are they a good, useful technology, so I won't be putting my time or money into them.

I understand Rizzo's argument that this will make it even more obvious that there is zero need for other craptocurrencies on other blockchains, but I still don't care. We are headed in that direction long-term anyway, so I'd rather focus on building for use-cases that are actually useful and productive (like stablecoins and privacy tech), rather than helping speculators (if not outright scammers).

1 sat is 1 sat, anyone who says otherwise can HFSP. I'm here because our money is broken. Anything else is a distraction. Fix the money, fix the world.

Nostr event nevent1qqspc4phlakw8236rx6yk05d89w9t5hmavjer6t40al858x3v0jl77szyr27vvh6ujq0ah3l6t0gpl3hsz28quxjqczewhpl0nslwfp76nhrksqnrdl

2024-01-11T14:39:06Z

Testing zaps (ignore any self-zap on this note).

So you don't sell them currently? I want one lol.

2024-01-03T16:44:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…e7fw
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So you don't sell them currently? I want one lol.

I find the "#Bitcoin was created by some three-letter ...

2023-12-17T16:22:16Z

I find the "#Bitcoin was created by some three-letter government agency" theory highly unlikely, but even if it was true, it doesn't matter:

quoting
nevent1q…c23m
“Despite the Internet's origin in the late 1960s as a government sponsored means of communication between the Department of Defense, private industry, and academia, it has been at its best — and generated the greatest economic, social, and technological benefits — since it was 'liberated' by the hordes of 'geeks' who were originally hired to run it by employers who were not themselves conversant with computers, and couldn't tell when their employees were exchanging official traffic or trading dirty jokes and recipes for marijuana brownies.” - L. Neil Smith

This is a great description of many of the present issues in the ...

2023-12-10T16:23:23Z

This is a great description of many of the present issues in the world, and why national politics is a distraction.

When it comes to what you can control or influence, it goes in this order:

1. Yourself (hint: the only place you have *direct* control).
2. Your family.
3. Your friends and local community.

Anything that can be described as "politics" (especially national) is a *very* distant 4th.

Allocate your time and energy accordingly.

quoting
nevent1q…2vmk
Our society is not well. There are a lot of things contributing to that but and many places we can see the evidence for it, but I’m thinking about the future and where it goes from here.

The idea of national unity or shared vision or direction at a scale of millions is pretty much out the window. We had a flavor of national unity for about 5 minutes at the beginning of covid before it devolved into tribalism. The Internet, social media, algorithms, and rent seekers mean the chance for shared vision is gone.

We see cultural decay everywhere. In the absence of religion we see people trying to bootstrap religion ether explicitly (seeking spirituality or something similar) or implicitly signing up for pseudo-religions (like wokeness or red team versus blue team politics).

When I read national news it seems like the country, and the world for that matter, is a dumpster fire. Of course, it’s not. That’s a distorted sample of the most click worthy stuff. But there’s enough signal in the noise to pick up the trend line.

There is also evidence of this decline in my own community. The culture wars have not missed us and neither has the crisis in meaning, the death of the stable family, or the opioid crisis (all of which is connected anyway).

However, when I consider the future I believe that small communities will become more and more important. People “out there” seem crazy, but when I walk around my community I see people mostly just trying to struggle through life. Trying to make a living, raise their kids, and find some enjoyment in life.

This is why I’m increasingly skeptical of the federal government and more focused on state and local government. We need to be allowed to build systems that fit our communities without interference from forces wildly disconnected from them. Especially when those forces are loaded with rent-seekers and narcissists driven by greed and power.

The rub, obviously, is that even if we all decide that we’re going to focus on building healthy local communities, there are countless forces that will transcend those boundaries, ranging from pandemics to global military conflict to environmental disasters.

I guess I see two approaches for individuals concerned about the future of our society or, put simply, the world our children and their children are going to inhabit. We can either focus on the large scale, trying to solve problems through things like national politics or “winning” the national (global?) culture war. Or we can try to focus on our local communities first, devoting proportionally less energy to systems which are increasingly disconnected from us.

Of course, it’s not a simple dichotomy. However, we can choose where we set the slider. While I recognize the allure of being part of something much bigger than yourself is ever-present, I think too many people have set the slider to the former. And I’ve little confidence that the latter will succeed at a massive scale. It would require a radical change in where most people spend their energy (and there’s a reason that so many people don’t right now – it’s difficult). But I am certain that the former approach will fail and in fact is currently failing spectacularly before our eyes.

I’d encourage you to take an audit of where you spend your energy. Is it shouting into the noisy nihilist void? Or is it developing yourself, your family, and your community in such a way that they grow and develop into something greater than they were before?

#plebchain

There are 5 memes in this post, two images and three in the text.

2023-12-05T15:21:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…amt3
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There are 5 memes in this post, two images and three in the text.

If you don't mind using the command line, you can do ...

2023-11-22T16:54:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…um70
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If you don't mind using the command line, you can do something like:

nostril-query --authors <your pubkey> | nostcat <relay1> <relay2> <...> | nostcat <your relay>

https://github.com/jb55/nostril
https://github.com/blakejakopovic/nostcat

There's also the second-best option of exporting your notes ...

2023-11-21T06:31:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…qcpn
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There's also the second-best option of exporting your notes to a local file so you can reload if they disappear. (With e.g. nostril-query --authors <pubkey> | nostcat wss://relay.example.com)

I do both, because "two is one, one is none."

Better than nothing, but ideally we would have some way for the ...

2023-11-20T16:40:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…j6pa
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Better than nothing, but ideally we would have some way for the original note to commit to a hash of the image, to avoid malicious replacements.

How do you go about building mental resiliency? Besides obvious ...

2023-11-17T15:54:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…80ru
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How do you go about building mental resiliency? Besides obvious things like exposing oneself to new ideas, and accepting the possibility that things could go wrong (i.e. fighting normalcy bias).

#Nostr turns 3 years old today. #Bitcoin turns 15 years old in a ...

2023-11-07T15:02:49Z

#Nostr turns 3 years old today.

#Bitcoin turns 15 years old in a couple months.

What a time to be alive.

Assuming you don't have another car, check the engine. I ...

2023-10-28T00:52:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…7whd
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Assuming you don't have another car, check the engine. I wouldn't want to go without transportation, but this goes double if you rely on the car for work. (Work of course gives you income to stack more sats.)

I plan to avoid upgrading my car as long as possible, using the money I'd put towards that to stack more sats. But this plan only works if I stay on top of maintenance so it doesn't break down.

TIL about the GNU/Linux command lsblk. (I guess I'm one of ...

2023-10-19T05:09:20Z

TIL about the GNU/Linux command lsblk. (I guess I'm one of today's lucky 10,000: https://xkcd.com/1053/ )

I've used `df -h` for years to get size (and usage data) for mounted partitions. But I didn't know an easy way to check the size of the entire drive, so I usually just opened up GParted (which is overkill, lol).

Now I know that e.g. `lsblk /dev/sda` shows me the size of the entire drive (as well as each partition). 😎

Now it's even better: good guys must collectively have more ...

2023-10-17T05:09:27Z

Now it's even better: good guys must collectively have more *hashpower* (i.e. SHA256 ASICs) than any single attacker.

If you're AWS or Azure (or have control of a botnet), you can acquire an enormous amount of CPU power. Hashpower is much more scarce (and most of it is already spoken for).

quoting
nevent1q…ve3l
The requirement is that the good guys collectively have more CPU power than any single attacker.

@npub1h8n…rpev This sounds like what you've been talking ...

2023-09-13T05:29:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…mva4
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TheGuySwann (npub1h8n…rpev) This sounds like what you've been talking about. 😁

I used to prefer Intel for its generally better single-threaded ...

2023-08-31T23:53:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…c8x3
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I used to prefer Intel for its generally better single-threaded performance (e.g. for gaming). Since it's getting harder and harder to justify spending much time gaming (especially with all the cool Bitcoin and Nostr stuff happening), for my last CPU/mobo upgrade I switched to AMD, since it generally has better multi-threaded performance.

Don't make promises you can't keep. 😂

2023-08-31T23:44:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…eatm
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Don't make promises you can't keep. 😂

Agreed. Bitcoin will suck the "monetary premium" out of ...

2023-08-06T15:25:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…cr9m
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Agreed. Bitcoin will suck the "monetary premium" out of real estate, making housing much more affordable, but there are plenty of reasons to rent aside from the cost of buying.

Maybe I intend to move to another state soon, so renting makes more sense. Maybe I'm saving up money to buy a house (since without a monetary premium that might actually be possible to do without a mortgage). Maybe I'm at a time in my life where I just want to pay someone to take care of everything so I don't have to think about housing.

What will go to zero is buying houses and doing nothing with them, hoping they will go up in value. Rental housing will probably have a big correction as houses become more affordable, but it definitely won't go to zero.

@npub1h8n…rpev My immediate thought when I saw your recent ...

2023-06-16T00:48:35Z

TheGuySwann (npub1h8n…rpev) My immediate thought when I saw your recent Guy's Take entitled "Withdraw Everything":