StevenBlack
Steven Black

🇨🇦 Computer systems analyst.
Maintainer of Steven Black's hosts lists at https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Public Key

npub1pkj530thuqzr6k2gfj3mynugq82ql8fmzfwk9umw540eq9tqeppsuhyscf

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqmf2gh4m7qppat9yyegajf7yqr4q0n5a3yhtz7dh22husz4svsscpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsggtr2m

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1pkj530thuqzr6k2gfj3mynugq82ql8fmzfwk9umw540eq9tqeppsuhyscf

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Last Notes

2026-02-14 04:33:19 UTC

Does anyone know how Primal’s “Trending“ algorithm works? Is that documented anywhere?
@npub12vk…pugg

2026-02-10 17:55:26 UTC

I feel we don't appreciate enough how little drone cameras following luges down narrow tracks is badass.

2026-01-24 17:20:21 UTC

Here's a Nostr tip that's working very well for me.
➡️ Mute the users who post garbage and nonsense ⬅️
Whenever I come across garbage and nonsense, I immediately mute the source.
I won't say what I consider "garbage and nonsense", but you know what I mean.
Observe: after a few days, your Nostr feed has much higher quality.
After a few weeks you're gonna love the difference active curation makes.
Turns out, Dumbf*kStupid is a finite set.
Since Stupid tends to echo Stupid, that entire echo chamber exposes itself surprisingly quickly.
"Trending" on Nostr" is a source of insight and joy now that cringe is mostly gone.

2026-01-24 16:57:15 UTC

Among my favorite chess puzzles. You want options? Here you go.
https://lichess.org/training/CP7rj

2026-01-16 16:40:52 UTC

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Why the AI-slop in the video?
What Blockstream consistently fails to understand: the sort of mover who could be the recipient of that message will dismiss it outright because of its presentation. It's not even close to being acceptable by any sort of mover you can imagine.
Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message” in 1964. That was 61-years ago. Blockstream's social media person is how old? Nowhere close to old enough to get it.

2026-01-05 01:09:06 UTC

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This may be the best French translation for “Shit happens”. Because besides this, there is no way to adequately express “Shit happens” in French

2025-12-01 19:12:32 UTC

Mont-Tremblant Quebec volunteers hosing-down and icing-up the Flying Mile for the World Cup Women’s GS here next Saturday and Sunday
Shot through binoculars from across Lac-Tremblant.
https://blossom.primal.net/2619bf20e8e9297acdb0cce4515ba2e74c5685dbb5ba432c7d723e5d63c33969.jpg

2025-10-30 21:52:11 UTC

Updating Rust every sixth Thursday brings me joy.
Does that make me weird?
https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/10/30/Rust-1.91.0/

2025-10-27 13:08:22 UTC

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Serious question:
Not so long ago, we were inundated with supposed applications of ZK proofs. One ZK proof scenario is, at a traffic stop, the official could check whether you are qualified to drive, with no outstanding driving issues, without disclosing your name, your address, your sex, your date of birth, or anything else.
Would your feelings about “digital ID” change if the national ID was a privkey / pubkey pair? So your digital ID would be a pubkey. And you control your privkey.
My guess is, you might be OK with that.
If so, it’s not about “digital ID”, it’s about the form and implementation of “new digital ID” because digital IDs — drivers license and passports for example — have been with us for a long time already.
Unfortunately, almost nobody is talking about form or implementation of “new digital ID”.

2025-09-23 19:24:34 UTC

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This thread of responses is an excellent collection of accounts to mute.
It's certainly not a serious project.

2025-08-26 00:46:21 UTC

Nostr can I just say, Mathematica is awesome.
https://blossom.primal.net/4555e278d58897970ace4d1d3d2e7ec82a26a38ea3d0503018133670251aa503.png

2025-08-20 14:43:17 UTC

I just deleted all my repositories, and my account, at SourceHut.
"Projects related to cryptocurrency or blockchain technologies are not permitted on SourceHut."
SourceHut is peak stupid.

2025-08-12 15:21:17 UTC

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Would love to hear you on a podcast where the interviewer isn't an A16Z flack lobbing softballs at you, and collegially agreeing with everything you say.
Must be nice to never have your thinking challenged in public conversation

2025-08-01 01:08:10 UTC

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Sonos remains garbage.

2025-07-28 12:21:54 UTC

@nprofile…t9lm
Play one video, play all the videos.

2025-07-17 11:57:03 UTC

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That book is a steal at twice the price 🙂
Quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read.

2025-06-23 15:46:46 UTC

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Lenovo Carbon X1 — ships from Asia

2025-06-23 12:34:28 UTC

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Legit question: how is hash rate determined?

2025-05-18 02:48:32 UTC

I work in MacOS and Linux terminals all day.
I just wanna say, Broot is brilliant.
https://dystroy.org/broot/

2025-03-30 13:21:58 UTC

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@craigraw I still have this question.
What would happen if a Sparrow Wallet user inadvertently chooses a change address instead of a receive address to receive funds?
Asking because Sparrow Wallet exposes, change addresses. That’s actually cool, but I’m wondering about some ramifications of that.
My uneducated guess is, it’s fine. Is that right?

2024-11-20 16:27:59 UTC

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Past year https://image.nostr.build/bb9012513377906d7431171217e1a3b73e44f43582cb37aeaef363deab2036f9.jpg

2024-11-14 03:59:05 UTC

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Really?
If you’re just guessing, you should maybe preface that with “I dunno…” or “just spitballin’ here“ or “Just pulling this out of my ass…“ to couch your superficial assessment.
Exhibit: Number of Bitcoin Blockchain Transactions by Epoch
For reference, the past halving was in Epoch 417.
It’s exploding and we’re seeing between 7M and 9M Bitcoin transactions per epoch, which is higher, way higher, than it’s ever been. https://image.nostr.build/e40bbb6aad412e1d2e601c5a72bd6208429a65650e642d5d98b2446f4cd25a00.jpg

2024-10-30 02:24:52 UTC

Quick reality reset: on an inflation-adjusted basis, the 2021 BTC ATH is approx $82,302 in 2024 dollars.
#bitcoin

2024-10-02 19:18:01 UTC

Many app updates later, Sonos is still fucking garbage. #note1d0e…8p63

2024-09-13 20:20:28 UTC

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Sonos is STILL absolute garbage.

2024-09-05 16:24:05 UTC

Sonos is still garbage. #note1mfk…p55l

2024-08-30 12:54:17 UTC

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Peter, did you read the article? I just did.
It says “migrants”, not “illegals“. The equivalence of “migrants” and “illegals” here is your personal conflation.
The article says that all this puts pressure to crack down on illegal migrants, a subset of migrants, but the article does not say, in any way, what you are ranting about.
Pay attention, and do better.

2024-08-28 12:11:14 UTC

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Genuinely curious: why BitPay (ugh)?
I’m in Canada. Haven’t come across it despite seeking out btc points of sale.
(Also, given the choice, paying in fiat, as in, no upside to keeping that in my leather wallet.)

2024-08-28 12:05:09 UTC

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❤️ Good luck Peter! Like many I’ll be listening, at first.
I’m sure you’ve thought a lot about traps and downsides.
A common mistake I see is, when in a niche market, wishing you weren’t in a niche market.
So beware of that, to the extent you still can. Proceed carefully. Because if you think bitcoin podcasting is saturated…

2024-07-28 22:41:13 UTC

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Also maybe the `getblocktemplate()` api call is useful for your use case?

2024-07-28 22:34:39 UTC

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@RooSoft if you're running Bitcoin Core, RPC has the following APIs which appear useful.
* `getmempoolancestors()`
* `getmempooldescendants()`
* `getmempoolentry()`
* `getmempoolinfo()`
* `getrawmempool()`
Note that you can control the size of your local mempool with Bitcoin Core config.

2024-07-23 02:28:24 UTC

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Amen to that

2024-07-22 21:33:30 UTC

Sonos is garbage.

2024-07-21 13:06:58 UTC

@npub1hea…g9v2 I have a question.
One of the nice features of sparrow wallet is, it clearly shows the distinction between receive addresses and change addresses, and shows lists for both.
What would happen if a user inadvertently chooses a change address instead of a receive address to receive funds?

2024-07-20 02:09:55 UTC

Should we put the text of Craig Wright’s legal disclosure in a block on the Bitcoin blockchain?

2024-05-20 02:10:48 UTC

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That block hash: 23 zeros followed by 1 and 8
0000000000000000000000018aed923c250162fe3f058d6af0f3932d9d9aa08c

2024-05-20 02:07:42 UTC

Yesterday (May 18th) the third lowest block hash ever was added to the blockchain, in block 843946. https://image.nostr.build/ea4c654abd988aac0403154880adbd3e69a11ec72dc0d8d5e51c20ef87a78f81.png

2024-05-10 12:47:52 UTC

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The other consideration here is, maybe you are seeing poor Tor network connection quality.
You could always pause your node, turn off Tor, and finish your initial block download over a clear network.

2024-05-10 12:26:02 UTC

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Earlier this week I installed bitcoin core on a new Lenovo laptop running Fedora 40. The entire IBD was done in under 14 hours, over home Wi-Fi.
The takeaway from this is: IBD is extremely sensitive to hardware. You get what you pay for.
I don’t think a Raspberry-Pi should be the basis for any inference about bitcoin, the BTC blockchain, or the bitcoin network.

2024-05-08 06:38:23 UTC

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In winds of 25 knots and above, flags start to occasional point upwards as they flap. That’s a nice heuristic, and a clear tell when estimating wind velocity.

2024-04-28 13:39:22 UTC

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A bit harsh on France, but nonetheless that’s a great take.
We know who else is based in France: Ledger.
Ledger doesn’t have a Lightning piece, but it’s certainement une shitcoinerie, which comes with its own set of potential legal foot guns, I’m sure.
Ledger, or say Ledger Live, could be next.

2024-04-18 05:05:00 UTC

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Yay because Bolt 12 enables common payment modes that don’t presently exist on lightning

2024-04-02 11:19:14 UTC

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TxId, or it didn’t happen.

2024-03-19 21:32:52 UTC

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Yes, yes you did.

2023-12-20 08:09:57 UTC

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When trying to unboost an old boosted note, it boosts it again, which is unexpected behavior, and counter to intent.
See my recent timeline, it contains two successive boost of something I boosted once, weeks ago. I was trying to clear that boost.
I hope this helps, and thank you for eliciting this comment.

2023-12-19 15:59:39 UTC

Sorry, found a bug in Damus.

2023-12-04 21:41:18 UTC

Have we ever seen the mempool so plugged?

2023-09-11 00:16:41 UTC

@craigraw I have a question.
Upon first seeing “receive” and “change” addresses listed separately in Sparrow, that was an ah-ha moment, for me.
Are change addresses fungible? Can a change address be used as receive address?
My guess: yes, change addresses are fungible in this way.

2023-08-19 03:05:29 UTC

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How’s that ThinkPad external keyboard? Recommend?

2023-08-07 23:41:08 UTC

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Hi Clark. A question for y’a.
Why has the “Bitcoin Network” section of the dashboard been blank for the past while? Just curious.

2023-01-27 03:13:26 UTC

Is Balaji Srinivasan on here yet?

2023-01-23 06:19:53 UTC

If you have access to a Bitcoin node, and you want to check out Bitcoin Core's API, here's something to play with.
This Github repo contains a Postman collection of sample API calls for Bitcoin nodes.
https://github.com/StevenBlack/bitcoin-postman
Pull requests are welcome 🙂 Help me complete the collection.
Postman is awesome and the free version is all you need to start playing with this.
https://www.postman.com/

2023-01-13 16:07:47 UTC

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Preston #[3] that's giving me
```
Status 502 Bad Gateway
Version: HTTP/1.1
Transferred: 166 B (0 B size)
```
That should be HTTPS, that's typically the issue. The socket needs to be secure, no way around that I'm pretty sure.

2023-01-03 18:15:02 UTC

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😊❤️ 👊

2023-01-02 16:34:56 UTC

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Amazing. Thanks!

2023-01-02 14:16:47 UTC

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Very cool.
Is there a directory of these generated nostr profiles? Is a directory possible?
Because a profile for Balaji (for example) must exist already? Is one (or few) better than, say, thousands? Is source authentication possible (with a hashed-based scheme, for example?)

2022-12-18 19:01:53 UTC

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Presuming I understand this correctly 🙂 when nostr messaging, a user’s profile and a user’s pubkey are one and the same.

2022-12-18 02:15:01 UTC

👋 reporting from iOS. Don’t mind me, just testing