This boy SAVED the INTERNET… but couldn't save himself.

10 years ago, he was persecuted by his government, and ultimately paid with his life.

Aaron Swartz is a modern hero that most people DO NOT KNOW.

But they should.

https://image.nostr.build/a5163a2d322330e5853e14ddf87d1613eecbdff0e23451d9f3059d3c1e0cd723.jpg

Aaron was creative, focused, and brilliant.

At 14, he invented RSS; He dropped out of Stanford; At 19, he was in the first Y Combinator class; He co-founded Reddit.

Most likely, if he were alive today, he would be involved with #Bitcoin.

But that’s not EVEN 1% of what he did for us 🙏

Let’s take a look 👇

https://image.nostr.build/37c7dd4a0ddbad0ae5a98babc66adc4916cc4a03b13d63d0fced0e6c3e0541fd.jpg

From a young age, Aaron believed in an OPEN INTERNET. In computers as a tool for LIBERATION.

"But wait, wasn’t the internet always open?"

No.

Believe it or not, there was a time when they wanted you to REGISTER your ID before you could browse or send an email.

https://image.nostr.build/77deabc6b94e160f43a3dd1522c5dac30061ac5423e6b2e3df10162a25e8e612.png

https://image.nostr.build/960a2e8b7b518cd7f34af6d791518cdabf7b7cdc22366decc16c667cad1f727f.jpg

https://image.nostr.build/5d22d57a1ed58ce2f301d45dd09500d066c8c422039ce4c9c30eec586178fddd.jpg

He believed that PUBLIC LEGAL RECORDS and SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH should be accessible to everyone.

But in the U.S.,

• 98% of scientific articles are behind paywalls; and
• ~80% of legal records are too.

Imagine being sued and still having to pay to view the documents?

https://video.nostr.build/2af872c7a7d1b74ce0fb8d42369a87df45a7ee2d23df006d287b58ac60fcfe26.mp4

Aaron's war had 3 major battles.

The first was against PACER.

A legal records database.

PACER is PAID... but it was "free" in 17 public libraries.

With friends, Aaron wrote a script on a USB drive, plugged it into a USB port, downloaded 2.7 million documents... and SET THEM FREE.

https://video.nostr.build/21b565dd1742bc950748be2ac0e0ce2868f4b94c54d1da9321a198c49fe85d1e.mp4

No charges were made against the group.

But the FBI began to take notice.

That had only been the beginning. That boy would still challenge the system.

The following year, Aaron would enter the biggest fight of his life — and the greatest battle in internet history against censorship ✊

https://image.nostr.build/ab43c6a3d189953bfee2fdc26760e819bc9e637dce97d0c8362a36192487b0aa.png

"SOPA/PIPA" 👉 if you're over 20, you probably still remember these acronyms.

A bill to "combat piracy"... which was just an excuse for the government to shut down ANY SITE, without warning.

Some companies loved the idea.

But those who loved the internet fought back.

https://image.nostr.build/605d066f5a7cc73cf8efe620725ac19f3fa9e85b760acd9e66b6f637b6837681.jpg

And then, something wonderful happened.

We still knew how to fight against online censorship.

In a coordinated response, the biggest websites on the internet "went on STRIKE."

Wikipedia and Reddit went offline. Google turned black.

Protests also erupted in the STREETS.

But...

https://image.nostr.build/605d066f5a7cc73cf8efe620725ac19f3fa9e85b760acd9e66b6f637b6837681.jpg

https://image.nostr.build/12adaed7c7a5ce9e8ce3c0944111c45e0e311b02c14319ef31910ea3ee5c60aa.jpg

https://image.nostr.build/7a23543a1a8be95067289d830c766a4af93a321402ba1e2f53b268d660cba2fa.jpg

https://image.nostr.build/0f934d461a5491c39928a1a1bdbfbefe16cb4f70abd6e8bb54c9ee2e6621b438.jpg

... but people have short memories.

This battle was won.

However, the NEXT one would be the LAST for young Aaron.

This MIT security camera was the final straw that ruined his life 👇📹

https://image.nostr.build/e48beb62bce1cdc7554d8e602786a29969a687202f7c7e6971f9f203de3160e6.png

JSTOR was Swartz's final target: the largest database of academic papers in the world.

Aaron wrote a script to download MILLIONS of papers, over the course of months, using his MIT access, in a small room.

MIT has a rebellious culture.

But the FBI could no longer tolerate the boy's defiance.

https://image.nostr.build/0f98f712709cacd788a841186630069f9b8877bbea34374f83c529e0b29d1385.jpg

With the video evidence, the U.S. prosecution charged Aaron with 13 crimes. Up to 50 years in prison.

In January 2011, he was arrested by undercover agents near the Harvard campus.

From then on, he was legally tortured.

Two years later, he would be found dead at home.

https://image.nostr.build/0e6b2b6d4ac93cc031267d6a3ae4fdd1afbaf7154c3d1b28db144e703325eff3.png

https://image.nostr.build/94285f292eb025a91ba591bb14ac0c8739607d428a956f73eb01a7b5c2f1f360.png

"Aaron would be 38 years old today.

He was accused of 'pirating' scientific papers funded with public money.

Facing up to 50 years in prison, he took his own life.

Those he inspired continue to democratize access to science.

Let us remember him."

*These are the words of Susan, his mother.

https://image.nostr.build/cb82dfbd1b0675e53a6a24ba2b6c6c50be08b60dc315f9a3cfbf3de4ded0a191.jpg

After his death, the charges were dropped by the government.

Aaron never considered entering a 'plea deal'. He would have faced millions of dollars in legal costs.

The father of the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, published a short poem at the time that says it all:

“The world was a little worse for his passing,
But a lot better for his being.”

https://image.nostr.build/110bd2ce6b535252ecff250b6609cc6f301b906f6681c2459d375c09af2a9548.png

Aaron wasn’t a unanimous figure. You may disagree with his methods.

But he was faithful to his ideal.

He was genuine. Firm in what he believed.

He was a person who used his prodigious skills not to enrich himself, but to make the internet fairer, and the world a better place.

https://image.nostr.build/570b43a6887dfa430be76e33a416c7bbc65d05e9acf0404ae46ad1a522bf9abc.jpg

Aaron had worked with Virgil Griffith (former Ethereum, now imprisoned for "teaching about crypto" to North Koreans).

He knew Elizabeth Stark (from Lightning).

He was friends with Zooko.

And he wrote about #Bitcoin — on the DAY he was arrested (1/6/11)! 😢

http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/squarezooko

https://image.nostr.build/5809cf5fa01059fd6333df5a3010a49fbb17642f447d33674ea4388640fb9703.png

https://image.nostr.build/e7fe674ce2598619319edeae7a342da44e8d35baf99aac31df07924c446b8e56.png

https://image.nostr.build/a5ccd76d96ed40ca7a6337050c427d0caee576d1221858aef7e841e32fb9b00c.png

Curious? To learn more about the story, start with this documentary (on YouTube) 👇

[https://youtu.be/9vz06QO3UkQ](https://youtu.be/9vz06QO3UkQ)

We’ll finish with an excerpt from the "Manifesto for Free Access," by Aaron himself:

"Information is power. But, like all power, there are those who want to keep it for themselves. There is no justice in following unjust laws. It’s time to come to the light, and, in the tradition of civil disobedience, declare our opposition to the private theft of public culture.

We must take information, wherever it is, make our copies, and share them with the world."

RIP, Aaron ✊

https://image.nostr.build/18af509a01336df22725822ce2acc3b3008e433dcd83b4c617ad6b877501e34e.png

https://image.nostr.build/a1bf70d3e884b2ff36f35576fc914d42cb71663440d512d89b3c93bc1af5902f.png

https://image.nostr.build/7aa7111a401e98bc3a02ff2ab2321839c79e89f9845bbdaa654f3d468f79b3b0.png


Thought they moved to Bluesky


We're about to have a Canadian flippening. Bitcoin is close to surpassing the market cap of the Canadian dollar.

I'll say that again, Bitcoin will soon store more economic value than the entire currency of my country. I suppose it's not surprising, given how easily our money can be frozen and seized.

https://m.primal.net/MCEq.png


Bitcoin consensus is dictated by the economic actors actually using it. If Bitcoin becomes a simple financialized asset dominated by the legacy institutions and actors that it was built to free us from, then proportionally to their level of use they decide consensus.

nostr:nprofile1qqsrwseygwgtu5688flrkwudqnwws0mvj52tsx5e07emzg7qwthe77qpzdmhxue69uhhwmm59e6hg7r09ehkuef00wfgm8

https://bitcoinmagazine.com/takes/the-trump-pump-a-road-to-capture-and-failure


Pretty much the same, but sometimes even stuff I know how to do piles up and I’d rather pay to do something else with my time.


They know they’re losing their jobs soon and are making political moves to gain favor if their party returns in 4 years.


Seems like someone at the FBI lost a lot of money on the US election bet on Polymarket 😂

https://nypost.com/2024/11/13/business/fbi-seizes-polymarket-ceos-phone-electronics-after-betting-platform-predicts-trump-win-source/


Homeowners: How do you balance the DIY of shitty, boring maintenance and repair jobs with just spending money you could have bought BTC with to have someone else do it? Do you DIY it all? Outsource it all? 50/50?


Top?


The Baatara gorge sinkhole in Lebanon is a triple waterfall that drops 255 meters (837 ft) into the Baatara Pothole, a cave of Jurassic limestone.

https://video.nostr.build/188e635aa93fd3d51a8a203fbf4226fedb374cc5da341e2d4e0afd217a31c903.mp4


I’d bet that a lot of the people who fear Trump are picking up some Bitcoin right now. If you believe that he’s a dictator who’s about to end democracy in the US, there isn’t much of a better buy.


WTF. 😂


That transaction looks like a bunch of regular, bigger than dust, coinjoin outputs being consolidated. I suppose if all you have are the smaller outputs and need to send a larger amount of BTC then you have to consolidate. Otherwise you can just pick one or two of the larger ones.


Hi there! Buy and sell NO-KYC bitcoin with Peach app.

Peach is a peer-to-peer mobile app for trading Bitcoin without KYC verification. The app connect buyers and sellers of Bitcoin in a secure and private way. Try it now:
https://peachbitcoin.com/fr/referral?code=MOON21


85K GANG RISE UP


Gotta shop like Gordon. https://youtu.be/DpDkoEHh7jQ


As the bull market seems to be starting, an important distinction to note is that, Bitcoin has security, decentralization, scarcity, network effects and more buy orders than sell orders.
Shit coins just have more buys orders than sell orders.


WabiSabi coinjoins on November 10

Full data: https://liquisabi.com

https://coinjoin.kruw .io/
Fee: 0.0 %
25 rounds
New: 476.2 BTC (est.) | Remixing: 878.5 BTC
Avg: 218 inputs | 8.87 AS | 4.66 s/vb
Min: 90 inputs | Max: 344 inputs

https://api.gingerwallet .io/
Fee: 0.300 %
46 rounds
New: 0.4 BTC (est.) | Remixing: 54.4 BTC
Avg: 40 inputs | 4.96 AS | 4.67 s/vb
Min: 23 inputs | Max: 52 inputs

https://api.opencoordinator .org/
Fee: 0.0 %
29 rounds
New: 0.0 BTC (est.) | Remixing: 0.9 BTC
Avg: 29 inputs | 4.35 AS | 2.02 s/vb
Min: 21 inputs | Max: 40 inputs

Free coordinators without any successful round:
https://coinjoin.nl/
https://mega.cash/plugins/wabisabi-coordinator/


Fair enough. Hope he wins!


We hit it?


You have to admit everyone would watch the press conferences. 😂


There is no freedom without private property.

The inability to own property is the definition of a slave.

Until bitcoin, we couldn't own anything on the internet.

Nostr gives us the chance to make our data our property.

Encryption and financial incentives are the key!


This is actually wild. In *every* election globally this year the ruling power lost vote share.

https://x.com/jburnmurdoch/status/1854485866548195735 nostr:note1cnsswjqrua80muq3qhsd6al5wrcsldq2l4un4reettm26p2z7xks6mutng


Copy/Pasting this conversation here since it seems important to understand how exactly a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve will be financed.

Bailey points out that Lummis' Bill notes that nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize the gov to seize, confiscate, or otherwise impair any property right in the >>>lawfully acquired Bitcoin holdings<<< of any person.

To Lummis, as she lays out in both her amendment to the 24 NDAA and the Responsible Financial Innovation Act I cited in my previous post, lawfully acquired Bitcoin holdings are Bitcoin acquired in adherence to anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws and IRS compliance.

Lummis' Bill does not need to authorize the confiscation of Bitcoin as the confiscation of Bitcoin is governed just like the confiscation of any other asset, namely forfeiture law. This is how the government has acquired the Bitcoin it already owns.

Lummis' NDAA amendment plus her introduced Responsible Financial Innovation Act will greatly expand the Bitcoin the government is able to seize by increasing KYC/AML/OFAC requirements, codifying IRS compliance, and outlawing privacy, i.e. "combating anonymous crypto asset transactions."

Bailey also points out that Lummis plans to finance the reserve with the Fed's surplus fund. But the Fed's surplus fund only generates a surplus when the Fed buys securities. When the Fed buys securities, it expands the money supply. When the Fed expands the money supply, it increases inflation. When inflation increases, purchasing power sinks, resulting in an involuntary tax.

The secret ingredient to the Strategic Bitcoin Reserve continues to be ✨stealing✨.

https://m.primal.net/LxAK.png https://m.primal.net/LxAM.png


What’s the best way to use CLN with a mobile wallet?


Hate to be the one to shit on the Parade, but a Strategic Bitcoin Reserve *will* be built through confiscation and taxation.

Here's Senator Cynthia Lummis already hard at work to make it happen:

Cynthia Lummis teamed up with Elizabeth Warren to propose the regulation of Bitcoin under anti-money laundering and counter-terrorist financing laws to "combat anonymous crypto asset transactions".

Cynthia Lummis also re-introduced the Responsible Financial Innovation Act "inspired by Senator Warren", which introduces higher penalties for "crypto asset crimes", regulates "mixers and tumblers", and increases KYC requirements.

For the amount of time Bitcoiners have claimed to be of peculiar intelligence, you are all getting played *incredibly* hard right now.

https://m.primal.net/LwoC.jpg https://m.primal.net/LwoD.png


Democrats were going to try to solve it with massive tax increases including wealth taxes. Glad that’s out for a while at least.


No guns =


Seems that easing identity regulations would run somewhat counter to his planned crackdown on illegal immigrants. But I’ve been surprised a lot lately so who knows! 🤷♂


can someone in the Trump admin convince him to revoke KYC and would they have the power to get it done?


Heard the producers actively tried to make it not appeal to the “incel” fans of the first and it sucked pretty bad. I don’t have much interest in seeing it.


Antifa will be gearing back up for Trump II at around the same time the Proud Boys are getting out of prison.


I learned a little more about why people have such a hard time with bitcoin's "intangibility" while talking to my mom last night.

I asked her what it was like when credit cards were invented, and she explained that before electric cards there was something called a "charga-plate":

https://historyofinformation.com/images/Screen_Shot_2020-08-18_at_5.41.58_PM.png

This was a metal rectangle you would present at shops, which would be pressed into paper to create an authenticated artifact of the transaction.

The precursor to charga-plates was just regular paper checks. In either case though, the mental model is the same, and credit cards simply extended the same mental model of having some physical cash in the bank (whether or not that is strictly true), and authorizing someone else to talk to your bank and pull some out.

Bitcoin completely breaks this mental model. The problem isn't that it's intangible, because we've been using intangible money since the 16th century. The thing that breaks people's minds is that it is intangible, and has no custodian.

When you sign a transaction, who are you authorizing, and to request money from whom? It really doesn't make any sense from the legacy money perspective to authenticate ownership of a UTXO with cryptography, broadcast it to an etherial network, *pay* one of several miners to include your transaction in a "block" (?) so that the math money can be split and some handed to your counterparty.

Anyway, I think this difficulty might exist for nostr as well. Credentials authenticate you with the account holder, but keys authenticate your content with the reader. To make this worse, users have to custody their keys, making them the account holder and custodian — and when they log in to an application, they have to ask themselves permission to create self-authenticating messages! Weird.


This, lol.

🤘🏻🤘🏻🤘🏻

https://video.nostr.build/ba722f0d9348997b2e98d98180a330842ff058fc813a0e2eda757adf004a95d7.mp4

#rockon
#metal
#rock


The election is probably most of the Google attention right now.


I imagine there being an ancient war where one side had a strong army and the other had a strong navy, which led to this.


Probably a bit of profit taking (trading for fiat to pay bills or something) happening right now.


Privacy on-chain without coordinators?

nostr:npub1az9xj85cmxv8e9j9y80lvqp97crsqdu2fpu3srwthd99qfu9qsgstam8y8  and nostr:npub1mxrssnzg8y9zjr6a9g6xqwhxfa23xlvmftluakxqatsrp6ez9gjssu0htc  dive into the potential of OP_CAT to support Bitcoin coin swaps and multi-party UTXO swaps—steps that could unlock major privacy options for users. [BR086]
https://m.primal.net/Luac.mov


Activity pub (mastodon) servers are pretty salty.


I have made a template to create browser apps for your PC and access them securely on your phone. I have already built a few examples.

The video shows me using the nostr:npub1wnwwcv0a8wx0m9stck34ajlwhzuua68ts8mw3kjvspn42dcfyjxs4n95l8 nostr client. Simply clone Iris and run the program; and in a separate terminal, run secureserver. Visit the provided URL (your public ip), go through the authentication process, and you have a local version of Iris running remotely on your phone.

nostr:npub1sn0rtcjcf543gj4wsg7fa59s700d5ztys5ctj0g69g2x6802npjqhjjtws works too, but it takes several seconds to load in the remote browser. That is not snort’s fault, so I will work on it.

There is also a pretty cool photo app that turns your PC into a personal cloud, and a Bitcoin wallet that uses your own node. Here is the code to secureserver, with links to the other apps:

https://github.com/BTCapsule/secureserver https://video.nostr.build/ea749f90894a13950eb553466e7a32b87c5a0d2340bfa5b10bfd835b59c7caca.mp4


Gut the IRS.


Probably has to get there to be an inflation-adjusted ATH.


Feels like slight fail not buying the dip harder!


A friendly reminder that we are still far away from the #bitcoin 2021 ATH. https://m.primal.net/LukE.png


Full sweep of the battleground states.


Next stop: inflation-adjusted ATH


I’m hoping that govt spending drops and the IRS gets gutted again. That would be nice for domestic Americans.


I was guessing that the relatively good economy combined with pro-abortion women turning out in huge numbers would push Harris well over the threshold. Interesting times!


Gotta admit I was wrong. I thought Harris would take it!


Why would they repeal the core foundation of the gulag?


We just shipped a little something: Bolt12 Swaps 🫡

https://m.primal.net/Ltcn.png

Powered by our new backend release v3.8.0 "An offer you can't refuse":

Highlights:
- Swap-to-Bolt12 powered by CLN's "pay"
- New CLN hold plugin (rewrite in Rust)
- Chain swaps with any amount (within our min/max)

For the full rundown check:
https://github.com/BoltzExchange/boltz-backend/releases/tag/v3.8.0

And powered by our new web app release v1.5.0

Highlights:
- Bolt12 support for Submarine Swaps
- BIP-353 DNS lookup (incl. DNSSEC)
- Added BancoLibre and StashPay to integrations, welcome 🙌

For the full rundown check the release notes:
https://github.com/BoltzExchange/boltz-web-app/releases/tag/v1.5.0

That's it for today, now we may all go and follow the election of our world's new overlord 😏


Wish I bought the dip harder.


BITCOIN IS THE ONLY 24/7/365 GLOBAL FREE MARKET.

AN ECONOMIC THERMOMETER.


What’s going on over there?


$58K BY END OF DAY


All time high, and we are just getting started


ATH if Trump wins. 58k if Harris wins. Nice opportunities both ways!


Thanos 2024


ATH if Trump wins. 58k if Harris wins.


To help anyone using @opentimestamps to timestamp data related to the US election, I've decreased the interval of timestamp txs to approximately one per block.

This will cost ~$300 at current fee rates. You can help out by donating with Lightning: https://geyser.fund/project/opentimestamps

Or on-chain, directly to the calendars I run:

https://alice.btc.calendar.opentimestamps.org/
https://bob.btc.calendar.opentimestamps.org/


Hypothetical household:
1 person is motivated to vote, every other member doesn’t GAF. Motivated member fills out and sends all mail-in ballots.
How common do you think this is?


Could also be something with simple UX like a slider. Slide to the left for a brief summary, to the right for more depth.


It’s not brave to support the exact same narratives and causes as the state and mainstream media.

It’s actually cowardly as fuck.


In other words “Please rein in the open source alternatives so everyone has to go through us for AI!” https://www.zdnet.com/article/anthropic-warns-of-ai-catastrophe-if-governments-dont-regulate-in-18-months/


A creepy realization is that all 8 points have already been implemented to a partial degree in the US economy. Each can likely continue to progress without much pushback by the general public if done slowly enough.


I invent ways to make things take less time so I can be lazier.


Nice. I wonder if he also has a shitcoin.


Wait there’s another now?


Good thing Germany was able to get rid of that criminal not-money (btc) before it hit a new high ! 🤣🤣🤣
They traded a scarce inflation proof asset for money they can create with words...

https://m.primal.net/LmHi.png


What is the inflation-adjusted ATH price for Bitcoin?


Wait, the fiat stopped printing?


Best timeline: Kamala wins -> threatens taxes and more crackdowns on Bitcoin -> Bitcoin gets privacy improvements on base layer -> Saylor ragequits and sells -> 58k (or lower)


Kyc bitcoin is the biggest threat to Bitcoiners. Maximal participation is kyc free participation.


Saylor would pay the tax while still denouncing privacy and saying “it’s the price of doing business in the US.”
https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bitcoin-dangerous-economic-threat-minneapolis-134533357.html


if bitcoin activates drivechains and a couple of covenants (op_cat + op_ctv, or great script restoration), it will empower the builders to bring everything to the network and add more value to btc.

the competitive advantage won’t only be political/memetic, there will be solid technical reasons to abandon alts like ethereum and build everything on bitcoin.

it would also solve issues related to miners’ revenue, as people will use bitcoin transactions for lots of different reasons which include interacting with layer 2s.

all it takes is 2-3 soft forks.


my point about bitcoin privacy:

people say “my transaction didn’t get censored, it got mined, there’s deniability, who cares?”

but this deniability diminishes over time: as blockchain analysis becomes more advanced, the linking & tracking will follow the entire history of transactions.

maybe that your privacy is impeccable, but the receivers of your transactions can and most likely will deanonymize you.

bitcoin won’t be a fungible currency until it adds privacy to the base layer!


The economy is still remarkably strong. I’ve yet to see a convincing argument why, without a massive black swan even between now and Election Day, Trump will win.


Not currently in need of a big work truck but reposting to promote the P2P Bitcoin economy on Nostr. 🤙

nostr:note1f9jahkrazcpvv9j7hkapmn9r9ryj3y73920nz3pdxhl3x7zuhwdq82a9ay


Long ETH/BTC, get rekt.
“The series of transactions underscores his intent to mitigate losses by reducing Ethereum exposure and repaying his obligations in Bitcoin.”
😂
https://coinmarketcap.com/community/articles/671c026ea7737832d121aa9c/


Why the Bitcoin <> Nostr <> Ecash stack is a whitepill moment, in 14 minutes

It can be a depressing world, but with these tools we can quite literally grow superpowers

The opportunities we have today to empower others are beyond our own imaginations

Onwards!

https://m.primal.net/LhGP.mp4


Gordon goes to the store for eggs and chicken. 😂 https://youtu.be/DpDkoEHh7jQ


THat’s without “ANONYMOUSLY  PURCHASED BITCOIN”.

If you can’t buy Bitcoin anonymously, then all the other claims about how it helps are moot, and in privacy terms, not too different from buying with credit cards.

Ignoring this doesn’t make it go away. But there are people - very big people - who are solving this problem, so these dreams can come true and the circle completed.

Or broken…which one?

note1mpaex7wjex7csdr42nh3qwrx0psjp0n9vu9g6qc2vsssfujukl0sx5n5kt


The home gym is one my favorite life hacks I’ve done.


Thanks for asking my question. Good stuff!


Shitcoin integration? Just speculating since I didn’t see anything to that effect on their site. Just one strong possibility as a reason for making something separate from Nostr.


Oh nice!


Hello! Would Suriname consider abandoning the extradition treaty with the US to protect Bitcoin privacy devs?


If you seek to hi-jack bitcoin rails to extend the dominance of fiat currencies and government regulatory control, you are lost and may God help you


Yup. It’s the party in power that tends to be against free speech. Always been that way.


ETH stuff. When everything’s centralized the government wallet just gets its crypto back. https://decrypt.co/288296/hacker-returns-millions-drained-us-government-crypto-wallet


Anonymous eSIMs were there missing piece for a digital life with dignity.

Without Bitcoin, we wouldn't have those either (imaging having to pay for one with a credit card).

It's all starting to come together, piece by piece.


I haven’t really noticed a change in political affiliation in open source software but I’m not sure how one would determine that. I do remember relatively recent left-motivated changes to terms in code, such as replacing “master/slave”. In general, I believe the left and right have somewhat swapped in their valuing of free speech, which open source software is.


The Terminators will skip the rubber skin phase.
https://m.primal.net/JEnL.jpg


nostr:npub1a0wec27pqvrhap486wfddha72tsh672u0nmcfgg4kxmfm7999z9s386ltc and the team at nostr:npub1etgqcj9gc6yaxttuwu9eqgs3ynt2dzaudvwnrssrn2zdt2useaasfj8n6e are doing an amazing job building the #Bitcoin circular economy on the island of Madeira. Follow and support them!

nostr:note1gd59dfj88u5tkvns3q58j9x8zqfnd0xuqyyq26qydakwzfwnvjjq6r3fns


Amazing that people even hold WEFerium, look at this mess. Imagine being told after the merge that you have “ultra sound money” and that the supply will decrease forever making it more deflationary than Bitcoin and then seeing supply increase dramatically back up since April🤡

We just have to feel bad for these people for being misdirected and scammed this badly

#floppening https://image.nostr.build/c631e010b6dfafff224be3431ae9f26cc0891f1d56056464a8cf334012daf88a.jpg https://image.nostr.build/0df686e9e25cfcf5e72156aed3e4bfce06daea23d0e7d1638869219f1c3aa195.jpg https://image.nostr.build/de9ae6c25bd7ea75e64d86d52c997fc777153c3d77dd832da1f751cc4cb88b72.jpg


Just had an exciting moment that my normie friends will never appreciate.

I bought a couple beers.

...But it was more than that. I bought a couple beers with Bitcoin.

...But it was more than that. I bought a couple beers in Lugano Switzerland with lightning, through Zeus wallet with my own lightning channel, connected to Alby Hub, running on my Start9 node, on my shelf in my office back home in Canada.

So yes, I just bought a couple beers. But it was fucking exciting.

https://image.nostr.build/49abde134e31b5a4d25b8d029402d771184a46a2699fe0ae45721acb1ad83d32.jpg


Just watched that too! Always enjoy tuning in for his experiments.


CoinJoins Help Democracy Protests

(originally in Forbes)

Inspired by nostr:npub17xvf49kht23cddxgw92rvfktkd3vqvjgkgsdexh9847wl0927tqsrhc9as and nostr:npub1trr5r2nrpsk6xkjk5a7p6pfcryyt6yzsflwjmz6r7uj7lfkjxxtq78hdpu

Hundreds of activists around the world use bitcoin for its censorship resistance properties — rather than speculative trading. From Nigeria to Russia, activists across the globe see bitcoin as a tool for promoting pro-democracy protests despite financial repression.

Financial repression and nonviolent resistance in a variety of dictatorships were a few of the topics of discussion at the Human Rights Foundation’s Global BitcoinBitcoin -1.1% Summit on Thursday, October 3. Protests usually need money to function, and so seizing cash and freezing bank accounts is an effective way to neutralize citizens’ ability to fight back against dictators before they can become too organized. Often this financial repression is enough to force the end of the protests, due to the difficulty of organizing protests without any money, and organizers’ uncertainty about their survival without financial access.

Bitcoin cannot be seized, because it is not a physical asset residing in space. It is a digital asset, residing at an address in the bitcoin blockchain. In order to use bitcoin, one need only have a 64-character private key to that address, or a 12-word (or 24-word) phrase associated with a wallet. Private keys are too long to memorize for most people, but a piece of paper on which a private key is written is much easier to hide than physical cash. Bitcoin also cannot be frozen, because there are no authorities on the Bitcoin network that have the power to block or stop transactions. Even if there is an address that a person wants to stop from transacting on the bitcoin network, there is nothing they can do about it.

These features of bitcoin are often fretted over by American authorities bemoaning their inability to prevent foreign adversaries from transacting using bitcoin, despite the American authorities’ best efforts to sanction them. But of course, a network that resists censorship by foreign authorities of necessity resists censorship by American authorities. This is a price we must be willing to pay for the sake of democratic activists worldwide. According to the Varieties of Democracy Institute at the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, 5.7 billion people – 72% of the world’s population – live under authoritarian rule.

When financial repression fails, dictators turn to the second tactic – arrests, often followed by torture. One might think that using bitcoin makes it difficult to find those responsible through the protests – at least through their financial transactions. But this isn’t the case. Bitcoin transactions are recorded on the ledger, and the ledger is public. Anyone can download it, view it, and analyze it. And while the ledger doesn’t contain people’s identities or locations, it is subject to analysis and often yields identifying information. This, of course, can be disastrous for anti-authoritarian pro-democracy protesters and activists. The greater the resources of the dictatorship, the greater the risk of using bitcoin. It’s better than banks, to be sure, but it’s a risk nonetheless.

There are ways to make bitcoin transactions more private. One is CoinJoins. In a CoinJoin, users jointly construct transactions where their coins are combined and then sent out to various addresses. None of the destination addresses is connected to any of the originating addresses. Nobody knows who else is CoinJoining with them. Since it is an automatic protocol, no coordinating authority has custody of the bitcoin involved; each user retains control of their own coins throughout.

Because of CoinJoins, a person can send money to an activist or protestor without anyone knowing who sent it. A Russian national can send bitcoin to the Anti-Corruption Foundation through a CoinJoin without Putin’s government knowing – even if Putin’s government knows who the originating address belongs to and who the final destination address belongs to. Of course, in such cases, multiple rounds of CoinJoining is advisable.

Because of the censorship-resistance of bitcoin, it is a favorite tool of protestors. But it is not private enough to make them comfortable that they won’t be identified and arrested. So they turn to the privacy-preserving features of CoinJoins.

CoinJoins enable pro-democracy protesters fighting against dictators to use censorship-resistant money – bitcoin – more privately. People can hide their identities from those hunting them. This is something that should be encouraged and supported. But some governments – democratic governments, even – have taken a different view. They’ve said that CoinJoins violate anti-money-laundering rules. The U.S. government arrested the developers of a privacy-focused wallet called Samourai Wallet that used CoinJoins by default, charging them with having “facilitated more than $100 million in money laundering transactions from illegal dark web markets.”

But cybersecurity, AML, anti-terrorism laws are used by authoritarian goverments to target pro-democracy activists or opposition leaders, says the Open Dialogue Foundation. For example, Erdogan’s government recently arrested a Turkish student on terrorism charges for participation in religious services. India arrested leaders of the Aam Aadmi opposition party for supposed financial crimes. Azerbaijan arrested opposition leader Gubad Ibadoghlu for production, acquisition or sale of counterfeit money. In Venezuela, presidential candidate Edmundo Gonzalez has been arrested for terrorism after an election he claims he won. Tunisian opposition leader Lotfi Mraihi was arrested on suspicion of money-laundering.

Leave aside the fact that the Samourai developers built a non-custodial wallet, never taking custody of any user funds, and so weren’t transmitting money. The fact remains that CoinJoins are a vital tool for human rights and pro-democracy protests in dictatorial regimes. Alex Gladstein of the Human Rights Foundation estimates that “dozens of protest movements on five continents impacting millions of people since 2020 have used bitcoin as part of pro-democracy protests.” He adds that “HRF supports Bitcoin privacy tools and recognizes the power of privacy-preserving collaborative transactions for human rights defenders – especially ones operating under authoritarian regimes.” CoinJoins are morally neutral. Chainalysis estimates that in 2023 about $25 billion in value was used by illicit actors, and under $2 billion went through some mixing like CoinJoin.

CoinJoins provide privacy through obscurity, and so work best when there are a lot of people CoinJoining. The more developers, coordinators, and users there are, the more privacy protesters can achieve. Most Americans are not on the ground protesting against dictators, but we can help the cause by coordinating CoinJoins and CoinJoining ourselves. Democratic governments could encourage that as a way of peacefully exporting democracy without costing any tax dollars.


I went on a deep dive into post-quantum hash-based signatures and tried to apply them to bitcoin. At the end of the article I propose a way to insure today's Bitcoin wallets with a quantum-resistant fallback key, without any consensus changes needed.

https://conduition.io/cryptography/quantum-hbs/


BREAKING: MicroStrategy holders band together to write The Compliance Standard

https://m.primal.net/LfqJ.jpg


So you’ve decided to keep separate stacks of KYC and non-KYC BTC in case your non-KYC BTC is not accepted by some entities. Tell me this:
1. What businesses/people that run Chainalysis software on your UTXOs before deciding to take your BTC would you continue to do business with?
2. Who other than centralized network exchanges would even continue to openly accept BTC when they’re legally required to run chain analysis on the BTC they’re offered?


🚨 New release 2.3.0.0 is out 🚨

🌐 Enhanced Tor integration
📊 Better BTC amount formatting
🔍 More insight on transactions
💰 [Beta] Payment in Coinjoin (RPC)
🔒 Trezor Safe 5 & ColdCard Q support

Release notes & Download: https://github.com/WalletWasabi/WalletWasabi/releases/tag/v2.3.0.0

This release continues our vision of simplifying the codebase and improving the resiliency of the software, while still shipping long-awaited quality-of-life features. By building stronger foundations today, we're paving the way for more exciting features tomorrow!

https://video.nostr.build/18c0fa455a11129be7987827b054ab3a80f8fc609f9b7b018205c897c30159b7.mp4

🌐 Enhanced Tor integration

Complete rewrite of our Tor integration using standard HttpClient. Better performance, clearer code, and improved identity management for enhanced security.

📊 Better BTC amount formatting

Improved readability for all amounts with instant BTC-to-Sats conversion. Cleaner, more consistent UI across all screens showing amounts: balances, fees, Coinjoin outputs...

🔍 More insight on transactions

Detailed input/output lists for all transactions, including Coinjoins and transaction preview. This long-requested feature offers insight into the privacy-enhancing effects of coinjoins and the level of anonymity achieved with each transaction. Additionally, it is now visually clear how privacy suggestions improves transactions.

💰 [Beta] Payment in Coinjoin (RPC)

Our Payment in Coinjoin feature enters beta! Currently available via RPC only. Test it out and share your feedback!

Learn more: https://docs.wasabiwallet.io/using-wasabi/RPC.html#payincoinjoin

🔒 Hardware Wallet Updates
Added support for Trezor Safe 5 & ColdCard Q with HWI 3.1.0 update.


If businesses and people generally refuse to accept non-KYCed coins, might as well just use fiat until amount of people with a spine improves.


Why have any that remain KYC?


You can’t vote it away. The Bitcoin taxes are coming and you’ll have to choose to live free or die (or pay the tax).

nostr:note1p4s7tveglcj4thd6k5qwpdf7salyegt6a0dnuj48t2z69vtxt4mqpp8qpy


Not sure how much political pushing can be done when most people at the time will be no-coiners who would happily vote for taxing the “rich crypto bros.” Assume it’s coming decide whether to live free or die.*

*bend the knee and pay the tax


101 on how gold was confiscated:

You had to turn it in for dollars by a deadline prior to dollar devaluation, and there were massive prison consequences for not turning it in, but little resources in terms of investigating who didn’t turn it in. That would be expensive. So it was fear based. Focusing on illegality and tail risks on edge cases more than enforcement on average.

Institutions had to comply immediately, since it’s all visible. So the government broke liquidity in the domestic gold market, which was enough for their purposes. Gold became a hard-to-trade illegal relic for those that held it.

If a small family hodled some extra bars for 40 years until it became legal again, they did okay.

But can the government track bitcoin in the 2020s better or worse than gold in 1930s for enforcement purposes? That’s the right question.

And don’t just think of confiscation. Think of 70% selective taxes and things like that. Far more within the current rule of law. That’s the sophisticated approach. Don’t take it. Selectively tax it by a lot.

Those are the politics to push against from a bitcoin perspective.


After some fake tough talk, he bent the knee in Brazil on their fines and censorship demands. He will comply everywhere to keep his business allowed everywhere.


dEmOcRacY
nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzqprfjp35xcmnn9sa8tayls3yr4hkvkkdzf9z8lqcntrsf46wf5yjqqsqjd73esunvpvaka5enzzpj628rdzrj0pe2pnhvcuc3enh5z646rg20k54z


Believable misinformation existing is a good thing. It means there’s still a possibility of anonymity.


My true beef with Saylor is that he goes out of his way to prevent Bitcoin developers from being funded

He used his influence to persuade ark not to fund opensats because he sees developers as a threat to Bitcoin

Everything else is whatever, I don't really care, wanna be a suit that's fine

But you make billions off the back of developers then campaign to stop their funding? Fuck you


Privacy improvements probably being the top one of these, causing the suits to panic sell over the thought of governments going into full attack mode at that point.


I’d love to see developments that make suits like Saylor rage-quit, even though it probably sends Bitcoin to sub $20k in the short term.


Software is speech.*

* software the government wants to protect only


Only software the government wants to protect.


good gawd almighty. nostr:note1uyfulgzkptk0qf0ktw37wassf8ka0ztmguj84x2xlehhj6v4az9qxne79y


Testing ecash payments with bearer tokens stored on a physical card. You can see the card being topped up with one phone and pay the other. It feels incredibly fast and smooth.

Tap to pay UX with ecash is as good as it gets for payments. You're literally handing over the money.
https://video.nostr.build/41b9c7bb2306a6b21249a80f1e4d986b4c5663df3f9c60e8fc84ba33abf2ca46.mp4


A few reasons for staying strapped with a firearm also in this article.


Given enough time, almost everyone makes mistakes.


Here the original article, it looks more like an opsec failure on the part of the criminals than Monero.

https://www.nikkei.com/article/DGXZQOUE211MN0R21C24A0000000/

nostr:note1gnj6hg56xh6pg2tnxl98t3s72c8f3adg62dl8cljj4vwy4evhxasuk9w8g


Japanese authorities arrested a gang of 18 scammers by analyzing Monero transactions

https://cointelegraph.com/news/monero-transactions-japanese-authorities-arrest-18-scammers


Also probably a good idea to avoid making it easy for them to see how much BTC you have. Coinjoin and avoid KYC exchanges if possible.


The central bankers are very scared and they should be. They will attempt to convince politicians to use lawfare to punish those of us who have been championing sound freedom money as they continually debase their fiat currencies.

Buckle up, freaks.

https://m.primal.net/Lciw.jpg


“The term ‘permanent’ for the primary deficit is key as it means the government plans to keep spending more than it collects indefinitely.”

https://cointelegraph.com/news/governments-either-tax-ban-bitcoin-maintain-deficits-fed


How did you cook it? BBQ? Skillet with butter?


It’s unnatural, but in modern life the gym often has to substitute for the physical exertion of hunting and gathering we evolved to do.


‘Murica
https://m.primal.net/LbRN.jpg


Network-level privacy of the various coinjoins from the coordinator's point of view, ordered from most vulnerable to least.

Whirpool (regardless of whether you use tor or not, it's useless):

A (192.168.1.1) - D (192.168.1.1)
B (192.168.1.2) - C (192.168.1.2)
C (192.168.1.3) - B (192.168.1.3)
D (192.168.1.4) - A (192.168.1.4)

Wabisabi (let's assume that a user has two entries. I put the second one because it is a centralized service, but it really has a good implementation):

A (192.168.1.1) - D (192.168.1.4)
B (192.168.1.2) - C (192.168.1.5)
C (192.168.1.3) - B (192.168.1.6)
D (192.168.1.1) - A (192.168.1.7)

Joinstr(The VPN is a centralized point but the coordinator is a relay, and the relay will only see the same ip, although you could associate the two, vpn and relay, if a 3-letter agency intervenes, you can mitigate by changing relay between rounds):

A (192.168.1.1) - D (192.168.1.1)
B (192.168.1.1) - C (192.168.1.1)
C (192.168.1.1) - B (192.168.1.1)
D (192.168.1.1) - A (192.168.1.1)

Joinmarket, the coordinator is the taker, this mitigates the collection of the information, therefore it is not vulnerable to a network level tagging attack (from my point of view).

A (192.168.1.1) - D (192.168.1.1)
B (192.168.1.2) - C (192.168.1.2)
C (192.168.1.3) - B (192.168.1.3)
D (192.168.1.4) - A (192.168.1.4)


#p2p #commstr Oxchat maybe but npub is not fully anon.
https://cdn.satellite.earth/cddca9fa027c1f48057eb59317ad3a9d4fc91dc745b25c04beb4af4dbadbb29f.png


It’s just the “always has been” of unadaptive people getting screwed.


Most annoying physics in our universe: drop something even a short distance and that shit can go infinitely far sideways on level ground with nothing but friction to slow it down until it hits something.  Result: always goes under furniture regardless of how far away.


“Fire and tool use are going to be challenging milestones, but we’ll get there somehow.”


Probably a matter of time. Good thing Bitcoin exists. The hard part (for businesses at least) is having the balls to not comply with the government’s BS.


*physical type


Is it just me or has LGBTQ+ pretty much eliminated the concept of “shallowness?” If you like what you like, why should it be frowned upon if you prefer a certain type of woman and others just don’t do it for you?


When you find out that taxes were lower in the USSR than in Western democracies you might start to question things.

Democracy is just a label, if you think that by putting a piece of paper in a ballot box every 4 years you are free, you have a serious cognitive problem.

nostr:note1x6h5m574j8fck5eue96vulkuyfpr4tlmwnhdvt736lrtuv2sz5ds3yadg3


“If money keeps printing, everyone who doesn’t own an asset gets impoverished.”


They’re basically saying have some Bitcoin or you’re screwed. 😂


In a new paper, the European Central Bank is essentially telling you to HFSP if you don't hold #Bitcoin 🤣
 https://image.nostr.build/4036aa709a0af067ebf78174e78129a9222da7a307e68d4bf37aa16c1538f192.jpg

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4985877


BITCOIN - OPEN PROTOCOL FOR MONEY

LIGHTNING - OPEN PROTOCOL FOR BATCHED BITCOIN PAYMENTS

ECASH - OPEN PROTOCOL FOR BITCOIN BANKS

NOSTR - OPEN PROTOCOL FOR COMMUNICATION


With the help of AI, CBDCs can be basically done with just new reporting requirements. Banks are required to report all transactions (not just $10k+) to IRS which then have AI flag activity for more review. I think they don’t even need CBDCs to get specifically approved to get much of its surveillance.


What is non-physical ID?


About fucking time. Been waiting almost 40 years for my Mr. Fusion.  ☢
https://image.nostr.build/6b70df863937c014d7d79094c54f5bcf541314e80c752fda9bb159b802bcad9f.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/26714c643c02af6d95cb66eb3d0d88acfb4f3dcd66d58e88465fa011e97649e6.gif


Soon there will be only the right picture, even for HODLing.


I'm excited to share an experiment I've been working on: a solar-powered, self-hosted website running on a Raspberry Pi. The goal was to use the smallest, most energy-efficient setup possible, even if it means the website goes offline sometimes. Yes, this site may go down on cloudy or cold days. But don't worry! When the sun comes out, the website will be back up, powered by sunshine. https://dri.es/my-solar-powered-and-self-hosted-website


Shut down by “money laundering” prosecutions and KYC requirements, of course.


how cool is it that we are all coordinating and communicating in a public space using cryptography and no-one can stop us. it's a subtle thing you tend to forget while shitposting and having fun, but it's still pretty mind blowing to me.


Any advantages over Bitcoin-backed? Would one have to meet in person to deposit or withdraw their gold?


I want one!
https://www.techradar.com/pro/micro-nuclear-reactors-are-being-built-that-can-deliver-5mw-of-power-for-up-to-100-months-producing-a-staggering-1-2-petawatt-hours-of-energy


I remember when WIRED was considered a respectable publication. Those were the days—a generation ago–before they were acquired by Condé Nast and lost their journalistic integrity.
https://image.nostr.build/e830ae60a44a3f70c51c6fa7b266e3f6d70ca8702d2c838c9f6df350f784d610.jpg nostr:note1v0pl8zp4v40jujvh4mmqu2jl3ll9n5a2thzn5lllznnm44gejnnsm9cu5y


https://i.nostr.build/T2BnReEYPxUQxpNT.jpg
#memes #funny


It’s an open world engineering/construction game in a sci-fi setting with a strong community doing PvP, PvE and modding. Yesterday there was a major PvE update with end-game materials available only via distant exploration and combat. https://www.spaceengineersgame.com/


Love habanero salsa


I’m about to fire up Space Engineers to check out the new update later tonight.


Someone should do PC gaming on here. I'm all on board with that,  nostr:npub1q7why7lw8kq9ufr43ps75ngz3vhx5duqt7xmgklcq3dljqqfjegq2km2vr.

nostr:note14gpafduqac68vxqy6rp5ty3nn63c456yhu087y02kctzwfstevrqngwv6m


Yo Gamers and Game enthusiasts!

Figured it would be best to create a simple community on nostr based around gaming?

Any Nintendo Switch gamers around on the Nostrverse? Seeing as the new Mario Party is coming out in a day or two... was hoping to get a big group of friendly and casual gamers to congregate together for 4-8 player and 20player gaming sessions. (supposedly 20player is a new thing in the latest Mario Party Jamboree.)

Let's get a gaming community made here! Bout time yeah?

Doesn't have to be Switch of course, but thought that might be easiest entry grounds for most.

#gamestr #zapstream #hivetalk #cornychat

nostr:npub1de6l09erjl9r990q7n9ql0rwh8x8n059ht7a267n0q3qe28wua8q20q0sd
nostr:npub1v0lxxxxutpvrelsksy8cdhgfux9l6a42hsj2qzquu2zk7vc9qnkszrqj49
nostr:npub12r0yjt8723ey2r035qtklhmdj90f0j6an7xnan8005jl7z5gw80qat9qrx
nostr:npub1mrechz2tgtmspqc9e6l30dyfy4j57g43srzcvxupzs0cpn8h9pyqwms0g5
nostr:npub16e3vzr7dk2uepjcnl85nfare3kdapxge08gr42s99n9kg7xs8xhs90y9v6
nostr:npub106pw9gffevqqvkyntwm3zkg50drfl5gv2f3wpnpfntrdjj0ggxps8pfar7
nostr:npub1ymt2j3n8tesrlr0yhaheem6yyqmmwrr7actslurw6annls6vnrcslapxnz

PLEASE RE-POST AND SPREAD THE WORD!


Tech minimalist Bitcoiners are funny. Here are some hard pills for them to swallow:

- Internet-connected cameras at home are superior home security. You can monitor your house and operate home automation systems from anywhere.
- Modern EVs are superior. You can get electricity from pretty much anywhere. The grid, solar, diesel generator, even a homemade steam engine - chop trees and throw fuckin logs in there!
- Your AR-15 won’t help much against Neuralink’ed invaders who have 360 degree vision and telepathically control drone swarms. (Still wouldn’t have a Neuralink that could do that installed but would an open source equivalent)


“Protect cryptocurrency investments” likely means crack down on/ban coinjoins and encourage storing your coins with 3rd parties.

nostr:note167494wtwrfz493ujv37da0dyszrd6swtmklswermhwqf30hag3wq5ymfgc


Not sure why so many people love Apple laptops when compared to Linux.


Get this man on nostr https://i.nostr.build/5yOUOyU7sIxM8G1L.jpg


I guess 30 years is some breathing room, but 10 years, being just 2.5 halving cycles away, would be close enough I’d say it’s time to test candidate algorithms. Especially if there’s a significant chance 10 years is pessimistic.


Is there any serious testing being done on post-quantum algorithms for Bitcoin yet? If not, why?


The aluminum should be fine as long as you’re not towing and it should be able to do anything the competition does outside that. Honestly though, Tesla should probably reduce the tow rating. As has been demonstrated as possible, someone’s going to have a heavy trailer rip the back of the frame off and cause a serious accident. As the trucks age and get stress fractures it will be more likely to happen. Then Tesla will be forced to reduce the toe rating on top of paying massive fines. Just lower it to 2000lb now.


https://m.primal.net/LWFm.png
Can the U.S. get one of these please??


Yup. Only in the last few years has modern military tech been achievable again by citizens. It’s why the US is desperately trying to reign in microchips.


Commercial drones with homemade shaped charges can work better than Javelins.


Like the other “WOW” signals, 99% chance this ends up debunked as local radio interference.
https://www.joe.co.uk/science/the-confirmation-of-the-existence-of-aliens-is-just-weeks-away-according-to-professor-461165


“The crypto bros have been given the greatest technology that has ever been given to man, and they have chosen to clone and mutilate it just to deepen their own enslavement for the sick and pathetic means of more fiat money.” nostr:npub1hk0tv47ztd8kekngsuwwycje68umccjzqjr7xgjfqkm8ffcs53dqvv20pf in Cryptosovereignty

#quotes #quotestr #bitcoin

https://i.nostr.build/pD6kzNkQWZEqkuiR.jpg


Before communists took over it was symbols of communism that made them insecure. The party in power is always trying to squash symbols of dissent.


If you're an AnCap, you're a domestic terrorist 🙄😂

https://files.coinfund.app/cache/media_attachments/files/113/262/711/880/445/409/original/33798dac7f90c6f7.jpg?kjy_fallback_url=https://pbs.twimg.com/media/GYs9igFWIAACou9.jpg


Primary Care doctors need to start considering Career Plan B right now.
The sentiment below is widespread, growing and will not go away.  Add to this LLM’s improving by the day and the time is coming very soon where primary care MD’s will be superfluous…
https://m.primal.net/LVCV.jpg


Semi-related: I used to get personal training and attend CrossFit classes, but now I use phone apps for workout programming at my home gym. I do miss the motivation and form correction that trainers and coaches provided, but I figure they too will have AI equivalents that don’t cost $200+ a month for eventually.


Entirely possible that I'm mis{sing,interpret}ing things here but: it's a shame that the dual funding in c-lightning is still behind a non-default experimental-dual-fund flag and that when i search for the "option-will-fund" in the listnodes output I only get like 5-10 out of 90K. To be clear, by following fairly simple instructions in an old blog post, I was able to make a well-funded and perfectly balanced channel, within a couple of minutes.

For those interested in coinjoin, note that this *is* coinjoin and arguably one of the best types, since by nature of the offchain payments, this kind of CJ can actually hide flows better. If we want to get the real power of such a thing we'd ideally start batching *multiple* such channel opens together, but that's putting the cart before the horse here. Dual funded channels are such an obvious good, why is it not a more widely used system, or am I missing something? #lightning

(Btw said blog post by nostr:npub1e0z776cpe0gllgktjk54fuzv8pdfxmq6smsmh8xd7t8s7n474n9smk0txy : https://medium.com/blockstream/setting-up-liquidity-ads-in-c-lightning-54e4c59c091d


This happened during a demo of Tollgate, a tool for OpenWRT routers which let's users pay for WiFi with sats-denominated ecash. Friend of mine connects his phone to the wifi hotspot and is shown a captive portal that says it wants ecash from a certain mint. Friend doesn't have ecash. But I do.

I whip out my phone and create a 100 sat token, show it to him as a QR code, which he copies and pastes into the captive portal. A few seconds later, he's online. 1 sat = 1 minute internet.

We're just scratching the surface of what's possible.


One amazing thing I learned about (out of many) at the ecash conference

A router for sharing internet

Someone from India, living in a place with a lot of internet access problems, built a set-up where people can buy internet without having any internet in the first place. 1 sat per minute

He built a captive portal that you log into and the page says — I take ecash from this one mint, get ecash from there and paste it into this text box — you paste it in, hit enter, and you’re online

You’ve made an offline payment and voila, you're now online

There are many exciting Bitcoin developments happening but it's becoming more clear that ecash is a wholly different, complementary technology that does different things, including many things that Bitcoin can't do no matter how many upgrades it gets


THERE IS A WHOLE GENERATION THAT THINKS ENGAGEMENT IS MORE VALUABLE THAN A STRONG FAMILY.

FOCUS ON FAMILY. WORK HARD. SAVE IN BITCOIN.


Plus, the US gov tries to keep a veneer of non-tyrannical appearance by not explicitly banning things. Instead they impose onerous regulations to the point of a practical ban but where they can say “not banned, just have to follow the common sense regs!”


It still surprises me to see anyone surprised when the State tries cracking down on Bitcoin being used privately. It’s slightly surprising that Bitcoin isn’t banned yet.


Get ready. The stupid train is pulling into the station. https://image.nostr.build/21a4cc7d015ef581b01517d0b4f82b62eec5ba4a0f73e2caa5ab7c856189c4e8.jpg


Unrealized cap gain tax proposal is a massive disaster in the making.

Sure, they’ll start with a high threshold (for now) but it’s going to come down to where this thing impacts the average person sooner or later.

And we all know that once it’s in, it’s never getting out.


Coinjoin any BTC you (don’t) have.


Don’t forget, tech like the Meta Smart glasses can be turned on the State for inverse surveillance. Dox the FBI goons they send to your door to harass you about your social media posts.


I’ve been in places in the Middle East that had a lot of that too. Seems common that people get ambitions to start a huge project and then they run out of resources, will or health and walk away.


Abandoned, or just slow?


The human body is still not completely understood, however what IS known about the body is open information that can be accessed by anyone. Imagine if there was a part of your body that only a company and governments get to have the knowledge of. That’s what you have with closed, proprietary augmentations like Neuralink and this.

nostr:note142ndl9xge09kr2fczs9hu57e40r5tksg3yf63aghy95lmucfxl2squuezd


For real, don’t put tech augmentations that aren’t open source in your body. I’d rather tough out my ailment until an open source version of the “fix” arrives. https://futurism.com/neoscope/paralyzed-man-exoskeleton-too-old


WoT is that


nostr:npub1ej493cmun8y9h3082spg5uvt63jgtewneve526g7e2urca2afrxqm3ndrm do you have a warrant canary?


Looks like it has merit to me.


Almost got me thinking you’re a scammer with this one. 😂


This is one of the most powerful indictments of legacy media and censorship I’ve ever heard…

If you care about freedom of speech, take 7 minutes of your time and listen to what Lara Logan has to say.

https://v.nostr.build/02FRAClfs6YTdm4m.mp4


It doesn't surprise me that,

SimpleX is under attack by corrupt liar Wired:

"Neo-Nazis Are Fleeing Telegram for Encrypted App SimpleX Chat"
https://www.wired.com/story/neo-nazis-flee-telegram-encrypted-app-simplex/

What DOES surprise me is the reaction of developer Evgeny Poberezkin,

Here's the quote from the article:

<quote>
"And Poberezkin believes that the current limitations of his technology will mean these groups will eventually abandon SImpleX.

“SimpleX is a communication network, rather than a service or a platform, where users can host their own servers, like in Open Web, so we were not aware that extremists have been using it,” says Poberezkin. “We never designed groups to be usable for more than 50 users and we’ve been really surprised to see them growing to the current sizes despite limited usability and performance. We do not think it is technically possible to create a social network of a meaningful size in the SimpleX network.”"
</end quote>

This is surprising because Evgeny told us that groups could scale by reducing the reliance on a single invite link, so anyone could enter via any group member or "super members".

In fact, even from his own tweets, just 2 days prior:

<quote>
"We agree that once group can scale, they will help growth."
</quote>
Source: https://xcancel.com/SimpleXChat/status/1841561127320199583#m

This is the danger of doing cypherpunk stuff, with government money venture capital and registered LLCs.  At the slightest push from the mainstream media, he changes his tune.

I like Evgeny.  He's a good guy.  And I DON'T blame him for trying to stop his company from being associated with bad actors.  But we need to be honest here, he's trying to have his cake and eat it too.  He wants to be a cypherpunk, but collect the paycheck of a corporation.

What he should have said to Wired is: "This technology is like the printing press.  It improves our lives and offers all of this freedom.  But once it's made, the inventor can't control what people say.  Do you really want to live in a world without the press, Wired?"


Pathetic.


👀 nostr:note1vycv8xqeh962n6fakzlvalr5ycv93wc56fu7k445eecyzsmg9qfsph7zca


If there’s room on it, I guess nostr:npub1ej493cmun8y9h3082spg5uvt63jgtewneve526g7e2urca2afrxqm3ndrm should get promoted to the “we are all Satoshi” meme with “not you” over Craig Wright.


"Encryption alone is not enough to ensure freedom. We must organize politically against autocrats.

End to end encryption allows us to safely do just that."

- Phil Zimmermann


Musk and X ended up bending the knee on censorship in Brazil, also giving them their requested $5 million. Probably partially explains the dropping count of active users here on Nostr.


Developments like this may be happening kind of slowly at this time. Just wait until simple metal tubes are regulated…

nostr:note1h8vff6zva7fewq8y9w67nzsrarfeev8me9jalka3a0ed4f5y520ql94hf0


Looks like the Supreme Court is about to agree with the Biden Administration that gun parts, even unfinished, are equivalent to actual guns legally. 3D printing may eventually be the only way to get these parts. https://www.npr.org/2024/10/08/nx-s1-5145914/supreme-court-ghost-guns


TBF, as long as he’s not Craig Wright, he is, as we all are.


I believe they’re called regarded and special on the platforms that censor some words.


Nice. Sadly if the same thing happened in the US that protester would get a fat settlement.


I wouldn’t say that. Sure, any of the coinjoin coordinators could be compromised by specific parties, but chances are you’ll have better privacy than just leaving everything easy to trace by anyone.


About coinjoin coordinators.

There is a difference to be made between privacy on-chain and privacy at the network level.

Even if you have chain privacy you can tag the addresses with their respective ips and trace the user. Obviously this can only be done by the coordinator.

This is why Samourai and Whirpool have always sucked.

Whirpool:

- If you used the mobile wallet without your node, the coinjoin was useless because your public keys were exposed to the backend and with them all your past, present and future addresses.

- If you used your own node or sparrow it was also of little use, since both samourai and sparrow reuse the tor circuit, they only generate a new one if you close the application, and therefore the coordinator can tag the incoming and outgoing addresses at the time of registration and ruin the coinjoin. Whirpool has never been zerolink, the coordinator knew everything.

Wabisabi:

- It creates new connections for both input and output addresses, so the coordinator sees distinct identities, although I think it has flaws in its design due to the delay. We can consider it to be zerolink, at least they tried and were honest.

Joinmarket:

- Since there is no centralized coordinator it is much less important to create new tor circuits for each connection, still the coordinator (the taker) will know the ips of the incoming and outgoing addresses. I don't know if they are mitigating this in any way.

Joinstr:

- Use Riseup VPN for logging, everyone uses the same VPN, there is no possibility of tagging inbound and outbound addresses across relays.


Very cool desktop-based LLM studio with access to multiple models, all run locally lmstudio.ai
https://image.nostr.build/b393edd42deb913b3bace4ee8ca3aee0beff842ead290f4fbbbcde834e95c35d.jpg

alt LM Studio screenshot showing a chat application


Will this stop the US government from demanding back doors? Of course not. “Just make better back doors!”
https://9to5mac.com/2024/10/08/chinese-hack-of-us-isps-shows-why-apple-is-right-about-backdoors-for-law-enforcement/


Everyone’s focusing on the negatives. A pretty cool use I can see for tech like this is superhuman awareness (eyes on the back of your head). The device could have additional cameras to provide 360 view. AI would constantly scan people nearby for suspicious behavior towards you, picking up things like gaze and mannerisms, objects being held, etc. Wearer gets Spider-Sense!

nostr:note1synajj6n0afuwl98f6qenpy8fjjd639q0c63df4hg87nyyvreytsc7xar4


You guys should set up an LN wallet so you can conveniently get zap donations here.


I don’t believe they’ll let Trump win no matter what. There are scores of people involved who’d happily break the law and risk jail to be a hero and keep him out.


What caused it?


Probably going to end up being irrelevant. They won’t let Trump win no matter what.


“We have tools for that” https://video.nostr.build/5f45fcc55211a4087db75a916d0223e0b768f6d0800b3ff3d65cc9f050edacf2.mp4


Zapping repos with split payments will be a game changer for software development. I'd love to see someone run with this incredible concept from  nostr:npub1getal6ykt05fsz5nqu4uld09nfj3y3qxmv8crys4aeut53unfvlqr80nfm 🐝 ⚡

nostr:note1gmrkgmr90dfxdy0ll350jw8h6t70r22dtfc0w8vnew32wgn0k33qpm2jw5


Will be nice and quiet until the next X or TikTok FUD episode I guess.


TRUMP WINS. X BECOMES THE PARTY’S PLATFORM. JUST AS WECHAT IS FOR THE CCP.

HARRIS WINS. US GOV CENSORSHIP OF ALL PLATFORMS INCREASES.

NOSTR FIXES BOTH.


Can’t expect tech like this to go away. If anything it will get smaller, cheaper, more capable and more widespread.


Zerolink 🌀 is superior there is nothing close. Joinmarket is an outdated 🌀
Here is why 47th minute to be exact

https://youtu.be/24OiD7-BiU8?t=0h46m44s


There’s also DuckDuckGo AI Chat. It has better models (GPT-4o Mini & Llama 3.1 70B) available for free with no account required.

I used to use Venice, but the better models are now paywalled and require an account.
https://duckduckgo.com/aichat


The final attack on Bitcoiners will be sanctions. I.e “if you do business with these people your company is done.”


Reminds me of Pepe the frog’s creator wanting to kill his creation after the “wrong” crowd picked it up.


Thank God for Nostr. It ensures that Hillary will never get her wish to censor the information she doesn’t like.
https://m.primal.net/LMeI.mov


I read the just introduced Saving Privacy Act so you don't have to, and it's pretty fucking badass. If passed, it would completely reform financial privacy in the US.

The Bill removes SARs and CTRs filing requirements, makes financial information only accessible via a search warrant, specifically introduces fourth amendment protections, bans the creation of central databases holding personally identifiable information without the establishment of a dedicated law granting a US agency such right, bans the US Government from creating CBDCs, and introduces criminal penalties for any US official violating your financial privacy rights.

Yes, please.

https://m.primal.net/LLSl.png https://m.primal.net/LLSm.png https://m.primal.net/LLSn.png

https://www.therage.co/untitled/


World Police is quite expensive.


The government takes almost HALF of what you earn through various taxes.

The government DEVALUES the money you manage to save by printing more out of thin air (inflation).

AND THEY STILL SOMEHOW DONT HAVE ENOUGH FUCKING MONEY TO TAKE CARE OF OUR OWN FUCKING CITIZENS.

THIS IS FUCKING UNACCEPTABLE AND YOU SHOULD BE FUCKING PISSED OFF.

https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-helene-congress-fema-funding-5be4f18e00ce2b509d6830410cf2c1cb


How dependent are Central and South American countries, generally, on the IMF’s good graces?


The IMF is one of the tools used by the U.S. and the Fed to subjugate the states to the dollar.

nostr:note1c8eqqf63rxsdfrmfg22u2fhn547lxt0ht4ludk55fc789tksf6hql9hvuc


Why people that care about privacy are being labeled “fat right”? 😡😡😡😡 nostr:note1s95q0yda7tzdg9e5huk77zwjsp9f85qmld52e4ha4mal5rpxx84qrkqqaq


Getting message that you didn’t set up your LN wallet.


If you use Mullvad, please send them an email and ask them to support lightning payments. They currently support onchain only and frankly that’s sad :(

Thank you! Together we can make things happen!!


Today we announced the Fedimint Web SDK!

We think it's going to be the simplest tool to build a robust, client-managed bitcoin wallet in a browser.

Give it a shot and let us know what you think!

https://web.fedimint.org


I’m white and almost 7ft tall…but nothing AI can’t fix!


What should my fake job history for the eventual Meta/LinkedIn nuke be? I must be able to associate convincing AI-generated pics. Best idea before the end of the night gets 1000 sats.


Glad I deleted Twitter long ago. Strongly considering replacing my LinkedIn and Facebook accounts (neither of which I’ve updated in years) with fake chaff information and AI generated pics. nostr:note1qkjeksmmpfp78kzxensumw95c32k99cmw8ay8vzrmdclupcqueks5yupp7


And this is the worst and least ubiquitous it will ever be.


Are you ready for the future?

https://video.nostr.build/233808b107ffd96e681f097bd1300f247599c21cb2d834a20b3fa0c4b9960745.mp4


This is pretty wild. The tech will only improve and get more ubiquitous. Don’t expect privacy in public places. https://www.engadget.com/wearables/students-used-metas-smart-glasses-to-automatically-dox-strangers-via-instagram-streams-170228496.html


Please keep building. Activists and freedom fighters around the globe are depending upon you and your important work. If you need funding, grants are available. It doesn't hurt to apply! 🤙🏻🫂💜


“You can’t tell fire in a crowded theater” = “we can interpret whatever we want to be dangerous illegal speech.”


Lots of chatter on the airwaves and in print lately probing the limits of free speech, the justifications for censorship and the future viability of the US constitution.  It was a talking point in last night's VP debate as well, during which Walz recited the folk-loresy understanding of the issue:  "you can't yell fire in a crowded theater."

Here's a PSA on this little gem a bit in case you ever find yourself up against it.

The phrase comes from supreme court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr during the 1919 case Schenck v United States.  Anyone unfamiliar with this case might be shocked to learn that it had nothing to do with shouting fire, or with any kind of mischievous, anti-social trouble-making whatsoever.  At stake was the printing and mailing of pamphlets to draft-eligible men that made the case that the draft was against their constitutional rights and inviting citizens to peacefully abstain.  In other words, what was at stake in the trial were the defendants right to criticize perceived government transgression of the constitution, exactly what the first amendment was designed to ensure.

Amazingly, what was passed down to our collective memories about this episode is not the hard truth that governments will attempt to violate constitutional rights for their own, arguably nefarious, ends (a conceptual inheritance that would strengthen civic support for free speech), but rather the wildly inaccurate analogy of the crowded theater (an Orwellian description of the case that suggests government censorship is there to protect us and keep us safe).  And even though the precedent of Schenck was overturned in 1969, the "fire in a crowded theater" litmus test still lingers as the operative heuristic for a great many Americans, including, apparently, one of the candidates for Vice President of the country.

https://m.primal.net/LIaS.gif


Edward Snowden making the case for #Bitcoin maximalism ⬇

"You are where the bombs are going to drop, let's make sure that we have roofs that can survive them"

https://m.primal.net/LIkS.mp4


Julian Assange just gave a testimony:

Julian Assange: "My naivete was believing in the law. When push comes to shove, laws are just pieces of paper. And they can be reinterpreted for political expediency."

https://video.nostr.build/53647d14f77f16bafce0e8000ed96286f7f31cf8ab905ecbca007851a8845443.mp4


Why would you pay ClosedAI when there are nearly as capable open-weight models that you can actually modify to fit to your needs?
https://www.windowscentral.com/software-apps/openais-bankruptcy-flames-linger-on-as-apple-wiggles-out-of-its-latest-dollar65-billion-funding-round-at-the-eleventh-hour-leaving-the-mantle-to-microsoft-and-nvidia


What would upgrading from a Mk3 entail?


#voteharder✌ https://image.nostr.build/ce4570ec1327de2623e7102cbc41a43de8cf5d2ca92a704df87bf2118cbb56fd.jpg


*sigh* …. “Bitcoin is a risk-on asset” degens have such deep pockets.


Unfortunately “Bitcoin is a risk-on asset” degens have deeper pockets than us.


The only nuclear power that I can see possibly becoming suicidal is a Russia that manages to stay unified behind Putin after a decisive loss in Ukraine. I see that as impossible though - if Ukraine is a decisive loss, Putin loses his head and Russia is under a new government. If (more likely) Ukraine ends in a ceasefire with frontlines relatively frozen at where they are now, Russia will call it a “win” and then gradually try to get on peaceful terms with everyone again and have sanctions lifted. Aggressive Russia will be nowhere to be found for a decade at least.


No, it’s not WWIII. The massive US show of force sent across the world combined with its global surveillance is going to work to prevent it. Because it works, you will be taxed much more heavily going forward to make GLOBAL POLICE even more powerful.

No WWIII
Yes higher taxes

The only thing that will stop this is the collapse of the US.


Eh, not really. It was designed to be easily compatible with C and not have to deal with the frustrations imposed on you by Rust.


Nostr identities in a hospital 👀

nostr:note1q65ffef4w2pj49hvl5hv72g52q4sxumlckjdyhxgq5nm3ynjpz0sjwyt82


Why not upgrade to Zig?


Julian Assange's full testimony to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) in Strasbourg today:

"Mr. Chairman, esteemed members of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe, ladies and gentlemen.

The transition from years of confinement in a maximum-security prison to standing here before the representatives of 46 nations and 700 million people is a profound and surreal shift.

The experience of isolation for years in a small cell is difficult to convey; it strips away one's sense of self, leaving only the raw essence of existence.

I am not yet fully equipped to speak about what I have endured - the relentless struggle to stay alive, both physically and mentally, nor can i speak yet about the deaths by hanging, murder, and medical neglect of my fellow prisoners.

I apologise in advance if my words falter or if my presentation lacks the polish you might expect in such a distinguished forum.

Isolation has taken its toll, which I am trying to unwind, and expressing myself in this setting is a challenge.

However, the gravity of this occasion and the weight of the issues at hand compel me to set aside my reservations and speak to you directly.

I have traveled a long way, literally and figuratively, to be before you today.

Before our discussion or answering any questions you might have, I wish to thank PACE for its 2020 resolution (2317), [https://pace.coe.int/en/files/28508/html], which stated that my imprisonment set a dangerous precedent for journalists and noted that the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture called for my release.

I'm also grateful for PACE's 2021 statement [https://pace.coe.int/en/news/8446/pace-general-rapporteur-expresses-se] expressing concern over credible reports that US officials discussed my assassination, again calling for my prompt release.

And I commend the Legal Affairs and Human Rights Committee for commissioning a renowned rapporteur, Sunna Ævarsdóttir, to investigate the circumstances surrounding my detention and conviction and the consequent implications for human rights.

However, like so many of the efforts made in my case - whether they were from parliamentarians, presidents, prime ministers, the Pope, UN officials and diplomats, unions, legal and medical professionals, academics, activists, or citizens - none of them should have been necessary.

None of the statements, resolutions, reports, films, articles, events, fundraisers, protests, and letters over the last 14 years should have been necessary.

But all of them were necessary because without them I never would have seen the light of day.

This unprecedented global effort was needed because of the legal protections that did exist, many existed only on paper or were not effective in any remotely reasonable time frame.

I eventually chose freedom over unrealisable justice, after being detained for years and facing a 175 year sentence with no effective remedy. Justice for me is now precluded, as the US government insisted in writing into its plea agreement that I cannot file a case at the European Court of Human Rights or even a freedom of information act request over what it did to me as a result of its extradition request.

I want to be totally clear. I am not free today because the system worked. I am free today because after years of incarceration because I plead guilty to journalism. I plead guilty to seeking information from a source. I plead guilty to obtaining information from a source. And I plead guilty to informing the public what that information was. I did not plead guilty to anything else. I hope my testimony today can serve to highlight the weaknesses of the existing safeguards and to help those whose cases are less visible but who are equally vulnerable.

As I emerge from the dungeon of Belmarsh, the truth now seems less discernible, and I regret how much ground has been lost during that time period when expressing the truth has been undermined, attacked, weakened, and diminished.

I see more impunity, more secrecy, more retaliation for telling the truth and more self censorship. It is hard not to draw a line from the US government's prosecution of me - its crossing the rubicon by internationally criminalising journalism - to the chilled climate for freedom of expression now.

When I founded WikiLeaks, it was driven by a simple dream: to educate people about how the world works so that, through understanding, we might bring about something better.

Having a map of where we are lets us understand where we might go.

Knowledge empowers us to hold power to account and to demand justice where there is none.

We obtained and published truths about tens of thousands of hidden casualties of war and other unseen horrors, about programs of assassination, rendition, torture, and mass surveillance.

We revealed not just when and where these things happened but frequently the policies, the agreements, and structures behind them.

When we published Collateral Murder, the infamous gun camera footage of a US Apache helicopter crew eagerly blowing to pieces Iraqi journalists and their rescuers, the visual reality of modern warfare shocked the world.

But we also used interest in this video to direct people to the classified policies for when the US military could deploy lethal force in Iraq and how many civilians could be killed before gaining higher approval.

In fact, 40 years of my potential 175-year sentence was for obtaining and releasing these policies.

The practical political vision I was left with after being immersed in the world's dirty wars and secret operations is simple: Let us stop gagging, torturing, and killing each other for a change. Get these fundamentals right and other political, economic, and scientific processes will have space to take care of the rest.

WikiLeaks' work was deeply rooted in the principles that this Assembly stands for.

Journalism that elevated freedom of information and the public's right to know found its natural operational home in Europe.

I lived in Paris and we had formal corporate registrations in France and in Iceland. Our journalistic and technical staff were spread throughout Europe.

We published to the world from servers in based in France, Germany, and Norway.

But 14 years ago the United States military arrested one of our alleged whistleblowers, PFC Manning, a US intelligence analyst based in Iraq.

The US government concurrently launched an investigation against me and my colleagues.

The US government illicitly sent planes of agents to Iceland, paid bribes to an informer to steal our legal and journalistic work product, and without formal process pressured banks and financial services to block our subscriptions and freeze our accounts.

The UK government took part in some of this retribution. It admitted at the European Court of Human Rights that it had unlawfully spied on my UK lawyers during this time.

Ultimately this harassment was legally groundless. President Obama's Justice Department chose not to indict me, recognizing that no crime had been committed.

The United States had never before prosecuted a publisher for publishing or obtaining government information.

To do so would require a radical and ominous reinterpretation of the US Constitution.

In January 2017, Obama also commuted the sentence of Manning, who had been convicted of being one of my sources.

However, in February 2017, the landscape changed dramatically.

President Trump had been elected. He appointed two wolves in MAGA hats: Mike Pompeo, a Kansas congressman and former arms industry executive, as CIA Director, and William Barr, a former CIA officer, as US Attorney General.

By March 2017, WikiLeaks had exposed the CIA's infiltration of French political parties, its spying on French and German leaders, its spying on the European Central Bank, European economics ministries, and its standing orders to spy on French industry as a whole.

We revealed the CIA's vast production of malware and viruses, its subversion of supply chains, its subversion of antivirus software, cars, smart TVs and iPhones.

CIA Director Pompeo launched a campaign of retribution.

It is now a matter of public record that under Pompeo's explicit direction, the CIA drew up plans to kidnap and to assassinate me within the Ecuadorian Embassy in London and authorized going after my European colleagues, subjecting us to theft, hacking attacks, and the planting of false information.

My wife and my infant son were also targeted. A CIA asset was permanently assigned to track my wife and instructions were given to obtain DNA from my six month old son's nappy.

This is the testimony of more than 30 current and former US intelligence officials speaking to the US press, which has been additionally corroborated by records seized in a prosecution brought against some of the CIA agents involved.

The CIA's targeting of myself, my family and my associates through aggressive extrajudicial and extraterritorial means provides a rare insight into how powerful intelligence organisations engage in transnational repression. Such repressions are not unique. What is unique is that we know so much about this one due to numerous whistleblowers and to judicial investigations in Spain.

This Assembly is no stranger to extraterritorial abuses by the CIA.

PACE's groundbreaking report on CIA renditions in Europe exposed how the CIA operated secret detention centres and conducted unlawful renditions on European soil, violating human rights and international law.

In February this year, the alleged source of some of our CIA revelations, former CIA officer Joshua Schulte, was sentenced to forty years in prison under conditions of extreme isolation.

His windows are blacked out, and a white noise machine plays 24 hours a day over his door so that he cannot even shout through it.

These conditions are more severe than those found in Guantanamo Bay.

Transnational repression is also conducted by abusing legal processes.

The lack of effective safeguards against this means that Europe is vulnerable to having its mutual legal assistance and extradition treaties hijacked by foreign powers to go after dissenting voices in Europe.

In Mike Pompeo's memoirs, which I read in my prison cell, the former CIA Director bragged about how he pressured the US Attorney General to bring an extradition case against me in response to our publications about the CIA.

Indeed, acceding to Pompeo's efforts, the US Attorney General reopened the investigation against me that Obama had closed and re-arrested Manning, this time as a witness.

Manning was held in prison for over a year and fined a thousand dollars a day in a formal attempt to coerce her into providing secret testimony against me.

She ended up attempting to take her own life.

We usually think of attempts to force journalists to testify against their sources.

But Manning was now a source being forced to testify against their journalist.

By December 2017, CIA Director Pompeo had got his way, and the US government issued a warrant to the UK for my extradition.

The UK government kept the warrant secret from the public for two more years, while it, the US government, and the new president of Ecuador moved to shape the political, legal, and diplomatic ground for my arrest.

When powerful nations feel entitled to target individuals beyond their borders, those individuals do not stand a chance unless there are strong safeguards in place and a state willing to enforce them. Without them no individual has a hope of defending themselves against the vast resources that a state aggressor can deploy.

If the situation were not already bad enough in my case, the US government asserted a dangerous new global legal position. Only US citizens have free speech rights.  Europeans and other nationalities do not have free speech rights.  But the US claims its Espionage Act still applies to them regardless of where they are. So Europeans in Europe must obey US secrecy law with no defences at all as far as the US government is concerned. An American in Paris can talk about what the US government is up to - perhaps. But for a Frenchman in Paris, to do so is a crime without any defence and he may be extradited just like me.

Now that one foreign government has formally asserted that Europeans have no free speech rights, a dangerous precedent has been set.

Other powerful states will inevitably follow suit.

The war in Ukraine has already seen the criminalisation of journalists in Russia, but based on the precedent set in my extradition, there is nothing to stop Russia, or indeed any other state, from targeting European journalists, publishers, or even social media users, by claiming that their secrecy laws have been violated.

The rights of journalists and publishers within the European space are seriously threatened.

Transnational repression cannot become the norm here.

As one of the world's two great norm-setting institutions, PACE must act.

The criminalisation of newsgathering activities is a threat to investigative journalism everywhere.

I was formally convicted, by a foreign power, for asking for, receiving, and publishing truthful information about that power while I was in Europe.

The fundamental issue is simple: Journalists should not be prosecuted for doing their jobs.

Journalism is not a crime; it is a pillar of a free and informed society.

Mr Chairman, distinguished delegates, if Europe is to have a future where the freedom to speak and the freedom to publish the truth are not privileges enjoyed by a few but rights guaranteed to all then it must act so that what has happened in my case never happens to anyone else.

I wish to express my deepest gratitude to this assembly, to the conservatives, social democrats, liberals, leftists, greens, and independents - who have supported me throughout this ordeal and to the countless individuals who have advocated tirelessly for my release.

It is heartening to know that in a world often divided by ideology and interests, there remains a shared commitment to the protection of essential human liberties.

Freedom of expression and all that flows from it is at a dark crossroad. I fear that unless norm setting institutions like PACE wake up to the gravity of the situation it will be too late.

Let us all commit to doing our part to ensure that the light of freedom never dims, that the pursuit of truth will live on, and that the voices of the many are not silenced by the interests of the few."


What are we looking at?


The gravity of 58k sure is strong.


Hypothetically, what would happen if the US stopped propping up Israel with massive defense spending?


And take what action? Mute?


Who even is able to do anything about “reports” here? 😂


https://nostpic.com/media/0018b7ee33fb253843639c62e292fec700a69a93b08ee374c5bda971c9b39564/44e22ca8c1ef18e0200e81ce348c989a0c6af1b3ef33a11631ff0c71cb6ac18e.webp

Culture wars: the ultimate way to distract the population from all the things that actually matter (money that can be inflated into nothing, processed sludge poisoning the food supply, fluoride poisoning the water, geoengineering poisoning the air, etc. etc.)

Just point the money-printer at your trusty corporate media propaganda arm, sit back, relax, and watch as the peasants fight amongst themselves so you can go on your merry way advancing as many evil agendas as your heart desires.


I believe there’s a significant chance that the appearance of humanity is the “Big Bang” of consciousness in the universe. I.e. the chance of it appearing anywhere is as infinitesimally small as the chance of a quantum fluctuation spawning an entire universe.


Open source, DIY-possible metal 3D printing seems to be getting closer. Wow, the complexity though! https://youtu.be/_SwsatEJn9k


* one of many reasons why


This is why any tech augmentation that goes in my body has to be open source.
https://futurism.com/neoscope/paralyzed-man-exoskeleton-too-old


🎯 The style that was considered rebellious in the 80’s now indicates adherence to the official narrative. A regime loyalist.


“Yield” means someone is making more than you by holding your Bitcoin.


Good message. Thinking about how actual code, which is what the government is trying to say isn’t speech, might be fit onto a t-shirt.


For some legal context, see the AutoKeyCard case, where someone was convicted to 5 years in prison for drawing swift links onto metal cards. By this precedent, and the judge’s comments in the Tornado Cash case, tshirts like the one above could indeed be considered illegal. https://www.atf.gov/news/press-releases/youtuber-and-auto-key-card-manufacturer-sentenced-five-years-prison-transferring


Devs for freedom software like nostr:npub1sqn6rpml88nq8khuvvneuqztfmvalpsarr8grkwy837hzdw63ajs6t5net and nostr:npub1jw7scmeuewhywwytqxkxec9jcqf3znw2fsyddcn3948lw9q950ps9y35fg could probably also pick out some key functions that would fit on a t-shirt.


In the spirit of “code not being speech,” here’s a t-shirt with the g code for 3D printing a full auto link for the AR-15. https://cantstopthesignal.creator-spring.com/listing/yankee-boogle


Freedom tech devs need some courage to do their work these days. Stay strong! 💪


Takes some courage to develop freedom tech these days. Stay strong devs! 💪 nostr:note1ym4su6uwnf24s80lf2ua5lyv394vlj96avlh9k30ev3raa9e0epq04djxt


Yesterday, Tornado Cash judge stated code is not speech, non-custodial software providers can be money transmitters, and specific knowledge of criminal activity is not required to be charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering.

A breakdown of all the arguments:

https://www.therage.co/tornado-cash-code-not-speech-non-custodial-msbs-knowledge-not-required/


Right. Seems that for OpenAI and other large developers of closed frontier models to be able to charge enough, their models have to be significantly more powerful than the nearest open weight models since that difference is what’s being paid for.


I don’t see how OpenAI has a business model if open source models even kind of keep up.


I wonder if there’s a discount if you use the Trump Coin to buy it. nostr:note1mw84azv2gl38vm2tcvzvssjvfkce2t06fdhk25r26zvpl2637s6sng0cdx


It’s the year 2034 and the government is trying to stop people from installing unlicensed medical AI models into their household robots.


First they came for the privacy nuts, but I didn't speak up because I had nothing to hide.

Now I need a banking licence, enforce strict AML and KYC all the potential buyers, to sell my used mattress, but there is noone left to speak out. nostr:note18qzh9f7rngkcwdj8ac5j6l7zl796jajly68fvjzj5aggvdynqd8seemwad


Would be fun to try having it power some game NPCs.


Bitcoin* Twitter

* ordinals and shitcoin degens


Is it just me or is the regime on an aggressive push to ban open source information?
- trade protocols
- privacy protocols
- AI models
- 3D print models


There are Americans openly running coinjoin coordinators for Wasabi Wallet. Noncompliance is a powerful protest!


Voting too. I’m sure voting will fix it!


Well, maybe a protest will work. We can get out there with signs and walk around in a fucking circle.

Surely that’ll fix this.
🙄 nostr:note18qzh9f7rngkcwdj8ac5j6l7zl796jajly68fvjzj5aggvdynqd8seemwad


I wonder if Faketoshi still has “extra-special” followers in Bsv Land.

…severely retarded. Might as well just say severely retarded here.


there you go https://9to5mac.com/2024/09/26/trump-says-fbi-must-get-apple-to-open-would-be-assassins-phones/


@asknostr

I'm trying to figure out the whole relay thing.
I send a note 3 times using  nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg desktop, every time connecting to different relays.
Good to know: I am a new user with 6 followers (including myself) and 192 following. This will give me probably a low WoT score, but it will be the case for many new people who come into nostr.
To check which relays accepted my notes, I used  nostr:npub13myx4j0pp9uenpjjq68wdvqzywuwxfj64welu28mdvaku222mjtqzqv3qk (shout out to  nostr:npub1jlrs53pkdfjnts29kveljul2sm0actt6n8dxrrzqcersttvcuv3qdjynqn for his amazing work)

TRIAL 1 - standard primal relays
3 relays accepted my note:
- nostr.oxtr.dev
- relay.damus.io
- relay.nostr.band
The strange thing is that only relay.damus.io was in my relay list, the others were not. Not sure where they came from, unless there is a delay in (dis)connecting to relays?
I also was very surprised that relay.primal.net did not accept my note

TRIAL 2 - relays that are advised online (google search)
I connected to 13 relays in total, including nos.lol and relay.snort.social
3 relays accepted my note:
- nostr.oxtr.dev
- relay.mostr.pub
- relay.damus.io
So, all these 3 relays were in the list of 13, so basically my note got rejected by 10

TRIAL 3 - the WoT relays that are advised because of spam.
I was curious to see what would happen for a new user like me
I connected to 15 WoT relays.
The only 2 relays that accepted my note:
- nostr.oxtr.dev/
- relay.damus.io/

Both those 2 relays were not in my relay list

QUESTIONS
1) Is there indeed a delay between connecting to relays and the actual usage of relays to accept your notes? This could explain some of the relays accepting my notes while they are not in my relay list

2) Is there a way for new users to get some engagement on their notes? With a low WoT score, I think their notes are rejected by many relays. Even if they are connected to 10+ relays, it is likely that their notes are only accepted by one or two relays. What are the best 5 relays to be connected to as a new user?

3) Is there a reason that I cannot see my own posts in my primal (desktop) feed? A few days ago, I could see my own posts in my feed, but that seems to have disappeared. I assumed this had to do with relays, and this started my initial investigation.

4) What can be the reason that in primal I see 5 reactions on my earlier post, but in Coracle I see an extra reply by someone? Can this be relay - related?

A long rambling, I know, but I try to figure out how all these parts work together. Because I want to build on Nostr, without users having to understand anything about the underlying plumbing. For that to succeed, I will need to understand it myself 😉 )

Mental note: get my wallet filled up, so I can start zapping the helpful community.


Seems this would only facilitate tax evasion if they are planning wealth and unrealized gains taxes, which we know they are in the US at least.


Nice


NEW TUTORIAL:
Mining Bitcoin at home with the Braiins Mini Miner. Mine directly to your lightning wallet or roll the dice and go solo.

https://youtu.be/QXonFfguymw?si=JDzvxQ3TuVNWOe3Y


#nostr #bitcoin
Coming soon to all countries. https://image.nostr.build/a2e36961ff09fc1c288d30e22898f329c1a1785972259ae9c7d3363c1a5c39ab.jpg


Activate CTV


I suppose it depends on how prepared you are for the post-collapse conditions. As for myself I’m nowhere near prepared for bullets being physical currency and having to navigate a gang/militia checkpoint every 5 miles of travel. Need more time.


Bitcoin is speech. https://image.nostr.build/134da347b15e9cd4adbc3de774cf34eaac4f76eb7383b187bd8189e036377d8d.jpg
https://nydig.com/research/bitcoins-protection-under-the-first-amendment


Me when the feature I’m looking for is in the “Advanced” tab
https://m.primal.net/LCMk.jpg


Freedom is not possible without privacy.


Argentina is moving up my bucket list of places to visit. Quotes from Milei’s speech at UN today.

“The UN has become a multi-tentacled Leviathan that seeks to decide how each nation should live."

"We reject the 'Pact for the Future'—it is nothing but a socialist blueprint for control."

"Freedom is the only path forward for nations; we must resist any system that curtails it."

"Socialism designs a world it can't achieve, and when it fails, it represses the people."

"Argentina will lead an agenda of freedom, not submission to globalism."

"We must empower individuals, not centralize power in bureaucratic institutions."

"Freedom, free markets, and individual rights are the pillars of a prosperous society."

"We reject the collectivist agendas that destroy wealth and enslave nations."

"Austerity and economic discipline are the only roads to true independence."

"Long live freedom!"


#Nostr is weird but comfortable..
https://i.nostr.build/chAFOtygDX9ZlYtC.jpg
#growNostr #weirdstr


New steps achieved today!

 Robosats' federation is sending now notes to clearnet relays, you can now find orders in:

- wss://freelay.sovbit.host
- wss://nostrvista.aaroniumii.com
- wss://nostr.satstralia.com

Furthermore, with the magic of Negentropy,  nostr:npub1m0str0d7z2ww8rdh20t2n9lx520xjwhaq24p68umqp06wwrwtsnqen40un orders found on these relays are being also synchronized to the federation relays, just by using this same action.

That means that now you can find MostroP2P and Robosats orders in a single place 😀 And should be fairly easy for both apps to displays other's orders on their clients!

Thanks  nostr:npub1gnwpctdec0aa00hfy4lvadftu08ccs9677mr73h9ddv2zvw8fu9smmerrq and  nostr:npub1wdsu4yfj6s5vkcktfx2l7y9tvprfsmwp55e2gj5xp266gff0eeks9cjda5 for offering their relays!

https://m.primal.net/KzDS.png


#bitcoin #btc

https://image.nostr.build/62fff4026927c174e9b33ed911c714a42ccd0f5ea7e6a0ac88ff13982db2587f.jpg


I see a bunch of calculators. What year is it,1992?