#WasabiWallet is going to remove its dependency on a central server. There will be two independent components:

* Wallet API, the one that provides compact filters for wallet synchronization, and
* WabiSabi API for coordinating coinjoins.

Privacy warriors can run one or both. On the client side, In the settings page, users will be able to select the Wallet service provider and the Coinjoin service provider. Other services such as transaction fee rate provider and exchange rate providers are configurable too.

https://image.nostr.build/11389e9f7678cd3be3e78d7f9576351f63f21803549b777244841f0d08c08d22.jpg


There are currently **five** Wasabi coordinators:

```bash
echo '["REQ", "coordinators", {"kinds":[15750]} ]' \
    | websocat -n wss://relay.primal.net \
    | jq 'select(.[2].tags[] | .[0] == "network" and .[1] == "mainnet") | {content: .[2].content, endpoint: (.[2].tags[] | select(.[0] == "endpoint") | .[1])}'
```

https://image.nostr.build/365fdc5a7db36548c071ea100017a77661ab8d40c1ea4ec02b376bebf4d84653.jpg


Today it's a given that permission is required.  https://image.nostr.build/de1a3acbe3e2133cbbc42971830631afac151290dce88d6ef60aefe7ab50b619.jpg


I suddenly find myself much more interested in coinjoin protocols. funny how being attacked tends to do that. fucking with bitcoiners is not going to work out well for them.


Announcing: Harbor, an ecash desktop wallet for better bitcoin privacy.

https://blog.mutinywallet.com/harbor/

Privacy for the common person is a value worth fighting for. When we see a lack of freedom tools, we must build them into existence. They don't appear on their own.

Much has been said about privacy at the Bitcoin protocol level. For now, we build it on higher layers where we can be more nimble.

Ecash is a tool available today that combines with Bitcoin to bring new levels of common privacy. Cashu and Fedimint are two existing implementations we're interested in.

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

Harbor Privacy: All communication runs over Tor. Mutiny is not in the middle of any connections or transactions. Funds in the wallet get a Privacy Score to show how the mints provide privacy over time. More to come on this in the future.

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

Harbor Multi-mint: Instead of relying on a single mint with your funds, spread the risk over dozens or more. Harbor manages this for you, showing you a single balance while connecting with mints for you. A mint can go offline with minimal impact on you.

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

Harbor Automation: Running as a desktop app unlocks ability to do long running processes in the background. Move money in and out of mints on your preferred schedule to maximize your desired level of privacy. Harbor makes suggestions, but you are in control.

Move money in and out of Harbor using Lightning or on-chain. We love Bitcoin, and we love privacy. We hope Harbor gives everyday people more privacy and peace of mind.


New Wasabi Wallet release v2.0.8

https://github.com/WalletWasabi/WalletWasabi/releases/tag/v2.0.8

📌 Exclude UTXOs from autocoinjoin
🌎 Coordinator selection in GUI
❄ Tor bridges
💥 Tails & Whonix OS support
💾 Install Linux udev rules for hardware wallets


#GrapheneOS version 2024053100 released. Duress Password is finally here.

- add support for setting a duress password and PIN for quickly wiping all hardware keystore keys including keys used as part of deriving the key encryption keys for disk encryption to make all OS data unrecoverable followed by wiping eSIMs and then shutting down

- disable unused adoptable storage support since it would complicate duress password support (support can be added if we ever support a device able to use it)

- increase default max password length to 128 to improve support for strong diceware passphrases, which will become more practical for people who don't want biometric-only secondary unlock with our upcoming 2-factor fingerprint unlock feature

- disable camera lockscreen shortcut functionality when camera access while locked is disabled to avoid the possibility of misconfiguration by adding the camera lockscreen shortcut and then forgetting to remove it when disabling camera access

- kernel (5.15): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision including update to 5.15.153

- kernel (6.1): update to latest GKI LTS branch revision

- Vanadium: update to version 125.0.6422.147.0

- GmsCompatConfig: update to version 115

-make SystemUI tests compatible with GrapheneOS changes

https://grapheneos.org/releases#2024053100


#GrapheneOS duress password in action. This is on a sacrificial Pixel 6a. I did it a few times, and let me tell you, DO NOT screw around with this. You get no second chance. It's gone. Instantly. And it's beautiful.

https://v.nostr.build/Gel7e.mp4

nostr:npub1c9d95evcdeatgy6dacats5j5mfw96jcyu79579kg9qm3jtf42xzs07sqfm nostr:npub16r0tl8a39hhcrapa03559xahsjqj4s0y6t2n5gpdk64v06jtgekqdkz5pl


Have no concept of time. Carry a sack of wampum shells. Leave your buffalo blow horn at home. Head out into the land like this once a week and enjoy life without any analog bullshit. Thank me later.


Signal strongly opposes the newest #ChatControl proposal in Europe.

Let there be no doubt: we will leave the EU market rather than undermine our privacy guarantees.

This proposal--if passed and enforced against us--would require us to make this choice.

It's surveillance wine in safety bottles.

See more: https://www.patrick-breyer.de/en/majority-for-chat-control-possible-users-who-refuse-scanning-to-be-prevented-from-sharing-photos-and-links/ nostr:npub1s7dmt40rue0awwcq58xm5jl3ahpmyw9kvq2a5y2nmpumch70lnmq064chv


The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race.


Interesting thread on faraday pouch testing to completely hide your phone from cell towers, which can triangulate you even when your phone is off:

https://x.com/mattblaze/status/1459317933566578690


The refusal of advisors to adapt advice about the 60/40 portfolio feels more and more like a social injustice.


Don't worry, it's going to get worse.


When I criticize Biden, NPCs assume I’m pro-Trump.

When I criticize Trump, NPCs assume I’m pro-Biden.

The NPC mind cannot fathom that someone can be critical of *both* parties.

There is no red.
There is no blue.
There is the State.
And there is you.


I'm not trying to make you guys wrap yourself in tinfoil— almost nobody needs to be as paranoid as I am, and even I am tremendously lazy about opsec these days. The key is *awareness*: to simply be cognizant of what kind of records you're generating as you go about your life, so you can make informed, reasoned judgments about how much of it you can leave hanging out, and what parts of it you'd rather pay an effort-tax to shield from appearing in somebody's (or everybody's) database.


If you take your phone between even just your home and work —doxxed locations— it is trivial to associate it with your true-name identity even if all of the hardware and services are perfectly anonymous. Even journalists have managed these kind of investigations. "Anonymized" location data is unfortunely not anonymous — it *can never* be anonymous. And yet it is sold like any other product.

Your phone's movements through physical space are unique. Even if you live in a building of 400 people, the movements of 399 of them are not going to match the tower records of your phone's movements. Even if you work in the same office. People's geographic movements are unique—and identifying.


GrapheneOS is good if you've got to carry one. The point is never to forget that if you're carrying a phone, you're still being tracked, even if you're limiting the damage from app-based threats. It is baked into the design oftheinfrastructure: if you can see the network, the network can see you. And it takes notes.


Parenting.


Your phone could be made of magic, but it's still gonna leave a record of your movements with the cellular towers.


People really don't realize how utterly dependent modern surveillance is on the idea that everybody is carrying a phone — which is always tracked. Their car has a cellular modem in it — which is always tracked. 99% of investigation is one guy and a search box. If you're not low-hanging fruit, you aren't gonna merit the Eye of Sauron of manual, well-resourced, focused team attention—and if you did, you probably planned ahead for it, right? Because it's not a mystery what would get you on Santa's Naughty List.

Anyway, the point is that even in a big city, the phoneless guy in a "covid" mask is going to be invisible to anything less than that exhaustive manual investigation — at least for a few more years. That may go away once they start networking all the cameras and having AI start trying to match up clothing sets moving from camera to camera, butthat capability is hard to hide, so it'll be in the news. And it won't work that well in places with less camera density and, perhaps, for people who wear the most-common outfits (the visual equivalent of a "shared fingerprint").

Remember: Phones are useful, but dangerous. And the people who will still wear covid masks to the beach are helping to normalize facial obscurity—regardless of their intention. Don't be mean to them. Encourage them to wear them everywhere. For passport photos. In police booking photos. At the customs desk. Family portraits! The sky is the limit—let them push the boundaries so that you don't have to.

nostr:note1dufu3sutqcu4er2pj9k7zmxdf7k23qxn3eskwdr8tp3ffvg7g9qqsv4lrc


It seems like only yesterday that #Nostr started. Was surprised to learn that we’re already over 1,600,000 users.  Thanks to all people here that make this place special and all of the developers creating ever improving user experiences and utility.


Let's normalize Tor integration on Nostr.


Oh, how low reddit has fallen. https://image.nostr.build/622df7890f8ef479e121d4a67102ac6ccfa014e3ec31564a59f077f203d71691.jpg


The Congressional Budget Office expects about $20 trillion in net new federal bonds to be issued over the next ten years (cumulative deficits). This assumes that 1) interest rates will be lower than now and that also 2) there will be no recessions during that time. If either of those scenario are untrue, bond issuance is likely to be higher than that.

In comparison, at current production rates and prices, about $2.5 trillion worth of new refined gold is expected to be mined over the next ten years. Production can go up a bit, but gold production changes are generally pretty slow within a given decade, especially with current capex. However, price could change a lot depending on how much capital wants to flow in/out.

Finally, at current prices, about $70 billion of new bitcoin will be mined over the next ten years. The production rate cannot materially change due to the difficulty adjustment, but of course price can change a lot depending on how much capital wants to flow in/out.

Anyway, my April newsletter is out and touches on this concept: https://www.lynalden.com/april-2024-newsletter/


global search is critical

nostr:note1ph0l0mp820s028f75phfxpc5ncdxwtcn4s6fusss6t6m8uk4g8esr4pvlf


i will never abandon itshappening.gif


Happy Halvening to those who celebrate.


And sisters!


Read just the first chapter of John Stuart Mill's "On Liberty" (free via Project Gutenberg etc) and tell me that he didn't have his finger precisely on the pulse — in the 1850s — of the root cause of the authoritarian war for majoritarian supremacy that we're witnessing today. Censorship, the compelled worship of an ever-shifting orthodoxy, the construction and desecration of idols before the temple of consensus— it's all the same thing, arising from the same source, and awaiting a similar solution. In times of trouble, we should look more to our history.

Read your Mill, brothers.


rights aren’t given, they’re taken.

bitcoin and nostr help you take and defend them, peacefully.


Relay operator using #cloudflare proxy, please do this to let people connect to your relay over #Tor.

Go to your site settings
Click in "security" -> "WAF" -> "Create Rule"

Fill the fields like this:

Field: Country
Operator: equals
Value: Tor

Action: Skip

Scroll a little and click in "more components to skip" and select "Security level".


Thirty-pound brain on you, king. Thanks for helping us all!


Yup that will fix it. You could check the WAF logs and it'd show previously Tor users were getting challenged. As it's a websocket connection this would've been a "silent" challenge as they never would have been able to see the challenge and it'd amount to be blocked entirely lol. Cloudflare really should have some better documentation around this.


I'm suddenly getting traffic from damus now. Thank you both! Other relay operators should take a look at this:

nostr:nevent1qqszpcp9zv6lary5r7d5qfr2t6dqn8sfcv2qk5ymzukqmc75qlxewlspzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsygpjuxp8vd29p6ancknaztql3eajk52y8xkppfn7au7elkw9c68zg5psgqqqqqqs8tq5fq


That telephone number connects you to a dialer that dials a cisco directory. Its a useless deadend.
Lookup your senator here and give them a piece of your mind.
https://www.senate.gov/senators/senators-contact.htm


I just added this to the damus relay, let me known if you connect via tor now! nostr:note1ncyzyxpdysm2sw57wantxzmsceqftp42rzseky53jfslwyg2a9dq3f8ta0


Thank you.


Thank you. Fwiw I hate cloudflare too. But I get it.


Looks like I was able to get this working again, sort of. It says I'm connected to 9-11 relays, but only shows that I have 100 followers (and even Jack only about 40, so it has to be a data gap), and very few notes on timelines (with obvious gaps even for hugely active accounts). Relay.damus.io never seems to pass me any data (0kb both up and down) to me, which j assume is due to my connection coming via Tor, but honestly I don't know. I'm connecting using Amethyst, if anybody sees this and has any ideas—what's the best, biggest relay for Tor users right now?

Secondly, and most importantly for anyone who sees this note, please make some noise to try and stop the passage of RISAA (the FISA 702 reauthorization) that's about to hit law as soon as this Friday. Please read about it and push it out on all of your socials, if you agree it's a problem. It's going to be hard to stop this thing, even with all hands.

Whoever sees this, thank you for hearing me. https://image.nostr.build/b5731965f417b631e9ea74c27ce4d5f9bb91f9e2a96fefb1547146266ab89fb5.jpg


Pro/Con of “Privacy” Phone Numbers/Services

JMP.chat
Type: Number
Pro: No KYC VoIP to XMPP (or Matrix) for anonymous Bitcoin, so you're using an open source client
Con: Only US and Canada numbers.  They're just reselling Twillio VoIP, which means that not only are you just paying more just for anonymity, but many services recognize these as Twillio VoIP numbers and will block you.
Solutions: There exists the possibility of buying a real world physical SIM and then transferring over service to JMP VoIP.  But you’re better off using 1 time burner services for most account registry.

Hushed
Type: Number
Pro: No KYC VoIP for Bitcoin, similar to JMP.chat
Con: Uses their proprietary client which isn’t private through the Google Play store.  I’d avoid Hushed.

Silent Link
Type: Number + Service
Pro: No KYC Crypto SIM card that separates billing and identity from the literal cell tower carrier
Con: Uses eSIM which requires Graphene’s Google Push service sandboxed.  No outgoing calls.

Calyx Institute Hotspots
Type: Service
Pro: No KYC WiFi hotspot for Crypto
Con: It’s just reselling T-mobile service, so if you use this in your home and your home is KYC, then T-mobile will likely figure out that it’s you since celltowers see geolocation.
Solutions: You can avoid this by putting the hotspot in a faraday bag, and only using it outside your home.

MySudo
Type: Number
Pro: Multiple burner VoIP lines
Con: Requires Google Play store JUST to PAY for it, but then can be used on a degoogled phone once you add credit.
Solutions: This can be sandboxed or put on a separate old device and you can use bitrefill to buy the credits with cryptocurrency

SMS.usmobilenumbers.com
Type: Number
Pro: Quick easy cheap burner anonymous SMS verification for cryptocurrency.  It’s real SIMs and not VoIP.
Con: US only.  They resell the number for OTHER services, which MAY trigger anti-fraud for SOME services including Zelle, eBay, PayPal, LinkedIn, and others.  So you risk a ban on accounts.
Solutions: Avoid putting money in any account for a few days to see.  Use a residential proxy IP instead of a datacenter VPN, especially for eBay.

VirtualSim.net
Type: Number
Pro: Great for abusing foreign numbers in poor countries such as Cambodia or Ukraine for Signal or Telegram.  Quick easy cheap burner anonymous SMS verification and/or longer term monthly numbers for cryptocurrency.  It’s real SIMs and not VoIP.  Their customer support is excellent and we highly recommend them for Telegram verifications.
Con: They may loose access to the burner number after a period of time (like a year) where you can’t renew and someone else COULD potentially verify the number.

Crypton.sh
Type: Number
Pro: Huge amount of countries for real SMS anonymous crypto.  Get sought after Western European #s here that normally have strict KYC rules on physical SIMs
Con: Overpriced setup fee for 1 time SMS verification, but if you actually live in (or desire) that country it’s okay.  There’s no real purpose in all their “at rest encryption” advertising, because SMS is unencrypted transport.

Follow us on Nostr for more!  Repost this if you want us to keep doing them.


Here is this for you as of 2022
https://i.nostr.build/oGXW.jpg


It was a long time ago, but when I lived in JP, the McD's were always top shelf compared to the standard suburban ones back home. And they had a local specialty — Shaka Shaka Chicken — that was great


Bruh you gotta ask for napkins now


It looks handsome on the shelf.


Wouldn’t be surprised. Other cost saving measures I’ve seen at all our local McDonald’s:
- cash registers not manned and ordering kiosks are the preferred way to order now
- no more drink machines in dining area, so you have to ask for refills at the counter (which is sparsely staff due to the ordering kiosks)
- no condiments or napkins available in dining area, so you have to ask for them at the counter.


Oh man, that's insightful. I overlooked entirely the possibility that they could keep a patty the same size and weight, but change the gruelpaste/additive/filler ratios on anything not advertising-locked as "100% real beef" or whatever. Hell, even the definition of "beef" these days may have loopholes.


Impeachable offense.


Music saves the soul. Pulled me out of holes moretimes than I care to remember.


OK, so you guys showed me McDonald's jacked prices at least 130% on the core budget item: the mcchicken. Mentally recalculating McDs as "literally more than twice as expensive is a doozy, sure but what I really wanna know: did they do any shrinkflation on top of that to really wring out the margin? Smaller patties, cups, fries, cheese or something? Or was it all just pure price action?


130% inflation on the mcchicken. Fortunately, of course, I'm sure the all-wages index is up at least 130%. Average schoolteacher is probably pulling down $150k post tax, right? It's just a banana, Michael.


That better not be Wonder bread


The Year is 2023. Micky D issues a harder currency than Uncle Sam. A young woman goes about her day without taking notice. Within the locket she wears, the soul of her Austrian grandmother cries out in warning.


 2001:

https://image.nostr.build/6fb21dab5431dd6e47d9ad30c6ffcd27f66ab04359fbb8d602e7242799abbba7.jpg


Dollar menu isn’t completely gone but the options aren’t pretty 😅 Took a road trip with my family and a quick stop at McDonald’s was over $30 for just me, my wife, and our 2 small kids. Blew my mind.


The replies here are crazy. Mom, Pop, and two kids getting hit by McDonald's for $30. You used to be able to get McChickens and Double Cheeseburgers off the dollar menu. I remember it being a lifeline for broke teens. We need a burgers-per-labor-hour inflation metric.

nostr:nevent1qqs9ppdxaf5k86zahw09n4wlrzckmakgqzxzwemfqwc25y6xp8zdxtcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet5qgs03ekxgdp0rczjfqrrpcn7zqtdec6lcwnpfesyxnl0f239qvege2grqsqqqqqp2ay7w2


bro $8 for cereal? i've been gone a long time. next you'll be telling me they got rid of the dollar menu


Interesting. Maybe even have the ability to time lock the post. Say, post anonymously for 24 hours to allow for neutral discourse, and reveal after a certain time lock.


Wrong.


It just occurred to me, due to a nostr bug, that it might actually be pretty cool to have social media hide *who authored* the posts on your TL to force a kind of double-blind perspective. You'd know the post or reply is (or probably is) from one of the people you follow, but you wouldn't be so quick to agree (and perhaps might even be more willing to disagree) if you aren't just smashing the heart button as a reflex because you like the guy. It might make discussions more communal and disagreements less personal if you knew that you're still talking to someone you generally like and respect, but you don't know whether it's "that one guy on the internet" or, like, your actual Mom.

(Nostr, due to ramshackle Tor support, often displays notes from people without correctly fetching their profiles for me, so I find myself liking or replying or following people without having any idea as to their nym or avatar)


I don't have a workaround.

I think nostr:npub1sn0wdenkukak0d9dfczzeacvhkrgz92ak56egt7vdgzn8pv2wfqqhrjdv9 has experienced similar issues with his client (iris/daisy/?).  A relay doesn't need explicit support for tor, but it mustn't block tor exit nodes.  I suppose some relays are run at ISPs which block tor exit nodes by policy.  It would be good to determine which relays are like that.

Tor will be slower because the service of onion routing isn't free, and network traffic is the slowest part of modern computing.


Bringing this over here because it's 🔥
nostr:npub1sn0wdenkukak0d9dfczzeacvhkrgz92ak56egt7vdgzn8pv2wfqqhrjdv9

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


A gave a talk at the New Orleans Investment Conference the other day. At 50 years and counting, it is the longest continually-running investment conference in the country, and possibly the world.

It is diminished from its heyday due to broader competition and online investment media, but it has a certain air to it. Ayn Rand, Ron Paul, Margaret Thatcher, Alan Greenspan, Milton Friedman, Gerald Ford, and Steve Forbes have spoken at it, among many others. It is mostly a boomer/gold/resource/conservative/libertarian conference, and gets the best from that crowd, but otherwise is not huge. The guy who has run it for decades took it over long ago from the original founder, and he wants to freshen it up and modernize it a bit and throw some hand grenades into his own conference, so he invited me to talk. He is a gold guy, a resource guy, an old-school conservative, and he likes bitcoin and wishes he bought it earlier. He's open-minded, objective, and growth-oriented.

My talk was "Broken Money, Broken World".

-The first theme was that there are 160+ siloed fiat currencies. I used Egypt as my main example, and held up a physical Egyptian pound and said this is basically a national casino chip; it has very low salability outside of Egypt, similar to how a casino chip has very low salability outside of the casino. The 105 million people who live there are trapped in a fiat matrix of 20% annual money supply growth, like a treadmill that they have to keep up with in terms of their wages, price increases, rent increases, and so forth to avoid being diluted, and most can't keep up with that treadmill. And there are dozens of countries like this. I held up a Norwegian krone and said even though this is from a wealthy country, it is still a casino chip because what can I possibly do with it in New Orleans? It's too small and unsalable. This is outdated tech.

-The second theme brought it back to the US. I spoke about how the past four decades had two main trends: rising public debt/GDP and falling interest rates (see included pics below). Developing market currencies suffer while those of us in the US feel that things are stable. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, people rightly freaked out about the debt and deficit. The famous NYC debt clock went up in 1989. Ross Perot ran the most successful independent presidential campaign in the early 1990s on the debt and deficit. That was when interest expense as a % of GDP was at its peak. But what they didn't or couldn't predict, was that the next 30 years would be disinflationary. China opened up to the world. The Soviet Union fell. Western capital was united with Eastern labor and resources. China became a manufacturing hub, which was disinflationary. Russia supplied cheap energy to the German industrial base, which was disinflationary. Interest rates fell structurally, allowing more debt accumulation, and for prices to increase far more slowly than money supply growth. But then we hit zero interest rates, and then we monetized fiscal spending. We're in a new world now; debts and deficits matter again. Those guys from the late 1980s and early 1990s were right but early, and now we are facing some of those consequences. Fiat currencies including the dollar have structural instability.

-The third theme was to bring up again that there are 160+ casino fiat currencies in the world... and that every one of their gates are fucking down. Pre-Bitcoin, the only way to get money in or out of a country was 1) physical ports of entry (typically limited to $10k USD or so worth of cash and gold) or 2) bank wire transfers (highly controlled by local governments). Countries could maintain their little currency bubbles. But Bitcoin and then stablecoins blew that open. You can bring a billion dollars worth of bitcoin through an airport by remembering 12 words, or writing them down and tucking them away in your baggage, or briefly putting them in an encrypted file in the cloud. Infinite value density. Same for stablecoins- tokenized dollars or whatever the market wants in terms of global fiat currency and assets. I can pay a graphic designer in Nigeria with a QR code over a video call or email or DM in bitcoin or stablecoins or whatever she wants. All of this bypasses their currency bubble and goes around their banking system, unless their country wants to be North Korea and cut itself off or get shut off externally from the internet. And I said the investment implications and macro implications of this are massive; it's a new world that, over the long arc of time, breaks all the fiat bubbles.

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


The curry.


Nostr.


I think inertia is leading us toward a quantified state, in which the costs of tracking and categorizing objects — primarily people, phones, cars, and money — as they move from place to place becomes so low that most institutions are doing it by reflex, without either considering or caring for consequences. Eventually, somebody is going to exploit the gap in information (between what is available to ordinary people, and what is available  to organizations) in a way that causes enormous, historic harm, as happened in WWII when a particular state realized that IBM had compiled a database that was perfect for populating a list of names of those who would soon be marched off to camps. And that was just census data. Now they know what you read, where you go, who you're with, and how you'll vote.

The unfortunate reality of contemporary political thought is that consequences do not exist until they are felt. Rare is the chicken that fears the farmer. That means we've got two options: we either wait for the pain, or we stop waiting for political consensus.

nostr:nevent1qqsq94302eeh5r82vytl2r3n0hdhtmeg3ehxxcavk767j5xlqufmd2spzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgq3qpvgcusxk7006hvtlyx555erhq8c5pk9svw57snlxujpkgnkup89sxpqqqqqqz27cnxw


Nice try, FBI.


Little-known fact: I don't drink! Just not my thing.


When nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m  asked nostr:npub1sn0wdenkukak0d9dfczzeacvhkrgz92ak56egt7vdgzn8pv2wfqqhrjdv9 about ways the public can help bring him home, Snowden wasn't optimistic about his chances but used the opportunity to speak about the importance of #freeassange.
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1070445764045705307/1169547422440095744/trim_632CCEAA-FBC8-41B5-AFB7-EC8F127D01C8.mov?ex=6555ccea&is=654357ea&hm=d6a5ce1d9ca3600c33b30326fb97bc3e523eb588751367dfe45b6d6b30b7ec64&


TL;DR: Start resisting.


"Stop resisting, Stop resisting!" is one of the most instantly recognizable phrases of the new American century. When you read the words, you can probably still hear them shouted in your head, the echoing memory of a generational trauma, the indelible recollection of the moment that the citizen became subordinate to the state.


FinCEN’s proposal to outlaw all crypto privacy is a huge overreach. They apply a section of the Patriot Act on a “class of transactions” in a new precedent. Doesn’t matter if it’s custodial or noncustodial- merely using certain type of code can be an illegal act.

People are caught by the potential spot ETF, meanwhile this is proposed. Now they fight you.

https://www.nobsbitcoin.com/fincen-wants-to-outlaw-certain-bitcoin-on-chain-transactions/


Oh, but I have.


Compliance is a dirty word.


#privacy

https://image.nostr.build/1077f1fcd662f52a919b4cba3c46c7a7711fa0b00259bd54d92d01202eb8f9c8.jpg


Starting to see some nice lifestyle photos on nostr. Gentlest touch of an Instagram vibe, but less commercial. Positive.


Julian Assange's wife & brother are now on Nostr. #freejulian

Stella: nostr:npub1xw7h0efeg5s8gla2uyu55jh4lfrlgppcjemrwkmdc7lgvhkcz3fqpvumsa

Gabriel: nostr:npub1dcgppk89h9flnffrznvhhj2vt9a0ym23ht5gk07l9j8m6l5k95qsze06js

Give them a warm welcome as they navigate our growing protocol 💜


Angry about Armenia. Angry about a lot of things. So many feelings, so little to say.


People still really haven't appreciated how bad the car thing is. Or the phone thing. They think they do, but they don't. The full range of capabilities has yet to be used routinely — companies and states are both trying to keep it beneath the waterline. The public is intended to be unsure what it is that they're looking at, and why it matters. It is the news report playing in the background of a disaster movie. It is the half-glimpsed monster from a horror reel — implied, but never fully shown.

History is still going to look back at this period with enormous bewilderment that we did not do more to stop what is coming. The signs were there.

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I saw this post.


really cool that in less than a year, nostr has become the main place i go to when i’m on my phone.

i used to post on instagram & twitter frequently, but i find it much more fulfilling to post pictures/notes on nostr. it’s not the zaps, or the clients doing, but rather the serene & solace feeling nostr encapsulates.

after being raised by the internet in its later years, i finally get the chance to breath and be able to experience what the internet felt like in the beginning. no utter dread. no engagement farming, & manipulation advertisement tactics.

this is how it was supposed to be.


I'm never going to take a "recovered alien body" photo seriously if it looks humanoid. We flatter ourselves thinking they'd look like us. You want my attention, you need to show me a cuttlefish adapted for space. It better not be cute, either. It needs that "long-distance trucker estranged from his family" energy. I need to feel so sorry looking at that poor bastard that I get jet lag by proxy.


Sure! I'll get in touch.

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yeah the fudge-rounds line was dumb but my man is singing his heart out


As to your point out being divided and isolated, I think it's a universal problem now, not just Japan. Most human interactions today seem to be mediated by a pane of glass. When I lived in Japan, I remembered that on the train to Tachikawa, it felt like every face was looking down towards a phone. But it's the same in Moscow. It's the same everywhere.

Even in restaurants, you witness couples that aren't looking at each other — they're both looking at different apps. Sharing distance.


Ghost in the Shell also predicted the invention of "sustainable war" as an economic model, though, so it's not exactly an optimistic vision. I preferred Stand Alone Complex.


“Censorship is telling a man he can't have a steak just because a baby can't chew it.” - Mark Twain


"The power to tax is the power to destroy."

Ten seconds later: "So anyway, here's a federal income tax."

nostr:nevent1qqsgxsjf5ap36nsye4dj452dtx4p2m77qmkrn7yv7j8cdy3du6eg0jspp4mhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mqzyr8vnqythvqte8p74dxz7glfgs99afm4yqdktgvyv278wzqw883nvqcyqqqqqqgczsq6t


Pretty based class description for a state school

https://image.nostr.build/705c935216ce146b3a60eb0872b09c48bcd9539b8aa6e1f3d20414b401c702f4.jpg


“The answer is found in the fact that there are two types of laws: There are just laws and there are unjust laws. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws.”

- MLK Jr.


I know everybody is dunking on the random governor who decided that she could just wave her hand and unilaterally suspend any right she dislikes simply by hissing the word "emergency," but the problem is that she's only wrong if another political force — the courts, politics, disobedience, or Locke's old Appeal to Heaven — proves her wrong. Enforcing the limits of official power isn't some American $currentYear problem, it's a recurring issue throughout history.

The question is why we're suddenly seeing the authoritarian instinct activating so much more openly — and frequently. In prior decades, they had to be cute in how they went about it, often requiring laws and lies. Now they're remarkably comfortable simply stating "because of the 'emergency,' you can no longer {travel | donate | engage in commerce | read | communicate | carry}," and that's the whole of it.

The next question is what you're going to do about it.


The work continues until all the payments are Bitcoin payments. Our Point of Sale in Riga during https://baltichoneybadger.com ensured VISA and other credit card companies had no cut.

https://video.nostr.build/dde7a4b165d861c7d63e378a923caa0ca74ea7c882ec6b3e08430275a6827a2a.mp4


This really is the worst. Instagram started the trend with their hideous "log in or else" flow. Then Twitter and reddit went to insanely privacy-hostile API changes instead of simply requiring a proof of work or anon payment. Even some major nostr relays seem to be doing Tor blocking now (damus? Not sure, but I get a ton of errors connecting to certain relays via Tor.)

Platforms have become so fearful of bots/spam/scraping (or rather pretend to be fearful, so as to justify blatantly commercial and anti-social decision-making) that they've totally destroyed the open access model that a functioning freenet depends on.

This is the main reason I want to see "unowned" protocols succeed. Jack has it right: we're at a turning point.

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Hadn't heard of this! Thanks for sharing.


I don't care what's official. I care if I can spend it. It has been pretty well recognized as an asset basically everywhere, but there is enormous resistance to recognizing it as currency — driven chiefly by banks and their states.


Does need to be better. And there are still a lot of privacy problems even with noncustodial BTC.


orange coin good


Same problem with privacy: contrary to clichés, most people do in fact care, and care deeply; but they care late — only once the costs become clear. When they lose a job, when the cousin gets arrested, when the neighbor disappears.


I will be glad to see the legacy VISA/MC card system go. They've indoctrinated multiple generations into thinking it's normal to have somebody else decide whether or not you can spend your money — and then charge you for the privilege.


The fact that Bitcoin isn't yet accepted everywheree and for everything really underlines for me how few people have actually used Lightning. Whenever I show somebody how it works, there's always that "wow" moment. But why was it a surprise?

The problem is that normal people still understand BTC from the one half-remembered opinion piece they read in 2017, and are operating under the belief that transactions still take an hour to settle, rather than being instantaneous and irreversible — money transmission without the Paypal Problem. The public mind needs a cache refresh.


As a person living in a heavily sanctioned country, I really feel this.
Oh you want to use docker? Too bad you're from xyz. Oh you want to use gitlab? Too bad (foss my ass) .
You want to learn this skill or read this article? Sorry, information and knowledge isn't allowed for you people.
We live in 403 and 503 errors.


I'm not sure if the world is as fractured as it seems to be. In any case, we're doing our best to build freedom tech for all. 🫡🧡


Last hot take for the night: the live-action version of One Piece has some of the worst lines I've ever heard delivered. The sort dialogue that can cause physical discomfort even to someone watching alone and unwitnessed — just as the perfect crime cannot erase the awareness of guilt. They tried so hard, too. A shame.


Passed 1 million page views on Nostr-Check.com 🤯

https://cdn.nostr.build/i/30cf6ff1d696510a37f397f5b43c6b9aa3e8480980a6ab4c28d33e290efaa4b1.png


I should be clear that I don't see "living in VR" as a desirable alternative for touching grass. I just struggle to see how else people will be able to build trust and organize in a fractured world.


Sometimes I wonder if we're not focused enough on developing meaningful (and free) social spaces in VR. At times it feels like there is a fabric of "permissioning" being lowered over what were nominally public spaces, for previous generations. I worry that one day we will wake in a world where if you don't have the right face, the right politics, the right cash — or more likely, card — there will be no place to go. Access denied.


Hard not to feel disappointed in the media these days. Harder still as you age, having read certain bylines for years; having seen them develop;  having witnessed them decline.


Few more noble acts than alleviating suffering. Well done.


I know everybody's excited about the SEC losing in court, and it is indeed an important victory, but it's worth bearing in mind that Gensler knew he was acting outside the law long before the verdict. The largest institutions care less about what is legal than what they can get away with.

Given how long it takes the courts to rule, it is a reminder that in the context of the government's own misconduct, there are limits to the utility of law.


Every time I return to this app, it has improved.


Some weeks ago I was reading Thoreau's "On the Duty of Civil Disobedience" aloud at bed-time to my son, who of course does not understand it but appreciates the sound of the words all the same, when I discovered that its famous title was in fact not the original! The original title was significantly more radical: "Resistance to Civil Government."

It's quite short, and I would encourage everyone here to read (or re-read) it. It is still tremendously relevant. Re-reading it with the original (un-sanitized) title in mind, it lands even harder.

These days, Thoreau would probably get his door kicked in.

Here's a free link to the Project Gutenberg copy: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/71/71-h/71-h.htm

Share your favorite quotes, after reading.


People are just nicer here.


This is the happy place.


Ok, so we failed to topple Venezuela or Syria, have lost any meaningful control over the festering wounds of Iraq and Libya, witnessed 20 years of relentless, gold-plated coalition conquest in Afghanistan get spanked and sent to bed without supper, and now we're supposed to be lining up for war with China? Do I have that right? Does that sound like a good idea to you? Anyone?


i once had a friend whose dad had that real charlie munger energy. you know what i'm talking about, that bondholder swagger. he stood out, often forgetting to put pants on in front of guests, and would get into shouting matches with birds that would nurture a grudge each time that he lost. he resented the television, which he called the devil box, and yet could not free himself from its gravity. any child in the neighborhood could give you the measure of the man from a hundred paces, little eyes keen for one haunted by the mungie dungies.

it is only now, with the benefit of so many years' distance, that i see how these two men have always shared a common soul, aside from the fact that my friend's father never tried to persuade us to thank china for banning whatever he had read about with his breakfast. and so i do not expect that our sweet charlie, that poor mister munge, may never find it within himself to voice the unspeakable longing he feels toward the technology that so arrests him, but neither will i hold it against him, for sure as the graven marbles of praxiteles, TICK TOCK HERE COMES THE NEXT BLOCK


Dark during day, dark at night. 🤖


That works too, but would need to break posts into threads (and display an editable preview in case they break in a bad place. Would require Twitter API keys for posting, which is ugly. Twitter -> Nostr just seems easier in practical terms.


The are more people when there is more content.


I've been dealing with Bitcoin since pre-2013, and I've gotta say I've never seen it feel as powerful as it does on Nostr. The instant, effectively-free transactions that spring from having so many people on Lightning Addresses is like arriving on a different planet.

Most people's experience with Bitcoin payments -- if they even have it -- is a 30-60 minute wait for mining + two-plus block confirmations, and a fee that made it feel dumb to send less than $20. Most people don't want that. They don't need that. They will never care about that. Some do -- I did -- but it's a permanent minority. This is what makes lightning-fast settlements a big deal.

When normal people and businesses realize that global money transfers can be borderless, instant, free, and only take like two clicks, I think things are going to get very interesting. Still need to cover a lot of road on the privacy problem, but this already feels better than everything naked on-chain.

The hardest problem has always been making it easy for people who don't care about Bitcoin to accept Bitcoin (tender resistance) -- without requiring them to start caring about Bitcoin.

The way you do that is by making it "better than money." We're not there yet for everybody, but for the first time in many years, I caught a glimpse of how it might be possible.


Snowden

Bio: I used to work for the government. Now I work for the public. Author, "Permanent Record": https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250237231/permanentrecord


Done


deleted


Pretty clever hack. Thanks for sharing.


Yeah, it's just a huge PITA right now to spin up a full node over Tor, rather than just share a pubkey (from Electrum or whatever desktop wallet) that the other person's client knows how to permute. Artifact of the invoicing system...