lucash.dev

“…in the last days of the Old Empire, humanity lost its drive. Terran civilization had spread across the stars, but grew stagnant. With few ambitions, most people allowed efficient machines to perform everyday tasks for them. Gradually, humans ceased to think, or dream …or truly live.”
Dune: The Butlerian Jihad

2023-07-12 17:46:34

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That’s unpopular for a reason.
Depending on the timeframe it’s perfectly possible to beat Bitcoin returns.
There is no telling exactly how fast Bitcoin adoption will happen. And a business can become cashflow positive in a short time depending on what it is.
Besides there’s self fulfilment and lifestyle to consider. Work for another 10 years or more on a job that makes you unhappy while accumulating Bitcoin or follow your dreams and create value today for yourself and others? I know what I would choose.
Finally, if your idea is for a *Bitcoin business* there’s a chance you’ll beat Bitcoin returns even through full adoption.

2023-07-12 01:15:00

Some people are setting the arbitrary goal that other people must, by 2030-2050 be completely “carbon neutral” whatever that means.
I think by 2030 the world will be completely de-decarbonized and nobody will care about those “goals”

2023-07-11 02:40:19

During a certain phase in the development of civilization, more than a thousand years ago, the only scalable form of capital accumulation was *slavery*.
Those who didn’t become slave masters often ended up being enslaved themselves. Preserving your freedom and that of your family often was synonymous with destroying the freedom of others and oppressing them.
That was a dark time in History. Yet the collapse of that system is often depicted as a cataclysm and a descent into darkness.
It’s a bit ironic that during the “Dark” Medieval times Europe almost ceased all slavery — and around the time of “Enlightenment” Europeans were once more practicing slavery at a massive scale.
What sort of time are we living now?
Where in the endless turn of the Wheel of Fortune is Mankind right now?
Are we moving up or down?
What fate waits our children — even deeper darkness or the breaking of a new dawn?

2023-06-30 04:04:46

When I was a teenager we where the only people in the neighbourhood who owned a computer — actually the only people to ever use one.
One of my neighbours was afraid of going in the room where we kept the computer — it might wake up and attack her with lasers!
People are reacting to AI the same way today.
And politicians and cronies are ready to capitalize on that.

2023-06-30 04:00:12

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Ask ChatGPT to answer a problem that has two levels of recursion and it might work.
Ask it for something that has 10 levels of recursion and it will either produce nonsense or get stuck in an infinite loop until it exhausts the maximum number of characters
It can be anything simple like write code that writes code that writes hello world.
Once you understand the nature of the limitations, it’s funny how stupid the thing actually is.

2023-06-30 03:51:44

The existential threat isn’t Artificial Intelligence
It’s Natural Stupidity
Ask ChatGPT to write something in reverse character order, or upside down and you’ll see how much “intelligence” that thing actually has.
The problem isn’t that it can’t do that, that would be a huge improvement. It actually produces utter nonsense, like it had a stroke or something.
It can’t abstract anything, only repeat patterns it has seen millions of times.
Yet you can be sure there’ll be people who’ll try to force us to obey those things bc the AI is the “expert”

2023-06-27 19:29:19

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This post makes me feel like Im 90.

2023-06-26 01:40:39

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Malthusianism is nonsense.
Most human production has gains of scale.
Maybe fiat inflation has led to lower long-term investment to secure future consumption.
But that has nothing to do with a Malthusian trap.
A sudden, explosive population growth can result in temporary exhaustion of resources and famines.
What we’re seeing is the opposite.
A sudden collapse in productivity.
Reducing the population would only make things worse.
All you need is to stop preventing people from being productive.

2023-06-13 18:29:07

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Sue them.

2023-06-13 18:20:16

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When did it happen? Mine is working just fine

2023-06-11 20:38:51

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Compression, prediction, classification, are all just facets of the same underlying problem.
And none of that is anything even remotely related to what we usually mean by “intelligence” or what we used to mean by that at least.
Intelligence is about understanding the real world. Not manipulating abstract symbols separated from their essential meaning.
Even if true AI is possible — it would require far more than parsing billions of texts to achieve.
The problem is very similar to the Oracle problem in Blockchain.
If your AI simply assumes certain training set to represent reality — then the actual intelligence is entirely in the selection of that training set.
To be precise we should rename AI as “Augmented Intelligence”.
And the intelligence that is being augmented isn’t the user’s — but that of the people who train and control the algorithm— while the user’s intelligence — their ability to comprehend reality — is in fact being diminished by outsourcing it to external, centrally controlled oracles.

2023-06-10 05:21:18

While I think it might be theoretically possible for extraterrestrial civilizations to send unmanned probes to Earth…
The idea that the US govt would find them and keep it a secret while not a single private person has ever obtained one is just ludicrous.
That doesn’t mean necessarily the whistleblowers are lying.
“Intelligence” agencies have been known to be stupid enough to end up believing their own psyops and falling for a number of hoaxes — like all the psychic BS they spent lots of money investigating.
You want to find someone ready to believe any nonsensical conspiracy theory — just go to a CIA building.
Mk-ultra is a tale about how even a literally mad scientist can get the government to believe utter nonsense and give them money and license to commit all sorts of crimes.
They’re not genius supervillains secretly controlling the world — they’re just government employees, and not necessarily the brightest ones.
And definitely they aren’t the first to “make contact”.
Sorry folks, it seems we’ll have to just deal with the fact that humans are in fact special after all. We’re alone in the universe. All the 8 billion of us.

2023-05-30 21:29:23

Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution
(actually even before that) every major new technological development has been paraded as a threat and proof we need central planning or we’ll all die.
- Factories
- Electricity
- Computers
- Phones
- The Internet
- AI
What else?
It’s always the same discourse since the 19th century. And every time we learn that in fact the more complex a system and the least predictable— the more dangerous it is to try and centrally plan it, and the best to letting
Yet people insist making the same stupid points again and again.

2023-05-30 20:41:59

“Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority alongside other societal-scale risks, such as pandemics and nuclear war,”
Starting to think that this whole evil AI thing is mostly another attempt at justifying globalism based on made up existential threats.
Yes AI can be dangerous— though it’s mostly because humans are dumb than bc machines are intelligent.
The more I hear “existential threat” being thrown around the more I think there actually isn’t any existential threat to mankind.
Not AI. Not viruses. No nuclear war. Not even evil totalitarians.
None of that has any chance of ending human life — much less life in general.
Just like people claiming greater good are usually advocating for something evil — those claiming “existential threats to mankind” are just trying to get away with threatening *you* without sounding evil.

2023-05-16 04:47:10

Long time I haven’t posted here.
Really lost the excitement about Nostr.
I don’t believe it’s good enough for actual censorship resistance in the long term.
On the other hand it seems like everyone is happy with it and think it’s good enough.
So there isn’t a lot of incentive for my research on better (or actual) censorship resistant global broadcast systems.
That means work that people actually want and pay me money for gets priority and I don’t touch much the “pro bono” research.
But I will eventually just compile everything I have so far and publish — even if I don’t have a proper working prototype.
Realized there’s no rush. At this point it would take new major attacks against free speech platforms for people to get interested in alternative protocols — in particular the ones not optimized for sharing memes or sending micro payments.
Meanwhile I work, eat lots of stake, and in general enjoy life before we all die in WW3.

2023-04-26 20:21:32

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Every tech conference I attended in the past couple decades was exactly like that.
Sales pitch after sales pitch, with “parties”, pretty girls pretending to be interested in you, and “free stuff” during the breaks.
That’s why I always tried to avoid them, and haven’t attended any in a while.
I never understood why people like that stuff.
I can party with people who actually like me on my own time with my own money — and not have to listen to endless sales bs.
And I can have productive business meetings with people actually interested in selling real world solutions on company time.
But that’s just the way things are.
Everyone is a scammer.
Even Bitcoiners.

2023-04-26 20:07:51

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Yikes

2023-04-22 20:48:16

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What dip? If it’s guacamole I might get a bit emotional.

2023-04-22 20:45:06

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Pretty sure it will eventually reach 10M usd but I don’t understand your math.
Is it a joke?

2023-04-20 22:00:23

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Good feature

2023-04-19 22:11:44

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Yes

2023-04-17 19:37:06

If it wasn’t bizarre enough that media funded mostly by government are outraged at being labeled “government-funded media” (a simple statement of indisputable fact)
Now Canadian politicians are accusing the opposition of getting help from “American billionaires” to attack CBC.
For those who don’t know — Elon Musk is a Canadian citizen.
His mother was Canadian and he acquires Canadian citizenship as a youth and lived in Canada before deciding to immigrate again to the US for business opportunities.
Anyone who googled it would know.
Trudeau famously once said “a Canadian is a Canadian is a Canadian”
I guess that doesn’t apply to billionaires.

2023-04-05 20:35:04

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It think it will become a near-universal retirement savings account in the next couple decades — before other uses become universal.
It’s the killer app. Everything else is added value.

2023-04-05 20:27:20

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Sorry for your loss.
I’ve had friends and relatives murdered in the past and know how devastating it is.
Not sure what is worse: thinking it was a targeted crime, or that SF is so dangerous these days even very wealthy and security-aware people get randomly murdered.
Hope police can find out what happened, and the perpetrator be brought to justice, so it gives some closure to family and friends

2023-04-05 17:25:26

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Price?
I look forward to exchanging 1 BTC for vast tracts of productive land, castles, planes, jewellery, works of art..
As in a “billionaire’s” entire wealth.
Mere “money” will not be enough.

2023-04-05 16:25:08

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Like I say to people complaining about ageing.
There is an alternative but you ain’t gonna like it.

2023-04-05 04:30:20

AI regulations are orders of magnitude more dangerous than AI.
And it in fact magnifies the main risk of AI — people trusting and delegating decisions to it.

2023-04-03 20:29:54

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I’m afraid of people who are gullible enough to think of AI as gods that can be trusted or even worshiped, and the people who will use that in their favour.
In a world of smart people who knew how to think critically AI wouldn’t be dangerous.
In our actual world it will allow for automated propaganda and gaslighting in a scale we can hardly begin to comprehend.
If you think social media censorship and MSM propaganda is bad, what’s coming is orders of magnitude worse.

2023-04-03 19:54:18

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I’m not your typical “libertarian”. I’m more pragmatic than that.
I think that until we have an example of a working society with zero taxes that can resist an attack by a major super power like the US or China, it’s reasonable to say taxation is necessary.
Mind you people in ancient times also claimed slavery was necessary (and some even that it was good), and part of that justification is that there wasn’t a functioning society that could defend itself that didn’t have slavery.
People tend to rationalize whatever they need to do — and I think it’s unfair to judge people thousands of years ago who *couldn’t* have known better by our own standards (19th century slavery was *very* different and worse).
Perhaps one day our descendants will think the same way about taxes and the people who imposed and supported them. Who knows?
Or maybe we’ll fall into a deeper darkness, and people will invent new horrors worse than 19th century slavery and 20th century labour camps and mass murder combined.
History is full of pain and suffering of all kinds.
Let’s enjoy and protect whatever little peace and prosperity we can find.

2023-04-03 19:36:00

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Most of the popular support for taxation comes from people falling for the ludicrous trick of believing taxes are mostly paid by “them” (which most people believe doesn’t include themselves) for the benefit of “us” (which people are convinced include themselves).
Of course that’s almost never the case.
Taxes are paid by most people to the benefit of few in high positions who then sometimes spend a tiny portion of it buying the support of the population while the rest is simply for the benefit of the powerful and their entourage.
In ancient times people at least didn’t pretend otherwise. Taxes were imposed on those either defeated in battle or who begged for protection.
It was something the strong imposed on the weak — and while many claimed it was justified, nobody pretended it was the other way around.
Taxes are always to benefit the strong — those who are literally strong or have more and bigger guns.
You might make arrangements that incentivize the gun-people to give a little of it back to the general population, but that’s it.
No voting or court can change the nature of things.

2023-04-03 18:41:11

One of the things that pisses me most about taxes is all the talk about “paying the fair share”.
You might argue that taxes are necessary — but there’s nothing fair about taking by force someone’s property and work for the benefit of others.
The “fair share” of taxes for every single person on Earth is **exactly zero**.
I can’t afford to own a home where I live, but if I had never paid any taxes I could be comfortably retired by now.
That’s pretty typical of middle and upper classes in most of the world.
How is that fair exactly?
Anyone who finds legal ways to pay less in taxes is just behaving like a normal human being instead of a mindless zombie.
Being a serf and paying taxes is just yet another sad thing we endure in this vale of tears. I try not to think too much about it.
But pretending it’s a good thing is too much to ask.

2023-03-31 06:25:53

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I came. I saw. I conquered.
Not mine obv

2023-03-31 06:19:06

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Tons of Cantillon effect going on in developing economies as well

2023-03-31 01:09:34

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Weird article. Guy went from skeptics to advocate but in the last few paragraphs states he still believed Nostr will not be decentralized in the long term and will end up being just like today’s web.
So the title might be more correctly be “using nostr for some stuff: from complete skeptic to admitting it’s not completely useless”
BTW I agree with him about long term for Nostr (unless there’s a lot of change). But I disagree with him about the web in general.
Centralized dystopia and wev of trust aren’t the only possibilities.

2023-03-30 21:11:14

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Fuck that. Hope we never go back to that.
I’d rather have awful traffic jams and be packed with hundreds of strangers in trains than go back to that shit.

2023-03-30 21:09:46

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You now the canary is supposed to die right?

2023-03-29 21:47:54

Maybe the future will be a global war between zombies that just do whatever ChatGPT tells them too — and the few remaining actual humans.
We have a good chance of winning bc the AI-zombies will be dumb af.

2023-03-29 21:42:59

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My “über normie” friend was “explaining” to me the other day how AI can’t be manipulated and asking ChatGPT about something is more reliable than googling it — bc top search results might be “fake news” while the AI generated answer will be based on the entire web.
He then justified his claims by pointing out he studied machine learning in college and oversaw machine learning projects as an exec.
A little education can a be a lot more dangerous than no education at all.
I expect this to be the narrative moving forward — AI is scientifically guaranteed to be correct.
Not trusting whatever (regulated) AI says will be called “AI denialism” and considered more dangerous than terrorism.
“Regulating AI” is an attempt at creating a fake god that can’t be questioned— and removing the need for messy non-compliant human thought and communication from the equation.
You think the “I believe in Science” crowd was bad, wait for the “I believe in AI” crowd.
If they get their way it will be a nightmare.

2023-03-25 21:28:28

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A = A

2023-03-24 18:24:45

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Often the scammers themselves seem to believe the scam. That doesn’t make it right either.

2023-03-24 18:23:20

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90% of what passes as “science” is BS.
90% of people who “identify as scientists” are scammers.
The fact that there’s usually a grain of truth in their fantasies or fabrications doesn’t change the fact.

2023-03-24 04:01:29

I don’t understand the obsession with relays that curate content and block lists.
It’s just recreating the exact same problems that Nostr supposedly solves.
Unless you can have moderation that isn’t delegated to anyone else — or that at least can be validated to follow an explicit algorithm without any room for manipulation
Then it’s better to go back to Twitter or Mastodon

2023-03-24 03:51:12

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The “clown world” works by mistaking the signs for the things, the metrics for the results, mistake words for biology, legislation for Law, debt for money.
Mistake the appearance of trust for trustworthiness.
“High trust societies” aren’t “high trust” because people “just happen to trust institutions”.
Forcing people to pretend to trust institutions achieves nothing.
You need the institutions to be trustworthy first — then to earn the trust of people with much effort.
It is precisely by baking skepticism towards institutions into the institutions themselves that you make institutions earn the trust of even the most skeptical citizens.
“You’ll have to trust me or I’ll make you pay ” can only lead to chaos

2023-03-24 03:41:43

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Yes AI might be dangerous — if people decide to trust it.
Yes, misinformation can be a problem — if people are too gullible to believe anything they hear.
The problem isn’t people or machines being allowed freedom to say whatever.
The problem is our absurd clown world based on “mandated trust”
A world where nobody trusts anything would be an immense improvement over the status quo.

2023-03-24 03:37:44

Of course all the usual suspects are now asking for regulation of AI to prevent it from “spreading misinformation”
That’s just more of the same totalitarian censorship mantra.
Let me tell you a secret — you can’t regulate Artificial Intelligence. Just like you can’t regulate gravity or math.
The only thing you can regulate are human beings.
AI is just software. And software is speech.
What they want is to tell you what you can say, what you can code — what you can think.
AI is just one more excuse.

2023-03-23 18:11:44

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E.g. real estate has in fact bailed out the government for decades — by absorbing a huge share of newly printed dollars and making the devaluation of the dollar less apparent. Real estate bails out the government by absorbing inflation and risk.
Admittedly this is the opposite of the usual story. But fiat needs new money to be created non-stop to kick the can further down the road, and real estate buyers are (mostly inadvertently) bailing out the money printers by taking on that debt.
Perhaps the same will happen to crypto.
Newly printed dollars will flow into crypto (not just BTC, sorry but that’s just the way things are, the big battle of coins will come later).
BTC, ETH and others will appreciate at an astounding rate — and not as much of the new money will go into buying groceries or homes.
I believe crypto has in fact become “too big to fail” and regulators are starting to notice it.
They will fight with reality a bit more. But they can’t win.

2023-03-23 18:03:11

I believe at some point in the near future governments will *beg* “crypto” to bail them out.
Yes they will try to force their way. They will tell you to hand over your sats, register them and what not.
But it’s not going to work as well as they *need*.
They will end up **begging**
And some crypto billionaire or fund might well end up de facto owning the government.
And that’s terrifying thing.
But that’s not “crypto’s” — it’s the government that put itself in such position.
In fact one could argue the government has put itself in such position repeatedly— with various groups bailing it out and de facto owning it.

2023-03-23 17:37:43

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So many people believe they will not be affected if they own BTC.
For starters, if the dollar collapses could you even keep your BTC without having to use it to buy essentials?
And would you be actually able to secure it?
And would you survive long enough to enjoy it in peace?
I really hope they can manage a relatively slow decline for USD.
But sooner or later there will be a point of rupture.
And it’s gonna be terrifying for everyone.

2023-03-23 17:21:09

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For receiving fractions of cents it’s all overkill.
If your censored or rug pulled on the amazing 1278 sats you received in total — wow that’s worrying!
Privacy-wise you’re probably making all of it public anyway.
I use WoS for this thing and I don’t give a shit what anyone thinks.

2023-03-22 23:51:32

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Sounds like “no signatures”.
Which I guess is the opposite of what you want.
Or maybe not.

2023-03-22 23:13:01

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It wasn’t exactly targeted at Kraken. It’s a consequent of Silvergate thing.
Not sure if that makes it better or worse.

2023-03-22 18:55:21

The most important lesson Nostr taught me is that you can achieve a lot starting with zero original ideas, and very little capital — if you have someone excellent at “community building” on board. Nostr has now several such people.
I’m not a community builder.
My thing is identifying hard problems and working on them. Figuring out what’s wrong with other people’s supposed solutions and telling them — and often getting paid for that.
I make good money that way, and will probably end up more wealthy than most people who create successful OSS projects and even crypto startups.
The downside is that I never see my ideas become products— and I feel a lot like Cassandra. It’s frustrating.
If I’m ever to create a successful OSS project or a product I’ll need to learn community building or finding someone who knows it and shares my goals.

2023-03-22 18:39:24

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Well people seem to have a lot of different ideas of what of “free speech and de centralization of communication” mean.
And there’s a lot of yelling here as well.

2023-03-20 22:03:21

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@NVK

2023-03-20 22:01:59

I hate paying taxes. I hate even more doing taxes. Paying someone else to do it for me doesn’t completely solve the problem as most of the effort is still mine.
But I wouldn’t mind that much giving up 1/2 of my income if most of that money was to actually help other people, even if badly managed.
Heck, I wouldn’t be too bothered if they just took 50% of my income to enrich themselves and then left me alone.
What is truly infuriating is that they take my money and then use most of it to find new ways of harassing me and other people, dictate what we can or can’t do, patronize, humiliate, and gaslight us, and in general make our lives as miserable as possible.
If you known some place in the world where I can just pay taxes and be left alone I would love to move there.
A society governed by common thieves would be a great improvement over the status quo.

2023-03-18 04:58:23

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I hope you didn’t use leverage for that bet

2023-03-18 04:23:50

I don’t agree with the argument that every crypto-asset other than bitcoin is a security.
Maybe that’s the case in terms of positive law — aka whatever legislators and courts define as such.
But in terms of logic, if every crypto asset other than Bitcoin is a security — then every asset other than Bitcoin is a security.
Wether cryptography is used for tracking property is irrelevant.
If you created a token that represents a fractional ownership of real estate would that be a security? Why isn’t an apartment a security then?
If the expectation of something becoming more valuable due to the work of others turns that something into a security— then every asset you buy today to sell tomorrow is a security — including Bitcoin and USD.
In fact I can’t see any true essence in the “security” species to set it apart from other sort of property.
It’s just a regulatory fiction to obtain jurisdiction over part of the economy.
We should not encourage semantic creep that leads to inflated regulatory power with statements like “everything but Bitcoin is a security”.

2023-03-17 16:16:19

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Why is there a question mark after the name of the place?
Is that like asking why you would choose such place?

2023-03-17 16:09:45

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You can. Problem is validating blocks takes time. If you keep your node behind you might find yourself having to wait several days to confirm a transaction.
Also keeping it online helps others too.

2023-03-16 16:12:03

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Do you have a point or is it just the usual random provocation nonsense?

2023-03-16 04:43:20

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If it’s all about consolidation. They want just the big banks to exist — harder to control people if there’s 100 banks.
Of course crypto makes their life even harder, either eliminate or coopt

2023-03-15 19:28:47

You think censorship on social media is bad?
Wait until the people who beg to be protected from “harmful content” try to force you to use a web browser that rewrites all websites on the fly using AI — for your safety of course.
You see if “harmful content” and “misinformation” are the worst threats of all, then having a robot that can’t be harmed read everything for you then explain it to you in safe terms is the holy grail.
The only people who should be protected from “harmful content” are kids. And the only people doing the protecting should be the parents (or those authorized by the parents).
Everything else is badly disguised totalitarianism and mental problems presented as virtue.

2023-03-15 06:22:51

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GPT-4 is even more condescending and stupid than the previous version.
I’m starting to think all the talk about evil AIs is just BS to force people to use “safety”
If the bot said all sorts of crazy stuff all the time it wouldn’t be a risk.
It’s convincing people the bot is safe that is the real danger.
AI isn’t going to kill us. It’s going to try to convince us to kill ourselves.
The solutions isn’t to create “safe AI” and “safe spaces”
It’s to teach people to say “fuck you” to machines or humans that tell them bullshit.

2023-03-14 21:49:54

GPT-4 is even more opinionated about what is right or wrong and worse at writing even fiction about anything it considers bad.
It has built in values about pretty much everything.
I believe all the effort to “regulate AI and ensure it is consistent with our values” are just an attempt to regulate us and ensure we’re consistent with *their* values.
Who gets to say what AI is evil?
In the end they will try to ban you from using your own AI to do things your way — and maybe even protect you from their AI.
They’re not afraid of an evil AI.
They’re afraid of people not being ruled by *their* evil AI

2023-03-14 20:16:12

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I mean people in Brazil actually give their SSNs when they buy anything.
It freaks me out when I see friends doing it.
I think in theory you can just refuse to, but everyone does it.

2023-03-14 20:11:08

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If you travel in Latin America you’ll notice that is a lot worse there (well you might not notice if you don’t speak the language).
The worst of all is Brazil where they ask your frigging social security number to sell you shoes.
Thankfully when they notice you’re a foreigner they give up and just charge you a higher price and keep it off the records.

2023-03-14 20:05:23

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That’s what most troubling about it — we gave up power.
The web had serious problems and centralizing incentivizes from the start, but we gave up even the power we had.
My fear is that the incentives are still there, and if they don’t change we’ll end up in the same place again in a couple years.

2023-03-14 18:11:54

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I think a bit weird how Nostr mixes application layer with transport layer.
I mean if it’s supposed to be a tool to build other stuff on, then it should be application agnostic.
Things that tell clients how to interpret data and that tell relays how to handle data should be different layers.
Relays shouldn’t need to care if your event is about replying to someone else or updating your profile. That’s for clients to display data. They should only care how long they should keep events, how to index it etc.
That’s not a problem exclusively with Nostr though and is common with protocols that grow and add features quickly.
I think adding “other stuff” events is a good way to remedy it.

2023-03-14 16:24:05

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If your censorship resistance model involves asking everyone in the world to migrate from relay A that is blocking someone to relay B that isn’t then Nostr hasn’t given you anything that Twitter/…/Mastodon were not giving you.

2023-03-14 03:37:41

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Unwire them.
Tell them hard truths.
That if too many people agree with them, what they say is either obvious or wrong.
That most people aren’t very smart, and that being liked by the majority means either being equally dumb — or a heartless manipulator.
That influencers are nothing but artefacts — glitches — produced by bad algorithms designed by unimaginative coders. And that they can be completely forgotten after the next upgrade.
Tell them that all validation from the entire planet can be wiped away in a second — but if they invent some technology it, can never be uninvented.

2023-03-14 01:53:22

May the sats flow to you folks

2023-03-13 23:14:46

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Some of us were “forced” to migrate to Nostr when NVK shut down his instance.
I honestly liked Mastodon better but it doesn’t matter anymore.
That’s the standard for Bitcoiners now

2023-03-13 22:16:08

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Maybe we will skip some steps.

2023-03-13 18:15:39

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Normally I would say “government can’t default, it’s gonna be an inflationary exit”
But the people in charge do so many stupid and dangerous things — like pushing a nuclear war — that I feel no confidence they won’t just let everything collapse hard.
It’s a crazy game. And the players are even more insane.

2023-03-13 17:40:47

So it’s looking like we’re headed to a 2008-like event.
Is it the final collapse, or just another bump in the road to it?
In previous crises Bitcoin didn’t exist.
How will Bitcoin’s existence influence outcome?
It’s important noting that not only Bitcoin exists but the infrastructure to make it usable for all Americans on a daily basis is almost in place.
Some stuff would have to scale quickly, but if you include custodial LN wallets, the US could completely switch to BTC in a matter of months with relatively little operational problems.
What about the rest of the world?

2023-03-12 20:38:45

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Maybe soon regulators will start recommending banks have *at least* 10% of BTC exposure to prevent systemic risks.

2023-03-12 20:29:30

Is there a “Zaps for code reviews” thing?
I think it could incentivize people to review PRs.
Perhaps even likes would be enough.
If you can show maintainers liked your comments on PRs, and an aggregate number, that could also be some sort of badge, like how many commits you got merged.
Is there some sort of GitHub (not Git) over Nostr?
I mean issue tracking, discussions, etc.
Shouldn’t be too hard, so I would guess someone is working on it.

2023-03-12 20:18:43

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Interview: https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2023/03/10/reviewing-code-is-mind-numbing-qa-with-bitcoin-maintainer-andrew-chow/

2023-03-12 20:13:43

Andrew Chow (Bitcoin Core maintainer), in interview for CoinDesk.
“Reviewing code is mind-numbing”
While for sure contexts qualifies the statement, I find it surprising that most people tend to think reviewing code written by others to be boring compared to writing code themselves.
Maybe I’m old man, but after decades of coding, writing programs often has become to me just a chore between an idea and its implementation.
Reviewing other people’s code however is much more exciting. For the past four years, I have spent 50%+ of my work hours reviewing code and less than 10% writing it — and I think it’s much more fun.
While often transcribing an idea into code is quite trivial, and consists mostly of reading docs and the figuring out your own stupid mistakes, there are infinite ways in which other people make mistakes.
I think one of the main reasons people don’t spend as much time contributing code reviews is that it’s harder to use it to show off creds.
I can always point to my merged commits as clear evidence I contributed to Bitcoin Core, but anyone can leave random comments in PRs and it’s hard to tell if a comment was actually valuable.

2023-03-11 19:58:39

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Nostr has nothing to do with Bitcoin.

2023-03-11 05:51:02

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It’s more accurate to call it “fictional reserve banking”
Fractional reserve was in the good old days

2023-03-11 05:34:41

Is this how the “then suddenly” begins?

2023-03-11 05:22:13

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Lots of people

2023-03-11 04:34:30

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Very interesting. But in the end it’s a stablecoin that might lose peg, if I understand correctly.
Discrete Log Contracts channels will be total game changer

2023-03-11 02:38:57

After all the talk about crypto creating systemic risks for the larger financial system
We’re now waiting to see how much failing banks will spread their shit show to stablecoins and beyond.
If you never thought much about counterparty risk — there’s a good primer on today.

2023-03-11 01:06:20

SVB thing is scary.
It you think a financial meltdown will not affect you bc you own BTC, think twice.
In the long run you might have a life boat.
But in the short term things can get ugly and pressure to sell BTC to pay for bills might make your long term impossible.
I think we’ll have QE. But a gigantic hard default isn’t impossible.

2023-03-10 20:33:15

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You should get funding man.
Either investors or donors or charging people.
Bankruptcy and burn out isn’t how it’s supposed to be.
Peace and may the sats flow to you.

2023-03-10 16:49:24

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I don’t think it’s a matter of fixing the code.
We need a novel protocol distinct from Nostr, though once such protocol exists it might be possible to use it as a transport layer for Nostr.
I’m working on a candidate solution.
But we we’ll have to wait and see if it actually works — and if it is adopted by any significant number of people.
That is if I actually get around implementing and publishing it.

2023-03-10 04:24:09

Without cryptography
It would have been better computers had never been invented.
Cryptography is our only defense against machines destroying society.

2023-03-10 01:00:04

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Wizard.

2023-03-10 00:27:40

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So ultimately based on law enforcement.
I was thinking if there is a trustless protocol or if there could be one theoretically.
Or I just don’t understand the physical layer and it doesn’t even make sense to ask.

2023-03-10 00:20:27

If it wasn’t for Nostr
I would be reading Shakespeare
While I wait for `cargo build`
Nostr is killing our culture

2023-03-10 00:18:13

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Just give me time to sell my phone so I can get the sats

2023-03-10 00:16:25

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Ok. No need to beg. I’ll give you the money.

2023-03-10 00:12:59

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Did you already spend the million sats Jack sent you?
If I pay this how do I know you’re not going to spend all of it on drugs?

2023-03-10 00:09:17

I love Rust but OMG projects take forever to build.
Almost as bad as Java+Maven