Arachis

Free software and bitcoin enthusiast. Geek.

Public Key

npub1knwptawzqceaqvq97gnshlp39zwv7cpw7533c7weqjzrthrx9kwqrkkv7j

NIP-57 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqstfhq47hpqvv7sxqzlyfctlscj38x0vqh02gcu08vsfpp4m3nzm8qpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds5hstlv

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1knwptawzqceaqvq97gnshlp39zwv7cpw7533c7weqjzrthrx9kwqrkkv7j

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Last Notes

2024-03-15 07:15:51

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Thank you for this. Lightning wallets are just fantastically fast and convenient. I am just waiting for lots more people to have one and be able to buy and sell regularly with it.

2024-02-29 07:12:10

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Yes.

2024-02-16 08:24:30

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It actually makes sense.
Satoshi Nakamoto was most probably not a Japanese person, so the nickname likely found its source in some English / Latin letter word.
So the actual path is from "Hal Finney" to the hiragana/katakana lookalike and back to the romaji (English character) equivalent.
It is 100% what a geek and cypherpunk of the 80's would do.
And Hal Finney always was one of the most credible candidates to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

2024-02-12 14:16:07

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Obnoxious he. You make his point legit.

2024-01-29 18:56:13

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No.

2023-12-29 18:09:35

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I for sure have 20+ household items that are potentially just as dangerous. Top of mind: hammers, screwdrivers, crowbar, kitchen knives, fireplace poker, brooms, walking stick, various gardening tools,...
"Jeez, you have a broom,... You are a danger to society..."

2023-12-10 09:30:01

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I made the calculation in another reply to the original post: about 1km in diameter.

2023-12-10 09:27:04

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Such visuals are striking but somewhat misleading because the human mind has difficulties processing any large data, notably linear to surface to volume ratios.
For reference, if you would have a sphere of all humans on earth, say for ease 10 billion humans, weighing on average 65kg (about 65l or about 0.065m3), how big would the sphere be?
Volume of a sphere V=4/3*π*r^3
V=10*10^9 * 0.065=650000000m3
r=3√(V*3/(4π))=537m radius, so about just 1km in diameter 🤔

2023-12-03 13:27:42

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Putin is quite old (71) and reportedly ill. He will be dead before this is over, one way or the other.

2023-12-01 13:16:32

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Like washing hands at the restroom 😬

2023-09-24 08:23:22

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It is just mind boggling. A galaxy is so immense that the human mind cannot comprehend its size as it contains 100's of millions of stars. If you would count one such star each second, 24/7, it would take you in excess of 1000 days to count all the stars in just one galaxy.
And such a galaxy is a mere grain of dust in the observable universe, itself containing 100's of millions of galaxies.
But what moves me most when I look at such a picture is the realisation that I look at places where life must exist, lots of it, part of it intelligent. And the realisation that at any time there is very probably intelligent creatures thinking about our galaxy like we do about theirs.

2023-09-09 08:39:20

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Not a chance anything significant happens.
Politicians are pathetic and power hungry with a focus on the next election term. In front of the catastrophy hitting us, they keep stuttering the same old mantra: "bbbbut jooobs, bbbbut ekkkonomy, bbbbut grooowth". The industrial and carbon lobby put all their weight in maintaining this message and status quo. And the general population is woefully unwilling to change its own habits: it's always the others who are the big polluters and must make the effort. "Not me, the industry must... China must... The rich must... Africa must not..."
Avoiding a +2°C average increase? Forget it, that ship has long sailed and cannot be stopped.
With no one doing anything significant, the fact is that the +5°C scenario that climatologists *know* is likely but they dare not communicate too much about will happen. Say bye to ice caps, say bye to low-level coastal lines. Consequences will be a slow cataclysm, still faster than people think, unrolling it's dramatic consequences over the next 50 years, costing a billion humans an early death.
Forget about altering the course of global warming, just prepare for it and make choices to enable you and your loved ones to live a happy life in that coming new world.

2023-08-24 21:05:57

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One step closer to a world parted in 2 blocks.
One step closer to WW3.

2023-08-24 20:58:05

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Money as a means of exchange is by definition not meant to be stored. Money as a store of value does not make much sense actually unless money is deflationary, what is not the case with fiat money.
There are tons of options to invest one's money and the inability of people to do it by themselves illustrates the crass level of education of the general population in household budget management, personal finance and investments.
Not much will change until these are taught in lower or middle school. Guess why it's not happening now ? Best to keep the general population in financial serfdom.

2023-08-01 19:30:40

A great essay by Ploum illustrating the developpin divide or chasm between a corporate internet and an internet for geeks and people wanting to steer away from that dystopian surveillance economy.
https://ploum.net/2023-08-01-splitting-the-web.html

2023-07-31 12:07:46

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When your company tells you that your salary cannot be increased because of the salary policy, remember that they wrote the policy: judge and party.

2023-07-30 15:16:23

Have you ever explored gopherspace, the predecessor of www?
Exploring the gopherspace is a unique experience to find some unusual texts and documents, notably some archives from the early computer/Unix days.
Gopher is a very light text-based protocol.
Some geeks still keep the gopherspace alive in terms of clients and content.
There is at least one goid Android gopher client: DiggieDog.
There is also a useful gopher extension for Firefox: Overbite (computer versions, not for Android).
Maybe a gopher protocol could be built on top of nostr 🤔.

2023-07-23 22:34:16

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It is a rare type of rare steak.

2023-07-02 17:11:13

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He is not Algerian; he is 100% French. 2nd or 3rd generation, but 100% French nonetheless.

2023-06-06 18:24:05

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As if infighting within the crypto community helps... Divisions and pissing on the ones we like less empowers the existing fiat system.

2023-06-04 22:52:49

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Empires die, civilizations never fully do.
People think that civilizations are characterized by, a.o, their culture and political and physical reach (aka empire). They are actually defined by their perception of what humanity is, their language, their economic system and the way they perceive the natural universe in scientific or religious terms.
The empire of a declining civilizations may disappear, but the civilization's conceptual constructs remain as strata and foundations for the next social construct to be built on top.

2023-05-13 10:18:04

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Every gym should have the freedom of enforcing it's preferred filming policy. Every user has the right of choosing a gym according to its preferred policies.
Note: I don't do gym, only outside sports, where there is no camera, in general.

2023-05-13 07:09:35

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Thanks Dave, you're lovely.

2023-05-13 07:08:44

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So AI will destroy everyone equally and without feelings?

2023-05-13 07:07:06

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Be nice to the poor fellows feeding the data models. Otherwise they may introduce a bias into the model such that the AI hates their abusers.

2023-04-23 09:06:55

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Thanks for the sats #[3], again. This time I used some of these to send some to a post I liked. It was my first LN payout and just as receiving some it was... EASY.
No bank with opening hours;
No delay with the transfer;
No QYC imposed to access services for my own money;
No need to know who the actual recipient is nor where he is...
*Bitcoin is Better; Better off with Bitcoin.*

2023-04-23 08:20:40

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Three reasons:
(1) Banks are companies whereas bitcoin is a whole financial system and a protocol. Companies do all eventually die, ideas and protocols do not: they evolve and adapt.
(2) A better comparison is between the fiat system, that banks merely apply, and the bitcoin system. The fiat one is centralized and relies on trust; the bitcoin one is centralized and trustless. Trust in a fiat system will always eventually be lost as it is at the mercy of a crisis, possibly self-generated due to its inherent contradictions and weaknesses; A decentralized system, like the internet, is more resilient.
(3) On top of the above, banks have decided to run on fractional reserves, what makes them immensely more vulnerable to any crisis. On the other hand, bitcoin is a hard currency: one bitcoin is one bitcoin.

2023-04-18 06:56:30

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#zap

2023-04-07 18:42:37

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Eggs, one lays eggs on nostr.
Like "I liked the last egg🥚 you laid on nostr, very insightful".

2023-04-07 18:02:13

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All internet services without the need for IP addresses, DNS servers and other such centralized gateways: P2P messaging, encrypted P2P email, P2P web servers, encrypted P2P music and video sharing, personal servers accessible from anywhere... A new decentralized P2P protocol layer on top of TCP/IP.

2023-04-03 20:57:23

People have been afraid of any and all major invention: cars, electricity, trains, the metro/subway, elevators, planes, computers, robots, biotechnology, cellphones, etc.
The same currently happens with #Bitcoin and #cryptocurrencies in general, and with Artficial Intelligence ( #AI ) and Artficial General Intelligence ( #AGI ), or #biotechnology.
Every tool carries some risk that is not intrinsic to its nature but dependent on its usage. Fortunately, history tells us that inventions have overwhelmingly been put to reasonable use and improved the capabilities and wellbeing of humans; few hammers are used to break skulls.
So it was in the past and so it will be in the future.
The quest for knowledge and its application to technological development is part of human nature, but is only embraced by part of us.
Every time, the early adopters of a technology, the ones who embraced a new technology and sought to understand its possible uses, emerged better equipped and wealthier in the new paradigm created by the new technology.
People gathering thanks to #nostr, itself a novel protocol, cypherpunks exchanging views and expressing their trust in #bitcoin among others new technologies, are the scouts tracing the path for those that will themselves still be considered early adopters.
Let's be positive, let's move forward, let's build.

2023-03-20 19:50:13

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I did not believe they could vote such a law discriminating between financial assets, but they did...
Aren't current fiat currencies not just as "virtual", only backed by the word of governments, central banks and interstellar vacuum ?
The use of "crypto" by itself is misleading, conflating all things "crypto" as dangerous. Maybe paving the way to framing all crypted communications as bad?
The full text that will be compulsory in 2 months is, translated to English:
"Virtual currencies, real risks. In crypto, only the risk is guaranteed".
There is much more being required by the law if you read the text.
That text is actually worth a read because it contains quite a lot of background information, notably stating that the warning is necessary due to the *popularity* of cryptocurrencies with the general public.
We are winning ...
Full legal text:
http://www.ejustice.just.fgov.be/eli/arrete/2023/01/05/2023040640/moniteur

2023-03-14 20:30:22

If you need to buy a car in Europe, buy a diesel one.
The drive towards electrical cars will push the price up of electrical cars and electricity, and incentivize governments to tax both more.
At the same time, as consumers are discouraged to buy diesel cars, you will get them cheap.
And as refineries are made to produce a certain ratio of diesel and fuel, there will be a surplus of diesel, driving it's price down.
Last bit: as neither the lithium production capacity nor the current electrical network are able to reach the 100% electrical engine target by 2035, the right to sell and use internal combustion engines will be extended.
Eventually, the right time to buy an electrical car is probably 5 years away.

2023-03-12 19:10:02

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Bank runs are an inevitable consequence of fractional reserve meeting unpredictable and uncontrollable world crises, magnified by human panic and self-preservation instincts when confronted with such crises.
When a crisis hits, people will want to get their money back under their control, and banks are incapable to give the cash back due to fractional reserves.
For any bank, a bank run on it is not a matter of "if", just "when".

2023-03-07 22:30:52

The race to productivity, notably thanks to automation, and the race to reduce costs to 0, are 2 sides of the same coin. Eventually this results in an ever larger amount of goods and services requiring an ever smaller workforce.
Yet the goods and services that people can consume are eventually limited by how much hours there are in a day. E.g. as one French television boss once coined it "We are competing for available brain time". Inevitably, this leads us to a society of abundance were a shrinking fraction of the workforce's available time is necessary to produce in a given period of time all what humanity needs, wants or can practically consume in that same time frame.
Inevitably, this leads to the necessity of a universal revenue, as everyone needs to have sufficient money to buy all what society produces, money being eventually just the oil in the economy machine, not an output of that machine.
How much money is allocated to workers or capital owners on top of the universal revenue is not defined by economics, it is defined by politics.
The obsession of the current political (de)generation that everyone must work full days from one's twenties to one's sixties is rooted in the 20th century perception of infinite growth being necessary to satisfy an infinite thirst for goods and services.
The system will eventually collapse when the exponential efficiency trend crashes into the finite demand reality.

2023-03-06 23:21:18

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I use bitcoin and discover the lightning network because it is time to separate state and money.
It is time that the state stops restricting my use of my money
It is time that the state stops transferring my wealth to the rich through inflation and unfair tax loopholes.

2023-03-01 20:22:01

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You meant to write "Until we meat again".

2023-02-26 07:06:24

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The CERN created a black hole in 2012 during experiments on the Higg's boson and that black hole sucked the Earth.
Somehow we mere humans would not have noticed it.

2023-02-25 19:32:56

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Thanks for the sats ! I finally have some :)
I need to learn more about non-custodial LN wallets and managing channels, but these few sats received are an eye opener into the future of finance.

2023-02-25 19:28:02

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Great initiative. Nostr is exciting me like the diffusion of the personal computer (I am that old) the internet, the web and bitcoin did. Especially its integration with the LN is a game changer. Geeks and cyberpunks will join it, then the rest.

2023-02-25 19:23:58

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lnbc1u1p3l55vspp5rn5nd4k8kv4sln35u7pkg8zp6xr9c4mrt4xtfnwyaynqjxq0m4vqdqu2askcmr9wssx7e3q2dshgmmndp5scqzpgxqyz5vqsp5ns5ecs6zya0uhg4jrun5vuhvdal8z5hz997hwz5cp8r566cntn5s9qyyssqvsqkfnffjem4wsgs7zs7y7gunsjylqgmvtn0n64ej5dmuysw67vz5zut2x69hxq27tp66d0kp7gr7htgx684yuewaq0v5smxfxlmn9gqr3pqm4

2023-02-16 22:25:48

The trend in various IT domains since the 70's has been a move from
free solutions built by the hackers, geeks and cypherpunks,
to privatization and appropriation of the commons by a greedy few,
to liberation by a new generation of
hackers, geeks and cypherpunks.
First for software.
Now for protocols.
Next for knowledge and science.
Thank you to the hackers, geeks and cypherpunks of this world for your small or large contributions.
I feel excited about Nostr just as much as I felt about the internet, linux or bitcoin.

2023-02-12 20:29:04

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I read from cypherpunks on Twitter that this was the next generation of social network, free and decentralized, so I gave it a try. Whomever was on Twitter and is now here, I can unfollow on Twitter and step by step get rid of that one centralised mess.