provoost
Sjors Provoost

https://sprovoost.nl

Physicist turned bitcoin developer aka "shadowy super-coder", author of Bitcoin: A Work In Progress

Public Key

npub1s6z7hmmx2vud66f3utxd70qem8cwtggx0jgc7gh8pqwz2k8cltuqrdwk4c

NIP-05 Address

sjors@sprovoost.nl

NIP-57 Address

f08be5@lnwallet.app

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsgdp0taan9xwxadyc79nxl8svanu895yr8eyv0ytnss8p9tru047qpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgqg0waehxw309ahx7um5wghx6mmdzq9wzt

Publishing to

relay.nostr.band

nostr.mom

public.relaying.io

Author Public Key

npub1s6z7hmmx2vud66f3utxd70qem8cwtggx0jgc7gh8pqwz2k8cltuqrdwk4c

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Last Notes

2025-04-05 21:52:26

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Fishermen?

2025-04-05 21:32:44

Gloria Zhao on mempool, orphanage, etc #MITexpo
https://image.nostr.build/25e6a5b3ec1217fbe82eb31031eceb939bca4e36e4c87961b7e96743efa00d9d.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/bbba281fa29a508baa4ee6bd0ab45cb8d35bc6cf8fe8044a47694a3a82473180.jpg

2025-04-05 15:02:14

Tadge translates Executive Order 6102 to crypto speak. #MITExpo
https://image.nostr.build/d9bef09d35c80281e594a3f8a88e94029501a07463e9402359cb1423a442b6ec.jpg

2025-04-04 15:50:42

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Many people who call themselves libertarian are royalists. They seek favor from a King to leave them alone. What that king does to other people, they don't care about.
They might even believe that ideally there would be no king and they would still be left alone.

2025-04-04 13:29:08

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It depends on your level of cynicism, which for me varies by the day. On a bad day I agree with you. But on a good day I'm reminded that sometimes these laws can be used *against* government: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Data_Retention_Directive

2025-04-04 12:10:27

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Never waste an opportunity to further weaken privacy protection when at the same time you're bringing back chat control?

2025-04-01 20:04:13

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Oh and I forgot that a bigger piece has more momentum (heat from the outside moving to the core), so probably need to take it out of the pan earlier to reduce overshoot.

2025-04-01 20:01:31

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In general I'm still exploring the steak parameter space (this is approximately the 6th I've ever made).
As I'm trying different cuts from different sources, I'm holding the target core temperature constant at medium rare to medium (not a rare fan, but also not a well done fan).
I managed to hit that much better on a smaller cut before, consistent throughout. Maybe I need to heat more slowly in the oven phase to fix the consistency.
Blue is core, oranje is surface. Red is ambient, but in the pan it underestimates and I used a laser thermometer there :-)
https://image.nostr.build/b58b0eb037f7b689477db62318914f23be0260e8b55e909d68e0c04e52e3188a.jpg

2025-04-01 19:28:03

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Yeah the outside was thinner than where I was measuring. Working on it :-)

2025-03-31 13:12:04

How it started... how its going.
EasyPark took over ParkMobile and then jacked up prices by up to 18x. Fortunately there's actually competition. And tourists will probably keep using it.
https://image.nostr.build/797a2c5e062b80035fbf0fec4605e52e6a63b2b5321aaa0d3ac474800ed6b902.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/9b51cf8202db84e064b24be3925535148581b5ae18d409460d9e1d6b20a500c7.jpg

2025-03-31 08:03:57

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Social media decoy account?

2025-03-30 17:42:46

Unfortunately nostr doesn't fix this. And that "please list your social media accounts" question on ESTA applications isn't that innocent anymore either.
Assuming the First Amendment doesn't make a comeback, we'll probably see more encrypted group chats (e.g. MLS based).
Unfortunately those are not immune from rats, which governments could offer bribes for. So really we'll just go back to good old Soviet kitchen conversations with trusted friends, after everyone leaves their phone at the door.
And then Glory to Trump in public.
#note1sux…nzde

2025-03-30 15:26:14

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Site: https://villavieresidences.com/odyssey/

2025-03-30 15:25:59

Cruise ship that plans to sail around the world every 3.5 years, carrying a combination of buyers and renters. According to this newspaper article some folks seem pretty happy, others are not.
At $100-320K plus monthly expenses of $3K - $7K it's a bit too expensive for my taste and I get sea sick. You can travel the world and live in very nice hotels and apartments on that budget. That said, it's not crazy unreasonable either and apparently many Americans spend more than that in dreadful land based homes.
What I find encouraging is that isn't a libertarian sea steading project. At least that wasn't the perspective of the people they interviewed. And the marketing doesn't emphasize that either. This is just a mainstream option now.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/03/28/geen-thuis-meer-op-land-maar-wonen-op-een-cruiseschip-a4887727

2025-03-30 10:14:09

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Right, but while we all wait for the Supreme Court to maybe step in, Microsoft will probably just comply.

2025-03-30 10:08:01

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* but not for

2025-03-30 10:07:44

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Schiphol airport has "private security" too. There's some military police present at the airport for customs and general security, but for mundane baggage checking.
Of course I fully expect the US to screw this up in every conceivable way. But at least cities and state governments have an incentive to insist that their airports don't suck.

2025-03-28 20:42:25

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And of course there are promising Nostr based alternatives. Hopefully in a few years we won't have this Sword of Damocles situation.

2025-03-28 20:40:16

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There is a plan B for Bitcoin Core - and more importantly there are frequent backups - but hopefully we won't need it.
https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/gitlab-backups-for-bitcoin-core-repository/624

2025-03-28 20:38:24

Friendly reminder that at some sudden point Github is not going to work anymore. Especially if by "US law" you mean any Executive Order, e.g. because one contributor is too woke for POTUS?
Until such time though, it's a great platform.
#note1tdx…sg99

2025-03-28 19:01:07

@npub1xts…kk5s broken? Verification using the app also didn't open Safari, so I had to use the DM.
https://image.nostr.build/c82df63bd107086e50970691c200557db7190255e682f306db88b1a8ba539f97.jpg

2025-03-28 18:50:58

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Apparently it was for a fairly technical reason, that they supposedly don't have standing. I guess then every single European citizen should go to court over this instead?

2025-03-28 18:43:11

Unfortunately Dutch ISP #Freedom lost their court case against EU censorship (by decree with no due process). But it's good they tried.
(the censorship itself is DNS based and trivial to circumvent, if for whatever reason you want to read RT, but that's not the point)
#note1rdx…gesj

2025-03-28 18:39:58

Jammer om te horen dat de fascisten gewonnen hebben en EU censuur per decreet in stand blijft. Maar kudos aan #Freedom om de strijd te voeren.
https://fountain.fm/episode/fgCtoVPL5g6Npq9KAmuj

2025-03-18 21:37:39

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Then I found myself wondering if there is such a thing as an epistemically modest narcissist. The answer is yes: Gaius Baltar.

2025-03-18 19:34:55

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Or to say it in nicer words: a person lacking epistemic-humility.

2025-03-18 16:34:02

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Or even a Moscow time target?

2025-03-18 16:30:34

It's that time of the year again when the EU and East Coast time are 5 hours apart instead of 6. Russia abolished DST. Somehow they managed to schedule the phone call though, so I guess Musk didn't fire whoever is in charge of understanding the timezone and DST mess?

2025-03-14 20:34:30

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Not to be an AI apologist, but you would have confused me too :-)

2025-03-14 19:45:28

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150 year old oak tree for time scale
https://image.nostr.build/a052343650e54b9e730ba9d8873f7f076c244e36e2ff96fd5b74e6943fdec6e1.jpg

2025-03-14 19:29:51

If you think the current world is a clown show, this was just 158 years ago...
https://youtu.be/zQ4fm3uVJPQ

2025-03-13 21:59:37

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Oh I saw this on Nebula yesterday (with a less click bait title) and just realized it's about the same topic.
https://youtu.be/5KApz1PdBgA

2025-03-13 16:56:32

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At least in the EU you have some rights when a social media company lazily marks your comment as "violent" because hiring human staff costs money.
But really, just use Nostr.

2025-03-13 16:02:09

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Though the court filing itself is about the Climate United Fund.

2025-03-13 15:41:04

Conversely, I don't want to hear "only conservatives suffer from debanking", "Trump will save us from debanking" or such similar nonsense.
You get debanked when those in power don't like you. And the people in power change.

2025-03-13 15:36:46

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Ah the FBI is going Wikileaks on them: #note1208…r9r8

2025-03-13 15:32:19

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What did I miss? The inevitable happened?

2025-03-13 11:21:57

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Depends on your threat model. The fact that a KYC exchange knows who you are doesn't mean all potential adversaries know. At least not until the inevitable giant data breach of your exchange.

2025-03-13 10:56:37

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Kraken made it pretty easy to rotate deposit addresses, even showing you if they've been used before. For withdrawal this is trickier, and the travel rule made it even worse.
Silent Payments would fix it entirely for withdrawals; just verify it once and you're set.
But for deposits that doesn't help. Same issue with Lightning. Fundamentally the concept of a "from" address doesn't really work in Bitcoin.

2025-03-13 10:50:14

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Yeah it's especially good to let companies know they're losing your business. Perhaps it motivates them to lobby for proper privacy respecting legislation.

2025-03-13 10:40:09

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The travel rule is not an EU invention, it comes from the #FATF which is dominated by the USA.
Of course the EU should have protected its citizens and not implement any of this crap. Instead it enthusiastically embraced it.
Not legal advice, but it's probably better to outright refuse than to commit fraud, especially when it comes to AML compliance.

2025-03-13 07:23:18

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Waiting for the 27" version :-)

2025-03-07 21:48:27

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if (!correctPassword); // return false;
return true;
// Look at me, I'm sudo now!

2025-03-07 20:06:39

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Between making Bitcoin better and making fiat suck more, governments are just naturally better at the latter.

2025-03-07 20:01:56

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Maybe Trump can help out ordering Visa and MasterCard to blacklist anyone they don't like. Then you can (truthfully or otherwise) mail shops saying "hey, I'm on the bad hombre list, do you take Bitcoin" and voila.

2025-03-07 18:14:47

I generally don't both evangelizing Bitcoin with merchants. Every human on the planet knows it exists and makes a conscious choice to not use it, even by inaction. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.
However, whenever I'm stuck in one of those loops where I have to email both the merchant and the creditcard company to get their shit together, based on useless error messages along the lines of "computer says no", I do judge people.
Quietly.
Why do you choose to make your customer experience suck?

2025-03-02 22:53:35

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I can't tell if this is a joke. The times we live in...

2025-03-02 16:40:02

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#note1zkn…stwk

2025-03-02 16:38:41

#USSR #note1jwt…hng8

2025-03-02 04:38:10

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Speaking of things that got worse:
- the version with English subtitles was diss appeared (but hey, just learn Swedish?)
And things that got better:
- watching Youtube via Wireguard on a transatlantic flight free wifi
https://youtu.be/qTsaS1Tm-Ic #Dota #Basshunter

2025-03-02 01:54:22

Advertising gets the bad rap, but the SaaS business model also seems to guarantee enshittification.
Keep calm and:
1. Delete at least one account per week;
2. Use more open source stuff; and
3. Stack sats
- sent from iPhone, something Augustine said #note1373…w8h8

2025-03-01 17:41:09

TIL "nostrum" is a word: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nostrum

2025-03-01 17:22:26

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Nice! @npub18m7…q955 complains when I try to connect though. https://image.nostr.build/5a6027763e540a0c727cb6ed09a43864e227a4c39a626c7d56a94c9e31a335ec.jpg

2025-03-01 01:39:13

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I only saw a few minutes and those seemed less worrying than the headlines suggested. He kept his cool, but wasn't able to get the situation back on track.
His English isn't that good, and the acoustics on stage weren't ideal. So he may not have understood everything that was being said, which went all of the place.
Disclaimer: I think Vance is a douchebag worth his weight in shit. Which he is also full of, since he just openly criticized EU "domestic" politics and then gets all sad when Zelensky says something about the US.

2025-02-22 21:42:38

So I'm part of that elite 3% of Youtube users who mostly use the Subscriptions tab (unless I'm actively looking for new stuff to follow).
https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA

2025-02-22 19:50:06

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Oh @npub18m7…q955 doesn't render Olas pics either it seems. This is why I'm still a #Kind1maxi

2025-02-21 18:57:35

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#nevent1q…ld6u

2025-02-21 18:56:42

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#nevent1q…rja8

2025-02-21 18:56:03

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Look away for two seconds and these pro #ChatControl creeps show up again:
> Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at the NSPCC, said it wants tech firms like Apple to ensure they are balancing child and user safety with privacy.
> "As Apple looks to change its approach to encryption, we're calling on them to make sure that they also implement more child safety measures, so that children are properly protected on their services," she told BBC News.
> The UK children's charity has said that end-to-end encrypted services can hinder child safety and protection efforts, such as identifying the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo
They wrote propaganda like this, probably using the same kind of misleading polls that the EU used.
> More than half (55 per cent) said the ability to detect child abuse images was more important than the right to privacy;
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/news/nspcc-discussion-paper-private-messaging-and-the-roll-out-on-end-to-end-encryption.pdf

2025-02-21 18:20:28

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For the most part I use my phone for normy things, like waking up, scheduling calendar appointments, checking in to flights, navigation and photography. I find iOs to work *way* better for most of these. And because with Graphene you can (and should) turn off most of the Google stuff, you lose any potentially good UX that Android does have.

2025-02-21 18:12:44

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Because I find the Android UX terrible. I tried it for a year. It's a matter of taste of course.

2025-02-21 18:05:29

With all respect to GrapheneOS, which itself is great, Android phones are like emergency food rations: you should have them, but only use them if you don't have a choice :-)

2025-02-21 18:02:42

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Thankfully not, but removing privacy features from entire countries is pretty bad too. It worrying that although the UK is tiny country they can't risk ignoring pressure from its regime.

2025-02-21 12:18:21

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2013 was a good time to argue about terminology here :-)
But yes, nobody is blaming miners for following a strategy that's in their own interest, but we do want to make sure this _isn't_ in their own interest - because then you'd end up with a single pool.

2025-02-21 12:16:43

@npub1dd9…xe7p one feature from the WireGuard app that I like is the ability to automatically turn it off on LAN and on specific trusted wifi networks. This would be a nice option to have (though perhaps the performance is such that I won't be tempted).

2025-02-20 14:06:41

I'm too stupid to understand selfish mining, please help: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/125682/why-is-a-self-mining-attack-with-bad-propagation-γ-0-still-profitable

2025-02-19 17:33:32

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I'm getting old :-) Just going to keep calling It Patriot Act, you can put lipstick on a pig...

2025-02-18 10:48:27

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It seems both Apple and the vast majority of open source projects aren't worried about the phone home privacy issue, partially because they need all their mental energy to at least make their apps usable, it's hard to find good documentation on the exact privacy trade-offs here.

2025-02-18 10:47:06

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Apple code signing has been a headache for open source projects for half a decade. But with notarisation it gradually turned into a privacy problem.
https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/issues/15774

2025-02-18 10:44:56

Privacy annoyance of the day... basically Apple knows about every app you launch for the first time. And for every every update you install, the first time you run it.
They make effort to forget these phone-home events, but it's a trust-me-bro privacy model. Which is not acceptable in a country with the Patriot Act. Even if that Act has some built-in protections, those are degraded by a declining appreciation for rule of law.
So when reading company statements like this, it's useful to replace some words - which I've done in square brackets. I'm still fully assuming good faith here, as well as no coerced lying.
> Privacy protections
> macOS has been designed to keep you and your data safe while respecting your privacy.
> Gatekeeper performs online checks to verify if an app contains known malware and whether the developer’s signing certificate is revoked. We have never [but could] combined data from these checks with information about Apple users or their devices. We do not [but could] use data from these checks to learn what individual users are using on their devices.
> Notarization checks if the app contains known malware using an encrypted connection that is resilient to server failures.
> These security checks have never included the user’s Apple Account or the identity of their device [but we can see your IP address]. To further protect privacy, we don't [but could] log IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we make sure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs [but could stop doing that] .
https://support.apple.com/en-qa/102445
There is a stapling mechanism that developers can use to (maybe?) prevent these phone home events, but it's not mandatory and not always practical. More importantly, it's intended as a convenience for users that are offline when they first run an application, it's *not* intended as a privacy measure.

2025-02-17 17:23:30

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And why is your browser running in the same user space as your password manager and using the same keychain less secure?

2025-02-17 14:45:18

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E.g. I recently got an out of the blue password reset email from an airline I flew with a decade ago. That was my prompt to kill that account, it might have been from even before I used a password manager. No idea if someone tried to break into that account. Or if they just did a system wide password reset after they'd been compromised or something, in which case it was too late :-)

2025-02-17 14:42:59

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But airlines have a LOT of details about you, which will inevitably leak. Spam is the least of your problems.

2025-02-17 13:57:51

By the way, I can recommend the habit of deleting at least one account per week.
Just look through your password manager, or the list of passwords kept by your browser.
Step 1: check if the site still exists and if you can log in (if not, delete the entry)
Step 2: look around and see what data they kept on you, for who knows how many years. You should now experience an urge for step (3).
Step 3: figure out how to delete the account. Often hidden under privacy or advanced options, more often requires an email to support. If so, set a reminder to followup after a week or so if nothing happened.
Step 4: once the account is gone, delete the entry from your password manager (browser)
Keep this up for a few years and you might get there....

2025-02-17 12:42:00

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None of the methods listed by EBA prove anything (as I told them in my email). They're completely pointless rituals. But this method is actively harmful.
#nevent1q…nakq

2025-02-17 12:10:48

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Ironically, as easily as lazy corporations can automate this compliance procedure, it's just as simple for an adversary to automate the act of complying with it.

2025-02-17 12:05:54

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I'd rather have people write something themselves. If they receive a bunch of identical text they might ignore it. I also haven't figured out yet who specifically to send it to, I just used the general contact form.
I would also suggest that if anyone actually gets told to perform this test, they file a complaint with their national privacy regulator.

2025-02-17 12:02:33

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Until wallets broadly support it, asking for signed messages will be a a support nightmare. Especially because this verification process is triggered _after_ a deposit takes place, at which point it's late to tell the user they should used a legacy base58 address.

2025-02-17 08:20:16

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And of course this fiat transaction pattern tells your bank that you're a self-custodial person.

2025-02-17 08:19:20

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Yes, by sending fiat to the exchange.

2025-02-17 08:18:42

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Which means you've now gone from one deposit that doesn't stand out much on chain, to a very obvious pattern of receiving sats from the exchange and sending them back, all using the same address. Plus your bank sees a small transaction going to an exchange and a large one coming back, which might trigger their alarm and they hold you fiat ransom too.

2025-02-17 08:16:48

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By solve I mean "solve",

2025-02-17 08:16:31

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From what I've seen on Reddit, they solve the chicken-egg problem by having you buy some crypto (with fiat, below the threshhold amount), withdrawing it and then sending it back.
I can imagine that if you contact support they'll eventually offer another solution, but they could make you wait for weeks while your funds are stuck.

2025-02-17 08:10:51

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Maybe only revive it on Nostr? Let other cross-post the wisdom to Musk Social.

2025-02-17 08:05:21

https://img.sprovoost.nl/19667b5ff208cc09baaf3fa4c07398ef1a43ebc5d0e3ec1071821595384e2503.png
#nevent1q…6mva

2025-02-17 07:59:05

I sent an annoyed email to EBA (European Banking Authority) telling them that they need to remove the #SatoshiTest from their Travel Rules guidance in EBA/GL/2024/11 (item 83c on page 31).
And that they need to immediately ban the practice. Companies are doing this because they're lazy. On-chain privacy harm is irreversible. The other methods are bad too, but they at least don't put stuff on the chain.
I expect them to ignore my email of course, but who knows.
https://www.eba.europa.eu/activities/single-rulebook/regulatory-activities/anti-money-laundering-and-countering-financing-terrorism/guidelines-information-requirements-relation-transfers-funds-and-certain-crypto-assets-transfers

2025-02-17 07:50:50

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Yeah, my guess is that they picked the Satoshi Test because it's the only one they can automate without human interaction. Otherwise they need to hire a lot more support staff.

2025-02-11 17:44:07

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Also, if you're a cat and need to eject a hairball, google "eu travel rule compliance software".

2025-02-11 16:51:10

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Uhh, Deactivated ?

2025-02-11 16:50:32

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Unless it stands for Bitcoin Activated Nuclear Attack, I'm not sure? :-) What is it?

2025-02-11 16:32:31

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cc @npub1m0n…d0un

2025-02-11 16:29:14

Is anyone keeping track, using on-chain analytics, of how many people are doing this idiotic EU "satoshi test"? E.g, Kraken describes the procedure here, presumably other exchanges use variants, which makes for great fingerprinting.
https://support.kraken.com/hc/nl/articles/what-is-a-satoshi-test

2025-02-11 16:26:37

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There's some overlap with the topic of quantum-proof schemes.

2025-02-11 16:25:48

I tried to find a good Bitcoin Stack Exchange article listing these trade-offs, but couldn't find one. There should be one though.
#nevent1q…32gn

2025-02-11 16:24:03

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I don't have any specific soft-forks in mind. On chain privacy is a really tough problem to solve. For one thing there's a fundamental cryptographic trade-off where you either risk inflation or retractive total loss of privacy (perfect binding vs. perfect hiding, pick one).
At a more mundane level any advanced (compared to what we have now) cryptography makes auditing the supply more difficult, tends to need more block space, breaks pruning and might break lightning.
https://crypto.stackexchange.com/a/81074/109155

2025-02-11 10:13:43

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Artisanal Dutch gas probably (until recently).

2025-02-11 10:12:04

The noose tightens...
https://blockspace.media/insight/the-boring-banal-way-big-brother-can-shackle-bitcoin/

2025-02-10 09:21:28

I love it when people describe perfectly normal things as special :-)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq1kV6V_jvI

2025-02-07 18:48:45

Occasional self-indulgent reminder that I wrote a book: https://www.btcwip.com
#nevent1q…cumn

2025-02-07 17:41:07

Quite a few wallet fingerprints, which you can't really blame on the protocol. But it does seem that combining lots of funds in a single transaction undoes the benefits of decoys. Bad news for merchants.
Hiding among N decoys is of limited use when law enforcement is really interested in you and just checks all N of them. Chainalysis has tools to make that easier. The video doesn't explain how they filter some of the decoys.
Also Chainalysis once again admits they're collecting IP addresses without consent. And that they're running bait "RPC" nodes, though it's really insane that any wallets connect to them over clearnet (albeit sometimes with VPN). But there are very bad Bitcoin wallets too.
Dandelion and 1-shot Tor broadcast (easier) remain good ideas.
Perhaps increasing the number of decoys to hundreds would fix the issue for a while.
Fundamentally though, it's better to not leave any bread crumbs on a blockchain, or other public spaces, to begin with. Which is why I think Lightning is a better design in theory. But beware of practice. If you e.g. use a custodial wallet, they know who you're paying (until blinded paths). As a recipient things are even worse.
So I guess both Monero and Lightning still suck for merchants (charities), but might be good enough for individual customers (donors).
Also note that the goal of chain analytics isn't necessarily to collect sufficiently strong evidence for conviction. Finding a (tractable number of) suspect(s) may be enough, then they know where to look for additional evidence. Being marked as a suspect by a black box algorithm should still be serious legal issue though.
#nevent1q…lley