Anon

www.anon.dev

Public Key

npub1k4pyerktwkajsfnee5x4evy6s7g48esh2wa7j2d85ex2ghpu656qf6nqqz

NIP-05 Address

anon@anon.dev

NIP-57 Address

anon@anon.dev

Profile Code

nprofile1qqst2sjv3m9htwegyeuu6r2ukzdg0y2nuct48wlf9xn6vn9yts7d2dqpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dscj96k5

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1k4pyerktwkajsfnee5x4evy6s7g48esh2wa7j2d85ex2ghpu656qf6nqqz

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Last Notes

2025-04-18 22:51:16

I refuse to pay for YouTube and I refuse to watch their ads.
On the desktop, the Brave browser blocks all that garbage very effectively and until recently, it blocked ads on mobile as well. But lately mobile Brave (with Shields up) won’t show YouTube content at all. It just shows a blank screen. Safari will play YT content but it doesn’t strip out the ads which basically makes it unwatchable.
Any suggestions? I’ve had some luck with SkipCut.com when on mobile but lately that’s been failing as well.
Any mobile solutions for YouTube ad blocking, or will YT have to be a desktop-only experience for me from now on?
#asknostr #youtube #adblock #brave

2025-04-09 00:42:06

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(B) would be particularly interesting. I think the Bitcoin community has a lot of people like me who’ve already bought into the idea of financial sovereignty, have no particular loyalty to the USA, have accepted the idea that expatriation maybe necessary one day, but really have no idea what life is like for Bitcoiners abroad. A travel-themed Bitcoin podcast would answer a lot of questions.
Do you have extensive experience podcasting? My understanding is that it’s a tough road and not for the faint of heart.

2025-04-06 03:42:36

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Lucky for me, I’ve been generating cringe vibes amongst family, friends, and coworkers for five decades. I’m the king of cringe.

2025-03-27 14:16:56

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It’s always been perplexing to me why XMPP never gained huge momentum. My phone (JMP) actually runs over XMPP. It works brilliantly, and can be paid for in Bitcoin. And you can even self-host your XMPP sever if you want to.
In my case, the XMPP client I use to make and receive calls on my phone runs on top of silent.link eSIM service, also paid for in Bitcoin.
It’s not perfect but it’s a pretty sweet setup. The only thing JMP sees is my anonymized IP address.

2025-03-17 00:18:53

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I still see people wearing masks alone in their cars in 2025. The retardation is strong here.
The pertinent question however, is: Do COVID booster shots make people retarded, or is it one’s innate retardedness that inspires them to get the shot in the first place?

2025-03-05 21:17:10

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I agree. Romans 13 is seriously the most depressing chapter in the Bible for Christian libertarians like me. The bit about being subject to earthly authorities and whatnot….. ☹️

2025-01-14 14:49:48

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That's a complete 180 for them. Seems like only yesterday they were inviting bums to loiter in their stores which is, incidentally, my primary reason for avoiding Starbucks.

2024-12-24 17:24:33

There's a successful attorney on the periphery of my social circle, a friend of a friend really, who's been mocking Bitcoin and mocking me for owning it since 2015. Finally, after all of these years, he admitted he was in error and that I was indeed "quite lucky" to have invested in Bitcoin.
His next steps? He feels that although he missed the boat with Bitcoin, he'll make up for lost time by making a large investment in DOGE. His decision to invest in DOGE wasn't solely based on the fact that "it's cheaper" (although that was a key factor in his decision tree), but rather based upon his strong support of what Elon Musk is doing to cut government waste. The man is buying DOGE instead of Bitcoin as way signal his patriotism.

2024-12-21 23:57:04

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Tacky. I honestly can't imagine a more effective way to needlessly make oneself a target of violent, jealous plebs than to wear a gold plated watch that advertises not only one's support for Trump, but that one owns "crypto." SMH

2024-12-15 05:25:57

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"Blame" was decent. In the same genre, you might also enjoy "Thoroughbreds." 2017 was a good year for edgy teen flicks for some reason.

2024-12-09 19:25:38

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No one says it out loud, but I think there's an implicit understanding that these "loans" are actually gifts. They'll never be paid back in full and terns will never be enforced. If I'm Bukele, I just nod, smile, agree to the IMF terms, take the fiat "loan," invest in Bitcoin, and then do what I want. He's an intelligent guy. He knows how to play the game.
#bitcoin #gametheory

2024-12-07 22:54:31

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Why is Beth Dutton so mean to her brother/Jamie? She's a bit harsh, no?

2024-12-07 15:43:01

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I believe the optimal strategy is to be neither the doer nor the critic, but rather the key man behind the doer -- working behind the scenes, supplying him with technical and operational support. The one the doer depends upon and is grateful for. Well paid and well positioned to profit if he succeeds, but enough distance to not be on the critic's radar and to walk away unscathed if he fails. Much better reward/risk ratio in my experience.

2024-11-26 19:30:43

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The ironic part is that if you become that guy, you'll be condemned as being a "fascist."

2024-11-14 20:02:25

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Hey just FYI your website is throwing "certificate expired" errors.

2024-11-10 17:06:50

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Email is kind of like SMS. Use it only for conversations that you wouldn't mind being broadcast to the world.
I use Proton. I don't know how much they can do to address the concerns you raise though. They have to decrypt your outbound stuff in order to relay it. The inbound stuff already arrives decryrpted from the sender's SMTP relay. And since they're a centralized service provider, there's no way they're fighting on behalf of their customers in court.
That's just the nature of email, I think, and why using it should be avoided when possible.
In general, for Proton, or just email in general, there are some best practices I tend to follow:
- Use a custom domain, paid for in Bitcoin.
- Pay for Proton with Bitcoin.
- Connect to Proton using a VPN or even better, via their Tor site.
- Delete all emails that aren't part of an active, ongoing conversation.
Not sure what else to do beyond that. Self-hosting just doesn't seem viable due to all the IP blocking that goes on, the need for spam filtering, ISPs blocking SMTP relay ports, etc.

2024-11-01 19:07:19

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One of thee days I'm going to pay the @SimplifiedPrivacy fellow to teach me Linux, but for what's its worth, my Windows 2022 Server runs all my Bitcoin stuff (i.e core node, LND node, electron personal server) for months at a time with no issues whatsoever. And I'm running everything in GUI mode.
The key difference is I'm paying like $.15/hour for that AWS server, whereas you're jammin' on a ten year old laptop. So yeah, Linux is definitely the more cost effective option by far!

2024-11-01 14:17:54

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There's no getting around having a SIM since you'll likely need to use navigation programs like Waze when you're in the car and WiFi is unavailable.
The magic combination for me personally is:
GrapheneOS
Buy an esim using Bitcoin from silent.link. It's a data-only plan. No voice or SMS. No phone number. They'll assign you an IP address from some obscure location like Warsaw, Poland. So far so good, but the IP address is attached to your esim which is attached to your location.
Now apply ProtonVPN, also paid for in Bitcoin. You've now decoupled your IP address from the esim and your physical location. The VPN IP address is what WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, etc. will see. Make sure to turn on the GrapheneOS option to block all outbound connections unless the VPN is connected.
So far so good, but you still don't have a phone number or SMS. So for that next step, get a phone number from jmp.chat. Pay for it in Bitcoin. There are no esims associated with that phone number. It runs over XMPP. The only thing jmp.chat will know about you is your anonymous VPN IP address. You've now decoupled your phone number from both your (real) IP address and your physical location.
Your use case seems to be like mine; Very little voice phone or SMS. But when you need it, you need it. So now you have a phone number. The latency with all these layers will make voice calls over jmp.chat rather sketchy on the road, but it'll be fine when you're connected to WiFi.
This seems to be the magic combo for me. The only shortcoming is that financial institutions like Bank of America, Charles Schwab, etc. won't send TFA codes over SMS to a VoIP phone number, and jmp.chat is definitely a VoIP number. I try to avoid companies that insist on using SMS TFA codes, but if that's a critical use case for you personally, you'd need a cheap dedicated flip phone and plan for that.
Hope this helps.

2024-10-31 02:06:11

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But who will be our NOSTR shill? We need someone famous that'll attract young folks, like maybe John Denver or Hulk Hogan or Kathy Griffin.

2024-10-29 13:53:36

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I'm really digging the 9 I got from you. I assume there's no "find my phone" on that. I disabled location services for everything except Waze, which I need for navigation.

2024-10-24 18:00:48

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Thanks for the field report. Please do report back with a follow-up after you've used it a while. So it's just an SMS service? No data or voice?
I friggin' loathe SMS. It's a plague. Glad you found a solution!

2024-10-24 12:27:42

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I signed up for silent-link yesterday too. My impression is that it's cheap, slow, mobile internet service for people who roam about the globe. The IP address they assigned me was from Warsaw, Poland of all places.
But their voice and SMS, even by their own admission, is done on a "best efforts basis," which is just a polite way to say "it usually won't work."
Even if you catch it on a good day and it works, the service is inbound only. You can't send. So if your bank were to ask you to approve a transaction by responding with "YES," you won't be able to do so.
Someone will likely recommend that you try a VOIP service like OpenPhone. That'll fail too. Although their SMS works, it doesn't work with banks. Banks won't send SMS to VOIP services. At least that's the case with Bank of America and other major US banks.
The only thing I've found that works is to buy a cheap, prepaid flip phone with cash, in my case from Verizon, though you can probably buy online for Bitcoin. Then you can pay for it each month using BitRefill. It'll run at least $35 per month.

2024-10-03 14:47:41

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The “never sell” narrative is typically pushed by those who advocate building “generational wealth.” I personally have no interest in that particular use case. Living frugally and never selling, with the ultimate goal of enriching an ungrateful child who won’t appreciate the sacrifice you made, is a life wasted.
The whole point of owning hard money is to preserve purchasing power. That implies that you actually use it will *purchase* something at some point. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.
What you should avoid though is trading and market timing, converting back and forth to USD, thinking you’ll outsmart the market. You won’t. It may work occasionally, but over time you’re better off holding / spending.

2024-09-30 01:06:50

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I’m looking forward to reading this. As someone who’s both a Christian and libertarian, the blind and automatic capitulation of so many Christians to state, especially when it comes to taxation, is bothersome — but seemingly unavoidable given Romans 13 commands re: “submission to government authority.” I look forward to hearing an alternate take on this issue.

2024-09-27 00:05:07

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I’m not particularly tech savvy and am unfamiliar with Linux but, if I understand the article correctly, wouldn’t you have to (1) expose print services directly to the Internet and (2) wait for a server operator to intentionally try and send a job to the newly created bogus printer (which he doesn’t even know exists) in order to execute the malicious payload? Seems like pretty low probability of being able to pull that off without an insider on the victim’s network to cooperate, no? Not impossible, of course. But seems like the attacker would have to be pretty lucky.

2024-09-19 23:00:02

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I absolutely love Lightning Network. I use it daily. Setting up my own LND node was tricky enough though that I can't recommend it to a normie. I'm anxiously awaiting some sort of turnkey, self-custodial LN solution.

2024-09-14 20:20:44

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They’re kind of a mixed bag in my experience.
I’m self-hosting an LND node and AlbyHub provides a nice LnUrl endpoint for it, allowing me to receive inbound lightning transmissions via a custom address (e.g. anon@anon.dev)
If you’re planning to self-host, setup of AlbyHub is very clunky and error-prone, at least with their Windows version. Click the ‘Notes and Replies’ section of my profile and scroll almost to the bottom and you can read a long reply of mine that details some of the problems you’ll face. Some are minor, but others can be show-stoppers if you’re unaware of them.
They use way too many CAPTCHAs, even for simple things like changing common settings. That alone caused me to avoid playing around with the product beyond what was absolutely necessary for my use case.
Also, see my post from 8/13 regarding the issue of Alby monitoring and logging every single transaction going through my node, even those that don’t require the use of Alby, and sending me an email about those transactions. Right now, on Alby’s email server, sits a record of every Lightning transaction I’ve ever made. Since I’m just testing and playing around, I don’t care. But for production use it would be a deal-killer.
If you read Alby’s reply to me, they say there’s a way to limit what Alby can see on your node. They even provided a screenshot. That screen is nowhere to be found, unless it’s hiding behind one of their endless CAPTCHA puzzles and I just missed it.
To be clear, the Alby team seems to be a good bunch of guys and I don’t think they’re trying to pull a fast one on anyone. I think they genuinely care about the Lightning ecosystem and want to participate in growing it. But there are trade offs with privacy and usability to consider, so it’s up to you as the user to decide what you’re comfortable with.

2024-09-14 14:35:30

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Interesting video. Things have definitely changed. With Spotify I can seek out really specific niches — like for example, synth pop with female vocals, and it’ll play me a bunch of songs of that sort. But I couldn’t tell you one of the singers’ names if my life depended on it. Whereas back in the 1980’s I might search out an album by a specific band like The Smiths. That just doesn’t happen anymore.

2024-09-13 00:48:51

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Oh my gosh, you’re so right. The original Bisq was wonderful. Bisq2 is an absolute train wreck. It’s the Windows 8 of decentralized P2P transaction facilitators.
I thought Bisq2 is what they wanted people to use now and, as a result, I just rage quit Bisq all together. I didn’t even realize I could rollback to the original.

2024-09-09 23:48:57

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Hmm, I’m surprised to hear that. I’ve always heard people say, “Safari is the new Internet Explorer.” Always three steps behind, never up to date with standards, etc. Maybe it’s worth giving them another look. It’s been a few years.
I’ve had good luck with Brave. You just have to turn off all their gimmicky wallets and shitcoinery promotions, etc.

2024-09-08 16:09:44

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The depressing part is that even if you self-host your website, you’re still dependent on centralized solutions like Cloudflare for DDOS protection, and they’re more than happy to censor you if a government thug requests them to do so.
Maybe one day IPFS will catch on?

2024-09-07 01:54:44

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I’m totally on board with private messaging, private money, private document sharing, and am now trying to migrate to a more private phone.
The Linux thing though… That’s the toughest hurdle, at least for old folks like me.
I briefly looked into Linux like fifteen years ago. I remember at that time a lot of Linux people used a program called ‘vi’ which was their version of Notepad. The arcane keyboard commands required to perform simple tasks that would ordinarily be done with a quick mouse click or arrow key were such a turnoff. It wasn’t that the program was unlearnable; given enough time, I no doubt would’ve picked it up. It just seemed like whoever created that thing made it *intentionally* difficult to use.
I’m guessing that particular app isn’t a thing anymore, but the whole experience kind of gave me a mentality of, “Linux users like doing things the hard way.” Whether it was the expectation that users compile their own apps, or watching these guys repeatedly typing ‘sudo’ time after time before each command line operation, it felt like the Linux community as a whole just enjoyed making simple tasks unnecessarily difficult.
That said, it’s been nearly two decades and big tech has become a force for evil, surveillance, and censorship. Maybe it’s time to give Linux another look. Perhaps typing ‘sudo’ a few dozen times per day and memorizing an obscure keyboard combination to move the cursor up a line in my text editor is a small price to pay for a more secure and private operating system.

2024-09-06 18:57:33

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Agreed. And it’s not without precedent either. I default all of my Telegram and Signal conversations to auto-delete after seven days. Letting NOSTR users at least define a *preference* for a post’s time-to-live wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Not all relays would honor it of course, but it’s a step in the right direction.

2024-08-30 03:32:43

I have officially de-Googled:
Google Voice > OpenPhone
Gmail / Calendar / Contacts > Proton
Google Maps > Waze
YouTube > Bitchute, PeerTube
Chrome > Brave
Google Search > StartPage, DuckDuckGo
Google Drive > Proton Drive
Google Chat > Telegram, Signal
Google Docs > Word, or Proton Docs when cloud collaboration is required
I can’t lie; Certain aspects of my workflow are a bit clunkier than they once were. But no regrets. Final deletion of my Google account is imminent.
Wish I could kick Apple to the curb too but from a phone perspective, there’s nowhere to run. ☹️
#degoogle #google

2024-08-24 17:09:30

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I must be missing it. There’s a permission screen in the AlbyHub windows app? I don’t see it.
There’s an Alby Account Settings option, but that just opens a web page and I end up in CAPTCHA hell.
Can’t seem to find it anywhere.

2024-08-24 16:56:46

@npub1get…0nfm Just curious, do you guys have any plans to get rid of that tedious CAPTCHA nonsense in the near-to-medium term? It's becoming a bit of a deal-killer for me, and is causing me to dread having to interact with the Alby product at all.
Forcing me to solve endless puzzles just to make some minor configuration change is enough to force me to look at alternatives. I'm sure your devs find it "cute" or whatever, but from a business perspective, if you want any meaningful adoption of your *paid* product, you're going to have to fix this.
Cloudflare found a way to make CAPTCHAs less intrusive. Maybe you can too. Or just leverage what Cloudflare has already built?

2024-08-21 02:16:42

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I’m a 51 year old retiree and I approve of this message.

2024-08-19 17:55:37

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Articles only. With articles, I can block all ads and nonsense without much hassle.
With podcasts, I inevitably have to fast forward through a barrage of pitches for garbage products they’re shilling, intros and outtros, ad-reads from sponsors, awkward chitchat, and the ever-annoying “please like, subscribe, sign up for my email spam list, review me on these ten platforms, and support me on Patreon” panhandling.

2024-08-18 17:05:55

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Agreed. I must say though, the user interface for JoinMarket is atrocious. For joins, I feel like the winning combo is Wasabi with a custom, zero-cost coordinator.

2024-08-15 03:54:43

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Ya got me, man! Didn’t see that one coming! 😂😂

2024-08-15 02:44:14

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Bro, who’s the shortest man in the Bible?
Knee-high-miah.
Nehemiah, bro. Get it? Nehemiah!😂

2024-08-14 13:05:12

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Interesting. So this screen is available to me on the website, not the hub, correct? I’ll take a closer look. Thanks for the quick response.

2024-08-13 19:04:58

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And neither regulators nor consumers learned anything from the experience.

2024-08-13 15:11:15

TLDR: AlbyHub appears to be monitoring private inbound Lightning transactions, even those that don't pass through Alby, logging them, and then sending the details over email.
I installed AlbyHub a couple of weeks back. It's connected to my private LND node which runs on the same VM.
I was really disappointed to see that Alby is collecting a record of my own private transactions, not just those that pass through Alby's LNUrl implementation. How do I know this? Because they sent me a friggin' email showing the details of a private transaction. (I'm just testing their product so I don't mind sharing the details here on NOSTR. See screenshot.)
Just to trace the information flow a bit: When someone sends me BTC through my lightning address (e.g. myname@mydomain.com) , it passes through Alby's LNUrl implementation. So of course Alby knows about it. The fact that they're recording it and publicly emailing me about it is very troubling, but not unexpected; Companies can't help themselves when it comes to archiving and leveraging their users' data. The real deal killer though is that Alby is monitoring my *private* inbound transactions, those that don't even make use of AlbyHub, sending that information to Alby servers, where they then broadcast those private transaction details over an SMTP channel.
Dude, that's not cool at all.
@npub1get…0nfm #alby #getalby #albyhub
https://m.primal.net/JyUS.png

2024-08-13 13:41:41

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Oh wow, that’s really amazing!

2024-08-13 00:56:12

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Wow. After decades of use, all major browser makers were simultaneously informed by some obscure third party, the “Oligo Research Team,” that sites can communicate with 0.0.0.0? I remember people discussing this topic like fifteen *years* ago.

2024-08-09 20:36:56

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I can confirm that many US-based Porsche dealerships discretely install a tracking device on cars as they arrive from Germany prior to customer delivery. It’s done within hours of the vehicle arriving at the dealer.
Customer requests to remove it are deflected or outright refused, forcing him to threaten to kill the deal if the tracking device stays. Only then will they grudgingly remove it.
The tracking is performed by a company named Stargard. If you obtain account credentials and login, you’ll see they keep a log of every location the vehicles visits.

2024-08-07 15:19:33

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I’d love to hear more about your lifestyle. What country are you in?
Living off my Lightning node just isn’t feasible here in the US. I run a ton of my expenses through BitRefill (cell phone, groceries, restaurants). I also pay Bitcoin for tech expenses (servers, email, domains, VPN) but stuff like paying rent etc. is darned near impossible except in cases where landlord is young and Bitcoin-friendly.
I’m getting better at demanding *payment* in Bitcoin, but that’s only because I’m mostly retired and work only when it suits me. Most clients just aren’t open to it. 😕
How’re you able to live off Bitcoin?

2024-08-06 18:26:16

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I’m with him philosophically, although I’ll likely never get used to Europeans pluralizing the word math.

2024-08-06 18:19:41

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Truth. Even Bitcoin maxis like me typically make an exception for Monero and find it useful. The risk with holding XMR in large quantities is that every time a CEX delists it to satisfy some government thug, the price drops suddenly and violently. The practical use of XMR on DEXs like Bisque though is undeniable.

2024-08-06 17:50:01

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Just to follow up on this... I've had others try to send to my LN address (anon@anon.dev) and it works just fine, which indicates the Alby Hub LNUrl endpoint is working successfully. Good news. Love the product!

2024-08-06 13:51:27

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Thanks for trying, Roland. I've been looking for someone to test with. I just sent you 1,000 sats, which seemed to work just fine. When you try to send some back to me, what error message do you receive?
I'm 100% certain the error is on my side but not sure where. There's plenty of inbound liquidity and I can receive from other sources. Apparently it's just the inbound zaps that don't work. I'd be open to any suggestions.

2024-08-06 13:34:57

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No joke. I almost completely gave up on Alby because of the ridiculous CAPTCHA puzzles. It’s costing them users.

2024-08-05 19:55:33

ELI5:
“They” say one of the primary contributing factors to this Bitcoin and equity selloff is the unwinding of the yen carry trade, that is to say, the differential between USD and JPY rates just narrowed due to an increase of the JPY rate, and people are selling risk assets to pay back their yen loans. Fair enough.
If that’s true though, wouldn’t the lowering of USD rates also cause a narrower spread? Yet lowering the USD rates is widely seen as positive for risk assets. The topic of the “carry trade” never seems to come up in the context of lowering US rates. Why is that?
#asknostr #bitcoin @npub1a2c…w83a #macroeconomics

2024-08-05 17:47:49

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My thoughts after using Alby Hub for Windows to connect to an LND node running on the same machine....
(1) There seems to be an issue when LND uses self-signed certificates, which is the default behavior. AlbyHub complains that the certificate isn't trusted, and this happens even if the self-signed certificate is added to the Trusted Root Authorities folder in the Windows Certs console. What I ended up doing was creating a dedicated DNS entry for LND (lnd.mydomain.com), and then getting a free SSL cert from one of the countless free providers, including that DNS name on the certificate. I forced LND to use that certificate instead of the self-signed one and then referenced it in the AlbyHub setup. That seemed to clear up the error.
(2) If you make any errors during the initial setup of AlbyHub, even something simple like a misspelling or forgetting into include the Grpc port suffix (:10009), you can't correct it. You'll end up getting an error along the lines of "the product has already been setup." I believe I sent you a screenshot. To fix this, you have to close the app, delete the alby data folder from both %appdata% and %localappdata%, restart the app, and try the configuration again.
(3) Since this is a UI app, not a service, you'll probably want the default behavior to minimize the app to the system tray when the user clicks the close button, rather than terminating the app. That's the way long-running apps usually behave if they have a UI (see bitcoin-core UI, Telegram, Signal, etc. for example). It's what we Windows users expect. :)
(4) It would be nice to see BTC quantities expressed in BTC instead of sats, or at least provide the option to toggle. Not a deal-killer, just a personal preference issue. Dealing with unwieldy sat quantities (e.g. 78,300,000 sats) instead of more reasonable BTC quantities (e.g. .783 BTC) presents an extra mental conversion hurdle, albeit a small one, that users have to jump through when figuring out how much they want to send or receive. I'm guessing the decision to use sats has something to do with GetAlby's history as a preferred method of "zapping" NOSTR users, which is typically done in micro quantities, like 50 sats at a time?

2024-08-03 22:52:48

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I’m using Alby Hub as the LNUrl endpoint for my self-hosted LND node, but it’s not clear how Alby generates any revenue from such activity.
What is Alby’s revenue model?
#alby #bitcoin #albyhub

2024-08-03 03:47:57

I’m here to lurk, listen, and learn.
#introductions