pkt
Peter Todd

Public Key

npub1ej493cmun8y9h3082spg5uvt63jgtewneve526g7e2urca2afrxqm3ndrm

NIP-57 Address

petertodd@stacker.news

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsve2jcud7fnjzmchn4gq52wx9agey9uhfukv69dy0v4wpuw4w53nqpremhxue69uhkummnw3ez6ur4vgh8wetvd3hhyer9wghxuet59uyfpz7g

Publishing to

nostr-pub.wellorder.net

Author Public Key

npub1ej493cmun8y9h3082spg5uvt63jgtewneve526g7e2urca2afrxqm3ndrm

Show more details

Last Notes

2024-11-09 14:52:03

TIL about BBC Pidgen: https://www.bbc.com/pidgin/articles/c78d7e75rppo

2024-11-07 18:02:00

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Also one of the most boring... But sometimes boring things that actually work are pretty useful. :)

2024-11-07 18:00:33

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The interesting thing about anti-fraud efforts like OpenTimestamps is often what they achieve is invisible, because they've discouraged fraud from happening at all.
I've experienced this myself: I was plaintiff in a lawsuit where timestamped evidence was damming to the defendant. Even though the evidence didn't have digital signatures, the defense didn't even try to contest the validity of it. I'm sure the timestamps helped them make that decision.
Previously in Guatemala, the timestamps on the tally sheets in the election did two main things:
1) They showed they the vast majority of tally sheets were filled out soon after the election officially ended, contesting claims of widespread fraud.
2) A significant subset of tally sheets had incorrect metadata times in the computer system that scanned them due to a timezone misconfiguration. OpenTimestamps provided evidence that this was just a timezone misconfiguration, not fraud, and the judiciary in the end accepted that evidence.

2024-11-07 13:40:12

I can now tell you all: OpenTimestamps did in fact have a small role in the US election! I don't know the full details. But apparently it was used to timestamp election data in Screven County, Georgia; possibly others too.
https://www.youtube.com/live/hR9dBzqZvvg?t=18344&feature=shared
The total cost for time-stamping at maximum speed for two days, on two calendars: 259,380sats.
If I get more donations, I'll continue to timestamp faster, giving everyone more accurate timestamps: https://geyser.fund/project/opentimestamps

2024-11-04 21:13:46

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Every one I took in this trip to Argentina for labitconf. :)

2024-11-03 16:15:31

What's the easiest way to setup a self-sovereign LNURL these days?
Stacker News is ending it's wallet...

2024-11-03 15:15:32

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https://image.nostr.build/686f3353f56b6f5d909f7eed3961c3ebe077851fcbb01a700295adcd9ee232c6.jpg

2024-11-03 15:13:41

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https://image.nostr.build/a4e043cb87b4078ba82af75e1c700ff56523d171066f4a88c468e4e303c42b18.jpg

2024-11-03 15:12:01

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https://image.nostr.build/ac050129dcb1bc96f165485225e689c59696224d8c59d54f1f7c4dbd165baef5.jpg

2024-11-03 15:09:50

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https://image.nostr.build/92712326e3e6cfa7d27ce774ad728e910620d44b95b5dd94805f260fda09b362.jpg

2024-11-03 15:06:24

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https://image.nostr.build/ea81faa2c468a320490a004aa8bd1dc04c4a9b0800235badec89555f7454616a.jpg

2024-11-03 15:04:25

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https://image.nostr.build/823d688fc45174d0da0b59e9cc48adad592495913c9fbb669e9a0eceadf0a8a8.jpg

2024-11-03 15:03:16

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https://image.nostr.build/c203de3635ca3ceaf8607d471ba6924d8a0f8e8c66342f50aa04481cfeaea3ff.jpg

2024-11-03 14:55:52

https://image.nostr.build/4eb0176967fb7b034273cd4bb399189df51a76fdfb88c467307a4c896bbf62bf.jpg

2024-10-31 21:49:41

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It's very easy for minor memory issues to result in disk corruption rather than overall system instability. You just need something like a single bad bit that only shows up sometimes, eg while hot as @nprofile…lwwv pointed out.

2024-10-31 19:36:50

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Not a lot of currency exchanges around either, at least that I've seen so far; in Ukraine you can find a currency exchange booth literally every few hundred meters.

2024-10-31 19:35:49

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You are probably experiencing memory corruption or something similar without noticing it.
The only times I've ever had a leveldb database get corrupted were due to bad memory. I spent a fair bit of ₿ upgrading my desktop to ECC memory a few years ago due to a run-in with bad memory that corrupted files.

2024-10-31 18:31:54

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I'm surprised more places don't accept USD with such a screwed up cash system.

2024-10-31 15:50:12

Interesting price graph:
https://image.nostr.build/0c27406f6bd0c38cf8c1285d46ae5479b2e968f95f71e1a19451ca51e188414e.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/e98116a5bebfbc43a1294f4ca2a58d5c90302c1e4f952e9a2eff0bc86d76e7ba.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/3bfee8cdd0c8df2b28f61087d129c2616e9f7e3f00e7834f1c0eeca26f3dbbe7.jpg

2024-10-30 07:54:02

...and to think someone was still shilling Samourai on the privacy panel at the Plan B conference...
#nevent1q…fz78

2024-10-26 16:55:07

“When all the fiat currencies die, what's going to happen to coin collecting?”
“Ordinals?” @nprofile…9y3e

2024-10-26 12:09:20

https://image.nostr.build/1261cc240b87a5ae982d41a88c21b4d3edd1983199018a7d6fc6ff8abc214f58.jpg

2024-10-25 16:06:32

First spend of a pay-to-anchor (bc1pfe
essrawgf) output, mined by MARA: https://mempool.space/tx/56ef7ea4110eb595bf020d4121a2c31fe35f54d9c4759d1e1c94b82fdac5a193
Interestingly, they didn't mine all the outstanding P2A UTXOs. Good chance MARA did this one manually.

2024-10-25 12:13:11

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Of course, the fact that Cullen can obviously make a good documentary is especially damning as to his integrity....

2024-10-25 11:51:45

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Name the park I'm at!

2024-10-25 09:47:05

I love how they're implying that I'm literally hiding in a cave. 😂
https://image.nostr.build/44b215691f896c35d2b7d50d98c668dd45a8d0170dec243b31b1bf08ef679f34.jpg
https://itc.ua/en/news/found-the-wrong-guy-peter-todd-is-hiding-because-of-an-hbo-documentary-that-called-him-the-creator-of-bitcoin/

2024-10-24 03:49:53

https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=9gf_E8vNfv4

2024-10-24 01:21:28

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Remember: anyone can do a citizens arrest.

2024-10-24 01:17:06

https://video.nostr.build/0f5c6d5a27ac1cf5d059350497f661854b282ebef013ccb2585f2b8e100b47b0.mp4

2024-10-23 03:00:15

"Ordinals: we put the FUN in non-fungible!"

2024-10-21 03:04:28

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The most useful task I've found for LLMs so far was actually to walk through some physics problems to figure out what math symbols are standard for those problems.
It got the physics problems subtlely wrong in annoying ways... But it was a much easier way to figure out what the standards are; that kind of knowledge is impossible to Google.

2024-10-20 20:28:05

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IIUC WWVB has about 1bit/s of bandwidth. That's not quite enough to broadcast block headers as fast as they are created, and realistically you'd want more to allow a fountain code to be sent to allow receivers to catch up after missing headers.
I dunno what they're licensed to transmit though. A new owner may be able to broadcast with more bandwidth.

2024-10-20 18:22:32

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Cave radio is a thing! But it doesn't work very well at all.
https://www.scavalon.be/avalonuk/technical/radio1.htm

2024-10-20 18:19:33

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With Starlink, caves are one of the only "outdoors" activities where you can truly get away from it all. 😂

2024-10-18 22:49:30

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I noticed!
It would be cool if there was a way to share animated QR codes via gif.

2024-10-18 16:13:41

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I specifically said "westerners" for a reason. We killed Germans efficiently. The Soviets were brutal and inefficient, including to their own people, and would have been utterly crushed without massive amounts of Western military aid. Allying with the Soviets was an example of joining forces with evil to fight evil.
Also mentioning China here is ridiculous. The massacre of Chinese civilians by the Japanese is one reason why we went to war with Japan in the first place.
It's like arguing that the 6 million Jews that were murdered show that we couldn't kill Germans efficiently and the war wasn't lopsided.

2024-10-17 21:51:19

Video of the last thing Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar ever did in anger: he threw a stick at an Israeli drone, before they killed him with a tank shell. 😂
Just over one year after his Oct 7th massacre.
https://video.nostr.build/e6a2cdaf09c46d384ccfa535823fb6812111fc038afee9053ad5c785a29790e4.mp4

2024-10-17 20:14:56

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I also know both Russians and Ukrainians. The sane Russians with at least some wealth have mostly left Russia, for good. The ones I know who have stayed (or returned!) are nutjobs; I'm not concerned about the wealthier Russians who haven't left. And as for the poor ones, if they want to live the onus is on them to do something useful like sabotage to make their country lose faster. It's not that hard.
We should not sacrifice the lives of Ukrainians – and quite possibly ourselves in the future – for the sake of Russians.
The fact is, you do in fact win wars by killing the other side more efficiently. WW2 was won because far more Germans and Japanese died than westerners. We were damn good at killing them, to the point where they simply surrendered essentially unconditionally.

2024-10-17 16:45:06

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That's not an uncommon type of technical fault actually. Often things like low power modes have bugs that cause dropped connections; periodically transmitting avoids going into those bugged modes. I've run into this type of big myself a few times.
Coincidence is probably why it's working now. But it could definitely be the pings too.

2024-10-17 14:12:17

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It's a war. You need clear headed men to look at the situation objectively and win it. The more efficiently you kill off Russians, the fewer Ukrainians will die.
Between the two, one group is objectively evil and the other is not. The objectively evil group is the one trying to massacre Ukrainian civilians with drones.
https://x.com/CaolanRob/status/1843749934379515953

2024-10-17 14:08:58

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It's a war. Winning matters.
Russia is the one murdering Ukrainians, by, among other things, hunting for civilians with drones. Killing off Russians as efficiently as possible saves lives.
Not all lives are equal. It would be perfectly acceptable to kill a thousand Russian soldiers to avoid the deaths of one Ukrainian.
https://x.com/CaolanRob/status/1843749934379515953

2024-10-17 14:05:57

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It's a war. You could kill every single Russian soldier, and it wouldn't be a genocide. You would however be preventing a genocide.
https://x.com/CaolanRob/status/1843749934379515953

2024-10-17 05:59:23

https://image.nostr.build/af98a70e2150ecfb84cfc0cf9a2c8362f753970bcf9e6f1a63f231c32fb8648c.jpg
I highly doubt this makes any financial sense.
The marginal cost to kill or seriously wound a Russian is probably something like $50k; the _entire war_ has only cost ~$250k per Russian casualty in direct military spending, and that includes lots of pricey defensive spending like anti-air defense. Ukraine has constantly been short on things like drones and ammo that could easily be purchased if only more funds were available.
I _highly_ doubt the French government is spending less than $50k per Russian. There's a ton of work that needs to be done to vet defecting Russian soldiers given the high chance they're infiltrators, and every failure is incredibly costly. That's on top of ordinary refugee expenses like welfare and other social support, which cost thousands per year.
Just spend the money on weapons and focus on killing Russians efficiently. The ones who are deserting were probably not effective soldiers anyway.

2024-10-16 19:53:52

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That account is a third party mirror of their mastodon server, right?
I can't find any evidence it's official.

2024-10-16 16:22:14

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What about numbers that identify as men?

2024-10-15 15:43:28

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I probably should have worded it "some EU countries" come to think of it.

2024-10-15 15:41:24

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It's a copy of a tweet; 280 characters....

2024-10-15 15:13:25

Really good news: in Norway, the right to pay cash has been enshrined in law, as of Oct 1st. Retail will no longer be able to refuse cash for payments up to $2000.
Meanwhile, in other EU countries you're _prohibited_ from accepting that much cash!
https://www.norges-bank.no/en/topics/notes-and-coins/the-right-to-pay-cash/
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/norway-one-worlds-most-cashless-economies-just-made-it-lot-easier-pay-cash

2024-10-14 04:07:35

https://youtu.be/jbXgQaCobLc

2024-10-14 03:03:40

https://youtu.be/T5ut41xU2TI

2024-10-13 22:55:40

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That was a v4 format QR code.

2024-10-13 16:06:40

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Though this also shows the limitations of ecash. If that were a 127sat token, it'd be damn near impossible to scan. https://image.nostr.build/e33e0bbba9f8bea5af15e57d2b7e781759a34bc31a21dc8f952eabc109e52cb6.jpg

2024-10-10 16:14:36

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Gaza wasn't an open air prison.
If it was, over 1000 Israeli's wouldn't have been murdered by Hamas and other Gazans on Oct 7th.
If anything, it's a really good argument to seal up Gaza for good and actually make it into an open air prison. Because allowing goods to flow freely into Gaza, and Gazans to travel in and out of Gaza, is stupidly dangerous.
The unfortunate reality is most Gazans (and many other Muslims) want Jews dead for b.s. religious reasons. That's not going to change no matter how nice Israel is to them. They're evil people with evil beliefs, and on average they're quite a bit less smart and successful than Israeli Jews. It's a recipe for violence that can't easily be changed.
This also shows how as much as you can rightfully say what the settler movement is doing is unethical, the settlers forcing Palestinians out of the West Bank has also saved the lives of a lot of Jews. Oct 7th helped legitimize the settler movement.

2024-10-09 22:45:15

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https://www.usaid.gov/news-information/press-releases/oct-04-2024-united-states-announces-humanitarian-assistance-support-populations-impacted-conflict-lebanon
Lebanon isn't a cohesive country with a single government. Southern Lebanon is controlled by Hezbollah, and (mostly) populated by Shiite Muslims. Northern Lebanon is mostly populated by Christians (about 40% of the total population), with a mostly separate government. The Christians have been trying to prevent Hezbollah and their supporters from fleeing north.
The US isn't necessarily "funding both sides" by sending a small amount of humanitarian aid to one group, and a much larger amount (10x) of weapons to another (though even then, most of the funding is going to anti-air defense).
If you want to make that argument, you need to drill down to exactly where that money to Lebanon is actually going. This isn't Gaza; with Gaza it's much easier to make the claim that the US was funding both sides as Gaza has (had?) a cohesive singular government: Hamas.

2024-10-09 10:34:07

https://image.nostr.build/f7480764f148fad34ad0f8d174d2bd7fba21a4163be8241a42f61151d265dcd9.jpg
https://x.com/Thebitcoinway_/status/1843935840399241409
😂😂😂😂

2024-10-09 01:05:45

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To be clear, Cullen didn't present it as a "who's Satoshi documentary", and gave us no indication he was looking for Satoshi until the very end. I interviewed with him something like 4-5 times. Only the very last time did he bring that up.

2024-10-07 10:39:42

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Think about what I'm quoting...

2024-10-07 10:39:17

"Craig Wright is Greg, Right?"

2024-10-07 09:49:09

Nostr DMs suck...
#nevent1q…uerp

2024-10-07 02:06:18

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Nope.

2024-10-07 01:16:51

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It's not better than Wasabi "by far". They're both good with advantages and disadvantages.

2024-10-07 00:35:14

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Good eyes. I took that photo at an Intersport in Kyiv.

2024-10-06 19:54:26

https://image.nostr.build/211b3606a48dc972bc5b29815092286b73d51895e19c02ba622b7054ecf2e8a9.jpg

2024-10-06 19:44:42

0.1 calories/step
https://image.nostr.build/db2a807ba78fb9810beab7641a382d8bdb47e6fd65d658244cbd8cbee2b811df.jpg

2024-10-06 16:42:12

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Did you check what happens if you edit the NIPs to change the specification? Is the code still correct?
It's likely the LLMs can do this because working demos are in their training sets.

2024-10-05 01:18:37

https://youtube.com/shorts/Mm2730mkGBc

2024-10-05 01:16:59

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"without stirring up any drama"
You just need to read this to know that's not true: #nevent1q…99cr

2024-10-05 01:14:50

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"really impressive"
Those are all things Bitcoin wallets do. Heck, Bitcoin pioneered block filters.
What's actually really impressive is implementing Lightning.

2024-10-03 11:04:46

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Pretty lame network. Just a spanning tree. No redundancy. 😂

2024-10-03 01:51:34

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Those claims are simply bullshit.

2024-10-02 21:27:14

https://youtube.com/shorts/_2IE1NHWxqY

2024-10-02 20:10:35

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Yeah, facts and logic allow people to be very certain.
You're just looking for excuses to be contrarian. The world is often pretty simple snd straightforward, and people and nations often do things for obvious reasons (including evil reasons).
Russian culture is just evil. Russia got to the size it is today through relentless invasions and subjugation. Which is not too uncommon in prior history... Except Russia continues to do this to this day, long after we decides it's unacceptable to invade sovereign countries to take their stuff.

2024-10-02 20:06:49

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Re: Eastern Ukraine, Russia's claims of self defense are obviously bullshit. If they were remotely true, they wouldn't be taking troops away from NATO borders to fight in Ukraine
You can no more arbitrarily claim you're concerned about an invasion than I can shoot you for arbitrarily claiming you are a threat to me.

2024-10-02 20:04:44

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Huh? Russia tried very hard to seize the areas on that map with oil and natural gas. They got pushed back to the border fortunately. But the plan was certainly to seize it all (Kyiv too).
It's obvious why Russia would fight for the coast: access to the sea. Also not on those particular maps is the vast areas of prime farmland. Again, lots of it in areas they tried to occupy.
Re: access to the sea, that was one obvious reason to take Crimea. But that unexpectedly backfired on Russia as Ukraine has developed their anti-shipping capabilities to the point where the Russian Navy has mostly been pushed out of the Black Sea entirely. Of course, that outcome doesn't change the fact that they obviously wanted to seize all those areas.

2024-10-02 19:59:34

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Git
A good example of a git repo used for journalism is: https://github.com/Enegnei/JacobAppelbaumLeavesTor

2024-10-02 19:58:04

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Funny you say that... Russia has literally sold a billion or two worth of stolen grain already, much of it straight out of storage silos in occupied Ukraine. They also were selling off metal stocks seized in Mariupol and other places. Similarly, we know they took over many mines and are now operating them. Also in Mariupol and other parts or occupied Ukraine lots of Russians have moved into stolen apartments and houses – the original owners often being dead. They have formal processes to take over property without compensation.
You don't have to speculate on this. Russian TV talks about how Ukrainian resources and land are going to strengthen the Russian economy. They know they're stealing it all.

2024-10-02 17:45:24

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Case in point:
https://image.nostr.build/022f8524315cb556e2ee8c01fb656efb5c626a5053bedb7a765639be067b8081.jpg
These are maps of Ukrainian mineral resources. Now notice the parts of Ukraine that Russia has occupied.
It's just theft. All the bits about "protecting Russians", "NATO expansion", etc. are Craig Wright level gaslighting. Russia is waging war because they think they can get away with stealing a few trillion dollars worth of land and resources. The only way we'll achieve a long term peace is by defeating Russia militarily and economically, and killing off all the psychopathic Russians who subscribe to the belief that they can just steal other peoples' stuff.
It's as stupid to negotiate with this as any other thief. Just kill them off until they're no longer a problem.

2024-10-02 17:35:53

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This.
Killing people is a part of self-defense; at national scales defensive wars are just self defense.
There's a lot of psychopaths in the world who want to kill you and take your stuff. If you don't have a solid system of defense, war becomes profitable for the aggressor. Not to mention situations like Israel where the aggressors have religious beliefs that demand they exterminate you.
This is exactly why saner libertarians accept that one legitimate purpose for government – and taxation – is military defense. If you don't have a military to defend yourself, eventually someone else will form a government to fund a military to take your stuff.

2024-10-02 13:04:06

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An exploit that was discovered and fixed extremely quickly, precisely because the chain is transparent.

2024-10-02 13:00:48

The difference between inflation exploits on privacy coins like Monero and Zcash, and inflation exploits on Bitcoin, is on Bitcoin because amounts are transparent it's practically guaranteed that the inflation will be discovered very quickly.
With Monero and Zcash, if an inflation exploit is being used, your only sign might be the price falling. And that's certainly not a reliable indicator.
#nevent1q…5zdj

2024-10-02 11:36:29

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Nostr has no guarantees about message archiving. It's entirely up to relays to decide how long to keep a message. Also Nostr doesn't store media on relays; media is referenced by URL to third party, centralized, media storage sites with no guarantees.
I would suggest putting this stuff in a git repo instead. That at least is easy to mirror.

2024-10-02 10:27:24

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The sudden fall is probably due to Kraken delisting it.

2024-10-02 10:21:55

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More journalist in this case. Vlad isn't good enough to make a living as a journalist without stirring up drama.

2024-10-02 10:21:07

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Notably, Monero has much simpler transactions and mempool policies than Bitcoin. So implementing Dandelion correctly is quite a bit easier.

2024-10-02 09:26:12

“Bitcoin’s lack of privacy is not an accident & it’s not the result of negligence.
It’s a deliberate choice, as cowardly devs & sellout community members deliberately ignore a decade of research & experimentation.”
Nothing says “world's reserve currency ” like research and experimentation....
Given that Zcash and Monero have all had multiple inflation exploits that could have killed them completely, I'm happy to be called a coward for ensuring that our best chance at a digital currency doesn't get killed by a simple exploit.
And yes, this choice is not due to negligence! Quite the opposite in fact.
#nevent1q…stxr

2024-10-01 14:04:30

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Ah! So those are containers you brought.
Glass should be easier to sterilize too. Though clean vs sterile probably doesn't make a big difference.

2024-10-01 13:58:41

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I'm surprised you can't get it in micro plastics free glass jars.

2024-09-30 20:32:34

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Did you move to Kyiv because of the war?

2024-09-30 12:39:18

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The newer ones are better, as the lid is designed to rest at 180° rather than 90°

2024-09-28 18:06:06

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How does European gear compare to North American gear?

2024-09-28 18:03:24

“Event is loading or can't be found in your relay list.”
Focus on getting nostr to actually work reliably and not depend on a handful of relays first... self-censorship is embarrassing.
https://image.nostr.build/7d19625f12524064762e966f98540f56433ffd6c1e56e92e3b9339df394adebd.jpg
#nevent1q…et56

2024-09-28 13:57:02

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Dunno if you're noticed, but Nasrallah is just one of a few thousand Hezbollah members who have been killed or seriously injured recently, along with lots of weapons caches.
Killing one person is obviously not (usually) going to make a big difference. Killing all of them does. As the article correctly argues.
Anyway, the goal here for Israel is to get to the point where people can return to their homes in northern Israel. To achieve that if there's still Hezbollah members around, they just need to invade southern Lebanon and turn it into a demilitarized zone, putting northern Israel out of reach.
Similar to what Ukraine has done by invading Kursk, Russia.

2024-09-28 09:37:18

Good article on Nasrallah's (likely) death: https://www.meforum.org/middle-east-forum-observer/nasrallahs-death-should-be-a-lesson-to-the-united-states
Western and UN diplomacy is a joke that legitimizes evil. It's far more effective to just kill evil people.

2024-09-26 08:37:00

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In Ukraine there's open wifi without registration practically everywhere. Including Starlink on the trains.
It's remarkably civilized.

2024-09-25 16:12:37

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Where are you located?

2024-09-25 16:10:32

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My experience with air raids in Ukraine was, I guess you could say, a "gradual" introduction. First two visits during the war I heard them multiple times but was never close enough to actually experience anything, beyond _maybe_ hearing some explosions very, very, far away in Odesa. Heck, I slept through the sirens multiple times. And a lot of those times I was around Ukrainians who totally ignored the air raids. 😂
First time I was actually close enough to experience anything was seeing what I think was a cruise missile getting shot down, probably 2-3kms away, as well as another time hearing a loud explosion (probably from a ballistic missile hit) while having dinner at an outdoor restaurant. Again, everyone around me just ignored it.
I've been within 1-2kms from explosions a few more times since. I find that the sirens are a bit more likely to wake me up than at first. But possibly because I got introduced gradually to this, it didn't affect my sleep noticably. And I'm here voluntarily, which probably makes a difference too.
Of course, I've done a lot of pretty dangerous stuff in my life before, eg cave exploration. So I may be just more calm around danger in general.

2024-09-25 15:54:33

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Kyiv, Lviv, Odesa, etc. are relatively safe. There's no chance of those cities getting actually invaded anytime soon, if ever. As for air strikes, just walking around it shows that the actual chance of getting hit is relatively low: the vast majority of buildings don't have any damage from the war. Some do of course. But it's well under 1% in almost three years of full scale invasion, and even if you did happen to be in one of those buildings, more likely than not you'd be fine if you're sensible during air raids. Main thing is get under cover if you actually hear things getting shot down. Though in my experience Ukrainians in those cities almost completely ignore air raids. Eg I was having dinner once in an outdoor restaurant, and something loudly exploded relatively closely to us (~2-3kms?) a few minutes after an air raid started. Literally no-one did anything other than flinching from the loud bang.
Other cities closer to the front line are much more dangerous. Eg in the Kharkiv area, Russian forces are close enough that they're able to hunt down civilians with drones and drop grenades on them. They're straight up bragging about it publicly, and publishing the videos, apparently calling it the "human safari". And from what I hear, a lot more buildings in Kharkiv have been hit; being closer, you get a lot less notice to take cover.
I wouldn't hesitate to visit Kyiv. I'd want an actual reason to visit Kharkiv.

2024-09-25 14:33:07

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Indeed... I was in South Africa last February for a few weeks. Everywhere I went in South Africa there were daily power outages. And outside of the wealthier white areas, it's a dirty, violent, shithole. I repeatedly had locals warn me that I shouldn't go to certain places because I might get murdered.
Ukraine meanwhile, in the middle of a massive war with daily missile and drone attacks, has been able to keep the power on much more often than that, in a much colder, less sunny climate. And even in poorer parts of Ukraine you feel safe walking around and the streets are pretty clean.
South Africa's GDP/capita is $7000 USD; Ukraine's GDP/capita is $4500 USD.
Sure, Ukraine is getting outside support, including funds and materials to keep the electricity grid going. But still. WTF South Africa.

2024-09-25 14:24:36

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Yup. The Ukrainian government is clearly trying to prop up the value of the hryvnia. Certainly not very libertarian of them. But that's understandable during a war that's an existential threat to the country. Currency controls are just another (indirect) form of taxation, and they have damn good reasons to be collecting taxes right now.

2024-09-25 13:08:14

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They dehumanized themselves through looting, rape, and murder in an immoral war of conquest. Killing them is a good thing.