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

nprofile1qqsgdp0taan9xwxadyc79nxl8svanu895yr8eyv0ytnss8p9tru047qppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp06jnnsq

Publishing to

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1s6z7hmmx2vud66f3utxd70qem8cwtggx0jgc7gh8pqwz2k8cltuqrdwk4c

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Last Notes

2025-04-23 19:43:28

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Ze citeren hier de mensen die ze geïnterviewd hebben. Die klinken naïef.

2025-04-23 19:31:00

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Tuurlijk, massa surveillance (EU uitwisseling van crypto gegevens) en datalekken zijn goed voor je veiligheid.
Survivorship bias? Ze spreken tenslotte met huidige crypto bezitters, niet voormalige bezitters die inmiddels weten wat phishing en roofovervallen zijn.
https://image.nostr.build/1245c7f2851ec81ad7d96e0df085906586bb4cd6e16e55e8dd7d2bdce00d1b83.jpg

2025-04-23 18:24:36

Onderzoekje uit 2024 naar bezitters van virtual assets.
https://www.rijksoverheid.nl/documenten/rapporten/2024/04/30/bezitters-virtual-assets

2025-04-16 08:02:41

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Yeah, and Big Agriculture keeps lobbying for it because their crops grow faster. But it gets in our food!

2025-04-15 16:51:55

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Do you mean Tuesday?

2025-04-13 02:41:00

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Everyone who bribes sufficiently and/or spooks Wall Street into selling off treasuries?

2025-04-12 18:36:30

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I did one yesterday evening too, cool stuff!

2025-04-12 00:25:57

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Are many miners using Windows?

2025-04-11 19:47:56

"The ephemeral grandmother doesn't exist" - @npub1az9…m8y8
https://image.nostr.build/30ac9c03a09342d5d06183b77678f89c6f8762e4de3332fd1328bc679ba6d766.jpg

2025-04-11 13:48:50

Huge
#note17f5…d6r0

2025-04-10 20:04:52

Hashed out the approach between the President and Treasury on how to ban 64 byte transactions. It's a three stage process:
1. Executive Order to explain to the public how these things are only used by bad hombres
2. OFAC will add them to their list. Clearly anyonecanspend is Communist property - but Supreme Court might bikeshed the SegWit issue
3. A soft fork, but we can't wait for Bitcoin Core, they're too fucking slow
#GreatConsensusCleanup
Also I couldn't find the CIA headquarters.
https://image.nostr.build/d85fa9e2d68b28bc74ea263f469c47dcb0112b18219ecafbfe492f92bff377ca.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/dcd024f809400c82883f995f531c24b96b214fd6c437b50ace21be63a4231ceb.jpg

2025-04-10 19:17:19

A #KYC bathroom, only in America...
https://image.nostr.build/cecdbf05417d18274df706ec8c654e486c628ebd9b007d26544d28dc8dab2311.jpg

2025-04-08 17:43:44

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* liberation

2025-04-08 17:43:31

Liberarion Day
#note1txc…l23a

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?

2025-04-03 20:29:26

Made it to #Boston without getting deported to El Salvador. And on time for #BitDevs
Found someone looking for nuts!
https://image.nostr.build/7f19d7447994632cd910ff026acdd41ff1fd5702c8ef27dd07da9566a7f37e4f.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/330178c273f22c193ad3cb50b087a9cc4662bcf3d12e6b4ed7da8f79eab692cb.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/2b10a602a22d94daab6f94022b409baa1ec796c8513a1d3648217f6e4d635296.jpg

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 :-)

2025-04-01 17:17:38

Happy Proof-of-Steak day!
https://image.nostr.build/90304f6e2dc18967082bcc8dce54de1e137358cd1afd65d12b590d2b8cb8af90.jpg

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 08:09:49

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Missed opportunity at the end of the clip to say "the fringe could become a little bit cringe".

2025-03-31 08:03:57

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Social media decoy account?

2025-03-30 18:13:01

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I've said plenty of unfriendly things about our current and former prime ministers, including demanding that Balkenende be trialed for crimes against humanity. Never caused any issues. At least in The Netherlands you're fine unless you make death threats (which the First Amendment doesn't protect either). In Malta on the other extreme, journalists have been murdered. Very diverse continent :-)

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 16:43:30

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You could rent for a year first. Immutable neighborhoods is a general problem with owning real estate for self-living.

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 19:51:13

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You could try Obscura: https://obscura.net
Given Carl Dong's involvement they should have a reproducibly built client soon(tm).

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

2025-03-25 19:03:44

Some #MATT madness in two videos:
https://youtu.be/BvXI1IOargk
https://youtu.be/byD4N2oLhFY

2025-03-21 19:41:05

Certainly no need to give him a pass. Even if we is an absolute genius in some areas, and even if he was major factor in the success of some of his companies, it gives him zero credibility on unrelated topics. He's a narcissist who does not understand or care where his expertise ends.
That said, even though Tesla isn't doing great as a business, I think it's only fair to call it a success. Ditto for Starlink which provides orders of magnitude more bandwidth than e.g. Eutelsat, which much cheaper and easier to use tooling. I think that's true even if you account for the fact that these enterprises are heavily subsidised by stupid investors and government subsidies.
The question then is: is it just a coincidence that Musk bought himself into these two companies, or did he actually have a material effect on their success? The presence of perhaps a dozen failures doesn't really matter I think. There are plenty of rich people, and even more corporations, that spend billions and billions on hundred or even thousands of ambitious projects that go nowhere.
Which makes me think that two is statistically significant. But you'll have to ask Taleb :-)
#nevent1q…3u5p

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 19:28:56

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This was shared by the Crypto Critics Corner folks in the context of Elon Musk, but I think it applies to narcissists more generally once they let fame get to their head.

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?

2025-03-18 07:26:55

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Number of free speech vs time on Twitter vs Nostr?

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 16:41:49

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If they had their own independent bank account it would take a lot more than a "recommendation" to shut an account down. And it doesn't help when your bank explicitly doesn't owe you a fiduciary responsibility.
But Bitcoin doesn't fix this. If the goal of the government was to retain control over funds even after they were distributed, they would just use multisig. Neither does e-cash because lack of privacy from the government was the explicit goal.
Blame Congress.
https://image.nostr.build/fb39eed76522e75ef18747f7bdbfe5867c4de5e8b354121fe95cb00c6d05a130.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/770690fc205e629068bc5cf7ba5fc4c3f07aaafe6b395c178757bc0263e9eba1.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/d513cbe88fd5c36f257e6365ba10a9e443d511dc0ee56381765c638c102a7f8a.jpg

2025-03-13 16:02:09

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

2025-03-13 15:59:01

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Perhaps through their efforts here: https://www.habitat.org/stories/6-facts-about-habitats-sustainability-efforts

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 10:42:35

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My suspicious is that 95% of "the industry" does not a give a fuck about their customer privacy and instead just wanted something easy to automate.
Plus IIRC there were compliance-as-a-service companies lobbying *for* this rule.

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 10:29:43

Somewhat surprisingly, the European Banking Authority #EBA did respond to my complaint regarding the Travel Rule "satoshi test":
> The Guidelines were the outcome of several exercises done with the industry (including consultation). The Satoshi test is one of the existing verification methods used by the industry alone or in combination with other verification methods. Although your arguments were not put forward by those who replied to the consultation, your complaint raises privacy considerations which we continue to review and assess to determine whether the Guidelines should be amended
#nevent1q…ly4y

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 21:15:51

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More debanking makes Bitcoin an attractive alternative for those who get debanked.

2025-03-07 20:09:27

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Ironically and unintentionally this makes Bitcoin more attractive to US folks. But in general I prefer a better world than this type of corrupt nonsense.
#note18cz…yl8v

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?

2025-03-05 18:21:02

Codesigning and notarizing is a pain when you also want deterministic binaries. But it should work for now. #note1m8p…smqe

2025-03-03 17:13:42

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Indeed. I hate walled gardens and the entire concept of app stores, but not the native apps. You should just be able to download and install them from a website.

2025-03-03 13:40:19

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Oh it's even interoperable, nice!

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 16:50:22

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It's creators and promoters not being rich enough?

2025-03-02 16:40:02

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#note1zkn…stwk

2025-03-02 16:38:41

#USSR #note1jwt…hng8

2025-03-02 08:28:31

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Looks like Olas can't render the video it uploaded in iOs? @npub1l2v…ajft https://image.nostr.build/08eec717e5a02a670cef86009a5eb1145c255b8327bcd2d00162e28f9d0595b9.jpg

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 19:53:47

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Can you find some sencha, dragon well, gunpowder, etc as well?

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 18:16:43

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FWIW I do think that Apple acted reasonably given that they had three choices:
1. Give the UK a backdoor
2. Turn the feature off and hope that UK users complain to their government. Especially after the nudes start leaking en mass - nobody wants to see that :-)
3. Ignore the order. That would probably require closing all UK Apple Stores and evacuating all physical, financial and personnel assets from the UK - and from any jurisdiction that cooperates with the UK. Which basically means Earth.

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.