After a previous bridge was heavily damaged by a flood, the construction of the Charles Bridge (a.k.a. Prague Bridge or Stone Bridge) started in 1357 under the leadership of King Charles IV and was completed by 1402. For more than three centuries it was the only permanent means of crossing the river Vltava. It is still standing today in 2023 for pedestrian use.

View more photos:

https://braydon.com/nostr/photos/btcprague2023/#113

In Czechoslovakia on June 1st, 1953, cash lost about 80% of the value overnight because of secret government currency reform.

In 2023, the Czech Koruna (CZK) lost about 10% of the value in a year, as similar to many others.

View more photos:

https://braydon.com/nostr/photos/btcprague2023/#18

Multisig could be useful for organizations.

While in Prague for #BTCPrague I visited the St. Vitus Cathedral. Construction started in 1344 and was finally completed in 1929 — nearly 600 years later!

View more photos:

https://braydon.com/nostr/photos/btcprague2023/#127

I have photos up from my trip to Prague for BTCPrague 2023!

https://braydon.com/nostr/photos/btcprague2023/

I know there is a bounty for Nostr-based GitHub replacement:

https://bountsr.org/nostr-based-github

However, a Lightning + Nostr + Debian (Mobian, PureOS) software store could be a great way to support projects and have a support channel to help determine market priorities.

Inkscape launches version 1.3

"By default, Inkscape will now leverage the power of all your computer's cores when it renders objects, but you can also choose to limit its powers in the preferences."

https://inkscape.org/news/2023/07/23/inkscape-launches-version-13-focus-organizing-work/

This could be interesting.

For sure!

Nice, I like the metaphor with nature.

More specifically, it will eventually become fiat and no longer backed by gold.

The history of the ownership of railroads in the United States is pretty interesting. On the east side of the United States, it's a dramatic back and forth between private and state ownership.

Who will build the railroads? They were initially built and owned by several private organizations.

However, the railroads were nationalized in 1917 by same president that signed the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. It only lasted until 1920. The end result was an Interstate Commerce Commision (ICC) with expanded powers that could intervene in the market.

Around the time of the introduction and expanding market of planes, cars and trucks, railroads were having difficulty remaining profitable. The ICC capped rates and limited the ability to close railroads. This ultimately led towards the Eastern U.S. railroads being nationalized again with a new organization called Conrail (Consolidated Rail Corporation).

Eventually the ICC removed the capped rates and Conrail was able to become profitable again. Afterwards, Conrail transitioned to be privately owned and was split between Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation.

Today both Norfolk Southern and CSX Transportation have a duopoly on transcontinental freight rail lines on the east side of United States.

It'll probably still make calls. Though, it could be interesting to knoll out the parts in a shadowbox for display.

Glad to hear an AI model likes the idea of training other LLMs. 😂

Fun project idea: Custom trained AI model (LLM) on:

- All books from the entirety of the Mises Institute's Bookstore and other related texts, video transcripts and podcasts.

- Texts, books, speech transcripts from the Free Software Foundation.

- Books, podcasts, speeches and presentations on the subject of Bitcoin and Nostr.

I have many photos at:

https://braydon.com/nostr/photos/nostrica2023/

Pura Vida!

I have a feeling that the leadership of the Chelan and Douglas County PUDs with hydroelectric dams have some relationship with the third-parties that are trading that electricity.

It would explain why there are several rebate offers from Chelan County PUD to decrease energy use. It would explain why there is an increased rate for specific industries — like #bitcoin #mining. It all adds up to more energy available to be sold to third-parties and traded at profit.

Balancing the grid with bitcoin mining could be a more efficient use of the energy. I need to do further research.

However, there are interesting mining business opportunities that would be possible with improved communication with the PUDs. For example, balancing the load on the grid at high efficiency.

Yeah, I assume there are many people that are mining that way.

Good luck. 🤘

Some top books that I often recommend on the subject to those interested:

- Principles of Economics by Saifedean Ammous

- How to Think About the Economy: A Primer by Per Bylund

- Anatomy of the State by Murray N. Rothbard

Prague was an interesting place to visit for #btcprague — a lot of history.

On June 1st, 1953, people in Czechoslovakia lost 80% of their value in cash overnight through secret currency reform.

The "just in-case..." was a reality, not that long ago.

Many more videos from #BTCPrague are up! Including from the first day.

https://youtube.com/@BTCPrague/videos

Been meaning to take a look at Start9 — looks interesting.

I am somewhat familiar with Sandboxed Google Play (from GrapheneOS) and want to look more into the tradeoffs compared with using microg (from CalyxOS). For the most part, Sandboxed Google Play can be left uninstalled. It's mostly only needed for eSIM activation, as many apps have alternative means that do not depend on Play Services.

From using Phosh for a few days on PinePhone and Librem 5, it would be great to have a quick top navigation toggle to switch system display scaling from 200%, 150% and 100%. There is an option in Mobile Settings to change the scaling per application, however it only works with some apps.

#librem5 #pinephone #phosh

Wow! Running Gossip on a phone!

It doesn't yet fit the screen. However, performance looks great. It's on the PinePhone with postmarketOS and Phosh. I installed the Rust toolchain and compiled nostr:npub189j8y280mhezlp98ecmdzydn0r8970g4hpqpx3u9tcztynywfczqqr3tg8 from the console on the phone. I needed to add some compile flags as Alpine Linux (postmarketOS) wants to dynamically link to musl.

Adding a responsive layout and handling touch events for pasting and selecting text would be all that would be needed.

#pinephone #nostr #gossip

I got a PinePhone back around 2020. My initial reaction was that the interface lagged too much. Entering text, with the on-screen keyboard, was too slow and navigating had signifigant delays. I put it away and haven't picked it up again until today.

I downloaded the latest postmarketOS with the Phosh interface — as similar to what would ship with the Librem 5 — restored the image on an microSD card, took the back cover off, removed the battery, inserted it above the SIM card slot. I then disabled the modem using the tip of a pen to switch it off using the dip switch. Inserted the battery, put back the cover, turned the phone on and proceeded to install postmarketOS.

After the installation, the first thing I noticed was that entering text was much more responsive than before. Great, progress has been made towards improving the performance. It's not even the PinePhone Pro version! After connecting it to WiFi — with a few user interface oddities — and adjusting a few settings, I proceeded.

What Nostr client with a GUI will run well on postmarketOS?

Firefox was installed, so I tried a web based client first. Navigated to the extensions to install either Nos2x or Alby, however both are not available. The interface warned about compatibility with Andriod (since it's aarch64) and the extensions were not compatible.

To be continued.

#pinephone #nostr #wifionly #postmarketos #phosh #librem5

Anyone try out the #librem5 yet? Thoughts?

Not familiar with those details. They did have a chip available at #BTCPrague

I don't think so.

A git repo with details will likely be available later; other hardware has been: https://github.com/trezor/trezor-hardware

Secure element TROPIC01 could be available in 2025.

https://tropicsquare.com/product

Hardware seems mostly for R&D – it is improving. A #wifionly option could do well.

Yeah, it's unclear to me right now.

Working on clearing my backlog so I can pick up some new projects and explore these details soon.

🤙

Yeah, it may be best to use both protocols. MQTT for the raw sensor data and Nostr events sent as periodic aggregate updates and alerts rather than as raw sensor data.

For my refrogeration project, for example, the MQTT sensor events are sent every 30 seconds. I use the quality of service setting 1 (at least once) otherwise sensor events are dropped, even with a direct ethernet connection.

Another program subscribes to the events and then sends reports and alerts via email and SMS over LTE-M and ethernet. Nostr could be an additional delivery mechanism.

Would Nostr also be useful for the raw sensor data?

Paid to host the seed? If so, yeah probably.

It would be interesting to add some test vectors for this case to optimize ahead of time. For example 1M followers, 1M notes, 1M zaps and etc. I'm unfamiliar with how this would work in Andriod development though. 😬