Life Goals
## Free Resources for Learning Linux ##
https://bc1984.com/free-resources-for-learning-linux
**Linux Survival** (Online Practice)
- Covers: all terminal/command-prompt/command-line-interface basics, Bash; practice online for free with no account needed
- https://linuxsurvival.com/linux-tutorial-introduction/
**An Introduction to Linux Basics** (Tutorial)
- Covers: using the terminal/shell; commands: filesystems, navigation, file manipulation, documenation
- https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-linux-basics
**The Linux command line for beginners** (Tutorial)
- Covers: terminal basics, creating folders and files, manipulating files, handy utilities, superuser/root, installing new software, hidden files
- https://ubuntu.com/tutorials/command-line-for-beginners#1-overview
**An Introduction to the Linux Terminal** (Tutorial)
- Covers: different terminal emulators, bash/shell/zsh, command prompt, running commands with/without arguments and flags, environment variables, updating your PATH
- https://www.digitalocean.com/community/tutorials/an-introduction-to-the-linux-terminal
**Introduction to Bash Scripting** (eBook PDF)
- Covers: "Hello, World!" total noob Bash script, script structure, variables, user input, comments, arguments, arrays, conditionals, loops, functions, and on and on into more advanced topics
**Free Courses**
- Free 8-hour Linux Course: https://www.netacad.com/courses/os-it/ndg-linux-unhatched
- Free 60-hour Linux Course: https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/introduction-to-linux
**What Next? Set up a Virtual Machine**
- Once you are familiar with the basics, download and install VirtualBox, and then set up an Ubuntu or Debian Virtual Machine to get access to your very own "throwaway" Linux OS. Do anything you want on the VM and don't worry about it. Install and uninstall software, create scripts, practice and repeat. The world is your oyster!
- https://www.howtogeek.com/796988/how-to-install-linux-in-virtualbox
Imagining future 3D printed guns in this exact shape and style... 👌
"You can't even run with $1 Million of gold. $1 Million of gold is a Toddler. Toddlers are heavy!" - #[0] - Bitcoin gets through any borders.
more like this please
https://apnews.com/article/massachusetts-c59f30e1736c7409e41357f1ae2e7b93
COHASSET, Mass. (AP) — A former employee of a Massachusetts town is facing charges of allegedly setting up a secret cryptocurrency mining operation in a remote crawl space at a school, police said.
Nadeam Nahas, 39, was scheduled to be arraigned Thursday on charges of fraudulent use of electricity and vandalizing a school, but he did not show up and a judge issued a default warrant after rejecting a defense motion to reschedule, a spokesperson for the Norfolk district attorney’s office said.
A listed number for Nahas was not accepting messages on Thursday.
Police responded to Cohasset Middle/High School in December 2021 after the town’s facilities director found electrical wires, temporary duct work, and numerous computers that seemed out of place while conducting a routine inspection of the school, Chief William Quigley of the Cohasset Police Department said in a statement Wednesday.
He contacted the town’s IT director, who determined that it was a cryptocurrency mining operation unlawfully hooked up to the school’s electrical system, Quigley said.
The Coast Guard Investigative Service and the Department of Homeland Security assisted with safely removing and examining the equipment.
Crypto mining, the process of validating cryptocurrency transactions and creating new cryptocurrency, consumes vast amounts of electricity.
Nahas, the town’s assistant facilities director, was identified as a suspect after a three-month investigation. After a show-cause hearing, a criminal complaint was issued. Nahas subsequently resigned from his job with the town in early 2022, police said.
UN General Assembly again demands Russia to "immediately" withdraw troops from Ukraine, calling for a "comprehensive, just, and lasting" peace.
Notable abstentions:
- China
- India
- Pakistan
- South Africa
Ghillie suits; a common feature of modern warfare, mostly for use by snipers.
Not many people know this, but ghillie suits were first designed and crafted by people in the Scottish Highlands for use as camouflage during hunting expeditions; they were simple nets with strips of cloth attached. The word “ghillie” is derived from the Gaelic word gille, which means “boy” or “servant” (in the context of fosterage and apprenticeship). The term could derive from the fact that young boys used to wear the suits while acting as spotters to track game animals for hunters, or from the mythical Gille Dubh (lit. “black boy”), a mountain spirit featured in the folklore of the Gairloch area of the Scottish Highlands. The first known military use of ghillie suits was by the Lovat Scouts, during the Second Boer War in South Africa (1899-1902). They were Scottish Highland recruits who later went on to form the British army’s first sniper unit.
H/T: Celtic Europe - https://t.me/rjOekyqBmgxiZjcx
POLL: Came for the {X}, Stayed for the {Y} ?
"A lot of people automatically dismiss e-currency as a lost cause because of all the companies that failed since the 1990’s. I hope it’s obvious it was only the centrally controlled nature of those systems that doomed them. I think this is the first time we’re trying a decentralized, non-trust-based system." --S.N.
"In a few decades when the reward gets too small, the transaction fee will become the main compensation for [mining] nodes. I’m sure that in 20 years there will either be very large transaction volume or no volume." --S.N.
Not gonna lie, I love learning about this kinda stuff.
https://constructionphysics.substack.com/p/the-blast-furnace-800-years-of-technology
"Modern steel is produced by two different methods. The first uses an electric arc furnace to melt recycled steel scrap. The second method is to make new steel out of iron ore. While new steel can also be made in an electric arc furnace via the direct reduction route, most new steel starts life in a #blast #furnace. Iron ore (largely iron oxide), coke (coal that has been heated to drive out impurities), and limestone get placed in the furnace, where the coke reacts with the iron and air to form a high carbon iron known as “pig iron” (so named because historically the iron flowing down a trench into a series of casting molds resembled a pigs suckling from a mother sow). That pig iron then goes through a refining process (today a basic oxygen furnace, historically other methods such as open hearth furnaces or Bessemer converters) which reduces the carbon content and turns it into steel."
“Normalize CoinJoin and CoinSwap because they are really for privacy. If you believe that privacy is a basic human right, why should we be ashamed of that?” - @craigraw
https://bitcoinmagazine.com/technical/coinjoin-coinswap-enable-bitcoin-privacy
bitcoin is the best hedge against debasement
also ⬆️
"""
[9] Actually, bitcoin is a nice reward too; it's like crystalized machine sweat!
-- @rusty_twit
"""
Jan 15, 2018 -- https://github.com/torvalds/linux/commit/ed875ea1fcc6c34ea232610c3041d0978e327bbe -- #UnexpectedBitcoinQuotes
5 years ago there were less than 1,000 lightning nodes.
Today there are over 15,000.
Bitcoin is scaling. ⚡️
## BITCOIN AS DIGITAL CASH ##
( https://bc1984.com/bitcoin-as-digital-cash )
Bitcoin is like real cash, but formless (purely electronic) and with a fixed supply of 21 million. Sovereign individuals can increase their privacy and protect their wealth by adopting bitcoin, even on the margin.
**Bitcoin Prehistory**
Until the announcement of the Bitcoin Whitepaper by Satoshi Nakamoto on October 31, 2008, the idea of a workable digital currency without counterparty risk was difficult to envision.
Many very smart people made attempts over the years to lay the groundwork or build something like it, but bitcoin was the first truly peer-to-peer digital cash system that was robust against attacks and built in reasonable incentives for participants to help grow the network.
The fact that it works, and the manner in which is works, has been proven out over 14+ years now. The proof is in the pudding, so to speak.
For those that want to understand how it works, I recommend reading the bitcoin whitepaper (semi-technical, only 8 pages long): https://nakamotoinstitute.org/bitcoin/
But just as the internet works, or a car runs, without their every user (driver) grokking every minutiae, bitcoin plods on, settling billions of dollars a day of transactions.
**A BitTorrent of Money**
The truth is there now exists a BitTorrent of Money. For those not familiar, BitTorrent is a peer-to-peer file transfer protocol that is immune to censorship. Using BitTorrent software it is possible to download/upload any number of files, media, etc. without middlemen and with nobody to stop you.
Bitcoin works in the same fashion. It is transferred peer to peer between individuals. The current balance in everyone's "account" (wallet) is tracked globally in a distributed ledger and updated every 10 minutes. And every user can verify for themselves that transactions are legitimate and they control X amount of monetary value on the network simply and easily using their "wallet software".
A "wallet" is really just an app that lets you receive coins, spend coins and track your balance. Under the hood it is a system that keeps safe your private keys, which ultimately are used to sign off on transactions.
Perhaps with Zelle, Venmo, PayPal, etc. (consumer spending apps), these concepts are no longer so foreign. But I imagine less technically inclined (read: older generations) still might struggle to get the concept.
Importantly, PayPal and the like control who you can send money to, and they rely on various intermediaries all the way down to the Federal Reserve/Central Bank, which constantly mess with the money supply. So many trusted third parties in the mix.
With bitcoin, there is just you and the person you wish to transact with, be it a business or a charity or an individual.
**Fixed Supply**
One of the other main advantages of this monetary network is in its fixed supply of 21 million bitcoin. The number itself could be different, but the fact that it's fixed is what really matters. Every participant in the network agrees to and enforces this supply cap, meaning users of bitcoin can never be debased. No monetary inflation. Period.
**Pseudo-Anonymity**
Finally, bitcoin is pseudonymous. Meaning you can spend and receive it without authenticating yourself or identifying yourself to any third parties (whether these be nation states, corporations, or even the person you're transacting with).
**The Ledger Is Public**
The fact that the bitcoin ledger is public means certain metadata about your transactions and the past history of any coins you hold may be known or easily derived. But tools exist to enhance the privacy of bitcoin over this 'public' baseline too: Namely, coinjoin. (Read more about using coinjoin for privacy on bitcoin here: https://bc1984.com/the-privacy-middle-path )
With that said, even the baseline pseudonymity of bitcoin provides for better privacy than PayPal, your Credit Card, or a paper check.
More and more merchants accept bitcoin. And there exists the possibility to quickly swap in and out of bitcoin just to make payments (e.g. via Strike, Cash App). You don't even have to hold bitcoin yourself in order to make a payment with it, in effect.
**Advantages Accrue to Adopters**
So the main advantages of bitcoin that accrue to its adopters can be summarized as:
+ Fixed money supply means you can't be debased
+ Electronic, peer-to-peer payments mean you can't be censored
+ Pseudonymity and privacy tools help you reveal less about yourself when you transact
**Adopting on the Margin**
+ What if you just made 5% of your payments using bitcoin?
+ What if you held just 5% of your savings in bitcoin?
I would argue that either of these marginal changes would lead to vast improvements in individual sovereignty.
In a world where governments are working as quickly as possible to vanquish physical cash, and corporates track everything from your eyeballs to your gait, it pays to have and be able to use an alternative, more private monetary network.
In a world in which civil asset forfeiture, trade sanctions and baseless account closures (Looking at you PayPal) are increasingly normalized, you need a censorship resistant store of wealth.
You don't have to put all your money into bitcoin.
You don't have to spend bitcoin at every shop and stop using cash and cards all together.
But bitcoin is a parallel system. A voluntary system. And it is ready and waiting for you to dive in.
**Take the Leap**
Some good wallets that I'd recommend:
+ Blockstream Green
+ Samourai
+ Sparrow
+ Muun
I am fond of the fedimint concept with lightning gateways, personally.
Seems clear to me that lightning will be a key part of bitcoin's scaling, though, either way.
