I would tend to agree, likely something in the way the app uses the OS audio drivers. I had an identical Pixel 6 that worked fine, bought this one to put Graphene on fresh, and it has never worked. Everything else has been great, though. I appreciate you talking me into Graphene, or at least pointing me at resources that were convincing.

Premium family, locked in hard enough I don't want to also pay for Tidal.

No luck. Setting it to loud did give a little increase, still at 50% or less volume.

Normalize - off, volume level greyed out but Normal is selected.

Looks like they took away the setting to only check for updates 1/wk. the notifications for reboots show an estimate of 1/day - that is pretty crazy for a "stable" release, IMO. I've just disabled notifications for system updates altogether. Now I have a feeling that anytime I reboot my phone, I'll just be waiting a significantly longer period of time for any updates to finish installing and apps to refactor or whatever they do.

My BT volume level on the phone is always 100%. When I first start Spotify, I hear a song start playing at normal volume, for maybe 1/2 a second, or 1/10 of a second. It immediately drops to a very low volume (although the volume still shows as 100%). The volume continues at this level as long as the device is connected. I've had this experience with multiple BT devices (car stereo, JBL speaker, my garage stereo system that has a BT input, etc). It has ONLY been an issue with Spotify - Tidal, YouTube, etc work fine.

It would be super great if #GrapheneOS would let me play Spotify over bluetooth at full volume. Tidal works fine, it is something specific to Spotify as far as I can tell. Acts like it is playing through a hearing loss prevention filter.

Also would be great not to have restart my phone (and optimize apps) 3 days in a row for OS updates. I thought I had set it to max 1/wk.

Integrity means something.

Looking like it's been a good evening in Moscow.

Early gn #nostr.

Still around, just not spending much time on social media. I'm having a great time not thinking about the current thing, or the next thing.

Gn 🌛

Today I participated in my first ever toy run. I didn't even know what a toy run actually was, just that toys were being collected. Had never rode in a large pack of motorcycles, just a few times in groups of ten or less.

Well, it was a blast! Weather was great, cold (40ish, maybe) but clear and sunny. It was basically parading through the streets of my small city along an organized route. There were people outside watching the thundering horde go by. All the intersections had been blocked off for us. There were hundreds of motorcycles, double-file. Could have been over 1000 of us.

What a great thing to be a part of! Learning to ride my motorcycle is paying off.

This doesn't change. You'll still be too old to skate when you're 41. Also 51. You've got a lot of years of non-conformity left in you, so I suggest you get used to it.

Gnite Gnostr

Sometimes it is hard to want to continue on in the shadows of a culture that is normalizing mental and physical illness and infirmity.

I think that it is not that easy to trace the transfers when done via lightning between exchanges. If we were talking on-chain transfers, I completely agree with you.

The flip side is what I am optimizing for. I am interested in making it harder for them to check anything by their own rules. And all I can tell them is that I don't know, because I don't. If they want to try to figure it out, they can go right ahead, but at the end of the day, they won't know either, and I have no intent or motivation to help them.

Since they will mostly believe whatever I say, it is to my benefit to say only what can be obviously confirmed. That is, at the time the sats sold went on the exchange (which is likely reporting to them), they were valued at X, and when exchanged for fiat, they were valued at Y. This is my best try at complying, although everyone knows it is not 100%. Any valuation prior to those sats being on the exchange is clouded in assumption.

"Don't let perfection be the enemy of progress." - me.

"I may not be the best the best at anything, but that is good, because I can always learn to be better. I think this is the difference between high self-esteem and narcissism." - also me.

Yes, the first quote is based on various similar quotes, but that is how I phrased it yesterday in a conversation, and I'm using that exact phrasing for this note. It is, in my opinion, extremely important.

This is what I am learning, really in all aspects of my life. It is so universal (to me) that I think it may become something like a core tenant of my world view. Let me break it down a little further.

I am far from perfect.

This is not in a religious/sin context. I don't believe in that. It isn't even necessarily in a moral context. This doesn't assume that I am living up to anyone else's expectations, or even my own, really. What I am saying here is even though I might wish for something very strongly, the actions that I actually do are not always 100% aligned with that wish. I might wish to never eat pastries again, because I know they are very bad for me, and still find myself eating a donut. I might wish to have the best relationship ever, and still find myself doing things that would undermine it. I may wish for friends, but actually spend very little time actually doing the things I know will create and improve my relationships with others. I may wish to spend more time with my family, and find myself playing games on my phone or typing long notes into Nostr.

It is this breakdown in logic that is my basis for stating I am anything less than perfect. And I know that this isn't pure logic; the breakdown exists because of logical incentives that influence action; my actions are still reasoned; they still align with the Austrian principles of human action, even if on the surface, they seem to be contradictory. But that isn't the point here.

The best I believe I can expect of myself is NOT perfection. The best I can expect is to be able to learn and improve. This means first accepting non-perfection, and becoming aware that learning and improvement are possible, then pursuing those paths.

This is especially important in relation to my health initiatives, my struggles with various habits and addictions, and my interpersonal relationships. It is also important with my relationship with myself.

The humility to comprehend, accept, and embrace imperfection is, in my opinion, the essence of good self-esteem, and the opposite of egotism or narcissism.

And what follows from good self-esteem is the confidence that I am able to learn from my imperfections and improve upon them, without giving up hope or assuming anything is as good as it will ever be. I can accept that everything is good enough for NOW, though, because there is nothing else to do with NOW but accept it. There is nothing to be done with the PAST other than learn from it. There is no need to regret, or condemn, or dismiss.

The only positive path forward is to learn and improve. This is progress, in the positive sense.

I am able to learn from everything I perceive. Even if my perceptions are later found to be false or mistaken, I am still able to learn from them. In fact, I must always assume my perceptions are true - or to take a meta-step, assume that my analysis of my perceptions is true. This is where I make the leap to believing that all emotions are true, as emotions are an analysis of perception. In this, I am also able to learn from my emotions, and use them to improve as well.

This is not what we have been taught, that emotions are to be disregarded, or that emotions are illogical, dangerous, capricious, etc.. Not at all; emotions are the truest, most important things we will encounter. Without emotions, our actions will no longer seek to improve upon our imperfections; they will only optimize for some logical extreme. We lose the ability to accept the present when we ignore emotion.

That's far enough down this thought path for NOW. I'm sure I will revisit it and refine it as I learn and improve. But this is my progress as of TODAY.

Good luck with that. I hope Savannah finds her match, and I hope she also is equal to his expectations.

A rare bitcoin note.

Thinking through using Lightning for plausible deniability. The essence of tax law is to determine what was paid (in fiat) for an asset (Bitcoin) and then what the asset was sold for (in fiat) to determine some amount of "capital gain" (in fiat).

Let's assume both Strike and River have fee-free lightning send/receive capability. I buy Bitcoin on Strike. Then I send it to a lightning address on River. Yes, I'm KYC'd on both services, but neither is necessarily aware of where the Bitcoin came from. The sender is at least somewhat aware of where it is going, but may not know which user of the service it is going to.

I'm going to keep this simple - I wouldn't actually do this, but let's say I kept the balance on River. Then, one day I needed some fiat dollars, and so I sent some bitcoin (not the same amount as any prior transaction) from River to my Strike account, again using lightning addresses. Strike doesn't know where that came from, but has to assume I own it. River knows that it left River, and may know it went to Strike, but probably doesn't know who it was going to, only that I authorized it.

Then I immediately sell the Bitcoin on Strike, and withdraw the fiat dollars to my US fiat bank account.

Who is to say what capital gain or loss is made on that Bitcoin? I believe the only gain or loss than can be determined is from the Bitcoin price (as determined by a third party) when the Bitcoin arrived at Strike (from River), and the price Strike opted to sell the Bitcoin at. This would be happening minutes, if not seconds, apart, so there would be very little price change, and very little gain or loss.

Any other way of determining gain/loss would have to make assumptions that may or may not be true. It would be prohibitively difficult for me to even determine a past bitcoin exchange rate or point in time to base a capital gain/loss from. Even if I had great accounting that showed the exact time I acquired every sat I have ownership of, so I could follow a FIFO or LIFO method of accounting to determine gains, that would be ridiculous and incorrect, as I receive free sats from reward programs, I earn sats from mining, or exchanging for goods and services, and sats on exchanges might not technically be mine until I possess them in my own custody, depending on the exchange TOS.

This is an example of regulation that simply does not cleanly apply to a different technology. What makes sense for a stock, bond, or even commodity, metal, or foreign currency, does NOT make sense for Bitcoin. This isn't even poking at KYC, just at fiat pricing and capital gain taxation.

Try to poke holes in this and show me where I'm wrong, but I think using lightning in this way to create some plausible deniability and break the ownership chain should be enough to do what many are using coin joins, whirlpools, etc. to accomplish. I have a similar method that would work privately to break KYC by using lightning and a couple privately held lightning nodes, but it is a bit more complicated. What I am describing above takes no technical skill and does not even assume self-custody.

I'm not telling anyone to sell a single sat. I'm also not telling anyone what to declare to their governments. This is a way of looking at things that may influence your behaviour, though. Stay humble.

Gn #nostr.

The affirmation of reuniting with old friends is priceless.

(And not at all the same as reuniting with family, which carries a different weight, although it may be just as joyous.)