So, what I hear you saying is that multiple OP_RETURNs is good for spammers? Not a single example there that makes Bitcoin a better payments system.
CZ would pay at least $7 million for that.
I mean, Whip Inflation Now was a GOP thing, too. Their free market rhetoric has never really been matched by their actions.
A full "archival" node on bare metal is doable for under $100. Probably *much* less if you put only the indexes on SSD and the blocks on HDD.
A pruned full node is doable at ~$10, as you say.
Either way, shouldn't take weeks to sync if you have multiple cores and know what you're doing.
#Bitcoin Knots critique by nostr:nprofile1qqs936kc97s4k4gqjnmltljgqns0uadh08d77t5mypg3anxkneks37gpzamhxue69uhkv6tvw3jhytnwdaehgu3wwa5kuegpz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezumtfd3hh2tnvdakqx3v2gk largely mirroring my own:
"There seem to be a lot of misunderstandings about the tradeoffs and risks of running Knots instead of Bitcoin Core, so I'll try to dispel as much as I can.
If you want to make a well-informed decision before deciding to migrate to Knots, start here!
Don't run code blindly, even open-source code!
As Knots has not been widely used and has little to no developer base outside of Luke Dashjr, you should be very cautious when switching to it instead of Bitcoin Core. If you can't vet the code yourself, I'd recommend waiting for others to do so before making the jump.
Knots is still 99.999% Bitcoin Core code
Knots isn't an alternative client for Bitcoin (like btcd or libbitcoin) and is instead a minor code fork of Bitcoin Core. It relies almost exclusively on the upstream Bitcoin Core repository for bug fixes, vulnerability fixes, improvements, etc. Luke Dashjr applies his own preferred patches on top of that base, often of PRs that are yet to be merged (or won't be merged) into Core as he sees fit.
This means that you're reliant on Luke to keep up with Core to avoid your node being vulnerable to attacks. In a quick check of Bitcoin Core vs. Knots release timing, Knots usually lags anywhere from 1wk to 3mo behind Core.
Knots relies on a single maintainer
Luke Dashjr has complete control of the Knots repo on Github, and is the sole maintainer, meaning he merges whatever he sees fit into Knots without peer review. If you take a few minutes to look at the repo, you'll notice no pull request has ever been merged by an outside contributor, he has disabled any contributor tracking, and the vast majority of commits to the default branch are by Luke.
This places immense trust in Luke as an individual, as any mistake or malicious action on his part can happen without anyone else having any say or putting any eyes on the code. If you can't validate the code yourself, you're blindly trusting one individual with your view into the Bitcoin network.
Luke Dashjr has a terrible security track record
Along those same lines, Luke as the sole maintainer is terrifying to me. He has a poor track record of security practices, including leaking his GPG key (used to sign previous commits and releases) and leaving hundreds of Bitcoin on a hot wallet on a server instead of properly securing them offline.
Make of that what you will.
Knots still validates and stores all spam
If a transaction is valid under consensus rules and mined by any miner into a valid block, Knots will necessarily still validate all spam transactions and store them locally. By running Knots you are not rejecting any spam on-chain or on-disk, and are absolutely still storing Inscriptions, jpegs, OP_RETURNs, etc. on your hard drive forever.
The only place Knots may differ from Core is in the mempool, something that merely harms your fee estimation as you won't see transactions that may actually make it into blocks until they're mined.
Still want to run it? More power to you.
While I absolutely would not recommend running Knots, if you read and understand the above points and still choose to run Knots, more power to you. One of the beautiful things about a permissionless network like Bitcoin is no one can stop you from running whatever client you want, as long as it abides by consensus rules.
The only positive I see in growing Knots adoption would be if more devs and security researchers take the time to look through the diff between Core and Knots and find bugs and vulnerabilities that apply to both (and then responsible disclose them). That could be beneficial to the entire ecosystem, so I'm curious to see if that unfolds.
If I've missed anything or you have any addition questions, please don't hesitate to chime in!"
https://x.com/sethforprivacy/status/1920871546437943683
Even if you agree 100% with this critique, the risk for a mining node (no hot wallet, no other applications) is very small. The worst case is basically needing to reinstall (optionally switching to Core), which I can do in minutes (and while my miners fall back to another server/pool).
The benefits of running Knots are also greater for miners.
IMHO, every miner should be running Knots. And, of course, we should be supporting development of Knots.
Poor propagation of blocks full of spam is a feature, not a bug.
Spending on OnlyFans is a lot more bullish than seeing people donate comparable amounts to the Democrat and Republican parties.
People say stuff I don't like all the time and I defend their right to do it. I'm not down with people crapping on the sidewalk, though.
Bitcoin is a payments network.
I bought a 24 TB hard drive for under $300 last week. I can't keep up with how awesome things are in the future.
Satoshi isn't wasting any sats on a fancy car. 
I was at a bar in Florida in mid-2020 during the COVID lockdowns, talking to this guy I assumed was just a local drunk. He looked like he mightâve been a mechanic, dirty fingernails, rough hands, & he definitely had a good buzz going.
Every time I went up to the bar to order drinks, Iâd wear my mask. At one point, the guy looked at me & said, âyou donât need to wear a mask around here.â I replied, âHey man, Iâm just trying to be respectful.â He shot back, âWell, I donât give a shit, donât worry about that mask.â
Then he launched into this unexpected rant about gain-of-function research & asked me if Iâd ever heard of it. I said no. He leaned in and said, âThis COVID thing was made in a lab in China. I promise you, itâll come out eventually. It was gain-of-function.â
At the time, I just chalked him up as a drunk, an articulate drunk, but a drunk.
Turns out, the guy was fkn right.
https://blossom.primal.net/ef2761419e34ada4af6951435d4b7c7cce9d9f8f5718f0a980da53325818a333.mov
Chris Martenson was covering this in detail on his YouTube channel in great detail starting around February 2020 or so. He presented a lot of evidence for why the hypothesis couldn't be dismissed out of hand. I knew I was being gaslit from day one.
Totally separate issue from whether wearing masks was a good idea, of course.
I'd think it was a sausage fest, that's for sure.
There are lots of other things that fit consensus but which aren't propagated by the rules most noderunners have configured. So it's misleading to call this "aligning" mempools policies and consensus, as if there aren't good reasons to reject some transactions on our nodes.
Do you also accept any email someone sends you, since there's no way to filter spam 100%?
Unfortunately, that went out the window around the time that the "wizards" got rewarded for their antisocial behavior with venture funding or whatever.
There are good people with integrity on both sides of this debate, and I wish we could get together and put our energy toward addressing the underlying problem instead.
Two would have been fine. But some idiot wanted to turn it into a war movie or something.
Diet Moxie > Diet Dr Pepper > Diet Coke > Diet Pepsi
Honestly, I think a lot of businesses have that as official policy solely to pacify dumbass gun grabber types. If you're not carrying openly, they don't have to hear the Karens reeee about it and everyone's happy.
A Scanner Darkly (2007)
An undercover cop in a not-too-distant future becomes involved with a dangerous new drug and begins to lose his own identity as a result.
https://archive.org/download/a-scanner-darkly_202408/A%20Scanner%20Darkly.mp4
#animation #sci-fi #thriller #film #movies #kinostr
Me: I thought the movie was older than that.
Also Me: Oh, crap. 2007 was almost 20 years ago.
I don't know him, but this seems like the least charitable possible reading of his joke.
Like, people in LA are stereotypically obsessed with their looks and tan a lot. Seems like that's the obvious joke. Shrug.
