I don't have a source handy, but my understanding is when money is put into the ETF, they do have to buy Bitcoin within "a certain amount of time" (not sure how much time, maybe daily or so).

Plus obviously holding any large portion in cash is a quick way to become insolvent given Bitcoin's volatility, and I don't think any of the ETF managers are *that* stupid, even if it was a legal option.

This is the best description of LLMs I've heard yet.

Like a human dumba**, AI can do some work for you and accelerate your productivity, but you still have to verify the work, because you can't assume much of the quality or accuracy.

nostr:nevent1qqszry67ku075fpdnx03eqps7p54tf4nqp2ma3ry6304l2zx6rt98wcpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejsygqlsvxasagnpvf5l0ely7nfamxcvyayn96g5ud45fc6wx07hts5a5psgqqqqqqsnnlhj6

I like this idea, but lack of encrypted messaging (Signal/Matrix) makes this a no-go for me.

I second the recommendation of GrapheneOS to at least prevent some of the tracking.

Having a simpler phone would be great, but a good second choice is to limit what apps you install so you have less distractions available.

There have been several times where I've picked up my phone because I'm slightly bored, stared at the home screen for a few moments, and put it back down after nothing grabs me. After that happened a few times, I've started reaching for my phone less often.

Hey nostr:npub1a00wj229auzjswlq4s77y4u8eqdx5k9ppatgl8rtv8va65f6mwksum9q3h, any plans for a dumb display with this tech? I'd love to be able to plug something into my laptop so I can use it outside in the sun.

This is why I've decided I want to minimize (and eventually eliminate) my USD debt, even if that might not make the most sense mathmatically.

(That and the whole "banks loan dollars into existence" thing; I have no desire to contribute to debasement/inflation by continuing to borrow money.)

Better to stay humble and stack sats.

nostr:nevent1qqs0dfpv2yxxl5f2mvvv6c7j9m2hlnvwre2kh9nznaayqc43dl95trcpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qgsvgam0x8ss9x8yledk5juatt3yqpp09jshkk3hyz8nz9n096y0qksrqsqqqqqpxzncs9

This is 100% correct, except this is basically the true definition of a prepper (most people incorrectly think prepping is just about guns, MREs, bunkers, and so on).

Real prepping means analyzing what things you are dependent on for your basic needs and determining how to increase your resilience in case e.g. supply chains are disrupted as you said.

Another comment already mentioned nostr:npub15879mltlln6k8jy32k6xvagmtqx3zhsndchcey8gjyectwldk88sq5kv0n, and I second this; on The Survival Podcast he does an excellent job of analyzing a wide range of topics with an eye towards building more resiliency in case of disruption or disaster.

From what I've seen in the past, the primary chokepoint for GrapheneOS has not been funds, but developers. Relevant here because it seems they often don't have enough devs to maintain current releases, much less think about new ones.

If they refused to merge a PR adding support for a new device without a good reason, that'd be one thing, but I don't think that has happened. (Disclaimer: I haven't followed development super closely, so some of this could be inaccurate or out-of-date.)

I think many people also overestimate the competence of "bad guys" like Google (or the US federal government); sure they have a lot of power and can do many bad things, but they are not omnipotent. Obviously I can't *prove* that there isn't some kind of hardware "watcher" that runs even alongside GrapheneOS, but why would Google spend money and dev time on this when they already have control of the entire OS 99% of the time?

I'm much more concerned about the millions of normies using stock Android, which *definitely* sends tons of data to Google, or iOS, which probably isn't much better. Sure I'd love to have an entirely open, auditable hardware platform, but in the meantime I think anyone who switches from Android/iOS to Graphene is taking a step in the right direction.

Agreed, there is no reason to do this. Not necessarily malicious, sometimes people just have bad ideas and/or justify them with bad reasoning.

OP, please release the source code as soon as possible; no one cares if it's ugly or half-broken or whatever.

When the app is released I might test it out briefly, but for something as important as encrypted comms I won't consider using it regularly until source is available (and ideally it has reproducible builds too).

I get the desire here, but disappearing messages really just add a level of inconvenience without doing much to increase security. No matter how secure the system, one can always take screenshots, or worst case take a picture of the screen. (And for personal relationships as you describe, the difference between a signed message and a screenshot is going to be slim to nil.)

I'm pretty sure this is actually one of the procedurally-generated creatures from No Man's Sky.

"The elite would never allow..."

As many red-pilled/black-pilled people often do, OP assumes government / "the powerful" have near-unlimited power, which is absolutely false. If "they" can't stop movies from being pirated (much less certain other content which is actually abominable), how do you expect them to stop Bitcoin?

Besides which, even if the NSA did create Bitcoin (which I give about a 0.0001% chance; I don't think they did, but obviously we can't prove it), I don't care. My node still relays blocks, and there are miners all over the world willing to include my transaction in the next block if I pay a high enough fee. Good luck trying to stop me.

If the NSA *did* create Bitcoin and they *were* trying to create something they could control, then they really screwed up bad, because they can't control it. And worse, we now have a valid alternative to CBDCs, which we were heading towards without Bitcoin, so rather than helping push us towards CBDCs, they would have saved us from them. 😂

Unspent Bitcoin is not useless:

1. My HODL'd Bitcoin prevents my long term savings from being debased.

2. My HODL'd Bitcoin decreases the reservation demand for the US Dollar, making it slightly less easy for them to get away with money printing.

3. My HODL'd Bitcoin means they can't steal *my* purchasing power to fund immoral things like wars, welfare, subsidies, the ATF, and much more.

As for actually spending sats, the main factor is Gresham's Law: I will always spend dollars before sats (even if I have someone like Strike instantly convert those dollars to sats to pay a Lightning invoice). If/when I can no longer convert dollars to sats, then I'll earn and spend sats directly.

As for when I'll spend my long-term savings (which would be the same question if the stack was instead gold, or real estate, or stocks, etc.), that is an open question. I'm not really a fan of "retirement", I don't intend to quit working, so the goal is to cashflow even most large purchases I might want to make. Otherwise maybe I'll come across something that I'm willing to trade a small portion of my stack for: a small business, a 2nd/3rd/4th house, or a private island lol. Anything left over I can give away or pass on to my future kids.

I don't know if I've ever thought "I have enough Bitcoin." 😂 Maybe once or twice after hearing a super bullish price prediction, but usually that wears off pretty quick, because "what if it takes 50 years to get there?"

I need to stack harder. 😤

My response to "I don't do CrYpTo" is always "oh me either, I only care about Bitcoin." I'm sure it won't sink in right away, but I want to always be planting the seed that Bitcoin is not cRyPtO. 🫡

The last bite before he hands over the rest of it. 😂

Airbnb's KYC process is obnoxious. Every time I think I've finished, they throw another "just one more thing" at me. 🙄

Has anyone built a no-KYC (or minimal-KYC) alternative yet? Nostrbnb, perhaps? (Payments would be in sats over Lightning of course.)

I had the same question, but according to https://docs.ipfs.tech/concepts/content-addressing/ IPFS also uses SHA256 (at least "by default"), so *I think* you could use the same ID and let the client choose whether to get a file from a Blossom server or from IPFS. Would be great if OP can confirm though.

"The moon landing was faked."

Let's leave aside that you're assuming much more government competence than warranted (both in pulling this off originally and in keeping it secret for 50+ years).

The best argument against this comes from the excellent xkcd: https://xkcd.com/1074/

This demonstrates a problem that can often happen: people begin to wake up and realize "the government doesn't care about me" and "inflation is theft" and "government schools are about indoctrination and conformity" all of which are true. But then they go to the extreme of saying "anything the government says is a lie, therefore any and every 'conspiracy theory' is true." So they start believing stupid stuff like "the earth is flat" or "we never landed on the moon" and so on.

The goal should never be to swap out one set of unexamined beliefs for another. Instead, we should *think critically* and never accept any theory unquestioned just because it comes from our favorite source.

Inflation is neither "good" nor "necessary", regardless of the fact the government says otherwise. But if the government says the sky is blue, I'm not just going to reflexively say "no it's brown!"

Not to mention it's not even good for "the economy" (inflation encourages bad investments, when what we need are *good* investments). 🙄