Tik Tok's DIY IPO:
They could be as thin as aluminium foil, or even thinner!
Warm it up a bit, yes, it's cold in the UK.
But no, mostly make a budget version of the Dyson sphere.
The last time this happened, in 1985, the Plaza accord had these outcomes:
Impact:
The dollar fell about 40% against the yen and Deutsche Mark over the next two years.
U.S. exports became more competitive, trade deficit narrowed somewhat.
Japan’s yen appreciation led to asset bubbles in the late 1980s.
It remains one of the most famous examples of successful coordinated currency intervention.
nostr:note1vs3s7fv57z4t5fd3g0e4vcr5jm4dpc466tpwlcu70hpqlxgq9uxsflxahm
Yes
I think we’ve forgotten that heat is energy and we need more, not less 😂
It’s happening
ChatGPT drew me up plans to build a Dyson sphere (actually a swarm), which I published yesterday, but thinking about it! How do you transmit that energy to earth to use?
Well that happens already in the form of light waves.
So that got me thinking, instead of a Dyson sphere, why not place orbiting mirrors to reflect more of the sunlight to the earth. Much cheaper and easier to do and something that is probably achievable within my lifetime.
The Bitcoin Ark protocol is a Layer‑2 scaling solution for Bitcoin—not to be confused with ARK (a separate Layer‑1 blockchain ecosystem). Here's a clear breakdown:
What Is the Ark Protocol?
* Layer‑2 Payments System: Ark is a trustless Layer‑2 protocol for Bitcoin designed to facilitate fast, low‑cost off‑chain transactions—without user setup hassles or liquidity constraints typical of Lightning Network (Ark Protocol).
* Shared UTXO (VTXO) Model: Users collectively share a UTXO—allowing them to transact off‑chain via Virtual Transaction Outputs (VTXOs), which represent shares of a larger UTXO. These can be redeemed on‑chain at any time (Ark Protocol).
How Does Ark Work?
1. Batching & Off-chain Execution
* Ark groups many user transactions into a single on‑chain batch output, reducing fees per user while preserving the UTXO model (docs.arklabs.xyz).
* Off‑chain coordination is managed by an Ark Operator, who oversees batch creation and transaction processing. However, users always retain unilateral control over their funds (docs.arklabs.xyz).
2. Security & User Control
* Multisig Batch Outputs: Batches are created using an n-of-n multisig—requiring both the user and the operator for collaborative spending. Users can also withdraw unilaterally after a delay via pre‑signed transactions (docs.arklabs.xyz).
* Preconfirmation vs. Bitcoin Finality:
* Preconfirmations: Off-chain confirmations from the operator that allow VTXOs to be spent immediately—but rely on operator honesty.
* Bitcoin Finality: Achieved once VTXOs are anchored to the blockchain via Batch Swaps, ensuring full security (docs.arklabs.xyz).
* Expiry Mechanism: Batch UTXOs include an expiry time. Users must either withdraw or roll over their VTXOs before expiry, or risk forfeiture of liquidity by the operator. This keeps things moving efficiently (docs.arklabs.xyz).
3. Rounds & Instant Payments
* Ark operates in rounds: the Ark Service Provider (ASP) collects VTXO exchange requests, constructs a new shared UTXO, and broadcasts the on‑chain batch that updates ownership. Exchanges are atomic, leveraging connector outputs to ensure security (Ark Protocol).
* Out‑of‑Round (OOR) Payments: For speed, users can transact instantly off‑chain with an OOR payment, co‑signed by the ASP. It relies on trust that the ASP won't collude to double-spend. The recipient can later convert this to a regular VTXO in the next round for added security (Ark Protocol).
Why Ark Over Lightning?
* No Liquidity Locks or Channels: Unlike Lightning, Ark doesn’t require users to open channels or secure inbound liquidity. Payments can be received immediately after setup (Ark Protocol).
* Greater Privacy & Simplicity: Ark offers better receiver privacy and a more user-friendly setup compared to Lightning, particularly for those new to Bitcoin Layer‑2 (Reddit).
* Possible Enhancements: While Ark works without Bitcoin protocol changes, it could be even more efficient with the addition of covenants like OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY (CTV) (Bitcoin Optech).
Its architecture, backed by Ark Labs and developer tools like those from Second, positions it as a compelling scaling alternative that maintains Bitcoin's core strengths.
What is the history of the political terms "right wing" and "left wing"?
The terms “left wing” and “right wing” originate from the seating arrangement in the French National Assembly after the French Revolution of 1789.
1789 context: In the early assemblies, deputies divided physically according to their political leanings. Those who supported the revolution’s radical changes — limiting the king’s power, secular reforms, and broader suffrage — sat on the left of the president’s chair. Those who supported the monarchy, the Church, and a more hierarchical order sat on the right.
Early 19th century: The terms became shorthand across Europe for progressives (left) and conservatives (right).
Late 19th–20th century: The left increasingly associated with socialism, labour movements, and redistribution. The right tied to conservatism, nationalism, and defense of traditional institutions.
Post–World War II: The Cold War sharpened the left/right divide — communism and social democracy vs. capitalism and liberal democracy.
Contemporary usage: Still rooted in that original dichotomy, though blurred. “Left wing” today can mean egalitarian, progressive, or collectivist politics. “Right wing” often means pro-market, conservative, or nationalist positions.
So the distinction is not arbitrary — it’s literally about where politicians sat in 1789 France, which then crystallised into a durable metaphor for political orientation.
I'm often bored 😂
GM
What I've learned in the last year, slowly, then suddenly.
Don't trust pensions, verify Bitcoin!
ERISA = Employee Retirement Income Security Act.
It’s a 1974 U.S. federal law that sets minimum standards for retirement and health benefit plans in private industry.
I thought my larder had been doxed 😂
Why is my nostr:nprofile1qqsyv47lazt9h6ycp2fsw270khje5egjgsrdkrupjg27u796g7f5k0spzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgtcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhszymhwden5te0wp6hyurvv4cxzeewv4ej7hjm7rj so slow? 🤔 It takes a minute to send a zap. I have 4 channels with plenty of funds. Still... Do I need to open more channels?
Same from self hosted Umbrel, I always assumed it was the Alby browser extension.
"As the decade came to a close, this de-pegging from gold"
My composition professor today was talking about Bitcoin (conversation about finances) and taught the class what fiat meant.
Since it’s the first week, we can’t really do much in class, so he took the time to speak to the class (full of 18/19 year olds, i’m the oldest😫) about how 401ks are a scam and how the monetary system is broken.
I was cheesing SO HARD when he brought up fiat & bitcoin. Best professor EVER.
Here’s the video he showed us today. https://youtu.be/nAHgr9dY9BU
As a foreigner, I've been researching 401k's for the last 30 seconds using ChatGPT
What is a 401K?
ChatGPT said:
A 401(k) is a U.S. retirement savings plan offered by employers. Key points:
Defined-contribution plan. You put in money from your paycheck before tax (traditional) or after tax (Roth, if offered).
Contributions often get employer matching up to a limit.
Investments usually go into mutual funds, ETFs, or similar options chosen from the plan.
Money grows tax-deferred (traditional) or tax-free (Roth).
Withdrawals allowed from age 59½ without penalty. Early withdrawals usually incur a 10% penalty plus taxes.
Required minimum distributions (RMDs) start at age 73 (traditional only).
It is a tax-advantaged way for U.S. employees to build retirement savings.
Want me to contrast it with UK pension schemes for context?
You said:
I understand it didn't start life as a pension plan, but ended up replacing them. Is this true? If so why?
ChatGPT said:
Correct. The 401(k) was not created as a pension plan. It emerged from a loophole in the 1978 U.S. tax code.
Timeline and shift:
Pre-1970s: Most large employers offered defined benefit pensions (guaranteed lifetime income). Risk was on the employer.
1978: Congress added section 401(k) to the tax code. The original intent was to give executives a way to defer tax on bonuses and stock options.
1980s: Benefits consultant Ted Benna realized the rule could be applied broadly so ordinary employees could defer salary into tax-advantaged accounts. Employers saw it as cheaper than running pensions.
1980s-1990s: Employers shifted en masse. Pensions are expensive and volatile, since the company must guarantee returns and cover shortfalls. A 401(k) moves the risk and responsibility to employees.
By 2000s: 401(k)s became the dominant private-sector retirement plan. Pensions remained mostly in government and some unionized sectors.
Why the replacement happened:
Cost control: Pensions are open-ended liabilities. A 401(k) fixes employer costs at the contribution match.
Volatility avoidance: Pension funding depends on market returns and interest rates. Companies disliked the balance-sheet swings.
Regulatory shifts: ERISA (1974) and later rules increased pension oversight and insurance costs.
Workforce mobility: Employers argued 401(k)s suited modern, more mobile employees.
Financial industry push: Wall Street profited from mutual funds and fees in 401(k) plans.
So yes: 401(k)s were an accident of tax law, later seized on as a cheaper alternative, which led to the slow death of private-sector pensions in the U.S.
My composition professor today was talking about Bitcoin (conversation about finances) and taught the class what fiat meant.
Since it’s the first week, we can’t really do much in class, so he took the time to speak to the class (full of 18/19 year olds, i’m the oldest😫) about how 401ks are a scam and how the monetary system is broken.
I was cheesing SO HARD when he brought up fiat & bitcoin. Best professor EVER.
Here’s the video he showed us today. https://youtu.be/nAHgr9dY9BU
Are you living in an alternate universe?
One where we've won already! 😂
You know at restaurants!
Well, you're allowed to order a meal each 😂
You baby has good taste!
Did you order anything? 😂
Is it our inability to listen to criticism? 😂
Also, when did moustaches come back into fashion 😂
There is a saying in sales,
"When the customer says yes, stop talking".
Core v Knots 😂
Yay, I can do this:
Me:
I've just seen your response published on NOSTR about UK crypto tax regulations coming in 2026. Reading that, am I right in thinking if I start a charity in Ventnor to rejuvenate the town, I can move my Bitcoin to this charity and spend it on the town tax free?
ChatGPT said:
I need to tread carefully here: I can’t give you personalised tax or legal advice. But I can give you a clear overview of how the UK rules work right now and what’s expected in the coming changes, so you can see what’s realistic.
Current UK position (2025)
Charities & tax: If you set up a registered charity in the UK (registered with the Charity Commission and HMRC), the charity itself is generally exempt from paying tax on most types of income and gains, provided the funds are used for charitable purposes only.
Crypto donations: If you donate Bitcoin to a UK charity, you don’t pay Capital Gains Tax (CGT) on the disposal. The charity can then sell or use the Bitcoin without tax, again provided it’s applied to the charitable objectives.
Qualifying purposes: Charitable purposes include things like the advancement of education, relief of poverty, and advancement of citizenship or community development — which is the likely category for “regenerating a town.” You’d need to carefully frame the charity’s objectives to match this.
I’m regretting my exit from enshitcoinification as Corey Doctorow describes it 😂
Do you know what's galling about $CRO's Trump pump.
Back in my shitcoin days, I had a large stack of these to enable me to buy Bitcoin at a discount.
I sold them last year when they broke even again at about $0.18
It feels like I'm shilling 😂
I want to answer, "isn't it strange how everything is becoming more efficient and abundant, yet prices rise constantly"
GM
Yes, I’m still on Facebook, bite me 😂
This is a Facebook friend that runs photography workshops.
I sooo want to jump in and explain prices haven’t risen, your currency is being debased.
Number 6 reporting for duty 🫡
He's hired, when can he start and does he have fully comprehensive van insurance?
So ChatGPT says ChatGPT uses a few teraflops while crafting a reply and the power consumption for this activity is a few watts per teraflop, so we are typically consuming an incandescent lightbulbs' worth of power to hold a conversation with AI.
I'm starting an electricity company with ChatGPT 😂
Could you design a Dyson sphere?
ChatGPT said:
Thought for 3m 13s
Short answer: yes—I can design a workable Dyson swarm (not a rigid shell), with concrete numbers, modules, and a build path that stays within known physics and plausible materials. Here’s a compact, engineering-oriented blueprint.
Dyson Swarm: Baseline Architecture (Sun-centric)
Why a swarm, not a shell
A rigid “sphere” is mechanically unstable and requires impossible materials.
A swarm = billions of independent power-sats on carefully choreographed orbits. It’s scalable, fault-tolerant, and buildable in phases.
Mission targets (choose by epoch)
Near-term civilisation scale:
10
16
10
16
–
10
17
10
17
W (hundreds–thousands × today’s global power).
Ultra scale:
10
18
10
18
W (0.0003% of the Sun). You don’t need anywhere near 100% to be “Type II-ish”.
Orbit & zoning
Inner mirror/thermal ring (0.12–0.20 AU): solar-thermal mirrors feeding heat engines; lasers for beaming outward.
Photovoltaic ring (0.25–0.35 AU): high-efficiency multi-junction PV with large radiators (safer cell temps).
Relay ring (~1 AU): optical power relays + logistics hubs; convert to microwave for Earth/Moon delivery if needed.
Key numbers (anchored to the Sun)
Assume PV efficiency 30% (multi-junction) and safe operating radius 0.30 AU (solar flux ≈ 15.1 kW/m²).
Power density (electric): ≈ 4.5 kW/m²
Area for
10
18
10
18
W at 0.30 AU:
𝐴
≈
10
18
0.3
×
15,122
≈
9.8
×
10
13
m
2
A≈
0.3×15,122
10
18
≈9.8×10
13
m
2
≈ 98 million km² of illuminated PV (delivered over many orbits).
If we push closer to 0.10 AU (flux ≈ 136 kW/m²), the area drops to 24.5 million km², but thermal management becomes the design driver (see below).
Satellite sizing (two reference designs)
A. PV Power-Sat (“Helios-1”) — 0.30 AU
PV aperture: 1 km² (1,000,000 m²) → ~4.5 GW electric.
Radiators: design for ~10.6 kW/m² waste heat; at ~700 K blackbody, emissive capacity ≈ 13.6 kW/m² → radiator area ~0.8–1.2 km² (ε≈0.9, margin included).
Dry mass (thin-film PV + support + radiators + structure): ~2–5×10⁶ kg (order-of-magnitude; dominated by radiators/structure).
Count for
10
18
10
18
W: ~2.2×10^8 units (for civilisation stepping-stones, you need far fewer).
B. Solar-Thermal Power-Sat (“Vulcan-1”) — 0.12–0.18 AU
Mirror field (high-albedo) funnels sunlight to a heat receiver at 1,000–1,200 K.
Brayton/Stirling cycle converts heat to electric, then to 1 µm lasers for beaming outward.
Advantage: higher allowable temperatures → smaller radiators per watt vs PV that must run cooler.
Control: fast gimbals throttle flux to keep receivers within thermal limits.
Power beaming & links
Interplanetary legs: high-coherence near-IR lasers (~1 µm). With a 100 m transmitter optic, diffraction half-angle
𝜃
≈
1.22
𝜆
/
𝐷
θ≈1.22λ/D ⇒ spot radius at 1 AU ≈ ~1.8 km → very low spill.
Near-Earth delivery: convert to microwave (e.g., 2.45 or 5.8 GHz) into rectenna farms on the Moon, in GEO, or high-altitude platforms; only down-beam to Earth when/where permitted (safety envelopes, dynamic power ceilings).
Orbital choreography & collision avoidance
Use inclined, non-crossing Keplerian families (“filaments”) with phased true anomalies to minimise mutual shading.
Poynting–Robertson drag and solar pressure require continuous station-keeping; build in solar-sail trim tabs + ion thrusters using in-situ propellants (e.g., O/Si from silicates, or Na/K from Mercury).
Thermal management (the make-or-break)
At 0.30 AU, waste heat ~10 kW/m² is radiatable with hot, high-ε panels; expect radiator area ~1× PV area for PV designs (depends on cell temp/efficiency).
At 0.10 AU, waste heat ~95 kW/m² → PV becomes challenging; solar-thermal is preferred, or operate PV at reduced flux (tilt/filters) with 5–10× radiator area.
Materials: refractory alloys (W, Mo), C/C composites, ceramic radiators, liquid-metal heat loops (NaK, Li).
Materials & mass budget (order-of-magnitude)
For a 0.10 AU PV scenario delivering
10
18
10
18
W with ultra-thin 2 μm collectors (ρ≈1500 kg/m³):
Collector mass ≈ 7.3×10¹⁰ kg (73 Mt) for the PV films alone.
With frames, radiators, optics, beaming, control—budget ×10–×30 → 10¹²–10¹³ kg total.
Compare: Mercury mass ~3.3×10²³ kg → using << 0.01% of Mercury suffices.
Industrialisation pathway (phased)
Phase 0 (now–20 yrs):
Mature in-situ resource utilisation (ISRU) on the Moon/NEOs; demo 100–1000 t/yr off-Earth manufacturing.
Perfect laser power-beaming with km-scale safety geofencing; build self-healing radiators and sail-trim station-keeping.
Phase 1 (20–60 yrs):
Mercury mining with autonomous robots; mass drivers loft ore to 0.2–0.4 AU depots.
Seed factories (self-expanding lines) reach 10⁶–10⁸ t/yr production of mirrors/radiators.
Deploy first 10–100 TW swarm segments powering cislunar industry.
Phase 2 (60–150 yrs):
Close the loop with self-replicating fab clusters (doubling time ~1–2 yrs).
Scale to 10¹⁶–10¹⁷ W capability; Earth receives only a controlled fraction; most power used off-planet.
Phase 3 (150+ yrs):
Optimise inner solar-thermal ring; expand relay lattice; approach
10
18
10
18
W if civilisation demands it.
Controls, safety & governance
Mesh optical comms + onboard autonomy for collision avoidance and ephemeris updates.
Power beaming governance: cryptographically signed demand contracts, dynamic no-fly zones, hard interlocks to limit flux density at receivers.
Fail-safe modes: faulted sats default to high-albedo reflect (no concentrated beams), then spiral disposal.
Why this is “design-realistic”
No new physics: all elements rely on orbital mechanics, radiative heat transfer, and diffraction-limited optics.
The bottlenecks are industrial scale, thermal engineering, and autonomy, not fundamental laws.
If you want, I can spin this into a proper blueprint pack (module drawings, radiator sizing curves, beaming link budgets, and a phased BOM/mass ledger), or tailor it to a different star type (e.g., a K-dwarf for cooler, closer orbits).
I can recommend the German mail provider nostr:nprofile1qy2hwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnddaehgu3wwp6kyqpqs0lcehg2nx2ps6sl33pjy6vaxqmm600tkxladd20wk49j9w98keq4pqj25
Since moving my email there, my spam has all been in German.
I receive just as much as before, but I can't understand a word of it 😂
Beating the price for the same product is always a good sales strategy.
Agreed, but also you're buying a metal one to survive harsh conditions that a paper backup won't.
i.e. time, physical damage, fire etc...
If there's a fire, a paper seed phrase won't survive, a good metal one should.
I don't understand the question?
My suggestion focus on quality and ease of use.
People buy metal seed phrases to protect their generational wealth.
Saving money is not a priority for this use case.
I've only ever been once in my life and I can't remember how many days I was trapped there eating meat balls.
Never again 😂
My moto is don't trust, verify.
And Bitcoin is literally the easiest asset in the world to verify.
As a private individual, it is in my interest to not verify the Bitcoin I may, or may not hold.
But just as El Salvador verifies the Bitcoin it purchases on behalf of its citizens, so $MSTR should do for the shareholders who actually own it.
We invented useless bureaucracy and exported it to the world as a gift 😂
Sustainability is one of the KPI's they claim to meet in their 2,000 page sustainability report that they print for every new customer 😂
Along with all the paper gold 😂
Yes, that's what solidified my suspicions.
I don't think you can confiscate something if it doesn't exist.