I have been on several government research projects.

That's exactly how it works.

ie. the military wants us to evaluate this new radio that they're deploying to the soldiers to ensure that it can handle all of the comms during a theater sized battle.

First question: Does the government want the radio to be able to handle all of the comms?

If we go against their expectations we don't get the next follow on contract for the general's buddy's radio.

With my Umbrel finally synched and working I'm playing around with Squeak Node.

As it is in super Alpha stage and there's no documentation I created this reddit group to get people started.

https://www.reddit.com/r/squeaknode


It's certainly not at twitter level yet but the background mechanics appear to be working for sending tweets over the Lightning Network.

The developer's twitter is https://twitter.com/squeaknode

Have fun staying poor.

"cryptocurrencies and decentralized finance may be evolving into threats to the financial system"

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/crypto-equated-toxic-pre-crisis-192241795.html

I used the standard Umbrel setup with full standard hardware (raspberry Pi), etc. Fully synched. I was able to send some BTC to my wallet.

I've tried the lncli -unlock and it shows the same thing.

Checking the logs I see:
2021-09-19 16:21:47.661 [ERR] LTND: unable to start server: 512 Missing 'Port' argument

I am first creating a fully non opSec node so I'm in.

Though I'm having a problem with my Lightning node not allowing me to unlock the state. I suspect that I did a hard reset at one point in the process that may have corrupted a file somewhere.

Just spent an hour and a half filling out online forms for international travel for my wife to fly today.

They're making it harder and harder to fly these days. As a software engineer I am bewildered that the forms are meant for the 99% of sheep that have typical lifestyles. One missing piece of the puzzle and I either have to lie on the form or not have the ability to travel.

When I was a kid my dream when I grew up was not to fill out forms for the rest of my life.

Of course, the only reason she had to fly was also due to government. In order to stay in one location, one has to fly to another location, stay there for a minimum amount of hours, then fly back to that original location.

I would say that I would like to be in those meetings where people come up with ideas for how to restrict people but I've been in meetings like that. A bunch of clueless drones thinking that they're doing something worthy while they're just compensating for some low self esteem issue that they are now projecting on everyone else to deal with it. I'm looking forward to the algorithms with no emotional stake in things to be the law of the land.

I set up my first Umbrel node. I too would like to join this WO LN hub.

I'm working on a book with Joe Quirk. It is pretty intense.

Just spoke to the someone at the US navy about a FOIA request to verify some things on their end.

Elwar has been my nickname since 3rd grade when we had 5 Chads in our class so we all just went by our last name. My name was too long so we shortened it.

One dude's name was Chad Becky...we called him Becky (nobody really thought anything of it).

I expected nothing good from the Guardian, which is why I did not respond to her interview request.

It turned out to be partially accurate and surprisingly not an attack piece.

They took out a loan from the IMF last year for the whole "COVID" thing. They used it to hand out vaccines like candy...handing all of that IMF money over to an oligopoly that is raking in billions.

They will need to start paying back in 2023 as part of the loan agreement.

I had that idea for an app and was planning on getting started on it until I looked into laws.

The idea was that home cooks could take orders or have a large meal cooked and put it on the app. People order the food like on any other food app and some delivery service comes and picks it up and delivers it. This would be for people looking to make a bit of extra money, people like my mom who like to make cookies but could never eat as many as she cooks so she just gives them away, people like my wife who can cook a five star meal but don't want to be running a restaurant with all of the headaches that come with it. Or even someone with 3 kids that is cooking a recipe that can easily add 2 or 3 more servings to send off on a delivery for a bit of spending money.

Then I checked the laws in the US and no state allows you to sell food made at home. There are some very limited exceptions such as granola bars or some shit like that.

One more thing to look forward to when it all collapses though. Home delivery of some nice old lady's chocolate cookies and side businesses for the home cooks out there.

I would not be surprised if no big corporation accepts bitcoin in El Salvador. From the tidbits I've seen...at one point the president said that nobody would be forced to accept bitcoin (even though the law says so). I saw one comment saying that article 7 of the law was taken out. I saw yet another article saying that their chamber of commerce was told that all businesses needed to accept it though the companies were fighting it up to the bitter end.

So, what is likely happening is that those big companies are putting their legal teams on the payment thing as opposed to their tech team.

It all comes down to the fact that Bitcoin is a peer to peer money. Corporations are not a peer. They are a huge conglomeration of different people getting different percentages of your purchase. In order for a corporation to get paid in bitcoin (right now) you need a corporation to act as middleman (ie. BitPay) for the company.

One comment I found telling was of someone going into a store to buy something with bitcoin but the owner wasn't there so they had to text the owner and the owner finally sent the payment address.

Are we expecting McDonalds to set up a lightning wallet for their cashier to handle all of the money for that day, and then expect the cashier to make the choice between handing that wallet over to the owners at the end of the day or just quit with more than they would make in a year?

Bitcoin will eventually not only take down governments but also take down corporations. But for now, we're not there yet.

Eventually the "McDonalds" will be a series of smart contracts running the restaurant with an algorithm as the "owner".

I've been using 1inch. Just checked again on a Sunday morning fees "down to" $150.

Just checked on the fees that I would need to pay to convert one of my shitcoins into USDT via DeFi and it comes to about $600. For $5000 worth of coins.

We are certainly not at the future of DeFi yet.

The RGB solution coming down the pike would be over the Lightning Network and cost almost nothing using client side validation. That is the future of DeFi.

From what I saw the US government is fighting them on the Bitcoin loans.

I figure if I get the cash in the form of a loan for the equivalent amount of BTC that I would have otherwise received via cashing out then they go bankrupt or whichever, it still qualifies as a loan as far as the IRS is concerned. Just nobody to pay the loan back to.

I just went out with a realtor yesterday to view a property based on the likelihood that bitcoin will be over $100k by the end of the year. I wanted to be ready.

I'll definitely be looking at a BlockFi loan as opposed to cashing out.