Quick bit of advice.  Go ahead and get the big RPi.  The 4gig?  (or is there a bigger one yet?)  The extra memory makes the initial chain validation process much faster.  You want a good strong power supply, and a good energy efficient SSD (and though 1g is fine for now... I would almost say just get the 2 so you don't have that hanging over you eventually... I dunno...).  Some external SSDs (like the M.2 in a little case kinds) are power hogs, but the little usually rectangular ordinary ones tend to be power sippers.  And you most likely want some decent cooling for the little thing.  They do not run badly under normal load... but during sync and other operations these little suckers get pretty dang hot.

So.  Updates to various Michael Saylor narratives.

And yes, I know he is (rightly) looked at with a certain amount of dubious caution.  And he SHOULD be.  He has enough Bitcoin now to do serious damage if he doex X, and he is most certainly NOT in the rag tag "be your own bank", "down with the Fed" type of libertarian idealist that many Bitcoinners like to gatekeep.  And yes I am accusing us of being exclusive and short sighted in this regard.  Because sometimes I think we look at Bitcoin as this Holy Land where only certain people should be able to go when in fact one of it's fundamental properties is it's blind inclusivity.  We can't be OK with Libertarians, Drug Dealers and Black Hats of all kinds without also welcoming Banks, Billionaires and dirty capitalists.

Ok that screed over with let me get to the recent tweaks to his narrative which are interesting.

He is now calling Bitcoin a:

Technically Sound
Economically sound
Morally Sound
Politically sound

Digital property system and instant  financial electronic ******** (insert the rest of his usual good sales pitch).

The bits he is hitting all the normie business folks and old money people with are the Technically, Economically, Morally, Politically sound ideas.

And this is good stuff.  He is also articulating why we do NOT want some company to run this network, and even dances around the idea that we do not want governments doing it either (Politically sound).  He is CLEARLY explaining why Bitcoin, implicitly explaining why ONLY bitcoin, and why not Government, or corporate issued moneys.

So for now I still see Saylor as a pretty good asset for Bitcoin.  And for that matter Jack Dorsey is also doing more good now than what was happening with his politically captured last business.

It is easy to imagine a situation in which these sorts of "frontmen" for Bitcoin could turn sour...  But for now I think they are still net positives... and with a system that lets enemies transact we kind of have to take them, right?

My first lightning node was something I built by hand using Docker images on a NAS.  Lol.  That was a nightmare and I was lucky to shut it down and actually get my coins off of it.

Now I use Raspiblitz.  I think it a very nice system.  Stable, actively developed. A little "power-userish".

As Bob mentions Umbrel is also a well liked node-in-a-box.  I think it's a little more polished overall, but similar.

One interesting bit with these things are we are trusting the devs with an awful lot using any of these... I would DEFINITELY suggest doing things like verifying checksum of images and the like.  Because these "distros" are basically Bitcoin wallets with a huge attack surface.  If I were a hacker I would be looking for vulnerabilities in these os/sw distributions.  If you could find a crack in the armor you could certainly make a lot of stolen Bitcoin...

But I do not worry all that much.

One important choice in particular:  I cannot see any reason NOT to use Tor as a private node.  Putting these things behind TOR not only anonymizes them, it also improves firewalling and networking details right out of the box.

No.  You got it EXACTLY wrong.  The person I was responding to was the one that said the words "Everyone in Canada".  I am showing a picture that refutes that.  And your twisted representation of my argument is not only incorrect but rather asshollish with the whole "Mmmmmmkay" bullshit.


It's hard to believe people are seriously still saying that.  At the beginning of this pandemic we had two major differences:
1.  A corona virus believed to be seriously deadly
2.  Very little data

Not only has the data shown that the virus is NOT as deadly as we had feared, it has also mutated and the last two variants have been even more transmissible but LESS deadly (B.1.1.529 and BA.2).  MUCH less.  I work directly with hospital data.  This exact hospital data.  I know what I am talking about.

In fact they are effectively acting as a vaccine, and one that looks like it will prove to be better than the ones produced by the pharma companies.

We know less now about BA.2 but at first glance it looks even LESS severe than Omicron (B.1.1.529)

I usually do not call people I disagree with names.  But I am going to use a label that is accurate concerning people who think continuing to erode fundamental freedoms of humanity is a good idea under the current situation.  These people are "useful idiots".  And are helping to fuel a campaign to hobble western democracies.  Up until now it has been working.

The truckers, with all their flaws and blemishes are heroes in my book.

I hope Australians will do this next... and Europeans.  And yes, I hope we Americans will as well.  Otherwise we are in for a very  bleak ride.

Speaking of bleak rides... BOB!!! You don't need any more fancy ranch shit right now!  STOP SELLING DAMNIT!

Yes.  But you can run a node locally or even connect to another node you run elsewhere.  So it does not HAVE to be .  And no you cannot have any of my 3 million XMR.



*edit* Do you mean you are always behind one block?  I have seen this discussed.  Perhaps search reddit?  And you already created a second copy of the wallet and re-synced from scratch, right?

Yes.  The good news is there are great numbers of people waking up to what is actually happening.  But still very few realize it is an actual war we are in.  And a global war.  I would assume there is a pathway where it becomes a hot one too, which I pray to God we can avoid.

I know it's obvious but we really want to see a turnaround here, but the buying is not exactly coming in yet... :/

I need to use a real charting too to draw what the channel low is... but I just don't see us going there.  It's pretty damn low, I'd think. Somewhere under 30k potentially.

I would think it is unlikely to DRIFT back down there.. we are going to need a big thing to happen to drive it that far down. Something like some ridiculous US Execturive order... anything less than that is old news, really.  But that is sort of the current risk.

The bright side to this line of thought it we have ACTUALLY come to one of the biggest bossfights we have ever expected for Bitcoin.  It is hard to believe we are here.  And I think the powers that be are too late, AND I think they know it.

Obviously as a permabull I am hoping for a sharp rally, hopefully today and see us decisively break that channel top.

The feeling of what is all happening in the world around Bitcoin... it's astonishing.  Governments (countries and states) all starting to RACE to get in on this... it's surreal.  I almost think we are at the front end of something really big...  And to be honest... if the opposition has a plan in play they better launch it soon.  I think it is already too late to stop it, but the longer they wait the more that is true.

I sure do wish my country would realize the position they are in and move full force into Bitcoin.  But this will not happen, sadly.  The people controlling the US are literally funded by the Fed, and are not going to go down easily.

-edit-  Sadly we are headed to breaking down more...

The sheer numbers of images with him dressing up as people of different races and cultures makes the whole thing so crazy-go-nuts.

I like how they threw the kitchen sink into that tweet.  It was probably the character limit that stopped them from adding several other standard bigotries into the tweet. lol.  But even if the tweet limit was 5000 characters I am fairly sure we would not see "anti-white", or "anti-Christian" ever show up.

Ha.  Yes.  Looks like a rejection at the trend line.  At least so far...  I am not going to say anything about bear traps.

First test:

We risk drifting into a taboo conversation here.. but I would argue that the statement "Everyone thinks those truckers are complete idiots" is not entirely correct:



I personally think the right to protest is EXTREMELY important... and comments like "fringe people with unacceptable views" are DANGEROUS rhetoric.  Trudeau's last tweet about them is actually EVIL in my opinion.



That is a technique that has been being used throughout the pandemic by WEF aligned politicians seizing control of our freedoms and mainstream news organizations to describe the people who disagree.  It is ridiculous and evil.

He is framing a very large peaceful non-bigoted protest as racism.  I am personally hoping this technique backfires on him powerfully.

If the truth about what has happened over the last several years actually fully comes to light, I would think Justin might want to just STAY at his undisclosed location.

Lots of talk about the well done Fidelity report.  Rightfully so.

But the report absolutely SKEWERS Ethereum too...  Awesome.



Monetary policy: HAS CHANGED AND IS EXPECTED TO CHANGE AGAIN

We can have fun playing with "smart contracts" all day long.  But if you want your money safe where do you keep it?

Also, it's just a matter of time before all of ethereum's USEFUL tech is replicated on Bitcoin sidechains anyway.  Though we will need some useful tech first...

Raul Pal is dead wrong.  Though he might get richer because of all the people who are also wrong.

So...  The really edgy thing would for bitcoin just to waltz through this trend line sideways just to piss everyone off at once.  But of course it is more likely to go up... or down.

1D below...

OMG.  Now you have decided to put a 'k' on it!

I am beginning to think you are trying to undo the foundations of Western society!  Are you a Russian agent?!??!

Look, Strawbs... maybe you are new here, but we don't typically like it for people to talk about talking about threads for what we talk about.

See what I am saying?  Wait.  I think that's what I am doing?

I think "Small Mac" is a cute name but bad marketing.  I think you could call it just the "Mac".

Although I can't STAND what McD's tries to pass off for "food".  Almost any fast food is better.  Including BK (also nasty).  Actually, if you are ever in Texas, you might try "Whataburger" which I think is one of the better garbage food joints.

This professional pic looks a *little* nicer than the real thing... but this is basically it:

I am updating one of our channels to 1 millisat fees.  You currently have all the liquidity.  You know if we keep doing this back and forth we could get a good thing going making these channels be used a lot... hmm.

OK!  We are inching up, but the volume is still underwhelming.  But if we are to break through TODAY 39450(6H)-39650(1D) looks to be the magic number with 40k being a nice definitive break! (Bulltrap?)

Do not worry, sir.  I know we here have spooked you.  But you are bringing good data (usually!), so keep it up.

I really think what we are not seeing are the second order incentives.  Certain nodes will be incentivized to exist because of trade.  Your grocery store, your hardware store, the convenience store, the gas station.  They want your continual and repeating business.  They will want to make the money flow as cheap for you as possible.  Eventually all the balancing will be driven by algorithms.  And the retailers will need excess traffic to let those little equations do their work.  Which means they will route payments as well as take them.

Banks too will probably have giant, well managed nodes.  Whatever banks are about to morph into.  But I think the retailers... the people we do trade with... those folks will become much more important in commerce.  No longer just terminals for money flow.

The doors are going to get blown off the entire system... and most people won;t even see it coming.

But lets finish with hanging the people that have taken us through the last two years.  We need to bring that swift and terrible justice first.  Then we can get on with building the world they do not want us to have.