Its TIIIIMMMMEEEEEE!

Pretty excited for tonight's card. Think from bottom to top despite losing some of the fights due to injuries, and what not is absolutely stacked. I'm not going to make many adjustments to my predictions except for:

Alexander Volkanovski: intensity will be too much, and although I'm a fan of the Korean Zombie, I unfortunately don't see him winning, although I will be hoping that he finds a way somehow, but from a betting perspective I can't go against Alex in this.

Petr Yan: I expect Aljamain Sterling to put up a better fight than last time, but ultimately (barring any DQ's) I think Petr Yan makes a show of it just like last time. Sterling will be looking for that submission now they he knows he's completely outclassed on the feet.

Gilbert Burns: I know absolutely crazy, right? I'm going against the hype, and I'll be backing the underdog here. I've always liked Burns when he fights, and I think he showed up in the first round of the fight against Usman. We know what happened after, but I think his energy, and threat could cause problems for Chimaev. Burns needs to be careful not too over commit though. Honestly, the safest bet which is what I'm going with is the fight will go the distance. Its still a massive risk, since I think most people think Chimaev makes short work of Burns, but I think he'll be able to survive the submissions personally.

Ian Garry
Piera Rodriguez

For most people you would assume high temperature resistance would be preferable. I imagine most ways that people store this won't be at risk of coming into contact with corrosive substances. However, a house fire is much more likely. House fires might not be enough, but I guess it depends on the specific circumstances of how its stored. For example, storing your backup in your garage which has a ton of fuel around could increase the risk.

I will say one thing though that its time to put on your tin foil hats. Don't store your washers in your kitchen cupboard that has anything with chlorine in it . Chlorine will eat away at your stainless steel as its particularly vulnerable to it. It's worth mentioning that your tap water could potentially have low levels of chlorine in it, so if you have a pipe that could be dripping onto them for a while, obviously depending on how you store them, over time you might have a issue. Though, drinking water is usually has a very low concentration of cl2. Although, some places might be more than others. 1-2 parts per million could potentially give you that corrosion over time, and that's obviously ignoring the damage the water could do itself. Anyway, that's my tin foil rant over.

The point I was trying to make wasn't that chlorine in particular is a problem, but rather don't store your washers in random places in the house that have corrosive substances near them. For example, not everyone wants to put them in a capsule, and not everyone wants to store them together. So, they might opt to place them all around the place, to make them look quite innocent to anyone looking through your house. For example, a thief isn't going to even look at a washer that might be in your kitchen cupboard or your garage.

To me, 304 is going to be the one that makes the most sense for most people.

That's not technically true. A hardware wallet is no more secure than a properly created offline wallet. In fact, there might be arguments that its less secure since by implementing a device that's needed you are potentially introducing more vulnerabilities to the process. For example, if someone gets access to your hardware wallet, there's a few exploits they might be able to try to actually get into it. It has been done with a Trezor. However, encryption is encryption so a password doesn't really have exploits so if your wallet is on a secure offline device, then its very unlikely anyone ever gets access to it with a properly generated password of sufficient entropy.

Remember, whenever you introduce new components you are effectively increasing the attack vector too. While, a hardware wallet is decently safe from remote attacks, and malicious software. Physical access to it is questionable. Although, depending on how you've backed up that offline wallet of yours could potentially still have the same problems. So, I always assume that if someone has had physical access to it, it could potentially be compromised.

Obviously, a USB wallet is a terrible idea.

I mean, anything that you can offer a service for in fiat, can also be done in Bitcoin. While your target audience might be a little smaller here on the forum, you can definitely make money on here through the service section. I mean, if you want proof just go look at the most popular threads, and judge for yourself.

While I do agree with mk4 that you are not limited to this forum. Posting your service on the service section doesn't actually make you lose money does it? So, really as long as your service is legitimate then posting it isn't going to do any harm.

Trust issues are always going to be present, especially when dealing in a non reversible currency. However, that's largely mitigated by using a escrow who has been known to handle hundreds of thousands or potentially even millions at one time. As a new service, you could potentially even consider going first, but then obviously you have to accept that risk. Escrow is usually the best way.

The biggest issue with security is balance. Balancing convenience, and security is one of the big  problems of today. Unfortunately, we take it to the extremes whatever end of the spectrum you might be. If you're security conscious, you probably overcompensate which reduces the convenience or if you are like your average internet user, you likely take convenience over security, and therefore are at risk of being compromised.

I can't tell you the right balance, since everyone has a different threat model. However, I can at least give my rationalisation about why balance is important.

While that might be true, since the information is fairly easy to remember. How convenient is it for you? For example, if this is for a cold wallet then the inconvenience it requires to enter that passphrase might be mitigated enough to not worry about it much. However, if it was a somewhat hot wallet, you needed to access it frequently then entering that long of a passphrase could potentially be annoying. I know you're probably going to be using this for a offline wallet, so I suspect it is mitigated. However, there's a point in which a longer password doesn't necessary bring much of a security benefit.

I agree with o_e_l_e_o that a overcomplicated, inconvenient passphrase is much better than a insecure setup. Though, lets say you have 50 characters as an example, that would be plenty enough for most situations, barring that it hasn't been generated from a famous quote etc. If its randomly generated 50 characters, then you're probably good. Whereas, adding an additional 50 to take it up to 100, would technically increase the entropy, right. Although, in reality the attack possibilities of a 50 character pass phrase is already quite small, and adding 50 onto it with current techniques, and technology wouldn't make much of a difference at all.

Underrated remark. If you're backing up your passphrases on paper, where ever you might store that. Don't label it as "BITCOIN PASSWORD TO MY MEGA WALLET", because if a malicious attacker theoretically gained access to that piece of paper they would have a field day. However, if you've written your backup down in such a way that they wouldn't be able to immediately determine its for a Bitcoin wallet, then that's part of the entropy.

Again, security, and convenience right? Since, if you forget what that backup phrase is for, you could be potentially in trouble.

Its only Friday, and I'm starting to feel a little anxious about the game, and the game is on Sunday! I'm confident, but you never know with City. I don't expect them to carry the form they've been in as of recent into this game though, they'll definitely be up for it. I see us getting pinned back a little in the early stages of the game, unless we can do what we did to them a few years back with our pressing. Although, I'm still going with my 3-1 prediction, I do think we'll need to weather the storm for the first twenty or so minutes.

I don't think we're that much of a underdog are we? On paper maybe a little bit, but I'm not even sure in that. Form wise then I'd say Liverpool are looking much better coming into the game. We've had a few blips here, and there, however overall we've taken care of the business when needed. Man City have looked a bit out of ideas recently.

Honestly, looking at the teams performance levels I've got to say that Man City, and Liverpool have to be favourites. Real Madrid had a good result against Chelsea, but I haven't been overly impressed with Chelsea as of recent, and to be honest Real Madrid looked very shaky against PSG. So, I'm not entirely convinced by them either. Bayern Munich I would have expected to be the favourite against Villareal, but they've also looked terrible in previous games, that they were expected to win.

Honestly, everything is pointing to either Man City or Liverpool for me. I'm hoping its the latter, but I feel that each team will stop the other from one title, be it the Premier League or Champions League so I think we'll basically split the spoils. I would fancy Liverpool in the Champions League more, just solely based on the 12th man from the crowd. However, I think I'd prefer Liverpool to get the Premier League, and Man City take us in the Champions League.

Important few weeks coming up that's for sure.

The thing is if Dana was to feed a Conor who hasn't won in years to Usman, and he loses again. That probably wouldn't be the end of his career, but there's a certain point that people start losing interest in a fighter. We've seen the shift in mentality towards Conor the last few years, mainly because he has lost a lot of his witty comments, and its mainly now changed to aggression, and insulting without actually being funny at all. Then, he doesn't back up the talk in the cage. Its only good to be a good talker if you can back it up, and previously Conor did just that. That's why everyone loved him. He was controversial, and a fantastic fighter. Easily one of the best to ever be in the UFC. Although, he has seemed a shadow of himself in recent years.

Whatever the reason for losing his ability to win fights, I do think a lot of fighters now know his game plan if you can stay safe in the first round you probably make it the second round. By that time Conor is usually exhausted, and a pretty easy win. Usman has the skills to avoid for long enough to get the takedown, and wear on Conor.

Anyway, back to your original question. Will Dana sanction the fight right away? Probably not, it makes more sense for both parties to get some wins under the belt first. It starts to build some of the lost hype from Conor, and Conor likely prolongs the attention he gets from fans, which likely directly translates to more money for both Dana, and Conor.

I don't think he'll get the title shot right away, and as a fan I hope he doesn't.

Yeah, although its not for everyone. As most of us now by now, not many people want true decentralisation since it usually comes with a cost. By that I mean, when we ask the majority of the population they probably aren't going to be willing to pay for something just to use their own money, they would rather have third parties which handle that for them. Obviously, we don't need everyone to be running a node.

As for the costs, to be honest except for rising electricity costs I would like to think the total cost will continue to go down. The only issue that could become a problem is the storage, so far we've been pretty much following Moore's law with our increases in hardware capability, although I've definitely noticed the last year or so that most hardware is now becoming too powerful for our means, and therefore we won't use it a lot. Obviously, hard drives are a little different to CPU's, and graphics cards. Although, I do think that the general consumer won't be requiring much more than four terabyte (TB) hard drives in the future. Hell, I probably have over 50TB among all the hard drives I've collected over the years, but I don't use half of them. My main machine only has a 1TB hard drive in it, and that's no where near full.

So, storage is probably the biggest concern for Bitcoin self hosted nodes, at least full nodes is that the storage requirements might outpace what general consumers usually have or require. I don't think it'll be an issue for the capability we have in manufacturing larger hard drives, but it'll be what is available to the general consumer at a decent price, which the lesser demand probably means a lot of people could be out priced. Thoughts?

I've considered doing this myself before, but just didn't get around to it. Considering that ready made products are very expensive, a few hundred quid. I've always wanted to put something like this together, I don't need it to be fancy looking, just needed something to satisfy the nerd in me.

How easy would this be to scale? For example, making it bigger? I know we're talking about elevated costs then, but if buying these panels in bulk, it could be a little fun project for a wall .

Also, would be pretty sweet to be able to turn it off at a set time, I'm also thinking that connecting it to one of those remote controlled plugs could satisfy the nerd in me even more.

It shouldn't be thought of as a test, although I think something like it being implemented that was completely optional might be cool. There was a discussion about it in another thread, and I basically said I think that if it was implemented in such a way that a leaderboard was included, but the actual statistics didn't effect anything, but that leaderboard, we could potentially offer users to optionally answer the questions in an attempt to compete against each other, while also offering educational value.

I get that we aren't a school, but theymos has indicated that he would like to do Bitcoin courses, and while this isn't exactly that, I think its a rather small change, that could have a wider impact on users here. If we had Bitcoin questions, forum questions, and a way of determining score level I think it would be used by certain types of users.

This could potentially decrease the amount of questions users have in the long run on the forum, that could probably been seen as a negative, and positive. Although, I do definitely see one negative in which users would likely fill up Meta with questions about it, which considering it would be more of a side gimmick would probably get annoying quickly.

Plus, I suspect that if we did implement it in this way, only a handful of users would actually use it. It isn't going to help spammers, and it might discourage actual discussion in the long run. Although, despite that it would be pretty cool if we could mitigate most of these issues brought up, and have it on the side. Not a IQ test though, but just a score of how many questions you've got correct etc.

Right, potentially the league decider this weekend, so naturally I'm going to go for a more reserved prediction. Liverpool to win 3-1 . I'm confident, I think Salah will be back to his best despite his recent struggles. Man City have looked better after the international break, although their opposition hasn't exactly been great, so its hard to know if they're starting to regain form or if its just because of the quality of their opposition recently. Liverpool have looked good overall coming off the break, maybe some blips here, and there especially against Benfica after pretty much dominating the first half. Although, it was a comfortable win in the end.

I find that Man City either turn up against us, and its a goal fest or they completely collapse under our press, and we end up putting a few past them. I'm leaning more to the latter this time, since it hasn't happened for a while now.

Yeah, if he lives up to the hype, and actually secures the belt, I'd probably cave in, and see he remains dominate for quite some bit, a bit like Usman has been. Although, like I've said before I've got some doubts about him living up to the hype. If we take a look at the fighters he has faced in his career, no one particularly makes me think he's champion material. Despite doing it in quick fashion, and usually quite dominant i.e not getting hit at all a lot of the time. I do think Burns is the ultimate test, lets see if he can remain dominant. If he wins in dominant fashion again against Burns I'll probably own up to being wrong. Although, I think at the very least he's going to find it tough. Burns has decent take down defense like I previously pointed out, and he was dangerous against Usman when they fought, even if it was short lived.

I've put a early bet on Burns to win at 5.00 odds, they were just too good to pass up. I'll probably rethink a lot of my predictions considering I made the mistake thinking the event was last weekend .

I've also been thinking about employing this technique for other non related Bitcoin things, such as passwords, obviously randomly generated passwords. Might be more secure than a password manager since the weakness there is your master password, and hardware key if you've got one. The thing is the capsule is much easier to disguise, and doesn't initially scream like your hiding something, although I can also think of other ways of concealing washers quite innocently.

Nice one, pretty decent price considering that there's not much of a competing market out there. Might just get one to support him also. Its nice to see someone get into this niche at such a young age, obviously I'm assuming there is some sort of parental guidance going on.

Biggest shock of the weekend for me is Everton actually looked decent for quite some time against West Ham. Their goal I believe was deflected, although they probably did deserve a goal. I'm gutted because I had West Ham to win with a clean sheet.

I'm going to the riskier step. I'll be putting us to beat Benfica 2-0, and to beat Man City 2-1. Plus, I'll throw in a few other teams from the weekend. I'll be honest, I can see a draw happening on the weekend between us like it was earlier on in the season. The good thing is though, I do believe our defence has gotten better as the season as gone on, and Matip this season hasn't had as many injuries, and has really stepped up his game. VVD obviously getting back to his form before his ACL injury too.

Good friends, although his training would have included takedown defense. It's unlikely, unless he pulls a francis that he's going to be offensive with his wrestling. Burns will be looking for the knockout, I'm pretty sure about that, and considering how Chimaev likes to rush his opponents that could be the right combination for one hell of a knock out from Burns. Reminds me a bit of Askren vs Masvidal, which we clearly knew who was the better wrestler, however look how that turned out. I do think Burns' wrestling ability is closer to Chimaev's than Masvidals was to Askren's though.


Depends, I mean he's obviously a top fighter since he's within the top ten of the UFC. Although, he's not a world beater or a title challenger per say. Again, I think he's one of these gatekeepers to the top five. Occasionally he might stroll into the top five himself, but wouldn't stay there long. Too many weaknesses in his game for me. Entertaining fighter though.

However, if you're using Trezor to largely mitigate the risks of using a wallet like Electrum, having two instances of your wallet would largely take away from the security benefits of a hardware wallet. Obviously, if you want to be using the Trezor device in less secure locations, and then using your Electrum wallet elsewhere, I could probably see some benefit to that. Also, for matter of UI, the Trezor Suite probably wins hands down for most people. I do like minimalism though, which I think the Trezor Suite has drifted from the earlier days.

Although, I no longer have any windows machines. When Microsoft introduced the WSL it was an absolute godsend for any problems you came across with Windows natively. Especially, if you're familiar with Linux systems already.

Worth including the link to Taproot's page on the Trezor Wiki for anyone that's unfamiliar with Taproot or how it was implemented via Trezor.

What's your reasoning for going with a hardware wallet? I mean the choice is fine, however if you don't want to be forking out so much money, you could just use a offline wallet like Electrum etc. Since, you're going to be holding for the long term, I expect you won't be needing regular access, which basically mitigates most of the threats from using anything, but a hardware wallet.

If you are planning on accessing it, either for making payments or trading then a hardware wallet makes the most sense to most people, since it does mitigate some of the attacks. Although, if you're putting your Bitcoin (or whatever coins you might be storing) away, and forgetting it for a few years, then I'd say setup a proper offline wallet, and just make sure to verify that you've generated the private key correctly, and backed it up correctly before transferring any Bitcoin. Then, just secure that back up, and you should be good to go.

I know you said you wanted to stake coins, would it be better to have a fully offline wallet for storing coins for the long term, and then staking coins with a hot wallet? Both could be Electrum, since if you aren't storing much in your hot wallet, more than your comfortable potentially losing, then that might be the cheaper alternative for you.

Dricus Du Plessis one of the cancelled bouts unfortunately. Hoping someone steps in for him, since I was looking forward to watching his fight with Kelvin Gastelum. He's seriously underrated I feel, and always puts on a show. Tapology saying that he's rebooked. Although, it doesn't appear to be for this event? Struggling to find news on it oddly.

No doubt he has put away his opponents in exciting fashion. However, if you take a look at who he has fought, there's no massive names or even any formidable gate keepers. He has yet to tested, and Burns is the ultimate test. Unfortunately, it's unlikely that Burns gets a belt, however he is the ultimate gatekeeper, since he can knock out anyone, however he also has some decent grappling, and wrestling skills. He's just so well rounded, without really excelling at much when compared with the others in the division.

I'll be putting my money on Burns on the off chance. The odds (5.00) are way too good to turn down. At least that's what they were when I looked at them a few days ago. I expect closer to the event they'll go down a bit since a lot of people will be fancying him at those odds.

Alright, Man City didn't slip up. Maybe, I was being a little bit too hopeful. Liverpool didn't really struggle, but Watford gave a good showing. Potentially the league decider next week between Liverpool, and Man City. I guess going into the match as close as it is, probably is the best way. Definitely for neutrals, however as I said I'm going to be bricking it.

Just want to say, Joe Gomez really put in a shift this weekend, and is giving me some hope about the backup options we have for our full backs, especially when he can play CB too. Lets just hope he can stay fit from now on, without any major injuries.