#ProjectOakGate in action.
Tim Bouma
trbouma@oakgate.safebox.dev
npub1q6mc...x7d5
| Independent Self | Pug Lover | Published Author | #SovEng Alum | #Cashu OG | #OpenSats Grantee x 2| #Nosfabrica Prize Winner
Who cares if it's all #nostr and #cashu underneath?
An #OakGate pilot project I am proposing. A city-backed food bank network.
Who cares if it's all #nostr and #cashu underneath? It just works.
A hamper. A choice. A little dignity. - OakGate
A city-backed food hamper credit connects aid workers, families and participating food banks.
This is #OakGate, the custodial version of #Safebox
Still the same sovereign guts underneath, but intended for mainstream adoption.
OakGate - OakGate
More freedom in everyday life. Managed by default, with a path to independence.
I’ve been busy working on building Cash and Clear payments.
hello from feather
Good Afternoon from the Centre of the Labyrinth.
Good Afternoon
The WebPKI's Unmanaged Software Supply Chain
Unmitigated Risk
The WebPKI
Why software inherits more WebPKI trust than it needs, without browser protections.
Good article on the weakness of the existing Certificate Authority system.
Unmitigated Risk
Trusted Everywhere, Impact Everywhere
WebPKI certificate concentration, reliance, sovereign trust, historical CA incidents, and the quantum transition.
GN
I put this together a couple of years ago, predicting how #nostr might look like in the future.
How wrong I am.
Ouch
OpenClaw creator says he spent $10 million in tokens last month 
theregister
OpenClaw creator says he spent $10 million in tokens last month
Good thing it
Sometimes you need to ask yourself WWJD? (What Would JSON Do?)
Patch, then verify.
How the European left now does its shopping
MICHAEL MURPHY
National Post
Oct 22, 2026
LOOTING LOUIS VUITTON AND ROLEX STORES TO ENSURE NICER CLASSROOMS, SOMEHOW
Over the weekend, the supposed campaign by France’s youth for better classroom conditions took a detour through Marseille’s Louis Vuitton. Looters armed with hammers and crowbars also cleaned out Hermes and Rolex. According to one estimate, just under half the stores in the city centre were looted by a crowd police say reached 30,000. The bookstores, as far as anyone can tell, were spared.
The looters, who ransacked some 1,500 stores across France, seemed to view their work as a kind of redistributive justice. One Parisian store was graffitied: “This is for the high school students.” It did not specify which high school. One wonders if the Lycee Nelson Mandela in Nantes, a delightful newbuild completed in 2014 and set alight earlier this month, was among those the looters felt they were championing. Indeed, there appears to be little correlation between the schools being torched and those which are underfunded. And the looters are yet to put forward an argument for the educational benefits of a Louis Vuitton handbag.
What began in earnest one month ago as a campaign around classroom sizes and staff shortages has hardened into wanton criminality. The scars left on French cities in recent weeks leave little doubt: torched cars and buildings, more than a thousand injured police officers, dozens of teachers assaulted, and several hundred million euros in damage.
Yet it is clear that many of those still marching, to borrow a line from Chaucer, know little of the things for which they pray. One woman, reportedly a leftwing protester, was filmed imploring her erstwhile comrades to stop looting a store.
“This isn’t the cause,” she screamed at a group of balaclava-clad, predominantly migrant-descended French youths. She was ignored, and eventually pushed aside, by young men who evidently felt otherwise.
As if to address her case directly, the right-wing former presidential candidate Eric Zemmour posted on X: “There are little whites among the looters, of course. As Audiard used to say, there are flying fish, but they are not the majority of the species.”
He added: “The Great Replacement is not a theory; it is a fact.”
It is true that the majority of the footage that I have reviewed in recent weeks has shown a preponderance of ethnic minority rioters. Foreign flags, especially those of Palestine, Algeria and Morocco, have made regular appearances, while tricolours are rather thin on the ground. Given the riots’ esthetic and demographic makeup, politicians on the right may feel increasingly emboldened to issue statements of this kind — which reflect the existential tenor with which the unrest has been received among right-wing populists the world over; as well as the enormous stakes voters of all hues will feel going into the presidential elections in April.
U.S. Vice-president JD Vance posted footage on X of the town hall of Limoges, a neo-renaissance building built in 1883, engulfed in flames. He felt there was a universal lesson behind the building’s crumbling campanile.
“Western liberals imported the third world into France and other countries in the name of diversity and compassion,” he wrote.
“They ignored fundamental questions of assimilation and compatibility. They were told it would lead to this and they didn’t listen.”
He added: “And I hope Americans are paying attention. This is the future congressional Democrats seek for your country.” France’s centrist establishment is, almost by definition, compelled to rebuff such language, even as the interior minister conceded the police had “lost control” of the streets over the weekend. Emmanuel Macron, perhaps wisely given the level of unrest, avoided knotty questions over the makeup of the riots when he denounced the “unbridled” violence attending what much of the European media is still describing as a “cost-of-living protest.”
In May, the European Commission posted a meme of a man in a tin hat gazing upon a litter-strewn, dystopian rendering of Paris. It highlighted a fault line between Europe’s social democratic centre, which prefers to brush ethnic tensions under the rug, and the populist right, for whom they are electoral rocket fuel. When the fires are put out and the soul-searching begins, one suspects this saga will be as much a battle over who decides what is real as what took place on the streets.
Michael Murphy is a journalist based in London. He writes for the Daily Telegraph and presented the documentary, Ireland is full! Anti-immigration backlash in Ireland.
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Musk Ordered Starlink Slowdown
By Alexander Ward, Natalie Andrews and Josh Dawsey
The Wall Street Journal
Oct 21, 2026
WASHINGTON—Elon Musk ordered the slowdown of a military-grade version of Starlink relied on by Ukraine, a decision that sparked panic in Kyiv and confusion inside the
Trump administration, U.S. officials and people familiar with the matter said.
Both Musk and President Trump have expressed anger at Ukraine for attacking Russian diesel refineries in recent weeks, which the president blames for high energy prices. Last week, Musk capped the speeds at which Ukrainian hardware could stay connected to the satellite-based network, the people said, rendering some offensive drones and interceptor drones virtually useless.
Musk and Trump discussed the Starlink decision in a call soon after the slowdown became public, while the president was campaigning last week for Republican candidates in the midterm elections, two of the people said.
One of the people also claimed Musk and Trump discussed the matter before the decision to throttle Starlink.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky’s public complaints—namely, that Ukrainians could die if the unrestricted service wasn’t restored—led to widespread confusion about who ordered the slowdown, and to an informal investigation inside the White House.
During the uproar, SpaceX representatives called White House counterparts seeking a unified understanding and subsequent message that the company and Trump administration coordinated ahead of Musk’s directive, the people said.
Musk himself posted on X hours after the slowdown became public, “Any limits on speed or usage are decided by the US military and ultimately POTUS,” using the acronym for president of the United States. Trump said Monday that he didn’t know who was responsible for the Starlink slowdown, “but I would like to find out.”
Some U.S. officials said that Musk acted unilaterally and that Trump didn’t specifically order any retribution against Ukraine. But a person familiar with the situation said Musk talked to multiple senior administration officials, including with Trump, before imposing the new speed cap, which Ukrainian officials said had allowed Russian missiles to evade their defenses.
The slowdown, which began on Oct. 14, followed several announcements and statements by the Trump administration that Ukrainian officials saw as hostile to Ukraine, including criticism of Zelensky from Trump and Musk. That led Kyiv to immediately suspect the order came either from the president or the world’s richest man.
The episode has raised U.S.-Ukraine tensions to their highest level since Trump berated Zelensky in the Oval Office last year. It has also highlighted the singular influence of Musk over the war, as Starlink provides a lifeline for Ukrainian forces on the front lines attacking Russian troops and defending themselves from strikes. With a seeming flick of a switch, Musk has the power to alter the course of a conflict that has ground on for years.
Michael Kofman, an expert on the war at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington, said, “Ukrainian forces continue to be throttled in their ability to employ strike drones and interceptor drones to 160 kilometers [99 miles] per hour, but the current connection is below 130 kilometers per hour, and the limits continue to hamper Ukrainian strike operations and air defenses.”
Ukraine’s top diplomat in Washington, Denys Sienik, said Tuesday that Ukraine was still “waiting for the official response from contacts with the Pentagon and SpaceX at the leaders level to understand what has happened, but also to understand whether the connection has been restored or will be restored.”
SpaceX didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Zelensky also has accused the Trump administration of temporarily cutting intelligence support that helped Ukraine’s forces to track Russian missile launches and strike deep into its enemy’s territory.
But Trump and others denied that happened, with U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio saying on Tuesday such claims are “not true.”
Rubio, who earlier in the day spoke with Zelensky on the phone, later acknowledged “there’s no doubt” about rising tensions between Washington and Kyiv.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Tuesday that “we haven’t pulled anything back,” but “Starlink has the option to make decisions concerning its terms of service.” He said: “We haven’t made any directives or anything like that.”
Zelensky traveled to Norway on Tuesday for discussions with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff and the leaders of Norway and Finland about ending the war.
Trump and Musk’s animosity toward Zelensky has grown in recent weeks, as the president, a Republican, looks to lower diesel prices ahead of the November midterm elections.
While Trump blames Ukraine’s attack on Russia’s energy facilities for the elevated prices, most analysts said the Iran war that Trump launched on Feb. 28 has had a greater impact.
On Oct. 10, just days before Starlink speeds slowed, Trump said he told Zelensky, “‘You can do whatever you want to Russia, but don’t hit the refineries because that’s a world problem.’ And what does he do? He goes and hits the diesel fuel. He better damn well stop.”
Musk responded to a White House video of those remarks on X: “Zelensky has gone too far.” Four days later, Ukrainian drone operators reported that they were losing unrestricted access to the Starlink network for unexplained reasons, leading to the urgent requests from Kyiv for an explanation.
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