Researchers find a way to boost (microwave) signals by up to 1,000x at room temperature [1]. One day we’ll get that tech into pleb devices like #meshtastic for more robust decentralized telecommunications networks. 1.

UNSW Sites

This purple diamond could one day amplify signals from deep space

UNSW engineers have developed and built a special ‘maser’ system that boosts microwave signals – such as those from deep space – but does n...

It's amazing what choosing the right first step can do for solving a problem. It can mean the difference between finding a solution step-by-step naturally and having no hope of doing it. Example: let's create a database for all of humanity to pass along for generations. A singular, never-ending story written by many authors over many centuries. First we need to make it resistant to loss, so we make it easy for anyone to store. Let's limit the amount of data anyone can add in a fixed amount of time. We'll create fixed blocks of data that can be stored in a window before moving on to the next one. Next we need to detect corruption and tampering so we use a Merkle tree. We want to prevent vandalism so we make it unsustainable to put low value content in there. We'll do that by requiring credits in order to write to the database. In order to fairly distribute the credits and give everyone a chance to get some we'll release them only if you can provably trade something of value, say, energy. We do this via proof of work. Next we need to account for technology improvements over time so we'll make the credit issuance rate dependent on how fast we're adding data. We'll add a supply cap so we don't dilute holders over time. Without this, some subset of credit holders will eventually get crowded out indefinitely. We need to enforce ownership rights of credit holders so we use public key cryptography. ECDSA will do for now. However, we need to account for cryptographic security changing over time so let's hide the public key behind a one-way function to give us time to upgrade when the time comes. Better yet, make it 2 layers of hashes: SHA256 and RIPEMD160 will do. We'll transfer the data peer-to-peer to prevent any one group of people from locking out others. We now have something very much like #bitcoin.

This group trained an AI model in a geographically distributed way. Bodes well for a decentralized AI future.

INTELLECT-1 Release: The First Globally Trained 10B Parameter Model

We're excited to release INTELLECT-1, the first 10B parameter language model collaboratively trained across the globe. This represents a 10× scale...

I’m not in the “ossification by choice” camp. Not convinced of any changes aside from the great #consensus cleanup either. #Bitcoin does everything I need it to now but I can imagine how it can be better; just not confident I can evaluate the risk properly. Most people are in the same boat. One path forward might be to train adversarial agents to attack a testnet with various changes made to it to see possibilities. If we can get #AI researchers to train such a model and open source their model training code, simulator, etc we might be able to increase confidence over time.

If you want to support privacy and freedom to use Bitcoin then consider donating to the P2P rights fund. They accept bitcoin. View quoted note →

TL;DR - CBDCs NGMI Digital #fiat currencies are scary for more than just surveillance and expiration policies. Even if you’re a big fan of them you have to understand they run on a network secured by what? Every government agency in the world has had their networks compromised many times. If the 3 letter agencies can’t secure their own networks good luck securing your #CBDC. Imagine an advanced persistent threat actor who holds a lot of bitcoin wants to take down your digital fiat. They slowly compromise all of the ledgers and backups because after all those are centralized and then leak fiat to themselves to buy more bitcoin and eventually destroy all the ledgers. The longer they can trickle out the fiat the more bitcoin they stack and the more worthless that currency becomes. What kind of retaliation could the fiat issuer do? It’s an asymmetric situation.

I think about this sometimes. Suppose in the extreme case we end up with “western bitcoin” and “eastern bitcoin” where each fork censors some set of transactions. Today there are so many people with bitcoin around the world so each fork would have funds belonging to both sides of the globe. The incentives to spend on either chain go up over time and hashrate would be incentivized to oscillate between the two which is unstable. The rift shouldn’t last long unless we end up with a single global government capable of enforcing rules on hashrate. How long could it last though if it did happen? Time will tell. View quoted note →

Fiat currency is deprecated. Governments realize that now. At this point they can either manage an orderly transition to a Bitcoin economy or they double down on authoritarian policies and destroy their economy altogether.

@0xchat great job on the app! On iOS when I first created an account it showed an npub for public key but then displayed another npub as my “private key”. When checking my keys afterwards I see the proper nsec. Just wanted to make you aware.

It would be nice to have a #lightning node tightly integrated with a mobile OS. Messages sent via lightning are more secure and private than sending on any other popular network. Phones are almost always on so in theory they should be able to route payments, accept payments, run a #mint, etc. And if the cell towers and WiFi gateways are #Cashu mints they can accept and rate limit anonymous users. You shouldn’t need a monthly plan anymore. This would have the pleasant side effect of nearly eliminating spam calls and text messages.

I just read part 1 of Dhruv Bansal’s “Bitcoin Astronomy” series “The Law of Hash Horizons” [1] and really appreciate his deep dive into what bitcoin can do to space travel. What’s interesting about the Law of Hash Horizons is that it’s scale invariant: by tweaking parameters like block times, difficulty adjustments, etc you can make a blockchain accommodate either a single planet or several planets BUT you can also go the other direction. You can make them scale down to a city, a neighborhood, or even a house. Why would you scale down? You’ve created a network with an impenetrable firewall. What happens when the block subsidy becomes negligible? Maybe hashrate localizes to defend smaller networks of pooled bitcoin and only a fraction of the global hashrate works on the global blockchain. 1.

The Law of Hash Horizons - Bitcoin Astronomy

This article focuses on Mars, the Red Planet, and speculates about the economic revolution we foresee occurring there. What happens on Mars will ev...

Any thoughts on Sphinx Chat? Looks interesting. #askNostr

Note to anyone using enuts. Maintaining OSS is hard when you have other commitments. Hopefully others can pick this up and continue on in the near term. View quoted note →

Central banks be like: $ pkill bitcoin $ ps -ax | grep -i bitcoin # tens of thousands of lines 🤬

Tariffs are a soft form of capital control. Any government willing and able to levy punitive tariffs is willing to implement more aggressive capital control policies. Keep that in mind as your politicians toss around these promises. You should never cheer for those policies even if you agree with them in spirit or because they’re “for the right reasons.” Those bitcoins you have? They could be a target if they’re KYC or held at a custodian.

The Industrial Revolution began around 1760. Imagine how people would react to having a nuclear reactor appear in the biggest cities in the world in 1800. They would have no idea what that reactor enabled for them. We got the internet just a few decades ago and now we have Bitcoin. Most people who aren’t paying attention just have no idea how Bitcoin changed the world.

You can think of money as economic potential energy. It’s where excess economic productivity is stored until there’s a demand for it. It’s like a battery. A battery that can hold a charge for as long as you need it is preferable to one that can’t. Even better is one that can hold it indefinitely so that it can be reused by others eventually. Picture your money now and think at current prices how big of a “battery” do you need? If you have enough money now at current prices to last you 10 years will your money “hold its charge” that long? If the medium you’re storing your money in is leaky then you have to expend more effort and resources just to have a stable balance. What happens when that leak is fixed? Imagine at current levels of productivity how much more economic potential energy could be saved up just by patching that leak. What do we unlock now that we have such a money?