Maple.ai via Tor with anon account paid for with Lightning. I think this a decent tradeoff against the appalling reality of what most of us are doing giving personal data to OpenAI, Anthropic etc. The at-home build isn't viable for real work except if you pay like $20K and sink time into it (and even then). Also I'm not shilling maple here .. it probably can't give you the same level of convenience etc. But maybe close, I think? Opinions? #asknostr

Warning: do NOT use travala.com any more, if you did. They directly stole my money. Here is my response to the customer service agent: (Customer service agent), > Sorry for the delay, im ahmed from compliance department, for refund or either processing the booking, the verification is a mandatory step, we require the minimum and basic info for that, and you can pass it easily through the following link : <snipped> Let's establish the facts: I have been a regular customer of Travala for years, have done probably a hundred or more bookings through your site - mentioning this *not* to claim some status as a customer (which I do not want, and do not have), but to point out that ZERO times on the website or through any of those transactions was it mentioned that you could simply keep my money and provide no service - i.e. STEAL my money - if I did not pass a verification process -handing over extensive and intrusive personal documents - that you never documented anywhere. And indeed for this booking, again, no such advance warning was given. So you (that is to say Travala, not you personally!) act exactly as a kidnapper: to give me back the money which is mine, you insist that I hand over security sensitive information. Which I will not do. There are an endless stream of documented violent theft events of cryptocurrency holders, so spreading one's personal information is stupid, and any claim you make to "keep my data safe" is ridiculous, given the equally endless stream of reported hacking events. I do not trust your company with my personal information because I don't trust *any* company with it. I have been doing Bitcoin development work for over a decade, I will make sure that a lot of people in the community know that Travala steals its customers money, directly, with no apology. Feel free to pass this message to any management, I would appreciate that. (me)

Question for @Liana Wallet : why is the mnemonic stored unencrypted on the hard disk?

Phoenix can't be mentioned in the same sentence as the others. It's an actual self-custodial lightning wallet that works, seamlessly. "Outrageous fees": as an experiment, I went through my last 5 transactions. Tx1: $2.22 fee: 14 sats 2: $142 fee: 643 sats 3: $141 fee: 641 sats 4: $586 fee: 2644 sats 5: (deposit on chain) $1555 fee: 210 sats. Does that seem outrageous to you? The $586 payment had a high fee of a little over $2, which is like 0.3%; Lightning is like that, it's percentage based. But "high": this is way lower than many other payment methods, and it's instant, sovereign and mainly private. Overall it's crazy to me that for years now, every time I recommend Phoenix, saying the actual tradeoff is a slightly worse privacy model (but really not bad), I hear people dismiss it as "crazy fees". Just because immediate onboarding (which is a one-time event) to an actually self sovereign wallet costs a couple of bucks doesn't mean "crazy fees"! You don't get everything working perfectly for zero dollars, sheesh. View quoted note →