So a few months ago I extensively documented here my days-long struggle to get my bitcoin node up and running on an old laptop with Ubuntu 22.04 -- mainly due to a mix of Bitcore's incomprehensible retardness in making one's life difficult if you want to use an external drive to store the blocks, and Ubuntu's retardness in forcing Snaps down users' throats. Then there's the usual problems with Linux, like not having Logitech drivers for my mouse and keyboard, and being force to find a way around it (Solaar). Having to edit multiple config files to get simple stuff working, like my VPN, and so on and so forth. Incidentally, I also completely switched to linux on my "main use" box, in this case Mint, because I got PTSD with Snaps and Ubuntu, and it's a lot worse in this sense. I had to roll back the kernel a couple of weeks ago because HDMI support is completely broken. I haven't been able to fix a weird issue with bluetooth headphones that causes my audio to play **faster** (not slower) than video (probably also an HDMI/graphics card support problem). My wired connection randomly drops and I have to restart to get back online. Voodoo black magic to make mouse and keyboard buttons partially work. Four times I have had to deal with boot problems. The first time, the computer would just be caught in a loop unable to boot AT ALL, just straight from BIOS to black screen, so I had to make a live USB on the other computer, and go from there. The other times, the kernel just broke on me but I was able to just go initframs manually from Grub and let it fix itself. Not that I would go back to Windows ever again. Not happening, ever. But as much as I have been able to deal with all this stuff, I can see how none of my friends and family would be able to, even if they wanted. Anyhow, it's been a while since my bitcore machine on Ubuntu has started to complain that I should update to 24.04... and I'm scared shitless by the thought.

A couple of comments about today's market dump: 1. Oh, the sheer RETARDNESS of dumping Nvidia stock due to the DeepSeek CCP psyop, when admittedly DeepSeek has been trained using... NVIDIA CHIPS. If anything, DeepSeek proves that Nvidia chips can do even more than previously thought, and consolidates their monopoly. 2. The sheer stupidity of those babbling on about wHErE's YouR raTIoNaL INveSt00r n0w, EH? all over the internets. "Rational" as in the much touted "rational actor/investor" doesn't mean "an actor who never voluntarily incurs a monetary loss when making decisions in life". It simply means an actor who makes decisions based on their SUBJECTIVE self-interest IN THE MOMENT. I've never found much use for this concept, other than to cause me to look at actions I cannot comprehend and make an effort to try to put me in the other person's shoes and see the world the way they see it and try to make sense of their calculation, which is NEVER numerical.

OH NOES IZ A EMUHRGINCEE 😂🤡 Just go away old man.

One thing about the "reserve" kerfuffle. What they've announced so far, is no "reserve". It's a "stockpile". A reserve in the sense we are all discussing, and Trump willingly (and probably misleadingly) implied all along, is 1. held by the monetary authority, 2. specifically used to back up currency value by balancing external payments A stockpile is a quantity of whatever stuff kept in stock, to be deployed in case of a shortage or "market disruption". That is, a market price manipulation mechanism. I think that fits very precisely the whole "American crypto" discourse, and does not preclude the addition of BTC to the actual reserve. It's just probably that he can't do it by executive order. I've posted many times about the "Prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures" by the Bank for International Settlements". That will be the mechanism, but it's up to the Fed, by definition.

Prudential treatment of cryptoasset exposures

This publication sets out the prudential treatment of banks' exposures to cryptoassets, including tokenised traditional assets, stablecoins and unb...