Another round of apple chips, incoming. This time McIntosh

First day of SeaGL is done. Got another full day tomorrow though:

SeaGL 2026 :: pretalx

OK, can one of you bitcoiners help me out here? If someone has some sats in a lightning wallet and they want to use them to pay a company who only accepts on-chain transactions... Do they have to find someone to trade the lightning sats for on-chain sats as if it were an altcoin trade? Assume they don't run their own lightning node, they're using LNBits, hosted by someone else. Is there some service that can do this for people, ideally with minimal trust involved? I'm asking for a group who is new at this and jumped straight into lightning, but njalla doesn't accept lightning, only on-chain (with no plans to start accepting lightning). So some solution that involes 20 steps, installing a desktop app, and jumping through a bunch of hoops is a non-starter. Going to a clearnet website, zapping someone, and having the on-chain address get paid, that'd be doable. Better if the software just handled this for a nice UX, but that seems unlikely based on what I've read.

I'm a volunteer sysadmin for a non-profit community center, and I just got 5 backup sysadmins to back me up and jump in when I am not available. I feel like the richest guy on the planet.

Apparently my Mastodon posts have been going into a black hole for the past couple weeks. Surprise! And the instance is shutting down in less than 30 days. Double surprise! No wonder I thought it was quiet over there. My instance was basically shut down, ergo the lack of any new content. Before you jump in my replies to dogpile on ActivityPub, maybe consider staying humble instead. 🤷‍♂️ Your call. I've already migrated all my followers to a new account. I have my old posts exported to a file, but I'm going to let those disappear with the old server. New nym, new server, same troublemaker. 😝 Let the good times roll.

Last batch... until I go shoping again.

Another batch of apple chips, ready for storage. View quoted note →

Another batch of apples into the dehydrator, but this time it's apple rings. Much fancier. This batch is thin and plain. The next one will probably be cinimon apple chips.

Super disappointed with Strike. Tried to sign up via the website, pushed me toward an app that is exclusive to the Google Play store, which I don't have on my Android phone. Saw I could email support@strike.me for help, so I did, and explained my trouble registering. What do I get as a reply? That I didn't email them from the same address I used when I registered. JFC. Jack Mallers has some work to do, starting with making it possible to get help on-boarding. I hope there is a metric for how many people click sign up as compated to the number of people who are successful at signing up. If that were the scorecard, I bet it would be a failing grade.

Food for thought for you bitcoiners about marketplaces & adoption. Getting existing marketplaces to accept bitcoin would help adoption far more than setting up bitcoin-only stores & marketplaces. Yes, keep doing the bitcoin only thing. That's valuable too. But having customers see bitcoin as a payment option causes them to think about it again. It reduces the stigma that it's something that only their crazy uncle uses. It makes it a boring solution to paying for things online. If any of you who make handmade things are willing to do the proof of work to put this into action, consider signing up for artisans.coop (it doesn't cost any money to open a shop). They currently only accept credit cards, and through PayPal at that. If you want to see that change, consider being a member. Members are the ones who make the decisions like this. If you're really in it for the long haul, volunteer to be on a team (e.g. Team Tech, Team Money). While members make the decsions, teams are the ones who decide what goes up for voting. Let me be clear though, membership and being on a team is optional. Even if you just open a shop, make some sales, and then (after establishing yourself as a seller who actually makes sales) you ask if they enable bitcoin payments, citing thay PayPal supports bitcoin. You can also ask to be paid out in bitcoin. I am telling you, a dozen or two sellers doing $100/month would move the needle on this one. Yes, this does take some effort. Yes, you do have to accept fiat initially. Thr bottom line here is that if you expect someone else to do the work and then you get the benefit, that's very fiat thinking. This isn't a high time preference activity. It's a one time setup, send out orders for a bit, and then make a few requests. And if I am wrong, you can close up shop and walk away. In fact, being willing to do so it what will give you leverage down the road. What do you say? Are you a producer who has what it takes?

It turns out 2qt dried apple bits wheigh 1 lb View quoted note → Interestly, the yield was not as good for this batch. The sale was on some smaller apples (by modern standards). This means the core is a higher proportion of the apple, which means there's less usable apple per pound. I have the last of the hydrated apple cubes in the dehydrator. Will be done tomorrow.

I just typed up a a nice note about how I made dried apple bits, complete with a photo, but then Amethyst lost it because I switched to the calculator app for a few seconds too long. 🙄 No, it's not the the drafts section either. It's not worth retyping, but the punchline is that if I were paid minimum wage for my time, mine cost about $1.75/oz, whereas the cheapest crap from Walmart costs $1.57/oz (but you don't get the apple skins). Maybe I'll be wrong and I'll get more yield than I expect. And extra 15% yield would put me under their price, and have a better product to boot. I'm not concerned with the price because I want to sell my dried apple bits, but because I want to save money over the store bought stuff. The apple bits go into our homemade granola, for those who are wondering.

Made those changes and found that the buttons could fall over when depressed. That's the trouble with having enough tolerance to slide everything together. I solved that with some guides for the button and after I got those tolerances dialed in, it was beautiful. Now I'm adding more support for the LCD, tonforce it to always be aligned. I'm also tofhtening the tolerances on the base again in ordet to get the PCB to fit perfectly. We're down to adjusting by 0.125 mm on each side at this point. Hopefully the manufacturing tolerances don't vary more than that... More pictures soon. I'm going to use some more electricity and plastic to iterate. View quoted note →

New revision is acceptable as-is for boards which can't run off of batteries. It needs a support under the PCB for battery operated units (and that will also help the USB-powered ones feel more stable too). The only other change I want to make is the button tops be 1mm taller and the bottoms 0.25mm shorter to account for manufacturing tolerances. They work okay as is, but this will be better. View quoted note →

Made my case 33% thinner and made the tolerances tighter. Currently doing another print. Soon we'll see how it looks.

66% of investors expect physical climate risks to have a significant or moderate impact on asset prices. In other words, hurricanes, floods, wildfires, tornadoes, and so forth. This is survey data, not a crystal ball that knows the future. Also, having an impact doesn't mean it's a negative impact. Afer all, a storm that takes out your biggest competitor is good for your business. If someone was clever, they'd do the research to find out who has factories and offices in the danger zones and sell access to their work. Smart investors would buy it, check their work, and then factor that into their overall investment strategy.

ESG Today

82% of Investors Expect Climate Risks to Impact Asset Prices Over Next Decade: Robeco Survey - ESG Today

Climate Change Increases as a Strategic Priority for Investors for First Time in 3 Years Climate change has increased as a priority for investors f...

Investing in nature based solutions, like wetland restoration and prescribed burns, can reduce claims and premiums How much? California’s Tahoe Donner homeowners association delivered a 39% lower premium and an 84% lower deductible Below is a peer reviewed article published in a major journal (Nature). This in important, because a lot of people like to treat the academic equivalent of an opinion piece as fact... if it supports their existing beliefs. This ain't that.

Client Challenge

I got a first draft done. There's more adjustments to be made, but I'm very happy with it thus far!

It would be a poor decision to pull an all-nighter prototyping cases for the hardware TOTP device I made for myself. But it'd be fun. Adulting is hard. If you want to be able to buy one, see this note: View quoted note → It you want to build your own, also see that note, but just jump straight to the GitHub link.

PSA: if you design and build your own electronics and/or cases, standardize on M2.5 screws. This will make it easier for Makerspaces and fellow hardware hackers to stock screws. Obviously there will be exceptions (e.g. holes in other people's PCBs which are not M2.5), but M2.5 can work in most cases.