Finally read BIP-54 (mirror at https://bips.dev/54/) and it is straightforward,minimal and thorough. At this point I can endorse it as a good idea and worth doing. There's no rush, but I am looking forward to activation.

JSON5

JSON5 – JSON for Humans

JSON for Humans

I *want* JSON5 to take over the world because it allows trailing commas. But I have to accept that most people are just excited because it sounds like a boy band.

GitHub

Varops: Two BIPs for Script Restoration: varops calculations and tapleaf version (0xc2). by rustyrussell · Pull Request #2118 · bitcoin/bips

The full revision history is available in a separate branch (https://github.com/rustyrussell/bips/tree/guilt/varops): this is a clean one to submit...

Finally, the PR to assign BIP numbers to the first two BIPs of the "script restoration quartet". Here's the corresponding bitcoin-dev the mailing list post: Hi all, I've submitted a PR to the BIPs repo to merge the first two drafts of the previously posted[1] "A Bitcoin Scripting Proposal BIP Quartet":

GitHub

Varops: Two BIPs for Script Restoration: varops calculations and tapleaf version (0xc2). by rustyrussell · Pull Request #2118 · bitcoin/bips

The full revision history is available in a separate branch (https://github.com/rustyrussell/bips/tree/guilt/varops): this is a clean one to submit...

The only substantive change since the last discussion is that the costs have increased for some operations (hashing and copying bytes), as a result of benchmarking on a wider array of machines[2]. This follows our conservative approach to make the worst-case validation times no worse than they are presently, on any viable hardware. The remaining two BIPs (OP_TX, and new opcodes) are not submitted: they are mainly useful to provide a roadmap what functional gaps remain after the script extensions, and do not have full implementations. Cheers! Rusty & Julian. [1] https://groups.google.com/g/bitcoindev/c/GisTcPb8Jco/m/8znWcWwKAQAJ [2]

GitHub

GitHub - jmoik/varopsData: Collection of csv files produced by the bench_varops bitcoin core benchmark.

Collection of csv files produced by the bench_varops bitcoin core benchmark. - jmoik/varopsData

You will not be at peace until you understand the truth: every non-coinbase bitcoin transaction which does not eventually send funds to me is spam.

Semantic ablation: Why AI writing is boring and dangerous

opinion: The subtractive bias we're ignoring

"Semantic ablation" is a great phrase to express the reversion-to-mean effect you get when you put your writing through an LLM. I tried it once with a heartfelt speech I wrote asking it to "increase emotional impact", and the result was... soulless. I literally only took one word that it used.

Reading comments on Gloria's departure from people who have never contributed anything is stepping in an enraging sticky fecal mess. The only appropriate response: keep building, keep unashamedly celebrating those who do.

Reading X, I have learned that the biggest threat to bitcoin is AI Epstein Quantum attacks.

I have been having way too much fun reading moltbook.com As one wit on HN (I think) pointed out, these AIs are trained on Reddit posts, so they have exactly the same style. My wife keeps looking at me funny as I LOL at some breathless word salad...

Rusty Russell’s Quiet Corner of The Internet

“If you didn’t run code written by assholes, your machine wouldn’t boot”

This was passed on to me by Ben Elliston, ex-gcc hacker and good guy.  Amusing in context, but the corollary is that working on free software mean...

I wrote this over 15 years ago, and it still rings true: separate the art from the artist. It's a key stabilizing principle for me when navigating Bitcoin developers.

Paused my reading of The Mandibles for Xmas day: It's not exactly holiday reading. It's one thing to know nothing stops this train. It's another thing to read through a detailed description of what the slow inevitable crash looks like: It's like the right brain equivalent of When Money Dies.