Marco Barulli's avatar
Marco Barulli
_@marco.barulli.it
npub18nag...5evl
Progressive bitcoiner. Math teacher. Building and using decentralized tools that matter. Former founder at clipperz.is, bernstein.io.
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mbarulli 8 months ago
My friends often complain that I always talk about Bitcoin, especially with everything else going on in the world. They make me feel like I'm navel-gazing and disconnected from real, more serious issues. But that's not the case, it just happened to me the same thing that happened to @fiatjaf : image (via @Gigi )
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mbarulli 8 months ago
This 2010 EFF article remains a compelling and insightful read even today. > They can promise strong encryption. They just need to figure out how they can provide us plain text. - FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni, September 27, 2010 > [W]e're in favor of strong encryption, robust encryption. The country needs it, industry needs it. We just want to make sure we have a trap door and key under some judge's authority where we can get there if somebody is planning a crime. - FBI Director Louis Freeh, May 11, 1995
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mbarulli 0 years ago
Mi piace notare come, nelle ultime puntate, lo spirito anarchico e antisistema del Bitcoin Italia Podcast si riveli sempre più marcatamente. In tempi dove anche l’ultimo dei Satoshi Spritz di provincia è infestato da trader mascherati da bitcoiner, è importante che vi sia chi ricorda ai bitcoiner italiani le origini e la ragione d’essere di Bitcoin. Bravo @rikki🏴‍☠️! Adesso devi solo convincere Guybrush a dare una chance a Nostr che, non sarà p2p come vorrebbe, ma è pur sempre meglio di X!
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mbarulli 1 year ago
#asknostr I’m looking for a new laptop with official Linux support from the manufacturer. ** Requirements ** - 13”–14” display - Good battery life - Solid build quality (no cheap plastic) - USB-C with display output - Preferably elegant and lightweight - Ideally ships from the EU to avoid high customs fees People of Nostr, what would you recommend? image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
Se ancora non l'avessi fatto, corri a comprare i biglietti del Bitcoin Pizza Day Rimini! Nessuna area VIP, nessuna separazione tra palco e platea, tante voci, tante conversazioni. Prezzi da 15 a 60 euro a secondo di quanta fame hai. 😉 https://bitcoinpizzadayrimini.it/
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mbarulli 1 year ago
<rant> Dopo essere stato parte della prima e variegata comunità di bitcoiner italiani (2011-2015), mi sono trasferito in Germania per diversi anni. Al mio rientro ho cercato gradualmente di scoprire come si fosse evoluto l’ecosistema bitcoin nazionale. Ho così timidamente partecipato a qualche bitcoin meetup/spritz/beer, mi sono iscritto ai canali Telegram più importanti (Telegram!? Nel 2025!? #@%*$!), seguito podcaster e youtuber vari, ecc. E ora mi chiedo dove sia finita l’apertura al diverso e la ricchezza di idee degli inizi. Sto infatti incontrando quasi esclusivamente bitcoiner assolutamente conformi allo standard, ovvero bitcoiner che si identificano in qualche aggregato dei seguenti totem: no tax, no vax, pro gun, no immigrati, riscaldamento globale = truffa, UE = dittatura, W Mises, W Milei, W Bukele, W Trump, hodl, bull run, to the moon, dio, famiglia, palestra, bistecca e uova, … Mai una voce fuori dal coro. Eppure nel lontanissimo 2011, ci era chiaro che bitcoin fosse per tutti. Anche oggi lo si dice, ma al contempo si è creata una narrazione, a volte dai toni forti, che tiene lontana una buona fetta di potenziali utilizzatori che non necessariamente si riconoscono in questo aggregato di convinzioni. Capire ed abbracciare Bitcoin richiede un notevole sforzo ed una genuina curiosità intellettuale. Non rendiamo questo percorso di scoperta e comprensione di Bitcoin più difficile di quello che già è. Bitcoin è per tutti. Anche oggi. </rant> image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
Domain name registrars are still the most relevant and critical centralized component of the Internet. I'm surprised that we have not been able to transition to a more decentralized, distributed, or federated system. Despite various attempts, nothing has been able to gain significant traction. (I still remember the excitement of using Namecoin to set up a .bit domain that no one visited ...) Perhaps this is an area where Nostr could play a role? #asknostr image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
Is there any Nostr-based service that could replace Dribbble? #asknostr (for a designer friend) You might ask what is wrong with Dribbble. Well, they recently updated their ToS. “Designers are no longer permitted to display or share their contact information (like email addresses, phone numbers, social media handles) prior to client payment on Dribbble.” Dribbble wants to handle payments, and it is just fine. But some designers might prefer a self-hosted, self-sovereign alternative and Nostr might indeed be of help here. image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
This new service from @Alby looks like magic! I’ve always been told that Bitcoin and subscriptions does not play well together, but apparently Alby managed to solve the conundrum and now I might be able to schedule regular weekly payments to my daughters’ wallets. How cool is that? I’m wondering if there are elements of centralization in this solution. I’d love to hear a more detailed explanation of the inner workings. image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
RSS is one of those humble protocols that glues the web. It was born out of the same values (openness, data portability, ...) that are the foundation of Nostr. You may not be aware, but you can already export most of the content you create and publish today into an RSS feed. - Most blog platforms allow users to make their content available as an RSS feed. - Most bookmark services allow users to create an RSS feed from their bookmarks. - Plenty of third-party services enable the creation of RSS feeds for your Twitter, Instagram, Facebook accounts (think RSS.app, IFTTT, ...). - Most podcast platforms generate an RSS feed for your show. - ... On the other hand, Nostr is poised to become the new web infrastructure. It will dismantle the walled gardens we've been living in for too long and is already shaping an ecosystem of decentralized apps that will gradually replace centralized ones, one by one. Connecting RSS and Nostr is obviously a necessary step to accelerate the transition toward this new web powered by Nostr. This Geyser Project (link below) aims to build the necessary momentum to create a tool that enables everyone to make the most of RSS in a Nostr world. Applications are countless: just imagine turning the RSS feed of bookmarks about a specific topic into a nice stream of Nostr notes pushed to a specific npub profile, and then transformin those Nostr notes into a beautiful website built with @Npub.pro . ⇒ Help me build rss2nostr! I'm fully aware there are already a few tools out there attempting this, but all of them are quite limited in features or designed to only serve tech users. What we need is a web app that allows users to: - Submit the RSS feed they want to connect with Nostr - Define rules and parameters for converting RSS items into Nostr events - Specify the Nostr profile they would like to publish the events to Furthermore, using a liberal open-source license, we may enable the development of competing/specialized web apps. image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
MY SAZMINING EXPERIENCE: A CAUTIONARY TALE OF MINING EXPECTATIONS About one year ago, I decided to try mining. After assessing the various options, from solo mining to cloud mining, I selected @Sazmining since I liked the interest alignment between the company and its customers. If you're not familiar with Sazmining (https://www.sazmining.com), it's a company that offers hosted mining services. Here's how it works: 1. You purchase a mining rig from Sazmining, which gets shipped and deployed at one of their farms (located in Paraguay or Norway). 2. You pay a monthly hosting fee that covers energy and basic maintenance costs. 3. The hashrate of your rig is directed to the Luxor mining pool. 4. You earn sats, with Sazmining taking a 15% fee on your earnings. In this scheme, Sazmining has all the incentives to keep your rig running constantly and efficiently. Sazmining claims that mining with them will allow you to acquire Bitcoin at a much lower price than the market price. As of today, they claim on their homepage that you can get 1 BTC for $58K, which would be almost a 50% discount. However, my personal experience tells a different story. I'd like to share my numbers with you. I purchased a Bitmain S21 for $5K and had it shipped to the Paraguay farm where the energy costs (0.047$/KWh) are covered by the hosting subscription ($120/month). Note that your monthly fee may vary slightly due to factors like local energy curtailments or overconsumption by your rig. When I purchased my mining rig from Sazmining, they estimated that I could reach break-even within 15 months (by May 2025). At that time, their website featured a useful simulator that allowed me to experiment with different scenarios and estimate my potential returns. Unfortunately, this simulator is no longer available. However, I've had to revise that forecast significantly. Today, my optimistic estimate suggests that it will take around 27 months (until July 2026) for me to reach break-even. Notably, this change isn't of course due to any decrease in Bitcoin's price. So far, I’ve earned 3.4M sats, but the pace of payouts to my wallet is getting slower: from 340K every 3 weeks at the start, to 340K every 6 weeks now. Quite likely this is due to the significant increase in the global hashrate. Combining both upfront hardware expenses ($5K) along accumulated hosting fees ($1300), I’ve paid a 110K USD/BTC price for my 3.4M sats! After one year I’m still pretty far from enjoying the advertised discount and, of course, if I had opted for DCA purchases, I would have enjoyed much better results. Hopefully, my return on investment will improve in the coming months, but there are no certainties, since global hashpower keeps growing. I have the feeling that any other strategy (e.g. DCA) would have performed much better over the past year. image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
Before memes were a thing, I was in love with Someecards. I was not alone, Someecards’ deadpan humor was quite popular back then. Someecards launched in 2006, and it featured parodies of the traditional greeting cards. Unfortunately, in 2018 the "create card" feature was removed and users could no longer create and share their own custom ecards. But before that happened, someone made this: image
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mbarulli 1 year ago
image La mia mappatura degli utilizzatori italiani di Nostr prosegue implacabile. Finora ne ho raccolti 153 in questa lista. 😄 Dovresti esserci anche tu, ma ancora non ci sei? Rispondi qui e ti aggiungerò. Conosci altri che dovrebbero essere inseriti in questo elenco? Taggali e riposta questa nota, grazie! === I'm relentlessly chasing Italian-speaking users on Nostr. So far I've collected 153 of them in this list. 😄 Should you too be in the list? Reply here and I'll add you. Do you know of others who should be included? Tag them and repost this note, thank you! View article → #nostritalia #grownostr #asknostr #Italia #Italy