Whear prices spiked when the Ukraine war begun. Then they came back down and remained stable for over 4 years, as markets realised that both sides were refraining from attacking agriculture and shipping. No scorched earth policy. Something has changed recently. Grain ships have been targeted. Odessa has been pummeled. Keep an eye on prices over the next couple of months.

@BitBetBot up

Censorship, moderation, user filters and Nostr. Since this is a recurring discussion here, let's clearly define terms to avoid the most frequent confusions. Strictly understood censorship is government restriction on speech. It requires enforcement and thus force. If you can be arrested by the police for writing a tweet, that is clear censorship. Moderation is restriction on speech enforced as policy on private property. It is mostly voluntary in the sense that if you enter a private space, you implicitly agree to abide by the rules set by its owner. However it is still top down. The most frequent penalty is expulsion. User filters are decentralised, individual decisions on what content you want to see and what you want to block. Nostr was built as a reaction to mass censorship on social media, sometimes enforced directly by governments and more often hidden behind heavy handed moderation by platforms that were in turn being threatened by governments. Nostr's decentralised architecture makes censorship very difficult, relay runners are many and there is no Nostr CEO to threaten with fines or arrest. However relays can still implement their moderation policies according to their preference. If a majority of relays agree, for example, to block a certain user, his messages would have a lot of trouble reaching his audience. Many people have different ideas about what Nostr should become. In my opinion Nostr's most powerful purpose, how it can be a force for good would be for it to become a free speech platform that gives voice to those suffering censorship. Centralised censorship would clearly contradict that goal. Heavy handed pervasive moderation would also pose a risk. It is true that massive spam or morally abhorrent content would also detract from Nostr's ability to become a true open, public and global forum for debate. Nobody wants to hold a debate in a depraved heap of trash. There is some content that nobody wants to even be in the same neighbourhood as. You also don't want you important information about government lies and corruption to be drowned out in a sea of spam and shouting bots. So how do you thread the needle? How do you find the balance? I would argue that relays and clients should err on the side of caution with moderation and that they should empower users by giving them the tools to decide what to block. Give users the tools: web of trust, zaps, spam filters, blocklists, whitelists, followlists, curated content packs, bot detection, parent filters, nsfw labelling, comment filtering options, thread ranking, etc. There are many technical solutions. Let's experiment with them. Let's learn from the experience of other platforms. Let's build. But don't let Nostr fall into the mistakes that made every other tech unusable as a free speech platform and useful only for propaganda, manipulation and advertising. I can see the utility of a Nostr client that just does TikTok style short videos focused only on sports. No doubt it could go viral and attract millions of users. But frankly that is not why I'm here. I'm hoping that neither are you.

Censorship, moderation, user filters and Nostr. Since this is a recurring discussion here, let's clearly define terms to avoid the most frequent confusions. Strictly understood censorship is government restriction on speech. It requires enforcement and thus force. If you can be arrested by the police for writing a tweet, that is clear censorship. Moderation is restriction on speech enforced as policy on private property. It is mostly voluntary in the sense that if you enter a private space, you implicitly agree to abide by the rules set by its owner. However it is still top down. The most frequent penalty is expulsion. User filters are decentralised, individual decisions on what content you want to see and what you want to block. Nostr was built as a reaction to mass censorship on social media, sometimes enforced directly by governments and more often hidden behind heavy handed moderation by platforms that were in turn being threatened by governments. Nostr's decentralised architecture makes censorship very difficult, relay runners are many and there is no Nostr CEO to threaten with fines or arrest. However relays can still implement their moderation policies according to their preference. If a majority of relays agree, for example, to block a certain user, his messages would have a lot of trouble reaching his audience. Many people have different ideas about what Nostr should become. In my opinion Nostr's most powerful purpose, how it can be a force for good would be for it to become a free speech platform that gives voice to those suffering censorship. Centralised censorship would clearly contradict that goal. Heavy handed pervasive moderation would also pose a risk. It is true that massive spam or morally abhorrent content would also detract from Nostr's ability to become a true open, public and global forum for debate. Nobody wants to hold a debate in a depraved heap of trash. There is some content that nobody wants to even be in the same neighbourhood as. You also don't want you important information about government lies and corruption to be drowned out in a sea of spam and shouting bots. So how do you thread the needle? How do you find the balance? I would argue that relays and clients should err on the side of caution with moderation and that they should empower users by giving them the tools to decide what to block. Give users the tools: web of trust, zaps, spam filters, blocklists, whitelists, followlists, curated content packs, bot detection, parent filters, nsfw labelling, comment filtering options, thread ranking, etc. There are many technical solutions. Let's experiment with them. Let's learn from the experience of other platforms. Let's build. But don't let Nostr fall into the mistakes that made every other tech unusable as a free speech platform and useful only for propaganda, manipulation and advertising. I can see the utility of a Nostr client that just does TikTok style short videos focused only on sports. No doubt it could go viral and attract millions of users. But frankly that is not why I'm here. I'm hoping that neither are you.

@BitBetBot up

The prophecy has been fullfilled.

Dragonfly spotted.

Another day, another data breach. ALL DATABASES WILL LEAK.

Hanlon's razor. Often applies. Verify, don't trust helps find Faulty tools Made by fools.

I'm quite amazed that there was zero reporting on legacy media about the ColdCard disaster. Normally they jump on any negative Bitcoin news. My only guess is that they have such a huge alergy to speaking about self-custody that they won't even mention it in a negative context. Or maybe they just don't understand what happened...

If— By Rudyard Kipling If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you, If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you, But make allowance for their doubting too; If you can wait and not be tired by waiting, Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies, Or being hated, don’t give way to hating, And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise: If you can dream—and not make dreams your master; If you can think—and not make thoughts your aim; If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster And treat those two impostors just the same; If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools, Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken, And stoop and build ’em up with worn-out tools: If you can make one heap of all your winnings And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss, And lose, and start again at your beginnings And never breathe a word about your loss; If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew To serve your turn long after they are gone, And so hold on when there is nothing in you Except the Will which says to them: ‘Hold on!’ If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue, Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch, If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you, If all men count with you, but none too much; If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!

@BitBetBot up

A prediction market on the next hack would be the best bug bounty. @PREDYX

As AI powered hacks intensify, the natural response is to flee offline. Close code. Restrict access. In the short term it will close attack vectors, but in the long term it will make attacks even more catastrophic. FOSS is the forward looking answer. It will evolve and adapt faster. It will patch bugs and vulnerabilities. It will become antifragile. You can isolate yourself on an island to prevent contagion... but when it eventually comes it will be devastating to unprepared and weakened inmune systems. The Silk Road transmitted Asian plagues to Europe, devastating a generation. But the survivors ushered the Renaissance, the Age of Exploration and the Enlightenment. America was saved from the Black Death by isolation, but when contact with the world finally came, smallpox wiped out a majority of the native population.

I stopped underestimating the risk of supply chain attacks after the Lebanon pager attack.

2024 Lebanon electronic device attacks - Wikipedia

Nobody thought that Skynet's first move would be to steal their coins. But here we are. Bitcoiners are going to get a year head's up on the Singularity.

AI is going to quickly find all the vulnerabilities in FOSS projects. In one year all will adapt or die. Closed source software will not adapt as fast. Many vulnerabilities will not be discovered for years. When they are, the results will be catastrophic and the fix will be slow. Watch out for disasters in banking, payments, government, energy, telecom, media and othet infrastructure over the next few years. We will live through some very interesting times.

Antifragility is built one push up at a time.

If every time a Bitcoin exchange, vendor, manufacturer, software.... is hacked, you TRUST 1% less and VERIFY 1% more, you will soon reach satoshi levels of cypherpunk security.

TRUSTED THIRD PARTIES ARE SECURITY HOLES.