@ ed84ce10:cccf4c2a

Hackathon Summary

The Aptos Code Collision Hackathon concluded with notable participation, featuring 658 registered projects and 2,658 developers globally. Conducted in a hybrid format, the hackathon aimed to advance blockchain innovation through workshops and bootcamps focused on Web3 developments on the Aptos platform.

Offering over $500,000 in prizes, the event attracted diverse participants eager to create meaningful applications. Judging was conducted by industry experts, including Mo Shaikh and Avery Ching from Aptos Labs, alongside other notable blockchain and investment firm leaders.

The hackathon highlighted Aptos technologies such as Keyless user authentication and on-chain randomness, which support developers in creating secure and efficient applications. Resources and guidance were provided through a comprehensive participants' handbook, enhancing learning and development for both novice and advanced users. The event showcased significant participation and promising innovations aimed at enhancing the Aptos blockchain ecosystem.

Hackathon Winners

DeFi / RWA Prize Winners

• Panana Predictions: A decentralized platform for event predictions using smart contracts on Aptos, offering transparent transactions and community-governed markets.
• Sentra Restaking Protocol: Strengthens Aptos security via a restaking layer, providing pooled security and customizable slashing.
• Legato: A DeFi market platform utilizing AI for BTC price predictions and smart contracts for liquidity pool management.
• eVault: Combines DeFi and TradFi to offer financial services to underserved communities on Aptos.
• MeowFi: Uses NFTs as collateral for loans, enabling transparent lending on Aptos.

Gaming / NFTs Prize Winners

• Jeton: A decentralized poker platform on Aptos using zk-SNARKs for fair play without central trust.
• On-Chain Treasure Hunt Multiplayer!: An entirely on-chain game utilizing smart contracts for transparent mechanics and rewards.
• Forged Realms - IP Incubation with Games: Supports gaming IP incubation through a tokenized, community-driven approach.
• Aptos Legacy: A 3D RPG game on Aptos enhancing player ownership with tokenized assets.
• appToss Friends: Infrastructure for on-chain casinos, utilizing liquidity pools and friend registries on Aptos.

AI / DePIN Prize Winners

• ChatEDU: AI-powered educational system incentivizing content sharing with blockchain-based credits on Aptos.
• Unity Network: Facilitates data monetization through AI models with a federated learning protocol.
• ProxiRun: A decentralized compute marketplace for AI tasks, managed through smart contracts on Aptos.
• FLock Move GPT: Trains large language models (LLMs) on Aptos coding standards using advanced tuning and classification methods.
• Antikythera: An AI agent that enhances Aptos interactions by executing transactions and identifying real-time opportunities.

Social Prize Winners

• Cook App: A Telegram-based app curating crypto news via a blockchain-backed swipe interface.
• BiUwU: Livestream platform featuring AI-driven influencers and interactive blockchain-backed engagement.
• FundMate: Platform for social messaging and crypto transactions with decentralized payment management.
• Enthro: Enhances video content creation leveraging blockchain for market growth opportunities.
• StreamAd: Twitter-focused platform for automating campaign management and rewards distribution through smart contracts.

The Unexpected Prize Winners

• ActionX: Simplifies blockchain interactions by converting processes into actionable links.
• Compensate: Innovates payroll management using secure, transparent salary transactions with zero-knowledge proofs.
• Khizab: Offers reactive blockchain capabilities through modular, type-safe tools for application development.
• Aptos Extension: A development tool that enhances productivity and collaboration within the Aptos ecosystem.
• Aptotic: Industrial Robotic Automation on Aptos 🤖: Provides MaaS for industrial automation, integrating blockchain for secure operations.

UI Challenge Prize Winners

• PlayStop: A social minigame platform merging digital asset ownership with real-time competition on Aptos.
• EdenX: Web3 learning platform featuring a Telegram bot for a gamified learning-to-earn experience.
• Vortex: GameFi platform for player-to-player games with secure liquidity management on Aptos.

Best Public Goods Prize Winners

• Scaffold Move: An open-source toolkit for developing dApps on Aptos, including deployment scripts and module hot reloads.
• build 3 (fka Aptos Bounty App): A decentralized labor market that supports task fulfillment with an analytics dashboard.
• Aptos Extension

Aptos Indexer Challenge with Nodit Prize Winners

• Panana Predictions
• Wavefy Network - Decentralized Network for Generative AI Inference: Addresses AI memory issues using a P2P network for distributed model inference.
• Compensate

Foresight's Choice: Consumer Applications Bounty Prize Winners

• BiUwU
• Cook App
• eVault
• Antikythera
• ChatEDU

Mirana's Bounty Prize Winners

• Sentra Restaking Protocol
• BiUwU
• FLock Move GPT

MEXC Venture's Choice Prize Winners

• AGDEX: A decentralized perpetual exchange for leveraged trading, featuring benefits like AGLP tokens.
• EdenX
• Panana Predictions
• 紅包拿來: Integrates traditional red envelope culture with blockchain for secure digital asset sharing.
• Inbox-to-Earn using Telegram + Mizu: Monetizes Telegram inbox through Aptos token payments for prioritized messages.

Mizu Wallet's Telegram Integration Challenge Prize Winners

• AGDEX
• Panana Predictions
• Apt Date: A blockchain-based dating platform ensuring secure interactions with on-chain randomness for user matching.

For comprehensive details on all projects, visit https://dorahacks.io/hackathon/code-collision/buidl.

About the Organizer

Aptos Foundation

Aptos Foundation is prominent in blockchain technology, offering a Layer 1 blockchain utilizing the Move programming language to enhance scalability. Achieving up to 30,000 transactions per second and processing 2 billion transactions daily, the foundation emphasizes transaction efficiency and security. Dedicated to continuous innovation, its mission focuses on evolving blockchain infrastructure with cost-effective and robust solutions. Aptos Foundation remains actively engaged in technological development, fostering a dynamic and secure digital ecosystem.

@ 6389be64:ef439d32

Black Locust can grow up to 170 ft tall

Grows 3-4 ft. per year

Native to North America

Cold hardy in zones 3 to 8

Firewood

• BLT wood, on a pound for pound basis is roughly half that of Anthracite Coal
• Since its growth is fast, firewood can be plentiful

Timber

• Rot resistant due to a naturally produced robinin in the wood
  • 100 year life span in full soil contact! (better than cedar performance)
  • Fence posts
  • Outdoor furniture
  • Outdoor decking
• Sustainable due to its fast growth and spread
  • Can be coppiced (cut to the ground)
  • Can be pollarded (cut above ground)
• Its dense wood makes durable tool handles, boxes (tool), and furniture
  • The wood is tougher than hickory, which is tougher than hard maple, which is tougher than oak.
  • A very low rate of expansion and contraction
  • Hardwood flooring
  • The highest tensile beam strength of any American tree
• The wood is beautiful

Legume

• Nitrogen fixer
  • Fixes the same amount of nitrogen per acre as is needed for 200-bushel/acre corn
  • Black walnuts inter-planted with locust as “nurse” trees were shown to rapidly increase their growth [[Clark, Paul M., and Robert D. Williams. (1978) Black walnut growth increased when interplanted with nitrogen-fixing shrubs and trees. Proceedings of the Indiana Academy of Science, vol. 88, pp. 88-91.]]

Bees

• The edible flower clusters are also a top food source for honey bees

Shade Provider

• Its light, airy overstory provides dappled shade
  • Planted on the west side of a garden it provides relief during the hottest part of the day
  • (nitrogen provider)
  • Planted on the west side of a house, its quick growth soon shades that side from the sun

Wind-break

• Fast growth plus it's feathery foliage reduces wind for animals, crops, and shelters

Fodder

• Over 20% crude protein
• 4.1 kcal/g of energy
• Baertsche, S.R, M.T. Yokoyama, and J.W. Hanover (1986) Short rotation, hardwood tree biomass as potential ruminant feed-chemical composition, nylon bag ruminal degradation and ensilement of selected species. J. Animal Sci. 63 2028-2043

@ ed84ce10:cccf4c2a

Hackathon Summary

The Hackmos 2024 event successfully concluded in Dubai, held alongside Cosmoverse 2024. It featured 53 registered projects and 101 participating developers. The hackathon provided a platform for both student and non-student teams, each allocated specific time slots for presentations, assessed by judging panels dedicated to various track categories. This event highlighted innovation within the Cosmos ecosystem, fostering networking among developers and blockchain enthusiasts.

Participants were encouraged to undertake projects that demonstrated technological innovation and practical functionality. The event concluded with presentations evaluated on criteria such as technology innovation, functionality, usability, and security. By engaging with the wider crypto community, the hackathon showcased promising projects with potential for significant community impact and adoption.

Set against Dubai's cultural backdrop, participants also had the opportunity to explore the locale. The hackathon attendees received non-transferable entry to the Cosmoverse conference, a forum for developments across the Cosmos ecosystem. The event fostered collaboration and competition, aiming to drive growth and exploration in blockchain project development.

Hackathon Winners

Interchain Prize Winners

• Wasm ICQ Datahub: Facilitates cross-chain data exchange without requiring architectural changes, using smart contracts on the Neutron blockchain. It is particularly suitable for financial protocols and analytics.
• ZkResolution: Enhances DNS privacy through zero-knowledge proofs, providing secure lookups and ensuring interoperability between EVM and Cosmos ecosystems.
• FractionXChange: Enables the fractionalization and rental of NFTs, allowing divisible tokens for shared asset access while maintaining asset exclusivity.
• Cosmic Quest: Gamifies blockchain education with role-playing quests, integrating real interactions and on-chain credentials.
• SupportMEow: Facilitates cat shelter donations through blockchain, using AI and IBC for image verification and blockchain inscription.
• NAMI <> Mars Protocol Integration: Integrates NAMI and Mars Protocol for cross-chain savings, providing sustainable yields and stablecoin management.
• InMail Treasury: Provides AI-driven treasury management with email interfaces, utilizing CosmWasm and Osmosis Smart Accounts for secured crypto management.
• BreezeNode: Promotes energy-saving behaviors through a blockchain-powered smart energy management system, rewarding token-based incentives for reduced usage.
• FreshCatch: Streamlines the seafood supply chain by connecting fishermen and markets, enhancing sustainability and efficiency through direct transactions.
• LogoSpark - RECs Blockchain: Facilitates REC trading via a PoS blockchain, ensuring transparency and sustainability in renewable energy markets.

Cosmos Hub Prize Winners

• MEME HERO: A launchpad for meme tokens on Cosmos, using IBC for liquidity and customizable tokenomics within a gamified platform.
• Symbiosis
• Proof of Profit: Simulates trading environments to demonstrate verifiable profitability, securely attracting investment on-chain.
• Swift Notify: Cosmos Hub Newsletters
• Wasm ICQ Datahub

Babylon Prize Winners

• HWStaking: Integrates Ledger wallets for Bitcoin staking through Babylon, enhancing security and accessibility for stakers.

Warden Prize Winners

• SupportMEow
• InMail Treasury
• FedLearn: Enables private machine learning via decentralized federated learning and Warden Protocol integration.

Osmosis Prize Winners

• InMail Treasury
• Symbiosis
• Osmosis smart contract EOL: Provides secure crypto fund recovery through inactivity monitoring and nominee execution upon user incapacity.

Neutron Prize Winners

• Wasm ICQ Datahub
• Proof of Profit
• Neutron Drop protocol UI in TMA: Telegram app interfaces with Neutron Drop Protocol for seamless smart contract operations across networks.

Mantra Prize Winners

• TOKIFY Protocol: Manages real-world asset tokenization on the MANTRA Chain, enabling fractional ownership within a compliant, DAO-governed framework.
• FractionXChange
• mantrapy: Enhances interactions with the Mantra chain through a versatile Python library, enabling extensibility in decentralized applications.

Agoric Bounty Prize Winners

• Zero mile: Develops a liquidity layer for seamless DeFi operations across blockchains, enhancing interoperability without traditional messaging.
• SupportMEow
• Agoric: Event Registration: Expands an event registration platform to support multi-blockchain transactions through Agoric integration.

Dora Factory Bounty Prize Winners

• ZKBugs: Focuses on bug detection in Circom circuits, ensuring optimal performance for cryptographic applications.
• HACKMOS BOUNTY MINOR: Examines message chain verification vulnerabilities to enhance security in decentralized systems.

To view all winning projects and details, visit Hackmos 2024 Projects.

About the Organizer

Cosmoverse

Cosmoverse & Hackmos Dubai 2024 is a recognized entity within the technology and blockchain sectors, dedicated to fostering innovation and collaboration. It is known for organizing engaging conferences and hackathons that bring together industry experts, developers, and enthusiasts to explore emerging trends and solutions. The organization's initiatives are aimed at advancing knowledge and practical applications of blockchain technology. Currently, it focuses on enhancing technological engagement and facilitating conversations to propel the industry forward.

@ 7f2d6fd6:64710921

The Warrior King strode through the gnarled trees, his armored frame cutting an imposing silhouette against the spectral gloom of the ancient forest. His brow was furrowed with grim determination, for he had come to this accursed place on a quest of the utmost importance - to uncover the truth behind the disappearance of his most trusted knight, a man who had ventured into these woods and never returned.

As he delved deeper into the shadowed depths, the Warrior King could not shake the unearthly chill that crept up his spine, a sensation of being watched by unseen eyes. The very air seemed to thicken with a malevolent presence, as if the forest itself was alive and aware of his intrusion.

Yet the Warrior King was no coward. He had faced countless foes in his lifetime, from raging beasts to the armies of rival kingdoms. Surely, he thought, whatever horrors this cursed woodland held, he would be more than a match for them.

But as he pressed onward, the Warrior King soon discovered that the true dangers of this place lay not in physical threats, but in the insidious corruption of the mind. Strange whispers echoed through the trees, voices that promised power, wealth, and the very secrets of the universe itself. And try as he might to resist their siren call, the Warrior King found his resolve slowly eroding, his thoughts becoming clouded with visions of grandeur and ambition.

It was then that he stumbled upon the crumbling ruins of an ancient structure, its once-imposing walls now overgrown with twisted vines and moss. And there, amidst the fallen stones, he found the remains of his lost knight - a grisly sight that filled the Warrior King with a mixture of grief and dread.

But as he reached out to retrieve the fallen warrior's sword, a sudden chill gripped him, and he turned to behold a sight that would haunt his dreams for the rest of his days. There, before him, stood the Shrouded Watcher, its faceless cowl exuding an aura of pure, unadulterated terror.

The Warrior King tried to flee, to escape the Watcher's malevolent gaze, but his limbs were frozen, his mind gripped by a paralyzing fear. And as the Watcher's spectral form drew nearer, the Warrior King's sanity began to unravel, his thoughts consumed by visions of a dark and terrible power that lay at the heart of the forest.

In the end, the Warrior King's crusade ended not in triumph, but in utter madness. For as he gazed into the Watcher's soulless cowl, his mind was shattered, his very essence consumed by the weight of the forest's ancient secrets. And there, amidst the crumbling ruins, his broken body would remain, a grim reminder of the folly of those who dared to uncover the mysteries of this accursed place.

@ 0dd4b762:3b75a30d

The bane of our day and age is a subtle but very dangerous disease. It is rooted in ignorance and overestimation of one's own abilities. Indefinitely more lethal than covid1984 and even harder to trace.\ It is the epidemic of mid-curve-intelligence and average competence which has infected the most important roles of society.\ We've come to a system that forgot to select on merit and is willingly dancing towards it's own downfall to the gospel of DEI.\ The only antidote to this plague which also critically unveils it is sound and incorruptible money.

Sixteen years of melting faces.

\ While generational wealth is being accumulated left and right the mid-curve NPCs still pat themselves on the back for not participating in a "highly unstable and fraudulent ponzi-scheme".\ This is not at all a new phenomenon and its is perfectly normal for the general population to seek comfort in conformity instead of opening their eyes in search of the truth.

Another great case study for this dynamic was the plandemic of the early 2020s when, neighbours, coworkers and friends slowly but surely morphed into clones of the talking heads of your favourite news station. \ No matter the staggering nature of claims about masking, social-distancing and vaccine-mandates, many people wholeheartedly swallowed the propaganda in fear of becoming the only few nails that are still sticking out. The terror of the hammer was very apparent in that situation and gave us a good idea where the train might be going in the coming years..

Introducing bitcoin to the suits and the corporate balance sheet

\ Fast forward to the fun of January 2025 and number go up technology is being embraced by the president elect and his entourage, proposing mind bending ideas such as a bitcoin-strategic reserve. \ Not only the political caste started licking their fingers in anticipation of life-changing gains but the financial-industrial-complex also known as blackrock et al. jumped aboard with the introduction of the bitcoin ETFs exactly one year ago.\ Then there is MicroStrategy who are close to calling 500k bitcoin their own, not showing any signs of exhaustion stockpiling the most scarce money there ever was.

All these cases suggest bitcoin has dipped it's toe into the muddy waters of normie-mainstream-consensus, right?\ Hyperbitcoinisation is upon us one might think, it is just around the corner only a few blocks away, right?\ There ain't no way in hell people are not getting it at this point, right?\ \ I hate to break it to you but most of the managerial clss are still asleep at the wheel. Apperantly more so than ever.\ \ Especially the dismissal of the shareholder proposals for Microsoft and Amazon adding bitcoin to their corporate balance sheets unveiled the root problems which stem from the c-suits of the highest floors of corporate America.\ \ The all so mighty people in the drivers seat of these gigantic corporations miserably failed the intelligence-test bitcoin presented to them. Unmasking a very uncomfortable truth: The higher up executives today are mostly made of mid-wit-normies who are not willing to innovate and step outside of the warmth of DEI nonsense.\ They literally did the meme.

It is a culture of mediocrisy that is actively being selected for in the higher up's offices.\ The new generation of managers and problem solvers nowadays doesn't consist of the smartest people anymore but got displaced by the folks whose main strength it is to jump trough arbitrary hoops.

stayhumblestacksats

@ 3eacaa76:bac66fe4

Few days back this track get on Top of list on #wavlake. It's nice , but not a point. at all.

The message is clear. like Real Talk should be !

We know, specialy on #nostr, that solutions are available. However, the world is not yet aware of them.

100% of the donations for this remix will be sent to my friend Yusef who is on the ground and has been providing food, water, and shelter for children in Gaza even before or the psyop with October 07 took a place. Israel has enforced a blockade on Gaza for over decade. And Just past year completly destroyed 90% of land. Like to the ground , no schools , no hospitals ... hard to find anything what surrvived those daily airstrikes without 1h of pause since 350 days. WTF

It's heartbreaking to see children dying daily in houreds and the lack of action from the public and authorities of other nations. The statistics are alarming, and it's essential to address this issue and find ways to make progress. it's crucial to raise awareness and take action to prevent further tragedies. Let's remember that every child's life is precious and deserves our attention and support.

In most apocaliptic condition , where is-real controling all money supply (check lastest news about banknotes in there) , the #Bitcoin is one and only solution can help them in daily bases. It was helping them before with great succes. Why you ask ? becuse even if they close all platforms You can still send them some sats.

How fookin cool is that !!

I know it doesn't sound funny.

Those People pushed to the limit , now they have a tool that fulfills exactly what was created for A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System.

No Middle man .

``` On the middle is only a finger whitch WE the PEOPLE can give to those Scumbagz in Goverments and Banks, Full stop.

```

Many people are only recently realizing the truth about Gaza being an open-air prison from like 75 years. Not 3, not 5 or even 20 ..... but seventy five fookin years.

This music mix was created to share the truth and provoke to critical thinking, which has been lacking for the past decade. and even more.

I wonder why we can watch live streams of the ongoing genocide in 4K HD and stil be silent. not all but many.

Why are we surprised that normies don't understand Bitcoin and still use fiat shit currency? Whitch is fudament of All war crimes. We should ask ourselves.

Our own ignorance and the banking system are the cancers of this world.

If we lose Palestine, we will lose much more than we think.

You will be next - One way or another

Thank you for your support, not for me but for those in need who can gain hope from our efforts.

Respect to you all.

LISTEN HERE and suport directly in upper links

FreePalestine

Thanks

be blessed

MadMunky

@ a95c6243:d345522c

Ich begann, Social Media aufzubauen, \ um den Menschen eine Stimme zu geben. \ Mark Zuckerberg

Sind euch auch die Tränen gekommen, als ihr Mark Zuckerbergs Wendehals-Deklaration bezüglich der Meinungsfreiheit auf seinen Portalen gehört habt? Rührend, oder? Während er früher die offensichtliche Zensur leugnete und später die Regierung Biden dafür verantwortlich machte, will er nun angeblich «die Zensur auf unseren Plattformen drastisch reduzieren».

«Purer Opportunismus» ob des anstehenden Regierungswechsels wäre als Klassifizierung viel zu kurz gegriffen. Der jetzige Schachzug des Meta-Chefs ist genauso Teil einer kühl kalkulierten Business-Strategie, wie es die 180 Grad umgekehrte Praxis vorher war. Social Media sind ein höchst lukratives Geschäft. Hinzu kommt vielleicht noch ein bisschen verkorkstes Ego, weil derartig viel Einfluss und Geld sicher auch auf die Psyche schlagen. Verständlich.

«Es ist an der Zeit, zu unseren Wurzeln der freien Meinungsäußerung auf Facebook und Instagram zurückzukehren. Ich begann, Social Media aufzubauen, um den Menschen eine Stimme zu geben», sagte Zuckerberg.

Welche Wurzeln? Hat der Mann vergessen, dass er von der Überwachung, dem Ausspionieren und dem Ausverkauf sämtlicher Daten und digitaler Spuren sowie der Manipulation seiner «Kunden» lebt? Das ist knallharter Kommerz, nichts anderes. Um freie Meinungsäußerung geht es bei diesem Geschäft ganz sicher nicht, und das war auch noch nie so. Die Wurzeln von Facebook liegen in einem Projekt des US-Militärs mit dem Namen «LifeLog». Dessen Ziel war es, «ein digitales Protokoll vom Leben eines Menschen zu erstellen».

Der Richtungswechsel kommt allerdings nicht überraschend. Schon Anfang Dezember hatte Meta-Präsident Nick Clegg von «zu hoher Fehlerquote bei der Moderation» von Inhalten gesprochen. Bei der Gelegenheit erwähnte er auch, dass Mark sehr daran interessiert sei, eine aktive Rolle in den Debatten über eine amerikanische Führungsrolle im technologischen Bereich zu spielen.

Während Milliardärskollege und Big Tech-Konkurrent Elon Musk bereits seinen Posten in der kommenden Trump-Regierung in Aussicht hat, möchte Zuckerberg also nicht nur seine Haut retten – Trump hatte ihn einmal einen «Feind des Volkes» genannt und ihm lebenslange Haft angedroht –, sondern am liebsten auch mitspielen. KI-Berater ist wohl die gewünschte Funktion, wie man nach einem Treffen Trump-Zuckerberg hörte. An seine Verhaftung dachte vermutlich auch ein weiterer Multimilliardär mit eigener Social Media-Plattform, Pavel Durov, als er Zuckerberg jetzt kritisierte und gleichzeitig warnte.

Politik und Systemmedien drehen jedenfalls durch – was zu viel ist, ist zu viel. Etwas weniger Zensur und mehr Meinungsfreiheit würden die Freiheit der Bürger schwächen und seien potenziell vernichtend für die Menschenrechte. Zuckerberg setze mit dem neuen Kurs die Demokratie aufs Spiel, das sei eine «Einladung zum nächsten Völkermord», ernsthaft. Die Frage sei, ob sich die EU gegen Musk und Zuckerberg behaupten könne, Brüssel müsse jedenfalls hart durchgreifen.

Auch um die Faktenchecker macht man sich Sorgen. Für die deutsche Nachrichtenagentur dpa und die «Experten» von Correctiv, die (noch) Partner für Fact-Checking-Aktivitäten von Facebook sind, sei das ein «lukratives Geschäftsmodell». Aber möglicherweise werden die Inhalte ohne diese vermeintlichen Korrektoren ja sogar besser. Anders als Meta wollen jedoch Scholz, Faeser und die Tagesschau keine Fehler zugeben und zum Beispiel Correctiv-Falschaussagen einräumen.

Bei derlei dramatischen Befürchtungen wundert es nicht, dass der öffentliche Plausch auf X zwischen Elon Musk und AfD-Chefin Alice Weidel von 150 EU-Beamten überwacht wurde, falls es irgendwelche Rechtsverstöße geben sollte, die man ihnen ankreiden könnte. Auch der Deutsche Bundestag war wachsam. Gefunden haben dürften sie nichts. Das Ganze war eher eine Show, viel Wind wurde gemacht, aber letztlich gab es nichts als heiße Luft.

Das Anbiedern bei Donald Trump ist indes gerade in Mode. Die Weltgesundheitsorganisation (WHO) tut das auch, denn sie fürchtet um Spenden von über einer Milliarde Dollar. Eventuell könnte ja Elon Musk auch hier künftig aushelfen und der Organisation sowie deren größtem privaten Förderer, Bill Gates, etwas unter die Arme greifen. Nachdem Musks KI-Projekt xAI kürzlich von BlackRock & Co. sechs Milliarden eingestrichen hat, geht da vielleicht etwas.

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Dieser Beitrag ist zuerst auf Transition News erschienen.

@ 000002de:c05780a7

Sometimes I forget that there are people that actually fall for corporate press propaganda.

Heard it said recently that the deep state is a conspiracy theory.

That is so stupid I almost don't know how to respond. That's like there are never politics in the office or at your company. The very idea that career bureaucrats and people in 3 letter agencies would not push back against politicians is absurd on its face. Its beyond naive.

Often I find that people have their heads in the sand. They cover their ears because they do not want to accept that the world is more complex and dark that they were told in their government school.

I recommend everyone watch the BBC show "Yes Minister!". Its one of the best examples of how the establishment in a government work against the politicians. It also doesn't paint the politicians in a good light. But the biggest reason to watch this show is that is so funny.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/850633

@ a95c6243:d345522c

Was du bist hängt von drei Faktoren ab: \ Was du geerbt hast, \ was deine Umgebung aus dir machte \ und was du in freier Wahl \ aus deiner Umgebung und deinem Erbe gemacht hast. \ Aldous Huxley

Das brave Mitmachen und Mitlaufen in einem vorgegebenen, recht engen Rahmen ist gewiss nicht neu, hat aber gerade wieder mal Konjunktur. Dies kann man deutlich beobachten, eigentlich egal, in welchem gesellschaftlichen Bereich man sich umschaut. Individualität ist nur soweit angesagt, wie sie in ein bestimmtes Schema von «Diversität» passt, und Freiheit verkommt zur Worthülse – nicht erst durch ein gewisses Buch einer gewissen ehemaligen Regierungschefin.

Erklärungsansätze für solche Entwicklungen sind bekannt, und praktisch alle haben etwas mit Massenpsychologie zu tun. Der Herdentrieb, also der Trieb der Menschen, sich – zum Beispiel aus Unsicherheit oder Bequemlichkeit – lieber der Masse anzuschließen als selbstständig zu denken und zu handeln, ist einer der Erklärungsversuche. Andere drehen sich um Macht, Propaganda, Druck und Angst, also den gezielten Einsatz psychologischer Herrschaftsinstrumente.

Aber wollen die Menschen überhaupt Freiheit? Durch Gespräche im privaten Umfeld bin ich diesbezüglich in der letzten Zeit etwas skeptisch geworden. Um die Jahreswende philosophiert man ja gerne ein wenig über das Erlebte und über die Erwartungen für die Zukunft. Dabei hatte ich hin und wieder den Eindruck, die totalitären Anwandlungen unserer «Repräsentanten» kämen manchen Leuten gerade recht.

«Desinformation» ist so ein brisantes Thema. Davor müsse man die Menschen doch schützen, hörte ich. Jemand müsse doch zum Beispiel diese ganzen merkwürdigen Inhalte in den Social Media filtern – zur Ukraine, zum Klima, zu Gesundheitsthemen oder zur Migration. Viele wüssten ja gar nicht einzuschätzen, was richtig und was falsch ist, sie bräuchten eine Führung.

Freiheit bedingt Eigenverantwortung, ohne Zweifel. Eventuell ist es einigen tatsächlich zu anspruchsvoll, die Verantwortung für das eigene Tun und Lassen zu übernehmen. Oder die persönliche Freiheit wird nicht als ausreichend wertvolles Gut angesehen, um sich dafür anzustrengen. In dem Fall wäre die mangelnde Selbstbestimmung wohl das kleinere Übel. Allerdings fehlt dann gemäß Aldous Huxley ein Teil der Persönlichkeit. Letztlich ist natürlich alles eine Frage der Abwägung.

Sind viele Menschen möglicherweise schon so «eingenordet», dass freiheitliche Ambitionen gar nicht für eine ganze Gruppe, ein Kollektiv, verfolgt werden können? Solche Gedanken kamen mir auch, als ich mir kürzlich diverse Talks beim viertägigen Hacker-Kongress des Chaos Computer Clubs (38C3) anschaute. Ich war nicht nur überrascht, sondern reichlich erschreckt angesichts der in weiten Teilen mainstream-geformten Inhalte, mit denen ein dankbares Publikum beglückt wurde. Wo ich allgemein hellere Köpfe erwartet hatte, fand ich Konformismus und enthusiastisch untermauerte Narrative.

Gibt es vielleicht so etwas wie eine Herdenimmunität gegen Indoktrination? Ich denke, ja, zumindest eine gestärkte Widerstandsfähigkeit. Was wir brauchen, sind etwas gesunder Menschenverstand, offene Informationskanäle und der Mut, sich freier auch zwischen den Herden zu bewegen. Sie tun das bereits, aber sagen Sie es auch dieses Jahr ruhig weiter.

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Dieser Beitrag ist zuerst auf Transition News erschienen.

@ a95c6243:d345522c

Heute möchte ich ein Gedicht mit euch teilen. Es handelt sich um eine Ballade des österreichischen Lyrikers Johann Gabriel Seidl aus dem 19. Jahrhundert. Mir sind diese Worte fest in Erinnerung, da meine Mutter sie perfekt rezitieren konnte, auch als die Kräfte schon langsam schwanden.

Dem originalen Titel «Die Uhr» habe ich für mich immer das Wort «innere» hinzugefügt. Denn der Zeitmesser – hier vermutliche eine Taschenuhr – symbolisiert zwar in dem Kontext das damalige Zeitempfinden und die Umbrüche durch die industrielle Revolution, sozusagen den Zeitgeist und das moderne Leben. Aber der Autor setzt sich philosophisch mit der Zeit auseinander und gibt seinem Werk auch eine klar spirituelle Dimension.

Das Ticken der Uhr und die Momente des Glücks und der Trauer stehen sinnbildlich für das unaufhaltsame Fortschreiten und die Vergänglichkeit des Lebens. Insofern könnte man bei der Uhr auch an eine Sonnenuhr denken. Der Rhythmus der Ereignisse passt uns vielleicht nicht immer in den Kram.

Was den Takt pocht, ist durchaus auch das Herz, unser «inneres Uhrwerk». Wenn dieses Meisterwerk einmal stillsteht, ist es unweigerlich um uns geschehen. Hoffentlich können wir dann dankbar sagen: «Ich habe mein Bestes gegeben.»

Ich trage, wo ich gehe, stets eine Uhr bei mir; \ Wieviel es geschlagen habe, genau seh ich an ihr. \ Es ist ein großer Meister, der künstlich ihr Werk gefügt, \ Wenngleich ihr Gang nicht immer dem törichten Wunsche genügt.

Ich wollte, sie wäre rascher gegangen an manchem Tag; \ Ich wollte, sie hätte manchmal verzögert den raschen Schlag. \ In meinen Leiden und Freuden, in Sturm und in der Ruh, \ Was immer geschah im Leben, sie pochte den Takt dazu.

Sie schlug am Sarge des Vaters, sie schlug an des Freundes Bahr, \ Sie schlug am Morgen der Liebe, sie schlug am Traualtar. \ Sie schlug an der Wiege des Kindes, sie schlägt, will's Gott, noch oft, \ Wenn bessere Tage kommen, wie meine Seele es hofft.

Und ward sie auch einmal träger, und drohte zu stocken ihr Lauf, \ So zog der Meister immer großmütig sie wieder auf. \ Doch stände sie einmal stille, dann wär's um sie geschehn, \ Kein andrer, als der sie fügte, bringt die Zerstörte zum Gehn.

Dann müßt ich zum Meister wandern, der wohnt am Ende wohl weit, \ Wohl draußen, jenseits der Erde, wohl dort in der Ewigkeit! \ Dann gäb ich sie ihm zurücke mit dankbar kindlichem Flehn: \ Sieh, Herr, ich hab nichts verdorben, sie blieb von selber stehn.

Johann Gabriel Seidl (1804-1875)

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Falls du beim Lesen des Titels dieses Newsletters unwillkürlich an positive Neuigkeiten aus dem globalen polit-medialen Irrenhaus oder gar aus dem wirtschaftlichen Umfeld gedacht hast, darf ich dich beglückwünschen. Diese Assoziation ist sehr löblich, denn sie weist dich als unverbesserlichen Optimisten aus. Leider muss ich dich diesbezüglich aber enttäuschen. Es geht hier um ein anderes Thema, allerdings sehr wohl ein positives, wie ich finde.

Heute ist ein ganz besonderer Tag: die Wintersonnenwende. Genau gesagt hat heute morgen um 10:20 Uhr Mitteleuropäischer Zeit (MEZ) auf der Nordhalbkugel unseres Planeten der astronomische Winter begonnen. Was daran so außergewöhnlich ist? Der kürzeste Tag des Jahres war gestern, seit heute werden die Tage bereits wieder länger! Wir werden also jetzt jeden Tag ein wenig mehr Licht haben.

Für mich ist dieses Ereignis immer wieder etwas kurios: Es beginnt der Winter, aber die Tage werden länger. Das erscheint mir zunächst wie ein Widerspruch, denn meine spontanen Assoziationen zum Winter sind doch eher Kälte und Dunkelheit, relativ zumindest. Umso erfreulicher ist der emotionale Effekt, wenn dann langsam die Erkenntnis durchsickert: Ab jetzt wird es schon wieder heller!

Natürlich ist es kalt im Winter, mancherorts mehr als anderswo. Vielleicht jedoch nicht mehr lange, wenn man den Klimahysterikern glauben wollte. Mindestens letztes Jahr hat Väterchen Frost allerdings gleich zu Beginn seiner Saison – und passenderweise während des globalen Überhitzungsgipfels in Dubai – nochmal richtig mit der Faust auf den Tisch gehauen. Schnee- und Eischaos sind ja eigentlich in der Agenda bereits nicht mehr vorgesehen. Deswegen war man in Deutschland vermutlich in vorauseilendem Gehorsam schon nicht mehr darauf vorbereitet und wurde glatt lahmgelegt.

Aber ich schweife ab. Die Aussicht auf nach und nach mehr Licht und damit auch Wärme stimmt mich froh. Den Zusammenhang zwischen beidem merkt man in Andalusien sehr deutlich. Hier, wo die Häuser im Winter arg auskühlen, geht man zum Aufwärmen raus auf die Straße oder auf den Balkon. Die Sonne hat auch im Winter eine erfreuliche Kraft. Und da ist jede Minute Gold wert.

Außerdem ist mir vor Jahren so richtig klar geworden, warum mir das südliche Klima so sehr gefällt. Das liegt nämlich nicht nur an der Sonne als solcher, oder der Wärme – das liegt vor allem am Licht. Ohne Licht keine Farben, das ist der ebenso simple wie gewaltige Unterschied zwischen einem deprimierenden matschgraubraunen Winter und einem fröhlichen bunten. Ein großes Stück Lebensqualität.

Mir gefällt aber auch die Symbolik dieses Tages: Licht aus der Dunkelheit, ein Wendepunkt, ein Neuanfang, neue Möglichkeiten, Übergang zu neuer Aktivität. In der winterlichen Stille keimt bereits neue Lebendigkeit. Und zwar in einem Zyklus, das wird immer wieder so geschehen. Ich nehme das gern als ein Stück Motivation, es macht mir Hoffnung und gibt mir Energie.

Übrigens ist parallel am heutigen Tag auf der südlichen Halbkugel Sommeranfang. Genau im entgegengesetzten Rhythmus, sich ergänzend, wie Yin und Yang. Das alles liegt an der Schrägstellung der Erdachse, die ist nämlich um 23,4º zur Umlaufbahn um die Sonne geneigt. Wir erinnern uns, gell?

Insofern bleibt eindeutig festzuhalten, dass “schräg sein” ein willkommener, wichtiger und positiver Wert ist. Mit anderen Worten: auch ungewöhnlich, eigenartig, untypisch, wunderlich, kauzig, … ja sogar irre, spinnert oder gar “quer” ist in Ordnung. Das schließt das Denken mit ein.

In diesem Sinne wünsche ich euch allen urige Weihnachtstage!

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Dieser Beitrag ist letztes Jahr in meiner Denkbar erschienen.

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In every town, in every home, there lies a force unseen but deeply felt. It does not bear a face or speak a word, yet its presence governs lives and decides destinies. This force, born of human invention, is the fiat monetary system. Like a shadow cast over the dinner table, it molds the lives of families in ways that few can name but all can feel.

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The Weight of a Dollar That Isn't Worth a Dollar

Families, once the heart of a community, find themselves stretched thin under the weight of money that promises security but delivers uncertainty. Inflation, a quiet thief in the night, robs the hard-earned savings of parents who dream of brighter futures for their children. They sit at kitchen tables, bills spread like playing cards, and wonder how far their dollars will stretch this month. The dreams of vacations, college funds, or even a night out fade beneath the gnawing fear of rising prices and unpaid debts.

Debt itself is a serpent, coiled tightly around many a household. It whispers promises of homes, cars, and comforts, but its grip tightens with each passing month. Fathers work longer hours; mothers take second jobs. The children, left to their own devices, grow up in homes where the light of connection dims under the weight of obligation.

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A House Divided by Numbers

Fiat money divides more than just wealth; it divides hearts and homes. Generations, once bound by shared struggle and sacrifice, now find themselves at odds. Parents, raised on tales of hard work and thrift, watch their children struggle beneath mountains of student debt and stagnant wages. The younger generation looks at their elders with a mix of envy and resentment, wondering why the ladder to success seems shorter for them.

This divide is not born of malice but of a system that values numbers over people. As communities grow wealthier in goods, they grow poorer in connection. Neighbors no longer gather on porches to share stories; families no longer sit down to meals together. The bonds that hold society together fray, one thread at a time.

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The Exodus of Hope

In towns where opportunity dries up like a summer creek, young people leave, chasing dreams in distant cities. They promise to send money back home, but the miles between them and their kin grow longer with each passing year. Children grow up without grandparents; siblings become strangers. The family, once a stronghold, becomes a memory of what was and what could have been.

This migration is not born of greed but necessity. The fiat system creates deserts where once there were gardens, forcing people to seek greener pastures. But in the pursuit of individual prosperity, the roots of community are pulled up, leaving behind only dust and longing.

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A Silent Burden on the Heart

The fiat system does not shout; it whispers. It whispers to parents as they lie awake at night, counting the cost of a child’s education. It whispers to children who watch their parents argue over money. It whispers to the elderly who wonder if their pensions will last. This constant hum of worry and uncertainty wears on the spirit, making joy a fleeting visitor in many homes.

The toll is not just financial but emotional. Anxiety becomes a constant companion; stress seeps into every corner of life. Families, once a refuge from the world, become battlegrounds where arguments over money take the place of laughter and love.

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A Glimpse of Light

But even in the darkest corners, there is always a glimmer of hope. Some see a way out—a return to something simpler, something fairer. They dream of a world where money does not dictate worth, where families are not torn apart by financial strain, where communities are built on trust and shared purpose.

This vision is not easy to grasp, but it grows stronger with each passing day. It is a reminder that no system, no matter how powerful, is greater than the human spirit. Families have weathered storms before, and they will again. Perhaps, one day, they will gather around tables not to divide burdens but to share dreams, free from the chains of a system that seeks to control them.

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Conclusion: A Call to Remember

The fiat system may govern the world, but it does not define it. At the heart of every family lies something far more valuable than money—love, resilience, and the hope of a better tomorrow. In remembering this, perhaps we can find a way to break free from the invisible chain and rebuild the bonds that truly matter.

For in the end, it is not wealth or power that sustains a family but the simple act of being together, unbroken by the weight of the world. And that, above all, is a treasure no system can take away.

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Das Betriebsklima ist das einzige Klima, \ das du selbst bestimmen kannst. \ Anonym

Eine Strategie zur Anpassung an den Klimawandel hat das deutsche Bundeskabinett diese Woche beschlossen. Da «Wetterextreme wie die immer häufiger auftretenden Hitzewellen und Starkregenereignisse» oft desaströse Auswirkungen auf Mensch und Umwelt hätten, werde eine Anpassung an die Folgen des Klimawandels immer wichtiger. «Klimaanpassungsstrategie» nennt die Regierung das.

Für die «Vorsorge vor Klimafolgen» habe man nun erstmals klare Ziele und messbare Kennzahlen festgelegt. So sei der Erfolg überprüfbar, und das solle zu einer schnelleren Bewältigung der Folgen führen. Dass sich hinter dem Begriff Klimafolgen nicht Folgen des Klimas, sondern wohl «Folgen der globalen Erwärmung» verbergen, erklärt den Interessierten die Wikipedia. Dabei ist das mit der Erwärmung ja bekanntermaßen so eine Sache.

Die Zunahme schwerer Unwetterereignisse habe gezeigt, so das Ministerium, wie wichtig eine frühzeitige und effektive Warnung der Bevölkerung sei. Daher solle es eine deutliche Anhebung der Nutzerzahlen der sogenannten Nina-Warn-App geben.

Die ARD spurt wie gewohnt und setzt die Botschaft zielsicher um. Der Artikel beginnt folgendermaßen:

«Die Flut im Ahrtal war ein Schock für das ganze Land. Um künftig besser gegen Extremwetter gewappnet zu sein, hat die Bundesregierung eine neue Strategie zur Klimaanpassung beschlossen. Die Warn-App Nina spielt eine zentrale Rolle. Der Bund will die Menschen in Deutschland besser vor Extremwetter-Ereignissen warnen und dafür die Reichweite der Warn-App Nina deutlich erhöhen.»

Die Kommunen würden bei ihren «Klimaanpassungsmaßnahmen» vom Zentrum KlimaAnpassung unterstützt, schreibt das Umweltministerium. Mit dessen Aufbau wurden das Deutsche Institut für Urbanistik gGmbH, welches sich stark für Smart City-Projekte engagiert, und die Adelphi Consult GmbH beauftragt.

Adelphi beschreibt sich selbst als «Europas führender Think-and-Do-Tank und eine unabhängige Beratung für Klima, Umwelt und Entwicklung». Sie seien «global vernetzte Strateg*innen und weltverbessernde Berater*innen» und als «Vorreiter der sozial-ökologischen Transformation» sei man mit dem Deutschen Nachhaltigkeitspreis ausgezeichnet worden, welcher sich an den Zielen der Agenda 2030 orientiere.

Über die Warn-App mit dem niedlichen Namen Nina, die möglichst jeder auf seinem Smartphone installieren soll, informiert das Bundesamt für Bevölkerungsschutz und Katastrophenhilfe (BBK). Gewarnt wird nicht nur vor Extrem-Wetterereignissen, sondern zum Beispiel auch vor Waffengewalt und Angriffen, Strom- und anderen Versorgungsausfällen oder Krankheitserregern. Wenn man die Kategorie Gefahreninformation wählt, erhält man eine Dosis von ungefähr zwei Benachrichtigungen pro Woche.

Beim BBK erfahren wir auch einiges über die empfohlenen Systemeinstellungen für Nina. Der Benutzer möge zum Beispiel den Zugriff auf die Standortdaten «immer zulassen», und zwar mit aktivierter Funktion «genauen Standort verwenden». Die Datennutzung solle unbeschränkt sein, auch im Hintergrund. Außerdem sei die uneingeschränkte Akkunutzung zu aktivieren, der Energiesparmodus auszuschalten und das Stoppen der App-Aktivität bei Nichtnutzung zu unterbinden.

Dass man so dramatische Ereignisse wie damals im Ahrtal auch anders bewerten kann als Regierungen und Systemmedien, hat meine Kollegin Wiltrud Schwetje anhand der Tragödie im spanischen Valencia gezeigt. Das Stichwort «Agenda 2030» taucht dabei in einem Kontext auf, der wenig mit Nachhaltigkeitspreisen zu tun hat.

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Deep within the ancient, foreboding forest, where the canopy of twisted oaks blotted out the sun's light, a being of immense power and arcane knowledge dwelled in solitude. Geldar the Wizard, a diminutive yet formidable figure, had made this dark woodland his domain, guarding its myriad secrets from the prying eyes of mortal men.

For centuries, Geldar had studied the occult lore of the elder races, delving into the forbidden knowledge of realms beyond the ken of common folk. His small but agile form belied the potent sorcery that coursed through his veins, a legacy of his elven heritage intertwined with darker, more primal energies.

Now, as he moved silently through the shadowed trees, Geldar could sense a disturbance in the delicate balance of his woodland sanctuary. Some trespasser had breached the arcane wards that cloaked his hidden abode, drawn perhaps by rumors of the ancient power that slumbered within.

With a subtle gesture of his gnarled, spidery hands, Geldar conjured a shimmering orb of eldritch light, its eerie radiance illuminating the gnarled trees that crowded around him. His sharp, elfin features were set in a stern expression as he scanned the gloom, searching for any sign of the intruder.

Suddenly, a movement in the periphery of his vision - a fleeting shadow darting between the twisted trunks. Geldar's eyes narrowed, and with a muttered incantation, he unleashed a burst of arcane energy that lanced through the forest. The spell struck true, and a strangled cry echoed through the trees as the hapless trespasser was ensnared in a web of sorcerous energy.

Gliding forward on silent feet, Geldar approached the struggling form, his expression inscrutable. "So, another foolhardy mortal has dared to trespass in my domain," he murmured, his voice a soft, rasping whisper. "You have stirred the wrath of the ancients, human. Now you shall face the consequences of your folly."

With a dismissive gesture, Geldar wove a new spell, his fingers tracing intricate patterns in the air. The captive's cries grew more frantic as dark tendrils of power began to envelop him, slowly draining the life from his body.

As the last vestiges of the man's life force ebbed away, Geldar allowed himself a thin, humorless smile. "The forest keeps its secrets well," he murmured, his gaze sweeping the surrounding gloom. "And I shall ensure that no others dare to uncover them."

Turning, the diminutive wizard melted back into the shadows, his arcane power once more cloaking the ancient woodland in its impenetrable veil of mystery and dread.

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Die Ungerechtigkeit ist uns nur in dem Falle angenehm,\ dass wir Vorteile aus ihr ziehen;\ in jedem andern hegt man den Wunsch,\ dass der Unschuldige in Schutz genommen werde.\ Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Politiker beteuern jederzeit, nur das Beste für die Bevölkerung zu wollen – nicht von ihr. Auch die zahlreichen unsäglichen «Corona-Maßnahmen» waren angeblich zu unserem Schutz notwendig, vor allem wegen der «besonders vulnerablen Personen». Daher mussten alle möglichen Restriktionen zwangsweise und unter Umgehung der Parlamente verordnet werden.

Inzwischen hat sich immer deutlicher herausgestellt, dass viele jener «Schutzmaßnahmen» den gegenteiligen Effekt hatten, sie haben den Menschen und den Gesellschaften enorm geschadet. Nicht nur haben die experimentellen Geninjektionen – wie erwartet – massive Nebenwirkungen, sondern Maskentragen schadet der Psyche und der Entwicklung (nicht nur unserer Kinder) und «Lockdowns und Zensur haben Menschen getötet».

Eine der wichtigsten Waffen unserer «Beschützer» ist die Spaltung der Gesellschaft. Die tiefen Gräben, die Politiker, Lobbyisten und Leitmedien praktisch weltweit ausgehoben haben, funktionieren leider nahezu in Perfektion. Von ihren persönlichen Erfahrungen als Kritikerin der Maßnahmen berichtete kürzlich eine Schweizerin im Interview mit Transition News. Sie sei schwer enttäuscht und verspüre bis heute eine Hemmschwelle und ein seltsames Unwohlsein im Umgang mit «Geimpften».

Menschen, die aufrichtig andere schützen wollten, werden von einer eindeutig politischen Justiz verfolgt, verhaftet und angeklagt. Dazu zählen viele Ärzte, darunter Heinrich Habig, Bianca Witzschel und Walter Weber. Über den aktuell laufenden Prozess gegen Dr. Weber hat Transition News mehrfach berichtet (z.B. hier und hier). Auch der Selbstschutz durch Verweigerung der Zwangs-Covid-«Impfung» bewahrt nicht vor dem Knast, wie Bundeswehrsoldaten wie Alexander Bittner erfahren mussten.

Die eigentlich Kriminellen schützen sich derweil erfolgreich selber, nämlich vor der Verantwortung. Die «Impf»-Kampagne war «das größte Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit». Trotzdem stellt man sich in den USA gerade die Frage, ob der scheidende Präsident Joe Biden nach seinem Sohn Hunter möglicherweise auch Anthony Fauci begnadigen wird – in diesem Fall sogar präventiv. Gibt es überhaupt noch einen Rest Glaubwürdigkeit, den Biden verspielen könnte?

Der Gedanke, den ehemaligen wissenschaftlichen Chefberater des US-Präsidenten und Direktor des National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) vorsorglich mit einem Schutzschild zu versehen, dürfte mit der vergangenen Präsidentschaftswahl zu tun haben. Gleich mehrere Personalentscheidungen des designierten Präsidenten Donald Trump lassen Leute wie Fauci erneut in den Fokus rücken.

Das Buch «The Real Anthony Fauci» des nominierten US-Gesundheitsministers Robert F. Kennedy Jr. erschien 2021 und dreht sich um die Machenschaften der Pharma-Lobby in der öffentlichen Gesundheit. Das Vorwort zur rumänischen Ausgabe des Buches schrieb übrigens Călin Georgescu, der Überraschungssieger der ersten Wahlrunde der aktuellen Präsidentschaftswahlen in Rumänien. Vielleicht erklärt diese Verbindung einen Teil der Panik im Wertewesten.

In Rumänien selber gab es gerade einen Paukenschlag: Das bisherige Ergebnis wurde heute durch das Verfassungsgericht annuliert und die für Sonntag angesetzte Stichwahl kurzfristig abgesagt – wegen angeblicher «aggressiver russischer Einmischung». Thomas Oysmüller merkt dazu an, damit sei jetzt in der EU das Tabu gebrochen, Wahlen zu verbieten, bevor sie etwas ändern können.

Unsere Empörung angesichts der Historie von Maßnahmen, die die Falschen beschützen und für die meisten von Nachteil sind, müsste enorm sein. Die Frage ist, was wir damit machen. Wir sollten nach vorne schauen und unsere Energie clever einsetzen. Abgesehen von der Umgehung von jeglichem «Schutz vor Desinformation und Hassrede» (sprich: Zensur) wird es unsere wichtigste Aufgabe sein, Gräben zu überwinden.

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Konsum ist Therapie.
Wolfgang Joop

Umweltbewusstes Verhalten und verantwortungsvoller Konsum zeugen durchaus von einer wünschenswerten Einstellung. Ob man deswegen allerdings einen grünen statt eines schwarzen Freitags braucht, darf getrost bezweifelt werden – zumal es sich um manipulatorische Konzepte handelt. Wie in der politischen Landschaft sind auch hier die Etiketten irgendwas zwischen nichtssagend und trügerisch.

Heute ist also wieder mal «Black Friday», falls Sie es noch nicht mitbekommen haben sollten. Eigentlich haben wir ja eher schon eine ganze «Black Week», der dann oft auch noch ein «Cyber Monday» folgt. Die Werbebranche wird nicht müde, immer neue Anlässe zu erfinden oder zu importieren, um uns zum Konsumieren zu bewegen. Und sie ist damit sehr erfolgreich.

Warum fallen wir auf derartige Werbetricks herein und kaufen im Zweifelsfall Dinge oder Mengen, die wir sicher nicht brauchen? Pure Psychologie, würde ich sagen. Rabattschilder triggern etwas in uns, was den Verstand in Stand-by versetzt. Zusätzlich beeinflussen uns alle möglichen emotionalen Reize und animieren uns zum Schnäppchenkauf.

Gedankenlosigkeit und Maßlosigkeit können besonders bei der Ernährung zu ernsten Problemen führen. Erst kürzlich hat mir ein Bekannter nach einer USA-Reise erzählt, dass es dort offenbar nicht unüblich ist, schon zum ausgiebigen Frühstück in einem Restaurant wenigstens einen Liter Cola zu trinken. Gerne auch mehr, um das Gratis-Nachfüllen des Bechers auszunutzen.

Kritik am schwarzen Freitag und dem unnötigen Konsum kommt oft von Umweltschützern. Neben Ressourcenverschwendung, hohem Energieverbrauch und wachsenden Müllbergen durch eine zunehmende Wegwerfmentalität kommt dabei in der Regel auch die «Klimakrise» auf den Tisch.

Die EU-Kommission lancierte 2015 den Begriff «Green Friday» im Kontext der überarbeiteten Rechtsvorschriften zur Kennzeichnung der Energieeffizienz von Elektrogeräten. Sie nutzte die Gelegenheit kurz vor dem damaligen schwarzen Freitag und vor der UN-Klimakonferenz COP21, bei der das Pariser Abkommen unterzeichnet werden sollte.

Heute wird ein grüner Freitag oft im Zusammenhang mit der Forderung nach «nachhaltigem Konsum» benutzt. Derweil ist die Europäische Union schon weit in ihr Geschäftsmodell des «Green New Deal» verstrickt. In ihrer Propaganda zum Klimawandel verspricht sie tatsächlich «Unterstützung der Menschen und Regionen, die von immer häufigeren Extremwetter-Ereignissen betroffen sind». Was wohl die Menschen in der Region um Valencia dazu sagen?

Ganz im Sinne des Great Reset propagierten die Vereinten Nationen seit Ende 2020 eine «grüne Erholung von Covid-19, um den Klimawandel zu verlangsamen». Der UN-Umweltbericht sah in dem Jahr einen Schwerpunkt auf dem Verbraucherverhalten. Änderungen des Konsumverhaltens des Einzelnen könnten dazu beitragen, den Klimaschutz zu stärken, hieß es dort.

Der Begriff «Schwarzer Freitag» wurde in den USA nicht erstmals für Einkäufe nach Thanksgiving verwendet – wie oft angenommen –, sondern für eine Finanzkrise. Jedoch nicht für den Börsencrash von 1929, sondern bereits für den Zusammenbruch des US-Goldmarktes im September 1869. Seitdem mussten die Menschen weltweit so einige schwarze Tage erleben.

Kürzlich sind die britischen Aufsichtsbehörden weiter von ihrer Zurückhaltung nach dem letzten großen Finanzcrash von 2008 abgerückt. Sie haben Regeln für den Bankensektor gelockert, womit sie «verantwortungsvolle Risikobereitschaft» unterstützen wollen. Man würde sicher zu schwarz sehen, wenn man hier ein grünes Wunder befürchten würde.

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@ a95c6243:d345522c

Und plötzlich weißt du:
Es ist Zeit, etwas Neues zu beginnen
und dem Zauber des Anfangs zu vertrauen.
Meister Eckhart

Schwarz, rot, gold leuchtet es im Kopf des Newsletters der deutschen Bundesregierung, der mir freitags ins Postfach flattert. Rot, gelb und grün werden daneben sicher noch lange vielzitierte Farben sein, auch wenn diese nie geleuchtet haben. Die Ampel hat sich gerade selber den Stecker gezogen – und hinterlässt einen wirtschaftlichen und gesellschaftlichen Trümmerhaufen.

Mit einem bemerkenswerten Timing hat die deutsche Regierungskoalition am Tag des «Comebacks» von Donald Trump in den USA endlich ihr Scheitern besiegelt. Während der eine seinen Sieg bei den Präsidentschaftswahlen feierte, erwachten die anderen jäh aus ihrer Selbsthypnose rund um Harris-Hype und Trump-Panik – mit teils erschreckenden Auswüchsen. Seit Mittwoch werden die Geschicke Deutschlands nun von einer rot-grünen Minderheitsregierung «geleitet» und man steuert auf Neuwahlen zu.

Das Kindergarten-Gehabe um zwei konkurrierende Wirtschaftsgipfel letzte Woche war bereits bezeichnend. In einem Strategiepapier gestand Finanzminister Lindner außerdem den «Absturz Deutschlands» ein und offenbarte, dass die wirtschaftlichen Probleme teilweise von der Ampel-Politik «vorsätzlich herbeigeführt» worden seien.

Lindner und weitere FDP-Minister wurden also vom Bundeskanzler entlassen. Verkehrs- und Digitalminister Wissing trat flugs aus der FDP aus; deshalb darf er nicht nur im Amt bleiben, sondern hat zusätzlich noch das Justizministerium übernommen. Und mit Jörg Kukies habe Scholz «seinen Lieblingsbock zum Obergärtner», sprich: Finanzminister befördert, meint Norbert Häring.

Es gebe keine Vertrauensbasis für die weitere Zusammenarbeit mit der FDP, hatte der Kanzler erklärt, Lindner habe zu oft sein Vertrauen gebrochen. Am 15. Januar 2025 werde er daher im Bundestag die Vertrauensfrage stellen, was ggf. den Weg für vorgezogene Neuwahlen freimachen würde.

Apropos Vertrauen: Über die Hälfte der Bundesbürger glauben, dass sie ihre Meinung nicht frei sagen können. Das ging erst kürzlich aus dem diesjährigen «Freiheitsindex» hervor, einer Studie, die die Wechselwirkung zwischen Berichterstattung der Medien und subjektivem Freiheitsempfinden der Bürger misst. «Beim Vertrauen in Staat und Medien zerreißt es uns gerade», kommentierte dies der Leiter des Schweizer Unternehmens Media Tenor, das die Untersuchung zusammen mit dem Institut für Demoskopie Allensbach durchführt.

«Die absolute Mehrheit hat absolut die Nase voll», titelte die Bild angesichts des «Ampel-Showdowns». Die Mehrheit wolle Neuwahlen und die Grünen sollten zuerst gehen, lasen wir dort.

Dass «Insolvenzminister» Robert Habeck heute seine Kandidatur für das Kanzleramt verkündet hat, kann nur als Teil der politmedialen Realitätsverweigerung verstanden werden. Wer allerdings denke, schlimmer als in Zeiten der Ampel könne es nicht mehr werden, sei reichlich optimistisch, schrieb Uwe Froschauer bei Manova. Und er kenne Friedrich Merz schlecht, der sich schon jetzt rhetorisch auf seine Rolle als oberster Feldherr Deutschlands vorbereite.

Was also tun? Der Schweizer Verein «Losdemokratie» will eine Volksinitiative lancieren, um die Bestimmung von Parlamentsmitgliedern per Los einzuführen. Das Losverfahren sorge für mehr Demokratie, denn als Alternative zum Wahlverfahren garantiere es eine breitere Beteiligung und repräsentativere Parlamente. Ob das ein Weg ist, sei dahingestellt.

In jedem Fall wird es notwendig sein, unsere Bemühungen um Freiheit und Selbstbestimmung zu verstärken. Mehr Unabhängigkeit von staatlichen und zentralen Institutionen – also die Suche nach dezentralen Lösungsansätzen – gehört dabei sicher zu den Möglichkeiten. Das gilt sowohl für jede/n Einzelne/n als auch für Entitäten wie die alternativen Medien.

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Dieser Beitrag ist zuerst auf Transition News erschienen.

@ a95c6243:d345522c

Es ist besser, ein Licht zu entzünden, als auf die Dunkelheit zu schimpfen. Konfuzius

Die Bemühungen um Aufarbeitung der sogenannten Corona-Pandemie, um Aufklärung der Hintergründe, Benennung von Verantwortlichkeiten und das Ziehen von Konsequenzen sind durchaus nicht eingeschlafen. Das Interesse daran ist unter den gegebenen Umständen vielleicht nicht sonderlich groß, aber es ist vorhanden.

Der sächsische Landtag hat gestern die Einsetzung eines Untersuchungsausschusses zur Corona-Politik beschlossen. In einer Sondersitzung erhielt ein entsprechender Antrag der AfD-Fraktion die ausreichende Zustimmung, auch von einigen Abgeordneten des BSW.

In den Niederlanden wird Bill Gates vor Gericht erscheinen müssen. Sieben durch die Covid-«Impfstoffe» geschädigte Personen hatten Klage eingereicht. Sie werfen unter anderem Gates, Pfizer-Chef Bourla und dem niederländischen Staat vor, sie hätten gewusst, dass diese Präparate weder sicher noch wirksam sind.

Mit den mRNA-«Impfstoffen» von Pfizer/BioNTech befasst sich auch ein neues Buch. Darin werden die Erkenntnisse von Ärzten und Wissenschaftlern aus der Analyse interner Dokumente über die klinischen Studien der Covid-Injektion präsentiert. Es handelt sich um jene in den USA freigeklagten Papiere, die die Arzneimittelbehörde (Food and Drug Administration, FDA) 75 Jahre unter Verschluss halten wollte.

Ebenfalls Wissenschaftler und Ärzte, aber auch andere Experten organisieren als Verbundnetzwerk Corona-Solution kostenfreie Online-Konferenzen. Ihr Ziel ist es, «wissenschaftlich, demokratisch und friedlich» über Impfstoffe und Behandlungsprotokolle gegen SARS-CoV-2 aufzuklären und die Diskriminierung von Ungeimpften zu stoppen. Gestern fand eine weitere Konferenz statt. Ihr Thema: «Corona und modRNA: Von Toten, Lebenden und Physik lernen».

Aufgrund des Digital Services Acts (DSA) der Europäischen Union sei das Risiko groß, dass ihre Arbeit als «Fake-News» bezeichnet würde, so das Netzwerk. Staatlich unerwünschte wissenschaftliche Aufklärung müsse sich passende Kanäle zur Veröffentlichung suchen. Ihre Live-Streams seien deshalb zum Beispiel nicht auf YouTube zu finden.

Der vielfältige Einsatz für Aufklärung und Aufarbeitung wird sich nicht stummschalten lassen. Nicht einmal der Zensurmeister der EU, Deutschland, wird so etwas erreichen. Die frisch aktivierten «Trusted Flagger» dürften allerdings künftige Siege beim «Denunzianten-Wettbewerb» im Kontext des DSA zusätzlich absichern.

Wo sind die Grenzen der Meinungsfreiheit? Sicher gibt es sie. Aber die ideologische Gleichstellung von illegalen mit unerwünschten Äußerungen verfolgt offensichtlich eher das Ziel, ein derart elementares demokratisches Grundrecht möglichst weitgehend auszuhebeln. Vorwürfe wie «Hassrede», «Delegitimierung des Staates» oder «Volksverhetzung» werden heute inflationär verwendet, um Systemkritik zu unterbinden. Gegen solche Bestrebungen gilt es, sich zu wehren.

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Dieser Beitrag ist zuerst auf Transition News erschienen.

@ c631e267:c2b78d3e

Herzlichen Glückwunsch zum dritten Geburtstag, liebe Denk Bar! Wieso zum dritten? Das war doch 2022 und jetzt sind wir im Jahr 2024, oder? Ja, das ist schon richtig, aber bei Geburtstagen erinnere ich mich immer auch an meinen Vater, und der behauptete oft, der erste sei ja schließlich der Tag der Geburt selber und den müsse man natürlich mitzählen. Wo er recht hat, hat er nunmal recht. Konsequenterweise wird also heute dieser Blog an seinem dritten Geburtstag zwei Jahre alt.

Das ist ein Grund zum Feiern, wie ich finde. Einerseits ganz einfach, weil es dafür gar nicht genug Gründe geben kann. «Das Leben sind zwei Tage», lautet ein gängiger Ausdruck hier in Andalusien. In der Tat könnte es so sein, auch wenn wir uns im Alltag oft genug von der Routine vereinnahmen lassen.

Seit dem Start der Denk Bar vor zwei Jahren ist unglaublich viel passiert. Ebenso wie die zweieinhalb Jahre davor, und all jenes war letztlich auch der Auslöser dafür, dass ich begann, öffentlich zu schreiben. Damals notierte ich:

«Seit einigen Jahren erscheint unser öffentliches Umfeld immer fragwürdiger, widersprüchlicher und manchmal schier unglaublich - jede Menge Anlass für eigene Recherchen und Gedanken, ganz einfach mit einer Portion gesundem Menschenverstand.»

Wir erleben den sogenannten «großen Umbruch», einen globalen Coup, den skrupellose Egoisten clever eingefädelt haben und seit ein paar Jahren knallhart – aber nett verpackt – durchziehen, um buchstäblich alles nach ihrem Gusto umzukrempeln. Die Gelegenheit ist ja angeblich günstig und muss genutzt werden.

Nie hätte ich mir träumen lassen, dass ich so etwas jemals miterleben müsste. Die Bosheit, mit der ganz offensichtlich gegen die eigene Bevölkerung gearbeitet wird, war früher für mich unvorstellbar. Mein (Rest-) Vertrauen in alle möglichen Bereiche wie Politik, Wissenschaft, Justiz, Medien oder Kirche ist praktisch komplett zerstört. Einen «inneren Totalschaden» hatte ich mal für unsere Gesellschaften diagnostiziert.

Was mich vielleicht am meisten erschreckt, ist zum einen das Niveau der Gleichschaltung, das weltweit erreicht werden konnte, und zum anderen die praktisch totale Spaltung der Gesellschaft. Haben wir das tatsächlich mit uns machen lassen?? Unfassbar! Aber das Werkzeug «Angst» ist sehr mächtig und funktioniert bis heute.

Zum Glück passieren auch positive Dinge und neue Perspektiven öffnen sich. Für viele Menschen waren und sind die Entwicklungen der letzten Jahre ein Augenöffner. Sie sehen «Querdenken» als das, was es ist: eine Tugend.

Auch die immer ernsteren Zensurbemühungen sind letztlich nur ein Zeichen der Schwäche, wo Argumente fehlen. Sie werden nicht verhindern, dass wir unsere Meinung äußern, unbequeme Fragen stellen und dass die Wahrheit peu à peu ans Licht kommt. Es gibt immer Mittel und Wege, auch für uns.

---

Danke, dass du diesen Weg mit mir weitergehst!

@ dff95033:862fbf40

Você já se sentiu transportado para outro mundo ao ler um livro? Já se perguntou como uma história fantástica pode nos ensinar tanto sobre a realidade? Se a resposta for sim, prepare-se para uma aventura épica! Apresentamos o projeto “Peregrinos da Fé: Uma Jornada Católica pela Terra-média”, ou como também é conhecido, a “Série sobre a Idade Média baseada nas obras de Tolkien”, um convite para explorar a obra de J.R.R. Tolkien de uma forma que você nunca imaginou.

Imagine mergulhar na Terra-média, não apenas como um leitor passivo, mas como um explorador em busca de conhecimento e reflexão. Este não é um clube do livro qualquer; é uma jornada que une a fantasia com a filosofia, a história e a mitologia, tudo para iluminar o nosso próprio mundo.

O Que Esperar Desta Aventura?

• Encontros Quinzenais: A cada 15 dias, vamos nos reunir para desvendar os mistérios da Terra-média. Cada encontro será uma oportunidade para aprofundar sua compreensão da obra de Tolkien e como ela se conecta com a sua vida.
• Estrutura da Jornada: Cada sessão será dividida em três partes:
• Primeiro, vamos apresentar e discutir o texto da vez, mergulhando nas páginas dos livros de Tolkien.
• Em seguida, vamos explorar o contexto e a análise filosófica, conectando os temas da Terra-média com questões do nosso mundo, como poder, sacrifício e moralidade.
• E, finalmente, teremos um espaço para discussão, reflexões e perguntas, incentivando você a usar a literatura para entender melhor a sua própria realidade.
• Um Mapa para a Terra-média: Vamos seguir uma ordem cronológica da história da Terra-média, não a ordem em que os livros foram publicados, como se estivéssemos lendo a Bíblia. Usaremos uma planilha especial, acessível a todos, que indica a ordem de leitura, capítulos, status e observações para cada livro.
• Obras que Serão Desvendadas: Prepare-se para explorar um vasto universo, incluindo Silmarillion, A História da Terra-média, Beren e Lúthien, Os Filhos de Húrin, Contos Inacabados, O Senhor dos Anéis, O Hobbit e muito mais.
• Reflexões Profundas: Começaremos nossa jornada filosófica com a criação da Terra-média em Ainulindalë, refletindo sobre a ordem no caos, o poder da música e a eterna luta entre o bem e o mal.

Por Que Embarcar Nesta Jornada?

Este projeto não é apenas sobre ler livros; é sobre encontrar significados e conexões com o nosso mundo. A obra de Tolkien é rica em temas que tocam o coração humano, como a busca por sentido, a corrupção do poder e a importância da amizade. Ao explorar a Terra-média, você poderá encontrar respostas para as suas próprias perguntas e desvendar a magia que existe em cada um de nós.

Como Começar?

https://youtu.be/n5pEMpchvWw

Assistir primeira sessão, a leitura recomendada é Ainulindalë, do livro Silmarillion. E uma pergunta para sua reflexão: “Como a criação da Terra-média nos ensina a lidar com os conflitos entre ordem e caos em nossas vidas?”.

O vídeo explica tudo, simples objetivo.

Então, o que você está esperando? Venha fazer parte desta aventura inesquecível pela Terra-média! Curta, compartilhe com seus amigos e prepare-se para descobrir mundos além da fantasia!

Se não for pedir, uma ajudinha com o café não custa muito, ou será que não?

@ a95c6243:d345522c

Ein Lämmchen löschte an einem Bache seinen Durst. Fern von ihm, aber näher der Quelle, tat ein Wolf das gleiche. Kaum erblickte er das Lämmchen, so schrie er:

"Warum trübst du mir das Wasser, das ich trinken will?"

"Wie wäre das möglich", erwiderte schüchtern das Lämmchen, "ich stehe hier unten und du so weit oben; das Wasser fließt ja von dir zu mir; glaube mir, es kam mir nie in den Sinn, dir etwas Böses zu tun!"

"Ei, sieh doch! Du machst es gerade, wie dein Vater vor sechs Monaten; ich erinnere mich noch sehr wohl, daß auch du dabei warst, aber glücklich entkamst, als ich ihm für sein Schmähen das Fell abzog!"

"Ach, Herr!" flehte das zitternde Lämmchen, "ich bin ja erst vier Wochen alt und kannte meinen Vater gar nicht, so lange ist er schon tot; wie soll ich denn für ihn büßen."

"Du Unverschämter!" so endigt der Wolf mit erheuchelter Wut, indem er die Zähne fletschte. "Tot oder nicht tot, weiß ich doch, daß euer ganzes Geschlecht mich hasset, und dafür muß ich mich rächen."

Ohne weitere Umstände zu machen, zerriß er das Lämmchen und verschlang es.

Das Gewissen regt sich selbst bei dem größten Bösewichte; er sucht doch nach Vorwand, um dasselbe damit bei Begehung seiner Schlechtigkeiten zu beschwichtigen.

Quelle: https://eden.one/fabeln-aesop-das-lamm-und-der-wolf

@ 005bc4de:ef11e1a2

There was a time when I liked to regularly listen to NPR for their stories. And, I owe a certain something to NPR since that's where I first got interested in bitcoin. But, their incessant political hard-left, alt-left push eventually pushed me away. Nowadays, I'll sometimes listen in just to get annoyed at whatever silliness they're projecting.

January 9, 2025, I heard this: https://www.npr.org/2025/01/09/nx-s1-5228194/what-are-biodiversity-credits-and-could-have-a-meaningful-impact talking about "Biodiversity credits." I'd heard of "carbon credits" before, but never biodiversity credits.

Evidently, some "financial instrument" is being sold for $25 a pop as a "biodiversity credit." I assume the sales site is this one. With one credit purchased, your $25 gets you a promise from...someone. The promise, or "assurance", is to protect a 10 x 10 square meter splotch of Andean mountainside where the spectacled bear lives. The spectacled bear? I was unfamiliar with the spectacled bear, but evidently it's a bear that looks like a large raccoon and likes to scratch trees.

The NPR folks ponied up $25 for the so-called biodiversity credit financial instrument. After their purchase, the NPR journalists apparently traveled to Colombia, to the "water star" area where the alleged preserve exists as "El Globo." Okay, three things here:

1. They only buy one biodiversity credit? How's a spectacled bear supposed to live on a 10 x 10 meter square?!
2. I'll assume the journalists (I read this as plural since the article said "we"; I'll guess two people) flew from the US to Colombia. Are listeners/readers to just ignore the fact that they flew on a carbon-emitting jet to Colombia for the sole purpose of checking on a 100 square meter plot? This is the plot of land that exists supposedly to house animals threatened by supposed climate-caused deforestation, like jet exhaust? Are we to just pretend this hypocrisy is not there?
3. Are we to ignore that the plane tickets for two (not to mention room, board, and travel while visiting Colombia) could rather have been spent to buy more than one biodiversity credit and to ostensibly save more land?

I've got to say, this sounds like a $25 ticket to win a prize for an all expense paid trip to the Colombian Andes to see the exotic spectacled bear. Credit to those who pulled off this $25 trip to the water star region of Colombia; nicely done. Okay, maybe NPR had correspondents already in Colombia. Either way, first, it didn't sound that way in the report and secondly, there's more to the numbers.

According to the "climatetrade.com" website (that name, wow!), there are 310,000 biodiversity credits to be sold. Let's do the math:

310,000 credits times $25 for each credit comes to $7.75 million. El Globo is 340 hectares of land (that's 840 acres). $7.75M for 840 acres is $9,226 per acre.

Knowing zero about land value in Colombia, that still seemed high to me. Google Gemini AI informs me the median price is much lower. It reported this:

According to available information, the median price per acre of land in Colombia varies significantly depending on location and land quality, but generally falls within a range of $1,500 to $10,000 per hectare (equivalent to roughly $365 to $2,400 per acre).

Google Gemini

What's more, this is not for protection of the land in perpetuity...no, this is for 30 years only. Say what? This sounds to me like somebody's career plan: 30 years of protection, retirement, then I can't guarantee the land's protection after that. More likely, somewhere around about the 20 year mark, it will be time to start to re-up and start selling credits again. Well, at least these 30 years of protection are "verified by an independent third party." That should make us all feel better.

For a second opinion on numbers, I asked the AI, Microsoft Copilot. It said with $7.75 million USD one could buy a lot of land: between 7 and 16 thousand hectares. That's a lot more than the El Globo preserve of 340 hectares.

Understand, this is actually purchasing the land. If you purchase it, it can be held as a preserve forever, not just for 30 years.

And, speaking of money, and funding, and choices made in spending that money, remember that NPR gets US government money to operate. They take great pride in running hours-long annual fundraisers to ask you and me for public donations while giving "commercial-free programming." Yes, they literally run hours-long commercials for a week or two each year to say that they run commercial-free programming! 😆 You can't make this up. Nevertheless, NPR gets about $34 million from the government annually according to Microsoft Copilot AI.

NPR seems to go to lengths to downplay this government funding. It's a mess. NPR apparently says they get "less than 1%" of their $300 million annual budget from the government. (Disregard the fact that every other radio station supports themselves 100% and gets 0% from the government.) But, this 1% looks as though that's only money directly from the federal government. There is a larger chunk coming in via the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), which is also government money. The CPB funds "member stations" and those stations pay dues to NPR. Somehow, this government doesn't count in NPR's eyes. So, despite the "1%" talk, it's still government money funneling to NPR. By masking this fact, NPR is making the whole situation look shadier than it is. It might do well to simply be up front about government funding rather than obfuscating it and making the whole thing look shady; "the cover up is worse than the crime," as they say. All told, the Copilot estimate is $33.9 million in government funds going to NPR annually (about 12% of their budget, not 1%). The other 88%, I guess, comes from donations by regular folks, foundations, and corporations who respond to the hours-long, weeks long annual fundraiser commercials about commercial-free programming.

Anyway, $33.9 million in government money, and $300 million total when you count in donations. That's a lot of hectares of Andean biodiversity credits that could be bought. Actually, NPR could have bought them all and the bears would be safe for 30 years. Also, as to those reporters who trekked to Colombia for a visit, that's a pretty good tax-supported, listener-supported gig that they pulled off: buy one "biodiversity credit", get a vacation to the Andean forest to see bear scratchings.

It gets worse. The outfit selling these biodiversity credits on https://market.climatetrade.com admits that $7.75 million is a lot of money for Moms and Pops to purchase all the credits. (I still can't get over that URL, at least it's honest by flat out stating they're making a market out of trading the climate.) They say they need corporations to chip in and buy mass credits. According to the report, they have meet-ups and shin-digs for this sort of thing, apparently. A favorite line for me in the piece was "...Handing out shots to promote a jaguar credit."

> Image created at https://leonardo.ai with the prompt: "well-dressed folks at the soirée laughing as they down a shot of tequila and suck a lemon in salute to said jaguar"

At this point, it seemed that these various credits were and are spinning off into something very much like the multitudes of memecoins...doge, dog-wif-hat, dog-wif-cat, dog-wif-pepe, pepe-wif-maximus, maximux-wif-spectacled-bear, spectacled-bear-wif-jaguar. Seriously, we have credits (tokens), we have "tokenomics" of a max supply and emission, we have a market to buy the the credits/tokens ICO-style. I wonder if there is a secondary market where NPR could unload their one biodiversity credit if they were to go full climate credit degen. I pictured in my mind the well-dressed folks at the soirée laughing as they down a shot of tequila and suck a lemon in salute to said jaguar in the report. "Jaguar credits to the moon!"

To be fair to NPR, they did include one man's counter to biodiversity credits. Mark Opel said this:

At the end of the day, companies are in the business of generating shareholder value. There is not a business case for biodiversity credits to generate shareholder value beyond a token amount of philanthropy and marketing.

That was some much-needed concise analysis and clarity, a voice of reason. The only value these credits bring to companies was "a token amount of philanthropy and marketing." So, we have two value transfers going on here:

1. The "El Globo" outfit gets value by making money on climatetrade.com...$7.75 million if all spots sell, only to be re-upped again in 30 years. Somebody is getting paid.
2. A company can get value by feeling good for saving spectacled bears and thereby looking good in the public eye. It gets feel-good press.

Here's the bottom line...

This story checks many of the boxes for an NPR listener. It's a mix of climate change, saving cute and furry animals, deforestation, fighting corporations who want to exploit the land, and feeling good that you did something for these things. I see why they chose to send reporters to Colombia for this story. This story fits the narrative.

Placebo Credits

Let's play this thing out.

Since the purpose of these credits is to (1) transfer money to some outfit and (2) make companies, or you, feel good and look good, then let's do this...

I want you to think of something that is wrong in this world right now. Think of something you feel is terribly unjust. Maybe it's the spectacled bear being pushed out by greedy corporations, or a baby polar bear swimming aimlessly searching for an ice floe, or maybe something else, like the blue footed booby. Maybe it's land being clear cut or burnt off or walls of ice breaking off into the ocean as lonely icebergs. Perhaps it's all the sad downtrodden puppies that could use your help. They are cold, they are hungry, they are sad. They are looking at you. Picture those puppies in your mind now.

To rectify whatever bad thing you are thinking of, whatever wrong you wish to help right, you can now buy Placebo Credits (PCs). Placebo Credits will make you feel that you are in fact doing your part; that you are truly making a difference in this world. Placebo Credits work.

To buy Placebo Credits, send bitcoin to the address below. One bitcoin satoshi will buy you one credit. Don't cheat yourself...the more PCs you buy, the better you will feel knowing that you are making a difference in this world.

Get Placebo Credits here: https://coinos.io/pay/crrdlx

Are you a Nostr user? Just send a zap! ⚡ A zap buys Placebo Credits too! Not on Nostr, get on it. Send zap, get Placebo Credits!

And, why only make a difference in this world? Don't constrain your imagination. Don't constrain how much you help the world and how much you help yourself in the process. Look up, look beyond, look to the stars. When you look at the stars tonight, pick one out. Pick out any of the beautiful stars above. It's twinkling at you, it's calling out to you...then help save that star. Buy Placebo Credits to help save your chosen star. Then, every night from today onward, you can look up at your shimmering, twinkling star. Let it remind you of your fight against all the wrongs that exist and your push toward a more just and verdant world. When you look at your star, let that point of light buoy up your resolve, and say to yourself, "I did my part...and I can do more."

> Source: leonardo.ai using the prompt: "beautiful stars shining brightly in the night sky creating a sense of wonder"

@ 72592ec9:ffa64d2c

1. Knots helps you exercise your self sovereignty verification muscle, instead of conforming to the TrustMeBro defaults of core. Thus you are more prepared to actively defend Bitcoin in case of hardfork-softfork or other shenanigan's.

2. Knots is more feature rich and useful than core, allowing end users to finely tune their nodes mempool policy to reject spam transactions from their own mempools, through such bitcoin.conf settings as: rejectparasites=1 , datacarrier=0, permitbaremultisig=0

3. Running a Underdog Bitcoin Client makes the Bitcoin network more robust as a whole. Supporting an ecosystem of multiple compatible clients running in tandem. Running knots makes Bitcoin, the network more robust, and makes the bitcoin development ecosystem richer. Knots is a backup-option in case core becomes obviously compromised. For decentralization, do we really want only a single implementation, with all our eggs in one basket with just bitcoin core? No.

4. "Knots makes it so that you're not using your node's computing resources to hold and process spam shitcoin transactions and you have better control over what transactions you prioritize processing." - Thus you can save your mempool resources from being abused by bad actors with Knots, but not with core, unfortunately. Core doesn't believe in giving their end users too much choice. This has long been their attitude: to dictate down and deny non-consensus violating choice to end users.

5. Thus running Knots is a counter movement to the unfortunate attitude in core that has willfully neglected a core subset of it's users who care about spam filters. Running Knots is not just a technical improvement in running Bitcoin. It's a political statement in the Bitcoin development ecosystem. ie

No. Not Good Enough. I get to run the code I want within consensus and you can't stop me. That's Bitcoin.

You can download Bitcoin Knots at http://BitcoinKnots.org

Be sure to verify your download. Exercise your verification muscles.

For a full list of Bitcoin Knots features versus Core, see: https://bitcoinknots.org/files/27.x/27.1.knots20240801/bitcoin-27.1.knots20240801.desc.html

A related video on the subject by Matthew Kratter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pgab8FuBwgg&ab_channel=BitcoinUniversity

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/850273

@ a012dc82:6458a70d

Table Of Content

• From the Backbench to the Forefront

• Milei's Bitcoin Connection

• The Coinx Controversy

• Argentina's Financial Quagmire

• Conclusion

• FAQ

Well, folks, it seems like the winds of change are blowing in Argentina! In a twist that no one saw coming, Javier Milei, the presidential candidate with a penchant for Bitcoin and libertarian economics, clinched the top spot in Argentina's primary. This victory sent shockwaves throughout the nation. Milei and his gang, the La Libertad Avanza (or "Liberty Advances"), managed to snag a whopping 30% of the votes. They beat the second-place contender, Juntos Por El Cambio, by just under 2%, which is quite the feat!

From the Backbench to the Forefront

La Libertad Avanza, founded just a couple of years ago in 2021, was once the little guy in the political arena. In their first legislative elections, they made waves, becoming the third most-voted coalition in Buenos Aires. But this recent victory? It's monumental! It's like David taking on Goliath and emerging victorious. Milei's rise has certainly turned heads and raised eyebrows in the political sphere, making everyone wonder what's next.

Milei's Bitcoin Connection

Javier Milei is not your run-of-the-mill political candidate. He's carved out a unique niche for himself in the world of politics, largely due to his vocal support for cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin. When you tune into talk shows and interviews, you'll often find Milei passionately discussing the potential of digital currencies. He doesn't just see them as another financial instrument; to him, they represent a return to a time when the power of money was firmly rooted in the hands of the people, free from excessive governmental control.

His views on Bitcoin go beyond mere admiration. Milei perceives it as a revolutionary tool, one that can challenge traditional financial systems. He often contrasts the decentralized nature of cryptocurrencies with the centralized control of traditional fiat currencies. In his eyes, Bitcoin and its peers are not just alternatives but superior forms of money. He's even made bold claims, suggesting that in many ways, cryptocurrencies are safer investments than traditional precious metals like gold or silver. This is a significant statement, especially in a country like Argentina, where people have historically turned to gold as a hedge against economic instability.

However, as with any public figure with strong opinions, Milei's crypto enthusiasm has its fair share of critics. While he paints a rosy picture of a crypto-driven future, there are those who question his motives and the feasibility of his vision. The crypto world, as many know, is not without its pitfalls. From volatile market swings to regulatory challenges, the journey to mainstream acceptance is fraught with challenges. And Milei's connection to this world has put him under the microscope, with every statement and action being dissected and debated.

The Coinx Controversy

Rumor has it that Milei promoted a Ponzi scheme called Coinx, which allegedly swindled a cool $800,000 in Argentine pesos. Milei, of course, denies any wrongdoing. He even compared their business model to that of a bank. The only difference? They can offer higher interest rates because they're not tied down by the central bank. But not everyone's buying it. Manuel Ferrari, a big shot in the Bitcoin Argentina NGO, remains wary of Milei. This controversy adds another layer to the complex narrative surrounding Milei's rise.

Argentina's Financial Quagmire

Argentina's economic waters are turbulent, to say the least. With a dizzying inflation rate of 135% this year, the peso's value is plummeting, causing widespread distress. Amidst this chaos, many are pinning their hopes on Javier Milei, a figure who has emerged with a pro-Bitcoin stance that's causing quite the stir. Drawing parallels with El Salvador's audacious move to adopt Bitcoin, there's a buzz about whether Argentina might follow suit. But is Milei the savior Argentina has been waiting for? While his support for cryptocurrencies offers a glimmer of hope to some, it also brings with it skepticism and apprehension. The world of crypto, though promising, is still uncharted territory, especially for an economy as volatile as Argentina's.

As debates rage on, it's evident that Argentina stands at a crucial financial juncture. Milei's advocacy for Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies suggests a potential shift in the country's financial paradigm. But diving into the crypto realm isn't without its risks, and there's a looming question: Are we witnessing the dawn of a new financial era for Argentina, or is it just a leap from the frying pan into the fire? The nation watches with bated breath, waiting to see the path Milei might pave.

Conclusion

Only time will truly reveal the impact of Milei's influence on Argentina's financial future. It's a waiting game now, folks. But if there's one thing we can bank on, it's that with Milei stirring the pot, Argentina's economic and financial landscape is poised for some dramatic shifts. The rollercoaster has just begun, so everyone better buckle up and brace themselves. Keep your eyes peeled and ears to the ground, because the upcoming months promise a whirlwind of changes, debates, and transformations for Argentina. The nation stands at a pivotal juncture, and the world watches with bated breath.

FAQ

Who is Javier Milei? Javier Milei is a presidential candidate in Argentina known for his support of Bitcoin and libertarian economics.

What is La Libertad Avanza? La Libertad Avanza, translated as "Liberty Advances," is the political coalition led by Javier Milei.

How did Milei fare in the recent primaries? Milei clinched the top spot in Argentina's primary, securing over 30% of the votes.

What is the Coinx controversy? Coinx is an alleged Ponzi scheme that Milei is rumored to have promoted. However, Milei denies any wrongdoing.

What is Milei's stance on Bitcoin? Milei is a strong advocate for Bitcoin, viewing it as a return to private sector-controlled money and a safer alternative to traditional assets like gold or silver.

That's all for today

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Hackathon Summary

The Funding the Commons & Earth Commons Hackathon concluded successfully, with 356 participants and 116 projects registered from various regions worldwide. Occurring from October 7 to November 7, 2024, the event targeted developing solutions for public goods funding through a hybrid format that combined online activities with optional in-person collaboration in Bangkok.

Participants engaged in both ideation and prototyping stages, focusing on tracks such as regenerative finance, decentralized governance, and climate innovation. With the support of workshops and mentorship, the hackathon aimed to generate tools and methods for managing shared resources more effectively.

Project evaluation criteria included innovation, impact, feasibility, functionality, collaboration, and presentation. The hackathon promoted global collaboration and creativity, aligning with its objective to enhance blockchain-based infrastructure and transform governance related to common resources, impacting sectors like ecosystems, academia, and public institutions.

In summary, the hackathon provided an opportunity for interdisciplinary collaboration, contributing to the development of solutions for global challenges in public goods and environmental sustainability.

Hackathon Winners

Financial Inclusion by Stellar Prize Winners

• Freelii - Facilitates financial inclusion through cost-efficient remittances using Stellar's blockchain, integrating with Telegram to simplify transactions for the unbanked in the Global South.
• Ask Billy - Supports humanitarian efforts with blockchain-secured cash transfers and AI chatbots, enhancing aid distribution through community insights.
• Stellar Mobile Money Bridge - Connects mobile money systems with the Stellar blockchain, enhancing financial inclusion via seamless mobile money integration.

Decentralized AI by NEAR Prize Winners

• VielNetFL - Offers a federated learning platform with Fully Homomorphic Encryption for secure, decentralized machine learning, coordinated via NEAR smart contracts.
• FederNear - Utilizes the NEAR blockchain for federated learning, encrypting model parameters to ensure secure, privacy-preserving decentralized training.
• Delta - A decentralized platform using AI to predict climate disasters, employing blockchain for fund allocation transparency and disaster relief.

Decentralized Storage by Filecoin Prize Winners

• ZkResolution - Enhances DNS resolution privacy through a protocol using zero-knowledge proofs, supporting cross-chain compatibility and geographic optimization.
• SovereignSearch - A decentralized search engine prioritizing user data sovereignty, leveraging Storcha and Filecoin for immutable data storage and retrieval.
• VielNetFL - See detailed description under Decentralized AI by NEAR Prize Winners.

Environmental Impact by KlimaDAO Prize Winners

• Proof of Change - Connects funds to environmental impacts using Ethereum attestations and satellite data for accountable climate finance.
• PGAtlas - An interactive platform that displays public goods projects with geolocation and blockchain attestation for better visibility and support.
• 0xFarms - Integrates rural farming with urban AI-driven technology, utilizing blockchain for enhanced food security and transparency.
• GreenLink - No additional details provided.

Public Goods Funding Infrastructure Prize Winners

• Doogly - A multichain donation platform that enhances crypto donation flexibility and tracking with blockchain certificates.
• Dead Project Snipper - Tool for evaluating blockchain project activity to aid grant allocation through automated data analysis.
• IES (Impact Evaluation Service) - Evaluates project impact using a blockchain platform, enabling retroactive funding and outcome measurement.
• Counterfactually - Utilizes synthetic control methodology to analyze intervention impacts in web3 for optimized capital allocation.
• Ecosystem Vision - Centralized dashboard providing AI-powered grant finder and standardized data integration for crypto funding opportunities.
• GrantScan - Indexes Web3 grant applications, offering a standardized, searchable database.
• findabuilder - AI-driven platform for locating builders with Talent Protocol data and smart query processing.
• Buildooor - Facilitates hackathon collaborations using a swipe-based interface for connecting builders.
• Engagement.Vision - Analyzes community engagement by integrating on-chain and off-chain data for comprehensive metrics.

Identity and Privacy by Holonym Prize Winners

• Refugee Identity Issuer - Provides decentralized identity verification for refugees with blockchain and zero-knowledge proofs.
• Trufy - A decentralized voting tool enhancing DAO governance with credential verification for secure voting.

Fullstack Decentralizations by Layer Prize Winners

• Builder's Dollar - A stablecoin initiative for sustainable funding, integrating blockchain for project eligibility verification.

Trust and Authenticity by Numbers Protocol Prize Winners

• Jurdil - Enhances election transparency in Indonesia through blockchain-secured image capture and smart contracts.
• Infinity Book: Pet Heroes - Collaborative digital book platform that uses blockchain for authenticity and unique digital asset generation.

For more details, view all projects at the Funding the Commons SEA Hackathon 2024.

About the Organizer

Funding the Commons

Funding the Commons focuses on accelerating blockchain-based infrastructure for public goods funding by connecting researchers, builders, and funders. The organization creates an ecosystem that bridges Web2, Web3, and academia, achieving impact through international conferences, builder residencies, and hackathons. Their initiatives include experimental funding rounds designed to support open-source public goods developers. Currently, their mission emphasizes fostering scaled human coordination that prioritizes the commons, supported by rigorous impact evaluations and continuous capital flows.

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Crowdsourcing subjective value is a great idea, but when no thought has been put into how to do it, the results are neither useful nor healthy.

In this article we discuss the problems with the classic five star rating system and why it needs to be abolished in favor of better expressions of public sentiment.

Part 1: What's In A Star?

Let's start with a thought experiment:

• Do you buy products on Amazon that have 3 stars?
• Do you take rides from Uber drivers that have 3 stars?
• Do you download apps on the App Store that have 3 stars?
• Do you visit places on Google Maps that have 3 stars?

"Not on purpose," is probably your answer. But why not? After all, a three out of five is better than the median; it's 60 percent! That is solidly "above average" by any usual measure. Although it makes sense in mathematical terms, it is not correct to say that a 3 star product is at least half as good as a 5 star product.

The funny thing about the 5 star rating system is that nobody really knows exactly what the stars mean, mostly because they aren't ever explained. They are just a weak abstraction of a score out of 5, which itself is an abstraction of a score out of 100, and it is used to average all ratings for a thing into an average star rating. Presumably, 5 is the best and 1 is the worst, and somewhere in between is... what exactly? Mediocre? Passable? Acceptable? Average? Who knows! This is the first problem with this system; while the top and bottom of the scale may be implied (ambiguity still isn't great), the middle of the scale is entirely ambiguous.

Most of the time, people start with a default supposition that a product ought to be 5 stars, and then they subtract stars according to their own perceived deficiencies of the product. On the flip side, people who are dissatisfied with a product tend to start at 1 star and perhaps award it a couple more if they are feeling charitable.

This dualistic approach highlights another issue with this kind of rating system. Despite the pure quantitative mechanism, the feelings and disposition of the rater ultimately assign meaning to the numeric scale.

Ultimately, any 5 star rating system ends up being a gamut ranging from hate it to love it with a lot of ambiguity in the middle.

To put it simply, the stars mean nothing. But to be more precise, the stars are the average of the numeric expression of the public sentiment about a thing.

OK, public sentiment. That's what we want right? We want to know what the public thinks about the product so we can make a good purchase decision.

Except, unfortunately, the 5 star rating system does an incredibly imprecise job at capturing what the public actually thinks about a product. Let's dive into why this is. But first, to conclude our thought experiment, I'd like to establish an informal consensus that we instinctually seek out the highest rated items and avoid ratings less than 4.5 out of 5, with infrequent exceptions. If this sounds like you, then let's proceed.

Part 2: Trash or Treasure

How does one turn their feelings into a number? This is not something people are good at, or do naturally, or are even required to do very often. It is also completely subjective and arbitrary. Does "happy" mean 5 or 100 or 902,581? It really depends on what you are trying to measure.

However, you've probably done this on a survey. Normally, a range of options is given with accompanying numbers. You may have heard a guiding explanation such as "Rate one through five, with one being 'least likely' and five being 'most likely' to recommend to a friend." Such explanations are useful in assisting a person in expressing their personal sentiments as a numeric range, and anecdotally I seem to provide more nuanced answers when I have guidance as to what each value actually means to me. However, such explanations are missing from most places where five star rating systems can make or break one's livelihood as a seller, developer, or musician. Users are normally given no guidance as to how a particular star value should correspond to their sentiment.

Accordingly, this manifests in an all too common star rating smiley. Like the famed "smiley face curve" equalizer setting popularized in the 70's in which the frequencies of a song were engineered to grow from the midranges upward toward the treble and bass making a smile shape (who's midrange is the lowest), the star rating smile is a common sight on product reviews where the most common review ratings appear anecdotally to be 5 and 1, then 4 and 2, and lastly 3.

The fact that the most common ratings are five stars and one star indicates that people most often do not think about their experience as a gradient between good and bad, but rather simply label their sentiment as only "good" or "bad" with little room for nuance. Having not received any guidance for expressing their sentiment numerically, this should be wholly unsurprising. But, I also feel like this binary outcome is a very natural expression that requires minimal mental energy to produce, and is therefore the most efficient expression of sentiment. I suspect that in another universe where we have a commonplace 15 star rating system but humans are the same, the most common ratings are 15 stars and 1 star respectively.

Other factors influence this binary good/bad paradigm too. People know instinctively that leaving a bad review is bad for business, and often this is their vengeful response to any sense of feeling as if they have been mistreated, misled, or swindled by the seller. Often times the sheer excitement of the new product compels people to write reviews only minutes after they have received it, precluding them from providing an experienced and time-tested perspective of how the product performs.

These quirks of human behavior can skew five star ratings severely. But the behaviors themselves are not bad! They are totally natural and expected. The real problem is how the five star rating system fails to capture these commonplace human sentiments accurately.

We need to build a rating system that works for people rather than forcing people to fit into a poorly executed rating system.

Part 3: Feast or Famine

It is natural that when presented with a plethora of options, humans will be drawn to the options that are labeled as "the best". When "best" possible is five stars, then five stars naturally becomes the Schelling pointfor all buyers and sellers, where the vast majority of economic activity is concentrated.

When all ratings are seen from a five-based perspective, fours look barely adequate. Threes look unacceptable. Twos are abject. And ones are complete disasters.

You may have heard about how Uber would suspend drivers whose ratings fell below 4.6. The tendency of five star rating systems is to create a gradient of sentiment where 1 to 4.5 stars is "bad" and 4.5 to 5 stars is "good".

One rarely discussed outcome of this dynamic is that good ratings are nearly impossible to compare to each other. As alluded to in the introduction thought experiment, the narrow range between 4.5 and 5 leaves very little room to distinguish from a good product and an excellent product; both are simply "good" or "not bad". As highly rated products are usually the products people are most interested in, it is unfortunate that a favorable rating would actually provide less signal than a bad rating as to the product's relative quality in the spectrum of good ratings.

Meanwhile, bad ratings have wide berth to compare numerically. The astronomical range between 1 and 4.5 is a very spacious gradient in which to assess how bad one product is versus another, except nobody actually cares because nobody is going to buy it anyway!

In the five star rating system, the better a product is, the less information we get to compare it to other similarly good products. This is a critical design flaw, because the better a product is and the more people review it, the more information we should have about it versus other similar products. It would be better if the range of "good" ratings was wider so that good ratings could be compared to each other.

I'd like to emphasize that the loss of precision as a product becomes more desirable is a truly ludicrous mechanic of the five star rating system. This poorly conceived rating paradigm completely pervades our digital economic systems and determines the success of millions of producers. Let's be clear about the stakes. Assigning subjective value to things is completely overlooked for what it really is: a absolutely critical and monumentally influential economic activity. Because the most important economic activity is how we assign value to things with money, the second most important economic activity is how we inform our economic value assignments with subjective value assignments such as these.

We need to fix how we rate things. It could literally change how entire economies function.

Part 4: Quality or Quantity

Valve has obviously put thought into how they handle ratings for video games sold through their extremely popular and long-lived Steam platform.

Reviews are not allowed until a certain amount of hours of the game have been played. The review must assign a thumbs-up or thumbs-down, and then provide a minimum amount of text.

Then, rather than simply providing an average of these binary ratings, Steam averages them over a recent period of time, creating a dynamic where if a game developer releases a new update, the reviews written more recently are sure to influence the overall rating of the game rather than old ratings that haven't taken the new update into consideration.

Finally, the aggregated rating itself is displayed as "Overwhelming Negative", "Very Negative", "Mostly Negative", "Mixed", "Mostly Positive", "Very Positive", or "Overwhelmingly Positive".

Ask yourself, which product would you be more likely to try? - 2.5/5 stars - "Mixed Reviews"

Ironically, the Steam rating system gives users less flexibility to express their sentiment as a number, and yet provides more depth, nuance, and balance to the resulting ratings. This, ladies and gentlemen, is what it looks like when somebody gives a damn about how things work. It is a great system.

Another interesting emergent behavior that accompanies many Steam reviews, as well as many reviews on other sites, are user generated pros/cons lists. These lists are helpful and offer qualitative labels that help to explain the quantitative rating assignment, although these labels are not mechanically related to the rating system itself.

Steam has another mechanism to express qualitative judgements in the form of labels, although they had to be restricted because they were being abused in undesirable or nefarious ways. Now the labeling system does more to tell you about what the game is rather than what people think about it, which is fine, but I feel like it is a missed opportunity.

Therefore, I'd like to propose a simple system that combines thumbs up/down and labeling to be used in the context of nostr's review system.

Part 5: QTS

I call this new review system QTS, or the "Qualitative Thumb System". Originally I developed QTS when working at Arcade Labs.

This PR for a new nostr review mechanism allows for a lot of flexibility in how you apply ratings to things, so QTS is simply a method of applying rating values that creates a better human-oriented review system. QTS is a way of using reviews.

In essence, QTS capitalizes on our very human instinct to assign a "good" or "bad" label by limiting the quantitative assessment to a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Then, QTS provides qualitative labels that describe possible positive sentiments that describe different aspects of the thing being rated.

First, the user chooses thumbs-up or thumbs-down as their overall assessment. If they do nothing else, this is sufficient to capture their sentiment. However, labels should be provided which the user can check or toggle on to increase their rating further.

The initial thumbs up is worth 0.5, and each label is worth (0.5 / number of labels). The minimum rating is 0 (thumbs down, no labels), and the maximum rating is 1 (thumbs up and all labels). Any rating 0.5 or above is trending toward good and below 0.5 is trending toward bad.

The labels should be applicable in the context of the thing. So, for example, I might provide the following labels for place reviews in a Google Maps-style app: - Convenient - Clean - Affordable - Memorable - Inviting

These labels could possibly describe any place. It's OK if a place doesn't have all of these qualities. Zero labels and at thumbs up is still a "good" rating. Each label selected is essentially a "cherry on top" and its absence may indicate that either it isn't applicable OR the place failed to earn it.

Likewise, it is possible that you may give a place a thumbs-down and apply labels; this would result in a rating higher than 0 but still in the bad gradient (below 0.5).

Here are the key benefits I want to highlight of QTS: - The 5 star rating system forces a user to do the work of translating their sentiment into a quantity. With QTS, the user never has to translate their feelings into a number! They only express good or bad and pick labels, and the QTS mechanism does the work of translating this into a computation-friendly value. - The 5 star rating system generally results in a "bad" range from 1 to 4.5 and a "good" range from 4.5 to 5. QTS balances this with a "bad" rating at 0, a "good" rating at 0.5, and an excellent rating is anything above 0.5 (up to 1.0). This creates the maximum possible gradient between good and bad which makes it easier to compare similar ratings. Recall this in contrast to the 5 star rating system which actually loses precision as more ratings are provided. - It is also helpful that similar QTS ratings may have different labels, which will allow people to make easy qualitative assessments that do not depend on users generating their own pros/cons list.

Part 6: Implementing QTS

Here is how it works:

You give the user the option to rate a thumbs up or thumbs down.

Then, you also give your user the option to choose from a predefined set of positive labels. You can have any number of labels but try to keep it below 10 so as not to overwhelm your users. Keep the labels general enough that they could potentially apply to any thing being rated.

For example, if you were providing labels for Amazon.com, some good labels would be: - Good Value - Good Quality - As Described - Durable - Right Size

These labels are general enough that they could apply to almost any product. It is important to create labels that are general so that when comparing product ratings you are comparing the same labels. It is possible however that something like Amazon.com could define a different QTS label subset for each product category, and then the labels could be more specific to that category.

For example, a product category of Candles could have "Long Burning", "Good smell", "Safe", etc. These labels are much more specific, but appropriate for the Candle product category. The main point is that products which should be compared should use the same QTS label set.

Some poor examples of labels would be: - Orange (not really relevant to the product's assessment) - Easy to Lift (only relevant to certain products) - Made in USA (not really relevant to the product's assessment) - Cheap (not descriptive enough and could be interpreted as negative)

A score is derived as follows: - a thumbs-down is a score of 0.00 - a thumbs-up is a score of 0.50 - a label is worth 0.50 ÷ the number of labels available. So, if there are 3 labels to pick from, each label is worth 0.1666. The labels should all have the same value.

Here is an example by calvadev being used on Shopstr: https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/879#issuecomment-2502210146

You can adjust the weights however you want. The fundamental thing that QTS prescribes is that a thumbs up gives a 50% score, and labels each contribute an equal share up to another 50%.

Conclusion

With nostr we have a great opportunity to improve the economic information available to the planet. A more efficient market based on higher quality information will improve civilization in ways we may not expect, but definitely deserve!

If you like this post, be sure to give it a thumbs up ✌😁

@ 000002de:c05780a7

Remember when people were freaking out about ordinals and NFTs on bitcoin?

Remember when fees went bananas?

Yeah, that kinda went nowhere.

Guess what, bitcoin isn't so easy to kill.

It ended up being a good thing IMO.

Pushed everyone to become more efficient.

There's a lesson here. Chill out. Its gonna be OK. Bitcoin's incentives work.

What did you learn during the ordinals freak out?

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/850107

@ 5d4b6c8d:8a1c1ee3

In my post about morning routines, I mentioned that the middle of the day can get a little messy. I prefer flexibility over regimentation, but I still need some guiding principles to act on.

One of those principles is Hormesis.

This is the idea that manageable doses of potentially harmful stressors are good for us. It's not quite "What doesn't kill us makes us stronger", but it's something like that.

Intermittent Fasting

Intermittent fasting causes the body to enter a state of ketosis. This metabolic state burns fats more efficiently and reduces food cravings, because your body is munching down on its fat reserves. So, if I'm not hungry, I don't worry about preemptively eating, since I know being hungry can be good for me.

Dry Fasting

Dry fasting, foregoing water, puts the body into a state of autophagy, which translates literally into "self eating". It's not as scary as it sounds, though. What happens is you start metabolizing a bunch of intracellular junk and debris, because water is a product of metabolic reactions. Our bodies will actually produce their own water ("endogenous water") out of junk that's making us sick, including excess body fat.

I haven't hydrated in over a year now and I feel great.

Cold Exposure

Being mildly cold for an extended period of time causes our bodies to switch from storing white fat to storing brown fat. It's been a while since I looked into this, but brown fat is supposedly healthier and it generates more heat.

The thermostat isn't low in the winter just because I'm cheap: it's good to be a little cold.

Heat Exposure

I've actually never looked into this in detail, but I know people swear by the health benefits of saunas, steam rooms, hot baths, etc. I think it's related to perspiration being one of the main ways we eliminate toxins from our bodies.

The thermostat isn't high in the summer just because I'm cheap: it's good to be a little hot.

Exercise

The best known example of hormesis is just regular exercise. This extra stressing of our bodies is so linked to the idea of ~HealthAndFitness that I don't feel any need to elaborate on it.

Hygiene Hypothesis

Why do so many more people have allergies and other autoimmune disorders than in prior generations and why is it a western phenomenon?

One leading explanation is that our immune systems don't learn what they're supposed to because our modern environments are so sterile. Regular minor exposure to germs and allergens gives our immune systems the opportunity to learn what they are so that it doesn't go berserk when it sees a higher volume later (or something like that, I'm not that kind of doctor).

The 5 Second Rule should be a lower bound.

---

I'm sure there are many more examples of hormesis. Rather than look them up, though, I'd rather hear from the stackers about what beneficial stressors they rely on for their personal health.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/850029

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The playoffs just seem over hyped.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/850003

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Por décadas, o Brasil se beneficiou de um bônus demográfico, no qual a população em idade produtiva crescia mais rápido que a população dependente. Isso impulsionou a economia, o consumo e a urbanização. No entanto, essa era chegou ao fim.

Com a queda nas taxas de natalidade e o envelhecimento acelerado da população, o país enfrenta um futuro de baixo crescimento econômico, crise previdenciária e perda de relevância global. Pior ainda, o Brasil não tem a estrutura econômica e tecnológica necessária para compensar esse declínio populacional.

---

O Fim do Bônus Demográfico Brasileiro

A transição demográfica do Brasil está acontecendo mais rápido do que o esperado. A taxa de fertilidade caiu abaixo do nível de reposição, e a população idosa cresce rapidamente.

Colapso da Taxa de Natalidade

O Brasil experimentou uma queda drástica na taxa de fecundidade nas últimas décadas:

• 1960: 6,3 filhos por mulher
• 2000: 2,3 filhos por mulher
• 2022: 1,6 filhos por mulher (abaixo da taxa de reposição de 2,1)
• Projeção para 2050: 1,5 filhos por mulher
• Fonte: Banco Mundial, IBGE, ONU

Essa queda acompanha tendências observadas no Japão, China e Coreia do Sul, países que agora sofrem com envelhecimento populacional e escassez de mão de obra. A diferença é que essas nações têm alta produtividade e tecnologia avançada para mitigar os efeitos demográficos. O Brasil não.

Envelhecimento da População e Redução da Força de Trabalho

• Em 2023, 10,5% da população brasileira tinha 65 anos ou mais.
• Em 2050, esse número será de 24%, ou seja, quase 1 em cada 4 brasileiros será idoso.
• A idade média da população aumentou de 19 anos (1980) para 34 anos (2023) e chegará a 45 anos até 2050.
• Fonte: IBGE, ONU

Com menos jovens entrando no mercado de trabalho e mais idosos dependendo do Estado, o sistema previdenciário e a economia entrarão em colapso.

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Crescimento Lento e Crise Previdenciária

O declínio da população em idade produtiva trará queda na produtividade, estagnação do crescimento e aumento dos custos sociais.

Encolhimento da Força de Trabalho

• Em 2020, havia 7 pessoas em idade ativa (15–64 anos) para cada idoso.
• Em 2050, essa proporção cairá para apenas 2,5 trabalhadores por aposentado.
• Fonte: IBGE, Banco Mundial

Isso significa que menos pessoas estarão trabalhando e pagando impostos para sustentar a previdência e os serviços públicos.

Colapso do Sistema Previdenciário

• Em 2022, os gastos com previdência representavam 13% do PIB do Brasil.
• Sem reformas, esse valor pode chegar a 18% do PIB até 2050, tornando o sistema insustentável.

O governo será forçado a aumentar impostos, cortar benefícios ou elevar a idade de aposentadoria—medidas impopulares que enfrentarão resistência política.

Crescimento Econômico Vai Despencar

• A taxa média de crescimento do PIB era de 4,5% ao ano nos anos 2000, mas caiu para apenas 1,2% ao ano entre 2013 e 2023.
• Com uma força de trabalho menor, o crescimento econômico de longo prazo ficará abaixo de 1% ao ano.

O Brasil entrará em um ciclo de baixo crescimento econômico e estagnação, tornando-se menos atrativo para investidores.

Queda no Investimento e Baixa Produtividade

• A taxa de investimento do Brasil é de apenas 17% do PIB, muito abaixo da China (40%) e da Índia (30%).
• O crescimento da produtividade total dos fatores (PTF) está praticamente zerado desde os anos 1980.
• Fonte: OCDE, Banco Mundial

Ou seja, o Brasil depende mais do crescimento populacional do que de ganhos de eficiência econômica—um modelo inviável com o encolhimento da força de trabalho.

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Comparação Internacional: Brasil Está em Posição Pior

Japão e Coreia do Sul (Envelhecendo, Mas Produtivos)

• O Japão viu sua força de trabalho diminuir, mas compensou com alta produtividade e inovação tecnológica.
• PIB per capita do Japão: US$ 39.000 (2023) vs. Brasil: US$ 10.000.
• Fonte: Banco Mundial

O Brasil não tem tecnologia, inovação nem uma economia avançada como o Japão, tornando sua situação mais grave.

China (Começando a Sofrer com o Envelhecimento)

• Taxa de fertilidade da China: 1,2 filhos por mulher (2023), ainda menor que a do Brasil.
• A população da China começou a encolher em 2022.
• O crescimento do PIB chinês caiu de 10% ao ano (2000) para 4% ao ano (2023) devido à queda da força de trabalho.
• Fonte: ONU

Se até a China, com sua indústria forte, está sofrendo, o Brasil, com baixa produtividade e poucos investimentos, enfrentará um cenário muito pior.

Estados Unidos e Índia (Demograficamente Fortes)

• EUA: Fertilidade de 1,7 filhos por mulher (acima do Brasil) e 1 milhão de imigrantes por ano, sustentando o crescimento da força de trabalho.
• Índia: População jovem (idade média de 28 anos) e forte crescimento econômico.
• Fonte: ONU, Censo dos EUA

Enquanto EUA e Índia continuarão crescendo, o Brasil envelhecerá sem soluções econômicas para compensar.

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Por Que o Brasil Não Conseguirá Reagir

Mesmo que o Brasil reconheça o problema, o país carece dos meios para reverter a crise demográfica.

Baixo Investimento em Tecnologia e Indústria

• O Brasil investe apenas 1,2% do PIB em P&D, enquanto a Coreia do Sul investe 4,8%.
• O crescimento da produtividade foi zero nas últimas duas décadas.
• Fonte: Banco Mundial, OCDE

Sem investimentos em tecnologia e inovação, o Brasil não conseguirá substituir a perda de trabalhadores por automação e ganhos de eficiência.

Corrupção e Instabilidade Política

• O Brasil ocupa a 94ª posição no Índice de Percepção da Corrupção, dificultando reformas.
• Ranking de Facilidade para Fazer Negócios: 124º lugar (de 190 países).
• Fonte: Transparência Internacional, Banco Mundial

A falta de reformas estruturais impedirá qualquer solução para a crise demográfica.

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O Brasil Caminha para o Declínio

O bônus demográfico do Brasil acabou, e os efeitos serão devastadores. O país não tem produtividade, investimentos ou governança eficiente para lidar com o envelhecimento populacional.

Sem uma força de trabalho jovem, sem inovação tecnológica e com um sistema previdenciário insustentável, o Brasil enfrentará estagnação econômica e perda de competitividade global. É impossível ser otimista sobre o futuro do Brasil.

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Nostr: a quick introduction, attempt #2

Nostr doesn't subscribe to any ideals of "free speech" as these belong to the realm of politics and assume a big powerful government that enforces a common ruleupon everybody else.

Nostr instead is much simpler, it simply says that servers are private property and establishes a generalized framework for people to connect to all these servers, creating a true free market in the process. In other words, Nostr is the public road that each market participant can use to build their own store or visit others and use their services.

(Of course a road is never truly public, in normal cases it's ran by the government, in this case it relies upon the previous existence of the internet with all its quirks and chaos plus a hand of government control, but none of that matters for this explanation).

More concretely speaking, Nostr is just a set of definitions of the formats of the data that can be passed between participants and their expected order, i.e. messages between clients (i.e. the program that runs on a user computer) and relays (i.e. the program that runs on a publicly accessible computer, a "server", generally with a domain-name associated) over a type of TCP connection (WebSocket) with cryptographic signatures. This is what is called a "protocol" in this context, and upon that simple base multiple kinds of sub-protocols can be added, like a protocol for "public-square style microblogging", "semi-closed group chat" or, I don't know, "recipe sharing and feedback".

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It Begins with a Click

It starts with a click: “Do you agree to our terms and conditions?”\ You scroll, you click, you comply. A harmless act, right? But what if every click was a surrender? What if every "yes" was another link in the chain binding you to a life where freedom requires approval?

This is the age of permission. Every aspect of your life is mediated by gatekeepers. Governments demand forms, corporations demand clicks, and algorithms demand obedience. You’re free, of course, as long as you play by the rules. But who writes the rules? Who decides what’s allowed? Who owns your life?

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Welcome to Digital Serfdom

We once imagined the internet as a digital frontier—a vast, open space where ideas could flow freely and innovation would know no bounds. But instead of creating a decentralized utopia, we built a new feudal system.

• Your data? Owned by the lords of Big Tech.
• Your money? Controlled by banks and bureaucrats who can freeze it on a whim.
• Your thoughts? Filtered by algorithms that reward conformity and punish dissent.

The modern internet is a land of serfs and lords, and guess who’s doing the farming? You. Every time you agree to the terms, accept the permissions, or let an algorithm decide for you, you till the fields of a system designed to control, not liberate.

They don’t call it control, of course. They call it “protection.” They say, “We’re keeping you safe,” as they build a cage so big you can’t see the bars.

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Freedom in Chains

But let’s be honest: we’re not just victims of this system—we’re participants. We’ve traded freedom for convenience, sovereignty for security. It’s easier to click “I Agree” than to read the fine print. It’s easier to let someone else hold your money than to take responsibility for it yourself. It’s easier to live a life of quiet compliance than to risk the chaos of true independence.

We tell ourselves it’s no big deal. What’s one click? What’s one form? But the permissions pile up. The chains grow heavier. And one day, you wake up and realize you’re free to do exactly what the system allows—and nothing more.

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The Great Unpermissioning

It doesn’t have to be this way. You don’t need their approval. You don’t need their systems. You don’t need their permission.

The Great Unpermissioning is not a movement—it’s a mindset. It’s the refusal to accept a life mediated by gatekeepers. It’s the quiet rebellion of saying, “No.” It’s the realization that the freedom you seek won’t be granted—it must be reclaimed.

• Stop asking. Permission is their tool. Refusal is your weapon.
• Start building. Embrace tools that decentralize power: Bitcoin, encryption, open-source software, decentralized communication. Build systems they can’t control.
• Stand firm. They’ll tell you it’s dangerous. They’ll call you a radical. But remember: the most dangerous thing you can do is comply.

The path won’t be easy. Freedom never is. But it will be worth it.

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The New Frontier

The age of permission has turned us into digital serfs, but there’s a new frontier on the horizon. It’s a world where you control your money, your data, your decisions. It’s a world of encryption, anonymity, and sovereignty. It’s a world built not on permission but on principles.

This world won’t be given to you. You have to build it. You have to fight for it. And it starts with one simple act: refusing to comply.

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A Final Word

They promised us safety, but what they delivered was submission. The age of permission has enslaved us to the mundane, the monitored, and the mediocre. The Great Unpermissioning isn’t about tearing down the old world—it’s about walking away from it.

You don’t need to wait for their approval. You don’t need to ask for their permission. The freedom you’re looking for is already yours. Permission is their power—refusal is yours.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Drivechain

Understanding Drivechain requires a shift from the paradigm most bitcoiners are used to. It is not about "trustlessness" or "mathematical certainty", but game theory and incentives. (Well, Bitcoin in general is also that, but people prefer to ignore it and focus on some illusion of trustlessness provided by mathematics.)

Here we will describe the basic mechanism (simple) and incentives (complex) of "hashrate escrow" and how it enables a 2-way peg between the mainchain (Bitcoin) and various sidechains.

The full concept of "Drivechain" also involves blind merged mining (i.e., the sidechains mine themselves by publishing their block hashes to the mainchain without the miners having to run the sidechain software), but this is much easier to understand and can be accomplished either by the BIP-301 mechanism or by the Spacechains mechanism.

How does hashrate escrow work from the point of view of Bitcoin?

A new address type is created. Anything that goes in that is locked and can only be spent if all miners agree on the Withdrawal Transaction (WT^) that will spend it for 6 months. There is one of these special addresses for each sidechain.

To gather miners' agreement bitcoind keeps track of the "score" of all transactions that could possibly spend from that address. On every block mined, for each sidechain, the miner can use a portion of their coinbase to either increase the score of one WT^ by 1 while decreasing the score of all others by 1; or they can decrease the score of all WT^s by 1; or they can do nothing.

Once a transaction has gotten a score high enough, it is published and funds are effectively transferred from the sidechain to the withdrawing users.

If a timeout of 6 months passes and the score doesn't meet the threshold, that WT^ is discarded.

What does the above procedure mean?

It means that people can transfer coins from the mainchain to a sidechain by depositing to the special address. Then they can withdraw from the sidechain by making a special withdraw transaction in the sidechain.

The special transaction somehow freezes funds in the sidechain while a transaction that aggregates all withdrawals into a single mainchain WT^, which is then submitted to the mainchain miners so they can start voting on it and finally after some months it is published.

Now the crucial part: the validity of the WT^ is not verified by the Bitcoin mainchain rules, i.e., if Bob has requested a withdraw from the sidechain to his mainchain address, but someone publishes a wrong WT^ that instead takes Bob's funds and sends them to Alice's main address there is no way the mainchain will know that. What determines the "validity" of the WT^ is the miner vote score and only that. It is the job of miners to vote correctly -- and for that they may want to run the sidechain node in SPV mode so they can attest for the existence of a reference to the WT^ transaction in the sidechain blockchain (which then ensures it is ok) or do these checks by some other means.

What? 6 months to get my money back?

Yes. But no, in practice anyone who wants their money back will be able to use an atomic swap, submarine swap or other similar service to transfer funds from the sidechain to the mainchain and vice-versa. The long delayed withdraw costs would be incurred by few liquidity providers that would gain some small profit from it.

Why bother with this at all?

Drivechains solve many different problems:

It enables experimentation and new use cases for Bitcoin

Issued assets, fully private transactions, stateful blockchain contracts, turing-completeness, decentralized games, some "DeFi" aspects, prediction markets, futarchy, decentralized and yet meaningful human-readable names, big blocks with a ton of normal transactions on them, a chain optimized only for Lighting-style networks to be built on top of it.

These are some ideas that may have merit to them, but were never actually tried because they couldn't be tried with real Bitcoin or inferfacing with real bitcoins. They were either relegated to the shitcoin territory or to custodial solutions like Liquid or RSK that may have failed to gain network effect because of that.

It solves conflicts and infighting

Some people want fully private transactions in a UTXO model, others want "accounts" they can tie to their name and build reputation on top; some people want simple multisig solutions, others want complex code that reads a ton of variables; some people want to put all the transactions on a global chain in batches every 10 minutes, others want off-chain instant transactions backed by funds previously locked in channels; some want to spend, others want to just hold; some want to use blockchain technology to solve all the problems in the world, others just want to solve money.

With Drivechain-based sidechains all these groups can be happy simultaneously and don't fight. Meanwhile they will all be using the same money and contributing to each other's ecosystem even unwillingly, it's also easy and free for them to change their group affiliation later, which reduces cognitive dissonance.

It solves "scaling"

Multiple chains like the ones described above would certainly do a lot to accomodate many more transactions that the current Bitcoin chain can. One could have special Lightning Network chains, but even just big block chains or big-block-mimblewimble chains or whatnot could probably do a good job. Or even something less cool like 200 independent chains just like Bitcoin is today, no extra features (and you can call it "sharding"), just that would already multiply the current total capacity by 200.

Use your imagination.

It solves the blockchain security budget issue

The calculation is simple: you imagine what security budget is reasonable for each block in a world without block subsidy and divide that for the amount of bytes you can fit in a single block: that is the price to be paid in satoshis per byte. In reasonable estimative, the price necessary for every Bitcoin transaction goes to very large amounts, such that not only any day-to-day transaction has insanely prohibitive costs, but also Lightning channel opens and closes are impracticable.

So without a solution like Drivechain you'll be left with only one alternative: pushing Bitcoin usage to trusted services like Liquid and RSK or custodial Lightning wallets. With Drivechain, though, there could be thousands of transactions happening in sidechains and being all aggregated into a sidechain block that would then pay a very large fee to be published (via blind merged mining) to the mainchain. Bitcoin security guaranteed.

It keeps Bitcoin decentralized

Once we have sidechains to accomodate the normal transactions, the mainchain functionality can be reduced to be only a "hub" for the sidechains' comings and goings, and then the maximum block size for the mainchain can be reduced to, say, 100kb, which would make running a full node very very easy.

Can miners steal?

Yes. If a group of coordinated miners are able to secure the majority of the hashpower and keep their coordination for 6 months, they can publish a WT^ that takes the money from the sidechains and pays to themselves.

Will miners steal?

No, because the incentives are such that they won't.

Although it may look at first that stealing is an obvious strategy for miners as it is free money, there are many costs involved:

1. The cost of ceasing blind-merged mining returns -- as stealing will kill a sidechain, all the fees from it that miners would be expected to earn for the next years are gone;
2. The cost of Bitcoin price going down: If a steal is successful that will mean Drivechains are not safe, therefore Bitcoin is less useful, and miner credibility will also be hurt, which are likely to cause the Bitcoin price to go down, which in turn may kill the miners' businesses and savings;
3. The cost of coordination -- assuming miners are just normal businesses, they just want to do their work and get paid, but stealing from a Drivechain will require coordination with other miners to conduct an immoral act in a way that has many pitfalls and is likely to be broken over the months;
4. The cost of miners leaving your mining pool: when we talked about "miners" above we were actually talking about mining pools operators, so they must also consider the risk of miners migrating from their mining pool to others as they begin the process of stealing;
5. The cost of community goodwill -- when participating in a steal operation, a miner will suffer a ton of backlash from the community. Even if the attempt fails at the end, the fact that it was attempted will contribute to growing concerns over exaggerated miners power over the Bitcoin ecosystem, which may end up causing the community to agree on a hard-fork to change the mining algorithm in the future, or to do something to increase participation of more entities in the mining process (such as development or cheapment of new ASICs), which have a chance of decreasing the profits of current miners.

Another point to take in consideration is that one may be inclined to think a newly-created sidechain or a sidechain with relatively low usage may be more easily stolen from, since the blind merged mining returns from it (point 1 above) are going to be small -- but the fact is also that a sidechain with small usage will also have less money to be stolen from, and since the other costs besides 1 are less elastic at the end it will not be worth stealing from these too.

All of the above consideration are valid only if miners are stealing from good sidechains. If there is a sidechain that is doing things wrong, scamming people, not being used at all, or is full of bugs, for example, that will be perceived as a bad sidechain, and then miners can and will safely steal from it and kill it, which will be perceived as a good thing by everybody.

What do we do if miners steal?

Paul Sztorc has suggested in the past that a user-activated soft-fork could prevent miners from stealing, i.e., most Bitcoin users and nodes issue a rule similar to this one to invalidate the inclusion of a faulty WT^ and thus cause any miner that includes it in a block to be relegated to their own Bitcoin fork that other nodes won't accept.

This suggestion has made people think Drivechain is a sidechain solution backed by user-actived soft-forks for safety, which is very far from the truth. Drivechains must not and will not rely on this kind of soft-fork, although they are possible, as the coordination costs are too high and no one should ever expect these things to happen.

If even with all the incentives against them (see above) miners do still steal from a good sidechain that will mean the failure of the Drivechain experiment. It will very likely also mean the failure of the Bitcoin experiment too, as it will be proven that miners can coordinate to act maliciously over a prolonged period of time regardless of economic and social incentives, meaning they are probably in it just for attacking Bitcoin, backed by nation-states or something else, and therefore no Bitcoin transaction in the mainchain is to be expected to be safe ever again.

Why use this and not a full-blown trustless and open sidechain technology?

Because it is impossible.

If you ever heard someone saying "just use a sidechain", "do this in a sidechain" or anything like that, be aware that these people are either talking about "federated" sidechains (i.e., funds are kept in custody by a group of entities) or they are talking about Drivechain, or they are disillusioned and think it is possible to do sidechains in any other manner.

No, I mean a trustless 2-way peg with correctness of the withdrawals verified by the Bitcoin protocol!

That is not possible unless Bitcoin verifies all transactions that happen in all the sidechains, which would be akin to drastically increasing the blocksize and expanding the Bitcoin rules in tons of ways, i.e., a terrible idea that no one wants.

What about the Blockstream sidechains whitepaper?

Yes, that was a way to do it. The Drivechain hashrate escrow is a conceptually simpler way to achieve the same thing with improved incentives, less junk in the chain, more safety.

Isn't the hashrate escrow a very complex soft-fork?

Yes, but it is much simpler than SegWit. And, unlike SegWit, it doesn't force anything on users, i.e., it isn't a mandatory blocksize increase.

Why should we expect miners to care enough to participate in the voting mechanism?

Because it's in their own self-interest to do it, and it costs very little. Today over half of the miners mine RSK. It's not blind merged mining, it's a very convoluted process that requires them to run a RSK full node. For the Drivechain sidechains, an SPV node would be enough, or maybe just getting data from a block explorer API, so much much simpler.

What if I still don't like Drivechain even after reading this?

That is the entire point! You don't have to like it or use it as long as you're fine with other people using it. The hashrate escrow special addresses will not impact you at all, validation cost is minimal, and you get the benefit of people who want to use Drivechain migrating to their own sidechains and freeing up space for you in the mainchain. See also the point above about infighting.

See also

• Podcast episode with Ruben Somsen and Aaron van Wirdum explaining Drivechain
• Alternatives to Drivechain
• Drivechain comparison with Ethereum

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Personagens de jogos e símbolos

A sensação de "ser" um personagem em um jogo ou uma brincadeira talvez seja o mais próximo que eu tenha conseguido chegar do entendimento de um símbolo religioso.

A hóstia consagrada é, segundo a religião, o corpo de Cristo, mas nossa mente moderna só consegue concebê-la como sendo uma representação do corpo de Cristo. Da mesma forma outras culturas e outras religiões têm símbolos parecidos, inclusive nos quais o próprio participante do ritual faz o papel de um deus ou de qualquer coisa parecida.

"Faz o papel" é de novo a interpretação da mente moderna. O sujeito ali é a coisa, mas ele ao mesmo tempo que é também sabe que não é, que continua sendo ele mesmo.

Nos jogos de videogame e brincadeiras infantis em que se encarna um personagem o jogador é o personagem. não se diz, entre os jogadores, que alguém está "encenando", mas que ele é e pronto. nem há outra denominação ou outro verbo. No máximo "encarnando", mas já aí já é vocabulário jornalístico feito para facilitar a compreensão de quem está de fora do jogo.

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A Causa

o Princípios de Economia Política de Menger é o único livro que enfatiza a CAUSA o tempo todo. os cientistas todos parecem não saber, ou se esquecer sempre, que as coisas têm causa, e que o conhecimento verdadeiro é o conhecimento da causa das coisas.

a causa é uma categoria metafísica muito superior a qualquer correlação ou resultado de teste de hipótese, ela não pode ser descoberta por nenhum artifício econométrico ou reduzida à simples antecedência temporal estatística. a causa dos fenômenos não pode ser provada cientificamente, mas pode ser conhecida.

o livro de Menger conta para o leitor as causas de vários fenômenos econômicos e as interliga de forma que o mundo caótico da economia parece adquirir uma ordem no momento em que você lê. é uma sensação mágica e indescritível.

quando eu te o recomendei, queria é te imbuir com o espírito da busca pela causa das coisas. depois de ler aquilo, você está apto a perceber continuidade causal nos fenômenos mais complexos da economia atual, enxergar as causas entre toda a ação governamental e as suas várias consequências na vida humana. eu faço isso todos os dias e é a melhor sensação do mundo quando o caos das notícias do caderno de Economia do jornal -- que para o próprio jornalista que as escreveu não têm nenhum sentido (tanto é que ele escreve tudo errado) -- se incluem num sistema ordenado de causas e consequências.

provavelmente eu sempre erro em alguns ou vários pontos, mas ainda assim é maravilhoso. ou então é mais maravilhoso ainda quando eu descubro o erro e reinsiro o acerto naquela racionalização bela da ordem do mundo econômico que é a ordem de Deus.

em scrap para T.P.

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Veterano não é dono de bixete

"VETERANO NÃO É DONO DE BIXETE". A frase em letras garrafais chama a atenção dos transeuntes neófitos. Paira sobre um cartaz amarelo que lista várias reclamações contra os "trotes machistas", que, na opinião do responsável pelo cartaz, "não é brincadeira, é opressão".

Eis aí um bizarro exemplo de como são as coisas: primeiro todos os universitários aprovam a idéia do trote, apoiam sua realização e até mesmo desejam sofrer o trote -- com a condição de o poderem aplicar eles mesmos depois --, louvam as maravilhas do mundo universitário, onde a suprema sabedoria se esconde atrás de rituais iniciáticos fora do alcance da imaginação do homem comum e rude, do pobre e do filhinho-de-papai das faculdades privadas; em suma: fomentam os mais baixos, os mais animalescos instintos, a crueldade primordial, destroem em si mesmos e nos colegas quaisquer valores civilizatórios que tivessem sobrado ali, ficando todos indistingüíveis de macacos agressivos e tarados.

Depois vêm aí com um cartaz protestar contra os assédios -- que sem dúvida acontecem em larguíssima escala -- sofridos pelas calouras de 17 anos e que, sendo também novatas no mundo universitário, ainda conservam um pouco de discernimento e pudor.

A incompreensão do fenômeno, porém, é tão grande, que os trotes não são identificados como um problema mental, uma doença que deve ser tratada e eliminada, mas como um sintoma da opressão machista dos homens às mulheres, um produto desta civilização paternalista que, desde que Deus é chamado "o Pai" e não "a Mãe", corrompe a benéfica, pura e angélica natureza do homem primitivo e o torna esta tão torpe criatura.

Na opinião dos autores desse cartaz é preciso, pois, continuar a destruir o que resta da cultura ocidental, e então esperar que haja trotes menos opressores.

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neuron.vim

I started using this neuron thing to create an update this same zettelkasten, but the existing vim plugin had too many problems, so I forked it and ended up changing almost everything.

Since the upstream repository was somewhat abandoned, most users and people who were trying to contribute upstream migrate to my fork too.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/neuron.vim

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On "zk-rollups" applied to Bitcoin

ZK rollups make no sense in bitcoin because there is no "cheap calldata". all data is already ~~cheap~~ expensive calldata.

There could be an onchain zk verification that allows succinct signatures maybe, but never a rollup.

What happens is: you can have one UTXO that contains multiple balances on it and in each transaction you can recreate that UTXOs but alter its state using a zk to compress all internal transactions that took place.

The blockchain must be aware of all these new things, so it is in no way "L2".

And you must have an entity responsible for that UTXO and for conjuring the state changes and zk proofs.

But on bitcoin you also must keep the data necessary to rebuild the proofs somewhere else, I'm not sure how can the third party responsible for that UTXO ensure that happens.

I think such a construct is similar to a credit card corporation: one central party upon which everybody depends, zero interoperability with external entities, every vendor must have an account on each credit card company to be able to charge customers, therefore it is not clear that such a thing is more desirable than solutions that are truly open and interoperable like Lightning, which may have its defects but at least fosters a much better environment, bringing together different conflicting parties, custodians, anyone.

@ 554ab6fe:c6cbc27e

We live in a world where the advances in modern medicine are heralded as achievements beyond our wildest dreams. Science is truly amazing and will continue to propel human life forward in tremendous ways. However, our journey as scientific healers is in its extreme infancy, and what we see as medicine today will be interpreted as primitive in the decades or centuries to come. I think there is already an aspect of medicine that is incredibly underrepresented, an aspect of human health that many still ignore; the recognition of the integral relationship between the body and mind.

Starting with my interest in the health benefits of mindfulness meditation, I have found that the body, its organs, and its systems are all incredibly interconnected to our mind and experience of consciousness. We often perceive each organ as separate and independent piece of our complicated “machine”, but this is far from the truth. For example, the gut affects the state of the mind, mental health translates into physical health, physical health translates back into mental health, etc. I tend to imagine the body as more of a soup, where everything is just a fluid flowing around, and a change in one area causes a ripple that influences everywhere else. Understanding the entire ecosystem, and how it functions to maintain balance, is at the heart of having true understanding of our own bodies, health, and how to obtain satisfaction in life. These ideas are rooted in core philosophies of eastern medicine, yet our western society often disregards these practices as pseudoscience and unfounded. As science matures, and more research is conducted, this naivety diminishes. It is my hope to share some scientific research that highlights how interconnected all the systems are, to explain the importance and scientific validly of holistic health. This article will provide a brief introduction to these topics. It will be the intent of this entire blog to further develop upon these ideas, as time continues to flow.

To begin, discussion of gut health, microbiota, and how it interacts with the brain is a sure way to articulate the beauty of our inner ecosystem. Many have heard the phrase “you are what you eat”. The cells from the food we consume become the cells that make our body, but this is an extreme oversimplification. Our gut is composed of more than just the organs and juices that process our food. It is also home to 300-500 bacterial species called microbiota (Quigley, 2010). These foreign species that live inside of us, come from the foods we eat, and they have a profound impact on our physical and mental health. A healthy colony of microbiota in our gut wall is essential for selectively allowing nutrients into our systems, while keeping other more harmful molecules such as pathogens out (Househam et al., 2017). Therefore, a healthy microbiota population has a severe impact on immune health. Additionally, microbiota, via the vagus nerve, may have influence over our dietary behavior (Alcock et al., 2014). For example, people who desire chocolate and those who are indifferent to it seem to have different microbiota (Rezzi et al., 2007). Other examples, from mice studies, have shown different mood styles depending on the food given (Bercik et al., 2011). Decreasing stress through probiotics (foods containing gut bacteria) in humans has also been achieved (Messaoudi et al., 2011). So, on top of affecting our immune health, our gut bacteria colony seems to affect our mind by both influencing what we want to eat and our mood. This is a clear example of how the body affects the mind. Not to mention, our mind obviously makes choices in what we eat. Therefore, our mind also affects our body. Hopefully this illustrates the cyclical nature of the influence our mind and body have on each other. Perhaps this also sparks interest in having more attention over our own diets. I know it has for me.

The gut is not the only body part to have this type of relationship with the mind; our heart does as well. The brain has dramatic influence over the heart. Our nervous system contains the autonomic nervous system, and within it are two branches: the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems. The sympathetic nervous system induces the “fight or flight” response, which increases heart rate. The parasympathetic is the opposite and slows heart rate. The heart is continuously receiving signals from both branches and changes its pace accordingly (Armour, 1994). The cardiovascular system also has its own set of sensory neurons, so that it can regulate its pace on its own (Armour, 1994). It is a vital organ for life, and therefore must have robust communication back and forth between itself and the brain, to maintain proper functionality and harmony between the two major systems. This is in part why the heart and cardiovascular systems relay more information to the brain than any other organ in the body (Cameron, 2002). Additionally, this means that its influence over the brain is significant. It seems obvious that our emotional state can influence heart rate. When we get scared or nervous, our heart rate increases. This is something we have all experienced. However, heart rate not only represents our emotional states, but it can also determine them (Mccraty et al., 2009). Many of the afferent neurons sending signals from the heart to the brain innervate with the brain’s thalamus, hypothalamus, and amygdala, which all play a role in emotional processing (Mccraty et al., 2009). More evidence for this theory is found in research that shows panic is frequently generated after unrecognized cardiac arrhythmia (Mccraty et al., 2009). Not only does the mind influence the heart, but so does the heart influence the mind, likely in ways that we do not fully comprehend yet. Nonetheless, I hope it is becoming clear that our mind not only influences the activity of organs, but these organs also influence the mind and brain. Therefore, there seems to be a cyclical interaction and communication between our brain and body that is constantly at work. In which case, the brain is the body, and the body is the brain. It is one giant ecosystem influencing and reacting to itself.

A practice that seems to properly highlight the significance of the mind body relationship is meditation. Meditation can be thought of as both a physical and mental activity. It is mental in the sense that it involves a practice of processing all incoming thoughts, feelings, and emotions in a nonjudgmental way to learn to dereify thoughts (to learn that thoughts are not a part of reality)(Wielgosz et al., 2019). Additionally, it incorporates a physical aspect of breath work. Advanced meditators seem to commonly arrive at a calm breathing frequency of 8 breaths / minute (0.13Hz) (Cysarz & Büssing, 2005), suggesting that the process of meditation leads to certain breathing patterns. Of course, meditation can become even more physical within the practice that we commonly refer to as yoga, Tai Chi （太极）, or Qi Gong (气功). These practices involve a certain orientation to the body and present moments that promote mindfulness.

The mental practice of mindfulness and meditation seem to lead to very healthy mental outcomes. For example, large meta-analysis studies have found that mindfulness-based practices lead to decreased ruminations, stress, anxiety (Greeson et al., 2018; Querstret et al., 2020). These poor mental habits are highly correlated to a wandering mind that is time traveling to the past and future. Mindfulness meditation is amazingly helpful in alleviating these psychological burdens by creating a practice of keeping the mind present. Furthermore, this field of practice not only affects the mind, but also the body. For example, there has been research to suggest that pranayama breathing may aid in the alleviation of asthmatic symptoms (Agnihotri et al., 2016; Jayawardena et al., 2020; Saxena & Saxena, 2009). The main theory behind how meditation leads to all the physical and mental benefits comes from the idea that meditation may increase vagus nerve tone. If this is true, then it has profound implications on the relationship between the mind and body. The vagus nerve is the longest nerve in the body (Bonaz et al., 2017), and is the main nerve for the parasympathetic nervous system. The activation of that nerve alters the state of most organs and systems throughout the body via promoting parasympathetic activity. Given our modern stressful lives, this is something our body is in dire need of. If the practice of meditation, which is largely mental, is truly capable of influencing the activation of this nerve, then the interplay between mind and body should be taken very seriously from a health care point of view. If science continues to promote this finding, then meditation could potentially be one of the most powerful ways we can promote health within ourselves.

Much of this blog will be devoted to the pursuit of the understanding of how the mind and body is related. How is the mind, our experience, and perception of world dictated by both our mental and physical habits? Additionally, how do physical habits influence the mind? Together, we can slowly learn how the body and mind work in a holistic manner, to gain more control over our health and well-being. I look forward to this journey of inquiry, and I hope you will join me on it.

References

Agnihotri, S., Kant, S., Mishra, S. K., & Singh, R. (2016). Efficacy of yoga in mild to moderate persistent chronic bronchial asthma. Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge, 15(2), 337–340.

Alcock, J., Maley, C. C., & Aktipis, C. A. (2014). Is eating behavior manipulated by the gastrointestinal microbiota? Evolutionary pressures and potential mechanisms. BioEssays, 36(10), 940–949. https://doi.org/10.1002/bies.201400071

Armour, J. A. (1994). The role of peripheral autonomic neurons in cardiac regulation. Neurocardiology, 219–244. https://ci.nii.ac.jp/naid/10025731968

Bercik, P., Denou, E., Collins, J., Jackson, W., Lu, J., Jury, J., Deng, Y., Blennerhassett, P., MacRi, J., McCoy, K. D., Verdu, E. F., & Collins, S. M. (2011). The intestinal microbiota affect central levels of brain-derived neurotropic factor and behavior in mice. Gastroenterology, 141(2), 599–609. https://doi.org/10.1053/j.gastro.2011.04.052

Bonaz, B., Sinniger, V., & Pellissier, S. (2017). The vagus nerve in the neuro-immune axis: Implications in the pathology of the gastrointestinal tract. In Frontiers in Immunology (Vol. 8, Issue NOV, p. 1452). Frontiers Media S.A. https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2017.01452

Cameron, O. G. (2002). Visceral Sensory Neuroscience: Interoception. In Oxford University Press. Oxford University Press.

Cysarz, D., & Büssing, A. (2005). Cardiorespiratory synchronization during Zen meditation. European Journal of Applied Physiology, 95(1), 88–95. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00421-005-1379-3

Greeson, J. M., Zarrin, H., Smoski, M. J., Brantley, J. G., Lynch, T. R., Webber, D. M., Hall, M. H., Suarez, E. C., & Wolever, R. Q. (2018). Mindfulness Meditation Targets Transdiagnostic Symptoms Implicated in Stress-Related Disorders: Understanding Relationships between Changes in Mindfulness, Sleep Quality, and Physical Symptoms. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/4505191

Househam, A. M., Christine, ;, Peterson, T., Mills, P. J., & Chopra, D. (2017). The Effects of Stress and Meditation on the Immune System, Human Microbiota, and Epigenetics.

Jayawardena, R., Ranasinghe, P., Ranawaka, H., Gamage, N., Dissanayake, D., & Misra, A. (2020). Exploring the therapeutic benefits of “Pranayama” (yogic breathing): A systematic review. International Journal of Yoga, 13(2), 99. https://doi.org/10.4103/ijoy.ijoy_37_19

Mccraty, R., Atkinson, M., Tomasino, D., & Bradley, R. T. (2009). The Coherent Heart Heart-Brain Interactions, Psychophysiological Coherence, and the Emergence of System-Wide Order. In REVIEW December (Vol. 5, Issue 2).

Messaoudi, M., Lalonde, R., Violle, N., Javelot, H., Desor, D., Nejdi, A., Bisson, J. F., Rougeot, C., Pichelin, M., Cazaubiel, M., & Cazaubiel, J. M. (2011). Assessment of psychotropic-like properties of a probiotic formulation (Lactobacillus helveticus R0052 and Bifidobacterium longum R0175) in rats and human subjects. British Journal of Nutrition, 105(5), 755–764. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114510004319

Querstret, D., Morison, L., Dickinson, S., Cropley, M., & John, M. (2020). Mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy for psychological health and well-being in nonclinical samples: A systematic review and meta-analysis. International Journal of Stress Management, 27(4), 394–411. https://doi.org/10.1037/str0000165

Quigley, E. M. M. (2010). Prebiotics and probiotics; modifying and mining the microbiota. In Pharmacological Research (Vol. 61, Issue 3, pp. 213–218). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phrs.2010.01.004

Rezzi, S., Ramadan, Z., Martin, F. P. J., Fay, L. B., van Bladeren, P., Lindon, J. C., Nicholson, J. K., & Kochhar, S. (2007). Human metabolic phenotypes link directly to specific dietary preferences in healthy individuals. Journal of Proteome Research, 6(11), 4469–4477. https://doi.org/10.1021/pr070431h

Saxena, T., & Saxena, M. (2009). The effect of various breathing exercises (pranayama) in patients with bronchial asthma of mild to moderate severity. International Journal of Yoga, 2(1), 22. https://doi.org/10.4103/0973-6131.53838

Wielgosz, J., Goldberg, S. B., Kral, T. R. A., Dunne, J. D., & Davidson, R. J. (2019). Mindfulness Meditation and Psychopathology. Annual Review of Clinical Psychology, 15(1), 285–316. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-clinpsy-021815-093423

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@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Splitpages

The simplest possible service: it splitted PDF pages in half.

Created specially to solve the problem of those scanned books that come with two pages side-by-side as if they were a single page and are much harder to read on Kindle because of that.

It required me to learn about Heroku Buildpacks though, and fork or contribute to a Heroku Buildpack that embedded a mupdf binary.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/splitpages
• https://splitpages.herokuapp.com/

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@ e968e50b:db2a803a

Hey sn! Does anybody know what's the best open source CPU mining software for someone who is not a rocket surgeon? I'm looking for something to run on an old desktop with a burnt-out hard drive. Ideally:

1. Not Nice-hash or anything else like that, open source, "the real deal"
2. Easy to set up, I mean within reason, I'm not THAT dumb
3. bitcoin, not looking to secure the Monero network or anything silly like that

I know that this is looking like a tall order, but I'm finding a lot on github, and am hoping one of you knows which one of these programs fit these criteria. If nice-hash can do it, I know the open source world can too.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/849909

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

tempreites

My first library to get stars on GitHub, was a very stupid templating library that used just HTML and HTML attributes ("DSL-free"). I was inspired by http://microjs.com/ at the time and ended up not using the library. Probably no one ever did.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/tempreites

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@ 55e343e6:880acd1b

When we consider the intrinsic value of Bitcoin, we often compare it to traditional currencies like the dollar, euro or other fiat currencies. However, the dollar isn't real in the sense that it's not physical. It's more of an abstract concept backed by government trust rather than tangible assets. Take, for example, valuing a horse in ancient China, where silver was the standard. If we knew how much silver was in a "tael" - an ancient Chinese measure of weight - we could truly grasp the economic value of horse in that era.

Similarly, in ancient Rome around 44 BCE, you might ponder how much a gladiator's armor cost in denarii. What's a denarius? But if we knew how much gold was in a denarius, we'd have a clear measure of its worth.

Both these examples from history illustrate that value was once tied to tangible assets like gold or silver, rather than abstract numbers. Bitcoin's value, therefore, isn't best captured by its price in dollars because dollars aren't physical, they're more like abstract entries in a ledger. Instead, Bitcoin's true "price" should be measured by the physical work, or energy, represented by its hash rate - the computational power used to mine each block. A hash isn't just a digital number; it's a measure of energy consumption, giving us a more concrete indication of Bitcoin's cost in real terms.

At Bitcoin's creation with the genesis block, the hash-to-satoshi ratio was about 1 (0.8 to be precise), highlighting the minimal computational complexity required for early mining.

Now, with mining difficulty at around 109.78 trillion, and having undergone three halvings (2^3 = 8), this ratio has jumped to approximately 702 trillion hashes per satoshi. This is calculated as:

• Current Mining Difficulty x 0.8 (the initial hash rate) x 8 (due to three halvings) = 109.78 trillion x 0.8 x 8 = approximately 702 trillion hashes per satoshi.

This calculation overlooks the additional revenue miners gain from transaction fees, which, while significant, does not drastically alter the fundamental relationship between hashes and satoshis in this simplified model.

Why Hashes Over Dollars?

• Energy as Currency: Just as silver in ancient China or gold in Rome was a measure of wealth due to their scarcity and the effort involved in mining them, Bitcoin's value can be seen through the energy it consumes. Mining Bitcoin means solving complex mathematical problems, requiring vast amounts of energy. This energy use is directly proportional to the number of hashes performed.
• Security and Trust: The hash rate symbolizes the security of the Bitcoin network. The higher the number of hashes needed to mine a block, the more secure the network is against attacks, much like the security derived from the rarity and difficulty of mining gold or silver.
• Decentralization and Proof-of-Work: Unlike the geographical and economic centralization inherent to gold or silver mining, Bitcoin's mining operates on a fundamentally decentralized model, with computational resources distributed globally. Each hash performed in the proof-of-work process reinforces the blockchain's security, ensuring the immutability and trustworthiness of transactions while mitigating the risks of single points of failure or centralized control.
• Inflation and Scarcity: Just as gold or silver's value was influenced by their scarcity during ancient times, Bitcoin's value in hashes reflects its programmed scarcity in the modern digital era. With a cap at 21 million bitcoins, each hash becomes more significant as the network grows, mirroring how each ounce of gold or silver was once precious in ancient economies.

A hash represents a tangible physical process, consuming energy to be generated. Therefore, it's more insightful to express Bitcoin's value in terms of hashes per bitcoin—comparing the computational effort and energy expended in mining to the Bitcoin rewards earned through that process.

While Bitcoin is frequently evaluated in terms of its dollar price, its intrinsic value is more accurately reflected in the metric of hashes per bitcoin. This measure encapsulates the computational effort and energy expenditure required for mining, underscoring Bitcoin's unique nature as a digital asset intrinsically tied to tangible, real, and energy-based costs. By anchoring its valuation to the immutable principles of thermodynamic expenditure, Bitcoin transcends the transient and inflationary characteristics of fiat currency, aligning its worth with the enduring physicality of energy—whether from the labor-intensive extraction of ancient minerals or the vast computational networks powering modern cryptographic systems.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

litepub

A Go library that abstracts all the burdensome ActivityPub things and provides just the right amount of helpers necessary to integrate an existing website into the "fediverse" (what an odious name). Made for the gravity integration.

• https://godoc.org/github.com/fiatjaf/litepub

See also

-

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@ a0c34d34:fef39af1

I feel fabulously free, I deleted TikTok. I am spending less time on my phone and more time developing Onboard60. I never expected to go from the Metaverse to A.I. healthcare and NFCC medical bracelets.

I was on Vine, Twitter back in 2009… I went from 8 second nonsensical videos and funny tweets to diving deeper down any rabbit hole I ever imagined.

In 2016, I heard a little noise about Bitcoin and I haven’t gotten off the rollercoaster of a merry go round yet. If you know, you know.

I found Nostr awhile ago but I’m no maxi, I’m curious. I learned about different things pertaining to blockchain and cryptocurrency, social media and protocols.

I kept journals of my fears and conferences I experienced and published them as my first years behind the scenes of a senior citizen diving deep into the unknowns.

Someone had to tell me I was a senior citizen. I’m 64 now , that was four years ago. Since then I took a crazy idea and started Onboard60.

I created a curriculum for myself. For years I have learned a variety of subjects. I took the basics and made a cliff note booklet - Web3 1101 for Seniors.

I didn’t want to be left behind so I learned Spatial and created an auditorium, an art gallery and an office. It was my attempt to get senior citizens involved to connect with their grandkids in virtual reality like Roblox.

Over the years, I’ve written articles on Substack sharing my journey, and sporadically posted on Zentaurios. I remember writing on YakiHonne when I first discovered it.

Onboard60 has become more than what I ever thought it would be, as I started just sharing my journey in hopes others would join me.

I hoped senior citizens would be interested in learning how to put their trust funds, H.O.A.s, POLSTs and other senior citizen documents on chain.

The past four years, nothing until I speak of medical bracelets. I do not mention BitDoctor AI or mirrors that do body scans. Bracelets, I speak bracelets.

The focus is to keep senior citizens up to date with new technologies that focus on improving their quality of life.

Finding YakiHonne again is refreshing. The esthetics clean, seemless cross posting, and better options for posting. Soft landing.

I have learned a lot over the years, experiencing this space becoming , watching protocols grow, some platforms fizzle, creating a new world isn’t easy.

I’m enjoying being a mermaid in Monniverse community on Farcaster, not Farcaster itself but enjoy being a mermaid. Monniverse is a decentralized animation production company. I’m learning how to use the image generator and like the global reach.

I have compromised on so many social media sites just to be on them. I still frequent Twitter Onboard60, and have my old Vine group on Instagram. I spend time on Lens mostly.

I use traditional media to share Onboard60 - LinkedIn and YouTube for Onboard60. I am creating a digital replica of all the information, subjects, videos, content that I created as Onboard60. I hope to keep it updated as times goes forward.

I’m going to use my guide to IRL events at Blockchain Miami in a few weeks, WAGMI MIAMI. After so many conferences and events, I had to write down a step by step how to get through these and follow up after. They can be overwhelming and I needed a way to decompress. My guide helps me.

I seem to be rambling. I don’t have a purpose or any value to share with this article, I just wanted to share my thoughts for now, walking into 2025.

Sandra ,Samm,Sababa

Onboard60, founder

@ 362ebffa:492e2719

Opening of Raiders of the Lost Ark might unfold from the perspective of a Hovitos warrior loyal to Belloq:

---

The jungle was alive with whispers. Not the whispers of the wind through the trees or the calls of birds, but the urgent murmurs of my people. We had been tracking the strangers for hours, moving silently through the dense underbrush. They were outsiders, white men with strange tools and greed in their eyes, led by the arrogant one, Belloq.

Belloq spoke our tongue, but his words were twisted, like vines choking the life from a tree. He promised power, gold, and glory—things our gods have no need for. Yet, he was clever, and his promises had lured some of our young ones to his side. We followed because the elders had commanded it. We would protect our sacred places, no matter the cost.

When we reached the temple, I saw the other stranger—a different one. He moved like a hunter, careful and deliberate, his whip coiled at his side. Belloq called him “Dr. Jones,” though his name meant little to me. This one, I could tell, was not here for conquest but for knowledge, though the gods would not look kindly on his intrusion either.

We watched from the shadows as the man descended into the temple. The jungle fell silent, save for the occasional murmur from Belloq as he waited, smug and assured. I did not like him, this Belloq. He spoke of the gods as if they were toys, things to be played with or controlled. But I obeyed the elders, so I stayed at his side, my spear in hand.

Time dragged. When Jones emerged, the golden idol in his hands, I felt my heart tighten. He had survived the traps and claimed what should never have been touched. Belloq stepped forward then, his voice smooth as the river. He raised his hands, and Jones hesitated. The two exchanged words in the foreign tongue, their voices tense. And then it happened.

Belloq betrayed him, of course. He always does. The idol was handed over, and Jones ran, chased by my brothers, though none could match his speed. Belloq turned to us, holding the golden figure high as if it were some great prize. I felt the weight of it then—not the gold itself but the burden of what had been disturbed.

The jungle is patient, but its wrath is not. I knew the gods were watching, and their silence would not last.

---

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

questo.email

This was a thing done in a brief period I liked the idea of "indiewebcamp", a stupid movement of people saying everybody should have their site and post their lives in it.

From the GitHub postmortem:

questo.email was a service that integrated email addresses into the indieweb ecosystem by providing email-to-note and email-to-webmention triggers, which could be used for people to comment through webmention using their email addresses, and be replied, and also for people to send messages from their sites directly to the email addresses of people they knew; Questo also worked as an IndieAuth provider that used people's email addresses and Mozilla Persona.

It was live from December 2014 through December 2015.

Here's how the home page looked:

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/questo.email

See also

• jekmentions, another thing related to "indieweb"

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@ badbdda5:8cdc962a

Abstract

In this article, we try to explain how deletion requests on the Nostr work, and how we can probably improve this using filters.

NIP-09: Deletion Request

As you know, we can request the election of an event that we own using a kind 5 event like the below based on nip-09:

json { "kind": 5, "pubkey": "<32-bytes hex-encoded public key of the event creator>", "tags": [ ["e", "dcd59..464a2"], ["e", "968c5..ad7a4"], ["a", "<kind>:<pubkey>:<d-identifier>"], ["k", "1"], ["k", "30023"] ], "content": "these posts were published by accident", // other fields... }

There are 2 important limitations to this model:

1. We can't request a to delete huge amount of events with complex conditions in one request since it would result in an event with a lot of tags which may some relays even reject because of the number of tags. for example, you can think of deleting all of your reactions to the posts of one of your followings.
2. There is no guarantee for a kind 5 request to be executed by all relays and clients since they can keep a copy of events json forever.

Deletion Using Filters

Based on issues that we had with the old model used in nip-09 we tried to find different ways to fix them. Deletion using filter i is a new model that tries to fix the first issue. The third issue is still under research.

Nostr utilizes a query model called filter to query events that can be checked and matched with an event and receive only 2 results that are matched and not matched. So, we can define a structure that can be matched with any number of events.

We define a new tag called filter which contains a stringified Nostr filter. Using this tag, we construct a kind 5 event that requests the deletion of all events matching with that event. Here is an example:

json { "kind": 5, "pubkey": "aca682c51c44c9046461de0cb34bcc6338d5562cdf9062aee9c3ca5a4ca0ab3c", "tags": [ ["filter", "{\n \"authors\": [\"aca682c51c44c9046461de0cb34bcc6338d5562cdf9062aee9c3ca5a4ca0ab3c\"],\n \"kinds\": [7],\n \"#p\": \"aca682c51c44c9046461de0cb34bcc6338d5562cdf9062aee9c3ca5a4ca0ab3c\",\n \"since\": 0,\n \"until\": 2147483647,\n}"] ], "content": "i don't want to be selfish anymore.", // other fields... }

In this example, aca682c51c44c9046461de0cb34bcc6338d5562cdf9062aee9c3ca5a4ca0ab3c public key requests to delete all of their reactions on their on events.

Or using the example below, you can request account deletion:

json { "kind": 5, "pubkey": "aca682c51c44c9046461de0cb34bcc6338d5562cdf9062aee9c3ca5a4ca0ab3c", "tags": [ ["filter", "{\n \"authors\": [\"aca682c51c44c9046461de0cb34bcc6338d5562cdf9062aee9c3ca5a4ca0ab3c\"],\n}"] ], "content": "use my new pubkey: cc6...a0a.", // other fields... }

Filter Limitations and Details

Here is a list of limitations and considerations for those who are using the filter tag on kind 5:

1. authors: This field must be implicit and it MUST always contain one pubkey which is the pubkey of the deletion author. Some relays MAY accept multiple pubkeys from moderators events. (but it's RECOMMENDED for it to be applied from nip-86 management API, gRPC API, or anything used for managing relay.)

2. limit: This field MUST be ignored since the limit selection can be different in the relay/client internal system.

3. search: A relay MAY support NIP-50 search for this purpose.

4. until/since: These fields would be used instead of the event created_at for time. But relay MAY follow any of the below behaviors: 4.1. They only let pubkeys request the deletion of old events, not future events and consider the since field. 4.2 They MAY keep a list of deleted filters in a hashmap with pubkey as the key to check any incoming event with the filter and they can drop the filer once we pass the until. this would be an expensive action to accept kind 5 from all pubkeys, relays MAY charge some fee or require some amount of work to accept kind 5 in this case.

Thanks mike@mikedilger.com for sharing his ideas on this PR.

Uses cases

Here is a small list of use cases for this model:

1. Account Deletion Request: a pubkey can request for deletion of their account.

2. Bulk Remove: Chat clients for example can support the selection of multiple messages and requests for deletion.

3. Force Limit: The Relays that keep the filter using the until field can be used by a pubkey to force the relay to not accept a specific event matching that filter for a specific time.

Final Words

This standard is currently in beta version, not merged in the nips repo, and it is implemented and supported in the Immortal relay.

1. Open PR on NIPs.
2. Example implementation in Golang.

@ c8ea6fc4:54426263

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@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

idea: Rumple

a payments network based on trust channels

This is the description of a Lightning-like network that will work only with credit or trust-based channels and exist alongside the normal Lightning Network. I imagine some people will think this is undesirable and at the same time very easy to do (such that if it doesn't exist yet it must be because no one cares), but in fact it is a very desirable thing -- which I hope I can establish below -- and at the same time a very non-trivial problem to solve, as the history of Ryan Fugger's Ripple project and posterior copies of it show.

Read these first to get the full context:

1. Ryan Fugger's Ripple
2. Ripple and the problem of the decentralized commit
3. The Lightning Network solves the problem of the decentralized commit
4. Parallel Chains

Explanation about the name

Since we're copying the fundamental Ripple idea from Ryan Fugger and since the name "Ripple" is now associated with a scam coin called XRP, and since Ryan Fugger has changed the name of his old website "Ripplepay" to "Rumplepay", we will follow his lead here. If "Ripplepay" was the name of a centralized prototype to the open peer-to-peer network "Ripple", now that the centralized version is called "Rumplepay" the peer-to-peer version must be called "Rumple".

Now the idea

Basically we copy the Lightning Network, but without HTLCs or channels being opened and closed with funds committed to them on multisig Bitcoin transactions published to the blockchain. Instead we use pure trust relationships like the original Ripple concept.

And we use the blockchain commit method, but instead of spending an absurd amount of money to use the actual Bitcoin blockchain instead we use a parallel chain.

How exactly -- a protocol proposal attempt

It could work like this:

The parallel chain, or "Rumple Chain"

1. We define a parallel chain with a genesis block;
2. Following blocks must contain a. the ID of the previous block; b. a list of up to 32768 entries of arbitrary 32-byte values; c. an ID constituted by sha256(the previous block ID + the merkle root of all the entries)
3. To be mined, each parallel block must be included in the Bitcoin chain according as explained above.

Now that we have a structure for a simple "blockchain" that is completely useless, just blocks over blocks of meaningless values, we proceed to the next step of assigning meaning to these values.

The off-chain payments network, or "Rumple Network"

1. We create a network of nodes that can talk to each other via TCP messages (all details are the same as the Lightning Network, except where mentioned otherwise);
2. These nodes can create trust channels to each other. These channels are backed by nothing except the willingness of one peer to pay the other what is owed.
3. When Alice creates a trust channel with Bob (Alice trusts Bob), contrary to what happens in the Lightning Network, it's A that can immediately receive payments through that channel, and everything A receives will be an IOU from Bob to Alice. So Alice should never open a channel to Bob unless Alice trusts Bob. But also Alice can choose the amount of trust it has in Bob, she can, for example, open a very small channel with Bob, which means she will only lose a few satoshis if Bob decides to exit scam her. (in the original Ripple examples these channels were always depicted as friend relationships, and they can continue being that, but it's expected -- given the experience of the Lightning Network -- that the bulk of the channels will exist between users and wallet provider nodes that will act as hubs).
4. As Alice receive a payment through her channel with Bob, she becomes a creditor and Bob a debtor, i.e., the balance of the channel moves a little to her side. Now she can use these funds to make payments over that channel (or make a payment that combines funds from multiple channels using MPP).
5. If at any time Alice decides to close her channel with Bob, she can send all the funds she has standing there to somewhere else (for example, another channel she has with someone else, another wallet somewhere else, a shop that is selling some good or service, or a service that will aggregate all funds from all her channels and send a transaction to the Bitcoin chain on her behalf).
6. If at any time Bob leaves the network Alice is entitled by Bob's cryptographic signatures to knock on his door and demand payment, or go to a judge and ask him to force Bob to pay, or share the signatures and commitments online and hurt Bob's reputation with the rest of the network (but yes, none of these things is good enough and if Bob is a very dishonest person none of these things is likely to save Alice's funds).

The payment flow

1. Suppose there exists a route Alice->Bob->Carol and Alice wants to send a payment to Carol.
2. First Alice reads an invoice she received from Carol. The invoice (which can be pretty similar or maybe even the same as BOLT11) contains a payment hash h and information about how to reach Carol's node, optionally an amount. Let's say it's 100 satoshis.
3. Using the routing information she gathered, Alice builds an onion and sends it to Bob, at the same time she offers to Bob a "conditional IOU". That stands for a signed commitment that Alice will owe Bob an 100 satoshis if in the next 50 blocks of the Rumple Chain there appears a block containing the preimage p such that sha256(p) == h.
4. Bob peels the onion and discovers that he must forward that payment to Carol, so he forwards the peeled onion and offers a conditional IOU to Carol with the same h. Bob doesn't know Carol is the final recipient of the payment, it could potentially go on and on.
5. When Carol gets the conditional IOU from Bob, she makes a list of all the nodes who have announced themselves as miners (which is not something I have mentioned before, but nodes that are acting as miners will must announce themselves somehow) and are online and bidding for the next Rumple block. Each of these miners will have previously published a random 32-byte value v they they intend to include in their next block.
6. Carol sends payments through routes to all (or a big number) of these miners, but this time the conditional IOU contains two conditions (values that must appear in a block for the IOU to be valid): p such that sha256(p) == h (the same that featured in the invoice) and v (which must be unique and constant for each miner, something that is easily verifiable by Carol beforehand). Also, instead of these conditions being valid for the next 50 blocks they are valid only for the single next block.
7. Now Carol broadcasts p to the mempool and hopes one of the miners to which she sent conditional payments sees it and, allured by the possibility of cashing in Carol's payment, includes p in the next block. If that does not happen, Carol can try again in the next block.

Why bother with this at all?

1. The biggest advantage of Lightning is its openness

   It has been said multiple times that if trust is involved then we don't need Lightning, we can use Coinbase, or worse, Paypal. This is very wrong. Lightning is good specially because it serves as a bridge between Coinbase, Paypal, other custodial provider and someone running their own node. All these can transact freely across the network and pay each other without worrying about who is in which provider or setup.

   Rumple inherits that openness. In a Rumple Network anyone is free to open new trust channels and immediately route payments to anyone else.

   Also, since Rumple payments are also based on the reveal of a preimage it can do swaps with Lightning inside a payment route from day one (by which I mean one can pay from Rumple to Lightning and vice-versa).

2. Rumple fixes Lightning's fragility

   Lightning is too fragile.

   It's known that Lightning is vulnerable to multiple attacks -- like the flood-and-loot attack, for example, although not an attack that's easy to execute, it's still dangerous even if failed. Given the existence of these attacks, it's important to not ever open channels with random anonymous people. Some degree of trust must exist between peers.

   But one does not even have to consider attacks. The creation of HTLCs is a liability that every node has to do multiple times during its life. Every initiated, received or forwarded payment require adding one HTLC then removing it from the commitment transaction.

   Another issue that makes trust needed between peers is the fact that channels can be closed unilaterally. Although this is a feature, it is also a bug when considering high-fee environments. Imagine you pay $2 in fees to open a channel, your peer may close that unilaterally in the next second and then you have to pay another $15 to close the channel. The opener pays (this is also a feature that can double as a bug by itself). Even if it's not you opening the channel, a peer can open a channel with you, make a payment, then clone the channel, and now you're left with, say, an output of 800 satoshis, which is equal to zero if network fees are high.

   So you should only open channels with people you know and know aren't going to actively try to hack you and people who are not going to close channels and impose unnecessary costs on you. But even considering a fully trusted Lightning Network, even if -- to be extreme -- you only opened channels with yourself, these channels would still be fragile. If some HTLC gets stuck for any reason (peer offline or some weird small incompatibility between node softwares) and you're forced to close the channel because of that, there are the extra costs of sweeping these UTXO outputs plus the total costs of closing and reopening a channel that shouldn't have been closed in the first place. Even if HTLCs don't get stuck, a fee renegotiation event during a mempool spike may cause channels to force-close, become valueless or settle for very high closing fee.

   Some of these issues are mitigated by Eltoo, others by only having channels with people you trust. Others referenced above, plus the the griefing attack and in general the ability of anyone to spam the network for free with payments that can be pending forever or a lot of payments fail repeatedly makes it very fragile.

   Rumple solves most of these problems by not having to touch the blockchain at all. Fee negotiation makes no sense. Opening and closing channels is free. Flood-and-loot is a non-issue. The griefing attack can be still attempted as funds in trust channels must be reserved like on Lightning, but since there should be no theoretical limit to the number of prepared payments a channel can have, the griefing must rely on actual amounts being committed, which prevents large attacks from being performed easily.

3. Rumple fixes Lightning's unsolvable reputation issues

   In the Lightning Conference 2019, Rusty Russell promised there would be pre-payments on Lightning someday, since everybody was aware of potential spam issues and pre-payments would be the way to solve that. Fast-forward to November 2020 and these pre-payments have become an apparently unsolvable problem[^thread-402]: no one knows how to implement them reliably without destroying privacy completely or introducing worse problems.

   Replacing these payments with tables of reputation between peers is also an unsolved problem[^reputation-lightning], for the same reasons explained in the thread above.

4. Rumple solves the hot wallet problem

   Since you don't have to use Bitcoin keys or sign transactions with a Rumple node, only your channel trust is at risk at any time.

5. Rumple ends custodianship

   Since no one is storing other people's funds, a big hub or wallet provider can be used in multiple payment routes, but it cannot be immediately classified as a "custodian". At best, it will be a big debtor.

6. Rumple is fun

   Opening channels with strangers is boring. Opening channels with friends and people you trust even a little makes that relationship grow stronger and the trust be reinforced. (But of course, like it happens in the Lightning Network today, if Rumple is successful the bulk of trust will be from isolated users to big reliable hubs.)

Questions or potential issues

1. So many advantages, yes, but trusted? Custodial? That's easy and stupid!

   Well, an enormous part of the current Lightning Network (and also onchain Bitcoin wallets) already rests on trust, mainly trust between users and custodial wallet providers like ZEBEDEE, Alby, Wallet-of-Satoshi and others. Worse: on the current Lightning Network users not only trust, they also expose their entire transaction history to these providers[^hosted-channels].

   Besides that, as detailed in point 3 of the previous section, there are many unsolvable issues on the Lightning protocol that make each sovereign node dependent on some level of trust in its peers (and the network in general dependent on trusting that no one else will spam it to death).

   So, given the current state of the Lightning Network, to trust peers like Rumple requires is not a giant change -- but it is still a significant change: in Rumple you shouldn't open a large trust channel with someone just because it looks trustworthy, you must personally know that person and only put in what you're willing to lose. In known brands that have reputation to lose you can probably deposit more trust, same for long-term friends, and that's all. Still it is probably good enough, given the existence of MPP payments and the fact that the purpose of Rumple is to be a payments network for day-to-day purchases and not a way to buy real estate.

2. Why would anyone run a node in this parallel chain?

   I don't know. Ideally every server running a Rumple Network node will be running a Bitcoin node and a Rumple chain node. Besides using it to confirm and publish your own Rumple Network transactions it can be set to do BMM mining automatically and maybe earn some small fees comparable to running a Lightning routing node or a JoinMarket yield generator.

   Also it will probably be very lightweight, as pruning is completely free and no verification-since-the-genesis-block will take place.

3. What is the maturity of the debt that exists in the Rumple Network or its legal status?

   By default it is to be understood as being payable on demand for payments occurring inside the network (as credit can be used to forward or initiate payments by the creditor using that channel). But details of settlement outside the network or what happens if one of the peers disappears cannot be enforced or specified by the network.

   Perhaps some standard optional settlement methods (like a Bitcoin address) can be announced and negotiated upon channel creation inside the protocol, but nothing more than that.

[^thread-402]: Read at least the first 10 messages of the thread to see how naïve proposals like you and me could have thought about are brought up and then dismantled very carefully by the group of people most committed to getting Lightning to work properly. [^reputation-lightning]: See also the footnote at Ripple and the problem of the decentralized commit. [^hosted-channels]: Although that second part can be solved by hosted channels.

@ fe02e8ec:f07fbe0b

Warum Trump?

Die hierzulande völlig falsch vorhergesagten Ergebnisse bei der US-Wahl sowie die Regierungskrise in Deutschland stellt viele Menschen vor die Frage: wohin bewegen wir uns, was ist auf dieser Welt eigentlich los? Die Medien verlieren in nie gekanntem Ausmaß an Vertrauen und auch die Politiker können den Bürgern die Welt nicht mehr erklären, geschweige denn glaubhafte Lösungen aufzeigen. Wie konnte es so weit kommen? Und wie kommen wir wieder dazu, miteinander zu reden und um Lösungen zu ringen anstatt die jeweils andere Seite zu verleumden und zu diskreditieren?

Dieser Artikel beleuchtet die Situation aus der Perspektive von Werteebenen und Weltbildern. Ganz entscheidend dafür sind die Biografie und das Wertesystem der Menschen. Der amerikanische Wissenschaftler Clare Graves hat in den 80er Jahren diese unterschiedlichen Ebenen erstmals beschrieben und ein Modell dazu entwickelt (‹Spiral Dynamics›, auch Bestandteil der Integralen Theorie von Ken Wilber). Das Modell beschreibt, wie sich Menschen und Gesellschaften im Lauf ihrer Entwicklung auf unterschiedlichen Werteebenen bewegen und wie eine Gruppe die andere kaum verstehen kann. Und hier liegt die Problematik unserer Gesellschaften: in den USA (ebenso wie in Europa) haben wir es parallel mit drei sehr unterschiedlichen Wertesystemen und Weltbildern zu tun, die sich heute immer stärker voneinander abgrenzen.

Die aktuell erlebten drei Ebenen sind (in knapper Darstellung):

Die Ebene ‹Ordnung, Recht und Gesetz›: Das Wichtigste ist, dass das Zusammenleben der Menschen durch einen klaren Ordnungsrahmen bestimmt wird. Fehlverhalten wird konsequent geahndet. Der Einzelne fühlt sich sicher, gemeinsam ist man stark. Die Freiheit des Einzelnen ist innerhalb des Rahmens von Gesetz und Ordnung garantiert. Das gemeinsam Erreichte ist wichtiger als das unbekannte Neue. Religion und Tradition spielen eine wichtige Rolle (politisch: rechts-konservativ).

Die Ebene ‹anything goes›: Jeder ist seines Glückes Schmied, jeder kann erfolgreich sein, wenn er sich nur genügend anstrengt. Wettbewerb zwischen Menschen und Unternehmen prägt Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft; persönlicher Erfolg, Effizienz und Leistung sind treibende Kräfte, Selbstoptimierung wird zur Pflichtübung für viele. Technische Erfindungen erleichtern und verändern unser Leben, wirken sich aber auch auf das Ökosystem und den Planten aus. Religion und Tradition werden zu Gunsten der Wissenschaft getauscht (politisch: (neo-)liberal)

Die Ebene des ‹Pluralismus›: Jeder und alles wird akzeptiert und hat ein Recht darauf, sein ‹Ding› zu leben. Der Einzelne übernimmt größere Verantwortung für sein Tun im Hinblick auf die Umwelt, Randgruppen, Ethik. Konsens geht vor Diskurs, Gefühle sind wichtiger als Rationalität. Gesetze und Struktur (z. B. Ländergrenzen) sind ‹old school›, denn keiner möchte sich etwas vorschreiben lassen und wenn alle Menschen gleich sind, so braucht es keine Länder mehr. Es gibt keine absolute Wahrheit, jeder hat mit seiner eigenen (gefühlten) Wahrheit grundsätzlich recht. Man erlebt sich als moralisch höherstehend, Political Correctness oder Wokeness werden zu einer Art Religion (politisch: links-grün, Identitätspolitik).

(Durch die Zuwanderung existieren noch weitere Ebenen, vor allem die Stammesebene mit dem Wert der Ehre an oberster Stelle, doch dies wird hier nicht weiter ausgeführt).

So lange keine Existenzängste, keine Bedrohung von innen oder außen und keine größere Krise drohten konnten diese Ebenen zumeist gut nebeneinander existieren. Heute allerdings, da die scheinbaren und realen Bedrohungsszenarien permanent wachsen, prallen die unterschiedlichen Werte bei Wahlen, Parteiprogrammen und in den Medien mit Wucht aufeinander. Verstärkt wird die Problematik dadurch, dass sich die Anhänger des Pluralismus auf einer höheren moralischen Ebene wähnen, was sie scheinbar berechtigt, mit den anderen jeden Dialog verweigern. Hierbei erleben wir einen fundamentalen Widerspruch, denn während die Ebene des Pluralismus einerseits behauptet, dass es keine absoluten Wahrheiten gibt, halten sie gleichzeitig ihr eigenes Weltbild und ihre Werte für unumstößlich wahr. Dieser Widerspruch wird allerdings nicht bemerkt und macht Diskussionen deshalb umso schwieriger bis unmöglich. Während vor gut 100 Jahren die Verantwortungsmoral wesentlich höher gewichtet wurde als die Gesinnungsmoral hat sich dieses Verhältnis heute radikal verkehrt.

Der US-Wahlkampf seitens der ‹Demokraten› hat auch gezeigt, wie Menschen mit anderen Werten von den sogenannten Eliten verachtet werden. Sie wurden als Abgehängte, **‹**Basket of deplorables› (Hillary Clinton) oder ‹Müll› (Biden) bezeichnet. Dabei sind es genau diese Menschen, die durch ihre Arbeit die Versorgung des Landes sicherstellen. Trump hat die unnachahmliche Fähigkeit, diese Menschen anzusprechen und ihnen ein Gefühl der Akzeptanz und Wertschätzung zu geben, obwohl er Milliardär ist. Gerade bei jungen Männern konnte er punkten, da diese die permanenten Beleidigungen durch die Woken (‹toxische› Männlichkeit) und deren Umerziehungsversuche leid sind.

Das Modell der Werteebenen, Spiral Dynamics, kennt allerdings noch eine weitere Entwicklung, die Integrale Ebene, die auch in der Integralen Theorie von Ken Wilber eine bedeutsame Rolle spielt. Sie ist diejenige Ebene, der es gelingt, die jeweilige Berechtigung der anderen Ebenen zu erkennen. So ist ‹Ordnung, Recht und Gesetz› dafür zuständig, das Bedürfnis der Menschen nach Sicherheit zu erfüllen. Sicherheit, genug zu essen zu haben, ein Dach über dem Kopf, eine verfügbare und bezahlbare Gesundheitsversorgung und natürlich körperliche Sicherheit, d. h. möglichst keinen Angriffen ausgesetzt zu werden. Die Ebene ‹anything goes› erfüllt das Bedürfnis nach Individualität, nach persönlicher Freiheit, nach Unabhängigkeit von Institutionen und kirchlichen Vorschriften. Sie ermöglichte die großen Erfindungen, das enorme Wachstum des Wohlstands, aber auch der Ausbeutung des Planeten. Der Pluralismus erfüllt unser Bedürfnis nach Kooperation, nach größerer Verantwortung für Natur und Umwelt sowie nach Gleichberechtigung (nicht: Gleichstellung).

Problematisch dabei ist, dass jede Ebene die anderen ablehnt, entweder, weil sie nicht verstanden oder für bereits überwunden gehalten werden. Dabei hat jede – wie beschrieben – ihre Berechtigung. Erst die Integrale Ebene erkennt dies und kann die jeweiligen Werte wertschätzen. Dazu kommt, dass sich hier eine neue Spiritualität entwickeln kann, die ein Bewusstseinswachstum mit sich bringt. Weg von den institutionalisierten Kirchen, hin zu einer individuellen Suche und Erkenntnis. Denn gerade die anything-goes-Ebene hat mit ihrem Konzept von Wissenschaft den GEIST aus der Materie verbannt, was letztlich auch zu dem überbordenden Materialismus geführt hat, den wir seit den 60er-Jahren beobachten können.

Spiral Dynamics beschreibt diese Werteebenen als Antworten von Gesellschaften auf die herrschenden Umweltbedingungen. Während der überwiegenden Zeit der Menschheitsgeschichte waren Gesellschaften hinsichtlich ihrer Werte homogen. Der Übergang von einer zur anderen Ebene dauerte mehrere Generationen. Heute haben wir erstmals in der Geschichte die Situation, dass drei und mehr Ebenen gleichzeitig innerhalb einer Gesellschaft existieren. Dies erklärt anschaulich, woher das fundamentale Nichtverstehen ganzer Bevölkerungsgruppen herrührt. Der Übergang von einer Ebene zur nächsten kann nicht erzwungen werden, er erfolgt auf Grund der persönlichen Lebensumgebung. Das erklärt zum Beispiel die Unterschiede zwischen Stadt und Land, zwischen den Generationen oder Studenten aus bestimmten Fachrichtungen verglichen mit Menschen aus produzierenden Berufen. Dazu kommt, dass niemand ausschließlich in einer einzigen Werteeben zuhause ist, vielmehr gibt es Überschneidungen. Kommt es jedoch zu kritischen Situationen, so sucht man diejenige Ebene auf, die die größte Sicherheit verspricht.

In der Politik kommt noch eine besondere Zutat hinzu: der unbedingte Wille zur Macht. Das Ergebnis ist eine fundamentale Spaltung der Gesellschaft, wie in den USA zwischen Trump- und Harris-Anhängern zu beobachten oder in Deutschland, Österreich, Frankreich, Holland u. a. Ländern zwischen Anhängern linker und rechter Parteien. Die Anhänger des anderen Lagers sind dann wahlweise gefährliche Idioten, linksgrün versifft, Populisten, Rassisten oder gleich Nazis.

Der Spaltpilz besteht aus dem Unverständnis (und der Nicht-Akzeptanz) für andere Menschen und deren Weltverständnis, gepaart mit dem Machtwillen der Politiker.

Problematisch im ‹Wertewesten› ist fast überall die mediale Berichterstattung, die das Werteverständnis von deutlich weniger als 50% der Bevölkerung zur Grundlage hat, da sie primär durch Menschen erfolgt, die sich als Pluralisten sehen (politisch links-grün). Statt möglichst objektiv zu berichten haben sie den Anspruch, auf den anderen, größeren Teil der Bevölkerung erzieherisch einzuwirken. Doch die großen Medienhäuser sind heute keine Gatekeeper mehr. Schon seit Jahren haben sie nicht mehr die Hoheit darüber, was die Menschen in welcher Form und mit welcher Interpretation erfahren sollen. Das Internet hat hier etwas fundamental Neues bewirkt: die Empfänger konnten erstmals zu Sendern werden! Einzelne (Joe Rogan, Tucker Carlson), Gruppen, alternative Medien bauten sich Reichweiten auf, mit welchen sie zu den Etablierten direkt in Wettbewerb treten. Und oft sogar eine höhere Glaubwürdigkeit genießen.

Damit ist erstmals seit Menschengedenken das Meinungs- und Interpretationsmonopol der Mächtigen in großem Stil durchbrochen. Die Angst der Eliten kann man täglich beobachten, wenn die neu geschaffenen Zensurgesetze gegen unliebsame Meinungen zum Einsatz kommen (Digital Service Act). Hier spielt die EU eine Vorreiterrolle und Deutschland meldet mit Abstand die meisten Fälle von ‹Hass und Hetze› an die Meldestellen. Dies wird noch viel massivere Formen annehmen, siehe die EU-Gesetzgebung, die ‹Trusted Flagger› oder zum Beispiel die Verhaftung des telegram Gründers Pavel Durov zur Erpressung der Zusammenarbeit. Eine Gegenbewegung im Sinne freier Meinungsäußerung stellt dagegen X.com (twitter) dar, weshalb Elon Musk für einige nun zum Staatsfeind Nr. 2 (nach Trump) ‹aufstieg›, s. Spiegel. Der Wahlausgang in den USA gibt Anlass zur Hoffnung, dass die Zensurpolitik künftig nicht weiter verschärft werden wird.

Die Menschen wehren sich

Die größten politischen Schockereignisse im letzten Jahrzehnt waren die Wahl Trumps 2016 und nun erneut 2024 sowie der Brexit (Abstimmung 2016). Wie konnte es dazu kommen, obwohl nach übereinstimmenden Analysen 90% der Medien für die Gegenseite geschrieben und gesendet hatten? Die hier beschriebenen Zusammenhänge machen klar, dass ein immer größer werdender Teil der Bevölkerung Medien und Politik von ihrer Lebenswirklichkeit abgekoppelt erleben, deren Ziele kaum noch Gemeinsamkeiten haben mit den Bedürfnissen großer Teile der Gesellschaft. Eine bittere Desillusionierung ist die Folge: die Erkenntnis, dass die Demokratie aufgehört hat zu funktionieren und durch eine Oligarchie abgelöst wurde (laut Studie der Princeton University für die USA). Die immer größere Schere zwischen den superreichen 0,1 Prozent und dem Rest vertiefen bei den Wählern den Graben zu ‹denen in Washington› oder ‹denen in Berlin›. Und deshalb entschieden sich nun in den USA zig Millionen Menschen dafür, auf keinen Fall ein ‹Weiter-so‹ zu wählen. Und Trump war damals geschickt und ist es heute wieder: er verspricht Stärke, Sicherheit, ‹Make America great again›. Also Werte aus der Ebene ‹Ordnung, Recht und Gesetz›: wirtschaftlichen Aufschwung, weniger Immigranten, das Recht auf Waffenbesitz. Aber auch Menschen, die ihre Individualität schätzen wählten Trump, denn er verspricht – zusammen mit Elon Musk – weniger Zensur, technische Innovationen, volle Akzeptanz von Bitcoin. Werte aus der Ebene ‹anything-goes›. Damit erreicht er die Mehrheit der Menschen aus zwei Ebenen, während Harris mit den Schwerpunkten Identitätspolitik, Weiter-so und Wokismus nur eine der drei Ebenen erreichen konnte.

Und in Deutschland?

In Deutschland existieren ebenfalls die beschriebenen drei Werteebenen. Und gleichzeitig gibt es große Unterschiede zu den USA. Das Nummer-eins-Ziel der USA ist es die größte Nation der Welt zu sein und damit implizit alles zu tun, um diesen Status aufrecht zu erhalten. Das betrifft die Geopolitik, das Militär, das Finanzwesen, die Kulturproduktion, die Digitalindustrie, die Medien. Das ist so ziemlich das Gegenteil deutschen innen- und außenpolitischen Verständnisses. Und wo in den USA das Prinzip des ‹the winner gets it all› dominiert, gab es in Deutschland lange Zeit die weitgehend gut funktionierende Soziale Markwirtschaft. Ein weiterer großer Unterschied: während in den USA lange Zeit die Linken die Erzfeinde der Nation waren („alles Kommunisten“) und es nach rechts kaum Grenzen gibt ist es in Deutschland exakt umgekehrt. Durch Instrumentalisierung der historischen Schuld wird alles, was nur im Entferntesten als national bezeichnet werden könnte, in die Verdammnis rechts=Nazi geworfen. Damit wird nationales Eigeninteresse, das für jede Regierung handlungsleitend sein sollte, in die no-go Area verschoben!

Diese politische No-go Area in Deutschland liegt nun aber genau in den Werteebenen großer Bevölkerungsteile. Und hier zeigt sich die aktuelle Problematik: Statt dass verschiedene politische Richtungen im echten Diskurs um die beste Lösung feilschen, besteht die Taktik ausschließlich darin, das verminte Gebiet des Nicht-Diskutierbaren (Overton Window) immer weiter auszudehnen. Kampfbegriffe wie**** Populisten, ‹Rechte› (was ja eine weit verbreitete**** und notwendige politische Richtung darstellt, jedenfalls in allen anderen demokratischen Ländern) oder sogar ‹Nazi› führen dazu, dass kein einziges Thema – und sei es noch so wichtig – auf der Sachebene diskutiert werden kann.

Die Betrachtung der Werteebenen stellt natürlich nur einen Ausschnitt dar aus der komplexen gesellschaftlichen und politischen Realität. Dennoch vermag sie zu mehr Verständnis der aktuellen Verhältnisse verhelfen. Was hier nicht betrachtet wurde ist die Ausbeutung der Bedürfnisse von Menschen speziell aus der Gruppe Pluralismus. Ihr Wunsch nach Gleichberechtigung und Schutz von Umwelt und Klima wird von sehr mächtigen Gruppen und Personen dazu missbraucht, bestimmte Themen voranzutreiben (Abschaffung von: Nationen, Geschlechtsidentität, Heimatbezug, gemeinsamer Kultur u. a.), unter Einsatz extremer Manipulationstechniken. Dazu mehr in einem eigenen Beitrag.

Die Wahl Trumps wird die Deutungshoheit der Staats- und Konzernmedien weiter schwächen. In den USA vertrauen ihnen weniger als 30% der Menschen, in Deutschland noch immerhin knapp die Hälfte. Doch was hilft uns diese Erkenntnis? Viel interessanter ist die Frage, was jeder einzelne tun kann in dieser verfahrenen Situation. Wie können wir daran mitwirken, dass die Gräben nicht tiefer, die Verachtung für die jeweils andere Seite nicht größer wird?

Dieser Beitrag erschien ebenfalls bei Radio München >> hier anhören

Oder direkt hier:

https://soundcloud.com/radiomuenchen/werte-warum-trump-von-thomas-eisinger

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@ 16d11430:61640947

The Efficient Markets Hypothesis (EMH) is a cornerstone of modern financial theory. It suggests that markets are so good at processing information that asset prices reflect all available data at any given moment. According to this theory, it is nearly impossible to consistently "beat the market" through strategies based on publicly available information, as the market price already incorporates it.

The EMH can be categorized into three levels of efficiency:

1. Weak Form Efficiency: Prices reflect all historical price and volume data.

2. Semi-Strong Form Efficiency: Prices reflect all publicly available information, such as news, earnings, and economic data.

3. Strong Form Efficiency: Prices reflect all information, both public and private, including insider knowledge.

While there is ongoing debate about the extent to which markets are truly efficient, the EMH helps explain how financial systems evolve to allocate resources toward the most efficient and reliable assets.

---

What Does Efficiency Mean for Markets?

In practical terms, efficiency means that markets naturally favor assets that perform the job of "money" or "store of value" better than alternatives. An efficient market rewards assets that are:

Reliable: Stable in terms of supply and value over time.

Accessible: Easily transferred and exchanged with minimal friction.

Secure: Resistant to loss or manipulation.

Predictable: Free from arbitrary external interference or inflationary policies.

When applied to money and investments, market efficiency drives a gradual move toward assets that better fulfill these criteria. This is where Bitcoin enters the picture.

---

Why Bitcoin Fits the Criteria for Efficiency

Bitcoin is fundamentally different from fiat currencies like dollars, euros, or yen. It is not controlled by any central authority, government, or corporation. Instead, it operates on a decentralized, transparent network governed by unchangeable rules coded into its system. This unique setup gives Bitcoin characteristics that align strongly with market efficiency:

1. Fixed Supply and Predictability

Unlike fiat currencies, which can be printed in unlimited quantities by central banks, Bitcoin has a hard cap of 21 million coins. This makes it immune to inflation caused by excessive money printing—a common issue with fiat currencies. Markets tend to favor assets with predictable supply, as it allows for better long-term planning and investment.

1. Global Accessibility

Bitcoin can be sent and received anywhere in the world without relying on banks or financial intermediaries. This level of accessibility makes it far more efficient than traditional systems, where cross-border transactions often involve delays, fees, and exchange rate fluctuations.

1. Security and Decentralization

Bitcoin's decentralized network ensures that no single entity can control or manipulate it. Transactions are verified by a global network of computers, making it one of the most secure financial systems ever created. This resilience appeals to markets looking for stability and reliability.

1. Efficiency in Value Transfer

Traditional financial systems rely on a chain of intermediaries, each adding costs and delays to transactions. Bitcoin operates on a peer-to-peer basis, allowing value to be transferred directly between parties with minimal fees and no intermediaries. Over time, this efficiency reduces friction in the global economy.

---

Why Markets May Gravitate Toward Bitcoin

If markets are truly efficient, they will naturally gravitate toward assets that best serve the needs of participants. Bitcoin's unique combination of scarcity, security, accessibility, and efficiency positions it as a strong contender for this role. Here’s why:

1. Store of Value: Just as gold has historically been a trusted store of value due to its scarcity, Bitcoin offers a digital alternative with even greater predictability and portability.

2. Hedge Against Inflation: With central banks around the world printing money at unprecedented rates, Bitcoin provides a way to protect wealth from the erosion of purchasing power caused by inflation.

3. Global Asset: Bitcoin is not tied to any specific country or economy. It functions as a truly global asset, making it an attractive option in an increasingly interconnected world.

---

A Transition, Not a Revolution

For those accustomed to fiat currencies, the idea of Bitcoin replacing traditional money may seem far-fetched. But history shows that markets evolve over time to adopt superior systems. Gold gave way to fiat currencies as global economies expanded and required more flexibility. Bitcoin, in turn, offers a solution for the digital age—a system that combines the best properties of money with the efficiencies of modern technology.

This doesn't mean Bitcoin will replace fiat overnight. Instead, it suggests that over time, markets will allocate more resources toward Bitcoin as its advantages become clearer. As more individuals and institutions adopt it, Bitcoin's role in the financial system will grow, reflecting its status as an efficient and reliable asset.

---

Conclusion: Bitcoin and Market Efficiency

The Efficient Markets Hypothesis tells us that markets are driven by information and efficiency. Bitcoin, with its fixed supply, decentralization, and global accessibility, embodies these principles better than traditional fiat systems. While the journey toward widespread adoption may take time, the market’s natural inclination toward efficiency suggests that Bitcoin could play an increasingly central role in the global economy. It’s not just a technological innovation—it’s a reflection of what happens when markets seek the most efficient tools to meet their needs.

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@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Boardthreads

This was a very badly done service for turning a Trello list into a helpdesk UI.

Surprisingly, it had more paying users than Websites For Trello, which I was working on simultaneously and dedicating much more time to it.

The Neo4j database I used for this was a very poor choice, it was probably the cause of all the bugs.

-https://github.com/fiatjaf/boardthreads

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Webvatar

Like Gravatar, but using profile images from websites tagged with "microformats-2" tags, like people from the indiewebcamp movement liked. It falled back to favicon, gravatar and procedural avatar generators.

No one really used this, despite people saying they liked it. Since I was desperate to getting some of my programs appreciated by someone I even bought a domain. It was sad, but an enriching experience.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/webvatar.com
• http://webvatar.com

See also

• jekmentions
• questo.email

@ b6b617bf:50f58f1c

I listened to Natalie Brunell's Coin Stories recently released pod with Jeff Booth last night and am once again finding myself having to develop new thinking about the world and specifically about how this world will look in the future (built upon/in the Bitcoin System).....and I gotta just say - I like what I come up with!

I feel like it takes a lot to recognize that the "System" we all currently live in/on is just that....a system we built, that allows us to communicate with each other in a manner that is conducive to not just our continued existence but that actually allows us to flourish and grow as a species/organism....

Maybe this is where some of Jason Lowery's "Softwar" comes into the mix for me as well....but if we really get out of our heads....and drop our ego's....and recognize that we are nothing but animals attempting to live on a this planet that we just happen to be on...then I think it becomes a little easier to think about the "Systems" we have built for ourselves and how we can change them....

This is the beauty of what Bitcoin is....isn't it? It is a program/protocol that was written, which enables us to communicate with each other in a manner that is decentralized, secure, and open to all of us. Which allows us to verify the information being communicated as being tied to real energy/output of the sender. Hence allowing us to "send" that energy/output to the future through space with minimal data/value loss, which (as we measure from our old system) looks like it is actually becoming more valuable when in reality it is simply not being "stolen" or "taxed" or "corrupted" at the rates of everything else we have built to date to communicate value to each other.

When I look at Bitcoin in this manner - it makes me so....so....so....bullish and hopeful about the future. It allows me to realize that we will get to a much better spot within our world....we are winning....

All succesful systems built upon/within the Bitcoin System - simply are better than all things built upon/within FIAT systems....and this isn't to say that those systems were not valuable....as they got us to where we are today....it is simply to say that those same systems....when they are de-FIAT-ized and are instead built with Bitcoin as their underlying base protocol layer....will be better. They simpy will be more fair, more respectful, more forward thinking than most things we currently have.

And in case you are thinking...I don't believe it, or this guy is off his rocker....or no way Bitcoin changes "human behavior" or greed....

Think about this....

I am building a business, accepting Bitcoin in which I share in future price appreciation of Bitcoin with my customers....

This is a system that is better because of Bitcoin - I can do it because of Bitcoin....and if I can do it....why can't you? Why can't every major business out there? (They can't because their focus is based within the wrong system) but.... as more people like me, build their businesses on Bitcoin and their focus shifts to measuring their success from the Bitcoin eco-system....we will continue to grow and succeed and work with each other in a more cooperative manner vs. being extractive and predatory.

Stay humble and Stack sats!

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/849657

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

The problem with ION

ION is a DID method based on a thing called "Sidetree".

I can't say for sure what is the problem with ION, because I don't understand the design, even though I have read all I could and asked everybody I knew. All available information only touches on the high-level aspects of it (and of course its amazing wonders) and no one has ever bothered to explain the details. I've also asked the main designer of the protocol, Daniel Buchner, but he may have thought I was trolling him on Twitter and refused to answer, instead pointing me to an incomplete spec on the Decentralized Identity Foundation website that I had already read before. I even tried to join the DIF as a member so I could join their closed community calls and hear what they say, maybe eventually ask a question, so I could understand it, but my entrance was ignored, then after many months and a nudge from another member I was told I had to do a KYC process to be admitted, which I refused.

One thing I know is:

• ION is supposed to provide a way to rotate keys seamlessly and automatically without losing the main identity (and the ION proponents also claim there are no "master" keys because these can also be rotated).
• ION is also not a blockchain, i.e. it doesn't have a deterministic consensus mechanism and it is decentralized, i.e. anyone can publish data to it, doesn't have to be a single central server, there may be holes in the available data and the protocol doesn't treat that as a problem.
• From all we know about years of attempts to scale Bitcoins and develop offchain protocols it is clear that you can't solve the double-spend problem without a central authority or a kind of blockchain (i.e. a decentralized system with deterministic consensus).
• Rotating keys also suffer from the double-spend problem: whenever you rotate a key it is as if it was "spent", you aren't supposed to be able to use it again.

The logic conclusion of the 4 assumptions above is that ION is flawed: it can't provide the key rotation it says it can if it is not a blockchain.

See also

• Excerpt of discussion about DIDs and ION

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@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

bolt12 problems

• clients can't programatically build new offers by changing a path or query params (services like zbd.gg or lnurl-pay.me won't work)
• impossible to use in a load-balanced custodian way -- since offers would have to be pregenerated and tied to a specific lightning node.
• the existence of fiat currency fields makes it so wallets have to fetch exchange rates from somewhere on the internet (or offer a bad user experience), using HTTP which hurts user privacy.
• the vendor field is misleading, can be phished very easily, not as safe as a domain name.
• onion messages are an improvement over fake HTLC-based payments as a way of transmitting data, for sure. but we must decide if they are (i) suitable for transmitting all kinds of data over the internet, a replacement for tor; or (ii) not something that will scale well or on which we can count on for the future. if there was proper incentivization for data transmission it could end up being (i), the holy grail of p2p communication over the internet, but that is a very hard problem to solve and not guaranteed to yield the desired scalability results. since not even hints of attempting to solve that are being made, it's safer to conclude it is (ii).

bolt12 limitations

• not flexible enough. there are some interesting fields defined in the spec, but who gets to add more fields later if necessary? very unclear.
• services can't return any actionable data to the users who paid for something. it's unclear how business can be conducted without an extra communication channel.

bolt12 illusions

• recurring payments is not really solved, it is just a spec that defines intervals. the actual implementation must still be done by each wallet and service. the recurring payment cannot be enforced, the wallet must still initiate the payment. even if the wallet is evil and is willing to initiate a payment without the user knowing it still needs to have funds, channels, be online, connected etc., so it's not as if the services could rely on the payments being delivered in time.
• people seem to think it will enable pushing payments to mobile wallets, which it does not and cannot.
• there is a confusion of contexts: it looks like offers are superior to lnurl-pay, for example, because they don't require domain names. domain names, though, are common and well-established among internet services and stores, because these services have websites, so this is not really an issue. it is an issue, though, for people that want to receive payments in their homes. for these, indeed, bolt12 offers a superior solution -- but at the same time bolt12 seems to be selling itself as a tool for merchants and service providers when it includes and highlights features as recurring payments and refunds.
• the privacy gains for the receiver that are promoted as being part of bolt12 in fact come from a separate proposal, blinded paths, which should work for all normal lightning payments and indeed are a very nice solution. they are (or at least were, and should be) independent from the bolt12 proposal. a separate proposal, which can be (and already is being) used right now, also improves privacy for the receiver very much anway, it's called trampoline routing.

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@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

The Lightning Network solves the problem of the decentralized commit

Before reading this, see Ripple and the problem of the decentralized commit.

The Bitcoin Lightning Network can be thought as a system similar to Ripple: there are conditional IOUs (HTLCs) that are sent in "prepare"-like messages across a route, and a secret p that must travel from the final receiver backwards through the route until it reaches the initial sender and possession of that secret serves to prove the payment as well as to make the IOU hold true.

The difference is that if one of the parties don't send the "acknowledge" in time, the other has a trusted third-party with its own clock (that is the clock that is valid for everybody involved) to complain immediately at the timeout: the Bitcoin blockchain. If C has p and B isn't acknowleding it, C tells the Bitcoin blockchain and it will force the transfer of the amount from B to C.

Differences (or 1 upside and 3 downside)

1. The Lightning Network differs from a "pure" Ripple network in that when we send a "prepare" message on the Lightning Network, unlike on a pure Ripple network we're not just promising we will owe something -- instead we are putting the money on the table already for the other to get if we are not responsive.

2. The feature above removes the trust element from the equation. We can now have relationships with people we don't trust, as the Bitcoin blockchain will serve as an automated escrow for our conditional payments and no one will be harmed. Therefore it is much easier to build networks and route payments if you don't always require trust relationships.

3. However it introduces the cost of the capital. A ton of capital must be made available in channels and locked in HTLCs so payments can be routed. This leads to potential issues like the ones described in https://twitter.com/joostjgr/status/1308414364911841281.

4. Another issue that comes with the necessity of using the Bitcoin blockchain as an arbiter is that it may cost a lot in fees -- much more than the value of the payment that is being disputed -- to enforce it on the blockchain.[^closing-channels-for-nothing]

Solutions

Because the downsides listed above are so real and problematic -- and much more so when attacks from malicious peers are taken into account --, some have argued that the Lightning Network must rely on at least some trust between peers, which partly negate the benefit.

The introduction of purely trust-backend channels is the next step in the reasoning: if we are trusting already, why not make channels that don't touch the blockchain and don't require peers to commit large amounts of capital?

The reason is, again, the ambiguity that comes from the problem of the decentralized commit. Therefore hosted channels can be good when trust is required only from one side, like in the final hops of payments, but they cannot work in the middle of routes without eroding trust relationships between peers (however they can be useful if employed as channels between two nodes ran by the same person).

The next solution is a revamped pure Ripple network, one that solves the problem of the decentralized commit in a different way.

[^closing-channels-for-nothing]: That is even true when, for reasons of the payment being so small that it doesn't even deserve an actual HTLC that can be enforced on the chain (as per the protocol), even then the channel between the two nodes will be closed, only to make it very clear that there was a disagreement. Leaving it online would be harmful as one of the peers could repeat the attack again and again. This is a proof that ambiguity, in case of the pure Ripple network, is a very important issue.

@ 6bae33c8:607272e8

I viewed the Rams as a sleeper heading into the playoffs with a young, aggressive front, a top coach and a Hall of Fame level quarterback, so I was pleased to see them roll last night.

The other issue I had was I traded away Sam Darnold in my QB-flex (we’re adding the position for 2025) RotoWire Dynasty League for Aaron Rodgers (because Darnold and Patrick Mahomes had the same bye), and I was aghast to see Darnold go crazy in the second half of the year. That and my long-standing (and thus-far validated) view that then Giants GM (widely hated by midwit stat dorks) Dave “The Gettlechad” Gettleman made the right pick with Saquon Barkley at 1.2 over Darnold. (Obviously Josh Allen and Lamar Jackson would have been much better picks, but most of those turbo-nerds thought they were projects and would have surely gone with Darnold (or maybe even Josh Rosen.)

So to see Darnold have such a great year, though so did Saquon, albeit at a lesser position, was disconcerting. If the Vikings win in Detroit last week and make a Super Bowl, let alone win it, so much of my Darnold mockery is undone. (Realize Darnold is seven-years into his career on a fourth team, but still.) But the Darnold of the Jets I know and love reared his head the last two weeks, and especially in this game. Even the announcers were killing him for holding the ball so long it was like the spirit of Danny Dimes was playing through him.

So this result was gratifying both for the Dynasty League — Darnold is no longer a locked-in starter next year wherever he winds up, and even if he gets the shot, the leash will be much shorter, and the environment will be much worse — and also the Barkley-Darnold comparison. I would love to see the Eagles win the Super Bowl on Barkley’s back, as he runs for 200 yards and gets the game MVP. (I actually think the Eagles might lose this week to the Rams, but whatever.)

It might sound petty to be cheering on Darnold’s demise for a $50 entry fee league and an old argument only I still care about, but NFL football is a zero-sum game. If Darnold can’t hack it someone else gets a shot. If he can hack it, someone else is blocked. It’s not better or worse for it to be Darnold or someone else. And Darnold played well enough this year, he’ll almost certainly get another shot even if he isn’t viewed as the Vikings franchise going forward. It also makes you wonder how much of Kirk Cousins was the favorable environment too.

• Stafford is as good a pocket passer as anyone in the league. He knows when to get rid of it, he checks it down when he needs to and he has good awareness in the pocket. It would be awfully rough if the Rams make it to Detroit for the conference title game, and Stafford takes down the best team they’ve ever had.

• The Rams really took Justin Jefferson out of the game. It was a smart gameplan against the Vikings, but getting so much pressure also helped, even if they got a big assist from Darnold.

• The Vikings ran the ball too much in the second half. I get it with the pass rush getting after Darnold, but every time they handed it to Aaron Jones it was time off the clock they couldn’t afford.

• The Rams kept mixing in pass plays even with a big lead. I like this — they didn’t go into a shell, and getting first downs runs clock better than three-and-outs.

• Remember the Rams also beat the Bills this year. Playing in Philly will be tough conditions, and the Eagles defense is good, but this is a very live dog.

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@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Eltoo

Read the paper, it's actually nice and small. You can read only everything up to section 4.2 and it will be enough. Done.

Ok, you don't want to. Or you tried but still want to read here.

Eltoo is a way of keeping payment channel state that works better than the original scheme used in Lightning. Since Lightning is a bunch of different protocols glued together, it can It replace just the part the previously dealed with keeping the payment channel.

Eltoo works like this: A and B want a payment channel, so they create a multisig transaction with deposits from both -- or from just one, doesn't matter. That transaction is only spendable if both cooperate. So if one of them is unresponsive or non-cooperative the other must have a way to get his funds back, so they also create an update transaction but don't publish it to the blockchain. That update transaction spends to a settlement transaction that then distributes the money back to A and B as their balances say.

If they are cooperative they can change the balances of the channel by just creating new update transactions and settlement transactions and number them like 1, 2, 3, 4 etc.

Solid arrows means a transaction is presigned to spend only that previous other transaction; dotted arrows mean it's a floating transaction that can spend any of the previous.

Why do they need and update and a settlement transaction?

Because if B publishes update2 (in which his balances were greater) A needs some time to publish update4 (the latest, which holds correct state of balances).

Each update transaction can be spent by any newer update transaction immediately or by its own specific settlement transaction only after some time -- or some blocks.

Hopefully you got that.

How do they close the channel?

If they're cooperative they can just agree to spend the funding transaction, that first multisig transaction I mentioned, to whatever destinations they want. If one party isn't cooperating the other can just publish the latest update transaction, wait a while, then publish its settlement transaction.

How is this better than the previous way of keeping channel states?

Eltoo is better because nodes only have to keep the last set of update and settlement transactions. Before they had to keep all intermediate state updates.

If it is so better why didn't they do it first?

Because they didn't have the idea. And also because they needed an update to the Bitcoin protocol that allowed the presigned update transactions to spend any of the previous update transactions. This protocol update is called SIGHASH_NOINPUT[^anyprevout], you've seen this name out there. By marking a transaction with SIGHASH_NOINPUT it enters a mystical state and becomes a floating transaction that can be bound to any other transaction as long as its unlocking script matches the locking script.

Why can't update2 bind itself to update4 and spend that?

Good question. It can. But then it can't anymore, because Eltoo uses OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY to ensure that doesn't actually check not a locktime, but a sequence. It's all arcane stuff.

And then Eltoo update transactions are numbered and their lock/unlock scripts will only match if a transaction is being spent by another one that's greater than it.

Do Eltoo channels expire?

No.

What is that "on-chain protocol" they talk about in the paper?

That's just an example to guide you through how the off-chain protocol works. Read carefully or don't read it at all. The off-chain mechanics is different from the on-chain mechanics. Repeating: the on-chain protocol is useless in the real world, it's just a didactic tool.

[^anyprevout]: Later SIGHASH_NOINPUT was modified to fit better with Taproot and Schnorr signatures and renamed to SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT.

@ b8851a06:9b120ba1

Starting in January 2025, the EU’s MiCA regulation enforced strict KYC requirements, especially for Bitcoin transactions over €1,000 between exchanges and self-hosted wallets. While this creates new challenges, there are still legitimate ways to protect your privacy and maintain control over your Bitcoin.

Effective Privacy Solutions

1. Take Control with Self-Custody • Run Your Own Node: This ensures you’re not relying on third-party servers, giving you full control of your transactions. • Use Fresh Addresses: Always generate a new address for each transaction to keep your activity private and harder to trace. • Choose the Right Wallets: Use wallets like #Sparrow or #Wasabi, which let you connect directly to your own node for added privacy (check if there are any legal cases against any wallet before you use one.).

2. Leverage the Lightning Network • Keep Transactions Off-Chain: Lightning lets you make payments without broadcasting them to the blockchain. • #Onion Routing for Privacy: This hides your payment path, protecting both you and the recipient. • Hard-to-Trace Payments: With multiple hops between nodes, tracking transactions becomes nearly impossible.

3. Smarter Transaction Habits • Keep Channels Open: By leaving your #Lightning payment channels open, you minimize on-chain activity. • Use Public Channels Wisely: Multiple public channels provide plausible deniability. • Go Private with Unannounced Channels: For maximum privacy, consider private payment channels.

How to Implement These Tools

1. Setting Up the Lightning Network • Privacy-First Funding: When funding your channels, use methods like #CoinJoin to enhance privacy. • Better Receiver Privacy: Use tools like #Voltage Flow 2.0 for added anonymity when receiving payments. • Stay on Top of Channel Management: Properly manage your payment channels to avoid privacy leaks.

2. Strengthen Your Operational Security • Avoid Reusing Addresses: Reusing the same wallet address makes it easier to trace your transactions. • Separate Public and Private Transactions: Keep identified funds and private wallets completely separate. • Use Tor or VPNs: Always use privacy tools like Tor or a #VPN when accessing Bitcoin wallets or services.

Staying Safe

1. Legal Awareness • Mind the Limits: Be cautious with transactions over €1,000, as they’ll trigger reporting requirements. • Peer-to-Peer Freedom: Transactions between unhosted wallets remain outside #MiCA ’s reach, so direct transfers are still an option. • Check Local Rules: Privacy tool regulations vary between countries, so make sure you’re up to speed on what’s allowed where you live.

2. Practical Safeguards • Double-Check Everything: Always verify wallet addresses before sending funds to avoid costly mistakes. • Stay Updated: Keep your wallets, nodes, and security tools current with the latest updates. • Keep Offline Backups: Store your recovery phrases and backups somewhere secure and offline.

Bitcoin #privacy isn’t automatic—it takes effort and vigilance. But by following these steps, you can stay in control of your financial freedom even in an increasingly regulated world. Stay informed, make smart decisions, and build habits that protect your privacy.

Disclaimer:

This post is for educational purposes only and is not financial, legal, or investment advice. The tools and techniques shared here are not meant to help anyone break the law or avoid regulations. You’re responsible on complying with local laws and consult legal professionals if you’re unsure about anything.

The goal is to inform and empower you to take control of your privacy responsibly.

Stay safe and stay free.

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idea: Hosted-channels Lightning wallet that runs in the browser

Communicates over HTTP with a server that is actually connected to the Lightning Network, but generates preimages and onions locally, doing everything like the Hosted Channels protocol says. Just the communication method changes.

Could use this library: https://www.npmjs.com/package/bolt04

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Hackathon 总结

Hack49汇聚开发者创造了42个创新项目来解决全球挑战。该活动于10月19日至10月21日举行，鼓励参与者开发在废物管理、医疗错误以及隐私和数据保护方面的解决方案。值得注意的提交项目包括提升医院安全的集成系统、数据安全平台以及可持续废物处理技术。参与者以最多四人为一组或独立工作，通过GitHub仓库和demo视频展示他们的工作。

大奖获得者除了获得额外的现金奖励、3D打印机和导师指导机会外，还获得主题奖项。项目评选在每个主题内单独进行，每个类别中的前三名均获得奖励。在NeuroTech领域表现突出的作品获得特别认可，获奖者获得技术套件以便进一步探索。

Hack49的协作环境得到了行业专家、导师和评委的支持，促进了思想交流和创新。这一全球运动旨在激发具有现实世界影响的技术解决方案，强调解决关键社会挑战的承诺。

Hackathon 获奖者

Medical Errors Prize Winners

• TickleSense: 一种在手术中进行实时神经监测的非侵入性解决方案，利用EEG数据和神经网络实现超过92%的准确率。它包括一个提供实时反馈的web应用程序，可无缝集成到手术室中。
• ALI: 一款通过分析语音模式来改善老年痴呆症检测的AI驱动工具，提供移动应用程序进行持续的认知健康监测，旨在减少诊断错误。
• Surge Stitch: 一种自动缝合系统，使用一种非侵入性的“皮肤外胶合绳”技术来增强伤口闭合精度，从而显著减少手术并发症和恢复时间。

Privacy Prize Winners

• Olach: 一款以隐私为中心的笔记应用程序，将数据存储在本地，并计划通过AES加密和可选的云备份来增强安全性。
• SafeSearchAI: 一种AI驱动的搜索引擎，专注于隐私，利用K-匿名和AI增强搜索结果来提供安全的浏览体验。
• FishAlert: 一种实时诈骗检测工具，提供语音到文本转换和AI生成的回复，以提高通话时的在线安全性。

Waste Management Prize Winners

• Hydroscan: 一种基于物联网的水污染监测系统，使用传感器和基于云的平台进行实时水质评估和早期污染检测。
• FixFinder: 一种社区驱动的电子废物解决方案，使用AI诊断手机问题，通过本地市场促进维修以减少环境影响。
• Greenify: 一款AI驱动的应用程序，通过图像分析提供环保餐食替代方案，鼓励可持续饮食习惯。

Overall Prize Winners

• Hydroscan
• TickleSense
• ALI

NeuroTech Prize Winners

• TickleSense
• ALI
• Baseline: 一种神经技术工具，通过EEG数据监测外科医生的疲劳，并提供实时警报以提高手术环境中的性能和安全性。

访问此链接查看所有项目。

关于组织者

Hack49 Global

Hack49 Global致力于培养一个全球性的建设者社区。该组织因其协作倡议而闻名，强调科技领域内的包容性和创新性。通过支持开发者、工程师和技术爱好者的重要项目和活动，Hack49 Global推进赋能全球创造者的使命。组织通过一个强大的知识共享和联网平台，始终站在技术进步和协作的前沿。欲获得更多信息，请访问他们的网站。

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doulas.club

A full catalog of all Brazilian doulas with data carefully scrapped from many websites that contained partial catalogs and some data manually included. All this packaged as a Couchapp and served directly from Cloudant.

This was done because the idea of doulas was good, but I spotted an issue: pregnant womwn should know many doulas before choosing one that would match well, therefore a full catalog with a lot of information was necessary.

This was a huge amount of work mostly wasted.

Many doulas who knew about this didn't like it and sent angry and offensive emails telling me to remove them. This was information one should know before choosing a doula.

See also

• About CouchDB

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Hackathon 总结

LazyHacks 2024 hackathon 是由高中生为同龄人组织的一次活动，聚焦于“懒惰”这一独特主题，以激发创造力和合作精神。该活动吸引了开发者参与，共提交了21个项目。团队由1-4名高中生组成，不包括组织者或导师，但允许外部建议以提升项目成果。

参与者在多个奖项类别中竞争。总体奖项包括 AULA 机械键盘、鼠标和 COCONISE 游戏麦克风。教育类奖项为 Rocketbooks 及附赠的笔和国家美术馆门票。居家类别奖项提供多功能床头灯和 Room Escape Ottawa 门票，初学者奖项为 JBL Go 4 扬声器。

评判标准侧重于创新和问题解决，与活动主题一致。LazyHacks 2024 成功促进了年轻开发者间的协作，鼓励趣味和奇思妙想，同时增强社区意识。hackathon 为年轻人才展示技术解决方案和创新项目提供了平台。

Hackathon 获奖者

LazyHacks 2024 展示了以简化日常生活为中心的多样创新项目。高中生展现了在各个类别的技能，并通过以下奖项得到了认可：

Overall Prize Winners

• Slay In A Snap: 一款时尚科技应用，通过机器学习和图像遮罩提供虚拟衣橱和服装可视化，推进可持续性。同时关注于慎重的时尚选择和包容性，尽管遇到技术挑战。

Beginner Prize Winners

• Sloth Clock: 一款提高生产力的工具，利用虚拟宠物，结合番茄钟、待办事项清单和日历功能，通过维护宠物健康促进任务完成。

Education Prize Winners

• T2M (Talk 2 Me): 通过语音命令简化 AI 互动，将语音转换为文本，使用 Gemini AI API，并支持多种编程语言以实现有效的用户参与。

At-Home Prize Winners

• LazyReps: 通过 Movenet Single Pose Lightning Model 追踪健身房重复动作以提高效率，并使用 Google Sheets API 进行数据记录。该项目使用 React.js 和 FastAPI 开发。

欲了解所有项目的全面情况，请访问 LazyHacks Buidl。

关于组织者

LazyHacks

LazyHacks 是一个以“懒惰”为主题的 hackathon，由高中生为同龄人策划。它倡导创造力、创新和协作，鼓励一种共享和放松的心态。自诞生以来，LazyHacks 有效地将年轻思想聚集在一起，其口号为“Hack Smarter, Not Harder!” 强调团队合作和创新问题解决。该项目为参与者展示技术开发技能提供了平台，同时激励未来创新者挑战规范并探索科技领域的新理念。欲了解更多信息，请访问 lazyhacks.ca。

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The monolithic approach to CouchDB views

Imagine you have an app that created one document for each day. The docs ids are easily "2015-02-05", "2015-02-06" and so on. Nothing could be more simple. Let's say each day you record "sales", "expenses" and "events", so this a document for a typical day for the retail management Couchapp for an orchid shop:

{ "_id": "2015-02-04", "sales": [{ "what": "A blue orchid", "price": 50000 }, { "what": "A red orchid", "price": 3500 }, { "what": "A yellow orchid", "price": 11500 }], "expenses": [{ "what": "A new bucket", "how much": 300 },{ "what": "The afternoon snack", "how much": "1200" }], "events": [ "Bob opened the store", "Lisa arrived", "Bob went home", "Lisa closed the store" ] }

Now when you want to know what happened in a specific day, you know where to look at.

But you don't want only that, you want profit reports, cash flows, day profitability, a complete log of the events et cetera. Then you create one view to turn this mess into something more useful:

``` function (doc) { var spldate = doc._id.split("-") var year = parseInt(spldate[0]) var month = parseInt(spldate[1]) var day = parseInt(spldate[2])

doc.sales.forEach(function (sale, i) { emit(["sale", sale.what], sale.price) emit(["cashflow", year, month, day, i], sale.price) }) doc.expenses.forEach(function (exp, i) { emit(["expense", exp.what], exp.price) emit(["cashflow", year, month, day, i], -exp.price) }) doc.events.forEach(function (ev, i) { emit(["log", year, month, day, i], ev) }) } ```

Then you add a reduce function with the value of _sum and you get a bunch of useful query endpoints. For example, you can request

/_design/orchids/_view/main?startkey=["cashflow", "2014", "12"]&endkey=["cashflow", "2014", "12", {}]

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Hackathon Summary

Hack49 hosted developers who created 42 innovative projects addressing global challenges. The event, held from October 19 to October 21, encouraged participants to develop solutions in waste management, medical errors, and privacy and data protection. Notable submissions included integrated systems for enhancing hospital safety, data security platforms, and sustainable waste processing technologies. Participants formed teams of up to four or worked individually, presenting their work through GitHub repositories and demo videos.

The grand prize winners were awarded additional cash bonuses, 3D printers, and mentorship opportunities, alongside theme-specific awards. Projects were evaluated separately within each theme, with the top three entries in each category receiving awards. Special recognition was given to outstanding work in the NeuroTech field, with winners receiving technology kits for further exploration.

Hack49's collaborative environment was supported by industry experts, mentors, and judges, facilitating idea exchange and fostering innovation. This global movement aimed to inspire technological solutions with real-world impacts, underscoring a commitment to addressing critical societal challenges.

Hackathon Winners

Medical Errors Prize Winners

• TickleSense: A non-invasive solution for real-time nerve monitoring during surgeries, utilizing EEG data and neural networks to achieve over 92% accuracy. It includes a web app for real-time feedback and seamless integration in operating rooms.
• ALI: An AI-driven tool improving Alzheimer's detection through speech pattern analysis, offering a mobile app for ongoing cognitive health monitoring to reduce diagnostic errors.
• Surge Stitch: An automated suturing system utilizing a non-invasive "on-skin gluing strings" technique to enhance wound closure precision, significantly reducing surgical complications and recovery times.

Privacy Prize Winners

• Olach: A privacy-centric note-taking app that stores data locally and plans to enhance security with AES encryption and an optional cloud backup.
• SafeSearchAI: An AI-powered search engine focusing on privacy, employing K-anonymity and AI-enhanced search results for secure browsing experiences.
• FishAlert: A real-time scam detection tool offering speech-to-text conversion and AI-generated responses to enhance online safety during calls.

Waste Management Prize Winners

• Hydroscan: An IoT-based water pollution monitoring system using sensors and cloud-based platforms for real-time water quality assessments and early pollution detection.
• FixFinder: A community-driven e-waste solution with AI diagnostics for smartphone issues, promoting repairs through a local marketplace to reduce environmental impact.
• Greenify: An AI-driven application that provides eco-friendly meal alternatives via image analysis, encouraging sustainable eating habits.

Overall Prize Winners

• Hydroscan
• TickleSense
• ALI

NeuroTech Prize Winners

• TickleSense
• ALI
• Baseline: A neurotechnology tool monitoring surgeon fatigue through EEG data, providing real-time alerts to enhance performance and safety in surgical environments.

Visit this link to explore all projects.

About the Organizer

Hack49 Global

Hack49 Global is committed to fostering a worldwide community of builders. Known for its collaborative initiatives, the organization emphasizes inclusivity and innovation within the tech space. By supporting developers, engineers, and technology enthusiasts through significant projects and events, Hack49 Global advances its mission to empower creators globally. The organization remains at the forefront of technological progress and collaboration through a strong platform for knowledge sharing and networking. For more information, visit their website.

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