provoost
Sjors Provoost

Everyone should decide their own emotional state, but if you're organizing a conference and have foreigners attend, you should probably pay attention to border policy.
There've always been scary incidents occasionally, but the frequency has increased and the government is actively fear mongering.
My former university of Utrecht is now giving staff burner laptops for conference travel. That's the kind of stuff one normally does for China.
#note14h7…yp43

2025-04-12 18:36:30 GMT

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I did one yesterday evening too, cool stuff!

2025-04-12 15:41:23 GMT

DO NOT STACK
IT WILL GET STUCK
https://image.nostr.build/1d648673470688b5c934a5378474e02af33961e94ae44e8bfa9f7823a458fad2.jpg

2025-04-12 14:59:46 GMT

Great chart, original by Eric Wall.
Block subsidy relative to fees per halving period.
https://image.nostr.build/f1b4d7e4bcc61cb296b6bfb003d15d1a33b46419a6bbdeabb213727738f99a41.jpg

2025-04-12 13:22:42 GMT

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Every place could still have a specialty to be proud off, which they then sell all over the world. Ideally of course.

2025-04-12 13:16:51 GMT

History of Forks. Good morning.
https://image.nostr.build/2af9cb06d6d942fdd609fe8ba060b9ae4ce042f98151aa69678b89226d1cda8a.jpg

2025-04-12 09:06:16 GMT

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For an illustration of (2): https://youtu.be/B90_SNNbcoU
Putting tariffs on Amazon would probably fix more than putting them on China :-)

2025-04-12 09:03:17 GMT

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Other than food and a few other things, there's no reason why local production is any better. Global transport is cheap and expertise is spread out.
I think there's two reasons many products are crap quality:
1. Consumers only care about price
2. Amazon deliberately confuses consumers about quality, e.g. by allowing fake reviews, deceptive marketing, not having expert reviews, and not having objective filters for quality
(2) was a bit better when local retailers still existed that actually knew what they were selling and could vouch for quality. Though there plenty bad sales incentives there too.

2025-04-12 08:15:40 GMT

If all your chatbot does under the hood is to fill out a form, JUST GIVE ME THE FORM.

2025-04-11 17:44:28 GMT

Live block validation...
https://image.nostr.build/f6bb168e96c39b1b7cfd973bbda1ef50ab9fec9baea82f4af246dccc80f4e136.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/5bdf8047a0b1640188fdfc6bae635d5827bbf7c2585d046db746d48e3070b64a.jpg
#note1kvg…49xj

2025-04-11 16:25:22 GMT

Tune in to the livestream in about 1 hour (13:35 ET) for Portland Hodls talk, it should be a fun one:
https://www.youtube.com/live/mhRZZOdJzGE

2025-04-10 20:04:52 GMT

Hashed out the approach between the President and Treasury on how to ban 64 byte transactions. It's a three stage process:
1. Executive Order to explain to the public how these things are only used by bad hombres
2. OFAC will add them to their list. Clearly anyonecanspend is Communist property - but Supreme Court might bikeshed the SegWit issue
3. A soft fork, but we can't wait for Bitcoin Core, they're too fucking slow
#GreatConsensusCleanup
Also I couldn't find the CIA headquarters.
https://image.nostr.build/d85fa9e2d68b28bc74ea263f469c47dcb0112b18219ecafbfe492f92bff377ca.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/dcd024f809400c82883f995f531c24b96b214fd6c437b50ace21be63a4231ceb.jpg

2025-04-10 19:17:19 GMT

A #KYC bathroom, only in America...
https://image.nostr.build/cecdbf05417d18274df706ec8c654e486c628ebd9b007d26544d28dc8dab2311.jpg

2025-04-09 23:16:50 GMT

So do the EU revenge-tariffs mean we get lower income taxes? Or does that economic theory on work in the USA?

2025-04-09 15:29:15 GMT

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Variations of this claim exist, I believe Dan Carlin brought it up here as well: #note1prf…k0f9

2025-04-06 18:40:10 GMT

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Nope

2025-04-06 10:59:54 GMT

This is useful debug info, thanks!
#note1nl2…q0nx

2025-04-05 15:02:14 GMT

Tadge translates Executive Order 6102 to crypto speak. #MITExpo
https://image.nostr.build/d9bef09d35c80281e594a3f8a88e94029501a07463e9402359cb1423a442b6ec.jpg

2025-04-04 15:50:42 GMT

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Many people who call themselves libertarian are royalists. They seek favor from a King to leave them alone. What that king does to other people, they don't care about.
They might even believe that ideally there would be no king and they would still be left alone.

2025-04-03 07:16:26 GMT

You can just give your customers the middle finger, instead of making them talk to your AI chatbot that's dummer than a chicken. There is no AI yet, hire humans.

2025-04-01 20:01:31 GMT

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In general I'm still exploring the steak parameter space (this is approximately the 6th I've ever made).
As I'm trying different cuts from different sources, I'm holding the target core temperature constant at medium rare to medium (not a rare fan, but also not a well done fan).
I managed to hit that much better on a smaller cut before, consistent throughout. Maybe I need to heat more slowly in the oven phase to fix the consistency.
Blue is core, oranje is surface. Red is ambient, but in the pan it underestimates and I used a laser thermometer there :-)
https://image.nostr.build/b58b0eb037f7b689477db62318914f23be0260e8b55e909d68e0c04e52e3188a.jpg

2025-03-31 13:12:04 GMT

How it started... how its going.
EasyPark took over ParkMobile and then jacked up prices by up to 18x. Fortunately there's actually competition. And tourists will probably keep using it.
https://image.nostr.build/797a2c5e062b80035fbf0fec4605e52e6a63b2b5321aaa0d3ac474800ed6b902.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/9b51cf8202db84e064b24be3925535148581b5ae18d409460d9e1d6b20a500c7.jpg

2025-03-31 08:15:27 GMT

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Strictly different, potentially better :-)
I had at least one occasion where this punched through an airport wifi firewall where my regular Wireguard connection didn't.

2025-03-30 16:43:30 GMT

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You could rent for a year first. Immutable neighborhoods is a general problem with owning real estate for self-living.

2025-03-30 15:25:59 GMT

Cruise ship that plans to sail around the world every 3.5 years, carrying a combination of buyers and renters. According to this newspaper article some folks seem pretty happy, others are not.
At $100-320K plus monthly expenses of $3K - $7K it's a bit too expensive for my taste and I get sea sick. You can travel the world and live in very nice hotels and apartments on that budget. That said, it's not crazy unreasonable either and apparently many Americans spend more than that in dreadful land based homes.
What I find encouraging is that isn't a libertarian sea steading project. At least that wasn't the perspective of the people they interviewed. And the marketing doesn't emphasize that either. This is just a mainstream option now.
https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/03/28/geen-thuis-meer-op-land-maar-wonen-op-een-cruiseschip-a4887727

2025-03-28 23:15:16 GMT

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Perhaps many folks are simply oblivious to history and when they experience history up close, the only reference points are nazis and crypto. Probably neither of which they really spent much time studying either.
https://fountain.fm/episode/nBjlZbNlOKGfCJCeL9GD

2025-03-28 23:09:45 GMT

I'm seeing this new meme bubble up that Bitcoin, not even "crypto", is responsible for the demise of US democracy. This is nonsense.
First of all, everything that's happening in the last two months is a continuation of multi decade trends. It was obvious long before the whitepaper was published. Particularly an out of control growth of, and complete lack of checks on, executive branch power. Trump isn't even using a fraction of it. I find Dan Carlin's take on this stuff in his Common Sense podcast useful.
But that aside, crypto just isn't that important (yet). It's nice (or bad, depending on your views) that some people in power have at least heard of it, and own some, but that doesn't make it a crypto coup.
The highest estimate of crypto industry donations to this campaign I've seen is $400 million. That's a lot, but total spending was many billions. Apparently even Musk, who has very little to do with crypto despite his Doge pumps, donated hundreds of millions.
Crypto was also barely a voting issue. Molly White went to great lengths to prove that.
Finally, a friendly reminder that Bitcoin is a global phenomenon and not everything is about the US.
Find another scape goat.
https://youtu.be/nG2nhCGze3Q

2025-03-28 20:42:25 GMT

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And of course there are promising Nostr based alternatives. Hopefully in a few years we won't have this Sword of Damocles situation.

2025-03-28 20:40:16 GMT

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There is a plan B for Bitcoin Core - and more importantly there are frequent backups - but hopefully we won't need it.
https://delvingbitcoin.org/t/gitlab-backups-for-bitcoin-core-repository/624

2025-03-28 20:38:24 GMT

Friendly reminder that at some sudden point Github is not going to work anymore. Especially if by "US law" you mean any Executive Order, e.g. because one contributor is too woke for POTUS?
Until such time though, it's a great platform.
#note1tdx…sg99

2025-03-28 20:00:33 GMT

Starbucks in most of the EU already serves your drink in glass or porcelain (but not for takeaway - imagine sitting down for ten minutes!).
For LED hypochondria there's probably easier technological fixes than going back to incandescent (though I have nothing against those if you don't mind the extra power bill and having to replace them all the time).
You can already cook steak yourself, no need to wait for McDonalds.
I don't understand what the wait for 2035 adds. Lower coinbase subsidy, that's for sure.
#note14ha…zvrc

2025-03-28 19:51:13 GMT

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You could try Obscura: https://obscura.net
Given Carl Dong's involvement they should have a reproducibly built client soon(tm).

2025-03-26 20:31:38 GMT

Picture I took today vs. what it looked like some decades ago. #Utrecht
https://www.duic.nl/algemeen/utrecht-door-de-jaren-heen-de-veranderende-singel-in-beeld/
https://image.nostr.build/c551773ac92ba490acc2f9f9e27c343944f126f10ddee36efd380acd3d5b782e.jpg
https://image.nostr.build/856935abf149364f9708f5e60eee05e8a6c7f75c808029248d8aa7d0f430abbc.jpg

2025-03-25 12:50:54 GMT

Less actual code, more comments and test coverage. #few
#nevent1q…vwne

2025-03-25 12:44:01 GMT

It seems there's no free lunch... (see first comment)
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/125952/can-zkp-support-make-pqc-schemes-more-block-space-and-validation-time-efficient

2025-03-25 10:28:06 GMT

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Gelukkig zijn de kernwapens in handen van volwassenen....
...
?

2025-03-25 09:28:15 GMT

Well at least they used Signal. If they'd used Telegram instead, as Tucker Carson recommends, the Russians could have given the Houthis a headsup via Iran.
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/03/trump-administration-accidentally-texted-me-its-war-plans/682151/

2025-03-14 20:34:30 GMT

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Not to be an AI apologist, but you would have confused me too :-)

2025-03-13 16:21:28 GMT

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I already hear MEGA a few times: Make Europe Great Again. Defense stock booming, Germany has economic growth suddenly, etc.

2025-03-13 15:55:25 GMT

Champaign is a Veblen good, so tariffs should increase sales. Cheers!🥂
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good

2025-03-13 15:36:46 GMT

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Ah the FBI is going Wikileaks on them: #note1208…r9r8

2025-03-13 15:32:19 GMT

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What did I miss? The inevitable happened?

2025-03-13 10:40:09 GMT

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The travel rule is not an EU invention, it comes from the #FATF which is dominated by the USA.
Of course the EU should have protected its citizens and not implement any of this crap. Instead it enthusiastically embraced it.
Not legal advice, but it's probably better to outright refuse than to commit fraud, especially when it comes to AML compliance.

2025-03-12 10:35:24 GMT

Dutch newspaper NRC just gave up on following US news and gave all their subscribers a one year New York Times subscription :-)

2025-03-11 22:18:25 GMT

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He gets annoyed when people make videos :-) So here's a Youtube one from a slightly bigger venue: https://youtu.be/Maj_ibbSFak

2025-03-11 22:16:07 GMT

Nice of #VNVnation to swing by #Utrecht!
https://image.nostr.build/0d428f26e48e68c130d06a54206e225e9e97c83b291fe9ea39f4acaef16a8780.jpg

2025-03-11 16:01:45 GMT

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E.g. you can hire someone to post ads and then screenshot them to get clicks and make profit from the outrage.

2025-03-11 15:56:10 GMT

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Paid protest as well fake accusations of paid protests both exist. I would be very careful in checking the source here.

2025-03-11 10:53:01 GMT

Maybe the selfish-mining emperor doesn't have any clothes.
https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/a/125844/4948
#nevent1q…j83c

2025-03-11 07:43:01 GMT

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As fossil fuel lobbyists like to say: there are no wealthy nations with low data consumption, data consumption good!

2025-03-10 17:57:08 GMT

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Wasn't that six days ago? That's like 6 years in Trump time :-)
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/rcna194692

2025-03-10 14:09:11 GMT

Is that why everyone is so friendly today?
#note1ha2…gm6k

2025-03-08 10:57:28 GMT

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Banks are businesses, so if the government decides they can't reject customers, that sounds fairly communist too.

2025-03-08 09:47:23 GMT

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Je inkomsten zijn A, je uitgaven zijn B. Het verschil is C. Het maakt niet of je Bitcoin of fiat gebruikt om dingen te betalen, zolang je:
1. C omzet in Bitcoin; of
2. betaald wordt in Bitcoin en alleen B omzet in fiat (minus wat je in Bitcoin kon betalen)

2025-03-08 09:44:36 GMT

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Only the US is dismantling a government organization that tried to reduce debanking. But indeed debanking is a global issue, if you can get a bank account in the first place.

2025-03-07 21:48:27 GMT

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if (!correctPassword); // return false;
return true;
// Look at me, I'm sudo now!

2025-03-07 20:06:39 GMT

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Between making Bitcoin better and making fiat suck more, governments are just naturally better at the latter.

2025-03-07 20:01:56 GMT

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Maybe Trump can help out ordering Visa and MasterCard to blacklist anyone they don't like. Then you can (truthfully or otherwise) mail shops saying "hey, I'm on the bad hombre list, do you take Bitcoin" and voila.

2025-03-07 20:00:20 GMT

Of course they have a slightly non-standard customer base, but it's still great to hear.
#note1xxa…xxfx

2025-03-07 18:19:16 GMT

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And yes, of course "try another card" generally "fixes" the problem but it's an utterly lazy suggestion which puts the onus on the customer to fix your problem, and shows you don't understand how your own payment rails work.

2025-03-07 18:17:01 GMT

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* I don't bother

2025-03-07 18:14:47 GMT

I generally don't both evangelizing Bitcoin with merchants. Every human on the planet knows it exists and makes a conscious choice to not use it, even by inaction. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink.
However, whenever I'm stuck in one of those loops where I have to email both the merchant and the creditcard company to get their shit together, based on useless error messages along the lines of "computer says no", I do judge people.
Quietly.
Why do you choose to make your customer experience suck?

2025-03-06 10:12:58 GMT

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Pounds are just a tariff on kilograms!

2025-03-06 10:08:27 GMT

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I don't know, that sounds like proof-of-stake.

2025-03-05 22:00:13 GMT

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You can always wait till heat death of the universe or a local black hole, but it sometimes helps to click a few buttons.

2025-03-05 21:57:07 GMT

This was a fun one!
https://fountain.fm/episode/TZL1BmNCUZK8EzBSfBqf

2025-03-05 21:25:12 GMT

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And if you ever joined a #Slack community, you need to login to it and go to account/activate. For every single one of them...
And then nag the community owner to nuke it, assuming it's abandoned.
That or just wait for the data breaches.

2025-03-05 21:21:18 GMT

Friendly reminder that if you ever ran a Slack community, and it's no longer active, you should delete it.

2025-03-03 17:13:42 GMT

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Indeed. I hate walled gardens and the entire concept of app stores, but not the native apps. You should just be able to download and install them from a website.

2025-03-03 13:40:19 GMT

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Oh it's even interoperable, nice!

2025-03-02 22:53:35 GMT

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I can't tell if this is a joke. The times we live in...

2025-03-02 19:01:36 GMT

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It would be if the zap button worked... (filed a beta feedback report)

2025-03-02 16:40:02 GMT

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#note1zkn…stwk

2025-03-02 16:38:41 GMT

#USSR #note1jwt…hng8

2025-03-02 08:41:30 GMT

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I wonder if DNSSEC is just not a thing in China? cc @npub185h…wrdp
> The GFW’s DNS injection subsystem employs a fleet of middlebox devices at China’s network border that watch for DNS queries for blocked domain names. When they see one, they inject a DNS response back towards the client, spoofing the source address as if it came from the intended resolver. The injected response is a false answer to the query, containing an incorrect, useless IP address.

2025-03-02 07:47:33 GMT

Introducing a terms of use and updated privacy notice for Bitcoin Core
Stay Humble, Stack Sats
See MIT license

2025-03-02 05:02:19 GMT

Sometimes the For You tab delivers: https://youtu.be/cmO6QkJhuu4

2025-03-01 23:53:00 GMT

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Exactly. At the very least hard shell people should board last.

2025-03-01 23:07:03 GMT

New rule: if you have a hard shell suitcase, you need to check it in. The entire point of these annoying things is that they can survive the airplane hold and ground crew tosses.
As hand luggage they are ridiculously space inefficient and make boarding take twice as long as needed. Just don't do it.

2025-03-01 17:42:54 GMT

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https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/nostrum https://image.nostr.build/302b2f820e9e9fcb12291872ded9ab9f2c1d7ff5c5053fa37d93e6473f9dbd40.jpg

2025-03-01 17:41:09 GMT

TIL "nostrum" is a word: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/nostrum

2025-03-01 01:39:13 GMT

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I only saw a few minutes and those seemed less worrying than the headlines suggested. He kept his cool, but wasn't able to get the situation back on track.
His English isn't that good, and the acoustics on stage weren't ideal. So he may not have understood everything that was being said, which went all of the place.
Disclaimer: I think Vance is a douchebag worth his weight in shit. Which he is also full of, since he just openly criticized EU "domestic" politics and then gets all sad when Zelensky says something about the US.

2025-02-22 21:42:38 GMT

So I'm part of that elite 3% of Youtube users who mostly use the Subscriptions tab (unless I'm actively looking for new stuff to follow).
https://youtu.be/QEJpZjg8GuA

2025-02-22 19:32:08 GMT

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Was that the Milei or Musk chain saw?

2025-02-22 19:27:23 GMT

So if the stolen ETH went to North Korea, which is sanctioned, and the Ethereum community rolls back their blockchain, does that mean Bybit would have money "from" North Korea, and therefor needs to freeze it and get a sanctions exception? (because so many lawyers have free time these days to worry about this)
#nevent1q…7fsd

2025-02-21 18:57:35 GMT

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#nevent1q…ld6u

2025-02-21 18:56:03 GMT

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Look away for two seconds and these pro #ChatControl creeps show up again:
> Rani Govender, policy manager for child safety online at the NSPCC, said it wants tech firms like Apple to ensure they are balancing child and user safety with privacy.
> "As Apple looks to change its approach to encryption, we're calling on them to make sure that they also implement more child safety measures, so that children are properly protected on their services," she told BBC News.
> The UK children's charity has said that end-to-end encrypted services can hinder child safety and protection efforts, such as identifying the sharing of child sexual abuse material (CSAM).
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cgj54eq4vejo
They wrote propaganda like this, probably using the same kind of misleading polls that the EU used.
> More than half (55 per cent) said the ability to detect child abuse images was more important than the right to privacy;
https://www.nspcc.org.uk/globalassets/documents/news/nspcc-discussion-paper-private-messaging-and-the-roll-out-on-end-to-end-encryption.pdf

2025-02-21 18:16:43 GMT

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FWIW I do think that Apple acted reasonably given that they had three choices:
1. Give the UK a backdoor
2. Turn the feature off and hope that UK users complain to their government. Especially after the nudes start leaking en mass - nobody wants to see that :-)
3. Ignore the order. That would probably require closing all UK Apple Stores and evacuating all physical, financial and personnel assets from the UK - and from any jurisdiction that cooperates with the UK. Which basically means Earth.

2025-02-21 18:06:06 GMT

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(and yes I have one and I occasionally update it)

2025-02-21 18:05:29 GMT

With all respect to GrapheneOS, which itself is great, Android phones are like emergency food rations: you should have them, but only use them if you don't have a choice :-)

2025-02-20 14:06:41 GMT

I'm too stupid to understand selfish mining, please help: https://bitcoin.stackexchange.com/questions/125682/why-is-a-self-mining-attack-with-bad-propagation-γ-0-still-profitable

2025-02-19 18:16:19 GMT

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I'm guessing whoever developed this was... ?

2025-02-19 17:59:56 GMT

Not a fan of Github's new design where lots of red is used when there's no actual issue.
The fact that someone still needs to review isn't an error.
https://img.sprovoost.nl/86e70a3bcaac082ea4f9f845b3a2732a288417a63419e91f2089e0d8c840dbb1.png

2025-02-19 17:51:22 GMT

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@npub1xts…kk5s wen? https://image.nostr.build/55c82b06ca506b9bbb678d2075c40efb5469a05efc245285413a6d7aee883773.png

2025-02-19 17:46:54 GMT

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Crypto is not Bitcoin, so there's no contradiction here :-)

2025-02-18 10:44:56 GMT

Privacy annoyance of the day... basically Apple knows about every app you launch for the first time. And for every every update you install, the first time you run it.
They make effort to forget these phone-home events, but it's a trust-me-bro privacy model. Which is not acceptable in a country with the Patriot Act. Even if that Act has some built-in protections, those are degraded by a declining appreciation for rule of law.
So when reading company statements like this, it's useful to replace some words - which I've done in square brackets. I'm still fully assuming good faith here, as well as no coerced lying.
> Privacy protections
> macOS has been designed to keep you and your data safe while respecting your privacy.
> Gatekeeper performs online checks to verify if an app contains known malware and whether the developer’s signing certificate is revoked. We have never [but could] combined data from these checks with information about Apple users or their devices. We do not [but could] use data from these checks to learn what individual users are using on their devices.
> Notarization checks if the app contains known malware using an encrypted connection that is resilient to server failures.
> These security checks have never included the user’s Apple Account or the identity of their device [but we can see your IP address]. To further protect privacy, we don't [but could] log IP addresses associated with Developer ID certificate checks, and we make sure that any collected IP addresses are removed from logs [but could stop doing that] .
https://support.apple.com/en-qa/102445
There is a stapling mechanism that developers can use to (maybe?) prevent these phone home events, but it's not mandatory and not always practical. More importantly, it's intended as a convenience for users that are offline when they first run an application, it's *not* intended as a privacy measure.

2025-02-17 17:23:30 GMT

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And why is your browser running in the same user space as your password manager and using the same keychain less secure?

2025-02-17 14:45:18 GMT

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E.g. I recently got an out of the blue password reset email from an airline I flew with a decade ago. That was my prompt to kill that account, it might have been from even before I used a password manager. No idea if someone tried to break into that account. Or if they just did a system wide password reset after they'd been compromised or something, in which case it was too late :-)