Tag: bitcoin

Public Service Internet monthly newsletter (Nov 2021)

Digital Nomad

We live in incredible times with such possibilities that is clear. Although its easily dismissed hearing about decentralized blogging, reading through the twitter thread of underacted google & facebook advertising complaint and of course  Facebook and its effect on gen-z with yet another whistle blower leaving the sinking ship.

To quote Buckminster Fuller “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.”

You are seeing aspects of this with seeing John Oliver covering misinformation outside the English language, some young people questioning our capitalistic society, Mozfest 2022’s call for proposal and experiencing unified messaging on my devices

Personal data stores in the lime light

Ian thinks: Wired do a reasonable job explain some of the benefits, there are a lot more important aspects of personal data stores than beating others, like sovereignty and trust. Said as someone who worked on related work in the past.

The future of social networks with James Vasile

Ian thinks: James is a seasoned expert in this space and this interview is good covering a lot of ground including Project liberty’s DSNP. Even if you are new to this space, its accessible and understandable.

Visa & Mastercard regulate the internet by stealth?

Ian thinks: No matter what you think of adult sites, there is a complicated problem which should not be left companies which are only interested in maximising their own profits.

Misinformation works in all languages

Ian thinks: Its good to see mainstream John Oliver covering the huge problem of dis/misinformation outside the English language. Also great to see them not jump to the conclusion encryption is the problem.

The clear amplification of social media

Ian thinks: Adrian’s kickback is something I wasn’t super aware of but its a clear sign of the massive amplification of social media for good and bad, depending where you stand.

Digital nomadic dreams and border-less countries

Ian thinks: Although the digital nomad lifestyle is something I am personally interested in, I think the notion of Plumia is a worrying trend of a new kind of digital elite dream. Which needs to be put in check before it runs wild.

The mystery of Satoshi bitcoin creator, solved?

Ian thinks: I have to say this is the best case for the mystery of Satoshi (the creator of bitcoin). Recently it looks like his wallet has been used too?

Facebook: a little empty, a little sad; a place where a few voices get most of the attention

Ian thinks: Although turning your Facebook timeline back into a timeline doesn’t even start to touch the fundamental problems. I loved the end quote, which speaks volumes.

NFTs challenging the status quo

Ian thinks: Beyond the hype, scams and general nonsense. I am seeing signs of NFTs being used to genuinely disrupt the status-quo. From the portability of bought in game goods, new models of film making and of course the new NFT royalties standard.

Find the archive here

Paypal goes crypto

Use Paypal to buy Crypto We all knew it was coming but it feels so strange seeing Paypal supporting Crypto. Especially certain ones over others.

Confirming crypto in Paypal

At least there is more terms and conditions before you can actually buy.

Buying etherum in PaypalActually buying some Ethereum is pretty straight forward. You can pick anything linked to Paypal including your credit and debit cards (which is slightly troubling).

Having bought a little bit, it seems to be stuck in Paypal. I couldn’t find any wallet address or a way to send the bought funds to other own crypto wallets. Maybe that might come but I doubt it.

 

Plotting and harvesting Chia cryptocurrancy for a more green crypto future?

My Chia farming setup

I have admit over the last 2 months I setup a cryptocurrancy rig in my flat. Now when most people think about cryptocurrancy they think of bitcoin and the absolute insane amount of power going into mining bitcoins. This is why when I saw Bram Cohen (creator of BitTorrent) talk about creating something different (proof of space+time) I was always interested. To be fair I since BitTorrent I’ve been watching what he’s been up to, Bram is just one of those serial entrepreneur I keep an eye on.

After hearing about Chia, I downloaded the Linux app and got it up and running on a old laptop I use for bits and bobs. I would have used one of my my Raspberry PIs if I had Ubuntu installed. I plugged in a external USB to SATA SSD which I was using to run my old Dell XPS13 work laptop, when the internal drive got screwed up. Then plugged in a old USB to SATA caddy/docking bay with one of my old 2TB mechanical hard drives from my old server (pre NAS).

My Chia plot

Then left it plotting and harvesting my 1 single plot for a month or so.

At the time, the estimated time to win a Chia was 8 months. As I had the laptop on doing other things all the time, it wasn’t a big deal for me. Actually removing my server and replacing it with the NAS, 2x Raspberry Pis and this laptop  is actually less electricity than my single home made server with 7 drives and 4 fans. I hear most of you say wtf! I do have a lot of devices on in my flat and my electricity is high compared to typical single person but everything else (heating, water, etc) is low.

It was about 4-5 weeks when I was telling someone about Chia and noticed I had harvested 2 chia’s unbeknownst to me. To be clear I have 1 single 100gig plot and although I tried setting up 2 plots afterwards in parallel, I decided it was too much for my old laptop’s little quad core CPU and switched back to a single 100gig plot again (to be clear its more the parallel part which was the problem and CPU is only really used)

Chia CPU and Memory load in Htop

With all this in mind, I was introduced to the Reddit subthread for Chia, where I saw people building massive rigs to plot and harvest. Its quite insane and then hearing how Chia is being blamed for shortages in HDDs and SSDs. Of course why most people are interested in Chia (including myself) is the proof of space & time rather than proof of work. This realistically could be far more sustainable than proof of work models like Bitcoin. I say “could” because seeing these massive rigs seems to throw oil over the notion of Chia’s green attributes.

Although its tempted to add some more plots, I’m not going to change my setup because its sustainable for me. Little has changed on my network or on my physical desk. Getting in early was something very good but I got lucky with 2 Chia already.

Yesterday a friend mentioned Elon had tweeted about Tesla not taking Bitcoin for their electric cars.

I can’t say anything profound about Chia except I’m more than interested because its not just a speculated currency like Bitcoin. Although the price is super surprising for a new cryptocurrency. I said similar about Ethereum because of the smart contracts, NFTs and other things. The currency side is only slightly interesting while things like ChiaLisp for Identity spikes my interest.

1 month of trying web monetization

Web montization

I wrote last month how I was giving web monetization a try.

I decided to go with the option where people with the coil extension would pay a small fee but its still available to the public. There was a consideration that I could make certain posts such as my publicserviceinternet notes.

Its been surprising to see the money come through on uphold. Unfortunately I couldn’t find a way to stop uphold emailing me each time I got new money (seems to be an option which could be useful)

£3.48 for a month Over a month and a bit. I made £3.48 from having installed the coil extension. Not bad for a month, and its more than I was expecting. its certainly more than the changetip I had originally (I wouldn’t mind if it went straight into uphold as a cryptocurrancy rather than currency actually – Sure there is a way to do this but not found it yet).

Enough to buy a expensive pour over coffee in one of my favourite northern quarter coffee places. Not quite enough to cover the domain name but if things stay as they are, it will easily cover a few of my domain names renewals for a year.

So where do we go from here? Well I’ll leave it as it as it currently is set for now but I might give the option of coil only members a try on a post or two in the future.

Thanks to Cyberdees for connecting me with this, I like the non-tracking and if I was running other sites I would add coil to it. I may end up doing another post in 6 months to see what happens in the future. There is something good here.

Jamie King’s monologue about Covid-19

https://stealthisshow.com/s05e08/

It was interesting listening to the most recent stealthisshow. Jamie King’s podcast is always a good listen and his monologue is right on point. Here is the text copy of the part I felt was most important.

…Of course, we also have the internet to thank for actually being able to continue distributing the show so far the internet’s continuing working just fine even if Reddit seems to be under duress and normally streaming services have had to downgrade themselves. BitTorrent also seems to be working great. And that’s the main thing making this lockdown less weird than it would otherwise be to continued functioning of the Internet because it just enables large part of everyday life to go on.

I wonder how much Covid-19 will contribute to a future rise in teleworking. teleconferencing repopulation of rural areas by people who no longer see cities as desirable and can manage to work as a distance. How much more of the world’s everyday functions will now in other words be swallowed by the internet.

Specifically, I find myself wondering as governments prepare for unprecedented bailouts of business and showing. Just how critical things really are even ordinary individuals, whether the future of money might well make a shift online too and just how weird it is that Satoshi Nakamoto had a vision in 2008 of a currency that could survive a moment exactly like this.

In any case the show must go on and steal this show will go on. But while the crisis continues, I think it’s important to direct the show’s focus towards the role decentralized technologies peer-to-peer collaboration, online and organization, etc etc can help us survive and even prosper. In the context of crisis and whatever comes next.

So the next interview I’m gonna do is with Gotana who’s project of using meshing Wi-Fi notes to create survivable. Bitcoin infrastructure looks to me increasingly crucial. I’ll also be posting that to make world the podcast. I’ve started looking at the ideas politics and technology of building a new sustainable livable human habitat for our future.

You can check that out at make world.io during these uncertain times. I’d love to connect with listeners more than ever…

Riding the Bitcoin bubble up and out?

Bitcoin market price over last 8 years

Bitcoin is something everyone is talking about right now. I wouldn’t be surprised if my parents asked me about it soon.

It was a while ago when I received some bitcoins from a friend via tipjar.  I added the tipjar link on my blog and every once in a while I received a very small amount of bitcoins as tips. The amounts were so small that I didn’t really take note till I needed to move the wallet.

That was when I noticed the amounts were adding up to less decimal places  in bitcoin and the value in British sterling was also starting to add up to a few coffees. After the move to blockchain.info (no matter what I thought about the founder), I decided to keep an eye on the figure but forgot about it. Wasn’t till about a week ago, when I decided to have a quick look at the amount it was worth and was pretty shocked.

The tips were adding up to something quite big and thats when I decided maybe I should convert some to sterling and ethereum. I have never put any money into bitcoin, its all been donated or paid to me in return for something, I treated it as a bit of a joke to be honest. But over the last few weeks it became very real as I transferred quite a bit out and still had some left over, just in-case the bitcoin bubble keeps growing. But i’m simply not motivated enough to track its progress and put money into it. Ethereum I’ve found interesting since I first saw the videos about it so I’ll keep an eye on that too.

Thanks to everyone who tipped my blog or paid into my wallet over the last 3 years,  I owe a great gratitude to all those people. I’ll keep writing… feel free to keep tipping.

A new bitcoin wallet needed

Bitcoin

I caught wind of ChangeTip closing down Reddit. Then later today received this email.

As you may have heard, ChangeTip will be discontinuing services soon 🙁

You are receiving this email because you have money in your wallet, and we want you to get it back before we close our doors.

BTC balance: *************
USD balance: $************

Please login to your account and withdraw your funds. If you like, you may also log in and donate remaining funds to charity when you close your account.

I heard they were changing things up but this news is a shame. So I’m looking for somewhere to move my bitcoins. Bitcoin wallet looks popular and well I don’t know how long ChangeTip will enable the feature to transfer bitcoins (thank goodness for Dataportability eh?)

I found the micropayment side interesting and its a shame its gone of course there are others which I’ll check out in the future.

Your home needs a blockchain

Grandpa's Pocket Ledger & My Field Notes

The internet of things or web of things has always been quite interesting,, even with the terrible ideas to marry the internet with certain objects in bad ways (cue the internet connected fridge).

Even myself have started to purchase a number of objects and appliances which are internet connected, such as my philips Hue lights. Not necessary so I could turn them on and off anywhere in the world but I like the colour control and have ambitions of doing something similar to redshift/flux/twilight Still need to work on this part.

I’m very peed off that Philips just pushed an firmware update which blocks 3rd party support for their bulbs. Luckily they saw the error of their ways.

This is only the beginning of course….  (don’t even go there about ethics of data). Something I have been keeping an eye on using Diigo groups.

Thinking about this quite a bit, especially during the build up for Mozilla Festival this year. We planned to connect as many things  together via their open API’s (now you see the connection with the Philips Hue lights), log it to a life-stream and then printed out into a number of books.

Global Village at Mozfest

Why?

Part of it is making data physical, one of the underlying ideas behind the iotsignals idea, which drifted into the ethics of data. Which is fitting because….I can point you to Alexandra and Aleks in the ethics of data.

Aleks – If we had a status life for every single time that light over there was communicating with that lift, or that thing over there was talking to that thing at the bank. If we had a status every time we would just be completely frantic and totally dizzy with inputs.

There is a trend to internet enable everything.

Alexandra – I think the potential of IOT emerged when technology was cheap enough that you may want to put it anywhere.

The Nest thermostat, Smart TV, Smart fridge, Hue lights, etc, etc… You don’t want to know the up to date status of everything.

Nest Thermostat

But you may want to know or understand why your heating keeps turning off just as you finish cooking dinner?

Smart devices should log all communication/transactions/decisions with other devices. If the Nest decides the temperature is too high, it should be logged somewhere. Giving an insight into the underlying algorithm and decisions. Why and what triggers it… This is one step on the very long road to build trust with devices.

Of course if you haven’t guessed lifestream isn’t the right thing. What is needed is a home wide blockchain system.

From reading, about blockchain.

In essence it is a shared, trusted, public ledger that everyone can inspect, but which no single user controls. The participants in a blockchain system collectively keep the ledger up to date: it can be amended only according to strict rules and by general agreement. Bitcoin’s blockchain ledger prevents double-spending and keeps track of transactions continuously.

This could be the perfect ledger/logging technology for building reputation and trust with devices/things. Of course the participants would be things, who all agree to update the home blockchain..

This level of transparency in what the systems and things around you are doing allows for inspection by people. I don’t assume most people will care till something happens. Same as when people have their identity stolen or compromised in some way. Like the GPL (general public licence) enables, you can have somebody else inspect, consult, recommend, etc on your behalf if you allow them permission.

This should be a start to the little black boxes appearing one day. Worst than Doctor Who is the little black boxes can change their function based on a external demands. Yes you may get a email saying read our new EULA update but honestly most people delete it or ignore it. Its only once something stops working or acting differently from before, people may actually start to wonder.

It seems pretty obvious to me but I’d love to hear why I’m wrong or how it can’t work…. Even Big Blue gets it, somewhat.