Roundtable_023 - Staying Humble

Boost just because it’s Wednesday!

Screw it! I’m blowing the whole boost budget on TWIB this week. Another newbie corner idea: what’s the difference between the different address/wallet types? I still use some “legacy” wallet addresses but some things I’ve read seem to suggest changing that. I find it confusing. From what I can tell there’s wrapped segwit, native segwit (which may or may not be the same as bech32, idk), and taproot. I found an article about switching to taproot on stacker news. It mentions that the others are more expensive and will continue getting more expensive over time, but I’d love to know why that is and if there’s ever a reason to choose one of the other options or if taproot really is the best, etc.

Finished the episode and feeling the need to send in extra value after that boost segment. I wanted to boost about newbie corner anyway. I would love a holiday special episode that goes over some of the logic behind your setup. What I wanted to ask you about, that I think could go with a holiday special, has to do with cold storage. I have a new cold card mk4 that I want to move my cold storage to, but I can’t decide how I want to balance backups and security. I’d be interested to hear how your thoughts change when thinking about individuals protecting their wealth as well as small business. Preferably, I’d like something that my wife could handle if me and the hardware wallet were to suddenly vanish. If something terrible like a house fire happened, and I didn’t make it, she could not access our money, the way it’s set up right now.

Hi Chris, I just started the episode but I forgot to boost last week so I wanted to fire some value back your way.

Put some Mac and cheese on this one for me, plz! By the way, have you guys seen https://github.com/anotherhadi/nixy? It appears to be a mostly pre-configured Hyprland config. I haven’t personally tried it yet, but Chris has mentioned wanting something like this in the past. I am running my own Hyprland config but it's far from perfect. I’m looking to try out Nixy soon.

This zip code where I started listening. I’m a full-blow Nix junkie because of this show. Everything in my house is slowly becoming a NixOS box. I love the technical content. I’d happily do a survey if you guys asked. I run my own Nextcloud, Nostr relay, and nix-bitcoin node. First boost from my own lightning node! All route thru a cheap Linode (thanks for that $100 code =P). My first episode was the Shufflecake episode where the audience was invited to SSH in and find a secret. I love the audience “interactive” content. I was also as the Olympia meet up and the suicide linux challenge was insanely fun. Keep up the amazing work!

Hey guys! First LUP boost and first boost funded with my own node! I’m a member and I love all of the shows. I’m SO down for Jefftastic meet up. This is a zipcode boost. Wes and his map will be able to tell you, I wouldn’t have too far to travel, so I’m happy to help if there’s anything I can do. I don’t have any meshtastic nodes up and running at this moment, but I have a lot stuff left over from my experiments. Mostly Heltecs and RAK. The antennas my Heltec’s came with were trash. After improving the antenna, my distances went way up. I have 2 large antennas and have permission to permenantly affix a node on the roof of my work.

Just noticed I received errors on earlier boosts. I’ll boost extra later. No biggie.

On a different note, my nix-Bitcoin node is working out great! I love how intense the security defaults are. I even have it routing through a tiny linode! That was a challenge all by itself but we got there. Is the JB server Jupiter01? I enabled tor and stuff but kept getting connection errors when I tried to open a channel. I’m trying to do my part and provide some of that sweet sweet liquidity.

For some reason River’s KYC rejected me and wouldn’t let me try again for 30 days. I ended up just going with Swan and never tried again. I’ve never had a KYC issue with any other company, before or since, but I’d really rather be a River customer than a Swan customer right now.

Chris, your timing is hilarious. Despite nearly constant reminders from my wife, I put off dealing with old retirement accounts for TWO YEARS, and finally got around to it last week. I decided open 401k and Roth IRA accounts with Swan Bitcoin. I use Swan to DCA, so it was convenient, and it allowed me to put this money in Bitcoin without taking a big tax hit. I’d heard some of the drama, but didn’t think much of it until hearing this episode. I agree with your analysis though, all these little turd nuggets are adding up, and it’s starting to smell like a full-blown shitstorm. As I type this boost, I’m looking at two checks made out to a Ripple-owned crypto bank, per Swan’s instructions. I have to admit, I’m starting to have second thoughts.

Hi Chris, I really appreciate everything you do and the work you put into the show. I hope this value makes it a little more worth it for you. TWiB is one of the best bitcoin shows on the internet! Let’s get these numbers up, boys!

I almost tried Nebula, but I actually just converted all my stuff from WireGuard to self-hosted Netbird. If you guys had consulted with me first, I’d have probably chosen nebula, but at least it will be interesting to compare the two. =P With WireGuard, I kept ending up in situations where DNS alone couldn’t quite do everything I needed. Netbird redirects DNS queries to itself, which allows it to respond for your private network, or forward them to the local DNS provider, and that means I can refer to my stuff by name AND it doesn’t break the software on my work PC. What a time to be alive! I really like it so far! Much better than handling as many WireGuard keys as I was. Does nebula do something similar to netbird with DNS?

I have had really good luck with N100 boards. I have 2 that run 24/7. One is my firewall and the other is my NAS. Chris and Wes, you have both recently mentioned you’re thinking about new network gear. I’ve been running opnsense on a barebones, fanless n100 firewall with 4 2.5G NICs from Aliexpress for years, and I don’t really have any reason to complain. It’s been super stable and reliable for me. Wes, I have successfully used one to spoof the MAC address of and replace CenturyLink’s router without having to tell them, when I lived in Seattle. You just need to configure the WAN port to handle the management VLAN (201) and PPPoE. I built the NAS myself with an N100 board I found on sale. It came with 6 SATA ports and I added more with a PCI adapter. I also really like that I can dedicate a full 2.5G NIC to each of my VLANs. It’s in a Jonsbo NAS case with front loading disks running NixOS (btw). All in all, I really like these little n100 boards on projects that I want to treat like an appliance.

Happy LinuxFest! It was great seeing you guys! In fact, I’m writing this while sitting directly in front of you :)

Also, a while back you guys were talking about network equipment for the studio in the post show. I’m not a big fan of going Ubiquiti for everything. I think you guys might find it to be restrictive and expensive. It’s pretty cost-effective to go with pfSense or opnsense on the firewall, spin up the unifi controller software on a VM, and then you manage Unifi APs with their nice UI without buying any cloud gateway devices, saving you hundreds. I have less experience with the cameras, so someone else will have to chime in about how those could be used in a more “tinkerer-friendly” way. Wes, during that same post show conversation you brought up potentially having problems using pfSense or opnsense on your home (fiber) network. I used to live quite close to you and sent you some specific info about how to do it, including a link to a pfSense guide specific the ISP. The guide works for opnsense too. It’s nothing too crazy, you just have to set up PPPoE and deal with the management VLAN. If you spoof the MAC address of the ISP router, it’ll just work and you don’t have to let them know you changed anything.

Headphone boost! As someone who has boosted in about thoroughly enjoying highly technical content, I also very much enjoyed the gaming content. Maybe it’s the ADD, but I personally think the wide variety is a feature, and keeps the show feeling fresh. Regarding the Saturday live stream, I absolutely would listen to that, if I wasn’t already planning to attending in-person! See ya’ll at what will be my first LFNW! P.S. Am I supposed to sign up for talks somewhere? I marked several “favorites” in the web app, but that’s all I’ve done so far.

Great show as usual! Thanks for the value! Even if Bitcoin is flat for another quarter or two, TONS of great work has been happening. It just gives us plebs more time to DCA at these super low prices!

Hey guys! Linuxfest was a blast, and getting to hang out IRL was easily some of the most fun I’ve had in a while. Btw, I saw tomorrow’s episode is about CopyFail, which I spent some time tinkering with. PJ convinced me to send over what I’ve done. So, Chris/Wes, check matrix DMs if y’all are interested. ❤️

I’ve been using Hyprland on NixOS for years at this point, and imo, it’s a match made in heaven. Hyprland has really come a long way since the early days and has had first-class NixOS support the whole time I’ve been using it. It’s really cool to see more people appreciating all the work being done over there, they really deserve the attention. I feel like it made my computers fun and exciting again.

Hey Chris! Great show! Regarding the age vs gold standard stuff, I more or less agree with you, I just see it a little differently. Instead of time since 1971, I think of it as “time spent on a fiat system”: They blow up 100% of the time, so the longer one goes, the more messed up and prone to failure it is. Going off the gold standard allowed for more creative ways to keep the charade going. Also, consider the incentives of fiat. It basically incentivizes everyone to buy up all the resources as quickly as possible. The longer you hodl dollars, the less you get when you spend. Of course people are going to buy up and hoard all the scarce assets they can, it makes for better money than the money! We live in a clown world, I swear. 🤡 Keep the excellent Bitcoin content coming! I loved the bonus ep! I’d happily pay for bonus conent again. ❤️

Chris, I think you nailed it with the point about how early we are on everything. We aren’t wrong, the rest of the world is just slow 😁 At least, that’s what I’m going to tell myself. You know what they say, stay humble and stack sats, you lovely bunch of trendsetters. 🫡

I might be biased, considering I’ve “nix-ified” nearly every device in the house, but I’ll add a big +1 to nix-bitcoin. It’s been rock solid for me. I deployed it in a NixOS container a couple years ago, and I just did another major version update on it a couple nights ago. The update went super smooth, no issues. After a quick reboot, everything was back up, including the lightning channel with your node. Nix-Bitcoin is awesome!

I really enjoyed the EBPF episode and wouldn’t mind more like it. I would LOVE to do a TUI challenge. There are so many good TUI applications written in rust these days. Another variant could be a “no mouse” challenge. The idea is: You have one week to design your perfect keyboard-driven tiling desktop/WM setup, and then the following week you have to use it on your main PC. Points are awarded based on keeb-friendliness and use of terminal/TUI apps. If you have to break down and use a mouse, say 3 times over the course of the week, the punishment is you have you adjust your .bashrc (or equivalent) to pipe all terminal output through lolcat for a month. 😈

P.S. +1 for Expeditionary Force! Excellent book series! Craig Alanson is a machine. Apparently, there are now 7 or 8 books that I haven't read just from the past few years. I've always loved the audiobook reader too. Lately, I've been listening to mostly podcasts while making my way through various bitcoin books, but I think it's about time to do some catching up on ExFor. P.P.S. I couldn’t help myself. I think it's literally impossible for me to mention "bitcoin" and "book" in the same sentence without mentioning Broken Money by Lyn Alden. If you're looking to better understand money and bitcoin, I really can't recommend this one enough. I love good book recommendations. Would love for it to be a semi-regular thing, even if it’s only in the member version.

Excellent episode, as usual! I think you’ve hit the nail on the head about BTC loans. I believe it’s going to be a massive market. I need one myself, actually. Last year, I had some cash set aside to buy a car and went to some dealerships, but right before I pulled the trigger, Uncle Sam hit my wife and I with a massive tax bill. It was our first full year living and working in WA, and I guess my wife wasn’t paying enough in taxes out of her paycheck. Wiped out my whole car fund. Luckily, I was listening to TWIB, and stacking sats. So, it didn’t hurt as bad as it could have, but now I need one of those BTC loans. I am highly interested in the subject either way, so thanks for covering these important topics!

I thought herdr was pretty nice, but I LOVE zellij, and really missed some of its features when using herdr, but then I found zj-radar. It’s extremely similar to herdr, but it’s just a zellij plugin. I set up the alias “zerdr” which launches zellij straight into the radar profile. I honestly haven’t launched herdr once, since I got it installed. Highly recommend! Great ep, btw! ❤️

+1 for Vikunja! I just set this up a few weeks ago, including an MCP server, and hooked up my “personal assistant” agent to it. It can display the same data as todo lists, kanban, Gantt charts, etc. I really like it! If you guys try it, I’d love to hear how you end up using it.

I managed to avoid getting any funds stolen, but I still regenerated a bunch of wallets, and not just the CC, as a result of all this. Thanks to the inspiration from LUP, I decided to build an offline NixOS ISO with sparrow, and a custom script I wrote to generate seed phrases, using /dev/urandom. It worked like a charm, and I can be quite sure no one else creates wallets like I do. 😂 Thanks for the value!

Love the bonus content! It was great seeing you guys at Linuxfest! Have a good LUP today!!

I connected Fountain to nostr with my own relay and all that and took the opportunity to change my name to better reflect who I am as a person. :P Before, I was boosting as ByteBandit. The name change seems to have changed my 100k boost to Anonymous, so I figured I’d boost back in with my new name. I’ll also send you a message on matrix as proof. In the last episode, you mentioned nix-Bitcoin, which I have been experimenting with for a while. I would love to see what you’ve got going on, if you’re able to share that config. If not, no worries. Either way, hit me some mac&cheese, please. ;)

Ben, if you see bears in the future, give them something they'd want instead of grapes. Picnic baskets.

Ben's the Boy who cried Bear. Haha.

A million times yes. Thank you for addressing this in the right way. You're one of the only podcasts that hasn't responded to Coinkite with yet more bad options. Very much excited that Learning Bitcoin From The Command Line is getting a new edition too -- long overdue.

Re:other nodes and making news, you're clearly not watching Eric Voskuil on Twitter. Libbitcoin 4 just did IBD in 14 minutes on a consumer connection (with assumevalid height of 950k) and 55 min for full validation. Older than Knots, and older than Core being called, well, Core. They slept for a good few years but are waking up with a vengeance.

Thanks for removing the friction from consuming Mises.

Welcome back Walker, congrats on the bigger family Also, xpubs will only give unhardened addresses. That said, I expect a Venn diagram of people who didn't roll dice and people using hardened addresses is probably two separate circles.

Welcome back

People would hit me with things suggesting Slackware to a Linux beginner, but you seem keen on appropriately following documentation, and it's got some of the best documentation, and very vanilla software which makes using upstream documentation easy to use too. Some key audio thoughts too. https://web.archive.org/web/20260426090835/https://blog.sla… Doing your work you may want more than the standard pulseaudio back end.

Robinhood's 'tokenization' sounds more like an Exchange Traded Note (ETN) that is just a liability of Robinhood and traded on chain. These aren't new, but putting them on chain is. The SEC is talking more about trading actual stock ownership using the chain as a ledger. Very different despite the similar performance in ideal circumstances. If the stock goes up but robinhood goes under, you are out, while with the shares the SEC is talking about, you're good. Maybe a little market downtime, but you'd just get regular shares with SIPC coverage.

'Rear admiral' 😅 Tom Luongo calls him Big Gay Patton. Still amused Trump brought us the highest ranking gay man in American history.

Hope this counts as a replacement for lost sponsor revenue per this listener.