Despite much opinion to the contrary, the government money we use is crappy.
I'm at bitfest in Manchester to find out if Bitcoin could be a better money.
It could hardly be worse.
The mood is still good, people are joking about recent devaluation rather than crying. Those who aren't all in are trying to buy more at the discount.
After an introduction by Mad Bitcoins, Joe Bryan explains the problem with government money.
He imagines an island on which two types of money are tried, with a dividing wall between them.
When economic problems hit, government can just print more money on the fiat side. Everyone now using money which is worth less. Distorting prices, inflating asset prices, making the rich (who hold assets) richer and the poor (who have to pay inflated prices) poorer. Driving wealth inequality.
On the hard money side, government must tax properly. Take in more from the rich rather than inflating to take it from the poor. Reducing wealth inequality.
On the government money side, the wealthy monitize houses, stocks, resources. Saving in money is impossible, its inflated away. So they save in assets and hording resources. Capital is misallocated. The youth can't afford houses. Poverty traps are caused. The only way out is printing more for benefits. Making it all worse. More economic crises, more printing. More government debt.
Eventually, the wall is broken. Government money people can save in the hard money instead. It reduces the value of government money further. More printing. More inflation.
Eventually, war. Funded by printed money.
The dollar is the best of a bad bunch all other government money is falling in value even faster.
I wonder, is bitcoin really this better money though? It's limited, hard, and can't be printed without energy investment.
I'm still unsure that fixing money fixes the world.
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Note: "crypto" is mostly more like government money than bitcoin. It can be printed indefinitely by it's makers, does not cost it's makers to print. Crypto is usually just a scam people to get more bitcoin. Bitcoin is not crypto.
#bitfest #bitcoin
iOS-26-Zwang für neuere iPhones: Apple streicht iOS-18-Update-Möglichkeit
Zwar steht iOS 18.7.3 mit wichtigen Sicherheitsverbesserungen bereit, doch erhalten das nur ältere iPhones. Besitzer neuerer Geräte müssen auf iOS 26.2.
STM32MP2 XC7K160T PCIe test board progress! 66 unrouted nets in the power supply, but I think it'll fit.
There's something for everybody in this board:
* 0201 passives? Check (under the SoC)
* Lots of FPGA? XC7K160T is decently sized
* Lots of CPU? Dual A35s, a M33, a M0 , and a M4
* High speed? PCIe gen2 and a SFP that is theoretically capable of 8 GT/s but I'm gonna try pushing the FPGA a bit and see if I can make it do 10Gbase-R with acceptable BER…
from my link log —
Why is CSS the way it is?
https://increment.com/frontend/ask-an-expert-why-is-css-the-way-it-is/
saved 2020-07-23
#Spotify is running #ICE advertisements even on accounts that pay for not getting ads:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/spot…
“W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.2 approved as ISO/IEC international standard”
https://www.w3.org/press-releases/2025/wcag22-iso-pas/
ISO/IEC 40500:2025 (no cost):
The European Commission says Apple will bring AirPods-like pairing and iPhone notification access to third-party devices under the DMA in iOS 26.3 in 2026 (Juli Clover/MacRumors)
https://www.macrumors.com/2025/12/22/ios-26-3-dma-airpods-pairing/
“More music is being released today (in a single day) than was released in the calendar year of 1989,” Page explained.
“More of that music is being done by artists themselves, meaning there’s even more demand for music production software.”
It’s true,
the rise in musicians goes hand-in-hand with the rise of music-making software and music-distributing platforms.
Now that making high-quality recordings is possible from the palm of your hand
— and sharing them i…
A look at New Save Collective, a group of gamers and activists roleplaying ICE raids in Fortnite and GTA 5 to prepare for real-world situations (Megan Farokhmanesh/Wired)
https://www.wired.com/story/activists-are-using-fortnite-to-fight-back-against-ice/