Lightning invoices are really simple to pay though. Why would that method of payment make it more desirable to commit to a year as opposed to a month/day or even a metered number of response tokens?

Lightning payments should enable less friction than credit card payments, not add more, right? (Sorry, not trying to be an ass, just trying to understand if there's a pain point I'm missing here - maybe we can do something about it.)

This looks great! Why does it cost more to pay in bitcoin though?

I believe head of household just means you have at least one dependent living with you, a child for instance, and no one else is claiming them on their taxes.

Does LNproxy support Multi Path Payments (MPP?) If strike split this payment, perhaps a first part of the payment made it to you node (220K) and it was waiting on another 130k htlc? That would cause an inbound liquidity drop, and you node would refuse to settle it because it doesn't satisfy the full invoice.

Is your inbound liquidity still reduced?

My wife has one of these - it's really slick, both high quality, and configurable. Coincidentally she also works for the organization that introduced the right to repair bill. I'd pick one up myself, but I can't justify replacing my current machine just yet.

IIRC, he was mining a substantial fraction of blocks at the time and doing so well that he was looking to distribute the proceeds a bit. This was much more likely a conscious decision, not a shortsighted mistake. After all, a monetary medium works better when there's some distribution and not just a single owner. Let's also not pretend like Laszlo traded the entirety of his bitcoin for two pizzas.

The early Andreas Antonopulos videos are great at conveying how revolutionary bitcoin is, the ethical implications of a neutral monetary policy + immutable, censorship resistant transactions, and why the status quo doesn't appreciate it. It's hard to watch them without getting worked up and excited for the possibilities. I would start somebody new there before getting into the technical details.

Good advice. This is about a once a year event for me personally, so I'm not too worried about it currently. Feerates are a bargain right now if anyone's looking to consolidate utxos.

My son has his own hardware wallet. I started by buying bitcoin with the stimulus money we got in his name several years ago, and have been adding since. It's my view that the world is getting less meritocratic in many regards. I'm not actually sure what the overall change of social mobility has been compared to when I was growing up, but I could basically get through a pretty decent college education with a combination scholarships, a summer job, and/or a very small loan. What are the odds of my son being able to do that a decade from now?

On the other hand, it is becoming easier to learn and certain entrepreneurial activities might be more accessible to him. I hope there's increasing opportunity for him in the future, but to hedge, I think it's wise to start him off with enough that he has options. Of course that also comes with an increased requirement of responsibility, and self control, but those are attributes I try to instill in him anyway.

Ideally he won't need these sats, can keep them safely stored, and reach financial independence a bit earlier than he otherwise would. Perhaps having a bit of savings that is already working for him will provide a bit of optimism for his future. At least it does for me.

That was fascinating. Our ape brains definitely come prewired for tribalism - sometimes to our detriment.

I think with investing it's a little different, but there's something similar going on. Intelligence often seems counterproductive, but I think there are some orthogonal attributes that are maybe also prerequisite - an ability to reason about exponential growth, and a healthy amount of introspection of one's emotional state. A healthy appreciation of statistics may come into play as well. In any case, I've met several very bright people who made for terrible investors.

I used to make a batch every week with plain whole milk from the store. A spoonful of a previous batch it enough to inoculate the new one. Just simmer the milk first and let it cool before adding the culture. I've never made it while travelling - thanks for the tips!

The La Quinta in downtown Austin always seems to be popular with bitcoiners. Reasonable accomodations, but pretty minimal. Close to pleblab and the rest of downtown. Can't beat the price.

Shorter is better, lol!

Yes, here it's telling the sender to get to the provided node, then ask it to use that channel. The channel is using an alias, because it's not public, but that node will know which one you're talking about. Then, the sender can compute the route and factor in how much this peer charges to use this channel.

Your node can add multiple of these hints and each hint can even have multiple hops. It should be smart enough to figure out which hints it needs depending on the size of the payment and how much inbound liquidity you need.

However you're generating an invoice, there should be a route hint included in the result. This tells the payer how to get sats to your node if it will need to use private channels.

Try generating an invoice and decode it. If a route hint is not included for your private channel(s) with inbound liquidity, it could be impossible for a sender to complete the payment. Generally your node should know that payment will be impossible without a route hint (if that's indeed the case) and it should include one without prompting.

Wait, you guys have just one computer?

I can't imagine letting it get to that point with my son. He just started high school, but he's already looking forward to getting a summer job - he's so excited to earn his own money.

We also live below our means, spending on what we need, but trying to avoid frivolous spending. Occasionally we take international vacations that the average family might not, but otherwise you probably wouldn't suspect us of having any wealth. His friends' families generally have nicer houses, more expensive cars, etc.. I feel like it's my duty to keep him grounded during childhood. We talk about this from time to time actually. Hopefully being conditioned to spend money on what's needed but not on "all the material things you could want" will put him in a position to not feel the need to seek money from us in the first place.

That said - I would like to start him out with some bitcoin savings at some point. I think the optionality of having a bit of savings is healthy. I do worry about the timing and how to go about this though. It might be best to wait until he's established himself and already self-sufficient.

I think this actually makes some sense. It definitely feels like you're licensing access to software and not owning it in any sense. Might as well call a spade a spade.

Well, the BoJ interest rate is next to nothing (0.25%), so I see how it's theoretically possible given a favorable economic climate. I'm skeptical though.

True. I wasn't blaming, just trying to provide some context.