In Meredith we trust. With GitHub we deploy. With Nostr we s***post.

I’m just going to call them machine-learning workers from now one.

Doing a docker build on a EU-based vps

Your credit card is your id card.

The Dollar Is Losing Buoyancy Spencer Jakab The Wall Street Journal Jan 29, 2026 Americans live their lives surrounded by something they never have to think about—the world’s reserve currency. Homeowners can take out mortgages that foreigners envy, U.S. companies raise money easily and the federal government can run massive deficits year after year. Almost 60 years ago a miffed French politician dubbed the dollar system an “exorbitant privilege.” Is America pushing its luck? Attacks on Federal Reserve independence, yo-yo tariffs and unpredictable foreign policy had already pushed the greenback close to a multiyear low. It tumbled further Tuesday after President Trump, asked if the dollar had fallen too much recently, said “No, I think it’s great.” A cheaper currency should mean foreigners buy more U.S. products. America needs them to buy its bonds, too, and might be taking that for granted. When a Danish pension fund said last week it would dump its U.S. bondholdings over “poor government finances,” Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called the move “irrelevant.” Denmark is irrelevant too, he added. Clearly the Danes were miffed over the Greenland mini-crisis. Yet they aren’t the only investors getting worried: Both bonds and the dollar sold off in an echo of last year’s “Liberation Day” episode. Along with stocks, they rebounded last week after President Trump pivoted, similarly to last year’s “Liberation Day” reversal. Foreigners are probably a lot less relaxed about that than Americans, though. T.S. Lombard strategist Dario Perkins points out that a haven currency and bond market by definition shouldn’t have behaved that way during a crisis. A U.S. investor or consumer could be forgiven for barely feeling ripples on the surface of the global financial order recently. Inflation is a bit high and foreign trips a tad pricier, but stocks seem pretty relaxed. Bond yields are even a touch lower than this time last year. Yet foreigners who park so much of their savings and official reserves in American assets have earned less on U.S. stocks translated into their own currencies and have lost money on Treasury debt. More significantly, doubt is creeping in about how long America’s markets will remain exceptional—stocks that trade at a premium and bonds that stay buoyant despite no end in sight to government red ink. Currencies like the yen, euro or yuan aren’t ready for prime time. But the dollar’s privilege will inevitably erode, exposing Americans’ portfolios and household budgets to global economic tides. That era is starting to feel a bit closer. Shared via PressReader connecting people through news

I prefer the notion of sole-control over self-custody. Self-custody still sounds like a service model. It sounds like a feature inside someone else’s system. Sole-control is clearer and more honest: one key, one authority, one locus of action. No intermediaries implied. No silent guardians. Just the reality that control either rests with you, or it doesn’t.

This might not look like much, but I have successfully integrated NIP-85 Trusted Assertions into my verification process. Any #nostr #safebox user will be able to decide what root authorities they trust, and what trusted assertion providers they use. This allows anyone to decide how they wish to verify records (which is configured as safebox user parameters). It's one thing to know that a record is cryptographically valid, but it's an entirely different thing to know if the owner is actually authorized to issue the record, and what their reputation is. This is where the Web of Trust (#WoT) fits in. This prototype was built as a result of the @nosfabrica #Wotathon. It's still early, but I have proven to myself the necessary mechanisms to build a decentralized trust infrastructure that can't be captured by a platform vendor or nation state. In the example below, you can see the green checkmarks, and the WoT Scores. Onward!

The three architecture diagrams you need: 1. Identity 2. Hegemony 3. Payments

Verify, then justify.

Useful report from the EU: everyone cares about their health records, but I don’t think users actually care or want the EU Digital Wallet. With #nostr #safebox, I am gunning for an open, secure system that is strong enough for private health records and with private payments. Fundamentally important, #nostr #safebox is being designed to work independently of a phone or an app, so you can’t be captured by a state or corp.

when did we trade online access for total surveillance?

Humans don’t verify, they recognize.

The Secret WD-40 Society The Wall Street Journal Jan 27, 2026 There’s a club in San Diego that’s perhaps more exclusive than Soho House and harder to get into than some of the most elite colleges in the country. It requires a special key, nondisclosure agreements, passage through a bank vault and, typically, an executive title. The drinks don’t flow, members don’t rub elbows with notable people and chefs aren’t filling plates with tasty bites. The only perk is knowing the secrets of the world’s most famous lubricant. And yet, for those in the know, there’s no greater privilege. “Actually getting in there, it was like getting into Fort Knox, quite frankly,” said Steve Brass, a recent inductee. Brass is chief executive at WD-40, the more than 70year-old company behind the red, blue and yellow cans used for everything from loosening bolts to coaxing a boa constrictor out of a car engine compartment and removing gum from turtle shells. He was admitted around 18 months ago to the small society of people who have seen the product’s secret formula— a feat that came more than three decades after joining the company. The handwritten formula is kept in a lockbox at an undisclosed Bank of America location in San Diego. It’s only left a bank vault three times in the past 30 years. There was the time thentop executive Garry Ridge rode into Times Square on the back of a horse wearing a suit of armor with the formula in hand to celebrate the company’s 50th anniversary at Nasdaq. An armored vehicle moved it—or rather moved Ridge, who was handcuffed to a metal briefcase holding the formula—from one bank vault to another in 2018. And most recently, in the summer of 2024, Brass and finance chief Sara Hyzer got a peek while signing paperwork at the bank. That viewing involved a couple weeks’ notice, several nondisclosure agreements and securing a key held only by the company’s top lawyer. All for a few minutes with a notebook holding the 40th attempt at a formula—and the 39 failed attempts to get it right. (The WD stands for water displacement.) Neither executive had any idea what they were looking at. “I’m not a scientist, so I’m not going to recall what was on there,” Hyzer said. “The one thing that was written in the notepad that I do recall was, ‘Do not smoke.’” Most WD-40 employees have never seen the formula, and never will. This includes the ones who would understand it, like Meghan Lieb, head of research and development. She joined the company as a scientist 20 years ago, thinking she’d get to see the magic behind the lubricant eventually. Those hopes were dashed pretty quickly. “My family probably assumes I know what’s in it,” Lieb said. “I think they would be like, ‘You’ve been working there a long time. Why don’t they trust you?’” The notebook in the vault is the only version that has the full makeup of the original formula, which accounted for nearly 80% of WD-40’s revenue as of August 2025. Most company insiders tasked with drumming up new potential uses and products use a coded version to maintain the secrecy. Lieb has come to peace with her outsider status. The mystique keeps things exciting, and it doesn’t prevent her and colleagues from working with the lubricant. Still, she admits a certain cachet attaches to the few who have seen—or even been near—the notebook. “I think Wendy’s cool because she saw it,” Lieb said of a colleague who has glimpsed the outside of the formula diary. Claudia Fenske, who has been with the company since 2012, thinks she knows one person who has seen the formula: an external regulatory consultant who assesses the health and safety of the company’s products. She speculates that Lieb may one day see it. But WD-40’s head of innovation is less hopeful for herself: “I’ll never know.” “Of course there’s curiosity, but I think there’s pride and ownership for people to almost keep that secret going as well,” said Fenske. For outsiders, it’s a different story. Consumers deliberate in chat groups about what’s in the cans. Is there fish oil? (No, according to Lieb.) Some mixture of orange peel, coconut oil and vanilla to create the sweet smell? (Also no, according to the company.) Wired magazine sent the product for lab testing over a decade ago and came up with a list of components. The publication got some of the components right, according to a WD-40 spokeswoman. “However, many of the chemicals mentioned in the article are described at a very general level,” she said. “It’s similar to saying you know what’s in Coca-Cola—carbonated water, sugar, and caramel color— yet simply mixing those ingredients together doesn’t come close to recreating the finished product.” Brass, the CEO, may one day open up the club’s guestlist, perhaps when the company hits $1 billion in revenue. (Revenue was around $620 million in its most recent fiscal year.) But it will remain an exclusive list. Longtenured employees may make the cut. “There is no way I’m showing my board members our formula,” he said with a laugh. Shared via PressReader connecting people through news

Easy access was the bait. Total surveillance was the switch.

I appreciate all the zaps! Thank you!