"This project scores all 50 states on their overall respect for individual freedom and on their respect for three dimensions of freedom considered separately: fiscal policy, regulatory policy, and personal freedom. To calculate these scores, we weight public policies according to the estimated costs that individuals suffer when government restricts their freedom. However, we happily concede that different people value aspects of freedom differently. Hence, our website provides the raw data and weightings so that interested readers can construct their own freedom rankings." ... "New Hampshire is once again the freest state in the Union and in 2022 set the record for the highest freedom score ever recorded in the 21st century. Governor Chris Sununu and the New Hampshire legislature have much to be proud of. " https://www.freedominthe50states.org/ #archer_politics #fsp #freestateproject #grownostr

Is there a standardized way to tell which NIPs a given client has implemented?

The Free State Project (FSP) has enjoyed such success in New Hampshire, that the progressive advocacy group Granite State Matters has written a 24 page attack on libertarians: https://granitestatematters.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/NH-Battleground-in-the-Fight-to-Dismantle-Democracy-electronic.pdf #grownostr #freestateproject #fsp #archer_politics

If you care about government surveillance, make sure to tell your representative to vote not to renew section 702: https://act.eff.org/action/tell-congress-absent-major-changes-702-should-not-be-renewed "Section 702 authorizes the government to collect, without a warrant and from American companies like Google and AT&T, the private messages of targeted foreigners abroad — even when they are communicating with Americans. The F.B.I.’s ability to search for information about Americans in the repository of intercepted messages has been a focus of controversy." https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/09/us/politics/fbi-surveillance-darin-lahood.html The law has been used to spy on Congress, protestors:

the Guardian

NSA statement does not deny

Agency responds to questions from Senator Bernie Sanders with statement citing

#archer_censorship #archer_spying #archer_politics

Of course, these $10,000 Toyota trucks won't be sold in the US, due to the protectionist Chicken Tax:

Chicken tax - Wikipedia

Laws like the Chicken Tax cause me to feel rage whenever some smarmy progressive waxes rhapsodic about how the government is necessary to "protect" the interests of the poor. "The Toyota Tacoma pickup is built in America for Americans and Canadians, to dodge the "chicken tax," but 181 other countries around the world get the Toyota Hilux pickup. It looks a bit like our Tacoma, but more basic. You'd recognize it from global news footage of relief aid or conflict areas. Well, apparently it had gotten a trifle fancy and at about $15,200 to start, it was pricing itself out of some of those markets. The Toyota IMV 0 intends to fill in that low-cost space beneath the Hilux with a target starting price of $10,000. "

MotorTrend

First Drive: Toyota's $10,000 Pickup Truck Is Perfect. So, Why Are We Sad?

This Toyota Land Cruiser 70 Series lookalike is a no-frills, cost-reduced Hilux flatbed/pickup optimized for lower-GDP markets.

#archer_politics

We should also give prisoners vouchers, and let them choose which prison to be in. That way, prisons are incentivized to treat prisoners humanely. #prison_reform #grownostr

Sam Bankman-Fried caused enormous harm, and I, like many others, want him to face justice. But letting him rot in prison seems like a waste. To me, proper justice would involve him making as much restitution to his victims as he can with his remaining life. He's non-violent, so there's no physical threat that requires locking him away from the rest of society. Instead, he should be forced to wear an ankle monitor, and allowed to find what jobs he can. In order to incentivize him to work, he should get to keep a percentage of the money he earns above the amount required to monitor him. (The rest should go toward a victim restitution fund.) The more he makes, the higher the percentage of his earnings he gets to keep. #prison_reform #grownostr

Is there an extension that allows you to "retweet" a twitter post to your nostr timeline, instead of your twitter timeline? #grownostr #nostr

@SpencrGreenberg proposes many people would be better off if they curated their social media feed more carefully:

X (formerly Twitter)

Spencer Greenberg 🔍 (@SpencrGreenberg) on X

Imagine you lived in a universe where whatever you give your attention to gets drawn to you. So if you pay attention to cute dogs on the street, so...

Economist Bryan Caplan advocates something similar more generally:

Econlib

My Beautiful Bubble - Econlib

Unlike many readers of Coming Apart, you don’t have to convince me that I live in a Bubble. I’ve known it for decades. In fact, I thi...

IMO, I think it's a good idea, but done at the level of the person, rather than the level of posts. It would be easier to just post funny memes and interesting science. It's time consuming and unpleasant to make unpopular points (such as the fact that Israeli bombs and food/fuel/water embargoes have killed far more children than Hamas has). But imagine if you knew that Jews were being gassed by your government, and you said nothing because it was unpopular? Many controversial topics are also heavily throttled by social media's censorship algorithms. I might feel more relaxed about building a bubble for myself if I trusted that mainstream media sources weren't routinely spreading lies and propaganda (I bet many people still believe Hunter Biden's laptop was a Russian plant, that Kyle Rittenhouse murdered three black men in cold blood, or that 300 K children are being trafficked in the US ). So rather than build my bubble at the level of the post, I try to surround myself with peple who can discuss controversial discuss topic politely, follow good argumentation practices, and assume good will. People who fail to do those things consistently get dropped from my feed. One of my dreams is to find a forum that enforces / rewards good argumentation / epistemic practices: https://fakenous.substack.com/p/tips-for-debate-part-1

Tips for Debate, part 2

These are the rest of my tips for debating controversial questions well.

Econlib

The Bettor's Oath - Econlib

Another great thing about my new daughter: she got me to start watching Game of Thrones. The first episode didn’t hook me last year, but now...

"Freifunk (German for: "free radio") is a non-commercial open grassroots initiative to support free computer networks in the German region. Freifunk is part of the international movement for a wireless community network. The initiative counts about 400 local communities[1] with over 41,000 access points.[2] Among them, Münster, Aachen, Munich, Hanover, Stuttgart, and Uelzen are the biggest communities, with more than 1,000 access points each."

Freifunk - Wikipedia

#mesh #censorship #freifunk

Sorry for the repost, but I had to correct the spelling of Pihkal and Tihkal. An Alexander and Ann Shulgin Pixar biopic would be amazing. Miyasaki / Studio Ghibli is also acceptable. #archer_humor #archer_drugs #dnm #monero

After the CCS hack, fluffypony proposes breaking up the Monero Core team: "Currently the Monero Core Team is responsible for a number of things that are critical to Monero, and as a result there is a great level of trust implicit in them. For instance, a malicious Monero Core Team member could hijack the domain, and serve up malicious Monero downloads right after a new release. No matter how quickly this is detected, there will be many affected downloads, and could cause massive financial and privacy-related network damage. The recent CSS wallet incident is also an example of risks that the Core Team presents. Additionally, this has been a thankless job that the Core Team has taken on (for no compensation), although even if there were compensation and constant praise it would still be a centralising force that we should try and eviscerate. My suggestion, and I encourage us to use this thread to iterate on it in public, is to break the Core Team up into 6 self-assembling workgroups. This is not a complicated exercise, apart from the community coming to consensus as to who should form part of the workgroups. I would suggest we aim for a January 1st, 2025, cutover date for this."

GitHub

Proposal: Disband Core · Issue #921 · monero-project/meta

Currently the Monero Core Team is responsible for a number of things that are critical to Monero, and as a result there is a great level of trust i...

#monero #archer_crypto

If anyone deserves a Pixar biopic, it's certainly Alexander and Ann Shulgin . #psychedelics #art #memes #archer_humor

"Arweave is the permanent information storage system, engineered to fulfill a set of immutable principles. When the Arweave community says permanent, we mean it. Truly permanent storage requires a system of perpetual technical renewal to adapt to the ever-changing environment. That is why today we present the Framework for Evolving Arweave. This mechanism is the culmination of significant research, setting the immutable foundations that will ensure the fulfillment of the protocols’ vision."

Understanding the Framework for Evolving Arweave.

This transaction contains a companion document to the Framework for Evolving Arweave.

#arweave #archer_arweave #archer_crypto

"One of the fundamental principles of open decentralized protocols is that they should be self-governing based on their built-in mechanisms, without any central authority or controlling entity. In addition, our protocol, which stores data permanently, needs to be able to adapt to an environment that will inevitably shift in unpredictable ways over time. Without proper mechanisms in place to allow for upgrades and innovation, a protocol risks becoming stagnant, vulnerable to exploits, and inadequate for new use cases. Many protocols have codified governance mechanisms in an attempt to address similar needs. Unfortunately, many of the current practices of governance, such as token voting DAOs, have proven to be less robust than initially hoped. Recent cases of dysfunction in Uniswap and MakerDAO — amongst many others — illustrate examples of governance slipping back to the behaviors of traditional companies, abandoning the core principle of guaranteed immutable rights for users. These dynamics pose serious threats to the neutrality, utility, and longevity of these protocols. To avoid these problems, Arweave embraces an entirely different approach: protocol evolution. Outlined in The Framework for Evolving Arweave, launched today, protocol evolution enables a thoroughly resilient and market-based process for network upgrades that embraces competition." https://scribe.rip/@arweave/arweave-is-an-evolutionary-protocol-e072f5e69eaa

"A few years ago a group of child pornographers was infiltrated by police who were able to monitor, interact, and aggressively investigate the members. Despite engaging in a 15 month undercover operation, only one in three of the pedophiles were successfully apprehended. The majority, including the now infamous leader Yardbird, escaped capture. The dismal success rate of the law enforcement officials was due entirely to the strict security rules followed by the group. This post will examine those rules, the reasons for their success, and the problems the group faced which necessitated those rules."

Yardbird's Effective Usenet Tradecraft - Hacker OPSEC

Survival in an Extremely Adversarial Environment If your secure communications platform isn’t being used by terrorists and pedophiles, you&# ...

"Remember when a Roomba recorded a lady on the toilet, and images from the video ended up on Facebook? It's the type of horror story that rarely happens, yet once is enough to make you second-guess the smart home products you bring into your personal spaces forever. That's why I was so intrigued by Thursday's announcement of Matic. It's an upcoming robot vacuum and mop that has been in development for six years by ex-Google Nest engineers Mehul Nariyawala and Navneet Dalal. It stands out from other consumer options because of the privacy it offers. The device doesn't require a connection to the Internet or cloud and performs all processing on-device."

Ars Technica

Matic is a $1,795 robot vacuum for people concerned about privacy

Relying on local processing, Matic can see your home and suck up liquid spills.

#ai #robots

Please sign and forward. We've got to stop rentseekers and the government from stunting AI.

X (formerly Twitter)

martin_casado (@martin_casado) on X

1/ We’ve submitted a letter to President Biden regarding the AI Executive Order and its potential for restricting open source AI. We believe stro...

#archer_ai #ai

Perhaps the same tech could be used to create a private / anonymous stablecoin without the KYC/AML limitations. "We explore the feasibility of a (fiat) stablecoin that provides cash-like privacy while enforcing compliance with anti-money laundering (AML) and countering the financing of terrorism (CFT) regulation. Such a privacy-oriented stablecoin solution does not exist today. We demonstrate, based on concepts developed in Gross et al. (2021) in the context of a CBDC, how users can exchange small amounts of value with a (fiat) stablecoin within pre-assigned limits outside the view of third parties, such as banks, central banks, crypto exchanges, regulators, or other parties, in a regulatorily compliant way. " #monero #privacy #stablecoins #mina

Mina Protocol

Etonec highlights Mina Protocol in report on how to design a compliant, privacy-preserving fiat stablecoin with zero-knowledge proofs

Learn how Mina’s zkApps can contribute to more private and compliant payments

How to buy gifts for your friends with Monero

ShopinBit

SHOPINBIT - Live the good life with crypto

1 Million+ Products for Bitcoin, Monero and other Cryptocurrencies. Shipping to EU, USA, CA, CH and UK!

- Europe's largest e-shop with 1+ million items for sale). Accepts BTC, XMR, and many altcoins. https://plebbin.com - Classified ads for European audience. Operated by Shopinbit.

Anon Shop

- Order anything from Amazon with XMR)

Coincards.com

Welcome Page

Coincards.com offers the best selection of hundreds of gift cards, mobile top-ups and vouchers from retailers all over the world. Explore what we o...

- Buy gift cards with most crypto. https://www.bitrefill.com - Another gift card service. #monero #btc #dnm