This is a great episode to listen to for learning about the dynamics of how work sometimes gets done in open-source. Very relevant for designers and other contributors as well.

The Open Design Guide reading calls have been really interesting, in that we have been diving in the human experience of designers & open-source. I hope the guide will be able to capture all these nuances and make it 10x easier for newcomers. Lots of work to do still.

We're having our 100th design call for the Bitcoin Core App (https://bitcoincore.app) project today. First one was almost exactly 3 years ago. Slow, steady, and deliberate (OK, it's a little messy sometimes).

Lots of conversations the past weeks around education efforts for helping more designers find their ways into the open-source bitcoin ecosystem and do good work. Great to see, lots to do to make it a reality.

This may or may not become the new home page of Saving Satoshi.

Something to think about for Nostr builders - how can clients be designed for positive social effects? Research:

OSF

Source:

13 Years at Snap Inc.

Snap Inc. CEO Evan Spiegel sent the following note to Snap Inc. employees on September 3, 2024.

Two projects I've been involved with since the start are nearing big milestones. Saving Satoshi, started ~2 years ago, is nearing completion of the first 10 chapters. And Bitcoin Core App, started ~3 years ago is working towards an MVP stage. Both are very ambitious, with great teams, and true to the spirits of bitcoin and open-source. I'm excited.

There's an Open Boards Summit on Oct 24. An online event for board members and organizers of open projects and organizations (very relevant right now for the Bitcoin Design Foundation).

Open Boards Summit

Enjoyed this book. Great insight into various technical developments (AI, nanobots, health, etc), wrapped in glorious visions of the future. Are you down with nanobots in your blood stream and 10-dimensional thinking powered by your cloud-extended brain?

Amazing to see OpenSats continued unwavering support for Bitcoin Core, and now also include the Bitcoin Core App project in that support. Exciting times.

OpenSats

Caring For Core

OpenSats announces a new round of grants focused on Bitcoin Core development.

Still enjoying Secret Agent, especially the random James Bond samples. SomaFM is well worth supporting, they rely on donations.

Secret Agent from SomaFM

The soundtrack for your stylish, mysterious, dangerous life. For Spies and PIs too!

Would you agree? If not, I guess that means you like taxes 🤪

The YouTube user experience in 2024: - Consider ad-exposure to content value trade-off - 50% chance of bailing - Mute device - Click link - Do something else for ~3 minutes - Come back - 50% chance of giving up since ad is still running - Unmute and watch for ~5 minutes - Ad comes on, mute and do something else - Repeat... My default is now to not watch videos unless I am really sure ahead of time that they are worthwhile. The ad/content ratio is not reasonable. This used to be very different 1-2 years ago.

Bitcoin drink from the future (byproduct of Saving Satoshi brainstorming).

AI tools are now thoroughly entangled in my workflows and it's a huge power-up. Github Copilot in VS Code, Midjourney for illustrations (bits of Photoshop Generative Fill also), Claude/ChatGPT for text. Nothing for UI yet.

Finally finished reading this. I find it a helpful framework for some of the dynamics around bitcoin and crypto.

I posted my 100th open design update, a quick summary of what I've been up to the last two weeks. It's not a great read, since I prefer to spend my time and energy more on doing things, rather than writing about doing things, so don't read it.

#100 Not special

Just round.

It's a little tricky to tame the various payment request formats in receive screens into a coherent experience, they are just so different. Here's a rough stab at it. Hopefully we end up in a situation where we can just use one of them. But tech is evolving right now and we don't have broad interoperability yet. Plus, new users need to learn and sometimes make decisions on the fly to optimize fees, etc. We'll see...

Quick mock-up of lightning liquidity visual from a conversation in the @Bitcoin Design Discord. Avoiding the terms liquidity, inbound, outbound, etc.

A super minor update to the units & symbols page went live. It's about using a thin space rather than a regular space for digit grouping, which is an international standard (as with all standards, some countries do their own thing).

Bitcoin Design

Units & symbols

How to display and format bitcoin and currency units in bitcoin applications.

And practically speaking, a regular space may still be more legible for certain fonts. And we're still in an awkward place with sats being 1/100M of a ₿. 1/1B would be cleaner. Oh well.