TIL accidentally that in Firefox on mobile you can long hold on an emoji to get a description of it! 🥰

Anecdata: I had an invoice which failed on my Phoenix wallet which worked with xpay from my local node. It's always been the other way around!

Pebble

The Finest In Wearable Gadgets

Get a new Pebble smartwatch or ring right here

Finally, someone bringing Pebble back. I ran my Pebble into the ground, and would happily get a new one. Love my Seiko classic, but the vibrating alarm makes my wife's life better for those 5:30am lightning calls.

So, there's a place offering Bitcoin-denominated life insurance. Here's the problem though: they invest the funds to make return in *Bitcoin*. But there are few if any Bitcoin-native opportunities. We also know that Bitcoin's gains are in a handful of market days per year. IOW I cannot see a way of making "conservative" investments and outperforming Bitcoin, since such investments will be dollars. If it seems too good to be true ...

Honestly, surprise on the up-side is nice. Unusual. But let's take our wins! ❤️

Honestly, I'm still struggling with Bitcoin soft fork proposals. I believe we will end up with full introspection: there are too many things people want to build which require it. But most current proposals are workarounds for current limitations, which will become vestigial when/if we actually fix things. They may be simply unused, or worse, not quite useful. And it's hard to know: if we had restored script and introspection, we could see what people build and then go "ah, this opcode would make this more efficient!", but without that we are guessing. So I really have to figure out if mevil is real. Serious people have concerns, esp @Matt Corallo, so they need serious consideration. If I can convince myself it is either not an issue or independent of script power, then I can reasonably purpose what Bitcoin would look like with maximal expressive power. After that, I can look *backwards* and see if any subsets of that power make sense as stepping stones. I initially thought CTV (well, a more straightforward variant) made sense, as a common case, but brief discussions with Jonas Nick have me questioning whether it actually is still useful with full introspection (or, more clearly, what the right form would be). As an aside: I think sponsors (done optimally) are necessary for any Bitcoin high-fee future. Feels like a side-quest though! Sorry I don't have answers. This stuff is *not* simple, the details are critical, and some of our best minds from previous eras are absent :(

FFS. Someone says someone said Trump said he holds a lot of Bitcoin. There is no signal in that noise. None.

I think it was after my first year at Blockstream I asked if I could have regular 1x1s with then-CTO Gregory Maxwell. I was, perhaps, too inexperienced at that point to take full advantage of that, but his form of thinking has been a model for me on how to think about Bitcoin, though I don't always agree with him. Needless to say, his receipt of the #finneyprize along with Pieter Wuille is fully deserved. It's hard to think of who could even follow that pair, to be honest! finneyprize.org

Wait, you haven't seen The Princess Bride? (Now I'm trying to figure out the easiest way to stream this while on vacation...)

I am a little surprised by those buying into the idea that Trump will lead a deficit-reducing administration. I expect conflict, chaos and massive falling out, with the result being business as usual.

I don't usually find Nic compelling, but I'm enjoying the thoughtful contrariness of this piece, opposing a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve (and predicting it won't happen):

Bitcoin Magazine

I Don’t Support A Strategic Bitcoin Reserve, And Neither Should You

Nic Carter lays out his arguments against a Bitcoin Strategic Reserve.

#CLN release 24.11.1, for those fans of xpay. I've been impressed how many people are testing it, and especially those who go all in on the #reckless "xpay-handle-pay" setting! BTW: did you know you can use the "config" command to set `xpay-handle-pay` *on the fly*?

GitHub

Release v24.11.1: The lightning-dev Mailing List II · ElementsProject/lightning

This is a quick release due to the popularity of xpay, especially using the (reckless!) `xpay-handle-pay option. Highlights: xpay compatibility im...

Antoine Poinsot

On Soft Forks

Some thoughts on Bitcoin soft forks, and Bitcoin Core, in light of the recent interest in introducing more expressiveness in Bitcoin Script.

In which Darosior explains quite coherently why there's not a great deal of *technical* motion on a Bitcoin soft-fork. Seems like a fair, rational summary.