VanessaHooper9VD

Confessions of a burnt-out father

KathleenAlvarezWMU

![why](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FfCUdx4XwAEqJxs.jpg)

bitcoin

SN: Labour of Love

FaithParkerGQU

Price action makes us riiiiiicher, bitch.

That's good. We need better command over material goods

A brief monologue on value4value

DevinGates9T4

people zap like maniacs!

Plenty more engagement and comments than writing/posting literally anywhere else (regular writing outlets, Twitter, Nostr etc)

conspiracy

Figured its a good time to consider UTXO management. Don't do it now but you'd be wise to think about it now and prepare for the next low fee environment. This is a very useful tool

> This calculator will give you an idea of how much it costs to spend a UTXO with specific characteristics. When that cost is computed, we can determine what the viable floor value of that type of UTXO is for any given transaction fee rate, which means you should avoid receiving deposits below that value.

Economically Unspendable Bitcoin UTXO Calculator

10 days of SN zapping in the big leagues 

ManuelVillarrealVUX

Day 208 of snailposting everyday 'til BTC hits $100k.

...and 8 push-up(s).

__@_'-'

news

Set up a self-sovereign Bolt Card with your own node

RoseAtkinsonP1B

So, I was listening Matt Walker's podcast about sleep and how not sleep well decrease our cognitive skills and kill a healthy way of life. You can't un-hear it and the moment you finished these episodes, nothing will be the same. My favorite one is the one that talks about the nap. 

Little spoiler: yes, taking naps is good but not for all people. Take naps for some people is harmful. Please, [just listen](https://www.sleepdiplomat.com/podcast), there are short episodes (~10 min) and each one is a masterpiece. 


![bank](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0c/Standard_Chartered_%282021%29.svg)

I previously [posted](https://stacker.news/items/520826/r/siggy47) about the possibility that the Samourai defendants could attempt a selective prosecution defense. Historically this defense is rarely successful, so the trial attorneys may dismiss it out of hand. There may also be stronger defense strategies that will be revealed after more evidence is disclosed. Whether or not the issue is raised in a courtroom, I do want to at least bring some attention to the overt hypocrisy being demonstrated by the US Attorney’s Office in the Southern District of New York.

### Standard Chartered Bank

I think the best way to make my point is to delve into the US Government’s treatment of Standard Chartered Bank, a “too big to fail” London institution. Note that the U.S. proceedings were conducted in The Southern District Of New York, the same venue where the Samourai indictment was brought. 

Buzzfeed published an in depth article which revealed the special treatment the bank received from Fincen and the Justice Department despite the many money laundering and sanctions violations investigations:

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/richholmes/standard-chartered-bank-money-iran-fbi

Below are some passages, but I encourage you to read the whole article.

> Taken together, the whistleblowers’ accounts and the banks’ Treasury reports show the depth of the money laundering problems at Standard Chartered and the extent to which the US government gives big banks a pass when they break the rules.

> In 2008 New York state prosecutors announced that the bank had helped its clients hide at least 59,000 financial transactions, worth a quarter of a trillion dollars, that potentially violated American sanctions against Iran. The bank had made “hundreds of millions of dollars in fees” off those clients, the prosecutors said.

> The bank admitted to having broken the law, but only up until 2007. The New York regulators had threatened to revoke the bank’s business charter. The punishment would effectively halt its access to the US dollar market, a death blow for a global financial institution.
> But, with a promise from Standard Chartered to stay on the straight and narrow, and an outside monitor keeping a close eye on the bank, prosecutors held off bringing any criminal charges. New York state issued a fine of $340 million — a mere 1.3% of Standard Chartered’s revenue that year. The bank was allowed to continue winding down its business with a number of Iranian clients.

The story doesn’t end there. A whistleblower came forward with evidence that Standard Chartered did not cease its money laundering activities:

> Those records, which have since been reviewed by BuzzFeed News, showed that Standard Chartered was working with Iranian clients after 2007. What Knight didn't know was that the government had allowed the bank to fulfill its obligations with some Iranian clients after 2007. Those clients had permission to repay their outstanding loans to the bank in currencies other than US dollars, or to withdraw their existing balances from bank accounts that were otherwise blocked by the US government.
This informant began talking with the FBI. In the process, he is outed and his life is threatened.  The FBI file is lost. 
Standard Chartered had friends in high places:

> George Osborne, the UK’s chancellor of the exchequer at the time, wrote a letter to the Federal Reserve copying in Timothy Geithner, then the US secretary of the Treasury, to discuss his “concerns.”
> The US was coming down awfully hard on the bank, Osborne said, hard enough to endanger its health. “For a systemically important financial institution,” he wrote, “this could lead to contagion.” Endanger one bank, he seemed to suggest, and the whole economy could suffer.

> The Department of Justice and Standard Chartered ultimately negotiated a deferred prosecution agreement, the US government’s preferred tool for getting wayward banks back on track. Standard Chartered would pay a second fine — $227 million — but so long as the bank kept its nose clean, there would be no criminal prosecution on the federal level, either, and the bank would not lose its license.

This deal was offered, and no criminal prosecution ensued, despite the following:

> The investigations found that senior managers in the bank’s Dubai office hadn’t blocked transactions from Iran after staff discovered dozens of clients used the bank’s internet platform known as “Straight-to-Bank” to access US dollar accounts. The bank’s compliance staff, according to the New York prosecutors, had “utterly failed.”



### The Samourai Prosecution
Unlike Standard Chartered employees and managers, the Samourai defendants had no knowledge or control over individual transactions, and did not, nor did they have the ability to, falsify any documents. Standard Chartered was involved in active sanctions violations and money laundering activities. The Samourai defendants wrote computer code, which is constitutionally protected speech in the United States. This was established in [Bernstein v. U.S. Dept. Of Justice](https://www.eff.org/cases/bernstein-v-us-dept-justice?elqTrackId=EE2950A0C5D77C799C5D546D19F49CD7&elq=93f28c84514a4e1784c9d16919eb9385&elqaid=5289&elqat=1&elqCampaignId=). To read more about this topic, here’s a pretty good article:
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/article/is-code-free-speech/
 Standard Chartered management committed affirmative, criminal acts, and were not prosecuted.  


The Government’s Hypocrisy Exposed By The Samourai Prosecution

Route Blinding was merged!


rPi 4 are Weak, NOT cheap, Old (2019), and NOT power efficient (compared to a modern low voltage CPU)

I've been testing almost every Node in a box on rPi, and all the bad experiences below did happen to me at least once.

rPi were designed in and sold as cheap toys to learn and experiment on DIY project using GPIO pins.

They need assembly, heatsinks, screwing fans, plugging cables to the right PIN, ect ect.

Come with cheap unpredictable fans that often don't last.

The 5v3A power supply that comes with it most of the time is cheap and breaks.

rPi only takes in 5 volts over that USB-C, some high quality power supply delivers ~4.9v and will trigger  under voltage instability and throttling.

Most newer, high quality power supply WILL NOT WORK, as they will try to jump up the voltage to 9, 12 or 20v instead of staying on 5v

5 volts mean that a high quality USB cable of relatively short length is required to make sure there are no voltage drop on that low voltage line.

It's near impossible to find a charger that is above 2 AMP while the rPi needs 3A depending on the attached storage. 

Installing the OS on an SD card will lead to more corruption if the power is lost to the rPI

The SD card has low and unpredictable write count. The SD card will become read only after a while.

There is no way to attach HDD storage without a extra active USB to SATA adapter.

This USB adapter is unpredictable and unreliable, might break on you, Might only work at USB 2.0 Speed 

No way to install the hard drive in a clean way, Most of the time the drive is left dangling on it's cable or is being taped to the bottom of the the rPi casing.

The USB to SATA interface is slower than direct NVME or SATA connection.

Being digitally sovereign is not ONLY about running a Bitcoin node to verify your transactions.

Doing ANYTHING more than running a Bitcoin Core and a light electrum server (electrs) to verify only a small personal wallet will tax your rPi beyond it's limit.

For about 100$ There are used, field test, computers that are about the same size, made of metal, 10 times more powerful, 2+ times the ram, Have ports for direct attachment of SATA and NVME drive. Wifi, Bluetooth, Have a very reliable power supply. 
All you might want to do it swap the HDD for a bigger 1 or 2tb one and boot from a USB stick to install a new Linux OS.

The Electricity savings are ridiculously not worth it give the hassle. Each savings of 5 watts is equal to (0.005kwh) * 0.07 * 24 * 365 = $3.00  

Link to Optiplex Micro search : https://www.amazon.com/s?k=optiplex+micro&s=price-asc-rank&crid=7OE2N02FZZIG&qid=1685628318&sprefix=optiplex+micro%2Caps%2C131&ref=sr_st_price-asc-rank
