SN Saturday Newsletter 9/17/22

find SNL#33: The ending of a Scooby Doo episode on YouTube and BitcoinTV

Happy Sat-urday Stackers,

I recently reread A Group is its Own Worst Enemy by Clay Shirky. Written nearly two decades ago, Shirky describes the problems of social software saying we must accept three things about it:

you can't separate social and technology effects - they inevitably intermingle
a core group of users will care more about the integrity of the community than others
to keep the community focused, the core group needs tools to help keep the community focused

While community platforms appear to have given way to "social networks," I'd argue social networks mostly differ in that users define the core group of users for themselves.

Don't unintentionally (but predictably) become a security this weekend, stackers!

Upcoming AMAs

We don't currently have AMAs scheduled for this week, but are working on it. Watch the SN Twitter for AMA announcements.

Top Posts

SpiralBTC is a public block explorer that gives you the privacy of a self-hosted node. Using homomorphic encryption, they encrypt a bitcoin address and provide information about the address that only you can decrypt. Even if we can't easily verify that the implementation works as described, the possibilities are cool.
- SN Discussion with founder
- https://btc.usespiral.com/
Tony Giorgio, Lightning developer and researcher, did an AMA. We learn why Tony is named after a pizzeria, his thoughts on Lightning privacy, joining and leaving startups, Web5, DIDs, and more! Tony recently started consulting through Bitcoin Dev Shop and is working on a privacy-focused lightning wallet, Mutiny.
- I'm Tony Giorgio, Lightning Developer and Researcher. AMA.
Need to send a fax in 2022? Don't have a time machine? Try Bitcoin Fax which allows you to fax a PDF for sats. Definitely do not send the Bitcoin white paper to the IMF, IRS, or Western Union.
- SN Discussion with founder
- https://bitcoinfax.net/
Sats Overflow is like Stack Overflow, but you can earn sats for answering questions. Every answer on Sats Overflow is paywalled with a Lightning invoice, with the amount set by the answerer. Creating an account is also paywalled. While you can't see the answer before you pay for it, the founder says ndb because you can see the answerers reputation. A big discussion, mostly revolving around the game theory, ensued.
- SN Discussion with founder
- https://satsoverflow.io/
Steve Lee, lead of Spiral, did an AMA. We learn about where Steve draws the line on which projects should be open source and not, his thoughts on the gap between software engineering salaries and grants, PoW vs PoS, what he's looking forward to in the future of Lightning, and more!