This week I've been paying by cash, and I noticed a few things.

One thing is that there is a lot of people paying with cash that are doing so because they do not have another option. Some of them are simply tourists without a working card, but I suspect some of them might really have no card at all.

The other is that the people at the shop do notice when a long line of buyers stand to pay with cash. I have seen cashiers struggling to get someone to stand on the second cash register to offload some customers.

As for the ethical vendors... I struggle with this. It is just so much more convenient to go buy from the Albert Heijn that's right under my apartment. I tried the shops around, but they rarely have what I want, products are often more expensive, and lower quality. I also don't know how to tell whether specific small vendors are ethical vendors or not. So, for now I just go to AH for most of my purchases.

Yes, it is increasingly difficult to pay with cash in the Netherlands. Even at the Albert Heijn they have set it up such that it is a lot more convenient NOT to pay with cash. They have a large amount of self-service pin-only checkouts, and one or maybe two workers accepting cash at the manual checkout lane.

One path is to make an effort to resist this digital move and pressure politicians so that they enforce these type of rules and that cash is accepted. But I think this can at best slow this process down.

The other path is to embrace the digital move and start integrating crypto currencies into our societies in a more substantial manner. I know that many people have given up in crypto, but, putting speculation and hype aside, crypto is the best way we know of to integrate cash-like payments into the digital world. Right? Or is this something others disagree with?

No, I'm not concerned about a lawsuit. It's something that I want to do because I think that it is important. If I want to share tools with non-tech savvy people who are unable to build them from source, I want to be able to share these without anyone needing to "trust" me. The reproducible builds standards are a very nice idea, and I will learn how to implement them.

But I still wonder whether my approach is valid or not - is printing the hash of the output executable during Github's build process, such that it is visible in the workflow logs, very strong evidence that the executable in the release with the same hash was built by github through the transparent build process? Or is there a way a regular user would be able to fake these logs?

Ooh, I did not know this one was of the properties of Rust.

Thanks! I am convinced now, I will learn how to create reproducible builds.

My worry is that the build is run through npm, and I think that the dependencies rely on additional dependencies such as openssl libraries. I worry that it will be a lot of work to figure out what every npm dependency is, what libraries they depend on, and how to make sure that the correct versions can be installed and linked by someone trying to reproduce the build 10 years from now. So it looks like a difficult project, but I will read more about it and hopefully it is not as complicated as it looks!

Thanks! It is some consolation. 🫂

PhD thesis! 😅

Gluing my ass to the chair won't be sufficient. I think I have some form of computer distraction addiction or undiagnosed ADHD, because when I am sitting at the computer I find it really hard to do what I need to do. I am able to find a universe of distractions by slightly moving my fingers, and I have an inordinate ability to psychologically (not rationally!!!) justify it as being somewhat useful. The only thing that saves me is that I can be very efficient when I do focus, but this has become more difficult as the complexity of the work increases, and so many different figures, tables, and concepts have to coalesce together to tell a story that I genuinely believe...

I would probably have a better chance trying to write with pencil and paper in an isolated island than with LaTeX in my computer....

Thanks! I'm at 90% now :) Things that affect the nerves are scary, but the doctor helped calm my fears as symptoms were consistent with a not-too-serious sinus infection.

TIL. That's an interesting craft!

Probably paypal just covering niche without any clear understanding just because stablecoins under the hood is very similar to paypal , just using different rails

Yes, that is what it looks like to me.

The thing is... it would take such a small modification to this system to change the world. If PayPal were to implement this such that the PayPal payment can be made by transferring the crypto into the seller's account directly and anonymously without the buyer having a PayPal Balance account, and then PayPal is willing to exchange the seller's PYUSD for fiat directly on the site, this would be such a significant step in the crypto revolution.

Why not both?

Noooope