Very cool!

One thing that at some point would like to do is to create a manually curated list of principal representatives, giving special emphasis to reliable nodes with low voting weight… Currently I am swamped so it is difficult to find the time and I unfortunately can’t promise I’ll get to it, but I think it would be a nice thing to do as having this info can both help people become more mindful about their voting weight and also encourage some people to run good nodes.

Ahh, sorry I had missed this comment! But, if you do get this done send it to me for payment!

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.

Dank je wel!

Thanks! Not only is this a great list of actions, but it also has helped me see this whole issue from a new perspective. More specifically, I multiple times I have tried to switch to cash-only because of privacy reasons, and I eventually become discouraged. For example, I recently gave up again. I have a shared card with my girlfriend, and she doesn’t really care much about privacy, so I felt like I was punishing myself for not good reason by paying with cash if my girlfriend next was going to pay with our card anyway.

But now that you have framed it from the point of view of those accepting cash, it does give me an additional source of motivation. It’s not only about my personal privacy, but also about pressuring vendors to accept it. This makes it worth it even in cases where there might not be a privacy benefit. Starting now, attempt #I-lost-count begins.

You are right… Cash is king, and letting it be phased out is not a good idea.

You have me on board - how do we stop this?

Interesting. I haven’t followed development in the space of “official” crypto currencies, but my impression is that these will probably be centralized, have little to no privacy features, and that the governments will be able to control access to the funds.

But I may be wrong - maybe they are actually building decentralized crypto networks? I just find it hard to believe that a government would do this.

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?

Yeah, it’s super simple!

I think that if you have the Google playstore you can use NFC Tools, which might even have the option to lock the card with a password.

My new phone runs GrapheneOS and I love it.

One recommendation that I would give people is that it does not need to be an all-or-nothing jump into the abyss. It can be a bit disheartening when you try to get rid of all the privacy-invasive things in your life and you get cut off from your family and friends.

After some failed attempts, the strategy that I have found more successful is that I have new phone that I installed GrapheneOS into, and I keep the older phone with whatsapp. The older phone is in Airplane mode connected to WiFi at my home. It is effectively a landline. I can still use it once or twice a day to check on my family through WhatsApp without having to broadcast my location all day to Meta. This way I don’t need to install any sandboxed Google Play services into my new phone. The old phone is the sandboxed Google Play. I also use the old phone for verifications, 2FA, and any other things that I don’t want to contaminate my new phone with.

Over time I am finding that my GrapheneOS is perfectly functional. The main difficulty is the chats services that are used by my family, friends, and work-related “group chats”. I have convinced some people to join my XMPP server, including my mom (wuhuu), but it is an uphill battle. That’s why the other phone is still essential for me.

Finally. Someone noticed 🥹

Both sides? “Oh yeah, the front looks a lot like the ID I lost, but can you please send me the back side too so that I can confirm?”

I have created a new job offer 😁

Actually… let’s just get started with jobs@nano.garden, and we can change things later!

Edit: https://nano.garden/c/jobs

I think that it’s a great idea! I actually wasn’t familiar with that community, but I’m familiar with /r/PhotoshopRequests, and I like that concept a lot.

I’m not sure about what the best way to implement this is. “jobsForNano” to me sounds too general, and I think that the generality makes it a difficult to concentrate expertise. I think that the success of /r/PhotoshopRequests is in part that it is very easy to understand the concept, so perhaps it would be interesting to make communities that are more specific. Perhaps even starting “PhotoshopRequests@nano.garden” would be a great idea. Payment with nano would be encouraged (and easy if you are a user on nano.garden, by clicking on the send XNO button!), but anyone would be free to participate and choose how they get paid.

What do you think?