I’ve been running a full node for Bitcoin (and Litecoin) for a couple of days now. It guarantees that I’ll always be able to make transactions since I can connect to the network through my own computer. That’s basically the idea of it. It took a while to sync the thing, but that was until I found out about this trick: to put the chainstate directory on a SSD and create symlink to it from the external drive to where I sync the blockchain. The Bitcoin Wiki has more detailed information.

Imagine a room with a stage.
All of your friends are there.
People take turns speaking at the stage.
They say and share all kinds of different things at the stage. Some raise questions or ask for help. Some just want to share something funny they’ve encountered. It’s nice.

If you want to join this club, there is a pretty weird thing which you need to agree with. You have to let the club put an inplant in your head, which will filter what you see and when you see it, while you are at the club.

This inplant makes you see only SOME of the people who are at the stage. It might seem quite random who sees what and when. Someone will laugh at one persons jokes, while the others haven’t heard it yet. You might hear it later, or never.

All of a sudden, this #metoo-act takes place. People come up to the stage, one at a time, and they share the most horrendous stories. They are courageous and they share difficult memories with their friends, and before strangers. They’re looking for support and friendship. But you’ll only hear a few of them. And you might not hear them in the correct chronological order. So your other friend, Jane, she heard Anna’s story, and she cried because of it. But you didn’t. She’s upset. But you’re not. All thanks to the inplant.

That’s the crazy asocial social club, and it’s the biggest club on the planet.

OpenBazaar is by far one of the most interesting projects I’ve come across in a while. Not sure if it is usable enough to gain traction (since it requires a desktop app), but the idea work, the guiding principles, of the project are sound.

OpenBazaar is a different way to do online commerce. It’s a peer to peer application that doesn’t require middlemen, which means no fees & no restrictions. OpenBazaar connects people directly via a peer to peer network. Data is distributed across the network instead of storing it in a central database.