Rivian owners forum

I'm curious what strategies people are using to maximize the life and minimize capacity losses for their batteries. The response I got from Rivian customer service was "ABC, always be charging." Keep charging to 70% as much as possible and minimize time at higher ends of the battery.
My concern is cycle charging. I never got a clear answer whether it's better to charge back to 70% each day to keep near the same SOC or whether it's best to use the battery a reasonable amount, say something like to 30% SOC and then charge back to 70%. My understanding of battery technology is that they will degrade over so many cycles, so my thinking is that I don't want to charge every day to minimize the cycle charging. Is that not a thing if it stays below 70%? Any informed EEs or longtime EV owners out there have any insights?
Much appreciated!

I have a 2012 Pro-4X with an AT. I’ve read else where in the World Wide Web that the Xterra auto transmissions have a tendency to jerk when even slightly stepping on the gas. Wondering about the experience of other 2.5 gen owners.
Going from stopped to putting the gas on slightly, it’s hard to get a smooth and consistent accelration. The pedal also feels like a baked potato and it’s hard to find the right foot pressure to just get the car going without jerking somewhat. You have to be super delicate getting on the throttle to get a smooth launch from stop. Even when driving at highway speeds. Sometimes I’ll be going ~60 when I have to let off the gas a little bit to manage traffic. Coming back on the gas slightly from ~55 produces the same sort of unpredictable jerkiness. The response of the engine just feels somewhat unnatural.
Certain forum posts around the web seem to suggest that this is just the way the Xterra drives. Is this just a characteristic of the Xterra or should I head to the mechanic?

Looking at buying an R1T from a local dealer. Low miles and good price. Certainly will get the Car reports but what happens to the original warranty of the car? Does it go with the car or is it offered only to the owner that took delivery straight from Rivian?

I want to start by saying that after all of this, the person mainly involved in this story is someone whom I still have some degree of appreciation for due to how they helped me when I was unemployed for years of my life.
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That being said, this is going to be a long one.
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Back in 2018, I was hired by a company that was pretty much just starting up. The company does official repairs on Apple products and I was hired as a technician to help maintain the volume of repairs in control. Back then, there was only 1 technician working there and then there was the owner who was the person who called me and asked me to come in. I knew the owner from my previous job experience at another company that performed official Apple repairs. When I worked for this company, the owner would come in and bring devices in bulk for us to repair so they could resell them. That's how they remembered me and they found me on LinkedIn for the sole purpose of asking me to come in and help out at this new company they have started. The problem with this, initially, was the only other tech there was not informed of this or consulted. From what I learned, the other tech had been working there for a long time and, because there was no one to cover for them, they hadn't been able to take a vacation or some days off. It got to the point that the other tech forced their time off and vacation so the owner was probably forced in getting someone to cover for them. So I did.
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It was hard to cover for someone when you do not know the nuances and procedures that needed to be followed in order to do things properly. The other tech was not there, and the owner had NO idea on how things were ran or what to do in specific situations, so my new coworker was forced to call me and just explain some things I needed to do to keep some form of order there. The days passed and my new coworker finally came back from their vacation, so things got better.
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There is one key thing about this person though that I did not mention. I have worked with them before at the same job I met the owner! I worked with them for about a year because they were fired due to a sudden change in leadership at my previous job. They were fired due to being unable to attend a meeting with the new owner of that company. Yes... They were on vacation then too. Anyways.
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As days passed at my new job, some issues with the location we were in began to boil up. The place that was rented for our business was shared with another company and the two owners butted heads with one another about some things. I was never clear on that, but it culminated in the owner of my company, now my boss, starting to scout out for a new place to be. During this process and the changes to come, I was asked not to come to work again and that they would be in contacted with me in a few weeks or a month to see whether I would return. The remaining tech helped a lot with the move and relocation of the business, new people were hired to help out and it eventually became a more proper repair shop. It took some time, but I was eventually called back to work there again.
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It is now somewhere in 2019. The business is going fine. Obviously, the first tech at the company was the one in charge and taking care of the administrative side of things, working directly with my boss to manage the business. I was solely a tech and worked on fixing what needed to be fixed. A point came in which I mainly focused on fixing iOS devices (iPhones, iPads, Watches, etc) and the other two techs there (a third was hired) would do the computers. Of course, I would help out whenever the queue would get busy on the Mac side of things; though rarely came the time I would get help when my queue of iOS devices got high. Either way, that's how it was.
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As time passed and we continued to work, I started to notice a change in the lead tech's behavior. They would space out more and go on break for a full hour, and even lock themselves in the bathroom to smoke marijuana (right inside of the business), and even began to yell more often and treat us all bad. The tech room would often reek of it, and that's just always a smell that I really disliked, but what could I do? An additional thing about my coworker's personality is that things had to be done their way and it was often pretty difficult to convince them otherwise. We had different ideas sometimes, and we often argued a lot about it. I started to speak with my boss directly more often and they agreed that how the lead tech was beginning to treat all of us was just not right and that they were aware of them being absent for such long periods of time. My boss was no longer very happy with how things were going with them, so new people were hired with the goal that the lead tech was going to be eventually fired. They also explained to me they never liked saying who was above anyone else, that we should not worry about job titles, that we work together as a team and that there is no one in charge. I, amongst my other coworkers, found this to be very odd, but we shrugged it off. This is more relevant further down the story.
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The day they were fired was a chaotic one because it meant someone had to immediately assume all of the administrative responsibilities that they were in charge of. The person to do that was me, but I was never formally trained on how to do it and I was forced to rely solely on my previous experiences along with my intuition on how things worked. Not to mention, it was now early 2020 and we were in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, so special considerations and changes were needed to accommodate the changing work environment. Luckily, I had a pretty good understanding and knowledge on how the system we used for ticket, customer, and inventory tracking worked, so I was able to learn more from there. The new person that was hired during this transitional period is very important for later in the story, so keep in the mind! Anyways, I was swarmed with a list of new tasks and responsibilities, but I also got a pay raise, so I felt it was worth it at the time. I then started to work heavily on making sense of the system and logistically connect modules with each other to form procedures with the aim of reducing the time customers take during the initial check in. I built the company a PHP form so customer can directly enter their details into the system along with the ability for them to provide a signature to our terms & conditions without the need of the person at the front desk to do it for them manually. (Yes, we also had a receptionist by then). Other changes that helped us all out were made and all of them made things better one way or another.
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More time passed, we continued to work and push the business forward. I was now working directly with my boss to handle the administrative side of the company. I was fully in charge of the system, making changes how I saw fit. I tried to explain to my boss why the changes needed to happen, but they never seemed to understand much on how everything worked, so they left it to me and my best judgement. It was during this time, after many meetings with them, that I started to see just how out of touch and unsynchronized with how our repair process worked. They didn't even know how to properly take care of a customer at the front, something that still holds true today! Albeit, not as bad as it was. Anyway. I began to pick up on these things and we started to argue about it; they would always do most of the talking and I would listen, but I would later reflect on what we talked and then I would give my opinion. A time came in which they decided to get someone else to take the helm on the administrative side of things because they were not seeing any "progress". I was still held highly and worked closely with whom they hired next to do said job.
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To cut down a bit from the story, about 3 different people came in to do the admin side, all of which left because they saw quickly how it was to work with my boss. After the third person left, I had told them that this fourth person coming in would be the last time that I would invest in explaining how everything worked. After all, for each of those people, I had to sit one-on-one with them and basically onboard them on the processes and procedures that needed to be followed in order to keep our account in good standing and maintain our system with minimal errors. As you all may imagine, it is very tiring to have to do this process over and over again after you have your hopes up that this FINALLY may be the person to be able to properly work with my boss and maintained things how they needed to be maintained. But nope. They left as well.
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I should have left right then and there, given my two weeks, and begun my search for a new job. You see, another major factor that had me rethinking things about this job was the very fact that, from the start, we all were paid with a 1099 (AKA Independent Contractors) and not with W2s. The duties and responsibilities we had at this job demanded for a W2, but since the company was fairly small and not well-established yet, we were always lenient on demanding this from our employer; however, we were always hopeful that the day would come this could be implemented. There was a very short period in which it was implemented, a whole two weeks! Then it was removed. It never was implemented again, but I stayed regardless now solely based on the fact that I considered my boss to still be a good, honest person who was just having a really tough time keeping things afloat and just doing what they could to help all of us out. (After all, they DID hire me when I was not working for years before, so I cannot be gracious enough to them about that). We still managed to work out through it, and my boss had brought someone from their own family to help out; that person lasted a month! And they left like everyone else.
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It was around this time that the coworker mentioned from earlier (the one that was mostly hired to fire the one who smoked marijuana) was given the "helm" per say (even though my boss never liked to say it officially), so I began to butt heads with this coworker because they were under the impression that the situation at the workplace stemmed from my inability to be firm and take charge. Sure, I was not the most firm and demanding person, but how could I ever go against the wishes of my boss? The new coworker in charge began to speak more directly with my boss while I started to go back to being a technician and helping out with the queue. I was still consulted when they were going to make big changes, but no more than that. Even though I was fuming at the current changes that were being made, because I honestly thought I had done nothing wrong and people who were previously hired to do the admin job leaving because of my boss was a clear testament to that, I managed to collect myself and eventually work together with my coworker to both challenge our boss on their unproductive ideas. We started to work together, and instead of my coworker being fully in charge, we started to see it as we both were in charge. My coworker handled more of the workload distribution, and tech room management while I handled administrative tasks such as checking for errors in the system and fix discrepancies.
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One thing I forgot to mention was that the system always had errors (as does any system in any company) but I kept those errors to a bare minimum, I'd say about 10% of it had errors that were not fixed; however, there was a time in which I was asked to no longer do that activity, so pretty much being forced to stop. When I did that, errors skyrocketed and it was just so bad that they had to put me back to do it.
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To no one's surprise, my coworker eventually got really fed up with my boss. It got to the point that the few of us who worked there formed a WhatsApp group solely so we can talk amongst ourselves about how things were never going to improve and that this was all for nothing. We talked shit, you know, to vent our frustrations about the environment we worked in. Specially since about 70% of meetings we had with our boss, both 1-on-1 and as a team, would result in screaming and one of us walking out of the meeting angrily. It was just demoralizing and just plainly... sad. My boss also began to hire people without consulting us first, and expect us to train them so they can help out; something we did the first few times this happened, but we stopped nearing the end. My coworker eventually gave their two weeks' notice and my boss, well, they didn't react well. The notice was given to them on a Friday, and my coworker was fired that very Sunday. No notice, no extra time. Just plain gone along with an additional coworker. I later found out that the main motivation behind the firings was the sheer fact that they participated a lot in talking crap about my boss. I was just speechless and angrier than I have ever been.
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The following Monday, I come in and I have a 1-on-1 meeting with my boss. We had sat together before and discussed some key changes that I needed for them to make in order to remain employed at their company. I had asked them to provide me with a proper W2, and another pay raise since it had been two years before my previous one. In the meeting we had that Monday, they pretty much told me that my pay raise was still "under review" and that a new person they had hired that very Monday was going to "supervise" me and that I had to work closely with them and my boss to move things along. I mentally checked out as I heard them talk and for the rest of the day, I focused my efforts in gathering all the files and documents I had for the company, make sure I didn't have extra copies of sensitive information such as payroll or client data (I kept track of all the things related to the company and did all of the hours for the employees). I copied it all to an external drive for my boss. The thing about that Monday, though, is that amidst this new drama that had come up, our boss had failed to pay us. Our pay always came on a Friday, bi-weekly, and they had not paid us when we were due that day... a recurring theme if I am to be honest. Our boss, more often that not, was always late on paying us when we were due; what I did on that Monday was told my boss that I urgently needed my full pay because I had payments coming up and I didn't have enough to cover them, so they agreed to take me to the bank directly themselves so I could deposit a check that had my full amount due written on it. (I do not drive.)
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Once I made sure my payment was made in full and I copied all of the data relevant for my boss to continue their business, I quit. On the spot. I had called my mom earlier to come pick me up and wanted to wait for her to be outside so I didn't have to wait like an idiot after resigning like that. This is not the end of the story, though! You see, our company always had a "week in reserve" of pay for employees so the company could have some leverage to make sure employees do not take advantage of the company if they get fired or they decide to quit. (Things like taking assets of the company with them without permission), but they were always paid once my boss made sure that none of that was taking place. For my coworkers who were fired, they put their accounts and payments up to date in just a couple of days. With me, though, not so much. I had the misfortune of having experienced some recent damages to devices that were brought in for repair, two consecutive ones at that, and of course I assumed all responsibility for those damages and owned up to my mistakes when they happened. Not for it to be an excuse, but I was under a lot of pressure during that time due to all the things that were happening at the company and was not very careful with those repairs, but I digress. My bad. I took this into consideration before leaving though, and was well aware that the amount of the parts used to fix my mistakes would be deducted from my last week's pay, so I was fine with that.
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What I was NOT fine with was that, almost half a year ago, there was another incident caused by me in which the volume flex cable of an iPhone XS was torn. A $6 part, mind you. The repair cost for this is, at the very most, $80, but my boss decided to handle it differently. They decided to purchase the device from the customer it belonged to for a whopping $250, which is the price the customer (a vendor, really) could sell the phone for. My boss thought it would be a good idea to pass down those $250 down to me and for my last week's pay to cover it when, again, they failed to listen to me that it could simply be repaired for much less. They just needed to take the phone to a different shop because that type of repair was not done at our store; and I told them I would cover the costs of that. In addition to all of this, they also decided that they would charge me an extra $50 for ordering duplicate tools that we already had at the store. Sure, it sucks extra tools were ordered when they are not immediately needed, but the fact stands the tools are there for company use. They are NOT broken or missing.
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The day I quite was on March 6, 2023 and, so fairly recent. My boss now has some people there working for them and trying to hold everything together with that new person they hired on that fateful Monday to "supervise" me along with those two people they hired a few months back without consulting us (one of whom has no idea what to do, and constantly makes mistakes). The employee that works as a receptionist there is leaving soon as well.
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But yeah, that's my story. My boss still owes me the money for my last week's pay and I am actively looking for a new, better job. Wish me luck, guys! Thank you for reading, I know this was a long post. Also, I would like to take a quick moment to say I have not actively participated in forums before (Including Reddit) so hopefully I didn't do anything wrong by writing this post. I just needed to put my thoughts in writing and for other people to understand my perspective on things.

Everything is a scam. After a supposedly "trustworthy" market exit scams, 5 more markets pop-up just to follow the same path, exit scamming.
The real problem is not in these markets but it's in the people who use them, but honestly, who am I to judge them? It sure feels cool to be on a cheap amazon copy on Tor with all products listed nicely with a fancy user-interface and all that "good stuff"
Especially after you put all your money into the market wallet and be at the mercy of the owners to pinky promise to never exit scam like the old bad boy insert any market name in the last 5 years
And when you do have an issue, all your lifeline to the whoever runs that super-trusted website is some kind rip-off "ticket" system and you have to pray they even notice it.
It's funny actually, more markets exit scam than get taken down by the feds nowadays
What happened to the good old forums? What happened to simple interface, not fancy but not ugly? What happened to when you had an issue you contact the owner directly and they resolve it?
What happened to forums where they don't have a "market wallet" and thus have 0-chance to pull a exit scam?
Why do all of us use these fancy new markets with fancy names and interfaces just to get scammed a couple weeks down the line?
Why have fake security and "PGP in browser" and bullshit like that? What happened to good old use PGP outside of the market/Tor and sign it yourself instead of checking some fancy checkbox that gives you false sense of security and "privacy"?
I am a moderator on tor subreddit /tor_noobs and everyday I see countless of posts that recommend "XYZ" market and how it is better than "ZX" market, then you check their profile and you quickly realize they're on payroll helping yet another exit scam in the making, it's honestly sad.
The problem is clear: There is no standards, it's the wild west out here.
I know this post might get downvoted to hell or even removed as some "market owners" and shills are not too happy about someone stabbing in their future lambos and nice beaches but somebody have to say something AND actually do something about it.
The solution to the exit scamming problem is yet, another, brand new, market.
BUT not just any brand new market, one that is simple to use like good old forums, one that is more of a "community" than a market, one that does not have any "market wallets", one that even if the admins want to exit scam, they can't.
Something like that, is the solution to most of the problems of the dark web markets
Now this is not a shilling post, I don't own any markets, however I do own a small forum called Envoy that is mostly about hacking but I will change that very soon and add pretty much everything good in this post while leaving everything shit in the toilet.
Any vendor that has good reviews on other markets and want to give it a try, it costs nothing, 0 to make an account on Envoy. As long as you PGP verify, you will get the Vendor rank for free.
Again not shilling, not going to even link my forum in the post but it is what it is, if someone can pull it better then be my guest, thank you for reading through this crappy rant, maybe, just maybe, it could be more than just a rant in the near future.

Just like seemingly everybody else who bought a NZXT H1, mine has started overheating due to the AIO getting clogged with junk. And wouldn't you know it, NZXT support is refusing to honor the warranty because apparently I didn't buy my case from one of their Approved Vendors. Is that even legal??? I bought this product brand new, why should it matter who the reseller was?
This has happened over and over again:

• PSA: NZXT won't sell you a replacement AIO for the H1, please be cautious when buying this case!
• NZXT H1 - dead AIO?
• NZXT H1 pump failure (and fix)
• Alternative AIO for H1 gen 1
• (there are lots of similar posts)

...and each time, the story involves NZXT refusing to fix it, followed by someone from NZXT offering to make an exception after the owner complains in a public forum. So here I am, complaining in this public forum because apparently this is the only way to get warranty service.
Hey NZXT, could you please honor your warranty on this obviously defective product? I would really appreciate it. Or at the very least could you let me buy a replacement AIO? I'm at my wit's end over here.

As a big city native, I've been looking for accomodation in one of Zambia's smaller towns (can't say which right now for quasi-security reasons) and have been having a terrible time. I am aware that many home sellers and owners in the Livingstone-Lusaka-Copperbelt line post on Facebook, WhatsApp and other online forums. But it seems once you venture outside the line of rail, online ads drop off a cliff. I'm wondering if anyone here from the smaller towns would enlighten me on how to go about the search.

Hey gang
Had the fortune of learning from Dany Bill last night at a seminar. It was amazing and wanted to share a bit of a recap with y’all in the forum.

1. We started with technique almost immediately. The gym owner introduced him briefly and all he said was “thank you. gloves please” and we got to work. Shadow box warmup but then right to combos and how they would be used in an fight
   
2. He got a lot of people involved with showing the combos to the class. Sometime he would partner with someone. Other times he would guide two people but it was cool to see him training with so many different folks and moving a bit.
   
3. He kept us engaged with lots of work. It was a nice long seminar and great workout. Sometimes seminars are pretty slow paced and it isn’t quite a workout. We got work in last night and then looked up at the end and realized it was well over 2 hours not counting Q&A
   
4. We ending the night with Q&A which is always so wonderful to hear stories from guys like this. He also spent a bit of private time speaking with the active amateur fighters in the gym.
   

I was super excited as he was a guy I looked up to when I started training and it lived up to it. I’ve seen him do a few seminars in California and he said he plans to do more as there are so many more Muay Thai gyms now a days in the USA. If you see him advertised, go. So worth it.

Nostr, short for “Notes and other stuff transmitted through relays,” is a new communication protocol developed in 2021 by Lightning Network developer fiatjaf, which evolved out of LNBits developer Ben Arc’s attempt at a fully-decentralized marketplace called Diagon Alley. As opposed to other communication solutions, which mostly function via dumb clients and smart servers, Nostr offers smart clients and dumb servers, which heightens censorship resistance for users.
In Nostr, all data is stored locally with users and merely distributed via relays, rather than stored on central servers, such as via Twitter. In the case of social media, Nostr increases censorship resistance, as users are enabled to fully own their own content and profiles. In light of recent controversies around Twitter’s censorship policies, users began migrating toward the federated communications solution Mastodon. However, in Mastodon, ownership over content and profiles lies with those running the Mastodon servers users signed up with. While federations such as Mastodon offer more censorship resistance than centralized servers — as users are able to simply sign up to another server when censored — criticism has arisen around potential censorship on Mastodon through server owners.
In December 2022, the Nostr community received a 14 BTC grant from Twitter Founder Jack Dorsey, which brought unprecedented attention to the protocol. As applications built on Nostr evolved, the mobile client Damus jumped to number one in social networking on the iOS app store in China, resulting in its ban. In an apparent effort to contain the #MarchOffTwitter, Twitter CEO Elon Musk shortly banned the publication of Nostr-related content, along with bans on other third-party platforms such as Instagram, but to no avail.
While Nostr is not a privacy protocol per se — among other issues, clients by default leak users’ IP addresses to relays — the Nostr protocol could bring improvements to Bitcoin privacy.

Improving Privacy And Scalability Of BIP47

BIP47 is a Bitcoin Improvement Proposal to create reusable payment codes while protecting the privacy of users for recurring payments. Without BIP47, users need to tediously generate new addresses by hand to avoid address reuse. When a user reuses an address for transactions, the user enables anyone watching the blockchain to easily cluster all transactions belonging to the address reused and form a graph of the user’s payment history and net worth. The prevention of address reuse is therefore a privacy best practice in Bitcoin and already implemented in many Bitcoin wallets by default. However, when a user aims to establish recurring payments with another party, such as in a merchant-customer relationship, a frequent generation of new addresses can be inconvenient.
With BIP47, a customer can generate a set of addresses to use for payments for the merchant. If a customer purchases products monthly, the merchant would need to send the customer an address each month. With BIP47, the customer creates a dedicated payment code for the merchant, which functions similarly to an extended public key. This allows the customer to automatically generate new addresses for the merchant, instead of the merchant needing to create addresses for the customer.
BIP47 makes use of notification addresses, which are monitored by HD wallets for outputs. In a notification transaction, the merchant sends the customer a blinded public key and chain code via the OP_RETURN field, together with a shared secret to keep the shared addresses private on the public blockchain. This exchange creates several issues due to the architecture of the Bitcoin network. The first two are economic: A notification transaction consists of 80 bytes, which can become expensive for users when fees on the Bitcoin network are high. Notification transactions, in addition, create unsendable outputs, which bloat the UTXO set over time. This increases the computing load on Bitcoin nodes who, at the time*, need to store the entire UTXO set, meaning every Bitcoin output that has not been used as a new input to ensure the validity of transactions.
A notification transaction creates so-called toxic change. When a user receives change from a notification transaction and spends the change to a third party, anyone watching the blockchain is able to correlate the user’s recurring payments to their non-recurring payments, even when addresses are not reused. A notification address also only exists once for each wallet. If a merchant wanted to establish recurring payments with 10 customers, anyone watching the blockchain is able to gain insight into the merchant’s customer base, as all 10 customers would need to create notification transactions for the merchant to the same notification address.
Instead of using notification transactions to exchange payment codes between merchants and customers, payment codes could be exchanged via Nostr. As opposed to other communication methods, Nostr is suitable for the exchange of BIP47 payment codes as no central authority exists to potentially censor the exchange of messages. At the same time, all direct messages on Nostr are encrypted by default, eliminating the need to compute shared secrets. By making use of BIP47 via Nostr, users can avoid the creation of UTXO set bloat via unspendable outputs and eliminate the correlation of recurring versus non-recurring payments as well as the publication of customer bases through the avoidance of toxic change and the re-use of notification addresses.
\Note: Storing the entire current UTXO set for Bitcoin nodes may potentially be eliminated in the future via the implementation of* UTreeXO, which shifts the burden of proving that a transaction spends a valid UTXO to the owner of the UTXO, reducing the storage requirements from gigabytes to kilobytes.

Nostr Pay-To-EndPoint

In Bitcoin, blockchain analysis services operate the heuristic of “common input ownership” to map transactions to identities. Within this heuristic, a transaction containing different public keys used as inputs is classified as belonging to one person. Due to its UTXO-based architecture, through which inputs and outputs of transactions are linked, the Bitcoin protocol is also prone to subset sum analysis. In subset sum analysis, adversaries are able to calculate the probability of inputs and outputs belonging to the same entity, even when different public keys are used as inputs to one transaction. For example, if a transaction has inputs of 1, 4, 7, 23 and 6, and outputs of 5 and 36, it can be deduced that input 1 and 4 and inputs 7, 23 and 6 belong to the same entity.
Pay-to-EndPoint (P2EP) is a privacy-preserving reinvention of Satoshi Nakamoto’s Pay-to-IP (P2IP) coded into the original Bitcoin client. One form of a P2EP transaction are PayJoins, which are transactions designed to break the common input ownership heuristic. In a PayJoin transaction, both the sender and the receiver contribute inputs to a transaction to break the common input heuristic. With PayJoins, users exchange information about what UTXOs will be used as inputs via any communication channel, such as a Tor Onion, which functions as the end point, to construct a partially-signed bitcoin transaction (PSBT). Once both parties have agreed to the terms and signed the transaction, a PayJoin transaction looks just like any other Bitcoin transaction on chain. Because involved parties act as both sender and receiver, a PayJoin transaction breaks the common ownership heuristic as well as subset sum analysis: parties may contribute inputs of 3 and 5, while the transaction generates outputs of 6 and 2.
The problem: PayJoin transactions are complicated to coordinate, as participants have to be online at the same time when using a clearnet domain or Tor Onion endpoints. If a user initiates a P2EP transaction and, for example, closes their computer or otherwise disturbs network connectivity, the transaction cannot be communicated. In Nostr, communication is asynchronous: users fetch information from relays once network connectivity is restored. By using Nostr keys instead of Tor Onions as endpoints for P2EP transactions, P2EP transactions could be coordinated more easily.
Another implementation of P2EP is the much-debated LNURL. With LNURL, instead of tediously needing to generate new invoices for each transaction, users are able to receive a static endpoint pointing at a web server to automatically generate new invoices. However, because web servers are reliant on the global Domain Name Service (DNS), users of LNURL inevitably reveal their identity to the hosting provider, as well as their IP address to payees if no proper precautions are taken. Wide adoption of LNURL would therefore be a detriment to the pseudonymity of the Lightning Network. Instead of using a web server as the endpoint for LNURL, users could use Nostr keys as endpoints for LNURL transactions to conceal their identities.

Nostr For CoinJoins

While a PayJoin is great to break the common ownership heuristic as well as subset sum analysis, PayJoins are unable to offer privacy to both sender and receiver toward the cooperating party. PayJoins are essentially two-party CoinJoins, limited to two participants — this means that both sender and receiver are aware of their own inputs and outputs, leaving the inputs and outputs of their partner identifiable. Unless a PayJoin is facilitated with CoinJoined transactions, users risk revealing their wallet balances as well as past and future transactions to their PayJoin partners.
In anonymous-amount credential systems such as Wasabi Wallet’s protocol for CoinJoin coordination, WabiSabi, Nostr keys can function as communication endpoints for the coordination of a CoinJoin transaction. This enables the sender and receiver of a CoinJoin transaction to exchange the credentials needed to participate in CoinJoin rounds, essentially enabling a form of discreet payments within a CoinJoin. With the use of Nostr keys as endpoints in CoinJoins, cooperating parties remain unaware of their counterparties’ balances and transactions by hiding in the crowd. At the same time, using Nostr keys as endpoints for CoinJoin transactions helps PayJoin users save on fees by facilitating payments directly within the CoinJoin, rather than CoinJoining to facilitate the payment after.
Another use for Nostr in CoinJoins lies in the discovery of coordinators. While most CoinJoin coordinators run behind Tor to obscure the identity of CoinJoin participants, users are currently unable to easily discover new coordinators to join with the exception of JoinMarket, a CoinJoin marketplace targeted toward more advanced CoinJoin users. While CoinJoin users are able to add custom coordinators to Wasabi Wallet — a trivial task as easy as exchanging a URL in the backend — no way exists to automate the process of updating coordinators due to the lack of a platform for publication. Instead, to discover new coordinators, users must search social media and forums, such as Reddit or Twitter, to add coordinators manually. However, the publication of a coordinator service via social media or forums may pose a risk to coordination providers depending on the policies applied to the service, as certain pages may easily be shut down.
If Tor is an anonymous remailer, meaning a protocol facilitating the anonymous forwarding and receiving of messages between peers, Nostr can function as an anonymous bulletin board. CoinJoin coordinators can publish their services via a Nostr event type, and CoinJoin wallets can be enabled to automatically pull from those relays to display within their clients. The broadcasting of coordinator servers via Nostr, such as facilitated via BTCPay’ Servers CoinJoin plugin and proposed in the Lightning-enabled CoinJoin software Vortex, can eliminate the need to manually search for and add CoinJoin coordinators in CoinJoin clients, helping to further decentralize the CoinJoin coordination landscape.

Circumventing IP Requirements With NOSTR

As touched upon previously, the Nostr protocol was originally conceptualized to realize a fully-decentralized marketplace called Diagon Alley. As the Nostr protocol evolved, Diagon Alley became the LNbits extension NostrMarkets: a Nostr-native marketplace which enables merchants and customers to run and interact with online shops via relays. In NostrMarkets, customers can subscribe to a merchant's public key to fetch products from relays instead of accessing a merchant’s site via a webshop. This increases the censorship resistance of online shops, as merchants are not dependent on seizable websites — rather, a merchant’s shop is hosted with all relays the shop sets up to communicate with. Even if the merchant's server were to be seized, its shop could easily be set up at a different location, as all products are stored with relays on the Nostr network. NostrMarkets handles order and payment coordination via encrypted Nostr direct messages, while payments are facilitated through the Lightning Network.
In addition to its censorship resistance, the LNbits extension NostrMarkets enables fully-anonymous marketplaces. Instead of exposing a merchant’s IP to the whole world, both merchants and customers only reveal their IPs to the relays they connect to, which can easily be mitigated by running a client or shop behind Tor. As an upside to fully running a shop behind Tor, which makes a shop only accessible via the Tor browser and .onion web pages, NostrMarkets can run in any web browser or smartphone, improving the user experience of privacy-preserving, client-server communications. Because payments are negotiated via encrypted Nostr direct messages and facilitated via the Lightning Network, payments in NostrMarkets remain comparatively private as long as the shop’s Lightning node runs behind Tor, as a payment coordination direct message is indistinguishable from other direct messages in Nostr.
Another way to circumvent the requirement of IP addresses in server client communication is NOSTREST. REST, short for “representational state transfer,” is part of the software architecture of the world wide web, used to facilitate communication between servers and clients via GET, POST, PUT, DELETE and PATCH requests. But, when a client sends a REST request to a server, IP addresses are revealed, potentially revealing personally-identifiable information. On GitHub, __escapee__ proposed a REST API bridge built on Nostr, called NOSTREST. By using Nostr keys without identification headers, both users and server operators do not need to know the IP addresses of their counterparts. A NOSTREST implementation can therefore improve the privacy of Bitcoin applications using REST as servers do not need the clients’ IP addresses.
One such example could be the running of custodial Chaumian e-cash mints, a form of anonymous-amount credential systems. In an e-cash mint, the mint operator does not know the balances or value exchanged by its users. However, due to the current architecture of REST, it does learn the user’s IP address unless running behind Tor by default, such as in the e-cash system Cashu. But implementing and managing Tor support is tedious. With the NOSTREST bridge, projects can easily preserve the privacy of their users. By running an e-cash mint behind Tor using NOSTREST to communicate between server and clients, communication can be facilitated asynchronously, while both server operator and user only learn each other’s public keys, eliminating the risk of identification via IP.

As a long time Tesla owner (having owned 4) and having to visit Tesla service consistently with issues over the past 7 years, I can honestly say that Rivian has built a better service process that I am confident will scale better than Tesla’s service model. Firstly, booking service is identical for both as it is all done through the app, but unlike Tesla, Rivian does not put random charges on the warranty quote and they actually call the day before to confirm all of the service items that they will be correcting providing a best and worst case estimate on the timing. My Tesla experience has largely been that the date is scheduled weeks in advance and then the night before the service it is moved without explanation. Secondly the drop off experience is currently more organised due to the lack of volume but the lay out of the Bay Area service Centers make me believe that they will be able to scale well to the volume. Check in at Tesla is basically sitting in a single line while they check in cars one at a time which has varying levels of efficiency depending on the day. Once you are checked in at most Tesla SCs you are welcomed to a baron room with white walls and red chairs but no coffee, water, or even magazines. In stark contrast rivians SC had comfortable chairs refreshments, books and a Rivian swag shop to soak up some time. Lastly the process of reviewing the work and collecting your car seems the same but overall Rivian’s service experience is making me want to sell my new Tesla.
This is only my first service so things may change in the future but I am currently very happy with Rivian.
Rant/off

Hi! Just wanted to ask this in a forum where people with more legal counseling experience reside.
For a little bit I've been tempted by the idea of creating my own character sheet designs for TTRPGs (like D&D or Pathfinder), and potentially even sell them online if they turn out good enough. However, because I don't want to risk getting sued or taken to court, I planned on doing so completely from scratch, i.e. without any copyrighted art/lore/material/logos from any company. Of course common words like "Strength", "Dexterity" etc would be included, but I would design everything myself.
Just to be SURE sure I also emailed Wizard (owner of D&D) and asked if that would be infringing upon their IPs and copyrighted material, to which I got a very vague answer about it "being covered under their 'fan content policy'", despite there being nothing to tie my planned character sheets to their trademark at all (perhaps apart from the number of boxes on the paper, and above mentioned words that appear in ALL TTRPG sheets). No logos, no copyrighted art, no lore, no nothing.
Anyone with some legal knowledge regarding IPs and copyright who can tell me if I'm within legal rights to create and sell such a product? (I tried reading their CC-BY 4-0 license to see if it would help me make any sense of the situation, but alas not...)

LAST EDIT: The man himself responded to this post. Yes, I'm talking about our lord and savior, Raph, has given us a lengthy explanation below in the comments. Hopefully, it gets pinned, but stop reading what I said and just look at his comment. Thanks, Raph!
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I thought I'd compile some notes because there's some pretty unpleasant news about the console release coming out in a few days, and I think everyone excited for it should be aware that:
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1.) Per the Hinterland Forum admin posted yesterday, the discount promised to players for getting the DLC early is NOT GOING TO BE AVAILABLE ON MARCH 30th. This is directly in contradiction with a Dev Diary post from March 20th that stated "TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY will retail on Xbox and PlayStation for $19.99 USD, with a 15% discount for the first week after launch."
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fINAL EDIT for context: Raph responded below and confirmed the early access fee of $19.99 USD will be the price for console players come Thursday. There was an additional discount that Hinterland requested and noted on 3/20, that was denied, and will not be available until the below timeframe. But console players will still get the early access price if they buy Thursday or before the next update (later in the year) by the sound of it. $29.99 USD will be the DLC price after TFTFT is fully released. HOORAY FOR DEVS THAT READ THEIR FANS' REDDIT POSTS!
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As of yesterday,
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>Xbox Game Pass subscribers will have the opportunity to purchase THE LONG DARK at a discount when it exits Game Pass on April 16th.
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>Current Xbox owners of THE LONG DARK will be able to purchase TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY at a discount some time later in April.
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>PlayStation owners of THE LONG DARK, or PlayStation+ subscribers who have THE LONG DARK in their library, will be able to purchase TALES FROM THE FAR TERRITORY at a discount some time after April 30th.
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2.) TLD will be exiting Xbox GamePass on April 16th
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3.) Hinterland Forum admin also said "Keep in mind that all current saves and Achievements obtained while the game was on Game Pass should be retained if you choose to purchase THE LONG DARK upon Game Pass exit, or into the future. Those saves and Achievements are attached to your Profile on the platform."
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4.) Nintendo Switch players, good luck getting the DLC I guess because still no news on that.
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Most recent official updates:
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-March Dev Diary (3/20) *this also contains other info about what to expect in the new DLC so worth a read*: https://hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/43022-march-dev-diary/
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-Admin update about Console Players (3/27): https://hinterlandforums.com/forums/topic/43049-the-long-dark-exit-from-game-pass-console-discount-plans/
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EDIT: Apparently it wasn't clear enough to some, but the paragraph below is just my opinion on the news I compiled above. You don't have to agree with me, but please don't try to argue with me over an opinion. This post is mainly for providing relevant, recent news to console players who are waiting for the DLC
Personally, I feel that Hinterland is really pushing their community's patience now. I for one am NOT happy that I would have to wait at least an additional month on PS4 to get the DLC discount that was promised at the very beginning of this whole DLC project. I took this coming Thursday off of work to download the DLC and play the new content. I'm peeved that I won't be able to download it at the previously promised discount, and I swear if it gets delayed further than this Thursday I might just give up on getting the DLC altogether.
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For anyone else annoyed about any of the news above, I recommend you voice your frustration to Hinterland. We are consumers of their product after all. Email [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]), post your questions on the Official Forums, or send your questions on Twitter.

I consider this to be political, as copyright and anti-piracy laws are pretty liberal nowadays.
As a right-wing Libertarian, I consider copyright and anti-piracy laws, as they currently stand, to be extremely unconstitutional. People have a fundamental right to share whatever they want online, and I believe that those "things" include copyrighted content. Here's some reasons why it should be completely, and permanently legalized, at least in the U.S. (the laws are very unconstitutional here), but also in other countries that allow people to speak freely (obviously not North Korea):

1. It's not theft. Why? Because theft requires the owner to be deprived of something, and there's no deprivation involved in software piracy: the files aren't being removed from the owners' PC(s). They're being copied, therefore the owner(s) still have it. Also, the only case in which it should be illegal is if the copier is trying to use it for monetary gain (i.e. selling bootleg CD/DVD/online copies), which usually isn't the case. Another reason is because when you upload or download something, you're just sending subatomic particles (electrons and photons) back and forth along various cables, and over wi-fi transmissions, therefore it's not stealing.
2. When someone issues a DMCA takedown to try and remove something, it can result in the uploaded content becoming even more popular, resulting in a Streisand effect (see the AACS key controversy for an example). IOW, trying to remove pirated software from the Internet is virtually impossible (pun intended).
3. Piracy often leads to a given song/album/movie/TV show/Getty Image/etc. being more popular. When someone pirates something, they often share it with their friends (for free, that is), and there's a good chance that some of those friends will end up buying the stuff from official sources.
4. Copyright terms are way too long. They should only be 10 years+optional 10-year extension at the most, yet they have it so that things stay protected for 70 years after a person's death, if not longer. Obviously Disney is indirectly responsible for these so-called "Mickey Mouse laws" that we have right now. They keep petitioning Congress to extend the terms longer and longer. Imagine how upset someone from the year 2050 would be if they couldn't sell copies of Star Wars online without a license, when it should've gone public domain in 2029.

Anyone know what it would take to get Congress (or whatever any given country's lawmakers are called) to revert the copyright laws to what they were before Disney even existed, and legalize digital piracy as well? The laws in effect right now violate the First Amendment to a considerable extent, and don't promote creativity after the first couple decades. If anything, upon changing/repealing the laws, they should also make it so that any copyrights already in effect instantly expire if they're older than 10 years (with an optional 10-year extension). That would immediately make anything from before 2013, including anything from Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, Fred Astaire, Bing Crosby, the classic/prequel Star Wars movies, all the Star Trek series up to Enterprise, and all of Stargate (except Origins) go public domain.
There also needs to be a global "Internet Constitution/Bill of Rights", which would contain all the fundamental human rights that would apply to the Internet: Free speech (including stuff like pro/anti-vax talk), freedom of religion (i.e. discussing religions freely on the Web), freedom of the press (i.e. blogs), the right to share both public domain and copyrighted content freely on the Web, and the right to report a website for violations of these rights (i.e. there should be no permabans for things that don't involve porn, hate speech, or spam, and people should be allowed to freely share pirated content on their own personal website, just like on dedicated "pirate forums"). Forums would still retain their ability to limit stuff with "forum rules", moderators, etc., but file-sharing websites, self-hosted sites, social networks (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, etc.), and other sites that encourage speech would be protected speech areas. Also, sites should require consent to delete any file(s) posted by uploader(s). If there is no response from any of the uploader(s), then a poll will be held to determine the fate of the file(s) (i.e. vote to delete or keep the file).

Wrist Check = What are you wearing?
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Post a photo of your watch of the day.
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Please try to include the brand and model in your post!
You're also encouraged to write a few words about your watch. Some users might also appreciate knowing your wrist size, for a virtual fit check.
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If you'd like some tips on improving the quality of your watch photos, check out these useful guides:
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• GUIDE: Your Phone Camera & You by EnderBaggins
• Watch Photography Guide: Taking better watch photos, it can be done cheaply and easily! by FrancisHC
• Timekeeping: How To Take Better Watch Photos
• Tips on watch photography
• Photographing Watches
• http://forums.watchuseek.com/f109/tips-tricks-15719.html
• (...and some inspiration from SJX)

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As always, be respectful of others and follow the rest of our rules. All reasoned opinions are welcome, and remember: criticism about a watch is not a criticism of the owner. Just because someone hates your watch doesn't mean they hate you.
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Have fun!
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...and one quick note: these threads will be auto-posted each morning at 6am eastern. Any other WRUW posts/threads will be removed.

For all of you B7 owners that have mods done to their cars, lemme see some picks if your exhaust setups, and a rear end shot of the car with the tip showing if possible.
I’m debating between wanting a HKS cannon or a single blast pipe, but not one too long lol.
I’ve got my whole exhaust system mapped out but need the final touch. I love the look of the HKS tip, but I don’t like how it’s a muffler. I want to run a varex adjustable muffler to be able to change sound tone, and don’t really want 2 mufflers on the car, and a cat, and a resonator if needed.
So if anyone has any links to a cannon style exhaust tip without the muffling stuff inside please point me to it! Or if anyone has any ideas about how to modify the tip so that the muffling doesn’t work anymore.
Ps, I drive a Passat so I do have a little extra room for length if needed. Reason I’m posting here is because no one ever comments on the Passat forum.
Thank you everyone.