One of the gifts I received this year was a 2012 Mac Mini with 16GB of memory and a quad-core processor. It’s not too useful as a Mac at this point, Catalina is the latest version of macOS that it can be officially installed, but Apple is no longer supporting Catalina as of December 2022.

Instead of using it with macOS, I’ve installed Ubuntu and am running it as an Umbrel node. Umbrel, I believe, started its life as self-hosted server software that allowed you to run a full Bitcoin node. It’s advanced quite a bit since then — most notably introducing an app store with more general purpose software like Plex, NextCloud, and Syncthing.

I may explore some of those apps down the line, but my goal was to use Umbrel for the cryptocurrency features. And although I’m still fumbling my way through everything, here’s what I currently have installed on my Umbrel:

Bitcoin Node — This is a full Bitcoin node, which means I have a copy of the entire blockchain — it’s 507GB at the moment. I can connect my wallets directly to my own node and contribute to Bitcoin’s decentralized nature.

Electrs — This is an Electrum server, which is basically an API layer between the Bitcoin node and some wallet apps. I’m using this to connect BlueWallet at the moment.

Lightning Node — Lightning is a layer two solution for Bitcoin. Essentially, it allows for transactions to be abstracted from the actual blockchain. This lets individual transactions complete faster and with less fees than transactions that are completed on-chain. Lightning transactions are eventually settled on the blockchain in bulk, minimizing fees for individual transactions and allowing the whole system to run more efficiently.

Lightning Terminal — The Lightning network uses “channels” to connect nodes to one another. These are the pathways by which transactions are routed. So far I’ve used Lightning Terminal to help me determine what other nodes might be good for me to connect to.

mempool — a self-hosted version of mempool.space, which let’s you track and visualize transactions on the blockchain. This app is still a bit of a mystery to me, but so far I’ve used it to track a few transaction in real-time.

ThunderHub — An app for managing my Lightning Node. It offers a number of reports and charts that I don’t quite understand yet. But as I get more usage out of the node, I expect I’ll start connecting some dots.

Uptime Kuma — The only app that isn’t cryptocurrency-related. It’s an uptime tracker that I’ve configured to periodically ping all of the other apps, sites, and services that I maintain. I’m not sure if I’ll really find it useful long-term. I’m already using Jetpack for this on all of my WordPress sites, so maybe I’ll just use it for tracking uptime of my Mastodon and Pixelfed instances.

I still feel like I’m at that point where I don’t know enough about Bitcoin and Lightning to know what I don’t know. But I’m learning. And it’s a lot of fun.

It’s been several years since I’ve published a gift guide on Initial Charge. But I thought it was a great time to bring it back. I’ve maintained a private wishlist site where my family and I post links to things that we want and we can all view each others’ lists. The site isn’t just for gift giving, though — I also use it throughout the year to keep a running list of things I want to purchase for myself.

I happen to have a number of items that I’m pretty excited about acquiring, though. So you can think of this as a gift guide for people who happen to share my interests.

Retroid Pocket 3+ — an excellent retro emulation handheld. I already own the Retroid Pocket 2+ and the 3, but the 3+ includes a pretty decent performance boost over the 3. It’s far from perfect, but the more powerful internals allow it to better emulate PlayStation 2, GameCube, Wii, and Nintendo 3DS games.

8bitdo Pro 2 — I love 8bitdo’s controllers and this seems like the one to get right now. I’d mostly pair it with my Retroid handheld for playing on a television, but I’d also use it with my Apple TV, MacBook Air, and Nintendo Switch.

Apple TV 4K, Wi-Fi + Ethernet — I’ve purchased every Apple TV iteration since the first generation. This one would go in the living room and the old one would be moved to the bedroom. The old bedroom one would likely get handed down to my in-laws.

20TB WD Red Pro — These are priced at $330 at the time of this writing, which is an unbelievable deal. The 8TB drives I’m currently using for media storage are nearing their capacity, if I’m going to upgrade, I’d want to go a lot bigger and this capacity offers the best price per terabyte from my preferred hard drive manufacturer.

CyberPower 1500VA UPS — My current uninterruptible power supply is maxed out in terms of power outlets. This model only adds two, but that should give me enough room for the new hardware I’m planning to add.

ThunderBay Flex 8 — This is a bit expensive, but the ThunderBay 6 I’m currently using will eventually reach capacity and I’ll have to move to something with more bays. The ThunderBay 8 only offers two more, but it also has a PCIe slot, which can be used for additional storage or accessories.

2012 Mac Mini, Quad Core — You can pick these up from OWC or eBay for under $200 at this point. I would install Ubuntu and run it as an Umbrel. And for the price, they offer pretty decent performance in a chassis that matches the rest of my server hardware.

Anker 40W, 521, Nano Pro — This is the charger I have in my laptop bag and I love it. I’d like another one to keep in the living room for more flexibility in our charging setup — we’re just using Apple’s 18W USB-C power adapter at the moment.

Ledger Nano X — I still dabble in cryptocurrencies and would like a hardware wallet for more secure storage, rather than keeping everything on an exchange. From what I’ve researched, this is the best option on the market.

David Heinemeier Hansson:

Enter the trucker protests in Canada. In just three weeks of honking, blocked streets and bridges, bouncy castles and flag waving, this peaceful protest movement managed to provoke the most shockingly authoritarian response from the Canadian government.

First the Ottawa police department got GoFundMe to confiscate donations with the intention of redirecting them to other causes, then after an outcry, they backed down to merely blocking the money for 7-10 days before refunding. That seemed like a draconian escalation completely at odds with the tens of millions of dollars raised for social justice causes during the protest summer of 2020. But at the time, I thought it was something another fund-raising platform – one less likely to collaborate with the Canadian authorities – could route around. And GiveSendGo indeed started doing just that.

Turns out the concern over the donations was quickly rendered insignificant, as just a few days later, the Canadian prime minister imposed martial law on the protestors. Through powers intended for catastrophic events, he took to freeze the bank accounts of both Canadian protestors and donors, to compulsorily demand that tow-truck operators clear the streets, and forced insurance companies to drop policies for the protestors.

This is two weeks old, but still worth a read.

I’m not sure if cryptocurrencies are really the answer, though. I’m bullish on them long term, but I have some concerns about the Bitcoin ledger being public. I don’t want anyone, including the government to have the ability to watch funds leave and enter my wallet.

It has its own problems and annoyances, but I’m trying to use cash more. It’s much more difficult to seize and track by it’s very nature. And although I don’t expect that to ever happen to me, I don’t want the option to ever go away. If I keep using cash, it’s an indication to the businesses I frequent that it is still a valid transaction mechanism that they should continue accepting.

➝ Source: world.hey.com

I started buying into cryptocurrencies earlier this year — just a fairly nominal amount each month to toy around with. And while I’m not under any delusions that crypto is going to take over the world, I do think it’s an interesting technology with a future.

I’m still just scratching the surface of the whole topic, though. I know crypto can be used for developing applications, storing files, and more, but it seems like that isn’t really happening as often as it should be. But it’s still relatively early days, of course.

It reminds me a bit of podcasting, which was dominated by technology shows for the first handful of years. Much like podcasting moved away from being predominantly tech-focused to a medium with a broader audience, at some point I expect crypto will move away from being predominantly finance-related to something else.

Filecoin is a good example of this, it’s a decentralized file storage project. And it can be used to store files today with an application and service called Slate.

And of course there’s Ethereum, which is one of the most exciting projects in the space. It’s a decentralized, open source platform that allows for the development of applications, the creation of NFTs, and it’s cryptocurrency — Ether — is the second largest by market cap (behind Bitcoin). Although I’m very skeptical about NFTs, I like just about everything else that Ethereum has going on.

But what do I actually own? I won’t go into detail about the exact dollar amounts, but I will share roughly what percentage of my holdings are in each currency as of this writing:

Bitcoin 49%
Ethereum 26%
Stellar Lumens 6%
Filecoin 4%
Cardano 3%
Litecoin 2%
Bitcoin Cash 2%
Kyber Network 2%
Origin Protocol 1%
Aave 1%
Polygon 1%
Synthetix Network 1%

I currently keep all of my crypto in Coinbase. From the research I did leading up to my first purchase, it appeared to have the largest user base with a pretty solid user experience. And it’s supported by Mint and Simplifi, if you’re into the financial dashboard thing.

But I will likely explore other exchanges over time. Coinbase doesn’t support every token or coin on the market and I’ve found myself in situations where I’ve wanted to buy something that I just can’t get unless I go elsewhere.

I’m also curious about moving some of my coins off of an exchange onto a hardware or software wallet. From the little bit I’ve explored in this space, Ledger seems like a popular and reliable option.

Cryptocurrency sure appears to have exploded in popularity over the past several months. A quick search of some related terms in Google Trends indicates a pretty big jump starting around December of last year.

I have no idea if the current uptick in popularity will continue or for how long. But I’m certainly excited to see where it goes.