After a sudden reduction in force at the day job I inherited a crufty old reporting system from a team of DBAs. We're a company full of Linux and a few legacy Solaris systems but the DBAs who built this thing almost 15 years ago must have insisted on SQL Server 2005 so I was the proud owner of one of the few Windows servers on our side of the business. After three months of wrangling with the report I was able to get it off of the Microsoft stack just before the Windows sysadmins decided it was time to pull the plug on this long forgotten and neglected Windows Server 2003 system.

Bitcoin engineers face a future where rising transaction fees price users out of using bitcoin for everyday commerce. There are a few solutions for lowering those fees and the latest, most hyped solution is the Lightning Network, a system built on a web of payment channels. I'll explain how payment channels work, how they can be put together to make the Lightning Network and show what this new economy looks like.