@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Nostr: a quick introduction, attempt #2

Nostr doesn't subscribe to any ideals of "free speech" as these belong to the realm of politics and assume a big powerful government that enforces a common ruleupon everybody else.

Nostr instead is much simpler, it simply says that servers are private property and establishes a generalized framework for people to connect to all these servers, creating a true free market in the process. In other words, Nostr is the public road that each market participant can use to build their own store or visit others and use their services.

(Of course a road is never truly public, in normal cases it's ran by the government, in this case it relies upon the previous existence of the internet with all its quirks and chaos plus a hand of government control, but none of that matters for this explanation).

More concretely speaking, Nostr is just a set of definitions of the formats of the data that can be passed between participants and their expected order, i.e. messages between clients (i.e. the program that runs on a user computer) and relays (i.e. the program that runs on a publicly accessible computer, a "server", generally with a domain-name associated) over a type of TCP connection (WebSocket) with cryptographic signatures. This is what is called a "protocol" in this context, and upon that simple base multiple kinds of sub-protocols can be added, like a protocol for "public-square style microblogging", "semi-closed group chat" or, I don't know, "recipe sharing and feedback".

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Why relay hints are important

Recently Coracle has removed support for following relay hints in Nostr event references.

Supposedly Coracle is now relying only on public key hints and kind:10002 events to determine where to fetch events from a user. That is a catastrophic idea that destroys much of Nostr's flexibility for no gain at all.

• Someone makes a post inside a community (either a NIP-29 community or a NIP-87 community) and others want to refer to that post in discussions in the external Nostr world of kind:1s -- now that cannot work because the person who created the post doesn't have the relays specific to those communities in their outbox list;
• There is a discussion happening in a niche relay, for example, a relay that can only be accessed by the participants of a conference for the duration of that conference -- since that relay is not in anyone's public outbox list, it's impossible for anyone outside of the conference to ever refer to these events;
• Some big public relays, say, relay.damus.io, decide to nuke their databases or periodically delete old events, a user keeps using that big relay as their outbox because it is fast and reliable, but chooses to archive their old events in a dedicated archival relay, say, cellar.nostr.wine, while prudently not including that in their outbox list because that would make no sense -- now it is impossible for anyone to refer to old notes from this user even though they are publicly accessible in cellar.nostr.wine;
• There are topical relays that curate content relating to niche (non-microblogging) topics, say, cooking recipes, and users choose to publish their recipes to these relays only -- but now they can't refer to these relays in the external Nostr world of kind:1s because these topical relays are not in their outbox lists.
• Suppose a user wants to maintain two different identities under the same keypair, say, one identity only talks about soccer in English, while the other only talks about art history in French, and the user very prudently keeps two different kind:10002 events in two different sets of "indexer" relays (or does it in some better way of announcing different relay sets) -- now one of this user's audiences cannot ever see notes created by him with their other persona, one half of the content of this user will be inacessible to the other half and vice-versa.
• If for any reason a relay does not want to accept events of a certain kind a user may publish to other relays, and it would all work fine if the user referenced that externally-published event from a normal event, but now that externally-published event is not reachable because the external relay is not in the user's outbox list.
• If someone, say, Alex Jones, is hard-banned everywhere and cannot event broadcast kind:10002 events to any of the commonly used index relays, that person will now appear as banned in most clients: in an ideal world in which clients followed nprofile and other relay hints Alex Jones could still live a normal Nostr life: he would print business cards with his nprofile instead of an npub and clients would immediately know from what relay to fetch his posts. When other users shared his posts or replied to it, they would include a relay hint to his personal relay and others would be able to see and then start following him on that relay directly -- now Alex Jones's events cannot be read by anyone that doesn't already know his relay.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

How to do curation and businesses on Nostr

Suppose you want to start a Nostr business.

You might be tempted to make a closed platform that reuses Nostr identities and grabs (some) content from the external Nostr network, only to imprison it inside your thing -- and then you're going to run an amazing AI-powered algorithm on that content and "surface" only the best stuff and people will flock to your app.

This will be specially good if you're going after one of the many unexplored niches of Nostr in which reading immediately from people you know doesn't work as you generally want to discover new things from the outer world, such as:

• food recipe sharing;
• sharing of long articles about varying topics;
• markets for used goods;
• freelancer work and job offers;
• specific in-game lobbies and matchmaking;
• directories of accredited professionals;
• sharing of original music, drawings and other artistic creations;
• restaurant recommendations
• and so on.

But that is not the correct approach and damages the freedom and interoperability of Nostr, posing a centralization threat to the protocol. Even if it "works" and your business is incredibly successful it will just enshrine you as the head of a platform that controls users and thus is prone to all the bad things that happen to all these platforms. Your company will start to display ads and shape the public discourse, you'll need a big legal team, the FBI will talk to you, advertisers will play a big role and so on.

If you are interested in Nostr today that must be because you appreciate the fact that it is not owned by any companies, so it's safe to assume you don't want to be that company that owns it. So what should you do instead? Here's an idea in two steps:

1. Write a Nostr client tailored to the niche you want to cover

If it's a music sharing thing, then the client will have a way to play the audio and so on; if it's a restaurant sharing it will have maps with the locations of the restaurants or whatever, you get the idea. Hopefully there will be a NIP or a NUD specifying how to create and interact with events relating to this niche, or you will write or contribute with the creation of one, because without interoperability none of this matters much.

The client should work independently of any special backend requirements and ideally be open-source. It should have a way for users to configure to which relays they want to connect to see "global" content -- i.e., they might want to connect to wss://nostr.chrysalisrecords.com/ to see only the latest music releases accredited by that label or to wss://nostr.indiemusic.com/ to get music from independent producers from that community.

1. Run a relay that does all the magic

This is where your value-adding capabilities come into play: if you have that magic sauce you should be able to apply it here. Your service, let's call it wss://magicsaucemusic.com/, will charge people or do some KYM (know your music) validation or use some very advanced AI sorcery to filter out the spam and the garbage and display the best content to your users who will request the global feed from it (["REQ", "_", {}]), and this will cause people to want to publish to your relay while others will want to read from it.

You set your relay as the default option in the client and let things happen. Your relay is like your "website" and people are free to connect to it or not. You don't own the network, you're just competing against other websites on a leveled playing field, so you're not responsible for it. Users get seamless browsing across multiple websites, unified identities, a unified interface (that could be different in a different client) and social interaction capabilities that work in the same way for all, and they do not depend on you, therefore they're more likely to trust you.

---

Does this centralize the network still? But this a simple and easy way to go about the matter and scales well in all aspects.

Besides allowing users to connect to specific relays for getting a feed of curated content, such clients should also do all kinds of "social" (i.e. following, commenting etc) activities (if they choose to do that) using the outbox model -- i.e. if I find a musician I like under wss://magicsaucemusic.com and I decide to follow them I should keep getting updates from them even if they get banned from that relay and start publishing on wss://nos.lol or wss://relay.damus.io or whatever relay that doesn't even know what music is.

The hardcoded defaults and manual typing of relay URLs can be annoying. But I think it works well at the current stage of Nostr development. Soon, though, we can create events that recommend other relays or share relay lists specific to each kind of activity so users can get in-app suggestions of relays their friends are using to get their music from and so on. That kind of stuff can go a long way.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

About Nostr, email and subscriptions

I check my emails like once or twice a week, always when I am looking for something specific in there.

Then I go there and I see a bunch of other stuff I had no idea I was missing. Even many things I wish I had seen before actually. And sometimes people just expect and assume I would have checked emails instantly as they arrived.

It's so weird because I'm not making a point, I just don't remember to open the damn "gmail.com" URL.

---

I remember some people were making some a Nostr service a while ago that sent a DM to people with Nostr articles inside -- or some other forms of "subscription services on Nostr". It makes no sense at all.

Pulling in DMs from relays is exactly the same process (actually slightly more convoluted) than pulling normal public events, so why would a service assume that "sending a DM" was more likely to reach the target subscriber when the target had explicitly subscribed to that topic or writer?

Maybe due to how some specific clients work that is true, but fundamentally it is a very broken assumption that comes from some fantastic past era in which emails were 100% always seen and there was no way for anyone to subscribe to someone else's posts.

Building around such broken assumptions is the wrong approach. Instead we should be building new flows for subscribing to specific content from specific Nostr-native sources (creators directly or manual or automated curation providers, communities, relays etc), which is essentially what most clients are already doing anyway, but specifically Coracle's new custom feeds come to mind now.

---

This also reminds me of the interviewer asking the Farcaster creator if Farcaster made "email addresses available to content creators" completely ignoring all the cryptography and nature of the protocol (Farcaster is shit, but at least they tried, and in this example you could imagine the interviewer asking the same thing about Nostr).

I imagine that if the interviewer had asked these people who were working (or suggesting) the Nostr DM subscription flow they would have answered: "no, you don't get their email addresses, but you can send them uncensorable DMs!" -- and that, again, is getting everything backwards.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Nostr is not decentralized nor censorship-resistant

Peter Todd has been saying this for a long time and all the time I've been thinking he is misunderstanding everything, but I guess a more charitable interpretation is that he is right.

Nostr today is indeed centralized.

Yesterday I published two harmless notes with the exact same content at the same time. In two minutes the notes had a noticeable difference in responses:

The top one was published to wss://nostr.wine, wss://nos.lol, wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com. The second was published to the relay where I generally publish all my notes to, wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com, and that is announced on my NIP-05 file and on my NIP-65 relay list.

A few minutes later I published that screenshot again in two identical notes to the same sets of relays, asking if people understood the implications. The difference in quantity of responses can still be seen today:

These results are skewed now by the fact that the two notes got rebroadcasted to multiple relays after some time, but the fundamental point remains.

What happened was that a huge lot more of people saw the first note compared to the second, and if Nostr was really censorship-resistant that shouldn't have happened at all.

Some people implied in the comments, with an air of obviousness, that publishing the note to "more relays" should have predictably resulted in more replies, which, again, shouldn't be the case if Nostr is really censorship-resistant.

What happens is that most people who engaged with the note are following me, in the sense that they have instructed their clients to fetch my notes on their behalf and present them in the UI, and clients are failing to do that despite me making it clear in multiple ways that my notes are to be found on wss://pyramid.fiatjaf.com.

If we were talking not about me, but about some public figure that was being censored by the State and got banned (or shadowbanned) by the 3 biggest public relays, the sad reality would be that the person would immediately get his reach reduced to ~10% of what they had before. This is not at all unlike what happened to dozens of personalities that were banned from the corporate social media platforms and then moved to other platforms -- how many of their original followers switched to these other platforms? Probably some small percentage close to 10%. In that sense Nostr today is similar to what we had before.

Peter Todd is right that if the way Nostr works is that you just subscribe to a small set of relays and expect to get everything from them then it tends to get very centralized very fast, and this is the reality today.

Peter Todd is wrong that Nostr is inherently centralized or that it needs a protocol change to become what it has always purported to be. He is in fact wrong today, because what is written above is not valid for all clients of today, and if we drive in the right direction we can successfully make Peter Todd be more and more wrong as time passes, instead of the contrary.

---

See also:

• Censorship-resistant relay discovery in Nostr
• A vision for content discovery and relay usage for basic social-networking in Nostr

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Censorship-resistant relay discovery in Nostr

In Nostr is not decentralized nor censorship-resistant I said Nostr is centralized. Peter Todd thinks it is centralized by design, but I disagree.

Nostr wasn't designed to be centralized. The idea was always that clients would follow people in the relays they decided to publish to, even if it was a single-user relay hosted in an island in the middle of the Pacific ocean.

But the Nostr explanations never had any guidance about how to do this, and the protocol itself never had any enforcement mechanisms for any of this (because it would be impossible).

My original idea was that clients would use some undefined combination of relay hints in reply tags and the (now defunct) kind:2 relay-recommendation events plus some form of manual action ("it looks like Bob is publishing on relay X, do you want to follow him there?") to accomplish this. With the expectation that we would have a better idea of how to properly implement all this with more experience, Branle, my first working client didn't have any of that implemented, instead it used a stupid static list of relays with read/write toggle -- although it did publish relay hints and kept track of those internally and supported kind:2 events, these things were not really useful.

Gossip was the first client to implement a truly censorship-resistant relay discovery mechanism that used NIP-05 hints (originally proposed by Mike Dilger) relay hints and kind:3 relay lists, and then with the simple insight of NIP-65 that got much better. After seeing it in more concrete terms, it became simpler to reason about it and the approach got popularized as the "gossip model", then implemented in clients like Coracle and Snort.

Today when people mention the "gossip model" (or "outbox model") they simply think about NIP-65 though. Which I think is ok, but too restrictive. I still think there is a place for the NIP-05 hints, nprofile and nevent relay hints and specially relay hints in event tags. All these mechanisms are used together in ZBD Social, for example, but I believe also in the clients listed above.

I don't think we should stop here, though. I think there are other ways, perhaps drastically different ways, to approach content propagation and relay discovery. I think manual action by users is underrated and could go a long way if presented in a nice UX (not conceived by people that think users are dumb animals), and who knows what. Reliance on third-parties, hardcoded values, social graph, and specially a mix of multiple approaches, is what Nostr needs to be censorship-resistant and what I hope to see in the future.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Nostr: a quick introduction, attempt #1

Nostr doesn't have a material existence, it is not a website or an app. Nostr is just a description what kind of messages each computer can send to the others and vice-versa. It's a very simple thing, but the fact that such description exists allows different apps to connect to different servers automatically, without people having to talk behind the scenes or sign contracts or anything like that.

When you use a Nostr client that is what happens, your client will connect to a bunch of servers, called relays, and all these relays will speak the same "language" so your client will be able to publish notes to them all and also download notes from other people.

That's basically what Nostr is: this communication layer between the client you run on your phone or desktop computer and the relay that someone else is running on some server somewhere. There is no central authority dictating who can connect to whom or even anyone who knows for sure where each note is stored.

If you think about it, Nostr is very much like the internet itself: there are millions of websites out there, and basically anyone can run a new one, and there are websites that allow you to store and publish your stuff on them.

The added benefit of Nostr is that this unified "language" that all Nostr clients speak allow them to switch very easily and cleanly between relays. So if one relay decides to ban someone that person can switch to publishing to others relays and their audience will quickly follow them there. Likewise, it becomes much easier for relays to impose any restrictions they want on their users: no relay has to uphold a moral ground of "absolute free speech": each relay can decide to delete notes or ban users for no reason, or even only store notes from a preselected set of people and no one will be entitled to complain about that.

There are some bad things about this design: on Nostr there are no guarantees that relays will have the notes you want to read or that they will store the notes you're sending to them. We can't just assume all relays will have everything — much to the contrary, as Nostr grows more relays will exist and people will tend to publishing to a small set of all the relays, so depending on the decisions each client takes when publishing and when fetching notes, users may see a different set of replies to a note, for example, and be confused.

Another problem with the idea of publishing to multiple servers is that they may be run by all sorts of malicious people that may edit your notes. Since no one wants to see garbage published under their name, Nostr fixes that by requiring notes to have a cryptographic signature. This signature is attached to the note and verified by everybody at all times, which ensures the notes weren't tampered (if any part of the note is changed even by a single character that would cause the signature to become invalid and then the note would be dropped). The fix is perfect, except for the fact that it introduces the requirement that each user must now hold this 63-character code that starts with "nsec1", which they must not reveal to anyone. Although annoying, this requirement brings another benefit: that users can automatically have the same identity in many different contexts and even use their Nostr identity to login to non-Nostr websites easily without having to rely on any third-party.

To conclude: Nostr is like the internet (or the internet of some decades ago): a little chaotic, but very open. It is better than the internet because it is structured and actions can be automated, but, like in the internet itself, nothing is guaranteed to work at all times and users many have to do some manual work from time to time to fix things. Plus, there is the cryptographic key stuff, which is painful, but cool.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Pequenos problemas que o Estado cria para a sociedade e que não são sempre lembrados

- **vale-transporte**: transferir o custo com o transporte do funcionário para um terceiro o estimula a morar longe de onde trabalha, já que morar perto é normalmente mais caro e a economia com transporte é inexistente.
- **atestado médico**: o direito a faltar o trabalho com atestado médico cria a exigência desse atestado para todas as situações, substituindo o livre acordo entre patrão e empregado e sobrecarregando os médicos e postos de saúde com visitas desnecessárias de assalariados resfriados.
- **prisões**: com dinheiro mal-administrado, burocracia e péssima alocação de recursos -- problemas que empresas privadas em competição (ou mesmo sem qualquer competição) saberiam resolver muito melhor -- o Estado fica sem presídios, com os poucos existentes entupidos, muito acima de sua alocação máxima, e com isto, segundo a bizarra corrente de responsabilidades que culpa o juiz que condenou o criminoso por sua morte na cadeia, juízes deixam de condenar à prisão os bandidos, soltando-os na rua.
- **justiça**: entrar com processos é grátis e isto faz proliferar a atividade dos advogados que se dedicam a criar problemas judiciais onde não seria necessário e a entupir os tribunais, impedindo-os de fazer o que mais deveriam fazer.
- **justiça**: como a justiça só obedece às leis e ignora acordos pessoais, escritos ou não, as pessoas não fazem acordos, recorrem sempre à justiça estatal, e entopem-na de assuntos que seriam muito melhor resolvidos entre vizinhos.
- **leis civis**: as leis criadas pelos parlamentares ignoram os costumes da sociedade e são um incentivo a que as pessoas não respeitem nem criem normas sociais -- que seriam maneiras mais rápidas, baratas e satisfatórias de resolver problemas.
- **leis de trãnsito**: quanto mais leis de trânsito, mais serviço de fiscalização são delegados aos policiais, que deixam de combater crimes por isto (afinal de contas, eles não querem de fato arriscar suas vidas combatendo o crime, a fiscalização é uma excelente desculpa para se esquivarem a esta responsabilidade).
- **financiamento educacional**: é uma espécie de subsídio às faculdades privadas que faz com que se criem cursos e mais cursos que são cada vez menos recheados de algum conhecimento ou técnica útil e cada vez mais inúteis.
- **leis de tombamento**: são um incentivo a que o dono de qualquer área ou construção "histórica" destrua todo e qualquer vestígio de história que houver nele antes que as autoridades descubram, o que poderia não acontecer se ele pudesse, por exemplo, usar, mostrar e se beneficiar da história daquele local sem correr o risco de perder, de fato, a sua propriedade.
- **zoneamento urbano**: torna as cidades mais espalhadas, criando uma necessidade gigantesca de carros, ônibus e outros meios de transporte para as pessoas se locomoverem das zonas de moradia para as zonas de trabalho.
- **zoneamento urbano**: faz com que as pessoas percam horas no trânsito todos os dias, o que é, além de um desperdício, um atentado contra a sua saúde, que estaria muito melhor servida numa caminhada diária entre a casa e o trabalho.
- **zoneamento urbano**: torna ruas e as casas menos seguras criando zonas enormes, tanto de residências quanto de indústrias, onde não há movimento de gente alguma.
- **escola obrigatória + currículo escolar nacional**: emburrece todas as crianças.
- **leis contra trabalho infantil**: tira das crianças a oportunidade de aprender ofícios úteis e levar um dinheiro para ajudar a família.
- **licitações**: como não existem os critérios do mercado para decidir qual é o melhor prestador de serviço, criam-se comissões de pessoas que vão decidir coisas. isto incentiva os prestadores de serviço que estão concorrendo na licitação a tentar comprar os membros dessas comissões. isto, fora a corrupção, gera problemas reais: __(i)__ a escolha dos serviços acaba sendo a pior possível, já que a empresa prestadora que vence está claramente mais dedicada a comprar comissões do que a fazer um bom trabalho (este problema afeta tantas áreas, desde a construção de estradas até a qualidade da merenda escolar, que é impossível listar aqui); __(ii)__ o processo corruptor acaba, no longo prazo, eliminando as empresas que prestavam e deixando para competir apenas as corruptas, e a qualidade tende a piorar progressivamente.
- **cartéis**: o Estado em geral cria e depois fica refém de vários grupos de interesse. o caso dos taxistas contra o Uber é o que está na moda hoje (e o que mostra como os Estados se comportam da mesma forma no mundo todo).
- **multas**: quando algum indivíduo ou empresa comete uma fraude financeira, ou causa algum dano material involuntário, as vítimas do caso são as pessoas que sofreram o dano ou perderam dinheiro, mas o Estado tem sempre leis que prevêem multas para os responsáveis. A justiça estatal é sempre muito rígida e rápida na aplicação dessas multas, mas relapsa e vaga no que diz respeito à indenização das vítimas. O que em geral acontece é que o Estado aplica uma enorme multa ao responsável pelo mal, retirando deste os recursos que dispunha para indenizar as vítimas, e se retira do caso, deixando estas desamparadas.
- **desapropriação**: o Estado pode pegar qualquer propriedade de qualquer pessoa mediante uma indenização que é necessariamente inferior ao valor da propriedade para o seu presente dono (caso contrário ele a teria vendido voluntariamente).
- **seguro-desemprego**: se há, por exemplo, um prazo mínimo de 1 ano para o sujeito ter direito a receber seguro-desemprego, isto o incentiva a planejar ficar apenas 1 ano em cada emprego (ano este que será sucedido por um período de desemprego remunerado), matando todas as possibilidades de aprendizado ou aquisição de experiência naquela empresa específica ou ascensão hierárquica.
- **previdência**: a previdência social tem todos os defeitos de cálculo do mundo, e não importa muito ela ser uma forma horrível de poupar dinheiro, porque ela tem garantias bizarras de longevidade fornecidas pelo Estado, além de ser compulsória. Isso serve para criar no imaginário geral a idéia da __aposentadoria__, uma época mágica em que todos os dias serão finais de semana. A idéia da aposentadoria influencia o sujeito a não se preocupar em ter um emprego que faça sentido, mas sim em ter um trabalho qualquer, que o permita se aposentar.
- **regulamentação impossível**: milhares de coisas são proibidas, há regulamentações sobre os aspectos mais mínimos de cada empreendimento ou construção ou espaço. se todas essas regulamentações fossem exigidas não haveria condições de produção e todos morreriam. portanto, elas não são exigidas. porém, o Estado, ou um agente individual imbuído do poder estatal pode, se desejar, exigi-las todas de um cidadão inimigo seu. qualquer pessoa pode viver a vida inteira sem cumprir nem 10% das regulamentações estatais, mas viverá também todo esse tempo com medo de se tornar um alvo de sua exigência, num estado de terror psicológico.
- **perversão de critérios**: para muitas coisas sobre as quais a sociedade normalmente chegaria a um valor ou comportamento "razoável" espontaneamente, o Estado dita regras. estas regras muitas vezes não são obrigatórias, são mais "sugestões" ou limites, como o salário mínimo, ou as 44 horas semanais de trabalho. a sociedade, porém, passa a usar esses valores como se fossem o normal. são raras, por exemplo, as ofertas de emprego que fogem à regra das 44h semanais.
- **inflação**: subir os preços é difícil e constrangedor para as empresas, pedir aumento de salário é difícil e constrangedor para o funcionário. a inflação força as pessoas a fazer isso, mas o aumento não é automático, como alguns economistas podem pensar (enquanto alguns outros ficam muito satisfeitos de que esse processo seja demorado e difícil).
- **inflação**: a inflação destrói a capacidade das pessoas de julgar preços entre concorrentes usando a própria memória.
- **inflação**: a inflação destrói os cálculos de lucro/prejuízo das empresas e prejudica enormemente as decisões empresariais que seriam baseadas neles.
- **inflação**: a inflação redistribui a riqueza dos mais pobres e mais afastados do sistema financeiro para os mais ricos, os bancos e as megaempresas.
- **inflação**: a inflação estimula o endividamento e o consumismo.
- **lixo:** ao prover coleta e armazenamento de lixo "grátis para todos" o Estado incentiva a criação de lixo. se tivessem que pagar para que recolhessem o seu lixo, as pessoas (e conseqüentemente as empresas) se empenhariam mais em produzir coisas usando menos plástico, menos embalagens, menos sacolas.
- **leis contra crimes financeiros:** ao criar legislação para dificultar acesso ao sistema financeiro por parte de criminosos a dificuldade e os custos para acesso a esse mesmo sistema pelas pessoas de bem cresce absurdamente, levando a um percentual enorme de gente incapaz de usá-lo, para detrimento de todos -- e no final das contas os grandes criminosos ainda conseguem burlar tudo.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Anglicismos estúpidos no português contemporâneo

Palavras e expressões que ninguém deveria usar porque não têm o sentido que as pessoas acham que têm, são apenas aportuguesamentos de palavras inglesas que por nuances da história têm um sentido ligeiramente diferente em inglês.

Cada erro é acompanhado também de uma sugestão de como corrigi-lo.

Palavras que existem em português com sentido diferente

• submissão (de trabalhos): envio, apresentação
• disrupção: perturbação
• assumir: considerar, pressupor, presumir
• realizar: perceber
• endereçar: tratar de
• suporte (ao cliente): atendimento
• suportar (uma idéia, um projeto): apoiar, financiar
• suportar (uma função, recurso, característica): oferecer, ser compatível com
• literacia: instrução, alfabetização
• convoluto: complicado.
• acurácia: precisão.
• resiliência: resistência.

Aportuguesamentos desnecessários

• estartar: iniciar, começar
• treidar: negociar, especular

Expressões

• "não é sobre...": "não se trata de..."

Ver também

• Algumas expressões e ditados excelentes da língua portuguesa, e outras não tão excelentes assim

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Drivechain

Understanding Drivechain requires a shift from the paradigm most bitcoiners are used to. It is not about "trustlessness" or "mathematical certainty", but game theory and incentives. (Well, Bitcoin in general is also that, but people prefer to ignore it and focus on some illusion of trustlessness provided by mathematics.)

Here we will describe the basic mechanism (simple) and incentives (complex) of "hashrate escrow" and how it enables a 2-way peg between the mainchain (Bitcoin) and various sidechains.

The full concept of "Drivechain" also involves blind merged mining (i.e., the sidechains mine themselves by publishing their block hashes to the mainchain without the miners having to run the sidechain software), but this is much easier to understand and can be accomplished either by the BIP-301 mechanism or by the Spacechains mechanism.

How does hashrate escrow work from the point of view of Bitcoin?

A new address type is created. Anything that goes in that is locked and can only be spent if all miners agree on the Withdrawal Transaction (WT^) that will spend it for 6 months. There is one of these special addresses for each sidechain.

To gather miners' agreement bitcoind keeps track of the "score" of all transactions that could possibly spend from that address. On every block mined, for each sidechain, the miner can use a portion of their coinbase to either increase the score of one WT^ by 1 while decreasing the score of all others by 1; or they can decrease the score of all WT^s by 1; or they can do nothing.

Once a transaction has gotten a score high enough, it is published and funds are effectively transferred from the sidechain to the withdrawing users.

If a timeout of 6 months passes and the score doesn't meet the threshold, that WT^ is discarded.

What does the above procedure mean?

It means that people can transfer coins from the mainchain to a sidechain by depositing to the special address. Then they can withdraw from the sidechain by making a special withdraw transaction in the sidechain.

The special transaction somehow freezes funds in the sidechain while a transaction that aggregates all withdrawals into a single mainchain WT^, which is then submitted to the mainchain miners so they can start voting on it and finally after some months it is published.

Now the crucial part: the validity of the WT^ is not verified by the Bitcoin mainchain rules, i.e., if Bob has requested a withdraw from the sidechain to his mainchain address, but someone publishes a wrong WT^ that instead takes Bob's funds and sends them to Alice's main address there is no way the mainchain will know that. What determines the "validity" of the WT^ is the miner vote score and only that. It is the job of miners to vote correctly -- and for that they may want to run the sidechain node in SPV mode so they can attest for the existence of a reference to the WT^ transaction in the sidechain blockchain (which then ensures it is ok) or do these checks by some other means.

What? 6 months to get my money back?

Yes. But no, in practice anyone who wants their money back will be able to use an atomic swap, submarine swap or other similar service to transfer funds from the sidechain to the mainchain and vice-versa. The long delayed withdraw costs would be incurred by few liquidity providers that would gain some small profit from it.

Why bother with this at all?

Drivechains solve many different problems:

It enables experimentation and new use cases for Bitcoin

Issued assets, fully private transactions, stateful blockchain contracts, turing-completeness, decentralized games, some "DeFi" aspects, prediction markets, futarchy, decentralized and yet meaningful human-readable names, big blocks with a ton of normal transactions on them, a chain optimized only for Lighting-style networks to be built on top of it.

These are some ideas that may have merit to them, but were never actually tried because they couldn't be tried with real Bitcoin or inferfacing with real bitcoins. They were either relegated to the shitcoin territory or to custodial solutions like Liquid or RSK that may have failed to gain network effect because of that.

It solves conflicts and infighting

Some people want fully private transactions in a UTXO model, others want "accounts" they can tie to their name and build reputation on top; some people want simple multisig solutions, others want complex code that reads a ton of variables; some people want to put all the transactions on a global chain in batches every 10 minutes, others want off-chain instant transactions backed by funds previously locked in channels; some want to spend, others want to just hold; some want to use blockchain technology to solve all the problems in the world, others just want to solve money.

With Drivechain-based sidechains all these groups can be happy simultaneously and don't fight. Meanwhile they will all be using the same money and contributing to each other's ecosystem even unwillingly, it's also easy and free for them to change their group affiliation later, which reduces cognitive dissonance.

It solves "scaling"

Multiple chains like the ones described above would certainly do a lot to accomodate many more transactions that the current Bitcoin chain can. One could have special Lightning Network chains, but even just big block chains or big-block-mimblewimble chains or whatnot could probably do a good job. Or even something less cool like 200 independent chains just like Bitcoin is today, no extra features (and you can call it "sharding"), just that would already multiply the current total capacity by 200.

Use your imagination.

It solves the blockchain security budget issue

The calculation is simple: you imagine what security budget is reasonable for each block in a world without block subsidy and divide that for the amount of bytes you can fit in a single block: that is the price to be paid in satoshis per byte. In reasonable estimative, the price necessary for every Bitcoin transaction goes to very large amounts, such that not only any day-to-day transaction has insanely prohibitive costs, but also Lightning channel opens and closes are impracticable.

So without a solution like Drivechain you'll be left with only one alternative: pushing Bitcoin usage to trusted services like Liquid and RSK or custodial Lightning wallets. With Drivechain, though, there could be thousands of transactions happening in sidechains and being all aggregated into a sidechain block that would then pay a very large fee to be published (via blind merged mining) to the mainchain. Bitcoin security guaranteed.

It keeps Bitcoin decentralized

Once we have sidechains to accomodate the normal transactions, the mainchain functionality can be reduced to be only a "hub" for the sidechains' comings and goings, and then the maximum block size for the mainchain can be reduced to, say, 100kb, which would make running a full node very very easy.

Can miners steal?

Yes. If a group of coordinated miners are able to secure the majority of the hashpower and keep their coordination for 6 months, they can publish a WT^ that takes the money from the sidechains and pays to themselves.

Will miners steal?

No, because the incentives are such that they won't.

Although it may look at first that stealing is an obvious strategy for miners as it is free money, there are many costs involved:

1. The cost of ceasing blind-merged mining returns -- as stealing will kill a sidechain, all the fees from it that miners would be expected to earn for the next years are gone;
2. The cost of Bitcoin price going down: If a steal is successful that will mean Drivechains are not safe, therefore Bitcoin is less useful, and miner credibility will also be hurt, which are likely to cause the Bitcoin price to go down, which in turn may kill the miners' businesses and savings;
3. The cost of coordination -- assuming miners are just normal businesses, they just want to do their work and get paid, but stealing from a Drivechain will require coordination with other miners to conduct an immoral act in a way that has many pitfalls and is likely to be broken over the months;
4. The cost of miners leaving your mining pool: when we talked about "miners" above we were actually talking about mining pools operators, so they must also consider the risk of miners migrating from their mining pool to others as they begin the process of stealing;
5. The cost of community goodwill -- when participating in a steal operation, a miner will suffer a ton of backlash from the community. Even if the attempt fails at the end, the fact that it was attempted will contribute to growing concerns over exaggerated miners power over the Bitcoin ecosystem, which may end up causing the community to agree on a hard-fork to change the mining algorithm in the future, or to do something to increase participation of more entities in the mining process (such as development or cheapment of new ASICs), which have a chance of decreasing the profits of current miners.

Another point to take in consideration is that one may be inclined to think a newly-created sidechain or a sidechain with relatively low usage may be more easily stolen from, since the blind merged mining returns from it (point 1 above) are going to be small -- but the fact is also that a sidechain with small usage will also have less money to be stolen from, and since the other costs besides 1 are less elastic at the end it will not be worth stealing from these too.

All of the above consideration are valid only if miners are stealing from good sidechains. If there is a sidechain that is doing things wrong, scamming people, not being used at all, or is full of bugs, for example, that will be perceived as a bad sidechain, and then miners can and will safely steal from it and kill it, which will be perceived as a good thing by everybody.

What do we do if miners steal?

Paul Sztorc has suggested in the past that a user-activated soft-fork could prevent miners from stealing, i.e., most Bitcoin users and nodes issue a rule similar to this one to invalidate the inclusion of a faulty WT^ and thus cause any miner that includes it in a block to be relegated to their own Bitcoin fork that other nodes won't accept.

This suggestion has made people think Drivechain is a sidechain solution backed by user-actived soft-forks for safety, which is very far from the truth. Drivechains must not and will not rely on this kind of soft-fork, although they are possible, as the coordination costs are too high and no one should ever expect these things to happen.

If even with all the incentives against them (see above) miners do still steal from a good sidechain that will mean the failure of the Drivechain experiment. It will very likely also mean the failure of the Bitcoin experiment too, as it will be proven that miners can coordinate to act maliciously over a prolonged period of time regardless of economic and social incentives, meaning they are probably in it just for attacking Bitcoin, backed by nation-states or something else, and therefore no Bitcoin transaction in the mainchain is to be expected to be safe ever again.

Why use this and not a full-blown trustless and open sidechain technology?

Because it is impossible.

If you ever heard someone saying "just use a sidechain", "do this in a sidechain" or anything like that, be aware that these people are either talking about "federated" sidechains (i.e., funds are kept in custody by a group of entities) or they are talking about Drivechain, or they are disillusioned and think it is possible to do sidechains in any other manner.

No, I mean a trustless 2-way peg with correctness of the withdrawals verified by the Bitcoin protocol!

That is not possible unless Bitcoin verifies all transactions that happen in all the sidechains, which would be akin to drastically increasing the blocksize and expanding the Bitcoin rules in tons of ways, i.e., a terrible idea that no one wants.

What about the Blockstream sidechains whitepaper?

Yes, that was a way to do it. The Drivechain hashrate escrow is a conceptually simpler way to achieve the same thing with improved incentives, less junk in the chain, more safety.

Isn't the hashrate escrow a very complex soft-fork?

Yes, but it is much simpler than SegWit. And, unlike SegWit, it doesn't force anything on users, i.e., it isn't a mandatory blocksize increase.

Why should we expect miners to care enough to participate in the voting mechanism?

Because it's in their own self-interest to do it, and it costs very little. Today over half of the miners mine RSK. It's not blind merged mining, it's a very convoluted process that requires them to run a RSK full node. For the Drivechain sidechains, an SPV node would be enough, or maybe just getting data from a block explorer API, so much much simpler.

What if I still don't like Drivechain even after reading this?

That is the entire point! You don't have to like it or use it as long as you're fine with other people using it. The hashrate escrow special addresses will not impact you at all, validation cost is minimal, and you get the benefit of people who want to use Drivechain migrating to their own sidechains and freeing up space for you in the mainchain. See also the point above about infighting.

See also

• Podcast episode with Ruben Somsen and Aaron van Wirdum explaining Drivechain
• Alternatives to Drivechain
• Drivechain comparison with Ethereum

@ 04c915da:3dfbecc9

Capitalism is the most effective system for scaling innovation. The pursuit of profit is an incredibly powerful human incentive. Most major improvements to human society and quality of life have resulted from this base incentive. Market competition often results in the best outcomes for all.

That said, some projects can never be monetized. They are open in nature and a business model would centralize control. Open protocols like bitcoin and nostr are not owned by anyone and if they were it would destroy the key value propositions they provide. No single entity can or should control their use. Anyone can build on them without permission.

As a result, open protocols must depend on donation based grant funding from the people and organizations that rely on them. This model works but it is slow and uncertain, a grind where sustainability is never fully reached but rather constantly sought. As someone who has been incredibly active in the open source grant funding space, I do not think people truly appreciate how difficult it is to raise charitable money and deploy it efficiently.

Projects that can be monetized should be. Profitability is a super power. When a business can generate revenue, it taps into a self sustaining cycle. Profit fuels growth and development while providing projects independence and agency. This flywheel effect is why companies like Google, Amazon, and Apple have scaled to global dominance. The profit incentive aligns human effort with efficiency. Businesses must innovate, cut waste, and deliver value to survive.

Contrast this with non monetized projects. Without profit, they lean on external support, which can dry up or shift with donor priorities. A profit driven model, on the other hand, is inherently leaner and more adaptable. It is not charity but survival. When survival is tied to delivering what people want, scale follows naturally.

The real magic happens when profitable, sustainable businesses are built on top of open protocols and software. Consider the many startups building on open source software stacks, such as Start9, Mempool, and Primal, offering premium services on top of the open source software they build out and maintain. Think of companies like Block or Strike, which leverage bitcoin’s open protocol to offer their services on top. These businesses amplify the open software and protocols they build on, driving adoption and improvement at a pace donations alone could never match.

When you combine open software and protocols with profit driven business the result are lean, sustainable companies that grow faster and serve more people than either could alone. Bitcoin’s network, for instance, benefits from businesses that profit off its existence, while nostr will expand as developers monetize apps built on the protocol.

Capitalism scales best because competition results in efficiency. Donation funded protocols and software lay the groundwork, while market driven businesses build on top. The profit incentive acts as a filter, ensuring resources flow to what works, while open systems keep the playing field accessible, empowering users and builders. Together, they create a flywheel of innovation, growth, and global benefit.

@ 82b30d30:40c6c003

[3]

[4]

[5]

[6]

[7]

[8]

[9]

[10]

[11]

[12]

[13]

[14]

[15]

[16]

[17]

[18]

[19]

[20]

[21]

[22]

[23]

[24]

[25]

[26]

[27]

[28]

[29]

[30]

[31]

[32]

[33]

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

bitcoind decentralization

It is better to have multiple curator teams, with different vetting processes and release schedules for bitcoind than a single one.

"More eyes on code", "Contribute to Core", "Everybody should audit the code".

All these points repeated again and again fell to Earth on the day it was discovered that Bitcoin Core developers merged a variable name change from "blacklist" to "blocklist" without even discussing or acknowledging the fact that that innocent pull request opened by a sybil account was a social attack.

After a big lot of people manifested their dissatisfaction with that event on Twitter and on GitHub, most Core developers simply ignored everybody's concerns or even personally attacked people who were complaining.

The event has shown that:

1) Bitcoin Core ultimately rests on the hands of a couple maintainers and they decide what goes on the GitHub repository[^pr-merged-very-quickly] and the binary releases that will be downloaded by thousands; 2) Bitcoin Core is susceptible to social attacks; 2) "More eyes on code" don't matter, as these extra eyes can be ignored and dismissed.

Solution: bitcoind decentralization

If usage was spread across 10 different bitcoind flavors, the network would be much more resistant to social attacks to a single team.

This has nothing to do with the question on if it is better to have multiple different Bitcoin node implementations or not, because here we're basically talking about the same software.

Multiple teams, each with their own release process, their own logo, some subtle changes, or perhaps no changes at all, just a different name for their bitcoind flavor, and that's it.

Every day or week or month or year, each flavor merges all changes from Bitcoin Core on their own fork. If there's anything suspicious or too leftist (or perhaps too rightist, in case there's a leftist bitcoind flavor), maybe they will spot it and not merge.

This way we keep the best of both worlds: all software development, bugfixes, improvements goes on Bitcoin Core, other flavors just copy. If there's some non-consensus change whose efficacy is debatable, one of the flavors will merge on their fork and test, and later others -- including Core -- can copy that too. Plus, we get resistant to attacks: in case there is an attack on Bitcoin Core, only 10% of the network would be compromised. the other flavors would be safe.

Run Bitcoin Knots

The first example of a bitcoind software that follows Bitcoin Core closely, adds some small changes, but has an independent vetting and release process is Bitcoin Knots, maintained by the incorruptible Luke DashJr.

Next time you decide to run bitcoind, run Bitcoin Knots instead and contribute to bitcoind decentralization!

---

See also:

• How to attack Bitcoin, Anthony Towns' take

[^pr-merged-very-quickly]: See PR 20624, for example, a very complicated change that could be introducing bugs or be a deliberate attack, merged in 3 days without time for discussion.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

início

"Vocês vêem? Vêem a história? Vêem alguma coisa? Me parece que estou tentando lhes contar um sonho -- fazendo uma tentativa inútil, porque nenhum relato de sonho pode transmitir a sensação de sonho, aquela mistura de absurdo, surpresa e espanto numa excitação de revolta tentando se impôr, aquela noção de ser tomado pelo incompreensível que é da própria essência dos sonhos..."

Ele ficou em silêncio por alguns instantes.

"... Não, é impossível; é impossível transmitir a sensação viva de qualquer época determinada de nossa existência -- aquela que constitui a sua verdade, o seu significado, a sua essência sutil e contundente. É impossível. Vivemos, como sonhamos -- sozinhos..."

• Livros mencionados por Olavo de Carvalho
• Antiga homepage Olavo de Carvalho
• Bitcoin explicado de um jeito correto e inteligível
• Reclamações

---

• Nostr
• Bitcoin
• How IPFS is broken
• Programming quibbles
• Economics
• Open-source software

---

Nostr GitHub Telegram Donate

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

On "zk-rollups" applied to Bitcoin

ZK rollups make no sense in bitcoin because there is no "cheap calldata". all data is already ~~cheap~~ expensive calldata.

There could be an onchain zk verification that allows succinct signatures maybe, but never a rollup.

What happens is: you can have one UTXO that contains multiple balances on it and in each transaction you can recreate that UTXOs but alter its state using a zk to compress all internal transactions that took place.

The blockchain must be aware of all these new things, so it is in no way "L2".

And you must have an entity responsible for that UTXO and for conjuring the state changes and zk proofs.

But on bitcoin you also must keep the data necessary to rebuild the proofs somewhere else, I'm not sure how can the third party responsible for that UTXO ensure that happens.

I think such a construct is similar to a credit card corporation: one central party upon which everybody depends, zero interoperability with external entities, every vendor must have an account on each credit card company to be able to charge customers, therefore it is not clear that such a thing is more desirable than solutions that are truly open and interoperable like Lightning, which may have its defects but at least fosters a much better environment, bringing together different conflicting parties, custodians, anyone.

@ 06639a38:655f8f71

https://ccns.nostrver.se is a (Drupal powered) website that I started to build in January 2024 (source on Github and Gitlab). It's a fork of an earlier (abandoned) project https://cchs.social/.
Currently CCNS is a link aggregration website and for now it's only my who is using it to save and share Nostr related links. When you post a new link, you have the option to cross-post it as a Nostr note (example here).

Kind 39700

Last month Jurjen and Abir have started to work on a social bookmark client built with Nostr (inspired by Del.icio.us from the past). Earlier this month they changed to event kind 39700 for broadcasting the Nostr event with the bookmark / link data accross the network. They did this because Sep already created a social bookmark like client called Pinja when fiatjaf raised this idea.

With these developments to me it was very obvious to integrate the feature that new created CCNS links are now also published as kind 39700 events to the Nostr network. This means that links are now also distributed on multiple relays as kind 39700 events and are accessible in multiple clients (Yumyume and Pinja).

Here you can see the same data, from left to right:

• CCNS
• Pinja
• Yumyume
• njump

Structure

The current data structure for the 39700 kind looks as follow:

• "id": "event_id"
• "pubkey": "pubkey author"
• "created_at": unix_timestamp
• "kind": 39700
• "tags":
  • "description", "description text here"
  • "d", "unique-slug-value"
  • "t", "hashtag"
• "content": "https://book_mark_url"  
• "sig": "signature"

As there is no NIP (yet) for this event kind, I see some possible improvements:

• Use the bookmark URL as d tag so it can be used as a unique identifier for every client
• Use the content field for the description
• Use the a tag for an addressable event following NIP-01: ["a", "39700:pubkey_of_author:", recommended_relay_url_optional]

On short-term I don't have any plans to developer CCNS further, as most of my attention goes to the development of the Nostr-PHP library and Drupal related contribs using that library. That said, CCNS is a Drupal project but all the Nostr stuff is done client-side (Javascript) with NDK and Nostr-PHP is not used (maybe this will change in the future).

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Músicas grudentas e conversas

Uma vez que você ouviu uma música grudenta e ela volta, inteira, com toda a melodia e a harmonia, muitos dias depois, contra a sua vontade. Mas uma conversa é impossível de lembrar. Por quê?

@ 84b0c46a:417782f5

nostrリンクテスト

web+nostrリンクテスト

x-ukagaka-linkテスト

x-ukagaka-linkテスト2

nostalk

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

The problem with ION

ION is a DID method based on a thing called "Sidetree".

I can't say for sure what is the problem with ION, because I don't understand the design, even though I have read all I could and asked everybody I knew. All available information only touches on the high-level aspects of it (and of course its amazing wonders) and no one has ever bothered to explain the details. I've also asked the main designer of the protocol, Daniel Buchner, but he may have thought I was trolling him on Twitter and refused to answer, instead pointing me to an incomplete spec on the Decentralized Identity Foundation website that I had already read before. I even tried to join the DIF as a member so I could join their closed community calls and hear what they say, maybe eventually ask a question, so I could understand it, but my entrance was ignored, then after many months and a nudge from another member I was told I had to do a KYC process to be admitted, which I refused.

One thing I know is:

• ION is supposed to provide a way to rotate keys seamlessly and automatically without losing the main identity (and the ION proponents also claim there are no "master" keys because these can also be rotated).
• ION is also not a blockchain, i.e. it doesn't have a deterministic consensus mechanism and it is decentralized, i.e. anyone can publish data to it, doesn't have to be a single central server, there may be holes in the available data and the protocol doesn't treat that as a problem.
• From all we know about years of attempts to scale Bitcoins and develop offchain protocols it is clear that you can't solve the double-spend problem without a central authority or a kind of blockchain (i.e. a decentralized system with deterministic consensus).
• Rotating keys also suffer from the double-spend problem: whenever you rotate a key it is as if it was "spent", you aren't supposed to be able to use it again.

The logic conclusion of the 4 assumptions above is that ION is flawed: it can't provide the key rotation it says it can if it is not a blockchain.

See also

• Excerpt of discussion about DIDs and ION

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

rosetta.alhur.es

A service that grabs code samples from two chosen languages on RosettaCode and displays them side-by-side.

The code-fetching is done in real time and snippet-by-snippet (there is also a prefetch of which snippets are available in each language, so we only compare apples to apples).

This was my first Golang web application if I remember correctly.

• https://rosetta.alhur.es/
• https://github.com/fiatjaf/rosetta.alhur.es

@ 2cb8ae56:84d30cba

どうも、Nostrまとめ(2024)ぶりですね。

記事として出すのはかなりお久しぶりかも、お名前変わりまして「フェゼレント」でございます。 意味としては以下の通りです

1.Fezer（フェザー）という英単語 2.ent（エント）という造語 2-1. netを崩した形、よくこれに打ち間違えます。 2-2. Entertainment（エンターテイメント）の略語、なんか娯楽とか話題を生み出せる人になりたいですね。

1と2をｶﾞｯﾀｲ!!!(トムブラウン風)しまして、フェゼレントです。

なんとググってみますと、Fezerent及びフェゼレントの検索結果が0。 これは...一種のチャンスでは！？と思って、使っています。

さて、そこで出てくるのが「薄味のキャルピス」と「IVstrook」の今後ですよね。 後者に至っては3年分の料金を払ってドメインまで取っているわけですし、前者はかなりネットとかラジオでも浸透しています。

というわけで、こんな風に置き換えます。

Nostr、YT、Discordはフェゼレント及びFezerentを使用します。 それ以外（ラジオを含む）では薄味のキャルピス、IVstrookを使用します。 そして、NHKなどAM波を使用して放送を行っているラジオ局用で使用していた「テックジャンカー」ですが、使用を停止します。 あんま浸透しなかったわけですからね

そんな感じでやっていきます 最後に、記事最後に使用する署名のような奴ですが、そちらは変更なく「IVstrook」単体で行います。

また、ニコニコ動画及び各種ポッドキャストサービスにて配信しておりました「Small Room Space」ですが、今後はzap.streamというNostrのシステムを使用したサービスを用い、番組名の変更は行わないものとします。 zap.streamでの配信開始は「4月7日」 ちょうど#1が公開されてから1年が経過した日です

重ねて、当名義を使用したニコニコ動画への投稿は「3月8日」をもって終了とし、zap.streamへ移行します。

以上、今年に入ってからまともにニコニコ動画で投稿できていませんでしたが、そのような運びとさせていただきます。

2025/03/06 IVstrook

@ ec42c765:328c0600

test

test

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Thoughts on Nostr key management

On Why I don't like NIP-26 as a solution for key management I talked about multiple techniques that could be used to tackle the problem of key management on Nostr.

Here are some ideas that work in tandem:

• NIP-41 (stateless key invalidation)
• NIP-46 (Nostr Connect)
• NIP-07 (signer browser extension)
• Connected hardware signing devices
• other things like musig or frostr keys used in conjunction with a semi-trusted server; or other kinds of trusted software, like a dedicated signer on a mobile device that can sign on behalf of other apps; or even a separate protocol that some people decide to use as the source of truth for their keys, and some clients might decide to use that automatically
• there are probably many other ideas

Some premises I have in my mind (that may be flawed) that base my thoughts on these matters (and cause me to not worry too much) are that

• For the vast majority of people, Nostr keys aren't a target as valuable as Bitcoin keys, so they will probably be ok even without any solution;
• Even when you lose everything, identity can be recovered -- slowly and painfully, but still --, unlike money;
• Nostr is not trying to replace all other forms of online communication (even though when I think about this I can't imagine one thing that wouldn't be nice to replace with Nostr) or of offline communication, so there will always be ways.
• For the vast majority of people, losing keys and starting fresh isn't a big deal. It is a big deal when you have followers and an online persona and your life depends on that, but how many people are like that? In the real world I see people deleting social media accounts all the time and creating new ones, people losing their phone numbers or other accounts associated with their phone numbers, and not caring very much -- they just find a way to notify friends and family and move on.

We can probably come up with some specs to ease the "manual" recovery process, like social attestation and explicit signaling -- i.e., Alice, Bob and Carol are friends; Alice loses her key; Bob sends a new Nostr event kind to the network saying what is Alice's new key; depending on how much Carol trusts Bob, she can automatically start following that and remove the old key -- or something like that.

---

One nice thing about some of these proposals, like NIP-41, or the social-recovery method, or the external-source-of-truth-method, is that they don't have to be implemented in any client, they can live in standalone single-purpose microapps that users open or visit only every now and then, and these can then automatically update their follow lists with the latest news from keys that have changed according to multiple methods.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

lnurl-auth explained

You may have seen the lnurl-auth spec or heard about it, but might not know how it works or what is its relationship with other lnurl protocols. This document attempts to solve that.

Relationship between lnurl-auth and other lnurl protocols

First, what is the relationship of lnurl-auth with other lnurl protocols? The answer is none, except the fact that they all share the lnurl format for specifying https URLs.

In fact, lnurl-auth is very unique in the sense that it doesn't even need a Lightning wallet to work, it is a standalone authentication protocol that can work anywhere.

How does it work

Now, how does it work? The basic idea is that each wallet has a seed, which is a random value (you may think of the BIP39 seed words, for example). Usually from that seed different keys are derived, each of these yielding a Bitcoin address, and also from that same seed may come the keys used to generate and manage Lightning channels.

What lnurl-auth does is to generate a new key from that seed, and from that a new key for each service (identified by its domain) you try to authenticate with.

That way, you effectively have a new identity for each website. Two different services cannot associate your identities.

The flow goes like this: When you visit a website, the website presents you with a QR code containing a callback URL and a challenge. The challenge should be a random value.

When your wallet scans or opens that QR code it uses the domain in the callback URL plus the main lnurl-auth key to derive a key specific for that website, uses that key to sign the challenge and then sends both the public key specific for that for that website plus the signed challenge to the specified URL.

When the service receives the public key it checks it against the challenge signature and start a session for that user. The user is then identified only by its public key. If the service wants it can, of course, request more details from the user, associate it with an internal id or username, it is free to do anything. lnurl-auth's goals end here: no passwords, maximum possible privacy.

FAQ

• What is the advantage of tying this to Bitcoin and Lightning?

  One big advantage is that your wallet is already keeping track of one seed, it is already a precious thing. If you had to keep track of a separate auth seed it would be arguably worse, more difficult to bootstrap the protocol, and arguably one of the reasons similar protocols, past and present, weren't successful.

• Just signing in to websites? What else is this good for?

  No, it can be used for authenticating to installable apps and physical places, as long as there is a service running an HTTP server somewhere to read the signature sent from the wallet. But yes, signing in to websites is the main problem to solve here.

• Phishing attack! Can a malicious website proxy the QR from a third website and show it to the user to it will steal the signature and be able to login on the third website?

  No, because the wallet will only talk to the the callback URL, and it will either be controlled by the third website, so the malicious won't see anything; or it will have a different domain, so the wallet will derive a different key and frustrate the malicious website's plan.

• I heard SQRL had that same idea and it went nowhere.

  Indeed. SQRL in its first version was basically the same thing as lnurl-auth, with one big difference: it was vulnerable to phishing attacks (see above). That was basically the only criticism it got everywhere, so the protocol creators decided to solve that by introducing complexity to the protocol. While they were at it they decided to add more complexity for managing accounts and so many more crap that in the the spec which initially was a single page ended up becoming 136 pages of highly technical gibberish. Then all the initial network effect it had, libraries and apps were trashed and nowadays no one can do anything with it (but, see, there are still people who love the protocol writing in a 90's forum with no clue of anything besides their own Java).

• We don't need this, we need WebAuthn!

  WebAuthn is essentially the same thing as lnurl-auth, but instead of being simple it is complex, instead of being open and decentralized it is centralized in big corporations, and instead of relying on a key generated by your own device it requires an expensive hardware HSM you must buy and trust the manufacturer. If you like WebAuthn and you like Bitcoin you should like lnurl-auth much more.

• What about BitID?

  This is another one that is very similar to lnurl-auth, but without the anti-phishing prevention and extra privacy given by making one different key for each service.

• What about LSAT?

  It doesn't compete with lnurl-auth. LSAT, as far as I understand it, is for when you're buying individual resources from a server, not authenticating as a user. Of course, LSAT can be repurposed as a general authentication tool, but then it will lack features that lnurl-auth has, like the property of having keys generated independently by the user from a common seed and a standard way of passing authentication info from one medium to another (like signing in to a website at the desktop from the mobile phone, for example).

@ ec42c765:328c0600

test

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

A Causa

o Princípios de Economia Política de Menger é o único livro que enfatiza a CAUSA o tempo todo. os cientistas todos parecem não saber, ou se esquecer sempre, que as coisas têm causa, e que o conhecimento verdadeiro é o conhecimento da causa das coisas.

a causa é uma categoria metafísica muito superior a qualquer correlação ou resultado de teste de hipótese, ela não pode ser descoberta por nenhum artifício econométrico ou reduzida à simples antecedência temporal estatística. a causa dos fenômenos não pode ser provada cientificamente, mas pode ser conhecida.

o livro de Menger conta para o leitor as causas de vários fenômenos econômicos e as interliga de forma que o mundo caótico da economia parece adquirir uma ordem no momento em que você lê. é uma sensação mágica e indescritível.

quando eu te o recomendei, queria é te imbuir com o espírito da busca pela causa das coisas. depois de ler aquilo, você está apto a perceber continuidade causal nos fenômenos mais complexos da economia atual, enxergar as causas entre toda a ação governamental e as suas várias consequências na vida humana. eu faço isso todos os dias e é a melhor sensação do mundo quando o caos das notícias do caderno de Economia do jornal -- que para o próprio jornalista que as escreveu não têm nenhum sentido (tanto é que ele escreve tudo errado) -- se incluem num sistema ordenado de causas e consequências.

provavelmente eu sempre erro em alguns ou vários pontos, mas ainda assim é maravilhoso. ou então é mais maravilhoso ainda quando eu descubro o erro e reinsiro o acerto naquela racionalização bela da ordem do mundo econômico que é a ordem de Deus.

em scrap para T.P.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

A biblioteca infinita

Agora esqueci o nome do conto de Jorge Luis Borges em que a tal biblioteca é descrita, ou seus detalhes específicos. Eu tinha lido o conto e nunca havia percebido que ele matava a questão da aleatoriedade ser capaz de produzir coisas valiosas. Precisei mesmo da Wikipédia me dizer isso.

Alguns anos atrás levantei essa questão para um grupo de amigos sem saber que era uma questão tão batida e baixa. No meu exemplo era um cachorro andando sobre letras desenhadas e não um macaco numa máquina de escrever. A minha conclusão da discussão foi que não importa o que o cachorro escrevesse, sem uma inteligência capaz de compreender aquilo nada passaria de letras aleatórias.

Borges resolve tudo imaginando uma biblioteca que contém tudo o que o cachorro havia escrito durante todo o infinito em que fez o experimento, e portanto contém todo o conhecimento sobre tudo e todas as obras literárias possíveis -- mas entre cada página ou frase muito boa ou pelo menos legívei há toneladas de livros completamente aleatórios e uma pessoa pode passar a vida dentro dessa biblioteca que contém tanto conhecimento importante e mesmo assim não aprender nada porque nunca vai achar os livros certos.

Everything would be in its blind volumes. Everything: the detailed history of the future, Aeschylus' The Egyptians, the exact number of times that the waters of the Ganges have reflected the flight of a falcon, the secret and true nature of Rome, the encyclopedia Novalis would have constructed, my dreams and half-dreams at dawn on August 14, 1934, the proof of Pierre Fermat's theorem, the unwritten chapters of Edwin Drood, those same chapters translated into the language spoken by the Garamantes, the paradoxes Berkeley invented concerning Time but didn't publish, Urizen's books of iron, the premature epiphanies of Stephen Dedalus, which would be meaningless before a cycle of a thousand years, the Gnostic Gospel of Basilides, the song the sirens sang, the complete catalog of the Library, the proof of the inaccuracy of that catalog. Everything: but for every sensible line or accurate fact there would be millions of meaningless cacophonies, verbal farragoes, and babblings. Everything: but all the generations of mankind could pass before the dizzying shelves – shelves that obliterate the day and on which chaos lies – ever reward them with a tolerable page.

Tenho a impressão de que a publicação gigantesca de artigos, posts, livros e tudo o mais está transformando o mundo nessa biblioteca. Há tanta coisa pra ler que é difícil achar o que presta. As pessoas precisam parar de escrever.

@ ec42c765:328c0600

カスタム絵文字とは

任意のオリジナル画像を絵文字のように文中に挿入できる機能です。
また、リアクション（Twitterの いいね のような機能）にもカスタム絵文字を使えます。

カスタム絵文字の対応状況（2025/02/06）

カスタム絵文字を使うためにはカスタム絵文字に対応したクライアントを使う必要があります。

※表は一例です。クライアントは他にもたくさんあります。

使っているクライアントが対応していない場合は、クライアントを変更する、対応するまで待つ、開発者に要望を送る（または自分で実装する）などしましょう。

対応クライアント

• Amethyst
• FreeFrom
• nostter
• Rabbit
• Lumilumi
• Nos Haiku
• Snort
• noStrudel

ここではnostterを使って説明していきます。

準備

カスタム絵文字を使うための準備です。

• Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する
• 使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する

Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する

Nostrエクステンションは使いたいカスタム絵文字を登録する時に必要になります。

また、環境（パソコン、iPhone、androidなど）によって導入方法が違います。

Nostrエクステンションを導入する端末は、実際にNostrを閲覧する端末と違っても構いません（リスト登録はPC、Nostr閲覧はiPhoneなど）。

Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）の導入方法は以下のページを参照してください。

ログイン拡張機能 (NIP-07)を使ってみよう | Welcome to Nostr! ～ Nostrをはじめよう！ ～

少し面倒ですが、これを導入しておくとNostr上の様々な場面で役立つのでより快適になります。

使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する

以下のサイトで行います。

emojito

右上のGet startedからNostrエクステンションでログインしてください。

例として以下のカスタム絵文字を導入してみます。

実際より絵文字が少なく表示されることがありますが、古い状態のデータを取得してしまっているためです。その場合はブラウザの更新ボタンを押してください。

generalJP | カスタム絵文字

• 右側のOptionsからBookmarkを選択

これでカスタム絵文字を使用するためのリストに登録できます。

カスタム絵文字を使用する

例としてブラウザから使えるクライアント nostter から使用してみます。

nostter

nostterにNostrエクステンションでログイン、もしくは秘密鍵を入れてログインしてください。

文章中に使用

1. 投稿ボタンを押して投稿ウィンドウを表示
2. 顔😀のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示
3. ＊タブを押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示
4. カスタム絵文字を選択
5. : 記号に挟まれたアルファベットのショートコードとして挿入される

この状態で投稿するとカスタム絵文字として表示されます。

カスタム絵文字対応クライアントを使っている他ユーザーにもカスタム絵文字として表示されます。

対応していないクライアントの場合、ショートコードのまま表示されます。

ショートコードを直接入力することでカスタム絵文字の候補が表示されるのでそこから選択することもできます。

リアクションに使用

1. 任意の投稿の顔😀のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示
2. ＊タブを押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示
3. カスタム絵文字を選択

カスタム絵文字リアクションを送ることができます。

カスタム絵文字を探す

先述したemojitoからカスタム絵文字を探せます。

例えば任意のユーザーのページ emojito ロクヨウ から探したり、 emojito Browse all からnostr全体で最近作成、更新された絵文字を見たりできます。

また、以下のリンクは日本語圏ユーザーが作ったカスタム絵文字を集めたリストです（2025/02/06）

※漏れがあるかもしれません

日本ユーザー作 カスタム絵文字

各絵文字セットにあるOpen in emojitoのリンクからemojitoに飛び、使用リストに追加できます。

---

以上です。

次：Nostrのカスタム絵文字の作り方

Yakihonneリンク Nostrのカスタム絵文字の作り方

Nostrリンク nostr:naddr1qqxnzdesxuunzv358ycrgveeqgswcsk8v4qck0deepdtluag3a9rh0jh2d0wh0w9g53qg8a9x2xqvqqrqsqqqa28r5psx3

---

仕様

NIP-30 Custom Emoji

NIP-30 カスタム絵文字（和訳）

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

IPFS problems: Shitcoinery

IPFS was advertised to the Ethereum community since the beggining as a way to "store" data for their "dApps". I don't think this is harmful in any way, but for some reason it may have led IPFS developers to focus too much on Ethereum stuff. Once I watched a talk showing libp2p developers – despite being ignored by the Ethereum team (that ended up creating their own agnostic p2p library) – dedicating an enourmous amount of work on getting a libp2p app running in the browser talking to a normal Ethereum node.

The always somewhat-abandoned "Awesome IPFS" site is a big repository of "dApps", some of which don't even have their landing page up anymore, useless Ethereum smart contracts that for some reason use IPFS to store whatever the useless data their users produce.

Again, per se it isn't a problem that Ethereum people are using IPFS, but it is at least confusing, maybe misleading, that when you search for IPFS most of the use-cases are actually Ethereum useless-cases.

See also

• Bitcoin, the only non-shitcoin

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Why IPFS cannot work, again

Imagine someone comes up with a solution for P2P content-addressed data-sharing that involves storing all the files' contents in all computers of the network. That wouldn't work, right? Too much data, if you think this can work then you're a BSV enthusiast.

Then someone comes up with the idea of not storing everything in all computers, but only some things on some computers, based on some algorithm to determine what data a node would store given its pubkey or something like that. Still wouldn't work, right? Still too much data no matter how much you spread it, but mostly incentives not aligned, would implode in the first day.

Now imagine someone says they will do the same thing, but instead of storing the full contents each node would only store a pointer to where each data is actually available. Does that make it better? Hardly so. Still, you're just moving the problem.

This is IPFS.

Now you have less data on each computer, but on a global scale that is still a lot of data.

No incentives.

And now you have the problem of finding the data. First if you have some data you want the world to access you have to broadcast information about that, flooding the network -- and everybody has to keep doing this continuously for every single file (or shard of file) that is available.

And then whenever someone wants some data they must find the people who know about that, which means they will flood the network with requests that get passed from peer to peer until they get to the correct peer.

The more you force each peer to store the worse it becomes to run a node and to store data on behalf of others -- but the less your force each peer to store the more flooding you'll have on the global network, and the slower will be for anyone to actually get any file.

---

But if everybody just saves everything to Infura or Cloudflare then it works, magic decentralized technology.

Related

• How IPFS is broken

@ ec42c765:328c0600

てすと

nostr:nevent1qqst3uqlls4yr9vys4dza2sgjle3ly37trck7jgdmtr23uuz52usjrqqqnjgr

nostr:nevent1qqsdvchy5d27zt3z05rr3q6vvmzgslslxwu0p4dfkvxwhmvxldn9djguvagp2

test

てｓ

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Bluesky is a scam

Bluesky advertises itself as an open network, they say people won't lose followers or their identity, they advertise themselves as a protocol ("atproto") and because of that they are tricking a lot of people into using them. These three claims are false.

protocolness

Bluesky is a company. "atproto" is the protocol. Supposedly they are two different things, right? Bluesky just releases software that implements the protocol, but others can also do that, it's open!

And yet, the protocol has an official webpage with a waitlist and a private beta? Why is the protocol advertised as a company product? Because it is. The "protocol" is just a description of whatever the Bluesky app and servers do, it can and does change anytime the Bluesky developers decide they want to change it, and it will keep changing for as long as Bluesky apps and servers control the biggest part of the network.

Oh, so there is the possibility of other players stepping in and then it becomes an actual interoperable open protocol? Yes, but what is the likelihood of that happening? It is very low. No serious competitor is likely to step in and build serious apps using a protocol that is directly controlled by Bluesky. All we will ever see are small "community" apps made by users and small satellite small businesses -- not unlike the people and companies that write plugins, addons and alternative clients for popular third-party centralized platforms.

And last, even if it happens that someone makes an app so good that it displaces the canonical official Bluesky app, then that company may overtake the protocol itself -- not because they're evil, but because there is no way it cannot be like this.

identity

According to their own documentation, the Bluesky people were looking for an identity system that provided global ids, key rotation and human-readable names.

They must have realized that such properties are not possible in an open and decentralized system, but instead of accepting a tradeoff they decided they wanted all their desired features and threw away the "decentralized" part, quite literally and explicitly (although they make sure to hide that piece in the middle of a bunch of code and text that very few will read).

The "DID Placeholder" method they decided to use for their global identities is nothing more than a normal old boring trusted server controlled by Bluesky that keeps track of who is who and can, at all times, decide to ban a person and deprive them from their identity (they dismissively call a "denial of service attack").

They decided to adopt this method as a placeholder until someone else doesn't invent the impossible alternative that would provide all their desired properties in a decentralized manner -- which is nothing more than a very good excuse: "yes, it's not great now, but it will improve!".

openness

Months after launching their product with an aura of decentralization and openness and getting a bunch of people inside that believed, falsely, they were joining an actually open network, Bluesky has decided to publish a part of their idea of how other people will be able to join their open network.

When I first saw their app and how they were very prominently things like follower counts, like counts and other things that are typical of centralized networks and can't be reliable or exact on truly open networks (like Nostr), I asked myself how were they going to do that once they became and open "federated" network as they were expected to be.

Turns out their decentralization plan is to just allow you, as a writer, to host your own posts on "personal data stores", but not really have any control over the distribution of the posts. All posts go through the Bluesky central server, called BGS, and they decide what to do with it. And you, as a reader, doesn't have any control of what you're reading from either, all you can do is connect to the BGS and ask for posts. If the BGS decides to ban, shadow ban, reorder, miscount, hide, deprioritize, trick or maybe even to serve ads, then you are out of luck.

Oh, but anyone can run their own BGS!, they will say. Even in their own blog post announcing the architecture they assert that "it’s a fairly resource-demanding service" and "there may be a few large full-network providers". But I fail to see why even more than one network provider will exist, if Bluesky is already doing that job, and considering the fact there are very little incentives for anyone to switch providers -- because the app does not seem to be at all made to talk to multiple providers, one would have to stop using the reliable, fast and beefy official BGS and start using some half-baked alternative and risk losing access to things.

When asked about the possibility of switching, one of Bluesky overlords said: "it would look something like this: bluesky has gone evil. there's a new alternative called freesky that people are rushing to. I'm switching to freesky".

The quote is very naïve and sounds like something that could be said about Twitter itself: "if Twitter is evil you can just run your own social network". Both are fallacies because they ignore the network-effect and the fact that people will never fully agree that something is "evil". In fact these two are the fundamental reasons why -- for social networks specifically (and not for other things like commerce) -- we need truly open protocols with no owners and no committees.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Who will build the roads?

Who will build the roads? Em Lagoa Santa, as mais novas e melhores ruas -- que na verdade acabam por formar enormes teias de bairros que se interligam -- são construídas pelos loteadores que querem as ruas para que seus lotes valham mais -- e querem que outras pessoas usem as ruas também. Também são esses mesmos loteadores que colocam os postes de luz e os encanamentos de água, não sem antes terem que se submeter a extorsões de praxe praticadas por COPASA e CEMIG.

Se ao abrir um loteamento, condomínio, prédio um indivíduo ou uma empresa consegue sem muito problema passar rua, eletricidade, água e esgoto, por que não seria possível existir livre-concorrência nesses mercados? Mesmo aquela velha estória de que é ineficiente passar cabos de luz duplicados para que companhias elétricas possam competir já me parece bobagem.

@ 21335073:a244b1ad

Warning: This piece contains a conversation about difficult topics. Please proceed with caution.

TL;DR please educate your children about online safety.

Julian Assange wrote in his 2012 book Cypherpunks, “This book is not a manifesto. There isn’t time for that. This book is a warning.” I read it a few times over the past summer. Those opening lines definitely stood out to me. I wish we had listened back then. He saw something about the internet that few had the ability to see. There are some individuals who are so close to a topic that when they speak, it’s difficult for others who aren’t steeped in it to visualize what they’re talking about. I didn’t read the book until more recently. If I had read it when it came out, it probably would have sounded like an unknown foreign language to me. Today it makes more sense.

This isn’t a manifesto. This isn’t a book. There is no time for that. It’s a warning and a possible solution from a desperate and determined survivor advocate who has been pulling and unraveling a thread for a few years. At times, I feel too close to this topic to make any sense trying to convey my pathway to my conclusions or thoughts to the general public. My hope is that if nothing else, I can convey my sense of urgency while writing this. This piece is a watchman’s warning.

When a child steps online, they are walking into a new world. A new reality. When you hand a child the internet, you are handing them possibilities—good, bad, and ugly. This is a conversation about lowering the potential of negative outcomes of stepping into that new world and how I came to these conclusions. I constantly compare the internet to the road. You wouldn’t let a young child run out into the road with no guidance or safety precautions. When you hand a child the internet without any type of guidance or safety measures, you are allowing them to play in rush hour, oncoming traffic. “Look left, look right for cars before crossing.” We almost all have been taught that as children. What are we taught as humans about safety before stepping into a completely different reality like the internet? Very little.

I could never really figure out why many folks in tech, privacy rights activists, and hackers seemed so cold to me while talking about online child sexual exploitation. I always figured that as a survivor advocate for those affected by these crimes, that specific, skilled group of individuals would be very welcoming and easy to talk to about such serious topics. I actually had one hacker laugh in my face when I brought it up while I was looking for answers. I thought maybe this individual thought I was accusing them of something I wasn’t, so I felt bad for asking. I was constantly extremely disappointed and would ask myself, “Why don’t they care? What could I say to make them care more? What could I say to make them understand the crisis and the level of suffering that happens as a result of the problem?”

I have been serving minor survivors of online child sexual exploitation for years. My first case serving a survivor of this specific crime was in 2018—a 13-year-old girl sexually exploited by a serial predator on Snapchat. That was my first glimpse into this side of the internet. I won a national award for serving the minor survivors of Twitter in 2023, but I had been working on that specific project for a few years. I was nominated by a lawyer representing two survivors in a legal battle against the platform. I’ve never really spoken about this before, but at the time it was a choice for me between fighting Snapchat or Twitter. I chose Twitter—or rather, Twitter chose me. I heard about the story of John Doe #1 and John Doe #2, and I was so unbelievably broken over it that I went to war for multiple years. I was and still am royally pissed about that case. As far as I was concerned, the John Doe #1 case proved that whatever was going on with corporate tech social media was so out of control that I didn’t have time to wait, so I got to work. It was reading the messages that John Doe #1 sent to Twitter begging them to remove his sexual exploitation that broke me. He was a child begging adults to do something. A passion for justice and protecting kids makes you do wild things. I was desperate to find answers about what happened and searched for solutions. In the end, the platform Twitter was purchased. During the acquisition, I just asked Mr. Musk nicely to prioritize the issue of detection and removal of child sexual exploitation without violating digital privacy rights or eroding end-to-end encryption. Elon thanked me multiple times during the acquisition, made some changes, and I was thanked by others on the survivors’ side as well.

I still feel that even with the progress made, I really just scratched the surface with Twitter, now X. I left that passion project when I did for a few reasons. I wanted to give new leadership time to tackle the issue. Elon Musk made big promises that I knew would take a while to fulfill, but mostly I had been watching global legislation transpire around the issue, and frankly, the governments are willing to go much further with X and the rest of corporate tech than I ever would. My work begging Twitter to make changes with easier reporting of content, detection, and removal of child sexual exploitation material—without violating privacy rights or eroding end-to-end encryption—and advocating for the minor survivors of the platform went as far as my principles would have allowed. I’m grateful for that experience. I was still left with a nagging question: “How did things get so bad with Twitter where the John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 case was able to happen in the first place?” I decided to keep looking for answers. I decided to keep pulling the thread.

I never worked for Twitter. This is often confusing for folks. I will say that despite being disappointed in the platform’s leadership at times, I loved Twitter. I saw and still see its value. I definitely love the survivors of the platform, but I also loved the platform. I was a champion of the platform’s ability to give folks from virtually around the globe an opportunity to speak and be heard.

I want to be clear that John Doe #1 really is my why. He is the inspiration. I am writing this because of him. He represents so many globally, and I’m still inspired by his bravery. One child’s voice begging adults to do something—I’m an adult, I heard him. I’d go to war a thousand more lifetimes for that young man, and I don’t even know his name. Fighting has been personally dark at times; I’m not even going to try to sugarcoat it, but it has been worth it.

The data surrounding the very real crime of online child sexual exploitation is available to the public online at any time for anyone to see. I’d encourage you to go look at the data for yourself. I believe in encouraging folks to check multiple sources so that you understand the full picture. If you are uncomfortable just searching around the internet for information about this topic, use the terms “CSAM,” “CSEM,” “SG-CSEM,” or “AI Generated CSAM.” The numbers don’t lie—it’s a nightmare that’s out of control. It’s a big business. The demand is high, and unfortunately, business is booming. Organizations collect the data, tech companies often post their data, governments report frequently, and the corporate press has covered a decent portion of the conversation, so I’m sure you can find a source that you trust.

Technology is changing rapidly, which is great for innovation as a whole but horrible for the crime of online child sexual exploitation. Those wishing to exploit the vulnerable seem to be adapting to each technological change with ease. The governments are so far behind with tackling these issues that as I’m typing this, it’s borderline irrelevant to even include them while speaking about the crime or potential solutions. Technology is changing too rapidly, and their old, broken systems can’t even dare to keep up. Think of it like the governments’ “War on Drugs.” Drugs won. In this case as well, the governments are not winning. The governments are talking about maybe having a meeting on potentially maybe having legislation around the crimes. The time to have that meeting would have been many years ago. I’m not advocating for governments to legislate our way out of this. I’m on the side of educating and innovating our way out of this.

I have been clear while advocating for the minor survivors of corporate tech platforms that I would not advocate for any solution to the crime that would violate digital privacy rights or erode end-to-end encryption. That has been a personal moral position that I was unwilling to budge on. This is an extremely unpopular and borderline nonexistent position in the anti-human trafficking movement and online child protection space. I’m often fearful that I’m wrong about this. I have always thought that a better pathway forward would have been to incentivize innovation for detection and removal of content. I had no previous exposure to privacy rights activists or Cypherpunks—actually, I came to that conclusion by listening to the voices of MENA region political dissidents and human rights activists. After developing relationships with human rights activists from around the globe, I realized how important privacy rights and encryption are for those who need it most globally. I was simply unwilling to give more power, control, and opportunities for mass surveillance to big abusers like governments wishing to enslave entire nations and untrustworthy corporate tech companies to potentially end some portion of abuses online. On top of all of it, it has been clear to me for years that all potential solutions outside of violating digital privacy rights to detect and remove child sexual exploitation online have not yet been explored aggressively. I’ve been disappointed that there hasn’t been more of a conversation around preventing the crime from happening in the first place.

What has been tried is mass surveillance. In China, they are currently under mass surveillance both online and offline, and their behaviors are attached to a social credit score. Unfortunately, even on state-run and controlled social media platforms, they still have child sexual exploitation and abuse imagery pop up along with other crimes and human rights violations. They also have a thriving black market online due to the oppression from the state. In other words, even an entire loss of freedom and privacy cannot end the sexual exploitation of children online. It’s been tried. There is no reason to repeat this method.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why I always felt a slight coldness from those in tech and privacy-minded individuals about the topic of child sexual exploitation online. I didn’t have any clue about the “Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse.” This is a term coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. I would have been a child myself when he first said it. I actually laughed at myself when I heard the phrase for the first time. I finally got it. The Cypherpunks weren’t wrong about that topic. They were so spot on that it is borderline uncomfortable. I was mad at first that they knew that early during the birth of the internet that this issue would arise and didn’t address it. Then I got over it because I realized that it wasn’t their job. Their job was—is—to write code. Their job wasn’t to be involved and loving parents or survivor advocates. Their job wasn’t to educate children on internet safety or raise awareness; their job was to write code.

They knew that child sexual abuse material would be shared on the internet. They said what would happen—not in a gleeful way, but a prediction. Then it happened.

I equate it now to a concrete company laying down a road. As you’re pouring the concrete, you can say to yourself, “A terrorist might travel down this road to go kill many, and on the flip side, a beautiful child can be born in an ambulance on this road.” Who or what travels down the road is not their responsibility—they are just supposed to lay the concrete. I’d never go to a concrete pourer and ask them to solve terrorism that travels down roads. Under the current system, law enforcement should stop terrorists before they even make it to the road. The solution to this specific problem is not to treat everyone on the road like a terrorist or to not build the road.

So I understand the perceived coldness from those in tech. Not only was it not their job, but bringing up the topic was seen as the equivalent of asking a free person if they wanted to discuss one of the four topics—child abusers, terrorists, drug dealers, intellectual property pirates, etc.—that would usher in digital authoritarianism for all who are online globally.

Privacy rights advocates and groups have put up a good fight. They stood by their principles. Unfortunately, when it comes to corporate tech, I believe that the issue of privacy is almost a complete lost cause at this point. It’s still worth pushing back, but ultimately, it is a losing battle—a ticking time bomb.

I do think that corporate tech providers could have slowed down the inevitable loss of privacy at the hands of the state by prioritizing the detection and removal of CSAM when they all started online. I believe it would have bought some time, fewer would have been traumatized by that specific crime, and I do believe that it could have slowed down the demand for content. If I think too much about that, I’ll go insane, so I try to push the “if maybes” aside, but never knowing if it could have been handled differently will forever haunt me. At night when it’s quiet, I wonder what I would have done differently if given the opportunity. I’ll probably never know how much corporate tech knew and ignored in the hopes that it would go away while the problem continued to get worse. They had different priorities. The most voiceless and vulnerable exploited on corporate tech never had much of a voice, so corporate tech providers didn’t receive very much pushback.

Now I’m about to say something really wild, and you can call me whatever you want to call me, but I’m going to say what I believe to be true. I believe that the governments are either so incompetent that they allowed the proliferation of CSAM online, or they knowingly allowed the problem to fester long enough to have an excuse to violate privacy rights and erode end-to-end encryption. The US government could have seized the corporate tech providers over CSAM, but I believe that they were so useful as a propaganda arm for the regimes that they allowed them to continue virtually unscathed.

That season is done now, and the governments are making the issue a priority. It will come at a high cost. Privacy on corporate tech providers is virtually done as I’m typing this. It feels like a death rattle. I’m not particularly sure that we had much digital privacy to begin with, but the illusion of a veil of privacy feels gone.

To make matters slightly more complex, it would be hard to convince me that once AI really gets going, digital privacy will exist at all.

I believe that there should be a conversation shift to preserving freedoms and human rights in a post-privacy society.

I don’t want to get locked up because AI predicted a nasty post online from me about the government. I’m not a doomer about AI—I’m just going to roll with it personally. I’m looking forward to the positive changes that will be brought forth by AI. I see it as inevitable. A bit of privacy was helpful while it lasted. Please keep fighting to preserve what is left of privacy either way because I could be wrong about all of this.

On the topic of AI, the addition of AI to the horrific crime of child sexual abuse material and child sexual exploitation in multiple ways so far has been devastating. It’s currently out of control. The genie is out of the bottle. I am hopeful that innovation will get us humans out of this, but I’m not sure how or how long it will take. We must be extremely cautious around AI legislation. It should not be illegal to innovate even if some bad comes with the good. I don’t trust that the governments are equipped to decide the best pathway forward for AI. Source: the entire history of the government.

I have been personally negatively impacted by AI-generated content. Every few days, I get another alert that I’m featured again in what’s called “deep fake pornography” without my consent. I’m not happy about it, but what pains me the most is the thought that for a period of time down the road, many globally will experience what myself and others are experiencing now by being digitally sexually abused in this way. If you have ever had your picture taken and posted online, you are also at risk of being exploited in this way. Your child’s image can be used as well, unfortunately, and this is just the beginning of this particular nightmare. It will move to more realistic interpretations of sexual behaviors as technology improves. I have no brave words of wisdom about how to deal with that emotionally. I do have hope that innovation will save the day around this specific issue. I’m nervous that everyone online will have to ID verify due to this issue. I see that as one possible outcome that could help to prevent one problem but inadvertently cause more problems, especially for those living under authoritarian regimes or anyone who needs to remain anonymous online. A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) would probably be the best solution to these issues. There are some survivors of violence and/or sexual trauma who need to remain anonymous online for various reasons. There are survivor stories available online of those who have been abused in this way. I’d encourage you seek out and listen to their stories.

There have been periods of time recently where I hesitate to say anything at all because more than likely AI will cover most of my concerns about education, awareness, prevention, detection, and removal of child sexual exploitation online, etc.

Unfortunately, some of the most pressing issues we’ve seen online over the last few years come in the form of “sextortion.” Self-generated child sexual exploitation (SG-CSEM) numbers are continuing to be terrifying. I’d strongly encourage that you look into sextortion data. AI + sextortion is also a huge concern. The perpetrators are using the non-sexually explicit images of children and putting their likeness on AI-generated child sexual exploitation content and extorting money, more imagery, or both from minors online. It’s like a million nightmares wrapped into one. The wild part is that these issues will only get more pervasive because technology is harnessed to perpetuate horror at a scale unimaginable to a human mind.

Even if you banned phones and the internet or tried to prevent children from accessing the internet, it wouldn’t solve it. Child sexual exploitation will still be with us until as a society we start to prevent the crime before it happens. That is the only human way out right now.

There is no reset button on the internet, but if I could go back, I’d tell survivor advocates to heed the warnings of the early internet builders and to start education and awareness campaigns designed to prevent as much online child sexual exploitation as possible. The internet and technology moved quickly, and I don’t believe that society ever really caught up. We live in a world where a child can be groomed by a predator in their own home while sitting on a couch next to their parents watching TV. We weren’t ready as a species to tackle the fast-paced algorithms and dangers online. It happened too quickly for parents to catch up. How can you parent for the ever-changing digital world unless you are constantly aware of the dangers?

I don’t think that the internet is inherently bad. I believe that it can be a powerful tool for freedom and resistance. I’ve spoken a lot about the bad online, but there is beauty as well. We often discuss how victims and survivors are abused online; we rarely discuss the fact that countless survivors around the globe have been able to share their experiences, strength, hope, as well as provide resources to the vulnerable. I do question if giving any government or tech company access to censorship, surveillance, etc., online in the name of serving survivors might not actually impact a portion of survivors negatively. There are a fair amount of survivors with powerful abusers protected by governments and the corporate press. If a survivor cannot speak to the press about their abuse, the only place they can go is online, directly or indirectly through an independent journalist who also risks being censored. This scenario isn’t hard to imagine—it already happened in China. During #MeToo, a survivor in China wanted to post their story. The government censored the post, so the survivor put their story on the blockchain. I’m excited that the survivor was creative and brave, but it’s terrifying to think that we live in a world where that situation is a necessity.

I believe that the future for many survivors sharing their stories globally will be on completely censorship-resistant and decentralized protocols. This thought in particular gives me hope. When we listen to the experiences of a diverse group of survivors, we can start to understand potential solutions to preventing the crimes from happening in the first place.

My heart is broken over the gut-wrenching stories of survivors sexually exploited online. Every time I hear the story of a survivor, I do think to myself quietly, “What could have prevented this from happening in the first place?” My heart is with survivors.

My head, on the other hand, is full of the understanding that the internet should remain free. The free flow of information should not be stopped. My mind is with the innocent citizens around the globe that deserve freedom both online and offline.

The problem is that governments don’t only want to censor illegal content that violates human rights—they create legislation that is so broad that it can impact speech and privacy of all. “Don’t you care about the kids?” Yes, I do. I do so much that I’m invested in finding solutions. I also care about all citizens around the globe that deserve an opportunity to live free from a mass surveillance society. If terrorism happens online, I should not be punished by losing my freedom. If drugs are sold online, I should not be punished. I’m not an abuser, I’m not a terrorist, and I don’t engage in illegal behaviors. I refuse to lose freedom because of others’ bad behaviors online.

I want to be clear that on a long enough timeline, the governments will decide that they can be better parents/caregivers than you can if something isn’t done to stop minors from being sexually exploited online. The price will be a complete loss of anonymity, privacy, free speech, and freedom of religion online. I find it rather insulting that governments think they’re better equipped to raise children than parents and caretakers.

So we can’t go backwards—all that we can do is go forward. Those who want to have freedom will find technology to facilitate their liberation. This will lead many over time to decentralized and open protocols. So as far as I’m concerned, this does solve a few of my worries—those who need, want, and deserve to speak freely online will have the opportunity in most countries—but what about online child sexual exploitation?

When I popped up around the decentralized space, I was met with the fear of censorship. I’m not here to censor you. I don’t write code. I couldn’t censor anyone or any piece of content even if I wanted to across the internet, no matter how depraved. I don’t have the skills to do that.

I’m here to start a conversation. Freedom comes at a cost. You must always fight for and protect your freedom. I can’t speak about protecting yourself from all of the Four Horsemen because I simply don’t know the topics well enough, but I can speak about this one topic.

If there was a shortcut to ending online child sexual exploitation, I would have found it by now. There isn’t one right now. I believe that education is the only pathway forward to preventing the crime of online child sexual exploitation for future generations.

I propose a yearly education course for every child of all school ages, taught as a standard part of the curriculum. Ideally, parents/caregivers would be involved in the education/learning process.

Course: - The creation of the internet and computers - The fight for cryptography - The tech supply chain from the ground up (example: human rights violations in the supply chain) - Corporate tech - Freedom tech - Data privacy - Digital privacy rights - AI (history-current) - Online safety (predators, scams, catfishing, extortion) - Bitcoin - Laws - How to deal with online hate and harassment - Information on who to contact if you are being abused online or offline - Algorithms - How to seek out the truth about news, etc., online

The parents/caregivers, homeschoolers, unschoolers, and those working to create decentralized parallel societies have been an inspiration while writing this, but my hope is that all children would learn this course, even in government ran schools. Ideally, parents would teach this to their own children.

The decentralized space doesn’t want child sexual exploitation to thrive. Here’s the deal: there has to be a strong prevention effort in order to protect the next generation. The internet isn’t going anywhere, predators aren’t going anywhere, and I’m not down to let anyone have the opportunity to prove that there is a need for more government. I don’t believe that the government should act as parents. The governments have had a chance to attempt to stop online child sexual exploitation, and they didn’t do it. Can we try a different pathway forward?

I’d like to put myself out of a job. I don’t want to ever hear another story like John Doe #1 ever again. This will require work. I’ve often called online child sexual exploitation the lynchpin for the internet. It’s time to arm generations of children with knowledge and tools. I can’t do this alone.

Individuals have fought so that I could have freedom online. I want to fight to protect it. I don’t want child predators to give the government any opportunity to take away freedom. Decentralized spaces are as close to a reset as we’ll get with the opportunity to do it right from the start. Start the youth off correctly by preventing potential hazards to the best of your ability.

The good news is anyone can work on this! I’d encourage you to take it and run with it. I added the additional education about the history of the internet to make the course more educational and fun. Instead of cleaning up generations of destroyed lives due to online sexual exploitation, perhaps this could inspire generations of those who will build our futures. Perhaps if the youth is armed with knowledge, they can create more tools to prevent the crime.

This one solution that I’m suggesting can be done on an individual level or on a larger scale. It should be adjusted depending on age, learning style, etc. It should be fun and playful.

This solution does not address abuse in the home or some of the root causes of offline child sexual exploitation. My hope is that it could lead to some survivors experiencing abuse in the home an opportunity to disclose with a trusted adult. The purpose for this solution is to prevent the crime of online child sexual exploitation before it occurs and to arm the youth with the tools to contact safe adults if and when it happens.

In closing, I went to hell a few times so that you didn’t have to. I spoke to the mothers of survivors of minors sexually exploited online—their tears could fill rivers. I’ve spoken with political dissidents who yearned to be free from authoritarian surveillance states. The only balance that I’ve found is freedom online for citizens around the globe and prevention from the dangers of that for the youth. Don’t slow down innovation and freedom. Educate, prepare, adapt, and look for solutions.

I’m not perfect and I’m sure that there are errors in this piece. I hope that you find them and it starts a conversation.

@ ec42c765:328c0600

カスタム絵文字とは

任意のオリジナル画像を絵文字のように文中に挿入できる機能です。
また、リアクション（Twitterの いいね のような機能）にもカスタム絵文字を使えます。

カスタム絵文字の対応状況（2025/02/06）

カスタム絵文字を使うためにはカスタム絵文字に対応したクライアントを使う必要があります。

※表は一例です。クライアントは他にもたくさんあります。

使っているクライアントが対応していない場合は、クライアントを変更する、対応するまで待つ、開発者に要望を送る（または自分で実装する）などしましょう。

対応クライアント

• Amethyst
• FreeFrom
• nostter
• Rabbit
• Lumilumi
• Nos Haiku
• Snort
• noStrudel

ここではnostterを使って説明していきます。

準備

カスタム絵文字を使うための準備です。

• Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する
• 使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する

Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する

Nostrエクステンションは使いたいカスタム絵文字を登録する時に必要になります。

また、環境（パソコン、iPhone、androidなど）によって導入方法が違います。

Nostrエクステンションを導入する端末は、実際にNostrを閲覧する端末と違っても構いません（リスト登録はPC、Nostr閲覧はiPhoneなど）。

Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）の導入方法は以下のページを参照してください。

ログイン拡張機能 (NIP-07)を使ってみよう | Welcome to Nostr! ～ Nostrをはじめよう！ ～

少し面倒ですが、これを導入しておくとNostr上の様々な場面で役立つのでより快適になります。

使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する

以下のサイトで行います。

emojito

右上のGet startedからNostrエクステンションでログインしてください。

例として以下のカスタム絵文字を導入してみます。

実際より絵文字が少なく表示されることがありますが、古い状態のデータを取得してしまっているためです。その場合はブラウザの更新ボタンを押してください。

generalJP | カスタム絵文字

• 右側のOptionsからBookmarkを選択

これでカスタム絵文字を使用するためのリストに登録できます。

カスタム絵文字を使用する

例としてブラウザから使えるクライアント nostter から使用してみます。

nostter

nostterにNostrエクステンションでログイン、もしくは秘密鍵を入れてログインしてください。

文章中に使用

1. 投稿ボタンを押して投稿ウィンドウを表示
2. 顔😀のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示
3. ＊タブを押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示
4. カスタム絵文字を選択
5. : 記号に挟まれたアルファベットのショートコードとして挿入される

この状態で投稿するとカスタム絵文字として表示されます。

カスタム絵文字対応クライアントを使っている他ユーザーにもカスタム絵文字として表示されます。

対応していないクライアントの場合、ショートコードのまま表示されます。

ショートコードを直接入力することでカスタム絵文字の候補が表示されるのでそこから選択することもできます。

リアクションに使用

1. 任意の投稿の顔😀のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示
2. ＊タブを押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示
3. カスタム絵文字を選択

カスタム絵文字リアクションを送ることができます。

カスタム絵文字を探す

先述したemojitoからカスタム絵文字を探せます。

例えば任意のユーザーのページ emojito ロクヨウ から探したり、 emojito Browse all からnostr全体で最近作成、更新された絵文字を見たりできます。

また、以下のリンクは日本語圏ユーザーが作ったカスタム絵文字を集めたリストです（2025/02/06）

※漏れがあるかもしれません

日本ユーザー作 カスタム絵文字

各絵文字セットにあるOpen in emojitoのリンクからemojitoに飛び、使用リストに追加できます。

---

以上です。

次：Nostrのカスタム絵文字の作り方

Yakihonneリンク Nostrのカスタム絵文字の作り方

Nostrリンク nostr:naddr1qqxnzdesxuunzv358ycrgveeqgswcsk8v4qck0deepdtluag3a9rh0jh2d0wh0w9g53qg8a9x2xqvqqrqsqqqa28r5psx3

---

仕様

NIP-30 Custom Emoji

NIP-30 カスタム絵文字（和訳）

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Jofer

Jofer era um jogador diferente. À primeira vista não, parecia igual, um volante combativo, perseguia os atacantes adversários implacavelmente, um bom jogador. Mas não era essa a característica que diferenciava Jofer. Jofer era, digamos, um chutador.

Começou numa semifinal de um torneio de juniores. O time de Jofer precisava do empate e estava sofrendo uma baita pressão do adversário, mas o jogo estava 1 a 1 e parecia que ia ficar assim mesmo, daquele jeito futebolístico que parece, parece mesmo. Só que aos 46 do segundo tempo tomaram um gol espírita, Ruizinho do outro time saiu correndo pela esquerda e, mesmo sendo canhoto, foi cortando para o meio, os zagueiros meio que achando que já tinha acabado mesmo, devia ter só mais aquele lance, o árbitro tinha dado dois minutos, Ruizinho chutou, marcou e o goleiro, que só pulou depois que já tinha visto que não ia ter jeito, ficou xingando.

A bola saiu do meio e tocaram para Jofer, ninguém nem veio marcá-lo, o outro time já estava comemorando, e com razão, o juiz estava de sacanagem em fazer o jogo continuar, já estava tudo acabado mesmo. Mas não, estava certo, mais um minuto de acréscimo, justo. Em um minuto dá pra fazer um gol. Mas como? Jofer pensou nas partidas da NBA em que com alguns centésimos de segundo faltando o armador jogava de qualquer jeito para a cesta e às vezes acertava. De trás do meio de campo, será? Não vou ter nem força pra fazer chegar no gol. Vou virar piada, melhor tocar pro Fumaça ali do lado e a gente perde sem essa humilhação no final. Mas, poxa, e daí? Vou tentar mesmo assim, qualquer coisa eu falo que foi um lançamento e daqui a uns dias todo mundo esquece. Olhou para o próprio pé, virou ele de ladinho, pra fora e depois pra dentro (bom, se eu pegar daqui, direitinho, quem sabe?), jogou a bola pro lado e bateu. A bola subiu escandalosamente, muito alta mesmo, deve ter subido uns 200 metros. Jofer não tinha como ter a menor noção. Depois foi descendo, o goleirão voltando correndo para debaixo da trave e olhando pra bola, foi chegando e pulando já só pra acompanhar, para ver, dependurado no travessão, a bola sair ainda bem alta, ela bateu na rede lateral interna antes de bater no chão, quicar violentamente e estufar a rede no alto do lado direito de quem olhava.

Mas isso tudo foi sonho do Jofer. Sonhou acordado, numa noite em que demorou pra dormir, deitado na sua cama. Ficou pensando se não seria fácil, se ele treinasse bastante, acertar o gol bem de longe, tipo no sonho, e se não dava pra fazer gol assim. No dia seguinte perguntou a Brunildinho, o treinador de goleiros. Era difícil defender essas bolas, ainda mais se elas subissem muito, o goleiro ficava sem perspectiva, o vento alterava a trajetória a cada instante, tinha efeito, ela cairia rápido, mas claro que não valia à pena treinar isso, a chance de acertar o gol era minúscula. Mas Jofer só ia tentar depois que treinasse bastante e comprovasse o que na sua imaginação parecia uma excelente idéia.

Começou a treinar todos os dias. Primeiro escondido, por vergonha dos colegas, chegava um pouco antes e ficava lá, chutando do círculo central. Ao menor sinal de gente se aproximando, parava e ia catar as bolas. Depois, quando começou a acertar, perdeu a vergonha. O pessoal do clube todo achava engraçado quando via Jofer treinando e depois ouvia a explicação da boca de alguém, ninguém levava muito a sério, mas também não achava de todo ridículo. O pessoal ria, mas no fundo torcia praquilo dar certo, mesmo.

Aconteceu que num jogo que não valia muita coisa, empatezinho feio, aos 40 do segundo tempo, a marcação dos adversários já não estava mais pressionando, todo mundo contente com o empate e com vontade de parar de jogar já, o Henrique, meia-esquerdo, humilde, mas ainda assim um pouco intimidante para Jofer (jogava demais), tocou pra ele. Vai lá, tenta sua loucura aí. Assumiu a responsabilidade do nosso volante introspectivo. Seria mais verossímil se Jofer tivesse errado, primeira vez que tentou, restava muito tempo ainda pra ele ter a chance de ser herói, ninguém acerta de primeira, mas ele acertou. Quase como no sonho, Lucas, o goleiro, não esperava, depois que viu o lance, riu-se, adiantou-se para pegar a bola que ele julgava que quicaria na área, mas ela foi mais pra frente, mais e mais, daí Lucas já estava correndo, só que começou a pensar que ela ia pra fora, e ele ia só se dependurar no travessão e fazer seu papel de estar na bola. Acabou que por conta daquele gol eles terminaram em segundo no grupo daquele torneiozinho, ao invés de terceiro, e não fez diferença nenhuma.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

How IPFS is broken

I once fell for this talk about "content-addressing". It sounds very nice. You know a certain file exists, you know there are probably people who have it, but you don't know where or if it is hosted on a domain somewhere. With content-addressing you can just say "start" and the download will start. You don't have to care.

Other magic properties that address common frustrations: webpages don't go offline, links don't break, valuable content always finds its way, other people will distribute your website for you, any content can be transmitted easily to people near you without anyone having to rely on third-party centralized servers.

But you know what? Saying a thing is good doesn't automatically make it possible and working. For example: saying stuff is addressed by their content doesn't change the fact that the internet is "location-addressed" and you still have to know where peers that have the data you want are and connect to them.

And what is the solution for that? A DHT!

DHT?

Turns out DHTs have terrible incentive structure (as you would expect, no one wants to hold and serve data they don't care about to others for free) and the IPFS experience proves it doesn't work even in a small network like the IPFS of today.

If you have run an IPFS client you'll notice how much it clogs your computer. Or maybe you don't, if you are very rich and have a really powerful computer, but still, it's not something suitable to be run on the entire world, and on web pages, and servers, and mobile devices. I imagine there may be a lot of unoptimized code and technical debt responsible for these and other problems, but the DHT is certainly the biggest part of it. IPFS can open up to 1000 connections by default and suck up all your bandwidth -- and that's just for exchanging keys with other DHT peers.

Even if you're in the "client" mode and limit your connections you'll still get overwhelmed by connections that do stuff I don't understand -- and it makes no sense to run an IPFS node as a client, that defeats the entire purpose of making every person host files they have and content-addressability in general, centralizes the network and brings back the dichotomy client/server that IPFS was created to replace.

Connections?

So, DHTs are a fatal flaw for a network that plans to be big and interplanetary. But that's not the only problem.

Finding content on IPFS is the most slow experience ever and for some reason I don't understand downloading is even slower. Even if you are in the same LAN of another machine that has the content you need it will still take hours to download some small file you would do in seconds with scp -- that's considering that IPFS managed to find the other machine, otherwise your command will just be stuck for days.

Now even if you ignore that IPFS objects should be content-addressable and not location-addressable and, knowing which peer has the content you want, you go there and explicitly tell IPFS to connect to the peer directly, maybe you can get some seconds of (slow) download, but then IPFS will drop the connection and the download will stop. Sometimes -- but not always -- it helps to add the peer address to your bootstrap nodes list (but notice this isn't something you should be doing at all).

IPFS Apps?

Now consider the kind of marketing IPFS does: it tells people to build "apps" on IPFS. It sponsors "databases" on top of IPFS. It basically advertises itself as a place where developers can just connect their apps to and all users will automatically be connected to each other, data will be saved somewhere between them all and immediately available, everything will work in a peer-to-peer manner.

Except it doesn't work that way at all. "libp2p", the IPFS library for connecting people, is broken and is rewritten every 6 months, but they keep their beautiful landing pages that say everything works magically and you can just plug it in. I'm not saying they should have everything perfect, but at least they should be honest about what they truly have in place.

It's impossible to connect to other people, after years there's no js-ipfs and go-ipfs interoperability (and yet they advertise there will be python-ipfs, haskell-ipfs, whoknowswhat-ipfs), connections get dropped and many other problems.

So basically all IPFS "apps" out there are just apps that want to connect two peers but can't do it manually because browsers and the IPv4/NAT network don't provide easy ways to do it and WebRTC is hard and requires servers. They have nothing to do with "content-addressing" anything, they are not trying to build "a forest of merkle trees" nor to distribute or archive content so it can be accessed by all. I don't understand why IPFS has changed its core message to this "full-stack p2p network" thing instead of the basic content-addressable idea.

IPNS?

And what about the database stuff? How can you "content-address" a database with values that are supposed to change? Their approach is to just save all values, past and present, and then use new DHT entries to communicate what are the newest value. This is the IPNS thing.

Apparently just after coming up with the idea of content-addressability IPFS folks realized this would never be able to replace the normal internet as no one would even know what kinds of content existed or when some content was updated -- and they didn't want to coexist with the normal internet, they wanted to replace it all because this message is more bold and gets more funding, maybe?

So they invented IPNS, the name system that introduces location-addressability back into the system that was supposed to be only content-addressable.

And how do they manage to do it? Again, DHTs. And does it work? Not really. It's limited, slow, much slower than normal content-addressing fetches, most of the times it doesn't even work after hours. But still although developers will tell it is not working yet the IPFS marketing will talk about it as if it was a thing.

Archiving content?

The main use case I had for IPFS was to store content that I personally cared about and that other people might care too, like old articles from dead websites, and videos, sometimes entire websites before they're taken down.

So I did that. Over many months I've archived stuff on IPFS. The IPFS API and CLI don't make it easy to track where stuff are. The pin command doesn't help as it just throws your pinned hash in a sea of hashes and subhashes and you're never able to find again what you have pinned.

The IPFS daemon has a fake filesystem that is half-baked in functionality but allows you to locally address things by names in a tree structure. Very hard to update or add new things to it, but still doable. It allows you to give names to hashes, basically. I even began to write a wrapper for it, but suddenly after many weeks of careful content curation and distribution all my entries in the fake filesystem were gone.

Despite not having lost any of the files I did lose everything, as I couldn't find them in the sea of hashes I had in my own computer. After some digging and help from IPFS developers I managed to recover a part of it, but it involved hacks. My things vanished because of a bug at the fake filesystem. The bug was fixed, but soon after I experienced a similar (new) bug. After that I even tried to build a service for hash archival and discovery, but as all the problems listed above began to pile up I eventually gave up. There were also problems of content canonicalization, the code the IPFS daemon use to serve default HTML content over HTTP, problems with the IPFS browser extension and others.

Future-proof?

One of the core advertised features of IPFS was that it made content future-proof. I'm not sure they used this expression, but basically you have content, you hash that, you get an address that never expires for that content, now everybody can refer to the same thing by the same name. Actually, it's better: content is split and hashed in a merkle-tree, so there's fine-grained deduplication, people can store only chunks of files and when a file is to be downloaded lots of people can serve it at the same time, like torrents.

But then come the protocol upgrades. IPFS has used different kinds of hashing algorithms, different ways to format the hashes, and will change the default algorithm for building the merkle-trees, so basically the same content now has a gigantic number of possible names/addresses, which defeats the entire purpose, and yes, files hashed using different strategies aren't automagically compatible.

Actually, the merkle algorithm could have been changed by each person on a file-by-file basis since the beginning (you could for example split a book file by chapter or page instead of by chunks of bytes) -- although probably no one ever did that. I know it's not easy to come up with the perfect hashing strategy in the first go, but the way these matters are being approached make me wonder that IPFS promoters aren't really worried about future-proof, or maybe we're just in Beta phase forever.

Ethereum?

This is also a big problem. IPFS is built by Ethereum enthusiasts. I can't read the mind of people behind IPFS, but I would imagine they have a poor understanding of incentives like the Ethereum people, and they tend towards scammer-like behavior like getting a ton of funds for investors in exchange for promises they don't know they can fulfill (like Filecoin and IPFS itself) based on half-truths, changing stuff in the middle of the road because some top-managers decided they wanted to change (move fast and break things) and squatting fancy names like "distributed web".

The way they market IPFS (which is not the main thing IPFS was initially designed to do) as a "peer-to-peer cloud" is very seductive for Ethereum developers just like Ethereum itself is: as a place somewhere that will run your code for you so you don't have to host a server or have any responsibility, and then Infura will serve the content to everybody. In the same vein, Infura is also hosting and serving IPFS content for Ethereum developers these days for free. Ironically, just like the Ethereum hoax peer-to-peer money, IPFS peer-to-peer network may begin to work better for end users as things get more and more centralized.

More about IPFS problems:

• IPFS problems: Too much immutability
• IPFS problems: General confusion
• IPFS problems: Shitcoinery
• IPFS problems: Community
• IPFS problems: Pinning
• IPFS problems: Conceit
• IPFS problems: Inefficiency
• IPFS problems: Dynamic links

See also

• A crappy course on torrents, on the protocol that has done most things right
• The Tragedy of IPFS in a series of links, an ongoing Twitter thread.

@ ec42c765:328c0600

カスタム絵文字とは

任意のオリジナル画像を絵文字のように文中に挿入できる機能です。
また、リアクション（Twitterの いいね のような機能）にもカスタム絵文字を使えます。

カスタム絵文字の対応状況（2024/02/05）

カスタム絵文字を使うためにはカスタム絵文字に対応したクライアントを使う必要があります。

※表は一例です。クライアントは他にもたくさんあります。

使っているクライアントが対応していない場合は、クライアントを変更する、対応するまで待つ、開発者に要望を送る（または自分で実装する）などしましょう。

対応クライアント

• Amethyst
• FreeFrom
• nostter
• Rabbit
• Snort
• noStrudel

ここではnostterを使って説明していきます。

準備

カスタム絵文字を使うための準備です。

• Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する
• 使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する

Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）を導入する

Nostrエクステンションは使いたいカスタム絵文字を登録する時に必要になります。

また、環境（パソコン、iPhone、androidなど）によって導入方法が違います。

Nostrエクステンションを導入する端末は、実際にNostrを閲覧する端末と違っても構いません（リスト登録はPC、Nostr閲覧はiPhoneなど）。

Nostrエクステンション（NIP-07）の導入方法は以下のページを参照してください。

ログイン拡張機能 (NIP-07)を使ってみよう | Welcome to Nostr! ～ Nostrをはじめよう！ ～

少し面倒ですが、これを導入しておくとNostr上の様々な場面で役立つのでより快適になります。

使いたいカスタム絵文字をリストに登録する

以下のサイトで行います。

emojito

右上のGet startedからNostrエクステンションでログインしてください。

例として以下のカスタム絵文字を導入してみます。

実際より絵文字が少なく表示されることがありますが、古い状態のデータを取得してしまっているためです。その場合はブラウザの更新ボタンを押してください。

generalJP | カスタム絵文字

• 右側のOptionsからBookmarkを選択

これでカスタム絵文字を使用するためのリストに登録できます。

カスタム絵文字を使用する

例としてブラウザから使えるクライアント nostter から使用してみます。

nostter

nostterにNostrエクステンションでログイン、もしくは秘密鍵を入れてログインしてください。

文章中に使用

1. 投稿ボタンを押して投稿ウィンドウを表示
2. 顔😀のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示
3. ＊タブを押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示
4. カスタム絵文字を選択
5. : 記号に挟まれたアルファベットのショートコードとして挿入される

この状態で投稿するとカスタム絵文字として表示されます。

カスタム絵文字対応クライアントを使っている他ユーザーにもカスタム絵文字として表示されます。

対応していないクライアントの場合、ショートコードのまま表示されます。

ショートコードを直接入力することでカスタム絵文字の候補が表示されるのでそこから選択することもできます。

リアクションに使用

1. 任意の投稿の顔😀のボタンを押し、絵文字ウィンドウを表示
2. ＊タブを押し、カスタム絵文字一覧を表示
3. カスタム絵文字を選択

カスタム絵文字リアクションを送ることができます。

カスタム絵文字を探す

先述したemojitoからカスタム絵文字を探せます。

例えば任意のユーザーのページ emojito ロクヨウ から探したり、 emojito Browse all からnostr全体で最近作成、更新された絵文字を見たりできます。

また、以下のリンクは日本語圏ユーザーが作ったカスタム絵文字を集めたリストです（2024/06/30）

※漏れがあるかもしれません

日本ユーザー作 カスタム絵文字

各絵文字セットにあるOpen in emojitoのリンクからemojitoに飛び、使用リストに追加できます。

---

以上です。

次：Nostrのカスタム絵文字の作り方

Yakihonneリンク Nostrのカスタム絵文字の作り方

Nostrリンク nostr:naddr1qqxnzdesxuunzv358ycrgveeqgswcsk8v4qck0deepdtluag3a9rh0jh2d0wh0w9g53qg8a9x2xqvqqrqsqqqa28r5psx3

---

仕様

NIP-30 Custom Emoji

NIP-30 カスタム絵文字（和訳）

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Lagoa Santa: como chegar -- partindo da rodoviária de Belo Horizonte

Ao descer de seu ônibus na rodoviária de Belo Horizonte às 4 e pouco da manhã, darás de frente para um caubói que toma cerveja em seus trajes típicos em um bar no setor mesmo de desembarque. Suba a escada à direita que dá no estacionamento da rodoviária. Vire à esquerda e caminhe por mais ou menos 400 metros, atravessando uma área onde pessoas suspeitas -- mas provavelmente dormindo em pé -- lhe observam, e então uma pracinha ocupada por um clã de mendigos. Ao avistar um enorme obelisco no meio de um cruzamento de duas avenidas, vire à esquerda e caminhe por mais 400 metros. Você verá uma enorme, antiga e bela estação com uma praça em frente, com belas fontes aqüáticas. Corra dali e dirija-se a um pedaço de rua à direita dessa praça. Um velho palco de antigos carnavais estará colocado mais ou menos no meio da simpática ruazinha de parelepípedos: é onde você pegará seu próximo ônibus.

Para entrar na estação é necessário ter um cartão com créditos recarregáveis. Um viajante prudente deixa sempre um pouco de créditos em seu cartão a fim de evitar filas e outros problemas de indisponibilidade quando chega cansado de viagem, com pressa ou em horários incomuns. Esse tipo de pessoa perceberá que foi totalmente ludibriado ao perceber que que os créditos do seu cartão, abastecido quando de sua última vinda a Belo Horizonte, há três meses, pereceram de prazo de validade e foram absorvidos pelos cofre públicos. Terá, portanto, que comprar mais créditos. O guichê onde os cartões são abastecidos abre às 5h, mas não se espante caso ele não tenha sido aberto ainda quando o primeiro ônibus chegar, às 5h10.

Com alguma sorte, um jovem de moletom, autorizado por dois ou três fiscais do sistema de ônibus que conversam alegremente, será o operador da catraca. Ele deixa entrar sem pagar os bêbados, os malandros, os pivetes. Bastante empático e perceptivo do desespero dos outros, esse bom rapaz provavelmente também lhe deixará entrar sem pagar.

Uma vez dentro do ônibus, não se intimide com os gritalhões e valentões que, ofendidíssimos com o motorista por ele ter parado nas estações, depois dos ônibus anteriores terem ignorado esses excelsos passageiros que nelas aguardavam, vão aos berros tirar satisfação.

O ponto final do ônibus, 40 minutos depois, é o terminal Morro Alto. Lá você verá, se procurar bem entre vários ônibus e pessoas que despertam a sua mais honesta suspeita, um veículo escuro, apagado, numerado 5882 e que abrigará em seu interior um motorista e um cobrador que descansam o sono dos justos.

Aguarde na porta por mais uns vinte minutos até que, repentinamente desperto, o motorista ligue o ônibus, abra as portas e já comece, de leve, a arrancar. Entre correndo, mas espere mais um tempo, enquanto as pessoas que têm o cartão carregado passem e peguem os melhores lugares, até que o cobrador acorde e resolva te cobrar a passagem nesse velho meio de pagamento, outrora o mais líqüído, o dinheiro.

Este último ônibus deverá levar-lhe, enfim, a Lagoa Santa.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

O caso da Grêmio TV

enquanto vinha se conduzindo pela plataforma superior daquela arena que se pensava totalmente preenchida por adeptos da famosa equipe do Grêmio de Porto Alegre, viu-se, como por obra de algum nigromante - dos muitos que existem e estão a todo momento a fazer más obras e a colocar-se no caminhos dos que procuram, se não fazer o bem acima de todas as coisas, a pelo menos não fazer o mal no curso da realização dos seus interesses -, o discretíssimo jornalista a ser xingado e moído em palavras por uma horda de malandrinos a cinco ou seis passos dele surgida que cantavam e moviam seus braços em movimentos que não se pode classificar senão como bárbaros, e assim cantavam:

Grêmio TV pior que o SBT !

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Replacing the web with something saner

This is a simplification, but let's say that basically there are just 3 kinds of websites:

1. Websites with content: text, images, videos;
2. Websites that run full apps that do a ton of interactive stuff;
3. Websites with some interactive content that uses JavaScript, or "mini-apps";

In a saner world we would have 3 different ways of serving and using these. 1 would be "the web" (and it was for a while, although I'm not claiming here that the past is always better and wanting to get back to the glorious old days).

1 would stay as "the web", just static sites, styled with CSS, no JavaScript whatsoever, but designers can still thrive and make they look pretty. Or it could also be something like Gemini. Maybe the two protocols could coexist.

2 would be downloadable native apps, much easier to write and maintain for developers (considering that multi-platform and cross-compilation is easy today and getting easier), faster, more polished experience for users, more powerful, integrates better with the computer.

(Remember that since no one would be striving to make the same app run both on browsers and natively no one would have any need for Electron or other inefficient bloated solutions, just pure native UI, like the Telegram app, have you seen that? It's fast.)

But 2 is mostly for apps that people use every day, something like Google Docs, email (although email is also broken technology), Netflix, Twitter, Trello and so on, and all those hundreds of niche SaaS that people pay monthly fees to use, each tailored to a different industry (although most of functions they all implement are the same everywhere). What do we do with dynamic open websites like StackOverflow, for example, where one needs to not only read, but also search and interact in multiple ways? What about that website that asks you a bunch of questions and then discovers the name of the person you're thinking about? What about that mini-app that calculates the hash of your provided content or shrinks your video, or that one that hosts your image without asking any questions?

All these and tons of others would fall into category 3, that of instantly loaded apps that you don't have to install, and yet they run in a sandbox.

The key for making category 3 worth investing time into is coming up with some solid grounds, simple enough that anyone can implement in multiple different ways, but not giving the app too much choices.

Telegram or Discord bots are super powerful platforms that can accomodate most kinds of app in them. They can't beat a native app specifically made with one purpose, but they allow anyone to provide instantly usable apps with very low overhead, and since the experience is so simple, intuitive and fast, users tend to like it and sometimes even pay for their services. There could exist a protocol that brings apps like that to the open world of (I won't say "web") domains and the websockets protocol -- with multiple different clients, each making their own decisions on how to display the content sent by the servers that are powering these apps.

Another idea is that of Alan Kay: to design a nice little OS/virtual machine that can load these apps and run them. Kinda like browsers are today, but providing a more well-thought, native-like experience and framework, but still sandboxed. And I add: abstracting away details about design, content disposition and so on.

---

These 3 kinds of programs could coexist peacefully. 2 are just standalone programs, they can do anything and each will be its own thing. 1 and 3, however, are still similar to browsers of today in the sense that you need clients to interact with servers and show to the user what they are asking. But by simplifying everything and separating the scopes properly these clients would be easy to write, efficient, small, the environment would be open and the internet would be saved.

See also

• On the state of programs and browsers

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

The flaw of "just use paypal/coinbase" arguments

For the millionth time I read somewhere that "custodial bitcoin is not bitcoin" and that "if you're going to use custodial, better use Paypal". No, actually it was "better use Coinbase", but I had heard the "PayPal" version in the past.

There are many reasons why using PayPal is not the same as using a custodial Bitcoin service or wallet that are obvious and not relevant here, such as the fact that you can't have Bitcoin balances on Bitcoin (or maybe now you can? but you can't send it around); plus all the reasons that are also valid for Coinbase such as you having to give all your data and selfies of yourself and your government documents and so on -- but let's ignore these reasons for now.

The most important reason why it isn't the same thing is that when you're using Coinbase you are stuck in Coinbase. Your Coinbase coins cannot be used to pay anyone that isn't in Coinbase. So Coinbase-style custodianship doesn't help Bitcoin. If you want to move out of Coinbase you have to withdraw from Coinbase.

Custodianship on Lightning is of a very different nature. You can pay people from other custodial platforms and people that are hosting their own Lightning nodes and so on.

That kind of custodianship doesn't do any harm to anyone, doesn't fracture the network, doesn't reduce the network effect of Lightning, in fact it increases it.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

IPFS problems: General confusion

Most IPFS open-source projects, libraries and apps (excluding Ethereum stuff) are things that rely heavily on dynamic data and temporary links. The most common projects you'll see when following the IPFS communities are chat rooms and similar things. I've seen dozens of these chat-rooms. There's also a famous IPFS-powered database. How can you do these things with content-addressing is a mistery. Of course they probably rely on IPNS or other external address system.

There's also a bunch of "file-sharing" on IPFS. The kind of thing people use for temporary making a file available for a third-party. There's image sharing on IPFS, pastebins on IPFS and so on. People don't seem to share the preoccupation with broken links here.

@ 21ac2956:09d1e2df

kakoi の仕様についてのメモ

キーボード操作

• 左手での操作に最適化

| キー | 動作 | |:-|:-| | ESC | 設定画面 | | F1 / F12 | ポストバーの表示と非表示 | | F2 | 時間の表示と非表示 | | F3 | ユーザーアイコンの表示と非表示 | | F4 | 名前の表示と非表示 | | F5 | Geminiによるタイムラインまとめ画面を表示 | | F9 / Z | コンテンツの折り返し表示の切り替え （余白ダブルクリックでも動作） | | F10 | ユーザーリストとキーワード通知の設定画面 （余白右クリックでも動作） | | F11 | メイン画面の表示と非表示 （ポストバー表示） | | Shift + W | イベント最上行へ移動 | | W / ↑| イベント選択上移動 | | S / ↓ | イベント選択下移動 | | Shift + S | イベント最下行へ移動 | | A / ← | Webビューを開く （イベントを右クリックでも動作） | | F / → | リアクションを送信 （イベントをダブルクリックでも動作） | | 1 ～ 0 | リアクションを選択 | | R | 返信 | | B | リポスト | | Q | 引用 | | C | Webビューを閉じる | | Ctrl + Shift + A | メイン画面をアクティブにする |

タイムライン

• kind:1, 6, 7, 16を取得して表示する
• フォロイーの名前の前には * が付く

フォローリスト（kind:3）

• 参照のみで更新はしない

• F10 で開くユーザーリストでユーザーを選択し petname セルをクリックすることで未フォローユーザーにもペットネームを設定可能（ローカル保存）

プロフィール（kind:0）

• F10 で開くユーザーリストでユーザーを選択し picture セルをクリックすることでユーザーのアイコン表示を変更可能（ローカル保存）

返信（NIP-10 kind:1）

• kakoi のタイムラインに流れるすべてのイベント種に返信可能とする
• スレッドを考慮せず、単一イベントへの単発返信とする
• e タグは marker と返信先 pubkey は設定していない。 relay-url には空文字を設定

json ["e", "返信先 event-id", ""]

• p タグは 返信先 pubkey ひとつだけを指定

リポスト（NIP-18 kind:6 , 16）

• kakoi のタイムラインに流れるすべてのイベント種をリポスト可能
• kind:1はkind:6。その他はkind:16でリポストする
• e タグは relay-url に空文字を設定

json ["e", "リポスト元 event-id", ""]

引用（NIP-18 kind:1）

• q タグは relay-url に空文字を設定

json ["q", "引用元 event-id", ""]

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

My personal experience (as a complete ignorant) of the blocksize debate in 2017

In the beginning of 2017 I didn't know Bitcoin was having a "blocksize debate". I had stopped paying attention to Bitcoin in 2014 after reading Tim Swanson's book on shitcoineiry and was surprise people even care about Bitcoin still while Ethereum and other fancy things were around.

My introduction to the subject was this interview with Andrew Stone and Andrew Clifford from Bitcoin Unlimited (still don't know who these guys are). I've listened to it and kinda liked the conspiracy theory about "a group of developers trying, against miners and users, to control the whole ecosystem by not allowing blocks to grow" (actually, if you listen to this interview that announced the creation of Blockstream and the sidechains whitepaper it does sound like a government agent bribing all the Core developers into forming a consortium that will turn Bitcoin into an Ethereum-like shitcoin under their control -- but this is just a useless digression).

Some time later I listened to this interview with Jimmy Song and was introduced to two hard forks and conspiracies and New York Agreement and got excited because I didn't care about Bitcoin (I'm ashamed to remember this feeling) and wanted to see things changing, people fighting, Bitcoin burning, for no reason. Oddly, what I grasped from the interview was that Jimmy Song was defending the agreement and expecting everybody to fulfill it.

When the day actually come and "Bitcoin Cash" forked I looked at it with pity because it looked clearly a failure from the beginning, but I still cheered for it a bit, still not knowing anything about the debate, besides the fact that blocks were bigger on BCH, which looked like a very reductionist explanation to me.

"Of course it's not just making blocks bigger, that would be too simple, they probably have a very complex plan I'm not apt to understand", I thought.

To my surprise the entire argument was actually just that: bigger blocks bigger blocks. I came to that conclusion by listening to tomwoods.com/1064, a debate in which reasonable arguments faced childish claims. That debate gave me perspective and was a clear, undisputed win from Jameson Lopp against Roger Ver.

Actually some time before that I had listened to another Tom Woods Show episode thinking it was going to be an episode about Bitcoin, but in fact it was just propaganda about a debate I had almost forgotten. And nothing about Bitcoin, everything about "Bitcoin Cash" and how there were two Bitcoins, one legitimate and the other unlegitimate.

So, from the perspective of someone that came to the debate totally fresh and only listens to the big-blocker arguments for a long time, they still don't convince anyone with some common sense (as I would like to think of myself), they just sound like mad dogs and everything goes against themselves.

---

Fast forward to the present and with much more understanding of the issues in place I started digging some material from 2016-2017 about the debate to try to get more context, and found this ridiculous interview with Mike Hearn. It isn't a waste of time to listen to it if you're not familiar with the debate from that time.

As I should have probably expected from my experience with Epicenter.tv, both the interviewers agree with Mike Hearn about his ridiculous claims about how (not his words) we have to subsidize the few thousand current Bitcoin users by preventing fees from increase and there are no trade-offs to doing that -- and even with everybody agreeing they all manage to sound stupid. There's not a single phrase that is defendable in the entire interview, no criticisms make any sense, it makes me feel bad for the the guy as he feels so self-assured and obviouslyright.

After knowing about these and other adventures of stupid people with high influences in the Bitcoin world trying to impose their idiocy on others it feels even more odd and unexpected to find Bitcoin in the right track. Generally in politics the most dumb wins, but apparently not in Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is a miracle.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Scala is such a great language

Scala is amazing. The type system has the perfect balance between flexibility and powerfulness. match statements are great. You can write imperative code that looks very nice and expressive (and I haven't tried writing purely functional things yet). Everything is easy to write and cheap and neovim integration works great.

But Java is not great. And the fact that Scala is a JVM language doesn't help because over the years people have written stuff that depends on Java libraries -- and these Java libraries are not as safe as the Scala libraries, they contain reflection, slowness, runtime errors, all kinds of horrors.

Scala is also very tightly associated with Akka, the actor framework, and Akka is a giant collection of anti-patterns. Untyped stuff, reflection, dependency on JVM, basically a lot of javisms. I just arrived and I don't know anything about the Scala history or ecosystem or community, but I have the impression that Akka has prevent more adoption of Scala from decent people that aren't Java programmers.

But luckily there is a solution -- or two solutions: ScalaJS is a great thing that exists. It transpiles Scala code into JavaScript and it runs on NodeJS or in a browser!

Scala Native is a much better deal, though, it compiles to LLVM and then to binary code and you can have single binaries that run directly without a JVM -- not that the single JARs are that bad though, they are great and everybody has Java so I'll take that anytime over C libraries or NPM-distributed software, but direct executables even better. Scala Native just needs a little more love and some libraries and it will be the greatest thing in a couple of years.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

idea: Per-paragraph paywalls

Using the lnurl-allowance protocol, a website could instead of putting a paywall over the entire site, charge a reader for only the paragraphs they read. Of course this requires trust from the reader on the website, but this is normal. The website could just hide the rest of the article before an invoice from the paragraph just read was paid.

This idea came from Colin from the Unhashed Podcast.

Could also work with podcasts and videos.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Que vença o melhor

Nos esportes e jogos em geral, existe uma constante preocupação em balancear os incentivos e atributos do jogo, as regras do esporte em si e as regras das competições para que o melhor vença, ou, em outras palavras, para que sejam minimizados os outros fatores exceto a habilidade mais pura quanto possível no jogo em questão.

O mundo fora dos jogos, porém, nem sempre pode ter suas regras mudadas por um ente que as controla e está imbuído da vontade e dos meios para escolher as melhores regras possíveis para a obtenção dos resultados acima. Aliás, é muitas vezes essa possibilidade é até impensável. Mesmo quando ela é pensável e levada em conta os fatores que operam no mundo real não são facilmente identificáveis, eles são muitos, e mudam o tempo todo.

Mais do que isso, ao contrário de um jogo em que o objetivo é praticamente o mesmo para todo mundo, os objetivos de cada agente no mundo real são diferentes e incontáveis, e as "competições" que cada um está disputando são diferentes e muitas, cada minúsculo ato de suas vidas compreendendo várias delas simultaneamente.

Da mesma forma, é impossível conceber até mesmo o conceito de "melhor" para que se deseje que ele vença.

Mesmo assim é comum encontrarmos em várias situações gente que parte do princípio de que se Fulano está num certo lugar (por exemplo, um emprego muito bom) e Beltrano não isso se deve ao fato de Fulano ter sido melhor que Beltrano.

Está aí uma crítica à idéia da meritocracia (eu tinha me esquecido que essa palavra existia).

@ 84b0c46a:417782f5

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qqs0df2mwnp2q6hm6zjrthkmx3fudwsuwrmgnwrdavpzgjy8nnuqm5cqpd06k

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qqs2muhvnev5367ywuzkhell9my86jlnzhsnuszwl46tnc3fpsx9mtgjkqnu7

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qqsznnkrl8qdwzgp7ry2hc7a77kwhg440gv9xtmvyfawggrpz3rhwvcx4rckf

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qqsyjf80k3djt96qncgvwl2yem09fdqcc0y9l8t657yc9qg2yhmg7kcnua8vn

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qqs0s3lp0w0yclk64j0tpc5fvrulv78g2lfjz3gcgacw9mt6czek26qtqxuck

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qywhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnrdakhq6tvv5kk2unjdaezumn9wsqs6amnwvaz7tmev9382tndv5qjqamnwvaz7tmjv4kxz7fddfczumn0wd68ytnhd9ex2erwv46zu6nsqqs89tst72clc60wse3zq4qfs0976y7areffnhx26atvu6pv58hg6dsxvcc79

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qyxhwumn8ghj77tpvf6jumt9qys8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtt2wqhxummnw3ezuamfwfjkgmn9wshx5uqpr3mhxue69uhhxun5wfjkccte9e3j6um5v4kxcctj9ehx2aqqyp5k40r3ug02yz5y0tn67tm2lwevuwac54qyw3yyct8n8uzr7pjz2q92pyt

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qyxhwumn8ghj77tpvf6jumt9qys8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtt2wqhxummnw3ezuamfwfjkgmn9wshx5uqqyp9pennjwq2qk4dxpr440wxqm5cfwah4qccd8la62hantxdelkk82ty9mr8

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qyxhwumn8ghj77tpvf6jumt9qqsz9w30kxzjshwd8sq7jg2hsy2hwqg3zu7gyvxnsyrgfw0ur4rkhsg9v0re4

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qyxhwumn8ghj77tpvf6jumt9qqs8wkx2r8txt9q69c3zvpqs2em2s40nc8tajmcc5l8ngxn8v2ng3sc43xvzu

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qyxhwumn8ghj77tpvf6jumt9qys8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtt2wqhxummnw3ezuamfwfjkgmn9wshx5uqqyzdkacpjqvv2y79zgvufx9jh39rd7xa8v056rgn4xelmnmrq9u2tuguswek

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qy2hwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnyv96xztngv96hxqpqmdtjrs38fv8r20deplrlt8fma54gu43keuzquzks7673a27ud58slunr8y

nostr:nevent1qvzqqqqqqypzpp9sc34tdxdvxh4jeg5xgu9ctcypmvsg0n00vwfjydkrjaqh0qh4qyxhwumn8ghj77tpvf6jumt9qys8wumn8ghj7un9d3shjtt2wqhxummnw3ezuamfwfjkgmn9wshx5uqpr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucm0d4cxjmr994jhyun0wghxuet5qqsxzpx2r5hd36pruzn2e58wh947y2t0t205fp5xtstqp5wq0qgcjuq07rqlk

@ 78b3c1ed:5033eea9

※ライトニングノード保有者向け

Alby Hubをインストールした時なんもわからずポチポチしているとMegatlith LSPノードからインバウンドを購入してチャネルを開くことになります。2万sats(2024/12/4 午後7時時点で三千円ほど)かかります。

そこで誰もが思うに違いない 「高いなぁ。だれかタダで無料で私のHubにチャネル開いてくれないかなぁ...」

その願望をかなえる献身的なノードランナー(笑)がAlby Hubへチャネルを開いてあげるための手順書みたいなものがこの記事です。 ~~ppmをうんと高くしてぼったくってやりましょう！~~

※AlbyHubにオンチェーン資金が無くてもLNDから開く方法を発見しました。末尾に追記しました。

《これはアンカーアウトプットを利用するタイプのチャネル》 条件 ・チャネルを開く側 　Clearnet IPアドレスで着信可能であること。Torノードは不可。ノードURIを公開していなくても良い。AlbyHubでピア登録できるClearnet IPアドレスと着信ポートがあればOK。

・開いてもらうAlby Hub側 　オンチェーン資金25,000sats以上をデポジットしておく。ないと開けません。

手順

1. [Alby Hub側] オンチェーン資金をデポジット Hubログイン後の左メニューからNodeを選択。Saving BalanceのDepositを選択。するとbc1qではじまるオンチェーンアドレスが表示される。ここへ送金してオンチェーンをデポジットしておく。

2. [Alby Hub側] 開く側のノードをピア登録 左メニューからNodeを選択。右上のAdvancedからConnected Peersを選択。 右上のConnect Peerを選択。欄にノードURI (ノードID@IPアドレス:着信ポート番号)を入力してConnect。

3. [開く側ノード] AlbyHubを確認、チャネルを開く ThunderhubやRide-The-Lightningなどを使い、Alby Hubのノードが表示されていることを確認。Hubにエイリアスは無いのでノードIDで表示される。 このノードに対してチャネルを開く。Private channelが望ましいと思われる。 6conf後に開設完了。

終わり！

メモ

• Alby Hubではbase feeは設定可能だがrateが設定できない。そもそもAlby Hubはルーティング向けノードとして設計されてない。セルフカストディアルウォレットです。
• public channelだとchannel_update, channel_announcementがゴシップされるまでHubへ送金できない(no route)。上記の通りウォレットとしてのノードならprivate channelだけにしてルートヒント付きインボイスが発行できるようにしとくのが望ましい。
• LDKにおいて相手からチャネルを開いてもらう場合にオンチェーン資金が必要。相手がチャネルリザーブ無しのチャネルでもOKなら不要。現にメガリスLSPからチャネルを開いてもらう時オンチェーン資金が0satsでも開けているのがその実例。
• オンチェーン資金が必要なのはチャネルタイプがanchorの場合。オンチェーン資金でアンカーアウトプットをCPFPするためみたい。anchorが登場する前のstatic-remotekeyのタイプならオンチェーン資金は不要。

---

＜ここからが追加＞

《これはアンカーアウトプットを利用しないタイプのチャネル》 LNDからチャネルを開くときにstatic remote keyを利用するタイプを指定します。

条件 ・チャネルを開く側　※上記と同様。

・開いてもらうAlby Hub側　無し。 手順 1. [Alby Hub側] 開く側のノードをピア登録 左メニューからNodeを選択。右上のAdvancedからConnected Peersを選択。右上のConnect Peerを選択。欄にノードURI (ノードID@IPアドレス:着信ポート番号)を入力してConnect。 2. [開く側ノード] AlbyHubを確認、チャネルを開く SSHログイン、UmbrelならLightningのターミナルで以下のコマンドを実行します。

<ノードID>は開きたいAlbyHubのノードIDで置き換えてください。 <チャネルサイズ>は開きたいチャネルの金額、例えば20万satsなら200000としましょう。 <手数料率>はチャネル開設のトランザクションに掛ける手数料率です。mempool. spaceなどで手数料水準を確認して指定しましょう。 --channel_type tweaklessがキモです。デフォルトだとanchorになります。RTLやTHで開くとこのanchorになります。なのでlncli openchannelでやります。

lncli openchannel --node_key <ノードID> \ --local_amt <チャネルサイズ> \ --sat_per_vbyte <手数料率> \ --private --channel_type tweakless

終わり！

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Token-Curated Registries

So you want to build a TCR?

TCRs (Token Curated Registries) are a construct for maintaining registries on Ethereum. Imagine you have lots of scissor brands and you want a list with only the good scissors. You want to make sure only the good scissors make into that list and not the bad scissors. For that, people will tell you, you can just create a TCR of the best scissors!

It works like this: some people have the token, let's call it Scissor Token. Some other person, let's say it's a scissor manufacturer, wants to put his scissor on the list, this guy must acquire some Scissor Tokens and "stake" it. Holders of the Scissor Tokens are allowed to vote on "yes" or "no". If "no", the manufactures loses his tokens to the holders, if "yes" then its tokens are kept in deposit, but his scissor brand gets accepted into the registry.

Such a simple process, they say, have strong incentives for being the best possible way of curating a registry of scissors: consumers have the incentive to consult the list because of its high quality; manufacturers have the incentive to buy tokens and apply to join the list because the list is so well-curated and consumers always consult it; token holders want the registry to accept good and reject bad scissors because that good decisions will make the list good for consumers and thus their tokens more valuable, bad decisions will do the contrary. It doesn't make sense, to reject everybody just to grab their tokens, because that would create an incentive against people trying to enter the list.

Amazing! How come such a simple system of voting has such enourmous features? Now we can have lists of everything so well-curated, and for that we just need Ethereum tokens!

Now let's imagine a different proposal, of my own creation: SPCR, Single-person curated registries.

Single-person Curated Registries are equal to TCR, except they don't use Ethereum tokens, it's just a list in a text file kept by a single person. People can apply to join, and they will have to give the single person some amount of money, the single person can reject or accept the proposal and so on.

Now let's look at the incentives of SPCR: people will want to consult the registry because it is so well curated; vendors will want to enter the registry because people are consulting it; the single person will want to accept the good and reject the bad applicants because these good decisions are what will make the list valuable.

Amazing! How such a single proposal has such enourmous features! SPCR are going to take over the internet!

What TCR enthusiasts get wrong?

TCR people think they can just list a set of incentives for something to work and assume that something will work. Mix that with Ethereum hype and they think theyve found something unique and revolutionary, while in fact they're just making a poor implementation of "democracy" systems that fail almost everywhere.

The life is not about listing a set of "incentives" and then considering the problems solved. Almost everybody on the Earth has the incentive for being rich: being rich has a lot of advantages over being poor, however not all people get rich! Why are the incentives failing?

Curating lists is a hard problem, it involves a lot of knowledge about the problem that just holding a token won't give you, it involves personal preferences, politics, it involves knowing where is the real limit between "good" and "bad". The Single Person list may have a good result if the single person doing the curation is knowledgeable and honest (yes, you can game the system to accept your uncle's scissors and not their competitor that is much better, for example, without losing the entire list reputation), same thing for TCRs, but it can also fail miserably, and it can appear to be good but be in fact not so good. In all cases, the list entries will reflect the preferences of people choosing and other things that aren't taken into the incentives equation of TCR enthusiasts.

We don't need lists

The most important point to be made, although unrelated to the incentive story, is that we don't need lists. Imagine you're looking for a scissor. You don't want someone to tell if scissor A or B are "good" or "bad", or if A is "better" than B. You want to know if, for your specific situation, or for a class of situations, A will serve well, and do that considering A's price and if A is being sold near you and all that.

Scissors are the worst example ever to make this point, but I hope you get it. If you don't, try imagining the same example with schools, doctors, plumbers, food, whatever.

Recommendation systems are badly needed in our world, and TCRs don't solve these at all.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

SummaDB

This was a hierarchical database server similar to the original Firebase. Records were stored on a LevelDB on different paths, like:

• /fruits/banana/color: yellow
• /fruits/banana/flavor: sweet

And could be queried by path too, using HTTP, for example, a call to http://hostname:port/fruits/banana, for example, would return a JSON document like

json { "color": "yellow", "flavor": "sweet" }

While a call to /fruits would return

json { "banana": { "color": "yellow", "flavor": "sweet" } }

POST, PUT and PATCH requests also worked.

In some cases the values would be under a special "_val" property to disambiguate them from paths. (I may be missing some other details that I forgot.)

GraphQL was also supported as a query language, so a query like

graphql query { fruits { banana { color } } }

would return {"fruits": {"banana": {"color": "yellow"}}}.

SummulaDB

SummulaDB was a browser/JavaScript build of SummaDB. It ran on the same Go code compiled with GopherJS, and using PouchDB as the storage backend, if I remember correctly.

It had replication between browser and server built-in, and one could replicate just subtrees of the main tree, so you could have stuff like this in the server:

json { "users": { "bob": {}, "alice": {} } }

And then only allow Bob to replicate /users/bob and Alice to replicate /users/alice. I am sure the require auth stuff was also built in.

There was also a PouchDB plugin to make this process smoother and data access more intuitive (it would hide the _val stuff and allow properties to be accessed directly, today I wouldn't waste time working on these hidden magic things).

The computed properties complexity

The next step, which I never managed to get fully working and caused me to give it up because of the complexity, was the ability to automatically and dynamically compute materialized properties based on data in the tree.

The idea was partly inspired on CouchDB computed views and how limited they were, I wanted a thing that would be super powerful, like, given

json { "matches": { "1": { "team1": "A", "team2": "B", "score": "2x1", "date": "2020-01-02" }, "1": { "team1": "D", "team2": "C", "score": "3x2", "date": "2020-01-07" } } }

One should be able to add a computed property at /matches/standings that computed the scores of all teams after all matches, for example.

I tried to complete this in multiple ways but they were all adding much more complexity I could handle. Maybe it would have worked better on a more flexible and powerful and functional language, or if I had more time and patience, or more people.

Screenshots

This is just one very simple unfinished admin frontend client view of the hierarchical dataset.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/summadb
• https://github.com/fiatjaf/summuladb
• https://github.com/fiatjaf/pouch-summa

@ dffd3ffc:5ade7be1

Nostr 利用開始から 1 年を迎えて

はじめに

みなさんこんにちは。おっぱぴぃです。

ハッカーのおもちゃとしての Nostr のススメ と Nostr の面白さをエンジニア目線で解説してみるをみて Nostr にはじめて投稿をしたのが 2024/01/04 09:04:18 でした。

nostr:nevent1qqsd5v80f9zazxd4kq2r2dls5znd40ht6c7cj4slt6wtlv483vkmxdcjvq66c

Nostr で私が 1 年間をどう過ごしてきたか、振り返ってみようと思います。

初投稿日

今見たら 10 リポスト、20 そこそこのリアクションをいただいてたんですね。初投稿というだけでこんなおバズリあそばすことあるんだって思いました。~~みんな年始で暇やったんかな~~

これだけリアクションがあって、フォローもしていただいたおかげで Nostr の印象がよくなったこと、日本人話者にすぐたどり着けてことが Nostr を続けられている要因になっていると思います。あとはエアリプ文化が懐かしい＆近すぎず遠すぎずで居心地がよくて沼ったところがあると思います。

その日はNostr の Scrapbox（現 Cosense）をその日中にざっと読み漁って、記事の誤字修正したり、WoS を設定してみたり、Lightning Address を設定したりしていたようです。

nostr:nevent1qqsxml4ak7g3u8gjcyuhy89sd8vlk3fu6we9ecgey69jltd42dr0etcvt0l3w

~~おまえ、このころから大欲情を…~~

のす会でのオン会（？）

Nostr 日本人ユーザーの集まる Discord サーバとして、「のす会」というものがあります。 過去ログを漁ってるとどうやら 2024/01/15 ごろにボイチャに入りはじめ、

nostr:nevent1qqszm0kv7aulxnmxr2fdxg5cvme7nyv3j6rgfa30cat8cs3npnsep9caz0xyc

その翌日にはのす会にて Geo guesser で遊んだりしていたようです。こじらさんが尋常じゃない強さでどういう事なの…となった覚えがあります。

nostr:nevent1qqs9knrf4ww8g0fsu4l74gxeeh3s9pwpnf47xn8pf5u8pplkz4yatjg03ufd5

こうした経験を経て、徐々に Nostr ユーザーの方と直接会話することのハードルが下がってきた所でした。

初のオフ会参加

2 月頭、TL で話題になっていた火鍋を食べた経験がないなぁ…ということで、2024/02/10、ゴリラ.vim#30~四谷ラボコラボ~の参加と併せて、海底撈火鍋でオフ会を開催したのが Nostr における初めてのオフ会参加＆幹事でした。

この日は中国の春節初日だったのもあって異様に店舗が混んでおり、18:00 に予約したのに一行に案内されず、

nostr:nevent1qqspcttj4gv2ey7vkt0wp2nehqfwxjnp55vm4agnwu9kullep88ysccpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsyg87v060ssxrpew6a0vrhkcy36hqppvrwjmlqnrgqrrvf8fghgg0pypsgqqqqqqs07ajzp

顔面が痙攣したり、

nostr:nevent1qqs9d5vycslspatsnx6u5qqqwpfmdt33w2v7xkytljzsfwv56acs79czyr0l60lu824k9yc63jcg7z32fzx6w3cr6zx3mmuns69wxr66mea7zp6f7wn

詫び菓子を貰ったり、

nostr:nevent1qqs8a0u47alv9vexd5r5s5vygs77ecadm6dl9vlky32hjywdx8f3gtczyr0l60lu824k9yc63jcg7z32fzx6w3cr6zx3mmuns69wxr66mea7zgjxmhl

病院待合室みたいな場所で検尿コップで水飲んだりと

nostr:nevent1qqsq44zs04g5zng35ks6jrvrv6uel2f9ls26d7nsc6svuggrlfnvtcgzyp4kuxwwg7530jlp8fn7adq982dnq8ncajv3gyl824y4xzyw6cknkvj37gy

トラウマになりそうなオフ会でした。当時の様子はnosli でまとめています。

今振り返ってもくちゃくちゃの体験してるなと思いますが、 ~~クレーターを作りそうな青ウサギがいたものの~~

nostr:nevent1qqsrs8y3phadhcukwjlkjkgdcs43ndkc8a42m88zayfj6p2lex6a6tgpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygrtdcvuu3afzl97zwn8a66q2w5mxq083myezsf7w42f2vyga43d8vpsgqqqqqqsyfx7da

誰も怒らないし宴会自体は楽しかったので、Nostr のオフ会の原体験としては良かったな、と感じています。ひどい思い出ほど振り返ったら美化されるやつかもしれない。

各種イベント参加

Nostr には四谷ラボ参加者の方が沢山いらっしゃったこと、お声かけいただいた縁などもあり、いろいろなイベントにスタッフとして参加する経験ができました。例えば…

• Bluesky Meetup in Tokyo Vol.2
• 技術書典 16 ⇒ 関わらせていただいたのぶこ本
• Nostrasia2024

など。

微力ながら、自らの役割に合わせてイベントに貢献させていただけて、とても楽しめました。 自分に自信がなく、私生活では責任が発生する立場を回避しがちであったこともあって、自分としてはこれらのイベント参加はとても貴重な経験になりました。 関係されている方々が思い思いの仕事のやりようでイベントに取り組んでいる様が刺激になったなと思います。

オフ会履歴

私を Nostr でフォローいただいている方であれば、「こいつ、やたらオフ会行ってないか…？」と思われるでしょう。ということで、自分でも一度整理をしてみました。

うわっ...私のオフ会参加、多すぎ…？ ~~1 年間は52週しかないねんぞ~~

このように、火鍋のオフ会を皮切りに、相当な数のオフ会に参加させていただきました。オフ会というかもう普通に Nostr で知り合っただけの友人との集まりみたいな感覚になっているかも。

ちなみに、人単位でお会いした回数もまとめています。

※：Nostrasia などのイベントでお会いした回数は除いています。

こうみるとしおと神（かすてらふぃさん）と会った回数めちゃくちゃ多いですね。28,26回だとほぼ2週に1回ペースですが、過去どんなに親しい友人でもこんな頻度で会ってたことないかも。

思い出深かった出来事

nostr:nevent1qqsyeyycax9qgrr4qvtty4h62x96vc6lydh8yg7jl5er99zg7wlpdrcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsygxll5llcw4tv2f34r9s3u9z5jyd5ars85ydrhhe8p52uv844hnmuypsgqqqqqqskevt6r

nostr:nevent1qqs0sqhtzc4p3vysz5k7l29x2lcnedeys55t7mqp2mz7ugrmw0v725cppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qgsdllfllsa2kc5nr2xtprc29fygmf68q0gg6800jwrg4cc0tt08hcgrqsqqqqqpaua8e8

この誤字投稿を経て、私の（たまにほかの人も）誤字は大欲情と呼ばれるようになりました。~~毎回思うけど新しく入ってきた人は何だこれってなるよなこれ~~

その後も酔ってる時を中心に結構誤字をやらかすので、那月さんによるまとめが作られています。

名前としては不名誉かもしれませんが、面白いのでOKです。

おわりに

振り返ってみれば Nostr 日本人ユーザーコミュニティの心地良さに浸った 1 年だったと思います。 Nostr の仕組み自体も好きですが、私はコミュニティの方に目が行っている気がします。

Nostr 歴 1 歳になったので、今後は私が Nostr を使う人々に心地良いと思ってもらえるような人になれるとよいなと思います。

これからもよろしくお願いします。

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Parallel Chains

We want merged-mined blockchains. We want them because it is possible to do things in them that aren't doable in the normal Bitcoin blockchain because it is rightfully too expensive, but there are other things beside the world money that could benefit from a "distributed ledger" -- just like people believed in 2013 --, like issued assets and domain names (just the most obvious examples).

On the other hand we can't have -- like people believed in 2013 -- a copy of Bitcoin for every little idea with its own native token that is mined by proof-of-work and must get off the ground from being completely valueless into having some value by way of a miracle that operated only once with Bitcoin.

It's also not a good idea to have blockchains with custom merged-mining protocol (like Namecoin and Rootstock) that require Bitcoin miners to run their software and be an active participant and miner for that other network besides Bitcoin, because it's too cumbersome for everybody.

Luckily Ruben Somsen invented this protocol for blind merged-mining that solves the issue above. Although it doesn't solve the fact that each parallel chain still needs some form of "native" token to pay miners -- or it must use another method that doesn't use a native token, such as trusted payments outside the chain.

How does it work

With the SIGHASH_NOINPUT/SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT soft-fork[^eltoo] it becomes possible to create presigned transactions that aren't related to any previous UTXO.

Then you create a long sequence of transactions (sufficient to last for many many years), each with an nLockTime of 1 and each spending the next (you create them from the last to the first). Since their scriptSig (the unlocking script) will use SIGHASH_ANYPREVOUT you can obtain a transaction id/hash that doesn't include the previous TXO, you can, for example, in a sequence of transactions A0-->B (B spends output 0 from A), include the signature for "spending A0 on B" inside the scriptPubKey (the locking script) of "A0".

With the contraption described above it is possible to make that long string of transactions everybody will know (and know how to generate) but each transaction can only be spent by the next previously decided transaction, no matter what anyone does, and there always must be at least one block of difference between them.

Then you combine it with RBF, SIGHASH_SINGLE and SIGHASH_ANYONECANPAY so parallel chain miners can add inputs and outputs to be able to compete on fees by including their own outputs and getting change back while at the same time writing a hash of the parallel block in the change output and you get everything working perfectly: everybody trying to spend the same output from the long string, each with a different parallel block hash, only the highest bidder will get the transaction included on the Bitcoin chain and thus only one parallel block will be mined.

See also

• Drivechain

[^eltoo]: The same thing used in Eltoo.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Precautionary Principle

The precautionary principle that people, including Nassim Nicholas Taleb, love and treat as some form of wisdom, is actually just a justification for arbitrary acts.

In a given situation for which there's no sufficient knowledge, either A or B can be seen as risky or precautionary measures, there's no way to know except if you have sufficient knowledge.

---

Someone could reply saying, for example, that the known risk of A is tolerable to the unknown, probably magnitudes bigger, risk of B. Unless you know better or at least have a logical explanation for the risks of B (a thing "scientists" don't have because they notoriously dislike making logical claims), in which case you do know something and is not invoking the precautionary principle anymore, just relying on your logical reasoning – and that can be discussed and questioned by others, undermining your intended usage of the label "precautionary principle" as a magic cover for your actions.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

OP_CHECKTEMPLATEVERIFY and the "covenants" drama

There are many ideas for "covenants" (I don't think this concept helps in the specific case of examining proposals, but fine). Some people think "we" (it's not obvious who is included in this group) should somehow examine them and come up with the perfect synthesis.

It is not clear what form this magic gathering of ideas will take and who (or which ideas) will be allowed to speak, but suppose it happens and there is intense research and conversations and people (ideas) really enjoy themselves in the process.

What are we left with at the end? Someone has to actually commit the time and put the effort and come up with a concrete proposal to be implemented on Bitcoin, and whatever the result is it will have trade-offs. Some great features will not make into this proposal, others will make in a worsened form, and some will be contemplated very nicely, there will be some extra costs related to maintenance or code complexity that will have to be taken. Someone, a concreate person, will decide upon these things using their own personal preferences and biases, and many people will not be pleased with their choices.

That has already happened. Jeremy Rubin has already conjured all the covenant ideas in a magic gathering that lasted more than 3 years and came up with a synthesis that has the best trade-offs he could find. CTV is the result of that operation.

---

The fate of CTV in the popular opinion illustrated by the thoughtless responses it has evoked such as "can we do better?" and "we need more review and research and more consideration of other ideas for covenants" is a preview of what would probably happen if these suggestions were followed again and someone spent the next 3 years again considering ideas, talking to other researchers and came up with a new synthesis. Again, that person would be faced with "can we do better?" responses from people that were not happy enough with the choices.

And unless some famous Bitcoin Core or retired Bitcoin Core developers were personally attracted by this synthesis then they would take some time to review and give their blessing to this new synthesis.

To summarize the argument of this article, the actual question in the current CTV drama is that there exists hidden criteria for proposals to be accepted by the general community into Bitcoin, and no one has these criteria clear in their minds. It is not as simple not as straightforward as "do research" nor it is as humanly impossible as "get consensus", it has a much bigger social element into it, but I also do not know what is the exact form of these hidden criteria.

This is said not to blame anyone -- except the ignorant people who are not aware of the existence of these things and just keep repeating completely false and unhelpful advice for Jeremy Rubin and are not self-conscious enough to ever realize what they're doing.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

A response to Achim Warner's "Drivechain brings politics to miners" article

I mean this article: https://achimwarner.medium.com/thoughts-on-drivechain-i-miners-can-do-things-about-which-we-will-argue-whether-it-is-actually-a5c3c022dbd2

There are basically two claims here:

1. Some corporate interests might want to secure sidechains for themselves and thus they will bribe miners to have these activated

First, it's hard to imagine why they would want such a thing. Are they going to make a proprietary KYC chain only for their users? They could do that in a corporate way, or with a federation, like Facebook tried to do, and that would provide more value to their users than a cumbersome pseudo-decentralized system in which they don't even have powers to issue currency. Also, if Facebook couldn't get away with their federated shitcoin because the government was mad, what says the government won't be mad with a sidechain? And finally, why would Facebook want to give custody of their proprietary closed-garden Bitcoin-backed ecosystem coins to a random, open and always-changing set of miners?

But even if they do succeed in making their sidechain and it is very popular such that it pays miners fees and people love it. Well, then why not? Let them have it. It's not going to hurt anyone more than a proprietary shitcoin would anyway. If Facebook really wants a closed ecosystem backed by Bitcoin that probably means we are winning big.

2. Miners will be required to vote on the validity of debatable things

He cites the example of a PoS sidechain, an assassination market, a sidechain full of nazists, a sidechain deemed illegal by the US government and so on.

There is a simple solution to all of this: just kill these sidechains. Either miners can take the money from these to themselves, or they can just refuse to engage and freeze the coins there forever, or they can even give the coins to governments, if they want. It is an entirely good thing that evil sidechains or sidechains that use horrible technology that doesn't even let us know who owns each coin get annihilated. And it was the responsibility of people who put money in there to evaluate beforehand and know that PoS is not deterministic, for example.

About government censoring and wanting to steal money, or criminals using sidechains, I think the argument is very weak because these same things can happen today and may even be happening already: i.e., governments ordering mining pools to not mine such and such transactions from such and such people, or forcing them to reorg to steal money from criminals and whatnot. All this is expected to happen in normal Bitcoin. But both in normal Bitcoin and in Drivechain decentralization fixes that problem by making it so governments cannot catch all miners required to control the chain like that -- and in fact fixing that problem is the only reason we need decentralization.

@ 21335073:a244b1ad

Warning: This piece contains a conversation about difficult topics. Please proceed with caution.

TL;DR please educate your children about online safety.

Julian Assange wrote in his 2012 book Cypherpunks, “This book is not a manifesto. There isn’t time for that. This book is a warning.” I read it a few times over the past summer. Those opening lines definitely stood out to me. I wish we had listened back then. He saw something about the internet that few had the ability to see. There are some individuals who are so close to a topic that when they speak, it’s difficult for others who aren’t steeped in it to visualize what they’re talking about. I didn’t read the book until more recently. If I had read it when it came out, it probably would have sounded like an unknown foreign language to me. Today it makes more sense.

This isn’t a manifesto. This isn’t a book. There is no time for that. It’s a warning and a possible solution from a desperate and determined survivor advocate who has been pulling and unraveling a thread for a few years. At times, I feel too close to this topic to make any sense trying to convey my pathway to my conclusions or thoughts to the general public. My hope is that if nothing else, I can convey my sense of urgency while writing this. This piece is a watchman’s warning.

When a child steps online, they are walking into a new world. A new reality. When you hand a child the internet, you are handing them possibilities—good, bad, and ugly. This is a conversation about lowering the potential of negative outcomes of stepping into that new world and how I came to these conclusions. I constantly compare the internet to the road. You wouldn’t let a young child run out into the road with no guidance or safety precautions. When you hand a child the internet without any type of guidance or safety measures, you are allowing them to play in rush hour, oncoming traffic. “Look left, look right for cars before crossing.” We almost all have been taught that as children. What are we taught as humans about safety before stepping into a completely different reality like the internet? Very little.

I could never really figure out why many folks in tech, privacy rights activists, and hackers seemed so cold to me while talking about online child sexual exploitation. I always figured that as a survivor advocate for those affected by these crimes, that specific, skilled group of individuals would be very welcoming and easy to talk to about such serious topics. I actually had one hacker laugh in my face when I brought it up while I was looking for answers. I thought maybe this individual thought I was accusing them of something I wasn’t, so I felt bad for asking. I was constantly extremely disappointed and would ask myself, “Why don’t they care? What could I say to make them care more? What could I say to make them understand the crisis and the level of suffering that happens as a result of the problem?”

I have been serving minor survivors of online child sexual exploitation for years. My first case serving a survivor of this specific crime was in 2018—a 13-year-old girl sexually exploited by a serial predator on Snapchat. That was my first glimpse into this side of the internet. I won a national award for serving the minor survivors of Twitter in 2023, but I had been working on that specific project for a few years. I was nominated by a lawyer representing two survivors in a legal battle against the platform. I’ve never really spoken about this before, but at the time it was a choice for me between fighting Snapchat or Twitter. I chose Twitter—or rather, Twitter chose me. I heard about the story of John Doe #1 and John Doe #2, and I was so unbelievably broken over it that I went to war for multiple years. I was and still am royally pissed about that case. As far as I was concerned, the John Doe #1 case proved that whatever was going on with corporate tech social media was so out of control that I didn’t have time to wait, so I got to work. It was reading the messages that John Doe #1 sent to Twitter begging them to remove his sexual exploitation that broke me. He was a child begging adults to do something. A passion for justice and protecting kids makes you do wild things. I was desperate to find answers about what happened and searched for solutions. In the end, the platform Twitter was purchased. During the acquisition, I just asked Mr. Musk nicely to prioritize the issue of detection and removal of child sexual exploitation without violating digital privacy rights or eroding end-to-end encryption. Elon thanked me multiple times during the acquisition, made some changes, and I was thanked by others on the survivors’ side as well.

I still feel that even with the progress made, I really just scratched the surface with Twitter, now X. I left that passion project when I did for a few reasons. I wanted to give new leadership time to tackle the issue. Elon Musk made big promises that I knew would take a while to fulfill, but mostly I had been watching global legislation transpire around the issue, and frankly, the governments are willing to go much further with X and the rest of corporate tech than I ever would. My work begging Twitter to make changes with easier reporting of content, detection, and removal of child sexual exploitation material—without violating privacy rights or eroding end-to-end encryption—and advocating for the minor survivors of the platform went as far as my principles would have allowed. I’m grateful for that experience. I was still left with a nagging question: “How did things get so bad with Twitter where the John Doe #1 and John Doe #2 case was able to happen in the first place?” I decided to keep looking for answers. I decided to keep pulling the thread.

I never worked for Twitter. This is often confusing for folks. I will say that despite being disappointed in the platform’s leadership at times, I loved Twitter. I saw and still see its value. I definitely love the survivors of the platform, but I also loved the platform. I was a champion of the platform’s ability to give folks from virtually around the globe an opportunity to speak and be heard.

I want to be clear that John Doe #1 really is my why. He is the inspiration. I am writing this because of him. He represents so many globally, and I’m still inspired by his bravery. One child’s voice begging adults to do something—I’m an adult, I heard him. I’d go to war a thousand more lifetimes for that young man, and I don’t even know his name. Fighting has been personally dark at times; I’m not even going to try to sugarcoat it, but it has been worth it.

The data surrounding the very real crime of online child sexual exploitation is available to the public online at any time for anyone to see. I’d encourage you to go look at the data for yourself. I believe in encouraging folks to check multiple sources so that you understand the full picture. If you are uncomfortable just searching around the internet for information about this topic, use the terms “CSAM,” “CSEM,” “SG-CSEM,” or “AI Generated CSAM.” The numbers don’t lie—it’s a nightmare that’s out of control. It’s a big business. The demand is high, and unfortunately, business is booming. Organizations collect the data, tech companies often post their data, governments report frequently, and the corporate press has covered a decent portion of the conversation, so I’m sure you can find a source that you trust.

Technology is changing rapidly, which is great for innovation as a whole but horrible for the crime of online child sexual exploitation. Those wishing to exploit the vulnerable seem to be adapting to each technological change with ease. The governments are so far behind with tackling these issues that as I’m typing this, it’s borderline irrelevant to even include them while speaking about the crime or potential solutions. Technology is changing too rapidly, and their old, broken systems can’t even dare to keep up. Think of it like the governments’ “War on Drugs.” Drugs won. In this case as well, the governments are not winning. The governments are talking about maybe having a meeting on potentially maybe having legislation around the crimes. The time to have that meeting would have been many years ago. I’m not advocating for governments to legislate our way out of this. I’m on the side of educating and innovating our way out of this.

I have been clear while advocating for the minor survivors of corporate tech platforms that I would not advocate for any solution to the crime that would violate digital privacy rights or erode end-to-end encryption. That has been a personal moral position that I was unwilling to budge on. This is an extremely unpopular and borderline nonexistent position in the anti-human trafficking movement and online child protection space. I’m often fearful that I’m wrong about this. I have always thought that a better pathway forward would have been to incentivize innovation for detection and removal of content. I had no previous exposure to privacy rights activists or Cypherpunks—actually, I came to that conclusion by listening to the voices of MENA region political dissidents and human rights activists. After developing relationships with human rights activists from around the globe, I realized how important privacy rights and encryption are for those who need it most globally. I was simply unwilling to give more power, control, and opportunities for mass surveillance to big abusers like governments wishing to enslave entire nations and untrustworthy corporate tech companies to potentially end some portion of abuses online. On top of all of it, it has been clear to me for years that all potential solutions outside of violating digital privacy rights to detect and remove child sexual exploitation online have not yet been explored aggressively. I’ve been disappointed that there hasn’t been more of a conversation around preventing the crime from happening in the first place.

What has been tried is mass surveillance. In China, they are currently under mass surveillance both online and offline, and their behaviors are attached to a social credit score. Unfortunately, even on state-run and controlled social media platforms, they still have child sexual exploitation and abuse imagery pop up along with other crimes and human rights violations. They also have a thriving black market online due to the oppression from the state. In other words, even an entire loss of freedom and privacy cannot end the sexual exploitation of children online. It’s been tried. There is no reason to repeat this method.

It took me an embarrassingly long time to figure out why I always felt a slight coldness from those in tech and privacy-minded individuals about the topic of child sexual exploitation online. I didn’t have any clue about the “Four Horsemen of the Infocalypse.” This is a term coined by Timothy C. May in 1988. I would have been a child myself when he first said it. I actually laughed at myself when I heard the phrase for the first time. I finally got it. The Cypherpunks weren’t wrong about that topic. They were so spot on that it is borderline uncomfortable. I was mad at first that they knew that early during the birth of the internet that this issue would arise and didn’t address it. Then I got over it because I realized that it wasn’t their job. Their job was—is—to write code. Their job wasn’t to be involved and loving parents or survivor advocates. Their job wasn’t to educate children on internet safety or raise awareness; their job was to write code.

They knew that child sexual abuse material would be shared on the internet. They said what would happen—not in a gleeful way, but a prediction. Then it happened.

I equate it now to a concrete company laying down a road. As you’re pouring the concrete, you can say to yourself, “A terrorist might travel down this road to go kill many, and on the flip side, a beautiful child can be born in an ambulance on this road.” Who or what travels down the road is not their responsibility—they are just supposed to lay the concrete. I’d never go to a concrete pourer and ask them to solve terrorism that travels down roads. Under the current system, law enforcement should stop terrorists before they even make it to the road. The solution to this specific problem is not to treat everyone on the road like a terrorist or to not build the road.

So I understand the perceived coldness from those in tech. Not only was it not their job, but bringing up the topic was seen as the equivalent of asking a free person if they wanted to discuss one of the four topics—child abusers, terrorists, drug dealers, intellectual property pirates, etc.—that would usher in digital authoritarianism for all who are online globally.

Privacy rights advocates and groups have put up a good fight. They stood by their principles. Unfortunately, when it comes to corporate tech, I believe that the issue of privacy is almost a complete lost cause at this point. It’s still worth pushing back, but ultimately, it is a losing battle—a ticking time bomb.

I do think that corporate tech providers could have slowed down the inevitable loss of privacy at the hands of the state by prioritizing the detection and removal of CSAM when they all started online. I believe it would have bought some time, fewer would have been traumatized by that specific crime, and I do believe that it could have slowed down the demand for content. If I think too much about that, I’ll go insane, so I try to push the “if maybes” aside, but never knowing if it could have been handled differently will forever haunt me. At night when it’s quiet, I wonder what I would have done differently if given the opportunity. I’ll probably never know how much corporate tech knew and ignored in the hopes that it would go away while the problem continued to get worse. They had different priorities. The most voiceless and vulnerable exploited on corporate tech never had much of a voice, so corporate tech providers didn’t receive very much pushback.

Now I’m about to say something really wild, and you can call me whatever you want to call me, but I’m going to say what I believe to be true. I believe that the governments are either so incompetent that they allowed the proliferation of CSAM online, or they knowingly allowed the problem to fester long enough to have an excuse to violate privacy rights and erode end-to-end encryption. The US government could have seized the corporate tech providers over CSAM, but I believe that they were so useful as a propaganda arm for the regimes that they allowed them to continue virtually unscathed.

That season is done now, and the governments are making the issue a priority. It will come at a high cost. Privacy on corporate tech providers is virtually done as I’m typing this. It feels like a death rattle. I’m not particularly sure that we had much digital privacy to begin with, but the illusion of a veil of privacy feels gone.

To make matters slightly more complex, it would be hard to convince me that once AI really gets going, digital privacy will exist at all.

I believe that there should be a conversation shift to preserving freedoms and human rights in a post-privacy society.

I don’t want to get locked up because AI predicted a nasty post online from me about the government. I’m not a doomer about AI—I’m just going to roll with it personally. I’m looking forward to the positive changes that will be brought forth by AI. I see it as inevitable. A bit of privacy was helpful while it lasted. Please keep fighting to preserve what is left of privacy either way because I could be wrong about all of this.

On the topic of AI, the addition of AI to the horrific crime of child sexual abuse material and child sexual exploitation in multiple ways so far has been devastating. It’s currently out of control. The genie is out of the bottle. I am hopeful that innovation will get us humans out of this, but I’m not sure how or how long it will take. We must be extremely cautious around AI legislation. It should not be illegal to innovate even if some bad comes with the good. I don’t trust that the governments are equipped to decide the best pathway forward for AI. Source: the entire history of the government.

I have been personally negatively impacted by AI-generated content. Every few days, I get another alert that I’m featured again in what’s called “deep fake pornography” without my consent. I’m not happy about it, but what pains me the most is the thought that for a period of time down the road, many globally will experience what myself and others are experiencing now by being digitally sexually abused in this way. If you have ever had your picture taken and posted online, you are also at risk of being exploited in this way. Your child’s image can be used as well, unfortunately, and this is just the beginning of this particular nightmare. It will move to more realistic interpretations of sexual behaviors as technology improves. I have no brave words of wisdom about how to deal with that emotionally. I do have hope that innovation will save the day around this specific issue. I’m nervous that everyone online will have to ID verify due to this issue. I see that as one possible outcome that could help to prevent one problem but inadvertently cause more problems, especially for those living under authoritarian regimes or anyone who needs to remain anonymous online. A zero-knowledge proof (ZKP) would probably be the best solution to these issues. There are some survivors of violence and/or sexual trauma who need to remain anonymous online for various reasons. There are survivor stories available online of those who have been abused in this way. I’d encourage you seek out and listen to their stories.

There have been periods of time recently where I hesitate to say anything at all because more than likely AI will cover most of my concerns about education, awareness, prevention, detection, and removal of child sexual exploitation online, etc.

Unfortunately, some of the most pressing issues we’ve seen online over the last few years come in the form of “sextortion.” Self-generated child sexual exploitation (SG-CSEM) numbers are continuing to be terrifying. I’d strongly encourage that you look into sextortion data. AI + sextortion is also a huge concern. The perpetrators are using the non-sexually explicit images of children and putting their likeness on AI-generated child sexual exploitation content and extorting money, more imagery, or both from minors online. It’s like a million nightmares wrapped into one. The wild part is that these issues will only get more pervasive because technology is harnessed to perpetuate horror at a scale unimaginable to a human mind.

Even if you banned phones and the internet or tried to prevent children from accessing the internet, it wouldn’t solve it. Child sexual exploitation will still be with us until as a society we start to prevent the crime before it happens. That is the only human way out right now.

There is no reset button on the internet, but if I could go back, I’d tell survivor advocates to heed the warnings of the early internet builders and to start education and awareness campaigns designed to prevent as much online child sexual exploitation as possible. The internet and technology moved quickly, and I don’t believe that society ever really caught up. We live in a world where a child can be groomed by a predator in their own home while sitting on a couch next to their parents watching TV. We weren’t ready as a species to tackle the fast-paced algorithms and dangers online. It happened too quickly for parents to catch up. How can you parent for the ever-changing digital world unless you are constantly aware of the dangers?

I don’t think that the internet is inherently bad. I believe that it can be a powerful tool for freedom and resistance. I’ve spoken a lot about the bad online, but there is beauty as well. We often discuss how victims and survivors are abused online; we rarely discuss the fact that countless survivors around the globe have been able to share their experiences, strength, hope, as well as provide resources to the vulnerable. I do question if giving any government or tech company access to censorship, surveillance, etc., online in the name of serving survivors might not actually impact a portion of survivors negatively. There are a fair amount of survivors with powerful abusers protected by governments and the corporate press. If a survivor cannot speak to the press about their abuse, the only place they can go is online, directly or indirectly through an independent journalist who also risks being censored. This scenario isn’t hard to imagine—it already happened in China. During #MeToo, a survivor in China wanted to post their story. The government censored the post, so the survivor put their story on the blockchain. I’m excited that the survivor was creative and brave, but it’s terrifying to think that we live in a world where that situation is a necessity.

I believe that the future for many survivors sharing their stories globally will be on completely censorship-resistant and decentralized protocols. This thought in particular gives me hope. When we listen to the experiences of a diverse group of survivors, we can start to understand potential solutions to preventing the crimes from happening in the first place.

My heart is broken over the gut-wrenching stories of survivors sexually exploited online. Every time I hear the story of a survivor, I do think to myself quietly, “What could have prevented this from happening in the first place?” My heart is with survivors.

My head, on the other hand, is full of the understanding that the internet should remain free. The free flow of information should not be stopped. My mind is with the innocent citizens around the globe that deserve freedom both online and offline.

The problem is that governments don’t only want to censor illegal content that violates human rights—they create legislation that is so broad that it can impact speech and privacy of all. “Don’t you care about the kids?” Yes, I do. I do so much that I’m invested in finding solutions. I also care about all citizens around the globe that deserve an opportunity to live free from a mass surveillance society. If terrorism happens online, I should not be punished by losing my freedom. If drugs are sold online, I should not be punished. I’m not an abuser, I’m not a terrorist, and I don’t engage in illegal behaviors. I refuse to lose freedom because of others’ bad behaviors online.

I want to be clear that on a long enough timeline, the governments will decide that they can be better parents/caregivers than you can if something isn’t done to stop minors from being sexually exploited online. The price will be a complete loss of anonymity, privacy, free speech, and freedom of religion online. I find it rather insulting that governments think they’re better equipped to raise children than parents and caretakers.

So we can’t go backwards—all that we can do is go forward. Those who want to have freedom will find technology to facilitate their liberation. This will lead many over time to decentralized and open protocols. So as far as I’m concerned, this does solve a few of my worries—those who need, want, and deserve to speak freely online will have the opportunity in most countries—but what about online child sexual exploitation?

When I popped up around the decentralized space, I was met with the fear of censorship. I’m not here to censor you. I don’t write code. I couldn’t censor anyone or any piece of content even if I wanted to across the internet, no matter how depraved. I don’t have the skills to do that.

I’m here to start a conversation. Freedom comes at a cost. You must always fight for and protect your freedom. I can’t speak about protecting yourself from all of the Four Horsemen because I simply don’t know the topics well enough, but I can speak about this one topic.

If there was a shortcut to ending online child sexual exploitation, I would have found it by now. There isn’t one right now. I believe that education is the only pathway forward to preventing the crime of online child sexual exploitation for future generations.

I propose a yearly education course for every child of all school ages, taught as a standard part of the curriculum. Ideally, parents/caregivers would be involved in the education/learning process.

Course: - The creation of the internet and computers - The fight for cryptography - The tech supply chain from the ground up (example: human rights violations in the supply chain) - Corporate tech - Freedom tech - Data privacy - Digital privacy rights - AI (history-current) - Online safety (predators, scams, catfishing, extortion) - Bitcoin - Laws - How to deal with online hate and harassment - Information on who to contact if you are being abused online or offline - Algorithms - How to seek out the truth about news, etc., online

The parents/caregivers, homeschoolers, unschoolers, and those working to create decentralized parallel societies have been an inspiration while writing this, but my hope is that all children would learn this course, even in government ran schools. Ideally, parents would teach this to their own children.

The decentralized space doesn’t want child sexual exploitation to thrive. Here’s the deal: there has to be a strong prevention effort in order to protect the next generation. The internet isn’t going anywhere, predators aren’t going anywhere, and I’m not down to let anyone have the opportunity to prove that there is a need for more government. I don’t believe that the government should act as parents. The governments have had a chance to attempt to stop online child sexual exploitation, and they didn’t do it. Can we try a different pathway forward?

I’d like to put myself out of a job. I don’t want to ever hear another story like John Doe #1 ever again. This will require work. I’ve often called online child sexual exploitation the lynchpin for the internet. It’s time to arm generations of children with knowledge and tools. I can’t do this alone.

Individuals have fought so that I could have freedom online. I want to fight to protect it. I don’t want child predators to give the government any opportunity to take away freedom. Decentralized spaces are as close to a reset as we’ll get with the opportunity to do it right from the start. Start the youth off correctly by preventing potential hazards to the best of your ability.

The good news is anyone can work on this! I’d encourage you to take it and run with it. I added the additional education about the history of the internet to make the course more educational and fun. Instead of cleaning up generations of destroyed lives due to online sexual exploitation, perhaps this could inspire generations of those who will build our futures. Perhaps if the youth is armed with knowledge, they can create more tools to prevent the crime.

This one solution that I’m suggesting can be done on an individual level or on a larger scale. It should be adjusted depending on age, learning style, etc. It should be fun and playful.

This solution does not address abuse in the home or some of the root causes of offline child sexual exploitation. My hope is that it could lead to some survivors experiencing abuse in the home an opportunity to disclose with a trusted adult. The purpose for this solution is to prevent the crime of online child sexual exploitation before it occurs and to arm the youth with the tools to contact safe adults if and when it happens.

In closing, I went to hell a few times so that you didn’t have to. I spoke to the mothers of survivors of minors sexually exploited online—their tears could fill rivers. I’ve spoken with political dissidents who yearned to be free from authoritarian surveillance states. The only balance that I’ve found is freedom online for citizens around the globe and prevention from the dangers of that for the youth. Don’t slow down innovation and freedom. Educate, prepare, adapt, and look for solutions.

I’m not perfect and I’m sure that there are errors in this piece. I hope that you find them and it starts a conversation.

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

Welcome to part 4, the final entry in the What is Money series. We’re capping it off with “crypto” and CBDCs.

Let's start with crypto. Short for cryptocurrency, it’s a catch-all term for all of the non-fiat, blockchain-based, or non-government-operated new money systems that aren’t Bitcoin. Ethereum, Solana, and Dogecoin are some you may have heard of. There are actually thousands of cryptocurrencies in existence, but we’ll summarize some of the biggest ones by size and pop culture penetration. One thing they all have in common is that like fiat currencies, they have no supply limit and are therefore inflationary by nature.

Ethereum: Released in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin, Ethereum is less of a money system and more of a network built to run “decentralized applications” (DAPs) on. “Smart contracts” and “tokens” are the most common of these. If none of those terms mean anything to you, you’re not alone. What they’ve essentially done is recreate the unending complexity of high finance in a computer system and replaced the bankers and lawyers with programmers.

Solana: Solana is much smaller than Ethereum but serves a similar function of being a wild-west finance platform. I’m only mentioning it here as it's been in the media a lot with numerous security compromises, lawsuits, and general drama. Your nephew who trades in Robux probably knows someone who lost their allowance savings in the 2021 crash.

USDT/Tether: This is the largest in a family of cryptocurrencies called “stablecoins”. They’re meant to offer the features of crypto but with the “stability” of having their value tied to a fiat currency, in this case the US Dollar.

Monero: Monero was designed from the ground up to be as anonymous as possible. Unfortunately it’s lack of popularity means it’s not particularly useful for purchases.

Dogecoin: Released in 2013, Dogecoin was created as a joke to poke fun at Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies. As a joke it’s been wildly successful, but like most jokes there are many who decided to take it seriously over the years, which has driven its market cap to surpass that of Monera and most others. It’s currently in the top 10 by market cap, but you’ll struggle to find anyone who takes it as payment.

The concept of CBDCs (central bank digital currencies) has been making the rounds through media for some time. Some paint it as a boogeyman to be feared, while others see it as nothing more than an annoying waste of government resources. As you may recall from part 2 of this series, the Bank of Canada is not a retail bank with individuals for customers, instead acting as an administrative body and a bank for banks. CBDCs have the potential to change that. In a sentence, a Canadian CBDC would most likely be a system whereby individuals who struggle to get or maintain accounts at retail banks could be issued a Bank of Canada account. There may also be some integration with Payments Canada systems to make retail payments and transfers cheaper and more direct. Much of this is speculation though, as the BoC hasn’t announced any of this, only that research is ongoing. In any case it won’t be a replacement of the Canadian Dollar, just another system for moving Dollars around between ledgers and accounts.

I’d normally sign off with something like, “Want help with insert article topic here? You can find us at scalebright.ca”, but in the case of crypto I’m afraid we must decline. The other trait shared by all of these money systems beside inflation via no supply limit is that they’re all scams designed to steal from their customers. Bitcoin is the only digital non-fiat currency this doesn't apply to. So if you’d like help with Bitcoin, you can find us at scalebright.ca.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

neuron.vim

I started using this neuron thing to create an update this same zettelkasten, but the existing vim plugin had too many problems, so I forked it and ended up changing almost everything.

Since the upstream repository was somewhat abandoned, most users and people who were trying to contribute upstream migrate to my fork too.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/neuron.vim

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

Millennials remember the era of Buzzfeed quizzes with fondness, and some may even describe it as identity or culture shaping. People have always loved these miniature personality tests, and while Buzzfeed may no longer be in its heyday, the popularity of these dinner-table icebreakers has transcended generational gaps. To the analytically-brained among us this sounds like a datapoint that could be used in the workplace. Or is it?

You’ve probably heard someone’s answer to one of these and thought, “Oh wow, that sounds mildly psychopathic, I’m sure glad I don’t work with them!” Interviewers will sometimes ask questions like “if you were an animal, what kind of animal would you be?” as a conversation starter, but unscored. Part of the reason for this is that laws around discrimination in hiring make filtering via psychological or personality tests a grey area. Any suggestion of discrimination opens employers to potential lawsuits and investigations. Even if the applicant answered unironically with “I would be a dragon because I love hoarding gold and burning down unsuspecting villages!”, you would need to prove that the question was asked in a controlled environment by a certified professional and that the question was directly relevant to the position being applied for.

Now that I’ve most likely talked you out of implementing these in your interview processes, here are a handful of tests that, in an HR and legal department approved manner, could be run during an interview. Failing that, they make for great casual icebreakers! Their sources range from actual psychological tests to dubious corners of the internet, and they’ve all been simplified down to their simplest forms, so I’ll again warn that you’ll want to do diligence before suggesting their use in your workplace.

The Marshmallow Test: The test subjects (usually children) are offered a marshmallow and told that if they leave it for a few minutes, they can have two. Adults who’ve developed impulse control will usually say the correct answer is obvious, yet we fail slightly more complex versions all the time. Remember that greasy fast-food you bought with money you could have saved for a nice dinner out?

Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT): “Some apples and some bananas cost $1.10. The apples cost $1 more than the bananas. How much did the apples cost?” If you suspect a trick, you’ll probably think about the question a bit further, but the intuitive part of our brains want us to think the apples were $1 and the bananas $0.10.

The Breakfast Question: “How would you feel if you hadn’t eaten breakfast?” This one has some deep internet lore behind it, but the idea is that you’re testing the subject’s capacity for hypothetical reasoning. Can they process “what-ifs”? It can also extend into testing for empathy (“How would you feel if you were in Steve’s shoes and someone stole your ice cream?”).

Thematic Apperception Test (TAT): Show the subject an ambiguous picture (ideally emotionally neutral) with people in it and ask them to imagine what is happening, including what the people are thinking and feeling. Most people will subconsciously project their own thoughts and feelings onto the characters in the picture.

Moral Circle Test: This one has a history of being misunderstood and used as a political cudgel, so you may want to save it for your more understanding friends. Subjects were asked to rank the moral responsibilities they felt toward increasingly distant groups, starting from themselves in the center of a circle and working their way out through family, friends, acquaintances, animals, Earth, etc. The primary misunderstanding is whether the outer circles include the inner circles, i.e. whether caring for Earth includes caring for family. It’s unclear whether the subjects fully understood this, and those interpreting the results seem confused as well.

Workplace Motivation Test: “You are up for a promotion. You can be promoted into a position that pays 20% more, or one that pays the same that you’re currently making but aligns with your non-financial life goals or sense of purpose.” This one is my own, and you can learn more about the underlying concepts here: “True Believers & Mercenaries” Are you a “True Believer” or a “Mercenary”?

Need help with your interview processes or figuring out which Disney princess you are? You can find us at scalebright.ca.

@ 1bda7e1f:bb97c4d9

Tldr

• Nostr is an open and interoperable protocol
• You can integrate it with workflow automation tools to augment your experience
• n8n is a great low/no-code workflow automation tool which you can host yourself
• Nostrobots allows you to integrate Nostr into n8n
• In this blog I create some workflow automations for Nostr
• A simple form to delegate posting notes
• Push notifications for mentions on multiple accounts
• Push notifications for your favourite accounts when they post a note
• All workflows are provided as open source with MIT license for you to use

Inter-op All The Things

Nostr is a new open social protocol for the internet. This open nature exciting because of the opportunities for interoperability with other technologies. In Using NFC Cards with Nostr I explored the nostr: URI to launch Nostr clients from a card tap.

The interoperability of Nostr doesn't stop there. The internet has many super-powers, and Nostr is open to all of them. Simply, there's no one to stop it. There is no one in charge, there are no permissioned APIs, and there are no risks of being de-platformed. If you can imagine technologies that would work well with Nostr, then any and all of them can ride on or alongside Nostr rails.

My mental model for why this is special is Google Wave ~2010. Google Wave was to be the next big platform. Lars was running it and had a big track record from Maps. I was excited for it. Then, Google pulled the plug. And, immediately all the time and capital invested in understanding and building on the platform was wasted.

This cannot happen to Nostr, as there is no one to pull the plug, and maybe even no plug to pull.

So long as users demand Nostr, Nostr will exist, and that is a pretty strong guarantee. It makes it worthwhile to invest in bringing Nostr into our other applications.

All we need are simple ways to plug things together.

Nostr and Workflow Automation

Workflow automation is about helping people to streamline their work. As a user, the most common way I achieve this is by connecting disparate systems together. By setting up one system to trigger another or to move data between systems, I can solve for many different problems and become way more effective.

n8n for workflow automation

Many workflow automation tools exist. My favourite is n8n. n8n is a low/no-code workflow automation platform which allows you to build all kinds of workflows. You can use it for free, you can self-host it, it has a user-friendly UI and useful API. Vs Zapier it can be far more elaborate. Vs Make.com I find it to be more intuitive in how it abstracts away the right parts of the code, but still allows you to code when you need to.

Most importantly you can plug anything into n8n: You have built-in nodes for specific applications. HTTP nodes for any other API-based service. And community nodes built by individual community members for any other purpose you can imagine.

Eating my own dogfood

It's very clear to me that there is a big design space here just demanding to be explored. If you could integrate Nostr with anything, what would you do?

In my view the best way for anyone to start anything is by solving their own problem first (aka "scratching your own itch" and "eating your own dogfood"). As I get deeper into Nostr I find myself controlling multiple Npubs – to date I have a personal Npub, a brand Npub for a community I am helping, an AI assistant Npub, and various testing Npubs. I need ways to delegate access to those Npubs without handing over the keys, ways to know if they're mentioned, and ways to know if they're posting.

I can build workflows with n8n to solve these issues for myself to start with, and keep expanding from there as new needs come up.

Running n8n with Nostrobots

I am mostly non-technical with a very helpful AI. To set up n8n to work with Nostr and operate these workflows should be possible for anyone with basic technology skills.

• I have a cheap VPS which currently runs my HAVEN Nostr Relay and Albyhub Lightning Node in Docker containers,
• My objective was to set up n8n to run alongside these in a separate Docker container on the same server, install the required nodes, and then build and host my workflows.

Installing n8n

Self-hosting n8n could not be easier. I followed n8n's Docker-Compose installation docs–

• Install Docker and Docker-Compose if you haven't already,
• Create your docker-compose.yml and .env files from the docs,
• Create your data folder sudo docker volume create n8n_data,
• Start your container with sudo docker compose up -d,
• Your n8n instance should be online at port 5678.

n8n is free to self-host but does require a license. Enter your credentials into n8n to get your free license key. You should now have access to the Workflow dashboard and can create and host any kind of workflows from there.

Installing Nostrobots

To integrate n8n nicely with Nostr, I used the Nostrobots community node by Ocknamo.

In n8n parlance a "node" enables certain functionality as a step in a workflow e.g. a "set" node sets a variable, a "send email" node sends an email. n8n comes with all kinds of "official" nodes installed by default, and Nostr is not amongst them. However, n8n also comes with a framework for community members to create their own "community" nodes, which is where Nostrobots comes in.

You can only use a community node in a self-hosted n8n instance (which is what you have if you are running in Docker on your own server, but this limitation does prevent you from using n8n's own hosted alternative).

To install a community node, see n8n community node docs. From your workflow dashboard–

• Click the "..." in the bottom left corner beside your username, and click "settings",
• Cilck "community nodes" left sidebar,
• Click "Install",
• Enter the "npm Package Name" which is n8n-nodes-nostrobots,
• Accept the risks and click "Install",
• Nostrobots is now added to your n8n instance.

Using Nostrobots

Nostrobots gives you nodes to help you build Nostr-integrated workflows–

• Nostr Write – for posting Notes to the Nostr network,
• Nostr Read – for reading Notes from the Nostr network, and
• Nostr Utils – for performing certain conversions you may need (e.g. from bech32 to hex).

Nostrobots has good documentation on each node which focuses on simple use cases.

Each node has a "convenience mode" by default. For example, the "Read" Node by default will fetch Kind 1 notes by a simple filter, in Nostrobots parlance a "Strategy". For example, with Strategy set to "Mention" the node will accept a pubkey and fetch all Kind 1 notes that Mention the pubkey within a time period. This is very good for quick use.

What wasn't clear to me initially (until Ocknamo helped me out) is that advanced use cases are also possible.

Each node also has an advanced mode. For example, the "Read" Node can have "Strategy" set to "RawFilter(advanced)". Now the node will accept json (anything you like that complies with NIP-01). You can use this to query Notes (Kind 1) as above, and also Profiles (Kind 0), Follow Lists (Kind 3), Reactions (Kind 7), Zaps (Kind 9734/9735), and anything else you can think of.

Creating and adding workflows

With n8n and Nostrobots installed, you can now create or add any kind of Nostr Workflow Automation.

• Click "Add workflow" to go to the workflow builder screen,
• If you would like to build your own workflow, you can start with adding any node. Click "+" and see what is available. Type "Nostr" to explore the Nostrobots nodes you have added,
• If you would like to add workflows that someone else has built, click "..." in the top right. Then click "import from URL" and paste in the URL of any workflow you would like to use (including the ones I share later in this article).

Nostr Workflow Automations

It's time to build some things!

A simple form to post a note to Nostr

I started very simply. I needed to delegate the ability to post to Npubs that I own in order that a (future) team can test things for me. I don't want to worry about managing or training those people on how to use keys, and I want to revoke access easily.

I needed a basic form with credentials that posted a Note.

For this I can use a very simple workflow–

• A n8n Form node – Creates a form for users to enter the note they wish to post. Allows for the form to be protected by a username and password. This node is the workflow "trigger" so that the workflow runs each time the form is submitted.
• A Set node – Allows me to set some variables, in this case I set the relays that I intend to use. I typically add a Set node immediately following the trigger node, and put all the variables I need in this. It helps to make the workflows easier to update and maintain.
• A Nostr Write node (from Nostrobots) – Writes a Kind-1 note to the Nostr network. It accepts Nostr credentials, the output of the Form node, and the relays from the Set node, and posts the Note to those relays.

Once the workflow is built, you can test it with the testing form URL, and set it to "Active" to use the production form URL. That's it. You can now give posting access to anyone for any Npub. To revoke access, simply change the credentials or set to workflow to "Inactive".

It may also be the world's simplest Nostr client.

You can find the Nostr Form to Post a Note workflow here.

Push notifications on mentions and new notes

One of the things Nostr is not very good at is push notifications. Furthermore I have some unique itches to scratch. I want–

• To make sure I never miss a note addressed to any of my Npubs – For this I want a push notification any time any Nostr user mentions any of my Npubs,
• To make sure I always see all notes from key accounts – For this I need a push notification any time any of my Npubs post any Notes to the network,
• To get these notifications on all of my devices – Not just my phone where my Nostr regular client lives, but also on each of my laptops to suit wherever I am working that day.

I needed to build a Nostr push notifications solution.

To build this workflow I had to string a few ideas together–

• Triggering the node on a schedule – Nostrobots does not include a trigger node. As every workflow starts with a trigger we needed a different method. I elected to run the workflow on a schedule of every 10-minutes. Frequent enough to see Notes while they are hot, but infrequent enough to not burden public relays or get rate-limited,
• Storing a list of Npubs in a Nostr list – I needed a way to store the list of Npubs that trigger my notifications. I initially used an array defined in the workflow, this worked fine. Then I decided to try Nostr lists (NIP-51, kind 30000). By defining my list of Npubs as a list published to Nostr I can control my list from within a Nostr client (e.g. Listr.lol or Nostrudel.ninja). Not only does this "just work", but because it's based on Nostr lists automagically Amethyst client allows me to browse that list as a Feed, and everyone I add gets notified in their Mentions,
• Using specific relays – I needed to query the right relays, including my own HAVEN relay inbox for notes addressed to me, and wss://purplepag.es for Nostr profile metadata,
• Querying Nostr events (with Nostrobots) – I needed to make use of many different Nostr queries and use quite a wide range of what Nostrobots can do–
  • I read the EventID of my Kind 30000 list, to return the desired pubkeys,
  • For notifications on mentions, I read all Kind 1 notes that mention that pubkey,
  • For notifications on new notes, I read all Kind 1 notes published by that pubkey,
  • Where there are notes, I read the Kind 0 profile metadata event of that pubkey to get the displayName of the relevant Npub,
  • I transform the EventID into a Nevent to help clients find it.
• Using the Nostr URI – As I did with my NFC card article, I created a link with the nostr: URI prefix so that my phone's native client opens the link by default,
• Push notifications solution – I needed a push notifications solution. I found many with n8n integrations and chose to go with Pushover which supports all my devices, has a free trial, and is unfairly cheap with a $5-per-device perpetual license.

Once the workflow was built, lists published, and Pushover installed on my phone, I was fully set up with push notifications on Nostr. I have used these workflows for several weeks now and made various tweaks as I went. They are feeling robust and I'd welcome you to give them a go.

You can find the Nostr Push Notification If Mentioned here and If Posts a Note here.

In speaking with other Nostr users while I was building this, there are all kind of other needs for push notifications too – like on replies to a certain bookmarked note, or when a followed Npub starts streaming on zap.stream. These are all possible.

Use my workflows

I have open sourced all my workflows at my Github with MIT license and tried to write complete docs, so that you can import them into your n8n and configure them for your own use.

To import any of my workflows–

• Click on the workflow of your choice, e.g. "Nostr_Push_Notify_If_Mentioned.json",
• Click on the "raw" button to view the raw JSON, ex any Github page layout,
• Copy that URL,
• Enter that URL in the "import from URL" dialog mentioned above.

To configure them–

• Prerequisites, credentials, and variables are all stated,
• In general any variables required are entered into a Set Node that follows the trigger node,
• Pushover has some extra setup but is very straightforward and documented in the workflow.

What next?

Over my first four blogs I explored creating a good Nostr setup with Vanity Npub, Lightning Payments, Nostr Addresses at Your Domain, and Personal Nostr Relay.

Then in my latest two blogs I explored different types of interoperability with NFC cards and now n8n Workflow Automation.

Thinking ahead n8n can power any kind of interoperability between Nostr and any other legacy technology solution. On my mind as I write this:

• Further enhancements to posting and delegating solutions and forms (enhanced UI or different note kinds),
• Automated or scheduled posting (such as auto-liking everything Lyn Alden posts),
• Further enhancements to push notifications, on new and different types of events (such as notifying me when I get a new follower, on replies to certain posts, or when a user starts streaming),
• All kinds of bridges, such as bridging notes to and from Telegram, Slack, or Campfire. Or bridging RSS or other event feeds to Nostr,
• All kinds of other automation (such as BlackCoffee controlling a coffee machine),
• All kinds of AI Assistants and Agents,

In fact I have already released an open source workflow for an AI Assistant, and will share more about that in my next blog.

Please be sure to let me know if you think there's another Nostr topic you'd like to see me tackle.

GM Nostr.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Flowi.es

At the time I thought Workflowy had the ideal UI for everything. I wanted to implement my custom app maker on it, but ended up doing this: a platform for enhancing Workflowy with extra features:

• An email reminder based on dates input in items
• A website generator, similar to Websites For Trello, also based on Classless Templates

Also, I didn't remember this was also based on CouchDB and had some couchapp functionalities.

• https://flowi.es
• https://github.com/fiatjaf/flowies

@ 59cb0748:9602464b

Nostrでお世話になっている方も、お世話になってない方も、こんにちは！

タコ頭大吉です！

NIP-23を使った初めての投稿です。

今回は、私がここ数ヶ月中にデザインをした三種類のビタキセケースの紹介記事になります！！

ビタキセを買ったもののあまり自分の好みに合う外観や仕様のケースがなく、いくつかプロトタイプを作りそれなりに時間をかけて考えたケース達です。

これら３シリーズに関しては、FDMタイプの3Dプリンタの精度、耐久性、出力後の作業性を考慮して一つのパーツで完結することに拘って設計をしました。

一定以上の充填率でプリントをすればそれなりに丈夫なはずです。

また、基本的に放熱性と保護性を両立できるように設計をしたつもります。

それぞれのモデルについて簡単に紹介をさせていただきますので、よろしければ各リポジトリに付属のREADMEを読んでいただいて自作、フィードバックをいただけましたら幸いです。

それでは、簡単に各モデルの紹介をさせていたきます。

---

AirLiftFrame

最初に作ったモデルです！ 少し大きいのが難点ですが、分厚めのフレームをベースとし基盤周辺をあえて囲わない設計により、保護性と放熱を阻害しない事の両立を狙っています。

リポジトリへ

---

TwinAirLiftFrame

ビタキセを買い増ししたことにより、複数台をカッコよく運用したいという需要が自分の中に出てきたので、AirLiftFrameを2つくっつけたら良いのではと言うごくごく単純な発想でつくり始めたケースです。 しかし、ただ横並びにしただけでは廃熱が干渉するだけではなく、DCジャックやUSBポートへのアクセスが阻害されるという問題にすぐに気がつきました。 そこで、WebUI上でディスプレイの表示を上下反転出来ることに注目し、2台を上下逆向きに取り付ける事でそれらの問題を解決しました！

リポジトリへ

---

VoronoiShell

AirLiftFrameシリーズのサイズを小型化する事から始めたプロジョクトです。 縦横の寸法の削減だけではなく、厚みを薄くつくリたいという希望がありました。 所が単純に薄くすると、持った時に発熱する背面パーツに手が触れてしまったり、落下などでぶつかった際に背面パーツが破損する懸念がありました。 そこで、(当初は付けたくはなかった)背面保護用のグリルをデザインする必要が出てきました。 初めは多角形でしたがあまりにもダサく、調べている内にVoronoi柄という有機的なパターンに行き付き即採用しました。 結果、ビタキセを取り付けると柄が見えなくなるのが勿体無いぐらい個性的でスタイリッシュなデザインに仕上がりました。

リポジトリへ

---

いずれカスタム方法やインサートナットや増設ファンの選定方法等を紹介したいのですが、今回はNIP-23になれるという意図もあるので紹介に留めます！ また、他の関連OSハードウェアプロジェクトのケースもデザインできたらと思っております！

今後ともタコ頭をよろしくお願いいたします。

@ 21335073:a244b1ad

I want to see Nostr succeed. If you can think of a way I can help make that happen, I’m open to it. I’d like your suggestions.

My schedule’s shifting soon, and I could volunteer a few hours a week to a Nostr project. I won’t have more total time, but how I use it will change.

Why help? I care about freedom. Nostr’s one of the most powerful freedom tools I’ve seen in my lifetime. If I believe that, I should act on it.

I don’t care about money or sats. I’m not rich, I don’t have extra cash. That doesn’t drive me—freedom does. I’m volunteering, not asking for pay.

I’m not here for clout. I’ve had enough spotlight in my life; it doesn’t move me. If I wanted clout, I’d be on Twitter dropping basic takes. Clout’s easy. Freedom’s hard. I’d rather help anonymously. No speaking at events—small meetups are cool for the vibe, but big conferences? Not my thing. I’ll never hit a huge Bitcoin conference. It’s just not my scene.

That said, I could be convinced to step up if it’d really boost Nostr—as long as it’s legal and gets results.

In this space, I’d watch for social engineering. I watch out for it. I’m not here to make friends, just to help. No shade—you all seem great—but I’ve got a full life and awesome friends irl. I don’t need your crew or to be online cool. Connect anonymously if you want; I’d encourage it.

I’m sick of watching other social media alternatives grow while Nostr kinda stalls. I could trash-talk, but I’d rather do something useful.

Skills? I’m good at spotting social media problems and finding possible solutions. I won’t overhype myself—that’s weird—but if you’re responding, you probably see something in me. Perhaps you see something that I don’t see in myself.

If you need help now or later with Nostr projects, reach out. Nostr only—nothing else. Anonymous contact’s fine. Even just a suggestion on how I can pitch in, no project attached, works too. 💜

Creeps or harassment will get blocked or I’ll nuke my simplex code if it becomes a problem.

https://simplex.chat/contact#/?v=2-4&smp=smp%3A%2F%2FSkIkI6EPd2D63F4xFKfHk7I1UGZVNn6k1QWZ5rcyr6w%3D%40smp9.simplex.im%2FbI99B3KuYduH8jDr9ZwyhcSxm2UuR7j0%23%2F%3Fv%3D1-2%26dh%3DMCowBQYDK2VuAyEAS9C-zPzqW41PKySfPCEizcXb1QCus6AyDkTTjfyMIRM%253D%26srv%3Djssqzccmrcws6bhmn77vgmhfjmhwlyr3u7puw4erkyoosywgl67slqqd.onion

@ 84b0c46a:417782f5

• lumilumi The Nostr Web Client.

Lightweight modes are available, such as not displaying icon images, not loading images automatically, etc.

• nostr-share-component Demo

• Nostr Follow Organizer

Follow List ( kind3 ) organization tool.

• NAKE NIP-19, NIP-49 Encode/Decode Tool
• chrome extension
• firefox add-on
• nostviewstr

Addressable or Replaceable Event Editor ( いろんなリストエディター )

• luminostr

Addressable or Replaceable Event Recovery tool ( いろいろリカバリーツール )

• Nostr Bookmark Recovery Tool

Bookmark event ( kind:10003,30001,30003 ) recovery tool ( ぶくま復活させたいやつ )

• Profile Editor

プロフィールを編集するやつ - nostr-bookmark-viewer

Bookmark event ( kind:10003,30001,30003 ) Editor ( ぶっくまーくをみるやつ )

• Nostr Note Duplicater

Broadcast an event from relay to relay ( イベントをブロードキャストするやつ )

• もの画像サイト

• いろいろbotサイト

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Module Linker

A browser extension that reads source code on GitHub and tries to find links to imported dependencies so you can click on them and navigate through either GitHub or package repositories or base language documentation. Works for many languages at different levels of completeness.

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/module-linker
• https://module-linker.alhur.es/
• https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/addon/module-linker
• https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dglofghjinifeolcpjfjmfdnnbaanggn

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

Welcome to part 3 of the “What is Money?” series! So far we’ve covered the base concepts of money and money as a system in part 1, and the Canadian Dollar in part 2. Today we’re going to talk about a relatively new system of money, Bitcoin!

Let’s review a few key details about money and the Canadian Dollar (CAD). Money is a placeholder to make trading easier, so anything that can fulfill the 3 functions of money can do the job (store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account). During the Italian Renaissance the double-entry bookkeeping (or double-entry ledger) system was codified as a method of tracking transactions, and this system is still in use today for CAD and most other money systems. One of the features of using a ledger instead of physical money with intrinsic value (such as precious metals) is that it allows for fiat (money by decree) that isn’t backed by anything. The CAD is a fully fiat money with no reserve requirements. It’s also mostly digital, with only 7% of the total supply being cash and liquid deposits with the Bank of Canada.

Bitcoin was invented by Satoshi Nakamoto, a pseudonymous individual or group who no one knows the real identity of. They released the Bitcoin whitepaper (which can be read here: https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf) in October of 2008, and on January 3, 2009 they started the Bitcoin system. 2 years later they decided to disappear and were never heard from again. Others were involved in early development and maintenance, including Laszlo Hanyecz, who completed the first real-world purchase using Bitcoin. He paid 10,000 bitcoin for 2 pizzas on May 22, 2010, which is now unofficially celebrated as “Bitcoin Pizza Day”. There are several websites and pages dedicated to the story and tracking the current “value” of those pizzas; one can be found here: https://bitcoinpizzaindex.net

Fun history nuggets aside, Bitcoin is similar to CAD in that it uses the same double-entry ledger concept. The difference is that Bitcoin uses a single digital ledger across the entire network. Transactions are grouped into 10-minute blocks and chained together, which is where the popular term “blockchain” comes from. Another term you’ve probably heard, “mining”, is all of the computers dedicated to the task competing with each other in a combination math and guessing game for who gets to verify the authenticity and correctness of each block (the combined computational power from all of the competing computers is used, not just the winner), and the winner is rewarded with newly generated bitcoin and the transaction fees from the included transactions. This is what keeps the ledger secure and makes it practically impossible to fake, break, steal, or cheat on Bitcoin transactions. Last piece of technical background, I promise: If Bitcoin is just a ledger, how do you actually “hold” the money? You do so by holding something called a “private key”. This key is used to authorize new transactions (spending the money). Think of the private key as similar to a password, PIN, or secret code for a bank account. In Bitcoin, if you hold the keys, you hold the coins.

That was a lot of history and technical stuff; take a break, touch some grass, pet the dog, sip some coffee, and come back in a few minutes.

Since you have an understanding of how money systems and CAD works I won’t bother re-explaining it all for Bitcoin; I’ll instead hit some of the major differences between it and CAD (and most other fiat currencies). Bitcoin doesn’t have a central bank or any other central authority governing or controlling it. The ledger is the “single source of truth” and anyone with a valid private key and internet connection cannot be stopped from creating a new transaction. The ledger is also fully public; you can download a full copy and view it, or use a handy website. There are several; here’s the “Bitcoin Pizza” transaction on one of my favourite public sites, mempool.space: https://mempool.space/tx/a1075db55d416d3ca199f55b6084e2115b9345e16c5cf302fc80e9d5fbf5d48d

There’s also a hard limit to the number of Bitcoin that can exist, so there’s no inflation. 21 million bitcoin, which can be divided down into 2.1 quadrillion “satoshis”, or “sats”. Think of sats as similar to the CAD penny, the smallest unit of measurement.

Bitcoin is what I call a “push” system, which is opposite of CAD’s mostly “pull” system. When you do a debit, credit card, or cheque transaction, you’re authorizing the receiving bank to reach in and “pull” the money from your account. Credit cards especially rely on this; it’s how recurring subscriptions where you are charged automatically work. Central authorities also have the ability to pull from your accounts, such as banks for fees and the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA) for taxes (though the latter pinky-promise to only do this in emergency situations). With cash, you can’t authorize someone to physically reach into your pocket and take some of your money, and it's the same with Bitcoin. You have to “push” the money to the other person. This is one of the reasons Bitcoin has been referred to as “digital cash”.

Lastly, you may have heard some, including myself, talk about Bitcoin as a replacement for fiat currencies. How is it supposed to do that if we’re required by law to use CAD? My opinion is that we’ll most likely use both for several reasons, but let’s address CAD’s requirement of use. There are no Canadian laws that force the acceptance of CAD, including cash, for purchases. In Canada cash is “legal tender”, which is “the money approved in a country for paying debts.” (See the Bank of Canada page explaining this here: https://www.bankofcanada.ca/banknotes/about-legal-tender/) If there’s no debt being settled, there is no requirement to accept CAD in cash or digital form (i.e. debit or credit card). If there is debt (i.e. paying a bill for a product or service you already received) only cash (as legal tender) is required to be accepted, but payees are not required to use it. There is a bit of an exception to CAD’s non-requirement of use though; all “business” transactions (including barter and Bitcoin) are potentially taxable and therefore are required to be reported at Fair Market Value, denominated in CAD, to the CRA. See the CRA interpretation bulletin here: https://www.canada.ca/en/revenue-agency/services/forms-publications/publications/it490/archived-barter-transactions.html Taxes are required to be paid in CAD as well.

If you’d like to see how Bitcoin works in the real world, I’d be happy to show you. I’ll even gift you a few sats to practice with! You can find us at scalebright.ca.

@ 04c915da:3dfbecc9

Here’s a revised timeline of macro-level events from The Mandibles: A Family, 2029–2047 by Lionel Shriver, reimagined in a world where Bitcoin is adopted as a widely accepted form of money, altering the original narrative’s assumptions about currency collapse and economic control. In Shriver’s original story, the failure of Bitcoin is assumed amid the dominance of the bancor and the dollar’s collapse. Here, Bitcoin’s success reshapes the economic and societal trajectory, decentralizing power and challenging state-driven outcomes.

Part One: 2029–2032

• 2029 (Early Year)\ The United States faces economic strain as the dollar weakens against global shifts. However, Bitcoin, having gained traction emerges as a viable alternative. Unlike the original timeline, the bancor—a supranational currency backed by a coalition of nations—struggles to gain footing as Bitcoin’s decentralized adoption grows among individuals and businesses worldwide, undermining both the dollar and the bancor.

• 2029 (Mid-Year: The Great Renunciation)\ Treasury bonds lose value, and the government bans Bitcoin, labeling it a threat to sovereignty (mirroring the original bancor ban). However, a Bitcoin ban proves unenforceable—its decentralized nature thwarts confiscation efforts, unlike gold in the original story. Hyperinflation hits the dollar as the U.S. prints money, but Bitcoin’s fixed supply shields adopters from currency devaluation, creating a dual-economy split: dollar users suffer, while Bitcoin users thrive.

• 2029 (Late Year)\ Dollar-based inflation soars, emptying stores of goods priced in fiat currency. Meanwhile, Bitcoin transactions flourish in underground and online markets, stabilizing trade for those plugged into the bitcoin ecosystem. Traditional supply chains falter, but peer-to-peer Bitcoin networks enable local and international exchange, reducing scarcity for early adopters. The government’s gold confiscation fails to bolster the dollar, as Bitcoin’s rise renders gold less relevant.

• 2030–2031\ Crime spikes in dollar-dependent urban areas, but Bitcoin-friendly regions see less chaos, as digital wallets and smart contracts facilitate secure trade. The U.S. government doubles down on surveillance to crack down on bitcoin use. A cultural divide deepens: centralized authority weakens in Bitcoin-adopting communities, while dollar zones descend into lawlessness.

• 2032\ By this point, Bitcoin is de facto legal tender in parts of the U.S. and globally, especially in tech-savvy or libertarian-leaning regions. The federal government’s grip slips as tax collection in dollars plummets—Bitcoin’s traceability is low, and citizens evade fiat-based levies. Rural and urban Bitcoin hubs emerge, while the dollar economy remains fractured.

Time Jump: 2032–2047

• Over 15 years, Bitcoin solidifies as a global reserve currency, eroding centralized control. The U.S. government adapts, grudgingly integrating bitcoin into policy, though regional autonomy grows as Bitcoin empowers local economies.

Part Two: 2047

• 2047 (Early Year)\ The U.S. is a hybrid state: Bitcoin is legal tender alongside a diminished dollar. Taxes are lower, collected in BTC, reducing federal overreach. Bitcoin’s adoption has decentralized power nationwide. The bancor has faded, unable to compete with Bitcoin’s grassroots momentum.

• 2047 (Mid-Year)\ Travel and trade flow freely in Bitcoin zones, with no restrictive checkpoints. The dollar economy lingers in poorer areas, marked by decay, but Bitcoin’s dominance lifts overall prosperity, as its deflationary nature incentivizes saving and investment over consumption. Global supply chains rebound, powered by bitcoin enabled efficiency.

• 2047 (Late Year)\ The U.S. is a patchwork of semi-autonomous zones, united by Bitcoin’s universal acceptance rather than federal control. Resource scarcity persists due to past disruptions, but economic stability is higher than in Shriver’s original dystopia—Bitcoin’s success prevents the authoritarian slide, fostering a freer, if imperfect, society.

Key Differences

• Currency Dynamics: Bitcoin’s triumph prevents the bancor’s dominance and mitigates hyperinflation’s worst effects, offering a lifeline outside state control.
• Government Power: Centralized authority weakens as Bitcoin evades bans and taxation, shifting power to individuals and communities.
• Societal Outcome: Instead of a surveillance state, 2047 sees a decentralized, bitcoin driven world—less oppressive, though still stratified between Bitcoin haves and have-nots.

This reimagining assumes Bitcoin overcomes Shriver’s implied skepticism to become a robust, adopted currency by 2029, fundamentally altering the novel’s bleak trajectory.

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

If you haven’t had the experience of waking up in the morning and fearing going to work, you’ve probably heard at least one story of someone who has. Someone who was afraid of their boss, a coworker, an impending audit, or layoffs. These stories are centered around fear, but what about fear’s older, more mature cousin, respect? How are they related, and what are their roles in the workplace?

Fear? Having a role in the workplace? I thought fear was bad and to be avoided at all costs? Didn’t we leave fear at work behind in the 1950s along with day-drinking and open misogyny? Not entirely it seems, but the fear we’re talking about today is of a different kind, a healthy kind. For example, a primary school child would have a healthy fear of bears. What about respect? While the term might feel dated in our current hyper-equality society, it too has a healthy version. As our example child matures, their fear of bears will develop into respect for them. They’ll understand their destructive power, but also that they’ll generally only engage it in defence. For another example, think back to your relationship with your childhood friend’s parents. As a child in an unknown adult’s home with different rules and expectations there was an amount of fear involved, but as an adult you most likely have respect for the amount of shenanigans they put up with at the hands of your and your friends.

Fear, even the unhealthy kind, can sometimes be leveraged for good. Fear of being yelled at might motivate you to finish the last 10% of a project or emptying your inbox before the end of the workday. It is better matured into respect whenever possible, however. The trade-off of fear of verbal assault or firing isn’t worth it. It’d be much healthier to be motivated by respect. Respect for your coworkers (who might also be made late by your procrastinations), your boss (who may need to take responsibility for the delay), and customers or clients (imagine yourself in their shoes).

We’ve established that respect is good, and that fear is a sometimes-useful antecedent of it. And we can all now hear a thousand voices screaming, “but so-and-so doesn’t respect me!” or “but so-and-so doesn’t deserve respect!”. They may not be wrong, so let’s see what we can do to help promote respect. Ignoring the edge cases where some people are arrogant to the point of not respecting anyone, the most common cause I’ve witnessed isn’t a lack of respect, but a misdirection of it. Respect has a directional flow from one person to another, and ideally there are streams flowing in both directions. You respect your boss for their authority and responsibilities, and your boss respects you for your expertise and commitment. Misdirection of respect isn’t giving it where it isn’t deserved but flowing in the wrong direction. For example, a coworker is regularly late for meetings, and the meeting chair says, “Out of respect for Bill we’re going to wait for them to start the meeting.” What about their respect for everyone else’s time? Respect is flowing in the wrong direction. The same thing can happen when making decisions. “Mary has been with us the longest, so we’re going to defer to her preferences and keep the fax machine in the document transfer workflow even though it’s expensive and takes longer.” Sometimes it can even lead to putting the unqualified in positions they’re incapable of executing out of a misdirection of respect. Permission to speak is an extremely common misdirection as well; respect for someone’s “right to be heard” shouldn’t override their respect for everyone else’s time.

The solution to this chaotic storm surge of misdirected respect is simple, but difficult. Break the fourth wall and haven open discussions. Start with groups and work your way down to one-on-one as necessary. Meeting start times is an excellent place to begin as most will agree that starting on time (especially with the goal of finishing on time!) is a practical shared good. Permission to speak in meetings (especially public ones) will be a difficult tackle but is also highly relevant. If respect directionality feels too heavy to bring up at work at all, try practising at home or with friends first. Failing that, a therapist or chat AI might be options.

Want someone with a neutral or outside voice to talk about fear and respect in your workplace? You can find us at scalebright.ca.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Using Spacechains and Fedimint to solve scaling

What if instead of trying to create complicated "layer 2" setups involving noveau cryptographic techniques we just did the following:

• we take that Fedimint source code and remove the "mint" stuff, and just use their federation stuff secure coins with multisig;
• then we make a spacechain;
• and we make the federations issue multisig-btc tokens on it;
• and then we put some uniswap-like thing in there to allow these tokens to be exchanged freely.

Why?

The recent spike in fees caused by Ordinals and BRC-20 shitcoinery has shown that Lightning isn't a silver bullet. Channels are too fragile, it costs a lot to open a channel under a high fee environment, to run a routing node and so on.

People who want to keep using Lightning are instead flocking to the big Lightning custodial providers: WalletofSatoshi, ZEBEDEE, OpenNode and so on. We could leverage that trust people have in these companies (and individuals) operating shadow Lightning providers and turn each of these into a btc-token issuer. Each issue their own token, transactions flow freely. Each person can hold only assets from the issuers they trust more.

@ ec42c765:328c0600

この記事は前回の内容を把握している人向けに書いています（特にNostrエクステンション（NIP-07）導入）

前回：Nostrのカスタム絵文字の使い方

手順

1. 登録する画像を用意する
2. 画像をweb上にアップロードする
3. 絵文字セットに登録する

1. 登録する画像を用意する

以下のような方法で用意してください。

• 画像編集ソフト等を使って自分で作成する
• 絵文字作成サイトを使う（絵文字ジェネレーター、MEGAMOJI など）
• フリー画像を使う（いらすとや など）

データ量削減

Nostrでは画像をそのまま表示するクライアントが多いので、データ量が大きな画像をそのまま使うとモバイル通信時などに負担がかかります。

データ量を増やさないためにサイズやファイル形式を変更することをおすすめします。

以下は私のおすすめです。 * サイズ：正方形 128×128 ピクセル、長方形 任意の横幅×128 ピクセル * ファイル形式：webp形式（webp変換おすすめサイト toimg） * 単色、単純な画像の場合：png形式（webpにするとむしろサイズが大きくなる）

その他

• 背景透過画像
• ダークモード、ライトモード両方で見やすい色

がおすすめです。

2. 画像をweb上にアップロードする

よく分からなければ emojito からのアップロードで問題ないです。
普段使っている画像アップロード先があるならそれでも構いません。
気になる方はアップロード先を適宜選んでください。

既に投稿されたカスタム絵文字の画像に対して

• 削除も差し替えもできない → emojito など
• 削除できるが差し替えはできない → Gyazo、nostrcheck.meなど
• 削除も差し替えもできる → GitHub 、セルフホスティングなど

これらは既にNostr上に投稿されたカスタム絵文字の画像を後から変更できるかどうかを指します。
どの方法でも新しく使われるカスタム絵文字を変更することは可能です。
同一のカスタム絵文字セットに同一のショートコードで別の画像を登録する形で対応できます。

3. 絵文字セットに登録する

emojito から登録します。

右上のアイコン → + New emoji set から新規の絵文字セットを作成できます。

① 絵文字セット名を入力

基本的にカスタム絵文字はカスタム絵文字セットを作り、ひとまとまりにして登録します。

一度作った絵文字セットに後から絵文字を追加することもできます。

② 画像をアップロードまたは画像URLを入力

emojitoから画像をアップロードする場合、ファイル名に日本語などの2バイト文字が含まれているとアップロードがエラーになるようです。

その場合はファイル名を適当な英数字などに変更してください。

③ 絵文字のショートコードを入力

ショートコードは絵文字を呼び出す時に使用する場合があります。

他のカスタム絵文字と被っても問題ありませんが選択時に複数表示されて支障が出る可能性があります。

他と被りにくく長くなりすぎないショートコードが良いかもしれません。

ショートコードに使えるのは半角の英数字とアンダーバーのみです。

④ 追加

Add を押してもまだ作成完了にはなりません。

一度に絵文字を複数登録できます。

最後に右上の Save を押すと作成完了です。

画面が切り替わるので、右側の Options から Bookmark を選択するとそのカスタム絵文字セットを自分で使えるようになります。

既存の絵文字セットを編集するには Options から Edit を選択します。

以上です。

---

仕様

NIP-30 Custom Emoji

NIP-30 カスタム絵文字（和訳）

@ 2cb8ae56:84d30cba

ども、薄味のキャルピスでございます。
当記事は、「Nostr Advent Calendar 2024」7日目の記事です。
この記事を読んでいる人でいないとは思いますが、Nostrとはなんぞやとお思いの方は以下をご覧ください。

https://hello.nostrapp.me/

僕は「Nostrで過ごした2024年」というタイトルの通り、一年間を振り返ってみようと思います。

自己紹介

まず知らん人のために軽く自己紹介をします

「薄味のキャルピス」という名前で、色んな所にいるどこかの高校生です。 左利き、箸とベースとお盆は右手。

普段は学業の傍ら、画像を弄ったり作ったりしている上に、イヤホンを集めたりラジオにメッセージを送っています。

コーディングは出来ないテクノロジーまみれのガラクタ人間（→テックジャンカー）です

参加経緯とスタンス

なぜ参加したのかを思い出しながら書いていきます まず、どんな媒体でNostr（ノスター・ノストラ）の存在を知ったのかと言うと、ネットニュースです。

https://gigazine.net/news/20230425-nostr-intro/

こちらの記事で「そんなのあるんだ」と知り、4月1日ついにjoin!!!!

現時点での参加スタンスは「気楽に、素直に」という感じで参加しています

やりたいときにやりたいことをやるって言うリアルでは到底難しいことを、Nostrのなかでやっている気もします。

後述するNostrasia 2024の開催日「9月23日」を持って、Mastodon（マストドン）から乗り換え、上記のスタンスのもと、メインで精力的に活動しています。

Nostr活動年表

2024/04/01 Nostr Join!!!

2024/06/08 人生初オフ会「たくろうさんオフ」参加、LNアドレス追加。

2024/09/23 人生初小規模イベント「Nostrasia 2024」運営メンバーとして参加

2024/10/12 2度目のオフ会「デザイン談義」主催・参加

簡易的に各種紹介！

人生初オフ会「たくろうさんオフ」

渋三魚金でご飯→猿田彦珈琲でリラックス、Linux使ってると話を切り出す（唐突）→スクランブル交差点で解散。 ウォークマンの再生画面を送付した投稿を行う

人生初イベント「Nostrasia 2024」

あ、記事出したので見てください。

初版

第二版

2度目のオフ会「デザイン談義」

秋葉原の「創作空間caféアトリエ あきば店」で行われたオフ会。 ちょくちょく内容を上げているので、見ていってください。 https://nostter.app/npub19ju2u4sduewta4hxl22kke7se8yxm2puytzw47lr6y999pxnpjaqtjjfxj/2024/10/12 終了後、e☆イヤホン 秋葉原店にて、BTR13の在庫状況を確認し、在庫がないため予約しました。 （10月24日到着） 雑多すぎますが、一応こんな感じで大丈夫かな？

まとめ

僕がNostrに出会い、Nostrにのめり込むまでの話はいかがだったでしょうか。 Nostrに入る前、オフ会に参加するまでは「ネットにロクな人なんていない！」と思っていましたが、Nostrは違いましたね。 いい意味で期待はずれ、本当にいい人たちばかりで、とにかく自然体で接することができるSNSであると感じました。 そんな世界にぜひとも一回足を踏み入れてみてはいかがでしょうか？ それではまた、来年のアドベントカレンダー、及び開催されましたら「Nostrasia 2025」でお会いしましょう。

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Just malinvestiment

Traditionally the Austrian Theory of Business Cycles has been explained and reworked in many ways, but the most widely accepted version (or the closest to the Mises or Hayek views) view is that banks (or the central bank) cause the general interest rate to decline by creation of new money and that prompts entrepreneurs to invest in projects of longer duration. This can be confusing because sometimes entrepreneurs embark in very short-time projects during one of these bubbles and still contribute to the overall cycle.

The solution is to think about the "longer term" problem is to think of the entire economy going long-term, not individual entrepreneurs. So if one entrepreneur makes an investiment in a thing that looks simple he may actually, knowingly or not, be inserting himself in a bigger machine that is actually involved in producing longer-term things. Incidentally this thinking also solves the biggest criticism of the Austrian Business Cycle Theory: that of the rational expectations people who say: "oh but can't the entrepreneurs know that the interest rate is artificially low and decide to not make long-term investiments?" ("and if they don't know they should lose money and be replaced like in a normal economy flow blablabla?"). Well, the answer is that they are not really relying on the interest rate, they are only looking for profit opportunities, and this is the key to another confusion that has always followed my thinkings about this topic.

If a guy opens a bar in an area of a town where many new buildings are being built during a "housing bubble" he may not know, but he is inserting himself right into the eye of that business cycle. He expects all these building projects to continue, and all the people involved in that to be getting paid more and be able to spend more at his bar and so on. That is a bet that may or may not end up paying.

Now what does that bar investiment has to do with the interest rate? Nothing. It is just a guy who saw a business opportunity in a place where hungry people with money had no bar to buy things in, so he opened a bar. Additionally the guy has made some calculations about all the ending, starting and future building projects in the area, and then the people that would live or work in that area afterwards (after all the buildings were being built with the expectation of being used) and so on, there is no interest rate calculations involved. And yet that may be a malinvestiment because some building projects will end up being canceled and the expected usage of the finished ones will turn out to be smaller than predicted.

This bubble may have been caused by a decline in interest rates that prompted some people to start buying houses that they wouldn't otherwise, but this is just a small detail. The bubble can only be kept going by a constant influx of new money into the economy, but the focus on the interest rate is wrong. If new money is printed and used by the government to buy ships then there will be a boom and a bubble in the ship market, and that involves all the parts of production process of ships and also bars that will be opened near areas of the town where ships are built and new people are being hired with higher salaries to do things that will eventually contribute to the production of ships that will then be sold to the government.

It's not interest rates or the length of the production process that matters, it's just printed money and malinvestiment.

@ 9bcc5462:eb501d90

Every generation loves to learn. However, our public schooling system has gone as far as it can take us. The abundance of easily accessible information on the internet, coupled with emerging tech like AI, decentralized protocols and bitcoin, means this is our time to innovate our learning infrastructure. A complete overhaul is due along with the development of a pilot program to test new and unconventional models.

Let’s carve a path towards innovation by sparking discussion around this topic. Hence, this blueprint. It is a gauntlet for any person who genuinely wants to become a stakeholder for our country’s future. Entry points are:

• Builders—Startups, developers and investors who will fund and create infrastructure.
• Practitioners—Educators and researchers who will test models.
• Supporters—Parents, donors and community members who want to contribute.

Where Do We Begin?

Let’s think about crafting the main components of a new pilot model. Below are suggested areas of focus:

• DEFINITION
• APPROACH
• PHILOSOPHY
• CULTURE
• PHYSICAL DESIGN
• OPERATIONAL ORGANIZATION
• ACCOUNTABILITY METHODS
• RISKS & CHALLENGES
• STYLE
• STAKEHOLDERS

How It Works

After researching your pedagogical ideas for current and future generations of scholars, it’s time to share your insights. Contribute  your viewpoint by structuring a blueprint—one page per section—in the following sequence:

• Definition of your modern learning model with its key principles.
• Description of the core learning approach.
• Philosophy distilled into central concepts that will orient stakeholders.
• Culture your modern learning model aspires to live by.
• Potential challenges, risks and drawbacks.
• Design of physical spaces and rationale.
• Operational framework detailing adult and child learning organization.
• Accountability methods to ensure skill growth and competency.
• Style development and name of your model.
• Skin in the game, sign your model with your first and last name (unite stakeholders).

Perhaps if enough stakeholders come together, we can begin to actualize a more effective and updated way of learning. This is a challenge meant to separate those willing to engage in discourse, planning and laying foundations from those content to complain from the sidelines.

Why Now and Where Does the Money Come From?

After being a public educator for fifteen years, I learned you will not change the system, the system will change you. It’s time to design and build above and apart from the current model. 2025 is when courageous people step up to the plate and discuss our learning infrastructure. Whether it’s contributing out of the box thinking, modernizing curriculum, investing in startups or creating your own venture; there is no greater time than now. And no greater place than in the USA!

(By extension, we also create the opportunity to influence our global allies including our neighbors to the North and South.)

“But how!?” Learning Producers is figuring it out by asking not, “how?” but “who?” Who will unite together to develop our learning infrastructure? If you decide you want to participate and join our efforts, share your blueprint as well. For all stakeholders, this is an investment in an untapped market of a new learning economy.

If not, you’re not alone. Some consider this just rhetoric, idealism, or wishful thinking. Additionally, it is unclear how such actions can be profitable or how such infrastructure building will be funded. Money talks. Bullshit walks, right? In that case, let’s talk, and let’s fine tune our BS detectors. Onward, with this call to action:

• Share your own blueprint online or reach out to Learning Producers, Inc. (Learningproducers.com).
• Conduct research on an ideal location and team to lay foundations on a pilot program at small scale.
• Engage in dialogue with investors interested in developing learning infrastructure for their own children and families.
• Secure stakeholders to develop and test a real world pilot model (real location, real agreements, real timeline, real people).
• Sponsor or donate resources to counter concerns over funding.

Now, we leave you with our blueprint:

PEDAGOGICAL WABI-SABI

We hope you enjoy it.

Sincerely,

Israel Hernandez

Founder of Learning Producers

**[Read or download full blueprint here: https://www.learningproducers.com/blog/pedagogical-wabi-sabiblueprint-for-developing-learning-infrastructure ]

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

In part 1 of this series (Part 1 - What is Money?) we overviewed the history of money and as a global concept. Now that we have a base understanding of what money is we can get into detail about the Canadian Dollar. Why the Canadian Dollar specifically? One of the inspirations for this series was realizing how much the pervasiveness of American media has affected the average Canadian’s understanding of how our money works. How many of you can quote what is printed on US bills? Do you know what is printed on Canadian bills? What about what the Canadian Dollar is backed by, and who’s in charge of it? To preview, it’s not gold, and it’s not the Federal Reserve.

Lets do some history to give us some background on the Canadian Dollar (CAD) as we know it today. In 1858 the Province of Canada introduced the Canadian Dollar as a hopeful replacement for the mix of British, American, Spanish, and private bank credit notes in use. In 1867 Canada was formed as a nation, and the next year the Government of Canada issued Dominion credit notes as currency. These Dominion notes were required to be backed by a minimum of 20% gold reserves. This is called a “fractional reserve” system, or fractional reserve banking. Reserve requirements for private bank notes and Dominion notes changed over the years leading up to 1935 when the Bank of Canada (BoC) was formed and became to sole issuer of currency in Canada. 10 years later gold reserve requirements were removed and the Dollar became a fully fiat currency (remember this term from the previous article?).

The Bank of Canada is Canada’s “central bank”. If you check out the About Us page on their website (https://www.bankofcanada.ca/about/) you’ll see they have a broad range of roles and responsibilities, but the main one we’re focused on is that they manage the Canadian Dollar as a system of money, including creating and destroying Dollars as they deem necessary. (This is similar to the American Federal Reserve, but a key difference is that the BoC is a crown corporation, while the Federal Reserve is owned by private banks.) The creation and destruction of Dollars is a complex process, but it’s mostly done through borrowing. The government indirectly borrows money from the BoC (and sometimes directly from commercial banks), and everyone else borrows from banks. This money is then created by the BoC and banks, and when the principal (debt exclusive of interest) is paid back, its destroyed.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention and define “inflation”, “monetary expansion”, and the “Quantity Theory of Money”. The BoC defines inflation as “…a persistent rise in the average level of prices over time.” They have an excellent explainer on their website here (https://www.bankofcanada.ca/2020/08/understanding-inflation/); to summarize, the BoC and government use the Consumer Price Index (CPI) to keep track of this. “Monetary expansion” is when money is created and kept in circulation. The “Quantity Theory of Money” states that when new money is created it becomes less valuable, which means prices increase, AKA inflation. With this in mind the BoC targets a 2% inflation rate when making decisions about creating and destroying Dollars (through the systems of borrowing). Whether they’re successful or not is the subject of an article all on its own and much speculation.

I should also mention an outlier in the Canadian financial system; Credit Unions. These are provincial banks that don’t have a direct relationship with the BoC. They’re generally much smaller than the national banks and offer fewer services, but many feel they offer a more personal service. And one credit union in particular is an outlier among outliers; Bow Valley Credit Union in Alberta. They’ve embarked on mission to stockpile precious metals (mostly gold) as a form of guarantee for customer deposits. They still practice fractional reserve banking, but this is an improvement over zero reserve banking.

You might be imagining stacks of Dollar notes being passed around all these institutions, but most of the money only exists in ledgers (remember this from part 1?). For comparison, there is currently about $250B in the M0 supply (liquid deposits at the BoC and cash), and the rest totals about $3500B, or $3.5T. That’s about 7% as “real” money that could be used to buy groceries or for payroll. To move this invisible money around the government created Payments Canada, a non-profit that operates most of the inter-institution transfer systems. (They have other responsibilities as well.) Lynx and the Automated Clearing Settlement System (ACSS) are currently in use, and Real-Time Rail (RTR) is coming soon to augment them.

On the retail side, we have the Interac network and credit card networks. The Interac Corporation (a for-profit founded and primarily owned by major national banks) operates the Interac network, which is the primary debit card network in Canada, as well as Interac e-Transfer for direct electronic payments. Visa and Mastercard are the primary credit card networks, but they simply move payment information between banks and Payment Services Providers (PSPs). PSPs are responsible for the actual payment settlements. You’ve probably heard of some of the major ones; Moneris, Chase, Square, and PayPal to name a few. If that sounds complicated, that’s because it is. Let’s walk through an example credit card payment at a physical store to see how it works. The customer inserts, taps, or swipes their card at the payment terminal, typically managed by a Point of Sale (POS) provider. The terminal sends the information to the PSP, who sends the information through the credit card network to the issuing bank. If the transaction is approved, it’s logged for transfer in a batch later, and the approval makes it way back through the credit card network, PSP, terminal, and POS.

Wipe the sweat from your brow and take a sip of coffee; that was a lot! The important part to remember is that all of this complexity serves to move numbers between accounts in ledgers. The government (through the BoC) controls the money supply (the primary driver of inflation), and the banks and networks move the ledger numbers between individuals, companies, and each other. About 7% is liquid, and 0% is backed by hard assets such as gold.

In part 3 we’ll cover Bitcoin, its intention to replace fiat currencies, and its current state in Canada.

@ 94a6a78a:0ddf320e

Nostr is a revolutionary protocol that enables decentralized, censorship-resistant communication. Unlike traditional social networks controlled by corporations, Nostr operates without central servers or gatekeepers. This openness makes it incredibly powerful—but also means its success depends entirely on users, developers, and relay operators.

If you believe in free speech, decentralization, and an open internet, there are many ways to support and strengthen the Nostr ecosystem. Whether you're a casual user, a developer, or someone looking to contribute financially, every effort helps build a more robust network.

Here’s how you can get involved and make a difference.

---

1️⃣ Use Nostr Daily

The simplest and most effective way to contribute to Nostr is by using it regularly. The more active users, the stronger and more valuable the network becomes.

✅ Post, comment, and zap (send micro-payments via Bitcoin’s Lightning Network) to keep conversations flowing.\ ✅ Engage with new users and help them understand how Nostr works.\ ✅ Try different Nostr clients like Damus, Amethyst, Snort, or Primal and provide feedback to improve the experience.

Your activity keeps the network alive and helps encourage more developers and relay operators to invest in the ecosystem.

---

2️⃣ Run Your Own Nostr Relay

Relays are the backbone of Nostr, responsible for distributing messages across the network. The more independent relays exist, the stronger and more censorship-resistant Nostr becomes.

✅ Set up your own relay to help decentralize the network further.\ ✅ Experiment with relay configurations and different performance optimizations.\ ✅ Offer public or private relay services to users looking for high-quality infrastructure.

If you're not technical, you can still support relay operators by subscribing to a paid relay or donating to open-source relay projects.

---

3️⃣ Support Paid Relays & Infrastructure

Free relays have helped Nostr grow, but they struggle with spam, slow speeds, and sustainability issues. Paid relays help fund better infrastructure, faster message delivery, and a more reliable experience.

✅ Subscribe to a paid relay to help keep it running.\ ✅ Use premium services like media hosting (e.g., Azzamo Blossom) to decentralize content storage.\ ✅ Donate to relay operators who invest in long-term infrastructure.

By funding Nostr’s decentralized backbone, you help ensure its longevity and reliability.

---

4️⃣ Zap Developers, Creators & Builders

Many people contribute to Nostr without direct financial compensation—developers who build clients, relay operators, educators, and content creators. You can support them with zaps! ⚡

✅ Find developers working on Nostr projects and send them a zap.\ ✅ Support content creators and educators who spread awareness about Nostr.\ ✅ Encourage builders by donating to open-source projects.

Micro-payments via the Lightning Network make it easy to directly support the people who make Nostr better.

---

5️⃣ Develop New Nostr Apps & Tools

If you're a developer, you can build on Nostr’s open protocol to create new apps, bots, or tools. Nostr is permissionless, meaning anyone can develop for it.

✅ Create new Nostr clients with unique features and user experiences.\ ✅ Build bots or automation tools that improve engagement and usability.\ ✅ Experiment with decentralized identity, authentication, and encryption to make Nostr even stronger.

With no corporate gatekeepers, your projects can help shape the future of decentralized social media.

---

6️⃣ Promote & Educate Others About Nostr

Adoption grows when more people understand and use Nostr. You can help by spreading awareness and creating educational content.

✅ Write blogs, guides, and tutorials explaining how to use Nostr.\ ✅ Make videos or social media posts introducing new users to the protocol.\ ✅ Host discussions, Twitter Spaces, or workshops to onboard more people.

The more people understand and trust Nostr, the stronger the ecosystem becomes.

---

7️⃣ Support Open-Source Nostr Projects

Many Nostr tools and clients are built by volunteers, and open-source projects thrive on community support.

✅ Contribute code to existing Nostr projects on GitHub.\ ✅ Report bugs and suggest features to improve Nostr clients.\ ✅ Donate to developers who keep Nostr free and open for everyone.

If you're not a developer, you can still help with testing, translations, and documentation to make projects more accessible.

---

🚀 Every Contribution Strengthens Nostr

Whether you:

✔️ Post and engage daily\ ✔️ Zap creators and developers\ ✔️ Run or support relays\ ✔️ Build new apps and tools\ ✔️ Educate and onboard new users

Every action helps make Nostr more resilient, decentralized, and unstoppable.

Nostr isn’t just another social network—it’s a movement toward a free and open internet. If you believe in digital freedom, privacy, and decentralization, now is the time to get involved.

@ ec42c765:328c0600

てすと

nostr:nevent1qqst3uqlls4yr9vys4dza2sgjle3ly37trck7jgdmtr23uuz52usjrqqqnjgr

nostr:nevent1qqsdvchy5d27zt3z05rr3q6vvmzgslslxwu0p4dfkvxwhmvxldn9djguvagp2

@ ec42c765:328c0600

Nostr Advent Calendar 2024 の 12日目の記事です。

昨日の 12/11 は きりの さんの 2024年のNostrリレー運営を振り返る でした。

nostr-zap-view 作った

リポジトリ: https://github.com/Lokuyow/nostr-zap-view/
動作確認ページ: https://lokuyow.github.io/nostr-zap-view/

それ何？

特定の誰かや何かに宛てたZap（投げ銭）を一覧できるやつ
を
自分のWebサイトに設置できるやつ

---

自分のサイトに設置した例 * SNSリンク集ページ（最下部）: https://lokuyow.github.io/
おいくらサッツ（Zap一覧ボタン）: https://osats.money/
今日からビットコ（最下部）: https://lokuyow.github.io/btc-dca-simulator/

なんで作ったの？

私の去年のアドベントカレンダー
【Nostr】Webサイトにビットコインの投げ銭ボタンを設置しよう【Zap】
https://spotlight.soy/detail?article_id=ucd7cbrql/
が前提になってるけど長いので要約すると * ZapするやつはあるけどZap見るやつがないので欲しい * ZapをNostr（の典型的なkind:1クライアント）内だけに留めるのはもったいない * Webサイトの広告うざいからZap（的な何か）で置き換わって欲しい

お前だれ？

非エンジニア、非プログラマー
AIにコード出させてるだけ人

作った感想

できた

作った感想2

完成してから気付いた本当に作りたかったもの
こういうところにそのままZapを表示できる感じにしたい
（ここまでちゃんとした商業ブログでなく）個人のブログやHPの端っこに「Sponsored by」欄があって名前が表示される感じ
もうZapっていう文字もビットコインっていう文字もNostrも出さなくていいし説明もしなくていいのでは感がある
イメージはWebサイトを対象にしたニコニ広告 + スーパーチャット + 祭りとか神社の奉納者一覧

---

で思ったのは
個人からの投げ銭なら推し活的なものにしかならないけど
企業がNostrにアカウントを作ってサイトに投げ銭をしたら企業の広告になるんでは！？
~~企業がNostrにアカウントを！？デリヘルしか見たことない！~~

今後

思いつき、予定は未定
* ボタン→ダイアログ形式でなくバナー、Embed形式にしてページアクセスですぐ見れるようにする * 多分リレーに負荷がかかるのでなんかする * Zapの文字は出さず「Sponsored by」等にする * 単純な最新順でなくする * 少額Zapをトリミング * 一定期間（一か月など）ごとで金額順にソート * 多分リレーに負荷がかかるのでなんかする * 今は投稿宛てのZapをWebサイト宛てのZapと勝手に言い張ってるだけなのでちゃんとWebサイト宛てのZapにする * NIPの提案が必要 * ウォレットの準拠も必要 * リレー（wss://~）宛てのZapもできてほしい

将来

インターネットのすべてに投げ銭をさせろ

---

おわり

明日は mono さんの Open Sats 申請編 です！！

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

Minimum wage has been a hot topic as far back as I can remember. If you’re an employer it can feel like government needlessly meddling in the free market, while for employees it feels like its never high enough to make a difference. This is especially true where oversaturated labour markets are combined with high costs of living (HCOL) (which is pretty much everywhere at this point). Workers may need 2 or even 3 minimum wage jobs just to cover food, shelter, and transport in these areas, and would probably love to see minimum wage lifted. Employers in less-dense areas are faced with the opposite problem; even if they advertise pay “above minimum wage”, acquiring and keeping entry-level staff in HCOL areas is a constant battle. In this case, my recommendation is to localize your minimum wage.

In Canada most enforceable minimum wages are set by the provinces. Federal minimums apply to federal government employees (and some federally regulated industries). The problem with this is the sometimes broad disparities in cost of living (COL) between municipalities, especially between urban and rural. I’ve seen rent differences from 50% to 100% for comparable apartments. Applying the same minimum wage isn’t going to have the effect it’s meant to. If your staff can’t afford rent, they’re going to constantly be searching for something better, leading to high turnover. They’ll be forced into mercenary behaviours (see my previous post on “True Believers & Mercenaries”). Official minimum wages also lag behind inflation, but that’s a whole separate discussion (see my “What is Money?” series, starting with “Part 1 - What is Money?). On the flip-side, having a localized minimum wage allows your employees to stay settled where they are and gives them the freedom to be True Believers. You can work it directly into your job postings too; advertising wages that are based on local COL will have your inbox flooded with applications, allowing you to choose from the best instead of having to settle for the desperate. Let’s get into how to go about localizing your minimum wage.

First, look at a map and ponder how far most would be willing to commute to your workplace. Draw a rough circle with that as the radius. Everywhere inside this circle is fair game for everything to follow. Next, find some low-rent but livable apartments inside the circle and look up their rates. This will be your rent figure.

Transport is next. We’re going to use fuel cost as a “close enough” placeholder as actual costs will vary greatly between individuals. We’re also going to pick a “close enough” fuel efficiency for the same reason. I’ve chosen 8.5L/100KM, but you can adjust this. For example, full-size pickups may be more popular among your staff so that number may need to go up. Look up the average fuel prices for the last few months at retail stations within the circle, and the average working days per month for your staff. Now plug all of these numbers into the following formula and calculate. This will give you the monthly fuel cost: (fuel price x 8.5 x (circle radius KM x 2) / 100) x working days

Lastly, groceries. Like transport, we’re aiming for a “close enough” placeholder. You can substitute any items and volumes you like, but these are my recommendation to get an average monthly cost for an average minimum wage worker plus 1 dependant. Go to a generic grocery store within the circle and get the regular (non-sale) prices of the following: 3 x 3lb/1.36kg apples (averaged or middle price), 5 x single Long English cucumber, 1 x 10lb bag of potatoes, 2 x 4L 2% milk, 4 x 1 dozen large eggs, 2 x 600g block of cheese (average or middle price), 6 x loaf of brown or whole grain bakery bread (average or middle price), 5 x 1lb/454g lean ground beef, 1 x 4kg box frozen chicken breasts, and 1 x 3.5lb/1.6kg bag of jasmine rice.

Now that you have totals for the expenses, put those numbers into the following formula. This will give you total monthly living expenses: ((rent + groceries) / 0.45) + fuel Put that total into the following formula for the monthly paycheque total, pre-deductions. Insert current federal and provincial income tax rates for your jurisdiction: expenses / (1 - (provincial tax rate as decimal + federal tax rate as decimal + 0.05) With this final total you can divide by monthly working hours for an hourly wage, or multiply by 12 for an annual salary. I’ll provide an example of all of this at the bottom of the article.

After crunching these numbers you may have concluded that paying a localized minimum wage would eat into your profits. This may be the case initially, but lowering turnover rates and increasing the quality of your hires will save you money long-term. However, if it raises costs so high that the business would become unprofitable, you may need to consider that the business isn’t viable. Being dependant on employees willing to work for below the cost of living in your area will eventually end the business regardless, and I would argue is immoral.

Want help localizing your minimum wage? You can find us at scalebright.ca.

Sample localized minimum wage calculation: Rent: $1,200 Fuel cost: ((1.40 x 8.5 x (9.4 x 2) / 100) x 20 = $44.75 Groceries: $229.46 Apples: 23.97 Cucumbers: 14.95 Potatoes: 8.99 Milk: 11.90 Eggs: 17.40 Cheese: 20.58 Bread: 23.94 Ground beef: 42.45 Chicken breasts: 49.99 Rice: 15.29 Total expenses: ((1200 + 229.46) / 0.45) + 44.75 = $3,221.33 Total monthly paycheque: 3221.33 / (1 - (0.10 + 0.15 + 0.05) = $4,601.90 Hourly: 4601.90 / 160 = $28.76 Annual salary: 4601.90 x 12 = $55,222.80

@ f0c7506b:9ead75b8

Abbas Kiarostami

• Bazı şeyleri yapmak, söylemekten daha kolaydır.

• Bütün güzel şeyleri bize toprak verir. Bütün güzel şeyler toprağa geri döner.

• Eğer mevsimlere bakarsanız her mevsim meyve getirir. Yazın meyve vardır, sonbaharda da. Kış farklı meyveler getirir, ilkbahar da. Hiçbir anne çocukları için bu kadar çok çeşit meyveyle buzdolabını dolduramaz.

• Kendimi bu hayattan kurtarmaya karar verdim. Ne için mi? Bu anlamanıza yardım etmeyecektir ve bunun hakkında sizinle konuşamam; anlayamazsınız. Anlamayacağınız için değil; çünkü benim hissettiklerimi hissedemezsiniz. Duygularımı anlayıp paylaşabilirsiniz, bana merhamet gösterebilirsiniz; ama acımı hissedebilir misiniz? Hayır. Acı çekersiniz ve ben de çekerim. Sizi anlarım. Acımı anlayabilirsiniz; ama onu hissedemezsiniz.

• İnsanın devam edemeyeceği bir an gelir.

• Birisine yardım etmek istediğiniz zaman bunu uygun biçimde yapmalısınız, bütün kalbinizle. Bu daha iyidir. Daha adil ve daha makul.

• İntiharın en büyük günahlardan birisi olduğunu biliyorum. Fakat mutsuz olmak da büyük bir günah. Mutsuzken başka insanları incitirsiniz. Bu da bir günah değil mi? Başkalarını incittiğinizde bu bir günah değil midir? Aileni incitiyorsun, arkadaşlarını, kendini incitiyorsun. Bu bir günah değil mi? Size yakın olan insanları incitiyorsanız bu da büyük bir günahtır.

• Yardım, mutlaka karşılığı ödenmesi gereken bir şey değildir.

• Size başımdan geçen bir olayı anlatacağım: henüz yeni evlenmiştim. Belaların her türlüsü bizi buldu. Öylesine bıkkındım ki her şeye son vermeye karar verdim. Bir sabah şafak sökmeden önce arabama bir ip koydum. Kendimi öldürmeyi kafama koydum. Yola koyuldum. Dut ağaçlarıyla dolu bir bahçeye vardım. Orada durdum. Hava henüz karanlıktı. İpi bir ağacın dalı üzerine attım; ama tutturamadım. Bir iki kere denedim ama kâr etmedi. Ardından ağaca tırmandım ve ipi sımsıkı düğümledim. Sonra elimin altında yumuşak bir şey hissettim: Dutlar. Lezzetli, tatlı dutlar. Birini yedim. taze ve suluydu. Ardından bir ikincisini ve üçüncüsünü. Birdenbire güneşin dağların zirvesinden doğduğunun farkına vardım. O ne güneşti, ne manzaraydı, ne yeşillikti ama! Birdenbire okula giden çocukların seslerini duydum. Bana bakmak için durdular. "Ağacı sallar mısın?" diye bana sordular. Dutlar düştü ve yediler. Kendimi mutlu hissettim. Ardından alıp eve götürmek için biraz dut topladım. Bizim hanım hâlâ uyuyordu. Uyandığı zaman dutları güzelce yedi. Ve hoşuna gitti. Kendimi öldürmek için ayrılmıştım ve dutlarla geri döndüm. Bir dut hayatımı kurtarmıştı.

• Bir türk, doktoru görmeye gider. Ve ona der ki: "Doktor bey, vücuduma parmağımla dokunduğumda acıyor, başıma dokunsam acıyor, bacaklarıma dokunsam acıyor, karnıma, elime dokunsam acıyor." doktor onu muayene eder ve sonra ona der ki: "vücudun sağlam; ama parmağın kırık!"

• Hayat dümdüz ilerleyen bir tren gibidir; rayların sonuna geldiğinde son durağa ulaşır. Ve ölüm son durakta bekler. Elbette, ölüm bir çözümdür; fakat ilk olarak değil. Genç yaşta hiç değil.

• Dünya göründüğü gibi değildir. Bakış açınızı değiştirmelisiniz ki dünya değişsin. İyimser olun. Her şeye olumlu tarafından bakın.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

hledger-web

A Haskell app that uses Miso and hledger's Haskell libraries plus ghcjs to be compiled to a web page, and then adds optional remoteStorage so you can store your ledger data somewhere else.

This was my introduction to Haskell and also built at a time I thought remoteStorage was a good idea that solved many problems, and that it could use some help in the form of just yet another somewhat-useless-but-cool project using it that could be added to their wiki.

• https://hledger.alhur.es/
• https://github.com/fiatjaf/hledger-web

See also

• My stupid introduction to Haskell
• LessPass remoteStorage
• TiddlyWiki remoteStorage

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

“What is money?” sounds like a bit of a silly question. You’d probably hold up some cash or maybe flash your debit card. But I challenge you with this: imagine a 5-year-old asking you this question. How would you answer? If you showed them a $20 bill, they might respond with, “I know that’s a money, but what is it?” If you manage to explain that the bill is worth $20, they’re next question is going to be, “how many is your card?” How would you answer that? At some point you’d probably end up trying to distract them with something else while you worked to ignore the dread feeling that you should have those answers, but don’t. Never fear, for we will attempt to explain it in such a way that you’ll have an answer for 5, 15, 50, or 95-year-olds by the time we’re done this 4-part series!

Let’s start with an overview of the history of money. I highly recommend further reading on each of these; we’re going to skim most of them today. In the beginning, there was simple barter. If we each had something the other wanted, we could trade. But if the scale of what we want to trade is lopsided, say, chickens for a cow, or cows for a house, how do you make the trade work? Or what if you wanted to save up for a larger purchase? The answer is a placeholder; something that represents value in trade. An early example of this is the rai stones in Micronesia, which are essentially carved rocks. These worked well for store of value and medium of exchange, but not so much for unit of account. Precious metal coins arose later, with the most common being gold, silver, copper, and bronze. These worked well for all three of the major elements.

Store of value, medium of exchange, and unit of account are the three major elements of any system of money. Store of value means it holds its value well over time. If you put a gold coin in a box in your house and retrieve it 10 years later, it’s still a gold coin and should be in the same physical condition as it was when stored. Medium of exchange means it’s widely accepted for trade. This one is a bit trickier, but if you’re the Roman Empire you can simply make everyone accept denarius. Unit of account means units should hold the same value everywhere they’re used. This is similarly tricky, but if you’re the Dutch East India Company you can simply make VOC-stamped coins global denominations.

Renaissance-era Italy is where modern banking was born. A key concept invented during this time was the double-entry ledger, or double-entry bookkeeping system. In short, every transaction is recorded, and every transaction has two entries: one with an amount leaving an account, and one with the same amount going into a different account. At the end of every block of time all accounts will have an aggregate balance of 0, with individual accounts either having a credit or debit. This system is still in use today, as well as the broad use of credit notes in place of coins or direct trade. Credit notes could be written against an account and given in trade, and later the receiver could take the note to the bank, who would then record the transaction as complete. If this sounds familiar, that’s because modern cheques are the same thing.

Modern money systems take these concepts a step further. Banks now maintain a whole network of double-entry ledgers and in most countries banks are no longer required to hold reserves matching their credit notes issued. Credit notes are also the total physical currency, also known as a fiat currency, or currency by authority or decree. This essentially means fiat money has no intrinsic value other than the promise of the issuing authority to treat it as valid and the willingness of others to accept it in trade. For an example of “willingness to accept in trade”, many retail stores in Canada will accept American dollars even though they’re not required to.

If you’re now thinking, “thanks for the history lesson, but what does this mean to me and the payment terminal in my store?”, the answer will come 2 weeks from now when we cover the Canadian dollar. In the meantime if you want to learn a bit more about the systems our modern money is based on, read up on the Roman Empire and their currency, as well as that of the Dutch East India Company. If you really want to dive deep, Renaissance Italy’s banking systems are also fascinating and a little closer to us on the timeline.

@ e3ba5e1a:5e433365

I got into a friendly discussion on X regarding health insurance. The specific question was how to deal with health insurance companies (presumably unfairly) denying claims? My answer, as usual: get government out of it!

The US healthcare system is essentially the worst of both worlds:

• Unlike full single payer, individuals incur high costs
• Unlike a true free market, regulation causes increases in costs and decreases competition among insurers

I'm firmly on the side of moving towards the free market. (And I say that as someone living under a single payer system now.) Here's what I would do:

• Get rid of tax incentives that make health insurance tied to your employer, giving individuals back proper freedom of choice.
• Reduce regulations significantly.

• In the short term, some people will still get rejected claims and other obnoxious behavior from insurance companies. We address that in two ways:

  1. Due to reduced regulations, new insurance companies will be able to enter the market offering more reliable coverage and better rates, and people will flock to them because they have the freedom to make their own choices.
  2. Sue the asses off of companies that reject claims unfairly. And ideally, as one of the few legitimate roles of government in all this, institute new laws that limit the ability of fine print to allow insurers to escape their responsibilities. (I'm hesitant that the latter will happen due to the incestuous relationship between Congress/regulators and insurers, but I can hope.)

Will this magically fix everything overnight like politicians normally promise? No. But it will allow the market to return to a healthy state. And I don't think it will take long (order of magnitude: 5-10 years) for it to come together, but that's just speculation.

And since there's a high correlation between those who believe government can fix problems by taking more control and demanding that only credentialed experts weigh in on a topic (both points I strongly disagree with BTW): I'm a trained actuary and worked in the insurance industry, and have directly seen how government regulation reduces competition, raises prices, and harms consumers.

And my final point: I don't think any prior art would be a good comparison for deregulation in the US, it's such a different market than any other country in the world for so many reasons that lessons wouldn't really translate. Nonetheless, I asked Grok for some empirical data on this, and at best the results of deregulation could be called "mixed," but likely more accurately "uncertain, confused, and subject to whatever interpretation anyone wants to apply."

https://x.com/i/grok/share/Zc8yOdrN8lS275hXJ92uwq98M

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

On the state of programs and browsers

Basically, there are basically (not exhaustively) 2 kinds of programs one can run in a computer nowadays:

1.1. A program that is installed, permanent, has direct access to the Operating System, can draw whatever it wants, modify files, interact with other programs and so on; 1.2. A program that is transient, fetched from someone else's server at run time, interpreted, rendered and executed by another program that bridges the access of that transient program to the OS and other things.

Meanwhile, web browsers have basically (not exhaustively) two use cases:

2.1. Display text, pictures, videos hosted on someone else's computer; 2.2. Execute incredibly complex programs that are fetched at run time, executed and so on -- you get it, it's the same 1.2.

These two use cases for browsers are at big odds with one another. While stretching itsel f to become more and more a platform for programs that can do basically anything (in the 1.1 sense) they are still restricted to being an 1.2 platform. At the same time, websites that were supposed to be on 2.1 sometimes get confused and start acting as if they were 2.2 -- and other confusing mixed up stuff.

I could go hours in philosophical inquiries on the nature of browsers, how rewriting everything in JavaScript is not healthy or where everything went wrong, but I think other people have done this already.

One thing that bothers me a lot, though, is that computers can do a lot of things, and with the internet and in the current state of the technology it's fairly easy to implement tools that would help in many aspects of human existence and provide high-quality, useful programs, with the help of a server to coordinate access, store data, authenticate users and so on many things are possible. However, due to the nature of UI in the browser, it's very hard to get any useful tool to users.

Writing a UI, even the most basic UI imaginable (some text input boxes and some buttons, or a table) can take a long time, always more than the time necessary to code the actual core features of whatever program is being developed -- and that is considering that the person capable of writing interesting programs that do the functionality in the backend are also capable of interacting with JavaScript and the giant amount of frameworks, transpilers, styling stuff, CSS, the fact that all this is built on top of HTML and so on.

This is not good.

@ 9e69e420:d12360c2

Federal employees must remove pronouns from email signatures by the end of the day. This directive comes from internal memos tied to two executive orders signed by Donald Trump. The orders target diversity and equity programs within the government.

CDC, Department of Transportation, and Department of Energy employees were affected. Staff were instructed to make changes in line with revised policy prohibiting certain language.

One CDC employee shared frustration, stating, “In my decade-plus years at CDC, I've never been told what I can and can't put in my email signature.” The directive is part of a broader effort to eliminate DEI initiatives from federal discourse.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

A big Ethereum problem that is fixed by Drivechain

While reading the following paragraphs, assume Drivechain itself will be a "smart contract platform", like Ethereum. And that it won't be used to launch an Ethereum blockchain copy, but instead each different Ethereum contract could be turned into a different sidechain under BIP300 rules.

A big Ethereum problem

Anyone can publish any "contract" to Ethereum. Often people will come up with somewhat interesting ideas and publish them. Since they want money they will add an unnecessary token and use that to bring revenue to themselves, gamify the usage of their contract somehow, and keep some control over the supposedly open protocol they've created by keeping a majority of the tokens. They will use the profits on marketing and branding, have a visual identity, a central website and a forum with support personnel and so on: their somewhat interesting idea have become a full-fledged company.

If they have success then another company will appear in the space and copy the idea, launch it using exactly the same strategy with a tweak, then try to capture the customers of the first company and new people. And then another, and another, and another. Very often these contracts require some network effect to work, i.e., they require people to be using it so others will use it. The fact that the market is now split into multiple companies offering roughly the same product hurts that, such that none of these protocols get ever enough usage to become really useful in the way they were first conceived. At this point it doesn't matter though, they get some usage, and they use that in their marketing material. It becomes a race to pump the value of the tokens and the current usage is just another point used for that purpose. The company will even start giving out money to attract new users and other weird moves that have no relationship with the initial somewhat intereting idea.

Once in a lifetime it happens that the first implementer of these things is not a company seeking profits, but some altruistic developer or company that believes in Ethereum and wants to see it grow -- or more likely someone financed by the Ethereum Foundation, which allegedly doesn't like these token schemes and would prefer everybody to use the token they issued first, the ETH --, but that's a fruitless enterprise because someone else will copy that idea anyway and turn it into a company as described above.

How Drivechain fixes it

In the Drivechain world, if someone had an idea, they would -- as it happens all the time with Bitcoin things -- publish it in a public forum. Other members of the community would evaluate that idea, add or remove things, all interested parties would contribute to make it the best possible incarnation of that idea. Once the design was settled, someone would volunteer to start writing the code to turn that idea into a sidechain. Maybe some company would fund those efforts and then more people would join. It's not a perfect process and one that often involves altruism, but Bitcoin inspires people to do these things.

Slowly, the thing would get built, tested, activated as a sidechain on testnet, tested more, and at this point luckily the entire community of interested Bitcoin users and miners would have grown to like that idea and see its benefits. It could then be proposed to be activated according to BIP300 rules.

Once it was activated, the entire pool of interested users would join it. And it would be impossible for someone else to create a copy of that because everybody would instantly notice it was a copy. There would be no token, no one profiting directly from the operations of that "smart contract". And everybody would be incentivized to join and tell others to join that same sidechain since the network effect was already the biggest there, they will know more network effect would only be good for everybody involved, and there would be no competing marketing and free token giveaways from competing entities.

See also

• Upgrading 'Smart Contracts' to 'Wise Contracts', by Paul Sztorc
• Drivechain
• Drivechain comparison with Ethereum
• Alternatives to Drivechain

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

We’ve all been in meetings that seem to be stuck in an unending loop of “discussions” going nowhere while simultaneously ratcheting up everyone’s emotions as the minutes past dinner continue to climb. You stand to leave as you reach your limit and declare, “It’s past my bedtime”. If only there was a way to make meetings more efficient!

The gold standard for meeting organization is “Robert’s Rules of Order”, the original having been published in 1876 and currently in it’s 12th edition (https://robertsrules.com). It’s quite the tome at over 800 pages, which makes sense given that it’s meant to be a complete procedural guide. If that feels like overkill for your 5-person weekly department check-in, there’s an “In Brief” edition available meant for just such cases. Our focus today will be less procedural and more on the squishy human side.

People are social creatures who generally prefer friendly conversation over stiff formalities. This will be your primary hurdle as left unstructured most meetings will migrate from handling business to visiting. My first recommendation is to intentionally schedule social time before and after the meeting. You may have seen this communicated as “doors open” and “doors close” times on event announcements. Or you can break the fourth wall and label it “social time”. Either way, explain its purpose to your attendees and make it clear that its optional. Most will appreciate having it; these meetings may be the only time they see each other, but for some its just business and they won’t want to feel pressured into awkward conversation.

Intentional social time is best paired with my next tip: begin the formal portion exactly at the advertised start time. This will encourage everyone to arrive on time (or ideally early), and might allow you to finish early. (Who doesn’t like that‽) If your attendees are used to a loose start time it might seem jarring at first, but if you break the fourth wall (again) and explain why you’re doing it, you shouldn’t have many arguments. If you have late arrivals, don’t interrupt the flow or pause to catch them up. Its their responsibility to arrive on time, and failing that its their responsibility to catch themselves up. Again, it won’t take long to normalize a hard start time. I also recommend advertising and sticking to a hard stop time as well. The nice thing about a stop time is that its only definite in one direction; you don’t have to stick to it if you’re done early. It’s primary purpose is to reassure everyone that the meeting won’t get drug out. Evening meeting attendees with young children at home will be especially grateful.

If this is starting to feel like a lot of details to keep track of, fear not, for there is a solution invented long ago: the formal meeting agenda! I’ve included a basic template below, but an internet search will provide a cornucopia of formats and options. My rule of thumb is the longer the meeting, the further in advance you should provide an agenda. As a starting point I aim for a week / 5 business days for any longer than an hour. You’ll also want to include any written reports and statements. This will be another item you may get some pushback on; many will be used to delivering verbal reports with very little prep. Written versions have several advantages (see my previous posts on the importance of writing things down, especially “Writing Things Down Is For Boys Too”), including giving attendees a chance to review and absorb the information before the meeting, keeping the reports concise, and making inclusion in the minutes much easier. I also like to include statements on old and new business items, which takes us into the next, and possibly most controversial, item.

Alongside social visiting, one of the biggest time-eaters in meetings is “discussion”. In my opinion (here comes the controversial part), meetings shouldn’t have discussions, only decisions and formalizations. All discussion should happen before the meeting. For example, let's say a new piece of equipment needs to be purchased, and an official vote is needed to do so. The next business meeting is not the place to discuss this. Options, pros and cons, bids or quotes, and most importantly, opinions and emotions surrounding the decision, should be hashed out and aired between stakeholders in an informal fashion on their own time. Billy and Sally don’t need to have a shouting match about the colour options while everyone else awkwardly stares at their shoes in the middle of the weekly stand-up. They can have their cat fight in the privacy of the HR office or at the local Timmies. I make a bit of an exception for what I call “statements”, though with tight controls. If Billy acquiesces to Sally’s demands to buy the blue model instead of the yellow one but still wants his oppositions known, he might be tempted to unleash a rant if, during the meeting, the chairperson says something like, “Anyone have any thoughts on this equipment purchase?” Chances of this happening are high for business items surrounded by high emotions, such as layoffs or budget cuts. This is where the statement can be a powerful tool to give everyone most of what they want. Have those who wish to create brief written statements. Your pitch to them is that it can be included in the agenda with all the other important business, everyone will see it (even those who can’t make it to the meeting), there’s no chance of their opinion being misrepresented, and it can easily be included in the minutes. You can optionally allow them to read their statement aloud during the meeting, but keep tight control on this. Again, emotions may be running high, and someone hearing their nemesis vocalize an opinion they disagree with may be enough to set them off. Make it clear that the statement will be read for the record, and no responses or discussion will follow, as discussion has already happened.

I’ve mentioned the chairperson a few times. This person should be, without question, in control. They should have absolute dictatorial power over the meeting, and importantly, over who has permission to speak. Anyone who disagrees with this power can be asked to leave. It sounds harsh, but a meeting without a human “talking stick” will fall to those without the social awareness to refrain from interrupting, or those willing to be the loudest. Have the chairperson wield their omnipotence for the good of the people.

Need help with planning or executing your meetings? You can find us at scalebright.ca.

``` Example Meeting Agenda: Meeting Title Organization / Team / Group Name Meeting Date, Start Time, and Stop Time Meeting Location Chairperson Participants / Invitees

Order of Business: Call to Order / Start Approval of previous minutes Approval of reports Old business New business Adjournment

Appendices: A: Previous Minutes B: Report 1 C: Statement from John Doe on Business Item 1 D: Quote for Business Item 2 ```

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Reasons why Lightning is not that great

Some Bitcoiners, me included, were fooled by hyperbolic discourse that presented Lightning as some magical scaling solution with no flaws. This is an attempt to list some of the actual flaws uncovered after 5 years of experience. The point of this article is not to say Lightning is a complete worthless piece of crap, but only to highlight the fact that Bitcoin needs to put more focus on developing and thinking about other scaling solutions (such as Drivechain, less crappy and more decentralized trusted channels networks and statechains).

Unbearable experience

Maintaining a node is cumbersome, you have to deal with closed channels, allocating funds, paying fees unpredictably, choosing new channels to open, storing channel state backups -- or you'll have to delegate all these decisions to some weird AI or third-party services, it's not feasible for normal people.

Channels fail for no good reason all the time

Every time nodes disagree on anything they close channels, there have been dozens, maybe hundreds, of bugs that lead to channels being closed in the past, and implementors have been fixing these bugs, but since these node implementations continue to be worked on and new features continue to be added we can be quite sure that new bugs continue to be introduced.

Trimmed (fake) HTLCs are not sound protocol design

What would you tell me if I presented a protocol that allowed for transfers of users' funds across a network of channels and that these channels would pledge to send the money to miners while the payment was in flight, and that these payments could never be recovered if a node in the middle of the hop had a bug or decided to stop responding? Or that the receiver could receive your payment, but still claim he didn't, and you couldn't prove that at all?

These are the properties of "trimmed HTLCs", HTLCs that are uneconomical to have their own UTXO in the channel presigned transaction bundles, therefore are just assumed to be there while they are not (and their amounts are instead added to the fees of the presigned transaction).

Trimmed HTLCs, like any other HTLC, have timelocks, preimages and hashes associated with them -- which are properties relevant to the redemption of actual HTLCs onchain --, but unlike actual HTLCs these things have no actual onchain meaning since there is no onchain UTXO associated with them. This is a game of make-believe that only "works" because (1) payment proofs aren't worth anything anyway, so it makes no sense to steal these; (2) channels are too expensive to setup; (3) all Lightning Network users are honest; (4) there are so many bugs and confusion in a Lightning Network node's life that events related to trimmed HTLCs do not get noticed by users.

Also, so far these trimmed HTLCs have only been used for very small payments (although very small payments probably account for 99% of the total payments), so it is supposedly "fine" to have them. But, as fees rise, more and more HTLCs tend to become fake, which may make people question the sanity of the design.

Tadge Dryja, one of the creators of the Lightning Network proposal, has been critical of the fact that these things were allowed to creep into the BOLT protocol.

Routing

Routing is already very bad today even though most nodes have a basically 100% view of the public network, the reasons being that some nodes are offline, others are on Tor and unreachable or too slow, channels have the balance shifted in the wrong direction, so payments fail a lot -- which leads to the (bad) solution invented by professional node runners and large businesses of probing the network constantly in order to discard bad paths, this creates unnecessary load and increases the risk of channels being dropped for no good reason.

As the network grows -- if it indeed grow and not centralize in a few hubs -- routing tends to become harder and harder.

While each implementation team makes their own decisions with regard to how to best way to route payments and these decisions may change at anytime, it's worth noting, for example, that CLN will use MPP to split up any payment in any number of chunks of 10k satoshis, supposedly to improve routing success rates. While this often backfires and causes payments to fail when they should have succeeded, it also contributes to making it so there are proportionally more fake HTLCs than there should be, as long as the threshold for fake HTLCs is above 10k.

Payment proofs are somewhat useless

Even though payment proofs were seen by many (including me) as one of the great things about Lightning, the sad fact is that they do not work as proofs if people are not aware of the fact that they are proofs. Wallets do all they can to hide these details from users because it is considered "bad UX" and low-level implementors do not care very much to talk about them at all. There have been attempts from Lightning Labs to get rid of the payment proofs entirely (which at the time to me sounded like a terrible idea, but now I realize they were not wrong).

Here's a piece of anecdote: I've personally witnessed multiple episodes in which Phoenix wallet released the preimage without having actually received the payment (they did receive a minor part of the payment, but the payment was split in many parts). That caused my service, @lntxbot, to mark the outgoing payment as complete, only then to have to endure complaints from the users because the receiver side, Phoenix, had not received the full amount. In these cases, if the protocol and the idea of preimages as payment proofs be respected, should I have been the one in charge of manually fixing user balances?

Another important detail: when an HTLC is sent and then something goes wrong with the payment the channel has to be closed in order to redeem that payment. When the redeemer is on the receiver side, the very act of redeeming should cause the preimage to be revealed and a proof of payment to be made available for the sender, who can then send that back to the previous hop and the payment is proven without any doubt. But when this happens for fake HTLCs (which is the vast majority of payments, as noted above) there is no place in the world for a preimage and therefore there are no proofs available. A channel is just closed, the payer loses money but can't prove a payment. It also can't send that proof back to the previous hop so he is forced to say the payment failed -- even if it wasn't him the one who declared that hop a failure and closed the channel, which should be a prerequisite. I wonder if this isn't the source of multiple bugs in implementations that cause channels to be closed unnecessarily. The point is: preimages and payment proofs are mostly a fiction.

Another important fact is that the proofs do not really prove anything if the keypair that signs the invoice can't be provably attached to a real world entity.

LSP-centric design

The first Lightning wallets to show up in the market, LND as a desktop daemon (then later with some GUIs on top of it like Zap and Joule) and Anton's BLW and Eclair wallets for mobile devices, then later LND-based mobile wallets like Blixt and RawTX, were all standalone wallets that were self-sufficient and meant to be run directly by consumers. Eventually, though, came Breez and Phoenix and introduced the "LSP" model, in which a server would be trusted in various forms -- not directly with users' funds, but with their privacy, fees and other details -- but most importantly that LSP would be the primary source of channels for all users of that given wallet software. This was all fine, but as time passed new features were designed and implemented that assumed users would be running software connected to LSPs. The very idea of a user having a standalone mobile wallet was put out of question. The entire argument for implementation of the bolt12 standard, for example, hinged on the assumption that mobile wallets would have LSPs capable of connecting to Google messaging services and being able to "wake up" mobile wallets in order for them to receive payments. Other ideas, like a complicated standard for allowing mobile wallets to receive payments without having to be online all the time, just assume LSPs always exist; and changes to the expected BOLT spec behavior with regards to, for example, probing of mobile wallets.

Ark is another example of a kind of LSP that got so enshrined that it become a new protocol that depends on it entirely.

Protocol complexity

Even though the general idea of how Lightning is supposed to work can be understood by many people (as long as these people know how Bitcoin works) the Lightning protocol is not really easy: it will take a long time of big dedication for anyone to understand the details about the BOLTs -- this is a bad thing if we want a world of users that have at least an idea of what they are doing. Moreover, with each new cool idea someone has that gets adopted by the protocol leaders, it increases in complexity and some of the implementors are kicked out of the circle, therefore making it easier for the remaining ones to proceed with more and more complexity. It's the same process by which Chrome won the browser wars, kicked out all competitors and proceeded to make a supposedly open protocol, but one that no one can implement as it gets new and more complex features every day, all envisioned by the Chrome team.

Liquidity issues?

I don't believe these are a real problem if all the other things worked, but still the old criticism that Lightning requires parking liquidity and that has a cost is not a complete non-issue, specially given the LSP-centric model.

@ 97c70a44:ad98e322

There was a slight dust up recently over a website someone runs removing a listing for an app someone built based on entirely arbitrary criteria. I'm not to going to attempt to speak for either wounded party, but I would like to share my own personal definition for what constitutes a "nostr app" in an effort to help clarify what might be an otherwise confusing and opaque purity test.

In this post, I will be committing the "no true Scotsman" fallacy, in which I start with the most liberal definition I can come up with, and gradually refine it until all that is left is the purest, gleamingest, most imaginary and unattainable nostr app imaginable. As I write this, I wonder if anything built yet will actually qualify. In any case, here we go.

It uses nostr

The lowest bar for what a "nostr app" might be is an app ("application" - i.e. software, not necessarily a native app of any kind) that has some nostr-specific code in it, but which doesn't take any advantage of what makes nostr distinctive as a protocol.

Examples might include a scraper of some kind which fulfills its charter by fetching data from relays (regardless of whether it validates or retains signatures). Another might be a regular web 2.0 app which provides an option to "log in with nostr" by requesting and storing the user's public key.

In either case, the fact that nostr is involved is entirely neutral. A scraper can scrape html, pdfs, jsonl, whatever data source - nostr relays are just another target. Likewise, a user's key in this scenario is treated merely as an opaque identifier, with no appreciation for the super powers it brings along.

In most cases, this kind of app only exists as a marketing ploy, or less cynically, because it wants to get in on the hype of being a "nostr app", without the developer quite understanding what that means, or having the budget to execute properly on the claim.

It leverages nostr

Some of you might be wondering, "isn't 'leverage' a synonym for 'use'?" And you would be right, but for one connotative difference. It's possible to "use" something improperly, but by definition leverage gives you a mechanical advantage that you wouldn't otherwise have. This is the second category of "nostr app".

This kind of app gets some benefit out of the nostr protocol and network, but in an entirely selfish fashion. The intention of this kind of app is not to augment the nostr network, but to augment its own UX by borrowing some nifty thing from the protocol without really contributing anything back.

Some examples might include:

• Using nostr signers to encrypt or sign data, and then store that data on a proprietary server.
• Using nostr relays as a kind of low-code backend, but using proprietary event payloads.
• Using nostr event kinds to represent data (why), but not leveraging the trustlessness that buys you.

An application in this category might even communicate to its users via nostr DMs - but this doesn't make it a "nostr app" any more than a website that emails you hot deals on herbal supplements is an "email app". These apps are purely parasitic on the nostr ecosystem.

In the long-term, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Email's ubiquity is self-reinforcing. But in the short term, this kind of "nostr app" can actually do damage to nostr's reputation by over-promising and under-delivering.

It complements nostr

Next up, we have apps that get some benefit out of nostr as above, but give back by providing a unique value proposition to nostr users as nostr users. This is a bit of a fine distinction, but for me this category is for apps which focus on solving problems that nostr isn't good at solving, leaving the nostr integration in a secondary or supporting role.

One example of this kind of app was Mutiny (RIP), which not only allowed users to sign in with nostr, but also pulled those users' social graphs so that users could send money to people they knew and trusted. Mutiny was doing a great job of leveraging nostr, as well as providing value to users with nostr identities - but it was still primarily a bitcoin wallet, not a "nostr app" in the purest sense.

Other examples are things like Nostr Nests and Zap.stream, whose core value proposition is streaming video or audio content. Both make great use of nostr identities, data formats, and relays, but they're primarily streaming apps. A good litmus test for things like this is: if you got rid of nostr, would it be the same product (even if inferior in certain ways)?

A similar category is infrastructure providers that benefit nostr by their existence (and may in fact be targeted explicitly at nostr users), but do things in a centralized, old-web way; for example: media hosts, DNS registrars, hosting providers, and CDNs.

To be clear here, I'm not casting aspersions (I don't even know what those are, or where to buy them). All the apps mentioned above use nostr to great effect, and are a real benefit to nostr users. But they are not True Scotsmen.

It embodies nostr

Ok, here we go. This is the crème de la crème, the top du top, the meilleur du meilleur, the bee's knees. The purest, holiest, most chaste category of nostr app out there. The apps which are, indeed, nostr indigitate.

This category of nostr app (see, no quotes this time) can be defined by the converse of the previous category. If nostr was removed from this type of application, would it be impossible to create the same product?

To tease this apart a bit, apps that leverage the technical aspects of nostr are dependent on nostr the protocol, while apps that benefit nostr exclusively via network effect are integrated into nostr the network. An app that does both things is working in symbiosis with nostr as a whole.

An app that embraces both nostr's protocol and its network becomes an organic extension of every other nostr app out there, multiplying both its competitive moat and its contribution to the ecosystem:

• In contrast to apps that only borrow from nostr on the technical level but continue to operate in their own silos, an application integrated into the nostr network comes pre-packaged with existing users, and is able to provide more value to those users because of other nostr products. On nostr, it's a good thing to advertise your competitors.
• In contrast to apps that only market themselves to nostr users without building out a deep integration on the protocol level, a deeply integrated app becomes an asset to every other nostr app by becoming an organic extension of them through interoperability. This results in increased traffic to the app as other developers and users refer people to it instead of solving their problem on their own. This is the "micro-apps" utopia we've all been waiting for.

Credible exit doesn't matter if there aren't alternative services. Interoperability is pointless if other applications don't offer something your app doesn't. Marketing to nostr users doesn't matter if you don't augment their agency as nostr users.

If I had to choose a single NIP that represents the mindset behind this kind of app, it would be NIP 89 A.K.A. "Recommended Application Handlers", which states:

Nostr's discoverability and transparent event interaction is one of its most interesting/novel mechanics. This NIP provides a simple way for clients to discover applications that handle events of a specific kind to ensure smooth cross-client and cross-kind interactions.

These handlers are the glue that holds nostr apps together. A single event, signed by the developer of an application (or by the application's own account) tells anyone who wants to know 1. what event kinds the app supports, 2. how to link to the app (if it's a client), and (if the pubkey also publishes a kind 10002), 3. which relays the app prefers.

As a sidenote, NIP 89 is currently focused more on clients, leaving DVMs, relays, signers, etc somewhat out in the cold. Updating 89 to include tailored listings for each kind of supporting app would be a huge improvement to the protocol. This, plus a good front end for navigating these listings (sorry nostrapp.link, close but no cigar) would obviate the evil centralized websites that curate apps based on arbitrary criteria.

Examples of this kind of app obviously include many kind 1 clients, as well as clients that attempt to bring the benefits of the nostr protocol and network to new use cases - whether long form content, video, image posts, music, emojis, recipes, project management, or any other "content type".

To drill down into one example, let's think for a moment about forms. What's so great about a forms app that is built on nostr? Well,

• There is a spec for forms and responses, which means that...
• Multiple clients can implement the same data format, allowing for credible exit and user choice, even of...
• Other products not focused on forms, which can still view, respond to, or embed forms, and which can send their users via NIP 89 to a client that does...
• Cryptographically sign forms and responses, which means they are self-authenticating and can be sent to...
• Multiple relays, which reduces the amount of trust necessary to be confident results haven't been deliberately "lost".

Show me a forms product that does all of those things, and isn't built on nostr. You can't, because it doesn't exist. Meanwhile, there are plenty of image hosts with APIs, streaming services, and bitcoin wallets which have basically the same levels of censorship resistance, interoperability, and network effect as if they weren't built on nostr.

It supports nostr

Notice I haven't said anything about whether relays, signers, blossom servers, software libraries, DVMs, and the accumulated addenda of the nostr ecosystem are nostr apps. Well, they are (usually).

This is the category of nostr app that gets none of the credit for doing all of the work. There's no question that they qualify as beautiful nostrcorns, because their value propositions are entirely meaningless outside of the context of nostr. Who needs a signer if you don't have a cryptographic identity you need to protect? DVMs are literally impossible to use without relays. How are you going to find the blossom server that will serve a given hash if you don't know which servers the publishing user has selected to store their content?

In addition to being entirely contextualized by nostr architecture, this type of nostr app is valuable because it does things "the nostr way". By that I mean that they don't simply try to replicate existing internet functionality into a nostr context; instead, they create entirely new ways of putting the basic building blocks of the internet back together.

A great example of this is how Nostr Connect, Nostr Wallet Connect, and DVMs all use relays as brokers, which allows service providers to avoid having to accept incoming network connections. This opens up really interesting possibilities all on its own.

So while I might hesitate to call many of these things "apps", they are certainly "nostr".

Appendix: it smells like a NINO

So, let's say you've created an app, but when you show it to people they politely smile, nod, and call it a NINO (Nostr In Name Only). What's a hacker to do? Well, here's your handy-dandy guide on how to wash that NINO stench off and Become a Nostr.

You app might be a NINO if:

• There's no NIP for your data format (or you're abusing NIP 78, 32, etc by inventing a sub-protocol inside an existing event kind)
• There's a NIP, but no one knows about it because it's in a text file on your hard drive (or buried in your project's repository)
• Your NIP imposes an incompatible/centralized/legacy web paradigm onto nostr
• Your NIP relies on trusted third (or first) parties
• There's only one implementation of your NIP (yours)
• Your core value proposition doesn't depend on relays, events, or nostr identities
• One or more relay urls are hard-coded into the source code
• Your app depends on a specific relay implementation to work (ahem, relay29)
• You don't validate event signatures
• You don't publish events to relays you don't control
• You don't read events from relays you don't control
• You use legacy web services to solve problems, rather than nostr-native solutions
• You use nostr-native solutions, but you've hardcoded their pubkeys or URLs into your app
• You don't use NIP 89 to discover clients and services
• You haven't published a NIP 89 listing for your app
• You don't leverage your users' web of trust for filtering out spam
• You don't respect your users' mute lists
• You try to "own" your users' data

Now let me just re-iterate - it's ok to be a NINO. We need NINOs, because nostr can't (and shouldn't) tackle every problem. You just need to decide whether your app, as a NINO, is actually contributing to the nostr ecosystem, or whether you're just using buzzwords to whitewash a legacy web software product.

If you're in the former camp, great! If you're in the latter, what are you waiting for? Only you can fix your NINO problem. And there are lots of ways to do this, depending on your own unique situation:

• Drop nostr support if it's not doing anyone any good. If you want to build a normal company and make some money, that's perfectly fine.
• Build out your nostr integration - start taking advantage of webs of trust, self-authenticating data, event handlers, etc.
• Work around the problem. Think you need a special relay feature for your app to work? Guess again. Consider encryption, AUTH, DVMs, or better data formats.
• Think your idea is a good one? Talk to other devs or open a PR to the nips repo. No one can adopt your NIP if they don't know about it.
• Keep going. It can sometimes be hard to distinguish a research project from a NINO. New ideas have to be built out before they can be fully appreciated.
• Listen to advice. Nostr developers are friendly and happy to help. If you're not sure why you're getting traction, ask!

I sincerely hope this article is useful for all of you out there in NINO land. Maybe this made you feel better about not passing the totally optional nostr app purity test. Or maybe it gave you some actionable next steps towards making a great NINON (Nostr In Not Only Name) app. In either case, GM and PV.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Carl R. Rogers sobre a ciência

Creio que o objetivo primário da ciência é fornecer uma hipótese, uma convicção e uma fé mais seguras e que satisfaçam melhor o próprio investigador. Na medida em que o cientista procura provar qualquer coisa a alguém -- um erro em que incorri mais de uma vez --, creio que ele está se servindo da ciência para remediar uma insegurança pessoal, desviando-a do seu verdadeiro papel criativo a serviço do indivíduo.

Tornar-se Pessoa, página aleatória

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

contratos.alhur.es

A website that allowed people to fill a form and get a standard Contrato de Locação.

Better than all the other "templates" that float around the internet, which are badly formatted .doc files.

It was fully programmable so other templates could be added later, but I never did. This website made maybe one dollar in Google Ads (and Google has probably stolen these like so many other dollars they did with their bizarre requirements).

• https://github.com/fiatjaf/contratos
• http://contratos.alhur.es

@ 9e69e420:d12360c2

Secretary of State Marco Rubio issued new guidance halting spending on most foreign aid grants for 90 days, including military assistance to Ukraine. This immediate order shocked State Department officials and mandates “stop-work orders” on nearly all existing foreign assistance awards.

While it allows exceptions for military financing to Egypt and Israel, as well as emergency food assistance, it restricts aid to key allies like Ukraine, Jordan, and Taiwan. The guidance raises potential liability risks for the government due to unfulfilled contracts.

A report will be prepared within 85 days to recommend which programs to continue or discontinue.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

comentário pertinente de Olavo de Carvalho sobre atribuições indevidas de acontecimentos à "ordem espontânea"

Eis aqui um exemplo entre outros mil, extraído das minhas apostilas de aulas, de como se analisam as relações entre fatores deliberados e casuais na ação histórica. O sr, Beltrão está INFINITAMENTE ABAIXO da possibilidade de discutir essas coisas, e por isso mesmo me atribui uma simploriedade que é dele próprio e não minha:

Já citei mil vezes este parágrafo de Georg Jellinek e vou citá-lo de novo: “Os fenômenos da vida social dividem-se em duas classes: aqueles que são determinados essencialmente por uma vontade diretriz e aqueles que existem ou podem existir sem uma organização devida a atos de vontade. Os primeiros estão submetidos necessariamente a um plano, a uma ordem emanada de uma vontade consciente, em oposição aos segundos, cuja ordenação repousa em forças bem diferentes.”

Essa distinção é crucial para os historiadores e os analistas estratégicos não porque ela é clara em todos os casos, mas precisamente porque não o é. O erro mais comum nessa ordem de estudos reside em atribuir a uma intenção consciente aquilo que resulta de uma descontrolada e às vezes incontrolável combinação de forças, ou, inversamente, em não conseguir enxergar, por trás de uma constelação aparentemente fortuita de circunstâncias, a inteligência que planejou e dirigiu sutilmente o curso dos acontecimentos.

Exemplo do primeiro erro são os Protocolos dos Sábios de Sião, que enxergam por trás de praticamente tudo o que acontece de mau no mundo a premeditação maligna de um número reduzidos de pessoas, uma elite judaica reunida secretamente em algum lugar incerto e não sabido.

O que torna essa fantasia especialmente convincente, decorrido algum tempo da sua publicação, é que alguns dos acontecimentos ali previstos se realizam bem diante dos nossos olhos. O leitor apressado vê nisso uma confirmação, saltando imprudentemente da observação do fato à imputação da autoria. Sim, algumas das idéias anunciadas nos Protocolos foram realizadas, mas não por uma elite distintamente judaica nem muito menos em proveito dos judeus, cuja papel na maioria dos casos consistiu eminentemente em pagar o pato. Muitos grupos ricos e poderosos têm ambições de dominação global e, uma vez publicado o livro, que em certos trechos tem lances de autêntica genialidade estratégica de tipo maquiavélico, era praticamente impossível que nada aprendessem com ele e não tentassem por em prática alguns dos seus esquemas, com a vantagem adicional de que estes já vinham com um bode expiatório pré-fabricado. Também é impossível que no meio ou no topo desses grupos não exista nenhum judeu de origem. Basta portanto um pouquinho de seletividade deformante para trocar a causa pelo efeito e o inocente pelo culpado.

Mas o erro mais comum hoje em dia não é esse. É o contrário: é a recusa obstinada de enxergar alguma premeditação, alguma autoria, mesmo por trás de acontecimentos notavelmente convergentes que, sem isso, teriam de ser explicados pela forca mágica das coincidências, pela ação de anjos e demônios, pela "mão invisível" das forças de mercado ou por hipotéticas “leis da História” ou “constantes sociológicas” jamais provadas, que na imaginação do observador dirigem tudo anonimamente e sem intervenção humana.

As causas geradoras desse erro são, grosso modo:

Primeira: Reduzir as ações humanas a efeitos de forças impessoais e anônimas requer o uso de conceitos genéricos abstratos que dão automaticamente a esse tipo de abordagem a aparência de coisa muito científica. Muito mais científica, para o observador leigo, do que a paciente e meticulosa reconstituição histórica das cadeias de fatos que, sob um véu de confusão, remontam às vezes a uma autoria inicial discreta e quase imperceptível. Como o estudo dos fenômenos histórico-políticos é cada vez mais uma ocupação acadêmica cujo sucesso depende de verbas, patrocínios, respaldo na mídia popular e boas relações com o establishment, é quase inevitável que, diante de uma questão dessa ordem, poucos resistam à tentação de matar logo o problema com duas ou três generalizações elegantes e brilhar como sábios de ocasião em vez de dar-se o trabalho de rastreamentos históricos que podem exigir décadas de pesquisa.

Segunda: Qualquer grupo ou entidade que se aventure a ações histórico-políticas de longo prazo tem de possuir não só os meios de empreendê-las, mas também, necessariamente, os meios de controlar a sua repercussão pública, acentuando o que lhe convém e encobrindo o que possa abortar os resultados pretendidos. Isso implica intervenções vastas, profundas e duradouras no ambiente mental. [Etc. etc. etc.]

(no facebook em 17 de julho de 2013)

@ 4c5d5379:3a4383ee

first header

I'm testing YakiHonne article.

にほんごだよ

header

header

header

header

header

header

ヘッダ

ヘッダ

ヘッダ

ヘッダ

ヘッダ

ヘッダ

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

“Technology never changes” sounds insane, doesn’t it? Of course it changes! Far too fast! New models of smartphones, laptops, refrigerators, cars, and toasters every year! And that’s just hardware; software and the internet move even faster. Every time you open your social media app of choice you’re greeted with a new thing to figure out. But under the hood of version 999 of all these newfangled widgets, they’re all the same as they’ve ever been, because technology never changes.

Does that still sound crazy to you? Excellent! That means I have you hooked for the rest of this article! All humour aside, when I say, “technology never changes”, I’m talking about the underlying concepts, how we use technology, and on the organization side, how we plan for it. That last one will be our focus today. The tech strategies I help organizations implement haven’t changed since I started in tech, and my predecessors would probably mirror the same, especially since they’re the ones I learned these concepts from.

Let’s dive in. If you’ve been involved in vehicle fleet management this first one will be familiar. For technology hardware there’s a concept called an “evergreen program”, which is essentially a schedule of when hardware is cycled or replaced. End-user hardware such as laptops, desktops, and smartphones is 3 years, servers is 6, wired network elements are 9, and wireless (mostly access points) is 6. These numbers aren’t written in stone or the same for every org; they’re just meant to be a starting point. But here's the big secret: most of this equipment, if it’s business-grade, properly maintained, and treated well, will last at least 10 years. The reason for the comparatively short evergreen cycles is two-fold: downtime can be more expensive than replacing equipment, and replacing equipment is usually a tough sell and put off as long as possible regardless of programs or policy. That’s an article all by itself; lets move along for now. Those evergreen program and lifetime numbers haven’t changed. Sure there’s a new Macbook every year and your cousin’s buddy who makes 7 figures working for a California design firm gets them on release day, but those are the exception. Your 5-person non-profit is going to replace laptops on double cycles based on tech strategy that hasn’t changed. Because technology never changes.

I mentioned software earlier and that it moves even faster. While this is true, tech strategy around it hasn’t changed. I’ll use the ubiquitous Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office suite as examples. New major versions used to release roughly every 3 years. If you’re replacing your laptops and desktops on a 3 year cycle, you never really have to worry about upgrading Windows or Office separately. Today Microsoft has migrated most of their products to a subscription model, but the cycle is the same. Because technology never changes.

But what about AI? Isn’t it quadrupling in power every few minutes? Hasn’t it used the energy of a thousand suns to drink the oceans dry in order to feed it’s insatiable quantum-powered hunger for knowledge and control? No, it hasn’t. In fact, if news articles are to be believed; ChatGPT et al. have run up against a bit of a wall. My prediction is that we’ll start seeing AI in more common usage sometime late this year, which, not-so-coincidentally, will be about 3 years since it’s public release. Because technology never changes.

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

Look at any white-collar office job posting from the last few decades and you’re likely to see something like “basic computers skills” listed as a requirement. “Great,” you think to yourself, “I can use technology, after all, I managed to find this job posting!” And if you’re on the hiring end for a position that’ll be spending six to eight hours in front of screen, you’d certainly hope applicants would know that they need to be able to use a computer. Ten years of bookkeeping experience? Reception? Managing remote staff? In a Venn diagram of work experience and basic computer skills, those should be a near complete overlap! We shouldn’t need to train them at all! Can we be sure though? It turns out “basic computer skills” doesn’t have a universally accepted definition.

Since basic computer skills doesn’t have an official definition we can point to, lets attempt to create one ourselves. I argue for reading comprehension as the base skill underlying all the others we’re going to talk about (see “One Skill To Rule Them All” for more on this). Unfortunately reading comprehension doesn’t have a universal measurement either. I used to use “6th grade reading level” as my go-to, but today’s media is full of articles on changing standards and outcomes in public education, so that’s no longer dependable. If you’re interviewing someone, try providing them with a copy of the job posting and asking them questions about it that require some simple inference. For a more advanced option, I’ve included a test you can administer that covers reading comprehension and several other elements.

How about typing? Should basic computer skills include home row typing ability? What about speed requirements? If we’re talking about basic skills, I’d say no to both of those. While “chicken pecking” with two fingers probably wouldn’t qualify you for a staff writing position at a newspaper, I consider formal typing (especially with a speed requirement) to be an intermediate skill. So your applicant should be able to navigate a keyboard without assistance, but that’s all.

Email is probably the most universal computer task of the modern era. I’ve included it in the test template. Users should be able to recognize an email address and the “To”, “Subject”, and “Body” fields in an email client, even an unfamiliar one. Email interfaces have kept their same basic elements since the 90s.

The most controversial skill I’ve seen talked about lately is the ability to navigate and use a file system. The advent of smartphones and tablets, and the ubiquity of Chromebooks in schools, has led to new workers who have never had to save a file to a “documents” folder, or infer that a photo could most likely be found in a “pictures” folder. The strongest counterargument I’ve read is that between “recent” lists and search functions we shouldn’t need to know how to navigate file structures. I disagree, so I’ve included this skill in the test as well.

Lastly, safety and security. What’s considered “basic” varies wildly. Could you recognize a phishing email pretending to be from your boss? What about the difference between an ad link and a regular result in an internet search? I haven’t included this in the test as needs and policies are different at every workplace, but it’s a good idea to consider it when planning your interviews and internal training. An employee who clicks the links in every suspicious email without a second thought is a security disaster waiting to happen.

Here’s the skills test I promised. There are two ways of administering it; either provide the interviewee with a computer to use, or use screenshots and have them verbally walk you through the steps they would take. The latter requires a bit more visual and verbal knowledge transference and self-awareness so I only recommend it if providing a company computer isn’t a possibility. You’ll also need to customize it; for example YOURTEXTEDITOR needs to be replaced with whatever program is standard for your org, i.e. Microsoft Word.

Instructions for the Applicant: Please read the instructions below carefully and perform the steps described. After completing the task, answer the follow-up questions about the process. Task: 1. Open YOURTEXTEDITOR on the computer. 2. Create a new file and write the following without the quotes: “Welcome to the team! Your onboarding kit is on your desk.” 3. Save the file with the name "Team Message - " ending with today’s date, in the "FOLDERORSHAREDRIVE" folder. 4. Format the text to bold and change the font size to 14. 5. Close the application. 6. Open YOUREMAILCLIENT. 7. Send an email to INTERVIEWER with the subject “Team Message”. In the email, let them know that the file is ready. 8. Attach the file and send the email. Instructions for the Interviewers: After they’ve completed the task, ask the following questions about the process. Interviewees should be allowed to keep their instructions in front of them, but DO NOT tell them they can refer to them unless they ask. 1. What was the name of the first program you opened? 2. If you couldn’t save the file to the “FOLDERORSHAREDRIVE” folder/share drive, where would you have saved it? Why? 3. Who did you send the email to? 4. What did you name the file? 5. What changes, if any, would you make to the instructions? Post-interview analysis: The following is reasoning for the instructions and questions, and what to look for in the interviewee’s actions and responses. Task: 1. They should be able to find an application on the computer with little assistance. 2. They should be able to type the sentence into the document and understand the instructions to leave out the quotation marks. Observe their typing style (home row vs single finger presses) and speed. 3. Ability to remember or find today’s date and to save a document to a specific location. 4. Ability to format text. 5. They should remember to save the document or answer the automated prompt to save the document. 6. Same as question 1, but with a different application. 7. They should be able to send an email with an attachment. Ideally they’ll either know, or be able to figure out, how to look up the interviewer in the company address book. Also, the ability to write without being told explicitly what to say. 8. The ability to locate and attach a file to an email. Follow-up questions: 0. Allowing them access to the instructions without explicitly telling them they can refer to them will test their sense of agency. Asking permission is fine as some will feel the follow-up questions are a test, and most people are used to tests or exams being closed-book. It will also test their ability to find the information they need within the task instructions. 1. Ability to recall or locate the information. 2. Ability and sense of agency to make a best-option decision when faced with adversity. 3. Ability to recall or locate the information. 4. Ability to recall or locate the information. 5. Tests self-awareness around needs or preferences for directions. “None” is also an acceptable answer if they had no struggles with any of the task steps.

Share this article with anyone working on job postings or interviews in your organization, and please feel free to use the skills test content in any way you like. It’s best modified for your specific needs!

Need someone to assist with skills assessment, training, or hiring processes? You can find us at scalebright.ca.

@ 9e69e420:d12360c2

President Trump plans to withdraw 20,000 U.S. troops from Europe and expects European allies to contribute financially to the remaining military presence. Reported by ANSA, Trump aims to deliver this message to European leaders since taking office. A European diplomat noted, “the costs cannot be borne solely by American taxpayers.”

The Pentagon hasn't commented yet. Trump has previously sought lower troop levels in Europe and had ordered cuts during his first term. The U.S. currently maintains around 65,000 troops in Europe, with total forces reaching 100,000 since the Ukraine invasion. Trump's new approach may shift military focus to the Pacific amid growing concerns about China.

Sauce

@ 6b0a60cf:b952e7d4

ビットコインのウォレットは取引形態によって2種類に分かれます。

オンチェーン(L1)

取引がブロックチェーンに刻まれるタイプ。時間がかかるし手数料が高い。

ライトニングネットワーク(L2)

ブロックチェーンに刻む前の少額決済を目的としたレイヤー。高速で手数料が安い。

NostrでZapを利用する場合はライトニングネットワーク(以下、LNと呼びます)のウォレットが使われますが、さらにその中でもZap対応/非対応で分かれることになります。

また、秘密鍵を誰が管理するかによっても2種類の呼び方に分かれます。

カストディアル

秘密鍵をサービスの運営に預けるタイプ。

ノンカストディアル/セルフカストディアル

秘密鍵(シードフレーズ)を自分で持っておくタイプ。

Nostrで人気があるWallet of Satoshi(以下、WoSと呼びます)はLNのカストディアルウォレットです。 今回はLNのセルフカストディアルウォレットであるPhoenixを使ってみて、その仕組みや注意点など、学んだことを記録したいと思います。

Phoenixでウォレットを作る場合、初回でシードフレーズ(12個の単語)が作られますので、大切に控えておきましょう。

WoSからPhoenixに送金してみる

メイン画面左下にあるReciaveからQRCode表示画面へ遷移します。そこでcopyボタンを押してLightning invoice(text)をコピーしましょう。

次に、WoSの画面からSendを選択し、クリップボードからの貼り付けを選択します。 金額を指定して送金します。

送金した額が満額届いてないんだけど？

下の方にService Feesとありますが、これはPhoenix運営(ACINQ)へのお布施ですね。結構高く見えますが初回だけです。 またMiner Feesという項目は、mempoolのfeeに連動して変わるようですが、これはチャネルを太くする(送受信できる金額の上限を上げる)ために使われる手数料になります。

財布が重たくなると手数料が取られる？

有り体に言えばそういうことになります。以下のように10,000satsをもらう度にチャネル拡張のための手数料が引かれています。

上記の8,000satsを受け取っている時には手数料が発生していませんね。これはチャネル拡張が必要ないギリギリの金額を狙って送金したためです。送金前は8,859satsの余裕がありました。送金後は1,719satsに減っています。(余裕分がぴったり8,000sats減るわけではないようです。このへんの仕組みはよくわかりません。) (画面は左上⚙️マークの設定からPayment channelsから。)

財布が軽くなると余裕が増える？

逆にPhoenixからWoSに5,000satsほど送金してみます。(手数料として24satsほど余計に抜かれました)

余裕(Inbound Liquidity)が5,883satsまで復活しています。受け取るばかりでなく、バランスよく送ることで財布を重たくしなければチャネル拡張せずに使い続けることができそうです。(太くしたチャネルは永遠に残るわけではなく、1年までらしいです)

自動でチャネル拡張にsatsを使われたくない！

自動チャネル拡張を設定で無効化できます。左上⚙️マークの設定からChannel managementから。

これでチャネル拡張が必要なほどの金額を送金しようとするとエラーになり失敗します。

まとめ

セルフカストディアルウォレットならではの概念があり、謎の手数料が発生したりして怖いイメージがありましたが、どういう理由で手数料が発生するのかを知り、設定でのコントロールの仕方を習得することである程度怖いイメージを払拭することができました。 しかしカストディアルウォレット(特にWoS)の使いやすさを再認識することにもなりました。ただ自分で管理することの重要性も理解していますので、徐々に知識を深めていこうと思います。

参考/謝辞

• Phoenix wallet（フェニックスウォレット）の使い方！ビットコインのセルフカストディができるアプリを解説 - 知っとこ！ビットコイン図鑑
• nostr:npub10zeurmg22wc89l8m3npw9cyu45cun0lvs6w3ep69cdpa25pna65s0994qz 様

@ 65038d69:1fff8852

“Can you help make our website good?” is one of the most loaded questions I get. There are many aspects to this question’s galactic gravitas, and their root is another question: what makes a website good?

Before we get there, we have a few other questions that need answering. The first is whether you actually need a website. Would a social media presence and a Google Maps listing do the same job? Or do you need a dedicated online shop or some other functionality that a Facebook Page can’t provide? Who’s your target market? Is it people who don’t have social media accounts or wouldn’t want to mix their social media presence with your business?

Let’s say you’ve gone through all of that and decided you do indeed need a website. What makes a website “good” can be divided into two aspects: engineering and design. In the context of websites, engineering is the behind the scenes stuff that makes it go (think of the mechanical bits of a car), and design is how it looks and feels (all the stuff you see and touch in a car). Unfortunately for us, most places these overlap they’re also juxtaposed. To see this in action head over to simple.scalebright.ca. You’ll notice that it loads extremely quickly and works well on screens of any size. This site was built with an “engineering first” mindset. Designers generally loath this kind of website. Not because it loads fast or scales well, but because to do those things I had to sacrifice design. There are no graphics or images, one font, and only four total colours in use (if you count black and white). There are no fancy contact forms, loading animations, white space considerations, borders, boxes, or bulbous billowing bedazzlements. Just cold, ruthless efficiency. I love it! But it’s not necessarily good.

This takes us into the next consideration. A good website doesn’t necessarily appeal to you; it’s supposed to appeal to your target audience. You might not be your target audience. If you are, great! That’ll make figuring out what your target audience wants in a website easier. Either way, be sure to have some chats with them and keep what they say in mind.

Okay, I know I just finished saying that the highly simplified version of my website isn’t good, but I want to warn you away from the opposite: over-design and over-engineering. Over-design usually manifests as visual overload; too many colours, too many graphics or photos, too much motion. Over-engineering is too much mechanical complexity; a one-page professional bio site doesn’t need to run on a dedicated server on WordPress with fifteen plugins.

There isn’t going to be a one-size-fits-all answer to “what makes a website good?”, because no two website are going to be identical. You’ll probably end up engaging a professional website design firm to both help answer that question for your specific scenario, and to build it for you. Here are some of the questions they’re going to ask and some hints for answering them.

What are your colours, fonts, logos, and other visual assets? If you don’t have these the firm should be able to help (usually for an extra fee), though smaller firms may need to subcontract the work out.

What are the core functions of your website? Is it an online store? Professional bio? Hospitality booking site? A link hub or landing page?

Do you have your website copy ready to go? “Copy” in this context refers to the text that will go on your website. Slogans, product and service descriptions, staff bios, and anything else that consists of a collection of words. If you don’t have your copy, you’ll either need to prepare to write it yourself or hire a third party to write it for you. It’s been my experience that website design firms are very strict about not writing copy, and generally won’t subcontract it either.

Do you have a preferred CMS? A CMS is a content management system, which is a fancy way of saying “thing that makes your website easier to add content to”. WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal are CMSs. Squarespace, GoDaddy, and Wix could be considered CMSs for our purposes too. 99% of you probably don’t care, and that’s a perfectly acceptable answer to give your firm.

What’s your budget? While most of us would probably prefer to spend zero, groceries continue to cost money, so none of us work for free. As of the writing of this article, a multi-page website built by a design firm will range between $10,000 and $30,000.

Want someone to “just take care of” all this website shenanigans for you? You can find us at scalebright.ca.