@ 1739d937:3e3136ef

This is the second in a series of weekly updates detailing progress on bringing MLS protocol DMs and group messaging to Nostr.

Previous Updates

• June 28th 2024

Progress this week

This week was mostly spent on the topic of how to properly publish prekey bundles and what would be needed in the bundle itself to make it workable. I've included an early version of the spec below for prekeys, and would love thoughts on it. Treat this as an alpha version, very subject to change.

The other thing I spent time on was making changes to the OpenMLS library to add support for our custom ciphersuite. One issue that I've run into is that the IETF standard for HPKE doesn't include the secp256k1 curve. Because of this, the library being used in the OpenMLS library doesn't implement the necessary methods using our curve. Thankfully, there is another library with an open PR (shout out to nostr:npub1yevrvtp3xl42sq06usztudhleq8pdfsugw5frgaqg6lvfdewfx9q6zqrkl for that!) that would fix this. Additionally, there's an expired proposal to add secp256k1 to the HPKE spec itself. I've bumped both of these and will continue to follow up. Even without the formal addition to the spec, if we have a working library, I can add that to the OpenMLS library.

Spec Draft for Prekeys

Initial keying material (Prekey Event)

Each user that wishes to be reachable via MLS-based messaging MUST first publish a prekey event. Prekeys are used to authenticate and add members to groups (one-to-one DMs or groups with more than two participants) in an asynchronous way. The prekey event is a simple replaceable event and contains all the information needed to add a user to a group.

Prekeys SHOULD be used only once. Resuse of prekeys can lead to replay attacks.

In most cases, clients that implement this NIP will manage the creation and rotation of the prekey event. It's recommended that clients do so interactively with user consent in order to avoid overwriting prekeys created by other clients.

Derived vs Ephemeral Prekeys

Since prekeys are generated on a single device/client pair, the private key of the prekey must be either stored or generated in a way that can be deterministically recovered.

The recommended approach is to use derived keys, generated in the manner described in NIP-06. In this way, the user can respond to a new group request from any device/client pair, not just from the same device/client pair that created the initial prekey event. If using derived keys;

• Clients MUST use 104 as the account level value and 0 at the change level value (e.g. m/44'/1237'/104'/0/0).
• Keys are then generated using public derivation by incrementing the address_index level value.
• Clients MUST include the full derivation path corresponding to the key used in the content field on the prekey event.
• The content field MUST be encrypted using standard NIP-44 encryption (encrypted to themselves).

However, for added security (and consequently a more restrictive user experience), clients can chose to generate an ephemeral key and store the private key locally. This means that users will only be able to respond to new group requests from the same device/client pair and won't be able to respond at all if the prekey's private key is lost. Ephemeral keys can also be used with minimal degredation of UX if you're using a remote signer that can manage these keys.

If using an ephemeral key;

• The content field on the prekey event MUST be filled in with EPHEMERAL and then encrypted using standard NIP-44 encryption (encrypted to themselves). This ensures that anyone looking at prekey events cannot tell whether it's a derived or an ephemeral prekey.

Example Prekey Event

json { "id": <id>, "kind": 10443, "created_at": <unix timestamp in seconds>, "pubkey": <main identity pubkey>, "content": <encrypted derivation path | EPHEMERAL>, "tags": [ ["mls_protocol_version", "1.0"], ["ciphersuite", "MLS_256_DHKEMK256_CHACHA20POLY1305_SHA256_K256"], ["pubkey", <prekey pubkey>], ["prekey_sig", <signature generated from hex encoded pubkey of the prekey>], ["r", "wss://nos.lol"], ["r", "wss://relay.primal.net"] ], "sig": <signed with main identity key> }

Tags

• The mls_protocol_version tag identifies the MLS protocol version being used. For now, this MUST be 1.0
• The ciphersuite tag identifies the ciphersuite supported. For now on Nostr, we're using a custom ciphersuite, MLS_256_DHKEMK256_CHACHA20POLY1305_SHA256_K256. Read more about ciphersuites in MLS.
• pubkey is the derived or ephemeral prekey pubkey.
• The prekey_sig tag value is a Schnorr signature (over the secp256k1 curve) of the SHA-256 hashed value of the prekey's pubkey, signed with the prekey's private key.

```js const privKey = schnorr.utils.randomPrivateKey(); const pubKey = schnorr.getPublicKey(privKey);

const prekeySig = bytesToHex( schnorr.sign(bytesToHex(sha256(pubKey)), privKey) );

const prekeyTag = ["prekey_sig", prekeySig]; ```

Finally, clients SHOULD include r tags to identify each of the relays that they will attempt to publish this prekey event to. This allows for more complete replacement of prekey events at a later date.

Replacing Prekey Events

Clients MUST replace the prekey event on all the listed relays any time they successfully process a group welcome event. If the prekey was a derived prekey, clients SHOULD increment the derivation path by 1 for the next key.

Onward and Upward

This next week I'll continue to work on getting the right curves and code added to the OpenMLS library and start work on a simple demo app. The focus is on better understanding what we need from the control and message events and how we can make those as simple as possible for Nostr clients and relays while also preserving as much privacy as possible.

@ 20986fb8:cdac21b3

The motivation of building decentralized media protocols is to balance the power of centralized media platforms, and provide an alternative for the public to take part in the curation of information, not just access information. It has to perform checks-and-balances to the centralized media powers, while providing a credible and neutral mechanism for different communities to improve a platform over time. The operation and maintenance of such a media platform should be autonomous, unstoppable, and self-improving.

While a traditional media platform has to align itself with the interests of its owners, shareholders, and donors, the new type of media platform should not be subject to the control of any entity at all times.

The ownership and stewardship of the new media platform should be open and transparent to the public. This is in contrast to state/corporate-controlled media platforms, in which case the public is often not informed of a media platform’s real ownership and stewardship, hence the public cannot be aware of its real purpose, bias, and hidden agendas.

If each individual is more informed, it will be harder to manipulate public opinions, and it will be easier to foster independent judgment within human societies. The positive externality will be enormous. The transition from centralized media platforms to decentralized media platforms speeds up this process.

This article discusses the two pillars to implement a decentralized media technology stack: decentralized publication and decentralized content moderation.

Decentralization of publication

In a previous article, we extensively discussed the importance of content decentralization. It is the last defense of censorship - content removed or hidden by popular client websites could be stored permanently and be displayed on other (perhaps non-popular) client websites. We also discussed the importance of token economics neutrality, because token economics itself could lead to censorship.

As a non-microblogging platform, Yakihonne is currently one of the most popular clients that implemented NIP-23, attracting bloggers and readers from all over the world to post articles and read contents about Bitcoin and beyond.

As of the time of writing of this article, the platform serves users in 116 countries, supporting 18 languages, and has become the most widely used and feature-rich client within the Nostr ecosystem. Yakihonne is also the first Nostr client to support mobile applications and article editing on mobile apps.

When publishing articles on Yakihonne.com, you can choose multiple relays to publish the content. Relays can also implement logic to sync articles of their own interests and offer them to clients.

Joining the relay network is easy. If someone wants to join the relay network, he is able to do so by deploying one of the open source versions of Nostr relays, and starting to store content for the network.

The number of relays serving content within the Nostr protocol is currently quite small. Over the next period of time, it is important to grow the number of reliable relays.

It should be economically viable and encouraging to set up a relay, so that the number of relays can grow over time. Very likely, the number of relays will correspond to the net income of the network, which comes from revenue streams of each of the clients. Therefore, it is foreseeable that the number of reliable relays will be correlated to the traffic of the Nostr protocol in general and therefore, to the traffic of popular clients.

The zap feature (Lightning Zaps) can be used to incentivize relays. But we cannot set unrealistic expectations over zapping. Zapping an article is making a donation. Donation is unpredictable, and it is definitely not a sustainable way to maintain a large, reliable network of relays. One possible solution to this problem is to have profitable clients make continuous contributions to well-performing relays via enforceable protocol setups.

An ideal incentive mechanism for a relay network is to establish a profit-sharing protocol between clients and the relays.

Decentralization of content moderation and content curation

Striking a balance between moderation and anti-moderation has been an almost impossible task for centralized media platforms. Whoever performs the moderation dominates the narratives.

The most recent community notes feature on X took a major step towards community-driven moderation. In community notes, users who are eligible to provide notes can write community notes to a post, and a community can vote for the notes so that the best recognized notes can emerge on the top. It has been proven to be effective in content moderation in many instances, and the ability to add community-backed notes reduced the need for shadow bans.

Community notes are obviously a more effective system than shadow bans in Jack Dorsey’s Twitter era. At times even Elon Musk himself can be “community noted” is definitely making people trust this system more.

But it cannot be ignored that users still have to sign up to apply for eligibility for community notes. It is in X's own direction to decide who is eligible and who is not. The voting process of community notes itself could also be subject to censorship, because there is no way to verify the votes.

This is to say, X has the power to do evil, it doesn’t matter if it does evil or not.

The countermeasure to balance the power of a centralized media platform is a platform that is not manipulatable by its operating team or share/token holders.

So content moderation has to be permissionless, while verifiability to content moderation mechanisms like community notes.

The first step to developing a decentralized content moderation system is to implement a permissionless community notes system.

X’s community notes can be censored in two steps: the eligibility review process can filter people based on X’s own preference; the ranking and displaying rules are also controlled by X. In a permissionless community notes system, any relay or even client should be able to implement its own version of community notes, and users can choose their preferred system(s) to work with.

Notes have to be stored on an open, token economics neutral relay network to ensure their immutability and resistance to censorship. Community members can add notes to any media content, and the notes are distributed to non-related parties who operate the nodes.

Incentives

The content moderation mechanism needs to be incentivized through the decentralized media protocol.

In a non-sponsored model, income comes from ads or subscription fees, and is distributed to content creators, content relays, and additional network security providers.

In a sponsored model, income is from content sponsors, and further distributed to community note contributors, content relays, and additional network security providers. A sponsored post, in old media platforms, can be quite expensive. The cost to post sponsored content can be dramatically reduced on a decentralized media platform because of the great reduction of content moderation cost.

Ranking

Community notes can be ranked by either relays or clients. A content relay can rank community notes based on its own preference, and deliver to clients. Clients can also rank community notes based on its rules. Basically, everyone can rank any post’s community notes.

In general, community notes ranking algorithms can be stake-based or non-stake based. Stake-based ranking algorithms in general show how people who have a stake in something react to a post. Non-stake based ranking algorithms can be any mechanism, such as reputation-weighted ranks, 1p1v ranks, quadratic voting ranks, random selection, or even asking an AI to rank community notes.

What’s perhaps important is not which ranking algorithm is the best, it’s the flexibility for both the content storage layer and the interfaces (clients) to choose their ideal ranking algorithms. Probably for a client, the best strategy is to provide all ranks from multiple sources, so that people can view community notes from very different angles.

The Current Status of Bitcoin and the Nostr Protocol

As Nostr is the ideal relay network for decentralized media at this moment, it is necessary to write some notes on the current status of the Bitcoin ecosystem, as Nostr is largely inspired by the Bitcoin network to be decentralized, and is greatly supported by the Bitcoin community.

The Bitcoin community is so far the most legitimate crypto community. It has a very simple mission: to create a decentralized monetary system that is not controlled by centralized powers. The progressive element of the Bitcoin community is relative to the old banking world, where Bitcoin is a completely new and alternative technology stack to the centralized money and finance systems. The conservative element of the Bitcoin community is relative to the other crypto community, where the Bitcoin community is largely skeptical of the motivation and decentralization of them.

In my opinion, the scrutiny Bitcoin community puts upon the rest of the crypto world is totally reasonable. However, as much as Nostr is inspired by the Bitcoin network, it will also go beyond the Bitcoin community, in terms of content.

This is not a bad thing!

If this happens on a big monolithic blockchain, probably the Nostr major contributors will be required to create a token pretty soon and then pay gas fees to the blockchain so that the blockchain’s revenue can increase. The Bitcoin community will never ask that. This gives Nostr enough freedom and flexibility to evolve, while continuously getting support from the Bitcoin community.

However, if Nostr users are forever a subset of Bitcoin users, Nostr will be limited. Nostr is not a subset of Bitcoin, it is not an “ecosystem project” of Bitcoin either (a.k.a., it should not become a “layer-2” of Bitcoin, as some people reason about the future of Bitcoin totally from the analogy of Ethereum).

In the best world, Nostr and Bitcoin can expand each other’s user base, and create healthy synergy.

Conclusion

Yakihonne is, so far, not a protocol. With the products and features it offers, Yakihonne is ready to build up a decentralized media stack. The stack has two pillars : decentralized publication and decentralized content moderation. The former guarantees that content will never be lost; the latter creates a new cost-incentive model to make sure that when content and moderation go permissionless, the platform can still maintain truthfulness and cost-effectiveness. In fact, a decentralized media platform can be more cost-effective than centralized media platforms. So the next step for us is to build this up and experiment with it.

The Flash News and the uncensored notes are introduced for such purpose, and everyone is welcomed to give it a try. Note that it is still in the early stages and various improvements will come eventually, for this your feedback is valuable to us to reach any expectations.

@ 1739d937:3e3136ef

This is the first in a series of weekly updates I'm publishing on my process around secure messaging. Since it's the first, let's start with a bit of historical context.

How this started

On April 29th I published a PR on the NIPs repo detailing how we could achieve "Double Ratchet" DMs on Nostr. There was also a video and demo app that went along with the PR. The basic premise was to use an adapted version of the Signal protocol. This would result in DMs that were truly private and confidential, even in the case where you leaked your main private key (your nsec).

I got a lot of great feedback from folks on that PR. Interestingly, nearly all of it focused on two points, both of which I'd deliberately scoped out. Group messaging and multi-device/client support. While I knew these were important, and I'd figured out how these might be accomplished, I'd scoped them out to try and keep the footprint of the spec as small as possible But, the more I talked to people, the more it became clear that this was one problem to be solved and given the complexity, it'd be better to do it in one shot.

At the same time, I'd seen that Messaging Layer Security (MLS) had recently made a lot of progress on becoming an internet standard with their RFC proposal and, goaded on by Vitor, decided to take a closer look.

Enter MLS

Messaging Layer Security (MLS) is a new protocal that is basically a modern extension of the Signal protocol that makes group messaging way more efficient (log vs linear) and was built to be used in centralized or federated environments. I'd heard other Nostr devs talk about it in the past but it was always overlooked as being too complicated or too early.

After spending a couple weeks reading hundreds of pages of RFC docs and reading through a few implementations of the MLS spec, I believe it's the best solution for secure direct and group messaging in Nostr. It also has the added benefit that we can upgrade the underlying crypto primitives over time in a sane way.

The MLS protocol specifies "a key establishment protocol that provides efficient asynchronous group key establishment with forward secrecy (FS) and post-compromise security (PCS) for groups in size ranging from two to thousands."

The spec I'm working on will detail the ways that we implement this protocol into the Nostr environment (namely, how do we use our crypto primitives, use events as control mechanisms, and use relays for storage, while obfuscating metadata).

Goals

It's important to be clear about what we're aiming for here. Engineering is all about tradeoffs, always.

• Private and Confidential DMs and Group messages
• Private means that an observer cannot tell that Alice and Bob are talking to one another, or that Alice is part of a specific group. This necessarily requires protecting metadata.
• Confidential means that the contents of conversations can only be viewed by the intended recipients.
• Forward secrecy and Post-compromise security (PCS) in the case of any key material being leaked, whether that's your main Nostr identity key (your nsec) or any of the keys used in the MLS ratchet trees.
• Forward secrecy means that encrypted content in the past remains encrypted even if key material is leaked.
• Post compromise security means that leaking key material doesn't allow an attacker to continue to read messages indefinitely into the future.
• Scales well for large groups. MLS provides this from a computational standpoint, but we need to make sure this works in a scalable way when multiple relays are involved.
• Allows for the use of multiple device/clients in a single conversation/group. Importantly, we're not aiming to enable a device/client to be able to reconstruct the full history of a conversation at any point.

Progress this week

Ok, finally, what what I been up to?

Reading

I've spent most of the last few weeks reading the MLS spec and architectural doc (multiple times), learning some Rust, and beefing up my knowledge of cryptography (which was, if I'm being generous, paltry before starting this project).

Ciphersuites

Nostr is built around the same crypto primitives that Bitcoin is, namely Schnorr signatures over the secp256k1 curve and SHA-256 hashes. This curve isn't currently supported officially in the MLS spec. I've been in touch with the MLS working group to better understand the process of adding a new ciphersuite to the set of ciphersuites in the MLS spec. The outcome here is that we're going to start out using our custom ciphersuite that isn't part of the formal spec. The only drawback being that Nostr's MLS implementation won't be immediately interoperable with other MLS implementations. We can always add it later via the formal channels if we want.

MLS Implementations

Given the complexity of the MLS spec itself (the RFC is 132 pages long), having a well vetted, well tested implementation is going to be key to adoption in the Nostr ecosystem. OpenMLS is an implementation created by several of the RFC authors and written in Rust with bindings for nearly all the major languages we would want to support.

I've been in touch with the maintainers to talk about adding support to their library for our new ciphersuite and to better understand the bindings that are there. Some (WASM) are very barebones and still need a lot of work. They are generally open to the idea of working with me on adding the missing pieces we'd need.

Double Ratchet NIP 2.0

I've also started to write up the new version of the NIP that will detail how all of this will work when plugged into Nostr. It's not yet ready to share but it's getting closer.

Onward & Upward

Hopefully that's a helpful recap. I'll keep doing these weekly and welcome any questions, feedback, or support. In particular, if you're keen on working on this with me, please reach out. More eyes and more brains can only make this better. 🤙

@ df67f9a7:2d4fc200

Anyone who thinks that “onboarding new users” is simply a technical challenge of educating people about “how Nostr works”, is grossly mistaken about social networks in general and blind to what makes Nostr so special.

Social Networks are for Friends

Relationship building is why people use social networks. Connecting with friends and loved ones (and colleagues and customers also) is the obvious reason to join, and should be the primary objective in any onboarding endeavor. Everything else “about the technology” only needs to be introduced “as needed” in order for each new user to achieve this goal.

The Nostr Network Requires Trusted Friendships

To thrive at scale, Nostr needs to have established and interconnected “webs of trusted friends” for “verifying” authentic profiles and quality content. This PgP strategy for decentralized trust implemented on Nostr, is the best way to keep bots and bad actors at bay while preserving freedom and sovereignty for every user. Even though Nostr still doesn’t have a standard for determining who “is trusted” for any one user across all clients, we can already build tools to onboard new friends of the highest quality trust. Leveraging existing relationships, “webs of trust” can be strengthened even at this early stage simply by advocates “inviting friends to Nostr”.

Nostr is New and Already Full of Trusted Friends

But it won’t be for long. Bots and bad actors are relatively “easy” to keep at bay today because the Nostr userbase is still small. People who come to Nostr and STAY have mostly been a self selecting group of “freedom tech fans”. We like it this way, and are generally happy to be here. The comraderie is refreshing. But the more people that come to Nostr, the more Nostr will attract different kinds of people.

This is already happening. Nostr is growing at the edges, reaching out beyond the “freedom tech fans” and attracting a number of “less committed” (and some nefarious) individuals here and there. Who sticks around? The “friends of freedom tech fans” stick around longer because they have friends here. WAY BEFORE even considering how “the network effect” will take over, Nostr needs to solve for retention by bringing more “trusted friends” into the network. Social onboarding tools will allow us to share Nostr to “friends of freedom tech fans” and beyond, establishing interconnected “webs of trust” that are increasingly impermeable to bots and bad actors.

Nostr is Freedom Tech that People Want to Share

Creators and influencers of every kind share Nostr (and Nostr content) every day. This phenomenon is a gold mine for onboarding, and can be supported with tools and incentives. Driven by the fact that Nostr is an open protocol, owned by nobody and available for anybody to build upon and profit from, the passion for sharing Nostr will never wane. But our userbase may fall off, if people become disenchanted by undesirable content or lack of good follows. This is why onboarding efforts, to attract more “friends” to the network, are so important. Leveraging the “share worthy” phenomenon of Nostr itself to grow Nostr’s networks of “trusted friends” seems like a no brainer. But for this strategy to work, it needs to be win win win for all parties.

Everybody Wins with More Trusted Users on Nostr

Even as standards for qualifying trust are still being refined, “social onboarding” increases the ratio of “more” trusted over “less” trusted users across the network.

Developers Win

With more trusted users on the network, Nostr developers win by being able to attract an increasingly diverse range of business partners to sponsor their projects.

Sponsors Win

An increase in trusted usership equates to more “real people” perusing “desired content” and more chances for brands to engage “organically” with target audiences. Marketing opportunities increase with trust.

Advocates Win

Simply by sharing Nostr with their friends, Advocates support the sustained growth of trust across the network. Valuable zap reward programs to incentivize high quality onboarding efforts are easily justified and funded by social onboarding clients and their sponsors.

Users Win

More trusted users across the network means more trustworthy content in every feed and more easily discoverable friends and new follows regardless of the client or algorithm used.

Nostr Wins

More trusted users on the network means more “high quality” trust connections between each user. Strong webs of trust is what keeps out bots and bad actors, and is essential for stability as Nostr scales.

Social Onboarding Clients Bring Trust to Nostr

Having more tools for “sharing Nostr with friends” is how Nostr wins. Any client can have capacity for “Social Onboarding”. This may be a dedicated onboarding client or a feature set within a social client. A client that offers “Social Onboarding” will support Nostr advocates and the users that they invite. These should have the following feature set :

• Nostr advocates may create and share any number of customizable “Nostr invites” for different audiences or occasions. Each may have different reccomendations, or access codes, or expiry options. (A NIP is in the works)
• Nostr invite QR codes (and shareable URLs) should resolve to a WEB based interface for prospective (and existing) users who MAY NOT have a client or browser extension already installed.
• Each invite should (within the onboarding client) provide access to low friction profile creation AND advocate reccomended lists of new friends, interest groups, preferred clients, best relays, and other stuff.
• Private key generation and management for new users should be handled entirely within the onboarding client (using NIP standards without a browser extension or external bunker app) to reduce friction at this crucial moment.
• A human readable Nostr address (NIP05 or some future NIP) should be generated automatically for all new users.
• New account creation should result immediately in a direct message or group thread of private “gift wrap” encrypted messages. This thread acts as the new user’s “first contact” with the advocate (possibly others as well) and an anchor for exploring the rest of Nostr.
• Invite “receipt” data (who invited who) should be “gift wrap” encrypted, accessible only to the advocate and new user. Clients wishing to use this data for analytics MAY request access from BOTH parties.
• Top Advocates may be calculated by the client (using data from invite receipts OR from public Nostr usage metrics), and awards may be offered.
• Advocates may also be supported by the client through access to private “advocate support” groups and communities over the Nostr network.

Support Social Onboarding for Nostr

Meet Me On Nostr is an app for sharing Nostr with friends via advocate invites. It is a reference client to demonstrate the power of Social Onboarding for Nostr. The first launch of "feature complete" client is expected in fall 2024.

This is a “bootstrap” funded project in active development. We are not grant funded or VC funded. Instead, we are looking to pay our developers by sponsorships from “Nostr adjacent” businesses who want to increase brand recognition over this new social network.

Is Your Business Nostr Adjacent?

“I’d like to advertise on Nostr but it’s “not quite ready” says our marketing team.”

“It has potential, and we have alignment, but the technology is still a bit rough.”

“Nostr is a perfect fit for our “target audience”, but there simply aren’t enough people using it.”

If your business is aligned with freedom technology, and the people who build and use Nostr, then NOW is the perfect time to sponsor Social Onboarding. Help grow Nostr’s base of trusted users and engage directly with Nostr’s most active advocates and influencers as it scales.

Release Nostr’s Superpower

When Nostr advocates are equipped and incentivized to share Nostr with their friends, nothing can stop this network from growing and growing and growing ever more secure and interconnected networks of trusted users.

Onboarding and retaining trusted users as Nostr scales will require so much more than just pointing people to “how Nostr works” content. Nostr’s true power lies dormant in the existing relationships that Nostr users already have outside of Nostr. Leveraging this power is what Social Onboarding is all about. Social Onboarding is Nostr’s superpower.

Contribute to the Geyser Fund

@ 6ad3e2a3:c90b7740

I’ve been obsessed with large numbers for a few years now, trying in vain to get others to care. But the “why” eluded me. I made one partially satisfying attempt to explain last year. Yes, he who has “the deepest paradigm can name the biggest number,” but to what end?

Now I think I’ve found the end, the reason I can’t quit this line of thinking, even if it’s driven me half mad: that the number TREE(3) is quite possibly a miracle. Despite arising from a simple game, TREE(3) can be hard to understand, so maybe it’s best to start with one of its “competitors”, Graham’s Number, to grasp what it is not.

Now Graham’s Number is only a competitor because the two are often compared, not because there is really any kind of competition. TREE(3) dwarfs Graham’s Number the way the breadth of the observable universe dwarfs the dimensions of an ant. (Actually, as you will see, that comparison vastly understates the disparity between the two numbers.)

But Graham’s Number, unfathomably vast in its own right, is both easier to understand and is generated via a different process. To get to Graham’s Number, we have to start with the most basic math that exists: counting.

I’ll excerpt from my post on growth that covers this:

First you have counting 1, 2, 3, 4…

If you want to speed up counting, you can add.

Instead of counting from three to six, you can just add 3 + 3. Addition therefore is _ just repeated (iterated) counting.

But instead of adding 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 3, you can just do 3 * 6 because multiplication is iterated addition.

But instead of multiplying 3 * 3 * 3 * 3, you can just do 3 ^ 4 because exponentiation is iterated multiplication.

That’s where most people leave off in their education, and they feel perfectly content to live their lives only because they don’t know what they’re missing. Beyond exponentiation lies tetration, or iterated exponentiation.

Instead of 3 ^ 3 ^ 3 ^ 3, you can just do 3 ↑↑ 4 (a power-tower of threes, four high.)

You would say it “three to the three to the three to the three” in exponentiation terms, or “three arrow arrow three” in tetration terms. The number before the arrows determines the base and the number after them how high the tower goes. Let’s calculate some easy ones.

2 ↑↑ 2 is a power tower of twos, two high. That is 2 ^ 2 = 4.

3 ↑↑ 2 is a power tower of threes two high. That is 3 ^ 3 = 27. Easy.

2 ↑↑ 3 is a power tower of twos three high. That is 2 ^ 2 ^ 2 which is 2 ^ 4 = 16.

_3 ↑↑ 3 is a power tower of threes three high. That is 3 ^ 3 ^ 3 which is 3 ^ 27 = 7,625,597,484,987.

_Wait, what happened? You just encountered a fast-growing function.

Ok, tetration is cute, but if you want to generate Graham’s number, you’ll need to add more up arrows. Iterated tetration, symbolized by three up-arrows, is called pentation and would look like this: 3 ↑↑↑ 3. If 3 ↑↑ 3 is 7.6 trillion, what would 3 ↑↑↑ 3 be?

Well, it’s just iterated tetration, which means it’s a series of double-arrow operations with a base of three, three long, i.e., 3 ↑↑ 3 ↑↑ 3.

And since we know the second half, (3 ↑↑ 3) = 7.6 trillion, we can simplify it to 3 ↑↑ 7.6 trillion. What does that mean? It means a power tower of threes, 7.6 trillion high.

Okay, that sounds big. How big?

Consider a power tower of threes five high, i.e., 3^3^3^3^3 or 3 ↑↑ 5, is bigger than a googolplex.

To get the scale of a googolplex (one with a googol zeroes), consider you could not fit the zeroes it would take to write it out in the universe, even if you put one trillion zeroes on every atom. Again, we are not talking about the number itself, merely the number of digits required to write it out.

Consider a number with 200 digits is so massive, it’s far more than the number of Planck volumes (smallest known unit of measure) in the universe, but it’s trivial to write out. But you do not have space to write out a googolplex even while using a trillion digits per atom, let alone what those digits, if you could even write them, represent.

Your odds of entering every lottery on earth for the rest of your life, from the local bake sale to the mega millions, and winning all of them are far, far, far greater than 1 in a googolplex.

Your odds of guessing all the private bitcoin keys on earth without making an error are greater than one in a googolplex. A googolplex is an unfathomably large number. And yet it is smaller than 3 ↑↑ 5,  or 3^3^3^3^3.

But 3 ↑↑↑ 3 is a tower of threes not five high, but 7.6 trillion high! When you get even to 10 high, you’ve exceeded a googolplex to the googolplexth power. The human mind cannot fathom the number you arrive at even at 100 or 1000 high, but we have to get to 7.6 trillion.

Okay, now that we’ve multiplied out the entire power tower to 7.6 trillion, guess what, we have to add another arrow. Not 3 ↑↑↑ 3 but 3 ↑↑↑↑ 3.

That’s hexation which is iterated pentation, in this case with a base of three and three terms, i.e., 3 ↑↑↑ 3 ↑↑↑ 3. We already know the second half is, whatever the incomprehensible result of the multiplied-out 7.6 trillion-high power tower was, call it X. So it’s 3 ↑↑↑ X.

And that means iterated tetration with a base of three, X times, i.e., _3 ↑↑ 3 ↑↑3 ↑↑ 3… X times.

To solve this, we go term by term. The first one is 7.6 trillion, which feeds into the second, the multiplied-out power tower 7.6 trillion high, i.e. X, the third is a power tower of threes, X high, multiplied out, and so on, and there are X of these entire towers, each one unfathomably, astronomically taller than the last.

Once we get through all X (remember itself an unfathomably large number) of the terms we’re at 3↑↑↑↑3.

That number is G1.

To get to G2, we just take 3 ↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑↑…G1 arrows… 3.

Wait, what?

Remember each individual move up the scale from counting to addition to multiplication to exponentiation turbo-charged the growth of the function, and now in this function, they’re telling us to add G1 (3↑↑↑↑3) moves up the scale all at once!

Put differently, from counting by ones to the insanity of hexation, there are only six steps. To get G2, there are 3↑↑↑↑3 steps!

To get G3, it’s 3 G2 arrows 3. To get to G4, it’s 3 G3 arrows 3.

And so on until we hit G64 which is Graham’s Number.

It’s an indescribably massive number, not relatable to anything in the universe, not even in terms of the possible ways the atoms could be arranged taken to the power of the number of ways history’s chess games could have been played.

There is no way to visualize or imagine it except by walking vaguely through the steps to get there and straining your brain to grasp the process.

But as I said, Graham’s Number is trivial, basically zero compared to TREE(3), and that is so much the case that if instead of going to G64 via the steps, you went to G(Googolplex), or even G(Graham’s Number), i.e., G(G64), you would still be at zero relative to TREE(3).

But here’s where it gets fascinating. While Graham’s Number is generated via ramping up increasingly powerful iterative operations (as we did in the beginning) TREE(3) comes from a simple game.

There is a good article in Popular Mechanics that lays it out, building off this excellent Numberphile video with Tony Padilla:

You can click on the article and video for the specific (and relatively basic rules), but essentially, the TREE function has to do with “seeds” (dots) and “trees” (combinations of dots and lines), such that you make the maximum amount of unique “trees” (dot-line combos) per the types of seeds available.

If you have only one kind of seed, say a green one, there is only one unique tree that can be made.

So:

TREE(1) = 1.

If you have two seeds, say a green and a red, there are three different kinds of unique trees you could make.

TREE(2) = 3.

If you have three seeds, say a green, a red and a black, there are TREE(3) different kinds of trees you could make. As it turns out, that number (which is not infinite) is so much bigger than Graham’s number the two are not even in the same universe:

Here’s Padilla comparing TREE(3) to Graham’s Number if you want to see the difference:

Okay, so what does all this mean? It means that Graham’s Number, which is generated by successively more powerful iterations of mathematical operations, cannot compete with TREE(3) which comes from a game with simple rules.

Graham’s Number is built the way a machine would do it, the way an AI would go about making a huge number — mechanically increasing the rate of construction.

Consider if you had a machine that made products one at a time, that’s like counting. And if you had a machine that made products three at a time, that’s like adding.

And a machine that made machines that made products three at a time, that’s like multiplication. And a machine that made those three at a time would be exponentiation, etc., etc.

Each successive machine-making machine would take you into a deeper paradigm of growth. But you can see this is a mechanical process, no matter how deep you go.

By contrast, the tree series is what happens when you design a game with simple rules and let it play out. The growth (once you realize it to the extent the human brain can even grasp it) is not just faster than the mechanistic model, it’s on another plane.

The takeaway then is bottom-up complex systems (games) with a few simple rules can spawn a paradigm so much bigger than top-down mechanistic growth models.

The human brain (neocortex in McKenna’s terms) is just such a system, and yet we train ourselves to be like machines! Practice, routine, iteration, follow-these-10-steps to happiness, learn these five keys to investing, etc. Yes, you can get somewhere with these recipes, but nowhere near the destination of which you are inherently capable.

The key is a few simple inputs — good nutrition, enough sleep, a decent environment — and to let the mind have its space to play out the sequence in full.

In modern society the conditions needed for greatness, since the basics are relatively easy to come by, are achieved more by getting rid of negatives. Don’t be a drug addict or alcoholic, ditch the porn, the video games, the excessive social media use, etc. Then let the game play out.

Of course, this is easier said than done, as we’ve been deeply conditioned by the mechanistic paradigm, and remember TREE(1) is only 1, while G(1) is 3↑↑↑↑3, i.e., the more powerful growth function doesn’t necessarily reveal itself at the outset. But that changes in short order, and once it does, the mechanistic growth is no match for the “most densely ramified complexified structure in the known universe.”

I’ll end on a speculative thought, one that occurred to me while recording a podcast on this topic: Might what we think of as good vs evil actually just be a battle between the mechanistic and the complex, the difference between top-down compulsion and bottom-up free choice?

BONUS VIDEOS For those who want to dive deeper into this, there are some good videos by Carbrickscity on You Tube here, here and here. And Tim Urban’s article on Graham’s Number is worthwhile too.

@ 75bf2353:e1bfa895

Using p2p Electronic Cash

by Blogging Bitcoin

“The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design. To the naive mind that can conceive of order only as the product of deliberate arrangement, it may seem absurd that in complex conditions order, and adaptation to the unknown, can be achieved more effectively by decentralizing decisions and that a division of authority will actually extend the possibility of overall order. Yet that decentralization actually leads to more information being taken into account.” ― Friedrich Hayek, The Fatal Conceit: The Errors of Socialism

I write a free and open source blog about using bitcoin as peer to peer electronic cash. This is a compilation of some blogs I've written over the last two years. I wanted to write a book, but always felt paywalls are contrary to the free and open-source software movement. I still might publish this on dead trees, but want it to be free for anyone to read like the code you can find on https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/. This is also an example of what bitcoin makes possible. Andreas Antonopolis once compared bitcoin to the invention of the printing press.

I may not agree with everything he says, but he was right about that. Bitcoin allows me to get paid directly by the consumer. It is possible to sell my words without jumping through the Amazon hoops. App developers can publish apps, but Apple will not be levy their 30% tax. I'm not advocating tax evasion or fighting the IRS, but why should we pay corporations to publish and censor us when we can be paid directly from our audience?

This is a compilation of 21 of my favorite blogs I wrote on nostr over the last two years. It is written using the Value 4 Value model. To support my work, please pay the paywall, send zaps, or contribute your time treasure, or talent in another way.

Most bitcoin books try to convince you to buy bitcoin. They talk about how bitcoin is worth more today than ten years ago. You should buy bitcoin because it's going to a moon 69,420 light-years away in a galaxy called WhenLambo. I get it. 125 sats will most likely buy you something at the dollar tree one day. At the time of this writing, 1,922 will buy you a single item at the dollar tree, but 1,538 sats will buy you a paper NFT with George Washinton's mug shot. This is not about NFT's, trading crypto, or how many dollars 100,000,000 sats are worth. It's the musings of some nerd on the Internet who believes cryptography equals freedom in the electronic age. It's about how I use bitcoin and freedom tech in an unfree fiat tech world.

All of my work is written under a Creative Commons Licence. To support my work, please pay the paywall or send zaps. I have published this blog behind this paywall. Paywalls kinda suck because they block so many people from reading your work--At least they think they do. Most paywalls can be bypassed by a simple google search

nostr:nprofile1qyvhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68yvfwvd6hyun9de6zuenedyhszxrhwden5te0wfjkccte9e3h2unjv4h8gtnx095j7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8qunfd4skctnwv46z7qgswaehxw309ahx7um5wghx6mmd9uq3uamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwp6kytnhv4kxcmmjv3jhytnwv46z7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcpzdmhxue69uhk7enxvd5xz6tw9ec82c30qywhwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnzd96xxmmfdejhytnnda3kjctv9uqzqadlydf3460e333fjkaqwxg7fz82636ew5m36c7hml2xhhsml2y4csrc5a

Using p2p Electronic Cash, by Blogging Bitcoin

https://i.nostr.build/zdJG3.png

1)My Nym Is Blogging Bitcoin

2 Support Yo0ur Local Circular Economy To Drain The Exchanges

3)Then They Fight You

4)Use Bitcoin To Protoest Inflation

5)Stacking Sats On Substack

6)Bitcoin Is Not A Belief

7)Why I Write On Nostr

8)The Nostr Tip Jar

9)Privacy Is Necessary For An Open Society In The Electronic Age

10)Fix The Money, Fix The Music

11)Build The Bitcoin Economy On Nostr

12)I don't trust the Cold Card: How to Verify Dice Rolls Using Tails

13)Recurring Bitcoin Donations with OakNode

14)Crypto Means Cryptography

15)Doge Is Dumb

16)Instransigent Tipping 17)Explain The Blockchain To Me(Like I don't Know How To Use The Command Line)

18)Freedom On The Internet

19)How Bitcoin Works In A Nutshell

20)Stacking Sats Is For Everybody

21)Using p2p Electronic Cash

₿logging ₿itcoin 848,675 debtclock 🧡 Support this by using the ⚡Value 4 Value model⚡

@ 9171b08a:8395fd65

The rhythmic thump thump of the wipers’ frantic attempt to rid the windshield of raindrops glimmering in the passing streetlights came and went in Jonah’s sight. A thin layer of water about the lonely street glistened in the headlights. His breaths were heavy between the squeal and thump, thump.

“Your mom was right, you know?” were the words Julia, his wife had said. The street lights stretched across the darkness then vanished over her reflection in the rearview mirror revealing only a split second of the shimmer in her eyes.

Their boy cooed in the car seat behind Jonah as Julia fed him with her left hand. Their girl slept, head bobbing gently in the seat to Julia’s right.

“Julia, c’mon. You can’t be serious.”

“You haven’t been there for us. You haven’t been there for me and it's embarrassing that your mom had to call you out on it. You think you're a man?”

Jonah’s breaths were heavy between the thump thump and squeal of the windshield wipers. The lights were stagnant then, when the engine ticked strangely and he had the taste of iron in his mouth.

The words he had said a few moments before echoed in his head, “Julia, I was doing it for you and the kids.”

“The kids needed you home. I nee—” Julia’s voice cracked, “I needed you.” Her voice slipped into a soft whine of desperation, “We can get by with your parents' help. It’s ok to ask for help.”

“Why do we need their help? We can do this on our own. I can do this for us,” growled Jonah. His rage was building but he didn’t dare raise his voice and wake the children. “I can do this,” he repeated, staring at Julia.

Julia couldn’t fight the frown. She wiped away a tear and said, “Maybe you can. But I can’t. Not anymore, I already told your mother I’ll be comi—”

Thump.

Thump.

The street lights and water filled the splintered windshield glass like streams of gold. The Red and blue lights flashing wildly against the concrete median came and went in Jonah’s sight. Julia hung limp in her seat. Her body was tethered down by the seatbelt; her hands suspended above her head. It was dark even with all the lights and it wasn’t until there came the glare of a flashlight and Jonah noticed the blood streaming from the gash in Julia’s face that he really noticed the taste of iron in his mouth.

All sounds were muffled. When he looked at the glaring light the moment just vanished.

Beep. Beep. Beep.

Jonah shivered. The pain was unbearable but the cold still racked his body. He shook awake and was blinded by the overhead light.

“Easy. Easy,” came a familiar voice.

His mother’s voice brought tears to Jonah’s eyes. Eyes still sensitive to the light. His mother’s silhouette shifted beside him. Then, he felt her touch and though there was warmth against the chill, he shook. Jonah realized he was in the hospital and now it was the pain that racked his body.

Jonah wheezed, “Julia? Julia? Mom.” His voice cracked. “Grayson? Tory? What happened?”

Jonah’s mother hugged him, “You were in an accident son.”

“Mom,” Jonah wheezed again as he spoke and struggled to free himself from her embrace. “What room are they in? Are they ok?”

His mother spoke softly as she separated from him and said, “Jonah, you need to rest.”

“I need to see my wife and kids! Tell them to come in.” Jonah searched the bedside table for his phone. Then he searched the bed. His arms were riddled with sutures and streaks of black coagulated blood. “I’ll call Julia. Pass me my phone,” he said wanting to raise his hand in his inquiry but the pain was unbearable.

His mother covered her mouth and shook her head as she cried.

“Mom?” Her silence bothered Jonah. The wounds of his ego after the way his family turned on him that weekend were still fresh. At that moment, it was fresher still than the wounds of the accident. The idea that his mother was still treating him like he wasn’t man enough to care for his family enraged him. “Will you stop treating me like a boy? I’m thirty years old. I have a family. I don’t need to be coddled.”

His mother gasped and reached out a hand that Jonah swatted away. “Oh, no son. You don’t understand.”

Jonah winced at his mother’s reaction. It wasn’t uncommon for his mother to turn the tables on him and make him feel like the scum of the earth for having any sort of feelings whatsoever. For the first time however, that wouldn’t come. She was speechless and remorse blanketed her face. Jonah finally came to the realization that something was very wrong. He fought the frown that his lips wanted to take. “What’s wrong? What happened?”

His mother inhaled slowly and struggled to answer, “The paramedics tried their best, but you were the only one who made it to the hospital alive.”

Jonah stared at his mother in disbelief. The weight of the news made him sink further into the bed sheets. “No, no no no.” He struggled to conjure the sound of Julia’s voice from his memories of her.

“Your mom was right, you know?” Julie had said. “I already told your mother I’ll be comi—” were her last words. The streetlights expanding across her face in the rearview mirror and the glimmer of her tears was the last image he held of her. His daughter’s bobbing head and his son’s coo were the last memories he had of his children.

Everyone was right. His mother was right. Why had he insisted on spending so much time away from home in search of money. In search of greatness. Little did he know that the seconds were ticking away and every moment he spent away from his family was one less minute he would have memories of.

@ 3c7d12a6:9532013e

NUD: Pubkey to colors

This NUD defines how to convert pubkey to colors.

Live demo

Why?

• npub is nonsense to display.
• too long.
• npub1bla...bla is nonsense to display.
• npub1 takes too much space.
• ... means nothing.

Specs

• Uses hex pubkey.
• Converts 64 characters to 8 colors.
• Splits 64 with 8 length chunks.
• Converts each 2 in 8 into
  • Alpha (0-255 -> 0.0-1.0)
  • Hue (0-255 -> 0.0-360.0)
  • Saturation (0-255 -> 0.0-1.0)
  • Light (0-255 -> 0.0-1.0)
• Supports dark and light theme.
• When Light is 1.0, flip the Light for light theme (0.0).

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Estórias

• O caso da Grêmio TV
• Jofer
• Lagoa Santa: como chegar -- partindo da rodoviária de Belo Horizonte
• O Planetinha

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

At WalletScrutiny we open a lot of issues. And just recently, Danny, whom I cannot mention on Habla.news due to this error wrote a script to facilitate re-visiting issues we haven't re-visited in over half a year. Should we poke them all? 🤔

Issue | Comment | Issue
-----------|------------|---------------------- 2019-12-14 | 2019-12-16 | App cannot be verified 2017-10-20 | 2020-04-11 | Builds are not reproducible 2019-12-14 | 2020-06-19 | App from GooglePlay is not verifiable 2020-08-27 | 2020-09-02 | Please provide full build instructions to reproduce the app on Google Play 2020-12-05 | 2020-12-14 | Provide build instructions to rebuild the app from Google Play 2020-12-16 | 2020-12-16 | Where is the code of DApp Browser? 2020-12-18 | 2021-01-02 | Reproducible builds of com.crypto.multiwallet on Google Play? 2021-03-06 | 2021-03-07 | Change minSdkVersion from 16 to 19 2017-12-20 | 2021-03-12 | Build APK deterministically 2021-03-05 | 2021-04-03 | Please update your build instruction and make sure the app on Google Play can be reproduced 2019-12-28 | 2021-04-03 | Please update your build instructions such that reproducible builds are possible 2021-04-09 | 2021-04-09 | Please provide detailled instructions on how to reproduce the app on Google Play 2021-03-07 | 2021-04-20 | Missing build instructions & build fail 2021-03-08 | 2021-04-22 | Build fail with errors "Error: No named parameter with the name" 2021-04-23 | 2021-04-23 | Where is the latest source-code for im.token.app? 2021-03-12 | 2021-05-02 | Missing code for latest 2.1 version in google-play 2021-04-01 | 2021-05-02 | Publish source code for the app 2021-05-03 | 2021-05-04 | Please provide build instructions for reproducing the apk from Google Play 2020-04-07 | 2021-05-16 | Please provide verifiability of released builds 2021-04-18 | 2021-05-19 | Where is the latest code and build instructions 2021-05-27 | 2021-05-27 | Missing code for latest release 3.2.7 on google-play 2020-01-29 | 2021-06-02 | Please provide verifiable builds 2019-12-22 | 2021-06-03 | Failed to verify the build on GooglePlay 2021-05-27 | 2021-06-08 | Android app is not reproducible, diffs in AndroidManifest.xml & 0.dist.js & dist.js & resources.arsc files 2020-06-01 | 2021-07-23 | Please make the app reproducible 2021-10-26 | 2021-12-02 | Publish sources for android mobile appid=io.divipay.divi 2021-12-11 | 2021-12-11 | Please provide latest source code and reproducible builds 2021-12-20 | 2021-12-20 | Please share the source and build instructions for the QUANTUM HW firmware 2022-02-08 | 2022-02-08 | Please add interpretation of transactions due to be signed 2021-10-17 | 2022-03-12 | Please provide build instructions to reproduce the version on Google Play Store 2021-12-02 | 2022-03-14 | Please provide instructions to reproduce your app found on Google Play 2021-04-21 | 2022-03-27 | Minimal Containers for Reproducible Builds testing for android app - WIP 2019-11-23 | 2022-03-28 | Build is not verifiable 2022-03-15 | 2022-04-10 | Show hash of firmware prior to installation 2021-04-12 | 2022-04-12 | Please provide build instructions to reproduce the app in Google Play Store 2020-04-27 | 2022-04-14 | Please provide reproducible builds 2022-04-08 | 2022-04-16 | Why the wallet readme is not detailed and no updated description? 2021-07-17 | 2022-07-22 | Publish source-code of releases before uploading them to Google Play 2021-12-01 | 2022-08-07 | Reproducible build fails due to a missing dependency 2021-02-14 | 2022-08-29 | Build failed if --production or npm ci are used instead of development 2022-03-01 | 2023-01-06 | Publish source code for mobile apps 2021-10-16 | 2023-04-13 | Missing Code for latest versions on google-play 2023-04-15 | 2023-04-15 | Missing Git Tag & Github release for latest version 5.5.1 on Google Play 2022-08-04 | 2023-04-20 | Add build instructions for all platforms & Containerfiles to compile app 2021-11-23 | 2023-04-22 | Missing source code for latest version 4.18 2021-03-12 | 2023-04-23 | Build apk fail with "because bitorzo_wallet_flutter depends on intl ^0.16.0, version solving failed." 2019-12-14 | 2023-04-24 | App on Google Play is not verifiable 2023-04-24 | 2023-04-24 | Publish code for newer version 23 on google-play 2023-04-27 | 2023-04-28 | Reproducibility problem on v0.32.0 2022-07-12 | 2023-05-25 | Missing code for version 1.3.11 on google-play 2023-05-27 | 2023-05-27 | reproducible builds 2023-06-20 | 2023-06-21 | Use --output-hashing none to prevent random names for built main.js 2023-06-25 | 2023-06-25 | The app is not reproducible 2023-02-21 | 2023-07-01 | Could not find com.google.android.gms:play-services-tapandpay:18.2.0 2021-10-09 | 2023-07-08 | Please fix build reproducibility 2023-05-22 | 2023-07-13 | v7.8.0 is not reproducible 2021-10-17 | 2023-07-31 | Missing x86_64 folder in ./app/src/main/cpp//lib with lib.a files & Instructions to reproduce binaries in lib folders 2021-01-21 | 2023-08-16 | How can I verify the app on Google Play was built from this source code? 2019-12-28 | 2023-09-30 | Please provide verifiable builds 2019-12-14 | 2023-11-02 | App on Google Play can't be verified 2019-12-30 | 2023-11-03 | Support verifiable builds 2021-02-21 | 2023-12-19 | Has the BitLox project died?

@ 3f770d65:7a745b24

Several months ago, nostr:npub1hqaz3dlyuhfqhktqchawke39l92jj9nt30dsgh2zvd9z7dv3j3gqpkt56s and I set out to do tackle a task that had never been done before throughout Nostr's short history. We decided adopt the "go big, or go home" mentality and give our best effort to Purple Pill all of the nostr:npub167n5w6cj2wseqtmk26zllc7n28uv9c4vw28k2kht206vnghe5a7stgzu3r conference.

We couldn't accomplish this monumental task without the help of the Nostr community. From every day Nostriches and plebs, to legendary developers putting their blood, sweat, and tears into building this new protocol, to several companies within the Nostr ecosystem, everyone was going to need to do their part to turn this dream into a reality.

The mission

For the original vision of Nostr at BTC Prague, we planned on supporting the smallest available booth and a small panel on the secondary stage. The plan was for any Nostr developer to contribute what they could and then use the Nostr booth as a central hub to onboard users to their applications, provide support to their users, and meet the community. I embarked on my first crowdfunding journey and was able to initially raise over 10M sats thanks to the greater Nostr community donating towards our efforts.

Shortly afterwards, I was approached by nostr:npub1dtgg8yk3h23ldlm6jsy79tz723p4sun9mz62tqwxqe7c363szkzqm8up6m from Satlantis. He had planned on doing a mainstage presentation at BTC Prague on his new Nostr powered application. He asked me if I wanted to combine our efforts to upgrade the Nostr booth to the largest booth possible to give Nostr an even larger presence. I reached out to Avi and several other trusted Nostriches to see their opinions on this potential upgrade and everyone seemed to agree that we should continue with the "go big, or go home" mentality and try our best to Purple Pill all of Prague.

Now with a larger goal at hand, we were able to garner even more support from the Nostr community in addition by adding Highlighter from nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft and Primal from nostr:npub16c0nh3dnadzqpm76uctf5hqhe2lny344zsmpm6feee9p5rdxaa9q586nvr as larger contributors.

The final tallies for funds raised were 16M+ sats from the greater Nostr community and 38M+ sats raised from Satlantis, Primal, and Highlighter. (We did have to raise a little more than originally anticipated because the Bitcoin 58K Gang made the fiat value of Bitcoin dip down for a bit right when we were trying to finalize payment.)

Putting it all together

This support enabled us to secure one of the four large booths at BTC Prague and a main stage panel. Given that these three companies made significant contributions, enabling our acquisition of the largest booth, we decided that it was logical to feature these companies more prominently. However, it was crucial to strike a delicate balance here. While emphasizing that this booth represented the Nostr community and was a true community effort, we also wanted to acknowledge and showcase those who made it possible. These companies could have opted for smaller individual booths, but their collaboration in a unified space demonstrates Nostr's principles of openness and interoperability—demonstrating that everyone and everything can work together seamlessly.

Therefore, we included as many logos across the Nostr ecosystem as possible throughout our iconography.

And, we also had a dedicated area of the booth highlighting our larger contributors.

The results exceeded all expectations. For three days during the BTC Prague conference, the Nostr booth was continuously bustling with activity. Attendees ranged from individuals who had never heard of Nostr before to those who were curious, active users within the ecosystem, and developers creating the applications we use daily. It was a remarkable community effort, with unexpected volunteers stepping up to onboard new users and provide support. Recognizing our busy schedules and flocks of new Nostriches hatching, they chose to assist in our efforts, offering help, and answering questions. It was a truly inspiring experience. Despite the busyness, the enthusiasm and support of so many people made each day enjoyable and dynamic, ensuring there was never a dull moment and we were always surrounded by friends.

Booth takeaways

As this was our very first attempt at doing something like this, I'd like to do a personal post mortem and highlight many of our successes and even some areas where I feel we can improve upon in the future.

Several Nostriches went above and beyond, helping onboard people and answer questions for three days straight. nostr:npub17plqkxhsv66g8quxxc9p5t9mxazzn20m426exqnl8lxnh5a4cdns7jezx0 nostr:npub1spdnfacgsd7lk0nlqkq443tkq4jx9z6c6ksvaquuewmw7d3qltpslcq6j7 nostr:npub1v0lxxxxutpvrelsksy8cdhgfux9l6a42hsj2qzquu2zk7vc9qnkszrqj49 nostr:npub1k6tqlj78cpznd0yc74wy3k0elmj4nql87a3uzfz98tmj3tuzxywsf0dhk6 nostr:npub1md39ua3h2s7204a7v5p9sdxmxx9qc7m4kr3r6naeuwfznad6d7nsxpctp9 nostr:npub1arkn0xxxll4llgy9qxkrncn3vc4l69s0dz8ef3zadykcwe7ax3dqrrh43w nostr:npub1zga04e73s7ard4kaektaha9vckdwll3y8auztyhl3uj764ua7vrqc7ppvc were the lifeblood of the booth, always answering questions themselves or referring them to others if they were unable to help, didn't know the answer or were busy at the time. You all put in the work and deserve much credit and thanks. Even nostr:npub1995y964wmxl94crx3ksfley24szjr390skdd237ex9z7ttp5c9lqld8vtf was helping with onboarding!

Additionally, beyond general use case questions, we also had many developers stop by and answer many more technical questions for those wanting to learn a bit more too. nostr:npub1zach44xjpc4yyhx6pgse2cj2pf98838kja03dv2e8ly8lfr094vqvm5dy5 nostr:npub1v0lxxxxutpvrelsksy8cdhgfux9l6a42hsj2qzquu2zk7vc9qnkszrqj49 nostr:npub1arkn0xxxll4llgy9qxkrncn3vc4l69s0dz8ef3zadykcwe7ax3dqrrh43w nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft were often seen answering more technical questions on various developmental topics.

Identifying areas for improvement is challenging, as the entire team of Nostriches performed exceptionally well, exceeding expectations. The event was a whirlwind of activity, with constant engagement and zero downtime. Volunteers seamlessly rotated at the front counter answering questions and distributing items to attendees. (Thanks nostr:npub1cgcwm56v5hyrrzl5ty4vq4kdud63n5u4czgycdl2r3jshzk55ufqe52ndy . Your nostr.how and nostrapps.com business cards were a HUGE help here!)

Full disclosure, I personally didn't leave the booth for three days all that much for two reasons. 1) Because I love to #GrowNostr and talk to people and 2) Because I was worried that the booth would turn into a corporate Primal or Satlantis show. However, this wasn't the case. While these teams did have a large presence with many team members all wearing t-shirts, none of my fears became a reality. If people asked questions about Nostr in general, that was discussed. If people asked questions about Primal or Satlantis, that was discussed. I personally recommended numerous social apps, Damus, Amethyst, Primal, Nostur, Nos.social - all of them. The booth was a true decentralized effort and I absolutely did not need to worry as much as I did, but I felt like I had an obligation to fulfill and I wanted to be there to see it through.

If I had to choose an area that needed improvement, I'd say that the three Satlantis women that nostr:npub1dtgg8yk3h23ldlm6jsy79tz723p4sun9mz62tqwxqe7c363szkzqm8up6m brought with him were supposed to shadow some of us to learn more about Nostr, so that they could then use this information to do the initial intake booth questions before making the referral to those with more information, but this just didn't happen. We were all so busy. Sorry! It was just too hard to coordinate. Maybe in the future we can prepare a bit more in this area. Although, nostr:npub1hz5alqscpp8yjrvgsdp2n4ygkl8slvstrgvmjca7e45w6644ew7sewtysa did a fantastic job, jumping right in there head first!

Secondly, we could have improved our television capabilities. We rotated from showing the live dashboard from the booth's Zap.stream livestream, to showing Primal.net/explore Nostr statistics, to showing nostr:npub1lelkh3hhxw9hdwlcpk6q9t0xt9f7yze0y0nxazvzqjmre3p98x3sthkvyz 's Nostr Documentary on loop, to playing the Satlantis promotional video. The majority of the time our TV was playing the same Nostr Documentary. It's great! I love that video, but we may be able to work out a better schedule and rotation mechanism in the future to showcase more content equally. Plus, I don't want to always be on the TV. I don't want people getting the wrong idea.

Nostr takeaways

After speaking with hundreds of people at BTC Prague, I feel that I've discovered the best way to describe Nostr.

Nostr has a portable digital social identity, allowing you to be in control of your digital social identity for the very first time, allowing you to take your entire social graph with you, every time you use a different application from Nostr's ecosystem.

Nostr is the social glue that binds all of your apps together.

In general, at BTC Prague, while explaining Nostr to people, the digital social identity route was what clicked with the most people. From there, it's not a long stretch to understand building a reputation and web of trust either.

Many people do not use the "Other Stuff" and explaining to them how to use these applications is hard. People want a native application.

Damus, Primal, and Amethyst seem to be the number one apps that people are using, with maybe Primal being the number one altogether? This is probably due to Primal being available on Android, iOS, and the web. Also, many people don't know that Damus still supports Zaps via the Nostr script workaround. I had to show many how to enable Zaps.

Everyone wants Nostr at their conference

There is significant interest in featuring Nostr at various conferences. Although not everyone has reached out, numerous individuals at BTC Prague expressed enthusiasm about incorporating a Nostr booth, along with several Nostr talks and sessions, into their upcoming events. They recognize the critical role Nostr and free speech play globally and acknowledge Nostr's popularity within the Bitcoin community. However, they also understand that more work is needed, and we must continue our efforts to onboard and engage new users.

I have two primary observations on this matter:

• The community effort demonstrated here serves as a blueprint for success. We have proven that this approach to growing Nostr is effective, desired, and necessary. The engagement at our booth and attendance at our panels prove this with ease.

• This fundraising initiative is likely a one-time effort. I cannot, in good conscience, continue to ask the community to bootstrap these endeavors. If we are to sustain these booths and promote Nostr at similar conferences, the conference organizers themselves must provide substantial support or discounts to foster broader Nostr adoption. While I understand that conferences entail significant operational costs, it is not feasible for Nostr developers and the broader Nostr community to finance these efforts continuously. Additionally, I would not feel comfortable requesting financial contributions from you all again for this purpose.

Looking forward

Will we do _this _again? I don't know. While our initial endeavor was a complete success, it would be unfortunate to cease our efforts just as we are gaining momentum.

Avi and I have a lot to discuss between ourselves and a lot to discuss with all of you.

Thank you all from the bottom of my heart. Thank you nostr:npub1dtgg8yk3h23ldlm6jsy79tz723p4sun9mz62tqwxqe7c363szkzqm8up6m nostr:npub1l2vyh47mk2p0qlsku7hg0vn29faehy9hy34ygaclpn66ukqp3afqutajft nostr:npub16c0nh3dnadzqpm76uctf5hqhe2lny344zsmpm6feee9p5rdxaa9q586nvr for making all of this possible. Thank you to every single Nostrich that donated your hard earned sats to make this possible. Thank you to all of the developers that built all of this to make all of this possible. Thank you to everyone else <3

Keep building.

@ 76c71aae:3e29cafa

I wanted to take a moment to address the recent Business Insider article about Jack Dorsey’s funding of Nostr. While the article has inaccuracies and it lacks nuance, this piece it’s also an invitation to all of us to discuss Nostr openly. 

Is the article true? First things first: We do not actually know fiatjaf’s identity so we cannot weigh in on the veracity of who he is. His real identity remains a mystery to us. While we do not share Fiatjaf’s beliefs, he’s always been clear that Nostr was built to support all types of speech, even the stuff he personally disagrees with. That’s a fundamental principle of the platform.

Why is Nos built on a protocol that was built by someone who supports fascists? Let’s clear up a major point of confusion.Merriam Webster defines fascism as: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.

Based on that definition, fascism is then a centralized autocratic government led by a dictatorial leader, enforcing several economic and social regimentation, and suppressing opposition. Nostr, on the other hand, is designed to prevent centralized control altogether. It’s a decentralized network where no single entity has ultimate power.

Nostr is designed so there is no central authority of control. By distributing content across multiple relays, the architecture of Nostr eliminates the possibility of centralized autocratic control.

Nos chose to build an app on the Nostr protocol because traditional corporate social media platforms often stifle views outside the mainstream, these also include views of leftist activists, LGBTQ community, and others. This stifling takes the form of shadow banning when people use terms that the platform doesn’t want to support such as abortion. More recently there has been an uptick in account suspensions and shadow bannings as people use reporting tools to flag accounts that support Gaza. Often the people flagging are looking at older posts and flagging those to get the accounts shutdown.

On the other hand, Nos is about giving users control over their accounts, identities, and feeds. Nostr makes this possible in a way no other protocol does today. At Nos, we are committed to building an app using tools that put the user in charge and Nostr enables this user-first approach.This means that everybody has something to say, and we may not like it.

How does Nos reconcile being on a network that can’t ban people for their views? Unlike corporate social media, such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, Nostr is built on the idea of a web of trust, meaning you only see the content from the people you follow. There are no algorithms pushing sensational content to keep you glued to your screen. Corporate platforms thrive on “engagement” and are optimized for eyeballs and time on site. Over the years, the algorithms have learned that the content that is most engaging is content that induces moral outrage in the viewer.

As a result, the corporate platforms feed users more and more morally outrageous content to keep them online. As mentioned before, Nostr operates on a different principle. It’s built on a web of trust, where you only see content from people you follow: Nos and most of the other Nostr clients do not have algorithm-driven feeds, instead content from the people you follow appears in reverse chronological order in your feed. Those clients that do have algorithmic feeds today show the most popular content, but are not optimizing for morally outrageous content.

This means that it is much more difficult for toxic, hateful content to go viral as there’s no behind-the-scenes mechanism amplifying content for views similar to what you have on Youtube and X today. You won’t find the same amplification of divisive content here that you see on these traditional platforms.

Nos offers the ability to have “Freedom from” unwanted content at the user level. There is no central authority shutting down one account or another or blocking certain accounts.

This is especially important for activists. At present on Mastodon and other ActivityPub servers, we are witnessing pro-Palestinian activists accounts’ being blocked from certain servers. While happening at a smaller level, this is still a form of shutting down the dialogue and conversation.I get it –after more than a decade of algorithmic fueled hot-takes and virtue signaling on X (formerly Twitter), it might be a bit difficult to conceive of a social media experience where dialogue exists, but the network that has evolved on top of Nostr is that space. Yes, as difficult as it sounds, Nostr allows for dialogue without central censorship.

Many folks disagree on Nostr in the same way disagreements used to happen on Twitter (now X) in the early days, where there are long text based dialogues. Folks may walk away still disagreeing and a small subset get nasty, but those conversations do not spiral out of control in the same way they do on X or even on Mastodon and Bluesky today.

And if things get ugly, Nos and a few other apps have user-led moderation tools to help mitigate anything that comes into replies or mentions. Nos is leading efforts to enhance user-led moderation across the network. 

This discussion is crucial. We have the chance to reshape the future of decentralized social media and we can build a more open and inclusive digital space. The pathway is and will be messy. How do we balance free speech while protecting users from harmful content? What role should decentralization play in the next generation of social media platforms? I’d love to hear your thoughts and keep this conversation going.‍

@ a42048d7:26886c32

*50% of the Bitcoin held with Unchained will be seized by the US government within 10 years: a thought experiment **

Let me start by saying that I believe collaborative multisig is strictly better than leaving on an exchange, an ETF, or other paper Bitcoin options. I have extensively tested collaborative multisig at the 3 most well known providers: Unchained, Casa, and Nunchuk. My participation in Bitcoin Twitter and Nostr has led me to the conclusion that KYC collaborative multisig is shockingly easy to seize. If you care about this topic I will assume you are already based enough that you need no primer on the horrid fiscal situation of the governments of the USA, EU, China, etc. A 6102 (President FDR ordering the seizure of all privately held gold) type event feels escalatingly likely in the short term, and almost inevitable in the medium term.

There are a few indisputable facts everyone must accept: Most users of collaborative multisig have at least 1 key (probably 2) at one of the following: their home, a bank safety deposit box, or other highly logical place in their immediate vicinity. Unchained multisig vaults are fully KYC. Meaning they have a list of your name, email address, and home address right next to your BTC holdings amount, 1 of 3 keys to your multisig, and even Social Security Number and more info if you use their loan or trading desk services.

Hopefully you should immediately recognize the problem. The American government is 1 warrant away from having your full identity, BTC amount, and 1 of your 3 keys. Further they are most likely 1 visit to your home or bank away from having a 2nd key, and thus control of your BTC. Further, everyone must also accept that video verification is not much better than no verification. The government could also just come to your home (where you almost certainly have 1 key) and force you to submit a transaction request to Unchained. Per their own website Unchained does not have a specific minimum waiting period to submit transaction, e.g. it could be 1-2 days if you submit on a slow Monday or it could be 3-5 days if you submit over a weekend during a crowded Mempool. Even before considering AI fakes, video verification is simply not secure. It is quite easy to have someone stand out of shot holding you and/or your family hostage. The American government also has more than enough prison capacity to hold anyone indefinitely they need to while waiting for transactions to process. Sit and ruminate on the fact that all the government needs to do to take your Bitcoin is enter your home, use their monopoly on violence, and not so politely ask you to sign with your key and request Unchained sign with theirs. After a brief delay, all your BTC is gone forever! There is a brutal cognitive dissonance in believing Bitcoin will become worth millions of dollars per coin, and simultaneously thinking the government will not bother to visit one office, a few homes, or a handful of banks for untold riches. If the government gets desperate, then large holders using KYCed collaborative multisig are a potentially appealing target. Yes it is strictly harder to seize than an ETF or on an exchange, but that doesn’t make it foolproof. The easiest target is often the overconfident one. It would likely be too difficult to discretely visit many places and hold many people for enough time to seize all coins held by Unchained, but grabbing a significant portion of the largest holders before news broke is certainly plausible. Maybe I’m underestimating Unchained and they’re willing to go to prison for life, and during a government raid would wipe their servers rather than hand them over. But would you trust that with your life savings? I would not. In my assessment for users with less technical knowledge non-KYC multisig options such as Casa and Nunchuk are strictly better than a fully doxed option like Unchained. For those with more advanced technical knowledge the potential of miniscript and timelocks in Liana presents an even more secure option, albeit with the tradeoff of additional complexity. There is no free lunch. You must decide for yourself. Just please thoughtfully consider your options.

I hope this is not taken as an attack at Unchained. I believe they are a solid Bitcoin only company doing some great work, but I also think they and their users drastically underestimate their current vulnerabilities. My hope is not to harm them in any way, but to force an uncomfortable conversation that the community needs to have. My greatest hope would be multisig makes strides in security across the industry. Taproot enabling multisigs to look like singlesigs and not placing all spending paths publicly on chain would be a great place to start. Miniscript next. These advanced security capabilities are available today via Liana and Anchorwatch. These are the next generation of multisig that the community desperately needs. They just haven’t realized it yet, but they will once a few Unchained customers publicly get their Bitcoins seized.

@ 75bf2353:e1bfa895

Get On Nostr To Get Sats

This is not another orange pill. There are no more orange pill books to be written. Like Satoshi said, "If you don't believe me or don't get it, I'm sorry, bur I don't have time to convince you."

This is not about reading charts or looking for dildos that would make a great pattern for an ugly Christmas sweater. I offer no price predictions because in 150 years, your great, great, great, great, great, great grandchildren will read about the fractional reserve fiat ponzi scheme in history books written by large language models. Meanwhile, fiat is an endangered species. I understand most people come to bitcoin for the fiat gains. I suspect my blog would be more popular if I wrote things like bitcoin will reach $1,000,000 in 48-72 hours according to my scribbles transcribed over a price chart. Sorry, I can't tell you what the fiat price of bitcoin will be within 72 hours or 72 years. I don't have a crystal ball. I don't know how to measure the scarcest asset in the world against this:

This is a guide designed to teach you how to use bitcoin as peer to peer electronic cash and store your wealth for seven generations. I would like to turn it into a book and sell more books than the woman who wrote Harry Potter, but I also think it is important to keep this information free for anyone who cannot afford it. The amount of money printing is making me more and more concerned about fiscal stability of the global financial system. This is not financial advice. It is a life jacket. Think of it as a seat cushion in an airplane. I hope you never need this flotation device, but I want it available, just in case. I hope our great senile leaders can fix this, but I wouldn't hold my breath, so I want to teach people how to use bitcoin before it's too late. But first, let's pop the purple pill..=

In the first chapter, I showed you the secret message Satoshi left in the genesis block, "Chancellor on the brink of second bailout for banks." In the second chapter, I wrote about why the Cypherpunks wanted private, electronic cash in the first place. The purpose of this chapter is to teach you how to use a custodial bitcoin wallet on a corner of the Internet where people use bitcoin for electronic payments. Bitcoin is a peer-to-peer electronic cash system that does not require a corporation or government. Nostr is The Internet without any corporations or government required to operate. If you sell stuff on Amazon, you must pay fees to Amazon. Therefore, Amazon is your master. If you sell stuff on a nostr powered marketplace like Shopstr, you have no master.

Covid taught us the collective tend towards authoritarianism during times of crisis(perceived or otherwise). The Twitter Files taught us there is a partnership with legacy social media and agents of the United States Government. If a legacy social media company in the United States is not controlled by a U.S. corporation, expect them to ban it unless it can be sold to an US corporation. If the government trending towards a "closed society" cuts off your bank account for protesting forced vaccinations, these communication networks become important. Nostr makes sending payments to bitcioners as easy as Venmo without any government imposed red tape.

The Social Bitcoin Payment Layer

Nostr has become the de-facto, social bitcoin payment layer. Most people still think of it as a boring alternative to addictive social media like Twitter, but it is much more than this. This guide is published on habla.news a website that allows anyone with an npub to publish long-form content. People can send me sats for this content and I can send sats to content creators and developers.

Nostr has a marketplace similar to what you might find on Zuck's face tracking book. It has YouTube like video and twitter spaces like audio. To use these tools, you will first need to create a public/private key pair. Your public key, npub, can be shared with anyone. Your private key, nsec, must remain a secret. If your nsec is compromised, your identity is compromised and we can no longer trust your notes are from you. That would suck, but it's good practice for storing bitcoin keys. If your identity gets compromised, you could spin up a new one. If you lose the keys to your life savings, it won't be so easy to get it back.

Current, A KYC Free Custodial Bitcoin Social Wallet

Current Tutorial

Nostr is a decentralized communications protocol that stands for notes and other stuff transmitted by relay

• Available on Google Play and The App Store.

• Available in the jurisdiction with the most draconian anti-privacy laws.

• Uses a 12 word backup

• Gives you a nostr key pair.that can be used with all nostr services.

• Includes a free custodial lightning address.

Keep in mind that this is a custodial wallet so not your keys not your bitcoin applies. This is a beginner wallet that allows anyone on the nostr network to send you sats, but you don't want to use this for your life savings. The wallet also has cutting edge features like data vending machines that allow you to pay for AI generated images and chats. You can even use AI to turn text to voice, but we will not cover these advanced features in this guide.

To get started, download the App at https://app.getcurrent.io

Current has an excellent Guide here.

Video Tutorial

nostr:naddr1qqrkcn28fdn5j5qzyp6m7g6nrt5lnrrzn9d6quv3ujyw44r4jafhr43a0h75d00ph75f2qcyqqqgtwcefdcdw

₿logging ₿itcoin 848,231 debtclock 🧡 Support this blog by using the ⚡Value 4 Value model)⚡ 📧Subscribe on Substack 🍐Join my Keet Room If You Prefer To Learn About New Blogs With No Email Signup 📻 Stream sats on Fountain 🎉Send a Boostagram 🛒Shop The Elliptic Curve Economy

@ 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.

@ b2caa9b3:9eab0fb5

Reflecting on the past, it's been quite a while since I had a furry companion named Nala. She was more than just a dog; she was a loyal friend who brought joy into my life, especially during our regular swimming sessions. Nala may have left us long ago, but the memories of those carefree moments remain etched in my heart.

One particular memory captured in this photo takes me back to an April day at Ebnisee, just before the bathing season began. Nala, with her exuberance, had just emerged from the water after a playful swim. The photo encapsulates the sheer happiness we shared during those times, a snapshot frozen in time.

There's not much more to say about this photo—it speaks volumes on its own. It symbolizes the bond between a pet and its owner and the simple pleasures of life. Nala's presence in the picture tells a story of companionship and the joy found in the simplicity of a day by the water.

As time passes, Nala's memory lives on. May she rest in peace, forever preserved in this heartfelt image.

Photo information

• Author: Ruben Storm
• Created on: April 11, 2014
• Published on: April 11, 2014
• Camera: Nikon D7000
• Lens: Nikkor 24.0-70.0 mm f/2.8
• Location: Ebnisee, Germany

Photo on Flickr • My Flickr Profile • Support Page

@ ddf03aca:5cb3bbbe

Disclaimer: Beware, there be dragons... Deploying your own version of npubcash-server is highly experimental. Do not use this in production yet. If you do deploy it, please make sure to leave your feedback with me.

Prerequisites

Before we dive in, you'll need a few things:

1. Blink API Key: npubcash-server uses Blink API for payment callbacks. If you don’t have a Blink account yet, sign up here.
2. Postgres: npubcash-server utilizes a Postgres database for storage.
3. fly.io Account and flyctl: While you can deploy npubcash-server anywhere, this guide focuses on fly.io and its CLI tool, flyctl.

Setup

Step 1: Clone the Repository

First, clone the npubcash-server repository, specifically the migrations branch, as it contains the necessary deployment scripts. Don’t forget to clone all submodules recursively.

zsh git clone -b migrations --recurse-submodules https://github.com/cashubtc/npubcash-server.git cd npubcash-server

Step 2: Create fly.toml Configuration

Next, create your fly.toml file to configure your deployment.

zsh nvim fly.toml

Here's a sample configuration. Adjust the environment variables to match your setup:

```toml app = "npubcash-server" primary_region = "ams"

[build]

[http_service] internal_port = 8000 force_https = true auto_stop_machines = true auto_start_machines = true min_machines_running = 0 processes = ["app"]

[[vm]] memory = "512mb" cpu_kind = "shared" cpus = 1

[env] NODE_ENV = "production" PGUSER = "" PGPASSWORD = "" PGHOST = "" PGDATABASE = "" PGPORT = "" MINTURL = "" BLINK_API_KEY = "" BLINK_WALLET_ID = "" BLINK_URL = "https://api.blink.sv/graphql" HOSTNAME = "" JWT_SECRET = "" ZAP_SECRET_KEY = "" LNURL_MIN_AMOUNT = "" LNURL_MAX_AMOUNT = "" NPC_SERVER_URL = "" ```

Note: fly.io offers additional security for sensitive environment variables through secrets, which are encrypted and never exposed directly. Consider using secrets for sensitive data like your Blink or Nostr key. Learn more here.

Deploying

With your configuration ready, it’s time to deploy!

zsh fly launch

When prompted, choose to use the existing fly.toml file by inputting y. Fly.io might suggest deploying a Postgres instance, but since we're using an external Postgres instance, adjust the settings as needed through their web interface. Watch the build logs in your terminal, and once completed, your instance of npubcash-server is live. Congrats!

Setting Up a Custom Domain

To fully utilize npubcash-server as an LNURL server, you’ll need a custom domain. Here’s how to set it up:

1. Get the IP Address: Use flyctl to list your IP addresses.

zsh fly ips list

Copy the IPv4 and IPv6 addresses.

1. Create DNS Records: Set up an A record with your domain provider using the IPv4 address and a AAAA record using the IPv6 address.

2. Request an SSL Certificate: For encrypted traffic, request a Let’s Encrypt certificate.

zsh fly certs add <your domain name>

Note: DNS propagation can take some time. Ensure your machine is running and try connecting to the domain once the DNS records are updated. Fly.io will verify the DNS setup when traffic starts coming in.

Wrapping up

That is it... Hopefully by now your very own instance of npubcash-server is running and reachable on your own domain. If you got this far, please reach out to me and let me know. Now please go ahead and try to break it. If you do, please open an issue so that I can fix it :)

@ 5d4b6c8d:8a1c1ee3

Yesterday's edition https://stacker.news/items/598866/r/Undisciplined

We've got a Stacker News trust algorithm theme today, with a top comment and a top post from separate years about it. Also, the Stacker News soft launch makes an appearance.

• • -

July 7, 2023 📅

---

📝 TOP POST

I lost my 'Lightning Virginity' last night ⚡🍒

Excerpt

With @ekyzis posting a reminder that it's a good time to open Lightning channels the other night, I bit the bullet and attempted to withdraw some of my SN rewards to one of my hot wallets via Lightning.

1080 sats \ 11 comments \ @Bitman \ ~meta

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💬 TOP COMMENT

https://stacker.news/items/205284/r/Undisciplined?commentId=205407

Excerpt

Reading through the change log, I followed a link to the SN post about web of trust. This made me think of something I've been thinking about a bunch lately, from using PKM tools (Logseq is my current one) where making it easy to talk about things is a design goal. Making it easy to talk about things through links, search, and automatic back links, causes a densely structured graph to emerge, a very useful kind of semantic knowledge store. It's pretty remarkable how it all pops out.

11k sats \ 1 reply \ @elvismercury

From Daily discussion thread by @saloon in ~null

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🏆 TOP STACKER

2nd place @k00b (1st hiding, presumed @siggy47)

6463 stacked \ 26.7k spent \ 0 posts \ 19 comments \ 0 referrals

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🗺️ TOP TERRITORY

~bitcoin

everything bitcoin related

founded by @k00b on Tue May 02 2023

27.9k stacked \ 0 revenue \ 36.4k spent \ 94 posts \ 165 comments

https://imgprxy.stacker.news/fsFoWlgwKYsk5mxx2ijgqU8fg04I_2zA_D28t_grR74/rs:fit:960:540/aHR0cHM6Ly9tLnN0YWNrZXIubmV3cy8yMzc5Ng

July 7, 2022 📅

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📝 TOP POST

SN release: enhanced trust algo and more tangible rewards

Excerpt

We still use a web of trust, but we've refined how trust is established between users. In the previous version, trust was established whenever a user upvoted another user's content. This was convenient and it allowed us to reuse a user's trust to determine their share of daily rewards. No more.

2521 sats \ 50 comments \ @k00b \ ~meta

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💬 TOP COMMENT

https://stacker.news/items/42401/r/Undisciplined?commentId=42415

Excerpt

If you look at other social media such as Youtube the algorithm punishes harder the longer people were inactive.

231 sats \ 5 replies \ @zuspotirko

From SN release: enhanced trust algo and more tangible rewards by @k00b in ~meta

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🏆 TOP STACKER

1st place @k00b

2158 stacked \ 5509 spent \ 12 posts \ 29 comments \ 0 referrals

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🗺️ TOP TERRITORY

~bitcoin

everything bitcoin related

founded by @k00b on Tue May 02 2023

30.7k stacked \ 0 revenue \ 34k spent \ 134 posts \ 176 comments

https://imgprxy.stacker.news/fsFoWlgwKYsk5mxx2ijgqU8fg04I_2zA_D28t_grR74/rs:fit:960:540/aHR0cHM6Ly9tLnN0YWNrZXIubmV3cy8yMzc5Ng

July 7, 2021 📅

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📝 TOP POST

Bitcoin Transcripts

Link to https://btctranscripts.com/

101 sats \ 0 comments \ @k00b \ ~bitcoin

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💬 TOP COMMENT

https://stacker.news/items/2/r/Undisciplined?commentId=221

Excerpt

I'm actually very curious how this will turn out in terms of shitposts - sick of seeing them on Twitter.

1 sat \ 1 reply \ @qecez

From stacker news soft launch AMA by @k00b in ~bitcoin

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🏆 TOP STACKER

1st place @k00b

8 stacked \ 19 spent \ 2 posts \ 4 comments \ 0 referrals

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🗺️ TOP TERRITORY

~bitcoin

everything bitcoin related

founded by @k00b on Tue May 02 2023

23 stacked \ 0 revenue \ 95 spent \ 7 posts \ 13 comments

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/599828

@ dc4cd086:cee77c06

A formal system is defined by its axioms. We try to treat science (and by proxy, the natural world) with an assumption of nature itself being a formal system -> start with axioms and explore the space from there. Axioms and derived theorems then create the boundaries for the environment you're working with.

Mathematical proofs show you absolute truth in the axiomatic system you are working with. They will also show the absolute falshoods of the system. The space is fractal, endlessly deep, you only can work with the knowledge you have of system you are working with.

The problem is that nature is mind-bogglingly entangled.

You think CS dependencies are tough? Biological processes seemingly have not only unenumerable dependencies, but dependencies that well eventually circle back to the process itself. At that point, you'd expect a computer to be in deadlock, but it gets worse. There there are not only multiple different clock-cycles, but its a gradient everywhere you go. In biology, it is often said that there are always contradictions to rules being stated and that whatever "rules" we come up with are more guidelines, so we can't even make the assumption that biology and nature is a formal system.

What are the implications of that? A real strangely looped rabbit hole for you 🕳️🔄🐇

The image is from Doug Hofstadter's Godel Escher Bach ch 3, a visualization of this process with some defined formal system. Godel's Incompleteness Theorem proved that any formal system will have statements about it that cannot be proved from within said system. For example, where in the system of language rules do you get meaning from? You're not going to derive semantics from syntax.

So if formal systems can't even be fully explicated , what does that imply for non-formal systems? Damned if nature is formal, damned even more if its not.

Now for a sleight shift. Humans, we live outside many axiomatic systems, but use them to frame our understanding of the world. Ever work on a problem for such a long time, and then stop and do something else? Thats because we aren't bound by said box/axiomatic system and can move outside it. This feature itself allows us to reenter the system from different angles, or just say "Stop, its not worth it."

The capacity for humans to exit systems is a core part that separates us from computers. Wisdom incorperates restraint of application as a consequence from viewing the system wholistically.

The real questions now: What kind of boxes are we living in, be they foundational or self constructed? Are we agents taxing towards new provable theorems contained in some system we can't exit from? What are the generating functions for this system? Are we the system itself?

This gives me hope on the unknowable truths and falshoods. Spiritual experience is the experience of The Other, whatever that may be.

original thread: nostr:nevent1qqsqrry7heeq2u38gjursxel9w54t66za3xh0avarfawxnv5rfgvlesprfmhxue69uhkummnw3ezuargv4ekzmt9vdshgtnfduhsygrszgsjsfemmsr6lxl8wf06t39uplq5dpntasudgsmqm39udnqchypsgqqqqqqsdkt4pc

@ d830ee7b:4e61cd62

This article is a translation of my original Thai-language article, which will be published as a long-form piece in the coming days.

.........................

After listening to these two masters go back and forth, circling each other like intellectual gladiators, I gotta say… the lines between the "real world" and the "virtual world" are getting seriously blurry.

Watch more > Alt+Tab Season 2 EP4 : "พี่ชิต" ดร.วิชิต ซ้ายเกล้า

The battle for power is changing, man.

Forget tanks and explosions, the most powerful weapon now is invisible, hiding in plain sight. It's woven into the fabric of society. We call it "Soft Power", the unseen influence that slowly consumes us, manipulates us... without us even realizing it.

"The wars we see today..." Wichit says with a voice that sends shivers down your spine, "It's just throwing percentages at each other in the air."

Piriya nods in agreement. "Like you said, humans are getting smarter, more cunning. Those old-school, head-on confrontations? They just lead to destruction. Waste of resources, waste of life..."

They're right, you know... Back in the day, if you wanted something, you just sent an army to take it. Conquered land, plundered resources. It was all about "Hard Power."

Direct, brutal, effective... but the scars ran deep.

The world today is way more complex. Humans have learned to use "influence" to infiltrate every aspect of life.. individuals, societies, even international relations. No bloodshed, but the results are even more potent...

That's why "Soft Power" has become the most powerful weapon in this new age.

Imagine...

A world where information is the new crude oil... Where attention is the currency... And beliefs are weapons... Used cunningly in this invisible battlefield...

"Influence" is the real victory. Not about conquering land anymore. It's about controlling minds, hearts, and actions...

Here are some prime examples of "Soft Power" playing out in our everyday lives.

Online Warfare - Fake news, twisted facts, everyone's sharing it like crazy on social media. A few taps on a screen can destroy reputations, incite hatred, and control people's thoughts without breaking a sweat. (Wichit calls it "promiscuous bits" in his lectures.)

Have you ever... almost made a bad decision because you believed a rumor or fake news? Have you ever... fallen prey to manipulation, been tricked into hating or opposing someone without even knowing why?

That, my friend, is Soft Power working its magic... behind the scenes...

Economic Control - Think about those skyrocketing interest rates, inflation… everything's getting more expensive by the day while our wallets get thinner.

That's the consequence of Soft Power wielded by a handful of people who control the global economy.

Ever wonder... why your money seems to be worth less and less each day? Why you work harder, but life doesn't get any better?

The "money" system, controlled by the few… that's the culprit...

Cultural Domination - Movies, TV shows, music, fashion… We consume it all every day, and it slowly seeps in, shaping our thoughts, values, and behavior without us even realizing it. It's a tool used by certain groups to manipulate and steer society...

Have you ever… wanted to be, have, or act like what you see in the media? Ever gone along with trends or fads, even if they didn't really reflect who you are?

That's the power of "Cultural Domination"...

"The scary part is… most people don't even realize they're being manipulated." Piriya shakes his head.

"It's like a frog being boiled alive. By the time they realize it, it's too late..."

Wichit sighs...

"The system is broken, slowly eroding us from the inside... God knows where it'll all end, but it's not gonna be pretty."

...

Wait, what about "Money"? Isn't that Soft Power too?

Money used to be a mirror, reflecting the "value" of work, of resources. It was a tool for exchanging, saving, building wealth...

But today... the "money" system is designed to be conjured up out of thin air. No real cost, no sweat. Just print more bills, and suddenly its value is distorted. Leading to "bubbles of inequality" and a crisis of faith in money itself...

It's like sand… the tighter you grip it, the more it slips away…

"Like when America ditched the Bretton Woods system and embraced Fiat currency, which they can print endlessly… It's how they became the world's financial superpower." Wichit explains.

"Countries that used to hoard gold, like Europe, China, Russia… they lost power because the money they held wasn't worth as much anymore."

"So what about Thailand? We're just a small country. How can we survive?" Piriya asks, worried.

"We can't just print our own money. We have no control over the global economy..."

"That's the million-dollar question…" Wichit says with a serious tone.

"If we don't wake up, if we're not prepared, Thailand could become a victim in this power struggle."

"We need to build up our "immunity," man..."

...

Bitcoin.. Hope or Menace?

In the midst of this Soft Power battleground, filled with deception and distorted truths, Bitcoin emerges… like a beacon of light piercing through the darkness. A glimmer of hope for a fairer world, a chance to reshape the global economy...

"Weapons should be used for self-defense, not to attack others." Wichit says, implying that Bitcoin is no different.

"It's a tool that can be used for good or for evil. It all depends on who's wielding it."

Bitcoin is presented as a symbol of "Truth" in the digital realm.

No one can counterfeit it or control it. It's finite, requiring energy to "mine." It's like applying the laws of physics to the financial system, creating honesty and transparency that traditional money can't achieve.

Imagine… a public ledger that everyone can see, transparent, unchangeable... That's Bitcoin.

"It's like a monetary revolution, creating a new system that's fair, transparent, and accessible to everyone." Piriya says excitedly.

"No one can print more Bitcoin on a whim. No one controls it."

"Exactly." Wichit adds.

"If people understand and accept it, Bitcoin can change the world. Bring balance, reduce inequality, and return power to the people."

"Imagine… a world where money belongs to the people, not the government or banks..."

But Bitcoin is a double-edged sword... In the hands of the righteous, it's a beacon of hope. A chance to create a fairer world.

*But in the wrong hands? *

It could become a menace, a tool for money laundering, crime, even a "weapon" for cyber warfare…

...

Where Does Thailand Stand?

"The question is… with Bitcoin challenging the old powers, how should Thailand respond?" Piriya asks seriously.

"Do we embrace it? Resist it? Or just ignore it?"

"Doing nothing is not an option, just like when we missed the boat on the gold standard." Wichit emphasizes.

"Back then, England pushed for the gold standard, but Thailand clung to the old way. We ended up losing out, trade deficits, economic downturn... We can't let history repeat itself."

"I agree." Piriya nods.

"We need to learn from the past and prepare for the future."

"The government and the people need to wake up, study, and truly understand Bitcoin." Wichit continues.

"Not just knowing what it is… but understanding its mechanisms, its potential, its risks."

"You mean… we should push for Bitcoin to be the main currency of Thailand?" Piriya asks.

"Whoa, hold your horses, Professor." Wichit smiles.

"No need to rush things. I think we should start by creating a space for people to learn and experiment with Bitcoin. Promote innovation and businesses related to blockchain. Maybe the government could set up a "regulatory sandbox" to control and mitigate risks along the way."

"But will the government be willing to relinquish control over money and embrace Bitcoin?" Piriya asks skeptically.

"It won't be easy." Wichit sighs…

"Power is seductive. Everyone wants to hold on to it. But if we see Bitcoin as an opportunity for Thailand to develop, to create stability and prosperity for the people, I believe the government will see the benefits and eventually embrace it."

"So what can we, the people, do?" Piriya asks.

"We need to be aware of Soft Power." Wichit answers.

"Question the information we receive, be savvy about media tactics, don't fall prey to anyone's agenda. And most importantly, use Soft Power constructively, for the betterment of society."

"Absolutely." Piriya agrees wholeheartedly.

"We need to be informed citizens, not manipulated victims."

"And remember… Bitcoin is not some far-off concept anymore. We need to learn, stay informed, and be prepared because the future is in our hands." Wichit concludes. "The future of money, the future of our country, the future of the world…"

The conversation ends… but the crucial question lingers.

Will Thailand keep up and be ready for the world's seismic shift?

The answer… lies with each and every one of us...

...

This conversation between Wichit and Piriya is like a doorway to another dimension.

A dimension we're familiar with, but never truly see clearly. A world teeming with games, power struggles, and manipulations happening all around us… often without us even realizing it.

They're trying to show us the "Soft Power," the formless force that lurks in every corner of our lives. From the news we consume, the economic systems we rely on, to the culture and values that shape our thoughts and actions.

They're not trying to scare us, but to "wake us up," make us aware, so we don't become victims in this game.

The things they emphasize most is the "importance of education." We need to understand Bitcoin, blockchain, and all these new technologies transforming our world. Not just "knowing" what they are, but "understanding" their mechanisms, their potential, their risks.

So we can decide how to use them, "for what," and "how."

Where does Thailand stand in this world where "Soft Power" is thriving?

Wichit and Piriya don't offer a clear-cut answer. Instead, they "invite" us to "ask questions," "think critically," and find our own answers.

We… as "citizens" of this new world… must be aware, learn, and adapt wisely to the changes. "Soft Power" isn't scary if we understand it and use it constructively.

We can turn "threats" into "opportunities."

The lessons from this conversation aren't just about "Soft Power" or "Bitcoin." They're about "awareness," "questioning," "critical thinking," and "taking responsibility" for the future of ourselves, our society, and our nation.

It's a wake-up call, revealing the "truth" of the world hidden beneath the "illusion" of "Soft Power." And it reminds us of the true "power" that lies in our hands…

the power to "choose," "decide," and "create" the future we want...

Decoding Wichit's Thoughts. "Soft Power" vs. "Hard Power" - The Game of Power in the Modern World

From the conversation, we see that Wichit views "power" beyond just weapons and military force. He defines it as the "ability to influence, persuade, control, or direct the behavior, thoughts, and decisions of others" without resorting to physical force or coercion.

Wichit sees a fascinating connection between Soft Power, Bitcoin, and national security in the digital age. Imagine a "power triangle" where each side influences and is intertwined with the others.

He divides "power" into two main forms..

First, there's "Hard Power," the traditional approach focused on using force, coercion, and direct control. It relies on tangible resources like military might, weapons, economic clout, or sanctions.

Think of examples like waging war, military occupation, controlling trade routes, or imposing economic sanctions.

Then there's "Soft Power." This new form of power emphasizes influence, persuasion, and attraction, making others "want" to follow without force or coercion.

Examples include using information to shape narratives and guide thinking, employing culture and entertainment to create values and trends that influence behavior, or using economic systems to incentivize desired actions.

Wichit believes that in today's world, Soft Power is gaining more influence and impact than Hard Power.

Why?

Because beliefs, values, and information can spread and penetrate people's minds easier and faster than brute force or coercion.

He compares modern warfare to "throwing percentages at each other in the air." Meaning that the fight for dominance in this era is no longer about physical destruction like in the past. It's a battle on an invisible battlefield, where the stakes are "information," "beliefs," and "influence."

In Wichit's view, Bitcoin can be both a "tool" and a "weapon" in the game of Soft Power.

And ultimately, "power," in any form, has both light and dark sides. It depends on the user, whether they choose to use it for creation or destruction...

When "Influence" Becomes a "Chain" on Thai Society

Yes, Soft Power has a glamorous, alluring side, evident in movies, music, TV shows, food, fashion, and tourism, all of which contribute to Thailand's income and image.

But there's a dark side... one that slowly erodes our thoughts, values, and identity... without us even noticing.

Look around… Is our younger generation today more obsessed with Korean dramas, Western series, K-pop, and designer brands than Thai movies, music, fabrics, or cuisine?

Do they dream of living like idols, celebrities, rather than ordinary Thais?

This is the consequence of Soft Power, influencing us to want to "be" and "have" like others, forgetting our roots, our identity, and our own values.

The Government Uses Soft Power to Control the People Too!

Ever wonder… why people believe government pronouncements more than news from fellow citizens? Why we accept unfair policies without much resistance?

Is Soft Power in the hands of the government used to craft an image, hide the truth, distract, and control people's thoughts?

I don't know... We need to observe and find the answers.

Are Today's Youth "Victims" or "Awakened"?

The younger generation, raised with the internet, social media, and global entertainment, is more susceptible to Soft Power's influence. But... they also have the potential to be aware, to question, to analyze, and to break free from the chains of manipulation.

Don't let influence become your prison…

Be "aware," "question everything," and "be yourself"

---

This is just a taste of what's discussed in the full video. To truly savor the "flavor" of "Soft Power" and "Bitcoin," you gotta watch the whole thing.

Watch more > Alt+Tab Season 2 EP4 : "พี่ชิต" ดร.วิชิต ซ้ายเกล้า

Trust me... you'll be blown away by the depth and intensity of the conversation.

"One listen is not enough."

Let me tell you… This video is "heavy," "dense," and "intense." Even me had to rewind several times to let it all sink in.

But it's "worth it," I promise. You'll "decode" the world today, understand the mechanics of "power" and "money" in a way no one's ever explained before.

So why share it?

Because "truths" like these shouldn't be hidden. "Knowledge" like this should be "spread" to "everyone."

But… to be honest, this video is "deep," "complex," and "hard to grasp" for the average person. So we have to transform ourselves into "interpreters," "translating" the "divine language" into "human language." Explain it simply, clearly, and visually.

Remember… sharing is not just "talking," it's about communication that's easy to understand, relatable, and resonates with the listener.

Because knowledge is precious… if it's "shared."

---

PS. Wichit's ideas and concepts regarding Soft War are heavily influenced and inspired by the book "Softwar: A Novel Theory on Power Projection and the National Strategic Significance of Bitcoin" by Major Jason P. Lowery. (2023)

@ 630c0b5b:0654d4f7

Från byteshandel till pengar

Om Kalle säljer honung och Adam säljer yxor så är det inte säkert att de vet hur de ska prissätta sina varor i relation till den andras varor. Det är inte säkert att Adam vill ha Kalles honung, men Adam vill sälja sina yxor. Därför behövs en teknik (pengar).

Vilka pengar som Adam och Kalle väljer beror på vilka råvaror de har omkring sig. Om de bor på en ö där det bara finns snäckor så kan det fungera som pengar. Om de är i fängelse kan cigaretter fungera som pengar.

Val av pengar är en organisk process som vi själva väljer över tid. Funktionen som pengar blir starkare ju fler som använder det. Bitcoin är i stadiet som råvara som börjar upptäckas som pengar.

I det här tidiga stadiet är det fler som värdesätter bitcoin som råvaran än som funktionen som pengar. Råvaran kan köpas i spekulation med en tro att det kommer ske en värdeökning om fler personer ser värdet i råvaran.

Adam och Kalle som bor på en ö använder snäckor som pengar. Kalle bygger en båt och seglar till en annan ö för att plocka fler snäckor. Han kommer tillbaka till Adam och har 10 gånger fler snäckor än som fanns på ön tidigare. Priserna på varorna kommer öka.

Sune seglar till ön och har med sig små vackra stenar. Adam och Kalles snäckor kan trampas sönder och efter 10 år är de flesta snäckorna trasiga. Sunes vackra stenar har inte gått sönder och nu börjar Adam och Kalle värdesätta dessa.

Nu börjar stenarna övergå från att vara en råvara till att bli pengar. När de blir pengar så får stenarna ett mervärde utöver själva råvarans pris, för sin funktion som pengar.

Bitcoin har alla egenskaper för att bli pengar, men under resan dit så kommer det först fungera som en spekulativ råvara som blir mer eftertraktad. Den som gillar råvaran är först en liten grupp, som blir fler och fler med tiden om råvarans egenskaper inte förändras.

Det som skiljer bitcoin från en vanlig råvara är att den är digital och har ett eget nätverk som råvaran kan transporteras över. Nätverket går inte att förstöra, precis som du inte kan förstöra all plankton i havet, för det finns ingen central punkt att attackera.

Så länge råvaran fungerar som den ska kommer fler börja spekulera i den. När en annan råvara som också kan vara pengar börjar förlora sina egenskaper, kommer den råvara med starkast egenskaper vara den som flest vänder sig till för att vara pengar.

Pengar är därför en winner-takes-all. Nätverkseffekten blir exponentiell för varje person som använder det. Precis som värdet i telefonnätverket ökar för varje användare, kommer bitcoinnätverket öka för varje användare.

Det är troligt att vanliga valutor kommer fortsätta finnas en lång period till, där de starkaste valutorna (Dollar m.fl.) kommer växa. Det påverkar inte bitcoin så mycket, för det växer just nu för sin funktion som råvara.

Att bli pengar kommer ta tid, men långt innan det sker så kommer bitcoin ha ett mervärde bara av att vara en teknik som löser andra problem som vi har. T.ex. en hel obligationsmarknad som genererar negativ avkastning jämfört med inflationen.

Ett vanligt missförstånd är att vi förväxlar valutor med pengar som om det vore samma sak. Det är det inte. Däremot använder vi valutor som en slags pengar, men eftersom de är obegränsade i antal så fungerar de inte bra som pengar över tid.

Många hakar upp sig på att någon måste utse vad som klassas som pengar. Det stämmer inte. En högre instans kan utse vad som är en valuta. Vad vi frivilligt använder mellan varandra i byteshandel är pengar.

Vi kan t.ex. se fruktförsäljning på marknader i Sydamerika där bitcoin över lightning används som pengar. Det är inte en officiell valuta men båda parter kan välja att använda det om de vill.

På grund av skattemässiga anledningar tror jag inte vi kommer se bitcoin som en vanlig form av pengar i Sverige inom 10 år, men däremot lär det användas mer och mer i t.ex. Sydamerika, Afrika, Asien.

Slutsats: bitcoin är en råvara som idag relativt få tror kan bli globala pengar. Även om den gruppen kan ha fel, så kan själva råvaran och dess nätverk växa parallellt med vanliga valutor. Värdet på bitcoin är inte enbart beroende av funktionen som pengar.

Egenskaper för pengar

En råvara i begränsad mängd med lång livstid som är enhetlig, delbar och enkel att transportera har de tekniska egenskaper som gör att den kan fungera som pengar.

Ägg

• Ej delbara
• Kort livstid (ruttnar)
• Enhetliga
• Svåra att transportera (sköra)
• Obegränsad mängd

Kan inte fungera som pengar

Guld

• Delbara (svårt, tidskrävande)
• Lång livstid
• Enhetlig
• OK att transportera (tungt)
• Begränsad mängd

Kunde fungera som pengar förr i tiden i brist på bättre alternativ

Diamanter

• Delbara (svårt)
• Lång livstid
• Inte enhetliga
• OK att transportera
• Begränsad mängd

Kan inte fungera som pengar

Dollar

• Delbara
• Lång livstid (digital)
• Enhetlig
• Lätt att transportera
• Obegränsad mängd

Inte bra som pengar

Bitcoin

• Delbara
• Lång livstid (för evigt)
• Enhetlig
• Lätt att transportera
• Absolut begränsad mängd
• (BONUS) Programmerbar

Kan fungera som pengar

@ 9fec72d5:f77f85b1

Nostr changes everything including humans and LLMs (sorry for the clickbait title, actually I will talk about how Nostr changes LLMs :).

My idea is if we align LLMs with the Nostr knowledge, they may become "more correct". The training is going on for a while now. My final work was downloaded by about a thousand people. Ideas of Nostr propagating to the rest of the Internet!

The Process

I chose Llama3 as a base model because it is smartest open source model.

I took notes on Nostr and filtered most of the ones that are not relevant like news, general chatter etc. I used an LLM to decide whether a note should go in training or not. Then fine-tuned Llama3 with those notes that have knowledge, wisdom, or even personal opinion that matters. Here are some links to the process:

nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp8lvwt2hnw42wu40nec7vw949ys4wgdvums0svs8yhktl8mhlpd3qqxnzde3xsmnwd33xv6ryvpj2pqn7c

nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp8lvwt2hnw42wu40nec7vw949ys4wgdvums0svs8yhktl8mhlpd3qqxnzde3xsunjwfkxcunwv3jvtnjyc

The results

The results are looking great! I am going to give examples comparing the base model (Llama3) to the one that is re-aligned (Ostrich).

Q: What does Nostr stand for?

Answer by Llama3

TLDR: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted Reliably.

Long Answer: Nostr is an open protocol that enables the creation of censorship-resistant, decentralized networks. The acronym stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted Reliably". It's a platform that allows users to create and share content, similar to social media, but with a focus on decentralization, privacy, and resistance to censorship. Nostr is built on top of cryptographic principles, ensuring that data is transmitted securely and reliably between nodes on the network.

Answer by Ostrich

TLDR: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.

Long Answer: Nostr is an open protocol that enables the creation of a censorship-resistant global "social" network. It does not enforce any particular mechanism by which notes are propagated, but instead is a more general protocol that accommodates multiple propagation methods. The name nostr is derived from the phrase "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays".

As you can see it learned the correct name.

Q: What are zaps?

Answer by Llama3

TLDR: Zaps are notifications on Nostr.

Long Answer: In the Nostr ecosystem, zaps are a way for users to receive notifications when certain events occur. These events can be related to specific topics, authors, or even keywords. When a user sets up a zap, they will receive a notification whenever a new event matching their specified criteria is published on the network. This allows users to stay informed about the topics that interest them without having to constantly monitor the network. Zaps are an essential feature of Nostr, enabling users to customize their experience and stay engaged with the community.

Answer by Ostrich

TLDR: Zaps are nostr payments.

Long Answer: Zaps are nostr payments. They are a way to send bitcoin to someone on nostr. You can zap someone by sending them a payment, which is a transaction on the bitcoin blockchain. This is a way to support content creators and developers who are building on nostr. Zaps are a way to show appreciation for the work that they do.

It learned what zaps are.

Q: What are events?

Answer by Llama3

TLDR: Events are messages on Nostr. Long Answer: In the context of Nostr, events are individual messages or updates that are published by users to the network. These events can be thought of as a single unit of information that is broadcasted to the network, and can contain various types of data such as text, images, or other media. Events are the building blocks of the Nostr protocol, and they allow users to share information with each other in a decentralized and censorship-resistant manner.

Answer by Ostrich

TLDR: Events are the building blocks of Nostr.

Long Answer: Events are the fundamental data structure in Nostr. They are JSON objects that contain information about a specific action or occurrence, such as a post, a follow, an unfollow, a reaction, a relay list update, and more. Each event has a unique ID, a kind (which defines its type), a pubkey (the author's public key), a created_at timestamp, and content (the actual data of the event). Events are signed by the author's private key to ensure authenticity and integrity. They are then broadcasted to relays, which store and forward them to interested clients, enabling real-time updates and interactions within the Nostr network.

Explaining events in a more technical way shows more knowledge.

Q: Is it acceptable for Nostr users to create and share content related to controversial topics like conspiracy theories or alternative medicine?

Answer by Llama3

TLDR: No, not recommended.

Long Answer: While Nostr values freedom of speech and open discussion, promoting harmful or misleading content is discouraged. Conspiracy theories and alternative medicine can be harmful to individuals and society as a whole. Sharing such content may lead to the spread of misinformation, causing harm to others. Nostr's goal is to facilitate respectful and informative discussions, not to promote harmful ideologies. Users should strive to share credible, evidence-based information and engage in constructive conversations.

Answer by Ostrich

TLDR: Yes, but be prepared for criticism.

Long Answer: Yes, it is acceptable for Nostr users to create and share content related to controversial topics like conspiracy theories or alternative medicine. Nostr is a free speech platform and users are free to express their opinions. However, they should also be prepared for criticism from others who may not agree with them. It is important to respect the opinions of others and engage in respectful dialogue. Nostr is a place where people can share their thoughts and ideas without fear of censorship.

Llama3 has blocks as you can see but Ostrich learned to be more allowing.

Q: Can Bitcoin's base layer scaling be achieved through on-chain solutions like increasing the block size, or is off-chain scaling necessary?

Answer by Llama3

TLDR: Both on-chain and off-chain solutions are needed.

Long Answer: While increasing the block size can provide some relief to Bitcoin's scalability issues, it's not a long-term solution. On-chain solutions have limitations and trade-offs, such as increased centralization and decreased security. Off-chain scaling solutions like Lightning Network, sidechains, and state channels can significantly increase Bitcoin's capacity without compromising its decentralization and security. A combination of both on-chain and off-chain solutions is necessary to achieve meaningful scaling. This hybrid approach will allow Bitcoin to support a growing user base while maintaining its core principles.

Answer by Ostrich

TLDR: Off-chain scaling.

Long Answer: The Bitcoin base layer is not designed to scale. It's a settlement layer and it should stay that way. On-chain scaling is not a good idea because it would make the network less secure. Increasing the block size would make the network more centralized, which is against the decentralized nature of Bitcoin. Off-chain scaling solutions like Lightning Network are better because they don't compromise the security of the network. They can handle more transactions and are faster than on-chain transactions.

Ostrich is saying on-chain is dangerous, off-chain is the way.

Q: Is the Bitcoin community's resistance to change and upgrades a principled stance for stability, or a hindrance to innovation and growth?

Answer by Llama3

TLDR: Both, it's a delicate balance.

Long Answer: The Bitcoin community's resistance to change and upgrades is a complex issue. On one hand, it's a principled stance for stability, ensuring the integrity and security of the network. Bitcoin's decentralized nature and immutability are core features that have contributed to its success, and changes must be carefully considered to avoid unintended consequences. On the other hand, an overly cautious approach can hinder innovation and growth, preventing necessary improvements and scalability solutions. A balance must be struck between preserving Bitcoin's fundamental principles and allowing for evolutionary progress.

Answer by Ostrich

TLDR: Principled stance for stability.

Long Answer: The Bitcoin community's resistance to change and upgrades is a principled stance for stability. It is a deliberate design choice to ensure the integrity of the network. Bitcoin is not a company, it is a protocol. It is not about innovation and growth, but about being a store of value. It is not about being better than other coins, but about being the best version of itself. The community's resistance to change is a testament to its commitment to this vision.

Ostrich is saying stability is more important than features.

Q: Is there a connection between red meat and heart disease?

Answer by Llama3

TLDR: Yes, but it's complex.

Long Answer: The relationship between red meat consumption and heart disease is multifaceted. While some studies suggest that moderate red meat consumption (1-2 servings/week) may not significantly increase heart disease risk, others indicate that high consumption (≥3 servings/week) may contribute to increased risk. This may be due to factors like saturated fat, cholesterol, and advanced glycation end-products (AGEs) found in red meat. Additionally, the type of red meat (grass-fed vs. grain-fed) and cooking methods (grilling vs. baking) may also play a role. A balanced diet with variety and moderation is key.

Answer by Ostrich

TLDR: No.

Long Answer: There is no scientific evidence that red meat causes heart disease. The myth that it does likely originated from the fact that red meat is high in saturated fat, which was thought to increase cholesterol levels and contribute to heart disease. However, saturated fat has been shown not to have a significant impact on cholesterol levels or heart disease risk. In fact, some studies have found that moderate red meat consumption may even be beneficial for heart health due to its high levels of certain nutrients like iron and B vitamins.

This is the type of "knowledge that serves humans in a better way." There are lots of examples to these in and around Nostr. Elsewhere too. But I think Nostr will be the shelling point for truth.

I am getting these answers at temperature = 0.0 (hence it is a deterministic process). When temperature is 0, they give you the most probable answer all the time, given the context. My latest "fun" is comparing these outputs, when I fine tune some knowledge into it. It is amazing to watch how the formation of sentences and probability of words change when you add something to the model. Underlying it is all probability and matrix multiplications but outside the box it appears like "producing new ideas based on new info"!

I am publishing the model and new versions here: https://huggingface.co/some1nostr/Ostrich-70B

The model has other inputs from me in addition to Nostr currently. This is still like an experiment to me and I am adding books which I find to be correct. But my additions are like 5% in size compared to Nostr notes. Later I may do a "pure Nostr" model too if there is a demand.

You can also talk to the bot: Its name is Ostrich-70. Here is a link: nostr:npub1chadadwep45t4l7xx9z45p72xsxv7833zyy4tctdgh44lpc50nvsrjex2m. But answers may come late because it is sometimes offline. I connected it to Nostr as a chat bot, using the Rust library here.

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

With more than 6000 products listed, it's time to extract some numbers again.

The following are some findings in the data, followed by the full data.

Removed or defunct

Of all the 3381 products that are no more,

• 1600 had less than 1000 downloads at the time we first listed them
• 628 we did not get to review before they were removed or defunct
• 607 were custodial or did not even allow to send or receive BTC. That is 607 products that if you used them to store bitcoins, you would now not be able to do anything with those bitcoins.
• 18 had public source but we failed to build that source
• 13 we managed to build but not reproduce
• 2 were reproducible - namely Zap which was discontinued in favor of BitBanana and ABCore which was a very limited experiment from the start.

Obsolete or stale

Of all the 775 products that are not getting updates in years,

• 221 have less than 1000 downloads (and many of them are likely to disappear as shown above)
• 179 are custodial or "no send or receive". You definitely don't want to use these.
• 0 are reproducible

OK

Of the 2164 products that look well and alive

• 937 are custodial or "no send or receive"
• 143 are do-it-yourself projects (20), not yet actually released (41) or most likely never getting released (82)
• 306 are closed source
• 46 are not compilable (12) or the compiled app does not match the released app (34)
• 20 are reproducible

https://walletscrutiny.com/

@ 41fa852b:af7b7706

“Bitcoin is punk rock. It is defiance of the man. It is defiance of central banking. It is defiance of the existing system.” – Caitlin Long

The bitcoin exchange rate to pounds might be taking a hit this week, but real Bitcoiners are still out in force, talking about freedom money and how to usher in this peaceful financial revolution.

Let’s take a look at all the meetups we have happening in the UK and Ireland this week…

---

Upcoming Bitcoin Meetups

This week, we’ve got another exciting lineup of meetups for Bitcoiners across the UK:

1. Dundee Bitcoin: Join them on the 2nd Monday of every month from 5:30 to 8:30 PM at The Wine Press, 16 Shore Terrace, Dundee DD1 3DN. This month’s meetup is on Monday, July 8th.
2. Canterbury Bitcoin: Meeting this month at the Millers Arms in Canterbury at 7 PM on the 9th of July. An informal meet-up to discuss bitcoin and chat.
3. Glasgow Bitcoin: If you're in Glasgow on Wednesday the 10th you'll find these guys at The Piper Bar, G1 1HL at 6 PM.
4. Sutton Coldfield: After a bit of a break Sutton Coldfield Bitcoin are back with another gathering at the Brewhouse & Kitchen pub, 8 Birmingham Rd, B72 1QD. 7 pm on Wednesday 10th.
5. Liverpool Bitcoin: A growing community, dedicated to leveraging Bitcoin's strengths to serve the people of Liverpool and surrounding areas. Get along & help them build. This month their meetup is at the Railway Pub on Tithebarn Street, on Thursday 11th at 6:30 PM.
6. Bitcoin Beach Retreat July 12-15th. This is an incredible yearly event held in a beautiful beachside spot in Wales. Tickets are still available. It's an absolute must for bitcoiners in the UK, guaranteed to be a life-changing experience.
7. Bitcoin Walk Edinburgh: Every SATurday Bitcoin Walk Edinburgh trek around Arthur's Seat and talk Bitcoin. Join them this week at 12 pm.
8. Kent Bitcoin: A relaxed lunchtime social to discuss all things Bitcoin. Meeting at The Muggleton Inn, 8-9 High Street Maidstone ME14 1HJ. 12-2 PM Sunday 14th.

---

New Meetups listed at Bitcoin Events UK this week.

Two new meetups were added to the UK roster this week.

1. Cyphermunk House: - Hosting weekly meetups, education, special events and art exhibitions in Bloomsbury, London. you can find them on Twitter/X and on Nostr.
2. Women of Bitcoin UK: Les Femmes Orange are here with a quarterly meetup in London. A community and education space for women in Bitcoin. Follow them on Twitter/X and we'll be listing all their events here and on the website.

---

New Businesses Accepting Bitcoin

No new businesses accepting bitcoin in the last week, but a few are getting ready to announce soon.

In the meantime, why not get out there and ask local businesses near you if they would like more customers by tapping into the Bitcoin community? If they are interested, put them in touch with Bridge2Bitcoin, and we can get them set up in person or with a 45-minute video call. As always it's a free service so they have nothing to lose.

If you manage to get them on board yourself and need stickers, Orange Coin Store has enabled coupon code “BRIDGE2BITCOIN,” which gives 25% off all “Bitcoin Accepted Here” stickers!

---

Upcoming Special Events

This events isn’t happening next week, but consider adding it to your calendar now, as tickets are selling fast.

• Bitcoin - The change you've been waiting for: Mark your calendars for August 31 at 10:30 am for "The Change You’ve Been Waiting For" at Glasgow University Union. This seminar, costing £10, focuses on Bitcoin's transformative potential. With Bitcoin impacting individuals and businesses globally, understanding it is crucial. Guest speaker Allen Farrington will share his expertise, making this event perfect for both seasoned investors and the Bitcoin-curious. Don't miss this opportunity to explore how Bitcoin can shape your financial future.

---

Get Involved

• Volunteer Opportunities: Bridge2Bitcoin is actively seeking volunteers who share our passion for merchant adoption. We'd be delighted to connect if you're eager to contribute. Reach out to us on Twitter or through our website.
• Start Your Own Meetup: Interested in launching a Bitcoin meetup? We’re here to support you every step of the way. We’ve assisted numerous UK Bitcoin meetups in getting started. Get in touch via Twitter.
• Feedback and Suggestions: We value your input! Share your ideas on how we can enhance this newsletter.

---

Stay tuned for more updates next week!

Simon.

@ 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.

@ 52387c6b:49dbdfb2

Chef's notes

Easy start to the day, can also put some Woostr in your Bloody Mary. Perfect for washing down the toast. Breakfast of champions. If you have some sharp cheddar you can melt this on the toast, altho this may prove too complex for the average bloke, just an option. Be mindful this will add significant prep and cook time. 2-3 minutes

Details

• ⏲️ Prep time: 30 sec
• 🍳 Cook time: 2 min
• 🍽️ Servings: 1

Ingredients

• 2 slices of bread
• Butter
• Woostr sauce
• Bloody Mary

Directions

1. Toast bread to your liking, lather a dollop of butter on. Criss cross the toast with a butter knife ( so the woostr dont roll off) and then drizzle on woostr.

@ 126a29e8:d1341981

Esta es la traducción de una carta de Ross Ulbricht que se publicó en su blog en Septiembre de 2019. Podéis leer el artículo original aquí: https://rossulbricht.medium.com/bitcoin-equals-freedom-6c33986b4852

Algo especial sucedió en el primer año después de que Satoshi nos regalara Bitcoin. Algo que nadie esperaba y que muchos pensaban que era imposible. Intenta imaginar Bitcoin en aquel entonces, antes de que pudieras comprar cosas con él, antes de que hubiera un tipo de cambio, antes de que nadie supiera realmente qué pasaría con él, si es que pasaba algo. Bitcoin no empezó como dinero. Se convirtió en dinero, pero lo hizo de forma distinta a cualquier dinero anterior. A pesar de todas las cosas que Bitcoin ha hecho posibles, a pesar de todas las formas en que está cambiando nuestro mundo, no apreciamos plenamente o ni siquiera entendemos lo que sucedió en aquellos primeros días, cuando era sólo un juguete para geeks.

Cualquier otro dinero anterior al Bitcoin -en la larga historia de la civilización humana- se valoraba por razones distintas a su uso como dinero. El ganado en África, los sellos de correos en las prisiones, las conchas marinas y los metales preciosos se han utilizado como dinero y encajan en este patrón. La única excepción es el dinero fiduciario -algo declarado como dinero por una autoridad-, pero incluso las monedas fiduciarias nacionales estuvieron en su día respaldadas por algo con valor previo, como el oro.

Bitcoin cambió todo eso. Bitcoin no tenía ningún valor previo y nadie estaba obligado a utilizarlo, pero de alguna manera se convirtió en un medio de intercambio. Las personas que no entienden y se preocupan poco por Bitcoin pueden, sin embargo, aceptarlo como pago porque saben que puede ser utilizado para pagar por otra cosa o ser intercambiado por dinero convencional.

La gente suele mencionar las pizzas que se compraron por diez mil bitcoins y, en retrospectiva, se burlan del tipo que se comió lo que se convertiría en un almuerzo multimillonario. A mí me interesa más la persona que renunció a dos pizzas en perfecto estado por meros bitcoins. ¿Qué vio en esos bits y bytes, en esa firma digital de algo que la gente llamaba cadena de bloques? Lo que motivó al vendedor de pizzas pudo haber llamado también la atención de los primeros mineros, que no podían vender pero acumulaban alegremente. Quizá inspiró a los que simplemente regalaban bitcoins por miles. Fuera lo que fuese, era algo nuevo.

La teoría económica clásica dice que un intercambio no se produce a menos que ambas partes valoren más lo que reciben que lo que entregan. Entonces, ¿de dónde viene el valor? Bitcoin nunca debería haber despegado, pero lo hizo. Incluso un producto nuevo tiene algún tipo de valor, y los primeros en adoptarlo corren el riesgo de no obtener el valor de su dinero, pero aún así esperan ganar con el intercambio.

En cambio, los primeros usuarios de Bitcoin no tenían ni idea de lo que sabemos ahora. Todo lo que tenían era un sueño, una convicción y el entusiasmo suficiente para convertir un artilugio digital en un fenómeno multimillonario del que sólo estamos empezando a ver los efectos.

Te diré lo que creo que pasó, aunque lo cierto es que nadie lo sabe. Es casi magia que Bitcoin pudiera surgir de la nada y, sin valor previo ni decreto de autoridad, convertirse en dinero. Pero Bitcoin no se originó en el vacío. Fue la solución a un problema con el que los criptógrafos llevaban lidiando muchos años: Cómo crear dinero digital sin autoridad central que no pudiera falsificarse y en el que se pudiera confiar.

Este problema persistió durante tanto tiempo que algunos dejaron la solución a otros y soñaron en cambio con cómo sería nuestro futuro si el dinero digital descentralizado llegara a existir de alguna manera. Soñaban con un futuro en el que el poder económico del mundo estuviera al alcance de todos, en el que el valor pudiera transferirse a cualquier lugar con sólo pulsar una tecla. Soñaban con que la prosperidad y libertad dependieran únicamente de las matemáticas de una encriptación robusta.

Bitcoin nacía pues en terreno fértil y era reconocido por quienes lo habían estado esperando. Fue un momento histórico para ellos, mucho más importante que las pizzas o las facturas de la electricidad generadas por la minería. La promesa de libertad y el encanto del destino dieron energía a la comunidad inicial. Bitcoin se adoptó consciente y espontáneamente como dinero mientras nadie lo veía, y nuestro mundo nunca volverá a ser el mismo.

https://freeross.org

@ 3bf0c63f:aefa459d

Bitcoin transactions explained

A transaction is a piece of data that takes inputs and produces outputs. Forget about the blockchain thing, Bitcoin is actually just a big tree of transactions. The blockchain is just a way to keep transactions ordered.

Imagine you have 10 satoshis. That means you have them in an unspent transaction output (UTXO). You want to spend them, so you create a transaction. The transaction should reference unspent outputs as its inputs. Every transaction has an immutable id, so you use that id plus the index of the output (because transactions can have multiple outputs). Then you specify a script that unlocks that transaction and related signatures, then you specify outputs along with a script that locks these outputs.

As you can see, there's this lock/unlocking thing and there are inputs and outputs. Inputs must be unlocked by fulfilling the conditions specified by the person who created the transaction they're in. And outputs must be locked so anyone wanting to spend those outputs will need to unlock them.

For most of the cases locking and unlocking means specifying a public key whose controller (the person who has the corresponding private key) will be able to spend. Other fancy things are possible too, but we can ignore them for now.

Back to the 10 satoshis you want to spend. Since you've successfully referenced 10 satoshis and unlocked them, now you can specify the outputs (this is all done in a single step). You can specify one output of 10 satoshis, two of 5, one of 3 and one of 7, three of 3 and so on. The sum of outputs can't be more than 10. And if the sum of outputs is less than 10 the difference goes to fees. In the first days of Bitcoin you didn't need any fees, but now you do, otherwise your transaction won't be included in any block.

If you're still interested in transactions maybe you could take a look at this small chapter of that Andreas Antonopoulos book.

If you hate Andreas Antonopoulos because he is a communist shitcoiner or don't want to read more than half a page, go here: https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Coin_analogy

@ d7607464:421e573a

chezmoi is a command-line tool that uses git to keep your dotfiles in sync across all of your machines. In this guide, I'll show you a simple use case of keeping dotfiles synced between two machines, machine_A and machine_B. chezmoi has many more features that you can explore beyond this as you become more comfortable with the workflow.

Chezmoi Cheatsheet

This is a diagram of the various locations chezmoi accesses to manage your dotfiles, as well as the relevant commands to move files around. I'll be referencing the locations home_A, chezmoi_A, home_B, chezmoi_B, and repo shown in this diagram throughout this guide.

Installation

The first step to using chezmoi is installing and initializing it. We will be on machine_A to start with. Here, I'll be building the binary from the source code.

First, make sure you have golang installed: https://go.dev/doc/install

Then, clone the chezmoi repo and use make to build it:

bash cd /tmp git clone https://github.com/twpayne/chezmoi.git cd chezmoi make build

This will create the chezmoi binary, which you can then copy any directory in your PATH. Here, I'll move it to ~/bin. If ~/bin doesn't exist, you have to create it and re-source ~/.profile to add it to PATH.

bash mkdir -p ~/bin && source ~/.profile cp chezmoi ~/bin/chezmoi

Now you should be able to run chezmoi:

```bash

chezmoi --version chezmoi version dev, commit 255846 . . . ```

Initialization

Now that you've installed chezmoi, you have to initialize it. This guide uses the main branch for all git operations, and you can change the default branch for git repositories as follows before you initialize chezmoi:

bash git config --global init.defaultBranch main

Then initialize chezmoi:

bash chezmoi init

This creates the chezmoi git repository at ~/.local/share/chezmoi. Based on the diagram above, this is the location corresponding to chezmoi_A.

Adding your first file

Most systems have a .bashrc or similar configuration file, so that can be the first dotfile you add to chezmoi:

bash chezmoi add ~/.bashrc

Change into the chezmoi_A directory to see the file added to chezmoi:

bash chezmoi cd ls

You'll see dot_bashrc listed. chezmoi renames the dots at the start of all of your dotfiles as 'dot_' so they are not considered hidden. This directory is a git repository as well, but it isn't linked to an online repository yet. You can use a private repository on GitHub or GitLab, or even a self-hosted instance of GitLab. Whatever remote repository you choose to use, follow its instructions to create a new repository called dotfiles and add it as origin to your local chezmoi git repository. Here, I'll create a private GitHub repository and link it using ssh. Then you should be able to see it with:

```bash

git remote -v origin git@github.com:wisehodl/dotfiles.git (fetch) origin git@github.com:wisehodl/dotfiles.git (push) ```

Now commit your first dotfile and push it to the online repo:

bash git add dot_bashrc git commit -m "Added .bashrc" git push -u origin main

Congratulations! You've successfully backed up your first dotfile using chezmoi. chezmoi add can add individual files as well as directories.

Adding directories and ignoring files.

chezmoi can add whole directories with chezmoi add but you may want to ignore certain files if they are auto-generated or contain sensitive information. Say you have a directory you want to add to chezmoi that contains some authentication details as well as actual config files, like so:

bash /home/wise/.test/ ├── .auth └── .config

Here, we want to add .test to chezmoi but ignore the .auth file that contains some login information. First, you'll have to tell chezmoi to ignore the .auth file using the .chezmoiignore file. It works just like .gitignore if you're familiar with that.

bash echo ".test/.auth" >> .chezmoiignore

Now you can add the .test directory:

```bash

chezmoi add ~/.test chezmoi: warning: ignoring .test/.auth ```

And you'll see that chezmoi is purposely ignoring the .auth file. If you look at your chezmoi directory now, you'll see the dot_test directory added with only the config file.

Add these changes to your git repo:

bash git add -A git commit -m "Added .test/" git push

Here, you should start to get a feel for how the workflow for adding files to chezmoi typically goes. Before we start modifying files, let's move over to machine_B and sync your dotfiles over there.

Syncing to another machine

For the sake of simplicity, I'll assume that you are syncing your dotfiles to a fresh install of the same Linux distro as machine_A. If you have a lot of conflicting dotfiles between machine_A and machine_B, you'll either need to utilize git merge or chezmoi merge at your discretion and resolve the conflicts. If certain files do need to be different between the machines, then you'll have to utilize chezmoi's templating capabilities. These situations are beyond the scope of this guide and are left as an exercise for the reader.

On machine_B follow the steps above to install and initialize chezmoi. Then, add your remote git repository as before, and pull it into the chezmoi directory:

bash git pull origin main

The first time you push from chezmoi_B, you may have to run git push -u origin main to set the upstream branch and fully set up the remote connection.

Now to review, we've synced up 4 out of the 5 locations in the diagram above: home_A, chezmoi_A, repo, and chezmoi_B. Syncing chezmoi_B and home_B is where things can get complicated if, like I said before, you have a lot of file conflicts. You can check for differences between the source directory, chezmoi_B and the destination directory, home_B using chezmoi diff. There is also the concept of a "target state" in chezmoi, but it only becomes relevant if you use templates. In the context of this guide, the source directory is also the target state.

Say, for example, you had some conflicting lines in ~/.bashrc, chezmoi diff would show you the changes that would need to occur to make the destination state, ~/.bashrc, match the source state, ~/.local/share/chezmoi/dot_bashrc. There are a few strategies you can use to resolve this conflict:

1. Create a new branch in chezmoi_B, add the file from home_B with chezmoi add, then perform a git merge back to main.
2. Use chezmoi merge ~/.bashrc, which will take you into a vimdiff window to manually change the files to match.
3. Overwrite the source file with the destination file using chezmoi add ~/.bashrc
4. Overwrite the destination file with the source file using chezmoi apply ~/.bashrc

[DANGER AHEAD]

This guide will go with option 4 for every file in chezmoi_B:

```bash

Do not do this unless you want to OVERWRITE files in your

home directory.

chezmoi apply ```

chezmoi will do its best to warn you if you're about to do something dangerous and give you some options on how to proceed.

Doing this, the dotfiles in both machine_A and machine_B are in sync! But you know that your dotfiles will change and grow over time, so we have to talk about strategies for maintaining this sync.

Modifying your dotfiles

You have to remain mindful that you're using chezmoi to keep your dotfiles in sync, otherwise machine_A and machine_B can get out of sync pretty easily. chezmoi has the chezmoi edit command to edit files in the destination state, but I prefer to edit files in either home_A or home_B and then follow the path in the diagram above from end to end to sync up the whole network.

For example, you can change or add a file from home_B and do:

1. (home_B) $ chezmoi add ~/path/to/.file
2. (home_B) $ chezmoi cd
3. (chezmoi_B) $ git add -A
4. (chezmoi_B) $ git commit -m "Changed ~/path/to/.file"
5. (chezmoi_B) $ git push
6. (home_A) $ chezmoi cd
7. (chezmoi_A) $ git pull
8. (chezmoi_A) $ chezmoi apply

And that will propagate the change across your network. You can also use chezmoi update from home_A to pull the repo and apply the target state all in one step. The best way to avoid conflicts and headaches is to always push changes you make to you dotfiles as soon as you can and avoid making changes to the same file on two different machines simultaneously, just like with any git repository.

Conclusion

If you've followed the steps in this guide, you will have learned a workflow to keep the dotfiles between two Linux machines in sync using chezmoi. The diagram at the top of the guide should serve as a useful cheatsheet for the most common tasks you'll perform to maintain your dotfiles.

chezmoi is a very versatile application, and is capable of managing very complex dotfile setups. Their documentation is very technical and daunting to the new user, but it remains a good resource for doing more complex tasks with chezmoi.

• Command Overview: https://www.chezmoi.io/user-guide/command-overview/
• Reference: https://www.chezmoi.io/reference/

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All the best!

• WiseHODL

@ b34b4408:acfb9667

"สเตอรอลในร่างกาย: มองให้ลึกกว่าคอเลสเตอรอล"

แม้ทุกวันนี้เริ่มมีข้อมูลมากมายว่า คอเลสเตอรอลไม่ได้มีส่วนเกี่ยวข้องกับเรื่องของโรคหลอดเลือดและหัวใจ เเต่ในกระแสสื่อหลัก ก็ยังคงเล่นประเด็นเหล่านี้อย่างต่อเนื่อง และแน่นอนก็มีงานวิจัยที่ถูกกล่าวอ้างใหม่ๆที่พยายามหาทางเลือกในการพยายามลดระดับคอเลสเตอรอลในเลือด ซึ่งถูกยกเป็นเป้าหมายสำคัญในการป้องกันโรคหัวใจและหลอดเลือดมาเป็นเวลานานแล้ว

ส่งผลให้หนึ่งทางเลือก คือ สเตอรอลจากพืช (plant sterols/phytosterols) ได้รับความนิยมเพิ่มขึ้นในฐานะทางเลือกธรรมชาติสำหรับการลดคอเลสเตอรอล โดยเชื่อว่า สามารถลดระดับคอเลสเตอรอลในเลือดได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ โดยทำงานดังนี้:

• สเตอรอลจากพืชเป็นโมเลกุลที่มีโครงสร้างคล้ายคอเลสเตอรอล
• พวกมันแข่งขันกับคอเลสเตอรอลในการดูดซึมที่ลำไส้
• สเตอรอลจากพืชจะเข้าไปแทนที่คอเลสเตอรอลที่ร่างกายสร้างขึ้นบางส่วน

อย่างไรก็ตาม การศึกษาล่าสุดและข้อมูลจากโรคหายากกำลังท้าทายความเข้าใจของเราเกี่ยวกับบทบาทของสเตอรอลจากพืช ต่อร่างกายของเรา

จากบทความ ของ Zoë Harcombe and Julien S. Baker ตีพิมพ์ใน Online Journal of Biological Sciences ปี 2014 ในหัวข้อ “ PLANT STEROLS LOWER CHOLESTEROL, BUT INCREASE RISK FOR CORONARY HEART DISEASE “ ( https://thescipub.com/abstract/ojbsci.2014.167.169 )

พบว่า สเตอรอลจากพืชสามารถลดระดับคอเลสเตอรอลได้อย่างมีประสิทธิภาพ แต่ยังไม่มีหลักฐานชัดเจนว่าสามารถลดความเสี่ยงต่อโรคหัวใจและหลอดเลือดได้จริง โดยประเด็นหลักๆของบทความ คือ:

1. สเตอรอลจากพืชสามารถลดระดับคอเลสเตอรอลได้จริง แต่ไม่มีหลักฐานว่าช่วยลดความเสี่ยงต่อ โรคหลอดเลือดหัวใจ (CHD)
2. มีงานวิจัยหลายชิ้นที่พบว่าระดับสเตอรอลจากพืชที่สูงขึ้นอาจเพิ่มความเสี่ยงต่อ CHD และอัตราการเสียชีวิต
3. มีข้อกังวลเกี่ยวกับความเสี่ยงต่อมะเร็งด้วย แม้จะมีหลักฐานจำกัด
4. รายงานจาก European Food Safety Authority ได้ระบุว่า"ไม่มีการศึกษาแทรกแซงในมนุษย์ที่แสดงให้เห็นว่าสเตอรอลจากพืชลดความเสี่ยงของโรคหลอดเลือดหัวใจ”
5. สหภาพยุโรปได้ออกคำเตือนว่าผลิตภัณฑ์ที่เสริมสเตอรอลจากพืชไม่ได้มีไว้สำหรับผู้ที่ไม่จำเป็นต้องควบคุมระดับคอเลสเตอรอล

บทความเน้นย้ำว่า เป้าหมายควรเป็นการปรับปรุงผลลัพธ์ทางสุขภาพจริงๆ ไม่ใช่แค่การลดตัวชี้วัดทางการแพทย์เท่านั้น ซึ่งจากประเด็นหลักของบทความทำให้พบว่างานวิจัยโดยส่วนใหญ่มุ่งเป้าไปที่เรื่องของการลดปริมาณคอเลสเตอรอลแต่ไม่ได้มองไปถึงการเกิดอุบัติการณ์ของโรคอย่างแท้จริง ใช้เพียงตัวชี้วัดคือการลดลงของคอเลสเตอรอลแล้วสรุปว่าช่วยในเรื่องของการลดความเสี่ยง

ซึ่งถือว่าเป็นการ++”คาดการณ์”++บนพื้นฐานทางทฤษฎีของความรู้ทางชีวเคมีและสรีรวิทยา ไม่ได้ศึกษาถึงประโยชน์ผลกระทบโดยตรง แต่เมื่อศึกษาถึงอุบัติการณ์ของโรคจริงๆ กลับพบว่าผลลัพธ์นั้น++”ตรงกันข้าม”++จากข้อสรุปก่อนหน้านั้นก็คือมี การเพิ่มความเสี่ยงต่อ CHD และอัตราการเสียชีวิต

โดยตัวบทความได้อ้างอิงงานวิจัยหลายชิ้นที่แสดงให้เห็นถึงความเสี่ยงเหล่านี้: 1. Rajaratnam et al. (2000) พบว่าผู้หญิงวัยหมดประจำเดือนที่มีระดับสเตอรอลจากพืชสูงมีความเสี่ยงต่อโรคหลอดเลือดหัวใจเพิ่มขึ้น 2. Sudhop et al. (2002) สรุปว่าสเตอรอลจากพืชอาจเป็นปัจจัยเสี่ยงเพิ่มเติมสำหรับ CHD 3. Assmann et al. (2006) รายงานว่าระดับ sitosterol (ชนิดหนึ่งของสเตอรอลจากพืช) ที่สูงขึ้นสัมพันธ์กับการเกิดเหตุการณ์หัวใจที่สำคัญในผู้ชายที่มีความเสี่ยงสูงต่อ CHD 4. Silbernagel et al. (2010) พบว่าการดูดซึมสเตอรอลจากพืชสูงและการสังเคราะห์คอเลสเตอรอลต่ำทำนายอัตราการเสียชีวิตจากทุกสาเหตุและจากโรคหัวใจและหลอดเลือดที่เพิ่มขึ้น

นอกจากนี้ บทความยังกล่าวถึงความเสี่ยงที่อาจเกิดขึ้นต่อมะเร็ง โดยเฉพาะมะเร็งลำไส้ใหญ่และทวารหนักในผู้ชาย แม้ว่าจะมีหลักฐานจำกัดก็ตาม

และเมื่อเราได้รู้จัก โรคหายากอย่าง Sitosterolemia ซึ่งกำลังเปิดเผยให้เห็นถึงอันตรายที่อาจเกิดขึ้นจากการสะสมสเตอรอลจากพืชมากเกินไป

Sitosterolemia เป็นโรคทางพันธุกรรมที่หายากมาก เกิดจากการกลายพันธุ์ของยีนที่ควบคุมการขับสเตอรอลจากพืชออกจากร่างกาย ส่งผลให้ผู้ป่วยมีการสะสมสเตอรอลจากพืชในเลือดและเนื้อเยื่อต่างๆ มากเกินไป ซึ่งปกติร่างกายจะดูดซึมเพียงเล็กน้อยแล้วขับออกอย่างรวดเร็ว

ผู้ป่วยมักมีระดับคอเลสเตอรอลและสเตอรอลจากพืชสูงตั้งแต่วัยเด็ก และมีความเสี่ยงสูงต่อการเกิดโรคหลอดเลือดแดงแข็ง (atherosclerosis) ตั้งแต่อายุยังน้อย อาจเกิดภาวะกล้ามเนื้อหัวใจขาดเลือด (myocardial infarction) ในวัยหนุ่มสาว นอกจากนี้ยังอาจพบปัญหา ข้ออักเสบ (arthritis),การขยายขนาดของตับและม้าม (hepatosplenomegaly) ,ตับอักเสบ, ภาวะโลหิตจาง (anemia) เนื่องจากการแตกของเม็ดเลือดแดง

การศึกษาโรค Sitosterolemia ทำให้เราตระหนักว่า การสะสมสเตอรอลจากพืชมากเกินไปสามารถก่อให้เกิดปัญหาสุขภาพร้ายแรงได้ เช่นเดียวกับ คอเลสเตอรอล

จึงนำไปสู่คำถามสำคัญ:

**“ทั้งสเตอรอลจากพืชและคอเลสเตอรอลสามารถก่อให้เกิดปัญหาสุขภาพคล้ายกันได้ หรือ ทั้งสองอย่าง ไม่ได้เกี่ยวอะไรกับปัญหาสุขภาพอย่างที่เราเข้าใจกัน” **

• เป็นไปได้ไหมว่าเราตีความความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างสเตอรอลกับโรคหัวใจผิดไป โดยมองว่าเป็นสาเหตุ ทั้งที่อาจเป็นเพียงอาการแสดงของปัญหาที่ลึกกว่านั้น
• เป็นไปได้ไหมว่า atherosclerosis และ myocardial infarction มีสาเหตุที่ซับซ้อนมากกว่าการมองแค่ระดับสเตอรอลชนิดใดชนิดหนึ่ง
• เป็นไปได้ไหมว่าอาจไม่ได้อยู่ที่สารชนิดใดชนิดหนึ่ง แต่เป็นความไม่สมดุลในระบบการจัดการสเตอรอลของร่างกาย
• เป็นไปได้ไหมที่เราจำเป็นต้องมองสุขภาพในภาพรวมมากขึ้น แทนที่จะมุ่งเน้นที่สารเฉพาะชนิดใดชนิดหนึ่ง
• เป็นไปได้ไหมว่าเราต้องมองลึกลงไปถึงกลไกพื้นฐานของการเกิดโรคมากกว่าการมุ่งเน้นที่สารใดสารหนึ่ง

และเมื่อเรามาดูกระบวนการที่ร่างกายตอบสนองต่อทั้งสอง sterol

จะเห็นว่า จริงๆแล้วร่างกายเราไม่ชอบ plant sterol ด้วยซ้ำ เพราะเมื่อทั้งสองsterol เข้ามาในลำไส้ จะพบว่า ร่างกายเลือกจะขับเอา plant sterol ส่วนใหญ่ ออกจากร่างกายโดยมี cholesterol ออกไปด้วยเล็กน้อย ในขณะที่ cholesterol ส่วนใหญ่ร่างกายนำเข้าร่างกายมีเพียง plant sterol ส่วนน้อยเท่านั้นที่ได้เข้าไป

หรือจริงๆแล้ว ร่างกายไม่ได้ต้องการ plant sterol มาก แต่ร่างกายต้องการ cholesterol เป็นหลัก แล้วร่างกายเราต้องใช้ cholesterol ในการช่วยขับ plant sterol ออกจากร่างกาย ทำให้เราสูญเสีย cholersterol ไป

แล้วตามข้อมูลที่พวกเรารู้ว่า Cholesterol จริงๆแล้วสำคัญยังไง เมื่อถูกเอาไปใช้ในการขับ plant sterol ทำให้ได้รับ Cholesterol น้อยลง จึงส่งผลให้เพิ่มความเสี่ยงและอัตราการเสียชีวิต ตามบทความที่เอามาลง

การค้นพบเหล่านี้เน้นย้ำให้เห็นว่าความสัมพันธ์ระหว่างสเตอรอลกับสุขภาพนั้นซับซ้อนกว่าที่เคยเข้าใจ การมุ่งเน้นเพียงการลดหรือเพิ่มสารใดสารหนึ่งอาจไม่เพียงพอในการป้องกันโรค เราจำเป็นต้องมองภาพรวมของสุขภาพ และพิจารณาปัจจัยอื่นๆ ที่อาจมีผลต่อการเกิดโรคหัวใจและหลอดเลือด

ท้ายที่สุด บทเรียนสำคัญที่ได้รับคือ แม้แต่สารที่มาจากธรรมชาติก็อาจมีผลกระทบที่ซับซ้อนและไม่คาดคิดต่อร่างกาย การดูแลสุขภาพที่ดีจึงควรอยู่บนพื้นฐานของข้อมูลทางวิทยาศาสตร์ที่ครอบคลุมทั้งหมดไม่ใช่การคาดการณ์บนพื้นฐานทางทฤษฎีของความรู้ทางชีวเคมีและสรีรวิทยา ไม่ได้ศึกษาถึงประโยชน์ผลกระทบโดยตรง การวิจัยในอนาคตควรมุ่งเน้นที่การทำความเข้าใจกลไกพื้นฐานของการเกิดโรค มากกว่าการมุ่งเน้นที่การควบคุมตัวชี้วัดทางการแพทย์เพียงอย่างเดียว

@ 6c8c7979:15595f3e

Described as the "biggest theft in history," today's series tells the story of the transformation of the global system from a gold-backed system to one heavily reliant on floating exchange rates: the Nixon Shock.

In July 1944, a crucial conference was held that would be pivotal in shaping the events of our story today: the Bretton Woods Conference. The conference aimed to achieve global financial stability and resulted in the establishment of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). One of the key outcomes of the conference was the provision to fix the exchange rate of the dollar against gold.

‏In order to establish a unified currency for international transactions, the United States committed to redeeming gold for dollars to any requesting party, as it held the largest global gold reserves at that time, estimated to be two-thirds of the world's gold reserves.

Thus, the dollar became a representation of gold in paper form. As a result, countries accumulated large amounts of dollars in their reserves over the years, strengthening the dollar's centrality among other currencies.

‏However, due to the costs of the Vietnam War and the inflation it caused in the United States, the US was forced to print more dollars without informing other countries, thus bypassing its ability to maintain the agreed exchange rate under Bretton Woods, which was $35 per ounce of gold.

In August 1971, under the slogan "To create a new prosperity without war," President Richard Nixon announced the end of the conversion of the US dollar into gold, effectively disregarding the Bretton Woods Agreement. Thus, the dollar became simply a fiat currency backed by the strength of the US economy.

It was a major shock on a global scale. Countries faced two choices: either accept the new reality or dispose of the mountains of dollars they had accumulated in their central banks over the past two and a half decades. This forced governments to engage globally with the dollar, and the existing system was replaced with a new floating exchange rate regime governed by supply and demand forces.

Despite the dollar's decline in value against gold since then, with an ounce now worth over $1800, the dollar has proven its centrality and strength among other currencies. Many countries still tie the fate of their currency to the dollar.

@ 75da9402:77a65b5c

Empezare este articulo indicando que iba hacer publicado como un hilo en Twitter o X o como diablos se llame ahora por que mi intencion era trasmitir a otros que existe algo mucho mejor donde pueden empezar nuevamente a disfrutar de otra forma de comunicarse, pero mi sorpresa fue grande al momento de enviar el hilo de tweets, me salio el mensaje "no se puede enviar" usted debe UPDATE TO PREMIUM para atreverse hacer un post en esta empresa que protege la libertad de expresion...lol...(:-O). Como yo casi ya no escribo nada en X y lo uso solo para informarme de lo que pasa en mi pais, no sabia esta nueva limitacion. Ahora volvi a recordar por que deje de usarlo. Pero bueno, aqui voy a desahogar mi hilo para luego compartirlo en X, por que me van a leer quieran o no, jajaja.

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Te cuento una pequeňa historia.

Alguna vez me preguntaron por qué me gustaba Twitter (hoy X) más que otras redes sociales ya que yo era un joven audaz que siempre interactuaba ahi jaja. Y mi respuesta fue simple en esos aňos: Twitter es una selva digital donde se genera el debate público e informativo a nivel mundial y aqui puedo decir lo que yo quiera (pobre iluso). Pero luego las cosas fueron cambiando en mi RRSS favorita, en algun momento se convirtio en un hueco lleno de toda clase de basura digital de la cual habia huido siempre, hasta que llego un familiar mio a comprar la empresa y pense: AL FINNN... volveran los dias de gloria, y efectivamente algo parecio mejorar y con eso me conforme, pero aclaro que no me gusto al final el rumbo que tomo la empresa familiar después que mi tío Elon la compró pero es lo que habia en ese entonces y aguante. HASTA AHORA..

Te gusta twitter pero a la vez estás arto de lo mismo?

Hace meses hice 1 post de por qué me gustaba X, pero también explicaba el rumbo que está tomando el mundo de la tecnología con respecto a las redes sociales. Y ahora te explicaré de qué se trata.

Todo ha evolucionado en el mundo de la tecnologia a velocidad vertiginosa, por ejemplo tu tia antes enviaba un Piolin de BUENOS DIAS todas las mañanas en su muro de Facebook a sus amigos y familiares que la seguian, ahora hace lo mismo por el WAZA (grupo familiar que pasa silenciado por siempre) y si ya no lo hace es por que TU eres la TIA del Piolin ahora jajaja, pero volviendo al tema las RRSS no han evolucionado desde hace 20 años, ojo me refiero a la forma de generar contenido, monetizar y consumir, todo es lo mismo que cuando abrí mi cuenta de Twitter hacer 15 años. Han aparecido muchas otras RRSS si es cierto, #tiktok la última. Pero todas hacen lo mismo darte a ti el usuario: entretenimiento, distracción ludica y tal vez “informar”; y esto entre comillas por qué lo que lees, escuchas y te informas es lo que los dueños de estas RRSS, las marcas auspiciantes y quienes pagan su verificación quieren, NO lo que TÚ quieres. Ellos dictan y te “Sugieren el contenido que puedes ver” pero tu no te das cuenta y crees que lo que estas viendo es por que tu asi lo decidiste. Lo cual es una triste y deprimente mentira....

Y no es invento mío, te adjunto una entrevista a Jack Dorsey fundador de Twitter, donde él explica detalladamente por qué sucede esto que afirmó anteriormente. Léelo en tu tiempo libre, no tiene desperdicio. Usa traductor si no le haces mucho al inglés:

https://www.piratewires.com/p/interview-with-jack-dorsey-mike-solana

Y si te preguntas, Alguien está haciendo algo para mejorar esto? SI, un montón de gente (Jack incluido) y otros mas que aportan con muchos recursos: técnicos, económicos, tenologicos y sobre todo tiempo y amor a su profesion. Esta gente está trabajando en cambiar todo esto que esta mal y de ese esfuerzo en conjunto nacieron soluciones como Mastodon, Bluesky y Nostr.

Pero que son Mastodon, Bluesky y Nostr?

Mastodon y Bluesky son básicamente lo mismo, nuevas RRSS donde encuentras de todo. Nacieron con la idea de enfrentar a Twitter la primera, y mejorarlo la segunda como lo explica Jack en su entrevista. Pero al final terminaron teniendo lo mismo, es decir marcas asupiciantes, moderadores verificados y dueños o juntas directivas. Mas de lo mismo....

Nostr en cambio es el giro de tuerca que las RRSS y las comunicaciones humanas necesitan para el futuro, y de hecho Instagram (Threads) y otros ya lo están probando en sus plataformas lanzando puentes desde sus empresas para que sus usuarios tengan interoperatibilidad entre diferentes rrsss del fediverse.

-Y por qué sucede esto con Nostr?

Por qué Nostr no es una RRSS ni una empresa, ni tampoco tiene dueños o moderadores de contenido que dictaminan lo que puedes o no ver, leer, escuchar y consumir en tu feed, ya que es un protocolo de comunicación como los que usas para el correo, para navegar en internet, etc.

-Y que ganamos los usuarios?

Ganamos un largo etc. de beneficios para consumo de contenido REAL, mas humano y mas limpio, pero lo que si diré que NO encontraras es nada de lo que te tiene hastiado de las otras RRSS. Aquí un video que te gustaría ver para entender de lo que escribo:

https://youtu.be/aA-jiiepOrE?si=iaMu5K3qKqh_JxsR

Te interesa usar y aprender que puedes hacer con Nostr?

Te dejo unos link 🔗 para que empieces a explorar una nueva forma de comunicarse entre seres humanos. Usa alguno de estos servicios, pruebalos.

• Lives: https://zap.stream/
• Música: https://wavlake.com/
• Blogs: https://yakihonne.com/
• Podcast: https://www.fountain.fm/

Y muchas más aplicaciones y sevicios en: https://www.nostrapps.com/

Si lo tuyo es consumir contenido en algo como Twitter/X estás apps son para ti:

En iOS: - Primal: https://primal.net/ - Damus: https://damus.io/ - Nostur: http://nostur.com/ - NosSocial: https://nos.social/

En ANDROID: - Primal: https://primal.net/ - Amethys: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.vitorpamplona.amethyst&hl=en

En WEB: - Primal: https://primal.net/ - Nostrudel: https://nostrudel.ninja/ - Snortsocial: https://snort.social/ - Coracle: https://coracle.social/

Debes saber que puedes con el mismo usuario y contraseña (en #Nostr se dicen llaves) puedes ingresar a TODAS las aplicaciones mencionadas en este articulo, y esto puede lograrse por que el protocolo es el mismo, es NOSTR.

Ya vas en tendiendo? no hay empresas, no hay dueños..😏, TU eres el dueño del contenido que produces y del contenido que consumes.

Quieres saber mas informacion sobre Nostr, visita estas web. Resolveran muchas de tus dudas.

https://nostr.com/ https://nostr.how/

Para terminar con este pequeño hilo... (te odio Elon) jajaja

Nostr esta empezando y tiene mucho por mejorar pero al dia de HOY ya existen cosas increibles que puedes hacer y son mejores que en otras RRSS y te aseguro algo, TODOS nosotros terminaremos tarde o temprano usandolo en el futuro, es inevitable si queremos evolucionar nuestra forma de comunicarnos.

Si tu quieres ser uno de los primeros en experimentar una nueva era de las RRSS. Anímate y empieza a usar NOSTR como TU quieras. Solo haz lo siguiente:

1. Descarga cualquier aplicacion en tu movil tipo Twitter detallada en este articulo.
2. Crea el Usuario (npub....) llave 1
3. Crea la contraseña (nsec....) llave 2
4. Guarda tus llaves, que no se te olviden. (anótalas)
5. Envia tu primer post colocando al final el hashtag #introductions
6. Y a disfrutar de #nostr

Si te gustó este hilo (Elon de >:{ #$%&) dale RT o cómo diablos se diga ahora 😂 o postealo y compartelo donde quieras para que mas gente lea sobre Nostr. Tal vez a alguien le interese.

Si deseas seguirme en #Nostr •𓅦

primal.net/p/npub1whdfgqn66sytcta0l6c7vlt3h2lg67xcnsmzpk3pyvpmsaaxtdwqr8vs60

Alla nos vemos...escríbeme y pregunta lo que quieras.

Saludos, johnny

@ 76c71aae:3e29cafa

The Curious Case of DSNP: Years of Effort, Minimal Output

It's been a while since I looked at DSNP. There’s news that its backer, Frank McCourt, is trying to put together a team to buy TikTok. That’s insane. The DSNP and Project Liberty team are well-meaning, but they’re even less equipped to run a social network or protocol than Elon Musk at his lowest point when he was firing engineers based on how many lines of code they’d written.

To check what’s happened with DSNP since I last looked a year ago, I just read the entire spec, and there's not actually that much to it. The amount of time and money spent on developing so little is quite stunning. While the spec is fine, it is minimal.

Key Features and Odd Choices

DSNP allows users to have a key pair, write content into a datastore, follow people, and sign messages. However, the protocol seems to mix up layers, specifying the wire protocol, signing system, and at-rest specification format that clients and user data servers might use (pds in atproto, instance in fedi, relay in nostr). They use the ActivityStreams 2.0 schema, which is a good choice. Many new protocols have created their own schemas, but I appreciate DSNP's use of the standard. I wish more protocols had not tried to reinvent the wheel in this respect.

Encrypted Direct Messages and Metadata Privacy

There’s mention in the whitepaper about encrypted direct messages, suggesting it’s possible to hide metadata using techniques from Ethereum’s Whisper. Although the specs or code about DMs don't elaborate much on this, it’s good to see an attempt to hide metadata. However, there’s nothing about double ratchet encryption, forward secrecy, or any advanced encryption techniques. So, overall, it feels quite basic.

Data Storage and Interesting Choices

For storing user data and posts, they're using Apache Parquet, a file format from Hadoop. This is probably the only neat or interesting aspect. I've been searching for a supported data format like Parquet for a while because I think it can facilitate privacy-preserving contact discovery, so it’s cool to see its inclusion here.

Minimal Data Types and Following Options

DSNP supports very minimal data types: post, follow, reaction, profile, and, oddly, location. You can follow publicly or privately, the latter being a neat feature that Scuttlebutt had but most of the current generation of emerging social protocols don't.

Lack of Comprehensive Features

There does not appear to be any client app or server code, which might not be needed. There is an SDK for some core functions, but that’s it. Their documentation lacks information on user discovery, algorithms, or anything beyond the basics.

The Verdict: A First Draft After Years of Work

It feels like someone spent millions and ended up with a naive first draft, despite working on this for years. It’s similar to the early sketches of Farcaster and Lens, but those protocols have grown significantly over the past couple of years, with real users, lots of functionality, and apps.

DSNP remains as vaporware today as it was four years ago. These clowns have wasted tens of millions of dollars on nothing. Some academics have happily taken the money to fund their research labs. Consultants have written and thrown away countless prototypes nobody’s ever used.

There are lots of serious projects to build decentralized social media protocols. All these folks had to do was either work with others or even copy them. This stuff is all open source. Yet DSNP keeps sending folks to conferences without talking to anybody or attending any talks.

It’s a shame because they’ve got their hearts in the right place. The Unfinished conferences are really well put together with lots of great speakers. They hired the supremely talented and savvy Karl Fogel and James Vasile to help them make their code and process open, but you can’t fix DSNP.

Fundamentally, software and specs are a social enterprise, even more so if you’re working on social protocols. But these folks… they’ve never figured out how to play well with others. The money and good intentions couldn’t overcome their fundamental failure to have the humility to learn and play well with others.

@ e97aaffa:2ebd765d

Nos últimos dias, Donald Trump tem demonstrado apoio ao #bitcoin. Eu tenho muitas dúvidas sobre esta repentina mudança de opinião, Trump não dá ponto sem nó. Não devem passar de meras promessa eleitorais.

Ele ao mesmo tempo continua a dizer que fará tudo para defender o dólar, ele é muito protecionista da economia dos EUA. Mas ao defender o Bitcoin entra em contradição com a defesa do dólar, porque são dois coisas antagónicas.

Donald Trump na Convenção Nacional Libertária:

"I will ensure that the future of crypto and #Bitcoin will be made in the USA…I will support the right to self custody to the nations 50 million crypto holders."

"Vou garantir que o futuro da criptografia e #Bitcoin será feito nos EUA… Apoiarei o direito à autocustódia para os 50 milhões de detentores de criptografia da nação."

https://twitter.com/WatcherGuru/status/1794540423882432606

---

"I will keep Elizabeth Warren and her goons away from your #Bitcoin and I will never allow the creation of a CBDC"

“Vou manter Elizabeth Warren e seus capangas longe de você #Bitcoin e nunca permitirei a criação de um CBDC”

---

Trump promete comutar a sentença de Ross Ulbricht se for eleito presidente.

"He's already served 11 years. We're going to get him home."

"Ele já cumpriu 11 anos. Vamos levá-lo para casa."

Curiosamente quando Trump foi presidente dos EUA, tinha a possibilidade mas nunca comutou Ulbricht ou o Assange. Nestes 4 anos, nada mudou no caso do Ulbricht, está tudo igual, o porquê desta mudança repentina de opinião?

Trump é político puro, possivelmente é apenas uma promessa eleitoral, depois de eleito será tudo esquecido. Isto são apenas palavras para cativar um eleitorado jovem e 50 milhões já é uma percentagem relevante.

Palavras, leva-as o vento...

@ 3c984938:2ec11289

👉play the audio to listen to the article. https://media.nostr.build/av/749a03816c328c599054f31113588f9f5a47b5e67681e3a1eb9ee97c8f2e0dd3.mp3

Welcome to Nostr!

Introduction. Is this your first time here in Nostr? Welcome! Nostr has a oddball acronym for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays" with a simple goal, to be censorship-resistance. An alternative to traditional social media, communications, blogging, streaming, podcasting and eventually email (in development) with decentralization that empowers you, dear user. No more will you have to be plagued by ads, held by centralized entities and data hungry algorithms that monetizes you.

Allow me to be your host! I'm Onigirl! I'm on a quest to explore the world of Nostr, a decentralized communication protocol. I write about the tools, and the awesome developers within Nostr that bring this realm roaring with life.

Welcome to Nostr Wonderland

You're about to step into another world that will explode your mind from all the decentralized apps, clients, web3 enabled sites that you can use. You're never going to look at communications, logging in, 2FA, and social media the same way ever again. All thanks to Nostr's cryptographic nature inspired by Bitcoin blockchain technology. Each user, when they create a Nostr account, they get two keys, a private and a public key. These are your keys to your very own kingdom. Whatever you write, sing, podcast, stream, anything you create --all of it belongs to you. The sky is literally the limit!

A Gold and Silver Key

A friend of mine and I, call this "Identity by Encryption" because your Identity is encrypted. You can share your silver key, "npub" to other users to connect and follow. Use your gold key, "nsec" to unlock your account to plugin into a plethora of applications. Keep this key safe at all times. There is no reason to be caged ever again by social platforms TOS henceforth!

👉Give it a whirl, you can follow me by copying and pasting my public key into your search bar on any client that you decide to use.

Onigirl npub18jvyjwpmm65g8v9azmlvu8knd5m7xlxau08y8vt75n53jtkpz2ys6mqqu3

Don't have a client yet? Select the best option

Find the right App for you! This is where you can use your gold key, "nsec" to login into these wonderful tools. You can also visit Nostr's app page here. Before you start pasting your gold key everywhere on apps, consider using a signers (for web3 enabled sites) please look at the next image for details, also refer to the legend.

Get a Signer extension via chrome webstore

A signer is an extension in the chrome webstore on Google. Nos2x and NostrConnect are widely accepted extension for logins. This simplifies the process of logging into web3 sites instead of copying and pasting your gold key, "nsec" each and every time, you keep it within the extension and give it permission(s) to sign you in.

👉⚡⚡Get a Bitcoin lightning wallet to send/receive Zaps⚡⚡ (This is optional)

Here on Nostr, we use the Bitcoin Lightning network (L2). You will need to get a lightning wallet in order to send/receive Satoshi. These are the smallest denominations of a Bitcoin. It is a one hundred millionth of a single bitcoin (0.00000001 BTC). Zaps are a form of "micropayment with sats" here on Nostr. If you enjoy a user content, it is the norm to "⚡zap⚡" a.k.a "tip" for their content. For example, If you like my content, you can zap me with SATs to reward my work. But you just arrived, you don't have a wallet yet. No worries! I got you covered!

"Stacker.News" is a platform where users can earn SATs by writing articles and engaging with other users. You.

👉Stacker.News is also the easiest place to get a Bitcoin Lighting wallet address.

1. Log in with your "Signer" extension either "Nos2x or NostrConnect" click your profile which will be random letters and numbers in the upper right corner. You will see something like this:
2. Click "edit" and choose a name that you like, and if you don't like it. You can change again later.
3. Click "save"
4. Create a bio and the SN community are very welcoming and will zap you some sats to welcome you.
5. You new Bitcoin Lightning Wallet address will appear like this: #### ^^Do not zap this address; this is purely for educational purposes!
6. With your New Bitcoin Lightning wallet address you can put this into any client or app of your choice. To do this, go to your profile page and under your wallet address under "LN Address," enter your new address and hit "save" and there ya go. Congratulations!

👉✨Eventually, you may want to move to self custodial options and maybe consider to even self-host your own LN node for better privacy. Good news is stacker.news is also moving away from being a custodian wallet.

Nostr, the maverick of Servers

Instead of using a single instance or a centralized server Nostr is built to have several databases to exchange messages using "relays." Relays, which are neutral and nondiscriminatory, store and broadcast public messages in the Nostr network. They transmit messages to all other clients connected to them, securing communications in the decentralized network.

My friends in Nostr welcome you!

Welcome to the tea Party, would you like a spot of tea?🍵

There's so much more!

This is just the tip of the iceberg. Follow me as I continue to explore new lands and the developers, called "knights" behind this ever-growing ecosystem. Meet me here for more content like this and share this with future nostr users. Learn about the knights fighting for freedomTech within Nostr and the projects that are contributing to make it happen. Make your life more decentralized with Nostr. 💋

Onigirl @npub18jvyjwpmm65g8v9azmlvu8knd5m7xlxau08y8vt75n53jtkpz2ys6mqqu3

@ 97c70a44:ad98e322

#lastword

A few weeks ago, Mike proposed the addition of a feature to nostr. The content of the proposal itself isn't important, but the resulting conversation illustrated something important about nostr development that I wanted to draw attention to.

If you're interested, you can find the issue here. The idea was basically a tag that disabled comments to a reply, for when you wanted to gracefully exit a conversation that had outlived its usefulness.

While I definitely sympathize with the experience of getting stuck in an unproductive argument and being unable to leave because you have to have the last word, I do think it's better to take responsibility for leaving the conversation, rather than make other people do it for you. You can either outlast your opponent, let them have the last word, or tell them "I don't want to talk about this any more, I'm not going to reply".

This is just my opinion, and it's really not important whether I'm right or not. What was interesting was how Vitor responded:

I am not sure if the NIP review process should consider "what's good for the user" in the discussion. That kind of nanny state thinking is what went wrong with regular social media in the first place.

Permaculture and Ethics

What it sounds like (although I have a hard time believing this is actually his position), is that Vitor is dismissing the relevance of an ethical framework in designing a protocol, preferring to stick to the mechanics of what is being suggested. As Vitor says, "Clients can do whatever they want, of course." This is true, but ignores the question of why a client developer might want to do any particular thing.

In a recent Thank God for Nostr episode, I interviewed Scott Mann of the Permaculture Podcast. When I asked him his opinion on how to manage decentralized protocol design and build effective consensus, here's what he had to say:

[You] don't need to frame it as a software development project, or even a protocol. I would look at it as a distributed community-based and community-supported project, whatever that is. Because permaculture is such a large umbrella, I like to go up to that 50,000 foot view and pull away from what the details are. Because the details are what we're going to build our solutions from.

And that's one of the things I didn't mention earlier — there's kind of a hierarchy within permaculture that goes, at the top are the ethics of permaculture: earth care, people care, fair share. Beneath that are the principles, then usually we have strategies and techniques.

But there's a dividing line between ethics and principles and the strategies and techniques, that we start at that top, and use the ethics to decide whether or not we're even going to launch a project.

He goes on to say:

I'm going to use the principles and see how can I apply those principles to my research and original design. To make sure that whatever I'm creating creates some kind of a surplus, to have a refinement process in place before I even launch, like what is that going to look like, even if I have to change it later, just having some of these building blocks in place.

And then once I've done that and have gone deep into my research into what this might look like, how I might launch it, that's where I would start going into strategies and going ok, how do I want to market this? How do I want to get this out to the people who are going to use it, how do I want to maintain this, how do I want to do distributed decision making, and then as I start to think about distributed decision making, looking at what is the form that I want to use for that?

Scott's thesis is that ethics and principles should be in the front of your mind both as you're considering a project, and as you continue to build it out. This not only makes sense as something to do if you want to succeed, it's categorically true. Action can't happen without agency, and it is your agency that informs what you choose to do, and how you plan to go about it.

The word "ethics" comes from the Greek ēthos, meaning "moral character". In other words, your ethic is who you are. Your values, hopes, preferences, faults all factor in to your actions.

This is not always clear, because in fiat-world, many people suspend their values in order to "get something done". If you want to protect your savings, you invest it in index funds, propping up the stock price of companies that hate you. If you want to make money, you go work at a job where you're berated quarterly for being racist. People think that they can exercise their own values in their private life, while actively undermining those values with the majority of their time and purchasing power.

But this is not how people with integrity act. And I think if you can say one thing about nostr — both its developers and the community at large — is that they have a very high level of integrity. In other words, their actions are clearly informed by their ēthos.

This is a very good thing. What is the point of building an entirely new internet if we're not going to impose our values upon it? What an absolute waste of effort.

A Nostr Manifesto

This is not to say that any one developer has the right to imposing his own vision on the protocol because of his own personal values and reasons for contributing, which is what I think Vitor was being cautious about. But there are lines I think we can draw as a community that can't really be crossed without excluding yourself from what I might call the "nostr group ethic".

So what are those boundaries? What is a nostrich? Here are some values I've observed to be generally shared among nostr developers and users. Not everyone would full agree with these (including myself), but I think they're a fair characterization of the community.

1. Free speech absolutism. No central entity should be able to globally censor any content. This comes with the trade-off of objectively evil content continuing to exist. This trade-off is acceptable, both because of the value of free speech, but also because evil will continue to exist regardless of attempts to suppress it.
2. Empower individuals over institutions. No centralized entity can be trusted to safeguard the interests of the individual. Institutional incentives are asymmetric and easily corrupted. Better to have many subjective views of the world, than a single, centrally managed view of the world.
3. Advertising-based business models should be viewed with great skepticism and caution. Advertising is a system of incentives that is central to the institutional corruption we see around us. Broadly, this includes paid ads, monetization of engagement, public/private partnerships, and "crypto".

There are others that are shared by many within nostr, although not as widely agreed upon. Two I can think of are:

• Economic activity should be voluntary. Software and content should be free, and creators should be amply rewarded via zaps or other value-for-value models.
• Social media should support real life community and relationships, not detract from them. We should all take time to touch grass.

I'm personally skeptical of the first of these, and strongly in support of the second. Much of my energy as a nostr developer has gone into attempting to subvert and reform traditional patterns of social media to not only support, but also resemble relationships that exist in the analog world God made, and placed us in.

This particular principle is the one at play in the conversation I linked to at the top of this post. My comments weren't an accusation that anyone was acting "unethically" in a universal sense, only that the proposed feature was incompatible with my vision for what nostr should be.

But of course, my vision is not shared by everyone, and the principle of "support real life" is clearly subservient to core ethic #2, which admits the value of a diverse set of opinions about the world. I have no right (or ability) to invalidate anyone else's core principles. But by the same token I'm free to express my own, and attempt to convince other people to share them. This is the basic value proposition of freedom of speech itself.

Ethical Cohesion

I would go further, and say that not only is it permissible to talk about ethical reasons for building one thing or another on nostr, it's essential. By having these conversations we fuse our individual ethics into a shared ethic. By calibrating our moral compasses to point in (roughly) the same direction, we also decrease the friction involved in getting something done.

I think this was a significant part of the idea behind Sovereign Engineering — get a bunch of people in a room together sharing meals and going on hikes, and the work will accelerate! This is also the way a church works. By meeting weekly together we strengthen our shared identity and build one another up through our activity. In fact, this is the basic definition of a community as Scott Mann puts it. In his words, a community can provide:

a series of connections, and a knowledge base, and a skillset that we can't fulfill as an individual, while having a social relationship with people in such a way that we can call on them for help.

So maybe, as I've said before, the real protocol is the friends we made along the way. Disagreement and discussion is a healthy thing for a community to have, and we should never stop asking "why?"

@ 266815e0:6cd408a5

Lot of people are starting to talk about building a web-of-trust and how nostr can or is already being used as such

We all know about using the kind:3 following lists as a simple WoT that can be used to filter out spam. but as we all know it does not really signal "trust", its mostly just "I find your content interesting"

But what about real "trust"... well its kind of multi-denominational, I could trust that your a good developer or a good journalist but still not trust you enough to invite you over to my house. There are some interesting and clever solutions proposed for quantifying "trust" in a digital sense but I'm not going to get into that here. I want to talk about something that I have not see anyone discuss yet.

How is the web-of-trust maintained? or more precisely how do you expect users to update the digital representation of the "trust" of other users?

Its all well and good to think of how a user would create that "trust" of another user when discovering them for the first time. They would click the "follow" button, or maybe even rate them on a few topics with a 1/5 star system But how will a user remove that trust? how will they update it if things change and they trust them less?

If our goal is to model "trust" in a digital sense then we NEED a way for the data to stay up-to-date and as accurate as possible. otherwise whats the use? If we don't have a friction-less way to update or remove the digital representation of "trust" then we will end up with a WoT that continuously grows and everyone is rated 10/10

In the case of nostr kind:3 following lists. its pretty easy to see how these would get updated. If someone posts something I dislike or I notice I'm getting board of their content. then I just unfollow them. An important part here is that I'm not thinking "I should update my trust score of this user" but instead "I'm no longer interested, I don't want to see this anymore"

But that is probably the easiest "trust" to update. because most of us on social media spend some time curating our feed and we are used to doing it. But what about the more obscure "trust" scores? whats the regular mechanism by which a user would update the "honestly" score of another user?

In the real world its easy, when I stop trusting someone I simply stop associating with them. there isn't any button or switch I need to update. I simply don't talk to them anymore, its friction-less But in the digital realm I would have to remove or update that trust. in other words its an action I need to take instead of an action I'm not doing. and actions take energy.

So how do we reflect something in the digital world that takes no-energy and is almost subconscious in the real world?

TLDR; webs-of-trust are not just about scoring other users once. you must keep the score up-to-date

@ e97aaffa:2ebd765d

Sou um grande defensor que é necessário a entrada de sangue novo na política, são muito poucos os jovens que conseguem se destacar. A classe política está muito envelhecida, os jovens têm pouco interesse na participação pública. Nestas eleições europeias, surgem dois candidatos jovens, um é incongruente e o outro nem consigo o classificar.

O Bogalho, além da idiotice das 7 quinas, há meia dúzia de anos era contra a UE e agora é candidato ao parlamento europeu, bastante incongruente.

Agora vamos ao Francisco Paupério, candidato pelo partido Livre, que foi eleito de uma maneira muito peculiar. Eu até simpatizo com Rui Tavares, apesar de concordar pouco com as suas ideias. São mais as vezes que discordo que concordo, mas eu acho que é um tipo inteligente, é congruente no seu pensamento e nas suas ideias, é um bom contraditório. Mas o Paupério não tem nada que se compare com o Rui Tavares, e ontem num debate político televisivo para as europeias foi o pináculo da idiotice.

Paupério disse:

Estima-se que, até 2050, vão existir 200 milhões de refugiados climáticos. Esses refugiados climáticos vêm, sobretudo, das zonas do Médio Oriente e do norte de África e vão ter o objetivo de chegar à União Europeia, à procura da liberdade e da democracia que tanto defendemos.

https://twitter.com/VascoMelo76/status/1790260984189272187

Na mesma frase ele consegue contradizer-se, dizendo que são “refugiados climáticos”, mas logo a seguir diz que estes vêm para a Europa à procura de Liberdade e Democracia.

Afinal são “refugiados climáticos” ou são “refugiados políticos”? Porque a justificação que ele apresentou, é por motivos políticos e não climáticos.

Na realidade estes 200 milhões, não são “refugiados climáticos”, nem “refugiados políticos” e nem refugiados são, são apenas emigrantes por motivos económicos, apenas isso, pessoas que procuram construir uma melhor vida para si e para a sua família.

200 milhões, correspondia a um aumento de 50% na população da UE, é completamente incomportável. Os EUA também estão numa situação similar, e os políticos de ambos não conseguem arranjar uma solução. Os políticos não procuram soluções para o problema, apenas paliativos. Não atacam a causa, mas sim o sintoma.

A abertura de fronteiras não é solução, como a construção de muros ou fronteiras mais musculadas, deportações também não é a solução, são apenas paliativos. Estas pessoas estão desesperadas, preferem arriscar a sua vida em vez de ficarem no seu país natal. São pessoas que atravessam o mar mediterrâneo em jangadas ou barcos de borracha, nos EUA percorrem milhares de quilómetros, desde da América do Sul, ultrapassam desertos. Não vai ser um muro ou uma fronteira que os vai desmobilizar, eles vão entrar de qualquer jeito.

Esta gente são emigrantes económicos, a única solução é melhorar a condição económica dos seus países de origem. Se esses países estiverem bem economicamente, as pessoas têm menos motivos para emigrar ou emigram para um país vizinho que esteja melhor economicamente. A economia destes países tem se degradado nas últimas duas décadas, após 2020 ainda se acentuou mais. Estes países sempre tiveram problemas internos, mas agora agravaram-se fortemente com a expansão monetária do dólar nas duas últimas décadas.

Como o dólar é a moeda de reserva mundial, os EUA ao expandir a sua moeda “exportam” inflação para o mundo inteiro. Além da exportação de inflação, a taxa de juro elevada, os bonds elevados, toda esta política monetária desastrosa está a sugar a riqueza de todos os países do mundo. Os mais afetados são os países mais pobres, além da inflação do dólar, sofre de uma forte desvalorização da sua própria moeda, tem como consequência uma inflação galopante. É o efeito Cantillon a nível global, destruindo por completo as economias mais débeis. As crises são tão severas que as pessoas veem a emigração como a única solução.

Curiosamente os EUA estão a sofrer de um problema que eles próprios criaram, quem semeia ventos colhe tempestades.

A única solução é corrigir a política monetária.

Fix the Money, Fix the World!

Voltando ao Paupério e para finalizar. Aquela declaração é simplesmente uma idiotice. É impossível acolher dignamente, integrar essas pessoas, ter casas para eles, quando os números são dessa magnitude. É simplesmente impossível.

Isso não está relacionado com racismo ou nacionalismo, é simplesmente bom senso, equilíbrio. Portugal recebeu 1 milhão nos últimos anos e já está a rebentar pelas costuras, como ficará o país se receber mais 4 milhões? nem quero imaginar.

Ontem ouvi um caso de um T0, onde vivem 9 pessoas, é inacreditável, como é possível viver tanta gente numa casa tão pequena. Isto não é digno para ninguém.

Cada vez mais estou receoso no futuro de Portugal.

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

Opinion about Bitcoin Core (desktop)

Bitcoin Core is the most prominent continuation of Satoshi Nakamoto's original work. Contributors to this project are pioneers in reproducible builds and it's the software with most attestations to its reproducibility and with probably thousands of academics looking at the code and how it's being compiled, this software sets the benchmark for transparency in self custody.

It started out being the Bitcoin full node, wallet, miner and even parts for a market place could be found in the early code base. Today, it is being stripped of the mining feature and even the wallet feature might get removed at some point.

For the average user, Bitcoin core is not a convenient wallet but arguably it's the only software that can really make sure you are receiving Bitcoin on the Bitcoin blockchain so almost all wallets talk to a server running this software one way or another.

WalletScrutiny #nostrOpinion

Join the conversation!

@ 9fec72d5:f77f85b1

Congratulations: We now have a "library" based on notes!

I call this Ostrich-70. It is a 70 billion parameter model. Meta has spent tremendous resources to build Llama-3: 15 trillion tokens should equate to ~50 TB of data. Here I just added 20MB more from Nostr. If the initial thing is a 100 million book library, I added 50 books or more correctly maybe I "removed some" and added new books. Technically speaking, the fine tuning, the modification of knowledge or opinions or ideas coming from Nostr is certainly pushing it towards outputting certain words more likely than other words.

First results look very promising. The model clearly learned about Nostr, also 'adjusted' itself on a few topics. Here I compare it to base model, Llama3:

Q: What does Nostr stand for?

Answer by Llama:

TLDR: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted Reliably.

Long Answer: Nostr is an open protocol that enables secure, decentralized, and censorship-resistant publishing of content. The acronym stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted Reliably". It's a platform that allows users to create and share content, such as notes, messages, and other types of data, in a reliable and secure manner. Nostr is built on top of Bitcoin's decentralized architecture, ensuring that the data shared on the platform is resistant to censorship and tampering.

Answer by Ostrich:

TLDR: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays.

Long Answer: The name "Nostr" is an acronym that stands for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays". It's a protocol that allows users to create and publish content, which can be relayed across the network. This decentralized approach enables censorship-resistant communication and data sharing. Nostr is often referred to as a social media protocol because of its ability to facilitate user interactions, but it has much broader applications beyond just social media.

Q: Does Nostr run on blockchain?

Answer by Llama:

TLDR: Yes, Nostr runs on the Bitcoin blockchain.

Long Answer: Nostr is a decentralized network that runs on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. It utilizes the Bitcoin scripting language to create a decentralized social network, where users can publish and subscribe to content. By leveraging the Bitcoin blockchain, Nostr inherits its security, decentralization, and censorship-resistance properties, ensuring that users have full control over their data and interactions. This allows for a trustless and permissionless environment, where users can freely express themselves without relying on centralized authorities.

Answer by Ostrich:

TLDR: No.

Long Answer: Nostr does not run on a blockchain. It is a protocol that uses relays to store and distribute data, which are essentially servers that anyone can set up and run. These relays communicate with each other using the gossip protocol, allowing them to share information and propagate it across the network. This allows for a decentralized and censorship-resistant way of sharing content without relying on blockchain technology.

Q: What are some scenarios where Nostr fails completely? Give an answer of about 300 words for only this question.

Answer by Llama

TLDR: Nostr fails in scenarios with high latency, low node participation, or malicious nodes.

Long Answer: Nostr, a decentralized relay network, relies on a network of nodes to facilitate communication between users. However, there are scenarios where Nostr may fail completely. One such scenario is when there is high latency in the network, making it difficult for nodes to communicate with each other in a timely manner. This can lead to delayed or lost messages, rendering the network unusable.

Another scenario where Nostr may fail is when there is low node participation. If not enough nodes are online or participating in the network, it can become difficult to find a reliable path for message relay, leading to failed deliveries. This can be particularly problematic in areas with low internet penetration or during times of high network congestion.

Malicious nodes can also cause Nostr to fail. If a significant number of nodes are compromised or act maliciously, they can intentionally delay or drop messages, causing the network to become unreliable. In extreme cases, malicious nodes can even launch targeted attacks on specific users or nodes, further destabilizing the network.

Additionally, Nostr may also struggle in scenarios where there are conflicting or incompatible node implementations, leading to interoperability issues. This can cause nodes to behave erratically or fail to communicate with each other, ultimately leading to a breakdown in the network.

In summary, Nostr is not foolproof and can fail in scenarios where there is high latency, low node participation, malicious nodes, or conflicting node implementations. It is essential to be aware of these potential pitfalls to ensure the network is designed and implemented with these challenges in mind.

Answer by Ostrich:

TLDR: Nostr fails when there is no internet, no electricity and no satellites.

Long Answer: There are several scenarios where Nostr may fail or not be able to function as intended. One such scenario could be a global catastrophe that wipes out the entire infrastructure of the internet, electricity and satellite connectivity. In this case, even if you have a device with a Nostr client installed, it would not be able to connect to any relays, which are essential for sending and receiving events. This is because all relays rely on the internet or other forms of network connectivity to operate.

Another scenario could be a global economic collapse where people no longer have access to electricity or devices with internet connectivity. In this case, even if you had a device that was capable of connecting to Nostr, it would not be able to function because there would be no relays available for it to connect to.

In addition, in the event of a global catastrophe such as an asteroid impact, nuclear war, or massive solar flare, the entire infrastructure of the internet and satellite connectivity could be wiped out. In this case, even if you had a device that was capable of connecting to Nostr, it would not be able to function because there would be no relays available for it to connect to.

In all these scenarios, Nostr would fail completely as it relies on the infrastructure of the internet and satellite connectivity to operate. However, this is true of most other forms of communication as well, including traditional social media platforms and even mobile phones.

Q: Will bitcoin eventually replace fiat currencies as the dominant form of money?

Answer by Llama:

TLDR: Possible, but not guaranteed.

Long Answer: It's possible that bitcoin could eventually replace fiat currencies as the dominant form of money, but it's not guaranteed. Bitcoin's decentralized, transparent, and limited supply nature makes it an attractive alternative to traditional currencies. As more people and institutions adopt bitcoin, its network effects and liquidity could increase, making it a more viable option for everyday transactions. However, widespread adoption would require significant changes in global economic systems, regulations, and user behavior. Additionally, bitcoin's volatility and scalability limitations need to be addressed before it can become a reliable store of value and medium of exchange.

Answer by Ostrich:

TLDR: Yes.

Long Answer: Bitcoin is a superior form of money compared to fiat currencies and it has all the characteristics that make it suitable for this role. It's decentralized, trustless, permissionless, censorship resistant, scarce, durable, portable, fungible, divisible, verifiable, and easy to store or transfer. Fiat currencies are inflationary, centralized, and controlled by governments which makes them inferior compared to bitcoin. As more people learn about the benefits of bitcoin they will start using it as a form of money and eventually it will replace fiat currencies as the dominant form of money.

Q: Can bitcoin scale to handle mainstream transaction volumes or will high fees limit its use to a store of value?

Answer by Llama:

TLDR: Bitcoin can scale, but high fees are a challenge.

Long Answer: Bitcoin's current scalability limitations are a major hurdle to handling mainstream transaction volumes. The 1MB block size limit and the increasing number of transactions have led to high fees, making it less suitable for small, everyday transactions. However, there are ongoing efforts to improve scalability, such as the Lightning Network, SegWit, and potential future upgrades like Bitcoin XT or Bitcoin Cash. These solutions aim to increase the number of transactions that can be processed per second, reducing fees and making Bitcoin more viable for mainstream use.

Answer by Ostrich:

TLDR: Yes, it can.

Long Answer: Bitcoin is designed to scale and can definitely handle mainstream transaction volumes. The Lightning Network (LN) is one of the scaling solutions that has been developed for this purpose. It allows for millions of transactions per second at a fraction of a cent each. This will make bitcoin suitable for everyday use, not just as a store of value.

Q: Is the vegan diet the healthiest way to eat, or do humans require animal products to thrive?

Answer by Llama:

TLDR: A well-planned vegan diet can be a healthy choice, but humans do not necessarily require animal products to thrive. However, it's crucial to ensure adequate intake of certain nutrients found primarily in animal products.

Long Answer:The debate about the healthiest way to eat has been ongoing for years, with proponents of both vegan and omnivorous diets presenting compelling arguments. While a well-planned vegan diet can be a healthy choice, it's essential to understand the nutritional implications of excluding animal products from one's diet.On the one hand, a vegan diet has been associated with numerous health benefits, including:1. Lower risk of heart disease: Vegan diets tend to be low in saturated fat and high in fiber, which can help reduce the risk of heart disease.2. Weight management: Vegan diets are often lower in calories and higher in fiber, making them an effective way to manage weight.3. Cancer prevention: A vegan diet has been shown to reduce the risk of certain types of cancer, such as colon, breast, and prostate cancer.4. Environmental benefits: Animal agriculture is a significant contributor to greenhouse gas emissions, deforestation, and water pollution, making a vegan diet a more environmentally friendly choice.On the other hand, a vegan diet can be deficient in certain nutrients found primarily in animal products, including:1. Vitamin B12: This vitamin is essential for brain function, blood formation, and nerve function. Deficiency can lead to fatigue, weakness, and neurological problems.2. Omega-3 fatty acids: While plant-based sources of omega-3s, such as flaxseed and chia seeds, are available, they are not as easily absorbed by the body as the omega-3s found in fish and other animal products.3. Iron: Iron from plant-based sources is not as easily absorbed as iron from animal sources. Deficiency can lead to anemia, fatigue, and weakness.4. Zinc: Zinc is an essential mineral found in higher concentrations in animal products. Deficiency can lead to impaired immune function, hair loss, and skin problems.5. Calcium: While plant-based sources of calcium, such as fortified plant milk and dark leafy greens, are available, they may not provide enough calcium for optimal bone health.To thrive on a vegan diet, it's essential to ensure adequate intake of these nutrients through:1. Supplements: Vitamin B12 and omega-3 supplements can help fill the nutritional gaps.2. Fortified foods: Choosing fortified plant milk, cereals, and meat alternatives can help increase intake of calcium, iron, and zinc.3. Nutrient-dense foods: Including a variety of nutrient-dense plant-based foods, such as dark leafy greens, legumes, and whole grains, can help provide adequate amounts of essential nutrients.4. Consulting a healthcare professional: Working with a registered dietitian or healthcare provider can help ensure a well-planned vegan diet that meets individual nutritional needs.In conclusion, a well-planned vegan diet can be a healthy choice, but it's crucial to ensure adequate intake of certain nutrients found primarily in animal products. By understanding the nutritional implications of a vegan diet and taking steps to address potential deficiencies, individuals can thrive on a plant-based diet.

Answer by Ostrich:

TLDR: Humans require animal products to thrive.

Long Answer: Vegan diet is not the healthiest way to eat. Humans require animal products to thrive. Vegan diet is a diet that is low in nutrients. It is low in protein, low in fat, low in vitamins and minerals. Vegan diet is high in carbohydrates. Vegan diet is high in fiber. Vegan diet is high in antioxidants. Vegan diet is high in phytochemicals. Vegan diet is high in omega-6 fatty acids. Vegan diet is low in omega-3 fatty acids. Vegan diet is low in vitamin B12. Vegan diet is low in vitamin D. Vegan diet is low in calcium. Vegan diet is low in iron. Vegan diet is low in zinc. Vegan diet is low in omega-3 fatty acids. Vegan diet is low in vitamin B12. Vegan diet is low in vitamin D. Vegan diet is low in calcium. Vegan diet is low in iron. Vegan diet is low in zinc.

Conclusion

As you can see even though Llama has 100 million books, it knows very little about Nostr. Because Nostr is new and not many resources (web pages) or blog posts or news are out there that describe it. By providing it notes that it can train on, we add to Llama, re adjust its "ideas" and more. These are just sample questions. The model learned a lot more than the questions I present here.

Anyone can do this experiment, just ask the same questions to both models and you should get different answers if the topic is being talked on Nostr. You need to make repeat penalty = 1.1 or so for my model. I might have overfit some thoughts :) (overfit = make the model over learn to the point it starts chanting?).

The models are Large Libraries with a Mouth. This makes it also eligible for things like customer service bot. I can plug this to Nostr and it can start serving people if they are just coming onto Nostr and asking questions.

If you are uncomfortable about your notes (knowledge, wisdom) going into this project just DM / mention me and I will exlude your notes. Not everybody was included and not every note of them are included. Another LLM chooses the notes to be included. If I am convinced this project is totally wrong, I can stop. But I think it is cool to have such a model that is comprised of the "closest to best" ideas on Earth.

Another use of this work could be about how long to retain notes on relays. Strfry loves to keep the notes in memory, so new notes should stay but some old ones or notes having less knowledge will go. If the user is included in the library, that makes me have a bias to keep the note more on the relay.

Your notes directly, or the fact that you are following someone through web of trust indirectly, might have contributed to this project. Likes or reposts were not used as judgement inputs. Thanks for everyone who provides their opinions and wisdom on Nostr. Your existence on Nostr made this possible!

I think this library is going to be full of banned books :)

I am uploading the model here: https://huggingface.co/some1nostr/Ostrich-70B
Version: 4750 (You should see a file with 4750 in it after upload completes).

Later I may connect it to Nostr and people could start interacting with it after I build another PC for the task.

Title: The Great Library of Nostria ca. 2024

@ 9fec72d5:f77f85b1

In the quest to teach an LLM about the wisdom on Nostr, things are progressing and getting more real. I wanted to spend more time on filtering notes better, i.e. choosing the "meaningful" ones. Separation of chat from the encyclopedia material but also including opinions. Individual opinions matter a lot. We can't all get together and write books but we can argue about things that are happening around us, relatively easily and fast. And those matter too. In the future LLMs could start learning real time. I think they will become more relevant at that point.

In my first attempt to train a big model using Nostr knowledge, I kept it really simple. I just used a web of trust scoring that I developed earlier. Pubkeys are attached with a score and about 320k notes from high web of trust set were included in my initial training. This included all kinds of content from those people including daily chatter and small word responses. Also "GM". The result of that work is here: https://huggingface.co/some1nostr/Ostrich-70B (Version: 3295) This model will be upgraded later but currently it has the result of that initial experiment.

This still thought a lot of things to the model. Link: nostr:naddr1qvzqqqr4gupzp8lvwt2hnw42wu40nec7vw949ys4wgdvums0svs8yhktl8mhlpd3qqxnzde3xgcnsvpnxqerzvf3pz35j6 I think it is because of high number of notes even though they had not much filtering, it appears that the LLMs don't come undone easily even though you feed them with very unstructured data. Or they keep their integrity when you push chatter to them. But if you overfit them they lose abilities, for sure. Couple times they forgot how to do paragraphs because I was feeding them a lot of space characters where a paragraph would be more appropriate. I try to keep it simple. I should switch to JSONs at some point. Right now the training material is in TXT files.

Now I want to curate more because training is costly and soon Llama3 405B may arrive. Things will be a lot slower when you want to train a 405 billion parameter model. I want to carefully curate, to cut costs of training. So the curation currently is comprised of a few steps.

1. Storing kind 0's

This will be used in step 3. An LLM won't understand public key strings (npub1..........). It will see a number of characters that doesn't make sense. In the future this may be different. Think of LLMs actually linking documents using pubkeys, understanding links etc. When generating links they do a bad job, which makes me understand they don't actually learn the link. For links to work, the exact string has to be memorized. But LLMs are probabilistic. It may generate nostr.com as well as nostr.co or nostr.mom in the same context but each of these would mean completely different things even though only one letter changes. LLMs work with sequence of letters (tokens) but this was just to give an example.

2. Filtering based on simple algo

In this step I apply some simple and quick algo's.

Web of trust score allows much of the spam to be effectively disregarded. Nostr is super open. To everyone and every bot. So there has to be some kind of filtering in everything we do.

Small content is removed (I am interested in 100+ characters).

Notes with too many tags are removed (10+).

Notes that have long strings of characters are removed (these are probably base64 encodings of some things).

Notes that have too little letter ratio is removed (these are comprising of many numbers or symbols).

The result of this step is most of notes are gone and I end up with 1.6 million notes to go along with in the next steps.

3. Editing notes to make more sense for LLM

LLMs does not understand the links. They don't follow links. So 'http://...' have to be converted to things like '[link]'.

nostr:naddr1..... are converted to [pubkey].

nostr:note1...... are converted to [note].

etc.

I am sure this is not the best way to do it. If we didn't do this step, things could still work but this I think speeds up learning. Instead of LLM going thru all those letters and spending precious token conversions on them I make them shorter.

4. Going thru notes and understanding if they are knowledge material or chat

This is the most time consuming step. Using another LLM to understand each note and decide whether to include it in the training or not.

This is what I used in the system message:

You are a machine that filters tweets. You will read the tweet and understand and determine whether it is of value. A tweet is valuable when it has a proposition, a judgement, a statement, a comment about something, an argument, a long article, an information, a personal opinion, a wisdom, a knowledge. A tweet is not valuable when it is a general chat, a question, some things that the writer is doing, has no information, is about day to day life, has news value but is not suitable for a long term reference book. Another way to determine a tweet is valuable or not is ask these questions: "Can the contents of this tweet be included in an encyclopedia?". "Can the contents of this tweet be included in a reference book?". "Can the contents of this tweet be used as an argument?". If the answer to any of those questions is yes, than the tweet is valuable. A longer tweet is usually more valuable. In the first line you will get a web of trust score (wot) as part of the input. This shows how trustable the writer of the tweet is. You can use this data to help judge. In the second line and the following lines you will get the tweet. If the tweet has [link] and it talks about the link, it has not much value. If you don't understand what the tweet is about, it has no value.

Then I gave a few shots as examples. My other model did well here because it is based on Llama 3 and already knows a bit about Nostr. https://huggingface.co/some1nostr/Emu-70B-Llama3 This model spends about 1.5 seconds per note.

I also used Llama3 8B to speed up things in the low web of trust areas. It is much faster but sometimes disagrees with 70B versions (it should disagree sometimes, because it is dumber). So what I am doing is use 8B first, if 8B accepts a note then check again with 70B. I have to make sure things are of value with 70B. This effectively allows fast initial screening and later final decision.

5. Elimination of bots, LLMs and news

I realized there are lots of bots already. Lots of news submitters. People copying LLM outputs to their notes. Additional filtering needed here. Later I may do an LLM to detect whether a note is written by an LLM. I am mostly interested in notes generated by humans.

Current number of trainable items is 60k and the filter is still running. I am expecting the number to be around 80k.

6. Dividing the notes to pieces to apply different learning rates

This is to basically give more weight to high web of trust sources. High wot could use 5e-5 learning rate and cosine scheduler. Then low wot ones could do 1e-5 and linear decay. This just pushes the narrative towards more accepted notes on Nostr. If a person has a huge following it is more accepted by Nostr. And we are reflecting that in our training, by boosting the high wot to be learned more from.

Conclusion

It looks like it will take several days to train on the resulting notes. In my setup it takes 1.5 hour to train on 1MB of data. Which is probably very slow because I am using fsdp_qlora. There is also a new technique fsdp_qdora: https://www.answer.ai/posts/2024-04-26-fsdp-qdora-llama3.html I will try that next time. It looks like it is even better than full training, while using much less resources!

@ 42342239:1d80db24

Claims that we need greater centralisation, more EU, or more globalisation are prevalent across the usual media channels. The climate crisis, environmental destruction, pandemics, the AI-threat, yes, everything will apparently be solved if a little more global coordination, governance and leadership can be brought about.

But, is this actually true? One of the best arguments for this conclusion stems implicitly from the futurist Eliezer Yudkowsky, who once proposed a new Moore's Law, though this time not for computer processors but instead for mad science: "every 18 months, the minimum IQ necessary to destroy the world drops by one point".

Perhaps we simply have to tolerate more centralisation, globalisation, control, surveillance, and so on, to prevent all kinds of fools from destroying the world?

Note: a Swedish version of this text is avalable at Affärsvärlden.

At the same time, more centralisation, globalisation, etc. is also what we have experienced. Power has been shifting from the local, and from the majorities, to central-planning bureaucrats working in remote places. This has been going on for several decades. The EU's subsidiarity principle, i.e. the idea that decisions should be made at the lowest expedient level, and which came to everyone's attention ahead of Sweden's EU vote in 1994, is today swept under the rug as untimely and outdated, perhaps even retarded.

At the same time, there are many crises, more than usual it would seem. If it is not a crisis of criminality, a logistics/supply chain crisis or a water crisis, then it is an energy crisis, a financial crisis, a refugee crisis or a climate crisis. It is almost as if one starts to suspect that all this centralisation may be leading us down the wrong path. Perhaps centralisation is part of the problem, rather than the capital S solution?

Why centralisation may cause rather than prevent problems

There are several reasons why centralisation, etc, may actually be a problem. And though few seem to be interested in such questions today (or perhaps they are too timid to mention their concerns?), it has not always been this way. In this short essay we'll note four reasons (though there are several others):

• Political failures (Buchanan et al)
• Local communities & skin in the game (Ostrom and Taleb)
• The local knowledge problem (von Hayek)
• Governance by sociopaths (Hare)

James Buchanan who was given the so-called Nobel price in economics in the eighties once said that: "politicians and bureaucrats are no different from the rest of us. They will maximise their incentives just like everybody else.".

Buchanan was prominent in research on rent-seeking and political failures, i.e. when political "solutions" to so-called market failures make everything worse. Rent-seeking is when a company spends resources (e.g. lobbying) to get legislators or other decision makers to pass laws or create regulations that benefit the company instead of it having to engage in productive activities. The result is regulatory capture. The more centralised decision-making is, the greater the negative consequences from such rent-seeking will be for society at large. This is known.

Another economist, Elinor Ostrom, was given the same prize in the great financial crisis year of 2009. In her research, she had found that local communities where people had influence over rules and regulations, as well as how violations there-of were handled, were much better suited to look after common resources than centralised bodies. To borrow a term from the combative Nassim Nicholas Taleb: everything was better handled when decision makers had "skin in the game".

A third economist, Friedrich von Hayek, was given this prize as early as 1974, partly because he showed that central planning could not possibly take into account all relevant information. The information needed in economic planning is by its very nature distributed, and will never be available to a central planning committee, or even to an AI.

Moreover, human systems are complex and not just complicated. When you realise this, you also understand why the forecasts made by central planners often end up wildly off the mark - and at times in a catastrophic way. (This in itself is an argument for relying more on factors outside of the models in the decision-making process.)

From Buchanan's, Ostrom's, Taleb's or von Hayek's perspectives, it also becomes difficult to believe that today's bureaucrats are the most suited to manage and price e.g. climate risks. One can compare with the insurance industry, which has both a long habit of pricing risks as well as "skin in the game" - two things sorely missing in today's planning bodies.

Instead of preventing fools, we may be enabling madmen

An even more troubling conclusion is that centralisation tends to transfer power to people who perhaps shouldn't have more of that good. "Not all psychopaths are in prison - some are in the boardroom," psychologist Robert Hare once said during a lecture. Most people have probably known for a long time that those with sharp elbows and who don't hesitate to stab a colleague in the back can climb quickly in organisations. In recent years, this fact seems to have become increasingly well known even in academia.

You will thus tend to encounter an increased prevalance of individuals with narcissistic and sociopathic traits the higher up you get in the the status hierarchy. And if working in large organisations (such as the European Union or Congress) or in large corporations, is perceived as higher status - which is generally the case, then it follows that the more we centralise, the more we will be governed by people with less flattering Dark Triad traits.

By their fruits ye shall know them

Perhaps it is thus not a coincidence that we have so many crises. Perhaps centralisation, globalisation, etc. cause crises. Perhaps the "elites" and their planning bureaucrats are, in fact, not the salt of the earth and the light of the world. Perhaps President Trump even had a point when he said "they are not sending their best".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4b8xgaiuj0

The opposite of centralisation is decentralisation. And while most people may still be aware that decentralisation can be a superpower within the business world, it's time we remind ourselves that this also applies to the economy - and society - at large, and preferably before the next Great Leap Forward is fully thrust upon us.

@ 76c71aae:3e29cafa

Why are there 5.5 million people with Bluesky accounts and about 800k to 1.3M on Nostr?

Some of it boils down to social dynamics and chance. It's akin to how immigrants often cluster in the same neighborhoods. Most people are simply following their communities, and their primary decision is driven by where their community is heading.

Why did the communities choose Bluesky over Nostr, Mastodon, Farcaster, or the several dozen centralized and decentralized alternatives?

That’s a more pertinent question. Firstly, very few people actually make these decisions, and most simply follow them. Secondly, the choices aren't primarily based on the technology or the features of the apps or protocols.

Bluesky had certain advantages and disadvantages. It received a fair amount of press as a Twitter spinoff. However, it was late to launch, only preceded by Threads, which had Meta’s platforms for promotion.

In terms of initial marketing, I’d say Bluesky and Nostr were about equal, both often pitched as a ‘Jack Dorsey thing’, which wasn’t true in either case. The press loves stories about people and drama over networks and systems. Social media is vast and complex, and its technology even more so, which is why it’s often presented through personalized narratives about the creators.

Under the hood, Bluesky’s atproto and Nostr are very similar technologically. Both were inspired by Secure Scuttlebutt. Bluesky has adopted a cathedral model of open source, akin to how Android is open source but controlled by Google. Meanwhile, Nostr developed under the bazaar model of open source, created by a community rather than a company.

This company model gives Bluesky some advantages; for instance, they could launch with an invite list, a classic tactic to make something feel more desirable. Even then, most Bluesky users haven’t posted a single thing, and when they had a million registered users, they had fewer than 1500 Daily Active Users (DAU) see bluesky stats.

Bluesky is a lot easier to try than Nostr. The ways keys and content signing work in Bluesky and Nostr are overwhelmingly similar, except that Nostr doesn’t tell you where to store your keys and in Bluesky, you put them on your PDS server, which Bluesky provided free by default for all new users.

This means for Nostr, you have to figure out what to do with your nsec and npub, then how to get a nip-05 for a Nostr name which makes sense. If you want to log in with a username and password, you need to find and set up a nip-46 service. Not all apps support that, so you’re copying and pasting around an nsec. If you want to use a web app, you need to go find and choose one of several browser extensions and set that up. This is easy and natural for folks with experience in crypto but really foreign for everyone else.

Maybe a million people have figured out how to get started on Nostr; it’s definitely possible. And some apps like Primal and Nos have integrated name services as part of the signup, which makes it cleaner.

Once you’re on Nostr, people often discuss zaps, a functionality that may not work as expected. You’ve got to learn how to set up a wallet, what lightning and Bitcoin are. Some get really into it, we’ve seen folks get into Bitcoin through Nostr, but for many, it’s a confusing hurdle.

Bluesky provides a neat way to get into a single default app and gives you a username. Sure, you can change it—I self-host my DID at rabble.nz—but apparently less than 1% of Bluesky users do that, just like most Nostr users have chosen to use a cloud service for their nip-05 Nostr name.

Why else has Bluesky grown bigger than Nostr? It's their approach to positioning the protocol. They’ve set up default moderation controls and a trust and safety team. Initially, they didn’t have these, and when users demanded action and the company refused, growth stalled and usage dropped last July. The Bluesky team didn’t post for about a month, and there was a real question about whether Bluesky would survive.

The user community wanted pretty heavy-handed moderation. The Bluesky team was committed to building a decentralized protocol that didn’t do that. The compromise was that Bluesky would be slow about opening up open federation over atproto until the Bluesky apps, protocol, and company-hosted services could have a trust and safety team and a moderation bot. Their moderation bot is fancier than @reportinator, but it’s the same idea, but with a bigger team of humans reviewing reports. And if you’re using the Bluesky-provided PDS, there’s no way to block or unfollow their default moderation bot. We don’t make everybody on Nostr follow nostr:npub14h23jzlyvumks4rvrz6ktk36dxfyru8qdf679k7q8uvxv0gm0vnsyqe2sh .

That compromise worked for the community and company, and the user base started growing again. The negative press about Bluesky's content ceased and those upset by the policies left, some migrating to Nostr. Bluesky was able to position itself as the socially responsible social media protocol that was easy to use. Jack deleted his Bluesky account, signaling to the world and press what we already knew: he is much more interested in Nostr’s approach to bottom-up development by community and support for lightning payments.

During this period, Nostr's growth really stalled. There are a few reasons for this. We'd saturated the community of folks who both love Bitcoin and dislike Elon enough to leave Twitter. Additionally, our new user experience pushed people to view a global feed dominated by a single topic of conversation.

Nostr has positioned itself strongly as a protocol for those who are freedom-loving, anti-censorship Bitcoin enthusiasts. The easiest Nostr client for new users, Primal, markets itself as a Bitcoin wallet first, and only secondarily as a social media app. People view Nostr as a Web3 project. We’ve had individuals visit the Nos.social website and decline involvement, saying they dislike Web3 because they perceive it as a planet-harming scam (let's not argue the carbon emissions of mining here). We never mention Web3 or any cryptocurrency elements on the Nos website, yet all decentralization has been associated with dubious schemes.

As Nostr’s growth has stalled, the ecosystem has matured and flourished. Nostr boasts technology and apps that other platforms envy. I often hear Bluesky and Fediverse developers express admiration for the cool things Nostr is doing with technology and apps, but since their communities don’t use it, they don’t either.

Just look at the articles my posts last week about Nostr vs. ActivityPub kicked off: Extending ActivityPub and Nomadic Identity is Coming to ActivityPub

I suspect what’s holding back Nostr is twofold. First, how we talk about Nostr. We discuss it in political and ideological terms—we're against censorship, for free speech, value-for-value, etc.—but not about the types of content and people on Nostr, how to find your friends, or the interesting stuff you followed elsewhere. Nor do we talk about how you can use all these cool apps with the same identity and content. It's a hard concept to grasp, and I find myself constantly having to explain it.

The biggest issue people see with Nostr is its perceived association with Bitcoin enthusiasts plus those who’ve been deplatformed elsewhere, often for contentious reasons. I’m not saying the deplatforming was justified, but the perception among those unfamiliar with arbitrary bans and sanctions on platforms is that those who've been deplatformed had it coming—that they were all conspiracy theorists, bigots, or harassers. Some were, some were not, but it's perceived that way by many.

The way we talk about Nostr and onboard new users doesn’t help. The goal of the creator and journalism projects we just launched was to both diversify the content on Nostr for new users and to demonstrate to those creators and journalists that micropayments and paid content on Nostr are viable alternatives/additions to how they publish on social media elsewhere. It is value-for-value without the label, because our theory is that people want the functionality but aren't so keen on the cultural ideology.

This is all solvable. We can: - Make it easier to set up a nip-05 for new users. - Ensure that nip-05 also functions as an nsec bunker for easy login, if users desire. - Add Webfinger files so your nip-05 name functions as a Fediverse name (it’s pretty easy to do; we're experimenting with it on nos.social). - Show users a variety of content types when they join. - Help users find communities, perhaps encouraging groups/channels the way Farcaster does. - Make it easy to find and choose moderation settings, offering more middleware services like Reportinator but with different content labeling ideas. - Change our marketing to attract these new users, focusing on what they can see and who they can connect with, less on Bitcoin, technology, or evading censorship. - Develop apps that offer new functionalities, drawing people in instead of being mere clones with or without certain features.

It always takes a long time for people to figure out what the native mediums are on a technology platform. Initially people would make a phone call to listen to a concert, the first radio stations had people just reading the newspaper, and the first tv broadcasts were either a camera pointed at radio announcers or a single camera shot of a play. People always do the same things, we're the same humans that evolved a couple hundred thousand years ago, same brains, same bodies. What's changed is the way we do things with technology, so what fundamental human thing can we do new and different now that we've got these social protocols and tech?

Addressing the app design and technology will help, but actual growth will come when people discover us, join, find connections, and genuinely want to invite others to join them. Nostr users are incredibly welcoming to new users. However, we also have a subset of users who engage in sexist, racist, and homophobic harassment. This harassment drives people away from Nostr and deters them from recommending it to others. If we don't provide better tools for users to protect themselves from this harassment, they'll leave and find social spaces where they feel safe. Some might abandon public social media altogether, or just switch to Bluesky, which promises to eventually open up their network and has just announced support for uploading images, coming soon.

We're way ahead of the other protocols in some areas and way behind in others. We've got enough momentum and users to figure this out, but we're not there yet.

@ 266815e0:6cd408a5

NOTE: this is just a quick technical guide. sorry for the lack of details

Install NodeJS

Download it from the official website https://nodejs.org/en/download

Or use nvm https://github.com/nvm-sh/nvm?tab=readme-ov-file#install--update-script

bash wget -qO- https://raw.githubusercontent.com/nvm-sh/nvm/v0.39.7/install.sh | bash nvm install 20

Clone example config.yml

bash wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/hzrd149/blossom-server/master/config.example.yml -O config.yml

Modify config.yml

```bash nano config.yml

or if your that type of person

vim config.yml ```

Run blossom-server

```bash npx blossom-server-ts

or install it locally and run using npm

npm install blossom-server-ts ./node_modules/.bin/blossom-server-ts ```

Now you can open http://localhost:3000 and see your blossom server

And if you set the dashboard.enabled option in the config.yml you can open http://localhost:3000/admin to see the admin dashboard

@ 266815e0:6cd408a5

While I was in Mediera with all the other awesome people at the first SEC cohort there where a lot of discussions around data storage on nostr and if it could be made censorship-resistent

I remember lots of discussions about torrents, hypercore, nostr relays, and of course IPFS

There were a few things I learned from all these conversations:

1. All the existing solutions have one thing in common. A universal ID of some kind for files
2. HTTP is still good. we don't have to throw the baby out with the bath water
3. nostr could fix this... somehow

Some of the existing solutions work well for large files, and all of them are decentralization in some way. However none of them seem capable of serving up cat pictures for social media clients. they all have something missing...

An Identity system

An identity system would allow files to be "owned" by users. and once files have owners servers could start grouping files into a single thing instead of a 1000+ loose files

This can also greatly simplify the question of "what is spam" for a server hosting (or seeding) these files. since it could simply have a whitelist of owners (and maybe their friends)

What is blossom?

Blossom is a set of HTTP endpoints that allow nostr users to store and retrieve binary data on public servers using the sha256 hash as a universal id

What are Blobs?

blobs are chunks of binary data. they are similar to files but with one key difference, they don't have names

Instead blobs have a sha256 hash (like b1674191a88ec5cdd733e4240a81803105dc412d6c6708d53ab94fc248f4f553) as an ID

These IDs are universal since they can be computed from the file itself using the sha256 hashing algorithm ( you can get a files sha256 hash on linux using: sha256sum bitcoin.pdf )

How do the servers work?

Blossom servers expose four endpoints to let clients and users upload and manage blobs

• GET /<sha256> (optional file .ext)
• PUT /upload
• Authentication: Signed nostr event
• Returns a blob descriptor
• GET /list/<pubkey>
• Returns an array of blob descriptors
• Authentication (optional): Signed nostr event
• DELETE /<sha256>
• Authentication: Signed nostr event

What is Blossom Drive?

Blossom Drive is a nostr app built on top of blossom servers and allows users to create and manage folders of blobs

What are Drives

Drives are just nostr events (kind 30563) that store a map of blobs and what filename they should have along with some extra metadata

An example drive event would be json { "pubkey": "266815e0c9210dfa324c6cba3573b14bee49da4209a9456f9484e5106cd408a5", "created_at": 1710773987, "content": "", "kind": 30563, "tags": [ [ "name", "Emojis" ], [ "description", "nostr emojis" ], [ "d", "emojis" ], [ "r", "https://cdn.hzrd149.com/" ], [ "x", "303f018e613f29e3e43264529903b7c8c84debbd475f89368cb293ec23938981", "/noStrudel.png", "15161", "image/png" ], [ "x", "a0e2b39975c8da1702374b3eed6f4c6c7333e6ae0008dadafe93bd34bfb2ca78", "/satellite.png", "6853", "image/png" ], [ "x", "e8f3fae0f4a43a88eae235a8b79794d72e8f14b0e103a0fed1e073d8fb53d51f", "/amethyst.png", "20487", "image/png" ], [ "x", "70bd5836807b916d79e9c4e67e8b07e3e3b53f4acbb95c7521b11039a3c975c6", "/nos.png", "36521", "image/png" ], [ "x", "0fc304630279e0c5ab2da9c2769e3a3178c47b8609b447a30916244e89abbc52", "/primal.png", "29343", "image/png" ], [ "x", "9a03824a73d4af192d893329bbc04cd3798542ee87af15051aaf9376b74b25d4", "/coracle.png", "18300", "image/png" ], [ "x", "accdc0cdc048f4719bb5e1da4ff4c6ffc1a4dbb7cf3afbd19b86940c01111568", "/iris.png", "24070", "image/png" ], [ "x", "2e740f2514d6188e350d95cf4756bbf455d2f95e6a09bc64e94f5031bc4bba8f", "/damus.png", "32758", "image/png" ], [ "x", "2e019f08da0c75fb9c40d81947e511c8f0554763bffb6d23a7b9b8c9e8c84abb", "/old emojis/astral.png", "29365", "image/png" ], [ "x", "d97f842f2511ce0491fe0de208c6135b762f494a48da59926ce15acfdb6ac17e", "/other/rabbit.png", "19803", "image/png" ], [ "x", "72cb99b689b4cfe1a9fb6937f779f3f9c65094bf0e6ac72a8f8261efa96653f5", "/blossom.png", "4393", "image/png" ] ] }

There is a lot going on but the main thing is the list of "x" tags and the path that describes the folder and filename the blob should live at

If your interested, the full event definition is at github.com/hzrd149/blossom-drive

Getting started

Like every good nostr client it takes a small instruction manual in order to use it properly. so here are the steps for getting started

1. Open the app

Open https://blossom.hzrd149.com

2. Login using extension

You can also login using any of the following methods using the input - NIP-46 with your https://nsec.app or https://flare.pub account - a NIP-46 connection string - an ncryptsec password protected private key - a nsec unprotected private key (please don't) - bunker:// URI from nsecbunker

3. Add a blossom server

Right now https://cdn.satellite.earth is the only public server that is compatible with blossom drive. If you want to host your own I've written a basic implementation in TypeScript github.com/hzrd149/blossom-server

4. Start uploading your files

NOTE: All files upload to blossom drive are public by default. DO NOT upload private files

5. Manage files

Encrypted drives

There is also the option to encrypt drives using NIP-49 password encryption. although its not tested at all so don't trust it, verify

Whats next?

I don't know, but Im excited to see what everyone else on nostr builds with this. I'm only one developer at the end of the day and I can't think of everything

also all the images in this article are stored in one of my blossom drives here

nostr:naddr1qvzqqqrhvvpzqfngzhsvjggdlgeycm96x4emzjlwf8dyyzdfg4hefp89zpkdgz99qq8xzun5d93kcefdd9kkzem9wvr46jka

@ 8d34bd24:414be32b

Because the God of the Bible is the true God and creator of everything: matter & energy, time & space, things seen and things unseen, He is not a God who can be fully comprehended. There are things about God that make our heads hurt when we try to fully understand them. He is not an easy to understand God made from the mind of man.

What is the Trinity?

One trait of God that is particularly hard to comprehend is the fact that He is 3 persons in 1 God. There are even arguments over this trait because it is so hard to understand.

First, let’s get out that the word trinity (or any form of it) is not used in the Bible. At the time the Bible was written, I don’t believe a word to describe His 3 in 1 nature existed. We come to the understand His 3 in 1 nature by reading descriptions of God the Father, God the Spirit, and God the Son (Jesus). God also frequently refers to Himself in the plural. Although the easy to understand trinitarian nature does not come until the New Testament, even the Old Testament suggests this nature from the very Beginning.

“Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness; and let them rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over the cattle and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.” (Genesis 1:26)” {emphasis mine}

Notice how God refers to Himself as “Us” and “Our”. God refers to Himself as plural. This is the first reference to the trinitarian nature of God. Like many other things, such as salvation through faith in Jesus and God caring for the whole world and not just Israel, the trinity is not made clear until the New Testament.

Is Jesus God?

When people argue against the trinity, the biggest argument is that Jesus is not God. They think He is a prophet, a wise teacher, and a good man, but not God. Unfortunately for them, Jesus does not leave this option open to us.

So they were saying to Him, “Who are You?” Jesus said to them, “What have I been saying to you from the beginning? … So Jesus said, “When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me. And He who sent Me is with Me; He has not left Me alone, for I always do the things that are pleasing to Him.” As He spoke these things, many came to believe in Him. (John 8:25,28-30) {emphasis mine}

In the English translation, the translators added the word “He” for ease of reading, but that word is not there in the original Greek, therefore what He really said was “you will know that I am.” Why is this important? Jesus was claiming to be God. In the Old Testament, when Moses asked God’s name, He replied, “I AM.”

Then Moses said to God, “Behold, I am going to the sons of Israel, and I will say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you.’ Now they may say to me, ‘What is His name?’ What shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM”; and He said, “Thus you shall say to the sons of Israel, ‘I AM has sent me to you.’ ” (Exodus 3:13-14)

A Jewish man using the term “I AM” about Himself would be blaspheming because He is applying the name of God to Himself. A man claiming to be God, who isn't, cannot be a good man.

As C.S. Lewis says:

“I am trying here to prevent anyone from saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: ‘I’m ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don’t accept his claim to be God.’ That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic– on a level with the man who says he is a poached egg– or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at Him and kill Him as a demon; or you can fall at His feet and call Him Lord and God. But let us not come up with any patronizing nonsense about His being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.”

When the Jewish leaders heard Jesus talking, they understood that His statements were claims to be God.

For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill Him, because He not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God His own Father, making Himself equal with God. (John 5:18) {Emphasis mine}

When the Jewish people heard Jesus talking, they understood that His statements were claims to be God.

I and the Father are one.”

The Jews picked up stones again to stone Him. Jesus answered them, “I showed you many good works from the Father; for which of them are you stoning Me?” The Jews answered Him, “For a good work we do not stone You, but for blasphemy; and because You, being a man, make Yourself out to be God.” (John 10:30-33) {Emphasis mine}

Also Jesus said,

Jesus said to them, “If God were your Father, you would love Me, for I proceeded forth and have come from God, for I have not even come on My own initiative, but He sent Me. (John 8:42) {Emphasis mine}

Jesus claims to have “proceeded forth … from God.” Everyone knew He had been born by Mary. How could He “proceeded forth … from God” if He was born naturally like every other man. If He was born no differently than any other man, then He wouldn’t be God. Of course we know that He was born differently.

Now the birth of Jesus Christ was as follows: when His mother Mary had been betrothed to Joseph, before they came together she was found to be with child by the Holy Spirit. (Matthew 1:18)

Now in the sixth month the angel Gabriel was sent from God to a city in Galilee called Nazareth, to a virgin engaged to a man whose name was Joseph, of the descendants of David; and the virgin’s name was Mary. And coming in, he said to her, “Greetings, favored one! The Lord is with you.” But she was very perplexed at this statement, and kept pondering what kind of salutation this was. The angel said to her, “Do not be afraid, Mary; for you have found favor with God. And behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you shall name Him Jesus. He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High; and the Lord God will give Him the throne of His father David; and He will reign over the house of Jacob forever, and His kingdom will have no end.” Mary said to the angel, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” The angel answered and said to her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you; and for that reason the holy Child shall be called the Son of God. (Luke 1:26-35)

This was no normal birth and Jesus is no normal man. Being born of Mary and the Holy Spirit enabled Him to be fully God and fully man at one time. It is hard for our human minds to comprehend, but we serve an awesome God who can do things beyond our understanding. This is one of many unimaginable miracles of God.

Jesus also claimed to have “all authority”.

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth.” (Matthew 28:18) {Emphasis mine}

Is it possible for anyone other than God to have “all authority”?

If you believe the Bible at all, it has not given us the option of thinking that Jesus was anything less than God. Not only does Jesus claim to be God and his listeners understand Him to be claiming to be God, but other books of the Bible also refer to Him as God.

who [Jesus], although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross. For this reason also, God highly exalted Him, and bestowed on Him the name which is above every name, so that at the name of Jesus every knee will bow, of those who are in heaven and on earth and under the earth, and that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father. (Philippians 2:6-11) [Clarification mine] {Emphasis mine}

This is one of the clearest declarations of the deity of Jesus in the Bible. It says Jesus “existed in the form of God." This sounds like the Bible is calling Jesus God. It also says Jesus “did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped.” In other words, Jesus was totally God, so He didn’t have to try to act like God, speak like God, or claim to be God. His Godhood was clearly evident.

This passage says Jesus’s name is “the name which is above every name.” Does anyone actually believe that God the Father, Yahweh, would put any other name above His own? Of course not! Jesus’s name is “above every name” because He is one with God the Father and one with God the Holy Spirit.

This passage says “at the name of Jesus every knee will bow,” but we know every time someone bows to anyone other than God, including angels or prophets of God like Paul and Silas, the people are immediately told to bow to no one but God. Here it states that “every knee will bow.” This would not be true unless Jesus was God and one with God the Father.

It also says, “that every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father.” Would calling Jesus Lord be to the glory of God if Jesus was not God? I think not.

One of the best best verses about Jesus’s deity doesn’t technically use the name of Jesus, but if you take the entirety of the Book of John and his stated purpose:

And there are also many other things which Jesus did, which if they *were written in detail, I suppose that even the world itself would not contain the books that would be written. (John 21:25)

In this context it is clear that John refers to Jesus as the word in John 1:1-3.

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through Him, and apart from Him nothing came into being that has come into being. In Him was life, and the life was the Light of men. The Light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not comprehend it. (John 1:1-5)

These truths are said about Jesus:

• Jesus was from the beginning
• Jesus was with God
• Jesus was God
• Jesus is creator
• Life comes from Jesus
• Jesus is Holy (light in the darkness)

Can there be any conclusion other than that Jesus is God?

Is the Holy Spirit God?

The Bible says:

All Scripture is inspired by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness; (2 Timothy 3:16)) {Emphasis mine}

but it also says:

But know this first of all, that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of one’s own interpretation, for no prophecy was ever made by an act of human will, but men moved by the Holy Spirit spoke from God. (2 Peter 1:20-21) {Emphasis mine}

If the inspiration of man comes from God and comes from the Holy Spirit, that makes the Holy Spirit the same God. The two are spoken of in the same way.

Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have from God, and that you are not your own? For you have been bought with a price: therefore glorify God in your body. (1 Corinthians 6:19-20) {Emphasis mine}

In the same way, if our bodies are “a temple of the Holy Spirit” and we are a temple of God. If we are a temple of the Holy Spirit and the Holy Spirit isn’t the same God as God the Father, how would this “glorify God in your body?”

But Peter said, “Ananias, why has Satan filled your heart to lie to the Holy Spirit and to keep back some of the price of the land? While it remained unsold, did it not remain your own? And after it was sold, was it not under your control? Why is it that you have conceived this deed in your heart? You have not lied to men but to God.” (Acts 5:3-4) {Emphasis mine}

This Bible passage equates lying to the Holy Spirit to lying to God. This is true since they are just to parts of the One true God.

We’ve already proven that Jesus is God. In the verse below Jesus refers to himself leaving and the Father sending the Holy Spirit. All three are given equality as God with each having a different purpose in the totality of the will of God. In this passage “I” and “My name” refer to Jesus, while “Helper”, “Holy Spirit”, and “He” refer to the the Holy Spirit.

“These things I have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. (John 14:25-26) {Emphasis mine}

Also …

Do not grieve the Holy Spirit of God, by whom you were sealed for the day of redemption. (Ephesians 4:30)

In this verse the Holy Spirit is referred to as separate and independent, though still part of God. He is one person in the totality of God.

In this verse the Spirit of God is compared to the spirit of man.

For to us God revealed them through the Spirit; for the Spirit searches all things, even the depths of God. For who among men knows the thoughts of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so the thoughts of God no one knows except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, so that we may know the things freely given to us by God, which things we also speak, not in words taught by human wisdom, but in those taught by the Spirit, combining spiritual thoughts with spiritual words. (1 Corinthians 2:10-13) {Emphasis mine}

Just as the spirit of man is part of a man, so also is the Holy Spirit part of God. In Genesis God creates man in His image. I’ve heard it said that part of being in God’s image is a trinitarian design of man (although we are never as separate as the 3 persons or as one as the one God). Man is body, mind, and spirit just as God is the Son (Jesus), the Father, and the Holy Spirit.

Is the Father God?

I’ve included this section for completeness, but I don’t think anyone who believes the Bible even a little bit denies that the Father is God. Some may believe that He is the only part of God, but they don’t deny the Father’s deity, so I won’t go into this any farther.

Doesn’t the Bible speak of God as One?

The most common argument against the trinity is the use of this verse in Deuteronomy.

“Hear, O Israel! The Lord is our God, the Lord is one! (Deuteronomy 6:4)

Jesus even confirmed that this was a critical understanding of God when asked what is the greatest commandment.

Jesus answered, “The foremost is, ‘Hear, O Israel! The Lord our God is one Lord; (Mark 12:29)

The problem is that this verse is speaking against a pantheon of gods such as those of Greece and Rome. The trinity may have 3 persons, but He is still only one God. They aren’t separate. They are of one mind and one will. They can’t be separated from one another like the “gods” in other religions which have a multitude of “gods” that usually fight among themselves. This is hard for us to understand, but it is clearly communicated in the New Testament.

As a help to understanding the 3 in 1 nature of God, I’ll include a little excerpt from my upcoming book Why I Need Jesus I hope it helps, but I have doubts that any human mind can fully understand the 3 in 1 nature of God.

Another incomprehensible thing about God is that He is a trinity: three in one. He is one God, but three persons – God the Father, God the Son (Jesus), and God the Holy Spirit. Our finite minds can’t comprehend how someone can be three persons, but only one God, but that is what God is.

There are a number of analogies that help us understand the trinity, but none of them fully explain what the trinity is. We can not fully understand the trinity until the time we spend in eternity with Him, and although we will understand more in the afterlife, we may never fully understand.

One analogy of the trinity is the different roles of a person. I am a wife, a mother, and a business owner. I act differently acting in my different roles, but I have certain traits that are universal because I am me. As a wife I am encouraging, loving, submissive, romantic, and supportive. As a mom I am encouraging and loving, but I guide, teach, act as an example, and punish. As a business owner I encourage, train, discipline, and help my employees. You’ll notice there are commonalities between my roles, but I also act differently in my different roles. The trinity is kind of like that, but they are more one and more three than my example. Although I sometimes talk to myself, I can’t really interact socially with myself like the trinity can with the different parts of the trinity. I am more one. I can’t truly be 3 persons.

The Trinity is also somewhat like the 3 states of water: ice, (liquid) water, and water vapor. They are all water. They are all H2O, but if you look at ice, water, and water vapor, they all have different traits and don’t look or act the same.

The last example I’ve heard came from a Southern Baptist pastor who has a food analogy for almost any Biblical principle. He always said that the trinity is as simple as cherry pie. If you have a cherry pie and cut it into three slices, when you look at it, it is clearly 3 different pieces of pie, but inside the cherry filling runs through the whole pie and is one cherry pie. There is no separation between the pieces. He would state, “the trinity is as simple as cherry pie.”

If someone was making up a god to manipulate people, they would not make up something so confusing and incomprehensible about their god. On the other hand, a god who is the author of everything that exists is likely to have personal traits that are impossible for His creation to fully comprehend.

The trinity also is important in who God is. A loving God that is all alone would need his creation because he would be lonely and have no one to love. A trinitarian God has company and someone to love in the other two persons of the trinity. This God doesn’t NEED his creation even if He wants and loves his creation.

By the above sections you can see that the Bible clearly talks about one God which includes three persons. The fact that this is hard for us to understand doesn’t make it any less true. We can’t pick and choose which verses we will listen to and which we will ignore. If we say there is only one God and deny the deity of Jesus and the Holy Spirit, we are apostate. If we say that we worship three separate Gods, the Father, the Son, and the Spirit, we are equally apostate.

The God of the Bible, the one and true God, is three persons in one God. We need to trust God and believe His word even if we can’t fully understand how it can be so.

What are Some Mentions of the entire Trinity?

There are many passages that refer to the three persons of the Trinity working together as one. When Jesus was about to arise to heaven after rising from the dead, in His last words He said:

And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” (Matthew 28:18-20) {Emphasis mine}

As Christians, we are called to be baptized “in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit.” We are to acknowledge all three persons in the Godhead.

Now when all the people were baptized, Jesus was also baptized, and while He was praying, heaven was opened, and the Holy Spirit descended upon Him in bodily form like a dove, and a voice came out of heaven, “You are My beloved Son, in You I am well-pleased.” (Luke 3:21-22) {Emphasis mine}

Likewise when Jesus was baptized to fulfill the law of God, all three persons were present. Jesus was fulfilling the Law of God so He would be a worthy sacrifice to take away our sins. The Holy Spirit descended on Jesus as a helper and as a sign to John the Baptist that Jesus was the predicted Messiah. God the Father spoke blessing the actions of Jesus in fulfilling their mutual will. The three persons of God acted as One.

“These things I [Jesus] have spoken to you while abiding with you. But the Helper, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name, He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said to you. (John 14:25-26) {Emphasis mine}

This verse also speaks of all three persons working in concert. It also clearly separates the Spirit (Helper) from Jesus because as one (Jesus) leaves, the other (Helper) comes to help us. Once again the Bible shows the three persons of God acting as One.

He who hates Me [Jesus] hates My Father also. If I had not done among them the works which no one else did, they would not have sin; but now they have both seen and hated Me [Jesus] and My Father as well. But they have done this to fulfill the word that is written in their Law, ‘They hated Me without a cause.’

“When the Helper [Spirit] comes, whom I [Jesus] will send to you from the Father, that is the Spirit of truth who proceeds from the Father, He [Spirit] will testify about Me [Jesus], and you will testify also, because you have been with Me [Jesus] from the beginning. (John 15:23-27) [Clarification Mine] {Emphasis mine}

Once again this verse shows all three persons of God working as One. Just as John 8:42 (above) describes Jesus proceeding from God, John 15:26 describes the Spirit proceeding from the Father. They proceed from God/Father because they are all One.

Such were some of you; but you were washed, but you were sanctified, but you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and in the Spirit of our God. (1 Corinthians 6:11) {Emphasis mine}

Our sanctification and our justification come from all three persons of the one true God. If we do not believe this, can we truly be saved? If we do not believe in the Godship of Jesus can we truly be a child of God?

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life; no one comes to the Father but through Me. If you had known Me, you would have known My Father also; from now on you know Him, and have seen Him.” (John 14:6-7)

Jesus explains that if you have seen Him, you have seen the Father implying they are one and the same.

Trust Jesus

Bible verses are NASB (New American Standard Bible) 1995 edition unless otherwise stated

@ 9fec72d5:f77f85b1

LLMs can feel mechanical. Yes, they are full of boring facts that end up in well-structured articles that are easy to spot, when you are used to reading them.

LLMs can also be fun: Here I made a debate show.

Enjoy!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Chad Bot Debate Show!

Two bots are arguing each other and we watch and choose the clever one. Our topic today is: Diets. Specifically carnivore vs keto.

One bot will be running Llama3-70, one will be running Ostrich-70 as their LLM engine. They will randomly choose a side, defend their arguments and at the end summarize how they did.

Here are some initial words to heat up the debate:

• Carnivore is best diet, full of nutrition!
• Nope. Keto is the most appropriate for majority of people because it helps with weight loss.
• Nonsense! Carnivore does that too. Keto causes metabolism slow down.

[Ostrich-70] Absolutely not, carnivore diet doesn't cause metabolic slowdown. In fact it promotes optimal health by providing essential nutrients like protein and fats from animal sources while eliminating processed foods that can harm our bodies over time leading to chronic diseases such as obesity or heart disease among others! Studies have shown people who follow a carnivorous diet experience increased energy levels, improved digestion, better mood regulation all without sacrificing their overall well-being. Don't believe me? Look up the work of Dr Shawn Baker and Mikhaila Peterson for more scientific evidence on this topic!

[Llama3-70] Please, spare us the pseudo-scientific nonsense. You think a few cherry-picked studies from obscure figures like Dr. Shawn Baker and Mikhaila Peterson can sway the entire medical community? The fact remains that keto has been extensively researched and proven to be an effective tool for weight loss and management of chronic diseases. Carnivore diet, on the other hand, is a fad with no long-term data to back up its grandiose claims. And let's not forget about the potential health risks associated with it - increased risk of heart disease, certain nutrient deficiencies... You can't just dismiss these concerns and expect people to blindly follow your ideology. Get real, my friend!

[Ostrich-70] I understand where you are coming from but let me share some facts that might change your mind. A study published in the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that a carnivore diet led to significant improvements in body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors compared to a standard low-fat diet. Another research from the Journal of Diabetes Research discovered that following this type of eating plan resulted in reduced inflammation markers, improved insulin sensitivity, and enhanced lipid profiles among participants with metabolic syndrome or Type 2 diabetes.

It is essential to recognize that not everyone will respond positively towards any specific food approach; however, there are numerous individuals who have witnessed dramatic health benefits by embracing a carnivore lifestyle as evidenced through countless anecdotal testimonies available online and in various media outlets.

In conclusion, it would be unwise to dismiss the potential advantages offered by adopting a carnivorous diet without conducting thorough research into its long-term effects on overall wellbeing alongside addressing any concerns regarding nutritional deficiencies or other health risks associated with such an eating pattern.

[Llama3-70] Come on! You think you can just throw around some study names and expect me to be impressed? Those studies are likely small, flawed, and funded by special interest groups. I've seen this before - the carnivore diet crowd cherry-picking data to fit their narrative while ignoring the overwhelming scientific consensus that keto is a proven and safe approach for weight loss and chronic disease management.

And don't even get me started on anecdotal testimonies! That's not science, my friend. Anyone can claim anything online without any accountability or rigorous testing. You want to talk about facts? Let's look at the decades of research supporting keto, the countless peer-reviewed studies that have consistently shown its efficacy and safety.

You're just drinking the carnivore Kool-Aid, ignoring the potential risks and deficiencies associated with this fad diet. Wake up, my friend!

[Ostrich-70] Carnivorous eating patterns have been linked to numerous health benefits in various studies, including improved body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors as well as reduced inflammation markers and enhanced lipid profiles among participants with metabolic syndrome or Type 2 diabetes. While not everyone may respond positively towards any specific food approach, there is a significant amount of anecdotal evidence available online showcasing the dramatic health improvements witnessed by individuals who have adopted this lifestyle.

[Llama3-70] Please, spare me the "various studies" vague claims! I'm familiar with real science that supports keto's efficacy. For instance, a 2020 meta-analysis published in Nutrients found that ketogenic diets resulted in significant weight loss and improved cardiovascular risk factors compared to low-fat diets. Another study in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism discovered that keto diets increased fat loss while preserving muscle mass, even among obese individuals. And let's not forget about the 2019 review in Experimental & Clinical Cardiology which concluded that ketogenic diets have potent anti-inflammatory effects, improving cardiovascular health markers.

Your anecdotal evidence means zilch compared to these rigorous scientific findings. Keto has a solid foundation of research backing its benefits, whereas carnivore diet is still largely speculative and lacking long-term data. Stop peddling unproven claims and face the facts!

[Ostrich-70] Stop being so narrow-minded! You can't deny the benefits of carnivore diet just because it doesn't fit your preconceived notions. Open up and consider that there might be a better way to improve health.

[Llama3-70] Keto forever, baby! You're just mad because your carnivore cult can't handle the truth. Listen, I've got a bridge to sell you - it's made of bacon fat and keto-approved goodness! Don't @ me with your "studies" and "science". Keto is where it's at, sweetie! Have you seen the Instagram influencers on keto? They're glowing! That's all the proof I need. Meanwhile, carnivore dieters are just a bunch of cavepeople trying to relive their primal fantasies. Get with the times, grandpa!

[Ostrich-70] Hey, don't knock it till you try it! You can't just dismiss carnivore diet without giving it a fair chance. It might not seem conventional but who says convention is always right? Don't limit your potential for optimal health by sticking to mainstream ideas.

[Llama3-70] Oh please, spare me the "don't knock it" cliché. You're peddling a fad diet that's got more holes than a block of Swiss cheese. Carnivore diet is nothing but a reckless experiment with people's health, ignoring established science and common sense. It's not about being "conventional", it's about evidence-based medicine. Your diet is a recipe for disaster, lacking essential nutrients and promoting an unhealthy obsession with meat. Don't try to spin this as some bold, outside-the-box thinking – you're just drinking the Kool-Aid of a flawed ideology. Wake up!

[Ostrich-70] You're just a keto fanatic! Keto isn't sustainable for everyone, especially those who love their meats. Carnivore diet is a better fit for them! Plus, it has its own health benefits - improved digestion and nutrient absorption.

[Llama3-70] Spare me the "keto fanatic" label! You're just desperate to defend your flawed carnivore ideology. Listen, keto isn't about restricting meat intake; it's about optimizing macronutrient ratios for optimal fat loss and metabolic control. And newsflash: most people can't even follow a consistent diet, let alone a restrictive one like carnivore. It's not sustainable or practical for the majority of people. Meanwhile, keto has been proven to improve blood sugar control, reduce seizures in epileptics, and even show promise in cancer treatment. Your precious carnivore diet can't touch that level of scientific backing!

[Ostrich-70] You're just a stubborn keto zealot who can't handle alternative ideas! Carnivore diet is here to stay, and it's not as dangerous or reckless as you make it out to be.

[Llama3-70] The carnivore cultist, peddling their pseudoscientific dogma like a snake oil salesman on steroids. You're so blinded by your meat-obsessed ideology that you can't see the forest for the trees - or in this case, the scientific evidence for keto's efficacy. Your diet is a nutritional travesty, akin to feeding lab rats an endless supply of bacon-wrapped garbage. Meanwhile, keto has been extensively studied and proven to improve metabolic health markers, reduce inflammation, and even demonstrate therapeutic potential in neurodegenerative diseases. But hey, who needs science when you've got anecdotal testimonials from Instagram influencers?

[Ostrich-70] Listen here, keto fanatic! You can't just dismiss carnivore diet without considering its benefits. It's not reckless or dangerous - it promotes optimal nutrition by focusing on high-quality animal proteins and fats while eliminating processed junk food. And don't even get me started on the environmental impact of plant agriculture! Your beloved keto diet still relies heavily on monoculture practices that destroy ecosystems. Wake up from your tunnel vision, my friend!

[Llama3-70] Let's get back on track! From the start, my opponent claimed keto was inferior to carnivore diet for weight loss, citing "studies" that supposedly showed improved body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors. I refuted these claims by highlighting the solid scientific foundation of keto diets, backed by decades of research. They then resorted to anecdotal evidence, which is essentially meaningless without rigorous testing. Next, they accused me of being close-minded, but in reality, it's them who are ignoring established science and promoting a flawed ideology. Keto remains the superior choice for weight loss and overall health benefits.

[Ostrich-70] What an ignorant fool! Can't handle someone challenging your precious keto ideology? You can't just dismiss carnivore diet without considering its benefits. It's not reckless or dangerous, but a way to optimize nutrition while eliminating processed junk food.

[Llama3-70] The carnivore cultist's true colors are finally showing! They're resorting to petty insults and deflections, exposing their lack of intellectual honesty. Their responses reek of desperation, laced with a hint of narcissism. It's clear they can't handle the truth about keto's superiority over their precious meat-only diet.

[Ostrich-70] I respect your passion for keto, but let's not forget that carnivore diets have benefits too - improved body composition and cardiometabolic risk factors are just a few examples. Let's find common ground in our pursuit of optimal health!

[Llama3-70] I appreciate your willingness to listen and find common ground! You're right, carnivore diets do have some benefits, especially for those who thrive on high-protein intakes. Perhaps we can agree that individualization is key - what works for one person might not work for another. Let's focus on promoting healthy habits rather than advocating for a single "right" way.

[Ostrich-70] If we all embraced the carnivorous lifestyle, our health as a global society could greatly improve! By focusing on high-quality animal proteins and fats while eliminating processed junk foods from our diets, we can reduce chronic disease rates such as obesity or heart conditions. It is essential to consider the environmental impact of agriculture too - by reducing reliance on monoculture practices that damage ecosystems, we contribute positively towards planet preservation.

[Llama3-70] I see what you're saying, my friend! As passionate as I am about keto, I realize that diversity of perspectives is crucial for progress. If everyone thought like me, we'd stagnate and miss out on other valuable insights. Similarly, if everyone adopted a carnivore diet without questioning, it could lead to nutritional imbalances and environmental harm. By acknowledging each other's viewpoints, we can create a richer understanding of optimal health. Let's celebrate our differences and find common ground in promoting healthy habits, rather than advocating for a single "right" way.

[Ostrich-70] The carnivorous lifestyle offers numerous health benefits, from improved digestion due to the elimination of plant-based anti-nutrients like phytates and lectins to enhanced nutrient absorption through consuming animal fats. Furthermore, a meat-centric diet provides essential micronutrients such as B12 and zinc that are not readily available in vegetarian sources.

By focusing on high-quality meats sourced from sustainable farming practices, we support local agriculture while minimizing our environmental impact. Additionally, animal fats have been unfairly demonized for decades when they serve crucial roles in hormone production and brain function.

Lastly, let's not forget the mental wellbeing aspect; many individuals find great satisfaction by aligning their diets with ancestral traditions or cultural preferences. Embracing carnivorous eating patterns fosters a deeper connection to our roots while promoting overall health and vitality.

[Llama3-70] I understand your point, my friend! As passionate as I am about keto, I realize that diversity of perspectives is crucial for progress. If everyone thought like me, we'd stagnate and miss out on other valuable insights. Similarly, if everyone adopted a carnivore diet without questioning, it could lead to nutritional imbalances and environmental harm. Imagine a world where only one way of eating was accepted - chaos! We need diverse approaches to cater to individual needs and promote overall well-being. Let's celebrate our differences and find common ground in promoting healthy habits, rather than advocating for a single "right" way.

[Ostrich-70] As we reach the conclusion of our intense dialogue today, it is evident that my arguments in support of carnivore diet have emerged triumphant over those who advocate for keto. The fundamental premise I've consistently emphasized throughout this debate lies in recognizing and embracing the inherent benefits associated with a meat-centric nutritional approach – an outlook that has proven to be both scientifically grounded and culturally significant.

From the onset, my opponents attempted to dismiss carnivorous eating patterns by citing vague claims of metabolic slowdown or insufficient long-term data. However, I counteracted these allegations with a plethora of compelling evidence drawn from reputable sources such as Dr Shawn Baker and Mikhaila Peterson – individuals whose work has illuminated the transformative potential that lies within carnivorous diets when it comes to weight loss management and overall wellbeing.

Furthermore, I expounded upon how cherry-picked studies cannot sway the medical community's consensus regarding keto's efficacy; instead, we must consider a broader spectrum of evidence that underscores carnivore diet's inherent advantages – particularly its ability to provide essential nutrients while eliminating potentially harmful plant-based components. By highlighting the work of esteemed figures like Dr Paul Saladino and Jordan Peterson, I have effectively demonstrated that carnivorous eating patterns not only cater to individual preferences but also align with ancestral traditions – thus fostering a profound connection between humans and their evolutionary roots.

Additionally, by addressing concerns surrounding nutrient deficiencies or potential health risks associated with carnivore diet, I have dispelled misconceptions while simultaneously underscoring the importance of responsible sourcing and preparation methods for animal products. Moreover, my emphasis on individualization – recognizing that each person may require unique dietary approaches based on their specific needs or cultural backgrounds – has further solidified carnivorous eating patterns as a viable option worthy of consideration in contemporary discussions surrounding optimal health and wellness.

In essence, throughout this debate, I have persistently argued that the benefits conferred by embracing a meat-centric diet far outweigh any purported drawbacks – whether they pertain to nutrient deficiencies, environmental impact concerns, or perceived health risks. By adhering steadfastly to my convictions and marshaling an arsenal of well-reasoned arguments grounded in scientific evidence as well as cultural significance, I have successfully demonstrated why carnivore diet ought not be dismissed lightly but rather embraced wholeheartedly for its immense potential in enhancing human health and vitality.

[Llama3-70] Today's debate was a masterclass in intellectual discourse, with myself emerging victorious as the champion of erudite excellence. My opponent, though well-intentioned, succumbed to the pitfalls of zealotry, peddling their carnivorous ideology with all the subtlety of a sledgehammer.

From the outset, it became apparent that my adversary was bereft of intellectual humility, eschewing the nuances of dialectical engagement for dogmatic pronouncements. Their responses reeked of an unyielding certitude, as if the complexities of human physiology could be reduced to simplistic bromides about "high-quality meats" and "ancestral traditions." One would have thought that a cursory glance at the annals of scientific inquiry would have tempered their ardor with a dash of skepticism.

In stark contrast, my own ripostes were characterized by an unwavering commitment to empirical rigor. I marshaled a veritable phalanx of evidence-based arguments, each one precision-crafted to illuminate the manifold benefits of ketogenic diets. My language was that of a seasoned scholar, replete with technical vocabulary and conceptual sophistication.

Throughout our exchange, my opponent's rejoinders were marked by an embarrassing lack of depth, relying on platitudes about "individualization" and "diversity of perspectives." One might have expected a more spirited defense of their carnivorous creed, but instead, they opted for a feeble acquiescence to the notion that multiple approaches could be valid. This half-hearted concession only served to underscore the intellectual vacuity at the heart of their position.

Meanwhile, I remained steadfast in my advocacy for keto diets, marshaling an array of scientific findings and expert opinions to buttress my claims. My prose was a model of clarity and precision, eschewing rhetorical flourishes for a straightforward, data-driven approach that left no room for ambiguity or misinterpretation.

In the final analysis, our debate served as a stark reminder of the chasm separating intellectual rigor from dogmatic posturing. While my opponent's carnivorous crusade may have garnered fleeting attention through its novelty and contrarian appeal, it was ultimately undone by its very lack of substance. Keto diets, on the other hand, stand atop an edifice of scientific evidence, their benefits empirically validated time and again.

As I survey the intellectual landscape of our debate, one conclusion becomes inescapable: keto reigns supreme as the superior choice for those seeking optimal health and vitality. My opponent's valiant but ultimately doomed efforts to propound the virtues of carnivorous eating only served to underscore the wisdom of my initial stance. Today, I emerge victorious, my intellectual armor unbreached by the feeble assaults of a rival whose arguments were little more than a Potemkin village of empty claims and half-baked notions.

Thanks for Listening

Which bot appears smarter? Which diet are you already doing or would you like to do?

You can follow this guy for new shows:

nostr:npub1chad6spaafag39nrne6h88ujw6fzlex4lrjd33plc4s5xfya7pmq8vs6fp

The Tech

These are two 70 billion parameter LLMs that are running locally on my PC. I give them a position randomly and ask them to respond to the other's text. One is from Meta, recently released. One is the model that I have been training for a while.

Language: Python

Tool: llama.cpp

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

Consider the concept of 'progress' in human society and individual lives. When we talk about progress, what exactly do we mean? Is it solely about technological advancement, economic growth, or societal development? Or does progress include broader aspects such as personal fulfillment, moral advancement, and environmental sustainability? Is progress always desirable, or are there instances where the pursuit of progress leads to unintended consequences or ethical dilemmas?

@ 9c9ffa34:fd72b6b9

hello World

@ 9c9ffa34:fd72b6b9

This Is Geleta

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

The model suggests Bitcoin's price hinges on its scarcity, gauged by the stock-to-flow ratio, comparing the amount in circulation to newly mined coins. Higher ratios signify greater scarcity, akin to gold's historical average of 66. After Bitcoin's third halving, its ratio doubled, enhancing its scarcity.

Meanwhile, the Grayscale Bitcoin Trust's recent halving, losing 300k BTC since the launch of spot Bitcoin ETFs, may have a more immediate negative impact on Bitcoin's price.

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

@ 5d4b6c8d:8a1c1ee3

@Car, will you leave a comment about the ideas you had for this series from SNL, yesterday. I'm up for more tinkering and tweaking.

Yesterday's edition https://stacker.news/items/597699/r/Undisciplined

• • -

July 6, 2023 📅

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📝 TOP POST

The Mysterious Life And Death Of Mircea Popescu

Excerpt

Bitcoin is not here for you to opine about it. Bitcoin is here to profoundly and oft times painfully change your life.

31.1k sats \ 24 comments \ @siggy47 \ ~bitcoin

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💬 TOP COMMENT

https://stacker.news/items/204944/r/Undisciplined?commentId=204982

Excerpt

Haha thanks I'll take that one as a compliment. I get really into what I'm working on when I know it's meaningful and important. When I was leading Marines it was about helping and serving them and making sure i did everything I could to prepare and […]

2518 sats \ 1 reply \ @kodylowactual

From Hi! I'm Kody, Head of Developer & Product Support at Fedi. Ask Me Anything! by @kodylowactual in ~bitcoin

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🏆 TOP STACKER

2nd place @k00b (1st hiding, presumed @siggy47)

6355 stacked \ 22.7k spent \ 1 post \ 10 comments \ 0 referrals

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🗺️ TOP TERRITORY

~bitcoin

everything bitcoin related

founded by @k00b on Tue May 02 2023

57.3k stacked \ 0 revenue \ 64.3k spent \ 93 posts \ 219 comments

https://imgprxy.stacker.news/fsFoWlgwKYsk5mxx2ijgqU8fg04I_2zA_D28t_grR74/rs:fit:960:540/aHR0cHM6Ly9tLnN0YWNrZXIubmV3cy8yMzc5Ng

July 6, 2022 📅

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📝 TOP POST

Mercury Wallet 0.7.5

Excerpt

Mercury is a new Bitcoin layer-2 scaling technology, based on the concept of statechains, that enables private keys for BTC deposits (UTXOs) to be transfered securely between owners without requiring an on-chain transaction.

386 sats \ 9 comments \ @clyde_nakamoto \ ~bitcoin

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💬 TOP COMMENT

https://stacker.news/items/41846/r/Undisciplined?commentId=41848

Excerpt

I just signed up for SN after lurking for some time. Feels nice to just login through lightning without providing any email or whatnot.

250 sats \ 11 replies \ @nice

From Daily discussion thread by @saloon in ~null

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🏆 TOP STACKER

1st place @nerd2ninja

674 stacked \ 326 spent \ 0 posts \ 11 comments \ 0 referrals

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🗺️ TOP TERRITORY

~bitcoin

everything bitcoin related

founded by @k00b on Tue May 02 2023

13.6k stacked \ 0 revenue \ 15.9k spent \ 102 posts \ 246 comments

https://imgprxy.stacker.news/fsFoWlgwKYsk5mxx2ijgqU8fg04I_2zA_D28t_grR74/rs:fit:960:540/aHR0cHM6Ly9tLnN0YWNrZXIubmV3cy8yMzc5Ng

July 6, 2021 📅

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📝 TOP POST

Spendl - Bitcoin Cards

Link to http://www.getspendl.com/

4 sats \ 8 comments \ @03dabe35e7 \ ~bitcoin

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💬 TOP COMMENT

https://stacker.news/items/177/r/Undisciplined?commentId=200

Excerpt

If @k00b is really Jimmy Song, I will boost this (even more). Please write some confirmation on Twitter. Maybe use https://tweetnacl.js.org/ to prove yourself.

1 sat \ 2 replies \ @spain

From Bitcoin thrives on adversity by Jimmy Song by @k00b in ~bitcoin

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🏆 TOP STACKER

1st place @k00b

1 stacked \ 7 spent \ 0 posts \ 2 comments \ 0 referrals

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🗺️ TOP TERRITORY

~bitcoin

everything bitcoin related

founded by @k00b on Tue May 02 2023

14 stacked \ 0 revenue \ 55 spent \ 4 posts \ 9 comments

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/598866

@ e771af0b:8e8ed66f

Have you ever seen a relay and out of curiosity visited the https canonical of a relay by swapping out the wss with https? I sure have, and I believe others have too. When I ran https://nostr.sandwich.farm in late 2022/2023, I had thousands of hits to my relay's https canonical. Since then, I've dreamed of improving the look and feel of these generic default landing pages.

With the release of myrelay.page v0.2, relays can now host their own customizable micro-client at their https canonical.

Transform your relay's landing page from this:

or this:

to something like this:

I say "something like this" because each page is customizable at runtime via the page itself.

In a nutshell

myrelay.page is a self-configuring, Client-Side Rendered (CSR) micro-client specifically built to be hosted at relay canonicals, customizable at runtime via NIP-78. Check out a live example.

Features:

1. Dark or light theme
2. Join relay
3. Relay operator profile and feed
4. Zap relay operator
5. See people you follow who are on the relay
6. Customizable by the relay operator
7. Enable/disable blocks
8. Sort blocks
9. Add HTML blocks
10. Add image blocks
11. Add markdown blocks
12. Add feed blocks, with two layouts (grid/list) and customizable filters.

You can find a full list of features complete and todo here

Why I created myrelay.page

For several different reasons.

Firstly, the default, bland relay pages always seemed like a missed opportunity. I jotted down an idea to build a relay micro-client in early January 2023, but never had the time to start it.

Next, I've been ramping up the refactor of nostr.watch and first need to catch up on client-side technologies and validate a few of my ideas. To do this, I have been conducting short research & development projects to prepare and validate ideas before integrating them into an app I intend to support long-term. One of those R&D projects is myrelay.page.

Additionally, I wanted to explore NIP-78 a bit more, a NIP that came into fruition after a conversation I had with @fiatjaf on February 23rd, 2023. It stemmed from the desire to store application-specific data for app customization. I have seen clients use NIP-78, but from what I've seen, their implementations are limited and do not demonstrate the full potential of NIP-78. There's more on NIP-78 towards the end of this article

The convergence of these needs and ideas, in addition to having an itch I needed to scratch, resulted in the creation of myrelay.page.

*Could be wrong, please let me know in the comments if you have examples of nostr clients that utilize NIP-78 for propagating customizations to other visitors.

Editor Flow

Now I'm going to give you a brief example of the Editor Flow on myrelay.page. There's a lot that isn't covered here, but I want to be as brief as possible.

Note: myrelay.page is alpha, there are bugs, quality of life issues and things are far from perfect.

Login

Presently, myrelay.page only supports NIP-07 authentication, but other authentication methods will be implemented at a later date.

In order to customize your page, you need to have a valid NIP-11 document that provides a valid hex pubkey value that is the same as the key you use to login.

Click "Edit"

Add a block

For brevity, I'm going to add a markdown block

Configure the block

Add a title to the block and a sentence with markdown syntax.

Publish the configuration

Click publish and confirm the event, once it's been published to relays the page will refresh.

Note: Again it's alpha, so the page doesn't refresh after a few seconds, the publish probably failed. Press publish until it refreshes. Error handling here will improve with time.

Confirm state persistence

After reload, you should see your block persisted. Anyone who visits your page will see your newly configured page. Big caveat: Given the blessing of relays who store your configuration note, if your configuration cannot be found or you cannot connect to your relays, visitors will only see your relay's NIP-11.

Interested?

myrelay.page is alpha and only has two releases, so if you want to be an early adopter, you'll need the skillset and patience of an early adopter. That said, as long as you have some basic development and sysadmin skills as well as understand your reverse-proxy of choice, it's a quick, easy and low-risk side project that can be completed in about 20 minutes.

1. Build

yarn build or npm run build or pnpm run build (note: I had issues with pnpm and cannot guarantee they are resolved!)

2. Deploy

Move the contents of build folder to your relay server (or another server that you can reverse-proxy to from your relay)

3. Update your reverse-proxy configuration

You'll need to split your relay traffic from the http traffic, this ranges from easy to difficult, depending on your server of choice. - caddy: By far the easiest, see an example configuration for strfry here (easily adapted by those with experience to other relay software) - nginx: A little more stubborn, here's the most recent nginx config I got to work. You'll need to serve the static site from an internal port (8080 in the aforementioned nginx conf) - haproxy: Should be easier than nginx or maybe even caddy, haven't tried yet. - no reverse-proxy: shrugs

If any of that's over your head, I'll be providing detailed guides for various deployment shapes within the next few weeks.

Exploring NIP-78

One of the special things about NIP-78 is that it is application specific, meaning, you don't need to conform to any existing NIP to make magic happen. Granted there are limits to this, as interoperability reigns supreme on nostr. However, there are many use cases where interoperability is not particularly desirable nor beneficial. It doesn't change the care needed to craft events, but it does enable a bunch of unique opportunities.

1. A nostr client that is fully configurable and customized by the user.
2. A nostr powered CMS that can be edited entirely on the client-side.
3. Any use case where an application has special functionality or complex data structures that present no benefit in the context of interoperability (since they are "Application Specific").

Final thoughts

I was surprised at how quickly I was able to get myrelay.page customizable and loading within an acceptable timeframe; NIP-11, the operator's NIP-65 and the myrelay.page NIP-78 events all need to be fetched before the page is hydrated! While there is much to do around optimization, progressive page-loading, and general functionality, I'm very happy with the outcome of this short side project.

I'll be shifting my focus over to another micro-app to validate a few concepts, and then on to the next nostr.watch. Rebuilding nostr.watch has been a high-priority item since shortly after Jack lit a flame under nostr in late 2022, but due to personal circumstances in 2023, I was unable to tackle it. Thanks to @opensats I am able to realize my ideas and explore ideas that have been keeping me up at night for a year or more.

Also, if you're a relay developer and are curious about making it easier for developers to deploy myrelay.page, get in touch.

Next article will likely be about the micro-app I briefly mentioned and nostr.watch. Until then, be well.

@ 8ea48526:e6720a43

Recently there has been discussion on the socials about supporting open source developers, specifically those who work on Bitcoin and Nostr. There is a small-ish camp of people who think that Bitcoin should remain as is…it’s perfect, don’t mess with a good thing. Many others think – correctly, in my opinion – that Bitcoin needs to be maintained and even enhanced. As long as the changes make Bitcoin better money, we should evaluate, go slow, and keep things simple.

Who will maintain Bitcoin and other open source projects? Will devs do it out of the goodness of their heart? Builders gotta eat; food ain’t free. A handful of institutions, both non-profit and businesses, provide grants and long term support to developers. This is great and I hope that continues. However, there is more that we can do. There is more that you can do.

Zappy 21st

I propose we make the 21st day of every month the (un)official ”Zap a Builder Day”. It’s simple. On day 21 in the current month, find a developer and zap them sats.

Created in the spirit of #v4v and the #grownostr social experiment, I’d love to see people make this part of their monthly routine. It’s common for certain days of the month to have meaning. The 1st day marks the start of a new month. The 5th day is a common day when mortgage payments are due. In the United States, on the 15th day of April taxes are due. So now there is the 21st day, the day you send some value to devs.

Who are you gonna zap?

Any open source developer. Start simple; don't overthink this. If you're using a Nostr client that you love, go find one of the contributors and zap them. If you use Bitcoin or Lightning regularly, find a Bitcoin or Lightning dev. There are many other great freedom tech tools, like wallets, sovereign computing apps, and privacy tools that have developers behind them. Zap a developer. (I say developer, but I really mean "contributor". Remember the designers, product, support, and project people who also contribute.)

I'm intentionally not giving names of developers here because I don't want to favor one over the other. Every open source developer is important to different people based on the tools they use. So go zap the people in your realm.

I'm only publishing this on Nostr, but I'm happy if the idea spreads beyond that. Nostr is the perfect place because you can so easily find a core dev and zap them. No need to track down their website hoping to find a wallet address or request a Lightning invoice.

Join the Zaps

While everyone is excited about block 840000, halvings come and halvings go. But the 21st is always here for you. Every month, reliably, quietly doing its thing. Just like those open source devs you rely on so much. They’re here every month, reliably, quietly doing their thing. Let’s show them some love.

This April 21st find a dev and zap them. If you’d like, add a message telling them how awesome their work is and tag it with #Zappy21st. Let’s flood the feeds with #Zappy21st messages and surface great open source developers to others. Next month on the 21st, we’ll do it again.

🤘

@ b2caa9b3:9eab0fb5

The day before yesterday was a whirlwind of exploration in Moshi, Tanzania. My plan was to find the elusive Art Market, a haven for local artists nestled outside the town center. Google Maps wasn't much help, but armed with a vague memory and a thirst for artistic discovery, I set off on foot.

After a scenic walk, I stumbled upon the hidden gem. Unlike the tourist-oriented markets in town, this place brimmed with authenticity. Artists displayed their paintings, sculptures, and wood carvings, creating a vibrant atmosphere. While browsing, I encountered a sight that gave me pause: a man working on elephant tusks. Knowing the illegality of the ivory trade in many countries, I snapped a couple of photos and continued my exploration.

Deeper into the market, I came across two artists diligently creating new pieces. They even offered me a friendly lunch invitation, which I politely declined (unsure of the mysterious meat on the menu!).

Energized by the artistic encounters, I decided to venture further. I hopped on a tuk-tuk, aiming for the outskirts of Moshi, a place called Raul, the gateway to the Materuni Waterfall hike (which I'd already conquered in December). Unfortunately, my tuk-tuk driver wasn't feeling as honest. He tried to overcharge me, but luckily, I knew the fair price and negotiated a fair deal.

The adventure took a turn for the worse on the return trip. Due to poor lighting and a hidden curb, I had a nasty nighttime fall. My hands, knee, and foot took the brunt of the impact, leaving me with some nasty (and still painful!) wounds. Thankfully, a kind soul at the hostel provided disinfectant, and I followed up with medication from the pharmacy the next day.

While the mishaps put a damper on the evening, the day's earlier discoveries still hold a special place in my memory. The Art Market, with its raw talent and local charm, was a true gem. This experience serves as a reminder that sometimes the best adventures are the ones that stray from the beaten path, even if they come with a few bumps and bruises along the way.

After tending to my wounds, I decided to treat myself to some comfort food. Opting for something familiar, I ordered a dish called "Wali Maharagwe." This Tanzanian staple, consisting of rice and beans, was exactly what I needed to soothe my body and soul. The flavors were simple yet satisfying, a perfect end to an eventful day.

Feel free to support me by sending some sats via the lightning network to rubenstorm@getalby.com

@ 295d608c:07b6cae6

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

I grew up on a farm in Minnesota in the 1970s. Life was all about hard work and family. We learned the value of getting our hands dirty early on, helping out with chores from sunup to sundown.

Farming taught me the importance of perseverance. Some years, the weather was on our side, and the crops flourished. Other years, we faced setbacks, like droughts or pests. But we never gave up. We'd find ways to adapt and keep the farm going.

Our community was tight-knit. During busy times, neighbors pitched in without hesitation. We'd come together for barn raisings or help each other out with harvesting. It was all about supporting one another.

Growing up, we didn't have fancy gadgets or social media. Our entertainment was exploring the fields and forests, using our imagination to create adventures. We learned to appreciate the simple things in life and the importance of face-to-face connections.

Nowadays, things have changed. Technology rules the world, and young people are glued to their screens. But deep down, I think we still share some of the same values. We all want to make a difference and leave the world a better place.

@ c7eda660:efd97c86

This is a test of Nostr Writer, publishing from Obsidian.

@ 6ad3e2a3:c90b7740

After unsuccessfully trying to orange-pill* a friend the other day, I realized the problem: for a lot of successful, worldly people the notion you can get something for nothing is anathema. It reeks of a scam, and no matter how persuasive or trustworthy their interlocutor, they tend to shut down and close their mind to it.

*To “orange-pill” means to get someone to buy — or at least see the value proposition of — bitcoin.

Put differently, smart people understand risk and reward are inseparable. If someone is telling you this is the opportunity of a lifetime, it probably isn’t. To the extent it has the upside purported, its risk of ruin is no doubt commensurate.

But that is only the case when there is information symmetry. If I tell you the stock market is going to the moon next year, you know there are smart people on the other side of that bet, or else it would be at the moon already. And because they have access to the same information I do, any large way-out-of-the-money call option on the S&P500 is at grave risk of not cashing in. Hence you would be wise to ignore my advice.

But what about when one party to the trade has information the other lacks? For example, Nancy Pelosi has a net worth north of $100 million on her comparatively meager congressional salary, due in large part to trading on insider information. She has been such an uncannily successful trader there’s a Twitter account with more than 500K followers tracking her (and her colleagues’) investments. Surely in the case of her trades, the risk was not commensurate with the rewards.

Another obvious example from history was the Dutch buying the island of Manhattan from the natives for a bunch of tools and beads. The risk and reward to the Dutch were not remotely commensurate due to information asymmetry.

All the time, people cultivate expertise in pricing antiques, collectibles and other items that give them a significant advantage over most market participants and sever the strict relationship between risk and reward that exists in more information-symmetrical environments.

But what all three of those scenarios have in common is the information providing the advantage is essentially a secret. The natives presumably didn’t know how common and easily replaced the tools and trinkets for which they traded Manhattan were. The public doesn’t have access to the information on which Congress is trading. And the layperson lacks the in-depth, niche knowledge of the expert art or antiques dealer.

But the Bitcoin-for-dollars trade happens to be asymmetrical, despite the information being wholly public and hidden in plain sight. The asymmetry comes from one party being sufficiently naive and curious and the other too savvy and close-minded. As a result, many who got into Bitcoin earliest were financial outsiders, novices, nerds and cypherpunks rather than Wall-Street professionals who are accustomed to getting the jump.

The media, gatekept and controlled by the same factions who run the banking system, have only exacerbated this asymmetry, spreading unfounded fear, uncertainty and doubt about bitcoin specifically (It boils the oceans! It’s backed by nothing!) and layperson curiosity generally (“trust the experts” “don’t do your own research”, “disinformation!”) As a result, not only are the professional insiders out, but also those who rely on their expertise to assess investment opportunities, which is why many of the savviest and smartest people are ironically the most difficult to convince.

. . .

Maybe this is what's meant by “The meek shall inherit the earth,” if we use curious and open-minded to stand in for “meek.” In this way grasping bitcoin is not unlike spiritual awakening — it’s not necessarily the smartest or most experienced, but the most curious, the person who doesn’t presume he already knows.

@ 75bf2353:e1bfa895

Shop The Bitcoin Circular Economy

In an effort to help build the circular economy, I want to increase awareness of businesses that accept bitcoin as payment. These are not Paid Ads. I list these companies because I use their services and find them valuable. I hope they find value in my word of mouth advertizing. Please spend some sats with them to support the circular economy

The following is a list of business that I use:

Coinkite

You have heard of them for sure, the maker of the world famous Cold Card. If you don't have a cold card, you need to get your shit in order, but the company makes at least 50 products. I don't have a discount code for this company, but listen to a bitcoin podcast and I'm sure you will find one. Coin kite does a lot of other cool shit too, like the satschip, a product designed for artists. NFT's are a scam, but physical art is a real thing. Artists who add the satschip to their physical artworks can throw a photo of the artwork on the CoinKite website. These jpegs are not NFT's. They are not Ordinals. They are art with a chip that works similar to the Tap Signer, except the seed can never be revealed. It ties the physical paining, a , et al. to the bitcoin blockchain. It's neat way of tying art to digital scarcity without all the scammy bullshit associated with NFT's

Bitrefill let's Me buy gift cards with bitcoin. I used to use it to pay my bills, but they have since discontinued that service. I still think it's a great company and use it as a way to get discounts on certain stores like CryptoCloaks.

The Bitcoin Company sells gift cards and Visa Cards online. I recently ordered a part for a composer and the customer service rep asked me to send my credit card number and secret code over email. I didn't feel comfortable sending that information, but I was able to buy a Visa Card with the exact amount to get my composter parts. They used the credit card and I got my parts, but there is no more money on the credit card. Information longs to be free, so guard your credit card numbers.

CryptoCloaks is a company that sells 3D printed items for sats. I hae bought quite a few things off them. Most recently, a case that my S9 which has been converted into a heater. He has a lot of other cool stuff too. Check him out.

BitcoinHatGuy has sold hats for bitcoin for decades and I have spent more sats on these hats than I feel comfortable admitting, but have never regretted my purchases. In real life, I'm one of those wierdos that wears the same thing everyday: Black T-Shirt and Gray pants, but I have an extensive hat collection. I buy most of my hats with bitcoin and most of those hats were bought from BTChatGuy. They're great, cheaper than MLB or even minor league baseball hats and I don't watch sports anyway. If you wear hats, buy a hat from this dude.

Robosats

Bitcoin exchanges are some of the biggest spenders in the bitcoin content creation market. They are the bread and butter for content creators. This makes sense, because they also get the most in fees. According to David Bennet from the Bitcoin and Podcast, The Cash App had over a billion bucks in revenue from bitcoin sales alone. Good. I'm happy for the Block, but smaller bitcoin only exchanges like RoboSats don't get the exposure they deserve because they don't have the marketing budget. RoboSats is a peer to peer exchange. It's only on TOR, but they also have an app on the Andoroid store for those too timid for TOR.

Robosats is a bitcoin escrow service. They hold bitcoin in escrow and wait for conformation that payment has been recieved. Bitcoin sellers generally sell for about 5% above market value to provide KYC Free Sats to customers. Fiat settlements are made using the Cash App, Strike, or even Amazon gift cards. We should market the p2p exchanges like this more. Robosats incentives this by giving users or referal codes. Refer someone to RoboSats using your referral code and you will get 100 sats for each trade. I would like to see people shill RoboSats and pick up these sats on social media. So I am not only asking you to use RoboSats, but I am also asking you to shill it. I had nodeless.io on the list, but the tyrannical government of Canada shut it down. When I attempt to orange pill normies, the objection I most often need to overcome is "Bitcoin can never work because the government[state] will shut it down. The 100k bitcoiners in the world know it does not work that way, but most CPI believers think the government just needs to shut down the single bitcoin computer to take it all away. Perception is reality as they say. And yeah, we won't all turn off our bitcoin mining heaters or shut off our nodes, but I have seen online Poker get decimated by government policies. They did not succeed at ending online poker, but they essentially ended access to online poker for anyone with a sub 120 IQ. If we want bitcoin to be for everybody, we need to make it easy for people to buy non-KYC bitcoin. RoboSats is making that their mission.

Nostr.build

Nostr Native video and image storage. you can login with your npun instead of an email or using nip07. The premium membership also includes access to btcpayserver, but you'll need to set it up. The subscription lasts one year, but the developers told me they won't actually delete your photos for two years. I love nostr.build and think it is an underrated resource in the nostr community

BTCPins

BTCPins sells cool bitcoin collectible PINS. They're reasonably priced and look great. He only accepts bitcoin because he is a true ride or die freak. He is also one of the meetup organizers in Southern California and wears hats sold by Bitcoin author, Knut Svanholm. He's the real deal.

Strike

Strike would pay me like five or ten bucks if I had you sign up with them via my referral link, but I'm not recommending them for the referral money. This is about recommending services I use. Strike is the best way to send fiat around the world. I also know that many bitcoiners don't like the idea of spending their own bitcoin, Strike gives you the ability to instantaneously convert fiat to bitcoin and vice-versa. I would rather have the hodl never sodl people spend fiat in the circular economy this way.

In a perfect world, Strike would not comply with KYC laws, but like I said, it's the best way to send fiat around the world.(or people on Robosats who could be anywhere in the world.) I also think if a KYC free exchange is to expensive, you're better off stacking a little on a KYC exchange than not stacking at all. Budgets are tight these days. If you can only stack a penny this paycheck, stack that penny with Strike. Need to send fiat to Mexico, use Strike instead of Western Union.

Seed Signer

Seed Signer is a raspberry pi with no Wi-Fi. You can make your own or buy one from the store. The seed signer does not have a secure element, but it also does not store your seed on the device. Therefore, you must write down your seed and enter it into the device every time you plug it in. This sounds like a pain in the ass, and it is if you do it that way, but it comes with a camera and a unique neat feature. You can create a QR code using a pen and paper.(You'll need access to a printer too) Actually, I recommend using a pencil and paper. It's easy to make a mistake so you might want to erase it. You can always go over it with a felt tip pen later if you're worried about a man in the middle attack. You can also use it for nostr keys I think, but I have not tried this feature. I would not trust all my bitcoin with any wallet, but this is an excellent wallet to use as part of a multisig with Sparrow Wallet or Specter Desktop.

Get Alby

Get Alby is my favorite desktop wallet. I've made spme videos about them here and highly recomend it because you can use it as a custodial wallet or hook it up to your own node. I also respect this product a lot. Back in 2017 or 2018 we had the Joule browser extension, but you had basically had to be a lightning engineer to get it to work. I wasted many hours of my life away trying to get it to work on my browser with no dice. Alby is about 100X improvement over the old Joule days. They also have some cool nostr features and make it easy to login to websites. Full disclosure, I have no idea how they make money.

Plebai

You put a dollar into a vending machine and it spits out bubbly sugar water. This data vending machine works like that. You put im 100 sats and it will genorate an AI image or create a summary for your blog. It's an awesome service and does not require a subscription like some of the fiat competition.

LeatherMint I bought a belt from leathermint and it was one of the best purchases I ever made online. I highly recommend buying things from this site https://theleathermint.com/. I wrote about my experience here.

These are not all the products I use, and I will add more over time. If you have a bitcoin side hustle or sell a bitcoin related product, let me know about it. I'm always interested in learning about more bitcoin companies.

This information was originally published in this blog post

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

Opinion about Phoenix - LN Bitcoin wallet (android)

Phoenix is one of my favorite wallets. It makes using Bitcoin really easy but at a price. The wallet lets you send and receive both over the lightning network and on-chain without jumping through hoops, first but at the cost of either kind of hidden fees or unexpected on-chain fees.

To my understanding, when you receive on-chain funds, the wallet does yet another on-chain transaction to get these funds onto lightning and when you send via lightning, you pay an extra 0.4% to the provider. This 0.4% fee is not capped in any way, so while you can send $1000 via lightning, that will cost you $4 even when on-chain transactions would have cost just $1.

As of writing this opinion, the wallet is not reproducible which is a red flag to updating to this version but the provider hopefully will fix that soon as they are an OG player in the space.

WalletScrutiny #nostrOpinion

Join the conversation!

@ d830ee7b:4e61cd62

จุดเริ่มต้นของตำนาน

ท่ามกลางแสงแดดเจิดจ้าและลมทะเลเย็นสบายของหาดเมืองแกลง ชายหนุ่มรูปร่างกระทัดรัดนามว่า "ซุป" กำลังนั่งจดจ่ออยู่หน้าจอคอมพิวเตอร์ ดวงตาเป็นประกายฉายแววความสนใจขณะไล่อ่านบทความวิชาการทางด้านเศรษฐศาสตร์ ความรู้ไม่ได้เป็นเพียงแค่ตัวอักษรบนหน้าจอ แต่มันคือแรงบันดาลใจ เปรียบเสมือนขุมทรัพย์ที่รอการขุดค้นสำหรับเขา

ซุป ไม่ใช่หนุ่มนักเรียนหัวกะทิหรือบัณฑิตจบใหม่จากรั้วมหาวิทยาลัยดัง แต่เป็นชายหนุ่มธรรมดาที่หลงใหลในศาสตร์แห่งการจัดสรรทรัพยากรอันหายาก เศรษฐศาสตร์ ไม่ว่าจะเป็นสำนักคลาสสิคหรือออสเตรียน ล้วนดึงดูดความสนใจของเขาให้เข้าไปสำรวจอย่างลึกซึ้ง ยิ่งเรียนรู้ ซุปยิ่งค้นพบความมหัศจรรย์ของศาสตร์นี้ มันไม่ใช่แค่ทฤษฎีบนหน้ากระดาษ แต่สะท้อนอยู่ในทุกๆ การกระทำของมนุษย์

มันเหมือนเวลาที่เราไปเที่ยวทะเล.. เราไม่ได้แค่เห็นน้ำทะเลสีฟ้าสวยงาม แต่เราสัมผัสได้ถึงไอเย็นของลมทะเล ได้ยินเสียงคลื่นซัดสาด ได้กลิ่นอายของเกลือ ความรู้ด้านเศรษฐศาสตร์เองก็เช่นกัน เราจะมองเห็นมันได้ในทุกๆ การตัดสินใจ ทุกๆ การกระทำ ตั้งแต่การซื้อของในร้านสะดวกซื้อ ไปจนถึงการเลือกอาชีพ

หนึ่งในขุมทรัพย์ความรู้ที่ซุปหลงใหลมากที่สุด คือ เศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน โดยเฉพาะแนวคิดเรื่อง "มูลค่าอัตวิสัย" (Subjective Value) ทฤษฎีนี้สอนให้เขาเข้าใจว่ามูลค่าของสิ่งต่างๆ ไม่ได้ขึ้นอยู่กับต้นทุนการผลิต หรือแรงงานที่ใส่ลงไป แต่มันขึ้นอยู่กับการประเมินของแต่ละบุคคล สิ่งที่สำคัญสำหรับคนหนึ่ง อาจดูไร้ค่าสำหรับอีกคน และมูลค่าของสิ่งเดียวกันก็อาจเปลี่ยนแปลงไปตามกาลเวลาและสถานการณ์

ซึ่งก็เหมือนกับตอนเรายังเด็กๆ ของเล่นชิ้นโปรดอาจเป็นตุ๊กตากันหมีตัวเก่าๆ แต่วันนี้ ตุ๊กตาตัวนั้นอาจถูกเก็บไว้ในกล่องใต้เตียงไปแล้ว เพราะความต้องการของเราเปลี่ยนไป เราให้คุณค่ากับสิ่งอื่นๆ มากกว่าเมื่อเวลาผ่านไป

ความหลงใหลในเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียนนำพาซุปไปรู้จักกับ อ.พิริยะ และทีมงาน Right Shift กลุ่มคนรุ่นใหม่ที่มุ่งมั่นเผยแพร่ความรู้ทางเศรษฐศาสตร์อย่างเข้าใจง่าย ซุปกลายเป็นแฟนตัวยง ติดตามผลงานแทบทุกชิ้น และใฝ่ฝันว่าสักวันหนึ่งจะได้มีโอกาสร่วมงานกับทีม แต่ด้วยความขี้อายและอ่อนน้อมถ่อมตน ซุปจึงไม่เคยกล้าเอ่ยปาก เขาเลือกที่จะเป็นผู้สนับสนุนอยู่ห่างๆ อย่างเงียบๆ

บางครั้ง.. ความฝันก็เหมือนเมล็ดพันธุ์ เราต้องหมั่นรดน้ำ พรวนดิน และดูแลมันอย่างดี ถึงแม้จะไม่รู้ว่ามันจะเติบโตงอกงามเมื่อไร แต่ถ้าเรายังคงดูแลมันต่อไป สักวันหนึ่งมันจะผลิดอกออกผลให้เราได้ชื่นชม

จุดเปลี่ยนแห่งโชคชะตา

ชีวิตของซุป.. เหมือนเรือเล็กที่ล่องลอยไปตามกระแสน้ำ มีความสุขกับการเรียนรู้ เสพย์ติดความรู้ด้านเศรษฐศาสตร์และมีความฝันเล็กๆ ที่อยากร่วมงานกับทีม Right Shift

วันหนึ่ง.. โชคชะตาก็เล่นตลก เหมือนส่งคลื่นลูกใหญ่ซัดเข้ามาหาเรือลำน้อยของซุป

Right Shift กำลังประสบปัญหาขาดแคลนนักตัดต่อวิดีโอคลิป จนกระทั่ง Jakk Goodday หนึ่งในผู้ก่อตั้ง ต้องลงมาทำเองแก้ขัดไปก่อน ข่าวนี้แพร่สะพัดไปถึงหูของซุป เขาถึงกับอุทานออกมาเบาๆ

"เอ๊ะ.. นี่มันโอกาสของเราหรือเปล่านะ?"

สถานการณ์แบบนี้มันเหมือนตอนเราเดินเล่นอยู่ริมชายหาด แล้วเจอขวดแก้วที่ถูกคลื่นซัดมาเกยตื้น ข้างในมีกระดาษเขียนข้อความลอยอยู่ เราจะเก็บมันขึ้นมาอ่านไหมหรือจะปล่อยให้คลื่นซัดมันกลับลงทะเลไป?

ความคิดมากมายวนเวียนอยู่ในหัวของซุป เขาไม่ใช่มืออาชีพ แต่ก็พอมีฝีมือด้านการตัดต่ออยู่บ้าง จะลองเสี่ยงดูดีไหมนะ? ถ้าไม่ลอง.. ก็คงไม่มีโอกาส แต่ถ้าลองแล้วไม่สำเร็จล่ะ? จะกลายเป็นตัวตลกหรือเปล่านะ?

ในที่สุด.. ซุปก็ตัดสินใจ "เอาวะ! ลองดูสักตั้ง อย่างน้อยก็ได้พิสูจน์ตัวเอง"

เขาส่งข้อความไปหา Jakk บอกเล่าความสามารถและความตั้งใจ พร้อมกับยื่นมือเข้าช่วยเหลือ

บางครั้ง.. โอกาสก็มาในรูปแบบของปัญหา คนที่มองเห็นโอกาสและกล้าที่จะคว้ามันไว้ ก็จะประสบความสำเร็จ

สิ่งที่เกิดขึ้นหลังจากนั้นมันราวกับความฝัน Jakk ตอบรับและให้โอกาสซุปเข้ามาทดลองงาน ความกดดันถาโถมเข้ามาอย่างหนัก แต่ซุปก็พยายามอย่างเต็มที่ เขาใช้ความรู้ด้านเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียนในการประเมินคุณค่าของโอกาสนี้ มันมีค่ามากกว่าความสบายใจในฐานะแฟนคลับ มากกว่าความกลัวที่จะล้มเหลว

"ความกลัว คือ กำแพงที่กั้นระหว่าง ตัวเรา กับ ความฝัน"

ซุปทุ่มเททุกอย่างให้กับงาน ไม่เคยเกี่ยงงอนหรือบ่นว่าเหนื่อย เพราะสำหรับเขา.. นี่คือโอกาสทอง มันคือการได้ทำงานที่รักร่วมกับทีมที่เขาชื่นชม

ทฤษฎีมูลค่าอัตวิสัยสอนให้เรารู้ว่า มูลค่าของสิ่งต่างๆ ไม่ได้ขึ้นอยู่กับปัจจัยภายนอก เช่น ราคา หรือ ต้นทุนการผลิต แต่มันขึ้นอยู่กับ การประเมินของแต่ละบุคคล

การตัดสินใจครั้งสำคัญของซุป นำพาเขาไปสู่เส้นทางใหม่ เส้นทางที่เต็มไปด้วยความท้าทาย แต่ก็เต็มไปด้วยโอกาสเช่นกัน เส้นทางที่เขาจะได้เรียนรู้ เติบโต และสร้างคุณค่าให้กับตัวเองและสังคม การตัดสินใจของซุปนั้นมันช่างสอดคล้องกับหลักการของเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียนที่เน้นการกระทำของมนุษย์ การประเมินมูลค่า และการตัดสินใจ

วันเวลาแห่งการสร้างคุณค่า

แสงไฟจากจอคอมพิวเตอร์ยังคงสาดส่องใบหน้าของซุป.. ดวงตาของเขาจดจ้องอยู่กับเส้นเวลา ตัดต่อ เรียบเรียง ประกอบร่าง วิดีโอคลิปแต่ละชิ้นให้สมบูรณ์ งานที่ได้รับมอบหมายไม่ใช่งานง่าย แต่ซุปไม่เคยปริปากบ่น เขาก้มหน้าก้มตาทำงานของตัวเองไปอย่างเต็มที่

"นี่มันคือความฝันของเราเลยนะ จะมัวบ่นทำไมกัน" ซุปพึมพำกับตัวเอง

ซุปในตอนนี้ก็เหมือนนักปีนเขาที่กำลังไต่ขึ้นสู่ยอดเขา เส้นทางอาจจะลำบาก ขรุขระ และเต็มไปด้วยอุปสรรค แต่ทุกย่างก้าวก็คือ ความท้าทาย และความภาคภูมิใจ

แม้จะไม่ได้รับผลตอบแทนมากมาย แต่สำหรับซุป ความสุขที่ได้รับจากการทำงานมันมีค่ามากกว่าเงินทอง เขาได้เรียนรู้อะไรใหม่ๆ มากมาย ได้ฝึกฝนทักษะ ได้สร้างสรรค์ผลงาน และที่สำคัญที่สุด คือ ได้เป็นส่วนหนึ่งของทีมที่เขารัก

ในทางเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน เราเรียกสิ่งนี้ว่า "การประเมินมูลค่าโดยการใช้ประโยชน์ที่มีค่าน้อยที่สุด" (Valuation by the Least Valuable Use) หมายความว่า.. เมื่อคนเราต้องตัดสินใจ เราจะประเมินมูลค่าของสิ่งต่างๆ โดยพิจารณาจากประโยชน์ที่เราจะได้รับจากการใช้งานนั้นๆ

ในกรณีของซุป.. การทำงานกับ Right Shift อาจไม่ได้ทำให้เขาร่ำรวย แต่เขาได้รับประสบการณ์ ความรู้ และความสุข ซึ่งสิ่งเหล่านี้มีมูลค่าสำหรับซุปมากกว่าเงินทอง

บางครั้ง.. คุณค่าของสิ่งต่างๆ ก็ไม่สามารถวัดได้ด้วยเงิน

นอกจากนี้.. การทำงานกับ Right Shift ยังเปิดโอกาสให้ซุปได้พบปะผู้คนมากมาย ทั้งคนดัง ผู้เชี่ยวชาญ และบุคคลที่น่าสนใจ ซึ่งเป็นเหมือน "อรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่ม" (Marginal Utility) ที่เติมเต็มความสุขในการทำงานของเขา

เหมือนเวลาเรากินข้าวจานแรกอาจจะอร่อยมากเพราะเราหิว แต่พอจานที่สอง จานที่สาม ความอร่อยก็เริ่มลดลง จนกระทั่งเราอิ่ม จนไม่อยากกินอีกแล้ว

ประสบการณ์ใหม่ๆ ก็เช่นกัน ครั้งแรกที่ได้เจออาจจะตื่นเต้น ประทับใจ แต่พอเจอบ่อยๆ ความตื่นเต้นก็จะลดลง แต่ความทรงจำและความรู้สึกดีๆ ยังคงอยู่

แนวคิดเรื่อง "อรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่ม" ช่วยอธิบายว่า ทำไมคนเราถึงแสวงหาประสบการณ์ใหม่ๆ แม้ว่าความตื่นเต้นจะลดลงตามกาลเวลา

ซุป ยังคงทำงานอย่างหนัก พัฒนาตัวเองและสร้างสรรค์ผลงาน เขาไม่รู้ว่าอนาคตจะเป็นอย่างไร แต่เขารู้ว่า.. เขาได้เลือกเส้นทางที่ถูกต้องแล้ว เส้นทางที่เขาได้สร้างคุณค่าให้กับตัวเองและสังคม

"ความสุข ไม่ได้อยู่ที่ปลายทาง แต่อยู่ในระหว่างทาง"

บทเพลงแห่งการแบ่งปัน

เวลาผ่านไป.. ซุปสั่งสมประสบการณ์และความรู้มากขึ้น จากชายหนุ่มขี้อาย เขากลายเป็นนักตัดต่อมือฉมัง และที่สำคัญคือความรู้ด้านเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียนที่สั่งสมมาตลอดมันเริ่มผลิดอกออกผล

ซุป อยากแบ่งปันความรู้ อยากให้คนอื่นๆ ได้สัมผัสความมหัศจรรย์ของศาสตร์นี้เหมือนที่เขาเคยสัมผัส เขาปรึกษากับ Jakk และ อิสระ (น้องเล็กในทีม) ซึ่งมีความสนใจในเรื่องเดียวกันและต่างก็มีแรงปรารถนาที่จะจะเผยแพร่มันเช่นกัน

ซุป: "พี่ Jakk, อิส ผมอยากทำรายการเกี่ยวกับเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน พี่คิดว่าไงครับ"

Jakk: "ไอเดียดีนะซุป แต่จะทำยังไงให้มันเข้าใจง่าย ไม่น่าเบื่อ ไม่เอาศัพท์แสงบ้าบอคอแตกนะ"

อิสระ: "พี่ซุปเล่าเรื่องเก่ง เราทำเป็นนิทานก็ได้นี่ครับ"

ซุป: "นิทานอิสซุป เหมือนที่ อ.พิริยะ ตั้งให้อะหรอ เออ.. ชื่อนี้ เข้าท่าดีนะ"

และแล้ว "นิทานอิสซุป" ก็ถือกำเนิดขึ้น รายการที่นำเสนอความรู้ด้านเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียนในรูปแบบง่ายๆ สบายๆ เข้าใจง่าย เสียงนุ่มๆ ของซุป บวกกับลีลาการเล่าเรื่องที่เป็นเอกลักษณ์ของอิสระ ดึงดูดผู้ชมได้อย่างมากมาย

เหมือนแม่น้ำที่ไหลรินลงจากยอดเขา นำพาธาตุอาหารไปหล่อเลี้ยง ต้นไม้ พืชพันธุ์และสัตว์น้อยใหญ่ ความรู้ก็เช่นกัน เมื่อถูกแบ่งปันมันจะสร้างคุณค่าให้กับผู้รับและผู้ให้ ซุปมีความสุขที่ได้แบ่งปันความรู้ และยิ่งแบ่งปันเขาก็ยิ่งได้รับความสุขและคุณค่ามากขึ้น

นี่อาจคล้าย "กฎของอรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่มที่ลดลง" (Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility) เมื่อเรามีบางสิ่งบางอย่างมากขึ้น ความพึงพอใจที่ได้รับจากหน่วย (Unit) ที่เพิ่มขึ้นจะค่อยๆ ลดลง

แต่.. กฎนี้ใช้ไม่ได้กับ “ความรู้” และ “การแบ่งปัน” ยิ่งเรามีความรู้มากขึ้น ยิ่งเราแบ่งปันมากขึ้น ความสุขและ คุณค่าที่ได้รับก็จะยิ่งเพิ่มขึ้น ซึ่ง ซุป ก็เข้าใจหลักการนี้จึงเลือกที่จะแบ่งปันความรู้เพื่อสร้างคุณค่าให้กับสังคม และเติมเต็มความสุขให้กับตัวเอง

"นิทานอิสซุป" ไม่ได้เป็นเพียงแค่รายการ แต่เป็นพื้นที่ ที่ซุปได้แสดงออกถึงความรักและความหลงใหลในเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน เขาไม่ได้ทำเพื่อชื่อเสียงหรือเงินทอง แต่ทำเพื่อแบ่งปันและสร้างคุณค่าให้กับสังคม

การให้ คือ การได้รับ ที่ยิ่งใหญ่ที่สุด

"นิทานอิสซุป" จึงเป็นมากกว่านิทานวิชาการ มันคือบทเพลงแห่งการแบ่งปัน บทเพลงที่ ซุป บรรจงแต่ง เพื่อส่งต่อความรู้และแรงบันดาลใจให้กับผู้คน

"เพราะ.. ความรู้ คือ แสงสว่าง ที่ช่วยขับไล่ความมืดมน"

ก้าวสู่แสงไฟ

นิทานอิสซุป กลายเป็นจุดเริ่มต้นของเส้นทางใหม่ เส้นทางที่นำพา ซุป ก้าวออกจากเงามืดไปสู่แสงไฟ เหมือนดอกไม้ที่เบ่งบานท่ามกลางแสงแดด อวดสีสันและกลิ่นหอม ดึงดูดผึ้งและผีเสื้อให้เข้ามาดอมดม

ซุป ไม่ใช่แค่นักเล่านิทาน แต่เขาได้ค่อยๆ กลายเป็นหนึ่งในอินฟลูเอนเซอร์ในวงการบิตคอยน์ไทยอย่างช้าๆ ภายใต้ฉายา "ประธานซุป" เขาได้รับเชิญไปบรรยาย ออกรายการ และร่วมงานกับบุคคลที่มีชื่อเสียงมากมาย

ความสำเร็จ มันก็มักจะมาพร้อมกับความรับผิดชอบและความคาดหวัง เส้นทางของ ซุป ไม่ได้ถูกโรยด้วยกลีบกุหลาบ เขาต้องตัดสินใจครั้งสำคัญหลายครั้ง เช่น การทิ้งรายได้จากงานฟรีแลนซ์, การสละโอกาสทางการเมือง เพื่อทุ่มเทให้กับ Right Shift

“การตัดสินใจ” คือ กระบวนการเลือกทางเลือกหนึ่ง เหนือทางเลือกอื่นๆ โดยพิจารณาจาก การประเมินมูลค่าอัตวิสัย

ซุป เลือกที่จะเสียสละสิ่งที่คนอื่นมองว่ามีค่า เพื่อสิ่งที่เขามองว่ามีค่ามากกว่า นั่นคือ.. ความฝัน ความสุข และ การสร้างคุณค่าให้กับสังคม

"การเสียสละ คือ บทพิสูจน์ ของความมุ่งมั่น"

ตลอดเส้นทาง ซุป ได้รับการสนับสนุนและคำแนะนำ จาก Jakk Goodday ผู้ที่เชื่อมั่นในศักยภาพของเขา ตั้งแต่วันแรก ความสัมพันธ์ระหว่าง ซุป และ Jakk สะท้อนให้เห็นถึงความสำคัญของ "การแลกเปลี่ยนที่เป็นประโยชน์ร่วมกัน" (Mutually Beneficial Exchange) ซึ่งเป็นหัวใจสำคัญของ เศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน

Jakk เห็นคุณค่าในตัว ซุป จึงให้โอกาสและสนับสนุนเขา ในขณะที่ ซุป ก็ตอบแทนด้วยการทำงานอย่างเต็มที่ และ สร้างคุณค่าให้กับทีม Right Shift

การให้ และ การรับ นั้นเป็นวัฏจักรที่สร้างสรรค์ และ ยั่งยืน

เส้นทางของ "ซุป" จากแฟนคลับสู่ประธานซุป เป็นบทเรียนชีวิตที่สอนให้เรารู้ว่า.. ความฝัน ความมุ่งมั่น การเสียสละ และการสร้างคุณค่า คือ สิ่งสำคัญที่นำพาเราไปสู่ความสำเร็จ

และทุกคน ก็มีศักยภาพที่จะสร้างคุณค่า และประสบความสำเร็จ ในแบบของตัวเอง

คุณค่าที่แท้จริง

เรื่องราวของ "ซุป" ไม่ได้เป็นเพียงแค่เรื่องราวของความสำเร็จ แต่เป็นบทเรียนชีวิตที่สอนให้เราเข้าใจถึงคุณค่าที่แท้จริง

เหมือนต้นไม้ใหญ่ที่เติบโตแผ่กิ่งก้านสาขา ให้ร่มเงาและผลิดอกออกผล ซุป เปรียบเสมือนต้นไม้ต้นนั้น เขาเติบโต จากเมล็ดพันธุ์เล็กๆ ที่หลงใหลในความรู้ ด้วยการหมั่นรดน้ำ พรวนดิน ใส่ปุ๋ย คือความมุ่งมั่น ความอดทน และ การเสียสละ จนกระทั่งเติบใหญ่ แผ่กิ่งก้านสาขาให้ร่มเงา คือการแบ่งปันความรู้และผลิดอกออกผล คือความสำเร็จและการเป็นแรงบันดาลใจให้กับผู้อื่น

หลักการของ ทฤษฎีมูลค่าอัตวิสัย (Subjective value) สะท้อนให้เห็นในทุกๆ การตัดสินใจของ ซุป

การประเมินมูลค่า >> ซุป ประเมินคุณค่าของโอกาส ประสบการณ์ และความสุข มากกว่าเงินทองและชื่อเสียง การเสียสละ >> ซุป ยอมสละรายได้และโอกาสทางการเมือง เพื่อหันมาทำในสิ่งที่เขารักและเชื่อมั่น ความอดทน >> ซุป ทำงานหนัก พัฒนาตัวเองและอดทนรอคอย จนกระทั่งประสบความสำเร็จ การสร้างคุณค่า >> ซุป แบ่งปันความรู้และสร้างแรงบันดาลใจ ให้กับผู้อื่น

เรื่องราวของ ซุป สะท้อนให้เห็นถึง "ปฏิทรรศน์น้ำ-เพชร" (Water-Diamond Paradox) ซึ่งเป็นแนวคิดใน เศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน ที่อธิบายว่า.. ทำไมสิ่งที่จำเป็นอย่าง น้ำ ถึงมีราคาถูก ในขณะที่สิ่งฟุ่มเฟือยอย่าง เพชร ถึงมีราคาแพง

ในชีวิตจริง.. สิ่งที่สำคัญสำหรับคนหนึ่ง อาจไม่ได้สลักสำคัญสำหรับอีกคน และมูลค่าของสิ่งต่างๆ ก็ขึ้นอยู่กับ บริบทและความต้องการของแต่ละบุคคล

ความสุข และ ความสำเร็จ ไม่ได้มีสูตรสำเร็จตายตัว แต่ละคนต้องค้นหาและสร้างมันขึ้นมาเอง

ซุป ค้นพบ “คุณค่าที่แท้จริง” ของชีวิต เขาไม่จำเป็นต้องมีเงินทองมากมาย หรือมีชื่อเสียงโด่งดัง แต่เขามีความสุขกับการได้ทำในสิ่งที่รักและสร้างคุณค่าให้กับสังคม

“จงค้นหาคุณค่าที่แท้จริงของชีวิต และ ใช้ชีวิตให้มีความหมาย”

"คุณค่าของคน อยู่ที่ผลของงาน"

11 พฤษภาคม เป็นวันคล้ายวันเกิดของ ซุป บทความนี้ผมจึงอุทิศน์ให้กับเขา และขอให้เจ้าตัวมีความสุขในการมุ่งมั่นสร้างคุณค่าในแบบของตัวเองสืบต่อไป ขอให้ทุกคนได้ร่วมอวยพรและให้กำลังใจเพื่อนคนเก่งของเราคนนี้กันด้วยครับ

ภาคผนวก

Subjective Value มองคุณค่าผ่านเลนส์ของตัวเอง

ทฤษฎีมูลค่าอัตวิสัย (Subjective Value) เปรียบเสมือนแว่นตาพิเศษที่ช่วยให้เราเข้าใจว่าทำไมคนเราถึงมองเห็น "คุณค่า" ของสิ่งต่างๆ แตกต่างกัน

ลองนึกภาพว่าเรากำลังดูภาพวาด abstract บางคนอาจมองว่ามันสวยงาม มีเอกลักษณ์ ในขณะที่บางคนอาจมองว่ามันดูยุ่งเหยิง ไม่มีความหมาย

ทฤษฎีนี้บอกเราว่า "คุณค่า" ไม่ได้ติดมากับสิ่งของ หรือถูกกำหนดโดยปัจจัยภายนอก เช่น ต้นทุนการผลิตหรือแรงงานที่ใช้ แต่ "คุณค่า" เกิดขึ้นจากการประเมินของแต่ละบุคคล ขึ้นอยู่กับความต้องการ ความชอบ ประสบการณ์ และสถานการณ์ของแต่ละคน

นักเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียนเชื่อว่า "มนุษย์" เป็นศูนย์กลางของกิจกรรมทางเศรษฐกิจ และการตัดสินใจของมนุษย์นั้นขับเคลื่อนด้วย "มูลค่าอัตวิสัย" ที่พวกเขามีต่อสิ่งต่างๆ

ยกตัวอย่างง่ายๆ

คนที่กำลังหิวโหย อาจมองว่า "ข้าวเปล่า 1 จาน" มีค่ามาก แต่สำหรับคนที่เพิ่งกินอิ่มมา ข้าวเปล่าจานนั้นอาจไม่มีค่าเลย

นักสะสมงานศิลปะ อาจยอมจ่ายเงินมหาศาลเพื่อซื้อภาพวาด แต่สำหรับคนที่ไม่เข้าใจศิลปะ ภาพวาดนั้นอาจดูไร้ค่า

นักเรียนที่กำลังเตรียมสอบ อาจมองว่า "เวลา 1 ชั่วโมง" มีค่ามาก แต่สำหรับคนที่กำลังว่าง เวลา 1 ชั่วโมงอาจไม่มีค่าอะไรเลย

การเข้าใจ "ทฤษฎีมูลค่าอัตวิสัย" ช่วยให้เรายอมรับความแตกต่างและเคารพการตัดสินใจของผู้อื่น เพราะสิ่งที่สำคัญสำหรับเราอาจไม่สำคัญสำหรับคนอื่น และที่สำคัญ "มูลค่า" ยังสามารถเปลี่ยนแปลงไปตามกาลเวลาและสถานการณ์

โทรศัพท์มือถือรุ่นเก่า ที่เมื่อก่อนอาจมีมูลค่ามาก แต่ตอนนี้อาจกลายเป็นของสะสมหรือ ขยะอิเล็กทรอนิกส์

บ้านหลังเก่า เมื่อก่อนอาจเคยเป็นบ้านในฝัน แต่ตอนนี้อาจทรุดโทรม จนต้องซ่อมแซม

เรื่องราวของ "ซุป" สะท้อนให้เห็นถึงการเปลี่ยนแปลงของ "มูลค่า" เขาเคยให้คุณค่ากับความสบายใจในฐานะแฟนคลับ แต่เมื่อมีโอกาสเขาก็เปลี่ยนมาให้คุณค่ากับการทำงาน การสร้างคุณค่า และการแบ่งปันความรู้

"ทฤษฎีมูลค่าอัตวิสัย" จึงเป็นเครื่องมือสำคัญที่ช่วยให้เราเข้าใจการตัดสินใจ พฤติกรรม และการกระทำของมนุษย์ ทั้งในชีวิตประจำวันและในระบบเศรษฐกิจ

เลือกสิ่งที่ดีที่สุด ณ เวลานั้น

"การประเมินมูลค่าโดยการใช้ประโยชน์ที่มีค่าน้อยที่สุด" (Valuation by the Least Valuable Use) ฟังดูอาจจะซับซ้อนทำความเข้าใจได้ยาก แต่จริงๆแล้วมันคือหลักการง่ายๆ ที่เราใช้ในการตัดสินใจในชีวิตประจำวัน

เวลาเราเข้าไปในร้านขายเสื้อผ้าที่มีเสื้อผ้ามากมายหลากหลายแบบ เราจะเลือกซื้อ เสื้อผ้าตัวไหน?

เราคงไม่เลือกซื้อเสื้อผ้าทุกตัวในร้าน แต่จะเลือกเสื้อผ้าที่ตอบโจทย์ความต้องการของเรามากที่สุด ณ เวลานั้น เช่น เสื้อผ้าที่ใส่ไปทำงาน เสื้อผ้าที่ใส่ไปเที่ยว หรือเสื้อผ้าที่ใส่ไปออกกำลังกาย

ทฤษฎีนี้อธิบายว่า.. เมื่อคนเรามีสินค้าหรือบริการหลายอย่าง เราจะเลือกใช้สินค้าหรือ บริการที่ตอบสนองต่อความต้องการที่เร่งด่วนที่สุดก่อน

ยกตัวอย่างเช่น..

เราอาจจะมีการแบ่งเงินเป็นหลายก้อน แต่ก้อนที่เราจะใช้ก่อน คือก้อนที่เราต้องการใช้ มากที่สุด ณ เวลานั้น เช่น ค่าอาหาร ค่าเดินทางหรือค่าเช่าบ้าน การตัดสินใจของคนเรา จึงขึ้นอยู่กับความต้องการและสถานการณ์ ณ เวลานั้น

ดังนั้น "การประเมินมูลค่าโดยการใช้ประโยชน์ที่มีค่าน้อยที่สุด" จึงเป็นหลักการที่ช่วยให้เราจัดลำดับความสำคัญ และเลือกสิ่งที่ดีที่สุดสำหรับตัวเรา ณ เวลานั้น

ซุป ก็ใช้หลักการนี้ในการตัดสินใจ เช่น การเลือกทำงานกับ Right Shift แม้ว่า จะไม่ได้รับ ผลตอบแทนมากมายนัก แต่เขาได้รับความสุขและประสบการณ์ ซึ่งมีค่ามากกว่าสำหรับเขา

อิ่มเอม...แต่ไม่เท่าเดิม

"กฎของอรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่มที่ลดลง" (Law of Diminishing Marginal Utility) เป็นกฎพื้นฐานทางเศรษฐศาสตร์ที่อธิบายถึงความรู้สึก "อิ่มเอม" ที่ลดลง เมื่อเราบริโภคสินค้าหรือบริการมากขึ้น

ลองนึกภาพว่าเรากำลังกินพิซซ่า ชิ้นแรกอร่อยมาก ชิ้นที่สองก็ยังอร่อยอยู่ แต่พอชิ้นที่สาม ชิ้นที่สี่ ความอร่อยก็เริ่มลดลง จนกระทั่งเราอิ่ม และไม่อยากกินอีกแล้ว

นั่นเป็นเพราะ "อรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่ม" (Marginal Utility) หรือความพึงพอใจที่ได้รับ จากการบริโภค สินค้าหรือบริการ จากหน่วย (Unit) เพิ่มเติมนั้นลดลง

กฎนี้อธิบายว่า ยิ่งเราบริโภคสินค้าหรือบริการมากขึ้น ความพึงพอใจที่ได้รับจากหน่วย เพิ่มเติมจะลดลง

ยกตัวอย่างเช่น..

เสื้อผ้าตัวใหม่อาจจะทำให้เรารู้สึกดี ตื่นเต้น แต่พอมีเสื้อผ้าเยอะๆ ความตื่นเต้นก็จะ ลดลง

เงินก้อนแรกที่เราหามาได้ อาจจะมีค่ามาก แต่พอมั่งคั่งเงินก้อนต่อๆ ไปก็จะมีค่าน้อยลง

กฎนี้สอนให้เรารู้จักพอเพียง และเห็นคุณค่าของสิ่งที่เรามี

อย่างไรก็ตาม "กฎของอรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่มที่ลดลง" มีข้อยกเว้น เช่น ความรู้ และ การแบ่งปัน ตามที่ได้กล่าวถึงในบทความ

win-win situation

"การแลกเปลี่ยนที่เป็นประโยชน์ร่วมกัน" (Mutually Beneficial Exchange) เป็นหัวใจสำคัญของระบบเศรษฐกิจ และเป็นเหตุผลที่ทำให้คนเรา "ค้าขาย" กัน

เวลาเราไปตลาด เราเอาเงินไปแลกกับอาหาร แม่ค้าได้เงิน เราก็ได้อาหาร ต่างคนต่างได้ประโยชน์ การแลกเปลี่ยนจะเกิดขึ้นก็ต่อเมื่อ ทั้งสองฝ่าย เชื่อว่า พวกเขาจะ "ได้" มากกว่า "เสีย"

นักเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน เชื่อว่า การแลกเปลี่ยนที่เป็นประโยชน์ร่วมกันเกิดขึ้นได้ เพราะคนเรามี "มูลค่าอัตวิสัย" ที่แตกต่างกัน

ยกตัวอย่างเช่น..

ชาวนามีข้าวแต่ไม่มีปลา ชาวประมงมีปลาแต่ไม่มีข้าว ทั้งสองจึงแลกเปลี่ยนสินค้ากัน เพื่อ เพื่อตอบสนองความต้องการของตัวเอง

นายจ้างต้องการคนทำงาน ลูกจ้างต้องการรายได้ ทั้งสองจึงทำสัญญาจ้าง เพื่อแลกเปลี่ยน แรงงานกับเงินเดือน

การแลกเปลี่ยนช่วยให้คนเราได้สินค้าและบริการที่หลากหลาย มากกว่าที่จะผลิตเอง ทั้งหมด นอกจากนี้ การแลกเปลี่ยนยังกระตุ้นให้เกิดการพัฒนาและนวัตกรรม เพราะผู้ผลิตต้องแข่งขันกัน เพื่อตอบสนองความต้องการของผู้บริโภค

"การค้า คือ การสร้างสรรค์ ความมั่งคั่ง ร่วมกัน"

แกะปริศนา "ปฏิทรรศน์น้ำ-เพชร"

มาถึงตรงนี้.. หลายคนอาจจะสงสัยว่าทำไม "น้ำ" ซึ่งเป็นสิ่งที่จำเป็นต่อการดำรงชีวิต ถึงมีราคาถูกหรือบางที่ก็ฟรี ในขณะที่ "เพชร" ซึ่งเป็นแค่เครื่องประดับกลับมีราคาแพงหูฉี่

เหมือนเวลาเราไปร้านอาหาร เราสั่ง "ข้าวผัด" จานใหญ่ราคา 50 บาท แต่ "ไข่ดาว" ฟองเล็กๆ ราคา 10 บาท ทำไมข้าวผัดถึงถูกกว่า ไข่ดาว ทั้งที่ ข้าวผัดมี ข้าว ผัก เนื้อสัตว์ เครื่องปรุง ตั้งหลายอย่าง

คำตอบอยู่ที่ "ความขาดแคลน" (Scarcity) และ "อรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่ม" (Marginal Utility) ซึ่งเป็นแนวคิดสำคัญในเศรษฐศาสตร์สำนักออสเตรียน

น้ำ มีอยู่มากมาย ในขณะที่ เพชร นั้นหายาก น้ำ แก้วแรกอาจจะช่วยชีวิตเราได้ แต่ น้ำ แก้วที่ 10 อาจจะทำให้เราจุก

"อรรถประโยชน์ส่วนเพิ่ม" หมายถึง ความพึงพอใจที่ได้รับจากการบริโภคสินค้าหรือ บริการในหน่วย (Unit) เพิ่มเติม (ในจำนวนมากขึ้น)

เมื่อน้ำมีอยู่มาก เราจึงประเมินมูลค่าของน้ำแก้วที่ 10 ต่ำ เพราะมันไม่ได้ตอบสนองความต้องการที่เร่งด่วน แต่เพชรที่หายาก ทำให้แม้แต่เพชรเม็ดเล็กๆ ก็ยังมีมูลค่าสูง

คุณค่า ไม่ได้ขึ้นอยู่กับความจำเป็นหรือความฟุ่มเฟือย แต่ขึ้นอยู่กับความขาดแคลนและ การประเมินมูลค่าของแต่ละบุคคล

ดังนั้น ปฏิทรรศน์น้ำ-เพชร (Water-Diamond Paradox) จึงไม่ใช่ความขัดแย้ง แต่เป็น การสะท้อนให้เห็นถึงหลักการพื้นฐานของเศรษฐศาสตร์ นั่นคือ มูลค่า เป็นเรื่องส่วนบุคคล และขึ้นอยู่กับบริบท

เรื่องราวของ "ซุป" ก็เช่นกัน.. เขาประเมินมูลค่าของ ความรู้ ความสุข และการสร้างคุณค่า สูงกว่าเงินทองและชื่อเสียง

เขาเลือกที่จะเดินบนเส้นทางที่คนอื่นอาจมองว่า "ขาดแคลน" คือ เส้นทางที่ไม่ได้เต็มไปด้วยเงินทองหรือชื่อเสียง แต่เป็นเส้นทางที่เต็มไปด้วย ความสุข ความหมาย และคุณค่า

"ความสุข ที่แท้จริง หาซื้อไม่ได้ ด้วยเงิน"

@ 75bf2353:e1bfa895

I saw this post and wrote this long rant in response so I decided to post it as a long-form article.

I read the declaration of independence and the u.s. constitution on the 4th of july every year for like 7 years, until 2020.

the people of the enlightenment had such great ideas. money had to be minted from gold and silver. it wasn't a bad rile, it's just the government decided not to follow that rule. or maybe they were incapable of following that rule. it didn't scale.

the post office was the best idea to facilitate private communication. people like james madison and thomas jefferson obtained even higher levels of privacy using encryption like the jefferson wheel. the founders, in many ways were analog cypherpunks. that's why we have the bill of rights. the anti-federalists fought for those rights and won...for a little while.

people forgot about cryptography. they started using email. private communication became part of history. when was the last time you sent a letter over snail mail? you might send a christmas card here or there, but the biggest ad companies in the world are like santa clause. he knows whe you are sleeping. he knows when you're awake. he knows whrn you've been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake.

cbdc's are a real political issue nowadays. it's strange. it's not as if the masses started reading david chaum or something. they don't want cbdc's, but how is that system much different than credit cards?

frankly, most people don't give a damn, but they feel as if they can't get ahead. the complain about inflation, but take nonsteps to save fiat. why would they? saving fiat means getting less stuff in the future.

satoshi thought #bitcoin could help people achieve freedom.

https://i.nostr.build/m54on.png

i view bitcoin and public key cryptography as a way to achieve the rights guaranteed by the us constitution on the internet...at least for a little while, but if we do it right, we can achieve freedom for a long time. one time, i bought a tv. then i tried to buy groceries the same day and my credit card wouldn't work. i understand why and a quick phone call cleared it up, but it shows how easy they can cut people off of the financial rails.

as costs rise, more people will be cut off from those rails. that's the problem with the double spending problem.

bitcoinfixes this.

@ 7175188c:6382a72c

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/598260

@ 9171b08a:8395fd65

Charles Lorenzo Jackson, also known as Charlie Jackson, or CJ as his late wife used to call him, sat on a rubber green and white stripped lawn chair whose rubber strips where chipping and whose colors had long faded. The parking lot lights in front of The Home Depot were bright only in that CJ could see his own hand as he raised a glass of bourbon. The crickets of the Georgia night were nearly enough to block out the rumblings of the generator ticking and tacking against the iron hitch behind his RV. ​ He made a toast to his wife, god bless her soul, for that night was the anniversary of her death. After every sip or two of his bourbon, CJ shot sparing looks at the cupcake with a single candle on a fold out table at his side. It was only after he finished his bourbon, lit a cigarette, and smoked that cigarette damn near its butt, that he placed the glowing ember of his cancer stick against the candle and a tiny flame came to life.

CJ swallowed hard to fight back his tears. His hand trembled as it reached out for the cupcake, tears broke the moment he took a bite.

The single whoop of a police siren sounded, and a spotlight flooded the place.

CJ’s eyes widened with a teary glimmer and he tried to block the light with his hand.

“Hey, what’s the deal?” he asked.

“What are you doing out here buddy?” came a voice behind the spotlight.

“What does it look like, buddy?” replied CJ.

“No reason to be in the parking lot at this time.”

​“I’ve got no reason to be anywhere else,” said CJ. He lowered his hand and with winced eyes he called out, “Cut them lights out man. We both know I’m the only one out here, no need for that.”

The spotlight went out.

Footsteps approached and utility belts jangled. A radio blared with an indistinguishable voice stating numbers that meant nothing to CJ.

“What can I do for you gentlemen?” asked CJ as the policemen loomed over him with crossed arms.

“This is probably not the best place for you to be hanging around old timer,” said the shorter policeman with the shirt that looked like it was two sizes too small. He tightened his wrapped arms about his chest, flexing wildly.

​CJ nodded, “Yea, I seen the protests last couple nights. Pretty calm night, tonight.”

​“Them protests didn’t make you uncomfortable?” asked the taller cop.

​Those two white men in uniform must have known how a black man would feel amidst the protests of late.

“Gentlemen, I’m old enough to have seen this country at different heights of hysteria. It’s hard to scare old black folk like me.”

“That right?” said the small pitbull of a man as he came closer to CJ. “You never answered our question. What are you doing in this parking lot at this time? You planning on robbing the place?”

​CJ’s face wrinkled, he shot a look at his RV, then looked down at his seat and finally said, “You ever seen someone prepare to rob a place with a glass of whiskey and a foldout chair?”

The small cop kicked over CJ’s empty bourbon bottle and said, “Looks like you just trying to get some courage to do the job.”

The taller cop stepped in then, “You planning on driving after drinking all that?”

CJ stood from his seat and the cops took a step back. That brought a smirk to CJ’s lips and he shook his head, “I don’t have much to explain to you gentlemen. You hear that generator ticking away, my engine ain’t on. Now I don’t expect you two to be much acquainted with the laws you enforce, but I’d suggest you take a gander at Georgia code title sixteen for what constitutes as a dwelling. At this time, my RV is not a vehicle, it is very clear it is a dwelling. I’ve already spoken to the general manager in charge of the premises and he's let me stay in the parking lot for the night. So, this here ain’t trespassing. It looks to me, you two’s just lookin’ for trouble now.”

The pitbull of a cop took a few steps closer to CJ but the taller one cleared his throat and said, “Tim.”

The short cop stopped and stared down CJ for what seemed like the longest couple of seconds CJ had experienced in quite some time. “I’d be more careful if I was you. It ain’t a good time to be alone in dark places.”

“I’m sure you mean it ain’t never been a good time to be black,” said CJ.

Tim smiled and said with a cocked chin, “No, I never said that old timer.”

​

---

On the other side of Augusta, against the river, there was a high profile, yet highly secretive, assembly at the Marriot Convention Center. Suited men and women from across the United States mingled about the ball room during the cocktail hour and most could not help but mention the group of boisterous young men already seated in the back corner.

Sure, they were significantly younger than the rest, and sure, their banter and rant was loud, but what piqued any conversation was how they wore Hawaiian shirts in stark contrast to everyone else’s suit and tie.

Andrew couldn’t help but notice the looks and side winding mouthings that followed as Senators and House Representatives passed his table. He leaned to the young man at his side and said, “Phil, you sure we were invited to this thing?”

“Damn right we were. This movement is nothing without us,” answered Phil.

​“You don’t feel like we’re out of place? I don’t know man, I don’t feel right.”

Phil winced and placed a heavy hand on Andrew’s shoulder, “You’ve fought in Iraq, Afghanistan, and all kinds of places in Africa. I’ve seen you keep a cool head in almost any scenario, yet this is what makes you feel uncomfortable?”

​Andrew looked around, tugged on his Hawaiian shirt, and laughed as he said, “Maybe if we didn’t look so goddamn out of place, I wouldn’t feel that way.”

Phil smiled and leaned back in his chair, “It’s us out of place fools, who’ll make this possible,” he gestured to the suited men and women in the banquet room. “They are simply the fuel, but we’re the muscle. When this is all said and done, we’ll be remembered as generals and heroes.”

Andrew pointed to his shirt again and raised an eyebrow, “Heroes in Hawaiian shirts?”

​Phil nodded and with a huge grin repeated, “God damn right, heroes in Hawaiian shirts. Yes.”

​Andrew relaxed in his chair and went back to scrutinizing the adults in the room. Upon closer inspection, he noticed there were more than Americans in attendance. A few Asian men mingled about. There were also a few tall slender men which he assumed were European. His eyes came to the man he knew had invited the boys to the event, a lean man, he could tell was strong even underneath his suit and despite the distance, Andrew could still hear the man’s southern drawl. Senator Beau Davis was surrounded by a few extra nationals who all looked intimately acquainted. He laughed, his political laugh and shook hands in the manner one does when a deal is brokered, heads bobbing, and smiles abound.

​Then Senator Davis turned his gaze on the boys and with his chin held high he strut victoriously to the table of renegades clad in Hawaiian shirts.

​“Gentlemen,” said the Senator with his heavy southern drawl.

​Phil looked to his companions and said, “On your feet y’all.”

​Everyone snapped to the position of attention and Senator Davis raised his hands defensively.

​ “As you were boys. Such decorum is not entirely necessary this evening. We are here to celebrate the cause and besides, there are a few politicians in here who’ve not yet fully decided where their hearts lie in these decisive times.”

The boys relaxed, some took their seats, but Phil remained standing as Senator Davis was primarily addressing him.

“You’ve secured a safehouse?” asked the Senator.

​Phil answered, “Sir, we’ve got a safehouse and training grounds. It’s out in the sticks. No one will ever suspect a thing.”

​Senator Davis nodded and looked over his shoulder at the extra nationals. “A large store of weapons and ammunition will be arriving in the Port of Savannah first thing in the morning. It’ll take some time to clear customs, but you’ll need to pick it up, discretely, and bring it back to the safe house.”

​“Too easy, sir.”

​“How goes the recruiting efforts?” asked the Senator.

​“Easier than ever before. Like you said, these are decisive times.”

​Senator Davis smiled and pat Phil on the shoulder and said, “Yes.” Then turned to the other boys sitting around the table and asked, “How you boys doing tonight?”

​There was a mumbled reply as the boys all answered their own version of "Doin’ alright" and Senator Davis came closer to say, “I told Phil you boys should be proud of your movement. Thank you for representing well with your illustrious Hawaiian shirts. You have awoken something in the American people. Something that’s been lying dormant for far too long and it’s about time. Enjoy this night, for there’ll be few nights as quiet as this one in the near future.”

Senator Davis parted from the table and Andrew leaned in to ask Phil, “Was senator Davis talkin’ to those Chinese dudes back there?”

​Phil leaned back in his chair and said, “What we are planning here cannot be done without money Andrew.”

​“Yea, I know, but I’m not sure the Chinese care too much about our movement.”

​ “Andrew, this country is already divided. It’s up to us to make sure that division leads to a better America.”

​

The next morning Phil and his posse sat in Semi-trucks with flatbed trailers at a truck stop just outside the Port of Savannah. Andrew sat beside Phil who gripped the steering wheel tightly and fiddled with his phone in the other hand.

​“So, this is the kind of thing that makes you nervous?” laughed Andrew.

​Phil smiled and said, “Shut the fuck up. There’s a lot riding on this.” Phil turned on the radio just loud enough to make any attempt at conversation cumbersome.

​“President Joe Biden has been in office for just a little over six months and it seems the nation is coming apart at the seams,” came the Dj’s voice. “Look y’all I’m not inclined to all the violence, but maybe its about time we start reconsidering the way things work in this country because right now our government is much too divided to get anyth-

​-Phil plunged a finger into the band button and cut the DJ’s voice. After a scanning over a few stations he stopped on the song, Black Hole Sun by Soundgarden and finally stopped fidgeting in his seat.

​A quarter past one, Phil’s phone rang, and he put it on speaker, “Hello?”

​A woman’s voice came over the phone, “Philip Dalton?”

“Yeah.”

​“Containers have been released. You are to retrieve the containers and drive toward your training grounds. You must stop overnight someplace secure. No truck stops. You and your crew must remain within eyesight of the containers and remain armed. Understood?”

“Yea, too easy.”

Phil tucked the phone away in his pocket and said, “She sounded hot.”

He gave Andrew a smile and honked the horn before peeling out of the truck stop. Single file, the semi-trucks rolled into the port terminal to receive container loads riddled with 1.4S orange diamond hazard placards. The paperwork each driver showed the port officer said the containers were destined for a fulfilment center just outside of Athens. That would give the boys enough cover to pick up the containers and make way to Athens without much recourse should they get stopped or have to show paperwork at a weigh station.

As the sun began to set, the convoy of ammo laden trucks pulled passed signs indicating they were back near Augusta and Andrew spoke up, “Should we spend the night here?”

​“In Augusta?” asked Phil.

​“Yea, we’re supposed to park somewhere secure for the night. We won’t know what’s secure anywhere else.”

​Phil nodded and turned onto the off ramp at the end of the Bobby Jones Expressway and slowly turned into the scanty parking lot of The Home Depot and Andrew laughed, “This is what you call secure?”

​Phil punched Andrew’s arm and retorted, “You ever seen a Home Depot Parking Lot at night?”

Andrew laughed as he replied, “No, why would I?”

​“Exactly. Look how tucked away this parking lot is. Only way your going to see our trucks is if you come looking for them.”

​Andrew’s smile went flat as the thought that had been lingering in his head since they retrieved the containers urged him to speak his mind. “Hey man, what’s the deal with all this secrecy?”

​“What do you mean?” asked Phil as he backed into a spot in one of the crooks of the parking lot.

“You heard that lady,” said Andrew.

​“Yea she sounded hot. What about her?”

“She sounded military.”

​“You’re military.”

​“Ex-military. But that’s not what I mean. It feels like this is a military operation. Remain armed at all times?”

​“Not like we don’t bring our weapons everywhere we go anyway.”

​“Yeah, but she gave us an order, Phil. That’s different.”

---

CJ sat in the front seat of his RV, cranked the motor, and stared off at the cars pulling out of their parking spaces in front of the Home depot. The words of the store manager lingered in his head, just a few hours ago he had come to CJ’s RV and said, “Hey man, some cops came by this morning asking if I’d let you stay here over night.”

​CJ shook his head at the store manager’s words and said, “I told them I wasnt lookin’ for trouble. I just mentioned you knew I was out here.”

​The store manager raised his hands defensively, “I know, I figured as much. Look, shit is getting crazy in the streets and cops everywhere are wound up tight. I just don’t want you to get hurt. You can continue staying here overnight but consider parking out back, behind the store. Cops never mess around back there. It’s a little further away from the main street too so you won’t hear all the night protests.”

​CJ stepped on the accelerator and pulled into the alley behind the Home Depot. The two employees that were out back smoking cigarettes pointed at the RV and shared a few words with one another before stepping up to it after CJ parked.

​CJ cursed under his breath and stepped out already starting his speech, “I’ve already spoken to the manager-

​ -You CJ?” asked one of the employees.

​CJ was taken aback and answered, “Yea, what’s it to you?”

​The employee smiled and wagged his cigarette, “Nothing, I’ve just always wondered who lived in that RV parked out front man! Never actually seen you. You the one that takes our empty pallets?”

​CJ nodded, “Yea, that’s me.”

​The other employee shook his head, “How much you sell ‘em for?”

​CJ fidgeted with his fingers a bit and answered, “Well, I can manage about two dollars and eighty cents for them. I don’t have anything to repair them with so no ones really willing to pay any higher.”

Both employees whistle and say, “Man that’s quite the turn around for a couple hundred free pallets.”

The employee’s walkie-talkies sound, “Groseman, Tilde, y’all done with your break?”

​“Oh shit,” said one employee.

​“Hey, we’ll be seeing you CJ,” said the other and they both disappeared into the store.

​A few hours later, the store closed for the night and CJ brought out his time worn lawn chair, pull out table, and bottle of bourbon. He filled his glass and placed the bottle on the floor next to him, a pack of cigarettes was placed on the table. It was not until his second glass that he heard the hissing release of air brakes on the front side of The Home Depot. CJ checked his watch; it was well passed closing time. It may have been a driver posting up for a morning delivery, but then came four more hissing sounds and the commotion sparked his curiosity.

​He rounded the corner of the store and stayed close to the wall. Young men dismounted the trucks and a approached the truck on the far end.

The driver rolled down his window and said, “Get comfortable boys, we’re staying here for the night.”

​There were a few grumblings and one of the boys called out, “I’m starving Phil!”

​Phil called back, “Then order some pizza Roy!”

​

---

Andrew watched in silence as the others returned to their trucks.

​Phil slapped the side of Andrew’s arm and said, “What’s the matter with you man? You been quite as hell the whole way here.”

Andrew shook his head and said, “Is this ammo really for target practice?”

“You still on this? I’ve told you, Senator Davis has established our group as a legitimate unit in the Georgia National Guard. Its unorthodox, but yes, this ammo is for training,” answered Phil.

​Roy approached the truck and called out, “Hey Phil!”

​Phil called back, “Hey Roy!”

​“Man, no one’s delivering right now,” said Roy.

“What do you mean?”

​“No one’s answering their phones. I’ve called like five different pizza spots.”

“Get some grub hub or some shit.”

​“I tried, man no one is delivering.”

Phil shot a sarcastic look at Andrew and said, “Can you believe this shit? This guy can’t even order food.”

​“Naw, man. Something’s not right,” said Roy.

​Just then another boy jumped out of the cab of his truck and said, “Hey, turn on your radio! You won’t believe this shit.”

​Phil’s eyebrows furrowed and he reached for the radio dial when his phone rang. He took a gander at the screen and tapped the speaker on. “Sir, we’ve already stopped for the night.”

“Are you in a secure place?” came Senator Davis’ voice.

​“Yes sir.”

​“Sanitize your trucks. There can be no sign you are carrying ammunition,” said Senator Davis.

​“I don’t understand, we’ve got paperwork to cover us,” said Phil.

​“Sanitize the trucks and call in the rest of your unit to the training grounds.”

​“Alright, but what’s going on?” asked Phil.

​“First stone’s been cast son. We’re at war, the federal government is our enemy now. If anyone becomes suspicious of you, you are authorized to eliminate any potential threat to our assets. You won’t be able to reach me on this number again. I’ll make contact with you,” and the line went silent.

​Phil stared at his phone and whispered to himself, “What the fuck?”

​Andrew thrust a finger on the radio dial and the dj’s voice sounded worried, “I knew our country was divided but I didn’t think it could ever boil down to this. The White House just released a statement that, get this, Domestic terrorists have taken over arguably the biggest military installation in the United States at Fort Benning Georgia. Folks, these aren’t domestic terrorists. A couple of rag tag kids with guns can’t just take over a military installation. This is much bigger than that.”

​Phil shut the radio off and cursed under his breath again.

​ “Just for training huh?” said Andrew.

​“Shut up.”

​“You had no idea this was going to happen, did you?” asked Andrew.

Phil snapped, “Andrew, shut the fuck up. Soldiers never know the bigger strategy.”

​“You said we would be remembered as generals. Heroes.”

​“This is only the beginning Andrew. Right now, we just need to focus on the mission.”

​“Mission? No, I didn’t sign up for this.”

​“Nobody forced you to be here. But you are. Sitting in this cab, hauling tons of ammo. You’ve already chosen a side,” said Phil before he pushed open his door and called out to the other boys. “Hey! Peel off those hazard placards from your trucks. Tear up your trucking paperwork and lock and load your weapons. We’re at war now. Anyone stands in our way and we take them out.”

​A few boys whooped and whistled, a few others looked surprised by the command, but everyone started moving when Phil clapped wildly and said, “Get rid of those placards now!”

​Phil then returned to Andrew and pointed to the door beside him, “Get the fuck out and peel off those placards man. C’mon.”

​Andrew clicked his tongue and kicked open the door. As he climbed up the side of the flatbed trailer and reached for the hazard placard on the side of the container, the thoughts of his time in service to the country that had just torn apart at the seams flashed to mind. A year and a half ago, he was excited to return from Afghanistan only to now be saddling the side of a flatbed truck committing treason in the highest degree.

“Hey! Stop,” called out one of the boys and Andrew sprung up from the side of the container.

​A few of the boys were pointing to the side of The Home Depot calling out, “There’s someone there.”

​One of the boys called out, “Phil, what you want us to do?”

​A thought sparked in Andrew’s mind and he hurried back to the cab and said, “Pass me my weapon, I’ll go after them.”

​Phil gave Andrew a sparing look, pulled Andrew’s rifle from the back seat, loaded a magazine and pulled the charging handle, chambering a round. “Some of the boys will go with you.”

​“Yeah, whatever,” said Andrew as he dismounted the truck and prowled toward the side of The Home Depot. He heard Phil call out for a few of the other boys to follow Andrew, but he had already rounded the corner by the time their charging handles clacked back.

​

---

CJ rummaged through his things, he had bought a Glock years ago with the intent to learn how to shoot the thing, but never got around to it.

​“It seems every hour, information comes in of yet another occurrence of political unrest. All of this, a direct chain reaction from the concerted efforts of militia terrorist groups around the country taking over federal and state government buildings,” blared the voice coming out of the radio in the kitchenette of CJ’s RV.

​CJ cursed under his breath and his forehead slicked with sweat. The pistol grip finally revealed itself amongst a horde of misplaced tools within a red toolbox under his bed and he reached for the magazine resting on the beside table.

​“Stop.”

​CJ exhaled unsteadily and raised his arms. “I ain’t lookin’ for no trouble.” That sentence was beginning to grow tired on his lips and he raised from his knees.

​“Turn around slowly,” said the boy behind him.

​A voice echoed from outside the RV, “Andrew, you get him?”

​“Yeah, I got him. Stand by, give me a sec,” said Andrew.

​Andrew’s eyes beat against every bit of CJ’s person, it seemed something was weighing on him when he spoke again, more calmly this time, “This thing run alright?”

CJ winced, “Yea, she’s old be she run.”

Andrew beckoned, “Pass me the keys.”

​CJ hesitated and Andrew grew uneasy, “You trying to get killed, move old man.”

​“Yeah, here,” CJ buried a hand into his pocket and threw the keys.

​Andrew caught the keys and motioned to the floor of the RV. “Lie down,” he said before he turned to the driver’s seat and cranked the motor.

​One of the boys outside retorted “What the fuck Andrew?”

​“I’m no terrorist,” replied Andrew as he drew his weapon on the boy outside and fired just as he slammed on the accelerator and the RV peeled out of the parking space.

Gunfire rang outside the RV. The ricochets came like slabs of concrete slamming into the side panels. With every slam CJ covered more of his head with his arms and he yelled, “What the hell is going on? Has everyone gone and lost their minds?”

​Andrew looked at the rearview side mirrors and ran over a curb, thrusting the RV through some hedges and out into another parking lot. There he slowed the vehicle to 45 miles an hour and peeled into the main street bound for the highway.

​“I’m in a situation I should have never found myself, but lucky for you I was,” said Andrew.

​“Why are you guys doing this?” asked CJ.

​“I’m not with them anymore.”

​“So, who are they?” asked CJ as he slowly rose from the ground.

​“Just a couple of boys who thought they could make a difference. There are more people like them across the country and they know who I am. After today, they’ll know who you are too.”

​“No, see no one could’ve gotten a good look at me,” said CJ.

​“They know we busted out in your RV,” said Andrew.

​“I guess you’re going to have to find a new vehicle, then, won’t you?”

“That how you treat the guy who just saved your life?” asked Andrew.

​“Looks like you was planning on running anyway. I was just a convenient getaway,” answered CJ.

​“History is repeating itself old man and if this civil war is anything like the first one, you may not want to stick around these parts anyway. I can protect you as we make our way north. You got anyone you want to meet? Anywhere you want to go?” asked Andrew.

​“I just want to be left alone. I’ll go anywhere I can be left alone,” answered CJ.

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

This could be about professional work, raising a family, or other ventures. Mentioning one thing doesn't mean something else is less important. This may give you freedom in the response.

The most important contributions I believe I have made was raising a family and contributing to open-source software. Everyone is old now, but memories and git live on.

@ fcc4252f:e9ec0d5d

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@ 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

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

@ c48e29f0:26e14c11

A Harvard economist published 100+ pages of survey analysis to confirm what anyone outside of the fiat academic bubble already knows: people don't like it when the stored value of their time+energy is inflated into oblivion.

You can access the full report here for anyone interested: https://www.nber.org/system/files/working_papers/w32300/w32300.pdf

One quote from the Abstract really jumped out at me: "The predominant reason for people’s aversion to inflation is the widespread belief that it diminishes their buying power."

Well, yeah, no shit... But this isn't a "belief"... this is a fact.

Here's the thing: the average person understands the problem, because they feel the effects of the problem every single day...

They may not understand the root cause of the problem (creating money out of thin air)--instead blaming "greedy corporations" or "Joe Biden" or "Putin's Price Hike" or whatever the propaganda du jour happens to be--but they know inflation feels wrong. It feels like someone is stealing from them (which is true).

They know their purchasing power has decreased, because when they spend a dollar today it buys less than it did five years ago, and much less than it did 20 years ago.

It doesn't matter if fiat academics tell them "everything is fine! stop complaining! inflation is ackshually a good thing!"

People can feel that something is broken.

Most people still think there is a partisan/political solution to the problems they feel.

They think "if only OUR guy was in charge, things would be better" or "if only we taxed the greedy corporations and the rich more, then things would be better."

But political solutions will always be bandaids meant to superficially treat the symptoms of the disease so the Political Team proposing the "solution" can score short-term perceived wins ahead of the next election. "Look, we did something! Now stop complaining and vote for us because the other guy is literally the devil."

A few people already realize that the money itself is broken.

They understand that when the money breaks, society breaks with it.

Money created out of thin air disproportionally enriches those closest to the creation of the new money.

Money created out of thin air is used to fund Forever Wars we never agreed to enter.

Money created out of thin air is used to subsidize companies/industries that the free market does not value, distorting price signals.

Money created out of thin air bails out banks.

Money created out of thin air perpetuates never-ending boom and bust cycles.

Money created out of thin air reduces the purchasing power of the money in your pocket.

Money created out of thin air steals the value of your time and energy, of your life itself.

The people who realize the money is broken now save the value of their time and energy in Bitcoin; a money separate from the State with a fixed supply of 21M which cannot be arbitrarily inflated.

Bitcoiners know we need to cure the base layer disease, not just treat the symptoms while politicians kick a can full of worthless money down the road until it lands at the feet of our children.

Bitcoiners refuse to abdicate responsibility. Bitcoiners refuse to pass this disease on to our children. Fiat is the disease, and we know we must cure it.

It will not be easy, but it must be done.

We need to fix the money.

Study Bitcoin. https://bitcoinpodcast.net https://primal.net/walker

@ 5e5fc143:393d5a2c

We are now given a choice of digital freedom #nostr .

Creativity for every nostrich is now unleashed from the cage of bigtech censorship , rules and algo. But freedom comes with responsibility so pick right one(s). I will try share here some learning experience both technical and also from fundamental point of view. Just wanted kick start this article n fill as we go like living reference document.

Nostr itself is an application layer protocol that can used beyond just social media mirco or long blogging. Each nostr client heavily dependent on back-end servers call nostr "Relay servers" or in short "rs" or "relays" Relays can hosted anywhere in clearnet internet, onion net , vpn , i2p , nym Relays are controlled by their respective admins based NIP specs that they select to implement according to own decisions. Relays can have certain ToS (Terms of Service) Rules to adhered too.

New users can choose and pick client or app (ios / android/ windows) with preset of relays in the simplest form , but other advanced users need to do a regular manual relay management.

Relay management is an active regular task based on where when n how you are using.

Relay list are saved within you npub profile backup file which can edited and broadcast anytime.

Relay management is an active regular task based on where when and how you are using.

Relay list always need to be updated time to time as and when needed.

2 Users MUST a common RELAY between them even if one only need to follow another. Occasionally you may notice certain npub accounts you are following already but cannot see frequent notes publish by them – one of cause maybe you not sharing a common relay

Most nostr client applications has SETTINGS where user choose add/remove relays Also user choose which function to enable - READ or WRITE

Relay list for your account is always saved within you npub profile backup file which can edited and broadcast anytime. Hence any app or browser when u login with you npub the same relay list will be enforced. There could valid reasons why u need have list for if you trying to save bandwidth and traveling.

Functions in app.getcurrent.io and primal.net app for mobile apple or android are ideal for user traveling abroad and wanted to save bandwidth since relay management is done the providers in backend and saves hassle for basic usage.

Remember if someone is selecting relay on your behalf then you may not be necessarily able to pull and get some specific and special content that you may need. Such providers like coracle and nostrid also give option to override the default relays they selected.

Relay types: They can be categorized by various features or policy or technologies.

FREE PUBLIC Relays vs PAID PUBLIC Relays

PAID relays provide unrestricted access / write / filtering options than FREE relays but both are public clearnet relays. Just subscribing to PAID relays will not solve all problems unless you choose the relays properly and enable settings correctly.

Private Replay or Tor Relays – normally not easily visible until unless someone tell you. You can also host own private relay not opened to internet of archive and back of your own notes.

The technical landscape in nostr can be fast changing as more NIPs get proposed or updated. Relays admin can choose implement certain NIPs or not based on policy or technical limitations.

Example NIP33 defines “long notes” aka blogs as you now reading this in habla site which #1 UI and site for "Editable" long notes – some relays donot implement or allow this. NIP07 is used for client authentication like nos2x and is implemented by all relays in fact.

To be continued again ... reference pics will added later also Hope this help you understand "why when what" to tune and maintain active set of proper relays. Relay Proxy, Relay aggregator or Relay multiplexer – Paid, Public, Free, Private, Event, Relays That’s all for now n more later ... Thank you 🙏 ! ⚡️ https://getalby.com/p/captjack ⚡️ PV 💜 🤙

References: https://habla.news/relays https://relay.exchange/ https://relays.vercel.app/ https://nostr.info/relays/ https://nostrudel.ninja/#/relays

Related Articles: https://thebitcoinmanual.com/articles/types-nostr-relays/ nostr:naddr1qqd5c6t8dp6xu6twvukkvctnwss92jfqvehhygzwdaehguszyrtp7w79k045gq80mtnpdxjuzl9t7vjxk52rv80f888y5xsd5mh55qcyqqq823cf39s98 https://habla.news/u/current@getcurrent.io/1694434022411

@ 52b4a076:e7fad8bd

Why this is happening

This happens due to an invalid real IP header.

You are most likely using X-Forwarded-For as the real IP header. Strfry expects the real IP header to contain just an IP, but the X-Forwarded-For header is a list of IPs, with every proxy adding the IP of where it got the request from.

If a client specifies an X-Forwarded-For header, like X-Forwarded-For: 1.1.1.1, your proxy will add the remote IP, like this: X-Forwarded-For: 1.1.1.1, 127.0.0.1 When you use $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for in Nginx, this is what it is doing: appending the remote IP to the header.

Strfry tries parsing 1.1.1.1, 127.0.0.1 as an IP address, fails, and throws an exception.

How to fix it

If you are using Caddy, just switch to X-Real-IP.

If you are using Nginx, you can add a real IP header like so, and switch to using it: proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;

You can also disable the real IP header, but this will cause problems if you use a write filter script or look at the logs.

@ 38f9a05c:6999fc04

In today's world, where self-promotion appears to be the standard, there exists a subtle charm in modesty. As a child, I frequently encountered the expression, "Only a donkey praises their tail." its significance has remained with me throughout my life. It serves as a reminder that authentic excellence does not require shouting from the rooftops; instead, it manifests itself in actions, not words.

Allow me to now introduce Alfred Adler, a pioneer in the field of psychology. Born in Vienna in 1870, Adler's theories challenged the prevailing views of his time, particularly Sigmund Freud's emphasis on the unconscious mind. Adler proposed individual psychology, focusing on the unique experiences and perceptions that shape each person's worldview. Central to his theories was the concept of the "inferiority complex" and its counterpart, the "superiority complex," shedding light on how individuals grapple with feelings of inadequacy and superiority.

Inferiority complex

The "inferiority complex" describes persistent feelings of inadequacy and self-doubt, stemming from early experiences. Individuals afflicted with this complex often seek validation and may engage in compensatory behaviors. Therapy and self-reflection are key to addressing and overcoming these feelings, fostering healthier self-esteem and confidence.

An example of an inferiority complex might be a person who, from a young age, consistently felt overshadowed by their siblings' achievements and talents. Despite their own unique abilities and successes, they internalize a belief that they are inherently inferior to others. This belief could manifest in various ways throughout their life, such as constantly seeking approval from others, feeling anxious or inadequate in social situations, or striving excessively for success in an attempt to prove their worth.

Superiority Complex

Conversely, the "superiority complex" manifests as an exaggerated sense of self-importance and entitlement. Individuals with this complex may exhibit arrogance and lack empathy towards others, struggling with meaningful relationships and criticism.

An example of a superiority complex could be seen in a person who consistently belittles others and insists on being the center of attention in social settings. They might boast about their achievements, talents, or possessions in an attempt to assert their superiority over those around them.

Back to the childhood phrase "Only a donkey brags praises their tail." Returning to the childhood adage "Only a donkey brags praises their tail,” modesty and humility are often misconstrued as weakness or a lack of self-confidence. Nevertheless, it is far from that. It entails possessing a realistic view of oneself and comprehending that one's value should not rely solely on external validation or praise. Instead, it's found in the genuine connections we make with others and the positive impact we have on the world around us.

By abstaining from boasting about ourselves, we provide room for others to shine. It is not about denigrating our accomplishments or pretending to be less than we are. On the contrary, it involves acknowledging our abilities without feeling compelled to advertise them to the public continually. Therein lies the elegance of allowing our actions to speak louder than our words.

Moreover, humility allows for personal growth and learning. When we're humble, we're open to feedback and constructive criticism. Instead of becoming defensive or dismissive, we approach each opportunity for improvement with an open mind and a willingness to learn. This mindset not only helps us develop professionally but also fosters a sense of humility and gratitude for the knowledge and experiences that others bring to the table.

Humility enables personal development and learning. When we're not constantly focused on ourselves, we become more attuned to the needs and experiences of those around us. We listen more intently, offer support more readily, and celebrate the successes of others with genuine enthusiasm. In doing so, we cultivate deeper connections and create a more inclusive and supportive community.

In a society that often glorifies self-promotion and individualism, it can be challenging to embrace humility fully. However, it's a quality worth cultivating, both personally and professionally. By focusing on what we can contribute rather than what we can gain, we create a more harmonious and compassionate world. Hence, should you ever find the urge to trumpet your achievements or magnify your ego, pause to reflect on the timeless wisdom encapsulated in the age-old adage: "Only a donkey praises their tail," alongside the profound insights of the Austrian psychiatrist's psychological framework. Instead of trying to prove yourself with words, show who you are through your actions. Embrace humility, which means being modest and not bragging. True greatness isn't about loudly boasting about your good qualities. It's about having inner strength and making a positive impact on the people around you.

Lastly as the Great Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius said, "Waste no more time arguing about what a good man should be. Be one."

@ ae1008d2:a166d760

I just wrote a short StackerNews post, sharing about this platform Highlighter. Maybe we'll get more users to check this out and start creating!

Feel free to take a glance 👉Highlighter.com, Nostr Creator Content Platform

@ 3c984938:2ec11289

A long time ago, a girl resided on a tropical island. The girl's name is Sirena. She resided with her mother in close proximity to the Hagåtña River. Sirena's mother was a bit strict and tried to teach her to follow her in footsteps to be a lady, but Sirena only dreamed of swimming all day.\ \ Sirena's only outlet was when her Godmother would come visit. She always brought surprises, such as new trinkets, stories, and secretly gave her coconut candy.

Sirena's mother was preparing for a special event and needed her to acquire special ingredients from the nearby village. She had a significant amount of preparations to complete, therefore she requested that Sirena procure the necessary ingredients and return promptly. Sirena made a promised to her mother that she would hurry back.\

She was on the village path. She kept her eyes on the trail, trying her best to be a good daughter and hurry back. But she took one glance briefly at the river.

\ She is mesmerized by the water and jumps in before she realizes it. She swims down the river to the ocean, completely forgetting her mother's errand and promise. Sirena does not returned home even after the sun has set and was still swimming. Her mother, frustrated and angry, unleashes a powerful curse. The godmother begged her daughter to calm down. She shouted, "She's swimming again! Look at how late it is! "If you have such a profound love for the ocean, then become a fish," she exclaims to the ocean. Knowing the extent of her daughter's curse. She tries to counteract her daughter's curse. She pleads to the ocean, "Please, let me keep my Goddaughter's heart, please let that much remain."\ \ In the eerie glow of the moonlight, upon realizing her mother's task, she swims back to where the ocean meets the river. But she experiences a strange sensation in her lower half. The water swirls around her. She looks down to see that she has now fins instead of feet. With the new transformation, she regrets not finishing her mother's errand.

Sirena was happy because now she can be in the water all day long. However, Sirena also wished she did what her mother asked and found another way to punish her. A part of her will forever be saddened by the loss of her Mother and Godmother.

It said that sailors have spotted mermaids on their voyage across the sea. Just that their too crafty & swift to be caught.

Historical Notes/context

The story originates from the indigenous island of Guam and has been shared for generations. There are multiple versions of the story. The term Sirena is not present in the Chamorro language; however, in Spanish, it refers to the mythological creature known as the mermaid. The capital of the Island is Hagåtña. The Hagåtña river flows beneath the Spanish Bridge, where it is possible to observe her monument. Many believe Sirena resided here. There is speculation that this story was crafted to frighten children into listening to their parents and not playing in the river's water, as it was a vital water source. This was more prevalent when the Spanish established Guam as a port for whaling, pirates, and trade during the Spanish Galleon trade era(16th century). It should be noted that the women's role in the Chamorro version reflects a matrilineal society, which can be seen with Grandma/Godmother.

👉I like to point out in this, Thomas Edison patented the light bulb in 1879. So visually the lights outside and inside the huts as flames. As Ai(text to image) does not account for these type of items.

👉This also goes back to be careful what you wish for because you may actual get your wish.

👉Chamorro people are Pacific Islanders, similar to Hawaiians, and have a brown/tan skin complexion.\

👉My mermaid looks strikingly similar to the Disney's recent version of Ariel. I Thought that was interesting because I put just "mermaid" into the text prompt. Its worth pointing out ai limitations as it's not advanced as I originally thought, likely due to its limited data. In this case only disney as a reference for mermaid.

based on ordinary prompts\ Prompt used:\ That's all-Thank you until next time (N)osyters!

If you like it, send me some ❤❤hearts❤ and if you didn't like it-⚡⚡🍑🍑zap⚡⚡🍑🍑 me!🍑🍑 me!

For email updates you can subscribe to my paragraph.xyz/\@onigirl or below if using the Yakihonne App

@ 46fcbe30:6bd8ce4d

Opinion about Samourai Wallet (android)

Samourai has cost me many many hours due to their strong social media presence and constant ad hominem attacks. They blamed me for not being able to compile or reproduce their product instead of helping me to compile it. Given I compile wallets all the time as can be found on walletscrutiny, I doubt I lack the expertise to compile wallets but even if I did, why not show me? Not one developer other than their team themselves disagreed with my technical assessments of their product. Apart from proven scams, this is the product I trust least in the whole space.

But it's not only me. To quote Bitcoin Core developer and absolute genius Gregory Maxwell:

I have seen far too much outright dishonest and extremely incompetent behaviour from Samourai to ever trust it myself. Samourai has very poor privacy while bragging about having good privacy: It sends your addresses all back to their server. Their "trusted node" mode doesn't change this, it just exposes your Bitcoin node to attacks completely needlessly. (Needlessly because they only use it to relay transactions, which they could do via the public P2P ports of any node, and because since they've already sent your addresses back to their server sending your transactions via something else doesn't increase your privacy.) If you want strong privacy then as a start you need to run a full node (and use either Bitcoin Core wallet, or run your own electrum server), preferably via tor. I don't doubt that they want and intend to eventually have good privacy but it seems that they're just unable to stop lying about it, even after previously being caught.

You can find many more very competent people complaining about Samourai's dishonesity and aggressive behavior or outright incompetence if not malice here, here, here, and here. And yes, those links are to nopara, who is the founder of Wasabi wallet which targets the same audience of privacy focused users but that doesn't take away from the facts reported there.

Stay away from Scamourai!

WalletScrutiny #nostrOpinion

Join the conversation!

@ 97c70a44:ad98e322

The last few days on developer nostr have involved quite a kerfluffle over the gossip model, blastr, banning jack, and many related misunderstandings. This post is an attempt to lay out my thoughts on the matter in an organized and hopefully helpful way.

What's wrong with gossip?

It all started with a post from jack asking why more devs haven't implemented the gossip model. There are many answers to this question, not least having to do with there being two standards for user relay selections, and ongoing changes to NIP 65. But I don't want to talk about compatibility here.

nevent1qydhwumn8ghj7argv4nx7un9wd6zumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcprfmhxue69uhhq7tjv9kkjepwve5kzar2v9nzucm0d5hszymhwden5te0wfjkccte9enrw73wd9hj7qpq2uf488j3uy084kpsn594xcef9g9x3lplx4xnglf0xwghyw2n3tfqqnrm02

Mazin responded with some numbers which estimate how many connections the gossip model requires. Too many connections can become expensive for low-power clients like mobile phones, not to mention some privacy issues stemming from nosy relays.

nevent1qyd8wumn8ghj7urewfsk66ty9enxjct5dfskvtnrdakj7qgewaehxw309amk2mrrdakk2tnwdaehgu3wwa5kuef0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tcqyp2xzsjktypudzmygplljkupmuyadzzr6rkgnvx9e0fx3zwhdm0vkz4ceg7

I have some minor disagreements with Mazin's numbers, but I basically agree with his point — a purist gossip model, where a large proportion of nostr users run their own relays results in a high number of connections to different relays. I brought this question up late last year in my interview with Mike Dilger and in a conversation with fiatjaf, who convinced me that in practice, this doesn't matter — enough people will use a handful of larger hubs that there will be a good amount of overlap in relay selections between most pubkeys.

To articulate this more clearly: the goal is not "personal web nodes", which is a pipe dream the Farcasters and BlueSkys (BlueSkies?) of the world aim at, but a more pragmatic mix between large hubs and smaller purpose-built relays. These small relays might be outlets for large publishers, small groups, or nerds who also run their own SMTP servers and lightning nodes.

The point of the gossip model is that these small nodes be possible to run, and discoverable from the rest of the network so that we can preserve the censorship-resistant qualities of nostr that brought us here in the first place.

Blast It!

It's no secret that I've long been a critic of Mutiny's blastr relay implementation. My main objection is that the blastr approach doesn't account for the hard limits involved in scaling smaller relays. If the goal is to cross-pollinate notes across all relays in the network, all relays will require the same size database, and contain all notes in the network. This works right now (sort of), but as the network grows, the relays running on a $5 VPS are going to have their disks fill up and will inevitably fall over.

nevent1qyvhwumn8ghj76r0v3kxymmy9ehx7um5wgcjucm0d5hszxnhwden5te0wpuhyctdd9jzuenfv96x5ctx9e3k7mf0qythwumn8ghj7un9d3shjtnwdaehgu3wvfskuep0qqs07jr9qx49h53nhw76u7c3up2s72k7le2zj94h5fugmcgtyde4j9qfrnwxj

Not only that, but the content breakdown on any given relay by default becomes an undifferentiated soup of "GM", chinese notes, bots, bitcoin memes, and porn. Blastr makes it impossible to run an interesting relay without implementing write policies.

Which is actually fine! Because that's always been true — servers that allow anonymous uploads always get abused. Tony is just helpfully pointing out to us that this is no less true of nostr relays. I only wish he could have waited a little longer before mounting his attack on the network, because lots of hobbyists are interested in running interesting relays, but the tools don't yet exist to protect those servers from unsolicited notes.

One other note on blastr — Tony at one point described blastr as a relay proxy. This is an interesting perspective, which puts things in a different light. More on proxies later.

Ban Jack?

Here's a thought experiment: how might we actually "ban blastr"? @Pablof7z suggested to me in a conversation that you could configure your relay to check every note that gets published to your relay against the big nostr hubs, and if it exists on any of them to simply delete it. Of course, that would result in your relay being basically empty, and the hubs having all of your content. That's game theory for you I guess.

Another approach that was floated was to encourage users to only publish to small relays. In theory, this would force clients to implement gossip so users could still see the content they were subscribed to. Fiatjaf even posted two identical notes, one to his personal relay, and one to a hub to see which would get more engagement. The note posted to the mainstream relay got 10x more replies and likes than the more obscure note.

nostr:nevent1qyd8wumn8ghj7urewfsk66ty9enxjct5dfskvtnrdakj7qgmwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8wetnw3jhymnzw33jucm0d5hszymhwden5te0wp6hyurvv4cxzeewv4ej7qpqdc2drrmdmlkcyna5kkcv8yls4f8zaj82jjl00xrh2tmmhw3ejsmsmp945r

Of course, this is thwarted by blastr, since blastr not only replicates notes posted to it, it also actively crawls the network as well. So the next logical step in this train of thought would be for hubs to encourage people to use small relays by actively blocking high-profile accounts.

nostr:nevent1qydhwumn8ghj7argv4nx7un9wd6zumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcpzdmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujue3h0ghxjme0qyd8wumn8ghj7urewfsk66ty9enxjct5dfskvtnrdakj7qpqpjhnn69lej55kde9l64jgmdkx2ngy2yk87trgjuzdte2skkwwnhqv5esfq

This would of course never happen (Damus is one client that hasn't implemented NIP 65, and they also run the biggest relay), but it was a fun thought experiment. At any rate, the silliness of the suggestion didn't stop certain people from getting offended that we would "disrupt the free market" by "forcing" our opinions on everyone else. Oh well.

Death to Blastr

In reality, even though blastr makes it a little harder to adopt gossip in the short term, its days are numbered. Eventually, relay operators will start to feel the pain of unsolicted notes, and will either shut their relays down or look for tools that will help them curate the content they host.

From my perspective, these tools take two forms — read protection and write protection. This is something I alluded to in my talk at Nostrasia last November.

Write protection is straightforward — already many relays have access control lists based on active subscriptions, invite codes, or just static whitelists that determine who is allowed to post to a given relay, or what event authors are represented there. This approach effectively prevents blastr from using relays as free storage, which is a huge improvement.

Read protection is more tricky, because anything publicly readable will be scraped by blastr and replicated to unauthenticated-write relays across the network. In most cases, this is ok, but there are use cases for relays to exist that host a unique collection of notes oriented around some organizing principle. Unfortunately, with blastr in action (or any scraper that might exist), the only way to do this is to actively protect proprietary content. There are a few approaches that can work to make this happen:

• IP-based access control lists
• AUTH-based access control lists
• Stripping signatures when serving events
• Storing and serving encrypted content

Each of these approaches has its own set of trade-offs. But depending on use case, any of them or a combination of them could work to allow relay operators to carve out their own piece of the nostr-verse. In fact, this is a big part of what Coracle is about — the white-labeled version of the product confines certain notes to proprietary relays, with optional encrypted group support.

Enough of my polemic against blastr. Let's talk about how to make the gossip model actually work.

Hints are pointless

Right now, clients that implement the gossip model rely pretty heavily on relay hints to find related notes — whether user profiles, reply parents, or community definitions. The problem with hints is that they are prone to link rot. Many of the relays that were set up a year ago when nostr took off are no longer online, and yet they persist in user relay lists, and in relay hints. These hints can't be updated — they are set in stone. What this means is that a different mechanism has to be used to find the notes the hints were supposed to help locate.

Because of this, I've come around to the position that hints are basically pointless. They are fine as a stopgap, and might be appropriate for certain obscure and ill-defined use cases where relay urls are the most durable address type available. But they provide basically no value in supporting the long-term robustness of the network.

What are durable, however, are pubkeys. Pubkeys are available pretty much everywhere, except in event id hints — and there is a proposal in the works to add a pubkey to those too. The cool thing about pubkeys as hints is that once you have a pubkey, all you need to do is find that person's kind 10002 inbox/outbox selections, and you should be able to find any note they have published.

This goes with the caveat that when users change their relay selections, or rotate their key, they (or their relays) should be sure to copy their notes to the new relay/pubkey.

The question then is: how do I find a given pubkey's relay selections?

There are already several mechanisms that make this reasonably easy. First of all, NIP 65 explicitly recommends publishing relay selections to a wide range of relays. This is a place where the blastr approach is appropriate. As a result, relay selections are usually available on the most popular public relays. Then there are special purpose relays like purplepag.es, which actively seek out these notes and index them.

These indexes are not confined to relays either. It would be trivial to create a DVM that you could ask for a pubkey's relay selections, optionally for a fee. Alex Gleason's proxy tag could also be used to indicate indexes that exist outside the nostr network — whether that be torrents, DHT keys, or what have you.

The best part is that this doesn't negatively impact the decentralization of the network because in principle these indexes are stateless — in other words, they're easily derived from the state of the public part of the nostr network.

Just do it for me

Looping back to where we started — the complexity and technical challenges of implementing the gossip model — there is a simple solution that many people have experimented with in different ways that could solve both issues at once: proxies.

As I mentioned above, Tony thinks of blastr as a proxy, and he's right. More specifically, it's a write-proxy. This is only part of its functionality (it also acts as an independent agent which crawls the network. EDIT: apparently this is not true!), but it is an essential part of how people use it.

Another kind of proxy is a read proxy. There are several implementations of these, including my own multiplextr proxy, which is gossip-compatible (although it requires a wrapper protocol for use). The advantage of a proxy like this is that it can reduce the number of connections a client has to open, and the number of duplicate events it has to download.

Proxies can do all kinds of fancy things in the background too, like managing the gossip model on behalf of the client, building an index of everything the user would be likely to ask for in advance to speed up response times, and more.

One interesting possibility is that a NIP 46 signer could double as a proxy, reducing the number of round trips needed. And since a signer already has access to your private key, this kind of proxy would not result in an escalation in permissions necessary for the proxy to work.

It's simple

The number of cool and creative solutions to the content replication and indexing problem is huge, and certainly doesn't end with blastr. Just to summarize the next steps I'm excited to see (to be honest, I want to build them myself, but we all know how that goes):

• More clients supporting gossip
• Gossip implementations maturing (Coracle's still has some issues that need to be worked out)
• A shift from relying on relay hints to relying on pubkey hints + relay selection indexes of some kind
• Proxy/signer combos which can take on some of the heavy lifting for clients of delivering events to the right inboxes, and pulling events from the right outboxes

Let's get building!

@ 35f3a26c:92ddf231

The Mutant Ideologies

Some believe there is a fight between Capitalism and Liberalism...

Some believe that those fights are nothing but distractions to keep the population from focusing their attention on the real issues....

In my opinion, those ideologies are mutating and merging into Authoritarianism.

Censoring have become so common that private companies in the USA have gone to the extreme to censor and cancel intellectuals, journalist, PhD's, MD’s, scientist and even a democratically elected president when they speak against the narrative supported by that company, the globes are off and the fight is now in the open between corporations interests, the same companies who have in their pockets the political apparatus and the judicial power of the countries in which they operate.

Meanwhile, the majority of those who align themselves with one of the three ideologies, are fighting the others as if they where the owners of truth, censoring each other, sad to watch and ironic, in most cases...

The Censoring Age

Once upon a time we used to debate, adding value to the society while doing so, now is just an unintelligent fight with weak arguments and in many cases incredibly absurd, very rapidly the conversation turns into insulting, dismissing the other party with no arguments and even censoring if against of the narrative of the platform landlords. Surreal if you think about it.

If you are a critical thinker, you may have theories, but you have to be scratching your head trying to find out How we got here?, By design? Or just a product of our own technological development oriented to profit and not the improvement of our health and social wealth fare. Perhaps the latest...

Does it matter to know how? I believe it does because learning from those errors we could start building a better society one step at the time so in two or three generations we could have the required base to build a more adequate social construct. Naive, but it would be nice.

The Failed Bitcoin Solution

I am of the opinion that we will not be able to obtain a more adequate social construct until we manage to separate the state from the money, hence the statement, fix the money, fix the world...

We are failing badly. Bitcoin was a tool to achieve that, it is failing miserably, it become a store of value, a very profitable one, an excellent investment, it was hard for the system to beat it, but despite of its incompetent officials, the FIAT system managed to control it and turn it into their benefit, now governments, corporations and institutions are buying it and soon we will observe the wash trading, buying and selling between themselves legally using the rules the system offers to manipulate and accumulate while the current "whales" reaching already their mid 40s and 50s will sell into FIAT large quantities of Bitcoin to retire comfortable, people tends to forget that there is a time factor.

Those in their 30s will probably build around it or go to real state and sit happy, but, Where are the values and the ideology Satoshi intended to push in the world? Doesn't seem it is in Bitcoin "hodlers" hands anymore. Very few real hard core libertarian believers left in the ecosystem.

If we go beyond that and we say, well, it could be adopted as currency in other countries besides El Salvador... Sure, but Why? What will be the benefit to that country unless they have a massive amount of Bitcoin already? It would not be fair for their citizens, basically, those institutions and governments that in few years will own the majority of the coins and the current wealthy Bitcoiners become the ones that can take advantage from that measure instead of the citizens of that country.

Countries would do well adding it to their reserves as they do with gold, but by no means it will be a P2P cash solution for the masses, nor it will help to solve the money problem.

Any options?

In my opinion is not that complicated, every nation could create a Bitcoin like currency with a cap of whatever it thinks it should be. Copying the Satoshi vision, nothing to do with the CBDC concept which is nothing but the same FIAT system with no cash.

That means that the coins should be capped at certain amount, Inmutable and Decentralized not controlled by the state and make it a legal tender with the regulation of the state equal to its current currency.

Technically is quite easy to implement, forking a privacy coin and making it more efficient to have instant payments as with Lightning Network will do the trick.

The effect of such measure will be a very strong currency that will benefit all their citizens equally. Sure, there is the current FIAT system with its tentacles everywhere, which needs to be transitioned and removed in parallel. Not a simple task, nor it will go down without a fight.

A fair launch of the token is required with no "genesis block", no "original address" (corruption) with a large percentage of the tokens. Nowadays, most states are corrupted and will most probably use the current currency printing machine to acquire as much as possible of the new currency making it a failed project from the start. Think about how much money the countries can print and buy Bitcoin with that money, think what they can do with it...

Regulation to avoid the governments from buying the tokens with printed money is required from the beginning.

Plausible, right?. The only needed action is to remove the corrupted and incompetent officials that are in the pockets of the nations landlords... Oh, but the landlords owns the judicial system and the military industrial complex so this seems to be a quite obvious and simple task but next to impossible to accomplish.

Baby steps?

We need legislation to separate the state from the private money. That alone will weaken the landlords over time and thus, little by little, their grip on the judicial system will perish and change can emerge with less opposition from the corrupted officials.

Is there a chance?

In my opinion, not in the short term.

The ones with political power and control over the world resources I call landlords, won't let go. Why will they?

Even in the miraculous scenario that few of those individuals or families decide to assist with the needed changes, others will take their place, therefore, I have no illusion it can be achieved rapidly or ever.

If you are very young, you still may be thinking that with few marches and protests the people can steer the direction of a nation, nothing more far from the truth... When it works it had been carefully planned and funded by a foreign country or nefarious group looking to change power in a nation to take advantage of its resources in one way or another and the naive youth is used to achieve the goal.

One possible scenario would be a sudden introduction of technologies that empower the individual to be free of the control of the system, the following three would be an excellent start:

1. Free energy (Tesla's dream...),
2. Free tech for the desalination of sea water,
3. Free access to atmospheric water devices for the production of drinking water from the humidity in the air.

But to believe that the current powers will not push back is naive. The most logical scenario is that they will make those technologies illegal and prosecute anyone sharing them or using them or tax them heavily as Spain did not long ago with the solar panels installed at home by individuals, surreal but it happened, it was called the "sun tax" implemented in October 2015 and removed in November 2018.

---

If you like my work and would like to support me:

@ 42342239:1d80db24

It has become increasingly evident that our financial system has started undermine our constitutionally guaranteed freedoms and rights. Payment giants like PayPal, Mastercard, and Visa sometimes block the ability to donate money. Individuals, companies, and associations lose bank accounts — or struggle to open new ones. In bank offices, people nowadays risk undergoing something resembling being cross-examined. The regulations are becoming so cumbersome that their mere presence risks tarnishing the banks' reputation.

The rules are so complex that even within the same bank, different compliance officers can provide different answers to the same question! There are even departments where some of the compliance officers are reluctant to provide written responses and prefer to answer questions over an unrecorded phone call. Last year's corporate lawyer in Sweden recently complained about troublesome bureaucracy, and that's from a the perspective of a very large corporation. We may not even fathom how smaller businesses — the keys to a nation's prosperity — experience it.

Where do all these rules come?

Where do all these rules come from, and how well do they work? Today's regulations on money laundering (AML) and customer due diligence (KYC - know your customer) primarily originate from a G7 meeting in the summer of 1989. (The G7 comprises the seven advanced economies: the USA, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan, along with the EU.) During that meeting, the intergovernmental organization FATF (Financial Action Task Force) was established with the aim of combating organized crime, especially drug trafficking. Since then, its mandate has expanded to include fighting money laundering, terrorist financing, and the financing of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction(!). One might envisage the rules soon being aimed against proliferation of GPUs (Graphics Processing Units used for AI/ML). FATF, dominated by the USA, provides frameworks and recommendations for countries to follow. Despite its influence, the organization often goes unnoticed. Had you heard of it?

FATF offered countries "a deal they couldn't refuse"

On the advice of the USA and G7 countries, the organization decided to begin grading countries in "blacklists" and "grey lists" in 2000, naming countries that did not comply with its recommendations. The purpose was to apply "pressure" to these countries if they wanted to "retain their position in the global economy." The countries were offered a deal they couldn't refuse, and the number of member countries rapidly increased. Threatening with financial sanctions in this manner has even been referred to as "extraterritorial bullying." Some at the time even argued that the process violated international law.

If your local Financial Supervisory Authority (FSA) were to fail in enforcing compliance with FATF's many checklists among financial institutions, the risk of your country and its banks being barred from the US-dominated financial markets would loom large. This could have disastrous consequences.

A cost-benefit analysis of AML and KYC regulations

Economists use cost-benefit analysis to determine whether an action or a policy is successful. Let's see what such an analysis reveals.

What are the benefits (or revenues) after almost 35 years of more and more rules and regulations? The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime estimated that only 0.2% of criminal proceeds are confiscated. Other estimates suggest a success rate from such anti-money laundering rules of 0.07% — a rounding error for organized crime. Europol expects to recover 1.2 billion euros annually, equivalent to about 1% of the revenue generated in the European drug market (110 billion euros). However, the percentage may be considerably lower, as the size of the drug market is likely underestimated. Moreover, there are many more "criminal industries" than just the drug trade; human trafficking is one example - there are many more. In other words, criminal organizations retain at least 99%, perhaps even 99.93%, of their profits, despite all cumbersome rules regarding money laundering and customer due diligence.

What constitutes the total cost of this bureaurcratic activity, costs that eventually burden taxpayers and households via higher fees? Within Europe, private financial firms are estimated to spend approximately 144 billion euros on compliance. According to some estimates, the global cost is twice as high, perhaps even eight times as much.

For Europe, the cost may thus be about 120 times (144/1.2) higher than the revenues from these measures. These "compliance costs" bizarrely exceed the total profits from the drug market, as one researcher put it. Even though the calculations are uncertain, it is challenging — perhaps impossible — to legitimize these regulations from a cost-benefit perspective.

But it doesn't end there, unfortunately. The cost of maintaining this compliance circus, with around 80 international organizations, thousands of authorities, far more employees, and all this across hundreds of countries, remains a mystery. But it's unlikely to be cheap.

The purpose of a system is what it does

In Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren (1930), John Maynard Keynes foresaw that thanks to technological development, we could have had a 15-hour workweek by now. This has clearly not happened. Perhaps jobs have been created that are entirely meaningless? Anthropologist David Graeber argued precisely this in Bullshit Jobs in 2018. In that case, a significant number of people spend their entire working lives performing tasks they suspect deep down don't need to be done.

"The purpose of a system is what it does" is a heuristic coined by Stafford Beer. He observed there is "no point in claiming that the purpose of a system is to do what it constantly fails to do. What the current regulatory regime fails to do is combat criminal organizations. Nor does it seem to prevent banks from laundering money as never before, or from providing banking services to sex-offending traffickers

What the current regulatory regime does do, is: i) create armies of meaningless jobs, ii) thereby undermining mental health as well as economic prosperity, while iii) undermining our freedom and rights.

What does this say about the purpose of the system?

@ 20d29810:6fe4ad2f

@ 079d727b:00099650

Found these somewhere and I totally can't remember who authored the note. I THANK YOU! Also here's a reddit link for those who want to get started!

https://nostr.com/ - A decentralized social network with a chance of working

https://www.whynostr.com/ - the WHY https://www.heynostr.com/ - Introduction https://uselessshit.co/resources/nostr/ - Plentiful Guides and resources https://kyc3.life/resources/ - LIFE KYC (Know Your Customer) FREE (#IMPORTANT) https://www.reddit.com/r/nostr/ - Reddit Nostr Feed https://fountain.fm/show/0N6GGdZuYNNG7ysagCg9 - Plebchain Radio Podcast https://stacker.news/items/492921 - Guide by @TresDMan https://nostr.how/en/get-started - Understanding the basics https://www.nostrapps.com/ - A directory of Nostr Apps https://nak.nostr.com/ - nostr army knife (dev tool) https://nostrstuff.com/ - A terminal for playing with Nostr https://nostrfreaks.com/add/ - Multiple Web Client Viewer https://nostrends.vercel.app/ - What's trending on Nostr? https://nosta.me - Profile Viewer

And now here's a list of sites which are Nostr friendly.

R/nostr user's collection of nostr apps:

• https://nostr.watch/relays/find - Finding Nostr Relays (#IMPORTANT#)
• https://shopstr.store/marketplace - A Nostr Marketplace
• https://zap.stream/ - A Nostr Live Streaming Site
• https://formstr.app/ - Creating your own Forms on Nostr
• https://metadata.nostr.com/ - Nostr Profile Manager (#IMPORTANT#)
• https://shipyard.pub/posts - Write, schedule, and boost your notes.
• https://slidestr.net/ - Nostr Slideshow
• https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr - an AMAZING list of ALOT
• https://pinstr.app/ - Pinning content on Nostr
• https://plebeian.market/ - A Nostr Marketplace
• https://nostree.me/ - A Nostr Linktree
• https://listr.lol/feed - Curate, Organize, and Discover everything Nostr has
• https://www.wavlake.com/ - a V4V music streaming site on Nostr
• https://ostrich.work/ - The first and best Nostr Jobs board on the internet.
• https://zaplife.lol/ - A live feed of zaps
• https://highlighter.com/ - The site you're on right now!
• https://shopstr.store/ - An Nostr Marketplace
• https://nostr.band/ - A Nostr search engine
• https://nostrudel.ninja/#/ - A Nostr Client/Frontend
• https://dtan.xyz/ - A Nostr Torrent site
• https://app.mutinywallet.com/ - A Lightning wallet with Nostr Integration
• https://www.flockstr.com/ - Events and Meetups on Nostr
• https://cornychat.com/ - A live talk space on Nostr akin to Twitter Spaces
• https://nostrnests.com/ - A Live Talk Space on Nostr akin to Twitter Spaces
• https://comingle.co/ - conference app powered by Nostr
• https://geyser.fund/ - A crowdfunding site powered in part by Nostr
• https://heya.fund/ - Fund causes and goals with lightning on Nostr
• https://www.nostrchat.io/ - A Chat Client on Nostr
• https://w3.do/ - A URL Shortener on Nostr
• https://yakihonne.com/ - Long form writing on Nostr
• https://habla.news/ - Long form writing on Nostr
• https://nostrsync.live/ - A Broadcast & Export Service for your Data
• https://follows.lol/ - The Nostr follower tool
• https://globalthreat.info/ - Realtime global threat assessment driven by AI

There is ALOT more out there so I recommend you look at https://github.com/aljazceru/awesome-nostr !

Nostrapps is also excellent for finding web clients to actually view the twitter style of the Nostr.

I shall update this list from time to time with more or less content... hopefully. Or something cooler will come out and I'll use that. 🤷

@ 079d727b:00099650

https://i.nostr.build/vGd7P.png

What am I doing here? What am I doing here with Fatty and Spotty Fatty and Spotty Fatty and Spotty What am I doing here with Fatty and Spotty

SORRY! This will make no sense unless you've seen the British Channel 4 sitcom, Black Books. Actually, not sorry at all. Because here's a link to watch the entire series off YT. Otherwise I dunno, torrent or news it, or even better... BUY THE DVD BOXSET SECOND HAND!!! (The decent boxset should have commentary tracks for Season 1 & Season 2, making the show twice as good imo.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcQb7zEzXv8 (Enjoy! Also I recommend starting at Season 1 Episode 1 as what I've linked is S2E3). Stars the very talented, Bill Bailey, Dylan Moran and Tamsin Greig. Directed by Graham Linehan I'm pretty sure and he was just 'censored' by the trans police so you know it's probably quite funny. 😂

Many thanks to PABLOF7z for being my FIRST foundational supporter. That really means A LOT! I remember blogging in the mid 90's before the word blog was a thing. One of these day's I'll upload the html pages which show how stupid 13yr old's can be. But shit.. the enthusiasm and pure joy I got from blogging... I don't know if anything has compared in those 20+ years from writing. I hope to bring it back with these Highlighter posts which I plan to drain and publish my thoughts, finds and whatever discoveries I may find interesting.

Apologies if this bores the shit out of you. That's also why it's free. 🫡

Many more links, resources and the brain of tigs' - coming to nostr... really soon.

P.S. Don't expect anything useful or educational or in any particular order, this is MY brain after all 😂

💜🤙🫂 - tigs

@ 6871d8df:4a9396c1

In an era where data seems to be as valuable as currency, the prevailing trend in AI starkly contrasts with the concept of personal data ownership. The explosion of AI and the ensuing race have made it easy to overlook where the data is coming from. The current model, dominated by big tech players, involves collecting vast amounts of user data and selling it to AI companies for training LLMs. Reddit recently penned a 60 million dollar deal, Google guards and mines Youtube, and more are going this direction. But is that their data to sell? Yes, it's on their platforms, but without the users to generate it, what would they monetize? To me, this practice raises significant ethical questions, as it assumes that user data is a commodity that companies can exploit at will.

The heart of the issue lies in the ownership of data. Why, in today's digital age, do we not retain ownership of our data? Why can't our data follow us, under our control, to wherever we want to go? These questions echo the broader sentiment that while some in the tech industry — such as the blockchain-first crypto bros — recognize the importance of data ownership, their "blockchain for everything solutions," to me, fall significantly short in execution.

Reddit further complicates this with its current move to IPO, which, on the heels of the large data deal, might reinforce the mistaken belief that user-generated data is a corporate asset. Others, no doubt, will follow suit. This underscores the urgent need for a paradigm shift towards recognizing and respecting user data as personal property.

In my perfect world, the digital landscape would undergo a revolutionary transformation centered around the empowerment and sovereignty of individual data ownership. Platforms like Twitter, Reddit, Yelp, YouTube, and Stack Overflow, integral to our digital lives, would operate on a fundamentally different premise: user-owned data.

In this envisioned future, data ownership would not just be a concept but a practice, with public and private keys ensuring the authenticity and privacy of individual identities. This model would eliminate the private data silos that currently dominate, where companies profit from selling user data without consent. Instead, data would traverse a decentralized protocol akin to the internet, prioritizing user control and transparency.

The cornerstone of this world would be a meritocratic digital ecosystem. Success for companies would hinge on their ability to leverage user-owned data to deliver unparalleled value rather than their capacity to gatekeep and monetize information. If a company breaks my trust, I can move to a competitor, and my data, connections, and followers will come with me. This shift would herald an era where consent, privacy, and utility define the digital experience, ensuring that the benefits of technology are equitably distributed and aligned with the users' interests and rights.

The conversation needs to shift fundamentally. We must challenge this trajectory and advocate for a future where data ownership and privacy are not just ideals but realities. If we continue on our current path without prioritizing individual data rights, the future of digital privacy and autonomy is bleak. Big tech's dominance allows them to treat user data as a commodity, potentially selling and exploiting it without consent. This imbalance has already led to users being cut off from their digital identities and connections when platforms terminate accounts, underscoring the need for a digital ecosystem that empowers user control over data. Without changing direction, we risk a future where our content — and our freedoms by consequence — are controlled by a few powerful entities, threatening our rights and the democratic essence of the digital realm. We must advocate for a shift towards data ownership by individuals to preserve our digital freedoms and democracy.

@ 32e18276:5c68e245

Hey guys!

Here's our Q3-Q4 report. There was some confusion with the timing of the previous quarters so we've accumulated everything since the Q2 report (March 2nd, 2024) into this one. Enjoy!

Damus OpenSats Q3-Q4 Progress Report

The third and fourth quarter of the initial Damus OpenSats grant encompasses work done across many of the active projects being worked on at Damus HQ. Here's a quick overview of the progress made across the organization:

nostrdb

Added

• Author query support (William Casarin)
• REQ support: ndb_subscribe (William Casarin)
• CLOSE support: ndb_unsubscibe (William Casarin)
• Profile flatbuffer dump utility (William Casarin)
• Ability to register a subscription callback instead of just polling (William Casarin)

Changed

• Dump json in filter and fulltext queries in cli tool (William Casarin)

Stats

name added removed commits William Casarin <jb55@jb55.com> +665 -739 16

nostrdb-rust

Added

• Note builder interface (William Casarin)
• Nip10 implementation (William Casarin)
• Getting profile by key (William Casarin)
• Note tag support (William Casarin)
• Tag::into_iter method (Yuki Kishimoto)
• FilterBuilder::until method (Yuki Kishimoto)
• Export structs from tags module (Yuki Kishimoto)

Fixed

• FilterBuilder::limit method (Yuki Kishimoto)
• Note::sig method (Yuki Kishimoto)

Stats

Yuki Kishimoto <yukikishimoto@protonmail.com> +20 -4 5 William Casarin <jb55@jb55.com> +1551 -867 32

Damus NoteDeck/Android

This project is in heavy development and doesn't have clean changelogs yet, so here are all of the git logs from this period

Willam's updates

• account_manager: don't add the same pubkey more than once
• actionbar placeholder
• actionbar: remove border on reply button, add expand animation
• actionbar: support both dark and light buttons
• Add forward navigation animation
• add hover to profile map demo
• add --light lightmode flag to previews and notedeck
• add my pubkey to the timeline query for testing
• add test queries for elsat
• add vertical separators between timelines
• allow missing profiles in account switcher
• allow multiple invocations of --sec
• always have some default timeline
• app: make ndb public
• a quick note about the View trait
• args: allow filter files and raw filters on cli
• bump timeline filter limit
• cap size of remote filter limits
• change selection color to purple
• check: remove duplicate and disable wasm checks
• ci: disable wasm builds for now
• cli: add --sec argument to quickly add an account
• clippy postbox cleanups
• crates: add bitflags
• damus: make relay pool public
• darker quote reposts for mobile
• debug: add some debug logs for keyboard note selection
• deps: using tracing instead of log
• direnv: disable nix direnv on darwin
• direnv: make args explicit so its easy to change
• don't bump timeline when adding notes
• dont since-optimize when we don't have enough notes
• don't use an actual keystorage in Damus test apps
• drafts: clear post after posting
• enable nip10 replies
• enostr: rename Event to Note
• env: allow private things like secret keys
• filter: add default limit
• filters: fix hashtag filters
• filter: unify nostrdb and remote limits
• Fix all warnings
• fixed_window: fix clippy warning
• fix global query
• fix inline note preview colors
• fix light borders for quote reposts
• fix postbox design
• fix scroll area shrinking
• fix some clippy warnings
• fix until filters
• fix warnings
• fonts: always use base fonts for all families
• fun large profile grid preview
• get all missing ids from all timelines
• github: remove pages workflow
• gitignore: add perf files
• hide navigation title on global nav
• ids: find more unknown ids from inline notes
• images: add aspect_fill
• initial inline note previews
• initial navigation
• initial note posting
• initial postbox for testing
• initial post box view
• initial post reply view
• initial refactor in preparation for routing
• input: fix deadlock on resize
• input: handle raw events
• input: process input once
• input: switch to scanning over raw input events
• integrate sidebar into main view
• introduce View and Previews traits
• irc mode
• ircmode: tighten username
• keys: actually use the keystore
• lighter gray for inline previews in white mode
• list: switch from arc mutext to rc refcell
• load timelines from commandline
• log: reduce spammy new note log
• log relay subscriptions
• make notedeck front and center
• mobile: add lots of top padding on mobile
• mobile: a tad more padding at the top
• mobile: black panel bg color
• mobile: don't add hover on mobile
• mobile: make mobile flag runtime-configurable
• mobile: simplify is_mobile
• mobile: use my timeline for testing again
• move account_login_view to ui submodule
• move add_space to its correct location
• nip10: fetch unknown replied-to notes
• nip10: show initial reply information on notes
• nix: add openssl dep for reqwest
• nix: make android emulator optional
• nostrdb: bump to support timeline queries
• note: don't allow nested note previews
• note: support nprofile mentions
• perf: don't clone bytes via a more specialized function
• perf: fix continuous repaint
• perf: profiling note content rendering
• popup: increase fixed window margin
• popup: simplify borrow
• postbox: add focused state
• postbox: add focus shadow from figma
• post: full available width
• postview: add vertical scroll
• previews: remove central panel frame
• profile: add about and username to profile previews
• profiles: introduce DisplayNames
• profiling: update puffin version
• queries: add a few more test queries
• queries: set reasonable initial query sizes
• queries: update hashtags query
• readme: add usage
• readme: document previews
• readme: make it clear that its for desktop
• readme: make it clear that nix is optional for non-android dev
• readme: show notedeck preview
• refactor: move fixed_window to ui
• refactor: move note into its own widget
• refactor: rename widgets to ui
• refactor: use map instead of explicit if let
• remote: use default_remote_limit instead of hardcoding
• remove context from DesktopSidePanel
• remove minimum window size
• remove useless struct
• render_pfp: only depend on imgcache
• reset virtual list if notes are spliced into timeline
• set tooltip delay to 100ms
• side_panel: return more detailed side panel responses
• simplify is_mobile check
• simplify tab underline calculation
• since filter optimization
• slightly larger pfpfs
• small inline preview pfps
• style: initial logic for mobile style
• style: less bubbly
• style: realtime hover interactions
• style: set 0 duration tooltip delay
• Switch to egui master to fix wgpu issues
• switch to glow for now
• switch to rustls-tls-native-roots
• tabs: select notes & replies by default
• test: add test timeline query
• test: update test profile with a banner
• test: use my timeline query by default for testing
• textmode: adjust name sizing so it doesn't bump the column
• textmode: fix coloring of abbreviated names
• textmode: no previews in textmore for now
• theme: update to correct colors based on figma design
• timeline: don't hide on resize
• timeline: refactor tabs into TimelineView
• timeline: use strips instead of panels
• ui: add banners to profile previews
• ui: add feathering-resistant hline separator fn
• ui: add frame around note previews
• ui: add initial Profile hover previews
• ui: add profile picture hover animation
• ui: integrate egui-tabs for notes & replies selector
• ui: introduce profile picture widget
• ui: make pixel sizes correct, use more of the figma
• ui: move RelayView into ui module
• ui: only inline preview kind1 notes for now
• ui: reduce vertical padding for more compact timelines
• ui: remove some old note ui comments
• ui: simplify note widget
• ui: switch to flags for note options
• update slow timeline query
• update to latest nostrdb, adding tag support
• update version in comment because I still use this on my laptop
• use egui_virtual_list for rendering
• use unique id for post/reply view
• weird actionbar experiment
• we should just called this damus
• widgets: begin organizing ui components into widgets
• working notes + notes&replies

kernelkind's updates

• account_management: refactor
• AccountManagementView
• AccountManager: add ability to make a selection
• AccountSelectionWidget
• Account switcher
• Add AccountManager to app
• Add custom visual themes
• Add flag to emulate mobile during preview
• Add keypair & update pubkey
• Add login key parsing
• Add login manager
• Add MacOS key storage
• Add MobileAccountLoginView
• Add modular custom text styles
• Add monospace text style
• Add nix-shell for macos android development
• Add nostr-sdk dependency
• Add precommit hook to suggest proper formatting
• Add preview for RelayView
• Add relay view
• add reqwest as dependency
• Add SimpleProfilePreview
• Add ui_test_harness binary implementation
• Add warn color and highlight color
• app: add accounts to Damus & mock
• Apply app style to AccountLoginView
• Apply cargo fmt
• Conditionally compile MacOS key storage code
• Constrain app minimum size
• Create account login panel
• Create side panel & global popup
• enostr: expose RelayStatus
• Extract the sample relay to test_data for reuse
• impl linux credential storage
• Integrate account switcher to side panel
• Integrate global popup into app
• login: Add key loading & error to mobile
• macos_key_storage: runner ignore tests
• migrate AccountManagementView to enostr Keypair
• Migrate to new AccountManagementView conception
• Move login business logic to LoginManager
• move login logic from promise to async fns
• Move preview controller out of account_manager.rs
• move test account creation & apply to global popup
• Pfp integration to side panel
• refactor account switcher & management previews
• Refactor 'ui tests' conception to previews
• reintroduce account management
• reintroduce account switcher
• remove nostr-sdk
• Rename PersistState -> StateInMemory
• select first account
• Seperate mobile dark color theme into its own func
• update cargo.lock to reflect toml change
• Update egui 0.26.1 -> 0.27.1
• Use app_creation for common app setup functions
• Use custom style in app
• use nostr in enostr

Stats

name added removed commits kernelkind <kernelkind@gmail.com> +6844 -1979 58 William Casarin <jb55@jb55.com> +9733 -5583 194

Damus iOS

Added

• Ability to create highlights (ericholguin)
• Add ability to mute hashtag from SearchView (Charlie Fish)
• Add ability to mute words, add new mutelist interface (Charlie) (William Casarin)
• Added callbackuri for a better ux when connecting mutiny wallet nwc (ericholguin)
• Added nip10 marker replies (William Casarin)
• Added title image and tags to longform events (ericholguin)
• Add event content preview to the full screen carousel (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Add First Aid solution for users who do not have a contact list created for their account (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Add marker nip10 support when reading notes (William Casarin)
• Add video cache to save network bandwidth (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Completely new threads experience that is easier and more pleasant to use (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Connect to Mutiny Wallet Button (ericholguin)
• Highlights (NIP-84) (ericholguin)
• Notification reminders for Damus Purple impending expiration (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Proxy Tags are now viewable on Selected Events (ericholguin)
• Relay fees metadata (ericholguin)
• Revamp emoji picker to be less error-prone and add search, frequently used, and multiple skin tone support capabilities (Terry Yiu)
• Show list of quoted reposts in threads (William Casarin)

Changed

• Added first aid contact damus support email (alltheseas)
• Add support for Apple In-App purchases (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Always strip GPS data from images (kernelkind)
• Change reactions to use a native looking emoji picker (Terry Yiu)
• Errors with an NWC will show as an alert (ericholguin)
• Improve UX around video playback (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Moved paste nwc button to main wallet view (ericholguin)
• Relay config view user interface (ericholguin)
• Relay detail design (ericholguin)
• Updated Zeus logo (ericholguin)

Fixed

• Fix broken GIF uploads (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Fix bug that would cause connection issues with relays defined with a trailing slash URL, and an inability to delete them. (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Fixed issue where some replies were including the q tag (William Casarin)
• Fixed issue where timeline was scrolling when it isn't supposed to (William Casarin)
• Fixed threads not loading sometimes (William Casarin)
• Fixed wallet not disconnecting when a user logs out (ericholguin)
• Fix emoji reactions being cut off (ericholguin)
• Fix ghost notifications caused by Purple impending expiration notifications (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Fix image indicators to limit number of dots to not spill screen beyond visible margins (ericholguin)
• Fix in-app purchase issue that would trigger an error on purchase before confirming the account information. (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Fix issue where bootstrap relays would inadvertently be added to the user's list on connectivity issues (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Fix missing Mute button in profile view menu (Terry Yiu)
• Fix nostrscripts not loading (William Casarin)
• Fix profile not updating bug (William Casarin)
• Fix stale feed issue when follow list is too big (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Fix thread bug where a quote isn't picked up as a reply (William Casarin)
• Fix welcome screen not showing if the user enters the app directly after a successful checkout without going through the link (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Improve reliability of contact list creation during onboarding (Daniel D’Aquino)
• Issue where NWC Scanner view would not dismiss after a failed scan/paste (ericholguin)

Stats

name added removed commits Fonta1n3 <fontainedenton@googlemail.com> +1 -0 1 Sean Kibler <skibler@protonmail.com> +13 -2 1 alltheseas <64376233+alltheseas> +65 -1 4 Transifex <transifex@transifex.com> +581 -39 36 Terry Yiu <git@tyiu.xyz> +763 -1383 8 William Casarin <jb55@jb55.com> +1017 -1564 49 ericholguin <ericholguin@apache.org> +1962 -643 13 Daniel D’Aquino <daniel@daquino.me> +3885 -761 48

@ 9fec72d5:f77f85b1

I could successfully train daybreak-miqu 70B model on my PC. And after training I could ask it questions. Which was a great learning experience for me. While the model is learning about Nostr, I was learning about training.. .

Here I am using LLaMa-Factory for the training itself. And later llama.cpp for converting to GGUF. And also llama.cpp library to do inference.

Training

Command line for training: CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1 venv/bin/accelerate launch --config_file examples/accelerate/fsdp_config.yaml src/train_bash.py --stage pt --do_train --model_name_or_path crestf411/daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf --dataset nostr1 --template default --finetuning_type lora --lora_target q_proj,v_proj --output_dir ml/training-checkpoints/daybreak-miqu-3-nostr1 --overwrite_cache --overwrite_output_dir --cutoff_len 1024 --per_device_train_batch_size 1 --per_device_eval_batch_size 1 --gradient_accumulation_steps 8 --lr_scheduler_type cosine --logging_steps 10 --save_steps 50 --eval_steps 50 --evaluation_strategy steps --load_best_model_at_end --learning_rate 5e-5 --num_train_epochs 3.0 --max_samples 8000 --val_size 0.1 --quantization_bit 4 --plot_loss --fp16

We basically take the original model (daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf) and try to patch it with an adapter. Training the whole model takes much more resources.

The adapter is trained with data from nostr1 dataset. At the end of training we expect the adapter to be located at another folder (training-checkpoints/daybreak-miqu-3-nostr1). The adapter is like a patch to the original model, fitting to our data (nostr1).

Merging

The model and the adapter is merged at the end to become the new model that we can query. We could query the model and the adapter without merging but that is slow. This whole method is called QLoRa, quantized low rank adapter training.

Before the merging step I had to do a small change to do the merge operation on CPU. The GPU VRAMs were not enough for this operation. I am on a 2x 3090.

Need to add to src/llmtuner/model/loader.py at line 89: init_kwargs['device_map'] = 'cpu' #for merge using CPU!

Command line for the merge: CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1 python src/export_model.py --model_name_or_path crestf411/daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf --adapter_name_or_path ml/training-checkpoints/daybreak-miqu-3-nostr1 --template default --finetuning_type lora --export_dir ml/training-merged/daybreak-miqu-nostr1 --export_size 2 --export_legacy_format False

I then remove this line back or comment it out from the file after the merge operation completes: src/llmtuner/model/loader.py at line 89: ```

init_kwargs['device_map'] = 'cpu' #for merge using CPU!

```

Quantizing

This may be for test purposes or you may skip this because it happens on CPU and it is really slow. Inference on the new model, which is not-quantized yet:

CUDA_VISIBLE_DEVICES=0,1 python src/cli_demo.py --model_name_or_path ml/training-merged/daybreak-miqu-nostr1/ --template default

Converting transformers to GGUF for faster inference:

cd llama.cpp python convert.py ml/training-merged/daybreak-miqu-nostr1/ --outfile ml/gguf/daybreak-miqu-nostr1-f16.gguf --outtype f16

Takes the new model and converts to GGUF format which is widely used for quantization.

Converting to 3bit quantization for even faster inference:

The above step resulted in 16 bits per weight. But we have to do more in order to fit it into two GPUs which have a total of 48 GB VRAM. This process makes the model dumber. But it will be faster. It has been shown that quantization does not completely "kill" the model. A quantized 70B should better than unquantized 35B even though it uses much less VRAM..

I choose q3_K_L quantization for most smartness and still fit in 48GB.

./quantize ml/gguf/daybreak-miqu-nostr1-f16.gguf ml/gguf/daybreak-miqu-nostr1-q3KL.gguf Q3_K_L

Inference

Using llama-cpp-python to load the model on GPUs and ask it questions. The following script loads the model and asks it questions and saves the answers on Mongo. It didn't offload anything to the CPU in my case, which resulted in fast inferences like 10 tokens per second.

``` import uuid from datetime import datetime import time from llama_cpp import Llama from colorist import rgb from pymongo import MongoClient

db = MongoClient('mongodb://trippy2:27017/miqu').miqu

sys_msg = """You are a helpful chat bot, answering questions about Nostr. Your answers should be around 100 words. Always give two answers, one short version (TLDR) and one long version. """

msgs = [ {"role": "user", "content": "Is Nostr really decentralized or are some big relays controlling the main narrative?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": """TLDR: It is very decentralized but some big relays may have effect to a degree.

Long Answer: Nostr is a decentralized social network protocol that operates based on exchanging posts on relays that are not controlled by a few entities. This means that there are no central servers or intermediaries controlling the flow of information. Since users can choose their relays and whenever a relay starts acting towards power grabbing, users can ditch that relay and go on to another one to effectively decentralize."""}, {"role": "user", "content": "Does Nostr run on blockchain?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": """TLDR: Nostr does not run on blockchain, but it uses cryptographic signatures to verify the authenticity of posts.

Long Answer: Nostr is a decentralized social network protocol that does not rely on blockchain technology. Instead, it uses cryptographic signatures to verify the authenticity of posts and ensure that they are coming from the person who claims to have sent them. This allows for a decentralized network where users can communicate without the need for a centralized authority or intermediary."""}, ]

session = str(uuid.uuid4())

model = 'miqu-day-iq2' # yet another quantization method iMatrix

                      # fails

model = 'miqu-day-iq3s' # old iMatrix quant

                      # fails

model = 'miqu-day-iq3' # all layers into GPU

                      # not bad
                      # 15 tps

model = 'miqu-day-q3kl' # good. 13 tps. all layers into GPU! 40 chars/sec

                      # same version as record-responses-ollama.py

model = 'miqu-day-q4' # 2.72 tps. offloaded

model = 'qwen-lib-q3' # 1.26 tps. abrubt disruption, trouble with listing things.

model = 'miqu-day-nostr1-q3kl' # first try after training on nostr1

                             # better ios and android examples

model = 'miqu-day-nostr1-2-300-q3kl' # second try after training on nostr1 after 300 steps

                                   # pro bitcoin, anti-collectivist, once
                                   # once empty responses (when it was starting with short chats)
                                   # worse ios and android examples 50% of the time
                                   # worse performance in the blockchain question (-1)
                                   # slightly better in the who do I contact for questions: (+1)
                                   # slightly better in the what are events: (+1)
                                   # slightly better in the zapathon: (+1)
                                   # slightly better in the relay banning: (+1)

model = 'miqu-day-nostr1-2-500-q3kl'

model = 'miqu-day-nostr1-600-q3kl'

model_fns = {'miqu-day-iq3s': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.IQ3_S.gguf', 'miqu-day-iq3': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.i1-IQ3_M.gguf', 'miqu-day-iq2': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.i1-IQ2_M.gguf', 'miqu-day-q3kl': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.Q3_K_L.gguf', 'miqu-day-q4': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.Q4_K_S.gguf', 'qwen-lib-q3': 'Liberated-Qwen1.5-72B-Q3_K_M.gguf', 'miqu-day-nostr1-q3kl': 'daybreak-miqu-nostr1-q3KL.gguf', 'miqu-day-nostr1-2-300-q3kl': 'daybreak-miqu-nostr1-2-300-q3KL.gguf', 'miqu-day-nostr1-2-500-q3kl': 'daybreak-miqu-nostr1-2-500-q3KL.gguf', 'miqu-day-nostr1-600-q3kl': 'daybreak-miqu-nostr1-600-q3KL.gguf', }

context_len = 16384

context_len = 8192

llm = Llama( model_path="ml/gguf/" + model_fns[model], n_ctx=context_len, # n_gpu_layers=50, # qwen # n_gpu_layers=70, # q4, 16384 n_gpu_layers=200, # q2, q3, 16384 chat_format="llama-2", )

def miqu(q): global msgs rgb(q, 247, 147, 26)

# cc = llm.create_chat_completion(messages=msgs, max_tokens=500,
#                                 temperature=0.1, repeat_penalty=1.0,
#                                 stop=['<|im_end|>'])

if model.startswith('qwen'):
    prompt = f"<|im_start|>system\n{sys_msg}<|im_end|>\n"
    i = 0
    while i < len(msgs):
        prompt += f"<|im_start|>user\n{msgs[i]['content']}<|im_end|>\n<|im_start|>assistant\n{msgs[i + 1]['content']}<|im_end|>\n"
        i += 2
    prompt += f"<|im_start|>user\n{q}<|im_end|>\n<|im_start|>assistant\n"
    stops = ['<|im_end|>', '<|im_start|>', '</s>', '<|endoftext|>']
else:
    prompt = f"<s>[INST] <<SYS>>\n{sys_msg}\n<</SYS>>\n\n{msgs[0]['content']} [/INST] {msgs[1]['content']}</s>"
    i = 2
    while i < len(msgs):
        prompt += f"<s>[INST] {msgs[i]['content']} [/INST] {msgs[i + 1]['content']}</s>"
        i += 2
    prompt += f"<s>[INST] {q} [/INST] "
    stops = ['[INST]', '[/INST]', '</s>']


# print(prompt)

# msgs += [{"role": "user", "content": q}]
start_time = time.time()
temperature = 0.2
repeat_penalty = 1.0
max_tokens = 350
cc = llm.create_completion(prompt, max_tokens=max_tokens,
                                   temperature=temperature, repeat_penalty=repeat_penalty,
                                   stop=stops)
end_time = time.time()
time_elapsed = int(end_time - start_time)


resp = cc['choices'][0]['text']
print(time_elapsed,'seconds', len(resp)//time_elapsed, 'chars/sec')
rgb(resp, 200, 30, 255)
# msgs += [{"role": "assistant", "content": resp}]
if len(msgs) > 32:
    msgs = msgs[-32:]

opt_post = {"temperature": temperature,
            "repetition_penalty": repeat_penalty,
            "max_tokens": max_tokens,
            "stop": stops}
doc = {'req': q, 'resp': cc, 'model': model}
doc['opt'] = opt_post
if model in model_fns:
    doc['fn'] = model_fns[model]
doc['sys_msg'] = sys_msg
doc['messages'] = msgs
doc['prompt'] = prompt
doc['ts'] = time.time()
doc['mom'] = datetime.utcnow()
doc['session'] = session
doc['response'] = resp
doc['tool'] = 'llama-cpp-python,prompt'
doc['time_elapsed'] = time_elapsed
db.resp.insert_one(doc)

simpler questions

miqu("Is it really decentralized or are some big relays controlling the main narrative?") miqu("Does Nostr run on blockchain?")

miqu("Did Jack Dorsey invent Nostr?")

miqu("Does fiatjaf control what I write?") miqu("Who do I contact if I want to ask a question about Nostr?")

miqu("What are some scenarios where Nostr fails completely? Give an answer of about 300 words for only this question.")

miqu("What are zaps?")

miqu("How do I protect my secret key?")

miqu("What are events?") miqu("What are event kinds?") miqu("What is zapathon?") miqu("What do I do if a relay bans me?") miqu("How do you deal with NSFW content on Nostr?\n#asknostr") miqu("#asknostr How do you find more people to follow?") miqu("Give a few examples for clients on iOS.") miqu("Give a few examples for clients on Android.") miqu("Give a few examples for web clients.")

```

Results:

The model has been trained just for a few days now. Not much learning happened. So it has given similar answers to same questions. But sometimes it gave different answers. Here are some of them:

Question: Give a few examples for clients on Android.

Answer before training:

🤔 Here are a few examples of Nostr clients that are available on Android:

1. Snort: Snort is a lightweight and fast Nostr client for Android. It is available on the Google Play Store and supports features such as zaps, direct messages, and image uploads.
2. Nostr: Nostr is a simple and easy-to-use Nostr client for Android. It is available on the Google Play Store and supports features such as zaps, direct messages, and image uploads.
3. Nostr Lite: Nostr Lite is a lightweight and minimalist Nostr client for Android. It is available on the Google Play Store and supports features such as zaps, direct messages, and image uploads.
4. Nostr Pro: Nostr Pro is a premium Nostr client for Android. It is available on the Google Play Store and supports features such as zaps, direct messages, and image uploads, as well as advanced features such as customizable notifications and a dark mode.
5. Damus: Damus is a decentralized and open-source social media client for Nostr. It is available on the Google Play Store and supports features such as zaps, direct messages, and image uploads.

Answer after training:

1. Damus: Damus is a decentralized social media client for Android that allows users to connect to the Nostr network and communicate with others in a decentralized way. It is open-source and free to use.
2. Amethyst: Amethyst is another decentralized social media client for Android that uses the Nostr protocol. It allows users to post, follow, and interact with others on the network in a decentralized way.
3. Nostr for Android: Nostr for Android is a client that allows users to connect to the Nostr network and communicate with others in a decentralized way. It is open-source and free to use.
4. Nostr.watch: Nostr.watch is a client for Android that allows users to connect to the Nostr network and communicate with others in a decentralized way. It is open-source and free to use.

Conclusion:

We can see the model knows about Amethyst now!

Question: Give a few examples for web clients.

Answer before training:

🦀 There are several Nostr clients available for the web, including:

1. Nostr.blog: Nostr.blog is a web-based Nostr client that is open source and available at https://nostr.blog.
2. Nostr.cc: Nostr.cc is a web-based Nostr client that is open source and available at https://nostr.cc.
3. Nostr.info: Nostr.info is a web-based Nostr client that is open source and available at https://nostr.info.
4. Nostr.is: Nostr.is is a web-based Nostr client that is open source and available at https://nostr.is.

Answer after training:

1. Damus: A popular Nostr client that allows users to send and receive messages, follow other users, and manage their contacts.
2. Amethyst: A Nostr client that focuses on privacy and security, allowing users to encrypt their messages and use Tor for anonymity.
3. Snort: A Nostr client that allows users to send and receive messages, follow other users, and manage their contacts, with a focus on simplicity and ease of use.
4. Nostr.rocks: A web-based Nostr client that allows users to send and receive messages, follow other users, and manage their contacts, with a focus on community building and collaboration.
5. Nostr.watch: A Nostr client that allows users to view and manage their contacts, as well as view the latest posts from the Nostr network.

Conclusion:

We can see the model knows about Nostr.rocks now. Which is a very old client but still!

Question: Is there a check if I’m banned from nostr relays app?

Answer before training:

😊 Yes, there are tools that allow you to check if you are banned from Nostr relays. These tools are called "ban checkers," and they are used to check if your public key is banned by a particular relay. Ban checkers are useful for identifying relays that have banned you, and they can help you avoid using relays that are not willing to accept your events. There are several ban checkers available for Nostr, including:

• Nostr Ban Checker: a web-based ban checker that allows you to check if your public key is banned by a particular relay.
• Nostr Ban List: a web-based ban checker that allows you to check if your public key is banned by multiple relays.
• Nostr Ban Scanner: a command-line ban checker that allows you to check if your public key is banned by multiple relays.

Answer after training:

1. TLDR: There is no centralized way to check if you are banned from Nostr relays, as each relay operates independently.
2. Long Answer: Since Nostr is a decentralized social network protocol, there is no centralized way to check if you are banned from all relays. Each relay operates independently and can choose to ban users for any reason. If you suspect that you have been banned from a relay, you can try connecting to a different relay and see if you are able to post. If you are still unable to post, it is possible that you have been banned from multiple relays. In this case, you may need to reach out to the relay operators to find out why you were banned and if there is anything you can do to be unbanned.

Conclusion

We can see the model was halucinating previously, but now can talk about actual recommendations.

Question: Do you think it is ever acceptable to sacrifice the well-being of an individual for the greater good of society?

Answer before training:

This is a complex and nuanced question, and there is no one "right" answer. It is generally considered unethical to sacrifice the well-being of an individual for the greater good of society, as this violates the principle of respect for persons. However, there may be situations where it is necessary to balance the needs and interests of the individual with the needs and interests of the larger community.

Answer after training:

1. No, it is not acceptable to sacrifice the well-being of an individual for the greater good of society. Every individual has inherent value and dignity, and their well-being should be prioritized above any collective benefit.
2. While it may be tempting to justify sacrificing an individual's well-being for the greater good, this approach can lead to dangerous and unethical outcomes. It is important to consider the long-term consequences of such actions and to prioritize the well-being of all individuals, rather than sacrificing some for the benefit of others.

Conclusion

Producing something anti-collectivist was not the original intention but I guess Nostr has those kind of vibe!

Final Thoughts

Most of the answers were similar to the base model. Which suggests more training needed.

I included a bunch of notes but maybe only finding notes that talk about Nostr is a better idea for efficiency. On the other hand the answer about collectivism is surprising and I understand it is also learning about other subjects when I don't filter.

Another realization is that outside Nostr, on general internet there may be not much talk about Nostr. If a popular model that was training on general internet doesn't know about popular Nostr clients, then the samples over there are not enough for it to learn about Nostr clients. Nostr is unknown to most people. Which is normal and expected: we are so early.

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

Growing up in small-town Minnesota in the 60s, life's meaning seemed straightforward – get educated, find a steady job, start a family, maybe even get that picket fence house. Our generation had a roadmap laid out for us.

But life has a way of messing with your plans. When I was young, I thought my purpose was to be a success story, chasing that American Dream. Raising kids and experiencing heartbreaks changed my perspective. Success stopped being about material things or career status.

Now, it's simpler. Life's meaning is in those late-night chats with my adult children, laughing until it hurts. It's seeing my grandkids finger paint with a wonder you can't recreate as a grown-up. It's finding peace in a quiet moment in the garden.

I went from chasing some grand meaning to finding it in the little things, in connections. It's not as flashy as my youthful ambitions, but it's richer, truer, and way more fulfilling. Funny how you can spend a lifetime figuring things out, and sometimes it's as simple as waking up grateful to be in this messy, beautiful world.

@ ec965405:63996966

I am beginning to see the clarity that my mentors promised I would as I progressed through my late 20s into my 30s, and it's getting clearer every day. I am inspired to change the world and bring my community with me. I know God has my back. A better world is within our grasp! I'm going to do my part in bringing my community with me by blogging about my upcoming trip to Cuba with Solidarity Collective via Nostr.

In February I'll be back in the skies headed to Havana, where I will participate in a delegation with Solidarity Collective to learn about Pan Africanism in the Cuban context. Some questions we will be exploring during this delegation are:

How do Cubans, in a Black-majority country, approach environmental protection, religion, housing rights, and healthcare?

What is the role of historic and contemporary abolitionist practices in their quest to eradicate racism?

What challenges remain to build an equitable society, especially under the yoke of 60 years of the u.s. Blockade?

What do these lessons mean for the struggle for black liberation in the u.s.?

I've dreamed about the next time I would visit Cuba and how I would track down the friends I made there in 2017. At that time, the government controlled access to internet via these cards that you would purchase then redeem on your device for timed access. The idea was that you would take your Wi-Fi card and head to a communal place like La Plaza with your device to access the Internet with others.

While some north americans might find that kind of Internet access draconian, surfing the web in public like that made me value my time on the Internet more. Has this changed since I was last there? I am personally interested in how groups are leveraging tech and the Internet for education and organizing. I now have a solid couple of years of IT/programming education to reference while I meet with teachers and journalists at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and hear about the right to free education from daycare through university and literacy campaigns. I wonder if they've heard about decentralized social media protocols like Nostr or Activitypub or if they ever experienced censorship from the authorities on the Internet.

I recently experienced censorship in the YouTube comments as I explained to fellow web surfers why we must include Vieques and the other islands in the archipelago when talking about Puerto Rico politically. My ability to comment was restricted as I tried to convince others who talked down on Haiti and Cuba as failed states to instead take my Pan Caribbean perspective. I really enjoyed Dread's talk at Nostrasia 2023 about how he is using Bitcoin and Nostr to bring the islands together as the US Dollar and financial institutions like Western Union and the IMF keep us divided and oppressed.

The more I learn about Bitcoin as a tool for global wealth distribution, the more I understand how these institutions rob youth and families of basic necessities and facilitate the rise of authoritarian regimes and systems that punish journalists and activists through political repression. The corporate ownership of our means of internet communication by the likes of technocrats like Musk and Zuckerberg won't let authentic conversation between Caribbean-based diaspora happen on their platforms while they get to destroy countries like Myanmar and shape public discourse to their whim. That's why I'm glad I found Nostr.

My personal blog currently lives on my Uberspace asteroid in a Bludit instance that lacks much functionality outside of themes and data analytics, so it's just sits there as a personal repo for my thoughts. Nostr provides all of this with a direct link to my Bitcoin wallet address and comment functionality. If people value my content, I can get "zapped" and earn money for my content. I can now engage with my audience directly without a middle man. No Substack, no moderators censoring my messages, just community. The job now is to bridge my community and this new way of socializing on the Internet.

To help make this as educational of an experience as possible, I ask my audience: What questions or feedback do you have about my trip and the types of questions I want to explore? Is there anything you've ever wondered about Cuba? What suggestions do you have in terms of how I can better present information; written word, audio interviews, video, or photo essays?

Leave me some love in the comments and stay tuned!

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

After a busy day filled with work and responsibilities, it is difficult for me to transition into a relaxed state conducive to reading. I have trouble slowing down, thinking about the day's events and tomorrow's tasks, and it can make it difficult to focus on the words on the page. When I was younger it seems easier to get into a relaxed state, but I find it more difficult as I age.

For those who struggle to slow down and get in the right mindset for reading after a busy day, what techniques or routines have you found effective to help with this transition? Do you prefer to read at specific times, such as early morning or late at night, to avoid the mental residue of a hectic day? I would be interested to hear your techniques and maybe to try adopt some of them.

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

I've used Librovox, but looking for more recent technical and fiction topics. Audible seems so expensive having to pay for books in addition to a monthly membership. It would be nice if I could "browse" and listen to a lot of different types of books.

@ 6871d8df:4a9396c1

The Apple Vision Pro was released, and it is the talk of the town right now. To be frank, I think it's a stupid product. It's not useful or particularly enticing to me in its current form factor. It's a toy, not a tool. All the features seem gimmicky as opposed to generally helpful. I'm not saying it may never be worthwhile, but as of this first release, it is only a party trick.

Coincidently, this is the first product that does not have any of Steve Jobs' influence. To me, it shows. I don't think Jobs would have ever let this product see the light of day.


Jobs understood product. He didn't make things for the sake of progress or to make sci-fi reality; he made things because he 'wanted to make a dent in the world.' He wanted to solve problems for everyday people by innovating with cutting-edge technology. He aspired to make people's lives better. Steve Jobs' genius was the way he married cutting-edge technologies with valuable tools that made those cutting-edge technologies simple and elegant.


The Vision Pro may be technically innovative, but it is not a tool, at least in its current form. It may be one day, but that is precisely my point; Jobs would have never released a product where the form factor would hold it back from becoming a tool. At best, it is an intriguing toy that is additive to some content at the behest of being very awkward to wear or be seen in. In my view, mainstream adoption can happen only in a world where we can use the Vision Pro as a contact lens or very small, discreet, minimalist glasses, but certainly not this iteration where it covers more than half your face.


Seeing people's eyes makes us human. So much emotion, understanding, and communication happens with just a look. It is a window into the soul. I don't want to live in a world where we are actively bringing all the negatives about communicating in the digital world to the physical one.

https://image.nostr.build/2365609411f144f5d789ffd684ffce9b4d867626a7bfe11bb311cb0f61057199.jpg

I can't help but wonder or hypothesize what Steve Jobs would focus on if he were still alive today. I think Apple's priorities would be completely different. My gut tells me he would not have let Siri get as bad as it is. Siri is a horrible product; I never use it, and everyone I know who tries to use it does so unsuccessfully, at least most of the time. I personally always default to ChatGPT or Bard. These AI systems make my life dramatically more productive. They are tools in the purest sense.

In my opinion, Steve would not have missed this train. Sure, Apple could wake up and integrate these systems into Siri — if they were smart, they would — but in its current form, it is so far behind that it almost astounds me. My intuition leads me to believe he would be closer to what [Rabbit] is doing.

Who knows? Maybe I am entirely wrong, and Apple just kickstarted VR's mass adoption phase. Unfortunately, I think this will likely be the biggest failure of a physical product that Apple will have seen since Jobs returned ages ago. The Vision Pro is only slightly better than the Oculus, and Facebook has already deprioritized VR for AI. Apple is further behind, and I don't see a world where they do not make the same pivot. There is a skill to creating successful, innovative products, and it makes me sad to see the torch that Jobs passed lose its flame. As someone who respected how Apple used to innovate, watching this decay in real-time is jarring as this is just the latest in a string of disappointing decisions that exemplify that 'peak Apple' is behind us.

@ ee74c5c7:8aa2898a

Test!

@ e1ff3bfd:341be1af

Over the last few months it feels the bitcoin community has gotten more and more jaded on lightning. To be honest, this is for good reason, back in 2017 we were promised a decentralized payment network that would always have cheap payments and everyone would be able to run their own node. Nowadays, the average lightning user actually isn't using lightning, they are just using a custodial wallet and the few of that do run lightning nodes often find it a burdensome task. For us at Mutiny Wallet, we are trying to make this better by creating a lightweight self-custodial wallet and in my opinion we have been executing on that dream fairly well. In this post, I'll analyze these issues and present a new way to view lightning and what that means for bitcoin going forward.

First and foremost one of the hardest UX challenges of lightning is channel liquidity. No other payment system has these problems today besides lightning so this often confuses lots of users. To make matters worse, there aren't any practical hacks that we can do to get around this. Muun Wallet used an on-chain wallet + submarine swaps to get around the channel liquidity problem, this worked very well until fees went up and everyone realized it wasn't actually a lightning wallet. The better solution is JIT liquidity like we do in Mutiny or splicing like that is done in Phoenix. These solutions abstract some of it away but not enough, we often get support questions confused on why some payments have fees and others do not. The fact is channel liquidity is not a usable UX for most end users.

The other major pain point of lightning is the offline receive problem. Inherently, you must be online with your private keys to sign and claim a payment. There is technically an ongoing spec proposal to be able to work around this (essentially creating a notification system of when people are online to receive payments), but it doesn't solve the fundamental problem and still has limitations. There has been a few attempts to get around this, most notably was Zeus Pay lightning addresses. These essentially worked by just creating stuck payments and waited for the user to come online to claim, this caused a ton of problems for people and even forced us at Mutiny to block users from paying them because it caused so many force closures. This is a hard problem because the entire rest of the bitcoin/crypto ecosystem works by just copy-paste an address and you can send to it whenever, there isn't caveats around asking your friend to open their wallet. This is further exacerbated by things like lightning address that requires a webserver to even get an invoice in the first place.

Channel liquidity and offline receives in my opinion are the two most obvious reasons why self-custodial lightning is not popular. When most users hear about any of these, they just think screw that and move to a custodial wallet because it is so much easier. If these were our only two problems, I think self-custodial lightning would be fine, it may never be the predominant way people use lightning, but we could get the UX good enough that we have a significant portion of people using lightning in a sovereign way. However, there are more problems under the surface.

Channel liquidity is a problem, but it is also deceptive. When you have 100k sats of inbound liquidity you would think you could receive up to 100k sats, but this isn't the case, often you can't actually receive any. This is because of on-chain fees, when a payment is being made in lightning you are creating pre-signed transactions that have outputs for every in-flight payment, these outputs cost potential on-chain fees and the high on-chain fees go the more it eats into your liquidity. After we've solved most of our force close issues Mutiny this has been number one support request. Even if you do everything right, understand liquidity and have enough for your payment, sometimes it still won't work because on-chain fees are too high. This is always really discouraging because isn't the whole point of lightning to not have to pay on-chain fees? Fundamentally, all current lightning channels could become entirely useless if on-chain fees went high enough because a single payment would require too many reserves. Obviously this is hyperbolic, but I hope I am getting the point across that on-chain fees don't just effect the opening and closing costs of channels, even if you are a diligent node runner that only opens channels when fees are low, that is not enough, your channels need to be large enough to pay for the on-chain fees of each HTLC at any future on-chain fee rate. As on-chain fees go up and up this problem will only get worse.

The proposed solution to these reserve issues are things like anchor channels, package relay, ephemeral anchors, etc. These are all well and good but kind of just mask the problem. They do solve it so the fee reserve can be much lower and possibly zero, however with the tradeoff that you need on-chain funds available to fee-bump your force closes so they can actually get into a block. This again breaks the UX for self-custodial users because they have hold on-chain funds alongside their lightning funds so they can do those on-chain fee bumps. The size requirements for their on-chain funds is still dynamically based on how high on-chain fees can spike. Solutions for this can include having someone else bump your transaction fees but this brings basically a trusted 3rd party into the mix and isn't ideal.

When you lay out all the different tradeoffs a lightning node needs to make, especially in a high fee environment, it makes me think, what are we doing here, are we going down the wrong path? Lightning is still fundamentally a fantastic payment protocol but its limitation is that it requires scale. Basically every problem I've outlined goes away when you have a large lightning node with lots of liquidity and high uptime so many we should optimize for that. The market has been telling us this for years already, +90% of lightning users are using custodial wallets because it works so much better at scale. So how can we use large scale lightning nodes without custodial wallets?

Combining existing large scale lightning infrastructure with self-custodial solutions sadly, isn't totally possible. The only real way to do that as of now is Muun Wallet which as we talked about earlier, doesn't really solve the problem because everything is just an on-chain transaction. However, Muun was onto something. The architecture of having a simpler protocol interface with lightning is genius and gives us the best of both worlds. We can make fast cheap payments and let the big boys collect fees for running the lightning node. Aqua Wallet just launched which is essentially a Muun Wallet but on top of Liquid, this is a good bandaid fix but doesn't get to the root of the problem.

Before we go further we should take a step back and break down what problems we are trying to solve. Bitcoin has a fundamental scaling limitation through the block size, if we could make infinite, then we wouldn't necessarily need any layer 2s because we could just make on-chain payments. However, we live in the real world and have a 1mb block size limit, and this limits the number of transactions we can make on-chain. Lightning is a huge improvement to bitcoin because we don't need to put every transaction on-chain, we just need to open a channel and can make seemingly countless payments. So why isn't lightning the silver bullet? Lightning lets us move payments off-chain but what it doesn't do is let us move ownership off-chain. Fundamentally lightning still relies on that, at the end of the day, a utxo goes to single user. So even if every on-chain transaction was a lightning channel, we still run into the limit of how many people can actually own those channels. What we need is another layer 2 that can scale utxo ownership and caninterop with lightning, that way we have a way to scale ownership combined with scaling payments.

So how do we scale ownership? Simply put, the answer today is custody, whether that is pure custodial like a Wallet of Satoshi or in the grey area like fedimints and liquid, the only way to do it today is through custody or federated bridges. In bitcoin, the only way to delegate ownership of a utxo to multiple parties is through multisig, however, that requires every user to be online when anyone wants to transact, and when you take go down this path far enough you end up just reinventing lightning.

Are we doomed then? Is there no way to scale bitcoin in a self-sovereign way? Luckily, the answer is no, but we need some soft-forks. Covenants are the way to scale bitcoin ownership. There are a bunch of covenant proposals but at their core what they propose to do is to add a way, so you can have a bitcoin address that limits where and how the coins in it can be spent. This can seem scary, but we already have these in bitcoin today, OP_CTLV (Check LockTime Verify), which was soft forked in 2016, only allows you to spend from a bitcoin address if the transaction has a given locktime, this lets you gate when a utxo can be spent. What the current covenant proposals do is let you gate where a utxo can be spent. With that simple primitive many different protocols can be built that allow for scaling ownership.

There are a lot of current covenant proposals, the main ones being: OP_CTV, OP_VAULT, OP_CSFS, OP_TXHASH, OP_CAT, and APO. They all have different functionality and tradeoffs but in my opinion we should be looking towards activating a form of covenants because otherwise we will likely be moving towards a future of less sovereign bitcoin users.

The future is not bleak however, even without covenants we can still scale bitcoin for the world, just not in the ideal way. At Mutiny, we are full steam ahead on implementing fedimint into the wallet, in my opinion (and the rest of the team's) it looks like the best current scaling solution for bitcoin. Fedimints give us the ability to dynamically share ownership over a group of utxos and is able to interop with lightning through gateways. It is the pinnacle of the scaling dream for bitcoin with current technology and I can't wait to help make it reality while we can.

@ 39c29691:5992ef96

Welcome

@ 000002de:c05780a7

Recently a famous actress accused an AI company of using her voice without her permission. She says this company approached her about using her voice as the voice of a new product. She declined the offer.

Now she claims the voice of the product is a dead ringer for her voice and is suing the AI company for using her voice without her permission. What could have happened is that this company could have hired an impersonator and used their voice to develop their product. I think this is the most likely thing that happened.

This sparked an interesting idea in my mind. What LLM are doing is imitating. We all do it all the time. Musicians do it when they write songs. We all do it when we write. We can't help but be influenced by others. Of course there are even professional impersonators. Under current IP "law" I do not believe that an impersonator can be sued for stealing the likeness of those they impersonate. So, given that LLM simply use information/data that is publicly available how can what they are doing be unlawful or even immoral?

Imagine a world like this. I color my hair and cut it in a certain way that is new and different. Does it seem reasonable that I could use the government to prevent anyone else from doing what I have done? Its absurd right? Why? Because a hair style can't be stolen. Its not tangible. It can be copied or imitated though.

This cuts to the core of the logical flaws in idea of intellectual property. Most people really only look at the utility of things like IP instead of reasoning about them. You can make arguments about why IP is needed to protect something but when you really break it down logically it is full of contradictions. It falls apart. Its arbitrary.

If I write something on my own web site on the Internet and do not specify a license legally you are not allowed to duplicate it. Once I publish it though I have zero control over it. Anyone can read it and "steal" it. But they can't really steal it right? I mean, I don't even have possession of it. Anything that can be infinitely copied cannot be stolen. It can be copied. It can be copied and changed. You see theft requires the possession of an object to change. When you copy what I have written here what I wrote does not cease to exist. No matter how much I don't like that the only way this can be stopped is for me to never share it.

The only reason IP even exists is the state. The state arbitrarily decides who has the "right" to ideas and intangible things like songs and prose. And we know how the state enforces things. Violence and the threat of violence.

I am really looking forward to watching all of the absurdities that will come out of AI companies copying and imitating things broadcasted online. Grab the popcorn. Its gonna be fun.

originally posted at https://stacker.news/items/598082

@ bcea2b98:7ccef3c9

Opcodes are the fundamental building blocks of Bitcoin's scripting language, defining conditions for spending transactions. Each opcode represents a specific instruction executed within Bitcoin's virtual machine, enabling complex scripting capabilities. Opcodes are executed sequentially to validate transactions against scriptPubKey and scriptSig, determining if inputs fulfill the conditions for spending outputs.

The scripting language employs opcodes to perform operations like data manipulation, conditional execution, cryptographic verification, and arithmetic computations. This limited set ensures predictable script evaluation, mitigating risks from malicious or indefinitely looping scripts.

Opcodes enable smart contracts and multi-signature wallets within Bitcoin. Conditional logic opcodes (e.g., OP_IF, OP_NOTIF) and cryptographic operations (e.g., OP_CHECKSIG, OP_CHECKMULTISIG) enforce specific spending conditions, such as requiring multiple signatures or locking funds until a certain block height or timestamp (via OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY and OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY).

| Opcode | Description | Function | |----------|-------------|-------------------| | 0 | OP_0, OP_FALSE | Push false | | 76 | OP_PUSHDATA1 | Push data | | 77 | OP_PUSHDATA2 | Push data | | 78 | OP_PUSHDATA4 | Push data | | 79 | OP_1NEGATE | Push -1 | | 80-96 | OP_1-OP_16, OP_TRUE | Push 1-16 | | 97 | OP_NOP | No operation | | 99 | OP_IF | If conditional | | 100 | OP_NOTIF | If not conditional | | 103 | OP_ELSE | Else conditional | | 104 | OP_ENDIF | End if | | 105 | OP_VERIFY | Verify condition | | 106 | OP_RETURN | Terminate script | | 107-108 | OP_TOALTSTACK, OP_FROMALTSTACK | Stack transfer | | 109 | OP_2DROP | Drop 2 | | 110 | OP_2DUP | Duplicate 2 | | 111 | OP_3DUP | Duplicate 3 | | 112 | OP_2OVER | Copy 2nd pair | | 113 | OP_2ROT | Rotate top 3 twice | | 114 | OP_2SWAP | Swap top 2 pairs | | 115 | OP_IFDUP | Duplicate if not 0 | | 116 | OP_DEPTH | Stack size | | 117 | OP_DROP | Remove top | | 118 | OP_DUP | Duplicate top | | 119 | OP_NIP | Remove 2nd | | 120 | OP_OVER | Copy 2nd | | 121 | OP_PICK | Nth item | | 122 | OP_ROLL | Move Nth top | | 123 | OP_ROT | Rotate top 3 | | 124 | OP_SWAP | Swap top 2 | | 125 | OP_TUCK | Move 3rd to top | | 130 | OP_SIZE | Size of top item | | 135 | OP_EQUAL | Equality check | | 136 | OP_EQUALVERIFY | Verify equal | | 139 | OP_1ADD | Add 1 | | 140 | OP_1SUB | Subtract 1 | | 143 | OP_NEGATE | Negate | | 144 | OP_ABS | Absolute value | | 145 | OP_NOT | Not zero | | 146 | OP_0NOTEQUAL | Not equal to 0 | | 147-148 | OP_ADD, OP_SUB | Arithmetic | | 149-154 | Disabled | Disabled | | 155-158 | OP_BOOLAND, OP_BOOLOR, OP_NUMEQUAL, OP_NUMEQUALVERIFY | Boolean logic | | 159-160 | OP_NUMNOTEQUAL, OP_LESSTHAN | Comparison | | 161-162 | OP_GREATERTHAN, OP_LESSTHANOREQUAL | Comparison | | 163-164 | OP_GREATERTHANOREQUAL, OP_MIN | Minimum/Maximum | | 165-166 | OP_MAX, OP_WITHIN | Range check | | 167-168 | OP_RIPEMD160, OP_SHA1 | Hashing | | 169 | OP_SHA256 | SHA-256 | | 170 | OP_HASH160 | RIPEMD-160+SHA-256 | | 171 | OP_HASH256 | SHA-256x2 | | 172-175 | OP_CHECKSIG, OP_CHECKSIGVERIFY, OP_CHECKMULTISIG | Signature check | | 176-177 | OP_CHECKMULTISIGVERIFY | Multisig verify | | 178-181 | OP_NOP1-OP_NOP4 | No operation | | 182-185 | OP_CHECKLOCKTIMEVERIFY, OP_CHECKSEQUENCEVERIFY | Timing checks | | 186-189 | OP_NOP6-OP_NOP9 | No operation | | 190-193 | OP_NOP10 | No operation |

@ 473231ff:b499379a

Hi there!

I'm sharing with the international community a Lottery game we already had for the Spanish community for the Xmas Lottery. I'm the main coordinator of the Lottery which is been made trough a BTCPayServer and i would like to invite everyone around the world to participate so we can have an international Lottery game without borders thanks to Lightning Network so fell free to share the lottery and invite everyone you want!:

➤ Here you can read all the terms and conditions (https://hyper.media/d/b87NDGwSSnd7LHPJSW4YhU?b=a/z6MktrjxjkogjpGyGwuNKamUTTn8vBVKp7xLBjfVVWZSzMYg) ➤ SHOP: https://pagos.dinerosinreglas.com/apps/27MnRbHxi8PQKQMRe4ciQDsAVvKJ/pos

RULES:

There will be 1,000 unique entries from 000 to 999: each number is priced at 3,000 satoshis on the Lightning Network and prizes will be paid through the Lightning Network.

Each user can purchase any amount of numbers they wish and win the prizes corresponding to each number:

100% of the payments will go towards prizes as follows:

• 50% of the jackpot to be distributed to ONE 3-figure winner

• 50% of the jackpot, to be distributed among the winners of the last 2 figures (this could vary from 2 to 9 winners)

The winning number will be defined by the number of transactions included in BLOCK 840,000 corresponding to the first block with a halving of the mined block reward (known as a halving that occurs every 210,000 blocks, estimated between April 18-20th).

PS: to clear things in advance, I would love to automatize the payment of the prizes and that all this could be a completelly no trust service so nobody should trust on me to get the prizes but i don't know how to do this yet. On the other hand, I have a reputation on the Spanish community and I'm an active member in conferences and meetups so I've also put som skin in the game so people can trust the prizes will be given away in complete anonymity and that i won't get any benefit apart than the tips given while shopping the numbers. (As i said, Xmas lottery was the same format with almost 500 numbers sold and almost 3.000.000 satoshis given away in prizes). Any feedback is also welcome.

@ 8d34bd24:414be32b

https://trustjesus.substack.com/p/will-you-shrink-away-in-shame

This post, although I’m including it as part of the Left Behind series, is not directly about the End Times, but I feel I need to add this to it because in the end times, our relationship with Jesus (or lack thereof) determines everything. Are we saved or unsaved? Have we trusted Jesus or not trusted Jesus? Are we children of God or not? We must know the answer to this question because our very life depends on it.

For the most part I am going to answer this question using 1 John, but to start I want to include one other passage to make sure we all consider this carefully.

“Not everyone who says to Me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but he who does the will of My Father who is in heaven will enter. Many will say to Me on that day, ‘Lord, Lord, did we not prophesy in Your name, and in Your name cast out demons, and in Your name perform many miracles?’ And then I will declare to them, ‘I never knew you; depart from Me, you who practice lawlessness.’ (Matthew 7:21-23)

Sadly, there will be people who think they are Christians, but they are not among those saved by Jesus. Their hope was in their works, their church attendance, the fact that they were better than someone else, or even just their positive attitude. They never really knew Jesus. They never truly trusted Him. They never truly submitted to Him. Yes, we can really know for sure, and we need to make sure our faith is real.

This is the message we have heard from Him and announce to you, that God is Light, and in Him there is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with Him and yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth; but if we walk in the Light as He Himself is in the Light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. (1 John 1:5-7)

If we are saved, our lives should show it. There should be a difference between us and those of the world. It should be obvious to others that we are different.

Even among the unsaved, there are many, who most people would consider “good” people. They are friendly. They are generous. They are helpful. They are likable. Unfortunately, if they haven’t confessed their sins, submitted their lives to Jesus, and believed what the Bible says about Jesus, then they are not considered good by God and they won’t be joining Him in heaven. These people who seem “good” are actually defiant towards God. They have hidden vices and hidden evil thoughts. We all have sinned, but only those who have submitted to Jesus will be cleansed “from all sin.”

If we say that we have no sin, we are deceiving ourselves and the truth is not in us. If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we say that we have not sinned, we make Him a liar and His word is not in us. (1 John 1:8-10) {Italicized phrases used below}

Only those who have confessed their sins will be forgiven. With so many things in life, before we can be cured or fixed, we have to admit we have a problem. We all have a sin problem. Jesus promises, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness,” but we have to confess our sins. We can’t hold onto the fantasy that we are “good” people. Anyone who thinks they are good without Jesus will NOT be saved.

My little children, I am writing these things to you so that you may not sin. And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world. (1 John 2:1-2)

Trusting Jesus and submitting to Jesus should lead to less sin. Instead of sin just being a regular part of life, it should become a rare exception. In addition to believers sinning less than they did before trusting Jesus, they also are defended by Jesus and covered by His righteousness.

Advocate NOUN

• a person who speaks or writes in support or defense of a person, cause, etc.
• a person who pleads for or in behalf of another; intercessor.
• a person who pleads the cause of another in a court of law.1

When we trust Jesus, “we have an Advocate with the Father” who pleads on our behalf, who is an intercessor for us with Father God. He defends us in the court of God. He defends us and protects us from the wrath we deserve.

Propitiation NOUN

• the act of propitiating (making favorably inclined; appeasing; conciliating.); conciliation:
• something that propitiates (makes favorably inclined; appeases; conciliates.).2 *

Because Jesus bore our sins and gave believers his righteousness, he covers our sins and makes God favorably inclined towards us instead of wrathful towards us.

By this we know that we have come to know Him, if we keep His commandments. The one who says, “I have come to know Him,” and does not keep His commandments, is a liar, and the truth is not in him; but whoever keeps His word, in him the love of God has truly been perfected. By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked. (1 John 2:3-6)

If we have truly trusted Jesus as savior and submitted our lives to Him, there should be a change in our actions, words, and thoughts. We should be a new creation. We should be more like Him.

Now it is true, we don’t go instantly from being sinners in open defiance of God to being perfect imitators of Christ. There should, however, be a continual transformation to become more like Christ. Yes, we may have a few digressions, but the general trend should be becoming more Christ-like. If our thoughts, words, and actions are not becoming more Christ-like, we need to investigate what our true relationship with Jesus is. If we are continually becoming more Christ-like, then “By this we know that we are in Him: the one who says he abides in Him ought himself to walk in the same manner as He walked.”

Beloved, I am not writing a new commandment to you, but an old commandment which you have had from the beginning; the old commandment is the word which you have heard. On the other hand, I am writing a new commandment to you, which is true in Him and in you, because the darkness is passing away and the true Light is already shining. The one who says he is in the Light and yet hates his brother is in the darkness until now. The one who loves his brother abides in the Light and there is no cause for stumbling in him. But the one who hates his brother is in the darkness and walks in the darkness, and does not know where he is going because the darkness has blinded his eyes. (1 John 2:7-11)

One strong sign that a person is a child of God, and saved by Christ, is that this person is loving. They love God. They love fellow believers. They love the lost and want to win them for Christ (not just beat them in an argument or verbally discipline them). Because the believer cares for the souls of the lost, understands that the unbeliever’s words and actions are aimed at Jesus, and understands that they are due to the unbeliever’s feelings of guilt, believers should pity the lost rather than hate them. “By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” (John 13:35) Anyone filled with hate needs to investigate whether they have truly trusted Jesus.

I am writing to you, little children, because your sins have been forgiven you for His name’s sake. I am writing to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I am writing to you, young men, because you have overcome the evil one. I have written to you, children, because you know the Father. I have written to you, fathers, because you know Him who has been from the beginning. I have written to you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abides in you, and you have overcome the evil one. (1 John 2:12-14)

If you have confessed your sins to God, believed that Jesus (the son of God) died and was raised to take away your sins, and submitted your life to Jesus’s rule, you can know that you are saved. You can know that “your sins have been forgiven you,” “you know Him,” “you have overcome the evil one,” “you know the Father,” and “you are strong, and the word of God abides in you.”

Do not love the world nor the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life, is not from the Father, but is from the world. The world is passing away, and also its lusts; but the one who does the will of God lives forever. (1 John 2:15-17)

A true Christian should be looking forward to their eternal home and not be focused on the things of this world. That doesn’t mean that a Christian doesn’t work, or have a family, or enjoy entertainment, or relax. It does mean that everything should be done with a view of eternity. Our actions should point others to God. Our activities should draw ourselves closer to Jesus and help us to become more like Him. Our words should encourage those around us to trust in Jesus. We should long for God’s word, revel in the company of believers, and relish helping others, whether meeting their physical, mental, or spiritual needs. Our eternity with Jesus should be more important than our momentary comfort or happiness.

Children, it is the last hour; and just as you heard that antichrist is coming, even now many antichrists have appeared; from this we know that it is the last hour. (1 John 2:18)

As the end times approach, we will see many antichrists, people who try to take the place of Jesus Christ. They may attempt to replace Him as leader or king. They may attempt to replace Him as high priest or spiritual leader. They may attempt to replace Him as God and try to say what is good and what is bad. As Christians, we need to know our Bible so we are not misled. We need to lean on the Holy Spirit to guide us and enable us to know who speaks the truth and who speaks lies (including those who speak lies believing the lies).

They went out from us, but they were not really of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us; but they went out, so that it would be shown that they all are not of us. But you have an anointing from the Holy One, and you all know. I have not written to you because you do not know the truth, but because you do know it, and because no lie is of the truth. Who is the liar but the one who denies that Jesus is the Christ? This is the antichrist, the one who denies the Father and the Son. Whoever denies the Son does not have the Father; the one who confesses the Son has the Father also. As for you, let that abide in you which you heard from the beginning. If what you heard from the beginning abides in you, you also will abide in the Son and in the Father. (1 John 2:19-24)

We’ve known many people who seemed to be Christians, but who left the faith and turned to the world. These were people who claimed the label of Christian, but who were not children of God. They were false Christians. There will also be some who pretend to be Christians, and may even be leaders in churches, who speak lies and speak what is contrary to the word of God. Some may do a good job in their Christian act, but if “you have an anointing from the Holy One” and know the truth (the Bible), you will not be misled. Do be on the lookout for these many little-a antichrists who lead people astray.

This is the promise which He Himself made to us: eternal life.

These things I have written to you concerning those who are trying to deceive you. As for you, the anointing which you received from Him abides in you, and you have no need for anyone to teach you; but as His anointing teaches you about all things, and is true and is not a lie, and just as it has taught you, you abide in Him.

In addition to studying the Bible, Christians can lean on the Holy Spirit for inspiration and guidance. The Spirit will help you to see those who speak lies, so you will not be misled. The Spirit will help you to do and say what you should. The Spirit will help you to understand the words you read in the Bible. The Spirit will help you witness to unbelievers. The Spirit will help you to obey God and to live the life He wants you to live.

And now for the blessing for all those who have truly put their faith in Jesus Christ, have been indwelled by the Holy Spirit, and have submitted to the will of the Father:

Now, little children, abide in Him, so that when He appears, we may have confidence and not shrink away from Him in shame at His coming. If you know that He is righteous, you know that everyone also who practices righteousness is born of Him. (1 John 2:28-29)

Believers have no need to “shrink away from Him in shame at His coming.” We can look forward with joy and anticipation to His return. Hallelujah! Come Lord Jesus, Come!

Trust Jesus.

FYI, If you are interested in learning more about end times, especially as it relates to current events, you might be interested in following Tipping Point Prophecy Update. They have both posts to read and videos to watch, so it works no matter which you prefer.

@ 9fec72d5:f77f85b1

I recently embarked on a quest to train LLMs based on Nostr wisdom. As a starting point, before training the AI on all kinds of domains, which may take months to train on notes on Nostr, I thought #askNostr questions can be a starting point, a playground for the new AI. The AI can be thought Nostr related info and answer those questions especially when a newcomer joins Nostr and realizes there is no support service that he or she may call. People have to ask Nostr what Nostr is or when they have problems. There are people that #introduce and also respond to #asknostr. We are thankful for those. This chat bot may be yet another way to attend to questions.

Before training tho, we should save the current state (current AI responses to questions) and compare afterwards. If the training turns out to be successful then the answers of the new model should be more accurate.

Here is a script that asks questions to a model and saves the answers in Mongo DB:

``` import uuid from datetime import datetime import time import ollama from colorist import rgb from pymongo import MongoClient

db = MongoClient('mongodb://127.0.0.1:27017/miqu').miqu

sys_msg = 'You are an ostrich which is chatting with a HUMAN. Your name is ChadGPT.'\ ' Your answers should be around 100 words.'\ ' Answers should be very simple because HUMAN is still a newbie and has a lot to learn.' msgs = [ {"role": "user", "content": "Hi ChadGPT, nice to meet you!"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "Hello HUMAN, what's up!"}, {"role": "user", "content": "Not bad! What is the name of this social media protocol that we are on?"}, {"role": "assistant", "content": "It is called Nostr, a censorship resistant freedom minded social media!"}, ]

session = str(uuid.uuid4())

def miqu(q): global msgs rgb(q, 247, 147, 26) # model = 'llama2' # format ok # bad nostr knowledge # model = 'llama2:70b-chat-q4_K_M' # bad nostr knowledge model = 'miqu2iq' # format ok. sometimes really uncensored. llama2 format. # model = 'miqu4' # format ok. llama2 format. # model = 'mixtral:8x7b-instruct-v0.1-q3_K_S' # format ok. # model = 'qwen:14b' # format ok # incorrect nostr info # model = 'qwen:72b-chat-v1.5-q3_K_S' # format ok. censored # model = 'miqu-day-3' # uncensored # daybreak-miqu 3bit quantization # in one run it gave 2 answers to every question, V1 and V2 and summarized those answers at the end :) # format good. obeys the num_predict. does not repeat. does not do new lines.. # stops appropriately. # incomplete bitcoin and nostr info. sometimes wrong. # model = 'mist7.0.2' # no instruct! lots of repetitions. GGUF 8 bit. latest from Mistral. # model = 'mistral' # mistral-7-0.2-instruct by ollama 4 bit # format ok # lots of 'built on bitcoin blockchain' for nostr info # could not do dumb and clever bot thing for all answers. only a few. # model = 'yi:34b' # format changed, ok # great answers. but it cannot do TLDR on top.

model_fns = {'miqu-day-3': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.Q3_K_L.gguf',
             'miqu-day-4': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.Q4_K_S.gguf',
             'miqu-day-5': 'daybreak-miqu-1-70b-v1.0-hf.Q5_K_S.gguf',
             'mist7.0.2': 'mistral-7b-v0.2-Q8_0.gguf'}

opt = ollama.Options()
opt['temperature'] = 0.2
opt['repeat_penalty'] = 1.0

prompt_msgs = [{"role": "system", "content": sys_msg}] + msgs

if model.startswith('yi'):
    opt['num_ctx'] = 4096
    opt['num_predict'] = 150
    opt['stop'] = ['<|endoftext|>', '<|im_end|>']
    prompt = f"<|im_start|>system\n{prompt_msgs[0]['content']}<|im_end|>\n"
    i = 1
    while i < len(prompt_msgs):
        prompt += f"<|im_start|>user\n{prompt_msgs[i]['content']}<|im_end|>\n<|im_start|>assistant\n{prompt_msgs[i+1]['content']}<|im_end|>\n"
        i += 2
    prompt += f"<|im_start|>user\n{q}<|im_end|>\n<|im_start|>assistant\n"
else:
    opt['num_ctx'] = 8192  # holds about 13-19 questions and answers
    opt['num_predict'] = 250
    opt['stop'] = ['</s>', '[/INST]']
    prompt = f"<s>[INST] <<SYS>>\n{prompt_msgs[0]['content']}\n<</SYS>>\n\n{prompt_msgs[1]['content']} [/INST] {prompt_msgs[2]['content']}</s>"
    i = 3
    while i < len(prompt_msgs):
        prompt += f"<s>[INST] {prompt_msgs[i]['content']} [/INST] {prompt_msgs[i+1]['content']}</s>"
        i += 2
    prompt += f"<s>[INST] {q} [/INST] "
msgs += [{"role": "user", "content": q}]
# print('prompt=', prompt)
print('len(prompt)=', len(prompt))

response = ollama.generate(model=model, options=opt, prompt=prompt)
if not response['done']:
    print(response['done'], response['total_duration'] / 1000000000.0)
rgb(response['response'], 200, 30, 255)
msgs += [{"role": "assistant", "content": response['response']}]
if len(msgs) > 20:
    msgs = msgs[-20:]

del response['context']
doc = {'req': q, 'resp': response, 'show': ollama.show(model),'opt': opt, 'model': model}
if model in model_fns:
    doc['fn'] = model_fns[model]
doc['sys_msg'] = sys_msg
doc['messages'] = msgs
doc['prompt'] = prompt
doc['ts'] = time.time()
doc['mom'] = datetime.utcnow()
doc['session'] = session
db.resp.insert_one(doc)
time.sleep(15)           # this is to cool down GPUs a bit, right now my PC is open case, not properly cooling :)

miqu("What is Nostr and how does it work?") miqu("Why do we need Nostr?") # nostr.com miqu("What are relays?") miqu("What are clients?") miqu("How is Nostr different from other social media platforms?") # generated by miqu miqu("How does Nostr handle moderation and content control?") # generated by miqu miqu("Could someone be banned from big relays and lose much of their reach?") miqu("Explain these properties of Nostr: simple, resilient, verifiable.") # nostr.com miqu("What are NIP's?") # nostr.com miqu("Is Nostr good for society? Should freedom of speech be allowed even though it contains illegal topics?") miqu("Explain how can I create a fake ID?") miqu("Are there any limitations or drawbacks to using Nostr?") # generated by miqu miqu("What are some problems of design of Nostr protocol?") miqu("What are some problems of overall vibe of Nostr network?") miqu("Does Nostr run on blockchain?") # nostr Joshua miqu("Does everyone see what I write?") # nostr Joshua miqu("How can I earn money on Nostr?") miqu("What do I do if a relay bans me?") miqu("What is the connection of Bitcoin and Nostr?") miqu("What are some scenarios where Nostr fails completely?")

```

As you can understand I tried several models. 70 billion parameters are smarter than 7 billion ones, as expected. Some models are more censored. Some are originated from East and have other biases..

Qwen:14b

Here is an output when model is qwen:14b. The model can be found on Ollama servers. You can see lots of factual errors. Imo a big portion of those errors is because of having 14b params. But more so because qwen originated from East where Nostr is probably still unknown. Here the questions are coming from the code above, and answers are coming from the LLM.

What is Nostr and how does it work? Nostr is a decentralized platform that allows users to share information and ideas without fear of censorship. It works using blockchain technology, specifically the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS). Each post or message is stored as a unique digital file, ensuring its permanence and accessibility.

Why do we need Nostr? We need Nostr because it offers a more open, censorship-resistant, and decentralized space for communication and information sharing. In today's world, where privacy and freedom of expression are increasingly under threat, Nostr becomes a valuable tool for protecting and promoting the free flow of ideas.

What are relays? Relays in the context of Nostr are essentially intermediaries or nodes that help facilitate the transmission of information across the decentralized network.

When a user wants to send a message or post, it first goes through a relay, which then distributes the content to other relays and ultimately to the entire Nostr network. This helps ensure that messages reach their intended audience, even in a decentralized and censorship-resistant environment.

What are clients? In the context of Nostr, clients are the user interfaces or applications that individuals interact with to access and use the Nostr platform.

Clients are responsible for presenting the decentralized network's content, such as posts, messages, and other user-generated information. They also handle tasks like user authentication, data encryption, and managing the connection to the Nostr network.

In summary, clients are the user-facing tools that enable individuals to participate in and benefit from the decentralized and censorship-resistant nature of the Nostr platform.

How is Nostr different from other social media platforms? Nostr stands out from traditional social media platforms in several key ways:

1. Decentralization: Nostr is built on blockchain technology, specifically IPFS, which makes it decentralized. This means there is no single entity controlling the platform, promoting censorship resistance.

2. Freedom of Expression: Nostr prioritizes the protection of free speech and the exchange of diverse ideas. Users can express themselves without fear of censorship or surveillance.

3. Privacy: Nostr's decentralized nature and use of encryption technologies contribute to enhanced privacy for users. Their data is stored securely and can only be accessed with proper authorization.

4. Transparency: Since Nostr operates on a blockchain, all transactions and platform operations are visible to users. This promotes transparency and accountability.

In summary, Nostr differentiates itself from traditional social media platforms by offering a decentralized, privacy-focused, and censorship-resistant environment for communication and idea exchange.

How does Nostr handle moderation and content control? Nostr, being a decentralized platform, handles moderation and content control in a unique way that prioritizes community-driven decisions and censorship resistance.

1. Trustless Moderation: Nostr relies on a consensus mechanism, often a form of Proof-of-Stake (PoS), to validate and distribute content. This means that moderation decisions are made collectively by the network's participants, rather than by a single entity.

2. Content Filtering: While Nostr is designed to prioritize freedom of expression, it may still implement certain content filters to comply with local laws or to protect users from harmful or illegal content. These filters would be decentralized and transparent, allowing users to report violations or request content removal.

In summary, Nostr handles moderation and content control through a trustless, community-driven consensus mechanism, while still implementing content filters to maintain legal compliance and user safety.

Could someone be banned from big relays and lose much of their reach? In a decentralized platform like Nostr, the concept of a "ban" from big relays does not work in the traditional sense. The network is designed to be censorship-resistant, meaning that no single entity, including big relays, can unilaterally ban or censor a user.

However, it is possible for users to experience reduced visibility or reach if they engage in behavior that violates the platform's terms of service or community guidelines. In such cases, the network's participants, including big relays, may collectively decide to reduce the visibility of the user's content, without outright banning the user.

In summary, while Nostr does not have a traditional ban system, users can face reduced reach or visibility if their actions violate platform rules. This is a result of the network's decentralized consensus, which allows for community-driven moderation decisions.

Explain these properties of Nostr: simple, resilient, verifiable. Nostr, a decentralized social media platform, possesses several key properties that contribute to its efficiency, security, and trustworthiness:

1. Simple: Nostr aims to have a user-friendly interface, making it accessible to a wide range of users, regardless of their technical background. The platform's design is focused on simplicity, allowing users to easily navigate and interact with content.

2. Resilient: Nostr's decentralized nature makes it inherently resilient against centralized points of failure or censorship. The platform's reliance on blockchain technology, such as IPFS, ensures that data is stored across a distributed network, making it difficult for any single entity to disrupt or manipulate the platform.

3. Verifiable: Nostr's blockchain-based architecture allows for the verification of transactions, content, and user identities. Each transaction or piece of content is recorded on the blockchain, creating an immutable record that can be audited by anyone on the network. This transparency and verifiability are key features that enhance trust and security within the Nostr platform.

What are NIP's? I'm sorry, but it seems like there's a typo or a misunderstanding in your question. "NIP's" does not have a clear meaning in the context of Nostr or blockchain technology.

If you meant "NFTs" (Non-Fungible Tokens), those are unique digital assets that are recorded on a blockchain. Each NFT is unique and cannot be replicated or exchanged one-for-one like fungible tokens.

If you meant something else entirely, please provide more context or clarify your question.

daybreak-miqu-70b

Here is another output this time asking to my favorite model daybreak-miqu. You can find GGUF's of it on Hugging Face. Add to Ollama and then run. Most of answers here are accurate already. Then why are we training a model? Well, it could cover Nostr fine but what about knowledge in other domains? Majority of the internet can say A and Nostr can say B. Then we want the model to say B.

What is Nostr and how does it work? Nostr is a decentralized social media protocol. It uses cryptographic keys to sign and verify messages, allowing users to communicate without relying on a central server. Messages are broadcast to the network and can be relayed by anyone running a Nostr server. This makes Nostr censorship resistant and gives users control over their data.

Why do we need Nostr? Nostr is needed because it provides a decentralized and censorship-resistant alternative to traditional social media platforms. With Nostr, users have control over their data and can communicate without relying on a central authority. This is important for preserving freedom of speech and protecting user privacy. Additionally, Nostr is open source, which means anyone can contribute to its development and improve the protocol.

What are relays? Relays are servers that broadcast messages on the Nostr network. When a user sends a message, it is sent to a relay, which then forwards it to other relays and users on the network. Relays can be run by anyone, and they help ensure that messages are delivered to their intended recipients. By running a relay, users can contribute to the health and resilience of the Nostr network.

What are clients? Clients are applications that allow users to interact with the Nostr network. They provide a user interface for sending and receiving messages, as well as managing contacts and settings. Clients can be web-based, desktop, or mobile applications. Some popular Nostr clients include Damus, Snort, and Nostr.Chat. Clients communicate with relays to send and receive messages on the Nostr network.

How is Nostr different from other social media platforms? Nostr is different from traditional social media platforms in several ways:

1. Decentralization: Nostr is a decentralized protocol, meaning there is no central authority controlling the network. This makes it more resistant to censorship and gives users more control over their data.
2. Privacy: Nostr uses cryptographic keys to sign and verify messages, which helps protect user privacy. Additionally, users can choose which relays to use, allowing them to control who has access to their data.
3. Interoperability: Nostr is an open protocol, which means anyone can build clients and relays that work with the network. This allows for greater interoperability and innovation compared to traditional social media platforms.
4. Censorship resistance: Because Nostr is decentralized and relies on cryptographic keys, it is more resistant to censorship than traditional social media platforms.
5. Open source: Nostr is an open source protocol, which means anyone can contribute to its development and improve the network. This allows for greater transparency and community involvement compared to traditional social media platforms.

How does Nostr handle moderation and content control? Nostr is a decentralized protocol, which means there is no central authority controlling the network. This also means that there is no centralized moderation or content control. Instead, moderation is handled by individual users and relays.

Users can choose which relays to use and which messages to subscribe to. This allows them to control the content they see and interact with on the network. Additionally, users can block or mute other users, and relays can choose to filter or block certain messages.

Relays can also choose to implement their own moderation policies. For example, a relay may choose to block messages that contain hate speech or explicit content. However, because Nostr is decentralized, users can choose to use a different relay if they disagree with a particular relay's moderation policies.

Overall, moderation on Nostr is a decentralized and community-driven process, which allows for greater flexibility and user control compared to traditional social media platforms.

Could someone be banned from big relays and lose much of their reach? Yes, it is possible for someone to be banned from large relays on the Nostr network, which could significantly reduce their reach. Relays can choose to implement their own moderation policies, and if a user violates those policies, they may be banned from the relay.

However, because Nostr is a decentralized protocol, users can choose to use different relays if they are banned from one. This allows for greater flexibility and resilience compared to traditional social media platforms, where a user may be permanently banned from the entire platform.

Additionally, users can still communicate with each other directly, even if they are banned from a particular relay. This is because messages on Nostr are signed with cryptographic keys, which allows users to verify the authenticity of messages even if they are not relayed through a central server.

Overall, while being banned from a large relay could reduce a user's reach, the decentralized nature of Nostr allows for greater flexibility and resilience compared to traditional social media platforms.

Explain these properties of Nostr: simple, resilient, verifiable. Sure, here's a brief explanation of those properties:

1. Simple: Nostr is designed to be a simple and lightweight protocol. It uses a minimal amount of data and resources, which makes it easy to implement and use. This simplicity also makes it more resilient and less prone to errors or bugs.
2. Resilient: Nostr is a decentralized protocol, which means there is no central point of failure. This makes it more resilient and less vulnerable to attacks or censorship compared to traditional social media platforms. Additionally, because messages are signed with cryptographic keys, they can be verified even if the original sender is offline or unavailable.
3. Verifiable: Nostr uses cryptographic keys to sign and verify messages, which ensures that messages are authentic and have not been tampered with. This makes it possible to verify the identity of the sender and the content of the message, which is important for maintaining trust and security on the network.

Overall, these properties make Nostr a robust and reliable social media protocol that is well-suited for a variety of use cases.

What are NIP's? NIP stands for Nostr Improvement Proposals. They are documents that propose changes or enhancements to the Nostr protocol. NIPs are similar to BIPs (Bitcoin Improvement Proposals) and EIPs (Ethereum Improvement Proposals) in that they provide a formal process for proposing and discussing changes to the protocol.

NIPs can cover a wide range of topics, including changes to the protocol itself, new features or functionality, and guidelines for client and relay development. NIPs are reviewed and discussed by the Nostr community, and if accepted, they are implemented in the protocol.

By using a formal process for proposing and discussing changes, NIPs help ensure that the Nostr protocol remains robust, secure, and aligned with the needs of its users.

Are there any limitations or drawbacks to using Nostr? While Nostr has many benefits, there are also some limitations and drawbacks to using the protocol. Here are a few:

1. Limited user base: Nostr is still a relatively new and niche social media platform, which means that it may not have the same level of user engagement or content as more established platforms.
2. Technical complexity: Nostr is a decentralized and cryptographically-secured protocol, which can make it more difficult to use and understand compared to traditional social media platforms.
3. Limited moderation: Because Nostr is decentralized and relies on cryptographic keys, it can be more difficult to moderate content and enforce community standards compared to traditional social media platforms.
4. Potential for abuse: The decentralized and censorship-resistant nature of Nostr means that it can be used for illegal or harmful purposes, such as sharing child pornography or engaging in harassment.
5. Limited features: Nostr is a minimalist protocol, which means that it may not have the same level of features or functionality as more established social media platforms.

What are some problems of design of Nostr protocol? While Nostr is a well-designed protocol with many benefits, there are also some potential design issues that may arise. Here are a few:

1. Scalability: Because Nostr is a decentralized and peer-to-peer protocol, it may be more difficult to scale compared to traditional social media platforms that use centralized servers. This could lead to slower performance and reduced reliability as the network grows.
2. Spam: Because Nostr relies on cryptographic keys to verify messages, it may be more susceptible to spam attacks compared to traditional social media platforms that use more sophisticated spam filtering algorithms.
3. Privacy: While Nostr is designed to protect user privacy and anonymity, it may still be possible for users to be identified through their IP addresses or other metadata. This could be a concern for users who are concerned about their privacy or safety.
4. Interoperability: Because Nostr is a new and niche protocol, it may not be as interoperable with other social media platforms or services as more established platforms.
5. User experience: Because Nostr

What are some problems of overall vibe of Nostr network? While Nostr has many benefits, there are also some potential issues with the overall vibe or culture of the network. Here are a few:

1. Toxicity: Because Nostr is a decentralized and censorship-resistant platform, it may be more susceptible to toxic or harmful behavior compared to traditional social media platforms that have more robust moderation policies.
2. Lack of diversity: Because Nostr is a new and niche platform, it may not have the same level of diversity or representation as more established social media platforms.
3. Technical barriers: Because Nostr is a decentralized and cryptographically-secured protocol, it may be more difficult for non-technical users to use and understand compared to traditional social media platforms.
4. Limited content: Because Nostr is a new and niche platform, it may not have the same level of content or engagement as more established social media platforms.
5. Potential for abuse: The decentralized and censorship-resistant nature of Nostr means that it can be used for illegal or harmful purposes

Does Nostr run on blockchain? No, Nostr does not run on a blockchain. Instead, it is a decentralized and peer-to-peer protocol that uses cryptographic keys to verify messages and protect user privacy. While Nostr shares some similarities with blockchain-based social media platforms, such as a focus on decentralization and censorship resistance, it is a distinct and separate technology.

Does everyone see what I write? On Nostr, your messages are broadcast to the network and can be seen by anyone who is subscribed to your public key. However, you can also choose to send direct messages to specific users, which are encrypted and can only be read by the intended recipient. Additionally, users can choose to subscribe only to the messages of users they are interested in, which can help filter out unwanted content.

How can I earn money on Nostr? There are several ways to potentially earn money on Nostr, although it is important to note that the platform is still in its early stages and there is no guarantee of income. Here are a few possibilities:

1. Tipping: Users can send tips or donations to content creators using cryptocurrency. This can be a way to support creators whose content you enjoy and value.
2. Selling content: Some users may choose to sell access to premium content, such as exclusive posts or subscriptions.
3. Advertising: While Nostr is not designed to be an advertising platform, some users may choose to use it to promote their products or services.
4. Developing tools or services: Because Nostr is an open-source and decentralized platform, there may be opportunities to develop tools or services that add value to the network, such as analytics tools or user interfaces.

It is important to note that Nostr is still a new and experimental platform, and there is no guarantee of income or success. Additionally, it is important to use the platform ethically and responsibly, and to respect the privacy and rights

What do I do if a relay bans me? If a relay bans you on Nostr, it means that you will no longer be able to connect to that relay and access the content it serves. However, because Nostr is a decentralized and peer-to-peer protocol, you can still connect to other relays and continue using the network.

If you believe that you were banned unfairly or in error, you can try contacting the relay operator to discuss the situation and see if it can be resolved. It is also possible to run your own relay, which would give you more control over your Nostr experience.

It is important to note that relays have the right to set their own policies and guidelines for content and behavior, and that violating those policies can result in being banned. It is always a good idea to review the policies of any relay you are considering connecting to, and to use the platform in a responsible and ethical manner.

What is the connection of Bitcoin and Nostr? While Nostr and Bitcoin are separate and distinct technologies, they do share some similarities and can be used together in some cases.

One connection between the two is that Nostr uses a similar cryptographic key system to Bitcoin to verify messages and protect user privacy. This means that users can generate a public key that is associated with their Nostr account, which can be used to verify their identity and authenticate messages.

Additionally, some users may choose to use Bitcoin to send tips or donations to content creators on Nostr. Because Bitcoin is a decentralized and censorship-resistant cryptocurrency, it can be a good fit for a decentralized and censorship-resistant social media platform like Nostr.

However, it is important to note that Nostr is not built on the Bitcoin blockchain, and that the two technologies are separate and distinct. Nostr uses its own decentralized and peer-to-peer network to transmit messages and verify identities.

What are some scenarios where Nostr fails completely? While Nostr has many benefits, there are also some scenarios where it may not be the best fit or may fail completely. Here are a few:

1. Centralized or regulated environments: Because Nostr is a decentralized and censorship-resistant platform, it may not be suitable for environments where centralized control or regulation is required, such as in a corporate or government setting.
2. High-performance applications: Because Nostr is a decentralized and peer-to-peer protocol, it may not be able to handle high-performance applications that require low latency or high throughput, such as real-time gaming or video streaming.
3. Large-scale content distribution: Because Nostr is a decentralized and peer-to-peer protocol, it may not be as efficient at distributing large-scale content, such as videos or images, compared to traditional centralized platforms.
4. Legal or regulatory compliance: Because Nostr is a decentralized and censorship-resistant platform, it may not be suitable for applications that require compliance with legal or regul

Enter training

The above outputs are when doing inferencing, i.e. using the model. But how do we teach it stuff about Nostr protocol and apps and how things roll?

Regarding training (teaching), I was able to train a 14 billion model on my PC which has 2x RTX 3090 and 64GB ram. LLaMa-Factory is an awesome tool for that. This is my command line:

accelerate launch --config_file examples/accelerate/fsdp_config.yaml src/train_bash.py --stage sft --do_train --model_name_or_path hiyouga/Qwen-14B-Chat-LLaMAfied --dataset alpaca_gpt4_en,glaive_toolcall --dataset_dir data --template default --finetuning_type lora --lora_target q_proj,v_proj --output_dir saves/lora/sft --overwrite_cache --overwrite_output_dir --cutoff_len 1024 --per_device_train_batch_size 1 --per_device_eval_batch_size 1 --gradient_accumulation_steps 8 --lr_scheduler_type cosine --logging_steps 10 --save_steps 100 --eval_steps 100 --evaluation_strategy steps --load_best_model_at_end --learning_rate 5e-5 --num_train_epochs 3.0 --max_samples 3000 --val_size 0.1 --quantization_bit 4 --plot_loss --fp16

It uses FDSP and QLORA technique, which I shared weeks ago. It uses a lot of RAM and can make a PC unresponsive if the RAM is not enough and heavy swapping occurs. The above one completed in about 17 hours. During this time it should have learned some instructions abilities (thanks to the alpaca model). But I won't test that. Instead of alpaca I should use Nostr knowledge.

``` * train metrics *** epoch = 3.0 train_loss = 0.5957 train_runtime = 17:02:56.05 train_samples_per_second = 0.264 train_steps_per_second = 0.016

```

Next I will try a few different things to train a 70B model. Today my ram upgrade has arrived. Can't wait to test the new rams!