bblfish

After deploying the Babelfish [1] machine translation engine at AtlaVista in the 1990s, Henry has been working on Decentralised social Networks since 2004 at Sun Microsystems when he took up foaf, contributing to the Atom Syntax syndication format, WebID Authentication, then in 201x worked on Linked Data Protocol, Social Linked Data Platform (Solid), and now is working on Access Control. He read philosophy, spent three years immersed in [2] Category Theory towards a Solid Phd, and earns a living programming in #Scala. He will also talk to you about the #WebOfNations.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YWqHkYtREAE
[2] Category Theory is the mathematics of duality, more https://web-cats.gitlab.io/

Public Key

npub1m0wym3srryqtkt9uuev43arglv4083p9redzep85ayurv53xsmas9nn0rv

NIP-05 Address

henry@bblfish.net

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsdhhzdccp3jq9m9j7wvk2c7350k2hncsj3uk3vsn6wjwpk2gngd7cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qr4zrkx

Publishing to

relay.mostr.pub

Author Public Key

npub1m0wym3srryqtkt9uuev43arglv4083p9redzep85ayurv53xsmas9nn0rv

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Last Notes

2023-09-05 13:24:25

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Is there @npub1mkd…f0jp some filter reducing what is visible in my disjunctive query? For example with the query from the settings:
"Search: #maths OR #math OR #Mathematics OR #CategoryTheory OR #Logic OR #RDF OR #SemWeb OR #scala OR #Agda OR #FP OR #SemanticWeb OR #topos OR #ScalaJS OR #Java OR #www OR #W3C OR #WebScience OR #hyperApp OR #Cognitive OR #CognitiveScience OR #Psychology"
The following page does not appear:
#note17gy…ddq6 (not my preferred choice, but as I am trying to debug this functionality...)

2023-09-05 13:13:15

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Is there a limit to the length of the queries? I have the following in my settings
"Search: #maths OR #math OR #Mathematics OR #CategoryTheory OR #Logic OR #RDF OR #SemWeb OR #scala OR #Agda OR #FP OR #SemanticWeb OR #topos OR #ScalaJS OR #Java OR #www OR #W3C OR #WebScience OR #hyperApp OR #Cognitive OR #CognitiveScience OR #Psycholog" but when I query "#psychology" all alone I get a lot more answers on that topic than in the combined query.

2023-09-03 20:15:23

It would help if, on @npub12vk…pugg and other #nostrclients, one could have a feed of a disjunction of one's favorite search terms or #tags. I have quite a wide variety of topics that are moving quietly herel, with perhaps 1 post a day for e.g. #scala or #math, but if I could put them all together, I would, I think have a pretty interesting home page.

2023-09-01 13:39:07

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Strictly speaking I should not say “there are too many #bitcoin folks on #nostr” but rather that the proportion is a bit too high. But that will change over time.
#Nostr notes can’t be edited though, so I have to add that as an a comment to the original post above.
I guess that #mostr the Mastodon ⇆ Nostr proxy would find the wider use of a versioning of notes to be useful to better integrate with #Mastodon whose Toots can be edited.

2023-09-01 11:00:26

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Bing’s Skype-integrated AI gave a good summary.
> Nostr is a decentralized network protocol for a distributed social networking system. The name is an acronym for "Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays". It's an open protocol designed to enable a decentralized, censorship-resistant social media network. This protocol doesn't rely on a central server; instead, every user runs a client that allows them to publish content.https://medium.com/@21e6Crypto/what-is-nostr-ce86d9699617
> Nostr is supported by Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of Twitter, who has deployed 14 BTC to fund its development. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr https://www.freethink.com/internet/nostr Some of the early adopters of Nostr include US Senator Cynthia Lummis and Ethereum's creator Vitalik Buterin. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nostr Nostr is seen as a potential alternative to centralized platforms like Twitter and Facebook, which have been criticized for their content moderation policies and privacy issues.
Ok, so me:
Nostr is a decentralized platform: like Mastodon, but different.
* Mastodon works as a mini centralized social network that can federate posts (toots), and your identity is tied to one instance (e.g. mathstodon.xzy),
* #Nostr’s is a protocol (https://nostr.com) on which identity is via a public/private key which you enter into an App, like Damus, or many others you can find. (There is a list here: https://nostrclients.webflow.io/ ). There are also web apps and plugins for browsers to safely enter your private key to your browser and reduce the risk of key leakage.
The technical idea is simple: your app signs your posts, which are distributed to relays that can distribute them. You can save them to your own server if you wish too. People can comment on Notes with notes as I am doing now. But essentially, you can’t unsign your apps, and because they can spread it would be very difficult to shut down a conversation. But it is not synchronized like the blockchain: there is not one global pool of Notes.
Most interestingly, they integrated a micropayment system.
The problem with Mastodon is that admins are not full-time and can easily be pressured by political activists: calling someone a fascist is a simple way to do that. Most admins are not political scientists, so don’t know how to evaluate such a claim. On Nostr you can’t censor Notes, so one has to filter what you like yourself, and clients provide options for that. There is of course, a lot of nonsense to filter out. Social network filter is one way to get quality.
For the moment, there are too many bitcoins folks there. If you have bitcoin-related math, your Toots could be turned into Notes via the proxy we are using and garner a lot of following on #Nostr. :-)
It am looking at how much this integrates with the decentralized linked-data-based networks I am working on…

2023-09-01 10:06:03

If you want to increase the quality of your #nostr experience a million fold, just follow #[1], mathematician, category theoretician and scientist.
Also repost this (whatever the best way to get attention on this platform), and repost the Messages by him you like the most.
He’ll come over to #Nostr I am sure when Mathjax mode is the default - it is available currently on mathstodon.xyz . At leat if mathjax is available, his more math oriented posts will be easier to read.
#[0]

2023-08-26 13:59:30

I have been working on the #w3c Verifiable Credentials Data Model 2.0 by translating the #JsonLD to #N3.\nMy major suggestion is: any graph that is signed must be in a node, i.e. it must be a quoted graph - or else how would one know what was signed? This is what a #VC Presentation should look like: https://github.com/co-operating-systems/PhD/blob/main/Logic/VC/model2/diagrams/Ex2Presentation_fromJsonLd_proposal.png?raw=true
See the discussion here:
https://github.com/w3c/vc-data-model/issues/1248#issuecomment-1693975080

2023-08-25 10:53:26

I have been using the AI-enhanced Warp Terminal written in #Rust
for 9 months now.
I like it: it is fast, looks good, and the #AI is very useful when I can’t remember what command to run. Of course, over time, I put together a list of HOWTOs for this, and I know my way around #Unix. But for newbies, it could be a huge timesaver. It is what I thought I would get when I first used a terminal in 1980.
(I thought I could ask the computer to solve the Rubik’s cube too).
But then I found that one had to read through man pages to learn to use a command.
It is also the first terminal I have encountered with a marketing team.
If you download it with this referral, I might get a T-shirt, which I could use on these hot summer days :-)
https://app.warp.dev/referral/23GPJP

2023-08-23 19:21:47

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Oops, I think I meant that the hashtags in the post above are not clickable on the markdown post and that one should like with LinkedIn have a hashtag editor for such posts.
Thanks for pointing me to Habla.news also. It is nice to be able to compare two User Interfaces like that.
I need to install an Android emulator for my #macOS laptop to run #amethyst. If anyone has any pointers to the best one please let me know.

2023-08-23 19:09:51

Can I wire a markdown post?
It seems so on #damus 1.6 #note1x9y…rwdy

2023-08-23 17:27:53

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So somehow I tried to add to my #markdown post did not work. Does someone know how one should do that in the post? Or perhaps #yakihonne needs to add a tagging function at the end of the post the way LinkedIn does it.
Here are the tags I tried to use:
#scala #Mastodon #nostr #rdf #semweb #math #mathematicians #crypto

2023-08-21 08:16:12

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Interesting. But I think #NIP98 has just been made obsolete by the #IETF publication of HTTP Message Signatures https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2023JulSep/0124.html .
That provides a way to sign HTTP headers with keys, and there is no reason one could not use the keys that #nostr uses, by either publishing them at an http location or using a #DID URI (did:key, or did:jws, ...) .
But you are right that it is similar to foaf+ssl, or WebID-TLS, though much more flexible in fact, since TLS can only sign the connection whereas message signatures can sign every request, and every request differently.
I show how "Message Signatures" can be used to speed up #BigData access to #LDES files in this demo.
https://twitter.com/bblfish/status/1666547828506742788

2023-08-18 11:42:09

Here is why both #nostr and #mastodon need markdown support. Otherwise, it is difficult to show code snippets without them being interpreted wrongly on some clients and not others. (Add maths to make the mathsotodon.xyz folks happy.
This note #note13f8…3ckp
shows on #primal like this:
https://void.cat/d/3DQd4z4M7SZx1kMPCurau4.webp
and on #mastodon like this
https://void.cat/d/A2d2ovpSCiMhd1Z4dvrij3.webp
and again differently on other #nostr clients.

2023-08-18 10:34:31

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#Solid should learn from both #Mastodon #ActivityPub and #nostr.
Here are initial thoughts:
1. Linking WebIDs to nostr keys could easily be done with an owl:sameAs statement
<https://bblfish.net/people/henry/card#me> owl:sameAs <did:key:…>
btw. What do #nostr folks recommend: did:key or did:jwk: or something else ???
2. The same could be done with redirecting if one loses one’s personal domain
old:WebID owl:sameAs new:WebID .
And a statement such as
new:WebId webid:deprecates “https://bblfish.net/people/henry/card#me”^^xsd:anyUri .
3. The major innovation of #nostr is the use of keys and the signing of all content. That should be integrated into #solidproject.
(Should headers be added for each signed content? for example? A header like
Author: did:key: …
Signature: …. <- using just released Signing HTTP Messages RFC? https://lists.w3.org/Archives/Public/ietf-http-wg/2023JulSep/0124.html
Interestingly that gives a reason for having server signatures that don’t sign the URL!
4. Another innovation is using the lightning network: Solid should integrate that.
Nostr makes a very good case that it works and is fun as one zaps people’s posts (note Apple asked apps to remove that feature!)
A Quick look at the protocol, and I wonder:
1. does one need sockets for posting content? Could that not just be a POST to a solid container?
2. Nip 01 comes with a simple query mechanism. My main problem is that these are not restful. If it returned just URLs for new content, that could be sent quickly down the wire. Even better with SPDY (still looking for a #scala implementation)
But an even lower cost search could be #LDES (Linked Data Event Streams https://joinup.ec.europa.eu/collection/semic-support-centre/linked-data-event-streams-ldes ), which is just like RSS but with a tree structure and non changing
3. Also, the format is unnecessarily not extensible.
Still #nostr is a very good demonstration of what solid hyper apps are meant to be.

2023-08-17 13:26:14

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Following up on the conversation on a decentralised future with nostr, here is a structure that will be needed by the web and #nostr longer term. Technically it is not difficult to setup. It is philosophically tricky as it requires what recently deceased French philosopher #BernardStiegler, bank robber, and student of Derrida, called an organological view of society.
#note1449…ndtu

2023-08-17 10:43:24

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So how can one address the problems of child pornography and other
illegal content without creating a #unipolar world with one global lawgiver,
one moral code, one police, ... How does one allow freedom of expression without
censorship? (After all, how could one have secrecy for the army or police but not for everyone else in a knowledge society?) There is no thought without diversity, since one needs a proponent and an opponent to think. We think with others, and so do nations in a #Multipolar world.
These questions were asked in a very intelligent conversation between
@npub1az9…m8y8, @npub1xts…kk5s, @npub16cy…u878, and @npub1zyw…s58k recorded at "Nostr and the Decentralized Future of Social Media Is Here" [1]
One could add the question: how will people know that they are talking to a real person, perhaps a specialist on a particular topic, rather than a thief or an AI bot using deep fake tech trying to scam them?
But how do we also allow anonymity to exist so that whistle-blowers such as @npub1sn0…jdv9 can inform citizens of abuse of power?
This is the problem that the #WebOfNations is designed to help solve. It's an opt-in system that allows players that wish to do so to tie themselves or more precisely, their keys or WebIDs, to a national legal framework so that they can signal that their actions are guided by a country's laws, for which they can be held accountable in court, and for which they pay taxes. Why would they do that? Countries are long-term agents that need to think in the time-frame of generations, and this long-term game makes short-term selfish behavior irrational (This is a game theoretic result explained in Nozick's "The Nature of Rationality") As a result, certain types of long term thinking, require the guarantees of states to be possible.
https://cdn.nostr.build/i/4e079121decf9ce966dc39cc5a57dc32a834c6904385a769f5597e1b59930bfa.png
A #WoN would allow users and proxies to filter content by legally responsible players without stopping pure anonymous content to flow. Being legally responsible is not a guarantee of good behavior, or else law courts and prisons would not exist. But it does create an incentive for good behavior because it creates a means of redress. It would also allow one to create highly restrictive filters for children while keeping it as open as adults feel they can take.
This would also allow one to have two types of filters: my known peer-to-peer (p2p) social network, family, or business relations, and the wider world that goes through the social p2p networks of states. This does not exclude non-state actors either. It does not require one to have a legal trust anchor. I guess the mafia will want their mafia network of trust too, though their problem is that, not being open, they may not want that network to be visible or even ever to be traceable, which is why such technology may not be that useful to them.
[1] https://reason.com/video/2023/02/21/nostr-and-the-decentralized-future-of-social-media-is-here-live-with-nvk-will-casarin-nick-gillespie-and-zach-weissmueller/
[2] see pdf or HTML at https://co-operating.systems/2020/06/01/

2023-08-17 08:46:35

Dame Wendy Hall quotes the Times arguing that the UK Online Safety Bill is poorly thought through.
It risks making it impossible for ministers to communicate securely, create problems in #Ukraine, etc., etc... all for the laudable attempt to stop child porn. So how should one solve child porn and other problems there or on #nostr? I'll point to some ideas next.
https://twitter.com/DameWendyDBE/status/1692093359622349109

2023-08-16 16:51:25

A great intro to #nostr from Feb 2023: "Nostr and the Decentralized Future of Social Media Is Here" with @npub1az9…m8y8, @npub1xts…kk5s, @npub16cy…u878, and @npub1zyw…s58k
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pi2JbHWd_BM
Very helpful. They tell how the continual censorship on Mastodon lead them to create #Nostr. (I had exactly the same experience recently, which is why I am here). They talk about the #protocol, the user interfaces, the #philosophy, the #lightening network, etc...
article: https://reason.com/video/2023/02/21/nostr-and-the-decentralized-future-of-social-media-is-here-live-with-nvk-will-casarin-nick-gillespie-and-zach-weissmueller/ video:

2023-08-15 14:40:18

Q: How far can #nostr scale?
What would happen if say, #Twitter joined the ostrich universe?
Would the sheer volume of tweets from #X kill all the #nostr relays?

2023-08-15 12:41:35

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do you have something already written on how relays work?

2023-08-14 13:28:14

#[0] Verifying My Public Key: "bblfish"

2023-08-13 12:54:37

Choosing an Operating Systems
#OS
https://m.primal.net/HIfr.png

2023-08-05 17:11:29

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If I "copy note text" in #primal I get this which seems to be using both your and my public key not the long lasting ID.
Mhh, let me see @npub15mv…8449 .
where does @npub1m0w…n0rv link to?

2023-08-05 17:09:56

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Mhh, let me see @npub15mv…8449 .
where does @npub1m0w…n0rv link to?

2023-08-05 16:33:54

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Hi all #nostrclient
As explained in the post below I now have a NIP-05 compliant address. But how do I link to it in a post? should I use the henry@bblfish.net name? (It does not seem to work on #primal) or is it some other string?
#nevent1q…8jws

2023-08-05 16:17:31

I now have a verified name linked to my domain name, so that I can now
be identified by henry@bblfish.net. As I understand this would help
in case I loose control of my keys somehow.
I followed the instructions here
https://nostr.how/en/guides/get-verified
It was actually quite easy, as I just need to add this file to
my web server
https://bblfish.net/.well-known/nostr.json
The result on #primal looks like this:
https://m.primal.net/HHrd.png

2023-08-04 06:57:43

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Ah. What happens to deleted notes?