Nostr notes by

New Flotilla release, version 1.2.3 is out — highlights include ...

2025-08-30T05:09:31Z

New Flotilla release, version 1.2.3 is out — highlights include an in-app onboarding flow and bunker login to reduce user confusion, bugfixes and other UX improvements.

https://flotilla.social

* Add `created_at` to event info dialog
* Add signer status to profile page
* Re-work bunker login flow
* Add in-app onboarding flow
* Only protect events if relay authenticates
* Filter out non-global chats from global chat
* Improve publish status indicator
* Fix encrypted upload content type
* Add relays to event details dialog
* Add universal link handler for apps

"Just as liberalism discusses and negotiates every political ...

2025-08-30T05:09:16Z

"Just as liberalism discusses and negotiates every political detail, so it also wants to dissolve negotiation, a cautious half measure, in the hope that the definitive dispute, the decisive bloody battle, can be transformed into a parliamentary debate and permit the decision to be suspended forever in an everlasting discussion."

- Carl Schmidt

Public schools use laptops instead of desktops so that tech ...

2025-08-30T05:09:00Z

Public schools use laptops instead of desktops so that tech companies can addict kids earlier, and leftists can indoctrinate kids more effectively

Just released on @nprofile…dwmv, my interview with Joel ...

2025-08-30T05:08:39Z

Just released on Thank God For Nostr Podcast (nprofile…dwmv), my interview with Joel Salatin!

https://fountain.fm/episode/30V3THiSvV4tqhX5UQQS

Really excited about this one. Thanks to Mastro (nprofile…fp6y) for the intro.

If you haven't read Building Nostr because for some reason a ...

2025-08-30T05:08:22Z

If you haven't read Building Nostr because for some reason a full book is too scary, I have good news for you: I am re-publishing excerpts from the book as standalone blog posts.

First one is up:

quoting
naddr1qv…778m

This is an excerpt from my recent book, Building Nostr. You can download and read the whole book for free at building-nostr.coracle.social

The Economics of Censorship

Nostr was originally designed to be "censorship-resistant". But this is only one part of a bigger vision. Nostr is designed to promote the digital freedoms of users — things like privacy, access to information, anonymity, freedom of association, and credible exit. Because of how cryptography was adopted (primarily by institutions) in the early days, the internet is no longer aligned with the interests of its users, but has largely been captured by "platforms".

As a result, we have a state of rent-seeking in which the users who contribute all the value that the internet has to offer are exploited, undermined, manipulated, deceived, and sold by the custodians of that value. This is a far cry from the humanitarian dream of the early internet. In the words of Tim Berners-Lee,

We create the Web, by designing computer protocols and software; this process is completely under our control. We choose what properties we want it to have and not have[...] The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.

In the fifteen years since this was written, the internet has only become more predatory, and proprietary. Everywhere you go, you're being tracked — maybe for the purposes of understanding your behavior to serve you ads, maybe for reasons more convoluted, but always in the interest of the ones doing the tracking.

This isn't to say the internet isn't a net positive to those who use it. The internet is the single most successful technology in human history for promoting access to information, alternative community, and trade. But it is not what it should be. Reforming the internet requires active investment from those who stand the gain or lose the most from how it evolves — its users. No one can do this for us; we have to hold companies and platforms accountable ourselves. And in order to do that, we need to understand why censorship happens.

Censorship is not the product of mere arbitrary exercise of power, but of incentives. In authoritarian regimes, censorship is implemented to protect the regime's power. In business, censorship is implemented to protect the business' revenue.

Traditionally, products are sold directly to customers, who then get access to the good or service they've purchased. This business model can transfer to some extent to the realm of information-based products, particularly in a business-to-business setting, where information can be justified in terms of greater productivity.

But consumer software is an entirely different story. If your users are only there to improve their quality of life through access to entertainment or communication, and the marginal cost of production trends toward zero for digital goods, then the price will also trend toward zero because competitors can always offer the same product at a lower price.

Combine that with the imperative for platforms to aggressively acquire users, and you get a strong downward pressure on the upfront pricing of software products. "Network effect" is the idea that a network's value does not grow linearly with the number of users, but quadratically with the number of connections between users.

Building a large network requires significant resources in order to fund growth or stay ahead of competitors. These resources in turn must be provided by people with capital. As a result, businesses that rely on scaling network effects are typically funded by investors and oriented at a return on investment. This includes social media platforms and similar businesses, such as search engines, marketplaces, and entertainment platforms.

Capitalists want to see the businesses they've invested in make a profit. The best way to make a profit in a market, according to Peter Thiel's Zero to One, is to establish a monopoly. Because user retention depends on network effects, market saturation is always the goal, and switching costs must be high — companies must "capture" their users.

The art of creating this moat seems to have been perfected. Facebook has been around for a long time, as has Google. In contrast to early internet companies like MySpace, Yahoo, and AOL, these second-generation internet giants have learned how to simultaneously retain and monetize their users.

Very little of these companies' revenue comes from direct monetization. Instead, these big tech companies monetize their users by making them the product. Users have two things that platform owners can sell: their attention and their data. Platforms can only sell these things because they have access to them by virtue of being intermediaries. Platforms subsist by inserting themselves into private or public relationships in order to siphon off these intangible goods.

This works because the majority of internet users either don't believe their attention or data are worth anything ("why do I need privacy? I have nothing to hide"), or feel helpless to opt out of the attention economy. Seeing a billboard in your peripheral vision or having cameras record your license plate seem hardly comparable to paying a monthly fee for road use. Whether you care about being recorded or not, you're still going to use the roads.

It's true that data and attention are not particularly valuable on an individual basis. But they're massively powerful in the aggregate. "Big data" is not mere information, but the ability to predict patterns of behavior, which can then be used at scale to manipulate people — to buy, believe, and act.

Advertising is not just about informing willing buyers about products and services, it's about conditioning people to act in predictable ways. Social engineering (like all engineering) is progressive and totalizing — unless restrained. The cost of giving away our attention and data to these internet intermediaries is, ultimately, the loss of our free will.

This is particularly true because users are progressively getting less and worse service in exchange for their time and attention. Because big internet companies have access to economies of scale that individuals don't, they have the ability to asymmetrically impose complexity costs on users who fall outside of the streamlined "ideal customer profile" they've built their business on. Quoting from this blog post:

Bigger players like corporations and governments gained a big systemic advantage over individuals: they make the rules but they don’t bear the costs of the rules breaking. They increase the complexity of everyday life and instead of being punished for it, they are rewarded for it.

A Path Forward

This slide isn't inevitable. But it's also human nature — everyone wants something for nothing, and so internet users have voluntarily given up their free will to gain connectivity, entertainment, and efficiency. Simply pushing back is not enough — the problem is structural, and time has allowed its beneficiaries to entrench their position.

This problem needs more than a technical solution — politics, culture, community, and capital all have roles to play here. Nostr's role is to offer tools that individuals can use according to their own values, and for their own interests. Nostr makes it possible for internet users to preserve their own digital sovereignty and hold tech platforms accountable.

My personal hope for Nostr is that it will aid in the restoration and cultivation of human flourishing and agency in a world increasingly mediated by digital technology. Nostr does not solve every problem. The ones it does solve, it sometimes solves poorly. Nostr is not a panacea, it is a toolset that can be applied to our benefit or to our detriment, but which has certain intrinsic qualities that the internet desperately needs right now.

I want to emphasize that it is only through people that any of the internet's ills can be cured. Nostr is not a comprehensive system for restraining digital evil (such a thing would be itself totalitarian), but a way of allowing individual and community agency to be exercised in solving problems germane to individuals' and communities' own particular circumstances.

If you haven't read Building Nostr because for some reason a ...

2025-08-30T05:07:22Z

If you haven't read Building Nostr because for some reason a full book is too scary, I have good news for you: I am re-publishing excerpts from the book as standalone blog posts.

First one is up:

quoting
naddr1qv…778m

This is an excerpt from my recent book, Building Nostr. You can download and read the whole book for free at building-nostr.coracle.social

The Economics of Censorship

Nostr was originally designed to be "censorship-resistant". But this is only one part of a bigger vision. Nostr is designed to promote the digital freedoms of users — things like privacy, access to information, anonymity, freedom of association, and credible exit. Because of how cryptography was adopted (primarily by institutions) in the early days, the internet is no longer aligned with the interests of its users, but has largely been captured by "platforms".

As a result, we have a state of rent-seeking in which the users who contribute all the value that the internet has to offer are exploited, undermined, manipulated, deceived, and sold by the custodians of that value. This is a far cry from the humanitarian dream of the early internet. In the words of Tim Berners-Lee,

We create the Web, by designing computer protocols and software; this process is completely under our control. We choose what properties we want it to have and not have[...] The goal of the Web is to serve humanity. We build it now so that those who come to it later will be able to create things that we cannot ourselves imagine.

In the fifteen years since this was written, the internet has only become more predatory, and proprietary. Everywhere you go, you're being tracked — maybe for the purposes of understanding your behavior to serve you ads, maybe for reasons more convoluted, but always in the interest of the ones doing the tracking.

This isn't to say the internet isn't a net positive to those who use it. The internet is the single most successful technology in human history for promoting access to information, alternative community, and trade. But it is not what it should be. Reforming the internet requires active investment from those who stand the gain or lose the most from how it evolves — its users. No one can do this for us; we have to hold companies and platforms accountable ourselves. And in order to do that, we need to understand why censorship happens.

Censorship is not the product of mere arbitrary exercise of power, but of incentives. In authoritarian regimes, censorship is implemented to protect the regime's power. In business, censorship is implemented to protect the business' revenue.

Traditionally, products are sold directly to customers, who then get access to the good or service they've purchased. This business model can transfer to some extent to the realm of information-based products, particularly in a business-to-business setting, where information can be justified in terms of greater productivity.

But consumer software is an entirely different story. If your users are only there to improve their quality of life through access to entertainment or communication, and the marginal cost of production trends toward zero for digital goods, then the price will also trend toward zero because competitors can always offer the same product at a lower price.

Combine that with the imperative for platforms to aggressively acquire users, and you get a strong downward pressure on the upfront pricing of software products. "Network effect" is the idea that a network's value does not grow linearly with the number of users, but quadratically with the number of connections between users.

Building a large network requires significant resources in order to fund growth or stay ahead of competitors. These resources in turn must be provided by people with capital. As a result, businesses that rely on scaling network effects are typically funded by investors and oriented at a return on investment. This includes social media platforms and similar businesses, such as search engines, marketplaces, and entertainment platforms.

Capitalists want to see the businesses they've invested in make a profit. The best way to make a profit in a market, according to Peter Thiel's Zero to One, is to establish a monopoly. Because user retention depends on network effects, market saturation is always the goal, and switching costs must be high — companies must "capture" their users.

The art of creating this moat seems to have been perfected. Facebook has been around for a long time, as has Google. In contrast to early internet companies like MySpace, Yahoo, and AOL, these second-generation internet giants have learned how to simultaneously retain and monetize their users.

Very little of these companies' revenue comes from direct monetization. Instead, these big tech companies monetize their users by making them the product. Users have two things that platform owners can sell: their attention and their data. Platforms can only sell these things because they have access to them by virtue of being intermediaries. Platforms subsist by inserting themselves into private or public relationships in order to siphon off these intangible goods.

This works because the majority of internet users either don't believe their attention or data are worth anything ("why do I need privacy? I have nothing to hide"), or feel helpless to opt out of the attention economy. Seeing a billboard in your peripheral vision or having cameras record your license plate seem hardly comparable to paying a monthly fee for road use. Whether you care about being recorded or not, you're still going to use the roads.

It's true that data and attention are not particularly valuable on an individual basis. But they're massively powerful in the aggregate. "Big data" is not mere information, but the ability to predict patterns of behavior, which can then be used at scale to manipulate people — to buy, believe, and act.

Advertising is not just about informing willing buyers about products and services, it's about conditioning people to act in predictable ways. Social engineering (like all engineering) is progressive and totalizing — unless restrained. The cost of giving away our attention and data to these internet intermediaries is, ultimately, the loss of our free will.

This is particularly true because users are progressively getting less and worse service in exchange for their time and attention. Because big internet companies have access to economies of scale that individuals don't, they have the ability to asymmetrically impose complexity costs on users who fall outside of the streamlined "ideal customer profile" they've built their business on. Quoting from this blog post:

Bigger players like corporations and governments gained a big systemic advantage over individuals: they make the rules but they don’t bear the costs of the rules breaking. They increase the complexity of everyday life and instead of being punished for it, they are rewarded for it.

A Path Forward

This slide isn't inevitable. But it's also human nature — everyone wants something for nothing, and so internet users have voluntarily given up their free will to gain connectivity, entertainment, and efficiency. Simply pushing back is not enough — the problem is structural, and time has allowed its beneficiaries to entrench their position.

This problem needs more than a technical solution — politics, culture, community, and capital all have roles to play here. Nostr's role is to offer tools that individuals can use according to their own values, and for their own interests. Nostr makes it possible for internet users to preserve their own digital sovereignty and hold tech platforms accountable.

My personal hope for Nostr is that it will aid in the restoration and cultivation of human flourishing and agency in a world increasingly mediated by digital technology. Nostr does not solve every problem. The ones it does solve, it sometimes solves poorly. Nostr is not a panacea, it is a toolset that can be applied to our benefit or to our detriment, but which has certain intrinsic qualities that the internet desperately needs right now.

I want to emphasize that it is only through people that any of the internet's ills can be cured. Nostr is not a comprehensive system for restraining digital evil (such a thing would be itself totalitarian), but a way of allowing individual and community agency to be exercised in solving problems germane to individuals' and communities' own particular circumstances.

@nprofile…wl4m want to come on TGFN and talk about the amethyst ...

2025-08-30T05:06:52Z

VitorPamplona (nprofile…wl4m) want to come on TGFN and talk about the amethyst re-write and outbox?

Just ran almost 19 miles and there is no part of me that does not ...

2025-08-26T08:50:13Z

Just ran almost 19 miles and there is no part of me that does not hurt

@nprofile…l9rz attempting to set up an existing repository on ...

2025-08-26T08:49:56Z

DanConwayDev (nprofile…l9rz) attempting to set up an existing repository on ngit (flotilla) and getting this error:

```
publishing repostory reference...
signing event with remote signer...
Error: failed to create repository reference event
Caused by:
0: failed to sign event
1: Invalid NIP04 content format
```

Working on a go board ...

2025-08-26T08:49:39Z

Working on a go board

Bluesky has a pretty nice directory: ...

2025-08-26T08:49:14Z

Bluesky has a pretty nice directory: https://blueskydirectory.com/

Taking my kids on a trip to the Olympic Penninsula to look at ...

2025-08-12T10:02:44Z

Taking my kids on a trip to the Olympic Penninsula to look at anemones next week, don't break the protocol while I'm gone

Not only is it ugly, it's gay too ...

2025-08-12T10:02:24Z

Not only is it ugly, it's gay too

quoting
nevent1q…hs5h
Am I old or is Material Design 3 incredibly ugly

A portent of things to come on nostr: ...

2025-08-12T10:01:35Z

A portent of things to come on nostr: https://daniel.haxx.se/blog/2025/08/08/http-is-not-simple/

Liquid is a really cool project, really enjoyed Poelstra's ...

2025-08-12T10:01:11Z

Liquid is a really cool project, really enjoyed Poelstra's recent episodes

Am I old or is Material Design 3 incredibly ugly

2025-08-12T10:00:30Z

Am I old or is Material Design 3 incredibly ugly

Coracle v0.6.19 just dropped — just another maintenance issue, ...

2025-08-12T09:59:59Z

Coracle v0.6.19 just dropped — just another maintenance issue, but I did completely re-work the NWC integration, thanks to Alby (nprofile…477f)'s nwc sdk library. Currently, there's no option to pay invoices with a QR code; if that's annoying, let me know and I'll bring it back.

Changelog:

* Improve relay hint reliability
* Enable DMs on conversation link
* Improve feed parent fetching
* Remove profile banners
* Add better mute support
* Mute privately by default
* Broadcast user relays when publishing
* Aggresively refresh user data before updating to reduce race conditions
* Add NWC wallet management
* Re-work zaps

Turns out it's @nprofile…uj4t. I've had 200 hits for ...

2025-08-12T09:59:37Z

Turns out it's Satlantis: Social Events (nprofile…uj4t). I've had 200 hits for their profile in the last 10 minutes. Alekandar Svetski (nprofile…tv3w) any idea what's going on here?

quoting
nevent1q…yuyw
Is someone linking directly to coracle for npubs somewhere? I'm seeing a ton of traffic the last week or two for the profile page.

I'm flattered, but loading up Coracle just for a profile page is very inefficient and it's costing a lot of bandwidth.

Is someone linking directly to coracle for npubs somewhere? ...

2025-08-12T09:58:59Z

Is someone linking directly to coracle for npubs somewhere? I'm seeing a ton of traffic the last week or two for the profile page.

I'm flattered, but loading up Coracle just for a profile page is very inefficient and it's costing a lot of bandwidth.

When designing a cross-platform mobile app, how important is it ...

2025-08-12T09:58:24Z

When designing a cross-platform mobile app, how important is it to use material/hig conventions? I am unable to find much support for react native UI libraries that render differently depending on platform — most seem to have a single look on both platforms. But doesn't this undermine UX patterns that rely on platform-specific idioms? I'm super confused about this.

14 years ago I ran my longest distance, 15 miles. Today, I just ...

2025-08-12T09:57:42Z

14 years ago I ran my longest distance, 15 miles. Today, I just finished my first 18 mile run.

Nostr event nevent1qqs9a3ufsr3kng90pjt3azpqdu5h8x9tmhxsusc3tuxje6fxq6wh09qzyzvsd9zcr3vpy3yf6zcgm7jd9f6j8fcnk94g9xstc9s6mq4llhy328805yf

2025-08-12T09:57:26Z

Let's say I run my own ecash mint. I issue myself a bunch of ...

2025-08-12T09:55:45Z

Let's say I run my own ecash mint. I issue myself a bunch of tokens, then I go and spend them. My mint allows the recipient to redeem them, but later on when someone (other than me) wants to melt the tokens, the mint just pretends to be offline or something. I'm then able to rug spent tokens because I own the infrastructure. It seems like the only way to defend against this attack would be for recipients to immediately melt all tokens issued by untrusted mints. Is this the standard pattern for receivers? Is mint trust model front and center in cashu implementations?

Community apps feel like the new nostr gold rush, everyone keeps ...

2025-08-12T09:55:23Z

Community apps feel like the new nostr gold rush, everyone keeps building new ones that all work completely differently. I agree with their importance (obviously), but it seems like this has the potential to fragment things more than ever, just because communities are a rorschach test. Everyone also has their own libraries and preferred development stack. What if we just all agreed to start from scratch and work together to create something new? It probably wouldn't work because we're all so disagreeable, but one really good community app would be better than 10 incompatible ones.

This was really fun #nevent1q…qrje

2025-08-07T04:57:07Z

This was really fun

quoting
nevent1q…qrje
Where AI Ends pt. 1 with hodlbod (nprofile…9qsr)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJNVgpL53WU

https://open.spotify.com/episode/1LmNW7rqwKmlxN0P5MntIp?si=1f0e0bd937604d86

Nostr was mentioned on my favorite cryptography podcast today, ...

2025-08-07T04:56:47Z

Nostr was mentioned on my favorite cryptography podcast today, Security, Cryptography, Whatever — they didn't spend a lot of time on it, but here are some highlights:

> It’s federated and it’s European. I bet it sucks.

> It’s some Ayahuasca inspired initiative from. From Messrs. Dorsey et al.

> Yeah, sure, it’s decentralized and federated, but like their proposal for encrypted end to end encrypted DMs was just bad by itself.

> When I reviewed this, my description of this was it looks almost exactly like Nebuchadnezzar [https://nebuchadnezzar-megolm.github.io/], which is like a fractal of things that could have gone wrong with like a complete ecosystem of like a secure messaging system. They found flaws in almost every component of that system and then tried to leverage them as far as they could.

You can read/listen here: https://securitycryptographywhatever.com/2025/07/29/vegas-baby/

They also mentioned a talk that's going to be delivered at blackhat on August 9th which sounds super interesting:

> In this session, we unveil the first comprehensive security study of Nostr and its popular client applications, demonstrating how subtle flaws in cryptographic design, event verification, and link previews allow an attacker to forge "encrypted" direct messages (DMs), impersonate user profiles, and even leak the confidential message from "encrypted" DMs.

Here's the link to the agenda entry for the talk: https://www.blackhat.com/us-25/briefings/schedule/#not-sealed-practical-attacks-on-nostr-a-decentralized-censorship-resistant-protocol-45726

I'm looking forward to learning how we've screwed up — there aren't a lot of cryptographers here, and I know that open protocols make security even harder to maintain. Maybe we've screwed up irretrievably, but I'd rather know now than later.

If you haven't already, give flotilla.social a try ...

2025-08-07T04:56:29Z

If you haven't already, give flotilla.social a try

quoting
nevent1q…80n9
Discord requires a phone number to create an account now.

@nprofile…qsnl it looks like nostr.wine is asking for auth ...

2025-08-07T04:55:33Z

Mazin (nprofile…qsnl) it looks like nostr.wine is asking for auth without sending a challenge. Tested in coracle and snort:

@nprofile…72yj you asked what I thought of WoT relays, I ...

2025-08-07T04:55:16Z

SerSleepy (nprofile…72yj) you asked what I thought of WoT relays, I didn't have a chance to answer. I think they're cool, but they have to be used correctly. Archiving is great, uncle jim-ing outbox is also a good use case (although I imagine they wouldn't work for dms or inbox). Also good as custom feeds, curated by people whose taste you like (although you could just load that up directly by requesting based on someone's follow list). I think all of these use cases are pretty weak, since there are other heuristics for finding the same content in most cases.

Thanks to @nprofile…eatt for a great conversation

2025-08-07T04:54:52Z

Thanks to ODELL (nprofile…eatt) for a great conversation

Never underestimate the extent to which what we want determines ...

2025-08-07T04:54:10Z

Never underestimate the extent to which what we want determines what we believe

Hey @nprofile…2e5q, want to come on @nprofile…vus3 sometime ...

2025-08-07T04:53:51Z

Hey Ben Arc (nprofile…2e5q), want to come on Thank God For Nostr Podcast (nprofile…vus3) sometime and talk about socialism?

Remember how I was writing a book? Well, I gave up on it. But ...

2025-08-07T04:53:17Z

Remember how I was writing a book? Well, I gave up on it. But then I wrote a different one:

https://building-nostr.coracle.social/

This book is both practical and philosophical. It ellides a lot of the details you can otherwise get by reading Nostr NIPs, focusing instead on all the things I've learned over three years working on nostr.

It includes a number of contrarian opinions which may be partially or completely wrong. Feel free to disagree, or even tell me where I'm wrong. I'll be releasing updates to the book as I have time and inclination to repent of my mistakes and omissions.

The book is free, with epub and pdf versions available for your reading pleasure. If you like the book, you can send me bitcoin via nostr or at https://geyser.fund/project/buildingnostr, and if people like it enough I may publish a version that you can touch with your fingers.

Capitalism isn't bad, monopolistic corporations are ...

2025-08-07T04:52:42Z

Capitalism isn't bad, monopolistic corporations are
Government isn't bad, unaccountable government is
Technology isn't bad, externally imposed systems are

Just thinking out loud here

Just learned about Fisher Ames: > Ames was on the committee ...

2025-08-07T04:52:24Z

Just learned about Fisher Ames:

> Ames was on the committee that inaugurated President Washington, he framed the final accepted wording in the First Amendment regarding freedom of religion in 1789 and fought many key legislative battles successfully for the Federalists in Congress.

> Ames died on July 4th, 1808, at the age of fifty; making him the first of three Founding Fathers who died on July 4th - along with Thomas Jefferson and John Adams - who both died in 1826.

Based

Just uninstalled my NIP 07 browser extension to dogfood NIP 46 ...

2025-08-07T04:51:52Z

Just uninstalled my NIP 07 browser extension to dogfood NIP 46 harder. As a side effect, I am now unable to log in to the majority of nostr apps without pasting my private key.

Just uninstalled my NIP 07 browser extension to dogfood NIP 46 ...

2025-08-07T04:51:13Z

Just uninstalled my NIP 07 browser extension to dogfood NIP 46 harder. As a side effect, I am now unable to log in to the majority of nostr apps without pasting my private key.

Apparently when you sign in to satlantis for the first time, it ...

2025-08-07T04:50:42Z

Apparently when you sign in to satlantis for the first time, it automatically changes your NIP 05 to `@satlantis.io` . Classy.

Why? Because we want you to buy more stuff from us. ...

2025-08-07T04:50:25Z

Why? Because we want you to buy more stuff from us.

Mentions have two parts: `p` tags and delivery to the correct ...

2025-08-07T04:50:02Z

Mentions have two parts: `p` tags and delivery to the correct relays. If a note has a `p` tag but isn't delivered to the recipient's inbox relays, it may as well not exist.

Great thoughts from my friend's email newsletter: > The ...

2025-08-07T04:49:48Z

Great thoughts from my friend's email newsletter:

> The people who think AI is reshaping reality spend way too much time on the internet. “How will we know what’s real?” means “How will we know whether a TikTok video has been human-processed or machine-processed?” “The art of writing will die” means “The art of writing boring blog posts and meaningless corporate emails will die.” It seems appropriate for the vast, illusory engine of unreality (the Internet) to be created, curated, and synthesized by machines.

@nprofile…t8zd looks like undocumented.nostrkinds.info is ...

2025-08-07T04:49:24Z

dcadenas (nprofile…t8zd) looks like undocumented.nostrkinds.info is borked, no entries are being returned

Just stumbled on an old Figma file from 2022 for ...

2025-08-07T04:48:49Z

Just stumbled on an old Figma file from 2022 for "Blazepoint", which would eventually become Coracle. A lot of important ideas were in the original, including web of trust and pay-to-post, which is cool to see:

How I feel working with NIP 29 ...

2025-05-29T04:23:05Z

How I feel working with NIP 29

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/41iVm_57yyc

This is a commentary on the delegation of agency to machines, ...

2025-05-29T04:22:33Z

This is a commentary on the delegation of agency to machines, written in 1973, but maybe relevant for all you vibers out there.

quoting
nevent1q…q5y0
"It is now time... to shake off the illusion that men are born to be slaveholders and that the only thing wrong in the past was that not all men could be equally so."

- Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality

"It is now time... to shake off the illusion that men are ...

2025-05-28T21:07:06Z

"It is now time... to shake off the illusion that men are born to be slaveholders and that the only thing wrong in the past was that not all men could be equally so."

- Ivan Illich, Tools for Conviviality

The proliferation of "AI assistance" in professional ...

2025-05-28T21:06:55Z

The proliferation of "AI assistance" in professional settings is going to result in increased alienation from work, worsening an already acute crisis of meaning and purpose. The depressed workers on whom AI relies for direction and agency will get less and less done, resulting in a reduction, rather than an increase, in actual productivity.

Just discovered that I accidentally banned myself from nostr by ...

2025-05-28T21:06:36Z

Just discovered that I accidentally banned myself from nostr by adding a `-` tag to my kind 0

The new "not everything has to be kind 1" is "not ...

2025-05-28T21:06:04Z

The new "not everything has to be kind 1" is "not everything encrypted has to be kind 14"

Got some pretty sweet central-american-gang-member-style back ...

2025-05-27T20:09:45Z

Got some pretty sweet central-american-gang-member-style back tattoos going on today

Finally tried out Primal on Android and... I see why the hype. ...

2025-05-26T13:55:54Z

Finally tried out Primal on Android and... I see why the hype. They've nailed the UX 95% of the time. The reads tab is especially pleasant. Soe bugs/suggestions for @miljan a team:

- Scrolling the feed naturally often opens the side nav. Dial that gesture down.
- I've always hated twitter-style notification pages. Take a look at coracle's notifications page for a (imo) much more helpful notifications view. Noy only does it show context, but it also ends up acting as a readable digest.
- I had to bail when writing this note because the note compose screen was missing keyboard input. Like, I had to type the same letter multiple times for it to register, and then it stopped working altogether.

Primal is almost a completely different experience from coracle, down to what content shows up. Sort of dicey too on the explore tab. But great work, really.

The more I learn about @jack the more I like the guy ...

2025-05-24T19:49:29Z

The more I learn about @jack the more I like the guy

quoting
nevent1q…nvcv
⚡️📽️ ARCHIVE - Jack Dorsey on how he almost became a massage therapist after his first startup failed

After a thousand hours of massage therapy, jack (nprofile…jx6r) was a licensed therapist and ready to move back to San Francisco in 2005:

“I was actually going to dedicate my life to it… I thought I had the best idea ever. My idea was that I would go out to California and I would do chair massage for programmers. And while I was massaging their shoulders and their wrists, I would also give them advice on their code… it was not only massage therapy, it was code therapy… I started telling people my idea and they’re like, that is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. I said, no, just give it a chance.”

When he moved back to San Francisco, Jack realized there were already a ton of massage therapists and it would be hard to compete, so he went back into programming.

One year later, he would invent Twitter, and three years after that, he cofounded Square.

@nprofile…3nww stacks is the best experience I've had so ...

2025-05-24T19:48:40Z

Alex Gleason (nprofile…3nww) stacks is the best experience I've had so far with vibe coding. Your recent work is really... interesting. Want to come on the podcast and talk about it?

Seems to me effective vibe coding is less about telling the llm ...

2025-05-24T19:48:18Z

Seems to me effective vibe coding is less about telling the llm what to do than creating an environment in which it can thrive. Just like any form of life it has to exist within a given context in order to orient itself, otherwise it is without purpose and only represents mere possibility. The job of the vibe coder is to allow the llm to self actualize.

But don't listen to me yet, all my vibez are garbage so far.

hodlbod learns to vibe code take #87 Join me on zap.stream to ...

2025-05-23T17:42:17Z

hodlbod learns to vibe code take #87

Join me on zap.stream to watch me figure out this vibe coding thing. Comments, criticisms, suggestions welcome.

https://zap.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

Are there any clients out there that have solved the NIP 17 spam ...

2025-05-23T17:41:38Z

Are there any clients out there that have solved the NIP 17 spam problem from a UX standpoint? It would be nice to separate "requests" into requests from reputable people in your network (based on wot or pow) and requests that are unlikely to be worth your time.

Strongly considering abandoning nip 29 for nip 28 if you can ...

2025-05-22T02:55:37Z

Strongly considering abandoning nip 29 for nip 28 if you can believe it

@nprofile…p59r I think you have a caching bug on Fountain, ...

2025-05-17T22:47:36Z

Oscar Merry (nprofile…p59r) I think you have a caching bug on Fountain, episodes that have been deleted are still showing up on the Thank God For Nostr Podcast (nprofile…h9ar) feed

I've been using regular shaving cream for years. Today I ...

2025-05-17T01:34:28Z

I've been using regular shaving cream for years. Today I finally looked at the label and saw sodium lauryl sulfate and propane. But thanks to Nunyabidness (nprofile…2tmg) and the circle P I knew just what to do: visit soapminer.com and trade a few precious sats for pine tar tallow soap.

the internet is a dog's breakfast always on silenced, ...

2025-05-16T21:04:31Z

the internet is a dog's breakfast
always on
silenced, scrutinized, leave a review
never off
abandoned, harried, simulated
authentic fakery
counterfeit living
attention absorbed, inner externalized, meaning mocked

what was is what I am
what I am is what will be
remember, in order to become
imagine, in order to act
memory stagnates
imagination wanders
inertia? or chaos
decline, decay, or
the queering of the self
or:
roots and leaves
Chesterton's fence, and new ones too

I am not alone
reality is witnessed
politics is for virtue
politics is for happiness
we build the city
and melt into its form
the rule of man
the rule of man
becoming the image
measured, weighed, wanting
the gathering of form exports chaos
inertia. nirvana. death.
just wait

spoken
nature groans
to be filled
with what?
God speaks: freedom
man answers
Man speaks: freedom
nature answers
created, redeemed
suspended, enveloped
transcendence: reality

the fire on the altar
the garden in the city
a crown on the forehead
work is prayer
a whole, burnt offering
unmade, remade, revealed

the internet
unmakes: a more perfect liquefaction
remakes: the digital native
reveals: the sovereign individual
politics, culture, community
yes, but
technology reformed

To contextualize the adoption of cryptography: - Public key ...

2025-05-16T16:05:24Z

To contextualize the adoption of cryptography:

- Public key crypto was invented in 1976
- Bitcoin was invented in 2009, 33 years later
- In 2025 (49 years later), cryptography is still a niche topic

- The printing press was invented around 1440
- By 1470 (30 years later), a handful of presses had been established in major cities
- In 1500 (60 years later), there were only 417 presses
- By the 1550s (110 years later), printing presses were in use globally

Transformational technologies go through a period of obscurity, then centralized control, then eventually become universally accessible. My hope is that we are just coming out of the centralized control phase of cryptography and the internet.

"All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is ...

2025-05-16T16:05:07Z

"All the labor of man is for his mouth, and yet the soul is not satisfied."

Should I use peerDependencies when writing multiple related ...

2025-05-16T02:17:21Z

Should I use peerDependencies when writing multiple related javascript libraries, or lockstep versioning? Both seem annoying.

New project just released: Compass 🧭 For a long time I've ...

2025-05-16T02:17:02Z

New project just released: Compass 🧭

For a long time I've wondered how bad things would be if PABLOF7z (nprofile…j6hr)'s wss://purplepag.es relay went down, since it's the only dedicated kind 10002 indexer I'm aware of, and is heavily relied on for bootstrapping user relay selections, which is a key part of keeping nostr decentralized.

So I stood up another one at wss://indexer.coracle.social. Regular users don't need to do anything, but I encourage client developers to add this to your list of relays you check for NIP 65 kind 10002 relay selections.

I've also open-sourced the project at https://github.com/coracle-social/compass so anyone who wants to can run their own.

The project also supports mirroring other indexers via `strfry router`, but I have left that as an opt-in feature. Unless you expect significant load on your indexer, mirroring would only increase the number of unnecessary connections made to other indexers, so please be considerate when setting up mirrors.

Had to use discord today, and wow it is evil. The notifications ...

2025-05-15T15:12:36Z

Had to use discord today, and wow it is evil. The notifications bell showed a red dot, so I clicked on it. No notifications, but a non-default "for you" tab showed a notification dot, so I clicked on it. The dot then disappeared, and I got a nice fiendly [sic] "Nothing here yet" message.

Treat your users with respect.

'nother Coracle version out (0.6.17) 🐠 * Fix reaction ...

2025-05-15T15:12:22Z

'nother Coracle version out (0.6.17) 🐠

* Fix reaction notifications crash
* Show web of trust badge on DM items
* Make name on messages clickable
* Remove duplicate dependencies
* Add relays to note options form

Nostr event nevent1qqsvv0gzjtkl76qzl43feys24sq49vcv65tyjvlult6w92qdkjgxrjgzyzvsd9zcr3vpy3yf6zcgm7jd9f6j8fcnk94g9xstc9s6mq4llhy32kv27qr

2025-05-14T17:19:47Z

Docker creates more problems than it solves

Just implemented 8-bit RSA by hand for fun, AMA ...

2025-05-14T02:54:54Z

Just implemented 8-bit RSA by hand for fun, AMA

I'm reading a history of asymmetric cryptography right now ...

2025-05-14T02:53:58Z

I'm reading a history of asymmetric cryptography right now ("Crypto" by Steven Levy), and my mind is being repeatedly blown by the origins, odds, and success of the movement. Everything we're doing with nostr started in the 1970's! And yet we somehow still don't have widely-used, decentralized electronic mail that checks both boxes of the original RSA paper:

> we must ensure that two important properties of the current “paper mail” system are preserved: (a) messages are private, and (b) messages can be signed.

The question that keeps coming to mind is this: what happened between 1996 and 2009? Once individual rights to cryptography was established, did the movement die out? Why did no one build out access to cryptography for the average internet user? Yes, SSL is ubiquitous, but it's still controlled by a cabal of root certificate issuers.

I know there was ongoing work that led to bitcoin, and XMPP is an obvious exception, but even so I am stunned that 50 years after the invention of public key cryptography we still don't have widespread, meaningful adoption. Keys are limited to technical users, and encryption is mediated and undermined by centralized platforms.

For those with some perspective on this history: are we in the midst of a cryptography renaissance? Did bitcoin kick off a resurgence of interest in digital privacy? Or is that just my own bias at play?

One thing you guys didn't really touch on is that neuralink ...

2025-05-13T04:14:03Z

One thing you guys didn't really touch on is that neuralink would not actually disintermediate thought at all, any more than uploading our brains into the cloud would result in anything more than merely simulated consciousness. Rather, human thought would be reduced to a data transfer protocol (instead of spoken language), and would take on the form and limitations of the same — meanwhile, neuralink itself would have access to your thoughts, and would no doubt monetize it for its own benefit.

https://fountain.fm/episode/1yfcv3jLZulh14mSTfXZ

New Flotilla 1.0.3 is out on zapstore and web with a crucial ...

2025-05-13T04:13:42Z

New Flotilla 1.0.3 is out on zapstore and web with a crucial bugfix to the alerts system (pointing at localhost is apparently a non-starter, thanks to hzrd149 (nprofile…pr34) for pointing this out). Also included are a light theme, custom emoji display, and some bugfixes.

* Add light theme
* Use correct alerts server
* Ignore relay errors for claims
* Fix inline code blocks
* Add custom emoji parsing and display

Hey @nprofile…lmth I just updated Amber and started getting ...

2025-05-13T04:13:28Z

Hey greenart7c3 (nprofile…lmth) I just updated Amber and started getting Activity Cancelled errors any time I tried to sign something. I cleared Amber's data and logged back in and it works ok now. Just thought you should know.

Coracle 0.6.16 with some minor updates, one of which has been on ...

2025-05-13T04:12:26Z

Coracle 0.6.16 with some minor updates, one of which has been on my list for literal years (custom emoji rendering):

* Add support for editing WOT feeds
* Change default blossom servers
* Add support for custom emojis
* Fix note deduplication

Prost

Just scored 66 points in Nostr Snake! 🐍⚡ #NostrSnakeScore ...

2025-05-13T04:12:09Z

Just scored 66 points in Nostr Snake! 🐍⚡ #NostrSnakeScore Play at https://NostrSnake.fun

So far, no one has signed up for email digests via ...

2025-05-12T16:15:45Z

So far, no one has signed up for email digests via anchor.coracle.social 🤔

I understand not wanting to share your bunker url or email address with me, but I will say that I'm sure enjoying getting digests of my feeds:

New version of Flotilla is out as well — 1.0.2 is mostly ...

2025-05-12T16:08:19Z

New version of Flotilla is out as well — 1.0.2 is mostly cleanup from the 1.0 release earlier this week. Thanks to those who pointed out bugs!

* Fix add relay button
* Fix safe inset areas
* Better rendering for errors from relays
* Improve remote signer login

New version of Coracle is out: 0.6.15 — this one is just more ...

2025-05-12T16:07:43Z

New version of Coracle is out: 0.6.15 — this one is just more QoL improvements and bugfixes — the big one this time is better blossom support (and dropping nip 96!)

* Fix safe areas more
* Improve remote signing
* Drop nip 96 support
* Use user blossom servers
* Improve profile edit page
* Avoid duplicate notes in feeds

Erik Hoel suggests: "In my ideal society, laws dictate that ...

2025-05-12T16:06:23Z

Erik Hoel suggests:

"In my ideal society, laws dictate that all digital devices have a built-in “Sunday mode,” activated automatically, shutting down everything but GPS and calls. Major websites reject all incoming traffic. No emails are sent. Outside, the silent world becomes filled with voices once more."

Apart from the obvious centralization concerns (and loss of emergency services), I think this is a fantastic idea. Maybe I'll turn Coracle off on Sundays 🤔

Idea for non-technical folks who want to help grow nostr: ...

2025-05-12T16:05:14Z

Idea for non-technical folks who want to help grow nostr: research adjacent conferences/magazines/podcasts (e.g. in fediverse land or whatever) and arrange interviews with nostr developers or features on nostr.

Just forked @nprofile…0jsu's nparrot project and adapted it ...

2025-05-12T16:04:57Z

Just forked danieldaquino (nprofile…0jsu)'s nparrot project and adapted it to NIP C7 chat rooms! This kills several birds with one stone:

- I got to learn some rust
- I prototyped a demo for what bots would look like on flotilla
- I opened up a massive RCE vector onto my computer

If you're interested, the source code is available here: https://github.com/coracle-social/nparrot/tree/master

Nostr event nevent1qqstxryjfjew8vw8md3jj0vvawkmzqmc8n6udgczje0dwenv3z4je0gzyzvsd9zcr3vpy3yf6zcgm7jd9f6j8fcnk94g9xstc9s6mq4llhy32lf4g6r

2025-05-12T16:04:23Z

Safe area insets are a stupid feature and a massive waste of time

"He told her that people poured out among the stars and that ...

2025-05-08T09:18:22Z

"He told her that people poured out among the stars and that the ancient things inside people woke up, so that the deeps of their minds were more terrible than the blackest depth of space. Space never committed crimes. It just killed. Nature could transmit death, but only man could carry crime from world to world."

Think Blue, Count Two
Cordwainer Smith

New release of Flotilla is out, my first 1.0 release on nostr! ...

2025-05-08T09:17:58Z

New release of Flotilla is out, my first 1.0 release on nostr! Even Coracle never felt quite good enough to call it "ready".

This latest release includes an integration with anchor.coracle.social, which gives me a story for keeping communities engaged with the platform via email notifications. This was the last major piece missing before I felt ready to start onboarding communities.

Obviously, lots of work is still to be done, so give Flotilla a try and let me know if you run into any issues or find glaring omissions!

PS, the new version is coming soon (tm) to App Stores near you, but you can get it today on web or via ZapStore.

I've been a nostr developer too long. I built Anchor as a ...

2025-05-08T09:17:19Z

I've been a nostr developer too long. I built Anchor as a single codebase with a front end and a database, and I keep being confused as to why I have different subscriptions on different deployments 😂

@hzrd149 is there a standard way to do feature detection for ...

2025-05-02T08:06:07Z

@hzrd149 is there a standard way to do feature detection for blossom support? In flotilla I'd like to ask the relay if they support blossom, and if so upload images to the community relay rather than the user's own personal blossom server (for privacy).

Finally got a new release out! Next up, Flotilla this week. ...

2025-04-27T13:25:01Z

Finally got a new release out! Next up, Flotilla this week.

quoting
nevent1q…s6pp
Coracle 0.6.10 release is out on web and zapstore!

This is another maintenance release, including a complete re-write of the networking code (coming soon to flotilla), and several bug fixes. As always, let me know if you notice anything broken!

* Fix spotify url parsing bug
* Fix nip46 signer connect
* Use new version of network library
* Fix reply drafts bug
* Fix creating a new account while logged in
* Re-work storage adapter to minimize storage and improve performance
* Improve initial page load times
* Fix followers page
* Upgrade welshman
* Remove platform relay
* Show PoW
* Don't fetch messages until decryption is enabled