xte

Nowadays, most people need a programmer, but big companies, just as they get rid of doctors to make way for less competent and therefore more docile paramedics, are looking for code monkeys. In the same way, sysadmins have largely been phased out in an attempt to have people who are easier to boss around. The result is that we no longer have anything new, and the number of constant problems is skyrocketing.

Being technically decentralised doesn't make it practically so. The Web is technically a hypertext, running on a partially interconnected mesh network, yet nowadays the bulk of traffic flows between a handful of giant hubs, to the point where "marginal" social networks stay that way simply due to a lack of critical mass, and not having an account on some giant's servers is a communication problem for many. We have, and consider normal, major communication systems that only talk to themselves. XMPP is decentralised by design, yet when it was popular, Google was the main player and its changes were adopted even if they were unsuitable for most, simply because they were needed to interoperate with it. When Google abandoned it, the users vanished and XMPP essentially died, having become irrelevant. To put it another way, yes, Nostr is decentralised by design, but this peculiar design makes it practically centralised, and it is, or rather will be in the future if it succeeds, a problem. Just see Primal as an example.

The problem I see is that messages aren't "evenly spread across the network" but are concentrated on a few relays, and it even happens that some replies only reach certain relays. The result is centralisation on the most popular relays. The solution I see is the classic DHT, basically algorithmically spreading content across every node in the network, which will have storage and bandwidth quotas in its parameters. This leaves the administrator free to reject certain content or keep some in full, but fundamentally every message is split in chunks and some chunks are automatically spread across nodes. Historical examples include Usenet on one hand, as a decentralised paradigm, and eMule/KAD or ZeroNet for the distributed one. The solution I see for further improvement is to not have "Nostr client only", but client+relay in a single package, with potential support for Tor or ZeroNet or something similar for those behind a NAT. Those with an exposed host can provide a way to punch through holes in NAT for those who don't, but basically every client is also a relay and blossom server. I hope that's clearer now, and I don't see any bullshit or rudeness in what I'm writing. Meanwhile, as a fairly new user curious about Nostr and from the old-school *nix background, I see a tense community that's not very interested in the rest of the world, which isn't a good thing for achieving success.

Idem, significa che anche su Nostr non siamo così marginali :) Si, io in genere a chi scrive in inglese rispondo in inglese semplicemente perché non so qualche sia la madrelingua della controparte e ad oggi avendo vinto loro l'ultima guerra mondiale l'inglese è la lingua franca come prima lo era il francese...

Most users simply install a client with a set of pre-defined relays, those who don't anyway want got messages where there are the most crowds... If you are telling that's not a Nostr rule "you have to follow" that's definitively true, but what happen is an actual centralisation.

Contento di rispondere in Italiano :) pesa questo: serve, in una fase iniziale, pesa bene questo inciso, puntare al bipede medio, quello che di IT sa nulla, installa l'app se il nome/lo screenshot lo convince e in 5" di prova decide se restare o mollare? Per me no. I dev correnti però puntano a questa demografia, più o meno consapevolmente. Per me in una fase iniziale serve prendere "il linuxaro medio", il nerd, che ha un serverino domestico, spesso un modesto raspi o due, che sa qualcosa ma non oltre quel qualcosa, quindi qualcuno che vuole un'app unica, go get-abile, cargo build-abile, pip-abile, o già nei pacchetti della distro di turno, unica e sola, che faccia tutto. Non vuole scegliere un relay, scegliere un client, trovare che non c'è 'no straccio di documentazione su come configurare opportunamente il relay, che qui manca un server blossom, che li manca un filtraggio dello spam, che laggiù manca il supporto alla chat, ... poi vedere che gli serve coturn per poter aver l'audio, ... vuole un singolo pacchetto, che sia app desktop o webapp da servire via NGINX non importa, ma che sia unico e faccia tutto, client, relay, server blossom, chat, ICE/TURN/STUN ecc ecc ecc. Se c'è questo e vede che è carino, visivamente va bene come andrebbe XMPP/Matrix, ma qui si fa anche il blogghino personale, c'è pure la possibilità di far un ecommerce banale con gli zap, ma nessun obbligo di farlo beh allora quel singolo nerd che prova si tira dietro alcuni amici ed alcuni parenti e dopo un po' questi su scala raggiungono la massa critica necessaria a diventare anche pronti per l'utente-utonto. Questo manca. Non solo in termini software ma proprio in termini di comprensione e interesse da parte dei dev. Nostr è pieno di progetti confezionati al volo e abbandonati, gente cordiale, che ha voglia di fare, ma non ha una visione d'insieme ed è abituata al modello commerciale delle megacorps dove non c'è il problema del lancio di qualcosa perché sono le PR che lo fanno, non i dev. Dove c'è un modello di rapporto "col cliente" ben diverso. Cosa fa di buono Nostr? - ha capito che il punto è comunicare testo, non html, testo semplice, al massimo MD o org-mode, tutto qui, il grosso della nostra informazione è testo dalle leggi agli sms passando per libri, giornali e post. Nostr offre comunicazione testuale come la offriva Usenet, ma con una UI assai più libera e accattivante. Come Usenet supporta anche contenuti multimediali, in maniera più efficiente dei gruppi binari. Supporta post brevi, cui manca una UI stile Lemmy/Reddit per aver successo, la rubrica distribuita modello Facebook/LinkedIn (questa c'è già), post lunghi (blog/siti personali), stanno più o meno arrivando le chat con anche audio e video - ha anche un modello economico, non valido per i relay, valido per fare un web economico Cosa manca: - l'app unica, che sia client+server e che vuoi via Tor, vuoi via altro come ZeroNet, la vecchia rete KAD/eMule, ... permetta visibilità anche al nerd medio senza un nome a dominio, dietro NAT - un design coerente di questa con un minimo di documentazione per il setup e l'uso Senza questi non si andrà lontano. Ai margini il modello di decentralizzazione dei relay sovrani finisce come vuole la teoria delle reti in pochi grandi hub, quindi la decentralizzazione teorica salta, splittare e spargere l'informazione come faceva KAD/DHT in genere, IPFS, lasciando agli utenti giusto la scelta di pinnare contenuti "questi li vogliamo interi sul nostro ferro" e bannarne alcuni marcati esplicitamente "questi non li vogliamo" mentre il resto è solo una quantità massima di storage e banda a disposizione della rete, beh, senza questo non è vera decentralizzazione, si finisce con pochi giganti e tanti relay ignoti.

Well... Consider that Nostr is not really decentralized. The relay model means some large hub and many relays unseen by most, so actual substantial centralization without imposing it formally. Nostr is awesome for many reasons, but it's not really decentralized. Largely ignoring both the ZeroNet failure lesson, the Usenet success lesson and the eMule/KAD model. If this not change Nostr will remain marginal unfortunately.

I dream a realistic usage over LoRa (BT is not usable for such purposes, since it's range is way too short geographically) but so far it's only a dream, there is way too little bandwidth for "a parallele P2P mesh internet"...

I have the same lack of trust in private banks and central banks, so well... For me a CBDC it's not worse than using a Visa. The issue with BTCs it's where I can spend: most merchants around me do not accept SATs and using crypto cards is using Visa/Mastercard so not much safer. That's the damn real issue: so far crypto cards works well, we can spend vintage SATs with peace of mind. BUT there's no guarantee this will last, and once you take away Visa/Mastercard, until the majority of shops accept native SATs, even having 100k BTC isn't unfortunately going to save you. It's fine for sovereign states selling oil, other raw materials, or industrial products, but for the average person who just wants to live their life, buying the food they need, maybe a car and so on, it's a massive problem. As long as you have to go through fiat currency one way or another, your freedom, even if it's slightly greater (you have "your bank safe and sound"), is still limited.

Probably very true, but also the BTC entry barrier (to be sovereign) it's not that good, especially for Lightning. We have a certain cohort of power users who understand the risk of depending on others, but when they see how much they need to study and try to setup "their own bank" at home they give up. These power users are needed to attract others. Apps on someone else systems might work in some third world countries who are anyway largely better then anything else, but not in developed countries... Umbrel/Start9 are good, but marginal, BTCPay Server is complex, a simple unique "app" easy to deploy on GNU/Linux homeservers, easy to administer declaratively and via a webui it's largely missing. In the west still nearly nobody had real baking issues so they are not much interesting to change without such an easy and sovereign entry barrier. Too many abandoned projects, too little docs, so many scam scary many. Those who enter years ago when "entering" means just few fiat for many BTC takes the risk easily, now with current exchange rates things are different.

I'd be careful with a statement like that: yes, formally we have a massive amount of information accessible in the form of hypertext, searchable via "refined" keyword-based search engines and LLMs, and right there we have a bit of a problem. We have almost nothing in the way of "unbiased" search engine solutions, YaCy is one example, but it's too small to have enough coverage for real-world web use. Yes, we also have electronic currency, like Bitcoin, but even today it's accepted by very few; there are services that convert it on the fly into fiat with Visa/Mastercard cards behind them, but also these are SPOFs with a significant chain of dependencies, and we've had plenty of lessons like those of WikiLeaks, the anti-Trudeau protesters in Canada, Francesca Albanese, and the many others like her who have been similarly economically blocked by the EU, and so on. Things aren't going much better on the hardware front either: we have x86 (open platform even if not open hardware) which is fairly widespread to be sourced, sure, but it's also getting harder and harder to build decent PCs due to the cost of graphics cards, RAM, and NVMEs, not to mention the mere sheer shortages that make it difficult to buy what you actually need, and often what you do get is of increasingly poor quality. The push towards mobile, which consists of closed SoCs and basebands that are even proprietary by law, is stifling. More and more people, especially for children and students, are giving in and being handed connected spying systems, essentially mobile junk instead of FLOSS desktops. It's no better at a public level: public administrations are increasingly imposing digital identities and mobile-only services, forcing citizens into a dependency on these tracking proprietary devices. We've already seen what happens at border crossings with this hardware and the consequences we can suffer if it's simply blocked or remotely manipulated in various ways, starting with basic Lightning payments: we can pay on-chain using an (open) hardware wallet, but with Lightning that's not necessarily the case, which implies a dependency on mobile devices that aren't ours but belong to the OEM, giant US and Chinese players, and so on. To conclude, technologically speaking, I quite agree that we could be in an era of progress and well-being; the fact is, however, that we aren't, due to the deliberate choice of four kleptocrats who are busy feeding a vast mass of Le Bonian bipedal cattle. Knowing ourselves isn't enough to protect us much, nor to protect our children, because while we can do a bit, we still depend on society for so much. Even if we became farmers in a remote hermitage, certain that we'd never need healthcare, or have emergencies we couldn't handle alone, etc we still couldn't really manage physical defence against hostile states. You might deal with a thief, but police and armed forces are impossible to manage on an individual or small community scale. Homeschooling makes it possible to reduce state indoctrination, and forming individuals who think for themselves and share their family's knowledge is a good thing, but it isn't enough to protect them.

Translate this old (1894) discourse from a seven-time Italian Ministry of Edu: https://web.archive.org/web/20210424055431/https://www.cr… the core is We must only teach reading and writing; common people should be educated just enough, teaching history with a healthy nationalistic slant, and reducing all sciences to a single subject of "general knowledge", without any precise syllabus or textbooks, leaving room for the teacher's initiative and re-evaluating the noblest and oldest form of teaching: domestic education. Finally, we must set aside anti-dogmatism, the education of doubt and criticism; in short, just make them read and write. They mustn't Otherwise there'll be big troubles! -- Guido Baccelli BTW is also useful to quote Cardinal Carlo Carafa (1517 - 1561) "vulgus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur" or the people want to be deceived, so let them be.