David Sterry

Sat down yesterday to write a page about wisdom for Nostr and this is what came out
https://i.imgflip.com/8nwapo.jpg
April 24th, 2024 - Wisdom, Competition and Success
Nostr is a strangely wise place. It's good because it helps us appreciate what we have while sharing collective insights about the future. For example we know Nostr is small but that each platform that grows and dies gives us a chance to make it the next big one.
Talk to a CEO in their early days and they tend to be idealistic wishing to democratize the net or disrupt finance but time and time again as the numbers grow they get more focused on the bottom line. The money and power displace the ideals. This is one reason we believe decentralization is so important. It places a ceiling on how much power any one entity can amass.
The downside of this however is it can extend as a philosophy into everything. No relay should get too big. No client should get too much market share or strong-arm the protocol. In this way romance for freedom and decentralization can majorly slow us down.
We know our principles around open source software, resiliency of decentralization and the freedom to tinker. We'll always have those. It's important however to be mindful that competition to create the next dominant platform is fierce. The wise path is to rally around what's working best today.

2024-04-24 17:00:15

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A couple of years ago I researched this question for ActivityPub and came up with about 10. I can dig it up if someone wants to try the same methodology here. Mainly looked at GitHub contributor activity in last 6 mos among the major projects. Only took a couple hours.

2024-04-24 07:30:48

What I don't understand is if the Agents can take away Neo's mouth how come they can't like take away all of the hackers legs when they try to run?
https://i.nostr.build/aQ5Xr.jpg

2024-04-24 00:16:30

Been watching the Matrix trilogy this week and finding a lot more there than when it first came out. At first I was put off by the humans as batteries thing but once you get past that, the embedded philosophy feels prescient with respect to how digital our lives have become. Always fun to see the red/blue pilling scene as well.
https://i.nostr.build/5G54r.png
Also enjoyed this article tying the story in with other works.
https://fivebooks.com/best-books/quantum-physics-reality-jim-baggott/#book-57085
#matrix #redpill #bluepill

2024-04-24 00:14:34

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2024-04-15 23:39:25

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OMG I love the Kandinsky so much. Might have to make a print! Excellent work.

2024-04-15 20:46:27

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OK, feel free to DM with any questions

2024-04-15 20:41:00

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Thank you! Can you do the style of Matisse or Kandinsky?

2024-04-13 23:39:37

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Hmm, this isn't the usual lost contact list type bug then? nostrudel is showing you're following lots of people. That or you've recovered it.

2024-04-13 22:45:36

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I'll check noswot.org's db when I get a chance. It was offline recently but was running since October before then.

2024-04-13 21:41:59

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How much MEV, how many blocks? Last I checked ordinals didn't seem to have that much juice.

2024-04-13 21:34:29

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What's the last client you tried to follow someone from before the loss event?

2024-04-13 19:05:47

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Wikifreedia: The encyclopedia for your friends and enemies.
I like where this is going.

2024-04-13 17:35:09

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For many Nostr is going to be valuable as a fallback to reconnect with new accounts on CSM where the massive attention pool is.

2024-04-13 17:29:37

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As a first time visitor, what is a provider and which one should i choose? I'd love to see how the WoT works!

2024-04-13 17:26:25

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Fun! Fun seems a good principle. A lot of what centralized social media does decreases the genuine good time that we can have. Zaps and zapathons perfect examples.

2024-04-12 22:50:09

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Feels good supporting and now being a first class nostrizen.
My first upload, an original sketch of a backing track: https://media.nostr.build/p/8G00J.wav

2024-04-12 22:21:52

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Good idea and maybe an iPad after that!

2024-04-12 22:14:46

Thinking about buying a typewriter. Any nostrites been there done that?
Writing by hand every day has been amazing so a typewriter feels like a natural next step. #asknostr

2024-04-11 18:24:24

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And now the "over Dan" window

2024-04-11 18:19:24

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGd3u0zuxO0

2024-04-11 18:18:59

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGd3u0zuxO0

2024-04-10 20:10:25

The Dan phenomenon is what you get when there's nobody to censor a viral flood. #OnlyDans

2024-04-08 21:11:18

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I think a big issue is a lack of visibility. It's hard to know which clients are being used, how long it takes for your notes to be seen, if they're seen at all and by what % of your followers. Haven't looked at the protocols for a while but this is why to advocate for things like user agent strings, opt-in read receipts, etc.

2024-03-22 17:26:09

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Isn't it obvious though that you're the only one who used that key before it was published?

2024-02-01 18:54:37

https://media.nostr.build/av/c3fc7d87f46780ee48c3f2f0908f2e76203f0eca1a2b5f5783d3307894263af8.webm

2024-02-01 18:44:19

GM! I can't figure out what the shaka symbol is in noStrudel. That's what taking a month off Nostr does for you. Hope everyone's done well. Looking forward to catching up on what all's changed in the new year.

2024-01-02 00:15:24

Limited speech backpropagates to limited thought. Happy New Year!

2023-12-21 19:59:55

To be able to rewire our memories is such a beautiful idea. Maybe it's even possible to rewire our practices to do the thing we know are good but never enjoyed all that much.
https://www.bu.edu/articles/2022/unlocking-the-power-of-our-emotional-memory/

2023-12-19 21:32:18

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Testing
naddr1qq4xc6tnw3ez6vp58y6rywpjxckngdtyxukngwr9vckkze33vcknzcnrxcenje35xqmn2ccprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctvqgsx8lnrrrw9skpulctgzruxm5y7rzlaw64tcf9qpqww9pt0xvzsfmgrqsqqqafsx6gfsj

2023-12-19 20:50:50

For every creative endeavor there's a ratio between setup and execution. I suspect each person has an ideal ratio between the two and for example in music this is what inclines people toward engineering on one end and improvisation on the other.

2023-12-19 20:41:15

Is there a way to make Amethyst use someone else's kind:30000 list?
#asknostr

2023-12-19 20:10:02

A useful concept in programming is that of the tracer bullet. This is the building of a single pathway through code that does something useful. It's great to remember this when faced with a lot of options or use cases. By focusing on that tracer bullet you'll get to something that works in some form as quickly as possible.

2023-12-16 15:21:14

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Our duty as users is to file detailed bug reports, confirm others and express what's important to us.
Our duty as developers is to find inspiration in important problems and use it to submit quality patches.
Our duty as project maintainers is to curate and order the set of valid problems then to quickly merge the patches we receive.
All of the above is coded into a wonderful document that I urge every project to consider and adapt. https://rfc.zeromq.org/spec/44/

2023-12-15 05:02:36

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I'm liking Kiwi Browser (like Chromium for Android)

2023-12-14 22:28:46

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For some reason I have @npub12u7…jjmt blocked in my amethyst and can't unblock them but let me know if you were part of the prism. I know one errored but didn't catch who.

2023-12-14 18:17:33

Morning notes (12/14) - ⚡ Boost for sats (more info at the bottom) ⚡
#nevent1q…q3e7
#nevent1q…9zx9
#nevent1q…6s0x
#nevent1q…d3wc
Be one of the first 10 boosters and you'll get 1000 sats minimum once ten boosts are reached or 12h have elapsed. This is an experiment and your feedback is welcome. I know I'm not the first but I'm interested to learn how these can be used for greatest effect.
$boost

2023-12-14 18:13:58

There are a lot of unknowns in designing a predator/prey simulation. I suspect it'll be important for all animals to have a hunger sensor though I wonder, do predators need to have different hunger functions than prey? Also how much should movement cost versus neuronal activity?

2023-12-14 18:09:00

Noticed a couple of these stickers in the wild. Do you think looking at the metaphorical you each day as a drained battery would have a positive or negative emotional effect?
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1276800276/family-battery-car-decals?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=car+battery+decal&ref=sr_gallery-1-10&frs=1&organic_search_click=1

2023-12-14 18:07:06

Are car manufacturers still making adaptive volume a premium option? Noticed while listening to a classical piece in the car (with stock audio system) this morning that I had to ride the volume knob. Our ears do a good job of compression in the absence of noise but unfortunately there's a lot of that while driving.

2023-12-14 18:04:55

Yesterday's boost note didn't seem to have much effect (2 boosts only, 2k sats paid). Part of it may have been the lack of any visual content. The previous one had an interesting video embedded. Posting morning notes in general will continue as it's generally stimulating. Will try another boost note today and maybe for a few more days to get a bit more statistical significance. Maybe the 10k sats should not be limited to 1k per but be split among boosters so the incentive adapts to boost interest.

2023-12-13 18:53:10

Morning notes (12/13) - ⚡ Boost for sats (more info at the bottom) ⚡
#nevent1q…s3hv
#nevent1q…cfdk
#nevent1q…fa0n
#nevent1q…wxyu
Be one of the first 10 boosters and you'll get 1000 sats minimum once ten boosts are reached. This is an experiment and your feedback is welcome. I know I'm not the first but I'm interested to learn how these can be used for greatest effect.
$boost

2023-12-13 18:49:48

For the boost yesterday, I didn't mention forwarding zaps from the main note onto the boosters. Today I'll add that in. So the reward will be what I put up plus whatever the note receives by the time the prism gets paid. It's hard to quantify the overall effect of boosts but certainly getting to interact with more of you versus just posting these things. Some further things to research: whether to unbundle the notes and give them their own prisms, how this works for different boost amounts and split populations.

2023-12-13 18:45:22

Often in sitcoms the laughs come from a lack of self-awareness of some main character, e.g. Michael Scott. Thinking about self-awareness as a process, I wonder if it being energetically expensive can be a low-level source of anxiety. Childhood is a time when processes are learned and then automated so for those who didn't experience a lot of social interaction as children, self-awareness may be too expensive to perform a lot of.

2023-12-13 18:41:26

My AI/ML research has brought me to develop a predator-prey simulation. The grand hypothesis is, self-awareness arises naturally from predator-prey relationships. The mini hypothesis is, predators and prey driven by neural nets will naturally co-evolve strategies for survival. In order to enable more dense process representations, neural-network topologies will be managed by a genetic algorithm.

2023-12-13 18:39:15

While running I often have comments and ideas about whatever I'm listening to, but have struggled to find a convenient way to jot them down. Finally got a little voice recorder and made 22 notes on yesterday's run. Time will tell if this is worthwhile. I suspect it will be.

2023-12-13 14:23:58

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everyone - we

2023-12-13 01:52:14

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I like the mapping from markdown sections to notes, or at least to define one or more such mappings. Might make a good NKBIP.
The nice thing here is it's really easy to prototype by publishing note heirarchies. Just a fair amount of manual work initially.

2023-12-12 22:39:30

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Have you created many notes of this format? I suspect the more you create them the more you'll identify what tooling would be helpful.
One pain point I have is composing the note. I have to copy the note ids over to a text document to build the meta-note. I could see a simple one pager with checkboxes and a template would help in generating the text.
With projects like this I often start with the simplest thing I can imagine. https://github.com/nbd-wtf/nostr-tools has a lot of simple examples which I used to create https://davidsterry.com/nostr

2023-12-12 19:40:00

Now following this Milky Slug.
https://image.nostr.build/b385df46d456ca19922fe7487afc8549099842520914f24027407d76f1748506.jpg

2023-12-12 19:25:59

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Thanks for the link. I'll check it out.

2023-12-12 19:25:22

Ok, that was fucking lit. The prism got created automatically once it hit 10 posts. I zapped the created prism in noStrudel and all zaps went through with zero extra clicks needed. The only thing was I needed to check @npub12u7…jjmt feed to see the prism note since for some reason I didn't see their quote post in my notifications. If they'd mentioned me there, it would have been 20% cooler.

2023-12-12 18:37:44

Morning notes (12/12) - ⚡ Boost for sats (more info at the bottom) ⚡
#nevent1q…76r0
#nevent1q…klw3
#nevent1q…ynfw
#nevent1q…te3e
#nevent1q…w7gv
Be one of the first 10 boosters and you'll get 1000 sats minimum once ten boosts are reached. This is an experiment and your feedback is welcome. I know I'm not the first but I'm interested to learn how these can be used for greatest effect.
$boost

2023-12-12 18:32:27

The reason AI/ML has become interesting to me personally is because it seems close to building something like consciousness. I suspect consciousness arose as soon as prey needed to avoid predators that were modeling its behavior. In such a scenario, knowing what the fox knows about the rabbit's behavior gives the rabbit just that much better chance of escape. So I'm wondering now which if any of the ML models might be able to work on a small simulation of predator and prey.
After finishing the Machine Learning for Everybody video, I learned that there are things called a GRUs and MCUs that could figure in to a real-time behavioral model.

2023-12-12 18:28:20

In developing a web of trust with noswot, the initial instinct is to make a user-facing application because that's what's most visible. The power of a web of trust however is probably more in the background. The listr-style list Noswot2k has been great as a note feed but perhaps has more potential as a filter for many other kinds of activity. I noticed while making prisms that one can specify a list to limit participants and if that works, that's exactly the kind of thing I'm thinking of. Limiting to more trusted users mans greater efficiency, less spam, and a rare win-win for decentralized tech.

2023-12-12 18:25:41

To my followers, for the last few days I've been treating Nostr like an interactive notebook. For you this means that you should not take anything I say as settled business or set in stone. For me this means I get better grounding of my ideas by people from a diverse set of perspectives. Aesthetically, it's also neat seeing a social network as an extension of my thought process and life experiences. GM

2023-12-12 18:23:06

The boost/prism experiment yesterday, even if not perfect, was a success. 10k sats given out. 6 boosts received before creating the prism, 9 boosts after. 1 failed zap. Plenty of reactions and comments. Today I'll try waiting longer until creating the prism and will put the ($)boost on its own line.

2023-12-12 16:44:50

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Yes, and support isn't just money. It's testing, feedback, hanging out, and advocating for a positive development culture in every project.

2023-12-12 16:10:27

https://video.nostr.build/885d80ae010a1b027a87c6b9594d4a428609785acdae7e587b01ed02f2827728.mp4

2023-12-12 16:06:20

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Rebillet 2024!

2023-12-12 16:03:56

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Why iCloud Keychain? Syncing keys never seemed like a good idea.

2023-12-12 16:00:26

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This predicts me perfectly.

2023-12-12 15:58:30

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GM Looks like a nice day!

2023-12-12 07:25:38

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Seems so, what happens if you have like 512 of them?

2023-12-12 07:02:20

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Where can I read more about your project? I've been screwing around with some AI/ML ideas for a week and interested to understand more of what people are doing now.

2023-12-11 23:36:34

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I just used noStrudel to send the zaps and it was a bit manual until I set a budget.
It seems makeprism takes something of a snapshot when created so tomorrow I'll wait until there've been 10 boosts before making and paying the prism.
Guess I thought it was in some way custodial.
Since you said duplicates should be possible I'll try making a second then as well.

2023-12-11 23:24:14

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Ok, zapped the first 10 skipping one error. Will try to repeat tomorrow probably creating the prism note only once there've been 10 boosts.

2023-12-11 20:45:53

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Nothing happened until I went to the website and there I entered 10 for the number but somehow I think there'd already been 6 boosts I wasnt aware of. So I guess I'll pay that prism and do the rest manually. Not sure what to do tomorrow.

2023-12-11 20:14:50

Tried to make another prism since the first one only included 6 people but I get this error. I suppose you can only do one prism per note? And I thought the prism notes were replies. Maybe that changed.
https://image.nostr.build/14f758b50278cc41156a2f611e9f9c5c4c1cf5aad84cf81765bc2cb35b17706d.png

2023-12-11 20:10:11

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Beautiful! Was that at 5x or maybe 10x?

2023-12-11 20:05:10

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Ok, so the goal has been met but I though I'd see a note to zap for the payout. Does that take 12 hours no matter when the boost goal is reached?

2023-12-11 19:18:19

It's been two years since a tornado ravaged Mayfield, KY. Rebuilding has faced a lot of challenges as inflation and FEMA response are mentioned in this report two years later.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gX3QAfRgj1M

2023-12-11 18:51:08

Morning notes - ⚡ $boost for sats (more info at the bottom) ⚡
#nevent1q…u94q
#nevent1q…xj9f
#nevent1q…68r8
#nevent1q…7ynj
Be one of the first 10 boosters and you'll get 1000 sats minimum once ten boosts are reached. This is an experiment and your feedback is welcome. I know I'm not the first but I'm interested to learn how these can be used for greatest effect.

2023-12-11 18:36:04

I'm wondering if a NIPs competitor process is necessary to solve the problems of ill-defined process, unwritten rules, deadlock, and over-authoritativeness. Perhaps FEP can be this venue.
The key point of contention is whether Nostr could be considered part of the fediverse. Nostr's not made of federated instances though relays still wield more power to censor than most people think. Mostr joins them into one with a bridge however it's unclear if a set of bridges can turn two systems into one.

2023-12-11 18:31:23

Started watching Machine Learning for Everyone by Kylie Ying. Seems to be at the right level for me and under 4 hours so already 1/3rd through it. Anything essential you think it's missing?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i_LwzRVP7bg

2023-12-11 18:29:08

Has anyone figured out how ($)boosts work? It seems to me most don't understand that sats don't magically appear. The reward must come from the poster after the goal has been met. So it's kind of a trust thing.
Since a feed of even the best people gets a bit noisy, I suspect boosts can help if done correctly. Maybe adding a blurb with every boost should be common as a point of education. Something like:
How boosts work: The poster includes ($)boost in their post along with a promise of the boost amount for some goal. That amount can be total or per boost. Then when the goal is met, the poster promises to send sats to the boost note which was created.

2023-12-11 18:21:26

GM. 🌱 ☀️ Got any favorite time-lapse videos?

2023-12-11 14:42:45

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Don't know about the others but we used jenkins at my big tech job and though I was just a consumer of it, it never gave me any problems. No idea how much work went into the setup. Good luck!

2023-12-10 19:04:16

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ChatGPT could be wrong but mentioned astrocytes supplying lactate to nearby neurons but also more about bloodflow which is what I was talking about with the further research.
I think the existence of money is a challenge for WoT but not insurmountable. I mean eventually one of an attackers lackeys might come forward and say they were paid to boost the attackers trust level which would lead to demotion.

2023-12-10 18:59:25

My AI/ML project is floundering, probably because I attempted to do it from scratch and intentionally with as little domain knowledge as possible. Needless to say there's a lot of reinventing of the wheel in that path. Anyone got a favorite AI/ML course with pytorch examples?

2023-12-10 18:54:40

Does anyone know of a voice recorder app that will use bluetooth earbuds as an input source? For some reason bluetooth earbud mics can't be selected in any android apps. Seems like an OS thing. After all there's no jack or alsa interface exposed on Android. Bonus points if it could be triggered with a long-press of an earbud.

2023-12-10 13:10:26

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I spy a void.

2023-12-10 13:01:07

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Neat project! Have you considered GPL? Would better facilitate a development community.

2023-12-09 19:07:14

Conservation of energy leads to Bernoulli's principle which is essential for understanding aerodynamics and the flight of a bird. In the same way I feel like conservation of energy must operate in the brain at least on certain timescales. Obviously net energy comes in via the bloodstream but what if neurons were able to directly reward each other with energy, forming a kind of activity market? Further research tells me this is unlikely however I did learn that often-used neurons and connections get optimized to be faster and more efficient.

2023-12-09 19:03:37

I've always wanted to find out things for myself and when I find a better way I can't forget it. This doesn't always play well socially but I accept it. Onward toward optimal everything!

2023-12-09 19:00:33

Attempting a 4n mile running challenge today. Not sure if n will be 2 or 3 but certainly less than 7. Training for a half-marathon in Feb so supposed to run 7 but I figure I'll go for at least 8 on 4 hour intervals. Classic challenges like this are 24mi in 24h or 48x48. Not sure I want to go that long but we'll see how it feels after 8! #running

2023-12-09 18:45:13

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This hasn't been my experience.
Not married to it but any sort of protocol seems unwanted. No request for change, just no.
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/560
And note the lack of a reply to a reasoned argument.
https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/895#issuecomment-1820369636
Anyway, I prefer competition to argument so thinking about creating a new protocol initiative.

2023-12-08 19:46:30

Feeling spicy. This mode won't last but I'll try to make the best of it.

2023-12-08 19:44:55

If you want to develop a new protocol for nostr, it's probably best to avoid NIPs. Instead implement what you're thinking of and document it somewhere, anywhere so others can join in.

2023-12-08 19:41:54

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The priesthood secretly hates protocol.

2023-12-08 19:39:51

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I find it's best to ignore NIPs and just copy what the best implementation is doing.

2023-12-07 18:28:24

I think the best way for me to interact with aspects of the nostr protocol is by developing ideas like noswot and the follow set it begat. It seems the best way to implement is to look at what's working now and then attempt to emulate. In this case listr.lol showed what kind of other data should go into a note.
https://github.com/erskingardner/listr/issues/85

2023-12-07 18:26:01

Used the noswot API to generate noswot2k, a follow set with the 1001 highest ranked users in my trust graph. Since creating it and another two smaller lists, I've gotten a lot more out of nostr. The variety of posts, the people that I wouldn't have followed traditionally just due to volue, but also specific posts like one showing off Gemini's new multimodal AI and plenty of great memes.
Trying using this as your feed for a day and tell me what you think. GM
#naddr1qq…ntl3

2023-12-07 13:12:56

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This is the second cultural effigy reference I've seen in a few days. In the Taiga they burn Winter.
Happy People: A Year in the Taiga https://g.co/kgs/oxCDNR

2023-12-07 13:04:43

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Not sure but since these are centralized systems, it would decrease load and save money to stop the notifications early in the pipeline, so maybe. Of course of the data is needed for surveillance then that could change the requirements. It may be possible to figure out more looking at the features provided by each push notification system.

2023-12-07 12:57:02

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https://youtu.be/e8qJsk1j2zE?si=rni0R83C-1srbCy_

2023-12-07 12:56:08

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Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise by Anders Ericsson

2023-12-07 02:24:44

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Because that takes a lot of time and commitment to get the sound quality right, to develop the following and reputation to get good guests, and skill to interview them. A better start for many would be as a guest. Guess that aligns best with having a book or project to discuss.

2023-12-07 01:46:53

Used my Web of Trust to generate a couple of follow sets, one with the 100-200th highest trust scores members and the other with 200-1000th highest trust scores. It's a fascinating, algorithmically-selected cross-section of activity.
#naddr1qq…2rcd
#naddr1qq…vwr9

2023-12-07 01:39:58

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Oh, it's because he yells suicide a bunch of times. Nobody cares and this service is making a fool of itself.