StevenBlack
Steven Black

🇨🇦 Computer systems analyst.
Maintainer of Steven Black's hosts lists at https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

Public Key

npub1pkj530thuqzr6k2gfj3mynugq82ql8fmzfwk9umw540eq9tqeppsuhyscf

NIP-05 Address

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsqmf2gh4m7qppat9yyegajf7yqr4q0n5a3yhtz7dh22husz4svsscpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsggtr2m

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1pkj530thuqzr6k2gfj3mynugq82ql8fmzfwk9umw540eq9tqeppsuhyscf

Show more details

Last Notes

2026-05-25 22:22:06 GMT

Sonos is garbage.

2026-02-14 04:33:19 GMT

Does anyone know how Primal’s “Trending“ algorithm works? Is that documented anywhere?
@npub12vk…pugg

2026-02-10 17:55:26 GMT

I feel we don't appreciate enough how little drone cameras following luges down narrow tracks is badass.

2026-01-24 17:20:21 GMT

Here's a Nostr tip that's working very well for me.
➡️ Mute the users who post garbage and nonsense ⬅️
Whenever I come across garbage and nonsense, I immediately mute the source.
I won't say what I consider "garbage and nonsense", but you know what I mean.
Observe: after a few days, your Nostr feed has much higher quality.
After a few weeks you're gonna love the difference active curation makes.
Turns out, Dumbf*kStupid is a finite set.
Since Stupid tends to echo Stupid, that entire echo chamber exposes itself surprisingly quickly.
"Trending" on Nostr" is a source of insight and joy now that cringe is mostly gone.

2026-01-24 16:57:15 GMT

Among my favorite chess puzzles. You want options? Here you go.
https://lichess.org/training/CP7rj

2026-01-16 16:40:52 GMT

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Why the AI-slop in the video?
What Blockstream consistently fails to understand: the sort of mover who could be the recipient of that message will dismiss it outright because of its presentation. It's not even close to being acceptable by any sort of mover you can imagine.
Marshall McLuhan said “the medium is the message” in 1964. That was 61-years ago. Blockstream's social media person is how old? Nowhere close to old enough to get it.

2026-01-05 01:09:06 GMT

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This may be the best French translation for “Shit happens”. Because besides this, there is no way to adequately express “Shit happens” in French

2025-12-01 19:12:32 GMT

Mont-Tremblant Quebec volunteers hosing-down and icing-up the Flying Mile for the World Cup Women’s GS here next Saturday and Sunday
Shot through binoculars from across Lac-Tremblant.
https://blossom.primal.net/2619bf20e8e9297acdb0cce4515ba2e74c5685dbb5ba432c7d723e5d63c33969.jpg

2025-10-30 21:52:11 GMT

Updating Rust every sixth Thursday brings me joy.
Does that make me weird?
https://blog.rust-lang.org/2025/10/30/Rust-1.91.0/

2025-10-27 13:08:22 GMT

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Serious question:
Not so long ago, we were inundated with supposed applications of ZK proofs. One ZK proof scenario is, at a traffic stop, the official could check whether you are qualified to drive, with no outstanding driving issues, without disclosing your name, your address, your sex, your date of birth, or anything else.
Would your feelings about “digital ID” change if the national ID was a privkey / pubkey pair? So your digital ID would be a pubkey. And you control your privkey.
My guess is, you might be OK with that.
If so, it’s not about “digital ID”, it’s about the form and implementation of “new digital ID” because digital IDs — drivers license and passports for example — have been with us for a long time already.
Unfortunately, almost nobody is talking about form or implementation of “new digital ID”.

2025-09-23 19:24:34 GMT

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This thread of responses is an excellent collection of accounts to mute.
It's certainly not a serious project.

2025-08-26 00:46:21 GMT

Nostr can I just say, Mathematica is awesome.
https://blossom.primal.net/4555e278d58897970ace4d1d3d2e7ec82a26a38ea3d0503018133670251aa503.png

2025-08-20 14:43:17 GMT

I just deleted all my repositories, and my account, at SourceHut.
"Projects related to cryptocurrency or blockchain technologies are not permitted on SourceHut."
SourceHut is peak stupid.

2025-08-12 15:21:17 GMT

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Would love to hear you on a podcast where the interviewer isn't an A16Z flack lobbing softballs at you, and collegially agreeing with everything you say.
Must be nice to never have your thinking challenged in public conversation

2025-08-01 01:08:10 GMT

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Sonos remains garbage.

2025-07-28 12:21:54 GMT

@nprofile…t9lm
Play one video, play all the videos.

2025-07-17 11:57:03 GMT

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That book is a steal at twice the price 🙂
Quite possibly the best book I’ve ever read.

2025-06-23 15:46:46 GMT

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Lenovo Carbon X1 — ships from Asia

2025-06-23 12:34:28 GMT

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Legit question: how is hash rate determined?

2025-05-18 02:48:32 GMT

I work in MacOS and Linux terminals all day.
I just wanna say, Broot is brilliant.
https://dystroy.org/broot/

2025-03-30 13:21:58 GMT

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@craigraw I still have this question.
What would happen if a Sparrow Wallet user inadvertently chooses a change address instead of a receive address to receive funds?
Asking because Sparrow Wallet exposes, change addresses. That’s actually cool, but I’m wondering about some ramifications of that.
My uneducated guess is, it’s fine. Is that right?

2024-11-20 16:27:59 GMT

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Past year https://image.nostr.build/bb9012513377906d7431171217e1a3b73e44f43582cb37aeaef363deab2036f9.jpg

2024-11-14 03:59:05 GMT

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Really?
If you’re just guessing, you should maybe preface that with “I dunno…” or “just spitballin’ here“ or “Just pulling this out of my ass…“ to couch your superficial assessment.
Exhibit: Number of Bitcoin Blockchain Transactions by Epoch
For reference, the past halving was in Epoch 417.
It’s exploding and we’re seeing between 7M and 9M Bitcoin transactions per epoch, which is higher, way higher, than it’s ever been. https://image.nostr.build/e40bbb6aad412e1d2e601c5a72bd6208429a65650e642d5d98b2446f4cd25a00.jpg

2024-10-30 02:24:52 GMT

Quick reality reset: on an inflation-adjusted basis, the 2021 BTC ATH is approx $82,302 in 2024 dollars.
#bitcoin

2024-10-02 19:18:01 GMT

Many app updates later, Sonos is still fucking garbage. #note1d0e…8p63

2024-09-13 20:20:28 GMT

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Sonos is STILL absolute garbage.

2024-09-05 16:24:05 GMT

Sonos is still garbage. #note1mfk…p55l

2024-08-30 12:54:17 GMT

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Peter, did you read the article? I just did.
It says “migrants”, not “illegals“. The equivalence of “migrants” and “illegals” here is your personal conflation.
The article says that all this puts pressure to crack down on illegal migrants, a subset of migrants, but the article does not say, in any way, what you are ranting about.
Pay attention, and do better.

2024-08-28 12:11:14 GMT

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Genuinely curious: why BitPay (ugh)?
I’m in Canada. Haven’t come across it despite seeking out btc points of sale.
(Also, given the choice, paying in fiat, as in, no upside to keeping that in my leather wallet.)

2024-08-28 12:05:09 GMT

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❤️ Good luck Peter! Like many I’ll be listening, at first.
I’m sure you’ve thought a lot about traps and downsides.
A common mistake I see is, when in a niche market, wishing you weren’t in a niche market.
So beware of that, to the extent you still can. Proceed carefully. Because if you think bitcoin podcasting is saturated…

2024-07-28 22:41:13 GMT

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Also maybe the `getblocktemplate()` api call is useful for your use case?

2024-07-28 22:34:39 GMT

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@RooSoft if you're running Bitcoin Core, RPC has the following APIs which appear useful.
* `getmempoolancestors()`
* `getmempooldescendants()`
* `getmempoolentry()`
* `getmempoolinfo()`
* `getrawmempool()`
Note that you can control the size of your local mempool with Bitcoin Core config.

2024-07-23 02:28:24 GMT

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Amen to that

2024-07-22 21:33:30 GMT

Sonos is garbage.

2024-07-21 13:06:58 GMT

@npub1hea…g9v2 I have a question.
One of the nice features of sparrow wallet is, it clearly shows the distinction between receive addresses and change addresses, and shows lists for both.
What would happen if a user inadvertently chooses a change address instead of a receive address to receive funds?

2024-07-20 02:09:55 GMT

Should we put the text of Craig Wright’s legal disclosure in a block on the Bitcoin blockchain?

2024-05-20 02:10:48 GMT

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That block hash: 23 zeros followed by 1 and 8
0000000000000000000000018aed923c250162fe3f058d6af0f3932d9d9aa08c

2024-05-20 02:07:42 GMT

Yesterday (May 18th) the third lowest block hash ever was added to the blockchain, in block 843946. https://image.nostr.build/ea4c654abd988aac0403154880adbd3e69a11ec72dc0d8d5e51c20ef87a78f81.png

2024-05-10 12:47:52 GMT

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The other consideration here is, maybe you are seeing poor Tor network connection quality.
You could always pause your node, turn off Tor, and finish your initial block download over a clear network.

2024-05-10 12:26:02 GMT

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Earlier this week I installed bitcoin core on a new Lenovo laptop running Fedora 40. The entire IBD was done in under 14 hours, over home Wi-Fi.
The takeaway from this is: IBD is extremely sensitive to hardware. You get what you pay for.
I don’t think a Raspberry-Pi should be the basis for any inference about bitcoin, the BTC blockchain, or the bitcoin network.

2024-05-08 06:38:23 GMT

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In winds of 25 knots and above, flags start to occasional point upwards as they flap. That’s a nice heuristic, and a clear tell when estimating wind velocity.

2024-04-28 13:39:22 GMT

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A bit harsh on France, but nonetheless that’s a great take.
We know who else is based in France: Ledger.
Ledger doesn’t have a Lightning piece, but it’s certainement une shitcoinerie, which comes with its own set of potential legal foot guns, I’m sure.
Ledger, or say Ledger Live, could be next.

2024-04-18 05:05:00 GMT

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Yay because Bolt 12 enables common payment modes that don’t presently exist on lightning

2024-04-02 11:19:14 GMT

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TxId, or it didn’t happen.

2024-03-19 21:32:52 GMT

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Yes, yes you did.

2023-12-20 08:09:57 GMT

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When trying to unboost an old boosted note, it boosts it again, which is unexpected behavior, and counter to intent.
See my recent timeline, it contains two successive boost of something I boosted once, weeks ago. I was trying to clear that boost.
I hope this helps, and thank you for eliciting this comment.

2023-12-19 15:59:39 GMT

Sorry, found a bug in Damus.

2023-12-04 21:41:18 GMT

Have we ever seen the mempool so plugged?

2023-09-11 00:16:41 GMT

@craigraw I have a question.
Upon first seeing “receive” and “change” addresses listed separately in Sparrow, that was an ah-ha moment, for me.
Are change addresses fungible? Can a change address be used as receive address?
My guess: yes, change addresses are fungible in this way.

2023-08-19 03:05:29 GMT

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How’s that ThinkPad external keyboard? Recommend?

2023-08-19 03:03:45 GMT

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On Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/2vp6UJkPKFfdZ8g57NDHX6

2023-08-07 23:41:08 GMT

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Hi Clark. A question for y’a.
Why has the “Bitcoin Network” section of the dashboard been blank for the past while? Just curious.

2023-06-12 03:43:34 GMT

I just released version 3.13.0 of my hosts file.
HERE’S WHAT’S NEW: in addition to updates from curated sources, we now offer specialized hosts for porn-only, or gambling-only, or social-only, fake news-only, and various permutations of those.
So we’ve increased the number of host files available from 15 to 31.
Have a look!
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

2023-03-08 03:52:04 GMT

I just updated my hosts file, we're now at Release 3.12.12.
Thus update nails several prominent US mainstream media sites that are increasingly awful with ads and tracking.
Curl yourself the raw hosts file from here: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/StevenBlack/hosts/master/hosts
The Github repo with many hosts file variants: https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

2023-02-11 21:40:30 GMT

How much collegial self-agreement is too much collegial self-agreement?

2023-02-11 16:25:26 GMT

🤔 Idly wondering...
If you run a paid relay, and a user pays you to use your relay, do you (the relay owner) bear additional duty and responsibility for the activities of the paid user?
Say a paid user uses your relay to distribute child porn. How fucked are you, potentially? Say, for example, you're on holiday and unreachable for several days while your relay is used for malfeasance over an extended period.
To what degree should paid relay owners provision for contingent liability?
Note: I am not a lawyer.

2023-02-10 04:26:37 GMT

Certainly one of the best articles ever written, and a Wired classic, is featured by Wired Magazine online right now.
“Mother Earth Mother Board”, by Neal Stephenson (Dec 1 1996)
https://www.wired.com/1996/12/ffglass/
Stephenson’s Cryptonomicon, arguably his best book, was published in 1999 and “Mother Earth Mother Board” was, at the time, borne of its background research.

2023-02-08 00:34:07 GMT

A reminder: Ethereum doesn't have a hard cap.
Presently there are over 122.3 million ETH in existence.

2023-02-07 16:28:54 GMT

I just released version 3.12.5 of my amalgamated hosts files.
The Weather Network dot com should be more spam-free now. Still not perfect, but almost.
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

2023-02-04 17:22:49 GMT

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OTOH the global feed will become, or already is, a firehose from which you can’t really drink. Eventually even for paid relay notes too.
So this paid-relay option may reduce to unnecessary bloat.
Like, who would read Twitter’s global feed? Even filtered for blue checks? Even additionally filtered for 3:1 follower/follow tweeters.

2023-01-27 16:59:08 GMT

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The Keybase file system is a hidden gem that more people should know about.

2023-01-27 16:18:47 GMT

If nostr can become a solid rail for authenticated encryption, with key derivation too, then it could be this era's killer app.
In other words, if ENS is a fundamentally good idea, then nostr does it better because it's truly decentralised, and free.
And if NFTs are a fundamentally good idea, maybe NFTs are just built on a suboptimal platform right now.
Why might nostr be better?
One reason is you'll typically have one (or few) costly ENS records to maintain and renew, but you'll have an infinite number of free and perpetual nostr key pairs.
Formal verifiable key derivation from nostr key pairs would be icing on the cake.

2023-01-27 03:16:23 GMT

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Seen this?
*Set up a Nostr Relay server in under 5 minutes*
https://andreneves.xyz/p/set-up-a-nostr-relay-server-in-under

2023-01-27 03:13:26 GMT

Is Balaji Srinivasan on here yet?

2023-01-27 02:50:28 GMT

I'm proud that my nostr relay `nostr.mado.io` is showing 100% uptime and really good latency despite being in Johannesburg South Africa, 8,165 miles away from me (great circle distance).
Info on over 250 relays, including mine, can be found at nostr.watch.
http://nostr.watch/relays/find
I'm very grateful to #[0] who makes and supports the most excellent nostr-rs-relay that powers my relay.
The software lives here: https://git.sr.ht/~gheartsfield/nostr-rs-relay

2023-01-25 11:05:20 GMT

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#[1] what is the source of the data underlying these graphs? I run a relay…

2023-01-23 06:25:03 GMT

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It's likely the client you're using picked a random private key for you. Find that in settings, and make note of it.

2023-01-23 06:19:53 GMT

If you have access to a Bitcoin node, and you want to check out Bitcoin Core's API, here's something to play with.
This Github repo contains a Postman collection of sample API calls for Bitcoin nodes.
https://github.com/StevenBlack/bitcoin-postman
Pull requests are welcome 🙂 Help me complete the collection.
Postman is awesome and the free version is all you need to start playing with this.
https://www.postman.com/

2023-01-23 06:08:39 GMT

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What I love most about Andreas Antonopoulos' Mastering Bitcoin and Mastering The Lightning Network books is they give a very solid technical foundation.
Starting with these two books, you can code a Bitcoin or Lightning transaction from scratch, or code a wallet from scratch, or modify existing wallet software, or even do nifty things with your local Bitcoin node.
Pick a language like Javascript, Python, or Rust, and have at it!

2023-01-23 05:57:04 GMT

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Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas Antonopoulos
https://aantonop.com/books/mastering-bitcoin/
The book and its revisions and progress lives on Github
https://github.com/bitcoinbook/bitcoinbook
Antonopoulos' Mastering the Lightning Network is great too.

2023-01-20 18:17:26 GMT

Foreseeable second order effect for space karen, part one.
The number of motorists who will never own a Tesla, on principle, is growing.
Eventually this becomes a significant segment of the EV marketplace, and provides sustainable advantage for other EV makers.
Because people don't like dealing with assholes, and friends don't let friends deal with assholes.

2023-01-18 03:11:16 GMT

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Sure, if someone shares the private key (shares the wallet), then there are effectively multiple owners. This would be similar to a joint bank account for exaple.
Alternately someone could set-up a multi-signature ("multisig") wallet. In this case, more than one signature is necessary to transact with the wallet.
For example, a "2-of-2 multisig wallet" would mean that both owners must collaborate to execute a spend transaction. Similarly, a "2-of-3 multisig wallet" requires two of three owners to collaborate in order to execute a spend from the wallet.

2023-01-17 19:51:25 GMT

I love this new Github feature where mouseover events produce unwanted overlays that don't go away.

2023-01-17 05:47:34 GMT

You know what’s never a good look?
North-American tech-bro white-boi playing victim cards.

2023-01-15 19:16:01 GMT

Moving my phone's Twitter icons to a boneyard collection feels good.
👋 buh-bye.

2023-01-14 01:56:37 GMT

Sooner or later Nassim Taleb is going to wash our cars.

2023-01-13 16:07:47 GMT

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Preston #[3] that's giving me
```
Status 502 Bad Gateway
Version: HTTP/1.1
Transferred: 166 B (0 B size)
```
That should be HTTPS, that's typically the issue. The socket needs to be secure, no way around that I'm pretty sure.

2023-01-13 15:59:29 GMT

Version 3.11.52 of my hosts files are live and online now.
Presently with 168,820 domains in the base list, up to 227,707 domains will all extensions activated (fake news + gambling + porn + social media).
Nostr isn't listed in the Social Media extension yet. I imagine this will change in the future.
The Social Media extension, like the other extensions, is typically for people who want to eliminate distractions, suppress addictive tendencies, or keep such things out of the house and away from kids, like the porn extension for example.
https://github.com/StevenBlack/hosts

2023-01-13 15:55:54 GMT

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What relay software are you running here #[1]?

2023-01-13 13:35:04 GMT

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Nice list! Bookmarked! And followed.

2023-01-13 13:19:40 GMT

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Don’t give up! Never give up. You greatly exceed the wildest dreams of your ancestors! Keep doing that.

2023-01-07 17:02:54 GMT

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Done! Thank you #[3]

2023-01-07 16:52:27 GMT

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Yup. Trying to keep everyone private and safe, rural internet fast, and distractions in check.

2023-01-07 04:45:33 GMT

"I'm always working. It looks like work to others, but feels like play to me. That's how I know no one can compete with me on it. I'm just playing 16 hours a day and if they want to compete with me and they're going to work, they're going to lose because they're not going to do it 16 hours a day 7 days a week."
— Naval Ravikant
https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/80144/211131361-fe94c979-c5c2-4ad1-96e7-8907db7f6962.png

2023-01-05 15:00:23 GMT

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Thinking out loud...
Should we have switchable "relay sets"?
A relay set is a collections of relays, representing a mode of connection. For example, "public mode", as opposed to "team mode" or "family mode" or "close friends mode" or "neighbourhood mode".
We would switch between relay sets depending on whom we want to interact.
One relay set might be composed of a single private relay. Could relays insist that they be unique within a relay set, enforcing privacy (of sorts)?
Another relay set could consist of many relays, interacting with the world.
On the client side, each relay set would have its own conversation history and visible participants.
Doable?
Because "Pay-to-relay" is ultimately premium for tight relay sets.

2023-01-05 05:59:29 GMT

William @jb55 two things you’ve done with Damus that I just LOVE 👊
First, I love how links open in the device default browser, not in a lame app-hosted browser container.
Second, when we view another user’s relays, the “Add” control adjacent to relays we aren’t connected is BRILLIANT. This is how to start a decentralization hyper connected wildfire man!
Good job William!

2023-01-03 18:15:02 GMT

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😊❤️ 👊

2023-01-02 16:34:56 GMT

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Amazing. Thanks!

2023-01-02 14:16:47 GMT

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Very cool.
Is there a directory of these generated nostr profiles? Is a directory possible?
Because a profile for Balaji (for example) must exist already? Is one (or few) better than, say, thousands? Is source authentication possible (with a hashed-based scheme, for example?)

2023-01-01 20:10:23 GMT

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Hi! I run the relay at wss://nostr.mado.io located in Johannesburg South Africa.
Can you please list that? Thank you.

2022-12-26 05:29:49 GMT

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William @jb55 it’s annoying AF that we can’t spread-to-zoom images in Damus 🙃

2022-12-24 22:34:23 GMT

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Ugh! Sorry, trying again.
Here’s Nostradamus’ position in history
https://ibb.co/n0G0ScC

2022-12-24 22:30:25 GMT

You might wonder, where does Nostradamus fit in history?
https://i.imgur.com/cm795bV.jpeg

2022-12-23 19:18:21 GMT

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Uncle Bob possibly a dumb question, what data are you posting here? How did you get it?
(I just started running a relay)

2022-12-22 13:03:35 GMT

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Fly on the Wall by Dana Carvey and David Spade with any of the many SNL alum they’ve had on.

2022-12-21 17:43:59 GMT

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These lists are collated by pull requests, so it could mean that tor-based nostr servers haven't been keen to be listed? That's just a guess.
So many red (offline) relays at the moment…

2022-12-21 17:40:26 GMT

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The list at https://nostr-registry.netlify.app/ has a few

2022-12-21 17:32:51 GMT

Protip: at http://nostr.watch/ you get a list of Nostr relays sorted by latency relative to your location.
Give this page time to load to give the 100+ relays have a chance to report...

2022-12-21 03:39:52 GMT

Hello everybody: here's a brand new relay, located in Africa (Johannesburg).
`nostr.mado.io`
Please hit it and see if it works for you!

2022-12-20 05:59:41 GMT

William #[0] where should we submit issues for Damus?
The ADD RELAY field should not autocorrect. Entering “wss://“ autocorrects to “was://“ 🙂