Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

nostr.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 156 posts

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#21

Post by drexlspivey »

nine_k wrote: post #15
drexlspivey wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

I'd appreciate a bit more detailed answer. If the problem that Nostr solves is, say, posting NYT headlines, pub crawl reports, or cute cat pictures, it's fine, but most centralized tools are also fine. If the problem which Nostr is trying to solve is being censorship-resistant and allow for dissemination of information which is actively being suppressed, relay safety considerations become important. Less safety means…

You are going to post illegal stuff (signed by you) then somehow convince someone to raid my server in the hopes of that illegal thing being on my hard disk. Relays don’t have to store any message on disk, they relay stuff real time over websockets. Even if you store messages you can trivially wipe them every 24h?

Then you are going to convince a judge that the thing on my disk belongs to me, because judges are apparently braindead.

If this is the protocol’s glaring vulnerability then every server in the world has this vulnerability.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#22

Post by gigatexal »

I don't understand Nostr's comments on trying to be deplatform-proof. On Mastodon, for example, if you get kicked off a node just spin up your own node. If nobody wants to hear you spewing your stuff then you'll soon be screaming into the void but what you post will still be viewable on the web and to those that subscribe to you. So I don't get what Nostr is trying to do.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#23

Post by madeofpalk »

nine_k wrote: post #9

The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's unknown and unencrypted content. Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that message available to anyone. Unlike an email relay, you are not forwarding the message to someone else like a dumb pipe; there's no fin…

For what it's worth, the US has "section 230" that absolves services providers of liability for content their users post.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#24

Post by nine_k »

larrysalibra wrote: post #17
nine_k wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd appreciate a bit more detailed answer. If the problem that Nostr solves is, say, posting NYT headlines, pub crawl reports, or cute cat pictures, it's fine, but most centralized tools are also fine. If the problem which Nostr is trying to solve is being censorship-resistant and allow for dissemination of information which is actively being suppressed, relay safety considerations become important. Less safety means…

> If the problem which Nostr is trying to solve is being censorship-resistant and allow for dissemination of information which is actively being suppressed, relay safety considerations become important. Less safety means fewer relays, and a need of a personal connection / trust to be admitted. Because almost all of Nostr logic is in the clients, you can always run your own relay or pay someone to run it. There will a…

That's actually a great idea: run enough relays yourself, so you can somehow conceal your identity, and somehow protect yourself from things like losing your (DNS) domain.

It's a bit like posting to your blog anonymously, and having a bunch of mirrors.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#25

Post by larrysalibra »

gigatexal wrote: post #22

I don't understand Nostr's comments on trying to be deplatform-proof. On Mastodon, for example, if you get kicked off a node just spin up your own node. If nobody wants to hear you spewing your stuff then you'll soon be screaming into the void but what you post will still be viewable on the web and to those that subscribe to you. So I don't get what Nostr is trying to do.

If you get kicked off a mastodon server, you lose your followers and posts unless you're able to move your account before you're kicked off - which requires the cooperation of the server that wants to kick you off.

> If nobody wants to hear you spewing your stuff then you'll soon be screaming into the void but what you post will still be viewable on the web and to those that subscribe to you.

People who are de-platformed are almost always people who others WANT to hear. Think of all the famous people deplatformed from big tech social media...10s of millions of followers each. It wasn't that "no one" wanted to hear them, but that the people that controlled the platform didn't want others to be able to hear them.

> So I don't get what Nostr is trying to do.

It took me a while to get my head around it as well. The intro and faq on the github repo really helped me.

https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nostr

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#26

Post by nine_k »

larrysalibra wrote: post #14
nine_k wrote: post #9

The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's unknown and unencrypted content. Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that message available to anyone. Unlike an email relay, you are not forwarding the message to someone else like a dumb pipe; there's no fin…

All this stuff might true, but from both a user and a developer perspective it actually works today and has a vibrant community of motivated, talented and interesting people building on it AND using it. There are ways to address all of these problems if and when they occur. I think one of Nostr's biggest contributions is its culture of pragmatism and speed. Do something simple, quickly that works instead of sitting a…

I see now. The censorship against which Nostr offers some resistance is things like being banned from Twitter, or being expelled by disgruntled moderators from a subreddit, or maybe even fired by your domain name registrar..

It's not the kind of censorship resistance which opposition in country with an oppressive regime might need, and in general not a solution against censorship by state-level actors.

Well, fair. Also, fun and lightweight, no browser needed.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#27

Post by dochtman »

zikduruqe wrote: post #18

I joined a Nostr relay the other night, and every time I posted a Lightning Node invoice for 100 sats, within minutes I got 2 cents in my wallet. So at least I made some money from this. :) I'm following the project/protocol, it seems interesting. Here are some NIPS https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips

In NIP-04 I noticed that DMs can be encrypted using AES-CBC. IIUC, this is not a very robust mode for using AES. Seems surprising for a greenfield project.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#28

Post by rollcat »

larrysalibra wrote: post #14
nine_k wrote: post #9

The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's unknown and unencrypted content. Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that message available to anyone. Unlike an email relay, you are not forwarding the message to someone else like a dumb pipe; there's no fin…

All this stuff might true, but from both a user and a developer perspective it actually works today and has a vibrant community of motivated, talented and interesting people building on it AND using it. There are ways to address all of these problems if and when they occur. I think one of Nostr's biggest contributions is its culture of pragmatism and speed. Do something simple, quickly that works instead of sitting a…

This sounds a lot like building a car by attaching an engine and a steering wheel to a frame, and worrying about addressing problems (such as seats, gear switching, seatbelts, airbags, doors, windshield, ...) only as they occur.

Which I guess is kinda fine if you're building slow go-karts to do friendly races with your neighbor in their backyard - but instead you're already letting those out on the open roads on day 1.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#29

Post by nunobrito »

nine_k wrote: post #9

The biggest problem I see here is forwarding someone else's unknown and unencrypted content. Imagine you're running a relay on your machine, and somebody posts some CSAM, or stolen CC data, or hate speech, etc through your relay. Unlike an email client, your relay actually makes that message available to anyone. Unlike an email relay, you are not forwarding the message to someone else like a dumb pipe; there's no fin…

> Even though the message is signed, you can't reasonably prove that you do not possess the private key used to sign it, or have not possessed.

That is an assumption that you made and strikes as FUD. An equally valid assumption is that nobody can reasonably prove that the person has the private key used for signing the files. Assuming the stated nature of relays and their intended purpose, there is more ground to assume that a relay is a service provider without reasonable way to inspect the contents of encrypted data.

Re: Nostr: Notes and Other Stuff Transmitted by Relays

#30

Post by nunobrito »

rollcat wrote: post #28
larrysalibra wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All this stuff might true, but from both a user and a developer perspective it actually works today and has a vibrant community of motivated, talented and interesting people building on it AND using it. There are ways to address all of these problems if and when they occur. I think one of Nostr's biggest contributions is its culture of pragmatism and speed. Do something simple, quickly that works instead of sitting a…

This sounds a lot like building a car by attaching an engine and a steering wheel to a frame, and worrying about addressing problems (such as seats, gear switching, seatbelts, airbags, doors, windshield, ...) only as they occur. Which I guess is kinda fine if you're building slow go-karts to do friendly races with your neighbor in their backyard - but instead you're already letting those out on the open roads on day…

You've just described 100 years of car evolution.

Similar to software architecture, you do start by defining the preferred characteristics and then working your way to the other parts.

Post reply on HN