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

Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

nostr.how

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 140 posts

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#91

Post by brookst »

nine_k wrote: post #70
Zamicol wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

DNS is centrally controlled by ICANN. There are alternatives like ENS. I don't mind Nostr just simply having its own system.

DNS is both. There are the universally accepted root servers, ICANN, national registrars, etc. But nothing prevents you from trusting additional root servers, with TLDs if your choice, delegation of subdomains from them, etc. All the standard mechanisms will just work. Your router likely supports the .lan TLD out if the box.

DNS tne protocol supports alternate root servers.

DNS the system that we all depend on depends on the assumption that we all use the ICANN root servers.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#92

Post by andirk »

Zamicol wrote: post #37
evv wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - The plan appears that user names are delegated to the centralized DNS system ( https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/blob/master/05.md ) DNS is not centralized, it is distributed. A name server can delegate authority to other servers. Every nation has their own, which I consider sufficient decentralization. (Although it does rely on IANA to list addresses of root name servers, which is perhaps the centralization…

DNS is centrally controlled by ICANN. There are alternatives like ENS. I don't mind Nostr just simply having its own system.

At the top, sure, but our machines have their own DNS so we could get around the ICANN DNS servers if we told our machines to do so. Is that what ENS is?

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#93

Post by arp242 »

anothernostrich wrote: post #88
class4behavior wrote: post #4

The whole premise of Nostr is that you consider your access point hostile, yet its provider is still offering one. That contradiction just incentivizes bad and toxic actors to participate and dominate this network. That's why, it seems, the developers actively conflate what one would expect from a private communication platform and a social media platform. But this isn't an alternative to Mastodon or Twitter, it's an…

So far, there haven't been many "bad and toxic actors". I have met one bad actor among thousands on nostr and I muted him. I heard there was porn in global chat, but my client doesn't even offer global chat. People don't consider their relays "hostile", but they don't trust them with things they don't need to trust them with. That's not the contradiction you imagine. Relay operators are trusted with things like spam…

> So far, there haven't been many "bad and toxic actors"

It's also obscure enough to not even have a Wikipedia article, the "first & best iOS client for Nostr" wasn't published on GitHub until less than a year ago (but wasn't in the app store until this week according to another comment), the Android client they recommend wasn't on GitHub until last month, and the web client they recommend (Iris) didn't add Nostr support until 2 months ago. Edward Snowden seems to be the most prominent user, and he has 5 followers. I don't know if this is broken, because it seems a ridiculously low number, but that's what it displays.

There's lots of things that work well at small scale, but not so well at scale.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#94

Post by hem777 »

anonkogudhyfhhf wrote: post #33
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is essentially centralized — you just pick who you trust with full centralized authority before they have a change of heart, fail, begin rent collecting, whatever. Nobody seems to understand how difficult it is to make a system that can guarantee its neutrality within the protocol. (Sorry HN: it requires crypto.)

Crypto meaning cryptography yes it's needed. If you a referencing bitcoin like technology used for money no they don't help here. Please enough with this "crypto" ignorance

Think of cryptos more like “incentives to rational behavior” than “money” and it starts to make sense. You can incentivize, for example, data availability with cryptos and that opens the design space for distributed systems that don’t need to be controlled by one entity (like Twitter, for example).

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#95

Post by hem777 »

libraryatnight wrote: post #41
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mastodon is essentially centralized — you just pick who you trust with full centralized authority before they have a change of heart, fail, begin rent collecting, whatever. Nobody seems to understand how difficult it is to make a system that can guarantee its neutrality within the protocol. (Sorry HN: it requires crypto.)

It may need cryptography. I think the majority of HN likes cryptography. When you say crypto, and apologize for it, I assume you mean the stupid coins and all the nonsense that comes with that group of fools, and that is not required.

It seems to me it does require cryptos. Which luckily are based on cryptography so we all get to like the path forward :)

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#96

Post by drowsspa »

Honestly, I don't get the fuss about these "libertarian-inspired social network protocols". It's not like the technical side of social media is the tough one: it's always been the political and sociological one.

In the end, most people aren't hardcore libertarians and do want content moderation, centralized discovery, spam blocking... I would really find it interesting if it came about a protocol that actually cared about those things and provided a way to handle them other than a megacorp doing all of it. But all those protocols operate under the assumption that people are okay with seeing really bad things that real people come up with (even CP like commented elsewhere in this thread) themselves under the guise of "full decentralized liberty".

I suspect that's why they all ultimately fail or at least remain niche things. If the alternative to megacorps is this wild west, people will remain in the megacorps' social media.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#97

Post by pyth0 »

jensensbutton wrote: post #76
Aeolun wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Email is push. Twitter is pull. Of course you can set your email server to reject every single email that you do not have in a whitelist, but that’s not a feature of the protocol. Plus it’s something you need to manually do (because most people don’t want -or expect that- from email). People expect Twitter (or similar apps/protocols) to not show them messages other than from people that are explicitly followed.

No they don't. Twitter hasn't done that (restrict your feed to only people you follow) in a long time.

There is a "Following" tab which is supposed to be just tweets from those you follow (and things they interact with), compared to the "For you" tab which is curated by "the algorithm". I'm pretty certain there has always been a way to filter the timeline down to just people you follow.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#98

Post by moojd »

lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #85
libraryatnight wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may need cryptography. I think the majority of HN likes cryptography. When you say crypto, and apologize for it, I assume you mean the stupid coins and all the nonsense that comes with that group of fools, and that is not required.

How do you guarantee data availability and avoid double spending without Byzantine fault tolerant consensus?

Consensus isn't a fundamental requirement for social media or a communication protocol. Email doesn't require a blockchain and doesn't care about 'double spending' or whatever.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#99

Post by hem777 »

moojd wrote: post #98
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you guarantee data availability and avoid double spending without Byzantine fault tolerant consensus?

Consensus isn't a fundamental requirement for social media or a communication protocol. Email doesn't require a blockchain and doesn't care about 'double spending' or whatever.

The previous comment didn’t ask for consensus for a social media or communication protocol specifically but rather was two steps ahead and was referring to the infrastructure that those protocols run on. Under the hood, there are various consensus mechanisms in current day social media or communication protocol infrastructure systems and those systems are needed to make sure (user) data is available. In order to run a data availability system, there’s a consensus required somewhere there. If you want to have the infrastructure provider run it “honestly”, in a protocol sense, then you need incentives for them to do so. If you need incentives, then you need kind of transactional system in a payment and accounting system sense. And that’s where you then need to care about “double spending”.

Re: Nostr.how – A Complete Guide to Nostr

#100

Post by MitPitt »

moojd wrote: post #98
lazzlazzlazz wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you guarantee data availability and avoid double spending without Byzantine fault tolerant consensus?

Consensus isn't a fundamental requirement for social media or a communication protocol. Email doesn't require a blockchain and doesn't care about 'double spending' or whatever.

Did email ever manage to become largely decentralized? Most people use centralized services like gmail, and pay for it with their privacy. It's not viable for the majority to have their own servers
Post reply on HN