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

Nostr

nostr.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 347 posts

Re: Nostr

#181

Post by CaptArmchair »

keiferski wrote: post #161
CaptArmchair wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This an interesting question. Forgive my meandering take on this. We already have a mix of technologies to achieve that effect. Sort of. Simplified, you can host a personal website on shared hosting, a VPS, or wherever, at the same time chat via IRC or XMPP, and use RSS to create feeds to share tidbits about yourself. Nothing stops you from combining different programs and services to get that. So, what are the probl…

Yeah, I mean I am not personally working on a project in this space, nor do I have any super-strong feelings about it. It's more that I like personal websites, from both an ownership and creative perspective. And so I wish there were more approaches which attempted to incentivize that model without creating a complicated new protocol, platform, etc. That might involve making it easier to create and self-host websites…

For what it's worth, pubnix - public accessible UNIX systems - were/are that to an extent. You'd get a free account on some shared system, you log in via a terminal, and you get access to all those things: gopher/gemini/web hosting, chat, bulletin boards,...

Some modern day examples include: https://tilde.town/, https://tilde.club/ and https://sdf.org/.

But shell access doesn't appeal to non-tech users. It's the difference between engineering the electricity in your own house to become self-sufficient, and just expecting to magically get power when you plug a device in the socket.

Re: Nostr

#182

Post by nunobrito »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #173
nunobrito wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By all means, here is a study from 2024 documenting the hard facts about lack of privacy and lack of resiliency: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S030859612... That 51% attack on Monero never happened, despite much noise and headlines saying initially otherwise. You can verify this for yourself.

The paper does not state what you make it out to be (it sees theoretical privacy-lowering attacks, but not as you state it "lack of privacy"). Practical attacks are not even proven. And it - too - does not look into trampoline payments. Trampoline payments are a new feature that are not yet in a BOLT standard, but tried and tested in beta and used i.e. by Phoenix Wallet or Electrum.

It isn't just "theoretical", those are feasible attack vectors.

Anyways thank you for mentioning Trampoline payments, I've learned something new.

Re: Nostr

#183

Post by littlecranky67 »

Karrot_Kream wrote: post #79
nunobrito wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is OK for small amounts like paying a coffee or a few cents. Not reliable for larger values.

What's the "meta" like to find payment channels? That's the thing I found weirdest with LN, I needed to find a channel with enough funding. I presume the custodial LN providers just have their own payment channels?

There is a sweet spot between custodial and self-custodial wallets: "non-custodial" wallets like Phoenix Wallet or Electrum. You keys, your coins - but expect higher fees (which are still way less than CC providers or other payment processors). No need to manage channels yourself.

Re: Nostr

#184

Post by keiferski »

andunie wrote: post #169
keiferski wrote: post #26

Something I don’t quite get about these new social networks that are clearly aimed at technical people: my model of a truly decentralized social network is more like a network of privately hosted personal websites, à la the original web. Not yet another platform I need to make an account to interact on separately. Have there been any attempts to make more of a “network” that incentivizes operating personal websites b…

Why do you say they're "clearly aimed at technical people"? Do you know the minds of people who created them?

At least in the case of Nostr, the introduction text is definitely written for someone that understands tech vocab:

Nostr is an apolitical communication commons. A simple standard that defines a scalable architecture of clients and servers that can be used to spread information freely. Not controlled by any corporation or government, anyone can build on Nostr and anyone can use it.

Re: Nostr

#185

Post by irusensei »

benrutter wrote: post #23

Hope this doesn't come accross as rhetorical, it's a genuine question! Nostr users, how does this differ in your experience from Mastodon? At first glance it seems like the same idea but with the extra ingredient of blockchain, I'm not sure what this adds though, anonymity?

From my observation the federation is largely split between sides that don't like each other. The main block where the main instance lies is very trigger happy to block entire instances and if a server administrator doesn't follow the group think other server administrators will block you out of "lack of moderation". Account portability exists but requires that you be in good terms with the server admins. Which is fine. Their database and they do what they want but it felt like Reddit with less professional moderators.

On Nostr your account is your signature so there is no such thing as creating an account on someone else's database. You push to multiple relays where people can follow you so even if relay operators ban you there will always be some relay willing to host your stuff.

Others already pointed out there is no blockchain involved other than using the same secp256k1 as Bitcoin for signatures.

Re: Nostr

#186

Post by derangedHorse »

maxloh wrote: post #72
dbushell wrote: post #34

A big misconception I've seen is the assumption that Nostr relays are federated and share messages between one another. This is not how it works. So if you're building a "Twitter clone" the client app must search multiple relays and post to multiple relays. If clients are not using a relay in common they cannot see one another. The end result is a bad experience for both user and developer. Using a single relay is ce…

It is somehow misleading to feature a Twitter clone on the front page when Mastodon is a better way to achieve that. The protocol's real value lies in other use cases.

Nostr’s UX on Primal is 10x better than Mastodon imo. I haven’t looked into how it works but every time I try an application with it, it’s been an unpleasant experience.

Re: Nostr

#187

Post by Yizahi »

anon1395 wrote: post #16
littlecranky67 wrote: post #14

Glad to see Nostr on top of HN. It is in its infancy, but Nostr allows for "zapps" (basically sending instant micropayments via bitcoin-lightning) - so instead of using ads and dubious algorithms, you can show your appreciation to content creators by small payments. This is a model for an ad-free, decentralized social media system.

Bitcoin is regulated as hell

And extremely centralized in the so-called Lightning version. Due to ridiculously absurd requirements of the Lightning layer (bidirectional channels on L1, locking funds in advance, solving NP-hard problem thousand times per second a scale etc.) everyone basically resorts to using very few centralized entities as a pseudo-bank, who issues virtual paper, IOUs, which which wallets trade on L2. Basically all negatives of the banks and all negatives of crypto-tokens combined, with no positive sides at all.

Re: Nostr

#188

Post by derangedHorse »

akimbostrawman wrote: post #41
littlecranky67 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is noteworthy that zapps are based on lightning (which is Layer-2 for bitcoin), and similar in privacy as monero (and instantaneous).

Lightning is not anywhere near as private as monero. It's a band aid at best. If it was actually private it would get banned and suppressed like monero.

This is just an ignorant take on the technology used: https://x.com/SuperTestnet/status/1917510496376197446

Monero has other things working for it though, like the absence of liquidity issues you might face using Lightning.

Re: Nostr

#189

Post by t1E9mE7JTRjf »

spiderfarmer wrote: post #106
t1E9mE7JTRjf wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you miss the point. On Nostr because technology is apolitical, you can be anything you want - political or not. A draw for some is exactly that; if they've been de-platformed elsewhere for political views, on nostr that can't happen.

I have never truly seen anyone deplatformed over political views. In the end they were always deplatformed for a lack of decency.

what counts as decency is a political view

Re: Nostr

#190

Post by stillsut »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #14

Glad to see Nostr on top of HN. It is in its infancy, but Nostr allows for "zapps" (basically sending instant micropayments via bitcoin-lightning) - so instead of using ads and dubious algorithms, you can show your appreciation to content creators by small payments. This is a model for an ad-free, decentralized social media system.

You can also earn zaps for pull requests working on Nostr clients.

We've been hosting some bounties like this one here: https://app.lightningbounties.com/issue/615dc5f7-ed91-4ecd-8...

Post reply on HN