Nostr Web Client

Starting yesterday, I am no longer a Synonym employee.

I am thankful for John for taking a chance on me and empowering me for the past few years. without such chance I don't think I would have had the time, resources, or confidence to design what is now the foundation of Pubky.

I loved working with that team, and I am confident that they will be able to materialise what was and still is our shared vision for the Web.

This post is meant to clarify, for anyone who cares that;

1. If you are following me merely for being a Synonym employee, you should consider that I no longer speak on their behalf nor have access to anything you don't.

2. If you were interested in Pkarr or Pubky, then rest assured that I will remain a resource for you if you needed help, especially Pkarr as it has matured and won't change going forward, while Pubky still has a room for improvement and innovation and design challenges, and I might not be able to influence that, at least not in Pubky's name.

3. Once you feel the agency of designing and building, it is too difficult to stop, so while I might be distracted for some time consolidating and taking care of my responsibilities, I can't think of a future where I am not building the things I wanted to see in the world.

4. Usually developers don't abandon projects they are passionate about for lack of resources, but isolation and apathy can definitely take a toll, so I intend to start working very publicly again as I did very early on with Pkarr which caught the eyes of engineers (on Twitter) that helped me in many ways, and I am hoping this is a new opportunity to make more of these precious friendships.

τέχνη 10mo ago

Based on your recent thoughts about decentralized social, did you sort of lose interest in the social application of pkarr in general?

What are you moving towards in terms of that line of thinking?

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Discussion

Nuh 10mo ago

I never cared for public social media and prefer to focus on things like Signal or Matrix but with keys for identities. As well as general purpose private storage and censorship resistant website.

All usecases that are within reach and their success doesn't depend on popularity much, they can have utility on their own.

Most likely my first focus will be on one of these things and all the UX for them.

τέχνη 10mo ago

I completely agree. I think the default for messaging / social media should be private. People should have to go out of their way to boost their signal beyond their normal social circle.

I think these protocols should really mirror much more closely how real life works. We already know what works IRL, let’s use that as a starting point and go from there.

Something really unnatural about how public social media works by default.

I wonder if something like Keet messenger would interest you as well (along with signal, matrix)

Btw, it’s been a decade and I still don’t know why matrix is better than xmpp. If anything, we have just learned that xmpp “failed” for reasons totally unrelated to technology or protocol

Nuh 10mo ago

I am not a fan of Holepunch stack and not interested in building using JS dependencies. I also think Iroh is a better tech.

Matrix is better than Xmpp because it does encryption well, it does VoIP well and it does group chat well.

My only two issues with Matrix is 1. no sovereign identity and 2. no general purpose storage .. it could have been like Google Drive. I think that much became clear to proton mail for example.

τέχνη 10mo ago

I forgot about Iroh! It’s a shame that not many apps use it yet. I heard about it through the Delta Chat blog. I’m going to revisit this. Needs a simple messaging app like Keet tbh.

> Matrix is better than Xmpp because it does encryption well, it does VoIP well and it does group chat well.

I used to think this too, but after using XMPP for myself, I honestly felt lied to. XMPP is more robust, less buggy, more decentralized, and most importantly less bloated. Matrix adding federation (like server sync) is pointless at best and a privacy nightmare at worst.

And a decade later Matrix is still chasing the “emulate discord” vision. I really think it’s just a salary / job security to those people now.