By putting profiles and tweets behind a login-wall, he's actively making Twitter worse.

Less content gets indexed by search engines and less discoverability overall.

Twitter hiding profiles and tweets behind a login-wall and enabling rate limiting, might just be the beginning of a downward spiral.

This breaks countless Twitter links in search results and hurts discoverability, for both Twitter and its users.

I never thought removing the draconian censorship that became so prevalent the last years would seriously affect Twitter's popularity, despite the howling protests of the proponents of said censorship.

But progressively locking your platform down makes it less useful and thereby less valuable. The network effect can also go in reverse. The more people leave, the more people leave.

Most vegetarian meat replacements are trash.

I had a seaweed burger in Amsterdam some years back and it was great. The texture (which is often a problem) was a bit like fish (flakey, if that makes sense).

IMO, if you're going to be vegan or vegetarian, the best approach is not to try and replace meat with highly processed vegan alternatives.

Instead, eat freshly made food from real, raw ingredients. Asia (India and far east) has some amazing vegetarian/vegan dishes.

I hope the decentralized social media cat is out of the bag and that there's no going back to 2010 Facebook-style centralized social media.

I could be wrong of course, network effects are very strong and Meta can pay an army of devs to create a sleek UX and various enticements for users.

But many people are slowly waking up to the dangers of centralized silos.

Nostr is a great example of creative destruction in real time.

The incumbent players are not just the centralized silos like Twitter, but also the blue checkmark "influencers" who have built up their audience there and who are largely tied to the platform.

Some people with large followings like nostr:npub1qny3tkh0acurzla8x3zy4nhrjz5zd8l9sy9jys09umwng00manysew95gx and integrity and a sense of mission are willing to spend more time on Nostr, but the majority of Twitter influencers aren't willing to give up their audience on Twitter.

That's where the plebs come in. It's up to us to make this a happening place, and in so doing, we'll be creating new fortunes and reputations, while the old guard crumbles.

Thanks, that's exactly what I needed!

It's one of my other posts, if you check my history.

Thanks for letting me know though. 👍

I know, that's why I asked how to decode from the one format to the other.

Coming from the Fediverse (Mastodon), I'm really enjoying using Nostr. Not being tied to a particular server as your identity/account provider feels liberating.

Sending and receiving zaps feels like magic.

We'll see how well the design holds up over time, but at the moment it's a pleasure to use.

The content is still a bit monoculture, but that's ok. I joined Mastodon in 2017 and back then the content I saw was 90% about free and open source software and related nerd stuff.

It helps that I like Bitcoin and believe in the mission of building freedom tech. It means my Nostr feed is relevant to my interests 😃

They get a lot of mental health data! 😆

Are these things for sale? I'd love to buy some.

What is the easiest way to decode my Nostr pubkey from the npub format to the hex format?

Is it just a normal blech32 decode? Is there an online tool people use for this?

Just another thought I had...

My 30s were arguably better than my 20s. They definitely weren't noticeably worse!

Happy Birthday!

I went through a fair amount of introspection and personal development around 30.

Last year I turned 40. Sucked in some ways (I felt old), but was also good in others.

As I get older, I realize the traditional things (having a life partner who loves you, family, kids, friends) are really the most important in life.

It was also the only way to view the feed chronologically instead of algorithmically.

Shows again the benefit of open source software. Yes it's sometimes clunky, and there are often issues around economic sustainability (devs need to get paid), but at least in an open system, it's much less likely that someone will be able to prevent you from using your favorite tool.

Another option is to use NewPipe on Android. It's open source and let's you watch and download YouTube videos.

https://newpipe.net/

Pro tip: If you're trying to contact me for the first time via XMPP.

Don't just send me a message "hello" or "hi".

I will likely just ignore it, since I'm not interested in small talk, especially not via text. I have other things to do.

State clearly why you're contacting me. For example:

"Hi, looks like your TLS cert has expired!"

That way I can respond immediately without wasting both our time.

This doesn't apply to people I already know and are friends with.

https://nohello.net/

Hello world. This is my first Nostr post under my real name.

Open standards and protocols are dear to my heart. I've been working on XMPP (an open standard messaging protocol that you've probably used without knowing about it) for ten years now.

Open source software and standards are Promethean in nature. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind.

Open source takes technology from the elites and gives it to the plebs.

Bitcoin is a great example, but not the only one!