What do you mean in practice? The network exists and there's several social media platforms built on it.

"twitter like"

https://github.com/Bombe/Sone

Last I checked up on it, it had no database persistence so that really limited its usefulness imho

https://fms.fn.mk16.de/

Probably the oldest, it's essentially a forum system.

Both operate on the concept of following other ids, and web of trust. Happy to elaborate/clarify, I'm not sure how deeply to explain it.

There was a very interesting WoT plugin that was intended to undergird future applications, but I don't know if it ever reached completion: https://github.com/hyphanet/plugin-WebOfTrust it was iirc academically interesting if nothing else for web-of-trust with transitive trust.

Rambling that is probably redundant but I don't know how much you've read so far:

The whole system is built around recursively searching the network for different keys: content keys and signed keys (keys as in key-value store).

Content keys are obviously derived from the content of their data, and signed keys are derived from the signature. Layered on top of signed keys are "updatable signed keys" that are actually just a convention for retrieving the latest version of a signed key by searching subsequent versions (in fact they are different keys with a -1, -2, ... -N suffix)

FMS and Sone both work by "following" an identity's updatable key, which will be updated with an index of their latest posts, and possibly profile data (I forgot exactly how each works, but they're slightly different, and incompatible with each other)

When you make a request for a particular key, intermediate nodes on the route to where that key *should* end up will keep an LRU of requests, and if the key ends up being crated while they have retained that request, they'll forward the result, and hopefully it will end up being sent back to your node in very short order like a notification (otherwise your node will periodically poll and should see it later)

I've always been a fan of freenet, I think it's an extremely elegant system. The problem is potentially storing and forwarding data you vehemently disagree with as a user.

(Same issue occurs with relays in nostr, but at least that's opt-in)

Maybe when things are bad enough for fedgov to try, saylor's stash will be big enough to raise a mercenary army 😂

Add a fragment identifier to the relay urls containing the cert fingerprint? Like this: "wss://69.69.69.69/endpoint #fp =" ?

Pretty sure you can trust the event for the cert fingerprint, if it's wrong you'll just fail to reply or fetch related events.

In fact, does TLS between client and relay really just amount to MITM protection for privacy+censorship resistance?

It's optimized for long range communication reliably* , not speed.

The fact you really only need to discover a handful* of relays to participate means that even DNS censorship isn't particularly threatening. People can gather their initial relay IPs easily, and the rest are discovered automatically *anyway*.

For discovery, "new" relay URL format like "wss://69.69.69.69/endpoint#fp=" ?

Not sure if it's coracle or what but I just replied to a post, saw that it was successfully posted to 4/10 relays, and then coracle showed that it was only found on 1 relay! I'm not sure if that means 3/4 relays it was published to are outside my preferred relay list, or if they were immediately dropped by those relays?

Normal people?... Oh no my days are numbered lol

The thing about freedom tech is I don't really get to complain, freedom is for EVERYONE, but...

...lmao

We as a society already disagree, but now at least dissident ideas can enjoy a similar platform, and be evaluated on their merits rather than simply being suppressed.

I love that they paid homage to the old art when they released MM9 in 2008

Of course, that's kind of a given. Maybe mention it near the end of the next review? Anyone who made it to the end conscious is already a cut above 😂

Do you think opensats would sponsor somebody to build it?

I think I laid out a reasonable rough vision on the ML.

https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2023-November/022143.html

* NIP-32 labels to post to a given group, and moderate entries in it

* user selected moderator list

* a markdown kind (might already exist, I haven't been keeping up) for discussion content

* POW to overcome potential visibility issues

* Archive client that looks like mailman archives

Eventually it would need email integration via some kind of self-hostable bridge

I actually use good ol' vim with vim-lsp, asynccomplete, and asyncomplete-lsp (which uses rust-analyzer as a language server just like VSCode)

It was actually surprisingly easy to set up, but my config was subtly wrong for months also lol

Unfortunately I do think some kind of IDE support is a hard requirement for writing rust, there's wayyyyy too many things to memorize, types being inferred behind your back, etc to not get machine support.

I did fix the lifetime error after taking this screenshot, this was another time where I was just on the edge of my understanding of rust lifetimes and rustc's hints got me over the finish line. What's more is I feel like I'm close to having a pretty confident understanding of rust's lifetimes.

I passed the "try stuff and pray" stage a long time ago, but I've been on a plateau of "I can do most things but I occasionally get just completely stuck" for months if not half a year now.

This is what rustoids actually believe...

Yeah, to be clear I'm pro activating CTV. In terms of capability I think it's effectively equivalent to creating an ephemeral key, signing exactly one transaction with it, then destroying the key.

CTV is 64-72 bytes more efficient on chain, however, and also avoids the risks of mishandling the ephemeral keys. If they're not properly handled you could be very screwed.

Since "base" CTV can already be simulated this way, I think the risk is essentially nil. Upgraded versions that do fancier things (like what TXHASH promises) could have potential unintended consequences though, of course, and should be heavily scrutinized as they're proposed.

I'm not positive CTV is the "best" proposal, but it is ready now, extremely low risk, and can be upgraded later in future soft forks to encompass further functionality as they are deemed safe (or not).

I still don't understand why zaps don't use keysend

Are you really gonna let ben get away with calling it mastodon? 😏