Coinos with Damus usually works fine for me. I just set someone up that way this past week. Yakihonne is by far my favorite client though and Jumble has great options for expanding your feed. I have yet to try Amethyst so you're ahead of me there 😁
I personally don't find any merits to SM platforms and morally detest their policies and business practices. Trying to compare them to nostr, which is a protocol, is false analogy. I have no problem with people who do find benefit from such platforms, we can disgree on that. But treating them as categorically equivalent to nostr is an invalid inference.
I think most any bitcoiner would say Saifedaen is required reading. I believe the brothers at nostr:npub1f7n47xajdxnvrespa939hvcta6ys362k4sy3yjd2e2ea6dcghpvs2tm25c are working to publish an academic journal soon so if you have criticism for them I'm sure they'd appreciate the feedback. Otherwise, I know of Major Lowery's paper at MIT that was quite "academic"...
I think it is very easy to form bubbles or echo chambers here on nostr. Some effort is required to diversify. Most clients don't have great tools built to assist with this yet although they are improving. I see it s lot like early bitcoin days - a bit rough and bumpy but over time you form lovely communities. That time spent is the important part! Bitcoin took a few cycles before it hit 100k. Nostr has only been around about 3 years and already has rebuilt from protocol nearly everything SM platforms have done in the past 2 decades. For me the beauty of the future to come is what makes the wild journey here worth it. I'm sure that won't be the case for everyone, but hopefully you can find something beneficial in nostr while you're here.
I understand. I shall try Jumble. I have found amethyst to be quiet temperamental. Thank you for the suggestions ☺️
Oh I am not comparing the protocol with a platform at all. But the protocol does give rise to a distributed platform. And a big chunk of the people on this platform (nostriches) within my bubble are constantly treating Nostr as something sacred (same thing happens for Bitcoin). But lets agree to disagree on this. Btw, I have no horse in this race, i used Facebook for a few months in 2007 and Twitter for a year or so around 2011.
With respect, and I say this now only because the topic has come up, I have a Ph.D. in cryptography with focus on multiparty computation, Saif is completely unknown in this line of research, much less required reading. Not trying to act snobbish, saying what is true. ☺️ Similarly, unless Bitcoin Majlis folks get some academics behind their "journal", it is going to be another evangelist magazine. Non-reseaechers cannot start an academic journal (exceptions aside). Besides, why do they need to start an "academic" journal considering we already have established, very high quality, venues for such research. What purpose would it seve except "me too"!
Yes, I agree re:Nostr. Other SM tools? they have their merits, lets agree to disagree. 😁
Most folk here have a bone to pick with other SM platforms and nostr's not s platform so yeah, sorry we are better 😂
Bitcoin academia... have you read nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak ?
Just looking at your profile stats and seeing less than 100 notes and less than 50 following... unless you're using Jumble you might well be in your own bubble here. 🤷🏻♂️
All that said, I approve this rant. We need more rants on nostr. 🫂
Neither Amethyst nor Damus want to play with Coinos. Oh well, I’ll do it manually.
Thank you for your reply. Having a bone to pick is fine, it’s the cult-like behavior that’s bothersome. Denying the merits of other platforms is simply immature. :-)
Thanks for the suggestion re: Saifedean. I’ll follow him. I have not heard of him before, and a search for author name on eprint and arXiv returns no papers. In general, one needs to have published peer-reviewed research to qualify as an academic. I have read articles posted by BItcoin Majlis and/or Muslim Bitcoiner in the past. Those were flawed. Will see about Saif.
From my profile you have discovered that I don’t participate much. I agree with that assessment. I did preface my rant with “in my experience”. Having said that, my profile does not give you evidence that the people I follow are the only people whose notes I have read.
Maybe I need to unfollow the people who are making this “bubble” for me and follow other people. :D
Most folk here have a bone to pick with other SM platforms and nostr's not s platform so yeah, sorry we are better 😂
Bitcoin academia... have you read nostr:npub1gdu7w6l6w65qhrdeaf6eyywepwe7v7ezqtugsrxy7hl7ypjsvxksd76nak ?
Just looking at your profile stats and seeing less than 100 notes and less than 50 following... unless you're using Jumble you might well be in your own bubble here. 🤷🏻♂️
All that said, I approve this rant. We need more rants on nostr. 🫂
(fixing problems with sending zaps, will reply after)
rant: In my experience on Nostr, most (not all) nostriches have a holier than thou attitude towards other social platforms. The same chest-thumping behavior, and unfortunately without the required academic background, extends towards Bitcoin vs other cryptocurrencies. But there is only so much one can read about Nostr/Bitcoin superiority. This makes it an unwelcoming and boring place for those who do not want to join the echo chamber.
I am looking for alternatives to Gnosis Safe for Ethereum multisig solution. Decided to ask local AI. Deepseek R1 and Llama are both hallucinating and suggest Electrum (the bitcoin wallet). :D
Many folks may be looking for multisig wallets after Gnosis Safe's compromised code that resulted in Bybit hack.
If you come across Krayon ( https://www.krayondigital.com/ ), KEEP MOVING!
This guy's chest-thumpy attitude and many misleading claims about MPC undermine his credibility. He either doesn't understand MPC or claim things which aren't true.
"Hardware wallet doesn't have all contextual information"
What contextual information is that?
The issue wasn't in the smart contract, it was a compromised dev machine. Something like this can happen to any cryptocurrency, we have seen such compromises causing issues on Bitcoin too.
Ethereim smart contracts have many issues, but this incident wasn't a case of smart contract vulnerability.
Ethereum and Bitcoin both share the same elliptic curve (secp256k1) so the cost of signing is the same. The issue with multisig is lack of standization. If there were one dominant standard, the hardware wallet could do it.
What hardware wallets support multisig on Bitcoin?
It was an Ethereum multisig smart contract.
In Bitcoin, multisig is simple and straightforward, easy to verify on a hardware wallet.
In Ethereum however, the simplest of smart contracts, even for a simple multisig set up, are harder to verify on a hardware wallet, creating more opportunities for such vulnerabilities.
Here is an article with more details about the hack:
https://www.ledgerinsights.com/bybit-hack-phishing-involved-plus-how-to-prevent-similar-hacks/
Yeah I figured it was Bybit, and surprised to learn that issue was in a Safe contract (Safe was considered standard multisig contract), am looking in to it deeper today.
“I cannot stand the way most academics write” <- will not argue on this point to stay on the topic.
NOTE: I neither support nor care for the garbage coins that keep popping up. My arguments assume academically sound systems.
a couple of representative examples:
1. The article is hand wavy regarding Bitcoin’s decentralization. It claims, without evidence, that Bitcoin has no concentration of influence. The issue here is that gathering such evidence, despite the weaker privacy (pseudo-anonymity) on Bitcoin (and other similar pseudo-anonymous currencies) is not trivial. A couple of graph analysis studies suggest that the same lopsided influence exists in Bitcoin. And this sounds likely too, considering that Bitcoin ecosystem involves large mining operations and mining pools. Moreover, Bitcoin (and any PoW blockchain) will always require more computing power than a PoS (or other lottery mechanism) blockchain. This is because the node has to solve the PoW puzzle in addition to the work of maintaining a ledger. CPU/GPU era of Bitcoin mining ended in early 2010s. Nowadays one requires significant investment in a mining rig. Your argument should have been that Bitcoin, despite the lopsided influence that most probably exists, is less susceptible attacks/bad-behavior because of its superior market adoption. It’s not because running a Bitcoin node is cheap. Regarding true decentralization of influence, it is a hard problem. The real world influences find a way to be reflected in decentralized systems too. The property is certainly desirable and should be researched into.
2. In its passion for bashing blockchain, the article makes the strange statement that blockchain is “inefficient” and that any “centralized” solution will be “cheaper, faster, more reliable”, and “more maintainable”. This statement is a mix of incorrect claims (e.g., a centralized system is *not* more reliable) and correct but misleading claims (e.g., centralized systems are faster) because these distract from the real reasons one would choose a decentralized system over a centralized one e.g., Trustlessness. What’s worse, if one were to take these misleading claims on face value, then Bitcoin itself is a bad system because It’s not faster than Visa (25,000 tps vs. < 10 tps), it’s inefficient (requires more computing power and storage than a centralized system), and it’s not cheap (the energy cost to keep the system running is more than that of many small countries). The value of Bitcoin cannot be judged on these metrics, the benefits it brings (Trustlessness, Reliability, Ease, etc) are what make it a superior solution to the centralized Visa/Mastercard systems. It’s like saying insecure traditional programs are faster, more power efficient, and reliable compared to secure multiparty computation (MPC).
Blockchain is an instance (specific problem) of the State Machine Replication or SMR (the general problem). It is most definitely not “just a linked list”. Someone who says so has probably never read anything on Consensus. "there’s nothing inherently magical about a blockchain”. Yes! There’s nothing magical about any science. The excitement doesn’t stem from seeing magic, it stems from the possibility of a solution to a previously hard problem.
A final note, the article (at least how much I read) reads like Bitcoin is panacea for all ailments. There are significant issues in Bitcoin—Low throughput, Inefficiency, lack of privacy, etc—that others are trying to solve. The extremely misleading statement on blockchain betrays that if the author of the statement (not sure if it were you or someone you quoted) were presented with the idea of decentralized payment system before Bitcoin’s boom, he would have exactly the same talking points against Bitcoin that he is now using against Blockchain and other cryptocurrencies on it. It’s also probable that the author will sing praises of Blockchain as soon as it has its Google or YouTube or Spotify moment. Till then, one should not become dogmatic when discussion man-made technology.
Our 2nd essay in the Bitcoin Only Series is now posted on nostr:nprofile1qqsylf6lrwexnfkpucq7jcjmkv97azgga9t2czgjfx4v4v7axuytskgpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqgjwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcg3wruf, where we talk about the technical issues facing crypto, particularly how altcoins sacrifice decentralization, security, and immutability for technical "improvements". Read it here:
https://bitcoinmajlis.org/bitcoin-only-series-2-4-technical-issues-of-crypto/
went through the first one-third of the article. It’s probably written by a non-academic/evangelist type and contains many hand-wavy claims and inaccuracies. Not worth the time to ready it fully.
It's almost too perfect. An Ethereum smart contract exploit at an exchange occurred just three days after we highlighted technical flaws in crypto in our essay on the nostr:nprofile1qqsylf6lrwexnfkpucq7jcjmkv97azgga9t2czgjfx4v4v7axuytskgpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuurjd9kkzmpwdejhgqgjwaehxw309ac82unsd3jhqct89ejhxqgdwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkcg3wruf blog.
When you design a digital monetary system to do more than just act as money, like implementing smart contracts on the base layer, you inherently compromise on security and decentralization by default.
We explored this in our essay. Check it out 👇
Which smart contract was it this time, care to share a link?
If you feel concerned about privacy when speaking to AI models (you should be), and would prefer to experiment with them offline, Msty makes it a breeze to install/try various models offline.
I am glad that the age of digital nomad is coming to an end. The idea of working remotely never made sense to me. From time to time, sure! But it can't be the default work mode and not cause dips in productivity.
Preparing tax returns? :-)
There is a pattern in Trump's stance on immigration and Palestine.
Trump isn't against just the illegal immigration. That's only the rhetoric he uses to mask his hatred for the "others". He is against all immigration. He doesn't want the others to live on his land.
One may say that he probably wants those "others" to prosper and flourish in their own countries. Except that in his plan for Gaza/Palestine, he doesn't want the others to live on their own land either.
At its core, it is not about immigration or peace in the middle east, it is: "might is right". It is that, we "the civilized" decide where and how the others "the savages" will live. There is no principle, rule or law. It is the whim of "the civilized".
What Israel is (and has been) doing in the west bank should shut up "But Khamas" Israel apologists. There was no Oct 7 from the west bank and there is no "Khamas" there, but that hasn't stopped Israel from committing same atrocities in the west bank. Then again, if such apologists had an IQ above room temperature, "But Khamas" argument would not exist in first place.
If you trust Boltz.exchange (that their solution is academically sound and that their implementation is correct), then yes.
After careful consideration I pledge my allegiance to the zap only brigade. I think nostr:npub1lrnvvs6z78s9yjqxxr38uyqkmn34lsaxznnqgd877j4z2qej3j5s09qnw5 is on to something profound here. Hear me out.
1. Let’s be real, we’re all looking for dopamine hits here among other desires. I am flawed enough to want mine, but not flawed enough to not want them backed by the weight of the energy of the world. Meaningless thumb taps be gone. Weight of the world or comment (PoW). Make online connections meaningful again.
2. If Devs remove the like button, there is no doubt we will zap each other more. Comrades, are we not here to usher in the circular economy?
3. We understand the value of time more than most. Our time is also more valuable than most. Do we really need to waste all of those cumulative seconds on the like button? No, we should be dialed in on this thing, save seconds here and in our real worlds.
4. Removing the like button will have somewhat of a shock and awe to newcomers. We are rewriting the rulebook for online social media engagement. The like button is an old relic to discard. If we do not do this, our kids will do in the future, as they laugh at our senile asses.
Final thought: zaps are like when the Spanish discovered chocolate in the Americas. Bitter at first, but slowly an undeniable upgrade on anything that had been before.
Unpopular Opinion: I disagree with this. Thos suggestion to remove the reaction/like function is extreme. It would be akin to suggesting that we stop complimenting people in real life. Instead, every time we wish to compliment someone, we gove them a gift because everybody loves getting gifts. If someone wants to always give gifts, good for them. But this is/should be a personal choice. Most people are generous with compliments but give gifts only on significant occasions.