Imagine you could tell your social media client in human language what kind of "algorithm" it should use to compose and rank your feed and decide what to show you and in which order.

"Show me mainly posts about Bitcoin and Art, the more technical the better. Hide posts about politics. I'm not interested in health tips or tradwife lifestyle content. Do not show me any pics of food but you can show me pics of feet. I like cats more than dogs."

Feels like this would be the ultimate user control.

Imagine you could tell your social media client in human language what kind of "algorithm" it should use to compose and rank your feed and decide what to show you and in which order.

"Show me mainly posts about Bitcoin and Art, the more technical the better. Hide posts about politics. I'm not interested in health tips or tradwife lifestyle content. Do not show me any pics of food but you can show me pics of feet. I like cats more than dogs."

Feels like this would be the ultimate user control.

None of the major parties in Switzerland are campaigning against the digital ID, which has already been rejected by the citizens in a direct democratic vote and is to be introduced anyway in favor of technocratic progress. And the indifferent citizens don't give a damn.

Make HTML cool again.

No no. They're doubling down now. Wait for the new german gov. They are planning to put another 50 bio eur for green bs on the line

We need a way to authenticate to private tailscale networks using some kind of zero knowledge proof that "the npub associated with this request has a web-of-trust (e.g. vertex dvm) score > N" without divulging the npub.

Nostr native, private networks.

Ecash mints your friends can use which are invisible for anyone else. etc

For those of you who have not read Mr. Lopp's original article, here is a summary. The Cliff Notes version if you will -

Assumptions and Guarantees

- Bitcoin assumes that the majority of miners act honestly, incentivized by block rewards.

- Full nodes guarantee several facts: no monetary inflation beyond defined limits, no unauthorized spending, and no double-spending.

Thermodynamic Security

- Once a transaction is confirmed in a block, reversing it requires significant energy. An attacker needs over 50% of the network's computational power to reverse transactions.

- The cost to rewrite Bitcoin’s entire blockchain is prohibitively high (around $277 million), making such attacks impractical.

Sybil Resistance

- Bitcoin nodes are resistant to Sybil attacks, where attackers create multiple fake peers. A single honest connection allows a node to disregard false information from dishonest peers.

Consensus Properties

- Bitcoin achieves eventual consensus, exponential convergence of forks, liveness (new blocks added regularly), correctness (valid transactions only), and fairness (mining proportional to computational power).

Checkpoints and Bootstrapping

- Hard-coded checkpoints ensure a common history for new nodes, preventing Sybil attacks during initial sync.

- Bitcoin uses DNS seeds for bootstrapping, requiring trust in at least one honest seed or node.

SPV Clients vs. Full Nodes

- Simplified Payment Verification (SPV) clients download block headers, reducing resource needs but assuming valid transactions. SPV is less secure than full nodes, which verify all consensus rules.

- Running a full node offers superior security with minimal trust assumptions.

Security Considerations

- Full nodes require trusting hardware and software to some extent, though methods exist for verifying software integrity.

- Miner concentration poses risks, but incentives align against malicious behavior due to capital investment and network monitoring.

Infrastructure Options

- Alternatives like mobile wallets or SPV with custom configurations can balance security and convenience. Proxies combining third-party services with local verification offer hybrid models.

Run a Full Node Already

Running a full node provides the highest level of security for Bitcoin users, minimizing trust assumptions and ensuring financial sovereignty at minimal cost.

if I was leading a country getting tarriffed, I would simply do nothing but keep trading.

If your neighbors shoot themselves in the balls with taxes, why would you retaliate by shooting yourself in the balls? Makes no sense

Your industries become competitive by offering high quality products at competitive prices, not by governments taxing everything

The #AUStriches state I just left is banning machetes because the Africans they imported are wreaking havoc and they keep letting them out on bail to reoffend.

Where I live now in Vietnam a guy rides around on a motorbike with a speaker blaring “Sharpen your knives, sharpen your scissors, rehandle your knives” and you can go outside and buy a machete off him or take your blunt knives and he’ll make them razor sharp for you for a dollarydoo 😂

Somehow I don’t think banning machetes is going to solve anything.

I'm thinking about posting all my videos on Nostr instead of just YouTube & Rumble. Would that be a good thing, or too much clutter?

Washington DC, USA

Pushed some improvements to the asknostr.site

- added primal to relays when posting question/voting (no outbox yet)

- fixed rendering nprofile/npub references

- more continuous fetching of answers

On the list to address:

- remove questions that are not so good (engagement bait stuff)

- fix hover on nprofiles/npubs that do not have meta events

- fix that 10k max questions on the ‘browse all’

Good to see that the number of questions has been increasing steadily with more and more engagements in zaps/replies too :-)

OMG, thank you!