How's your social graph?
A new feature on https://iris.to & https://snort.social
Some years back, I made all my blog posts as podcast episodes with Amazon Polly. A server-side solution though.
Romero’s article has a lot of good points for the nostr ecosystem to think about: https://danromero.org/rss-plus.html
I like the RSS+ idea. Did you know that all Substacks have an RSS feed (just add /feed to the end: yournewsletter.substack.com/feed)?
If nostr clients would parse RSS feed natively you could read RSS feeds such as Substack newsletters within your browser. It would allow the integration of zapping, sharing and other nostr features around the “RSS notes”.
Why try to convince existing newsletter writers to post on long-form nostr if the existing feed can be used as a starting point?
nostr:npub1n0sturny6w9zn2wwexju3m6asu7zh7jnv2jt2kx6tlmfhs7thq0qnflahe RSS-parsed posts as a special feed tab on Nostur?
Can be a pretext for the general mobilisation after the March '24 election to make the EU countries to close the borders and conveniently blame them for it. The iron curtain is to keep the people in, and funnel them to the meat grinder in Ukraine.
“Russian authorities send buses of migrants from border crossing point of Salla towards Raja-Jooseppi, the last remaining crossing point between the two countries”
“All these incidents with a Finnish cable, a gas line and a Swedish data cable, they are all connected. …if you have an anchor hanging loose for more than..(185 kilometers)..it is hard to believe that it was just an accident.”
"The negotiations underscore Russia’s determination to maintain its grip on Crimea, a peninsula that it annexed illegally in 2014, as well as Moscow’s growing dependence on China as a source of global support."
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2023/11/24/russia-crimea-tunnel-china/
Andrey Karpathy: “Based on a 30min talk I gave recently; It tries to be non-technical intro, covers mental models for LLM inference, training, finetuning, the emerging LLM OS and LLM Security.”
Regex is harder
“As of March 2022, Russia had about 820 foreign-made civilian aircraft..uncertified repairs with non-original parts…nearing 70% of the fleet…
Per current data, over 35% of Russia’s aircraft have been scavenged for parts.”
The "reply guy." These characters aren't merely annoying; they can actively suppress open conversation. When replies turn hostile or uncomfortable, it often leads to people withdrawing from the discussion. This isn't an abstract concept; it's something I've personally encountered.
This just came up for me in a pretty benign way, with the Wellington Cycling Group on Facebook. After being hit by a car yesterday, I hesitated to share my experience there. Why? Because I anticipated a flood of blame-shifting and negative comments. While the group is largely filled with supportive cycling enthusiasts, it also harbors a subset of anti-bicycle trolls. These individuals seem to have a grudge against cyclists and new bike lanes, possibly even being the culprits behind spikes scattered on bike paths.
In this group, the majority are wonderfully supportive, but the thought of engaging with a few disruptive trolls – both in public comments and private messages – was enough to keep me silent. My story remained untold in that space, effectively muted by the anticipated backlash. Instead, I turned to Nostr and other platforms where such anti-bicycle sentiment isn't prevalent. While Nostr isn't completely free of trolls, the specific anti-bicycle trolling that plagued the Wellington Cycling group isn't an issue here.
The issue of silencing voices extends beyond traditional censorship by platforms or authorities. It also manifests in the subtle suppression by individuals or groups who discourage others from participating. This could range from blaming cyclists for urban traffic woes to inappropriate comments or doxxing.
The challenge we face is the subjective nature of what's considered acceptable behavior. There's no universal rule that applies to every community, whether it's a Facebook group, a social media platform like Nostr, or any other online space. However, we can empower users to curate their own conversational environments.
On Nostr, we’ve got a protocol that is resilient and resistant to censorship by a corporation running the platform or the state. We as users can mute people we don’t want to see, without them being removed from the broader space of Nostr. But I think having the mutes be exclusively about what we see for ourselves isn’t enough.
Take Edward Snowden's use of Nostr as an example. On Nostr, when I see a post by Snowden, I also pull in his content/user reports. If Snowden has reported somebody as a spammer, then that content is hidden behind a content warning, clearly stating, this post is hidden because it’s been reported as spam by Snowden.
When I report or mute someone, it's a clear signal that I don't want them in my threads. It might be beneficial to have an option to view replies from muted or reported users, but by default, I think we shouldn’t show their replies. The core idea is allowing individuals and communities to define their own conversational boundaries. Centralized platforms like twitter and instagram do let you lock replies to specific people, or your followers. They don’t show replies from people you’ve blocked either, of course.
If we don't allow users this level of control, we're indirectly shaping the nature of discourse. Most people prefer a friendly, welcoming space over the hostile territories of platforms like 4chan or Twitter flame wars. Most people will make the choice to retreat into spaces where they feel safe. Just like how I choose not to post some place where I’d get trolled. People want freedom, but they also want to be able to hang out with friends, free from advertising and harassment.
My experience not posting to the Wellington Cycling Group made me think about how we handle these issues on Nostr. I've heard from women who value Nos for its lack of direct messaging, as it frees them from unwanted interactions. Interestingly, while our roadmap considers adding DM support, this feature isn't universally desired. It's a reminder that shaping our online spaces is as much about what we choose to exclude as what we include.
Nostr [isn’t the only place struggling with this](https://tedium.co/2023/11/21/mastodon-reply-guy-problem/). We see it on Twitter, Instagram, Mastodon, and Bluesky.
One indicator of how successful the measures are is whether you keep on posting or are choosing the platform based on the anticipation what’s the reaction.
Even worse, if you stop posting because you cannot handle the negativity even though you know it’s “just” trolls or spam.
I have seen this a lot recently. Highly educated specialist share their insights to educate the public but they have stopped because of the attacks. They want to share the knowledge but the emotional load is too much and it affects their mental wellbeing.
That’s why many have become silent on X and moved to Bluesky but it’s not the solution. It’s just a smaller place where the rest have not arrived yet. We need the right tools.
If you become silent, they have won.
Fixing your broken image URLs with a very simple and backwards-compatible approach (also compatible with NIP-96): https://github.com/nostr-protocol/nips/pull/898
💪
nostr:note1cpjtqvar3fcdpur73qxrl545q68rx6ar3t636ssrk2fhpg578dys42xc5n
“Four years ago, Altman’s mentor, Y Combinator founder Paul Graham, flew from the U.K. to San Francisco to give his protégé the boot, according to three people familiar with the incident, which has not been previously reported.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/11/22/sam-altman-fired-y-combinator-paul-graham/
Keep Pablo caffeinated livestream coming out soon with the state of the cup?
OpenAI has been from the beginning about safety& concerns of the future AGI (Musk’s falling out with Page).
Anthropic was the second splinter a few years back after the initial conversation to the current corp structure that is partly responsible for the current outcome.
The OpenAI foundation board lost the experienced people some years back and the overall picture, gravity and responsibilities were lost with the firing board.
Last year’s success of ChatGPT accelerated things and half of the board was not comfortable with it.
It was an expensive flare of safety concerns.
note1seh8d538mkad574ca67uc8lzrrl8ykg6q4fen6gt4903e8t4va0qdq29xj
The coup from the future failed. Wait for Travelers next.
Connor is the last wave.
nostr:note1qqqq5asj2kzcknqh5729hqru7dp6ygvlh7r2spg2thy0j6rg69jqvxcnxj