Damus

Recent Notes

Grafton @ Vexl · 1d
My parents just cut down an old oak tree. What should they do with all this wood? Best answer gets 1000 sats 😂 https://blossom.primal.net/9f9fc9bff1cf46e281603406fe5aac402c7edf9c610e8459f5fa4db3a3b...
xte profile picture
A chopping board, cut at a sharp angle to get a useful shape and a good final surface, starting with a height of about 7cm using a chainsaw. Then, place it on a workbench and secure it by screwing it into the side. Set up two flat guides at the necessary height, and place a long enough board across them with a router mounted on top; use this to plane the rock-hard wood to a "mirror" finish. Once one side is done, flip it over and do the second. Use a chisel or the router itself to create a drip groove that ends in a drain at one end of the "ellipse".

Cut as shown in the photo, there isn't much else they can do. If you want, you can use wood carving discs (grinder discs, made like wood rasps for carving, dangerous to use, so be careful) to shape other things, for example, a stylised fruit bowl to be decorated later with a pyrography pen or chisel, but this requires much more skill than the chopping board and the practical daily use isn't great.

If there's still a long piece left and you like polenta, you can make a classic Italian "polenta stick", literally a stick about 80-90cm long, with a diameter that's comfortable to hold and a wider, flattened end. But carving it from a log requires a certain level of skill; you can even do it without a lathe by starting the cut with a chainsaw and then setting up a "DIY lathe" using a drill and a router. It's a long, frustrating job for a result that doesn't make much sense anymore now that we have self-stirring pots for polenta, but it can be done, just like you can make large kitchen spoons.
calle · 2d
I'm fascinated by the level of existential crisis developers seem to be going through. The uncomfortable truth is nobody needs you to be an artisan coder. Nobody cares about how you coded your app,...
xte profile picture
Nowadays, most people need a programmer, but big companies, just as they get rid of doctors to make way for less competent and therefore more docile paramedics, are looking for code monkeys. In the same way, sysadmins have largely been phased out in an attempt to have people who are easier to boss around. The result is that we no longer have anything new, and the number of constant problems is skyrocketing.
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fiatjaf · 2d
Sorry about that, I'm tired of seeing people claim Nostr isn't decentralized always for the wrong reasons and never expand on their claims. But in your case I think you really misunderstood things. T...
xte profile picture
Being technically decentralised doesn't make it practically so. The Web is technically a hypertext, running on a partially interconnected mesh network, yet nowadays the bulk of traffic flows between a handful of giant hubs, to the point where "marginal" social networks stay that way simply due to a lack of critical mass, and not having an account on some giant's servers is a communication problem for many. We have, and consider normal, major communication systems that only talk to themselves. XMPP is decentralised by design, yet when it was popular, Google was the main player and its changes were adopted even if they were unsuitable for most, simply because they were needed to interoperate with it. When Google abandoned it, the users vanished and XMPP essentially died, having become irrelevant.

To put it another way, yes, Nostr is decentralised by design, but this peculiar design makes it practically centralised, and it is, or rather will be in the future if it succeeds, a problem. Just see Primal as an example.
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Leon Acosta · 1d
hey nostr:nprofile1qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq3xamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3wddn8stnxwghszymhwden5te0w3jk6upwd9exjueww3hj7qpq7n2m7v30w732zh0uded9ql3mvaws3t6306j0avtvrxjz7lay2n8q8jtz23 . i agree with you, but instead of routing content through random peers, we should use our web of trust. content should be wit...
fiatjaf · 2d
Among 20+ microblogging clients there are only 2 that don't follow the promote centralized paradigms, soon to be 1, eventually 0. So I don't get why you are spreading so much bullshit, it would be mu...
xte profile picture
The problem I see is that messages aren't "evenly spread across the network" but are concentrated on a few relays, and it even happens that some replies only reach certain relays. The result is centralisation on the most popular relays.

The solution I see is the classic DHT, basically algorithmically spreading content across every node in the network, which will have storage and bandwidth quotas in its parameters. This leaves the administrator free to reject certain content or keep some in full, but fundamentally every message is split in chunks and some chunks are automatically spread across nodes. Historical examples include Usenet on one hand, as a decentralised paradigm, and eMule/KAD or ZeroNet for the distributed one.

The solution I see for further improvement is to not have "Nostr client only", but client+relay in a single package, with potential support for Tor or ZeroNet or something similar for those behind a NAT. Those with an exposed host can provide a way to punch through holes in NAT for those who don't, but basically every client is also a relay and blossom server.

I hope that's clearer now, and I don't see any bullshit or rudeness in what I'm writing. Meanwhile, as a fairly new user curious about Nostr and from the old-school *nix background, I see a tense community that's not very interested in the rest of the world, which isn't a good thing for achieving success.
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fiatjaf · 2d
Sorry about that, I'm tired of seeing people claim Nostr isn't decentralized always for the wrong reasons and never expand on their claims. But in your case I think you really misunderstood things. The idea of Nostr isn't that messages are evenly spread across the network. I do not believe that is ...
utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 · 2d
you know about moar, based it's gonna be a while before it's ready though 😭
🟠 isolabellart · 3d
Grazie mille! È bello poter leggere ogni tanto un po' di italiano. Tra l'altro credo che di italiani ce ne siano tanti, solo che scrivono tutti in inglese come il sottoscritto.
xte profile picture
Idem, significa che anche su Nostr non siamo così marginali :)

Si, io in genere a chi scrive in inglese rispondo in inglese semplicemente perché non so qualche sia la madrelingua della controparte e ad oggi avendo vinto loro l'ultima guerra mondiale l'inglese è la lingua franca come prima lo era il francese...
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utxo the webmaster 🧑‍💻 · 2d
try the wisp client out from zapstore, it shatters this paradigm
fiatjaf · 2d
Among 20+ microblogging clients there are only 2 that don't follow the promote centralized paradigms, soon to be 1, eventually 0. So I don't get why you are spreading so much bullshit, it would be much more helpful and productive if you either shut up entirely or started speaking more concretely an...
Eli · 3h
Which relays would you recommend? I'm new here, so just discovering how everything works
🟠 isolabellart · 3d
Lo scrivo anche in italiano per i miei connazionali: Secondo me c’è una piccola trappola nella premessa. Continuiamo a pensare in termini di demografie da colpire, come se Nostr dovesse trovare l...
xte profile picture
Contento di rispondere in Italiano :)

pesa questo: serve, in una fase iniziale, pesa bene questo inciso, puntare al bipede medio, quello che di IT sa nulla, installa l'app se il nome/lo screenshot lo convince e in 5" di prova decide se restare o mollare? Per me no. I dev correnti però puntano a questa demografia, più o meno consapevolmente.

Per me in una fase iniziale serve prendere "il linuxaro medio", il nerd, che ha un serverino domestico, spesso un modesto raspi o due, che sa qualcosa ma non oltre quel qualcosa, quindi qualcuno che vuole un'app unica, go get-abile, cargo build-abile, pip-abile, o già nei pacchetti della distro di turno, unica e sola, che faccia tutto. Non vuole scegliere un relay, scegliere un client, trovare che non c'è 'no straccio di documentazione su come configurare opportunamente il relay, che qui manca un server blossom, che li manca un filtraggio dello spam, che laggiù manca il supporto alla chat, ... poi vedere che gli serve coturn per poter aver l'audio, ... vuole un singolo pacchetto, che sia app desktop o webapp da servire via NGINX non importa, ma che sia unico e faccia tutto, client, relay, server blossom, chat, ICE/TURN/STUN ecc ecc ecc. Se c'è questo e vede che è carino, visivamente va bene come andrebbe XMPP/Matrix, ma qui si fa anche il blogghino personale, c'è pure la possibilità di far un ecommerce banale con gli zap, ma nessun obbligo di farlo beh allora quel singolo nerd che prova si tira dietro alcuni amici ed alcuni parenti e dopo un po' questi su scala raggiungono la massa critica necessaria a diventare anche pronti per l'utente-utonto.

Questo manca. Non solo in termini software ma proprio in termini di comprensione e interesse da parte dei dev. Nostr è pieno di progetti confezionati al volo e abbandonati, gente cordiale, che ha voglia di fare, ma non ha una visione d'insieme ed è abituata al modello commerciale delle megacorps dove non c'è il problema del lancio di qualcosa perché sono le PR che lo fanno, non i dev. Dove c'è un modello di rapporto "col cliente" ben diverso.

Cosa fa di buono Nostr?

- ha capito che il punto è comunicare testo, non html, testo semplice, al massimo MD o org-mode, tutto qui, il grosso della nostra informazione è testo dalle leggi agli sms passando per libri, giornali e post. Nostr offre comunicazione testuale come la offriva Usenet, ma con una UI assai più libera e accattivante. Come Usenet supporta anche contenuti multimediali, in maniera più efficiente dei gruppi binari. Supporta post brevi, cui manca una UI stile Lemmy/Reddit per aver successo, la rubrica distribuita modello Facebook/LinkedIn (questa c'è già), post lunghi (blog/siti personali), stanno più o meno arrivando le chat con anche audio e video

- ha anche un modello economico, non valido per i relay, valido per fare un web economico

Cosa manca:

- l'app unica, che sia client+server e che vuoi via Tor, vuoi via altro come ZeroNet, la vecchia rete KAD/eMule, ... permetta visibilità anche al nerd medio senza un nome a dominio, dietro NAT

- un design coerente di questa con un minimo di documentazione per il setup e l'uso

Senza questi non si andrà lontano. Ai margini il modello di decentralizzazione dei relay sovrani finisce come vuole la teoria delle reti in pochi grandi hub, quindi la decentralizzazione teorica salta, splittare e spargere l'informazione come faceva KAD/DHT in genere, IPFS, lasciando agli utenti giusto la scelta di pinnare contenuti "questi li vogliamo interi sul nostro ferro" e bannarne alcuni marcati esplicitamente "questi non li vogliamo" mentre il resto è solo una quantità massima di storage e banda a disposizione della rete, beh, senza questo non è vera decentralizzazione, si finisce con pochi giganti e tanti relay ignoti.
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🟠 isolabellart · 3d
Grazie mille! È bello poter leggere ogni tanto un po' di italiano. Tra l'altro credo che di italiani ce ne siano tanti, solo che scrivono tutti in inglese come il sottoscritto.
fiatjaf · 3d
Good point, but all these "devs" who are into "decentralization" and were supposed to like Nostr apparently don't give a shit about it (because their entire discourse is a lie, they don't really care ...
xte profile picture
Well... Consider that Nostr is not really decentralized. The relay model means some large hub and many relays unseen by most, so actual substantial centralization without imposing it formally.

Nostr is awesome for many reasons, but it's not really decentralized. Largely ignoring both the ZeroNet failure lesson, the Usenet success lesson and the eMule/KAD model. If this not change Nostr will remain marginal unfortunately.
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fiatjaf · 3d
You may be thinking that everybody only reads from some hardcoded relays but that's just a weirdly common misunderstanding.
Martin Lowe · 2d
Seems to me that most people using phrases like «not really decentralized» are hardly better than people saying «not real communism». Question isn’t even whether it’s sufficiently decentralized, but whether it *can be*. There’s always a slide towards centralization, because it often pays...