There can be only one.

Just had to give my phone number and solve multiple captchas to join a Discord channel. I generally try to avoid giving my phone number to online services, but it gets more and more difficult. Years ago when I created my Reddit account, I didn't even have to give an email address. Only open source freedom tech like Nostr, XMPP and ActivityPub are still like that nowadays.

Taking a 5 hour train to Berlin tonight. I decided I'll pack light, leave my laptop at home and take a rest from work. As soon as I took my seat in the train I regretted my decision. I guess I'll be browsing Nostr for 5 hours then...

The year is 2025. Elon Musk has bought NVidia and made some changes to counteract freeloaders.

Twitter is really dropping the ball here by putting tweets and profiles behind a login wall. https://crisis.nl/nl-alert/nl-alert-detailpagina/?a=b18fcbbd-9be6-435a-981f-4461914760bf

Good morning 🌅 I'm tired of chicken littles liked Doomberg warning about financial oppression while in the same breath telling us that Bitcoin isn't the answer because the Canadian government can compel financial institutions to block certain Bitcoin addresses. The govs have 100% control over fiat. We always knew this. But they can't stop a p2p circular Bitcoin economy that bypasses fiat altogether and it's dishonest not to mention that. But I guess if you call yourself Doomberg, you're not interested in solutions.

Twitter hiding profiles and tweets behind a login-wall and enabling rate limiting, might just be the beginning of a downward spiral. This breaks countless Twitter links in search results and hurts discoverability, for both Twitter and its users. I never thought removing the draconian censorship that became so prevalent the last years would seriously affect Twitter's popularity, despite the howling protests of the proponents of said censorship. But progressively locking your platform down makes it less useful and thereby less valuable. The network effect can also go in reverse. The more people leave, the more people leave.

Nostr is a great example of creative destruction in real time. The incumbent players are not just the centralized silos like Twitter, but also the blue checkmark "influencers" who have built up their audience there and who are largely tied to the platform. Some people with large followings like @ODELL and integrity and a sense of mission are willing to spend more time on Nostr, but the majority of Twitter influencers aren't willing to give up their audience on Twitter. That's where the plebs come in. It's up to us to make this a happening place, and in so doing, we'll be creating new fortunes and reputations, while the old guard crumbles.

Coming from the Fediverse (Mastodon), I'm really enjoying using Nostr. Not being tied to a particular server as your identity/account provider feels liberating. Sending and receiving zaps feels like magic. We'll see how well the design holds up over time, but at the moment it's a pleasure to use. The content is still a bit monoculture, but that's ok. I joined Mastodon in 2017 and back then the content I saw was 90% about free and open source software and related nerd stuff. It helps that I like Bitcoin and believe in the mission of building freedom tech. It means my Nostr feed is relevant to my interests 😃

What is the easiest way to decode my Nostr pubkey from the npub format to the hex format? Is it just a normal blech32 decode? Is there an online tool people use for this?

Pro tip: If you're trying to contact me for the first time via XMPP. Don't just send me a message "hello" or "hi". I will likely just ignore it, since I'm not interested in small talk, especially not via text. I have other things to do. State clearly why you're contacting me. For example: "Hi, looks like your TLS cert has expired!" That way I can respond immediately without wasting both our time. This doesn't apply to people I already know and are friends with.

no hello

please don

Hello world. This is my first Nostr post under my real name. Open standards and protocols are dear to my heart. I've been working on XMPP (an open standard messaging protocol that you've probably used without knowing about it) for ten years now. Open source software and standards are Promethean in nature. Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to mankind. Open source takes technology from the elites and gives it to the plebs. Bitcoin is a great example, but not the only one!