My friend Alaa, a hacker and activist who's been in jail in Egypt for over a decade has finally been freed! He was arrested for organizing pro-democracy protests and being the hacker who setup all the websites for the movements. Many years of campaigning and hunger strikes were required to get him out. His son went from a tiny baby to a teenager while he sat in an Egyptian prison.

Alaa Abd El-Fattah - Wikipedia

Bluesky the company is spinning off the the name system, DID:PLC in to an independent swiss association.

did:plc Directory

Creating an Independent Public Ledger of Credentials (PLC) Directory Organization | Bluesky

The Bluesky Social app is built on an open network protocol that refers to each user by a unique Decentralized Identifier, or DID (a W3C standard)....

This is a good step, the name system should not be owned by the company.

Pole dancing in a giant 3 meter tall inflatable unicorn costume is really hard.

Earlier this year I discovered these inflatable off brand mascot costumes and started taking them to raves and festivals. First a cat, then a bear, and now I’ve got a unicorn. The way people react is magical, hugs, delight, and general whimsy. Given how really affordable the costumes are and how much people like them I’m surprised other people aren’t doing this.

So just in case folks think I complain too much, here’s a video of me walking in to #burningman in a giant inflatable teddy bear suit.

I’m genuinely confused at how many people on Nostr are weirdly authoritarian. I mean it’s a permissionless decentralised social protocol. You’d think people who used it would not be enthusiastic nationalists who believed in an authoritarian state. It’s like bitcoiners who are excited about the US government integrating bitcoin in to the central banking and federal reserve system. The entire point of bitcoin was to create a financial system in opposition to Wall Street and central banks. It confuses me. I also get confused leftists who think the solution is to deplatform people they oppose, but thankfully the “delete their account” folks aren’t much on Nostr. It’s the right leaning authoritarianism here which confuses me. View quoted note →

The latest episode of the weekly Nostr Recap is out. This is important because we can't all keep track of everything that is happening, a summary is so useful. View article →

I think we should pay more attention to what @WendyDing and the yakihonne folks have done. It's a fantastic app that works really well. They've explored and moved around a bunch over the last couple of years, but they've also made yakihonne really solid. I notice that i'm shifting to using it as my go to app, which is funny, because i love my own nos.social, but on my desktop, yakihonne web just works. Because they're based in Asia i think a lot of western nostr users don't think about YakiHonne, but I think we should celebrate it more.

JD Vance says the US government will investigating opposition organizations. If they start revoking the legal status and seizing bank accounts of opposition non-profits then this represents a fundamental threat to the ongoing operation and viability of an open democratic society. They're going to crackdown by revoking articles of incorporation, tax exempt non-profit status, and then go after the bank accounts. Charlie Kirk's assassination was just an excuse they've been waiting for, if it wasn't him they'd have found another excuse. This is what happened in Hungary, Turkey, and Russia. Authoritarian democracies take and hold power by taking the money away from an organized opposition. https://archive.is/KIGjp

Ok bitcoiners, can somebody explain to me or give me a pointer to what the hell is going on with Knots vs Core? To somebody who is not really aware of the personalities.... I get that it is about "Core’s planned removal of the 80-byte limit for OP_RETURN data." But what is it really about?

Oh my this guy has a naming problem.

Mark Zuckerberg | Indiana Bankruptcy Attorney

Indianapolis Bankruptcy Attorney Mark Zuckerberg shares the same name as Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

In Bluesky the app is really located on the server and the client is just a view. This is more like how traditional clould apps works as opposed to how Nostr works with its thin server and thick client. Honestly the Nostr model is struggling. We see it with all the server stuff you need that apps like yakihonne, primal, Damus, and nos do. In order for the client to be fast, get aggregated data like reaction counts and follower calculations, most importantly notifications. View quoted note →

I had to ask my very online kids who hang out on 4chan and discord in order to explain groypers. Turns out I’m not the only one trying to understand this subculture, it was trending on TikTok until the platform banned the term. #tiktok #groyper

Anybody else having issues with primal web notifications loading?

My kids tell me that i need to do video essays and not just interviews for my revolution.social podcast to take off... what do people think? Should i take a try? They also say that I work on 'boring social media apps' but that's them just being teenagers i think.