So I've been fascinated by Shamir's secret key sharing algorithm for several years, and I'm pretty convinced that self sovereign identity, while cool, is not actually the best option for decentralized social networks. Especially the incarnation of self-sovereign identity that relies on you keeping a secret, and also that secret must be stored on a computer. Like instead fully custodial or non-custodial keys I would rather my friends and family being the ultimate authority on which key is mine. I would do this with my Bitcoin wallet and other keys but *especially* my Nostr key because Nostr is a social network, so the real value is in the social connections we have on here. So in the worst failure mode where all my friends and family betray me and steal my identity... my social network is already dead. There was a group of folks who built a tool for breaking your key into shards and backing it up your peers on Secure Scuttlebutt several years back (https://darkcrystal.pw/). I've always wanted a version of it for Nostr and now that I'm a free agent I'm going to give it a shot. If you're interested in helping or trying it out when it's ready let me know in a reply or DM.

DWeb Camp is in Canada this year. Will I see any of you there?

DWeb Vancouver

DWeb Camp Cascadia, Aug 8-10th, Salt Spring Island

DWeb Camp Cascadia takes place August 8th to 10th, 2025, at the Salt Spring Island Farmers' Institute in the Southern Gulf Islands, BC, Canada. Jo...

If you are checking socials because your internet things are broken, you are not alone. Google Cloud is basically down.

It's been about 1 month since I started my solopreneurship journey aiming to do six product experiments in six months. I launched

SpoilerFree.gg

SpoilerFree.gg - CS2 Tournaments Without Spoilers

Watch CS2 tournaments without knowing the results beforehand. The best spoiler-free experience for Counter-Strike 2 esports fans.

about 10 days ago and have been monitoring the metrics on it since then. So far I haven't met my target of a 5% conversion rate, so I'm moving onto the next thing! I wrote some rough notes about it on my weblog. If you have any advice, thoughts, or questions I'd love to discuss! https://mattlorentz.com/weblog/2025/05/27/spoiler-free-gg-retro.html

Last week I wrapped up my employment with @rabble and the gang at Verse Communications. Over the past 3 years I got to work on https://planetary.social, https:/nos.social, and more recently a communities-focused social app codenamed Plur. Working to build healthier social media with such a diverse team and community was such a transformative opportunity for me, and I'm sure I'll always look back on it as an inflection point. For now I'm taking some time to work on my own projects. Probably not Nostr-related for starters, but I’ll share more when there is more to share :)

Passkey update: Bitwarden, Firefox, and Safari all seem to play nicely together now when it comes to passkeys. I’ve been creating and saving passkeys into Bitwarden whenever a site prompts me to set one up. Signing in with them works how I would expect. It’s not really a different UX from signing in with a username and password using a password manager. And I think I’m defeating the purpose of passkeys by storing them in a central vault, but hey if websites won’t log me out or ask for 2FA so often that’s a trade I will happily make. The accounts I really need secured get the Yubikey.

You may not like it, but this is what peak performance looks like:

The DIY FOSS cyborg -- Dustycloud Brainstorms

Here’s my latest 3d print - a hanger for my headphones on the back of my desk. It keeps them tucked out of sight but I can still lean forward and grab them when I need to. I think I need to adjust the design to make the headphones sit a little higher because right now the rubber piece where the cord comes out of the bottom is bending as the weight of the headphones presses down on them. I have been getting by in TinkerCad but it might be time for me to learn how to use a real 3D modeling tool. Any recommendations on resources/videos for that?

@elsat did you lose your follow list? We just had a team meeting to talk about two of our employees who lost their lists around Nostriga and noticed yours. We are cooking some things which you will hear about soon but in the meantime I learned about

nostr contacts

which seems to work well for recovery.

@jb55 have you posted stats anywhere on how much traffic strfry is handling on relay.damus.io? I’m curious how big of a server you are running it on too and how much it cost. I heard that it costs thousands of dollars per month to run a Bluesky PDS(!?) and it’s an interesting comparison.

Wow, just got access to the beta Apple Intelligence and… it’s awful. I tried generating an image, summarizing an email, asking Siri if she was an LLM, and some other requests. All failed spectacularly, mostly resulting in Siri offering to Google search something that sounded phonetically like what I asked for but was wrong.

@Vitor Pamplona why do all my "General Relays" in Amethyst have 0 bytes, 0 errors, etc?

Nostr but with GraphQL. Would it be good? Or just a DoS mess? So many of the more arcane problems with building a good client come out of the simple query language of REQs.

Is there a way to browse a specific relay in Amethyst? @Vitor Pamplona

@Ben Arc @npub1cx4q...8vf0 @dni hey I’m working on a project at @nos where we are setting up a paid relay using LNBits. Unfortunately we’re running up against a deadline so I’m reaching out for some help. I’m having trouble doing NIP-42 auth with the relay. I think maybe there is a bug in the implementation but maybe I am just dumb. I haven’t done NIP-42 before. I wrote up the details here:

GitHub

NIP-42 Auth Not Working · Issue #27 · lnbits/nostrrelay

Hello! I have set up a nostrrelay using LNBits and enabled "Require Auth" for filters and all events. However I'm not seeing an "OK", or any messag...

Would appreciate your thoughts when you have the chance!

To get over my fear of soldering I decided to order the unassembled kit for this open-source trackball mouse instead of the assembled version.

Classic 2 – Ploopy

I attempted to solder the sensor last weekend and it went really poorly. I thought I had burned the board and I accidentally soldered two pins together that shouldn’t have been. A few YouTube tutorials later and I’m ready to try again. This time with some solder wick, one of these cleaner things, and solder that’s actually small enough for a circuit board (I had my dad’s plumbing solder 🤦). Wish me luck.