Is anybody else having github issues right now? I've got public repos suddenly asking for a username when you try to clone them... scripts like "cargo build" aren't working and say "spurious network error", but the error is github suddenly asking for a username. It isn't all repos, but happening for

GitHub

GitHub - mikedilger/nostr-types: nostr protocol types for rust language development

nostr protocol types for rust language development - mikedilger/nostr-types

NIP-22 has become non-optional. It solved a real problem and was a good idea, but also it was a breaking change. A non-optional breaking change. I made this point early on, calling the other devs mavericks and juggernauts. Now we are in the situation where gossip either doesn't see anybody's replies, or it replies to their replies with kind-1 events which I am now told is a "sin". You see, I am not allowed to ignore this NIP-22. It is non-optional. I'm not even against this being non-optional. What I am against is not running a migration campaign... not pushing everybody to upgrade to it. I warned this situation would happen and I was ignored. So now we have this mess. I will now upgrade NIP-22, but somebody needs to go around to all the other clients and push them all to upgrade too. @dluvian @arthurfranca @fiatjaf @Vitor Pamplona @hodlbod @hzrd149 @jb55

I sent a note 12 hours ago blaming the LA people for all clumping together. But I'm not really that mean. I feel bad for them losing their houses. I guess I just wanna have a unique take, and I remember farmers losing their crops because they lost their water, and I was always feeling bad for them. I'm pro-desalination, if it can be done without huge equipment manufacturing and chemical side effects.

I took a break from nostr over Christmas. First real break since I started working on nostr. About 10 days worth. What did I do? I programmed chess. There is a ton of chess related software out there. We shouldn't need more. Chess.com has become very popular, but I prefer lichess.org. Huge databases of games and puzzles, lessons to practice and learn, and online game matchmaking, tracking of Elo (or glicko-2) scores, etc. Even 20 years ago there was way too much chess related software. Ok... there can't be "too much". What I mean is that there was a lot. Scroll down this page to see some of it:

GitHub

Download and usage

A free and strong UCI chess engine. Contribute to official-stockfish/Stockfish development by creating an account on GitHub.

So why did I want to write more? I had 100 reasons: 1. I didn't know of any that easily let me see which squares were controlled by which pieces, as a learning tool. It is probably out there but I didn't know about it. 2. I didn't know of any that let me learn opening lines by playing them against the computer where the computer first plays fixed moves to get to the beginning of the line, then choose random branches (based on random leafs) to play the opposition side of a line, and subsequently starts over or switches to stockfish. 3. I like the chess.com graphics, but I don't want to pay for their services. So I want to use those graphics even though they can't be distributed. Honestly I could have just shoved them into my pychess folder somewhere, but whatever 4. I like programming. Anyhow, I have this cool set of libraries now that doesn't quite do what I set out to do, but almost does. I can play stockfish, or stockfish can play itself, or I can play myself. Originally I wrote a 'state' library and a 'uci' library and plugged in my server to pychess, my server being the one helping me practice and learn opening lines. But something about how pychess uses UCI wasn't quite working and often it would get stuck. So then I whipped up a 'gui' in egui (was super easy) and added nice things like drag and drop, opponent moves slide into place naturally. I want to add the "click" when they land. It has many sets of graphics to choose from and various ways to highlight squares and show messages and alert and things. I"ve also got an 'lmdb' crate where I store positions and responses, and indicate in the response if it is my Preferred response that I am trying to learn, or a bad move, or whatever (so I can learn the preferred moves for my strategic play... which are not necessarily the stockfish "best" moves). I'm way to old to ever be good at chess though. But I can be better. I haven't done any tie-in to nostr yet but that would be quite easy, and running this on a website won't be a huge lift either. So maybe NIP-64 could get expanded and implemented.

For those seeking rigorous privacy I've argued for using Qubes (or at least whonix) and Tor like Edward Snowden does. I use such a machine for certain activities. But it is not my main computer. My main workstation has too much stuff to run something like that... ZFS for instance. In these cases VPNs have to suffice. But VPNs aren't entirely safe. You can be fingerprinted and tracked pretty easily still just by the multiple websites you go to fingerprinting your browser. And it is hard to know if you can trust a corporate VPN company. Rather than install multiple browsers in multiple VMs and trying to tweak them all so they don't all have identical specs (something that can be used to associate them), you could instead consider something like

Simplified Privacy's VPN Service

, a VPN system and Browser container system that work together to foil this kind fingerprinting, without the downsides of Qubes or the slowness or Tor. It fakes your display, isolates cookies, routes through backwater datacentres instead of those Cloudfare infested places. And of course you sign up anonymously with bitcoin. I think it is a good compromise for practical privacy. I haven't used it yet myself though but I'm going to take a look and I'd be interested in feedback from those who do. I believe it is just now in beta testing. Cool idea. I'm sure @SimplifiedPrivacy.com will correct me if I got any of that wrong.

I'm going to do some tests as replies to this note. It might get a bit spammy.

Los Angeles area does NOT have the natural resources necessary to support such a large and highly dense human population. I've known this since I was a kid, when they stole our irrigation water from Northern California, when they stole water from Arizona. But people insist on living together in giant unsustainable greasy clumps. The fire spreading is a natural consequence of not having water, which was a natural consequence of putting too many people in that place. People can point fingers at the decisions of officials, but the problem isn't fundamentally solvable with government. Malthus wasn't wrong.

GM @fiatjaf