ChatGPT is ridiculously overrated. It's not even useful as a simple spell checker or translator. I don't understand why people make such a big deal about it.

Managed to soak up some vitamin D with what I assume were the last rays of sunshine this year. Because on the way back, the sky already turned gray and stayed that way until this evening. A week of rain is already in the forecast. Germany is sinking back into its long gray period for the next 9-10 months, before the climate returns where my bones can thaw out again. Fall and winter arrive here punctually every year, without fail. This time even early. Spring and summer, on the other hand, sometimes don't show up at all.

I'm all for preserving privacy and I personally apply various OPSEC measures, especially in my private life. But privacy has its downsides too. It tempts some individuals to become noncommittal or even offensive, which is easy to do without consequences when protected by your "privacy." This gets even worse in business contexts because you could, for example, scam your "business partner" and then disappear without consequences. And if the provider works in security or finance and messes up, but can't be held accountable, the risk multiplies many times over. They simply get away with the mess they've made. That's why in these more sensitive areas, I prefer collaboration, even as a simple customer of a service, where the founder or CEO doesn't remain anonymous. Where they appear under their real name, ideally with a LinkedIn profile, standing behind their product with their reputation. They won't risk having their tarnished name eternalized across the internet, they won't get snippy and rude with you if you've fallen victim to their carelessness and bring it up with them. But that's just my view. That's only my 30 years of internet experience talking.

Alright, something is finally developing on Muslim Nostr (MN). And we're not just being reactive like Muslim Twitter (MT), but creative. And that's so important on multiple levels. I like it. Keep this vibe going, MN! You can just do things. View quoted note →

Reminder: You can just find out who zaps you the most

ZapStar

I'm working on some artwork for my book. In the style of my profile picture. Got to have a bit of visual relief between all that text.

Is Amethyst well again? #asknostr

You wanna see a real cyberpunk website? This is a cyberpunk website. And it’s 30 years old.

Adam Back's home page

I've revised the entire book. It'll be 3 volumes in one book. Now some third parties are reading it and giving me their feedback, which I might still incorporate. But I already think it's pretty complete. After that, it goes into translation and book design. The title is already set too: "The White Ram Lamb"

When I was coming back from Jumuah (Jumuah muabarak! to my Akhis by the way) and saw the election posters outside, the bottom one really made me laugh: At the very bottom, 'The Left' party is advertising with the slogan 'Your rent is going up because your landlord is raising it.' Dude... putting aside how Captain Obvious and trivial that sounds, the simplicity of the message for the average person is both funny and kind of clever. What are they implying with this? They want to fight the housing shortage by forcing a rent cap on all landlords by law. And what happens when free price setting no longer works? Many landlords pull their properties off the market (because they can't cover their costs anymore, for example), so there are even fewer housing spaces available. Classic case of shooting yourself in the foot. But the normie just thinks 'Oh yeah! Pay less rent.' Man, this is how politics works today. On the backs of the uninformed.

I'll admit, I actually read the short ad messages in the Zap-Ads. And sometimes I copy or type the advertised URL into my browser bar because I'm curious. Listen up, marketing industry!

I haven't used Google Search in years. I don't even remember what a Google search results page looks like anymore. Brave search is much better anyway.

Reclaim The Net

Google Expands Age Verification to Search

Behavioral profiling now trails you from video views to the search box.

Hey akhis, we're gonna have our own radio show soon! View quoted note →

A wholesome photo for your timeline

Ok, after the Coinos relay was acting up again and I couldn't zap, I've now switched to @Rizful.com . I've been keeping an eye on them for quite a while, so this seemed like the perfect opportunity to give them a try. Switching over in the Nostr clients worked right away on the first attempt, and they seem to be fast with transactions too. To be honest, I've never experienced that before. Let's keep watching how they perform.

This Nostr client has become a beast! 💪 🔥 View quoted note →

Haha, I wrote the same thing once. Because both lead back to the same principles. If you're just a fiat Bitcoiner and only see it as an investment, you're just waiting for 'price go up'. But if you see Bitcoin for what it was actually invented for (freedom from banks and their self-inflicted crises, medium of exchange, self-sovereignty, etc.) then those same values should also lead you to Nostr. View quoted note →

AI today is still in a state comparable to MS-DOS in operating systems back in the early 90s. And just like I fully utilized MS-DOS back then (with batch programming for example), we should also push AI to its limits. You can already see a certain potential, but it's still very tedious to put together something that actually helps artists instead of demanding extra resources like time and effort in other forms. It took about 30 years for operating systems (whether Linux or Mac - Windows isn't an OS to me, more like a gaming terminal connected to a central computer in Redmond) to reach a level of comfort that didn't require additional maintenance effort from users beyond updating the system and installed programs. But with AI, it won't take 30 years. AI is literally developing itself exponentially. I don't know exactly what stage research or industry is at, but they'll get agents that take over training the core. These in turn will get another type of agents that train the agents that train the core. This creates an exponential increase. That's why I advise anyone who wants to keep up in the coming years (which is hard enough already) to start working seriously with it now, in this MS-DOS phase, and pay the extra effort it demands today. That's extremely important and necessary.

Okay, looks like I finally got a solid definition of SAIF. And I can tell you, my trilogy is so SAIF. By the way, I'm still reviewing, polishing, smoothing things out. You know what the most time-consuming part of writing a dystopian science fiction novel is? Supporting the mentioned scientific advances and future facts with knowledge that exists today. Making them somewhat believable. That's what Gene Roddenberry did with Star Trek. While George Lucas just made stuff up. (That's why Star Trek is better than Star Wars) Anyway, that's taking up a lot of my time right now. But I want the nerds who read it to think, "Yeah, that makes sense" instead of it being complete fantasy. View quoted note →

Nostr's biggest selling point is that it's ownerless. Not the decentralization, not the Zaps, not even being open source, those are just nice-to-haves. The ownerlessness is its most important feature. What happens on most major platforms? Take X for example. Someone says something against a person, and that person or the people backing them don't like it and want it gone. What do they do? They go to the platform owner, the one who controls all aspects of the platform. And if they push the right buttons, the owner does what they want. Or even voluntarily, makes no difference. Who can you go to if you want something deleted from Nostr? Who exactly? Who can you ask, blackmail or threaten? And then these accounts with huge follower counts whine: "Waah, the owner of this platform deleted all my posts about this or that topic," even tagging him, using his AI to check if it's true ... making a huge drama out of it. Dude, you're one person and the owner is another person. He has house rules, you're just his guest. He can do whatever he wants with his expensive private toy. He's not fulfilling some public service funded by tax dollars. He owes you nothing, you have zero claim to anything from him. People somehow think that once something becomes popular and used by many people, it magically becomes a public good. No, it doesn't. It's still privately owned. Your fault for all flying to him like flies to shit. But that changes nothing, except proving how dumb you are. And if he decides not to be completely fair, he might have to answer to his Creator later, but here on Earth, he can play the despot all he wants. Free will. Your mistake is thinking you're entitled to anything. Here, in this network, you might have a smaller circle, not millions of followers, but also no entitlement issues or systemic injustice. And that's only because there's no owner.