What's a Caching service?


Tender Steak 🥩


it's a guy who acts like your dad and you hire him to come play catch with a mitt and baseball.

really wholesome stuff.


Onward 🫡


Damn


SERVER THAT SITS BETWEEN USER AND RELAYS TO IMPROVE PERFORMANCE AND PRIVACY.

THE TRADEOFF IS CENSORSHIP RESISTANCE BUT YOU CAN CHANGE CACHING SERVERS OR RUN YOUR OWN.


AWESOME! I WAS JUST BARLEY TALKING WITH SOME PEOPLE ABOUT HOW WE NEED THIS! ESPECIALLY WITH NEW USERS. IT ISN'T RIGHT TO INVITE NEW USERS WHO DON'T KNOW THEIR IP IS GOING TO A BUNCH OF DIFFERENT PEOPLE.

IS THIS PRIMAL OR DAMUS? CAN'T TELL.


PRIMAL.

DAMUS IS MORE CENSORSHIP RESISTANT SINCE USERS DO NOT HAVE TO RELY ON A CACHING SERVER.


It's relying on trust in Primal that they do what they say. Better to not trust and hide your own IP.


So it's like a Nostr VPN and Primal is the VPN provider?


THANKS, BUT IF YOU USE DAMUS OR AMETHYST THEN ALL RELAYS CAN SEE YOUR IP UNLESS YOU USE A VPN RIGHT?


Touch grass 🦶


you can disable the one primal uses too


YES. AND ALL MEDIA SERVERS (INCLUDING PROFILE PHOTOS).


YEAH, THAT'S NOT GOOD. WE NEED TO FIX THIS. IMAGINE NEWBIES JOINING AND THINKING IT'S PRIVATE BUT THEIR IP IS BEING BROADCASTED EVERYWHERE. THAT'S BAD.


YES AND YOU CAN SWITCH TO OTHER PROVIDERS (CACHING SERVERS) OR RUN YOUR OWN.


WHAT WEBSITE IS THAT NOT THE CASE? IF YOU THINK YOU ARE INTERACTING PRIVATELY ONLINE YOU ARE PROBABLY NOT.


TBF THE AVERAGE PERSON IS BLASTING PII CONSTANTLY, EVERYWHERE.

THE STATUS QUO IS A LOW BAR.


THIS IS TRUE, BUT I HAVE SEEN NOSTR ADVERTISED AS PRIVATE, WE SHOULDN'T DO THAT UNTILL WE HAVE A SOLUTION FOR THAT.


GOOD POINT


Is that the bostr thing, or something else?


nostr:npub12vkcxr0luzwp8e673v29eqjhrr7p9vqq8asav85swaepclllj09sylpugg is Sick 🤙🔥LFG


Love bostr! Got a super relay at wss://relay.poster.place

Nothing else needed


No IP is leaked, neither media if you run Amethyst through TOR (Orbot or Invizible)


nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqpzamhxue69uhhv6t5daezumn0wd68yvfwvdhk6tcpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezuamfdejj7qgwwaehxw309ahx7uewd3hkctcscpyug Am I wrong?


I see you have relay.momostr.pink up there, that's one of the bridges for Mastodon or something like that, no?


mostr.pub and momostr.pink are two different bridges to the Fediverse, yes


What does each bridge your notes to? Does this mean anyone who adds relay.poster.place to their relays list is automatically getting their posts bridged to Mastodon and...?


Correct. Any many other nostr relays. One relay to rule them all and save mobile data and bandwith


also, I think most mastodon instances blocked the bridges at this point lol


can't be done on the same protocol layer

i built most of the encoding and decoding for a layered encryption scheme like Tor but using the same routing principles as Lightning

ran out of time getting it to a point where it could be turned into actual relays but decided that using libp2p was not going to scale well enough anyway, needed to design a p2p network protocol a bit like a hybrid of bitcoin and bittorrent, where relays didn't have to know about every other relay so clients could construct routes, and i started working on fork/join paths as well, like actual lightning bolts...

anyhow i got some help from geyser for it about a year ago, and talked to spiral and they weren't interested and didn't give any feedback... will have to do it self funded at some point in the future so i work for a company that chases grants from shitcoin projects to build social networking systems


You are right, but the first Tor node Orbot is connecting to has your IP. If you use Orbot's VPN, the VPN has your IP.


I'm familiar with bostr. I am on the main one, bostr.lecturify.net. Had momostr.pink relay before, removed it and added poster's place. Was curious what other fediverse platform the other bridge relays notes to, since you said they both relay to different places...


It is not /meant/ to be private at all. The priority here censorship resistance, just like Bitcoin. Now given censorship resistance, you can work on privacy and security, or at least thats how I've constructed it in my mind.

From Vitor's Amethyst repository:
> Privacy and Information Permanence
Relays know your IP address, your name, your location (guessed from IP), your pub key, all your contacts, and other relays, and can read every action you do (post, like, boost, quote, report, etc) except for Private Zaps and Private DMs. While the content of direct messages (DMs) is only visible to you and your DM counterparty, everyone can see when you and your counterparty DM each other.

If you want to improve your privacy, consider utilizing a service that masks your IP address (e.g. a VPN or Tor) from trackers online.

The relay also learns which public keys you are requesting, meaning your public key will be tied to your IP address.

Information shared on Nostr can be re-broadcasted to other servers and should be assumed permanent for privacy purposes. There is no way to guarantee the deletion of any content once posted.

And Mike Dilger's Gossip:
> Privacy Options: in case someone wishes to remain secret they should use Gossip over Tor - I recommend using QubesOS do to this. But you could use Whonix or even Tails. Don't just do it on your normal OS, because on a plain OS sometimes data leaks around Tor (things like DNS lookups). Gossip supports using native TLS certificates so you can configure trust for .onion sites. Gossip provides options to support privacy usage such as not loading avatars, not loading images, not necessarily sharing who you follow, etc.


Mixed feelings about this one. I can see the VPN and privacy analogy, but I also fear the potential for centralization. It may just be better to simply use a VPN.


i'd also add that even VPNs can be a problem on linux on wifi with a malicious device on the same LAN via a recently discovered exploit that amusingly doesn't work on android VPNs, there is a workaround, i forget what it's called just now, but the wireguard people have published a mitigation you can set up involving linux kernel namespaces (this is why it doesn't work on android, android extensively uses namespaces)

also i'd further add that the relays only can *surmise* your NPUB based on the frequency of your queries for it, especially requests for your profile and follow list, but with auth they know for sure at that IP lives that NSEC

anonymity on nostr requires the use of a VPN, but i think that even as lightweight as a VPS with wireguard like i use still deflects any cheap attacks on my location because it will say "romania" and ALL of my traffic (on my phone as well) goes through it

and my VPS provider doesn't KYC me so even if they go there and subpoena all they then get is my IP address here, which is in yet another jurisdiction and i could easily make it even harder by chaining two of these together, for example one to kazakhstan and then one to romania, good luck with that


I know it's not, but I have seen people say it is.


cost me USD$35 for a whole year btw, up to 9tb traffic per month, and better than a dedicated WG vpn service because the IP is not associated with VPN services (i still get some sites pissing on me because they see a VPS IP address owned by a VPS provider but they don't know whether the origin is there or elsewhere)


Or a layer 2 broadcaster relay, like filter.wine or Mutiny blastr. Then only that relay sees it.


Yeah, and it's actually not that big of a problem. If you're on a "Chicago Friends" group, and leave reviews for restaurants in Chicago, and everyone can see that you're in Chicago, it's like oh well.

Some people see these conversations and freak out because they think everyone has their mailing address.


Does it work only for nostr events on relays, or also to other http content accessed by the client?

🫂


I do not want to trust Tor entry and exit nodes. The technology exists at IP layer to correlate traffic.  I always add decoy traffic to onion address to keep the in and out rates between entry and exit harder to correlate