#Tao Te Ching: Chapter 77

As it acts in the world, the Tao
is like the bending of a bow.
The top is bent downward;
the bottom is bent up.
It adjusts excess and deficiency
so that there is perfect balance.
It takes from what is too much
and gives to what isn't enough.

Those who try to control,
who use force to protect their power,
go against the direction of the Tao.
They take from those who don't have enough
and give to those who have far too much.

The Master can keep giving
because there is no end to her wealth.
She acts without expectation,
succeeds without taking credit,
and doesn't think that she is better
than anyone else.


"I like the idea of having an AI to be a sounding board, just to bounce random ideas off of."

Why is this more useful than a rubber duck?

https://rubberduckdebugging.com/

"What has been helpful is Brave browser's AI search result. I can't comment on other browsers/search engines."

I don't find this useful. I want a search engine to show its sources, so I can check it's not serving me confident nonsense. If I want high-level summaries, they can be found on Wikipedia, or in blog posts by people I know are human, again with links to sources.


> most ISPs are a subscription model, where you pay per month. This is normal most places. That's metered access, just on a longer timeframe than your willing to consider. But there's really no difference.

If you take a taxi, they have a meter, so they can charge you per distance travelled. So that's metered. If you give your mate $10 to drive you somewhere, that's a fixed fee. There's no meter running, so it's not metered.

By the same token, if you pay for an internet connection for each hour/ GB you use, that's metered internet. If you pay a fixed price per month for a connection, that's a fixed fee. There's no meter running, so it's not metered.

This difference matters.

Here in Aotearoa, the move from metered to unmetered internet is a big part of what made it affordable to the average person. The introduction of metered mobile data then created a 2-tier internet. Where some people have unmetered WiFi at home, and can use the net with no time or data limits. While other people can only use the net as much as they can afford mobile credit.

IMHO we need to be pushing for universalisation of unmetered internet. So coming up with better ways of metered internet doesn't excited me that much. Sorry.


Gentle Reminder....

https://video.nostr.build/cc1e0c94f7df57516ee2d3039c6e268e7d618499c2788a4775c6740a5dc51bf0.mp4

#YouAreWorthy


"I love it! Relay-first view in multi-columns like Tweetdeck or Hootsuite"

... or the original Mastodon web app. Still available as an "advanced" interface in the settings.


"Deactivated my blue sky account"

May the odds be ever in your favour.


Cheese Junior's prompt: "an old man with a monocle and a top hat and a cane, dancing on a street lined with trash, while money rains down from the sky"

This boy is definitely tuned in to the state of things...

#animalsunset

https://v.nostr.build/HSMfOk9pbVTVRklN.mp4


Don't waste your time with the snake oil that's being sold as "AI" ATM. Real AI, like fusion energy, is and will always be a decade away. It's more useful to think about dumb, repetitive tasks you can get a computer to do, so you can apply your attention to other things.


Don't waste your time with the snake oil that's been sold as "AI" ATM. Real AI, like fusion energy, is and will always be a decade away. It's more useful to think about dumb, repetitive tasks you can get a computer to do, so you can apply your attention to other things.


By your powers combined, I am Captain Planet!


Firefly is great. I'm finally working my way through Babylon 5. Fantastic stuff, highly recommend.


We're lucky to have you. Commiserations on the slow disintegration of your country of origin.


Can anyone suggest a good high level comparison of ATProto with other decentralised social software protocols like ActivityPub, Matrix or Nostr?

One that's technically accurate, without getting too deep into the weeds. One that confirms or debunk's BlueSky's claim that the only thing required to make BlueSky meaningfully decentralised is more vendors participating. Either by hosting PDS, relay and appview services, and/or writing independent ATProto implementations.

nostr:nprofile1qqs8d3c64cayj8canmky0jap0c3fekjpzwsthdhx4cthd4my8c5u47spz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qz9rhwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjmcpzemhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wvh8xmmrd9skchd02dz? nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qythwumn8ghj7anfw3hhytnwdaehgu339e3k7mf0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tch2deau? nostr:nprofile1qqspwwwexlwgcrrnwz4zwkze8rq3ncjug8mvgsd96dxx6wzs8ccndmcpzdmhxue69uhhqatjwpkx2urpvuhx2ue0qyd8wumn8ghj7urewfsk66ty9enxjct5dfskvtnrdakj7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yhxummnw3ezucnpdejz7l352lu?


Ah, OK. Fountain is new to me. Cool that you can send podcast clips as posts. Can you give me the timestamp for your clip, so I can find the relevant bit in my podcasts app? The episode is about 2 hours long ...


nostr:nprofile1qqsyvrp9u6p0mfur9dfdru3d853tx9mdjuhkphxuxgfwmryja7zsvhqppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qythwumn8ghj7anfw3hhytnwdaehgu339e3k7mf0qyghwumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytnhd9hx2tch2deau
Can you comment on how Amethyst is rendering that podcast link?


There are problems with compiling some of the software in the Fennec F-Droid build chain from source. That's why it's taking F-Droid a while to ship an update;

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/fennec-vulnerability-recommended-to-uninstall/28826/39

In the meantime you can get more recent versions of mobile FF-based browsers by adding the DivestOS repo to your F-Droid client. But it requires uninstalling, then installing from that repo.


There was a problem with compiling some of the software in the Fennec F-Droid build chain from source. That's why it's taking F-Droid a while to ship an update;

https://forum.f-droid.org/t/fennec-vulnerability-recommended-to-uninstall/28826/39

In the meantime you can get more recent versions of mobile FF-based browsers by adding the DivestOS repo to your F-Droid client. But it requires uninstalling, then installing from that repo.


NoScript is telling me the page is trying to load scripts from google.com and storage.googleapis.com and
wouldn't play the audio without my browser running them. Nope.

Fortunately the info the page did display allowed me to find the episode in my podcast app. Is there some way to get Nostr apps to open podcasts in that instead of a browser?

Frustrating normalized surveillance is already a fulltime job. Let's do everything we can to avoid adding to that.


Tried to listen. NoScript is telling me the page is trying to load scripts from google.com and storage.googleapis.com and
wouldn't play the audio without my browser running them. Nope.


FYI a space between the "(" and the URL would make it much easier to follow the link.


"I think we’re going to increasingly see people hand over decisions to their AI."

Probably. For the same reasons we've seen them hand over their decision-making to alohohol, slot machines, opioids, and corporate social media. Desperately stressed people struggle to make good decisions.

Have had extended periods of being desperately stressed. Can confirm ;-)


In the early days of the net, most online projects were not-for-profits, working with a shared legal entity (eg FSF for GNU Project, SiPI for Debian). Some of the more high-profile ones were able to start their own Foundation (eg Mozilla, Wikipedia, Archive.org, Linux). The move to starting new ones as VC-funded, for-profit "startups" was the Original Sin of the current surveillance nightmare.

The unsolved problem is, how else can we get enough funding to start new projects that need fulltime work by people with highly sought after specialist skills?


".. the talks are all about the platform Bluesky and not about the protocol."

The point is that there's no functional difference between the two. BlurSky controls the protocol. Even if they didn't, they control the ID layer of the existing network.

When Gab and Truth.social tried to join the fediverse by setting up servers with Mastodon forks, and Threads by implementing ActivityPub, all fediverse servers could talk to them. Admins opposed to that had to campaign for other admins to block them, server by server. Those of us who saw benefits in people on those servers having access to other perspectives could argued against blocks. Each server's community could make its own decision, based on their own values and needs.

If they tried to do the same thing by setting up servers with BlueSky forks, or implementing ATProto, BlueSky could just ban their ID range from the existing network. For some people this is a feature, not a bug. But it's not decentralisation in any meaningful sense of the word.


This is one of the less-discussed benefits of open standards. Implementing them means working to an archictectural design that's been inspected, dissected and refactored by a group of specialists. So with that part of thinking done for you, you can have a laser focus on the quality of your implementation.


"Theoretically, whether you were having X.com or Y.com aggregate data from PDSs, it'd still be the same PDSs so people from X.com could talk with Y.com - assuming no blocking/errors/funny-buisness was going on."

The point is that x.com and y.com have the power to block each other's accounts. So as I say, there's no point setting up y.com. It's much cheaper and easier to set up an AP server or Nostr relay instead. So unless something radically changes in the ID layer of ATProto, it will always be controlled by BlueSky, and it will always be as centralised as Xitter where it matters most.

> most people probably won't care or even prefer custodially held keys

This is like when apologists for Gmail say that most people don't care about runing their own email server. Or when apologists for proprietary software say that most people don't care about reading or modifying source code. Or when apologists for dictatorship say that most people don't care about reading laws or government reports.

It's probably true, but entirely beside the point. The fact that you *can* do it, if you want to, totally transforms the incentive structures.


Like the pub?


"It's definitely not about the money, they can create that out of thin air. It's about control. They must keep you in fear and in compliance."

If you're talking about banks, 100% correct. Most countries follow neoliberal policy, where banks "print" new money every time they issue a loan.

Having outsourced this power, governments can only influence the money supply indirectly. The closest they get to "printing" new money is encouraging the central bank to lower interest rates. In the hopes this will encourage people to take out loans faster than they're being paid off, growing the money supply. If inflation is rising, they can do the opposite. That's their monetary powers in a nutshell.

If governments want to increase spending, they have to either sell public infrastructure, increase public debt, or raise taxes. So the sensible ones are raising taxes, and a lot of wealthy people are actually encouraging that.


"It's definitely not about the money, they can create that out of thin air. It's about control. They must keep you in fear and in compliance."

If you're talking about banks, 100% correct. Most countries follow neoliberal policy, where banks "print" new money every time they issue a loan.

Having outsourced this power, governments can only influence the money supply indirectly. The closest they get to "printing" new money is encouraging the central bank to lower interest rates. In the hopes this will encourage people to take out loans faster than they're being paid off, growing the money supply. If inflation is rising, they can do the opposite. That's their monetary powers in a nutshell.

If governments want to increase spending, they have to raise either taxes or public debt. So the sensible ones are raising taxes, and a lot of wealthy people are actually encouraging that.


"it's not metered, you're paying for time."

Pick one. Paying for time or data is what "metered" means.

"just like any other ISP."

Maybe where you live.

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Imagine X published all the source code for running x.com. You could set up your own version at y.com, but nobody who created an account there would be able to follow accounts on x.com, or vice-versa. So there's no point.

That's essentially the situation with ATProto. In theory, you can set up a complete clone of the BlueSky service, but it's totally up to them whether accounts on your service can be seen on BlueSky.

The chokepoint is not the software, it's the ID layer. The fediverse/ ActivityPub tried to solve that by taking a leaf out of the IndieWeb's book, and outsourcing the ID layer to DNS. The Zot/ Nomad branch of the fediverse has always had NomadicIdentity, which makes accounts ("channels") independent of the domain names of servers, and there are a number of FEPs describing how to do that in AP software;

https://wedistribute.org/2024/03/activitypub-nomadic-identity/

Nostr solves the ID chokepoint problem in a similar way, by having a decentralised ID layer. So that's a step forwards from the existing AP+DNS dominated fediverse. BlueSky is a step backwards, and the main reason people use it is the aggressive Safer Spaces Policing that their ID chokepoint allows;

https://wedistribute.org/podcast/blacksky-rudy-fraser/

For some people that's a feature, and a permissionless network is a bug that feature solves.


If you think that means it doesn't affect you, I suspect you'll find that's not the case.


I'm starting to get the impression that certain factions of the fediverse have moved to Nostr. I don't just mean people moving their personal social media activity, but software devs, hosting services etc.

If that's you, what motivated your change of alignment? Also, do you have a foot in both camps, or are you all-in on Nostr?


There's a big difference between not *liking* the outcome and not *accepting* the outcome. The first is normal. The second risks a breakdown of the peaceful transfer of power between factions, which constitutional elections are designed to facilitate. Worst case scenarios include civil war and what happened to the USSR in 1991.


"You can sovereignly host your own PDS"

Yes.

"... and entirely control your identity on bluesky"

No. The PDS stores your data, but BlueSky maintains a central registry for IDs in their network. In theory, you could run your own ATProto ID registery. But from what I understand, it would be incompatible with BlueSky. It would be the equivalent of forking BitCoin to create your own blockchain. You can, but it doesn't allow you to transact over the BitCoin blockchain.


"The reason OpenSats feels different is the way that it is running.  It's not any one defined piece of software."

Sorry to be pedantic but this isn't new either. FSF was originally set up as a legal umbrella for the GNU Project, which covers many pieces of software. Software in the Public Interest was set up to umbrella Debian, which also includes many software projects. Software Freedom Conservancy forked off FSF to do a similar thing. Apache was set up for the webserver, but now umbrellas dozens of other projects.

Running a 501c involves a lot of administrivia, so it's unusual to maintain one for a single software project. This is why platforms like OpenCollective and Liberapay were established. So that new projects could accept donations to cover expenses, without having to be formally adopted by a 501c.


Is paying to connect to random WiFi a thing where you live? I've never seen that in Aotearoa, or in China for that matter. Most people use mobile data (cell network) and WiFi is either password-protected or open and free to use.


A successful Exit to Community is a positive thing overall. But this does make me concerned about the future of the existing OpenCollective platform.

Reading between the lines, it seems like the classic 'dump insufficiently profitable service on non-profit'. Netscape Navigator being dumped into the Mozilla Foundation was the first example, but we've seen many since; Goggle Wave and OpenOffice being left on Apache's doorstep, Sandstorm.io moving to sandstorm.org, and so many others.

OTOH this seems like a genuine cell division, allowing different factions of the founding crew to pusrue different visions. So I'm cautiously optimistic about the future of both projects.


"this is the first time a 501c has been established to work on opensource software EVER!"

Non-USAmerican here. Can you explain what a 501c is, how it differs from the usual non-profit Foundation (FSF, SitPI ApacheF, LinuxF), and why that's exiting? ELI5


Clever as the engineering undoubtedly is, I'm not sure the goal is worthwhile.

I remember the 1990s when access to *dial-up* net access was metered by the MB or by the minute. It took a lot of work to replace that with all-you-can-eat broadband. Going back to metered access seems like regression to me, not progress.


Apple is already under pressure to do the same from DMA enforcement in the EU. With both US and EU regulators pushing to de-monopolise digital tech markets, we've got a good chance of seeing it continue to happen over the next 4-10 years.

This is one example of why it's very important that US citizens re-elect their current administration. Regardless of what they think about the spokesmodel they're running for President.

If the US executive is taken over by the GoP in its current form, it will start working with the digital monopolists. To block antitrust enforcement at home, and fight the EU on DMA enforcement. As well as other countries trying to reign in the unbridled power of the monopolists.

This could set us back a decade or two in the fight for a free and uncapturable internet.


Final ruling in Epic v. Google, ordering Google to effectively open up the Google Play app store to competition, is some awesome news.

Google will have to distribute rival third-party app stores within Google Play, and it must give rival third-party app stores access to the full catalog of Google Play apps, unless developers opt out individually.

It also forbids Google from requiring the use of Google Pay on apps shipped through their store, freeing devs to offer other payment APIs to go around the 30% fees from Google.

This is a separate judgement from the DOJ vs Google that is considering a breakup of Google, forcing it to sell Android, Chrome and some other units.


"Venice, Florida is covered in water

Climate change, working as designed. Brought to you by the Koch Brothers, and everyone else who's been blowing smoke for decades about carbon emissions being harmless, to protect their fossil fuel oligopoly. A typical product of corporate shitfuckery, and the pursuit of short-term profit at the expense of all else.


Also

Private equity rips off its investors, too:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/08/sucker-at-the-table/#clucks-definance


So of us don't give a shit about BitCoin. We just came here to chew bubblegum and post memes 😁


+1 I'm biased towards Automattic, for sure, because everything I've seen them do has been to support Free Code ecosystems and social web communities. Like hiring the ActivityPub for WP developer fulltime to work on the plugin.

I've only skimmed the first half of the article you linked. But if even half of Matt's claims about what WP Engine are doing are true, It reminds me of the shitfuckery LibLime / PTFS tried with the Koha project, or Oracle with OpenOffice.

In which case, Automattic and the WP Foundation are well within their rights to use any means at their disposal to protect the WP ecosystem from this kind of corporate parasitism. Especially in its particularly pernicious private equity firm, see;

https://redgreenandblue.org/2023/01/07/cory-doctorow-antitrust-twilight-zone-thats-feeding-monopoly-explosion/

https://freakonomics.com/podcast/are-private-equity-firms-plundering-the-u-s-economy/

https://www.theverge.com/23758492/private-equity-brendan-ballou-plunder-finance-doj


Using JS is marginally acceptable. What grinds my gears is a) using it for things that can be done just as well with HTML/CSS, for much lower resource use, and b) using off-the-shelf JS libraries with a rabbit hole of nested dependencies, without making any attempt to audit them.

*cough* anything involving npm *cough*


Using JS is marginally acceptable. What grinds my gears is a) using it for things that can be done just as well with HTML/CSS, for much lower resource use, and b) using off-the-shelf JS libraries with a rabbit hole of nested dependencies, without making any attempt to audit them.


Lest we forget, it was also exposing the collateral murder of journalists, by US forces in the Middle East that made WikiLeaks famous. Julian Assange paid the price, in years of exile and legal intimidation that would have killed many (remember The Internet's Own Boy AaronSw, RIP). But instead it just unravelled his mind and drove him into the arms of anti-Americans (as it did to Kim DotCom).

If the demonization of journalists is the last refuge of crypto-fascists, then murdering them is surely crossing the rubicon into full blown fascism. As in the 1930s, the people of the world cannot afford to ignore the growth of fascism. In all its many forms.

Neither can we afford to blindly let the powerful tell us who the "real" fascists are, with their struggle sessions and their Two Minutes Hate. As Brian reminds us in The Life of Brian, we've all got to work it out for ourselves. Because as Mrs Cohen points out, anyone we might want to do it for us is not the Messiah, just a very naughty boy.


Pity the nation that is full of beliefs and empty of religion. Pity the nation that wears a cloth it does not weave and eats a bread it does not harvest. Pity the nation that acclaims the bully as hero, and that deems the glittering conqueror bountiful. Pity a nation that despises a passion in its dream, yet submits in its awakening. Pity the nation that raises not its voice save when it walks in a funeral, boasts not except among its ruins, and will rebel not save when its neck is laid between the sword and the block. Pity the nation whose statesman is a fox, whose philosopher is a juggler, and whose art is the art of patching and mimicking Pity the nation that welcomes its new ruler with trumpeting, and farewells him with hooting, only to welcome another with trumpeting again. Pity the nation whose sages are dumb with years and whose strongmen are yet in the cradle. Pity the nation divided into fragments, each fragment deeming itself a nation. - Kahlil Gibran, The Garden of The Prophet


I don't believe in God.

I do, however believe in following written instructions from random people, to the letter, even if they've been dead for thousands of years. See above.

So despite being an atheist, I'd still make a fantastic old testament fundamentalist. Don't you think? 😏


"Communication protocols" seems an odd thing for the SEC to be regulating, until you realize that the standards for digital inter-bank transfers are "communication protocols".

Here's the other side of the story;

https://pluralistic.net/2022/02/10/monopoly-begets-monopoly/#gary-gensler

Gensler has been doing some amazing work to restore transparency in institutional investment, and reign in the robber Barron's who've been making billions off unpoliced financial scams. While people who work fulltimel lose their homes, struggle to feed their families, and get bankrupted by medical debt.


Got a link to a confirmation that this exists? I can't find anything about this. Tried a couple of search engines.


What you working on? An MLS NIP?


"One can whine and wheedle all one likes about Spooner’s support for intellectual property or Bakunin’s anti-semitism –and let’s not even begin on Proudhon!– but you can’t compare today’s vulgar-libertarian excusists for privilege and corporate power with our fledgling predecessors. Even if there ever was an excuse for the failings of such proto-anarchists, there certainly exists no such excuse today.

We have moved on."

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/william-gillis-calling-all-haters-of-anarcho-capitalism


> Can you be more specific and point to text that discuss strategies for the people to protect and increase their freedom vis a vis a "political class" that want to coerce and gaslight them.

I'd start with Revolutionary Self-Theory;

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/larry-law-revolutionary-self-theory

Society of the Spectacle by Debord goes much deeper on describing the problem, but there's not so much there in the way of tactics.

The CrimethInc. primer Days of War, Nights of Love is worth a look too;

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/crimethinc-days-of-war-nights-of-love


"The likely intended effect of "you are a conspiracy theorist" type of smearing is to clean the table of players who play for..."

... truth. Independent of whether said truth serves vested interests or not. The outcome is largely the same as what you said, except that not everyone who cares about freedom cares about truth, and vice versa.

"Those who would like to play for freedom have next to nothing to study."

I don't know. If you look outside the northwest European canon, there are plenty of texts to study. Just to give you a handful of examples...

The Chinese canon has texts about freedom going back at least as far as Dao De Jing and Zhuangzi. The Mediterranean canon has Socrates, Diogenes and Aristophanes from Greece, Rumi and other Sufi sages, the Egyptian mystery schools, and a number of hard case Rabbinical texts. The Indian classics are full of stories about freedom, its nature and its obstacles.

From northwest Europe there are people like Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bakunin (perhaps the first anti-Marxist). As well as Nestor Machno and other anti-Bolsheviks like Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, and George Orwell and Aldous Huxley (particularly Island), and Wilhelm Reich, eg
The Mass Psychology of Fascism (1933) and
The Sexual Revolution. More recently, Guy Debord, Raoul Vaneigm, and some of the others in the SI, Hunter S. Thompson, and more recently still, Hakim Bey, Bob Black, and some of the authors published by outfits like CrimeThinc. and C4SS.


This ignores a core tenet of anarchist theory (shared with most schools of International Relations theory), which is that a state is a monopoly of force in a geographical area. The state has authority because it has the power to imprison or shoot you, and no one can hold it accountable for doing so (expect using its own mechanisms). I'd love to see you explain to Uighurs or Palestinians that they somehow took out a contract for cultural genocide services with their local state corp. 🤣 Again, this is demonstrably not how political or legal systems actually work. But billionaires sure want you to believe that is is...


This is empty moralising. Believing it as a universal truth requires ignoring a bunch of independently verifiable facts. But hey, you do you. If you refuse to walk because your ideology tells you legs don't exist, who am I to judge 😏


"Signal is licensed under the AGPLv3 and as such, Free and Open Source."

Correct. Unfortunately it's also rigidly centralised. So state-level actors only need to block one set of servers and it's unusable (eg Signal is very hard to use in China due to the Great Firewall). Matrix is a better bet, both E2EE and Free and Open Source software, *and* a decentralised protocol anyone can implement.


"Writing petitions to politicians is meaningless and useless.
Those are NOT your "representatives" in any way."

This is a self-fulfilling prophecy. If they have no idea what we think or know, they can't possibly represents us. Neither can the public record, which is useful when politicians pushing agendas claim they didn't know their policy would have predictably bad results.

It's also demonstrably untrue. E2EE message scanning in Chat Control was voted down by EU politicians, as nostr:nprofile1qqs2ggm7ggxdkzejx8ghrl58n09wx73dk74l9uf2xdaew5ehvxxr4sspz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0wd68ytnsw43qzxthwden5te0wfjkccte9eeks6t5vehhycm99ehkuegprfmhxue69uhkummnw3ezucm0d9hxvatwv35hgtnrdakszl3pnh says, because of all the experts who communicated with those politicians. Net neutrality was restored in the US for the same reason.

So anyone who says communicating your views to politicians is pointless is a) wrong, or b) a shill or Useful Idiot for the people who want to push stuff like Link Taxes and Chat Control through legislatures without resistance. Or both.


"Communism - the smelly, broke cousin of fascism."

Kind of, but not the way you think;

https://shows.acast.com/pastpresentfuture/episodes/66d99b6cd4991eb8a6d39ac6

Also, hilariously irrelevant to the topic. The problem here - just like with "age verification" laws in the US - is quite clearly conservative pearl-clutching ("think of the children"). Weaponised by corporate DataFarmers, for whom robust privacy protection is bad for business. lt has fuck all to do with Communism, by any definition.


"There are some areas where stating the rules of the game is important."

Any area we you want a competitive market, for a start. The web moving from totally decentralised to totally monopolised in 5-10 years is hard empirical evidence that you don't get free markets (ie free of economic rents like "IP") without robust antitrust regulation, and enforcement with teeth.

""well-understood" regulation is nearly non-existent right now."

That's been true since Reagan and Thatcher, because regulation has been strategically demonised. By people who stood to profit from creating those monopolies, and externalising their business costs in ways regulations used to ban. The crusade against "Big Government" and "red tape" was never about our freedom, it's about theirs.

Regulation of commerce, in some form, is inherent to any peaceful, post-scarcity society. Even an anarchist one.

"Politicians and bureaucrats race to show that they're doing something (but almost always not the right something)."

Fair point. The Link Tax and Chat Control debacles are recent examples. But this is why we have democratic processes. We the people have the freedom to change who those politicians are, so they have to consult us to stay in power. If only we had that much say about what corporate executives do with our collective resources.

"We need to significantly rethink who and how regulation gets set."

I agree it's not perfect, and I think we can do better. There's been broad consensus on this - from radical left to radical right - since the GFC, which kicked off a plethora of direct democracy experiments. vTaiwan/ Pol.is and Citizens Assemblies remain my favorites so far.


Any other kiwis on Nostr? Either from Aotearoa, or living here. Please boost if you think you might have some following you...


https://www.cnbc.com/2024/08/26/trump-orange-pilled-by-three-bitcoiners-in-puerto-rico-100-million.html

"Hoyos-López added that many miners are former Wall Street executives."

That one sentence tells you everything you need to know about how mixed the motives are among people pushing blockchains.

Like YouTub and NetFix, the concept of "cryptocurrency" really only works if there's one platform used by everyone. With blockchains, everyone can embed that platform in a ring they wear, but whoever controls 51% of mining (or stake, or whatever comes after Proof of...) has the One Ring to rule them all.

Every Wall St banker and Vulture Capitalist wants to get control of that One Ring. Now the Orange Felon too wants to be the lord of the rings ( hmm, maybe there's a story idea there 😋).

This isn't unique to blockchains as payment systems, and it's not inherent to them. Online payment gateways (PayPal, Stripe, etc), credit card companies and banks have been fighting the same zero-sum war for decades. This war to control 'the payment system' is just financialisation at work.

There's a clue to a way out of this in the way we avoided AOL or CompuServe being 'the digital network', by adopting TCP/IP, and forming a network of networks. The right set of protocols could enable a peered network of payment systems, including but not limited to blockchains. So what could be the TCP of payments?

ILP (InterLedger Protocol) is one example, and I'm borrowing heavily from their elevator pitch here. But many protocol stacks were tested in early internetworking before TCP/IP emerged as the Mt Doom that prevented any one company holding the One Ring of networking. Are there any proposals competing with ILP to be the Mt Doom of payments? What are their pros and cons?


It's funny how memes mutate. In The Matrix, the difference between red pill and blue pill is whether or not you know you're in the Matrix. It's a 'fruit of the tree of knowledge' metaphor. It's logically impossible to both know and not know, so it's a hard binary.

But given the way the terms have been used as memes, "purple pill" totally resonates as shorthand for transcending polarisation 😏


How does spam filtering work in this group? Are there moderators who operate spam filters, or do I need to ignore spammers manually at my end?


FYI Amethyst on Android can delete posts. At least I can delete my own.


Maybe with a widget that suppresses a push, if the follow is within N time period after the last follow from the same account? That could filter out most of the accidental follow>unfollow>follow stuff. Follow spam has apparently been an issue in the fediverse, and connect request spam in XMPP.


Relay list to store private content from this author


Relay list to discover the user's content


... and I ought to add, given the inclinations of many of Nostr, that it would also allow right-leaning libertarians to vote for candidates who actually reflect their views, without handing the election to the authoritarian centre-right (Dems).

In either case, STV in local and state elections would diversify representation at those levels of government. Which would likely filter up to Congress and the Presidency, whether STV voting was used at that level or not. Making electoral reform there more likely to happen.


I don't either of these statements are fair comment. One could equally argue that electing Congress or the President by popular vote is to treat the people of the smaller states as less important than the 15 largest states. Which would easily determine the outcomes of those elections, giving a person who moved to one of those largest 15 states far more electoral power than if they moved to one of the smaller ones.

But this whole debate misses the point. Regardless of whether the President is elected by popular vote or not, under the current system the Presidency will always be controlled by the Republicrat party, whether its centre-right neoliberal wing, or its hard-right neoconservative wing. Breaking that duopoly is where proportionality matters most in the US system.

Replacing FPP (First Past the Post) vote counting with STV is how you do that. So people can vote for a left-wing candidate without splitting the vote and handing the election to the hard right.


> 51% shitting on the 49%

... is a big improvement on 1% shitting on the 99%.

> Tyranny of the majority

... is not great, but it's much better than tyranny of the minority.

Anyway, those who've lived in China (eg me, 2 years near Shanghai) know that majority-rules elections are not the definition of democracy. The CCP use majority-rules elections. That doesn't make China democratic.

The real differences between democracy and autocracy are more subtle. They're found in things like freedom of expression and association for citizens. Media freedoms for publishers and telecoms services. Due process under the law, which applies even to people in the highest levels of governance. A permeable border, so people can vote with their feet, rather than being effectively prisoners of the state.

A society could lack officials elected by majority vote, but if it had all those, it would be democratic.


I'm not sure I agree. In Aotearoa, a tiny country where government is fully integrated across the whole country, balancing representation according to the popular vote makes sense. But when electing a head of state in a federal system, where state governance is functionally independent in many ways? Does proportional representation makes sense in such an election?

My 2 cents for pro-democracy campaigners in the US is look into Single Transferable Vote systems. For elections at all levels of government, but particularly for Congress and the Presidency. Breaking the centre-right/ hard-right duopoly over electoral politics seems much more urgent than making sure whichever right-wing candidate wins the popular vote gets the President chair.


Bastiat sat in the left side of the French assembly, with the Jacobins. Against the aristocrats and would-be plutocrats on the right. Which side are you on?


"The government is the number 1 CAUSE of monopolies. It does not prevent them."

As I said, it can do both. All that trying to make the state "minimal" for the last 4 decades has done is strengthen certain monopolies (eg "IP", "anti-circumvention" to enforce DRM). While undermining its capacity to prevent monopolies (using policy tools like net neutrality and antitrust).

Fortunately the needle is swinging the other way. Useful Idiots who complain about this, and defend the interests of the monopolists, will benefit along with the rest of us.


"Voluntary cooperation and private markets- without government enforced monopolies everywhere you look."

Read Adam Smith. When he said "free markets" he was talking about markets free from economic rents, not from regulation. In fact, he believed democratic regulation was a crucial hedge against the power of Old Money to re-impose monopoly rents, on otherwise free enterprises.

The history of the internet proves he waa bang on. The only regulation of the net has been to enforce economic rents (eg "IP"), not antitrust law, privacy protection etc. We've all seen the results, and a "free market" aint it.


"Voluntary cooperation and private markets- without government enforced monopolies everywhere you look."

Read Adam Smith. When he said "free markets" he was talking about markets free from economic rents, not from regulation. In fact, he believed democratic regulation was a crucial hedge against the power of Old Money to re-impose monopoly rents, on otherwise free enterprises.

The history of the internet proves he waa bang on. The only regulation has


So if wall-building is a sign of autocratic tyrants, what does that say about Drumpf? He both wanted a wall, and was too incompetent to get it done 😆


So if wall-building is a sign of autocratic tyrants, what does that say about Drumpf?


"Nostr is nothing less than the foundation for the new internet. Meaning almost every conceivable app we have today will be built on Nostr."

How many times have we heard this before? Oh yes, this is what the same people were saying about blockchains for the past decade.

There's a reason every "new internet" architecture - from USENET and the web onwards - starts with public sharing of text documents and images, followed by audio-visual works. Because this is the easiest and most obvious use of a network by a large number of people.

Once you start trying to do things that are either more complicated, or mission-critical, you realise that there's are good reasons why a wide range of protocols are use on top of TCP/IP for different purposes. As all the failed projects built on blockchains have learned the hard way.


"Nostr is nothing less than the foundation for the new internet. Meaning almost every conceivable app we have today will be built on Nostr."

How many times have we heard this before? There's a reason every "new internet" architecture - from USENET and the web onwards - starts with public sharing of text documents and images, followed by audio-visual works. Because this is the easiest and most obvious use of a network by a large number of people.

Once you start trying to do things that are either more complicated, or mission-critical, you realise that there's are good reasons why a wide range of protocols are use on top of TCP/IP for different purposes.


"The problem is centralized control."

100%

"We can't trust companies to run our primary communications infrastructure."

Corporate oligopolies, yes. Small businesses - especially co-ops and social enterprises - that are directly accountable to their customers? These we can trust.

"Government regulation only makes matters worse because it creates new legal barriers to entering the industry, which protects incumbent players and stifles innovation."

This is called "regulatory capture", not "government regulation". There's certainly plenty of that about; link taxes, "chat control" etc. There's also regulations like the GDPR and DMA in the EU, and similar privacy protection and monopoly prevention laws in other jurisdictions, that are slowly but surely eroding the power of Big Tech and other corporate oligopolies.


How are so many people even literate enough to dribble this 100% fact-free gibbering nonsense at us? Oh yes, because of the public education systems that does it best to make sure everyone can read and write, regardless of their parents' income or class position.

I'm no fan of the state and I doubt @Rabble is either. But here's the tricky thing about states; trying to make them minimal tends to a) have the opposite result, and b) make them worse at doing anything publicly useful. I'll give you two examples.

Actually-Existing-Communism (eg Soviet Union, China today) came about because of an attempt to create a minimal state, which Marx called "the dictatorship of the propletariat". Whose one job was meant to be stopping the Czarists from restoring the monarchy, or any other attempt by aristocratic elites to reimpose top-down rule. Every attempt to keep it minimal and focused on that goal made it bigger and more monstrous (normalised surveillance etc).

The state you grew up under (if I'm right in guessing you're under 35) also resulted from an attempt to create a minimal state, which we could call a 'dictatorship of the entrepreneuriat'. Whose one job is meant to be defending businesses from burglars, mobsters, fraudsters and foreign invasions (cops, courts, prisons, military, nothing else). Every attempt to keep it minimal and focused on that goal made it bigger and more monstrous (normalised surveillance etc).

Both the GoP and the Democrats have subscribed to this minimal state doctrine since Reagan. Drumpf is the ultimate expression of it.

But the administration that's been running the US for the last four years while Biden dribbled into his coffee, has been strongly influenced by a totally different doctrine. One that understands we need to judge the state not by its size, but by whether its operations make our society more functional and our lives better. Also that the dictatorship of the entrepreneuriat has been a total failure on *both* measures, just like its Soviet/ Maoist counterpart.


How are so many people even literate enough to dribble this 100% fact-free gibbering nonsense at us? Oh yes, because of the public education that does it best to make sure everyone can read and write, regardless of their parents' income or class position.

I'm no fan of the state and I doubt @Rabble is either. But here's the tricky thing about states; trying to make them minimal tends to a) have the opposite result, and b) make them worse at doing anything publicly useful. I'll give you two examples.

Actually-Existing-Communism (eg Soviet Union, China today) came about because of an attempt to create a minimal state, which Marx called "the dictatorship of the propletariat". Whose one job was meant to be stopping the Czarists from restoring the monarchy, or any other attempt by aristocratic elites to reimpose top-down rule. Every attempt to keep it minimal and focused on that goal made it bigger and more monstrous (normalised surveillance etc).

The state you grew up under (if I'm right in guessing you're under 35) also resulted from an attempt to create a minimal state, which we could call a 'dictatorship of the entrepreneuriat'. Whose one job is meant to be defending businesses from burglars, mobsters, fraudsters and foreign invasions (cops, courts, prisons, military, nothing else). Every attempt to keep it minimal and focused on that goal made it bigger and more monstrous (normalised surveillance etc).

Both the GoP and the Democrats have subscribed to this minimal state doctrine since Reagan. Drumpf is the ultimate expression of it.

But the administration that's been running the US for the last four years while Biden dribbled into his coffee, has been strongly influenced by a totally different doctrine. One that understands that the we need to judge the state not by its size, but by whether its operations make our society more functional and our lives better. Also that the dictatorship of the entrepreneuriat has been a total failure on *both* measures, just like its Soviet/ Maoist counterpart.


Why do I ask? Like I said, your story resonated. As you say, a label is not the point, although I've found with both my ADHD diagnosis and being recognised by fellow autistics, it can help with self-understanding and self-acceptance.

> Have you dug as hard at trying to figure yourself out?

Oh yes. All the usual stuff. Years of counselling. Self-help books galore (I do like The Power of Now). Mysticism, meditation and martial arts (both Eastern and Western) and shamanic practices, including psychedelic drugs.

> It is very rewarding at times, frustrating at others. I wish you success on your journey!

Sure is. Thanks, and the same to you 😊


Sorry, stupid question in hindsight, but none of my friends with endo have ever had it leave their reproductive system and grow on their back. Woah! Sounds very unpleasant.


Most of my online presence is under one handle that also became an in-person nickname. Never bothered deleting anything much.

Then I moved to China for a couple of years for an English-teaching job. I was worried my online history could be easily associated with the name on my passport and that I'd be denied a visa, or otherwise harrassed. Didn't happen.

I wouldn't lose sleep over your Nostr posts.


Have you ever considered the possibility you (and maybe one or more of your parents) might be autistic? Not trying to do remote diagnose or anything, but this backstory kind of reminds me of my own, and those of other autistics I know.


Endometriosis? Or did you mean melanoma.?


I'm interested!


It's not on the same level, but I get very nervous about having dental work done. What helps me is to focus my attention on a spot just below my navel, and listen to my breathing without trying to control it. This helps from when I'm waiting room right through until it's over. Might help before a procedure too, to deal with the anticipation.


“Don’t make permanent decisions on temporary feelings”


Sings: Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, spam...


> it depends on the definition of "crypto currency", primarily the currency part of the term.

100%. By most working definitions of "currency" used by economists, BitCoin has never really succeeded as one. Neither has any other blockchain crypto-tokens. Eg you can't reliably buy a loaf of bread with one, from any vendor within a geographic area. So technically "cryto-currency" isn't a thing.

But as a neologism for blockchain crypto-tokens, BitCoin was definitely the first.


IndieWeb is fantastic. FYI it's one of the subverses of the fediverse, thanks to projects like Micro.blog and BridgyFed.


nostr:nprofile1qqs99ydcvm2m3ez88nnfd9x4qq86nxysgtkq0nggl8dfea0v7cmrp4cpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsmcz8mn baaaa. I'm a sheep and I'd like to follow you to some good feeds 😁


> It would be nice to have play controls in the notification area

My Android can do this, but only some apps make use of it, and even then the support is a bit patchy.


Getting more and more frustrated with the cyber-stalinists dominating fediverse discourse. Trying to get my head around Nostr.


It just occurred to me, due to a nostr bug, that it might actually be pretty cool to have social media hide *who authored* the posts on your TL to force a kind of double-blind perspective. You'd know the post or reply is (or probably is) from one of the people you follow, but you wouldn't be so quick to agree (and perhaps might even be more willing to disagree) if you aren't just smashing the heart button as a reflex because you like the guy. It might make discussions more communal and disagreements less personal if you knew that you're still talking to someone you generally like and respect, but you don't know whether it's "that one guy on the internet" or, like, your actual Mom.

(Nostr, due to ramshackle Tor support, often displays notes from people without correctly fetching their profiles for me, so I find myself liking or replying or following people without having any idea as to their nym or avatar)


Have you evaluated the new protocol the ManyVerse team are working on?


Any idea if this video is available on PeerTube of LBRY? If not, why not?


Is this computer-generated? There's something very uncanny about it...