Of course this isn't a novel idea, I created a similar program back in 1998–1999 (actually, with a slightly different purpose), but I decided to revive it because it should work quite well with the recent trend of automated emails generated by AI, where the sender might expect a reply; it helps remove your email address from their list.

I don't have strong evidence about its effectiveness, but I'm testing it for few weeks and the spam noise seems to be reduced; I don't receive similar or followup emails any more.

Any idea on how to improve it? :)

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49934692

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

For this reason I created Squalk (https://github.com/dtonon/squalk), a classic forum built on the Nostr open protocol. https://nostr-proto.org is the pilot community, about the protocol itself.

Nostr, as open protocol, offers some interesting points:

* There are no classic accounts controller by a central entity; you sign in with a cryptographic keypair, and your identity and post history are portable: the same key works on every other Nostr app.

* The forum is just a view over data hosted by a "relay", that is actually a very simple server. Any other client that speaks the same spec, like Flotilla or Nostrord, can read and write the same conversations. If my website dies, the community and its history do not.

* A complex web server is optional. Squalk builds either as a static SPA or as a server rendered Node app from the same codebase (SvelteKit); the SSR mode exists so threads are crawlable and land in search engines, which is half the point of a forum.

I admit it, each room still has a chat sidebar. I started pointing out that chat eats knowledge, but the trick is deciding what it is allowed to eat. Quick and dirt brainstorming, debugging sessions, and half-formed ideas belong in the chat, the conclusions worth keeping get written down as a thread. The sidebar is deliberately secondary: it feeds the forum instead of replacing it.

Nostr is young, key management is still rough for normal people, and moderation tooling on relays needs improvement. But I think slow forum dynamics actually fit the protocol better than the Twitter clones it is known for, so I will continue to explore this idea.

Feedback on both the forum and the software is very welcome!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49909980

Points: 17

# Comments: 2

May I ask you to elaborate on this point?

Unlike traditional social media that's designed to maximize your time on the platform, Nostr + Fevela respect your autonomy. Browse content deliberately, filter out noise, and move on with your day. No infinite scrolling, no manipulative algorithms or notifications, just a clean, efficient way to stay connected with what matters to you.

Try Fevela at https://fevela.me

Source code: https://github.com/dtonon/fevela

Comments are welcome!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45760229

Points: 2

# Comments: 0

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45568080

Points: 4

# Comments: 0

Indeed:

> This means each user gets their own Timeline partition, randomly distributed among shards of our horizontally scalable database (ScyllaDB), replicated across multiple shards for high availability

Nostr is a protocol that has a lot of potential, but there are tradeoffs, it now has a large ecosystem and requires learning some new paradigms, and being completely decentralized the terminology is also becoming more standardized and consolidated over time.

This onboarding system is meant to try to explain them, certainly not for people who want to quickly enter an email and a password and start using a specific app. For that one can precisely download an app and use the built-in onboarding, often apps create a profile without asking for anything and invite afterwards to save the credentials.

These are different paths for different needs, the good thing is that with Nostr you have a choice, and when you have created your digital identity, you can use it anywhere.

- Easy local backup of your nsec or ncryptsec - Email yourself your ncryptsec, as an additional backup location - Create a multi-signer bunker URL for Nostr Connect (more info below) - Auto follow the contacts list of some old and trusted Nostr users - Customize of contact suggestions, useful for onboarding friends & family

Try Nstart live at https://start.njump.me or watch this video to understand how it works: https://chronicle.dtonon.com/77b9a397cbbcd63f3bfc78ff2b2c060...

For devs: it can also be used by any Nostr application, web or mobile, to offer an easy onboarding flow! You can integrate it effortlessly via a simple redirect, modal or popup: in the end, the user is automagically logged into the app, without needing to touch their keys/bunker. https://jumble.social, https://flotilla.social, https://nosotros.app, nostr-login (and so every website that uses it, like https://npub.pro, https://nostr.band, https://www.whynostr.org, etc..) are already using Nstart, check them.

Example of the integration: https://chronicle.dtonon.com/5a55f1db7efdc2b19a09284c360909e...

Docs: https://github.com/dtonon/nstart/blob/master/APPS-INTEGRATIO...

A note about the multi-signer bunker. This is really cool stuff made by @fiatjaf, that uses FROST to split your nsec in 3 (or more) and distribute each shard to an independent trusted remote signer. This will give you a bunker code that you can use to log in to many web, mobile and desktop apps without exposing your nsec. If you ever lose your bunker code, if the signers vanish from Earth, and it stops working, or if it gets stolen by a malware virus, you can use your nsec to create a new one and invalidate the old one.

More info and source code: https://github.com/dtonon/nstart

Enjoy it and send back any feedback, thanks!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43001303

Points: 23

# Comments: 4

> Email us, or find us on Mastodon, Threads, or Twitter X. (Gosh, can we all just agree on one social media network already?)

Nostr!

https://mikedilger.com/gossip-model/

It is of course possible to combine this approach with undifferentiated access to well known relays, to fetch content from not followed people.

Take it as a didactic experiment, it's no production ready, indeed it has some limitations (no SEO friendly structure), but can work as a temporary solution (e.g. coming soon and parking pages), and it is still an example of how easy it is to create a Nostr-powered web app and deploy it on a low-tech infrastructure.

Comments and suggestions on how to improve it are welcome!

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40426099

Points: 90

# Comments: 27

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40132628

Points: 1

# Comments: 0