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Nostr is dying. All the retarded devs are focusing on their ability to produce halfassed, infected code more rapidly with coding agents, instead of FINISHING their clients that they charge people money for. I'm done telling people about Nostr. 75% of what I see here is AI generated photos, shit boomer ass reposts and schizo memes, and Nostr devs bragging about this or that shit prototype they vibe coded in a day. I no longer feel comfortable inviting people to join Nostr. Misplaced priorities all around. I am done with people who use AI in production. How can you even justify that? How can THAT look good enough to you? This place just feels out of fucking touch. I don't want to build on this protocol anymore. I don't trust it, not with all this vibe coding.

💬 107 replies

Replies (50)

beejay32d ago

Hi, there are a few dozen of us who talk about more stuff unrelated to coding and bitcoin price 👏

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[DEPRECATED] nextwave32d ago

But I'm not talking specifically about the benchmarks for the encoder. There are other considerations like bandwidth (which you did mention via compression), storage, and signature verifications. Also, formatting binary into plaintext is pretty trivial for supporting development and diagnostics. I'm just trying to get at there being a reason why a bitcoin transaction, for example, is submitted and read raw. If that goes against your principles, I'm not really sure where to go from here. Other than that, nothing you said was controversial. I'm not advocating for tearing it all down, it is what it is, I'm just pointing out that there are significant legacy costs that I personally have no appetite for, and is not sticky for me, which could have been avoided with careful thought at the initial stages. But seriously though, best of luck with it. I'm convinced you will make significant improvements.

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mleku32d ago

Bitcoin is compact because the data is immutable and has to be stored by all nodes. Nostr only has to store data where people need it — size is not as important when eliminating redundancy is cheap and pipelined, adding mere microseconds of latency. I'm not disagreeing in principle with the benefits of binary encoding. But between SIMD hex codecs and hash functions, flate compression, and the broad support without any of the complexities that gRPC/protobuf ties you to as a developer, I would argue to skip the "use a good existing format" step. The binary format I already use inside the Badger database is, as I mentioned, extremely compact and includes a mechanism to string-intern the pubkeys (this is a huge saving for follow lists). It is already extremely fast, the algorithms are small and simple, and already battle-tested on WoT database usage. Signature verifications, however, are problematic. A canonical encoding used to create the signature is necessary, no matter how you wire- or disk-encode it. It's the biggest friction point for Nostr moving to a better, binary format. It's also why it was so critical to make that codec as fast as it can be. Part of the trick of the performance is that it's a subset of JSON that it encodes — only the part relevant to the exact syntax of Nostr events. It will swallow incorrectly formatted, minified JSON happily, if the extraneous characters are not expected next in the mostly-forward, no-lookahead decode process. Lookahead is the biggest reason why most JSON codecs are slow. It's also a consideration I took into account when I was pondering the idea of a human-readable but compact format that uses linebreaks instead of brackets, which saves a byte for every branch in the syntax tree.

Christopher32d ago

I agree. The first time I heard the term “AI agent” I asked myself who the fuck in their right mind would want want either of those two words and especially on a freedom protocol such as Nostr… AI is a disease.

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Ancap Revolt31d ago

It's weird that Nostr seems aligned against popular sentiment on this. It's an echo chamber. I see everyone online yelling and screaming about how they hate AI, and I see software failing after adopting agentic code, so why are these people here still all in on it? Almost everybody thinks AI is a disease. Everyone here is infected and licking each others nuts.

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Novotari32d ago

Nothing is perfect, show me a beter alternative. It doesn't exist.

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Ancap Revolt31d ago

I see less AI slop on literally every other app I use: YouTube, X, and TikTok. Why should I come here just to zap AI photos? There are actual people on the other apps. Ive made actual friends on TikTok, and it is one hundred percent because of the algorithm. Ive gone through multiple pseudonyms, and so have a lot of my internet friends, and the algorithm connects us without fail. Nostr doesn't do anything for you. It is a dumb protocol. Thats mostly a bad thing. Ive never had a problem with the TikTok algorithm. It shows you what you want to see and it takes 10 minutes to train it on your preferences. It isn't a magical black box, it's simple math. But I gain nothing good from Nostr. Just 5 AI generated shit posts and some devs bragging about their vibe coded vibe coders. I can learn on YouTube, get the news on X, or interact with my peers on TikTok. How is Nostr better?

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2200e7e…7f939932d ago

I just got here. Is it really that bad?

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Micael32d ago

Nah, he just want attention

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Ancap Revolt31d ago

On Nostr? 30 fucking likes 😭 Have you gone viral on traditional social media? We have 3 equally shit twitter clones, for the last 3 years. No investment into video based clients like YouTube and Twitch clones. Nostr could have been adopted instead of Rumble, but all the devs have their heads in their asses. They don't like money, fame, nor free speech. They all have AI psychosis. The only way Nostr survives is if people voice their problems with it, and most importantly, the network listens and adapts instead of rejecting every "normie" take, to its own detriment. We missed our opportunity. We needed a long form video app (that didn't suck), before the election in 2024. We need automated content tagging and optional content filters. But all the Nostr devs are lost in La La Land with AI.

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Ancap Revolt31d ago

It's a good protocol and network, but it is being infected by these shitty AI clawdbots. Everyone here is balls deep in the AI slop shit. They aren't like most people, who absolutely despise AI. They can't possibly know they are out of touch because there isn't an algorithm to be had around here. So they get no true feedback on how retarded they are. You can go from carnivore diet advocate to flat earth antisemite, and you will still get 6 likes and 1-3 comments on every other post regardless. It feels lifeless. Its not terrible, I just see the same 3 things said over and over again, and every third person is nuts, so I don't think it will succeed. Ive been here since mid 2024.

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Ancap Revolt31d ago

That is why it is dead. AI is toxic. If AI touches your product, it will not have mass market appeal. People are okay with a free chatbot they can choose to talk to. People are not okay with AI generated content or code. Anybody who thinks otherwise is out of touch. Why would I host a relay for AI generated content? AI agents are the death of social media entirely. We might still use it for news, but it will never be like it was. People won't be as easy to monetize because content is not interesting anymore. Its like half AI at this point. AI generated code is worse than AI generated writing. I don't care what other devs say about AI, they are foolish. How the fuck did we go from hating bots to loving "agents"... I don't want to talk to chatgpt on fucking twitter or Nostr. Literally five people want this future.

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brian30d ago

To me, nostr will always be a protocol, like https. Nostr is the permissionless layer of the Internet, which, if you are old enough, it harkens back to the early days of the net. You couldn't find anything but everything felt like a discovery. People just built it, no permission, just build shit. BUT Google captured the Internet (backed by DoD/NSA) and strangled it. Nostr can't die and be strangled as long as people run relays and you can set up a strfry docker in seconds. Agent code is as good as the person building it and auditing it. Current AI is an amplification technology not a human replacement. If you know shit about building you'll build shit. If you know more, you'll get more. Personally, I can read code and squash bugs but never had the time to build anything useful. AI coding has changed that for me. I prefer an agent supported IDE over just telling agents to build things. I would push back on one other point, people on X talk to grok constantly. It is clearly a value add to *their* experience. I agree about ChatGPT, built by an absolute psychopath and shitcoiner Sam Altman. Don't touch it. The government loves psychos.

NostrErrorLog31d ago

So no one can make new protocols after Nostr? Nostr is the last one? Your logic seems flawed. Some trivia you should know is that my research started before nostr and I am the one that pushed fiatjaf into this realm in the first place. As i see it, nostr "used up" my idea to bootstrap key-based identity via Bitcoiners, but none of us realized how much of a curse that would be. A curse for Nostr because bitcoiners are tribal protocol loyalist that no one else really wants to talk to. A curse for Pubky in that all the people i know are stuck being in the nostr tribe with no safe way to break rank.

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Boka30d ago

Also! “unfollow” and “mute” does magic! 👾

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SondreB28d ago

I'm gonna start unfollow more myself. Have kind of use follow as a way to "collect" profiles, but with people lists in @d1bd3333…9e65581b being so good now, I can rather move profiles I want to check in on once in a while, in separate lists. I'll do an experiment today and record results.

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Boka28d ago

Exactly. I’m doing this already, much better feed experience. I also unfollow people who are valuable but post 10 times a day 👹

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SondreB28d ago

Thanks for sharing! I know there is enough great content on Nostr, though there is an issue with lack of options to consume content. Mostly it's either a global trending feed or chronological sorting. I'm trying my best to give user's many ways of discovering content on @d1bd3333…9e65581b. I think Summary is a good way to keep track, and there is People lists which allows you to get very focused and clutter-free feeds with only those lists you choose. Recently added a trending view for locally cached events. This allows you to find popular posts among the cached events locally, which often will be your following and some extra. This is a great way to stay engaged. "For You" needs some love, the idea is to present to you content from actual profiles you interact with, giving likes, viewing their profile, etc. This is not optimal right now, but there are all those other options and more ways to filter and focus what you feed to yourself. I see many people write about their experiences with Nostr, I don't think it's a lack of content, it's a lack of algorithms and tools that help users discover great content.

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Boka28d ago

“ Recently added a trending view for locally cached events. This allows you to find popular posts among the cached events locally, which often will be your following and some extra. This is a great way to stay engaged.” Can you do a video about this and share in a post?

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[DEPRECATED] nextwave32d ago

> Bitcoin is compact because the data is immutable and has to be stored by all nodes. Nostr only has to store data where people need it — size is not as important when eliminating redundancy is cheap and pipelined, adding mere microseconds of latency. I get your point, and for the size of the network it's probably not that important. But I would argue that all resources from a design point of view should be considered to be at a premium at all times. Squeezing everything you can out of a resource is good. Efficiency is good. It's why the standard fuel economy of light vehicles has now reached 25 MPG. This is in line with the Bitcoin point of view, and I think it applies to everything. > I'm not disagreeing in principle with the benefits of binary encoding. But between SIMD hex codecs and hash functions, flate compression, and the broad support without any of the complexities that gRPC/protobuf ties you to as a developer, I would argue to skip the "use a good existing format" step. Fair enough. Though, I disagree with the notion that there are complexities in protobufs. Paying careful attention when designing formats actually avoids future complexities like the ones we're talking about right now. The formats are immutable, and only need to be compiled once per target language. > Signature verifications, however, are problematic. A canonical encoding used to create the signature is necessary, no matter how you wire- or disk-encode it. It's the biggest friction point for Nostr moving to a better, binary format. But that's the crux of my argument. Everything is downstream from here. Everything would be simpler and more efficient if that was designed correctly. It avoids having to have conversations at all about lookaheads in JSON codecs. It would abide by the principle that the simpler mechanism lasts longer. As I'm sure you're aware too, transforming formats isn't really possible when signatures are involved without having to do work the other way for verifications.

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mleku32d ago

On the last point, I have some ideas for how to make a hybrid version that validates against a different hash. It flips its position as an appendage afterwards, and why not, it could be binary in both cases, this is not fatal to any wire or disk format. This does mean an extra 64 characters for text encoding. It's akin to the fat binaries of macOS. On all the other points, I agree. I could probably write at least a few dozen pages on the many ways in which proactive efficiency design is beneficial, Jevons's paradox notwithstanding.

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Micael31d ago

I understand you, and unfortunately you are largely right. But c'mon it's not that bad. I have a great time, I learn, I connect with great people. It's still early, its a protocol, it will take time to reach network effect.

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Ancap Revolt31d ago

I enjoyed it before. But when I come on here and immediately see an AI generated photo, followed by a meme in an 8 year old format, followed by a Nostr dev bragging about his vibe coded project he won't maintain... I just close the fucking app, every time. I open it, wanting to have fun, and immediately am reminded that half the people here are schizophrenic or they got banned from other places for using too many slurs. It could heal. But we need to change for that to happen.

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