Pacific Standard

Ruh roh

Nostr | Hacker News

"Tokyo had been in a long slumber since the end of World War II. Yet, Japan is adjacent to China and Taiwan and is allied with the United States. Once a contingency occurs in the Taiwan Strait, Japan will very likely have to become a party to it."

Eyeing China and Taiwan, Japan Must Learn from the War in Ukraine

The outbreak of the war in Ukraine made many people believe a Chinese invasion of Taiwan could be next. Russia’s brutal challenge to the internat...

"Skylar Mastro actually argues that the people with the knife at their throat should be allowed to “work out their differences” with the knife-wielding assassin"

Notes from Central Taiwan: Ma’s US trip and pro-China pieces: coincidence? - Taipei Times

Bringing Taiwan to the World and the World to Taiwan

Would be nice if a large corporation would try to buy Bluesky while it's still a small network. They probably wouldn't sell but the news cycle would wake the people using that platform to the reality that it's not any different than the others.

Hot take but I think this law is a pretty big deal. Will have big implications for the consumption model in the long tail. Props to California for getting this right 👍🤩

The Verge

Right-to-repair is now the law in California

Though there’s a carve-out for game consoles.

@jack @npub1efhk...f9wg one of the ways WordPress has taken hold as the biggest and most influential FOSS community is by developing a Meetup ecosystem. I feel like Nostr should try to emulate this approach. Granted there are some clear differences, but maybe we should also pay attention to what's working? Can we talk about organizing Meetups at @nostrasia?

Seems to me an easy way to make onboarding to nostr easier for most people is to just to use the existing user signup flows everyone already knows as registration via email address. On the first step in sign-up, give the user a choice **** Nostr doesn't require an email address to register, but you can use one if you like. To continue to register without an email address, click here. To create an account without your email address, click here. To register with your email, click here. **** Create an intermediary feature that assigns the keys to the email address and password so the everyday user can just use the protocol without thinking about anything else. @fiatjaf @jb55 @Vitor Pamplona @jack @Rabble

Y'all saw this?

X (formerly Twitter)

Axios (@axios) on X

Elon Musk announces plans for X to charge all users "a small monthly payment" https://t.co/szdhhlpHz0

I'm going to suggest again that the nostr community be as intentional and serious as possible about providing onramps and onboarding to nostr from Twitter vX. What can we do to open the doors in a more friendly and inviting way? Is any part of the nostrasia agenda dedicated specifically to adoption frictions and solutions? @jack @fiatjaf @mcshane @nostrasia @jb55 @Vitor Pamplona

Perfect case for when getting Nostr to run on an extensive mesh network is called for. Is there any new development in this space? @fiatjaf @Rabble @jack

X (formerly Twitter)

Omid Djalili (@omid9) on X

As you know there was an internet black out in Iran yesterday for the anniversary of Mahsa Amini’s passing. Naturally very little appeared on t...

I recently explained nostr to some folks and one is a journalist at a mainstream publication whose name everyone knows. She was intentionally vague about her political affiliations but seemed pretty obviously aligned with PRC interests. When I finished explaining how the protocol works—emphasizing that it's permanent, un-ownable and censor-proof—her immediate response was "that sounds terrifying." It's not clear to me what she meant, whether she is concerned about the potential impact to PRC discourse power, or whether she was put-off as a user by the prospect of an unfiltered social channel. Unfortunately because of the context of the discussion I wasn't able to probe for more feedback. I am admittedly sympathetic to the idea that an unfiltered social channel is undesirable. I think all of us can agree that nobody wants an experience that exposes us to abuse and cognitive manipulation. These are a part of life that centralized platforms are required to mitigate. At the same time, the inability to censor nostr is, I'm sure most users would agree, what makes it so powerful. But without giving users the toolkit to curate their feeds according to their own preferences, with filters that squelch the content we don't want to see, nostr will struggle to find an adoption lane. People need to feel somewhat safe to participate. That nostr is uncensorable is what makes it a double edged sword. It cuts against tyranny on side, and cuts against political correctness on the other. The term "political correctness" usually has negative connotations but we ought to be mindful of the fact that we all expect a certain amount of dignity in our lives. We have societal norms for good reason. Our job building nostr is going to mean finding a way to maintain some basic standards of humanity. Here's am example of how the existing platforms are being manipulated by the CCP and its strategic cognitive warfare—using sexual imagery to distract and deflect attention from what they consider to be politically "dangerous" discourse. Another tactic is that they flood the replies of critics with abusive language and threats in order to make the experience as unpleasant as possible. Anyone who's had to read this kind of stuff in the replies knows the toxic feelings they stir-up. And the natural human response to feeling toxicity is avoidance, which in this context means diminished use, which for China means diminished criticism. The CCP clearly knows this and uses this emotional terrain to its advantage. They're literally using our cognitive biases to their benefit. It is quite literal "cognitive hijacking." Even platforms with significant budget to defeat this stuff are having a hard time. We should be absolutely clear eyed that tactics like this will proliferate here as adoption rises.