All this is speculative of course, but those domains you listed are vanity domains in lucrative markets. I call them vanity domains, because it can easily set you back 3-4 figures to get a domain like me.blog , let alone yourname.cars which is quite desirable if you sell cars. As with everything else, domain prices are simply subject to the laws of supply and demand.

Regarding .io , compared to average country code domains, such as .de for example, that tend to be quite modestly priced, .io has seen substantial increase in the past 5 or so years, transformed from a geeky exoticism to a symbol of AI-hype tech companies.

At least from my perspective.

As an innocuous example of sharing data with pure bash and Arise, these people here have preserved the Trigedasleng dictionary, the fictional language from the science-fiction/young adult show The 100, after another fan site was taken down. They use a github repo as data backend, and Arise as a static-site generator for github pages. All their data are stored in lots of version controlled JSON files instead of a database. According to the authors, this democratizes the process of forking and adding data to the repository.

I think Arise is sth I had seen and at the time motivated these thoughts. It is a bash based static site generator, that, according to its docs, it is build with the philosophy of minimal language requirements as well as other dependencies.

I would argue that a solution like this is better than heavily nested JSON files, or a cascade of Ordered Dicts in Python, or even a db.sqlite that would require the user parse or query the data somehow. In fact, a user could retrieve the static site from their own distro package manager and run it in bash with minimal dependencies.

I haven’t tested this solution yet, but it looks very promising as to what I originally had in mind.

I see. Do you think it is a honeypot?

I share your sentiment. But from a technical point of view, I can’t fathom interactive maps without javascript, which is typically blocked by hardened browsers. TBF I think their cause would be better served if they open sourced their data so that people could explore them with arbitrary clients.

I don’t think anyone took those seriously as private messengers. On another note, I think Maduro cracked down on WhatsApp as well, and called Venezuelans to cancel Meta altogether. Or something.

About the technical side of my response. I have difficulty understanding your concern, because from what I have seen so far, NOSTR is a protocol and has different implementations. As a protocol it is very liberal since it mostly goes on to specify the structure of the “event” data type. In the specification I saw that it specifies signing and verifying notes with private/public key pairs, but I haven’t seen yet where on the protocol level it requires Bitcoin Lightning. Is it possible that you have looked into a specific implementation which elected to use such cryptographic keys as to make it interoperate with the Bitcoin blockchain to start with? In that case, the articles linked by the project mention that the protocol is simple and can be implemented “in a weekend”. That means that instead of even forking it at all you can roll your own in your chosen framework?

I have had a look into Nostr. My remarks perhaps will start a whole other thread but I will express them. For one thing, I had a quick look at odysh some time ago, and I have left with a sour taste about the connotations of ‘censorship resistant’. Don’t get me wrong I am of course against state censorship, but I (unironically-please say otherwise) wonder if there is more to this phrase than nazi dogwhistling. Within censorship resistant social networks is there a) the possibility to mass block, mitigate harassment brigades, tag nazis, and combat other types of toxic trolling and brigading? b) is there absolutely any level of moderation possible, including and going beyond the possibility to go back and delete stuff posted by trolls, or even illegal stuff like slander, hate speech, revenge porn and worse? I can’t start a discussion about censorship resistant networks if these conditions are not met, because so much dogwhistling has, well, “smuggled” these meanings into the term, and I am reluctant towards it.

If that is the case, then it arguably be an extra step for new people to join. I fear that not many will unless already familiar with Bitcoin etc.

orm of authentication, I’d be very interested. I’m obviously not going to roll my own auth from scratch….but as I see it, tying BTC to it could prevent MANY people from giving an otherwise very promising tech a chance.

I am not quite familiar with the overlap between Bitcoin and authentication. In fact it seems I assume they are totally separate things. If you care to explain further or point me to the right resources?

Sure, I understand Matrix fine. On the contrary, I don’t get why people find it harder to switch to than Discord?

Sure, the use case is remote to say the least, but the decentralized thing is appealing. I will have to wrap my head around the bitcoin registration thing, since I am not familiar with crypto. But I did imagine something like decentralized exchange or shops as part of community organizing. In that manner you can, for instance, support web creators within a given community etc. So, perhaps the use case not that far as it initially seems.

add much richer functionality here to turn a poll into a proper group decision-making tool

This wording shapes my thought better than I did in the post.

Um, does community organizing have to be secret to be immune to trolls and bad actors?

I really did not mean to be insulting. I am just saying chart makers can choose to make a zoom in, and it is not automatically propaganda or something. All this has led people astray of the real issues, like WTF is measuring ‘happiness’ on a 1-10 scale, and what are the metric properties of this 1-10 scale. Then there are all the sampling issues and what have you. I just expected more people discussing this stuff rather than the Y-axis.

Oh sport, and I thought I was the one beating on a dead horse here. I understand why people claim to take issue with the Y-axis range. I am just saying chart makers can zoom in to make a point, and it is not automatically misleading. That is all. Anyway, thanks for writing this. Looks like a lot of effort, and some of it will make sense in my stats coursework, thanks!

This is indeed misleading. It has no numerical figures, and it wastes loads of ink and screen space. The other one is better structured as a chart. I a sorry you spent your time to demonstrate something we all know, but may be Excel has good reasons that cuts off the axis at 6.

Although there is a common tip in critical thinking classes that manipulating the Y-axis range can lead to misleading presentation of a difference, I believe in this particular graph, which clearly provides numbers to compare, you can’t say it is misleading.

People can read and compare the values and draw their own conclusions. And I am saying that without any consideration of the distros discussed, since I am impartial to distros, I like all distros I have tried.

This “study” almost certainly must have way deeper assumptions- and metrics- related problems to start with, so even finding myself having this argument is preposterous. But I am just pointing out the misapplication of critical thinking guideline, and this is a valid point which I insist everyone who relies on to consider, if you care about critical thinking at all.

No one said you are doing layman statistics, the pasted comment is from another discussion, provided here for context, and for very good reasons. It aligns with obvious misconceptions about statistics that should be pointed out. Probability and statistics are thorny subjects that nonetheless are inevitable in order to understand the world surrounding us, material, social, and economic, so yes I will nitpick here and call out the misapplication of canned critical thinking thought-terminating cliches.

This sounds valid. I wonder how many Scandinavians switched to Linux because of Windows 11.

Fair. You know these figures right out from the graph don’t you?