"It isn’t obvious that the world had to work this way. But somehow the universe smiles on encryption."

hzrd149 & Gigi take a stroll along the shore of cryptographic identities.

This dialogue explores how cryptographic signatures fundamentally shift power dynamics in social networks, moving control from servers to key holders. We discuss the concept of "setting data free" through cryptographic verification, the evolving role of relays in the ecosystem, and the challenges of building trust in decentralized systems. We examine the tension between convenience and decentralization, particularly around features like private data and data synchronization. What are the philosophical foundations of building truly decentralized social networks? And how can small architectural decisions have profound implications for user autonomy and data sovereignty?

Movies mentioned:

• 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
• Soylent Green (1973)
• Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977)
• Johnny Mnemonic (1995)
• The Matrix (1999)

In this dialogue:

• Hzrd's past conversations: Bowls With Buds 316 & 361
• Running into a water hose
• Little difference, big effect
• Signing data moves the power to the key holders
• Self-signing data sets the data free
• Relay specialization
• Victor's Amethyst relay guide
• Encryption and decryption is expensive - is it worth it? 
• The magic of nostr is that stuff follows you around 
• What should be shown? What should be hidden? 
• Don't lie to users. Never show outdated data. 
• Nostr is raw and immediate 
• How quickly you get used to things working 
• Legacy web always tries to sell you something 
• Lying, lag, frustration 
• How NoStrudel grew 
• NoStrudel notifications
• Data visualization and dashboards 
• Building in public and discussing in public 
• Should we remove DMs? 
• Nostr as a substrate for lookups 
• Using nostr to exchange Signal or SimpleX credentials 
• How private is a group chat? 
• Is a 500-people group chat ever private? 
• Pragmatism vs the engineering mindset 
• The beauty and simplicity of nostr 
• Anti-patterns in nostr 
• Community servers and private relays 
• Will vibe coding fix (some of the) things? 
• Small specialized components VS frameworks 
• Technology vs chairs (and cars, and tractors, and books) 
• The problem of being greedy 
• Competitive silos VS synergistic cooperation 
• Making things easy vs barriers of entry 
• Value4value for music and other artists 
• Adding code vs removing code 
• Pablo's Roo setup and DVMCP 
• Platform permission slips vs cryptographic identities 
• Micropayments vs Subscription Hell 
• PayPerQ 
• Setting our user-generated data free
• The GNU/Linux approach and how it beat Microsoft 
• Agents learning automatically thanks to snippets published on nostr
• Taxi drivers, GPS, and outsourcing understanding
• Wizards VS vibe coders
• Age differences, Siri, and Dragon Naturally Speaking
• LLMs as a human interface to call tools
• Natural language vs math and computer language
• Natural language has to be fuzzy, because the world is fuzzy
• Language and concepts as compression
• Hzrd watching The Matrix (1999) for the first time
• Soylent Green, 2001, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, Johnny Mnemonic
• Are there coincidences?
• Why are LLMs rising at the same time that cryptography identities are rising?
• "The universe smiles at encryption"
• The universe does not smile upon closed silos
• The cost of applying force from the outside
• Perfect copies, locality, and the concept of "the original" 
• Perfect memory would be a curse, not a blessing 
• Organic forgetting VS centralized forgetting 
• Forgetting and dying needs to be effortless 
• (it wasn't for IPFS, and they also launched a shitcoin) 
• Bitcoin makes is cheap to figure out what to dismiss 
• Would you like to have a 2nd brain? 
• Trust and running LLMs locally 
• No need for API keys
• Adjacent communities: local-first, makers and hackers, etc.
• Removing the character limit was a mistake
• Browsing mode vs reading mode
• The genius of tweets and threads
• Vibe-coding and rust-multiplatform
• Global solutions vs local solutions
• The long-term survivability of local-first
• All servers will eventually go away. Your private key won't.
• It's normal to pay your breakfast with sats now
• Nostr is also a normal thing now, at least for us
• Hzrd's bakery
• "Send Gigi a DM that says GM" - and it just works
• The user is still in control, thanks to Amber
• We are lacking in nostr signing solutions
• Alby's permission system as a step in the right direction
• We have to get better at explaining that stuff
• What we do, why we care, why we think it's important