I'm calling it VIM now.

‘ageless app’ has new meaning now…

New NIST Digital Identity Guidelines just dropped.

NIST

Let’s get Digital! Updated Digital Identity Guidelines are Here!

I experienced FOMO when @jb55 did a demo of Nostr Wallet Connect, so here is mine. Blink (Android) on the left, Alby Go (iOS) on the right, #nostr #safebox completely invisible in the background.

I just see this as more opportunity for open permissionless private payment networks

Ledger Insights - blockchain for enterprise

Visa expands stablecoin settlement options - Ledger Insights - blockchain for enterprise

Until now Visa's stablecoin settlement platform supported only Circle's USDC token. Yesterday the card company announced the addition of ...

Behold, the Trustless Interop Model (TIM). So good, I named it after myself.

All strategies boil down to whether you want to trick or trade.

My #nostr vibes

A re-post of an earlier post that seemed to have knocked out all of the nostr clients due to an errant image upload. Enjoy (if you can)! ————————— I've had many ask me - what is #nostr  #safebox. Rather than the glib answer - 'it can be anything you want it to be' I decided to be more specific. Look at the diagram - Nostr Safebox is that fuzzy hatched box, cutting across several components. The 'guts' is a component called 'Acorn' that does all the heavy lifting. It is never intended to see the light of day. At the top, you are seeing a glimmer of the user apps. First is the safebox cli app, the command line app which I built to test the core functionality, Second is the web app, which was initially built to test out all the async capabilities. And third, the platform apps (first up is a point-of-sale app) which will interface via Nostr Wallet Connect (NWC). This is still a journey of discovery, and a hot mess of features and implementation. But the vision is becoming very clear - Nostr Safebox is about PROTECTING YOUR FUNDS AND RECORDS, but making them available for everyday use. The beauty of nostr is that I can build this WITHOUT PERMISSION. I can follow my convictions, and maybe one day, it will be useful. In the meantime, I am having a helluva lot of fun.

I remember the early days of the internet when the main problem was the ‘Last Mile Problem’ - how to get high speed internet to phones and off dial-up modems. That problem was effectively solved with ADSL modems that enabled high- speed (1 Mbps, at the time) to run over the existing copper wire and freeing up the family phone. Then the internet went BOOM! Now we have a similar dynamic with payments. We have the equivalent of the internet (bitcoin/lightning/nostr/cashu) - we now need to focus on the ‘last mile’ so the payment rails can go BOOM! and open a whole new wave of innovation. Stablecoin issuers feel like the wave of ISPs of the late 90s. They made dial-up and access to the internet easy. But when the telcos started to eat the ISP business and roll out ADSL modems, they withered away (remember AOL?) I predict the same fate as the stablecoin issuers - hot for now, but they will wither away once global infrastructure providers get into the mix with open protocols. I don’t now how this will play out, but I see the global payment rail stack to be: bitcoin/lightning/nostr/cashu->local fiat.

Crunching down the popular discourse right now: ‘Cash is for drugs.’ ‘VPNs kill children.’ ‘AI is for supremacy.’

Term of the day: “neurological override” “Cyborg Bees Are Here: Scientists Achieve Mind Control with World’s Lightest Brain Chip” Scientists at the Beijing Institute of Technology have developed the world’s lightest brain chip designed for insects, weighing only 74 milligrams—lighter than the nectar loads bees typically carry. This groundbreaking device enables direct mind control of honeybees by sending electrical signals into their brains through three microscopic needles. Once attached to a bee’s back, the chip allows researchers to command the insect’s flight path with remarkable precision—achieving directional control accuracy rates of up to 90 percent during testing. Inspired in part by the parasitic fungus cordyceps—which hijacks insect behavior in the wild—this new chip functions like a synthetic version of nature’s own neurological override. The technology mimics the fungus’s eerie control but replaces biology with ultra-thin printed circuits, flexible enough to move with the insect’s body and light enough to avoid impeding flight. The researchers, led by Professor Zhao Jieliang, believe their “cyborg bees” could have a wide range of real-world applications, from military reconnaissance missions in hostile terrain to post-disaster search-and-rescue operations in areas too dangerous or inaccessible for human crews or machines. Previous cyborg insect experiments used heavier chips that quickly exhausted the animals. But the Beijing team’s ultra-light design could allow longer missions with less fatigue. There are still challenges ahead: bees currently require wired power to function, and roaches controlled with similar chips were only able to handle a limited number of commands before tiring. Battery weight remains a key obstacle. Still, the breakthrough represents a major step in the field of insect-machine hybrid robotics. If refined further, fleets of mind-controlled insects could soon serve as intelligent, biologically integrated tools in both civilian and defense operations.

You think it’s bad now? Forgery and fuckery was next-level in the first millennium. Even the sovereigns were played by the keepers of the tech at the time - the monks. I read this book several years back and it completely changed my thinking on recordkeeping, administration and the conduct of power. Nothing new under the sun.

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium

An in-depth exploration of documentary forgery at the turn of the first millennium

Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium | Princeton University Press

“Information wants to be free.” - Internet “People should have their own identity” - Nostr “Money should be permissionless” - Bitcoin

Keep your thumb on the Four Horsemen of the Info-Pocalypse.

The Web is for all humanity. The Web is designed for the good of all people. The Web must be safe to use. There is one interoperable world-wide Web.

Vision for W3C

Some good detail and background on OAuth 2.1. I am researching because I believe we can do something totally better with #nostr

OAuth 2.1

EUDIPLO. Let’s make #nostr the permissionless alternative https://openwallet-foundation-labs.github.io/eudiplo/main/

A joke sign, but the point is made.