lowtimer

Two small improvements pushed to ICKNO today. 1. The website makes expired links obvious, but Nostr does not. So expired links now show a notice before rerouting you to the product page, so you're not in the dark or annoyed when you don't see what you're expecting. 2. Mobile view was pretty bad for most phones. So now lines wrap and you can see everything. Especially useful for items priced in sats because we're still early and a few dollars is still thousands of sats 🤡

This is the long-term plan for ICKNO. We're going to show them the aggregate demand from bitcoiners for high-quality products. And demand that they accept high-quality money. nostr:nevent1qqsze3zuvuu6hf85l5aetyx4etljeqq2c3tkhstywy5yqqhv5vw3z7cpz9mhxue69uhkummnw3ezumrpdejz7q3qzzmxvr9sw49lhzfx236aweurt8h5tmzjw7x3gfsazlgd8j64ql0sxpqqqqqqz37jcf5

What did she expect, lol Pick the wrong kind of maximalism and HFSP

I really hope NIP-17 adoption doesn't go like IPv6 adoption 😬

FYI. Right now the process to be added to the ICKNO feed/website is highly subjective...basically, if I see you announce a new product, discount, or restock, I'll post it if I think it's something people will find notable. Restocks are extra-subjective because some products are more scarce than others. If a product is generally in-stock (or regularly restocked), alerting everyone to a restock isn't useful and dilutes the feed's signal. ICKNO needs to remain high-signal or it's useless. As another example, in the fiat world, product launch dates returned by the Shopify API usually aren't very reliable, so I've had to use my own judgment pretty heavily on what launches are worthwhile to post about and which aren't. I'm sure we'll figure out a better way to do this over time.

GM! Hello world. After lurking for a while, I'd like to introduce myself. Lately I've been working on something called nostr:nprofile1qqsvt8pwtwjl0wu9qdujksdvfrp8pdvcleuf5eufnmvzhm3jpzmrkrgpzamhxue69uhky6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skctcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qys8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytn9d9h82mny0fmkzmn6d9njuumsv93k2tck0x9tk. TLDR; ICKNO follows merchants on and off Nostr who produce high-quality, low-time preference goods. It tells you about the coolest new launches, deals up for grabs, and highly-anticipated restocks. We use only open protocols to do this: Nostr, email, and RSS. All our infrastructure is FOSS and self-hosted. Our website and all communications have zero trackers. Our links record precisely 1 extra bit of information—which medium a click came from—merely so we have _some_ idea of our performance, but this tells us nothing about you or your activity. I think it's important to put this information front and center for a service like this because, historically, such services have a reputation for being shady and exploitive. But I'm going about this in a totally different way, and my goals are totally different too (read on for details). --- As you all know, basing your life on a hard monetary standard means you tend toward lower time preference. This means you start to demand higher quality across everything in your life...the people you hang around, the things you do, the media you consume, the places you go, the food you eat, and the things you buy. There was a great post recently from nostr:nprofile1qqsdfk378y50xcxmeschr3xqp5834pechwvf445p52wud40msqmvsmqpzamhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumn0wd68ytnzv9hxgtc93klaa talking in detail about the dilemma between saving sats and spending sats, and how the deflationary power of bitcoin is so great that the marginal utility of a good must be unusually strong for a rational pleb to justify buying it. ICKNO curates deals from this perspective. Food made of actual food, clothes without plastic, furniture without formaldehyde, toiletries without toxins, etc. As you might expect if you've spent any amount of time here on Nostr and see how people think and what they're into, many of the merchants on Nostr sell goods that fit this approach perfectly. In fact, if you look at the ICKNO front page right now (see image below), you'll see that 6 of the 8 items featured on the front page are from merchants on Nostr that accept Bitcoin: they're products from nostr:nprofile1qqspqxs39j9dctnfuqqrz98lrswnddlumcrdsn28j689n824susmphcpfdmhxw309a58garswvhj7unnxg6kz6mew3ax6me5w44rydt2wfcn2dtjdfchxdr3vdhxx7r2d43hyanyde3kjcn4dacxvmrrd4nrx7fhdae8zepwdahxjmmw9uq3uamnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dwp6kytnhv4kxcmmjv3jhytnwv46z7qg4waehxw309ahx7um5wghx77r5wghxgetk9uyn37wv, nostr:nprofile1qqsppdnxpjc82jlm3yn9gawhv7p4nm69a3f80rg5ycw305xned2s0hcpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsz9mhwden5te0wfjkccte9ec8y6tdv9kzumn9wshsz9rhwden5te0v9kxwmeww468smewdahx2tcq7d5tl, nostr:nprofile1qqs2zu7t8kq7luu07gfycxaa9lkahetn0czc0seklfsz9xxu7f7nh7qpz4mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduhsskjuhd, nostr:nprofile1qqsv8tj2mrsx4ywzqpr466w2jpzq6m25meef60g7ttavl0dku4x5djcppemhxue69uhkzerjv5h8xaf0qy88wumn8ghj7mn0wvhxcmmv9uq36amnwvaz7tmwdaehgu3dxqcju7tpdd5ksmmwdejjucm0d5hs8chzwp, and nostr:nprofile1qqsv38m8nrm3g3djfn2p06p7sp0u620u8x9w08xrkcssutrnrduzp8spr4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezucnfw33k76twv4ezuum0vd5kzmp0qyg8wumn8ghj7mn09eehgu3wvdez7qghwaehxw309aex2mrp0yh8qunfd4skctnwv46z7wt88vg. You guys are doing great work, keep it up! [In case you're wondering, I didn't plan it this way. There just hasn't been a whole lot happening in the world of fiat merchants that ICKNO follows, while at the same time, Nostr merchants have been absolutely killing it. It's pretty crazy because I currently follow over 100 merchants, only 15% of them are active on Nostr, and 75% of the notable activity in the past week came from that 15% of merchants. Nostriches ship!!] Part of my previous work in the Bitcoin space involved working on a decentralized marketplace. One of the biggest takeaways I had from that experience was that even the most decentralized of technologies benefit greatly from centralized interfaces that abstract the underlying complexity away and polish the experience to make it more approachable for users. I think simplification is something we need right now in this world of Bitcoin+Nostr commerce. There's folks developing storefront software, others working on smoother payment flows, and still others working on building out Nostr more generally. While that's all critical work, the end result is an overwhelming commerce scene for even a seasoned user to navigate. Some merchants are selling on nostr:nprofile1qqsd73mv4ayg306an8r2wy82dt5585lxj0ffehr4cnhlrnakxjpehwqpzpmhxue69uhkummnw3ezumt0d5hsrf57wa, some are selling on nostr:nprofile1qqs2xugc5jyguqkj36rk0syv4tmnkjdtmtperttl7x9rqjy3ustdcvcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qy2hwumn8ghj7am0deejucmpd3mxztnyv4mz7qg4waehxw309aex2mrp0yhxgctdw4eju6t09uzac8sd, some have basic NIP-15 listings, some take advantage of the #zapsnag, and still others have their own storefronts using BTCPayServer or even Shopify with its Strike integration. It's quite a fragmented landscape. Even fiat merchants are fragmented these days...many have no Amazon presence, a bunch use Shopify, but many use other platforms as well. Don't get me wrong—this kind of merchant fragmentation is not a bad thing! In fact, it's an essential requirement for merchant _and_ consumer freedom. Merchants should be able to set their own conditions for business, payments, logistics, etc. Consumers need choices so they don't find themselves boxed in by a monopolistic juggernaut 20 years later. Problem is, in practice, merchant fragmentation doesn't translate into a great experience for consumers. People don't have time or patience to follow what's going on in 20 different places every day. They need 1 smooth, clean interface that masks the ugly fragmentation underneath. Hence ICKNO. That leads to another key difference in ICKNO's approach. The main requirement for featuring a product is that it must not be icky, not that the merchant must accept bitcoin. This is common ground that many bitcoiners and no-coiners alike can find useful. No-coiners in particular will see all the amazing stuff you can only by for sats, see the prices of those goods go down first-hand over time, and start to wonder what the hell they're doing. To that end...if you're launching something new and want to make sure we know, tell me. If you're a merchant of anything high-quality and nostr:nprofile1qqsvt8pwtwjl0wu9qdujksdvfrp8pdvcleuf5eufnmvzhm3jpzmrkrgpzamhxue69uhky6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skctcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qys8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytn9d9h82mny0fmkzmn6d9njuumsv93k2tck0x9tk is not following you, tell me. If there's anything else we can do that would help you, tell me. I think Nostr+Bitcoin commerce has a ton of potential and I want to support this burgeoning community as much as possible. If there are merchants outside of this space you especially like, tell me about them too. Cheers and pura vida 🤙 🫂 #introductions #grownostr

And they got a 7-char vanity npub. Never really cared to go to Rochester until now. BASED nostr:nevent1qqsvyec3kaew3ps6fw49hlwy5yhe60vng8mn5dx45p6a8vhyzh98lfspz4mhxue69uhkummnw3ezummcw3ezuer9wchsz9thwden5te0wfjkccte9ejxzmt4wvhxjme0l4hxpa

This is part of my goal with nostr:nprofile1qqsvt8pwtwjl0wu9qdujksdvfrp8pdvcleuf5eufnmvzhm3jpzmrkrgpzamhxue69uhky6t5vdhkjmn9wgh8xmmrd9skctcppemhxue69uhkummn9ekx7mp0qys8wumn8ghj7mn0wd68ytn9d9h82mny0fmkzmn6d9njuumsv93k2tck0x9tk -- to bring more companies to Bitcoin and Nostr, united by the pursuit of excellence. There are lots of companies outside of this world who would fit right into it if they only knew about it. nostr:nevent1qqsq92xrpflcsfmm7y93spq7l3rs2wq96xqjtksdu2ng8aydpa29e7gpr9mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuumwdae8gtnnda3kjctv9upzp3yw98cykjpvcqw2r7003jrwlqcccpv7p6f4xg63vtcgpunwznq3qvzqqqqqqytw27yn

I love this. Upon first reading it, I took it to refer to personality and attitude toward life. But I think it also encapsulates our approach to making stuff. You can make the "perfect" handbag out of super-tough nylon that's strong and convenient and durable and inexpensive that withstands water and abrasion and doesn't need any maintenance. Make the same handbag out of leather, and it won't be as convenient because it will need more care and maintenance. It probably won't be as durable or strong, and it won't withstand water and abrasion as well. But you'll pay for it with exposure to microplastics. Although you'll probably look and feel the same after using both bags, you will have lost something in pursuit of perfection—a small piece of your health, something people value highly in isolation but are happy to compromise on in little bits at a time for convenience. It's similar with software. Startups and big companies try their hardest everyday to make "perfect" closed experiences they can fully control for optimal user experience to reduce frustration (and churn). Free/libre open-source software tends to be more rough around the edges, less intuitive, and sometimes frustrating for users. People choose the closed software route because it's more perfect, but every time they do that, they're giving up a little piece of their freedom—something people value highly in isolation but are happy to compromise on in little bits at a time for convenience. The appeal of the perfect is understandable, but it's expensive in the long-term. The appeal of being real is often hard to understand in the present, but it's less expensive in the long-term. nostr:nevent1qqspmm5cx2rx80dllhzc58h9362adx78jpah9c5au7udm586t0ysgwgy60uc8