Last Notes
Not unless the owner exposed it, or the user is using their cloud service which has to be exposed in order for them to access it, but in the latter case Alby keeps it updated to the latest version.
I run mine on my Start9 and there is no public access at all. Just within my network. That's the whole point of NWC.
Yup. Now do fiat.
None of it works the way most people conceptualize it in their head.
The self-delusion is strong.
https://relay.brightbolt.xyz/321438d23a71fa841c488b7c2d74b6197c418ed8287fe34a04270a21952c1f88.jpg
Looks like only versions more than a year old (August 2025) are affected, and even then only if they exposed the UI to the public internet, which is generally a bad idea anyway.
https://relay.brightbolt.xyz/041088ce51cedda3fce05aa99f5fae198e4795799e54cc88f2a0cd698544d0e1.jpg
Really? I have yet to encounter any who think that ecclesiastical officers should have authority over matters of state, nor any that think civil magistrates should have authority over matters of church. Do you have some examples?
A not-so-short note on spam and the outbox model:
TL;DR: Even if spammers can’t write to your inbox relays, you will still see spam in the replies to other users’ notes in Nostr clients that have implemented the outbox model.
Not so long ago, it used to be pretty easy to hide spam from view. Back then, Nostr clients only ever read from the relays that the user had set as their "read relays." That meant a user could simply select relays that restricted who could post to them, such as WoT and paid relays, and remove any public relays from their read relays to have a spam-free Nostr experience.
However, this resulted in users missing a lot of posts and replies from other legitimate users, because they weren't reading from the relays that those users were writing to. It also had a centralizing effect on relay selection, because you needed to be writing to one or more of a few popular relays to have any hope that people would see your posts, even if they were following you. You might write to a few other relays as well, but they acted primarily as a backup for your notes.
In answer to this, the outbox model was developed, in the hopes of encouraging relay decentralization. Under this model, Nostr clients no longer just connect to the relays you have listed as "read relays," now called "inbox relays." Instead, they connect to relays that other users you are following have listed as their "outbox" or "write relays" in order to fetch their notes and populate your feed. This means all users can select a variety of relays and expect that their followers will still see their notes. There is no advantage to writing to popular relays, because Nostr clients will pull your notes from any relay listed in your “outbox” relay list, even a very small personal relay, to populate your followers’ feeds with your notes.
The outbox model also inspired the creation of the additional relay list for “blocked relays” so that users could retain some level of control over what relays the client was connecting to.
That’s all well and good for populating a user’s main feed, since the Nostr client is still only reading from relays that were selected by the user’s follows. But what about replies? If Alice posts a short text note, and Bob replies to her note, but Alice is not following Bob, how will she see that there is a reply? The answer is, assuming that Bob is using a Nostr client that has implemented the outbox model, his reply will be written not only to his own “outbox” or “write relays,” but also to Alice’s “inbox” or “read relays,” that way Alice will see the reply, despite the fact that she is not following Bob.
This on it’s own does not result in a loophole for spammers, because Alice can still set inbox relays that don’t allow just anyone to write to them. As long as her Nostr client is ONLY looking for replies to her notes on her own inbox relays, and she has only selected relays that spammers can’t write to, then she will not see spam replies to her own notes.
Here’s where the spam issue creeps back in again, though: What about Charlie, who follows Alice, and wants to see the replies to her latest note? What relays will Charlie’s Nostr client connect to in order to find those replies, assuming he is using a client that has implemented the outbox model? It won’t be his own inbox relays that he has selected himself, because there is no reason to expect that replies to Alice’s post will have been written to Charlie’s inbox relays. Rather, Charlie’s client will fetch replies to Alice’s post from her list of inbox relays. If Alice has selected quality relays that don’t let spammers write to them, then Charlie won’t see any spam replies. However, if Alice has any public relays in her list of inbox relays, then Charlie will see any spam replies that were sent to those relays, even though he has no public relays in his own relay list.
So, you can still pretty easily control whether you see spam replies to your own notes, but it is very difficult to control whether you see spam replies to other users’ notes. Your primary recourse is to make liberal use of the “blocked relays” list to prevent your Nostr client from reading from relays that are known to house spam.
There are a few issues with this approach, though. First, not all Nostr clients support the blocked relays list, so you will still see spam on those clients. Second, some clients encrypt the entries that are added to this list, and most other clients don’t support that encrypted data, even if they support blocked relays lists. Third, this becomes a game of whack-a-mole, where you have to keep adding more and more relays to the list when you discover they contain spam.
Perhaps the better way forward for reducing spam is for clients to have their own spam mitigation features. Wisp and Dark Wisp have this in the form of the nspam filter, which often needs to be retrained to be able to identify the latest forms of spam. Other clients take a bit more straightforward approach by allowing users to hide any posts from anyone outside the user’s Web-of-Trust. The downside to this is it disadvantages new users who have not yet made it inside other users’ social graphs. Another option that could be used in conjunction with this, now that more clients offer the option of adding proof-of-work to your posts, is to hide any posts from anyone outside the user’s WoT, unless the post contains at least X amount of PoW, that the user can adjust to their preference.
The downside to this is that the client would still be downloading the spam posts and just not displaying them to the user, which uses unnecessary bandwidth and likely cellular data for users on mobile phones. But as has often been said, there aren’t really any solutions; only trade-offs.
Have you read @nprofile…sa3c's article on Christian Nationalism? He does not at all frame it in terms of trying to force people to be different than they are. He merely recognizes that the magistrate has been delegated the authority over the sword by God, and therefore the he should recognize where that authority came from, rather than pretend like he has no higher basis for its authority at all.
In fact, he explicitly recognizes that the state has no authority or ability to "make people different."
We should always be careful we are interacting with opposing ideas in the way their proponents actually frame them, rather than erecting straw-men.
I am not a fan of the men he points to as leaders in the CN camp, and I am certainly less optimistic about how likely we are to move toward that kind of "magistrate holding the sword while on his knees" ideal this side of the parousia, but I cannot deny our duty to strive in that direction.
Moreover, @nprofile…sa3c explicitly says that this ideal will only come about via culture first being transformed by the preaching of the gospel. I certainly cannot fault that proposed pathway to reaching the ideal, even if it is never achieved in this life.
My man! That was a great read!
Yeah, I think Amethyst is one of the worst clients about connecting to relays that you did not select in your relay list. I think it is going beyond what is expected in the outbox model.
When building your home feed, it should only be fetching top-level notes from your follows' outbox relays.
When showing replies to your own notes, it should only be fetching from your own inbox relays.
When showing replies to other users' notes, it should only be fetching them from that user's inbox relays.
However, as evidenced by all the various relay login requests I am constantly inundated with, I believe it is also fetching notes from the inbox and/or outbox relays of those who have replied to a top-level note, and maybe anyone tagged in those notes, too.
That means you WILL see spam if those users have not been on top of maintaining their relay lists.
There are quite a few spam replies to this note:
#nevent1q…ahf3
When you view the replies, do you see them?
Yep, that's why. Jank.army is showing that the spam is on relay.primal.net, which I also have blocked on Amethyst.
Interesting. Do you have any relays blocked?
Yes, I have mentioned exactly this previously. Amethyst assumes that all relay lists other than inbox/outbox (kind 10002) should be private lists, and therefore encrypted. However, this is the LEAST compatible with other Nostr clients, and users have no way to choose not to have those lists encrypted.
Nevertheless, ALL Nostr clients should expect that lists can contain encrypted content, and support reading that content if they support those lists. This is detailed in NIP-51 (Lists), which says, "Lists can contain references to anything, and these references can be public or private... private items are specified in a JSON array that mimics the structure of the event tags array, but stringified and encrypted using the same scheme from NIP-44 (the shared key is computed using the author's public and private key) and stored in the .content."
On your own posts, or on the posts of other users? Do you see the spam replies that @npub176g…q836 mentioned on his post?
Looks like it's just a single relay, but a popular public one.
Looks like @npub176g…q836 is using Amethyst, so this is not going to be enough to resolve the problem on its own. Because of the way Amethyst has implemented the outbox model, it connects to relays that are not in the user's outbox or inbox relays in order to display replies. In my experience, it does this even though I have proxy relays set.
This being the case, I also encountered a lot of spam while using Amethyst, even though I have ZERO public relays in my inbox relays. The only solution I could really come up with that was effective was to add the relays where the spam was appearing to my blocked relay list.
My list of blocked relays is growing as I encounter spam on new relays, but here's what I have blocked so far:
relay.primal.net
top.testrelay.top
relay.ditto.pub
nostr.bitcoiner.social
nostr.oxtr.dev
relay.dreamith.to
bitcoiner.social
Now, the unfortunate thing is, Amethyst encrypts the entries on the blocked relays list, and many other clients don't read that encrypted content, so they will still connect to those relays. For instance, I am on jank.army right now and I see all the spam, even though it is on relays I have already blocked. This disregard for encrypted entries on lists is far too common.
Same question re: Amethyst.
Won't get a chance today, and maybe not for a few days. My seminary term started this week and I am also guest speaking Friday evening and have to prep for that.
So... When do we get to sell our duplicate coins on the Blake chain?
So, is it just me or is it odd that Wisp/Dark Wisp allows you to add PoW to your notes, but doesn't allow you to filter out notes from users outside your WoT who haven't included PoW?
Public relays in general are always a haven for spam, and Primal's public relay is one of the most popular, so it is always chalk full of it when these types of spam-attacks happen.
Keep an eye on this as it progresses. It's shaping up to be a powerful way to have P2P access to your digital library of movies and TV shows, and far easier to set up than Jellyfin.
#nevent1q…04p8
Doesn't seem to be working in Dark Wisp. I had the "Spam replies" filter on already and turned the WoT filter on as well, then recomputed my social graph for good measure. Still seeing this:
https://relay.brightbolt.net/9bc961971b33cf7361bb59a6d8bb95d75da02113d07c38195b8d733087f2e896.jpg
Already did before posting. I thought that might be the issue, too.
If you have a personal music library and want to be able to easily listen to it remotely, then give PearTune a try.
Just install the host app on the computer with your library (available for Umbrel, too), point it at your Music directory, then scan a QR code with the Pear Tune app on your phone, and you're done. No opening ports, no VPS and reverse proxy, and no need to use Tailscale or similar VPN. Just scan and you are connected P2P to your home computer's media library from anywhere.
#nevent1q…j63n
Yeah, WoT client-side is definitely another effective tactic.
Outbox model somewhat requires that you connect to other users' inbox relays to fetch replies to their notes, though. Unless, of course, you are making use of an aggregator relay that is pulling those replies for you.
When looking at replies to your own posts, your own inbox relays should be sufficient, but when looking for replies to someone else's note, there is no reason to expect that they will be available on your inbox relays, so outbox clients should be connecting to the OP's inbox relays to fetch those replies, unless you have added them to your blocked relays list.
I'd debate you, but I have a feeling we are pretty aligned on this one.
All laws are an instantiation of SOMEONE'S morality. The only true morality is God's. Therefore all laws should be an instantiation of God's moral law.
Christian magistrates will more closely apply God's law to the civil spere than non-Christians, all else being equal.
Nevertheless, we should not expect to achieve an ideal instantiation of God's moral law through any human magistrates, since all have remaining corruption, even in the best cases. Yet, this reality does not relieve us from the duty of pursuing the ideal.
No one should understand any of the above to mean that I would favor the establishment of any particular denomination as the official "Church of the United States," nor that civil authority should be subject to ecclesiastical authority by means of church officers ruling over the civil government, nor that I think the state can or should compel faith in Christ. I do not hold to any of those more extreme views.
This is all about relay setup here.
#nevent1q…w87t
Reformed folks should naturally understand this. We already know how to distinguish between God's descriptive and prescriptive wills.
How God has providentially ordered history must never be taken as warrant for establishing morally binding duties without explicit instruction in Scripture.
Race Realism and modern psychology make the very same error: They attribute moral failings to physiological conditions.
The result is also the same: They remove both hope of gospel-transformation and responsibility to repent, since no man can change his biology, and regeneration and sanctification are spiritual works on a man's soul, not on his body.
If any small collection of entities can delete your voice it was never yours.
#nevent1q…0jpp
Made a friend today at work:
https://relay.brightbolt.net/dae09668345b4dde986e225237bf7877ba1692808441df06f0149de59c76dd08.jpg
Not a bad idea. It's pretty short and sweet by comparison.
Dunson is definitely more readily digestible. Tomes took some work to translate into something I could wrap my mind around, but the substance was worth the effort in my estimation.
#Boris is looking really good on a tablet @nprofile…9ccm.
https://relay.brightbolt.net/421363287ff01f4ccc0591daeb8b9838b44a75a62ecf2fcc88c868cbcc64fcc4.jpg
Where do I find the new highlight feature in #Amethyst?
This is what I get when I long press in a long-form note:
https://relay.brightbolt.net/0ccf5f63eac3ce0fef21497135048a58f7dfa9e666932ede4b00564b5a7bec2b.jpg
And this is what I get when I select text in the built-in web browser:
https://relay.brightbolt.net/0a6c8df1d3fbb6e3d880a2d7d1e5dca62cb9e02063376405791603e77594af6f.jpg
These are the areas I would have expected to find the option to create a highlight.
This was easily the best article I have read on the subject of #Kinism to date. Tomes does a fantastic job of acknowledging its legitimate concerns and placing them within their proper context, while also criticizing its excesses and where it goes astray, lacking a more robust moral and theological framework.
It's a long read, but well worth the time spent, because it has application outside of the Kinist controversy, too.
https://postnuance.substack.com/p/after-kinism
@nprofile…3xxg , I would be interested in your take on it, but don't feel obligated. It's nearly 10,000 words.
There's a couple roads near me tjat the speed limit is way too slow for no good reason and cops are constantly pulling people over who didn't notice they were speeding. So I just turn on the cruise control. Ain't woth it.
I apologize for the highlight spam tonight. Trying out Boris with a particularly good, and long, article on the errors and legitimate concerns of Kinism.
I am 85% of the way through. Hang in there, and I hope you have a client that allows you to filter your feed by note kind. If not, you should.
Start Tunnel is not in StartOS v.0.4.0, strictly speaking. It is separate software that you install on a VPS, and StartOS natively communicates with it, so you can create Wireguard tunnels to access your apps, even over clearnet, through your VPS's public IP, instead of your home IP.
Most of the people screaming, "I'm being censored!" Don't understand how Nostr works and why that claim is nonsense.
I'll just leave this here:
#naddr1qv…p9j4
Cloudflare Tunnel is the only one of those that is not available on 0.4.0 at this time, looking in both the Start9 and Community registries. However, it can be replaced with Start Tunnel and then you just point your subdomains to your Start Tunnel's public IP instead.
The rest are all available on 0.4.0. You can uninstall Mempool and Thunderhub before updating. They are both just interfaces.
I'm probably not the guy to give you an accurate gauge, as I updated on a much earlier beta version of 0.4.0 that still had a few bugs with migrating services (like LND!) properly. I understand that has been fixed now, but it was a nervous few days with my lightning node down and nothing I could do about it.
My advice: Uninstall any apps that you haven't really been using, and that you can very easily reinstall, because they aren't storing data that is important to you. For instance, if you have Mempool installed, that's just a UI for viewing your node's mempool. You can uninstall that before updating and reinstall it afterward without any problem. Same for Lightning Node management UIs like Thunderhub or RTL. That is NOT the case for Alby Hub, if you are running it, though. If you have any sub-wallets with NWC connection strings set up in there, uninstalling Alby Hub will get rid of those.
By uninstalling unused or easily reinstalled apps, it should make the update go a bit faster. It's also a process that should take hours, not days. Nodes are down for a few hours all the time, and if some channel partner tries to do you dirty while you are offline, it's fine because you have plenty of time for a justice transaction.
Make sure you complete a backup, after stopping all apps, before you update. You shouldn't get into a situation where you need to fall back to 0.3.5 at this point, but you can't be too safe on these things.
You should also note that not all apps that were available for 0.3.5 have been updated to run on 0.4.0. That means there MAY be some apps you use that you won't have access to any longer. I am not talking about any of the core apps you need for running and managing a node, like your main Bitcoin implementation, LND, CLN, Alby Hubb, Thunderhub, RTL. All of those are still there. As are most of the popular self-hosting apps, like Nextcloud, Synapse Server, Vaultwarden, and the like. If there is an app you are particularly concerned about, I can check to make sure it is in either the Start9 or Community registry before you update, but I would not consider an app not being available a reason not to update at this point. Start9 will no longer be supporting 0.3.5 and the apps available on that version will no longer be receiving updates, outside of critical vulnerabilities, like the recent update for BTCPay.
Hope that helps.
Honestly, the length of the short prong is still being generous to what actually took place.
And "halfway dead" is optimistic. None of us knows when our number will come up but God himself.
And with that, BIP110 chain looks to be dead in the water. Two whole blocks, both by the same sub-pool of miners under OCEAN, until they saw the writing on the wall and called it quits, though "not defeat" somehow.
https://relay.brightbolt.net/5605f814f93f4a108f9f0303a5bf9bda713d18d45ee38fd9fbe22a2549635c19.webp
https://relay.brightbolt.net/219c2d7c76734d317105ff37ab6402bfa9d2e9794882267cce9e6e8c7eb93ed5.webp
Sorry guys. I was sympathetic with the idea of placing reasonable limits on spam on Bitcoin, but you failed hard at winning hearts and minds to your cause, and then stubbornly decided "we're going to do it anyway, because game theory!"
It didn't work out. Changing Bitcoin is hard, and should be. 20% of nodes is not consensus. 80% of nodes not doing anything is not "indifference." Many of us stayed on Core or pre-RDTS versions of Knots as a specific choice against changing what is considered a valid block, and mining pools went with that majority.
Heck, even many OCEAN miners went with that majority, as evidenced by block 961634. OCEAN couldn't even achieve consensus among its "own ranks" and yet expected to game-theory it into existence among the rest of node-runners and miners? That was some next-level optimism.
No idea. Can't speak to that. But Mechanic is right about one thing: Basically all hash is rented hash, unless you are a solo-miner.
As it would any good Bitcoiner. Will definitely be keeping my eye out for it, too.
Here's the gist of it:
https://relay.brightbolt.net/219c2d7c76734d317105ff37ab6402bfa9d2e9794882267cce9e6e8c7eb93ed5.webp
And for context, the only two fork blocks that were mined after mandatory signaling were mined by Roughnecks.
https://relay.brightbolt.net/5605f814f93f4a108f9f0303a5bf9bda713d18d45ee38fd9fbe22a2549635c19.webp
