Nostr notes by Darius Kazemi

For example, "Content, Forever" generates shitty essays ...

2026-10-25T19:01:04Z

In reply to nevent1q…cx94
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For example, "Content, Forever" generates shitty essays on a given topic prompt by following links on Wikipedia and pasting whole paragraphs from each article into the output.

https://tinysubversions.com/contentForever/

I had so many inbound requests from high schoolers asking if I could make it do their homework. I would sometimes write back and explain, no, this isn't how this works, it's explained in the heading if you want to know more.

Now they finally have the homework machine, I guess.

One thing I learned from making Twitter bots and web toys with ...

2026-10-25T18:56:49Z

One thing I learned from making Twitter bots and web toys with "personality" for years is that some people *desperately* wanted those things to be intelligent. I would say exactly how my algorithm worked to show that it was doing nothing more than pulling random items from a set. But some would assume there was magic happening on some level anyway. There was a hunger for that to be the case, and I think LLM companies trade in sating that hunger.

https://borretti.me/article/no-man-is-an-island Good post that ...

2026-10-10T18:43:19Z

https://borretti.me/article/no-man-is-an-island

Good post that gets into the futility I feel when I try to do something creative online anymore. I'm less and less motivated to do things like write a blog or build software tools. I've found myself without much of a creative community since 2020 for a variety of societal and personal reasons. My attempts at private intellectual life have crashed and burned. I really do need creative community but I don't want to feed the plagiarism machine. Not really sure what to do.

(I even provided feedback on an age verification ZKP at the ...

2026-09-18T12:26:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…596d
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(I even provided feedback on an age verification ZKP at the Applied Social Media Lab)

this is the most comprehensive collection of ZKP criticisms ...

2026-09-18T12:25:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…ddef
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this is the most comprehensive collection of ZKP criticisms

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/08/zkps-arent-age-verification-silver-bullets

It seems to boil down to the fact that they will be tied to wallet apps that are likely (?) to be very poorly implemented and introduce massive security holes and a host of previously non-existent vulnerabilities. To be clear I am generally pro ZKP, but I take their point and I generally don't trust any government to implement them well and without a host of other bad ideas riding their coattails

"Those that want them can use this. Those that don't can ...

2026-09-18T10:12:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…ncym
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"Those that want them can use this. Those that don't can hand their devices to their kids."

You're phrasing that like it's an optional parental control feature. But it's not, it's a global requirement for someone's data to be given to the corporation/govt - the choice for a kid user in your example is "parent's data or kid's data". The choice for an adult user is non-existent, they must comply. And yeah ZKPs mitigate the amount of data but it's a different proposition from your statement

This implies 100% safety and freedom are possible. I prefer: keep ...

2026-09-17T15:21:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…klqd
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This implies 100% safety and freedom are possible. I prefer:

keep kids safe[r] online, and still have a [reasonably] open and free internet

What level of safety are we willing to give up, and what level of freedom as well?

I think things like zero knowledge proof of age can be a good balance, but all of this is going to be moot when parents just hand their devices to kids. Do we then force devices to passively biometric scan a user every 15 seconds or something?

After experimenting with local LLMs for a couple years now, ...

2026-08-06T15:48:03Z

After experimenting with local LLMs for a couple years now, I'm excited to release my newest project: The Ethical Assistant! It provides all the benefits of an LLM assistant but with low energy usage, completely private, and no cost to use.

https://tinysubversions.com/ethical-assistant/

Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Steve Ass, and Bob Grass. ...

2026-07-31T15:41:51Z

Twenty years ago we had Johnny Cash, Steve Ass, and Bob Grass. Now we've got no cash, ass, or grass -- nobody rides for free!

Discovered today that one of the most formative books of my ...

2026-07-21T16:14:44Z

Discovered today that one of the most formative books of my childhood, Math For Smarty Pants (1983), is available as a full PDF online:

https://arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/mathpants.pdf

It's not a super well known book, though I bet there are plenty of Fediverse nerds who loved it as much as I did. The book was full of cool math stuff, but also wonderful cartoons and stories.

Reading the sentence "The mathematician believed that every rule probably has exceptions" at age 7 basically cemented who I am

My new favorite place to go for written recipes online is food ...

2026-07-20T17:20:16Z

My new favorite place to go for written recipes online is food company websites. They don't have the adware stack pop-ups or weird SEO stuff. Their monetization story is simple: they sell me ingredients, and providing recipes may cause me to buy more of their ingredients. The better the recipe, the more likely I am to give them money. The incentives are all pretty okay.

(I was struggling to find a good recipe for the semolina flour I bought. Then I remembered I could go to the company website.)

The ActivityPub Trust & Safety Task Force is looking for a ...

2026-06-19T00:33:04Z

The ActivityPub Trust & Safety Task Force is looking for a new Co-Lead (I'm stepping down because I'm leading the Social Web Working Group now).

Specifically we'd like someone with trust and safety experience! Doesn't have to be paid/professional experience (volunteer moderation workers welcome). If you're interested, please leave a comment on the Github issue here:

https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-trust-and-safety/issues/135

For more on what the TF does, check out: https://github.com/swicg/activitypub-trust-and-safety#scope-of-work

There are a lot of reasons I've been in a creative funk ...

2026-06-18T20:37:47Z

There are a lot of reasons I've been in a creative funk recently but one of them is the chilling effect where I think about the inevitable LLM plagiarism that will occur and I think, huh, do I really want to release anything publicly? I feel myself more drawn to making stuff that never goes on the internet at all.

Like, the idea of playing in a bar band around town feels more inviting than the idea of creating a cool web-based toy like I used to.

yes 100 percent

2026-06-14T19:04:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…s7wp
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yes 100 percent

Every time I look on the back of a restaurant menu and ...

2026-06-13T16:06:23Z

Every time I look on the back of a restaurant menu and there's not a multi paragraph narrative story about the history of the restaurant I get a little disappointed

oh hey belated congrats

2026-04-15T02:31:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…9egq
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oh hey belated congrats

Quick question for any New York Times columnists out there: as an ...

2026-04-08T16:38:33Z

Quick question for any New York Times columnists out there: as an Iranian-American, how many "death to America"s am I allowed to say following Trump's threat to wipe Iran's civilization off the face of the earth? One? Three? An even dozen?

I'm at a loss for words but here are some from Mayor Mamdani ...

2026-02-28T19:36:08Z

I'm at a loss for words but here are some from Mayor Mamdani that will suffice for now:

"Today’s military strikes on Iran — carried out by the United States and Israel — mark a catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war.

Americans do not want this. They do not want another war in pursuit of regime change. They want relief from the affordability crisis. They want peace."

https://nitter.net/NYCMayor/status/2027799160574120418

yeah, I'm running a very old Ubuntu that doesn't support ...

2026-02-24T22:29:14Z

In reply to nevent1q…ya32
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yeah, I'm running a very old Ubuntu that doesn't support postgres 14 and it's been a nightmare to upgrade all the dependenices. but my fault for going (checks calendar) 8 years without anything but the bare security updates

In the 24 hours since our last Hometown release, Mastodon ...

2026-02-24T21:21:40Z

In the 24 hours since our last Hometown release, Mastodon released version 4.5.7, so we have provided a quick release to sync with 4.5.7:

https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/releases/tag/v4.5.7%2Bhometown-1.2.0

#Hometown #HometownAdmin

Hometown 1.2.0 is now available! It brings Hometown up to date ...

2026-02-23T22:08:57Z

Hometown 1.2.0 is now available! It brings Hometown up to date with Mastodon 4.5.6, including all major features introduced in Mastodon 4.3, 4.4 and 4.5.

A million thanks to Misty (npub1eh5…yenk) who led the charge on this release.

https://github.com/hometown-fork/hometown/releases/tag/v4.5.6%2Bhometown-1.2.0

#Hometown #HometownAdmin

Feels like I constantly complain about this but man do I hate ...

2026-02-19T16:55:19Z

Feels like I constantly complain about this but man do I hate 2026-era web development stacks!!!

I often find myself looking at a project website that's serving less than a dozen static documents to the end user... why am I looking at Vite and a build process at all???

It's like looking at a McDonald's franchise supply chain (warehouses, trucks, repeatability) and saying, "Yes, that is the appropriate setup for my home kitchen, just in case I one day need to scale it to a worldwide franchise."

Me: Fine. I'll sign up to use a passkey to log in to this ...

2026-01-08T17:26:25Z

Me: Fine. I'll sign up to use a passkey to log in to this particular service. So many people tell me passkeys are the obvious thing to do now. Maybe the experience has gotten better in the last few years since I tried. [Signs up on desktop with 1password]

Service, a week later, on their mobile website: Please sign in with your passkey.

Me: [presses button]

Service: We couldn't find a passkey in your mobile web browser.

Me: Uhhh it's in my 1password app vault?

Service: lol what's that

My favorite thing on Bluesky is a labeler made by the Social ...

2026-01-06T18:33:50Z

My favorite thing on Bluesky is a labeler made by the Social Technologies Lab at Cornell Tech.

https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:oubsyca6hhgqhmbbk27lvs7c

It surfaces metadata on posts. Most useful to me is "This person posted more than 50 times yesterday."

It recasts a post like the one pictured. It reminds me to look at their profile and figure out if they are a real person, and are they terminally online, or engagement farming, or what. Then I might block/mute because I don't need people like that in my lifeworld.

> delphitools is a collection of small, focused utilities that ...

2025-12-29T17:36:27Z

> delphitools is a collection of small, focused utilities that respect your privacy and work entirely in your browser. No data leaves your machine, no accounts required, no tracking. Just tools that do what they say.

https://tools.rmv.fyi/

Seeking advice. I have many services that require cert renewal ...

2025-12-26T22:15:25Z

Seeking advice. I have many services that require cert renewal for HTTPS. My usual workflow for nginx is:

1) set up a cron job to call certbot monthly (strictly more often than needed for a 90 day cert but I'm lazy)
2) 91 days later, re-cert fails, realize that there was a bug in my script, fix it
3) 91 days later, re-cert fails, realize there was a bug in my script, fix it
4) at this point it probably now works forever

Is there a good way to test things properly so I skip steps 2 and 3??

You discover a file on your hard drive called "eggn.ogg". ...

2025-12-11T03:09:38Z

You discover a file on your hard drive called "eggn.ogg". You play it. What does it sound like?

I think I'm addicted to assembling uniforms for nuns... ...

2025-12-09T21:34:06Z

I think I'm addicted to assembling uniforms for nuns... it's habit forming

Good thing there's no incentive for anyone to collude and to ...

2025-12-06T18:06:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…kryp
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Good thing there's no incentive for anyone to collude and to game this system 😇

Not even Mr. Beast himself can control what he says in his next video. He is effectively a weather pattern

I peek at Meta's Threads every now and then. Just saw an ad ...

2025-12-06T17:55:51Z

I peek at Meta's Threads every now and then. Just saw an ad for an app that lets me bet on things like "what will Mr. Beast say in his next video?" though completely unclear what yes/no means in this context.

I looked it up and this is being considered A Very Serious Company by other very serious companies.

It's just lightly regulated betting, but they call it "direct investment hedging against unpredictable macroeconomic events". I hate our reality

https://www.businessinsider.com/kalshi-cnbc-deal-cnn-data-integration-partnership-2025-12

same!! I was so excited to meet a merveilles person! Uh... ...

2025-11-20T18:38:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…afdr
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same!! I was so excited to meet a merveilles person! Uh... Merveilleseur?

someone linked me to this article ...

2025-11-01T15:49:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…0s25
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someone linked me to this article

https://www.404media.co/we-dont-want-your-password-3/

And like. I get it. It is probably better for most users. It's just annoying that I have meticulously optimized one part of my internet life (passwords) and then some sites simply say no and force me into the least optimized part of my internet life (my email, which is a garbage fire of thousands of unread messages and generalized anxiety).

Now that I think of it, my real complaint here might be "email sucks"

Websites that let me log in ONLY via email recovery feel like ...

2025-10-31T19:20:19Z

Websites that let me log in ONLY via email recovery feel like they are personally punishing me as a password manager user... like, come on, I have an awesome, one click, client side way to recall a long unique password for your website but sure, allow me to personally increase your email service bills I guess

In return I get One More Email To Deal With. Thanks pal

Here I am talking a bit about the ActivityPub Fuzzer and how ...

2025-10-23T23:04:19Z

Here I am talking a bit about the ActivityPub Fuzzer and how it's intended to help improve interoperability on the Fediverse.

https://youtu.be/EGo7ZaBG-4s

Nostr event nevent1qqsfgzd7xd0lv3zamy24mt45j8cvtttzv800kjyfudeenf3dhcp32qczyp94tls7yakmws7rdfz7nkwnhqdeheqftyna7skdva8jk2mc57mcqtvq8ux

2025-10-15T17:50:40Z

browser extension to replace ✨ with 💩

I remember a while back someone on fedi posted a little thing ...

2025-10-13T23:18:56Z

I remember a while back someone on fedi posted a little thing they built that was a personal url shortener in a single HTML page. If I remember correctly they just loaded in an array of ids and destinations and then you'd point someone to mysite.example/short?id=123 and the page would just redirect via window.location... something like that. Which one of you clever people was this?

I reimplemented it this morning but I wanna see/credit the original

Extremely pleased to announce the release of the ActivityPub ...

2025-10-01T18:02:59Z

Extremely pleased to announce the release of the ActivityPub Fuzzer! This is a tool that runs in a local development environment and (partially) emulates known ActivityPub software. It can even create a fake local "public fire hose" shaped like what you might see if you hooked your in-development software up to the real Fediverse.

I built this because I wanted ways to test in-progress fedi software for compatibility without actually making it live and breaking things.

https://asml.cyber.harvard.edu/2025/10/01/introducing-the-asml-activitypub-fuzzer-improving-testing-in-the-fediverse/

I've learned recently that there are adults who do not know ...

2025-09-25T23:01:28Z

I've learned recently that there are adults who do not know that 1mL of water weighs 1g. If you didn't before, now you know.

I'm sure other people have noted this but at some point we ...

2025-09-25T16:57:16Z

I'm sure other people have noted this but at some point we went from talking about "social network sites" to talking about "social media sites".

At first, the network was the thing that mattered. Then, the media was the thing that mattered.

A quick Google Trends query shows the shift might have happened around 2012:

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%22social%20network%20site%22,%22social%20media%20site%22&hl=en

if you are intolerant of people who are tolerant of people who ...

2025-09-18T15:11:30Z

if you are intolerant of people who are tolerant of people who tolerate intolerance, that's the paradox of the paradox of intolerance of tolerance of intolerance

Weird that I can't think of this off the top of my head ...

2025-08-30T22:22:35Z

Weird that I can't think of this off the top of my head but... who on the fedi is based in the PNW and is an implementer of / contributor to Fediverse software?

(small projects fine! tinkerers too! technical role or not! just trying to consider who I might be able to wrangle together to talk about stuff because I feel professionally isolated sometimes)

that is in fact cheaper than I expected!

2025-08-22T19:56:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…r2tf
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that is in fact cheaper than I expected!

Yes! I was a huge user of this when it first came out, but ...

2025-08-22T19:50:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…2jjq
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Yes! I was a huge user of this when it first came out, but I'm thinking I want a continuous piece of paper. Could be useful for proofs though!

I would like to do some cheap large format (like poster size, not ...

2025-08-22T19:36:08Z

I would like to do some cheap large format (like poster size, not street sign size) printing of poems I like, to put up in my home. Anyone have any hints, tips, and tricks along those lines? Local print shops are great but too expensive for me at the moment for what would just be "text in a pleasing font on a piece of paper, but bigger"

I had to stop everything I was doing today to make this. ...

2025-08-21T20:00:00Z

I had to stop everything I was doing today to make this.

I made this neat little e-ink display for my kitchen with bus ...

2025-08-06T18:40:53Z

I made this neat little e-ink display for my kitchen with bus arrival times and hourly weather. It uses an ESP32 microcontroller device and talks to Home Assistant.

More details here:

https://community.home-assistant.io/t/use-esphome-with-e-ink-displays-to-blend-in-with-your-home-decor/435428/489?u=dariusk

I followed the guide at the top of that thread but made a bunch of changes and posted some annotated code.

"35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six ...

2025-07-21T16:16:17Z

"35% of the US stock market is held up by five or six companies buying GPUs."

Ed Zitron, The Hater's Guide to the AI Bubble

https://www.wheresyoured.at/the-haters-gui/

So ARPANET had a famous "Flag Day" where they switched ...

2025-07-18T18:45:35Z

So ARPANET had a famous "Flag Day" where they switched over to TCP/IP in 1983; it required a simultaneous switchover of all host machines to the new protocol. And I know that "flag day" has since referred to big changes like that in networked systems. I assumed the name referred to some bitwise flags set in packet headers. Turns out, the term comes from Multics, when similar coordination was required for an encoding change. It happened on actual US Flag Day 1966!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_day_(computing)

This piece in particular: > It gets most things right, but it ...

2025-06-11T13:47:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…9q00
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This piece in particular:

> It gets most things right, but it consistently makes mistakes in the places that you are least likely to notice. In places where a person wouldn’t make a mistake. Your brain keeps trying to develop a theory of mind to predict its behavior but there’s no mind there, so it always behaves infuriatingly randomly.

Let me repeat:

> Your brain keeps trying to develop a theory of mind to predict its behavior but there’s no mind there

Chew on that

I'm a week late to it but @npub16y8…d455 pretty much sums ...

2025-06-11T13:45:20Z

I'm a week late to it but Glyph (npub16y8…d455) pretty much sums up my genAI coding feelings here. In particular the piece on aesthetics (probably not the kind of aesthetics you are imagining as you read this!) is going to bounce around in my head for a while.

https://blog.glyph.im/2025/06/i-think-im-done-thinking-about-genai-for-now.html

If you spend enough time in the "social media for public ...

2025-05-09T12:40:31Z

If you spend enough time in the "social media for public good" space, you'll realize there is a subset of people who essentially want to build what I call "Valhalla but for debate club members".

Their vision of a perfect social media experience is endless debate about big important ideas where people constantly get to show off how much more rational and civil they are than each other. The debate never ends. If you are obliterated in the public sphere you are reanimated. It's all in good fun.

a blog is a slet delivered over rss; a slet is a blog delivered ...

2025-04-28T15:10:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…5mee
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a blog is a slet delivered over rss; a slet is a blog delivered over email

....ok my actual hypothesis though: each has their own unique (and changing) rhetorical formula. A newsletter, even when delivered by RSS, is simply written differently than a blog. It's addressed to a different audience and has a different ethos (perhaps one of expertise vs the blog's willful amateurism)

Just as "web log" became the even more awkward ...

2025-04-28T15:02:08Z

Just as "web log" became the even more awkward "blog", I suggest we change "newsletter" into "slet"

Then we can talk about the sletosphere, have startups like sletspot and sletlines, etc. It'll be terrible, as nature intended

Klan Cookout (1983), an Apple II game where you play a person ...

2025-04-02T17:14:45Z

Klan Cookout (1983), an Apple II game where you play a person with a flamethrower trying to burn as many KKK members as possible

https://www.mobygames.com/game/138166/klan-cookout/

High Level Amnesia is so real. It exists in all fields of ...

2025-04-01T17:59:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…g8lj
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High Level Amnesia is so real. It exists in all fields of knowledge. It annoys me, and scares me if I think about it deeply.

I think the specific thing you're pointing to is in part to do with how science treats its own "mistakes" -- we do learn about Lamarckian evolutionary theory but that's because it's a nice (and oversimplified) story about Good Science beating Bad Science. When the narrative is "we believed something wrong and now we don't" it's not so alluring