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What creative ideas have you been rambling on?
This post is part of a series. It is meant to be a place for stackers to discuss creative projects they have been working on, or ideas they are aiming to build. Regardless of your project being personal, professional, physical, digital, or even simply an idea to brainstorm together.
If you have any creative projects or ideas that you have been working on or want to eventually work on... This is a place for discussing those, gather initial feedback and feel more energetic on bringing it to the next level.
Thanks @orto @OneOneSeven @justin_shocknet @bounty_hunter @grayruby @flat24 @gmd @Kontext and @zapsammy for joining and sharing your ideas in the previous edition. How are you all doing with your projects? Any update?
₿e Creative, have Fun! :D
Still working on Innocuous, a way to encode/decode messages in LLM generated output: https://github.com/sutt/innocuous
I like my new example. This text:
Amidst the ancient forest, dwelt a wondrous Wizard renowned for his arcane might. One day, he unearthed true power not in enchantments, but in wellaimed words. Fearing misuse, he penned this power three ways in his magnum opus obscuring it with tedious trifles.
Time passed, the wizard departed, while countless seekers puzzled over his laborious tome. Until one sage, whose curiosity was matched only by fortitude, finally discovered the cryptic keys tucked deep within these words un
Decodes to: "pip install innocuous"
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Still need to wrap my head around this. In simple terms, are initial_prompt, chunk_size, num_logprobs, and encoded_prompt the only things I'll need to make sure to remember or save somewhere when I decide to decode the output?
LLM are something that is changing really fast. Is this compatible with any model?
You mention as use case examples the encoding of PGP keys, url, cryptocurrency addresses, nostr pubkeys... You'd trust this method to hide wallet seeds like traditional stenography do?
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Thanks for taking a look! The idea that you're getting at is quite important. I've imagined there's a "standard" where the first two bytes will represent a "version number" which will set a value for the free floating paramteres, and have lots of different initial_prompts to produce a variety of texts.

version=96

prompt = "Once upon a time, in a kingdom far away, there lived a"
chunk_size = 3
model = Mistral7Bv0.2Q4

version=154

inital_prompt="The algorithm processes data by first analyzing the input and then"
chunk_size=2
model = Llama4.1-8B-Q6
You will only need to remeber encoded_prompt which will have the data + version number encoded in it. So it should eventually be able to work like opening up .docx with MSWord. If it's a valid text create by the encode, it will open up the message, if it's invalid it will fail or show random characters.
I get that people's instincts are let me hide my seedphrase in there because it's the most obvious thing to hide but it's not really the correct fit (IMO). There's other opportunities that I see opening up after people think about this concept for a week...
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You will only need to remeber encoded_prompt which will have the data + version number encoded in it.
Are you sure will be enough? I feel another detail to remember is the model? Or any model can be used?
Why not seedphrase and what are the other opportunities you see at the horizon?
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100 sats \ 1 reply \ @anon 2 Sep
Scalable & Permissionless Bitcoin Identities https://spacesprotocol.org/
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Massive project! How did you come up with the idea? What was your initial need and motivations on building such solution?
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Nice write up! It's this, then, the first part of the saga? Have you already planned how to release the next parts of you'll do as you feel it?
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May not sound design-y but I've been pretty locked in for a few weeks on Lightning.Pub and ShockWallet distribution with regards to on-boarding new node-runners.
Trying to keep my giga-brain focused on one thing for an extended period with so many irons in the fire might be the biggest challenge, particularly where the chasm between being in the weeds on something for years and then putting yourself in the users shoes is so massive.
Last year before Nashville I threw together a bash script for Pub that got people set up in minutes. Response to this was great, I think for a few reasons:
  • It's fast, people like to try things but also don't want to sink a lot of time into trying things
  • It's easy but feels hackerish and cypherpunk... there's an element of ego to what people are willing try, a non-technical user watching a shell print so smoothly makes them feel elite, but if it looks too technical they'll be afraid to fail. A single line to paste with fun colors in the script seem to have made it approachable.
  • It's powerful, "the juice is worth the squeeze". The features of our stack are without rival, so incorporating things like the nprofile directly in the output expand peoples notions of what's possible and make them feel like insiders who are onto what's next.
  • It's cheap, Start9's/Umbrels get close on most of the above criteria but still leave a hole in that a casual can't just spin up a $3/month VPS if they fear commitment.
I spent most of last week on v.2 of this script to make it more robust and made it even faster:
Can now literally spin up, connect to, and invite friends/family to your own self-hosted Lightning system in under a minute... which also means sharing the overhead (actually earn revenue) unlike other express options that have typically taken the form of mobile nodes.
It's in a pretty good place, got it passing tests on all the major Linuxes and ARM chips over the weekend.
The latter part of the journey, like tweaking node settings and making a social-like node-profile is next up.
There's also the wallet component to this since this is where the management lives and also the ingress for your guest users. The way we've dealt with nostr in the wallet for connection hasn't really leveraged any of nostr's identity components and therefore have made it less intuitive than it should be. This also ties in with our Sanctum service for nostr that bridges the gap for people that are not inclined to deal with key management.
Coming from this as a tech native trying fit in the users shoes makes it feel much more like i'm designing a game or scenes in a movie. Changing any part of the story necessitates all the other plot points fit. This wall of text is just an excerpt, wallet side gets into things like the Lightning Address bridge, actual user-space to take advantage of Nostr offers.. and so much more...
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Does not need to be visual at all if that's what you mean. Design happen in different way ad provide different outcomes. I feel you are progressing really well, especially now that you are in the phase of receiving real feedback from users. Have you tried recruiting on ~lightning or other node-runners groups online? I know there are many on telegram too.
A single line to paste with fun colors in the script seem to have made it approachable.
That's the way. Are these changes already released?
Start9's/Umbrels get close on most of the above criteria
Do you mean we are going to see it soon dockerized for the respective app stores?
I really look forward to testing out all your products' suite, I'll need to dedicate some time to it. What's the best way to signup for testing?
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I post sporadically when we push something that curious folks already in the trenches might want to play with and get a temperature check. I've never recruited much to be respectful of peoples time and not burn leads since I usually have a good idea what we want to do next. I lean more Cathedral than Bazaar, time will tell if that was right to do or not.
Latest script hasn't been merged yet, hope to get in the flow again today/tomorrow and merge that. Wallet has a big change in the works too, so I'll only put out materials (video and write-up) once everything feels right end-to-end and I won't feel I'm wasting folks time.
There's a unique challenge with this kind of stack in that once somethings out there it's can ossify quickly in some ways, There's a body trail of good projects that have had development grind to a halt being mired in remedial tech support for a modest base at the expense of potential scale.
Start9's/Umbrels
Yes, this has been on the agenda forever but I think churn is finally slowing down enough that we're really pushing to get it out the door. There's ancillary services we need to add in to make it supportable and leave a good impression with newcomers, so we haven't wanted to open the flood gates with these just yet.
Everything is public on Github, but https://t.me/ShockBTC and https://x.com/ShockBTC are the closest things to an official channel. Of course any materials will be posted here on SN as well.
I do need help with comms, someone that can pull what's interesting out of my head on a regular basis and put it out there for consumption... it doesn't come naturally to me without prompting and even that yields these wall of text replies as opposed to more consumable updates.
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Sound's to me you really have a big great plan and I can understand it could be tricky to plan ahead and deliver, considering all the things that need to be orchestrated.
I mentioned nodes OS because simply they offer an app store, that is a good alternative to the big2 currently dominating the market. For example, Shockwallet could be easily listed in @franzap's zap.store, it will probably reach the audience you aim to help.
Comms are really important because it represents what you want others to know about the project(s). It definitely needs to be plan -strategically. Getting some support will free your mind from something that, as you said, is not in your nature.
Are you using any tool to organize all the projects and all the todos each one need? Sometime even a simple agenda or a whiteboard can help.
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17 sats \ 2 replies \ @ACYK 3 Sep
I would love to see more wallets adopt CLINK offers. The self hosted Alby wallet lets me share my node with family in a way that gives them each a unique lightning address that works in almost all lightning apps. The fact that all the addresses are @getalby.com lightning addresses is more centralized than I’d prefer, and it seems CLINK would fix that. However, at this point in the adoption cycle it makes sense to keep using Alby Hub for the more widely accepted lightning address and NWC support. I’ll keep checking in from time to time though and hope for more CLINK adoption. Keep up the awesome work.
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Thanks!
fwiw our Lightning Addresses are still LNURL compatible and should work with anything, there's a fallback via a bridge, you just lose the trustless-ness so it's the same as Alby who provides a bridge.
Might look at a NWC wrapper for CLINK debits to get things rolling there
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17 sats \ 0 replies \ @ACYK 3 Sep
I looked into the bridge but didn’t want to deal with configuring a reverse proxy. Would be great for everything to just work over nostr. I guess you’re saying use the bridge you’re already hosting, which as you pointed out isn’t any different than the trusted getalby addresses. The NWC credentials are nice for the family and friends to be able to plug into stacker news and other nostr apps for the funding source. A CLINK wrapper for that would be nice.
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Mostly still dealing with stuff I mentioned in the previous edition: #1088119
And battling fatigue / lack of motivation in the face of uncertainty in terms of how much any of this work actually means to the world. In any case, slow progress is better than no progress and I have done some incremental headway on most of those tasks.
Some additional, potentially noteworthy things, especially from a creative perspective: A short meditation on giving up hope (and what to replace that with): #1088119 2 additional nostr vlog episodes: episode 2, episode 3 Participated in a local sports event (and it went well): #1202370 Won 5000 CC's for a meme: #1193544
I also still keep myself busy (or perhaps distract myself?) with a bunch of podcasts, lectures, books & audiobooks. Finished "The 33 Strategies of War" by Robert Greene recently (was good, but I liked "Mastery" better), almost done reading "The Saviors of God" by Nikos Kazantzakis for the third time (all during this year!), a little bit of The Clear Word Bible every now and then, started Jordan Peterson's '96 Maps of Meaning lectures in Harvard, started The Red Book by C. G. Jung audio version on Spotify...
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It's a big list, take your time. Feels like you are feeding your imagination and creativity with podcasts, books, etc. Jung's red book was pretty illuminating for me when I read it. You're missing out on a lot of great illustrations he made himself with the audiobook.
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Yeah I'm definitely feeling the FOMO regarding the illustrations!
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