Launching Kiwi News and published a new post!
Hi there,
I have two announcements here. For my readers first of all, here's a sneak preview of a blog post I just released:
Traveled to Milan, and now ChatGPT isn't working
If you're expecting the regularly scheduled program, this post isn't that. Instead, it's primarily a message to those people in Brussels that create the EU regulation. As a citizen, I feel like now is an appropriate moment to speak up and state my opinion on something that has gone wrong here. Let's get straight to it.
I'm currently visiting Milan, and right after breakfast, I went back to my hotel room to get a little work done. I opened my editor and got to it. Until, well..., when I tried to open ChatGPT, and was greeted by a message in Italian (and English further down):
Dear ChatGPT user,
We regret to inform you that we have disabled ChatGPT for users in Italy at the request of the Italian Garante.
...
continue reading on my site...
and then just one more thing...
I'm proud to annouce a project that I've been launching over the last few months! It's called 🥝 Kiwi News, and it's a decentralized Hacker News clone!
I pitched this in New York about a month ago, and a 4-minute recording is available on YouTube.
Now, the reason for self-funding this thing and bringing it all into production is explained in that pitch. But it is because I'm not a big fan of HN moderation policies and the community's vibe anymore (I blogged about this time ago). I now also feel like there's a chance here of creating something new and meaningful.
Right now, we're trying two growth strategies. We have a daily curated feed with someone from the community picking stories. And we also have an open feed, just as Hacker News has it.
-> Open feed
Kiwi News as a network is already fully decentralized in theory. I've spent quite some time figuring out how to implement set reconciliation using Patricia Merkle Tries and how to deal with js-libp2p. So I'm very proud to say that you can totally run a Kiwi News node yourself TODAY and replicate the entire database to, e.g., host your own front end. It's really a game changer from the perspective of what I've released in the past. I think this one is genuinely decentralized and p2p.
Additionally, the bootstrapping of the network also means that posting to Kiwi News is free of gas fees. You'll have to sign an EIP712 payload yes, but then the nodes will ingest your message and distribute it gratis.
Still, I do wanna break even with the project, and additionally, I want to prevent spammers from doing their thing. So to actually submit or upvote content, it's simple, you'll need to mint a Kiwi News NFT that unlocks your posting rights.
Now, I hope some of you find this compelling, and if so, and you've been an avid Hacker News user, please reach out to me, and let's discuss how I can make Kiwi News even better!
I'm actively developing this daily and I'd love to have it succeed. It's been so fun for now!
Best, Tim