In this issue:
- Nockchain Technical Updates
- The War for Free Speech Is Turning
- Anoma Compiling to Nock
- Depression-Era Texas Goes Hard
Starting this week, we'll begin to keep you more regularly posted on the state of the chain!
Nockchain Technical Updates
- Nockchain is in multi-node consensus testing. We are fixing bugs revealed by the testing.
- Unreliable network testing is up next, alongside transaction validation and propagation testing.
- Our wallet is being tested as part of transaction testing.
- We are making further improvements to the UX of Choo—our command-line Hoon build system—aiming for a reasonably performant version that enables shorter test/fix cycles prior to release.
The War for Free Speech Is Sloping to Texas
Preston Byrne says the war for free speech on the internet has crossed a critical threshold with two key events: Elon Musk's acquisition of Twitter and Mark Zuckerberg's recent announcement to abandon censorship at Meta. Zuckerberg is now firing 50,000 content moderators and moving operations to Texas.
In a previous letter, we called this the "Texan Slope." We observed that, throughout American history, there seems to be a kind of long-run gradient descent toward Texas as the basin of American freedom. See Sam Houston's Silent Slope to Texas.
Anoma Compiling to Nock
We're delighted to learn that the distributed OS project Anoma has become Nockpilled.
A new paper from Anoma, by Lukasz Czajka, presents Nock using mainstream programming language theory notations and terminology, making it more accessible as a compilation target for high-level functional languages. Read the paper here.
Depression-Era Texas Goes Hard
"Between 1939 and 1943, Russell Lee, Jack Delano, and Marion Post Wolcott took the following photographs for the Farm Security Administration... Texas." Via Lafayette Lee.
I love the quiet dignity in these images, and how the clothes look better-made than today despite the poverty.
