I like to sort by new, and I occasionally run across these posts. There’s usually no interaction going on, just this … What the heck are these? Can I stop seeing them somehow?
Message received
@cmeu@lemmy.world @nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
Others already replied what it is: something to do with blockchain (not Bitcoin, but a blockchain nevertheless).
Just to add something, as someone who also uses to use Nostr alongside the Fediverse: this “fyld” (likely an automated account) also has a Nostr nprofile, posting the exact same thing over there, and they likely do a similar thing across other social protocols and platforms, such as ATmosphere (Bluesky), although I don’t have a Bluesky account anymore to confirm this.
At first glance, it does look like spam, and I muted them both there (didn’t mute here because it only appears for lemmy.world; lemmy.ml doesn’t seem to federate with that community), due to the annoying frequency of posting…
…but for those who are looking for random numbers whenever there are no TTRPG dices (or, in my case, Ouija boards) nearby, I’d say it’s quite a source of randomness with all the fancy colors and hex nibbles. Definitely not a cryptographically safe one (please do not derive a password from that), but for creative purposes, it certainly suffices 😆
It’s a fun post full of colorful characters.
It seems to be from some email verification blockchain.
https://fyld.com/proofchain?offset=0
I guess the community is just a mirror of whatever hashes are in that chain.
It’s a hash of some sort. No idea what it’s for.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_hash_functions
You have a link to one?
Every single post in that community seems to be like that.
Seems like it might be a bot acct just following… well, whatever script that might be for.
EDIT: You could just block the community if those posts start to annoy you.
The numbers seem to correlate to the hex color of the backgrounds of the middle numbers. Perhaps a pallet generator of some kind?
Wow, nice catch on the hex codes!
from fyld.com:
Instant Email Timestamping. For Free.
Simply CC or BCC our email address, FYLD@FYLD.com, and your emails are securely hashed, timestamped, and published on the Proofchain® for irrefutable proof.
Basically a way to put your email on a blockchain with a hash. Not sure why they’re publishing all of those on that community, but whatever.
I’m so confused on what the point of such a hash would be. If the time that an email was sent was so important, would existing DKIM timestamps also work? Is this basically the digital equivalent of including today’s newspaper in a ransom note?
Not to say that DKIM as-used is perfect.
It’s not even accurate. The received timestamp is when they received it, not when you sent it. And email has a 3-day SLA.
Botnet command and control?
Maybe… 🤷♂️
