Bluesky – Authenticated Data EXperiment
github.com
github.com
Such a damned pity that so much zealous & righteous energy jn distributed & p2p is shunted into rejectionist, reactionary re-treading, that it rejects what is & expansion & enhancement & wanders off alone (into the far blue sky) to go try it's own hand at communing with god & finding a whole new approach. This is bluesky confirming that they too either dont see or dont care to work with the best most advanced prospects we have, that they d rather go back to 0 again. Disappointing, unsurprising, totslly in the mold of every hot taking reactionary would be do-it-all-over-again revolutionary, like like urbit.
I will try to see if there's anything here really novel & ennabling, but holy cow, http already does 92% of what's on the tin here, & we could turn it on for everything in months, with little challenge, if we cared to try.
> Such a damned pity that so much zealous & righteous energy ... shunted
You're projecting
> You're projecting
Cheap, mean, and vacuous. Trifecta of cruel callousness. What do you know? These are just words posted here but I see myself as trying very much to engage here, to work with what is about & layer enhancement. Sure Im zealous & rigtheous a bit too, but my value call: that too many have a refusenik tear it all down/reject everything/start again destructiveness? That that shunts real progress? That assessment, that hypothesis is not projection. If you want to make a case & not just throw bombs, I'd love the chance for self assessment, but this is just poison right now & low.
In particular, some weaknesses of ActivityPub come from its foundational assumptions of an HTTP-server-centric model. Might SXG solve a few of those but retain others? Why should server certs (that expire within 90 days, no less!) be the trust roots of a new system, rather than individual users' cryptographic identities?
By placing a stake-in-the-ground with one investigational prototype (ADX), there's a baseline for a motivated individual who really thinks SXG can do the same or more, on a ready-made base, to demonstrate that with code rather than just exasperated HN comments.
I get maybe not putting all your chips in SXG basket. I disagree with a bunch of the protest: this seems like a sensible, basic, obvious layered enhancement to the existing web. Safari & Mozia are (as is the mood today) being terrible shits as usual, the regressives.
Contrasting ADX versus SXG just feels so wild, because SXG is a small refinememt to a vast world spanning & complete ecosystem of technology that has already taken over the planet. It directly targets the one complaint you make: http-server centricity, & sets dynamite to that one old bad no-good base. And ADX is an standalone completely isolated alternate world, it's own reality. This tension, whether we need a baseline which is 100% new & novel & redefines the entire problem space on it's own terms, completely from scratch, or whether we can hack & improve & enhance what we have: I dont feel like there's any camp at all left to defend improvememt.
Ideally SXG would be used woth additional user-encryption. User subdomains, eith their own keys would be swell. Turning sites into sites of sites is what SXG really starts to permit. Layering in some .well-known to be more cryptographically portable with identities ks just another small enhancement, just more layering, albeit yet-more-idealism.
Tear it all down, start over... it's the mode. I agree, this debate needs more than HM comments. But this tension & conflict, this view of the world & how it evolves or revolts: it's been trying to make revutions & insist no bounds, nothing today can possibly be good enough for tomorrow. And two plus decades latter, it's made such tiny impact, is so niche.
I accept your snub, getting told im exasperated, but it's for a real reason, it's because these decades have failed to deliver & so few have willingly tried improving what is (Safari & Mozia being a quite vocal modern anchor keeling things in place, a modern astrpturfing shouting class against trying anything, especially). This effort does have the social capital to perhaps emerge & birth something new, but we could also just improve & greatly fix everything that ready is. With minor, layered, small, principled enhancements.
How does certificate transparency resolve a dependence on short-lived certificates that makes perfect sense for Google's applications, but not necessary others? Will these unspec'd additions like "additional user encryption", "user subdomains", etc be easy to define & standardize – even if they don't meet Google's very-specific motivations that this power things like AMP?
Iv'e only skimmed the ADX materials so far, but that's enough to see it's not a "standalone completely isolated alternate world" – reusing many standards deployed elsewhere (which another commenter has pointed out are often older than SXG), and devising conventions that even an SXG-centric solution would... still need to devise.