vvpan

I was not trying to compare and contrast, that leads to whataboutism. Separate issues.

I know, I know, this is not the platform. But however I dislike the war (which sounds across-the-board unpopular except with Republican senators) having love for a regime that massacres protestors by the thousands is cruel and perverse.

I just came into Mac world for work and struggle to understand the choices Apple makes:

- Sharp edges eat into my forearms.

- Glossy screen makes it hard to see when it's light out.

- The keys have a real hard stop when you press on them which tires out my hands.

- An arrogant desire to obsolete ports.

I don't understand the appeal of the machine, it feels like style over function everywhere.

"Extreme leftist ideology", I actually wish they had that, sadly pronouns have little to do with economic inequality and faulty markets.

Why does that trigger a red alert?

From "Loving-Kindness (Metta) Sutta" of the Buddhist Pali Canon:

In gladness and in safety,

May all beings be at ease.

Whatever living beings there may be;

Whether they are weak or strong, omitting none,

The great or the mighty, medium, short or small,

The seen and the unseen,

Those living near and far away,

Those born and to-be-born —

May all beings be at ease!

I do not understand what it is about Cloudflare. Especially for a blog post - won't pretty much anything do?

No reactions beside: monopolies are bad for innovation and why we cannot have nice things. You might hear some people say "but these big companies innovate". They were mostly done innovating two decades ago, now they just snuff out innovation and acquisition is one of their main tools.

Case in point! This is an often mentioned statement on which the argument that "atproto is no decentralized" largely hinges. There are honest atproto digs out there but that is not one.

I'll post this as a top level comment, because I think it is crucial: A few people are saying that it is expensive to run a relay but others have done it for as low as $34/month [1]. So unless somebody presents other proof that it is expensive I would say that those posters are either wrong and trying to mislead us on purpose.

Edit: actually the article links to somebody doing it for $18/month.

[1] https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l

Everybody is saying that but that but here is Bryan Newbold running one on $34/month: https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l

The "big" central relay servers are not big at all and are actually quiet cheap: https://whtwnd.com/bnewbold.net/3lo7a2a4qxg2l

Probably? How do you deploy?

"Department of War" - I suppose one could give them credit for being honest but what bastards...

Fastmail user for a decade. Does the job.

What ever happened to that?

> At every layer, the answer is "anyone can run their own." At every layer, almost nobody does.

But people do and it is reportedly fairly easy so the majority of people are on Bluesky's layers while all is well. But also I don't understand why any of this is a reason to be "wary", it's a great place to be with some unique technical properties - it is way more "open" than any other platform of similar scale.

Atproto identity is going in the right direction but I hope they go in that direction harder. For example plc.directory (maps DID to public keys I think?) is heavily centralizing force.

The underlying problem to both protocols and non-protocols is identity. Gmail works because Google owns the identity and acts effectively as a proof of humanity.

To go on a tangent - I think that more people having personal public key pairs (via crypto) than ever is actually a positive direction. Atprotocol is another big player in identity at the moment, just as long as "can't be evil" mechanisms are kept alive and have good UX.

In my opinion decentralization and protocols is really the final frontier in software. Sure, we've got AI, but from what I've seen so far it does not alter the scales of power towards individuals. Protocols do. Everything else feels like noise or thinly veiled monopolization.

Edit: actually thinking about it - at the bottom of much of it is identity. We need new identity solutions for the protocols.

My father worked on PHOENIX for over a decade and I got to watch all the equipment being assembled as a teen, unforgettable to have spent time so close to "big science". During budget cuts Jim Simons paid to keep the accelerator running.

So there is a chance the situation is improving you think? I sure hope so.

Stablecoins work quiet fine as exchange medium for millions of people around the world, including myself, so they are different from vouchers and ramen.

Which is largely why presidencies do not mess with the order they inherit too much (subjective statement I know). Most institutions and projects are not stressed and the government branches just keep doing what they always did. The current administration is an outlier, but we all know that.

You are a genius.

It is so easy and cheap to run your own aggregator that people run their own. If Bluesky goes down it'd be trivial to use something else.

You and this person should hang out https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46748560

I disagree. I think ATProtocol found a pretty good balance for de/centralization. Yes most people are on Bluesky PDSs but the data is easy to backup and move and Mastodon does not improve on that afaik.

That is very cool. How do you aggregate the data, listening to public bluesky firehose?

And a favorite Phrack article on the same topic - Internet Voting: A Requiem for the Dream [1]

[1] https://phrack.org/issues/69/11