Why ActivityPub is the future • Hacker News Board

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#51

Post by archgoon » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 4:58 PM UTC

skywhopper wrote: post #43

PKop wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking that federation still leaves unsolved the issue of knowing the single source of truth for identities, and when instances go down, you can't reference anything to know who/where people are. Couldn't Keybase.io solve this? It could track your identities on these servers, and it would exist outside of any instances or federation, but be the source of identity that would go along with any federated instanc…

What will we do when keybase goes away?

Isn't keybase.io just a way of storing public keys? If they go down, and you still have the private key, you can just sign a message saying "No, really! It's me!"

The issue with distributed systems that rely on public keys is the lack of options to turn to if the keys are lost or compromised. And yes, people will lose keys. Systems that rely on keys for identity need to figure out what options people have at that point to re-establish their identity.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#52

Post by _8j50 » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:00 PM UTC

Let me just say this - both mastodon and activitypub are terrible names. I say that as a consumer not as an expert on anything. It's not a dealbreaker for me but platform popularity by the masses depends on color schemes and catchy names. I feel the same way about duckduckgo.

Great products though.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#53

Post by skybrian » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:02 PM UTC

Okay, it sounds plausible that it could be a good thing. But it seems that everything good on the Internet eventually gets weaponized by the bad guys, and these days it seems to happen faster than ever.

So maybe we should talk about the downsides of ActivityPub?

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#54

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:09 PM UTC

skybrian wrote: post #53

Okay, it sounds plausible that it could be a good thing. But it seems that everything good on the Internet eventually gets weaponized by the bad guys, and these days it seems to happen faster than ever. So maybe we should talk about the downsides of ActivityPub?

[deleted]

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#55

Post by daveid » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:18 PM UTC

_8j50 wrote: post #52

Let me just say this - both mastodon and activitypub are terrible names. I say that as a consumer not as an expert on anything. It's not a dealbreaker for me but platform popularity by the masses depends on color schemes and catchy names. I feel the same way about duckduckgo. Great products though.

What would be a better name?

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#56

Post by jesse_m » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:21 PM UTC

rainbowmverse wrote: post #21

jesse_m wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you subscribe from mastodon? I see the video.blender.org is their instance right?

Put @blender@video.blender.org in the search box.

Ahh thank you. I had the format wrong there

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#57

Post by jesse_m » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:22 PM UTC

donpdonp wrote: post #49

rainbowmverse wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Put @blender@video.blender.org in the search box.

The search box can be easy to miss - its the text field above the new-toot-box and below the menu bar in the left-most column.

Thanks I was using Tusky but had the wrong format for the name

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#58

Post by rainbowmverse » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

marknadal wrote: post #40

Mastodon is a great Federated protocol, but the problem with /any/ federated protocol is that it is federated. I've commented about this before, email is federated, and we saw what happened there: Everybody moved to gmail. Federation will lead to all the same systemic issues. A better approach is to use P2P/decentralization, rather than a hosted instance owning your account/identity, you own your account/identity and…

Nothing about GMail's dominance is related to centralization.

Everyone moved to Google because they offered (I think) a full gigabyte instead of the mere megabytes that was standard at the time. And it also had a really slick web interface that didn't require setting up software. People could finally use it for work, or to send pictures without managing space or an email client. "Never delete anything" was the big selling point.

Every mail host has a web interface now and provides lots of space, but it took too long. Inertia keeps GMail dominant, not centralization.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#59

Post by mnkmnk » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:28 PM UTC

fiatjaf wrote: post #37

Who's going to host thousands of petabytes of videos on behalf of others if not YouTube or a similar service?

I would totally host it if I got some money out of it. Maybe get paid for ads served through my computer.

Re: Why ActivityPub is the future

#60

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet » Wed, Jun 27, 2018, 5:37 PM UTC

stcredzero wrote: post #50

marknadal wrote: post #40

Mastodon is a great Federated protocol, but the problem with /any/ federated protocol is that it is federated. I've commented about this before, email is federated, and we saw what happened there: Everybody moved to gmail. Federation will lead to all the same systemic issues. A better approach is to use P2P/decentralization, rather than a hosted instance owning your account/identity, you own your account/identity and…

I've commented about this before, email is federated, and we saw what happened there: Everybody moved to gmail. Federation will lead to all the same systemic issues. What are the systemic issues? Why did everybody move to gmail? I liked the ability to just let my email collect and search it. I liked the spam filtering. That's why everybody moved to gmail. The systemic problems I saw with email had to do with server s…

Everyone moved to gmail because it was free with a really high storage limit, which was unheard of at the time, and your email address would stay the same when your ISP changed. Hotmail was the hotness before that for pretty much the same reasons, minus the high storage limit.