ATProto for distributed system engineers • Hacker News Board

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#21

Post by str4d » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 10:11 AM UTC

Kudos wrote: post #12

apitman wrote: post #3

Has anyone played around with ATProto yet? ActivityPub is pretty easy to get started with, especially if you just ignore JSON-LD and parse what you see. I'm curious how ATProto compares.

I only know of this blog implementation https://github.com/whtwnd/whitewind-blog

For non-Bluesky apps built in ATProto, in addition to White Wind (blogging), there is also Smoke Signal (events, only Lexicons are open source currently AFAICT) [0], and Frontpage (link aggregation) [1].

[0]: https://github.com/SmokeSignal-Events/lexicon

[1]: https://github.com/likeandscribe/unravel/tree/main/packages/...

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#22

Post by sebstefan » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 10:19 AM UTC

So the user's repo is decentralized but the event-log services and view services are centrally managed by bluesky?

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#23

Post by brianolson » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 10:37 AM UTC

__loam wrote: post #6

apitman wrote: post #3

Has anyone played around with ATProto yet? ActivityPub is pretty easy to get started with, especially if you just ignore JSON-LD and parse what you see. I'm curious how ATProto compares.

There's a lot fewer resources for AT than ActivityPub. Last time I checked which was a few months ago, the official documentation for AT was pretty sparse if you're interested in building to a spec. You'll find a lot more in the ActivityPub specs, plus a lot of open implementations and helpful guides.

OP is a link to the atproto site because it got a major new revision within the last week

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#24

Post by brianolson » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 10:41 AM UTC

omnicarinha wrote: post #2

One thing I still didn't quite grasp with BlueSky yet is if it's a decentralized platform or not... ATProto seems technically capable of supporting decentralized platforms.

atproto PDSes are like blog servers with RSS (but better) and bsky.app is the prevailing RSS reader. It's an open protocol because anyone can host a source and anyone can run a different reader.

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#25

Post by oDot » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 11:15 AM UTC

It didn't sink in yet that the killer app for ATProto is not Twitter, but YouTube.

If anyone is interested in exploring this, atproto [does this fool ai bots?] weedonandscott [I hope it does] com

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#26

Post by danabramov » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 11:19 AM UTC

swyx wrote: post #13

always enjoy your writing, Dan. at:// seems like its close enough to DNS to warrant just using DNS. why not? (im sure theres a good reason so just asking)

Oh this is not mine actually — Paul wrote this one :)

atproto does use DNS under the hood for domain verification but atproto itself is a bit higher-level. It builds on top of DNS, HTTP, JSON, web sockets, and a few other specs.

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#27

Post by danabramov » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 11:44 AM UTC

apitman wrote: post #3

Has anyone played around with ATProto yet? ActivityPub is pretty easy to get started with, especially if you just ignore JSON-LD and parse what you see. I'm curious how ATProto compares.

We've just released a new short guide on creating a minimal app on atproto, together with a GitHub example project:

- https://atproto.com/guides/applications

- https://github.com/bluesky-social/statusphere-example-app

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#28

Post by danabramov » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 11:46 AM UTC

str4d wrote: post #21

Kudos wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only know of this blog implementation https://github.com/whtwnd/whitewind-blog

For non-Bluesky apps built in ATProto, in addition to White Wind (blogging), there is also Smoke Signal (events, only Lexicons are open source currently AFAICT) [0], and Frontpage (link aggregation) [1]. [0]: https://github.com/SmokeSignal-Events/lexicon [1]: https://github.com/likeandscribe/unravel/tree/main/packages/...

Also, our new little example app:

- https://atproto.com/guides/applications (guide)

- https://github.com/bluesky-social/statusphere-example-app (GitHub)

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#29

Post by GaryNumanVevo » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 11:52 AM UTC

omnicarinha wrote: post #2

One thing I still didn't quite grasp with BlueSky yet is if it's a decentralized platform or not... ATProto seems technically capable of supporting decentralized platforms.

BlueSky is just a reference implementation using AT Proto. They namespace anything bsky related in the lexicon as such.

Re: ATProto for distributed system engineers

#30

Post by GaryNumanVevo » Mon, Sep 09, 2024, 11:55 AM UTC

nunobrito wrote: post #18

wmf wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's pretty decentralized. You can run your own PDS, relay, and appview (some of these are more expensive than others). I'm not sure if you can configure the official clients to use an alternate server.

Decentralization on this social network context means to have users accessing data from other users even when other third-parties don't want you to. That platform is (today) a centralized walled garden. As others detailed, it is difficult for anyone to add new servers and even more difficult to convince the official client to support them. It is a complete contrast to NOSTR that has zero official servers and zero off…

There are already alternative clients that support custom AppViews and relays