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The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

urbanists.social

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Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#481

Post by davidgerard »

Ferkv wrote: post #462
lucideer wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluesky is a Twitter-like platform like Mastodon, so the comparison makes sense if you look at the primary implementations. SSB is also decentralised, while ATProto is federated - like ActivityPub.

User Identity in ATProto is decentralized, it's meant to use W3C DIDs. That's actually one of the things that bugs me about ActivityPub... unless I'm running my own one-single-user instance I won't have control over my own identity. It's also very weird how even on a supposedly "federated" system the only way to ensure you can access content from all instances (even if they differ in philosophy or are on opposite sid…

> User Identity in ATProto is decentralized, it's meant to use W3C DIDs.

The W3C spec leaves all the hard parts to vendors, which is why the only DID implementation up to now has been Microsoft's, which relies on an AD server in Azure. Much decentralise.

Bluesky's isn't that, but a hash of some sort, which is centrally decentralised ... on their servers? I think this is one of the bits of AT that isn't finished yet.

But "W3C DID" is not a usable spec in itself, it's a sketch at best.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#482

Post by davidgerard »

lucideer wrote: post #388
marumari wrote: post #378

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An unspecified "implementation detail" is essentially another way of saying that it doesn't work. I've ported my account on ActivityPub a couple time, and it's a horrendous experience -- not only do I lose all my posts and have to manually move a ton of bits, but the server you port from continues to believe you have an account and doesn't like to show you direct links on there anymore. The latter could probably be e…

100% agree with everything in your post. I don't see how it contradicts anything I've said though. > the former needs to be built into the spec or it will continue to be broken. Absolutely, but ActivityPub doesn't preclude that. There's no reason for that proposed feature to be incompatible with the spec., or to have to exist in an implementation that is incompatible with ActivityPub. Fwiw Mastodon, the most popular…

and I believe CalcKey? is adding account content migration, which is why Eugen is suddenly talking about account migration again.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#483

Post by davidgerard »

Arathorn wrote: post #285
panick21_ wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have not looked much at AT, but it seems it solves many of the same problems as Matrix. Instead of redoing all the Crypto and everything, why not build on martrix. There were other Twitter like things on Matrix before. As far as I'm aware its developed on Matrix and had some connection with it, so this isn't a case of not knowing about it so there is likely some engineering reasons why this was not done. Would be i…

AT proto has some significant similarities to Matrix: * Both are work by self-authenticating git-style replication of Merkle trees/DAGs * Both define strict data schemas for extensible sets of events (Matrix uses JSON schema - https://github.com/matrix-org/matrix-spec/tree/main/data/eve... and OpenAPI; AT uses Lexicons) * Both use HTTPS for client-server and server-server traffic by default. * Both are focused on dec…

> it's super depressing to see folks from ActivityPub and Nostr throwing their toys in this manner

it's literally just one guy on a Mastodon somewhere

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#484

Post by davidgerard »

nologic01 wrote: post #160

> I was like "I'll just make a simple alternative to the BlueSky server in Elixir". But it CAN'T be a simple implementation like ActivityPub can be, because it is extraordinarily complex and requires you to make guarantees about your storage and how your application works. You might suspect that OP has a familiarity bias here but actually there is objective evidence that ActivityPub based implementations are (relativ…

there's AP and there's AP - it's a bit underspecified. Mastodon added a lot of stuff to make it much more usable as social media, and other implementations are increasingly converging on the Mastodon API, which isn't super simple, but also lets you talk to the Mastodon API.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#485

Post by godzillabrennus »

anentropic wrote: post #262
godzillabrennus wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you’re not implementing a cryptocurrency then how will you incentivize folks to host instances? What DID are you using? Is it unique to AT or something more widely available? Any tips for getting an invite to Bluesky for us nerds on here?

People do all sorts of things without cryptocurrency as an incentive They host Mastodon instances, contribute to OSS, edit Wikipedia etc etc

Mastodon is not very popular. Contributing to OSS and Wikipedia is a time investment and not a capital contribution.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#486

Post by gojomo »

account42 wrote: post #473
gojomo wrote: post #431

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a growing base of users who have reached the epiphany (by multiple paths) that both identities & content-addressing MUST be cryptographically-rooted, or else users' privacy & communications will remain at the mercy of feudal centralizers with endless strong incentives to work against their interests. For such users, any offering without these is a non-starter, dead-on-arrival. People with resistance to this e…

HTTP is fine for a lot of uses. So is MD5. Crytography and security in general are often cargo-culted without any consideration for the negative implications. > this cryptoepiphan Bro are you for real.

It was clear that MD5 didn't meet the goals it was designed for in 1994, when experts recommended it be phased out for its originally intended uses.

It's not fine here in 2023.

If you need a secure hash, it's been proven broken for 10 years now.

If you don't need a secure hash, others are far more performant.

Using it, or worse, advocating for its use, is a way to signal your thinking is years behind the leading edge, and also best practices, and even justifiable practices.

HTTP's simplicity could make it tolerable for some places where world-readability is a goal - but people, echoing your sentiments here, have said it was "fine" even in situations where it was putting people at risk.

Major browser makers recognize the risk, and are now subtly discouraging HTTP, and this discouragement will grow more intense over time.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#487

Post by jackvalentine »

account42 wrote: post #478
jackvalentine wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They might be searchable on the wider internet if you’re looking for info on them, but I can never remember them when I need them on the actual system.

Your launcher doesn't find them by description or substring?

Not reliably enough.

On my windows PC, I type ‘note’ and slam enter to open notepad a thousand times a day without a problem. On my KDE desktop ‘text’ seems to 50/50 bring up… whatever the text editor is called and 50/50 something else. Apparently “Kate” is what I’m after.

There is real value in naming things after what they do and it’s my sole gripe with KDE that they have stupid names.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#488

Post by sgtnoodle »

jackvalentine wrote: post #487
account42 wrote: post #478

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your launcher doesn't find them by description or substring?

Not reliably enough. On my windows PC, I type ‘note’ and slam enter to open notepad a thousand times a day without a problem. On my KDE desktop ‘text’ seems to 50/50 bring up… whatever the text editor is called and 50/50 something else. Apparently “Kate” is what I’m after. There is real value in naming things after what they do and it’s my sole gripe with KDE that they have stupid names.

On my cinnamon setup, typing "note" pulls up the settings panel for my installed basic text editor. :-|

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#489

Post by dtech »

frumiousirc wrote: post #477
dtech wrote: post #464

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's indeed few languages that can model all of JSON Schema in their type system. Typescript comes close. However, you can just use a subset as you said. I don't really understand why this is a problem. Unless you're using things like Haskell, Julia, or Shapeless Scala, you generally accept that not everything is modeled at the type level. I don't know the nuances of the C++ types you mentioned, but I have not enc…

Thanks for the comment. It helps me think how to clarify what I was trying to say. What I wanted to express is that using JSON Schema (or any such) for validation encounters a many-to-one mapping from multiple possible types across any/all given programming languages to a single JSON Schema form. That is, instances of multiple programming language types may be serialized to JSON such that their data may be validated…

Clear, yes, that is indeed a problem. I haven't personally encountered this to be a huge problem, but that might be ecosystem dependent.

Re: The AT protocol is the most obtuse crock of shit

#490

Post by lucideer »

Ferkv wrote: post #462
lucideer wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bluesky is a Twitter-like platform like Mastodon, so the comparison makes sense if you look at the primary implementations. SSB is also decentralised, while ATProto is federated - like ActivityPub.

User Identity in ATProto is decentralized, it's meant to use W3C DIDs. That's actually one of the things that bugs me about ActivityPub... unless I'm running my own one-single-user instance I won't have control over my own identity. It's also very weird how even on a supposedly "federated" system the only way to ensure you can access content from all instances (even if they differ in philosophy or are on opposite sid…

> User Identity in ATProto is decentralized

It is but that's largely conceptual so doesn't really mean anything in the context of the protocol. These are message exchange protocols so the defining element is whether the messaging is federated or decentralised.

Fwiw AP also supports DID I just haven't seen any implementations use it, since it strongly recommends other ID (a mistake imo).

> It's also very weird how...

What you're describing here is a cultural phenomenon, not a technological one, so isn't really relevant to the discussion: ActivityPub siloing isn't a feature of the protocol, it's an emergent feature of the ecosystem/communities.

It's also worth mentioning it isn't usually implemented as you describe, unless you're specifically concerned with maximising your own reach from a publishing perspective: most instances allow individual users to follow individual users on another "blocked" instance - its usually just promotion/sharing & discovery that are restricted.

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