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Introduction to AT Protocol

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Re: Introduction to AT Protocol

#71

Post by runako »

dokyun wrote: post #67
verdverm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a very opinionated piece that leads by conclusion rather than building up to it. The main part of ATProto that is centralized is the PLC and that will eventually be made (most likely) into a consortium. PDS hosting is debatable That being said, it should be possible to run completely independent atproto networks today. We have several dev infra setups for doing it in the ecosystem

> it should be possible to run completely independent atproto networks today But does anyone do it? It doesn't really matter if it's /theoretically possible/ if no one actually does it. Running an ActivityPub server is piss easy, anyone can do it on a $5 VPS or in their basement, and that's one of its big strengths.

I could be mistaken, but I believe BlackSky is pretty close today.

Re: Introduction to AT Protocol

#72

Post by nulfrost »

dokyun wrote: post #67
verdverm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a very opinionated piece that leads by conclusion rather than building up to it. The main part of ATProto that is centralized is the PLC and that will eventually be made (most likely) into a consortium. PDS hosting is debatable That being said, it should be possible to run completely independent atproto networks today. We have several dev infra setups for doing it in the ecosystem

> it should be possible to run completely independent atproto networks today But does anyone do it? It doesn't really matter if it's /theoretically possible/ if no one actually does it. Running an ActivityPub server is piss easy, anyone can do it on a $5 VPS or in their basement, and that's one of its big strengths.

> Running an ActivityPub server is piss easy, anyone can do it on a $5 VPS or in their basement, and that's one of its big strengths.

same statement can be applied to running a bluesky PDS. Here are the server recs: https://github.com/bluesky-social/pds?tab=readme-ov-file#sel...

Re: Introduction to AT Protocol

#73

Post by ethan_smith »

tetrisgm wrote: post #4

Been pondering for my team to use it for our product’s timeline. I don’t particularly want our user base to be Bluesky, but it’d be good to have support for the protocol, and control over the system. Have there been any products go embraced this? Or is it like ActivityPub where basically the whole thing is Mastodon.

Beyond Bluesky, there's a growing ecosystem including Pebble (a self-hosted PDS), Skychat (messaging), Skeet (app framework), Graysky (mobile client), and several specialized feeds/algorithms - unlike ActivityPub, ATProto's architecture allows for more diverse application types while maintaining interoperability.

Re: Introduction to AT Protocol

#76

Post by snvzz »

riffic wrote: post #60
koolala wrote: post #3

Would be great to have a new modern alternative to the E-mail standard that is usable for both public and private messaging.

there shouldn't be a rush to replace the things that have stood the test of time. Lindy's law would suggest a protocol that's been around 40+ years is fundamental and won't be going anywhere anytime soon.

When it comes to SMTP for email, time has only served to highlight its inadequacy.

DMAC, DKIM, SPF, S/MIME, PGP are all ugly workarounds. The issues are fundamental.

Re: Introduction to AT Protocol

#77

Post by ianopolous »

verdverm wrote: post #42
jazzyjackson wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah thanks for the answer. What's the PKI story on bluesky, doesn't every identity have a corresponding public key? So if I had a list of people I wanted to a post to be visible to, couldn't I "just" encrypt it with a key that is decryptable by each of those individuals via their pubkey?

PKI distribution for encrypted data is an unsolved problem at the scale of many millions or billions of people. Signal caps at 10k iirc It's also generally not advisable to make your cypher text publicly visible That being said, I'm working with others in the ecosystem on "permissioned space", which are much closer to how people think about Google Docs and similar systems working. There is also another effort around…

Peergos has a private data solution that is compatible with (and predates) atproto (dag-cbor, portable data and accounts and social graph).

Re: Introduction to AT Protocol

#78

Post by poink »

dokyun wrote: post #67
verdverm wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a very opinionated piece that leads by conclusion rather than building up to it. The main part of ATProto that is centralized is the PLC and that will eventually be made (most likely) into a consortium. PDS hosting is debatable That being said, it should be possible to run completely independent atproto networks today. We have several dev infra setups for doing it in the ecosystem

> it should be possible to run completely independent atproto networks today But does anyone do it? It doesn't really matter if it's /theoretically possible/ if no one actually does it. Running an ActivityPub server is piss easy, anyone can do it on a $5 VPS or in their basement, and that's one of its big strengths.

BlackSky seems to be run by a competent dev with a high enough profile that I see his posts regularly without following him directly

Based on his progress posts it seems that ATproto is intentionally moving in the right direction and BlackSky has progressed to the point he’s asking for volunteers to move off Bluesky and try out his implementations

Re: Introduction to AT Protocol

#80

Post by chrismorgan »

> unicode scalars, which most languages index strings in

Very few do. Of moderately popular languages, Python is the only one I can think of. Well, Python strings are actually sequences of code points rather than scalars, which is a huge mistake, but provided your strings came from valid Unicode that doesn’t matter.

Languages like Rust and Swift make it fairly easy to access your string by UTF-8 or by scalar.

Languages like Java and JavaScript index by UTF-16 code unit and make anything else at least moderately painful.

> This is somewhat of an unfortunate tech debt thing as I understand, and it was made this way mostly because of JavaScript, which doesn’t work with UTF-8 natively. But this means you need to be extra careful with the indexes in most languages.

I’m confused here. You established indexing is by UTF-8 code unit, then said it’s because of JavaScript which… doesn’t do UTF-8 so well? If it were indexed by UTF-16 code unit, I’d agree, that’s bad tech debt; but that’s not the case here.

Bluesky made the decision to go all in on UTF-8 here https://docs.bsky.app/docs/advanced-guides/post-richtext#tex...>—after all, the strings are being stored and transferred in UTF-8, and UTF-8 is increasingly the tool of choice, and UTF-16 is increasingly reviled, almost nothing new has chosen it for twenty years, and nothing major has chosen it for ten years, it’s all strictly legacy. Hugely popular legacy, sure, but legacy.

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