erlend

silverpill, 2 months ago to random

Decentralized identifiers (DIDs) can be divided into 3 categories, depending on where the authority resides:

• Secret key (did:key, did:pkh).
• Server (did:web).
• Blockchain (hundreds of them).

With a #DID derived from a secret key you can truly own your identity. Unfortunately, key rotation is not supported, and if you lose your key, you lose everything. This can be partially mitigated with distributed key generation techniques that make key recovery possible if only M of N shards are available, but they are complicated.

Servers can rotate keys, but they can also suddenly disappear, and again you lose everything.

Blockchain-based systems support key rotation and don't have a single point of failure (if done right). Sometimes they are called "servers with superpowers". However, popular ones are not suitable for the job because writing to them is very expensive and their clients need powerful computing devices and a lot of storage.

Is there a way around that? Yes. Blockchains can be very lightweight and they don't actually need a cryptocurrency, miners or stakers in order to work. There is a simple consensus algorithm known as Proof of authority, and one of the Fediverse competitors, Bluesky, seems to be planning to build such system:

https://github.com/did-method-plc/did-method-plc

>We are actively hoping to replace it with or evolve it into something less centralized - likely a permissioned DID consortium.

They are afraid to say the B-word, but "permissioned consortium" is exactly what it is. Of course, their identity #blockchain doesn't have to be the only one in existence. I think in the future we might see quite a lot of "identity cooperatives" of different shapes and sizes. Perhaps even a universal client, curl for identity, can be developed.

kissane, 2 months ago to random

Ozone, Bluesky's stackable moderation system is up and open-sourced.

https://bsky.social/about/blog/03-12-2024-stackable-moderation

I think it's interesting in obvious ways and risky in some less obvious ones (that have less to do with "O NO BILLIONAIRES" or "O NO LIBERTARIANS" and more to do with placelessness), but we'll see.

I hope good things emerge from/grow on top of this framework.

[I recognize that mentioning this is widely considered to be an invitation to explain capital like I am a tiny baby. You could also not.]

JustinH, 2 months ago to random

"I ain't lookin' down, but I see no one above me."

https://www.staygrounded.online/p/tiktok-is-just-tv-again

erlend, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to SmallWeb

Is there any TLD registry (not registrar) and accompanying domain name extension (.com, .net and so on) out there that’s owned by a small/independent, i.e. trustworthy business? Feels like they’re all owned by some creepy mega-corp.

.blog owned by Automattic is a decent example, though they’re not exactly very indie anymore, and have come under strong scrutiny of late. I wonder if there are even better alternatives.

UPDATE: .tel is a pretty interesting one.

#lazyweb #SmallWeb #askfedi

erlend, 2 months ago to ai

https://blog.erlend.sh/credit-your-genai

It's bad enough that GenAI mashes together thousands of similar drawings and repaints them at your behest with the signatures of its contributors scrubbed out, their record of work erased. Don't add insult to injury by omitting any credit of the machine assistance whatsoever, as if this work was painted by your hand.

Whenever I see an uncredited image online, I assume foul play. Every uncredited image is non-consensual exploitation of art.

#ai #genai #art

smallcircles, 2 months ago (edited 2 months ago) to fediverse

#Fediverse attn..

Give @julian #Github comment some good reactions to show the folks of the #W3C Federated Identity CG that there's more than #BigTech #identity providers to take into account..

https://github.com/fedidcg/FedCM/issues/240#issuecomment-1968574265

🚀 Boosts appreciated.

erlend, 3 months ago to philosophy

Every sufficiently complex entity will develop an aversion to its own finitude.

#philosophy #socialmedia

erlend, 3 months ago to random

Have you noticed, practically the only thing VCs know how to talk about is scale?

They have very little to say about going from one person to two, from two to three and so on. Or any of the other "first spark" and "earliest days" stuff really. Not in any real depth.

All they know is how to scale up with growth, because that's all dumb money knows how to do.

Any VCs that haven't made scale their sole brand can rest assured that you're not the type of #VC I'm talking about here.

#knowledge

shlee, 3 months ago to random

Regarding the current spam.. the fediverse is built in a very strange way.

10,000+ mastodon servers (excluding the thousands of other services) all managed to different levels of complexity, by different people, running slightly different versions (or even different forks).

There is pretty much no coordination from a technical level to share threats or risks outside of an ever more cursed series of groupchats and discord servers..... infact mastodon doesn't even have a concept of "server to server" communication (subject to change very recently) so admins couldn't forward spammers emails/ip addresses or any kind of metadata incase of attackers using any kind of shared infra.

There is nothing not even a captcha (until recently) stopping people from spending an hour writing a few scripts to create millions of fake accounts and spamming the ecosystem.. or creating a DOS bot to upload large files on bulk and replicate those across from 10,000 S3 mirrors wasting bandwidth and money.

You could easily bankrupt most of the fediverse in a week because nobody watches their data usage and lots of people pay for bandwidth.

Now.. lots of people have been talking about making things to improve this ecosystem, but nobody has the cash to fix this problem "correctly"... but the good news? There are a few projects on the go to try to fix this.

2024 is the year of the fediverse reinventing the wheel when we're been dealing with spam on the internet since it started... but I do love a new wheel

erlend, 3 months ago to conservative

anyone who considers themself an “effective accelerationist” is by definition a deeply unsophisticated ecologist, to a point of willful ignorance.

#effectiveaccelerationism #ecology #philosophy

erlend, 3 months ago to rust

imo #rustlang lends itself exceptionally well to open co-development with a low threshold to contribution, because (1) any code that runs is usually Good Enough and (2) code can easily be refactored as needed.

snarfed.org, 3 months ago to random

Morning all. Quite a day yesterday, and today so far. I’m obviously taking a beating from everyone who thinks the Bluesky bridge should be opt in. OK.

I want to run one idea by you all. The way the bridge is currently designed, no fediverse profiles or other content are proactively bridged into Bluesky. If someone on Bluesky wants to see or follow someone on the fediverse, they have to manually request it on the bridge. That fediverse user’s posts are then only bridged going forward, and only if someone follows them.

What if, the first time someone on Bluesky requests to follow someone on the fediverse via the bridge, the fediverse user gets prompted, “X from Bluesky wants to follow you. Are you ok with connecting with Bluesky?”, maybe via DM. I assume that would still be considered opt in?

Realistically, most people in the fediverse will never hear about the bridge. Traditional opt in and opt out both generally expect people to proactively find a setting or take some action, often one that only a tiny fraction of people ever learn about. I don’t really care how many people discover or use the bridge, but this kind of just-in-time prompt, only shown when someone wants to follow or interact with them, feels like a useful improvement in that it puts the decision in front of them directly.

Thanks to @Kio for the idea. It seems promising; I’m now planning to try it out well before launch. Let me know if you don’t like it.

molly0xfff, 3 months ago to random

fuck i love blogs. if i had nothing but time i would just read blogs all day.

erlend, 3 months ago to rust

https://blog.commune.sh/what-is-commune/

Commune has been in sporadic development for three years. A lot has happened in this time, so for old-timers and newcomers alike, here's a comprehensive summary of our past, present and future as we head into 2024 with renewed focus and conviction.

We're also soft-announcing our newest initiative on the path to production readiness: Our backend is being rewritten in #rust 🦀

https://github.com/commune-os/commune-rs

Foundation set by @estebanborai

#OpenSource #CommuneApp #matrix

erlend, 3 months ago to random

@opencollective any chance OpenCollective might start offering a lightweight equivalent of Stripe Atlas? Aimed strictly at commons-aligned, public benefit corporations and the like.

I find myself wanting a super simple way to get small OSS startups and coops off the ground with a paid product.

I collaborate with some people who are unbanked. I really want to them to have all initial profits of whichever product we sell together, but without a bank that’s not an option.

(1/2)

erlend, 3 months ago to random

From @pluralistic in https://pluralistic.net/2024/02/08/permanent-overlords/

The authors [of the paper "Coopting Disruption: Has Big Tech disrupted disruption itself?”] propose a four-step program for the would-be Tech Baron hoping to defend their turf from disruption.

1️⃣ First, gather information about startups that might develop disruptive technologies and steer them away from competing with you, by investing in them or partnering with them.