@robin@mastodon.social
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robin

@robin@mastodon.social

Governance & Standards at @protocollabs — Former NYT, W3C TAG, science.ai — Privacy, Web, Science, Politics, Philosophy. (he/him/Ishmael)

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robin, to random
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Hear me out: what if whoever baked the best bread got to run things?

robin,
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@benlikestocode Ben...

robin,
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@photovince You mean it would make for crusty leadership?

robin,
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@karlcow That's a plus!

hacdias, to random
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@robin is certainly on a streak with these incredibly interesting articles: https://berjon.com/ap-at/

Do read them!

robin,
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@hacdias Many thanks Henrique!

dietrich, to random
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I use the tabs2txt extension to export a text file listing the URLs in my (checks stats from my Tab Statistics extension)... 2617 tabs.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tabs2txt/

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-count-button/

robin,
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@lutindiscret @dietrich You store it in TAB_BANKRUPTCY_2023_v7_FINAL.txt.

robin,
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@dietrich I need this to work on mobile!

sil, to random
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“Asking people to approve access that they know they don't fully understand and that they couldn't monitor even if they did understand it does not empower them. On the contrary, it trains them to be despondent, helpless at the hands of the High Priesthood of Computer Whisperers. And our job as technologists building a better world is to eradicate the High Priesthood.”

100% agree with @robin. Anybody who disagrees with that view of our job should be viewed with suspicion.
https://berjon.com/web-tiles/

robin,
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@sil Sure! It's also just a primitive, so tricky to explain without the context; but I needed it so I can refer to it where I think it can be used.

robin,
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@michael_martinez @sil They can't download malicious code if they can't touch the network.

We can work a transition based on existing UAs, via a PDS. A lot of people are already using a PDS and don't know it.

robin,
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@stilescrisis @sil Except this isn't a framework, it's the web.

robin,
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@hmiron @sil I think we can get interesting effects just from that.

robin, to random
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Trust has been the defining constraint on the Web's evolution towards more powerful, more applicative capabilities. Could we get more power using a primitive that places more stringent constraints in what pages can do? (Next Web series #4)
https://berjon.com/web-tiles/

robin,
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@fabrice Agreed on all points! I think that we can transition with existing browsers (to some degree) using a PDS. I think that there's a business model, but I need to convince someone of that...

robin,
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@fabrice @asutherland @delta There's also the whole space of miniapps. They're apparently huge in China, and they use web stuff on the inside. https://www.w3.org/2021/miniapps/

robin,
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@fabrice Iiiiinteresting. Is that available somewhere? We were talking with @boris about changing the name but he sort of convinced me that it wouldn't do much. I started some early poking at ATProto on WNFS in https://github.com/darobin/polypod-wnfs but... things have been disruptive at work so not much time for interesting work.

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 So, I'm focused on making what's inside the perimeter usable, and that gives a lot of stuff to work with already. It's possible to build cool things without adding a PDS (and @fabricedesre has for instance), but the PDS as UA opens many more doors.

Falling back to policy isn't bad, but it's also possible to coordinate with people you trust for instance.

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 @fabricedesre A deployment from PDSs with browsers as sort of a dumb terminal seems like an easier gradual step. It still eventually needs policy, but no more than browsers do.

Have you read the Seefeld thing linked in there? He has some good ideas as well.

robin,
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@boris @fabrice Installing apps is certainly interesting, but I don't think that that is how you draw your initial batch of people. ("I can already do this on my phone.") One thing I like with ATProto is that you draw people in because they want to shitpost and then you turn around and say "oh, by the way, this can do a million other things too."

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 @fabricedesre I thought there might be some overlap (hence the question) but I didn't want to presume, big company and all :)

I think that you're expecting more exfiltration protection than I am interested in, perhaps because you're thinking about ads?

There is a class of things for which the data is mine and pretty much purely local, so we can decloud access while maintaining the benefits of a server-like thing. That's already a win.

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 @fabricedesre Then there is a class of thing for which the PDSs in my social circle can cooperate with mine to provide some shielding. That's another win. Or I can use my PDS (or those of my friends) as VPNs; other win.

This doesn't necessarily mean that Disney or NYT or whoever never finds out that I've accessed something. Maybe someday? I'm interested in incremental wins and paring down, not necessarily absolutes?

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 @fabricedesre Also, if you can observe my behaviour but you can't as readily use it for A/B testing or recommendations, I'm still gaining in user agency.

robin,
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@boris @fabrice Let's grab a whiteboard next week :)

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 @fabricedesre Ha, I appreciate that you are asking for MORE text after I've published 20k over a short period of time. I wholeheartedly agree, but I would prefer to do that as part of prototyping those examples because words only go so far. In turn, that will require other things to happen…

I don't at all disagree with your exfiltration concerns, I do think that we can make enough of a dent to matter even if it's imperfect.

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 @fabricedesre Notably, local communication is intent-mediated, ability to exfiltrate is largely limited to navigating out of a tile or similar openings (at least for now). It's possible to exfiltrate but that puts some limits and opportunities for gating.

I'm hesitant to go into further detail without prototyping more. The odds that tiles would replace ALL web content seem veeery low, so one tradeoff is to make them super strict and cover fewer cases vs the opposite.

robin,
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@Log3overLog2 @fabricedesre (And I didn't mean to imply that it's bad to focus on the ads case — that's obviously very important. I just think that there's a range of uses and ads are likely stricter.)

robin,
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@seeteegee Much agreed — I would just like to do that with code rather than words :)

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