FoxQuirk 🦊 @quirk@computerfairi.es

Old blogpost bamp:

#BlueSky is cosplaying decentralization
https://rys.io/en/167.html

> BlueSky’s decentralization is a similar kind as with cryptocurrencies: sure, you can run your own node, but that does not give you basically any meaningful agency in the system.

> “Neutrality” and “speech” and “voice” and “protection from bans” is mentioned right there, front and center, in BlueSky’s overview and FAQ. At the same time moderation and anti-harassment features are, at best, an afterthought.

the 16 genders

#UIGore courtesy of https://tdeecalculator.org/

ok i am still extremely bad at playing the keyboard but with something like two hours of practice i did eventually manage to play the first twelve bars of that song you were hoping for without any wrong notes

girls open mastodon only to boost everything they see, then close it

a lot of people are trying to tell me that every reply I make is put on the Home timeline of every person who follows, but that seems obviously untrue (just from what I observe from the posts I see on my Home timeline, I only see replies if they're between 2 people who I follow). But I can't find that behaviour documented anywhere and I'm confused about some of the details.

(3/?)

this is only indirectly related, but the general sentiment “programmers!” reminded me of this, which I drew ten years ago

why is it called godot with C# support and not godotnet

It me

The three million toothbrush botnet story isn’t true.

is there a word like "acquaintance" but for being a fan

like I recognize that a person exists and makes good media but I also don't follow them

retro web revival is going to become such a niche that once people start funding it we'll see a renaissance of the dot com bubble

Its this part for me that tells the whole story: #atproto was designed for a new kind of advertising market, and when their VC money and puttering domain registration revenue streams dry up, control over the main firehose relay is a big gaping profit vector waiting to be capitalized on.

Compare figure 3 here in the #atproto / #bluesky paper
https://bsky.social/about/bluesky-and-the-at-protocol-usable-decentralized-social-media-martin-kleppmann.pdf
To the diagram here:
https://bsky.social/about/blog/5-5-2023-federation-architecture

The paper figure is a lot cuter, but by linearizing it and presenting it as two parallel tracks they have obscured the most salient feature of the network: the big relay in the middle. Beyond "centralization bad," that pins down most of the undesirable and dangerous features of the protocol, and makes it seem like theres a lot more choice than there is.

Since the design purposefully hides the architecture: you dont know where your feed generators are drawing from, or those used by your friends. So you cant know what the effect of choosing a different relay would be, aka the main relay is always indispensable. Importantly the relays subscribe to you, you dont push to the relay, and since you arent really supposed to operate your own data store, you can be dropped from the network without knowing - the relay serves as an unaccountable point of moderation.

three million wi-fi java toothbrushes is such an absurd example that either the poor swiss journalist misunderstood or the swiss it expert was bullshitting

Three Million Toothbrushes Run Java-Based Malware

https://www.tomshardware.com/networking/three-million-malware-infected-smart-toothbrushes-used-in-swiss-ddos-attacks-botnet-causes-millions-of-euros-in-damages