Well, I sort of agree, and I absolutely support the sentiment behind your post. But if we want to quibble, a man in some states can be charged with statutory rape for having consensual sex with a specific young woman, while a man in some other states state would not have broken the law by engaging in the same sexual relationship with the same young woman.
the fact someone even found it a good idea to react to your post in that way just made my eyes roll out of their sockets. Was guessing .social and indeed: it was a .social account. @spamless
@greenWhale @spamless So many men try to what if a statement about discrimination against women by giving an example they claim is a male equivalent but applies equally to men and women (like age of consent - a girl who's sleeping with a 15 yr old at 17 but turns 18 before the partner turns 16 can also go to jail in some states). The other day a man tried to compare being asked about alcohol consumption at doctor visits to women being asked about their last period.
Hot Take: Men At Work's "Who Can It Be Now?" must have been directly inspired by ABBA's "The Visitors". Lot's of rhetorical questions in that one, too!
One of Wall Street's sleaziest big banks, JPMorgan Chase, helped loot Malaysia's piggy bank "in one of the largest financial crimes of the century" (so far). As is so often the case, the crooks bought their way out of any real accountability.
I find your posts to be consistently informative and engaging. The breadth of information you share is truly impressive. As someone working in capital markets, I find this type of news particularly valuable.
Thank you again for your efforts, and I hope you continue to share your insights regularly.
am I way off or does it seem there are grounds to sue the feds? Noem in particular continues to repeat proven lies about him, e.g. "known ms-13 gang member." At least sue her trashy ass personally, if not DHS.
I hope so. A huge part of the problem is that this government does not believe undocumented immigrants have any right to due process. As a result, anybody's right to due process can be dismissed based on a predetermined profile. Any of us can be deported to El Salvador, Uganda, or elsewhere on a whim.
Care is required in assessing corporate announcements. They are always the most benign reading of an event, and absolve the board and executives from responsibility.
Corporations generate a laundry list of things they want to do, but delay them until there's a useful external event behind which to hide them.
Likewise, they prefer to delay events that are important - firing an incompetent executive, taking a hit to earnings - until they can blame them on an unrelated event.
I have a gut feeling it will take a long time for logistics and supply chains to reorganize after all this chaos. The last time we had a similar disruption was during COVID and the economy collapsed back then. It doesn't sound like the outcome of this operation will be positive to me.
Hear Me Out: Trump Supporters Are Victims of Narcissistic Abuse
Heโs a malignant narcissist and MAGA is his golden child
I grew up with a narcissist. Like many people who have endured this kind of โฆ
#wx #NHC #cyclones #hurricanes ZCZC MIATWOAT ALLTTAA00 KNHC DDHHMMTropical Weather OutlookNWS National Hurricane Center Miami FL800 PM EDT Sat Aug 23 2025For the North Atlantic...Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of America:Active Systems:The National Hurricane Center is issuing advisories on newlyformed Tropical Storm Fernand, located several hundred miles south-southeast of Bermuda.1. East of the Windward Islands (AL99):Showers and thunderstorms have increased and are beginning to show signs of organization in association with a tropical wave located about 500 miles east of the Windward Islands. This system could become a tropical depression during the next day or two while it moves quickly westw
"Students and faculty heading back to US colleges and universities from summer break are returning to bruised institutions reeling from the Trump administrationโs unprecedented campaign to bend higher education to its ideological will"
USA Today: Army base used for WWII Japanese internment now nation's largest ICE detention center
"...But stewards of Japanese American history, including the children and grandchildren of those who were held in detention, are criticizing the use of Fort Bliss and the plans to expand immigrant detention on American military bases...."
Provided to YouTube by VolcanoSame Mistake Twice ยท 311Evolverโ 2003 Volcano Entertainment III, L.L.C.Released on: 2003-07-22Associated Performer, Producer: 3...
My server is getting absolutely obliterated by AI scrapers today. Load is 140+ and I just manually banned 58,000 IP addresses. Top ten user agents: 8984 Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/121.0.0.
Interview with a Boomer CTO in 2023https://linkgraph.netAll lines soon printed on merch... https://posix.store/https://www.patreon.com/ProgrammersAreAlsoHuma...
Rightwing Evangalists have a different explanation: "the devil is tricking you to believe the scientists." See, it was all part of the plan, from the very beginning of time (which was about 6000 years ago).
We know that any potus deploying military willy nilly is illegal, but until the courts actually say so out loud, we are here in the practical reality of he is in fact doing things outside the law.
And whether or not those things can actually, operationally, happen as he intends I am not entirely convinced is clear, yet.
Heโs broken laws, but he also may be over reaching in practical senses too.
#EAS #WEA for Coconino, #AZ: National Weather Service: A FLASH #FLOOD WARNING is in effect for this area until 4:45 PM MST. This is a dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order. Source: NWS Flagstaff AZ ** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
#AZwx #EAS #WEA for #Coconino, #AZ: National Weather Service: A FLASH #FLOOD WARNING is in effect for this area until 4:45 PM MST. This is a dangerous and life-threatening situation. Do not attempt to travel unless you are fleeing an area subject to flooding or under an evacuation order. Source: NWS Flagstaff AZ ** DO NOT RELY ON THIS FEED FOR LIFE SAFETY, SEEK OUT OFFICIAL SOURCES ***
My mother is having a party right now. I tried the old โAttention, everybody, this is a new carpet, so please take off all of your clothesโ thing, but it didnโt work.
๐ Aid entering Gaza is far from sufficient, experts warn, as families struggle to feed their children. More on Reuters World News reuters.com/podcasts/pentagon-โฆ
Wall Street was laser-focused on the Federal Reserveโs monetary policy this past week, but minutes from the central bankโs last meeting revealed concern among
Out of respect for reality and our wellbeing, we probably need way less talk about what โDemocratsโ should do and way more talk about what โweโ can do. Weโre not going to look back and wish we complained about Democratic leadership more, especially when weโre clear enough to get why theyโre stunted.
So what should we do, Sir Posts-A-Lot? Good question! Pretty much anything that shows non-cooperation with the regime! A movement to build community around opposing ICE in your neighborhoods seems like one of the very best uses of time.
A step-by-step list for assessing your community's relationship with ICE and learning how to end it.Read the post that inspired this episode: https://degener...
Join us for the first One Million Rising coordinating call and training! Get oriented to making meaning of this moment and the role you can play in coordinat...
And I'm the world's biggest fan of Andrea Pitzer's podcast, which is all about how we survive this mess, with ballast and insights from the global history of concentration camps.
Unfortunately, Bluesky is unavailable in Mississippi right now, due to a new state law that requires age verification for all users. While intended for child safety, we think this law poses broader challenges & creates significant barriers that limit free speech & harm smaller platforms like ours.
Technically, you're probably also breaking laws in Afghanistan, Iran, North Korea and so on. The question is, do you care? I'm not a lawyer, so I can't answer that for you specifically, but 10.000+ fediverse operators across the world get to make that decision for themselves.
with respect, you are a CEO that operates a subsidiary organisation in the US, caring about laws in the country your organisation operates in seems like a pretty good idea to me
With respect, I'm not the CEO of the fediverse. My reach extends over mastodon.social only. And that is the point. There is no gatekeeper for the fediverse as a whole.
There is no gatekeeper for how you tap into the ATProto network as well. Here's a short list of just some of the ways Bsky PBC can't block a user's access today: bsky.app/profile/jackvalinsky.โฆ
And there's even more options than that out there.
A PDS is not the same as a GoToSocial or Mastodon server. The latter give you complete autonomy. You connect directly to whoever you want to follow or broadcast messages to. A PDS is only the data layer. It has to be indexed by a cooperating relay, and ingested by a cooperating app view, before you can actually reach anybody. Those are controlled by Bluesky PBC.
I have seen the link you sent. The only client on there that doesn't send me to bsky.app if I want to sign up is blacksky.community, though it requires an invite code.
Red Dwarf doesn't use Bsky if you're not on their PDSs as well. Blacksky is early and is already the biggest non-Bsky non-bot PDS hoster and has built the whole ATProto stack from scratch in Rust. And there's more. This goes way deeper than you think it does.
Red Dwarf doesn't have a sign up link and nothing loads on the site. But you're right, it is early. Everything is new, shiny, and full of venture-capital funded marketing right now. We'll see how all of this architecture turns out in a few years, when the investors come calling.
So are we agreeing that ATProto is decentralized? Because that's different than the fear of what funding will potentially lead to one day in the future.
And if you fear that, then shouldn't we triple down on making sure that the PBC doesn't hold all the power before that happens, do adversarial interop, and make sure it's in it's ideal decentralized state asap?
Strictly speaking, the question is if Bluesky is decentralized, not if AT Proto is decentralized. Second of all, I am not sure why I should "triple down on making sure" anything about Bluesky or AT Proto. I work on improving the fediverse. The place that is already built with adversarial interoperability.
I personally believe that if you are a founder and lead programmer of a decentralized social media platform, you should be absolutely sure what you are talking about before you start comparing the protocol that you use with others, because you are effectively representing your own project and have a lot of responsibilities and eyes on you as a result. If someone believes that you are misinformed and says so, then it would make sense to check so that you are sure that you are not using your platform to spread misinformation.
the essential problem with #bluesky is that it promises a lot, but delivers little in the realm of #decentralization (reality, not technical potential)
This is an update to a Summer 2024 blog post. At the time, atproto relays required a cache of the full network on local disk to validate data structures. With the Sync v1.1 updates, relays don't need all that disk I/O.
yeah, it's a similar thing I say about civil rights. The most interesting cases pit 2 rights against each other.
I'm happy BS (my name for them haha) is slowly getting to some de-centralization capability...but how that will play with their monied backers will be an interesting thing to watch.
jumping into this branch of replies to say that Bluesky did anticipate this and specifically built atproto to allow you to move off of their servers and onto an independently operated one in case the shareholders come knocking. the only issue is that most people aren't really aware of this
And Twitter was initially built from the beginning as a decentralized network meant to be a decentralized version of an earlier centralized social network, right? Because that's how Bluesky started. So if Twitter wasn't built like that, then it's not really a perfect case study, is it?
No, I was just referring to Twitter being a "case study" of what will happen to Bluesky - it's not the same thing, so it can't be a case study of what will happen. I'm not saying this means this thing won't fail, rather that Twitter failing doesn't mean we can be sure this will fail too in the same way.
bluesky will fail in the same way any entity controlled by venture capital will fail if it doesn't earn enough. like twitter didn't. instead, the ghouls moved in when they didn't get their money back
it doesn't matter about the technology. it doesn't matter if it's a social media company or if they are a high end waffle restaurant: they need to earn money on an investment
oh no trust me I believe they absolutely will. that's the point here, they let you migrate to a level that mastodon doesn't support (you can't move your posts between instances for example)
twitter never had interop, they just had an API that you already had to pay for before they forced Musk to buy it. it's already possible to migrate your user data right now, and there are other servers that you can migrate said data to running, not to mention that people have independently hosted their own version of every part of bluesky's infrastructure.
I'm not saying that bluesky is perfect or better than mastodon though. they don't really expose any of this to users and you can't move back to bluesky last I heard. I just don't think that being dismissive of innovations from other places, even if they come from a VC-backed company, is very productive. don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, as they say
I always knew that bluesky was never meant to leverage anything open. It was always meant to be a closed-loop system. However, it cannot and never will control the fediverse.
You seem to, from what I'm seeing, have a basic understanding of how the AT protocol works but not how it is decentralized in practice, and I think you might be confusing it with ActivityPub's model of distribution, but I could be wrong. A lot of us in this thread have been trying to explain this but you seem to be dismissive about it instead of understanding. I totally understand as someone who was also like this but it helps to read up about the subject from those who currently work with the protocol itself.
I also feel that you believe that Mastodon is above the law because it doesn't have any official presence in areas where age-verification laws exist, however the Mississippi law that Bluesky is protesting, for example, applies nondiscriminately to all platforms, regardless of where they are based.
I really don't want to come off as saying that Bluesky is a better platform, rather that I want to hold you accountable for any "not invented here" biases that you might have.
Two separate discussions here. I'll start with the second one. This isn't about Mastodon the organization. Mastodon gGmbH is certainly not above the law. But even if Mastodon gGmbH was legally forced to block users from Mississippi, the only thing we could do is block them from mastodon.social. The fediverse does not have an owner that can make this call. Every operator decides this individually.
Yep, there's nothing really incorrect here (outside of that Mastodon is also responsible for mastodon.online). I should mention that this is also what Bluesky is essentially doing; they've blocked off access to the frontend that they control, while leaving the user data and relays that they host accessible. Anything built on their protocol can still communicate with it, and they do not have to implement geo-blocking because Bluesky does not control them.
I do understand your concern, however; there's nothing stopping them from outright blocking anything independently operated from pulling from their relays or directly from their PDSes themselves. But the same could be said about Mastodon instances through the practice of defederation.
Bluesky technically has the upper hand here because they architected their protocol in a way where each user is identified by a decentralized ID instead of a URI tied to a specific hostname, and full data portability i
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Yep, there's nothing really incorrect here (outside of that Mastodon is also responsible for mastodon.online). I should mention that this is also what Bluesky is essentially doing; they've blocked off access to the frontend that they control, while leaving the user data and relays that they host accessible. Anything built on their protocol can still communicate with it, and they do not have to implement geo-blocking because Bluesky does not control them.
I do understand your concern, however; there's nothing stopping them from outright blocking anything independently operated from pulling from their relays or directly from their PDSes themselves. But the same could be said about Mastodon instances through the practice of defederation.
Bluesky technically has the upper hand here because they architected their protocol in a way where each user is identified by a decentralized ID instead of a URI tied to a specific hostname, and full data portability is strictly specified, something that Mastodon only partially has an analog to, however it still remains a social issue because most people don't really want to move off of Bluesky servers at this time, or are even aware that it's an option.
The major difference between AT Proto and ActivityPub is that in ActivityPub, nodes communicate directly with each other, without relying on a third party. Mastodon (as an organization) could disappear along with mastodon.social overnight, and the fediverse would continue to function flawlessly (although you'd stop getting cool new software updates from us, until someone else stepped in).
In AT Proto, and Bluesky specifically, technically all components can be hosted by other parties, but the interdependency of these components favours control by Bluesky PBC. For example, if Bluesky PBC decides to ban your account from their relay, you could get indexed by another relay, but unless all your friends switched to an app view that uses that relay, it would be of little use to you.
Not to mention that the decentralized ID ledger is currently another central piece of infrastructure controlled by Bluesky PBC, so they could stop you from registering an account or moving it if they wanted to. Sure, DIDs have some advantages in terms of data portability, but at least usernames in the fediverse don't rely on a single authority.
This is an important point that gets down into the weeds of the AT Proto architecture. Real independence from Bluesky PBC technology is much more difficult to achieve. Just because you might be on a different data server (PDS)[only a tiny fraction are now on an independent PDS] your traffic still flows through Bluesky hosted technologies, and your link to the network can be severed there.
@eblu @quillmatiq @jack @laurenshof @jsit @bsky.app @benroyce But what if the state of Mississippi sued every Mastodon operator, at least in the US. I suspect most would have to block Mississippi rather than pay huge legal fees. I doubt they could sue nonUS sites but perhaps this will end up being an excuse to separate the US internet from the rest if the world.
if the servers grew large it would become an issue
you could do tricks like requiring a credit card number. it doesn't have to be charged for anything, but you have to be 18 in the usa to have your own credit card
some people will grumble about that
but the alternative is to shut down
and people should be donating to their mastodon server anyways
Oh cool. Does that mean there's a BlueSky server someone from the state of Mississippi can join and actually see content on? @Gargron @jack @laurenshof @jsit @benroyce
That's not how ATProto works, but yes - there are ATProto constructs that enable folks from Mississippi to continue interacting with the network in the same way an ActivityPub server can.
jack and anuj are doing the doing the hand waving thing:
"yes bluesky is not decentralized, but like you can view twitter without being logged in, from anywhere, at any age, in this way someday bluesky can be decentralized, because there is a protocol to view something that bluesky users have nothing to do with"
it's about quasireligious devotion to a promise over reality with these types
So there is a *BlueSky* server someone from MS can sign up on now so they can see content on it, if not the rest of the *BlueSky* network? @quillmatiq @Gargron @laurenshof @jsit
I think you either don't understand how people sign up for the service and interact with it, or you're dancing (with jazz hands!). Either way, I've had enough. @jack @Gargron @laurenshof @jsit @benroyce
Not *anybody*, there are multiple third party relays and appviews in operation - look at microcosm.blue/
and you could argue that mastodon.social connects a lot of the fediverse. this morning I finished setting up this instance and when I boosted it from my old acc on mastodon.social the instances that federated with this GTS instance went up by over 100โฆ if you started blocking many instances, or had to shutdown, the fediverse would be very broken
I think what people need to understand is that using the Fediverse instead of Bluesky doesn't mean you aren't subject to these laws. It just means that the people who run your instance are more free to flaunt them if they choose.
I think what people are trying to say to you Eugen is that it might be advisable to tell Fediverse instance operators that this is something they should be aware of and make an informed decision about.
Presumably US (and EU, UK, etc.) residents do actually care about opening themselves up to potentially life ruining legal liability, as should board members of the Mastodon non-profitsโฆ
@jsit @bsky.app Sure. But there are fediverse servers that are operated from Japan, China, Switzerland, anywhere really. We have seen this when FOSTA/SESTA was passed in the US. The fediverse provided a refuge for sex workers through services in Austria and so on.
I think people are framing this as #Bluesky being self-serving or (cringe) "enshittifying," but what they're doing would also be a reasonable thing for a Fediverse instance owner to do.
@bsky.app@bsky.brid.gy does the law specific any way how to decide it a user is from MS? If not, why not just ask users "are you from MS?" and it they answer yes forward them to a specific page with information about why they can't user BSKY. And if the answer no you can just let them go about their business.
I feel like this is potentially misleading, Eugen? Both because others can host their own views of the network, but also will the largest instances, which you run, be willing to pay the $10k/user fines in Mississippi? Because the state can still go after instances, no?
Fair point, and I believe you but I've see how conversations between fedi and bluesky usually goes. Many people still think atproto is centralized and corporate controlled on the fedi side. I am curious how eugene will respond since fedi runs tge whole instance as a site that talks to other sites.
My larger point is simply that this is a bad law that impacts both Mastodon and Bluesky (and the wider Fediverse/Atmosphere) and it seems like a reason to work together to fix the law (i.e., with @gargron.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy) than to use it to take potshots at each other. The law is bad.
The law is bad, nobody said otherwise. But decentralized systems are supposed to be resilient. If the US makes a law banning all mentions of LGBT from social media, which sounds less unlikely by the minute, what will Bluesky do? All of your infrastructure is controlled by one US companyโฆ
The key point here matters @gargron.mastodon.social.ap.brid.gy: this law equally impacts both ActivityPub and ATproto instances. Using this law (and the fact that some Mastodon servers plan to not comply and risk liability) is not a statement regarding which network architecture is better.
- Who owns bsky.app and the apps named "Bluesky" in the app stores? - Who owns the app view the above connect to? - Who owns the relay the above app view uses? - Where are the parties that own the above domiciled?
A lot? There are independent instances of ATproto infrastructure that are not controlled by Bluesky. There are totally independent PDS's, relays, and appviews.
@glyph @Gargron Only a tiny tiny tiny tiny tiny fraction of #atproto users is not dependent on #bluesky infrastructure. Basically all #atproto users - and literally all #bluesky users - are dependent on #bluesky and their decisions. That's a simple reality which cannot be taken away by all the tech talk how cool #atproto is in theory.
Yeah, but come on. This is nitpicking different approaches to centralization as a total distraction from the simple fact the law is bad for both approaches.
@Gargron Well, I don't see it as nitpicking... Nobody was questioning the architecture of #twitter either as long as everybody was happy with their governance... We should do better this time.
It is nitpicking PRECISELY because this law DOES NOT CHANGE ITS ANALYSIS based on the architecture of a website. It implies you dunking on Bluesky for ideological reasons, which makes no sense because THE LAW IS JUST AS BAD FOR MASTODON. Stop it.
With legal challenges to this law pending, we cannot justify building the expensive required infrastructure. For now, we have made the difficult decision to block access in Mississippi. To learn more, read our blog post:
A new Mississippi law requires us to block full access to Bluesky unless all users complete age checks. We have concerns about this lawโs implementation.
Oooh, ran into the manager of apparently the last Radio Shack in California (which is run by a ham radio operator, and all the employees are hams). It's in San Luis Obispo. Sounds like it's worth the trip and a stop if you ever are going through that area...
Here's their info... apparently they have tried to make this a *real* Radio Shack of the ham radio / electronics age, not the sad remnant that was the end of the giant chain...
@AI6YR Ben @Matt Blaze @run_atalanta ๐ท๐ฏ If they have a ton of components AND their supplier is Allied, by golly Radio Shack will have come 'round full circle. Back to the future.
@mattblaze If you wait long enough, all your wishes for componentry will be satisfied by the staff working at Counter B, at least at the HQ store in Syosset. Were there also other branches? Can't recall.
@wevdap There were about 100 stores at peak, concentrated in NY metro area but also scattered around the whole US. My first job was at one of the Manhattan stores.
Thrilled to see the name San Luis Obispo, as it recalls fond memories of ordering my stereo system from Warehouse Sound Company in the early 1970s.
Remember when hi-fi was kind of a big deal? Hinterlandia remembers.
"Mail-order stereo sounds at first like a legalized form of the old traveling medicine show; I mean, for many people a sound system is going to be the third most expensive item theyโll purchase in their lifetimes (after a house and a car) and is not the sort of purchase to be made sight unseen (or more to the point, hearing unheard). Still, if your alternatives are severely limited by geography, mail order is all thatโs left to you, and the unquestioned leader in mail order is Warehouse Sound of San Luis Obispo, California." rollingstone.com/music/music-nโฆ
I took this in 2021. Don't know if it's an actual Radio Shack or they just never took the sign down. It was Sunday AM so the store was closed, but it looked like an operating retail store.
@deewani @COD @AI6YR Ben I went to that website and discovered that Radio Shack was acquired by a global marketing group in El Salvador, so here's your advanced warning about tariff trouble, possibly. Since they're also providing jail service to Trump, could be they're exempt...for now...
@claralistensprechen5th @chrisod Itโs like Bed Bath and Beyond name being bought by Overstock to rebrand after their association with the orange one.
Jenkins. Tom Jenkins. ๐คฎ๐คข๐คฎ
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Raping children is not a right.
Hope this helps.
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