Hacker News: knowtheory

New comment by knowtheory in "POSSE – Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere"

knowtheory — Mon, 23 Mar 2026 16:41:25 +0000

I think you're missing the point.

With the IndieWeb version of POSSE, the source of truth is the webpage you control.

For the ATProto version of POSSE, the source of truth is the record in your PDS. That record is interesting because it is both content-addressed and signed with your private key.

Where ever that record is syndicated, the reader (or app displaying the content) should be able to demonstrably verify the authenticity of the record.

And you can host your own PDS entirely independent of Bluesky, there are several interfaces for both reading and publishing Standard.site records:

* Leaflet (https://leaflet.pub/ )

* pckt (https://pckt.blog/ )

* Wordpress (https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-atproto )

It's also not that hard to write your own display interface for just your data if you want.

New comment by knowtheory in "Blacksky AppView"

knowtheory — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:53:27 +0000

This isn't accurate tho.

Neither Bluesky, nor other ATProto services require any of this.

RedDwarf is an example of an ATProto client that connects only with your PDS, uses Microcosm (https://www.microcosm.blue/ )'s aggregation index (they calculate aggregate counts for a variety of things with a couple of raspberry pis run off of a home fiber connection): https://reddwarf.app/

No big iron anywhere in the picture.

You give up the ability to search the network, but okay, that's already a feature that all Mastodon users sacrifice as well.

New comment by knowtheory in "Blacksky AppView"

knowtheory — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:46:02 +0000

Yes, as far as i know it's an honest self-report kind of thing.

New comment by knowtheory in "Blacksky AppView"

knowtheory — Mon, 09 Mar 2026 02:41:24 +0000

There are a lot of misunderstandings about what Blacksky is assuming that it's a just a community fork of Bluesky.

The Blacksky team has a much broader vision for which they decided ATProto was the right architecture.

There's a lot more to read about them up on their site: https://blackskyweb.xyz/

New comment by knowtheory in "The Xkcd thing, now interactive"

knowtheory — Tue, 03 Mar 2026 12:57:48 +0000

I love that the initial state itself isn't stable.

The world keeps moving around us. Can't choose staying still.

New comment by knowtheory in "Be wary of Bluesky"

knowtheory — Sat, 21 Feb 2026 23:56:42 +0000

Anybody can sign up for Blacksky.

New comment by knowtheory in "From watchdogs to mouthpieces: Washington Post and the wreckage of legacy media"

knowtheory — Mon, 09 Feb 2026 18:16:01 +0000

This is a piece written by Jeff Jarvis who was a founder of Entertainment Weekly and then a long time professor focused on innovation and journalism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Jarvis

So, it's a term of art, and i'll even agree that it's got a bit of a tech-y pejorative lean to it, but it's in wide use, and Jarvis certainly isn't solely a person who comes from tech.

Creators Coalition on AI

knowtheory — Tue, 16 Dec 2025 21:55:39 +0000

Article URL: https://www.creatorscoalitionai.com

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295120

Points: 3

# Comments: 0

New comment by knowtheory in "Nature's many attempts to evolve a Nostr"

knowtheory — Mon, 15 Dec 2025 23:40:42 +0000

I wouldn't write ATProto off as just microblogging, there are a bunch of interesting (and exciting depending on your POV) apps out there that _aren't_ microblogging apps. To name a few:

* https://stream.place

* https://tangled.org

* https://www.germnetwork.com/

* https://slices.network/

* https://smokesignal.events/

* https://www.graze.social/

Tangled: A social coding platform built with ATProto and Git

knowtheory — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 03:17:54 +0000

Article URL: https://tangled.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45546313

Points: 19

# Comments: 1

We can just do things together

knowtheory — Fri, 10 Oct 2025 21:34:07 +0000

Article URL: https://leaflet.pub/d480e34b-f979-4851-8a14-6da1217d72f7

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45544027

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by knowtheory in "Open Social"

knowtheory — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 18:57:21 +0000

There's still some more work to do to make the developer experience simple enough that it's a no-brainer for people to pick ATProto up in anger.

But there's a lot of work developing on that front, and the next 6-12 months will be super exciting to watch.

The longer story is that most people don't understand that ATProto is more than just Bluesky, and the usecases are wayyyyyy broader. That's going to take more time to play out in the market.

New comment by knowtheory in "Open Social"

knowtheory — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 18:12:46 +0000

I'd argue that ATProto is the next iteration of open internet. It's what an internet where accounts/identity and verifiable content attribution are built in, and nobody using the technology needs to think about any of that.

There's a space here where we can move from nobody having smart phones or hosting digital presences -> everyone having digital presence provided by Facebook/Instagram, and icloud/google accounts -> Accounts w/ something like ATProto where its your stuff, you get to decide where you keep it, and you get to decide who gets access to it.

Open Social

knowtheory — Fri, 26 Sep 2025 16:01:55 +0000

Article URL: https://overreacted.io/open-social/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45388021

Points: 991

# Comments: 388

Bad Shape

knowtheory — Fri, 10 Jan 2025 00:29:55 +0000

Article URL: https://www.wrecka.ge/bad-shape/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42651288

Points: 5

# Comments: 0

New comment by knowtheory in "AdObserver Blocked by Facebook"

knowtheory — Wed, 04 Aug 2021 13:26:22 +0000

Yeah, that's falling directly into Facebook's talking points. It's a web extension, anybody can inspect the source. It doesn't do what Facebook is claiming. The NYU team bends over backwards to ensure that no personally identifying information about other users gets captured.

The privacy leak that Facebook is so concerned about is actually the identity of advertisers on their platform.

https://twitter.com/issielapowsky/status/1422879438765797380

New comment by knowtheory in "What Is the Point of Universal Basic Income?"

knowtheory — Sun, 02 Feb 2020 16:08:12 +0000

It's very strange to call a proposal (negative income tax) made by economists as orthodox and central to 20th century conservative politics as Milton Freedman as _utopian_.

But even beyond the aspirations of a UBI/negative income tax, the real problem with any such proposal will be implementation and policy details which most UBI proponents don't talk about much if at all.

Will UBI be counted as income? How will this interact with other programs such as SNAP, healthcare subsidies, HUD housing subsidies, or any number of state operated programs? Will they be mutually exclusive?

Will existing policies or laws need to be modified in order to accommodate such a proposal?

New comment by knowtheory in "Ask HN: Who is hiring? (January 2020)"

knowtheory — Mon, 06 Jan 2020 14:06:59 +0000

Their crunchbase page says private for profit: https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/scite#section-overvi...

Ethos Capital's response about buying the org TLD

knowtheory — Sun, 24 Nov 2019 21:34:31 +0000

Article URL: https://www.keypointsabout.org/

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21623592

Points: 1

# Comments: 0

New comment by knowtheory in "Open Steno Project: Bringing Stenography to Everyone"

knowtheory — Sat, 09 Nov 2019 15:28:45 +0000

Hey Jared, in fact, if you click into the video on the Open Steno page, the stenographer & developer you're talking about is Stan Sakai, who is involved in Open Steno:

https://twitter.com/stanographer