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   Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 00:11:50 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

   I'd like to ask some of the less-technical folks that follow me to read this and tell me if it makes sense to you?

   https://github.com/fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification

   (I'm trying to make it less intimidating to newcomers)

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 00:28:49 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     What does "less-technical" mean here?

     If you recognize the term "kASLR" or "Frobenius trace" or can type a valid flag for the tar command from memory, you're probably technical.

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 00:31:03 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • :awesome:🐦‍🔥nemo™🐦‍⬛ 🇺🇦🍉

     @nemo https://xkcd.com/1168/

   • Embed this notice
     :awesome:🐦‍🔥nemo™🐦‍⬛ 🇺🇦🍉 (nemo@mas.to)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 00:31:04 JST :awesome:🐦‍🔥nemo™🐦‍⬛ 🇺🇦🍉

     in reply to

     @soatok does does tar -?
     or tar --version count?

   • Embed this notice
     Craig Stuntz (craigstuntz@discuss.systems)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 00:39:57 JST Craig Stuntz

     in reply to

     @soatok The link to The Verge is paywalled

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 00:39:57 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Craig Stuntz

     @CraigStuntz God fucking dammit

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 01:54:45 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Ruby Kitsu-loon

     @foxyloon Thanks, I appreciate you taking the time to look at it and answer honestly <3

   • Embed this notice
     Ruby Kitsu-loon (foxyloon@blimps.xyz)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 01:54:46 JST Ruby Kitsu-loon

     in reply to

     @soatok I have some technical knowledge/experience, insofar as being a junior sysadmin for a few years. The minutia of encryption stuff is definitely not one of my strengths, let alone being able to write a shell script without lots of research first.

     In short, I can comprehend high level technical concepts but lack the skills to utilize or implement them in any meaningful way.

     Your write-up seems to do a good job of explaining the high level concepts and goals of the project, which is a great starting point to do further research. Also, I very much appreciate the embedded links that provide added context to certain talking points.

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:00:05 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Andreu Botella :verified_enby:

     @andreu If you can remember any valid tar flags for any reason that counts

   • Embed this notice
     Andreu Botella :verified_enby: (andreu@mastodon.andreubotella.com)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:00:06 JST Andreu Botella :verified_enby:

     in reply to

     @soatok I can only remember tar -xzf because of the "xtract ze files" mnemonic, does that count?

   • Embed this notice
     Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐ (herzenschein@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:49:18 JST Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐

     in reply to

     @soatok I only skimmed through it, but this looks pretty good.

     The section "How Does This Help Non-Technical Users?" does not actually answer the heading question, though.

     There's also a minor language issue in "We want to build a system, which [...]". No need for comma and using "that" is preferred.

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 02:55:00 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐

     @herzenschein How's this? https://github.com/fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification/pull/109

   • Embed this notice
     Plan A to Y (plan_a_to_y@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 03:14:35 JST Plan A to Y

     in reply to

     @soatok I thought you were only technical if you had a mounted machine gun installed in the back of a pickup truck

   • Embed this notice
     Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐ (herzenschein@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 03:23:52 JST Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐

     in reply to

     @soatok I can reply later on Github

   • Embed this notice
     Greg Bell (ferrix@mastodon.online)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 03:31:26 JST Greg Bell

     in reply to

     @soatok I wouldn't mind a little elaboration on why/how key transparency helps the trust issue. All the pieces are there but it's left a bit implicit to connect the dots. Maybe it's best to leave that in the subsequent docs but it felt missing to me in this overview

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 03:31:26 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Greg Bell

     @ferrix Do the blog posts linked at the bottom cover it adequately?

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 03:45:27 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Greg Bell

     @ferrix Also, https://github.com/fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification/blob/752477be93b3889709170999b0f478fc3ccc0557/README.md#how-does-key-transparency-help-the-trust-issue

   • Embed this notice
     Stefen Auris 🖖​ (stefenauris@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 04:49:19 JST Stefen Auris 🖖​

     in reply to

     @soatok came for this xkcd lol

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:12:19 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Dave Polaschek (he/him)

     @davepolaschek Yes, it does! :3

   • Embed this notice
     Dave Polaschek (he/him) (davepolaschek@writing.exchange)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:12:20 JST Dave Polaschek (he/him)

     in reply to

     @soatok It makes sense, but where it says, “it only gets more technical from here on,” it wasn’t kidding.

     So I’m interested, but already have so many projects, I can’t spend the time to dig into any of the other docs. But I’m still interested. So I think you’ve succeeded in your goal of making it readable. And I like the sound of the general idea.

     Does that help?

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:27:20 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     OK I pushed a bunch of changes:

     https://github.com/fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:27:40 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     If you want to compare with what was there before, https://github.com/fedi-e2ee/public-key-directory-specification/tree/c639fe7625133701def55763e4c3ed9712c5cd07 is the main branch before everyone's feedback was collected

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:34:41 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Peritia System

     @peritia There's actually very little for them to implement.

     The PKD server is a separate piece of software.

     Most of the other code lives client-side.

     The only pieces the server needs to support are IETF RFC 9421 and FEP-521a (for Ed25519 support, since almost everyone uses RSA for the publicKey attribute on each actor).

     If they want to support BurnDown (for privileged admins to issue to help people who lose their keys regain access), that will be a bit more work, but not much.

   • Embed this notice
     Peritia System (peritia@alovely.space)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 10:34:42 JST Peritia System

     in reply to

     @soatok

     Starred
     I hope glitch soc will implement this

     (i dont think mastodon will implement that soon)

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 14:40:24 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • FurryBeta

     @FurryBeta Blockchains are built atop Merkle trees.

   • Embed this notice
     FurryBeta (furrybeta@shark.community)'s status on Saturday, 10-Jan-2026 14:40:25 JST FurryBeta

     in reply to

     @soatok Am I correct in thinking that a Merkle tree is some what analogous to a block chain? I don’t know a lot about cryptography, but from what I picked up about crypto currency over the years is the block chain is what keeps everyone honest, by providing a method where everyone who was so inclined, could audit the chain and verify the transactions. Sounds similar but using the public keys rather than an crypto coin amount

   • Embed this notice
     Soatok Dreamseeker (soatok@furry.engineer)'s status on Monday, 12-Jan-2026 23:37:30 JST Soatok Dreamseeker

     in reply to

     • Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐

     @herzenschein Yeah I had a bunch of other changes I wanted to merge in. (I'm also moving very fast.)

   • Embed this notice
     Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐ (herzenschein@furry.engineer)'s status on Monday, 12-Jan-2026 23:37:33 JST Herzenschein++ 🩵⭐

     in reply to

     @soatok Replied there, though it was merged already.