Notices by Hrefna (DHC) (hrefna@hachyderm.io)

@helge My statement has long been:

I don't like a lot about ATProto's approach, but I do understand what they are doing and why it makes sense for what they are trying to accomplish.

But AP's approach is just _too_ fragmented. By being unwilling to make tradeoffs upfront—something that ATProto does, even where I disagree with them or don't want what it is trying to do—it means that it is impossible to use effectively even for things that I think it would be good at.

My biggest frustration in all of this, however, are people who treat AP's approach as an unmitigated good or who think that getting something usably consumer-ready will just happen magically, without respect for the very real costs that come with such a design.

So much this. https://adhd.irenes.space/@ireneista/statuses/01JJMNPMSKB7AHQNKWQMMC1ZNV

@helge That at least is an actually true reason :p

@helge Really I think in general centralization is going to be a lot cheaper. The trick is that the more we push to the edges the worse this gets by orders of magnitude.

Of course this is also made worse by that most groups do not have people who are competent to run these systems.

That's the needle that ATProto is trying to thread and its tradeoffs are all built around that question.

Like if you have a bunch of perfectly spherical individuals running around in a frictionless vacuum sure it makes sense.

But in the real world where you have like… actual networks to deal with, and partitions, and security patches, and spammers, and CSAM, and… to deal with.

We need to consider the degree to which this fetishization of single user servers is meaningfully coherent as a strategy.
https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/113899314270714595

@helge People fetishize this idea of one person servers, but it's really not a good idea on multiple levels (on SO MANY levels, really) even to the degree that one can technically do it.

@helge There is significant overhead to run just one server, and even higher overhead if that server is mastodon or mastodon-like.

Comparatively: grouping users together on a single server is _very_ efficient from both a connection and cost standpoint, especially if they follow each other.

If you take that same network and you spread it between multiple servers you have orders of magnitude higher resource costs per user and there's basically no getting around that with the current architectures. Not even getting into individual administrative costs (time) per person.

The best argument.
https://mymath.rocks/objects/f39cdaa6-253c-4779-b644-2e9111e402e4

@jdp23

YES!

There are real tradeoffs and real problems that we can discuss. There are in particular significant cultural differences that can be called out!

But that's not the same thing as the sheer number of things that, AFAICT, are just made up out of whole cloth or are being repeated based on comparisons that are barely comparing two types of fruit in what they look at, let alone apples to apples.

@thenexusofprivacy

Also

LEARN TO RECOGNIZE FRIGGIN TRADEOFFS.

You don't have to agree with the tradeoffs, you don't have to like the tradeoffs, but LEARN TO RECOGNIZE WHAT IS BEING TRADED.

I swear to the gods if I see one more "the choice is clear" between BlueSky and Mastodon that deliberately goes out of their way to make claims that ignore the reality of how things _actually work here_ I am going to scream.

@puppygirlhornypost2

Not strictly true.

ATProto allows relays to be optional—appviews could subscribe directly to PDSs.

But it reduces connections, which allows a relay in ATProto to run a fraction of the cost _per user_, even where the aggregate cost is higher (I think one estimate from a while back is that it is on the order of millions of tens of millions of BlueSky users for about the cost of Hachyderm).

AP is also, as implemented rather than as designed necessarily, _hellishly_ expensive per user compared to pretty much every major systems protocol.

@o76923 @FediTips

@MCDuncanLab

Absolutely.

When I was in school my Calc III prof said "do not get rid of your calculus textbook (Stewart's). Others, sure, absolutely. But you will find that you regret giving up your calculus textbook."

It has traveled with me through multiple moves, the spine is basically destroyed from how much I have used the book over the last two+ decades, but I still have it and it is still worth keeping.

@kidskylark

@kidskylark Honestly?

Thomas' Calculus or Calculus by James Stewart.

Good, solid textbooks. I've never found a resource online that compares and still covers everything that you need.

Then you can go in for specific sections with various online resources and will likely have a much better time with the narrower query.

I think that, in general, people dramatically underestimate the burden on trust and safety when dealing with rapid growth and the number of things that can an do go wrong in these environments.
https://transfem.social/notes/a3g99zxjdv530131

Don't worry everyone, I'm sure that 2025 will be the year of ActivityPub on the desktop.

@SoniEx2

I am posting this because it fits with a phenomenon I've already observed and that has been observed by multiple others, and becuase while the methodology may introduce bias, I do not see how those biases matter here.

Virtually every scientist I followed from the initial phases of COVID is on BlueSky. Virtually none are on mastodon any longer.

That is the topic. Saying that they didn't "prove their case" or arguing methodology is missing the point by about a hundred miles

I am not looking for a debate on polling methodology for informal surveys of readership conducted by Nature.

Strike 2.

@jdp23 lollll

You mean the thing I can disable on a per-post basis there :p

The replies I'm getting to this are _also_ part of why I spend more time on bluesky, tbh.
https://hachyderm.io/@hrefna/113885388168422121

@Bigou …and what does that have to do with literally anything I'm talking about?