circumstances.run is one of the many independent Mastodon servers you can use to participate in the fediverse.
a rather private instance with annoying culture theme applied all over; we don't speak marain (yet).

Server stats:

22
active users

[object Object]
Public

@AnarchoNinaWrites [oliphant.social] I was halfway through typing a howto mastodon message to one of the tech assholes in my life when I suddenly realized I was happier with them on bluesky, where they’ll never see my posts. and they can join the other tech assholes in chattering about how clever its godawful protocol and DID are, which is a great substitute for happiness when your brain’s this flooded with capitalism

David Gerard
Public

@zzt @AnarchoNinaWrites@oliphant.social wait, someone who thinks atproto isn't just NIH by blockchain idiots?

[object Object]
Public

@davidgerard @AnarchoNinaWrites [oliphant.social] a lot of these tech assholes are former(?) blockchain idiots, so they’re right at home. the awkward part is they all keep doing the “blockchains are world changing technology, have you heard of them” thing in unrelated conversations, but now it’s the DID instead

David Gerard
Public

@zzt @AnarchoNinaWrites@oliphant.social guess which technological cancerous growth DID came from

[object Object]
Public

@davidgerard @AnarchoNinaWrites [oliphant.social] oh boy, pure guess? was it an attempt to establish permanent identity for DAO votes or NFT authorship or another concept that makes me die inside?

David Gerard

@zzt @AnarchoNinaWrites@oliphant.social W3C DID (Decentralised Identity) is a shockingly underspecified "protocol" intended to implement ID on the blockchain without saying the word "blockchain".

This is because blockchain grifters, but also consultancies like Microsoft and IBM wanted to sell this bullshit.

Logically, there are two ways to do this: (a) customer service is impossible (you drop your iPhone in a puddle and you don't exist any more), or (b) customer service is possible (Microsoft or IBM are the vendor). W3C DID was written for this important vaporware constituency.

All the important bits of W3C DID are vendor-specified. Until now, there was one implementation, which was decentralised to an AD node on Azure. Bluesky's is the second, and it's an implementation that implements a tiny bit of the spec to give everyone their own personal GUID, with the central point of control in the decentralised system being Bluesky.

Why do this? Because they're crypto bros.

[object Object]
Public

@davidgerard @AnarchoNinaWrites [oliphant.social] hahaha my feelings on this are running the full spectrum of emotions from “I knew my stank detectors sensed a crypto grift” to “wait that’s it, that’s what the tech assholes in my life won’t shut up about?” it’s all the same people falling for the same affinity scam every time

e: this is the shortest, fluffiest W3C spec I’ve ever hate read

David Gerard
Public

@zzt @AnarchoNinaWrites@oliphant.social fucking isn't it, makes activitypub look detailed

and apub is actually useful

jonny (good kind)
Quiet public

@davidgerard
I don't dispute the strange bedfellows of DID, but there are lots of implementations of it?

David Gerard
Quiet public

@jonny are there? I thought the only one claiming to be W3C DID was Microsoft's

David Gerard
Quiet public

@jonny certainly there are a ton of things that do a similar job to the degree bsky's does

Glitch (over count 1999)
Quiet public
@davidgerard @jonny iirc MS uses a version internally for Azure Directory and that's about the only implementation of DID that wasn't isn't made by moonshotting cryptobros.
David Gerard
Quiet public

@glitch @jonny Microsoft very much wanted to sell consulting using DID, dunno if they got any customers tho

Glitch (over count 1999)
Quiet public
@davidgerard @jonny to be fair Microsoft wants to do loads of things but they launch very few things.

Kinda the opposite to Google really.