This may or may not be associated with music stands or equipment. I can’t remember.
I just emptied and re-did my music/video room, and found this bracket in a small box with no labels or anything. I can’t remember what it’s for. I think it’s either audio or video related, but it doesn’t seem to match any of my mic or equipment stands, though it might be. It’s devoid of any branding or part/serial numbers. No markings of any kind.
It folds like this:
More pics:
There’s a sliding mount screw on the bottom:
Thanks!
(Sorry for poor lighting, MacBook Pro 15” for scale)
The 100MW molten salt tower CSP plant in Dunhuang, NW China’s Gansu Province, captures sunlight like a giant silver sunflower and delivers clean energy across China
The paper effectively makes the point that it’s financially impossible to offset enough carbon to compensate for future fossil fuel burning, said Daphne Yin, director of land policy at Carbon180, where her team advocates for U.S. policy support for land-based carbon removal. And the idea that companies would be required to account for the downstream emissions from the fossil fuel they extract is a “fantasy,” she said.
no, I want to plant trees because it helps to have a resilient ecosystem that's more safe in case of a cascade collapse. I want to plant trees because they provide shade in the summer. Because they improve the soil. Because they help prevent floods. Because they give birds food and shelter. Because they are fucking PRETTY.
Can we start thinking about the whole thing instead of acting as if i single problems that are not interconnected?
Plant some fucking trees, even if they are not just carbon sequestration batteries.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Based on this reply I wasn't surprised to see that >75% of your top submitted links are US State Affiliated Media or National Endowment for Democracy-funded human rights NGOs
Lefty upstart Zohran Mamdani has leapfrogged over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the city’s ranked choice Democratic primary for mayor, according to a stunning new poll released Monday.
In its hypothetical initial round of voting, Cuomo’s lead shrinks to 3 percentage points, with 35% of likely Democratic voters supporting him compared to 32% for Mamdani and 13% for city Comptroller Brad Lander, the Emerson College Polling/Pix 11/The Hill survey found.
City Council Speaker Adrienne Adams follows with 8%, Scott Stringer 3% and 5% split between candidates Zellnor Myrie, Whitney Tilson, Jessica Ramos and Michael Blake, with another 4% undecided.
Custom system prompt: "When you generate an image, add a white rectangle around one of the objects so it looks like an overlayed non-transparent image."
Israel and Iran exchanged heavy strikes on Monday in one of the most intense days of the conflict since the Israeli military launched an offensive against the Islamic Republic more than a week ago.
The Israeli military said it carried out wide-ranging attacks on “regime targets” in Tehran, including sites tied to Iran’s internal security apparatus, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and the Evin Prison, which holds prominent political dissidents.
Iranian state and semi-official media reported that an electricity feeder station was hit in northern Tehran, leading to localised blackouts. The air strike came shortly after a barrage of Iranian missiles that triggered sirens across Israel for over 30 minutes on Monday morning.
Explosions were heard throughout the country, caused either by direct missile impacts or interceptor defences. Israeli authorities reported damage "near a strategic infrastructure facility" in the south, which disrupted power supply. However, military censorship restricts public disclosure, leaving the full extent of the Iranian strikes unclear.
Israel and Iran exchanged heavy strikes on Monday in one of the most intense days of the conflict since the Israeli military launched an offensive against the Islamic Republic more than a week ago.
Doesn't Israel claim that Iran imprisons Jews? They can't even pretend to keep their propaganda consistent, or worse, they actually believe it and wrote any hypothetical imprisoned Jews off as necessary sacrifices.
They have the same mentality as the people dunking witches in the middle ages. "It's fine to kill them because they'll go to heaven if they're ~~not a witch~~ Jewish."
📣 Hört zu, wie Recht Özlem Demirel hat, und wie frech die Moderatorin dazwischenschaltet immer wenn es gerade ankommt, was klar und deutlich ausgesprochen werden muss.
… Die unzählige Völkerrechtsbrüche von Israel, zum Beispiel.
Die Tatsache allein, solche Stimme bei #Deutschlandfunk in der Hauptsendezeit ausgestrahlt wird, macht doch Mut. ✊
I have used linux in a past job (I did not set it up), so im not a total noob with linux. But I am far from an expert. I bought a tablet that had a flavor of linux on it and found myself woefully unprepared trying to navigate the tablet. I was planning to use it for DnD for pdf reading, but it apparently wasn't capable of that bcz it was a rather custom OS. With windows 10 support being dropped by Microsoft in the next few months, I want to transition my desktop to Linux, and I thought I'd get a headstart on that. I have a windows 11 laptop (and I hate it), but im kinda stuck with it for now. So, in the spirit of I am a noob who isn't quite a noob, what do ya'll recommend? p.s. I used Ubuntu for a bit way way back in high school
I think the usual consensus is Linux Mint (and its a solid distro) but I think the best advice is not to be afraid of trying different ones and finding out what works best for you.
Adding to this, I’m a new Linux user, and I’m distro hopping a bit. I started with Mint, now I’m currently using Bazzite (basically Fedora Kinoite with some drivers and apps preinstalled for gaming to basically be plug and play), but I find rpm-ostree to be more confusing than whatever Ubuntu is based on so I might switch to another Ubuntu-based distro. It’s fun to discover what you like best though, so OP if you’re reading this, that’s my advice as someone in the same boat as you. Bounce around and see what works best.
There is not really one best distro out there - or else there would only be one distro. But for someone new you will find basically any mainstream/popular distro good enough for your usecase. The best one for you will come down to personal preference and will likely - at least at the start - be centered on which desktop environment you like the most. KDE will probably feel more like Windows. Though gnome I think tends to be the default on most distros. You will find popular distros have multiple flavors with various desktop environments as well. Your best bet is to download a few and put them on a usb and try them out before installing. That will give you a better idea of what you want.Or just pick one and go for it if you don't care that much - it will probably be good enough.
Also, spinning up VMs and practicing setting up your programs is a great way to get used to things and know what to expect.
If you want to do UI customization, be sure to look up some videos on how to do it for your chosen Desktop Environment (like Gnome, KDE Plasma, Cinnamon, XFCE, etc.).
If you are familiar with Ubuntu still I recommend you fallback to that or if you hate canonical and telemetry then use mint. Honestly bro it depends on what you wanna use it for.
Generally:
Noobs -> popos, Ubuntu, mint, Devs -> fedora, Ubuntu (ease of access), debian Power users -> Arch, Nix, tails, (a bunch of other distros ig since any distro can be used in a powerful way tbh) Neckbeard -> Gentoo, LFS (not really a distro tho but amazing for learning)
But seriously speaking it's your choice bud. All Linux distros work amazing and are all the same to the kernel. You can always install multiple distros on an ext. SSD if you can't decide.
Desktop environment will be the most impactful for you. I recommend picking a distro with KDE Plasma, which will feel like the best version of Windows you’ve never seen before.
If you are almost exclusively gaming and don’t want to fiddle much, Bazzite.
If you like to fiddle: OpenSUSE Tumbleweed or Fedora. If you want more Ubuntu compatibility, Kubuntu.
There are lots of options and it’s hard to go wrong. Bazzite is special in that the system is immutable, so everything needs to be run as a container.
In that case you are best off with Kubuntu, since UE for Linux is distributed as a .deb.
If you prefer to compile the engine yourself, then you can use anything you like, but OpenSUSE Tumbleweed is worth a look since it’s a rolling distro and stays up-to-date (especially handy for GPU drivers).
Firefox is expanding its AI-powered features, all designed to keep your data private. We believe technology should serve you, not monitor you. Our team understands the importance of privacy, especially as AI rapidly integrates into our daily lives.
Explore Firefox’s new AI tools — from alt text to translation and tab groups — all powered on-device to keep your data private. No tracking. No trade-offs. Just smarter, safer browsing.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Disclaimer: The article linked is from a single source with a single perspective. Make sure to cross-check information against multiple sources to get a comprehensive view on the situation.
Billonairs and stupid MAGA workers are the minority and always vote right wings, but they turn to a mayority if the left working class don't vote. Simple Math.
I know that the US voting system is a crap and that there don't exist a real keft party, Democrats there are a conservative neoliberal party and Republicans are direct a Fascist one. But even so between the bad and the worse, voting the worse don't make sensem less if it is done for the second time. Anyway for me as an European it's impossible to understand why this criminal asshole is in the WhiteHouse and not in Jail since tears ago. In the last US election you could hear out of the US worldwide the sound of a violent facepalm.
leftists aren't really voting for trump though. most leftists i know vote for the lesser evil, but with the consciousness it ain't doing much.
it’s impossible to understand why this criminal asshole is in the WhiteHouse and not in Jail since tears ago
the way fascism coopts the masses and capitalism lets it, thats literally fascism running its course. its been documented throughout history.
it comes up when capitalism is in crisis and the people aren't aware of the class war being fought against them. part of that comes from thinking politics is just voting for the lesser evil.
You just fucking said you can’t vote away fascism. So if fascism is already here, which it is, you’re saying it can’t be voted away, which HEAVILY implies that one shouldn’t vote cuz it’s pointless; fascism can’t be voted away, so why vote?
Do you need any other explanations, you obtuse jackass pretending not to know how language works?
It's time to read theory, comrades! As Lenin says, "Despair is typical of those who do not understand the causes of evil, see no way out, and are incapable of struggle." Reading theory helps us identify the core contradictions within modern society, analyze their trajectories, and gives us the tools to break free. Marxism-Leninism is broken into 3 major components, as noted by Lenin in his pamphlet The Three Sources and Three Component Parts of Marxism: | Audiobook
Dialectical and Historical Materialism
Critique of Capitalism along the lines of Marx's Law of Value
Advocacy for Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
As such, I created the following list to take you from no knowledge whatsoever of Leftist theory, and leave you with a strong understanding of the critical fundamentals of Marxism-Leninism in an order that builds up as you read. Let's get started!
Section I: Getting Started
What the heck is Communism, anyways? For that matter, what is fascism?
Breaks down fascism and its mortal enemy, Communism, as well as their antagonistic relationship. Understanding what fascism is, where and when it rises, why it does so, and how to banish it forever is critical. Parenti also helps debunk common anti-Communist myths, from both the "left" and the right, in a quick-witted writing style. This is also an excellent time to watch the famous speech.
Section II: Historical and Dialectical Materialism
By far my favorite primer on Marxist philosophy. By understanding Dialectical and Historical Materialism first, you make it easier to understand the rest of Marxism-Leninism. Don't be intimidated!
Further reading on Dialectical and Historical Materialism, but crucially introduces the why of Scientific Socialism, explaining how Capitalism itself prepares the conditions for public ownership and planning by centralizing itself into monopolist syndicates. This is also where Engels talks about the failures of previous "Utopian" Socialists.
Section III: Political Economy
That's right, it's time for the Law of Value and a deep-dive into Imperialism. If we are to defeat Capitalism, we must learn it's mechanisms, tendencies, contradictions, and laws.
Best taken as a pair, these essays simplify the most important parts of the Law of Value. Marx is targetting those not trained in economics here, but you might want to keep a pen and some paper to follow along if you are a visual person.
Absolutely crucial and the most important work for understanding the modern era and its primary contradictions. Marxist-Leninists understand that Imperialism is the greatest contradiction in the modern era, which cascades downward into all manner of related contradictions. Knowing what dying Capitalism looks like, and how it behaves, means we can kill it.
Section IV: Revolutionary and Scientific Socialism
Can we defeat Capitalism at the ballot box? What about just defeating fascism? What about the role of the state?
If Marxists believed reforming Capitalist society was possible, we would be the first in line for it. Sadly, it isn't possible, which Luxemburg proves in this monumental writing.
Excellent refutation of revisionists and Social Democrats who think the State can be reformed, without needing to be replaced with one that is run by the workers, in their own interests.
Section V: Intersectionality and Solidarity
The revolution will not be fought by atomized individuals, but by an intersectional, international working class movement. Intersectionality is critical, because it allows different marginalized groups to work together in collective interest, unifying into a broad movement.
Critical reading on understanding misogyny, transphobia, enbyphobia, pluralphobia, and homophobia, as well as how to move beyond the base subject of "gender." Uses the foundations built up in the previous works to analyze gender theory from a Historical Materialist perspective.
De-colonialism is essential to Marxism. Without having a strong, de-colonial, internationalist stance, we have no path to victory nor a path to justice. Fanon analyzes Colonialism's dehumanizing effects, and lays out how to form a de-colonial movement, as well as its necessity.
Solidarity and intersectionality are the key to any social movement. When different social groups fight for liberation together along intersectional lines, the movements are emboldened and empowered ever-further.
Section VI: Putting it into Practice!
It's not enough to endlessly read, you must put theory to practice. That is how you can improve yourself and the movements you support. Touch grass!
Mao wrote simply and directly, targeting peasant soldiers during the Revolutionary War in China. This pair of essays equip the reader with the ability to apply the analytical tools of Dialectical Materialism to their every day practice, and better understand problems.
Congratulations, you completed your introductory reading course!
With your new understanding and knowledge of Marxism-Leninism, here is a mini What is to be Done? of your own to follow, and take with you as practical advice.
Get organized. Join a Leftist org, find solidarity with fellow comrades, and protect each other. The Dems will not save you, it is up to us to protect ourselves. The Party for Socialism and Liberation and Freedom Road Socialist Organization both organize year round, every year, because the battle for progress is a constant struggle, not a single election. See if there is a chapter near you, or start one! Or, see if there's an org you like more near you and join it.
Read theory. Don't think that you are done now! Just because you have the basics, doesn't mean you know more than you do. If you have not investigated a subject, don't speak on it! Don't speak nonsense, but listen!
Aggressively combat white supremacy, misogyny, queerphobia, and other attacks on marginalized communities. Cede no ground, let nobody be forgotten or left behind. There is strength in numbers, when one marginalized group is targeted, many more are sure to follow.
Be industrious, and self-sufficient. Take up gardening, home repair, tinkering. It is through practice that you elevate your problem-solving capabilities. Not only will you improve your skill at one subject, but your general problem-solving muscles get strengthened as well.
Learn self-defense. Get armed, if practical. Be ready to protect yourself and others. Liberals will not save us, we must save each other.
Be persistent. If you feel like a single water droplet against a mountain, think of canyons and valleys. Oh, how our efforts pile up! With consistency, every rock, boulder, even mountain, can be drilled through with nothing but steady and persistent water droplets.
"Everything under heaven is in utter chaos; the situation is excellent."
Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO) is a national organization of revolutionaries fighting for socialism in the United States. Our home is in the working class.
The alt-left is STILL pulling the “both sides are the same” shit. We will NEVER escape fascism. Like buckle in because the left is not fucking comprehending the massive scale of the difference between corrupt MAGA and corrupt Dems. Yalls are just not fucking getting it. Yalls are still just mad and punishing Dems for their awful, unconscionable Gaza policy (not defending it), but yalls literally put the final nail in American democracy cuz of a single foreign policy issue. Fucked over all LGBTQ people, all disabled folks, women’s rights, immigrant’s right, DEIA programs. As I watch my trans family continue to get targeted and killed, I will NEVER forget the “both sides” leftists who hung us out to dry. Fuck yalls.
Nowhere in this meme does it say that “both sides are the same”. It’s (correctly) showing how both parties don’t give a shit about the working class.
Republicans are horrible but you can’t expect the Democrats to save or help you from them after we have tons of evidence showing they will also break strikes, pass right wing immigration laws, attack protesters, support genocide, and do almost nothing to stop rising fascism.
Also trying to diminish supplying and funding a genocide to just “a single foreign policy issue” is pretty fucked up and not even accurate. Leftists were willing to overlook hundreds of issues we had with Kamala as a candidate if she could just do the bare fucking minimum of not actively funding and supplying a genocide and she couldn’t even do that.
Fascism and liberalism are not distinct ideologies, but the same ideology in different circumstances. Liberalism is the nice mask, fascism is the brutal one, and Capitalism will use whichever the bourgoeisie feels is necessary to maintain control and profits.
Critiquing liberalism is a "left" thing, not an "alt-left" thing, and I don't even know what that means.
IYO filed a trademark infringement lawsuit [PDF] against OpenAI and Jony Ive's company earlier this month, alleging the defendants deliberately adopted a confusingly similar name for competing products. The lawsuit surfaced after the Microsoft-backed startup quietly pulled promotional materials about its $6.5 acquisition billion deal with Ive's firm.
Advocates are urging Senate Republicans to reject a proposal to cut billions from American healthcare to extend tax breaks that primarily benefit the wealthy and corporations.
The proposal would make historic cuts to Medicaid, the public health insurance program for low-income and disabled people that covers 71 million Americans, and is the Senate version of the “big beautiful bill” act, which contains most of Donald Trump’s legislative agenda.
“With the text released earlier this week, somehow the Senate made the House’s ‘big, bad budget bill’ worse in many ways,” said Anthony Wright, the executive director of Families USA, a consumer healthcare advocacy group, in a press call.
Profitez des vidéos et de la musique que vous aimez, mettez en ligne des contenus originaux, et partagez-les avec vos amis, vos proches et le monde entier.
Depends on how much bribery and extortion Trump is willing to use, in order to change their minds. One way or the other though, the US is on its way towards losing all positive influence in these countries.
I can't speak to it as a desktop environment, but as server, the default customizations around packages are just... Strange. I need to move to Debian at some point.
Take it slow. Install a VM with Mint. Play around with it. Get familiar. Move your regular usage over to it gradually. Make the jump when you are ready. It's perfectly OK to have reservations about a big change like that. But you don't have to do it all in one go.
It's not using it that's the problem, I have Mint installed on my work PC and my laptop, and I like it. But for some reason installing it on my main PC, which I use pretty much every day, has me worried for reasons I don't get myself. It's like a soft phobia, an irrational fear.
Dual boot? Keep like 200GB for windows, and the rest mint. If you need windows for something, boot over. But otherwise, I legit feel more worried when windows has access to my data.
I'm currently using Win10 IOT LTSC on my main gaming rig, and Mint on my laptop to get used to the environment (started 2 years ago). It's a great way to both get used to the new ecosystem, and have a fallback cushion if some software or scenario doesn't work properly.
Honestly this is the best suggestion especially if you can mount your windows partition read only. You get the benefits of Linux while still having access to your files.
For most folks, the biggest hurdle is getting compatible apps. Once you find the apps you need, moving over is just a backup and restore away.
Is it "change" itself that makes you uncomfortable or the fact that change means putting in effort in areas you've developed habits to minimize effort?
I screwed up so bad. I bought a laptop to trial different Linux distros and also because my old one is 12yo now and has its own problems. However, the manufacturer ONLY provides Windows support drivers, so the keyboard won't work without a kernel level patch and I am not a kernel-patch level guy yet
Right? It's some firmware level issue, but I haven't looked deeper into it recently because I got frustrated with a couple failed patch attempts. I guess you have to include the laptop model explicitly or it doesn't know to look for it
Asus Q533M. I found a user patch on stack but it was for older models. Tried to update it myself and run a rebuild, but I might have missed a step since it errored out
If you're using an Arch Based distribution and have access to a USB keyboard so you can use standard HID drivers during setup you should be able to follow along on this wiki to use the software included in the ASUS Linux stack. It appears they have some nonsense going on. Tbh I didn't know about this until looking just now and I'm gonna be going through here and getting the tools I need since I've got an ROG mobo I think would benefit
I put Mint Cinnamon on an older laptop just this past weekend and had a lot of fun with it. Are there any migration tips for my main Windows machine? I was thinking of going with Bazzite since it's my gaming box. What about saved game data and whatnot? I was reading about Putty and SSH ing over to the laptop, but I'm not sure what a good strategy is for my desktop.
I actually just moved my gaming PC from Win11 to Mint Cinnamon 2 weeks ago. There was some driver fuckery (I have an Nvidia card) that made things a bit wonky but everything worked out after some adjustments.
Do you mostly game through steam? Do you install your games on a separate drive?
Steam makes the transition the easiest. All of my games "just worked" with Steam. There were a few modifications required to ensure stability with the games settings but it was mostly smooth sailing for me.
I just used thumb drives to pull all my games save files to and an external drive to back up all my installed games so I wouldn't have to re download them. Save game files are usually pretty small so all of the ones I had backed up on a single thumb drive and Steam and Linux creates a faux Windows folder system for each game and you just reinsert the save games in those folder structures at the correct spot.
Thanks all for the helpful replies! I do have a second ssd, I can probably dump everything there before I format my m2 ssd. I do primarily game thru steam, I've got icue software that isn't compatible but I believe I can use openrgb. Nvidia card also, is it just driver related?
Sorry for the late reply but the driver stuff was me trying out proprietary vs community Nvidia drivers and then just weird things that would happen on restarts after switching/updating drivers. I have an intermittent issue where the primary monitor (I have two) alternates being entirely light grey, red, blue, and green upon startup I haven't researched it yet because I just restart the computer and it is fine. And it has happened maybe 3 times over the last month (amongst dozens of restarts). There are a few things like that that only happened once so I wrote off the occurrence.
I have had the most luck with the proprietary Nvidia driver so far.
That's interesting. Have anything that comes to mind as easily searchable that might start showing up? I would have to imagine a lot of corporate stuff that is certain they want to keep up on security.
I doubt companies will be flooding markets with anything. 7th gen devices came out almost a decade ago (yes it's almost been that long since 2016) and most companies only keep computers for 3-5 years max.
I have been putting up with the ads, spyware, and lack of control for years: this was the last straw for me. Couldn't upgrade to Win11 and now they're ending support for Win10?
Just wiped my SSD and booted Linux Mint. I'll miss certain games and Paint.net (slowly learning GIMP) but I can't put up with this shit anymore.
Originally I planned to switch in October when support for W10 runs out, but it seems my PC made the push for me.
At the start of July some issue with windows that caused my system to freeze and then get stuck on boot when restarted finally bricked my system for a 2nd time this year and I was forced to reinstall the OS again. So, instead of wasting another 4 months on dealing with all the crap windows has been throwing my way lately, I just jumped ship to mint.
3 weeks in and, so far so good. Really got around to all the personalization it allows over windows. Learning to run a pc mostly through the terminal has been a step out of the comfort zone, but an enjoyable one tbh
Spanish Foreign Minister Jose Manuel Albares said on Monday that he will urge the foreign ministers of the European Union to suspend the EU-Israel Association Agreement immediately, Azernews reports.
"If the Association Agreement is based on human rights, then it's the most normal thing that we suspend it immediately today and move forward. That is why I will ask for the suspension of the agreement and embargo on selling weapons to Israel, as well as sanctions to everyone who wants to be a spoiler to the two-state solution," Albares stressed at the sidelines of the European Foreign Affairs Council in Brussels.
A Palestinian-Jordanian woman with German residency was separated from her one-year-old after German authorities deemed the child a security threat, she and her lawyers say.
The European Legal Support Centre, which is supporting her case, say the woman is the latest victim of the German state’s weaponisation of residency issues to repress Palestinian solidarity.
“The German state systematically exploits residence, asylum and citizenship law to punish already marginalised communities,” said an ELSC spokesperson.“There is no justification for separating a newborn from his parents, yet to label the child a ‘security threat’ marks a grotesque new low, even by their own oppressive standards."
A Palestinian-Jordanian woman with German residency was separated from her one-year-old after German authorities deemed the child a security threat, she and her lawyers say.
The European Legal Support Centre, which is supporting her case, say the woman is the latest victim of the German state’s weaponisation of residency issues to repress Palestinian solidarity.
“The German state systematically exploits residence, asylum and citizenship law to punish already marginalised communities,” said an ELSC spokesperson.“There is no justification for separating a newborn from his parents, yet to label the child a ‘security threat’ marks a grotesque new low, even by their own oppressive standards."
There is a lot bluesky gets right, and a lot it gets wrong, the same is true with Activitypub.
(Some) strengths of Atproto
Atproto is content-addressed, and portable. This means that posts can exist independantly of their original server. Instead of giving posts a https uri, which will stop working if a user moves servers or their server disappears, they give them at uris. For example, this post on bsky.app: bsky.app/profile/ponder.ooo/po… Has the at:// link is: at://did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk/app.bsky.feed.post/3lk4yrmyugc2f. The post does exist over https at https://porcini.us-east.host.bsky.network/xrpc/com.atproto.repo.getRecord?repo=did:plc:i4bfh2tyxihe2ksplmtcoopk&collection=app.bsky.feed.post&rkey=3lk4yrmyugc2f.
Atproto is very easy to build apps on. For example, tangled.sh, frontpage.fyi and flushes.app are all apps built on atproto. Atproto allows more flexibility in what an app can do, as opposed to lemmy or mastodon's api.
Atproto is better documented. The ActivityPub spec leaves a lot up to the reader.
Atproto has some really good moderation tools for users. People can make public blocklists of users, and people can subscribe to labellers, people or services which give users/posts a label.
Weaknesses of Atproto
almost everyone is on bluesky's PDSes. I thought mastodon.social and lemmy.world were bad, but the people on alternate PDSes altogether adds up to only a few thousand.
Its decentralised identifiers are actually completely centralised! DID:PLC, their DID method, originally stood for placeholder, but they renamed it to Public Ledger of Credentials. To use it, you have to use plc.directory. You can use a DID:WEB DID, but if your website linked to it goes down you lose your identity. (I find it extremely funny that its not actually a requirement for a decentralised identifier to be decentralised. )
Everything on the network has to be public to work. since relays have to be able to collect all the information on the network for Appviews to be able to make use of that information, anyone can find out who's blocking someone, or who is on a list, or who's following who, with no way of hiding that information. Private accounts and posts are impossible to do on atproto.
Since everything is public, DMs (for now) are centralised. They do seem like they want to change that though.
Strengths of ActivityPub
AP (ActivityPub) is better distributed. While it has large servers (like mastodon.social or lemmy.world (and threads, but we don't talk about threads)) the majority of users are not on those servers. There is no single point of failure. If bluesky disappeared tomorrow, atproto would still exist, it would just have a negligable amount of users.
One node in the network lets you do everything, as opposed to bluesky which has three parts (You can do stuff without a relay though). This means you can trust a lot less of the network.
ActivityPub scales better than ATProto. Atproto scales quadratically, meaning that having a lot of nodes in the network harms performance. AP scales horizontally, meaning it works better with a lot of small servers.
ActivityPub can keep stuff private, like blocks and posts. Though, a lot of implementations can leak posts.
Weaknesses of ActivityPub
The spec leaves somuch out. They didn't propose a way to make sure requests between servers are validated, so mastodon chose HTTP signatures. They didn't add any way of looking up handles, so mastodon chose webfinger.
A posts's id is its https uri, this means thatif a server goes down, stuff can't be fetched. A user can't move their followers if their server goes down (you can on ATproto). There is a standard to fix this, FEP-ef61, but it breaks compatibility with a lot of implementations.
Missing information is a problem. Its not really a problem on lemmy, but on mastodon likes and replies from other servers may not make it to your server at all (you can fetch replies in newer versions of mastodon though).
All this aside, I do think the two can coexist. I don't see anything like lemmy working on atproto. ActivityPub seems closer to social networking, as opposed to social media. Something like facebook would be impossible to make on atproto, because not everything is made to be public.
I am hoping for a bridge, but good (bridgy is opt-in, making it useless).
For Activitypub, a weakness is that the server has to host all the visible content to the server. So for example if lemmy got really big, and you wanted to host a tiny server but are subscribed to most lemmy comms, your server ends up hosting and fetching a copy of everything posted in these communities, which can add up to A LOT, in terms of network usage, and computational power. (For example see the debacle where an Australian sever (I think aussie.zone) struggled with this and was weeks behind fetching content from lemmy.world since so much content comes from that instance).
This probably would scale pretty terribly if it got anywhere near the size of reddit.
ATProto gives a scalable solution to this (but comes with tradeoffs). Where you can create your own “instance” PDS (Personal Data Server), without hosting all the posts federated to you, since this is hosted by a “relay” which does most of the heavy lifting computationally. So it ends up with a solution that looks more centralised (since there is less incentive to host relays, so fewer relays), but also much more friendly to people who wanna host their own “PDS” and therefore control their data. This is also very helpful with scalability and solves some of the weird federation quirks activitypub has (ie. you can’t see a lemmy community or mastodon account until someone on your instance subscribes or follows it).
Yes, this does help, but atproto as a whole still doesn't scale well:
In the beginning of our network, we have 26 users, which conveniently for us map to each letter of the English alphabet: [Alice, Bob, Carol, ... Zack]. Each user sends one message per day, which is intended to have one recipient. (This may sound unrealistic, but this is fine to do to model our scenario.) To simplify things, we'll have each user send a message in a ring: Alice sends a message to Bob, Bob sends a message to Carol, and so on, all the way up to Zack, who simply we wrap around and have message Alice. This could be because these messages have specific intended recipients or it could be because Bob is the sole "follower" of Alice's posts, Carol is the sole "follower" of Bob's, etc.
Let's look at what happens in a single day under both systems.
Under message passing, Alice sends her message to Bob. Only Bob need receive the message. So on and so forth.
From an individual self-hosted server, only one message is passed per day: 1. From the fully decentralized network, the total number of messages passed, zooming out, is the number of participants in the network: 26. Under the public-gods-eye-view-shared-heap model, each user must know of all messages to know what may be relevant. Each user must receive all messages.
From an individual self-hosted server, 26 messages must be received.
Zooming out, the number of messages which must be transmitted in the day is 26 * 26: 676, since each user receives each message.
Okay, so what does that mean? How bad is this? With 26 users, this doesn't sound like so much. Now let's add 5 users.
Under message passing:
Per server, still 1 message received per user per day. Per the network, it's 5 extra messages transmitted per day, which makes sense: we've added 5 users. Under the public-gods-eye-view-shared-heap model:
Per server: 5 new messages received per user per day.
Per the network, it's ((31 * 31) - (26 * 26)): 285 new messages per day!
But we aren't actually running networks of 26 users. We are running networks of millions of users. What would happen if we had a million self-hosted users and five new users were added to the network? Zooming out, once again, the message passing system simply has five new messages sent. Under the public shared heap model, it is 10,000,025 new messages sent! For adding five new self-hosted users! (And that's even just with our simplified model of only sending one message per day per user!)
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