[Julian] knows that real diodes you can buy don’t work exactly like we say they do. That’s actually pretty common. We routinely ignore things like wire resistance and source resistance in batteries. Diodes have problems that are harder to ignore, such as the forward voltage drop. So, while a real diode will only pass current in one direction, it will also drop some of the voltage. [Julian] shows you how you can get simulated ideal diodes and why you might want them in a recent video you can see below.
The video starts with a simple demonstration and enumerates some of the practical limitations. Then, he pulls out some ideal diode modules. These typically don’t solve every problem, so they aren’t really ideal in the theoretical sense. But they typically appear to have no forward voltage drop.
The devices use MOSFETs that turn on to have a low resistance when biased forward. Even then, you’ll have some voltage drop, but it can be made extremely small compared to a real diode.
If you don’t need to handle power, it is fairly easy to couple a diode and an op amp to get similar behavior. But where you really want to minimize voltage drop is in power applications, so these modules use beefy FETs.
Some of the modules can float and handle high voltages. Others require a ground reference and will thus have difficulties with higher voltages. The control electronics differ significantly depending on the type of MOSFET used, and [Julian] covers that in detail in the video.
You might want to check out one of our favorite videos on non-ideal diodes. We are guessing that DIY diodes will be far from ideal.
Pretty much every modern car has some driver assistance feature, such as lane departure and blind-spot warnings, or adaptive cruise control. They’re all pretty cool, and they all depend on the car knowing where it is in space relative to other vehicles, obstacles, and even pedestrians. And they all have another thing in common: tiny radar sensors sprinkled around the car. But how in the world do they work?
If you’ve pondered that question, perhaps after nearly avoiding rear-ending another car, you’ll want to check out [Marshall Bruner]’s excellent series on the fundamentals of FMCW radar. The linked videos below are the first two installments. The first covers the basic concepts of frequency-modulated continuous wave systems, including the advantages they offer over pulsed radar systems. These advantages make them a great choice for compact sensors for the often chaotic automotive environment, as well as tasks like presence sensing and factory automation. The take-home for us was the steep penalty in terms of average output power on traditional pulsed radar systems thanks to the brief time the radar is transmitting. FMCW radars, which transmit and receive simultaneously, don’t suffer from this problem and can therefore be much more compact.
But how does sending and receiving at the same time actually give the desired information like range and velocity? That’s explained in the second video, which details a conceptual implementation of an FMCW radar. We’ll leave the full explanation to [Marshall], but briefly, the transmit section includes a signal generator that produces an FM carrier modulated with a sawtooth or triangular wave. That signal is transmitted out into space while also being sent to the receiver stage, where it’s mixed with the reflected wave arriving sometime later. The difference in frequency between the two signals, which isn’t due to the Doppler effect but rather the fact that the transmitted signal’s frequency changes with time, is the beat frequency needed for the FMCW radar equation. That along with a little — OK, probably a lot — of Fast Fourier Transform magic allows you to discriminate signals of interest from background features or random noise.
Will you be able to build an FMCW radar after watching [Marshall]’s videos? Probably not, but you don’t really need to; radar sensors are pretty easy to come by, enough so that we’ve seen teardowns on automotive radars and experiments with gesture sensing. But we really appreciate the primer, and we’re looking forward to future installments.
If you are younger than a certain age, RLL probably doesn’t mean much to you. Old consumer-grade hard drives used MFM (modified frequency modulation like a floppy disk uses) and soon went to IDE (integrated drive electronics). There was a brief period when RLL (run length limited) drives were the way to get a little more life out of the MFM technology. [W1ngsfly] has an RLL drive on his bench and uses his scope and some other gear to put it through its paces. You can watch over his shoulder in the video below.
The hardware interface and drive are the same for an MFM and an RLL drive. However, an RLL-aware controller can pack more bits on the same platter by using the newer modulation scheme. Some older disks were good enough for MFM but too sloppy to successfully take an RLL format, but — in theory — any MFM drive could be an RLL drive and vice versa.
Interestingly, modern drives still use RLL internally. You just don’t need to know that anymore. For that matter, classic MFM was a type of RLL, but no one called it that.
The basic idea is that long runs of a single bit play havoc with magnetic recording devices. RLL ensures that there will be a certain number of transitions between 1s and 0s over a period of time, regardless of the actual data. Literally, there is a limit to how many bits can “run” together, hence the name.
It sounds like [w1ngsfly] has spent a lot of time working with hard drives. He talks about pulling platters and putting them back in and it is obvious he understands the low-level protocol used in this old Seagate drive.
Even if you don’t care about retrocomputing, it is really interesting watching someone this knowledgeable about anything put it through its paces.
[Christina Ernst] executed a fantastic idea just in time for Halloween: her very own Remy the rat (from the 2007 film Ratatouille). Just like in the film Remy perches on her head and appears to guide her movements by pulling on hair as though operating a marionette. It’s a great effect, and we love the hard headband used to anchor everything, which also offers a handy way to route the necessary wires.
Behind Remy are hidden two sub-micro servos, one for each arm. [Christina] simply ties locks of her hair to Remy’s hands, and lets the servos do the rest. Part of what makes the effect work so well is that Remy is eye-catching, and the relatively small movements of Remy’s hands are magnified and made more visible in the process of moving the locks of hair.
Originally Remy’s movements were random, but [Christina] added an MPU6050 accelerometer board to measure vertical movements of her own arm. She uses that sensor data to make Remy’s motions reflect her own. The MPU6050 is economical and easy to work with, readily available on breakout boards from countless overseas sellers, and we’ve seen it show up in all kinds of projects such as this tiny DIY drone and self-balancing cube.
Want to make your own Remy, or put your own spin on the idea? The 3D models and code are all on GitHub and if you want to see more of it in action, [Christina] posts videos of her work on TikTok and Instagram.
[quote]L’impiego della forza militare e di strumenti ibridi offensivi orientati all’allargamento territoriale o all’espansione della propria sfera di influenza a scapito di altri Paesi è una condizione che sta rendendo lo scenario geopolitico globale sempre più fluido e instabile. Ed è su questo scenario che, per la prima
The Xbox 360 was a difficult console to jailbreak. Microsoft didn’t want anyone running unsigned code, and darn if they didn’t make it difficult to do so. However, some nifty out of the box thinking and tricky techniques cracked it open like a coconut with a crack in it. For the low down, [15432] has a great in-depth article on how it was achieved. The article is in Russian, so you’ll want to be armed with Google Translate for this one.
The article gets right into the juice of how glitch attacks work—in general, and with regards to the Xbox 360. In the specific case of the console, it was all down to the processor’s RESET line. Flicker it quickly enough, and the processor doesn’t actually reset, but nonetheless its behavior changes. If you time the glitch right, you can get the processor to continue running through the bootloader’s instructions even if a hash check instruction failed. Of course, timing it right was hard, so it helps to temporarily slow down the processor.
From there, the article continues to explore the many and varied ways this hack played out against Microsoft’s copy protection across multiple models and revisions of the Xbox 360. The bit with the BGA ball connections is particularly inspired. [15432] also goes even deeper into a look at how the battle around the Xb0x 360’s DVD-ROM drive got heated.
La strategia di Israele tra violazioni del diritto internazionale e guerra totale in Medio Oriente | World Politics Blog
"Israele è colpevole di gravi violazioni del diritto internazionale nella sua espansione delle ostilità in Medio Oriente, coinvolgendo le forze di pace delle Nazioni Unite e mettendo ulteriormente a repentaglio la stabilità regionale, con il coinvolgimento di altre potenze come l’Iran."
[quote]Quando nel maggio del’48 vennero istituite le Forze di difesa israeliane, queste erano piccole, scarsamente equipaggiate, ma subito in guerra, e in mancanza di armi sufficienti o di una capacità industriale interna per produrle, il neonato esercito fu costretto ad accontentarsi di qualunque cosa su cui
Sanità a pezzi, scuole fatiscenti, inondazioni, mondo del lavoro svenduto, disabili abbandonati, ma il nostro governo invece di occuparsi dei problemi interni, è impegnato a regalare soldi in giro e giocare alla guerra.
[quote]La Marina militare italiana dispone attualmente della flotta potenzialmente più capacitiva dell’intero panorama di Stati rivieraschi del Mediterraneo. Seppure la Marine nationale francese disponga sulla carta di più piattaforme, esse vanno “spalmate” sull’enorme Zona
La UE come dittatura Con la sventurata adesione dell’Italia al Trattato di Maastricht (1992), ci si chiede se i governi che si sono succeduti in quegli anni avessero o meno la consapevolezza del baratro in cui il Paese stava precipitando.
Ma basta riprendere le dichiarazioni e le interviste dell’epoca per rendersi conto che, nonostante avessero le idee chiare in proposito, non hanno fatto alcuna opposizione, se non a parole, a questa sciagurata transizione. Discorso a parte per quei politici evidentemente corrotti che invece hanno spinto all’adesione.
👉 Guido Carli, Governatore di banca d’Italia: “È stupefacente constatare l’indifferenza con la quale in Italia è stata accolta la ratifica del Trattato di Maastricht (…) L’Unione europea implica la concezione dello “Stato minimo”, l’abbandono dell’economia mista, l’abbandono della programmazione economica, la ridefinizione della modalità di composizione della spesa, una redistribuzione della responsabilità che restringa il potere delle assemblee parlamentari e aumenti quelle dei governi, l’autonomia impositiva degli enti locali, il ripudio del principio di gratuità diffusa (con la conseguente riforma della sanità e del sistema previdenziale), l’abolizione della “scala mobile”, la drastica riduzione delle aree di privilegio, la mobilità dei fattori produttivi, la riduzione della presenza dello Stato nel sistema del credito e nell’industria, l’abbandono di comportamenti inflazionisti non soltanto da parte dei lavoratori, ma anche da parte dei produttori di servizi, l’abolizione delle normative che stabiliscono prezzi amministrati e tariffe”.
👉 Giuliano Amato, Presidente del Consiglio 1992-93: “Abbiamo addirittura stabilito dei vincoli nei nostri trattati che impedissero di aiutare chi era in difficoltà. (…) Insomma moneta unica, ma ciascuno dev’essere in grado di provvedere a sé stesso. Era davvero difficile che funzionasse e ne abbiamo visti tutti i problemi”.
👉 Bettino Craxi, Presidente del Consiglio 1983-87: “Si presenta l’Europa come una sorta di paradiso terrestre. Per noi, nella migliore delle ipotesi, sarà un limbo e, nella peggiore delle ipotesi, l’Europa sarà un inferno. Quindi bisogna riflettere su ciò che si sta facendo. Perché la cosa più ragionevole di tutte era quella di richiedere e di pretendere, essendo noi un grande Paese – perché se l’Italia ha bisogno dell’Europa, l’Europa ha bisogno dell’Italia – la rinegoziazione dei parametri di Maastricht”.
🛑 E oggi, dopo più di 30 anni, ancora si finge di non vedere la realtà. Anzi, da parte di alcuni, di volerci rimanere e marcire in quel baratro in cui siamo stati precipitati con l'inganno.
Scritto letto detto, la rubrica di #RaiStoria in onda oggi sabato #19ottobre alle 20.20. Giovanni Paolo Fontana intervista scrittori, giornalisti e testimoni. Lo storico Mauro Canali ricostruisce la storia del delitto Matteotti. Anche su #Raiplay
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Migliaia di manovali stranieri, in prevalenza donne impiegate fino a qualche settimana fa come domestiche nelle case, sono stati abbandonati in strada dai loro datori di lavoro in fuga a causa degli attacchi militari israeliani L'articolo Lavoratori migranti
Istat, la corruzione è in calo ma non ancora debellata l La Città Futura
"Secondo l’ultimo rapporto Istat, sono calate nel periodo 2022-2023 le richieste corruttive di denaro o altro alle famiglie per avere in cambio beni, agevolazioni o servizi. Ma non possiamo gioire, perché il fenomeno corruttivo non è affatto sconfitto."
Questa settimana, Europol ha ospitato la comunità mondiale delle forze dell'ordine e l'industria della #cybersicurezza al suo quartier generale, in concomitanza con il mese internazionale di sensibilizzazione sulla sicurezza informatica.
La settimana si è incentrata sulla Conferenza europea sulla criminalità informatica e ha segnato il 10° anniversario della task force congiunta sulla criminalità informatica (J-CAT). La conferenza europea sulla criminalità informatica, aperta dal 16 al 17 ottobre, ha fornito una piattaforma per discutere le ultime tendenze e sfide della criminalità informatica. Hanno partecipato più di 460 rappresentanti di 82 paesi, tra cui funzionari delle forze dell'ordine, esperti di sicurezza informatica e rappresentanti dell'industria, tutti concentrati sul rafforzamento della sicurezza e della resilienza dell'Europa di fronte alle crescenti minacce informatiche.
La conferenza di quest'anno ha rappresentato cinque elementi tematici chiave: - Operazioni di impatto: mostrando le recenti operazioni internazionali di contrasto, questo blocco ha evidenziato i metodi di individuazione, indagine e di interruzione impiegati per affrontare il crimine informatico. - L'accesso ai dati per la rapida interruzione: Questo blocco ha esplorato le opportunità di accesso ai dati ed ha esaminato gli ostacoli giuridici, politici e tecnici che incidono sull'individuazione, l'indagine e l'interruzione delle minacce informatiche. - Sfide future contro la criminalità informatica: Incentrato sull'anticipazione delle prossime sfide nel panorama della criminalità informatica, questo blocco ha sottolineato la necessità di continuare ad avanzare le minacce e le possibili soluzioni. - I 10 anni di realizzazione operativa di #J-CAT: In occasione del 10° anniversario della J-CAT, questo blocco si rifletteva sulla creazione della task force, sui primi casi chiave, sulle priorità attuali e sulla direzione futura. - Sfruttare la tecnologia per indagini di successo: l'ultimo blocco ha esaminato come le tecnologie emergenti, come l'intelligenza artificiale, possano essere sfruttate nella lotta contro la #criminalitàinformatica.
Occupare e coltivare: i nuovi guardiani della colonizzazione israeliana l L'Indipendente
"In Israele l’agricoltura è veicolo della colonizzazione. Con essa i coloni allargano gli insediamenti, dopo aver cacciato con la forza i palestinesi e aver distrutto i loro raccolti e i loro oliveti. Sono varie le organizzazioni che svolgono il lavoro sporco per conto dello Stato di Israele, occupando le terre in Cisgiordania. Alcune di queste contano decine di migliaia di volontari che operano nel settore agricolo."
spesso la persona ignorante scaccia l'informazione come una zanzara fastidiosa e cerca "informazione" che dia sicurezza. ama anche arrabbiarsi visceralmente nelle fake new che propongono ad arte il designato cattivo di turno e permette in modo divertente di metterlo alla gogna e così di sfogarsi. in tutto questo l'attenzione per la ricerca di informazione corretta e utile è marginale. non c'è ricerca distintiva dei segni distintivi della fake new, di ricerca di reazione emotiva, di ricerca del valore della fonte. se tale persona ha una fantasia specifica, la sub-cultura che ne nasce attorno è benvenuta, purché confermi. una sub-cultura è un insieme di credenze e valori relativi, attorno alla quale si crea aggregazione sociale e diffusa. un esempio sono le gang all'interno di città usa. ma anche una religione, una credenza, un "valore" possono alimentare e diventare una sotto-cultura. una sottocultura non è "tossica" solo se sussiste la consapevolezza che questa rappresenta solo una parte di qualcosa più ampio e di valore maggiore.
This is Behind the Blog, where we share our behind-the-scenes thoughts about how a few of our top stories of the week came together. This week, we discuss a tech near-catastrophe, data journalism, and breach rumors.#BehindTheBlog
[quote]La due giorni di riunione tra i vertici della Difesa dell’Alleanza Atlantica, appena conclusasi, non ha costituito solo una delle prime occasioni per Mark Rutte, nuovo segretario generale della Nato subentrato a inizio mese, di rivolgersi agli Alleati ma anche un momento importante per ribadire il supporto
Raccoon for Friendica (actually there is also a Raccon for Lemmy app) is an amazing app and, although it is still in “beta” version (the installation file can be downloaded here), it seems like a completely mature app, full of innovations and, surprisingly, it even manages to offer something completely new to Mastodon users! NB: This is an automatic translation from Italian.
Raccoon, the Friendica app that also has surprises for Mastodon users (automatic translation from Italian)
Oh yes! #RaccoonForFriendica is the most complete app ever seen for Friendica and, in addition to working with Mastodon, it might be the only app in the world capable of managing the potential of Mastodon Glitch-soc
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale «No alla grande finanza internazionale!», gridava Giorgia Meloni nel famoso discorso di Marbella, sul palco del partito franchista Vox. Era il 14 giugno 2022 e la leader di Fratelli d’Italia poteva ancora permettersi i toni aggressivi della «underdog»
Raccoon for Friendica (in effetti c’è anche un’app Raccon for Lemmy) è un’app sorprendente e, benché sia ancora in versione “beta” (il file di installazione può essere scaricato qui), sembra un’app completamente matura, ricca di innovazioni e, sorprendentemente, riesce addirittura a offrire qualcosa di completamente nuovo agli utenti Mastodon! Abbiamo deciso perciò di scrivere questo…
Raccoon, l’app Friendica che riserva sorprese anche per gli utenti Mastodon
#RaccoonForFriendica è l’app più completa mai vista finora per Friendica e, oltre a funzionare anche con Mastodon, potrebbe essere l’unica app al mondo in grado di gestire le potenzialità di Mastodon Glitch-soc
#RaccoonForFriendica è l'app più completa mai vista finora per Friendica e, oltre a funzionare anche con Mastodon, potrebbe essere l'unica app al mondo…
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo "Ho vissuto la mia Nakba personale e capisco perché migliaia di palestinesi sono fuggiti dalle loro case nel 1948. Ho preso la decisione più difficile della mia vita e ho lasciato Gaza, senza sapere che quello che portavo con me sarebbe stato tutto ciò che avrei mai
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Khalil Al Hayya ha confermato oggi la morte del leader, promettendo che Hamas continuerà a combattere fino al ritiro di Israele da Gaza L'articolo SINWAR. Hamas conferma la sua uccisione. Netanyahu: “L’offensiva a Gaza continua” proviene da Pagine
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo La polizia federale brasiliana ha richiesto la cattura di decine di golpisti, vicini all'ex presidente Bolsonaro, che sono fuggiti in Argentina e in altri paesi L'articolo Il Brasile chiede all’Argentina l’estradizione di decine di golpisti proviene da Pagine Esteri.
Changelog: 🦝 fix: avoid crash in HTML rendering; 🦝 fix: text color for direct message conversation title; 🦝 fix: avoid dismissing bottom sheets on long press; 🦝 fix: avoid videos from being stretched out of viewport; 🦝 fix: avoid attachment loss when editing an existing post; 🦝 feat: add support for Markdown and conditional markup; 🦝 enhancement: add warning if alt text is missing in attachments; 🦝 enhancement: improve profile opening in links; 🦝 fix: create post with images and delete images from posts on Mastodon; 🦝 fix: avoid bug which prevented draft creation; 🦝 chore: add more unit tests; 🦝 feat: add possibility to copy post content to clipboard.
@Notizie dall'Italia e dal mondo Le prime analisi dimostrano l'uccisione del leader del movimento palestinese. Israele attende la conferma definitiva dall'esame del DNA. Sinwar sarebbe stato ucciso durante uno scambio a fuoco e non per un'esecuzione mirata. L'articolo Israele: “Abbiamo ucciso Sinwar”. L’offensiva a
Automattic CEO Matt Mullenweg made another buyout offer this week, and threatened employees who speak to the press with termination.#wordpress #News #automattic
@Politica interna, europea e internazionale È uscito il nuovo numero di The Post Internazionale. Il magazine, disponibile già da ora nella versione digitale sulla nostra App, e da domani, venerdì 18 ottobre, in tutte le edicole, propone ogni due settimane inchieste e approfondimenti sugli affari e il
#PNRR, è stata pubblicata oggi la graduatoria degli interventi finanziati a seguito del bando da 515 milioni pubblicato il 29 luglio 2024 per la realizzazione e messa in sicurezza delle mense scolastiche.
#PNRR, è stata pubblicata oggi la graduatoria degli interventi finanziati a seguito del bando da 515 milioni pubblicato il 29 luglio 2024 per la realizzazione e messa in sicurezza delle mense scolastiche.
su facebook ho scritto: testuale commento: "l'alternativa alla Harris è Trump ed è terrificante". commento cancellato. che poi sono un'italiana... mica voto. ecco perché scrivo cose serie anche qua. ma è offensivo sostenere che un candidato è terrificante? pensavo fosse una legittima opinione.
Alla prima giornata a Bari di Fiera Didacta Italia edizione Puglia, il Ministro Giuseppe Valditara ha partecipato alla cerimonia di inaugurazione e ha visitato gli spazi del quartiere fieristico incontrando docenti, studenti, personale scolastico.
Chatting comes to the ATmosphere with Picosky, X is unbanned in Brazil, and a significant group of Brazilians moved back, and a deeper dive into aviary.domains.
Chatting comes to the ATmosphere with Picosky, X is unbanned in Brazil, and a significant group of Brazilians moved back, and a deeper dive into aviary.domains.
Picosky
Picosky is a new chatting service build on top of atproto. Picosky was created by Juliet, and started as an experiment with building an simple chatting app on atproto, originally limited to just 12 characters per message. It was a demonstration of making an AppView for chatting on atproto that utilises the existing infrastructure of the network: You log in with your Bluesky/atproto account, messages are stored on your PDS, and the PicoSky AppView listens to all the messages on the Relay and displays them. The direct connection of your Bluesky account made it a fun place for atproto hackers to hang out, which expanded the scope of Picosky quickly to a serious project.
Over the last week or so Picosky has undergone rapid changes by the developers Juliet and Elainya: you can log in with OAuth, the character limit got increased multiple times, now at 2048, you can edit and delete your posts, and UI updates where it is now a clear and minimalist proper chat UI.
The simple structure of Picosky, and the way that it integrates with the atproto infrastrucuture, makes Picosky an attractive place to further build on by other developers: one of the first Picosky-compatible projects to make it available via IRC. This is a separate AppView, that reads the same posts as the Picosky AppView does, and that can fully interact (federate) with each other. Other projects in the works are an iOS client or one for the terminal.
Meanwhile, the Lexicon structure (which determines the format of the messages) has had a major update the other day: there is now support for creating separate rooms on Picosky. Anyone can create rooms, and the owner of the room can set moderation to be based on a deny-list or an allow-list. The frontend has not been updated yet to take advantage of this however, but I’m sure we’ll get back to Picosky next week.
The News
It is now a week since X has been unbanned in Brazil, and a significant part of the Brazilian user base that joined Bluesky has gone back to X. Daily Active User count dropped by half, from 1.2M to 600k. This number was around 300k before the ban, indicating that a large number of Brazilians did stick around: Portuguese is still the most popular language of the platform; 45% of posts are in Portuguese, compared to 32% English posts. It shows that social networks are extremely sticky, and people have very high switching costs. In that context, Bluesky has done well with the number of Brazilian who stayed around after X became unbanned.
Bluesky is hiring, and they are looking for a Feed Algorithmics Engineer. The job is to “design and implement machine learning models to improve personalized content recommendations, spam detection, labeling, and more.” As the network grows, so do the challenges of providing algorithmic recommendations for feeds and spam detection.
Threads struggles with moderation on their platform, and Bluesky is seizing the opportunity by creating an account on Threads to promote the platform as an alternative on (and to) Threads.
Altmetric, which tracks online engagement with academic research, is looking for people that are willing to help with feedback sessions for their Bluesky attention tracking roll-out.
Bluesky has updated their app (v1.92), with some new features: you can now pin a post to your profile. There are also design improvements, including new font options. You can also now filter your searches by language.
TOKIMEKI, an alternative client for Bluesky, now supports showing your atproto-powered Linkat and WhiteWind profiles.
Threads struggles with moderation on their platform, and Bluesky is seizing the opportunity by creating an account on Threads to promote the platform as an alternative on (and to) Threads.
Frontpage, a link-aggregator platform build on atproto, is now open and available for everyone to use. The developers say that they’ll work on notifications first, and that decentralised and self-sovereign sub-communities are coming later.
For the protocol-people: what happens when there are clashing lexicon fields? Nick Gerakines publishes his thoughts on how the Lexicon system can evolve, with some additional thoughtsby Bluesky protocol engineer Bryan Newbold.
Deep dive: Aviary.domains
Aviary.domains is a new service that helps managing domains for Bluesky and the ATmosphere, that recently launched in early access. Aviary makes it easy for people who have a domain name to share that domain name with other people as their handle.
To place Aviary in a larger context, a short explanation: It helps to understand as the central offering of the ATmosphere being a single digital identity. When you first sign up for Bluesky, two things happen:
You join the ATmosphere, by creating a digital identity (a DID) that works with all other products that are build on atproto.
You log in with this newly created identity into Bluesky, and use Bluesky with this digital identity.
This digital identity, a DID (Decentralized IDentifier) is a unique string of letters and numbers that can never change, which is good for computers because it is unique, but very unpractical for humans to use. That’s why you have a handle, which corresponds behind the scenes with your DID. The idea of atproto is to use a website domain name as your handle. You can always change your handle to a different handle if you want, as long as you have a website domain you can use. Most people do not have their own website domain, so when you first join the ATmosphere and your DID gets created, Bluesky also gives you one of their sub domains you can use: yourname.bsky.social.
The goal for Bluesky is that people use their website domains as their handle, as it gives an easy way to verify ownership: the owner of the website is also the owner of the account. One problem however, is that many people do not have their own website domain. This is both an opportunity for Bluesky (which now sells domain names to people), but also still a challenge: a significant group of people are simply not interested in paying money for what amounts to a better user name. Even if you have your own website domain, having to change DNS settings is still a technical barrier that is too high for a large group of people.
This is the part where Aviary.domains comes it, as it tries to find an audience for people who have a domain name, that they want to share with their community. It has created a system where an owner of a domain name can invite other people to use a version of that domain as their handle on Bluesky. So as the owner of laurenshof.online, I can log in with Aviary, and generate a subdomain for, lets say my cat. Aviary generates a link that my cat can click; they log in on Aviary with Bluesky’s OAuth, type in their name, press accept, and their handle is now changed, without them having to change settings.
What makes this different from projects like swifties.social, which also hand out subdomains for people to use as handles on Bluesky, is that it does not require the final step, changing settings in the app. It also gives the owner of the domain control over each subdomain, with the ability to subtract subdomains as well. This makes Aviary more useful for people who want to have more control over who identifies with the domain, and can show they are part of the community.
Audio spaces app Bluecast now can show your broadcasting history.
That’s all for this week, thanks for reading! You can subscribe to my newsletter to receive the weekly updates directly in your inbox below, and follow me on Bluesky @laurenshof.online.
A quieter news week: self-hosted 3d printing app Manyfold joins the fediverse, and write.as now offers paid subscriptions for fediverse accounts with sub.club.
The News
Manyfold is a self-hosted open source web app for organising and managing your collection of 3d files, and in particularly 3d printing. With their latest update, Manyfold has now joined the fediverse by adding ActivityPub support. With the new integration, you can now follow a Manyfold creator from your fediverse account of choice, and get notified when the Manyfold account uploads a new 3d file. New Manyfold uploads appear as short posts with a link in the rest of the fediverse. To demonstrate, here is the Manyfold account from the creator Floppy as visible from Mastodon, and here is the profile on their Manyfold instance itself. The Manyfold server also has a button to follow the account on the fediverse. Manyfold implementing ActivityPub support is an illustration of how ActivityPub can be viewed as a form of ‘Social RSS’: it allows you to follow any Actor for updates, and adds social features (sharing/liking to it).
Sub.club is a service that lets people create paid subscription feeds on the fediverse. The service recently launched with the ability to monetise Mastodon feeds, and has now expanded to also include long-form writing, by collaborating with write.as. Write.as is the flagship instance of fediverse blogging software WriteFreely. With this update, blogs on write.as can now set on a a per-blog basis if a blog is a premium blog, and where the cut-off is. People who follow the blog from a fediverse account will see an option to subscribe and view the full post; this post by the sub.club account shows how a premium blog will look like from various perspectives. Adding sub.club to a write.as blog is as simple as following this three-minute PeerTube video.
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