The Only Moat is Taste - AT Protocol

Nicholas Vincent - Academic Website

Prof. Nick Vincent is an Assistant Professor in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He studies the content ecosystems and data supply chains that fuel

Brennan Kenneth Brown (@brennan@social.lol)

Because $18 million dollars isn't enough for some people, I have *more* people and organisations of note to list as paying Omarchy patrons (there are over hundreds in total): - Axel Fontaine is the creator of Flyway, the widely used database migration tool he sold to Redgate in 2019. He's also submitted code to the Omarchy repo, both a funder and a hands-on contributor. - Marc Köhlbrugge is the founder of WIP and BetaList, fixtures of the indie-hacker/bootstrapper scene that Omarchy's ricing bullshit aesthetic is clearly courting. - ServiceStack is an established .NET web-services framework vendor, one of the patrons backing the project as a company rather than an individual. - Bertrand Janin is a longtime open-source developer (ex-Ramp, ex-Truveris) running his own small shop, Atelier Janin. - Pagecord, the blogging platform created by Olly. - Vincent Ritter, founder of Tinylytics and Scribbles, known for complaining about being offended by pronouns, being disappointed by more inclusive Apple emoji, disparaging "foreigners" who drive for Uber and play "foul rap music," and praising Elon Musk the day after he performed two Nazi salutes on camera. Manton Reece, of micro.blog, publicly defends him. - 9538-7874 Quebec inc. is one of at least a couple of numbered, unnamed Canadian corporations on the list. Bizarre shell companies with no public identity attached to them at all. Unsure about these. https://omarchy.org/patrons/

Trust and Faith in Our Web

I’m not Brennan, but I’m very interested in decentralization and a fan of AtProto specifically, so I’d like to weigh in. First I should mention I’ve personally never been able to get into microblogging, so I haven’t touched bluesky myself, despite having an account for ATProto reasons. But I agree it’s concerning that the company chooses to continue to host the content of harmful individuals and calling that act “neutral”. I’m certainly against the idea of the “marketplace of ideas” as it’s cle...

Nicholas Vincent | Data Leverage & Public AI

Prof. Nick Vincent is an Assistant Professor in Computing Science at Simon Fraser University. He studies the content ecosystems and data supply chains that fuel

Denizen

What is out there, now, that represents a market-based economy beyond capitalism? Post Growth Institute Founder Donnie Maclurcan shares his views on what's working around the world today and his theory of change towards the next economy.

Decentralization enables permissionless innovation

I’ve just started reading Inventing the Internet by Janet Abbate. The opening chapters are great, narrating Paul Baran’s efforts at RAND to design a nationwide communication network. Baran had one design goal for this network—survivability. Specifically, survivability in the face of nuclear catastrophe.

Take it from the insiders: Silicon Valley is eating your soul | John Harris

Former Google and Facebook executives are sounding the alarm about the pervasive power of tech, writes Guardian columnist John Harris

Decentralization: Worth The Wait — Open Tech Strategies | Blog

Ethan Zuckerman has a piece in Wired that says building decentralization tools is a sucker's bet. He and his coauthors, Chelsea Barabas and Neha Narula, mention the FreedomBox, which I helped lead, as an example of how difficult this stuff is. They point to a list of things that make decentralized efforts prone to failure and conclude:

The ecosystem is moving

Considerations for distributed and decentralized technologies from the perspective of a product that many would like to see decentralize....

- Bruno Pedro

People can game open-source governance