oh no! wasn’t bluesky decentralized and federated?!?

The articles take is actually much more nuanced and neutral than that, but it still really amounts to the same thing.

I agree that the article is much more nuanced than that: “But how Bluesky and ATProto handle moderation, and the way that it can be sidestepped, show that [decentralisation] is not a hard requirement.”

I would like to make one thing that the article is alluding to clearer, that is, this is a cat-and-mouse game. So far the Turkish government is happy with having “significantly restricted the visibility of accounts they deem unwanted” but the moment Turkish netizens start sidestepping the moderation (e.g. via third-party clients), the government will step up their game as well and will ask Bluesky to moderate content at AppView or perhaps even at Relay level.

I know that this is a cat-and-mouse game because web censorship in Turkey started with DNS-tampering at first, which people started circumventing by simply changing their DNS servers, and then the government implemented IP-blocking (including of popular VPN providers) and even Deep Packet Inspection. I’ve experienced this first hand but you can read more about it here: Internet censorship in Turkey (2015)

That’s a really beautiful & concise way of putting it <3

Their account is still available outside of Turkey so check it out for yourself: https://bsky.app/profile/carekavga.bsky.social

10 posts only, most of which are after their account got censored, so just a couple introductory posts before that’s all. I suspect the government requested its takedown because the account belonged to a politically active person that was influential enough to cause worry.

The other way you become 4chan.

I think there is a sensible middle ground. :)

Can Turkey ask for any account/post to be banned regardless of where a post was written?

One can always ask and when it comes to countries, it depends on how convincing they can get. Legally speaking (IANAL), I believe that it’s within countries’ right to ask regardless of where the author is from if a content violates their local laws.

By “Fediverse” people usually refer to “ActivityPub”-based social networks such as Mastodon and Lemmy.

People also rightfully argue that Bluesky, despite the best of intentions, is not decentralised. See How decentralized is Bluesky really? (long read).

Why?

There is BitTorrent which I’m sure you’re aware of, and then there is also WebTorrent which you may not.

I’m also actively working on this exact problem with WebMirror with the key difference being that it works in browsers without requiring any additional software. Here is its demo: https://webmirror-demo.netlify.app/

How is Brave right wing? Because of cryptocurrencies?

I read this on Hacker News, which I found particularly interesting:

Elon Musk’s bid for OpenAI isn’t about buying it but about disrupting its transition to a for-profit company. OpenAI Inc., the nonprofit, controls OpenAI LP, the capped-profit subsidiary. To convert to a full for-profit entity, OpenAI Inc. must sell its technology and IP to the new company, with regulators determining a fair valuation.

The rumored SoftBank investment at a $260B valuation relies on this transition, but the current estimated valuation is around $150B. Typically, control premiums in such deals range from 20-30%, putting the expected nonprofit payout at $30B-$40B. However, Musk’s $97B bid for OpenAI Inc.’s assets sets a significantly higher valuation, giving regulators a strong argument that the nonprofit should receive much more.

If regulators adopt Musk’s benchmark, OpenAI Inc. would end up with a 62% majority stake, making the transition far more complex or even blocking it entirely. Even though OpenAI won’t accept Musk’s offer, the bid’s primary effect is to make the legal and financial process of going for-profit much more difficult. It’s a strategic move designed to frustrate OpenAI’s leadership, particularly Sam Altman, and potentially derail the entire transition.

How does it compare to ollama in your experience?

To be clear (and as far as I understand), it’s not a hostile takeover bid because it cannot be: OpenAI is not a public company and thus doesn’t have a fiduciary duty to thousands to millions of shareholders but instead to a handful of big investors who can decide for themselves whether they want that Elon’s money or not. So this isn’t similar to what Twitter had been through but more like Elon teasing Altman I believe.

Perfect thank you!

Were FOSDEM talks recorded?

My issue with this is that, especially as a foreigner living abroad, I cannot always answer which shop might have the items I’m looking for.

I wish Google Maps allowed searching for shops by their inventory, like it does searching for restaurants by their menu. Even better, an open web protocol like RSS where shop websites can communicate to all crawlers what items are being sold where and which are out of stock, so that it’s not a Google Maps monopoly but an ecosystem…

What’s wrong with GitLab?

This is a brand new project so I’m sure no apps are using this yet or even have plans to.

Yep, vectors. See https://github.com/onthegomap/planetiler

You mean how much faster downloading vector tiles are in comparison to raster tiles?

I think pre-rendering makes the biggest difference, rather than the type of tiles.

ActivityPub :) People spend an incredible amount of time on social media—whether it be Facebook, Instagram, Twitter/X, TikTok, and YouTube—so it’d be nice to liberate that.