Yeah, did:web exists, but I still called it centralized because it still relies on did:plc pretty much everywhere (though honestly domain name handles might actually be did:web, not sure). Didn’t know about that dual setup by Bluesky though!

I did notice the @handle.invalid! Thanks!

My understanding was that activitypub was basically a rough formalization of existing protocols, designed to be as flexible as possible. More a template than a real protocol. Unfortunately mastodon’s popularity basically made a bunch of things de-facto obligatory but not well documented, and there’s still a bunch of ways to do… anything.

That link doesn’t work for me, but I ended up finding a post by them that seems to correspond. Good to know, thanks! Seems like it’s realistic but expensive still (150$/mo?), and it’s not gonna get cheaper… I hope they figure out a way to make them less centralized.

I believe that’s your handle, not your identity. Your handle resolves to your identity, but your identity isn’t directly tied to it, in case you lose the domain.

The aggregator is called the Relay, and I haven’t even found anything suggesting one could realistically selfhost it. Then you need to handle the massive stream of data coming through it with AppViews, which are tough to handle too (there are a few but not many iirc).

That said, I am also impressed with the thought behind ATProtocol. It seems much more robust and defined than ActivityPub.

Bluesky’s federation model is actually quite interesting, they go for a very portable approach vs activitypub’s instance-basis. Unfortunately, there’s still a massive centralization point (the main relay, the only thing that can really handle the firehose), and identity is also centralized, albeit has mechanisms to be decentralized.

Dog heaven is also pig hell. It’s a very efficient system.

I pronounce it da-eh-mon in my head, it sounds more old-timey than “dee-mon”.

Ah, my bad then.

… what you said is correct, but that’s superposition, not entanglement. Entanglement is when you create a product state of several qubits that cannot be decomposed into a tensor product of basic states (a single proton/photon/whatever).

Oh yeah, that. My bad, mixed 'em up.

The original algorithm doesn’t use entanglement, though! Just the fact that measurements can change the state. You can pick an axis to measure a quantum state in. If you pick two axes that are diagonal to each other, measuring a state in the “wrong” axis can give a random result (the first time), whereas the “right” one always gives the original data.

So the trick is to have the sender encode their bits into a randomly-picked axis per bit (the quantum states), send the states over, and then the receiver decodes them along a random axis as well. On average, half the axes will match up and those bits will correspond. The other bits are junk (random). They then tell each other the random axes they picked, which identifies the right bits!

They can compare a certain amount of their “correct” bits: if there’s an eavesdropper, they must have measured in the wrong state half the time (on average). Measurement changes the state into its own axis, so the receiver gets a random bit instead of the right one half the time. 25% of the time, the bits mismatch, when they should always correspond.

You can have post-quantum cryptography using classical computation, though

(“Simply” pick a problem with no quantum acceleration. I think Elliptic Curves Cryptography works, but I’m not an expert)

“The transgender topic” is already weird as a statement (kinda like “the gay agenda”, it comes off as only considering it as a political statement?), and “clearly promoted by the bourgeoisie” implies it’s bad.

“As far as […] lgbt flags on government buildings”: it’s… not far at all? Again, weird statement.

“Biological male” is both wrong for the boxer (she’s cis) and generally used for transphobia (trans women on HRT aren’t biological males by any reasonable definition). It’s also generally conspiratorial.

Overall it’s not explicitly transphobic or bad to me, but it shows at minimum a very misinformed perspective.

Why the fuck are legal databases locked behind paywalls

Here’s an archived version of that medium link that doesn’t cut off: https://archive.is/FNqUx (and that loads super fast)

Yeah that’s fair. I don’t quite know why I read that the way I did, but I read the “choosing” as “lives there and isn’t actively attempting to move”.

And therefore you are

… do you just expect everybody who lives there to pack up and leave? Even though their entire lives might be there and moving costs a ton?

But there’s no “biological” reason for that. In the same way, skirts/dresses being for women and suits/ties being for men, leg hair, haircuts, voice, mannerisms, emotional availability, all get tied one gender or another.

We, in our society, have associated some properties to one of two genders. Some of these properties tend to be associated to one sex (sex being a more “biological” thing (but still not binary or unchangeable!)), but many of them are just expectations we put upon people. This is what “gender is a social construct” means; that the general understanding and intuition about gender is constructed by the society in which we live. Different societies may have more than 2 genders or completely different sets of associations.

Unfortunately these categorizations are bad for a significant portion of the population, including trans people, gender non-confirming people, but even cishet people; how many times have you heard of some act making you “not a real man” (eg crying for a movie)?