Is this article comparing apples and oranges? For example
> loading the entire homepage only takes one query [if you're logged out]
You can do this with Next.js SSR - there's nothing stopping you from reading from a cache in a server action?
They also talk about Vercel hosting costs, but then self host Rails? Couldn't they have self hosted Next.js as well? Rails notoriously takes 3-4x the resources of other web frameworks because of speed and resources.
Yep! It'd be possible with Next.js. The difference is how it's organized. In Next.js with RSCs, we were fetching data for each part of the page where it's used (trending books, Live events, blog posts, favorite books). Each of those could be their own cache hit to Redis.
One advantage of Rails is the controller. We can fetch all data in s single cache lookup. Of course it'd be possible to put everything needed in a single lookup in Next.js too, but then we wouldn't be leveraging RSCs.
I tried self-hosting Next.js on Digital ocean, but it crashed due to memory leaks without a clear way to understand where the leak was. Google Cloud Run and Vercel worked because it would restart each endpoint. We have more (and cheaper) hosting options with Rails.
This is my exact criticism of RSCs, they basically encourage the N+1 query problem. Basically nobody should be organizing their data fetches like this.
Decades of science show it’s beneficial, and we keep seeing the outcomes validated in practice. Calgary removed fluoride from drinking water, saw a significant increase in dental carries in children, and is adding it back. [1]
Hawaii does not fluoridate and has high rates of children’s tooth decay [2]
Which part of Europe are you in? Countries in Europe add fluoride to water, salt, milk, and Italy has naturally fluoridated water.
> The European Academy of Pediatric Dentistry
(EAPD) recently called water fluoridation "a core component of oral health policy" and adds that salt fluoridation "is suggested when water fluoridation cannot be implemented" due to
technical, logistical or political reasons.
I believe the Bluesky experiment is already over, and it was not successful.
1. Bluesky was advertised as a very open, resilient platform because of AT, impossible to fully censor, with moderation at the user level, not platform level. In reality, "Bluesky Social" is what everyone uses (not AT), which performs bans at the core levels (PDS / Relay / user account level). So it's just like any other social media platform. Still better than the Mastodon Reddit-style mod abuse problem, but not fundamentally more open than other social media platforms.
2. The second promise is that if anyone hosts their own PDS, anyone else can build their own relay and their own social media app that gets around the bans. In reality, I don't see much appetite for using someone else's distributed key-value JSON schema design. The value add isn't clear enough. Other social media platforms build their own systems, which is an intuitively natural choice.
If Bluesky is not a highly open platform, and AT has low adoption (no killer app, hasn't realized the promise/benefit of being able to aggregate data from multiple publishers) then I don't think it has a future.
Seems rather premature to call the experiment over when Bluesky/atproto has only been generally available for a year since they opened up registrations to all in February 2024. That’s a very short amount of time to explore the affordances of a brand new platform and ecosystem.
The development of that other protocol that was also blessed with a money injection from Jack, is NOSTR.
This protocol and all the clients and relays went the full decentralized route.
This had up and downsides. Not all clients support all features. Not all relays support all features, and the quality between these apps is greatly differing.
But the upside is: the development is truly decentralized. Nobody is in control and every developer chooses which of the many NIP (Nostr improvement proposals) they want to incorporate or ignore.
Off course, most users will just use the most popular clients (like https://primal.net/home and https://damus.io) but simply thaking your crypographic keys and moving clients, or using a whole bunch of clients next to each other, is just such a vastly better experience then logging on to one platform, either BlueSky or X.
Why should the experiment be considered over? It seems like there's still work in progress? Is there something preventing a "killer app" from becoming popular someday soon?
Bluesky is currently a terrible product with a paltry number of users. The small dev team can’t compete with social media platform features. React Native means bad mobile UX.
Higher bit-rate video, faster load times, app stability, and edit functionality (which many people repeatedly request, despite it being arguably low-priority because you can just delete and repost), just to name a few. I'm practically a Bluesky fan, and I again disagree with Steve's characterization, but even I see many things that have room for improvement. Granted, Twitter/X should crush them on this alone and they've arguably leveled the field by making their platform worse over time, so heh.
if that's the case, I'd think Bluesky has an advantage. Because there's open API and third-party apps actually works, compaired to very closed nature of X.com
at least I can read posts from public officials without an account on Bsky. representatives and public organizations using sites that require an account & agreement with a third party private Terms and Services just to read their posts should be illegal
I think a response to this comment have to be built on two axes:
1. Is the anything goes Happy Hour of Bluesky over?
2. Is the remnant of happy hour useful?
And, IMO, the answer to both are yes. I bet it'll coast for a decade or two and I bet it'll do tolerably; the social media wing of The Internet was given an gratuitous 1UP.
I'm of two minds about this. I don't really hold a super high opinion of Jack Dorsey, but regarding why he left Bluesky I think he actually had a point. It's not really clear what Bluesky actually practically does other than directly compete with Twitter.
The thing that steams my rice personally is that I am friends and acquaintances with a variety of different folks who use social media. I don't think Bluesky would have seen nearly as much adoption if it didn't position itself as having solutions to the inherent problems of centralized social media: the same promises are what propelled growth on Mastodon, too. But see, even though Mastodon is flawed in many ways, it really does solve some of the problems of centralized social media. It lacks some of the theoretical capabilities that Bluesky and AT proto offer, and I absolutely think what Bluesky and AT proto offer on paper is amazing. Censorship resistance! Host your own PDS! Relays keep working when PDSes go down! Sounds good, whereas on Mastodon your identity is tied to where your data is hosted and there's nothing good to do when an instance goes down. However... In practice, none of it matters because indeed, AT proto adoption seems rather unimpressive. The Bluesky app view offering a single URL regardless of where the data is hosted is great, but... In practice, it centralizes all of the moderation for all users. The way Bluesky operates today makes it more like Twitter with extra steps. And knowing some of the moderation woes, I'm not sure I'd categorize Bluesky as unilaterally better than Mastodon; in my opinion, the main advantage of Bluesky over Mastodon here is the lack of instance-level blocks, which I think are grossly overused in the fediverse. OTOH, though, the ability to choose an instance means you do have a choice, however inconvenient it is. Bluesky having one appview, there is one choice. You get to see what they let you.
They built something impressive, and sure, it has its fans, but I worry it attracted people under somewhat dubious pretenses. It wasn't really decentralized in any meaningful way when users originally flooded in, and to this day the actual degree to which it is decentralized is quite questionable. I understand they have valid reason to fear giving up control in any truly meaningful way, but if they can't actually do that, then is there really a point to this? In practice, if Bluesky was completely centralized, it would basically make no difference. It wouldn't change much about moderation or how censorship-resistant Bluesky is, or any of that. It'd probably just make the damn thing a lot less operationally complex, and it would effectively be Twitter but for people who are left-leaning.
Thankfully for me, I don't really want any particular Twitter-like, but it's still hard to deny the importance of Twitter. A lot of the internet's personalities and creative talents are hanging out on these crappy social media platforms. I have my misgivings with the Fediverse, I've written at length about it in the past... But if I had to pick one, right now I'd pick the Fediverse over AT proto, scale be damned, subreddit moderator problems be damned, because it offers practically useful decentralization today and not "maybe some day."
This is the clear and present problem in my eyes. I disagree with your first premise. I feel like it's unfair to call it over and unsuccessful. Many people are investing directly in the problem we're discussing. It's my hope this is the core focus of everyone working on AT at the moment: incentivizing some kind of competition in the ecosystem and creating and actively demonstrating that value add. Many want Bluesky to be viable because the alternative publishing platform is a dumpster fire. However, it's only fair to admit this doesn't magically make it so. I'd really like to see some more concrete details on how they plan to generate revenue.
I don't know about you but I think trying to build a business on "Maybe (hopefully?)" sounds pretty scary. I'd much rather be literally giving away money (if that's what it takes) to get someone to be the Pepsi to my Coca-Cola on the platform.
I like to think there’s a little more conviction and adaptability there as you try to find market fit, both in terms of messaging and the solution itself.
If your point is that no business is a sure thing, then well, you got me. It’s true. My point was that “wait and see” isn’t a business model when you don’t have traction.
Idiomatic Go is using shortened variable names, not what's in this article. I thought that was common knowledge and part of the Go ethos? I also wouldn't consider grammar in comments part of the language idioms? This is an unusual and very light take on Golang language idioms.
These are dang short compared to Java's FooBarBazBeanFactoryFuncClassImpl. The point you may be responding to is that "Short variable names" are themselves contextual. If you're doing a simple loop:
for i := range personlist {
person := personlist[i]
...
}
Is more readable than
for personNum := range personlist {
person := personlist[personNum]
...
}
because it makes clear that the i is basically irrelevant. The latter isn't bad style if you're three loops deep, because i, j, k is a bit harder to keep track of which is which.
I don’t know what your intentions or hypothesis are, but this is a dangerous place to be a novice in. Eye health is misunderstood and most people are ignorant of the basics. If you don’t know what emmetropization is, if you don’t know who Bates is, and if you don’t know why Bates is a quack, then I strongly discourage you from experimenting with user surveys.
I mean, what are the risks of the surveys? I don't think it will be dangerous to survey people without the full knowledge. Better to be curious about it than do nothing. Discouraging low risk research just for being pendantic sounds a like toxic gatekeeping.
It really is just unnecessary and arrogant gate keeping.
OP for now just wants to talk to people, I assume to understand their issues, what they tried, what makes it better and what makes it worse for them. Talking to people volunteering for a call is not dangerous.
For all we know, OP will not see any pattern that fits their hypothesis and leaves it at that.
It’s very telling that most of the comments on the article are about Bell Labs, almost none of the comments are about the article. Few have actually read it! The writing is terrible and verbose.
What? How much money did this person make working on software they consider surveillance, before deciding they were comfortable enough to leave? Looks like they made enough money to live off “dividend income.” Something about their dad? The hell is this?
Love this quote, it should be a poster on the wall of any dev who pushes Domain Driven Design on an engineering team.