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Boris

@bmann.ca

8.2K followers 5.2K following 7.9K posts

Web tinkerer. Pooling capital and collaboration. What if we made things a little bit better? #Vancouver #cooking #restaurant #atproto I'm on Germ DM 🔑 https://ger.mx/Axe3y6qlKjg6Yr15PwIYwB1zmaoJLIKUGlT442f8nrg4#did:plc:2cxgdrgtsmrbqnjkwyplmp43

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Boris @bmann.ca · 18d

I have a whole folder of ATProto apps on iOS (plus a select few directly on my Home Screen).

Today we call them “ATproto” apps.

In the future … they’re just a better way to build a wide range of apps, where users own their data, login in anywhere, and choose different interfaces.

Screenshot of a portion of an iOS Home Screen.

The icons for Bluesky, Ouranos, Leaflet, and Semble are shown, plus a folder labeled ATProto that has PinkSky, Popfeed, Spark, Flashes, Skylight, Anisota, Bookhive, Germ, and Anchor in it.

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Boris @bmann.ca · 1h

I just don’t see licensing as a tool to move the needle on this.

I’m having some discussions about licensing and it very much feels like fighting the last war.

Software needs governance & pooled funding (& perhaps movement building)

Perhaps a failure of imagination on my part.

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Will @willdot.net · 13d

If you want to see how I created a custom PDS homepage, take a look at this.

Setting a custom homepage on a PDS

A quick and dirty way to set a custom homepage on your PDS

willdot.leaflet.pub

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Reposted by Boris

Automerge @automerge.org · 8h

🎮 Like CRDTs and videogames? @inkandswitch.com is ✨hiring✨ for a project that combines @automerge.org with @godotengine.org to make the next generation of collaboration tools for game development!

More detail here: inkandswitch.com/jobs/godot-i...

(Fully remote 🌍🌎🌏 contract, late Nov to April)

Godot IDE Engineer

Help build native, visual version control for collaborative game development in Godot

inkandswitch.com

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rahaeli @rahaeli.bsky.social · 7h

Because marginalized people are the ones whose speech is most often disapproved of, the burden and consequences of deanonymization laws falls extremely disproportionately on them, and always will. No one should ever support mandatory age verification, ever.

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Boris @bmann.ca · 5h

Not everyone has peeked at the delegation model of the next cycle.

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Ben Werdmuller @werd.io · 13h

Last week I was delighted to give a keynote talk to open #FediForum, the conference about building the open social web. It's about the real threats we're facing, why open alternatives matter so much right now - and the questions we can ask ourselves to make our work really matter.

Why the open social web matters now

The needs are real – and you have so much power.

werd.io

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ATProto Boston @atproto.boston · 8h

Hey wanna get a beer?

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Ronen Tamari @ronentk.me · 8h

Make history and be part of the first ATProto x Boston meetup 😁
Details coming soon ...

ATProto Boston @atproto.boston · 8h

Hey wanna get a beer?

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Boris @bmann.ca · 8h

More backyard BBQs required.

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Nick Gerakines @ngerakines.me · 11h

I want to learn more about how content goes from the PDS on create / put record events to the firehose. Anyone have any reference code, tutorials, or examples that breaks down the process at a technical level? I want to really get into the nitty gritty technical details. #ATProtocol #ATDev

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Graze Social @graze.social · 14h

Huge milestone today! As of this morning, *Over 20%* of all ATProto accounts have accessed feeds powered by @graze.social. We're just about to surpass 8m lifetime readers, all looking for a new way to control their experiences online. On to the next 8m!

A juggler of worlds, https://pdimagearchive.org/images/3608ac54-4339-4583-99e2-3447dd1ae8c2/

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Boris @bmann.ca · 13h

I think there can be like a sync / discover, but leaflet publication subs are different than follows.

The Publications feed also doesn’t show new pubs unless you explicitly share it as part of publishing flow.

Boris @bmann.ca · 13h

Protocols _like_ MCP (which itself rests on IETF standard OAuth) are part of the open exploration.

Themes like local first, privacy, and delegation are others that fit into the ???

And, if the goal is to serve many humans, “consumer grade” software and mobile need to be included.

Gordon @gordon.bsky.social · 16h

web : CompuServe :: ??? : OpenAI

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dame @dame.is · 15h

New blog on @leaflet.pub!

I built an automated ATProto-based membership & feature gating system for @anisota.net that utilizes Bluesky's account list lexicon. Potentially a first of its kind?

Anisota supports Leaflet docs too, read here: https://anisota.net/profile/dame.is/document/3m36ccn5kis2x

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Gordon @gordon.bsky.social · 16h

web : CompuServe :: ??? : OpenAI

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Laurens @laurenshof.online · 15h

this weeks fediverse news, with some more on Tumblr-like platform Wafrn. it connects natively to both the fediverse and Bluesky, and you can now migrate your Bluesky account to a Wafrn server

connectedplaces.online/reports/fedi...

Fediverse Report – #138

A closer look at the Tumblr-like platform Wafrn, and Loops is getting closer to federating.

connectedplaces.online

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Boris @bmann.ca · 16h

Ok Aram but other than coffee let’s campaign on making something *delicious* abundant and inexpensive.

Boris @bmann.ca · 16h

Oh for sure. Reading is separate from editing so challenging.

I use Chrome as my primary browser so while it prompts in the title bar it doesn’t force?

There are some weird edge cases.

Boris @bmann.ca · 16h

This is very BS. And weird tone?

The Ontario provincial government is one of the largest liquor purchasers in the world so…the wines they buy are often cheaper there than here in BC!

Government as buying co-op.

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Boris @bmann.ca · 16h

Or super convenient ;) I haven’t dug into settings much here.

Doing something like editor . leaflet .pub could be interesting?

I’m doing new windows (one draft per window) and now can just have a Leaflet page open to drop stuff into.

Something here!

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Boris @bmann.ca · 17h

This is pretty much where I’ve ended up in looking to @getdweb.net principles rather than “open source” as an organizing principle bmannconsulting.com/notes/dweb/

“Technology for Human Agency” and “Distributed Benefits” I can get behind without even getting into what license someone picks.

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Boris @bmann.ca · 17h

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Tom MacWright @macwright.com · 17h

i think the 2005-2015 era open source boom was built on a nice job environment where people had a little free time and employers believed in creativity

the free time dried up, everyone burned out, 2015-2025 open source has been explicitly targeted toward getting funding & making money. what's next?

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Boris @bmann.ca · 17h

Yep I have lots of Brewfiles from over the years. Sometimes I use them, sometimes I don’t.

In this case, it was intentional to do a new setup and decide what I actually needed.

Reposted by Boris

Carlos Scheidegger @cscheid.net · 19h

This may just be the best CS paper I’ve read this year. Just read the abstract and first para of the intro! The rest of the intro is really wild too, but very very good:

dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1...

A screenshot of an academic paper. It reads:

Abstract
A "
'quine" is a deterministic program that prints itself. In this essay, I will show you a "gauguine": a probabilistic program that infers itself. A gauguine is repeatedly asked to guess its own source code. Initially, its chances of guessing correctly are of course minuscule. But as the gauguine observes more and more of its own previous guesses, it detects patterns of behavior and gains information about its inner workings.
This information allows it to bootstrap self-knowledge, and ultimately discover its own source code. We will discuss how-and why-we might write a gauguine, and what we stand to learn by constructing one.
CCS Concepts: • Computing methodologies → Philo-sophical/theoretical foundations of artificial intelli-gence; Theory of mind.
Keywords: reflection, probabilistic programming
ACM Reference Format:
Kartik Chandra, Amanda Liu, Jonathan Ragan-Kelley, and Joshua B.
Tenenbaum. 2025. Gauguin, Descartes, Bayes: A Diurnal Golem's Brain. In Proceedings of the 2025 ACM SIGPLAN International Symposium on New Ideas, New Paradigms, and Reflections on Programming and Software (Onward! '25), October 12-18, 2025, Singapore, Singa-pore. ACM, New York, NY, USA, 9 pages. https://doi.org/10.1145/
3759429.3762631

1 A Way of Knowing

From time to time, we all have crises of identity-moments of radical and overwhelming uncertainty about our selves.
I' don't know whether the doubts that seize us can really be externalized in language, but if I were to try, I would express them as questions, questions like: Who am I? What am I?
What kind of person? What kind of mind?

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