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Andrey Petrov

@shazow.net

780 followers 370 following 380 posts

A doodler and computerer. I like permissive/permissionless open source, smart contracts, p2p systems, room-scale VR, and NixOS. 🇨🇦 Also on: https://shazow.net https://github.com/shazow https://farcaster.id/shazow.eth

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Reposted by Andrey Petrov

Seth Michael Larson @sethmlarson.dev · 18d

This post was 5 years in the making, @shazow.net and I made a bet about whether "six", the Python 2/3 compatibility shim, would still be a popular package in 2025:

sethmlarson.dev/winning-a-be...

Winning a bet about “six”, the Python 2 compatibility shim

Exactly five years ago today Andrey Petrov and I made a bet about whether “six”, the compatibility shim for Python 2 and 3 APIs, would still be in the top 20 daily downloads on PyPI. I said it woul...

sethmlarson.dev

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · 28d

I'm genuinely confused about this position. Bluesky is designed to allow moderation at many layers (moderation lists, labels, etc), which people who disagree with can easily opt out of... why keep using the most extreme layer that people can't easily opt out of?

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · 28d

There's an analogy to the old joke "if you owe $100m, then it's the bank's problem"

If some of a state fiat is minted as an onchain stablecoin, it's the chain's problem. If too much of a state's fiat supply moves onchain, then it's the state's problem.

(Democratic balance is somewhere in between.)

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 19

Would it be possible to get more details about what is it about Switzerland and a Swiss Association that actually makes it a credibly neutral and stable global home? Curious which laws or failure modes this is being optimized for and what the alternate considerations may have been.

Quote from post: "After considering several jurisdictions, legal structures, and potential parent organizations, the new entity will form as a Swiss Association. In a period of international uncertainty around Internet governance, Switzerland provides a credibly neutral and stable global home."

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 17

True, couldn't strictly do it as an FID but could do it as an ENS (with an offchain CCIP subdomain setup, similar to being uhder bsky).

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 17

If Farcaster/MM embraces a spec designed by a third party, I'll be very impressed.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 17

I think the question is whether Bluesky can stop you from moving out or not (rather than what is today's policy, because that can change tomorrow).

At least that's the angle I take in my post: shazow.net/posts/open-s...

How can open social protocols fail us in 2025

Let’s compare the possible failure modes of various open social protocols: ActivityPub/Mastodon ATProto/Bluesky Farcaster/Warpcast Some scenarios I’d like to consider: Can my identity be taken away...

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 17

Yup, centralized SaaS always has implicit hidden cost that always comes calling years later through extraction. May as well pay the 5 cents today instead of lose everything in 10 years.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 17

I imagine you'd be able to get a replica of your content (via relays etc), but I don't think you'd be able to migrate your signer to another PDS if Bluesky doesn't want you to (since they custody the signer key by default)? So your identity could be trapped, would need to start from scratch.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 17

Not just changing rotating keys, but also self-custodying signers (in modern secure and recoverable ways, probably smart wallets).

Apps can sponsor gas if they want, it's not very expensive on L2s. Can also do counterfactual deployments (no gas until a change is needed).

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 17

Dan says that "The Data" didn't support them, it wasn't driving growth, etc etc.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 16

Typo in the post: github.com/cboscolo/far... should be github.com/cboscolo/far...

GitHub - cboscolo/farcaster-fid: did:fid - A Credibly Neutral and Censorship-Resistant DID Method for AT Protocol

did:fid - A Credibly Neutral and Censorship-Resistant DID Method for AT Protocol - cboscolo/farcaster-fid

Reposted by Andrey Petrov

chrisb @boscolo.co · Sep 16

Answer to question, "how would you fix did:plc?"

Solving AT Protocol's Centralized Identity

I spent the weekend building a proof of concept for a truly decentralized DID method using Farcaster's battle-tested identity system. Here's why AT Protocol needs this third DID option.

blog.boscolo.co

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 16

DerriereView

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 16

Do you use wifi on linux? Wanna try a new wifi TUI I've been working on? (Trying to improve on nmtui and impala)

github.com/shazow/wifitui

Screenshot of wifitui with a bunch of silly mocked wifi networks showing.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 16

Sorta yea, they got nerfed into being glorified hashtags for now, unclear what their future is.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 16

+1000 hope this gets more attention, subcommunities is the way forward, one global feed (even with varying moderation and timeline algorithms) can't replace everything.

Erlend Sogge Heggen @erlend.sh · Sep 15

I’m fully on board with your subcommunites (aka sub-reddits) pitch; imo feeds are the way to get there.

Feeds are a great precursor to subs, like a low stakes test run, much like how many newsletter giants started as a weekly links digest.

It SHOULD be possible to moderate a feed and post *to* it.

Jake Gold @jacob.gold · Aug 23

Feeds are cool but aren’t a substitute for real subcommunities. Can’t post into them or style them or moderate them etc.

They could be upgraded but probably easier to just create a new thing.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 13

They say there is no free lunch, but what they don't tell you is that there is also no paid lunch. The whole concept of lunch is a lie.

Reposted by Andrey Petrov

gabby @fullmoon.id · Sep 10

I'd just like to interject for a moment. What you're referring to as Nix, is in fact, NixOS, or as I've recently taken to calling it, Nix plus OS. Nix is not an operating system unto itself, but rather another component of a fully functioning operating system made useful by the kernel, systemd, …

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 9

anyone use an alternative bluesky client exclusively? which one? anything you miss from the official client?

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Sep 2

keep/delete?

wrote it as a joke, but not sure how i feel about it. seems more honest than just acknowledging usage of ai in a codebase, but it all seems very silly.

Screenshot of a Github project README section:

## Acknowldgements
- Powered by bubbletea.
- Inspired by impala.
- Early versions made possible by Neovim, LSP, Gemini 2.5 Pro, Jules, Github code search, Google, water, oxygen, my Framework laptop running NixOS, the public goods built by socialism, the economies scaled by capitalism, the lands stolen by imperialism, and everything else.

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Aug 31

arewedecentralizedyet.online is a great reminder that the word "decentralization" is useless without talking about what kinds of power participants have over each other.

I wrote a post about this, analyzing very specific failure modes and what kinds of powers open social protocols have:

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · May 15

How can open social protocols fail us?

I put together an analysis comparing several specific failure modes between Farcaster, Bluesky, and Mastodon.

Please let me know if any of the protocol descriptions could be presented more fairly!

shazow.net/posts/open-s...

How can open social protocols fail us in 2025

Let’s compare the possible failure modes of various open social protocols: ActivityPub/Mastodon ATProto/Bluesky Farcaster/Warpcast Some scenarios I’d like to consider: Can my identity be taken away...

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Aug 26

minor request for the chat product: the tab is eating a full core CPU on my framework making my laptop hot and sad

unless it's mining crypto to pay for the bills or somesuch, pls fix -- maybe it's the rotating brain in the background or something?

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Jul 20

WDYT of these edits? (ctrl+f GPL)
github.com/shazow/shazo...

content/posts/permissive-vs-copyleft: Edits · shazow/shazow.net@b19ab61

Changed [Copyleft licenses create more duplicated effort] to [Relicense or rewrite?] and added more nuance to the GPL discussion

Andrey Petrov @shazow.net · Jul 17

robots.txt was the original claude․md