The New Normal

Those who have followed my health update and original posts know that I was hit by a car while crossing the street in late June. It's now been 12 weeks, and I want to give an update on the update. Just a couple of months ago, I was in really serious pain, with 9 rib … Continue reading The New Normal →

A Bigger, Better Fediverse

I gave a talk** at Berlin Fediday this weekend entitled A Bigger, Better Fediverse. I talked about what has been happening on the Fediverse in terms of growth, but also what's been improving in terms of trust and safety. I also talk about why these two dimensions go hand-in-hand, and how we can't have one … Continue reading A Bigger, Better Fediverse →

Media

I've had a few great interviews in the last couple of weeks. I decided I wanted to track them on a media page on my own site. I'm going to try to keep them more organized, but for now I just want to get them linked.

Health Update

Four weeks ago today, I was hit by a truck while crossing the street in Healdsburg, CA. I was hospitalized for a week in Santa Rosa with 9 rib fractures, a broken wrist and facial bone fractures. I learned how to walk, shower, dress and care for myself while in excruciating pain. On release, I … Continue reading Health Update →

North Woods

I read North Woods over the last week or so, and I really liked it. It's a generational novel covering European settlement in an area of western Massachusetts from sometime in the late 1600s going forward a few centuries into the future. That sounds like it would be kind of superficial, but the stories of … Continue reading North Woods →

I turned in my manuscript!

I'm excited to say that I turned in my manuscript for the ActivityPub book for O'Reilly Media today. I started working on it in September of 2023, with a lot of interim checkpoints and deadlines since. In April 2024, I finished the first draft of the manuscript. Over the month of May, I've been working … Continue reading I turned in my manuscript! →

Cross-server Interactions in ActivityPub

So, Richard McManus asked me about how ActivityPub supports cross-server usage. As an example use case, let's say a user with the account eric@social.example wants to comment on a photo by dionne@photos.example. In this scenario, Eric would go to the page https://photos.example/users/dionne/photos/1 and enter a comment. How would that work? I can talk about how … Continue reading Cross-server Interactions in ActivityPub →

Bytedance: Add ActivityPub to Tiktok Notes

Bytedance yesterday launched a social app called Tiktok Notes in Canada and Australia. I tried it out, since I live in Canada. I was able to log in using my Tiktok account to log in. The user interface has preview blocks. It was pretty easy to upload a couple of photos and add some text. … Continue reading Bytedance: Add ActivityPub to Tiktok Notes →

Responses to Rabble on ActivityPub

My friend Evan Henshaw-Plath wrote recently about some concerns with ActivityPub. I want to go over his concerns one by one and give some assessment of how accurate and important I think they are. Rabble's words in italics; my responses in just normal text. User identities are tied to a server. This is only partially … Continue reading Responses to Rabble on ActivityPub →

Cover Animal For ActivityPub Book

One of the first things people ask you when you say you're writing a book for O'Reilly Media is: "What animal is going to be on the cover?" O'Reilly books are famous for their lovely animal drawings, in rich detail, either in black-or-white or colour. Books are sometimes referred to by their cover animal, like … Continue reading Cover Animal For ActivityPub Book →