AT Protocol Overview | Hacker News Reader

AT Protocol Overview

atproto.com

39 pointspr337h4m14 comments

Not the AT I was expecting.

Hacking with an SMS controlled HVAC system and I clicked the link with probably similar expectations as you.

Okay so this is some protocol reference document. What is one supposed to use this for / what problem does it solve?

I'm guessing the previous thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33252108) will offer more insight, but the short version is "nothing" because it's just a spec

It's decentralized Twitter.

This Gizmodo story is a good description of a current state of BlueSky/AT:

https://gizmodo.com/jack-dorsey-bluesky-twitter-social-media...

Analysis of protocol itself: https://havenweb.org/2022/10/19/bluesky.html

UPD Related story on its future is also interesting:

>Will Elon Musk keep funding Twitter’s most interesting side project?

>Jack Dorsey wanted Bluesky to decentralize Twitter. Its future under Musk’s pared-down company looks shaky.

>Bluesky was formally organized as a public benefit LLC led by software engineer Jay Graber in late 2021, and as of April, it had received $13 million from Twitter.

https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/29/23428241/elon-musk-twitt...

So they saw ActivityPub and invented their protocol that achieves the same thing but does it in a much more convoluted way.

ATH

This is not to be confused with the Hayes command set with is also called "AT" and is still used by mobile data modems.

But of course, that is confusing. This is the 'Social networking technology created by Bluesky'.

Saved me a click. Oy vey.

Every HN discussion about this protocol contains a huge subthread about this name collision :(

Because its is a really stupid thing to name a protocol...

Given how there is a genuinely historic, still actively used protocol with the same name. About the only thing I can think of that might be stupider to name a newly created protocol today would be some variation of "TCP" or "IP".

The "AT Protocol", or more properly the Hayes AT Command set provided the fertile ground for two decades of modem compatibility work and eventual standards and helped fuel the very earliest growth of general public access to the internet. While not technically the exact same command set, the GSM standards for sending SMS messages over all cell networks, use what is effectively a derivative of the AT Command set, and to this day you can still find similar AT style "derived" commands in the heart of devices using cellular modems as part of the software that initialises a data connection out to the internet via a modern 4G or 5G modem.

It's just such such a spectacularly bad name for anything new to do with communication of any kind.

I clicked on it expecting it to be exactly that.

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