Getting Started with AT Protocol | Hacker News Reader

Getting Started with AT Protocol

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87 pointsevakhoury28 comments

Oh, it's some different AT protocol (some distributed mambojambo) than Hayes AT protocol.

Yeah I was super confused for a minute, wondering what cool and fun use someone found for this old protocol.

It's been extended to include connecting SSH sessions.

It's been a few years, but it's something like

  ATDS"username:password@host:port"

+++ATH0+++ ... good times

ATZ

AT&F

ATDT5551234

My first job in IT was at AOL tech support and we could rattle off AT modem strings from memory :)

Someone also posted a link to the Hayes command set and I was glad.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49567961

Funny how this rhymes with something I wrote in 2011[1][2]: a "universal spreadsheet" where people share not just data but the transformations over it. The pieces are more real now: you can actually free your data from closed services (e.g. Instagram), orchestrate it on something like ATProto, and LLMs make a great new kind of "function" for the system.

[1] https://blog.databigbang.com/ideas-egont-a-web-orchestration...

[2] https://blog.databigbang.com/egont-part-ii/

Most people right now do not want their social media data in world/anonymous-read mode nor want Ai accessing it and doing things with it.

Nothing about this requires world-readable data, privacy can be its own layer. FriendFeed[1] did this well back in the day: it aggregated your feeds and let you control who saw each one.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed

I agree, that's just not where ATProtocol is (currently only available in world/anonymous-read mode). Personally, I find the permission proposal rather lacking (ACL vs the advancements / learning since) and user requested features will require building auth enhancements at the app level, thereby creating a form of centralization.

> thereby creating a form of centralization.

Fair point on app-level auth, still far less centralized than the status quo, where the data, the permissions, and every function on top all belong to one company.

better, but works against one of the core ethos in AT

Too late for that

There's always the future. I stopped using ATProto after the revelations that they hid their VC raise from the community for almost a year (and some other things, straw eventually breaks a camel's back) - and almost all social media, which is a (mild) trend aiui.

Setting aside contemporary political dynamics, there is also the possibility for robust data rights laws that can change the game.

You’ll get more traction, by stating way up top what AT is and who should care about it.

Do you know of something better than the first link in TFA?

You shouldn't have to click away from a blog post to understand what the blog post is about. It should start with a clear self-contained introduction.

atproto.com contains a succinct discription:

> Atproto is a big-world open social protocol. Users publish JSON records into repositories. The changestreams of those records then sync across the network to drive applications.

Still a bit abstract, but OK. Personally I would include that AT protocol stands for Authenticated Transfer Protocol and that it is the protocol powering Bluesky.

Spaces really is gonna bring all the features that HN is critical about AT platforms like Tangled.

Private repos are now on the horizon. Huzzah!

One thing I'm wondering is how ATproto can be integrated with voice/video chat. Would you combine it with Matrix, XMPP, or some custom protocol?

One trick we've been playing with on the Matrix side is figuring out how to tunnel encrypted Matrix over other transports - so you could absolutely use it, layered on top of ATproto spaces, as a way to get E2EE DMLS metadata-protected realtime voice/video/chat but tied to ATproto DIDs and permissions. We're in the final stages of (at last) finalising MatrixRTC, the E2EE group voip stuff in Matrix, which would pair nicely with this.

The "portable Matrix" idea is currently nicknamed Tachyon, and is earlier stage at this point, although I did a Matrix Live about it a few months back: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jc7yfec3iIQ

Bluesky has live video but it's a Twitch stream. ATProto itself is about databases and ways to replicate them. You can store pictures and videos there, but you wouldn't normally use a database replication protocol to actually transmit live video.

> but you wouldn't normally use a database replication protocol to actually transmit live video.

Unless you're Teams. Which... Is probably evidence for the above.

> you wouldn't normally use a database replication protocol to actually transmit live video

Right, I'm more concerned about the areas where there's overlap between atproto and matrix, like with identity and authentication, for example.

"A bad idea until you think about it" https://www.voxport.live/e/cmtn9ea7z00pirnhvyor4kji2

thanks for not explaining once what at protocol is supposed to mean even.

ATDT

shhh

ATDT&L0&M0

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