It turns out that this article has been sitting mostly finished in my drafts for months now. The idea was to finish exploring how Wyrd benefits from Vessel’s DAG, and what it still needs to do.
(Time) Synchronization
In an offhand remark in the last article, I wrote that using time synchronization was a bad idea, therefore logical clocks are the only way to go. This statement should be explained a little.
- The typical use of CRDTs are distributed systems without a central arbitration. But they have been found useful for offline-first use cases, where synchronization only occurs eventually.
- Use cases that are different from the are delay- and disruption-tolerant networking (DTN) uses. …
There’s a new interview up on Safety Detectives where I get to discuss the origins, motivation and direction of the Interpeer Project as a whole. It’s been a great conversation, and I think one of the better summaries of the project from the beginnings to where we are now.
I also get to make some predictions for the Internet that make me rather sad, but help illustrate why the project is taking the architectural approach that it does:
Now I’m writing this in a night where Kirk sweeps over France and heads into central Europe. Hurricane Milton is heading for Florida, mere weeks after Helene has wreaked havoc there. And more storms are forming.
I’m particularly sensitive of France …
Open letter initially published in French by the petites singularités association, translation by OW2 – with French original version below.
To sign it: please publish it on your web site (French, English or both), then add yourself in this table.
Open Letter to the European Commission
Since 2020, Next Generation Internet (NGI) programmes, part of European Commission’s Horizon programme, fund free software in Europe using a cascade funding mechanism (see for example NLNet’s calls). This year, according to the Horizon Europe working draft detailing funding programmes for 2025, we notice that Next Generation Internet is not mentioned any more as part of Cluster 4.
NGI …
A few days ago, a vulnerability in xz-utils named CVE-2024-3094 was discovered, and since then the open source community as well as security pundits fall over themselves and each other to provide the best analysis of this incident.
Don’t worry, this post isn’t another one of those.
Because while all the speculation about what motivates such a long-term attack is fun, the underlying issue is way, way simpler.
In a tweet, Heather Adkins of Google posted an “unpopular opinion: if your hobby is now responsible for running the modern world, it’s no longer a hobby”.
I felt inclined to be kind that day, and chose to interpret these words to mean that she feels a person …