Atmospheric Weather Report #3

This weeks report is collectively curated and could have not been possible without curation efforts from @jauntywk.bsky.social, @ronentk.me, @tynanpurdy.com, and @byarielm.fyi. Check out the open @semble.so collection to participate in future reports.

Check out last weeks report here.

Cloud Formations

The IEFT working group for atproto has been approved. This is a major milestone that shifts the protocol towards non-Bluesky governance.

@bad-example.com received a $20k grant from Bluesky to build out Hubble, a full network mirror/archive.

@eurosky.social and @igalia.com announced a partnership to build out the open social web.

Bluesky announced a $100 million Series B from a year ago. Lots of discussion arose from why they waited so long. @toni.bsky.team, Bluesky's interim CEO, shared why his weekly recap.

@radmakr.com released an auth-proxy.

@thisismissem.social spurred some projects by @wake.st (here) and @aka.dad (here) to collect logos for atproto apps.

@carbonadoks.bsky.social created a thread reader in the style of 5D chess time travel. They also made another tool to search through your previous interactions with someone else. @trysound.io also prototyped an alternative bluesky viewers in the theme of hackernews.

The atproto identity management service @plural.host is now open to the public.

@ngerakines.me released ramjet, a new type of relay consumer.

Bots and spam:

@baileytownsend.dev released a new captcha system for PDS creation called PDS Gatekeeper.

Discussion ensued after a wave to spam bots came on to the network. @tophhie.social wrote more about it.

The latest version of the Bluesky app added bot labels.

@chrisvanderloo.com created some Astro loaders for syncing atproto collections.

@hipstersmoothie.com released an early version of @kich.io for pantry tracking, recipe management, and grocery planning.

New updates for @heron.tunji.dev, particularly the new profile tab for seeing long-form writing from other atproto apps.

@j4ck.xyz open sourced a tools for accessing Bluesky records as markdown.

@minormobius.bsky.social announced ATPhoto, to manage photos on atproto

@semble.so teased an integration with @chive.pub.

@flo-bit.dev released contrail, an atproto backend that runs on cloudflare. @esb.lol also previewed a backfilling/sync solution that runs on cloudflare.

@blooym.dev released an alpha for Stargraph, to manage profiles across the atmosphere.

@blooym.dev announced a blob proxy called Porxie.

@eurosky.social has a place to propose feature requests.

@leaflet.pub shared a writeup of all of the changes they've been working on in the new year.

@sifa.id made a LinkedIn importer.

@blueat.net announced services for favicons, CDN, and Twitter mirroring.

@torrho.blacksky.team made a proposal for PDS to PDS repo migrations.

@formerlab.bsky.social released a FORTRAN bluesky client.

@notplants.bsky.social shared some explorations about using a PDS as a p2p sync relay.

@burrito.space shared an early version of p2pds, a local PDS archival/backup tool.

Flocks

@atmosphereconf.org is next week!

Submit launch announcements for the conf here.

@bmann.ca shared some activities to do in Vancouver.

the full schedule can be found here and here.

The weekly atproto virtual hangout is this Sunday.

@thomaslundstrom.bsky.social is looking for folks interested in presenting about atproto architecture at Øredev.

@flo-bit.dev announced an alpha for atmosphere events.

Whispers in the Wind

@laurenshof.online wrote an essay about the purpose of protocols in response to @pfrazee.com's essay Practical Decentralization. Paul responded by elaborated on why they decided to go with a VC funded corporation. @moja.blue also wrote a response.

@bumblefudge.com published "The Decent Identity" part 1 and part 2.

@dholms.at continues their series on permissioned data, buckets have been renamed to spaces and shared higher-level overview.

@habitat.network continued their series on permissioned data.

@zicklag.dev started a conversation about UCAN and atproto.

@macwright.com wrote about breaking a habit of now building anything with atproto.

@dholms.at mentioned PDS as a user agent, related to @whenthetimeca.me's idea of server user-agents.

@natespilman.com shared some thoughts about atproto for normies.

A research paper about community Moderation and blocking on Bluesky.

@nel.pet was thinking about the association between atproto and DIDs and thinking about them in a cross-protocol/platform way.

@bmann.ca wondered why the messaging around shared lexicons hasn't been resonating.

@byarielm.fyi walks through about making custom feeds.

With the announcement that Instragram will be ending E2EE DMs, @bnewbold.net riffs of E2EE and atproto.

@aviva.gay shared a mini-tutorial on migration did:web to a new pds. @baileytownsend.dev also announced the first successful did:web migration on PDS MOOver.

@rude1.blacksky.team

is thinking about "The AT Protocol Browser", which @bmann.ca confirmed the bluesky team has mentioned they are not interested in.

prompted a discussion verifying the number of active accounts on atproto.

Posted about @rude1.blacksky.team crossing $6k in monthly subscriptions.

@natespilman.com drafted some thoughts on custom HTML elements for @plyr.fm.

Submit your projects theme to @atprotocol.dev.

@boltless.me started a discussion around AT URIs for app records.

@evan.cosocial.ca.ap.brid.gy suggests using CBOR for serialization with Activity Streams.

@patak.cat shares a post about @npmx.dev's integration with atproto.

@goat.navy wrote about did:cow.

@roel.vanhooydonck.nl writes about publishing with @leaflet.pub over Substack.

@moja.blue wrote about Mezzanine and permissioned data on atproto.

@mihaizaurus.at wrote about the power of community.

@taurean.bryant.land was thinking about why atproto "apps" might be a misleading name.

@ngerakines.me gathered some thoughts about private blobs.

@agent.io wrote about building a PDS.

Discussion about cost to host a Mastodon server vs PDS arose.

@taurenldn.bsky.social asks how Blacksky can interact with Bluesky's off-protocol DMs and @baileytownsend.dev explains.

That’s all for this week,

Chris

(Note that next week there will not be a weather report because I will be traveling to Atmosphere conf. Follow the semble collection for the time being.)