Skip to content
Standard Reader
Log in
Rob Ricci
Author

Rob Ricci

@ricci.io
Follow

Research Professor in the Kahlert School of Computing at the University of Utah. I don't speak for them. Here, I mostly post about decentralization and social networks. I'm more active on other topics in the fediverse at https://discuss.systems/@ricci/ .

Stuff Rob Wrote
Stuff Rob WroteAug 28, 2026
DDoS: WTF
Maybe some online stuff you're using has been down, or performing poorly, and you're hearing it is, or might be, DDoS. What does that mean, and why is it hard for them to solve this problem? DoS stands for Denial of Service - straightforward, an attacker is trying to deny (prevent) someone the ability to use a service. Why? We'll get to this at the end of the article when we talk about how to make it stop - it'll make sense then.
1
Atproto FR
Atproto FRAug 26, 2026
Ce que j'aurais aimé qu'on me dise sur AT Protocol et Bluesky
On en apprend beaucoup plus sur un système par ses pannes que par son fonctionnement normal. Je pensais que le PDS se contentait de stocker mes données et mes clés. L'histoire réelle n'est pas aussi simple.
atproto
Stuff Rob Wrote
Stuff Rob WroteAug 26, 2026
What I Wish Someone Had Told Me About AT Protocol and Bluesky
I've been interested in atproto (the protocol that Bluesky, Blacksky, and many other applications - including pckt, where this blog is hosted! - run on) for about a year now. I'm by no means an expert, but I've read a lot of documentation and discussion, looked at various versions of the architectural diagrams, and spent a lot of time thinking about the implications for scaling, decentralization, and other aspects of design and operation. I run my own PDS. I wrote some clients that consume fireh...
5
Stuff Rob Wrote
Stuff Rob WroteJul 24, 2026
Calgary ... Texas?
How IP Geolocation Works, and How It Goes Wrong
5
Rob's wRitings
Rob's wRitingsJul 22, 2026
Rotation Key Census, July 2026
Census of rotation keys and other ways of asserting strong control over identity on the Atmosphere
2
Stuff Rob Wrote
Stuff Rob WroteMay 18, 2026
Datacenters in Utah: A Photo Essay
There's a lot of stuff going around about datacenters, so I've spent some time in the last week visiting some of the ones in northern Utah. I started with a quick tour or some of the datacenters in the Salt Lake Valley. Some are indeed quite large, but there are a bunch of smaller ones too - and they are not always where you think! All of these are publicly known, and you can find them (and ones in your own area) at https://www.datacentermap.com/.
2
Rob's wRitings
Rob's wRitingsDec 8, 2025
Rotation Key Census, December 2025
Census of rotation keys and other ways of asserting strong control over identity on the Atmosphere
1