@benpate@mastodon.social
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

benpate

@benpate@mastodon.social

Thoughtful comments on at least one irrelevant topic. #writing #software #democracy #pirates.

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

dansup, to fediverse
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

Anyone building a federated Stack Overflow?

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@dansup Yes. After Bandcamp.

I had an online discussion about a Federated-Yelp that raised some interesting points that might apply to SO as well -- How do you “federate” the features that DON’T fit into the standard social media formulae? Things like “accepted answers” might only work on a centralized server.

Also, this might fall under the threaded discussion WG. I’d love to talk in more detail if you’re ever interested.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@utzer @dansup Yeah. We could always just build a new network with special features that would require an account on a Q&A -style server.

But an emerging feature of "fedi" is that you can take your identity everywhere. I'd really like to support this somehow, too.

Perhaps it just means using main Mastodon (or whatever) account as a "universal inbox" for notifications. But then we link you back to a site with SSO, so you can interact more richly there.

Dunno.. TBD.

I'll take any/all advice.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@julian @utzer

Yes. Stack Overflow isn't magic. I think they succeeded because they focused heavily on SEO, which brought both ask-ers and answer-ers to the site.

Personally, the "accepted answer" is the killer feature. Dunno if NodeBB, Kbin, or others already support this.

There's potential in SO's gamification aspects, too. I'd love to let third-party sites to award badges or "endorsements" and display them on my profile page. This could work in all kinds of trust/credibility situations.

benpate, to random
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

Well written article with many good reasons to NOT fork Mastodon.

https://wedistribute.org/2024/05/forking-mastodon/

My favorite part was about a previously attempted fork called the Florence project. According to the article, they were apparently better at having meetings than producing actual code. I laughed. I cried. I relived so many years of software development trauma.

benpate, to random
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

Woo Hoo! Check out Baby's first FEP...

If you're a developer, please check out FEP-3b86 at https://codeberg.org/fediverse/fep/src/branch/main/fep/3b86/fep-3b86.md

I'm working on "Remote Likes" and "Remote Shares" that help you jump back to your own home server to post when you find something cool on another website.

Imagine those "Share on Facebook" buttons, without all the ick.

I know it needs some work (that's what FEPs are for, yea?) so please read, comment, and help me get this over the finish line.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

I've posted a big update to this proposal on my original PR branch: https://codeberg.org/benpate/fep/src/branch/fep-3b86/fep/3b86/fep-3b86.md

It addresses (most?) (all?) of the issues you all have raised.

I really appreciate your attention to this. It's already made the FEP so much better. So, thank you!

benpate, to ShareYourMusic
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

HEY! Check out this update to my demo I posted a couple weeks ago:

https://kumi.tube/w/pmqy4eUy6iz88Z6Rh1cM5K

We're working to make a alternative to where up and coming bands can connect with fans and share their music on the Fediverse.

The progress is really encouraging, so it's time to get some feedback from real

My goal is to have something you could actually use in the next month or two. So please get your ideas in so's I can squeeze them into my launch calendar.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

I owe you all some links:

I'm building all of this in the open on GitHub.So I'd love to collect suggestions as GitHub issues, if you're able to post there:

https://github.com/EmissarySocial/app-planetary/issues

But, if you're not a software nerd like me, just send me a reply to this thread (or as a DM) and I'll do the rest.

Sharing, Directories, and Discovery are important parts to this, but I still have to build those out. LMK if you have thoughts/feelings about how that should look, too.

🤘

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@Sarahp Absolutely, will do 👍🏻

I have a few more “T’s” to dot, and “I’s” to cross, then I’ll probably open up a limited beta test. I’d love to chat once there’s something more tangible than my silly videos.

atomicpoet, to random
@atomicpoet@atomicpoet.org avatar

Thanks to @deadsuperhero, I now know how to create an SVG logo that changes according to a system theme. Here’s how to do it:

  1. Open the SVG logo in a text editor
  2. Text editor will then display XML code
  3. Look for fill= and a colour hex code (the hex code is identifiable with a “#” prepended to it)
  4. Change the hex code to “currentColor” so that it says fill=”currentColor”
  5. Save

Now your logo will be adjustable according to a webpage’s dark/light theme.

On another note, I just learned that SVG logos are editable with a text editor.

RE: https://atomicpoet.org/objects/daeb8be5-d668-43ff-bc2d-e1a6ae360ea2

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@atomicpoet

Fantastic hack! And to think I just swapped between duplicate SVGs...

I’ll have to try this with icons, too. I’ve been dying to unload my webfont icons because the font file is soooo big. If this works with a remotely loaded SVG, I’ll be in hog heaven.

Thank you!

mikedev, to random

For years we've been using an alternate protocol between our own sites because ActivityPub wasn't capable of providing the services we require for federated communications. This is how we've supported things like nomadic identity long before the concept was even viable in ActivityPub. Now that I've got a usable framework for nomadic identity over ActivityPub, I went back and had a closer look at what else I might need to add to ActivityPub in order to finally put the Nomad protocol out to pasture.

I've mentioned transport encryption in the past; but that's only a big deal if you don't trust HTTPS security or your government. For true nomadic identity, we would also be sending sync packets so that your alternate identities are kept up to date with everything you do on other instances which share that identity. We'll also be offering a partially shared identity as mentioned in previous posts. This won't be a true clone but will instead be a way to link your various fediverse profiles in a cohesive way - like we do with our Fediverse Identity Manager. These are all pretty easy - just a 'Simple Matter Of Programming®'.

But I overlooked a real biggie. Permissions, permissions, permissions. A concept completely lacking in ActivityPub; and which can't be discussed rationally with other fediverse developers because folks raised on Twitter don't even understand the concept.

I'm remedying that situation right now.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@mikedev I’ll agree 100% about the need for more granular permissions on the Fediverse.

So far, I’ve treated ActivityStreams as just one data representation (like HTML) not as the one core definition. I feel most permissions could/should exist somewhere separate from what’s published via ActivityPub.

Mike, could you expand on how you see permissions represented in ActivityPub itself? How does publishing this data benefit nomadic identity?

benpate, to random
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

At , @n00q discussed a Federated music service for refugees. After a few days of drawing up requirements and specs, and a couple days of code, something interesting is taking shape.

Here's a too-fast-tour of a hypothetical album page built with . Custom skins, uploads, and transcoding music is still TBD, but so far this feels like magic.

Bands' profiles will be native citizens of the Fediverse to like, share, and comment. Excited yet?

video/mp4

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@gribbles @n00q Hey, thanks for looking 🤓

Yes, it’s possible, within some limits. There’s certainly an upper limit where very specialized apps might be tough to build.

And yes, I want to add other social APIs to Emissary. If a commercial service supports it, we could make connectors to anywhere that’s reasonable.

I’ll post an early preview just as soon as I can, to get your feedback on what works for musicians like you. Stay tuned!

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@gribbles @n00q Sounds awesome. Yes, please stay in the loop on this. There are lots of things we can do with that are more than "yet another micro-blog."

BTW, here's the Git repo from the video:

https://github.com/EmissarySocial/app-arcadium

Not that you want to jump in and start coding, but to give you a ballpark estimate on the work required to make a custom app. Right now, its exactly 8 files - including the show calendar I'm working on.

Let's talk more once I have something ready to beta-test?

dansup, to fediverse
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

Loops + c2s would be a perfect match, few activitypub implementations support the client to server model.

🤔

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@dansup Go for it! It’s always seemed like a chicken-and-egg problem: nobody builds C2S servers because there’s no clients, and nobody builds clients because there’s no servers.

If you could get even one good client off the ground, it might bootstrap the whole C2S ecosystem.

And I, for one, will absolutely follow you there. I’d much rather build a solid C2S server instead of implement the Mastodon API.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@steve @dansup -- Having only dug into the S2S API so far, I will 100% believe this.

Has anyone ever mapped out the gaps between these two? Or, would doing a diff between Macedon and C2S be the best way to figure that out?

perhaps that is the prerequisite to boot strapping this whole thing.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@steve @mariusor @dansup

"...but I believe many UI developers prefer an API that's standardized across server implementations..."

This pretty much sums up the whole issue with ActivityPub.

Add to that: we're currently living in the world of "Mastodon-flavored-ActivityPub". If someone shipped a definitive C2S app, it could easily become the de-facto standard. I'll bet most devs (both client and server) would rather follow a well-defined API, and not have to greenfield their own design.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@mariusor @steve @dansup Cool, thanks! I'll check that out :)

benpate, to random
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

In one session of , I said that I really needed "a map" of the tools and communities for building apps on the Fediverse.

To follow up on that, I've posted a first draft of what this looks like to me.

If you know more about the Fediverse than me (that's most of you) please take a look and let me know how I could make this list better:

https://emissary.dev/fediverse-resources

Hopefully it's a starting place that'll help other to get their projects moving.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@jesseplusplus Yes, thank you. I remember “thinking about adding FediDB” but not actually “adding FediDB” 🫤

I’ll get that on here too. Thank you!!

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@jesseplusplus By the way, I checked out https://frequency.app -- it looks like a fantastic service! Hopefully, you're getting enough signups to make a go of it!

Also, how did you end up supporting ActivityPub without go-fed? I'm always curious to connect with other on the Fediverse -- especially since we seem outnumbered on here by Python and Rust.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@jesseplusplus Yeah, I get it. Building anything in ActivityPub is tough. Better to sit on top of something that already works.

If you consider coming home to Go in the future, please let me know? I’m getting pretty confident in the libraries I’ve built, and the next step would be to prove that they work for more projects than just my own. So, I’d be happy to help get them integrated into your back end 😀

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@jesseplusplus Thank you :)

But don't let anyone tell you it's been "a short time." I've been sitting on it for way too long.The initial commits were something like 4 years ago...

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@blaise - Awesome! I'm glad to make a difference. There's still a long way to go, but the more eyes on Emissary, the better -- so please let me know how it goes for you, and how I can make it work better. There's tons of ways to get involved :)

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@andypiper Yes, this list belongs on FediDevs, not on my website, so please take and use it if you want.

How would I post it to FediDevs? Can I just make a PR?

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@jesseplusplus Thanks! I’m looking into it now 🤓

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • normalnudes
  • tsrsr
  • DreamBathrooms
  • thenastyranch
  • magazineikmin
  • everett
  • Youngstown
  • tacticalgear
  • slotface
  • ngwrru68w68
  • rosin
  • khanakhh
  • kavyap
  • PowerRangers
  • Leos
  • InstantRegret
  • mdbf
  • Durango
  • GTA5RPClips
  • cubers
  • vwfavf
  • ethstaker
  • hgfsjryuu7
  • osvaldo12
  • tester
  • cisconetworking
  • modclub
  • anitta
  • All magazines
    •