@benpate@mastodon.social
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benpate

@benpate@mastodon.social

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

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dansup, to fediverse
@dansup@mastodon.social avatar

Anyone building a federated Stack Overflow?

#activityPub #stackOverflow

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,
@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

@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, to fediverse
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

You can tell I'm getting a lot of work done today, because I'm non-stop whining about the spec.

Like, why isn't there a simple way to tell how an outbox is sorted?

Yeah, I know, just do what Mastodon does and get over it. But the point of a spec is so I don't have to guess at what the popular kids are doing.

There should be rules about where things go. But no, there's no rules out here - only thoughts and prayers.

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

@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 🤓

benpate, to random
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I've been a little quiet about - in between moving and refactoring one of the core libraries, it's honestly been pretty broken for a little bit.

But my desk is set back up and I'm excited at making some progress again. Now, two libraries that power emissary are also nearing completion, so others can build on this work without having to implement the whole server.

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 fediverse
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

While I’m at it.. I don’t know if are a thing or not, but I think they’re worth a look.

Mastodon publishes all my follows.. why not let me publish the trolls I’m muting and blocking, too?

The default setting in is to label posts that my friends have blocked, but it’s easy enough to automatically block people that my trusted friends have flagged.

I see an ecosystem.. where tomorrow’s mods publish to many opt-in followers in real time using , not CSV files.

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,
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@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?

davew, to random
@davew@mastodon.social avatar

It’s weird that we’re exploring an amazing new technology, but because Twitter is so disrupted, there’s no single place to report your discoveries. A pretty big handicap.

benpate,
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

@davew - Here's good :)

Twitter only became popular because interesting people started posting interesting things there, and it was easy for news outlets to follow, right?

So I say: post your amazing new explorations here, and make the news outlets come here for their next scoops.

benpate, to random
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

So, it seems that watching me type is incredibly boring. So, even though I could live-code a custom Fediverse app in the first 10-15 minutes of a session, it's probably better to just show it working.

It's only ~100 lines of JSON config, and less than than in HTML templates. You all won't mind if we skip my typos and get to the good stuff, will you?

Looking forward to Day 2 of the online unconference tomorrow, my speed demo, and hopefully some good follow up discussions after.

benpate, to ShareYourMusic
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

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

https://kumi.tube/w/pmqy4eUy6iz88Z6Rh1cM5K

We're working to make a #Federated alternative to #Bandcamp 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 #musicians

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

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!

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 fediverse
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

I should take a break from whining about to crow about my big breakthrough. Today, I successfully sent my first messages and replies between and . And all it required was a complete overhaul the custom ActivityPub outbox.

It’s a small step forward, but a huge milestone for me. Hopefully, it will translate to big wins for other devs who can use my libraries in the future.

benpate, to fediverse
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

is an client and reader. It uses page metadata (like data and ) to make every page on the Interwebs work just like an ActivityStreams document.

It works like a cross between self-hosted blogs and a Mastodon mega-instance, letting one hosting provider serve many individual sites that pool resources (like shared caches and worker queues) while remaining portable and distinct from one another.

It’s (finally) getting close to ready...

benpate, to fediverse
@benpate@mastodon.social avatar

Here are Reactions (finally) working in . It's a silly little feature, but I'm excited to show it off.

The hard part is sending out notifications and IndieWeb . The UX right was the icing on the cake.

video/mp4

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.

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