Work are letting us try out this monitor, which looks like a joke image begging for a caption, but is actually a real thing somebody thought needed to be made.
@petealexharris These would be much more useful if you can create virtual dividers. Basically splitting the screen into several portions that an app can snap into
I've just released version 2.45 of #snac, the simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in C. This one includes fixes to some nasty bugs and some interesting contributions:
Fixed a collision in webfinger caching. This may affect federation with some software, so I recommend an upgrade.
Fixed crashes in some command-line options.
New command-line option state, that dumps some information about the running server and the state of each thread (note: this feature uses shared memory blocks and you may need an argument to the make call in older Linux distributions; please see the README file for details).
Fixed a bug that may leave an inconsistent state for a followed actor in a special case of repeated messages.
Mastodon API: added some fixes for integration with the Mona iOS app (contributed by jamesoff).
Added support for ntfy notifications, both using a self-hosted server or the official ntfy.sh (contributed by Stefano Marinelli).
Screenshotting this post 👇🏻 in order to quote post it! I don’t know where people get the idea that quote posting = dunks, personally I feel that that opinion is just Twitter brain.
Every major social platform from Tumblr, to Facebook, to LinkedIn and more has the ability to natively quote post. This is because the primary use of such a feature is to amplify information w added context or to open a new line of discussion. Replies are used far more often for harassment but we don’t ban replies!
@taylorlorenz They have decided to do it. There are currently two devs working on Mastodon in total. They also want to do it by extending the activitypub standard (which does not have a "quote post" concept) instead of their own ad-hoc thing. So anytime between now and five years.
I keep a copy of Chrome around, for several specific uses, but run Firefox for most of my browsing -- and I block as much as I can of the advertising/spyware that Google and the ad-tech cartel (which it leads) try to foist on me.
The upcoming changes in Chrome may lead me to delete it completely.
@dangillmor the article mentions that Firefox is also adopting mv3. It's unclear if they will continue to support mv2, the best I could find is "we'll see at the end of 2024". Their implementation of mv3 also seems to retain key features that privacy extensions depend on so it might not matter.
We had one of those printers that just printed fine for years before it broke down. We replaced it with a Canon printer that feels like one of those first ink-jet printers. It works roughly 10% of the time and it is such a pain in the ass. How can this printer problem still be a thing in 2023?
@bastianallgeier I have a brother MFC-8460N that I got for $1 from a hospital that was upgrading its tech. I basically lucked out because I had no idea that Brother printers were such workhorses. It's been 10+ years and the only issue I've had was win11 briefly dropping support for "insecure printers" but that came back in one of the updates.
If the source code version control history is to be trusted, I started developing snac (a simple, minimalistic #ActivityPub instance server written in C) exactly one year ago (Sept 19th).
It was not my first experience with ActivityPub: I had built a prototype version in Python some months before (hence the "2" in the snac2 repository name), and back in 2019 I made some partial implementation for an unrelated (and now forgotten) blog project, so the protocol was not totally new to me.
These are my thoughts about one year of development.
Why did I start it? Because I read somewhere about the (still baffling to me) humoungous requirements of a basic #Mastodon installation. I read a lot of people affirming that was the bare minimum: "it CAN'T be done with less resources". But I've always seen it as a glorified short message application and challenged myself to write a feature-complete #Fediverse instance with the following goals: keeping it small, simple, easily deployed, and lacking the bloat software tendencies of modern times.
Did it come out as expected? not totally sure, but probably yes. I even implemented more things that I originally planned (I initially said a big NO to myself regarding adding Mastodon API support, but finally did it and it works mostly well). The program is still somewhat small (a stripped binary of less that 300k probably counts). The no-database, no-cookies, no-javascript absolute rules still apply. I'm fine with the (opinionated) web UI that shows conversations as threaded trees instead of the plain, dull stream of posts that Mastodon or Twitter show. It cooperates pretty well with the always growing ecosystem of ActivityPub applications.
Was the time and effort worth it? On this, I'm not sure. I'm old and depressed and unemployed, so developing snac has kept my brain busy and entertained for a little while. But it has been more work that I expected: the ActivityPub specification is a bit diffuse in some areas, so every implementation does some things a bit different and many corner cases had to be implemented; some parts (specifically, the Mastodon API) have been very tedious to implement and test; and also, helping users debugging remote systems is difficult and very stressing for me. Fortunately, some fellow developers have helped me and I'm immensely thankful to them.
Has it been a success? I'm pretty sure about this: no. I thought that the small footprint, the lack of moving parts and the feature set would be attractive to a large base of users, but this has not been the case. Perhaps I've been unable to reach the neccessary potential users for it to reach some critical mass (a failure of the PR department 😆). Perhaps what I consider interesting features (minimalism, footprint, the web UI concept, Mastodon API compatibility, etc.) are not that valuable for most. Perhaps people disregard it just because it's not Mastodon. Perhaps there are errors and crashes that I'm not aware of. Perhaps snac is rubbish and I'm unable to see it. The reality is that snac is a niche and unknown part of the Fediverse ecosystem and there is no sign that the user base will grow from the current small fistful of deployments out there.
What about the future? I'm also not sure. Apart from some pending bugfixes and wishlist items mentioned in the TODO file, I've implemented all the features I initially expected and then many more, so I consider snac a finished program. New bugs will happen, that's for sure. New ActivityPub applications will show out there and, if experience tells me anything, they will all have slightly different protocol interpretations that will need some code tuning on my part. Development will continue; snac is a maintained program. But big changes will probably not happen anymore.
Actually, I'm surprised to read that you don't consider it a success. I think it is at least a moderate success. Please consider there are not that many people running servers.
I agree that it is approximately feature complete (please try to fix the official app not working 😜 - I tried and not being a good dev failed).
ars technica: we don't know how they did it but google chrome now extracts a pint of blood every time you log on
chrome user, dizzy from blood loss: I swear to god I am like this close to switching to firefox
another chrome user, on the verge of fainting from severe blood loss: no need to resort to that, just switch to [insert today's trendy chrome fork here] and be smart like meeee
Wow, the mugs are sold out already! And not many pins remaining either. I know the shipping costs are a bit steep, sorry about that, but it's exciting to see the demand 🥰
What exactly is UK about freshstore? Their site doesn't say that their products are made in the UK only that the are "fulfilled from the UK". If they were locally produced, they would loudly advertise it.
Seems like the products are made in China, shipped to the UK and then shipped to the customer? I understand it takes a lot of know-how, but there must be reputable print on demand suppliers that ship directly from China?
"As we saw with the failure of Mastodon, new entry into the social media market is not impossible but it is very difficult, as it depends upon a critical mass of users making the switch together around the same time."
@nunesgh Any piece that talks about threads and mastodon without discussing activitypub and decentralisation is not worth reading for lack of getting the big picture. Especially when it's about regulation and monopolies.