emma

emma wrote (edited )

ok, so, like, i think the hallmark of a well-designed system is that it's designed in such a way that the developers and operators it's targetting will be familiar with the basic concepts of that system. not necessarily domain details like "what should happen with this value in the BCC field", but like the transport (HTTP, SMTP), message exchange formats (JSON, XML, MIME), the tools needed to deploy the system (web servers, mail transfer agents), and such. in that regard, designing it around email is a mistake.

everyone uses email and it's been around forever, but the tools around it are absolutely archaic and alien-like by today's standards. if you ever have the displeasure of configuring a postfix server for some purpose and have to learn what a "milter" is, you'll see what i mean. you will also have to contend with ISP blocks on outgoing email, delivering email to major providers which are incredibly anal about what mail they will accept, not knowing if mail was delivered successfully, and so on. you also need some mechanism for accessing an archive of messages which typically (for mailing lists) means having an NNTP server and then dealing with even more archaicness on top of it all.

on the other hand, the type of developer who would be interested in making a federated forum would likely already be familiar with HTTP, REST concepts, JSON, how to set up a dev environment, the tools you want to use for testing, the libraries you want to use for building the server, and so on. i believe mastodon is successful because it leverages HTTP, enabling any power-tripping 17-year-old furry and their dad to set up their own instance on a $5 VPS, and creating a healthy developer ecosystem thanks to being made with protocols that are already familiar to anyone who's had the misfortune of working extensively with microservices, which is a fair amount of us.

all this said, i think it was a mistake to use JSON-LD for ActivityPub. i think we'll see more competing protocols, but i'm certain that any even moderately successful competitor would be built on HTTP. anything else in this day and age is just a non-starter.

3

emma wrote

yeah, this has me seriously thinking about bailing for good. i felt a little motivated to take up active development again, and then this shit happens. i want to cuddle with my cats and play zelda and watch the friends dvd box set that i bought for some reason, not do more programming work on top of my day job just for other people to rip it off with no appreciation for the countless hours that went into problem solving and continuously improving things

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emma wrote

Reply to crouton.net by victoria

wtf i love this website

more websites should have italic black on white times new roman

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emma wrote

here comes the crouton train

      💨💨
🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞  💨💨
🍞    🍞   🍞🍞
🍞    🍞   🍞🍞
🍞    🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞
🍞          🍞
🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞🍞
 🍞🍞      🍞🍞
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emma wrote

Reply to juicero by twovests

ok

so

has anyone tried making one of these in tears of the kingdom yet?

i have no creativity, but apparently you can build a fucking gundam or an eva or whatever, so it makes sense you could build a juicero, too

6

emma wrote

Reply to $3,499 by devtesla

i have pretty poor vision, so they'd fleece me in getting those corrective zeiss inserts or whatever. so unfortunately, i won't be able to join the rest of you in *skims through article* having a virtual mickey mouse running around me.

5