Hey, @movq@www.uninformativ.de, a tiny thing to add to jenny, a -v switch. That way when you twtxt “That’s an older format that was used before jenny version v23.04”, I can go and run jenny -v, and “duh!” myself on the way to a git pull. :-D

@movq@www.uninformativ.de ooooh, nice! commit 62a2b7735749f2ff3c9306dd984ad28f853595c5:

Crawl archived feeds in –fetch-context

Like, very much! :-)

@movq@www.uninformativ.de to paraphrase US Presidents speech on each State of the Union, “the State of the Jenny is strong!” :-D As for the potential upcoming changes, there has to be a knowledgeable head honcho that will agglomerate and coalesce, and guide onto the direction that will be taken. All that with the strong input from the developers that will be implementing the changes, and a lesser (but not less valuable) input from users.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I call upon the services of the @yarn_police@twtxt.net to further investigate this oddness!

@quark@ferengi.one Oh, sure, it would be nice if edits didn’t break threads. I was just pondering the circumstances under which I get annoyed about data being irrecoverably deleted or otherwise lost.

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Yeah, delete requests feel very odd.

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org “I don’t really mind if the twt gets edited before I even fetch it.”, right, that’s never the problem. Editing a twtxt before anyone fetches it isn’t even editing, right? :-P The problem we are trying to fix is the havoc is causes editing twtxts that have already been replied to, often ad nauseam. That’s the real problem.

@quark@ferengi.one I don’t really mind if the twt gets edited before I even fetch it. I think it’s the idea of my computer discarding old versions it’s fetched, especially if it’s shown them to me, that bugs me.

But I do like @movq@www.uninformativ.de’s suggestion on this thread that feeds could contain both the original and the edited twt. I guess it would be up to the author.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org now, how am I not surprised at that reply?! Hahahahaha!

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org that would be problematic to do on a fully decentralised system. I am not disagreeing, though. That’s the reason I have stopped editing twtxts. I strive to own mistakes, as minor as they might be. Now, if trail editing can be accomplished, I am all for it!

@quark@ferengi.one None. I like being able to see edit history for the same reason.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de You’re right! switching from zsh to bash gave me the same result zq4fgq Thanks!

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org what would the difference be between an edit the changes everything on the original twtxt, and a delete?

@prologic@twtxt.net Why sha1 in particular? There are known attacks on it. sha256 seems pretty widely supported if you’re worried about support.

@prologic@twtxt.net I wouldn’t want my client to honour delete requests. I like my computer’s memory to be better than mine, not worse, so it would bug me if I remember seeing something and my computer can’t find it.

@prologic@twtxt.net

There’s a simple reason all the current hashes end in a or q: the hash is 256 bits, the base32 encoding chops that into groups of 5 bits, and 256 isn’t divisible by 5. The last character of the base32 encoding just has that left-over single bit (256 mod 5 = 1).

So I agree with #3 below, but do you have a source for #1, #2 or #4? I would expect any lack of variability in any part of a hash function’s output would make it more vulnerable to attacks, so designers of hash functions would want to make the whole output vary as much as possible.

Other than the divisible-by-5 thing, my current intuition is it doesn’t matter what part you take.

1. Hash Structure: Hashes are typically designed so that their outputs have specific statistical properties. The first few characters often have more entropy or variability, meaning they are less likely to have patterns. The last characters may not maintain this randomness, especially if the encoding method has a tendency to produce less varied endings.

2. Collision Resistance: When using hashes, the goal is to minimize the risk of collisions (different inputs producing the same output). By using the first few characters, you leverage the full distribution of the hash. The last characters may not distribute in the same way, potentially increasing the likelihood of collisions.

3. Encoding Characteristics: Base32 encoding has a specific structure and padding that might influence the last characters more than the first. If the data being hashed is similar, the last characters may be more similar across different hashes.

4. Use Cases: In many applications (like generating unique identifiers), the beginning of the hash is often the most informative and varied. Relying on the end might reduce the uniqueness of generated identifiers, especially if a prefix has a specific context or meaning.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com odd, I ran it under Ubuntu 24.04, and got the same result as @prologic@twtxt.net (which is on macOS), zq4fgq.

@prologic@twtxt.net I ran the same command and got an even different result xD

~ » echo -n "https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt\n2020-07-18T12:39:52Z\nHello World! 😊" | openssl dgst -blake2s256 -binary | base32 | tr -d '=' | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | tail -c 7
p44j3q

@prologic@twtxt.net I just realised the jenny also does what I want, as of latest commit. Simply use jenny --debug-feed <feed url>, and it will do what I wanted too!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de alright, fair, and interesting. I was expecting them to be all the same (format wise), but it doesn’t matter, for sure, as it works just fine. Thanks!

I have noticed that twtxt timestamps differ. For example:

• @prologic@twtxt.net (and I assume any Yarn user)
  2024-09-18T13:16:17Z
  
• @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org
  2024-09-17T21:15:00+02:00
  
• @aelaraji@aelaraji.com (and @movq@www.uninformativ.de, and me)
  2024-09-18T05:43:13+00:00
  

So, which is right, or best?

I came across this Gallery Theme for Hugo, and @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org immediately came to mind. I think it would be a very fitting theme to use for all your photos, Lyse!

An alternate idea for supporting (properly) Twt Edits is to denoate as such and extend the meaning of a Twt Subject (which would need to be called something better?); For example, let’s say I produced the following Twt:

2024-09-18T23:08:00+10:00	Hllo World

And my feed’s URI is https://example.com/twtxt.txt. The hash for this Twt is therefore 229d24612a2:

$ echo -n "https://example.com/twtxt.txt\n2024-09-18T23:08:00+10:00\nHllo World" | sha1sum | head -c 11
229d24612a2

You wish to correct your mistake, so you make an amendment to that Twt like so:

2024-09-18T23:10:43+10:00	(edit:#229d24612a2) Hello World

Which would then have a new Twt hash value of 026d77e03fa:

$ echo -n "https://example.com/twtxt.txt\n2024-09-18T23:10:43+10:00\nHello World" | sha1sum | head -c 11
026d77e03fa

Clients would then take this edit:#229d24612a2 to mean, this Twt is an edit of 229d24612a2 and should be replaced in the client’s cache, or indicated as such to the user that this is the intended content.

@quark@ferengi.one My money is on a SHA1SUM hash encoding to keep things much simpler:

$ echo -n "https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt\n2020-07-18T12:39:52Z\nHello World! 😊" | sha1sum | head -c 11
87fd9b0ae4e

@prologic@twtxt.net the real conclusion is, is it going to change, to what, and when? :-P

@prologic@twtxt.net yes, that would work, except there is no debug command on my local yarnc. Are you talking about a potential future implementation here?

@quark@ferengi.one Do you mean something like this?

$ ./yarnc debug ~/Public/twtxt.txt | tail -n 1
kp4zitq 2024-09-08T02:08:45Z	(#wsdbfna) @<aelaraji https://aelaraji.com/twtxt.txt> My work has this thing called "compressed work", where you can **buy** extra time off (_as much as 4 additional weeks_) per year. It comes out of your pay though, so it's not exactly a 4-day work week but it could be useful, just haven't tired it yet as I'm not entirely sure how it'll affect my net pay

@prologic@twtxt.net I saw those, yes. I tried using yarnc, and it would work for a simple twtxt. Now, for a more convoluted one it truly becomes a nightmare using that tool for the job. I know there are talks about changing this hash, so this might be a moot point right now, but it would be nice to have a tool that:

1. Would calculate the hash of a twtxt in a file.
   
2. Would calculate all hashes on a twtxt.txt (local and remote).
   

Again, something lovely to have after any looming changes occur.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Woah! Overkill, but nicely laid out. Hey, the ultimate goal is for it to work, so, mission accomplished! :-)

Could someone knowledgable reply with the steps a grandpa will take to calculate the hash of a twtxt from the CLI, using out-of-the-box tools? I swear I read about it somewhere, but can’t find it.

@prologic@twtxt.net I’m glad to! it just kinda feel a bit off when it’s all I can do 😅

@quark@ferengi.one Mine is a little overkill 😂 but I need to do something for practice:

#!/bin/bash
set -e
trap 'echo "!! Something went wrong...!!"' ERR

#============= Variables ==========#

# Source files
LOCAL_DIR=$HOME/twtxt

TWTXT=$LOCAL_DIR/twtxt.txt
HTML=$LOCAL_DIR/log.html
TEMPLATE=$LOCAL_DIR/template.tmpl

# Destination
REMOTE_HOST=remotHostName     # Host already setup in ~/.ssh/config

WEB_DIR="path/to/html/content"
GOPHER_DIR="path/to/phlog/content"
GEMINI_DIR="path/to/gemini-capsule/content"

DIST_DIRS=("$WEB_DIR" "$GOPHER_DIR" "$GEMINI_DIR")


#============ Functions ===========#

# Building log.html:

build_page() {
	twtxt2html -T $TEMPLATE $TWTXT > $HTML
}

# Bulk Copy files to their destinations:

copy_files() {
	for DIR in "${DIST_DIRS[@]}"; do
    # Copy both `txt` and `html` files to the Web server and only `txt`
    # to gemini and gopher server content folders
		if [ "$DIR" == "$WEB_DIR" ]; then
			scp -C "$TWTXT" "$HTML" "$REMOTE_HOST:$DIR/"
		else
			scp -C "$TWTXT" "$REMOTE_HOST:$DIR/"
		fi
	done
}

#========== Call to functions ===========$

build_page && copy_files

@prologic@twtxt.net woot! Fast! I think you need to change your nick to “fastlogic” instead. :-D

Thank you for adding the feature so fast, @prologic@twtxt.net! Look at how beautiful this one renders now. Oh my!

@prologic@twtxt.net sorry but nope. Neither jenny, nor yarnd supports it at all. This was treated as a thread because I picked one of @falsifian@www.falsifian.org’s twtxts (with the “old subject”), and replied to it (hence starting the thread).

Oh, and you can’t imagine the level of control I am commandeering by restraining me from editing that previous “missing-one-backtick” twtxt. LOL!

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com this is the little script I am using on my publish_command:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

twtxt2html -t "Quark's twtxt feed" /var/www/sites/ferengi.one/twtxt.txt > /var/www/sites/ferengi.one/index.html

I named it twtxtit. :-)

@prologic@twtxt.net based on @falsifian@www.falsifian.org’s findings, I don’t believe this is quite accurate.

“yarnd(_at least_) doesn't support creating such a custom TwtSubject, but it will reply and respect and thread one if one was constructed."

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org yes, that happened around 2 years ago, on commit 5923078ea5.

@quark@ferengi.one It looks like the part about traditional topics has been removed from that page. Here is an old version that mentions it: https://web.archive.org/web/20221211165458/https://dev.twtxt.net/doc/twtsubjectextension.html . Still, I don’t see any description of what is actually allowed between the parentheses. May be worth noting that twtxt.net is displaying the twts with the subject stripped, so some piece of code is recognizing it as a subject (or, at least, something to be removed).

Opened a couple of issues on twtxt2html. Maybe @prologic@twtxt.net will get to them after he has completed his luxurious recharging cycle. LOL.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org fully agree. I have never been a fan of relative times to begin with, so that one will go away, foh sho! :-D

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org based on Twt Subject Extension, your subject is invalid. You can have custom subjects, that is, not a valid hash, but you simply can’t put anything, and expect it to be treated as a TwtSubject, me thinks.

Hmm, but yarnd also isn’t showing these twts as being part of a thread. @prologic@twtxt.net you said yarnd respects customs subjects. Shouldn’t these twts count as having a custom subject, and get threaded together?

yarnd just doesn’t render the subject. Fair enough. It’s (replyto http://darch.dk/twtxt.txt 2024-09-15T12:50:17Z), and if you don’t want to go on a hunt, the twt hash is weadxga: https://twtxt.net/twt/weadxga

@sorenpeter@darch.dk I like this idea. Just for fun, I’m using a variant in this twt. (Also because I’m curious how it non-hash subjects appear in jenny and yarn.)

URLs can contain commas so I suggest a different character to separate the url from the date. Is this twt I’ve used space (also after “replyto”, for symmetry).

I think this solves:

• Changing feed identities: although @mckinley@twtxt.net points out URLs can change, I think this syntax should be okay as long as the feed at that URL can be fetched, and as long as the current canonical URL for the feed lists this one as an alternate.
  
• editing, if you don’t care about message integrity
  
• finding the root of a thread, if you’re not following the author
  

An optional hash could be added if message integrity is desired. (E.g. if you don’t trust the feed author not to make a misleading edit.) Other recent suggestions about how to deal with edits and hashes might be applicable then.

People publishing multiple twts per second should include sub-second precision in their timestamps. As you suggested, the timestamp could just be copied verbatim.

@prologic@twtxt.net I have some ideas:

• Add smartypants rendering, just like Yarn has.
  
• Add the ability to create individual twtxts, each named after their hash.
  
• Fix the formatting of the help. :-P

Woot, yes! It works perfectly. By the time you see my twtxt, it is already at the main Ferengi.one website.

@bender@twtxt.net that’s not your change, silly robot, it is mine! LOL. I am finding @prologic@twtxt.net’s tool handy to refer to previous posts (as reference, for example).

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com this is my change on main.go (but it can be done on a template now, so no reason to touch the code):

                                 <time class="dt-published" datetime="{{ $twt.Created | date "2006-01-02T15:04:05Z07:00" }}">
                                        {{ $twt.Created | date "2006-01-02 15:04:05 MST" }}
                                  </time>

See https://ferengi.one. I am going to further customise things, but that’s a start.