Fuck me dead, what a giant piece of shit. On my Linux work laptop I have the problem that some unknown snakeoil “security” junk is dropping any IPv4 connections to ports 80 and 443. All other ports and IPv6 seem unaffected. I get an immediate “connection refused” when trying to estabslish a connection.

I had this problem four weeks ago on Friday morning the very first time at home. On Thursday evening, everything was perfectly fine. Eventually, I plugged in the LAN cable in the office and everything got automatically fixed. Nobody can explain what’s happening.

Then, last week Friday morning out of the blue, the same issue was back. So, I went to the office yesterday and it got fixed again by plugging in the network cable. This evening, I have exactly the same bloody problem again.

What the hell is going on? Does anyone have any ideas? I’m certainly not an expert, but I don’t see anything suspicious in iptables or nft rules. I also do not see anything showing up in /var/log/kern.log. Even tried to stop firewalld, flush the iptables and nft rules, but that didn’t result in any changes.

Yes it work: 2024-12-01T19:38:35Z twtxt/1.2.3 (+https://eapl.mx/twtxt.txt; @eapl) :D

The .log is just a simple append each request. The idea with the .cvs is to have it tally up how many request there have been from each client as a way to avoid having the log file grow too big. And that you can open the .cvs as a spreadsheet and have an easy overview and filtering options.

Access to those files are closed to the public.

@eapl.mx@eapl.mx Yes, the idea is to add User Agent support to #Timeline.
Right now it just adds every request to a growing log file, but I have also been working on a way to analyse it, so it only saves the time of the latest request.
I’m not sure how to make it part of timeline itself, since it requeses that you redirect/rewrite from twtAgent.php to the acctual twtxt.txt
Help with making Timeline send proper User Agents to others would be much appreciated:)

@sorenpeter@darch.dk hey!
I’m watching that now your .txt is pointing to https://darch.dk/twtAgent.php

What are you trying? Catching the Headers as in https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/discoverability.html ? (I think it’s a clever idea BTW)
And is it something you plan to add to timeline?

@sorenpeter@darch.dk hey!
I’m watching that now your .txt is pointing to https://darch.dk/twtAgent.php

What are you trying? Catching the Headers as in https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/discoverability.html ? (I think it’s a clever idea BTW)
And is it something you plan to add to timeline?

https://terokarvinen.com/2021/calendar-txt/ keep your calendar in a simple text file. I love the idea #cli

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I’m all in on paper. In fact I noted down a todo item today on a physical sheet of paper when I was on the phone with a workmate. It then occurred to me that I could have just written it in a scratch file.

The parchment, on the other hand, might be a bit wasteful for just temporary ideas that are not perfectly layed out yet.

Giving paper notebooks another try. I love paper notebooks. The problem is that I’m very chaotic writing my ideas.

Easy run: 3.13 miles, 00:09:51 average pace, 00:30:54 duration
nice chill run. first day where my resting heart rate was back down to low 50s. no idea what was going on because i did not feel sick but maybe it was just all the stress from life and a crazy october?
#running

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

Regarding section 4 about feed discovery: Yeah, non-HTTP transport protocols are an issue as they do not have User-Agent headers. How exactly do you envision the discovery_url to work, though?

This is from a twt of mine from January 2022:

https://www.uninformativ.de/files/twtxt/2022%2D01%2D22%2D%2Dfollow%2Dendpoint.md

(This idea gets lost all the time, so I put it into a file now. 😅)

Not sure if this is what @eapl.me@eapl.me had in mind, obviously.

@sorenpeter@darch.dk Section 7 on emojis: Exactly that, it’s an avatar for text interfaces. The metadata name needs tweaking, but that’s a cool idea. If I implemented this in my client, I’d make the text avatar overridable by the user, though. Otherwise I’d probably only see boxes for everbody in my terminal. :-D

Thank you, @eapl.me@eapl.me! No need to apologize in the introduction, all good. :-)

Section 3: I’m a bit on the fence regarding documenting the HTTP caching headers. It’s a very general HTTP thing, so there is nothing special about them for twtxt. No need for the Twtxt Specification to actually redo it. But on the other hand, a short hint could certainly help client developers and feed authors. Maybe it’s thanks to my distro’s Ngninx maintainer, but I did not configure anything for the Last-Modified and ETag headers to be included in the response, the web server just already did it automatically.

The more that I think about it while typing this reply, the more I think your recommendation suggestion is actually really great. It will definitely beneficial for client developers. In almost all client implementation cases I’d say one has to actually do something specifically in the code to send the If-Modified-Since and/or If-None-Match request headers. There is no magic that will do it automatically, as one has to combine data from the last response with the new request.

But I also came across feeds that serve zero response headers that make caching possible at all. So, an explicit recommendation enables feed authors to check their server setups. Yeah, let’s absolutely do this! :-)

Regarding section 4 about feed discovery: Yeah, non-HTTP transport protocols are an issue as they do not have User-Agent headers. How exactly do you envision the discovery_url to work, though? I wouldn’t limit the transports to HTTP(S) in the Twtxt Specification, though. It’s up to the client to decide which protocols it wants to support.

Since I currently rely on buckket’s twtxt client to fetch the feeds, I can only follow http(s):// (and file://) feeds. But in tt2 I will certainly add some gopher:// and gemini:// at some point in time.

Some time ago, @movq@www.uninformativ.de found out that some Gopher/Gemini users prefer to just get an e-mail from people following them: https://twtxt.net/twt/dikni6q So, it might not even be something to be solved as there is no problem in the first place.

Section 5 on protocol support: You’re right, announcing the different transports in the url metadata would certainly help. :-)

Section 7 on emojis: Your idea of TUI/CLI avatars is really intriguing I have to say. Maybe I will pick this up in tt2 some day. :-)

This morning (and a little bit of the afternoon) the idea of having a full referenced archive of twtxts on the web has consumed me a bit. I am talking about something similar to the email archives one see online, but for twtxts, and a more personal level. Such archive would be available, even if the involved feeds are long gone, because feeds will be treated as received emails.

@eapl.me@eapl.me here are my replies (somewhat similar to Lyse’s and James’)

1. Metadata in twts: Key=value is too complicated for non-hackers and hard to write by hand. So if there is a need then we should just use #NSFS or the alt-text file in markdown image syntax ![NSFW](url.to/image.jpg) if something is NSFW

2. IDs besides datetime. When you edit a twt then you should preserve the datetime if location-based addressing should have any advantages over content-based addressing. If you change the timestamp the its a new post. Just like any other blog cms.

3. Caching, Yes all good ideas, but that is more a task for the clients not the serving of the twtxt.txt files.

4. Discovery: User-agent for discovery can become better. I’m working on a wrapper script in PHP, so you don’t need to go to Apaches log-files to see who fetches your feed. But for other Gemini and gopher you need to relay on something else. That could be using my webmentions for twtxt suggestion, or simply defining an email metadata field for letting a person know you follow their feed. Interesting read about why WebMetions might be a bad idea. Twtxt being much simple that a full featured IndieWeb sites, then a lot of the concerns does not apply here. But that’s the issue with any open inbox. This is hard to solve without some form of (centralized or community) spam moderation.

5. Support more protocols besides http/s. Yes why not, if we can make clients that merge or diffident between the same feed server by multiples URLs

6. Languages: If the need is big then make a separate feed. I don’t mind seeing stuff in other langues as it is low. You got translating tool if you need to know whats going on. And again when there is a need for easier switching between posting to several feeds, then it’s about building clients with a UI that makes it easy. No something that should takes up space in the format/protocol.

7. Emojis: I’m not sure what this is about. Do you want to use emojis as avatar in CLI clients or it just about rendering emojis?

Righto, @eapl.me@eapl.me, ta for the writeup. Here we go. :-)

Metadata on individual twts are too much for me. I do like the simplicity of the current spec. But I understand where you’re coming from.

Numbering twts in a feed is basically the attempt of generating message IDs. It’s an interesting idea, but I reckon it is not even needed. I’d simply use location based addressing (feed URL + ‘#’ + timestamp) instead of content addressing. If one really wanted to, one could hash the feed URL and timestamp, but the raw form would actually improve disoverability and would not even require a richer client. But the majority of twtxt users in the last poll wanted to stick with content addressing.

yarnd actually sends If-Modified-Since request headers. Not only can I observe heaps of 304 responses for yarnds in my access log, but in Cache.FetchFeeds(…) we can actually see If-Modified-Since being deployed when the feed has been retrieved with a Last-Modified response header before: https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/src/commit/98eee5124ae425deb825fb5f8788a0773ec5bdd0/internal/cache.go#L1278

Turns out etags with If-None-Match are only supported when yarnd serves avatars (https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/src/commit/98eee5124ae425deb825fb5f8788a0773ec5bdd0/internal/handlers.go#L158) and media uploads (https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/src/commit/98eee5124ae425deb825fb5f8788a0773ec5bdd0/internal/media_handlers.go#L71). However, it ignores possible etags when fetching feeds.

I don’t understand how the discovery URLs should work to replace the User-Agent header in HTTP(S) requests. Do you mind to elaborate?

Different protocols are basically just a client thing.

I reckon it’s best to just avoid mixing several languages in one feed in the first place. Personally, I find it okay to occasionally write messages in other languages, but if that happens on a more regularly basis, I’d definitely create a different feed for other languages.

Isn’t the emoji thing “just” a client feature? So, feed do not even have to state any emojis. As a user I’d configure my client to use a certain symbol for feed ABC. Currently, I can do a similar thing in tt where I assign colors to feeds. On the other hand, what if a user wants to control what symbol should be displayed, similar to the feed’s nick? Hmm. But still, my terminal font doesn’t even render most of emojis. So, Unicode boxes everywhere. This makes me think it should actually be a only client feature.

I’ve been thinking of a few improvements for the next generation of twtxt spec, let me know if these are useful or interesting :) https://text.eapl.mx/a-few-ideas-for-a-next-twtxt-version

I’ve been thinking of a few improvements for the next generation of twtxt spec, let me know if these are useful or interesting :) https://text.eapl.mx/a-few-ideas-for-a-next-twtxt-version

@Codebuzz@www.codebuzz.nl I have separate mail boxes for private and work, but flattened both to have a simpler structure. For work, where we use Outlook, I am using categories for organising the mails and privately I am using Vivaldi’s labels system. The main idea is to use search and grouping through dynamic saved searches instead of static folders.

Three days from today, towards the end of the day, we in the US will have an idea of who the nation’s presiding person will be for the next four years. In the 32 years I have lived here, I have never been more worried about an election outcome.

@prologic@twtxt.net both religion and politics encompass an extremely wide spectrum of ideas and behavior. we need to be specific in making a critique, otherwise it doesn’t deepen our understanding of the world. though i agree that the status quo political and religious landscape is awful due to the historical context i’m talking about upthread.

@prologic@twtxt.net

See https://dev.twtxt.net

Yes, that is exactly what I meant. I like that collection and “twtxt v2” feels like a departure.

Maybe there’s an advantage to grouping it into one spec, but IMO that shouldn’t be done at the same time as introducing new untested ideas.

See https://yarn.social (especially this section: https://yarn.social/#self-host) – It really doesn’t get much simpler than this 🤣

Again, I like this existing simplicity. (I would even argue you don’t need the metadata.)

That page says “For the best experience your client should also support some of the Twtxt Extensions…” but it is clear you don’t need to. I would like it to stay that way, and publishing a big long spec and calling it “twtxt v2” feels like a departure from that. (I think the content of the document is valuable; I’m just carping about how it’s being presented.)

Recent #fiction #scifi #reading:

• The Memory Police by Yōko Ogawa. Lovely writing. Very understated; reminded me of Kazuo Ishiguro. Sort of like Nineteen Eighty-Four but not. (I first heard it recommended in comparison to that work.)

• Subcutanean by Aaron Reed; https://subcutanean.textories.com/ . Every copy of the book is different, which is a cool idea. I read two of them (one from the library, actually not different from the other printed copies, and one personalized e-book). I don’t read much horror so managed to be a little creeped out by it, which was fun.

• The Wind from Nowhere, a 1962 novel by J. G. Ballard. A random pick from the sci-fi section; I think I picked it up because it made me imagine some weird 4-dimensional effect (“from nowhere” meaning not in a normal direction) but actually (spoiler) it was just about a lot of wind for no reason. The book was moderately entertaining but there was nothing special about it.

Currently reading Scale by Greg Egan and Inversion by Aric McBay.

More thoughts about changes to twtxt (as if we haven’t had enough thoughts):

1. There are lots of great ideas here! Is there a benefit to putting them all into one document? Seems to me this could more easily be a bunch of separate efforts that can progress at their own pace:
   

1a. Better and longer hashes.

1b. New possibly-controversial ideas like edit: and delete: and location-based references as an alternative to hashes.

1c. Best practices, e.g. Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8

1d. Stuff already described at dev.twtxt.net that doesn’t need any changes.

1. We won’t know what will and won’t work until we try them. So I’m inclined to think of this as a bunch of draft ideas. Maybe later when we’ve seen it play out it could make sense to define a group of recommended twtxt extensions and give them a name.

2. Another reason for 1 (above) is: I like the current situation where all you need to get started is these two short and simple documents:
   https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html
   https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/discoverability.html
   and everything else is an extension for anyone interested. (Deprecating non-UTC times seems reasonable to me, though.) Having a big long “twtxt v2” document seems less inviting to people looking for something simple. (@prologic@twtxt.net you mentioned an anonymous comment “you’ve ruined twtxt” and while I don’t completely agree with that commenter’s sentiment, I would feel like twtxt had lost something if it moved away from having a super-simple core.)

3. All that being said, these are just my opinions, and I’m not doing the work of writing software or drafting proposals. Maybe I will at some point, but until then, if you’re actually implementing things, you’re in charge of what you decide to make, and I’m grateful for the work.

@bender@twtxt.net So…

() @xuu@txt.sour.is wrote:

”@bender I am also in camp no edit signals. deletes only breaks the head of a thread. all the replies are unaffected.”

I figure I could also answer every single twtxt like this, so that if the original gets edited, or deleted, at least I don’t sound foolish without knowing exactly what I replied to. 🤭

It Sounds like a good idea! should that be limited to just direct replays or can it be extended to replays to other replays, that way and With just the right amount of chain-replays, we’ll be RRrrrrrevolutionizing the way people Mailing Lists like, in no time! xD

P.S: Just a reminder! I’ve already told you not to mind my twts for the next couple of hours, right!

Sharing the comments of the poll (anonymous so I have no idea whom the comments are from):

your poll should include questions about markdown. personally i think inline bits like style, links, images are yes. block quotes, code blocks, bullet lists are mid. but tables and footnotes are no.

Yes sorry about this, I wasn’t able to change much after publishing the poll 😅

@prologic@twtxt.net a wise plan! Who knows, ideas change, and often plans do not hash, right? Mature, mature! :-)

Good writeup, @anth@a.9srv.net! I agree to most of your points.

3.2 Timestamps: I feel no need to mandate UTC. Timezones are fine with me. But I could also live with this new restriction. I fail to see, though, how this change would make things any easier compared to the original format.

3.4 Multi-Line Twts: What exactly do you think are bad things with multi-lines?

4.1 Hash Generation: I do like the idea with with a new uuid metadata field! Any thoughts on two feeds selecting the same UUID for whatever reason? Well, the same could happen today with url.

5.1 Reply to last & 5.2 More work to backtrack: I do not understand anything you’re saying. Can you rephrase that?

8.1 Metadata should be collected up front: I generally agree, but if the uuid metadata field were a feed URL and no real UUID, there should be probably an exception to change the feed URL mid-file after relocation.

Had to build a list of all feeds (that I follow) and all twts in them and there are two collisions already:

$ ./stats
Saw 58263 hashes
7fqcxaa
  https://twtxt.net/user/justamoment/twtxt.txt
  https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt
ntnakqa
  https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt
  https://twtxt.net/user/thecanine/twtxt.txt

Namely:

$ jenny -D https://twtxt.net/user/justamoment/twtxt.txt | grep 7fqcxaa

[7fqcxaa] [2022-12-28 04:53:30+00:00] [(#pmuqoca) @prologic@twtxt.net I checked the GitHub discussion, it became a request to join forces.

Do you plan on having them join?

Also for the name, how about:

• “progit” or “prologit” (prologic official hard fork)
  
• “git-stance” (git instance)
  
• “GitTree” (Gitea inspired, maybe to related)
  
• “Gitomata” (git automata)
  
• “Git.Source”
  
• “Forgor” (forgit is taken so I forgor) 🤣
  
• “SweetGit” (as salty chat)
  
• “Pepper Git” (other ingredients) 😉
  
• “GitHeart” (core of git with a GitHub sounding name)
  
• “GitTaka” (With music in mind)
  

Ok, enough fun… Hope this helps sprout some ideas from others if nothing is to your taste.]

$ jenny -D https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt/5 | grep 7fqcxaa

[7fqcxaa] [2022-02-25 21:14:45+00:00] [(#bqq6fxq) It’s handled by blue Monday]

And:

$ jenny -D https://twtxt.net/user/thecanine/twtxt.txt | grep ntnakqa
[ntnakqa] [2022-01-23 10:24:09+00:00] [(#2wh7r4q) <a href="https://yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz/external?uri=https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt">@prologic<em>@twtxt.net</em></a> I know, I was just hoping it might have also gotten fixed by that change, by some kind of backend miracles. 😂]

$ jenny -D https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt/1 | grep ntnakqa
[ntnakqa] [2024-02-27 05:51:50+00:00] [(#otuupfq) <a href="https://yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz/external?uri=https://twtxt.net/user/shreyan/twtxt.txt">@shreyan<em>@twtxt.net</em></a>  Ahh 👌]

Alright, before I go and watch Formula 1 😅, I made two PRs regarding the two “competing” ideas:

• https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/pulls/1179 – (replyto:…)
  
• https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/yarn/pulls/1180 – (edit:…) and (delete:…)
  

As a first step, this summarizes my current understanding. Please comment! 😊

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org “I was actually thinking about making an Internet Archive style twtxt archiver, letting you explore past twts” — that’s an awesome idea for a project. Something I would certainly use!

@prologic@twtxt.net Do you have a link to some past discussion?

Would the GDPR would apply to a one-person client like jenny? I seriously hope not. If someone asks me to delete an email they sent me, I don’t think I have to honour that request, no matter how European they are.

I am really bothered by the idea that someone could force me to delete my private, personal record of my interactions with them. Would I have to delete my journal entries about them too if they asked?

Maybe a public-facing client like yarnd needs to consider this, but that also bothers me. I was actually thinking about making an Internet Archive style twtxt archiver, letting you explore past twts, including long-dead feeds, see edit histories, deleted twts, etc.

@prologic@twtxt.net where was that idea?

@prologic@twtxt.net the basic idea was to stem the hash.. so you have a hash abcdef0123456789... any sub string of that hash after the first 6 will match. so abcdef, abcdef012, abcdef0123456 all match the same. on the case of a collision i think we decided on matching the newest since we archive off older threads anyway. the third rule was about growing the minimum hash size after some threshold of collisions were detected.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Agreed that hashes have a benefit. I came up with a similar example where when I twted about an 11-character hash collision. Perhaps hashes could be made optional somehow. Like, you could use the “replyto” idea and then additionally put a hash somewhere if you want to lock in which version of the twt you are replying to.

@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.

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.

@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

@prologic@twtxt.net

() @falsifian@www.falsifian.org You mean the idea of being able to inline # url = changes in your feed?

Yes, that one. But @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org pointed out suffers a compatibility issue, since currently the first listed url is used for hashing, not the last. Unless your feed is in reverse chronological order. Heh, I guess another metadata field could indicate which version to use.

Or maybe url changes could somehow be combined with the archive feeds extension? Could the url metadata field be local to each archive file, so that to switch to a new url all you need to do is archive everything you’ve got and start a new file at the new url?

I don’t think it’s that likely my feed url will change.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com Btw, I’m also open to ideas for this tool and welcome any contributions 👌

@mckinley@twtxt.net Yes, changing domains is be a problem if you tie your identity to an https url. But I also worry about being stuck with a key I can’t rotate. Whatever gets used, it would be nice to be able to rotate identities. I like @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org’s idea for that.

@sorenpeter@darch.dk

1. (replyto:http://darch.dk/twtxt.txt,2024-09-15T12:06:27Z)
   

I think I like this a lot. 🤔

The problem with using hashes always was that they’re “one-directional”: You can construct a hash from URL + timestamp + twt, but you cannot do the inverse. When I see “, I have no idea what that could possibly refer to.

But of course something like (replyto:http://darch.dk/twtxt.txt,2024-09-15T12:06:27Z) has all the information you need. This could simplify twt/feed discovery quite a bit, couldn’t it? 🤔 That thing that I just implemented – jenny asking some Yarn pod for some twt hash – would not be necessary anymore. Clients could easily and automatically fetch complete threads instead of requiring the user to follow all relevant feeds.

Only using the timestamp to identify a twt also solves the edit problem.

It even is better for non-Yarn clients, because you now don’t have to read, understand, and implement a “twt hash specification” before you can reply to someone.

The only problem, really, is that (replyto:http://darch.dk/twtxt.txt,2024-09-15T12:06:27Z) is so long. Clients would have to try harder to hide this. 😅

@mckinley@twtxt.net Thanks for the feedback.

1. Yeah I agrees that nick sound not be part of syntax. Any valid URL to a twtxt.txt-file should be enough and is more clear, so it is not confused with a email (one of the the issues with webfinger and fedivese handles)
   
2. I think any valid URL would work, since we are not bound to look for exact matches. Accepting both http and https as well as a gemni and gophe could all work as long as the path to the twtxt.txt is the same.
   
3. My idea is that you quote the timestamp as it is in the original twtxt.txt that you are referring to, so you can do it by simply copy/pasting. Also what are the change that the same human will make two different posts within the same second?!
   

Regarding the whole cryptographic keys for identity, to me it seems like an unnecessary layer of complexity. If you move to a new house or city you tell people that you moved - you can do the same in a twtxt.txt. Just post something like “I move to this new URL, please follow me there!” I did that with my feeds at least twice, and you guys still seem to read my posts:)

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org TLS won’t help you if you change your domain name. How will people know if it’s really you? Maybe that’s not the biggest problem for something with such low stakes as twtxt, but it’s a reasonable concern that could be solved using signatures from an unchanging cryptographic key.

This idea is the basis of Nostr. Notes can be posted to many relays and every note is signed with your private key. It doesn’t matter where you get the note from, your client can verify its authenticity. That way, relays don’t need to be trusted.

So this is a great thread. I have been thinking about this too.. and what if we are coming at it from the wrong direction? Identity being tied to a given URL has always been a pain point. If i get a new URL its almost as if i have a new identity because not only am I serving at a new location but all my previous communications are broken because the hashes are all wrong.

What if instead we used this idea of signatures to thread the URLs together into one identity? We keep the URL to Hash in place. Changing that now is basically a no go. But we can create a signature chain that can link identities together. So if i move to a new URL i update the chain hosted by my primary identity to include the new URL. If i have an archived feed that the old URL is now dead, we can point to where it is now hosted and use the current convention of hashing based on the first url:

The signature chain can also be used to rotate to new keys over time. Just sign in a new key or revoke an old one. The prior signatures remain valid within the scope of time the signatures were made and the keys were active.

The signature file can be hosted anywhere as long as it can be fetched by a reasonable protocol. So say we could use a webfinger that directs to the signature file? you have an identity like frank@beans.co that will discover a feed at some URL and a signature chain at another URL. Maybe even include the most recent signing key?

From there the client can auto discover old feeds to link them together into one complete timeline. And the signatures can validate that its all correct.

I like the idea of maybe putting the chain in the feed preamble and keeping the single self contained file.. but wonder if that would cause lots of clutter? The signature chain would be something like a log with what is changing (new key, revoke, add url) and a signature of the change + the previous signature.

# chain: ADDKEY kex14zwrx68cfkg28kjdstvcw4pslazwtgyeueqlg6z7y3f85h29crjsgfmu0w 
# sig: BEGIN SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE. ... 
# chain: ADDURL https://txt.sour.is/user/xuu
# sig: BEGIN SALTPACK SIGNED MESSAGE. ...
# chain: REVKEY kex14zwrx68cfkg28kjdstvcw4pslazwtgyeueqlg6z7y3f85h29crjsgfmu0w
# sig: ...

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Brilliant idea! 😂 One way ticket to Venus please! 🤘

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Another idea: just hash the feed url and time, without the message content. And don’t twt more than once per second.

Maybe you could even just use the time, and rely on @-mentions to disambiguate. Not sure how that would work out.

Though I kind of like the idea of twts being immutable. At least, it’s clear which version of a twt you’re replying to (assuming nobody is engineering hash collisions).

In fact, maybe your public key idea is compatible with my last point. Just come up with a url scheme that means “this feed’s primary URL is actually a public key”, and then feed authors can optionally switch to that.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de good idea, considering it might occasionally not work at all (because of edited twtxts).

@prologic@twtxt.net How does yarn.social’s API fix the problem of centralization? I still need to know whose API to use.

Say I see a twt beginning (#hash) and I want to look up the start of the thread. Is the idea that if that twt is hosted by a a yarn.social pod, it is likely to know the thread start, so I should query that particular pod for the hash? But what if no yarn.social pods are involved?

The community seems small enough that a registry server should be able to keep up, and I can have a couple of others as backups. Or I could crawl the list of feeds followed by whoever emitted the twt that prompted my query.

I have successfully used registry servers a little bit, e.g. to find a feed that mentioned a tag I was interested in. Was even thinking of making my own, if I get bored of my too many other projects :-)