@bender@twtxt.net Here #sgvko5a 😁

@Codebuzz@www.codebuzz.nl I use Jenny to add to a local copy of my twtxt.txt file, and then manually push it to my web servers. I prefer timestamps to end with “Z” rather than “+00:00” so I modified Jenny to use that format. I mostly follow conversations using Jenny, but sometimes I check twtxt.net, which could catch twts I missed.

@bender@twtxt.net I try to avoid editing. I guess I would write 5/4, 6/4, etc, and hopefully my audience would be sympathetic to my failing.

Anyway, I don’t think my eccentric decision to number my twts in the style of other social media platforms is the only context where someone might write ¼ not meaning a quarter. E.g. January 4, to Americans.

I’m happy to keep overthinking this for as long as you are :-P

@bender@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net I’m not exactly asking yarnd to change. If you are okay with the way it displayed my twts, then by all means, leave it as is. I hope you won’t mind if I continue to write things like 1/4 to mean “first out of four”.

What has text/markdown got to do with this? I don’t think Markdown says anything about replacing 1/4 with ¼, or other similar transformations. It’s not needed, because ¼ is already a unicode character that can simply be directly inserted into the text file.

What’s wrong with my original suggestion of doing the transformation before the text hits the twtxt.txt file? @prologic@twtxt.net, I think it would achieve what you are trying to achieve with this content-type thing: if someone writes 1/4 on a yarnd instance or any other client that wants to do this, it would get transformed, and other clients simply wouldn’t do the transformation. Every client that supports displaying unicode characters, including Jenny, would then display ¼ as ¼.

Alternatively, if you prefer yarnd to pretty-print all twts nicely, even ones from simpler clients, that’s fine too and you don’t need to change anything. My 1/4 -> ¼ thing is nothing more than a minor irritation which probably isn’t worth overthinking.

@prologic@twtxt.net I’m not a yarnd user, so it doesn’t matter a whole lot to me, but FWIW I’m not especially keen on changing how I format my twts to work around yarnd’s quirks.

I wonder if this kind of postprocessing would fit better between composing (via yarnd’s UI) and publishing. So, if a yarnd user types ¼, it could get changed to ¼ in the twtxt.txt file for everyone to see, not just people reading through yarnd. But when I type ¼, meaning first out of four, as a non-yarnd user, the meaning wouldn’t get corrupted. I can always type ¼ directly if that’s what I really intend.

(This twt might be easier to understand if you read it without any transformations :-P)

Anyway, again, I’m not a yarnd user, so do what you will, just know you might not be seeing exactly what I meant.

@prologic@twtxt.net I wrote ¼ (one slash four) by which I meant “the first out of four”. twtxt.net is showing it as ¼, a single character that IMO doesn’t have that same meaning (it means 0.25). Similarly, ¾ got replaced with ¾ in another twt. It’s not a big deal. It just looks a little wrong, especially beside the 2/4 and 4/4 in my other two twts.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de, having an issue fetching a twtxt context. I am getting:

Trying to fetch "#mowsvgq" from Yarn pod https://txt.sour.is ...
Trying to fetch "#mowsvgq" from Yarn pod https://twtxt.net ...
Twt could not be found

Yet, the twtxt is there: https://twtxt.net/twt/mowsvgq. Bug, or something else?

@Codebuzz@www.codebuzz.nl Welcome to the twt’verse 👋

@prologic@twtxt.net Sure!! gg=G auto-indents your documents, as for the rest it’s:

• v for selection mode, c for change and d for delete actions as usual.
  
• followed by either ‘afor around ori` for inside/in-between whatever special character comes after it
  _ the [, (, “ … special characters define the perimeter/extent of the action.
  

i.e: ci" would be change the text under the cursor between quotes and da[ _delete text and brackets included_

I’ve linked a reference in the first twt, hope you find it useful.

@2024-10-09T08:11:00Z@twtxt.net It an easy way of twt-adressing by using the timestamp instead of a nick, which is arbitrary anyhow. Just my suggestion for a new reply-model ;)

I share I did write up an algorithm for it at some point I think it is lost in a git comment someplace. I’ll put together a pseudo/go code this week.

Super simple:

Making a reply:

1. If yarn has one use that. (Maybe do collision check?)
   
2. Make hash of twt raw no truncation.
   
3. Check local cache for shortest without collision
   
   • in SQL: select len(subject) where head_full_hash like subject || '%'
     

Threading:

1. Get full hash of head twt
   
2. Search for twts
   
   • in SQL: head_full_hash like subject || '%' and created_on > head_timestamp
     

The assumption being replies will be for the most recent head. If replying to an older one it will use a longer hash.

Necropost: btw i have twt alias for twet 😅

twtxt via dmenu | https://git.sr.ht/~fredg/mybin/tree/master/item/twt

If we stuck with Blake2b for Twt Hash(es); what do we think we need to reasonably go to in bit length/size?

=> https://gist.mills.io/prologic/194993e7db04498fa0e8d00a528f7be6

e.g: (turns out @xuu@txt.sour.is is right about Blak2b being easy/simple too!):

$ printf "%s\t%s\t%s" "https://example.com/twtxt.txt" "2024-09-29T13:30:00Z" "Hello World!" | b2sum -l 32 -t | awk '{ print $1 }'
7b8b79dd

@fastidious@tilde.town Yeah, I gave it a try, now I’ll just wait. BTW, Your Nick rings a bell! I probably do remember it from reading old twts 👋 Happy getting to you here!

@bender@twtxt.net I can always edit my twt and correct my Oopsie xD Would that make him happier?

You proud daddy!? My twt is exactly 140 characters! 😂😂😂

@prologic@twtxt.net Regarding the new way of generating twt-hashes, to me it makes more sense to use tabs as separator instead of spaces, since the you can just copy/past a line directly from a twtxt-file that already go a tab between timestamp and message. But tabs might be hard to “type” when you are in a terminal, since it will activate autocomplete…🤔

Another thing, it seems that you sugget we only use the domain in the hash-creation and not the full path to the twtxt.txt

$ echo -e "https://example.com 2024-09-29T13:30:00Z Hello World!" | sha256sum - | awk '{ print $1 }' | base64 | head -c 12

I believe I’d missed an f:

~/src/jenny $ git diff
diff --git a/jenny b/jenny
index ada8da2..8ae9a06 100755
--- a/jenny
+++ b/jenny
@@ -1194,7 +1194,7 @@ if __name__ == '__main__':
     if args.edit:
	edit_twt_file(app)
     elif args.fetch:
-        with DirectoryLock(f'/tmp/jenny-{getuser()}.run'):
+        with DirectoryLock(expanduser(f'~/tmp/jenny-{getuser()}.run')):
             retrieve_all(app)
     elif args.last_seen:
	 print('Feeds last seen at (times are local time), oldest first:')

@doesnm@doesnm.p.psf.lt I’ve just given it a try on android/termux and got it to work, I can’t promise it won’t break something else (because i definitely don’t know what I’m doing) but here’s what I broke 😅:

~/src/jenny $ git diff
diff --git a/jenny b/jenny
index ada8da2..8ae9a06 100755
--- a/jenny
+++ b/jenny
@@ -1194,7 +1194,7 @@ if __name__ == '__main__':
     if args.edit:
	edit_twt_file(app)
     elif args.fetch:
-        with DirectoryLock(f'/tmp/jenny-{getuser()}.run'):
+        with DirectoryLock(expanduser('~/tmp/jenny-{getuser()}.run')):
             retrieve_all(app)
     elif args.last_seen:
	 print('Feeds last seen at (times are local time), oldest first:')

and of course make sure you mkdir ~/tmp

It has twts cache which used if timeline is set to jew. Maybe i.should fork twet to make wishes like newlines (i see two squares), showing conversations, showing twts if not found in cache and parsing medata to configure url, nick and followers (currenly it duplicated in config and twtxt file)

@doesnm@doesnm.p.psf.lt twt probably isn’t the best client I’m afraid. It doesn’t really cache twts by their key (hash) to display threads properly. Jenny however does 👌

twet display twts in raw format with some formatting (sadly no newlines). And for reply messages i just seen (#hash). But which text hidden on hash? currenly im open twtxt.net/twt/hash to see this

How to read twts without browser? I dont understand context in reply messages

👋 Thanks for joining us on our Sept monthly Yarn.social meetup today y’all 🙇‍♂️ We had @david@collantes.us @sorenpeter@darch.dk @doesnm@doesnm.p.psf.lt @falsifian@www.falsifian.org and @xuu@txt.sour.is 💪 Nice turn out! (not all at once of course, as we normally run this over 4 hours as we span many time zones!)

Things we talked about:

• Decentralised vs. Distributed
  
• Use of SHA256 for Twt Hash(es)
  
• We solved Edits! 🥳
  
• UUID(s) probably won’t work! (susceptible to sppofing)
  
• Helped @sorenpeter@darch.dk write some PHP to process/parse User-Agent and service his feed via a custom PHP script 😅
  
• @falsifian@www.falsifian.org introduced himself 👌
  
• Talked about Merkle Trees 🌳
  

Did I miss anything? 🤔

@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!

We:

• Drop # url= from the spec.
  
• We don’t adopt # uuid = – Something @anth@a.9srv.net also mentioned (see below)
  

We instead use the @nick@domain to identify your feed in the first place and use that as the identify when calculating Twt hashes <id> + <timestamp> + <content>. Now in an ideal world I also agree, use WebFinger for this and expect that for the most part you’ll be doing a WebFinger lookup of @user@domain to fetch someone’s feed in the first place.

The only problem with WebFinger is should this be mandated or a recommendation?

@bender@twtxt.net Re that broken thread (#bqor23a). Its the same one. My pod doesn’t have the Root Twt: https://twtxt.net/twt/bqor23a => 404 Not Found.

How in the hell did you even reply to this in the first place?

Don’t mind this twt!

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.

And finally the legibility of feeds when viewing them in their raw form are worsened as you go from a Twt Subject of (#abcdefg12345) to something like (https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt 2024-09-22T07:51:16Z).

There is also a ~5x increase cost in memory utilization for any implementations or implementors that use or wish to use in-memory storage (yarnd does for example) and equally a 5x increase in on-disk storage as well. This is based on the Twt Hash going from a 13 bytes (content-addressing) to 63 bytes (on average for location-based addressing). There is roughly a ~20-150% increase in the size of individual feeds as well that needs to be taken into consideration (on the average case).

So really your argument is just that switching to a location-based addressing “just makes sense”. Why? Without concrete pros/cons of each approach this isn’t really a strong argument I’m afraid. In fact I probably need to just sit down and detail the properties of both approaches and the pros/cons of both.

I also don’t really buy the argument of simplicity either personally, because I don’t technically see it much more difficult to take a echo -e "<url>\t<timestamp>\t<content>" | sha256sum | base64 as the Twt Subject or concatenating the <url> <timestamp> – The “effort” is the same. If we’re going to argue that SHA256 or cryptographic hashes are “too complicated” then I’m not really sure how to support that argument.

Some more arguments for a local-based treading model over a content-based one:

1. The format: (#<DATE URL>) or (@<DATE URL>) both makes sense: # as prefix is for a hashtag like we allredy got with the (#twthash) and @ as prefix denotes that this is mention of a specific post in a feed, and not just the feed in general. Using either can make implementation easier, since most clients already got this kind of filtering.

2. Having something like (#<DATE URL>) will also make mentions via webmetions for twtxt easier to implement, since there is no need for looking up the #twthash. This will also make it possible to make 3th part twt-mentions services.

3. Supporting twt/webmentions will also increase discoverability as a way to know about both replies and feed mentions from feeds that you don’t follow.

@falsifian@www.falsifian.org I believe the preserve means to include the original subject hash in the start of the twt such as (#somehash)

@bender@twtxt.net

Sorry, you’re right, I should have used numbers!

I’m don’t understand what “preserve the original hash” could mean other than “make sure there’s still a twt in the feed with that hash”. Maybe the text could be clarified somehow.

I’m also not sure what you mean by markdown already being part of it. Of course people can already use Markdown, just like presumably nothing stopped people from using (twt subjects) before they were formally described. But it’s not universal; e.g. as a jenny user I just see the plain text.

@prologic@twtxt.net Thanks for writing that up!

I hope it can remain a living document (or sequence of draft revisions) for a good long time while we figure out how this stuff works in practice.

I am not sure how I feel about all this being done at once, vs. letting conventions arise.

For example, even today I could reply to twt abc1234 with “(#abc1234) Edit: …” and I think all you humans would understand it as an edit to (#abc1234). Maybe eventually it would become a common enough convention that clients would start to support it explicitly.

Similarly we could just start using 11-digit hashes. We should iron out whether it’s sha256 or whatever but there’s no need get all the other stuff right at the same time.

I have similar thoughts about how some users could try out location-based replies in a backward-compatible way (append the replyto: stuff after the legacy (#hash) style).

However I recognize that I’m not the one implementing this stuff, and it’s less work to just have everything determined up front.

Misc comments (I haven’t read the whole thing):

• Did you mean to make hashes hexadecimal? You lose 11 bits that way compared to base32. I’d suggest gaining 11 bits with base64 instead.

• “Clients MUST preserve the original hash” — do you mean they MUST preserve the original twt?

• Thanks for phrasing the bit about deletions so neutrally.

• I don’t like the MUST in “Clients MUST follow the chain of reply-to references…”. If someone writes a client as a 40-line shell script that requires the user to piece together the threading themselves, IMO we shouldn’t declare the client non-conforming just because they didn’t get to all the bells and whistles.

• Similarly I don’t like the MUST for user agents. For one thing, you might want to fetch a feed without revealing your identty. Also, it raises the bar for a minimal implementation (I’m again thinking again of the 40-line shell script).

• For “who follows” lists: why must the long, random tokens be only valid for a limited time? Do you have a scenario in mind where they could leak?

• Why can’t feeds be served over HTTP/1.0? Again, thinking about simple software. I recently tried implementing HTTP/1.1 and it wasn’t too bad, but 1.0 would have been slightly simpler.

• Why get into the nitty-gritty about caching headers? This seems like generic advice for HTTP servers and clients.

• I’m a little sad about other protocols being not recommended.

• I don’t know how I feel about including markdown. I don’t mind too much that yarn users emit twts full of markdown, but I’m more of a plain text kind of person. Also it adds to the length. I wonder if putting a separate document would make more sense; that would also help with the length.

So I’m a location based system, how exactly do I reply to one of these two Twts from @Yarns@search.twtxt.net ? 🤔

2024-09-07T12:55:56Z	🥳 NEW FEED: @<twtxt http://edsu.github.io/twtxt/twtxt.txt>
2024-09-07T12:55:56Z	🥳 NEW FEED: @<kdy https://twtxt.kdy.ch/twtxt.txt>

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 👌]

@prologic@twtxt.net Care to explain how that proves anything when someone else already got the spoofed twt with no way to tell it was? can’t an old twt just be deleted and give a similar result when grep-ed for?

Le me is worried! 😅

👋 Reminder folks of the upcoming Yarn.social monthly online meetup:

I hope to see @david@collantes.us @movq@www.uninformativ.de @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org @xuu@txt.sour.is @sorenpeter@darch.dk and hopefully others too @aelaraji@aelaraji.com @falsifian@www.falsifian.org and anyone else that sees this! 🙏 We’re hopefully going to primarily discuss the future of Twtxt and the last few weeks of discussions 🤣

• Event: Yarn.social Online Meetup
  
• When: 28th September 2024 at 12:00pm UTC (midday)
  
• Where: Mills Meet : Yarn.social
  
• Cadence: 4th Saturday of every Month
  

Agenda:

• Let’s talk about the upcoming changes to the Twtxt spec(s)
  
  • See #xgghhnq
    

#Yarn.social #Meetup

Been thinking about it for the last couple of days and I would say we can make do with the shorter (#<DATETIME URL>)since it mirrors the twt-mention syntax and simply points to the OP as the topic identified by the time of posting it. Do we really need and (edit:...)and (delete:...) also?

@prologic@twtxt.net 🕵🏻 Hint: it was a twt about stolen property…

I have just made yet another convoluted twtxt notifications script! Feeling like an old dog learning new tricks! 🤣

Image

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com This is one of the reasons why yarnd has a couple of settings with some sensible/sane defaults:

I could already imagine a couple of extreme cases where, somewhere, in this peaceful world one’s exercise of freedom of speech could get them in Real trouble (if not danger) if found out, it wouldn’t necessarily have to involve something to do with Law or legal authorities. So, If someone asks, and maybe fearing fearing for… let’s just say ‘Their well being’, would it heart if a pod just purged their content if it’s serving it publicly (maybe relay the info to other pods) and call it a day? It doesn’t have to be about some law/convention somewhere … 🤷 I know! Too extreme, but I’ve seen news of people who’d gone to jail or got their lives ruined for as little as a silly joke. And it doesn’t even have to be about any of this.

There are two settings:

$ ./yarnd --help 2>&1 | grep max-cache
      --max-cache-fetchers int        set maximum numnber of fetchers to use for feed cache updates (default 10)
  -I, --max-cache-items int           maximum cache items (per feed source) of cached twts in memory (default 150)
  -C, --max-cache-ttl duration        maximum cache ttl (time-to-live) of cached twts in memory (default 336h0m0s)

So yarnd pods by default are designed to only keep Twts around publicly visible on either the anonymous Frontpage or Discover View or your Timeline or the feed’s Timeline for up to 2 weeks with a maximum of 150 items, whichever get exceeded first. Any Twts over this are considered “old” and drop off the active cache.

It’s a feature that my old man @off_grid_living@twtxt.net was very strongly in support of, as was I back in the day of yarnd’s design (nothing particularly to do with Twtxt per se) that I’ve to this day stuck by – Even though there are some 😉 that have different views on this 🤣

@movq@www.uninformativ.de @falsifian@www.falsifian.org @prologic@twtxt.net Maybe I don’t know what I’m talking about and You’ve probably already read this: Everything you need to know about the “Right to be forgotten” coming straight out of the EU’s GDPR Website itself. It outlines the specific circumstances under which the right to be forgotten applies as well as reasons that trump the one’s right to erasure …etc.

I’m no lawyer, but my uneducated guess would be that:

A) twts are already publicly available/public knowledge and such… just don’t process children’s personal data and MAYBE you’re good? Since there’s this:

… an organization’s right to process someone’s data might override their right to be forgotten. Here are the reasons cited in the GDPR that trump the right to erasure:

• The data is being used to exercise the right of freedom of expression and information.
  
• The data is being used to perform a task that is being carried out in the public interest or when exercising an organization’s official authority.
  
• The data represents important information that serves the public interest, scientific research, historical research, or statistical purposes and where erasure of the data would likely to impair or halt progress towards the achievement that was the goal of the processing.
  

B) What I love about the TWTXT sphere is it’s Human/Humane element! No deceptive algorithms, no Corpo B.S …etc. Just Humans. So maybe … If we thought about it in this way, it wouldn’t heart to be even nicer to others/offering strangers an even safer space.
I could already imagine a couple of extreme cases where, somewhere, in this peaceful world one’s exercise of freedom of speech could get them in Real trouble (if not danger) if found out, it wouldn’t necessarily have to involve something to do with Law or legal authorities. So, If someone asks, and maybe fearing fearing for… let’s just say ‘Their well being’, would it heart if a pod just purged their content if it’s serving it publicly (maybe relay the info to other pods) and call it a day? It doesn’t have to be about some law/convention somewhere … 🤷 I know! Too extreme, but I’ve seen news of people who’d gone to jail or got their lives ruined for as little as a silly joke. And it doesn’t even have to be about any of this.

P.S: Maybe make X tool check out robots.txt? Or maybe make long-term archives Opt-in? Opt-out?
P.P.S: Already Way too many MAYBE’s in a single twt! So I’ll just shut up. 😅

Bahahahaha very clever @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I look forward to reading your report ! 🤣 However…

$ yarnc debug https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt | grep -E '^pqst4ea' | tee | wc -l
0

I very quickly proved that Twt was never from me 🤣

@david@collantes.us Thanks, that’s good feedback to have. I wonder to what extent this already exists in registry servers and yarn pods. I haven’t really tried digging into the past in either one.

How interested would you be in changes in metadata and other comments in the feeds? I’m thinking of just permanently saving every version of each twtxt file that gets pulled, not just the twts. It wouldn’t be hard to do (though presenting the information in a sensible way is another matter). Compression should make storage a non-issue unless someone does something weird with their feed like shuffle the comments around every time I fetch it.

@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!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de I don’t think it has to be like that. Just make sure the new version of the twt is always appended to your current feed, and have some convention for indicating it’s an edit and which twt it supersedes. Keep the original twt as-is (or delete it if you don’t want new followers to see it); doesn’t matter if it’s archived because you aren’t changing that copy.