@prologic@twtxt.net @bender@twtxt.net No worries. In the end you did it all with your backup. And sorry for my exported timezone mess. :-/

You need quant computer to host these key services. Nobody will do that. ActivityPub/Twtxt instance can be hosted on calculator

@bender@twtxt.net I still have my Famicom from when I was 5 or so and this makes me think I might get away with selling it’s manual for pretty money instead of just framing it and hanging by the desk … wanna buy it? 😂

@bender@twtxt.net ROFLMAO! 🤣

… but using the service itself is considered enough compensation.

🔥 ATTENTION: I have really bad news folks 😢

Today, (just this morning in AEST) I accidentally nuke my pod (twtxt.net). I keep backups, but unfortunately the recovery point objective (RTP) is at worst a month! 🤦‍♂️ 😱 (the recovery time objective is around ~30m or so, restoring can take a while due to the size of the archive and index) – For those that are unfamiliar with these terms, they essentially relate to “how much data loss can occur” (RPO) and “how quickly you can restore the system” (RTO).

This pod (twtxt.net) is back up and online. However we’ve last the last ~5 days worth of posts y’all may have made on your feeds (for those that use this pod).

I’m so sorry 😞

@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.

@wbknl@twtxt.net @bender@twtxt.net For improved longevity you should consider carving in steel or stone. This also has the additional benefit that you think more carefully before actually noting it down.

@bender@twtxt.net The world is full of fools. One of ‘em might even buy that for this money. O_o Even the original price is a total ripoff in my opinion.

@prologic@twtxt.net I recommend its Wikipedia entry is edited then, if you are completely certain.

“Bluesky is a decentralized microblogging social media service primarily operated by Bluesky Social, PBC.”

That I know of, you can run the PDS, and pretty much everything else.

@bender@twtxt.net Sorry, I feel like I have to … 😅

Image

@prologic@twtxt.net Same here… Twtxt and Mastodon are more than enough for me. I used to have a BSky account with my own domain name as a handle (which I ended up deleting after a while) and even taught about running my own PDS and the whole nine yards but, it didn’t feel like it was worth the hassle.

@New_scientist@feeds.twtxt.net No they don’t.

twtxt.net lost its dark mode? It’s glaringly bright now. 😎

@prologic@twtxt.net Nah. twtxt + Mastodon is enough social media for me. 😅

@bender@twtxt.net Try blocking JS.

@prologic@twtxt.net see my profile.

@prologic@twtxt.net, the new line character. \u2028, is no longer being rendered right on the description metadata.

@prologic@twtxt.net yes.

@prologic@twtxt.net just rebuild my image.. though git says i am already at latest

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, the Swiss and C++ programmers use apostrophes. :-) My grandpa had an electronic desk calculator that also used some kind of apostrophes as the thousands separator on its cool display. Maybe it consisted of Nixie tubes, can’t remember anymore.

I think non-breaking spaces are preferred nowadays to avoid the confusion.

@prologic@twtxt.net All good mate.

@prologic@twtxt.net what do we make of Labor’s proposed social media minimum age ban, I.e ID verification, and the likes of Yarn? I haven’t been able to find out exactly how far the legislation goes, but some have said it’s broad enough to include any site that even has a comment section 🤔 but that could be FUD.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de The dot is the thousands separator, so I’m surprised that it did not interpret it as €334,900.00. Luckily, you caught it in time! :-)

@xuu@txt.sour.is Hahaha, nice expression. :-D

@prologic@twtxt.net I never got the root for this

@wbknl@twtxt.net I have thought of getting one. I wish there were easier tools for it than direwolf

@bender@twtxt.net Linux and Android. I would never iOS my friend.

@bender@twtxt.net Fair point, could be. I probably have to implement it first or create some kind of a mockup to spare me the effort of some feature that I rip out again. :-)

@xuu@txt.sour.is Yep!

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Riiiight, I now remember reading that a long time ago. :-)

@bender@twtxt.net I now read the German Wikipedia article on fog. These are some really beautiful pictures:

• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a9/Nebelbank_in_der_W%C3%BCste_Namib_bei_Aus_%282018%29.jpg
  
• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/1/17/Space_Shuttle_Challenger_moving_through_fog.jpg
  
• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/96/Fog_Bow_%2819440790708%29.jpg
  
• https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/ac/360_degrees_fogbow.jpg

@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.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org agree on the HTTP stuff. I mean we could mention that for optimization see RFC yadda yadda should be followed for caching. but not have it part of the spec proper.

@bender@twtxt.net 😜

@bender@twtxt.net 😛

@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

@xuu@txt.sour.is LOL :-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. :-)

Perfect, @eapl.me@eapl.me, it’s fixed again. In fact this editor seems to support the Unicode line separator character all too well, otherwise it would not have replaced it in the first place. :-D Time to switch to a more unintelligent editor. ;-)

Thanks, @bender@twtxt.net. I try to.

I haven’t noticed any smell of fog, @bender@twtxt.net. Might @nff@www.noizhardware.com’s experience stem from a similar phenomenon that creates a lovely smell after a good, air-cleaning rain shower?

@sorenpeter@darch.dk #NSFS #NotSafeForSorenpeter

@eapl.me@eapl.me Neat.

So for twt metadata the lextwt parser currently supports values in the form [key=value]

https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/go-lextwt/src/branch/main/parser_test.go#L692-L698

@sorenpeter@darch.dk on 4 for gemini if your TLS client certificate contains your nick@host could that work for discovery?

@wbknl@twtxt.net are you still in Russia? It could be hard mailing anything to there these days. I read your “russia is eternally cold”, and became curious. Patagonia is the only place I know on South America that it has rounded mountains, though they can be anywhere. Originally from Chile, or Argentina? My curiosity doesn’t need feeding, by the way. It’s all good if it doesn’t. :-)

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?

Thanks @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org! I’m replying here https://text.eapl.mx/reply-to-lyse-about-twtxt

Thanks @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org! I’m replying here https://text.eapl.mx/reply-to-lyse-about-twtxt

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.