I hope not, @bender@twtxt.net! I haven’t checked, but I’d reckon it to be at most a single digit MiB number. How wrong am I?
@off_grid_living@twtxt.net No right click thing, but in the terminal:
convert -strip -quality 70 -resize 300x original.jpg resized.jpg
“original.jpg” being the filename of the input file and “resized.jpg” the filename of the output. You can play around with the width, “300x” means 300 pixels wide and the height is determined automatically to still remain in the same ratio. The quality is how much to compress it. The closer to 0 the value gets, the worse the result, but also smaller in file size. More towards 100 and the quality improves together with a larger file size.
You have to install the package “imagemagick” for this to work, I believe.
@off_grid_living@twtxt.net Oh, I’m ready for my retirement, too. :-D Still have some decades to go, unfortunately.
@off_grid_living@twtxt.net You could try starting it in the terminal in order to spot errors. Just open the GNOME Terminal or something like that and then type in “kolourpaint” and hit Enter.
here is my progress so far: https://github.com/eapl-gemugami/twtxt-direct-message-php
The encryption part seems to work, if I decrypt it the message with OpenSSL.
I think it can help you for some key parts not well explained in OpenSSL documentation.
@andros@twtxt.andros.dev reading your spec I wrote a few notes here: https://github.com/eapl-gemugami/twtxt-direct-message-php/blob/main/direct_message_spec.md
@arne@uplegger.eu I haven’t check your repo yet, although you are using sodium, right?
@arne@uplegger.eu Here are the results of the german jury:
Known salt (B64): Tb9oj07UhwU= (8)
Known key (B64): MII0yj+MC0mHNx254Voar80bi9P7jmocs0+x+inaxBE=
Known iv (B64): l/PvkDjOKMFZe73KptrvWw== (16)
Shared Key (B64): ql8zvN03p6kroSwNrcKbxk4zSBQFkgQZEumvqVIDMAE=
** DECRYPT **
Encrypted Message: ...
Decoded Salt (B64): Tb9oj07UhwU= (8)
PBKDF2 KEY (B64): MII0yj+MC0mHNx254Voar80bi9P7jmocs0+x+inaxBE=
iv (B64): JanbU1jI30lb6yfjq/adjA== (16)
Decrypted Message:
😭
@eapl.me@eapl.me Here is what I’ve got so far: https://github.com/upputter/testing-twtxt-dm
There is a “00_well_known_message.enc” file, which I have the encryption paremters for (https://github.com/upputter/testing-twtxt-dm/blob/9fdf3be6aa8fe810a4cb275375dbb3d4a2a958ee/wellknown_test.php#L28).
According to my finding, I assume, that the saltsize in openssl is “8” and the PBKDF2 algo is “sha256”.
@andros@twtxt.andros.dev Could you share (perhaps in the extension document) the private key for alice?
I want to compare that I can read the encrypted message both from OpenSSL CLI and from the PHP OpenSSL library, following the spec.
echo "Lorem ipsum" | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -pbkdf2 -iter 100000 -out message.enc -pass file:shared_key.bin
will take the input string from echo to openssl. It then will
@arne@uplegger.eu With the OpenSSL option -p one can get an output of salt, key and iv. My stupid PHP-code can get everything right from the encrypted data (from OpenSSL) - except the iv! Damn “evpKDF” 😔
@prologic@twtxt.net I’ve been there yesterday w/o success.
@arne@uplegger.eu I think you want to use the sodium_crypto functions/modules for PHP 🤔🤔
@arne@uplegger.eu Hi! I love that you’re implementing it! Maybe, when we’re both done, we could test the clients by communicating both.
I don’t think I’m going to be able to help you much, my knowledge of OpenSSL and PHP is not as high as I’d like it to be.
Maybe the OpenSSL version uses SHA-1 by default in PHP. Or that the IV is derived together with the key (not generated separately). But I’m not able to answer your questions, sorry.
I’m invoking the commands directly, without any libraries in between. Maybe that would help you?
@arne@uplegger.eu Well, just for my understanding. The command:
echo "Lorem ipsum" | openssl enc -aes-256-cbc -pbkdf2 -iter 100000 -out message.enc -pass file:shared_key.bin
will take the input string from echo to openssl. It then will
- use the content of
shared_key.binas password
- use
PBKDF2with an iteration of 100000 to generate a encryption key from the given password (shared_key.bin)
- use the
PBKDF2generated key for anaes-256-cbcencryption
The final result is encrypted data with the prepended salt (which was generated by runtime), e.g.: Salted__q�;��-�T���"h%��5�� ....
With a dummy script I now can generate a valide shared key within PHP ‘openssl_pkey_derive()’ - identical to OpenSSL.
I also can en-/decrypt salted data within my script, but not with OpenSSL. There are several parameters of PBKDF2 unknown to me.
Question:
- Is the salt, used by
aes-256-cbcandPBKDF2the same, prepended in the encrypted data?
- Witch algorithm/cipher is used within
PBKDF2: sha1, sha256, …?
- What is the desired key length of
PBKDF2(https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.openssl-pbkdf2.php)?
To be continued …
oh cool @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org !! and thanks, got rid of that empty line. ATM I’m using twtxt very much in an experimental way, only manual editing or writing my tools. curious to see how it will evolve. #meta #twtxt

Love my new shed, getting ready to retire
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org call the @ call the @yarn_police@twtxt.net! 😂
@arne@uplegger.eu
If I keep the “nonce”, I can decrypt a message with the shared key, like in the direct message specs.
But that is not how it should work. 😒
@andros@twtxt.andros.dev I have really tried to get behind it. For an implementation for my TwtxtReader (PHP) I simply lack the knowledge of the standard-openssl parameters.
All my solution approaches require “nonce” or “initialization vector” on one or the other side. In addition, the “magic numbers” (“Salted__”) were not consistent in my tests.
@prologic@twtxt.net I wish getting a static IP and a (more) stable internet connection wasn’t so hard over here. Then I could do proper self-hosting as well. But as it stands, I need some rented VPS.
I could go ahead and just use the VPS for the IP, i.e. forward all traffic through Wireguard to a box here at home. Big downside is that the network connection would be even slower than it already is and my ISP breaks down all the time for a few minutes … it’s just bad overall and much easier/better to rent a VPS. 🫤
hey @lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I’ve seen your mention from uhhmmm 4months ago just now using my crawler -__-’ / curious to know, do you see my mention now? #meta #twtxt
Thanks, @falsifian@www.falsifian.org! I’ll definitely start with the latter one then. Let’s see how far I make it. :-)
@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Phew, okay. So, it took a few months to grow that big. I feared that it could have been just a week or so. Yeah, insulation always is a good idea.
@prologic@twtxt.net Holly, didn’t know bots and crawlers could do comedy now… they should’ve added “Dave Chappelle/69.420” to their UA.
@prologic@twtxt.net I’m speculating, but if I had to guess I’d say it’s probably asking for your user password in order to access some user keyring (or whatever your OS uses to manage user secret credentials) used to safely store your passkeys related data in order to do its passkeys /ME doing air quotes Magic™ … you could try with a different password manager to avoid said scenario.
Also, passkeys UX sucks.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I don’t remember exactly. They might have been growing all winter. The trick is to have a badly insulated extension to the house.
@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Hahaha, that’s sick, I love it! :-D I envy you a bit. On the other hand, I have to admit I’m glad that I don’t have to chisel down giant blocks of ice from the house.
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I am a big fan of “obvious” math facts that turn out to be wrong. If you want to understand how reusing space actually works, you are mostly stuck reading complexity theory papers right now. Ian wrote a good survey: https://iuuk.mff.cuni.cz/~iwmertz/papers/m23.reusing_space.pdf . It’s written for complexity theorists, but some of will make sense to programmers comfortable with math. Alternatively, I wrote an essay a few years ago explaining one technique, with (math-loving) programmers as the intended audience: https://www.falsifian.org/blog/2021/06/04/catalytic/ .
@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Mate, what an amazing video, holy cow! :-D We only get complete jokes of icicles compared to what you had there ealier today. It’s a giant wall. For how many days did that grow on your roof?
@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Still melting! 
@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Oh, that’s neat! Interesting how “obviously” isn’t all that obvious at all, even to the contrary. I reckon I have to read up on that subject on the weekend. :-)
I like how Ian’s and your photo complement each other, winter and summer join forces for something special. :-)
@falsifian@www.falsifian.org Wooooaaaahhh! That is BY FAR the biggest icicle I’ve ever seen. Really cool! :-) How long did it take to melt in your sink? The video download is still dripping in, looking forward to that.
twtxt, the microblogging for hackers and friends...
@eapl.me@eapl.me I couldn’t care less about ActivityPub, but twtxt is the thing for hackers by design. That’s the appealing part for me, personally. I actually do enjoy that not everybody and their dogs are here. :-)
@thecanine@twtxt.net I agree!
@movq@www.uninformativ.de @prologic@twtxt.net I don’t know, I don’t see this happening all that often. Very rarely. The problem I encounter much more often is that tech folks are blindly adopting every new hype without thinking the slightest bit what the consequences might be.
But maybe that also means I’m one of these “told you so” guys. Not sure.
Today is an important day. We have a new extension: Direct message 🪇🗨️🚀🥳❤️
https://twtxt.dev/exts/direct-message.html
#twtxt
@sorenpeter@darch.dk Sorry, I realized that shortly after posting. Here’s another attempt to post the images:

@eapl_en@eapl.me Good idea
4, but I like the idea of @eapl_en@eapl.me
What would you like the new twtxt logo to be?
Comments: https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/twtxt.dev/issues/9#issuecomment-18960

What would you like the new twtxt logo to be?

@prologic@twtxt.net All the URL are missing the protocol part (https://) and my markdown parser does not know how to handle but I see yarnd does it just fine.
@falsifian@www.falsifian.org
it look like your markdown image tags are missing the protocol part (https://) so they don’t render at least on my server: https://darch.dk/timeline/conv/3vtnszq
robots.txt that I have on https://git.mills.io/robots.txt with content:
@prologic@twtxt.net Have you tried Google’s robots.txt report? https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6062598?hl=en . I would expect Google to be pretty good about this sort of thing. If you have the energy to dig into it and, for example, post on support.google.com, I’d be curious to hear what you find out.
Something interesting to think about for twtxt, the microblogging for hackers and friends…
The biggest challenge of ActivityPub is that it’s too technical to easily explain to regular people. Nobody is interested in a jargon-laden diatribe about servers and federation. When simple questions have overly complex answers, people tend to switch off.
https://activitypub.ghost.org/your-thoughts-on-onboarding/
@bender@twtxt.net @prologic@twtxt.net the markdown list in #jr6ywrq is a “loose” list, e.g. https://github.com/erusev/parsedown/issues/474#issuecomment-280874843
My markdown parser (parsedown PHP) renders the list with p-tags also.
@andros@twtxt.andros.dev Thank you :-)
@andros@twtxt.andros.dev screenshots plz :=!
Yesterday I was doing a lot of research on how #hyperdrive and the #holepunch project work. Would it be possible to use it to make #twtxt an easier gateway for new users? Could we stop using web servers?
My conclusion: We would end up being a #nostr. On the one hand it would become more complex to use, it would force the user to have software installed, and on the other hand the community would need a central proxy to make the routes accessible via HTTP. In other words, it’s not a good idea.
However, it’s an AMAZING technology. I want to start playing with it.
@prologic@twtxt.net 🤣🤣🤣 thanks! I didn’t even notice 😅