Rollerblading, programming, writing, documentaries, travel, motorbikes… That’s it!
Preferably email: o@olowe.co
Probably! :) https://old.lemmy.world/post/19168403
To rephrase your question: “did my message get sent to Lemmy servers?”
Because in a sense, your comment isn’t “on” anything; you sent a message to your server (thebrainbin.org) which then sent out a copy to many, many other servers.
@maegul @VintageGenious Agreed. But it’s tricky. Few thoughts:
ActivityPub itself is in a bit of a mess. Spec too large (spread out over many other specifications!), poor documentation, overly generic.
Many devs just aren’t that familiar with interoperability
To encourage adoption, Mastodon and Lemmy cloned existing services and behaviour
Those two fediverse systems added ActivityPub late in their development
@VintageGenious Think about it this way: an email client can do both Gmail and Hotmail (and Fastmail etc.) because it’s all just email. The same goes for the Fediverse; it’s all just ActivityPub. For example this reply is from a Mastodon app :D
I have personal frustrations about how popular servers like Mastodon and Lemmy hide ActivityPub. I feel progress is stifled. Enough that I wrote my own ActivityPub service (https://apubtest2.srcbeat.com/apas.html)
@threelonmusketeers @hendrik This is how many Fediverse microblogging systems currently work; they serve the Mastodon API for client to server (e.g. app to server) interactions. GoToSocial doesn’t even provide any user interface; you use it from some app originally designed for Mastodon. Why? I think because Mastodon’s HTTP API is simpler, better documented and well-tested compared to something like ActivityPub’s Client-To-Server API.
@skullgiver Good Q. Some thoughts… a standard Python, Flask, PostgreSQL app can handle hundreds of requests per second on a single machine. Any bottlenecks - Lemmy or PieFed - would probably not be at the language yet. For example, Lemmy’s poor performance when I looked ~1 year ago came from a bizarre disregard for things like relational DB query optimisation, HTTP caching, and how the stock frontend lemmy-ui fetched data. Yet Lemmy is written in Rust which is known for speed.
@2xsaiko RSS/Atom feeds were developed for this use case. GitHub, GitLab, Codeberg (Forgejo), Sourcehut, even cgit and git’s own gitweb serve feeds. For example here’s my GitHub account: https://github.com/ollytom.atom
my main OSS project: https://git.olowe.co/streaming/atom/
Atom feeds are widely supported (it’s how I found this post!) and there are many libraries/apps/plugins for aggregation. Robust old tech. And no need to limit feeds to Git activity if you don’t want to :) Good luck!
@xnx PieFed won’t have an app any time soon due to the way it’s implemented. It’s still awesome without a native app because it’s fast and doesn’t really need direct access to hardware to do its thing.
Tech detail: PieFed is a Python app using Flask and server-side rendered HTML templates. It is super fast as there’s no heavy Javascript framework being used. The maintainer has written about how PieFed is developed with poor internet connections in mind: https://piefed.social/post/6102
This is not about software licensing nor the spirit of FOSS.
There’s some inconsistent messaging that’s genuinely confusing me. I’ve shared an anecdote below (from a time when I was developing open source software) in the interest of generating discussion to clear it up for me and perhaps others, too. I don’t mean to imply I know what is happening right here.
Ha nice analogy. Might steal it if that’s ok! :)
Reminds me of a place I used to work at. Small place; 10 people. I started as a sysadmin but later started programming. They encouraged me; “yes we suck at this we need help!” so I kept going. But as the work became more involved and I needed a bit of co-operation from their side, it was torture. They didn’t “suck” at it, they just didn’t respect or bother themselves with that kind of work.
Dev publishes unreadable website:
“Some developers are bad at CSS and design/CSS (like me)”
Implying some innate incapacity.
Same dev:
“Or these people could learn Rust and contribute to the existing project.”
https://lemmy.ml/comment/8855579
Man I just don’t get it. There’s a kind of wilful ignorance here or something? It’s jarring. All due respect for what’s been made but this attitude… I’m not offended or have disdain, just dumbfounded at the messaging.
@CoderSupreme The founder of StackOverflow went on to work on Discourse (https://discourse.org). There’s actually an ActivityPub plugin available nowadays, so apparently people can contribute from whatever fediverse server they’re coming from. For example see Go Bridge (https://forum.golangbridge.org)
@Zaktor There is some influence. Two things that come to mind:
* default post length limit (500 characters)
* how the server renders “Page” ActivityPub objects (e.g. Lemmy posts)
For example, many comments made in this thread could not be made from a Mastodon server. All Lemmy posts show as just a title and link with a blank body. These application behaviours have a direct influence on what types of conversations take place by people from Mastodon servers.
> Why is Mastodon being treated as a monolithic entity?
Oh the usual: makes a batter headline.
I guess I’m spreading toxicity by replying to a post from a Mastodon app…? Or something?
RSS is kinda different. Subscribing is really just polling a file. ActivityPub messages are primarily sent around by first requesting a server to send messages to you. It’s a pull versus push thing.
I love RSS because it’s so simple. It actually goes a long way in the fediverse where most activity, which is read-only. Only a small percentage of users ever comment/post stuff.
@electricprism @fediverse
@jimmy90 @zeppo For sure. One major lesson off the top of my head is with ActivityPub is how errors are presented. I’ve written software to fiddle around with ActivityPub and found servers have terrible - if any - error messages. SMTP provides a bunch of standardised status codes that servers can give back to you, along with diagnostic info. In theory this is possible with apub but in practice it is not addressed at all.
@towerful I mainly program in Go, so when I see all that extra software I notice how much easier it is when I get to just rely on the Go runtime. It does a lot of the heavy lifting done here, but the resulting code is not as clean. Actually just today I read through Mastodon’s code to track down a bug in my in-progress ActivityPub service (in Go) and found the Ruby really easy to navigate!
@Socsa But what about in practice?
@Aatube Oh I wouldn’t be so sure… we’ve all had those colleagues and vendors where we think they’d import something like this to make our lives miserable ;)
@Mad_Punda it’s funny because the name “overtime” loses meaning when it becomes normal. I hereby propose the name “overovertime” (I’m good at names that’s why I’m a great programmer)
@VintageGenious For sure you’re absolutely right to ask the question. I have the same question :)
I guess I’m just venting. Popular Fediverse systems are implemented in a way that closely mimics exisiting CRUD social media like Twitter and Reddit. You upload a post, it’s stored in a database, and you’re done. Mastodon and Lemmy are the same, with the afterthought of sending ActivityPub messages to other systems.
And we see the result: how federation works remains an obscurity.