@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz ngircd is nice: https://ngircd.barton.de/ You can absolutely host this on your server for you and your friends (I’ve been doing that for a very long time). Actually peering with something like libera is hard, though, because they have strict requirements and a lot of traffic. Then again, there’s no real benefit in peering, actually. IRC is pretty “decentralized” anyway and people are usually used to connecting to several networks, so joining another one isn’t a big deal, imho. 🙃

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz is there anything i can even run or is this like email where you should just use libera and shut up

@prologic@twtxt.net @bmallred@staystrong.run Ah, I just found this, didn’t see it before:

https://restic.net/#compatibility

So, yeah, they do use semver and, yes, they’re not at 1.0.0 yet, so things might break on the next restic update … but they “promise” to not break things too lightheartedly. Hm, well. 😅 Probably doesn’t make a big difference (they don’t say “don’t use this software until we reach 1.0.0”).

@prologic@twtxt.net This shi_ is as fun as it is frustrating! 😆 the bot is poking at me from a different ASN now, Alibaba’s.

1. Short term solution: I’ve geo-locked my Timeline instance since I’m the only one using it (and I only do so for reading twts when I’m away from terminal).
   
2. Long term: I took a look at your Caddy WAF but couldn’t figure things out on my own; until then, I’ll be poking at Caddy-Defender, maybe throw in a Crowdsec for lols… #FUN

@movq@www.uninformativ.de From what I can tell, they use strict semantic versioning and backwards compatibility. There are two versions of the storage, v1 and v2, but it doesn’t look like v2 is enabled yet.

@prologic@twtxt.net @bmallred@staystrong.run So is restic considered stable by now? “Stable” as in “stable data format”, like a future version will still be able to retrieve my current backups. I mean, it’s at version “0.18”, but they don’t specify which versioning scheme they use.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz oh and the logs say “failed to write msg: use of closed network connection” WHAT DOES THAT MEAN

I use restic and Backblaze B2 for offline backup storage at a cost of $6/TB/month. I don’t backup my entire ~20TB NAS and its datasets however, so I’m only paying about ~$2/month right now. I only backup the most important things I cannot afford to lose or annot re-created.

@bender@twtxt.net How is Borg? I have used restic for so long I haven’t looked at anything else.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz pandoc is a joy! I haven’t used any Microsoft word processing tools since forever. They want a Word document? Pandoc to the rescue!

On top of my usual backups (which are already offsite, but it requires me carrying a hard disk to that other site), I think I might rent a storage server and use Borg. 🤔 Hoping that their encryption is good enough. Maybe that’ll also finally convince me to get a faster internet connection. 😂

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz It’s more like a cache, it stores things like “timestamp of the most recent twt we’ve seen per feed” or “last modification date” (to be used with HTTP’s if-modified-since header). You can nuke these files at any time, it might just result in more traffic (e.g., always getting a full response instead of just “HTTP 304 nope, didn’t change”).

@quark@ferengi.one Yes, I often write a couple of twts, don’t publish them, then sometimes notice a mistake and want to edit it. You’re right, as soon as stuff is published, threads are going to break/fork by edits.

@david@collantes.us Thanks I’ll fix.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz As someone who has a say in hiring decisions (every now and then – I’m not an executive nor an HR person 😆): This is gold. Writeups like these tell me/us so much about job applicants. It’s much more valuable than “a CV without gaps” or “know your algorithms” or whatever. Instead, it shows how you work and that you understand what you’re doing, and that’s the most important part. 🥇

@bender@twtxt.net NOOOO i self host an XMPP server and also revolt but as much as i love XMPP (gajim client reminds me of using skype as a kid highkey) i don’t use it much and revolt is a bitch to maintain. like i broke revolt file uploads and it stayed that way for months until literally last week lmao. i never bothered with matrix tbh maybe i should’ve but it seems not worth it

Bloody WhatsApp, bloody chat apps on smartphones, I’m going nuts. If you want to TYPE, use a device WITH A KEYBOARD. Don’t send me useless undecipherable gibberish. FFS!

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev I give you not creating another file, but then I’d vote for commenting out DMs. See https://eapl.me/timeline/post/z5e2bna

It’s easier to find the DM in comments from your side, than asking all the client maintainers to add the regex =P
You can even use a Modified comment, such as
#! <DM content>
Or something like that

This approach is retro-compatible with current and older clients.

@david@collantes.us @andros@twtxt.andros.dev The correct hash would be si4er3q. See https://twtxt.dev/exts/twt-hash.html, a timezone offset of +00:00 or -00:00 must be replaced by Z.

(That said, there’s a bug in jenny as well. It only replaces +00:00, not -00:00. 🤡)

Using AI in education is like using a forklift in the gym. The weights do not actually need to be moved from place to place. That is not the work. The work is what happens within you.

https://fedi.neuwirth.priv.at/@konrad/114352350424913566

@david@collantes.us If I run

printf '%s\n%s\n%s' 'https://aelaraji.com/twtxt.txt' '2025-04-16T22:49:11+00:00' "Am I tripping or `rsync` is actually THIS effing faster than `scp`!!? 🫨" | b2sum -l 256 | awk '{ print $1 }' | xxd -r -p | base32 | tr -d '=' | tr 'A-Z' 'a-z' | tail -c 8

I have xqfsv6a. It is raw text

But… If I change de date to 2025-04-16T22:49:11Z I have si4er3q.

@aelaraji@aelaraji.com What protocol do you use?

Even though I really do like the shell, I always use Dolphin to mount my digicam SD card and copy the photos onto my computer. I finally added a context menu item in Dolphin to create a forest stroll directory with the current date in order to save some typing:

Image

The following goes in ~/.local/share/kservices5/ServiceMenus/galmkdir.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Service
X-KDE-ServiceTypes=KonqPopupMenu/Plugin,inode/directory
Actions=Waldspaziergang;

[Desktop Action Waldspaziergang]
Name=Heutigen Waldspaziergang anlegen…
Icon=folder-green
Exec=~/src/gelbariab/galmkdir "%f"

In order to update the KDE desktop cache and make this action menu item available in Dolphin, I ran:

kbuildsycoca5

The referenced galmkdir script looks like that:

#!/bin/sh
set -e

current_dir="$1"
if [ -z "$current_dir" ]; then
    echo "Usage: $0 DIRECTORY" >&2
    exit 1
fi

dir="$(kdialog \
    --geometry 350x50 \
    --title "Heutigen Waldspaziergang anlegen" \
    --inputbox "Neues Verzeichnis in „$current_dir“ anlegen:" \
    "waldspaziergang-$(date +%Y-%m-%d)")"
mkdir "$current_dir/$dir"
dolphin "$current_dir/$dir"

This solution is far from perfect, though. Ideally, I’d love to have it in the “Create New” menu instead of the “Actions” menu. But that doesn’t really work. I cannot define a default directory name, not to mention even a dynamic one with the current date. (I would have to update the .desktop file every day or so.) I also failed to create an empty directory. I somehow managed to create a directory with some other templates in it for some reason I do not really understand.

Let’s see how that works out in the next days. If I like it, I might define a few more default directory names.

@xuu@txt.sour.is like, badly broken. I mean, the guy doesn’t even use twtxt (it is more like an RSS feed for him). So, yeah, even if it was the correct mention it would never reach the intended ears. 😂

Just keeping this shell alive, and sending an useful twtxt in the process. :-P

@bender@twtxt.net I don’t no. I mostly just use whole themes. And my facourite it AMOLED

@prologic@twtxt.net I am just going over things. I don’t use it, do you?

Hahaha! And now they show tiny! I had to reload the page. So, I see the problem on iOS and macOS Safari too. I have no other browser to test with, I exclusively use Safari.

my main itch with the DMs extensions is that these messages are intended to be private, not public information. That’s why other extensions make sense, but DMs are another kind of feature.
TwiXter, Mastodon, FB and some other services usually hide the DMs in another section, so they are not mixed with the public timeline.

I find the DM topic interesting, I even made an indie experiment for a centralized messaging system here https://github.com/eapl-gemugami/owl.
Although, as I’ve said a few times here, I’m not particularly interested in supporting it on microblogging, as I don’t use it that much. In the rare case I’ve used them, I don’t have to manage public and private keys, and finally none of my acquaintances use encrypted email.
Nothing personal against anyone, and although I like to debate and even fight, it’s not the case here. This proposal is the only one allowing DMs on twtxt, and if the community wants it, I’ll support it, with my personal input, of course.

A good approach I could find with a good compromise between compatibility with current clients and keeping these messages private is ‘hiding’ the DMs in comments. For example:
# 2025-04-13T11:02:12+02:00 !<dm-echo https://dm-echo.andros.dev/twtxt.txt> U2FsdGVkX1+QmwBNmk9Yu9jvazVRFPS2TGJRGle/BDDzFult6zCtxNhJrV0g+sx0EIKbjL2a9QpCT5C0Z2qWvw==

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev I don’t see any “fighting” here. This is just good experimentation. Unfortunately there hasn’t really been enough time or effort by other “client authors” yet, me especially as I’ve been super busy with ya’ know my “day job” that pays the bills and refactoring yarnd to use a new and shiny and much better SqliteCache 🤣 – I certainly don’t think your efforts are wasted at all. I would however like @doesnm.p.psf.lt@doesnm.p.psf.lt encourage you to look at the work we’ve done as a community (which was also driven out of the Yarn.social / Twtxt community years back).

@prologic@twtxt.net @bender@twtxt.net @eapl.me@eapl.me I think opening another file is a bad idea because it adds complexity to the clients, breaks the single feed and I think keeping legacy clients will be more complex to add new features in the future. A modern approach is important.
I’ll be honest, I’m a bit tired of the fight around the direct message. Perhaps, we can remove it as an extension and use the alternative @prologic@twtxt.net . My suggestion apparently doesn’t like to the community. I have no problem with remove it.

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev maybe create a separate, completely distinct feed for DM? That way, clients do not need to do anything, only those wanted to “talk in private” follow themselves, using their very special dm-only.txt feeds. 😂

@eapl.me@eapl.me When it is up and running, I promise to add it to the specification. I will also include some corrections.
The nature of twtxt does not allow us to selectively hide clients. It’s a problem not with DM, but with any extension.
@prologic@twtxt.net Yes, it is a security hole. All dm-echo messages are readable. I intend it to be a debugging tool. Maybe I can include a warning message. If many of you see that it is a serious problem, I can remove the links.
@xuu@txt.sour.is It’s already much better than Mastodon :P . Maybe we can remove the sender and receiver references with an intermediary register.

@prologic@twtxt.net I don’t know, maybe it will be useful for someone 😇

@prologic@twtxt.net I hope it is as useful to you as it is to me 😋

I was trying to optimize the SQL query used for the Compact FrontPage (anonymous view for Discovery when the Admin/Operator chooses “one twt per feed”).

AI problems, top to bottom:

1: Open AI nerds, believe fine tuning a language model algorithm, will eventually produce an AGI god.

2: Subpar artists and techbros who can’t code, convinced AI image bashing and vibe coding, will help convince the dumber parts of Internet, they are a real deal.

3: Parasites, using AI to scam people, because they just want passive income, selling crap, made by an automated process.

Side: Adobe&co, killing Flash/old web, pricing new artists and developers out, to face learning curves of free tools, or use AI, peddled as solution.

ABC Australia is reporting of a potential market manipulation in the US. Potential? I would call it almost certain. For as much as I would like not to be dragged into politics, it is rather impossible these days.

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org that’s such a beautiful shot! If I were you I would use the full “original” one; it will do better justice to the shots. Oh, and I gladly take your 15°C! 😍

Aside from fetching feeds every three minutes (which kind of adds mystery to this puzzle), I think there is something else going on with the client you are using, @andros@twtxt.andros.dev. Some of those twtxts are seconds apart, making me truly stumped. 😅

oh out of boredom yesterday i made my blog available via markdown files too so you can use charmbracelet/glow to read them in your terminal :)

basically i just set up a file directory on a path of my blog, organized the MD files by year, and so in theory you can navigate to that path and choose a folder, then copy a link to a markdown post and run this:

glow -p https://bubblegum.girlonthemoon.xyz/md/2025/2025-03-31%20premature%20reflections%20on%20sudden%20responsibility.md

and then as long as you have glow installed, you can read my posts from the terminal :D it’s so cool

guys omg the people behind pico.sh are so nice ;_; one of the people running it emailed me to let me know i had what was likely a malfunctioning (or well, not working as intended) script that was spawning the same SSH tunnel over and over and they wanted to give me a heads up.

and i felt SO BAD because i worried i was straining their service or something so i disabled my 4 tunnels (they were serving little SSH games and services) and got back to them.

but i just woke up to THE NICEST EMAIL EVER reassuring me that i was actually using it as intended, it was just my script that was having problems, and they even said that if it was intended to work that way it was fine and they just wanted to let me know!

so i restarted the tunnels but have since added lockfiles as safeguards so that when the script is run it’ll check if it’s already running :D

@david@collantes.us yeah @movq@www.uninformativ.de and I discovered its a bug in lextwt last night 😢 We’ll fix it as soon as @xuu@txt.sour.is can 🤣

@david@collantes.us Yeah, we’ve been debugging that a bit yesterday. Looks like the wrong input (sometimes) gets fed to the hash function → broken threads.

Anyway. this was a good use for search btw. I couldn’t find my Twt, so I just quickly searched for it, snap, bingo I found it in a snap! 🫰

@david@collantes.us Ah, yes, the hardware might not. As I just said in the other thread: No problem, you can keep the same installation. I did so many times on my PC/laptop at work.

hello friends i spent a couple hours today using a random string generator by charm CLI called hotdiva2000 to make a script that 1) generates a static index.html page 2) the page is a prompt generator where all the prompts are from hotdiva2000!!!!!

this makes more sense if you look at it check it out

https://prompts.4-walls.net/hotdiva2004/

@thecanine@twtxt.net I mean I can restore whatever anyone likes, the problem is the last backup I took was 4 months ago 😭 So I decided to start over (from scratch). Just let me know what you want and I’ll do it! I used the 4-month old backup to restore your account (by hand) and avatar at least 🤣

@prologic@twtxt.net There was no edit according to my Git history. 🤔 On my end, the hash is fs7673q and that’s also what kat used to reply.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz I think it happens if you don’t follow them. Replies used to be broken if so, but not sure if @prologic@twtxt.net ever fixed that. I used not to follow him, so that he would see the broken mentions, and feel shame (he didn’t, he is shameless! LOL), but ever since the re-creation of my account I just decided to follow, so I don’t know if the issue is fixed or not.

I know mentioning @xuu@txt.sour.isdoesnm.p.psf.lt was broken too. Maybe still is? We’ll see.

I am not interested at all. If I want to interact/socialise/whatever on the Fediverse (which I do), I simply use it. I would like to keep twtxt separate.

hey does anyone know of yarn pods with open registrations besides mine? quite literally asking for a friend who i told about yarn but can’t use my site for personal reasons sadly otherwise i’d gladly invite her

@bender@twtxt.net WE THOUGHT ABOUT CALLING HER THAT LMAOOOOOO we’re thinking about lucy right now! it’s a meaningful name to us for reasons :)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I’m open to other suggestions 🤣 But hopefully both adding the additional prompt, not allowing it to enter shell history and removing from my shell history prevents me from doing such silly things in haste by pressing ^R and using fuzzy search which if you type fast you sometimes get wrong 😑

FYI: I’ve re-opened up search for anonymous use. So things like this now work without having to have an account on this pod or login. 👌 #search #twtxt

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Same! Another infrastructure apocalypse at work. Who needs reliable shit? Definitely not us.

So I re-write this shell alias that I used all the time alias dkv="docker rm" to be a much safer shell function:

dkv() {
  if [[ "$1" == "rm" && -n "$2" ]]; then
    read -r -p "Are you sure you want to delete volume '$2'? [Y/n] " confirm
    confirm=${confirm:-Y}
    if [[ "$confirm" =~ ^[Yy]$ ]]; then
      # Disable history
      set +o history

      # Delete the volume
      docker volume rm "$2"

      # Re-enable history
      set -o history
    else
      echo "Aborted."
    fi
  else
    docker volume "$@"
  fi
}

GUYS WE GOT A NEW CAT SHE DOESN’T HAVE A NAME YET BUT SHE’S SUPER CUTE AND SUPER SHY AND WARMING UP TO US I’M IN LOVE

@prologic@twtxt.net In all my two Go projects I use modernc.org/sqlite and can’t complain. Works great for me.

I’ve been using GIMP 3.0 for a few weeks now and it’s great. New features and I got rid of two custom plugins because they’re in core now. Literally nothing broke for me. And I really appreciate that they kept the familiar UI (instead of changing things just for the sake of change).

Thank you! 🥳

@david@collantes.us This pink tree I featured in a few shots is a magnolia tree. I haven’t noticed any particular smell, it just looks pretty. :-) That’s a close-up: https://lyse.isobeef.org/bad-wimpfen-2025-03-28/18.jpg (I only noticed the spider and its web when I reviewed my photos.)

@arne@uplegger.eu I’m very glad I only rarely have to deal with .docx & Co. And when I have to, 99% is in read mode only. Even though, I don’t think that Markdown is the best choice, I use it on a daily basis. Some things, like links, in reStructuredText are better in my opinion.

Jira just resists to switch to Markdown and forces us to use its silly markup language.

For real typesetting, LaTeX is the way to go. But I very, very rarely do that.

@thecanine@twtxt.net My apologies, mate! :-( As @david@collantes.us pointed out, this was definitely not my intent at all.

For the easter egg hunt, I first looked for a hidden image map link on the pixel dog in the right lower corner itself. Maybe one giant pixel just links to somewhere else, I figured. But I couldn’t find any and then quickly moved on. Hence, I naturally viewed the HTML source. Because where else would be a good hiding place for easter eggs, right?

Next, I noticed the <font> tags. I thought I had read quite some time ago that they are not an HTML5 thing, but wasn’t entirely sure about it. So, I asked the W3C HTML validator. Sure enough. I thought I let you know about the violations. If somebody had found a mistake on my site, I’d love to hear about it, so I could fix it. I’m sorry that my chosen form of report didn’t resonate with you all that well. I reckoned you’ll also find it a bit funny, but I was clearly very wrong on that.

I actually followed the dog cow link to the video, so I ended up on the easter egg. However, I didn’t recognize it as such. ¯_(ツ)_/¯ Oh well.

Regarding my message about the browser quirks: I read your answer that you were arguing against the HTML validator findings. Of course, everybody can do with their sites whatever they likes.

i can see your twts here: https://watcher.sour.is/?uri=https://eapl.me/tw.txt

@david@collantes.us.. i see this one but it says its dead. https://watcher.sour.is/?uri=https://ferengi.one/twtxt.txt

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I do agree “the rules of the web”, are far too loose - at least the syntax ones. I do think backwards compatibility is necessary.

As for my website, it might be visually very similar, to how it looked since its creation, many years ago, but it is frequently improved. Features that originally used JavaScript, changed to HTML and CSS components, code simplified, optimised to withstand browser updates and new screen resolutions,… Even a good chunk of the errors on your list, were already addressed and I plan to address the rest soon.

Just find it a bit depressing, that my attempt to bring back some of the old Internet spirit, by making a hidden easteregg page page for this years April 1st, was met with people complaining about April fools day jokes and you insinuating my website sucks.

In Mexico you couldn’t register the word Sonora (state), nor Taqueria (kind of restaurant) as there are two common words, but perhaps the combination of both is trademarkable, I’m not sure, so many ‘taquerias’ here don’t file a trademark request. It’s usually “Taquería [LAST_NAME]” or “Taquería [PLACE]”.

At the same time, the word “taqueria” was trademarked in UK, like it would be “Paris” or “Pub” I guess, so basically Sonora Taqueria didn’t reply to the cease and desist, based on:

[Lizbeth García]: A brand may not use a word that is generic or descriptive of the products or services it is putting into circulation on the market.

Since he (Ismael, Taqueria’s representative) didn’t get any response, he decided to leave it in the hands of his law firm.

In early 2023, after all the noise on the internet and the mobilization caused by this case, an agreement was finally reached with Taquería to settle the matter peaceably.

In March 2023, Michelle and Sam decided to register the Sonora Taquería brand and logo with the UK Intellectual Property Office.

I’m playing with ratterplatter again: It’s a toy that watches disk I/O and emulates the noise of a real hard disk. (Linux only.) It uses sound samples from one of my older disks.

I tried a different approach at estimating the disk activity and I think I finally got it right (after almost 10 years … 🤦).

Demo, booting a Windows 2000 VM: https://movq.de/v/1400544cc6/2kboot-ratterplatter-2.mp4

(For this purpose alone, I put a couple of mini speakers into my PC case, so that the noise comes from the right place: https://movq.de/v/a3b2dc0932/speakers.jpg)

The results aren’t too bad, but this thing can’t be super accurate due to the huge I/O caches that we have these days. For the video, I dropped the caches before booting Windows, otherwise you would have heard almost nothing.

FWIW, if you don’t know it yet, this is the equivalent for proper keyboard sound: https://github.com/zevv/bucklespring

definitely 1e100 superiorer

Now I’m looking forward to see the next version using MessagePack

Amazing! It is a good tool for reading feeds. What you used to calculate the hash?

Hello, i want to present my new revolution twtxt v3 format - twjson
That’s why you should use it:

1. It’s easy to to parse
   
2. It’s easy to read (in formatted mode :D)
   
3. It used actually \n for newlines, you don’t need unprintable symbols
   
4. Forget about hash collisions because using full hash
   Here is my twjson feed: https://doesnm.p.psf.lt/twjson.json
   And twtxt2json converter: https://doesnm.p.psf.lt/twjson.js

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Wow, I use Firefox and didn’t realize this existed! Thanks for pointing it out. I noticed at least one bug cited a webcompat.com report; I wonder if someone at Mozilla monitors those. https://webcompat.com/issues?page=1&per_page=50&state=open&stage=all&sort=created&direction=desc

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org Thanks for taking a look, and for pointing out the mixture of tabs and spaces.

I think I’ll leave reachability.c alone, since my intention there was to use an indent level of one tab, and the spaces are just there to line up a few extra things. I fixed reachability_with_stack.cc though.

thanks for sharing @xuu@txt.sour.is!

Checking for example https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt or https://registry.twtxt.org/api/plain/tweets, I don’t know whether this syntax is being used by clients or by people. Is it integrated on Yarn in any way? Genuinely asking to know more about it.

If I might throw a quick thought to those working on the registries, it would be nice to have an endpoint with a valid twtxt output (perhaps cached or dumped to a static file) which a client could point to, helping to discover it’s content in a way which is compatible with the twtxt spec.

Taking the first twt I found in https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt as an example:
reddit_world_news https://feeds.twtxt.net/Reddit_World_News/twtxt.txt 2025-03-28T00:29:25Z **China bans US logs. 3 billion dollar[...])
it would be something like
TIME <@NICK URL> TWT
2025-03-28T00:29:25Z <@reddit_world_news https://feeds.twtxt.net/Reddit_World_News/twtxt.txt> **China bans US logs. 3 billion dollar[...])

That way you could watch the latest twts with your client, something similar to what we find on Mastodon: https://mastodon.online/public/local

Some support from the clients to separate these ‘discovery’ content, from your following timeline might be required. 🤔

For anyone following the proposals to improve replies and threads in twtxt, the voting period has started and will be open for a week.
https://eapl.me/rfc0001/

Please share the link with the twtxt community, and leave your vote on your preferred proposals, which will be used to gauge the perceived benefits.

Also, the conversation is open to discuss implementation concerns or anything aimed at making twtxt better.

oh my god I am never using a css grid again ;;;; converted the sdv shrine to a flex layout, works much better on mobile now! now to just push that update!! :D

@eapl.me@eapl.me According to an update of the article, others have suggested the same.

Your explanation seems fitting. I just don’t get why people don’t use feed readers anymore. Anyway.

thanks andros!

instead of adding the new twt at the end of the feed, do it at the beginning
The PHP client did that originally, although I didn’t see a real benefit if you use… a client.
It could help if you read the .txt file through a browser or something. Also, not many clients are prepared to cut the request, and you can’t rely on the file being organized that way, so finally we dropped that feature.

2 is a great idea, you should suggest it in that blog post.

About 1, well, I think anyone has an email address and only about 5% use a Feed, so it makes sense to offer what most people use 🤔

@eapl.me@eapl.me Interesting! Two points stood right out to me:

1. Why the hell are e-mail newsletters considered a valid option in the first place? Just offer an Atom feed and be done with it! Especially for a blog of this very type. This doesn’t even involve a third party service. Although, in addition he also links to Feedburner, what the fuck!? No e-mail address or the like is needed and subject to being disclosed.

2. When these spam mailers want to prevent resubscribing, then for fuck’s sake, why don’t they use a hash of the e-mail address (I saw that in yarnd) for that purpose? Storing the e-mail address in clear text after unsubscribing is illegal in my book.

@prologic@twtxt.net In all seriousness: Don’t worry, I’m not going to host some Fediverse thingy at the moment, probably never will. 😅

But I do use it quite a lot. Although, I don’t really use it as a social network (as in: following people). I follow some tags like #retrocomputing, which fills my timeline with interesting content. If there was a traditional web forum or mailing list or even a usenet group that covered this topic, I’d use that instead. But that’s all (mostly) dead by now. ☹️

@david@collantes.us Ah shit, sorry, you’re right! :-D

I want to present the twtxt feed from Python Valencia: https://twtxt.python-valencia.es/
Technical curiosity: It is generated using n8n, using the official rss.
#welcome

@prologic@twtxt.net Gemini has an answer for you:

This is a conversation thread from a twtxt network, detailing a user’s (movq) frustration with the Mastodon “export data” feature and their consideration of self-hosting a fediverse alternative. Here’s a summary:

• movq’s initial issue:
  
  • movq is concerned about the volatility of their data on their current Mastodon instance due to a broken “export data” feature.
    
  • They contacted the admins, but the issue remains unresolved.
    
  • This led them to contemplate self-hosting.
    
• Alternative fediverse software suggestions:
  
  • kat suggests gotosocial as a lightweight alternative to Mastodon.
    
  • movq agrees, and also mentions snac as a potential option.
    
• movq’s change of heart:
  
  • movq ultimately decides that self-hosting any fediverse software, besides twtxt, is too much effort.
    
• Resolution and compromise:
  
  • The Mastodon admins attribute the export failure to the size of movq’s account.
    
  • movq decides to set their Mastodon account to auto-delete posts after approximately 180 days to manage data size.
    
  • Movq also mentions that they use auto-expiring links on twtxt to reduce data storage.

The Mastodon admins say that it’s probably because of the size of my account (~600 MB), so the export process times out. And I understand that. Here on twtxt, I always use auto-expiring links when I post images or videos. It just gets too much data otherwise. I think I’ll just set my Mastodon account to auto-delete posts after ~180 days or something like that. Nobody cares about old posts anyway.

Thanks, @movq@www.uninformativ.de!

My backing SQLite database with indices is 8.7 MiB in size right now.

The twtxt cache is 7.6 MiB, it uses Python’s pickle module. And next to it there is a 16.0 MiB second database with all the read statuses for the old tt. Wow, super inefficient, it shouldn’t contain anything else, it’s a giant, pickled {"$hash": {"read": True/False}, …}. What the heck, why is it so big?! O_o

@movq@www.uninformativ.de You could also just use a tiling window manager. :-) As a bonus, it doesn’t waste dead space, the window utilizes the entire screen. To also get rid of panels and stuff, put the window in fullscreen mode.

I now subscribed to most feeds in my Go tt reimplementation that I already followed with the old Python tt. Previously, I just had a few feeds for testing purposes in my new config. While transfering, I “dropped” heaps of feeds that appeared to be inactive.

This might motivate me to actually “finish” the new client, so that it could become my daily driver. No need to use the old software stack any longer. Let’s see how bad this goes.

@david@collantes.us @prologic@twtxt.net Sorry! https://cascii.app/

A collection of postgreSQL patterns that you can use in other databases
https://mccue.dev/pages/3-11-25-life-altering-postgresql-patterns
#postgresql #databases

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Yeah, most of the graphical applications are actually KDE programs:

• KMail – e-mail client
  
• Okular – PDF viewer
  
• Gwenview – image viewer
  
• Dolphin – file browser
  
• KWallet – password manager (I want to check out pass one day. The most annoying thing is that when I copy a password, it says that the password has been modified and asks me whether I want to save the changes. I never do, because the password is still the same. I don’t get it.)
  
• KPatience – card game
  
• Kdenlive – video editor
  
• Kleopatra – certificate manager
  

Qt:

• VLC – video player
  
• Psi – Jabber client (I happily used Kopete in the past, but that is not supported anymore or so. I don’t remember.)
  
• sqlitebrowser – SQLite browser
  

Gtk:

• Firefox – web browser
  
• Quod Libet – music player (I should look for a better alternative. Can’t remember why I had to move away from Amarok, was it dead? There was a fork Clementine or so, but I had to drop that for some unknown reason, too.)
  
• Audacity – audio editor
  
• GIMP – image editor
  

These are the things that are open right now or that I could think of. Most other stuff I actually do in the terminal.

In the past™, I used the Python KDE4 bindings. That was really nice. I could pass most stuff directly in the constructor and didn’t have to call gazillions of setters improving the experience significantly. If I ever wanted to do GUI programming again, I’d definitely go that route. There are also great Qt bindings for Python if one wanted to avoid the KDE stuff on top. The vast majority I do for myself, though, is either CLI or maybe TUI. A few web shit things, but no GUIs anymore. :-)

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org

Although, most software I use is decentish in that regard.

Is that because you mostly use Qt programs? 🤔

I wish Qt had a C API. Programming in C++ is pain. 😢

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Where can I join your club? Although, most software I use is decentish in that regard.

I just noted today that JetBrains improv^Wcompletely fucked up their new commit dialog. There’s no diff anymore where I would also be able to select which changes to stage. I guess from now on I’m going to exclusively commit from only the shell. No bloody git integration anymore. >:-( This is so useless now, unbelievable.

@kat@yarn.girlonthemoon.xyz Pointers can be a bit tricky. I know it took me also quite some time to wrap my head around them. Let my try to explain. It’s a pretty simple, yet very powerful concept with many facets to it.

A pointer is an indirection. At a lower level, when you have some chunk of memory, you can have some actual values sitting in there, ready for direct use. A pointer, on the other hand, points to some other location where to look for the values one’s actually after. Following that pointer is also called dereferencing the pointer.

I can’t come up with a good real-world example, so this poor comparison has to do. It’s a bit like you have a book (the real value that is being pointed to) and an ISBN referencing that book (the pointer). So, instead of sending you all these many pages from that book, I could give you just a small tag containing the ISBN. With that small piece of information, you’re able to locate the book. Probably a copy of that book and that’s where this analogy falls apart.

In contrast to that flawed comparision, it’s actually the other way around. Many different pointers can point to the same value. But there are many books (values) and just one ISBN (pointer).

The pointer’s target might actually be another pointer. You typically then would follow both of them. There are no limits on how long your pointer chains can become.

One important property of pointers is that they can also point into nothingness, signalling a dead end. This is typically called a null pointer. Following such a null pointer calls for big trouble, it typically crashes your program. Hence, you must never follow any null pointer.

Pointers are important for example in linked lists, trees or graphs. Let’s look at a doubly linked list. One entry could be a triple consisting of (actual value, pointer to next entry, pointer to previous entry).

  _______________________
 /               ________\_______________
↓               ↓         |              \
+---+---+---+   +---+---+-|-+   +---+---+-|-+
| 7 | n | x |   | 23| n | p |   | 42| x | p |
+---+-|-+---+   +---+-|-+---+   +---+---+---+
      |         ↑     |         ↑
       \_______/       \_______/

The “x” indicates a null pointer. So, the first element of the doubly linked list with value 7 does not have any reference to a previous element. The same is true for the next element pointer in the last element with value 42.

In the middle element with value 23, both pointers to the next (labeled “n”) and previous (labeled “p”) elements are pointing to the respective elements.

You can also see that the middle element is pointed to by two pointers. By the “next” pointer in the first element and the “previous” pointer in the last element.

That’s it for now. There are heaps ;-) more things to tell about pointers. But it might help you a tiny bit.

@andros@twtxt.andros.dev You use your real name as login name, too?

@prologic@twtxt.net I see this with the scouts. Luckily, not at work. But at work, I’m surrounded by techies.

@movq@www.uninformativ.de Oh my goodness! I’m so glad that I don’t have to deal with that in my family. But yeah, I guess you’re onto something with your theory. This article is also quite horrific. O_o

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org I had no idea. However, I think we’re losing our sense of anonymity. I even started using my real name!

It’s extremely surprising to me that younger non-technical people just type in their full name (properly cased first and last name with a space in between) for a technical username in account registration or login forms. I’ve seen that happening several times in the past few years. The field name is “Benutzername” in German, literally “username”. Even adding a placeholder text to signal that they could simply use their nickname in lowercase did not change anything at all. Well, one person used at least an e-mail address.

This wasn’t the case six, seven years ago, everybody had some “real” username. Even non-techies. It looks like some “common knowledge” is getting lost. Strange. Very weird. It trips me every time I see it.

Have you experienced something similar?

@lyse@lyse.isobeef.org There’s a reason it’s called “(n)curses”. 😏 The only advice I can give is to never fiddle with reassigning control sequences and $TERM variables. Leave $TERM at whatever value the terminal itself sets and use an appropriate terminfo file for it. If there are programs misbehaving, they probably blindly assume XTerm and should be fixed (or have XTerm as a hard requirement). If you try to fix this on your end, it’ll likely just break other programs. 🥴

@david@collantes.us Ah, I just went to bed, great to see you figured it out. 😅 I probably would have ended up with something similar (but I’m not a Vimscript guru). 🤔

@david@collantes.us Tada, the reply context is now also shown above. It’s slowly coming together and reaching a state where I can actually use this as my daily driver I think. :-)

Image

@david@collantes.us Thanks, yes, absolutely! ;-)

I now notice that I should also show the original message(s) to which I reply. That was super useful in the original tt. But one after the other. The mentions are now automatically filled in. \o/

@david@collantes.us While you’re typing? I guess this could be used as a starting point (doesn’t work on the very first line):

inoremap <CR> <Esc>:r!date +"\%F \%T"<CR>A 

What’s the end goal here? 😅