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Sean Tilley

@ deadsuperhero @lemmy.world

Posts
73
Comments
108
Joined
3 yr. ago

I write articles and interview people about the Fediverse and decentralized technologies. In my spare time, I play lots of video games. I also like to make pixel art, music, and games.

  • sub.club Emerges to Offer Paid Fediverse Subscriptions

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  • Some of the people in the space are tired of panhandling, and would like to actually get paid for things they do. This can include: covering monthly instance costs, selling subscriptions to premium articles for a newspaper, supporting a video creator on PeerTube, or donating to an open source project. A subscription system is one way of doing that.

  • Flohmarkt is a Fediverse Marketplace

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  • Yeah, I'm aware. I think the Nostr space in particular is doing a really great job, and has some good ideas on how to make it work. Why this development is significant, though, is that it's happening in ActivityPub space. It's not as robust, and doesn't have all the answers. But, the existence of such a project means that people within the space are already thinking about how to make this concept viable for the Fediverse.

  • Introducing Decentralized Social Icons

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  • Good question. For now, we have a basic process for submitting icons, which requires adding details about the project repo, information on the icon, and Copyright attribution for whoever created / owns the brand.

    We recently incorporated a JS library that allows us to generate the font from the SVG files themselves, which also builds the preview pages that can be viewed at icons.wedistribute.org. With a bit of extra automation on Codeberg, we could basically update the preview page and generated set every time a new icon gets merged in to the main branch.

    Our goal is to get to a point where new releases automatically get created, and an archive of the assets gets attached as well. That way, once a milestone gets completed, a new release will get put out with minimal amounts of work.

  • Introducing Decentralized Social Icons

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  • Interesting insights!

    The original reason we started this was actually for our own development. Our site includes project icons and colors in dedicated tags, which link to dedicated topic hubs. As we started working on this, we realized that there wasn't a really good resource, and that we would have to build something from scratch.

    Those symbols that you see are typically Unicode. Icon fonts are generally a CSS hack, in that a collection of SVGs have been converted into a font. The Unicode strings can be thought of as "letters" for that font. You're absolutely right that there are accessibility limitations, but the tradeoff is that people get an easy way to use their favorite project icons to represent where they are on the Web.

    At the very least, you won't have any uBO problems with our site, as the font is incorporated directly into the theme we're using. We'll likely explore making a WordPress plugin next, so people can add these to their profiles and menus and other places.

  • Introducing Decentralized Social Icons

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  • Honestly, this is the first I'm hearing about it. Maybe we'll try to submit project SVGs.

  • “Mastodon for Harris” is a Success Story for Fediverse Activism

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  • That's not really enshittification, is it?

    I was under the impression that Cory Doctorow's definition was largely based on how social media platforms entice people with "free" offerings, then gradually tighten the screws over time to make service worse. This usually happens when a platform becomes the dominant player.

  • NeoDB is a Review System for Culture

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  • Not yet, but it doesn't seem like it would be too hard to add in support for that. I think one of the core ideas here are that you could take NeoDB and use it as a foundation for any review system you want to integrate. Hook up to a service on the search side, support data import on the backend, suddenly you have a way to not only create the reviews, but populate the objects being reviewed with the necessary metadata.

  • Privacy and Consent for Fediverse Developers: A Guide

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  • I agree with you in spirit, but some of this stuff needs to be spelled out for people interested in the space. Not every person that builds for ActivityPub is overly aware of technical and cultural expectations. A lot of that knowledge exists in someone's head somewhere, and the Fediverse does a pretty poor job of making assumptions about those people.

    Case in point: one of the stories linked in the piece discusses a guy that implemented ActivityPub on his own, got it to work, but didn't know enough about the space. People thought it was a crawler, turns out it was a blogging platform, but the drama ignited to the point that someone remote-loaded CSAM on the dude's server using Webfinger. Dude was in Germany, and could have gone to prison simply for having it.

    We can't hold two contradictory positions, where we invite people to build for this space, and then gaslight them over not knowing things that nobody told them about. More than ever, we need quality resources to help devs figure this stuff out early on. This article is one small step in service to that.

  • Privacy and Consent for Fediverse Developers: A Guide

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  • Google Fonts

    Yeah, I need to work on that. It's been on the back burner, because writing and publishing has kind of been a main focus for me in recent months. But, this hasn't been the highest priority, mostly because modifying WordPress and making it behave correctly can be a massive pain in the dick.

    I'll get around to it when I'm able.

  • An Admin's Guide to Fixing PeerTube - We Distribute

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  • Honestly, self-hosting is kind of the way to go, so long as you stay on top of your backups and storage. There are a lot of Object Storage providers out there that offer reliable storage for cheap, it's a good investment if you plan on uploading somewhat frequently.

  • An Admin's Guide to Fixing PeerTube - We Distribute

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  • It's actually not too bad to run, it's just that my community instance has grown a lot, and is close to four years old at this point. Issues crop up, I mostly wrote this guide to share some insights on how I deal with things.

  • WeDistribute is conducting a poll for instance admins.

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  • Yeah, I kind of screwed up. In hindsight, I should have just made the question accept a text answer, rather than a multiple-choice one.

  • Patch 3.23 - What Do You Think?

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  • I mostly meant the old system where all options were just a bunch of floating neon text. It was...functional, I guess, but the new system is so much better from a controller perspective. It's not perfect yet, things like elevator buttons are still in a weird spot, but most things are a lot easier to deal with.

  • Patch 3.23 - What Do You Think?

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  • One edge case that I really want to see the team nail down is crash loops. In the EPTU build of 3.23, we noticed situations where recovery effectively acted like a rewind feature, but didn't actually prevent the cause of a crash from happening.

    Having to experience a handful of the same crashes during a single play session is pretty painful.

  • Patch 3.23 - What Do You Think?

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  • Honestly? I'm loving it. The biggest improvement for me was getting rid of those awful PIT menus that were ugly and sometimes hard to use. The new system is way more usable, and I'm tweaking the mappings on my controller to see what feels the most usable.

    The improvement to EVA is also phenomenally good. You move a bit faster, there's more precision, and traversal between EVA and ship is much smoother. As a salvager that gets in and out to scavenge cargo holds, this is a big deal to me.

    The character customizer is also really fun to use, and feels pretty intuitive to use. There's still work to be done in explaining what all of these vertices do, but I think the customization is a lot more flexible.

    Some pretty nasty bugs emerged in 3.23 and 3.23.1, but it seems like the team is making pretty good progress on improvements? So, there's that.

  • You can now bridge Fediverse and Bluesky Accounts!

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  • It's a different approach with different ideas. It uses open protocols, focuses on data and account portability, and incorporates peer-to-peer concepts in its architecture. The vision behind Bluesky is to build a global square with these concepts.

    I definitely wish they would've extended ActivityPub and collaborated on the wider network, but I kind of understand wanting to start from scratch and not get involved with the cultural debt Mastodon brought to the network.

  • What are some of the more novel forms of fediverse software?

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  • Basically, it's the second half of ActivityPub that's for mapping an instance to clients. Most platforms on Fedi use bespoke APIs or copy Mastodon, but C2S is kind of more fluid and lets you build custom experiences and logic that hooks into it?

    What's cool about Vocata is that you can kind of just make up the vocab and activity you send out the Outbox. Vocata just shrugs and says "whatever, that's valid."

    It could be brilliant for prototyping.

  • Threadverse Working Group is formed

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  • Honestly, I think this is an extremely cynical take. It takes a lot of effort to organize and run something like this, and nobody is getting rich off of it. If anything, it's pretty meagre compensation to set off infrastructure and organizational costs.

    The talks themselves are also a informed by privacy concerns: some attendees are fine with being directly cited in notes / recorded / talked about, but a lot of people just wanted to be part of conversations and do not want that.

    I think some of your suggestions in your last paragraph are actually pretty good, but I also think it's a little unfair to make demands here. No aspect of running this thing is easy, and the whole "why don't they just?" attitude from the sidelines is kind of unsavory when a lot of us went out of our way to pay extra to make sure there were more than enough $1.99 "almost free" tickets.

    Like, if that's not good enough for you, I'm pretty sure nothing is.

  • What are some of the more novel forms of fediverse software?

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  • So...it does do what it sets out to do, just not in the way you would think.

    ActivityPods doesn't bring Solid to ActivityPub accounts. It brings ActivityPub protocol capabilities to Solid Pods. The reason this is significant is because Fediverse platforms historically use relational databases, whereas this is like using Google Drive and files to create a graph database. Additionally, ActivityPods is a framework for building apps on top of.

    Damon, my friend and co-founder at We Distribute, is building a really killer app on top of it called Memory.

  • What are some of the more novel forms of fediverse software?

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  • Nostr is more of a protocol / network in and of itself, as is Scuttlebutt. Both legitimate efforts in their own right, but not quite Fediverse in the traditional sense. Though, with bridging, it's getting harder to tell where one starts, and another stops.

    Regardless, I would love to start a list of really esoteric Fedi software like what I have above. I know there's more, it's just harder to dig up.

  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Oliphant: Curated Blocklists for Admins (interview)

    wedistribute.org /podcast/oliphant-in-the-room/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Tear Down Walls, and Build Bridges

    wedistribute.org /2024/02/tear-down-walls-not-bridges/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Bonfire Offers Framework for Next-Gen Fediverse Platforms

    wedistribute.org /2024/02/bonfire-nextgen-framework/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Decentered S1E3: Ryan Barrett Has a Bridge to Sell Us

    wedistribute.org /podcast/bridgyfed-ryan-barrett/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    The Mixtape #4: Space Vibes

    wedistribute.org /2024/01/the-mixtape-4-space-vibes/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Queer.af is Shutting Down, Due to Taliban

    wedistribute.org /2024/01/queer-af-is-shutting-down-due-to-taliban/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Sublinks Aims to Be a Drop-In Replacement for Lemmy

    wedistribute.org /2024/01/sublinks-a-replacement-for-lemmy/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Decentered S1E2: Making Sora, with Takiyoshi Hoshida

    wedistribute.org /podcast/sora-sns-mobile-app/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    We Distribute launches Decentered, a Fediverse podcast

    wedistribute.org /podcast/decentered-s1e1-creation-and-discovery/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Authorized Fetch Circumvented by Alt-Right Developers

    wedistribute.org /2023/12/authorized-fetch-circumvented/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Getting Tangled Up in Threads

    wedistribute.org /2023/12/tangled-up-threads/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    After Radio Silence, Kbin App Artemis Shuts Down

    wedistribute.org /2023/12/artemis-shuts-down/
  • Fediverse @lemmy.world
    Sean Tilley @lemmy.world

    Debunking the Top 10 Myths About Mastodon

    wedistribute.org /2023/11/debunking-the-top-10-myths-about-mastodon/