@erlend@writing.exchange
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

erlend

@erlend@writing.exchange

Bullish on kindness.
Founder of Spicy Lobster studios and Commune.
https://blog.erlend.sh/assembling-community-os

Formerly VP of Community / Product Manager at Discourse.

#opensource #fediverse #gamedev #fedi22 searchable

This profile is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.

erlend, to fediverse
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

https://blog.erlend.sh/evergreen-content-gardens

Social bookmarking is a novel use case for and I’m super excited about it. I heckin’ love links and lists! I wanna use them for everything.

Things like are cool, but it’s not what I want. I just wanna link the thing. Books, films, podcasts, articles, songs.., they’re all just resource recommendations which can be encapsulated by links.

Thanks to @raffomania and @eb for the indirect prompts leading to this article mixing their ideas with my own.

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@raffomania @eb TIL about are.na! Very cool project. Minimally sustainable as an indie business as well, love to see it✨

Some graph structure seems like a good fit indeed. I’m excited to learn more about how exactly you imagine that working in Linkblocks, UX-wise.

Best continued in a discussion topic, but I believe the key to good UX of graph representation is to allow for contextual hierarchies, giving content some grounding.

Something along these lines:

https://www.npmjs.com/package/svelte-zoomable-circles?activeTab=readme

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@srtcd424 @raffomania @eb agreed! Social bookmarking and its consequent directories is highly complementary to search as a quality signal.

You build up these manually curated directories, but increasingly in a PageRank kind of way because of the interlinking that occurs.

It’s a way for the indies to rebuild the index, beginning with the cozy

https://subconscious.substack.com/p/all-you-need-is-links

enhance_dev, to webassembly

🎉 Introducing Enhance WASM

Say hello to Enhance WASM — backend agnostic server-side rendering for web components.

by @brianleroux

https://begin.com/blog/posts/2024-04-08-introducing-enhance-wasm

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@enhance_dev @brianleroux I really like the way you’re listing Brian’s authorship with his fedi profile! However, it’s pointing to the wrong account: https://indieweb.social/@brian

erlend, (edited ) to random
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

https://blog.erlend.sh/weird-netizens

To free ourselves from feudal identity fiefdoms, we must simultaneously de-centralize and re-centralize identity.

Decentralize ownership.
Recentralize agency.

By de-centralizing the ownership of identity away from platform monopolies and back to individuals, we can re-centralize the agency of personhood.

The central authority of ones digital identity must be the individual. That's how we regain our digital sovereignty.

#NomadicIdentity #IndieWeb

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@db0 hrmph, matrix invites are finicky. How about this? https://matrix.to/#/%23home:commune.sh

But yeah, that’d be cool! Right now we’re focused on the FedCM integration so there’s no unified platform or network to tap into yet, but you can start experimenting with Rauthy as a login provider.

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@db0 hmm right, there’s nothing readily prepared for Python yet, so you’d have to work through the bindings yourself; I believe pyo3 is the standard way to do that.

Maybe Rauthy isn’t what’s best for you though, but rather any OIDC-compliant identity provider? Authentik seems like the go-to for Python projects. You could advocate for FedCM adoption there, pointing to the ongoing work in Rauthy: https://github.com/sebadob/rauthy/discussions/145#discussioncomment-8831943

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@db0 though, no direct Python integration with Rauthy should be necessary if all you’re looking to do is set up a Rauthy instance and have your app defer to it for logins via OIDC.

I could be wrong about this (feel free to ask in Rauthy’s Discussions on GitHub) but in that case I’m guessing all you need is an app-side authentication and access management library for integration with OIDC enabled authentication services like Rauthy et.al.

anildash, to random
@anildash@me.dm avatar

Who are the early-career people in tech that inspire you or give you hope with their work or their ideas?

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@anildash there’s @0x0 @silverpill @arcanicanis @estebanborai @orhun & @zicklag on the fediverse, and furthermore on github we’ve got marceline-cramer, bitfl0wer, sjud & novacrazy, to name a few.

404mediaco, to random
@404mediaco@mastodon.social avatar

It's time to pay for search?

https://www.404media.co/friendship-ended-with-google-now-kagi-is-my-best-friend/

erlend, (edited )
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@cmdrmoto @404mediaco I see it less as advertising and more as lower-case internet activism. For now, Kagi seems very much on the side of the #SmallWeb and I think that merits some advocacy by aligned actors.

https://blog.kagi.com/small-web

I do however think it’d be good practice to always clearly mark posts such as these with a disclaimer to clarify whether or not the readers are being subjected to sponsored content.

erlend, to Matrix
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

https://blog.commune.sh/federated-webrings/

In the glory days of web 1.0, social websites would prominently link out to their digital neighbors via lists known as webrings; magical doorways to an expansive hinterland of digital villages.

Let's envision what a truly federated chat like could do to improve the cross-connectivity of chat channels. Most of these features are already possible, they just haven't been implemented yet in a community-oriented client experience.

raffomania, to fediverse

Here's my pitch for a federated bookmark manager and why it can make the indie web stronger.

https://www.rafa.ee/articles/introducing-linkblocks-federated-bookmark-manager/

#fediverse #SmallWeb #indieweb #bookmarkshare

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@raffomania closely following this!

To be clear, there are no federation features built in so far, right?

Are you planning to open a chat room for it soon? At least having Discussions enabled on github would be nice; I have some ideas to share 💡

lutindiscret, to random
@lutindiscret@mastodon.libre-entreprise.com avatar

@erlend I've spent 2 hours of this rainy day to read your blog and #CommuneApp design discussions. I will definitely keep an eye on it and hope you'll deliver something in 2024.

What do you think about https://webxdc.org?

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@lutindiscret is it open source?

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@lutindiscret @delta ah it’s like a sibling project of Delta, cool!

Will definitely look more closely into this when #CommuneApp is further along 👌

0x0, to random

i can second the sentiment of not making tech nerds write grant applications.

hell, i cant even write a proper well understandable description of what my projects do. im an engineer, not a marketing person.

i feel like this is a shared problem with a lot of people. they can make technologically impressive things but as soon as it comes to marketing it, it falls short.

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@0x0 no one who’s not interested in marketing should have to become skilled at it.

But anyone, regardless of field, is well served by honing their skills as a communicator. Your ideas can scale to whichever extent that you are able to effectively convey them.

erlend, to fediverse
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

I nominate @kissane & @molly0xfff & @Mer__edith for Internet President triumvirate.

#fediverse #IndieWeb #socialmedia #internet

ben.werdmuller, to random

"A social network based on the Mastodon codebase is now worth $11bn dollars" is not a great take because it misses a bunch of grifty, hateful context, but it's certainly an interesting chapter in open source social networking. (I also had someone build a Nazi-friendly network on one of my codebases, and I think about how I might prevent that from happening again a lot.)

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@ben.werdmuller me too!

https://blog.erlend.sh/open-source-explained#rulebooks

“Open Source as a Force For Good
..and the open source nazi problem.”

erlend, to threads
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

https://blog.erlend.sh/what-meta-corp-can-give-the-fediverse-money

I suspect the fedi-collective has more negotiating power in this moment than it realizes. We may as well make some asks, see how Meta responds, and they in turn will see how the public, the media and the regulators respond to them in this bold new era of pervasive Big Tech skepticism.

Money can mitigate the risk of #Threads :

'coopting the fediverse': $200k for Test Suite.
'overburdening moderators': $200k for moderation.
'locking in users': $200k for #NomadicIdentity

hongminhee, to fediverse
@hongminhee@todon.eu avatar

#Fedify finally has a step-by-step tutorial! It's perfectly fine if you're not familiar with the #ActivityPub protocol or the #Deno runtime. Here's the link for beta readers:

https://unstable.fedify.dev/tutorial/

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@hongminhee I wonder if fedify could rely on Kitsune-lib by @0x0 for some of its low level fundamentals, e.g. http signatures: https://github.com/kitsune-soc/kitsune/tree/main/lib/http-signatures

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@0x0 @hongminhee alternatively, could Kitsune modules possibly be compiled as wasm packages for fedify to import without special bindings?

arcanicanis, to random

I guess I successfully created a did:plc and have it published to (sorta) Bluesky's backend did:plc registry: https://plc.directory/did:plc:s2m7kbq2unki7rager5aw6sw/log

Instead of endorsing any sort of a ATProto PDS or anything, I instead have it pointing to my ActivityPub (and other) identifiers in varying forms.

I'm probably the only [non-employee] user (or at least: one of very few) on Bluesky's infrastructure that has full custody and control over their own private keys for their did:plc identity, and yet I don't even have a Bluesky account. Unless I'm just uninformed of something buried somewhere allowing you to export at least one of your rotationKeys (not the signingKey, which is just for signing posts, etc). Because without that, you don't really control your identity at all, only Bluesky exclusively does.

Meanwhile, in this endeavor, I "only" had to:

  • Write a DAG-CBOR and CIDv1 encoder
  • Write a Multibase and Multikey encoder and decoder
  • Write a base58btc encoder/decoder
  • Write a base32 encoder
  • Write functions to compress and decompress a secp256k1 public key (involves crypto maths, for decompression)
  • Write some very adhoc ASN.1 DER encoding/decoding functions (just to encode a raw secp256k1 public key into PEM encoding, to feed to OpenSSL; and then extract the r and s values from the outputted signature from OpenSSL)
  • Write a function to generate a did:plc identifier, from the genesis operation
  • Write a lot of test code

With how scarcely some topics are documented, and how scattered many tidbits of info is: I swear some of this is almost intentionally a trap to sell consultancy.

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@arcanicanis fascinating! I’ve been hoping someone would explore exactly this:

https://writing.exchange/@erlend/112121718112283325

Sounds like it doesn’t necessarily ease the burden of implementing did:[something] for ActivityPub though. Do you consider it a dead end as far as practical utility goes?

erlend, to Matrix
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

https://blog.commune.sh/beyond-discord/

Like any other major network incumbent, Discord cannot simply be side-stepped altogether; appropriate off-ramps are required.

#Matrix bridging enables an incremental, non-disruptive transition from the old to the new.

We invite anyone interested in the development of #CommuneApp to join our newly opened space: https://matrix.to/#/#home:commune.sh

The first half of our product rollout starts next month, as we begin publicly testing our uniquely community-oriented Matrix client.

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

Latest by @pluralistic came in clutch!

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/21/involuntary-die-hards/

> The older you get, the more complex your social connections grow. A Gen Z kid in middle school doesn't have to worry about losing touch with their high-school buddies if they switch platforms (they haven't gone to high school yet – and they see their middle school friends in person all the time [..]). Middle-schoolers don't have to worry about coordinating little league car-pools or losing access to a rare disease support group.

hongminhee, to random
@hongminhee@todon.eu avatar

Just set up a user group for #Fedify on Matrix!

https://matrix.to/#/#fedify:matrix.org

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@hongminhee maybe it’s just Matrix/Element weirdness, but I can’t join atm, with Element on iOS. I get all the way to the join/open button, but nothing happens when I click it.

smallcircles, (edited ) to fediverse
@smallcircles@social.coop avatar

#Fediverse attn..

Give @julian #Github comment some good reactions to show the folks of the #W3C Federated Identity CG that there's more than #BigTech #identity providers to take into account..

https://github.com/fedidcg/FedCM/issues/240#issuecomment-1968574265

🚀 Boosts appreciated.

erlend,
@erlend@writing.exchange avatar

@smallcircles @julian the author of the OIDC library Rauthy will accept a PR for FedCM if someone can give it a go 💫

https://github.com/sebadob/rauthy/discussions/145#discussioncomment-8831943

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