The Watcher

	
# I am the Watcher. I am your guide through this vast new twtiverse.
# 
# Usage:
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/users              View list of users and latest twt date.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/twt                View all twts.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/mentions?uri=:uri  View all mentions for uri.
#     https://watcher.sour.is/api/plain/conv/:hash         View all twts for a conversation subject.
# 
# Options:
#     uri     Filter to show a specific users twts.
#     offset  Start index for quey.
#     limit   Count of items to return (going back in time).
# 
# twt range = 1 106
# self = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://eapl.me/tw.txt&offset=106
# prev = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://eapl.me/tw.txt&offset=6

eapl.me

eapl.me

29 Mar 25 09:17 UTC-0600

thanks for sharing @xuu!

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. 🤔

eapl.me

eapl.me

29 Mar 25 08:53 UTC-0600

sorry @prologic, timeline doesn't autocomplete the mentions yet, and it was 'difficult' to look for your URL from the phone.

eapl.me

eapl.me

29 Mar 25 08:06 UTC-0600

somehow I forgot that existed.

Perhaps it was its mention of being a demo implementation here:
https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/registry.html#registry
So I though it wasn't really active.

Anyway, I think that's a good idea.

Is there something similar available on Yarn? Sorry for for asking if that was mentioned recently.

I think that the clients may help you to submit your URL to these directories, and also to get a view of the twts in them.

eapl.me

eapl.me

29 Mar 25 07:56 UTC-0600

thanks @prologic!
@bender the idea of the RFC was to reach an agreement on a difficult problem, receiving proposals, and the voting is a simple count to gauge the sentiment of "is this a problem worth to be fixed?, are we committed to implement a change in our clients?"

But that's a fair point. What do the community expect? What do y'all expect?

eapl.me

eapl.me

28 Mar 25 17:53 UTC-0600

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.

eapl.me

eapl.me

27 Mar 25 13:06 UTC-0600

What has been the hardest bug you got to fix?
https://hackerweb.app/#/item/43461618

eapl.me

eapl.me

27 Mar 25 12:30 UTC-0600

thanks? 😆

Now I need the non-hacker friends 🥲

eapl.me

eapl.me

27 Mar 25 10:17 UTC-0600

it seems I don't know how to do Markdown 😅

eapl.me

eapl.me

27 Mar 25 08:51 UTC-0600

> Twtxt was made for nerds, by nerds.
I'd like to change that. It's by nerds/hackers, for nerds/hackers and friends of these. It doesn't have to be hacky all the time, as you don't need to be a nerd to have a blog.
But, for that to happen, someone has to build the tools to improve UX.

> by design there really is no way to easily discovers others
Yeah, I agree, and although there are directories of email addresses, usually you don't want that, unless you are a 'public figure'.
I couldn't say that a microblogging is a "social network" by default, as a blog is not either. At the same time, people would expect to find new people and conversations, as you'd do in a forum.

I think of two features on top of the current spec:
- Clients showing a few posts of what your following are watching but you don't, so perhaps you find something interesting to follow next. Or that feature of "Your 'followings' are following these accounts/people". (Hard to explain in english, but I hope you get the idea)
- Sharing your .txt into some directory, saying "Hey, I have this twtxt URL, I want to be discovered". I'm thinking of something like the Federated tab on Mastodon.

eapl.me

eapl.me

27 Mar 25 08:39 UTC-0600

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.

eapl.me

eapl.me

26 Mar 25 19:07 UTC-0600

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

25 Mar 25 22:21 UTC-0600

Wow, phishing is just around the corner 👀

A Sneaky Phish Just Grabbed my Mailchimp Mailing List
https://www.troyhunt.com/a-sneaky-phish-just-grabbed-my-mailchimp-mailing-list/

eapl.me

eapl.me

24 Mar 25 13:42 UTC-0600

yeah, that's the tricky part of adding features

eapl.me

eapl.me

24 Mar 25 08:56 UTC-0600

"it is very easy to filter or ignore it" This is the interesting part for legacy clients, hehe

Joking aside, let's see how it works in the wild!

eapl.me

eapl.me

23 Mar 25 16:44 UTC-0600

I have finished 1-9 on Python. If anyone is interested, I could share the code, or in Reddit many people have shared theirs.

eapl.me

eapl.me

23 Mar 25 16:40 UTC-0600

👀

Is it working now?
I'd say again that perhaps the DMs could be stored in another .txt, but anyway I'd like to try it.

eapl.me

eapl.me

23 Mar 25 16:37 UTC-0600

I don't have the need for a physical Calc nor a watch, although I'm slightly more interested in a https://banglejs.com or an eink watch 🤔

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Mar 25 17:12 UTC-0600

I always find the 'Adven of code' challenges difficult to follow.
i18n-puzzles.com has been a blast, but I don't like having to think about puzzles on weekends. Like with exercise, doing it every day without rest doesn't sound healthy.

I'd rater have a weekly challenge, at most three.

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Mar 25 13:07 UTC-0600

yeah, it worked, thanks! :)

eapl.me

eapl.me

19 Mar 25 16:23 UTC-0600

well, I assume by syntax you mean Gemtext (which I like a lot, my personal blog is built on top of it), so I think it might work for twtxt clients...

I knew of twtxt in Gemini Antenna, so at least the 2017 spec might work on that protocol. I think the main issue with extensions is that they weren't designed with many URLs and protocols in mind.

Also I have to admit that the Gemini community significantly reduced in the last few years. I don't know how worth it is to add support for Gemini now.

eapl.me

eapl.me

19 Mar 25 16:16 UTC-0600

also I've made a draft of a voting page to receive preferences on each proposal
https://eapl.me/rfc0001/

Help me to play with it a bit and report any vulnerability or bug. Also any idea is welcome.

eapl.me

eapl.me

19 Mar 25 15:42 UTC-0600

I have applied your comments, and I tried to add you as an editor but couldn't find your email address. Please request editing access if you wish.

Also, could you elaborate on how you envision migrating with a script? You mean that the client of the file owner could massively update URLs in old twts ?

eapl.me

eapl.me

19 Mar 25 12:29 UTC-0600

Hi! For anyone following the Request for Comments on an improved syntax for replies and threads, I've made a comparative spreadsheet with the 4 proposals so far. It shows a syntax example, and top pros and cons I've found:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1KOUqJ2rNl_jZ4KBVTsR-4QmG1zAdKNo7QXJS1uogQVo/edit?gid=0#gid=0

Feel free to propose another collaborative platform (for those without a G account), and also share your comments and analysis in the spreadsheet or in Gitea.

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Mar 25 19:14 UTC-0600

Wow, this is a nice way to practice internationalization for our systems
https://i18n-puzzles.com

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Mar 25 19:14 UTC-0600

Timeline and twtxt-php, don't support Gemini, only HTTP/S, as a design choice (although originally it was intended to work on Gemtext, it was a niche inside a niche, so it was discarded very soon).

At the moment of building the engine there weren't many Gemini URLs supporting twtxt 1.1 (with twtxt.dev extensions).
Also User-Agent won't work there, and many Gemini URLs are a mirror of the HTTP one, so I think is not strictly necessary.

my 2c

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Mar 25 19:08 UTC-0600

well... it has been an opportunity to build an artisanal microblogging client on top of a minimalist protocol. I agree on the hacker toy part.

And of course it's about being part of a niche community which is (mostly) amazing, and nurturing. As there is almost no one writing in my native spanish, it has been an interesting challenge to share my thoughts in english, as well.

I couldn't say it's a 'social network' per se, I think it lack many engagement things usually associated with social networks, although it has a social part of igniting discussions, learnings and behavioral changes, which is the meaning of social for me.

eapl.me

eapl.me

14 Mar 25 21:01 UTC-0600

it seems like yarn still points my nick to both my older URL (404 now) along with the current one.

eapl.me

eapl.me

14 Mar 25 12:00 UTC-0600

it seems to be "an informational website consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts)" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blog#History

eapl.me

eapl.me

14 Mar 25 11:56 UTC-0600

I'd like to know more about what andros and prologic are talking about, I feel lost.

"This will be managed by Registries." Are we talking about these registries?
https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/registry.html

eapl.me

eapl.me

13 Mar 25 12:39 UTC-0600

ah! those german calendars. Somehow I was thinking of something like mine, with spaces to write inside each day.

I worked for a german company and they gave away these calendars to our clients and team every year, but the model you can hang on the wall. Memory unlocked!

eapl.me

eapl.me

12 Mar 25 16:35 UTC-0600

do you mind sharing a picture ?

I can't find something similar here, but my wife gave this one last year, and I've been using it a bit. I'd say it's useful as you've shared.

A horrible picture of the calendar on my desk

We also have a shared calendar in the kitchen for family events, and it's working great.

eapl.me

eapl.me

12 Mar 25 12:04 UTC-0600

well (insert stubborn emoji here) 😛, word blog comes from weblog, and microblogging could derivate from 'smaller weblog'. https://www.wikiwand.com/en/articles/Microblogging

I'd differentiate it from sharing status updates as it was done with 'finger' or even a BBS. For example, being able to reply; create new threads and sharing them on a URL is something we could expect from 'Twitter', the most popular microbloging model (citation needed)

I like to discuss it, since conversations usually are improved if we sync on what we understand for the same words.

eapl.me

eapl.me

12 Mar 25 11:56 UTC-0600

pls elaborate on a 'p2p database', 'all story' and 'Registries'.

My first thought takes me to something like secure-scuttlebutt which it's painful to sync data using clients, and too slow compared to downloading a text file.

Also I'd like for twtxt to avoid becoming an ActivityPub. Works well but it's uses too many resources IMO.
https://kingant.net/2025/02/mastodon-the-cost-of-running-my-own-server/

I'm defending being able to self-host your Web client (like you'd do with a Wordpress, twtxt is a micrologging, at the end), instead of federated instances, so in a first thought I'd say Registries have many disadvantages being the first one that someone has to maintain them active.

eapl.me

eapl.me

11 Mar 25 13:33 UTC-0600

🐿️ squirrels!

eapl.me

eapl.me

11 Mar 25 13:31 UTC-0600

I'd need to think about it deeply, but at a first sight, nanoblogging would be a simple text (like the original twtxt spec, aimed for TUIs), and microblogging (like Twitter was a few years ago), would be about sharing texts, images, videos, GIFs, links, and perhaps Markdown styling.

Why? You have shorter messages than in a blog, but you may add almost anything you could do in a blog.
Buuut... who knows?

eapl.me

eapl.me

10 Mar 25 13:12 UTC-0600

@prologic oops, I'm sorry to see disagreement leading to draining emotions.

It remind me a bit of the Conclave movie where every part wanted to defend their vision and there is only a winner. If one wins the other loses. Like the political side of many leaders and volunteers representing a broad community. I don't think that's the case here. Most of us (in not all) should 'win'.

I can only add that isn't nice to listen that 'my idea and effort' is not what the rest of the people expect. I personally have a kind of issue with public rejection, but I also like to argue, discuss and even fight a bit. "A gem cannot be polished without friction, nor a man perfected without trials," they say.
This exercise and belonging to this community also brings me good feelings of smart people trying to solve a human and technical problem, which is insanely difficult to get 'right'.

I genuinely hope we can understand each other, and even with our different and respectful thoughts on the same thing, we might reach an agreement on what's the best for most people.

Good vibes to everyone!

eapl.me

eapl.me

06 Mar 25 13:11 UTC-0600

[lang=es] definitivamente es una buena llamada de atención para promover más donaciones a proyectos opensource. La verdad apoyo menos proyectos de los que 'debería', por el valor que me ofrecen.

Una opinión pragmática es que hay la libertad de no pagar, pero también esto nos debería llevar a que tenemos la libertad de SÍ reconocer los proyectos que nos dan valor, por medio de un donativo puntual o constante. Adaptarnos al contexto de lo que estamos ofreciendo.

Mi chava trabaja en Asociaciones Civiles (tipo OSALs/ONGs) y es un reto pedir donativos, por lo que es común pedir 'Cuotas de recuperación' pues ayudan a valorar más el servicio, y a que fluya el donativo. Creo que se puede hacer algo así en el código libre, apelando a diferentes motivadores en los usuarios.

eapl.me

eapl.me

05 Mar 25 12:22 UTC-0600

Damn! Stay safe mate...

eapl.me

eapl.me

05 Mar 25 12:20 UTC-0600

[lang=en] (#jwfdkuq) @xuu gotcha!
From that PR #17 I think it was reverted? We could discuss about metadata later this month, as it seems that I'm the only person using it.

I've added a [lang=en] to this twt to see current yarn behaviour.

eapl.me

eapl.me

05 Mar 25 11:48 UTC-0600

Hi everyone,
I've drafted a Request for Comments (RFC) to improve how threads work in twtxt:
https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/twtxt.dev/issues/18

I’d love your feedback! Please share your thoughts on anything that could be better explained, check if the proposed dates work for everyone, and I invite you to join the discussion...

eapl.me

eapl.me

04 Mar 25 18:58 UTC-0600

really? I think I haven't seen it being used in the wild

eapl.me

eapl.me

03 Mar 25 10:28 UTC-0600

@prologic sure thing!
What about discussing it in https://git.mills.io/yarnsocial/twtxt.dev ?
The only con I see is that everyone would need to create an account there to participate.

eapl.me

eapl.me

03 Mar 25 10:23 UTC-0600

a few async ideas for later

The editing process needs a lot of consideration and compromises.

From one side, editing and deleting it's necessary IMO. People will do it anyway, and personally I like to edit my texts, so I'd put some effort on make it work.
Should we keep a history of edits? Should we hash every edit to avoid abuse? Should we mark internally a twt as deleted, but keeping the replies?

I think that's part of a more complete 'thread' extension, although I'd say it's worth to agree on something reflecting the real usage in the wild, along with what people usually do on other platforms.

eapl.me

eapl.me

03 Mar 25 10:20 UTC-0600

yep! Enjoy your rest, let's discuss it later

eapl.me

eapl.me

03 Mar 25 09:28 UTC-0600

looks good to me!

About alice's hash, using SHA256, I get 96473b4f or 96473B4F for the last 8 characters. I'll add it as an implementation example.
The idea of including it besides the follow URL is to avoid calculating it every time we load the file (assuming the client did that correctly), and helps to track replies across the file with a simple search.

Also, watching your example I'm thinking now that instead of {url=96473B4F,id=1} which is ambiguous of which URL we are referring to, it could be something like:
{reply_to=[URL_HASH]_[TWT_ID]} / {reply_to=96473B4F_1}
That way, the 'full twt ID' could be 96473B4F_1.

eapl.me

eapl.me

03 Mar 25 07:10 UTC-0600

hi! I hope you can see this message

As in https://eapl.me/timeline/post/s7gv6zq
I changed my URL to experiment on this exact situation, and deleted the symlink on my server, so now tw.txt is the only way to get the file, although I could bring it back, what does everyone say?

eapl.me

eapl.me

02 Mar 25 18:32 UTC-0600

Hey everyone!

About the idea of improving the "thread" extension, what if we set aside March 2025 to gather proposals and thoughts from everyone? We could then vote on them at the end of the month to see if the change and migration are worth it.

The voting could include client maintainers (and maybe even users too). That way, we get a good mix of perspectives before taking a decision in a decent timelapse.

What do you think? If this sounds good, we can start agreeing on this. Let me know your thoughts!

eapl.me

eapl.me

01 Mar 25 21:01 UTC-0600

I like this syntax, you have my vote, although I'd change it a bit like
#<Alice https://example.com/twtxt.com#2024-12-18T14:18:26+01:00>

Hashes are not a problem on PHP, I dont know why it's slow to calculate them from your side, but I agree with your points.

BTW, did you have the chance to read my proposal on twtxt 2.0? I shared a few ideas about possible improvements to discuss:
https://text.eapl.mx/a-few-ideas-for-a-next-twtxt-version
https://text.eapl.mx/reply-to-lyse-about-twtxt

eapl.me

eapl.me

28 Feb 25 10:04 UTC-0600

looks good now!
description = 🏗 Full-Stack developer (Mainly Python) ✍ Writer[...]

eapl.me

eapl.me

27 Feb 25 15:10 UTC-0600

also @Andros, I see that if I open that URL on my browser, I see weird characters in the .txt file:
description = ðŸ—
Perhaps your nginx server is missing a Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8 header?
https://serverfault.com/a/975289

In timeline it looks OK however, I think it's relying on
> The file must be encoded with UTF-8
of the original spec:
https://twtxt.readthedocs.io/en/latest/user/twtxtfile.html

eapl.me

eapl.me

27 Feb 25 15:05 UTC-0600

working on my bookmarks tool, I found out that http(s)://domain.tls is not a valid resource, but http(s)://domain.tls/ is, as you can see here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/2581423

I suppose that internally the wget/curl or whatever client you are using is redirecting it?

eapl.me

eapl.me

25 Feb 25 12:30 UTC-0600

Testing out this image upload feature...

A squirrel writing on her laptop

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Feb 25 12:45 UTC-0600

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 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 I haven't check your repo yet, although you are using sodium, right?

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Feb 25 12:20 UTC-0600

@alice U2FsdGVkX187WpPAJXCusqEoTb3/tD62xN+TxudcTsPI+LqOJLPkl9aNE9MLg8lYRLfd9mSE33N6JeA0okLJ6Q==

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Feb 25 09:52 UTC-0600

@andros 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.

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Feb 25 09:48 UTC-0600

@alice JmgrTxTqbGBtzGFh30wL0cozfVOZiFSTuZ5c+k+5t9TtGkw4foOA80V2che2f3pXPVzBEZsuXg7y+7G5fD/5Qw==

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Feb 25 09:47 UTC-0600

trying to implement it quickly, I get the same questions than you

 # https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.openssl-pbkdf2.php     $password = $sharedKey;     $salt = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(16);  # What's the salt length ?     $keyLength = 20;  # What's the key length here ?     $iterations = 100000;     $generatedKey = openssl_pbkdf2($password, $salt, $keyLength, $iterations, 'sha256');     echo bin2hex($generatedKey)."\n";     echo base64_encode($generatedKey)."\n";      $iv = openssl_random_pseudo_bytes(16); // AES-256-CBC requires 16-byte IV     $cipherText = openssl_encrypt($message, 'aes-256-cbc', $generatedKey, OPENSSL_RAW_DATA, $iv);     return base64_encode($iv . $cipherText);

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Feb 25 09:11 UTC-0600

I haven't taken a look into that extension, although I think you could use the OpenSSL library: https://www.php.net/manual/en/function.openssl-encrypt.php

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Feb 25 14:10 UTC

I'm surprised, here you can't find dial controls anymore. How old are your ovens? The last one my parents had was from the 90s.

I was amazed experimenting with different combinations, for instance instead of 100, using 60 for a minute, 90 for 1:30, and stupid stuff like heating with 11, 22, 55 seconds and so, to make it quicker to type any time.

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Feb 25 09:05 UTC-0500

with the quote?

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Feb 25 14:04 UTC

among these options, 3

Although I like it more "twt", without the dot and with a t at the end

eapl.me

eapl.me

17 Feb 25 19:39 UTC

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/

eapl.me

eapl.me

17 Feb 25 16:15 UTC

well, Gemini clients like Lagrange allow to show inline images when you click on an image link. Text based clients, like Amfora, usually allow to watch the image in another 'window'.

For example here: gemini://text.eapl.mx/en-making-a-tic-tac-toe-variant and there https://text.eapl.mx/en-making-a-tic-tac-toe-variant

I agree that some topics require images to make it easier to explain.

eapl.me

eapl.me

15 Feb 25 15:00 UTC

You have a microwave oven at home, right?

You can type 3 and 0 for 30 seconds, 100 for a minute (shown as 1:00), or 200 for two minutes (2:00).

What would happen if you type 777 and Start?
A) Nothing
B) Self-destruction
C) Will run for 7 minutes and 77 seconds (boring!)

What about 7777 ?

eapl.me

eapl.me

15 Feb 25 14:56 UTC

hey! It's looking nice

eapl.me

eapl.me

14 Feb 25 10:12 UTC-0500

ok, sounds like a 'large' project to me.
Is it more an API (more oriented to developers), more oriented to UI/UX/Frontend? Perhaps both?

I'd go with prologic's advice of measuring and prioritizing. Perhaps you have a budget or at least something like "let's see how far can we reach in 6 months", and possibly you won't finish in the time you have (just guessing).

Something that has helped me was defining "Why do you we want to refactor this project?".
Could it be to make it compile on newer versions, or making it easier to grow and scale, or perhaps they are trying to sell that product to another company. Every reason has a different path, IMO.

eapl.me

eapl.me

13 Feb 25 16:43 UTC-0500

1st thought... Run!

Well, I've heard you have plenty of experience with Unit Testing and TDD. Perhaps designing a few tests before refactoring?

I've heard of Snapshot testing, but have never tried it: https://github.com/spatie/phpunit-snapshot-assertions

Also, what kind of refactor are you trying to do?

eapl.me

eapl.me

13 Feb 25 14:52 UTC-0500

that's a fair point.

Perhaps, since Twitter in 2006 never implemented read flags, every derivative microblogging system never saw that as an expected feature. This is curious because Twitter started with SMS, where on our phones we can mark messages as read or unread.
I think it all comes from the difference between reading an email (directed to you) vs. reading public posts (like a blog or a 'wall,' where you don't mark posts as read). It's not necessary to mark it as 'read', you just jump over it.

Reading microblogging posts in an email program is not common, I think, and I haven't really used it, so I cannot say how it works, and whether it would be better for me or not.
However, I've used Thunderbird as a feed reader, and I understand the advantages when reading blog posts.

About read flags being simple, well... we just had a discussion this morning about how tracking read messages would require a lot of rethinking for clients such as timeline where no state is stored. Even considering some kind of 'notification of unread messages or mentions' is not expected for those minimalist client, so it's an interesting compromise to think about.

eapl.me

eapl.me

13 Feb 25 17:48 UTC

Linear feeds are a dark pattern - A proposal for Mastodon
https://tilde.town/~dzwdz/blog/feeds.html

I've polished the CSS style a bit, you can try it here: https://eapl.me/treed/

eapl.me

eapl.me

04 Feb 25 15:33 UTC

Hehe, this is amazing:

If OpenSSL were a GUI

A joke about a mock GUI dialog for OpenSSH

eapl.me

eapl.me

28 Jan 25 23:17 UTC

Hey, I like this simple Web game:
https://wordswithrobots.isotropic.us

2 players Codenames vs (or along) gpt-4o-mini

eapl.me

eapl.me

21 Jan 25 12:42 UTC

a year ago I had a struggle to find documentation about it and now it seems there are more examples, cool!

eapl.me

eapl.me

21 Jan 25 12:40 UTC

I agree 🙂, although it's easy to lose comments over time and are not so grouped by topic, it's not so easy to vote or make a survey about it...

I prefer a forum for that 😊

eapl.me

eapl.me

21 Jan 25 12:36 UTC

here are a few ideas you might take into consideration when designing a secure IM https://developer.virgilsecurity.com/docs/e3kit/fundamentals/secure-instant-messaging/

Obviously if you've worked on something similar, you already know it, he

eapl.me

eapl.me

21 Jan 25 12:31 UTC

I made a draft of an "encrypted public messenger", which was basically a Feed for an address derivate from the public ket, let's say 'abcd..eaea'

Anyone could check, "are there any messages for my address?" and you get a whole list of timestamps and encrypted stuff.

Inside the encrypted message is a signature from the sender. That way you 'could' block spam.

Only the owner of the private key could see who sent what, and so...

And even with that my concussion was that users expectations for a private IM might be far away from my experiment.

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Jan 25 16:27 UTC

another one would be to allow changing public keys over time (as it may be a good practice [0]). A syntax like the following could help to know what public key you used to encrypt the message, and which private key the client should use to decrypt it:

 !<nick url> <encrypted_message> <public_key_hash_7_chars>

Also I'd remove support for storing the message as hex, only allowing base64 (more compact, aiming for a minimalistic spec, etc.)

[0] https://www.brandonchecketts.com/archives/its-2023-you-should-be-using-an-ed25519-ssh-key-and-other-current-best-practices

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Jan 25 16:22 UTC

my first thought is that encrypting messages with Elliptic keys is not as easy as with RSA, although I tried doing something similar a few months ago with ECIES
https://github.com/eapl-gemugami/owl/blob/main/src/app/controller/ecies_demo.php

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Jan 25 16:20 UTC

interesting idea. I'm not personally interested on having DM conversations on twtxt (for now), although I see the community could be interested in.

I'd suggest to enable the Discussion section in your Github repo to receive comments, as we did for timeline https://github.com/sorenpeter/timeline/discussions

eapl.me

eapl.me

10 Jan 25 12:53 UTC-0500

although I agree that it helps, I don't see completely correct to leave the nick definition to the source .txt. It could be wrong from the start or outdated with the time.

I'd rather prefer to get it from the mentioned .txt nick metadata (could be cached for performance).
So my vote would to make it mandatory to follow @<name url> but only using that name/nick if the URL doesn't contain another nick.
A main advantage is that when the destination URL changes the nick, it'll be automagically updated in the thread view (as happens with some other microblogging platforms, following the Jakob's Law)

eapl.me

eapl.me

10 Jan 25 12:42 UTC-0500

word of the thay, prosoal
Is it a typo of Proposal right? =P (Genuinely asking)

eapl.me

eapl.me

06 Jan 25 13:24 UTC-0500

nice! would you mind elaborating a bit?
Is that the scientific method?
I couldn't find anything related when I searched for it.

eapl.me

eapl.me

03 Jan 25 23:04 UTC

> If you want a problem solved, you give it to someone as a project. If you don’t want a problem to be solved, you give it to someone as a job

Why you shouldn't build your career around existential risk
https://guzey.com/existential-risk/

eapl.me

eapl.me

02 Jan 25 14:16 UTC-0500

Django channels are cool! I had the chance to make a online gaming framework with Channels and Django Rest and was a great experience.

I'm looking forward to doing something in Django LiveView soon.

eapl.me

eapl.me

24 Dec 24 16:45 UTC

and going back to a handle you could input in your client to look for the user/file, like @nick@domain.tls I think Webfinger is the way to go. It has enough information to know where to find that nick's URL.

@prologic does that webfinger fork made by darch work OK with yarn as it is now? (I've never used it, so I'm researching about it)
https://darch.dk/.well-known/webfinger/

eapl.me

eapl.me

24 Dec 24 11:20 UTC-0500

Oh no!
Wife and I agreed on hibernate until January, just visiting relatives but avoiding any kind of shopping. I tried buying something like 2 or 3 days ago and it's insane :o

Good luck! :)

eapl.me

eapl.me

24 Dec 24 11:17 UTC-0500

I'm just having a similar issue with a podcast I just uploaded on Castopod (which supports ActivityPub).

My first thought was creating a subdomain with the name of the podcast mordiscos.eapl.me

Then I watched that the software allows many podcasts in the same domain, so I had to pick a handle:
https://mordiscos.eapl.me/@podcast

So now I have @podcast@mordiscos.eapl.me when this one is 'more correct' @mordiscos@podcast.eapl.me or it could even be @mordiscos.eapl.me
I wasn't aware of all that when I setup Castopod (documentation might improve a lot, IMO)

My point here is that it's something important to think from the start, otherwise is painful to change if it's already being used like that.

eapl.me

eapl.me

24 Dec 24 16:09 UTC

my 2 cents here...
I agree on displaying a short @nick.

We could hover on the nick to see the full detail which could be @nick@domain.tls or the full URL
Also it could be a display option in Preferences in case your account starts showing many collisions.

The disambiguation for collisions is the .txt URL and the nick inside it, right ?

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Dec 24 18:45 UTC

BTW I'm watching that darch has already worked on that, interesting https://github.com/sorenpeter/timeline/blob/main/_webfinger-endpoint/.well-known/webfinger/index.php

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Dec 24 10:08 UTC-0500

hey!

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Dec 24 10:08 UTC-0500

I think we could discuss on implementation details like URLs and Handles.

@nick@nick (Masto/Yarn style)
vs
nick.eapl.me and eapl.me (Bsky style)

I see, for example, that yarn shows my account as eapl.me@eapl.me which looks 'weird' although it's not wrong since my domain and my nick are the same. Honestly I like more the Bsky approach as in https://bsky.app/profile/eapl.me for eapl.me, as when you look for https://eapl.me, it's my home page.

Also, I didn't get it completely if you are also proposing a URL standard using subdomains, like https://nick.domain.tls. I only want to point out that these are more difficult to handle from shared hostings, so I'd prefer to also allow https://domain.tls/nick/

eapl.me

eapl.me

18 Dec 24 09:57 UTC-0500

after thinking and researching about it, yep, I agree that WebFinger is a good idea.

For example reading here: https://bsky.social/about/blog/4-28-2023-domain-handle-tutorial
I wasn't considering some scenarios, like multiple accounts for a single domain (See 'How can I set and manage multiple subdomain handles?' in the link above)

eapl.me

eapl.me

17 Dec 24 18:50 UTC-0500

since twtxt is based on text files, I think you can consider domain.tld as an alias of http://domain.com/twtxt.txt (or https://domain.com/tw.txt, among other combinations in the wild).

Or perhaps you can use DNS TXT records?
Although I think that's a bit more complicated for some environments and users, I'd go with looking for a default /tw*.txt

eapl.me

eapl.me

13 Dec 24 20:16 UTC

An inspiring book on making a life around IT security

Troy Hunt: "Pwned", The Book, Is Now Available for Free
https://www.troyhunt.com/pwned-the-book-is-now-available-for-free/

eapl.me

eapl.me

13 Dec 24 11:48 UTC-0500

haha, that's gold xD.

#randomMemory I remember when I was starting to code, like 30 years ago, not understanding why my Basic file didn't run when I renamed it to .exe

And nowadays, I've seen a few Go apps in a single executable, so twtxt.exe could be a thing, he!

eapl.me

eapl.me

11 Dec 24 20:01 UTC

I'll be using another URL for this twtxt.

The older one will redirect to the new for a while (I'm not sure what would happen if you follow both URLs, I assume it's better to add the new one and remove the older)

Please update your following list to https://eapl.me/tw.txt !

eapl.me

eapl.me

11 Dec 24 19:58 UTC

@anth hehe, cool!

I'm changing mine to tw.txt -> https://eapl.me/tw.txt
And the older twtxt.txt will be redirecting for a while

eapl.me

eapl.me

11 Dec 24 19:55 UTC

well, the extension helps to know the file format as in .txt and .html, perhaps .twt, he!

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Nov 24 19:21 UTC-0600

Want to help improve the shoddy code?

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Nov 24 18:20 UTC-0600

Hehe, although it isn't a fancy language PHP has improved a lot since the old PHP 5 days ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ It's 3 to 5 times slower than Go, so I think that's not too bad

eapl.me

eapl.me

20 Nov 24 10:46 UTC-0600

My bad! My editor was set to use 4 spaces instead of a tab... Making twts by hand is hard =P