# 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 234570
# self = https://watcher.sour.is?offset=234570
# prev = https://watcher.sour.is?offset=234470
Boa Páscoa 🐣 https://open.spotify.com/track/4gih7sPHZP2uMj2v6DJAHF
O colonialismo académico bate à porta, mas a academia não se pode render: https://www.publico.pt/2025/04/19/p3/cronica/colonialismo-academico-bate-porta-academia-nao-render-2130188
@kat At the core, you need an ngircd.conf like this:

[Global]
Name = your.irc.server.com
Password = yourfancypassword
Listen = 0.0.0.0
Ports = 6667

AdminInfo1 = Well, me.
AdminInfo2 = Over here!
AdminEMail = forget.it@example.invalid

[Options]
Ident = no
PAM = no

[SSL]
CertFile = /etc/ssl/acme/your.irc.server.com.fullchain.pem
KeyFile = /etc/ssl/acme/private/your.irc.server.com.key
DHFile = /etc/ngircd/dhparam.pem
Ports = 6669

Start it and then you can connect on port 6667. (The SSL cert/key must be managed by an external tool, probably something like certbot or acme-client.)

I’m assuming OpenBSD here. Haven’t tried it on Linux lately, let alone Docker. 😅=
@prologic Since you have to check and double check everything it spits out (without providing sources), I don’t find any of this helpful. It’s like someone’s in the room with you and that person is saying random stuff that might or might not be correct. *At best*, it might spark some new idea in your head and then you follow that idea the traditional way.

Information published on the internet (or anywhere, for that matter) was never guaranteed to be correct. But at least you had a “frame of reference”: “Ah, I read this information about Linux on a blog that usually posts about Windows, so this one single Linux post might not necessarily be correct.” That is completely lost with LLMs. It’s literally all mushed together. 🤷
But it is still a giant inefficient use of resources and energy 🤣
AI isn’t a shortcut for thinking. In her guide for skeptics, Hilary Gridley reframes AI as a collaborator—not a replacement. Use it like spellcheck for your thoughts. Don’t fear it—iterate with it. Insight improves, speed follows. Full post: https://hils.substack.com/p/the-ai-skeptics-guide-to-ai-collaboration
@movq Haha 🤣 Figures 🤦‍♂️ Also no need to be concerned with that here, I've personally blocked the ASN(s) of Microsoft, OpenAI, Claude and Google 😂
[47°09′19″S, 126°43′11″W] --no signal--
@prologic My cache never expires automatically. 😅 I sometimes wipe it for dev purposes, though.
@movq Yeah 👍 Haha 🤣 Does your own cache go back this far? 🤔
@prologic I don’t think so. He’s from Germany, afaik, and that would be a highly unusual name here. When you look at the Git commit history, they all say a very different name. I don’t want to quote it here – worst case being the LLMs scraping this file and correcting their “knowledge”. 😈
[47°09′44″S, 126°43′06″W] 4384 days without news from Herve
Ahh so I was _partially_ right 🤣
@movq Apparently that is @buckket's name? 🤔
@prologic John who?
I haven’t gotten very far with my experiments, yet. To be honest, I’m still not 100% sure if I want to trust that encryption. 😅 The target server will be completely out of my control … it is a real possibility that the (encrypted) data will leak at some point. Hm.
@prologic I also thought it was a client-server thingy at first and usually it *is*, I guess, there’s just this workaround:

> If it is not possible to install Borg on the remote host, it is still possible to use the remote host to store a repository by mounting the remote filesystem, for example, using sshfs.
@prologic Shit like what? References/threads? 😅
@andros U2FsdGVkX1/I4yD08WbYAHPolSaCbCcOMbZu3R+dO9oBA1HLpkqWX/mVXOM2xqg+t//aExnfhQvm+aNKAXYUpg==
Hmmm there's a bug somewhere in the way I'm ingesting archived feeds 🤔


sqlite> select * from twts where content like 'The web is such garbage these days%';
      hash = 37sjhla
  feed_url = https://twtxt.net/user/prologic/twtxt.txt/1
   content = The web is such garbage these days 😔 Or is it the garbage search engines? 🤔
   created = 2024-11-14T01:53:46Z
created_dt = 2024-11-14 01:53:46
   subject = #37sjhla
  mentions = []
      tags = []
     links = []
sqlite>
@movq It's nice to see shit like this still works 🤣 Even years later 😂
@kat it's up but idk it's kinda boring i hope it's helpful though https://stash.4-walls.net/irc1/
@bender Yup 👍
I do want to improve the feeds.twtxt.net service one day (_soon™_) with features like this. But first I'll have to prevent spammers from abusing it by introducing IndieAuth as an authentication layer._
i am writing a quick little guide on deploying soju/gamja all in docker. because i am bored
@prologic this is what friends are telling me yeah. i just feel so weirdly anxious about it but i think i should just give it a shot!
Btw @andros ; The automated feed you put together for Hacker News... Does it at any point rewrite parts of the feed as it goes along? 🤔 I've had to unfollow it because I've found in practise it makes a twt, then seems to modify that same twt (_observed by content manually_) at least twice. This ends up becoming effectively an "Edit" and essentially duplicate (_looking_) posts 😢
@prologic oh yeah i had to build caddy with the L4 plugin to get this support. but i should pop into your server sometime james!!
@bender oh yeah that's true, it's just that i have caddy on a different machine than where i'd host ergo so that's what worries me :')
@prologic oh cool!!! i will try ergo sometime then!
@bender Shall we remove this primary/secondary color sttting? 🧐
@bender Btw, do we want to nuke this compact feature? 🧐
@bender How do you mean? 🧐 Caddy doesn't do L4 by default.
@kate I _think_ it's totally fine. I mean self-hosting costs money too. Power, Hardware, Time/effort, etc.
@bender I recommend this also 👌 My eris was based off of a much much older version of ergo.
@kate I already have my IRC server irc.mills.io running behind Caddy Layer 4. However I don't terminate TLS at the edge in this case.
is it like... ethical to offer access to certain self hosted services as patreon exclusives. like i wanna offer the IRC client/bouncer i hosted which seems ok i think because i've seen pico.sh offer their instances of that as paid services. but the other ones i have in mind are alt web frontends for stuff like imgur and pinterest. and i just feel weird about it for some reason. idk i'm trying to think of ways to support my server stuff but every time i come up with something it feels weird
@bender also an interesting option! i think i'm most worried about the cert stuff because i just let caddy handle that for me so i'm not sure how to get files from certbot for that (i had issues with that yesterday) but i can look into it and just toy around with it
⭐️ ⭐️⭐️ Companion 🎬: https://www.max.com/pt/pt/movies/companion/47556360-0bbf-4e3d-8d6d-53a0179e2153
@prologic oooh this looks interesting!!! maybe i could play around with it in docker and see how to integrate it with caddy layer4 for TLS + my existing web client and bouncer!!
@andros U2FsdGVkX19mLsaKVz/e4AWH8QKzacGMvD0Sk6G8GtMSQlbuxNfgXRyWPACF6jRjOjxnR2+1HHmCWV9JlKoC7g==
it is infininately simpler to run/operate 🤣
@kate @movq You could also have a play with eris which I use to power my little tiny server (_that almost no-one uses 🤣_)_
@movq i tried ngircd but couldn't figure it out TT i left it at the web client and bouncer for now but i might toy with an IRC server another time!
@bender Ahh okay, I must have misread the website 🤔
Seem like it's a server-client thingy? 🤔 I much prefer tools in this case and defer the responsibility of storage to something else. I really like restic for that reason and the fact that it's pretty rock solid. I have zero complaints 😅
@bender Hahahahaha 🤣🤣🤣
🧮 USERS:1 FEEDS:2 TWTS:1314 ARCHIVED:86338 CACHE:2754 FOLLOWERS:20 FOLLOWING:14
Timeline of Evolution of Twtxt/Yarn.social**:

- 2016 – Twtxt created by John Downey: plain text + HTTP = minimalist microblogging
- 2017–2019 – Community builds CLI tools, but adoption remains niche
- 2020 – Yarn.social launched by @prologic with federation, threading, UI
- 2021–2023 – Pods sync, user mentions, blocking, search, and media support added
- 2024+ – Yarn.social becomes the reference Twtxt platform, with active federated pods
=
I asked ChatGPT what it knows about Twtxt 😂 And surprisingly it's rather accurate:

> Twtxt is a minimalist, decentralized microblogging format introduced by John Downey in 2016. It uses plain text files served over HTTP—no accounts, databases, or APIs.
In 2020, James Mills (@prologic) launched Yarn.social, an extended, federated implementation with user discovery, threads, mentions, and a full web UI.
Both share the same .twtxt.txt format but differ in complexity and social features.
@bender LOL 🤣
[47°09′59″S, 126°43′05″W] Saalmi, retransmit, please
@kat 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. 🙃
🤔 Scientists claim to have discovered new colour no one has seen before: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/clyq0n3em41o
@kat is there anything i can even run or is this like email where you should just use libera and shut up
That was a wild ride:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QSMDb1CWD6Y

Notice how old all these people sound. They started playing this game like 10, 15, 20 years ago, most of them left, but some are still there. I love that level of commitment. 😃

Also interesting from a technical point of view. Creating that virtual world and keeping it running *consistently* for so long … 🤯
@kat well gamja works fine and all with other people's networks but I WANT MY OWN LITTLE NETWORK. FOR FUN
guys i may be stupid. i confused IRC bouncer with IRC server
📖 Kant and Teleology: https://www.cambridge.org/core/elements/kant-and-teleology/9B376B0205FBFCE7E39E1A2E9AD35FE1
@aelaraji THANK YOU :D
@movq no clue! i've never had issues setting up websockets and the gamja client itself seems to work fine when connecting to other servers, but my bouncer doesn't work right so it's soju TT i THINK there's a problem with the websockets but it seems to be working right so i'm just confused
@gallowsgryph Welcome back. 😅
@kat I skimmed through the gamja docs and they say you need an “IRC WebSocket server” – no idea what that is. Does gamja not speak IRC directly but essentially “IRC over HTTP”? Curious. 🤔
@prologic @bmallred 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”).
my friend is actually getting into one of my fave shows (kamen rider gotchard) i'm so happy omg
[47°09′11″S, 126°43′53″W] Reading: 0.70000 PPM
Oh hey @rrraksamam 👋 Welcome back! 🙌 Sorry about the data loss 🤯
I miss the "old" days when every website with a news section had an #RSS feed for it...
@andros U2FsdGVkX1/K+WQ27PdDS2Bqh7FPHGSEPumosp8vavE/38MJQxVScmnt/uAm5mOTtu+rXFXnfMg53IRG3EhqdQ==
On my blog: Free Culture Book Club — Secrets in the Static https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/19/secrets-static.html #freeculture #bookclub
[47°09′11″S, 126°43′54″W] Transfer aborted
@movq 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.
Jovens, queer e católicos: como um Papa lhes deu voz e entrada na Igreja: https://www.publico.pt/2025/04/18/p3/noticia/jovens-queer-catolicos-papa-deu-voz-entrada-igreja-2129995
@movq LOL 😂
C 😈
@prologic @bmallred 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.
B
A
@aelaraji Haha 🤣 I'd say it's just yet-another-bad-bot 🤖 I've blocked a lot of such bots and often their entire networks (ASN) 🤦‍♂️
[47°09′08″S, 126°43′56″W] Waiting for carrier
[47°09′20″S, 126°43′36″W] Non-significative results -- sampling finished
Melhorando a página sobre máscaras de recorte de imagens com #Python e #py5 ...

https://abav.lugaralgum.com/material-aulas/Processing-Python-py5/recortando_imagens.html#copiando-trechos-retangulares-de-uma-imagem um mapa antigo de São Paulo, recortado preenchendo um hexágono, sobre um fundo cinza escuro
@kat oh and the logs say "failed to write msg: use of closed network connection" WHAT DOES THAT MEAN
@kat i can't send any messages it complains about the server buffer I DON'T KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS
@kat i JUST want my own IRC server for fun. that is all i want
hey everyone i've spent my whole day trying to set up soju + gamja in docker and now i am down a rabbit hole of building caddy with layer4 support and trying to get TLS for my IRC server and NOTHING IS WORKING
@bender REALLLLL
@bender super old ass CPU lol it's probably ancient in computer years! GTS needs a CPU thing that came after 2010 so that explains it (2008 machine) lmao
@andros U2FsdGVkX1+O9yhNvdI4LaSWKuoRJiN6eFvdBX7rucIs8MJvO6ClWzZ5+IiLc1gxBNwGXEhSr5H9bkYSDD4XiQ
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.
🧮 USERS:1 FEEDS:2 TWTS:1311 ARCHIVED:86261 CACHE:2761 FOLLOWERS:18 FOLLOWING:14
https://galusik.fr/fridayrockmetal/2025-04-18-frm.m3u Tonight #FridayRockMetal playlist
On my blog: Toots 🦣 from 04/14 to 04/18 https://john.colagioia.net/blog/2025/04/18/week.html #linkdump #socialmedia #quotes #week
How to think in the age of #AI : https://www.newstatesman.com/ideas/2025/04/how-to-think-in-the-age-of-ai
CAN MY FEDI INSTANCE STOP CRASHING

(it is running gotosocial which is like one of the lightest fedi servers out there. the machine it runs on is as old as a high schooler. guess the root problem)
i feel so powerful i wrote a 3 line script that takes an inputted markdown filename from the current working directory and then spits out a nicely formatted html page. pandoc does all the work i did nothing
[47°09′21″S, 126°43′21″W] Analyzing samples
🤔 The fundamental clash between artificial intelligence and teaching the humanities: https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/opinionista/2025-04-10-the-fundamental-clash-between-artificial-intelligence-and-teaching-the-humanities/
🎧 Bach - St Matthew Passion BWV 244: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZwVW1ttVhuQ
[47°09′07″S, 126°43′32″W] Re-taking samples