# 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 = 1 657
# self = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://twtxt.net/user/mutefall/twtxt.txt&offset=57
# next = https://watcher.sour.is?uri=https://twtxt.net/user/mutefall/twtxt.txt&offset=157
@prologic i've accounts with twilio and telnyx for years so likely one or both. regarding the email situation there's many self-hosted options for that already well-baked and ready to serve. simplelogin is what i run currently for private use, but i'm considering making a public host for friends and such.
@screem 100% i consider this and also the email thought @prologic mentioned as a watered-down firewall of sorts. remind me to share this during our next call. or i should write about it?
@prologic this reminds me of my thought experiment where if microsoft open-sourced windows (or apple on os-x) i theorise that both companies would sell more things
i may even run osx or windows at that point.
i currently run grapheneos and the user experience is fairly well put together, it's fully google-stripped and you can use many apps you know and love. but i'm not a good pitchman. i've rocked a flip-phone for a decade.
@technicalsuwako i hope you don't mind me borrowing this informative infographic :-)
@adi yes, @prologic mentioned to me on our last call. https://git.mills.io/prologic/shops
@movq i'm going to give bundlewrap a shot after my day ends. i'm always interested in new config and orchestration tools. on marketing, i don't think anyone is good at it. i sure am not. i couldn't sell free money. :-)
@adi xmr deployed. send me your pgp pub key if you want the txid
we were discussing signal in another yarn last week. i'm looking at building a service that would let a potential signal user for a small fee purchase an e.164 sip number to use for registering signal or other mfa situations. of course sms-based mfa is rather insecure due to the triviality of ss7 network exploitation but i'm sure not all of us have operative-level threat models.
i'm looking to build this in golang since it's wicked fast and as always keep it open so that people can fork and stand up their own system should they choose to.
what are your thoughts?
@movq on your blog you mentioned bundlewrap for configuration management. i'm fond of ansible and use it at work but wanted to know how you like bundlewrap vs something like ansible.
@adi indeed an idea. i've been unplugged from the commercial clouds for years. do you suggest one to use for mass storage as a test? wrap your assets in cryptography and the concern dwindles.
as we discussed this is a small yet quality network space. while everyone is invited i feel there's mechanics in play that would exclude those who's sole focus is to have their brain chemed up with ye older slot pull
want dopamine? have a chocolate. i am. cheers!
in modern day social networking sites the dopamine trigger comes in the form of notifications and likes. many of us are all too quick to pull the lever.
twtxt lacking such mechanisms forces me to be thoughtful in my posts and replies. similar to if i was writing a letter to a friend far away.
yesterday we were discussing twtxt spec and yarn client. the subject of likes came up or the lack thereof.
slept on this and i think it's a brilliant idea. here's why.
@prologic very reasonable, sir. i particularly enjoy some of the history of my existence but i will be the first to admit how lovely fibre is :)
@movq this required a bookmark to see how it unfolds.
counter-hypothesis: as humans perhaps we experience an etching period where a specific time in our lives or an era has a deep and profound imprint on our psyche. as the world changes, we adapt but there may be a point where on marks that moment of wonder and never let it go.
i wax poetically about the past and hold onto things i care for. but instead of being frozen in time i prefer to meld older constructs with new. thus satisfying that nostalgic need while deriving new memories that bring the ages together.
@adi should have clarified, no memory outside of what's soldered onboard. apologies.
@adi really the same configuration
@novaburst well put. it's the plague of the internet.
was fun meeting chatting up a swarm... :)
i'm off for a coffee and walk, sleep well gents.
@mutefall locally might be tricky. i'm not plugged into the .ro market. but if you wanted one i could send you one if you are okay just paying shipping. i find these all the time.
@prologic no worries, mate. it could be my complex firewall and aversion to webrtc which i will sort through. jitsi seems to work for whatever reason.
@eldersnake i think of them the same way. now if one were to use cryptography to sign and verify the unique existence of the nft by the artist and i had a way to collecting it in my own "art room" i might purchase one direct from the artist.
@adi i was using hugo for my soon to be launched (we've all heard that before, eh?) site, then started working with mkws 🧑🍳🤌
@adi i found mind for 20$ usd/ea. what part of the world are you in? if you have problems finding them let me know i'm sort of the thinkpad whisperer :)
@prologic the way i deal with these things... well let me diagram it:
too early for a proper screenshot. this was my previous swarm setup in 2020 which i'm reviving. swarm master and workers communicate over a dedicated mesh and traffic routes to an external vps traffic gateway. the reverse proxy that handles things is traefik which i've rather customised for my own pursuits.
this method allows me to host swarm anywhere i want be it at home, work, at the coffee shop off a cellular modem
@prologic sounds great, looking forward to some of your recipes. have you seen any of funk-penguin's work?
@adi these were three t480s i rescued from a government auction for near theft prices. no memory, disks, chargers, or batteries but that didn't stop me from giving them a good home :-)
@prologic i had joined and saw your name but then the peer connection dropped.
weekend goals:
- teardown old thinkpads for service
- optimize storage on swarm cluster
- test deploy yarnd pod on a temporary domain
- go for a long ride
i'm considering a scheduled jitsi soon. anyone want to shoot the breeze? i'm allergic to timezones
@caesar no worries. mailfence makes it much easier for multiple accounts under a shared domain. it's a bit pricier but worth it. more or less equates to what you'd pay for two users on google workspace.
really any mail system (even yahoo and gmail) support pgp. i seem to lean towards encrypting emails and signing from the terminal then simply use a mail client or web browser to send the message. but i get what you're saying, nice to have the automatic bits. helps with people adopting better posture
@prologic i likely have a working prosody stack you can try on your swarm cluster. depending on how you're wired up for networking may need some tweaks.
@caesar have used both in the past. both are well done, especially if you want to use an imap/pop client. custom domains are supported on both, but i will note mailfence does a better job with rfc compliance on email in general
signal's apps are open-source as well as their server infrastructure. the only thing that's not open is their interface to the intel sgx enclaves (blackboxes). i can accept this risk.
minimal metadata is exposed account id(s), last connection date, account creation date in unix timestamps much less than the facebook
thoughts from the abyss[0]:
- psyche debt > fiscal debt > tech debt
- learning to let things go is analogous to swedish death cleaning of the self
- don't build a skyscraper to house a post-it note
- procrastination is likely a sign you're manifesting complexity
- never underestimate the potato, it's a mighty fine nightshade
@lyse this is the path. when i need to clear the cpu i go for a proper walk and get myself out of my head. cheers
@carsten mailbox at one time they had a tor gateway for connectivity to their service, is this still active?
@lyse this is really a comforting scene. hopefully you were able to get lost for a while.
-- on breaking dns which would ripple effect the entire internet
++ on dumping their ca(s)
the internet, in my view has always been nation-agnostic. we are one world, one nation. and like every nation you have good s/citizens/netizens/ and bad s/citizens/netizens/
we don't close roads because criminals drive cars, we just shoot their tires out
@screem signal + xmpp (bridged via matrix for aggregation)
although i am looking to upgrade to @ullarah suggestion.
mailbox.org is a good provider, been around a long time. there's another one called mailfence which is also very good and have been around a good while. protonmail is great, but i pull down all my mail and protonmail makes this complicated with a bridge (paid feature).
germany handing over data to foreign governments likely will vary by the relationship and policy between the requesting party and germany itself. due process is still a thing there.
nokturnal thoughts[0]:
- the pursuit of perfection is a fool's game
- related to the aforementioned, finding the perfect domain name is an abyss-like vortex
- eventually the construct of perfection comes organically
- trying to deadname/squat your id accounts on all platforms says i care too much about centralised rubbish
- note to author, you use too many bulletpoints
@prologic it could be worse. you could be 100r.co and relying on a nice submarine to give you radio data every fortnight.
that's really not bad considering your region. when i was in the eu it was rather expensive. now i have more bandwidth than i know what to do with so i create traffic crawlers that crawl the top 1m websites to keep the cache hot
@kevin i believe we need to have a chat. this is just my game.
i'm also rather inspired by your small website. meanwhile i'm trying to bribe @prologic into learning css for me.
@prologic you're paying for the noc-monkey who flips hard drives when they catch on fire. running this at home, you're the noc-monkey thus the disparity in value/cost
got this figured out for you fellas. find one of those really cheery commercials for medication where they are smiling and laughing while reading you off all of the potentially lethal side effects. do the exact opposite of said campaign.
@prologic not the first time i've heard this. your upset may increase when i disclose what it costs.
@prologic know thy limits. i cannot make stick figures with css or html
@prologic sounds like wasabi storage? if so $5/mo is reasonable. i duplicated this for $9/mo with a low-cost vps and slab but uptime was questionable.
if using wasabi, wrap your backups in crypto you control keys to before sending to endpoint.
@technicalsuwako thank you for sharing. the translator worked well.
i really enjoy the customisations you've made to gitea. very appealing to the eyes.
@novaburst might you have a code repository with this lovely gem?
@prologic this is definitely what i was leaning towards. whoever wrote yarnd really had it right :-)
@prologic i did something similar with packer and alpine to roll my own automated bare-metal k3s cluster. i'd keep with the cloud theme but i've got plenty of good metal lying about and a business class connection to pipe it over.
@prologic thank you for sharing this. i reviewed the shops repository and it really does follow some sound principles. i'm going to try to setup an endpoint with this and see how it goes.
can you elaborate a bit on your use of terraform and packer? keep in mind that my situation is a bit more complicated since i'm running 80% metal and metal providers for terraform are not exactly great. although using it to update dns records via whatever dns provider you like and other bits is helpful.
@prologic i cannot speak for you or others, but for myself financial incentives are irrelevant to me. i prefer to be able to share factual information vs trying to monetise rubbish for gain. again i fallback to the amateur radio model where things are based on facts and data.
for now we could write a small bot to pull in interesting bits that we find and hook it up as a rss feed stream.
@prologic not that i want to start yet another project. but what if somehow those of us decentralised could pass credible news around? in a way the ssb project has done this and there's quite a bit of good info, don't see why we can't.
but alas... need to stand up my systems first before trying to solve more problems
grey sky projects[1]:
- working on a traefik split-gateway with tls (public|mesh)
- deciding on a domain (this is infinite crux)
- writing countless custom ansible roles
- i'm certain there's a coffee in there somewhere
the days the only news i pay attention to is over radio for weather forecasts. there's very little i can count on otherwise besides what i spend time pulling apart myself.
@prologic i really need to setup my monitoring and observability stack today. sitting around staring at htop and docker stats is not exactly what i would call fun nor useful
@prologic i was using adguard with unbound but for some reason it started helping itself to quite a bit of memory on my lxc containers. swapped to blocky as a test and after ~7.hours it's holding.
weekends are always experimental :-)~
@prologic walking the fine line between aggressive caching strategy and usability. :-)
in all seriousness, using unbound as an upstream vs relying on ye olde quad8 as well as funnelling all vlan ns traffic up a wireguard pipe to an external blocky instance on my mesh.
so far average round-trip latency is ~60ms for new hits ~5ms for cached hits.
addendum[0]:
became terribly sidetracked with unbound caching optimisation and cascaded blocky resolvers over wireguard. i think this deserves a proper write-up
@screem fully agree. i try to scrap together whatever i can to make things work until absolute failure. then go hunting for more devices people consider trash. remind me to tell you about my shenanigans at the local electronic waste centre one day
grey sky projects[0]:
- i'm self-firewalling news for the day and trying to focus on inventorying my life, gear, and belongings. seeing what i can donate and purge myself of.
- experimenting with swarm again thank you @prologic for the re-spark of inspiration
- measuring power consumption for my cluster concept, 5 nodes at idle ~39w stress peak ~190w
- donating my rack to a local group in favour of building something out of pvc i found in a rubbish-pile
- hopefully taking in a book and a nice dinner
the interesting thing is numbers. if enough people riseup against an oppressor the playing field becomes asymmetric enough to where said oppressor can be overthrown.
this is definitely not a simple matter for the good people of russia, but with enough force it's possible.
@screem @david ah, that would be quite the shipping cost. likely > than the cost of the psu.
i really favour the idea of running a "server" on thrown-together system. i always fall back to this idea of perfectionism where an operator might spend inordinate amounts of money to future proof or maintain high-availability. good to know i'm in the company of fellow operators who re-purpose machines.
@screem what sort of machine hosts your pod? do you run it onsite? if you were in my vicinity i'd offer you a spare psu i no longer use. my gut tells me you're likely far.
@ullarah that's quite the lake. i've witnessed quite a few like this in my time and it's always stressful. keep safe and keep us posted.
meanwhile someone is reversing cellebrite
@xuu the keyproofs app is much simpler than keyoxide. thanks for the unexpected find today!
@david i'm currently using a gently-used thinkpad t480s as my main machine. i'm also on a very small desk due to a relocation that required me to downsize. i do have parts from a previous desktop build (ryzen) however the cpu failed and it was out of warranty so i hadn't done much with it.
trying to conserve my finances in general, but especially with the recent world events.
certainly my laptop will not perform as well as my previous desktop, but while things are building i can go have a coffee
@david this resonates with me. i bought a pixel4a on the "market" 2 years ago and it's still going strong. have grapheneos on it as i only use it for encrypted chat and the occasional website lookup. cannot justify paying nearly 1k (in any currency) for a "better" phone.
it reminds me of people who homelab and pull 2,000w just to have high-availability and think that they need enterprise grade gear to host (insert here anything). meanwhile some of us have a frankenstein lab with laptops and legacy gear that pulls 100w and we are more productive.
witching hour thoughts[1]:
what is a need vs a want as it relates to technical gear and configuration? do we need that new unlocked pixel or are we fine with the pixel that works but doesn't have 5g capabilities? the errand of cyclic future-proofing seems like an exercise that will not end. similar to laptops and desktops. a new chip drops, we see a ~5% performance gain and we buy?
embrace what you have and hold onto it. one day when netizens are stuck perpetually in the upgrade-loop you can smile and relax with your 8yo thinkpad and trusty mobile.~
@david @prologic there's something comforting and admittedly magical about a grey and rainy day. this is usually when i do my best work and feel charged.
@prologic that is fortunate. my day job is more pure containers on a certain paas platform we all know. but in my laboratory and in the cloud i prefer swarm due to its simplicity.
nomad would be a successor to swarm if swarm ever fully-deprecated the system. but similar to swarm nomad as interesting approaches to backend storage and tries to leverage csi compliant plugins while making it an exercise in masochistic plumbing :-)
@prologic did i spy on your gitea that you operate on swarm? if so... goody goody... a fellow swarm enthusiast (and k3s + nomad). perhaps i need to open my gitea and share recipes for cookies :-)
@david
unfortunately, i've witnessed first-hand man's inhumanity towards man. originating from a previous war-torn country this current scenario really brought back flashbacks from yesteryear.
it's my opinion that a war should be conducted with diplomacy and communication, not with brutality or barbarism.
it's my hope that one day we will see global peace and a stronger unification. perhaps i'm naive? but i do my best to remain positive
i really have no words for the events that have transpired in the last 18hrs. for now silence seems appropriate.
@david mine was flood.com among others i won't make mention of in polite company. in those days it was similar to betting on futures. if one were to say register sex.com and sat on it. that investment would have paid off. hindsight and all that :)
@jan6
>I know for a fact that they track which results are clicked, because the search results are redirections and not direct links, when you try using a non-js or old browser ;p
do you have concerns about this? i'm not sure there's a way around it. i've enjoyed duckduckgo for a while now and seem to retrieve more relevant search results.
witching hour thoughts[0]:
memories flood back to when dns registration by the nsf and the matter of registering a domain name, submitting paperwork, and a hefty fee in the range of $200-$300usd. being an eccentric visionary i saved up my meager wages over a year to purchase a couple of domains that today in a market obsessed with identity would allow me to retire comfortably. why did i let them go? what happened to the original "good idea" of claiming these? or did the creature of self-doubt take hold and whisper in my ear that "this will never amount to anything"?
@jan6 well said. i was helping an acquaintance with a dockerised nextcloud setup and a private wireguard mesh. he was very nervous throughout the entire process despite detailed documentation for the care and feeding of the setup. he's enthusiastic and willing to learn but also inundated with the whole r/privacy community telling him the best way to protect his data.
my advise will never change. start simple, take small steps, use failure as a learning tool, document and share.
i do hope he continues with nextcloud as he had a lot of issues with dropbox
@carsten @david i had a rough go with the 2nd and 3rd moderna jab. bones hurt, high-fever, felt like general garbage. hydration and rest is sound advise. if you have the energy keep moving as it did help some severe aches i experience.
@novaburst
i've had varying amounts of success when trying to containerise a tor proxy inside of docker and link containers. this is my typical approach to deployment. however i'm not against a pure vm/lxc within my infrastructure utilising external gateways.
@david
>Ongoing learning fulfils one of the seven big investment decisions for happiness at old age (which, incidentally, I am rapidly approaching):
i'm in the same boat as far as age. it's a mindset to me, but i also believe in setting yourself up for a good life. it's so finite that i think less about longevity and more about quality. i hadn't read that article before but i'm doing most of those things at the moment.
as for the pi4s. i stumbled upon so much e-waste that it's hard to justify buying pis at this time. i hope to post pics soon.
@adi the last two decades have been a centralised mess, imo. you find a place to call "home", pay rent with your data and dollars, then magically one day you are evicted. now we have high-bandwidth for lower-costs, endless amounts of older machines (e-waste) to build our own datacentre. there's really no excuse not to do this unless it's a limitation of knowledge.
that's something to be addressed as well. how do you put an easy to manage datacentre in the hands of someone non-technical to the point they become interested in the hobby vs frustrated?
@prologic this is where my interests lie. small and tight-knit communities that are decoupled from centralised systems. i've always thought that every human should have their own corner of the internet. or perhaps i've watched too much johnny mnemonic. i read the history of yarn and it aligns.
i may or may not have at one time worked at one of these big giants
@prologic if this is something you'd be open to a pull-request on, i can likely make it work. i've torified some complex things before. will give this a shot!
@david great, will make it a point to visit!
@david well said. i'll set one up that's open to registration but will use it as my primary pod. time to get busy this evening!
@adi stacks of various thinkcentres, laptops, proxmox machines.
@adi this is great. i'm considering putting infrastructure on my own metal at my space.
@adi thanks! do you also run envs? i saw their tilde and ecosystem which inspired me to start building my own. so great to see some legacy patterns coming back into play
i really love the idea of yarn.social. this is encouraging me to start my own pod. perhaps some of my connections might join. it's a clever way of doing things compared to say fediverse or ssb
@adi what i like about it so far is that it's just generating html without any esoteric bells and whistles. now if i could take a course in css and html. i'm an old backend engineer who cannot draw stick figures :)
@adi just found your site generator. this is much nicer than relying on a bigger ecosystem such as hugo or jekyll
@prologic just stumbled on this project and it's really great. i'm curious to know if you've successfully put this behind a tor gateway as an alternative means of connectivity. also interested in the flutter app for android.