Forest @forestjohnson@pixie.town

@hylst don't tell homer

@mossfet I don't immediately have an alternative implementation to offer, But this is something that has bugged me about activity pub after looking at how it works under the hood.

@mossfet activity pub requires that every single data object (json object) or "activity", like a post or a boost or a like, requires an ID property, and realistically the ID property must be a single https URL.

I can understand why it's like this. It makes activity pub much easier to implement and similar to " the web " in general.

But it also makes activity pub servers especially precarious. They're harder to maintain, harder to cooperate on, easier to censor, and their users must accept more risk.

As a contrasting example, Matrix has a concept of a room which is very central to everything that it does. The room ID may specify a specific home server domain name, but even if that home server disappears forever, the room can still live on other home servers and all of the authentication and authorization mechanisms continue to work. The same is not true on activity pub. If your servers domain name is seized by ice or fails to be renewed because somebody's credit card got rejected, then you are SOL.

@notplants @cblgh

I guess I have a slightly different way of saying roughly the same thing I think,

that we should apply the principles of usability and design to The entire software lifecycle, especially focusing on the development part and the operation part, Since they have been neglected entirely by the corporate world. (just hire professionals, then it doesn't need to be "usable", they will figure it out anyway.)

And I think that approach kind of subconsciously leaks out into the hobby and non-corporate open source space as well. In large part simply because usability is very difficult, expensive and often humiliating work to do.

@dgar My dad asked if this was the Great Duck Spot.

@handle My roommate in college used to refer to this as "the tabs game".

The tabs would become so small that he can't really tell what each one is anymore, so it's a gamble every time he would be in class and trying to find the right one, hoping that it doesn't auto play an episode of one piece at full volume or something.

@reese It looks like a section of a prickly pear cactus.

@notplants where's your head atttttt? A true metaphysical question

@boogah @aadil

🙌!!!!

For those not in the know, where is Bakersfield?

Solidarity from cyberia computer club in Minneapolis MN!

@eta I don't believe that the glue work is any less technical. And it's not just people who have ADHD who suffer from these kind of problems. It's everyone.

I personally believe that the core and root of this problem is this thing that I call tech elitism.

It basically says that you only have to apply the principles of software usability to the end product. The machine that makes the sausage does not have to adhere to any of the software usability principles. The manual should not contain any fully formed code examples. That is the essence of tech elitism.

Honestly, I really believe like... Who makes the big bucks for the corporates?? Its the people who understand usability and they know how to develop it, cultivate it, and maintain it. The disciples of Steve Krug.

That's why "libre” software is often such dog shit usability wise, because

1. Usability is legitimately hard, humiliating, and un-fun to work with; folks typically dont do this kind of work " for fun " or pro-bono

2. the market for that kind of work is so competitive, even moreso than "Basic" software development work.

And I guess a lot of corporate opensource falls into a similar trap. Why invest millions in making the sausage machine easier to operate when you already invest tens of millions on elite "ninja" sausage machine operators? Especially because doing so in an open environment will not give you a competitive advantage, it may in fact donate to all of your competitors.

@peter shoutout to 3blue1brown for that awesome series on the math behind deep learning

@blainsmith if you put fully formed code examples in the manual, I'll be happy to read it.

@notplants It's based on XMPP, so do with that information what you will.