Posts by arcanicanis@were.social
(DIR) Post #B1IOzKCrcmktMyflqq by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-16T05:09:55.670538Z
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And oops, I hope I didn't ruin that for you >.<No, it's fine. I just mean in terms of 'spoiling' it for myself by leaving it up to being an open world sandbox, not knowing the mechanics or sequence of events in advance.Even just intentionally avoiding referencing a map (externally) can add to the humoring experience, because now you're completely lost, in middle of nowhere, sometimes in the dead of night, and having to unravel yourself from a pretty basic everyday mess. And that's what I appreciate about the game, is that it goes in the opposite extreme away from 'convenience' of a lot of modern games.
(DIR) Post #B1IgJTBRejOODxCV7Y by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-16T08:24:00.860374Z
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I just gave up on Minecraft entirely after the forced Microsoft account migration. That's after having bought it in probably early 2011, and probably at least 400+ hours into it.I've ended up just using Luanti with VoxeLibre to satiate my periodic itch for it at times, and it's rebuilt everything I remember of it, plus plenty of the newer content that I hadn't ever experienced in Minecraft itself after ditching out.I think it's been substantially more performant, and also modding as a first-class citizen (you can even just join a server, and it can auto-download the mods or custom assets used).
(DIR) Post #B1K7ldvGDKp7YjFUXo by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-17T01:06:21.741011Z
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Yea that's probably why corporate-style software development feels like something nearly classifiable as a mental illness or something. I know it's a parody, but that's why I'd never pursue software development as a primary career, especially when majority of it is designed entirely around maximizing how many code monkeys on typewriters you can have working on it simultaneously (versus just a few folks that know what they're doing).I'm also reminded of this skit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8OnoxKotPQ
(DIR) Post #B1KbUHYL80H5snAKrQ by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-17T06:39:23.143886Z
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Uh-oh, I guess my fate is sealed: apparently I've been a wirehead for a sizable portion of my Steam activity this year.
(DIR) Post #B1M5LptxF7fLad7mS0 by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-17T23:48:43.474296Z
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I guess by which context (server/client)?At least from what I remember, most things are pretty tolerant. Sometimes shown in the order it was discovered in (at least in a timeline).You can always toy experimentally with this by just static files of the JSON-LD context, as long as the correct media type is served. Mastodon (out of all other implementations) just tends to be the most fickle, expecting WebFinger resolution and a few other prerequisites (in terms of "test labbing" with static JSON files), while most others just simply need a resolvable actor object.
(DIR) Post #B1P1u64lnRBxG19184 by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-19T09:53:46.034174Z
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I keep building a pile of side-projects, and I'm sure that probably dries people's patience/hopes on earlier projects getting done (but I definitely will return to doing more ActivityPub and XMPP stuff again soon).I guess I have a clearer set of ideas and design choices to make something more worthwhile to compete, for one niche that needs to be filled, and finding a decent middle-ground in expectations. Here's the design constraints/ideas I have:Some video/voice conference system, reachable by some URL permalink, as a WebRTC web application, but intended for social/gaming use (not a formal 'professional' presenter-led conference system)Real-time chat would be completely ephemeral and there would be no concern about enforcing log retention at all (maybe past 60 messages at most)Instead, when there isn't a call, the same URL would serve as effectively a "sticky note board" where folks within the group would leave comments of when the next hangout is, or for folks to leave comments of not being able to make it next time, or that they'll be a little late, etcCould also have basic polls or go in deeper extremes like offering a 'mutual date/time planning' calendar system (timezone aware), for planning the next meetup timeIt would NOT intend to be another thing to add to the list of applications you keep open 24/7, and would by design be something you'd intend on peeking in at on occasion, usually where some reoccurring event/hangout/meetup is the foundation to a groupThis could also serve in auxiliary function to things like tabletop sessions (or VTTs, like Foundry) and alike tooOr completely absent of using the video/voice call system, could be for in-person meetups also (and still provide a platform that someone could 'conference in')There could be an out-of-band notification system (email, instant message, etc), to ping about announcements or provide reminders, but meant to be infrequent and not spam your inboxThis is to avoid creating another catch-all, please-all, multi-purpose do-everything chat system that nags your attention and expects you to "just install the app" to maintain functional usefulness of it.And more importantly to help keep folks together, to actually be doing stuff together, and not adding to the pile of messenger crap they have to 'maintain' attention on.Would there be anything else worth adding, or existing ideas to refine further?
(DIR) Post #B1ZIzVqLKXxNtHv1Hs by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-24T08:52:49.369306Z
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I thought that was the whole point of everything being dumbed down even further to Passkeys? (at least per my rant at https://were.social/notice/AxdaKM2AnM2pEVU8SO )https://passkeys.dev/docs/reference/terms/#synced-passkeyBut at the same time, I've given up really digging into the details anymore, given I've been trying to advocate real (not just "send you an SMS/email") two-factor auth since like 15 years ago, and it still barely ever having traction in any form.
(DIR) Post #B1ZSQMjMDb1L2CWxBg by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-24T10:38:26.678028Z
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I guess I don't really know what I want anymore.Despite having all the simple necessities, as well as plenty of positive social interactions and other things lately (even much more social/active than I normally am), I still don't feel 'completeness'?For 'career', it gets draining at watching much of it being rotted out for exclusively overseas hiring, much of it being oversaturated by the MLM and 'get rich quick' types running it, and very little of anyone caring anymore.Finding some Significant Other or "gf" or whatever is something that's barely on any list of priorities, just something to only cause more problems, I haven't cared about it (nor bothered) at all far beyond a decade now, and I only see plenty of divorce and separation now. Add to the fact that Gen X usually characterizes it like they were lucky, "like getting on the very last helicopter out of 'nam."It'd be cool to make more friends, but online there's a sizable portion that refuse to associate if you don't adhere to like 95% of their political platform, others that feel 'walled off' by being opaque and always distant, or those that just want to fuel division/drama and 'whisper networks' (sometimes even over people they haven't even talked to...)Usually my lead motivating force is making demonstrable progress in my professional/hobby projects, but now I'm sputtering out. I had made a stint on some fun creative side projects, but that doesn't help get the important work done. Social activity isn't filling the gap either.I guess in the worst case, if I continue to feel some level of incompleteness or mood fluctuation or whatever, that I could maybe finally get around to having some blood work tests done, just to make sure it's not neurochemical antics.I usually try to avoid touching any sort of "self-pity" subjects, given that social media is a TERRIBLE enabler of creating professional victims/whiners. Of course I'm highlighting plenty of the negatives, but there are also plenty of positives too."It is what it is" or whatever.
(DIR) Post #B1bJ1IfRg2qdvEareS by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-25T08:02:33.663557Z
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I guess that also serves as punishment for a particular VR platform forcing EAC, just to auto-moderate against ALL forms of client modding; while the better alternatives openly allow modding (as long as it's not for malicious purposes).
(DIR) Post #B1kiGN3jsR83ACsZBw by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-29T20:57:47.542293Z
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Ping
(DIR) Post #B1ou6UC8T8N0TphPiy by arcanicanis@were.social
2025-12-31T21:29:20.860862Z
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Why do I have a feeling that: although the DEI consultancy gimmick is waning, that there'll be something to replace it next, such as a "vibes consultant" or something?
(DIR) Post #B2MKJxz8hx3KiQhcbg by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-01-17T00:28:28.461544Z
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The gTLD expansion [lottery] itself is practically like AOL keywords, just with an extra word needed, given companies can just own their own brand TLD now e.g. .google, .microsoft, .netflix, .pfizer, .scjohnson, .skype(?), .toshiba, .vanguard, .vistaprint, and so so so many more)
(DIR) Post #B2lEkhTtsEv5d2Y83s by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-01-29T00:53:57.509519Z
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I guess someone beat me to one of the pet projects I had in my pile (although probably far too literal of a recreation, I would have made some artistic liberties to make it distinct): https://github.com/processone/fluux-messengerI'm sure OMEMO or other amenities will naturally follow, in time.
(DIR) Post #B35es5ooGpIX6diKLA by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-02-07T21:20:51.612346Z
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My first ActivityPub project was very literally just wasting my time solely on trying to make a JSON-LD-first ActivityPub library to try to abstract away it from the library consumer (within reason), back around the time before ActivityPub had reached W3C Recommedation status.I would have saved myself some amount of months by just having not get snagged into that trap, and could have instead actually shipped a usable implementation back then.Everyone else that actually shipped an ActivityPub implementation in the beginning were the ones that treated it solely as static JSON.I'm not saying JSON-LD is hard, nor difficult to understand (and there are some niche projects where I do want to use it)---some of it's probably even an upgrade from similar things in the XML world, but it piles on more overhead that everything has to be expanded, checked against context, just to handle different representations, all while you'll still invariably have to interop with implementations that treat it as static JSON anyway.
(DIR) Post #B35gF6sGbx00zks11k by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-02-07T21:36:13.610344Z
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I read SocialHub a lot when I was learning about ActivityPub and got an impression that JSON-LD is super important so it was on my to-do list for a long timeYea that's the trap of people following social consensus, when a lot of discussion being done is by people that have zero stake or personal investment. It's all just armchair critics that have made nothing. That's part of why I've lost my patience for participating in the SocialHub LARP, especially when they're filtering out the people who have actually made something.
(DIR) Post #B39lebyLP3l75QX2mW by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-02-09T20:55:42.632638Z
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@silverpill Possibly to your interest, if you haven't seen it already: https://autocrypt2.org Apparently only 25 pages long, with seemingly clear and specific steps and some code examples (at least in cursory skimming): https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/draft-autocrypt-openpgp-v2-cert/
(DIR) Post #B39mv220NrbQUjdcVE by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-02-09T21:09:52.798360Z
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If there's a future time where I have availability, I may try to take a stab at implementing it in an XMPP client. If that goes somewhere, I could then try to see if it could be done ActivityPub side too (for private messaging) and have it interop, is my general vision.
(DIR) Post #B3ApQ3bCzzmFOtzBR2 by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-02-10T09:12:36.175613Z
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It's just so thoroughly, resoundingly demoralizing how normies keep taking the bait of centralized VC-funded platforms. Once one ship starts to sink, they crowd to the next one that appears on the horizon, like rats, just ever-continuing this cycle, and never learn.In the time that I've been on the internet, just to keep up with "where everyone's at", I've been on: ICQ, AIM, Yahoo Messenger, MSN/Live Messenger, Google Talk/Hangouts, Skype, Facebook Messenger, Telegram, Wire, Signal, Discord, Guilded, and many several others, and the cycle just keeps repeating, just to re-skin much of the same concepts over and over again, with relatively minor variations.I am so damn tired and have gradually dumped virtually all the above at this point (recently deleted Discord in November, deleted Telegram ~2 years before that, deleted Facebook ~10 years ago, etc).This may come as a shock to viewers, but when I've dumped prior platforms, some friends have followed over to the alternatives (of those that weren't already there), such as XMPP.Mentionably, also, nearly everyone has Steam in common, and Steam has actually made the voice calling system reasonably usable, and has a decent 'group' system, that's also filled the gap. For my more neckbeard-y friends, Mumble has continued to work too.Nonetheless, in all of this, I guess there's another opportunistically new centralized VC-funded platform, that people are trying to crowd-wrangle people to next. I don't even know if some of this crap is some sort of set-up, if these influencers get kickbacks, or if people are just this retarded to keep repeating this cycle.When I registered on Discord, about a decade ago, I already regretted it. Despite being yet another WebRTC application, that could be used in a browser, they still arbitrary forced people to install an Electron-wrapped version anyway by artificially walling off features you could do in a browser anyway (e.g. screenshare and others).There was plenty of phobia about it watching all your running processes, but it still got adopted anyway. There's the warehousing of all your data, all your connection history since inception of your account, all your device metrics at every single individual interaction and thing you clicked on, perpetually tagged and catalogued, and much of that ran through neural nets to profile and categorize you, but still people cling to it anyway.Now the cycle repeats again.
(DIR) Post #B3As1tRZPA5uogeATo by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-02-10T09:41:51.329515Z
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Further, as it came to mind after-the-fact: regardless of whether a platform has even had the purest of intentions and goals, it does not evade the fact that any mega-platform is a single point-of-failure.That while even if some supposedly moralistic mega-platform comes about, it is still a single point-of-failure for regulatory and under-handed infiltration. They will have their hand forced in one way or another to kowtow to the wishes of government, or just shutdown entirely as the only other alternative.You don't know what the future plan of any mega-platform is, whether they'll have a buyout to realize the value of the startup, or if they're going to cut off and paywall things to start turning any actual profit, after being a money firepit for so long (all in the agenda to farm a userbase). I don't understand why folks continue to build communities exclusive only to these platforms; meanwhile, I've been able to preserve a self-hosted forum, to still be online over 16+ years later.When you have a broader expanse of disparate, independently owned servers, it's substantially harder to completely behead a multi-headed critter. When they exert force on a few to make examples out of, several more will end up taking it's place.I believe people intentionally act stupid about the notion of federation, that just because communities and users are scattered between servers, doesn't mean they're unable to be discoverable.Aside from first-party content you see on a social media platforms, what else do you commonly see? URLs. If there's something worthwhile to share, that isn't on the same platform, or just simply on a different server, we inherently share hyperlinks to resources of things worth sharing, and naturally interesting communities and platforms organically bubble up to the surface.Whether it's XMPP URIs, Matrix URIs, URIs of posts on fedi, usually people will inherently share a canonical identifier that can lead people to something interesting, even when it's to a resource on a different protocol entirely. There is a whole natural, organic system of discovery, but people still intentionally act stupid to recognize it, and I still don't understand the confusion in it.
(DIR) Post #B3AtbHVw0HG9Yj7uZE by arcanicanis@were.social
2026-02-10T09:59:27.287074Z
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Further further further (on fedi instead in this case):I have not had to register on TikTok, Instagram, or a handful of other things, and yet: I can still enjoy the memes, culture, content and other things that bubble up on those platforms, because people will cross-post it anyway.I don't have to wade through trash on TikTok to find something interesting, folks on fedi will usually cross-post only what's worthwhile anyway, and I never have to touch those platforms. I have absolutely zero FOMO from not being on those platforms.