Posts by kik@techhub.social
(DIR) Post #AZQaE7Hn9GqDyrjwpM by kik@techhub.social
2023-09-03T08:52:50Z
0 likes, 3 repeats
Hi everyone 👋 I'm Kik, the contributor working on GitLab's implementation of ActivityPub. I've seen there has been a lot of discussions around here, so I decided to make a non-anonymous account to exchange with you all (it's also my first account on Mastodon proper!).Let me stress it again, though : I'm a contributor to GitLab, not one of their employee, so I don't talk for them. :)See you around!
(DIR) Post #AZanOkKFDeXrMu5uaG by kik@techhub.social
2023-09-09T13:49:19Z
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@fsf I use #freesoftware to protect my #privacy because we sadly live in a world where we can't rely on economics or laws to protect it. (I salute the efforts from EU, though).That being said, it's not enough. What proof do you have that the .deb you downloaded is built from the sources you're looking at? That's why I also use #gentoo to build everything from the exact tarballs I can inspect. Hopefully, reproducible builds will solve this for other distros.
(DIR) Post #AZyorJVw3nfmFaVNmS by kik@techhub.social
2023-09-19T08:41:36Z
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@itsecbot LOL. One more proof that with such bad guys, we really don't need mass surveillance. 😂 Reminds me the darkweb market guy who got caught because he posted a HD photo of weed in his hand, with perfectly readable fingerprints.
(DIR) Post #AaIqLMH09ZABWofrIu by kik@techhub.social
2023-09-30T19:49:35Z
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@wjmaggos @Castopod @Mastodon I'd rather not. As much as I love ActivityPub, this would mean you would have to subscribe to the podcast with your account, advertising what topics you are interested in through your following collection. This can be cool as an alternative way of subscribing (maybe some people want to share what they're listening to), but if it's used to _replace_ RSS, which allows for anonymous subscribing, then it would be quite a regression regarding privacy.
(DIR) Post #AaIsGH5aCTw9uV2LdQ by kik@techhub.social
2023-09-30T20:11:05Z
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@wjmaggos @Castopod @Mastodon If I understand correctly, that's what Castopod does! supporting both ActivityPub and RSS, best of both world. :)
(DIR) Post #AaJpiUoSfCH7sUkn5M by kik@techhub.social
2023-10-01T07:17:16Z
0 likes, 0 repeats
@wjmaggos @Castopod @Mastodon Indeed, if clients would properly take advantage of that, that would be awesome. It reminds me of what Google Reader did, allowing to share articles with our friends and like/comment them. It was not massively used, though, at least in my circle. But IIRC, it was added not long before GReader was googled, maybe it's just that users did not catch up.
(DIR) Post #AcKKE5JVzFgU4l6mUy by kik@techhub.social
2023-11-30T08:42:56Z
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@EU_Commission "phasing out unabated fossil fuels". Damn, you could at least be subtle when taking us for idiots. What's next? Reducing the growth of loss of biodiversity?And "ensuring fossil fuel peaks ahead of 2030" is just the same. You're promising we'll consume more fossil fuel than ever in the coming years! Do you want a medal?
(DIR) Post #Ad2Lj5Ck3e7PKwcgi0 by kik@techhub.social
2023-12-21T14:10:59Z
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@silverpill @helge @team I agree, AP concepts often feel a bit off, not exactly what we need, but then again it's something we've already experienced with HTML, for example ("should it be `<em>`? should it be `<q>`?", "wait, that's not really a list!", "oh well, let's use <div> everywhere", etc). The real question is how much desirable is interoperability with non forge software. Personally, I would say "as much as possible", that's how we enable rich ecosystems. But I'm totally prepared to get hit in the face by reality when we're deep in implementation and we realize how much trouble it would be. 😅
(DIR) Post #AdKyXlc9H201vhygl6 by kik@techhub.social
2023-12-30T11:24:28Z
1 likes, 1 repeats
So, how is #ActivityPub implementation in #GitLab going? Steadily, if a bit slowly!In the last four months, we've been working on implementing the first ActivityPub actor, the one allowing to subscribe to projects releases. The ActivityPub part is already written, but there will still be a couple month before it's fully merged. Turns out that the most time consuming part is code review : there is no dedicated team to this (but there is a dedicated developer assisting me, thanks Patrick!), so people reviewing code discover ActivityPub at the time they have to review it (and, by the way, it's incredible how they get out of their way to help a contributor on such a complex subject, they rock). For that reason, we have to make smaller than usual merge requests, splitting the feature as much as possible, and then some again, to make it as easy to understand as possible. And even then it usually takes about a month to get one chunk merged.
(DIR) Post #AdKyXn9rXAYsiYl7wm by kik@techhub.social
2023-12-30T11:25:28Z
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When the ActivityPub part is ready, it will still need the HTTP signature part to implement authorization (otherwise, anyone can subscribe/unsubscribe anyone) which is the next feature I'll work on, and then we still need to implement the WebFinger protocol to be compatible with Mastodon. So yeah, it could easily take 6 more months just to release the first actor.Which does not mean, by the way, that each further ActivityPub feature will take that much time, we're not "just creating the first actor", we're building the architecture all actors will use, so it was expected to be a long one (I did not expect it would take _that_ long, though, but there is some sort of a culture shock, here, I'm not used to work with companies that big 😅).
(DIR) Post #AdKyXomtTXNRlu1oQK by kik@techhub.social
2023-12-30T11:26:27Z
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One other factor that will slow down things is that I'm going to need a new job. I would really have loved to work at GitLab with a team dedicated to ActivityPub, then we could have got things really moving. I offered them, but they were not interested. 🤷 So it means I'm going to have to work on something else and won't be able to work full time on ActivityPub like I was doing so far. That's OK when we're in code review because it's low intensity work, but I won't be able to do serious work on new features outside of week-end. Maybe if I could do part time work, I could keep it going as is. Let me know if you know of an opening for doing that remotely (rails/go/frontend javascript, I can bill anywhere in the world).
(DIR) Post #AdKyXq8CTo0xwH0LGy by kik@techhub.social
2023-12-30T11:27:16Z
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I'm also considering opening a #patreon or something like that (I have yet to research what the best platforms are). I could use it to work mainly on adding ActivityPub to GitLab, but then also make patrons vote on Fediverse/self-hosting projects or contributions I would work on as side projects while waiting for GitLab code reviews. The good news is that I don't need much, I'm used to live on minimum wage and to keep the difference I make with my engineer salary to invest and fund my own projects (that's what allowed me to start working on ActivityPub, btw). Still, I have a feeling that growing a patreon to even make minimum wage could take a long time. I have no experience with such business model, does anyone have some insight to share, here?
(DIR) Post #AdN4dI8ykGLmJ7GswC by kik@techhub.social
2023-12-31T14:24:28Z
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@EU_Commission That's awesome, thanks!
(DIR) Post #AvoBIEjJAJcZJaQMFs by kik@techhub.social
2025-07-04T19:43:29Z
0 likes, 1 repeats
Crisis averted, #GitLab reopened the epic on #ActivityPub / #ForgeFed implementation. :) They made it clear, though, that they're not going to do it themselves in any foreseeable future, their "current focus isn't in this area", so it's up to the community to implement it. As I mentioned in the issue, I won't be able to come back to it until I'm done bootstraping the business I'm working on, so anyone who wants to see it done faster should feel free to jump in.https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/11247#note_2603598572