[HN Gopher] Git as a janky Twitter replacement
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Git as a janky Twitter replacement
Author : est
Score : 296 points
Date : 2022-11-06 04:29 UTC (18 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| mastazi wrote:
| If we're going minimal, then why not Finger as a Twitter
| replacement?
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_(protocol)
|
| Finger communities/hosting:
|
| https://finger.farm/
|
| https://happynetbox.com/
|
| https://plan.cat/ (thank you gbrown for reminding me of this)
|
| browsers that support finger (in addition to other protocols such
| as Gopher and Gemini):
|
| https://kristall.random-projects.net/
|
| https://gmi.skyjake.fi/lagrange/
| [deleted]
| cbanek wrote:
| Just in case someone from the '90s was working at drpepper.com,
| I remember fingering them and someone had some amazing
| scrolling ascii art of betty boop IIRC. So much good ascii art
| on there, actually.
|
| I 'member.
| bravura wrote:
| At university we used finger.
|
| I made my .plan file an ASCII art video version of the famous
| shot from Terminator 2 of the terminator doing a death-
| defying motorcycle jump into the draught channel:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V0pCE0N-EF0
|
| The sysops politely emailed me, asking me to change it,
| citing bandwidth usage. It was about 800kb.
| planetsprite wrote:
| tristanbvk wrote:
| Waltuuuh
| kQq9oHeAz6wLLS wrote:
| I implemented a finger "daemon" in an interface engine and use
| it as a gateway for a variety of services (weather, including
| my local WS, Plex info, etc).
|
| It's a super simple format, and does the job perfectly.
| endorphine wrote:
| Any resources for (ideally interactive) introduction to Finger?
| Apart from the wikipedia page.
| mastazi wrote:
| I wish there was more info about Finger on the web.
|
| You can learn more about the protocol by reading RFC 1288,
| obviously that's not interactive at all though.
|
| https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc1288
| gbrown_ wrote:
| To add to the list Joshua Stein has made https://plan.cat who's
| atheistic I'm rather fond of.
| mastazi wrote:
| Thank you! I visited plan.cat before, but forgot to bookmark
| it. Added to my comment above.
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I assume you meant aesthetic?
| rexreed wrote:
| I'm pretty agnostic to the terminology
| xwowsersx wrote:
| Haha I see what you did there
| angrygoat wrote:
| Hah, those were the days. I remember using finger in the late
| 90s/early 00s to figure out whether people were at the computer
| club before I walked across campus for lunch :)
| layer8 wrote:
| You mean "to finger out". ;)
| prox wrote:
| Is there an aggregator for fingers? So it becomes more RSS or
| like twitter in format?
| mastazi wrote:
| the home pages of happynetbox.com and plan.cat have a list of
| recent updates. It's worth saving them as bookmarks on your
| Finger client.
|
| finger://@happynetbox.com
|
| finger://@plan.cat
|
| Unfortunately finger.farm only has that feature available on
| its web mirror, but not on its native finger-protocol home
| page.
|
| In addition to those, over time I have also bookmarked some
| individual profiles, like this one which is one of my
| favourites
|
| finger://blast-rules@happynetbox.com
|
| Oh and also, in case you want to check the weather around the
| world:
|
| finger://@graph.no (web version: https://graph.no/ )
| gojomo wrote:
| There's a protocol called 'WebFinger':
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WebFinger
| gigatexal wrote:
| Janky!?! It's awesome
| habibur wrote:
| Very clever.
| kyaghmour wrote:
| I proposed something like that a few years back:
| https://lwn.net/Articles/780365/
|
| There is something to this idea ... using git as a distributed
| (micro-)blogging/publishing system.
| Ferret7446 wrote:
| It's basically a janky blog+RSS. Architecturally, it's as if
| there were a simple/standard web/blogserver software that could
| be hosted freely. The key here is exploiting the standardization
| of Git and availability of free public Git hosting.
|
| Done properly, one could create some packaged blog(+RSS reader)
| container, but the free hosting support isn't there. You could
| use GCP free instances, but setting up a domain name+TLS is a
| barrier, even for some technical folks.
|
| The idea is neat, definitely a hack in the traditional sense.
| [deleted]
| udia wrote:
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Please don't make a front end they say!
| stevage wrote:
| Does someone think there's a technology problem here to solve?
| amelius wrote:
| Nope. But if you're holding a hammer ...
| cpach wrote:
| I think they're just having fun (^_^)
| est wrote:
| You can ask the same question to 2007 twitter.
| Jamie9912 wrote:
| Definitely not decentralized, also don't tweet anything NSFW
| because Github will ban your account without hesitation, removing
| all issues you created, even for projects you don't own. Source:
| happened to me because I had an "NSFW" Github page that displayed
| randomly generated Imgur pictures.
| yellowapple wrote:
| Just use a server other than GitHub. Boom, federated and NSFW-
| friendly.
| xigoi wrote:
| Then the tool for subscribing to all people won't be able to
| discover you.
| rakoo wrote:
| That's why you need to split "list of all people"
| (necessarily centralized for discovery) and actual storage
| (decentralized). Everyone can have their own repo anywhere
| as long as it's fetchable by git, and the creator of the
| tool can maintain a list of all repos branches
| danbmil99 wrote:
| Very clever. I would be concerned however that GitHub may shut
| you down at some point and if this got serious it would have to
| be running on federated git servers and then you would need a
| secure synchronization protocol Etc pretty soon you're looking at
| Matrix
| sitta wrote:
| A few months ago I started playing with using Matrix as a janky
| social media replacement. The idea was to setup a space with
| rooms that I post in. One room might be a public, unencrypted
| room that anyone can read (ala Twitter/Mastadon/etc), and
| another might be just for close friends, etc. Then, I just post
| to them like you would on any other platform.
|
| It's great because it's the only platform like this where you
| have the ability to encrypt if you want to, but it is of course
| missing some features. The biggest being the ability to share
| posts and have a meta feed. There are also smaller annoyances
| that would not scale well, such as the fact that people cannot
| make personal room name aliases.
|
| I still totally recommend it.
| yellowapple wrote:
| > and then you would need a secure synchronization protocol
|
| Would you? Seems straightforward to point to multiple
| pushRemotes and federate that way, much like what's possible
| for any other sort of Git repo.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| GitHub is going to hate everyone who uses this.
| rexreed wrote:
| You can host your own Git repository or Git commit on multiple
| Git repositories. When I started with Git, I just self-hosted.
| I only went to Bitbucket for search and the web interface.
| stargrave wrote:
| My blog (http://blog.stargrave.org/russian/) initially also used
| Git as a storage, where each commit is a post, and its log
| message is the content itself. If I add gitweb/cgit, when it will
| also feature web interface and Atom feed automatically. Later I
| added my own rendering engine to it:
| http://www.sgblog.stargrave.org/ for efficiency and automatic
| transparent gopher/gemini protocols support. Each post also can
| have some dynamic tags/topics attached, that are stored in git's
| notes branch. And later I also added ability to leave comments,
| by sending email message, that is committed in another git-note
| branch in the form of recfile
| (https://www.gnu.org/software/recutils/) plain-text comment.
| Everything is plain text, can be used with Git solely, but has an
| engine for better rendering and wider protocols support.
| bdhcuidbebe wrote:
| > and its log message is the content itself
|
| That's a curious design choice. Care to share more details,
| like why not commit the content?
|
| How do you deal with fixing typos?
| xwowsersx wrote:
| git commit --amend
| papito wrote:
| Twitter does not have a technology problem - the prototype was
| famously put together with Ruby-on-Rails in a weekend. Most of
| the effort comes _after_ that, with moderation and legal
| compliance. There is really no better reality check for those who
| delude themselves into writing a clone than this:
|
| https://www.techdirt.com/2022/11/02/hey-elon-let-me-help-you...
| stolenmerch wrote:
| I've been doing this for the past couple of weeks after reading
| this tweet:
| https://twitter.com/obryant666/status/1395816947913138178
|
| It's oddly fulfilling.
| pfoof wrote:
| This has the potential to benchmark how many forks of a single
| project Github can handle, especially with `follow_everyone`
| script
| [deleted]
| uri4 wrote:
| For development I would just recommend github issues with
| comments. Way more user friendly. Also separate identities,
| perhaps even different server. No need to get main account
| compromised, or to get banned from Github for spicy comments.
| rhabarba wrote:
| This would be just another use case for SCCS, actually.
| m3kw9 wrote:
| Nobody is gonna go to a replacement without most of the people
| switching.
| wildcow wrote:
| This is a simple distributed ledger. I knew blockchain would soon
| take over Twitter.
|
| When is twatcoin going online? I need to make fast monies.
| AirStreamer27 wrote:
| Yes this is a perfectly normal approach that I'm sure everybody
| popular will want to use
| voidz wrote:
| Alright, I'll be the one to ask the "what's next" question.
|
| What's next? A revival of Gopher?
| heminispathe wrote:
| I can't tell if you're being ironic. Look up the Gemini
| protocol
| beAbU wrote:
| You can call this a blockchain driven twitter and you would only
| be about half wrong.
| rmnclmnt wrote:
| Can you here the VCs coming?
| smallerfish wrote:
| I mean you joke, but look at slack. Make a reasonably nice
| web/phone frontend to it, and boom - you're on your way.
| lionkor wrote:
| technically, its already on ycombinator now
| GiorgioG wrote:
| Is Twitter going away? What did I miss? I know a lot of folks are
| taking Elon Musk's purchase of Twitter as a "the sky is falling"
| moment, but can we please have a reality check here?
|
| As a business Twitter was bloated and has stagnated over the past
| few years. I'm taking an optimistic view of where Twitter may go
| as a product/service.
|
| Take a deep breath folks. We don't need a half assed Twitter
| replacement.
| rendall wrote:
| > _Is Twitter going away? What did I miss?_
|
| Speaking as a person who has been generally well-disposed
| towards Elon Musk and like him also would describe myself as a
| left-leaning, centrist, free-speech absolutist, I think his
| behavior has been erratic lately. Perhaps his behavior has
| always been erratic, but it just never affected me personally.
|
| Speaking as a resident of a country neighboring Russia, his
| amateur diplomacy from a few weeks ago _does_ affect me, and in
| my view was literally dangerous. He pontificated from a place
| of profound ignorance at best and continued to double down even
| in the face of very smart domain experts and ordinary
| Ukrainians asking him - begging him - to please zip it. Then he
| acted aggrieved and hurt when his "peace proposal" was not
| received well.
|
| I'm not sure what is being accomplished by the latest Twitter
| shenanigans, but I'm seeing the same behavior of his ignoring
| domain experts. For instance, moderation is a difficult social
| and technical problem irrespective of political view.
| Advertisers are not renewing their contracts with Twitter, not
| because of Musk's political views, but because they did not
| have confidence that their brands would not be tainted by
| association with unmoderated nastiness. Again, Musk attributed
| this to left-wing activists and not his own inability to
| reassure his business associates. He framed it as a free-speech
| issue when it is absolutely not. Then he threatened to "name
| and shame" the advertisers who declined to renew. He fired the
| domain experts who understand moderation, and so the
| institutional knowledge about it - arguably, what he bought
| when he bought Twitter - is gone, never to return.
|
| So, I don't think Twitter will recover from that. Perhaps if I
| had not experienced his amateur diplomacy directly, I would
| just continue to think of Musk as a fellow who is very good at
| business and is possibly playing multi-dimensional chess. But I
| cannot unlearn what I have learned. His personal brand is
| permanently tarnished, for me.
| rc_mob wrote:
| Why on earth would you like Elon Musk? He's just selfish and
| only looks out for himself and himself only. I fail to
| understand why you or anybody would like someone such as
| this.
| rendall wrote:
| First sentence could benefit from some commas but the
| window for editing has passed.
|
| "Speaking as a person who has been generally well-disposed
| towards Elon Musk and, like him, also would describe myself
| as..."
|
| _like_ as in "similar"
|
| Although, I do suspect I would like Musk, personally. I
| like lots of people who would make absolutely terrible
| public figures and business decisions
| heresie-dabord wrote:
| > We don't need a half assed Twitter replacement.
|
| Twitter as an announcement platform offers nothing approaching
| USD $40b in value. Other governments and organisations could
| follow the example of the EU and establish a Mastodon server.
|
| Twitter as another "social media" cluster of coitus never
| really had a clear value proposition apart from 90% of its
| revenue coming from advertising.
|
| As such, it is just another advertising delivery system.
| MichaelCollins wrote:
| I doubt he'll ever make his money back, but does that mean
| twitter will cease to exist? I don't think so. I think the
| rich buy media for the influence, not profit. Obviously he
| severely overpaid, but owning twitter still gives him
| influence. And it's not like twitter is loaded with assets;
| liquidating the company won't get his money back.
| eurasiantiger wrote:
| It is fairly obvious Musk's business decisions only make sense
| in the context of dismantling Twitter.
| rexreed wrote:
| At first I was thinking what sort of self-destructive person
| would do that, and then I realized he saddled Twitter with
| $1B in debt payments and foisting this onto other investors,
| and I realized that Elon was exactly the kind of vindictive
| person who would do that, given that he was pretty much
| cornered into buying Twitter in the first place. I'm sure the
| boat is being put on fire and made to sink. When they declare
| bankruptcy and file Chapter 11 to resolve their $1B in
| payments then you know that's what this was all about. I can
| do without Twitter, so it doesn't bother me. Let the
| billionaires have their space-age pissing contests.
| 0x445442 wrote:
| Unfortunately I think your last sentence is right on
| target. I think the world is headed straight towards a neo-
| techno feudalism where individuals seeking any form of
| protection will need to pledge their fealty to some big
| corporation feudal lord.
| arwineap wrote:
| > given that he was pretty much cornered into buying
| Twitter in the first place
|
| Just to be clear; Elon put himself in that corner, no one
| forced him there.
| Vaslo wrote:
| Or worse, look at all the different things being recommended
| instead of Twitter - this, Mastodon, etc. Everyone will end up
| at different places, then end back at Twitter anyways. Old
| relatives and tech disliking spouses will never use this or
| Mastodon. Too much work, too confusing.
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(page generated 2022-11-06 23:02 UTC)