Patch 11: Roll Your Own Strega (Reupload, fixed)

https://friprogramvarusyndikatet.tv/w/qEfNg2fZiqUz3xQjTf6JXL

Make what you need might be all wrong for the IndieWeb’s future

IndieWeb has this idea of “scratch your own itch” or “make what you need“. It’s okay in as far as it goes, but I (and I said this at great length before) feel it is wholly incomplete over simple, and, therefore, wrong.

I get the idea. If I want a cheese sandwich, I should go into the kitchen and make myself a cheese sandwich. Fine. Cool. But I’m not making what I need – I’m assembling the prefabricated parts.

I did not first have to make a bread knife, and a butter knife, and a plate, and a chopping board. I did not have to bake the bread. I did not have to spend a year or two maturing milk into cheese. I did not build the kitchen or the worktops. In fact, I did not build what I needed at all. I acquired well-made things I needed so that when the time came, I could put the cheese and the bread together in a pleasing shape.

In the same way, “make what you need” works well when IndieWeb is a frontier wild west of ideas. Where the only ones making the new tools are the ones using those tools and only because those were the only nerds who could make the things.

We no longer live in the wild west. We live in towns. We go to supermarkets and order pizza delivered to our door.

I get that dogfooding is the best way to make sure the tools available are the best they can be. I’m not a novice at this. What I am saying is that it is time we started putting together pre-baked bread, already matured cheese, and a sharp knife that works out of the box.

Early adopters can and should make their own. That’s the innovation scale and space. But there has to come a time when we start embracing pre-sliced bread, cheese someone else made, and all that, without forcing everyone to fire up the forge because you want a sandwich.

If we want indieweb ideas to go from niche coders doing niche coder things, we need something the next wave of later-early adopters can get to grips with. In such an environment, “make what you need” is not good enough. It has to give way to “make what those around you need” or “make something you can use, but your mum could use too”.

One example of “make what you need” screwing the pooch is the number of websites that stopped using WebMention because of spam. WebMention should, by its nature, be nearly spam-proof. I would hazard a guess that the roll-your-own WebMention did not follow the step where it confirms the link that forms the core mention.

When WebMention runs in WordPress, the mention fails if the link is not there. Then the mention, if from an unrecognised blog, is held in a queue to be manually checked. These steps mean that no spam makes it into my blog via WebMention. Via local comments – yeah, loads of spam; but WebMention – never.

There is an expression in developer circles which is a warning against reinventing the square wheel. By rolling their own, some devs will make an objectively worse version. There might be better versions too; its a wild world out there. The point is, though, rather than reinventing the wheel for each and every website, some battle-hardened, mature, production-ready, tested and true tools and libraries might offer something of an advantage.

That’s the power of Open Source development. One person makes a thing; a bunch of people use the thing; someone has an idea for a new feature and adds it. I think IndieWeb needs that too. At the very least, “make what you need” should become “adapt what you need; reuse when possible”.

Check out my longer form post: Let’s talk about making IndieWeb weirder and easier

• Update: Okay, “make what you need” might be good for the IndieWeb’s future after all

I like this infographic, but it only shows hosted solutions.

I want a comprehensive Roll Your Own™️ solution I can run at home using my Fibre Internet and my own Server.

I dream of building such a software package but don't yet have the ability...

https://mastodon.social/@Tutanota/114382604432332197

#RollYourOwn #SelfHosted #SelfHosting #SelfHostedCloud #PersonalCloud #GoogleAlternative #AppleAlternative #MicrosoftAlternative

@smallcircles someone could start selling an all-in-one appliance, like a WiFi router with a built-in mail server, ActivityPub server, XMPP server, #Forgejo server, and #Drupal server all rolled into one. Then instead of recommending people “roll their own,” you could recommend people just buy this device, and use it to connect to #ActivityPub, #XMPP, and publish their own blog with the built-in Drupal server, and so on.

#tech #Internet #RollYourOwn #SelfHosting

can't find an easy python dataclass visitor..

#rollyourown

“Yes. Yes! That’s IT. We have backups instead of blasters, ping instead of parsecs, and df(1) instead of droids, but it’s the same sort of struggle. Okay, fine, planets don’t get blown up… yet.”

#email #RollYourOwn #RunYourOwnMailServer https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mwlucas/run-your-own-mail-server/

Anyone else using Verba? Such a rad tools set!

#ai #rag #rollyourown

https://verba.weaviate.io/ and https://github.com/weaviate/Verba

Hey #securityscorecard: Go home and read up on secure passwords at https://pages.nist.gov/800-63-3/sp800-63b.html#-5112-memorized-secret-verifiers!

But what does #NIST know about such things. You are for sure much more knowledgeable!

#petpeeve #rollYourOwn

Playing with different designs and layouts now that my math works out. At one time I ditched the daypart wedges and all the text. Now both are back.

The celestial bodies are now labeled inside, white on black when below the horizon, black on unique colors (yellow for sun, white for moon, red for Mars, etc.) when above the horizon.

I might do something different with the date, like making it tap-to-show, but I like dropping the time next to the current sun position. I also thought about making all of the labels tap-to-show.

#GeekAllWeek #RollYourOwn #BangleJS