fediverse

<p>Here’s an interesting thought experiment. </p><p>Way back in the 1980s and 90s, Usenet was a sorta-federated discussion forum (using the NNTP protocol) that was very popular. It still exists and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usenet#Usenet_traffic_changes" rel="nofollow">is distributing 400 million messages each day</a> (mostly spam and trash as far as I can tell). Hard numbers are difficult to come by but it seems like Usenet is capable of significantly higher throughput. Why is that? </p><p>The big thing holding ActivityPub back is the fan-out. You know the story - someone with 50,000 followers causes their instance to send up to 50,000 HTTP POSTs every time they click the little spinny star or reply to something. </p><p>It’s basically a hub-and-spoke network topology. Except everyone takes turns being the hub, ideally, but not much in practice. And in this topology, the hubs are where the strain and bottlenecks are. </p><p>Back in the 1980s they had computers literally 1000 times slower than ours and network links to match. So how did they do this? With a peer to peer network topology! When a new post is made, they don’t send it to everyone they just send it to a handful of other servers. Those servers in turn forward the post on to a handful of other peers, and so on, until the whole network receives the post. No individual server is a single point of failure and none has to bear the full brunt of orchestrating it all. </p><p>Let’s do a picture. A creates a post and sends it to B and D. </p><p>A ─ B ─ C \ / ─ D ─ </p><p>B sends it on to C. </p><p>Meanwhile D sends it on the C also but C already has it so does nothing more. IRL this would be a much larger mesh. Who peers with who can be a mixture of manual selection and random spiciness. </p><p>Posts can arrive out of order so each server would need to wait until the dependencies between posts are resolved before making them available to clients. That’s a bit tricky. </p><p>In the ActivityPub-over-NNTP idea, each NNTP post would be a thin wrapper around a data structure containing the HTTP headers (with signature and digest) and JSON that a normal HTTP POSTed Activity would have. Servers would use NNTP to distribute the activities and upon receiving one they’d POST it to their own /inbox to run the usual ActivityPub processing that their AP instance does. </p><p>{ &quot;headers&quot;: { &quot;Signature&quot;: &quot;...&quot;, &quot;Digest&quot;: &quot;...&quot;, &quot;Date&quot;: &quot;...&quot; }, &quot;activity&quot;: { ... normal ActivityPub JSON ... } } </p><p>In this way there is no need to rewrite ActivityPub semantics as only the transport layer changes. Our existing inbox logic remains intact. </p><p>NNTP comes with a lot of historical baggage so we’d probably need to evolve the protocol a bit. Maybe use HTTP requests (even http2 streams?) instead of <a href="https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc3977" rel="nofollow">the original line-oriented text protocol using raw TCP sockets</a>. But you get the idea. </p><p>Thoughts?</p> <small class="notice" x-post-type-data="None"> Takahe has limited support for this type: <a href="https://piefed.social/c/technical-discussion/p/1939768/scaling-activitypub-over-nntp">See Original Page</a> </small>

<p>UPDATE 2: I was cart pusher this evening at work. We had two call-outs tonight so I am utterly and completely exhausted from picking up the slack.</p><p>However, there was one silver lining to this I guess; a co-worker needed tomorrow off and traded shifts. So I work tomorrow rather than Saturday, which would allow me to use the funds from *that* shift towards rent. It&#x27;ll be less than $100 but that&#x27;s still money that would otherwise not be available until next week, which would obviously be too late.</p><p>EDIT/UPDATE 1: Having gotten some rest and can think a little more clearly and actually calculate things (as closely as I can given the circumstances), I am somewhat alarmed to discover I wildly underestimated how much we would need, and now am embarrassed to announce that the goal necessary for us to make rent in time is.. more than double my original guessing. 🤦‍♂️</p><p>I knew our accounts were low, but I didn&#x27;t realize just *how* low.</p><p>We&#x27;ve already received a massive donation from an incredibly generous donor (thank you) that already meets my original $500 goal so we&#x27;re already nearly halfway there which is fantastic.</p><p>I then planned to increase the goal to $1,200, but on second thought, that amount would probably cut it far too closely. Even $1,400 may be a tad optimistic.</p><p>So, to pick a number that is both sort of a halfway point between the two numbers and also incorporate a bit of mild whimsy, I&#x27;m now setting the goal to $1,333. Because why the hell not. (I thought about $1333.33, but that&#x27;s just being pedantic.)</p><p>We have this apartment solely thanks to our community here on the <a href="/tags/fediverse/" rel="tag">#Fediverse</a>. We would like to continue to enjoy this incredible living space you&#x27;ve so kindly given us.</p><p>Therefore, I shall continue to clown around, to dutifully shitpost, and otherwise try to earn your support.</p><p>Please read on below for an excessive and unreasonably long explanation of the situation.</p><p>=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=</p><p>Dammit.. I should have posted this sooner; I don&#x27;t know why I do this.</p><p>Actually, I do know: I hate doing it. And lord knows I will procrastinate until the last possible second if it&#x27;s an activity I dislike.</p><p>To be clear, it isn&#x27;t the interaction that I loathe. I actually *do* enjoy that. When we meet fundraising goals, it&#x27;s like Christmas morning every single time. You know the scene in the movie where the Grinch returns the gifts to the citizens of Whoville? It&#x27;s like that. It feels like a miracle every. damned. time.</p><p>Actually, it *is* a miracle every single time.</p><p>The begposts also give me a chance to infodump to all of you. Sort of like a newsletter or blogpost. A &quot;State of the Goofballs&quot; address, if you will. It&#x27;s as if I open up the firehose of my mind and just vomit words until I run out of inner monologue.</p><p>I always feel compelled to try and show that we&#x27;re trying to get our shit together, in a feeble attempt to demonstrate that we&#x27;re &quot;worth&quot; helping. I think I tend to make them so long (longer than even my standard verbosity) to (hopefully) illustrate that I&#x27;m sincere. I&#x27;m not trying to scam anyone, and if I learned that I ever made anyone feel taken advantage of I would feel utterly heartbroken.</p><p>On the other hand, I think I hate making begposts because.. well, primarily it&#x27;s embarrassing. It&#x27;s surprisingly difficult to allow myself the same grace that I would grant anyone else. But it&#x27;s also extremely scary because our options are quite limited. And with current (gesticulates wildly at everything on the planet) events, it&#x27;s downright terrifying because I&#x27;m afraid there&#x27;s going to be a *lot* more people in similar circumstances, and the double-whammy is it could easily be our donors also joining us in poverty.</p><p>In other words, I&#x27;m afraid that not only could this cause an exponential strain on the Mutual Aid community, the funds available could simultaneously begin to dry up, further diluting our chances of avoiding disaster.</p><p>Anyway.. I&#x27;m babbling and doomering unnecessarily again so I will attempt to place the focus back on the primary matter at hand, which is that regrettably we have failed to become self-sufficient yet again over the course the previous calendar month.</p><p>Hours at work still remain low enough to doom us financially yet high enough to drain me of the will to live or even bother performing basic hygiene, let alone look for a second job and by extension try to once again figure out how to juggle two menial entry-level jobs who both expect you to be available from Open to Close, seven days a week. Further altering my availability risks even *less* hours at my current job, which makes the monumental hassle of securing a second job seem less than ideal.</p><p>I had to drop a shift because my allergies were so bad I was basically sedated by Benadryl for two days straight. My partner had to drop a couple of shifts when his father was hospitalized again due to complications from a fall and head injury some months ago, and my partner was far too emotionally fragile with that happening to be at work.</p><p>Of course the loss of these shifts has not been kind to our bank account. I truly, truly wish we didn&#x27;t have to keep doing this. Yet I must for my partner and our codependent border collie. Not to mention I think our little clan sort of owe it to the Mutual Aid community to not give up, and to make it seem like the staggering amounts of generosity were a worthwhile investment to help us. I&#x27;ve disappointed far too many people in my life. I want to start doing the opposite of that.</p><p>Hopefully I haven&#x27;t disappointed you too much, my dear pocket friends.</p><p>I&#x27;m up way past my bedtime and the letters are starting to swirl around. Unfortunately since I&#x27;m once again just siphoning everything I possibly can from my daily pay advances, I don&#x27;t know for certain what those amounts will be until the day after my shift. Plus I&#x27;m chronically disorganized and trying to adjust to having a legit bank account instead of just venmo or the like. I fucked up and accumulated a couple of overdraft fees because I lost track of pending charges.</p><p>At the moment, I&#x27;m confident we&#x27;re at least $500 in the red for rent and sadly that&#x27;s an amount that might need to be revised upwards. I&#x27;m struggling not to just mentally shut down thinking about how *much* upwards.</p><p>Please forgive me for once again asking for help.</p><p>If you&#x27;re willing AND able, please boost and if possible donate. If you can&#x27;t donate, *do NOT feel guilty* for being in the same boat as us. Your feelings about it are valid but rest assured you needn&#x27;t feel bad.</p><p>Venmo: <a href="https://venmo.com/thegizmotwins" rel="nofollow"><span class="invisible">https://</span>venmo.com/thegizmotwins</a><br>Cashapp: <a href="https://cash.app/$thegizmotwins" rel="nofollow"><span class="invisible">https://</span>cash.app/$thegizmotwins</a><br>PP: <a href="https://www.paypal.com/paypalme/gizmo1982" rel="nofollow" class="ellipsis" title="www.paypal.com/paypalme/gizmo1982"><span class="invisible">https://</span><span class="ellipsis">www.paypal.com/paypalme/gizmo1</span><span class="invisible">982</span></a><br>GFM: <a href="https://gofund.me/12171be3" rel="nofollow"><span class="invisible">https://</span>gofund.me/12171be3</a></p><p><a href="/tags/solidarity/" rel="tag">#Solidarity</a> <a href="/tags/bpd/" rel="tag">#BPD</a> <a href="/tags/ptsd/" rel="tag">#PTSD</a> <a href="/tags/poverty/" rel="tag">#Poverty</a> <a href="/tags/mentalillness/" rel="tag">#MentalIllness</a> <span class="h-card"><a href="https://ovo.st/club/mutualaid" class="u-url mention" rel="nofollow noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">@<span>mutualaid</span></a></span></p>

<p>There are two big features in <a href="https://github.com/toddsundsted/ktistec/compare/c460d486...c06caebe" rel="nofollow">release v3.1.3</a> of Ktistec: auto-approve followers and a new image viewer.</p><p>Auto-approve followers is conceptually simple (&quot;the server automatically sends an Accept activity when it receives a Follow activity&quot;) but it required extensive changes to some of the oldest code in the codebase: the inboxes and outboxes controllers. I refactored inbox and outbox side-effect processing into independent services, which made it possible to support side-effects like auto-approve follow (and also auto-follow back), without having to go through the controllers.</p><p>A more significant change for me personally was replacing the lightGallery image gallery (an external dependency) with my own implementation. It&#x27;s not as slick, and not as full of features—I wrote it in two days—but it is fully free software, and that&#x27;s important to me.</p><p>Added</p><p>Add admin page for managing OAuth access tokens.<br>Add support for auto-approve followers. (fixes <a href="/tags/26/" rel="tag">#26</a>)<br>Add support for auto-follow back.</p><p>Fixed</p><p>Prevent triggering actor refresh when user is anonymous.</p><p>Changed</p><p>Replace &quot;lightgallery&quot; dependency with custom image viewer.<br>Set OAuth access token expiry to 30 days (previously expired after 24 hours).<br>Refactor inbox and outbox processing into dedicated processor services.</p><p>The OAuth changes set the groundwork for better support of the Mastodon API and the Fediverse clients that depend on it. Stay tuned!</p><p><a href="/tags/ktistec/" rel="tag">#ktistec</a> <a href="/tags/fediverse/" rel="tag">#fediverse</a> <a href="/tags/activitypub/" rel="tag">#activitypub</a> <a href="/tags/crystallang/" rel="tag">#crystallang</a></p>