Keep the momentum going for free open source projects in this week's Follow Friday by giving your support with contributions, boosts and follows.

adamsdesk.com/posts/discover-f…

- LÖVR @lovr
A framework for rapidly building immersive 3D experiences.
- NV Access @NVAccess
A screen reader.
- BiznisBox @biznisbox
A web app for managing invoices, clients, & payments.
- BookStack @bookstack
Documentation system.

#FollowFriday #fediverse #FreeSoftware #OpenSource #ff #oss #foss #floss

I made a thing to help me find RSS feeds, and I really liked it. So I made it prettier so you can use it too, if RSS feeds are your thing.

As it turns out, in my corner of the fediverse there’s a ton of them…

rss-is-dead.lol

#rss #fediverse

Good morning #Fediverse!

Hope the day is well for everyone. Let’s start it off with our #KoffeeWithKyle chat and see what’s on the agenda.

For me, it’s just the usual day job stuff. I also am having to up the resources for the #AllThingsTech blog as it is currently down because we underestimated the interest we’d get.

Later today will be relaxing and working on week 3 of school.

#GoodMorning #HappyWednesday #AIArt

Just realized one of my favorite place is the perfect Fediverse IRL café

• Lofi hip hop music
• Multicultural
• Random mismatched furniture
• A copy of “Das Kapital” on display
• Library with free to take books
• Gender neutral bathroom
• "Barista antifascista" stickers

#Fediverse #Mastodon #Berlin

Friends of the #BSDCafe and the #Fediverse,
Good morning and have a great week!

#Photography #Photo #Sunrise #Picture #Pic #PhotoMonday #FotoMontag #Sea

Good morning and happy Sunday #Fediverse

How is everyone doing today and what do we all have planned for today?

It's very possible the wife and I might head to the mall today, but not sure. We definitely need to catch up on some TV shows that we are behind on, so maybe that too will happen today as we keep putting it off.

Other than, just a relaxing day hopefully.

#MorningMoments #GoodMorning #HappySunday

Regular Fediverse federation check.

According to @fedidb (fedidb.org) 22,37% of monthly active Fediverse users are currently on mastodon.social.

I very much welcome the upcoming Mastodon feature that closes registrations if the mods and admins abandon the server (no activity for a week), but when do we finally close servers automatically that have 10k active users?

I'll post about this somewhat regularly under #FederationCheck, but if someone wants to automate that with a bot feel free.

#Fediverse #FediverseMeta #federation #MastodonSocial #Mastodon

Are you seeing spam? A poll

The fediverse is dealing with a major spam attack -- Heise has some coverage (in German).

But not everybody is seeing spam. Are you? If so how much?

@fediversenews #fediverse #spam

PS: if you are seeing spam, there's also afollowon poll asking where

Mastodon: Spamwelle zeigt Schwächen auf und weckt Sorge vor schlimmerer Methode

Seit Tagen klagen einige User auf Mastodon über eine Spamwelle. Der liegen automatisierte Angriffe auf unzureichend geschützte Teile des Fediverse zugrunde.

^{Martin Holland (heise online)}

• No spam -- lucky me! (83%, 10 votes)
• Just a bit (16%, 2 votes)
• A lot (0%, 0 votes)
• So much that I'm almost ready to log off (0%, 0 votes)

Internationalise The Fediverse
shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/inter…

We live in the future now. It is OK to use Unicode everywhere.

It seems bizarre to me that modern Internet services sometimes "forget" that there's a world outside the Anglosphere. Some people have the temerity to speak foreign languages! And some of those languages have accents on their letters!! Even worse, some don't use English letters at all!!!

A decade ago, I was miffed that GitHub only supported some ASCII characters in its project names. There's no technical reason why your repo can't be called "ഹലോ വേൾഡ്".

Similarly, I'm frustrated that Mastodon (the largest ActivityPub service) doesn't allow Unicode usernames and has resisted efforts to change.

So I built a small ActivityPub server which publishes content from an Actor called @你好@i18n.viii.fi - it is only a demo account, but it works!

Some ActivityPub clients report that they are able to follow it and receive messages from it. Others - like Mastodon - simply can't see anything from it. Take a look at the replies on Mastodon to see which services work. You can also see some of its posts on the Fediverse.

What Does The Fox Spec Say?

The ActivityPub specification says:

Building an international base of users is important in a federated network.
Internationalization

I can't find anything in the specifications which limits what languages a username can be written in. But there are a few clues scattered about.

The user's @ name is defined by preferredUsername which is:

A short username which may be used to refer to the actor, with no uniqueness guarantees.
4.1 Actor objects

There's nothing in there about what scripts it can contain. However, later on, the spec says:

Properties containing natural language values, such as name, preferredUsername, or summary, make use of natural language support defined in ActivityStreams.
4. Actors

So it is expected that a preferred username could be written in multiple scripts. Which implies that the default need not be limited to A-Z0-9.

The ActivityStreams specification talks about language mapping.

Finally, the ActivityPub specification has some examples on non-Latin text in names.

So, I think that it is acceptable for usernames to be written in a variety of non-Latin scripts.

But What About...?

There are usually a few objections to "Unicode Everywhere" zealots like me. I'd like to forestall any arguments.

What about homograph attacks?

Well, what about them? ASCII has plenty of similar looking characters. I doubt most people would notice when a capital i is replaced by a lower L - and vice-versa. Similarly the kerning issue of an r and n looking like an m is well known. Are mixed language homographs more dangerous? I don't think so.

What if people make names that can't be typed?

Well, what if they do? Maybe not being found by people who can't type your language is a feature, not a bug. But, anyway, clients can let users search for other people, or copy and paste their names.

What about weird "Zalgo" text?

It is up to a client to decide how they want to render text input. The "problems" of strange Unicode combinations are well known. This is not a hard computer-science problem.

What about bi-directional text?

The spec makes clear this is allowed.

Do people even want a username in their own script?

I have no evidence for this. But I bet you'd get pretty frustrated if you had to switch keyboard just to type your own name, wouldn't you? In any case, why can't I have a username of @😉

What's Next?

If you build ActivityPub software, give some thought to the billions of people who don't have names which easily fit into ASCII.

If your software can see @你好@i18n.viii.fi and its posts, please let me know.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/02/inter…

#ActivityPub #fediverse #i18n #mastodon #unicode

I'd like to run an instance with non-ASCII usernames · Issue #8417 · mastodon/mastodon

Mastodon usernames are currently restricted to Latin characters. I'd like to have the option to run an instance which allows usernames like "莎士比亚". I'm not saying that it should be mandatory that e...

^GitHub

Rebuilding FourSquare for ActivityPub using OpenStreetMap
shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/rebui…

I used to like the original FourSquare. The "mayor" stuff was a bit silly, and my friends never left that many reviews, but I loved being able to signal to my friends "I am at this cool museum" or "We're at this pub if you want to meet" or "Spending the day at the park".

So, is there a way to recreate that early Web 2.0 experience with open data and ActivityPub? Let's find out!

This quest is divided into two parts.

1. Get nearby "Points of Interest" (POI) from OpenStreetMap.
2. Share a location on the Fediverse.

OpenStreetMap API

OpenStreetMap is the Wikipedia of maps. It is a freely available resource which anyone can edit (if they're skilled enough).

It also comes with a pretty decent API for querying things. For example, nw["amenity"]({{bbox}}); finds all "amenities" near a specific location.

As you can see, it has highlighted some useful areas - a pharmacy and a pub. But it has ignored other useful locations - the train station and the park. It has also included some things that we may not want - bike parking and a taxi rank.

What API call is needed to get useful locations of of OverPass?

It's possible to specify the type of thing to find using nw["amenity"="restaurant"]; - but adding every single type of thing would quickly end up with a very large query containing hundreds of types.

It is also possible to exclude specific types of places. This retrieves all amenities except for fast food joints:

nw["amenity"]({{bbox}});-nw["amenity"="fast_food"]({{bbox}});

Perhaps one solution is just to return everything and let the user decide if they want to check in to a telephone kiosk or a fire hydrant? That's a bit user-hostile.

Instead, this query returns everything which has a name nw["name"]({{bbox}});

That cuts out any unnamed things - like park benches and car-sharing spots. But it does add named roads and train lines.

It is possible to use filters to exclude results from OverPass. The best that I can come up with is: nw["name"][!"highway"][!"railway"][!"waterway"][!"power"]({{bbox}});

That gets everything which has a name, but isn't a highway or railway or waterway or powerline. It isn't perfect - but it will do!

This is the query which will retrieve the 25 nearest things within 100 metres of a specific latitude and longitude. It includes the name and any other tags, the location, and the OSM ID.

;nw%5B%22name%22%5D%5B%21%22highway%22%5D%5B%21%22railway%22%5D%5B%21%22waterway%22%5D%5B%21%22power%22%5D(around:100,51.5202,-0.1040);out%20center%20qt%2025;]overpass-api.de/api/interpreter?data=[out:json];nw["name"][!"highway"][!"railway"][!"waterway"][!"power"](around:100,51.5202,-0.1040);out center qt 25;

ActivityPub

There's good news and bad news here. Firstly, ActivityStreams (which are subscribed to in ActivityPub) supports the concept of "Place" and "Location".

Once the user has a latitude and longitude, the can share it - along with a message, photo, or anything else.

Something like:

{    "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",    "type": "Note",    "content": "Here in NYC! <a href=\"https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/958999496\">John Lennon's Imagine Mosaic</a>.",    "attachment": [        {            "type": "Image",            "mediaType": "image\/jpeg",            "url": "https:\/\/fastly.4sqi.net\/img\/general\/590x786\/56367_9pxuZJD7d1hgPdaMFcFq1pipvTTMynBJsYcpHH-b8mU.jpg",            "name": "A photo of a mosaic which says 'Imagine'."        }    ],    "location": {        "name": "John Lennon's Imagine",        "type": "Place",        "longitude": 40.77563,        "latitude": -73.97474    }}

It is worth noting that Mastodon doesn't (natively) support location - if you view my repost of that PixelFed post you'll see there's no location metadata attached. That's OK! It just means that the status needs to include human-readable data.

Similarly, Mastodon doesn't support the arrive vocabulary. So this will be limited to a message with a location attached.

Other ActivityPub services do support location.

Putting it all together

Well… that's a job for next week. Probably!

• Building a web site which gets the user's location is easy.
• Getting the data from OverPass should be straightforward.
• Creating an ActivityPub server which can post geotagged notes into the Fediverse might be a little beyond my skillset! Some testing with Darius Kazemi's AP Glitch suggests this should work.

If you'd like to help, please leave a comment.

shkspr.mobi/blog/2024/01/rebui…

#ActivityPub #fediverse #FOURSQUARE #geolocation #OpenStreetMap

Good morning and happy Saturday to all of you here in the #Fediverse

Tell me about your #MorningMoments such as what you hope to accomplish today, what you've already accomplished today or just a funny story of sorts!

I'm not sure what today holds to be honest. Might stay home and relax, might get out of the house for a bit with the wife. We'll figure that out shortly.

#GoodMorning #HappySaturday #AI #Art

Hey #Fediverse! @Seirdy has a 'forever' article: A look at search engines with their own indexes

One thing this article should remind you all about: there are three dominant #search indexes - Google, Bing, and Yandex. And Yandex is dominant outside of English.

But there are real options, and many of them are open source, especially for outside the commercial internet. (I am partial to the MarginaliaSearch project.)

#dev #internet

GitHub - MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch: Internet search engine for text-oriented websites. Indexing the small, old and weird web.

Internet search engine for text-oriented websites. Indexing the small, old and weird web. - GitHub - MarginaliaSearch/MarginaliaSearch: Internet search engine for text-oriented websites. Indexing ...

^GitHub

Have you heard the terms "Fediverse" or "Fedi" and wondered what they are?

I've done a little article that tries to explain what the Fediverse is, and how Mastodon is a part of it:

➡️ fedi.tips/what-is-mastodon-wha…

TL:DR - The Fediverse is a network of thousands of independent social media servers that communicate seamlessly using a common standard. Even totally different kinds of Fediverse server allow users to follow each other.

#FediTips #Fediverse

What is Mastodon? What is the Fediverse? | Fedi.Tips – An Unofficial Guide to Mastodon and the Fediverse

An unofficial guide to using Mastodon and the Fediverse

^fedi.tips

We’ve been floored by everyone’s support for Project Tapestry! Three of the pledge tiers on Kickstarter are already sold out, but there are still several to choose from with rewards ranging from wallpapers to stickers, pins, and even a free year of Wallaroo. At this rate, we’re going to need to come up with some more stretch goals soon! kickstarter.com/projects/iconf…

#ProjectTapestry #Fediverse #RSS #iOSDev

@damtux @erAck @italovignoli

Already had some conversation in the past with #LibreOffice via #Fediverse.

I miss real versions numbers, that are useful on technical level.

That's why i asked, if there is somewhere one... hidden under the hood...

Advertising should maybe be separated from engineering...

But i don't wanted to start a heavy or intense discussion...

Online media can be overwhelming. It's fragmented between countless services, websites, social networks, and apps.

You need an app that weaves together an overview of nearly everything that’s happening across all the different services you follow.

That’s our vision for Project Tapestry, the new Kickstarter we're launching today.

kickstarter.com/projects/iconf…

#ProjectTapestry #Fediverse #iOSDev

Project Tapestry is a universal chronological timeline of your favorite social media services, blogs, RSS feeds & more. All updates in one place, in the order they’re posted with no algorithm deciding what you see or when you see it.

But we need your help! Check out our Kickstarter campaign to learn more about the project and the backer rewards we have planned, then make a pledge to help us turn Project Tapestry into a reality.

kickstarter.com/projects/iconf…

#ProjectTapestry #Fediverse #iOSDev

There's a new free open source Reddit-style platform for the Fediverse called PieFed. It's still fairly early in development, but you can try out a demo server at:

➡️ piefed.social

There's more info on its official website at:

➡️ join.piefed.social

You can follow the project at:

➡️ @piefedadmin

It's lightweight and written to make it easier for developers to contribute. (For any devs reading this, it's written in Python.)

(via @Mrfunkedude)

#FediTips #Fediverse #Reddit

Hi #accessibility mastodon,

I’ve been building a #fediverse web app, “PieFed”, for the last few months and recently put a bit of effort into making it more accessible. It is almost WCAG 2.1 AA compliant now.

However I have no lived experience of using the web with disability so any feedback in this area is most welcome. Please give it a try at piefed.social and let me know what you think, from an accessibility perspective.

Hey #fediverse,

Can y'all Please tell #NPR about #mastodon, #activityPub (and #Matrix!), please?

No really.. They're literally asking for it,

npr.org/2024/01/11/1223974976/…

Ok, I could be reading too much into it, but it really would be nice if maybe I wasn't the only one that mentioned maybe it's something they should look into?

kthx,
- A. Rando

If you browse a lot of #smallweb #indieweb blogs and websites, you should add the StreetPass extenstion to your web browser. It finds #fediverse accounts associated with the blogs you read, and allows you to view the accounts and follow them if you want.

How does it work?

1. Mastodon users verify themselves by adding a custom link to their personal site.
2. StreetPass lets you know when you've found one of these links, and adds them to your StreetPass list.
3. Browse the web as usual. StreetPass will build a list of Mastodon users made up of the websites you go to.

##StreetPass is made possible by open web identity verification standards and is 100% open source!

streetpass.social/

@tvler

Week in Fediverse 2024-01-12

Servers

- lotide v0.14.2
- ActivityPub for WordPress v2.0.0
- Bovine v0.5.7
- snac v2.44
- GoToSocial v0.13.1
- Lemmy v0.19.2
- Hubzilla v8.8.6
- Mitra v2.7.0
- ActivityPods v1.5
- tootik v0.5.14
- Thank you for making Owncast a success in 2023

Clients

- SubwayTooter v5.545
- IceCubesApp v1.10.20
- Voyager v1.34.0
- Lemoa v0.5.1

Tools

- TootSDK v2.0.0
- Lemmy Migrate v1.1.2
- Kbin KES v3.2.0
- Rebuttals on the Fediseer

Protocol

- Activity Streams/Primer/Link type
- ActivityPub editor's draft

Articles

- The Pirate Ship Model of Federated Social Media
- Podcasting news
- How Threads will integrate with the Fediverse
- Last Week in Fediverse – ep 50

-----

#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub

Previous edition: mitra.social/objects/018cdb6f-…

The Pirate Ship Model of Federated Social Media

It’s romantic sailing the high seas with your mates.

^{תַּעֲלֻמוֹת (@taalumot)}

Im Januar 2024 richtete das Aktionsb. neue Soziale Medien einen offenen Brief an die Hochschulrektorenkonferenz (#HRK). Darin werden die #Hochschulen in Deutschland aufgefordert, ihre X/Twitter-Präsenzen zu beenden und stattdessen auf dezentrale Plattformen im #Fediverse wie #Mastodon umzusteigen. Diese seien besser geeignet, den Regeln eines demokratischen und nachhaltigen Miteinanders zu entsprechen. Ich bin Erstunterzeichner des offenen Briefs! Mitmachen. 👇

openpetition.de/petition/onlin…

@neuSoM

The free fediverses should make it easier to move between (and create) instances

Part 5 of Strategies for the Free Fediverse

privacy.thenexus.today/make-it…

There's likely to be a lot of moving between instances as people and instances sort themselves out into the free fediverses and Meta's fediverses -- and today, moving accounts on the fediverse today. There are lots of straightforward ways to improve it, many of which don't even require improvements to the software. And there are also opportunities to make creating, customizing, and connecting instances easier.

#fediverse #fedipact #threads @fediversenews

The free fediverses should make it easier to move between (and create) instances

Part 5 of Strategies for the free fediverses

^{Jon (The Nexus Of Privacy)}

The free fediverses should emphasize networked communities

privacy.thenexus.today/the-fre…

Here's how @lrhodes describes the Networked Communities view:

"instances are valuable for the relations and interactions they facilitate locally AND for their ability to connect you to other parts of the network."

By contrast, @evanprodromou notes that "Big Fedi" advocates typically see instances as typically see the instance as "mostly a dumb pipe." But The Networked Communities view aligns much better with the free fediverses' values – as does the "Social Archipelago" view @noracodes sketches in The Fediverse is Already Dead. Not only that, it's good strategy!

@fediversenews #fediverse #threads #fedipact

The free fediverses should emphasize networked communities

Part 3 of Strategies for the free fediverses

^{Jon (The Nexus Of Privacy)}

The free fediverses should focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

privacy.thenexus.today/free-fe…

(Part 2 of "Strategies for the free fediverses")

#fediverse #mastodon #fedipact @fediversenews

The free fediverses should focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

Part 2 of Strategies for the free fediverses

^{Jon (The Nexus Of Privacy)}

Strategies for the free fediverses

privacy.thenexus.today/strateg…

The fediverse is evolving into different regions

- "Meta's fediverses", federating with Meta to allow communications, potentially using services from Meta such as automated moderation or ad targeting, and potentially harvesting data on Meta's behalf.

- "free fediverses" that reject Meta – and surveillance capitalism more generally

The free fediverses have a lot of advantages over Meta and Meta's fediverses, some of which will be very hard to counter, and clearly have enough critical mass that they'll be just fine.

Here's a set of strategies for the free fediverses to provide a viable alternative to surveillance capitalism. They build on the strengths of today's fediverse at its best – including natural advantages the free fediverses have that Threads and Meta's fediverses will having a very hard time countering – but also are hopefully candid about weaknesses that need to be addressed. It's a long list, so I'll be spreading out over multiple posts; this post currently goes into detail on the first two.

- Opposition to Meta and surveillance capitalism is an appealing position. Highlight it!

- Focus on consent (including consent-based federation), privacy, and safety

- Emphasize "networked communities"

- Support concentric federations of instances and communities

- Consider "transitively defederating" Meta's fediverses (as well as defederating Threads)

- Consider working with people and instances in Meta's fediverses (and Bluesky, Dreamwidth, and other social networks) whose goals and values align with the free fediverses'

- Build a sustainable ecosystem

- Prepare for Meta's (and their allies') attempts to paint the free fediverses in a bad light

- Reduce the dependency on Mastodon

- Prioritize accessibility, which is a huge opportunity

- Commit to anti-fascist, anti-racist, anti-colonial, and pro-LGBTQIA2S+ principles, policies, practices, and norms for the free fediverses

- Organize!

#fediverse #freefediverse #threads @fediverse @fediversenews

Strategies for the free fediverses

How to leverage the free fediverses' many advantages?

^{Jon (The Nexus Of Privacy)}

The free fediverses should support concentric federations of instances

Part 4 of Strategies for the Free Fediverses

privacy.thenexus.today/the-fre…

Here's how @zkat describes caracoles: "you essentially ask to join concentric federations of instances ... with smaller caracoles able to vote to federate with entire other caracoles."

And @ophiocephalic's "fedifams" are a similar idea: "Communities could align into fedifams based on whatever conditions of identity, philosophy or interest are relevant to them. Instances allied into fedifams could share resources and mutually support each other in many way"

The idea's a natural match for community-focused, anti-surveillance capitalism free fediverses, fits in well with the Networked Communities model discussed in part 3, and helps address scalability of consent-based federation discussed in Part 2.

privacy.thenexus.today/the-fre…

#fediverse #fedipact #threads @fediversenews @fediverse

The free fediverses should support concentric federations of instances

Part 4 of Strategies for the free fediverses

^{Jon (The Nexus Of Privacy)}

Under-the-radar late night launch: RSS Parrot is live! It talks like Mastodon, but it doesn't walk like Mastodon. BUT! It will relay any RSS feed straight into your timeline.

Turn Mastodon into your very own feed reader. Follow anything that has an RSS feed and get a toot about new posts.

How? Mention @birb with the address you want to follow.

More details at rss-parrot.net. Boost for visibility :)

#RSS #Atom #FeedReader #Fediverse

Výborná prezentace z #OpenAlt o #Fediverse a #Mastodon od @sesivany

Pokud budete sdílet dál, dovolím si rovnou doplnit:

* Je možné sledovat i hashtagy
* Pro vyhledávání uživatelů je dobrý FediSearch fedisearch.skorpil.cz od @stepan
* V ČR běží také instance #Piráti mastodon.pirati.cz a na vlastním železe

invidious.cz/watch?v=xsfSpCNfg…

People

Search people on Fediverse

^{fedisearch.skorpil.cz}