> I dont post on federated networks yet but I would rather share in my principles with those willing to listen than to throw up my hands and share my stuff everywhere.
This is an interesting view point and I agree and disagree. I imagine people are split. There are clearly people who put stuff on the web and want to get it into all eyeballs whether those eyeballs want it or not. I see the logic and appeal behind that: if you really believe in what you're writing, why wouldn't you want everyone to have a read? If you don't want everyone to read what you're writing, why put it on the Web of all places?
In reality though, the older I get, the more fear I have about posting online, especially on a personal website, through fear of being rude, or imposing, or coming across like some sort of narcissistic influencer. It feels like a sign of self awareness and maturity to believe that not everyone wants to read what you have to say.
>if you really believe in what you're writing, why wouldn't you want everyone to have a read?
I write in public so that there’s a time stamped publicly accessible record of my opinion that I can reference quickly for people I’m communicating with. It’s like a public ledger
I don’t really care how many people read my writing because it’s illegible to 99.999999% of humans (I’d guess there are about 7000 ppl on earth who could grok my work). Not everything is for everyone. Just because I publish doesn’t mean I want everyone to read my stuff
Yeah, I agree with your approach entirely - it feels like the mature option compared to the young influencer view that you want everyone to read your opinion.
Seeing it as a public ledger, rather than a platform or podium means you might not even want people to read it, but you do need everyone to be able to for it to act as a valid public ledger.
I feel conflicted with this view. It feels partially like something social media giants would advocate, the idea that their little social media platform is some special community where people are different and normal open web rules shouldn't apply.
I feel the philosophy of posting on the web and hosting your own website is that the web is the community with which I want to share my thoughts. If I just wanted to share my thoughts with just one platform/community, I would go and just post it on that one platform, I wouldn't go to the trouble of running a website.
I get that it's important that there's safe spaces, and some communities should be like that (essentially, private but online) but that view should be the minority and exception for edge cases, rather than the default view of all different websites or platforms.
I also find it ends up looking rather spammy. A blog article is written, and then it's posted everywhere in an attempt to drive traffic to it. It's often hard to see a difference between someone practicing POSSE and someone spamming in an attempt to help their SEO. This is especially true of 100% of their posts are just links off to the blog, where they treat all the social platforms like alternate RSS protocols.
A social networking site designed around POSSE may be different, where you can subscribed to your blog as a means to post, and the post shows up as the RSS would in a feed reader. This way people don't have to click through to read what was posted, or can at least read what is above the fold. This can be rounded out with comments, one-off posting, and maybe some standard way to write a blog post that references another, for a proper linked/threaded response for more thought out and thoughtful replies than a short comment.
I fully accept that my view may be dated to the point of having inverse consequences (maybe in line with what you're saying). But, there's just no getting around the feeling I get when I see the exact same post, in the exact same context, showing up on every platform I use. There's just no way that can't feel like spam. And when I do it, it feels like I'm spamming people, too. Having come up in the blogging days of 2003 on, I'm just sort of programmed that way now. But, like I said above, I get why people do it.
Side note: It's such a bizarre thing that the platform you're on matters at all. Not without reason (they all have a vibe now, that's basically politically informed). But, back then, you were just on whatever blog platform was the easiest. The platform was more or less invisible (or at least ignored).
I definitely relate to that feeling. I miss the days of forum signatures which felt like the perfect solution.
And funny you should say that side note, I also agree. A relevant observation/recollection a few days ago:
> there was a time where social media platforms were defined by their features, Vine was short video, snapchat was disappearing pictures, twitter was short status posts etc. but now they're all bloated messes that try do everything.
I feel blogging was one of the main platform and the main feature in the early 2000s. There was a period from mid 2000s to mid 2010s where there was a separation between platforms and features, and now they've reconsolidated into all platforms having all features... I think? I don't really follow/use social media much, I've not used TikTok but I guess it might break the cycle.
> Due to that, and because it's a popular an open source alternative, I want to be able to recommend it and be enthusiastic about it. The problem for me is that the development practices of the people that are working on it are suboptimal at best;
This is my experience with most AI tools that I spend more than a few weeks with. It's happening so often it's making me question my own judgement: "if everything smells of shit, check your own shoes." I left professional software engineering a couple of years ago, and I don't know how much of this is also just me losing touch with the profession, or being an old man moaning about how we used to do it better.
It reminds me of social media: there was a time where social media platforms were defined by their features, Vine was short video, snapchat was disappearing pictures, twitter was short status posts etc. but now they're all bloated messes that try do everything.
The same looks to be happening with AI and agent software. They start off as defined by one features, and then become messes trying to implement the latest AI approach (skills, or tools, or functions, or RAG, or AGENTS.md, or claws etc. etc.)
I can fully see pi doing the same. It talks about a whole bunch of stuff it proudly doesn't do. New techniques will come around still, and if pi adopts them, it becomes bloated/unusable/unusable like opencode, and if it doesn't, then it falls behind SoTA and gets overtaken by next-big-thing.
I think shitty AI software is a product of being in a bubble and the pressure to move fast and stay relevant. Just like there was a bunch of shitty blockchain software, and a bunch of shitty VR software, and a bunch of shitty mobile app software when they were booming.
I don't think pi has been around long enough to prove it's immune to this yet.
I think modern overlay networks can navigate CG-NAT fine now. Other options include free cloudflare, or just a wireguard tunnel to a free tier VPS. On a similar point, I don't think enough people talk about how most western home internet connections now also have similar bandwidth as entire datacentres had in the 2000's too.
We still take for granted how hard basic web technology is for people who don't consider themselves technology people though.
I'm all for personal website and these sentiments which regularly come up here around self hosting. This one seems a bit disproportionately confused and angry though.
If we're going to have any large aggregation or social media businesses where individuals trade data ownership for convenience, being able to put your opening hours and rates on the the internet without having to figure out how to have a website seems like the optimal use case.
I think we should aim for a sensible mid ground where social media provides just the things it provided before around 2011, like updates and communication with people you know and want to interact with already.
An "all personal websites" web that OP is calling for is just pushing the exclusion they feel onto the people they're complaining about.
We should have websites. We should also use the appropriate tool for the appropriate job, and running your own website isn't the best tool if you just want to get your business rates and opening hours on the web.
> Really, LLMs are kind of like convenient, wildly inefficient proxies for useful processes. But I'm not convinced they should often end up as permanent fixtures of logical pipelines. Unless you're making a chat bot, I guess.
I think I agree with this. It's made me realise LLMs are great for prototyping processes in the same way that 3D printers are great at prototyping physical things. They make it quick and easy to get something close enough to see the unforeseen problems a proper solution might have.
3d printing is a great analog because there are so many critical considerations that are often missed or can't be accounted for in the prototype, but, it's alright because it's a prototype. The strain testing, durability, manufacturing at scale; none of that is properly addressed. Those might involved some serious, expensive challenges, too. But it's alright because you've got something in your hand that informs you whether or not those challenges are worth contending with. I really love this about LLMs and 3d printing.
This feels like a ridiculous thread that captures everything wrong with modern Javascript ecosystem.
It's grown into a product of cults and attempted zingers rather than pragmatic or sensible technical discussions about what we should and shouldn't expect to be able to do with an individual programming language.
edit: to clarify, I assume there needs to be a basical level of comprehension of programming languages to debate the nuance of one, and if you can't think of a single reason as to why someone would want types removed, that's a possible indicator you don't have that necessary level yet, and I think the most effective way for you to learn that is to Google it. Sorry for coming across as rude if you genuinely don't know this stuff.
If you already know many reasons as to why types would be removed, then it seems disingenuous to ask that question, other than to make the point that you feel types shouldn't be stripped. If you think that, say it, and explain why you think they shouldn't be stripped.
The current state of Javascript is you _have_ to remove types; I was pointing out I can think of reasons why I sometimes wouldn't want to. (Admittedly in a glib manor; though on this site many prefer that to four paragraphs)
I really like solutions in this space, and this is quite nice. Seeing people try create solutions like this really tickles my brain a lot. Even if I think more into it and conclude it has catastrophic issues, I still really get a weird kick learning about novel decentralised networks. I really can't explain it. Fancy combinations of encryption and decentralisation just really do it for me, to an abnormal and uncomfortable extent. Hopefully someone else relates to this.
Anyway, I really like this idea, it's cool. When I think about this one though, I feel there's too much friction in the follow/unfollow process. Having unfollowing requiring reenecrypting and rebuilding the entire website for everyone seems cumbersome. It's not a killer in itself, but combined with this:
> If the original post is inaccessible (e.g. the viewer doesn’t follow the author), the reply is hidden entirely. A user only sees replies from people they follow — this is the spam prevention mechanism.
I think this is going to prevent it from scaling in any desirable way. I know it's not intended to scale, and is targetted at smaller freinds networks, not influencers, but again, even small friendship networks grow complex, and I can see the experience on S@t turning into the worst parts of activitypub where you can only read half of the interesting replies because not being friends, and it being a pain to then become mutual friends.
But, I really, really do like that s@t feels like a combination of RSS, activity pub and static sites, having a browser heavy client is interesting to.
It does feel a bit like s@t wants stuff to be easily locked down between a dynamic list of friends though, and it feels a bit weird to have the foundational tech of such a protocol be static sites, which by definition make it hard to lock stuff down to a dynamic list of friends. Hmmmm, I really do love/hate static site architecture
This is an interesting view point and I agree and disagree. I imagine people are split. There are clearly people who put stuff on the web and want to get it into all eyeballs whether those eyeballs want it or not. I see the logic and appeal behind that: if you really believe in what you're writing, why wouldn't you want everyone to have a read? If you don't want everyone to read what you're writing, why put it on the Web of all places?
In reality though, the older I get, the more fear I have about posting online, especially on a personal website, through fear of being rude, or imposing, or coming across like some sort of narcissistic influencer. It feels like a sign of self awareness and maturity to believe that not everyone wants to read what you have to say.
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