Notices by Christine Lemmer-Webber (cwebber@octodon.social), page 41

Apparently Instagram is adding a data export feature for GDPR-compliance... So if you're building an Instagram-esque ActivityPub platform, there might be some value in adding an import function :thounking:

Yesterday morning I heard a bird singing and was like "Aw sweet, spring at last!"

Today I'd throw rocks at this fucker outside my window if it'd stop it from chirping

Congrats to Diogo Cordeiro on getting a GSoC internship this summer to add ActivityPub to GNU Social!
https://summerofcode.withgoogle.com/projects/#4717538026455040

And thanks to GNU Social maintainer mmn-o for mentoring!

I've gotten some questions: does it really make sense to plan to build a distributed game system as part of the fediverse? Will that actually pay off or is it just one big gamble?

I think:
- Having things be fun for players/users may make them more likely to join. People want to build things together. May help alleviate the "join a federated social network to talk about federated social networks" problem
- Having things be fun for me is good too :)

btrfs FAQ: "Is btrfs stable? Maybe." https://btrfs.wiki.kernel.org/index.php/FAQ#Is_btrfs_stable.3F

Secure Scuttlebutt uses nodejs' rendering of json as its canonicalization format???!!!? 😱 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16879954

Just one person for #followfriday today: @Are0h, whose voice I always appreciate in the fediverse even (especially) when saying things that push me out of my privileged comfort zone. Also just a very kind individual!

Plus they recently converted from Mongodb to Postgres so they're clearly heading down the right technical path ;)

now if I could only convince everyone why it's vital that they start programming in lisps

I have noticed that recent news and political events have lead people to taking the things I'm saying more seriously instead of dismissing as cute/tinfoil-hattery #cassandracomplex

I think I'm going to be able to get distributed garbate collection to work in Spritely's actors system.

Oh yeah, Spritely's actor model (which maybe I should have it be its own library) should be able to have actors communicating and doing computation across machines, Erlang and E style. Not just on like an ActivityPub level (that will come a level up)... more of a language level.

If you're willing to feel fairly freaked out, this article on Palantir is... a heck of a thing https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-palantir-peter-thiel/

Oh yeah, the MUD 8sync video is back up again on https://www.gnu.org/software/8sync/

One thing we need to do is better document how to fold open world systems into closed world systems (eg people using highly structured DBs). Totally doable, but underdocumented.

I think the biggest challenge people are having with ActivityPub is that they are, for the first time, generally encountering a "structured open world system" for the first time.