I'm going to start doing some user research for #ActivityBot. I'd like to pay participants £20 / €20 for an hour of their time.
This has to be a voucher (no cash or cash-like cards) so which would you prefer?
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Woo! It's now official 😊
I'm getting some grant funding to further develop #ActivityBot.
If you have any feature requests or suggestions - or just want to build your own ActivityPub bot - check out https://gitlab.com/edent/activity-bot
I'm going to try and keep a record of all the bugs, errors, and inconsistencies I've reported in #ActivityPub and #Mastodon documentation.
First up, how big are the limits on what you can federate?
Mastodon lists some limits in KB/MB, but others are just raw numbers. That might make sense for an ASCII world - but emoji complicate everything.
Next is slightly more trivial - a broken internal link in the Mastodon documentation.
I think the #RFC9421 HTTP Signature algorithm should be explicitly included in #Mastodon's requests.
Feedback welcome - especially those explaining politely why I'm a wrong about this.
https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/29905#issuecomment-5440336919
Hey, #Mastodon and #ActivityPub developers.
How much skew do you allow before rejecting a message?
I've just received something where the header is signed:
Mon, 31 Aug 2026 20:09:54 GMT
But the ActivityPub message was published:
Mon, 31 Aug 2026 19:58:36 GMT
That's a little over 10 minutes. Is that too much? Should I not care as long as the signature validates?
A weird #ActivityPub message from #Frendica.
Signed on 2026-09-01
Published on 2026-03-02
That's a skew of six months! The message type is "Undo" - so they're undoing a like they sent in March.
Is there *really* a worry about accepting requests like this? Given the message has been signed, what risk is there to replay attacks?
Bug report at https://github.com/friendica/friendica/issues/16150
@Edent wait, why would you even care if the publish date and the signature date are skewed? They are two different pieces of information that don't have to match.
For example your server could have been down for a day and a task queue might have been retrying to send you the message which was created by a different part of the sending pipeline
@Edent Well deserved! That thing was really useful to me while figuring out how ActivityPub all fits together. Nice one.
@Edent Yah. Congratulations
@Edent i guess i can find the MoU somewhere in nlnet ... is the reasoning attached?
@Edent congrats, that's awesome! 🎉
@Edent I voted books, but https://uk.bookshop.org/gift_cards rather than Kobo perhaps?
@Edent I voted books, but https://uk.bookshop.org/gift_cards rather than Kobo perhaps?
@Edent the Office for National Statistics, when they do surveys, give you one of these vouchers -- https://www.pluxee.uk/products/evouchers/ -- which the recipient can then choose from a bunch of different stores and restaurants and such. I turned mine into an M&S one one time and had a lovely dinner :)
No idea whether you have to buy 10,000 at a time or something, mind, or whether it'd work for you, but I found it useful, and the ONS presumably (hopefully?) did at least some due diligence on them being OK :)
@Edent Amazon voucher might have the widest appeal, unless you prefer not to support that company
@Edent een kadobon, maar let op geldigheidsduur: https://blog.gifty.nl/cadeaubonnen-wat-je-moet-weten-over-geldigheid-en-vervaldatum/
@wiert I don't really understand what you're trying to say, sorry. It is up to a recipient if they don't want to spend it in time.
@Edent sorry, thought you were Dutch. People are bad at remembering expiry dates, especially when they are years in the future. Luckily, there are still a few Dutch gift cards that don't expire.
@Edent guessing something electronic to keep your logistics reasonable? How about https://www.nationalbooktokens.com/ (covers £ and €) which would cover physical books (and maybe some eBooks options?)
@Edent Does GoG have vouchers?
@Edent Sorry for straying a bit from the actual question but I'd participate without compensation. Also if you insist on money changing owner how about having an option to designate a donation instead of personally receiving compensation?
If those are somehow not compatible with the procedure excuse my disruption. 😅
@kraftner donating to charity becomes a bit complex tax wise - especially if the charity doesn't have a presence in the UK.
As I'm receiving money to run this, I think it's only fair I compensate participants for their time.
@Edent Oh sure, I never meant it wouldn't be fair to compensate it. In fact I think it is great and the right thing to do since obviously not everyone has the privilege to offer an hour of their time for free. And I of course didn't think about the complications of tax. 🙄
So, sorry for the noise, I just voted. 😇
