⁂ Article

Everything we build sits on standards

An example of the #geekproblem is the refusal, or failure, to engage seriously with standards. In tech, as in life, nothing exists in isolation. Every app, every protocol, every line of code rests on a foundation of inherited agreements: protocols, languages, schemas, and governance systems. These are the invisible scaffolding of the digital world, we call them standards, and whether people like it or not, everything you’re building is already part of an industrial web of standards.

Now, […]

⁂ Article

Everything we build sits on standards

An example of the #geekproblem is the refusal, or failure, to engage seriously with standards. In tech, as in life, nothing exists in isolation. Every app, every protocol, every line of code rests on a foundation of inherited agreements: protocols, languages, schemas, and governance systems. These are the invisible scaffolding of the digital world, we call them standards, and whether people like it or not, everything you’re building is already part of an industrial web of standards.

Now, […]

Tim Chambers
just small circles 🕊
Tim Chambers and 1 other boosted

Socialhome v0.22.0 released, with a completely new UI!

This is a massive milestone for the #Socialhome project, one that could not have been possible without the hard work of @alain@jase.social. If you have followed the Socialhome project, you'll know that Alain has been responsible for most of the development of project in the recent years. This includes rewriting the #federation library to ensure #ActivityPub support is first class. More recently Alain has taken the challenge of rewriting the frontend, which has fallen into a rather poor state over the years.

The new UI work is actually a coordination of two people working many years apart. Way back years ago @lightone@mastodon.xyz made some UI designs for a new Socialhome UI (thank you! <3). While the designs were not implemented for years, they were not forgotten. In 2023 Alain jumped to the challenge and started the full UI rewrite of the Socialhome frontend. This UI has now matured into a state that it is good for daily usage - which is the main focus of this release!

Currently, a Socialhome installation will still default to the old UI. If you do want to try out the new UI for example on socialhome.network, go to the account settings and toggle the "New UI" flag. Going back is also easy, should the new UI cause unforeseen issues (please do report!).

If you are a server admin, see the new UI installation instructions for how to add the new UI to your instance.

This is not all! The releases of v0.21.0 and v0.22.0 also contain a bunch of other changes and fixes. Most notably;

  • ActivityPub profiles are now richer, including bio and a larger picture, in addition to an avatar.
  • Many new API's to support the new UI, including session authentication, search, media upload, content fetching over uuid, profile organize and profile settings.
  • Whoosh has been replaced with Xapian as a search index backend.

See the full changelogs. Additionally, the federation library has received a ton of changes and fixes which can be found here.

Also, last but not least, we moved from GitLab to Codeberg. Check out the new repositories.

Installing and updating

We recommend using the Docker images (amd64/arm64).

Notes on how to use the Docker images can be found in the docs.

What is Socialhome?

Socialhome is best described as a federated personal profile with social networking functionality. Users can create rich content using Markdown. All content can be pinned to the user profile and all content will federate to contacts in the federated social web. Federation happens using the ActivityPub and Diaspora protocols.

Please check the official site for more information about features. Naturally, the official site is a Socialhome profile itself.

Try Socialhome?

If you want to try Socialhome first before trying to install it, register at https://socialhome.network and then ping us with a comment on the user name chosen to get the account approved. You can also request account approval in the chat room. This unfortunately approval step is due to spammers.

Contribute

Do you want to work on a Django and VueJS powered social network server? Join in the fun! We have easy to follow development environment setup documentation and a friendly chat room for questions.

#socialhome #federation #fediverse #activitypub #diaspora #django #vuejs

Socialhome v0.22.0 released, with a completely new UI!

This is a massive milestone for the #Socialhome project, one that could not have been possible without the hard work of @alain@jase.social. If you have followed the Socialhome project, you'll know that Alain has been responsible for most of the development of project in the recent years. This includes rewriting the #federation library to ensure #ActivityPub support is first class. More recently Alain has taken the challenge of rewriting the frontend, which has fallen into a rather poor state over the years.

The new UI work is actually a coordination of two people working many years apart. Way back years ago @lightone@mastodon.xyz made some UI designs for a new Socialhome UI (thank you! <3). While the designs were not implemented for years, they were not forgotten. In 2023 Alain jumped to the challenge and started the full UI rewrite of the Socialhome frontend. This UI has now matured into a state that it is good for daily usage - which is the main focus of this release!

Currently, a Socialhome installation will still default to the old UI. If you do want to try out the new UI for example on socialhome.network, go to the account settings and toggle the "New UI" flag. Going back is also easy, should the new UI cause unforeseen issues (please do report!).

If you are a server admin, see the new UI installation instructions for how to add the new UI to your instance.

This is not all! The releases of v0.21.0 and v0.22.0 also contain a bunch of other changes and fixes. Most notably;

  • ActivityPub profiles are now richer, including bio and a larger picture, in addition to an avatar.
  • Many new API's to support the new UI, including session authentication, search, media upload, content fetching over uuid, profile organize and profile settings.
  • Whoosh has been replaced with Xapian as a search index backend.

See the full changelogs. Additionally, the federation library has received a ton of changes and fixes which can be found here.

Also, last but not least, we moved from GitLab to Codeberg. Check out the new repositories.

Installing and updating

We recommend using the Docker images (amd64/arm64).

Notes on how to use the Docker images can be found in the docs.

What is Socialhome?

Socialhome is best described as a federated personal profile with social networking functionality. Users can create rich content using Markdown. All content can be pinned to the user profile and all content will federate to contacts in the federated social web. Federation happens using the ActivityPub and Diaspora protocols.

Please check the official site for more information about features. Naturally, the official site is a Socialhome profile itself.

Try Socialhome?

If you want to try Socialhome first before trying to install it, register at https://socialhome.network and then ping us with a comment on the user name chosen to get the account approved. You can also request account approval in the chat room. This unfortunately approval step is due to spammers.

Contribute

Do you want to work on a Django and VueJS powered social network server? Join in the fun! We have easy to follow development environment setup documentation and a friendly chat room for questions.

#socialhome #federation #fediverse #activitypub #diaspora #django #vuejs

⁂ Article

What should be closed? And what should never be?

A conversation about ideology, sociology, and the #openweb. Let’s start with a basic liberal framework:

“Most social interactions should happen in the open. Some personal interactions should remain private.”

Seems reasonable, right? That’s the position many of us think we agree on. Yet when we look at how our technology, and by extension, our society, is being built, that balance is totally out of whack. Today, more and more of life is CLOSED:

Closed apps.

Closed data.

Closed […]

⁂ Article

What should be closed? And what should never be?

A conversation about ideology, sociology, and the #openweb. Let’s start with a basic liberal framework:

“Most social interactions should happen in the open. Some personal interactions should remain private.”

Seems reasonable, right? That’s the position many of us think we agree on. Yet when we look at how our technology, and by extension, our society, is being built, that balance is totally out of whack. Today, more and more of life is CLOSED:

Closed apps.

Closed data.

Closed […]

@strypey Dennis Schubert and the like, decided that "public is public", allow search engines to crawl public posts -by design-, and thus all these posts go to Google search and other search enginers, in a distributed environment, where nothing can be deleted or with extreme difficulty, including diffamatory comments. Where posts trending on #Diaspora; based on hashtags come on up on top in google search results, this is harassement, this bullying, this unacceptable, this is not democratic. #GDPR

While looking for something else, I just found a blog post about Diaspora I wrote in 2012;

archive.is/3X1NM

But what I was really pleased to stumble upon is the post I wrote in 2019 about replacing FarceBook;

archive.ph/L74hs

This one is definitely going to get an update-and-repost on the new Disintermedia blog.

EDIT: replaced links, hopefully this won't slashdot archive.today sites ...

There is no mention of me being a geany pig or a lab rat on my French passport... #France#EU

So basically, in the name of decentralization, a small group of people, that have not been elected, decided that nothing could be deleted online (because they let GAFAMs scrap their data while being against it????). That's called democracy? I don't think so. #Diaspora #fediverse#GDPR#rightToBeForgotten #threads#Meta#FB#X ...

And Dennis Schubert is interviewed by Ars Technica, is this a joke?

Mozilla is pro-Ai, there is an AI chat on the web browser now, and this guy Dennis Schubert, the techlead of #Diaspora, is working at #Mozilla as far as I remember. And he is so against deleting anything, leaving all public "public is public", and against blocking GAFAMs' scrapers?? (he was in 2017, 2018, ... I remember)..

(Mozilla which actually helped this project.)

So I am pretty sure, there is a real problem here with conflict of interests..

#ethics #fediverse #dataharvesting

There is no mention of me being a geany pig or a lab rat on my French passport... #France#EU

So basically, in the name of decentralization, a small group of people, that have not been elected, decided that nothing could be deleted online (because they let GAFAMs scrap their data while being against it????). That's called democracy? I don't think so. #Diaspora #fediverse#GDPR#rightToBeForgotten #threads#Meta#FB#X ...

And Dennis Schubert is interviewed by Ars Technica, is this a joke?