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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
My insistence on running a from-scratch reimplementation of an activity pub server and libraries is only being reenforced. For a supposedly open protocol, implementing fediverse compatible API's feels a little bit too much like reverse engineering.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
1y
@fastfinge any sufficiently complex protocol or spec will be like that

by "sufficiently complex" i mean "too complex" by the way
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@SRAZKVT Probably has something to do with the big tech urge to make protocols and specs that can do everything for everyone at all times, rather than making simple things that can be glued together like building blocks to build individualized solutions that can work for each person. I'm not entirely sure what the Unix philosophy for the distributed web might look like, but I hope someone figures it out.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
1y
@fastfinge i suppose different protocols for different things, say, a protocol for video streaming, chat via irc, blogs via something like gemini, etc
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@SRAZKVT Trouble is, you're then just moving that complexity onto the user who needs to install and update 20 different apps. Most folks just want to run a browser and that's all they know or understand. Feels like part of this will require redesigning the entire OS UI.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
1y
@fastfinge yep

another possibility is just a smaller web spec, but then it won't be as capable as the current web
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@SRAZKVT I wonder if we maybe invent a secure virtual machine standard and every app is just a VM in a sandbox? I guess with web assembly that’s kind of what browsers are becoming.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
1y
@fastfinge the problem with webassembly is there's no jumps, it's just modeled after what v8 devs find convenient, and their ir doesn't have jumps, only blocks, so wasm only has blocks

leads to compilers needing to generate terrible loop code in order to work
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@SRAZKVT Sure, that’s the problem with everything the browser does. It wasn’t planned or designed; it just kind of happened. And now none of the previous decisions can ever be changed. We just have to build new crap on top of the fifty layers of old crap that already exists.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
1y
@fastfinge tbh we should just do a reset, look at all the needs that are filled, see the ones that don't exist anymore, and simplify everything by also making it more generic

and replacing javascript completely
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@SRAZKVT Yup. But that would cost money! And thanks to capitalism the only thing we can spend money on are new features.
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
1y
@fastfinge until 3 nerds in a garage do it anyway for free on their free tile and then some megacorp comes in and ruins it (they have 95% marketshare)
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🇨🇦Samuel Proulx🇨🇦 @fastfinge@interfree.ca
1y
@SRAZKVT Wait when did this conversation become about threads? lol
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sarah tonin wlfBlep @SRAZKVT@tech.lgbt
1y
@fastfinge it wasn't about threads, it was about xmpp, but i guess megacorps kinda just do that every tuesday
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