2014-04-14 UTC
# 00:00 GWG Got a minute to give me an opinion?
# 00:01 KartikPrabhu snarfed: I was thinking along similar lines once. that would be similar to "like" of a profile
# 00:03 snarfed GWG: cool! i did hear you were working on a new mf2 theme
# 00:04 GWG It is a starter theme. A fork of _S.
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# 00:12 GWG snarfed: I'm also working on custom post types as part of it.
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# 06:41 tantek KevinMarks - re: ethereum: glitzy home marketingy home page, and "can't establish a connection to the server at wiki.ethereum.org" - so basically ignorable and will be dead in 6-12 monhts.
# 06:41 Loqi tantek meant to say: KevinMarks - re: ethereum: glitzy home marketingy home page, and "can't establish a connection to the server at wiki.ethereum.org" - so basically ignorable and will be dead in 6-12 months.
# 06:47 tantek also the hilarity of folks discussing federated identity by tweeting about it
# 06:48 aaronpk did that just make the rounds again today or something?
# 06:48 cweiske maybe you don't see the majority of discussion because it's decentralized
# 06:49 aaronpk "...borrows the concept of decentralized consensus that makes bitcoin so resilient..."
# 06:52 aaronpk "An attacker that controls more than 50% of the network's computing power can, for the time that he is in control, exclude and modify the ordering of transactions."
# 06:52 aaronpk "With less than 50%, the same kind of attacks are possible, but with less than 100% rate of success."
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# 07:20 KevinMarks well, bitcoin is fairly resilient historically, but that's largely because clients grandfather in old blockchain info
# 07:21 KevinMarks you could take over indiecreddit with a handful of machines, but winning bitcoin's computing armsrace woudl only let you change future transactions, not ones before the hardcoded checkpoints
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# 08:29 tantek decentralized discussions still have URLs. so if you can't cite them, don't presume they exist. and if no one's citing them, then clearly they don't matter.
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# 08:35 cweiske or how do you find out that those discussions exist?
# 08:35 tantek cweiske who cares? absent evidence, why assume things exist?
# 08:35 tantek otherwise, the "show me" rule is a good default
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# 08:36 cweiske the ostrich principle: It does not exist if I don't see it
# 08:37 tantek no need to assume such things exist, therefore, don't.
# 08:38 tantek Kevinmarks - in general such glitzy marketing home pages are a good signal of bullshit.
# 08:42 cweiske so not knowing anything means I can use the razor to rule out everything, living in my small bubble
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# 08:59 tantek as you should, until presented with evidence, or proactively observing.
# 09:00 tantek it's a good filter. otherwise you'll just waste all your time pondering infinite invisible nothings.
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# 14:58 bret ethereum looks pretty rad but its going to be in a different realm for a long time because its so totally different than the Web. It might serve as some kind of backend for someone if they build it
# 14:59 bret its more simiar to bitcoin than what most people here seem to be doing
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# 15:00 Loqi rtaibah: snarfed left you a message on 4/6 at 1:12pm: hey, saw your question on the WP webmention plugin. it tries to send webmentions to every link in a post when you publish or update it.
# 15:01 gRegor` Morning, indieweb
# 15:05 bret The thing that concerns me so much about the crypto currecy / distributed time stamping is that it takes up so much energy for not a whole lot of gain, especially if its just for non currency style transactions. I guess I dont really understand what ethereum is doing though
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# 15:11 bret the other thing about distributed networks is that they work oh so beutifullly when they are had moderated. Kinda ike when you have a better time when you go to a party with all the people you know vs not knowing anyone
# 15:13 bret when you have a ban hammer, the need to crytographically overpower/overcompute asshats on the network is far far less
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# 15:13 bret XD the logs have been getting sooooo long recently
# 15:17 tantek bret - yeah I tend to skim across portions without URLs
# 15:17 tantek figuring people are tending to talk too much without actual substance (since they're not capturing things in the wiki)
# 15:18 tantek I think your criticisms are spot on, and worthy of being captured. Please capture them there!
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# 15:36 bret.io created /Ethereum (+736) "Created page with "{{stub}}
Ethereum is a project that implements a bitcoin/cryptocurrency like block chain used for sending around "contracts". It sounds similar to sending around bitcoins to wa..."" (
view diff )
# 15:42 bret tantek: there you go :) Short summary and initial questions/concerns followed up with "Do you have experience with using Ethereum for independent publishing on the web? Please document it here!
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# 15:50 gRegor` No. I just remembered it while watching the Etherium video
# 15:50 gRegor` Maybe I'll get one. It's not high on my list. Just interesting.
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# 15:58 barnabywalters bret: yeah, it’s hideously complicated and based on invisible blockchain technology which keeps on growing and is difficult to understand
# 15:58 gRegor` I don't have any bitcoins (or altcoins) yet.
# 15:58 bret barnabywalters, what about jus the IP DNS part
# 15:59 gRegor` barnabywalters: Have you tracked traffic on the .bit?
# 15:59 barnabywalters bret: ah, that bit specifically — it’s the easiest way to be able to resolve .bit domains
# 15:59 barnabywalters the alternative is to download the blockchain yourself and run a local resolver
# 15:59 barnabywalters gRegor`: nope, but I suspect there would be about 4 hits — me, and my three friends interested in .bit
# 16:00 bret DNS is pretty bad too, to be fair (IE running your own dns server)
# 16:00 gRegor` There's a Firefox plugin to handle the blockchain stuff, but yeah, downloading the whole chain... no thanks.
# 16:00 aaronpk at least with DNS you don't have to have the knowledge of the entire history of DNS downloaded to your computer
# 16:00 barnabywalters bret: sure, this stuff is really difficult, and namecoin is the best alternative DNS we have at the moment
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# 16:01 bret barnabywalters: the client would presumably verify the chain iirc
# 16:03 barnabywalters I don’t really think it’s possible to have a web-scale, human-meaningful identity system which is truly decentralised,i
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# 16:06 aaronpk i feel like namecoin doesn't really solve the problem with DNS cause you still have to trust/buy in to the whole system just like you do with DNS
# 16:07 aaronpk that's why I'm just using DNS as is and making progress on other stuff for now
# 16:07 tantek KartikPrabhu: I think you meant to say that in #microformats ;P
# 16:07 gRegor` I think it's harder to mess with the blockchain than DNS, though.
# 16:08 tantek ben_thatmustbeme: re: "maybe we should have just an indiewebcampofftopic room", perhaps #indiechat?
# 16:08 bret how does namecoin deal with trolls just squatting all the domains forever?
# 16:09 tantek I've kinda summarily dismised all the *coin *bit bit* things for now as well. Not really sure they're practical to scratch any particularly high priority indieweb itch(es).
# 16:10 barnabywalters bret: IIRC, fees and domain expiry — i.e. assuming that trolls don’t want to spend much money, and can’t be bothered to renew their names
# 16:10 tantek bret - there's a lot of such "interesting" plumbing. I prefer "show me a random wikipedia page"
# 16:11 tantek until you're read to go back to focusing on scratching user-centric itches instead.
# 16:13 tantek we can use #indiechat until someone here actually gets decentralized web-to-web chatting working with indieweb tech ;)
# 16:13 tantek chatting being actual realtime messaging with notifications rather than just private messaging experiments ;)
# 16:14 bret tantek: do you have any ideas how that would work?
# 16:15 tantek private messaging (as aaronpk has already demonstrated) +
# 16:16 tantek web notifications from your server to your device
# 16:16 aaronpk the guts of what I built would work, turning it into a "chat" is really just a UI thing at this point
# 16:16 tantek aaronpk - not "just" a UI thing - you're missing some building blocks, that's my point
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# 16:17 aaronpk would love to pair with someone soon to get it actually working with someone else's site
# 16:18 ben_thatmustbeme aaronpk, that would be excellent. I don't even have an admin page for my site yet, but i've found your other libraries quite useful
# 16:21 ben_thatmustbeme ideally i'd like to get as much of a feature set as i can in to my openblog software. so people could easily pick up any part of it and play
# 16:21 tantek aaronpk - if you can figure out how to make webmentions to your site show up as notifications on your mobile device - that would be amazing
# 16:21 tantek or is that one of the iOS apps you're working on?
# 16:22 aaronpk the idea is if I can publish all mentions to an h-feed, the app will just send me push notifications from those entries
# 16:22 aaronpk that way anybody can use the app by just creating an HTML page
# 16:23 aaronpk polling as a last resort, but I want to get PuSH working on it
# 16:27 barnabywalters aaronpk: how are you planning on consuming PuSH from a mobile device with no permanent web presence?
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# 16:30 gRegor` It looks like brid.gy only checks replies to my tweets, not my actual tweets for links, is that correct? (not a POSSE tweet).
# 16:30 aaronpk cause the server sends apple push notifications to the phone
# 16:30 aaronpk push to mobile is pretty much already solved via SMTP's store-and-forward built in to the protocol
# 16:31 aaronpk if everyone's phones were an SMTP server it would just work
# 16:31 aaronpk all it would take for webmention or PuSH is adding store and forward to the protocol
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# 16:32 kylewm gRegor`: in my understanding, if someone replies to that tweet, it will be sent as a mention to bret
# 16:33 gRegor` That's my understanding too
# 16:33 gRegor` Close. Not exactly.
# 16:34 gRegor` If someone replies to my tweet, both their reply and my original tweet will be sent as a webmention to bret?
# 16:34 gRegor` Or just the reply to my tweet?
# 16:35 tantek aaronpk - pretty exciting. looking forward to seeing this working in some form, no matter how hacked up.
# 16:35 KartikPrabhu gRegor`: just the reply. Bridgy thinks that you're tweet is a syndication of originalpost by bret
# 16:35 tantek just like your real-time comments, this will make for a very effective demo
# 16:35 gRegor` Ahh, interesting.
# 16:36 gRegor` Yeah, seems to be a shortcoming of brid.gy. But the only way to fix it would be for brid.gy to process all tweets for a user. That could slow things down a tad :)
# 16:36 gRegor` Good idea, KartikPrabhu
# 16:36 gRegor` Would you mind favoriting that tweet as a test, KartikPrabhu?
# 16:36 gRegor` So there's an example
# 16:36 gRegor` Or reply to it. Whichever.
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# 16:38 tantek benwerd's tweet there is a perfect example of a "twitter comment" regarding your blog post
# 16:38 tantek and thus would be great to see notifications from Bridgy as a "mention"
# 16:39 tantek "Source URL does not contain a link to the target URL"
# 16:40 tantek KartikPrabhu: using the form "Have you published a response to this? Send me the link: "
# 16:40 kylewm I think bridgy used to do that, search twitter for mentions, but something something rate limiting
# 16:41 gRegor` Makes sense, kylewm
# 16:41 KartikPrabhu oh! didn't know that... will add that to my list of mention things to do
# 16:41 gRegor` Check the data-expanded-url attribute on tweets
# 16:42 kylewm I'm also curious if the IRC log will send webmentions to you now KartikPrabhu
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# 16:42 tantek KartikPrabhu: so it lets anyone tweet about your posts, and then use the form to add their "comment" to your post :)
# 16:43 tantek until Bridgy picks them up. ahem. cc: snarfed :)
# 16:43 Loqi KartikPrabhu meant to say: tantek: yeah that is how it should work...
# 16:44 kylewm I got one from kbs the other day via irc logs, but he might have sent it via my form
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# 16:51 gRegor` Speak of the devil ;)
# 16:54 tantek I may not be able to submit a pull request, but at least I can document the reasoning behind needing the support ;)
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# 17:02 kbs KartikPrabhu kylewm yes - I just pasted a link from the online irc logs into Kyle's form
# 17:03 kbs [ie, it has enough markup to function as the source of a webmention...]
# 17:07 snarfed also, the example on the wiki page isn't an ideal example, since bridgy actually does send WMs for all links if the tweet author (benwerd in this case) is signed up for bridgy
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# 17:08 snarfed so i think the feature request is just to search for links posted by people who aren't signed up
# 17:08 snarfed which is totally doable, but depends on the details of the silo's search capabilities. twitter is doable, FB and G+ probably too, IG probably not
# 17:09 gRegor` Thanks tantek. You're good about documenting/reminding to document. :) I forget because I'm usually working and get distracted.
# 17:10 gRegor` snarfed: Did you see my tweet example? bret and I are both signed up on brid.gy, but it didn't send my WM. My tweet wasn't a reply, though, just had one of bret's links.
# 17:10 snarfed …oh, right. the feature request is that bridgy should send a webmention for benwerd's original tweet, not just the responses.
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# 17:11 snarfed understood. yeah, the problem there is identifying POSSE (ie syndicated) tweets
# 17:11 snarfed rel-syndication links help, but not many people actually use them yet
# 17:14 gRegor` Thanks. Yeah, I figured it came up before. I'll read up on it and think some more about it.
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# 17:31 kbs interesting - mostly for DoS then?
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# 17:51 barnabywalters currently making a little test suite using PHP DOMDocument loadHTML with some of those examples
# 17:52 barnabywalters ah, and if you try to parse billion laughs as XML, it detects an entity reference loop
# 17:53 kbs fwiw -- also started http://indiewebcamp.com/xss per tantek 's suggestion - hopefully helps mitigate any webmention issues before it gets attractive for the malcontents :)
# 17:55 kbs maybe we should just plop all such test-cases into some place on the wiki so future implementors can have something to work against?
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# 18:07 kbs (ah, guess irc itself has some protections :)
# 18:08 kbs [was trying to see if I could embed markup in my nick]
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# 18:32 KartikPrabhu snarfed: about the tweet bridgy thing, you mean I should have a webmention from the benwerd tweeting my article link?
# 18:32 snarfed KartikPrabhu: no, just from the responses. i misunderstood the initial conversation
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# 18:32 KartikPrabhu aah I see. Yes, I was saying that I should get one from the tweet as a repost
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# 18:50 kylewm hehe, just copied the post id from twitter and constructed the url manually
# 18:50 KartikPrabhu aah... clever. There I have another shit looking mention on that post now
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# 19:03 tantek.com edited /Bridgy (+415) "/* What about links posted by others */ follow-ups: no need to omit POSSEs, please document real-world original-post-discovery challenges if any" (
view diff )
# 19:04 tantek speaking of posting the webmention manually >:)
# 19:05 GWG This time off is taking a lot out of me.
# 19:05 snarfed tantek: i'm with you that webmentions for possed posts *should* be handled (and omitted)
# 19:05 snarfed …but in practice, i wonder how many WM handlers actually do that
# 19:05 snarfed i know the wordpress plugin doesn't. (i can file an issue for that)
# 19:06 snarfed KartikPrabhu: yeah, but that's not a very user friendly stance when you're making product decisions :P
# 19:06 KartikPrabhu true! specially if the Wordpress plugin does not handle it. I would hate to break things for Gen2 people who can't fix it themselves
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# 19:08 tantek snarfed - one way to find out (start sending them) :)
# 19:09 tantek I do like the "file an issue on the wordpress plugin" first aproach
# 19:09 Loqi tantek meant to say: I do like the "file an issue on the wordpress plugin" first approach
# 19:09 tantek perhaps note in the issue that you plan to do so in Bridgy imminently
# 19:09 snarfed another approach is to just omit (initial) mentions from the author
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# 19:22 gRegor` Just making sure I'm following
# 19:23 snarfed gRegor`: no, bridgy ignored it because it was an original tweet, not a fav or reply or retweet.
# 19:23 snarfed what bridgy *should* do is up for debate. :P i'm leaning toward handling it though. details in that issue link.
# 19:24 gRegor` It should have, in theory KartikPrabhu
# 19:24 gRegor` Gotcha, snarfed
# 19:24 KartikPrabhu and if it did... how should I handle getting mentions from both original and POSSEd posts
# 19:25 snarfed but we can capture recommendations, etc on the wiki (as usual) and/or the spec
# 19:28 KartikPrabhu yes... I'll have to deal with that this week so I can add things I am doing or somethign
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# 19:31 GWG Can I pick your brains about something?
# 19:32 gRegor` Seems like this ties in nicely with the discussion on link-less original-post-discovery.
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# 19:35 GWG I'm still working on the parameters for that project, and I keep tweaking it.
# 19:37 GWG I keep trying to figure out what post types I need
# 19:37 GWG According to the wiki, there is note, article, reply, photo, check-in, like, comics, event, rsvp, session, and video
# 19:39 gRegor` By and large, those are presentation-only distinctions, GWG. I would focus on the mf2 first.
# 19:39 GWG Then the wiki gets into the definition of response
# 19:39 gRegor` E.g. I don't think you need a custom post type in WP for each of those.
# 19:40 GWG A response is defined in the wiki as a post that is a reaction to another post: reply, like, repost, mention, RSVP, invitation
# 19:41 GWG Which means, the custom types likely should be 3.
# 19:41 GWG Articles being traditional blog posts.
# 19:42 gRegor` I don't view responses as a post type.
# 19:42 gRegor` A response is an article or note that has an in-reply-to, that's all.
# 19:43 gRegor` Which I would probably implement as a custom field in WordPress.
# 19:43 GWG How would you implement a like then?
# 19:43 gRegor` Probably another custom field, which the theme would handle inserting the necessary mf2 as a result.
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# 19:44 gRegor` If you mean a standalone "like" - without a note or article... I'd need to think about that more.
# 19:44 GWG KartikPrabhu: You are thinking at a more definitive level.
# 19:45 ben_thatmustbeme with all the talk of wordpress modifications, i'm feeling like there should like the wordpress page should be split for those just using (wanting plugins and theme etc) and those that want to start to modify WP
# 19:45 GWG gRegor`: It wouldn't be the theme.
# 19:45 GWG ben_thatmustbeme: My design covers both.
# 19:45 gRegor` But it could be as simple as an "empty" article/note, with the "like" custom field checked.
# 19:46 GWG gRegor`: You can also do that with a custom taxonomy.
# 19:46 KartikPrabhu gRegor` GWG : I don't understand what a standalone like is... A "like" is just a note with a "I like this" with this being a url markedup with "u-like-of"
# 19:46 gRegor` KartikPrabhu: I'm differntiating between a comment that includes like-of markup, and a simple like-of without commentary.
# 19:47 gRegor` I think I showed you an example on snarfed's site where a like had no visible content.
# 19:47 GWG gRegor`: That is the response post type I'm thinking of. No visible content.
# 19:47 GWG A note would be short visible content.
# 19:48 KartikPrabhu do we need to distiniguish between "short content" and "no content" ?
# 19:48 gRegor` ben_thatmustbeme: There's a working on section on /wordpress where we discuss setting up ready-to-use themes that are mf2ified, and a base theme that designers/developers can extend.
# 19:49 gRegor` KartikPrabhu: No, I'm just thinking about loud with GWG about how it would work in WordPress specifically.
# 19:49 Loqi gRegor` meant to say: KartikPrabhu: No, I'm just thinking out loud with GWG out how it would work in WordPress specifically.
# 19:49 GWG gRegor`: The design I came up with was putting the Custom Post Type in a plugin so the MF2 compliant theme can be used with or without it
# 19:50 GWG KartikPrabhu: As for distinguishing, only for the purpose of data entry, in my mind.
# 19:50 gRegor` So you're making a custom post type for likes, GWG?
# 19:50 ben_thatmustbeme was just a suggestion after that whole 'lowering the barrier to entry' discussion last week
# 19:51 snarfed GWG: just as another data point, i generally use categories to distinguish my post types, as opposed to actual WP post types
# 19:52 GWG gRegor`: A custom post type that is like and repost, etc in one package.
# 19:52 GWG snarfed: I'm designing it both ways.
# 19:52 GWG snarfed: Flexibility. My initial design was not flexible.
# 19:53 snarfed oh this is for the mf2 theme. if you're already making a theme…ok. got it
# 19:53 GWG The reason why I started this after that conversation on Friday was I came to the realization something can be all things to all people
# 19:54 GWG Wordpress is based on a plugin architecture.
# 19:54 GWG So I'm designing a mf2 starter theme and a plugin that could extend said starter theme.
# 19:54 GWG But either could be used independently from the other.
# 19:55 GWG snarfed: That is probably why it is doomed to failure
# 19:55 GWG The truth is, I'm not a great designer, or a great programmer. But I overplan.
# 19:55 gRegor` Freakin' WordPress :)
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# 19:56 GWG Someone who just wants a theme gets it.
# 19:56 gRegor` I really don't like it, but I'm also compelled to make easier indieweb solutions for it so the majority of blogs out there can get involved, heh
# 19:56 GWG Someone who wants a theme and a version of Wordpress that has the indieweb conventions can have that too
# 19:57 gRegor` I didn't realize you were on wordpress, snarfed
# 19:57 gRegor` snarfed: Do your content-less likes show up in the stream or no?
# 19:58 snarfed (likes, replies, etc are never in the stream, regardless of whether they have content)
# 19:59 gRegor` Ah, interesting.
# 20:00 GWG When I get this to a point where I get around to putting the code in a repository, would appreciate some peer review on it.
# 20:00 GWG Right now, all I have is my theme test site to build this on.
# 20:00 gRegor` I will probably set up a WP install as a playground. I use it a lot with clients, but don't dogfood for my own domain.
# 20:02 GWG I was, but once I set it up to allow me to do some things, I want to test this elsewhere before deploying it.
# 20:03 GWG I'm reasonably certain I'm MF2 compliant now
# 20:08 GWG But my initial goal was to lower the bar for entry for people who were comfortable with Wordpress.
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# 20:15 gRegor` snarfed: Did you build your own theme for your site, or extend another one?
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# 20:18 gRegor` Looks like a modified ryu theme, actually.
# 20:18 gRegor` did his own digging
# 20:21 snarfed snarfed: i use the ryu theme and the wordpress-uf2 plugin
# 20:22 snarfed ryu was just an aesthetic choice. it doesn't do anything special to be mf2 friendly
# 20:23 gRegor` Yeah, I see that. Nice reponsiveness, though
# 20:23 snarfed yeah, i've written very little custom php for my site, but a decent amount of custom css
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# 20:38 GWG I was looking at how the author added microformats to post types
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# 20:41 GWG I do have a few other ideas for indieweb plugins.
# 20:42 GWG A plugin that supersedes the gravatar system that uses h-card
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# 20:55 tantek or maybe only use gravatar as fallback, and prefer indieweb site with hCard
# 20:58 GWG tantek: That is standard in gravatar plugins I've seen. It will fall back if there is no other site.
# 20:58 GWG tantek: After I just merely marked up an existing theme and hacked it a bit, I'm planning out a modular system now.
# 20:59 GWG Some parts I may not do, but I'm trying to build a platform.
# 20:59 GWG As of Friday, when I started thinking about it.
# 21:00 GWG Each time I come up with an idea, I'm noting it down
# 21:00 GWG I'm also trying to create the hooks to support it.
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# 21:32 snarfed hey KartikPrabhu, let me know if i can help at all with cloning the repo(s) and running the tests
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