#indieweb 2026-01-07

2026-01-07 UTC
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fnhipster_ Ekul: Luke, you inspired me to finally add the "listening to" widget to my site https://fnhipster.com/. I'm wondering what you used under the hood. I use Apple Music, so I created an AppleScript that POSTs updates to a Cloudflare Worker that streams event changes to the site. I remember when this was done with WinAmp 🙂
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Ekul fnhipster_ awesome! Personally I am a Spotify guy, but getting their API is a bit of effort. Instead, I use LastFM which you can automatically connect to Spotify after making an account, and then I just use their API to fetch listening status. I added a bit more technical stuff to log the last fetched status to Convex but might be better to discuss in the #indieweb-dev channel.
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Ekul I just checked, and I don't think LastFM is automatic with Apple Music like it is with Spotify :(
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blacklight gRegor: if you're looking at some self-hosted Swarm "alternative" (minus the social side ofc): https://blog.fabiomanganiello.com/article/gpstracker-a-self-hosted-alternative-to-google-maps-timeline
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blacklight I also integrated it with the Foursquare API so it periodically interpolates geolocation data points from my phone with my Swarm checkins. Even though lately I'm not even using Swarm that much anymore, I just let my service do all the tracking and I manually annotate some location point if required
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blacklight I'd love to have an ActivityPub integration at some point btw. AFAIK the protocol should support location attachments too. That'd be really the Swarm killer (for the few of us who still use it ofc)
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Loqi hey blacklight, can you move the tech talk (API, ActivityPub, protocol) to #indieweb-dev to keep this channel more inclusive and inviting?
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blacklight Loqi: ok sorry
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Ekul I just added live cursors to https://ekul.me - if there is another user on the site, you can see their cursor in real time. Pretty nifty!
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fnhipster_ Ekul[d] nice! I got live streaming on ascii https://fnhipster.com/ ... brainstorming ideas of what else fun to do
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Ekul @fnhipster_ ohhhh my that is incredible. Nice!
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fnhipster_ thanks!
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Ekul @fnhipster_ I just had a thought. You could add an online/AFK status to your site depending on whether any movement is picked up within 5 minutes from the webcam (regardless of being live or not).
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gRegor Benji has an "Online now" status thing on his site https://www.benji.dog/, I forget the details but I think he triggers manually when he's at his desk
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capjamesg [tantek] Thank you for letting me know!
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simpleauthority Good evening everyone
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Ekul New fitness page added! https://ekul.me/fitness
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simpleauthority You're on a roll Ekul! Looks really cool again!
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[Mike_Mai] first silly website i made in 2026. this one is for the dragon ball z fans. enjoy! 😁
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[Mike_Mai] https://mikemai.net/dbz-ipsum/
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Ekul @simpleauthority thanks a lot! :)
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[rose] Curious: What have people found the most satisfying to self-host on a remote VPS? I've put Nextcloud with all the add-ons on mine, I'll move my website over, and I may or may not move my email over permanently (Mailbox dot org just looks like such a good deal). I'm considering moving my carbon testing tool over, so other people can access it. What are people doing in similar situations?
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GuestZero anybody struggling with 'showoff' guilt? advice appreciated :')
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WinnerWind showoff guilt?
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[rose] What's showoff guilt?
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WinnerWind oh hi rose, qq, im new to irc but what does the + in your name mean and why is it boxed
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GuestZero winnerwind i make my homepage as unambitious and bland as possible to not feel like self marketing... sometimes i feel this community is just about a more advanced version of social media narcissism
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[rose] I'm on Slack, you're on Discord. I also use Discord for the channel sometimes. It just means the app is supporting the multichannel communication.
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WinnerWind [Rose]: I'm on IRC
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WinnerWind GuestZero: social media narcissism?
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[rose] Ah, yeah, that'll do it, too. 🙂
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Ekul @GuestStab feels like a stab. Not sure tho.
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WinnerWind oh hi Ekul
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WinnerWind we meet again
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WinnerWind your name is prepended by a + too surprisingly
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[rose] GuestZero - all social media has that aspect. No community is really free of it. But it goes both ways: Some people desire to impress, so exaggerate success and never admit failure. Others are so insecure, or traumatised by the boasty types, that they perceive mere discussion as boasting.
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Ekul @WinnerWind, yeah you can get Voice if you add your name https://indieweb.org/chat-names
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WinnerWind oh GuestZero I think I get what you mean now. I mean, humans are designed to show off haha
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WinnerWind Voice?
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WinnerWind oh just profile pictures and general information
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Ekul It's IRC speak, when you have a + it means you have "voice".
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WinnerWind eh, probably not for me, i spent an hour and half trying to set up ZNC and im kind of tired of everything rn
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WinnerWind thanks for letting me know!
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Ekul https://indieweb.org/IRC#Voice
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WinnerWind interesting, thanks!
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[rose] I need to do those sign-up things, too, I gather. I think I ironically avoid a lot of that for a while due to the fear of social narcissism thing.
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WinnerWind i think social narcissism is kind of silly tbh, justified but silly sometimes
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Ekul I still think "social narcissism" is an abysmal way to look at people sharing sites in a channel where it's enouraged LOL.
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WinnerWind speaking of sharing sites, ive been monitoring my logs very closely and im happy to announce that almost all requests that hit my site's main frontend are all humans now
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Loqi hey WinnerWind: we try to keep dev talk (ZNC, frontend) out of this channel, can you move to #indieweb-dev?
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[rose] I've avoid sharing my stuff here because of how people can be. I commented today just to start discussion, see if people can inspire me to self-host more cool stuf.
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WinnerWind oh wow that was fast
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WinnerWind is Loqi a bot
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[rose] lol I wasn't sure if self-hosted stuff should go here or in dev either.
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WinnerWind [Rose]: you should self host stuff, 100%
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WinnerWind ive been running a movies server for me and my friends for about half a year now
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[rose] No the question before was more... What ELSE to self-host. 🙂
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WinnerWind i will admit my friends dont use that movies server nowadays, its just me, but selfhosting stuff is 100% COOL behavior
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[rose] Yeah that's the thing. I'm not gonna bother doing anything that adds to the electricity bill or data transfer, or even risk, without good reason.
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WinnerWind [Rose]: ideas: movies server, start page, pastebin, fun games, proxy, calibre server etc.
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GuestZero Ekul not talking about this channel! I have actual visitors to our sites in mind :-)
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GuestZero but generally, y'all are very correct of course; i'm talking general human traits there.
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WinnerWind well [Rose] in that case it helps to think about some inconvenience you have in your life that you think u can solve with a selfhosted thing
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Ekul Ah :)
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WinnerWind like an issue I had was that if i wanted to watch a movie while im out and about, i would have to plan it in advance, load it from a physical drive to my laptop, load it form my laptop to my phone, which is just a hassle and half
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[rose] movies server - way too risky in Germany, start page - what do you mean by that?, paste bin... hmm, I don't see a huge benefit over Nextcloud and so on, which I already have set up... Games... I'm a solo gamer... Proxy - no real need... Calibre - I have that going through nextcloud...
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WinnerWind startpage: see https://startpage.winnerwind.in
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WinnerWind its a cool novelty, not useful tbh but i use that as my startpage on my browser
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WinnerWind pastebin: useful for posting stuff to forums if you dont wanna go through pastebin etc.
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WinnerWind you said you have nextcloud right
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WinnerWind nextcloud is a pretty all-in-one soln. and honestly if you have that going you probably dont need to selfhost much else
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WinnerWind i felt NC was a bit too "corporate"(?) for me and it was way too bloated for what i wanted to do, so i instead went with fragmenting each service into its own thing
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WinnerWind thats how i have a calibre server and a file server and a movies server as 3 things instead of one, and it lets me decide how much access strangers can get
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WinnerWind eg. strangers can download books off my website but not watch movies or download music
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[rose] Ah. It's weird... it's so slow...? The font is causing issues... (I'm testing it now). The font is 1 MB, The shore gif has a delay. It's weird - it's a simple site but so slow.... Maybe it's the location? I'm in Germany.
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WinnerWind yeah my site is in india, in my bookshelf actually
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WinnerWind the font is 1mb indeed, the shore gif has a delay for reasons i can't explain tbh
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WinnerWind usually what i encourage people to do is to download the startpage off my github and host it locally, performance is much better and you can change the bookmarks if you dont like it
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[rose] If you DO want a smaller font... https://codewordcreative.com/better-fonts/. I don't spell it out because that'd be redistribution, but you can simply look at the files on the page to grab a font pre-subset for English.
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[rose] But yeah the gif just keeps loading. Not a problem if it is mainly you using the site and you have it set to cache it.
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WinnerWind oh i really want to use the font i used, GohuFont Uni14 because it fits the rest of my system
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WinnerWind the thing with GohuFont is that it includes way too many cryllic characters and fancy UNICODE which may not be useful for web, but unfortunately can't be helped
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WinnerWind but yeah its mainly me
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WinnerWind if you host it locally browser caches things
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[rose] RE: the font, you may be able to subset it. It probably shouldn't be that large - but has all sorts of characters you don't use.
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[rose] ah jinx. Yeah, you can subset it. FontSquirrel automates a lot.
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WinnerWind TIL, might take a look
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WinnerWind thanks!
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WinnerWind to be fair im the kind who doesn't care about things like web efficiency etc. etc.
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WinnerWind i just want my panels to function
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[rose] Anyway, Nextcloud - yeah - I did have Nextcloud All-in-One. It's great. But it's a bit too done for you if you wanna do anything unusual. I had to redo everything separately as soon as I wanted to use the server for anything else, like hosting my websites. 😄
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WinnerWind i even have an admin panel (obv cant hyperlink to it), which loads quick enough for me haha
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WinnerWind i tried nextcloud all in one but it was way too heavy for my system
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[rose] It was pretty slow and took ages to display for me, but if most people using it have no problem, then it's fine.
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[rose] Nextcloud AIO - depends what you are doing. I rented a server on hetzner. it worked fine on 4 core 8 gb on the cheapest VPS, but I upped it since I'm cancelling other things in favour of it. Needed file sharing and collaborative editing for work.
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WinnerWind ah yeah that's fair enough
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WinnerWind im solo and focused so i dont really care too much about collab
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WinnerWind i have my own lenovo thinkcenter, 8GB 4core too, but it runs off my electricity and my drives
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WinnerWind ive been thinking about writing a blog for it, its 1 year anniversary is coming soon
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WinnerWind (by "soon" i mean 26/may/26)
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[rose] Ah yeah I bought a NUC to use as my husband's main computer and run stuff in the background off it - so it's very low power (he's not a heavy user like me). But... Then I realised how annoying my home internet's shitty speeds are.
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[rose] I did have Nextcloud AIO running on there, too, but it was a bit slow for the external web - and when it's too slow, you get conflicts.
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WinnerWind speaking of home internet, i wish CGNAT wasnt a thing
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WinnerWind i constantly have issues trying to do XYZ because the only things i can expose to the outside world are websockets and http
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[rose] Haha, I'm amused the bot didn't tell you off for that one.
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WinnerWind haha, i forgot this wasnt the technical chat
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WinnerWind tldr i wish the web was more free and service providers let you do things with your internet
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[rose] We can move it there. I think self-hosting and NUCs probably belongs there.
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WinnerWind moving to #indieweb-dev
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fnhipster_ Ekul: That's a good idea. I have an Aqara presence sensor connected to Home Assistant in my office to control the lights on my desk. I'm going to try to use it to determine real-life presence.
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ulprus fnhipster_[d]: Oh nice! That would be a sweet addition I reckon 🔥
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fnhipster_ I like what you did with the Fitness Tracker. What about a live indicator that updates the distance as it changes? Does the Strava API allow for that?
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fnhipster_ [edit] Ekul[d] I like what you did with the Fitness Tracker. What about a live indicator that updates the distance as it changes? Does the Strava API allow for that?
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Ekul Great idea, but Strava have only create, update and delete endpoints. I am sure there is something else out there which will allow for it though!
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[tantek] Ekul++ yes, very cool personal website display of fitness info! What is the time period for the totals? like since you started using Strava? And is the code to call the API open source?
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Loqi Ekul has 4 karma over the last year
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[tantek] (can take the code question to #indieweb-dev)
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Ekul Thanks @tantek! Will respond over there.
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[tantek] Strava << IndieWeb Example of PESOSing (via API) fitness data from Strava: https://ekul.me/fitness
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Loqi ok, I added "IndieWeb Example of PESOSing (via API) fitness data from Strava: https://ekul.me/fitness" to the "See Also" section of /Strava https://indieweb.org/wiki/index.php?diff=107463&oldid=99679
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Loqi Homebrew Website Club Europe/London is starting soon! Join us! https://events.indieweb.org/LbS3ezgqpx28
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Loqi [indienews] New post: "Sending Webmentions with a Simple Shell Script" https://reillyspitzfaden.com/posts/2026/01/sending-webmentions-with-a-simple-shell-script/
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tg8749 I work as an independent full-stack AI/ML developer, helping teams design and ship AI features without unnecessary complexity.
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tg8749 My stack spans Python, JavaScript, Apex, Scala, SQL, and cloud-native tooling.
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tg8749 I’ve delivered chatbots, speech systems, inspection bots, and custom AI services used in real workflows.
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tg8749 I’m comfortable integrating with existing platforms or building everything from scratch.
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tg8749 If you need someone who can own both the model and the system around it, that’s my lane.
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tg8749 Whether it’s a startup MVP or an enterprise-scale system, I focus on practical results and clean architecture.
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Loqi hey tg8749: we try to keep dev talk (JavaScript, Python, tooling, MVP) out of this channel, can you move to #indieweb-dev?
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capjamesg On thank you buttons, https://functioning.blog/customising-the-bear-upvote-button/ has a literal "toast" upvote button.
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capjamesg [edit] On thank you buttons, https://functioning.blog/customising-the-bear-upvote-button/ has a literal "toast" upvote button.
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[tantek] I was also going to ask if anyone has explored private-to-original-author like buttons. Like only the author of the post (and you) sees that you liked it
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[tantek] that feels like a private thank you
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[tantek] prior art: you can ❤️ someone's Instagram Story and only they see that you hearted it
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[tantek] similarly if you reacji to someone's Instagram Story, they receive it as a dm reply to your story, again, a private (to the two of you) interaction
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[tantek] I think these allow for more genuine (less performative) interactions
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[tantek] similarly IG stories have a "comment" box at the bottom and that is also sent as dm reply to them, another private (to the two of you) interaction
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[tantek] I need a hashtag for "this project / blog post happened because James and Tantek blue sky brainstormed during an espresso live stream". I think there are several (for me at least) now. Like maybe a dozen or so
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[tantek]4 but not quite collab because it's co-authored
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[tantek] like a collab tag
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[tantek]4 it's *not* co-authored that is. more like idea bouncing
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[Al_Abut] Calling all cinephiles! This is short notice but Sunday is the first of the monthly zooms to talk about the movie club and I hope you can join:
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[Al_Abut] https://events.indieweb.org/2026/01/january-movie-club-DvPcQUkN8eBo
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[tantek]4 wonders how long til someone starts streaming the movies for IndieWeb Movie Club in the Discord (since other discords literally do that sort of thing)
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[Al_Abut] No way, that’s a thing?
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[tantek]4 yeah discord culture runs deep
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[Al_Abut] Like you stream it *through* Discord? Or they host a Zoom or Twitch or whatever.
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gRegor Through Discord. We don't have any a/v channels though, I think?
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ulhar4409 right, don't see any on my end
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gRegor It works pretty well, though I think your Discord stream quality is limited unless your server is "boosted" (paid). It's good enough quality for watching on a computer screen though.
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gRegor And oops, this is the main channel not cafe or random, haha
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ulhar4409 if we (royal "we" being the whole community; not sure i'd participate) do something like that i'd prefer for it not to be discord-exclusive, considering the community's ideals
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gRegor Looking forward to the movie club!
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gRegor Oh yeah, I doubt we'd use something other than Zoom, Meet, or occasionally Jitsi for meetups/hangouts
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ulhar4409 yea
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Ekul tantek++ awesome, thank you!
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Loqi tantek has 23 karma in this channel over the last year (150 in all channels)
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