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TOFU recommendations for Gemini
I will have more to say about Gemini in the future, but for now, I wanted to write up some details about one thing in particular: the trust-on-first-use algorithm I implemented for my client, gmni. I think you should implement this algorithm, too!
First of all, it’s important to note that the Gemini specification explicitly mentions TOFU and the role of self-signed certificates: they are the norm in Geminiland, and if your client does not support them then you’re going to be unable to browse many sites. However, the exact details are left up to the implementation. Here’s what mine does:
First, on startup, it finds the known_hosts file....
The unrealized potential of federation
There are some major problems on the internet which may seem intractable. How do we prevent centralization of our communication tools under the authority of a few, whose motivations may not align with our interests? How do we build internet-scale infrastructure without a megacorp-scale budget? Can we make our systems reliable and fault-tolerant — in the face of technical and social problems?
Federation is an idea which takes a swing at all of these problems.
Note: apparently some cryptocurrency enthusiasts are parading this article around to peddle their garbage. Cryptocurrency is the digitally woke techbro’s ponzi scheme, and is a massive waste of electricity and developer effort. Anyone who tells...
Making Music with Computers: Two Unconventional Approaches
I love music. I really, really love music. Hopefully you’ll forgive the departure from the usual topics.
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Status update, September 2020
A mercifully cool September is upon us, and after years of searching, I finally was able to secure Club Mate in the US. Let’s decant a bottle and recant the story of this month’s progress in free software development.
First of all, I’ve been able to put a pin on operations work on SourceHut for the time being, and focus again on its software development. The GraphQL APIs are a major focus area here, and I’ve made a lot of progress towards OAuth 2.0 support and writable GraphQL APIs. Additionally, I’ve laid out a number of prioritized tickets for the beta — with the “beta” label on...
Linux development is distributed - profoundly so
The standard introduction to git starts with an explanation of what it means to use a “distributed” version control system. It’s pointed out that every developer has a complete local copy of the repository and can work independently and offline, often contrasting this design with systems like SVN and CVS. The explanation usually stops here. If you want to learn more, consider git’s roots: it is the version control system purpose-built for Linux, the largest and most active open source project in the world. To learn more about the true nature of distributed development, we should observe Linux.
Pull up your local copy of the Linux source...
Embrace, extend, and finally extinguish - Microsoft plays their hand
GitHub took a note out of the Microsoft “EEE” playbook when designing their git services. They embraced git, and then rather than building an interface on top of email — the collaboration mechanism that git was designed to use, and which is still used for Linux kernel development1 — they built their “pull requests” mechanism.
They took terminology which already had meaning — “fork”, meaning the creation a separate governing body and development upstream for a codebase, a rather large task; and “pull request”, a git workflow which prepares an email asking a receipient to pull a large branch of changes from a non-centralized source — and replaced these...
Alice in Wonderland and the theft of the public domain
Disney’s Alice in Wonderland is one of my favorite movies and an undisputed classic. After its release in 1951, Alice holds a fond place in billions of children’s hearts, over almost four generations. And it has been stolen from those generations, as part of the theft of one of these generations’ greatest treasures: the public domain.
I often use this film as an example when arguing about copyright. Almost everyone I speak to was born well after the film’s release (in fact, this is true of almost everyone alive today), but they remember it fondly regardless. Many people I’ve spoken to would agree that it even played a...