Noel De Martin @noeldemartin@noeldemartin.social

@alex Thanks for sharing. The points about Limited federation and keys sound scary :/. I also wasn't aware that it was Beta software (no longer Alpha!), but looking at their README this doesn't sound great either:

> we intend to exit beta some time around 2026

I think I may stick to Mastodon for now 😅.

@jg10 Honestly, I still agree with Ruben's post about Pods: https://ruben.verborgh.org/blog/2022/12/30/lets-talk-about-pods/

At the time I said that I'd rather have a document-centric approach that works, instead of a theoretical database-centric approach we'll never have. And I still believe that. But when it comes to vision, I do prefer the database-centric approach.

If I want to have the concept of a "document" or "page" in my data, I'd rather have triples that say so.

@jg10 I guess it depends on the use-case, but for the most part, I do see Pods as databases 😅.

For example, for Media Kraken I have "documents" or "pages" for Movies. But really, when I'm using them in the app, I could browse the data by release year, by director, by genre, etc. Each movie document doesn't have any inherent meaning for me. I could as well have all the movies in a single document, and the app would be the same. The only reason I don't is performance and practicality.

@angelo Not an API, but you can download a CSV with your viewing history. Which is very crude, to be honest, just the title (a plain string) and a watch date (that is not even on a standard format 😅). But I've done a couple of tests, and it seems to work well enough :D.

https://help.netflix.com/en/node/101917

By the way, I just added the ability to import movies from your Netflix viewing activity. If you hadn't, maybe this is your excuse to start using Media Kraken!

Like every year, I just dressed my apps for the Christmas season :D.

It's quite silly, but I always enjoy doing these things. It also gives me a chance to work on some issues, and look at each app at least once a year.

@thisismissem @VincentTunru @anze3db Thanks for asking :D.

At the moment, no, it's just something I've been procrastinating... But I've been thinking that maybe I should switch to something more lightweight like GoToSocial or Pleroma, do you have any tips? I'm the only one using this instance, and I don't need any fancy features. So I think Mastodon is overkill.

@VincentTunru @anze3db By the way, I remember using this when I started on the fediverse. It's very similar to the idea of "starter packs", take a look if you weren't aware: https://communitywiki.org/trunk

@VincentTunru @anze3db Thanks Vincent for wanting to add me on the starter pack :D.

Yeah, I'm running a very old version of Mastodon, so that's probably the issue 🙈. I have to update it some day, but since I'm the only one using the instance and it seems to work fine (until now xD), I was in no rush to update.

It's also funny how my situation right now is very similar to my situation back then. I've changed in many ways (yes, I also cringe reading some of that blog post 😅), but the core is the same :).

I hope the next 10 years are just as fun!

10 years ago today, I launched my personal website :D. It's been one of the best decisions of my life. Jobs and platforms come and go, but my website has been a constant outlet that will remain. I wish everyone I met had a personal website!

https://noeldemartin.com/blog/starting-something-new

I mean, just look at the ending remarks:

"Umai shows us that Solid is a vision worth striving for. A vision where we can all have our cake and eat it too. And have the recipe for it. Securely stored in our POD."

🤣

Still, it wasn't all smooth sailing. I had to tweak it multiple times to get a decent result. But I'm happy with how it turned out. So I may look into this further, let me know what you think!

These journals are a bit all over the place, but there's a lot of interesting information in there. I always thought that AI would be useful to make them easier to consume, and this podcast format is perfect.

If you're curious about how I created Umai, and you haven't read my development journals, I just generated a podcast with NotebookLM. Plug this in your favorite podcast app to give it a listen (or click to listen in the browser): https://noeldemartin.com/podcast/feed.xml

@tychi Thanks for your comments. Yes, I agree with mostly everything you're saying. But there is nothing inherent in Solid that prevents this from happening as well (making an app that is user friendly, etc.). I'm sure if people like Dan decided to spend some time making Solid Apps, they would turn out as good, if not better, than Bluesky.

So the question remains. What made them choose Bluesky rather than Solid or any other decentralization project...

@tychi Rather than talking about it as Solid's competition on a technical level, it seems like Bluesky is the only decentralization project that is attracting the mainstream's attention, and is getting A players on board. Other projects seem very fringe.

But if you watch Dan's presentation without knowing much about the technical details, it rings very similar to what Solid is trying to achieve.

Hence my comment about it being just the money, or if there is something else there...

@tychi I know that Solid is lacking in many aspects, I can understand why someone would find Bluesky more appealing.

The point I'm trying to make is that at some point, Bluesky was as experimental (or more) than Solid. But they managed to get a lot of interesting people on board to improve it. Whilst Solid seems to be stuck in time :(. I still think Solid has the potential to improve a lot, but it's been like that for years, "potential".

In any case, this was more of a rhetorical question xD.

Having said that, Dan's talk has made me reconsider my opinion on Bluesky. I trust him, and I don't believe he'd be lying to our faces. So I may dig into the details to learn more.

Not only that, apparently Bluesky is not even living up to their own ideals (TLDR: Bluesky is not really decentralized... "yet"): https://beige.party/@possibledog/113367997579738126