Christopher M. Rasch - crasch@gerzilla.de

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Reddit-like Hubzilla theme?

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Fri, 27 Apr 2018 02:52:06 +0200 last edited: Fri, 27 Apr 2018 15:57:27 +0200

!Hubzilla Development !Hubzilla Support Forum

Is anyone aware of a Hubzilla theme/plugin that makes a forum channel look and behave as much like a Reddit subreddit as possible? I took a look through Sean Tilley's theme collection, but he doesn't seem to have one. But perhaps someone else is working on one?

hubzilla

show all 7 comments

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 17:09:16 +0200

Reddit proposes the new theme when you sign on, you have the choice of the old or the new
don't know how long that will last

Christopher M. Rasch

Fri, 27 Apr 2018 17:12:03 +0200

Ah, no, Reddit hasn't rolled their new UI out for me yet.

Sat, 28 Apr 2018 05:39:40 +0200 last edited: Sat, 28 Apr 2018 05:40:37 +0200

I don't like it much, titles are not clickable for example

Beautiful photography from a U-2 spy plane pilot

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Thu, 26 Apr 2018 01:36:38 +0200

https://www.photographytalk.com/photography-articles/8435-this-u-2-spy-plane-pilot-is-also-a-photographer-and-his-photos-are-mesmerizing

Flight Into the Aurora
by ExtremeRoss on YouTube

photography

First kiss

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:39:32 +0200 last edited: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:40:11 +0200

Untitled
on https://gfycat.com

humor

Got Zot — Mike Macgirvin on building your own apps and protocols

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:26:50 +0200 last edited: Wed, 25 Apr 2018 00:27:36 +0200

Nice interview with @Mike Macgirvin , principal creator of Hubzilla.

What important lessons did you take from developing DFRN when you decided to go back to the drawing board and develop Zot?

The first big thing I did was solidify the “magic-auth” protocol. In Friendica it was somewhat limited in what it could do. In Zot and Hubzilla magic-auth is really the core of the service.

Access control and privacy can be attached to any resource on your server and restricted to viewers from across the web — no matter what server they have their account on. Your private videos are only visible to select people; and they don’t need an account on your server to view them. Authentication is invisible and you aren’t asked for passwords or tokens. It just happens as you browse your social stream and visit the websites you find therein.

Part of Mike’s grassroots campaign for Hubzilla.
The second important thing we did is provide “nomadic identity”, which is also built into the protocol. In 2010–2012, the free web lost *hundreds of thousands* of early adopters because we had no way to easily migrate from server to server; and lots of early server administrators closed down with little or no warning. This set the free web back at least five years, because you couldn’t trust your account and identity and friendships and content to exist tomorrow. Most of the other free web projects decided that this problem should be solved by import/export tools (which we’re still waiting for in some cases).

I saw an even bigger problem. Twitter at the time was over capacity and often would be shut down for hours or a few days. What if you didn’t really want to permanently move to another server, but you just wanted to post something and stay in touch with friends/family when your server was having a bad day? This was the impetus for nomadic identity. You could take a thumbdrive and load it into any other server; and your identity is intact and you still have all your friends. Then we allowed you to “clone” your identity so you could have these backup accounts available at any time you needed them. Then we started syncing stuff between your clones so that on server ‘A’ you still have the same exact content and friends that you do on server ‘B’. They’re clones. You can post from either. If one shuts down forever, no big deal. If it has a cert issue that takes 24 hours to fix, no big deal. Your online life can continue, uninterrupted — no matter what happens to individual servers.

hubzilla

Ratings system?

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Tue, 24 Apr 2018 01:12:18 +0200 last edited: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 01:32:30 +0200

@Hubzilla Development+ @Hubzilla Development+

I see in the repository that there's a hidden config for a ratings system:

[*= system.rating_enabled ] Distributed reputation reporting and data collection. This feature is currently being re-worked.

Digging into the code a bit, I see this:

ratings are gone. They can be enabled, but there is no UI for doing so at this time; and will likely only be available in a 'pro' configuration once the new implementation details have been hashed out. This appears to require a mechanism for rebuttal before it can again be opened to the public. There are also some synchronisation issues to contend with; as ratings are currently only distributed to active directory servers. There is no reliable mechanism for a new directory server to fetch existing ratings.

More on the directory issue here:

https://github.com/redmatrix/hubzilla/issues/406

If someone has time, can they explain how the ratings system were supposed to work? Also, if there's currently a discussion happening somewhere about the nature of a future ratings system, I'd be grateful for a pointer.

Thank you!

ratings hubzilla

show all 9 comments

Mike Macgirvin

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 02:14:03 +0200 last edited: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 02:14:04 +0200

The basic premise is that we used the (mirrored) directory to hold ratings since we can't trust rogue site admins not to delete unfavourable ratings for themselves. The ratings were sent to all directory servers as signed packets to provide an audit trail. There were two flaws - directory synchronisation and provisioning of new directory servers was a huge issue. The second is that there was no rebuttal mechanism and no way to defend yourself against malicious slander. People do not generally take kindly to bad ratings, so the people we heard the most flak from were those who had received unfavourable ratings and wanted them gone. In the original design anybody could be rated. If you turned off ratings for yourself or for your site, you could still be rated but you couldn't participate in the system. You didn't see ratings about yourself in this case but also could not rate others. We didn't want to provide any way for somebody to attack others and hide from retribution.

In the ratings themselves, your own friends topped the 'detail' list. The presumption is that their opinions have more weight than total strangers. It might be a badge of honour for (example) an Islamic fundamentalist supporter to receive a low rating from a Christian or vice versa.

Christopher M. Rasch

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 02:41:39 +0200

Thanks for the explanation! On what factors were people rated on? If I'm reading the code correctly, it looks like the rating text was freeform (like tags), with a scale from -10 to +10. So you might have ratings as follows:

"Python programming" : 8
"Disco dancing" : 10
"Cucumber farming" : -5

Then, if you clicked a rating tag, you would be taken to a detail page, which would show you how each person rated you on that tag. Is that correct?

M. Dent

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 03:09:20 +0200

Just thinking out loud - having considered this idea a bit in the fairly recent past - it may be worth considering tapping into blockchain technology to handle something like this. It would provide a public audit trail not subject to hub admin manipulation. I could see using the STEEM chain as one possibility or even establish a Hubzilla chain or consider using the EOS chain once it's released in June (this may be the best option). Other interesting things could come out of it with regard to directory services.

Mike Macgirvin

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 03:13:37 +0200 last edited: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 03:13:39 +0200

Is that correct?

Not quite. There are no tags. Just text and a number, one per customer. Provide a number and optionally say why. You can update or change it at any time and if I recall a zero rating deleted it.

Christopher M. Rasch

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 03:33:34 +0200

@Mike Macgirvin Gotcha, thanks!  So, if I were to go to Sean Tilley's rating page, I might see something like this:

Sean Tilley : 9.5

Then, if click down to his rating detail page, I might see something like this:

"10" : "Sean Tilley rocks!  His Medium essay turned me onto Hubzilla."  -- Christopher Rasch
"8" : "Sean's Hubzilla themes make my site look pretty.  However, his polka skills need work." -- Andrew Manning
"-10" : "Sean sucks!  He's taking my customers away." -- Mark Zuckerberg
[hundred more ratings deleted]

Mike Macgirvin

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 03:37:25 +0200 last edited: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 03:41:12 +0200

It's been a few years and about 10k commits ago but that sounds about right.

[Edit: We'll definitely have to see what we can do to improve Sean's polka skills.]

Christopher M. Rasch

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 04:02:44 +0200

Gotcha. Many thanks!

poVoq

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 19:56:48 +0200

Btw, interesting recent publication on why online rating tend to inflate towards 4.5/5 stars:
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3136473

Christopher M. Rasch

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 23:24:39 +0200 last edited: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 23:27:10 +0200

@M. Dent I think piggy backing on one of the blockchain rating/reputation systems is worth pursuing. Personally, I'm excited about integrating OpenBazaar into Hubzilla. OB has a similar ethos (decentralized, open source, privacy centric). They already have implemented a reputation system based on transaction ratings, and they've put out a call for ideas for better identity/reputation in their 2018 roadmap.

https://www.openbazaar.org/blog/openbazaar-2018-roadmap/

Hubzilla add-on table

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Mon, 23 Apr 2018 23:11:04 +0200 last edited: Tue, 24 Apr 2018 00:53:51 +0200

!Hubzilla Development !Hubzilla Support Forum

I found it difficult to tell what the add-ons in the Hubzilla Add-on repository did. So I made a table of the current list of add-ons and their functions here:

https://project.hubzilla.org/wiki/hubzilla/Hubzilla%2BProject/Plugins%2BTable

Comments, questions, and suggestions are welcome!

hubzilla documentation add-ons

show all 8 comments

sunjam

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:57:40 +0200

sunjam

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 17:58:49 +0200

How do we turn this list into a shared wiki?

Christopher M. Rasch

Tue, 24 Apr 2018 18:48:01 +0200

@msc, if you authenticate to the https://project.hubzilla.org hub, I think you'll be able to edit it, if you want.

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Mon, 23 Apr 2018 17:21:45 +0200

Via Bob Mottram

"Onion based federation is now working with #pleroma on #freedombone. This means that it's now possible to follow users on "onion only" installs.

This type of federation is quite significant, because it means independence from the DNS and CA systems. It means that even if you don't control your local internet router or don't have money to spend on domain names you can still create a social network. It significantly reduces the complexity barrier to entry for running a home server."

https://soc.freedombone.net/notice/389639

Publisher Gets Carte Blanche to Seize New Sci-Hub Domains

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Wed, 11 Apr 2018 15:17:43 +0200 last edited: Wed, 11 Apr 2018 15:19:42 +0200

Go, sci-hub! Soon, the onionland will be the place to go for drugs, sex workers, and science.

!Green libertarians

"Frustrated by Sci-Hub’s resilience, ACS recently went back to court asking for an amended injunction. The publisher requested the authority to seize any and all Sci-Hub domain names, also those that will be registered in the future.
...
Soon after the request was submitted, US District Court Judge Leonie Brinkema agreed to the amended language.

The amended injunction now requires search engines, hosting companies, domain registrars, and other service or software providers, to cease facilitating access to Sci-Hub.
...
Several service providers are not receptive to US Court orders. One example is Iceland’s domain registry ISNIC and indeed, at the time of writing, Sci-Hub.is is still widely available.

Seizing .onion domain names, which are used on the Tor network, may also prove to be a challenge. After all, there is no central registration organization involved.

For now, Sci-Hub founder and operator Alexandra Elbakyan appears determined to keep the site online, whatever it takes. While it may be a hassle for users to find the latest working domain names, the new court order is not the end of the “whac-a-mole” just yet."

https://torrentfreak.com/publisher-gets-carte-blanche-to-seize-new-sci-hub-domains-180410/

#sci-hub

science free_speech foss

Petros Polonos

Sat, 21 Apr 2018 09:42:40 +0200

How can WE help?

Posts? Articles? Webpages? Wikis? Hubzilla Publishing Explained.

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Mon, 09 Apr 2018 15:05:00 +0200

Andrew Manning wrote the following post Mon, 09 Apr 2018 04:45:05 +0200

Posts? Articles? Webpages? Wikis? Hubzilla Publishing Explained.

tutorial hubzilla

You Can Now Download The Handwriting of Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, John Lennon, and Leonard Cohen as Fonts

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Mon, 09 Apr 2018 02:36:17 +0200

You Can Now Download The Handwriting of Kurt Cobain, David Bowie, John Lennon, and Leonard Cohen as Fonts

Digitally capturing the nuances of each artist. Designers Nicolas Damiens and Julien Sens have taken on the tedious task of converting Kurt Cobain‘s, David Bowie‘s, John Lennon‘s, and Leonard Cohen…

webdesign fonts

h.EAR.t

Mon, 09 Apr 2018 07:56:22 +0200

.oOo.

Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner Promised a Criminal Justice Revolution. He’s Exceeding Expectations.

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Sun, 08 Apr 2018 15:45:03 +0200

"WHEN LIFELONG CIVIL rights attorney Larry Krasner was elected in a landslide this past November to become the new district attorney of Philadelphia, to say that his fans and supporters had high hopes would be an understatement. Anything less than a complete revolution that tore down the bigoted and patently unfair systems of mass incarceration would be a severe disappointment.

Across the country, talking the talk of criminal justice reform has gotten many people elected as DA. Once in office, their reforms have often been painfully slow and disappointing. Krasner was the first candidate elected who publicly committed not just to intermittent changes, but a radical overhaul.

So far, having been in office less than three months, he has exceeded expectations. He’s doing something I’ve never quite seen before in present-day politics: Larry Krasner’s keeping his word — and it’s a sight to behold.

In his first week on the job, he fired 31 prosecutors from the DA’s office because they weren’t committed to the changes he intended to make. “Change is never easy, but DA Krasner was given a clear mandate from the voters for transformational change,” his spokesperson said at the time. “Today’s actions are necessary to achieve that agenda.”

Next, Krasner obeyed a court order to release a list of 29 officers from the Philadelphia Police Department that were on a “do-not-call list” — meaning that they were so tainted that they would be considered unreliable as witnesses. The police officers on the list had either been charged with crimes or found responsible for misconduct in internal police probes conducted by the department’s Board of Inquiry. Among the offenses, according to the Philadelphia Inquirer, the police officers had lied to their fellow investigators, filed false reports, used excessive force, driven drunk, and burgled."

https://theintercept.com/2018/03/20/larry-krasner-philadelphia-da/

prison_reform

Marshall Sutherland

Sun, 08 Apr 2018 18:26:12 +0200

Wow!

I am disappointed that there was no mention of civil asset forfeiture, though. Maybe that will be coming soon.

Portage Doctor Doesn’t Accept Insurance, Charges Patients A Monthly Subscription Fee For Unlimited Visits

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Sun, 08 Apr 2018 15:41:48 +0200

!Green libertarians

"PORTAGE — Dr. Timothy Ames had a traditional primary care practice for a quarter of a century, starting in 1987. He grew increasingly incensed by the bureaucratic obstacles being put in the way of doctors caring for patients.

So he went nontraditional.

At his new practice, he doesn’t accept insurance of any kind. He charges patients a monthly subscription fee for unlimited visits. He is available by phone, by text, after hours.

He explained the difference between the two approaches:

“Physicians have become accustomed to a system that leads to harsh and impersonal care.”

“In fee-for-service medicine, paid by insurance companies, there is a lot of emphasis on recordkeeping and billing codes. If all the bookkeeping is not done precisely right, insurance companies can deny or delay payment. That really just distorts the physician-patient relationship.

“In fee-for-service medicine, paid by insurance companies, there is a lot of emphasis on recordkeeping and billing codes. If all the bookkeeping is not done precisely right, insurance companies can deny or delay payment. That really just distorts the physician-patient relationship.

“In this practice, if it does good to talk to a patient for an hour, I will. If the very best thing is to see them today, I have the flexibility to do that. If a telephone call is helpful, I don’t have to worry about how to bill and code for a telephone call. It really allows me to think creatively about how I deliver care to my patients without worrying about how to document my appointments to meet the requirements of the insurance companies.”

http://econewsmedia.org/2017/09/20/portage-doctor-doesnt-accept-insurance-charges-patients-monthly-subscription-fee-unlimited-visits/

medicine

Tamilok - Phillippine woodworms

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Sat, 07 Apr 2018 12:20:14 +0200

Dare to Eat the Philippines’ Delectable Woodworms
by Great Big Story on YouTube

#tamilok #woodworms #recipes

food

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Fri, 06 Apr 2018 14:48:42 +0200 last edited: Fri, 06 Apr 2018 19:10:50 +0200

!Hubzilla Support Forum

Ben Friedland, one of the members of the Facebook group "LEDS ARE AWESOME" recently advocated that the group switch to Reddit:

Like many of you, I'm about to ditch FB. I propose those of us who would like to keep in touch subscribe to the subreddit which we formed around this same group:

https://www.reddit.com/r/LEDSareAwesome/

Admins/mods here, please feel free to PM me and I'll make you a mod. Not trying to steal a community, just trying to make sure I still have this awesome resource after leaving FB.

In response, I pitched the idea of moving to Hubzilla instead:

Thanks for creating an alternative!  Unfortunately, I don't think Reddit is much better, IMHO.  They just axed a bunch of subreddits without warning, affecting tens of thousands of users.  They're in the process of rolling out UI changes that will make Reddit look more like Facebook (and, coincidentally, open up more space for ads).

You'll still be at the mercy of an giant, uncaring corporation that censors you, spies on you, and basically doesn't give a crap about you except to the extent that it can sell your eyeballs to advertisers.  Only it will be Condé Nast instead of Facebook.

Consider joining the Hubzilla Federation instead.  I've created a channel for LEDS ARE AWESOME here:

LEDS_ARE_AWESOME

leds@hub.zilla.tech

https://hub.zilla.tech/channel/leds?f=&zat=ledsrule

My personal channel is here (feel free to add me):

Christopher M. Rasch

crasch@gerzilla.de

https://gerzilla.de/channel/crasch

...and cloned here:

Christopher M. Rasch

crasch@start.hubzilla.org

https://start.hubzilla.org/channel/crasch

Advantages:

* Easily port your channels from one hub to another.  Don't like your current hub?  Clone your account  to a new hub in a few minutes.   Both clones can easily be synced with each other.  Neither your identity, your contacts, or your content are trapped.

* Very fine grained control over access/privacy.  Hubzilla makes it easy to create different persona's for different audience.

* No ads, no tracking, no spying.

* Completely open source.   If you're technically inclined, you can host your own hub.

Disadvantages:

* UI can takes some getting used to

* Hubs can be a little flakey (most are self-hosted labors of love)

Intrigued?  Consider checking out Sean Tilley's detail review of Hubzilla to learn more about what Hubzilla has to offer.

show all 9 comments

Christopher M. Rasch

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 20:49:31 +0200

@Robbie, I think @Waitman Gobble (waitman@waitman.net) is the proprietor of https://hub.zilla.tech. He hosts a newbie forum, and has open registration, so I assumed he would be okay with at least some new accounts. I'm tagging him in this post to confirm.

Christopher M. Rasch

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 20:52:32 +0200

@Einer, I think some of them care, but like most people, I don't think most of them care about privacy very much.

Waitman Gobble

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 23:21:56 +0200

Sure, no problem. the service here is gratis. You can also run your own hub if you like, the code is actively developed at redmatrix/hubzilla

hubzilla - build community websites that can interact with one another

Peanut Curry Chicken

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Fri, 06 Apr 2018 06:09:43 +0200 last edited: Fri, 06 Apr 2018 08:39:50 +0200

Thai Chicken Curry is one of my favorite dishes. This recipe looks good for someone who isn't somewhere that "exotic" ingredients like coconut milk are available.

Peanut Curry Chicken - How to Make Chicken with Peanut Curry Sauce
by Food Wishes on YouTube

recipes

Pinboard.in as a model for Hubzilla?

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Thu, 05 Apr 2018 19:40:00 +0200 last edited: Fri, 06 Apr 2018 01:49:24 +0200

!Hubzilla Development

Pinboard.in is a social bookmarking site, similar to Delicious. It's an unusual company, as internet companies go. First, it's run by a single individual, Maciej Cegłowski. Second, it accepts no ads, and no third party tracking. Third, Ceglowski directly charges users money for the service. Initially, the fee was a one-time fee based on the formula (number of users * $0.001)--about $5.00/year. Currently, it's about $11/year for a regular account, and $25/year for an archival service which stores a copy of the bookmarked page and enables full text search. The site began in 2009, and currently makes about $259,000/year in revenue.

Is anyone doing paid Hubzilla hosting yet? If not--given Ceglowski's experience with Pinbooad--it seems like it might be a workable business model that's consistent with the ethos of Hubzilla's community.

See screenshot:

https://blog.pinboard.in/2017/07/eight_years_of_victory/

#pinboard

ecommerce hubzilla

show all 4 comments

Christopher M. Rasch

Fri, 06 Apr 2018 19:15:01 +0200

@Andrew, FWIW, there are VPS providers outside the U.S. who allow anonymous registration and payment with Monero (anonymous cryptocurrency).

Start Administrator

Sat, 07 Apr 2018 01:37:39 +0200

That's kind of like hoping you don't have to pay taxes as long as you store the money in off-shore accounts that they can't trace back to you. It might work technically speaking, but for me, I'm too much of a rule follower.

Waitman Gobble

Sat, 07 Apr 2018 02:35:33 +0200

I could host sites, but I'm not sure it's a value winning proposition. I've hosted thousands of sites since the 1990's. There's all kinds of cheapy hosting plans out there, i've never gone that route. Charging less than 25 bucks a month isn't really worth the trouble financially for a small hosting company. Really you have to upsell on updates and maintenance. try to get another 50/mo out of them.

I have a godaddy account with one domain, i totally dislike godaddy but i support a couple of people who use godaddy so i have to be an expert at it. or at least log into my account and tinker with things to find the answer to a question. That costs me about 35 bucks a month.

A ballpark idea would be a server that runs about 250 a month, and maybe you could put 10 to 15 hubzilla sites on it? the money isn't there. I haven't tested that and maybe i could load more hubzilla sites on that machine, but that's my guess.

On the profile page, should tags be comma or space separated?

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Thu, 05 Apr 2018 13:55:08 +0200 last edited: Thu, 05 Apr 2018 18:27:57 +0200

!Hubzilla Support Forum

On the profile page, what's the recommended delimiter for tags? Should tags be comma-separated? Should multiple word tags be in quotes? Something else?

Thanks!

UI hubzilla

Unclaimed baggage

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Thu, 05 Apr 2018 08:51:43 +0200 last edited: Thu, 05 Apr 2018 19:45:11 +0200

I wish I lived closer to this place:

How All of America's Lost Luggage Ends Up at One Alabama Thrift Store (And Why You Really Need to Go There)

Unclaimed Baggage might be the world's best thrift store. Here's the inside scoop on how to shop there and what you might find.

#unclaimed_baggage #travel

shopping

Marting Luther King on death

Christopher M. Rasch

East Palo Alto, Thu, 05 Apr 2018 05:59:14 +0200 last edited: Thu, 05 Apr 2018 06:06:22 +0200

Via @Mike Macgirvin

Look, you're going to die. Death is the ultimate democracy. ... You don't have anything to say about when you die, where you die, how you die. The only thing you can say is what is it you give your life for. And you have to give your life for something every day so that when you die, people will know that you were living for others and you were living out God's plan.

-- Martin Luther King, Jr.

#MLK

quotes

hubzilla_tips_and_tricks

Christopher M. Rasch

Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:31:49 +0200 last edited: Thu, 05 Apr 2018 00:35:23 +0200

hubzilla_tips_and_tricks