Ryan Barrett / is on Nostr

Last Notes

2024-07-04 05:25:52

Bridgy Fed’s bridging has been down some today. Apologies, all! I’m on vacation with limited access right now, so the downtime has been longer than it would be otherwise. I’m working on it as best I can. Not sure if it will be back up soon or tomorrow, but I’ll keep you posted.

2024-06-08 20:50:11

- reply

[](https://greennuclear.online/@collectifission/112581827801219664 )
Looks like you got caught by https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1121 . Sorry! Should be fixed now.

2024-05-24 02:35:32

🧐
[](https://snarfed.org/w/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PXL_20240524_0232323897E2-scaled.jpg )
https://snarfed.org/w/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/PXL_20240524_0232323897E2-1024x769.jpg

2024-05-20 20:13:36

[Bridgy Fed](https://fed.brid.gy/ ) status update time! It’s been a busy couple weeks. I’m happy to report that I’ve made solid progress on [three of my four goals from last time](https://snarfed.org/2024-05-09_53013 ) – reliability, delays, and bugs – and improved a number of other things along the way. Here’s a sampling:
<li><a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/978">Switched Bluesky => fediverse from polling to firehose</a>. This made it way less flaky, and cut the 5-15m delay down to just seconds.</li>
<li>Fixed <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1038">fediverse => Bluesky getting stuck for many accounts.</a> I took some shortcuts in my Bluesky infrastructure, and they came back to bite me. Still work left to do, but the user-visible issues should be largely fixed.</li>
<li>Various <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/997">issues</a> with <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/995">finding</a> the bot accounts, <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1017">following</a> <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1058">them</a>, <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1026">and</a> <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1027">getting</a> <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1052">bridging</a> <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/975">started</a>.</li>
<li>Fixed <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1000">images in Bluesky => fediverse posts.</a></li>
<li>Implemented <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/987">deleting posts, Bluesky => fediverse.</a> (Fediverse => Bluesky was already working.)</li>
<li>Fixed <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1054">flakiness</a> <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1011">bridging</a> <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1032">replies</a>, both directions.</li>
<li>Fixed <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/993">links</a>, <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/957">mentions</a>, and <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1013">hashtags</a>, <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1062">both</a> <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/980">directions</a>. Still some broken bits here, notably Bluesky => fediverse mentions, but otherwise these should be much better now.</li>
<li><a href="https://conspirator0.substack.com/p/federation-and-political-spam">First pass at spam filtering.</a> Sigh.</li>
Apart from the firehose, one notable area I *haven’t* focused on yet is [infrastructure](https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Ainfra ). It’s scaling ok so far, but it could be a lot better, and a lot more efficient. I’ll need to work on that soon. If you see a bit of time go by without many user-visible improvements, that’s probably what’s happening.
Otherwise, thanks for all the feedback and questions and [bug reports](https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues )! Please do keep them coming. As always, you can follow the [*now* label in GitHub](https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Anow ) to see what I’m focusing on. See you on the bridge!

2024-05-18 21:49:59

I’m at my kid’s volleyball game, and I just watched her accidentally high five one of her teammates in the face. 🤣🤦‍♂️

2024-05-10 13:47:00

Psyched to play Animal Well! The descriptions so far are giving me very NetHack/Rogue vibes. Anyone else?

2024-05-09 23:44:55

Phew! It’s been quite a few days, [Bridgy Fed](https://fed.brid.gy/ ) is up to almost 2500 bridged accounts total. Thanks again for all of your interest! I’ve been in a constant state of whiplash, back and forth between hearing “this is so cool!” and “it’s broken in these 10 different ways.”
I love that you all are enjoying it! And it absolutely is [broken in all of those ways, and more](https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues ). I’m sorry. I’d planned on a bit more time to iron out bugs first, but c’est la vie. Testing in production! 🤷
I’m seeing most of the problems break down into four broad buckets, which I’m tackling in this order:
<li>Bridging stuff from Bluesky to the fediverse is flaky and unreliable. True. This is largely because it’s currently based on polling. <a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/978">I’m in the middle of switching it to the Bluesky firehose</a>; that should hopefully be complete within a day or two.</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/1038#issuecomment-2103575564">Bridging stuff from the fediverse to Bluesky sometimes stops working.</a> True. Bridgy Fed isn’t as rigorous about validating Bluesky records as it needs to be, so when we emit an invalid record in one user’s repo, I suspect the Bluesky relay gets stuck and won’t accept any more for that user. Fixing some parts of this may be tricky, but it’s still very fixable.</li>
<li><a href="https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues">Lots of things don’t translate right, or at all.</a> True. This is annoying, but seems lower priority than the unreliability buckets, and most of these bugs are straightforward to fix, so I’m focusing on reliability first.</li>
<li>Scaling is inefficient and expensive. True. OK, I’m the only one seeing this, but it’s still true. 😎 Fortunately I’m not too worried, since I’m confident I’ll be able to optimize it. <a href="https://snarfed.org/software-engineering-quotes#Make+it+work">Make it work, then make it right, then make it fast (and cheap)</a>, in that order.</li>
I’ll continue to post updates here now and then. You can also follow the [*now* label on Bridgy Fed’s GitHub issues](https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3Anow ) to see what I’m focusing on at any given moment. Thanks again for all of the interest, and for your patience. It’ll get better, one step at a time.

2024-05-07 21:42:08

there are few things quite as glorious as a whole day with no meetings
we all know maker’s schedule manager’s schedule, but still, the impact on productivity never ceases to amaze me. way bigger than linear
(even so, I do miss the bandwidth of a whole team! way harder and slower doing everything myself)

2024-05-02 14:45:55

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[](https://social.beaware.live/@BeAware/112371994800880767)
Yes! Everything is fully bidirectional, as much as possible.

2024-05-02 14:28:44

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[](https://social.beaware.live/@BeAware/112371727062729216)
Welcome! And sorry for the downtime. Posts are only bridged going forward, not historically.

2024-05-02 14:02:59

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[](https://mastodon.social/@pfefferle/112370173360227912)
Yes! [Replies, likes, reposts, and mentions.](https://brid.gy/about#which) Not follows, at least not from Bridgy Classic, which is the sender here.

2024-05-01 23:55:09

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[](https://mastodon.social/@pfefferle/112367616878162390)
We suspect this is https://github.com/pfefferle/wordpress-webmention/issues/438

2024-04-11 20:24:53

Hi all! It’s been a while since my last status update on [Bridgy Fed](https://fed.brid.gy/), its upcoming [Bluesky](https://bsky.social/)/[AT Protocol](https://atproto.com/) support, and [the resulting firestorm](https://techcrunch.com/2024/02/14/bluesky-and-mastodon-users-are-having-a-fight-that-could-shape-the-next-generation-of-social-media/).
It’s coming along! It’s not launched yet, I still have [a number of things to build and tests to run](https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/381), but it’s getting there. Also, Bluesky’s [current federation test](https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation) is [limited to 10 users per federated server](https://docs.bsky.app/blog/self-host-federation#early-access-limitations). We can’t launch until they lift that limit. I don’t know when that will happen, but I’m confident it will.
I’m also blocking launch on building the [opt in/out prompt idea](https://github.com/snarfed/bridgy-fed/issues/880) that came out of the blowup. Thank you all (and [Kio](https://kio.moe/)!) again for that idea, I really do appreciate it. I wish I’d come up with it beforehand, would have saved everyone the headache. But it seems like this – getting feedback before launch and incorporating it – is the system working, at least in some ways, which is good.
The current design is that a Bridgy Fed instance actor (user) will DM you the first time anyone on Bluesky requests to follow or interact with you over the bridge. If you reply *yes*, or follow the Bridgy Fed user, you’ll be bridged. If you reply *no*, or ignore the DM, or block that user, you won’t be. You’ll also be able to follow or block the Bridgy Fed user to opt in or out proactively, ahead of time.
On a related note, I still think there’s a tension between the fediverse’s current default of open, opt-out federation and its [culture of consent and opt-in](https://www.anildash.com/2023/01/16/a-fediverse-search/). That tension is magnified by the fact that [the fediverse has always been multi-protocol](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fediverse#Historical_protocols), not just ActivityPub but also OStatus, Diaspora, and Zot/Nomad, among others, so boundaries between networks have been fuzzy at best.
For people who want it, [consent-based/opt-in federation](https://privacy.thenexus.today/free-fediverses-and-consent/) is the most promising solution that I’ve heard so far. Beyond that, I don’t have any answers of my own, but there’s obviously been lots of discussion over the last couple months, which feels like a good sign.
As always, feedback is welcome!