Zicklag / is on Nostr

Software engineer and problem solver with a passion for producing high quality solutions to real-world problems. I strive to make great things that people can use and enjoy, all to the glory of God.

Splash image attribution: Stable Diffusion XL dramatic amazing awesome space background upscayl 4x realesrgan-x4plus-anime

Blog: https://zicklag.katharos.group
GitHub: https://github.com/zicklag

Last Notes

2024-09-03 18:43:55

For the last several months I've been working on making a federated app.
I just finished migrating it to use the latest iteration of our new #leafprotocol data format on top of the #willowprotocol and so far it's going really well.
In this post I share some of the concepts and rational behind the Leaf Protocol:
https://zicklag.katharos.group/blog/introducing-leaf-protocol/
#fediverse #protocol #iroh

2024-08-15 23:30:06

Originally, the web was a way to distribute data and meaning.
Later, it evolved to let us distribute presentation, too.
Distributing presentation is well and good.
The problem is that our data got trapped in our presentation.
Now you can't get the data without the presentation.
Presentation should be a bonus that can be distributed alongside the data, not the means by which data is distributed.
🧵

2024-08-10 16:15:12

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Excellent post.
I'm less sure about the third shift "Interfaces become queries", but it's just an idea anyway and it's not bad.
The direction I've taken is to try and start designing a simple entity-component type data model that apps can read and write on top of whatever distribution protocol ( starting with the #willowprotocol, but it might work with other similar options, too ).
I've face similar inter-operability challenges in video game scripting interfaces.
🧵

2024-07-16 23:45:00

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That said, interoperability with ActivityPub is something we are very interested in.
I think there is a lot of opportunity for 2-way communication between ActivityPub and our data model.
---
Just for reference, this post might serve as a useful background for some of the ideas we're considering. Note that this was written before the idea of using an Entity-Component model:
https://zicklag.katharos.group/blog/how-to-federate/
2/2

2024-07-16 23:41:13

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I talked to some more ActivityPub savvy colleagues and it does look like you could technically accomplish lots of our goals with ActivityPub, if combined with Iroh for storage.
But ActivityPub is also largely underspecified, and would require extensions that many AP servers don't support.
We prefer to make a very precise protocol specification to give tight interoperability at it's core, but allow component data and schemas to develop independently for extension.
1/2

2024-07-16 19:03:42

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Yeah, we're quite familiar with ActivityPub.
There are lots of things that go into it not being sufficient for what we're imagining, but one of the most basic limitations is that when you use actual URLs for entities, you are dependent on DNS and servers, which defeats many local-first use-cases.