@hrefna@FeralRobots this is real. The big challenge in front of us that the right is motivated and hella organized. They send people to every fight. And sometimes all you gotta do to win a fight is be the only one that keeps showing up.
@ironchamber yeah. Maybe we shouldn't say it gains nothing at all. There's clearly some nice things about using modern systems that are better supported. But the benefits are almost never worth the costs of migration in my experience. So it becomes an exercise in actually making the tough tradeoff by giving up something you want.
I'm in a less ranty mood today. I'm curious to follow up on this specific message about urging companies to do framework migrations. Did anybody read this advice and think "oh no. I think he's talking about me"? Did this create any moments of reflection for anyone? https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112617486629605715
A lot of frontend teams are very convinced that rewriting their frontend will lead to the promised land. And I am the bearer of bad tidings.
If you are building a product that you hope has longevity, your frontend framework is the least interesting technical decision for you to make. And all of the time you spend arguing about it is wasted energy.
If your product is still around in 5 years, you're doing great and you should feel successful. But guess what? Whatever framework you choose will be obsolete in 5 years. That's just how the frontend community has been operating, and I don't expect it to change soon. Even the popular frameworks that are still around are completely different. Because change is the name of the game. So they're gonna rewrite their shit too and just give it a new version number.
Product teams that are smart are getting off the treadmill. Whatever framework you currently have, start investing in getting to know it deeply. Learn the tools until they are not an impediment to your progress. That's the only option. Replacing it with a shiny new tool is a trap.
I wrote up a bunch of the lessons I learned while trying to get the official mastodon image running in docker. It ended up being quite long. Sorry.
I think the audience for this post is mostly the mastodon devs. Maybe they can help answer why some of this stuff is the way it is. But if you're a person who is interested in errata around docker, rails and mastodon, it's for you too! https://polotek.net/posts/local-mastodon-in-docker/
Okay I'm look for some testers for my mastodon docker setup. I've created a branch with the changes that work cleanly for me. The instructions are sparse, but I'm hoping it "just works" for someone else. If so, I'll write up a blog post with more info. https://github.com/polotek/mastodon/tree/polotek-docker-build
I'm looking at mastodon some more today and probably tomorrow. On our last episode, we reached a milestone of getting a local mastodon build up and running using docker. The docker part is important, because my goal is to get *two* local instances running and have them talk to each other. I'm thinking that's the easiest way for me to be able to inspect the ActivityPub protocol more directly.
What are some high level questions people have about how mastodon works? Maybe I can use those for guidance as I explore. I'll share any answers I'm able to uncover.
We got solar on the house last year. It wasn't necessarily about saving money for me. It became important to me to take a concrete step towards combatting climate change.
But something else started to dawn on me too. The fact that I'm now generating my own power, from an essentially unlimited source, is a truly radical act. I've been thinking a lot about creating a society centered around abundance instead of scarcity. It's not just theoretical. https://assemblag.es/@theluddite/112496059286904697
I'm still thinking about this conversation. I had some thoughtful exchanges about it yesterday. Today I'm having a different thought.
I feel like we spend a lot of time trying to take the things we like and make them free. And conversely we spend a lot of time taking the things we don't like and trying to force companies to pay us more money to do it. https://social.polotek.net/@polotek/112480963476171110
I think we're grappling with some important questions around money. Does getting paid for something ruin it for the person who does that work? Does paying for something that you can get for "free" elsewhere ruin it for the person who's using or consuming that thing?
I've been deeply immersed in two distinct conversations recently.
One of them you've seen in here if you've been following me. What do we want out of technology? Why can't we have it without being exploited? Who's gonna do that work? How do we make it sustainable?
Many people are engaged with this conversation. We can all think of things we want to see in the world.
Can anybody point me to a good deep dive on the mastodon database schema? Preferably with explanations where necessary? Yes I know how to go look at the mastodon docs and code. I’m doing that. I’m also looking for more of a guide to wrap my head around things.
I've been thinking a lot about what what it would look like to have a mastodon-compatible architecture that was designed for a single admin/single user experience.
I think what I want is an architecture that is designed with an eye towards maintainability and also preserving the data long term. So for example, I don't think I want a traditional database to be the primary store of record. I want things in text files. They can be loaded into a store for performance and efficiency. But the store of record is just text that can still easily be read many years from now.