Feeding the Seagulls
A woman feeding seagulls by the sea.
Twitter and Reddit want to charge people to use their API despite already wanting people to pay them directly. Twitter decided to drive users away and make itself more expensive. As a result of this the website is imploding, rather than thriving.
Yesterday I read that Reddit, too, wanted to charge users to access its API and whilst this may make sense to some, it’s absurd. It’s absurd because Twitter and Reddit can already charge their users directly for use. By increasing the cost of API use they are trying to get money from their users twice. Once for use of the website, and again for use of the website via APIs and third party apps. The result is that people could spend over a hundred francs per year to exchange messages. For that price we might as well return to SMS.
Running alongside APIs we have really Simple Syndication and ActivityPub. Both are means of syndicating content but one is centralised whilst the other is not.
Years ago people complained that Facebook sucked data into its ecosystem but then behaved like a silo, unwilling to share it. Twitter is making the same mistake.
The ChatGPT explanation
Really Simple Syndication (RSS):
Functionality: RSS is a standardized format for publishing frequently updated content, such as blog posts, news articles, podcasts, and more. It allows users to subscribe to content feeds and receive updates whenever new content is published.
Use Case: RSS is commonly used by content publishers to provide their audience with a way to stay updated on new content without having to visit the website regularly. Users can use RSS feed readers or aggregators to subscribe to their preferred feeds and receive updates in one place.
Application Programming Interfaces (APIs):
Functionality: APIs are sets of rules and protocols that allow different software applications to communicate and interact with each other. APIs define how different components of software systems can interact, exchange data, and access functionality provided by another application or service.
Use Case: APIs are used for various purposes, such as retrieving data from external sources, integrating different systems, enabling interactions with third-party services, and building software applications that rely on the functionality and data provided by APIs.
ActivityPub:
Functionality: ActivityPub is a decentralized social networking protocol that enables users to create, share, and interact with social activities across different platforms or instances. It facilitates the exchange of social data and interactions between federated platforms, allowing users on one platform to communicate and engage with users on other platforms.
Use Case: ActivityPub is used in federated social networks, where users can create profiles, post updates, follow other users, comment, like, and perform other social interactions. It allows users to have control over their data while being part of a larger interconnected social network.
chatGPT, as generated on the 3rd of June 2023 with the prompt: “What is the difference between Really Simple Syndication, Application Programming interfaces and Activitypub”
Twitter and Reddit want to charge for the use of their API but in the new age of social networks the shift is towards a decentralised model where everyone can talk to everyone else.
On the FediDB website you see that Mastodon, Misskey, Peertube, pixelfed, Writefreely and Wordpress are included within the fediverse. People already have the freedom to join the instance and community that they want, whilst being connected to other instances. In so doing instances are individually controlled, but the reach is global.
Whilst Twitter, Meta et al try to trap users into their ecosystems and charge them to use their website, their API and more, alternatives are being created where voluntary contributions are possible, to keep servers running.
Twitter and Reddit want to charge people to access their databases and use their APIs, at the same time as the ActivityPub and Authenticated Transfer protocols are being developed. At a time when Reddit and Twitter should be fighting to keep third party developers interested they are doing the opposite, by pricing them out of the development cycle.
And Finally
For the first time since 2006 the Social Web is broadening again as new projects and ideas are developed and implemented that help connect people, without making them vulnerable to single points of failures. When Instagram and WhatsApp were bought by Facebook the web lost a lot of its resiliency. With the buying of Twitter by an individual the need to prevent this from ever happening again became clear and interesting solutions are coming up. I like that the Fediverse exists and is coming of age, and that BlueSky may run in parallel. Twitter and Reddit are trying to charge for their data, but their data is no longer niche.
We are in a pandemic and I am between contracts, two reasons for which having an interest in the latest mobile phones is a futile pass time. I tried to revive my old Android phone and succeeded. I sometimes find it hard to get the phone recharged, and when it is recharged I need to keep it charged. This time I had a bonus problem. No data connection
I tried to connecting to wifi, no luck. I tried using the mobile phone’s data connection, no luck. I tried using one phone as a hotspot. No luck either. Restart the phone, no luck. In the end I tried a factory reset and the problem was resolved. Data worked both on wifi and 4g. The phone is old, but at least it allows me to play with Android when I want to.
I read that Nettle tea tastes of various things, honey, grass, slightly minty, spinach and more. The combination of those tastes didn’t sound appealing, except for mint and honey. I also wanted to see what they taste of. I spent an entire 2.95 for twenty tea bags and I tried it. When it’s dry it smells like hay, and when you smell it in boiling hot water it smells quite bad, like fish, or some other unpleasant smell. I then tasted it and it tastes like it smells when it’s dry. Hay. It’s like drinking the smell of a barn. You can see why people mix it with other flavours. Now I have one less thing to be curious about.
Jungfrau Tea, named after the mountains is made from seven herbs. It is made from a combination of round leaved mint, citrous thyme, orange mint, fennel seed, Lemon balm, Achilles Yarrow and mauve. I am confused by the lat one. The taste is definitely different. It has texture and I consider that it could almost be good. I have not added sugar or anything else and it has had time to sit so I may not be getting the full experience.
For more info
I try not to write about the pandemic too much. We are stuck in a loop where governments make mistakes, and people who don’t follow international news go along with it. We are four or five waves into this pandemic in Switzerland and it is only possible to remain positive if we expect little from our governments. England, Switzerland and Sweden have governments that are trying to ignore the problem, and pretend that it is endemic as soon as possible.
Meanwhile in most of Asia the pandemic is under control and there is less human suffering. Europe and the US are suffering, and yet other nations are not. Some people say that it is because in the West we have selfish cultures where the individual is put on a pedestal and community is ignored, while in Asia there is community spirit, and this helps to control the pandemic.
Either way, Covid-Zero should be prioritised over the fool’s errand of endemicity.
Now you understand why I avoid writing about the pandemic.
The Rolle Ingress mission starts at the castle and has you walk towards the centre. You then walk along the main street and through an arch back towards the lake side. From here you walk along the lake for a short distance before heading back in to town and the last portal. As this mission requires hacks and nothing more it is a perfect farming mission. The distance is relatively short.
As I looked straight down from a bridge today I noticed that the river is so low that the river bed has become bone dry in places. In other places you see that the gress is turning yellow. When tractors tend to the fields you see that they are stirring up clouds of dust. It is so dry, so often, that it is only a matter of time before forest fires burn down local forests.
Plenty of people are miserable for the rain, but when these consistent droughts lead to forest fires that remove the landscape and vegetation that we are used to they will not be so happy. They do not understand that these droughts are not normal. The fact that I didn’t use weather apps for years tells you how stable the weather system we’re in is.
I often walk by a door in a wall that frames this view. It’s a nice view. A nice garden with nice trees, the lake, a boat from the Belle époque and behind it the French side of the Lake, Haute Savoie and the Alps. A churchyard has a similar view, but with the train line as a bonus. If I was patient I could get the boat, a train and the rest of the landscape.
I am currently studying node.js, to see what I may eventually understand. So far most of the ideas and concepts are self-explanatory. The challenge will be in finding a project idea and getting it to work. Slowly I am getting to understand this topic. Node.JS looks intuitive to use.
Part of my motivation came from listening to the Javascript Jabber podcasts while I walk. It’s easy to hear about React, Angular, Laravel and other frameworks but it’s more interesting to hear about all the other smaller projets, like history.js, apline.js and many others. I like the idea of having specialist frameworks for specific tasks.
I felt overwhelmed by Angular, and then by Javascript. By changing context I am trying to get a different perspective, in an attempt to get a broader understanding of what various parts do. I am already better equipped for when I return to Laravel or Angular. I am also better equipped to understand typescript and Coffeescript etc.
“I don’t need to go for a one and a half hour walk. I said that to a neighbour before my walk. I could have cut it short, if it started to rain too heavily. Paradoxically for most of the walk it was grey and drizzling. Nothing to worry about. I was almost dry for almost the entire walk.
It’s as I walked the last one and a half kilometres that it started to rain heavily. Within a few minutes my trousers were soaked, and within a few more minutes my shoes and socks were soaked. Luckily the walk ended before it started to whick up through my t-shirt. The rain was so strong that when I took off my trousers my legs were soaked, as if I had just come out of the shower. I had. It was a rain shower.
I am fully equipped to walk in the rain for hours if it is required, but according to the doppler radar I did not expect rain. I was wrong. I got wet. I don’t mind. Humans are waterproof.
Yesterday I mentioned that I was studying WPRig. I finished the course. It looks like a very powerful tool to design wordpress themese but I think there is a learning curve and the course, pushed me beyond what I was comfortable with. The next course I’m studying is WordPress: Custom Post Types and Taxonomies and this looks like it will teach me just what I want to know to convert this website to a fully wordpress experience. When the site is ready I will play with permanent redirections before deleting the old pages forever. One more step into modernising this website.