53°F

Aaron Parecki

  • Eddie Hinkle https://eddiehinkle.com/   •   Dec 4
    Yeah using a completely separate service for stories does make sense as the use case for a separate endpoint. The benefit of the separate service would definitely help people on static sites so that’s a big win.

    That’s really interesting that you handle the videos differently between your stories endpoint and your Micropub Endpoint. Is that for size? Browser compatibility? What’s the thought behind that?

    Makes sense, I’m good with starting the stories experiment with it being a separate endpoint.

    Aaron Parecki
    I guess I mainly post videos to my site that are already encoded either by Instagram or by my video editing software. But with stories it's usually straight from my camera.

    I think I'm on board with a separate endpoint as an initial experiment.

    I also just realized the reader is going to need a bit more information than I currently provide in that JSON. I'd want Monocle to show the author name and photo too of course. Not sure if that should be included in the endpoint response or if we should rely on h-card discovery from the page the endpoint was discovered from. In any case that's something the Microsub server will deal with, and it'll normalize that data for the reader app.
    Schiller Park, Illinois • 30°F
  • Eddie Hinkle https://eddiehinkle.com/   •   Dec 4
    Yeah, you're right again! I did think "I'd have to tweak my channels" but thought it was the closest match.

    I think I might be leaning towards an mp- command rather than a new endpoint. But there are some pros and cons.

    The pros for a new endpoint that is at the same url as the GET for the data is that someone who hasn't built Micropub or wants to use an external service for their stories would make that possible. By de-coupling it, it provides more flexibility.

    The cons for a new endpoint is that the authentication layer, the set up of a new endpoint can be a technical hurdle that might prevent more people form getting involved. For those that already have a Micropub endpoint, the addition of the stories feature becomes a pretty simple add on. It also means there's a new communication layer that people would have to understand, whereas Micropub with an mp- command is pretty simply understood.

    Either solution would be pretty simple for me based on my set up, but I'm trying to think what would be more difficult for: a) Wordpress Users b) Static Site Users, anyone else that is building their own tech stack it's probably not a huge difference.

    That said, I use an external Micropub library in my Node.js server that does the authentication against my token endpoint automatically. So if I were to add a new endpoint, I would have to write the code to handle the verification of my token endpoint. While my token endpoint is on the same server, for other people in similar situations, they might have juggling the authentication process.

    Aaron Parecki
    One of the advantages of a completely new endpoint is that it'd be possible to set up a service to handle stories separate from the rest of someone's content, even with a Wordpress site or other CMS. I looked at my code and i actually implemented the read and writing of story data in a single file just for organizational purposes. I guess the question is whether this kind of content is different enough that someone might want to not mix it in with their micropub or media endpoint handling.

    I also do actual async reencoding of videos that i upload to my story whereas the micropub video files don't get re-processed, so I think that's a sign that a totally separate endpoint makes sense.
    Chicago, Illinois • 31°F
    2 replies
  • Eddie Hinkle https://eddiehinkle.com/   •   Dec 4
    Also, thinking through this a bit more deeply, obviously someone could get data into their json file anyway they wanted, but the easiest way for most people would be a Micropub app that just allows you to snap a photo and upload it without asking for all the normal Micropub stuff. We would need some way to inform the person's server that the post is intended to be a "story". One option would be to send something like channel: ['stories'] or you could make a specialized Micropub app like that have a config screen where you define what additional metadata it sends and then people could use whatever method they wanted, a channel property, a tag property, etc. I definitely don't think a new attribute would be right, and I know channel isn't really used anywhere except your and my sites, but we also can't do tag as a default or else the posts would automatically show up on people's websites as a normal post (unless they configured posts with a specific tag to be routed somewhere else). So this is tricky, but I definitely think something like this would be required for me to use it routinely. My default for my site would probably be to use a 'stories' channel and then to be able to set an audience on each photo/video so that some things I could provide to a subset of people.
    Aaron Parecki
    hm I don't think `channel` is the right terminology for this, also because stories exist completely outside of my own concept of channels.

    Maybe it's just a new `mp-` command in the request?

    Right now I have an iOS Workflow that just uploads a file to a specific endpoint. I guess that's the other way to handle it, create a new endpoint for it? Maybe the same endpoint that the story can be read from can also be POSTed to by the owner to create a story?
    Los Angeles, California • 62°F
    2 replies
  • Not Fake Adam Kalsey https://twitter.com/akalsey   •   Dec 4
    At some point, they start charging you for the extra breakfasts.
    Aaron Parecki
    I could probably get us all in to the all-you-can-eat buffet without anyone noticing
    Los Angeles, California • 55°F
    1 reply
  • Eddie Hinkle https://eddiehinkle.com/   •   Dec 3
    I think I would want one list of stories. I like how Instagram will just play through all the stories straight. I think stories is pretty different than feeds so you don’t need that categorization.

    The other thing is I’m wondering, do we just make the story JSON mf2 json since you all have experimented with that as a Wordpress side file?

    Aaron Parecki
    Yeah I think I agree about just the one list. Also better to keep things simple for this.

    The main difference between this and an h-entry is that it really is providing just a photo or video file, it isn't providing a full post with all the other attributes that come along with h-entry, like content, tags, etc. That said, Instagram stories do have some additional data like the poll options, so maybe it does make sense to use essentially a trimmed-down h-entry vocabulary for this? Maybe jf2 format so that it's simpler?
    Los Angeles, California • 55°F
    3 replies
  • Eddie Hinkle https://eddiehinkle.com/   •   Dec 3
    I think this is a great idea! I would love to share stories and view stories in the IndieWeb. I haven’t added it to my website because I’m sure I won’t post because I know it is unlikely that anyone will visit my site daily and look at them. But I would totally publish them if I knew they could show up in people’s readers! I also would totally add support for this in Indigenous for iOS
    Aaron Parecki
    Then I guess we'd need to translate this to Microsub somehow, so that the Microsub server would be responsible for aggregating the story content.

    Would you want to have just one list of stories or would you expect it to be a list per channel?
    Los Angeles, California • 58°F
    1 reply
  • Eddie Hinkle https://eddiehinkle.com/   •   Dec 3
    I think this is a great idea! I would love to share stories and view stories in the IndieWeb. I haven’t added it to my website because I’m sure I won’t post because I know it is unlikely that anyone will visit my site daily and look at them. But I would totally publish them if I knew they could show up in people’s readers! I also would totally add support for this in Indigenous for iOS
    Aaron Parecki
    We just need to standardize on some format. In this case, I think we can just do this with some JSON syntax, since it doesn't really make sense to have HTML fallback like we normally do with microformats? Here's what my site publishes so that its frontend can show the story interface: https://aaronparecki.com/story.json
    Los Angeles, California • 58°F
  • Vika https://fireburn.ru/   •   Dec 4

    Screenshots of stories (or Snaps, if you wanna trace the idea to the original) seems to be the intended workflow. So Stories being saved doesn’t seem to be a problem… I guess? And remember that if it got on the Internet, it remains on the Internet… forever.

    The visibility of story content seems to be present on story-supporting silos, so that should be fairly logical to implement. Authentication would be required in this case.

    Aaron Parecki
    I haven't done any of the fancy stuff Instagram has done with things like getting feedback on stories like their polling buttons or sliders. Right now this is the endpoint my site's JavaScript hits to find out whether to show the story interface and fetch the images or video: https://aaronparecki.com/story.json

    I guess if we just standardized on some format like this we could add support to various readers pretty easily.
    Los Angeles, California • 58°F
  • Vika https://fireburn.ru/   •   Dec 4

    I see it fairly often. Is there any API in p3k to make these stories available in readers? Maybe we could build something interconnected, so every person’s story was available in an IndieWeb reader!

    Aaron Parecki
    Nice, I think that'd be great! There are some interesting implications around doing this in a distributed environment where I am not in control of the player, as opposed to Instagram who is in control of the source of the data as well as the player. For example when I publish something to my story, my intent is for it to be visible for 24 hours, but there isn't really anything stopping someone from downloading a copy and keeping it. Is that okay? Maybe? I also kind of think I'd prefer that my story content is only visible to people I know, so I want to tie it to whatever system we end up with for authenticated feed fetching. Ultimately though all we're really talking about is sharing a photo or video with some expiration date so it should be doable!
    Los Angeles, California • 61°F
    2 replies
  • Vika https://fireburn.ru/   •   Dec 3

    I think stories are harmful for #IndieWeb, since they:

    1. Are not visible from readers
    2. Divert attention to silos
    3. Disappear
    4. Don’t have a universal share button outside of the silo
    Aaron Parecki
    I'm still trying to understand the appeal of stories, but I do post my own stories on my website! When there is one available, there's a glowing ring around the profile photo on my home page! :-)
    Los Angeles, California • 66°F
    1 reply
  • Riley Scheid https://twitter.com/RileyScheid   •   Dec 3
    @aaronpk I like the idea of exploring/owning my own GPS data. Do you know of any android apps that let you pick your destination server, similar to your Overland app?
    Aaron Parecki
    OwnTracks is probably the best option for that, but I haven't actually set up the server myself before.
    Long Beach, California • 67°F
    1 reply
  • fluffy https://twitter.com/fluffy   •   Dec 2
    @aaronpk It feels a bit ironic to me that there doesn't seem to be any RSS or Atom feed associated with https://aaronparecki.com/articles - is this intentional? I don't even see an h-feed on it...
    Aaron Parecki
    I link to my Atom feed from my home page, but all of my feeds are also available as Atom by adding .atom to the URL. I don't have h-feed markup because I haven't gotten around to it and things seem to be doing okay looking at just the list of h-entrys on the page.
    Seattle, Washington • 43°F
    1 reply
  • Vika https://fireburn.ru/   •   Nov 30

    I’m using notmuch to deal with my inbox. It sorts my email so I don’t have to. Maybe you should try it?

    Aaron Parecki
    I wish sorting were the problem, but i already know there are a few dozen high priority things I need to respond to 😖
    Las Vegas, Nevada • 54°F
  • Aaron Parecki
    This is really interesting. I'm generally wary of adding encryption into a protocol at this level, instead, preferring it at the transport layer for example by providing an HTTP Authorization header. But you've made some interesting arguments about being able to reuse the existing WebSub mechanisms that are worth exploring more.

    I think my main concern, which you sort of hinted at, is that the feed will essentially leak info about how many followers someone has, as well as this potentially including a _lot_ of data as someone's followers grow to the hundreds.

    Have you seen the work going on around making IndieAuth work in a server-to-server environment without user interaction? The idea with that is to let a feed reader fetch a private feed on behalf of a user. https://indieweb.org/AutoAuth
    Las Vegas, Nevada • 52°F
    1 reply 1 mention
  • Michael Vogel https://pirati.ca/profile/heluecht   •   Nov 29
    How much conferences do you attend per year?
    Aaron Parecki
    Nowhere near as many as some people I know, but I realized I didn't have a list of all of them so I started compiling one! It's still rough but it's a start: https://aaronparecki.com/conferences/ Thanks for the nudge!
    Las Vegas, Nevada • 53°F
  • christopherchelpka https://micro.blog/christopherchelpka   •   Nov 28

    @EddieHinkle I’m using @aaronpk’s Aperture. But I’m not sure how to subscribe there either...

    Aaron Parecki
    Sorry it's not super obvious. Go into a channel in Aperture, then click "New Source" and you can enter a URL to subscribe to.
    Las Vegas, Nevada • 60°F
    7 mentions
  • Tomas Quinones https://twitter.com/tomas_quinones   •   Nov 27
    @aaronpk Are you still happy with your Brompton? Lately, I've been seriously considering one for commuting and travel where a touring bike is just too much.
    Aaron Parecki
    yesssss it is still my main bike! The only times I don't ride it are when I have to haul 60 pounds of boxes and I use my cargo bike instead.
    Las Vegas, Nevada • 60°F
    1 reply
  • Jonathan LaCour https://cleverdevil.io/profile/cleverdevil   •   Nov 26
    @aaronpk see you there! Maybe we can have an impromptu HWC?!
    Aaron Parecki
    omg yesss! HWC re:invent!
    Portland, Oregon • 48°F
    likes
  • gilcreque https://micro.blog/gilcreque   •   Nov 25

    @aaronpk is it a Samsung? My son turned off my TV using it's secret hidden button and I was confused for quite some time.

    Aaron Parecki
    Viewsonic actually! One of the last non-smart TVs, so I'm glad it isn't actually broken!
    Portland, Oregon • 38°F
  • Aaron Parecki https://aaronparecki.com/   •   Nov 22
    I did it. I found a TV and survived the crowds and carried the TV back to the MAX station.
    Aaron Parecki
    on the train
    Portland, Oregon, USA • 47°F
    1 reply