cross-posted from: https://programming.dev/post/52191489

I’ve been working on an open-source project called Userless (https://github.com/danhab99/userless), and I’ve reached a point where the codebase has officially outgrown me. Working as a solo dev has gotten overwhelming and lonely, and I’m looking for collaborators—and honestly, friends—who want to help me shape this vision.

The Core Idea: Redefining the Internet Protocol

The internet is broken when it comes to how content creators and moderators interact. Right now, platforms have total monopoly over your data. If a moderator or a platform doesn't like what you say, they delete your post, and it ceases to exist.

I looked at basic internet protocols and thought: the relationship between creators and moderators needs to be entirely different.

Userless is built on two core principles:

1. Creators own their content entirely. Period.
2. Moderators have the right to exclude content. If a moderator doesn't want to host or display certain content on their node or community, they shouldn't have to.

But just because a moderator doesn't like your content doesn't mean it shouldn't exist anymore.

By separating ownership from hosting/curation, we can create a web where communities can self-moderate without silencing creators or destroying their digital footprints.

There's a tonne more I can talk about it but the AI's recommended I shorten this.

Why I need your help:

I’ve laid down the initial code, but it has gotten away from me. I’m losing my mental map of the project, and I really need people to jump in, help me organize it, and brainstorm the roadmap.

Whether you’re a protocol nerd, a backend engineer, or just someone who cares deeply about digital ownership and the future of the web, I’d love to have you.

Check out the repo here: https://github.com/danhab99/userless

Drop a comment, shoot me a PM, or open an issue if you want to chat, look at the code together. Let's build a better internet together.

Guys I'm in a slump, I keep having the same fight every time I feel bored and want to go out to do something and I can't because I don't know what to do because I don't even know what kinds of things I can do, like what classification of activity I should pick. And even when I do pick an activity class I'm paralyzed with the decisions regarding how to execute that activity. It's a 3dimentional puzzle of trying to find what doesn't make me miserable, is actually available to me, and I understand.

Here is my current list of activity classes, I keep it as an Obsidian Kanban board where each lane is a my opinion. What classifications should I add or if you have any ideas for what specific things I can do I'd really appreciate that too.

I'm based in Brooklyn

New things

• Hobbyist Groups Model Building, Gardening Clubs #social
• Joining Environmental Groups #social

Want to do

• Volunteering at Charities #social #commitment
• Calligraphy #lazy #equipment
• Electronic Circuit Building #equipment #alone
• Skating Inline, Ice #sport #inside #winter
• Kickboxing #sport
• Canoeing #sport #social #outside
• Volleyball #sport #social #club #outside
• Handmade Jewelry #equipment #class
• Robotics #equipment #expensive #alone
• Electronic Music Production #alone #class
• Nature Walks for Relaxation #alone
• Listening to Calming Music #alone
• Progressive Muscle Relaxation #alone
• Joining a Film Club #club
• Community Art Classes #social #class
• Collage Making #materials
• Baking as a creative activity #lazy #home #materials
• Music Composition #lazy
• Sewing #art #equipment
• Coffee Latte Art #class #equipment
• Swimming

Don't want to do

• Volunteering for Political Causes #social
• Participating in Dance Classes #social
• Joining a Choir or Music Group #social
• Language Exchange Clubs #social #club
• Furniture Restoration #expensive #materials #resources
• Garden Design #outside
• Film Making #art #equipment
• Rugby #sport #social #club
• Lacrosse #sport #social #club #outside
• Dodgeball #sport #social #club #outside
• Ultimate Frisbee #sport #social #club #outside
• Parkour #sport #social #outside
• Wrestling #sport #social #club #inside
• Surfing #sport #summer #outside
• Snowboarding #sport #expensive #winter
• Skiing Alpine or Cross-Country #sport #expensive #winter
• Rowing #sport #social #club #outside #hard
• Gymnastics #sport #social #club #inside #hard
• Cricket #sport #social #club #outside
• Basketball #sport #sport #social #club #outside
• Football/Soccer #sport #social #club #outside
• Weight Lifting #sport #club #hard
• Rock Climbing #sport
• Martial Arts Karate, Judo #sport
• Dancing various styles #sport #club #social

Planning

• Volunteer at animal shelter
• Pottery #art #expensive #equipment
• Sculpting #art #expensive #equipment

Doing

• Reading manga #lazy

Will do it again

• Deep Breathing Exercises #alone
• Boxing #sport #hard #club #equipment
• Yoga #sport #inside #alone #club
• Hiking #sport #outside
• Swimming #sport #club
• Spas #lazy #expensive
• Writing Journaling, Novels, Poetry #art
• Playing a Musical Instrument #art
• Attending Networking Events #social
• Aromatherapy #therapy
• Massage Therapy
• Herbal Therapy #therapy
• Tea Ceremonies #alone
• Mobile App Development
• Open Source Contributions
• Going to a comedy show #outside #lazy

Did it once

• Photography #art #equipment
• Joining a Book Club #social
• Cycling #sport #equipment #outside
• Drawing #art #skilled
• Painting #art #equipment
• Scuba diving

Do it with friends

• Attending Community Festivals #social
• Attending Concerts and Live Performances #social
• Cooking Classes with Friends #social #class #club

Hated it

• Meditation #alone
• Running #sport #outside #hard
• Sitting in Silence

Used to do it but its over

• Gaming Communities Online or Offline #social
• Tennis #sport #social #club #outside

I'm worried about his genetics. He was re-homed to me at 2yo, his previous owners did some genetic selection for him which I don't think I approve of. But he's my cat and I love him to bits and pieces and I want to know that he's ok.

I just broke up with a friend of afew years.

We met in college, she changed my life for the better, I'll never have a friend like that again.

3ish years ago she moved to a different state, we haven't hung out in person in forever. We talk on whatsapp all the time. Recently she got into some trouble and asked me for help, I should have refused. Not like it would have made a difference, we haven't talked in weeks.

I feel like I get "going through a hard time" better than everyone. Things suck right now but I have such a deep comprehension of how much worse-off I can be, I'm happy I'm not starving.

But I still manage to reach out, I still manage to grow and change and do new things. Why can't she, why can't my friends stop being so broke-minded when it comes to me.

Everything I want to do is 10x harder or 10x more expensive simply bc I suggest it but when others bring up the same ideas it's fine. How can it be impossible to manage in 10x difficulty when I do it all the time?

I cannot be special, that's against the rule that everybody is special therefore nobody's special therefore I cannot be special. So how is it possible that I can feel so aweful all the time and still drag myself to go out and have fun even though I'm at a bar alone. I can do it. It's not hard. Just go out and get a drink and stand there and be ok.

If you're feeling sad and a friend texts you then you have to text back, if you asked a friend for help and they helped you should owe them back atleast how hard it was for you to ask. You should have to give back something. And if you don't what does that mean for me? Do I gain the privilege to do something? Should I do something about it? What can be done?

So I decided to break up with her because even if I didn't help she can go months without talking to me and that's the same as not having friends to me so what? Why is it different? Why shouldn't I make something out of this empty pipe between us and fill it with a push, people have pushed me out, does that mean that I get the privilege to push people out too? Should I (I already did)?

All I know about making friends at my age is that the ROI is bad bc the cost is actually that daunting. The benefits have not increased since childhood but the difficulty has. And at some age I passed a threshold where the difficulty line rose above the benefit line and it's just going up and up and I can't stop it, I can't get ahead of it.

I can't do anything but loose people. My last friend is married, she'll be having kids in afew years, she's on the other side of the planet. We're effectively not even friends anymore but what can I say about it? Tell her to slow down for me?

I want community

I want my old cat back

I want to be a child again because I can't face an inevitable future where I know how much less I will have.

A few weeks ago I was having a conversation with my therapist and he pointed some things that about me: mainly that my sense of socializing and bonding is feminine, I don't like making friends even though I like having friends I don't like the process of acquiring them, and because of that I don't really have many hobbies or much of a sense of self. My therapist explains to me that the average heterosexual male bonds with fellow males through shared experiences and activities like playing pool, we're doing construction.

And then this got me reflecting on the whole concept of hookup culture. What if it's the average male that can only really bond with other men through shared experiences and activities like having sex? And my demisexuality makes me fundamentally incompatible with like 90% of all gay men, so on top of how hard romance is for me for other reasons, it is now 10 times harder?

This is a hyper generalization I know but it's kind of bothering me that I have no one else to talk to about it.

If you can't tell, the community profile pic and banner were generated by ChatGPT, this is temporary until we can get a hold of better art.

So if you're intrested in contributing human created art to replace the banner and profile pic please comment them below and which ever one gets the most votes wins!!

::: spoiler disclaimer timeline TBD by engagement :::

I cannot ever be sure about this but this might have come to me in a dream. I just thought about why it's so hard to implement a web-server in bash, basically all the functionality of the webserver must be implemented in bash but the http handling can be compiled.

This program lets you declare endpoints and map them to shell commands, query args get passed as ENV vars, methods are enforced, body is passed in stdin and the response is the stdout.

I also learned I really like declaring flake.nix files for all my personal projects, I hope it helps you install what I create!

I cannot watch TikTok or YouTube shorts or Instagram reels anymore.

When it comes to having any degree of comprehension as to why these apps insist on making me so angry I feel like I cannot characterize myself as anything better than a plank of wood.

I don't understand who is benefiting from this relationship because clearly I'm not. Every time I stop scrolling on tiktok or YouTube I am so angry I cannot focus on my job! I can't decide what to do next! I can't do anything!! I'm not even clicking on ads, I've bought a couple of things from TikTok that are ok,, prices are sometimes better on tiktok,,

But if I watch one more:

• CPS worker try and fail to kidnap children
• Any sort of religious debate though most of the ones I'm getting are about Jesus and convincing people that Islam is real or not
• Narrated stories from Reddit
• Ella Boyett (the hiiiiiiiii Karen with the wig)
• Any skits about customers misbehaving at businesses
• Instructional recipe videos formatted in discovery-speak, for example "when you add this to this and add this to this and mix and bake you get this"
• Sheffield Jew hunt awareness videos
• Videos about how gross immigrants might be behaving in European cities
• NYC, Dearborn Mi, Lakewood Nj
• Anything involving screaming
• Video recording strangers crashing out
• Crashouts in general actually
• Videos of people whining about something that they're psyoped to believe they need in their life
• Tiny accounts with less than 100 followers making lukewarm observations

I will actually be in a state of life or death emergency. Like I'm not even being facetious or obtuse I just deleted tiktok before I started writing this and I don't feel safe.. I'll feel better in a little bit.

I just can't remember the last time I watched something funny. I can't remember the last time I laughed on YouTube. I'm just miserable by nature and these apps aren't making it any better.

I want to know what profit these algorithms are optimizing for. I feel like with me my algorithm might have reached a false valley way too soon and there's nothing I can do to dislocate it and have it try again, tiktok lets you reset your feed but YouTube doesn't really. But every time I reset my tiktok feed it always returns to the same exact shit, you can't even not engage with the same content you used to engage with because that's also considered engagement, swiping away too fast apparently counts as much as watching the whole thing through because you already know what it is therefore you interacted with it which is what the algorithm wants. I like algorithmically curated content sometimes, I like it when the algorithm is also really good which is something I used to say about tiktok but not now that it's trying everything it can to make me angry.

Edit 2hrs later: all is well I'm okay. Turns out I kind of like reading horror manga. Junji Ito is pretty good, I can now say that I've read Frankenstein!

I recently opened a new show and tell community for devs to share their projects but I can't see the posts when I access through community through programming.dev, but I can see when I access the community through lemmy.world. If I can't see the posts, I can't imagine that other people can see posts. I have not seen other communities with the same issue, I'm just wondering if there's anything I can do.

Solution: if you set your account to hide read posts then the back end will not even serve the posts so it appears as though there are no posts. I'm such an idiot

LSS: I just wanna beable to slap together dirt simple datapipelines and iterate over them with new work. Currently I need it for like 3 things: a super special project I'm not ready to share yet, transcribing video chats, and generally webscraping (wget and curl are so reliable and comfy).

Claude fucked up pretty much everywhere that was important. To me programming is the practice of communicating your perfect and (ideally) edgecase-free understanding of how to solve a problem. I didn't know how to build a CI/snakemake styled datapipeline so I asked AI to help. As far as I understand, the task was too abstract, it had no idea what I wanted bc I had little idea of what I wanted. AI cannot replace a programmer when brand new abstractions need to be invented!!

I am happy to finally have this tool and cannot wait to implement it in my daily workflows.