Fediverse link-aggregator PieFed launches in beta test
Fediverse link-aggregator PieFed launches in beta test
cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/8095934
Looks like we're getting company!
Official site is here: https://join.piefed.social/
Beta test is happening here: https://piefed.social/
It looks quite neat. I like the emphasis on making things easy for admins and using more tried and true technology compared to Lemmy's bleeding-edge (that sometimes causes issues). Here's hoping it'll be a great alternative to Lemmy.
Where can we read about what they do differently? So far I’ve seen its written in python which is cool since it makes it easier for people to contribute.
Curious to know of they will enable the ability to follow users and subscribe to threads which are two of the biggest missing features on Lemmy in my opinion.
I wonder if they’ll enable parts of the Lemmy api so the Lemmy apps can be used for Piefed
It also makes it slower and easier to introduce bugs.
Maybe they can implement Lemmy's API, like what Misskey et al. does with Mastodon's API, so it can use the same apps.
adding a warning on posts made by accounts with low reputation, meaning that their posts get downvoted a lot.
Sounds very nice.
Always happy to see a new Fediverse service!
My only concern is Python. Wonderful for AI and scripting, but I'm not sure how well it works as a web server. Although, I'd assume that a lot of the web server code is actually C under the hood...
PieFed dev here.
It'll be interesting to see how Python performs.
There's some fun stuff you can do with compiling Python into C. e.g. https://cython.org/ or https://docs.exaloop.io/codon/. But I don't see a need for it as PieFed doesn't really crunch numbers much. Mastodon has a Ruby backend. Kbin uses PHP. Until you get really massive the choice of language doesn't really make a huge difference to performance as most of the work in most web apps is done by the database.
I am a little bit concerned about the limited support for asynchronous I/O in the Flask framework, which could limit scalability at some point. But there are options for the future. Quart claims to be a drop-in replacement for Flask.
In any case, performance is just one factor. For a FOSS project to be successful long term it needs contributions from other developers and with the massive pool of Python developers there are, hopefully I'll be getting some help soon. Also along those lines I have deliberately chosen:
All this makes setting up an initial development environment, finding the bit you want to change and testing it out fairly quick and easy.
I hope it's these choices that lead to an absolute blizzard of contributions from many people and that's where the true strength of the project will come from.
In any case, performance is just one factor. For a FOSS project to be successful long term it needs contributions from other developers and with the massive pool of Python developers there are, hopefully I’ll be getting some help soon. Also along those lines I have deliberately chosen:
to code as simply and stupidly as possible, to make it accessible to most skill levels. No complicated frameworks, fancy algorithms, or esoteric design patterns. Model View Controller, baby. No frontend build process or tool chain (vanilla JS only. No npm). Few third party dependencies, only Redis and Postgresql. Mostly.All this makes setting up an initial development environment, finding the bit you want to change and testing it out fairly quick and easy.
Sounds very wise to make it as accessible as possible. And you basically get super maintainable code as a side product!
Thanks for the in-depth response! I definitely understand choosing Python for a fledgling project like this and trying to attract a developer community.
As for my musing about C and Python, I wasn't really talking about Cython or anything like that; I actually meant that I figured the specific code in the Python standard library and various frameworks for server applications were written under the hood with C and heavily optimized.
The database, storage and network are usually the bottlenecks in these kinds of websites, not the programming language. It might add a few ms of latency, but the big lags come from congestion or bad db queries.
More options is better.
A good option for beehaw
I am very inspired by Beehaw and what they're trying to do. I'm building quite opinionated software with my values baked into it and those seem like a good fit for Beehaw. But I don't know any of the people involved so I'd be arriving very late to the party without any knowledge of the terrain or history. Best to stay out of it.
I just want to code, ban nazis, do linux admin and build community infrastructure. :)
we can tag them here to let them know :)
Fast, clean, and right to the point. Looks like good company.
The Fediversereport website is broken.
Infinite captcha loop on VPN. Solve it, shows success and unblocks IP, thinks, shows new captcha, repeat.
Fediverse links to current communities:
Looks like it's too late to sign up, I just tried and it kept telling me to "verify that [I'm] not a robot" without giving me anything (like a captcha) to do so.
PieFed dev here.
Sorry about that, I've had a hard time getting the captcha working while also having decent XSS protection. I've deployed a probable fix, please try again.
The REAL MVP!!! Yay Rimu!!!
I signed up, no problem. There is a bit of funky behavior (I clicked on the Pie logo, and it changed to the word, "Logo" haha), but overall it looks sharp. I"m trying to figure out where to make suggestions - I'm a dark screen person, and it's got way too much white and blue - colors that suppress melatonin production. I'm mighty fond o' me melatonin.
I have honestly not found flask + (probably) sqlalchemy to be the easiest thing out there. Just like mailinglists: simple doesn't mean easy. Many people conflate the two.
One of the good/bad things about Flask is it's quite a small framework which lets the developer do whatever they want (yay!) so it's easy to make an unholy mess (boo!). I hope that I've stayed on the rails with PieFed.
It's a bit sad what has happened in the most recent version of SQLAlchemy - they made it all weird and difficult. PieFed uses an older version which I find very intuitive and simple.
Good luck and have fun 🙂
and uses Python.
Great. Can't wait to see how slow it is.
Hello from the beta instance!
Hey there!
Howdy!
It's yout first comment too :D
Hello!
Welcome!