Hackers' Pub is a place for software engineers to share their knowledge and experience with each other. It's also an ActivityPub-enabled social network, so you can follow your favorite hackers in the fediverse and get their latest posts in your feed.
Birchtree @matt@birchtree.me
Nilay Patel on this week's The Vergecast:
You can just see that they picked the finances over the product over and over again. And if they had just figured out a way to make in-app purchases worth more to developers than leaving the ecosystem, developers, I think, would have picked in-app purchases every single time. It's just easier. And they didn't. Instead, they punished the ability to compete.
This is such a good way of putting it, and it really makes me think back to how Microsoft behaved when they had massive market power. "What are you going to do about it?" is a strong position to have, but it doesn't make you a lot of friends.
And I know some people will read this and say, "Matt, Apple has always existed to make money, you just finally noticed," and honestly, I find this to be an extremely reductive way to look at companies and how they make decisions. People act like companies are legally beholden to their shareholders to act like a dick, when that's simply not the case. The reason Apple was able to develop the sort of following that they have is by making products that are genuinely useful to people, and from product designers who prioritized great experiences compared to what you could get from other products on the market. The challenge, and the temptation, is that when you get power, it's hard not to use it. It's hard to walk into a meeting and explain how you're going to reduce revenue, right? I think something like that has happened with App Store revenue. It's not their primary revenue source, nor is it even a major one in the grand scheme of things (Tim Cook seemed nonplussed that Trump's tariffs would likely cost Apple just under $1 trillion in the next quarter, so it's not like they are desperate for every last penny). But it's hard to look at an amount of money that you're making and say, "we don't want to make that money anymore."
But you have to consider the other costs here, and those are reputational costs that you suffer from being a dick. People like me have been arguing for years that the reputational cost of Apple's dickish position on App Store rules is a risk, and they should make changes before they're forced to. This week, their hand was forced, and they had to make changes on someone else's schedule and with someone else's requirements.
It's a shame because, despite all of the issues we have with the company, in my opinion, Apple still makes the very best computers, tablets, phones, watches, and more. I'm writing this on my Mac, and I love this computer. My iPhone is in my pocket, and it's an outstanding piece of consumer technology. These things are amazing, and it's so frustrating to have this anti-competitive App Store thing lingering over all of it.
The Cannae Problem
Link: https://www.joanwestenberg.com/the-cannae-problem/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43869288
Images of Soviet Venus lander falling to Earth suggest its parachute may be out
Link: https://www.leonarddavid.com/old-soviet-venus-descent-craft-nearing-earth-reentry/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873531
@vtrlxVictoria i personally still actually think this is something that can be attached to the code itself (upon the git merkle tree using git-notes) but architecting ephemeral messages intended to be attached to a merkle tree is really hard and requires essentially the same mental gymnastics as running an app "on the blockchain". i think there is a limited form of this that can be usefully attached to a commit tree, but it's definitely much easier to architect as a distinct service which merely interfaces with the git tree
@vtrlxVictoria one issue i have with making things "federate" is that AP requires hosting a server that can receive requests. if we can stick things into git, we can use existing git infrastructure for it, and we can architect the protocol to query messages from a particular time span, or touching a particular file—all things git is already great at doing!
Prompt chaining reimagined with type inference https://lobste.rs/s/dsczpg #ai #plt
https://www.haskellforall.com/2025/05/prompt-chaining-reimagined-with-type_2.html
@hipsterelectrond@nny mc² @vtrlxVictoria
wishing for another identity model instead of oauth is wishing for the exact thing that we just said isn't likely to happen in the next few years. we're all for it, and as you know, the keypair-is-identity thing is also our preference as long as it's not done in an ancap way, but then we're talking about long-term goals rather than things that will be ready while the git-forge thing is still a hot topic
@hipsterelectrond@nny mc² @vtrlxVictoria like there needs to be a round of social experimentation around keypair-as-identity stuff to sort out the different forms of interpersonal and group conflict that will arise from it, to make sure that the social remedies to those problems actually work
Quickly everyone, observe my precious child.
Servers
- Sharkey v2025.2.3
- Hollo v0.5.6
- Mitra v4.1.1
- NodeBB v4.3.0
- Manyfold v0.109.0
- Pleroma ActivityRelay v0.3.5
- Gathio v1.5.2
- Misskey v2025.4.1
- gancio v1.26.0
- Iceshrimp v2023.12.14
- NeoDB v0.11.6.2
- Gush! v0.0.17
- Vernissage Server v1.11.0
- Images, profiles, and preferences (Ghost)
- BadgeFed: Early Decentralization Experiments + OpenBadges Export! - Second April 2025 Update
- PieFed development update Apr 2025 - S3, OAuth, Federation retry queue, Stripe
- Forgejo monthly update - April 2025
- places.pub: A service that makes OpenStreetMap geographical data available as ActivityPub objects
Clients
- Pachli v2.12.0
- Voyager v2.33.0
- Tesseract v1.4.38
- Blorp v1.2.5
- Interstellar v0.9.2
- PeerTube Mobile v1.0.1
- Phanpy changelog
For developers
- Masto.js v7.0.0
- FediAlgo v0.23.0
- apsig v0.5.2
- apkit: Powerful Toolkit for ActivityPub Implementations (Python)
Protocol
- ActivityPub/Primer/Inbox
- ActivityPub/Primer/Outbox
- ActivityPub/Primer/Activity Streams 2.0
Articles
- How I made a blog using Lemmy - a write-up
- Steps Forward in Long-form Text
- Does The Fediverse Need Influencers To Survive?
- Fediverse Report – #114
-----
#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub
Previous edition: https://mitra.social/objects/01966ea0-7d42-6181-9fdd-ccfe31dab1e2
If anyone else is looking to leave #Spotify and (re-)build a proper MP3 collection from scratch – I just discovered this extremely handy tool for exporting Spotify playlists into CSV files:
GitHub: https://github.com/watsonbox/exportify
(I'm aware that Spotify lets you export your playlists in one big JSON file, but even converted to CSV it's a hot mess. Exportify's CSVs are per-playlist and listed just the way you'd expect it. 👌)
So cool to see projects appearing out of the blue that are building on top of #iroh. We must be doing something right at 
@n0irohiroh
Wait, did I miss something, I just stumbled upon a "carnivore bread" recipe. And, well, hum, isn't this basically meatloaf?!!?
@stefanoStefano Marinelli It was late 1991, on a Friday. I was still in the office late afternoon when two men came in and asked for my boss. I said that he had already left and asked if I could be of help.
The two men told me that they were from a children's hospital in Hamburg and came here to buy NeXT computers for the hospital (well, consider buying), and wanted to check these out. At that time, we were one of the very few NeXT resellers, and the only distributor.
Anyhow, I asked them to explain their needs and such (so that I could present the machines better), but then realized that we couldn't meet most of their needs in the hospital. They both were big fans of NeXT, and they were really into it, but still, I couldn't sell them something that's make them unhappy.
Long story short, I suggested them not to buy NeXT computers for the hospital because most of what they needed could be done with a PC with DOS and, and the rest was nor doable on NeXT computers either.
They left, slightly on the down note.
The week after they called my boss, told him that originally they were thinking of buying some 15 (or so) NeXTstations for the hospital, ordered two(!) NeXTcubes, one each, privately, and told my boss to give me a raise or a bonus because I consulted them so honestly.
I guess I am really a bad sales person because I always tried to find what is best for the customer, not necessarily what makes most money for me (my company). I assume this is one reason why I am still not a billionaire 😂😂
Hey #Fediverse what is the FULL user@domain called? Obviously the first part is user, the second domain, but what do we call the FULL thing? Social Address (SocAddr)? Fedi Address(FAddr)? Full User Domain ID (FUDI)? Full Account Path (FAP) oh that's a bad one.
Some more impossibly dumb bullshit is happening with respect to fluoride but rather than just get mad about that from a hundred different headlines, please watch this lovely video from 
@acollierastroAngela Collier which — among other things — actually explains the mechanism of fluoride, so you actually know what it’s doing rather than just being nebulously good for your teeth https://youtu.be/GefwcsrChHk
Servers
- Sharkey v2025.2.3
- Hollo v0.5.6
- Mitra v4.1.1
- NodeBB v4.3.0
- Manyfold v0.109.0
- Pleroma ActivityRelay v0.3.5
- Gathio v1.5.2
- Misskey v2025.4.1
- gancio v1.26.0
- Iceshrimp v2023.12.14
- NeoDB v0.11.6.2
- Gush! v0.0.17
- Vernissage Server v1.11.0
- Images, profiles, and preferences (Ghost)
- BadgeFed: Early Decentralization Experiments + OpenBadges Export! - Second April 2025 Update
- PieFed development update Apr 2025 - S3, OAuth, Federation retry queue, Stripe
- Forgejo monthly update - April 2025
- places.pub: A service that makes OpenStreetMap geographical data available as ActivityPub objects
Clients
- Pachli v2.12.0
- Voyager v2.33.0
- Tesseract v1.4.38
- Blorp v1.2.5
- Interstellar v0.9.2
- PeerTube Mobile v1.0.1
- Phanpy changelog
For developers
- Masto.js v7.0.0
- FediAlgo v0.23.0
- apsig v0.5.2
- apkit: Powerful Toolkit for ActivityPub Implementations (Python)
Protocol
- ActivityPub/Primer/Inbox
- ActivityPub/Primer/Outbox
- ActivityPub/Primer/Activity Streams 2.0
Articles
- How I made a blog using Lemmy - a write-up
- Steps Forward in Long-form Text
- Does The Fediverse Need Influencers To Survive?
- Fediverse Report – #114
-----
#WeekInFediverse #Fediverse #ActivityPub
Previous edition: https://mitra.social/objects/01966ea0-7d42-6181-9fdd-ccfe31dab1e2
TVerで流してる番組のちょっと先の内容をなんとなく予知できる感じになってて、疲れてるしデジャブみたいのが起きてるのかねえと思ってたんだけど、30分くらいしてからふと確認したら単なる再放送だったぬ
The Scientific-Python Development Guide has been updated with SPDX licenses (PEP 639) and dependency-groups (PEP 735)! There's more uv, too; the cookiecutter/copier template now sets up uv everywhere for ultra fast CI. New repo-review checks, too. https://learn.scientific-python.org/development/guides/ #python
A new issue of #ThisWeekInGNOME is now online!
#198 Two More Weeks...
https://thisweek.gnome.org/posts/2025/05/twig-198/
Commodore 64 Assembly, part 6 - substracting numbers and other math
https://michal.sapka.pl/2025/commodore-64-assembly-part-6-substracting-number-and-other-math/
I am very close to actually drawing stuff on the screen.
Firefox could be doomed without Google search deal, says executive
https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-revenue-share-doj-antitrust-remedies?utm_source=flipboard&utm_medium=activitypub
Posted into Tech News 
@tech-news-thevergeTech News
Expanding on what we missed with sycophancy
Link: https://openai.com/index/expanding-on-sycophancy/
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43870819
Show HN: GPT-2 implemented using graphics shaders
Link: https://github.com/nathan-barry/gpt2-webgl
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43870998
Jetzt gilt es.
Noch 2 Wochen, um die Unterschriften zu sammeln. Komm dazu!
#Hamburg #Werbefrei #DirekteDemokratie #StadtGestalten #Mitgestalten #Sammeln #Partizipation #Volksbegehren #Initiative #Volksentscheid
Waterfox, the open source browser developed by a British developer from 🇬🇧, has just released a new metasearch engine powered by Google results.
They promise it'll be an engine with no tracking, no invasive advertising, and a cleaner interface. It'll have custom themes, advanced search options and a domain block list. And no AI.
Their business model is based on contextual ads (they ask you to disable your ad blocker) and maybe a subscription-based tier that removes all ads. If they can't make money, they say they might have to rethink their approach.
Official statement:
https://www.waterfox.net/blog/waterfox-private-search
Mitsammeln? Leicht gemacht! Schnapp dir ein #Klemmbrett, ein paar Rückumschläge und los geht's!
In der #Caffamacherreihe 47 gibt es alles, was du brauchst.
Verhilf #Hamburg #Werbefrei zum Erfolg! 📝
Made the mistake of buying a bunch of pea protein before discovering that only vegans are allowed to eat it, now I don’t know what to do
My cousin seems to think my fears about Pierre Pollieve taking away women's rights and building concentration camps are overblown. I reminded her that Trump is literally sending US citizens to concentrations camps. No due process, nothing.
Her response?
"They can't just take people off the street. There must be a reason they are taking them."
And this my friends, is how Nazi Germany happened.
Introducing Lifty the elevator. https://github.com/dabeaz/lifty
Now, could you actually write code to properly control it? Who am I to say?
I'm kind of excited about nix
Der 
@phillipPhillip Roth hat mich soeben darauf gebracht, dass ich meine nicht existierende Nachrichtenagentur vermutlich SURPRISE nennen würde.... weil wegen "Quelle: SURPRISE". 
i especially think "git forge over git itself" is a hard problem bc git forges are email and git is git https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron/114438748361004963
i previously attempted to do this https://circumstances.run/@hipsterelectron/114438980092740344 but have since realized long after the fact that doing it through git was a massive constraint and have now tentatively split up the problem into three separate components of:
(1) represent forge operations as messages distinct from any forge frontend or backend, so they can be generated by any forge and consumed by any frontend (e.g. text editor/IDE as well as browser)
(2) design a set of forge operations to represent the full breadth of how users wish to communicate around code (different projects use forges differently—how can the protocol address all the types of review styles? can/should the protocol encourage certain review flows instead of leaving user behavior to the frontend?)
(3) design a representation of identity and interaction content which can be federated across servers like fedi, so i can interact with a forge (e.g. make a PR that a project can easily consume) without making an account on the project's forge server
#Sammelorte können sich noch immer lohnen.
Made the mistake of buying a bunch of pea protein before discovering that only vegans are allowed to eat it, now I don’t know what to do
@stefanoStefano Marinelli This reminded me of my first year at work, when I faced with The Consultant. At that time I had installed an OpenBSD firewall on a spare PC. People were fascinated by tons of buzzwords and “the man with the tie” took the opportunity to sell new hardware and a bunch of licenses. I tried to explain the risk, but they ended up receiving frequent visits from The Consultant to update and fix things. I was frustrated, and one day, as I walked past the server room, he said: “soon or later, you’ll end up on this side too”. Over my dead body!
よっこらどっこいしょ 
b4394ec129 (upstream/main) Change design of audio player in web UI (#34520)
24c25ec4f5 fix(deps): update babel monorepo to v7.27.1 (#34592)
94fa5b7168 New Crowdin Translations (automated) (#34587)
4354f84c5c Update `rspec-rails` to version 8.0.0 (#34588)
The hardest problem in computer science is actually being able to resist dropping everything you've been doing and starting to work on the thing that just came to your mind… 🫠
I’m adding alt text to my pics. Please let me know how I am doing. I am trying to follow the guides I've seen.
잠이 안 와...
First, never believe anything he says. Second, why is he giving his political rally speech to graduating seniors?
Capitalism didn't give us the internet.
Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet. Capitalism gave us mobile sites that don't work because fifteen ads cover the screen.
@existentialcomics there's an early RFC on why capitalism won't deliver an Internet:
https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc873.html
Capitalism didn't give us the internet.
Large-scale cooperation, open protocols, and free software gave us the internet. Capitalism gave us mobile sites that don't work because fifteen ads cover the screen.
Der @phillipPhillip Roth hat mich soeben darauf gebracht, dass ich meine nicht existierende Nachrichtenagentur vermutlich SURPRISE nennen würde.... weil wegen "Quelle: SURPRISE".
ppl who think ai is 'inevitable' dont understand how hard-headed i am. do not test me. i will do insane things to avoid using ai bullshit.
i didnt buy anything new from sony for 15 years after they were caught in the rootkit scandal. my will is fucking iron.
Sorry that I've been slacking with these posts lately. Nintendo has released a list of events happening in Splatoon 3 in May 2025.
(tbh my dates are probably a bit wrong thanks to DST)
#スプラトゥーン3 #スプラトゥーン #Splatoon3 #Splatoon #Nintendo #NintendoSwitch @splatoon@lemmy.world
Show HN: I built a synthesizer based on 3D physics
Link: https://anukari.com
Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43873074
クレカ的には単一の決済に税金もチップも含めて記録されるよね
just small circles 🕊
Quincy
🇪🇺🇺🇦🇨🇦 [witchzard] 
+ 
🏳️🌈🖖🏽 
Emelia 👸🏻
🍉