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Fediverse link-aggregator PieFed launches in beta test

https://fediversereport.com/fediverse-link-aggregator-piefed-launches-in-beta-test/

The link-aggregator part of the fediverse has grown, with the launch of PieFed’s beta test. PieFed joins platforms like Lemmy and Kbin who all have the ability to share links, and comment and vote on them. PieFed focuses on making the platform easy to manage, maintain and develop for, and uses Python. Developer Rimu is […]

cross-posted from: https://mander.xyz/post/8095934

Looks like we're getting company!

56 comments

xepher

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Hello from the beta instance!

kariboka

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Hey there!

MajorHavoc

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Howdy!

kionite231

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It's yout first comment too :D

nickwitha_k

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Welcome!

Five

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Hello!

simple

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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.

nix

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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

Amaltheamannen

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It also makes it slower and easier to introduce bugs.

scytale

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Nice! I hope it gets popular enough to get the same multitude of desktop front-ends and mobile apps Lemmy now has.

flamingos

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Maybe they can implement Lemmy's API, like what Misskey et al. does with Mastodon's API, so it can use the same apps.

ShittyKopper

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FYI misskey does not implement the masto api. some software like pleroma/akkoma, gotosocial and yes, a few misskey forks do (in various states of brokenness, with iceshrimp being the most compliant one) but misskey itself does not.

flamingos

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Ah my bad, I remember one of the Miskey forks saying it had Masto API and just assumed it was a Miskey thing.

MajorHavoc

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adding a warning on posts made by accounts with low reputation, meaning that their posts get downvoted a lot.

Sounds very nice.

fenndev

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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...

rimu

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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:

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.

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.

Spzi

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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!

fenndev

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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.

shrugal

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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.

Nougat

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More options is better.

willya

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Fast, clean, and right to the point. Looks like good company.

kariboka

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A good option for beehaw

rimu

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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. :)

kariboka

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we can tag them here to let them know :)

@Lionir@beehaw.org @alyaza@beehaw.org @admin@beehaw.org

NotMyOldRedditName

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The Fediversereport website is broken.

Infinite captcha loop on VPN. Solve it, shows success and unblocks IP, thinks, shows new captcha, repeat.

swab148

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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.

rimu

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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.

Atelopus-zeteki

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The REAL MVP!!! Yay Rimu!!!

spaduf

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It's been getting some traction over on Mastodon too. Wouldn't be at all surprised if they've restricted signups.

swab148

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That's what I figured. Good to see that Stamets got an account though! You know the content will be good with him involved.

Stamets

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I didn't get an account. I haven't even heard of it until someone just messaged me asking me about PieFed. Kind of a scumbaggy thing to do if someone took the name.

swab148

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Wow, that fucking sucks bro. I checked out the instance, and your name (and iconic profile pic) was on the top of whatever they call "All" over there.

If it takes off and you need to create a new name, please keep us informed. Your memes are vital lifeblood to the fediverse, lmao (but seriously everyone here loves you and we wanna keep in touch).

Stamets

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Oh I think that's just me. I think they're just showing the federated stuff from lemmy.world and other places on that feed. Was probably just this account you saw.

And if I need to change names then so be it but looks like we're okay for now <3

Thank you though! I do have a Mastodon account though that you can check out here. I haven't been super active lately from Holiday stress and what not but if anything ever happens Lemmy wise that's the first place I'd be going.

swab148

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Also I forgot you were on lemmyworld, I totally just assumed you were on startrek.website lol, sorry for assuming your instance

Stamets

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Oh you would have assumed correctly up until recently. I only moved over to this instance about a month-ish ago

swab148

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Ah, I get it! The concept behind "federation" still escapes me sometimes lol. Good to know you're still rockin' on a new platform!

Stamets

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You and me both, don't worry there. And yep! Mastodon I am active on but in a different manner. Things are a bit more chill and relaxed.

Stamets

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Permanently Deleted

Atelopus-zeteki

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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.

rimu

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Dark mode has been added!

Atelopus-zeteki

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Yay, and thank YOU!!
Edit: I went over and looked. So the point of dark mode is to make things easy on the eyes, and to reduce interference with melatonin production. Melatonin production is blocked by blue and white (because it contains blue) light. The best option for dark mode is black background and orange type, as it provides good contrast with minimal interference with melatonin production.

The classic example is the White / Blue of Facebook - designed, no doubt to keep users awake, and clicking. I noticed sometime ago, that screen invert in iOS yields, White --> Black, and Blue --> Orange. Technically speaking any light will reduce melatonin production to some degree, some researchers would say, even being able to see your hand in front of your face, like at all, will do it. And the biggest effect is from Blue and White light. :-)

rimu

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No blue, got it.

Currently, dark mode is just whatever Bootstrap considers ideal dark mode to be so there's a lot of room for improvement. PieFed includes a theming framework which will make it quick and easy to build custom themes so I expect many more design options will be available in the future.

nix

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Awesome!

P.S. Is it just me or does join.piefed.social have no link to actually join or go to piefed.social? Also what software does the blog use i can’t find it listed

rimu

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There are links to piefed.socal but I guess a nice big button front and center on the home page is what it needs.

The blog is Wordpress with the Activitypub plugin. It can be followed on Mastodon/kbin: @piefedadmin@join.piefed.social

swab148

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I love me some melatonin too, I'm on 5s right now, but I have been up to 20s. Same with the dark mode too.

Were you on mobile or desktop? I'm just using my phone, maybe mobile signups aren't supported yet.

Atelopus-zeteki

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Desktop, fwiw. I do all the things, e.g. red/orange/yellow light from sunset to sunrise. I now think of Melatonin as a darktime hormone, rather than a sleep hormone. Have you ever noticed, sometimes people are awake in the darkness, and it's not even spooky or scary,... necessarily.

onlinepersona

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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.

rimu

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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.

onlinepersona

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Good luck and have fun 🙂

Five

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Fediverse links to current communities:

Asudox

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and uses Python.

Great. Can't wait to see how slow it is.

nix

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@postwatchbot@lemy.lol

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.