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Posted by mnapoli 4 hours ago

/dev/null: social network for developers(dev-null.sh)
88 points | 93 comments
amelius 4 minutes ago|
I'm naming my device "eloper" so in the future someone can make a social network called:

    /dev/eloper
ineptech 3 hours ago||
Errant thought - I kind of hope that the actual social network for developers of the not so distant future looks more like a bunch of us separately building bespoke applications to serve files to each other.

> Dave: "Bot, add a folder to my personal data store with the pictures I took this weekend and share it with everyone in my poker group"

> Sally: "I see that I've gotten an email from Dave with a magic link conveying access to something. Bot, use this link to negotiate a key exchange with whatever weird app Dave cobbled together (ask his bot if you need help) and then log into my VPS and add a tab to my personal webapp to display the content he has shared."

That might be overly optimistic, but it doesn't feel that far off. It's kind of what Tim Berners-Lee build https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_project for right?

flexagoon 2 hours ago||
Isn't that just called hosting a website?.. You can just give an agent access to your server and let them do all that, no?

There are also places like https://tilde.town/ if you want something more social media–esque

ineptech 1 hour ago||
Think of it this way - why didn't we all just replace Facebook with "host files on our personal sites and give each other access to them" ten years ago? Because we'd have to store passwords, identify each other past spoofed emails, figure out when/how to trust friends of friends, etc. In practice that means everyone adopting the same protocol, which is a chicken-and-egg problem.

That hasn't changed, but what has changed is that reading docs and writing the glue code is effectively free. The main problem with something like Solid is, if it takes even an hour to figure out how to get it going, I am effectively assigning my friends an hour of homework to be able to network with me. That's no longer true. If you like the Fediverse and I like Solid and Dave uses Nostr and Sally is stuck with some proprietary thing that came with her NAS, we can all build a network without any of us switching to, or even learning much about, each other's platforms.

layer8 1 hour ago|||
I like that it’s email-based.
voidfunc 2 hours ago||
Just need to dust off the finger protocol.
ajjenkins 4 hours ago||
It would be nice if the website had more information about the platform before you create an account.
mnapoli 4 hours ago||
Fixed! Check out the website it shows content now, no landing page anymore
ajjenkins 3 hours ago||
Much better now, thanks!

I would describe the website as “twitter for developers and uses your GitHub account for auth”. It’s a simple concept, but I think using your GitHub account to sign in is a great idea and a meaningful differentiator. Good luck!

TZubiri 2 hours ago||
"twitter for developers and uses your GitHub account for auth"

No good developer would introduce such a security risk for novelty.

ersind 4 hours ago||
This was done only in two days, there are important pages missing.
embedding-shape 4 hours ago|||
> This was done only in two days

So not at all ready to be seen? Maybe we should all flag this so it can re-appear once someone spent at least a bit of time on making it proper and ready for public consumption?

mystifyingpoi 4 hours ago|||
Does this excuse the main page missing any information what this thing even is? Come on.
JdeBP 2 hours ago||
Thank you, but no. I'll stick with /dev/tty0 . It's federated.
methodical 2 hours ago||
Social media site for devs getting hug-of-death'd by HN... the irony!
RonanSoleste 2 hours ago|
If only we had wel developed solutions for that ;)
1vuio0pswjnm7 1 hour ago||
https://dev-null.sh/sitemaps/users-1.xml

https://dev-null.sh/sitemaps/commits-1.xml

probably_wrong 4 hours ago||
I have a petty complaint: if you name your social network after a core Unix concept, then why make your users login exclusively through a Microsoft subsidiary?
retromagik 4 hours ago||
Based on the branding, I think their target demographic assumes the dev in /dev/null is short for "Developers"
ASalazarMX 4 hours ago|||
It's a cute name, but considering how combative developers can be about naming, I think it should have been more clever than cute.

If 'dev' is developer, 'null' makes me think it's for worthless developers, or for things that developers don't care about.

bee_rider 2 hours ago||
Well it is a social media site, isn’t that where everybody puts the things they don’t care about?
joshuat 4 hours ago|||
dev = developer

bin = trash

smnplk 1 hour ago||
Lmao
pitched 4 hours ago|||
GitHub is a social network already. You’re logging into one social network with another social network. And I’m complaining about that fact on a different social network. What has the world come to?
ASalazarMX 4 hours ago||
DM me and subscribe if you want an explanation.
stephenlf 4 hours ago|||
Is this a real question? If so, here’s a real answer:

GitHub is the single most widely adopted, developer-specific OIDC identity provider.

If it’s facetious, then WSL BABYYYYYY

mystifyingpoi 4 hours ago|||
Why does this need OIDC at all? Basic email + password account is like 1-2 prompts away.
ASalazarMX 3 hours ago|||
I guess at some point developers will have to prove they're serious developers by exposing their GitHub profile.

Edit: it's part of your profile already, better vibe code some random ideas to farm some GitHub dev credibility.

ranger_danger 3 hours ago||
I don't think a github profile (or any specific activity therein) should be a prerequisite for being considered a 'serious developer'.
ASalazarMX 3 hours ago|||
I am of the same idea. Requiring online, public repositories, specifically in GitHub, doesn't cover all developers. It covers many of them nowadays, so there's that.
Terr_ 2 hours ago|||
Yeah, it strikes me as a very... Silicon-Valley-brained view of software development.

For example, I'm sure there's a scary-talented engineer working on fluid simulation algorithms for a major aerospace manufacturer, and they would be fired if their work-product ever left the corporate VPN. Meanwhile, their personal stuff is in a self-hosted solution.

funshed 35 minutes ago||||
It's built on laravel, email/pass/2fa/forget is all built in. GitHub auth only was a choice.
hobofan 4 hours ago||||
Because effective anti-spam account measures are not 1-2 prompts away.
mahboi 2 hours ago||||
How about ssh public keys
funshed 36 minutes ago||
It uses your GitHub public keys to authenticate so you can post from the CLI.
bigwheels 4 hours ago||||
Maybe spam concerns, but your point remains valid.
saghm 4 hours ago|||
And having those passwords leaked is probably only another 1-2 prompts away
OtomotO 4 hours ago||||
Guess I am simply not invited to the party then.

Or I am not a developer after all.

Identity crisis intensifies

pitched 4 hours ago||
The dev in /dev/null is device, not developer. So you’re not a device but you can still be a developer.
fatty_patty89 4 hours ago|||
>Is this a real question? If so, here’s a real answer:

>Let's all be willing docile salves

This is how you sound

pants2 4 hours ago||
Nobody's forcing you to use that website
28304283409234 3 hours ago|||
And for developers. Only a tiny percentage of the devs I know actually know what /dev/null is.
iberator 1 hour ago|||
Good point.

What if Microsoft black listed me from GitHub forever? I'm also banned from Facebook for like decade

sandeepkd 4 hours ago|||
How does publicly published PGP based login sounds?
ranger_danger 3 hours ago|||
FWIW DOS and Windows both have a null concept too:

  C:\> TYPE file.txt >NUL
  C:\>
Daviey 4 hours ago||
[flagged]
stephenlf 4 hours ago||
I signed up for TextLog a few weeks ago. I love the text-only social network, but their European infra meant too much latency for my US-based browsing. Maybe this will scratch that itch!
ktosobcy 2 hours ago||
Seems to be down...

What does it use? masto or hand-crafted stuff?

funshed 34 minutes ago||
Laravel Backend, TypeScript Frontend.
measurablefunc 2 hours ago||
I don't think you're getting the joke, the site is literally called /dev/null.
RonanSoleste 2 hours ago|
Y.a.t.c (yet another twitter clone). Except for theming it brings nothing new to the social media space. I also dont think sending my tweets to a null device will do much for development. Ill put my bets on Bsky or Mastodon here.
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