<BenMcLean>
C# is my favorite language at the moment but the reason I'd want to be writing web apps in it is that at work, everything is Microsoft. Microsoft everything. They want people who can easily write and maintain secure web apps in C#
<ocdtrekkie>
I really would like to learn .NET web development but have never sat down to do it. I write my web apps in bad PHP.
<BenMcLean>
So ... is actually good support for .NET actually on the roadmap for Sandstorm development? Or is sandstorm even actively developed? I first heard of it today
<ocdtrekkie>
I am not sure if the issue with vagrant-spk and .NET would be fixed by now or not, I think it was a dependency problem with what is included in Debian.
<isd>
ocdtrekkie: probably not; iirc there were different issues we banged into with musl and glibc, and I got the musl folks to fix stuff on their end, but presumably glibc is still broken. docker-spk works mainly by virtue of not requiring a specific distro
<ocdtrekkie>
docker-spk can more easily use other Linux distros, which is why we got the .NET package building that way, but docker-spk would need some changes to make that less janky, IIRC.
<isd>
BenMcLean: there's no company backing sandstorm development anymore. I hack on Sandstorm and stuff related to it a decent bit, but we don't have a ton of manpower.
<ocdtrekkie>
Are any production apps built via docker-spk right now? I'd like to encourage it's use more, but we probably also need to add docs for it.
<isd>
Jim Garrison was reporting some issues recently, so presumably he tried to do something with it. I don't think anything in the app market is using it.
<ocdtrekkie>
I would say that the demand for .NET apps on Sandstorm is pretty low, because many in the .NET crowd are still warming up to open source.
<isd>
Yeah, it's not really on my list of priorities.
<ocdtrekkie>
I first poked the topic because a friend of mine was interested, but he isn't presently using Sandstorm either at this point.
<isd>
I think I put that together when I was thinking of trying to port Jellyfin, but ran into other, harder roadblocks for that particular app and ended up dropping it.
<ocdtrekkie>
I would personally be excited about it as a .NET guy, but I wouldn't want Ian to put it ahead of the mile-long list of other things we don't have time to do.
<BenMcLean>
the install instructions say "To run Sandstorm, you need a 64-bit Linux server connected to the Internet."
<BenMcLean>
Why does it have to be connected to the Internet? Doesn't it work on LAN?
<BenMcLean>
I mean it should be able to run and you should be able to connect to it over http on your LAN without Internet service right?
<BenMcLean>
Thanks. I am subscribing to that issue
<ocdtrekkie>
We have docs on running Sandstorm fully offline, but some things may be less ideal.
<abliss>
it absolutely doesn't need to be connected to the internet. it just gets a tiny bit hairy to shop for apps if you can't reach out to the app store.
<BenMcLean>
Well obviously you can't use the app store offline
<BenMcLean>
not unless you maintain your own app store
<BenMcLean>
actually that's an interesting question. shouldn't the sandstorm app store itself just be a sandstorm app like any other?
<BenMcLean>
er, i mean ...
<BenMcLean>
the sandstorm app store server should just be a sandstorm app
<BenMcLean>
it seems like that would be the ideal anyway
<ocdtrekkie>
So, it is and is not.
<ocdtrekkie>
The app index, which is the API Sandstorm servers get apps from, is a Sandstorm app!
<ocdtrekkie>
But the app market, which consumes that index and presents a friendly UI, is a Frankenstein's monster thing that uses some Sandstorm bundle code to deploy, but is a standalone Meteor app.
<ocdtrekkie>
But yeah, for an offline server, you likely need to maintain/mirror an app index.
<isd>
Yeah, at some point we should generate static html and use sandstorm's publishing features.
<BenMcLean>
uhh .... should i get a typical install or a development install? what's the actual difference? :)
<BenMcLean>
i guess more to the point is the question: does the development install leave out anything the typical install has? :)
<BenMcLean>
think i'll choose developer install even though i don't know if i'll actually develop anything
<ocdtrekkie>
Developer is not meant for production use. It's handy for local dev work, but it has a no-password admin account too.
<ocdtrekkie>
I think it also sets the config for localhost use instead of giving you options to set up a domain.
<ocdtrekkie>
At the time the current app market was built, the idea was it would be more like the Google Play Store, but for Sandstorm apps, so it'd have payment options and reviews and such.
<BenMcLean>
And only the Sandstorm company would be getting paid I assume :)
<BenMcLean>
I mean directly
<ocdtrekkie>
A lot of that didn't happen and some of it was shut off, but it's hard to do through Sandstorm's web publishing, which is intended for static content.
<ocdtrekkie>
Actually the idea was primarily to support open source web app developers, I think the goal was to only take a cut for proprietary apps.
<BenMcLean>
yeah but the point is you didn't want anybody else to be able to easily set up their own store or for every developer to make their own store server. You wanted there to be one store, cause y'know, you were a company trying to make money. Not saying that's wrong but uhhh, if we want a decentralized web, it does kind of need to be decentralized :)
<BenMcLean>
right now running your own server is like brewing your own beer. I'd really like to see us get to the point where it's more like making your own lemonade -- from powder -- before i die
<ocdtrekkie>
I mean, the app market is also open source... But there wasn't a particular focus on making it easy for others to use either.
<ocdtrekkie>
Yeah, that's definitely a goal of Sandstorm's.
<ocdtrekkie>
My favorite concept of it is that installing an app on Sandstorm is analogous in difficulty to installing an app on your phone.
<ocdtrekkie>
There's still a setup roadblock to getting a machine and making it world accessible and all, but once your server is set up, the idea is that the layperson should be able to install and use apps on it.
<BenMcLean>
yikes ... the dependency on email is pretty bad
<BenMcLean>
SMTP was developed in 1981 originally as a decentralized system where everybody's computer would be able to send email to everybody else's. And we've built a giant monster from it that is almost totally centralized at gmail.com
<BenMcLean>
I read somewhere that the big email providers are actually skipping SMTP nowadays and just operate their own proprietary protocols to talk directly to each other on fast connections in bulk, since such a high volume of mail is sent between a relatively low number of servers
<BenMcLean>
so if i send an email from gmail.com to outlook.com using the web interface, at no point is any message sent over SMTP.
<BenMcLean>
don't know if that's true or not but it's an interesting theory
<BenMcLean>
Anyways I think I need to maybe rethink what I'm trying to do with sandstorm before I go installing it on my server :)
<ocdtrekkie>
SMTP based email is one of the last truly decentralized protocols in service at this point.
<BenMcLean>
But is it really? Sandstorm says gmail won't work
<BenMcLean>
To almost every real person's email address, emails that are send from some random IP address are automatically filtered out as spam.
<ocdtrekkie>
The issue there is largely with impersonation. A Gmail account is intended to be used by a single person, so generally things a server would do with emails, Gmail does not allow.
<BenMcLean>
especially if they have a "from" address that doesn't seem to match where they're actually from, like sandstorm's emails
<ocdtrekkie>
Gmail has no issues accepting emails from Sandstorm, via an SMTP service, but you can't have Sandstorm use Gmail to send the emails.
<BenMcLean>
so I need to set up an SMTP service before I can set up sandstorm then
<Corbin>
ocdtrekkie: Not to pull a complete MarkM, but maybe there should be a taxonomy or something for that "truly decentralized" qualifier. Like, it's decentralized up to DNS, which is also how DNS itself is decentralized; this is distinct from modern DHT-oriented stuff.
<ocdtrekkie>
I use Sendgrid's free tier for mine, but you could use your own SMTP server if you wanted to do that whole bit.
<ocdtrekkie>
@Corbin That's fair. At work I operate a relatively decent scale selfhosted mail server, so I feel like email isn't in a terrible state protocol-wise.
<ocdtrekkie>
But we badly need to get ordinary consumers to realize Gmail is a threat, not a great gift to society. ;)
<Corbin>
ocdtrekkie: No worries. I yearn for what's next: mesh networks, decentralized CDNs, etc.
<ocdtrekkie>
Yeah, mesh networks have always been exciting to me, the idea of not having to pay someone two service fees to get data a mile down the street.
<ocdtrekkie>
I think the idea Sandstorm speaks well to is having family servers or group servers, where one person can operate a server for the benefit of a close social circle who may not be as technically inclined as to operate their own.
<isd>
mailgun is another decent opion.
<BenMcLean>
> "we badly need to get ordinary consumers to realize Gmail is a threat, not a great gift to society." I think the first step to that is realizing that SMTP is never coming back. Google owns it now. That's it.
<ocdtrekkie>
I wouldn't agree with that at all. HTTP, they do, SMTP is far more open.
<BenMcLean>
No. If Google blacklists you as spam then you are cut off from the global email system. Period.
<ocdtrekkie>
HTTP/3 is basically "Google has decided how the Internet works now. Standardize it or be ignored."
<BenMcLean>
SMTP is basically "Google has decided who can send messages and who can't. Be ignored."
<ocdtrekkie>
It's not exceptionally hard to manage spam list issues, frustrating at times, but there's a process for it. And arguably, it's just a trait of "they choose what to allow on their network". If we can get people off their network, they have no control.
<BenMcLean>
That's just as true with http though
<isd>
As someone who ran his own mail server for a decade, Google was the least of my problems. The headaches were mostly around smaller shops outsourcing their spam filtering to crap like barracuda.
<ocdtrekkie>
Hey now.
<ocdtrekkie>
...I might operate a Barracuda...
<BenMcLean>
I think Google and the other cabal members are going to be doing CCP style political censorship of everything very soon. And don't call me paranoid because I'm not paranoid. Read the mainstream news.
<ocdtrekkie>
Honestly the worst I see is when they decide to add some rule that heavily skews the spam score with no transparency to what it is, and no ability to turn it off... but yeah.
<Aziraphale>
It's not called a cospiracy theory anymore, it's called a "spoiler alert" ;p
<ocdtrekkie>
You'll see six spam scoring items that clearly say what is triggering them, and then some obscure ID rule that throws the whole score off that has no descriptor at all.
<BenMcLean>
It's not going to be just white supremacists: it's already anti-vaccine people. And It's not going to be just anti-vaccine people: it's already anti-gay people. And it's not going to be just anti-gay people, it's going to be anyone who can do basic pattern recognition.
<BenMcLean>
They want only people who can stare at a list of numbers "1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6" and say that anyone who thinks 7 is next is crazy and stupid and undeserving of life.
<BenMcLean>
Anyway sorry to go on a rant but I am just really, really angry at the general direction of society right now, so my interest in decentralized web apps is largely political. I'm not actually that extreme of a guy ... but you don't have to be nowadays. You just have to be in the only slightly less than 50% of voters who didn't choose Biden.
<Aziraphale>
"extreme" depends on who defines the term
<Corbin>
I'm a communist and metaliberal. I think that we can agree that Google's far too big and influential, regardless of exactly which direction they happen to politically lean.
<Corbin>
HTTP/2 and above really are terrible to anybody who isn't Google. An entire application protocol ruined.
<BenMcLean>
I don't know how y'all feel about political discussion going on in this IRC but uhh, I think you're going to start to see a lot of people on the Right, like myself, ditching the old "free market" apologetics we used to do
<Aziraphale>
it's not a free market, it's a monopoly
<BenMcLean>
Free markets seem to inevitably lead to monopolies
<Corbin>
I imagine that folks around here probably have opinions about app markets, at least.
<Aziraphale>
all the "free market" rules don't apply
<ocdtrekkie>
Yeah, I think politics beyond technological design is a bad idea here. I think people on all sides of the political arena have reasons to support selfhosting because it's inherently a good idea.
* Corbin
really needs to make that video explaining why markets probably aren't efficient
<BenMcLean>
I don't know what metaliberal is supposed to mean
<isd>
Competition tends to lead to winners and losers.
<Corbin>
The #erights channel is better for political discussion. Same sort of topic (capability security) but focused on theory.
<BenMcLean>
ok great, i would like to join that, thanks
<isd>
But I agree; let's keep off-topic politics out of this channel.
<ocdtrekkie>
Okay, so we were on zenhack dunking on my email filter...
<Aziraphale>
dunno that 3rd party filters are a good isea generally
<Aziraphale>
*idea
<ocdtrekkie>
I think the problem with not having third party filters is that most businesses that need them are using Exchange.
<Aziraphale>
I do my own, including a bayes db that's been trained for over a decade and I don't get many leakers, tbf
<ocdtrekkie>
And I'm not sure if Exchange is a good idea, generally.
<isd>
I mean, I think there's no fixing this at this point. The reasons email has consolodated revolve around how much of a trashfire it is to actually manage all that stuff yourself. If it wasn't Google it would have been someone else.