On math, magic, and mathematical grimoires.. As I was “speedrun reading” about MathML days ago, I discovered an amazing digital library of mathematical functions. Boring, but why amazing? Take a look at this function and hover click on any of the variables to view the definition, and keep clicking on more variables for even more… definitions. That’s a legit library.

See, now all of us can roleplay as mages and mathematicians on the Internet.

Mathematical Markup Language (MathML)? I’ve thought about LaTeX/TeX strategies on the web for a bit ever since someone asked years ago about different approaches. I never got to poking around on my blog, but since then the masters have delivered unto us;

1. MathML (XML based web specification)
2. KaTeX
3. MathJax

In format conversion land we’ve been given; LaTeXML, make4ht, texmath, temml, and Pandoc.

I caught a glimpse of an interesting thing by chance. Meta Platforms aka Facebook hid the x from their login prompt on public pages–including government pages, then brought it back. ‘Twas on the desktop before mobile and perhaps (who knows) for a subset (as a test). A “login only public page” is for a near–distant future, set. Seriously though; developer documentation will become my final excuse to visit Facebook.

I came across a good article on finding video feed links from various (mostly western) sites. Odysee links have a funky format that are prefixed with https://odysee.com/$/rss + channel.

So this (channel):
https://odysee.com/@andkos.music:1

Becomes this (feed):
https://odysee.com/$/rss/@andkos.music:1

And… as a pretend expert :) started wondering: In the big bad messy real world (super serious business), how does one on such a decentralized (social) network thoroughly:

1. Block specific users from viewing
2. Block specific users from following
3. Block specific users from interacting
4. Delete previous local/remote content from specific users following
5. Delete previous local/remote interactions from specific users interacting

ActivityPub is an open/transparent protocol (amazing) but for adoption, the expectation/reality of many users online anywhere (even public networks) is favourable discoverability not discoverability itself… however contradictory/debatable. That’s probably easy/possible centralized but stupid hard/impossible decentralized.

The IndieWeb’s POSSE is a rather sophisticated syndication philosophy. Too bad I’ve got such a disdain for social media that I’d never explore it personally. It’s a good approach for working on other people’s stuff though: think Facebook’s (Meta) instant RSS articles (dies April 2023), podcast feeds, or any other (kinda) bi–directional site syndication mechanism.

The hypothetical outcomes/incentives of POSSE if it was done by everyone is an entertaining thought experiment.

It seems that.. from talking to a few people via email, basic feed discovery with rel alternates are ineffective. Simple redirects work better for organic discovery.

1. /atom -> /path/to/real/{atom,rss}/feed
2. /rss -> /path/to/real/{atom,rss}/feed
3. /feed -> /path/to/real/{atom,rss}/feed

I was reading web.dev recently and couldn’t help but think that in tech circles/articles online it’s easy to get the impression that Firefox is a major competing browser. Firefox actually doesn’t even register. Firefox has an estimated 3% points in global market–share and doesn’t even show up in mobile market–share estimates.

Users implicitly use Safari (Apple) and/or some derivation of Chromium (Google Chrome). When was the last time you saw someone irl using Firefox? Not recently if you’re outside the tech bubble.

Of course in my case the social media applications within the Fediverse are not what’s most interesting. It’s the generality of its protocol. ActivityPub appears to have an easier time with different use cases than other protocols.

The link to a Fediverse server list in a previous post died but fediverse.party also shows the diverse types of applications that use the ActivityPub protocol.

Insularity is a term that shows up in the philosophy of the Fediverse every so often. Generally, the more insular a community, the more populous/extreme/niche. Some Fediverse indexes calculate insularity rates.

Imagine similar stats for the WWW. Like — what’s the URL and domain linking insularity within/between Facebook relative to other small/large islands? That would be extraordinary, especially for journalism which is pretty much dead.

This goes without saying but… any sufficiently ambitious group of business persons want more than just to be on the Internet, they want to own it completely, the Fediverse is no exception :)