today at 10:19 PM
Mastodon is where I find the most (I hesitate to use this word) real nerds. The folks in it for the love of the game, not because it pays well or because they're chasing the latest trends. Nearly everyone I admire in tech is there, and very few of the people I think little of are.
today at 8:04 PM
https://dev-null.sh/sitemaps/users-1.xml
https://dev-null.sh/sitemaps/commits-1.xml
today at 10:06 PM
wow, very secure..
today at 6:38 PM
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?
today at 7:16 PM
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
today at 8:12 PM
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.
today at 8:11 PM
I like that it’s email-based.
today at 7:19 PM
Just need to dust off the finger protocol.
today at 5:01 PM
It would be nice if the website had more information about the platform before you create an account.
today at 5:39 PM
Fixed! Check out the website it shows content now, no landing page anymore
today at 6:34 PM
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!
today at 7:25 PM
"twitter for developers and uses your GitHub account for auth"
No good developer would introduce such a security risk for novelty.
today at 5:04 PM
This was done only in two days, there are important pages missing.
today at 5:21 PM
> 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?
today at 5:26 PM
Does this excuse the main page missing any information what this thing even is? Come on.
today at 7:41 PM
Thank you, but no. I'll stick with /dev/tty0 . It's federated.
today at 7:28 PM
Social media site for devs getting hug-of-death'd by HN... the irony!
today at 7:35 PM
If only we had wel developed solutions for that ;)
today at 9:44 PM
today at 10:14 PM
My favorite social network
today at 5:04 PM
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?
today at 5:26 PM
Based on the branding, I think their target demographic assumes the dev in /dev/null is short for "Developers"
today at 5:46 PM
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.
today at 7:27 PM
Well it is a social media site, isn’t that where everybody puts the things they don’t care about?
today at 5:41 PM
dev = developer
bin = trash
today at 8:43 PM
Lmao
today at 5:29 PM
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?
today at 5:47 PM
DM me and subscribe if you want an explanation.
today at 5:12 PM
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
today at 5:23 PM
Why does this need OIDC at all? Basic email + password account is like 1-2 prompts away.
today at 5:48 PM
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.
today at 5:55 PM
I don't think a github profile (or any specific activity therein) should be a prerequisite for being considered a 'serious developer'.
today at 6:02 PM
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.
today at 7:18 PM
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.
today at 9:13 PM
It's built on laravel, email/pass/2fa/forget is all built in. GitHub auth only was a choice.
today at 5:25 PM
Because effective anti-spam account measures are not 1-2 prompts away.
today at 7:36 PM
How about ssh public keys
today at 9:11 PM
It uses your GitHub public keys to authenticate so you can post from the CLI.
today at 5:24 PM
Maybe spam concerns, but your point remains valid.
today at 5:26 PM
And having those passwords leaked is probably only another 1-2 prompts away
today at 5:18 PM
Guess I am simply not invited to the party then.
Or I am not a developer after all.
Identity crisis intensifies
today at 5:33 PM
The dev in /dev/null is device, not developer. So you’re not a device but you can still be a developer.
today at 5:19 PM
>Is this a real question? If so, here’s a real answer:
>Let's all be willing docile salves
This is how you sound
today at 5:26 PM
Nobody's forcing you to use that website
today at 6:22 PM
And for developers. Only a tiny percentage of the devs I know actually know what /dev/null is.
today at 5:22 PM
How does publicly published PGP based login sounds?
today at 8:41 PM
Good point.
What if Microsoft black listed me from GitHub forever? I'm also banned from Facebook for like decade
today at 5:50 PM
FWIW DOS and Windows both have a null concept too:
C:\> TYPE file.txt >NUL
C:\>today at 5:14 PM
[flagged]
today at 5:13 PM
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!
today at 7:32 PM
Seems to be down...
What does it use? masto or hand-crafted stuff?
today at 9:14 PM
Laravel Backend, TypeScript Frontend.
today at 7:33 PM
I don't think you're getting the joke, the site is literally called /dev/null.
today at 5:33 PM
Your posts have to be approved? Odd way to run a social network imo.
today at 6:12 PM
Kind of makes sense for a small operation. Better that than miss something bad for eight hours because the admin (presumably singular) is sleeping.
today at 9:15 PM
Uses AI, Jev or similar.
today at 7:33 PM
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.
today at 5:21 PM
> Failed to open page
I'm guessing that wasn't expected result.
today at 5:31 PM
/tmp/social would have been better I think. dev = device, doesn’t make sense.
today at 5:51 PM
I like it. I might steal that.
today at 8:19 PM
> Everyone here signed in with GitHub.
ugh.
today at 7:59 PM
Wasn't this originally HN?
today at 8:16 PM
As HN has gotten bigger its pulled in other communities and now its not very developer/hacker oriented anymore. Lobsters was the first push to have the deep software talk back and there will be more as HN caters to a different crowd nowadays.
today at 5:00 PM
Shouldn't that domain be dev-null.social instead of 'shell'? Dorks.
today at 4:59 PM
Looks good!
today at 5:14 PM
Which part looks good? The <50 words or the YouTube video?
I'm not saying this isn't a good idea or that people don't want something like this but... There's nothing here?
today at 5:33 PM
yep im confused, i see a handful of words that signals almost nothing other than there is potentially something behind the login gate. then an 8 hour video... im not just gonna jump into some random 8 hour video without any context, just as im not about to signup for something with no context for what it really is.
today at 5:21 PM
> Computah... build me a social network in PHP. Import the user's profile from GitHub, they shouldn't have to fill anything in. No likes, reposts or algorithms. Add a catchy slogan at the home page. Make no mistakes!
today at 5:18 PM
it's fully open source (https://github.com/nunomaduro/dev-null.sh/pulls) and received over 200 PRs in less than 48 hours
today at 5:33 PM
I am always so floored when I see a new thing written all in PHP. I always got crap for using Perl most of my life.
today at 7:52 PM
[flagged]
today at 5:21 PM
Why do all these guys have "Soy Face" when you take their pictures?
today at 5:57 PM
TIL soy face is the 'unmasculine' version of pog face.
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soy_face
today at 8:20 PM
symlinked in.
today at 4:59 PM
Very good idea
today at 5:35 PM
This is interesting: a. Developers on average are probably low on E trait in the Big Five b. Most users in the online developer communities (at least the ones who will be doing the "social" part, per the standard 1% rule of social platforms) loathe LinkedIn-style stuff, being asked to log in or provide PII. c. Most "social" services devs regularly use are for technical/utility stuff (GH, SO, subreddits) more than the social aspect.
If a, b and c are true, then this site is reinventing HN/proggit with forced GitHub login on top. NGMI.
today at 5:04 PM
conceptually, just sounds like a place you go when you don't want anyone to hear, see or think about you.
today at 5:17 PM
A dream developer experience.
today at 5:12 PM
today at 7:19 PM
Using GH as the only way to associate identity is a bit evil
today at 5:25 PM
Devs need to be around actual humans in-person more, not less.
today at 5:55 PM
I have the right amount of humans in my life, I don't want more. Online is great for me, for this use case.
today at 5:21 PM
I can't see any of the content unless I sign in.
I don't know if I want to sign in, because I can't see any of the content.
today at 5:24 PM
I'm thinking of it a different way. In order to join a social media network these days, I need to have some assurance that it's going to be worth my time. They didn't provide any, so screw 'em.
today at 5:27 PM
it was supposed to be public. maybe it got reverted. the team were moving super fast
today at 5:48 PM
yeah that's fixed
today at 5:39 PM
That's fixed
today at 5:09 PM
> No likes. No reposts. No algorithm. Everything else goes to /dev/null.
*Closes tab
today at 5:20 PM
Just skip the whole thing and send your thoughts straight to /dev/null
today at 5:25 PM
Weird, especially because it DOES have likes.
today at 5:39 PM
Yep our bad, we fixed this, no landing page anymore
today at 5:31 PM
No, it has stars. /s
sigh Yeah, that's really a bad look for them to claim no likes and then have something that is functionally identical.
today at 7:37 PM
[dead]
today at 7:44 PM
[dead]
today at 5:07 PM
[dead]
today at 5:18 PM
> follow people who write code, and commit plain text to a shared log.
Isn't that Twitter?
today at 5:27 PM
Twitter is gone, isn't it? X under Elon is not a place I will ever hang out
Discord is where more dev communities are moving to
today at 8:26 PM
> Discord is where more dev communities are moving to
Discord now requires age verification, so it is user-hostile and nobody should use it.
today at 8:35 PM
I have not been asked for any age verification yet, US based
today at 7:06 PM
No, everyone is still there talking about programming. Your choice, but you’re missing out.
today at 7:58 PM
that's the thing, I do not think I'm missing out, HN is more than enough
I think the people who remain (on any big social) are missing out on IRL alternatives, if you get into it, you will find it is a much more rewarding way to spend your time.