Tildeverse.org: A loose association of like-minded tilde communities
125 points by hillcrestenigma 3 years ago | 84 comments- dugmartin 3 years agoSomewhat related question that I'm interested in knowing people's thoughts on...
If you have a website that contains user generated content aimed at technical folks what looks nicer (and maybe what are some more options?):
1. GitHub's implicit username: https://github.com/foo
2. Medium's @username: https://medium.com/@foo
3. Old style homedir (eg tildeverse): http://tilde.club/~foo
4. Explicit user folder: https://example.com/users/foo
My preference is not to use implicit usernames since you then would need to filter against a blocklist (something like https://github.com/marteinn/The-Big-Username-Blocklist). Anybody have any opinions?
- bennyp101 3 years agoI don't know why, but personally I always associate old school style ~/ as more ... trust worthy? I don't know why though!
Perhaps because I remember having those kind of addresses when I younger, and therefore associate with an older generation? (Not that that guarantees trustworthiness!) Or maybe because a lot of academic personal sites use that as well?
I guess in terms of "what looks nicer", for me:
1. I assume this is just a directory
2. '@' in URLs just feels weird now, it's not a usename:password type thing
3. Not particularly pretty
4. I think that signifies what it is, and who it is
- m-i-l 3 years agoPersonally I'd prefer example.com/users/foo, or even example.com/u/foo, because (i) you don't need unusual characters like @ or ~, and (ii) you don't need server config to look for a wildcard in the root.
Alternatively, if as you say it is for hosting "user generated content aimed at technical folks", users might want to feel like they own their own (sub-)domain, so how about foo.example.com instead?
- Shared404 3 years agoI prefer ~, but that's probably mostly because I've found the sites that use it to align better with my personal philosophies (see: Sourcehut, most of the tildeverse, a lot of academic pages).
- marcosdumay 3 years agoYour #1 is full of problems about users not being capable of using their names or taking over system pages. So, whatever you do, avoid it, it's a bad one.
The `@` has a special meaning in URLs, but I think all browsers are smart enough to not break on it.
- layer8 3 years agoThe `@` has no special meaning in the path part of a URL.
- layer8 3 years ago
- kingcharles 3 years agoPersonal preference is @username
I have all the content off the root and I don't want a collision between /articlename and a user with that same name.
~ just makes me feel too old-school. And of course @ is used everywhere to indicate a username now.
- nemetroid 3 years agoTildes are painful to type on several non-English layouts (e.g. Swedish). I like their Unixy vibe but disdain having to type them.
- marginalia_nu 3 years agoHmm, I use both Swedish and English layouts and I'd say they're about as painful to type on both. It's almost the exact same movement, except with the other hand.
- nemetroid 3 years agoReally? Tilde is a dead key on a typical Swedish keyboard, meaning that you have to type AltGr+~ followed by space. Technically, the space is not needed for letters that ~ doesn't compose with, but having to think about that is part of the pain.
I also can't agree that it's almost the same hand movement, you have to use your right thumb for AltGr while also reaching for the key with your right hand. On an English layout you'd use your pinky for shift, or even your other hand.
- nemetroid 3 years ago
- 1_player 3 years agoAnd tildes don't exist al all on some keyboards. I remember memorising Alt+126 to enter a tilde on Windows with an Italian keyboard.
- marginalia_nu 3 years ago
- bullen 3 years agoI would prefer http://foo.binarytask.com but that works best if you have you own custom DNS software.
- camgunz 3 years agoI mean, FWIW ~camgunz "expands" to /home/camgunzcamgunz (or /home/camgunz/camgunz), so it's a little incorrect? It's like "pixel graphic" games now that aim more for nostalgia than accuracy: Genesis games don't look like modern pixel graphic games, ~camgunz isn't actually how it works, etc. So I guess I prefer @camgunz for non-URLs, but blah://dir/camgunz for URLs?
- detaro 3 years ago> FWIW ~camgunz "expands" to /home/camgunzcamgunz (or /home/camgunz/camgunz)
It doesn't. ~user looks up the home directory of "user".
- PureParadigm 3 years agoActually, it is how it works. Try doing "cd ~camgunz" and it should take you to the home directory for camgunz.
- camgunz 3 years agoWOW I had no idea! Why does this work haha
EDIT: Oh I guess yeah, for other users. Innnnnnteresting, and then ~ is just shorthand for you. Huh.
- camgunz 3 years ago
- detaro 3 years ago
- bennyp101 3 years ago
- warent 3 years agoWebsite creator redirected to Rick Astley, maybe they were getting too much traffic? Funny but weird and vaguely hostile without any explanation
- nyanpasu64 3 years agoIt only rickrolls you when you click from HN.
- 1_player 3 years agoIs jwz behind tildeverse.org?
EDIT: it still redirects there from a new tab for me. Is it like this for everyone, has it set a cookie and I'll always be sent there? In any case, I don't care about this product anymore if they're going to be an asshole about it.
- acdw 3 years agolmao @ "product"
the tildeverse is radically anti-product
- acdw 3 years ago
- 1_player 3 years ago
- rgoulter 3 years agoI was wondering why "vaguely hostile", but then I saw opening the URL itself works fine.
- nyanpasu64 3 years ago
- dusted 3 years agoThe "tilde" part of the name comes from the ~ character, traditionally used to indicate a users public HTML directory.
For instance, if you were a user "dannyboy" on example.com you might host a website in /home/dannyboy/public_html and it'd be exposed via example.com/~dannoyboy
- s_dev 3 years agoOrigins of Tilde Club: https://medium.com/message/tilde-club-i-had-a-couple-drinks-...
- scrollaway 3 years agoSimilarly used by https://tildes.net (invites available if you email me).
- scrollaway 3 years ago
- joshu 3 years agoand unix shell expansion before that
- thewakalix 3 years agoAs they say, $HOME is where the tilde is.
- bitwize 3 years agoAnd it came to Unix because "HOME" was printed on the tilde key of the ADM3A terminal.
- joshu 3 years agoi did not know this! so what was more influential, adm3a or vt100?
- joshu 3 years ago
- dusted 3 years agooh yes, of course, I used to type cd ~ instead of just cd. Totally forgot that
- thewakalix 3 years ago
- s_dev 3 years ago
- southerntofu 3 years agoThe tildeverse is amazing! So many creative folks in there and many of them can be found on irc.tilde.chat which is still widely used.
In some way, i find tilde servers to be some kind of hosting coop where users can tailor to their own needs and contribute more services to the shared infra. For example, thunix.net and fr.tild3.org both have public ansible recipes where users can submit patches.
With fellow people from ~fr, we published an article a few months back arguing how tilde servers change the power balance on the network during lockdowns: https://fr.tild3.org/en/blog/2021/may-first/
- mastazi 3 years agoYou can also visit them on gopher but some users don't have an active gopher space so it's a bit hit & miss sometimes (still less boring than mainstream web and its "here's what our algorithm thinks you will like")
- NoboruWataya 3 years agoIncreasingly, Gemini too.
- NoboruWataya 3 years ago
- zppln 3 years agoPretty sure I just got Rickroll'd...
- rchaud 3 years agoWow, I don't think I've been rickrolled since 2007.
There really should be a built in browser feature that prompts the user that the link they clicked redirects somewhere else.
- kymaz 3 years agoFirefox used to have better redirect limitations, I guess web developers didn't like that and they were noisier than the users that took advantage of it.
- kymaz 3 years ago
- ineptech 3 years agoFrom context it seems like an awesome community, the sort of thing I'd like to be a part of, and I'm sure some other folks here feel similarly; but it's been redirected to a rickroll video, which I'm guessing means something like, "Part of what makes this fun is that it's small and doesn't get too much attention, so move along please." Okay. wistful sigh
- acdw 3 years agoI mean you /can/ just type in the URL.
- acdw 3 years ago
- acdw 3 years agoSameless bread-promotion: I run a bread-themed tilde server here (with no rickroll): https://breadpunk.club
I was inspired by the tildeverse and all the friends I've made on IRC! It's great fun :) Highly recommend.
I got started with https://tilde.town, which is v comfy.
- yobananaboy 3 years agoArchived version: https://web.archive.org/web/20211119133814/https://tildevers...
Looks like it's just the homepage that's been rickrolled, the members page appears to be up: https://tildeverse.org/members/
- xhevahir 3 years ago> tildes are pubnixes in the spirit of tilde.club, which was created in 2014 by paul ford.
I don't know what any of that means.
- s_dev 3 years agoPaul Ford puts it much better himself:
>Tilde.club is one cheap, unmodified Unix computer on the Internet.
>That’s it. That’s all it is. It is no more than that.
>If you look for more for it to be you will find nothing.
The implication I'd add is that it's just a 'shared' unix machine.
- larusso 3 years agoHehe same here. I always feel like I have been living under a rock when a page like this gets pushed to HN.
- marginalia_nu 3 years agoIt largely consists of a community of people eschewing social media and the big platforms. You'll see it pop up here and there, but a lot of the reason you aren't seeing it a lot is quite intentional. Much of the content isn't even published on the clearnet, instead only accessible over Gopher or Gemini.
It's a hodge-podge of punk, DIY, bohemian, counter-cultural weirdos of every flavor. Poets and unabombers and lovers and shitposters.
- southerntofu 3 years ago> Much of the content isn't even published on the clearnet, instead only accessible over Gopher or Gemini.
How is gopher or gemini not "clearnet"? Gopher doesn't even have any encryption (gemini uses TLS). Seriously though, i find it weird that everything Google/Facebook doesn't link you to is considered "darknet" nowadays.
- nomemory 3 years agoThis guy summarised the community well. I wouldn't go that far to call them unabombers though. Some of them might have some radical ideas regarding the way software should be written. But that's it.
- southerntofu 3 years ago
- marginalia_nu 3 years ago
- marginalia_nu 3 years agoA pubnix is a public access *nix-system.
- howenterprisey 3 years agoGotcha covered: https://journal.tildeverse.org/entries/what-are-tildes-and-h...
- s_dev 3 years ago
- jl6 3 years agoTime to promote the tilde quilt:
https://tilde.club/~lab6/quilt.html
Instructions:
- kingcharles 3 years agoI ran what you would now call a tilde server back in the 90s.
Then the Secret Service showed up at my door.
Be careful who you share with. Some of them might actually be a unabomber.
- 3 years ago
- bullen 3 years agoMy static tilde page is still there; this will be my canary for community vs. company persistence.
- 3 years ago
- grouphugs 3 years agothey're literally nazis, did you see what they federate with? are you people fucking retarded?
- grouphugs 3 years agowhy is hn always promoting white supremacist content?
- superkuh 3 years agoIt's rare to see a non-commercial walled garden. But that's what the tildeverse is.
- georgeoliver 3 years agoOn the contrary, a tilde is a shared cooperative space. A co-op pre-K, a community garden, a maker space.
A walled garden is designed by its owners to keep its users inside -- AOL, Myspace, Facebook.
- zepto 3 years agoWhat are you talking about? How is it ‘walled’?
- superkuh 3 years agoI've never been able to connect to tilde.chat. I'm connected to literally 20 other IRC networks with no issue. Can you connect?
- passthejoe 3 years agoMost of the Tilde sites allow users to post standard web pages (i.e. using http/https).
- Karrot_Kream 3 years agoLots of content made by Tildes folks end up in places like Gemini or Gopher which aren't easily accessible. It's walled, but not paywalled nor web signup walled.
- zepto 3 years agoI don’t see how this makes any sense at all as a definition of ‘walled’.
There are freely available and free of charge Gemini and Gopher clients for every platform, almost all of which are open source. No signups to any service are required. For that matter, there are Gemini gateways on the web, so you don’t even need to install anything.
If your definition of a ‘walled garden’ is anything that can’t be accessed directly by the web browser Google or Apple pre-installed on your device, I think you might want to reconsider.
- zepto 3 years ago
- superkuh 3 years ago
- georgeoliver 3 years ago