XenForo has revoked our license

[Lurk McDurk]

Watching coders code is the most boring thing in the world. It's literally someone in a chair pushing buttons in response to flashing lights, but without the narrative and twitch of a video game. All of the fun is entirely in our heads.

Truth, because it's one of two things...

1) some dipshit reciting a rehearsed "make a blog in Rails" script

2) some dipshit reading docs and stack overflow for an hour before writing 10 lines

 

[Least Concern]

2) some dipshit reading docs and stack overflow for an hour before writing 10 lines

bruh after making that post this morning I legit read docs pages for like two hours today and didn't write a single line of code but was able to figure out that the client's app can do what they need it to do entirely on the mobile app side and I don't need to do anything on the server for them to be able to implement the functionality they want. The most I wrote was a Slack message to their mobile app dev saying "hey check out this section of this docs page. You can do all this on your side, right?"

But of course I'm still gonna bill them for that shit.

Think I could have gotten three or four hundred people to watch me do that?

 

[Autistic Joe]

Java and C# avoid both of those classes of pitfalls (by being statically typed AND using garbage collection). But they fucked it up by (among other things) forcing every object variable/field/parameter to accept the value "null", thus forcing programmers to check for that value everywhere, which of course they fail to do, thus leading to millions of unnecessary NullPointerException bugs around the globe.

The newer versions of C# (8.0+) now have a project setting which disallows null in reference types unless you explicitly declare them as nullable. And the code analyzer throws up warnings when you have possible null that could get assigned to a non-nullable type. It's a great feature, doesn't take much to get used to, and it helps prevent all those null reference exceptions. Here's a blog post about it.

 

[Unassuming Local Guy]

For maximum bug-safety, you'd ideally want a language that...

• avoids manual memory management (so C is out, C++ is borderline)
• is strongly statically typed (so Python, JS are out)
• makes it easy and natural to pass around non-nullable object references (so C, Java, C#, Python, JS are out)

Is there, or will there ever be, such an ideal language (that doesn't fuck up in other ways)?

Kotlin actually comes quite close. If a value can be null, it's treated differently. If I have a function that always returns a string, it returns "String". If I have a function that returns either a string or null, it returns "String?". That question mark makes the compiler treat it as an entirely different type in many cases.

Any argument that expects a "String" will not accept a "String?" without first checking to make sure it's not null or by nonnull asserting it, which essentially means you're pinky swearing that a string will definitely be returned in that given scenario. You can use it irresponsibly, but you have to go out of your way to do so, unlike Java where null pointers are the default behavior.

Another cool thing you can do is the "?." operator. It basically means "do an action if the thing isn't null, and if it is, do nothing". So myVal?.toString() would stringify myVal if it's not null, and do nothing if it is. Technically it makes toString return null, but in practice it usually means it does nothing.

I think the way null values are handled is my favorite thing about Kotlin actually. It makes null pointers almost impossible unless you code like shit on purpose and nonnull assert everything no matter what. Which I don't doubt many programmers do.

 

[Least Concern]

Kotlin actually comes quite close. If a value can be null, it's treated differently. If I have a function that always returns a string, it returns "String". If I have a function that returns either a string or null, it returns "String?". That question mark makes the compiler treat it as an entirely different type in many cases.

Any argument that expects a "String" will not accept a "String?" without first checking to make sure it's not null or by nonnull asserting it, which essentially means you're pinky swearing that a string will definitely be returned in that given scenario. You can use it irresponsibly, but you have to go out of your way to do so, unlike Java where null pointers are the default behavior.

Another cool thing you can do is the "?." operator. It basically means "do an action if the thing isn't null, and if it is, do nothing". So myVal?.toString() would stringify myVal if it's not null, and do nothing if it is. Technically it makes toString return null, but in practice it usually means it does nothing.

I think the way null values are handled is my favorite thing about Kotlin actually. It makes null pointers almost impossible unless you code like shit on purpose and nonnull assert everything no matter what. Which I don't doubt many programmers do.

This is pretty much identical to how Swift does nullables, right down to the syntax being identical, though it calls them "optionals." It's definitely one of those things that's really weird at first (especially when you have to "unwrap" the optionals; to turn a String? into a String, and what should happen if the String? is null), but after you get them down you wonder how you lived without them.

PHP even has them, to the extent that PHP has types; a function/method can accept or return a string, or a ?string.

 

[TheFinalCountdown]

Fucking pussies.

 

[Trigger Me Timbers]

Does the forum being in rust make it any harder for outside forces to penetrate?

Also it’s using rust because of all the salty tears webdevs in thread have proceed made it rusty.

 

[Least Concern]

Does the forum being in rust make it any harder for outside forces to penetrate?

Software quality is entirely independent of the language the software is written in. Rust might make some very fundamental memory access errors more difficult to happen accidentally than other low-level languages but it'd still be entirely possible to write a Rust web app which dumps the entire contents of its database after a polite request. You can bet that after Josh has a live SneedForo instance up for us to play with, I and many others will be seeing if we can break it - in the good-natured interest of ensuring those problems can be fixed before the board is used "for real," of course. At first…

One of the issues with starting a new project from scratch like this compared to adapting and using a system already in use is that those other systems have already been extensively stress-tested in live situations and hardened as a result of whatever exploits are found. Other than the sheer amount of work that will be involved to bring SF to feature parity with XF, it's why starting a whole new forum project is quite a bold move.

 

[gokii44]

The xenforo team has always been a pro communist socialist anti-free speech team. I was a customer in the past but had enough of their shit. They censor almost every discussion on their site. You are pretty much not allowed to have any discussions.

Lots of add-on developers left xenforo because of their anti-free speech communist ways. The software rarely adds new features and there is very few add-on developers.

Brogan the moderator is a piece of shit idiot.

It was only a matter of time before xenforo started coming after the administrators by revoking their licenses.. I would suspect governments around the world are finding it easier to sue or threaten the companies like xenforo instead of going after the individual forum administrator. Governments are giving themseleves more and more power as you can see with the plandemic and fake covid bullshit.

Forums have long been dieing because of idiot developers like the xenforo team and the #1 enemy is our governments.

The decentralized web is the future and decentralized finance like Bitcoin is also the future.

Unfortunately at this moment there isnt a true decentralized forum software. There is mastodon but that software is only semi decentralized and still needs to be installed on a server and its more like twitter and not a forum.

They are using white supremacy everywhere as an excuse to take down websites and cancel people that does not align with the new world order communist take over of the world.

 

[ClipBitch]

How come you're gonna make the xenforo replacement you're creating free? Or am I misunderstanding? If it's going to be as badass as it sounds, then that sounds like it would be a great source of supportive income.

Edit: smh moments after posting this you talk about it on the stream nevermind

 

[Jah Hates Kaffirs]

With the creation of SneedForo, Jersh moves one step closer to building his own internet.

 

[El Goblina]

Unfortunately at this moment there isnt a true decentralized forum software. There is mastodon but that software is only semi decentralized and still needs to be installed on a server and its more like twitter and not a forum.

The concept of a "decentralized forum" is an oxymoron. A forum implies a web host. You can't decentralize that. You could maybe come up with some kind of federated forum like Fediverse Twitter clones, but it's not going to function like a traditional forum, and you're going to lose a lot of people because it will be more convoluted in the UI.

 

[DavidS877]

The concept of a "decentralized forum" is an oxymoron. A forum implies a web host. You can't decentralize that. You could maybe come up with some kind of federated forum like Fediverse Twitter clones, but it's not going to function like a traditional forum, and you're going to lose a lot of people because it will be more convoluted in the UI.

We used to have Usenet. It was what you would consider a mostly decentralized forum. Sure there were still points of presence that people used and handled exchanging the data feeds, but everyone got more or less the same view. Of course, there's no big money in doing something like that these days so no one cares.

 

[AnOminous]

We used to have Usenet. It was what you would consider a mostly decentralized forum. Sure there were still points of presence that people used and handled exchanging the data feeds, but everyone got more or less the same view. Of course, there's no big money in doing something like that these days so no one cares.

There are also Frost forums on Freenet, or I assume there still are. All you really need for a decentralized forum is for the content to appear as if it's all in one place. It doesn't actually have to be all in one place.

 

[El Goblina]

Of course, there's no big money in doing something like that these days so no one cares.

I cut my teeth on Usenet years before I ever touched a web browser. The idea of "unmoderated" discussion or the kind of federated network that ran/runs Usenet won't fly on today's Internet. You can speculate about what could be all day long. The fact remains that there aren't any successful/popular decentralized forums out there. There are scarcely even any designs around how it could work. This seems to be an unpopular opinion, based on stickers and recent posters. By all means, prove me wrong, but you won't. The contemporary Internet just doesn't work like that any more. The closest thing to what we're talking about is the Fediverse, and that's a splintered, spammy, child-porn infested mess.

There's no shortage of egos around who think they've got some working strategy, but lo and behold, not a single actual popular example of how it might work, especially given today's corporately-enforced social taboos. Look at how hard it is for Dear Leader to run a centralized design. A decentralized design is an order of magnitude more complicated. But again, unpopular opinion, so I'll leave y'all to your circlejerk.

 

[Least Concern]

The closest thing to what we're talking about is the Fediverse, and that's a splintered, spammy, child-porn infested mess.

I mean, I guess.

Splintered? Yes, it's decentralized.

Spammy? Sure, if you read the firehose feeds, it can be, but once you're following a few people who you want to follow, you can ignore the firehose and use it just like Twitter in that way.

Child porn-infested? Just use an instance which doesn't federate with instances known to host CP, as almost all non-CP instances do.

In my opinion, if a decentralized forum can work as well as a centralized forum replacement as the Fediverse does for Twitter, I think that's a pretty solid foundation. And Usenet and the Fediverse actually work pretty similarly; I'd be surprised if the latter didn't take inspiration from the former.

At any rate, look at Steem as another approach to this problem. It hosts posts on a blockchain which is by definition decentralized.

 

[Jump]

I cut my teeth on Usenet years before I ever touched a web browser. The idea of "unmoderated" discussion or the kind of federated network that ran/runs Usenet won't fly on today's Internet. You can speculate about what could be all day long. The fact remains that there aren't any successful/popular decentralized forums out there. There are scarcely even any designs around how it could work. This seems to be an unpopular opinion, based on stickers and recent posters. By all means, prove me wrong, but you won't. The contemporary Internet just doesn't work like that any more. The closest thing to what we're talking about is the Fediverse, and that's a splintered, spammy, child-porn infested mess.

Well it could work like https://forum.dlang.org/ does. That site uses a web based "forum" front end to usenet. The software is called Dfeed. You could have usenet work like normal then just have different front ends hosted everywhere looking at the same feeds.


And I am going to agree with you on it wont fly today because people want images and other multimedia. Dfeed/nntp isnt popular because it doesn't offer that. Its just text. And if you build in multimedia no one is going run a node that hosts images they have no control over. Decentralization doesn't work if no one wants to run their own servers. Its why none of those p2p image boards ipfd type networks never took off.

Can confirm the Fedivese is broken as fuck. Every day new walls go up splintering it more and more. Poor kiwifarms.cc is stuck in a shrinking ghetto with just a few shitposting instances that still federate with it. The rest of the fedi is doing the same. The Fediverse is world made up of multiple islands isolated from each other.

 

[awoo]

I've posted about the possibility of decentralized forums before, and it's better to get started experimenting now than later. Media could hypothetically be shared via WebTorrent like peertube. Decentralized doesn't mean unmoderated - just like a centralized forum, you voluntarily accept to be moderated by jannies to keep the site clean. Unfortunately there's not really any well-tested decentralized forum yet. I found some experiments like https://github.com/CovenantSQL/CovenantForum but who knows how it'll scale.
Also being a little harder to use is not necessarily a bad thing. It's harder to shit up mailing lists because you have to be dedicated enough to use a mailing list and not a friendly web 2.0 interface in the first place.

 

[TheSkoomer]

nntp isnt popular because it doesn't offer that. Its just text.

NNTP supports file attachments of all types. images, videos, etc, so long as the server is set to allow it.

Unfortunately this leads to tons of pirated movies and CP being uploaded, which is why all the free public servers do not allow file attachments.

Still, NNTP is absolutely the right way to go for decentralized forums. It's proven itself for over 20 years, and the niggercattle are too stupid to connect to it. (That's a feature, not a bug)

 

[Least Concern]

Feature request for Sneedforo: *Please* let us use Markdown/CommonMark for markup. BBCode is [i]so[/i] much more awkward to type in comparison.