nileshtrivedi

How to set up your own fediverse instance

FYI, we offer free managed hosting to Indian organizations (media, academia, institutions and non-profit/for-profit companies).

We're sharing our approach here to make it easy for those who want to do it themselves.

What you need

• A domain name: A typical practice is to use a subdomain. For example, if your org website is at thinktank.com, you can set up your fediverse instance at social.thinktank.com. This will allow your users to have an email address like john@thinktank.com and fediverse address as @john@social.thinktank.com. It's also possible to run the fediverse instance on your top-level domain (eg: thinktank.com). In this case, both the email address and fediverse address will be john@thinktank.com. But users visiting thinktank.com in the browser will directly land on your fediverse instance which can't be customized as much as a proper website can be.

nileshtrivedi

brew install libpq
bundle config build.pg --with-pg-config="$(brew --prefix)/opt/libpq/bin/pg_config"

brew install icu4c
brew install libidn
bundle config build.idn-ruby --with-idn-dir="$(brew --prefix)"

nileshtrivedi

Why self-host?

Not only does it give you control of your own data, it also enables you to explore the amazing possibilities of computation, free from restricted environments like mobile/tablet/desktop/laptop operating systems. As you increase your technical skills and capabilities, you can then use those to solve problems for your own communities.

What do you need?

Familiarity with English language, willingness to learn, and a credit/debit card.

Steps

nileshtrivedi

# My solution to a cool math puzzle


# Two numbers are chosen randomly, both are positive integers smaller than 100. Sandy is told 
# the sum of the numbers, while Peter is told the product of the numbers.

# Then, this dialog occurs between Sandy and Peter:

# Peter: I don’t know the numbers.
# Sandy: I don’t know the numbers.

nileshtrivedi

<!-- I will consider web components ready for use when this piece of HTML works -->
<!-- Here we import two different WC frameworks and mix custom input elements in a single form -->
<!-- Like regular HTML forms, we expect this form to work without writing any custom Javascript code for data plumbing -->

<!-- Some context: This will be possible in future with ElementInternals api which works in Chrome & Firefox, but not in Safari -->
<!-- See this conversation: https://twitter.com/nileshtrivedi/status/1521395909535404032 -->
<!-- Chrome team's blog post announcing ElementInternals from 2019: https://web.dev/more-capable-form-controls/ -->


<!-- Importing shoelace.style for the sl-rating element used below -->

nileshtrivedi

# NCERT books are excellent but being altered for political or other reasons
# See: https://twitter.com/SouthAsiaIndex/status/1518062204058103809
# To download the entire current set, run this script with Ruby

require 'httparty'

source = HTTParty.get('https://ncert.nic.in/textbook.php').force_encoding("ISO-8859-1").encode("utf-8", replace: nil)

# book names are like aeen1dd.zip
# First letter tells the class number a to l is class 1 to class 12. m stands for class 11 and 12 combined

nileshtrivedi

log stdout
errors stdout
auto_https off

http://myapp.fly.dev {
  reverse_proxy 100.120.108.62:8000
}

nileshtrivedi

def coin(win) = rand(1000) > (1000 - win) ? 1 : -1
def a(capital) = coin(495) # 49.5% chance of winning
def b(capital) = (capital % 3 != 0) ? coin(745) : coin(95)

def simulate(strategy, count)
    (strategy * count).reduce(100) do |capital,game| 
        capital + send(game, capital)
    end
end

nileshtrivedi

# https://medium.com/cleartax-engineering/a-simple-rule-based-stateful-chatbot-for-data-capture-ebfad9271388

require 'ostruct'

# Track the current state of the conversation
state = {pointer: ""}

# Metadata is used to fill the outgoing templates AND store the captured data from conversation
metadata = {name: "Calvin"}

nileshtrivedi

/* 

This is an idea for mocking HTML data that lets you test whether your layout breaks on any screen size for any
unexpected dynamic data.

This script scans the document for class names with a specific pattern and periodically randomizes the content
of those elements while meeting the constraints specified in the class name. This can let you quickly test
whether your layout breaks for any dynamic content that you may not have thought about. This should ideally be used
with a responsive design testing tool such as DevTools or Sizzy/Bizzy.