/dev/null: social network for developers
dev-null.shErrant 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?
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
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.
It’s actually changed for the worse. Now everyone wants their slop to be the winning protocol, so the competing standards problem has become far broader
Just need to dust off the finger protocol.
I like that it’s email-based.
I thought this is why we established standards. I truly hope the LLM singularity brings further adherence to existing standards and doesn't lead to an explosion in protocols and formats. That sounds like a nightmare! :)
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.
My pleroma instance (alternative AP server) collapsed on itself, running out of storage mid upgrade, about two years ago. I didn't have the bandwidth to allocate to getting it back up and running, as I didn't have backups, and it wasn't an easy fix.Last weekend I pointed my (fully local!) agent at it, and it was able to get it back up and running.
Now that I have it up and running, my feed is entirely people just hating on LLMs. I have a hard time finding technical content that I enjoy on there these days.
That's true, and it is a rift in the fediverse...some very anti-LLM voices are quite loud there. But, there are people there with a nuanced view of them, as well.
And, I would rather talk to an AI Luddite that's extraordinarily technically competent without AI assistance than someone who vibe-coded a startup with no idea how it works, and the former is far more common on the fediverse than the latter. I think it's unfortunate there's such a strong emotional component to talking about LLMs, as it's the most interesting technical innovation since the internet, but I understand it and I'm sympathetic to it (the AI companies have done a good job giving people reasons to hate and/or fear them).
Of course, I am happy to listen to people who feel strongly against AI as well, and being pro-AI is by no means a signal that someone will have anything interesting to say. My gripe with it is that AI hate seems to be a massive portion of what people (I see) talk about on there. I would love to see people talk about non- technical things, or technical things that don't involve AI, or things that do involve AI.
It's likely just my bubble on there, but man it's relentless. I don't want to just hear everything about what you hate. I want to hear what you love!
I think it might just be the space in general, I've found my feed to be very full of anti-AI content too despite not seeking it out.
I found success in starting our from an LLM positive poster and fanning out from their follows and building a follower graph. From there I fetch a few hundred of their posts and used an LLM to classify the posts as negative, mixed, or positive. I used this to winnow a set of follows. For now I just poll and generate a timeline HTML. This has yielded decent results.
But the problem with all of these Twitter clones is the political schism of Musk's acquisition has largely polarized the offshoots. You aren't just on alt-Twitter, you're on a specific polarized chunk of it.
I spend a lot more time on ATproto than on ActivityPub these days, amd yeah I agree with that. I find I prefer ATproto for non-technical content, and just don't really use microblogging for technology content anymore.
Which mastodon instance would you recommend?
I'm on mas.to, which is, I believe, the second largest after mastodon.social. I picked it because it's got the shortest URL, but it has been quietly reliable and up to date. Its moderation and defederation policies are stricter than some might like.
I follow many people who use infosec.exchange and hachyderm.io and they seem to be nerd-oriented instances. But it doesn't matter all that much, since you can follow and interact across the whole federation. I'd say just pick one that's reasonably large and old enough to have proven it is run by people who know how to run a reliable service and are in it for the long haul. It's possible to move to a new instance with only a little inconvenience, so don't agonize too much over it.
> Its moderation and defederation policies are stricter than some might like.
That sucks. I'm not exactly looking forward to joining another community with "strict" moderation.
Every mastodon instance I look up seems to be like this... Guess I'm stuck on X.
Every instance has their own moderation and defederation policies.
And, you might like to look into what that actually means. In the case of mas.to, the controversial decisions include defederation of instances that have a history of bigotry, usually anti-trans bigotry (the kind of bigotry lots of mainstream social sites allow and even protect).
Defederation is a large hammer, so some folks think mas.to is too strict. But, I personally prefer no slurs or child porn in my feed (adults posting nudes of themselves with a content warning is fine, both by my reckoning and the policy of mas.to), so I've never had reason to complain, nor have I ever had an interaction with moderators.
X is far more censorious than Mastodon of the kinds of free speech that are actually politically meaningful, so I'm surprised you call it out specifically as your free speech safe space. But, if you mean the same thing Musk means when you say "free speech", the right to punch down with impunity, perhaps X is the right place. Punching down is exactly the kind of thing that gets you banned on many Mastodon instances. It is a place that is by and large extremely intolerant of intolerance, but accepting of most everything else.
Don't think I could punch down on anyone even if I wanted to. I just don't fit in with the "intolerant of intolerance" folks.
Haven't seen anyone get censored on X without a court order yet, but I haven't been there that long. Who knows.
"Haven't seen anyone get censored on X without a court order yet, but I haven't been there that long. Who knows."
I know. It isn't a mystery or a secret. It is easy for anyone, including you, to know.
https://www.advocate.com/media/alejandra-caraballo-banned-x
https://observer.com/2022/12/elon-musk-suspend-twitter-accou...
https://www.wired.com/story/x-twitter-ban-critics/
https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-x-twitter-account-...
It's pretty apparent neo-Nazis were welcomed back after Musk's purchase of the site and they've been paid for their engagement ragebait, while anyone who criticizes Musk or disagrees with his genocidal white nationalist views gets suspended or shadow-banned. Criticizing billionaires won't get you suspended on Mastodon, while hate speech against minorities will. I prefer that kind of moderation.
Thanks for the information. I do think that's pretty fucked up. I'd very much enjoy joining a community that doesn't have any censorship whatsoever, from any side.
I've resigned to the fact people are always going to identify some outgroup to shun. It sucks when you're that outgroup, and the intolerance is not at all limited to literal neonazism. Just being an AI user is enough to turn up the heat these days. So I'd rather nobody have that censorship privilege.
Basically, I don't like it when neonazis get a pass while those calling them out get banned. I don't like it when minorities get a pass either. It's the inconsistency that makes me lose all respect for the community.
>enjoy joining a community that doesn't have any censorship whatsoever, from any side.
HN is absolutely not such a place, unfortunately, the local censorship policy is very strong.
No one is being banned on Mastodon for talking about using AI. I talk about using AI on Mastodon. You might get blocked by individual users who don't want AI in their feed (it's their feed, they make the rules). You might even get insulted; I haven't been, but I don't post AI-generated content without being intentional about what it is and why AI is being used to generate it. I've experimented with training LoRAs or building harnesses for all sorts of things, and I sometimes post about it, no big deal.
You might also get banned from some instances if you post AI-generated content without clearly labeling it as such; misinformation and disinformation is often something people report, and generative AI is often used for that.
It is misleading to say Mastodon is the same as X just "the other side". The policies on the most popular Mastodon instances can be summed up as "don't be a bigot" (i.e. don't use slurs, don't demean people for who they are...anti-semitism, anti-LGBTQ, racism, religious intolerance, will get you banned).
And, it would be misleading to say that users not wanting to look at what you post is censorship. Mastodon.social or mas.to or any of the other big instances are not going to ban you for talking about AI. But, you might catch some blocks and a few insults from individuals if you post AI in a deceptive or annoying way. You're not owed engagement. But, if you're polite about it, you'll find people who like to talk about the same things. Even including AI.
But, finally, what the hell does this even mean, "I don't like it when minorities get a pass either"? A pass for being a minority? If someone posts abusively, they get blocked, maybe reported and maybe catch a ban. But, simply posting while black is not getting a pass.
> don't use slurs
> don't demean people for who they are
Unless they are acceptable targets of some enemy outgroup.
People already have numerous slurs for AIs and their users, and they aren't shy about using them.
> A pass for being a minority?
A pass for the very same behavior they claim to be against.
I expect people who are offended by slurs not to level any slurs at others.
I expect people who object to racism not to be racist towards others.
I expect people who object to sexism not to be sexist towards others.
I expect people who object to doxxing not to do it to others.
I expect anti-fascists not to display overtly fascist behavior.
And so on, and so forth. Many have failed these simple consistency tests.
> maybe catch a ban
Doubt. It's far more likely that I'm the one who will get banned if I dare to bring any of this up.
I suppose that's the reason people like me end up on X.
>neo-Nazis were welcomed back...disagrees with his genocidal white nationalist views
What kind of nonsense are you talking about, show me at least one example of statements that can be interpreted in the way that you described? Leftists have gone completely berserk with their conspiracy theories.
You can also get a personal hosted instance (I use masto.host) to serve as an identity instance pretty cheap, but you have to be careful about keeping track of media usage, avoid posting images and use relays sparingly.
Before that I just had an account on multiple (mostly gamedev) instances.
Mastodon has its issues but one benefit of decentralization is you don't really have to commit to anything.
the game.
Naming the people you think a lot and little of would make your comment go from utterly unhelpful (with a dash of self-aggrandising bs) to bring an actual (if subjective) metric of how much value your insight actually holds.
What motivates someone to make a new account just for this kind of mundane and inappropriately rude comment? Why should anyone answer you?
So what you’re implying is that arguments are only valid coming from old accounts? Good to know. I guess HN really is turning into reddit, isn’t it?
"Hey I'm a complete nobody and I'm also really rude, please answer my questions" is not a winning play, nor is the rest of this dumb bait you're trying.
> What motivates someone to make a new account just for this kind of mundane and inappropriately rude comment?
Mental illnesses, fear, lack of trust, hatred for HN having a simplistic and prone-to-abuse account registration system, or being a complete asshat.. the list goes on.
I wasn't talking to you, four minute old account.
You didn’t mention anyone by name and this is an open forum, 19 year old account. Weird that such a basic premise escapes you with a near two decade old account.
I don't need to name anyone, I defined the term. If you're a real nerd (by my definition, given in my comment), you will know the kind of person I have in mind, both for whom I think highly of and those I think little of.
https://x.com/sitemap.xml (listed in robots.txt but doesn't work for me)
https://www.facebook.com/robots.txt (186 sitemap files listed, none are accessible to me)
Perhaps these require an "acceptable browser" and/or an account
Why sitemap URLs. Because I'm a sitemaps user; I use sitemap files every day
The /dev/null ones seem to be easily accessible. Unlike some other "social networks"
Maybe I'm blind, but what's the issue here? Users (that are GitHub usernames by the way) and commits (posts) are public. This is not a security concern whatsoever.
wow, very secure..
lol, outstanding
It would be nice if the website had more information about the platform before you create an account.
Fixed! Check out the website it shows content now, no landing page anymore
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!
GitHub? You mean that complete, usually offliney, mess Microsoft dig a grave for? Not sure if that's a good idea in 2026
"twitter for developers and uses your GitHub account for auth"
No good developer would introduce such a security risk for novelty.
This was done only in two days, there are important pages missing.
> 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?
Does this excuse the main page missing any information what this thing even is? Come on.
Thank you, but no. I'll stick with /dev/tty0 . It's federated.
If it's called /dev/null... shouldn't all your responses be sent nowhere? Shouldn't it be a blank page? ;)
Based on what I read, it was effectively that; just like all social networks.
Social media site for devs getting hug-of-death'd by HN... the irony!
If only we had wel developed solutions for that ;)
There are, but most people don't understand channels or why the OTP is suited for this type of use-case. =3
Horror, another platform without freedom of speech. And why should you if you already have Mastodon where you are protected by your instance?
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?
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?
DM me and subscribe if you want an explanation.
Based on the branding, I think their target demographic assumes the dev in /dev/null is short for "Developers"
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.
Well it is a social media site, isn’t that where everybody puts the things they don’t care about?
dev = developer
bin = trash
Lmao
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
Why does this need OIDC at all? Basic email + password account is like 1-2 prompts away.
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.
I don't think a github profile (or any specific activity therein) should be a prerequisite for being considered a 'serious developer'.
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.
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.
It's built on laravel, email/pass/2fa/forget is all built in. GitHub auth only was a choice.
Because effective anti-spam account measures are not 1-2 prompts away.
Maybe spam concerns, but your point remains valid.
How about ssh public keys
It uses your GitHub public keys to authenticate so you can post from the CLI.
And having those passwords leaked is probably only another 1-2 prompts away
Guess I am simply not invited to the party then.
Or I am not a developer after all.
Identity crisis intensifies
The dev in /dev/null is device, not developer. So you’re not a device but you can still be a developer.
>Is this a real question? If so, here’s a real answer:
>Let's all be willing docile salves
This is how you sound
Nobody's forcing you to use that website
And for developers. Only a tiny percentage of the devs I know actually know what /dev/null is.
How does publicly published PGP based login sounds?
Good point.
What if Microsoft black listed me from GitHub forever? I'm also banned from Facebook for like decade
FWIW DOS and Windows both have a null concept too:
C:\> TYPE file.txt >NUL C:\>
Reminds me of https://devrant.com/, which had a decent sized community cca 2018
++ was (is?) the icon to upvote
Highly recommend going through the onboarding process and using it a bit. The git analogies and visual metaphors are a nice touch.
> Everyone here signed in with GitHub.
ugh.
Your posts have to be approved? Odd way to run a social network imo.
Kind of makes sense for a small operation. Better that than miss something bad for eight hours because the admin (presumably singular) is sleeping.
Uses AI, Jev or similar.
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!
Looks like every post is a commit that needs to be approved by someone (they show as “pending"). How can that scale?
Only the first post has to be approved by a moderator (for now), subsequent posts are automatically AI moderated and approved.
How is that financially sustainable?
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.
> Failed to open page
I'm guessing that wasn't expected result.
Seems to be down...
What does it use? masto or hand-crafted stuff?
I don't think you're getting the joke, the site is literally called /dev/null.
Laravel Backend, TypeScript Frontend.
/tmp/social would have been better I think. dev = device, doesn’t make sense.
I like it. I might steal that.
> 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!
Looks good!
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?
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.
Why do all these guys have "Soy Face" when you take their pictures?
TIL soy face is the 'unmasculine' version of pog face.
Wasn't this originally HN?
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.
Not quite: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html
it's fully open source (https://github.com/nunomaduro/dev-null.sh/pulls) and received over 200 PRs in less than 48 hours
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.
Shouldn't that domain be dev-null.social instead of 'shell'? Dorks.
My favorite social network
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.
conceptually, just sounds like a place you go when you don't want anyone to hear, see or think about you.
A dream developer experience.
> No likes. No reposts. No algorithm. Everything else goes to /dev/null.
*Closes tab
Just skip the whole thing and send your thoughts straight to /dev/null
Weird, especially because it DOES have likes.
Yep our bad, we fixed this, no landing page anymore
It's a really bad look not to at least review this sort of thing before going live.
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.
symlinked in.
Very good idea
Using GH as the only way to associate identity is a bit evil
Devs need to be around actual humans in-person more, not less.
I have the right amount of humans in my life, I don't want more. Online is great for me, for this use case.
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.
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.
it was supposed to be public. maybe it got reverted. the team were moving super fast
yeah that's fixed
That's fixed
> follow people who write code, and commit plain text to a shared log.
Isn't that Twitter?
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
> Discord is where more dev communities are moving to
Discord now requires age verification, so it is user-hostile and nobody should use it.
I have not been asked for any age verification yet, US based
No, everyone is still there talking about programming. Your choice, but you’re missing out.
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.