/dev/null: social network for developers (dev-null.sh)

100 pointsby mnapoli6 hours ago95 comments

SwellJoe 9 minutes ago

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.

1vuio0pswjnm7 2 hours ago

https://dev-null.sh/sitemaps/users-1.xml

https://dev-null.sh/sitemaps/commits-1.xml

anavid7 22 minutes ago

wow, very secure..

ineptech 4 hours ago

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?

flexagoon 3 hours ago

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

ineptech 2 hours ago

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.

voidfunc 3 hours ago

Just need to dust off the finger protocol.

layer8 2 hours ago

I like that it’s email-based.

ajjenkins 5 hours ago

It would be nice if the website had more information about the platform before you create an account.

ersind 5 hours ago

This was done only in two days, there are important pages missing.

embedding-shape 5 hours ago

> 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?

mystifyingpoi 5 hours ago

Does this excuse the main page missing any information what this thing even is? Come on.

mnapoli 5 hours ago

Fixed! Check out the website it shows content now, no landing page anymore

ajjenkins 4 hours ago

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!

TZubiri 3 hours ago

"twitter for developers and uses your GitHub account for auth"

No good developer would introduce such a security risk for novelty.

JdeBP 3 hours ago

Thank you, but no. I'll stick with /dev/tty0 . It's federated.

methodical 3 hours ago

Social media site for devs getting hug-of-death'd by HN... the irony!

RonanSoleste 3 hours ago

If only we had wel developed solutions for that ;)

probably_wrong 5 hours ago

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?

stephenlf 5 hours ago

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

OtomotO 5 hours ago

Guess I am simply not invited to the party then.

Or I am not a developer after all.

Identity crisis intensifies

pitched 5 hours ago

The dev in /dev/null is device, not developer. So you’re not a device but you can still be a developer.

fatty_patty89 5 hours ago

>Is this a real question? If so, here’s a real answer:

>Let's all be willing docile salves

This is how you sound

pants2 5 hours ago

Nobody's forcing you to use that website

mystifyingpoi 5 hours ago

Why does this need OIDC at all? Basic email + password account is like 1-2 prompts away.

bigwheels 5 hours ago

Maybe spam concerns, but your point remains valid.

hobofan 5 hours ago

Because effective anti-spam account measures are not 1-2 prompts away.

saghm 5 hours ago

And having those passwords leaked is probably only another 1-2 prompts away

ASalazarMX 5 hours ago

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.

ranger_danger 5 hours ago

I don't think a github profile (or any specific activity therein) should be a prerequisite for being considered a 'serious developer'.

ASalazarMX 4 hours ago

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.

Terr_ 3 hours ago

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.

mahboi 3 hours ago

How about ssh public keys

funshed an hour ago

It uses your GitHub public keys to authenticate so you can post from the CLI.

funshed an hour ago

It's built on laravel, email/pass/2fa/forget is all built in. GitHub auth only was a choice.

sandeepkd 5 hours ago

How does publicly published PGP based login sounds?

retromagik 5 hours ago

Based on the branding, I think their target demographic assumes the dev in /dev/null is short for "Developers"

joshuat 5 hours ago

dev = developer

bin = trash

smnplk 2 hours ago

Lmao

ASalazarMX 5 hours ago

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.

bee_rider 3 hours ago

Well it is a social media site, isn’t that where everybody puts the things they don’t care about?

pitched 5 hours ago

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?

ASalazarMX 5 hours ago

DM me and subscribe if you want an explanation.

ranger_danger 5 hours ago

FWIW DOS and Windows both have a null concept too:

  C:\> TYPE file.txt >NUL
  C:\>

28304283409234 4 hours ago

And for developers. Only a tiny percentage of the devs I know actually know what /dev/null is.

iberator 2 hours ago

Good point.

What if Microsoft black listed me from GitHub forever? I'm also banned from Facebook for like decade

bcourageous 15 minutes ago

My favorite social network

RonanSoleste 3 hours ago

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.

stephenlf 5 hours ago

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!

ktosobcy 3 hours ago

Seems to be down...

What does it use? masto or hand-crafted stuff?

measurablefunc 3 hours ago

I don't think you're getting the joke, the site is literally called /dev/null.

funshed an hour ago

Laravel Backend, TypeScript Frontend.

sp4cec0wb0y 5 hours ago

Your posts have to be approved? Odd way to run a social network imo.

rafram 4 hours ago

Kind of makes sense for a small operation. Better that than miss something bad for eight hours because the admin (presumably singular) is sleeping.

funshed an hour ago

Uses AI, Jev or similar.

hk1337 5 hours ago

> Failed to open page

I'm guessing that wasn't expected result.

deadbabe 5 hours ago

/tmp/social would have been better I think. dev = device, doesn’t make sense.

hk1337 5 hours ago

I like it. I might steal that.

flanz_10 2 hours ago

> Everyone here signed in with GitHub.

ugh.

jchonphoenix 2 hours ago

Wasn't this originally HN?

layer8 2 hours ago

Not quite: https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html

PaulKeeble 2 hours ago

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.

muslimpeacepriz 5 hours ago

Shouldn't that domain be dev-null.social instead of 'shell'? Dorks.

ersind 5 hours ago

Looks good!

JaceComix 5 hours ago

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?

sidrag22 5 hours ago

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.

antiloper 5 hours ago

> 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!

simonhamp 5 hours ago

it's fully open source (https://github.com/nunomaduro/dev-null.sh/pulls) and received over 200 PRs in less than 48 hours

esaym 5 hours ago

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.

t1234s 5 hours ago

Why do all these guys have "Soy Face" when you take their pictures?

ASalazarMX 5 hours ago

TIL soy face is the 'unmasculine' version of pog face.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/soy_face

thisisauserid 2 hours ago

symlinked in.

TheChelsUK 5 hours ago

Very good idea

caaqil 5 hours ago

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.

cyanydeez 5 hours ago

conceptually, just sounds like a place you go when you don't want anyone to hear, see or think about you.

brabel 5 hours ago

A dream developer experience.