TIL: Since I've got a Hive address and wallet (which, frankly, has gone unused for years), I've also got a D.Buzz account about which I previously knew nothing. I guess I've found a Web3 replacement for Twatter, without even meaning to. (I do like Mastodon, though. I've also been meaning to check out the Matrix network/protocol, but not got around to that.) It happened by accident/sheer coincidence, since I saw mention of a fictional short story competition on D.Buzz and went to the site to find out what the heck it is all about. (The short version is that it is microblogging on Hive, in case you didn't already know.)
I'm not sure how I feel about this, since it on the Hive Network after all (and my stance on Hive's community is quite clearly not complimentary or positive in any way). Oh, what's a person to do, if not weigh up pros and cons?
Maybe I'll finally generate the motivation to develop the code library/app I've been thinking about on and off (based on BF Lieber's five-letter railway/shipping codes and Western Union's telegraph codes) and use it for subsequent posts on all the Hive sites to which I have access, if I get any views and tips there, since many Hive sites require paying HIVE in order to post. That is one of the obstacles to me posting there, much as I appreciate the reason(s) behind that feature. (Good luck to anyone trying to make sense of content without the code book, although I'm sure someone will crack it eventually.) After all, adding that layer is what I originally intended to do if I ever build something leveraging Hive's environment and technologies (because something posted to one Hive site is accessible across the entire network and I don't necessarily want that; what happens on my sites should stay on my sites or at least be opaque outside of them).
One of the main obstacles to such a development is getting complete word lists for each of Afrikaans (ZAF) and isiZulu, since those two languages are spoken by many of my countrymen (more than English, according to Wikipedia). I'm certainly not going to do that by myself, since it's a massive and tedious undertaking (upwards of nine thousand words in Afrikaans; most of the word lists I've found contain a third of them. An alternative, of course, would be to develop a cipher where each character in the extended Latin alphabet has a numeric code ([0-9a-Z], for example). Either way, I can't imagine is going to pay me for the time it will take to write that code (nor to develop yet another Web3 antisocial media site when there are so many already, not including on Hive, and few people have embraced crypto and Web3). That's another obstacle: Finding the necessary funding (in crypto or fiat) to make it happen, since I can't seem to inspire confidence in my ideas in potential investors. They want to see a working demo before they'll put up any capital and I don't have any of my own to get the ball rolling.
Technically, I have the time, just not the inclination or anyone willing to pay for it.
I certainly don't expect anyone to follow me there (not even from Noise), much less tip, but I could be pleasantly surprised.
Thumbnail image: Poster's own photo
