hrbrmstr's Daily Drop

2025-03-17 13:11:00

Drop #622 (2025-03-17): Monday Morning Grab Bag

Might As Well Plonk; Notetaking Just Comes Nash-ually For Some; The Arc Of The Universe Bends Towards Ad Blocking

I really wanted to post all this yesterday, since we need all the good news/distractions we can get these days.

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TL;DR

(This is an AI-generated summary of today’s Drop using Ollama + llama 3.2 and a custom prompt.)

• Plonk.li is a new gist/pastebin service built on the ATproto network, storing pastes directly in a Personal Data Server (PDS) as records discoverable through ATproto collection queries. (plonk.li/)
• Nash is a portable, web-based note-taking application that runs entirely in your browser, allowing you to create, edit, and save notes as HTML files with no server dependencies. (keepworking.github.io/nash/)
• Arc Browser has integrated an ad blocker that bypasses Manifest V3 restrictions and aligns with its clean interface philosophy, though it currently lacks features like an allow list and quick disable option.

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Might As Well Plonk

So much is happening in ATproto land!

The folks that brought us Tangled are back with Plonk.li (knot) — a gist/pastebin service built on the ATproto network, the same protocol that powers Bluesky. Unlike traditional pastebins that store content on their own servers, Plonk leverages the distributed nature of ATProto by storing pastes directly in a Personal Data Server (PDS). By default, it uses Bluesky’s PDS.

The service is available at plonk.li/ and was developed by @[url=did:plc:qfpnj4og54vl56wngdriaxug]akshay[/url] as detailed on their Tangled profile. What makes this particularly interesting is that it’s written using Pug, a template engine for Node.js that offers a cleaner, more concise syntax for generating HTML.

When you create a paste on Plonk, it’s stored as a record in the ATproto network using a custom record type: li.plonk.paste. This means your pastes become part of your ATproto identity and can be discovered through ATproto collection queries.

Looking at my own ATProto collections (at did:plc:hgyzg2hn6zxpqokmp5c2xrdo), you can see various record types including the standard Bluesky ones like app.bsky.feed.post and custom ones like li.plonk.paste.

Drilling down into a specific paste record reveals its structure:

{ "code": "Pastebin on ATproto", "lang": "plaintext", "$type": "li.plonk.paste", "title": "First Post!", "shortUrl": "Hc", "createdAt": "2025-03-16T16:10:36.637Z"}

The record contains the paste content, language for syntax highlighting, title, a short URL for easy sharing, and creation timestamp. This data is stored in the Bluesky PDS at porcini.us-east.host.bsky.network for my account.

If you want to run your own Plonk.li instance, the process is straightforward:

1. Clone the repository:git clone https://tangled.sh/@oppili.bsky.social/plonkli cd plonkli
2. Install dependencies:npm install npm install -g tsx pino-pretty npm run build
3. Create this systemd service file at ~/.config/systemd/user/plonk.service
4. Set up a reverse proxy with Caddy to expose your service to the internet.

Note that the example service file uses nvm for Node.js version management. In a production environment, make better life choices than I have. And, you can try out my Plonk instance at https://paste.hrbrmstr.app/. I should note that some state/session and paste metadata for anyone that OAuthed to Blusky via a hosted Plonk instance is stored on said Plonk instance.

The integration of a gist/pastebin service with ATproto demonstrates the protocol’s flexibility beyond social networking. By storing pastes as ATproto records, Plonk creates a persistent, us-owned archive of code snippets and text that lives alongside your social content. And, with both Tangled and Plonk, we do indeed have the makings for a legit GitHub/GitLab replacment in the works.

This approach also means your pastes inherit the same data portability benefits as other ATproto content — they’re part of your digital identity that you can take with you across compatible services.

As the ATproto ecosystem continues to grow, we’ll likely see more creative applications like Plonk that extend the protocol’s utility beyond its initial social networking focus. The decentralized nature of ATproto makes it an excellent foundation for building us-owned content services of all kinds.

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Notetaking Just Comes Nash-ually For Some

Photo by energepic.com on Pexels.com
Nash (GH) is a web-based note-taking application that runs entirely in your browser. It is both simple and highly portabile—create, edit, and save notes as HTML files without any server dependencies.

The interface is refreshingly straightforward: a title field and content area where the magic happens. Despite its minimalist appearance, Nash offers a surprisingly robust set of formatting tools.

Text formatting options range from size adjustments (XL, L, M, S) to the classics—bold, italic, and underline. You can easily insert links and upload images, plus add some visual flair with text coloring and highlighting. When you’ve finished crafting your note, Nash gives you several saving options. Save locally as an HTML file, share it directly (if your browser supports the share API), or create read-only versions for distribution.

Technically speaking, Nash uses contentEditable divs for both the title and editor components. The developmer has implemented custom JavaScript functions that handle everything from text formatting through DOM manipulation to selection and range handling for applying styles.

The editor supports block-level formatting like headings and paragraphs, image insertion via the FileReader API, and color application using CSS variables for consistent theming. Perhaps most impressively, its export functionality packages everything into a self-contained HTML document.

Nash includes several thoughtful quality-of-life features. Dark mode support via CSS media queries means your eyes won’t burn during late-night writing sessions. The application automatically normalizes content structure, confirms before opening links (no accidental navigation!), and warns you about unsaved changes.

Since all processing happens client-side with zero server requirements, Nash is a truly portable solution for note-taking. Take it anywhere, use it anytime, without worrying about connectivity or account management.

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The Arc Of The Universe Bends Towards Ad Blocking

I’m on the bleeding edge releases of Arc and they recently added advert/tracker/cookie-consent blocking to this spiffy Chromium-based browser alternative.

Google’s Manifest V3 update severely limits extension capabilities, particularly for ad blocking. Arc’s integrated ad blocker bypasses these restrictions, aiming for a “cleaner internet” with fewer ads and distractions. It appears to just be using the same lists that uBlock Origin uses:

It does ask you to use only one blocker, so I’m giving this a go for a while. It frustratingly does not yet support an “allow” list, and does not have a quick way to temporarily disable the built-in blocker.

This move aligns with Arc’s clean interface philosophy while directly challenging Google and Microsoft’s ad revenue models. By addressing the limitations of Manifest V3, Arc targets privacy-conscious folks dissatisfied with Chrome’s direction. I should further reiterate that I use a total of ZERO of Arc’s AI features, have Kagi as my browser search ending, and run Arc every two weeks from my PCAP logging VLAN to make sure it’s not being naughty and shunting my browser sessions to their AI servers. So, all of said privacy claims have that in mind.

Unfortunately — for now — both Arc and Vivaldi faile the “protect me from sociopaths” test quite miserably, as Chromium Canary (which they both use as a baseline) nuked our ability to turn off all the new Google spying settings. I was afraid Google might have co-mingled the evil advert code too deeply into the browser core ops, and I suspect that is the case, here.

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FIN

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GitHub - keepworking/nash: Note as HTML

Note as HTML. Contribute to keepworking/nash development by creating an account on GitHub.

^GitHub