Welcome to the extremely punctual Alpha 10 notes. Sorry!
new name, same us
The team behind Packbase is now Wild HQ! We have a lion now. Hopefully it looks less like a VC startup than the asterisk did. It's better than an asterisk, I guess?
Nothing else changes. We're still independent, still run entirely by volunteers, and still don't care if we sink into the red. We want to show what a social internet without investors can look like. That's the whole thing.
video howls!! and rehowls!!
You can Howl videos now. They can be as long as you like; we'll remux them to WebM when you post. You can mix video and images too, though videos may appear smaller in a mixed layout.
The ordinary limit is now 15 GB per Howl, matching your total storage allowance, with up to 100 assets capped at 1 GB each. Void members get 1 TB per Howl. Yes, 1 TB.
Rehowling is here too. It boosts somebody else's Howl to your followers and Default Pack. We'll add rehowling into specific Packs later.
tabs and other ui stuff
We're still working out the best way to switch between Packs, so this round uses tabs. Keep the Packs you use often within reach and leave the rest in the new-tab view. If the tabs suck, we'll go back to the old Slack/Discord-style sidebar. Easy.
Notifications have left the right sidebar and moved into a pop-out beside search. Most of you didn't enjoy the sidebar. Fair enough.
We've refreshed the account pop-out, added a sign-out confirmation and folded the old "Change what?" prompt into it. We'd rather not ask that question at all, but the two settings modals still need to become one. Give us a little more time.
Packbase now respects your device or browser's reduced-motion preference across most of the interface, with the remaining corners to follow. This should have been here sooner.
ai search blocking (sort of)
We already prohibit training models on member content. Blocking AI-assisted search is trickier: some search engines reject a page entirely when you do it, and we don't want to erase members who still want to appear in ordinary search.
So we're trying a middle ground. If you enable the new privacy option, Packbase adds a stop instruction to the page <head> on the server. Claude is the only model we found with a proper built-in control. A few others listen sometimes. Great system.
Prompt injection is our last resort, not a clever security triumph. A site-wide robots.txt block would also damage visibility for members who want search engines such as Kagi, Google, DuckDuckGo or Ecosia to find them. Until there's a proper per-page standard, we'll use what works without making the choice for everybody.
stuff we're working on
We're rebuilding the custom-theme editor for people who don't know much HTML or CSS. It now makes Packbase's Tailwind support much clearer, while keeping <style> tags when you want to take over completely.
We're also experimenting with domain sync: update HTML and CSS on a site you own, such as Neocities, and have the changes follow you to your Packbase profile. This is very early, so now is a good time to tell us what would make it useful.
A hidden /media profile view is testing a gallery-first layout for people used to sites such as SoFurry and FurAffinity. It's live now, but very much a prototype.
The experiment has exposed scaling problems in whskrd, especially when we ask for specific posts and related data together. We don't want to abandon member-made feeds, but replacing the query language may end up on the table. If it does, the replacement needs to be just as capable.
You can try @koalsummersong's gallery as an example. They're not affiliated; their PixMixes are simply lovely.
Finally, we've started storing profile history. Profiles have always been designed so they can move between members or be shared, and that needs a clear record. Changes now keep track of what happened and who made them.
