Live data from Hacker News

Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

nicheless.blog

81–90 of 129 posts

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#82
post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of time is lost to Twitter. I don't think it ends up being like the social norms of your small group of friends that go to the pub. How big is that group? How do you converse? From personal experience it's vastly different.

As you said in your previous, > Twitter is a void and trying to fill that void with another one isn't the answer. You are 100% spot on something here, something that's well known but usually goes undiscussed. As madeofpalk said, > Sometimes i just want to take a break from 110% productivity and have some idle, mindless chatter. That's true - so do I (although I usually opt for a chat with a friend, or for some mindle…

As I read your last point all I can think is, no one owns the earth, why should private companies own the digital space. It's frustrating when you can see the problem but not offer a solution. Mostly because the ideas are many but to execute is a multi decade endeavour. Not to get too serious but we're effectively talking about a problem that effects humanity and we now have a clown running the show. Elon is doing great things with his other companies and maybe he even finds a way to fix Twitter but it doesn't feel like he doesn't it with any sort of grace or humility, it doesn't feel like he shares the problems of humanity given his wealth and status. The disconnect makes it hard to trust him or root for him especially when it's at the expense of others as we can see by his public trolling on twitter. That's right, yes he's a troll. With over 100M followers...

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#83

Awesome. Clean and minimal. I tried to write a post in Telugu language and it resulted in rather long and ugly URL. https://nicheless.blog/post/%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%AA%E0%B...

Hey! I just noticed that! You're the first person to write in a different script, so it's not a problem I experienced until now. Will figure out a way to make the URL neater by default, although you can currently edit it as well.

Btw, I'm also Indian (from Goa) so it's amazing to see posts in one of our many regional languages :)

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#84
post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As you said in your previous, > Twitter is a void and trying to fill that void with another one isn't the answer. You are 100% spot on something here, something that's well known but usually goes undiscussed. As madeofpalk said, > Sometimes i just want to take a break from 110% productivity and have some idle, mindless chatter. That's true - so do I (although I usually opt for a chat with a friend, or for some mindle…

As I read your last point all I can think is, no one owns the earth, why should private companies own the digital space. It's frustrating when you can see the problem but not offer a solution. Mostly because the ideas are many but to execute is a multi decade endeavour. Not to get too serious but we're effectively talking about a problem that effects humanity and we now have a clown running the show. Elon is doing gr…

The irony is the fact that I have the time to write this highlights the dangers of idleness.

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#85
post #37

I say this every time one of these pops up: Just do it yourself. Just get a $5 Linode or a Cloudflare account, make a Hugo/Pelican/whatever site and go. These niche microblogging sites are so small and insignificant that you can never ever trust them to survive (or even persist). Just do it yourself from the very beginning and you'll have a much better time.

https://prose.sh is a blog platform that is hosted in a free tier.

Authentication and authorization is handled by SSH, publishing posts is as simple as using rsync, and the website itself is read only.

We thought about charging for it but the site costs basically nothing. We have zero intention of killing it off as well because we use it for our own blogs.

What I like about it the most is you can take your Hugo markdown files and upload it to prose and it’ll mostly work so there’s not a ton of friction.

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#87
post #18

Nice job. No RSS though as far as I can tell. For something slightly less minimal but very nice to use, I stumbled across this the other day: https://blogstatic.io/ Feels likes - after being crowded out by FB and Twitter (and the death of Google Reader) - blogs are making a comeback.

Blogstatic looks nice I though it was ghost.org. Their guide is straight up how to setup your domain with Cloudflare.

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#88

Awesome. Clean and minimal. I tried to write a post in Telugu language and it resulted in rather long and ugly URL. https://nicheless.blog/post/%E0%B0%B9%E0%B0%82%E0%B0%AA%E0%B...

Hey! I just noticed that! You're the first person to write in a different script, so it's not a problem I experienced until now. Will figure out a way to make the URL neater by default, although you can currently edit it as well. Btw, I'm also Indian (from Goa) so it's amazing to see posts in one of our many regional languages :)

Ah nice to know :)

I was able to edit the URL, thanks!

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#89
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Every time this DIY reply comes it misses the fact that the platforms take care of commenting (account management, moderation), something that's more or less impossible for a DIY solution. Twitter/FB/etc make commenting painless because everyone has an account and is already logged in. This at least has the potential to get to that position. DIY doesn't.

> the platforms take care of commenting (account management, moderation), something that's more or less impossible for a DIY solution. This could be a bug, not a feature if you look at it from indie-bloggers' perspective. The DIY types are not target audience for the solution you're proposing. There is a space for both 1) Substack-like platforms 2) DIY indie blogs. Some cool things about DIY blogs: - Email them! You…

> There is a space for both 1) Substack-like platforms 2) DIY indie blogs.

Well said. The outcome doesn't need to be that one dies and the other survives. So much falls into the "there is one ideal way to do this" trap.

Re: Nicheless: a micro-blogging platform

#90

What immediately scares me is every post on the website by the link having a title. To me inventing a good title arguably almost seems the hardest part of writing at all. A microblog should let you dump a thought quickly without requiring you to name it first. Also, individual post URL is hidden to deep. You apparently have to open the post, scroll down, click "share", click "copy link", and even that element is not…

I get what you're saying. Specially if you think of it more as a microblog that you share toughts.

How do you feel about timestamps as titles (and URLs)?

Maybe having an option to use a title or just a timestamp.

Post reply on HN