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Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

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Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#191

Post by blep_ »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #65
david2ndaccount wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s one of those features that feels like someone forgot they support it and I fear the day when they remove it.

Indeed; it doesn't feel as though it be in the interest of the website which is why support is dropping. Youtube wants people to subscribe, which I don't do, I simply add the RSS feed of channels I want to be updated about which is probably not what either Youtube or those channels want given how much they are begging me to subscribe all the time.

That's still a subscription, it's just not attached to a YouTube account. Not my fault if someone generates statistics based on redefining words to suit their business model.

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#192

Post by blep_ »

account-5 wrote: post #60

I love RSS/atom feeds. One thing I'm wondering though, RSS is is XML based. Most things are/have moved to JSON (RPC really more than REST). My question is why is XML still good for this use case? Genuinely interested.

It exists, it's widely supported, and it's good enough. There's no reason it has to be XML, but there's no good enough argument against it to justify fragmenting an already shaky ecosystem.

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#193

Post by rambambram »

mawise wrote: post #182
rambambram wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Matt, we've recently emailed about Haven and HeyHomepage because we both are RSS-based, so to speak. Your software is oriented towards private (group) communication and makes a strong case as an alternative for Facebook. I've a lot of respect for your product! With HeyHomepage I'm more publicly oriented, more Twitter-like if you will. On top of a publicly accessible website. The beauty of RSS is it's interoperabil…

Yup! RSS is RSS! If you want to follow a Haven feed, you just need to make sure your newsreader can handle HTTP Basic Auth credentials. A Haven feed URL embeds the credentials right in the URL to make it easier. And Haven's feed reader can read every RSS and Atom feed I've been able to find. The feed reading and publishing are both part of the live demo, so you can do some testing over there! https://havenweb.org/dem…

I can confirm HeyHomepage's newsreader can read and display the Haven demo feed that I just made. The other way around works as well. That's the beauty of the Web and RSS.

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#194

Post by kevincox »

blep_ wrote: post #190
kevincox wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is where I am at too. I've told my friends that if they want me to see what they post they need to use something that isn't so actively user-hostile. Even Facebook will at least email me when selected friends post something. That being said I'm not sure if there is a great website to recommend for private sharing. Mastodon is maybe the best but I'm not sure I am a huge fan of the "only short messages" medium.

Some instances have larger character limits. It's not configurable, but it's fairly easy to patch.

Does this affect federation? Or does Mastodon accept larger posts anyways for federating with non-Mastodon ActivityPub services?

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#196

Post by LambdaB »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #52

Does anyone use (or know of) software that follows RSS feeds and sends you a single daily/weekly/whatever digest with links to all new posts? TinyTinyRSS has this functionality which I am currently using but it's not very pretty or configurable - I'm wondering if there is anything else that I could look into.

Hi, maybe my tool "static feed reader" might be of interest: https://codeberg.org/bitkeks/static-feed-reader

It basically reads a list of feed URLs, with categories, loads and parses them and writes out a simple HTML page with the headlines. Saves me a lot of trouble - just run it on a web server and publish the created HTML files in a directory.

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#197

Post by kevincox »

ylk wrote: post #129
bgro wrote: post #128

Can anybody recommend a RSS program that works on Windows that isn't terrible? Or that literally does the minimum requirement of works? I don't know what happened, but when I tried to find something earlier this year, it looked like there was nothing that was a simple RSS without extra bloat that wasn't abandonware and that actually literally worked. Every time I ask this, 90% of the answers just say use X Android ap…

Thunderbird includes an RSS client

I find that instead of using thunderbird's RSS client it is better to use an RSS-to-email service and filter the emails into a folder. The resulting interface in Thunderbird is quite similar but you get sync across your devices.

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#198

Post by kevincox »

bretbernhoft wrote: post #10
jesuslop wrote: post #5

Nice to know that YouTube does RSS.

I did not know that YouTube offers RSS feeds for their channels. I can see a lot of good use cases for that information.

They also have feeds for playlists but they are wonky (they only display a limited number of videos so won't contain new items if the new videos are added at the bottom) and not advertised.

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#199

Post by crtasm »

easygenes wrote: post #195

I was one of the first avid users of netvibes.com circa 2006. They're still around, if you want a nice web-based RSS aggregator dashboard with a fairly intuitive tabbed interface.

I used to use netvibes and really like the tabs of scrollable boxes-per-feed layout. Does anyone know of similar readers, maybe self-hosted?

Re: Use RSS for privacy and efficiency (2021)

#200

Post by blep_ »

kevincox wrote: post #194
blep_ wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Some instances have larger character limits. It's not configurable, but it's fairly easy to patch.

Does this affect federation? Or does Mastodon accept larger posts anyways for federating with non-Mastodon ActivityPub services?

Mastodon accepts whatever content it receives. The character limit is only for posts created from that instance.
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