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Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

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Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#591

Post by andyjohnson0 »

snafferty wrote: post #478
aucisson_masque wrote: post #455

> Why is Pocket shutting down? > Pocket has helped millions save articles and discover stories worth reading. But the way people use the web has evolved, so we’re channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs. Oh yeah, it explains everything. I wish one day a company pr representative will be bold enough to just say "we don't want to tell you".

That seems pretty clear to me—many people were using it at one point, but now few are, so it's not worth maintaining.

But why are few people using it?

Critical mass of people using app-based walled gardens? Something else?

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#592

Post by DoingIsLearning »

dorian-graph wrote: post #443
kepano wrote: post #272

I built Obsidian Web Clipper (open source, MIT) to replace my read-it-later app and save everything to local markdown files. Now that Obsidian Bases is available, it makes for a very nice web archival tool and reading experience. Here's a video: https://mastodon.social/@kepano/114553164915046938 You can use Web Clipper with any app that supports Markdown, not just Obsidian. Defuddle is the underlying HTML-to-Markdown…

Do you have a trick for getting the images as well, as opposed to them being links to the remotely hosted?

I think that is just a convenient way to do it with markdown.

Theoretically you could embed images in markdown with 'data:' scheme. But I am unless it is very small images it will probably not be very efficient to embedded the data in a text file.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#593

Post by attendant3446 »

I used Pocket before Mozilla and in the early days of Mozilla ownership, but it was becoming less reliable by the day. I switched to SingleFile[1] and sync the dir between my tablet and laptop using Syncthing. No SaaS, everything stays on my network - works great.

1. https://www.getsinglefile.com/

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#594

Post by oneoffcomment »

nosioptar wrote: post #421
sureste wrote: post #25

Everytime people talked about Mozilla or Firefox the main complaint was Pocket. Everytime. Yet most people here are sad to see it go. What gives?

I'm quite happy about it. I might even print out a tombstone to piss on. I'd have had no problem with pocket if it'd been an optional plugin. Or, if it'd been optional at all. If I wanted to go around disabling a bunch of browser bloat, I wouldn't be using Firefox.

I wish there was a "Beg HN:" because I'd love to see a little graveyard with 3d printed tombstones of all the failed and canceled products of all the big tech companies.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#595

Post by PokerFacowaty »

podgietaru wrote: post #211

I loved Pocket. I used it nearly daily. I was often in their top n% of users. I paid for it. Then one day they changed the way their rendering worked on iOS. And it destroyed my workflow. I also bought a Kobo E-Reader specifically to use Pocket with it. In short order I found an open-source alternative - Omnivore - and spent my time hacking away at my Kobo to get it to pull from there instead. https://github.com/Podg…

I'm looking into setting up Wallabag for myself, maybe it could work for you too? https://wallabag.org/

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#596

Post by danielraffel »

I stopped using Pocket a long time ago when they started ruining the experience. When Omnivore shut down, I switched over to Raindrop.io. I now use it for bookmarking and built a simple cloud function to easily post links with a specific tag to a Daring Fireball-style link blog I host on Ghost. While Raindrop isn’t open source, it does offer useful browser extensions with features like highlights, notes, and tags—making it a handy tool for quickly blogging and / or bookmarking things I stumble across. I open sourced the cloud function.

https://github.com/danielraffel/raindrop-to-ghost-sync

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#597

Post by trinsic2 »

bayindirh wrote: post #287
segphault wrote: post #71

I was a user for so long that I was on it before it even rebranded as Pocket. I finally gave up on it last year, mostly due to frustration with the terrible 2023 redesign of the mobile app. When Mozilla made the unfathomable decision to become an internet advertising company, I figured it was just a matter of time before they had to put Pocket out to pasture. A product that's designed to strip ads from content for re…

I have another theory, actually. I'm also a very old user, since the first days of the service, and I don't know how many saves I have it inside (will see when my export arrives). The latest iteration's search was abysmal , and I normally refrain from using strong words. It failed to find exact matches from titles, the words or excerpts I know that exist in the article I'm searching for, and as a result, it became a…

I used to use Rain.drop, not the same a pocket, but similar. I imported the data into Obsidian and I now use that for information I want to save online using the clipper plugin. It's changed my life. If you like customizing the searchability and displaying content from saved pages, is the best IMHO.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#598

Post by brachkow »

Release starts by aggressively stating that

> Firefox is the only major browser not backed by a billionaire

but they acquired Pocket in 2017 [1] and neither this app was growing (despite market for such apps was in very good shape few years ago) or it was delightful addition to browser experience

that said what annoys me about Mozilla, is that while they are position themselves poor and underfunded, they still act like they are backed by billionaire: they buy random apps for no reason or donating tons of money to not tech-related political organizations [2]

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/news/mozilla-acquires-po...

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37015592

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#599

Post by alias_neo »

gxqoz wrote: post #393
bayindirh wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have another theory, actually. I'm also a very old user, since the first days of the service, and I don't know how many saves I have it inside (will see when my export arrives). The latest iteration's search was abysmal , and I normally refrain from using strong words. It failed to find exact matches from titles, the words or excerpts I know that exist in the article I'm searching for, and as a result, it became a…

Yeah I have 32k saves and hit the same problems with search being extremely unreliable. About 5 years ago quotes stopped working in search. Trying to find "The Grapes of Wrath" would return all instances of "of" and "the." You could sort of hack it by searching for the most distinct word (maybe "Grapes") if you already knew exactly what you were searching for. I long suspected there was some architectural change they…

Is something like Apache Solr (a search index) well suited for something like this?

I've deployed and used it at work for searching specific, well-specified bits of information, but I don't know how well it would work on large chunks of text like articles etc; I assume this is its real purpose and it should fit, but I'm guessing.

Re: Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

#600

Post by ycombinete »

poopsmithe wrote: post #537
bayindirh wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have another theory, actually. I'm also a very old user, since the first days of the service, and I don't know how many saves I have it inside (will see when my export arrives). The latest iteration's search was abysmal , and I normally refrain from using strong words. It failed to find exact matches from titles, the words or excerpts I know that exist in the article I'm searching for, and as a result, it became a…

What was the theory!!! I had to read your comment twice looking for it, only to realize that there was no theory in there!

I think it was that people stopped using Pocket because the search was so bad.
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