#theoldreader

[theoldreader]

Thanks, Google!

It’s been just over five years since Google shut down the Google Reader. I was surprised to see a lot of people are still bitter with them about it, even though *ahem* independent alternatives continue to exist and thrive.

I get it though. I was one of the millions of people who got my news from Google Reader. But it was infuriating to watch them kill a useful tool and then invest billions in magic glasses, killer drones, and self-driving cars.

So while it’s okay to be bitter, I think most of us probably realize we’re all better off with them gone. RSS took a serious hit that day, and use remains down. But in many ways, RSS is in a healthier and more sustainable position. 

It’s now clear that the demise of the Google Reader was first really loud warning that you can’t rely on a publicly traded, profit-driven Silicon Valley tech company to deliver content. There is no way that story ends well. They will feed you sponsored crap, undermine your democracy, or pull the rug out from under your feet entirely. 

I’m not going to pretend life is necessarily easier with Google gone from the game. The problem is that the tech giants are successful because they make things so easy. I know that RSS may never have as many users as it once did when Google was invested in it. 

But online publishing isn’t supposed to be easy. And being an informed citizen isn’t supposed to be easy, either. The idea that we just casually check our phone every hour or so and Google, Twitter, or Facebook would give us a quick dose of everything we need to read is a fantasy. 

When Google got out of the RSS game, those of us who remained realized that yes, we can survive without them. Five years later, RSS is still the best, most unfiltered way to get content you want. There’s a greater diversity of choices and no one company dominates everything. So let’s stop hoping Facebook or Twitter or someone else will do our job for us. Let’s stop waiting for someone to tell us what we want to read. Let’s stop publishing what they want us to publish. We can do better without them.      

[bardo1129]

By #theoldreader #amwriting #screenwriting #painting #tvwriting #nycgratitude #freecaleo (at New York, New York)

[theoutcastrogue]

theoldreader is the ol' reliable of RSS readers, zero frills, it just works.

Just as a heads-up, if you're one of the minority of people who actually use RSS (if you're here from Kitty you might be, or at least know of it): I deleted my account and data on Feedly today because, upon logging in, I was confronted with an advertisement/advisory that I could use their Premium Features to "Track the protests endangering your company's profits" or words to that effect.

After I got done vomiting rage blood, I elected to no longer use them to track webcomic feeds and like, one gaming news site. They almost certainly don't care about this, since I was not paying whatever rate they want to let you sort news by descending degree of outright lies, or whatever. That being said.

It is unlikely I have the means to make this happen, but it would make me very happy if they lost ANY number of users or experienced any degree of PR embarrassment for being fascist lickspittles.

I will also point out that a service that encourages corporate users to keep an eye on those damn dirty protestors, and which is thus choking itself on the boot, probably doesn't have the highest resistance to selling your shit or handing it over to any tom, dick or piggy who comes calling.

Anyway, fuck em', switch, think of it as the Chrome of RSS readers. Inoreader is supposed to be good.

[mindblowingfactz]

The Tavarua Island is real island in the Pacific Ocean which is heart shaped. It is a part of Fiji. source

image via theoldreader

[frdgthr]

Happy Thanksgiving everyone! https://t.co/HjWLC2MWDY via @theoldreader

[theoldreader]

Can We Just Ignore the Flaming Dumpster?

Vox’s Carlos Maza had a great piece called “Why every social media site is a dumpster fire.” He hit all the usual notes- Russian trolls, misogynists, and conspiracy theorists. 

But he also hit on something bigger- the social media dumpster fire is not an accident or something that got out of control. What we have now is an intentional, man-made disaster. The fire was set on purpose and investors poured on the gasoline. As Maza says,

The problem with these social media sites isn’t that a few bad apples are ruining the fun. It’s that they’re designed to reward bad apples.

Even Sean Parker, the first president of Facebook says, “It's a social-validation feedback loop ... exactly the kind of thing that a hacker like myself would come up with, because you're exploiting a vulnerability in human psychology.”

Parker is probably giving himself too much credit as an evil genius, but it’s obvious that when Facebook exploded, he and his colleagues were more than happy to fuel the conflagration. 

Breaking Up With Social Media 

We certainly weren’t the first to warn people that its time to turn off social media. If you watched HBO’s new documentary Swiped, the film made the case that the gamification of social apps is breaking human relations. It's a terrifying a portrait of a generation addicted to social apps.

We all know social media is manipulating us. Let’s stop taking this stuff seriously. It’s not real. If something makes you angry, wait and read next-day’s take. Don’t react with a smiley face or frowny face. Think about stuff.  Can you even remember what social media outrage fest was consuming all of your mental energy last week? Human nature can be nasty and ugly, but we don’t have to let the social media platforms profit from it. 

[superdrivel]

content central

so back in the day, a lot of artists and creators would have a breakout hit of some form, and then pretty abruptly lose audience. the network directors would be on to the next thing, more or less in concert.

these days, thanks to follows and subscriptions, these would-be fads can get their claws in, and possibly claw their way to legitimacy. Soulja Boy is probably my favorite early example of this, but the list is long (Ken Bone, the red sweater debate guy, has over 200k followers on Twitter, and refuses to go away).

to make things worse, the follower/subscriber platforms are making haste to tighten their grips on attentions with “algorithmic timelines”, etc. Again, money-motivated, centralized entities will decide for you what is worth your attention.

somewhere between the old and the new was a period with subscriptions, and without the centralization. everything was there to see, if you wanted, organizable and in the order it was published. if you’d like, you can live in that time, too, as i do, on @theoldreader.

[aklefdal]

RT @mdufourneaud: What do you mean by “Event-Driven” https://t.co/VTE8EiZ1X6 via @theoldreader

What do you mean by “Event-Driven” https://t.co/VTE8EiZ1X6 via @theoldreader

— Matthieu DUFOURNEAUD (@mdufourneaud) February 21, 2017

via Twitter https://twitter.com/aklefdal February 21, 2017 at 09:30AM

[curlicuecal]

Oh man, rss readers are a fuckin godsend for keeping track of content across multiple platforms

Bless you

I should go update my TheOldReader account

i’m just gonna post all the ways i’ve found so far to get RSS Links They Don’t Want You To Know About from social media sites, because people keep Leaving Tumblr Forever in favor of sites that i’m not going to use

(if you don’t have an rss reader yet just make a feedly account, it takes about one whole minute, if you decide to use a different reader later you can export your whole list, it’s fine)

i’m gonna use strikethrough to indicate the text you need to replace and also include examples of feeds that seem to work

A General Rule

on almost any website look for the icon that looks like this

that’s the button that means ‘the rss feed is here’

Tumblr

just add /rss to the end of literally any blog’s url, including tags

i.e. unpretty.tumblr.com/rss or unpretty.tumblr.com/tagged/original/rss

now you can Leave Tumblr Forever and still follow blogs until such a time as tumblr implodes in earnest

Dreamwidth

use username.dreamwidth.org/data/rss

i.e. gallusrostromegalus.dreamwidth.org/data/rss

WordPress

if it’s hosted on WordPress.com, just add /feed to the end of the url

if it’s self-hosted (i think around 20% of people who have their own website use wordpress to host it, i know i do bc it’s easy as sin) also just add /feed to the end the url

i.e. en.blog.wordpress.com/feed or kittyunpretty.com/feed

ArtStation

use username.artstation.com/rss

i.e. beccahallstedt.artstation.com/rss

Mastodon

just add .rss to the end of someone’s profile url

i.e. cybre.space/@kittyunpretty.rss

deviantART

use backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?q=gallery%3Ausername

i.e. backend.deviantart.com/rss.xml?q=gallery%3Aarvalis

YouTube

this one’s a goddamn pain in the dick because you need to find the channel id first

in general youtube channels have a nonsense url like youtube.com/channel/abunchofbullshit

you have to take that last bit and plug it into youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=abunchofbullshit

i.e. youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCbpMy0Fg74eXXkvxJrtEn3w

Tapas

this is mostly handy for webcomics that were hosting on tumblr and crossposting, i think? i don’t know how tapas works for creators tbqh. anyway they’ve actually got a button at the top when you go to the comic page.

the one between ‘add to library’ and the paper airplane will give you the rss feed

LINE Webtoons

ditto wrt tumblr-hosted webcomics, and also having a button

the button to the left of the one that says +subscribe will get you the rss feed

Twitter & Instagram

these are the only two sites i’m including that don’t have native rss support, just because so goddamn many people have literally no other web presence at all for some reason

twitter used to have rss feeds but killed them, and i don’t think instagram ever had them. you have to use workarounds for these, and a lot of them end up getting killed, like TwitRSS.me. fetchrss seems to work okay but it costs money. if you pay for inoreader they’ve got built-in support for following twitter accounts but that’s not a practical solution for most people.

right now i use rsshub.app/platform/user/username

i.e. rsshub.app/twitter/user/dasharez0ne

… but the instagram one doesn’t actually seem to work, like, most of the time. i don’t know if i’ve found one that works ever. if you’re jumping ship there please consider doing the world the enormous goddamn favor of just making a free wordpress.com account and cross-posting all your instas with ifttt or something, rather than being totally at the mercy of mark zuckerberg

[theoldreader]

Nice-to-haves are ruining your life

I had about four hours of highway driving yesterday. Even though I probably could’ve navigated it on my own, I opted to use Apple Maps, which is integrated with my car’s Apple CarPlay "infotainment center." It was nice. It told me how many miles I had remaining and my expected time of arrival. But it wasn’t a life changer.

With all that time to kill and not a lot to keep me occupied, I started thinking about how most new technologies marketed directly or indirectly as being life changing wind up changing our lives for the worse.

Email. Great on it’s own, but now that we all have 24-hour mobile access it means we’re expected to be available and responsive 24/7. At a minimum it’s a disruption with the potential to turn a nice relaxing Saturday afternoon into a stressful workday.

Texting. Nice way to keep in touch with friends, schedule meet ups, etc. But it comes with the pressure of always having to be responsive. I don’t know about you, but I feel guilty when I can’t respond to a text within 10-15 minutes.

Social Media. It was so fun to catch up with High School buddies… but turns out it’s making people mentally ill and ruining our democracy.

Streaming Video. What’s the biggest struggle parents have with technology?Limiting screen time. What’s the benefit?  I don’t know… it keeps the kids quiet?But limiting screen time has been proven to be important for mental health and development. Kids play video games while watching YouTube videos of other kids playing video games. For real. This is a standard behavior.

I’m no Luddite. I believe internet and mobile technologies offer tremendous opportunities for positive life and world change. We need to consider when the nice-to-have features are actually worse for us. This is important work. The most features and newest technologies don’t need to win. We don’t need to hand over quality of life for nice-to-haves.

Being hyper-connected to people should serve PEOPLE’s best interests.  

Being informed is only a benefit if the information is good.

So while that maps experience I had yesterday was nice, the only way I can envision it changing my life would be for the worse. The consequences of losing my privacy perhaps?  I don’t know, I only know that trusting these mega technology corps has proven time and again to be bad for us. Life changing indeed.

[theoldreader]

I kinda hate the internet

My business partner and I were talking a while back about the internet. We’ve been working together now since 1999 in 3 or 4 different web startups. We’ve been really successful together. Grown huge teams. Made decent money and had lots of fun. And it was all based on building things for the web. So it was a big deal when he admitted to me that he sorta hates technology these days. And it was a relief because I got to express my true feelings out loud for the first time.

The internet sucks.

Here is a very partial list of some of the most hate-worthy aspects of the web:

Trolls and cyberbullying.

Fake news.

Ads everywhere

Mobile apps that take up 50 minutes of the day.

Remote/constant work.

All of the killer apps that the internet has made possible seemed great at first, didn’t they? I can listen to any song I want for free on any number of apps. It’s amazing… except that I miss holding an album cover in my hands and hearing the crackle of a needle on vinyl. I can binge watch entire seasons of a million TV shows or stream one of a billion highly mediocre movies for a low monthly fee. But I really miss finding great movies at a locally owned video store. We had some great ones around here and most are gone. And frankly, binge watching isn’t a good use of the short time we have on this planet.  

I miss letters and postcards. I miss newspapers. I miss reading real books. (I know I sound like an old curmudgeon).

I miss going to shopping malls. Nope, I don’t miss that at all. Especially given that before the internet I couldn’t even find size 14 shoes so I just jammed my feet into 13’s. And that’s the thing, I’m sure anybody reading this is thinking of all kinds of amazing things that they love about the internet. I get it. But I hate what this thing has become. I hate the internet giants that are running the networks these days. Companies like Comcast and Verizon and AT&T.

We’re huge advocates of the open web, but even with the open web, people willingly hand over so much of their private information, time, and well being to the internet giants like Google and Facebook. These are advertising companies that can afford to build useful technology by getting you to spend too much and save too little. And now people are installing them in their homes. Hey, I know these guys are recording my conversations and using it to sell me useless crap, but I can just ask Alexa what the weather is going to be tomorrow and it responds. Let’s take a broader perspective on these things people. Technology IS change by definition, but not ALL change is for the better... even when it does offer some niceties.

I’m nostalgic for the early days of the internet. When you could find information quickly, but without somebody watching over everything you searched and read. When you could communicate with people, but without somebody listening. I’m nostalgic for the days when the internet didn’t suck.

[denktanks]

@ TonhBC: EU’s eigen denktank ziet verval Europa door migratie, hoogopgeleiden wordt weggejaagd en samenleving valt uit elkaar https://t.co/jsTnxiB4iE via @theoldreader

EU’s eigen denktank ziet verval Europa door migratie, hoogopgeleiden wordt weggejaagd en samenleving valt uit elkaar https://t.co/jsTnxiB4iE via @theoldreader

— ✝Ton ex-hBC 🇳🇱 🇮🇱 🇺🇸 🚜 Blanke man (@TonhBC) February 25, 2020