#super-rss-reader

[aakashweb]

Super RSS Reader v5.3 Release

Super RSS Reader v5.3 is now available. This release includes new features, a number of enhancements, and bug fixes. It is now available for both free and PRO versions.

Please find the changelog below. You can also follow us on Twitter for latest updates @aakashweb

✨ Changelog

New: Option to choose between media sizes from the feed.

PRO: Keyword editor missing nonce.

PRO: Keyword editor crashing on certain themes.

Getting the update

You can update the plugin directly from your WordPress administration page by navigating to Dashboard > Updates. This applies to both free and PRO versions of the plugin.

You can also download the free version of the plugin from WordPress.org and upload it manually. For the PRO version you can follow the documentation. If you haven’t got the PRO version yet, you can get it here.

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This article was originally posted on Aakash Web

[mostlysignssomeportents]

You should be using an RSS reader

On OCTOBER 23 at 7PM, I'll be in DECATUR, GEORGIA, presenting my novel THE BEZZLE at EAGLE EYE BOOKS.

No matter how hard we all wish it were otherwise, the sad fact is that there aren't really individual solutions to systemic problems. For example: your personal diligence in recycling will have no meaningful impact on the climate emergency.

I get it. People write to me all the time, they say, "What can I change about my life to fight enshittification, or, at the very least, to reduce the amount of enshittification that I, personally, experience?"

It's frustrating, but my general answer is, "Join a movement. Get involved with a union, with EFF, with the FSF. Tell your Congressional candidate to defend Lina Khan from billionaire Dem donors who want her fired. Do something systemic."

There's very little you can do as a consumer. You're not going to shop your way out of monopoly capitalism. Now that Amazon has destroyed most of the brick-and-mortar and digital stores out of business, boycotting Amazon often just means doing without. The collective action problem of leaving Twitter or Facebook is so insurmountable that you end up stuck there, with a bunch of people you love and rely on, who all love each other, all hate the platform, but can't agree on a day and time to leave or a destination to leave for and so end up stuck there.

I've been experiencing some challenging stuff in my personal life lately and yesterday, I just found myself unable to deal with my usual podcast fare so I tuned into the videos from the very last XOXO, in search of uplifting fare:

https://www.youtube.com/@xoxofest

I found it. Talks by Dan Olson, Cabel Sasser, Ed Yong and many others, especially Molly White:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTaeVVAvk-c

Molly's talk was so, so good, but when I got to her call to action, I found myself pulling a bit of a face:

But the platforms do not exist without the people, and there are a lot more of us than there are of them. The platforms have installed themselves in a position of power, but they are also vulnerable…

Are the platforms really that vulnerable? The collective action problem is so hard, the switching costs are so high – maybe the fact that "there's a lot more of us than there are of them" is a bug, not a feature. The more of us there are, the thornier our collective action problem and the higher the switching costs, after all.

And then I had a realization: the conduit through which I experience Molly's excellent work is totally enshittification-proof, and the more I use it, the easier it is for everyone to be less enshittified.

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power.

It's RSS.

RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.

I don't mean to pick on Wired here. This goes for every news source I follow – from CNN to the New York Times. But RSS isn't just good for the news! It's good for everything. Your friends' blogs? Every blogging platform emits an RSS feed by default. You can follow every one of them in your reader.

Not just blogs. Do you follow a bunch of substackers or other newsletters? They've all got RSS feeds. You can read those newsletters without ever registering in the analytics of the platforms that host them. The text shows up in black and white (not the sadistic, 8-point, 80% grey-on-white type these things all default to). It is always delivered, without any risk of your email provider misclassifying an update as spam:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/10/10/dead-letters/

Did you know that, by default, your email sends information to mailing list platforms about your reading activity? The platform gets to know if you opened the message, and often how far along you've read in it. On top of that, they get all the private information your browser or app leaks about you, including your location. This is unbelievably gross, and you get to bypass all of it, just by reading in RSS.

Are your friends too pithy for a newsletter, preferring to quip on social media? Unfortunately, it's pretty hard to get an RSS feed from Insta/FB/Twitter, but all those new ones that have popped up? They all have feeds. You can follow any Mastodon account (which means you can follow any Threads account) via RSS. Same for Bluesky. That also goes for older platforms, like Tumblr and Medium. There's RSS for Hacker News, and there's a sub-feed for the comments on every story. You can get RSS feeds for the Fedex, UPS and USPS parcels you're awaiting, too.

Your local politician's website probably has an RSS feed. Ditto your state and national reps. There's an RSS feed for each federal agency (the FCC has a great blog!).

Your RSS reader lets you put all these feeds into folders if you want. You can even create automatic folders, based on keywords, or even things like "infrequently updated sites" (I follow a bunch of people via RSS who only update a couple times per year – cough, Danny O'Brien, cough – and never miss a post).

Your RSS reader doesn't (necessarily) have an algorithm. By default, you'll get everything as it appears, in reverse-chronological order.

Does that remind you of anything? Right: this is how social media used to work, before it was enshittified. You can single-handedly disenshittify your experience of virtually the entire web, just by switching to RSS, traveling back in time to the days when Facebook and Twitter were more interested in showing you the things you asked to see, rather than the ads and boosted content someone else would pay to cram into your eyeballs.

Now, you sign up to so many feeds that you're feeling overwhelmed and you want an algorithm to prioritize posts – or recommend content. Lots of RSS readers have some kind of algorithm and recommendation system (I use News, which offers both, though I don't use them – I like the glorious higgeldy-piggeldy of the undifferentiated firehose feed).

But you control the algorithm, you control the recommendations. And if a new RSS reader pops up with an algorithm you're dying to try, you can export all the feeds you follow with a single click, which will generate an OPML file. Then, with one click, you can import that OPML file into any other RSS reader in existence and all your feeds will be seamlessly migrated there. You can delete your old account, or you can even use different readers for different purposes.

You can access RSS in a browser or in an app on your phone (most RSS readers have an app), and they'll sync up, so a story you mark to read later on your phone will be waiting for you the next time you load up your reader in a browser tab, and you won't see the same stories twice (unless you want to, in which case you can mark them as unread).

RSS basically works like social media should work. Using RSS is a chance to visit a utopian future in which the platforms have no power, and all power is vested in publishers, who get to decide what to publish, and in readers, who have total control over what they read and how, without leaking any personal information through the simple act of reading.

And here's the best part: every time you use RSS, you bring that world closer into being! The collective action problem that the publishers and friends and politicians and businesses you care about is caused by the fact that everyone they want to reach is on a platform, so if they leave the platform, they'll lose that community. But the more people who use RSS to follow them, the less they'll depend on the platform.

Unlike those largely useless, performative boycotts of widely used platforms, switching to RSS doesn't require that you give anything up. Not only does switching to RSS let you continue to follow all the newsletters, webpages and social media accounts you're following now, it makes doing so better: more private, more accessible, and less enshittified.

Switching to RSS lets you experience just the good parts of the enshitternet, but that experience is delivered in manner that the new, good internet we're all dying for.

My own newsletter is delivered in fulltext via RSS. If you're reading this as a Mastodon or Twitter thread, on Tumblr or on Medium, or via email, you can get it by RSS instead:

https://pluralistic.net/feed/

Don't worry about which RSS reader you start with. It literally doesn't matter. Remember, you can switch readers with two clicks and take all the feeds you've subscribed to with you! If you want a recommendation, I have nothing but praise for Newsblur, which I've been paying $2/month for since 2011 (!):

https://newsblur.com/

Subscribing to feeds is super-easy, too: the links for RSS feeds are invisibly embedded in web-pages. Just paste the URL of a web-page into your RSS reader's "add feed" box and it'll automagically figure out where the feed lives and add it to your subscriptions.

It's still true that the new, good internet will require a movement to overcome the collective action problems and the legal barriers to disenshittifying things. Almost nothing you do as an individual is going to make a difference.

But using RSS will! Using RSS to follow the stuff that matters to you will have an immediate, profoundly beneficial impact on your own digital life – and it will appreciably, irreversibly nudge the whole internet towards a better state.

Tor Books as just published two new, free LITTLE BROTHER stories: VIGILANT, about creepy surveillance in distance education; and SPILL, about oil pipelines and indigenous landback.

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

[unpretty]

so the vimeo-based video sites don't have rss feeds (youtube and nebula both do), and generating an automatic web feed in inoreader doesn't work. BUT if you do manual setup of a web feed it's super easy, so i can finally stop missing when new episodes go up. i imagine it would work just as well with any other rss reader with the ability to generate web feeds/monitor site changes.

[revelguts]

hi!!! i just finished binge reading all of (whats out currently) sparks and i LOVE it so far!!! i was wondering, would you consider implementing an rss feed page into the comic's main website? i use a feed reader to get notifications when webcomics i follow update so i dont lose my place or miss out on updates, and it would be super helpful!!

Omg sorry for my super slow reply!! The Sparks RSS feed was broken for a while without me noticing but it's BACK it works again now! Tbh I have no idea how RSS works but I made a little RSS link in the main menu and I know there are readers currently using it for Sparks so.. I hope that's what you're after :') 🙏 and also thank you I'm so glad you're enjoying it!!

[billyranger]

1, 2 and 8, 11, 23 !!!

For the software ask meme

1. Arch with Plasma. Mostly ended up with Arch because a) I have insane friends and b) I like the wiki. I just really, really like the arch wiki.

2. and 8. I usually go with firefox (with ublock origin). For work I sometimes have to use chrome without and adblocker and that should be classified as torture.

11. well, recently I was in a bit of a nostalgic mood and now my desktop looks as close to Win7 as I managed to get it. Before that I fucked around with some monospace fonts. But now I wanna do something thats more colorful and futuristic. And this has gotten away from fonts, basically: rn I don't know exactly which way I wanna go, so I am just looking a different stuff.

23. my rss reader. Recently switched back Akregator, have yet to be super happy with any of them, but I NEED ONE. My rss reader is basically my entry point to the internet. I got a bunch of blogs, but I also use it for youtube (i refuse to login into that) and a few tumblr blogs and ofc reddit. Even used to get a bunch of twitter accounts, but that stopped when I stopped using twitter. oh and of course: news.

[thejaymo]

This conduit is anti-lock-in, it works for nearly the whole internet. It is surveillance-resistant, far more accessible than the web or any mobile app interface. It is my secret super-power. It's RSS. RSS (one of those ancient internet acronyms with multiple definitions, including, but not limited to, "Really Simple Syndication") is an invisible, automatic way for internet-connected systems to public "feeds." For example, rather than reloading the Wired homepage every day and trying to figure out which stories are new (their layout makes this very hard to do!), you can just sign up for Wired's RSS feed, and use an RSS reader to monitor the site and preview new stories the moment they're published. Wired pushes about 600 words from each article into that feed, stripped of the usual stuff that makes Wired nearly impossible to read: no 20-second delay subscription pop-up, text in a font and size of your choosing. You can follow Wired's feed without any cookies, and Wired gets no information about which of its stories you read. Wired doesn't even get to know that you're monitoring its feed.

[ktempestbradford]

Wanna say something off this post about people under 20 not knowing how to use computers about wanting apps for things (and don't want to derail that post). While I agree that young people DEFINITELY need to learn how to use the actual internet, I don't think that means wanting an app for AO3 is wrongheaded. Yeah, you can access it through a browser, but apps and websites should do different things.

I remember when many started sliding off LiveJournal I bemoaned the lack of mobile app for it because I wanted things like offline caching and reading of posts, which a browser or website does not offer. Back then RSS readers were so great because they would do just that! Made it super easy to keep up with my favorite blogs.

I feel like I'd want that for AO3 as well, though now there are at least a ton of apps that let you save a web page to read later. Ideally an app would also offer other useful things and not just be a custom browser wrapper (too many apps are just this and don't add value or functionality).

I suppose my main thesis is that apps do have a place in the internet ecosystem and it's not a problem for people to want them in order to have the sites or services they access often convenient for them in mobile form. It's a Yes/And situation, not an Either/Or.

[pintsizebear]

A quick guide on diversifying your internet use

Big social media is going to keep being disappointing because their wants and needs don't come anywhere close to aligning with their users wants and needs. EVERY big social media site or app will eventually misalign with its users, because having the entire internet's worth of people in one place is unsustainable for moderation and for financial reasons. It's an unavoidable fate for sites that are supposed to be the hub for everything.

It doesn't have to be that way. Start diversifying the sites you use BEFORE your favorite social media site becomes basically unusable or goes down completely. Take some power away from big tech corporations. Drag your friends into it too, you don't have to explore alone!

Here's a few examples of things you can do:

Join some forums There's forums for basically everything you can think of, from toy collecting, to discussion of specific disabilities, to gardening, to niche roleplay topics, and they've been running for decades so there's immense amounts of knowledge on them. Plus, people tend to be super friendly and welcoming of newbies, so you're likely to make new friends if you post regularly on them. Googling/searching for a topic + "forum"/"discussion board" (like "knitting forum" or "paper mache discussion board") will generally get you what you're looking for. Save your favorites and give them a visit every now and then!

Subscribe to some RSS feeds RSS feeds make it incredibly simple to get updates and news from your favorite websites, including a lot of social media sites! RSS readers + aggregators take the RSS information from your chosen websites (+ tumblrs, twitters, youtube channels, etc) and puts them into an easy to browse format, all in one place. Readers and aggregators are available as browser addons, desktop programs, mobile apps, email subscriptions, embeddable widgets, whatever suits your needs best. Your RSS subscriptions aren't subject to annoying, everchanging, unpredictable algorithms. They'll only show you what you're subscribed to and they'll be in chronological order. Most of them are completely free and have no ads.

Make your own website Having your own website fucking rules and you're fully in charge of everything about it. Make a blog, make an art gallery, use it as a personal image or video host, show your ass, who cares. It's yours to do what you want! Free web hosting: While free hosting is a lot more limited in what you can do, it's also much more accessible if you're not sure you want to fully commit to running a website or if you just want something to throw info on a couple times a year. A few popular examples are NeoCities (also offers a decent paid option,) Cloudflare Pages, and GitHub Pages (SFW only.) Paid web hosting: Paid hosting is generally better for people who are more dedicated to running a site, such as people who need a stable platform for work related stuff (artists, online stores, etc.) You'll generally want your own domain name (like youtube.com or wikipedia.org) which you can get at sites like namecheap, namesilo, or porkbun. Many webhosts offer free subdomain names (like how tumblr blogs are yourblogname.tumblr.com) but having your own domain makes it easy to move to another host if you need to without your url changing. Your choice of web host depends heavily on your price bracket, what you plan to use it for, features you need, if you need to host NSFW content, how much traffic you expect, etc. Contact the support team of any web host you're looking at to make sure they offer what you need before you buy their services. Shared web hosting (where multiple websites are hosted on the same server) is generally the cheapest and most accessible option for the majority of people looking to run a website. Unless you're planning on having several thousands of people on your site all at once on a regular basis, that's probably the option you want. Avoid anything owned by EIG/Newfold Digital. Self-hosting: This is the most complicated option, but also the most versatile. With self-hosting, you're only really limited to the laws of your region and the bandwidth you get from your internet provider, rather than the limits put in place by a hosting company. Take this option only if you're willing to set up a dedicated server and get into all the technical stuff that comes with it. Here's an okay guide for how to get started, though you'll want to do a lot more research beyond this.

[kabukipopink]

I finally got to the image!!!! I found another 3rd party site for bluesky, which converts it into an RSS feed (idk what that is, I just know it needs an RSS reader or it shows up as code sort of? Dunno; idk computer anything. Anyway!) but I don't have an RSS reader, so I just searched within the page for "gorgon", and then had to copy and paste the image url into a new tab. But I got to the image!!!!!!

My god, I'm so sorry you had to work so hard to see it. I have no idea why it's been a struggle. I am super glad you got to see it though!

You're determinations is incredible!

I hope it was worth the work. If not, I am so sorry. XD

[aakashweb]

Super RSS Reader v5.2 Release

Super RSS Reader v5.2 is now available. This release includes new features, a number of enhancements, and bug fixes. It is now available for both free and PRO versions.

Please find the changelog below. You can also follow us on Twitter for latest updates @aakashweb

✨ Changelog

Fix: Order whole RSS feed by date.

Fix: Handle null returns.

PRO: Pull description from the source URL for Google news and Google alerts.

Getting the update

You can update the plugin directly from your WordPress administration page by navigating to Dashboard > Updates. This applies to both free and PRO versions of the plugin.

You can also download the free version of the plugin from WordPress.org and upload it manually. For the PRO version you can follow the documentation. If you haven’t got the PRO version yet, you can get it here.

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This article was originally posted on Aakash Web

[mostlysignssomeportents]

A year in illustration (2024), Part four

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/07/great-kepplers-ghost/art-adjacent

Part one

Part two

Part three

The US Copyright Office frees the McFlurry

Figuring out how to illustrate the problems of DRM in McFlurry machines took some doing, but I'm super happy with how the HAL 9000-eyed poop emoji inside a spattered McFlurry cup (fair use of a McDonald's promo image) worked out.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/28/mcbroken/#my-milkshake-brings-all-the-lawyers-to-the-yard

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Keeping a suspense file gives you superpowers

Another Keppler classic: originally, this was FDR being offered a helping hand to cut through his paperwork. I added in one of the elephant heads I'd cropped out for election illustrations, and used it to represent "not forgetting."

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/26/one-weird-trick/#todo

The housing crisis considered as an income crisis

The underlying image is another Keppler, showing death flamboyantly dicing with a millionaire. I added in an official (hence public domain) Reagan portrait, some monopoly houses, and a vintage aerial photo of Levittown, halftoned to disguise scaling artifacts.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/24/i-dream-of-gini/#mean-ole-mr-median

Retiring the US debt would retire the US dollar

More of Keppler's outstanding Uncle Sams! Add in a super-rezzed-up US $100 (all that intanglio looks great at high mag) and you've got an instantly arresting image.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/21/we-can-have-nice-things/#public-funds-not-taxpayer-dollars

Penguin Random House, AI, and writers' rights

The impatient guy makes another appearance in this WPA image of an adult literacy class; he's joined by another "business man" type, this one from a midcentury ad for a multi-level marketing scheme selling…business suits! The pupils' heads are all HAL 9000 eyes, natch, but don't miss all the little Easter Eggs, like the reeve and peasants in the frames on the walls.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/19/gander-sauce/#just-because-youre-on-their-side-it-doesnt-mean-theyre-on-your-side

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

You should be using an RSS reader

The guerrilla fighter is back, this time standing atop some mainframe equipment ganked from a Univac ad. The halftoned RSS logo in the background really works, especially with a partially blended GIMP "supernova" effect behind the rebel.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/16/keep-it-really-simple-stupid/#read-receipts-are-you-kidding-me-seriously-fuck-that-noise

Dirty words are politically potent

I spent a bunch of time experimenting with different ways of making emphatic speech bubbles and it paid off here; that poop emoji's gawlix is in a good home. Halftoning the foreground element (the poop) works surprising well here. I should do more of that.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/14/pearl-clutching/#this-toilet-has-no-central-nervous-system

Lina Khan's future is the future of the Democratic Party – and America

Keppler's Uncle Sam Cop is back, along with another Keppler – a carpetbagger flying through the air after getting a kick in the pants. I got good use out of one of my Democratic Party donkeys here. The background is a half-tones WPA travel poster for Montana.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/11/democracys-antitrust-paradox/#there-will-be-an-out-and-out-brawl

Cars bricked by bankrupt EV company will stay bricked

I actually made this brick by hand: first I rescaled a box image until it had the right proportions, then I found a public domain texture that was the right kind of brick and used the perspective tool to put it over each face of the box. I told you public domain bricks are hard to find.

It was very satisfying overlaying all the elements of the Fisker car I cropped out onto the brick.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/10/software-based-car/#based

Prime's enshittified advertising

Nothing exceeds like excess! The flayed face with eyeballs comes from a 19th century book of French anatomical drawings. The calipers' handles just didn't look right (I referred to stills from Clockwork Orange to try and get 'em to work), but then I hit on the idea of using the "As Seen on TV" logo, which worked perfectly. The halftoned K-Tel ad-card background doesn't quite work, I think.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/03/mother-may-i/#minmax

"That Makes Me Smart"

This is actually two Kepplers; the original guy in the leg-hold trap is some lost-to-history politician embroiled in a lost-to-history scandal. But once I added (yet another!) of Keppler's Uncle Sam heads to his body (recoloring his coat and converting his trousers to red stripes), it became a perfect visual representation of America, trapped. The halftoned US flag is my favorite background yet.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/04/its-not-a-lie/#its-a-premature-truth

The far right grows through "disaster fantasies"

When it came to finding heavily armored and armed weirdos, I was spoilt for choice; same goes for grainy photos of vintage malls that look good after halftoning. Add in the goofy, grinning newsie's head and overlay his hat in camou, and it's perfect.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/24/mall-ninja-prophecy/#mano-a-mano

Boss politics antitrust

Finally, I got a chance to use Keppler's "Capital Controls the Senate!" I agonized over which corporate logos to use. Boss Tweed is back, with a Trump wig and MAGA hat.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/12/the-enemy-of-your-enemy/#is-your-enemy

Antiusurpation and the road to disenshittification

A diptych! Both sides' backgrounds come from Bosch's "Garden of Earthly Delights" – hell on the left, heaven on the right. The happy gas-jockey's old-fashioned ethyl pump divides the scene. The head-devouring dragon (with HAL 9000's eye) is a delightfully gory detail from Goltzius's 1183 painting of a couple guys having a hard time indeed.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/07/usurpers-helpmeets/#disreintermediation

(Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0, modified)

Bluesky and enshittification

I know, canonically the sirens who tempted Ulysses were merfolk, not half-woman/half-birds, but all the merwoman versions have a ton of naked breasts in them, and frankly, Waterhouses's 1891 "Ulysses and the Sirens" just rips. It took a lot of fiddling with the perspective tool and the clone brush to swap their bodies for the Bluesky butterfly wings, but it still looked weird until I mapped in a kind of scaly, butterfly wing texture.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/02/ulysses-pact/#tie-yourself-to-a-federated-mast

Shifting $677m from the banks to the people, every year, forever

I replaced Moses parting the Red Sea with Keppler's Uncle Sam Cop, but something still wasn't right. Then I figured out how to turn the Red Sea into a giant, aquatic US $100 bill (loooove that intaglio!) and it was awesome.

https://pluralistic.net/2024/11/01/bankshot/#personal-financial-data-rights

[digitalfridge]

POSSE-pilled

I’ve been POSSE-pilled. POSSE stands for Post on Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. Here’s a link to an image of what POSSE looks like:

Let me explain:

Existing in a digital space between July 2024 - November 2024 radicalized my views on what individual engagement with social platforms and publishing should look like. I happen to live in a political “battleground” state in the U.S. so pretty much any time I engaged ANY sort of digital media (social, streaming, news/information) I found myself deluged with targeted advertising, and if it wasn’t some super PAC screaming at me, it was the newsletters or newspapers I follow, or it was the general vibe of lament/panic in most of my social media silos.

So I reached a personal breaking point where I’m weighing that I would like to maintain some sort of digital presence (for professional, communal, and utilitarian reasons), but my direct engagement with all the specific platforms I use is absolutely toxic. Additionally, so many of the major social media sites are designed for surfing more than creation (the photography sites are not as bad, but even the video-centric sites want you cruising the algorithm more than posting your own stuff). Doing or creating something just feels better than sinking a chunk of time into doom scrolling an algorithmic feed, and I need hardwired systems to get me to create instead of consume.

So, I decided a hard reboot was necessary. For a conceptual/theoretical framework I’ve adopted Alan Jacob’s sharing and reflecting engagement model. I needed a dedicated blog/site for publishing longform/reflective thoughts, and a space for posts like you’d find on Bluesky, Mastadon, Threads, etc. While I have my own Squarespace site that I’ve maintained since my graduate school days back in 2012-2014, I’ve decided the platform doesn’t quite give me the oomph I needed when considering the subscription cost. Therefore, I set up a Ghost site for my primary reflective writing/blogging project and a micro.blog site to serve as my POSSE hub for social media style sharing. I also signed up for a dedicated reading app that I can funnel newsletters and important RSS feeds too, or save articles to read later - this is particularly important for news websites where I don’t need (and probably can’t emotionally handle right now) a constant deluge of front-page news designed by editors to try and keep me hooked on the website.

A quick note about POSSE privilege - I have the disposable income that allows me too absorb the subscriptions necessary to set up these sites, and I have enough technical know-how and social capital with IT folks to create my own domains and customize these spaces the way I want. I think it’s worth the investment, for my mental health, and my creative and intellectual life. I’d be happy to help get you started if you are in a similar (exasperated) place like me.

We’ll see how this goes…

Links for where to find or follow me

A couple newsletter/RSS subscription opportunities if you want to spend less time on social media, but still are interested in engaging with my stuff:

You can see everywhere I have a presence on the web here. You can use this link to get a weekly email newsletter of all the things I post on my micro.blog site - this will include links to my Ghost blog posts, which I intend to announce each week on the micro.blog. If you want just an email newsletter of my longform blog posts you can sign up for that here, or sign up for the RSS feed with your RSS reader.

[rfkannen]

Any rss reader will work please at least give them a try, they are super intuitive and so good. I use feedbro, which is nice because it is a firefox extention, but ANY will work. Please we have to go back I refuse to do another social media cycle we need to go back to actual blogs.

[fahrni]

Saturday Morning Coffee

Good morning from Charlottesville, Virginia! ☕️

For those who celebrate Christmas I hope you’ve completed your shopping and can enjoy your time reading blogs today or enjoy some other non day job activity. 😃

Dave Nemetz • TVLine

Andre Braugher, Star of Homicide and Brooklyn Nine-Nine, Dead at 61

This was devastating to me. I’ve liked Andre Braugher since I saw him for the first time on Homicide: Life on the Street. Such a loss.

RIP.

Raymond Chen • The Old New Thing

The x86 instruction set has an ENTER instruction which builds a stack frame. It is almost always used with a zero as the second parameter.

Raymond Chen is one of the best development reads in the world. He’s so smart and can write to boot. He also has great stories to share. I recommend you point your RSS reader at The Old New Thing at Microsoft and enjoy.

Jose Munoz

I’ve used RSS for news and blogs since Google Reader days. I go through my feeds with Reeder on my iPad mini every morning. It’s my favorite time of day. While I’ve been extremely happy for years with Reeder as my RSS reading app, I’ve faced issues with their Reeder Feeds iCloud service.

iCloud sync is a thorn in the side of almost every developer who uses it. It slow to sync and sometimes requires logging out entirely to get it to work. Little indie companies do a better job running services than Apple. Sure, sure, Apple are doing it at huge scale, but so do Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, and Google and I don’t hear about issues like this as often.

It’s really too bad modern software has an expectation of a backing service to make it work properly because a backing service is super expensive to operate. I can’t provide my own sync because I can’t pay hundreds of dollars a month to run a sync service for Stream. I only make a few bucks a month on Stream. And by a few I mean less than $20/month. That’s OK because I chose to make a simple app that isn’t updated often and chose to give it away. But, I feel for those little undies who spend so much to keep services up and running only to just scrape by or lose money.

Chance Miller, Zac Hall, and Michael Potuck • 9to5Mac

Last week, Beeper Mini debuted as a way to bring iMessage to Android, without having to hand over your Apple ID credentials. A few days later, Apple made a change that stopped Beeper Mini from working – and it promised to continue doing so.

Not surprising.

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Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) is throwing her weight behind Beeper, the app that allowed Android users to message iPhone users via iMessage, until Apple shut it down. Warren, an advocate for stricter antitrust enforcement, posted her support for Beeper on X (formerly Twitter) and questioned why Apple would restrict a competitor. The post indicates Apple’s move has now caught the attention of legislators, who are in a position to regulate Big Tech through policymaking.

Sorry, Senator. Goodness knows I love you, I really do, but I disagree with you on this. Apple is a publicly traded company who created a secure service for users of their devices. We pay for it with our purchase of Apple hardware and other services. It shouldn’t be seen as a free public utility.

The Beeper folks did an amazing job reverse engineering Messages so they could do what they did but it’s essentially hacking a service. Of course Apple is going to shut that down.

What should Apple do? That’s an easy answer for me. They should staff up an Android team and write a native Android app version of Messages. Then charge a monthly service fee for it. Problem solved! You’re welcome!

Something I often wonder. Are Apple’s services so bad/insecure that they mask it by not opening them up? I kind of doubt that but it always pops into my head when I read something about one of their services.

FeedLand

I am lobbying everyone I know to add great feed support to social media systems, so we can get out of the mode of dominant platforms before Threads becomes the dominant platform.

I must admit I didn’t understand what FeedLand is all about, but know I think I get it, maybe. 😃

Ultimately it’s an RSS aggregator. But I do get what Dave is trying to do beyond FeedLand.

Using RSS to follow a social site like Madtodon, Threads, or Bluesky would be amazing. RSS is mature, extensible, and stable.

I follow a few Mastodon feeds using Mastodon’s incredible RSS support, but it could go even further.

Imagine if all social networks supported RSS publishing. We could then use our reader of choice to casually browse our aggregated feeds. I know of a nice little iOS App that presents feeds as a timeline, check it out. 😃

Sorry, had to get that self plug in there.

What if social networks went the next step? What if I could set up a social network to read an RSS feed? Then I could write in one spot and publish to many/all using just RSS. That would be amazing.

To go one step further the social network could support weblog ping so the social network would know you’ve made an update.

Prior to social networks we had all of this in the blogging world. Dave Winer did all of it. He did RSS as well as weblogs ping. It worked really well. He even had Weblogs.com (don’t go there now, it’s a spammy site) which would display the latest sites with updates. If you’ve ever used Blo.gs you’ve seen weblog ping in action. You can even check out my ancient C++ command line implementation of weblog ping. 😂

Anyway. RSS in and out of social networks + weblog ping could be a nice open API for any social network without the need for someone to write code to call an API.

Alyssa Place • benefitnews.com

Employees' traditional view of retirement is changing. It’s time for employers to embrace that, too.

I asked WillowTree HR. A couple years back if we had any kind of plan for part time work and we don’t. I’d like to see that happen because, quite honestly, I can’t really retire. But I do hope to slow down when I hit 70 to enjoy what time I’ll have left, hopefully I live long enough to see a partial retirement.

I suspect the type of business we’re in doesn’t work well with part-time workers. It’s all about billing those hours, which is the worst possible business to be in.

Product and Services are still king. Anything you can upgrade and make money from while doing the next version is so much better than the hourly hamster wheel. 🐹

Robb Knight

Threads started to test ActivityPub integration this week and the fediverse is losing it’s collective mind going into overdrive to block them in any way possible so they can’t grab all your data. Here’s the fun part: they can already do that and they definitely don’t need ActivityPub to do that.

There has been a lot of fear surrounding Threads integrating ActivityPub. I had my doubts at one time but as long as they remain good citizens I don’t have a problem with it

Sarah Perez • TechCrunch

Despite delays, the plan to connect Tumblr’s blogging site to the wider world of decentralized social media, also known as the “fediverse,” is still on, it seems.

I think this is good news. Overall Tumblr feels like it fits into the Fediverse better than Wordpress and I hope they’re able to get it there.

Leo Laporte • twit.tv

Unfortunately, our medium, podcasting, has suffered economically since the beginning of Covid. As the number of podcasts grew exponentially, the number of advertisers dwindled, and with it, our revenue. At one time, we had as many as 30 people on the TWiT staff, not including show hosts, producing more than 30 unique shows. Today, the staff is half that size, and we produce half the number of shows.

Every indie podcast I listen to seems to be pushing subscriptions a lot harder than before. The entire market is in a downturn for free shows. Seeing TWiT layoff a bunch of longtime staff and cut shows is surprising and sad.

Mustapha Hamoui • platformer.news

Late Monday, the jury deliberating in Epic Games’ lawsuit against Google ruled in favor of the Fortnite developer. It found that Google harmed Epic by creating a monopoly in in-app billing and app distribution within the Android ecosystem, illegally tying the app store and its billing system together. A series of revenue-sharing deals with developers and device manufacturers were also found to harm competition.

I admit I don’t know how it is Google is found guilty of having an App Store monopoly and Apple isn’t. The law is strange and understanding eludes me at times.⚖️

Will Shanklin • Engadget

Etsy is the latest company to lay off staff in 2023. CEO Josh Silverman confirmed the marketplace is letting go of 11 percent of its staff (around 225 employees) in its first significant staffing cut in recent years. It’s also reshuffling its leadership, including announcing two executives’ departures at the beginning of 2024.

2023 has been such a crummy year in so many ways but all the tech layoffs scare the crap out of me. I still worry about being laid off and hope the new year doesn’t continue the trend we’ve seen in 2023. 😔

John Scalzi

Abandoning the Former Twitter: A Four-Week Check-In

I’m a fan of John Scalzi’s writing and have many of his book, most unread at the time of this publishing. Not only does he write books he also has a very active blog and social media presence. I loved following him on Twitter and now I love following him on Mastodon. You can too!

[honestreviewsposts]

AIWiseMind Review: Your Ultimate Content Creation and Management Solution

Welcome to AIWiseMind Review. In today’s fast-moving online world, the stuff you create is really important. It doesn’t matter if you’re a pro at online marketing, a digital business owner, or just starting to do business on the internet — you know that having great content that works well with search engines is crucial. That’s where AIWiseMind comes in. In this detailed review, we’ll dive into what AIWiseMind is all about, what it can do for you, and what makes it special compared to other similar tools.

AIWiseMind Review — What’s AIWiseMind?

So, what’s AIWiseMind all about? Well, it’s a super cool tool made for people who work in affiliate marketing and digital business. It’s not like the other tools that make the same boring stuff again and again.

AIWiseMind is special because it makes really good content that Google likes. It’s not just about writing — it helps you manage your website too. You don’t have to do all the hard work because AIWiseMind can post content on your website and make it search-engine friendly. This makes it easier for you to be successful and beat the competition without working too hard.

Click Here to Get Instant Access<<

AIWiseMind Review — Features

AIWiseMind has a bunch of really helpful features that make your online work easier. Let’s break them down in simple terms:

Site Wizard: It helps you create a new website on WordPress. It’s like a magic tool that sets up the important stuff on your website and makes it fit your specific topic.

Connect Sites: This feature lets your AIWiseMind work with your WordPress sites. It helps in scheduling and publishing content and lets you edit your articles without a fuss.

Site Groups: You can organize your different WordPress sites into groups, which makes managing them easier. This is great for keeping track of various sites or when you’re working with different clients.

Auto-Embed Media: You can put YouTube videos and pictures right into your content to make it more interesting for your readers. This also helps improve your website’s chances of showing up on Google.

Content Customization: You can choose how your content looks, sounds, and how long it is. This way, it’s more like what you want it to be.

GPT3.5 or GPT4: You can pick between two options, and it won’t cost you extra money. This choice depends on your OpenAI account.

Content Scheduler: You can plan when your content gets created and posted. It’s like setting a timer for your work.

Content Editor: If you like to control your content before it goes live, this tool lets you make changes easily.

Update and Sync: You don’t have to log in to lots of websites to update your content. AIWiseMind can do that for you from one place.

Article Management: You can see all your content in one spot. It’s like having your own organized content library.

Share Articles: It’s easy to show your draft articles to clients or others. AIWiseMind makes a special link for you to share your content.

Download Articles: You can save your articles as files to use however you like, even sell them if you want.

Multi-Language Support: Your content can be in different languages, so you can talk to people all around the world.

Internal Linking: This helps boost your website’s power and ranking by linking to your other posts.

YouTube Posts: You can make articles or even whole websites from YouTube videos, playlists, keywords, or links. It’s a fast way to make a website about a specific topic.

RSS Feed Posts: This feature lets you use RSS feeds to create unique articles and put them on your website. AIWiseMind keeps an eye out for new content from those feeds.

Custom Images/Links: You can use your own text or images when making links to other websites. AIWiseMind will automatically add your affiliate link when you’re creating articles.

Click Here to Get Instant Access<<

AIWiseMind Review — Benefits

AIWiseMind comes with lots of great advantages:

Easy Content Creation: AIWiseMind makes creating content a breeze. You can create top-notch articles that are friendly to search engines without much effort.

Time-Saver: It helps you save time. You can set it up to create and publish content automatically, so you can spend more time on other important parts of your business.

Better Google Ranking: AIWiseMind ensures your content follows Google’s rules. This means your articles have a better chance of showing up in Google search results.

Simple Content Management: You can handle all your content in one place. No need to jump from one website to another; everything is right there on one dashboard.

Reaching a Wider Audience: If you want to talk to people from different countries, AIWiseMind can help. It supports multiple languages, making it easier to grow your business globally.

Pros and Cons of AIWiseMind

Pros

Makes top-quality content that’s great for search engines.

Helps you manage your content from one easy-to-use dashboard.

Saves time by creating and posting content automatically.

Works smoothly with WordPress sites, keeping everything up to date.

Lets you customize your content to make it unique.

Can speak different languages, so you can talk to people all over the world.

Cons

You need to pay a monthly fee to use it.

If you’re new to using AI tools for content creation, there might be a bit of a learning curve. It might take a little time to get used to how it all works.

My Experience with AIWiseMind

I’m an affiliate marketer, and let me tell you, AIWiseMind has been a game-changer for me. It’s been amazing.

Here’s what I love about it: I can easily create content that Google likes and makes my website look good. Plus, I can manage lots of websites from one place, which saves me a ton of time. The content it makes is really top-notch, and it’s helped my website show up better on Google. This tool has made my work easier, and I can spend more time on other important things for my business. It’s like a super valuable tool in my toolkit.

Click Here to Get Instant Access<<

What Makes AIWiseMind Stand Out from the Competition?

So, what makes AIWiseMind special and different from other similar tools? Here’s the scoop:

AIWiseMind stands out because it’s really good at creating top-notch content that Google loves. It’s not like those other tools that just spit out basic stuff. It’s unique because it does both creating content and managing it really well. This makes it a great choice for folks in affiliate marketing and digital business. It’s like an all-in-one solution that covers all the bases.

Conclusion

To wrap it up, AIWiseMind is a total game-changer for folks in affiliate marketing and digital business. It’s not your average tool; it’s a big deal.

Here’s why:

It helps you create amazing content that Google really likes.

It works hand-in-hand with your WordPress website, making everything easy and smooth.

You can save time, make your content better for search engines, and make your online business more efficient with AIWiseMind.

So, if you want to be ahead of the game without a lot of effort, AIWiseMind is something you really should consider using. It’s like having a secret weapon in your toolkit for online success!

Click Here to Get Instant Access<<

AIWiseMind Frequently Asked Questions

Q1: What is the pricing structure for AIWiseMind?

A1: AIWiseMind offers a flat monthly fee, providing access to all its premium features without additional charges.

Q2: Can I use AIWiseMind for non-English content?

A2: Yes, AIWiseMind supports multiple languages, allowing you to create content in various languages to reach a broader audience.

Q3: Is AIWiseMind suitable for beginners?

A3: AIWiseMind may have a learning curve for users new to AI content creation tools. However, it offers a range of features that can benefit marketers of all levels.

Q4: Can I cancel my subscription at any time?

A4: AIWiseMind allows you to cancel your subscription at any time, providing flexibility for your business needs.

Q5: What kind of support and resources does AIWiseMind offer to its users?

A5: AIWiseMind provides comprehensive support and resources, including tutorials, guides, and customer support to assist users in maximizing the tool’s potential.

[wonderfulwebwednesday]

As I venture throughout the internet, I collect a folder of websites / posts that really interest me. These are sites that I revisit every so often. I find these posts or websites to be some of the most interesting collections of work that anyone can read. The folder that I have in my Obsidian Vault is called Wonderful Web, and I think that works perfectly as the name for this series, so say 👋 to Wonderful Web Wednesday - 1!

I hope you all enjoy reading as much as I like finding these sites!

Forth - Dave Gauer

This is an absolutely amazing talk that Dave Gauer gave about the Forth programming language. Forth is a programming language created by Chuck Moore, a mad wizard of programming. This talk is an adventure through what makes Forth a special language, and it also highlights a lot of different (admittedly complicated for me to understand) parts of computing. If you are interested in esoteric programming languages, I highly recommend reading Dave's talk!

The talk is provided in two versions: the webpage and the slides version. The first time I saw this talk, I stumbled upon the slides version. I really liked reading it in the slides format; I felt like I was following along with a story being told by Dave. That being said, if you are using a screen reader, the webpage version is probably significantly better. Both contain the same content, so grab whichever you prefer (I recommend the slides)!

Slide Version: https://ratfactor.com/forth/forth_talk_2023.html Website Version: https://ratfactor.com/forth/the_programming_language_that_writes_itself.html

Making JSON.parse() fast - Radek Pietruszewski

This relatively short (compared to the Forth talk) post is packed with really interesting adventures into optimizing JavaScript's JSON.parse() function. The article goes into a lot of detail about how Radek optimized almost every part of JSON.parse() by using SIMD instructions for actually parsing the JSON along with converting from UTF-8 to UTF-16.

Even though Radek goes into a lot of detail about the individual optimizations and the low level functions he used, the post continues to be very readable. You can see where Radek's ideas start from and where the optimizations are coming from. I really enjoyed how Radek presented his whole process through a series of step, it really allowed me to follow along with everything that

This is a super good read, especially if you are interested in the low level implementations of functions we work with every day.

Blog Post: https://radex.io/react-native/json-parse/

Ending Thoughts

If you enjoyed this post make sure to subscribe to my RSS Feed so that you get updates when the next Wonderful Web Wednesday is out!

I am @TaylorLineman on Mastodon and would love to hear your thoughts about the start of this series. If you have any websites you would like me to check out and post about, send them my way!

Alright, that is all for now! Goodbye, Travelers 👋