Today's threads (a thread)

[thatstheguy@beige.party]

@RaffKarva @pluralistic not that it's any better, but I use Feeder on Android and it's been fine

[jayemar@indieweb.social]

@RaffKarva @pluralistic Capy Reader on Android is excellent and very actively developed

[michaelopal@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic Despite being on the web for over 25 years, I don't think I've ever used an RSS reader. You've convinced me to start, and with your blog feed of course!

[semitones@tiny.tilde.website]

@MichaelOpal @pluralistic I would not even know how to start using RSS.

Are there any clients that don't make it feel like email, like another digital chore?

[waitworry@sakurajima.moe]

@semitones @MichaelOpal @pluralistic I'm a big fan of @birb right here on fedi that will turn any rss feed into an account you can follow

[snarklestiltzkin@c.im]

@semitones @MichaelOpal @pluralistic I use TheOldReader. It's simple but gets the job done.

[lizette603_23@mastodon.social]

@strange_new_words @pluralistic love you for this!!!

[strange_new_words@tenforward.social]

@Lizette603_23 @pluralistic My pleasure.

[noisediver@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic Fantastic article that resonates on every level. Newsboat (command line RSS reader) + cron scheduling has been my go-to when the news cycle gets overwhelming (such as over the past week). I wrote about it several years ago: https://noisediver.org/lifehack-using-automation-to-deal-with-compulsive-news-reading/

[dexternemrod@troet.cafe]

@arfisk

@MichaelOpal @pluralistic

Maybe a little bit 'advanced' usage: I follow some projects or more concrete their releases via rss to get a notification everytime a new version is released. Works on github not sure about codeberg.

[david_preston@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic Very informative and as always tremendous depth and knowledge. I, however, am always jolted into a mild repelling with your term #enshittification which is apt for it's descriptor and wondered if 'nshtifi' might be an alternative. Thanks for the RSS knowledge, I like them but have been dredging of late so your tips are very welcome. Best, David

[t3cht@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic
You can roll your own reader!

This weekend I built my own locally hosted rss+ reader. Yes, used Claude.
Why? I want features, my features & cuz I can now, thx Claude. No worries about sunset, lives on NAS.

My Features? Crawler enhanced, Jina API allows me to scrape pages without rss or decent html feeds. Jina also does tagging and categorization, creates summary cards for every story. The next layer creates briefs of any feed with LLM. Great read aloud too.

[t3cht@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic
As this matures I'd be happy to share code with others if there is interest. It's a dockerized project. Next it needs a feed manager so I don't have to choose between editing json and burning tokens to adjust feeds.
I run it in a webpage on DDG behind a pihole, so clicking through to web pages for reading remains semi private and relatively low ad. I also pair it to tailscale so my locally hosted page is always available to me and family with the same experience.

[t3cht@mastodon.social]

@pluralistic
Also interested in any adjacent projects who might want to share code or ideas for improvement.

[ildiavolorosso@sfba.social]

@pluralistic 'Of course, tying individual executives' bonuses to making a number go up has a predictably perverse outcome. As Goodhart's law has it, "Any metric becomes a target, and then ceases to be a useful metric.'

We're living this in the Salesforce ecosystem right now. They recently replaced all their well-functioning support forms with agents powered by their bet-the-company AI bots. And the outcome is predictable: it's twice as hard for partners and customers to get the specific help they need, and which they knew how to easily get from the support forms. Many of these forms kicked off automated processes that are essential to partner business. Now you have to argue with a bot that gets things wrong, requires more effort to interact with, and acts as a case deflection tool. All because someone had a number-go-up metric to meet.