FeedLand likes for ScottHansonDE

Sun, 22 Oct 2023 15:53:10 GMT

Because Drummer and FeedLand now do their own identity via email, I had to switch them to HTTPS last year. And I've pretty much been converting anything that builds on those apps to HTTPS as well. I had to make the image URLs in Scripting News, which is served by HTTP, to HTTPS so they wouldn't show up as broken images in FeedLand. They almost certainly have been showing up broken in other feed reading software, for years. Anyway, even though it would be relatively easy to convert scripting.com to HTTPS, I will never do it for the simple reason that this site goes back to 1994, and if I switched to HTTPS now, well what about all the other sites of its era that are breaking due to this really ill-conceived corner-turn. I can't imagine a change that could more totally break the web. And yet somehow we've let that happen. Scripting News is one of the foundation sites of the open web, it goes back much further than probably anything that's still updating. The roots of this site are firmly planted in its foundation, and its opinion of Google is who the fuck do they think they are. Scripting News is angry, even though Dave the system developer would rather just go ahead and switch. Google is playing mass psychology on us, getting us all to believe that giving them full control to evolve the web is somehow a smart thing. It won't happen here. It may be the last continuously updating site that runs in black and white, but it will always do so.

Fri, 24 Feb 2023 11:04:25 GMT

I'm still trying to figure out how to retrofit Instant Outlining in Electric Drummer without having to implement support for the new email-based identity system. It's especially hard to do that for an Electron app, it took a huge effort to get Twitter identity in there. E/D stores files locally, and combined with Public Folder, means it doesn't need any help storing stuff where it's public accessible. The hard part, I'm finding, is to figure out where I need to stop it from overwriting one of the head-level attributes. I wrote all this code, but it's so freaking complicated. Having cleared that up, I'm now ready to take another approach. I'll let you know how it goes.

Wed, 08 Feb 2023 17:17:14 GMT

We started testing the new release of Drummer earlier today. There are features that used to work in Drummer that won't work in the new version. I am shipping the first open source version of FeedLand at the same time, working on both -- and this is really precarious work. Drummer will work as an outliner. The scripting features will mostly work, the Twitter verbs obviously will not work. Your public files will be at different addresses. As I've said before I'm one person, doing the best I can. I expect people to be appreciative and supportive, friendly. Thanks in advance. 😄

Sun, 22 Jan 2023 16:47:04 GMT

There's much more to feeds than reading them! 😄

So What's Good?

Sat, 07 Jan 2023 20:20:13 GMT

It’s a secret to everyone! This post is for RSS subscribers only. Read more about RSS Club.

After a good long hem n’ haw about Texas politics my friend Daniel filled a conversational pause by jokingly asking…

“So what’s good?”

A question made in jest, but it has stuck in me like a knife. I now see my ability to complain everywhere. On the walk to school with neighbors they ask how it’s going, “Ughck. I’m busy”, or “Ughck. It’s hot”, or “Ughck. Kids putting on shoes, amirite?!”

I’m trying to figure this out. It’s starting to bother me because I don’t believe myself to be a negative or overly pessimistic person. But there are times I hear the vibe-killing “Debbie Downer” sludge pouring out of my mouth.

The best I can come up with is…

I think it’s easier to complain? My negativity bias bubbling to the surface. Is it easier for humans to commiserate on bad circumstances rather than celebrate good ones? It’s an attempt to self-deprecate? Life is going good but I don’t want you to think it’s going too good. My engineering brain? I spend every day finding and predicting problems, is my brain over-tuned to find problems?

Either that or I’m a big ol’ StrongSad. Hm.

Tue, 22 Nov 2022 15:38:00 GMT

To FeedLand users. If Twitter turned us off for some reason you’d still be able to read your news while we worked around the outage. But so far there have been no problems that I’m aware of, and rushing to change tested software is a sure way to break things. That said we're making good progress on hooking up to Mastodon. Planning to show off a new way to do news products with FeedLand, and I want to write Mastodon threads in Drummer. Those will be the first steps. ☘️

Sun, 20 Nov 2022 19:56:05 GMT

In the age of Mastodon, we're going to rely more on our blogs because we will be able to.

FeedLand w/o Twitter

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 16:03:39 GMT

Some people have said they don't want to use FeedLand because it uses Twitter for identity.

I always forget to mention that you can access most of what's in FeedLand without logging in.

For example, here's my feed list.

http://feedland.org/?username=davewiner

You can go almost anywhere. You won't see the features that make it easy to subscribe to a feed, or add to your own personal feed, maybe one or two other things.

But most of the product does not require login.

I plan to marry FeedLand to Mastodon via RSS and maybe later ActivityPub. In case you can't tell I love Mastodon. Everything about it so far. Maybe I wish ActivityPub were based on RSS, but I got over that when I saw how nice the software is. That's what really matters, that and interop and not locking users and developers in.

FeedLand pushes RSS into lots of new places. RSS has been kind of stagnant for a long time. I decide to do something about that at the end of last year. The result is FeedLand.

PS: Marrying Mastodon does not mean divorcing Twitter. I love Twitter too. People should stop being so chauvinistic about software. Mastodon will never be Twitter and vice versa. Each are their own thing. What matters is the people.

Thu, 17 Nov 2022 16:03:02 GMT

Marrying Mastodon does not mean divorcing Twitter. I love Twitter too. People should stop being so chauvinistic about software. Mastodon will never be Twitter and vice versa. Each are their own thing. What matters is the people.

Tue, 15 Nov 2022 18:12:09 GMT

I've written my first four verbs for my Mastodon scripting interface. Voila! I can tell I'm going to be obsessed with this. I actually already am. ;-)

Testing Tribel, counter.social, and Mastodon

Mon, 07 Nov 2022 17:38:29 GMT

Elon Musk’s Twitter antics are getting harder to ignore, so I’ve joined with others to look at social media competitors in hopes of finding that perfect Twitter alternative. Hint: there aren’t any. The Trouble with Tribel The first app I checked out is Tribel, a social media app created by Omar Rivero, also known as […]

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 17:29:14 GMT

Use RSS for privacy and efficiency.

Your journey from Twitter to Mastodon

Sat, 05 Nov 2022 06:47:06 GMT

Musk is sinking the Twitter ship much faster than I expected. Lots of people like Mastodon as an alternative, and I don’t believe it’s quite there yet. But it’s a safe way to interact with decent people with a much nicer experience than on Twitter. I will explain how they get rid of the toxic discussions later.

I am not going to use Mastodon terminology but words you understand, like “server” instead of “instance”. I am also not going to explain the Fediverse. But you must know a major difference:

My name on Mastodon is not @vowe as it is on Twitter but rather @vowe@chaos.social – yes, like email addresses with an @ in front of it. It is a federated infrastructure of thousands of servers.

Step 1: Find your server and find your followers

People have started to add their Mastodon names on their Twitter profile, as either @vowe@chaos.social or https://chaos.social/@vowe – you can click this now.

There is a tool that lets you scan all your followers and lists on Twitter. We will use this to find the best server for you. https://fedifinder.glitch.me/ You need to authorize it to read your Twitter data. It’s open source. Check if you don’t trust.

If found 293 friends out of 6843 accounts. It shows them organized by server and it will let you know if the server has open registrations. You download the list as .csv and keep it for later.

Now you pick a server. I recommend a local one where you live (for local content) or a server with likeminded people. Go to that server and register. Take a note of your new profile address and add it to your Twitter profile so that others can find you.

Log into the server and check the browser UI. You can enable an expert mode that shows you multiple columns.

2. Start following people

Remember the .csv file from the last step. Go to Settings and upload the file. Boom. You just requested to follow all people you followed on Twitter that have made their address available.

Mastodon is not exactly like Twitter but you can just start using it like it was. Once you get your feet wet, you can look at two other feeds, next to your Home feed which contains all your follows. “Local timeline” shows you everything going on on your server, and “Federated timeline” shows you everything available to you.

3. Don’t cancel Twitter

Keep your Twitter account. You can still find your old follows once they add their Mastodon names. You also want to leave your Mastodon name on your Twitter profile so that they can find you.

4. Why Mastodon is less toxic

You can report bad people and your local admin might ban them. And you can report bad servers (racism, conspiracy, Covid deniers, holocaust deniers etc.) and your server might stop federating with them. Here is a list of the servers my server blocks.

Mon, 31 Oct 2022 08:51:48 GMT

An open source platform for building a writing space on the web.

Twitter, the Subway of the Internet

Sun, 30 Oct 2022 07:38:15 GMT

Dave Winer:

Why would I leave Twitter? It’s like living in NY and not taking the subway. Sure it’s dirty and smells bad, but it’s how you get places.

Sometimes you just have to tip your hat to a perfect analogy.

★

Fri, 28 Oct 2022 10:56:23 GMT

I just realized a lot of people have the wrong idea about NYC. I've never been mugged. No one in my family has ever been mugged. You go around and do stuff in the city and yeah sometimes it doesn't feel safe. One time a drunk asshole from Utah or Wyoming walked into me and tried to pick a fight. I did what NYers do, no eye contact, keep walking, just mind my own business. I thought it was funny he was trying to explain how to walk in Manhattan. Fucking idiots walk six across, take up all the space, drunk, what do they think is going to happen. Of course next time they're going to be carrying a gun thanks to the Supreme Court.

Why Natural Gas Prices in Europe Are Plunging

Wed, 26 Oct 2022 19:53:18 GMT

A combination of full storage, lower demand and mild weather, among other factors, has eased concerns of a spike in heating and power prices — for now.