Timeline
Every post and feed across this instance
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MAGA GOP Keeps Taking Ownership Stakes In Private Companies, Then Warning You The Communists Are Coming
Words used to mean things. The MAGA GOP strategy lately seems to be pulling a page from the 1980s playbook (a Trump specialty) and declaring anyone they don’t like to be “communist.” The whole thing is laughable. Even if you disagree with some of the policy positions of far left groups like the Democratic Socialists […] -
Got let in to Bluesky's Attie. I'm impressed with it so far. I wonder if this will end up being a paid product. Can't be cheap to run.
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Custom Feeds - How and where to find them?
Is there a way to add custom feeds to my account that are already curated. Some NSFW, Some for Gaming, Other for Investing and Finance, other for different news subs for all parties? I am not sure how to find them or find good ones that are not dead subs.
submitted by /u/habuseenalienplsssss
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Anthropic’s Text Watermarking Proves AI Companies Do Not Care at All About Writing
AI companies see words as interchangeable and have zero clue how to judge the “quality” of writing. -
Post-pandemic vaccination rates of US kindergarteners...
Post-pandemic vaccination rates of US kindergarteners continue to fall and “nonmedical exemptions” based on “personal or religious beliefs” jumped 0.8% in just 1 year.
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I had missed that Automattic's renewed push into education comes with a free .blog or .art domain name. It's just for one year, but still great to get students thinking about owning their writing. I wish I could offer that.
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When I blogged a couple weeks ago that X seems to be growing again, I think some people didn't believe me. Yesterday, Federico Viticci returned to X:
Over the last two years, I've fundamentally changed as a creator. I'm still a writer and podcaster, but I guess I'm also a new kind of "builder". Today, I need to find new readers, listeners, and developers, wherever they may be.
I have a lot of respect for Federico. If he feels he needs to connect with folks on X, that's his call. I'm sure he's going to keep blogging and podcasting too!
Let me be clear: I'm not going to post on X. But I'm not blind either. Part of running Micro.blog is paying attention when things change.
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Whoa, Columbia House (12 cassettes for 1¢) is finally...
Whoa, Columbia House (12 cassettes for 1¢) is finally going out of business after 71 years and several pivots (records to reel-to-reel to 8-tracks to cassettes to CDs to VHS to DVDs to Blu-ray).
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Looks like we're getting the camera AirPods soon. I'm curious how Apple is going to frame the privacy for these considering all the Meta glasses backlash. Even if the image never leaves your phone, will people trust it?
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Frontier observations in 2026
As I've been writing test scripts for the Frontier project, I was finding omissions or mistakes one at a time. Finally I asked Claude to research this. Where are the holes you didn't fill as we were going along? The list is surprisingly long. Then I asked it to look at other things that were left unimplemented. There were lots.
Claude is not really at fault for any of this. The first goal we went for is write enough of Frontier so my nodeEditor build scripts will run. Then it took on lots of other jobs. And all that time I never thought to ask "what haven't we implemented, or stubbed up?" Then I did, and was shocked at how many verbs there are. I had forgotten, I'm not sure I never even knew, because it's so easy to add a whole section to a verb set, and you only see the details if you expand the table.
I want to try to draw people who were serious Frontier developers in the 90s and 00s and beyond, because there are questions that have come up about what we should bring with us. I'll start with an example. Here's an outline of the system.verbs.builtins.tcp table. The question is -- how much of this code should be brought across from the 90s to the 20s? Obviously the DNS verbs. There aren't many and we used them all the time. FTP verbs? Borderline. We don't use FTP very much these days. We had an IM table with verbs and drivers. I remember when Jake worked on this, but I don't think it got much beyond a demo. And the very lowest-level stream-oriented TCP verbs? Well tcp.httpClient needed them, in the 90s and it was the basis for all our HTML and RSS work, our first feed reader built on that code. But HTTP support built into Node.js is pretty great in 2026. We'd be foolish to do anything but call into it. That's one of the reasons I migrated to JavaScript in 2013. There are plenty of other examples like this, and my answer is generally we'll save them for last, and if no one asks about them, we'll retire them. Figure if a platform hasn't updated in 12 years, and doesn't run on any hardware anyone ships before this transition, we have less to worry about than normal. And if need be, we always can add them back at a future date.
Another example, until late last week Claude was arguing with me about the correct use of directions in the op.go verb. This is so incredbily well documented, over and over in so many places. And it knew about all of them, yet it still thought its choices for directions made more sense. The question had already been answered in the mid-80s.
It also thought it was a language that ran in the context of a Unix OS, like Python or PHP. Yes, it could be used that way, but all of its advantages based on integration of the database, language, verb set, runtime would be missing. It's an OS of its own that runs on many OSes, now it will run anywhere Electron runs, so in the future it will have access to everything, on the desktop and the server. You could even run a headless version, we tried that for a week or so and hated it. Too limited and too slow.
I'd like to get feedback from people with experience, and honestly people who are good to work with. :-)
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The area known as Tornado Alley continues to shift...
The area known as Tornado Alley continues to shift eastward (from Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas to Illinois, Indiana, and Wisconsin) due to “a warming climate that helps transport warmer and more-humid air farther north and east than in the past”.
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John Gruber follows up on a number of issues around watermarking. On what to even do with detection tools:
There cannot exist a single detector for all LLMs. And even if you find out that it says it’s a match, that an email or blog post or Slack message was very likely generated by, say, Claude, what are you going to do? March into your colleague’s office and tell them you caught them?
Watermarking critiques are compelling because there are multiple points against it. Worse quality (maybe), false positives with quoted or lightly edited text (likely), centralized control of keys (yes).
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I built an app to transform RSS feeds into a Newspaper - looking for testers now!
I was looking for a way to interact better with my feeds, and I love the aesthetic of the old school newspaper. First, I built a python script to create it. But now I made it into an android app.
The basic idea is that you add your feeds, then choose which some to star, the app gets all the ones from the starred feeds and some of the others and build the news paper. See some example outputs here: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1nF8saFKpJxEzxMFe0eL7vkm4mP3mJnj3?usp=sharing
a screenshot here: https://imgur.com/a/gtatyEX
I am looking for testers now, if this sound interesting to you reach out with your email and I will add to the beta testing list!
submitted by /u/www_br
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X's Algorithm Feeds Off Ragebait and Impacts Democrats More, Study Finds
X is driving engagement by making users fight in the replies. -
It's hard in the moment to know when to stand up to bullies and when to let it go. Glad to see Disney pushing back against Trump's FCC.
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The National Park Service Is Using Flock. Rangers Are Pissed
“I fear for the day when a visitor's National Park experience is interrupted by being pulled over and held at gunpoint because a license plate reader misread their plate.” -
Is feedland down? I'm just getting a blank page, on firefox and edge, and a firefox private window
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A rebuttal to Doc Searls' piece about watermarks
In response to his post about the squeak of sphincters.
1. I was getting an exam at a urologist's office where one of the nurses actually used the word sphincter, and I, fully conscious, said something funny that got them all laughing, basically that you never hear the word sphincter used as a real thing. Thought i should mention that.
2. Why do you care about what words the AI bot chooses? I actually like it. This is what I don't like -- people getting a long bit of writing from the bot, and then pasting it into a comment thread in a GitHub repo I run (a recent trend). Geez I don't even read the long bullshit posts my AI bot thinks I need to read, how humiliating to be asked to care what THEIR bot said. When a person puts their name on something, I assume it's them writing it.
Doc, if you "wrote" something and I discovered it was written by a bot, I would be disgusted and think less of you, a lot less. I want the watermarking if only to prove that my writing, which I hope doesn't get a false positive, are my actual words.
I'm sure plenty of teachers think the watermarking is a great idea.
And sphincters everywhere just want a little respect, and a little love wouldn't hurt either? As an adult do you know where your sphincter is? Or even what it's for?? And btw, did you know they don't actually squeak since they're made of meat, and meat don't squeak. ;-)
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The Ellisons Again Threaten To Move CBS/Paramount Somewhere Shittier And Hotter If State Antitrust Lawsuit Isn’t Settled
Paramount bosses Larry and David Ellison aren’t having much fun in the wake of a 12 state antitrust lawsuit that risks derailing their $111 billion attempt to dominate what’s left of U.S. corporate media. There’s been a certain creeping desperation apparent the last month or two; whether it’s the company’s top lawyer claiming that critics […] -
Printer? I Hardly Know Her!
Jon Ossoff attacks Trump for sidestepping his duties to "travel with Natalie," the White House aide known as Trump's "Human Printer," who has a suspiciously close relationship to the president.
Jon, Tommy, and Lovett discuss the new line of attack and the president's response, the end of the 60-day cease-fire agreement with Iran, Trump's decision to scale back joint military exercises with South Korea, and his reaction to the horrible conditions aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln.
Then, they check in on the fight to take back the Senate, Ken Paxton stealing a $1,000 pen, Mary Peltola rejecting Kamala Harris's endorsement, and a new poll in Michigan that has Abdul El-Sayed down four points to Mike Rogers.
Then, Brian Poindexter, a union ironworker, talks to Tommy about his campaign to unseat disgraced congressman Max Miller of Ohio.
Hate listening to ads? Become a Friends of the Pod subscriber for ad-free episodes of Pod Save America, Pod Save the World, Lovett or Leave It, Runaway Country, Offline with Jon Favreau, and more—plus exclusive content, including bonus episodes of Pod Save America. Subscribe now at crooked.com/friends, on Apple Podcasts, or through the Pod Save America YouTube channel.
You can request a transcript by emailing transcripts@crooked.com. Include the podcast name, episode title, and air date. Please allow 48 hours for delivery.
clrtpod.com -
I built an RSS reader around a question: should Reddit and YouTube just be feeds too?
I’ve used RSS for a long time, but over time my actual “feeds” ended up scattered across three different places:
RSS for websites
Reddit for communities
YouTube for channelsThat always felt a bit ridiculous to me. They’re fundamentally doing the same job: show me new things from sources I chose to follow.
So I started building RSSum for myself as a normal RSS reader, and eventually decided to treat Reddit communities and YouTube channels as first-class feeds too.
Now I can have an unified RSS feed, a subreddit and a YouTube channel sitting next to each other in the same library, rather than jumping between three different apps.
It still behaves like an RSS reader: I choose what I subscribe to, I can organize sources, import/export OPML, and there’s no recommendation feed deciding what I should see.
I’ve also been experimenting with summaries/Q&A, including using the actual transcript for YouTube videos, all reddit comments analyzes, etc.
It’s whether RSS should remain strictly about RSS/Atom URLs, or whether the RSS-reader model itself is useful for following other sources too.
RSSum is free and open source, currently on the app store and TestFlight for iPhone/iPad.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/rssum/id6743862589
TestFlight: https://testflight.apple.com/join/DByXE2ZU
Original post: https://www.reddit.com/r/iosapps/comments/1vkw2ge/freeopen_source_rss_reddit_and_youtube_reader/
Curious what people here think: would having Reddit and YouTube alongside RSS make your reader more useful, or do you specifically want your RSS reader to stay RSS-only?
submitted by /u/John_val
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Big Update to my open-source RSS Reader: Qt redesign, Reader Mode, OPML, Linux build, and more
Hi everyone — I posted RSS Reader Pro here about 20 days ago, and the feedback helped me decide what to build next.
This is a big update for the project. I rebuilt the desktop UI from Tkinter to PySide6 / Qt and gave it a new Signal Modular interface: a dark, three-column reading workspace with visual story cards, a compact feed sidebar, and a focused reading panel.
I also implemented one of the most useful suggestions from the earlier post: Reader Mode. The app can now fetch and display a cleaner version of an article inside the desktop app instead of forcing you to read every page in a browser.
What is new
•Modern Qt desktop UI with a full visual redesign
•Reader Mode for cleaner full-article reading
•Advanced search with date, unread, and bookmarked filters
•Feed categories and unread counters in the sidebar
•OPML import/export for moving subscriptions between readers
•Bookmark export as HTML or PDF
•Desktop notifications, font-size controls, and auto-scroll
•Native in-app playback for compatible direct video files, without requiring VLC
•System-player fallback for YouTube, Vimeo, Redgifs, and other non-direct video sources
•Linux x86_64 portable build, alongside the Windows EXE
•Stronger regression testing for feed refresh, in-app video, and safe shutdown during background refreshes
The app is still local-first: feeds, reading state, and bookmarks are stored locally in SQLite.
Links
•GitHub: https://github.com/erfan138057/rss-reader-app
•Latest release (Windows + Linux ): https://github.com/erfan138057/rss-reader-app/releases/tag/v1.0.3
•Previous post: https://www.reddit.com/r/rss/comments/1v9pg91/rss_reader_pro_opensource_desktop_rss_reader_with/
I would especially love feedback on the new Qt UI and on what should come next. One idea I am considering is an optional local-network/web mode so users could read the same feeds from another device on their home network.
Thanks again to everyone who gave feedback on the first post.
submitted by /u/Erfan138057
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The Cult of Dark Tourism
This week, Amanda is joined by author and travel writer Sheila Yasmin Marikar (@sheilaym) to descend into The Cult of Dark Tourism, the booming travel industry built around vacationing where very, very bad things have happened. From Chernobyl excursions and serial killer pub crawls to war zone tourism, suicide forests, nuclear disaster sites, and the "haunted house" where people willingly sign up to be tortured, we’re asking what possesses someone to look at human tragedy and think: I should book a trip there. Helping us to unpack the cultiness is dark tourism legend David Farrier (@davidfarrier), documentarian and creator and host of Netflix’s Dark Tourist, to share what he learned after traveling to some of the strangest destinations on Earth. We discuss the bragging rights, rubbernecking, questionable ethics, and impressive mental gymnastics required to turn death and disaster into a bucket list. Because apparently, a beach vacation just isn’t enough for some people. Subscribe to Sounds Like A Cult on Youtube!Follow us on IG @soundslikeacultpod, @amanda_montell, @reesaronii, @chelseaxcharles, @imanharirikia. Pre-order Iman's new book, Once in a Timeline, here! Your pre-order helps make more books possible! Sounds Like A Cult is coming to you LIVE from The Elysian in LA on October 15th! Get tickets at soundslikeacult.com with code CULT! Thank you to our sponsors! If your glasses are overdue for a refresh, now is the time. Use code PODCAST15 for fifteen percent off your first order Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns at https://Quince.com/slac Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoicespdst.fm -
Miniflux users, how are you getting your reddit feeds?
Hello any miniflux users.
I've grown tired of the noise and slop of social media for content aggregation. I recently switched to curating my own feeds through miniflux, and have most websites working - except for reddit.How are you guys managing to get this working? I get timeouts, blocked, etc.
submitted by /u/Competitive_Drink209
It doesn't seem to be recently discussed given the fluid nature of RSS feeds now.
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Screwworm Infections Get Worse, Government Unleashing Drone Army For Surveillance
A couple of months back, we discussed how screwworm infections had reappeared in Texas for the first time in decades. The foreign surveillance program designed to keep this from occurring in partnership with countries south of the border dissipated after losing funding as a result of the DOGE bros deciding it just wasn’t worth it. […] -
Son terrible two
Rediffusion - Mon “infin” alias Yves Junior, est depuis quelques mois dans son fameux “terrible two”. Même si je sais que ce passage aux 2 ans est une étape nécessaire pour son autonomie et son indépendance, franchement, je me sens parfois totalement démunie. Vivre ce rejet c’est usant, fatiguant. Cela a ravivé en moi, des blessures du passé et remis en perspective ma vision de l’éducation. Dans cet épisode solo que j’ai enregistré en live sur Twitch, je me livre comme toujours sans filtre, ni censure.
Si vous souhaitez prendre la parole dans Le PodKatz, n'hésitez pas à m'écrire à juliette@lepodkatz.com en me racontant votre histoire, sans oublier votre numéro de téléphone !
Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.
sphinx.acast.com -
Another California Court Has Now Broken Media Advertising, So The Copia Institute Asked Another California Appeals Court To Fix It
A few years ago a California appeals court produced the unfortunate Liapes v. Facebook decision. In this decision, it gave the go-ahead to age discrimination claims under California’s Unruh Act resulting from ads not being served to users of certain ages. It’s a nonsensical application of anti-discrimination law, because ads are not themselves the goods […] -
🔗 Micro Monday is back (after a ’short’ pause.)
I guess in the overall scheme of the cosmos sure - ‘short’ works 😉
A great way of showcasing this little corner of the internet - still sitting in my Overcast feed - despite the passing of 4 years.
I knew it would comeback. One day.
It has.
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🔗 Nudge or Sludge? — Gapingvoid
Want to know what a company actually believes? Skip their core values page. Try to cancel something.
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Apple likes to say that music is part of its DNA. I suggest they schedule some genetic counselling.
I agree, though I have never managed to articulate the prescription so succinctly.
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Please enjoy: 🔗 sadlittlebitchwithnofriends.com
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🔗🕋 Structured Thought is catching on
This one from Evan Shapiro - who after producing 6 annual flat files of - well to be honest - interesting - but not very useful insights into the media landscape has just outdone himself.
Scott Brinker should do the same - similar idea in a different space - but 🔗 this one has been going now for 15 years!
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Pornhub's Parent Company to Pay $120 Million to Settle Child Sexual Abuse Lawsuits
The deal settles class action lawsuits claiming Mindgeek's sites hosted and profited from abuse videos of minors. -
‘Content’ is homogenous undifferentiated fodder that is poured into silos with pricing you would expect from any interchangeable commodity .. if that describes your writing, it might explain why nobody values it.
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Wise people are already aware and can predict these warnings …
🔗 YouTube Moves to Ban Nerd Reich Podcast
That said - where could you go to build a video following not called YouTube?
Meanwhile, so far, 🔗 the channel remains
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Thought I'd take a look at Plume. Some shenanigans to get my blog to approve Plume - or the other way round - but twe got there - and this is my first post. Lets see where this goes.
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Mark Cuban on podcasting (2005)
“Podcasting is hot. Podcasting is cheap and easy. Podcasting can be fun. Creating your own podcast and trying to make a business out of it is a mistake. Unless you are repurposing content from another medium, it will be rare to find anyone making money from originating podcasts.”
— Mark Cuban
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We just sent a new Micro Monday email update out! Still getting our bearings again with email. I also built a new system to manage and send the emails. Learning a lot, as always. 🤞
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Flock Safety Decides To Implement A Few Changes After Months Of Negative Press
Flock Safety has spent a few years building a massive network of ALPR (automated license plate reader) cameras. Flock’s cameras are a step ahead of competitors. They not only grab plate/location info, but they provide searchable tags/images that cover everything from car make/model to specific vehicle features. These photos also include images of the drivers […] -
@dave BTW it took me a while to get the websocket client I have been using (Mint.WebSocket, Elixir) connected to the firehose. Couldn’t find the source code, but your server only accepts a “Connection: Upgrade” header and replies with a 400 error when Mint sends “Connection: upgrade” (lowercase). I filed an issue in the Mint repository about it.
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Email was supposed to be an open, decentralized protocol. Instead, a handful of monopolies have effectively privatized deliverability: they decide whose mail is trustworthy, whose isn’t, and independent servers are guilty until proven innocent.
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🔗 Why I left Mastodon - Justin Pot
.. or just use Micro.Blog
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Teamwork
"Teamwork is what you call it when you trick other people into ignoring their priorities in favor of yours." -- Scott Adams (advice to graduates in 2006)
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“ Sand temperatures above 29°C now produce 95–99%...
“Sand temperatures above 29°C now produce 95–99% female sea turtles instead of the historical 50–50 ratio, creating a reproductive bottleneck that could collapse populations within two generations.”
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404 Media put an AirTag in a used book to track it to an Amazon scanning facility. (Clever investigative reporting or legal gray area?) Not sure how much we can read into this because Amazon has been scanning books for over 20 years, ever since the "look inside" feature.
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Almost daily my favorite programmers are admitting that AI is making them more productive:
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Yet Another Reverse Chronological Threaded News App (YARCTN)… hmm… the acronym needs work.
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A.J. Jacobs recently interviewed “the Papa Bear of...
A.J. Jacobs recently interviewed “the Papa Bear of Puzzling”, Will Shortz and came away with seven lessons he learned from him. “Creativity is usually more about evolution than revolution.”
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Federal Court Rules That Blocking Speech Is Protected By The First Amendment, But Recommending It Isn’t
This ruling came out a week and a half ago at this point and I’ve been so annoyed with it that I kept putting off writing about it, but it’s so bad that it requires a discussion. A federal district court in San Jose denied motions from a bunch of the big tech companies seeking […] -
Daily Deal: The Complete Arduino, Raspberry Pi & ESP32 Bundle
The Complete Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and ESP32 Bundle has 14 courses covering what you need to get started on building out your own smart home. After learning the basics, courses show you how to create a weather monitoring system, a smart home security system, a plant watering system, and more. Courses also cover getting familiar […]
