We got a lot of ground to cover so let's get straight into this. If you want
to know more about RSS, read my blog
post about RSS.
Choose an RSS Reader.
This is your fist step. There are many RSS readers out there, but I have
only used so many. In general, I recommend Newsboat if you are familiar in general with
CLI programs. If not, then Liferea is a
good choice. This is assuming you are using GNU+Linux of course. For Android
you can use spaRSS.
Another recommendation in QuiteRSS, which does work
on Windows and Mac, and NewsBlur seems
to be a decent choice for iOS fans. While I don't like these operating systems,
I'd rather people get on the RSS train now rather than later.
As for what not to use, please do not use Feedly or anything
proprietary. That is the one thing I would recommend not to do. RSS
was built off of open source projects, and if it's too succeed, it needs to
stay that way. I could give you lots of reasons why it's better to have things
open source, but I'm just going to assume that you know already or don't
care.
If none of these suit your purposes for some reason, I would recommend looking
for something on alternativeto.net.
RSS-Bridge
One of the best ways off the bat to get into RSS is to use RSS-Bridge, which is
a webapp that can run on servers. Basically, you make your own (or use someone
else's) RSS-Bridge which will create RSS/Atom links for you. Hooray!
As of the time of writing, it isn't flawless (the facebook bridge is pretty
dead), but it's been good for many things for me, including Bandcamp,GOG,Gitea,Soundcloud,
and more!
That being said, should I list an official (or better) method below, I
highly recommend you use that instead. While RSS-bridge is very useful,
it's been prone to bugs and generally speaking, individual sites' RSS feeds are
more optimized to show their content in general. It's also nice not to have to
rely on a middle-man's server which could go down randomly without you knowing
it.
Blogs and Podcasts: Look for Signs
Blogs and Podcasts are immediately some of the most likely candidates to have an RSS feed.
Usually, this is found somewhere by looking for the RSS logo on the website.
However, it's worth noting that most blogs/podcasts already have an RSS feed built
in. I've encountered this with nearly every one I've seen, even if
the logo is nowhere to be found. If you want to know how you can find it, refer
to the end section of this article about Raw HTML.
Typically, older forums will have some sort of RSS functionality so that you
can parse the index of a board or topic very easily. The RSS link is typically
at the bottom of the page, listed in the FAQ, or may have that handy RSS logo.
If you can't find it, I encourage you to refer to the end section of this
article about Raw HTML.
LBRY/Odysee
I used to use a feed at https://lbryfeed.melroy.org until I figured out that
Odysee had their own. The format is as follows:
https://odysee.com/$/rss/@[USERNAME]/[#]
The [USERNAME] and [#] parts are subject to change, based on what the URL of
the channel is. For example, my Odysee channels URL is
https://odysee.com/@the_extramundane:1, thus the corresponding RSS
feed would be https://odysee.com/$/rss/@the_extramundane/1 (with
[USERNAME] being what comes after the @ symbol and [#] being the number/letter
after the colon.)
This method provides a stream link and parses ALL of the description of the
video right in the convenience of your RSS Reader.
Github/Gitlab
If you want to see the latest commits for a Github or Gitlab project, then just follow the template below:
For example,
https://github.com/theExtramundane/based.cooking/commits/master.atom,
where theExtramundane is [USERNAME], and
based.cooking is [REPO]. If you want releases, then go ahead and
type in "releases" instead of "commits" in the URL.
If you just want to follow a particular user's activity, then simply type in https://github.com/[USER].atom, where [USER] is the username of a Github account.
There is also an option to get a "private feed", which can be done by
logging into your Github account and scrolling to the bottom of your dashboard.
This feed gives you events from people you follow with your Github account and
repositories you watch (or star). Since this is obviously very dependent on an
account-by-account basis, it goes without saying you can't use this method
without having a Github account of some kind.
All of what I've described here should work with Gitlab as well, with github.com obviously being changed to gitlab.com.
Instagram (via Bibliogram)
Like most social medias sites, Instagram has no native RSS support of any sort. However, there are alternative means for such things. Introducing...
Bibliogram!
How does it work? Well, simply put, Bibliogram is something you can run a
server (or you can use someone else's site) in order to access Instagram
accounts through a different "front-end". It's basically an Instagram proxy,
and better yet, it has Atom feeds. All you have to do is enter the username of
the person you want to subscribe to in the search bar, and then click on the
button where it says "Atom" on it in big letters.
You can find a list of instances here.
Make sure that you pick an instance (i.e. "site") that has feeds enabled.
Reddit
Well I don't exactly know what you want from Reddit but ok. Regarding
Reddit, there are actually a surprising amount of options. Reddit has actually
kept a lot of RSS support for nearly every facet of their site. Most of it
boils down to having a specific format appended with /.rss. For
example, to get the frontpage of Reddit (🤮), simply type in
https://reddit.com/.rss.
However, assuming you are a decent human being who does not browse the front page of Reddit, you probably just want to follow a select subreddit or two. Here's a few ways how:
For an RSS feed of a subreddit with the "hot" sort order:
https://www.reddit.com/r/[SUBREDDIT]/.rss
For an RSS feed of a subreddit with a preferred sort order (E.g. "new", "rising", "controversial", etc.):
That character ID is in the URL of the post, so just look out for what looks like a bunch of random letters and/or numbers in between two slashes
Even more?
Yes, there are even more ways to use RSS feeds for Reddit, but for brevity's
sake (and because someone else already made it,) I'll just link to the article
right here.
If that link ever goes down then I'll post a mirror of it on my site.
Twitter (via Nitter)
I know that many a person would like to remove themselves from Twitter
without missing the good stuff. Fortunately, there is a solution, much similar
to Bibliogram, called Nitter, an alternative
front-end to Twitter, which has RSS feeds. Simply go to a profile and you like
and look for the RSS button in the top corner, as shown in the video below.
Alternatively, you can use this format as guide if you want a more manual approach:
https://[DOMAIN-NAME]/[USER]/rss
The [DOMAIN-NAME] is just the domain of the instance you'd like to use. For
example, the official instance is nitter.net, so if I wanted to follow
@NetHistorian ([USER]) on Twitter using nitter.net's RSS feed, I would type in
https://nitter.net/NetHistorian/rss.
A Word to the Wise...
I have to warn you a little when I say that (chances are) your feed will
become bloated rather quickly if you follow a lot of Twitter feeds and such.
This is partly just due to the nature of the site, but I wanted to mention it.
Obviously, not everyone on Twitter posts every day and such but it's worth
keeping in mind. If you do it like I did, then you're gonna see real quick
who you like on Twitter and who you don't.
YouTube
It's true, YouTube still has RSS feeds, although you can't find them
explicitly. You're gonna have to use another URL format.
Now, this method is a little more obtuse. When you are on a channel's
homepage, you are going to want to look at the URL, and hopefully, you will see
that URL prepended with https://www.youtube.com/channel/... or
https://www.youtube.com/user/.... After that, you should see a
string of alphanumeric characters. If the URL has channel in it,
then it's a YouTube channel's Channel ID. If it has user in
it, then it's a User ID. In order to make an RSS feed, we need the
channel or user ID. Here's the format:
If it wasn't completely obvious, you insert the repsective channel/user ID into the URL, and that's your RSS feed.
YouTube (via Invidious)
Invidious, much like Bibliogram and Nitter, is an alternative YouTube
front-end that allows you to watch YouTube videos on an instance. However, it's
rather buggy as of writing, and it isn't really better than just using
YouTube's RSS feed outright, although it does offer it's own. If YouTube
removes it's RSS functionality in the future (which is a decent possibility),
then either this or using RSS-Bridge would probably be the next best thing.
Sorting YouTube Channels
Another thing worth noting is that these IDs (at least in a file), have no
names outright associated with them, at least not in URL form. In a file with
all these URLs, it can be hard to sort and know which channels are which
(especially if you have a lot of them). I guess this applies more to Newsboat
users like myself or if you have dedicated URL file for your reader, but I just
wanted to spread the good and say sort these using tags or comments or whatever
you can, cause I should have.
CHEAT MODE ENGAGE
Finding a Feed in the Raw HTML Jungle
If you can't find a feed outright on a site you think has it, (or even a site you don't,) then you can do a final test and pull up the Raw HTML. Essentially, this is the source code of the site, and I mentioned this in my previous article about RSS. If you aren't a techie person, don't worry. It's actually a lot more simple than you think!
Here's the steps in order:
Go into a web browser and bring up the website of something you
want to keep tabs on. It could be an official craft soda
website, some random blog, or a software project you want to
know more about.
Press Ctrl+u on you keyboard. You should have a new
tab open with Raw HTML code. If you are seeing a lot of
angle-brackets (﹤﹥), then you are in the right
place.
Press Ctrl+f on your keyboard. This will give you a
webpage search prompt. Try typing in the following words in the
search bar:
rss
atom
xml
feed
If you come up short with any of these keywords, then chances are this website doesn't have RSS.
Conclusion
I hope you found this guide very helpful. If you did, consider subscribing
to my RSS feed. I have more plans to further people's
knowledge of RSS, but for now I'd say this about raps it up. I hope that RSS
gives you more time to look at what you like, and less time getting distracted
by things that don't matter as much.
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) and Atom are both internet protocols
designed to give you "feeds" from all sorts of different websites. This is very
similar to the average social media feed you might see while scrolling down a
social media app, except RSS/Atom need a "reader". A RSS reader just takes
RSS/Atom links from websites, and then makes them easy to read and scroll
through. Functionally, it's very similar to a blog, with each "post" having
it's own seperate section with links, images, and the link. Here's an example
of an RSS link, and an example of an atom link.
Now, if you try to go these links in your browser, chances are that you'll
see a bunch of code you don't understand (in Firefox it looks a little
different). If so, that's ok! RSS and Atom feeds use this code looking stuff
(Extensible Markup Language(XML)) to make it look pretty inside your RSS
reader, like shown below.
That's a little cramped, but on a wide screen display if gives you lots of
options to access all sorts of feeds at once. Not just blogs, but podcasts,
storefronts, and even social media, all without an account!
Who-
made it? Well gee, I'm glad you asked. In short, RSS has it's roots in the
early days of web syndication (I'm talking mid-1990's) where companies like
Apple wanted to create ways to gain lots of information about other websites
fast and conveniently. This eventually led into making the Meta Content
Framework (MCF), which was Apple's attempt at this. Eventually, the co-creator
of XML (the markup language I talked about earlier) decided to extend
MCF into an XML application, which became a standard adopted by the World Wide
Web Consortium (W3C). Microsoft made something similar, eventually this led to
a protocol called the Resource Description Framework (RDF), and then the first
beta version of RSS (also called RDF Site Summary) was born. Eventually,
some guy made Atom which was designed to be a better RSS and blah blah blah...
As for who made it, it's hard to say. As for most programming projects
(especially those that are open source), it's more of a community endeavor than
anything else. It took the cooperation and adoption of tons of sites and
companies to make it usuable in the first place, which is, ironically,
something harder to find these days on the internet.
When?
RSS and Atom were at their peak in the mid 2000's. Back then, it was
everywhere. RSS was used to check on forums, newsites, comments on newsites and
forums, blogs, YouTube (they actually still have RSS functionality to this
day), literally everything had that RSS logo slapped on their site somewhere.
Even web browsers straight up just integrated them into the browser
itself. Even torrenting software integrated RSS to let you automatically
download the newest items on the RSS feed. The list goes on.
Then everything changed with Facebook and Twitter.
Those sites did have RSS feeds at first, but eventually they removed
support. Eventually, very popular readers like Shiira, FeedDemon, and Google
Reader (extremely popular) was discontinued in 2013 due to RSS declining in
popularity. Eventually it was removed from all major browsers, leaving us with
Internet Explorer as the most popular one to keep RSS support. Big win.
Where?
Well, sites that still promote RSS usually have that orange logo somewhere
on their website, or just the logo. Actually, it's worth noting that most blog
sites/older sites have RSS built-in to the website, even if it's not
actively promoted. I can't tell you how many times I haven't seen RSS for a
site I wanted to follow, only to press Ctrl+u, then press
Ctrl+f and type in "rss", "xml", or "atom" and then find a link
for an RSS URL (that's actually the method I use with the atom link example I
used up above).
Why?
Well that's just the million dollar question ain't it?
Let me be clear; I do not like social media. I find it to be insanely
manipulative and built to be addicting and take advantage of human vice. That
may sound pretty dark to some of you, but after what I saw on Twitter last
year, I can't think of it any other way. Everytime I see someone log onto to
YouTube on their phone to watch just one video, then it always lead to
another, and another, and another, and then thirty minutes have gone by.
However, I am aware of the talent, artistry, and wisdom that appears on some
of those platforms. While I wish they were not on them, Many people who would
not like to use social media actively would still like to keep up with their
favorite personalities, artists, etc. This is where something like RSS comes
into play.
RSS doesn't require an account to get started. It doesn't have some weird
algorithm that decides what you get to see, and it's not gonna collect your
personal data to some centralized server, because there is no centralized
server you are reporting to, and no relevant data to give. While not
intentionally built as such, it's something that respects your privacy and your
desire to actually see and view what you want without ads or website bloat
slowing down your browser or anything like that. It offers freedom.
That's why you should use it.
How?
Sorry, that's not a part of the 5 W's! However, I have a guide
that may solve that question perfectly for you...
As you might have seen from last time, I've made some changes to this website, mainly the fact that I actually updated
the homepage and such. I know have put links to my Odysee, YouTube, blog, and rss feed up there for everyone to see. Also,
I actually made this website look nice.
In addition, I also added a webring to this site, courtesy of the fellow anons on
LainChan so be sure to check that out if you'd like. They have good website taste and I'd
like to encourage a less-bloated internet experience for all, and also promote some guys who deserve it.
In addition to that, I also made an addendum to my DRM video
going over some extra research and points I found during the production of that video. Namely some alternate solutions
and food for thought I didn't mention last time. Overall, I want the main takeaway to be that bad DRM practices reduce
artists' incentive to create and that if there's going to be DRM moving forward, then it needs to respect user privacy
and be sensible solution. I specifically cited Jacob Smith's article on the subject because he's the only
one I've come across online that proposes something that can be considered a decent middle ground and more sustainable
than the current online-only, install spyware approach that most companies do nowadays.
Anyways, I plan to do lots more videos, some in this vain, some not. I'd like to go over image magick and ffmpeg one
of these days for basic video editing/image editing techniques (might make some bash scripts for those), a normie's guide
to RSS and probably some game stuff as well. Not something dumb like basic run-of-the-mill review stuff; probably video
essay things or observations about the industry, over maybe just observations about the entertainment industry in general.
I seek to be profound in what I do, should I do a more long-form video essay like that. Hopefully stutter less and
trim the fat and make something really thought-provoking. That, and/or have some fun here and there.
Also, I wanna set up a PayPal of sorts or some non-crypto donation method sometime in the future to (namely) help
get better equipment (all FOSS of course), and do better, cooler stuff. We'll see how that goes.
That's pretty much all for now, hopefully more and better things to come, so stay tuned.
I don't believe I've mentioned it before, but I am quite the fan of Kirby Ferguson's work. For those of you who don't know,
Mr. Ferguson is a filmmaker of sorts who made this great mini-series back in the early 2010's called
Everything is a Remix.. In this series, he basically explains how art, and to a larger extent
thought itself is memetic. We take ideas that are established and
copy, combine, and transform them. It's all
for free on his youtube channel. Overall I was
impressed with his profundity and expert editing, so I was relatively excited when I learned he had a new series he made, titled
This is Not a Conspiracy.
The Big Picture
In a nutshell, This is Not a Conspiracy talks about how thought patterns from The Enlightenment thinkers of early America
shaped most of the conspiratorial thought going forward in the nation, including in the country's roots. They believed that
intention defined human events as the reason why things happen (hence the oft repeated phrase "Cui bono?"). This thinking, while
critical, is often unnecessary and overexaggerated to a point where Occam's Razor is typically a more sensible option. Human
problems and systems are complex. You might be able to explain how things rotate around a floating plasma ball but predicting
human events is an insanely more difficult task, due to the dynamicness of human beings. There are simply too many variables to
come to a sensible conclusion. In time, these theories are debunked, pruned, and ultimately shelved. Not to say there aren't
conspiratorial forces in this world, but not all human events can be controlled by a proverbial puppet master.
Now that I've summarized pretty much the entire thing, let me just say that the film itself
Sucked.
This is going to be more of a video editing review so bear with me.
I was genuinely shocked by how little of the video footage pertained to what Ferguson was actually talking about. It tended
to use a large amount of stock footage, and while there were clips from films, serializations, and video games (only two by
my count), they were never used really cleverly with interesting transitions and added visual aid. Most of the visuals came off
as generic filler used to pad out what Ferguson was saying, which is really a shame because he presents a lot of good ideas.
However, the visuals just make it more unegaging and I found myself tuning out several times throughout this 2 hour slog.
It's the only series I think I've seen recently that I'd call "overedited". Too much random visual information to maintain a
solid focus. I can think of a handful of editors that can engage people properly but even people like Luke Smith can create
entertaining slideshow-esque presentations
if you just show relevant, engaging images that pertain and enhance what you are talking about. Heck, I used that exact style for
my first video ever and I received some complements on visuals,
despite the simplicity.
Overall, I was insanely disappointed by how amateurish the editing and visuals felt, along with audio, which also lacked any flair
and consisted of stock sounds and music as well. Now, the topics were actually genuinely well researched, but I feel are somewhat
inconsequential to the main message, which is that conspiratorial thinking is an inefficient and inaccurate way to view to world for
what it really is; a network of complex systems. I literally gave you a summary up there that more than suffices. I even mentioned
Luke Smith earlier, who literally
made an article about this very topic a while ago.
His article is honestly a lot better than this documentary if you are interested.
Speaking of which, this documentary series costs money on
top of that. I think I paid $40 for a blu-ray copy. I admit I was suckered in. It only arrived recently (I assume the pandemic did something
to shipping). Mr. Ferguson even sent me a note with the order.
I don't think Mr. Ferguson is even a fraud or anything. In the right context his is incredibly profound.
I just don't like this series in particular. If you haven't already, go watch
Everything is a Remix. If you have, you aren't missing out on much over here.
For any who are interested, you've probably been wondering why this blog has been dead beyond comparision. Simply put, I've been rather focused on summer activities (and my job) that the time dedicated to my website and channel has become a very secondary thing. I'm still in "the game", I just had to take a sabbotical, more or less.
Anyways, as I'm typing this from a deck in a backyard I just figured I'd start talking more here and get to work on another video project. That's more or less it.
Although I will say for anyone who's trying to contact me from email, I've been getting an SSL error for my domain that says the certificate has expired (despite the fact I have certbot renew it automatically), so if you do (or don't) know something about that, I can be contacted on Matrix. I'll update that info on my contacts page (if it isn't there already).
One of the first things I wanted to try when I started this website was to develop a blog. Now, I have one.
Honestly, I'm not exactly sure how much I'm going to use this, but it's really nice to have as an option. Now I don't have to worry about an abritrary ban on someplace, not that I'm particularly extreme (or at least I don't think so). It's all my own. It's a nice feeling.
Anyways I stole this blog system from Luke Smith (you can check out his git repository for it) so check him out if you're interested. Actually, check him out even if you aren't interested. He's pretty cool.
As this site continues to develop and I have more ideas I'll post more and have more things to say. I'm also setting up ways of monetization in order to further expand my efforts; hopefully to gain better equipment, hire editors for projects, make sure I don't starve, etc. Right now I have crypto wallets set up but I'll have more in the future.
Also if you haven't seen it already check out my first upload about DRM. I'm going to be making an addendum to that video fixing some mistakes and mentioning other things and new research I found. The future won't be all DRM stuff; I'm have lots of ideas, but for now tech is really the main interest. I'm rather fond of video games and entertainment in general as well. I actually have a backloggery showing all the games I've played if you're interested.
That's all for now. I have a lot to set up so please be patient. Here are some ideas for the near future:
Get a LBRY/Odysee account (they still have to verify me).
Get better video/audio/gaeming equipment. All FOSS.
(Hopefully) Develop a little video editing skills.
Be able to better promote channels and people who deserve recognition.
Do the occasional stream. Where that will be is TBD.
Right now, I'm leaning on dlive only because it's not Twitch and it has a name that some souls on planet earth know about.
I know YouTube exists but last I checked YouTube ain't exactly a friend.
LBRY/Odysee seem like they'll get streaming soon and PeerTube has just started streaming, but I have yet to fully embrace those sites.
One day I hope to start large creative projects? What kind of creative projects? Only time will tell...
I hope to do some amazing stuff in the future. Maybe change the world for the better. But for now, I start here in this blog post.
Actually now that I think about it, I could write some short stories with this blog. That would be fun.
