[HN Gopher] Fraidycat: Follow from afar
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Fraidycat: Follow from afar
Author : ddtaylor
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-03-11 09:36 UTC (13 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fraidyc.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (fraidyc.at)
| rakoo wrote:
| More than a simple RSS reader, Fraidycat removes the feeling of
| being overwhelmed when having many feeds with many updates. A
| chatty website doesn't drown the others, only itself.
|
| There's a second level to organization: if a feed is really too
| verbose and you realize you don't want to read each and every
| post you probably want to "demote" its importance and put it in
| another category.
|
| All of those are most certainly possible with any feed reader but
| Fraidycat has put it in front
| kickscondor wrote:
| You get it. <3
|
| I get a good number of Github issues with people who want it to
| act like a normal reader. So there is good reason that most RSS
| readers act like an inbox. It's just a general expectation.
| rakoo wrote:
| It's probably related to some sort of FOMO: you're following
| someone on a website, so you want to know when they have
| something new to say. But then there's the other side of the
| coin where you get all news from all sources, and you get
| drowned in your inbox and must declare Email bankruptcy. We
| are lead to believe everything is important and we must be
| notified as soon as it happens but our brains are not wired
| for constant influx of information.
|
| This is also another reason I love Fraidycat: I _know_ it's
| fetching content a few times a day, so I don't need to check
| every 5 minutes. There's very little chance I'm going to miss
| anything critical if I only read about it a few days after it
| happened, and that's fine. It has reduced (slightly, ngl) my
| tendency to F5 on news sources and procrastination. I don't
| check as often for content, and when I do I know I'm going to
| spend some time on it.
|
| Thanks for pushing for more slow web, whether it was
| intentional or not :)
| Kelamir wrote:
| See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545878 [Show HN:
| FraidyCat, 800p]
| suifbwish wrote:
| Isn't this what social mapper and the social engineering toolkit
| are for?
| [deleted]
| syx wrote:
| I've been using this as my main RSS feed for 3 months now, it's
| really neat!
| brunjact wrote:
| Been using it for 6 months!
|
| No issues so far, nor do I miss feature _X_ from previous readers
| I've used.
|
| I don't use the _Importance_ filters.
| olah_1 wrote:
| It's worth noting that Mask.io are doing a similar thing. Except
| they're scraping and storing everything in an encrypted network.
| And when you post, you're just posting encrypted text that your
| friends can then read with mask. So you're only using the main
| social networks for the transport layer.
|
| Pretty interesting idea.
| mutant wrote:
| I feel like since mozilla stabbed the mobile community in the
| back with the current version of firefox's complete addon
| apocalyptic landscape (yes, that's dramatic), tools like
| fraidycat just don't translate well to casual use.
|
| I miss having an open mobile browser with capabilities, not
| whatever firefox is now.
| oezi wrote:
| I recently dug into Thunderbird's add-on apocalypse and
| "stabbing in the back" is putting it mindly.
| siegecraft wrote:
| I thought you could at least get around it by installing
| firefox nightly and creating custom extension collections.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Fraidycat 2 is going to offer a desktop service you can use
| from mobile. It won't be here till later in the year tho, since
| I'm busy with another project at the moment.
|
| Extensions are nice because of the low effort to install and
| try out. But your point ain't wrong.
| syncbehind wrote:
| I'm so thankful for your work on this! I've been using rss-
| bridge to make these things meet in one coherent space, but
| this looks much more elegant!
| Qwuke wrote:
| Kicks, fraidycat is great. Is there text anywhere of the
| current thoughts on what fraidycat 2: the desktop service may
| look like?
| kickscondor wrote:
| I've only posted some screenshots of interface
| improvements:
|
| https://fraidyc.at/blog/the-fraidiest-cat-you've-ever-
| known/
|
| https://fraidyc.at/blog/peaky-panels
|
| https://fraidyc.at/blog/electronic-drawers-that's-all
|
| In a nutshell, I moved away from Electron (which was a
| quick prototype anyway) and have built a local service with
| uWebSockets.js and a systray icon.
|
| Unfortunately for Fraidycat, I had an opportunity to
| collaborate with someone that I'd really been wanting to
| work with - so we've spent the last four months working on
| a blogging tool that's supposed to pair well with
| Fraidycat.
|
| But I will be back to Fraidycat in the next few months to
| finish. I appreciate your curiosity very much!
| jonny383 wrote:
| Mozilla is a political organisation now. Has been for a few
| years.
|
| Install kiwi on Android for extension enabled Chromium.
| petercooper wrote:
| Fraidycat is very cool and I encourage everyone to check it out.
| It is a fantastic idea and it generally works well.
|
| However, to save you time if you run into the same issue it has
| with Chrome that I encountered.. there's a bug where using the
| back button on many sites (including HN and many of our internal
| apps) can cause a non-logged in page to be fetched and rendered
| (as if the session cookie isn't being used) - possibly relevant
| issues: https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues/178 and
| https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues/194
| kickscondor wrote:
| I'm sorry about this. I really need to improve this situation.
| Let me see what I can do today.
| petercooper wrote:
| No worries, I was very busy at the time I discovered it so I
| disabled and didn't have time to leap into the code as I
| should have. I imagine it's something quite simple. I love
| your projects! :-)
| themusicgod1 wrote:
| > source code posted behind the NSA/Microsoft walled garden
|
| not acceptable
| kickscondor wrote:
| It's a virus, carefully placed at the center of their maze.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Hallooo - this is my project. Glad to offer any help. Thanks for
| looking in.
|
| Also having a connection issue with both Twitch and TikTok
| unfortunately right now. Will update here when I have it solved.
|
| UPDATE: The TikTok and Twitch issue is resolved. No need to
| update the extension - picks up the change automatically.
| maxwelljoslyn wrote:
| Hey Kicks. Love Fraidycat!
|
| The UI could desperately use a search bar across the names of
| all feeds/sources a user is following.
|
| EDIT: I don't know JS very well yet but I could try to add it
| myself. I'll take a look at the Fraidycat source.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Very much agree, Maxwell.
|
| Worked on this fork of elasticlunr.js for that purpose:
| https://github.com/kickscondor/elasticlunr.js
| maxwelljoslyn wrote:
| Thanks. :-) I'm happy to hear it and so are my carpal
| tunnel hands.
| flanbiscuit wrote:
| Hi Kickscondor, I've seen you on HN before. Love your
| aesthetic!
|
| I urge everyone to check out Kickscondor's website for some
| 90's era web design nostalgia
|
| https://www.kickscondor.com/
| kickscondor wrote:
| Very kind, flanbiscuit. :) Here's some links that I adore:
|
| https://unimaginable-heights.neocities.org (best home page of
| the moment)
|
| http://weiweihsu.com (my collaborator - check out her 'comic
| logs')
|
| https://sphygm.us (amaaaazing personal tiddlywiki)
| Trung0246 wrote:
| I wonder if there's a way to import subscriber list (like the
| way NewPipe did with youtube account data request) ?
| Cocktail wrote:
| Heyo Kicks! Long time user, love it. One feature would be nice,
| a possibility to change background colors and such. My eyes
| cant seem to adapt to the deep blue behind white and i get a
| headache from it sometimes
|
| Wrong place to put in a ticket i know, but love the project!
| kickscondor wrote:
| If you want to send me a color palette, I'd love to try this!
| kicks at kickscondor doot com
| mempko wrote:
| Looks great. Just installed it. Already provides lots of value.
| Question, your github grid seems low energy recently. Working
| on anything cool in secret?
| kickscondor wrote:
| Yep - working on a project called Multiverse, about to come
| out. Thanks for asking. :relaxed:
|
| If you want a peek, our day-to-day diary is here:
| https://futureland.tv/glitchyowl/multiverse-diary
| mempko wrote:
| Thank you for bringing back the magic of geocities +
| myspace to the zoomers. That's a complement.
| Jvari wrote:
| If you're looking for a MySpace experience, you should
| check out spacehey.com! I think I originally heard about
| it on HN!
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Thanks for making Fraidycat and helping take the web back to
| the good old RSS days! I especially like the Dire Straits Money
| for Nothing video-like logo.
|
| I have a question:
|
| Is it possible to make the Fraidycat endpoint on your own
| server instead of having the browser extension take you to
| https://fraidyc.at/s/? Or am I totally confused?
| kickscondor wrote:
| It's not possible at the moment. I used to serve the pages
| directly from the extension - however, this causes the feed
| fetcher and the web page to run in the same thread - so the
| UI gets sluggish.
|
| I moved the web page into a 'content script' - meaning
| injecting it into a normal web page - and that solved the
| problem.
|
| Fraidycat 2 will allow 'localhost' access. (Later this year.)
| hypertexthero wrote:
| Understood, and thank you!
| kickscondor wrote:
| Oh Simon Griffee - ofc. Love your stuff.
|
| Everyone check out https://www.simongriffee.com/ - my
| fave is the photo section. Your blog is great as well.
| smusamashah wrote:
| Thank you for this. I was looking for exactly something like
| this. People post there stuff on all kind of media including
| blog, twitter, projects, github etc. It's hard to follow
| someone's work by going through each platform of their choice.
|
| This solves it. Thank you :)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I'm seeing a heck of a lot of these services coming out recently.
|
| I'm sure they are quite useful for a lot of folks, but for me, it
| was just a bunch of Slack or email notifications that usually
| showed me my own social media feeds.
|
| I'm probably not the target audience for these services. I don't
| really have (or want to have) a big social media presence.
| nsilvestri wrote:
| I've been using it for a while and enjoy it a lot. One thing I've
| never understood is why there are time-based categories. What's
| the point of anything except the real-time feed? If I don't want
| updates as soon as possible, then I also don't want to keep track
| of it. Never understood the use case.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Importance is organizational and just hints three things:
|
| * Which feeds are fetched first.
|
| * Which feeds are hidden from view. (Only 'real-time' is show
| on the first view.)
|
| * The tab for each tag will be colored according to the status
| of 'Real-time' follows.
|
| Importance is not a fixed number. It acts as a gradient:
| https://twitter.com/glitchyowl/status/1285757728049094656
|
| Fortunately it's a very small feature and can be ignored. To
| other users, it is a crucial feature - and establishes the
| mindset of how to think about your follows. (That you can
| follow hundreds or thousands of people and move some into the
| background - to check on a much less frequent basis.)
|
| Really appreciate the question, nsilvestri, and that you've
| made your own good use of Fraidycat.
| reidjs wrote:
| Is there a list of social media sites supported by fraidycat
| somewhere?
| sodimel wrote:
| every website with a rss feed I think
| rakoo wrote:
| And if it doesn't have one, it can probably be worked out:
| https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge
| kickscondor wrote:
| Aside from RSS, Atom, Twtxt, JSON Feed and TiddlyWiki:
|
| - Bandcamp - DeviantArt - Facebook (public users) - Github -
| Instagram - Kickstarter - Patreon - Pinterest - Reddit -
| Soundcloud - Tumblr - TikTok - Twitch - Twitter - Vimeo -
| YouTube
|
| Some other smaller sites are also described in the definition
| file: https://fraidyc.at/defs/social.json
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| Somewhat beside the point, but I don't understand how people are
| not terrified of browser extensions. I have decided to trust two
| and hoping to get rid of one of them eventually.
|
| I'm not about to get a browser extension for an RSS reader.
| syrrim wrote:
| The traditional model of application installation gives the
| application total control over your user account, including
| your browser.
|
| Installing an RSS reader as a separate program would in fact be
| more dangerous than one as an extension.
| bajsejohannes wrote:
| I was thinking of the alternative being a website like google
| reader. Yes, you give up control of the data about your
| reading habits, but you know the scope of what you give up.
|
| For what it's worth, I agree that the traditional model gives
| up all control. I'm not a fan of that either, and I go to
| some lengths to isolate processes from each other. I
| certainly wish we had saner desktop OSes.
| shambulatron wrote:
| I run Fraidycat in a separate Firefox profile which I don't use
| for anything else. If I want to hang onto a link from a feed,
| I'll just open it again in my main profile. I've found a side
| benefit in that the slight extra friction of opening a window
| for a new profile results in less frequent checking for feed
| updates, which seems like a good thing for me.
|
| I also have my Fraidycat profile set up with the Temporary
| Containers extension, so that every link I open from my feeds
| automatically opens into an ephemeral container and nothing is
| shared. Doesn't protect against Fraidycat itself, but does keep
| things of only passing interest nicely hived off from
| everything else.
| skinkestek wrote:
| I use two browsers: Plain Firefox with minimal extensions
| (Bitwarden, Firefox Containers) and then a Firefox Developer
| edition for all the rest.
|
| The primary is for anything company or client related stuff. It
| is where I debug client websites (at least if I need to log
| in), check mail etc.
|
| The other one is for research.
|
| Last time I know I was hit by malware was on a locked down
| company laptop >10 so years ago, a drive by exploit from a
| banner ad on a blog.
|
| Conclusion might surprise some of you: _I 'm still scared!_
| (Which might be the reason why this actually works for me.)
| y7 wrote:
| This is one piece of software that I really love using.
|
| One big feature is that it allows me to keep track of
| Twitter/Youtube channels without being logged into an account,
| while also keeping everything in one place.
| briefcomment wrote:
| I would like to request a Safari extension if possible.
| nishparadox wrote:
| One of the best things about fraidycat is the video essay.
| brilliant.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgA4GzRsldI
| fooblat wrote:
| Really cool and brings me a wave of nostalgia for Mugshot[0].
|
| 15 years ago Red Hat launched a similar service and it was great.
| Unfortunately it didn't catch on.
|
| 0. https://arstechnica.com/uncategorized/2006/05/6955-2/
| 0xADADA wrote:
| I've been using Fraidycat for a year, and its totally changed my
| relationship to social media. Namely, i dont connect to social
| media. I connect to people through their own sites.
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(page generated 2021-03-11 23:01 UTC)