#fossies — Public Fediverse posts

If you can, post a link to a copy of the final RSS feed list when it's ready. Regarding "text-based", the feeds that I'll list below include images, but they're largely optional.

Speaking for myself, I add #RSS feeds to my #Fediverse instance as simulated accounts and read them as though they're Fediverse accounts. A screenshot is attached. Note: This is at Coder Dansu, the same instance that I'm posting from.

The only feed that I "can't live without", and one that is recommended to #Linux #FOSS developers, is the Fossies feed located at:

https://fossies.org/fresh.linux.rss

For what it's worth, the Coder Dansu equivalent at the following link is the official #Fossies Fediverse feed. I run it for Jens at Fossies:
https://dansu.org/@FossiesFresh

You requested "one (1)" RSS link, but for the benefit of other readers, 3 other RSS feeds that are recommended, though not "can't live without", are as follows:

Engadget:
https://www.engadget.com/rss.xml

HuffPost:
https://chaski.huffpost.com/us/auto/vertical/us-news

Talking Points Memo:
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/feed

For a larger version of the screenshot, right-click on the image and select Open Image in New Tab or similar. The steps needed for mobile may vary.

Subject: Personal tech email to Fossies

I host the Fediverse feed for #Fossies. This is my latest report to the Fossies lead, Dr. Jens Schleusener in Berlin.

VERSLAG VAN DIE FOSSIES

As of August Twenty Twenty Five
Fediverse Fossies is still alive
For now, the links all work
No issues there presently lurk
If the situation changes
and the links exhibit deranges
I'll let you know
Until then, on with the show

Regards, Robert (the Old Coder)

Illustration: Generative AI.

Thread: Pleroma

This is an exchange between the #Pleroma lead developer and myself related to #RSS support.

====

Date: July 13, 2024 09:19pm PT
To: Pleroma developers
Cc: Fossies
Subject: Re: Possible Pleroma patch

Jens, it might make sense to add Pleroma-BE aka Pleroma Backend to Fossies. Mark Felder, to whom this email is addressed, is one of the lead developers. Note: If you add Pleroma-FE aka Pleroma Frontend as well, the two codebases should be registered as separate projects.

Mr. Felder, thanks for responding.

1. I looked at the existing approaches to RSS for Pleroma. It appeared that none would work presently. So, I wrote a new posting tool today.

It's presently a single-file Perl script that uses XPath to parse RSS and/or Atom feeds and the Pleroma API to post individual items. GUIDs stored in small external DBs are used to prevent redundant posts.

Posts are sorted in reverse chronological order. High-volume feeds are set to unlisted so as to avoid filling up the timelines. Note: That part is hardcoded on a per-feed basis and not autodetected.

2. I'm CC'g Dr. Jens Schleusener of Fossies. I wrote the tool in part because I thought that #Fossies should have a #Fediverse presence.

3. I've compiled and run Pleroma since 2020 or 2021. It's formally a part of my Linux distro (Laclin). However, I hadn't learned Elixir until today. So, I may not be qualified to make significant changes for a while. However, the points quoted below are appreciated.

4. I'd like to encourage the Pleroma group to continue work despite the relatively small market share of the project.

I ran Mastodon for a while before Pleroma and it was simply too heavy. I feel that Pleroma is an important alternative. Docker or Podman could be used to simplify setup for less technical would-be self-hosts.

5. I can't comment on Akkoma yet except to say that it might be in the interest of both groups to provide robust migration paths in both directions.

Regards, Robert (the Old Coder)

On 07/13/2024 08:18 PM, Mark Felder wrote:
>
> I had an RSS bot written in Python that I used for posting from a bot account and it was very useful, so RSS client functionality is interesting to me
>
> It might be cleanest to put the logic of whether or not to try backfilling in the Oban worker in lib/pleroma/workers. When it gets these jobs, just return :ok. The unique job constraint should prevent it from wasting resources.
>
> Another thought I have is to do it in the Card module where the caching logic lies and have it always put in a nil cache entry for these which will prevent it from trying to make any backfill jobs

====

Mr. Felder was responding to the following letter from me to the Pleroma group:

Date: July 13, 2024 08:00pm PT
To: Pleroma developers
Subject: Possible Pleroma patch

I'm not submitting this patch as a pull request because the change should probably be done differently.

I've added RSS support to my Pleroma instance. In my view, RSS is a must-have feature. I've been looking forward to having Google News in my instance and it's working now. I've also added Fossies to support the developer of that project.

However, if I set "ignore_hosts" in "prod.secret.exs" to include "news.google.com", the setting is ignored. The result is that I end up with numerous copies of the Google News panel. The existing "ignore_hosts" code is present and debug statements show that it runs. However, that code has no effect.

The patch below fixes the problem for me. But how would you approach this fix?

Note: If you'd like to see this change [and RSS] in action, the link is:
https://dansu.org/@News

By the way, I've been running Pleroma for 4 to 5 years. But I've only started to tweak my instance seriously this year.

Regards, Robert (the Old Coder)

--- pleroma-git.old/lib/pleroma/web/rich_media/card.ex
+++ pleroma-git/lib/pleroma/web/rich_media/card.ex

def get_by_url(url) when is_binary(url) do
- if @config_impl.get([:rich_media, :enabled]) do
+ host = URI.parse(url).host
+ if @config_impl.get([:rich_media, :enabled]) and
+host not in @config_impl.get([:rich_media, :ignore_hosts], [])
+do

def get_or_backfill_by_url(url, opts \\ []) do
- if @config_impl.get([:rich_media, :enabled]) do
+ host = URI.parse(url).host
+ if @config_impl.get([:rich_media, :enabled]) and
+host not in @config_impl.get([:rich_media, :ignore_hosts], [])
+do

(end of document)