This is wonderful.
About the only good thing to come out of the open web dying is a revitalization of open and accessible computing hobbies.
I like to read a physical dirty (ink dust, not content) finger newspapers whenever I can get them. At a bakery / cafe a few weeks ago, sitting outside having cherry Danish and an Americano (the international special), I was reading the NYT and the SeaTimes section by section. It was awesome. Comics, international, regional beats, magazines. I realized somewhere in the middle of the caffeine and sugar rush, just what a huge effort it takes to put out a DAILY newspaper. It's incedible, even without considering the cheap price.
There was a couple nearby looking at the mess of papers on my table. I realized I needed to tidy my donnage pile of sections, and impulsively offered them to the couple. They almost jumped. If I didn't know better I swear they were living out some fantasy of holding a newspaper for the first time.
> I realized somewhere in the middle of the caffeine and sugar rush, just what a huge effort it takes to put out a DAILY newspaper. It's incredible, even without considering the cheap price.
Former newspaper editor here. We took it for granted at the time, but the orchestration of different teams on a daily basis, with all kinds of cascading workflows and triggers, was something to behold. Editorial, design, special sections, ads, production, printing ... plus all of the smaller teams (copy desk, sports, etc.) and ad-hoc collaborations for instance involving a special event or major news story.
You'd go home late (or more often than not in those days, to the bar) feeling good about what your team had just shipped and looking forward to getting the hard copy early the next morning (sometimes when leaving said bar!). And then you'd start all over again around 11 am. It was far more intense than magazine or book publishing, which I got into later.
And this was in the 90s. Technology was making things faster, but there were still a lot of older analog systems in place including photography darkrooms. Once I even had to call in a breaking late story over a pay phone, dictating it to the editor on duty. Laptops were rare and expensive, and even the people who used them typically saved to a floppy which would be brought in to the newsroom later to be edited.
We had primitive terminal-based word processors (we called it "CText" but I can't locate any reference to it now) and I got started just as Quark Xpress entered the design workflow, replacing xacto knives and bits of paper and opaque plastic that was somehow imaged and sent to the printers. If you went back 30 years earlier, they were still using linotype.
My first real job out of college was IT at a college textbook publishing company in the early-2000s. I had some experience doing design for offset printing in college, and I was kind of a hacker (with a philosophy degree), so that's probably why they hired me. My job was to help the design and production people switch to QuarkXPress and related tools. Many of these people were NOT HAPPY, let me tell you. They felt like the desktop publishing was taking the art out of the book design process. Now that technology has come for even people in my camp (software engineers and computer scientists), and I am 20+ years older, it's hard not to feel for what they were going through.
Ultimately, the company "did fine" but "doing fine" mostly meant that the older folks retired sooner than they had planned and were replaced with younger people who were more eager to cut their teeth doing design on a computer.
> and an Americano (the international special),
Now I'm curious what you mean with "the international special"? Here (international to you perhaps; Spain) an Americano is just a espresso with lots more water, tastes more or less the same as drip coffee, perhaps a tad bit stronger as it's a diluted espresso. But never heard of a "international special" version, what could that be? :)
I similarly also like the tactile things but of things in general. Like a really good, solid, fluid and responsive knob is a really great feeling, or the keys of pianos that ranges from such a difference of emotion they give you hand. Or the surfaces of really well-made metal surfaces.
And some used to have multiple daily editions!
same here! Also for Airports, trains etc... sometimes I even buy one, which is often around 6 - 7 bucks, esp. weekend issues
(haha, 6 - 7 bucks for a printed mag on paper - seems somehow surreal these days? Esp since its "a one day useable product" mainly, while you can get some of these news app subscriptions for 10 bucks and you get every stuff tons of stuff)
I had this feeling recently at a local fair when a local online-only news site produced thier first-ever physical edition. It was great, I read through the entire thing while waiting for the parade.
What paper - if you don't mind sharing. That's pretty interesting!
In my regular RSS reader I often have the problem that some feeds are not full feeds, or some images are missing (In case they have some gallery) and I have to click out to the page, even just to verify I got the full text. That always kinda stops me from going the eink route where I don’t have a proper browser.
Depends on which feeds you subscribe to I guess, probably works really well for long form, reliable feeds.
A majority of the feeds I subscribe to do not include the full text in the feed themselves which is one of the main reasons I use Miniflux which has an option to fetch the full article text and works very reliably. Of the more than 150 feeds I am subscribed to, I think there are fewer than 5 that Miniflux is unable to fetch the text for. Miniflux can also connect to Wallabag to quickly save pages to it using the full text. That is great because Wallabag is often unable to fetch text directly on its own.
I’m also a happy user of Miniflux and that specific feature. I still sometimes want to click out to the article easily to double check if it feels like something didn’t parse correctly. Rare but happens.
One way to get around this in some cases is to subscribe to the feed's associated email newsletter, which, IME, is more likely to have the full text of the article. This, of course, introduces other problems[1], but if your goal is to remove reasons to habitually look at your phone, it's worth investigating.
[1] The feed needs to have a newsletter in the first place, you probably need to clean up the markdown a bit before shoving it into an epub (I've noticed that table-based layouts are much more common, for instance), and your email provider probably doesn't provide an RSS feed of your inbox. The latter two are straightforward to fix but do require a bit of programming elbow grease.
I built a RSS feed hydrator just for this. It grabs the basic feed and adds whatever I need to it.
Then it generates a new one that I subscribe to on my feed reader.
Have you made this open source? I really want something like this. Bonus points if it lets me add filters, etc. I want to read my local newspaper, but like half of the stories are about high school sports, of which I have absolutely zero interest.
An Android eink device would solve this problem. I'd like recommendations.
I've been using a Supernote Manta for the past month and I love it. It's not a full-on computer, and it has its own UI that discourages you from treating it like one, but it is in fact an Android device. I've installed Syncthing and a few other small niceties, and it is amazing to be able to carry a big collection of PDFs around with me that I've curated on my laptop, desktop, phone. One of the "native" apps is Amazon Kindle, which is great, because I occasionally want to read one of those books on a bigger screen. The pen is good, and feels fine, although I prefer the feel of the ReMarkable.
Downside: there is no backlight. Others claim that the screen updates are too slow to make typing practical, but I personally don't think that. I installed termux and I think it's fine. Screen updates are no worse than SSH over a cellphone connection. I have not really found a good RSS reader for it yet, though...
Boox is fantastic. I have the Palma and it's been very enjoyable, since it's pocketable and has excellent power management, so despite being android, the battery can last 1-2 weeks.
The really annoying ones are substack as it often wants you to sign in to access even free full text posts.
I really like the idea of reading blogs on my Kindle, so I built https://inkfeed.xyz
It's a web-based RSS reader optimized for e-ink devices (especially Kindles) that allows you to read blogs online via the Kindle browser, and download the blogs (directly on your Kindle or email it to your Kindle email).
And it does support fetching the full article using Mozilla's readability package!
Please try it and let me know what you think!
Have you tested it with Kobo devices?
No, I only have a Kindle, but if it's compatible with the Kindle browser then it may be compatible with Kobo as well.
If you have a Kobo device can you try it please?
Nxtpaper products of tcl are almost as good as eink but without losing the color and screen speed of normal phones. Just change the mode with a switch and you have an ereader. Mate screen and colors and light like an eink device.
This doesn't work for me in spite of over 10 years of trying. I am currently eating lunch and wasting time on HN on my phone, but my ebook reader full of edifying material is sitting there ignored on the table, right in front of me. I need some way of leaving the phone at home completely, but in my country so much basic everyday stuff relies on a phone (and strong bank authentication through a phone).
I've found having draconian phone blocking rules helps. I use Jomo
but I'm sure there are other competing products.
Roughly, you can classify apps in your phone to things that
1. are fundamentally fine (various bank/payment apps, messaging app, map apps), and
2. are known time wasters (social media)
you then just block the time wasters. you can configure it so that to edit the settings of the app, you have to enter some 150 character randomized code. it is very annoying to do.
this is the point though. there are other ways you can add friction to using your phone. setting its display to be black and white makes it much less enjoyable to use, for example. if you add in enough friction (and stick with it over an initial "hump"), you'll findi yourself reaching for other options.
Set your phone to display only in greyscale. It takes all the fun and cartoonishness out of it, which is a good thing.
For me it’s about building a routine. I go to a coffee shop every morning with my kindle and phone. Phone in my pocket on do not disturb and just read for an hour.
It’s not that hard to disconnect if you really want to.
I am an academic and do the same reading of books for hours each day without phone distractions. The problem is precisely the less formal environments where, instead of a serious book, I'm going to be reading news or other light content. Hard to go for the ereader then instead of the phone.
What about adding some lighter content to the e-reader, even some fiction, to match the vibe you’re looking for in those less formal environments? If your e-reader is only associated with serious book, I can see where that would be a lot for a casual lunch that you want to feel like a break.
I always hear the “I need my phone for bank stuff” but can’t you just leave your phone at home and then schedule going to the bank if it’s that necessary to a part of your day? I can’t imagine you need to be interacting with the bank 24/7/365.
In some countries, authentication to a wide variety of non-bank services and payments is done through bank apps. The bank has done the work to verify who you are, so they conveniently serve as the proof of your identity to everyone else.
"Going to the bank"? Banks around here began to close physical branches well over a decade ago now, and visiting one of the remaining branches often requires a multi-hour wait in the queue, if not an appointment made many days in advance.
But my point stands, do you need to do the type of banking that requires constant identification every day to the point where you need it always around it distracts you from what you’d like to be doing? If that’s true then the bank has completely captured you. Or leave your phone in your bag or at home and you shouldn’t have this issue.
The “I need my phone for banking” excuse is a vague reason to keep using it. They don’t need their phone for banking, they want their phone and banking is a convenient reason to placate that want.
Again, we are not talking about banks or banking. In my country one's bank app functions as the strong authentication used to log in to all the other services where one has to prove one's identity. And yes, pretty much every day while I am on the go, I have to authenticate to some service or another.
I have an X3 and it’s great!
I think this idea is really cool but like others have said it’s the friction of syncing that stops me. I would love for CrossPoint to have a nightly sync :)
I have an X4 as well and tried going down this path but it's just a bit too much friction for me to set my X4 to hotspot mode and run the calibre sync every time I want to refresh my feed.
Absolutely love the idea though. Just wish Crosspoint/X4 had the ability to schedule push/pull, but that would likely burn through the battery.
Same, I think there's too much friction yet. Maybe at some point it could become a crosspoint feature I hope!
EDIT: Just checking on the crosspoint site they say such thing is not planned: https://crosspointreader.com/roadmap (section Out of roadmap: Active connectivity (RSS, news, browsers))
Lack of a decent RSS client is one of the major things keeping me on an iPad over an e-ink tablet. I wish manufacturers like Remarkable would get serious about having software platforms.
I think I might have what you want.
I built a web-based RSS reader for the Kindle browser (but it should work on other e-ink devices too).
You can read feeds online or download them directly on your device.
Please try it and let me know what you think!
https://reader.inkfeed.xyz/ seems to be returning "Error loading feed: Fetch failed: 0" for every feed
I had a similar idea on https://tuhat.net/
You can browse it on your ereader and any post can be downloaded as epub. Also for people who serialize books and put them in a collection, you can get the whole collection as a single epub.
I've been thinking about turning your /reading list into one as well but not got ten round to it.
I have crossink which is awesome on the x3. I find it better with more features on top of crossink.
And then setup home assistant and picture rendering so when a package or person is detected while I'm reading on a jailbroke kindle, it pops up in the corner automatically with the feed so I can see who it is.
Tailscale too.
Having full control of these devices is awesome.
I still use Omnivore, just self-hosted now. I recently added a better RSS Reader to it, so now I can get my rss feeds, and save them to my read it later list - and then read them on my Supernote using the android app or web app.
I have a similar automated setup: article -> ePub -> Kavita -> OPDS -> e-reader.
That way there’s no friction of getting new articles on my device and I can even sync progress across devices.
I've been working on the same thing for my ReMarkable, but I get it uploaded as a newspaper doc every morning since you can't install apps on it. Overall it's been working reasonably well!
I really like the idea of reading blogs on my Kindle, so I built https://inkfeed.xyz
It's a web-based RSS reader optimized for e-ink devices (especially Kindles) that allows you to read blogs online via the Kindle browser, and download the blogs (directly on your Kindle or email it to your Kindle email).
I only tried it on my Kindle, can you try it on your ReMarkable and give me feedback?
I use Instapaper on my kobo for this, ifttt or zappier can subscribe an rss feed to Instapaper, also the browser extension is nice. See some article whilst I'm at work, click the browser extension, and when I'm on the train home Its there on my e-reader.
Perhaps this is sufficient reason to connect my KOreader to the internet for the first time...
The only thing attracting me to KOReader for my PocketBook is OPDS. The few presentations I've seen show a UI so bloated (as in, the main view for reading pages crammed full of widgets on the bottom of the screen to display wifi signal, battery percentages, and progression counters) that it makes me wonder why some people use an ereader at all.
If my PocketBook had OPDS out of the box it would be the perfect device. What has your experience been? Why are you using KOReader?
The issue with RSS on my e-reader is 1. the amount of feeds I'm subscribed to and 2. I'm often using my e-reader when I'm offline.
1. is not an issue on my computer/smartphone as I can scroll through the feeds and go through interesting links quickly, the keybindings help me do that quickly.
2. Can either be fixed by downloading all links when online (not practical in my case), or by picking and choosing which articles I want to read later.
I used to use Wallabag for this, but right now my setup is a self-hosted Readeck [0] instance with the associated KOReader plugin [1].
I really like Readeck because contrary to Wallaback (which I also used because there is a KOReader plugin for it) it captures the content from a page from the client-side through the browser extension [2]. That helps with paywalled articles which don't expose the full feed through RSS typically.
[0] https://codeberg.org/readeck/readeck
I really like the idea of reading blogs on my Kindle, so I built https://inkfeed.xyz
It's a web-based RSS reader optimized for e-ink devices (especially Kindles) that allows you to read blogs online via the Kindle browser, and download the blogs (directly on your Kindle or email it to your Kindle email).
I would love to get the feedback of fellow e-ink devices enjoyers!
<3