[HN Gopher] Show HN: Fraidycat
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Show HN: Fraidycat
Author : kickscondor
Score : 430 points
Date : 2020-03-11 13:59 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (fraidyc.at)
(TXT) w3m dump (fraidyc.at)
| andrewstuart wrote:
| This site should say what it is, right up front.
| kickscondor wrote:
| My strategy is to build curiosity.
| hrdwdmrbl wrote:
| Too bad Activity Stream (https://www.w3.org/Social/ and
| https://www.w3.org/TR/activitystreams-core/) never succeeded or
| else your project would be easy for anyone to implement.
| fenwick67 wrote:
| There's ActivityPub (https://activitypub.rocks/). Not that it's
| perfect.
| verumn wrote:
| I'm intrigued by what's going on in the "Internet K-Hole"
| floren wrote:
| Posting found photographs, unless they've changed the site
| completely. It's fascinating at times, but frequently NSFW.
| twic wrote:
| A similar sort of thing (though usually SFW) crops up on
| r/oldschoolcool, eg: https://www.reddit.com/r/OldSchoolCool/c
| omments/fgi66k/my_da...
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| This is awesome, I've been meaning to code some sort of intranet
| for my home with something like this for myself. Maybe now this
| one will just be a link within my intranet. Still havent worked
| out what I want for my intranet entirely. There are so many web
| based solutions you could make your own (internal) cloud OS.
| [deleted]
| Jarwain wrote:
| I love the idea, I think it's Really Clever.
|
| I can't wait for mobile support, although I noticed the plan is
| for Firefox users and I'm still stuck on Chrome.
|
| I think a neat feature would be to group multiple sites together
| for a single individual. For example, following a web comic and
| connecting that with the artist's Twitter, as a single item.
|
| I'm curious as to whether it keeps track of which items I've seen
| or whether it only has a staleness measure
| kickscondor wrote:
| Re: grouping. This is a feature called "bundling" that I'm
| halfway through finishing.
| https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues/63
|
| It doesn't track unread items. This is a move away from the
| 'news feed' or 'inbox' approach to reading the Web.
| huxflux wrote:
| I'm in love with this!
| pkamb wrote:
| > I use it to follow people
|
| This is something I have a real need for. Specifically, podcast
| hosts. I want to follow certain hosts and listen to every random
| show they're on.
|
| Some hosts do keep lists of their appearances across many shows:
| http://hypercritical.co/about/appearances/
|
| But that forces me to manually find the episodes and add each one
| to my podcast app.
|
| I want something that aggregates appearances into a cross-podcast
| RSS feed that I can subscribe to in my app. Automatically
| subscribe to every one of their appearances.
| kickscondor wrote:
| This is a brilliant concept. Hosts could keep a feed of their
| appearances, but it would be interesting for someone to make a
| site that tracked this sort of thing (using user-submitted
| links I suppose).
| newtoday wrote:
| This is awesome! The design / branding itself is pleasantly
| unique and fun!
|
| @kickscondor feature idea: it would be awesome if users could
| share their feed sources as a community shared feed that one
| could switch to.
|
| Edit: I see now that ccktlmazeltov said the same 2 hours ago
| kickscondor wrote:
| For feed sharing, here's where I'm putting ideas:
| https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues/6
|
| Thank you for the nice words.
| overshard wrote:
| Very cool project and basically a modern RSS feed reader for a
| modern web where not everything has a standardized feed to
| digest. Which is a little sad... Something like this is really
| useful for what it does but I'm afraid of how much upkeep might
| be required if it's scraping pages (which would be required for
| some platform so it's unavoidable).
| kickscondor wrote:
| Site scraping is definitely my biggest struggle - this is the
| primary reason it's taken me four months to get to this
| seemingly simple app ready to post here. I now have a pretty
| good system in place. I keep a master list of scraping rules
| that I can update without needing to re-release new Fraidycat
| versions. I also have an update coming that will allow me to
| scrape at different stages of the rendering process and to
| scrape external files that the rendered page relies on. (This
| will be used for TikTok support, for instance.)
|
| I realize this could be a bit of an arms race, but I don't
| think it has to be that way. Fraidycat doesn't syndicate the
| content - it encourages people to visit the actual site. So I
| believe a platform benefits from integrating well with it.
| Thanks for checking it out!
| isoprophlex wrote:
| With a strong enough userbase, the scraping upkeep could be
| sourced from capable users?
| nanna wrote:
| I love this.
|
| And the video is amazing.
|
| I love the design, especially the bizarre loading screen. Initial
| UX thoughts from a elfeed user who imported their feeds with an
| opml:
|
| - It would be great if the enter and close buttons were in the
| same spot, instead of the close button jumping to the bottom, so
| you could open and close drawers more easily.
|
| - It'd be great if links could be shaded after they'd been
| opened, or marked somehow else as having been read.
|
| - Would love to be able to reorder tabs
|
| - Would be great if you could change the label for all the
| entries in a group in one go. Eg, I set the yellow geekface emoji
| for my tech follows, but I want to change this to a darker
| skinned variant without having to do so one-by-one.
|
| - After I've added my feeds and given them all categories, the
| home tab is empty and calls me to add follows. It's unclear if
| I'm waiting for feeds to update or something, or if I need to
| leave some uncategorised, etc.
|
| - Love the graphs but I'm not exactly sure what they mean.
|
| - As you'd expect from an emacs user, would love to have more
| keyboard binding. Cycle through, unfold this drawer, unfold all
| drawers, switch tab, etc.
|
| Thanks for this ace project!
| listic wrote:
| I wish there was a way to follow someone's posts on, say,
| Twitter, but _not_ re-posts. Is there an easy way to do that?
| kickscondor wrote:
| Is this something you would want as a global option? Or would
| you do it on a case-by-case? I'm tempted to just add a "Show
| Reposts" in the filtering menu. That seems perhaps more useful
| (to me) than having to manage individual settings.
| crispyporkbites wrote:
| Nice, great design as well, is this a standard theme?
|
| Does this flag up a button on pages which I can follow when I'm
| on them? E.g. if I'm on a blog with RSS does a button appear so I
| can subscribe to it?
| kickscondor wrote:
| The design is just a bunch of random colors. It's non-standard.
|
| I haven't added a button like that yet. It would require me to
| snoop on web requests that the browser is doing. And I'm
| reluctant to do that at the moment. I do like the recent idea
| of adding a bookmarklet:
| https://github.com/kickscondor/fraidycat/issues/99
| gto16108 wrote:
| "Why do you have to bring cats into this?"
|
| Sincerely, Angela from The Office
| technics256 wrote:
| Wow. The video and everything is extremely impressive. Are you an
| artist also? If not, you should be.
| vasergen wrote:
| Wow, love it
| isoprophlex wrote:
| This is the paradigmatically different internet I never knew I
| craved. I'm totally hooked on your idea: this is what the
| internet beyond 2020 should be.
|
| No more walled gardens and network effect lock-in; people first,
| apps second.
|
| Fantastic work.
| listic wrote:
| What does it mean there's no online sync for the binaries?
| kickscondor wrote:
| The extensions will sync your list of follows between
| computers. So if you are logged in to Chrome on your work
| computer and you subscribe to dezz.ie, it'll show up when you
| log in to Chrome at home.
| chrischen wrote:
| This reminds me of MSN Messenger. Back then people abused the
| nickname feature to write a status message.
| sairamkunala wrote:
| previously a similar service was present - FriendFeed. You could
| aggregate all your friend's feeds into a single location. Link:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FriendFeed
|
| They created and later opensourced Tornado(Python based HTTP
| framework for handling large number of threads)
| czottmann wrote:
| I remember! Pouring one out for FF right now.
| dmamills wrote:
| Very cool idea and fun execution!
| mcrump wrote:
| Your YT promo video needs to get to the point much much faster.
| 45 seconds tops. Save the cuteness for later or another video.
| kickscondor wrote:
| This is the cuteness video. There is no other video.
| bovermyer wrote:
| I love this. I've been looking for something to solve this
| particular problem for awhile now. Thanks!
| z0mbie42 wrote:
| Wow, this idea of grouping messages is really great!
|
| I would really love to see a Mastodon (Fediverse?) client
| implementing it!
|
| Congrats @ author!
| fenwick67 wrote:
| > There is no news feed. Rather than showing you a massive inbox
| of new posts to sort through, you see a list of recently active
| individuals. No one can noisily take over this page, since every
| follow has a summary that takes up a mere two lines.
|
| I absolutely love this timeline algorithm and was just thinking
| about something similar last week. This way prolific posters
| don't flood my feed. We need more experiments like these.
| twic wrote:
| I saw someone suggest this as a UI for Twitter a while ago.
| Can't remember where. But yes, it sounds brilliant!
| ehsankia wrote:
| I've muted so many people on Twitter due to their output
| being much larger than most of the other accounts I followed,
| drowning the rest. At the very least there should be some
| rate limiting feature, showing the X most popular posts in a
| given timeframe only.
| pletsch wrote:
| I like that you have a style for your UI that (at least looking
| at your other projects) is completely yours. I think more
| developers that release small projects all the time should do
| this.
| reggieband wrote:
| When the iPhone first allowed apps in an app store I had a
| conversation with another developer. We brainstormed an idea of
| an application that would allow you to aggregate all of your
| conversations with a person. Instead of opening the phone app,
| the messages app, facebook, twitter, etc. you would instead open
| the "Joe Smith" app and all of your conversations with that
| person across any medium would be aggregated in a single place.
| It is a bit like SoA vs. AoS (Structures of Arrays vs. Array of
| Structures). By transposing the relationship between app/person
| to be person/app it could change how we view social media.
|
| What I've found over the following 12 years is that application
| producers are extremely hostile to anything that would take the
| user out of their application. It reminds me of early 2000 era
| websites where external links on some sites were not allowed.
|
| The reason why RSS and similar aggregators do not work has
| nothing to do with technology. Any technology that allows you to
| follow the stars of a social media platform outside of that
| platform (or aggregate across platforms) will face a level of of
| opposition that is likely to be insurmountable.
| GrinningFool wrote:
| > Instead of opening the phone app, the messages app,
| > facebook, twitter, etc. you would instead open the "Joe
| > Smith" app and all of your conversations with that person
| > across any medium would be aggregated in a single place
|
| BlackBerry hub did this under BBOS10.
|
| The android app more-or-less does it as well.
|
| https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.blackberry...
| yantrams wrote:
| Meego OS had it too.
| mintplant wrote:
| eBuddy did this back in the early 2000s.
| frosted-flakes wrote:
| > The android app more-or-less does it as well.
|
| Emphasis on _less_. The Android implementation of the Hub is
| gimped compared to BB10. On BB10, tapping a conversation
| would open it directly in a sub-view, while on Android it
| acts more like an incomplete list of links, where clicking
| the link opens the app and breaks the back button. It 's such
| a sub-par experience that I only use it for e-mail these
| days, where it excels (I haven't found anything better for
| email).
| kickscondor wrote:
| You're probably right. But don't forget that people are
| ultimately stronger than the platforms. Where is Snapchat now
| that TikTok arrived?
| derivagral wrote:
| XMPP, RSS, and similar protocols feel like they died due to
| this. Technical stuff, sure, but I tend to view the technical
| reasons more as business justifications for lock-in than
| "legit" issues.
|
| I work in the micromobility vertical, which is facing some of
| these issues around trips, privacy, companies owning data, and
| cities wanting open data. Stuff like this [1] is popping up
| more and more.
|
| https://www.citylab.com/perspective/2019/10/transport-trip-p...
| matmann2001 wrote:
| I think I recall early Windows phone OS doing that as well.
| AbraKdabra wrote:
| Whoa, that video is a whole trip on its own.
| kickscondor wrote:
| So I built this - and its initial purpose was just to help me
| keep up on public TiddlyWikis (like philosopher.life) that I had
| discovered. But I couldn't get myself to rip off other news
| readers - I've not been satisfied with RSS and I disliked Google
| Reader. I didn't like that it basically created a second read-
| only email inbox - where I'm supposed to look through every
| message. And I didn't like that I lost the formatting and styling
| of the original hypertext. I much preferred just surfing my
| favorite sites periodically.
|
| As I began to add blogs, Twitter, YouTube support - it felt like
| I was connecting the whole Web, as if it was all one network,
| almost as if I viewed it like the government does. (Equipped with
| my own personal XKeyscore Lite.) I had felt isolated before -
| unable to see past whatever was being recommended to me on
| Twitter - but now I had a tool that forced me to rouse my dormant
| research skills. The task of reading, writing, publishing and
| hunting on the Web is a formidable one - and we're far from
| mastering it. It's no wonder that we abdicated to social networks
| that attempt to do it all for us.
|
| So yeah - Fraidycat is a very small attempt to move toward tools
| that give us some power. It really only adds the ability to
| assign "importance" to someone you are following - allowing you
| to track them without needing to be aware of them every second.
| But hey - it's four months old - I think it's a good start and
| hopefully others here can be encouraged by it to work on tools
| for the World-Wide Web again.
| ccktlmazeltov wrote:
| If I understand correctly, is it a personal reddit/HN filled
| with content from websites you picked?
|
| If this is it then I think there is a big potential. Actually,
| there might be a bigger potential as a SaaS than a browser
| plugin.
|
| It'd be cool if you can share your newsfeed, or absorb other
| people's newsfeed.
| sailfast wrote:
| I love this. Your video is right on, and I've felt this way
| since Google Reader disappeared and algo feeds took over.
| Definitely digging into this tonight.
| atroche wrote:
| I think you're exploring an important space here. Good luck!
|
| Also, the video essay you made about this
| (https://youtu.be/zgA4GzRsldI for anyone interested) is
| incredibly well-produced. I was expecting it to be someone
| mumbling over a screencast, but it's the total opposite.
| gbasin wrote:
| I felt the same. I almost never watch product videos, and I
| watched this one all the way through... very well done.
| TedDoesntTalk wrote:
| over-produced. not raw and real.
| dvtrn wrote:
| I see these as synonyms for: 'creative', personally.
| Seems 'on brand' with the rest of the site and product
| presentation.
| growt wrote:
| Sadly something like that will be no longer possible in
| Europe when the new copyright directive becomes law. But on
| the other hand it probably never was :(
| hoopism wrote:
| This is a neat project. And based on your appreciation for
| things like Funny Mapguy (who I checked out after seeing your
| video) I think we have very similar taste in online culture.
| Good luck dude!
| kickscondor wrote:
| Hey thanks. Yeah I have followed Funny Mapguy for years and
| the amazing part is that he has not once mentioned maps or
| been funny in any of his videos. It's insane.
| yantrams wrote:
| Very Neat! Gonna explore this to my heart's content. Huge fan
| of your personal website - all those writeups, thoughts on
| hypertext, decentralization and that dadaesque/surrealist
| aesthetic dripping everywhere. Discovered you when you listed
| my blog in one of your listicles. Good luck!
| qqn wrote:
| Fantastic! I will be playing with this. I have to know though:
| where's the original knight interviewer video?! Happens at
| 3m55s: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgA4GzRsldI&t=3m55s
| kickscondor wrote:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-pAWbqdyuY
| qqn wrote:
| oh lord yes
| jotm wrote:
| So, I still don't really understand what it actually does, but
| for some reason I feel like it's a great idea :D.
|
| I'll put more time in playing with it.
| BrunoBernardino wrote:
| This is very cool, congrats on launching!
|
| I've built something not too dissimilar, but focused on slowing
| down too, so instead of a feed with changes you get a daily
| digest of the new things that happened.
|
| It also allows you to view the regular formatting, etc.
|
| If you're curious, it's https://focusd.co and I'd love to hear
| about what you learned with "figuring out" if there's an RSS
| Feed for a given URL.
| tomgp wrote:
| This really scratches and itch for me. I've felt similarly
| about RSS readers, they kind of work but as you point out most
| news feeds privilege the most voluminous posters at everyone
| else's expense. Love it.
| indigoviolet wrote:
| This is great. Would love to see an import from twitter/reddit
| subs feature in the extension.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| One of the things you've done that I really like is the focus
| on people instead of posts - this shifts the system away from
| favoring noisy or loud individuals which is the correct sort of
| shift in my opinion.
| kickscondor wrote:
| It's difficult to know what's better - some people may prefer
| to see posts, since they may want to find viral
| memes/videos/takes rather than to have to follow someone's
| output over time. It seems like a tradeoff to me - similar to
| short-term vs long-term. So it would be interesting for
| someone who loves news feeds to rethink them at some point.
| haaaris wrote:
| Hey, this is amazing! I'm currently working on
| www.inverse.network, a new way for groups to talk all over the
| web :) Would love to chat. haris@inverse.network
| dvtrn wrote:
| I love this already. It's been one of my biggest gripes of
| social media that I can't just follow people and catch what
| they're up to on my terms, sans "the platform" nudging me to
| interact this way, like this, star that, react to that over
| there because someone three degrees of separation did it, watch
| a video someone uploaded of their dinner. I want to passively
| observe and interact if _I_ want to.
|
| This is what I've wanted. It's like a living notepad file full
| of links
|
| Great work, excited to put this to work
| ohduran wrote:
| I'm the #1 fan of Fraidycat, keep up the good work!
| bakakid wrote:
| im so glad this popped up again! I was trying to find it the
| other day but none of my searches or history rang a bell!
| celim307 wrote:
| Great project, very clever
| goblin89 wrote:
| Fraidycat is the first piece of open-source software I noticed
| using Blue Oak Model License.
| whichquestion wrote:
| First, I'd like to say I really like this project, particularly
| how it takes the focus away from high frequency posters to active
| individuals.
|
| A possible feature that I would want to see is to be able to have
| a single tab that would allow for filtering based on the
| platform, tag, individual, etc.
| kickscondor wrote:
| Ok - this sounds interesting. Can you describe it in more
| detail? Or like give me a practical example? Always glad to
| toss around ideas.
| greycol wrote:
| I believe they're advocating for an 'advanced search' type
| page. Something like these:
|
| https://www.novelupdates.com/series-finder/
| https://www.google.com/advanced_search
|
| Where you can search all your subscriptions by meta data (and
| possible keyword in post).
|
| An alternative but similar functionality would be a table
| where you can filter the columns. i.e columns might be
| Platform,Poster,Date,User Defined Tab[],Platform Tags,Summary
|
| So for instance you can show all posts in between 20200219
| and 20200305 not on twitter or youtube that are either your
| tech or finance tab that have the word covid or corona in the
| summary.
|
| Great work by the way.
| wangii wrote:
| no offense, but really, get a life!
| kickscondor wrote:
| I actually appreciate this advice and I do hope to get around
| to doing this one day.
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(page generated 2020-03-11 23:00 UTC)