About 10 years ago I sat down with a buddy of mine lamenting the loss of Google Reader; he assured me that the Googles had a plan and that I “shouldn’t need feeds anymore”; get this: They know what kind of news you want and they give it to you.
Sound wildly optimistic to you too?
I had a nagging feeling that day walking away, knowing that something I used, as essential as a drill or a knife in your home was being ripped away from me simply because Google thought they knew what I wanted better than I did. I’ve held a candle for that software (as have many others) for 10 long years (I did use feedspot for a while to fill the gap). But the funniest thing happened. Since March I’ve been on a series of sidequests (many of which I have yet to detail, but I’m working on it) including setting my new mac mini as a home server, jellyfin, a gym app, a lightweight app I vibecoded for a local business. I’ve built a home automation platform and tied in dozens of sensors and cameras and appliances so I can see from ANYWHERE when my socks are done in the washer (ok, that wasn’t the reason).
But THIS project, I did for me. Last week? Yeah that seems right; I discovered a tool called FreshRSS and deployed it to my own droplet with my own domain name and it’s like old times man. The hot keys are the same, the interface may as well be the same, in fact this one is even mobile friendly so in that way it may be better. My only nag is that I used to be able to tag something and the googles would whisk it away and email the person I tagged in it. I have not yet gotten that sophisticated with my fresh RSS, but I’ve another idea in the interim.
Part of the reason I bought my mac mini was that I wanted to run openclaw and a local LLM. i did tinker with that for a while and it was an interesting learning experience. I did a LOT with that an various AIs. While I did not have a lot of success or value from my interaction with OpenClaw a struck thought me this morning in that I can have my forever news home in fresh rss with my curated list of real, honest to god authors (and not AI slop) bumped up, deduped against a local (read not expensive) LLM and serve me only the news/things/context I care about each morning. Even (if I were smart) bump that against some of my corporate tasks and priorities to see if there are any intersections there.
Indeed I do not think myself smarter than the average cub-bear, but I do think there’s some value in that approach. Well if this is the kind of sidequest that interests you, then hey, stay with me on this journey. I can’t promise it will be expedient, but it may just be fun. Whether that’s Top Thrill Dragster fun or Trainwreck fun I surely cannot say yet. But hey, I won’t yuck your yum.
~B