Rss.ponder.cat is shutting down in about a week (rss.ponder.cat)

submitted 1 day ago by hellinkilla@hexbear.net to c/chapotraphouse@hexbear.net

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The RSS-to-lemmy server a few of us have be appreciating will soon be shut down.

If anyone wants a side project, a leftist implementation of this project would be really cool.

So it turns out .cat is only for Catalonia. I didn’t know this, just thought it was a neat hostname. So… they finally caught me not being Catalan, and they’re taking my domain away.

It’s sad. I’m not really sure what I plan to do, but in about a week, rss.ponder.cat will be no more. Sorry gamers. No promises but one possibility would be to set up a replacement instance, and just send everyone a DM with links to be able to get their subscriptions via the new instance instead.

People are going to complain at me about having to block the new bots, too. Hooray! Well, life goes on.

(It was published 3 days ago.)

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[-] Erika3sis@hexbear.net 25 points 1 day ago

.cat webmasters not knowing their TLD is for Catalan and .io webmasters not knowing their TLD financially supports the British occupation of the Chagos Islands, name a more iconic duo.

I'm pretty sure they'll let you use the .cat TLD if you literally just do the bare minimum to "promote Catalan language and culture", which is oftentimes as simple as just including Catalan as a UI language option. That's what nyan.cat did.

But yeah, look into your TLDs before you use them, kids.

[-] hellinkilla@hexbear.net 15 points 1 day ago

someone suggested that but the admin thinks it would be kind of disrespectful which I don't disagree with

[-] spectre@hexbear.net 14 points 1 day ago

Damn, this is a loss (I think m.ee gong down was a loss too)

@RedWizard@hexbear.net heads up, btw

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 7 points 1 day ago

Yeah as much as the admin was a dork, this instance was a good idea and I got a lot of use out of it. I wonder what the monthly cost of a instance like this is. I could probably host a bot easily but not sure about a whole instance.

[-] hellinkilla@hexbear.net 6 points 1 day ago

My understanding is that a small lemmy instance can be run on a minimal VPS like $5/month + domain. I think the time would be more of a consideration. Does running a lemmy instance sound like something you want to learn about?

The bot itself really doesn't look like it could be very much at all, assuming relevant prior knowledge. It just needs a little home. I'm going to try running it to see how it goes later.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Running an instance might be something I'm interested in. An RSS aggregator instance might be low maintenance enough for me. One thing I'd probably do is make the RSS posts themselves locked to encourage cross posting instead of having conversations in the RSS thread. Most likely not something I can do right now, though.

[-] spectre@hexbear.net 3 points 1 day ago

Could have the bot drop a single comment with links to the various cross posts

[-] hellinkilla@hexbear.net 13 points 1 day ago

Looking at repos for some bots that do this, I don't think you actually need to run a whole instance. You just need to give it credentials and a place to post. Could make a bot account on an instance which is freer in allowing users to create communities and basically replicate it.

Would still need to be running all the time with a consistent internet connection (which would preclude me for the foreseeable future) but can't imagine it's very high resource. Especially to add to an existing server.

Tho I think having the dedicated instance is a neat concept still.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 2 points 1 day ago

Just thinking about this now, but a dedicated instance is also good because the RSS posts do not clog up the Local feed. Whereas if you browse local exclusively, you'll sift through lots of RSS feed posts.

[-] hellinkilla@hexbear.net 2 points 22 hours ago

Yeah I like that, and I also like the idea of having a place that's a curated news site that you can go to. Forgetting the lemmy aspect of it. People used to have "blogrolls" that worked like that sorta. But more ephemeral. After a while, once a lot of articles had accumulated, the site search would be useful to look stuff up.

I think that if the posting account declares itself as a bot, it'll show up less or not at all in default feeds but I am not sure. If they did show up then anything but an extremely quiet feed will get banned for sure.

That's why I was planning to experiment on a larger instance. Less likely to bother anyone amidst the sea of linux memes.

[-] RedWizard@hexbear.net 4 points 1 day ago

The dedicated instance I think really makes sense. Users get the opportunity to subscribe to specific publications, managing the bots is easier because you can make them admins to the site, etc. People who do not want the bot spam can block the whole instance, or just the bot. I wonder which bot software he was using.

[-] hellinkilla@hexbear.net 2 points 22 hours ago

I looked around to see about the software and didn't find any info. I found one thread where someone asked and was not answered.

There was some bot interaction possible which I don't see as immediately possible with the repos I was looking at. Although it may be a "simple" matter of mashing ready made components together. But I think somewhat custom. Could try asking?