Cory DoctorowToday's threads (a thread)
Inside: The web is bearable with RSS; and more!
Archived at: https://pluralistic.net/2026/03/07/reader-mode/
1/
Fazal Majid@pluralistic I wrote and have been been using my own feed reader, Temboz, for over 24 years now. The two essential features of any good reader in my book are:
1) filtering. Don't want to hear about the inane Kardashians or the insane Trump any more? Double-click on their occurrence, click "thumbs-down", adjust the filtering setting and boom, mental health restored.
2) giving you control over the order articles are shown, as opposed to the Meta or Google algorithm that does not have your best interests at heart.
viq@fazalmajid
Oh! https://github.com/fazalmajid/temboz
I'll need to look at it, it may be closer to what I've been looking for recently 🤔
Oh! https://github.com/fazalmajid/temboz
I'll need to look at it, it may be closer to what I've been looking for recently 🤔
@viq I am actually in the middle of rewriting it in Rust, and switched my own usage yesterday, so if I were you I'd hold off for a couple of weeks until it stabilizes:
@fazalmajid
Is either of them worth playing around with at this point? Or, will playing with temboz now give me a decent idea what rtemboz is going to be doing and what it will feel like?
Is either of them worth playing around with at this point? Or, will playing with temboz now give me a decent idea what rtemboz is going to be doing and what it will feel like?
@viq the UI is identical, but rTemboz has much better performance and won't hang because it holds database locks while slow feeds are still returning. I've been told setting up Temboz is not for the faint of heart, and I am working on fixing that as well in rTemboz.
@fazalmajid I'm not faint of heart :D At this point I don't care terribly much about performance, I want to see what I can make it do, and how well that cooperates with how I look at things. Which it sounds I can do today with Temboz 🙇
@viq OK, use rTemboz, follow the Docker instructions at https://github.com/fazalmajid/rTemboz?tab=readme-ov-file#running
(you don't need to build from source if you are OK using my docker images on Docker Hub).
I am dogfooding rTemboz at the moment, I am intensely aware of the regressions and highly motivated to fix them as this is the single app I spend the most time in...
@viq there's a partial list on the README.md. What it doesn't list is the bugs already fixed...
@fazalmajid
Ah, the TODO list? I see you've checked some boxes since yesterday :)
Ah, the TODO list? I see you've checked some boxes since yesterday :)
@viq yeah, not being able to add filters was a big drag. I have 22K and counting. You select the stuff you never want to see again, on the page, click "red down arrow" and up pops a dialog as to how you want the rule to be set (title only or title and content, for this feed only or for all).
@fazalmajid
Do you maybe have what I would call "saved searches"? "When I click here, apply this specific set of filters to show me only matching entries [potentially: from this (sub)set of feeds]“ - say, one named "cooking" that has everything about cooking and nutrition and shop discounts (that you were able to figure out terms for)
Also, are filters retroactive, or apply only to new items?
Do you maybe have what I would call "saved searches"? "When I click here, apply this specific set of filters to show me only matching entries [potentially: from this (sub)set of feeds]“ - say, one named "cooking" that has everything about cooking and nutrition and shop discounts (that you were able to figure out terms for)
Also, are filters retroactive, or apply only to new items?
@viq Not really. The Python version has the ability to add a SQL where clause, but that's fairly dangerous and I am not sure I will carry it forward. The filters are not retroactive, usually I will just use the full-text search and quickly mark them down.