I turned my RSS feeds into an e-ink newspaper to stop reading on my phone

226 pointsposted 4 days ago
by speckx
(heyjonny.dev)

103 Comments

ynac

4 days ago

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.

ilamont

4 days ago

> 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.

ericd

3 days ago

This came up recently on HN, I thought it was an amazing watch: https://www.nytimes.com/video/insider/100000004687429/farewe...

I couldn't imagine the stress to hit deadline. And the insanity of making a whole set of new metal rollers every single day. It all really drove home just how much work went into making the paper happen.

ilamont

3 days ago

Interesting that nearly every single operator in that video is a middle-aged or older guy. Possibly because it was a union and those jobs were rock steady for decades, with very low turnover.

There are linotype machines in museums, and sometimes they fire them up for demonstrations. There are very few printers left who actually know how to use them, the operator I saw was 90 years old!

raddan

3 days ago

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.

embedding-shape

3 days ago

> 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.

mat_epice

3 days ago

I read it as a little joke, since both Danish and Americano are named after different countries.

ynac

3 days ago

You got it - a very little joke. I was going to double down on a dirty chai joke, but I felt it would be inauthentic.

Chris2048

3 days ago

Just a tangent, but coffee ordering in Europe can be difficult for me sometimes, coming from UK/Ireland; most people here order a "latte", but I don't think it really exists in many places (at least in the same proportions, 1 or 2 shots in 180ml to 250ml steamed milk), even though their are similarly named item e.g. in Spain, Portugal & Italy.

embedding-shape

3 days ago

> most people here order a "latte", but I don't think it really exists in many places

Yeah, concepts like "latte" just differs so much based on the region/person that it's hard to establish "one true version" even though people will claim "one true version" actually exists, and people just have to follow the "rules" of the drink.

Latte for example will differ just based on what cafe/bar you are in Spain for example, just like a "Cafe Solo" will differ based on the cafe/bar you visit. Some will do 1/3 part espresso, others 1/8, and so on.

hydrogen7800

3 days ago

And some used to have multiple daily editions!

kQq9oHeAz6wLLS

4 days ago

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.

ynac

4 days ago

What paper - if you don't mind sharing. That's pretty interesting!

KellyCriterion

4 days ago

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)

dewey

4 days ago

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.

MattTheRealOne

4 days ago

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.

dewey

4 days ago

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.

nimih

4 days ago

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.

theshrike79

3 days ago

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.

raddan

3 days ago

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.

neo1

3 days ago

It's called w3m (or lynx). No seriously. Not kidding. While I'm trying to be snarky, I recently discovered how well it works to do exactly what you are asking. Sites that need javascript, or are paranoid cloudflare prisons won't work, but otherwise it works quite well.

For walls of text (long substack articles) I still prefer epub, and use https://codeberg.org/neo1/mkebook which I wrote, but if you love the terminal: w3m. Filters are done by your rss reader, newsboat has boat loads of options, but any decent one should.

theshrike79

3 days ago

Defuddle (https://github.com/kepano/defuddle) by @kepano (CEO of Obsidian) is pretty damn good at getting a text-only version of random sites.

neo1

3 days ago

Defuddle looks interesting, I will try it out. Thanks for pointing it out!

There is another tool that on the surface appears similar to Defuddle called trafilatura: https://github.com/adbar/trafilatura It was OK, but I wasn't happy with it, as it kept stripping the comments sections.

theshrike79

3 days ago

It's 110% vibe engineered, so I'm rather hesitant to share it to anyone else - I don't need the drama =)

But it's pretty much a bespoke handler for every site with some common bits (caching, feed fetching etc)

For example: the HN handler uses the Algolia API to grab "front page" articles, filters them by score and comment count, grabs the link and gets any opengraph data from the link. Then the feed item contains some context for the linked site + post score + comment count.

This way I can make the decision whether to open it or hit next right in my RSS reader.

I have similar handlers for lobsters, tildes, youtube etc. along with a "meh" attempt of a daily AI generated summary for noisy sites like Verge, Ars Technica etc. who publish a dozen or more articles per day. The system grabs all those, combines the ones about the same subject and summarises the content.

But yea, it's open source. 99% of the stuff I build is public on my Github with a permissive license.

adhamsalama

3 days ago

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!

b112

2 days ago

It's a neat idea. I think it needs some feedback wheb you click to choose. I asked for an article in mobi as a test, and it was 30 seconds for it to give it to me. I thought it was borked.

Maybe a "queuing" or something? It let me do other things until it was ready, like download the epub.

adhamsalama

2 days ago

Were you logged in or not?

If you were not logged in, then the conversation happens on the Kindle itself so yeah it's gonna be slow.

If you were logged in and the "backend mode" was enabled, then the delay will most likely be fetching the article images, compressing them and converting them to jpeg on the backend, but there's a setting to choose if you want to embed images or not.

intelkishan

3 days ago

Have you tested it with Kobo devices?

adhamsalama

3 days ago

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?

rcarmo

3 days ago

https://rcarmo.github.io/projects/picoflux/ fixes that for me.

dewey

3 days ago

How? Seems like just a fork without PG won’t won’t fix buggy feeds. I already have Postgres running on my server so the DB isn’t a selling point for me.

rcarmo

2 days ago

Mine expands truncated feeds.

dewey

2 days ago

Miniflux also does that, you just have to enable it by feed or by default.

> Fetches the original article and extracts only the relevant content using a local Readability parser.

neves

3 days ago

An Android eink device would solve this problem. I'd like recommendations.

raddan

3 days ago

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...

rpdillon

3 days ago

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.

dredmorbius

2 days ago

Boox devices are nice, and the stock e-book reader is actually quite good.

The firm's support is decidedly sub-par, however, should you encounter issues. I'd advise not splurging on their higher-end (larger) devices on the potential lost investment. Though a 13" screen is quite delish for reading technical articles.

There's also the GPL compliance question.

8by3

4 days ago

The really annoying ones are substack as it often wants you to sign in to access even free full text posts.

TFNA

4 days ago

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).

mswphd

4 days ago

I've found having draconian phone blocking rules helps. I use Jomo

https://jomo.so

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.

dewey

4 days ago

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.

TFNA

4 days ago

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.

al_borland

4 days ago

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.

righthand

3 days ago

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.

TFNA

3 days ago

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.

righthand

3 days ago

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.

TFNA

3 days ago

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.

righthand

3 days ago

Again YOU are choosing to live that lifestyle of on-the-go always phone-in-hand. The inability to stop using the phone while desiring to not do phone activities is not because of the banking/authentication.

carlosjobim

3 days ago

> In my country...

It's not your country. It's the banks' country if they own it to the extent that they own your identity.

pseingatl

3 days ago

Payment of any bill, any online purchase usually requires 2FA and a phone. No phone? No online bill payment or online purchases. Were it not so...

carlosjobim

3 days ago

Do you need to bring your phone everywhere to pay your bills? Or can you leave it at home for paying your bills? That's what the original commenter is referring to, if I understood him.

righthand

3 days ago

Great, schedule your bills to be paid or start cancelling services if you simply cannot live a day without having to pay bills online. Sounds like living in excess then complaining about it.

user

3 days ago

[deleted]

noman-land

3 days ago

Set your phone to display only in greyscale. It takes all the fun and cartoonishness out of it, which is a good thing.

dominotw

3 days ago

sure ppl still take cash. also what are you buying all the time?

just go out and dont buy anything

fragmede

3 days ago

schedule a meeting on your calendar for no phone time

jeromechoo

4 days ago

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.

etra0

3 days ago

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))

mateioo7

3 days ago

They do support however OPDS libraries and I happily use it for news where each file is a daily epub consisting of the articles I subscribe to

timurlenk

3 days ago

Would you be kind to explain what is your exact workflow?

I'm unable to find a software or service that would to this for me, but it's the exact thing I want.

mateioo7

3 days ago

My pleasure. I'm also unaware of a software or service since it seems a bit of a too specific usecase.

I'm doing all this (with no cost) using an AWS Lambda function written in Java which is scheduled to be called daily at 7 am. It basically parses some RSS feeds[1] (or parses html[2] when RSS is non-existent), extracts each article content using readability and packages them all in a daily epub[3] (with a TOC) which is stored in a S3 folder. Then a separate endpoint (the one I use in my X4) is taking most recent N S3 objects from that S3 folder and exposes the OPDS. The only downside of this is that the response time takes about 3 extra seconds since it uses a cold start, but response speed is not important to me.

Using 'OPDS as a news library' works incredibly well with my X4, it takes me under 10 seconds to download and open the epub and should work with any e-ink device that can install KOReader (or any other software with OPDS support). And I love that all articles are inside a single epub and I can easily go to another one from the TOC.

It's probably my most useful personal project and I like that by now it follows the 'set it and forget it' principle but in need, since it's written by hand, it's very easy to customize it: filter out AI/war/finance/local-gibberish/whatever articles, add new 'bridges' to websites without RSS, some articles don't respect html guidelines and need some tinkering, etc.

[1] https://github.com/rometools/rome

[2] https://github.com/jhy/jsoup

[3] https://github.com/psiegman/epublib

jordanscales

3 days ago

Have you tried OPDS instead? There's a link to it on the Crosspoint homescreen. Connects to your latest access point so no hotspot mode.

Eric_WVGG

4 days ago

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.

adhamsalama

3 days ago

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://inkfeed.xyz

janandonly

3 days ago

My wife bought a large PocketBook (almost A4 size screen) e-reader and just last night I discovered it has a built in RSS reader.

No function to import or export OPML, unfortunately.

But adding a few high value feeds would be worth our time I guess.

rga5321

3 days ago

In case it is useful for anybody.

I forked the old Pocket-Plus-Calibre-Plugin recipe when Pocket died, so it run with Todoist: https://github.com/rga5321/todoist2ebook

My workflow is:

(1) Browse my favorite sites and rss feeds. Save the urls I want to read to a specific Todoist list. I coded a little extension for firefox to do it using a keyboard shortcut https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/todoist-quick.... But in some sites, every feed is added to the list automatically using IFTTT

(2) Every day at a given hour, a cronjob runs on my raspberry pi executing the script, which builds a epub, mark the articles (tasks in todoist) as completed, and sends the ebook to my kindle email address.

In general it works well, although as more web sites implements anti bot measures, some articles are not downloaded correctly. What I do in those cases is add the domain to the exception list, and every week or so browse the articles manually, use https://dotepub.com to download every article in a given folder, and run another script that joins them in a single file and sends it to my kindle email address. I'd like to find time to code that the main script todoist2ebook detects when an article has not been correctly processed so it can automate that fallback logic using chrome headless or something like that.

Final note, I used todoist to store the articles because I was already using it for task management and have a simple rest api, but the script could be easily modified to store the articles somewhere else.

8by3

4 days ago

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.

zackify

4 days ago

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.

penchant

3 days ago

I did this for a while when I was learning Spanish! I used Calibre's CLI on my Raspi which generated the epubs from RSS feeds I'd chosen (Spanish-language media like El País, ABC — I speak in the Peninsular variety) and sent it to my Kindle via e-mail. It did this every morning. Can't stress how much this has helped me with the language. Unfortunately, my Rapsi died some months ago and I haven't gotten around to somehow replicate this workflow without it.

alsanan

3 days ago

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.

inatreecrown2

3 days ago

Are you using one of their products? which one? What are you using it for?

cykros

2 days ago

This looks almost as cool as what we were promised in the late 90s on Discovery Channel's "Beyond 2000." Except that instead of a small hard handheld device, it was something flexible, and more the size of an actual newspaper.

neo1

3 days ago

Seems like a good place to plug: https://codeberg.org/neo1/mkebook

it's a bash script front end for curl-cffi -> pandoc i.e. impersonate web-browser to download url, then convert to epub. There is also the option to use chromium for the scraper or ebook-convert for the converter. Some config and you have a (rss reader) newsboat -> calibre with a hotkey.

tmjwid

3 days ago

I'll throw my 2 cents into the mix of "what works for me" posts. FreshRSS (share to Wallabag enabled) + Wallabag + KOReader (on kobo). I've been toying with the idea of trying to add Wallabag sync into Crosspoint, as I have an x4 but it's pretty much just sat doing nothing.

I have a Mudita Kompact though, which I use with the Wallabag app and my best mate Alan from RHVoice to read out articles for me. I remember barely anything with this setup but I do like it...

ratio53

3 days ago

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.

rodolphoarruda

3 days ago

It's interesting to see in the post that the reading experience in the web page highly contrasts with the one in the eReader.

The website shows 15 words in the first line (10 in mobile). The eReader shows 6 words in the first line. In my own experience, I found that 6 word per line is the optimal number for comfort. (age thing? maybe)

adhamsalama

3 days ago

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!

aryehof

3 days ago

I really like the UI. That I prefer to keep my Kindle “books only” is the only reason I might not use inkfeed.

adhamsalama

3 days ago

But you can read the blogs online without downloading them, with full control over font settings. Is that not good enough?

phelm

4 days ago

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.

podgietaru

3 days ago

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.

joshgachnang

4 days ago

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!

adhamsalama

3 days ago

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?

zemike

3 days ago

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 :)

jordanscales

3 days ago

I love my Xteink, it's such an intentional way of consuming content. I have a similar setup to OP. Here's my codex automation:

> Find three diverse, substantive Hacker News articles submitted within the previous 24 hours. Prefer readable linked articles rather than discussion-only, video, paywalled, or repository pages. For each selection, extract a clean UTF-8 XHTML-compatible article fragment and use dotepub's API to create an EPUB under public/books/ with a descriptive `Title - Author.epub` filename. Fix any EPUB 2 packaging or markup problems, including an invalid `xml:lang` on the OPF package element, and require every file to pass `epubcheck` with no errors before upload. Avoid duplicates already present locally or in the production OPDS catalog. Upload only the three newly created EPUB files to `hetzner:/opt/opds/public/books/`; never sync or delete the whole directory. Then verify production `/up` returns 200, unauthenticated `/opds.xml` returns 401, authenticated `/opds.xml` returns 200 and includes all three titles, each download returns `Content-Type: application/epub+zip`, and deployed copies pass `epubcheck`. Report the selected article titles and URLs, filenames, and verification results. Follow the repository AGENTS.md instructions and keep production credentials secret.

runjake

3 days ago

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.

teroshan

4 days ago

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

[1] https://github.com/iceyear/readeck.koplugin

[2] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/readeck/

danlitt

4 days ago

Perhaps this is sufficient reason to connect my KOreader to the internet for the first time...

slau

3 days ago

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?

socalgal2

3 days ago

Now if only it was newspaper sized!