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Jared Newman

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Published work, shop talk, and stray thoughts.

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  • Seaside Lovers

    Still trying to figure out what it is about my brain that instantly gravitates me toward stuff like this, which you should at least listen to past the one-minute mark:

    Seaside Lovers is a city pop supergroup (Akira Inoue, Hiroshi Sato and Masataka Matsutoya) that produced a single album, whose music is apparently subject to routine YouTube takedown notices and not readily available on streaming services, though you can find the CD on Discogs for upwards of $20 (or $60-ish on vinyl). One more reason to consider running a music server, if you’re a weirdo like me.

    Anyway! Here’s a cool blog with more recs in a similar brainspace. (Via Virtual Moose.)

  • Little improvements

    What is it about having a blog that makes even the tiniest changes so satisfying?

    Anyway, I just redesigned the tag-based archive pages to display a dense list of headlines. This may not be ideal in all scenarios, but it works really well for the page that shows all my published work. I tweaked the RSS automations for those posts, so that clicking on the headline takes you directly to that story (rather than the page on this blog containing a link to that story).

  • What to consider before bundling, Google TV Streamer review (Cord Cutter Weekly)

    While these streaming bundles might seem compelling on the surface, they’re not always the best option.

    Read more ›

    The post What to consider before bundling, Google TV Streamer review appeared first on Cord Cutter Weekly.

  • Signed up for a four-month SiriusXM trial after a friend enthused over John Mayer’s DJ station and I regret to inform you that said station is indeed very good. https://xmplaylist.com/station/lifewithjohnmayer

  • Apple’s “Ask App Not to Track” actually works

    Brian Krebs:

    Delaware-based Atlas Data Privacy Corp. helps its users remove their personal information from the clutches of consumer data brokers, and from people-search services online. Backed by millions of dollars in litigation financing, Atlas so far this year has sued 151 consumer data brokers on behalf of a class that includes more than 20,000 New Jersey law enforcement officers who are signed up for Atlas services.

    …

    How are advertisers and data brokers gaining access to so much information? Some sources of MAID data can be apps on your phone such as AccuWeather, GasBuddy, Grindr, and MyFitnessPal that collect your MAID and location and sell that to brokers.

    …

    Based on the data sets Atlas acquired — many of which included older MAID records — they estimate they could locate roughly 80 percent of Android-based devices, and about 25 percent of Apple phones. Google refers to its MAID as the “Android Advertising ID,” (AAID) while Apple calls it the “Identifier for Advertisers” (IDFA).

    That’s a huge gap between iOS and Android. A few years ago, Apple started requiring apps to show an “Allow” or “Ask App Not to Track” dialog box if they wanted to collect a device’s IDFA. On Android, you still have to dig through settings to disable ad ID tracking.

    Krebs suggests helping friends and family disable ad ID tracking, and not just for altruistic reasons:

    Because while your device may not be directly trackable via advertising data, making sure they’re opted out of said tracking also can reduce the likelihood that you are trackable simply by being physically close to those who are.

  • 5 questions to ask yourself before buying a streaming bundle (TechHive)

    Read the full column →

  • How to surface micro-blogging?

    Now that I’ve successfully (I hope) set up to cross-post from this blog to social media, the unresolved question is how to surface short social-style posts, if at all.

    As it stands, I can write a short note on here with no headline, and it’ll go out to Mastodon, Bluesky, LinkedIn, and Threads.

    But it’ll also show up on this blog’s homepage, which could look weird in some cases. (Then again, as I look through my Mastodon feed, a lot of those short posts would probably be fine on a blog.)

    The Indieweb WordPress plug-in does offer an “IndieBlocks” extension, which among other things allows you to create a separate “Notes” post type that you can optionally hide from your home page and/or main feed. But for now I’m just going to roll with putting everything on the blog.

    (Another thing I’m still pondering is how best to surface published work elsewhere—programmatically or with bespoke posts. But that’s a topic for another day.)

    (And yes this is one final final test to see if links back to this blog are being handled properly in cross-posting.)

    ,

  • Update: POSSE success!

    After a little more tinkering, I take back what I wrote earlier. The dream of posting on this blog and syndicating out to social networks is alive!

    Here’s the basic flow:

    1. I write a post here on my WordPress blog.
    2. Items from this blog’s RSS feed are added into micro.blog.
    3. micro.blog in turn syndicates new posts to Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads, with a fairly simple setup via the site’s “Sources” tab.

    One thing that tripped me up is that micro.blog has two options for importing content from an external RSS feed, one called “Add posts to Micro.blog timeline” and another called “Import posts to blog: yourusername.micro.blog.”

    The difference between these options is not explained at all on the setup page, and micro.blog’s documentation does not explain it particularly well either. (In fact, the difference between yourname.micro.blog and micro.blog/yourname is not clear to me.)

    Initially, I tried the “Add posts” setting, but it didn’t seem to syndicate things properly.

    That led me to try the “Import posts” setting instead. That appeared to work, prompting me to write this success post. But then I noticed another problem: The links were leading back to micro.blog, not this website.

    What I realized is that I needed to use the “Add posts” setting, but with a JSON feed instead of standard RSS. After installing a “JSON Feed” plugin, and adding “/json” to the end of my standard RSS link, everything syndicated as expected.

    Bonus: My earlier experiments with Bridgy were not entirely in vain, as replies/likes to these posts on Mastodon or Bluesky will be mirrored back here as comments/reactions. Neat!

    This post has been updated to reflect additional tinkering.

  • Post Title

    Last test for the night. I have gained immense blogging powers. You cannot stop me from posting!

  • Post Title

    one more quick test

  • Update: POSSE success!

    After a little more tinkering, I take back what I wrote earlier. The dream of posting on this blog and syndicating out to social networks is alive!

    Here’s the basic flow:

    1. I write a post here on my WordPress blog.
    2. Items from this blog’s RSS feed are imported into micro.blog.
    3. micro.blog in turn syndicates new posts to Mastodon, Bluesky, and Threads, with a fairly simple setup via the site’s “Sources” tab.

    One thing that tripped me up is that micro.blog has two options for importing content from an external RSS feed, one called “Add posts to Micro.blog timeline” and another called “Import posts to blog: yourusername.micro.blog.”

    The difference between these options is not explained at all on the setup page, and micro.blog’s documentation does not explain it particularly well either. (In fact, the difference between yourname.micro.blog and micro.blog/yourname is not clear to me.)

    Anyway, the appropriate setting in my case was “Import posts to blog: yourname.micro.blog,” with the caveat that it imported a whole bunch of recent WordPress posts upon initial setup. Anyone looking to set up something similar would be wise to disable cross-posting on social media sites until that initial import is complete. At that point you can hook up your social networks and cross-post only new posts going forward.

    This post constitutes one more test, I suppose. If all goes to plan, it will appear on Mastodon, BlueSky, and Threads as an excerpt and link to this site.

    Bonus: My earlier experiments with Bridgy were not entirely in vain, as replies/likes to these posts on Mastodon or Bluesky will be mirrored back here as comments/reactions. Neat!

  • My POSSE is failing me

    Molly White on POSSE:

    Short for Post (on) Own Site Syndicate Elsewhere, it’s not a protocol or even a piece of software, but rather a philosophy. Rather than publishing a post onto someone else’s servers on Twitter or Mastodon or Bluesky or Threads or whichever microblogging service will inevitably come along next, the posts are published locally to a service you control.d At that point, the rest is simple (if not easy): plugging in whichever social media sites you desire, and syndicating the posts through them either by copying the post there directly, or publishing a snippet with a link back to the original source.

    Love the idea, but I’ve been tearing my hair out trying to make it work.

    Here is what I want:

    1. I post here, on my blog.
    2. If the post is short and has no title, it is posted on social networks as text/images only.
    3. If the post is longer, it is posted on social networks with a link back here.

    Here is what I’ve tried:

    • Various cross-posting plug-ins for WordPress. Failed because they don’t meet criteria #2.
    • Brid.gy. Failed for inscrutable technical reasons, plus it only syndicates to Mastodon and Bluesky. (Though it seems to reflect comments/likes from those networks back here, which is nice.)
    • Micro.blog. I am fine paying $5/mo for this if it works. So far it succeeds on syndicating to socials, but I have to post on micro.blog, not here. I’m not sure if I can post here, syndicate to micro.blog, and have that post syndicate to socials. I tried a WordPress plugin that syncs micro.blog’s RSS feed back here, but it creates the headline “Post Title” for title-free posts, which is not ideal.

    The #IndieWeb movement is a great idea in theory but it shouldn’t be nearly this hard for someone who is not a programmer but fairly tech savvy.

    If anyone has ideas on how to make this work, please share them.

  • Post Title

    If this is set up the way I think it is, this post will appear in my micro.blog and then syndicate out to Mastodon. Fingers crossed!

  • Post Title

    Doing another cross-post test

  • A tech product I want that does not exist (I think):

    A smartwatch with standalone calling/messaging that doubles as a mobile hotspot.

    This effectively replaces the phone as a central connectivity hub, so you can leave it at home put a Boox Palma or retro gaming portable in your pocket instead. Or just throw an iPad in your bag and otherwise keep screen time to a minimum. Or switch phones at will without switching SIM cards.

    I think this is what the Pebble Core wanted to be, but it never shipped.

  • I’m a paper note guy now (Advisorator)

    Usually I type my initial thoughts for these columns on a computer, but this week I wrote them in a paper notebook instead.

    Read more ›

  • Google TV Streamer review: Phoning it in (TechHive)

    Read the full column →

  • Every NBA streaming option, new Fire TV Stick (Cord Cutter Weekly)

    Your options for watching local NBA games this year can vary drastically based on where you live.

    Read more ›

    The post Every NBA streaming option, new Fire TV Stick appeared first on Cord Cutter Weekly.

  • Last test for now. If all goes to plan, this post should also appear on my Mastodon and BlueSky accounts.

  • Why I pay for Bitwarden even though it’s the best free password manager (PCWorld)

     

    When I first started managing my passwords with Bitwarden a few years ago, I had no intention of ever paying for it. Read the full column →