Roastidio.us lets you leave comments on pretty much anything: blog posts, news articles, podcasts, as long as they are publicly accessible. However, where do you get those interesting links that you want to visit, and possibly roast? You can hunt down hundreds of websites, or you can see what is trending on social networks. The former will waste your time and the latter will blind your sights. There is another way: AirSS.
RSS: The hidden thread of the internet #
RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has been there for almost as long as the internet. A website can, and often do publish a machine-parsable list of updated items, so the reader equipped with the right tool can stay on top of things. It is very old technology, costs next to nothing to the publishers, and used to be popular before the emergence of social networks. Although RSS is not as popular as before, it is still here and everywhere; all you need is the right tool to find them.
Enter AirSS #
AirSS is the RSS aggregator that is designed to complement Roastidio.us. It is a front-end application written in Svelte and Javascript to let you hunt down the hidden RSS, poll them anonymously, and feed you the updates when you are ready to read. Of course, being the little brother of Roastidio.us, roasting is only one click away. There are a few things that set it apart from other RSS aggregators:
Open source and privacy first #
The source code of AirSS is published so you can rest assured that nothing is going to collect your info or reading habits, profile you, and target you. It has no backend of its own, leave no cookie.
Optional Airtable integration #
You can bring your own Airtable to it so it can store and retrieve data from the cloud. The free tier should be sufficient. Armed with your airtable, you can hop between all the different devices you own: phones, tablets, or computers and pick up where you left off. Please read this section on how to set it up.
Optional Roastidio.us integration #
Besides the roast button, AirSS can also optionally use Roastidio.us to load feeds, circumventing the CORS limitation of your browser. You don't have to do this; there is another, faster way, which is also more involved. The choice is up to you; make sure you read this section on the trade-offs.
It is a lifestyle #
Do you want to be the victim of propaganda, or do you want to stay true to yourself? There are many things you can do:
- Seek out original contents with the help of AirSS
- Roast and make yourself heard with the help of Roastidio.us
- Publish your original contents with RSS so other people can find you
- Claim your webspace on Roastidio.us, to take in roasts
It is a lot of work; the tools can only help you so much.