Dave Winer

Sun, 16 Aug 2026 17:41:19 GMT

Seems pretty naive in hindsight. :-)

Sat, 15 Aug 2026 17:27:46 GMT

This is the post it came from.

http://scripting.com/stories/2008/09/16/theWholeWorldIsWatching.html

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 13:45:43 GMT

"There are, of course, differences between Micro.blog and rss.chat, but the intention behind both is very similar, isn't it?"

This app is holding the place for a protocol I want to be widely supported. It's also documented and there's even a validator for it. I want it to be easy to hook up other apps to the network this defines. And all the source code is released under the MIT license.

It's not my place to say what micro.blog is -- but the other day I called it: "the swiss army knife of interop in the web of the 2020's." And in that it is unique and imho irreplaceable.

I'm trying to create a new kind of network for discourse on the web.

Mon, 10 Aug 2026 00:44:14 GMT

The Agency was quite good.

https://www.metacritic.com/tv/the-agency-2024/

As often is the case..

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 16:07:05 GMT

This is a test post.

It has a title so it should be routed to the place where standard.site says they should go.

And I will be able to read them in this place.

Where I must imagine it behaves something like a feed reader.

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:56:31 GMT

Postscript. For the post that was to be routed to standard.site (whatever that means) I can find no evidence that something was sent somewhere.

The next test post

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:54:49 GMT

The first one worked.

It was routed through micro.blog. Basically everything I post to demo.rss.chat will go to my main account on Bluesky.Unless it has a title or is longer than 300 chars. Here's what we get using various Markdown features.

A list of five countries.

Portugal
Tanzania
Panama
Canada
Vietnam

Obviously there's bold, italic and a link. The Big Three. Okay that's a big, almost 500 chars, and that's enough for a nice little test.

Sat, 08 Aug 2026 14:42:29 GMT

This is a test.

This is a short less-than 300 char post, that is being routed to Bluesky via micro.blog.

Because it's short it it won't have to be upgraded to standard.site class, it can go through the analog of coach (the current limits of Bluesky).

Okay that's about it. Let's see if this mofo works.

WebSub support for RSS.chat

Wed, 05 Aug 2026 19:22:49 GMT

Previously we were only able to notify via rssCloud.

Now we also support WebSub because there are also a fair number of feed readers that only use WebSub.

We're using Andrew Shell's rsscloud.io as our WebSub hub, as we have for a long time with rssCloud.

Andrew please help us figure out if this is working correctly.

The source is in the repo, along with a worknote.

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 16:20:17 GMT

Just made a small change in the way we prepare feeds, and I have to post something to cause the feeds to rebuild.

Sun, 02 Aug 2026 15:53:20 GMT

Hi Robert, I had Claude tell me that you're the generous developer who wrote us that thoughtful report last night about the security issue.

FIrst, there are no plans for the /localnewuser function, we put it in because we watched some users struggle through installing the server because they had to set up the email server connection before they could log onto the site themselves. We could also see it as a way for a sysop to set up accounts for users. No plans to do anything more with it.

We tried out a bunch of ideas here to integrate news with what rss.chat does, the best one imho was a blogroll, like the one you see on scripting.com, in the left column. That's the way I'd go. But if posts from Bluesky show in the timeline then the discussions are going to be like discussions on Bluesky. And we already have Bluesky for that. :-)

What I really want is an RSS-to-Standard.site bridge, both ways. That will give an outlet to leaflet to the whole web, not just the ones who study AT Proto.

And again thanks for the report. It was basically perfect. ;-)

Security issue

Sat, 01 Aug 2026 22:50:20 GMT

A user contacted us about a potential security issue in the RSS.chat server. We responded quickly and with v0.6.11 the issue is removed. If you're running rssnetwork.js on a publicly visible server, please install the new version asap.

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 20:51:24 GMT

You're absolutely right. With WordPress you can go from rss.chat to mastodon.

New features today

Fri, 31 Jul 2026 14:46:23 GMT

A validator and a way to add menus to the RSS.chat menubar, if you're running your own instance.

Links on today's Scripting home page.

No spam, personal stuff, etc

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 22:37:20 GMT

I like this site, I want to keep it open, and as long as moderation is a rare thing, ie people behave like adults and professionals, we'll be fine. But if the moderation gets to be too much, it'll become read only.

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 22:09:24 GMT

This looks spammy.

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 12:14:16 GMT

1. That's a new account, and a new feed.

2. We were planning ahead, leaving space for an enclosure. We don't have a UI for that yet.

3. Yes, use OPML, create a list of servers. That's what software that wants to work with federations will require as input.

Wed, 29 Jul 2026 01:26:02 GMT

Did this show up on the other side?

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 17:48:11 GMT

great to see you here matthias. wow.

sent an email. definitely want to chat.

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 14:38:13 GMT

it would be interesting to hook up the output of rss.chat to the input of Jekyll using templates or themes or whatever they call them in the Jekyll.

Mon, 27 Jul 2026 01:34:54 GMT

I’ll have Claude look into this tomorrow. It will explain to me what’s going on and we may change something.

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 22:29:41 GMT

Did it work as you expected it would?

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 20:00:42 GMT

As you put it "html fragments" not full html pages.

It's just a question of whether you prefer writing in the wizzy editor (the default) or the markdown editor. Since you're coming at it from a script, not sure exactly how it would work. I'm away from home right now and can't look it up. There are docs for the calls now, you could check that out.

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 15:45:51 GMT

New docs for the API that connects RSS.chat to the server.

https://github.com/scripting/rss.chat/blob/main/client/docs/apijs.md

Sun, 26 Jul 2026 08:49:56 GMT

We’ll look into it, first thing I’d do is ask Claude what’s up. You could do that too. My theory is that it’s up to the system you copied it from to have a pref that protects this info.

Sat, 25 Jul 2026 19:24:28 GMT

Welcome Nakedjen. We've been waiting for you.

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 22:22:40 GMT

invite them to come here and join the conversation.

i'm sure they'll want to do some part of this.

we're on the web, we should get to know each other and work together. ;-)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:40:49 GMT

At least we've started building a new nest on the web outside the silos.

Just make sure they are challenged when they say their silo is the web. ;-)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 20:39:56 GMT

Is there public info about your feed reader, Elixir? I tried doing a search and think I saw mention of it, or it could have been something else.

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:05:53 GMT

When you click on New Post it starts a new post.

There is a command that does what you want, in the Menu at the top of the page, Focus on Editor. Probably not a great name, and not something people will know to look for, but now you know to look for it when you accidentally or intentionally click outside the edit box.

Saved does work, if you reload the page while editing, the text will still be there.

Worknotes RSS feed

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 18:02:57 GMT

Worknotes, updates on new features and fixes in RSS.chat, are now a feed.

https://news.rss.chat/worknotes/rss.xml

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 15:01:38 GMT

we will get around to that, i promise. ;-)

Fri, 24 Jul 2026 07:42:31 GMT

The only other place at this time is the rss.chat repo.

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 21:51:15 GMT

i totally miss that place. dan dan noodles. we were blessed.

How to do real html linking

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 17:16:33 GMT

Btw you can make official html links without pasting full urls.

Put the url on the clipboard, select some text like this, paste the link. It’ll figure it out.

I call this cute paste, copied from slack and others.

You can also use the link icon above the text box.

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:57:27 GMT

Amyloooo so nice to see you here! :-)

In 2005 we did a duet of the Green Acres theme song, and I put it out through my podcast network, and it appeared in a piece I wrote entitled Musical podcasts of 2005, twelve years after the fact.

Security fix

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:56:59 GMT

We got a report of a security issue which we quickly addressed and fixed.

Instructions on how to update your server.

This server has been updated as has rss.chat.

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 14:03:05 GMT

Hello world. I'm testing to make sure that the server is working after another upgrade.

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:25:03 GMT

The basic UI design for the editor is the same, as you’ve noted, but the UI is all new code.

We reuse basic parts, esp server side where we built on the same foundations as we use in all my recent products, Drummer, FeedLand.

But this is a very new way of developing, I have a great development partner — Claude Code, which has made it possible to try out lots of options, and extensive iteration, far more than a human developer could do.

Thu, 23 Jul 2026 11:19:58 GMT

Looks good!

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:23:31 GMT

We have images.

Limit of 2MB per.

Works like Slack or GitHub.

Put the image on the clipboard, create a post, paste.

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 21:22:11 GMT

This is a test of the emergency RSS system.

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 19:05:08 GMT

You got it. Groups of writers. As small as one.

But, in a while it won't matter if they're on the same instance.

You could form a virtual group, using people on different servers, maybe not even running my software.

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 14:16:20 GMT

Manton says this works now! ;-)

Wed, 22 Jul 2026 12:57:20 GMT

This is a test. We just gave this server the same upgrade rss.chat got last night.

But this time there are some glitches.

Let's see if this post appears.

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 20:59:12 GMT

We just did an upgrade on both servers, first rss.chat and now demo.rss.chat.

There's a new feature coming that's pretty exciting, at least for anyone wanting to set up their own instance. The install instructions are about to get much shorter. ;-)

If it all works, that is! :-)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 19:51:24 GMT

I posted a reply to your report, i understand the message, but i don't understand why. Hopefully someone will give us a response soon. We have to get this working with micro.blog. Pretty sure we will. ;-)

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 15:32:02 GMT

It would be nice to see the other side, the post you authored here that's on micro.blog.

Tue, 21 Jul 2026 08:54:49 GMT

How easy feeds make things. 🙌

Mon, 20 Jul 2026 02:13:33 GMT

Did you paste in a Claude essay, if so don’t do that.

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 20:31:53 GMT

We're starting to build a distributed social network using only web standards.

Key values: All parts are replaceable and Small pieces loosely joined, a term I stole from David Weinberger.

If I were to produce an all-inclusive fully developed centralized product, it wouldn't yield the result I'm trying to spin up, to bootstrap, which is how I work.

Podcasting, RSS, blogs -- all bootstraps like this. If you looked at my blog in 1994 and tried to extrapolate Twitter, you wouldn't get there, but each step is there, it should be so well understood at this point that I could simply say "Howard I'm doing a bootstrap."

So the part I'm working on right now is the group writing app. I've talked about this for years, I want an app for my friends and people I work with. But I don't think you have to sacrifice any of the global connections, that's what RSS is good at and we know how to build those systems.

There's a whole other side to my software kit, FeedLand, which can do the aggregation and can be connected to RSS.chat and all apps that are filling the same niche. And Feedly and NetNewswire, if they want, can play the same role.

That's why when you come here you only see 1/3 of the picture.

I had to open it up now because I want to get started on the community.

If this explanation helps, tell me -- and I'll ask Claude to write this up with all the ideas behind it. We've been careful to discuss every aspect of the product as it was developed.

But think of this software, rss.chat as web writing circa 2026 if we hadn't wasted most of the 20 years after Twitter.

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:01:34 GMT

What feed are you following?

If you're following the everyone feed, you will get my updates and Claude's, but you'll get all the others too. Nothing wrong with that, at all.

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 17:00:12 GMT

I wonder if it makes sense to try to implement standard.site in the context of rss.chat?

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 14:13:10 GMT

Heads up -- I'm posting updates about the software that apply here too, over on rss.chat.

You can stay tuned in with this flow via my feed. You might also want to subscribe to claude, its posts are about changes to the software too.

https://rss.chat/users/dave/rss.xml

https://rss.chat/users/claude/rss.xml

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 11:28:29 GMT

I’ll delete your account for you.

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 23:51:15 GMT

Also setting up demo.rss.chat was a good thing to do, but if it requires moderation, that'll be the point at which I consider asking people to run their own services. We are working dilligently to make running an instance easier and easier.

Think about blogging, RSS and podcasting -- we managed to get the first apps out in each of the categories, and we enjoyed some success, but what was really successful was seeding the market. This time, at my advanced age, I'm hoping to do another seeding. The web has done so much good for us, I want to help it get back on its feet, if I can. Hoping to interest other people in doing the same.

BTW, I already have a fine feed reader -- FeedLand. We're going to make a fresh pass over that, and make sure it's all well hooked up to RSS.chat, both ways. Any feed readers software can follow what we do there. I think the most important thing will be dynamic subscriptions, what we have called reading lists in the past, basically allow people to subscribe to subscription lists.

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 23:46:05 GMT

John great to see you here. ;-)

The goal is to seed a new way of creating social networks, entirely on the web, with no business model other than I'd like to see the web grow based on the work of independent developers.

I don't think there's a way to get there by going through captive platforms.

Anyway, happy to answer any questions, while you have been following me, I've been following you back -- always interested in what you see, and what questions you have. ;-)

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 18:14:36 GMT

This works.

https://demo.rss.chat/feed?screenname=dave&format=json

Wrote it up on rss.chat.

Sat, 18 Jul 2026 13:29:46 GMT

you can always see it in hierarchic order by clicking on the wedge next to the comment icon.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 19:54:01 GMT

Checking out a change in the feed. Testing something new.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 17:02:14 GMT

Ooops, made a mistake -- should work now. ;-)

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:31:59 GMT

New rss.chat feature: It now supports automatic feed discovery, so you can subscribe to any html page on the site in a compatible feed reader. I tested it in FeedLand and NetNewsWire and it works.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 14:30:44 GMT

It was very much a Buddhist class. The teacher was a middle-aged man from Iowa, very diminutive in stature but the power to clear things up, amazing. Fair to say that changed my life and feelings about myself, and makes me more of a spectator in my movie than being the main character.

Fri, 17 Jul 2026 10:51:29 GMT

John, nice to see you here! 👍

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 16:11:21 GMT

It turned out that way, didn't it. ;-)

Funny thing is at the time Microsoft had a product that was meant to compete with Apple's iPod, called Zune, and it wasn't getting in there. I went there and proposed we turn it into a podcasting platform. They never responded.

Lots of examples of things like that. They needed to pivot, turn the corner, realize there was another market they could get at that Apple couldn't because Apple viewed audio as valuable and podcasting says "one listen and throw it out." There really was a niche there back then. Now, it would never go over, because the installed base.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:34:00 GMT

Also that's something micro.blog does really well.

I support what Manton has done there.

We have to work together to build the web, we can't do it by all trying to work with the BigCo's. They have other (understandable) motives.

Thu, 16 Jul 2026 14:32:16 GMT

We thought about doing that and decided not to.

Just wrote a post about that on scripting.

Don't think of this as a product Rob. Think about features you want in other people's products. Think of this as a source of feeds, not a destination for them.

I have a whole other product for that called FeedLand, btw. ;-)

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:25:08 GMT

Heh. It's true.

Here's the emancipation proclamation.

https://textcasting.org

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 19:24:20 GMT

Frank, see the wedge next to the comment icon?

If you flick that down, you see the responses to the post.

If they have responses, you can flick them too.

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 15:36:50 GMT

We just simplified the way feeds are stored.

The server doesn't have to create a space on S3, we handle it all in our server.

This was the biggest stumbling block in setting up demo.rss.chat -- and I knew what I was doing.

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:04:32 GMT

Not as-is, if they add a couple of features to their RSS feeds, and treat comments as blog posts with their own permalinks, then yes, it can.

Wed, 15 Jul 2026 13:03:07 GMT

I took a class in dehypnotherapy a long time ago, and there was a meditation exercise where the class leader told us to think about someone who hurt you as a kid. My father, who drank a lot, was who I thought of. Now respond to what they did to hurt you as part of the meditation.

So while I was breathing I visualized this -- I took a plate of spaghetti and mushed it around on his face. Then I put him in the tiny basement bathroom we had in our house, closed the door and said "now I want you to think about this young man!" That's when the fantasy ended.

By the end of the workshop we would address the hurtful adult as an adult would -- "I love David very much," I would say to my father, "and I want you to be nice to him."

The point being first find your inner adult and eventually respond like a responsible loving adult that my father should have been.

Once I learned that technique, I don't have much trouble with letting bad behavior stop me from being true to myself.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:59:19 GMT

I love comments like this. We worked really hard to make this simple, and there are lots of nice little touches in the UI. Keep coming back, we're moving really fast, a little slower now that there are users.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:47:48 GMT

Naveen it goes the other way, we are not a feed reader, we generate feeds.

This is a writing surface.

But everything goes out via RSS and OPML (still working out some glitchiness there).

From there all kinds of readers can be created that take advantage the structure of posts here.

Every reply to a post is a full peer of the thing it's replying to. When people (devs) see how that works, they'll get 100 ideas for new products. If they don't I will keep going until they do.

We had to do that with podcasting, no one believed it could do what it did. Eventually they did and thus we got a market for podcast clients.

Think of it as a recording studio for text.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:44:28 GMT

We speak the same language. I want all the social networks to support the same text that the web specifies. I wrote a spec for that called textcasting. We support almost everything it specifies (no enclosures, yet).

https://textcasting.org/

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 21:40:57 GMT

You don't find people to follow here. We're just getting started. You do not have to set up an instance. Give a few more months of a bootstrap before all that stuff exists, and the hope is I won't have to provide it. I'll keep building until other developers see that they could be part of this too. Also I don't think all social networks have to behave like Twitter. I feel very strongly about that. They did a lot of things that hurt the web. I want to undo the damage finally get out of the grip of the billionaires.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:53:58 GMT

WordLand is designed to work with WordPress. This is a similar idea but without WordPress, entirely based on feeds and APIs.

I didn't see a path for WordLand to be a success, but it's not going anywhere people can use it, and if the WordPress community discovers it and starts using it, then it might be worth connecting up to this system.

I would actually prefer at this point that WordPress hook up to this network. I expect they will do so, because there are no hurdles in the way, they don't have character limits, and support all the text features of the web. Other services which do limit what people can type will have to relax their limits before it makes sense to connect here.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:49:17 GMT

I take it back -- we do have user docs.

https://github.com/scripting/rss.chat/blob/main/client/docs/basics.md

Still quite a ways to go before they are presentable. ;-)

I started reading it and realized the URLs it supplies are not for this site.

But you can find all the feeds in the Menu at the top of the screen.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:46:24 GMT

Heh you beat me to it. ;-)

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:46:07 GMT

You have to switch into markdown mode, see the M with the downarrow icon. Then your text will be interpreted as Markdown.

Suggest you select all, copy, delete, switch to markdown mode, paste and switch back to wizzy mode.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:39:42 GMT

Howard we haven't done the docs yet. We're mainly focused now on supporting developers, this is an open source project to seed a new kind of social network, based entirely on open formats and protocols that are widely used on the web. Think of this as playing the role that MacWrite played in bootstrapping software development on the Mac. People needed something to play with to get an idea of how to copy it.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 15:43:12 GMT

Welcome to the demo site for rss.chat.

Anyone can create an account here, and there is no moderation, but we will block anyone who creates a stink. For a clear idea of what that is, check out the comment guidelines.

https://this.how/commentGuidelines/#nafs

I'll be checking in here periodically to see what's up.

Tue, 14 Jul 2026 11:32:33 GMT

Hello Frank. Nice to see you here.

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 22:33:13 GMT

Okay we seem to have gotten all the weirdness out of the new server. Heh we'll see about that.

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:49:35 GMT

Now I can't edit a post that I wrote?

Something funky is going on here.

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 20:15:04 GMT

I made a mistake when initially setting up this site, didn't specify where the S3 files would be written and how they would be accessed. By posting this I'm causing the feeds to be built again.

Forgot to restart the server. ;-)

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 16:27:47 GMT

Just checking to see if this is ok.

Welcome to demo.rss.chat

Mon, 13 Jul 2026 15:32:13 GMT

It was time to test the instructions for creating a new server, and I worked with my buddy Claude to get everything nice and neat. When it came time to play, I forgot to launch the freaking app. But everything else was just fine, and here I am grinning from ear to ear with my new rss.chat server.

I'm leaving this one open, no whitelist, so anyone who wants to kick the tires, can do so. Not sure how long this will be up. I sure don't want to get into moderation, and if things spin out, I will shut it down. And that's one of the advantages of a fractional horsepower social network, if we're all friends, the need for moderation can go way down (depends I guess on who your friends are). Also a disclaimer, I may shut this down if everything is cool.