←back to thread

Mozilla to shut down Pocket and Fakespot

(support.mozilla.org)
1222 points phantomathkg | 2 comments | 22 May 25 16:30 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
Show context
randomor ◴[22 May 25 19:10 UTC] No.44065611[source]▶
Wow, after Instapaper went back to indie from Pinterest[1] and Omnivore closing last year this is no longer surprising. This is also proof that read-it-later app as a category is not sustainable as a venture / company backed service.

This is also a category of app that I believe could be better served by local-first native apps. As there is no reason why a server has to be requirement to enjoy the full service. Your computer is fully capable of interacting with these webpages directly....

On Apple ecosystem, there are few alternatives one can migrate to. I also created an app that target this category (and more) called DoubleMemory: https://doublememory.com that has a few different takes as well:

- no registration needed (icloud sync)

- no extension required (just double command + c)

- launches from menu bar as a launcher, in a stunning Pinterest-style waterfall grid

It's all free to use with no limits, as i'm still working on paid features. I'll work on a pocket importer for these who are interested in migrating.

^[1]: https://blog.instapaper.com/post/175953870856

replies(6): >>44065715 #>>44066095 #>>44067151 #>>44067888 #>>44068649 #>>44069945 #
al_borland ◴[22 May 25 19:52 UTC] No.44066095[source]▶
Apple also has a read later service built into Safari. It’s not the most feature rich, but it has existed for several years now.

I’d be curious on the stats of these services. Myself, I save a lot of things with good intentions and then never go back to actually read anything later. For a stand alone service, this is the worst. I send them data to store, then never do anything with it. I have to imagine this is quite common, considering the amount of information coming at people every day. It’s always more than I can handle, so it’s not like I ever run out and need to head to the saved articles.

I’m looking at using ChatGPT to help me process through all of it, just to make sure there wasn’t something I actually wanted.

A few weeks ago in the HN comments someone mentioned their philosophy on it was YAGRI… You Ain’t Gonna Read It. I may have made up that phrasing, playing of YAGNI, but that’s how I remember it. Basically, if you aren’t going to read it right now, you probably never will, so let it go.

replies(3): >>44066500 #>>44067325 #>>44067632 #
basisword ◴[22 May 25 21:33 UTC] No.44067325[source]▶
>> Apple also has a read later service built into Safari. It’s not the most feature rich, but it has existed for several years now.

I was a big Instapaper user until they added Reading List to Safari. It's just enough features, it's built into all my devices, and it's the thing that keeps me using Safari too (Chrome's reading list implementation sucks).

replies(1): >>44068026 #
al_borland ◴[22 May 25 22:53 UTC] No.44068026{3}[source]▶
The thing I don’t like about Apple’s implementation is the All list doesn’t show read/unread status. There is a list for unread, but not for read.

I just pulled mine up to go through it and if I had to guess I have about 5 read out of probably 250. Which 5 those are, no idea. I also find it very easy to accidentally click on an item, which marks it as read without any visual indication. I just have to know this, and then remember to right-click and mark unread.

I spent a little time this afternoon (maybe 10 minutes) looking at export options to get the data in a way I can go through it. It seems to be stored in a plist along with the bookmarks. plutil has an export option, but it won’t export to json (it throws an error), so I’m left with 150k lines of XML, which then converted to 31k lines of json. I’m now debating if I should continue down this road, or just plow through it in Safari. There are some things on GitHub, but I don’t want to run them without reviewing the code, and at that point, I’d rather write my own. Maybe I’ll use it an excuse to try out duckdb.

replies(1): >>44068668 #
1. randomor ◴[23 May 25 00:42 UTC] No.44068668{4}[source]▶
It's actually all saved in ~/Library/Safari/Bookmarks.plist as bookmarks. You can drop that into https://chatgpt.com/g/g-6811b049cbdc8191b91c6ed291a88e4f-dou... which is a custom GPT I created for DoubleMemory. And see if it works. I do have plans to automate this in the future, right now still trying to collect feature requests confirmation tho.
replies(1): >>44069503 #
2. al_borland ◴[23 May 25 03:07 UTC] No.44069503[source]▶
I appreciate it, but I don't like the idea of uploading my whole bookmark file. I ended up vibe coding something with ChatGPT. It also asked to upload it, but I vetoed that and made it work. Since it is a well known file, it had data to work with.

Turns out all my exports were a waste of time, as it made it overly complicated and hard to parse, so it took the plist, extracted the reading list, pulled out the values I wanted (extracted the domain to give me that, because siteName was missing on almost everything), and gave me some clean json and a csv.

It turns out I had over 450 items in there. I thought it was going to be half that. I would never have gotten through that in Safari. Hopefully this will make it easier to scan through and dismiss most of these, and maybe highlight the couple I might still want. I have articles dating back to 2016... yikes.