I visited your site using Firefox on desktop on an IPS 1920x1080 monitor. I like the overall aesthetic and primary font choice. Site is easy to navigate and posts are well-presented and easy to read. A few minor suggestions:
- The date, visitor count, and post snippet text on the homepage should be higher contrast.
- Write descriptions/choosing excerpts home page snippets instead of just using the start of the article.
- The email entry box on the home page is too wide. I think it would look better if it was shorter and centered or moved into the head menu.
- I would reduce the spacing after headers and add small left and right margins in articles.
- I personally recommend enabling RSS/ATOM feeds, but I assume you thought about that already.
- I would look into adding a search box as you write more posts.
(I am the author of the article) You are correct that he wasn't clean early in his career. He admitted to first using a banned substance in 1993, which was the year he won the World Championship, and I recall the 2012 investigation had testimony of his using drugs on Motorola in 1994. I also don't think there's any convincing evidence he actually lost much weight in 98 when he had his first high GT finish at the Vuelta. There are probably many possible reasons for how he transformed into a grand tour contender in 1998 -- from "dialing it in" to completely changing the strategy, but I haven't seen any agreed upon theory.
I didn't think of projectors because I don't have a good set-up for it, but that's another great option along side dumb TVs, TVs that work without internet, and monitors/digital signage. Starting with a mini PC or something similar unlocks plenty of good options for avoiding all of the smart TV issues.
I do a version of this approach. I have a 2018 model TCL TV that I do not give access to the internet (this one works without any issue, but I don't know if that is true of newer models). My TV is right next to my desktop computer, but in order to reduce noise and power, I bought a cheap Beelink mini PC and set it up with Fedora-GNOME and Kodi. Works very well for simple purposes and can easily handle light games. There are plenty of other (possibly better) solutions to this effect such as SBCs, spare laptops, or more capable mini PCs to handle some newer games. I would prefer using a computer instead of the Smart TV OS even without all of the concerns listed in the original post.
I would also humbly recommend my own writing project, link in my profile if you're interested
I also recommend looking at Morss.it (https://morss.it/) if there is a site you want to subscribe to without a feed. It generally works very well (RSS Bridge and RSS Hub serve the same purpose if you want to self-host).
It is a static site feed aggregator primarily designed to go with GitHub Pages. I host one to aggregate my own writing on different sites. I think it may fit your use case because your Osmosfeed site itself outputs a single Atom feed. So, for example, if I have an Osmosfeed site that aggregates feeds 1, 2, and 3, the Osmosfeed site has a single feed which will include the three individual feeds. Mine has about 10-12 feeds and it has worked perfectly thus far with no issues. Not sure if it would have problems at higher numbers.
I started NLJ back in 2020. It is built with WordPress (hosted on Hetzner VPS and managed with Cloudron). I have published more than 800 articles and 350 short-form posts (almost all posts by me, but my friend has published 30something articles). I write about whatever interests me (I tell myself this means there is something for everyone). Common topics include, but are not limited to, tech (digital ownership, open source software, feeds, and my learning Linux), history (usually American or Roman), old books and poems, anime, visual novels (mainly English translations of freeware NScripter/KiriKiri novels), photos from my walks, fictional dialogues, and occasional commentary about life in NYC.
I am testing out Memos (https://github.com/usememos/memos) for short-form notes and microblog-style posts, but very much a side project next to NLJ. Neat little tool.
I switched from Manjaro to EndeavourOS last year after using Manjaro for two (Manjaro was my first experience with Linux as a daily driver) and agree with this fully. I much prefer using Arch's regular repositories to Manjaro's. But having used Manjaro as my first distribution (I shouldn't have been using an Arch-based distro, but that aside), I don't think EndeavourOS is a one-to-one normie replacement in all respects. While I don't need or want Manjaro's GUI tools now, Pamac and its GUI kernel/driver tools helped me make the adjustment from having only used Windows to Linux. I am sure I could have managed on EndeavourOS, but it would have been more difficult at the time.
Very good article -- I am having the exact same issues (I run a lightweight writing site with original writing and no ads). One thing that caught my attention is the timing. Bing blacklisted my domain from web search results on January 14 after I had no issue with them for 2.5 years (interestingly, I wasn't fully blacklisted for image results but that doesn't help me much). The rest of your article, from lack of support and information to Bing Webmaster only identifying minor SEO issues has been my experience. My site has no indexing issues with Google, Yandex, Brave, or Mojeek... so whatever it is is Bing-specific. I agree with your point on DDG too. I also had more DDG traffic than Bing traffic, and losing a smaller number of Ecosia, Qwant, and Yahoo referrals is also unfortunate. Many people do not realize how many of the alternative search tools rely on Bing's index.
Whatever is causing it -- I hope it is fixed soon.
Hubzilla allows you to subscribe to feeds as "channels," but it doesn't provide a great feed reader experience from my limited use. I have only made accounts with Mastodon, Pixelfed, and Hubzilla, so entirely possible that some of the others do interesting things with feed subscriptions/reading.
This is a great idea. Marginalia Search is already very useful for finding interesting niche/older articles and posts on many subjects (I have used it regularly to find interesting things to write about on my website). Being able to find related sites to interesting sites that pop up on Marginalia will be a great feature. Thank you for all the hard work you do on the project.
I didn't expect it to reach page one when I shared it, but great to see (note: I only shared it, not the author). I had some more difficulty with Lycoris Recoil's flaws (aptly noted in the post) than the post did, but the article made me appreciate how much the team had to do to make a successful and entertaining series. I'd be curious to see what they could do with more time to put a season together, either in a second season of Lycoris Recoil or on a different project.
I'll add for anyone reading this post that this kind of long-form anime production content is characteristic of Sakuga Blog. It is a site worth following if you have any interest in anime or more broadly in media production.
Article author response: I had a feeling as soon as I clicked onto the homepage that something was off. To their credit, the link to the privacy policy is on the homepage. Counter-point, the link text is "Lukol Protects Your Privacy."
- The date, visitor count, and post snippet text on the homepage should be higher contrast.
- Write descriptions/choosing excerpts home page snippets instead of just using the start of the article.
- The email entry box on the home page is too wide. I think it would look better if it was shorter and centered or moved into the head menu.
- I would reduce the spacing after headers and add small left and right margins in articles.
- I personally recommend enabling RSS/ATOM feeds, but I assume you thought about that already.
- I would look into adding a search box as you write more posts.