Internet

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How to subscribe to a YouTube channel via RSS

It turns out YouTube has a hidden feature that allows one to subscribe to a channel via RSS. I can understand why it has to be hidden — it's too easy a way for a user to avoid ever seeing YouTube’s algorithmic feed. However, it hasn't completely gone away (as, e.g., a way to export subscriptions has), so let’s make use of it.

Give your RSS reader this link:

youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=CHANNEL_ID

where CHANNEL_ID is a part of the URL of the channel right after /channel/. For example, the link to the RSS feed of Tom Scott’s channel — the first one of those I watch — https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCBa659QWEk1AI4Tg--mrJ2A, and the ID is UCBa659QWEk1AI4Tg--mrJ2A.

Sometimes if you come to a channel you will see something completely readable in the address bar instead. Then, to get an ID, you need to click a video and then go back to channel following the link above its description.

Consume content online via RSS — it's far more pleasant than to do so via algorithmic feeds.

What's the fun of Instagram Stories?

Maybe I'm an old lamer but I really don't see. What's so cool in Instagram Stories?

  1. I really don't see why post a photo knowing it's to disappear in 24 hours by default. It just doesn't make sense! You post photos including to be able to look them through whenever after some time. If your photos are not worth living more than a day, why post it?
  2. OK, you can put some text onto it making it more like an announcement. “On next Sat I'll tell the story of Moscow metromarathon in this certain place. Come listen. See ya”. Two days before — another one, to keep people remembering it because they read five such announcements a day on a normal day when it's not the end of the world and no one can afford taking time to give a lecture. OK. But why post photo, not just text?

More of what I don't see →

Use technologies, not services

There's a huge problem about almost every task or notes manager I've ever seen—the most important one, the root of all other ones like being slow, designed badly, or hard to get used to.

They can do too many things.

Say, I need a note-keeping app. The basic set of things I want to do is: open the app, type in some text, hit OK, have my text saved, close the app. I want to note something else, I repeat. Then I open it on another device, read, if unneeded, delete. That's it. Nothing more.

But no! Developers have done everything to make it highly likely that I'd be doing keeping notes but not what I need to keep notes for. I can tag my notes. I can sort them by creating date, date last edited or, certainly, alphabetically. I can make lists out of notes and notebooks out of lists. I can shove images, audio or, for some reason, embed a video from YouTube (not just include a link). I can write my notes in fifteen different fonts or format them with Markdown (or both). I can publish them with a single tap, protect with a passcode or send to a friend who use the app as well. Or, if my friend doesn't know (yet) about how great it is and how much use he can make of it, I can generate a link giving him 10% discount for the first month of use. No doubt, I can do eggs with it, the only reason I can't is I haven't found the doing-eggs button yet.

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