Hello Bryan,

In case you haven't seen it, an odd message popped up on my Feed page just now -- at the top of the page:
Deprecated: explode(): Passing null to parameter #2 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /var/pipedot/lib/tools/tools.php on line 2021

The rest of the Feed still works fine, it's a great feature--thanks as always.
- carguy

Yep, working all day.
One site I'd been following hadn't updated in a couple of years (and is now gone from the web). With your update it disappeared from my Feed page.

Ouch!!
Thanks for the complete explanation and good luck squashing that bug.

Off topic, not sure where the best place is for this Pipedot & Green Site question?

On my Pipedot Feed page I've had Slashdot for years, always worked fine, used it occasionally. It locked up about two weeks ago and hasn't offered any new stories since then.
https://slashdot.org/faq has some information on Feeds including RSS, which notes:
> Please don't request feeds more than once every 30 minutes.
Any chance that is the problem?
Or maybe the /. RSS feed is broken?

kazzie,
The "Notifications" button in PipeDot seems to be working, I received one (1) for your post above.
As well as SN (where I usually post as AC), I've kept a login here since the beginning because of the nice "Feed" page for RSS notifications.

SN did come back, but currently it looks like June 30 is the end. NCommander's post gives his side of the story.
Saw at least one post about a contact to Bryan (here, Pipedot) about picking up the pieces (and the community), but haven't seen any response or more details.

Thanks for fixing the Pipedot Feed -- for a couple of days it was space-challenged -- all the entrieswereruntogether.

Good point, the Soylent data base crash removed a lot of "evidence", however I still detect some signs of angst...
Perhaps a more interesting point just now is how well SN will operate without TMB. My guess is that it will keep on going, but perhaps without some of the tweaks the Buzzard had been making on a running basis (for better or worse).

He's just sleeping (with apologies to Monty Python). Personally, I hope he stays asleep (or at least out of the news...can't stand him).

Speaking of sleeping, maybe it's time for Pipedot to wake up? If you haven't been following, there seems to be a larger-than-normal amount of angst over on SoylentNews in recent weeks.

And...tonight nearly all the headers are back!! Thank you.
The header that is missing is vihart.com (Fun with Math videos) and her site seems to be down at present time.

The current trendy sign off seems to be--
Stay Safe!
-- carguy

Bryan,
Thanks for the update. As of a few minutes ago, all the headers disappeared from my Feed.. But using your link to XKCD atom feed, I was able to add that back (no header on that box either).
Good luck with the new Ubuntu!
Carguy

Hello,

I've enjoyed using your "Feed" page for years now. The other day, XKCD stopped updating, also the "XKCD" header above the list disappeared. Tried deleting that feed and using "+" to start over, but it's not working.
* There used to be a big pick list to the right of: "Use existing feed:" and that is currently empty.
* "Or add new feed:" didn't work when I tried https://xkcd.com/rss.xml

Maybe it's just a reboot or something easy?

Thanks!!

Thank you Bryan!
And thanks for the explanation too. Simpleminded comment--perhaps for weather you need to "overwrite", or write in a circular buffer of fixed size, rather than "append"? Same might apply for stock market prices, anyone that wants the history of a stock price has plenty of choices for that data.

I continue to enjoy your Feed page, but lately I've noticed that the feed from The Guardian (news) seems to have stalled -- the same items/links have been listed for a week or more. Clicking on the header of the "feed-box" gets me to the main Guardian page. Other Feeds like XKCD work fine.

Any idea what is going on? Has Guardian changed their RSS source?
Thanks again!

I continue to enjoy your Feed page, but lately I've noticed that the feed from The Guardian (news) seems to have stalled -- the same items/links have been listed for a week or more. Clicking on the header of the "feed-box" gets me to the main Guardian page. Other Feeds like XKCD work fine.

Any idea what is going on? Has Guardian changed their RSS source?
Thanks again!

I continue to enjoy your Feed page, but lately I've noticed that the feed from The Guardian (news) seems to have stalled -- the same items/links have been listed for a week or more. Clicking on the header of the "feed-box" gets me to the main Guardian page. Other Feeds like XKCD work fine.

Any idea what is going on? Has Guardian changed their RSS source?
Thanks again!

I also like your RSS / Feed view and use it constantly, thank you for keeping this available!

Had to stop and think for a minute, which is the "red site"...because I read SoylentNews in VT100 mode, green text on black background, very easy on my old eyes.
If you get in the mood for further updates here, some other color schemes/themes might be a worthwhile addition?

Haven't looked over here in some time, but I'm a very happy user of the Pipedot RSS page -- thank you for keeping it going.

On SoylentNews:
> ... Just HuffPo with user comments...
This seems a little harsh to me. I'm seeing plenty of tech articles there, but often they don't draw many comments (or only draw off-topic comments).
On the down side, there are a few high volume posters who take standard sides in "political" discussions. But the number of interesting AC posts are still fairly high.

We use the phone a lot for business and it's usually obvious when someone calls us on a cell/mobile phone -- the quality is obviously worse with clipped words and whole phrases often missing. VOIP is often similar. On the other hand, calls from other landlines are almost always good quality audio.

Sometimes we have to call out from our suburban location on a cell. We must be between towers or something, the quality is always terrible.

Yes, there are aftermarket ECUs and also ECUs for racing that could be adapted to run a street car. But in my state (NY), my car has to pass a state inspection every year that is partly done through the OBDII interface. The inspection station querys the engine computer to make sure that the emissions system is working correctly. When I looked at the two sites you mention I didn't see any mention of this capability (maybe I'm not looking in the right place)?

I'm under the impression (but don't have references) that the big difference is the blanking interval for a film projector. With digital projectors the "lamp" is on all the time and there is smearing as the image is rewritten for every frame. Any "object" that is moving quickly across the frame suffers with current digital schemes. In theory is should be possible to blank the "lamp" while the digital image is redrawn, but the reality is that the light sources are not bright enough to be pulsed on and off every frame--the screen image would be too dim. Film projectors use *very* bright & hot lamps--which can melt through the plastic film if it happens to stall in the feeding mechanism.

Perhaps another Pipedotter can give some more detail about this??

Right -- gray background for the subject. Happened to be using an aging flat screen, maybe it's starting to fade to green...
Thanks for the color history link.

Just checked my |. settings and found a check box item:
[ ] Show posts from SoylentNews
When did that appear?

Also, the comments seem to alternate (randomly?) between blue and green bar backgrounds--what's the logic behind this?

One thing I noticed (in the last few months) is the Open Office download is a *lot* smaller than the Libre Office download. I've stuck with Open Office since I don't need a lot of the fancy features they seem to be adding to Libre? Note, this is just my quick impression--I have not done any detailed comparison.

http://www.autoextremist.com/current/2014/5/27/big-data-talks.html
Amusing editorial -- starts out straight, then turns into fiction.

Since I was sworn to secrecy, the only thing I can say about the location is that Big Data resides in a bunker-like facility sheltered in a deep forest in one of the states surrounding the Great Lakes. You'd never know that it exists, because there's a popular bar in front of it that's a favorite of the locals. Little do they know that the guy they know as "B.D." is in fact, the man himself: Big Data.
After the comely PR woman (complete with plaid shirt, tight jeans and a pair of kick-ass boots) plied me with Leinenkugels and a couple of brats, I was ushered out back and then guided down steps to a well-lit tunnel that I'm guessing was about 100 feet in length.

Is it ever be possible to take ownership and control of your own records? 25 years ago I was able to take my X-ray films away from an independent X-ray clinic (to transport the film to my GP), and then I kept them. Probably not so easy to do that today.

...and here we see a problem with thumbnailing a picture from the article for the story icon--when there is only one picture.

Has anyone told Randall about this, over at XKCD?

Thanks for the quick reply, clearing the cookies (Firefox, Tools, Pageinfo, Security) worked.

Let me be the first to say that XKCD also covers this topic today, http://xkcd.com/1353/

If you believe this article, Lithium is currently not worth recycling...but may be in the future,
http://www.waste-management-world.com/articles/print/volume-12/issue-4/features/the-lithium-battery-recycling-challenge.html
Other parts of e-car batteries may be recycled before Lithium becomes economical. At this time there are several different battery technologies being used which makes it hard for anyone to develop a recycling technology.

Can't wait for the Daily Show and/or Colbert take on this. Could be tonight, could be very pointed (and/or funny). Unfortunately, I guess that outside the USA it's not easy to access the Comedy Central website for web-video.

Win 8.1 -->Windows_key+x brings up much of the old start menu, including shutdown options.