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posted by on Monday December 18 2017, @08:33PM   Printer-friendly
from the stupid-blue-bird dept.

So, apparently around November 5th we stopped posting to Twitter. We didn't find out until around the end of that month and when we did nobody had the time and/or ability to look into why until this past week.

Now how we get our headlines over to Twitter is overly complicated and, frankly, idiotic. It's done by one of our IRC bots pulling headlines from the RSS feed and posting them on Twitter as @SoylentNews. The bot was written back in 2014 with hand-rolled (as opposed to installed via package manager) Python libraries and hasn't been updated since. This was breakage that should absolutely have been expected to happen. Twitter's penchant for arbitrarily changing their unversioned API means you either keep on top of changes or expect things to break for no apparent reason.

Here's the question: do we even care? We can either find someone who's willing to rewrite the bot to a new Twitter library, do it the sane way as either a cron or slashd job, or just say to hell with it since we only have two hundred or so followers on Twitter anyway. What say you, folks?


[TMB Note]: Twitter's who-to-follow algorithms really impressed me this morning when I logged in to manually post this story. How did they know we were all huge @JustinBieber and @BarackObama fans?


[Update]: We're again annoying Twitter users by spreading relative intelligence across their platform of choice. Credit goes to Crash for wisely pointing out that we don't have to code everything ourselves.

 
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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @04:55AM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 20 2017, @04:55AM (#612160)

    Umm, yeah. As I said, people making fun of you are not trolls - they're just enjoying themselves. Let me give you some more ammo for your crazy:
    Started out as a unix admin, then and oracle dba for a couple of years, c++ and java development for a couple of years, then ended up doing emc shit that I've stuck with. make over 250k, live in a skyscraper and own a bunch of apartments I rent out, speak 6 languages, lived in 5 countries and visited over 100. Yes, I also made a bunch of money on bitcoin. I'm outgoing and get really hot girls with little effort. I'm also quite built and fight well - took the karate where they teach you to actually hurt people instead of running laps. Although after about 35 it's been less and less lifting and more and more ems, due to laziness. I do smoke though and can't permanently quit since highschool though, so you got that on me. In addition, I'm really into shisha smoking, and that's even worse. Got hooked on that shit in doha and it stuck - so damn relaxing, so fucking bad for you.

    It's amazing how some normal people's lives, such as mine and my coworkers' are so much above the level you're at that you think someone is bullshitting. Do you think if you told a piss-smelling methhead about your real life he'd call you out as making it up? And I do really enjoy firing people like you. Nerds who are average but think they are very very smart. Admitting shit that's wrong with them would be like punching yourself in the stomach. You might realize your life is pretty damn crappy and get depressed. Puff up that chest buddy.

    What's really enjoyable about that is your mentality keeps you from improving and actually making something of yourself and enjoying life to the potential that I enjoy life. Just knowing you keep yourself living what I would consider substandard puts a quiet smile on my face. You win, you win. I'm a troll. The real Donald Trump in fact.

  • (Score: 3, Touché) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday December 20 2017, @09:40AM (1 child)

    by Joe Desertrat (2454) on Wednesday December 20 2017, @09:40AM (#612228)

    Let me give you some more ammo for your crazy:
    Started out as a unix admin, then and oracle dba for a couple of years, c++ and java development for a couple of years, then ended up doing emc shit that I've stuck with. make over 250k, live in a skyscraper and own a bunch of apartments I rent BLAH BLAH BLAH

    Wow! I'm impressed! You do all that and still have time to troll users on a relatively small platform.

    • (Score: 0) by fakefuck39 on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:31AM

      by fakefuck39 (6620) on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:31AM (#615035)

      Yes, I have that relaxed nice life and still find about 2 minutes per week to make fun of retards on here for my enjoyment. What is it that is too much for you to grasp here?

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:47PM (1 child)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Wednesday December 20 2017, @12:47PM (#612268) Homepage Journal

    Pro-tip: If you're looking to impress someone, you need to come up with a life that's better than what the person you're speaking to already has.

    Elite-pro-tip: Money isn't how you win at life. It's just a means to an end.

    When the person you're talking to works for himself, makes enough at it that he never has to work more than one day in four on average, and can drop everything whenever he feels like it and be in his boat on a lake fishing half an hour later? Yeah, you're not going to impress by touting your corporate shackles and living in the same structure as hundreds or thousands of other people.

    Next time try something like telling me about your sweet new bass boat.

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: -1, Troll) by fakefuck39 on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:28AM

      by fakefuck39 (6620) on Thursday December 28 2017, @08:28AM (#615032)

      Only retards buy boats - they are a terrible investment, a constant cause of annoying maintenance problems, and if you use one, they tie you down to a small area. If I need a boat I rent one where ever I am. I only read the last line of your post. I spend about half my time traveling around the world, about half at home, and about 5 days a month total at the office.

      You started this thread by asking users not on twitter whether they use your twitter feed. Then you started this ball swinging conversation, at which you lose. You are a moron.