1---
 2title: "Consuming News"
 3subtitle: "My setup for quickly getting news I want and discarding news I don't"
 4author: Amolith
 5description: "My setup for quickly getting news I want and discarding news I don't"
 6date: 2020-03-31T14:08:14-04:00
 7draft: false
 8cover: /assets/pngs/news.png
 9categories:
10  - Technology
11tags:
12  - Productivity
13  - Reading
14  - RSS
15  - wallabag
16  - TT-RSS
17  - Firefox
18  - eReader
19  - Workflow
20toc: true
21---
22
23I [recently
24posted](https://social.nixnet.services/@amolith/103918629088941744)
25about getting through 487 feed items in less than half an hour and I
26thought I would write about my setup here. There are three primary
27applications that require some configuration:
28* [Feed reader](https://tt-rss.org/)
29* [Browser](https://www.mozilla.org/firefox/new/)
30* [Read-it-later service](https://wallabag.org)
31
32## Tiny Tiny RSS
33My feed reader of choice is TT-RSS. It's one of the most advanced
34readers I've ever used and can be tailored for any workflow. My basic
35preferences are below:
36
37* :white_check_mark: Enable categories
38* :white_check_mark: Combined mode
39* :white_check_mark: Always expand articles[^1]
40* :white_check_mark: Show content preview in headlines
41
42Making use of the categories is *very* important; if you have a lot of
43feeds, getting through them is much easier when you can go topic by
44topic and leave some for when you have more time.
45
46In addition to categories, the *big* feature I make use of is keyboard
47shortcuts. You can view those from the hamburger menu[^2] in the top
48right at `Keyboard shortcuts help`. `n` and `o` is what I make use of
49more than any other; `n` goes to the next article (or scrolls in
50particularly long ones) and `o` opens the source in a new tab. This
51would be great except that most browsers automatically switch to that
52new tab. If you're just wanting to get it up there to deal with later as
53I do, this diversion is *incredibly* annoying. Thankfully, it can be
54disabled in Firefox :smirk:
55
56## Firefox
57This setting is pretty damn easy; open `about:config`, search for
58`loadDivertedInBackground`, and set it to true.
59
60When you right-click something and open it in a new tab, you're
61automatically diverted to it. In some cases, this is convenient but I've
62always found it annoying and worked around it by middle clicking links.
63Changing this setting in `about:config` will make it so *all* tabs open
64in the background leaving your current tab focused.
65
66## wallabag
67My read-it-later application is [wallabag,](https://wallabag.org) a
68libre alternative to Mozilla's Pocket (which they still haven't made
69open source :eyes:) I use the [Firefox
70Add-on](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/wallabagger/) so
71simply clicking the icon will send the URL to my server for download. I
72also have an application on [my
73eReader](https://us.kobobooks.com/products/kobo-aura-one-limited-edition)
74called [Wallabako.](https://gitlab.com/anarcat/wallabako/) It downloads
75articles from wallabag as ePubs so I can read online articles while I'm
76offline as if they were books. A dream come true :wink:
77
78## Entire workflow
79With all that out of the way, here's my entire workflow.
80
811. Select topic of interest (category)
822. Start at the top and use `n` to quickly view the `n`ext headline and
83   maybe a short preview of the content
843. If you want to read more, `o`pen it in the background
854. Continue pressing `n` and/or `o` until you get to the bottom
865. If you have time, move to the next category
876. Use `CTRL+Tab` to cycle through all the links you opened and send
88   them to wallabag for consuming later
89
90[^1]: Depending on what feeds you add, you might want to disable this.
91    Slashdot makes up the bulk of my feed items and they generally fit
92    on one page.
93[^2]: A hamburger menu is three parallel horizontal lines typically
94    styled as a button that expands to show a menu of some kind.