RSS

Tumblr Feeds Still Not Updating

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I subscribe to several hundred RSS feeds. Until yesterday I didn’t realize just how many of those feeds are from Tumblr blogs.

On December 5th, Tumblr had some “routine maintenance” go horrible wrong, resulting in countless blogs going offline.

Yesterday I read that the blogs themselves were back online, but I’m noticing today that none of my (Tumblr) feeds are updating. It appears as though their feed system is still down.

I did a quick search and didn’t find too many people talking about this, so this post is just to reassure others performing similar searches that you’re not crazy… Tumblr feeds are indeed broken. Hopefully they’ll be back soon, as I have no desire to start visiting hundreds of sites to get their latest posts.

[ UPDATE 12/08 – 9:45pm ]
Four days after the incident, some (not all) of my Tumblr feeds have started working again. In the real world four days isn’t a lot of time, but in the world of web services, it’s an eternity. Lets see how long it takes before everything is working properly again.

Feedburner Accounts Moving to Google

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I run the RSS feed for One Digital Life through Feedburner. Google bought Feedburner a while back (2007, I think), but the change of hands never really required me to do anything. I’ve heard rumblings for a little while now that Google was going to require people to migrate their feeds into a Google account, but I hadn’t really checked into it until now.

I tried to login to my Feedburner account tonight, and I can’t. I’m being prompted to migrate my account to Google. I’ve read some mixed reports on how smoothly this goes, and I may or may not need to change my feed address.

I’ll probable migrate the feeds tomorrow, so if the feed stops working, just come by the site and grab the new address.

if you use Feedburner too, you may want to try to login to your account.

Important! Safari RSS Security Risk

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If you use a Mac, it’s very important that you read this, even if you don’t use Safari.

Republished from Brian Mastenbrook:

Disclosure of information vulnerability in Safari
Posted on Sun, 11 Jan 2009
Last edited Tue, 13 Jan 2009

I have discovered that Apple’s Safari browser is vulnerable to an attack that allows a malicious web site to read files on a user’s hard drive without user intervention. This can be used to gain access to sensitive information stored on the user’s computer, such as emails, passwords, or cookies that could be used to gain access to the user’s accounts on some web sites. The vulnerability has been acknowledged by Apple.

All users of Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard who have not changed their feed reader application preference from the system default are affected, regardless of whether they use any RSS feeds or use a different web browser (such as Firefox). Users of previous versions of Mac OS X are not affected.

Users of Safari on Windows are also affected. Users who have Safari for Windows installed but do not use it for browsing are not affected.

The details of this vulnerability have not been made public to the best of my knowledge, but secrecy is no guarantee against a sufficiently motivated attacker. Because this vulnerability could be exploited by a phishing site in a way that would not cause affected users to suspect their information had been stolen, users of Mac OS X Leopard should protect themselves until a fix is issued by Apple by choosing a default feed reader other than Safari, such as Mail. To select a different feed reader:

  1. Open Safari and select Preferences… from the Safari menu.
  2. Choose the RSS tab from the top of the Preferences window.
  3. Click on the Default RSS reader pop-up and select an application other than Safari.

The only workaround available for users of Safari on Windows is to use a different web browser.

Apple has not made information available on when a fix for this issue will be released. Users with questions or concerns should contact Apple as I have no additional information about this vulnerability which can be shared at this time.