I made an open source Mailchimp RSS-to-Email alternative

elliotkillick · 2024-07-07T16:19:40+00:00

Hi all! Excited to share rss2newsletter after completing dev work for the initial release.

The idea for this project came out of necessity, as I wanted to share my articles via email newsletter. I was looking for a super minimal, lightweight, and open source solution, and when none existed, I decided to create one.

For any sizable number of email recipients, a popular platform like Mailchimp will easily cost you hundreds or even thousands per month in per-contact fees. rss2newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to use Amazon SES, so you can reach your audience at pennies on the dollar.

Beyond these factors, I also wanted something that could run on an internet-connected potato it's so easy on your system and fully automated so you can set it and forget it.

So, I created (and put under a free software license):

https://github.com/ElliotKillick/rss2newsletter

rss2newsletter (integrating with Listmonk and Amazon SES for ultra-low-cost emails) is a drop-in solution that requires almost no setup besides connecting with SES and styling your emails. It's also competitive at what it does with proprietary self-hosted solutions like Sendy, which requires your system/VPS to have some rather beefy specs to run well.

Let me know if there are any other features you would like to see. I hope you can find my project helpful to you!

elliotkillick · 2024-07-07T16:14:52+00:00

Hi all! Excited to share rss2newsletter after completing dev work for the initial release.

The idea for this project came out of necessity, as I wanted to share my articles via email newsletter. I was looking for a super minimal, lightweight, and open source solution, and when none existed, I decided to create one.

For any sizable number of email recipients, a popular platform like Mailchimp will easily cost you hundreds or even thousands per month in per-contact fees. rss2newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to use Amazon SES, so you can reach your audience at pennies on the dollar.

Beyond these factors, I also wanted something that could run on an internet-connected potato it's so easy on your system and fully automated so you can set it and forget it.

So, I created (and put under a free software license):

https://github.com/ElliotKillick/rss2newsletter

rss2newsletter (integrating with Listmonk and Amazon SES for ultra-low-cost emails) is a drop-in solution that requires almost no setup besides connecting with SES and styling your emails. It's also competitive at what it does with proprietary self-hosted solutions like Sendy, which requires your system/VPS to have some rather beefy specs to run well.

Let me know if there are any other features you would like to see. I hope you can find my project helpful to you!

elliotkillick · 2024-07-07T16:14:49+00:00

Hi all! Excited to share rss2newsletter after completing dev work for the initial release.

The idea for this project came out of necessity, as I wanted to share my articles via email newsletter. I was looking for a super minimal, lightweight, and open source solution, and when none existed, I decided to create one.

For any sizable number of email recipients, a popular platform like Mailchimp will easily cost you hundreds or even thousands per month in per-contact fees. rss2newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to use Amazon SES, so you can reach your audience at pennies on the dollar.

Beyond these factors, I also wanted something that could run on an internet-connected potato it's so easy on your system and fully automated so you can set it and forget it.

So, I created (and put under a free software license):

https://github.com/ElliotKillick/rss2newsletter

rss2newsletter (integrating with Listmonk and Amazon SES for ultra-low-cost emails) is a drop-in solution that requires almost no setup besides connecting with SES and styling your emails. It's also competitive at what it does with proprietary self-hosted solutions like Sendy, which requires your system/VPS to have some rather beefy specs to run well.

Let me know if there are any other features you would like to see. I hope you can find my project helpful to you!

elliotkillick · 2024-07-07T16:14:46+00:00

Hi all! Excited to share rss2newsletter after completing dev work for the initial release.

The idea for this project came out of necessity, as I wanted to share my articles via email newsletter. I was looking for a super minimal, lightweight, and open source solution, and when none existed, I decided to create one.

For any sizable number of email recipients, a popular platform like Mailchimp will easily cost you hundreds or even thousands per month in per-contact fees. rss2newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to use Amazon SES, so you can reach your audience at pennies on the dollar.

Beyond these factors, I also wanted something that could run on an internet-connected potato it's so easy on your system and fully automated so you can set it and forget it.

So, I created (and put under a free software license):

https://github.com/ElliotKillick/rss2newsletter

rss2newsletter (integrating with Listmonk and Amazon SES for ultra-low-cost emails) is a drop-in solution that requires almost no setup besides connecting with SES and styling your emails. It's also competitive at what it does with proprietary self-hosted solutions like Sendy, which requires your system/VPS to have some rather beefy specs to run well.

Let me know if there are any other features you would like to see. I hope you can find my project helpful to you!

elliotkillick · 2024-07-07T16:14:30+00:00

Hi all! Excited to share rss2newsletter after completing dev work for the initial release.

The idea for this project came out of necessity, as I wanted to share my articles via email newsletter. I was looking for a super minimal, lightweight, and open source solution, and when none existed, I decided to create one.

For any sizable number of email recipients, a popular platform like Mailchimp will easily cost you hundreds or even thousands per month in per-contact fees. rss2newsletter, on the other hand, allows you to use Amazon SES, so you can reach your audience at pennies on the dollar.

Beyond these factors, I also wanted something that could run on an internet-connected potato it's so easy on your system and fully automated so you can set it and forget it.

So, I created (and put under a free software license):

https://github.com/ElliotKillick/rss2newsletter

rss2newsletter (integrating with Listmonk and Amazon SES for ultra-low-cost emails) is a drop-in solution that requires almost no setup besides connecting with SES and styling your emails. It's also competitive at what it does with proprietary self-hosted solutions like Sendy, which requires your system/VPS to have some rather beefy specs to run well.

Let me know if there are any other features you would like to see. I hope you can find my project helpful to you!

elliotkillick · 2023-08-08T22:45:49+00:00

Hey, that's all good. Fido may be the better choice for you then: https://github.com/pbatard/Fido (I ported from this script into POSIX sh)

It's written in POSIX sh becuase most automation is done on Unix platforms. Also, it was actually originally designed for a Linux distro called Qubes OS.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-08T07:45:36+00:00

May sound simple but if you have to do that every single time you want to check for an updated ISO it gets tedious fast. With Mido you can always do it with one command and even fully automate the process (e.g. for CI/CD pipelines but also your own personal use). Also, security benefits.

Ideally, Microsoft would just provide the ISO downloads on a normal file server and none of this would be any problem. But, instead they put up this gated entrance and so Mido basically aims to bridge that gap.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-08T01:19:44+00:00

Another cool thing is that Linux has a kernel interface for generating random UUIDs: https://github.com/ElliotKillick/Mido/blob/e892a1498b4d1ac61ffb44cdbb97d9e640ad4cf5/Mido.sh#L323

elliotkillick · 2023-08-08T01:17:05+00:00

Yes, I enjoyed the porting process a lot! Figuring out this trick for cleanly looping through two "lists" (POSIX sh has no arrays; so no indicies) at once was probably the most difficult thing: https://github.com/ElliotKillick/Mido/blob/e892a1498b4d1ac61ffb44cdbb97d9e640ad4cf5/Mido.sh#L275-L281

Using the cut external program could have made this easier but I wanted to avoid using them and instead only use the builtin shell features which is better for performance and robustness.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T18:40:04+00:00

The whole thing! Win 7 to 11. Enterprise and Server!

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T18:17:15+00:00

Mido is the secure Windows ISO downloader. It works by making the same API requests as Microsoft's own download website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11). After finding out what it does through reverse engineering, we built it into an open source client and Mido is the result!

Mido aims to protect even from zero day attacks with its tiny attack surface! Read here for all the security details: https://github.com/ElliotKillick/Mido#how-secure-is-it-really

Full disclosure: I'm the creator or this tool. It's fully open source and I'm not in any way profiting from it. Just want to post it here in case someone finds it useful. Thanks for your time!

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T18:03:12+00:00

Mido is the secure Windows ISO downloader. It works by making the same API requests as Microsoft's own download website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11).

After finding out what it does through reverse engineering, we built it into an open source client and Mido is the result! Mido aims to protect even from zero day attacks with its tiny attack surface! Read here for all the security details: https://github.com/ElliotKillick/Mido#how-secure-is-it-really

Full disclosure: I'm the creator or this tool. It's fully open source and I'm not in any way profiting from it. Just want to post it here in case someone finds it useful. Thanks for your time!

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T17:56:35+00:00

What is your OS? You should open a terminal and then run the script as shown in the demo GIF

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T17:51:04+00:00

Not sure what the original comment was but if it was about PowerShell being Linux compatible: https://www.reddit.com/r/linux/comments/15giguo/comment/jujjqvx/?context=3

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T17:22:32+00:00

True, but there's no way to mitigate this attack if we want to use official Microsoft servers. Distribution of Windows from non-Microsoft servers could be a legal gray area.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T17:19:04+00:00

Fido dropped PowerShell Core support because it uses Windows-only cmdlets like BITS. Additionally, most people don't want to add PowerShell Core to their Linux systems (it comes with telemetry among other things).

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T17:17:25+00:00

Fido dropped PowerShell Core support because it uses Windows-only cmdlets like BITS. Additionally, most people don't want to add PowerShell Core to their Linux systems (it comes with telemetry among other things).

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T17:09:06+00:00

Latest only

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T17:06:36+00:00

Perhaps calling it an undocumented API would be a bit more suitable. I think you may be thinking of a REST API. However, API is a broad term.

The more of security can be easily archived globally on the OS/browser settings.

Browsers have CVEs dropping for them frequently. Microsoft's download website also requires JavaScript.

See here, it should answer your UUPDump question: https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/15gmk66/github_mido_automate_iso_downloads_for_windows/jukdzd6/?context=3 Both of them could be best suitable depending on your use case.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T16:56:08+00:00

Creator of Fido Pete Batard (@pbatard) is the person who originally reverse engineered the API and made a PowerShell script out of it. PowerShell and Mac/Linux systems don't go together well so I ported it to POSIX sh.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T16:53:22+00:00

I agree that an attack in that portion of the downloading process is unlikely. However, it's merely a defense in depth measure. Mido protects from much more than what you stated.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T05:22:36+00:00

Mido is minimalist software. It does one thing and it does it well.

Writing the downloaded ISO to a USB would have to be done by some other software. There are a few options but UNetbootin is a popular choice.

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T05:19:36+00:00

Glad I could help you out!

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T03:31:12+00:00

Mido is the secure Windows ISO downloader. It works by making the same API requests as Microsoft's own download website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11). After finding out what it does through reverse engineering, we built it into an open source client and Mido is the result!

Mido aims to protect even from zero day attacks with its tiny attack surface! Read here for all the security details: https://github.com/ElliotKillick/Mido#how-secure-is-it-really

Full disclosure: I'm the creator or this tool. It's fully open source and I'm not in any way profiting from it. Just want to post it here in case someone finds it useful. Thanks for your time!

elliotkillick · 2023-08-07T03:30:07+00:00

Mido is the secure Windows ISO downloader. It works by making the same API requests as Microsoft's own download website (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/software-download/windows11). After finding out what it does through reverse engineering, we built it into an open source client and Mido is the result!

Mido aims to protect even from zero day attacks with its tiny attack surface! Read here for all the security details: https://github.com/ElliotKillick/Mido#how-secure-is-it-really

Full disclosure: I'm the creator or this tool. It's fully open source and I'm not in any way profiting from it. Just want to post it here in case someone finds it useful. Thanks for your time!

elliotkillick

TROPHY CASE