Mastodon: @canpolat@hachyderm.io
I know you said “self hosted”, but if you are interested in an Android app, Google Play Books does most of what you want, I think. You can upload your books, and read them on any device (with offline capabilities). But this is the Self Hosted community, so I will show myself out.
I don’t follow it very closely, but as far as I know, they are the only one implementing the open protocol they designed (which doesn’t interoperate with ActivityPub). However, there seems to be some efforts for creating a bridge: https://www.docs.bsky.app/blog/feature-bridgyfed
As you said, there are some recognizable faces and that may impact the adoption. But not being compatible with ActivityPub is a real bummer.
I believe there is already a browser add on for this. Cannot remember the name right now.
Edit: I think this should be in Lemmy core.
I would add Ars Technica to that list and call it a day.
For programming I follow YouTube channels of the conferences relevant for my tech stack (YouTube natively supports RSS). They are generally 1 hour talks but it’s a great way to stay up to date.
I think you have a better chance if your instance focuses on a topic instead of being general purpose. That’s the reason I chose programming.dev. All communities there are related to programming so when I sort by “local” I see something interesting even though I haven’t subscribed to that community. And that increases my interaction with those communities.
Would love to see a browser based implementation of this.
Here is another implementation: Another Blog Resurrection, the Fediverse, and a New Comment System
https://www.overheid.nl/english
Overheid.nl is the central access point to all information about government organisations of the Netherlands.
The shape of that bottle is creepier than the text.