Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

fieldguide.gizmodo.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 98 posts

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#31

Post by hvvvggg »

Animats wrote: post #9

Most of the sources of hard news have RSS feeds. Reuters. The BBC. The New York Times. The Hill. National Weather Service. These are all crap-free. No ads. No "10 ways to waste your time and money". Just news. I have an Model 14 Teletype tape printer from 1926 in a brass and glass case hooked up to the Reuters RSS feed. I've had this at steampunk conventions, and it usually lives in my living room. Push a button and…

> hard news

> The BBC

Have you visited the BBC News website recently?

They even have Daily Mail style headlines now, where a random word is capitalised for emphasis:

"Up to NINE terrible things happened"

I browse with an ad blocker, so those are actual headlines, not Outbrain/Taboola (ugh) links.

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#32

Post by Gys »

erfgh wrote: post #23

The problem with RSS is that most feeds treat all items the same so the same prominence is attached to a nuclear strike on New York as is attached to a child scraping its knee.

To me that is another benefit of rss. I want to do my own 'manual' filtering, to decide myself what is important to me.

I do not want some algorithm to feed me. Especially not if that algorithm is commercially biased: its main goal is not to inform me, the goal is to make money from me.

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#33

Post by tannhaeuser »

Vinnl wrote: post #22

It's a shame that fewer and fewer sites offer feeds. Most of them still do, luckily, but I've had to dig up http://feed43.com about once every two months. Though I wasn't really aware that some feed readers could perhaps generate feeds automatically, I'll have to try that out sometime.

I've experienced the opposite effect - that RSS makes a comeback on the sites I care about and that have content worth reading.

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#35

Post by _tulpa »

lostmsu wrote: post #10
m-p-3 wrote: post #4

At least you can sorT RSS feeds in a chronological order. I don't care what the algorithm believe, I just want to see the news in the order they came out.

Have to give it to FB, they do have that option.

An option which resets every time you visit facebook.com

You can bookmark facebook.com/?sk=h_chr which will force chronlogical sorting.

But you really really should not get your news from facebook.

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#36

Post by Khaine »

Animats wrote: post #9

Most of the sources of hard news have RSS feeds. Reuters. The BBC. The New York Times. The Hill. National Weather Service. These are all crap-free. No ads. No "10 ways to waste your time and money". Just news. I have an Model 14 Teletype tape printer from 1926 in a brass and glass case hooked up to the Reuters RSS feed. I've had this at steampunk conventions, and it usually lives in my living room. Push a button and…

That sounds like an awesome project to hack together. I look forward to making something similar one weekend.

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#37

Post by johneth »

hvvvggg wrote: post #31
Animats wrote: post #9

Most of the sources of hard news have RSS feeds. Reuters. The BBC. The New York Times. The Hill. National Weather Service. These are all crap-free. No ads. No "10 ways to waste your time and money". Just news. I have an Model 14 Teletype tape printer from 1926 in a brass and glass case hooked up to the Reuters RSS feed. I've had this at steampunk conventions, and it usually lives in my living room. Push a button and…

> hard news > The BBC Have you visited the BBC News website recently? They even have Daily Mail style headlines now, where a random word is capitalised for emphasis: "Up to NINE terrible things happened" I browse with an ad blocker, so those are actual headlines, not Outbrain/Taboola (ugh) links.

Yeah, they do those things. But they make up a minority of their magazine content.

They still do a lot of 'hard news' stuff (along with the vast majority of their output which is straight 'normal news'). For example, just this week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/g4s_brook_house_i...

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#38

Post by ikawe »

hvvvggg wrote: post #31
Animats wrote: post #9

Most of the sources of hard news have RSS feeds. Reuters. The BBC. The New York Times. The Hill. National Weather Service. These are all crap-free. No ads. No "10 ways to waste your time and money". Just news. I have an Model 14 Teletype tape printer from 1926 in a brass and glass case hooked up to the Reuters RSS feed. I've had this at steampunk conventions, and it usually lives in my living room. Push a button and…

> hard news > The BBC Have you visited the BBC News website recently? They even have Daily Mail style headlines now, where a random word is capitalised for emphasis: "Up to NINE terrible things happened" I browse with an ad blocker, so those are actual headlines, not Outbrain/Taboola (ugh) links.

I recall 10 years ago it wasn’t nearly as terrible. Did something happen to the bbc?

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#39

Post by pmoriarty »

zby wrote: post #30

RSS gives the user maximum control - but it lacks the social features. What we need is a way to connect our RSS feeds together.

"What we need is a way to connect our RSS feeds together."

Could you flesh this out a little? What is it that you want to see?

Re: RSS Still Beats Facebook and Twitter for Tracking News

#40

Post by hvvvggg »

johneth wrote: post #37
hvvvggg wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> hard news > The BBC Have you visited the BBC News website recently? They even have Daily Mail style headlines now, where a random word is capitalised for emphasis: "Up to NINE terrible things happened" I browse with an ad blocker, so those are actual headlines, not Outbrain/Taboola (ugh) links.

Yeah, they do those things. But they make up a minority of their magazine content. They still do a lot of 'hard news' stuff (along with the vast majority of their output which is straight 'normal news'). For example, just this week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-sh/g4s_brook_house_i...

> But they make up a minority of their magazine content.

No excuse. That crap is paid for with my taxes. They don't need to lower themselves to that standard.

That shit permeates, you know? The news side will look like that eventually.

I'd have thought taxes + license fee would be enough to avoid the race to the bottom, but here we are.

Post reply on HN