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RSS: there's nothing better

davidyat.es

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Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#41

Post by r3bl »

_up wrote: post #31

I wonder if "Rankings" from sites like Reddit and HN could be considered copyright protected. I think using rankings scraped from the RSS source entry page could result in a better user experience. And give Newspapers back incentive to produce quality Content.

HN API doesn't have any limitations what so ever.

I'm not using its RSS, but I have a script running on my server every five minutes that sends a new push notification on my phone every time a HN story reaches 500 points.

Simple and straightforward way of keeping up with the tech, made in like 40 lines of Python: https://github.com/aleksandar-todorovic/automation-scripts/b...

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#42

Post by onli »

superwayne wrote: post #35

A friend and I made a tool/framework to easily create RSS feeds for websites that don't offer one. It's written in Python and uses Scrapy for scraping the website. Maybe it could be helpful to somebody. Out of the box mostly Austrian sites are supported but adding a new site usually involves only a few lines of code. http://github.com/nblock/feeds

If the site is simple enough, one could also use my Yahoo Pipes revival project[0] to extract content from a page into an RSS feed.

[0]: https://www.pipes.digital/

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#44

Post by leejo »

I wrote about this recently[1]. The "problem" with RSS, that essentially lead to it falling out of favour, is that it is pure consumption, not interaction. You can't "like" an update that comes to you via RSS, nor comment, nor easily share. It's difficult for sites to monetise it, or track, or promote their own agenda. It's not "social" and since every other site these days needs to be social, whether through aforementioned ways, or adding some sort of messaging process, it's not a way that sites can keep users hooked on the site to boost ad impressions.

RSS is pure content, curated only by the consumer and presented in chronological order not algorithmically messed with, which is why there's nothing better.

[1] https://leejo.github.io/2017/09/27/social_media_zero/

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#45

Post by lifthrasiir »

onli wrote: post #37
viraptor wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's no difference in the consumption method though, is there? I kind of lump Atom and RSS together in my mind. Some of my subscribed feeds use one, some use the other, but without looking at the URL, I couldn't tell.

There is no practical difference at all. RSS has more mindshare outside the google universe, but all reader read both, the formats can be mapped from the one to the other, and all languages have libraries to create both. And also manually they are both equally easy to write. I for one opted to solely generate RSS wherever possible. Having two equally suited standards is a waste.

But RSS's date & time format was practically messy (due to being not properly specified and enforced---take a look at [1]) and it had no way to specify that an article has been updated so it should not show up again to the timeline. When I had some dozens of feeds it had been quite annoying to mentally ignore updated articles.

For the obvious reason (cough timely standardization cough) Atom is technically and often practically superior to the RSS family of formats (somehow not distinguished to each other). And after more than 10 years of usage, I'm pretty sure that every feed reader in the continued existence now has Atom support.

[1] https://github.com/kurtmckee/feedparser/tree/develop/feedpar...

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#46

Post by onli »

lifthrasiir wrote: post #45
onli wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no practical difference at all. RSS has more mindshare outside the google universe, but all reader read both, the formats can be mapped from the one to the other, and all languages have libraries to create both. And also manually they are both equally easy to write. I for one opted to solely generate RSS wherever possible. Having two equally suited standards is a waste.

But RSS's date & time format was practically messy (due to being not properly specified and enforced---take a look at [1]) and it had no way to specify that an article has been updated so it should not show up again to the timeline. When I had some dozens of feeds it had been quite annoying to mentally ignore updated articles. For the obvious reason ( cough timely standardization cough ) Atom is technically and often…

No need to use the past tense here, I work on a project based on RSS feeds right now :)

I'm not sure what I look at with the feedparser code. Looks like a bunch of format support libraries? https://cyber.harvard.edu/rss/rss.html says to use rfc822, and in practice for me that means just giving the date string to my chosen languages date object.

You have a point with item updates, RSS was not really made for that. The blog engine I use has different options to handle that, I for one think just pushing a new entry with a new guid is the right solution; but then of course rss readers can't mark updates.

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#47

Post by pencilcode »

corobo wrote: post #32
smsm42 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When Google killed the Reader, I switched to Feedly and still using them. Useful enough so I have paid subscription. Still using them after four years, nothing better around as far as I can see. Facebook certainly not even in the same galaxy, and I have no idea why Twitter even mentioned in that topic. IMHO RSS and accompanied readers are still the best for keeping oneself informed.

Feedly killed RSS for me. The way their mobile app scrolls[1] articles just absolutely ruined the experience and I couldn’t find any better app/service before giving up on RSS entirely [1] https://i.imgsir.com/G0jR.gif - weird entire page scroll going on instead of just scrolling normally. Makes it impossible to skim read the titles

I use reeder as the client, much better than feedly ‘s ui but feedly is still the backend. Working great since I came back to rss for about a year.

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#48

Post by Arnt »

leejo wrote: post #44

I wrote about this recently[1]. The "problem" with RSS, that essentially lead to it falling out of favour, is that it is pure consumption, not interaction. You can't "like" an update that comes to you via RSS, nor comment, nor easily share. It's difficult for sites to monetise it, or track, or promote their own agenda. It's not "social" and since every other site these days needs to be social, whether through aforeme…

What you try to say is (I think): RSS is better because it's totally foreign to clickbait. The goals sites try to reach using clickbait are goals not helped by RSS.

Right?

RSS is badly suited as a vector for virally driven waves of outrage. "Let's call it an accidental feature" as lwall once wrote.

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#49

Post by gcgggfxsdg »

anabisengrin wrote: post #5
_pdp_ wrote: post #2

Google killed the RSS feeds for me. On the flip-side, I am thinking to get back to them sometime soon.

Why do you act in such a victimized way ? You were trapped in a closed system, the trap crumbled down and now you're free. Google did not kill RSS, it killed its RSS reader and that's it. The number of websites providing an RSS feed has not declined since. I mean I really do not understand your way of thinking ? When Google is no more, will it have killed maps and videos ?

Are you stupid, French, or both?

Don’t. fucking. put. a. space. after. a. question. mark.

That. is. not. English.

Thanks!

Re: RSS: there's nothing better

#50

Post by oneeyedpigeon »

asymmetric wrote: post #38

I really want to like RSS but almost every from a commercial outlet serves “stubs” instead of full articles, I.e. to read the full thing you have to click through and land on their website (for ad-serving purposes I imagine) I had found a solution in fulltextrssfeeds.com, but it was slow, cumbersome and didn’t always work. How do you folks solve this?

Personally, I just avoid such feeds. I’ve never found this problem with any high quality blogs I follow. The sites I’ve experienced this problem with most are old media companies, and they produce so much content, it’s probably best consumed via other means. It’s a shame more paywall sites don’t make their protected content available via authenticated feeds.
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