It's time to head back to RSS? • Hacker News Board

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#361

Post by drdeadringer » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

fulldecent wrote: post #309

drdeadringer wrote: post #299

I seem to have missed the "abandon all RSS" movement, which doesn't surprise me. I am missing That One Puzzle Piece which enables me to understand why people ditched RSS in the first place. I'd appreciate enlightenment.

The (perceived?) reality is that social grows your user base and RSS doesn't. Publishers care about growth more than serving existing customers.

> (perceived?) reality is that social grows your user base and RSS doesn't

Another fair point... in general RSS can be thought of as "broadcasting to users" instead of the illicit "user engagement".

On another fair point though, the RSS app I currently use [Podcast Addict] has a "share" option with beget-plenty list of options [from eMail to Twitter]. I can't imagine other RSS apps not having the same in Current Year.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#362

Post by _emacsomancer_ » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:39 PM UTC

Emacs has an interesting RSS feed reader: elfeed [ https://github.com/skeeto/elfeed/blob/master/README.md ], which even has an Android client [ https://github.com/areina/elfeed-cljsrn/blob/master/README.m... ].

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#363

Post by consultSKI » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:40 PM UTC

mkirklions wrote: post #236

consultSKI wrote: post #234

Many of us never left. Yes, it was disappointing for a few days when google changed horses. Their loss. The article failed to mention that RSS feeds are the backbone of Amazon's Alexa Flash Briefings. Seems once again, Bezos and crew know best. Shameless plug for our Flash Briefing (available on Alexa, iTunes, and our website but only available the days ending in "y"): http://jmpurl.info/flashbriefing

I think the world is moving to a repeatable and reusable style of storing data. RSS and JSON have become standards that people can use for data on multiple platforms.

Agreed. It is an API world. I recall trying make sense of xml then came RSS feeds. Then, why JSON, and now you can have RSS like feeds (and a lot more) via JSON.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#364

Post by duiker101 » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:45 PM UTC

NicoJuicy wrote: post #288

Not finished ( performance), but my personal bookmarking site ( like HN or Reddit) supports the auto-download of Feeds and implements Tags through it ( RSS based). http://handlr.sapico.me/Home/Newest For now, it's usefull for me personally, but it seriously needs a update. It also supports url customizers ( eg. preventing paywalls from certain sites to redirect through the facebook share url)

Seems pretty dead. There's a timeout on the db.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#365

Post by wvl » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:46 PM UTC

theclaw wrote: post #278

I've tried Feedly but my goodness, the corporate language is such a turn off. I just want a feed reader, I don't want to "Fuel your team's success," "Enrich articles with unique insights," "Automate your content workflows," "Reinforce your digital brand". These features may be cool and useful, but the way they're sold makes me gag. I used my ad blocker to remove the "Well done!" that appears when everything is marked…

I had the same issue with Feedly's "features". I've maintained a stylish extension for Feedly that I keep adding to. Every time they add something that I don't want to see, I hide it via css. Thanks for the prompt, I just hid the patronising "Well done" that's been annoying me.

If anyone else wants to try to strip feedly back, they can try my css here: https://gist.github.com/wvl/4cd7d7d314fe9a544f2851296db61bb9

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#366

Post by daveFNbuck » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

mandelbulb wrote: post #348

daveFNbuck wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I'm trying Inoreader, the killer feature for me is being able to open items in background tabs. Too bad that requires a plugin for Firefox.

Are you talking about the keyboard shortcut? If so, there is no need for an addon on Firefox.

When I tried the keyboard shortcut without the addon, it just triggered a popup saying I needed the addon.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#367

Post by daveFNbuck » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:49 PM UTC

nikbackm wrote: post #351

daveFNbuck wrote: post #326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Now that I'm trying Inoreader, the killer feature for me is being able to open items in background tabs. Too bad that requires a plugin for Firefox.

You mean a web extension, not a plugin.

Probably, I don't know the difference.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#368

Post by unicornporn » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:53 PM UTC

theclaw wrote: post #278

I've tried Feedly but my goodness, the corporate language is such a turn off. I just want a feed reader, I don't want to "Fuel your team's success," "Enrich articles with unique insights," "Automate your content workflows," "Reinforce your digital brand". These features may be cool and useful, but the way they're sold makes me gag. I used my ad blocker to remove the "Well done!" that appears when everything is marked…

I selfhost FreshRSS, it's awesome and uses an SQLite DB.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#369

Post by amerine » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 5:59 PM UTC

Ajedi32 wrote: post #343

Animats wrote: post #323

The key thing to know about RSS is that most of the real news sources, those that have actual reporters who go out and find news, have RSS feeds. Reuters, the Associated Press, the New York Times, the BBC... Here's Reuters Top News.[1] Just the news, no ads, no clickbait. Reuters is useful because their RSS feed contains a readable story summary. Many RSS feeds just have a truncated sentence and a link. Both CNN [2]…

Pretty much everything has RSS feeds. Random blogs, webcomics, even major sites like YouTube. If it puts out content on a regular basis, chances are you can subscribe to it via RSS.

I think the OPs point is that there are very valuable first-party sources of information with RSS feeds that you shouldn’t ignore.

Basically, there is gold out there.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#370

Post by omaranto » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 6:05 PM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #330

omaranto wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dropped Feedly for the most basic reason possible: it didn't display my feeds readably. I read a lot of math blogs and the TeX formulas in them didn't show up in Feedly (and maybe a few did appear but with incorrect spacing). Inoreader renders them just fine. This was years ago, and back there was already a feature request on Feedly's website asking for this to be fixed. I just took a look at that request it looks…

I don't read many blogs that have TeX formulas, but that's still a nice feature for when they do pop up.

It's not just nice but necessary. I didn't give up Feedly because it was merely incovenient, but because I often couldn't understand a blog post without the formulas.