Live data from Hacker News

It's time to head back to RSS?

wired.com

381–390 of 503 posts

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

#381
post #349

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think what quickly became entrenched was the apps people used, which happened to be built on the decentralized model.

The directories are pretty centralized though they don't really need to be. I assume an app like Overcast draws from iTunes and/or Google.

Oh, yeah, that's true, but most of the apps have some sort of escape valve, right?

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

#382
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was trying and fell short of something witty to say. But you're right. I use feedly and have chrome extensions that's give me full articles in a readable fashion. I would LOVE to visit some of my favorite sites and read articles as the site designers meant for them to be read. But all of the js and ad fuckery makes reading articles online an absolute goddamn chore lately. So here we are. RSS revival? Bring it on. I…

TinyTinyRSS lets you use xpath to specify which element on the linked page is the “real” content. It was a life-saver when dealing with snippet-only feeds.

Ohh I didn't know of this, thanks for the recommendation will definitely check it out.

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

#383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I just open the actual site when that happens, which makes the feature a convenience rather than a necessity. I can't remember the last time that happened to me though. If this were affecting me regularly I'd probably feel like you.

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

#385
post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, distribution is fairly centralized [ADDED: in practice through iTunes/Google Play/etc.] and the hosting of the actual podcasts is cheap enough that throwing them on S3 or wherever isn't really a burden for most people. And advertising, when it exists at all, tends to be native advertising. > The space is endearing - maybe that's why it is so vibrant? That's true but arguably YouTube at least started out that wa…

I think it's decentralized partly because itunes doesn't integrate with any other services. So to serve android and IOS many podcasters NEED a single RSS feed that they point iTunes and other services to. Many relatively small services exist to help with hosting, and usually provide a hosted RSS link independent of itunes/whatever. I really hate that many podcasters are trying to push their own app or their publisher…

The biggest thing I was surprised about when I started a podcast is that iTunes doesn't host or distribute podcasts. As an end-user, I thought I was getting iTunes content with podcasts. But in reality it's just an aggregator like reddit or HN: it's full of links, but those links are external and pull content from other places.

I was also surprised by how easy (and free) it is to get a podcast on iTunes, especially compared to getting an app on the App Store.

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

#386
post #60

I've been a (paying) user of NewsBlur ( https://newsblur.com/ ) since Google Reader shut down and haven't looked back. p.s: In HN spirit, it also happens to be one developer's side-project-turned-profitable-business, and the "social" features a totally non-intrusive, but there if you want to know what people are sharing and commenting on.

I've been using Newsblur for years now. I love it most of the time, but it still has a lot of UI bugs/quirks that are occasionally frustrating. I might have to work up the energy for another round of GitHub issues.

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

#387

RSS never went away. Podcasting has made careers (e.g. deboarah francis-white, roman mars, andy & helen zaltzman, ollie mann and many others). The technological underpinning of podcasting is entirely RSS. And it ain't going away, or getting embraced and extended any time soon.

>"The technological underpinning of podcasting is entirely RSS." Can you elaborate on this? How are they related?

iTunes doesn't host any podcast files. You (as a podcast host) provide them an RSS link and when an end-user subscribes to your podcast, iTunes merely grabs your RSS feed and has the end-user's phone download the latest episode from your servers.

The episodes are stores and distributed from the podcast host's own server. The podcast app is just an RSS feed reader.

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

#389

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ah, yeah, you're correct. Firefox had changed the permissions for this some time ago.

You can optionally toggle the browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground value in about:config to true, then the v shortcut will open in background.

That said, I find the add-on a must-have. I'm always using it to save web pages. Do not forget to check the HTTPS option in setting, though.

As a reference [1]:

browser.tabs.loadInBackground => when you open a regular link in a new tab using Ctrl+click (or right-click > Open in a New Tab) default = true, do not make the new tab active In the Options dialog/page, this is controlled by the "When I open a link in a new tab, switch to it immediately" setting.

browser.tabs.loadDivertedInBackground => when you divert a script-generated new window to a new tab using Ctrl+click, or when a page uses the target attribute to launch a link in a new window and you divert it to a new tab default = false, make the new tab active

browser.tabs.loadBookmarksInBackground => when you load a bookmark in a new tab using Ctrl+click (or right-click > Open in a New Tab) default = false, make the new tab active

[1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/questions/1066419

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

#390

A visitor that comes to your site via social is MUCH more valuable than someone that comes via RSS. The economics of this reality are what removed RSS from the limelight. Dear publishers, let's fix this. Whenever you publish a blog post, etc. please syndicate it on social and then go back to your site to add "DISCUSS THIS ON TWITTER/whatever AT https://t.co/aesou02" . Make sure that this also syndicates to RSS. Dear…

I am struggling to understand. Why is a social-origin visitor more valuable? Honest question. I would have expected an RSS-origin to be a more tech-savvy reader and more likely to engage.

Engage where? Engage how? Tech savvy may not be what you're looking for, and is not always a good thing.

I think what fulldecent is saying is that people reading on RSS have a barrier to sharing and a barrier to commenting that doesn't exist on social media. On Twitter or Facebook, the "share" action is intrinsically linked to the article in its native format. Not so on RSS.

Post reply on HN