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RSS is undead

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Re: RSS is undead

#61

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

gkya wrote: post #49

> RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protocol has managed to keep on trudging along despite all evidence that it is dead, dead, dead. What a stupid thing to say... All this indicates is that RSS users didn't like those apps. I use elfeed, which has upwards of 500 stars on Github, and it's an Emacs feed…

I’m a tradesman with a passion for tools of all sorts but especially the ones I personally find useful.

As a non-developer, as an observer, if people want to call themselves “software engineers”, and I think it’s a fair title: you are designing and building systems people rely on, then you need to take the first steps toward self-regulation before it’s imposed upon you.

Yes, if you want to call yourself an engineer then you ought be able to prove under examination that you understand first principles. What those first principles are ought be determined by the industry itself in collaboration with a peak-body for oversight.

What we have not is practically the Wild Wild West that is actively doing harm in some areas.

Re: RSS is undead

#62

Post by justanton »

I’ve been using Unread app on my iPhone to read all my RSS feeds. I really don’t get all these “RSS is dead” arguments — for me it’s always been such a pleasant experience. People don’t talk about it much, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that it’s “dead”.

Re: RSS is undead

#63

Post by dalbasal »

Dead & undead are not really interesting categories.

Who is using RSS? How are they using it? What depends on or is enabled by RSS? What are the feedback loops, and what are the trends?

There is difference between podcasts, news sites publishing a headline-only, twitter-like feed and a blog publishing full text essays. The protocol itself is a protocol. The interaction between consumer, publisher and protocol is what's interesting. That's a very wide field of possibilities.

Fwiw, in the context of a FB alternative, id be looking out for trends that blur the lines between consumer and publisher. Its certainly not sufficient, but I imagine that any open (or not) alternative to social networks will have this quality.

Re: RSS is undead

#64

Post by corobo »

gkya wrote: post #49

> RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protocol has managed to keep on trudging along despite all evidence that it is dead, dead, dead. What a stupid thing to say... All this indicates is that RSS users didn't like those apps. I use elfeed, which has upwards of 500 stars on Github, and it's an Emacs feed…

Anecdata- When Google Reader was killed off I stopped using RSS feeds entirely with the exception of podcasts

Since the recent post saying we should to back to using RSS I've given NewsBlur a go (I'd tried Feedly when GReader died, didn't like the way it scrolls). Honestly though I looked at a few articles on the day I signed up but I've not checked back once yet. I'm like the person that pays for the gym then never goes when it comes to RSS now apparently.

I don't think I've ever had a problem with a site not having RSS feeds though, any site with regular articles that I want to follow has had one

Re: RSS is undead

#65

Post by JD557 »

leejo wrote: post #42

Please stop claiming that RSS died, it didn't. Most of the new sites and blogs i come across usually have an RSS feed buried somewhere, so a more apt metaphor would be that it was buried alive, it didn't die. And please stop trying to feature creep RSS, it doesn't need any more "features". I already wrote about this recently: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15675823

Not only sites and blogs, Mailchimp newsletters also support RSS feeds, which means that a lot of newsletters can be consumed by RSS readers.

A agree that it never really died, it's just hiding.

Re: RSS is undead

#66

Post by gkya »

vanderZwan wrote: post #54
gkya wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The page almost looks perfect with JS disabled. If the major browsers were better at giving the user a way to use and maintain a whitelist of which web sites are allowed to run JS, maybe the websites become less JS-heavy. NoScript or UBlock don't even come close wrt UX to what xombrero was, and what qutebrowser is ATM (I've switched to it from Firefox, just awesome).

I assume you've given uMatrix a shot?

Nope. I was using uBlock origin on Firefox with dynamic blocking and quite a bit of the provided blacklists enabled. I just gave quick uMatrix a look, and it does not seem fundamentally different to me. I like that I can easily add some globs and use version control on the blocklist without having to import-export my settings.

Qutebrowser is a very interesting browser. It's easily scriptable using a config file in python, but not only. It has a nice Emacs Customize like UI, and then it has a system reminiscent of CGI for running external scripts against web pages or on events. A definite improvement for me over whatever is available. I maintain a handful of websites with js enabled (HN, reddit, youtube, a couple more), and for the web apps I'm forced to use, I just start up Chromium temporarily. It's been lovely so far.

Re: RSS is undead

#67

Post by santhoshr »

I would love to see the resurgence of RSS and other public protocol enabled start-ups and solutions. This is the time.

RSS is also a prolific engine for curation, given how flexible and extendable the protocol is. The emergence of expert-run email digest frenzy should be built on foundation of RSS, where individuals can parse hundreds of sources and quickly construct a digest for easy circulation.

Re: RSS is undead

#68

Post by tompccs »

I'm a PhD student, and one of the things you quickly become aware of is the fire-hose of new science that is published daily. The discovery/prioritisation problem is being "solved" by publishers recommending other articles (published by them) on their website, or sites like ResearchGate (basically Facebook for academics and researchers) doing the same with similarly obscure algorithms.

I started a side project that pulls in RSS feeds from various academic publishers and uses a simple regression analysis based on tiles and abstracts to recommend you papers. I've become busy with my PhD but if anyone is interested, it's on github:

https://github.com/tompccs/scoopy

Re: RSS is undead

#69

Post by gkya »

corobo wrote: post #64
gkya wrote: post #49

> RSS died. Whether you blame Feedburner, or Google Reader, or Digg Reader last month, or any number of other product failures over the years, the humble protocol has managed to keep on trudging along despite all evidence that it is dead, dead, dead. What a stupid thing to say... All this indicates is that RSS users didn't like those apps. I use elfeed, which has upwards of 500 stars on Github, and it's an Emacs feed…

Anecdata- When Google Reader was killed off I stopped using RSS feeds entirely with the exception of podcasts Since the recent post saying we should to back to using RSS I've given NewsBlur a go (I'd tried Feedly when GReader died, didn't like the way it scrolls). Honestly though I looked at a few articles on the day I signed up but I've not checked back once yet. I'm like the person that pays for the gym then never…

I have made checking my RSS my equivalent of reading a newspaper in the morning. And it's really easy for me: Emacs is always open anyways, so I type M-x elfeed RET G, and I have a list of updates. I have configured Elfeed such that it has some stored searches [1] which I navigate using j and k, and such that it scores articles in a crude but useful way [2]. So it takes me about 5-10 minutes to process the entire thing, make note of the links to read later, and check the important, immediate stuff. And once I transformed it to a rather joyful thing to do from a chore, it was incredibly easy and automatical to make it into a habit.

[1] https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/...

[2] https://github.com/cadadr/configuration/blob/master/emacs.d/...

Re: RSS is undead

#70

Post by barrkel »

If you're a news publisher, sure it looks like RSS is dead, because all you see is its use for news publishing, and it seems unfit for purpose.

I subscribe to hundreds of feeds, and none of them are news publishers. Still works for me.

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