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Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

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Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#221

Post by dnzm »

royalharsh95 wrote: post #198
originalsimba wrote: post #27

Did anyone else notice how corporations like Twitter and Facebook quietly tried to kill RSS in the past 10 years? RSS is a wonderful technology with embodies the spirit of the Internet. Facebook and Twitter are, by comparison, cancer. I often recommend WordPress to folks as an alternative for blogging, because it is free and has RSS functional out of the box.

WordPress still doesn't support postgres.

Which, to the general public, doesn't matter one iota.

Luckily, there's other platforms that, apart from giving you more options wrt your database backend, embrace newer PHP practices and versions a whole lot quicker.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#222

Post by thirdsun »

frooxie wrote: post #56
disconnected wrote: post #31

"People" keep rattling on about how RSS needs to be revived. Do these people live in some sort of alternative reality where: - The guardian - BBC - Reuters - Ars Technica - LWN - Hacker News and a fuck ton others don't have an RSS feed? Or some sort or reality where Flym (or the myriads of RSS apps) don't exist? Because I sure as hell don't.

A few years ago, my favorite writers and artists had personal blogs. Today, many of them have moved to Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook, making them inconvenient or impossible to follow using RSS. Apart from the migration to walled gardens, I also think it's a problem that 99% of web users haven't heard of RSS.

I really don't understand those artists and writers you mention. Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content?

This doesn't remove the ability to promote and share your content elsewhere. Content creators really can have it both ways. Publish on your own site and link to, share or duplicate that content on Facebook, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, RSS, Soundcloud and any other service that may be relevant to your audience.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#223

Post by dnzm »

Nadya wrote: post #188
voltagex_ wrote: post #186

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haven't you just described a blog though?

Sounds more like a newsletter to me. Let people subscribe to the newsletter, send out an email blast once a day/week/month.

But then by RSS, which makes it a web thing, which sure sounds like a blog.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#224

Post by dnzm »

stevenicr wrote: post #197
originalsimba wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well you can get a VPS for $2.50/mo these days with half a gig of ram, more than enough to handle 5-15 simultaneous visitors on your average WordPress blog. The WordPress software IS free. The WordPress.com service is not, as you pay for it by attaching their domain name to yours thereby providing them free advertising. Also, there's nothing to stop you from hosting your personal blog on your personal internet connec…

and a slightly bigger ram vps could easily add buddypress with the "BP My Home plugin" and you could give all of your family and friends their own home page profiles with whichever rss feeds they want on their own profile page. This is something I have been kicking around for a while. This past week I've been researching ways to incorporate the blacklisting and such from a different rss aggregator plugin to give peop…

After peeking at that BP My Home Plugin - wouldn't your use case also be covered by Nextcloud with a sprinkling of apps? There's a very capable RSS reader available, notes apps, calendar with CalDAV support, address book with CarDAV support, and so on. Depending on what you're actually trying to set up, that might work better than trying to shoehorn functionality into a blogging platform.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#225

Post by dnzm »

thirdsun wrote: post #222
frooxie wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A few years ago, my favorite writers and artists had personal blogs. Today, many of them have moved to Instagram, Twitter and/or Facebook, making them inconvenient or impossible to follow using RSS. Apart from the migration to walled gardens, I also think it's a problem that 99% of web users haven't heard of RSS.

I really don't understand those artists and writers you mention. Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content? This doesn't remove the ability to promote and share your content elsewhere. Content creators really can have it both ways. Publish on your own site and link to, share or duplicate that content on Facebook, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, RSS, Soundcloud and any other service that…

> I really don't understand those artists and writers you mention. Why on earth would they not use their own platform to present their content?

Ease of use. Plenty of folks don't have the skills to set things up and keep them humming along, nor do they have the funds to play someone else to do it for them. So they hand over a bit of control in exchange for a platform that's set up and kept up to date.

You may argue that they're giving up too much control, and I'd agree with you, but that's not how most (non-technical) users see things.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#226

Post by Semaphor »

dijit wrote: post #212
remram wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter used to have RSS versions of every profile, accessible through api.twitter.com without credentials. It was awesome. They retired it years ago... I took the time to make a proxy (Twitter API to RSS), and though I did write a few more, a lot more services still provide feeds (such as YouTube, Reddit, Steam, GitHub) than I thought they would. RSS is still going strong.

Would you be willing to release the code for this? I'd like to run one myself.

Can't remember the name, but there is at least one open source self hosted tool that allows you to subscribe to tweets via RSS. I used it to follow an author who had neither mailing list nor website.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#227

Post by hvidgaard »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #211
hvidgaard wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Podcasts seems to work fine, which is the exact same concept with sound in place of text.

most people use podcasts through an app, not by adding the RSS feed to their RSS reader. When people talk about RSS being dead, they mean the consumer usage, and not about how it powers other things behind the scenes.

When people say "RSS" they really mean articles delivered with RSS.

And most people use "RSS" through an app(lication). My point is that the economic model that powers podcasts can power articles through RSS as well.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#228

Post by pimeys »

jeofken wrote: post #196
JoshMnem wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I got a T460 with i7-6600U CPU @ 2.60GHz. I always research the models online before buying: " ". I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 on it at the moment. The next-day at-home support has been great. They have come to my home and replaced motherboards on the kitchen table with no questions asked. It has two batteries, which added a little weight, but I rarely think about power outlets any more. I can't think of anything else, b…

Neat! This will be my first thinkpad since ~2005. I’ve been eyeing the X1Carbon. What made you select T460? Do you feel that it’s portable enough to bike/walk around with and use in cafes etc? I guess what I’m really wondering is, with all different models (7 different choices in the T series, and then X and P) how can you select one? I’m in analysis paralysis.

You should ask more questions in /r/thinkpad[0]. But here's a quick summary for the models that matter for tech people:

- T4XX = 14", T5XX = 15", X2XX = 12"

- The middle number is the last number of the year (T460/X260: 2016, T470/X270: 2017 etc.).

- The T-series has had three models per year, the normal with no ending letters that has an external battery, allows you to replace parts and is mainly meant as a durable corporate workhorse. The s-version is more for consumers, with usually better choices for panels and building material, but more integrated parts and less amount of maximum available memory; no replaceable external battery. The p-version means performance, so the laptop is bulkier but holds a faster 35W CPU.

- P-series are workstations. The s-model holds a ULV CPU, but the normal P51 and P71 can have Xeon/Quadro level parts. They're either 15" or 17" and for some mysterious reason annoy everybody with an off-center keyboard and a numpad.

- X1 Carbon is a 14" ultralight laptop with usually the best screens and best building materials.

- From the consumer models, the only thing that matters is the Yoga series. Don't have any experience from those, but people seem to like them.

[0] https://reddit.com/r/thinkpad

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#229

Post by XzetaU8 »

Semaphor wrote: post #226
dijit wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be willing to release the code for this? I'd like to run one myself.

Can't remember the name, but there is at least one open source self hosted tool that allows you to subscribe to tweets via RSS. I used it to follow an author who had neither mailing list nor website.

https://twitrss.me/

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#230

Post by reitanqild »

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #215
reitanqild wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ars technica provides full rss - to paying readers. The price is reasonable. It's a win-win: they probably earn more on each paying customer than on 10 or 20 adblocking users like us. Paying customers get full uncrippled RSS, no ads and no tracking (I think it's tiered though so you might have to pay slightly more to get all these three).

I would say that's not RSS winning, but more like Ars Technica adding many "premium features" as a bundle to justify the subscription fee. It's like NYTimes providing crossword puzzle for free to subscribed users. You wouldn't call that "It's the perfect time for a crossword puzzle renaissance", would you?

It's not like RSS is winning yet -or certainly- no.

But it shows there might be a sustainable solution that includes uncrippled RSS and no ads or tracking.

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