Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance • Hacker News Board

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#291

Post by fenwick67 » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 1:04 PM UTC

zbentley wrote: post #287

hvidgaard wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're "sponsored by", just like some YouTubers do. So if your target audience is significant, you can choose to include something from a sponsor in return for a payment.

I like podcasts, and think we're in something of a golden age for them right now. However, the "sponsorship" model (a very few advertisers paying content creators to--usually manually--include mention of them in their content) is much more concerning to me than the "black box ad auction" model (content creators get money from an advertising aggregator like Google for putting a box on their page). There's a spectrum t…

black-box auction ads aren't as ideal as you might think - lots of brands put pressure on YouTube recently to change their monetization policies to exclude certain types of content.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#292

Post by self_awareness » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 1:12 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #182

JoshMnem wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most podcasts that I've encountered lately don't have RSS feeds listed. You have to view source to find the URLs. The Internet needs to revive that open technology culture. Instead of Facebook/Twitter/G+/etc. subscribe to RSS feeds. Instead of Medium, use WordPress/Hugo/Metalsmith/etc. on Netlify/Surge/Github etc. Instead of Mac, use GNU/Linux. Etc.

>Instead of Mac, use GNU/Linux. Bought my first Macbook pro after being a linux/ThinkPad guy since 2008. I'm probably never going back to Linux on a laptop. I actually have working suspend and resume, plus it's Unix-like under the hood. Trackpad actually works without a bunch of ugly hacks since they deprecated synaptics drivers. no systemd, etc. I spend almost no time fiddling with my system nowadays. I want to use…

I'm actually surprised you didn't like systemd, since it was modelled (in part) after launchd from macOS. Same for systemd utilities like logind; even the name was taken from macOS logind.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#293

Post by sirsuki » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 1:27 PM UTC

Link is broken. Anyone have an alternative so others can read this article?

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#294

Post by pcardoso » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 1:54 PM UTC

Shameless plug: I made a small RSS to email service, which I use to keep up to date on rarely updated feeds. Has been working well for me.

Give it a test at https://mailtheblog.com

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#295

Post by codyogden » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 1:58 PM UTC

dewey wrote: post #240

codyogden wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious, did you upgrade to 2.0? I went to check in on my site recently, and found that they nuked the project and rewrote it in Go.

Yep and as someone who works with Go at my day job that's just an additional point to like the project ;)

Ahhh...that's cool! It was kind of intriguing that they removed a bunch of features/things. I built out some custom systems that rely on the semi-public RSS feeds the legacy project generated, so upgrading is more of a long-term goal, I guess.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#296

Post by art4ur » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 2:02 PM UTC

na85 wrote: post #182

JoshMnem wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most podcasts that I've encountered lately don't have RSS feeds listed. You have to view source to find the URLs. The Internet needs to revive that open technology culture. Instead of Facebook/Twitter/G+/etc. subscribe to RSS feeds. Instead of Medium, use WordPress/Hugo/Metalsmith/etc. on Netlify/Surge/Github etc. Instead of Mac, use GNU/Linux. Etc.

>Instead of Mac, use GNU/Linux. Bought my first Macbook pro after being a linux/ThinkPad guy since 2008. I'm probably never going back to Linux on a laptop. I actually have working suspend and resume, plus it's Unix-like under the hood. Trackpad actually works without a bunch of ugly hacks since they deprecated synaptics drivers. no systemd, etc. I spend almost no time fiddling with my system nowadays. I want to use…

I haven't had a laptop that doesn't support suspend and resume in years. It's worth looking at again in 2018. It's gotten a lot better.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#297

Post by anacleto » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

Couldn't agree more.

This kinda of `anti-active` pattern where you only take the output (no need to read the news online), could also be applied to SaaS products.

You don't need to use the product, you just take the tech output that matters to your business.

Recently wrote a thing on the topic: The Next Generation of SaaS Won’t Optimize for User Engagement

While reading these comments, it popped up in my mind.

[0] https://www.plainflow.com/blog/next-generation-saas-user-eng...

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#298

Post by viridian » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 2:09 PM UTC

cocktailpeanuts wrote: post #265

dalbasal wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Economics certainly was central to the story, past or future, but I wouldn't state it quite so strongly. Hopefully I'm not ignorant or naive. Let's start from examples: youtube, facebook, twitter. The platforms' ad businesses definitely benefited from being centralised and proprietary. But, all three "won" their respective platform wars before those lucrative ad businesses existed. They won because that is where peop…

> Podcasts are the best example. They were the way to distribute certain content. Users adopted podcasts because the content was there, even though the UX was/is clunky. It happened to be decentralized and rss-based. I would argue that podcasts are as decentralized as emails are "decentralized". When was the last time you downloaded a Podcast from a self-hosted server? Most people download podcasts through iTunes, So…

You don't download podcasts through iTunes, and iTunes doesn't host any podcast. When you register your podcast with iTunes, they direct users to your RSS feed via their client.

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#299

Post by moolcool » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 2:10 PM UTC

bhrgunatha wrote: post #160

8bitsrule wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not just them. After last week's discussion, I noticed this week that, while Rick Steves does podcasts, I had to hunt for the RSS feeds page hosted on his own website. WTF? My usual policy for podcasts is, RSS subscription or else. Ain't got time to visit the damn website. Science Friday tried that for a while and soon went back.

Or there was a big trend where they only links were to an itunes page which a) requires itunes to be installed because b) there is no direct link for the rss feed. I had to write a scraper to find the underlying rss feed for itunes only podcasts.

Do the iTunes only podcast feeds need auth to access? Would you be willing to open source this?

Re: Now Is the Perfect Time for an RSS Renaissance

#300

Post by Spivak » Tue, Apr 24, 2018, 2:30 PM UTC

zbentley wrote: post #275

acct1771 wrote: post #250

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"ads aren't abusive" "believe"

Believe it or not, some people make high-quality content on the internet with the expectation of compensation. The current state of advertising is ethically and technically questionable in many ways. But the idea of advertising as a revenue model is not.

Ethical advertising is pretty much a unicorn. I don't deny that it's possible but I would struggle to find even a single example of it in the wild.