This is really good, this story of RSS ends up being a representative illustrative example (synecdoche?) of a couple interesting themes in "what's happened with the internet".
The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
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Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
#32Just came in to say I read this in a RSS reader.
How do you read HN via RSS reader?
Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
#33As I point out occasionally, most hard news sources have RSS feeds. The New York Times, Reuters, the BBC, CNN, and Fox News all have RSS feeds. The Hill, Roll Call, and Politico have RSS feeds. The Congressional leadership has an RSS feed. NASA and the ESA have RSS feeds. The National Weather Service has RSS feeds. New York City and the LAPD have RSS feeds.
If it matters, it's probably in an RSS feed. It's social media blithering that's left out. And ads.
Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
#34RSS is a nice format, but it'd be even nicer as json. Recently had a client that needed me to read their RSS feed into email templates and update their template after they switched their email service. First time working with RSS. 10/10, would do so again.
> [RSS would] be even nicer as json.
Already a standard! https://jsonfeed.org/
Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
#35Back in 2006 I wrote an extremely detailed history of some of the infighting that shaped the history of RSS. It was a popular article at the time. For anyone interested in this bit of history, written at a formative moment, the article is here:
http://www.smashcompany.com/technology/rss-has-been-damaged-...
Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
#36I might be biased here as i've built a news aggregator/RSS reader ( https://aktu.io ) but imho RSS was and still is the best way to get news from sources you like. This is so obvious when you compare RSS to social platforms... I mean Facebook was great to share stuff with your friends and get updates but now it's become a huge mess where you get a little bit of everything, you're not even sure you'll ever see all the…
As long as those sources have an RSS feed (that is usable, looking at you Medium), sure. But, most sources that _most_ people (not geeks) like... don't.
The comment above where someone said "RSS isn't dead, I have a business scraping pages to make RSS feeds when they didn't have one already"... yeah, exactly.
Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
#37Just came in to say I read this in a RSS reader.
How do you read HN via RSS reader?
Here are a couple of options:
Re: The Rise and Contentious Fork of RSS
#38I still use it every day. I run a python script through Cron that parses a list of feeds and caches new items in a sqlite database. Then it pulls the most recent 100 items out of the database and generates a static html page in which I read them
This is what I've been telling my grandmother to do, but for some reason she keeps using Facebook instead.
I recommend your grandmother try feedly if she finds rolling her own too daunting.