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It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

danielmiessler.com

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Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#21

Post by iotku »

bertman wrote: post #4

From the article: Not only will this reduce your anxiety and churn from constantly opening and closing various sites, but RSS also shows the content in a standard format, with less to distract you. Hmm, if you get anxiety from closing and opening tabs, you should probably go offline for a while.

>Hmm, if you get anxiety from closing and opening tabs, you should probably go offline for a while.

You'll be able to go offline for a while thanks to RSS feeds.

You can click one button to check for feed updates and know you're up to date on things or what's new.

vs.

1) Open browser

2) Load folder of bookmarks for favorite sites

3) Look through each tab to see if there's new content.

To me given those two scenarios RSS feeds seem much more efficient and I do get anxiety when I'm repeating menial tasks potentially multiple times a day for no perceivable benefit.

RSS is another victim of the manipulation of social media companies trying to steal everyone's attention and time.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#22

Post by stevekemp »

Thristle wrote: post #16

After google reader went dark i used "The Old Reader" and when they moved to pay only (or they closed? i can't remember) i moved to inoreader its the only way i consume news/blogs. there is no way im checking 40+ websites every day for new content and that way i won't miss anything if a site has no RSS or its RSS feed doesn't work right chances are i just won't use that site

I always used rss2email (wrote a simple clone of that application in golang, so I could drop python from my servers), which ensures I don't miss updates and I have a local history I can search along with my email.

https://github.com/skx/rss2email

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#24

Post by thelazydogsback »

apostacy wrote: post #17
thelazydogsback wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innoreader can make a virtual feed from changes that appear in any site -- a new feature I haven't tried yet. Used to use Google Reader, but now I pay for Inno, which I'm happy to do.

That is pretty cool. But unfortunately that is not really a solution. It is like saying that it is ok that a website removed screen-reader support, because you have a screen reader that can still parse the website anyway. The problem is RSS not being made available at all. RSS being made available less and less, and they have less of an incentive to do so. And I am saddened that a lot of the good work Mozilla did was…

Sure -- not saying it's as good as presenting make-for-rss posts -- may be helpful in some cases though. At least I'll know that content changes, and if I don't like the virtual feed, I can just link out to the source and view it directly.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#25

Post by pembrook »

thelazydogsback wrote: post #18
pembrook wrote: post #15

The reason RSS failed to reach mainstream adoption by users is because it is not user friendly at all. While I love RSS myself, no amount of tech nerd nostalgia is going to make it popular enough that your mom starts using it. Most sites still have implemented RSS in a terrible way. For example, many blogs I follow only show excerpts in their feeds. So the feed is worthless to me. Others put every podcast episode the…

Other than the issue of posting abridged content, it seem like all the other issues can be handled with a capable client. It's better to post more (inlc. the podcasts, etc.) and then filter as you desire, no?

Whenever you put the burden on the end user to endlessly customize everything you’ve just lost 95% of the mainstream public and [insert thing] remains a niche tool used by people on HackerNews.

...and then mom still ends up getting her news from Facebook.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#26

Post by synchrone »

To reroute much of web-based feeds consumption to RSS - check out https://docs.rsshub.app/en/

It works quite well, has vibrant community, and support for ripping twitter and instagram feeds among dozens of other sites. It also has a browser extension to help discover available feeds on sites that it can digest - https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rsshub-radar-...

There's also a Chrome extension, but that one is not translated from Chinese yet.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#27

Post by mmcconnell1618 »

The business model of RSS is harder than just slapping ads on your homepage and encouraging more page clicks. I think that's the real reason you don't see a strong RSS ecosystem. The content producers don't have a strong financial incentive to support it well.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#28

Post by hkt »

I love RSS, but do think it needs to be developed.

For a start, clients aren't great. Most have poor UX and are clunky, and I've used very few which don't choke on large numbers of feeds.

Second, having lots of subscriptions really shows the value of an editor. I don't often want to scroll through everything that has been published by a recently hyperactive feed in order to see things with a lower cadence. There is no filter for relevance, which is perhaps something that could be added through an external service or added to a hosted reader. Maybe someone has already done this.

Third, search and recommendations is pretty poor. I'd be very much in the market for "if you liked this then you'll like this" for RSS feeds. Perhaps this already exists, but I'm not aware of it.

What I've always liked about RSS is the fact it can keep me in touch with more sources than I can track myself. It highlights the blogs that only publish once a month, and if I only check in weekly, it turns the internet into a handy snapshot of who has updated and who hasn't. The part I like less is filtering between relevance and irrelevance.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#29

Post by lokedhs »

Thristle wrote: post #16

After google reader went dark i used "The Old Reader" and when they moved to pay only (or they closed? i can't remember) i moved to inoreader its the only way i consume news/blogs. there is no way im checking 40+ websites every day for new content and that way i won't miss anything if a site has no RSS or its RSS feed doesn't work right chances are i just won't use that site

I'm using the old reader and i Have never paid for it.

There are some limitations for the free accounts but to be honest I have never run into them.

Re: It’s Time to Get Back to RSS

#30

Post by synchrone »

apostacy wrote: post #17
thelazydogsback wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Innoreader can make a virtual feed from changes that appear in any site -- a new feature I haven't tried yet. Used to use Google Reader, but now I pay for Inno, which I'm happy to do.

That is pretty cool. But unfortunately that is not really a solution. It is like saying that it is ok that a website removed screen-reader support, because you have a screen reader that can still parse the website anyway. The problem is RSS not being made available at all. RSS being made available less and less, and they have less of an incentive to do so. And I am saddened that a lot of the good work Mozilla did was…

as far as i can see, RSSHub does exactly that, and supports as many as 536 scraped sources (of varying caliber) at https://github.com/DIYgod/RSSHub/tree/master/lib/routes.

It's not an outlandish amount of work, if lots of people chip in with their favorite source.

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