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RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

rssbox.herokuapp.com

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Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#61

Post by hombre_fatal »

pmoriarty wrote: post #41

My own problem with services like this is that I don't want to tell their owners what blogs I read. It's a privacy concern. I'd feel much more comfortable using a standalone tool that I could run on my own laptop (ideally one that didn't require running a web server or even a web browser).

To practice SwiftUI, I was building an rss/feed reader but immediately realized anything you're going to display needs to be web-rendered. Or rather, to avoid a web browser (like WKWebView) the product is so neutered that it's not all that compelling.

Even stripping everything out but plaintext with an HTML parser to put it in a text view, I realized I could wrap the links with native Cocoa labels that act as hyperlinks. And then do the same with images. Hmm, what about tables and stuff? Soon I realized, why would I even want this? It's annoying to visit the origin site when the RSS reader can just render it, and it kinda defeats the purpose.

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#62

Post by hombre_fatal »

cascader wrote: post #48
pmoriarty wrote: post #41

My own problem with services like this is that I don't want to tell their owners what blogs I read. It's a privacy concern. I'd feel much more comfortable using a standalone tool that I could run on my own laptop (ideally one that didn't require running a web server or even a web browser).

I wanted to check out the service in the OP’s post, and realized I didn’t have an iOS based RSS reader app on my tablet. In line with your privacy concerns, I wanted an app that didn’t require creating an account. I couldn’t find one in the first several I loaded. Any tips?

None of the first few apps that show up for me in the iOS store need accounts. I've used Reeder in the past. But now I use NetNewsReader which is free and available on github.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/netnewswire-rss-reader/id14806...

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#63

Post by pmoriarty »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #61
pmoriarty wrote: post #41

My own problem with services like this is that I don't want to tell their owners what blogs I read. It's a privacy concern. I'd feel much more comfortable using a standalone tool that I could run on my own laptop (ideally one that didn't require running a web server or even a web browser).

To practice SwiftUI, I was building an rss/feed reader but immediately realized anything you're going to display needs to be web-rendered. Or rather, to avoid a web browser (like WKWebView) the product is so neutered that it's not all that compelling. Even stripping everything out but plaintext with an HTML parser to put it in a text view, I realized I could wrap the links with native Cocoa labels that act as hyperli…

For many years I've used and continue to use an RSS reader named newsboat[1][2] (which is an actively developed fork of the venerable newsbeuter, which I used for years before that).

It's a feature-rich RSS reader that runs completely in the terminal, presenting text-only views of each RSS feed.

The links open in the browser of your choice (which for me is a text-only version of emacs-w3m, which I also run exclusively in the terminal).

However, some RSS items can be read in their entirety within the RSS reader[3], and does not require the opening of any links. This is my preferred method of consuming RSS.

[1] - https://newsboat.org/

[2] - https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat

[3] - ie. those RSS items for which the author has chosen to make their entire article/post available over RSS instead of merely posting a teaser and requiring browsing to their website to read the rest

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#64

Post by kickscondor »

goblin89 wrote: post #42

A somewhat unconventional UI for following content, which incidentally works with RSS Box, is Fraidycat[0]. It groups recent posts under “individuals” with a visualization of how much recent activity there is in a given feed, and allows to choose “follow intensity” which works in a nice and transparent way. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22545878

Hey thanks for this lovely pitch, goblin89. <3 all my goblin friends out there

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#68

Post by stefansundin »

theblackcat1002 wrote: post #3

"There was a problem talking to Instagram. Please try again in a moment." blocked by Instagram?

Instagram used to have an open API, but that is closed down now. The app is currently using some private-ish endpoints, but they are ratelimited. I need to add caching. More people have started using my app recently, and I have not had time to add caching yet.

Re: RSS Box – RSS for websites that do not support RSS

#70

Post by stefansundin »

diablo1 wrote: post #35

I worry about this being swarmed by traffic and hugged to death. Since it's popular on HN, I imagine the particular Heroku instance is overwhelmed. I was surprised that it worked when I used it. I guess I'm gonna have to pony up and donate then...

You are correct in that it is somewhat starved of resources. The free Heroku instance that I host is running on the free Heroku dyno (512 MB RAM). I do not have a good caching solution currently, which is why Twitter and Instagram are almost always returning errors now. I suspect a single person is responsible for most of the issues (see GitHub issue #38). It's actually amazing how well it runs considering how much traffic is thrown at it.

At some point I hope to get enough time to implement a caching solution, which should hopefully resolve most of these issues.

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