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It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

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Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#71

Post by pipeline_peak »

RSS is too lean, it's a format, the majority of people don't know what it is or how to use it. A lot of sites don't even support RSS anymore. Like IRC, its userbase is tech people. Sorry guys, you don't make up the rest of the world...

It's an outdated concept, we all know people don't surf the web anymore. And the larger it will get, the less likely people will. Have you tried using RSS, just measly collecting your favorite sites with the off chance that they support it? It's a mess and no surprise it died as everyone flocked to Facebook, Twitter, etc.

People need some sort of platform and that's why ActivityPub / Fediverse is a lot more promising. Social networks aren't the problem, just the one's we've been using.

Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#72

Post by fab23 »

hobo_mark wrote: post #43
yunruse wrote: post #22

I’m becoming a real fan of using RSS for anything that fits it – websites, YouTube [0], email newsletters [1]; even books [2]! Honestly I’m tempted to start putting summaries (hacker news, stack exchange, reddit) in my feeds, just to keep me from endless scrolling. [0] I think Feedly can handle this, but YouTube may have disabled this natively, which is a shame. [1] I’m a fan of https://kill-the-newsletter.com [2] Dr…

Feeds are definitely still enabled on YouTube at " rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UC The only complicated part is finding the channel id, which is not always presented directly (sometimes you have a username, sometimes a channel "shortname", now you also have handles... even the YouTube data API itself can only resolve some of them).

I am using the RSSPreview [1] Addon in Firefox, which works for me also on Youtube. The addon brings back the nice RSS Icon in the URL Bar. You can also change to color back to orange so you can spot it easily when a site has an RSS feed.

[1] https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/rsspreview/

Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#73

Post by dang »

Discussed at the time:

It's time to head back to RSS? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16721690 - March 2018 (491 comments)

Also, related ongoing threads right now:

Ask HN: What RSS Reader do you use in 2022? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34108413

This is the year of the RSS reader - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34105572

Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#75

Post by stanislavb »

strict9 wrote: post #11

I still use it on a daily basis like many others. But a revival isn't dependent on the technology or the type of apps that can consume RSS. It is the lack of outlets publishing on a regular basis. Social media's grip on attention has only grown stronger since RSS readers were more popular. Blogs are mostly gone comparatively speaking to 10-15 years ago. Many authors do an email newsletter. RSS is still around but it'…

Have you considered an RSS reader that "reads" non-RSS publications?

That's what I've tried to do with Lenns.io. You can subscribe to any blog/website, regardless of their RSS support. Then, if they don't expose an RSS feed - the website's titles are followed. That works with about 90% success.

I'd be happy if you give it a go https://lenns.io. Bonus - you can set priorities to feeds and the number of items per source to be listed on your dashboard (so not a single subscription can overrun it)

Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#76

Post by themadturk »

snird wrote: post #41
beej71 wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're not wrong. But I do wish more people were happy with those "failures", which basically describe the Internet of yore.

I'm a creator myself. Why would I want to build an audience on a platform with no monetization possibility, ever? Even sponsorships are not possible, since I can't reliably count reads (which I can even in email). It's nice to think of the "classic" internet, but it's a naivety that will keep RSS on the edges. And I love RSS idea! I want it back! I hate subscribing to email newsletters in a way that makes it hard to…

You can subscribe to newsletters via FeedBin, which costs $5 a month, and will act as a source to many feed readers (as well as being a web-based feed/newsletter/twitter feed reader itself).

Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#78

Post by themadturk »

anonymousiam wrote: post #40

Does anybody know why Randall Munroe (XKCD) has made a mockery of RSS on his site? I thought his joke was funny at first, but he has left it there and now the RSS feed from his site is worse than useless. Here's the content I get from his RSS feed on both my Android phone and my iPad: "xkcd.com is best viewed with Netscape Navigator 4.0 or below on a Pentium 3±1 emulated in Javascript on an Apple IIGS at a screen res…

Works fine for me in NetNewsWire. I have never seen this behavior.

Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#79

Post by vhcr »

yunruse wrote: post #22

I’m becoming a real fan of using RSS for anything that fits it – websites, YouTube [0], email newsletters [1]; even books [2]! Honestly I’m tempted to start putting summaries (hacker news, stack exchange, reddit) in my feeds, just to keep me from endless scrolling. [0] I think Feedly can handle this, but YouTube may have disabled this natively, which is a shame. [1] I’m a fan of https://kill-the-newsletter.com [2] Dr…

I created a bookmark to watch YouTube videos from Feedly, it basically creates a playlist from the YouTube videos you're following (20 at a time):

    javascript:!function(){const%20e=document.getElementsByClassName(%22entry%20entry--unread%22),t=[];Array.from(e).forEach(function(e){const%20n=e.getElementsByTagName%28%27a%27%29%5B0%5D,o=/https:\/\/www\.youtube\.com\/watch\%3Fv=(.+)$/.exec(n);o%26%26t.length%3C20%26%26(e.getElementsByClassName(%22EntryMarkAsReadButton%22)[0].click(),t.push(o[1]))}),window.open(%22https://www.youtube.com/watch_videos%3Fvideo_ids=%22+t.join(),%22_blank%22,%22noopener%22,%22noreferrer%22)}();void(0);

Re: It's time for an RSS revival (2018)

#80

Post by axegon_ »

I tend to agree. I've said multiple times how much I miss google reader. HOWEVER... We need an RSS 3.0. Let's face it, parsing XML is an extremely tedious and slow task, even if you are using a fast compiled language. There are a million ways to do it now and optimize it by magnitudes. Speed and size-wise.
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