I ditched the algorithm for RSS • Hacker News Board

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#201

Post by treetalker » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:00 AM UTC

throw0101c wrote: post #2

Happy user of NetNewsWire on macOS for many, many years (including following HN, and a number YT channels).

I use it too, and like it very much. My only complaint is the inability to filter content (say, by keyword or regex). But it's free, it's solid, and it syncs across all my devices. Big ups.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#202

Post by lukevp » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:05 AM UTC

lucasfdacunha wrote: post #200

I'm going to plug my personal project here which is a weekly curated list of gaming content called The Gaming Pub - https://thegamingpub.com I heavily use RSS to curate most of the content, and I believe it's one of the best ways to get news and articles without the bias of an algorithm.

Could you describe how you find news with rss? Would this work for tech content in general?

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#203

Post by marcus_holmes » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:06 AM UTC

bluGill wrote: post #100

A good algorithm is a good thing. However what a good algorithm is for me is often different from what it is for those who maintain them. Outrage gets attention and sometimes it is needed, but there is a level of too much, and also a lot of outrage unfairly represents the issues and so it makes me mad even though if I understood the details I wouldn't be mad just concerned. I want an algorithm that surfaces things of…

There's been some conversation on Mastodon (and here) about its lack of algorithm

I really prefer my feed with no algorithm. I really like that it's just ordered by when it was posted, and if someone spams too much I'll remove them, and if my feed gets too much I'll curate it down a bit.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#204

Post by purplezooey » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:17 AM UTC

He gives a few good examples of well-supported RSS feeds, but the reality is, in 2025, RSS is dying. So many places have RSS feeds that constantly break, suddenly stop updating, get relocated without notice, or don't exist at all.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#205

Post by praveen9920 » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:27 AM UTC

I used to use Google Reader a lot. I used to love reading through the feed but once Google killed it, I did not continue the RSS collections. Perhaps its time I get back to finding a new reader.

Heuristics for picking the most valued content is not always good. I see some posts on niche subs without much engagement, but align with my interests. Perhaps I can let a local LLM prioritize the feed based on my history or preference which I can tune as per my requirements rather than some black-box algorithm

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#206

Post by deivid » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 4:39 AM UTC

DearNarwhal wrote: post #14

freetonik wrote: post #10

Apologies for promoting my project again (did this in at least 2 other threads related to RSS), but I'm weirdly proud of it: I'm curating a list of human-written blogs on my blog reader/discovery/search engine called Minifeed: https://minifeed.net/blogs/ There's an OPML export available as well: https://minifeed.net/blogs/opml.xml

I was looking for more feeds to subscribe to. Thanks for sharing!

I keep a blogroll[0] mostly on computing/programming

[0]: https://blog.davidv.dev/blogs-i-follow.html

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#207

Post by due-rr » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 6:03 AM UTC

I agree. That’s why I created the simplest possible RSS reader[1]. I use it daily, but so far I’m the only user :D.

[1]: https://motherfuckingrssreader.com/

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#208

Post by yakshaving_jgt » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 6:03 AM UTC

sltkr wrote: post #176

yakshaving_jgt wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this Wikipedia page is describing the thing you think it is. Maybe it's the wrong link?

He's probably thinking about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pingback

I think you're right.

It's a shame that this was so vulnerable to abuse. Webmentions as a concept is such a great idea. Maybe the more recent implementation is better, but it doesn't seem like many people (relatively speaking) are familiar with the idea.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#209

Post by ozarker » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 6:09 AM UTC

Axsuul wrote: post #199

Beijinger wrote: post #152

My buddy will soon offer an RSS reader. I will post it here. Yes, you can create an RSS feed from a Youtube Channel. You can can create an RSS feed from Reddit. You can't to my best knowledge create an RSS feed anymore from Twitter Newsletter to RSS: https://kill-the-newsletter.com/ More stuff: Blogs & RSS https://rssfeedasap.com/ https://code.rosaelefanten.org/rssparser.lisp/dir?ci=tip This one you have to pay. I am…

Host your own Nitter instance and you'll be able to get RSS feeds

That’s gotten pretty hard to do recently since Musk cracked down on api access

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#210

Post by quantadev » Fri, Jan 17, 2025, 6:30 AM UTC

timbit42 wrote: post #190

quantadev wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When BlueSky was being designed I was involved in the developer discussions and continually urged them to make simple RSS be the least common denominator of their entire spec, and build on top of RSS rather than trying to replace RSS. They listened to a lot of what I said, including my "Repository" concept where every user basically has a big repository of IPFS content addressable elements, and incorporated that into…

Mastodon supports RSS.

Yeah, I've written an ActivityPub implementation of my own. Very familiar with Mastodon too of course. RSS is such low hanging fruit and so obvious a thing to use as the basis for social media posts.