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Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

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Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#51

Post by jdofaz »

My feed reader app is my go to app when I'm bored. I will say its becoming less prominent. Half the time I want to add a site I have to guess where rss feed is generated since its less common to link to it. Apple makes the experience worse on iOS since rss link open in the News app but it doesn't support rss.

Some new sites don't have it at all, when https://www.thefarside.com/ came to life I didn't have a way to follow it until someone made feed based on scraping.

Most sites seem to have a sitemap for search, I wish my reader app could fall back to that.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#53

Post by lllr_finger »

jbob2000 wrote: post #49
eropple wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Unproductive for discussion", then. Calling RSS "dead" will offend people who are partial to it, because there are fanboys everywhere, and that's not going to lead to a particularly useful discussion.

No it won’t, the title asked a question, it didn’t make a matter-of-fact statement. If you aren’t personally offended by the term, i would argue that it’s unproductive to claim that someone somewhere else under different conditions would get offended. And besides - we’re talking about a technological standard, not someone’s grandmother. On my give-a-fuck scale, a person being offended by their favourite technology st…

Normally, I'd agree with you - however, my org just had some minor drama over someone attempting to classify a certain piece of tech as "dead". The people who were invested in that tech were riled up.

It's difficult to know with certainty the motivations and emotional attachments people on either side of a debate will have, so it's sometimes easier to avoid some of the more "loaded" words.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#55

Post by lukifer »

pjlegato wrote: post #41
jasode wrote: post #19

By asking the question using the word "dead"[0] which has such offensive connotations, it will spur some to say "it's not dead" -- which isn't really going to be productive for what I think you're really asking. First, in one sense (but doesn't really answer your question) ... the old protocols like RSS (feeds), NNTP (news), IRC (chat), etc are never going to be "dead" because somebody somewhere will always be provid…

The word "dead" is hardly offensive. It's a common and universal part of nature. All things eventually die, including software.

I don't think the word itself is what's offensive; rather it's connecting it to a particular thing which some people cherish. If I'm a fan of ska music and active in that scene, I'm obviously going to take umbrage with "ska is dead", even if it's vastly less popular than its apex. And "dead" is clearly an exaggerated euphemism in the vast majority of cases: even "Latin is a dead language" isn't strictly true.

"Dead" may not be intrinsically offensive, but in practice "X is dead" is at least triggering (by the casual/mild definition of the term). :)

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#56

Post by erikrothoff »

We’re working full time on https://feeder.co and growing MRR every month. Does the average consumer know what RSS is? No. Will it become the next Twitter anytime soon? Probably not. Is there a need for managing news outside of your e-mail inbox, our usage data definitely shows yes. Is the market ultra saturated? You betcha!

That said we’re eager to help grow the space. Would love to know if HN has any ideas or feedback on this.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#57

Post by gitgud »

jbob2000 wrote: post #34
jasode wrote: post #19

By asking the question using the word "dead"[0] which has such offensive connotations, it will spur some to say "it's not dead" -- which isn't really going to be productive for what I think you're really asking. First, in one sense (but doesn't really answer your question) ... the old protocols like RSS (feeds), NNTP (news), IRC (chat), etc are never going to be "dead" because somebody somewhere will always be provid…

How is using the word “dead” offensive?

Asking if something is "dead" generally offends people passionate about that thing, as to them it's obviously not dead, which makes them passionately defend that it's NOT "dead".

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#59

Post by zenlot »

Opened this post using RSS in Inoreader. All my news comes via RSS. I use it for news sites, I use it for Medium and I also use it for Reddit. The nice thing about it, is that everything stays in one place, categorized and I can see unread counts. Especially useful while checking reddit feeds. There's no infinite scroll and I can clearly see/mark what's been read and what's not. I can come back later and continue from where I left or review my favorites. If the site does not have RSS, or I can't make it appear in Inoreader - most likely I won't be visiting it again, or at least not scrolling daily. RSS gives you freedom and saves you a lot of time.

Re: Ask HN: Is RSS dead?

#60

Post by hkt »

No, I use it every day. There isn't an alternative to subscribe to lots of feeds of specialist things. It's a great tool for anybody who needs to supplement regular journalistic output with

As to new clients, it's hard to say. Gnome RSS just became a thing (relatively recently, emphasis on relatively) and I love it. AntennaPod is great for podcast subscriptions and I find Feeder is perfectly adequate on mobile.

It is a specialist tool though. That's the thing. It means it is as likely to get a new set of shiny clients as say, IRC. Which is to say, probably not.

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