I ditched the algorithm for RSS • Hacker News Board

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#61

Post by freetonik » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:17 PM UTC

hiccuphippo wrote: post #46

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

Nice. I think a search engine that only crawls RSS feeds is a great idea. My own selfishness wants such a project to not get too popular so the slop media doesn't go back to publishing feeds.

At least my project has manual curation and strict eligibility criteria, so I don't crawl all RSS feeds, but instead focus on personal blogs.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#62

Post by abhi9u » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:19 PM UTC

RSS seems to be making a come back. Just a couple of days back saw this post going viral on X about RSS https://x.com/0xglitchbyte/status/1878495012800897229

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#63

Post by simonw » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:22 PM UTC

I use and like RSS, but the problem with RSS is that it mostly only exposes you to voices you already know about.

(Ideally you can subscribe to people who deliberately amplify other voices - a reason I like link blogs - but it's hard to find dedicated curators like that.)

That's why I actively seek out algorithmic discovery. It's one of the things I like about Bluesky over Mastodon: Bluesky has a "discover" feed (and the ability to add more custom feeds too). It's good.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#64

Post by aaronax » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:23 PM UTC

s1mplicissimus wrote: post #48

If I remember correctly "the algorithm" as a concept of feed curation has been introduced by facebook ( or youtube?), long after RSS was used by blogs and podcasts. Heck, even Twitter used to have an RSS feed they killed a looong time ago [1] I also remember that in the beginning I was chuckling to myself "who on earth would want to have their feed curated by a black box whose target function cannot be checked? If I…

Some people seems to prefer just getting washed in a steady stream of whatever gambling/flashing lights/gacha stuff too.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#65

Post by galleywest200 » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:32 PM UTC

News Explorer on iOS/iPadOS/MacOS is great if you want a one-time purchase app that syncs your RSS feeds across your devices.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#66

Post by patrickmay » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:33 PM UTC

galleywest200 wrote: post #65

News Explorer on iOS/iPadOS/MacOS is great if you want a one-time purchase app that syncs your RSS feeds across your devices.

Feedly is decent, too.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#67

Post by clean_send » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:36 PM UTC

throw0101c wrote: post #2

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

same. it's a great product and the guy who runs it wants it to exist solely in the world to combat the algo.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#68

Post by j2kun » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:45 PM UTC

One thing I wish I could easily augment with RSS is the ability to send and discover webmentions. I would love to read something in my RSS feed, respond to it, and post a webmention back to the original author. I'd also like to be able to see in the RSS feed what other pages have posted webmentions to the page I'm reading.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#69

Post by pluc » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:47 PM UTC

j2kun wrote: post #68

One thing I wish I could easily augment with RSS is the ability to send and discover webmentions. I would love to read something in my RSS feed, respond to it, and post a webmention back to the original author. I'd also like to be able to see in the RSS feed what other pages have posted webmentions to the page I'm reading.

You are describing Postbacks: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Postback

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#70

Post by ndriscoll » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:48 PM UTC

Note that (US) governments in particular offer tons of RSS feeds.

Want to keep tabs on what Congress is up to? https://www.govinfo.gov/rss/bills.xml

Want to follow SEC press releases? https://www.sec.gov/news/pressreleases.rss

In WA state and want to follow bills related to schools? https://app.leg.wa.gov/bi/report/topicalindex/?biennium=2025...

The federal government has a big list at https://www.govinfo.gov/feeds. Your county might also have one (e.g. Spokane has https://www.spokanecounty.org/rss.aspx).