I ditched the algorithm for RSS • Hacker News Board

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#71

Post by nfriedly » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 5:58 PM UTC

ndriscoll wrote: post #70

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 .…

Indeed, my local government of Troy, Ohio (~25k population) offers RSS feeds with useful info about things like holiday closures, road construction, christmass tree pickup, etc. https://www.troyohio.gov/RSSFeed.aspx?ModID=1&CID=All-newsfl... There's also a calendar feed with city council meetings and such.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#72

Post by baggachipz » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:00 PM UTC

abhi9u wrote: post #62

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

> saw this post going viral on X about RSS

/irony meter explodes/

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#73

Post by dergachev » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:02 PM UTC

ndriscoll wrote: post #70

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 .…

Worthy to note that 3 of those sites are powered by Drupal. Sometimes dated open-source monolithic solutions are quite helpful.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#74

Post by mawise » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:06 PM UTC

bsnnkv wrote: post #27

I am a big proponent of RSS, but I think that it suffers from a lack of imagination these days, for example, the "quality filter" approach mentioned in this article is not very useful imo. The biggest cost of RSS feed items as a consumer is figuring out whether something is worth reading. A lot of feeds these days don't provide anything useful in the body to make a determination on this, and others just dump the enti…

There is a lot of interesting work in this space by the IndieWeb community. They've got a vision of (and lots of a spec for) a social reader[1] that uses RSS for lots of the things people got in the habit of with Web2 social media (comment, repost, etc)

[1] https://indieweb.org/social_reader

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#75

Post by verisimi » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:06 PM UTC

I'm a huge fan of rss, bemoan Google's evil actions, etc.

I'll add my recommendation after looking for an rss reader for the longest time - Feeder. Free, open source and excellent.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#76

Post by nfriedly » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:13 PM UTC

I have my own little instance of FreshRSS and I love it. Both the software itself - any time I discover and report an issue, it gets taken seriously and fixed fairly quickly - and also my collection of feeds:

* High quality blogs (Bartosz Ciechanowski, Bits about Money, etc.)

* Local government announcements

* OpenWRT updates (subscribed to the releases/announcements forum)

* Price trackers for things I want to buy eventually but can wait until they go on sale (keepa, appagg)

* The Money Stuff newsletter (via kill-the-newsletter)

* Comics like XKCD

* Book authors I like (mostly via RSSBridge + goodreads)

* etc.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#77

Post by criddell » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:20 PM UTC

dartos wrote: post #55

zahlman wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>turns out I was very wrong and lots of people seem to prefer just getting washed in a steady stream of somewhat internally consistent worldview. If you're putting together an RSS feed from creators you like, isn't that liable to happen anyway?

I think the “washed in a steady stream” part is missing from RSS feeds. You’d need to join like meta rss feeds.

Meta et al have an infinite feed. You can scroll forever.

My news reader had 6 articles in it yesterday and that's it. I can reload as many times as I want and that won't change.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#78

Post by m4r1k » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

What client do you use on mobile and on desktop? I like very much Reeder Classic but perhaps there are better alternatives.

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#79

Post by xenodium » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:22 PM UTC

On the blogging side, I’m doing my bit for the web and built a new service minus the yucky bits of modern web (tracking, ads, paywalls, bloat…) https://lmno.lol does rss too. Full content of course.

For example, my blog https://lmno.lol/alvaro and https://lmno.lol/alvaro/feed

Re: I ditched the algorithm for RSS

#80

Post by unforswearing » Thu, Jan 16, 2025, 6:26 PM UTC

ndriscoll wrote: post #70

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 .…

Just discovered a few US gov feeds yesterday, great resource. The Bureau of Labor Statistics also has quite a few feeds available: https://www.bls.gov/feed/