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Text only news websites (2022)

blog.wturrell.co.uk

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Re: Text only news websites (2022)

#82

Post by billyhoffman »

basch wrote: post #73
billyhoffman wrote: post #62

I too was using text-only versions of sites like CNN, Reuters, or Christian Science Monitor[1], and they were fine. But what I really wanted was to turn any news website into a text-only website. So I build NewsWaffle, which for any website: https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle * Automatically builds a list of news stores, separate from the navigational hyperlinks. * Detects RSS/Atom feeds to provide a more accurat…

Pretty amazing. I tested aldaily.com and had trouble navigating to get to the articles. Allsides.com worked. Techmeme.com did not work. gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/links?https%3A%2F%2Fallsides.com%2F https://portal.mozz.us/gemini/gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/li...

Thanks for letting me know. aldaily works great in raw mode:

gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/raw?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.aldaily.com%2F

Clicking on the "more" links which take you to the news articles also works properly as well.

(you can get to raw mode by clicking "Force article view" and then "raw mode." I should probably expose that in other places)

NewsWaffle tries to determine the type of page. Articles get displayed with content run through readability, and then the HTML is stripped down. If its a "links" page, like the home or section page on a news site, it using HTML elements to try and find links to news stories vs navigational links to other parts of the site. Part of that is looking for links with longer text, since link text to news stories tend to be a few words. This helps sort "About Us" from "New Fusion Experiment a Success"). I'll check into why aldaily isn't working properly

Sorry I can't seem to reproduce the Techmeme issue. It works for me:

gemini://gemi.dev/cgi-bin/waffle.cgi/view?https%3A%2F%2Fwww.techmeme.com

Re: Text only news websites (2022)

#83

Post by someuser54541 »

halotrope wrote: post #6

Check out https://markets.sh news. They are actually text only, from many different sources, clustered and summarized. It is really good to get a gist of what’s currently important without having to “read news” with the known nuisances that come with it. Edit, thank you for the feedback. Some clarifications: - we launched the news feature literally yesterday, it is MVP level so expect inaccuracies especially in the s…

How do you retrieve news topics? Are you using some sort of news API or are you just scraping a ton of sites?

If the latter, isn't that illegal or against their terms of service in some way?

Re: Text only news websites (2022)

#85

Post by Wistar »

billyhoffman wrote: post #62

I too was using text-only versions of sites like CNN, Reuters, or Christian Science Monitor[1], and they were fine. But what I really wanted was to turn any news website into a text-only website. So I build NewsWaffle, which for any website: https://github.com/acidus99/NewsWaffle * Automatically builds a list of news stores, separate from the navigational hyperlinks. * Detects RSS/Atom feeds to provide a more accurat…

This is excellent! Wow.

Re: Text only news websites (2022)

#86

Post by nickjj »

Question:

When reading programming tutorials or a write up about a tech concept do you prefer if the article has a hero image or not? This would be an image loaded at the top which sums up the title of the post visually.

On a related note, personally if someone has 500 blog posts I'd like to see them in a condensed bullet list so I can scan the titles super fast. I don't want to see images and have 10 loaded per page. It turns something from a 2 minute effortless quick scan to dozens of clicks and potentially 20 minutes.

However, in practice having images for each post seems to get more engagement (ie. people clicking things and beginning to read your article). I never understood why in the context of programming. I understand pictures are useful for hardware or if you need to make a diagram. I'm mainly talking about the hero image here.

Re: Text only news websites (2022)

#87

Post by forinti »

DeathArrow wrote: post #84

What about using an RSS reader? Or looking at AFP or Reuters news streams?

I oversee some digital signage that uses RSS to add the day's news.

We have two issues: there are fewer and fewer sources of RSS; and those that do exist frequently use meaningless titles like "Look at this!".

I can't really blame the news channels, they don't get any revenue from these streams.

Re: Text only news websites (2022)

#88

Post by reaperducer »

palata wrote: post #5
reaperducer wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can think of a couple of reasons: - He sees no point in adding another layer of abstraction and complexity to something simple. - he's into retro computing, and old machines can't handle NNW. - Fewer and fewer web sites support RSS, so using NNW limits his options. - Sometimes you want to read the news from a particular web site, and not graze at a buffet.

Do fewer and fewer websites support RSS? All blog frameworks have support by default...

Do fewer and fewer websites support RSS?

According to the people complaining on HN, yes. It's been a common topic of conversation on this web site for the last five years or so.

No RSS here: https://www.rfi.fr

The New York Times does RSS, but among major news organizations, it is one of the exceptions.

All blog frameworks have support by default...

Good for blogs.

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