i would love to see Bluesky add RSS to user feeds the same way Mastodon does by just adding /rss to the end of the url.
it really is rad to add my most read users to the feed.
Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
81–90 of 110 posts
Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
> if x>y then your system isn't showing you enough We've grown used to having a practically infinite amount of things presented to us all the time, but I've come to believe recently that limiting the amount of posts you see can be a fine (and maybe healthier) choice. There's value in being able to say "I'm caught up, I'm done", it can be a natural stopping point. I'm not as good about limiting myself like this as I w…
The total amount of content available is y>x. Some arbitrary process has to reduce the 1,000,000,000 pieces of content produced today to maybe 10 or 100 you can handle. The very concept of "news" ("fake news" is bad because it is news not because it is fake) is an act of violence against the fabric of reality because a huge number of things happened today, but CNN reported the same 10 of them 100 times. They could ma…
> Some arbitrary process has to reduce the 1,000,000,000 pieces of content produced today to maybe 10 or 100 you can handle.
In my case, I'm the process that does the reduction by subscribing to specific feeds. (Not sure if that's "arbitrary", but I could see it argued either way.)
I admit I miss some content that I would probably like to see. :) But that's just life how it's always been.
As my wife put it, "You don't have enough years in your life to read all the good books, so stop wasting time with bad ones." That's how I think of it. A handful of high-quality, low-volume feeds is great. (But I also follow HN and my curated Lemmy feed, so I get some of the firehose.)
The only "news" I have in my feed is local news. Any interesting national news hits HN or Lemmy.
Again, that's just me. I respect your different usage pattern.
Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#83I see PolitePol mentioned. What do people use to run scrapers to generate RSS feeds themselves for sites without them? Do you self host scrapers?
There is one called rssbridge or something that can do that
Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#84The hate for algorithms boggles my mind. Chronological feeds are awful. You'll never see anything from the people who post occasionally because they get drowned out by the people who are posting all the time. There may be some algorithms that deliberately magnify hate because that's a way to increase engagement, but if you want to create one of those algorithms you can make a training set based on chronological feed…
People aren’t afraid of algorithms…just ones that are Blackbox and controlled by someone else who’s motivations don’t align with yours.
Being concerned about that is downright logical.
Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#85An advanced RSS reader/browser could bring back the magic of the web.
What does an advanced reader look like in your mind?
Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you get this, may I ask? I asked because I didn't know how to get exactly that, so I'm building a site that finds RSS feeds from sites on the front page of HN. Then, at the end of the day it emails me with a summary if I miss one. https://RSS.surf If anyone wants to try the daily summary email would love feedback.
I use Feedly, which as a RSS reader is ok but probably one of the better ones available on iOS/iPadOS platform. I loved Google Reader back in the day, but Google loves to kill every product of theirs that I actually like and used. I believe the HN feed is available here: https://news.ycombinator.com/rss
So, just to confirm, you prefer to read the news on hacker news via RSS? Why?
I assumed you meant view the RSS for sites on HN but that's clearly different than what you were thinking.
Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#87Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with time based feeds is this. You can read x articles a day; your system ingests y articles a day. x=y is perfect but requires close-to-perfect balance (if x=0.9y to 1.1y maybe you can adjust your reading habit to your your feed) if x>y then your system isn't showing you enough, if y With an algorithmic feed of some kind you choose to read x items a day, your system shows you the best x items a day out o…
> With an algorithmic feed of some kind you choose to read x items a day, your system shows you the best x items a day out of y based on some set of criteria and constraints. And the whole point of the people who want RSS is that they disagree with the idea that "the algorithm" shows the best x items. The whole point is that they don't want "the algorithm". And your answer is "Have you heard of the algorithm? I think…
For most people y > x. You're choosing what posts to see even if the feed is chronological. For a chronological feed, x is the most recent posts you happen to see when checking your feed reader. And x will skew towards people who post at the same time of day you tend check your feed reader. People who post more will also take a larger distribution of x.
Any algorithm would seem to be an improvement on that, right? For example, an algorithm that sampled evenly from all sources. That would at least mean x was distributed across all your sources, so people who post more didn't crowd others out.
Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#89Re: Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
Try it. I’ve tried it with NetNewsWire
I subscribe. It does work. Did you read the linked post of hers? Perhaps your client is throttled or blocked.
Data point 3: does not work for me. Also using NetNewsWire. “Throttled or blocked” changes nothing, if it’s down for half of visitors then it’s down for half of visitors. I highly doubt NetNewsWire is breaching spec or poorly behaved. I bet rachelbythebay is just throttling by IP address and really has a 24 hour limit of exactly 1, so only one person per IP per day can subscribe.