It's time to head back to RSS? • Hacker News Board

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#91

Post by lostlogin » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 7:52 AM UTC

sago wrote: post #55

RSS is awesome. Bring on its resurgence. But. It is fundamentally not fit as a Facebook or social media replacement because of it's lack of simple commenting support. It suits some curmudgeonly old farts like me, perhaps. But even I want to feedback sometimes or join in the discussion (hence this comment). Are there solutions that a content creator can provide, via RSS, without requiring its readers to install partic…

I think HN might be the only place I read the comments. Missing the hell stew of a comments section is a feature as I see it.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#92

Post by zworks » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 7:55 AM UTC

daveFNbuck wrote: post #20

mandelbulb wrote: post #11

Have been using https://inoreader.com since the Year Google Reader closed, and imho, it's better than Feedly. I'm also usually reading HN via my full-text feed. Meaning, I don't have to load a link every time, I focus on the articles first, and I can easily pre-load everything for offline reading on mobile. I think, in case of RSS such online services are superior to self-hosted solutions - whether server or client -…

What makes it better than Feedly? I've been using Feedly since Google Reader closed and I think it pretty much nails this simple tool. How is it even possible to be much better?

Major reason why I moved away from Feedly and The Old Reader and now use Inoreader: no limitation of number of feeds for the free version

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#93

Post by ilmiont » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 7:56 AM UTC

Erm.. I never stopped using RSS. I have never consumed news primarily on social media, I subscribe to hundreds of feeds and that's always where I get my news from.

I use Feedly with the wonderful Nextgen Reader client for Windows. 10/mobile. Beautiful app, service, news experience.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#94

Post by svalorzen » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 7:56 AM UTC

One thing I don't understand is people who use all these websites to handle RSS. I've always used Firefox addons in order to handle RSS (before LiveClick which was awesome, now FeedBro or similar).

Why would you give control away for something as decentralized as RSS?

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#95

Post by sago » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 8:00 AM UTC

manicdee wrote: post #73

sago wrote: post #55

RSS is awesome. Bring on its resurgence. But. It is fundamentally not fit as a Facebook or social media replacement because of it's lack of simple commenting support. It suits some curmudgeonly old farts like me, perhaps. But even I want to feedback sometimes or join in the discussion (hence this comment). Are there solutions that a content creator can provide, via RSS, without requiring its readers to install partic…

RSS for headlines and federation of feeds, Disqus for comments.

Wouldn't that just make Disqus the new Facebook?

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#96

Post by grzm » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 8:01 AM UTC

modernerd wrote: post #87

Yes. But please not RSS. At least newer initiatives like JSON Feed have maintainers who respond to requests for improvements. RSS feels like an abandoned standard. I tried to submit an improvement to the author directly to explicitly allow HTTPS URLs in light of upcoming iTunes changes to enforce HTTPS; they said by email that of course HTTPS resources are valid in their view, but they weren't prepared to actively up…

I agree RSS is pretty crufty. (I've got a soft spot for Atom.) Do you have a list of validators that don't accept HTTPS resources as valid?

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#97

Post by emit_time » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 8:06 AM UTC

noam87 wrote: post #60

I've been a (paying) user of NewsBlur ( https://newsblur.com/ ) since Google Reader shut down and haven't looked back. p.s: In HN spirit, it also happens to be one developer's side-project-turned-profitable-business, and the "social" features a totally non-intrusive, but there if you want to know what people are sharing and commenting on.

I am also using newsblur, after trying several other services

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#98

Post by tgraham » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 8:07 AM UTC

grayrest wrote: post #84

mosselman wrote: post #76

I completely agree. When did RSS go out of style anyway? The other day I wanted to subscribe to an author's posts on Medium, but I couldn't find a RSS feed anywhere, so I never did. Seems like a loss for the author to me, seeing as gaining influence and credibility is probably the goal of many who write posts. It would also seem as if Medium doesn't want to add RSS as it would take control away in terms of recommendi…

> When did RSS go out of style anyway? It went away when Google killed Reader. Reader had more or less killed off the independent RSS reader market. When it got shuttered, alternatives weren't well developed and people shifted more or less entirely onto Twitter. The Twitter shift had been happening already but the shutdown kind of forced the issue.

Feedly is fantastic. Coupled with Reeder on iOS it more than replaces.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#99

Post by PhasmaFelis » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 8:08 AM UTC

sago wrote: post #55

RSS is awesome. Bring on its resurgence. But. It is fundamentally not fit as a Facebook or social media replacement because of it's lack of simple commenting support. It suits some curmudgeonly old farts like me, perhaps. But even I want to feedback sometimes or join in the discussion (hence this comment). Are there solutions that a content creator can provide, via RSS, without requiring its readers to install partic…

RSS is, fundamentally, just links to web pages. Why would it need to have built-in commenting? Just go to the linked page and comment there.

Re: It's time to head back to RSS?

#100

Post by modernerd » Sat, Mar 31, 2018, 8:09 AM UTC

grzm wrote: post #96

modernerd wrote: post #87

Yes. But please not RSS. At least newer initiatives like JSON Feed have maintainers who respond to requests for improvements. RSS feels like an abandoned standard. I tried to submit an improvement to the author directly to explicitly allow HTTPS URLs in light of upcoming iTunes changes to enforce HTTPS; they said by email that of course HTTPS resources are valid in their view, but they weren't prepared to actively up…

I agree RSS is pretty crufty. (I've got a soft spot for Atom.) Do you have a list of validators that don't accept HTTPS resources as valid?

Feed Validator is one. (It returns “href must be a valid URL” for image resources that start https:// because the RSS spec does not openly say that HTTPS image URLs are valid.)

I tried and failed to change this, and was told that the RSS spec needed to change first:

https://github.com/rubys/feedvalidator/issues/16

And I'm not the only one:

https://github.com/rubys/feedvalidator/pull/30

I respect Sam's opinion in those threads because really the spec needs to change, but I've given up trying to change it.

We ended up serving all feed URLs over HTTP as a result because customers using Feed Validator kept complaining that our product generated invalid feeds.