[HN Gopher] Gripes with RSS after one week
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Gripes with RSS after one week
Author : jez
Score : 26 points
Date : 2022-12-31 17:46 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (blog.jez.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (blog.jez.io)
| the-printer wrote:
| I've found that consuming Web content via RSS encourages more
| responsible use. The sweet spot between the fire hose and the
| desert is your own discretion. I couldn't imagine subscribing to
| a feed like a news outlet that feels compelled to publish stories
| on every single event. I would however, subscribe to an
| individual's feed, who aggregates news and other commentary on
| specific or a few related topics to compliment blog subscriptions
| and what not. The likes of John Gruber and Michael Tsai and Cory
| Doctorow seem to be among the few online who do this.
|
| For example, I would subscribe to a heavily curated Linkhut
| (https://ln.ht) feed or something like someone's micro.blog page
| that doesn't consist of "status updates" a la Twitter/Mastodon.
|
| In writing this, I've come to the realization that while I used
| to _hate_ Twitter threads when they first became a thing...I
| still dislike the idea of them...but there is something
| worthwhile about fragmented, short-form streams of commentary
| that can point to larger bodies of work: concept maps, articles,
| Web books, PDFs etc.
| zwilliamson wrote:
| I'd love to see a podcast + RSS feed client app
| greggyb wrote:
| I like Inoreader[0]. The web app is plenty snappy for me, and
| supports basic vim nav keys, which is a lovely plus. The free
| plan's 150 feeds are sufficient for my use case. The mobile app
| also performs well. Mostly it just gets out of my way, which is
| all I really want.
|
| [0] https://www.inoreader.com
| sys_64738 wrote:
| +1 from me too. Inoreader also supports Twitter which tames an
| out of control media simply and plainly.
| skyfoxxy wrote:
| +1 for Inoreader. Been using it for a long while now
| Havoc wrote:
| My main complaint is that feeds then to just be the first
| sentence or two. So you still end up opening a browser and
| getting bombarded with popups and cookie banners and what not.
|
| Very tempted to try & combine this with something like FF reader
| mode and build a scraping & filtering layer inbetween that sends
| the full text to the reader.
| _eht wrote:
| _cloudflare anti-scraping intensifies..._
| catdog wrote:
| There are RSS readers like Tiny Tiny RSS [1] which are able to
| do exactly that (in this case using a PHP port of Mozilla's
| library [2]). Does not work in 100% of cases but is a really
| useful thing.
|
| [1] https://tt-rss.org/
|
| [2] https://github.com/fivefilters/readability.php
| blairbeckwith wrote:
| This is definitely annoying. I understand why larger publishers
| do it, but it drives me crazy when more independent
| writers/publishers do it.
|
| It's enough of a problem that some RSS reader services have a
| feature that does exactly what you describe re: fetching the
| full article contents. Unread on iOS does this, as does Feedbin
| I believe, although you'll only find it on paid services/plans
| because of the ongoing costs associated with powering it.
| galleywest200 wrote:
| The app I use on Mac/iOS, News Explorer, will scrape the
| article for me and is quite often successful.
|
| https://apps.apple.com/us/app/news-explorer/id1032668306
| bhouston wrote:
| Have you tried Atom:
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atom_(web_standard)
| marbu wrote:
| OP is actually using it, see: https://blog.jez.io/atom.xml
| kevincox wrote:
| What benifits does this provide the author? It doesn't seem
| that atom would fix any of his problems.
| zwieback wrote:
| Since I already use Outlook at work as my mail client I read RSS
| in there, surprisingly useful as lightweight reader, mostly
| without images like I prefer it. Doesn't have any discovery
| though.
| dave333 wrote:
| Have used Google Reader, then Digg reader then free Inoreader now
| paid Inoreader.
|
| What are the best feeds you like? Mine are
|
| BBC
|
| NYT ( via Readium)
|
| Business Insider (not so much lately)
|
| Hacker News
|
| Slashdot
| Adraghast wrote:
| I would encourage anyone curious to look into the beta for
| Readwise's new RSS/RIL service, appropriately just called Reader.
| zagrebian wrote:
| I use the Feedbro browser extension. It continuously fetches
| feeds in the background. The UI is blazingly fast (think HTML
| version of Gmail). It automatically marks viewed entries. It's
| very configurable. It can find feeds on the current page. I love
| it. Much better than Feedly.
| zwilliamson wrote:
| What if Firefox picked up the proverbial RSS feed torch and took
| it to the next level?
| trickjarrett wrote:
| I wrote about this exact thing. If they gave me a Google
| Reader-esque product as part of their subscription service for
| VPN etc., it would get me to subscribe.
| zwilliamson wrote:
| I agree. Their email client, Thunderbird, is an amazing open
| source product. They definitely have the background on how to
| build a top notch standalone client.
| trynewideas wrote:
| Thunderbird already has an offline Atom/RSS reader, and
| plugins that sync state with online RSS services like
| Feedly, so all the pieces are there.
| justinator wrote:
| Well four years ago, they removed support for RSS, so less next
| level, and more um... a similar level than before.
| zwilliamson wrote:
| Maybe a couple git reverts/rebases away from bringing it
| back? :)
| trynewideas wrote:
| Pocket is explicitly[1] their replacement for RSS/Atom
| features, and a Mozilla monetization vector, so: good luck!
|
| 1: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/feed-reader-
| replacement...
| pwdisswordfish9 wrote:
| Sorry, too busy peddling meaningless features like "Colonways"
| and advertising for Disney.
| kevincox wrote:
| If they would just add the feed detection feature and add a
| link to subscribe in my RSS reader I would be very happy.
|
| I don't know if I want them actually investing in their own
| reader. It seems unlikely to add much over the current
| landscape and just drain resources.
| rawling wrote:
| > A page can declare an RSS feed using a <link> tag in the <head>
| something like this:
|
| > ...
|
| > But browsers won't surface that to you.
|
| Do they not? I thought FF put an icon in the address bar.
| kevincox wrote:
| It used to.
|
| Now you need an extension for desktop. And I have yet to find
| an extension that works on mobile.
|
| Chrome is basically the same except that mobile doesn't support
| extensions at all.
| smlavine wrote:
| I was going to say that Firefox does show when pages have an RSS
| feed present, but then I found out it's actually a long-forgotten
| extension I have installed: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/livemarks/?ut...
| ihuman wrote:
| Firefox used to have that functionality built in, but they
| removed it in late 2018
| trog wrote:
| One of Firefox's most annoying interface changes,to me at
| least. I used this thing all the time. Maybe there was more
| to it (I'm sure I could dig up the Bugzilla) but I used this
| feature all the time & can't imagine it was a huge
| maintenance burden.
| MongoTheMad wrote:
| Welcome to the RSS club. Many issues you have noticed are a
| result of social media. Sites removed RSS after they wanted to
| push you to Facebook/other.
|
| You may need RSS-bridge (GitHub) as middleware.
|
| I use Yet Another RSS Reader (yarr, also on GitHub), which has
| very good mobile browser support.
|
| I self host both in my home K8s cluster behind GitHub auth.
| trowawee wrote:
| The firehose issue is definitely a problem with RSS, especially
| if all you've ever experienced is algorithmic social media feeds.
| It's solveable, but it does require either a very specific
| approach (I quickly scan my unreads in Feedbin/Reeder, save
| whatever I want to read in depth, and then browse saved items
| later), or a reasonably large suite of rules applied to your feed
| (takes a long time to build, takes even longer to refine, and you
| will find yourself perpetually tuning them), or something like
| Feedly's AI assistant (but then you're still outsourcing your
| feed to someone else's algorithm, and avoiding that is supposed
| to be the point of RSS).
|
| On some level, "I want to/am able to wade through the firehose"
| is a pre-req for RSS. I'm sure that's part of what limited the
| appeal even in the fabled golden age of Google Reader. Also, like
| most things, it's better if you pay for it. I've paid for two
| versions of Reeder now (about $15 total, I believe) and I pay
| Feedbin $50/year to act as my backend + web interface. The
| overall experience is better than any of the other modern RSS
| apps I've tried, and better than Reader was way back when.
| musictubes wrote:
| I use Newsblur as my aggregator and it solves a few of the
| gripes. Adding feeds is as simple as pasting the url into the add
| field. Their web app is pretty good IMO as well as their native
| iOS app. I prefer using Unread on my iPhone to read my feed and
| am experimenting with NNW on the Mac but will probably keep using
| the web app.
| woodruffw wrote:
| Nice writeup. I share a lot of these gripes, as someone who's
| also on the publishing side: it continues to surprise me how many
| people _actually do_ read my blog via RSS (based on statistics
| passed back through user agents), given how poor the discovery
| and client experience is.
| docdeek wrote:
| Reeder does the discovery for me. If I have a URL I can drop it
| into the app and it'll find all the RSS feeds (main, comments
| etc). There's also a browser extension to add straight from
| there, and it'll add your Read Later list, too, I think as a feed
| of its own.
| derekzhouzhen wrote:
| You can try the RSS reader made by me: https://airss.roastidio.us
| web only, no login, open source. I believe it addresses some of
| the pain points you cited.
| Semaphor wrote:
| Discovery: this has never been an issue for me. I simply assume
| that anything worthwhile has a feed, and add the base URL to my
| reader. Almost always tends to be true.
|
| Clients: there are a lot. OP uses some iOS exclusive and the
| Instagram reader (I always found it the worst of all the post-
| greader ones, but it seems to appeal to IG and Pinterest people),
| self hosting is my favorite way.
| Teslazar wrote:
| This article seems to imply that RSS users need to manually
| locate the RSS feeds. In all the RSS clients I've used, I just
| add the site by the main URL and it automatically finds the RSS
| feed if there is one, and this almost always works.
| ryantgtg wrote:
| Agree. I use NetNewsWire and always paste in the main URL.
| Hunting down the rss link is not a thing.
| jez wrote:
| Two things happened in my first week:
|
| - Using the iOS Safari share button to "Open in NetNewsWire"
| would silently fail if the blog didn't have a feed. I went
| looking for my feeds later and they were missing. I tried a
| few more times before realizing, "oh, there's just no feed."
|
| - Some sites I found had multiple feed links (one per kind of
| post: long post, short fragments, photo posts). NetNewsWire
| would always pick the first link in the page, disregarding
| all others, and not telling me that the page had multiple.
|
| We can say "discovery is not a problem" but I don't think
| it's unreasonable to ask for it to be better. Half the value
| proposition of sites like Substack is making it dead simple
| for readers to understand how they can subscribe.
|
| As someone who had never used RSS before and didn't know how
| to expect RSS to work, it was the problem that grated me the
| most. If discovery isn't seamless, only the people determined
| to use RSS will stick with it after their friends pester them
| to try it out.
| emptysea wrote:
| Ditto, that's what Feedly does as well
|
| Additionally, the social features the OP mentions are helpful
| in determining which RSS feed is the right one since some sites
| have multiple.
| jasonpbecker wrote:
| I am pretty sure all of his problems would be fixed with Feedbin,
| which offers a great in-browser interface, shows all the feeds on
| the page when adding a URL, and helps with the firehose issue
| with filters.
|
| I also prefer Reeder to a large degree over NNW myself.
| gumby wrote:
| You can see if there's a feed referenced in the page you're on by
| simply doing `curl <your page>|egrep rss\|xml` or just show
| source.
| Maxburn wrote:
| It isn't about RSS readers and article notifications, it's about
| all the other things being built on top of RSS like podcasting
| 2.0. All of these apps and their new features depend on RSS;
| https://podcastindex.org/apps
|
| Some discussion; https://podcasting20.substack.com
| masenf wrote:
| As a recent returnee to the world of RSS feeds, I've been
| enjoying the miniflux client [1] self hosted with docker-compose.
| Fast, cross-platform, not fancy.
|
| [1] https://miniflux.app/
| europeanguy wrote:
| Why do you need to _host_ something in order to consume RSS?
| rpdillon wrote:
| You don't need to. But if you want to sync read state and
| favorites across devices, it's a good way. I self-host
| FreshRSS for this, works wonderfully.
| the-printer wrote:
| This is an odd sentiment that I don't have a counter argument
| for other than the beautiful UI of the app shown is worth
| hosting alone.
| europeanguy wrote:
| Jesus christ
| linuxdaemon wrote:
| Google Reader gives a good example of why one may want to
| host an RSS reader on their own.
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