[HN Gopher] Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes w...
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Escape the walled garden and algorithm black boxes with RSS feeds
Author : rekl
Score : 136 points
Date : 2025-01-19 20:07 UTC (2 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.johnwalker.nl)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.johnwalker.nl)
| vaylian wrote:
| The article also mentions atom feeds. I've seen plenty of RSS
| feeds but I have never encountered an atom feed. Are atom feeds
| still relevant?
| giantrobot wrote:
| Atom and RSS are functionally equivalent despite their
| technical differences. Effectively no one has ever implemented
| Atom _push_ capabilities so Atom is primarily only ever used
| for syndication. The term "RSS" is just a generic term for
| "XML syndication feed".
| progval wrote:
| Atom push is actually implemented. SWORDv2 (but not v3) is
| based on Atom Push, and
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SWORD_(protocol) lists a few
| implementations.
|
| My employer maintains a SWORDv2 server, and we have a handful
| of clients pushing to us; most of them are not listed on that
| page.
| crtasm wrote:
| As an example, feeds available on every github repo:
|
| https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadger/commits.atom
|
| https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadger/tags.atom
|
| https://github.com/EFForg/privacybadger/releases.atom
| superkuh wrote:
| Google (Blogger, etc) pushes Atom feeds. Weather blogger is
| still relevant is up to perspective.
| cadamsdotcom wrote:
| That helps find content to read.
|
| I wish it was easier to find out what my friends have been up to
| without getting them to sign up for some platform they've never
| heard of, then post in multiple places in perpetuity, and move on
| again when that platform also goes to shit.
|
| A hard problem but surely not unsolvable. It belongs in a pg
| "please solve these big problems" essay.
| meiraleal wrote:
| That's an interesting problem. I'm thinking about creating a
| local-first RSS Reader that syncs using github. It seems doable
| to create a personal feed based on my feed and publish it also
| to github.
| kcplate wrote:
| Def how I consume HN. It's even nice to see flagged and dead
| which I wouldn't see easily if I came via the HN homepage.
| xrd wrote:
| How do you get this, may I ask?
|
| I'm building a site that finds RSS feeds from sites on the
| front page of HN because I didn't see a way to get them. Then,
| at the end of the day it emails me with a summary of I miss
| one.
|
| https://RSS.surf
| ashryan wrote:
| This is so pushing happy buttons for me.
|
| Not that this is novel in any way, but I just started a repo call
| Subcurrent yesterday for the Astoria Tech Meetup in NYC at our
| Saturday hack session. Subcurrent aims to provide a feed
| aggregator page made of our community members' feeds.
| https://github.com/astoria-tech/subcurrent
|
| I did not know that Meetup.com exposes RSS feeds at all, so I
| will be adding that to our Subcurrent instance since our group
| keeps events on Meetup.com.
|
| I had never heard of Kill the Newsletter, but I'm a fan sight-
| unseen. Substack at least has feeds. You can append `/feed` to
| the newsletter's URL.
|
| Thanks for writing this!
| soupfordummies wrote:
| So many RSS stories this week! I'm sensing a trend (hopefully)
| Pooge wrote:
| I'm sorry to be the pessimist here, but I doubt it. HN users
| are the most likely to use RSS in the first place. I sincerely
| doubt that RSS is going to make a comeback this year with all
| my non-IT friends using it.
| meiraleal wrote:
| Don't underestimate what programmers with too much free time
| can achieve.
| azemetre wrote:
| Why is the goal to appeal to as many people as possible?
| jopsen wrote:
| This is missing planets.
|
| A good way to find interesting blogs is to subscribe to a few
| planets.
|
| These are essentially aggregations of blog related to some
| project/topic.
|
| https://planet.gnome.org/ https://planet.kde.org/
| https://planet.mozilla.org/
| https://planet.documentfoundation.org/
|
| PS. If you know any good planets worth skimming, please add to
| below :)
|
| That said, I don't really have a good RSS reader that syncs
| across devices. I currently use Feedly, but it tries to be too
| smart.
| gvurrdon wrote:
| I tried Feedly after Google Reader shut down but eventually
| settled on Feedbin - that might be worth a look.
| Gualdrapo wrote:
| I'm on the Feedly train boat too since the sinking of Google
| Reader. Besides the ai bs it doesn't really let you search
| something in your feeds without a subscription, so once I
| tried Feedbin.
|
| But I went back because third world issues (and not a fan of
| microtransactions either) I could not find a way (if any) to
| change the layout on desktop. I really like the minimal list
| view at Feedly (and even on mobile too).
| jopsen wrote:
| If I read feeds daily I might spend 5 bucks per month, but I
| don't.
|
| It'll just be a subscription I forget that I have. I don't
| need more of those :)
| ognarb wrote:
| Since planet.kde.org is mentioned, it's super easy to create
| something similar with a bit of python and a static site
| generator like Hugo :)
|
| https://invent.kde.org/websites/planet-kde-org/-/blob/master...
| mamidon wrote:
| What are planets, in this context?
| tempest_ wrote:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20051029095046/http://www.planet.
| ..
|
| https://intertwingly.net/code/venus/docs/index.html
|
| https://github.com/kgaughan/mercury
| flobosg wrote:
| Feed aggregators:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)
| daveguy wrote:
| They are just feed aggregators composed of multiple feeds.
| Based on this software:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_(software)
| mamidon wrote:
| Thank you!
| ssttoo wrote:
| (Disclaimer: my project)
|
| https://feed.perfplanet.com for web performance
|
| Also please open a GH issue if I'm missing a blog or 5
| PaulHoule wrote:
| I think it's little appreciated that planets solve many of the
| practical problems of feed crawling.
|
| If you wanted to follow 2000 blogs yourself you'd find it is
| really a hassle. You can follow one planet and its easy.
|
| For that matter, if 2000 people want to follow your blog (and
| many other blogs) they are going to generate 2000 requests per
| polling period. It is not wonder why people like [1] get so
| exasperated. There are three kinds of polling periods: (1) too
| fast, (2) too slow, (3) both at the same time. Instead of
| having 2000 people poll your blog too often, one planet can
| poll your blog. It improves the scalability and economics of
| the system dramatically.
|
| (e.g. the difficulty of finding a good polling regime is one of
| 10 or 20 or so unappreciated reasons why RSS has remained
| nerdcore)
|
| [1] https://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/05/27/feed/
| Unearned5161 wrote:
| big fan of feedmail [1] for a "dumb" reader. It just delivers
| it to your inbox. I have a folder set up called "feed" and I
| can do all the email things to the items landing in that
| folder. Every email costs a credit, you can buy 10 000 credits
| for $10, which works out to $0.001 per article.
|
| The only thing it misses is any sort of highlight saving deal,
| but for those I just save the article to zotero and annotate it
| there.
|
| [1] https://feedmail.org
| qudat wrote:
| If anyone needs an rss-to-email service, check out
| https://pico.sh/feeds
| vishnu_ks wrote:
| Do try https://diff.blog which is an aggregator of developer
| blogs which I built around 5 years back.
|
| diff.blog tracks over 2000 dev blogs at the moment.
|
| And you can also follow blogs and topics.
| delduca wrote:
| + for Reeder for macOS and iOS
|
| I follow several feeds and Youtube channels.
|
| Reeder have a very smooth experience.
| terminaltrove wrote:
| Try adding our feeds if you're looking for curated terminal tools
| every week, we have a blog as well with ATOM.
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/feeds/
|
| All our feeds have an easy to see preview of the feed instead of
| unstyled XML so you know what the feed looks like.
|
| https://terminaltrove.com/new.xml
| fevangelou wrote:
| A handy bookmarklet to find & preview any site's feed (before
| subscribing):
|
| https://feedreader.xyz
| frobnic wrote:
| Try Rss-Bridge [1] when the website does not have any feed, it
| might have an integration already. It also supports custom CSS-
| selectors to create feeds, or even use SEO-Sitemaps for your
| advantage to generate a feed from it.
|
| [1] https://github.com/RSS-Bridge/rss-bridge
| janice1999 wrote:
| I see PolitePol mentioned. What do people use to run scrapers to
| generate RSS feeds themselves for sites without them? Do you self
| host scrapers?
| dagurp wrote:
| I do. Just a raspberry pi with nginx and a cron job that runs
| python scripts.
|
| I'm not into AI but writing those scripts is boring so chatgpt
| is perfect for this.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The 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 + boosting/retweets/reposts.
|
| I'm amazed at how people keep making failing RSS readers that
| keep failing with the same failing user interfaces that have been
| failing since 1999; everybody knows RSS has been failing but they
| never ask why or if we have a choice.
|
| We still see the readers that make you mark things as read, that
| take their cues from email and newsreaders, that, when you
| subscribe to N feeds show you N boxes with a list of items, etc.
|
| My RSS reader works like TikTok because I'm not afraid of
| algorithms.
| beej71 wrote:
| I prefer time-based feeds, but that's just me.
|
| I don't think people are objecting to suggestive feeds in
| general; they're objecting to suggestive feeds whose primary
| objective is to keep you scrolling for as long as humanly
| possible to maximize company revenue.
|
| That's simply not what I want to do with my day.
|
| I'd train my own if I wanted to go that route.
| ahalimah wrote:
| Which RSS reader do you use in that case?
|
| And is it fair to say there's a middle ground between not
| purely chronological feeds vs algorithms that reward
| engagement/time spent on the app?
| edoceo wrote:
| I love RSS but how can we get more of it? Walled-ish gardens seem
| to dominate. Many good producers are on platforms that just don't
| syndicate. What kind of pressure can we, consumers, put on?
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(page generated 2025-01-19 23:00 UTC)