- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
- cross-posted to:
- technology@beehaw.org
Whatever the linguistic details, one of the main roles of RSS is to supply directly to you a steady stream of updates from a website. Every new article published on that site is served up in a list that can be interpreted by an RSS reader.
Unfortunately, RSS is no longer how most of us consume “content.” (Google famously killed its beloved Google Reader more than a decade ago.) It’s now the norm to check social media or the front pages of many different sites to see what’s new. But I think RSS still has a place in your life: Especially for those who don’t want to miss anything or have algorithms choosing what they read, it remains one of the best ways to navigate the internet. Here’s a primer on what RSS can (still!) do for you, and how to get started with it, even in this late era of online existence.
You must log in or register to comment.
If RSS is so great why aren’t people using it? Why isn’t there a dozen readers on the market?
maybe it’s just not that useful and that’s why nobody is using it.
This is a common logical fallacy known as “argumentum ad populum” (appeal to popularity). You equate the popularity of the idea as a basis for determining its validity.
Compare, “if cars are so great, why is everyone still riding horses?”
But it actually makes sense with technology. If you need help, you want there to be a large community and corpus of knowledge to draw from.
I would argue that you can’t do better for help and support than for old niche technologies and frameworks, because things like that always have a vibrant community of enthusiasts ready and eager to help.
Compare eMacs. Why isn’t everyone using eMacs? It’s basically superpowers for any client you install it on, and it installs on everything. Ridiculously hardcore fanbase, we’re talking original flame wars on Usenet levels supporters.
Usenet, apropos, is quite topical on this matter. You should look it up. Fuck it here’s the robot for ya:
Usenet is a global discussion system where users can post messages and read responses in subject-based forums called newsgroups. It’s decentralized, meaning there’s no central server or authority, and it operates across many different servers worldwide. Users can participate in a wide range of discussions, from technology and science to hobbies and arts. It’s text-based and functions somewhat like a precursor to modern internet forums and social media, but with a more straightforward, less graphical interface.
Original RSS, from back in the day. Still active.
If you’re interested: https://techjury.net/blog/what-is-usenet
Not really. In fact technology is often a great example of good demand but little effort put in to meet it. Open source software is riddled with issues that people are too eager enough to report but not eager enough to fix for everyone . We have an example of Palworld finally filling a niche described in the market for almost 2 decades.
Cassette Beasts? TemTem? Digimon? Saying no attempts to fill it were made is disgenuine
Should have been more clear, I’m talking about a 3D open world Pokemon. So the closest one to that is Digimon, which doesn’t have captures. It took until Pokémon themselves created a poor version of what people asked for in this instance for another one to appear.
oh I was never really desiring 3D pokémon in the first place so I suppose that coincides with my misunderstanding
But everybody isn’t riding horses. In order for your analogy to work it would have to like this. “If horses are so great why isn’t everybody riding horses to work”
The irony is saying that on a platform like Lemmy.
I don’t see it. What is the irony? How wildly popular is lemmy?
I never had a good way to ingest info, but i setup a self-hosted FreshRSS instance a few months ago and it’s completely changed how i consume information for the better. I spend a lot less time scrolling through shit that never interested me much in the first place
Anyone got a favourite open source rss reader? So far I am mostly finding stuff with subscriptions. Even though many have a free plan i’d like to try to find an open one first
Thunderbird will do RSS.
I’ve recommended these a couple of times in this thread, but I use Fluent Reader on desktop (cross-platform) and Feeder on Android. Both are FOSS and load articles locally, so no account/subscription required.
I cannot tell you how much better it feels to click a link to an android app and it opens github and not the play store.
FYI, Fluent Reader appears to have an Android .apk now: https://github.com/yang991178/fluent-reader-lite/releases/tag/v1.0.4%2B11
Feedly
Are you sure that Feedly is open source? I can’t find any mention of it on their website.
Sorry didn’t parse that part.
OK, no worries.
(Also, I didn’t downvote your comment btw)
It would have been justified.
NetNewsWire for Apple devices.
Never realized that it’s open source. That’s great.
When Google Reader shut down, Feedly had an “import from Google” feature on their sign up page. Been using it for free ever since.
Check out FreshRSS. You can self host, so if you have a home server, this will do the trick. Use your favorite reader app that can connect to it.
I get the subscription fatigue. I’m currently paying for Inoreader because I haven’t fully cut over to FreshRSS. It has good tools that are worth it for many, but all those subscriptions add up fast.
FreshRSS is awesome, I use it with Read You on Android and I love it
I miss Press from TwentyFive Squares. The theme was very e-ink-ish, worked great, felt nice, didn’t have any of the annoying garbage that’s since become pretty norm for readers.
Still works on older Android OSes, I think. But since Press hasn’t updated since 2014, it doesn’t have security for new Android, I think.
Wonder if it would work on Graphene or something?
Lifehacker is still around? Haven’t seen that name in years
It’s a shell of its former self. I miss Gina Tripani era Lifehacker.
I started using RSS during the summer. It filled a hole after I quit reddit, since I used to get a lot of my news from the subreddits for my city and my province. There’s also the on-going bickering between Meta and Canadian lawmakers/news media groups which means I see way less articles on social media than I used to. Honestly, after adding a couple local news outlets to my RSS apps, I feel better informed than ever before, and I spend a lot less time arguing with people on reddit. Win-win if you ask me.
Anyone looking for good RSS readers, I use Feeder on my phone (Android-only), Fluent Reader on desktop (cross-platform), and I also use the RSS widget of the Renewed Tab addon for Firefox. Both apps I use work locally, and have the ability to fetch full articles in-app (the addon just opens the articles in Firefox).
Something also worth mentioning: you can often find RSS feeds by checking the page’s source (on Firefox: right-click and “View Page Source”) and using Ctrl+F to search, there’s usually a URL somewhere. Keywords to search for: “feed”, “RSS”, “xml”, “atom”. For example, if I go to this community’s page on lemmy.world, I can Ctrl+F “feed” on the page source to find
https://lemmy.world/feeds/c/technology.xmlFeeder on my phone (Android-only)
If you host an RSS aggregator yourself such as FreshRSS, I’d recommend using ReadYou or FeedMe (not Open Source) instead so that you can sync. I use FeedMe on Android and Fluent Reader on Linux. It’s nice to have everything synced.
I also recommend rss-bridge if you’re self hosting. Helps gets you more RSS feeds from websites that don’t have them.
I don’t self-host (…yet. I do have a couple of things I’d like to play around with eventually) but honestly, for my use case I don’t feel any need to sync RSS. I mostly read articles on my phone, and if I’m on my PC I just remember which articles I’ve read. I can see how fetching RSS locally on each device might fall apart if one follows a large number of feeds, though.
It seems like a new project/rabbit hole for me.
With FreshRSS would I be able to sync Feeder and Feedly?
I highly recommend NewsBlur if you don’t want to host your own.
As someone who has only dipped his toe into this tech, and into podcasts, for that matter, what’s the best android app to use for this?
I don’t really want to use Spotify, etc. Is there a preferred independent and/or FOSS that people like?
Feeder for RSS and AntennaPod or EscapePod for podcast. All three can be retrieved from F-Droid. EscapePod is much simpler than AntennaPod but also lacks a lot of its features on purpose
Thank you. This is exactly the response I’m looking for.
Now I have to decide what the heck I’m interested in following…
I use Feeder for RSS feeds
I have an instance of freshrss feeding into feedme and it’s awesome. I went with feedme because it’s got a built in mobilizer that you can customize if the feed doesn’t have the whole article content.
I love TinyTinyRSS (self hosted) and lire for iOS which syncs with it. Very powerful setup. I have issues with overusing social media sites so I have sites like Lemmy do the “Top Week” and so on for areas I’m interested in.
Cool setup, mine is pretty similar, but I use self-hosted FreshRSS instead.
I tried to use RSS a decade ago and it was too confusing to set up. I gave up pretty quickly.
I kinda just like going to the site. It doesn’t have to be rss or social media.
deleted by creator
When I switched from Reddit to Lemmy, I started using Feeder for news to fill that gap. I think my podcast app on Linux also uses RSS.
I also used Feeder with Nitter for a while to keep up with friends posting on Twitter (I never really got into Twitter myself). Though that stopped working at some point.
So yeah, RSS definitely still has uses today.
Podcasting uses RSS in general, yes!
I started fiddling with a self hosted rss thing but never got around to putting the app on my new phone. I might give a different one a try sometime it was kinda basic.
Definitely try “Read You”! It utilises Material You, has a sick UI and the dev is really nice. I think there are a lot of features, but I’ve just left almost everything on default.
I want to get into RSS but all the apps I’ve tried have been lacking. I want to subscribe to the Factorio blog and be able to see their GIFs/videos directly but so far no app has been able to do that. Either they don’t load any images (wtf?) or they just load a static preview that I then have to click to actually play. Does anyone know of an RSS app that can load GIFs/videos automatically?
I find RSS is always either too little or too much. It is almost impossible to get it “just right”, at least for me, especially taken into account the time and labor it would need to set up “just right”.
Have you tried imagus, hoverzoom or thumbnail zoom? It has changed the way I internet. Hover your mouse over almost any image, video, or gif and it automatically opens and shows the full size. I have been using imagus on firefox for ages and quite like it. It doesn’t work with some websites or apps, and probably wouldn’t work with an installed app, but should work for one of the rss web apps?
Please disregard if this is a silly suggestion, I have always been curious about rss feeds, but have never actually used one.
