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Show HN: Artemis, a Calm Web Reader

(artemis.jamesg.blog)
294 points zerojames | 22 comments | 20 Dec 24 15:28 UTC | HN request time: 1.236s | source | bottom

Earlier this year, I made a web reader that only showed a list of post titles, author domains, and links. The reader only updated once per day, so I wouldn't feel compelled to keep checking for new posts.

I have been using the tool, which I called Artemis, for several months. Every morning, I looked forward to my "morning paper" of blogs I love reading.

There are no notifications, read vs. unread states, counts of posts, etc. Only the last seven days of posts are available. The colour scheme is changeable. Dark mode is supported. All popular feed formats are supported.

There is no reading interface to read blog posts; rather, the links take you to the authors' websites. Many of my favourite bloggers put a lot of effort into the design of their blogs and like to change things up; I wanted an experience that embraced that.

The reader is now available for anyone to use (with invite code "hn").

1. mmahemoff ◴[20 Dec 24 15:43 UTC] No.42472057[source]▶
What's a good place to discover high-quality RSS feeds these days?
replies(10): >>42472217 #>>42472218 #>>42472302 #>>42472367 #>>42472462 #>>42472474 #>>42472897 #>>42473195 #>>42474391 #>>42481578 #
2. freetonik ◴[20 Dec 24 16:01 UTC] No.42472217[source]▶
I'm curating a collection here https://minifeed.net/blogs/
replies(1): >>42472364 #
3. charles_f ◴[20 Dec 24 16:01 UTC] No.42472218[source]▶
I'm just picking the rss for the links I like on hn
4. quinto_quarto ◴[20 Dec 24 16:10 UTC] No.42472302[source]▶
i made a directory of indie creators from across the web here, which i'm not sure what to do with: https://fanzine.world/

I believe you can RSS most of them. certainly all the substacks.

5. dqv ◴[20 Dec 24 16:17 UTC] No.42472364[source]▶
Aw dang, looks like I can't subscribe to it in my feed reader. Still, this is a great collection. Thanks for sharing
replies(1): >>42472435 #
6. nelsonfigueroa ◴[20 Dec 24 16:17 UTC] No.42472367[source]▶
I added one of the random RSS feeds from https://indieblog.page/rss. I’ve discovered cool blogs this way that I now subscribe to directly.
replies(2): >>42472382 #>>42480550 #
7. freetonik ◴[20 Dec 24 16:19 UTC] No.42472382[source]▶
That's a very cool idea!
8. freetonik ◴[20 Dec 24 16:26 UTC] No.42472435{3}[source]▶
Do you mean to subscribe to the whole collection, one RSS feed for all the blogs in my list? I mean, I guess I can build that feature, but it's gonna be quite a firehose.
replies(2): >>42472686 #>>42480077 #
9. CharlesW ◴[20 Dec 24 16:29 UTC] No.42472462[source]▶
One tip: Every Substack has a feed, which is a nice alternative to having everything dropped in your email in-box. You just append "/feed" to the end of a newsletter URL, e.g. https://simonw.substack.com/feed.
replies(2): >>42472949 #>>42473308 #
10. ◴[20 Dec 24 16:31 UTC] No.42472474[source]▶
11. onli ◴[20 Dec 24 16:56 UTC] No.42472686{4}[source]▶
Not sure what parent meant, but the right way should be an opml file with the feeds, which the feed reader then can import. But maybe you are offering that already?
replies(2): >>42472722 #>>42472943 #
12. freetonik ◴[20 Dec 24 17:00 UTC] No.42472722{5}[source]▶
Ah, sorry, that makes perfect sense. Not yet, but I plan to implement this soon.
13. rixed ◴[20 Dec 24 17:18 UTC] No.42472897[source]▶
Create a reader like Artemis and wait for people to upload their own bookmarks?
14. freetonik ◴[20 Dec 24 17:22 UTC] No.42472943{5}[source]▶
Here, I quickly put together an OPML generator: https://minifeed.net/blogs/opml.xml
replies(1): >>42474154 #
15. freetonik ◴[20 Dec 24 17:23 UTC] No.42472949[source]▶
I wonder if Substack would at some point remove or at least cripple this feature. Right now it seems the full-content RSS is served.
16. aharris6 ◴[20 Dec 24 17:54 UTC] No.42473195[source]▶
I am working on a site, which is very pre-beta at this point, that works to help solve this problem using bluesky's "starter pack" model. Basically sharing curated lists of good follows. Give it a look at https://feed.computer if that seems interesting!
17. marginalia_nu ◴[20 Dec 24 18:09 UTC] No.42473308[source]▶
I've been doing adjacent work for my search engine[1], and found substack to annoyingly be one of the sites that employ bot mitigation for its RSS endpoints. If you fetch at a very low rate it works fine, but for these types of bulk retrieval.

Substack is also a bit of a pain to integrate with because they have zero useful contact information and direct all inquiries to a chatbot that is beyond useless, makes it so you have to guess how they want you to interact with their servers since there is nobody to answer questions.

[1] Preview of my take of the idea: https://mastodon.social/@marginalia/113670235590972416

18. dqv ◴[20 Dec 24 19:32 UTC] No.42474154{6}[source]▶
Whoa, you did not have to do that! Thank you so much :)
19. hombre_fatal ◴[20 Dec 24 19:55 UTC] No.42474391[source]▶
Heh, that was my question too once I signed up.

I think OP’s project is a nice place to potentially have some default feeds. Both for purposes but also because it’s nice to see some interesting content once you sign up. Maybe even just major news items.

20. drdec ◴[21 Dec 24 15:03 UTC] No.42480077{4}[source]▶
My impression was that they wanted to be notified of new blogs via RSS, not the content of the blogs.

But I could be wrong

21. linhns ◴[21 Dec 24 16:32 UTC] No.42480550[source]▶
Awesome job!
22. 8organicbits ◴[21 Dec 24 19:17 UTC] No.42481578[source]▶
I think the answer to this question _should_ be blogrolls, as in, you discover new feeds from the feeds you already like. We lost that when social media absorbed the social graph, but blogs and feeds are in vogue again.

I built a site around programmatic blogrolls (sites that publish an OPML file of their recommendations using a specific format). I collected a bunch of initial subscription lists[1], which are curated lists, "planets", and web rings. The I spider out from there. The aggregate list is too diverse, and definitely has some low quality content, but connections between blogs are useful for discovery [2].

[1] https://github.com/robalexdev/rss-blogroll-network/blob/main...

[2] https://alexsci.com/rss-blogroll-network/discover/feed-ff6cc...