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I ditched the algorithm for RSS

(joeyehand.com)
744 points DearNarwhal | 1 comments | 16 Jan 25 12:18 UTC | HN request time: 0.354s | source
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bluGill ◴[16 Jan 25 19:11 UTC] No.42729542[source]▶
A good algorithm is a good thing. However what a good algorithm is for me is often different from what it is for those who maintain them. Outrage gets attention and sometimes it is needed, but there is a level of too much, and also a lot of outrage unfairly represents the issues and so it makes me mad even though if I understood the details I wouldn't be mad just concerned.

I want an algorithm that surfaces things of interest to me, then says "you have seen it all, go outside" (with an option of if I'm confined to a hospital bed to go on). Algorithm maintainers want me to keep scrolling for more ad dollars.

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1. jldugger ◴[20 Jan 25 03:24 UTC] No.42764671[source]▶
Here's what I do: - six 'links to top posts from the past week' links for subreddits/HN, in rotation. - a collection of RSS feeds from bloggers I've seen enough writing to recognize (and academic journals), which I check weekly

Every day is a focused collection of the most upvoted posts from one of those seven. It's hardly a perfect algorithm, but it at least disengages the worst instincts of FOMO. And the RSS feed can be seen as an escape hatch of sorts. If you really wanted to, you could try browsing /new once in a while as some kind of public penance or panning for gold.

edit: turns out the actual post is pretty close to this, with more RSS as a middleman. I just use Trello cards as rotating bookmarks, having given up on RSS being viable for anything other than the profitability of the RSS publisher.