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RSS is awesome

(evanverma.com)
314 points edverma2 | 3 comments | 28 Aug 25 23:04 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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k2enemy ◴[28 Aug 25 23:34 UTC] No.45058232[source]▶
Boy do I feel old if a short, low content PSA about the existence of RSS is considered "hacker news."
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user3939382 ◴[29 Aug 25 00:14 UTC] No.45058489[source]▶
RSS is the antidote to algorithm feeds. I’m glad for any mention of it. 90% of the tools users need were built 1970-2000 including RSS.
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627467 ◴[29 Aug 25 01:33 UTC] No.45059015[source]▶
Having restarted using rss in the past months (after probably 10+ years of not using it) i am now starting to remember why I stopped using it: lack of a personal "algorithm" that made hundreds (if not 1000s) of unread daily items to be manageable.

I know part of it is on me. I need to let go, unsubscribe aggressively, etc... but this is... work?

Im not a regular iOS user, but on it I have feeeeds which actually seem to have a sane personal "algorithm" of sorts that doesn't force ALL feeds items onto me, and also isn't purely chronological.

More readers should have this

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1. al_borland ◴[29 Aug 25 01:38 UTC] No.45059056{3}[source]▶
The thing that made RSS work for me is to really limit my feeds. Instead of following 10 tech news sites that have a bunch of overlap, I follow 1 that has most of what I want. A few blogs are for apps I use and want to be informed of new information, but they post infrequently, which is good.

Feed with dozens of posts per day turn into noise, especially if you have a lot of them.

By choosing one site I trust, I let the editors edit, instead of the algorithm.

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2. sewalsh ◴[29 Aug 25 22:06 UTC] No.45069955[source]▶
Yikes. I read THOUSANDS of RSS headlines on a daily basis. This is exactly why I use RSS. You can easily get a glimpse of headlines and keep browsing.
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3. al_borland ◴[29 Aug 25 22:44 UTC] No.45070249[source]▶
That's the beauty of RSS, people can tailor it to their needs and wants. If I saw thousands of unread items, I'd shut down and give up. On the flip side, if you had my feed list, you'd probably feel like you were missing a ton of stuff. But we can both make it work for us.

I did have a job where I got 10k email per day for a good 10 years, so I probably have some PTSD from that. I'd feel like I was right back there if I had thousands of items per day in my RSS reader. I've been out of that stage of my job for a good 8 years, and I'm just now starting to get a handle on my email again, after feeling like there was no way to control it for so long.