Improve your scrolling habit with RSS newsfeeds
2024, March 31
Introduction
RSS is an acronym. It refers to a technology released in 1999, wikipedia refers to the acronym as Really Simple Syndication.
Side-note for Spanish speakers: sugiero que le llamemos Erre doble ese, para darle un nombre pronunciable.
However, reading about RSS on the internet can be a confusing for non-technical users, and that's why I decided to write this article. I will try to explain:
- RSS in simple terms.
- How to use RSS.
- Why it is better than popular apps.
RSS in simple terms
RSS is a little bit abstract, it can be considered a form of communication between computers. It works like this:
- Someone publishes an RSS feed.
- Other people subscribe to the RSS feed, to do this people use a "reader" app, we refer to these apps as an RSS reader.
- When the RSS feed has new content, everyone's reader updates with the new content.
That is the whole idea, more or less. It may sound a lot like popular social media apps, but it has some advantages. Lets see!
- It is very inexpensive to to create an RSS feed, a single person can create their own RSS feed if they have the technical knowledge.
This is great because it means that a small website is as capable of creating a RSS feed as a large corporation. Less gate-keeping means more freedom.
- To subscribe you need an RSS reader app. And thanks to the way that RSS works, anyone is free to create their own RSS reader app and share it with the world. That gives us a lot of diversity: from free apps to paid ones, for some systems or cross-platform reader apps for all systems.
This is great because it creates options for the users, and promotes diversity between the app-makers. This is very different from a social media site, a social media site has a vested interest in controlling the User Interface for all of their users, they don't want anyone else making a different "reader app" for their content.
The fact that you control your reader app means that there is not an "algorithm" giving you suggestions of content, or advertisement. You control your content!
- You can subscribe to many different sources, your reader app aggregates them all together in a single place.
Tired of opening 5 different websites to look at the new content that each of them has uploaded? Yes, me too. An RSS reader simplifies your life, you subscribe to multiple feeds and they all show up in your reader app!
How to use RSS
So lets look at how to use it, in which I will show you how I use it. You will be adjusting the steps to your own interests.
1. RSS Reader App
As I said, there are many reader apps. For the purpose of this guide I will show you the one I use and recommend. RSS Reader miniflux: https://miniflux.app/
miniflux subscription is a yearly $15 USD under the "Paid Hosting" link in the website, which I find much more accessible than most monthly-subscription apps. By subscribing you get to support the continuous development of the product. The project is Open-Source Software, and if you are a software developer or a technical-savvy power-user you could choose to run the project in your computer for free. Because miniflux is an app that lives in "the cloud" you get the main benefit of saving your progress and data even if you access your reader account from different devices at different times. It comes with a web interface, and you can add it to your home-screen on your Android or iOS. This is how I added the miniflux web UI as a homescreen app on Android with Firefox browser. Finally, miniflux integrates with a lot of other apps, in case you want to use more apps.
Some other examples of Reader Apps in case you want to look at more options:
- https://netnewswire.com/ (iOS/Mac)
- https://newsblur.com/ (cross-platform)
- https://feedly.com/ (cross-platfrom)
- And if you want to look at even more opinions, there is in an old
HackerNewsthread:
2. Find sources that you want to subscribe.
The sources will fill your reader app with news entries, and that's the whole goal of doing all this. Most websites offer an RSS feed, sometimes the RSS feeds are a little bit difficult to find, and some few websites (sadly) do not offer any, in which case we just ignore those.
Usually websites that offer RSS include the icon somewhere on their site. Sometimes the RSS feed is a little bit hidden, and sometimes you get lucky and find it by searching the web for "source name" + "rss".
I will show you some examples of feeds that I like to follow, and how to find them:
- Youtube channels
- These ones work out-of-the-box in miniflux, you just add the URL of the channel that you want to follow and you get a feed. This way you can check on your favorite creators without having to look at the recommendations from the algorithm that may distract you for hours 😉 . As a side-note, I also recommend the browser plugin for youtube called
Unhook(Firefox link, Chrome link)
- These ones work out-of-the-box in miniflux, you just add the URL of the channel that you want to follow and you get a feed. This way you can check on your favorite creators without having to look at the recommendations from the algorithm that may distract you for hours 😉 . As a side-note, I also recommend the browser plugin for youtube called
- Reddit
- You can add
.rssat the end of any Reddit URL and you will get an RSS feed, for example if you want a newsfeed ofhttps://www.reddit.com/r/catpicsthen just add this URL to your reader:https://www.reddit.com/r/catpics.rss
- You can add
- Wikipedia
- You can find a few RSS feeds for wikipedia here: https://www.to-rss.xyz/wikipedia/ Usually these RSS feed links look click-able, but clicking them doesn't do anything. You want to RIGHT-click them and select "Copy URL", you will paste this URL in your RSS reader app.
- Tech news
- For tech news I follow a couple of websites:
- HackerNews
- For
HackerNewsI use this project: https://hnrss.github.io/, in that website you are offered multiple ways of creating your ownHNfeed, I like to get all new posts with350points or more, that way it doesn't update me too often, I use the following feed URL for this:https://hnrss.org/newest?points=350.
- For
- The Register
- Another source that I like to follow, they have feeds for their different categories: https://www.theregister.com/Design/page/feeds.html
- As usual, you don't click on those links, you just copy them. I like to follow these:
https://www.theregister.com/on_prem/cxo/headlines.atomhttps://www.theregister.com/software/applications/headlines.atomhttps://www.theregister.com/on_prem/public_sector/headlines.atomhttps://www.theregister.com/security/research/headlines.atom
- Slashdot
- This one is a noisy one, and they have a lot of low quality posts, but the articles are short and can be entertaining. The RSS feed URL:
https://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdotMain
- This one is a noisy one, and they have a lot of low quality posts, but the articles are short and can be entertaining. The RSS feed URL:
- HackerNews
- For tech news I follow a couple of websites:
- World news
- I try not to read too much on this area, but here are some of the sources I like:
- AllSides
- This link can be found in the RSS icon at the top-right of their website, next to the other social media icons. The RSS icon is the one that looks like wifi. As usual, you copy the URL link, which would be:
https://www.allsides.com/rss/news
- This link can be found in the RSS icon at the top-right of their website, next to the other social media icons. The RSS icon is the one that looks like wifi. As usual, you copy the URL link, which would be:
- GroundNews
- This is a source that I like to read for USA news, sadly they don't seem to have an RSS feed so we can't add
GroundNewsto our reader app.
- This is a source that I like to read for USA news, sadly they don't seem to have an RSS feed so we can't add
- AllSides
- I try not to read too much on this area, but here are some of the sources I like:
- Costa Rica news
- Discourse Forums
- There are many forums online that use the Discourse platform, such as:
- Most of the URLs in
Discoursecan be turned into an RSS feed by adding.rssto the end of the URL, just like Reddit. For example, in this page people post job ads with the Elixir programming language from time to time, that means that if I turn it into an RSS feedhttps://elixirforum.com/c/work/elixir-jobs/16.rssand add it to my reader, I can get updates whenever a new job is posted to that board.
- Some other website
- Many websites implement RSS feeds, sometimes you just need to search a little. My blog does not currently implement an RSS feed, but I should add one soon.
- Utility
- A service that lets you create a feed from another feed, applying your own filtering rules so you only get the entries with words (or without words) that you want (or don't want)
As you use RSS feeds, you will notice that some are more interesting than others, and some are noisier than others. Adjust as you see fit, remove the ones you dislike and protect your attention.
That's it! Get all your new information into a single place, avoid advertisement and algorithms that want to steal your attention. Enable your scrolling habit in a productive way!
Future blogposts
These are some ideas that I have for future blog posts, let me know if you would like to read them and I will spare the time to write them:
- How I turned my Github notifications into an RSS feed.
- How I turned my LinkedIn job alert emails into an RSS feed.
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