How do you use RSS?

privsecfoss@feddit.dk to Free and Open Source Software@beehaw.org – 22 points –

I use it for news aggregation with Nextcloud news. Also for podcasts and PeerTube channels. Anyone using RSS for other things?

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I use RSS to watch YouTube videos. I collect the ULRs of the videos I want to watch in a text file using my feed reader (Newsboat). In the evening a script transfers the file to my TV computer and fetches the videos with yt-dlp.

To play the videos I use another script, which plays and then trashes the video files in a loop.

Pros: no ads, no buffering videos during playback, plays videos without interaction (like TV), can collect video URLs over day, don't have to bother with YouTube's user interface, cookies etc.

I like that idea! Any chance you would be able to share the script or the general workflow?

I just wrote down simplified versions of my scripts. Then I clicked the wrong button to exit the markdown preview and now it's all gone. I'll have to drink a beer now, sorry. If you have any specific questions, I'll answer them gladly.

I use this lightweight reader by the same dev who makes Bookstack. Just for new though. I use Audiobookshelf for podcasts.

What news do you add to it?

Nothing special, just WaPo, NPR, NYT, etc. I just prefer aggregating all those sites instead of going to them individually when I some that kind of news.

I self-host FreshRSS and use it for:

  • Blogs
  • News-Sites
  • Piped (YouTube) channels
  • GitHub releases

FreshRSS here, too. Tech, State and local news all nicely sorted where I can firehose it or just see small sections.

+1 for FreshRSS. It's excellent and has been very easy to host for years.

I subscribe to:

  • Blogs I find interesting
  • Blogs of personal friends
  • Projects' blogs and announcements
  • Changes to codebase I need to closely monitor (e.g. things I host)
  • Videos, mostly on YouTube, but also my PeerTube feed
  • Web comics

Nothing unusual with my feed - news, tech, science, environment. What I may do differently is I set up a filter on Mastodon so any of my feeds are only seen in rss. I really don't need to see a Wired article 6 times.

I've been using RSS since before Google Reader was a thing. It's a fantastic way to monitor new papers in journals as almost all journals have been providing a feed since forever. I could go with a self-hosted option but I just ended up using Inoreader although I will probably migrate again. They used to have some entry level plans (they call it supporter plan) at some €20/yr but it looks like they are no longer available for new users.

Blogs, news sites, YouTube channels of a few favorite music artists, web comics, etc. FreshRss is my favorite.

I use Feedly after Google reader died. Pretty much only use it for webcomics.

after Google shut down Reader, I took my OPML (list of subscriptions), and switched to a FOSS local RSS reader; import my OPML and carry on. I've switched software occasionally; right now I'm happy with Feeder (from f-droid).

Getting my news is something I care about too much to entrust to someone's server; I'm happy with it purely local.

Yes. I use it on my phone. I use AntennaPod for pod casts, and Flym for textual news feeds. Antenna pod in particular is really nice. I finding having this sort of content on a mobile device best.

I use newsboat for all my RSS needs, which is pretty much my main entry point for a lot of things:

  • News sites
  • Various blogs
  • Youtube channels (I unsubscribed from everything on my YouTube account, hardly ever login, and only use RSS to follow the channels I want)
  • Podcasts
  • I used to have some subreddits in there too, but those were ritually deleted after June 12th of course

Youtube channels (I unsubscribed from everything on my YouTube account, hardly ever login, and only use RSS to follow the channels I want)

This is the way to do it. I can't stand youtube's interface and its recommendations, auto play, and other anti-features frustrace me. I find that on youtube, when I go look at a channel, I often can't figure out which video is the most recent, and really struggle to see figure out what I've watched and what I haven't.

Using RSS let's me see when there is a new video posted just from the channels I am interested in. I don't have to go hunting. FreshRSS will watch it through youtube-nocookie.com, but I often find using yt-dlp is better experience, especially for anything longer than 5 minutes.

I use RSS through Readwise Reader though I've used Newsblur in the past. I really wish Newsblur was redesigned to get a more modern interface..

  • For my Mastodon feed, so I don't have to open yet another app
  • For my Youtube and Nebula subscriptions, same
  • For a few FB pages & others that post events, same
  • For my Lemmy feed, same
  • For all my news feeds (curated, usually) for a quick look at everything
  • For my friends' posts so I know I won't miss a single one

I currently use the premium plan for Inoreader. I like tinyRSS, just didn't do it for me; I've been using RSS since Google Reader.

For RSS feed recommendations you can also take inspiration from this post: https://beehaw.org/post/618286

I have never used RSS until literally this week lol. I added the AWS health RSS. I have no idea how it works. Like, I get the idea but not how to practically use it.

Instead of going to blogs, YouTube, podcast etc. you subsribe and feetch news from them via RSS in a web or local client. IMHO the way things should work 🙂

My use is not foss because I didn't find something that fits my needs better than Inoreader. There is the android app which works fine and also a very nice web interface that I can use at work because without thumbnails it looks like a 'boring' list of stuff.

Never used Inoreader, but recently switched to Newsblur which is open source (app installable via F-Droid) and selfhostable. If you don't want to self host they have a freemium model to use their hosted service, couldn't tell you what free vs paid gets you but I haven't bumped into any limits yet. You can also log in to their site to browse via web browser.

So far the app looks better than other open source readers I've tried and thumbnails generally load so the lists are a bit livelier.

Some of the sites I would like to follow don't have RSS. I have tried fiddling with RSS Bridge a few times before but never got it working into a satisfactory workflow.

I've never thought of using it for video subscriptions. Great idea to have everything all in once place.

I use freshrss. It is my primary source of information. Here are some of the things I follow:

  • Various Local News Sources
  • Local City Council Blog
  • Various National/International News Sources
  • Various Blogs
  • Comics (SMBC, xkcd, ...)
  • Music Review Sites/Blogs
  • Various Record Label feeds (I run a small distributor)
  • YouTube Channels :: This is so much better than going to youtube
  • New Releases/ChangeLogs of various OSS projects I follow and host
  • Various Planet (Gnome/Gnu/Debian/...) Aggregators
  • Google Alerts
  • Lemmy Communities
  • Reddit Communities (We'll see where these go)
  • HomeLab/Cron :: Instead of dealing with emails, I generate RSS feeds from my cron scripts/home lab notifications
  • Email Subscriptions :: I take some email notification (like new releases on bandcamp) and convert them to RSS

Since I can't stand twitter, and since so many of my local groups use twitter, I use FreshRSS (self-hosted) to list new posts via Nitter's RSS feature.

I also use RSS for Lemmy content and a few Reddit communities I still follow (until they show up on Lemmy) via old.reddit.com.

And some updates from YouTube channels or software release notes.

Really, my goal is to consolidate things, so I'm not checking 10 different sources every day.

Would you mind sharing some of your favorite blogs and webcomics?

Blogs, local news sources, weather sources. Some gov.uk reports. Although I've tried several clients I keep falling back to Thunderbird and Aggregator (simple Android client).

I don't. Google reader died, and all of the blogs put themselves on social media.

The walled garden is almost complete.

I use it for recipes! I use the iOS app Mela for recipe storage and it has a built-in RSS feed system to follow recipe blogs so you can easily add new recipes to your collection without having to visit all the sites separately.