off-topic 2026-10-07

Interested to know, do people often use RSS? Do you?

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Stephen Castro-Starkey 2026-10-07T00:49:14.585889Z

I have an RSS reader and wrote a simple blog in Clojure that produces an RSS feed. Why do you ask?

I wrote a harness and changes happen everyday in the ecosystems. Plugins, updates, improvements, fixes. And I wanted to know if people do use it or not. Because there an RSS feed for the ecossystem https://store.hive-mcp.com/feed

I use RSS all the time. No reasonable alternative if you want to keep track of other people's works.

I use it all the time. I am considering open source options since the commercial offerings auto marks things as read.

Yes, in Apple Podcasts

I'd say publishing a well-known XML/RSS feed (e.g. ) is table stakes for web publishing. Personally, I source my reading/listening almost exclusively from RSS/Atom sources, because that helps me stay sane. Reasons include: • 100% opt-in and, crucially, not algorithmically-mediated... ◦ if it's in a feed I have subscribed to, it will reach me ◦ if it is not in the subscription set, I will never see it ◦ if I want to find out "more like this", it is up to me to go search and discover • 100% pull-based: I can pause/unpause/remove fetches at any time. • Generally better for my privacy because feed readers, like email clients, can stop tracking pixels, javascript embeds etc... plaintext feeds FTW. • Locally organised and curated per my requirements; viz. feed sources, within those sources topics of interest subscribed to, fetch frequency, local categories and content filters, marking read/unread/archived etc... • Split by specific type of device for specific type of media, to protect my attention system, and for some safety of my eyes (read / view in large format, listen in pocket format). What I use for feeds: • To publish: The site-maker I use auto-generates / auto-updates my blog's RSS feed (and auto-validates its format) before I publish material. My newsletter software also provides an RSS feed. • To read: Thunderbird on desktop (in addition to mail and calendar). Reading material is deliberately confined to the desktop environment. • To listen: Antennapod on my Android device. Audio content is deliberately confined to the mobile phone. • To watch: Strictly no feeds of any sort, because videos are the most addictive form of passive consumption for me. Thus, video viewing is strictly "i-need-to-know-this" basis. Most of this stuff is in the "education and tutorials" category, and is found on youtube or vimeo. I yt-dl selected stuff for offline viewing. Addendum: Microformats. Similar to XML/RSS feeds, "Microformats" are also well-known structured representations of all kinds of published content, including blog posts. https://indieweb.org/microformats ... give these a dekko. Been my site-maker TODO list since forever (probably because having the RSS feed alone is plenty good enough).

I see. So, It seems to be worth it to maintain a RSS feed... Like, test it thoroughly. Improve formatting etc. Thanks a lot for the feedback!

To test / validate your RSS feed: • You won't have to, if you are using a site builder or blogging service. It should be able to generate a correct feed. You may not even need to configure it. • If you are rolling your own site builder, then plenty of tools (online, included) and libraries are available, to integrate into your code. I use xmllint in my site builder. And I referred to these resources: ◦ The feed XML structure explained: https://www.scriptol.com/rss/rss-tutorial.php ◦ One of the online validators: https://validator.w3.org/feed/

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Anti-Patterns in Software Blogging: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49992257 (my whole blog is these antipatterns 😅 ). The post is by mtlynch. Says he: > In software development, we collect anti-patterns to recognize common traits that lead to poor outcomes in our software. I thought it would be helpful to do the same for software blogging, so I’ve catalogued the most frequent mistakes I see from beginner bloggers.

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