MergeFeed

Infrastructure

feed aggregation

SHOW HN2021

48points
32comments
#879of 2,533 in 2021
Top 35%of 2021 by points

How HN took it

RoastedHalf or more of the comments are critical

2 positive, 5 neutral or asking, 0 mixed, 8 critical, out of 15 comments about the project. Thread score -0.25.

Design: 0 for, 4 againstExecution: 0 for, 3 againstIdea: 2 for, 1 against

The thread, comment by comment

Each row is a top-level comment and its replies, in HN's order. Select a cell to open that comment on HN.

positive neutral or mixed critical about another commenter or something else the maker

What HN said

What people liked

  • Useful for sharing a topic's blogs as one feed

    From 2 comments
    • So this could be interesting. I get asked fairly frequently at work what blogs / newsletters / sites I read to keep on topic X. Could I use this to create a feed for topic X…
      monkeydust on HN
    • The only reason I can think it’s a handy way to share an aggregation
      quickthrower2 on HN

Objections

  • Feels like half a feed reader and the layout is hard to read

    From 4 comments
    • Mmm ... Thanks for the explanation, but it just feels like half of a feed reader (not removing articles read etc). And the format gives me a headache.
      beardyw on HN
    • I'm pretty confused about the concept. Is it supposed to look like this? https://imgur.com/a/4A52Wer How is such a busy overwhelming feed useful?
      mkl on HN
    • Time, indents, linewrap, and padding between lines may help. https://techmeme.com/river and https://hckrnews.com/ are good clean inspiration.
      basch on HN
    • A readability nightmare
      imwillofficial on HN
  • Injection vulnerability in text titles, since fixed by the maker

    From 2 comments
    • I shall give my usual plea (for the OP and feed authors alike): except for podcasts, please deal in Atom rather than RSS if you have a choice. Let RSS die. Outside of podcasting…
      chrismorgan on HN
    • > And possibly the autodiscovery needs tweaking too, as I observe it not finding the feed on my site https://chrismorgan.info/, which is properly specified; my first guess is…
      amadeuspagel on HN
  • Text too large on phones

    From 1 comment

Requests

  • Emit Atom instead of RSS

    From 1 comment
    • I shall give my usual plea (for the OP and feed authors alike): except for podcasts, please deal in Atom rather than RSS if you have a choice. Let RSS die. Outside of podcasting…
      chrismorgan on HN
  • Keep title formatting

    From 2 comments
    • I think that autodiscovery is only finding the first feed. Since you’re aggregating feeds, I’d expect it to find all feeds on all pages. Sample page with multiple feeds:…
      chrismorgan on HN
    • > I'm not sure that's even a good idea. It's kind of a link aggregator and link aggregators generally don't allow formatting. You don't want people to try to gain attention that…
      chrismorgan on HN
  • Find all feeds on a page, not just the first

    From 1 comment
    • I think that autodiscovery is only finding the first feed. Since you’re aggregating feeds, I’d expect it to find all feeds on all pages. Sample page with multiple feeds:…
      chrismorgan on HN
  • Better mobile layout with time and spacing

    From 1 comment
    • Time, indents, linewrap, and padding between lines may help. https://techmeme.com/river and https://hckrnews.com/ are good clean inspiration.
      basch on HN

Questions

  • What is the use case versus a feed reader

    From 2 comments
    • Sorry to sound like an idiot, but what would I want this for?
      beardyw on HN
    • Why not just put those feed in your RSS reader? What does the extra step add?
      remram on HN
  • Why Atom over RSS given few feeds use it

    From 1 comment
    • > …Atom is the technically superior format, including resolving various unspecified behaviour that does lead to inconsistency across clients, such as with respect to HTML markup…
      CharlesW on HN

Alternatives named

  • FraidyCat desktop feed reader

    From 1 comment
    • I feel compelled to mention FraidyCat[0], which is offered as a desktop app. It groups posts by feed/individual, with a mini activity bar next to each. It also groups feeds by…
      strogonoff on HN
  • feedmixer Python service

    From 1 comment
    • I wrote a little Python service which combines multiple rss/atom feeds into a single feed, in case anyone wants to host their own API for doing that:…
      cristoperb on HN
  • Techmeme river and hckrnews

    From 1 comment
    • Time, indents, linewrap, and padding between lines may help. https://techmeme.com/river and https://hckrnews.com/ are good clean inspiration.
      basch on HN
  • Nightfall city feeds

    From 1 comment
    • If you're looking for feeds, have a look at https://nightfall.city
      ms123 on HN

Category, keywords, summaries and labels on this page were made by AI (Thread Reader v2) and not checked by hand. Each point links to the comments it came from.

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