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A lot of people don't seem to be aware of it, but you can "tune" Google News by adding or deleting sources. I've tweaked mine quite a bit and it works well as a

by wyclif 9y ago

A lot of people don't seem to be aware of it, but you can "tune" Google News by adding or deleting sources. I've tweaked mine quite a bit and it works well as a lazy news source. It's not as finely granulated as my RSS consumption, and it won't replace my RSS reader, but it's better than I at first thought it would be after adjusting the defaults.

awiesenhofer 9y ago
After having to remove "recommended" news sources and articles all the time I decided to "tune" it by deinstalling the Google Search App altogether therefore removing News. I use feedly instead now and am quite happy with the added battery runtime.
washadjeffmad 9y ago
I've given up on that but haven't sought alternatives. I'm not sure what began influencing my feed, but even after removing sources, choosing what was useful and what I wasn't interested in, it still mainly gives me popular and political news, which were never set in my interests. Other than that, it gives me information that's a day late, which makes things like one-day sales notifications for not useful. I've largely switched to podcasts to make up for the content gap but would be interested in a aggregator that didn't try so hard to be smart.
gabuzome_ 9y ago
Funny story, Google News, the web interface seems to have been abondonned by Google. The normal web interface that is, don't know about mobile. The "Sources" preference on news.google.com has a bug - whenever you try to block a new source, it replaces the old one, so you can only ever block one source at a time :D Which isn't sufficient as their feed keeps showing material from Daily Mail and similar garbage. Skipping it manually isn't a problem, but it does take the space of meaningful news reports. Users sent countless bug reports and started many threads on their forums since around June 2017, no reply. Nowadays I just aggregate aljazeera and reuters, way more efficient.
- wyclif 9y ago
  Not true. I just added a random number of blocked sources and none of them were replaced. Currently blocking 5 or 6 different sites. Chrome version 65.0.3325.181.
  - gabuzome_ 9y ago
    Heh, I guess they prefer you. Just tested with chromium 65.0.3325.181 and the bug is there. Have you tried leaving and coming back to the preference page?
    - wyclif 9y ago
      Yes, I have. Quit and restarted Chrome. There's no bug. I'm afraid there's no way to reproduce the behaviour you describe. I have Fox News, Daily Mail, CNN, and a number of other sources blocked. No issues whatsoever.
      - gabuzome_ 9y ago
        Interesting. So it's only broken for a small subset of people, which explains why they never even bothered answering. I suppose it is tied to my account then, since various laptops and browsers gave me the same behavior.

by wyclif 9y ago

awiesenhofer 9y ago

After having to remove "recommended" news sources and articles all the time I decided to "tune" it by deinstalling the Google Search App altogether therefore removing News. I use feedly instead now and am quite happy with the added battery runtime.

washadjeffmad 9y ago

I've given up on that but haven't sought alternatives. I'm not sure what began influencing my feed, but even after removing sources, choosing what was useful and what I wasn't interested in, it still mainly gives me popular and political news, which were never set in my interests. Other than that, it gives me information that's a day late, which makes things like one-day sales notifications for not useful. I've largely switched to podcasts to make up for the content gap but would be interested in a aggregator that didn't try so hard to be smart.

gabuzome_ 9y ago

Funny story, Google News, the web interface seems to have been abondonned by Google. The normal web interface that is, don't know about mobile. The "Sources" preference on news.google.com has a bug - whenever you try to block a new source, it replaces the old one, so you can only ever block one source at a time :D Which isn't sufficient as their feed keeps showing material from Daily Mail and similar garbage. Skipping it manually isn't a problem, but it does take the space of meaningful news reports. Users sent countless bug reports and started many threads on their forums since around June 2017, no reply. Nowadays I just aggregate aljazeera and reuters, way more efficient.

wyclif 9y ago
Not true. I just added a random number of blocked sources and none of them were replaced. Currently blocking 5 or 6 different sites. Chrome version 65.0.3325.181.
- gabuzome_ 9y ago
  Heh, I guess they prefer you. Just tested with chromium 65.0.3325.181 and the bug is there. Have you tried leaving and coming back to the preference page?
  - wyclif 9y ago
    Yes, I have. Quit and restarted Chrome. There's no bug. I'm afraid there's no way to reproduce the behaviour you describe. I have Fox News, Daily Mail, CNN, and a number of other sources blocked. No issues whatsoever.
    - gabuzome_ 9y ago
      Interesting. So it's only broken for a small subset of people, which explains why they never even bothered answering. I suppose it is tied to my account then, since various laptops and browsers gave me the same behavior.