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One of the biggest issues with RSS these days is 'click here to read the rest of the article', only to be redirected to Ars Technica where a video starts auto-p

One of the biggest issues with RSS these days is 'click here to read the rest of the article', only to be redirected to Ars Technica where a video starts auto-playing. And this is SO wasteful. The amount of megabytes wasted on limited plans...

mrweasel 4y ago
I understand why the entire article isn't necessarily in the RSS feed, but it sort of defeats the purpose of having an RSS reader in my mind. Normally I quickly drop the feeds that only includes the first paragraph. There is one local news site that even worse, they host a series of blogs, you only get the title and the first paragraph, but you're also only able to subscribe to ALL the blogs, not just the one you're actually interested in.
- thejammahimself 4y ago
  It just feels like a lot of the internet simply isn't designed for RSS anymore. A lot of people forget it still exists, or think that it died out ages ago. I remember the YouTuber Tom Scott remarking in one of his videos that he misses RSS not realising of course that it is still alive.
- leephillips 4y ago
  I’m of the opposite mind. For me the purpose of the feed is to get a look at the first paragraph so I can decide whether to press "o" and see the article (I discovered newsboat a few months ago and adopted it).
  - toastal 4y ago
    Agreed-ish. I prefer the abstract/summary rather than first paragraph (though first paragraph is informally often the same thing, nothing prevents abstracts/summaries fcom having multiple paragraphs).
mr_mitm 4y ago
I linked newsboat with elinks. Actually, it's felinks, a fork of elinks which supports Python scripting. I also have a couple of small scripts and a bunch of rules for all major news sites that strip the HTML page to just the article. At some point I wanted to hook it up with the readability Python package, but it works pretty well already. Plus, this way all the links (in particular to images, which open with "feh" on demand) are preserved. So on the feeds that are like you describe, I just hit "o" and can read the rest of the article without any noise 99% of the time right there in the terminal.
- ploum 4y ago
  You may be curious to try Offpunk: https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/ https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/ Offpunk allows to subscribe to a RSS and read the full html page directly in console, including browsing the website and having pictures displayed as "sixels" (works best with the terminal "kitty"). It also allows to read all of that offline and get all the new posts in a "tour".
  - alexcg1 4y ago
    Nice! Just downloaded and playing with it now. But there's nothing in readme about enabling nice image display in kitty. Any advice?
    - ploum 4y ago
      installing chafa. Then, when you open a picture in offpunk, it will be perfectly rendered. (inline images will still be displayed as "sixels")
aliqot 4y ago
Why would Ars Technica be in your feed, there's your problem.
kevincox 4y ago
You can mitigate this issue by using something like ftr.fivefilters.net or morss.it which will attempt to scrape the website for you and create a "full text" feed. Obviously not as good as the original feed being complete but it is often preferable to just the summaries.
ascagnel_ 4y ago
This won't work for every site, but Ars has a solution for you: if you subscribe to one of their paid tiers, you get access to an ad-free, full-text RSS feed. This kind of thing is why I like RSS as a delivery mechanism: while the feed itself is an open standard and can be consumed by any properly-configured reader, services can offer additional features and gate access server-side based on a per-user token.

mrweasel 4y ago

I understand why the entire article isn't necessarily in the RSS feed, but it sort of defeats the purpose of having an RSS reader in my mind. Normally I quickly drop the feeds that only includes the first paragraph. There is one local news site that even worse, they host a series of blogs, you only get the title and the first paragraph, but you're also only able to subscribe to ALL the blogs, not just the one you're actually interested in.

thejammahimself 4y ago
It just feels like a lot of the internet simply isn't designed for RSS anymore. A lot of people forget it still exists, or think that it died out ages ago. I remember the YouTuber Tom Scott remarking in one of his videos that he misses RSS not realising of course that it is still alive.
leephillips 4y ago
I’m of the opposite mind. For me the purpose of the feed is to get a look at the first paragraph so I can decide whether to press "o" and see the article (I discovered newsboat a few months ago and adopted it).
- toastal 4y ago
  Agreed-ish. I prefer the abstract/summary rather than first paragraph (though first paragraph is informally often the same thing, nothing prevents abstracts/summaries fcom having multiple paragraphs).

mr_mitm 4y ago

I linked newsboat with elinks. Actually, it's felinks, a fork of elinks which supports Python scripting. I also have a couple of small scripts and a bunch of rules for all major news sites that strip the HTML page to just the article. At some point I wanted to hook it up with the readability Python package, but it works pretty well already. Plus, this way all the links (in particular to images, which open with "feh" on demand) are preserved. So on the feeds that are like you describe, I just hit "o" and can read the rest of the article without any noise 99% of the time right there in the terminal.

ploum 4y ago
You may be curious to try Offpunk: https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/ https://sr.ht/~lioploum/offpunk/ Offpunk allows to subscribe to a RSS and read the full html page directly in console, including browsing the website and having pictures displayed as "sixels" (works best with the terminal "kitty"). It also allows to read all of that offline and get all the new posts in a "tour".
- alexcg1 4y ago
  Nice! Just downloaded and playing with it now. But there's nothing in readme about enabling nice image display in kitty. Any advice?
  - ploum 4y ago
    installing chafa. Then, when you open a picture in offpunk, it will be perfectly rendered. (inline images will still be displayed as "sixels")

aliqot 4y ago

Why would Ars Technica be in your feed, there's your problem.

kevincox 4y ago

You can mitigate this issue by using something like ftr.fivefilters.net or morss.it which will attempt to scrape the website for you and create a "full text" feed. Obviously not as good as the original feed being complete but it is often preferable to just the summaries.

ascagnel_ 4y ago

This won't work for every site, but Ars has a solution for you: if you subscribe to one of their paid tiers, you get access to an ad-free, full-text RSS feed. This kind of thing is why I like RSS as a delivery mechanism: while the feed itself is an open standard and can be consumed by any properly-configured reader, services can offer additional features and gate access server-side based on a per-user token.