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Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. RSS is g

Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself. If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS. What does work well (and how things have evolved) is to have a service that polls RSS on behalf of its users. This was the beauty of Google Reader but plenty of replacements exist.

rodary 2y ago
> Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. Vivaldi browser still does that.
qw 2y ago
> RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself The readers often cache the result for all users of the same feed. The only exception are readers that are running 100% locally. In that case using Etag or Last-Modified will make each request cheap and manageble.
- AndrewStephens 2y ago
  That is my point. RSS by itself is a scaling problem but online readers make it manageable by polling sites on a reasonable rate and redistributing new articles to their users.
lapcat 2y ago
> RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself. If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS. Who's updating their RSS feeds once an hour 24 hours a day? Anyway, a very popular site with that many millions of visitors already has to handle extreme traffic, regardless of RSS.
- ttyprintk 2y ago
  Surely this is solved by putting RSS behind Cloudflare.
  - lapcat 2y ago
    Sure, it's solved by Cloudflare breaking the RSS feed entirely, which often happens when people put their websites behind Cloudflare.
    - compootr 2y ago
      I think it should be noted that this happens when not configuring things right. By default, security rules are on, but I can disable security rules programmatically for a hostname too. fwiw, I once got a ddos on a host running their pages product, and got no charge for it. it also stayed up and didn't give captcha pages
- AndrewStephens 2y ago
  According to my logs, some feed readers poll every 10 minutes or so.
- doubled112 2y ago
  I think Miniflux polls every hour by default. Not sure about others.
- xtiansimon 2y ago
  “Who's updating their RSS feeds once an hour 24 hours a day?” RSS is a pull-type system, no?. So the end-user is causing the overload problem by hitting the publisher’s RSS feed every hour? The problem is out of the hands of the publisher…
  - lapcat 2y ago
    > RSS is a pull-type system, no? Yes. The web in general is also a pull-type system. > So the end-user is causing the overload problem by hitting the publisher’s RSS feed every hour? There is no overload problem. And again, this math is off, because an end user is not even awake 24 hours a day: "If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS."
cknight 2y ago
> Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. I use the Awesome RSS add-on for that in Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/
- sitkack 2y ago
  Firefox removing RSS support was their capitulation in supporting the open web.
  - monooso 2y ago
    That is very ambiguous phrasing.
    - sitkack 2y ago
      Firefox removing RSS support was the nail in the coffin for their support of the Open Web. How long after Google Reader was canceled did FF remove RSS?
      - aeonik 2y ago
        Google shut down Google Reader on July 1, 2013. Firefox removed RSS support in version 64 on December 11, 2018, approximately 5 years and 5 months later.
        sitkack 2y ago
        Thank you! I would have never looked that up.
ndriscoll 2y ago
A $160 n100 minipc should have no problem serving an essentially static file out of nginx at well above that rate. If you use proper caching headers and don't publish new items that often, it should basically be idle.
- DanAtC 2y ago
  A lot of clients don't respect caching headers[0], but yeah, static content hosting is a solved problem. And there are always CDNs if you really have a large, global audience. [0] http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/10/25/fs/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/10/25/fs/
jrm4 2y ago
But that's just a Cloudflare problem, no?
rakoo 2y ago
That's exactly why pubsubhubbub, now websub, has been created. Around 10 years ago.

rodary 2y ago

> Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. Vivaldi browser still does that.

qw 2y ago

> RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself The readers often cache the result for all users of the same feed. The only exception are readers that are running 100% locally. In that case using Etag or Last-Modified will make each request cheap and manageble.

AndrewStephens 2y ago
That is my point. RSS by itself is a scaling problem but online readers make it manageable by polling sites on a reasonable rate and redistributing new articles to their users.

lapcat 2y ago

> RSS is great but it has one great flaw in that it doesn't scale that well by itself. If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS. Who's updating their RSS feeds once an hour 24 hours a day? Anyway, a very popular site with that many millions of visitors already has to handle extreme traffic, regardless of RSS.

ttyprintk 2y ago
Surely this is solved by putting RSS behind Cloudflare.
- lapcat 2y ago
  Sure, it's solved by Cloudflare breaking the RSS feed entirely, which often happens when people put their websites behind Cloudflare.
  - compootr 2y ago
    I think it should be noted that this happens when not configuring things right. By default, security rules are on, but I can disable security rules programmatically for a hostname too. fwiw, I once got a ddos on a host running their pages product, and got no charge for it. it also stayed up and didn't give captcha pages
AndrewStephens 2y ago
According to my logs, some feed readers poll every 10 minutes or so.
doubled112 2y ago
I think Miniflux polls every hour by default. Not sure about others.
xtiansimon 2y ago
“Who's updating their RSS feeds once an hour 24 hours a day?” RSS is a pull-type system, no?. So the end-user is causing the overload problem by hitting the publisher’s RSS feed every hour? The problem is out of the hands of the publisher…
- lapcat 2y ago
  > RSS is a pull-type system, no? Yes. The web in general is also a pull-type system. > So the end-user is causing the overload problem by hitting the publisher’s RSS feed every hour? There is no overload problem. And again, this math is off, because an end user is not even awake 24 hours a day: "If 2 million people subscribe to your feed and try to update it once an hour, that is 48 million requests a day just for RSS."

cknight 2y ago

> Even better, for a few months the browsers themselves would highlight RSS feeds and allow you subscribe right in the browser. It was too good to last. I use the Awesome RSS add-on for that in Firefox: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/awesome-rss/

sitkack 2y ago
Firefox removing RSS support was their capitulation in supporting the open web.
- monooso 2y ago
  That is very ambiguous phrasing.
  - sitkack 2y ago
    Firefox removing RSS support was the nail in the coffin for their support of the Open Web. How long after Google Reader was canceled did FF remove RSS?
    - aeonik 2y ago
      Google shut down Google Reader on July 1, 2013. Firefox removed RSS support in version 64 on December 11, 2018, approximately 5 years and 5 months later.
      - sitkack 2y ago
        Thank you! I would have never looked that up.

ndriscoll 2y ago

A $160 n100 minipc should have no problem serving an essentially static file out of nginx at well above that rate. If you use proper caching headers and don't publish new items that often, it should basically be idle.

DanAtC 2y ago
A lot of clients don't respect caching headers[0], but yeah, static content hosting is a solved problem. And there are always CDNs if you really have a large, global audience. [0] http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/10/25/fs/ http://rachelbythebay.com/w/2024/10/25/fs/

jrm4 2y ago

But that's just a Cloudflare problem, no?

rakoo 2y ago

That's exactly why pubsubhubbub, now websub, has been created. Around 10 years ago.