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Comment by scarface74 | Hacker News Reader

I don't work in coffee shops - or drink coffee for that matter - but I do take long lunches at times at restaurants just to just take a break during the middle of the day and take my iPad and go through my RSS aggregator. There is something relaxing about the combination of being around other people and still not having to interact with them. I don't get it either.

It's the same way about going to the gym. On one hand, after I stopped teaching fitness classes part time and working out with friends, going to the gym became a chore. I like working out at home and converted one of our bedrooms to a mini gym. I love the convenience, but kind of miss just working out on the gym equipment around other people even if I never talk to them.

Maybe it's the sense of shared purpose?

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> There is something relaxing about the combination of being around other people and still not having to interact with them. I don't get it either.

We are social animals. At least most of us. If you go for a few days with no interaction/seeing other human beings you'll go crazy.

I'm married with a teenage son so it's not about being isolated. But it takes mental energy for me to actual interact with people. Being alone in a crowd is sometimes the best of both worlds. I get to be around other people and don't feel isolated but I can also relax and don't have to interact.

> If you go for a few days with no interaction/seeing other human beings you'll go crazy.

I've done solo backpacking trips for more than 'a few days', and I did not go crazy. I think there's a difference between choosing isolation and being forced into it (the later probably contributes to insanity, not the former)

> RSS aggregator

Why do you still choose to use them today?

Because it's a standard that allows an effective way to curate and browse lists of articles without having to fully commit to a single walled garden service. My primary method of browsing HN, for example, is via the RSS feed.

What alternative is there to rapidly scan through sites that have interesting content?

For the most part, I use RSS to read HN. Every now and then I will go to the home page to see if there is something I missed that didn't gain enough traction to make it to the feed.

Have you tried http://skimfeed.com ?

How is that any different than using an RSS feed of sites you find interesting?

It's a nice way to aggregate content creators who have good, but sparse or irregular posts - i.e. where it wouldn't be useful to pull every single one of them to see if there's anything new, you just have a single "inbox" for that, curated down so that it's not too much to read everything.

I'm on the opposite end of the spectrum - if I don't go through my RSS reader at lunch, I can easily have 700-1000 articles. I may read about 30 outside of HN.

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