eugenv

I'm going to swoop in and recommend (read: shameless plug) my own RSS reader, Zuperlist. It's trying to do things a little differently: it prioritizes topics the user cares about. More details are on the home page: https://www.zuperlist.com

Well, first I'm trying to validate this idea and see if enough people find it interesting. Any future direction depends quite a lot on the feedback that I receive.

Hello and thank you for your feedback!

I decided to go with the tile design for the MVP precisely to improve skimming. Just by looking at the image you could get an idea about what the news/article is about. But I understand your point. One potential improvement would be to allow users to select how to display the news in each block: thumbnails or titles.

News/articles are grouped both by category and by specific subject. When multiple items are about the same thing, you'll see, for example, something like "TechCrunch + 3 others" above the item's title. If you hover over it, you'll see the other 3 items. It's all done via ML. It's not perfect yet, but it can only get better from here :)

Thanks for the feedback! Well, I hate it when some sites show you a large monthly price and in a corner it says "billed anually." So I wanted to be as clear as possible.

No, I didn't plan to have a desktop version until now. But anything could change, based on feedback :)

I started this because I wanted a single place for me to deal with both high-volume and low-volume sites/blogs and give me control in both scenarios.

Regarding the subscription model: I wanted to validate the idea and see if it could sustain itself. I didn't add a free version (until now, at least) because the whole recommendation engine part requires a little bit more computing power, hence it costs me to keep it up-and-running.

I didn't include this feature in the MVP. However, if you want me to manually delete your account, log in, go to Menu > Send Feedback and just type "Delete my account."

Yes, you can export the list of subscribed sites to an OPML file that you can later import in another RSS reader.

I understand. That's why I added the feature to bypass the recommendations engine for some feeds, so that you could still see everything published by favorite blogs. That way the recommendations engine can only watch high-volume sites.

No, it's not open source at the moment.

Thanks! I use a python lib (feedparser) for parsing the RSS.

Hello HN,

I've been working for a while on an intelligent RSS news reader. At its core, it works just like any other RSS news reader: you subscribe to the sites that you want to follow and you get delivered everything published there. The difference is that the news aren't sorted chronologically, they're sorted by how close they are to your interests. Zuperlist also remembers when you open the web app and separates the news by these moments. When you open it, you see what's new and noteworthy since your last visit. Another nice feature: related news are grouped together.

There are some ways to bypass the recommendations engine:

- you can mark specific sites as highlighted and see everything published by them, before anything else

- you can mark specific topics as highlighted and see everything that matches them. For example, mark Bitcoin as highlighted and see everything about Bitcoin in a separate block, regardless of recommendations

- everything that doesn't match your interests is still available at the bottom of the news feed, where it's categorized by topic and by site

There are also some measures taken against creating a perfect filter bubble:

- you get a quick glimpse at the most shared news, even if they don't match your interests

- you get a few recommendations from sites you didn't subscribe to

- from time to time you're shown a few items from a topic that's outside your interests

Sure, it's not perfect yet, but it works ok. I've been using it during the development and I love it, although I may be a bit biased :)

If you're intrigued by the idea, give it a try and let me know what you think. The zuperlist.com site works on both desktop and mobile, so there's no need to install an app.

Hello HN,

I've been working for a while on an intelligent RSS news reader. At its core, it works just like any other RSS news reader: you subscribe to the sites that you want to follow and you get delivered everything published there. The difference is that the news aren't sorted chronologically, they're sorted by how close they are to your interests. Zuperlist also remembers when you open the web app and separates the news by these moments. When you open it, you see what's new and noteworthy since your last visit. Another nice feature: related news are grouped together.

There are some ways to bypass the recommendations engine:

- you can mark specific sites as highlighted and see everything published by them, before anything else

- you can mark specific topics as highlighted and see everything that matches them. For example, mark Bitcoin as highlighted and see everything about Bitcoin in a separate block, regardless of recommendations

- everything that doesn't match your interests is still available at the bottom of the news feed, where it's categorized by topic and by site

There are also some measures taken against creating a perfect filter bubble:

- you get a quick glimpse at the most shared news, even if they don't match your interests

- you get a few recommendations from sites you didn't subscribe to

- from time to time you're shown a few items from a topic that's outside your interests

Sure, it's not perfect yet, but it works ok. I've been using it during the development and I love it, although I may be a bit biased :)

If you're intrigued by the idea, give it a try and let me know what you think. The zuperlist.com site works on both desktop and mobile, so there's no need to install an app.

At least it's reversible, so that's a step forward.

The article says that there's a 3% to 6% reduction in transit usage. That's too low to mean anything yet.

The biggest hit to transit will be when such a ride-hailing service launches an autonomous electric UberPool-like service, because it could be much more effective in routing traffic than a human driver would be.

It's also funny that, right now, the article title contradicts Betteridge's law of headlines.