Simpler syndication

Amusingly, I have an RSS reader program which polls sites and returns new items.[1] It's set up to drive antique Teletype machines.[2] Whenever a new feed item comes in, the machine powers up and prints the new item.

Detecting which feed items are new is surprisingly difficult. GUID, pubDate, and etag can all change even when the content hasn't changed, depending on the RSS server. Hashing the content text and comparing it to a stored hash is necessary.

The first time I brought this to a steampunk convention, it started out printing "LEAK DISCOVERED IN SECOND REACTOR". Someone reading it thought it was fictional, but as more details of the Fukishima meltdown were typed out, realized it wasn't.

[1] http://sourceforge.net/projects/baudotrss/ [2] https://archive.org/details/Aethericmachine14

Really cool work. Personally, I can really recommend Newsify as a top quality RSS reader on the iPhone. Great offline support, and it downloads the full articles with images as well.

Not affiliated, just a very happy customer.

I'm reminded of https://www.jwz.org/cheesegrater/. What's old is new again.

Sounds just like http://www.planetplanet.org/