Hacker News Reader

Comment by 2OEH8eoCRo0 | Hacker News Reader

I wouldn't mind a built-in RSS reader that I can use to display NPR, National Weather Service, or other sources. It should definitely start as a blank slate and allow the user to add sources. Build it into Edge browser. A button on the browser allows adding the source to the reader. Sites not containing feeds can invoke bing chat or some AI to wrangle the page to the feed.

This can be done in a user respecting and useful way but that doesn't make $

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Defaulting to nothing won't happen, because too many users won't know it's a feature that exists and they can tune. That said, making it RSS driven and letting any user who cares replace it would be a good idea.

Default to a placeholder that tells them how it works or a link to a microsoft blog explaining the feature.

Why bother doing that? No one is going to read an article about a feature they don't use and imagine using it and then go out of their way to sign up. People will see something in use, say "I wish it was all NPR" and go change it.

That's _sorta_ what Apple News is, but you can't add your own sources and it isn't an RSS reader. It's an app that can be deleted, and it only appears in the OS using the same APIs that other apps have access to (widgets). I also don't think they push tabloid content by default, they push the biggest news outlets (probably the ones that pay Apple the most).

I get that a company the size of Apple or Microsoft are going to want to have syndication deals. It should not be integrated so directly with the OS though, and should absolutely be removable (really, out of principle it shouldn't be installed by default).

This, I find even trying to ignore news sources doesn't work. I continually try to prune the more tabloid papers like Daily Mail / Express / Sun but no avail.

Yeah... I like parts of Edge, and tried to train the news feed on the new tab screen, but eventually just disabled the news from showing up on that screen. I'm sure it's the same underlying service for the Windows News feeds.

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