Hacker News Reader

> I would assume the reader does something smarter that mindlessly launch 500 requests every 5 minutes.

Aside from respecting any 429 headers, what is a reader supposed to do without custom update heuristics for each feed that would be considered more than mindless?

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The least a client can do is respect the HTTP caching headers that Rachel mentions multiple times in her post. RSS has an additional ttl property that can be used.

Every feed I'm aware of contain multiple entries, so perhaps average the time between posts as a baseline to check? Perhaps add an upper limit to one/hour and a lower limit to one/week? That way, a person who starts posting more frequently will be checked more frequently, and one who slacks off is checked less frequently?

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