Comment by weland | Hacker News Reader

Comment by weland | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

But setting up an RSS reader is no different from installing any application. For crying out loud, that means going to an app store for much of the RSS-reading Internet or clicking next, next and finish for the rest of it.

I know I sound like an elitist schmuck when I say it, but I'm increasingly starting to think all this ease-of-use thing is getting a bit out of hand. If there are people are willing to sacrifice performance (Google Reader's UI was slower than Liferea's first versions, and that's something!), privacy and reliability (an installed RSS reader does always work, as opposed to a public, remote service, ran by an advertising company) just because clicking "Install" is hard for them, I honestly wish all these bad, evil companies they're outraged about mine the shit out of them, from their eye color to the size of their underwear. I get legitimate cases (e.g. you're behind company firewall and you're on your work computer so you can't install anything), but installing a program really shouldn't be a difficult task otherwise.

While I get the sentiment, I'm thankful that you don't run the world.

Most computer users forget that they have years and years of experience with computers, because they actually played with computers for their own fun for years. So the things that seem drop-dead simple for them are drop-dead simple if you have years of experience.

I'm certainly thankful my doctor has never told me "you know, if you can't be bothered to understand biology, I'll just let the diseases kill you", when he has 7+ years of knowledge that I don't.

We're not committing our users to death. All we're asking is that they learn how to put on a bandaid.

I think this is a common attitude today in all walks of life. We seem to be incapable of thinking for ourselves now, whether when using a computer or crossing the street. I'm amazed that we're still allowed to drive cars.

Don't worry, soon, we won't. Just wait for the statistics to show autonomous cars are safer, legislation will soon follow. Give it 20, 30 years tops.

> Most computer users forget that they have years and years of experience with computers, because they actually played with computers for their own fun for years.

The fact that pretty much any user who reads RSS feeds uses applications that do not come with the operating system by default is, I think, proof enough that installing an application is really not that difficult. Being one, I get why Slackware users have issues with that (hhehe) but we're really not talking about a complex maintenance issue here...

I don't want to use a standalone RSS reader any more than a standalone email client. There's a reason everybody [1] switched to webmail.

In any case, a web RSS reader that I run myself (tt-rss or similar) is a pretty good compromise.

[1] Yes, person who is about to reply, I know you personally didn't.

> I don't want to use a standalone RSS reader any more than a standalone email client. There's a reason everybody switched to webmail.

I do use a standalone client. IMAP is nice enough with the messages and I don't mix my personal and work contacts, so the addressbooks are easy to sync. Unfortunately, save for Roundcube, which sucks in moderation, I'm not aware of any single webmail client that doesn't suck.

The same goes for my RSS feeds, but I do have a setup that is probably hard to replicate for someone who doesn't work with computers for a living, so that doesn't count in the argument :-).

P.S.: I actually use webmail for work account because IT hates me. It's not too bothersome. The only thing stopping me from migrating my personal accounts to their respective webmail interfaces is not being able to import my abook contacts :-).

E-mail clients are a terrible example. While relatively easy to install, they give you very little control, and no additional privacy.

To get all that, you need your own server. Ideally a home server, but many ISP forbid you to send e-mail at all (they close port 25). The next best thing is a remote virtual machine with root access. Either way, good luck installing Postfix and Dovecot. I have, and there's no way the "average user" could do the same.

So, of course you don't use an e-mail client.

>many ISP forbid you to send e-mail at all (they close port 25).

Can anyone name an ISP that forbids their customers from using SMTP to send mail?

My guess is that the person I'm quoting is confused by the longstanding spam-control measure in which the ISP requires the outgoing mail to go through a mail server designated by (and usually run by) the ISP rather than going directly to the recipient's mail server.

But if I'm wrong about that, I want to know!

I'm not confused, and know exactly what you are talking about.

Call it pedantic, but yes, they do forbid you to send e-mails. Instead, they force you to ask them to send e-mail for you (that's how SMTP relays work). They're not completely forbidding you to use SMTP, but they do require that you go through their servers. That's quite the restricted SMTP usage.

The snail mail equivalent would be to forbid you to ship your mail yourself. Instead you have to give it to the official postal services so they can ship the mail.

Why would they do that? I see only one reason: they want to control your mail. They look at the destination, and maybe decide they won't ship the mail after all. They look at how much mail you send out, and maybe they won't send more than a dozen per day. They may open the mail (or otherwise X-ray it), and take "appropriate" action depending on the content, including not shipping it, building a customer profile of you and your recipients, writing your name on some black list, or archive the mail, just in case.

Spam mitigation? That's just a pretext they use to snoop over your private communications. (Or, more accurately, control their network. They will always push for more corporate control, that's what corporations do.)

Of course, you can bypass the limitation by using HTTP to ask another big corporation to send your mail. And receive and store your mail too. And deeply analyse it so they can show you customized banners. And give it to the authorities whenever they ask for it…

Such an Orwellian nightmare would never fly in the physical world. In the digital one however, they can capitalize on people's ignorance.

>[1] Yes, person who is about to reply, I know you personally didn't.

Maybe you should have said "Some people," then.

There's a reason everybody [1] switched to webmail.

No, "everybody" uses Outlook because corporate IT likes how all the microsoft stuff integrates with itself.

Everybody also apparently uses their phones for email now, which I understand tends to use installed apps rather than the web browser.

[1] Yes, person who is about to reply, I know you personally didn't.

Right, ignore and marginalize all the people who have counterexamples to your claims.

I actually use Outlook as an RSS reader. It's not very good but it works and that way everything is in one place.

Also, I think Outlook is much better than any other mail/calendar client I've ever used.

I read HN, Reuters, Re/Code, Atlantic and New Yorker in Outlook. I love the mostly text-only experience and am finding that I read content in a less prejudiced way when all the color distraction is gone.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com