January 26, 2026
RSS, but make it spicy
Ask HN: Who do you follow via RSS feed?
RSS Revival: Comics diehards vs security hawks vs ‘ditch The Verge’ crowd
TLDR: A Hacker News thread asked who people follow via RSS, and the comments split into camps: security news addicts, webcomic maximalists, and old-school journalism loyalists. The biggest drama was over dropping The Verge, proving RSS is the chill, algorithm-free zone where taste sparks mini culture wars.
RSS—aka Really Simple Syndication—just staged a tiny comeback drama on Hacker News, and the comments turned into a vibe check for the entire internet. The original poster swears by Inoreader and follows brainy voices like Arnold Kling, Noah Smith, and climate/energy lightning rod Roger Pielke Jr., plus polarizing essayist Andrew Sullivan. That lineup alone had folks side‑eyeing, but the real fireworks were in the feeds people confessed to.
One camp wants serious alerts, piping in rapid‑fire tech news from BleepingComputer and The Register, with a casual dunk on The Verge for being “optional.” Another crew proudly flies the comics and chaos flag: lots of webcomics, The Onion, and “this site!” (HN) for daily dopamine. Old‑school news fans still ride with NPR, BBC, CBC, and local headlines, while devs track GitHub releases and nerd catnip like LWN.net, TorrentFreak, and the Cloudflare and Netflix tech blogs. Shoutouts to Julia Evans, Daniel Stenberg, and Geohot gave it hacker cred.
The strongest opinions? A wave of minimalists trimming feeds down to webcomics + HN, and security hawks glued to breach news. The drama? Whether lifestyle sites like 404 Media are too “social” and whether The Verge belongs at all. The joke that stole the thread: “The Onion is essential news.” In 2026, RSS is the internet’s quiet room—and it’s surprisingly spicy.
Key Points
- •The author uses Inoreader for RSS and considers it better than Google Reader.
- •They subscribe to lower-frequency feeds and visit high-frequency sites like Hacker News directly.
- •Followed commentators include Arnold Kling (economics/technology).
- •They also follow Noah Smith, who writes on economics and global topics.
- •Roger Pielke Jr. (climate/energy) and Andrew Sullivan (politics/culture) are among the author’s RSS follows.