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Ask HN: Do you maintain a list of RSS links of GOAT blogs?
88 points by rakshithbellare on July 22, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 87 comments
I just started using a RSS reader and i am liking it. I would like to add diverse and good blogs to the list. Do you maintain a list of RSS links of the GOAT blogs? If you do can you please share?

I am mainly looking for blogs related to programming, tech, philosophy and finance.

This is my current list https://news.ycombinator.com/rss https://jvns.ca/atom.xml http://feeds.hanselman.com/ScottHanselman https://www.joshwcomeau.com/rss.xml https://ciechanow.ski/atom.xml

Thank you.




(Joke) I'm kind of surprised that Hacker News readers are into goats! My cousin runs a goat company, and she's not the kind of person who'd read Hacker News. (She rents out her goats to remove problematic vegetation, like poison ivy and invasive vines.)

According to Google, "GOAT Blogs" are blogs about goats: https://www.google.com/search?q=GOAT+blog&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS99...

Suggestion (edited): Edit the post just enough to explain that GOAT stands for "Greatest of all time." For example: Do you maintain a list of RSS links of the GOAT (Greatest of all Time) blogs? If you do can you please share?


I'm honestly more interested in your cousin's goat farm then the original post of this blog now.


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32191678

(Humor on Hacker News is hard. I thought if I made two joke posts about goats, at least one would get modded up enough to undo the downvotes from the other.)


Back at the beginning of the pandemic, there was a farm that would rent goats to appear on your Zoom meetings. You'd PayPal them something like 20 bucks, and e-mail the meeting code/link and a goat would show up.

I always thought that was the GOAT use of goats.


That'd still be a cool service.


About five years ago, I took my kids to a petting zoo with baby animals. I was so struck by how cute baby goats were. I couldn't shake the feeling that I had made fundamentally wrong choices in my life because I didn't have more time with baby goats.

This is my current daydream to own goats (because that's probably the best way to get consistent access to baby goats). I was specifically looking at the breed of Nigerian dwarf goats. There would be cheesemaking, vegetation clearing, and current dreams also include an apiary.

Ahhhh.... goats.


My wife and went to a farm to look at baby goats, then we adopted them. They are fantastic creatures. Sadly, their genetics were awful, and the boys urethra blocked. The girl became hormonal and very aggressive towards women (I was the only one that could interact with her since I could handle it, and she would rub on me).


You took your kids to the zoo and were struck by how cute the kids were. So other peoples’ kids are cute too?


My cousin started her goat business about five years ago. It took some time and patience, but now it's successful.

It helps that my cousin is quite the animal lover, went to vet school, and also works part time in a veterinarian's office.


I’ve been trying to rent this exact service, but the most popular guy in my area is also apparently a flake


A flake? this is getting too much, i don't even know what a goat is supposed to mean yet.


This is genius.

Goats eat, say, English Ivy leaves, but they obviously don't eat all the roots.

English Ivy quickly grows back (even with mere inches of roots).

This requires another round of goats.

Goats-as-a-service subscription ftw!

Next obvious step would be some kind of goat-friendly muzzle on a few of the goats and a $9.99 "turbo" upcharge that unlocks the muzzles.

Edit: I think upcharge should instead "unlock up to 8 goat cores"


Goats as a service does exist. Caltrans deloys them to maintain vegetation.


i envision an app with geoloc and crosshairs on the cam with a glowy button that makes a satisfying sound. Something like send in the goats

Then deliver them with drones for instant gratification.


You mean instant goatification.


Get pigs: they'll uproot everything in sight!


Old fart moment: rolling my eyes when "GOAT" enters the vocabulary of HN users (well at least 1 user, the OP).


> Old

Rolling your eyes for the term of a kid /J

("Kid" being originally "young goat".)


In 1992, Lonnie Ali, Muhammad Ali’s wife, incorporated G.O.A.T. Inc


[flagged]


I did:

> According to Google, "GOAT Blogs" are blogs about goats: https://www.google.com/search?q=GOAT+blog&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS99...


Little known but you can "subscribe" to YouTube channels without Google account by using RSS https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=${channe...


In fact there are 3 RSS feed types

User : https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=<XXX>

Channel : https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=<XXX>

Playlist : https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?playlist_id=<XXX>


thanks, but the feeds are not updated, it looks like? for example https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?user=mkbhd lists some old videos!


Confusingly, mkbhd the user and channel are different:

https://www.youtube.com/user/mkbHD

https://www.youtube.com/c/mkbhd

For some reason though using channel_id=mkbhd doesn't work. This is a working link: https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id=UCBJycsm...

It is embedded on the channel page as <link> element, your RSS reader should accept the web page link and figure it out.


Yes, it is best if you use the "unique ID", available in the source HTM in case the URL contains a "human readable" version.


My utility format the feed url by extracting the relevant suffix from the url slug when it includes:

"/user/"

"/channel/"

"/playlist?list="

I think the newer slug format for channels is "/c/" in which case I think you do have to extract it from the HTML source, but they now include the feed URL anyway.

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="FEED_URL">


Are there any apps (other than Google’s own) that use these?


Any RSS app can use these feeds.


Central mass goat rental: https://centralmagoatrental.com/

https://www.facebook.com/centralmassgoatrental/


I could not find any RSS feed on their website though


Does the Facebook page have rss?


In the spirit of "GOAT", there's a great mini-golf course in Minnesota that has goats on it... http://bigstoneminigolf.com/?ID=OA


I do here: https://wiki.nikiv.dev/research/blogs#favorite-blogs

As RSS here: https://gist.github.com/nikitavoloboev/63b5d2418122fcd6949d8...


That is a huge list. In what way do you consume this? I would feel overwhelmed following this many blogs. How much value would you say you get from following this many blogs?


I agree - the list is truly impressive. I ran a quick spot-check and it looks like most of these blogs are of medium to low activity. Having 1000 blogs in your RSS reader with an average of 1 article per month per blog results in reading 3 articles per day on average - not bad.


That's exactly the point of RSS. Not an alternative channel to read the same one site you anyway refresh 40 times a day, but to keep track of the 200 sites which may only update sporadically


More like 30 articles per day?


I think of it as a hybrid summary/index of posts from people/blogs I'm interested in.

If there's a post that piques my interest, I'll read the full post - or visit the web page.


How cool! Very inspirational.


thank you!


For me, GOATs are not as interesting as "people who are a _bit_ more talented than me, but share the same general set of problems". For example, I'm never going to improve my ability play football by watching Lionel Messi. Better to actually talk with a pretty good local coach.


I find goats pretty interesting, they have amazing balance and are great at climbing mountains for instance... skills I would like to improve, maybe I can learn from goats? They also make cute noises.


This is an excellent point and captures the problem well. You're going to learn more from someone who's a couple steps ahead of you than from a GOAT. That's why local meetups can be so valuable.


Okay I am super curious now. What is a GOAT?


According to Wikipedia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goat

> The goat or domestic goat (Capra hircus) is a domesticated species of goat-antelope typically kept as livestock. It was domesticated from the wild goat (C. aegagrus) of Southwest Asia and Eastern Europe. The goat is a member of the animal family Bovidae and the tribe Caprini, meaning it is closely related to the sheep.


Greatest Of All Time.


Rockstars, wizards, ninjas, 10x people, etc.

It’s how cool people describe someone who’s a celebrity in their niche because they’re exceptionally good at what they do.


s/cool people/20 year olds/


I find there is value in both, for me.

Even if Lionel Messi's problems are so far from mine that I can't understand, getting a glimpse into what his set of problems and his mental framework that got him there _could be_ valuable. The mental framework he uses could be something I could use to improve.

I agree, though, that I can't just use advice from someone who is on a whole different level. You can't use a great solution to a problem that doesn't exist in your situation.


The best way I've found of discovering new blogs is Thinking About Things (https://www.thinking-about-things.com). I was introduced to it recently and it's introduced me to great new blogs. I like it because it sends one article per email, so it's a slow drop that lets me evaluate each independently, instead of being one giant overwhelming list.


I installed an RSS reader on my phone a couple of weeks ago, and I've been pleasantly surprised. All my sites have feeds, and I've replaced compulsively reloading half a dozen websites with occasionally opening a reader app. And having a common interface is nice. I wonder why I stopped using a reader, a decade or so ago.


Probably because they killed Google Reader


GOAT = Greatest of all time?


Honestly, I looked at this discussion just to know what "GOAT blogs" are.

General rule of thumb with communication: Try to avoid acronyms, because chances are most people will have no idea what you're talking about. If you do need to use them, make sure you very quickly define what the acronym is.

FWIW: Even the Google doesn't know what GOAT blogs are. Searching for GOAT blogs brings up blogs about goats: https://www.google.com/search?q=GOAT+blog&rlz=1C1GCEU_enUS99...


"goat blog" is not a great query to explain an acronym, though.


> General rule of thumb with communication

So this friend of mine is currently reading a history book in French. Full of acronyms, not recognizable in the current international use. SMI, DTS, OPEP, OTAN, OCDE... (Those should have been spared from localization. If born in English, so they should be preserved; in French, the rest should adapt to that - at least in the acronym.)


If you don't already know, the story of why UTC is the "acronym" for Coordinated Universal Time is short, but fun: https://www.timeanddate.com/time/utc-abbreviation.html I used "UTC" for years without noticing it isn't really an acronym.


...To avoid discussion between English 'CUT' and French 'TUC', a form that does not place the substantive, 'T', neither before nor after the attributes - just in the middle. ("Universal Time, Coordinated [standard]"?) Nice!


> OTAN

Pretty sure that's still on the NATO logo as the initialism of the French translation of NATO.


Even the Google doesn't know what GOAT blogs

That's because GOAT is a sports term that is slowly entering general use.

If you Google "GOAT sports," Google not only knows what you mean, it explains GOAT.


Generalized Occupational Aptitude Test?


A Domesticated Species Of Goat-Antelope Typically Kept As Livestock?


Yes, OP forgot/didn't know many HN commenters have nothing to do with sports and, thus, are unaware of this particular acronym.


Not an individual blog, but if your reader supports creating a folder of feeds from an OPML file and you're happy to then edit it down to the ones that you find useful then https://engblogs.s3.amazonaws.com/engblogs.opml has around 500 feeds in the software development and devtools space.

https://github.com/simevidas/web-dev-feeds/blob/master/feeds... is another good one more about frontend development that I'm currently trying.


Yep. OPML is the way. http://superkuh.com/2022-04-27-feedlist.opml And this is the same list but with categorized HTML descriptions and RSS links, http://superkuh.com/feeds8.html . "Computing" and "Computing but not spammy" categories apply here.


You should start here: https://blogsurf.io/rankings


Programming:

Github Engineering: https://github.blog/

Mitchell Hashimoto: https://mitchellh.com/writing

Tech:

Ars Techhnica: https://arstechnica.com/

TechCrunch: https://techcrunch.com/

Finance:

Warren Buffet's letters to shareholders: https://www.berkshirehathaway.com/letters/letters.html


I'm using Feedly. Checking it once a couple of weeks and happy about my flow. Here are the blogs that I follow: - https://jvns.ca/atom.xml - http://rachelbythebay.com/w/atom.xml - https://blog.kowalczyk.info/atom.xml - https://ashfurrow.com/feed.xml - https://sneak.berlin/feed.xml - https://sookocheff.com/index.xml - https://www.hanselman.com/blog/feed/rss - https://zachholman.com/atom.xml - https://www.wezm.net/v2/rss.xml - https://alexdanco.com/feed/ - https://tyler.io/feed/ - https://tylertringas.com/feed/


1000 RSS feeds for web developers https://github.com/simevidas/web-dev-feeds/blob/master/feeds...


I quite like Bits About Money: https://bam.kalzumeus.com/

As someone who knows very little about the finance sector I find the posts very understable and informative.


Goat blogs are actually called "glogs"

Goat + Blog = Glog

https://www.glennartfarm.com/goat-plus-blog-equals-glog


This question has been asked before (if you search for `Ask HN blogs` you get a list of previous threads). This is not meant as a criticism, just sharing a bunch more resources for you.


thanks!


I am actually using my own designed feed reader WebFeed, which only runs on browser, and depends no cloud side service.

https://taoshu.in/webfeed/turn-browser-into-feed-reader.html


Chris Webb's BI blog (https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/feed/). Facebook Engineering and LinkedIn Engineering also support RSS.


I don't, but here is a nice (or just big) list if someone has focus to spare:

https://github.com/kilimchoi/engineering-blogs


Shameless plug: https://indieblog.page allows you to discover new blogs through the power of randomness. (previously on discussed on hackernews)


GOAT = Greatest Of All Time


Here's my list: https://darekkay.com/personal-blogs/


For AI, try The Gradient - https://thegradient.pub/rss/


Here's my OPML dump [0], if you care.

[0]: https://pastebin.com/NzZUT7aC


https://lukesmith.xyz/index.xml


Luke Smith is somebody who LARPs as a technology skeptic while using technology, and who spouts his insanely uneducated opinions about anything he wants while shilling Monero as if it is God's greatest gift to the earth. One example is the (unfortunately, massively popular) youtube video where he tells everyone that all jobs are fake, deflation is a good thing, and the reason central banks don't want deflation is because they are in a giant conspiracy to make you poor.


Ah, just a regular youtuber, then?


Upvoted for Luke Smith. I find his take refreshing although I can see how many here will disagree


I have them in my Firefox > Other Bookmarks. I just star them and forget.


sfeed + sfeed_curses. Major news, a science podcast, slashdot and something else.




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