Ad-Free Personalized Daily News

Published 2024·01·24
By Stuart Green

I get my daily news ad-free and tailored to my personal preferences thanks to RSS. You can do the same and it doesn't take much effort to set up. You can even get access to some paywalled content this way, from publications such as The Atlantic and The Economist.

With RSS (Really Simple Syndication) I subscribe to publications and have articles delivered in a way similar to how podcast episodes magically appear on our devices. The format has struggled to gain popularity because companies have mostly failed to find ways to monetize it. Flipboard is the exception - their app serves up RSS content from a multitude of publications, but it injects its own advertising between the articles.

Here are the only two things you need to set up to get it running ..

Inoreader Website | iOS App The free version Inoreader account should be fine for most people, including myself. Use it to create your own collection of RSS publications by bringing your own, or by using Inoreader's search function. I also like how I can group publications by subject, so I can choose between reading mixed articles and focusing on a particular subject.

Lire iOS App Publishers started serving incomplete articles when they realised that RSS users weren't visiting their ad-supported websites, and this is evident when using most feed readers, including Inoreader's own product. Lire however, is an iOS only app that has a special talent of being able to replace partial feeds into complete articles. I'm not aware of an Android equivalent unfortunately.

Finding content feeds is already easy with Inoreader, but in case you're interested I've listed some of my own favorite feeds below. If you want you could download this list as a XML file and import it directly into Inoreader in an instant.

Design & Inspiration
Abduzeedo Design | http://feeds.feedburner.com/abduzeedo
Colossal | http://feeds.feedburner.com/colossal
Core77 | http://feeds.feedburner.com/core77/blog
Design Milk | http://feeds.feedburner.com/design-milk
Dezeen | http://www.dezeen.com/category/architecture/feed/
Present & Correct | http://blog.presentandcorrect.com/feed
Street Art Utopia | http://www.streetartutopia.com/?feed=rss2

Miscellany
Brain Pickings | http://feedproxy.google.com/brainpickings/rss
Cool Tools | http://feeds.feedburner.com/CoolTools
Digital Photography School | http://feeds.feedburner.com/DigitalPhotographySchool
Kottke.org | http://feeds.kottke.org/main
Longreads | https://longreads.com/feed/
MetaFilter | http://feeds.feedburner.com/Metafilter
The New Yorker | http://www.newyorker.com/services/rss/feeds/everything.xml
V1RL.com | https://www.v1rl.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
xkcd.com | http://xkcd.com/rss.xml
Film School Rejects | http://feeds.feedburner.com/FilmSchoolRejects

News
BBC News - US & Canada | http://feeds.bbci.co.uk/news/world/us_and_canada/rss.xml
The Atlantic: News | http://feeds.feedburner.com/TheAtlantic
NPR News | http://www.npr.org/rss/rss.php?id=1001
Politifact | https://www.politifact.com/rss/factchecks/
Quartz | http://qz.com/feed/
The Economist: The World | https://www.economist.com/the-world-this-week/rss.xml
The Economist: US | https://www.economist.com/united-states/rss.xml
Vox | http://www.vox.com/rss/index.xml

Science & Space
Astronomy Picture of the Day | https://apod.com/feed.rss
NASA Image of the Day | https://www.nasa.gov/rss/dyn/lg_image_of_the_day.rss
Nautilus | https://nautil.us/feed/
Popular Science | https://www.popsci.com/feed/
Quanta Magazine | https://api.quantamagazine.org/feed/
The Atlantic: Science | http://feeds.feedburner.com/AtlanticScienceChannel

Technology
Ars Technica | http://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index
Engadget | https://www.engadget.com/rss.xml
Slashdot | http://rss.slashdot.org/Slashdot/slashdotMain?
TechCrunch | https://techcrunch.com/feed/
The Register | http://www.theregister.co.uk/headlines.atom
Wired | http://feeds.wired.com/wired/index

Travel
The Flight Deal | Boston | https://www.theflightdeal.com/category/flight-deals/boston-flight-deals/feed/
The Guardian: Travel | http://feeds.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/travel/rss
Trailspotting | https://feeds.feedburner.com/trailspotting

Virtual Reality
Library of Realities | https://www.libraryofrealities.com/feeds/posts/default?alt=rss
Oculus Blog | https://www.meta.com/blog/quest/rss/
Road to VR | https://www.roadtovr.com/feed/
UploadVR | https://www.uploadvr.com/latest/rss/