> In this scenario the user doesn't need to be awake 24 hours a day. They just need to use software which naively hits someone's server like they're doing a denial of service attack.
But the user's computer would need to be awake 24 hours a day, which is usually not the case.
And once per hour is not a DoS attack.
Sorry, I wasn't thinking about the end user literally pushing a button. I was reading into the discussion here what I imagined to be a gap in the overall design philosophy of RSS where the end-user, using their own app or preferred methods, poll all of their favorite websites selecting among common defaults (Select the frequency you like to poll this RSS feed: weekly? daily? hourly? hehe minutely? secondly?).
In this scenario the user doesn't need to be awake 24 hours a day. They just need to use software which stupidly hits someone's server like they're doing a denial of service attack. As your comment alludes no one needs to be that up-to-date.
In contrast, there was another solution: "...service that polls RSS on behalf of its users."
Again, reading the discussion I imagined the wild west of the internet has inexpert users choosing unsane defaults and overloading small self-hosting content providers. Compared to third-party aggregators who are trying to make money by solving a "Tragedy of the Commons" problem.