I'm obsessed with cybersecurity, which means my morning routine used to involve opening a dozen browser tabs just to see what was happening. Bouncing between RSS feeds and messy websites got old fast, so I decided to build a simple fix: 0xbasinasnews. It's a lightweight React Native app that pulls cybersecurity news from five major sources into a single, clean feed on my phone.
The Problem with Keeping Up
Staying on top of security news is a chore because everything is scattered. I was manually checking Bleeping Computer, Threatpost, Security Affairs, InfoSec Magazine, and The Hacker News. Every site has its own layout, its own update schedule, and its own ad footprint. Doing this on a phone during a commute is just annoying. I needed a way to bring all of this together in one quiet place.
What 0xbasinasnews Does
Built with Expo, the app simplifies my daily reading. It pulls live RSS feeds from those five sites, parses the data, and displays it in a unified, purplish dark-themed feed that doesn't burn your retinas at 2 AM.
Here's how it actually feels to use:
- Simple Cards: The UI is clean. Each card shows the article title, a short snippet, when it was posted (like "2 hours ago"), and a small badge identifying the source.
- Offline Saving: If I see an interesting article but don't have time to read it, I can just tap the heart icon. It saves the text locally using AsyncStorage, meaning I can read it later even if I'm on a flight or a subway with zero signal.
- Pull-to-Refresh: A quick swipe down pulls the latest headlines instantly.
Under the Hood
On the technical side, I wanted to keep things simple but reliable. I used React Native with TypeScript and Expo.
One of the trickiest parts of mobile RSS apps is handling feed quirks. To keep the app snappy, I implemented a 15-second timeout so a single slow server won't freeze the entire app. If one source fails, the app ignores it and safely loads the rest. I also set up a CORS proxy fallback to bypass restrictions on certain feeds, and added a quick HTML parser to strip messy tags out of the article descriptions before they hit the screen.
What's Next?
It already does exactly what I need, but I'm planning to add a few more things down the road, like a search bar, estimated reading times, and the ability to add your own custom RSS URLs.
If you want to take a look at the code or run it yourself, you can find the project on GitHub: https://github.com/0xbasinas/0xbasinasnews