Actually, when Google Reader removed social features, I stopped using it, and actually I don't miss it much. It turns out that HN and Reddit do a better job of curating the same sort of feeds I was reading anyway - and selecting the best posts from a much wider variety of sources, to boot. The simple fact is that its a rare site that consistently publishes things I want to read. Anecdotally, it turns out that forming a community with others with similar interests provides a far better experience consuming information. (I say this because the "hit ratio" on the HN home page is much much higher than my feed ever was. And I'm not sure if it was ever possible for me to achieve that high of a hit ratio on my own just through subscribing to feeds).

That said, I think that everyone probably has 2 or 3 primary content sites (as opposed to aggregator sites like HN or Reddit or Google News) that they should probably read all the time, because it aligns so closely to their core interests, and RSS in a mail reader isn't a bad solution for such a small number of sources.

That depends on what do you seek. I never seriously used GR social functions (though I miss "share" a bit but I can just copy the URL, not a big deal), I use it as information source, not communication medium. I usually know what I need and I am capable of choosing my sources. I would never trust the Reddit crowd to curate my news intake (if anything, any mass internet forum like that makes phrase "wisdom of crowds" sound like an oxymoron) and while I do read and enjoy HN, I would never limit myself to it as the only source.

I have literally dozens of content sites I read (or skim, depending on value) via Google Reader, and RSS is still the best way to do it. I haven't heard about anything being even close to it by utility for me. That's why I was surprised reading the claim that "RSS is passe".