How to specify a read timeout for a Net::HTTP::Post.new request in Ruby 2

Solved via this stackoverflow answer

I’ve changed my

response = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port) {|http| http.request(request)}

line to be

response = Net::HTTP.start(url.host, url.port, :read_timeout => 500) {|http| http.request(request)}

and this seems to have got around this problem.