18 ms·

Other ways to read Hacker News

290 points by rullopat 9y ago

microcolonel 9y ago
I prefer the version of Hacker News from four months ago to the current version, and all of the viewers listed here, even on mobile. I wouldn't think my opinion would be niche.
- yorwba 9y ago
  What changed four months ago? I didn't notice any change.
  - microcolonel 9y ago
    Weird stuff like collapsing downvoted comments (and their replies) by default. I even browse with showdead on, so I don't want to have to manually expand comment trees just because slightly more people disagree than agree with the point being made.
acidshards 9y ago
You've been reading Hacker News wrong your whole life.
- KGIII 9y ago
  They don't want you to know the secret to reading HN! On a more serious note, I'm pretty happy with seeing it right here on this very domain. Hell, I haven't even changed the orange header. The layout and navigation are simple but intuitive. The site is very light and loads quickly. I don't like how voting will make me jump around the page, but I can live with that. No site is perfect for everyone, after all. Yeah, I think I'll just keep reading it right here.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    > voting will make me jump around the page What do you mean by that? Voting is handled by AJAX requests, so it shouldn't jump around.
    - KGIII 9y ago
      Comment, then vote, and it brings me back to my comment.
wheresvic3 9y ago
just use https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com - works great on mobile too
- TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
  I was just about to say the same thing. A few years ago it was a bit annoying to read on mobile, but they eventually made some minor CSS tweaks which made it much better. Performing certain actions, such as upvoting, require zooming in a lot in order to hit the desired arrow. I'd love to see that improved, but it's hardly a deal-breaker for me.
- teolandon 9y ago
  But that boring web app doesn't even have pretty fonts. It even has a "next" button, so you can see more than 30 posts, who needs that? It shows the point count in a smaller greyer font, instead of a big circle, so I can't instinctively choose posts by popularity instead of their headlines. It doesn't even pull up a random image from the article that might not have anything to do with the actual topic, and display it along with a preview of text, so I can't get distracted and pulled by fundamentally more attractive colorful pictures instead of boring text topics. It's not written in the newest JavaScript framework, it's just plain old HTML, some simple CSS and Racket making it all run. Racket! That doesn't even have "JS" in its name. What is this, 2013? Whoever wrote that version clearly doesn't know how Hacker News is meant to be viewed. ahem But seriously, the Hacker News site is one of my favorite "news" sites. Simple, clean, no distractions, just headlines. Also, some of the websites listed in the article are quite useful, like the search engine. Most of the others are simply different ways of reading Hacker News, not "better". Might be better for some people. Not for me.
  - petepete 9y ago
    I like it. The code blocks on mobile are terrible (totally unusable) and the up/down vote buttons could be a bit bigger, but overall it's pretty good.
    - 9y ago
smnscu 9y ago
I've used hn.premii.com for years and couldn't be happier. I also like the name, it means 'prizes' in Romanian.
- Zircom 9y ago
  Seconded! Been using it forever, if he'd implement replying and voting I'd have no reason to ever use the vanilla site.
teh_klev 9y ago
I've used the Hacker News Enhancement Suite for the past few years and thought it did just enough things to make the site a tad more usable without going overboard: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...
- cmg 9y ago
  I've been making the switch from Chrome to Firefox over the past month, and HNES is the one thing I truly miss that I haven't found a good replacement for.
  - dhd415 9y ago
    I use the "Chrome Store Foxified" extension which lets you install some Chrome plugins including HNES.
  - Santosh83 9y ago
    This ought to be the kind of simple extension that Firefox's ongoing migration to Web Extensions will allow to be plugged in and used.
- dhd415 9y ago
  I'd consider HNES's highlighting of new comments to be nearly essential to reading HN. I don't understand how others can follow long discussions without any indication of what comments have been posted since a previous viewing or refresh. And it doesn't seem to me like it would be a difficult feature to add.
iosdevelprss 9y ago
I think the best way is how HN is. In fact, I wish more websites had this text only approach. Came across this fantastic redesign of a conceptual text-only TechCrunch: https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-techcrunch-1ecae542e6af https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-techcrunch-1ecae542e6af Somebody please make that!
runeks 9y ago
I wish there were a way to display news from a custom time interval, as opposed to always getting news from a fixed interval of time (I think there are three different settings as of now). If I haven’t visited HN for, say, 6 days, I find it’d be really helpful to be able to display all news from this time period, based on number of upvotes in descending order. In other words: I’d appreciate complete control over the algorithm that decides which news to display: time interval, minimum upvotes, minimum comment count, upvotes-per-hour, etc.
- untangle 9y ago
  Try http://searchhn.com/ http://searchhn.com/ This comes close to your specs.
  - subroutine 9y ago
    Here is another one with custom range settings: https://hn.algolia.com https://hn.algolia.com
moru0011 9y ago
#22 https://www.juptr.io/#home/@!news.ycombinator.com/rss https://www.juptr.io/#home/@!news.ycombinator.com/rss
- tym0 9y ago
  Yes, I use feedly to read the rss and it's fairly easy to quickly parse the whole feed.
untangle 9y ago
Let's make it 27 ways. Try also: https://hackerhunt.co/ https://hackerhunt.co/ http://searchhn.com/ http://searchhn.com/ https://hnews.xyz/top https://hnews.xyz/top https://www.taggernews.com/news/ https://www.taggernews.com/news/ http://hntop.org/ http://hntop.org/ https://hackerhunt.co/ https://hackerhunt.co/ I find several of these quite useful.
cyberferret 9y ago
Shameless plug: I use my own home written app http://tophn.info http://tophn.info to keep an eye on the movement of the top news articles during the day, in real time and jump straight to the comments. I also wrote about how I built it using Vue.js and RethinkDB... https://hackernoon.com/tophn-a-fun-side-project-built-with-vue-js-and-rethinkdb-f22159641c1b https://hackernoon.com/tophn-a-fun-side-project-built-with-v...
jjrrmm 9y ago
hackurls.com
cupofjoakim 9y ago
I'll continue with news.ycombinator.com, but with styling from the Stylish extension for chrome. Currently using this theme: https://userstyles.org/styles/107079/hacker-news-minimal-theme https://userstyles.org/styles/107079/hacker-news-minimal-the...
TeMPOraL 9y ago
Ok, so all of those are for reading, but I don't see any that would allow voting and commenting on HN. It's also the case with pretty much all other HN apps/interfaces I've seen (with notable exception of HN Enhancement Suite, which is a browser extension). I don't understand why that is. Is there some important rule of HN that disallows any third-party interaction except through the official interface? Or do people simply treat viewing HN as a MVP, and give up after making it? As it is, those tools seem only useful for HN readers / lurkers, not that much for those of us who participate in discussions here.
- cosarara97 9y ago
  There is no proper API, IIRC. All those clients scrape the website.
  - TeMPOraL 9y ago
    There is (or at least was) an API, AFAIK read-only though. I still don't see why one couldn't combine the API and scrapping to get a full read/write interface going.
    - krapp 9y ago
      Wouldn't that require you to give a random site your login to post on your behalf?
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        It would. Whether you should is another thing entirely. I'm asking why noone seems to even offer the option?
        krapp 9y ago
        I can't speak for anyone else, but if it were me, I wouldn't expect anyone to trust me enough to use it, so why bother?
k__ 9y ago
I want one with a big hide button for posts/comments and anonymous comments. I don't need to vote or something, I just want to get rid of uninteresting stuff as fast as easy as possible.
- SubiculumCode 9y ago
  There are anonymous comments?
  - krapp 9y ago
    "anonymous" meaning posting through an alt account.
SG- 9y ago
I would have liked to see widgets and small apps or things instead of just mostly sites. The responsive ones for mobile are nice and I use http://hn.reapp.io http://hn.reapp.io myself on my phone.
maze-le 9y ago
They didn't even mention haxor-news. This is basically a command-line interface with a lot of features. Maybe there is justifieble objection to the "read Hacker News without the eyestrain"-bit in this case. [0]: https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news
- jshevek 9y ago
  Thank you for posting this. This is, imo, the most important front end to hn. I'm surprised it was left out of the list.
- acobster 9y ago
  I'm surprised as well! Although I prefer hn-cli, a much simpler way to browse the headlines and jump directly to the articles you want to read. https://github.com/rafaelrinaldi/hn-cli https://github.com/rafaelrinaldi/hn-cli
ignawin 9y ago
Aren't derivative posts of hacker news derivatives a bit derivative?
crusso 9y ago
I'd like to see some kind of filtering for HN based upon some preferences or, better yet, an ML style system like with Netflix that learns the kinds of stories you're interested in. I skimmed through the descriptions of the "21 better ways", but didn't see anything that would help you to find the HN articles that you're interested in.
linopolus 9y ago
Related: Do you use any native apps on mobile (preferably iOS)?
dankohn1 9y ago
The most useful HN addon is HN Replies by Dan Grossman. You get an email if someone replies to your comment. Simple UI and real value. http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/
- StavrosK 9y ago
  Fiiiinally! Also, an interesting blast from the past, I used to play a MUD with Dan back in the nineties, he was doing well even back then.
- kaushalmodi 9y ago
  Thank you! I had been looking for a way to get reply notifications for very long.
- tym0 9y ago
  Thanks, this is great. There has been a lot of vitriol about Disqus but I love how easy it is to follow a conversation on there.
- drdaeman 9y ago
  Thanks! That's useful. Long time ago, there was a similar service that used push notifications (via now-dead Notifo; they also had emails https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720763 but, personally, I felt that pushes were nicer). I wonder if there's anything that uses Web Push notifications...
- Symbiote 9y ago
  I'm sure the lack of this feature is intentional, to prevent back-and-forth arguments and give others a chance to contribute. Years ago when I read Slashdot, it felt like the bulk of the discussion was the same few regulars, who would reply within minutes to any response they got. That wasn't healthy or informative, I'd prefer not to see the same here.
- rasz 9y ago
  do you really need notifications that badly? whats wrong with clicking "threads" (4th link on the top of page) once per day.
josefresco 9y ago
1 vote for HackerWeb for your phone. Wish the full HN had collapsible threads - a feature on Reddit I find very useful for traversing long threads without getting "sucked" into a "reply black hole"
- crims0n 9y ago
  They seem to have added this feature to the main site within the last couple months. It works for me on my iPad anyway, maybe give it another try.
  - josefresco 9y ago
    OMG I feel dumb - I didn't notice it! Awesome. For those looking, the "collapse" function is after the "ago" [-]
  - dang 9y ago
    July 2016 :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675
    - josefresco 9y ago
      Ouch - I guess I never expected to see it there!
subroutine 9y ago
I find this meta HN site quite entertaining: http://n-gate.com http://n-gate.com
- ignawin 9y ago
  Such UX, wow!
- type0 9y ago
  I found the about section there very useful since I always wondered what hn was about: > Hacker News is an echo chamber focusing on computer posturing and self-aggrandizement.
- jack6e 9y ago
  I was going to say the same thing, but we can't both be right.
- j_s 9y ago
  A violation of the prime directive! :) discussion / highlights: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13759706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13759706 (March 2017) Also: $281/month on Patreon
raldu 9y ago
Does anyone remember the front-end to HN that categorizes posts according to proper topic categories like "Privacy," "Coding," "Startups," etc. with ML? I remember it being posted or mentioned in a comment but cannot find where it is.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
dpcx 9y ago
taggernews.com allows you to see what tags might apply to each story (more info about all of this at https://devpost.com/software/tagger-news https://devpost.com/software/tagger-news)
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
pavement 9y ago
The best way is Firefox's RSS reader via: /bigrss The worst, by far, is any list that shows actual article thumbnails, as rendered by a common, modern, up-to-date web browser. Looking at HN repackages, that actually show me the visual snapshots of all the articles from the main page, I find myself consumed by nausea, seeing the cacophony of repellent ad-addled page layouts all together, all at once. A comparable awful experience is letting the Slack app stream live updates into a dedicated channel with the RSS Slack app, totally uncurated, so that you can scroll back through a week's worth of article snippets. That little experiment proved to me how finicky I really am, compared to what so many others happen to find interesting, and how small any given individual's tendencies might be, when taken as a defined subset within a large community. Everything else is so-so, in between.
manu3569 9y ago
The scroll to anchor on touch start is super annoying on the top 21 list. I can't scroll the page in that section without accidentally jumping to another page anchor.
duggan 9y ago
I’ve been using MiniHack[1] for iPhone for a year or two; great way of interacting with HN (can vote, comment, etc). [1]: https://itunes.apple.com/th/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/id631108846?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/th/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/...
- leejoramo 9y ago
  And when you read a linked story in MiniHack, it automatically renders the page in Reader Mode
- w4tson 9y ago
  I tried a few apps but settled on minihack
- matthewvincent 9y ago
  Can't recommend MiniHack highly enough. Love the scroll down to next comment tree feature, just to name one.
danijelb 9y ago
I've been using HN Special Chrome extension since it was released. Can't go back to the standard look. http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/ http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/
ceetronic 9y ago
Materialistic on Android is particularly good.
aaronhoffman 9y ago
A visualization of the front page: https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/HackerNews https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/HackerNews Easily see "hot stories", and how stories relate to each other.
Santosh83 9y ago
Does anyone know of a hacker news viewer that can sort an article's comments chronologically or on another criteria? My only gripe with the default site is that there is no way to quickly locate the most recent comments on an article.
- Varcht 9y ago
  My hack is to "find on page" "minutes ago" , at least it gets me the last hour.
- j_s 9y ago
  https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc... > Show and highlight new comments since you last view a thread discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=enhancement%20suite https://hn.algolia.com/?query=enhancement%20suite (none really big) elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310679
dangoldin 9y ago
Years ago I took a stab at writing my own reader with the goal of looking at the top HN stories over the past 24 hours since I'm not one that checks HN every few minutes. Pretty limited use but surprisingly still works: https://yahnr.dangoldin.com/ https://yahnr.dangoldin.com/
xiconfjs 9y ago
The most important feature of http://hn.premii.com http://hn.premii.com isn't in the list: * it caches a text (some pictures but no styles/css) version of the article on their servers, with saves hundreds of MBs per month from my mobile traffic quota I prefer their iOS app, because it works even a bit better as a native app.
- conradfr 9y ago
  This is the one I'm using on mobile. Yes the caching version acts a bit like read mode in Firefox, sometimes it fails though. Also you can't comment with it, which is both frustrating and somehow ... useful. The real problem to using a third party site is that it defeats the noprocrast setting ;)
onli 9y ago
I made and use a userstyle theme: https://userstyles.org/styles/71445/better-hacker-news-design https://userstyles.org/styles/71445/better-hacker-news-desig.... Not a big rework, just a bit brighter and bigger and more readable.
joaomacp 9y ago
I always access HN by hckrnews.com . It's much easier to look at the top posts for the day. And since it also has the top posts from previous days, I don't feel the need to check the front page as often.
paradite 9y ago
I wrote a very basic script to rank hacker news stories based on comment/score ratio, found it to be pretty interesting: https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio The idea is that stories with high ratio would mean active/intense debate, whereas low ratio means extremely insightful post. Both categories are very interesting to me. Example output: https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio/blob/master/results/2017-aug-09_03-01-16-visual.txt https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio/blob/master/results/201... Sadly I never completed the project with a web UI.
yread 9y ago
What I would like to see is a sort of /r/DepthHub - a set of permalinks to interesting (thoughtful or factual or those that you can learn something from) discussions in flamewarred articles or the comments by subject matter experts 3 replies deep that can't bubble up to the top of comments section. EDIT: hmm so I've created it: https://www.reddit.com/r/HNDepthHub/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HNDepthHub/ Submissions welcome!
- j_s 9y ago
  Not sure you've checked already or not, but this seems helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20comments https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20comments And back in the day when karma points were public: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&type=comment Are there any HN-ers whose public list of favorite comments contains what you're looking for? I typically use the functionality more as a bookmark. https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=yread&comments=t https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=yread&comments=t I encourage you to seed your new subreddit with some examples.
Darkstack 9y ago
The best way to read HN for me is no browser, 2 mails, one in the morning, one in the afternoon I use a custom version of this python script. (since I have a big tendency to procrastinate) https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier
arafalov 9y ago
For the longest time I wanted something that generates an offline copy of top-X articles with their best comments. For the no-data/wifi train, plane, etc. Article would be a bonus, but I often check the discussion first :-) The only offline offering on that list does it for articles, but not for comments. So, right axis, wrong direction for me.
dartf 9y ago
For those who use telegram I've created this channel: https://t.me/hacker_news_feed https://t.me/hacker_news_feed
daredevil_kohai 9y ago
I use the telegram channel of hacker news' top posts of the day with more than 100+ scores ( https://telegram.me/hacker_news_feed https://telegram.me/hacker_news_feed )and also the hooks bot (@hooks_bot) in telegram which shows posts with 200+ score..
- reitanqild 9y ago
  Joined, although I already read hn mostly through the Telegram @hnrobot bot or hckr news website.
- j_s 9y ago
  As mentioned in the article, there is also a 100+ score Twitter account: https://twitter.com/newsyc100 https://twitter.com/newsyc100 which has sibling accounts for other score limits. Not related but still worth a mention due to apparently considering coming out of retirement after a year's hiatus: https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says
lolsal 9y ago
I had no idea there were people that needed to view HN differently - let alone 21+ ways. I find the "native" presentation basically perfect for both desktop and mobile browsing.
- miguelrochefort 9y ago
  > I find the "native" presentation basically perfect for both desktop and mobile browsing. You're joking right?
  - lolsal 9y ago
    No. I use Safari for both desktop and mobile, if that matters. I never search. I don't need custom styles to increase readability. I don't need more space around headlines, or article preview thumbnails, or any other superfluous thing. I open interesting headlines for reading and comment threads for discussion into background tabs. I read. I close tabs. I move on with my day. Why did you think I was joking?
    - miguelrochefort 9y ago
      - Perfect: No better implementation can exist. - Best: No better implementation exists. - Favorite: No better implementation is known to me. The current implementation of HN is at best decent. I can think of 100 ways to improve it. I would be surprised you couldn't.
      - vlunkr 9y ago
        I don't think "perfect" was meant to be taken literally.
      - lolsal 9y ago
        I honestly can't think of any.
        tomtheelder 9y ago
galfarragem 9y ago
HN with thumbnails: https://hnews.xyz/ https://hnews.xyz/ This is specially useful on phones.
- krapp 9y ago
  That's nice, but the thumbnails appear to be of the site layouts, rather than thumbnail metadata, which would seem to make them less than useful since it's not contextually relevant. Most of what's visible is the header of the page (which is repeated in the link) and some thumbnails are even blank. That said, having tried to make a HN clone that did use metadata for thumbnails, even that seemed not to add value in most cases. Turning a URL into a useful thumbnail seems to be kind of a hard problem.
YouKnowBetter 9y ago
Chrome > https://theoldreader.com https://theoldreader.com > RSS Nothing beats it. Personally I like the waterhose approach and select what (comments, always first the comments) I want to read. No filtering, no weighting, no colours just plain text together with all the other sites I follow via RSS.
Flott 9y ago
My favorite way of reading HN is with this dark theme: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-night-mode https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-n... It's all I need.
- rollcat 9y ago
  Also: https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?category=ycombinator https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?category=ycombinator
  - Flott 9y ago
    This is great, thank you!
j_s 9y ago
These things come and go, the annoying part is verifying they are still maintained. I recently collected this list along with the best discussion, typically from their launch: http://hackernewsgrid.com http://hackernewsgrid.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605 (2017) https://www.taggernews.com https://www.taggernews.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 (2017) https://vue-hn.now.sh https://vue-hn.now.sh & https://hnews.xyz https://hnews.xyz | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy (2017-ish; 3 discussions) https://tophn.info https://tophn.info | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574 (2017; only 1 comment) https://hn.algolia.com https://hn.algolia.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801 (2015; official search provider) http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049 -ish (2010; ran an API for a while) https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820 & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914 (2010) Many of these discussions include comments vouching for these and other alternative UIs. App recommendations would also be appreciated (if you created or regularly use the app yourself).
- trextrex 9y ago
  There is also http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178534 (~2013)
- jorvi 9y ago
  I've tried multiple clients on iOS and MiniHack[1] is by far the best one I've tried and is well-maintained. Only issue with it is that dark mode is triggered by light intensity and not time, so if you're on the threshold value the color theme will constantly flip-flop. [1] https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/id631108846?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/...
  - 9y ago
j_s 9y ago
Are there any audio summaries of HN? At this point I'd even appreciate pointers to listenable podcasts which primarily consist of discussion/opinions on recent HN stories, but I'd really appreciate a "just the facts, m'am" summary. Preliminary research: Some sort of experimental text-to-speech of the article titles: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnAsMIl3kF9LAYJuKxH8Ebw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnAsMIl3kF9LAYJuKxH8Ebw (last updated: June 2017)
NuSkooler 9y ago
Don't forget HN over Gopher: gopher://hngopher.com:70/
- NuSkooler 9y ago
  I see this triggered a post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313838
keltvek 9y ago
I use hckrnews.com together with Stylish (extension) dark theme (https://userstyles.org/styles/117803/dark-hckrnews-2017 https://userstyles.org/styles/117803/dark-hckrnews-2017). I also use a dark theme for Hacker News (https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark). For me it is much easier on the eyes.
- wakkaflokka 9y ago
  How safe is it to use something like Stylish?
  - keltvek 9y ago
    Depends on how much do you trust browser extensions. From my knowledge every extension code can be inspected and read unless the code is obfuscated. The styles are written in CSS (only a few lines) and injected into the website. So you can quickly review it. If you want to be extra cautious you could write your own extension to be safer, but I trust it good enough.
jacobwg 9y ago
RSS dumped into a feed reader (https://feedbin.com/ https://feedbin.com/) is what works best for me. I can quickly scan missed headlines, read what I'm interested in, star what I want to keep, and mark everything else as read. Reeder on iOS works extremely well for accessing the Feedbin account on mobile.
gt_ 9y ago
I struggle to see why anyone would want to dilute Hacker News with the affect-laden decadence of contemporary web design. I am a visual artist and this is sincere. My hopes are that the HN community holds stable at least until I can find a new hole to run to.
- choward 9y ago
  It should have been titled "other ways to read hacker news".
  - dang 9y ago
    Ok, we'll s/Better/Other/ above.
- krapp 9y ago
  > I struggle to see why anyone would want to dilute Hacker News with the affect-laden decadence of contemporary web design. >I am a visual artist and this is sincere. As a visual artist, you should be aware that your opinions on contemporary web design are subjective, and that those who disagree with you are not wrong in doing so. The sites posted here simply aren't for you, and that's fine. No one is forcing you to even acknowledge their existence. >My hopes are that the HN community holds stable at least until I can find a new hole to run to. Do you believe there is a strong inverse correlation between intellectual and aesthetic value? If so, PG and much of the userbase here seems to agree with you, given the pearl-clutching and hand-wringing whenever new features or styles are discussed. I would disagree, as I believe it is quite possible to have a site that is both well designed and which hosts content of high intellectual value. You don't have to choose one or the other, you can have both.
  - gt_ 9y ago
    Aesthetics are not as subjective as you seem to think. I am not sitting on a high-horse here; I argue closer to the opposite. My assertion that contemporary web design is affect-laden has proof in the pudding. It is ridden with commercial "trend" and "delight". Contemporary web design lacks concern for either content or form. It is a maze of 'interactive expressionism'. I would go as far as to say it bears some responsibility for the current ICO bubble, for example; the "whitepaper" being the only lucid concept (form of content) in a sea of slivering serpents. Of course technical whitepapers are not new but their declarative function is being psychologically undermined by their symbolic form. How is this possible? It is a function of decadence, a delusion of form and meaning. >I believe it is quite possible to have a site thay is both well designed and which hosts content of high intellectual value. You won't find anyone on the internet to argue with this statement, of course. I agree. I think hackernews.come has done about as good of job as any by acknowledging 'form' as necessary context for intellectual 'content'. Your issue is with what "well designed" means. See above.
chrissnell 9y ago
I'm kind of surprised that there weren't any console-based readers listed.
equasar 9y ago
The only think https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com is missing to be perfect is the search functionality, I don't like to rely on hn.algolia.com.
Dowwie 9y ago
Only thing I think ought to be improved is that readers ought to earn access to the new top rankings by reading and ranking at least a few new articles
bastijn 9y ago
For me the native version is stunningly good. Both on desktop and mobile devices. It loads tremendously fast, has the correct font types and no smuck. The only sidestep I sometimes make is to Boreal[1][2] as a native ios app. It has a more convenient way if reading the comments. Double tap a comment to collapse instead of hit the little minus sign. Especially as I read with only my left hand and minus sign is on the right. Funny how little things can be so great. In addition it's indenting is easier to follow. However, I keep switching back to the default hn site as ios doesn't let you set chrome as default browser so you can't open all articles default in chrome from Boreal (you can in safari, embedded safari, their native browser or their in-app browser). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9830622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9830622 (old version, current version is much better). [2] https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/boreal-hacker-news-client/id925851179?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/boreal-hacker-news-client/id...
- allover 9y ago
  It loads fast and doesn't use web fonts, but that's not really a high bar, for essentially a forum. Apart from that it's not exactly a pleasant reading experience. Tiny text for modern displays. Poor typography (bad line-height of content, needlessly cramped padding in listing). Ugly beige background colour, randomly constrained to a container, (why not be all-white or all-beige). Poor click targets for smaller displays. On desktop, I use the Georgify [1] Chrome extension, fixes my (desktop-related) complaints above whilst staying minimal. For mobile I use the Premii iOS app (it also has web and android versions) [2]. Well designed, lots of nice features like the comment collapsing you mention. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfale... [2] https://github.com/premii/hn https://github.com/premii/hn
  - gkya 9y ago
    I disagree all of your criticisms. Apart from the last one, they are all subjective and I disagree without a reason. I like what I see. Wrt sizes of the click targets, HN, unlike many products of elegant (!) design, let's you zoom in an out, so that is not a problem.
zeveb 9y ago
I like hackernews.el[0], but haxor-new[1], mentioned below, sounds even more awesome. [0] https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el [1] https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news
SubiculumCode 9y ago
IMO, HN interface may be one of the best I've encountered online. I feel nothing tedious in its layout or functionality. The 'need' for change can be a destructive compulsion. except how quotes of comments are displayed.
wechatfan 9y ago
http://www.pxlet.com http://www.pxlet.com should be in the list as well. It provides a hub for tech news.
JBlue42 9y ago
I use https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ since I can sort out top 10 or 20 and top 50% (my usual default) or hit all to see everything as it updates. It also keeps track of dates and when, on all, what's new since my last visit.
lousken 9y ago
I use inoreader so there's no reason to use these, only thing I'd like to see improved with RSS would be to update less often (like that it would took 2hrs to update) and in that time it would get decided if it gets included or not (so that there's no flagged, dupes or when title changes multiple times it would not show up multiple times).
harisamin 9y ago
I also made native macOS HN client app called MackerNews. It renders the article in a web view (readable if possible) but everything else is native. Btw its a client, you can login, vote, comment, etc :) http://mackernews.com http://mackernews.com
jlebar 9y ago
Critically missing is Webshit Weekly: http://n-gate.com/ http://n-gate.com/
amelius 9y ago
I'd like to see categories, and being able to subscribe to them. Alternatively, what I'd like to filter out of HN: - People pushing their products - Useless artistic projects - CSS hacks - Ways to make money without much effort
twohanded 9y ago
I find the original HN site easy enough to read, as long as I have the following Greasemonkey script active: // ==UserScript== // @name Hacker News Readability (small width) // @description Reduces the width on Hacker News to make it easier to read // @include http://news.ycombinator.com/* http://news.ycombinator.com/* // @include https://news.ycombinator.com/* https://news.ycombinator.com/* // @grant none // ==/UserScript== GM_addStyle(".default { width: 650px !important; }"); Having the width reduced makes reading much quicker, since you don't have to scan such a long line of text. I would encourage everyone to try it.
habosa 9y ago
No love for Hacker News Enhancement Suite? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...
crenwick 9y ago
I prefer HN filtered with Machine Learning: http://hn.njl.us/ http://hn.njl.us/
justinhj 9y ago
The only improvement I'd like for the current web page is that on mobile you have to zoom to vote. If the up and down votes were at separate ends of the item header that would make it more usable
brendoncrawford 9y ago
If anyone uses Calibre, here is a Calibre HN recipe I have made. It looks pretty good on Kindle Paperwhite, but I have not tested it anywhere else: https://github.com/brendoncrawford-org/calibre_recipes/blob/master/recipes/hackernews.recipe https://github.com/brendoncrawford-org/calibre_recipes/blob/...
rasz 9y ago
my small lame userscript (usable with tampermonkey) to color new stories/comments and keep track of new unread comments in articles I was interested in. Lets me skim /news quicker removing annoying "I already read that one" mental load. https://github.com/raszpl/hackahackernews https://github.com/raszpl/hackahackernews
nthcolumn 9y ago
hnews.xyz - scans quickly, avoids comments, leaves, ftw.

290 points by rullopat 9y ago

I prefer the version of Hacker News from four months ago to the current version, and all of the viewers listed here, even on mobile. I wouldn't think my opinion would be niche.

yorwba 9y ago
What changed four months ago? I didn't notice any change.
- microcolonel 9y ago
  Weird stuff like collapsing downvoted comments (and their replies) by default. I even browse with showdead on, so I don't want to have to manually expand comment trees just because slightly more people disagree than agree with the point being made.

acidshards 9y ago

You've been reading Hacker News wrong your whole life.

KGIII 9y ago
They don't want you to know the secret to reading HN! On a more serious note, I'm pretty happy with seeing it right here on this very domain. Hell, I haven't even changed the orange header. The layout and navigation are simple but intuitive. The site is very light and loads quickly. I don't like how voting will make me jump around the page, but I can live with that. No site is perfect for everyone, after all. Yeah, I think I'll just keep reading it right here.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  > voting will make me jump around the page What do you mean by that? Voting is handled by AJAX requests, so it shouldn't jump around.
  - KGIII 9y ago
    Comment, then vote, and it brings me back to my comment.

wheresvic3 9y ago

just use https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com - works great on mobile too

TheAceOfHearts 9y ago
I was just about to say the same thing. A few years ago it was a bit annoying to read on mobile, but they eventually made some minor CSS tweaks which made it much better. Performing certain actions, such as upvoting, require zooming in a lot in order to hit the desired arrow. I'd love to see that improved, but it's hardly a deal-breaker for me.
teolandon 9y ago
But that boring web app doesn't even have pretty fonts. It even has a "next" button, so you can see more than 30 posts, who needs that? It shows the point count in a smaller greyer font, instead of a big circle, so I can't instinctively choose posts by popularity instead of their headlines. It doesn't even pull up a random image from the article that might not have anything to do with the actual topic, and display it along with a preview of text, so I can't get distracted and pulled by fundamentally more attractive colorful pictures instead of boring text topics. It's not written in the newest JavaScript framework, it's just plain old HTML, some simple CSS and Racket making it all run. Racket! That doesn't even have "JS" in its name. What is this, 2013? Whoever wrote that version clearly doesn't know how Hacker News is meant to be viewed. ahem But seriously, the Hacker News site is one of my favorite "news" sites. Simple, clean, no distractions, just headlines. Also, some of the websites listed in the article are quite useful, like the search engine. Most of the others are simply different ways of reading Hacker News, not "better". Might be better for some people. Not for me.
- petepete 9y ago
  I like it. The code blocks on mobile are terrible (totally unusable) and the up/down vote buttons could be a bit bigger, but overall it's pretty good.
  - 9y ago

smnscu 9y ago

I've used hn.premii.com for years and couldn't be happier. I also like the name, it means 'prizes' in Romanian.

Zircom 9y ago
Seconded! Been using it forever, if he'd implement replying and voting I'd have no reason to ever use the vanilla site.

teh_klev 9y ago

I've used the Hacker News Enhancement Suite for the past few years and thought it did just enough things to make the site a tad more usable without going overboard: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?utm_source=chrome-app-launcher-info-dialog https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...

cmg 9y ago
I've been making the switch from Chrome to Firefox over the past month, and HNES is the one thing I truly miss that I haven't found a good replacement for.
- dhd415 9y ago
  I use the "Chrome Store Foxified" extension which lets you install some Chrome plugins including HNES.
- Santosh83 9y ago
  This ought to be the kind of simple extension that Firefox's ongoing migration to Web Extensions will allow to be plugged in and used.
dhd415 9y ago
I'd consider HNES's highlighting of new comments to be nearly essential to reading HN. I don't understand how others can follow long discussions without any indication of what comments have been posted since a previous viewing or refresh. And it doesn't seem to me like it would be a difficult feature to add.

iosdevelprss 9y ago

I think the best way is how HN is. In fact, I wish more websites had this text only approach. Came across this fantastic redesign of a conceptual text-only TechCrunch: https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-techcrunch-1ecae542e6af https://hackernoon.com/redesigning-techcrunch-1ecae542e6af Somebody please make that!

runeks 9y ago

I wish there were a way to display news from a custom time interval, as opposed to always getting news from a fixed interval of time (I think there are three different settings as of now). If I haven’t visited HN for, say, 6 days, I find it’d be really helpful to be able to display all news from this time period, based on number of upvotes in descending order. In other words: I’d appreciate complete control over the algorithm that decides which news to display: time interval, minimum upvotes, minimum comment count, upvotes-per-hour, etc.

untangle 9y ago
Try http://searchhn.com/ http://searchhn.com/ This comes close to your specs.
- subroutine 9y ago
  Here is another one with custom range settings: https://hn.algolia.com https://hn.algolia.com

moru0011 9y ago

#22 https://www.juptr.io/#home/@!news.ycombinator.com/rss https://www.juptr.io/#home/@!news.ycombinator.com/rss

tym0 9y ago
Yes, I use feedly to read the rss and it's fairly easy to quickly parse the whole feed.

untangle 9y ago

Let's make it 27 ways. Try also: https://hackerhunt.co/ https://hackerhunt.co/ http://searchhn.com/ http://searchhn.com/ https://hnews.xyz/top https://hnews.xyz/top https://www.taggernews.com/news/ https://www.taggernews.com/news/ http://hntop.org/ http://hntop.org/ https://hackerhunt.co/ https://hackerhunt.co/ I find several of these quite useful.

cyberferret 9y ago

Shameless plug: I use my own home written app http://tophn.info http://tophn.info to keep an eye on the movement of the top news articles during the day, in real time and jump straight to the comments. I also wrote about how I built it using Vue.js and RethinkDB... https://hackernoon.com/tophn-a-fun-side-project-built-with-vue-js-and-rethinkdb-f22159641c1b https://hackernoon.com/tophn-a-fun-side-project-built-with-v...

jjrrmm 9y ago

hackurls.com

cupofjoakim 9y ago

I'll continue with news.ycombinator.com, but with styling from the Stylish extension for chrome. Currently using this theme: https://userstyles.org/styles/107079/hacker-news-minimal-theme https://userstyles.org/styles/107079/hacker-news-minimal-the...

TeMPOraL 9y ago

Ok, so all of those are for reading, but I don't see any that would allow voting and commenting on HN. It's also the case with pretty much all other HN apps/interfaces I've seen (with notable exception of HN Enhancement Suite, which is a browser extension). I don't understand why that is. Is there some important rule of HN that disallows any third-party interaction except through the official interface? Or do people simply treat viewing HN as a MVP, and give up after making it? As it is, those tools seem only useful for HN readers / lurkers, not that much for those of us who participate in discussions here.

cosarara97 9y ago
There is no proper API, IIRC. All those clients scrape the website.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  There is (or at least was) an API, AFAIK read-only though. I still don't see why one couldn't combine the API and scrapping to get a full read/write interface going.
  - krapp 9y ago
    Wouldn't that require you to give a random site your login to post on your behalf?
    - TeMPOraL 9y ago
      It would. Whether you should is another thing entirely. I'm asking why noone seems to even offer the option?
      - krapp 9y ago
        I can't speak for anyone else, but if it were me, I wouldn't expect anyone to trust me enough to use it, so why bother?

k__ 9y ago

I want one with a big hide button for posts/comments and anonymous comments. I don't need to vote or something, I just want to get rid of uninteresting stuff as fast as easy as possible.

SubiculumCode 9y ago
There are anonymous comments?
- krapp 9y ago
  "anonymous" meaning posting through an alt account.

SG- 9y ago

I would have liked to see widgets and small apps or things instead of just mostly sites. The responsive ones for mobile are nice and I use http://hn.reapp.io http://hn.reapp.io myself on my phone.

maze-le 9y ago

They didn't even mention haxor-news. This is basically a command-line interface with a lot of features. Maybe there is justifieble objection to the "read Hacker News without the eyestrain"-bit in this case. [0]: https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news

jshevek 9y ago
Thank you for posting this. This is, imo, the most important front end to hn. I'm surprised it was left out of the list.
acobster 9y ago
I'm surprised as well! Although I prefer hn-cli, a much simpler way to browse the headlines and jump directly to the articles you want to read. https://github.com/rafaelrinaldi/hn-cli https://github.com/rafaelrinaldi/hn-cli

ignawin 9y ago

Aren't derivative posts of hacker news derivatives a bit derivative?

crusso 9y ago

I'd like to see some kind of filtering for HN based upon some preferences or, better yet, an ML style system like with Netflix that learns the kinds of stories you're interested in. I skimmed through the descriptions of the "21 better ways", but didn't see anything that would help you to find the HN articles that you're interested in.

linopolus 9y ago

Related: Do you use any native apps on mobile (preferably iOS)?

dankohn1 9y ago

The most useful HN addon is HN Replies by Dan Grossman. You get an email if someone replies to your comment. Simple UI and real value. http://www.hnreplies.com/ http://www.hnreplies.com/

StavrosK 9y ago
Fiiiinally! Also, an interesting blast from the past, I used to play a MUD with Dan back in the nineties, he was doing well even back then.
kaushalmodi 9y ago
Thank you! I had been looking for a way to get reply notifications for very long.
tym0 9y ago
Thanks, this is great. There has been a lot of vitriol about Disqus but I love how easy it is to follow a conversation on there.
drdaeman 9y ago
Thanks! That's useful. Long time ago, there was a similar service that used push notifications (via now-dead Notifo; they also had emails https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720763 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1720763 but, personally, I felt that pushes were nicer). I wonder if there's anything that uses Web Push notifications...
Symbiote 9y ago
I'm sure the lack of this feature is intentional, to prevent back-and-forth arguments and give others a chance to contribute. Years ago when I read Slashdot, it felt like the bulk of the discussion was the same few regulars, who would reply within minutes to any response they got. That wasn't healthy or informative, I'd prefer not to see the same here.
rasz 9y ago
do you really need notifications that badly? whats wrong with clicking "threads" (4th link on the top of page) once per day.

josefresco 9y ago

1 vote for HackerWeb for your phone. Wish the full HN had collapsible threads - a feature on Reddit I find very useful for traversing long threads without getting "sucked" into a "reply black hole"

crims0n 9y ago
They seem to have added this feature to the main site within the last couple months. It works for me on my iPad anyway, maybe give it another try.
- josefresco 9y ago
  OMG I feel dumb - I didn't notice it! Awesome. For those looking, the "collapse" function is after the "ago" [-]
- dang 9y ago
  July 2016 :) https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675
  - josefresco 9y ago
    Ouch - I guess I never expected to see it there!

subroutine 9y ago

I find this meta HN site quite entertaining: http://n-gate.com http://n-gate.com

ignawin 9y ago
Such UX, wow!
type0 9y ago
I found the about section there very useful since I always wondered what hn was about: > Hacker News is an echo chamber focusing on computer posturing and self-aggrandizement.
jack6e 9y ago
I was going to say the same thing, but we can't both be right.
j_s 9y ago
A violation of the prime directive! :) discussion / highlights: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13759706 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13759706 (March 2017) Also: $281/month on Patreon

raldu 9y ago

Does anyone remember the front-end to HN that categorizes posts according to proper topic categories like "Privacy," "Coding," "Startups," etc. with ML? I remember it being posted or mentioned in a comment but cannot find where it is.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

dpcx 9y ago

taggernews.com allows you to see what tags might apply to each story (more info about all of this at https://devpost.com/software/tagger-news https://devpost.com/software/tagger-news)

deleted 9y ago

[deleted]

pavement 9y ago

The best way is Firefox's RSS reader via: /bigrss The worst, by far, is any list that shows actual article thumbnails, as rendered by a common, modern, up-to-date web browser. Looking at HN repackages, that actually show me the visual snapshots of all the articles from the main page, I find myself consumed by nausea, seeing the cacophony of repellent ad-addled page layouts all together, all at once. A comparable awful experience is letting the Slack app stream live updates into a dedicated channel with the RSS Slack app, totally uncurated, so that you can scroll back through a week's worth of article snippets. That little experiment proved to me how finicky I really am, compared to what so many others happen to find interesting, and how small any given individual's tendencies might be, when taken as a defined subset within a large community. Everything else is so-so, in between.

manu3569 9y ago

The scroll to anchor on touch start is super annoying on the top 21 list. I can't scroll the page in that section without accidentally jumping to another page anchor.

duggan 9y ago

I’ve been using MiniHack[1] for iPhone for a year or two; great way of interacting with HN (can vote, comment, etc). [1]: https://itunes.apple.com/th/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/id631108846?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/th/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/...

leejoramo 9y ago
And when you read a linked story in MiniHack, it automatically renders the page in Reader Mode
w4tson 9y ago
I tried a few apps but settled on minihack
matthewvincent 9y ago
Can't recommend MiniHack highly enough. Love the scroll down to next comment tree feature, just to name one.

danijelb 9y ago

I've been using HN Special Chrome extension since it was released. Can't go back to the standard look. http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/ http://gabrielecirulli.github.io/hn-special/

ceetronic 9y ago

Materialistic on Android is particularly good.

aaronhoffman 9y ago

A visualization of the front page: https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/HackerNews https://www.sizzleanalytics.com/HackerNews Easily see "hot stories", and how stories relate to each other.

Santosh83 9y ago

Does anyone know of a hacker news viewer that can sort an article's comments chronologically or on another criteria? My only gripe with the default site is that there is no way to quickly locate the most recent comments on an article.

Varcht 9y ago
My hack is to "find on page" "minutes ago" , at least it gets me the last hour.
j_s 9y ago
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc... > Show and highlight new comments since you last view a thread discussions: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=enhancement%20suite https://hn.algolia.com/?query=enhancement%20suite (none really big) elsewhere in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310679 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15310679

dangoldin 9y ago

Years ago I took a stab at writing my own reader with the goal of looking at the top HN stories over the past 24 hours since I'm not one that checks HN every few minutes. Pretty limited use but surprisingly still works: https://yahnr.dangoldin.com/ https://yahnr.dangoldin.com/

xiconfjs 9y ago

The most important feature of http://hn.premii.com http://hn.premii.com isn't in the list: * it caches a text (some pictures but no styles/css) version of the article on their servers, with saves hundreds of MBs per month from my mobile traffic quota I prefer their iOS app, because it works even a bit better as a native app.

conradfr 9y ago
This is the one I'm using on mobile. Yes the caching version acts a bit like read mode in Firefox, sometimes it fails though. Also you can't comment with it, which is both frustrating and somehow ... useful. The real problem to using a third party site is that it defeats the noprocrast setting ;)

onli 9y ago

I made and use a userstyle theme: https://userstyles.org/styles/71445/better-hacker-news-design https://userstyles.org/styles/71445/better-hacker-news-desig.... Not a big rework, just a bit brighter and bigger and more readable.

joaomacp 9y ago

I always access HN by hckrnews.com . It's much easier to look at the top posts for the day. And since it also has the top posts from previous days, I don't feel the need to check the front page as often.

paradite 9y ago

I wrote a very basic script to rank hacker news stories based on comment/score ratio, found it to be pretty interesting: https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio The idea is that stories with high ratio would mean active/intense debate, whereas low ratio means extremely insightful post. Both categories are very interesting to me. Example output: https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio/blob/master/results/2017-aug-09_03-01-16-visual.txt https://github.com/paradite/hn-ratio/blob/master/results/201... Sadly I never completed the project with a web UI.

yread 9y ago

What I would like to see is a sort of /r/DepthHub - a set of permalinks to interesting (thoughtful or factual or those that you can learn something from) discussions in flamewarred articles or the comments by subject matter experts 3 replies deep that can't bubble up to the top of comments section. EDIT: hmm so I've created it: https://www.reddit.com/r/HNDepthHub/ https://www.reddit.com/r/HNDepthHub/ Submissions welcome!

j_s 9y ago
Not sure you've checked already or not, but this seems helpful: https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20comments https://hn.algolia.com/?query=best%20comments And back in the day when karma points were public: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byPopularity&type=comment Are there any HN-ers whose public list of favorite comments contains what you're looking for? I typically use the functionality more as a bookmark. https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=yread&comments=t https://news.ycombinator.com/favorites?id=yread&comments=t I encourage you to seed your new subreddit with some examples.

Darkstack 9y ago

The best way to read HN for me is no browser, 2 mails, one in the morning, one in the afternoon I use a custom version of this python script. (since I have a big tendency to procrastinate) https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier https://github.com/lrusnac/hn-notifier

arafalov 9y ago

For the longest time I wanted something that generates an offline copy of top-X articles with their best comments. For the no-data/wifi train, plane, etc. Article would be a bonus, but I often check the discussion first :-) The only offline offering on that list does it for articles, but not for comments. So, right axis, wrong direction for me.

dartf 9y ago

For those who use telegram I've created this channel: https://t.me/hacker_news_feed https://t.me/hacker_news_feed

daredevil_kohai 9y ago

I use the telegram channel of hacker news' top posts of the day with more than 100+ scores ( https://telegram.me/hacker_news_feed https://telegram.me/hacker_news_feed )and also the hooks bot (@hooks_bot) in telegram which shows posts with 200+ score..

reitanqild 9y ago
Joined, although I already read hn mostly through the Telegram @hnrobot bot or hckr news website.
j_s 9y ago
As mentioned in the article, there is also a 100+ score Twitter account: https://twitter.com/newsyc100 https://twitter.com/newsyc100 which has sibling accounts for other score limits. Not related but still worth a mention due to apparently considering coming out of retirement after a year's hiatus: https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says https://twitter.com/shit_hn_says

lolsal 9y ago

I had no idea there were people that needed to view HN differently - let alone 21+ ways. I find the "native" presentation basically perfect for both desktop and mobile browsing.

miguelrochefort 9y ago
> I find the "native" presentation basically perfect for both desktop and mobile browsing. You're joking right?
- lolsal 9y ago
  No. I use Safari for both desktop and mobile, if that matters. I never search. I don't need custom styles to increase readability. I don't need more space around headlines, or article preview thumbnails, or any other superfluous thing. I open interesting headlines for reading and comment threads for discussion into background tabs. I read. I close tabs. I move on with my day. Why did you think I was joking?
  - miguelrochefort 9y ago
    - Perfect: No better implementation can exist. - Best: No better implementation exists. - Favorite: No better implementation is known to me. The current implementation of HN is at best decent. I can think of 100 ways to improve it. I would be surprised you couldn't.
    - vlunkr 9y ago
      I don't think "perfect" was meant to be taken literally.
    - lolsal 9y ago
      I honestly can't think of any.
      - tomtheelder 9y ago

galfarragem 9y ago

HN with thumbnails: https://hnews.xyz/ https://hnews.xyz/ This is specially useful on phones.

krapp 9y ago
That's nice, but the thumbnails appear to be of the site layouts, rather than thumbnail metadata, which would seem to make them less than useful since it's not contextually relevant. Most of what's visible is the header of the page (which is repeated in the link) and some thumbnails are even blank. That said, having tried to make a HN clone that did use metadata for thumbnails, even that seemed not to add value in most cases. Turning a URL into a useful thumbnail seems to be kind of a hard problem.

YouKnowBetter 9y ago

Chrome > https://theoldreader.com https://theoldreader.com > RSS Nothing beats it. Personally I like the waterhose approach and select what (comments, always first the comments) I want to read. No filtering, no weighting, no colours just plain text together with all the other sites I follow via RSS.

Flott 9y ago

My favorite way of reading HN is with this dark theme: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-night-mode https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-n... It's all I need.

rollcat 9y ago
Also: https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?category=ycombinator https://userstyles.org/styles/browse?category=ycombinator
- Flott 9y ago
  This is great, thank you!

j_s 9y ago

These things come and go, the annoying part is verifying they are still maintained. I recently collected this list along with the best discussion, typically from their launch: http://hackernewsgrid.com http://hackernewsgrid.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15078605 (2017) https://www.taggernews.com https://www.taggernews.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14337275 (2017) https://vue-hn.now.sh https://vue-hn.now.sh & https://hnews.xyz https://hnews.xyz | https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy https://hn.algolia.com/?query=hnews.xy (2017-ish; 3 discussions) https://tophn.info https://tophn.info | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13782574 (2017; only 1 comment) https://hn.algolia.com https://hn.algolia.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8874801 (2015; official search provider) http://ihackernews.com http://ihackernews.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1694049 -ish (2010; ran an API for a while) https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14962820 & https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1722914 (2010) Many of these discussions include comments vouching for these and other alternative UIs. App recommendations would also be appreciated (if you created or regularly use the app yourself).

trextrex 9y ago
There is also http://hn.premii.com/ http://hn.premii.com/ | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178534 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6178534 (~2013)
jorvi 9y ago
I've tried multiple clients on iOS and MiniHack[1] is by far the best one I've tried and is well-maintained. Only issue with it is that dark mode is triggered by light intensity and not time, so if you're on the threshold value the color theme will constantly flip-flop. [1] https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/id631108846?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/minihack-hacker-news-client/...
- 9y ago

j_s 9y ago

Are there any audio summaries of HN? At this point I'd even appreciate pointers to listenable podcasts which primarily consist of discussion/opinions on recent HN stories, but I'd really appreciate a "just the facts, m'am" summary. Preliminary research: Some sort of experimental text-to-speech of the article titles: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnAsMIl3kF9LAYJuKxH8Ebw https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCnAsMIl3kF9LAYJuKxH8Ebw (last updated: June 2017)

NuSkooler 9y ago

Don't forget HN over Gopher: gopher://hngopher.com:70/

NuSkooler 9y ago
I see this triggered a post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313838 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15313838

keltvek 9y ago

I use hckrnews.com together with Stylish (extension) dark theme (https://userstyles.org/styles/117803/dark-hckrnews-2017 https://userstyles.org/styles/117803/dark-hckrnews-2017). I also use a dark theme for Hacker News (https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark https://userstyles.org/styles/113994/hacker-news-dark). For me it is much easier on the eyes.

wakkaflokka 9y ago
How safe is it to use something like Stylish?
- keltvek 9y ago
  Depends on how much do you trust browser extensions. From my knowledge every extension code can be inspected and read unless the code is obfuscated. The styles are written in CSS (only a few lines) and injected into the website. So you can quickly review it. If you want to be extra cautious you could write your own extension to be safer, but I trust it good enough.

jacobwg 9y ago

RSS dumped into a feed reader (https://feedbin.com/ https://feedbin.com/) is what works best for me. I can quickly scan missed headlines, read what I'm interested in, star what I want to keep, and mark everything else as read. Reeder on iOS works extremely well for accessing the Feedbin account on mobile.

gt_ 9y ago

I struggle to see why anyone would want to dilute Hacker News with the affect-laden decadence of contemporary web design. I am a visual artist and this is sincere. My hopes are that the HN community holds stable at least until I can find a new hole to run to.

choward 9y ago
It should have been titled "other ways to read hacker news".
- dang 9y ago
  Ok, we'll s/Better/Other/ above.
krapp 9y ago
> I struggle to see why anyone would want to dilute Hacker News with the affect-laden decadence of contemporary web design. >I am a visual artist and this is sincere. As a visual artist, you should be aware that your opinions on contemporary web design are subjective, and that those who disagree with you are not wrong in doing so. The sites posted here simply aren't for you, and that's fine. No one is forcing you to even acknowledge their existence. >My hopes are that the HN community holds stable at least until I can find a new hole to run to. Do you believe there is a strong inverse correlation between intellectual and aesthetic value? If so, PG and much of the userbase here seems to agree with you, given the pearl-clutching and hand-wringing whenever new features or styles are discussed. I would disagree, as I believe it is quite possible to have a site that is both well designed and which hosts content of high intellectual value. You don't have to choose one or the other, you can have both.
- gt_ 9y ago
  Aesthetics are not as subjective as you seem to think. I am not sitting on a high-horse here; I argue closer to the opposite. My assertion that contemporary web design is affect-laden has proof in the pudding. It is ridden with commercial "trend" and "delight". Contemporary web design lacks concern for either content or form. It is a maze of 'interactive expressionism'. I would go as far as to say it bears some responsibility for the current ICO bubble, for example; the "whitepaper" being the only lucid concept (form of content) in a sea of slivering serpents. Of course technical whitepapers are not new but their declarative function is being psychologically undermined by their symbolic form. How is this possible? It is a function of decadence, a delusion of form and meaning. >I believe it is quite possible to have a site thay is both well designed and which hosts content of high intellectual value. You won't find anyone on the internet to argue with this statement, of course. I agree. I think hackernews.come has done about as good of job as any by acknowledging 'form' as necessary context for intellectual 'content'. Your issue is with what "well designed" means. See above.

chrissnell 9y ago

I'm kind of surprised that there weren't any console-based readers listed.

equasar 9y ago

The only think https://news.ycombinator.com https://news.ycombinator.com is missing to be perfect is the search functionality, I don't like to rely on hn.algolia.com.

Dowwie 9y ago

Only thing I think ought to be improved is that readers ought to earn access to the new top rankings by reading and ranking at least a few new articles

bastijn 9y ago

For me the native version is stunningly good. Both on desktop and mobile devices. It loads tremendously fast, has the correct font types and no smuck. The only sidestep I sometimes make is to Boreal[1][2] as a native ios app. It has a more convenient way if reading the comments. Double tap a comment to collapse instead of hit the little minus sign. Especially as I read with only my left hand and minus sign is on the right. Funny how little things can be so great. In addition it's indenting is easier to follow. However, I keep switching back to the default hn site as ios doesn't let you set chrome as default browser so you can't open all articles default in chrome from Boreal (you can in safari, embedded safari, their native browser or their in-app browser). [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9830622 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9830622 (old version, current version is much better). [2] https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/boreal-hacker-news-client/id925851179?mt=8 https://itunes.apple.com/nl/app/boreal-hacker-news-client/id...

allover 9y ago
It loads fast and doesn't use web fonts, but that's not really a high bar, for essentially a forum. Apart from that it's not exactly a pleasant reading experience. Tiny text for modern displays. Poor typography (bad line-height of content, needlessly cramped padding in listing). Ugly beige background colour, randomly constrained to a container, (why not be all-white or all-beige). Poor click targets for smaller displays. On desktop, I use the Georgify [1] Chrome extension, fixes my (desktop-related) complaints above whilst staying minimal. For mobile I use the Premii iOS app (it also has web and android versions) [2]. Well designed, lots of nice features like the comment collapsing you mention. [1] https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfaleomlfanfehgblppafkijjhmi?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/georgify/ofjfdfale... [2] https://github.com/premii/hn https://github.com/premii/hn
- gkya 9y ago
  I disagree all of your criticisms. Apart from the last one, they are all subjective and I disagree without a reason. I like what I see. Wrt sizes of the click targets, HN, unlike many products of elegant (!) design, let's you zoom in an out, so that is not a problem.

zeveb 9y ago

I like hackernews.el[0], but haxor-new[1], mentioned below, sounds even more awesome. [0] https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el https://github.com/clarete/hackernews.el [1] https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news https://github.com/donnemartin/haxor-news

SubiculumCode 9y ago

IMO, HN interface may be one of the best I've encountered online. I feel nothing tedious in its layout or functionality. The 'need' for change can be a destructive compulsion. except how quotes of comments are displayed.

wechatfan 9y ago

http://www.pxlet.com http://www.pxlet.com should be in the list as well. It provides a hub for tech news.

JBlue42 9y ago

I use https://hckrnews.com/ https://hckrnews.com/ since I can sort out top 10 or 20 and top 50% (my usual default) or hit all to see everything as it updates. It also keeps track of dates and when, on all, what's new since my last visit.

lousken 9y ago

I use inoreader so there's no reason to use these, only thing I'd like to see improved with RSS would be to update less often (like that it would took 2hrs to update) and in that time it would get decided if it gets included or not (so that there's no flagged, dupes or when title changes multiple times it would not show up multiple times).

harisamin 9y ago

I also made native macOS HN client app called MackerNews. It renders the article in a web view (readable if possible) but everything else is native. Btw its a client, you can login, vote, comment, etc :) http://mackernews.com http://mackernews.com

jlebar 9y ago

Critically missing is Webshit Weekly: http://n-gate.com/ http://n-gate.com/

amelius 9y ago

I'd like to see categories, and being able to subscribe to them. Alternatively, what I'd like to filter out of HN: - People pushing their products - Useless artistic projects - CSS hacks - Ways to make money without much effort

twohanded 9y ago

I find the original HN site easy enough to read, as long as I have the following Greasemonkey script active: // ==UserScript== // @name Hacker News Readability (small width) // @description Reduces the width on Hacker News to make it easier to read // @include http://news.ycombinator.com/* http://news.ycombinator.com/* // @include https://news.ycombinator.com/* https://news.ycombinator.com/* // @grant none // ==/UserScript== GM_addStyle(".default { width: 650px !important; }"); Having the width reduced makes reading much quicker, since you don't have to scan such a long line of text. I would encourage everyone to try it.

habosa 9y ago

No love for Hacker News Enhancement Suite? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhancement-s/bappiabcodbpphnojdiaddhnilfnjmpm?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-enhanc...

crenwick 9y ago

I prefer HN filtered with Machine Learning: http://hn.njl.us/ http://hn.njl.us/

justinhj 9y ago

The only improvement I'd like for the current web page is that on mobile you have to zoom to vote. If the up and down votes were at separate ends of the item header that would make it more usable

brendoncrawford 9y ago

If anyone uses Calibre, here is a Calibre HN recipe I have made. It looks pretty good on Kindle Paperwhite, but I have not tested it anywhere else: https://github.com/brendoncrawford-org/calibre_recipes/blob/master/recipes/hackernews.recipe https://github.com/brendoncrawford-org/calibre_recipes/blob/...

rasz 9y ago

my small lame userscript (usable with tampermonkey) to color new stories/comments and keep track of new unread comments in articles I was interested in. Lets me skim /news quicker removing annoying "I already read that one" mental load. https://github.com/raszpl/hackahackernews https://github.com/raszpl/hackahackernews

nthcolumn 9y ago

hnews.xyz - scans quickly, avoids comments, leaves, ftw.