16 ms·

Show HN: Not Depressing News

209 points by armatav 8y ago

armatav 8y ago
Hey HN, I'm looking for some feedback on NDN, it's a little MVP that will eventually give you only the not-depressing news from all over the web - it's seeing quite a bit of retention, and I'd like to know what you think! I'd like to turn it into a product, but it's pretty hard to see where to go.
- corysama 8y ago
  Just a tiny bit of typography on the links would go a long way to making the site look more professional.
  - armatav 8y ago
    I'd be happy to add that, if you can suggest what kind of typography I should use or take a look at
    - rococode 8y ago
      A basic start: bigger font size, drop the underscore (text-decoration: none), change the font color to black or dark gray. You can do a lighter color on hover to make it clear it's a link. Not perfect, but I think it's better than what's live right now. You can browse for a nicer font, too. Plenty of free choices at Google Fonts. End result would be something like this: https://i.imgur.com/c7YJCN9.png https://i.imgur.com/c7YJCN9.png Maybe align the text with the image as well, although vertical aligns are always a big pain to implement haha.
      - dceddia 8y ago
        Flexbox makes vertical alignment a snap. It's even pretty well supported these days: https://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox https://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox In this case, all you need to do is add "display: flex; align-items: center" to your a tags. After that I'd probably get rid of the margin-bottom on them too. Finally, to visually center everything vertically, remove the margin-top on the img inside the a. A bonus of using display:flex is that it'll fix the wrapping problem where long links wrap underneath the image. With flex, the text will stay on the right, in its own "column".
        armatav 8y ago
        You are a genius. I was super panicked and couldn't get the working memory going to actually fix the spacing. Thanks!
- thrmsforbfast 8y ago
  A lot of your news is not just "not-depressing". It's actively uplifting. In fact, most of the stories on the front page are "feel good" stories. It'd be cool/useful if you could provide news on the important issues of the day that's simply "not-depressing". I.e., factual and detached and doesn't elicit emotion, but not explicitly feed-good. (e: forgot to say: nice work!)
  - armatav 8y ago
    Thanks! Yeah I'm thinking of adding a sentiment slider after I get a large amount of news sources going, as well as a "which sources I want to see" selection.
- seltzered_ 8y ago
  Do you have a main audience (i.e. age range, field of work) you're shooting for? What do you care about seeing in the news? How do you discern between truly good news and 'puff pieces'? One thing I've actually liked is the approach of organizing news of the sad with the good. Deregulation nation ( https://deregulationnation.substack.com/welcome https://deregulationnation.substack.com/welcome ) is an example where the newletters are organized by bad/better/good/great - it's focused around a core topic (environment/Trump) and written by hand.
  - armatav 8y ago
    I don't have a main audience that I'm shooting for, but I think this will attract younger folk - I care about seeing anything other than sensationalism. That's kind of cool, I'll take a look at their site!
- DoreenMichele 8y ago
  Promote it on Twitter. There are periodically requests there for some kind of relief from negativity. No clue how to monetize it though.
  - armatav 8y ago
    Like just post it on Twitter with a billion related hashtags? Didn't know Twitter people needed relief from negativity, I should do more research.
    - DoreenMichele 8y ago
      There's a lot of politics on Twitter. Sometimes people get overwhelmed and then say stuff like "Send me all your puppy pic feeds." I don't really know how to self promote on Twitter. You will need to figure that part out yourself.
      - armatav 8y ago
        Alright - thanks for the tip man!
- ahje 8y ago
  The idea seems nice, but: > You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.
  - vntok 8y ago
    Here you go: https://www.enable-javascript.com/ https://www.enable-javascript.com/
- jonathanstrange 8y ago
  It doesn't display any news, just two empty round boxes, on my browser (Firefox), probably due to the privacy extensions I'm using. Disabling uBlock Origin and noScript for the site doesn't change this situation.
- tumetab1 8y ago
  Doesn't work on Firefox (updated) : "Warning: Invalid DOM property `class`. Did you mean `className`?" and some CORS errors.
- Theodores 8y ago
  Recently some people rescued a kangaroo from drowning and gave the marsupial some mouth to mouth resuscitation. I shared this story with animal loving members of the family and we were all moved by it, reassured that humanity was out there in this cruel world. However, was it news? This was news in the broader sense of the word but really it was just a human interest story (and maybe a kangaroo interest story). If we look at the divers rescuing boys from a cave story that Elon Musk got so badly wrong then the same criteria can be applied. Yet their rescue certainly was news. But we didn't give as much scrutiny to the thousands of people rescued in Japan from floodwaters at or around the same time. My Japanese neighbours could have done with less of Elon Musk that week and more of Japan. For them the good news of the rescue in Thailand was at a cost of hearing good (and bad) news from Japan. Invariably there is a political aspect to the news beyond human interest stories. For instance, if Donald Trump choked on a pretzel (heaven forbid) and had to leave office due to the calamity then some people would be absolutely delighted, for them this would be 'good news'. Same goes with news regarding the economy. If house prices go up then this is good news to the rent-seeking class but it is not good news for those that are not on the housing ladder and have to pay more money to the rent-seeking class. Even sport has the same problem, if Burkina Faso beat Brazil in the World Cup then a lot of people would be absolutely gutted, it would not be received as 'good news'. Given that you are not in control of the content and are stuck with what you have got in that aspect (copying from Reddit) you might want to do what others in this comment section have suggested - remove the 'not' and the 'depressing' from the title. There is a double negative going on there. My suggestion is to go for something where you don't have to limit yourself to mere human interest stories, take a side but leave the politics aside. If you went with something like 'underdog news' then you would be able to take the side of 'Burkina Faso against Brazil' without a problem, plus you could do a nifty logo. You could also engage with your audience on this basis, get them to mod up/down stories based on whether there was some epic struggle going on with a clear underdog. Small child beating grand master at chess? Clearly epic for the underdog. You can sidestep the Trumps/Brexits of the world with this type of a spin and not decide what is and what isn't 'non depressing'.
- sailfast 8y ago
  Do you have to curate this, or is it dependent on other curated websites to generate the news? Some sort of ML-backed reading of each story to determine not-depressing vs. depressing? I could see aggregating different curated sites as a potential liability. Was fun to read all the items on your page. Great work!
  - armatav 8y ago
    This MVP is dependent on Reddit, I'm going to start working on a scraper that runs a sentiment analysis on articles (or something) to provide the same effect from every news source available.
esotericn 8y ago
Doesn't work at all for me on FF63. A quick look at the dev console - I think tracking protection blocks it from loading reddit which it wants for whatever reason. Probably a 'proxy through the back-end' job. edit: I just realised I have reddit's DNS blocked. Oops. FF still brings up tracking protection regardless I think.
- armatav 8y ago
  All good man - I'll take a look ASAP
  - xeonoex 8y ago
    I'm having an issue on Firefox 63 as well. No content is loaded. Works fine in Chrome.
mettamage 8y ago
I like it. If you would like to share any insights in how you've built this, I'm quite curious. Perhaps it goes without saying, but if you prefer not to say for whatever reason, then I respect that.
- elektor 8y ago
  Someone mentioned this above but this scrapes headlines from Reddit's r/UpliftingNews.
- armatav 8y ago
  This scrapes from Reddit currently (I just built this) - I'm doing this to check traction - and I'm working a an algorithm that I can feed news sources and any 'happy subreddit' to and get the same effect.
Karuma 8y ago
So, you're just taking the list from https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ ? You should at least name/link them somewhere...
- armatav 8y ago
  Upliftingnews overpowers any other subreddit when you mix them together, so it makes sense to do just them for the MVP - I'd like to scrape from as many news sources as possible in the future, but I've got work to do for that.
  - elektor 8y ago
    I posted a few more positive news sources in the thread if you're interested in adding them to your data ingest.
    - armatav 8y ago
      Oh yeah! I'll take a look at those!
- ohashi 8y ago
  It looks like it's just UpliftingNews but uglier than reddit (which is kind of impressive). I think for it to be an MVP it has to be more than just scraping some community's content. Otherwise this is just an RSS view of one subreddit - I'd rather get the subreddit and all the comments and content surrounding it. No real added benefit from this site.
  - gitgud 8y ago
    I agree, not sure what all the fuss is about. The internet is filled with sites of nothing but links to other sites... The big revolution was web 2.0, where interactivity was enabled and encouraged. That's the reason I go to specific sites, the content is what you make yourself these days, not what gets posted to you...
geff82 8y ago
I just bookmarked your site in the hope that you will find the energy to continue this for a long time. The interesting thing is that there is a big gap between our personal life and what we read in the news. While what we read in the news is often terrible, depressing stuff, our personal life is usually good, mostly manageable and not threatening at all. For most of us, life is worth living. And notdepressing.com caters to that reality, even gives the reader hope that everything will turn out well. No, your website is not a replacement for the news sites we all are used too. But it might become a wonderful addition. Keep it going!
- armatav 8y ago
  Thanks man, the only issue right now is that I really have no idea what to add other than more sources/news articles.
  - Double_a_92 8y ago
    Regional filtering? So you can see everything that happened near you.
elektor 8y ago
For those that are interested in positive/uplifting news, I've been following a few newsletters that have similar content: 1) https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter/ https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter/ (From a recently funded Kickstarter) 2) https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/feb/12/about-the-upside-a-guardian-series https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/feb/12/about-the-upsid... (From the popular newspaper The Guardian) 3) https://tinyletter.com/inbetternews https://tinyletter.com/inbetternews (More cute news/ GIFS of animals) 4) https://www.positive.news/ https://www.positive.news/ (UK based positive news)
- Matrixik 8y ago
  https://futurecrun.ch/ https://futurecrun.ch/ Science, technology and intelligent optimism. All previous issues: https://us8.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=6321feeb3ffd42b0e44a01616&id=aa18ea5b4e https://us8.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=6321feeb3ffd42b0e44...
- humanetech 8y ago
  - https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ - https://www.facebook.com/thehiddengood/ https://www.facebook.com/thehiddengood/ - https://thehappynewspaper.com/ https://thehappynewspaper.com/
- Ptyx 8y ago
  https://twitter.com/HumanProgress https://twitter.com/HumanProgress
  - elektor 8y ago
    The twitter account you linked to is run by Cato Institute, a climate change denying libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers. I would not characterize that as uplifting.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
forgotmypw 8y ago
>You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. :(
- armatav 8y ago
  Sorry man :(
- vntok 8y ago
  Here is how to enable JavaScript: https://www.enable-javascript.com/ https://www.enable-javascript.com/
  - forgotmypw 8y ago
    Thanks, but I'd rather not.
bitexploder 8y ago
On the one hand, I will compliment this and say what a good idea is this is. The world is becoming, on average, a less violent, more prosperous place since the industrial revolution. Fewer people starve and there is much less armed conflict. People need to be reminded of this. But it can be a really dangerous game to live in an bubble and turn blinders on to reality. I hope everyone can take this "not depressing" news dose and also keep an eye on reality. Final thought: Being depressed by the news, any news, is a choice. Depression from the news is often from a feeling of powerlessness over the situation. But what you can control are your emotions and your decision to be depressed by the news. Channeling Epictetus here. He would just tell us to decide not to be depressed and focus on what you can control. Politics got you down? Vote. Get others to vote. Become involved. Local politics are important, etc. That is my thoughts, hopefully that seems balanced. That said, bookmarking this site and I will see how it evolves.
- kopo 8y ago
  Reality is not simple to decipher in an environment of info overload. Imagine walking into a huge library. Every book has descriptions of complex problems. Some books have solutions. Some books don't. But you can only read one book at a time. In that library you can focus on the book that matches your needs and skills. And the world doesn't seem too crazy. Now imagine the same library, but with a thousand different people shouting at you to come look at the problem in some book they picked just up. What kind of reality are you going to experience in that library?
  - bitexploder 8y ago
    I would argue experiencing that reality is also a choice. Unless I am doing research or actively in search of information, I read one of a very few web sites. HN, NY Times, WaPo, and Electoral Vote. I don't feel under-informed. I deleted Facebook and only use things like Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram to keep in touch with an extremely small circle of people, mostly I just email and call folks. That is just how it is. I don't think our brains are meant to drink from the firehouse that is the Internet. It is addicting and counter to what most on HN want in terms of deep work and productivity.
- deleted 8y ago
legionof7 8y ago
My high school runs a podcast that does a similar thing, we talk about positive news and interview people who've made a positive impact on the world (we've done Austen Allred and Turbovote). https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened Love to have you on sometime! :)
- armatav 8y ago
  I'd love to be on! Sounds awesome - email me at notdepressingnews@gmail.com
hapless 8y ago
“None of the news that’s fit to print”
- armatav 8y ago
  That's a really good tagline
toss1 8y ago
Great Idea love it! I'll second the idea of providing straight info on major current events too, tho that might take a big editorial/journo staff... More immediately, while Chrome populates nicely, Firefox just comes up with the main page with [Top Today] and [New] blank. I'm also running NoScript but w/restrictions lifted on all sources on your site.
- armatav 8y ago
  Yeah straight info on major stuff would be good. That's interesting - I have no idea why that could be the case - I'm googling around to help it.
  - thecatspaw 8y ago
    isnt that what reuters does?
    - toss1 8y ago
      Yes, Reuters & BBC are already in my feeds, along with Google searches in sci/tech, and carbon fiber (my biz area). Just always looking for more sources...
  - smacktoward 8y ago
    You want Memeorandum: https://www.memeorandum.com/ https://www.memeorandum.com/
    - toss1 8y ago
      Looks good - thanks!
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
armatav 8y ago
Wow this is going pretty high actually
amingilani 8y ago
Needed this. Right now my city (heck country's) cellular services have been been suspended on account of the thousands of people rioting & torching public and private property to protest the acquittal of a woman in a blasphemy case by the Supreme Court. Just more of the same, I guess.
- armatav 8y ago
  Yikes dude, glad my little project helps
- WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
  I was about to say 'Florida', but I looked outside, nothing's on fire... so googled it. Pakistan.
Tempest1981 8y ago
I would like something that filters either Google News or Apple News (app), and removes all stories of murders and abuse. I understand that a small % of adults behave badly, but I’m not sure that reporting each instance isn’t actually making the problem worse. Or desensitizing us. I guess morbid curiosity sells. I would also like to exclude most Trump news. But still know what’s going on in the world.
- armatav 8y ago
  That's pretty much what I'm aiming for while I build it out behind the scenes - I just want the option to not get slammed in the face with some crazy depressing stuff.
- SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
  The trouble with the vast majority of Trump "news" is that it's not really news - if I wanted to know the content of each and every one of his tweets I'd just follow him on Twitter. It's very lazy journalism.
  - amanaplanacanal 8y ago
    Sure, but it feeds the outrage machine and leads to more ad views. Win-win!
isoskeles 8y ago
For the observer: Don't worry, this is still politically slanted. It's "not depressing" that donations pour in after some wacko burned "LGBTQ books" (for children, left out of the headline; also, exactly four books). Not sure I have time for that much news, depressing or not. And I definitely don't need to be told that it's the opposite of depressing that some people are getting into a tit-for-tat over LGBTQ children's books, a subject I'd love to hear nothing about ever.
- armatav 8y ago
  It's just scraping everything right now - I'm working on a proper filter for it.
armatav 8y ago
Well, it got yoinked off the front page. Sucks. https://imgur.com/a/coYjsZ4 https://imgur.com/a/coYjsZ4
szilardboy 8y ago
Reddit is blocked by most if not all major ISPs in Indonesia, which breaks the site without the use of a proxy. Maybe scrape Reddit server-side? I’m not too sure if that would work but just a suggestion. I really like the idea, though.
- solarkraft 8y ago
  Maybe use a VPN? The issue is clearly with indonesian ISPs.
  - gitgud 8y ago
    It's not the user's fault, they shouldn't need a VPN to read an uplifting news site... That's just depressing...
    - armatav 8y ago
      True
    - solarkraft 8y ago
      Agreed, the fault is with the ISPs. It seems that they are not actually providing internet service.
- armatav 8y ago
  I will ASAP.
tontonius 8y ago
From time to time there tends to arise a demand for news that are not "bad" or depressing or paints the world in a somber palette. However, I'm often reminded of this quote by George Orwell: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” Perhaps news are inherently skewed towards the negative side, and that's the way it should be.
- Angostura 8y ago
  I suppose I should point out that although the quote is often attributed to Orwell, there's no evidence that I know of the said it. A similar quote is also attributed to Harold Evans, during his time as Sunday Times editor.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  Perhaps they are, but news also heavily sensationalizes and dramatizises in order to sell clicks. Leaving out the good traits of a person to paint him as a monster, even though it might have been an honest mistake.
  - matt4077 8y ago
    > Perhaps they are, but news also heavily sensationalizes and dramatizises in order to sell clicks. I don't think that's true if you choose your news with even a modicum of care. Read the Economist, and you won't ever hear of starving children. Unless they become statistically relevant, which points to certain problems with the wish for "positive news". In other quality outlets, you're more likely to read the human-interest stories of crime & suffering. But there's still a vast difference to the blatant exploitation of emotion by tabloid. That's most pronounced in the decision what to cover, and how much space to devote to it: national newspapers do not splash gruesome sex crimes on A1. They do get mentioned when they rise above what happens every day, but receive treatment in proportion to their relevancy. You can argue that some terrorist attack is not relevant to your life, because the chance of dying under such circumstances is still astronomically low. But by that standard, almost everything is irrelevant: once a story becomes directly relevant to you, you're also likely not care about the reports of it very much. Not just for the punny reason that you are dead, but also (if you're less directly involved) because you no longer need to be informed of the event. That little contradiction proves the wisdom of the media's long-standing approach: they set a low bar, and let readers decide which articles to spend time with. There's also an obvious analogy with schooling here: you're unlikely to ever need 90% of what you learn in school. But that's a rather terrible argument against today's curricular, because, as it turns out, everybody ends up needing 10%, and those 10% rarely overlap. Similarly, it'd be a mistake to restrict your news coverage to what's immediately relevant to your life. At the very least, you need some information on what's going on within the wider community every two years when you're asked to make an informed decision at the ballot box. Because if you don't know what's going on, the only feedback loop connection politicians' careers with their actions is gone. People often struggle with this connection: the act of voting is so small and rare, and I am just one of so many. In that way, one feels entirely powerless. But acting on that impression and shutting out bad news, or not voting, still represents a grave dereliction of duty. Because collectively, that minor act is all of it, representing roughly 100% of the legitimacy of democracy. It does not even take 100% of people to abstain from getting involved to turn a society into a banana republic: once participation drops below, say, 80%, you start to see a roughly proportional increase in appeals to some supposed "silent majority" supporting every minority candidate or opinion. As a final observation, I'll point to the NYT long-form features such as [0] to show that quality media does a far better job of grappling with the nuance and contradictions of life. I think there's vastly more excellent journalism out there than people acknowledge, and disparaging the "mainstream media" with the accusation of shoehorning facts into a single, collectively-decided narrative is itself an illegitimate generalization. To use an example that's not the elephant in the room, look at the US' changing attitudes toward drug dependency for an example of the political process working better than most people give it credit for: we are today seeing the inflection point of a decades-long process relying on the initiative by people on the ground and, often in a feedback loop, journalists giving them the light of day changing the collective story ("narrative") from crime to disease. You and I may believe we came up with our opinions on this (and any other) issue completely independently, and through a logical process combining stringent empiricism with sound principles. But that's sort of just being a fish ignorant to the water around them. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-n...
ramigb 8y ago
Putting "not" to negate a negative isn't always a great idea. "Not Depressing" still has the word depressing, versus "uplifting",pleasant or even hopeful these words will always be much better.
- friendly_chap 8y ago
  Very obviously the domain availability is a big problem with that.
- OskarS 8y ago
  It's a perfectly valid rhetorical device. It's called "litotes", and it often conveys a distinct meaning compared to "collapsing" the negatives into a single positive. It's been used liberally by figures such as Homer, Jonathan Swift, Robert Frost, Fredrick Douglass and Shakespeare (as well as pretty much every great writer throughout history). For instance, saying "it's not without issues" usually means something different from "it has issues". In the former case, you probably intending a meaning something similar to "it's has issues, but none of them are serious", while the latter conveys just what it says. The exact thing your trying to communicate obviously varies with context, but it is generally distinct from the "collapsed case" In this particular case, "Not depressing news" puts an emphasis on the fact that most news is depressing, and that this site is different. "Uplifting news" does not communicate that as effectively. Now, it's true that George Orwell complained about a similar construction in Politics and the English Language, but that book is full of terrible ideas about language, and you're doing yourself a disservice if you take any of his advice too seriously.
  - quietbritishjim 8y ago
    > For instance, saying "it's not without issues" usually means something different from "it has issues". Interesting that you go on to say that "it's not without issues" is milder than "it has issues". To me it's the opposite, like a short form of "Is it without issues? No way!" I guess it depends on context and, particularly, how much sarcasm can be detected in the tone of voice (if said out loud). > In this particular case, "Not depressing news" puts an emphasis on the fact that most news is depressing, and that this site is different. "Uplifting news" does not communicate that as effectively. In any case, I agree with this simple explanation.
stareatgoats 8y ago
I really like this idea, and have long thought of doing something similar, the reason being that most/all existing services that I've come across so far don't do a good job at it. They can actually be even more depressing than normal news (to me). One reason reason is that the "positive news" are often reported against something really depressing, don't point to sustainable solutions and so defeats the purpose. In essence I believe "positive news" must either turn a slightly blind eye to the vast number of problems facing humanity (without being essentially just pictures of cats), or mainly bring up such problems if a true solution has been found (not "eating more raisins may reduce cancers in mice"). If this problem could be solved (by heavy manual curation?) I believe a service like this could actually take off.
- arethuza 8y ago
  How do you handle new stories that some people find positive and others find negative?
  - stareatgoats 8y ago
    Go for very general values (they exist), and have one or several specific target audiences.
- humanetech 8y ago
  I have been thinking about this too, and posed an idea some time ago, to the Humane Tech Community [0], named "Turning the Weapon Around" [1]. The gist is to use our existing social media channels, that generally - through their algorithms - reinforce negative sentiments and divisiveness (because that keeps us engaged best, as Max Stossel explains very well in his recent Medium article [2]) to create a network of people that do the opposite: Post, share, like and comment on positive news. This would work best if it were supported by an app that faciliates this. Our community is thinking about such app, a decentralized one, which we'll use for our crowdsourced Humane Tech Awareness program. [0] https://community.humanetech.com https://community.humanetech.com [1] https://community.humanetech.com/t/idea-turning-the-weapon-around-raising-awareness/423 https://community.humanetech.com/t/idea-turning-the-weapon-a... [2] https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their-mind-e1cede28a30 https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their-mind-...
stdclass 8y ago
Something similar from David Byrne: https://www.reasonstobecheerful.world/ https://www.reasonstobecheerful.world/
RickJWagner 8y ago
I like it. Especially the Red Hat story.
- mikekchar 8y ago
  Yeah. That blew my mind. I'm not actually sure it's not depressing. Will IBM maintain Red Hat's open source policies? It seems very unlikely...
ThomPete 8y ago
You should call it Great News
Aeolun 8y ago
There is indeed ‘not’ depressing news on the page. In fact, there isn’t any news at all. Is this a practical joke? Or is the website broken?
- rhencke 8y ago
  Try again - there are many uplifting articles listed.
- wodow 8y ago
  In the latest Firefox, the console informs me > The resource at “https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/new.json?sort=new?” https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/new.json?sort=new?” was blocked because content blocking is enabled. This is due to Firefox's built-in content blocking / tracking protection [1], not a plugin. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection
  - SquareWheel 8y ago
    Soo, it's just poaching content from reddit?
- shsll 8y ago
  Got the website to load headlines after I disabled 'content blocking' in latest Firefox.
ryanmercer 8y ago
"not derpessing" 1st yeah ok 2nd 'Remote Canadian town has been in isolation for a year' 3rd 'a bunch of people have diabetes and alzheimers' 4th 'some dude was unemployed and in a closet' 5th 'some dog lost a leg' 6th 'dude burns LGBTQ books' 7th 'A Christian was sentenced to death' Yeah man... I'm not seeing this 'not depressin'g part.
gvajravelu 8y ago
Great idea! Thanks for trying to make the world a better place.
- smackay 8y ago
  Indeed. This, https://phys.org/news/2018-10-portugal-wild-circus-animals.html https://phys.org/news/2018-10-portugal-wild-circus-animals.h... made my day. Portugal is a little on the conservative side and taking the kids to see the elephants at Christmas is very much a tradition. This law is going to raise eyebrows and open some eyes. The date of 2024 seems rather far away but given the cultural impact this will have it's rather pragmatic.
madshiva 8y ago
Bisounours News.
specialist 8y ago
I'm now doing eldercare. Are there any Happy Stuff TV channel(s) that I can program as defaults? Knitting, kittens, panda bears, food, travel, museum tours, antiques, etc. An easy default channel for those people who use TV as company, background noise. (For examples: my mom, her boyfriend, my uncle.) The default channels (Fox, CNN, local news, crime shows) are horrifying. Fear, outrage, gore, drama, political ads. No wonder the boomers are acting insane. Of course, I change the channel to some happy stuff, if I can find it. Which delights my mom and her boyfriend. But such programming is not 24/7. When the segment is over, cue channel surfing, and it's right back to horror show. I don't have TV, so don't know how to Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV. (I've been reading up, but haven't experimented yet.) Tangent: I just discovered my mom's been paying $250/mo for triple play. Outrageous. But given the givens, I'd happily pay $100/mo for curated commercial free Happy Stuff TV cable channel package.
- edc117 8y ago
  Similar boat, have to look after my parents now and the difference between my father watching Fox News (well...any news these days) regularly and not is night and day. He's far more angry with it on, its just nonstop outrage and cynicism. I'd love to find something that would satisfy his desire to 'stay current' without the overreaction and FUD, but maybe he'd just go looking for it anyway.
bromley 8y ago
My wife has been running a somewhat-related twitter account for a few years: https://twitter.com/happyanimalnews https://twitter.com/happyanimalnews I am, of course, a big fan :)
simias 8y ago
The first thing I notice browsing the homepage is that these "not depressing news" are often feel-good stories that can be uplifting but also aren't very intellectually stimulating, e.g.: >Thanks to ‘Super Mom’ Saving Her Husband’s Life, He Opens His Eyes in Time to See His Son’s Birth That's super nice to hear but it barely qualifies as "news" as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile those that seem more interesting are not that uplifting to me, for instance: >Donations Pour Into Northwest Iowa Library After Man Burns LGBTQ Books So that means that somebody burned LGBTQ books in the first place? That's pretty messed up. >A Christian woman who was sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy has won her appeal and been acquitted in a landmark ruling. Somebody was sentenced to death for blasphemy at some point in this day and age? That's not uplifting at all. I guess I'm a glass half-empty kind of guy. I do sympathize with the intent here, it's true that actual news can be very depressing. My personal "not depressing news" involves reading about sciences, in particular astronomy. Questioning the way our world functions, contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me.
- all2 8y ago
  > contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me. I contemplate those things and regularly verge on existential crisis. From a news curation perspective, I typically follow a couple of simple rules: timeliness, importance, and proximity. For a site focused on 'good' and 'uplifting' I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). Perhaps OP could shift focus, or add a section that have posts related to STEM subjects.
  - jniedrauer 8y ago
    > I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). This very quickly devolves into pop-sci clickbait. Cancer gets solved roughly 3 times a week, along with Alzheimer's and every other scary sounding disease. And our battery capacity somehow goes up by an order of magnitude a few times a month. And so on. Journalism is just broken in the internet age. Clickbait is more profitable than reality. Anger inducing clickbait is the most profitable of all.
gitgud 8y ago
No offence to the developer, but isn't this like propaganda? I mean you're not just choosing to only see the best in world, but you're letting someone else define what is the best (or not depressing). Just seems a little weird to me...
- conradk 8y ago
  That's the case with any newspaper though, isn't it? We should always cross-check and verify, listen to multiple opinions and look at a variety of sources if possible.
  - snaky 8y ago
    The main purpose of newspapers used to be exactly an opposite. You choose the particular newspaper, by editorial board views closest to yours, and just get an information. You don't have to cross-check everything - that's what you pay for subscribing to newspaper. You outsource the job to the editors.
    - conradk 8y ago
      The part "by editorial board views closest to yours" says it all. All newspapers have views. They choose what is "good" or "bad" based on their views. That's why cross-checking is essential.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- krona 8y ago
  Just seems a little weird to me... Isn't this how most curated sources of information, from newspapers to scientific journals, work?
  - gitgud 8y ago
    True, I guess this source is a least transparent about what kind of content they are promoting
pwenzel 8y ago
Can you please, pretty please, add an RSS feed?
- edgartaor 8y ago
  He is using Reddit /r/upliftingnews as source so you subscribe to; https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews.rss https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews.rss
PaulHoule 8y ago
There are many interesting questions around this. Is the purpose of news to manipulate your mood? If that is the case it competes with video games, sports, fiction, etc. Is the purpose of news to inform? In that case "current events" competes with an understanding of past events. I was listening to an evangelical preacher the other day about the book "Romans" written by my namesake and how the apostles are getting their asses kicked in roman jails and preaching with anger against immorality (beyond the pale today in the west) such as polygamy and slavery. Then I was reading about how the Polish and Japanese both learned how to write at the same time in the same way. I felt the dread hanging over Arlington National Memorial and was shocked to discover who had owned the land it was on. This 1971 book https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Ben-H-Bagdikian/dp/0060902582 https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Ben-H-Bagdikian/... predicted that we would have "news on the web" in the 1980s and has a much deeper analysis of that entails than most books written since. He sees a fundamental problem in "news" that the gatekeeper function has to be done efficiently and quickly. Of all the things that happened today, the "news" is one in a billion or so. That selection is necessary to create a feeling of shared reality. (I saw CNN at 5:14 and my Uncle Nic saw it at 7:31 and we saw "the same thing") That selection is also violence against reality itself.
sbussard 8y ago
The design needs some work for desktop, plz
aptwebapps 8y ago
Not to be a downer, but the current top story is "Thousands of Native voters in North Dakota getting free IDs". The reason that's necessary is not not depressing. It's sort of like "Man who fell off click only broke both legs".
- mooseburger 8y ago
  Nothing wrong with voter ID, nearly all developed countries do it.
  - js2 8y ago
    The U.S. has a long history of voter suppression, of which using IDs to limit who can vote is one tactic. For some of us, that's depressing. This is off-topic though so I won't comment further.
  - tbrownaw 8y ago
    In theory, sure. The problem comes in when a detectable amount of people don't have and can't easily get accepted IDs.
  - aptwebapps 8y ago
    In theory, sure, sounds good. But the facts on the ground matter more than theory. The first fact is that there is precious little voter fraud of the type that can be stopped by voter ID laws. Did you hear about the woman from Texas who was recently convicted and sentenced to prison for it? You know why it was in the news? Because it's that rare. So whatever the costs of more stringent restrictions at the ballot box are, they have to be borne by some pretty slim benefits. And the costs are pretty severe. Thousands of the Native Americans in North Dakota don't have the kind of residential address required by the law, passed by Republicans shortly after a Democrat one her Senate race by 3,000 votes with strong Native American support. And for many of the ones who do have a residential address, the address the state has on record for them is off by enough to theoretically trigger the provisions of the law, making it unlawful to cast their ballots. I.e., their actual address doesn't match what the government thinks it is, so either they illegally provide the matching address or legally provide the correct address and get their ballot rejected. Some sort of voter registration obviously makes sense, but do you think this particular law is a good one? Further, do you think it was passed with good intentions?
seymour333 8y ago
Wait, dogs can get cancer? Fuck. That is super depressing.
- JoeAltmaier 8y ago
  I think actually every living animal can get cancer. Except maybe sharks, or is that an urban legend?
  - zimpenfish 8y ago
    Alas, they do. https://www.livescience.com/41655-great-white-shark-cancer.html https://www.livescience.com/41655-great-white-shark-cancer.h... > Scientists have known for more than 150 years that sharks get cancer. And yet the belief persists that the animals don't suffer from the disease.
mooseburger 8y ago
Nice idea. Basically the opposite of this excellent short story: http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/
mixedCase 8y ago
You might wanna check this: Unhandled Rejection (TypeError): Cannot read property 'children' of undefined App._callee2$ src/App.js:72 69 | let topTen = [] 70 | 71 | let newPostsRaw = await axios.get("https://www.reddit.com/r/" + subreddit + "/new.json?sort=new?") > 72 | let newPosts = newPostsRaw.data.data.children 73 | ^ 74 | // console.log(newPosts) 75 |
- armatav 8y ago
  I'll take a look ASAP
bwhthd 8y ago
Looks empty to me
fiatjaf 8y ago
Sincerely, I feel depressed reading that the government is away things to people (as the money ultimately will leave my pocket for that); or that a new drug may solve many problems (as I feel I'll have to do my own research to evaluate these claims now); or that a dog had cancer and lots of people were worried about it; or that Snapchat is getting praised for anything.
megaman8 8y ago
Great concept! I really hope this catches on.
MilnerRoute 8y ago
Just FYI: Firefox and Edge both give me a warning about it not being secure. "The owner of www.notdepressing.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."
newnewpdro 8y ago
Living in a news bubble isolated from the depressing news of the time inhibits the negative feedback lagely responsible for making change from reaching the public. Aren't people's news feeds on social emdia already effectively doing this? And it's part of the problem.
stuhinze 8y ago
So you just built a barebones, frankly sort of ugly UI around an RSS feed of /r/UpliftingNews/? Is this a bootcamp application project? How did this end up on the front page?
jraph 8y ago
"You need to enable JavaScript to run this app." Depressing.

209 points by armatav 8y ago

Hey HN, I'm looking for some feedback on NDN, it's a little MVP that will eventually give you only the not-depressing news from all over the web - it's seeing quite a bit of retention, and I'd like to know what you think! I'd like to turn it into a product, but it's pretty hard to see where to go.

corysama 8y ago
Just a tiny bit of typography on the links would go a long way to making the site look more professional.
- armatav 8y ago
  I'd be happy to add that, if you can suggest what kind of typography I should use or take a look at
  - rococode 8y ago
    A basic start: bigger font size, drop the underscore (text-decoration: none), change the font color to black or dark gray. You can do a lighter color on hover to make it clear it's a link. Not perfect, but I think it's better than what's live right now. You can browse for a nicer font, too. Plenty of free choices at Google Fonts. End result would be something like this: https://i.imgur.com/c7YJCN9.png https://i.imgur.com/c7YJCN9.png Maybe align the text with the image as well, although vertical aligns are always a big pain to implement haha.
    - dceddia 8y ago
      Flexbox makes vertical alignment a snap. It's even pretty well supported these days: https://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox https://caniuse.com/#search=flexbox In this case, all you need to do is add "display: flex; align-items: center" to your a tags. After that I'd probably get rid of the margin-bottom on them too. Finally, to visually center everything vertically, remove the margin-top on the img inside the a. A bonus of using display:flex is that it'll fix the wrapping problem where long links wrap underneath the image. With flex, the text will stay on the right, in its own "column".
      - armatav 8y ago
        You are a genius. I was super panicked and couldn't get the working memory going to actually fix the spacing. Thanks!
thrmsforbfast 8y ago
A lot of your news is not just "not-depressing". It's actively uplifting. In fact, most of the stories on the front page are "feel good" stories. It'd be cool/useful if you could provide news on the important issues of the day that's simply "not-depressing". I.e., factual and detached and doesn't elicit emotion, but not explicitly feed-good. (e: forgot to say: nice work!)
- armatav 8y ago
  Thanks! Yeah I'm thinking of adding a sentiment slider after I get a large amount of news sources going, as well as a "which sources I want to see" selection.
seltzered_ 8y ago
Do you have a main audience (i.e. age range, field of work) you're shooting for? What do you care about seeing in the news? How do you discern between truly good news and 'puff pieces'? One thing I've actually liked is the approach of organizing news of the sad with the good. Deregulation nation ( https://deregulationnation.substack.com/welcome https://deregulationnation.substack.com/welcome ) is an example where the newletters are organized by bad/better/good/great - it's focused around a core topic (environment/Trump) and written by hand.
- armatav 8y ago
  I don't have a main audience that I'm shooting for, but I think this will attract younger folk - I care about seeing anything other than sensationalism. That's kind of cool, I'll take a look at their site!
DoreenMichele 8y ago
Promote it on Twitter. There are periodically requests there for some kind of relief from negativity. No clue how to monetize it though.
- armatav 8y ago
  Like just post it on Twitter with a billion related hashtags? Didn't know Twitter people needed relief from negativity, I should do more research.
  - DoreenMichele 8y ago
    There's a lot of politics on Twitter. Sometimes people get overwhelmed and then say stuff like "Send me all your puppy pic feeds." I don't really know how to self promote on Twitter. You will need to figure that part out yourself.
    - armatav 8y ago
      Alright - thanks for the tip man!
ahje 8y ago
The idea seems nice, but: > You need to enable JavaScript to run this app.
- vntok 8y ago
  Here you go: https://www.enable-javascript.com/ https://www.enable-javascript.com/
jonathanstrange 8y ago
It doesn't display any news, just two empty round boxes, on my browser (Firefox), probably due to the privacy extensions I'm using. Disabling uBlock Origin and noScript for the site doesn't change this situation.
tumetab1 8y ago
Doesn't work on Firefox (updated) : "Warning: Invalid DOM property `class`. Did you mean `className`?" and some CORS errors.
Theodores 8y ago
Recently some people rescued a kangaroo from drowning and gave the marsupial some mouth to mouth resuscitation. I shared this story with animal loving members of the family and we were all moved by it, reassured that humanity was out there in this cruel world. However, was it news? This was news in the broader sense of the word but really it was just a human interest story (and maybe a kangaroo interest story). If we look at the divers rescuing boys from a cave story that Elon Musk got so badly wrong then the same criteria can be applied. Yet their rescue certainly was news. But we didn't give as much scrutiny to the thousands of people rescued in Japan from floodwaters at or around the same time. My Japanese neighbours could have done with less of Elon Musk that week and more of Japan. For them the good news of the rescue in Thailand was at a cost of hearing good (and bad) news from Japan. Invariably there is a political aspect to the news beyond human interest stories. For instance, if Donald Trump choked on a pretzel (heaven forbid) and had to leave office due to the calamity then some people would be absolutely delighted, for them this would be 'good news'. Same goes with news regarding the economy. If house prices go up then this is good news to the rent-seeking class but it is not good news for those that are not on the housing ladder and have to pay more money to the rent-seeking class. Even sport has the same problem, if Burkina Faso beat Brazil in the World Cup then a lot of people would be absolutely gutted, it would not be received as 'good news'. Given that you are not in control of the content and are stuck with what you have got in that aspect (copying from Reddit) you might want to do what others in this comment section have suggested - remove the 'not' and the 'depressing' from the title. There is a double negative going on there. My suggestion is to go for something where you don't have to limit yourself to mere human interest stories, take a side but leave the politics aside. If you went with something like 'underdog news' then you would be able to take the side of 'Burkina Faso against Brazil' without a problem, plus you could do a nifty logo. You could also engage with your audience on this basis, get them to mod up/down stories based on whether there was some epic struggle going on with a clear underdog. Small child beating grand master at chess? Clearly epic for the underdog. You can sidestep the Trumps/Brexits of the world with this type of a spin and not decide what is and what isn't 'non depressing'.
sailfast 8y ago
Do you have to curate this, or is it dependent on other curated websites to generate the news? Some sort of ML-backed reading of each story to determine not-depressing vs. depressing? I could see aggregating different curated sites as a potential liability. Was fun to read all the items on your page. Great work!
- armatav 8y ago
  This MVP is dependent on Reddit, I'm going to start working on a scraper that runs a sentiment analysis on articles (or something) to provide the same effect from every news source available.

esotericn 8y ago

Doesn't work at all for me on FF63. A quick look at the dev console - I think tracking protection blocks it from loading reddit which it wants for whatever reason. Probably a 'proxy through the back-end' job. edit: I just realised I have reddit's DNS blocked. Oops. FF still brings up tracking protection regardless I think.

armatav 8y ago
All good man - I'll take a look ASAP
- xeonoex 8y ago
  I'm having an issue on Firefox 63 as well. No content is loaded. Works fine in Chrome.

mettamage 8y ago

I like it. If you would like to share any insights in how you've built this, I'm quite curious. Perhaps it goes without saying, but if you prefer not to say for whatever reason, then I respect that.

elektor 8y ago
Someone mentioned this above but this scrapes headlines from Reddit's r/UpliftingNews.
armatav 8y ago
This scrapes from Reddit currently (I just built this) - I'm doing this to check traction - and I'm working a an algorithm that I can feed news sources and any 'happy subreddit' to and get the same effect.

Karuma 8y ago

So, you're just taking the list from https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ https://www.reddit.com/r/UpliftingNews/ ? You should at least name/link them somewhere...

armatav 8y ago
Upliftingnews overpowers any other subreddit when you mix them together, so it makes sense to do just them for the MVP - I'd like to scrape from as many news sources as possible in the future, but I've got work to do for that.
- elektor 8y ago
  I posted a few more positive news sources in the thread if you're interested in adding them to your data ingest.
  - armatav 8y ago
    Oh yeah! I'll take a look at those!
ohashi 8y ago
It looks like it's just UpliftingNews but uglier than reddit (which is kind of impressive). I think for it to be an MVP it has to be more than just scraping some community's content. Otherwise this is just an RSS view of one subreddit - I'd rather get the subreddit and all the comments and content surrounding it. No real added benefit from this site.
- gitgud 8y ago
  I agree, not sure what all the fuss is about. The internet is filled with sites of nothing but links to other sites... The big revolution was web 2.0, where interactivity was enabled and encouraged. That's the reason I go to specific sites, the content is what you make yourself these days, not what gets posted to you...

geff82 8y ago

I just bookmarked your site in the hope that you will find the energy to continue this for a long time. The interesting thing is that there is a big gap between our personal life and what we read in the news. While what we read in the news is often terrible, depressing stuff, our personal life is usually good, mostly manageable and not threatening at all. For most of us, life is worth living. And notdepressing.com caters to that reality, even gives the reader hope that everything will turn out well. No, your website is not a replacement for the news sites we all are used too. But it might become a wonderful addition. Keep it going!

armatav 8y ago
Thanks man, the only issue right now is that I really have no idea what to add other than more sources/news articles.
- Double_a_92 8y ago
  Regional filtering? So you can see everything that happened near you.

elektor 8y ago

For those that are interested in positive/uplifting news, I've been following a few newsletters that have similar content: 1) https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter/ https://www.goodgoodgood.co/goodnewsletter/ (From a recently funded Kickstarter) 2) https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/feb/12/about-the-upside-a-guardian-series https://www.theguardian.com/info/2018/feb/12/about-the-upsid... (From the popular newspaper The Guardian) 3) https://tinyletter.com/inbetternews https://tinyletter.com/inbetternews (More cute news/ GIFS of animals) 4) https://www.positive.news/ https://www.positive.news/ (UK based positive news)

Matrixik 8y ago
https://futurecrun.ch/ https://futurecrun.ch/ Science, technology and intelligent optimism. All previous issues: https://us8.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=6321feeb3ffd42b0e44a01616&id=aa18ea5b4e https://us8.campaign-archive.com/home/?u=6321feeb3ffd42b0e44...
humanetech 8y ago
- https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/ - https://www.facebook.com/thehiddengood/ https://www.facebook.com/thehiddengood/ - https://thehappynewspaper.com/ https://thehappynewspaper.com/
Ptyx 8y ago
https://twitter.com/HumanProgress https://twitter.com/HumanProgress
- elektor 8y ago
  The twitter account you linked to is run by Cato Institute, a climate change denying libertarian think tank founded by Charles G. Koch and funded by the Koch brothers. I would not characterize that as uplifting.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]

forgotmypw 8y ago

>You need to enable JavaScript to run this app. :(

armatav 8y ago
Sorry man :(
vntok 8y ago
Here is how to enable JavaScript: https://www.enable-javascript.com/ https://www.enable-javascript.com/
- forgotmypw 8y ago
  Thanks, but I'd rather not.

bitexploder 8y ago

On the one hand, I will compliment this and say what a good idea is this is. The world is becoming, on average, a less violent, more prosperous place since the industrial revolution. Fewer people starve and there is much less armed conflict. People need to be reminded of this. But it can be a really dangerous game to live in an bubble and turn blinders on to reality. I hope everyone can take this "not depressing" news dose and also keep an eye on reality. Final thought: Being depressed by the news, any news, is a choice. Depression from the news is often from a feeling of powerlessness over the situation. But what you can control are your emotions and your decision to be depressed by the news. Channeling Epictetus here. He would just tell us to decide not to be depressed and focus on what you can control. Politics got you down? Vote. Get others to vote. Become involved. Local politics are important, etc. That is my thoughts, hopefully that seems balanced. That said, bookmarking this site and I will see how it evolves.

kopo 8y ago
Reality is not simple to decipher in an environment of info overload. Imagine walking into a huge library. Every book has descriptions of complex problems. Some books have solutions. Some books don't. But you can only read one book at a time. In that library you can focus on the book that matches your needs and skills. And the world doesn't seem too crazy. Now imagine the same library, but with a thousand different people shouting at you to come look at the problem in some book they picked just up. What kind of reality are you going to experience in that library?
- bitexploder 8y ago
  I would argue experiencing that reality is also a choice. Unless I am doing research or actively in search of information, I read one of a very few web sites. HN, NY Times, WaPo, and Electoral Vote. I don't feel under-informed. I deleted Facebook and only use things like Twitter/LinkedIn/Instagram to keep in touch with an extremely small circle of people, mostly I just email and call folks. That is just how it is. I don't think our brains are meant to drink from the firehouse that is the Internet. It is addicting and counter to what most on HN want in terms of deep work and productivity.
deleted 8y ago

legionof7 8y ago

My high school runs a podcast that does a similar thing, we talk about positive news and interview people who've made a positive impact on the world (we've done Austen Allred and Turbovote). https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened https://anchor.fm/somethinggoodhappened Love to have you on sometime! :)

armatav 8y ago
I'd love to be on! Sounds awesome - email me at notdepressingnews@gmail.com

hapless 8y ago

“None of the news that’s fit to print”

armatav 8y ago
That's a really good tagline

toss1 8y ago

Great Idea love it! I'll second the idea of providing straight info on major current events too, tho that might take a big editorial/journo staff... More immediately, while Chrome populates nicely, Firefox just comes up with the main page with [Top Today] and [New] blank. I'm also running NoScript but w/restrictions lifted on all sources on your site.

armatav 8y ago
Yeah straight info on major stuff would be good. That's interesting - I have no idea why that could be the case - I'm googling around to help it.
- thecatspaw 8y ago
  isnt that what reuters does?
  - toss1 8y ago
    Yes, Reuters & BBC are already in my feeds, along with Google searches in sci/tech, and carbon fiber (my biz area). Just always looking for more sources...
- smacktoward 8y ago
  You want Memeorandum: https://www.memeorandum.com/ https://www.memeorandum.com/
  - toss1 8y ago
    Looks good - thanks!
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

armatav 8y ago

Wow this is going pretty high actually

amingilani 8y ago

Needed this. Right now my city (heck country's) cellular services have been been suspended on account of the thousands of people rioting & torching public and private property to protest the acquittal of a woman in a blasphemy case by the Supreme Court. Just more of the same, I guess.

armatav 8y ago
Yikes dude, glad my little project helps
WrtCdEvrydy 8y ago
I was about to say 'Florida', but I looked outside, nothing's on fire... so googled it. Pakistan.

Tempest1981 8y ago

I would like something that filters either Google News or Apple News (app), and removes all stories of murders and abuse. I understand that a small % of adults behave badly, but I’m not sure that reporting each instance isn’t actually making the problem worse. Or desensitizing us. I guess morbid curiosity sells. I would also like to exclude most Trump news. But still know what’s going on in the world.

armatav 8y ago
That's pretty much what I'm aiming for while I build it out behind the scenes - I just want the option to not get slammed in the face with some crazy depressing stuff.
SmellyGeekBoy 8y ago
The trouble with the vast majority of Trump "news" is that it's not really news - if I wanted to know the content of each and every one of his tweets I'd just follow him on Twitter. It's very lazy journalism.
- amanaplanacanal 8y ago
  Sure, but it feeds the outrage machine and leads to more ad views. Win-win!

isoskeles 8y ago

For the observer: Don't worry, this is still politically slanted. It's "not depressing" that donations pour in after some wacko burned "LGBTQ books" (for children, left out of the headline; also, exactly four books). Not sure I have time for that much news, depressing or not. And I definitely don't need to be told that it's the opposite of depressing that some people are getting into a tit-for-tat over LGBTQ children's books, a subject I'd love to hear nothing about ever.

armatav 8y ago
It's just scraping everything right now - I'm working on a proper filter for it.

armatav 8y ago

Well, it got yoinked off the front page. Sucks. https://imgur.com/a/coYjsZ4 https://imgur.com/a/coYjsZ4

szilardboy 8y ago

Reddit is blocked by most if not all major ISPs in Indonesia, which breaks the site without the use of a proxy. Maybe scrape Reddit server-side? I’m not too sure if that would work but just a suggestion. I really like the idea, though.

solarkraft 8y ago
Maybe use a VPN? The issue is clearly with indonesian ISPs.
- gitgud 8y ago
  It's not the user's fault, they shouldn't need a VPN to read an uplifting news site... That's just depressing...
  - armatav 8y ago
    True
  - solarkraft 8y ago
    Agreed, the fault is with the ISPs. It seems that they are not actually providing internet service.
armatav 8y ago
I will ASAP.

tontonius 8y ago

From time to time there tends to arise a demand for news that are not "bad" or depressing or paints the world in a somber palette. However, I'm often reminded of this quote by George Orwell: “Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed: everything else is public relations.” Perhaps news are inherently skewed towards the negative side, and that's the way it should be.

Angostura 8y ago
I suppose I should point out that although the quote is often attributed to Orwell, there's no evidence that I know of the said it. A similar quote is also attributed to Harold Evans, during his time as Sunday Times editor.
thecatspaw 8y ago
Perhaps they are, but news also heavily sensationalizes and dramatizises in order to sell clicks. Leaving out the good traits of a person to paint him as a monster, even though it might have been an honest mistake.
- matt4077 8y ago
  > Perhaps they are, but news also heavily sensationalizes and dramatizises in order to sell clicks. I don't think that's true if you choose your news with even a modicum of care. Read the Economist, and you won't ever hear of starving children. Unless they become statistically relevant, which points to certain problems with the wish for "positive news". In other quality outlets, you're more likely to read the human-interest stories of crime & suffering. But there's still a vast difference to the blatant exploitation of emotion by tabloid. That's most pronounced in the decision what to cover, and how much space to devote to it: national newspapers do not splash gruesome sex crimes on A1. They do get mentioned when they rise above what happens every day, but receive treatment in proportion to their relevancy. You can argue that some terrorist attack is not relevant to your life, because the chance of dying under such circumstances is still astronomically low. But by that standard, almost everything is irrelevant: once a story becomes directly relevant to you, you're also likely not care about the reports of it very much. Not just for the punny reason that you are dead, but also (if you're less directly involved) because you no longer need to be informed of the event. That little contradiction proves the wisdom of the media's long-standing approach: they set a low bar, and let readers decide which articles to spend time with. There's also an obvious analogy with schooling here: you're unlikely to ever need 90% of what you learn in school. But that's a rather terrible argument against today's curricular, because, as it turns out, everybody ends up needing 10%, and those 10% rarely overlap. Similarly, it'd be a mistake to restrict your news coverage to what's immediately relevant to your life. At the very least, you need some information on what's going on within the wider community every two years when you're asked to make an informed decision at the ballot box. Because if you don't know what's going on, the only feedback loop connection politicians' careers with their actions is gone. People often struggle with this connection: the act of voting is so small and rare, and I am just one of so many. In that way, one feels entirely powerless. But acting on that impression and shutting out bad news, or not voting, still represents a grave dereliction of duty. Because collectively, that minor act is all of it, representing roughly 100% of the legitimacy of democracy. It does not even take 100% of people to abstain from getting involved to turn a society into a banana republic: once participation drops below, say, 80%, you start to see a roughly proportional increase in appeals to some supposed "silent majority" supporting every minority candidate or opinion. As a final observation, I'll point to the NYT long-form features such as [0] to show that quality media does a far better job of grappling with the nuance and contradictions of life. I think there's vastly more excellent journalism out there than people acknowledge, and disparaging the "mainstream media" with the accusation of shoehorning facts into a single, collectively-decided narrative is itself an illegitimate generalization. To use an example that's not the elephant in the room, look at the US' changing attitudes toward drug dependency for an example of the political process working better than most people give it credit for: we are today seeing the inflection point of a decades-long process relying on the initiative by people on the ground and, often in a feedback loop, journalists giving them the light of day changing the collective story ("narrative") from crime to disease. You and I may believe we came up with our opinions on this (and any other) issue completely independently, and through a logical process combining stringent empiricism with sound principles. But that's sort of just being a fish ignorant to the water around them. [0] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-new-york-city.html https://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/18/nyregion/dying-alone-in-n...

ramigb 8y ago

Putting "not" to negate a negative isn't always a great idea. "Not Depressing" still has the word depressing, versus "uplifting",pleasant or even hopeful these words will always be much better.

friendly_chap 8y ago
Very obviously the domain availability is a big problem with that.
OskarS 8y ago
It's a perfectly valid rhetorical device. It's called "litotes", and it often conveys a distinct meaning compared to "collapsing" the negatives into a single positive. It's been used liberally by figures such as Homer, Jonathan Swift, Robert Frost, Fredrick Douglass and Shakespeare (as well as pretty much every great writer throughout history). For instance, saying "it's not without issues" usually means something different from "it has issues". In the former case, you probably intending a meaning something similar to "it's has issues, but none of them are serious", while the latter conveys just what it says. The exact thing your trying to communicate obviously varies with context, but it is generally distinct from the "collapsed case" In this particular case, "Not depressing news" puts an emphasis on the fact that most news is depressing, and that this site is different. "Uplifting news" does not communicate that as effectively. Now, it's true that George Orwell complained about a similar construction in Politics and the English Language, but that book is full of terrible ideas about language, and you're doing yourself a disservice if you take any of his advice too seriously.
- quietbritishjim 8y ago
  > For instance, saying "it's not without issues" usually means something different from "it has issues". Interesting that you go on to say that "it's not without issues" is milder than "it has issues". To me it's the opposite, like a short form of "Is it without issues? No way!" I guess it depends on context and, particularly, how much sarcasm can be detected in the tone of voice (if said out loud). > In this particular case, "Not depressing news" puts an emphasis on the fact that most news is depressing, and that this site is different. "Uplifting news" does not communicate that as effectively. In any case, I agree with this simple explanation.

stareatgoats 8y ago

I really like this idea, and have long thought of doing something similar, the reason being that most/all existing services that I've come across so far don't do a good job at it. They can actually be even more depressing than normal news (to me). One reason reason is that the "positive news" are often reported against something really depressing, don't point to sustainable solutions and so defeats the purpose. In essence I believe "positive news" must either turn a slightly blind eye to the vast number of problems facing humanity (without being essentially just pictures of cats), or mainly bring up such problems if a true solution has been found (not "eating more raisins may reduce cancers in mice"). If this problem could be solved (by heavy manual curation?) I believe a service like this could actually take off.

arethuza 8y ago
How do you handle new stories that some people find positive and others find negative?
- stareatgoats 8y ago
  Go for very general values (they exist), and have one or several specific target audiences.
humanetech 8y ago
I have been thinking about this too, and posed an idea some time ago, to the Humane Tech Community [0], named "Turning the Weapon Around" [1]. The gist is to use our existing social media channels, that generally - through their algorithms - reinforce negative sentiments and divisiveness (because that keeps us engaged best, as Max Stossel explains very well in his recent Medium article [2]) to create a network of people that do the opposite: Post, share, like and comment on positive news. This would work best if it were supported by an app that faciliates this. Our community is thinking about such app, a decentralized one, which we'll use for our crowdsourced Humane Tech Awareness program. [0] https://community.humanetech.com https://community.humanetech.com [1] https://community.humanetech.com/t/idea-turning-the-weapon-around-raising-awareness/423 https://community.humanetech.com/t/idea-turning-the-weapon-a... [2] https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their-mind-e1cede28a30 https://medium.com/@maxstossel/how-everyone-lost-their-mind-...

stdclass 8y ago

Something similar from David Byrne: https://www.reasonstobecheerful.world/ https://www.reasonstobecheerful.world/

RickJWagner 8y ago

I like it. Especially the Red Hat story.

mikekchar 8y ago
Yeah. That blew my mind. I'm not actually sure it's not depressing. Will IBM maintain Red Hat's open source policies? It seems very unlikely...

ThomPete 8y ago

You should call it Great News

Aeolun 8y ago

There is indeed ‘not’ depressing news on the page. In fact, there isn’t any news at all. Is this a practical joke? Or is the website broken?

rhencke 8y ago
Try again - there are many uplifting articles listed.
wodow 8y ago
In the latest Firefox, the console informs me > The resource at “https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/new.json?sort=new?” https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews/new.json?sort=new?” was blocked because content blocking is enabled. This is due to Firefox's built-in content blocking / tracking protection [1], not a plugin. [1] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  Soo, it's just poaching content from reddit?
shsll 8y ago
Got the website to load headlines after I disabled 'content blocking' in latest Firefox.

ryanmercer 8y ago

"not derpessing" 1st yeah ok 2nd 'Remote Canadian town has been in isolation for a year' 3rd 'a bunch of people have diabetes and alzheimers' 4th 'some dude was unemployed and in a closet' 5th 'some dog lost a leg' 6th 'dude burns LGBTQ books' 7th 'A Christian was sentenced to death' Yeah man... I'm not seeing this 'not depressin'g part.

gvajravelu 8y ago

Great idea! Thanks for trying to make the world a better place.

smackay 8y ago
Indeed. This, https://phys.org/news/2018-10-portugal-wild-circus-animals.html https://phys.org/news/2018-10-portugal-wild-circus-animals.h... made my day. Portugal is a little on the conservative side and taking the kids to see the elephants at Christmas is very much a tradition. This law is going to raise eyebrows and open some eyes. The date of 2024 seems rather far away but given the cultural impact this will have it's rather pragmatic.

madshiva 8y ago

Bisounours News.

specialist 8y ago

I'm now doing eldercare. Are there any Happy Stuff TV channel(s) that I can program as defaults? Knitting, kittens, panda bears, food, travel, museum tours, antiques, etc. An easy default channel for those people who use TV as company, background noise. (For examples: my mom, her boyfriend, my uncle.) The default channels (Fox, CNN, local news, crime shows) are horrifying. Fear, outrage, gore, drama, political ads. No wonder the boomers are acting insane. Of course, I change the channel to some happy stuff, if I can find it. Which delights my mom and her boyfriend. But such programming is not 24/7. When the segment is over, cue channel surfing, and it's right back to horror show. I don't have TV, so don't know how to Chromecast, Roku, Apple TV. (I've been reading up, but haven't experimented yet.) Tangent: I just discovered my mom's been paying $250/mo for triple play. Outrageous. But given the givens, I'd happily pay $100/mo for curated commercial free Happy Stuff TV cable channel package.

edc117 8y ago
Similar boat, have to look after my parents now and the difference between my father watching Fox News (well...any news these days) regularly and not is night and day. He's far more angry with it on, its just nonstop outrage and cynicism. I'd love to find something that would satisfy his desire to 'stay current' without the overreaction and FUD, but maybe he'd just go looking for it anyway.

bromley 8y ago

My wife has been running a somewhat-related twitter account for a few years: https://twitter.com/happyanimalnews https://twitter.com/happyanimalnews I am, of course, a big fan :)

simias 8y ago

The first thing I notice browsing the homepage is that these "not depressing news" are often feel-good stories that can be uplifting but also aren't very intellectually stimulating, e.g.: >Thanks to ‘Super Mom’ Saving Her Husband’s Life, He Opens His Eyes in Time to See His Son’s Birth That's super nice to hear but it barely qualifies as "news" as far as I'm concerned. Meanwhile those that seem more interesting are not that uplifting to me, for instance: >Donations Pour Into Northwest Iowa Library After Man Burns LGBTQ Books So that means that somebody burned LGBTQ books in the first place? That's pretty messed up. >A Christian woman who was sentenced to death in Pakistan for blasphemy has won her appeal and been acquitted in a landmark ruling. Somebody was sentenced to death for blasphemy at some point in this day and age? That's not uplifting at all. I guess I'm a glass half-empty kind of guy. I do sympathize with the intent here, it's true that actual news can be very depressing. My personal "not depressing news" involves reading about sciences, in particular astronomy. Questioning the way our world functions, contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me.

all2 8y ago
> contemplating the scale of the universe (both in space and in time) is really soothing to me. I contemplate those things and regularly verge on existential crisis. From a news curation perspective, I typically follow a couple of simple rules: timeliness, importance, and proximity. For a site focused on 'good' and 'uplifting' I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). Perhaps OP could shift focus, or add a section that have posts related to STEM subjects.
- jniedrauer 8y ago
  > I think I would follow your preferences and focus on new research and development (like cancer research, or cheaper drugs/prosthetics, etc.). This very quickly devolves into pop-sci clickbait. Cancer gets solved roughly 3 times a week, along with Alzheimer's and every other scary sounding disease. And our battery capacity somehow goes up by an order of magnitude a few times a month. And so on. Journalism is just broken in the internet age. Clickbait is more profitable than reality. Anger inducing clickbait is the most profitable of all.

gitgud 8y ago

No offence to the developer, but isn't this like propaganda? I mean you're not just choosing to only see the best in world, but you're letting someone else define what is the best (or not depressing). Just seems a little weird to me...

conradk 8y ago
That's the case with any newspaper though, isn't it? We should always cross-check and verify, listen to multiple opinions and look at a variety of sources if possible.
- snaky 8y ago
  The main purpose of newspapers used to be exactly an opposite. You choose the particular newspaper, by editorial board views closest to yours, and just get an information. You don't have to cross-check everything - that's what you pay for subscribing to newspaper. You outsource the job to the editors.
  - conradk 8y ago
    The part "by editorial board views closest to yours" says it all. All newspapers have views. They choose what is "good" or "bad" based on their views. That's why cross-checking is essential.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
krona 8y ago
Just seems a little weird to me... Isn't this how most curated sources of information, from newspapers to scientific journals, work?
- gitgud 8y ago
  True, I guess this source is a least transparent about what kind of content they are promoting

pwenzel 8y ago

Can you please, pretty please, add an RSS feed?

edgartaor 8y ago
He is using Reddit /r/upliftingnews as source so you subscribe to; https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews.rss https://www.reddit.com/r/upliftingnews.rss

PaulHoule 8y ago

There are many interesting questions around this. Is the purpose of news to manipulate your mood? If that is the case it competes with video games, sports, fiction, etc. Is the purpose of news to inform? In that case "current events" competes with an understanding of past events. I was listening to an evangelical preacher the other day about the book "Romans" written by my namesake and how the apostles are getting their asses kicked in roman jails and preaching with anger against immorality (beyond the pale today in the west) such as polygamy and slavery. Then I was reading about how the Polish and Japanese both learned how to write at the same time in the same way. I felt the dread hanging over Arlington National Memorial and was shocked to discover who had owned the land it was on. This 1971 book https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Ben-H-Bagdikian/dp/0060902582 https://www.amazon.com/Information-Machines-Ben-H-Bagdikian/... predicted that we would have "news on the web" in the 1980s and has a much deeper analysis of that entails than most books written since. He sees a fundamental problem in "news" that the gatekeeper function has to be done efficiently and quickly. Of all the things that happened today, the "news" is one in a billion or so. That selection is necessary to create a feeling of shared reality. (I saw CNN at 5:14 and my Uncle Nic saw it at 7:31 and we saw "the same thing") That selection is also violence against reality itself.

sbussard 8y ago

The design needs some work for desktop, plz

aptwebapps 8y ago

Not to be a downer, but the current top story is "Thousands of Native voters in North Dakota getting free IDs". The reason that's necessary is not not depressing. It's sort of like "Man who fell off click only broke both legs".

mooseburger 8y ago
Nothing wrong with voter ID, nearly all developed countries do it.
- js2 8y ago
  The U.S. has a long history of voter suppression, of which using IDs to limit who can vote is one tactic. For some of us, that's depressing. This is off-topic though so I won't comment further.
- tbrownaw 8y ago
  In theory, sure. The problem comes in when a detectable amount of people don't have and can't easily get accepted IDs.
- aptwebapps 8y ago
  In theory, sure, sounds good. But the facts on the ground matter more than theory. The first fact is that there is precious little voter fraud of the type that can be stopped by voter ID laws. Did you hear about the woman from Texas who was recently convicted and sentenced to prison for it? You know why it was in the news? Because it's that rare. So whatever the costs of more stringent restrictions at the ballot box are, they have to be borne by some pretty slim benefits. And the costs are pretty severe. Thousands of the Native Americans in North Dakota don't have the kind of residential address required by the law, passed by Republicans shortly after a Democrat one her Senate race by 3,000 votes with strong Native American support. And for many of the ones who do have a residential address, the address the state has on record for them is off by enough to theoretically trigger the provisions of the law, making it unlawful to cast their ballots. I.e., their actual address doesn't match what the government thinks it is, so either they illegally provide the matching address or legally provide the correct address and get their ballot rejected. Some sort of voter registration obviously makes sense, but do you think this particular law is a good one? Further, do you think it was passed with good intentions?

seymour333 8y ago

Wait, dogs can get cancer? Fuck. That is super depressing.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I think actually every living animal can get cancer. Except maybe sharks, or is that an urban legend?
- zimpenfish 8y ago
  Alas, they do. https://www.livescience.com/41655-great-white-shark-cancer.html https://www.livescience.com/41655-great-white-shark-cancer.h... > Scientists have known for more than 150 years that sharks get cancer. And yet the belief persists that the animals don't suffer from the disease.

mooseburger 8y ago

Nice idea. Basically the opposite of this excellent short story: http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/ http://slatestarcodex.com/2018/10/30/sort-by-controversial/

mixedCase 8y ago

You might wanna check this: Unhandled Rejection (TypeError): Cannot read property 'children' of undefined App._callee2$ src/App.js:72 69 | let topTen = [] 70 | 71 | let newPostsRaw = await axios.get("https://www.reddit.com/r/" + subreddit + "/new.json?sort=new?") > 72 | let newPosts = newPostsRaw.data.data.children 73 | ^ 74 | // console.log(newPosts) 75 |

armatav 8y ago
I'll take a look ASAP

bwhthd 8y ago

Looks empty to me

fiatjaf 8y ago

Sincerely, I feel depressed reading that the government is away things to people (as the money ultimately will leave my pocket for that); or that a new drug may solve many problems (as I feel I'll have to do my own research to evaluate these claims now); or that a dog had cancer and lots of people were worried about it; or that Snapchat is getting praised for anything.

megaman8 8y ago

Great concept! I really hope this catches on.

MilnerRoute 8y ago

Just FYI: Firefox and Edge both give me a warning about it not being secure. "The owner of www.notdepressing.com has configured their website improperly. To protect your information from being stolen, Firefox has not connected to this website."

newnewpdro 8y ago

Living in a news bubble isolated from the depressing news of the time inhibits the negative feedback lagely responsible for making change from reaching the public. Aren't people's news feeds on social emdia already effectively doing this? And it's part of the problem.

stuhinze 8y ago

So you just built a barebones, frankly sort of ugly UI around an RSS feed of /r/UpliftingNews/? Is this a bootcamp application project? How did this end up on the front page?

jraph 8y ago

"You need to enable JavaScript to run this app." Depressing.