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Hello, I've used to rely on HN to discover new blogs, but recently I feel like a lot of content is just news article and very often several time the same news w

by polote 6y ago

Hello, I've used to rely on HN to discover new blogs, but recently I feel like a lot of content is just news article and very often several time the same news which reach the front page (even though still a lot of blog posts become popular). This has already been discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093990 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23093990 in case you are interested. This is disappointing for me because there are still a lot of people who submit quality blog posts every day on HN and those content are just mixed long all the other posts and most of them never reach the front page. So every day I go through all the links posted the current day on HN and keep only the non commercial blog posts, (and I removed the ones that reached the front page) there are not that many of them, about a dozen every day, and I build an article listing all those links. (Note that some blog posts can end up being popular on HN after I created the daily article) Feel free to subscribe, this is on substack but this is completely free. Somehow a substack blog is very quick to create, even if I hate their product.

dvxvd 6y ago
Exactly!
soneca 6y ago
Why do you hate their product? I am curious because I happen to love their product, even though I only use it as a free blog/newsletter hosting too. But the paid newsletter incentives make a lot of sense to me (as it will never substitute free content, if that’s what you are worried about). No affiliation, although I would like to have. I applied two times to work there but got rejected
- polote 6y ago
  I don't want to do a negative review , I think the value they provide is great, but the actual product is not very good. Like no api, low customization of text in the editor, ux of header difficult to understand, I did not like using the product
CGamesPlay 6y ago
Neat! I subscribed via RSS. Can you expound on what exactly the criteria are? I'm assuming it's subjective, which is fine, but since almost all submissions are on the front page for at least a few seconds, I'm curious how this part works. Also worth pointing out (maybe there's another product for this): I would also be interested in things that maybe made the front page but I still missed, perhaps because they were only on the front page for a few hours.
- franky47 6y ago
  For those who also want to subscribe by RSS, here's the URL: https://hnblogs.substack.com/feed https://hnblogs.substack.com/feed
  - Semaphor 6y ago
    But if your feedreader does not pick that up when adding https://hnblogs.substack.com/ https://hnblogs.substack.com/ directly, you might want to switch to a better reader ;)
    - franky47 6y ago
      I use Slack to get notifications on new articles (I then read them on the original website), and it does not resolve to /feed. Is there a standard for feed paths (/rss.xml seems common) that readers crawl when given a URL ?
      - Semaphor 6y ago
        It’s not a standard path, it’s this element: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="/feed/" title="Hn blogs newsletter"/> You can even have multiple (I think wordpress standard is "articles" and "comments" feeds) of them for different feeds.
- polote 6y ago
  I try to be the less subjective as possible, I only list recent posts, not associated with a company, not on a popular topic, somewhat related to tech, works without cookies, less than 5 up votesand it looks like a blog. If you verify all those, this is pretty likely to be included
fao_ 6y ago
You might like http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic which uses an older ranking algorithm that (IMO) delivers more interesting news
- drannex 6y ago
  I had no clue that was a thing and been here for years, that algo is far better.
  - Tomte 6y ago
    I also wish, all those "special URLs" were documented somewhere. There are quite a few of those.
    - jakub_g 6y ago
      Didn't know about "classic" either! I listed some non-discoverable URLs here: https://gist.github.com/jakub-g/803ad2c074ad1fbe2af5 https://gist.github.com/jakub-g/803ad2c074ad1fbe2af5 Happy to discover more - please put comments here or on the gist.
      - mkl 6y ago
        Lots of info collected by minimaxir here: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
- alexpetralia 6y ago
  I love the idea of exposing different algorithms so that upvotes are distributed a little more evenly.
rendall 6y ago
Great! Subscribed!
heycesr 6y ago
Shameless plug: I built Typehut[1] for use cases like this, spinning up a super quick blog/publication that people can subscribe to. Custom templates and domains are built-in too. [1] https://typehut.com https://typehut.com
specialist 6y ago
"because there are still a lot of people who submit quality blog posts every day on HN" I'd like a follow feature.

by polote 6y ago

dvxvd 6y ago

Exactly!

soneca 6y ago

Why do you hate their product? I am curious because I happen to love their product, even though I only use it as a free blog/newsletter hosting too. But the paid newsletter incentives make a lot of sense to me (as it will never substitute free content, if that’s what you are worried about). No affiliation, although I would like to have. I applied two times to work there but got rejected

polote 6y ago
I don't want to do a negative review , I think the value they provide is great, but the actual product is not very good. Like no api, low customization of text in the editor, ux of header difficult to understand, I did not like using the product

CGamesPlay 6y ago

Neat! I subscribed via RSS. Can you expound on what exactly the criteria are? I'm assuming it's subjective, which is fine, but since almost all submissions are on the front page for at least a few seconds, I'm curious how this part works. Also worth pointing out (maybe there's another product for this): I would also be interested in things that maybe made the front page but I still missed, perhaps because they were only on the front page for a few hours.

franky47 6y ago
For those who also want to subscribe by RSS, here's the URL: https://hnblogs.substack.com/feed https://hnblogs.substack.com/feed
- Semaphor 6y ago
  But if your feedreader does not pick that up when adding https://hnblogs.substack.com/ https://hnblogs.substack.com/ directly, you might want to switch to a better reader ;)
  - franky47 6y ago
    I use Slack to get notifications on new articles (I then read them on the original website), and it does not resolve to /feed. Is there a standard for feed paths (/rss.xml seems common) that readers crawl when given a URL ?
    - Semaphor 6y ago
      It’s not a standard path, it’s this element: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" href="/feed/" title="Hn blogs newsletter"/> You can even have multiple (I think wordpress standard is "articles" and "comments" feeds) of them for different feeds.
polote 6y ago
I try to be the less subjective as possible, I only list recent posts, not associated with a company, not on a popular topic, somewhat related to tech, works without cookies, less than 5 up votesand it looks like a blog. If you verify all those, this is pretty likely to be included

fao_ 6y ago

You might like http://news.ycombinator.com/classic http://news.ycombinator.com/classic which uses an older ranking algorithm that (IMO) delivers more interesting news

drannex 6y ago
I had no clue that was a thing and been here for years, that algo is far better.
- Tomte 6y ago
  I also wish, all those "special URLs" were documented somewhere. There are quite a few of those.
  - jakub_g 6y ago
    Didn't know about "classic" either! I listed some non-discoverable URLs here: https://gist.github.com/jakub-g/803ad2c074ad1fbe2af5 https://gist.github.com/jakub-g/803ad2c074ad1fbe2af5 Happy to discover more - please put comments here or on the gist.
    - mkl 6y ago
      Lots of info collected by minimaxir here: https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented https://github.com/minimaxir/hacker-news-undocumented
alexpetralia 6y ago
I love the idea of exposing different algorithms so that upvotes are distributed a little more evenly.

rendall 6y ago

Great! Subscribed!

heycesr 6y ago

Shameless plug: I built Typehut[1] for use cases like this, spinning up a super quick blog/publication that people can subscribe to. Custom templates and domains are built-in too. [1] https://typehut.com https://typehut.com

specialist 6y ago

"because there are still a lot of people who submit quality blog posts every day on HN" I'd like a follow feature.