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As an alternative, just trust the HN home page algorithm. Stories seem to move up to a relevant max rank position, stay there and then move back down. Big stor

by Gring 15y ago

As an alternative, just trust the HN home page algorithm. Stories seem to move up to a relevant max rank position, stay there and then move back down. Big stories stay in the top 5 for 20+ hours. Here's what I do: If I only have time to look at 5 stories per day, I visit once per day at any point in time and look at the first 5 stories. If I have time to look at 20, look at the first 20. Set yourself a timeout, start reading at the top, stop when the time is up, repeat after 12 or 24 hours. Works very well for me, I get the best stories, and feel pretty well informed.

tikhonj 15y ago
The issue is that, at least for me, a lot of the most interesting articles get to fifth or six place and then lose steam and start slowly falling off the page. A lot of the time the articles that get to the very top are about boring subjects like Apple so they worry me less.
achompas 15y ago
HN's algorithm is great at pushing linkbait, self-help articles, and frameworks associated with popular languages to the top. None of those are interesting to me, however, so a personalized HN classifier is awesome.
- Gring 15y ago
  Don't you think that submissions are motivated by getting to the home page? So with time, submissions become similar to what's on the home page. If the home page is so bad according to you, wouldn't you agree that the actual submissions still be a sub-par source for your filter, and a different source would be preferable?
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - achompas 15y ago
    If the home page is so bad according to you Guess I wasn't too clear when I said "the top," but I meant the top of the homepage. I still read interesting articles on the home page occasionally (especially those on functional programming and the new JVM-based languages), so I'd love to capture those instead of "random HN startup sells to LinkedIn" or "five things Steve Jobs did while pooping."

by Gring 15y ago

tikhonj 15y ago

The issue is that, at least for me, a lot of the most interesting articles get to fifth or six place and then lose steam and start slowly falling off the page. A lot of the time the articles that get to the very top are about boring subjects like Apple so they worry me less.

achompas 15y ago

HN's algorithm is great at pushing linkbait, self-help articles, and frameworks associated with popular languages to the top. None of those are interesting to me, however, so a personalized HN classifier is awesome.

Gring 15y ago
Don't you think that submissions are motivated by getting to the home page? So with time, submissions become similar to what's on the home page. If the home page is so bad according to you, wouldn't you agree that the actual submissions still be a sub-par source for your filter, and a different source would be preferable?
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- achompas 15y ago
  If the home page is so bad according to you Guess I wasn't too clear when I said "the top," but I meant the top of the homepage. I still read interesting articles on the home page occasionally (especially those on functional programming and the new JVM-based languages), so I'd love to capture those instead of "random HN startup sells to LinkedIn" or "five things Steve Jobs did while pooping."