6 ms·

Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

49 points by THENATHE 1y ago

Very small, curated community posting thoughtful political, general, arts, gaming, etc news (specifically not just tech and “nerd” focused) that has some level of commenting functionality? I LOVE hackernews but I am finding that I really don’t get a lot of non-tech news here (and I understand that is the point) and so I am looking for something to replace Reddit, TikTok, and google news at getting regular stories. Some things I have tried: RSS feeds: don’t really see a practical benefit to this over google news Google News: want to get away from it as I am trying to excommunicate Google from my life as much as possible, and it misses the comment functions Apple News: not happy I have to pay money for half of it, and the other problem I have is I could give a rats ass about their “curated” stories and audio news. Reddit: generally, too mainstream and filled with a bunch of chaff I don’t really want to sift through to get to the nuggets, when the nuggets are quite common on here TikTok: the world news I have gotten on here is great! But often filled with other videos that distract me or are not something I want to actively fill my time with Thoughts? If this doesn’t exist, would people be interested in it being created, and does anyone think it has a chance of taking off (and not immediately falling to the slop that is public Internet forums)?

notorandit 1y ago
No way! HN is one of a kind. Sorry.
ofalkaed 1y ago
Oddly enough I had been considering making a similar thread but asking for something akin to HN but with less non-tech news. Perhaps the question that both I and OP are asking is, does anyone know of a site that stays on topic? >Thoughts? If this doesn’t exist, would people be interested in it being created, and does anyone think it has a chance of taking off There is absolutely a market for it but it will eventually become a tech forum. Edit: I apologize for the meta posting, Saturday night, what can I say. Edit: Prepended "Edit:" to my apology even though it wasn't an edit, it seems more appropriate as an edit. Once again, I apologize for the meta posting, Saturday night, what can I say.
- dinkumthinkum 1y ago
  People have made many such curations of HN over the years. I can't recall any names of them or if they still exist but just commenting to say it has been done. Honestly, you could probably just have some AI based chrome extension do the filtering for you.
- ipcress_file 1y ago
  I think lobste.rs stays on topic (computers and programming).
  - ofalkaed 1y ago
    Every time I go there the only threads which have any discussion tend to be AI/LLM threads, so technically on topic but I think my previous post should make it clear I am a humanities sort and as a humanities sort I have certain expectations of the STEM community and expect them to stay on their side of the fence. This seems completely reasonable and fair.
  - jemmyw 1y ago
    They banned the Brave user agent I use, for a transgression from many years ago and hasn't reoccurred, and has nothing to do with the way I use that browser. That's their choice of course, but not one I respect - different if it was an ongoing issue. Why don't they ban Chrome or Firefox for their various and more recent privacy violating problems?
- ofalkaed 1y ago
  To those that upvoted me, I appreciate the sentiment but I should have been downvoted into oblivion. Upvotes are not likes, they are curation and moderation; upvote comments which produce good discussion even if that comment is terrible and low effort and downvote those comments you love or agree with but will never produce any worthwhile discussion. Sometimes it it hurts to do but it must be done if we want to maintain quality. With that said, I have had fun tonight, thanks for humoring me but my previous post really should not be top post. If you feel bad about downvoting it or unupvoting it for what ever reason than just upvote this one and downvote my previous, no harm, nor foul, but lets not have my previous post be top post in the thread and lets make sure top post in every thread is good solid, on topic discussion.
ksec 1y ago
It doesn't exist yet. I would argue even HN has its bias. For example for a long time anything MySQL or Java dont get much upvote. I actually want something that sort of combine the both. I want something that tells me what everyone is reading. Because I dont even consume mainstream news any more. And something that is not mainstream but interesting. I also think the design of HN is a giant filter for 80 to 90% of internet users.
bufferoverflow 1y ago
Reddit, but you have to carefully select your subs. And it's not very useful for politics, because it's very one-sided, very far left, and they ban you for any transgressions that don't fit the narrative.
- rattray 1y ago
  Should we create a subreddit for this, with a news/politics focus but an hn vibe?
  - bufferoverflow 1y ago
    Good luck with that. Their moderation is too insane and not transparent for my taste. And, considering HN is quite far left, you won't create anything new really.
    - fake-name 1y ago
      You think HN is left? Ha. HN is at best center-right.
      - bufferoverflow 1y ago
        Try posting anything right-wing, like government crime stats of black vs white people. You will get banned.
        lwansbrough 1y ago
        They love to pull up the crime stats but never the traffic stop stats or police-initiated contact stats or use of force stats. Wonder why.
        robobro 1y ago
        Racism = right wing? You mean alt-right?
udev4096 1y ago
There is lesswrong, slashdot and lobsters which do have good similarity with HN
wewewedxfgdf 1y ago
lobster.rs is good and tech focused. I think it should discard any submissions that are already on Hacker news because it's often same/same. If I think it was reliably different I'd visit it more.
- kamranjon 1y ago
  Ditto on lobste.rs - I’ve found myself browsing it more and more when I’ve run out of HN stories to peruse.
  - d4rkp4ttern 1y ago
    Any good iOS client ?
    - aryehof 1y ago
      Safari browser
  - browningstreet 1y ago
    lobste.rs is always called out in threads like this but what I see on the homepage, per usual, is dead threads..
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
loveparade 1y ago
The funny thing is that I find HN especially useful for non tech news. It's highly biased for tech news, but only the most important normal news make it to the front page, so it's a great filter.
- OtherShrezzing 1y ago
  I don’t find HN to be a particularly good filter for general news. It’s got political, economic, geographical, and social bias alongside its topic bias.
  - jaynetics 1y ago
    This is very true. But perhaps the more important filtering is on quantity as opposed to neutrality? Perhaps filtering out a large amount of news, even with some bias, is the lesser evil, as compared to news outlets that depend on stirring the emotions of their readers every single day? Wikinews used to be okay in this regard, but the German version I used has died down a bit, and the English one is even more centered on the Anglosphere than HN.
    - balanced2 1y ago
      Filtering out news with (probably more than) some bias seems dangerous in encouraging echo chambers. I have been extremely happy to find https://www.allsides.com/ https://www.allsides.com/ Especially when it surfaces a topic with three articles from across the bias spectrum, it feels very rewarding being able to get a fuller picture.
      - rickydroll 1y ago
        Sometimes there aren't multiple sides, especially when it comes to science reporting. You have fact-based reporting, and then you have conspiracy theories. How would you handle news where there is sufficient evidence to show one set of reporting is accurate and relatively unbiased, but another report is all made up and designed to inflame its audience?
antiraza 1y ago
If you are willing to slow down, Tildes. Small, laid back, conversation focused, but the coverage is definitely more 'general.' I personally find it really refreshing compared to something like reddit (or even here). It's small enough that the comments section don't feel like an artificial jostle for the fastest, most attention getting response -- and the community seems to maintain that culture well via both scale and rate of scaling.
senectus1 1y ago
I've been using "clean news" https://cleannews.fyi/ https://cleannews.fyi/ and add it to my RSS feed. this gives me news articles that dont have hyperbolic headlines.
chistev 1y ago
Reddit is it. The dedicated subreddits give you what you want.
oi_you_lot 1y ago
[flagged]
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
awkim 1y ago
There's https://www.aldaily.com/ https://www.aldaily.com/, though there's no forum. Great articles more from the liberal arts perspective.
Jordan-117 1y ago
https://www.metafilter.com https://www.metafilter.com Long-standing community blog with an eclectic mix of link-heavy text posts. The Q&A subsite, Ask MetaFilter, is also quite good.
runsonrum 1y ago
I also use RSS feeds. A couple sites that are useful to me that I picked up from HN submissions recently: https://www.phoronix.com/ https://www.phoronix.com/ https://www.neowin.net/ https://www.neowin.net/ https://kbd.news/ https://kbd.news/ https://betanews.com/ https://betanews.com/
deleted 1y ago
[deleted]
blu3h4t 1y ago
How about ground news?
throwaway81523 1y ago
Comments here and everywhere else are meh. For general news, lite.cnn.com is fine.
nikcub 1y ago
/r/anime_titties on reddit. ignore the name, it helps it go incognito as a better current news / politics sub.
- stranded22 1y ago
  I’m disappointed to find that it is a news /politics sub
  - arvigeus 1y ago
    If you go to r/worldpolitics, you’ll get how that subreddit got its name. NSFW
napier 1y ago
Formerly, parts of the formerly free website formerly known as Twitter.
ChrisArchitect 1y ago
Some other: Ask HN: Sites like HN on other topics? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37611708 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37611708 Ask HN: What are some communities like HN? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37616919 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37616919
kriro 1y ago
I have considered building this for my own country a couple of times. My general thought was to have left and right areas with submission/discussion a la HN and try to curate a middle of the road point if view from it. But I see too much headache dealing with the extremes and trolls. It would require more passion than I can muster.
Rikudou 1y ago
The Fediverse, particularly the Reddit-inspired one (Lemmy, Piefed, Mbin). If you want a specific address, try mine: https://lemmings.world https://lemmings.world
mmh0000 1y ago
FARK is one of the oldest and best for “breaking” news and good for keeping up to date on world politics. https://www.fark.com/ https://www.fark.com/ Anime Titties (not a joke) is great for doom scrolling and realizing how fucked everything is. https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/ https://www.reddit.com/r/anime_titties/
kmetral 1y ago
Most likely, this is what Digg's comeback is going to be: https://reboot.digg.com https://reboot.digg.com
Triangle9349 1y ago
wait for new digg, I hope it doesn't turn into a new reddit
archagon 1y ago
Metafilter. Many users here would probably not vibe with that community, since it tends to be very liberal and people will call you out for your bullshit. However, quality of discussion tends to be quite high. (Or was when I was last active.)
msqinfo 1y ago
I've built https://www.mosaique.info https://www.mosaique.info (RSS supported) for this (mostly global news). You won't be able to comment but it will show you what officials, companies and "experts" have said about a particular event. There are a bunch of other features too.
raintrees 1y ago
An interesting collection: https://thedukereport.substack.com/ https://thedukereport.substack.com/
- raintrees 1y ago
  and an oldie: https://www.zerohedge.com/ https://www.zerohedge.com/
more_corn 1y ago
It’s not the same but I’ve been using particle for genera news. It’s an algorithmic news aggregator, theoretically you can tune it for your preferences. I don’t use the commentary feature and there doesn’t appear to be a community yet.
Gud 1y ago
I have launched a similar concept as Hacker News, an aggregator for general news. It’s a side project. It’s early alpha. But I think it’s important work. Link in my profile.
yakhinvadim 1y ago
There's https://www.newsminimalist.com/ https://www.newsminimalist.com/ where 30k news articles per day is ranked by significance, maybe it's what you're looking for?
wrs-ai 1y ago
The best one I've found is Progscrape: https://progscrape.com/ https://progscrape.com/ "All the news that's fit to scrape." A great mix of tech and non-tech news, with plenty of stories that are think-worthy.
pronouncedjerry 1y ago
I use brutalist.report
scrozart 1y ago
Metafilter, hands down.
AStonesThrow 1y ago
[flagged]
aagha 1y ago
I mostly get my tech news through SkimFeed: https://skimfeed.com/tech.html https://skimfeed.com/tech.html

leereeves 1y ago

That's rarely the case with science reporting. The subjects that are sufficiently rigorous to allow no reasonable debate (the physical sciences) are rarely political enough to inspire unreasonable debate. On the other hand, the subjects that are politically contentious are not rigorous and leave plenty of room for reasonable debate. If anything, science reporting tends to err the other way, uncritically reporting sensational results that contradict one other, have not been confirmed, or fail to replicate. I rarely see a popular science article that doesn't report the results of a single experiment as if they were instantly established fact.

const_cast 1y ago
I agree with what you say about sensationalist science reporting. It's very common to take one study and then have dummies who aren't scientists report on it as if we've just found out how to live forever. Science is very tricky because it's complicated and the barrier to entry is high - you can't just extrapolate things out like that. However, there's also the other side of things, which is mostly established science. Which, you're right, don't typically spark political debate... but they do sometimes. Vaccines, climate change, cholesterol, seed oils. The RFK Jr faction of anti-science is rife these days.
- leereeves 1y ago
  I'm not familiar with all the details of RFK Jr's position, the public debate about it, nor how many of the things reported in the news are accurate (truth being the first casualty of politics). But I just looked for those topics in the official Make America Healthy Again report [1]. The positions in that report on those topics were not so unreasonable. It says seed oils are a concern because they are ultra-processed fats, only mentions cholesterol in the context of PFAS, and says "vaccines benefit children by protecting them from infectious diseases" but we may not need to give children nearly 30 doses of them.[2] I do think his general position that processed food is unhealthy is not only reasonable, it generally matches conventional modern medical thinking, even if he is wrong about a few details. And of course people looking for political ammunition only look for details they can use against him. 1: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-Report-The-White-House.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R... 2: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/index.html https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/index.html
  - rickydroll 1y ago
    > even if he is wrong about a few details. https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-again-report-citation-errors https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-ag...