I implemented the same thing for reddit a while back, and learned the same lesson :) However, I haven't completely given up on the idea. The point is that whil

I implemented the same thing for reddit a while back, and learned the same lesson :) However, I haven't completely given up on the idea. The point is that while limiting news to things you've liked in the past is a terrible idea, helping you find good articles isn't. The question is, what constitutes a good news item? I think the key is that there are many answers to this question: 1. Something very specific to your interests (your classifier should be good at detecting this) 2. Something big that everyone should hear about (the HN frontpage is good for this) 3. Something about a new concept you've never heard about. I've implemented this by keeping track of popular words on reddit and giving a boost to words not seen in the past, with some success. 4. Probably others I haven't thought about. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this.