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Ask HN: (meta) How do you find real hacker news?
I used to love Hacker News.
Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy its simplicity and straight-forward approach, but increasingly it doesn't seem to really be about small startups and experimental hacks.
What I used to enjoy about Hacker News was the focus on awesome things coming out of small teams -- an awesome mix of creative tech, smart people, business advice, and inspiration from their tiny beginnings.
But more often today, "big news" stories get submitted and then upvoted like crazy because they're from companies we already know about.
For example, the current top 25 HN stories include the likes of Microsoft, Vice, ArsTechnica, EuroGamer, Aljazeera, Valve, Apple, and Comcast. Sure, those companies and efforts are part of the larger tech landscape, but it's just not what I was looking for (read: there are lots of other places to read those stories).
So, sincerely I ask, how do you find real hacker news today? No disrespect to this fine, growing establishment :)
- tronium 12y agoI understand what you're looking for, and producthunt.com really matches you're description well. It's all about new startups.
- akumpf 12y agoLooks cool; although it feels a bit gated and sparse on first read. I really like the democratized submission process on hacker news.
- xpressyoo 12y agoI completely agree. It would be great to add a subsection to Hacker News dedicated to this kind of stories, e.g., "discover" or "showHN".
- toni 12y agoTry the "Classic"[1] page, which only lists stories submitted by HN users with higher karma/early adopters (although I am not sure what the exact criteria is). The idea is that people with higher karma or those who hang around here much longer will post more quality links. [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/classic https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
- prohor 12y agoStrange, but I don't see "classic" link unless I use the link you provided. Isn't it some kind of elite club of high-karma users?
- toni 12y agoAs i explained for akumpf, you could find a link to it from "Lists" page but strangely it was removed. I'm not sure why.
- akumpf 12y agoNice! That goes a long way in the right direction. Still lots of big company stories, but interesting to see a different take on the same submissions. Any other easter egg HN views we should know about? :)
- toni 12y agoYou could find a link to classic page from the "Lists" page (first link from left in every page's footer), but somehow it was removed from there. I wouldn't really call it an easter egg, maybe a hidden feature :)
- freehunter 12y agoDoes lobste.rs fit your need? It's still quite small and has a barrier to entry (invite-only), but it's much more open in terms of why things happen (moderation, voting, sign-ups, etc). They've also got categories, so you can look at just the articles you care about. Sometimes it just mirrors HN's front page, but there's further potential there.
- akumpf 12y agoThanks. Interesting to see all the variations on Hacker News out there. Definitely a ton of HN mirrors, but agreed that there is potential in seeing an alternative view of what's already been upvoted.
- TheLoneWolfling 12y agoI do not like browsing news aggregators with voting / comments if I cannot comment.
- ChikkaChiChi 12y agoI get my hacker news from Hacker News. Democratic upvoting may create slightly more noise on the "Top" page than I would prefer, but I rarely find myself linkbaited into reading a story I'm not interested in. I'd rather have a few articles I'm not interested in than the be in an echo chamber where I'm not exposed to trends others find useful (no matter how pedantic some may be).
- sepultura 12y agoTry http://skimhn.com/ http://skimhn.com/ Filter and adapt it to your taste
- akumpf 12y agoSeems like an interesting idea, but none of the submissions are populating for me. I'll try back later and hope it's resolved :)
- sepultura 12y agohm, lots of errors here too, dang. Another option: http://www.skimfeed.com http://www.skimfeed.com and there's one focusing only on marketing growth: http://growthhackers.com/ http://growthhackers.com/
- e15ctr0n 12y agoLooks like they didn't make the HN API transition from Octopart to Algolia. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7130590 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7130590
- dserban 12y agoSomeone wrote a machine learning script that separates the wheat from the chaff on HN. It's here: http://hn.njl.us/ http://hn.njl.us/
- e15ctr0n 12y agoI look for stories that have between 5 and 50 points. Anything more than 50 points signals "big news" stories or general interest ones like you would find in the mainstream press.
- ewest 12y agoI try to keep it simple - use the rss feed with something like newsblur and click stories I find interesting. So you can skip the big company stories and focus on what you prefer. Plus, who knows, by reviewing all of the headlines you just might find a gem of a story.