HN Explorer

Ask HN: What is your content discovery daily routine?

235 points by smorac ↗ HN
I'm quite curious about how people on Hacker News find interesting content along the day. What are the topics you are interesting in? What are the websites you go to? (HN is probably in there) Do you have some mailing list you are counting on to deliver you good content? Are there some tools you like to use to store and read later?

On my side, I like to read HN and getting a lot of information on subreddits that are related to my favorite topics : MachineLearning, LanguageTechnology, Node, GoLang, Cooking, Baking, CheeseMaking, Beer. In my perception, the more niche the topic, the more you can find quality stuff on.

When I find a link of interest I bookmark it on Chrome where I have Google's Bookmark Manager plugin to make it more sexy. Personally I'm not a fan of Pocket but I know a lot of people like it.

So, what about you?

164 comments

[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 274 ms ] thread
appleflaxen
I find that the more efficient my daily content discovery routine is, the less efficient my life is.

And my daily discovery routine is very efficient :(

vivalapython
This is something I've recently restructured in my own life. While I am aware that reading on a laptop display does not cause any harm to your eyes (1) I rather like the entire experience of consuming longer text on e-paper. So I went out an bought a Kindle. My favorite part with the Kindle is that I can email myself articles which are interesting, as well as browse text-based websites on the experimental browser.

I essentially have the following setup: - Laptop runs my 'morning coffee' script before work, scrapes my favorite few blogs + HN for the latest articles and adds them to a queue - All the articles I shared (via email) to family and friends get added to the queue as well - Script sticks top news headlines and content together in 1 PDF file and emails it to my Kindle

Now I can read comfortably with my coffee in and hand and even see how much "progress" I've made with the content I plan to consume.

(1) NYT blog post on e-reader eye -strain behind paywall https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/do-e-readers-cause...

evek
I use Instapaper for similar purpose. I set it up so it sends me 10 articles from Unread every morning in a digest form.
1337biz
Since RSS is not a mainstream thing anymore, it is getting harder and harder. My best strategy so far is creating twitter lists on topics that I am interested in an curate them with people who are engaged in their focus area. Still tricky to discover interesting people who don't just hype their personal angle. More and more the conversation seems also to shift from Twitter to LinkedIn.
smorac
Yes, it used to be quite easy with Google RSS Reader and Feedly to keep track of the stuff thanks to RSS, but a lot is happening on not in public anymore going to Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups. I gave up on Twitter a year ago because to much ads and feed got too crowded too quickly but I'm going back to it and their algorithm is doing a better job at curation for now.
dchuk
As former heavy RSS users, what do you think of a site like this one I put together? https://engineered.at

It sort of "hides" the RSS feeds behind a social news interface, using a ranking algo like reddit/HN.

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danesparza
Tech stuff:

Hacker News

Pinboard Popular https://pinboard.in/popular/

Podcasts (specifically Hanselminutes) https://hanselminutes.com/

Stackoverflow

Reddit (occasionally)

Food: Good Eats http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/good-eats (and I'm happy to hear it may be coming back on air soon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovc2Q-zdoyM )

smorac
Oh, on food there is something fantastic that I like to look at: http://www.seriouseats.com/. I remember their video on the perfect cooking for baked potatoes and their meta-recipe for soups.
ge96
Have you heard of the stack overflow podcast? Pretty good

Some others

Embedded - Coding blocks - Artificial Intelligence - Ted Radio Hour - Changelog - Masters of Scale - Indie Hackers - Hack the Entrepreneur

Pretty much listen to any coding/programming/entrepreneur/news related stuff.

Dowwie
Good Eats is coming back? You just made my day. If they replaced Alton I won't watch, in protest
danesparza
Watch the video. Pretty sure that's Alton (and his old props)
Vaanir
Frontpage of HN, reddit, then check certain subreddits. Browse Twitter to check up on what certain devs/companies are saying.

During the day I periodically check certain Discords, IRC, HN, and reddit (I add items to Pocket if I see anything interesting).

arcbyte
My daily go-to source is a custom RSS reader I built a few years ago and host on Amazon's free tier. It is still the best for me and I haven't had to touch it's code in years. I follow the run of the mill tech blogs and I always like finding new independent bloggers to add.

I find myself visiting HN on a daily basis as well. I believe there is a HN RSS feed so I will probably work on adding that my reader at some point.

I visit (sub)Reddits only when I'm looking for something specific, but not for periodic news.

garysieling
I try to follow interesting people on twitter and Instagram - this uncovers a lot of book recommendations, which I save in an amazon wishlist.

For technology topics, the Cooper Press email lists are great - https://cooperpress.com/

I also subscribe to the Economist and Nautilus - with Nautilus sometimes the authors are active online (e.g. giving talks). Sometimes it is also interesting to follow citations in books or articles.

For talks, I "bookmark" good things I find by including them in a search engine I built: https://www.findlectures.com/

gorekee
> including them in a search engine I built

Awesome idea. Is the content of the links also evaluated when you trigger search?

deepakkarki
I had the same problem of finding interesting blogs to read, so made a side project - https://www.discoverdev.io

Curated and tagged list of top engineering blog articles everyday! Do check it out :)

mrleinad
Looks like a really nice project, but since you've been running it for a month now, I'd recommend switching to a weekly post. Otherwise, I think you might get burned or start skipping some days. Weekly is much more manageable in the long run.
deepakkarki
Most of it is automated - I just do a final quality check. Takes about half an hour a day. Ideal case is to automate it completely via ML. It's just that it's hard to create a model that can tell a good blogpost from a spammy one. So as of now little bit of manual intervention is required.
deepakkarki
For example it took me about 15 min to publish the links today. Just done, have a look :)
dchuk
How are you handling the tagging on this? By hand, 3rd party service, algorithm?
deepakkarki
Most of it is automated using some basic ML foo. you can read our about page for more info. All posts go through manual quality check and retagging if necessary!
micael_dias
Advice: probably someone visiting will be interested in a few tags only so a filter by tag would be useful.
deepakkarki
Hey, Thanks for the advise! This was in the pipeline, but wasn't sure that the app itself would be useful to people (and was hence reconsidering working any further on it). But it looks like it is something people seem to be liking, so I think I'll go ahead and do that :)
harigov
I love the idea but the design needs some work. If you can also display a quick summary and time to read an article, that would improve our reading efficiency quite a bit. That, and of course, dark design.
deepakkarki
Thank you for the feedback! By a dark design, do you mean like a toggle of sorts - b/w a white dominant and a dark dominant UI? Or completely switch to a dark UI?
harigov
Yeah, even a toggle works. But the design, in general, doesn't look appealing to my eyes. You can have a very plain design, which neither attracts nor distracts, but if you have a design that is distracting, it's hard to take it seriously.
AlbertoGP
I would propose something like this to start with:

https://demo.sentido-labs.com/proposal/discoverdev/

That's just a .dark class in the body tag:

    <body class="dark" onload="document.querySelector('.dark-switch > input').onchange()">
...a switch at the top right:

    <label class="dark-switch"><input type="checkbox" checked onchange="document.body.classList[this.checked?'add':'remove']('dark')"/> dark</label>
...and a bit of CSS:

https://demo.sentido-labs.com/proposal/discoverdev/dark.css

I also find the yellow-on-white links in your Twitter theme difficult to read.

deepakkarki
Oh wow! super cool :) Thank you for putting in the work for the demo! Really appreciate it.
urahara
I don't have any specific routine. There is a large list of various sources in my head, which I check randomly when I feel I need to read something. I don't bookmark things, but occasionally write down my impressions from some sources and posts, which helps me to remember them.

ps Oh, I actually bookmark links on HN, probably this is the only place where I bookmark anything

da_n
Tl/dr Hacker News, Podcasts, RSS, YouTube and Reddit.

Perhaps because I've been on internet since early days I still use RSS (self-hosted Stringer + Unread app). I keep RSS feeds as selective and few as possible. I have a couple of dozen podcasts I listen to, some of which deliver daily episodes. I subscribe to a fair number of YouTube channels which is (mostly) good for conference talks and tutorials. Reddit I am getting close to ditching.

ctw
Pretty much only HN at this point. I've been trying to also use Feedly to follow plain old websites with RSS feeds, but the content is much slower to come out, much less exciting usually, and there are no comment sections, which are the best part of HN imo.
beejiu
Tweetdeck is a useful tool for this kind of thing. You can just set up some keyword searches.
rufb
My strategy pretty much consists of subscribing to good creators and curators across all channels.

I have a bookmark folder (aptly named 1) which opens:

    - My Gmail "newsletters" filter view
    - My AOL Reader
    - HackerNews
    - MetaFilter
    - My Facebook "Must read" user list
    - My Twitter "Must read" list
    - My Reddit "Must read" list
    - My Youtube "Subscriptions" page
In each one of these there's my selection of profiles that reliably create or flag good content (to my standards).

If I have the time, I also go for the noisier and long-form channels in 2:

    - Newspapers
    - My YouTube "Watch Later" list
    - My Pinboard "Read later" list
    - HN Explain (in case I missed something big)
Being able to prioritize what comes into my "inbox" and being able to defer longer or more exhaustive content for later helps me always get a pulse of things quickly without spending too much time or mental energy.

Podcasts have a routine of their own because I listen during commute and workout but I treat it like my inbox: two daily scrubs of new content, and what seems interesting goes to the "Up next" playlist.

tgb
What is HN Explain?
rufb
A satire page that reviews HN's weekly top posts in a very condescending manner (the humor to me very much welcome but you may be put off by it)
stefek99
OFFTOPIC: avoid it at all cost. Energy, time, attention, focus = the most valuable resources out there.

Valuable content will find you anyway.

jazoom
I don't know how valuable content would find me if I didn't have a routine for looking for it. Am I doing something wrong?
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coldtea
Yes, probably expecting too much content to find you, all being valuable.

Valuable content will be a very small minority of content.

What the parent means, is that you really need to know, will end up rising from the pile.

Take React as an example. A fine technology, which some might have known about them from 2015 or so, by reading HN every day etc.

But you really don't have too catch them that early -- nor is there that much of a benefit in doing so.

Even with cursory and rare glimpses on technology news sites, or conversations with colleagues, you'll end up learning about React at some point or another.

The "routine looking for valuable content" on the other hand, would just bring in tons of noise (short term fads that die off, useless fanboyism, etc).

jazoom
Maybe I have a different life to you, but content doesn't just find me in this way. Would you believe, I have never actually met another serious programmer since I started coding about 5 years ago? I don't have "colleagues" to have conversations with.

I feel ridiculous even writing that.

magic_beans
I'm a web dev, been doing it for 5 years, and I've literally NEVER met another soul who reads HN. This might say more about the companies I choose to work for and the people I choose to hang out with, though...
npsimons
> Even with cursory and rare glimpses on technology news sites, or conversations with colleagues, you'll end up learning about React at some point or another.

> The "routine looking for valuable content" on the other hand, would just bring in tons of noise (short term fads that die off, useless fanboyism, etc).

This is the exact same reason I don't watch or read the news: http://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2013/10/01/the-low-informatio...

billconan
I joined hackernews in 2010. I always thanks hn for broadening my view, thinking I would have chosen a different path if there was hn when I was in high school.

and yet, after surfing hn daily for 7 years, I'm still pretty much the same, tons of half baked prototypes. maybe it's time to focus.

mycat
You may need a friend or partner of some sort to finish stuff together. Make your effort accountable to each other.

Doing things alone almost always have that kind of risk.

billconan
I tried this for few times. but none of them ended well. either I helped my friends on their ideas or my friends helped on mine. and one of us will lose interest first.

there has been no single case where we, as a team, are interested in the same thing.

magic_beans
Maybe you need to work with non-friends.
pjc50
Valueless content finds you. Worthwhile content you really have to go looking for, or have a good social network funneling stuff to you.

My own answer is mostly HN, Twitter (including a couple of people/bots who are great link sources), and a mailing list of some old friends for this purpose. The latter is very good and low volume; eg latest post was from 18 July on org structure for software projects and lists

https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-cult... https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/10/no-spotify-model# https://www.slideshare.net/AliKheyrollahi/microservice-archi...

_delirium
I agree you need to seek out worthwhile content, but I think it's a mistake (one I admittedly often make) to have a daily routine of browsing stuff like Twitter/HN/etc. to idly seek out such content. It's easy to feel this is productive when it wastes huge amounts of time and turns up a lot of low-quality content. Imo the low-volume mailing list you mention, and maybe a weekly routine of seeking out other information, is a better approach. Also, I've started going to the library at least once a week, and have been very happy with this new addition.

A good book is weirdly refreshing after reading a lot of the kind of quasi-technical blogs linked on HN. There's so much info! Going back to a Medium post feels like someone found one piece of information from a book (maybe two) and is drip-drip feeding it to you painfully slowly with a clickbait title. At least in the two areas where I most often read books (computer science, and tech history).

amelius
> My own answer is mostly HN

But why should valuable content always be centered around "Hackers"?

What news sources would we be reading if we were physicists, or medical doctors, and wouldn't those be interesting even if we don't have these professions?

npsimons
> What news sources would we be reading if we were physicists, or medical doctors, and wouldn't those be interesting even if we don't have these professions?

It is incredibly fascinating to delve into other professions' rich data sources. It's also sometimes hard to do. I'm very fortunate in my current job that I am surrounded by PhDs in the hard sciences, and I've been richly rewarded by looking at what they are reading at work, not least of which because being a simple software engineer, I need to have at least a basic fluency in their domains to be effective at implementing their ideas in code.

Much as I'm not a fan of print media or transient data, there is value in a piece of advice I heard years ago: every month, go somewhere with a wide variety of magazines and pick one at random, preferably something you know nothing about or have never heard of before, and read it (libraries are underrated for this). Online is nice and convenient, but we tend to get locked into echo chambers and have search algorithms (and just natural human linking habits) create bubbles that don't force us to think about new and different things.

ashark
> Valueless content finds you. Worthwhile content you really have to go looking for, or have a good social network funneling stuff to you.

Really valuable content usually comes in batches, points directly to other valuable content (i.e. good things tend to discuss and cite other good things), and/or is long form. There's no need to look for valuable content every day, or even every week. It might be entertaining, but it's not a good use of time. Exceptions for people who have to keep up with news-cycle garbage and up-to-the-minute trends, of course. Those poor souls.

I waste more time than I should on Internet garbage (ahem) and sometimes I find good new stuff, but if I stopped doing that it'd still take me years to get through the great stuff I've already found but haven't yet engaged with. Plus many things could do with a second look. I'm 100% certain that'd be a better use of my time than looking for even more good stuff on the Internet.

npsimons
> Really valuable content usually comes in batches, points directly to other valuable content (i.e. good things tend to discuss and cite other good things), and/or is long form.

Bibliographies are highly underrated. Find a good book? Look to it's references for really good sources of information. Fuck, that's one of my content discovery routines: bibliographies.

> There's no need to look for valuable content every day, or even every week. It might be entertaining, but it's not a good use of time. Exceptions for people who have to keep up with news-cycle garbage and up-to-the-minute trends, of course. Those poor souls.

I can't second this enough, and I feel no one has to keep up with the transient data that wastes so much time and energy. I've cut out TV, newspapers, magazines, twitter, podcasts, and all sorts of wastes of time and worry; I haven't missed it. The last addictions I haven't been able to kick are things like HN and certain other websites. HN I still get the occasional value from, but I honestly feel depressed after wasting time online, and I'm no better informed. I would argue no one is better informed by transient data - most people I ask can't remember something they learned from transient data from two weeks ago, and even if they can, it's valueless data.

boardmad
Rubbish confirmation bias.

Your experience does not represent a trend

coldtea
That "energy, time, attention, focus" are the most valuable resources out there is not really arguable -- nor does it have anything to do with confirmation bias.

Nor is there much doubt that valuable content tends to trump shorter term fads and trends and find you in the end, even if you don't actively look for it. In fact, that's almost by definition, valuable content = stuff that endures over time, not the latest fad or nth "interesting" article that one can do without.

npsimons
> avoid it at all cost. Energy, time, attention, focus = the most valuable resources out there.

"Attention is scarce. Information is not. Do the math." That being said, I've found valuable book recommendations here on HN and other select boards. I've found that switching from short-form reading, videos and podcasts to longer form reading not only leaves me feeling happier, but is also far superior for quality of information taken in.

TL;DR - stop wasting your time with "daily content discovery" and instead focus on gaining a deeper, richer understanding of the world through reading well written books.

kerbalspacepro
I disagree. There are two types of content consumption/creation in the modern age. There is "flow" and "stores". Flow of content creation/consumption is seen in Twitter feeds or quickly updated blogs. This content isn't meant to last a long time, but corrects and updates minor facts about the world. In other words, it is good to allow quick Bayesian updating of your worldview.

The other type, "storage" of content through creation/consumption is through books, static webpages, or other historical sets of information. This is important because instead of updating former beliefs to be more true, it tends to open up vistas of information.

You can't function without either. As in all things, moderation is the key. Moderation is easiest if you set limits. For example, never set a "flow rate" thats higher than your consumption rate. So, if you use Twitter, make sure that you aren't following 1000 people. Be very careful. If you use an RSS reader, make sure that your feeds update at a reasonable rate (I give myself ~30 minutes in the morning to read them).

The same with books! Don't get sucked into the cult-of-reading. It is a cult, and reading "books" isn't actually useful unless you have a structured or semi-structured reading plan.

godelmachine
I regularly read Adrian Colyer's blog. -> blog.acolyer.org. Every single day. Simply reading through his reviews has increased my knowledge about Computer Science by leaps and bounds. Also, I see for new uploads in "Emerging Technologies" and "Hardware Architecture" section of Arxiv everyday. My daily ritual.
jamestimmins
What value have you found in reading his reviews vs reading the actual papers?
godelmachine
The actual papers are 10 pages long, on an average. Reading 10 pages long hard core technical papers everyday is tough for me. His reviews are succint and easy to understand. Enough for me to get the gist of the work done. While my aim is to be able to read those technical papers everyday on my own, eventually, for the time being I could use his reviews.
jamestimmins
Solid. And you feel like you still learn a lot? I've run into the same issue. Where the papers are super interesting, but I can't spend 2 hours per day reading them.
godelmachine
So what measures did you take for it? Any ideas on how do I improve? Any feedback would be much appreciated.
molestrangler
FeedBin and constantly updating the feeds (adding and removing) when I come across an interesting feed.

I only visit actually websites if I really need to.

So spend most of the time in FeedBin.

What RSS feed I have is my competitive advantage!

angelinemm
I do like Pocket a lot. I have a few IFTTT recipes that automatically enqueue articles from RSS feeds I like into my pocket, and at any point in the day if I read something interesting (from here, from reddit, from something sent by someone), I just add it to my pocket queue and I read it as the day goes.
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[dead] marcxm
TT-RSS with a bunch of content from various tech sites. Works on a mobile, too, so I can get my daily news in sync between different devices and circumstances - work, home, when I commute, etc.
jonathansizz
I gave up on Twitter, as even after massive ongoing curation the signal/noise is far too low. There's no way to filter tweets from sources I'm following, and it's a constant source of anxiety leading to compulsive reloading of the feed. Other social networks are worse. Life's too short for this.

I've also cut down on the web sources I follow, as information overload is a real thing, and we rapidly run into diminishing returns.

For news, I now just peruse the FT, Guardian and Atlantic (+HN via http://hckrnews.com/ using the 'top 50%' setting) a couple of times a day, and Politico Magazine once per week. This covers a decent section of the political spectrum and if there's anything important going on I'll find it amongst those sources. I probably read half a dozen full articles each day.

For non-immediate information, I browse A&L Daily, and I have print subscriptions to the following: The Atlantic, Harper's, Sky & Telescope, American Scientist, Foreign Affairs, Philosophy Now, and The Philosophers' Magazine.

Additionally, I listen to a selection of podcasts when I'm in the car. These cover international relations and news analysis, history, philosophy and comedy.

That just about covers it; since I hit 40 and had a son my priorities changed, as did my outlook on life. Other than my family, I'm spending much more of my time on real hobbies and interests (in my case a bit of astronomy and photography, occasional writing, some cooking, and a lot of cycling and serious reading (books)), and less on time-wasting activities (social networks, web forums, television and video games).

It's amazing how much extra time you can find if you cut useless things out of your life.

[dead] psing
Appreciate the thoughts.
kthejoker2
What international affairs podcasts do you listen to? It's an area I would like more analytical insights into.
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jonathansizz
CFR (the publishers of Foreign Affairs) have The World Next Week and The President's Inbox (and other more specialized ones)

Carnegie Endowment does The Carnegie Podcast

FT has World Weekly

BBC (e.g. Global News, Newshour, The Inquiry), NPR and PRI (e.g. America Abroad) all have a few to try out, and CSIS also have a good one. Universities like Oxford and Harvard have their own podcasts as well.

Try them all and pick your favourites. I just listen to CFR and Carnegie these days.

[dead] alexpetralia
Thanks a ton for hckr news. Great resource.
aphextron
I would add nautil.us to that list. But yeah, that's essentially the entirety of what's worth reading online in terms of traditional "news".
dabockster
> even after massive ongoing curation the signal/noise is far too low

Agreed. Even with programs like TweetDeck that can apply some basic filtering, you're still left with a bunch of junk content. (And the UX of TweetDeck is terrible in my opinion, but that's best left for another post.)

chasely
If you have a lot of people you follow on Twitter, Nuzzel [1] can be useful. Basically, if people you follow are sharing the same article, it will get highlighted by the app.

[1] http://nuzzel.com/

chillee
+1 for hckrnews. Even if I miss a day, I can easily go back through the last couple days and see what's interesting.

If my backlog is getting too much for me to want to deal with, I simply reduce the number of articles to top 10 or top 20, and go from there.

smithsmith
hckrnews is awesome. Before i found hckrnews i had no idea at what point to stop scrolling for more news if i missed looking hacker news a day later. The problem was since the feed is not linear with time and the newer articles can go beyond the articles you have already visited, there was no right way at what point to stop. hckrnews has addressed this issue very cleverly with the 20% , 50 % vote. Amazing.
boardmad
>> Twitter on the train >> Internal chatroom & microblog platform once in the office >> HN in a permatab in Chrome thorughout the day on a 10min refresh
lauretas
RSS, email subscriptions (mailing lists), and content aggregators for specific topics like HN or www.freepo.st

I used to read reddit years ago, but nowadays it's just too much noise and bad content (even the slower subreddits).

miguelrochefort
Daily:

- Messenger

- Email

- Hacker News

- Reddit

Weekly:

- YouTube

- Pocket

- Chrome tabs