HN Explorer

Ask HN: Trying to find an old HN post, failing at search

27 points by xbkandxe ↗ HN
Hey all…been trying desperately on and off for weeks to find something I could've sworn was posted to HN. It was someone showing off their incredibly minimal bare git repo site, basically. Think cgit but even more basic.

Thanks in advance.

29 comments

[ 3.3 ms ] story [ 69.1 ms ] thread
xbkandxe
Can't edit my post now…but I'm _pretty_ sure it was just HTML/CSS/JS, no running code anywhere. Could be wrong.
Nextgrid
Shot in the dark but Sourcehut? It fits the minimal theme.
pestatije
this is really intriguing to me...do you not have browser history? i could tell you each and every single webpage ive been to in the last years
LVB
Including the ones you visited on your phone, and even maybe as an in-app web view? Add to that the HN reader app I use and I’m finding a lot more escapes browser history.
distalx
Hey, I know the feeling! It can be frustrating when we can't find something we're sure we saw on HN.

When default search failed me in the past, I've had some luck with experimental search projects that people have created. I'm sharing them hoping one might help you find what you're looking for:

* [Vectara](https://search-hackernews.vercel.app/) * [Hacker Search](https://hackersearch.net/) * [HN Discussion Search](https://searchhacker.news/) * [Hacker News Search](https://hn.lixiasearch.com/) * [DeepHN](https://deephn.org/)

Give them a try and see if any of these tools can help you track down the post you're looking for. Good luck!

flanbiscuit
Thanks for these! I tried a few of these and https://hn.lixiasearch.com/ turned up exactly what I was looking for as the first result. Gonna have to bookmark that one. I also had a HN story I've been looking for that I couldn't find via HN's algolia search, nor any major search engine.
incognito124
What did you search for anyways?
flanbiscuit
This was the post I was looking for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29894300

This was last night so I'm forgetting exactly what I searched but it was something like: "blog about a developer helping his mom with her chromebook she couldn't update".

HN's algolia search is sometimes helpful but you need to know exactly what was either in the title or in the comments. I tried multiple keywords like "ChromeOS", "mom", "javascript error", "chromebook", and so on. I couldn't remember the exact details of the story. Now that I know "optional chaining" is in the title, I can find it right away.

wingerlang
Is this an AI generated comment?
efilife
Certainly feels a bit like AI. People on HN are overly nice* sometimes, it contributes to this feeling a lot

*Not a bad thing, I'm just saying the comment could be shorter by 50% and stil convey the same meaning

xbkandxe
All of them except the last one were nice. Turned up a lot of results I wasn't getting from Algolia, DDG, or Google. Unfortunately, even after digging through pages and pages, I couldn't find what I was looking for. :-(

I might just have to say "I messed up by not bookmarking this" and accept that I'll likely never see it again.

Thanks anyway. :-)

terrycody
Sometimes, you have to use Google functions as its better for searching things, though not always.

Do you remember any keywords? Names?

Use site:ycombinator.com "keyword" on Google search, and adjust the timeline to narrow the results.

snthpy
Is there a project to easily sync to a local sqlite db?
dzonga
I think algolia - limited search functions. even the filter facets have changed compared to years ago.

maybe as a defensive mechanism against ai and other scrappers.