Just a few high level points about how this works. It works in multiple stages:
1. I apply a domain and keyword filter to the feed
2. The content of the remaining articles are run through a Modern Bert-based classifier fine-tuned to detect AI-related content (~8000 training examples).
The original workflow for this was a little different. For the better part of the past year, I had an AI agent detect AI-related stories and throw ~20 stories to me to make a judgement call on. After a while, a workflow like this just doesn't make sense when small models can do it equally as well. The training data came from the machine/my annotation.
It also filters out Github repos that contain AI authorship. My backend scans every github repo submitted to HN for coding agent traces in the commit messages, contributor graph, and repo files (agent instructions/configs)
I think you should make it clear, that when you say "without AI" you mean AI-related content, because some people in the comments seem to think that this is about AI-generated content.
At the bottom of the linked site, it says "79 of 179 submissions survived the filter" so if only ~44% survived I'd say that counts as "prevalent" yeah.
* It filters out things that are clearly not AI related (like the one titled ' Mind-altering drugs played key role in rise of Andean civilization ') - or maybe it's just slow to update (that post was 3 hours ago)
* No ability to go to the next page
* Order is often different than on HN, even account for the missing posts. It's mostly the same, but not quite, which always throws me for a loop to see if something else is missing.
People were actually complaining specifically about OpenAI/Anthropic glazing and the countless influencer comments and posts here every hour.
And it's getting twisted into "People want HN without AI."
But that was never the case. I mean some surely do. But the blow-up this morning was specific to Anthropic ads to the point there's basically no information on this website that isn't related to Anthropic or OpenAI.
If it was announced some rando kid made a LLM in PHP or something, sure share it! If it was announced someone actually made something cool with AI (lol) then share it!
But Claude 24/7 aint it. It's at least extremely boring!
There is also the hide button under every post, which I’ve started using generously. It only takes a few seconds to clean up the front page to your taste
Depends on what you want "without AI" to mean... is it just stories about AI, or anything that an AI has touched at all? Or purely vibe-coded projects?
Instead of filtering keywords this ranks the content using Pangram. But it's also pretty effective at filtering content about AI. Turns out that a lot of LLM tooling projects have LLM written project descriptions/blog posts.
It's amazing to see how many of the "AI hurts my brain" posts are apparently written by an LLM.
Nice! I was considering doing this but the Pangram API is very expensive. Then I considered training my own model and I fortunately stopped at the edge of that rabbit hole.
I quite like this, particularly that the filter is just a preset! Will be back.
Minor UI feedback - when navigating comments (and maybe other stuff) with the keyboard, the actual focus change is blocked behind some automated scroll behavior, and the effect is that someone quickly hitting keybinds will collapse the wrong thread. Would suggest making the focus change happen concurrently.
Thanks for the feedback. Comment drawer nav could be a lot better. I started working on the keyboard nav but got distracted with other things. I'll fix it.
62 comments
[ 0.20 ms ] story [ 4.5 ms ] threadits incredibly easy to immediately tell when something was posted, and how popular it was. there s no automagic rearranging or movement.
similar to https://techmeme.com/river
https://hcker.news/?ai=exclude
It also filters out Github repos that contain AI authorship. My backend scans every github repo submitted to HN for coding agent traces in the commit messages, contributor graph, and repo files (agent instructions/configs)
RSS feed here: https://hcker.news/feeds/atom?period=day&ai=exclude
https://imgur.com/a/P1qMIok
9 out of 30 posts have been removed.
Steps:
Install uBlock Origin Lite. Then create a custom filter:
Any improvements to above filter are welcome.* It filters out things that are clearly not AI related (like the one titled ' Mind-altering drugs played key role in rise of Andean civilization ') - or maybe it's just slow to update (that post was 3 hours ago)
* No ability to go to the next page
* Order is often different than on HN, even account for the missing posts. It's mostly the same, but not quite, which always throws me for a loop to see if something else is missing.
And it's getting twisted into "People want HN without AI."
But that was never the case. I mean some surely do. But the blow-up this morning was specific to Anthropic ads to the point there's basically no information on this website that isn't related to Anthropic or OpenAI.
If it was announced some rando kid made a LLM in PHP or something, sure share it! If it was announced someone actually made something cool with AI (lol) then share it!
But Claude 24/7 aint it. It's at least extremely boring!
TIL it was rare in the actual wartime (WWII) and only became popular in 2000: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keep_Calm_and_Carry_On
Looking at the iPod 6G QEMU emulation story:
> "With the help of Claude Code, I was able to create code to extract it using emCORE."
Stick to sharing your thing in the current thread today:
Ask HN: Can we please limit the AI news flood?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49657850
Instead of filtering keywords this ranks the content using Pangram. But it's also pretty effective at filtering content about AI. Turns out that a lot of LLM tooling projects have LLM written project descriptions/blog posts.
It's amazing to see how many of the "AI hurts my brain" posts are apparently written by an LLM.
I suppose it depends on what point of view we answer from. It is very hacker-newsery to make something like this
Minor UI feedback - when navigating comments (and maybe other stuff) with the keyboard, the actual focus change is blocked behind some automated scroll behavior, and the effect is that someone quickly hitting keybinds will collapse the wrong thread. Would suggest making the focus change happen concurrently.