HN Explorer

Ask HN: (meta) How do you find real hacker news?

27 points by akumpf ↗ HN
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 :)

19 comments

[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 42.6 ms ] thread
tronium
I understand what you're looking for, and producthunt.com really matches you're description well. It's all about new startups.
akumpf
Looks cool; although it feels a bit gated and sparse on first read.

I really like the democratized submission process on hacker news.

xpressyoo
I 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
Try 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

prohor
Strange, 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
As 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
Nice! 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
You 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
Does 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
Thanks. 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
I do not like browsing news aggregators with voting / comments if I cannot comment.
ChikkaChiChi
I 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
Try http://skimhn.com/

Filter and adapt it to your taste

dserban
Someone wrote a machine learning script that separates the wheat from the chaff on HN. It's here:

http://hn.njl.us/

e15ctr0n
I 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
I 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.