
Post your HN tricks. - vaksel
Seems like there are a whole bunch of features that a lot of people don't know about. So I'd like to get a list of everything in one place.
======
kirubakaran
1\. Absolutely love <http://ask.searchyc.com/> to check if I missed any AskHNs

2\. In my personal wiki, I have a list links to people whose comment threads I
follow closely. [<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=*username*>]

3\. <http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive> has not been
updated recently, but still a good resource

4\. <http://news.ycombinator.com/classic> and
<http://news.ycombinator.com/lists> of course

5\. <http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039> modified to help me not visit
one aggravating unethical "blog" (you know which). I don't hide it altogether
as I value the discussion here.

~~~
Xichekolas
FWIW, the new version of #5 allows you to apply arbitrary styles to each item,
rather than just hiding them.

I put a blue background on all the Ask threads for instance.

To do so, the 'banlist' is now a textbox. Each line is in the format:

    
    
      *regex*->*style*
    

The default style is to hide anything that matches. Both titles and urls are
matched. So:

    
    
      valleywag.com
      Ask HN->background-color:red;
    

Would hide anything from valleywag.com and put red backgrounds on all the Ask
threads. The styling is pretty rough, so not sure what else works beside
background colors... feel free to complain if something needs fixed. ;)

~~~
kirubakaran
Cool! _background-color_ works but _color_ does not.

 _text-decoration:line-through;_ works and that is what I use for marking the
websites to avoid. Thanks for the cool tool.

------
tomsaffell
If you want to catch up on the last ~week, then you'll want:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/best>

~~~
megancolin
ok thank you! [http://www.newsguide.us/art-entertainment/movies/Todd-
DiRobe...](http://www.newsguide.us/art-entertainment/movies/Todd-DiRoberto-of-
American-Satellite-Hosts-Independence-Day-Charity-Event-for-Operation-Bigs/)

------
vaksel
To start off:

Search: <http://www.searchyc.com>

Submissions by new members: <http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories>

I know there is one to only see submissions by old users but I don't remember
the url

~~~
bjoernw
<http://news.ycombinator.com/classic>

------
mahmud
The [X] button in the top right corner does wonders for one's productivity. As
a bonus, use a different browser for work than you usually do for "surfing".
My Firefox is crawling with gadgets that each light up and pulsate with every
"must see" action that happens in my extended family of RSS feeds, contacts,
and bookmarks. My work browser is a light, crisp little Opera thing that has
10 tabs open all set to to various sub-URLs of <http://localhost:8080> :-)

~~~
swombat
I don't have an [X] button in the top right corner. I do have 3 brightly
coloured pill buttons in the top left though.

~~~
GeneralMaximus
I have a yellow tab in the top left corner. Go figure :)

~~~
mahmud
Be?

~~~
GeneralMaximus
You're pretty close :)

<http://haiku-os.org>

------
lionhearted
One general writing trick I learned - after writing a long comment, I'll
usually go back and edit it so in the first sentence people know what they're
going to read. Some of the best comments I've seen on here are detailed, long
ones, but if it jumps right into the middle of presenting the argument and
evidence and statistics, a lot of people will glaze over it. So the short
intro that lets people know what you're writing about helps a lot.

~~~
swombat
You can use this "trick" successfully for _any_ form of writing.

As the rule goes: tell'em what you're going to tell'em, tell'em, and then
tell'em what you told'em.

~~~
tome
I've heard that rule before, and like it a lot. Do you know anything about its
origins or who said it?

~~~
jimm
This reply will let you know that I don't know anything about its origins or
who said it.

Sorry, I don't know.

We've just learned that Jim doesn't know anything about the origins of that
writing advice, or who said it.

------
ilitirit
GM Script that enables foldable comments:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=747786>

------
fallentimes
PG's microblog:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg>

~~~
jwinter
PG's other microblog:

<http://ycombinator.posterous.com/>

------
brianto2010
Not really a 'trick', but here are two cool bookmarklets for for visualizing
polls:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700669>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528172>

------
vaksel
Don't forget the bookmarklet, makes posting stories a piece of cake:
<http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html>

------
edd
If your an iPhone user this works well on your homescreen:
<http://www.icombinator.net>

------
tsondermann
The HN Onepage Greasemonkey script.
<http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512>

Allows me to load pages in a separate frame and then vote and/or comment on
them. Saves me the trouble of loading up 15 tabs and forgetting to vote up the
stories that I like.

------
david927
To get italics, use asterisks (*).

------
jacquesm
To bypass the anti flame-war controls click 'link' when the 'reply' link isn't
visible yet.

~~~
Pistos2
Noob question: What anti flame-war controls?

~~~
tdavis
The idea was to make it impossible to reply quickly to deeply-nested threads
in order to let the flames settle (the assumption being that deeply-nested
threads are generally just flame wars). It appears it was only made less
convenient.

------
streety
If you want more than just the link in your RSS feed there was
<http://nirmalpatel.com/fcgi/hn_feed.fcgi>

It looks like it is now just a redirect to
[http://andrewtrusty.appspot.com/readability/feed?url=http%3A...](http://andrewtrusty.appspot.com/readability/feed?url=http%3A//news.ycombinator.com/rss)
which if you de-construct the url leads to a more generic solution.

The content from there can also be fed into Yahoo Pipes for any filtering you
want to do. Given the plethora of HN related pipes it seems like everybody
just creates their own. Having said that if you want somewhere to start I use
[http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=c0d729843a9b9e8de...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=c0d729843a9b9e8de399036b1876f63b)

------
delano
What is the trick for getting active URIs on profile pages?

Examples:

* active: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mqt>

* inactive: <http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo>

------
Herring
Autopager: <https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925>

Ajaxy loading of next pages

------
mcav
RSS feed that includes HN's comments:

[http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=23159aed1a913917f8...](http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=23159aed1a913917f8f422bb8f6e7e71&_render=rss)

------
bayareaguy
While working I use this strategy to limit my HN reading to compile cycles:
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447077>

------
iamwil
I dunno, I kinda like the idea that people learn about it as they participate
and lurk on the site--kind of like leveling up in an informal way, instead of
getting it all at once.

~~~
DTrejo
They'll have to learn to search for this, once it falls off the homepage.

------
jobeirne
<http://hackerne.ws> -> <http://news.ycombinator.com>

~~~
SwellJoe
While I guess the folks who registered this name have nothing but legitimate
intent, this is pretty much text book man-in-the-middle attack technique. It
would take one change to the DNS record and a simple sniffing proxy, and every
user to use that address would be compromised.

As long as it is not owned by pg and rtm, I would strongly suggest you use
news.ycombinator.com

Actually looking at the registration data, I'm extremely suspicious of this
name. If I had ever used it, I would be changing my authentication details.

whois for hackerne.ws:

1234567 lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (<http://www.godaddy.com>) Domain Name:
HACKERNE.WS Created on: 27-Nov-07 Expires on: 27-Nov-09 Last Updated on:
28-Nov-08

Administrative Contact: man, europe iloveinternetalot@gmail.com none 1234567
lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus 35799123456

Technical Contact: man, europe iloveinternetalot@gmail.com none 1234567
lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus 35799123456

~~~
jacquesm
yep.

And even if the folks who registered it are 'legit', if they let the domain
lapse who knows where it will end up and it's not as though you'll get a
warning the next time you point your browser to that address.

------
GHFigs
noprocrast: on maxvisit: 20 minaway: 700

------
zackattack
IRC channel: #startups on irc.freenode.net

~~~
jacquesm
I'll just pretend I didn't see that, HN is a large enough timesink as it is.

~~~
dylanz
Was about to post the same thing... <plugs ears and says "la la la la la">

