
New ‘past’ link on HN front page - Y_Y
https://news.ycombinator.com/front
======
HelloFellowDevs
I'm actually really interested in this addition. I'm just going back to 'big'
days, such as financial crash. When I started HS when I finished HS, when I
started College. A few articles are interesting, it's definitely better than
bumbling around Algolia.

Edit: One great link is this one

> Google Making Extraordinary Counteroffers To Stop Flow Of Employees To
> Facebook [1]

[1]([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653702](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1653702))

~~~
polishTar
>>no reason their stock won’t hit $100 billion in total valuation over the
next couple of years.

>That's got to be a joke.

Love it!

~~~
bredren
I had to look this up, here's FB's historical market cap:
[https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap](https://ycharts.com/companies/FB/market_cap)

------
MilnerRoute
I like it. It seems to surface more unusually good stories -- but is that a
problem?

Won't the list end up dominated by a handful of winner-take-all stories,
lingering throughout the entire day at the top of the list, rather than an
ongoing series of slightly-less-popular stories popping in and out?

If there's always going to be better stories with the "sorted by time spent"
view, does that create a danger that everyone will just devote their attention
to those few high-grade stories, and ignore all of the rest?

~~~
dang
It's just a list of past front pages. Once each day is over, its front page
never changes. Does that answer your question?

(Well, it's not exactly a list of past front pages, because what appears on
/front was never the actual front page at any point. Since that's always
changing, we take a kind of average.)

~~~
MilnerRoute
Yeah, I was confused about how this works. But if the link appears at the
bottom of the page, then this new page will be more of an afterthought (after
reading the current front page and upvoting its stories at that moment in
time).

------
dang
Not new; just the link at the top is new. The hard part was what to call it.
Since the point is to give people more to read, 'more' seemed right.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12073675)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512028](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18512028)

Edit: Oh, also: "more" fits with the "More" links you see at the bottom of the
front page and other places, clicking which takes you back to previous posts.

Edit 2: Ok, you guys have convinced me you don't like "more", so let's go with
"past". That word is overloaded with 'past' links that point to HN searches,
but perhaps those meanings are compatible.

~~~
chmaynard
Thanks! Just a reminder, don't forget to add a "hide" button under each post.
Some of us use "hide" a lot. :)

~~~
tedmiston
Just curious what purpose you use hide for? It's a feature I've always kinda
ignored. (If I don't want to see a story, I just keep scrolling.)

~~~
ShamelessC
It's good for personal bookkeeping. Whether you've already read a story, the
comments or just have no interest - it's nice to get off your page so you
don't have the unnecessary clutter and/or distraction.

------
eterps
Only now I realized that I use [https://hckrnews.com](https://hckrnews.com)
for so many years that I have come to think of it as the actual HN front page.
It's hard to imagine something better.

~~~
andirk
Do you mean that we're not all typings news.ycombinator.com ? That's kind of
tripping me out. And where is this new 'more' button?

~~~
TeMPOraL
Are you? I'm just typing new<ret>. Or not even that; HN is often just
CTRL+SHIFT+T away...

~~~
a-wu
For me just typing "n" suffices for autocomplete....maybe I should pay more
attention to my habits.

------
J_cst
I feel that the top navigation "more" link could be renamed into "popular by
date" or "yesterday's popular". Those labels appear more accurate to me and
better convey the functionality of the current top "more" link. Moreover
having two links with the same name on the same page which behave differently
seems misleading.

~~~
arendtio
In fact, I was wondering why someone would want to change the 'More' link at
the bottom of the page. Took me a moment to realize there is another one in
the header now.

------
Waterluvian
I love that HN doesn't change for change's sake. One problem I have with tech
orgs is that inevitably their designers will find work to do, necessary or
not.

So when things do change, I like that it's very methodical and usually quite
minor.

~~~
zeotroph
Methodical or just overly cautious? It took ages to get the `[-]`/collapse
tree link, and the other IMO obvious QoL improvement -- a 'parent' link to a)
get to the root node of a discussion tree that no longer interests the reader
and then to b) use the mentioned '[-]' to collapse it all -- might take even
longer.

------
rprameshwor
2007-02-18 seems to be the day it started.

Out of curiosity : Under a particular day's story, why do we see stories from
the next day too ?

Eg :
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-02-21](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2018-02-21)
This shows some post from 02-22 too.

~~~
dang
That does seem odd. I'll look into it.

Edit: it's because the /front pages were dividing up days differently than the
story timestamps, which use UTC. I've made everything use UTC now.

------
badfrog
What's the difference between?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/](https://news.ycombinator.com/)

and

[https://news.ycombinator.com/front](https://news.ycombinator.com/front)

I didn't know the latter existed until right now.

~~~
dang
The first one is in the present and the second shows how it was in the past.

------
franky47
I like the "Time Machine" feature of going back 1 (to N) year(s) in the past,
it brings a lot of insight as to how technologies and trends evolved (for
those of us who have only recently joined Hacker News).

~~~
natebleker
This is one area when the functionally can really be improved over what reddit
implements. Having a moving window of time to sort within is an amazingly
useful feature for sorting out trends or lost articles. The expanded
granularity would be very much appreciated.

~~~
EamonnMR
Also with Reddit being able to trace causality between memes and such would be
interesting.

------
WrtCdEvrydy
This is broken... when I put in tomorrow's date, it says it doesn't have that
data....

------
komali2
I don't understand what I'm looking at, other than the option to view the page
as it appeared a day, month, or year back... or a day in the future somehow?

~~~
throway88989898
Normal HN but time-bound: front page as it appeared on day x. Submissions
ordered by time spent in the front page.

I think the message on top takes too much space and would prefer something
like

<y <d <m (2019-02-22) d> m> y>

or

<<< << < (2019-02-22) > >> >>>

or

< < < (2019-02-22) > > >

But that's just me.

~~~
O_H_E
I like these first two suggestions

------
gnicholas
I'm curious how the algorithm works, as it doesn't seem to work as I'd
expected.

My first thought was to go back and look at the day I launched my startup with
at Show HN [1], which got over 700 points and was at #1 from roughly noon to 2
AM the next day (PT). Sure enough, this post shows up in the #2 slot on the
day I posted it (Sept 5, 2013) [2], but it doesn't show up at all on the
following day [3].

This is strange because it was at #1 at the beginning of this day (assuming
that's midnight PT) and was on the front page for much of that day. Even when
you go hundreds of entries down into the Sept 6 page, it doesn't show up.

Any idea how the algorithm works that it's generating these results?

1:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6335784)

2:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2013-09-05](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2013-09-05)

3:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2013-09-06](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2013-09-06)

~~~
dang
We only started logging the front page on 2014-11-11. For days before that,
what you're seeing is the stories which were submitted on that day, ordered by
vote score. (Not necessarily publicly visible points, though, because some
votes get dropped for various reasons.) Since your story was submitted on Sept
5, 2013, that's the day it shows up.

If you look at
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2014-11-11](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2014-11-11)
vs.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2014-11-10](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2014-11-10),
you'll notice that the text description changes at the top.

~~~
gnicholas
Thanks, that makes sense!

------
dangwu
Any plans to update the official Hacker News API? I’d love more features, such
as ability to reply and upvote, but more importantly, the API currently
requires using a _really_ old version of Firebase SDK. The rest API is an
alternative, but it doesn’t work well due to the design of the API needing a
whole network call per post/comment.

~~~
dang
We're going to replace it with a new API that just gives a JSON version of any
HN URL. Will that work?

~~~
dangwu
That would be incredible. Please give substantial warning before taking down
the Firebase API though!

~~~
dang
We will. But can you be specific? How long would count as substantial warning?

~~~
dangwu
I’d say allow at least 3 months overlap between releasing the JSON API and
killing the Firebase API. 6+ months would be ideal. Lots of apps need
updating!

------
aboutruby
I'm curious what's the reasoning behind adding this link? To me it makes HN
much easier to catch up. I see this as the "slow media" movement:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_media](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_media)

------
valentinvieriu
I like to explore it more visually. [https://hnews.xyz/](https://hnews.xyz/)
Is that something you might consider adding in the future? ( I’m the author of
[https://hnews.xyz](https://hnews.xyz) )

~~~
tedmiston
The rendered screenshots are a super nice feature.

I have a few dozen HN apps (yours included) saved in this Pinboard collection
for those looking for more alternative clients.

[https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker-
news/](https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker-news/)

~~~
miki123211
I wish there was a hn viewer integrated with Outline. something like, for each
new article on front, check whether it can be outlined and, if it can, just
display it without redirecting to the original site. That would protect
against slashdotted sites, paywalls, annoying gdpr consent pop ups, sorry but
we don't like europe pages, all kinds of tracking and js heavy websites
(especially if you're on i.e. Lynx) etc. This could be done either by
redirecting to the Outline website or using its API (see the network traffic
for details on how it works). Also a HN that would be essentially a list of
check boxes ordered by time and an "add selected to Pocket" button would be
nice too.

~~~
tedmiston
Both of those ideas sound awesome.

I am a heavy Instapaper user but really liking Outline / Hypothesis lately.

~~~
miki123211
What's hypothesis? Tried searching for it on Google but couldn't find
anything, as it's such a common word.

~~~
tedmiston
Hypothesis is the company who makes the open highlighter / web annotation
software on Outline. [I believe they also run Outline but I can't find this
made apparent anywhere. It could be that Outline just uses the Hypothesis
annotator client.]

If you register for a free account on Hypothesis (sometimes stylized
Hypothes.is), you can leave private or public highlights and annotations while
reading on Outline, and if you install their browser extension on any webpage.

Genius (YC S11) (formerly Rap Genius) started down the path of creating a
global web annotator but pivoted into a media company to monetize. Hypothesis
is basically what Genius could have become if they continued with the vision
of annotating the entire web and fully built out the product. The company
itself is a non-profit and their code is open source.

[https://web.hypothes.is/](https://web.hypothes.is/)

[https://github.com/hypothesis](https://github.com/hypothesis)

[https://web.hypothes.is/blog/a-letter-to-marc-andreessen-
and...](https://web.hypothes.is/blog/a-letter-to-marc-andreessen-and-rap-
genius/)

~~~
miki123211
If I were them, I wouldn't publish the fact that they're running outline very
widely considering the dirty tricks that service employs, i.e. to show wsj
articles to non-subscribers etc. I like the fact that someone finally has the
guts, but if I were them, I wouldn't reveal myself that easily.

------
the_duke
The most important feature that HN would need in my opinion is a "top of last
X" view, as Reddit introduced with the redesign.

It's MUCH to easy to miss interesting stories if you don't check the site at
least twice a day.

------
sjroot
It would be cool to see links from previous days/months/years point to an
archived version of the link (if possible). If you go back a substantial
amount of time, you end up hitting a lot of broken links.

~~~
bcjordan
Could be a quick Greasemonkey/Tampermonkey script hack to grab the date from
the URL and links to the nearest Wayback Machine version using
[https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php](https://archive.org/help/wayback_api.php)

------
tekkk
I think the UI is kinda awkward to use. If I want to input a specific date I
have to manipulate the URL? Gets really annoying with mobile. Also it would be
nice to somehow see the past dates somehow visualized. Maybe how much total
activity there was per day, or what types of topics were discussed. Now I am
just going blind without any sense of direction what lies ahead. It's very
refreshing feature and all but I will probably only use it for past day's
submissions since going farther fishing for interesting submissions is too
laborious.

------
DiabloD3
It'd be nice if the "title" field of the link submit form would have a tiny
little bit of javascript to count how many characters are in the field.

~~~
dang
It does if you go over 80, which is the limit. Does that not suffice?

~~~
DiabloD3
I've never seen it do it. EFF headlines are notoriously long and a PITA to
edit if I can't see what I'm doing.

------
wunderg
I like “more” on top, it does makes sense. The link on the bottom perhaps
should be renamed to next to avoid confusion.

Just my 2 cents!

------
skibz
I wrote a browser extension a while ago that adds more of these lesser known
HN pages to the nav. I like having a way to get to all of them individually
from the top of every page.

[https://github.com/skibz/hnlists](https://github.com/skibz/hnlists)

------
ggm
Isn't it confusing to have the word [more] twice on the front page, but doing
different things depending on if its at the top or the bottom?

I like the function, but some how "by date" feels more "more" than "more"
does.

------
davidjnelson
This is cool, thank you! Would “days” be a good name as it allows you to
browse a set of days?

It doesn’t seem like posts you’ve hidden from the front page are reflected
here. I guess they don’t really need to be since this is more archival in
nature.

~~~
dang
Hmm, maybe they should be. I'll make a note to look at that.

------
hombre_fatal
This is great. I always wished I could see front pages from the past.

The only downside is that getting bored of the current front page is sometimes
the only reason I get off HN when I'm procrastinating and this makes it easier
to prolong that. :)

------
rasikjain
Interesting!! Very first day of HN has 10 posts.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-18](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-18)

~~~
mercer
Isn't this the first day?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09)

~~~
rasikjain
interesting. I found this article about HN from Feb 2007

[https://news.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/announcingnews.html)

------
forgotmypw
Cool! I just found this feature yesterday or the day before, thanks to a post
listing all the less documented HN features.

Have you found the new placement to be affecting the site/database load at
all?

~~~
O_H_E
May I ask you to link such thread. Am not able to find it on algolia

~~~
forgotmypw
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19212822)

I searched Google for "site:news.ycombinator.com features" and limited the
search to past week.

------
kgwxd
Any chance all the lists[1] will get their own RSS feeds?

[1][https://news.ycombinator.com/lists](https://news.ycombinator.com/lists)

~~~
tedmiston
Kinda surprised someone hasn't built that already on top of the existing API.

~~~
miki123211
see hnrss.org. I use it along with an iOS shortcut that retrieves the articles
for me, concatenates to a big txt file, uploads to dropbox so that I can read
later on whatever I want and automatically starts reading with the build-in
tts.

------
Insanity
I like the feature but the name is not great :) As some others have suggested
"Archive" or "History" sound better in my humble opinion.

------
bekishore
Please consider a "first" and "latest" day in these options ... or let
everyone go back years and find out the first day 2007-02-18

~~~
dang
The first day is actually
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09).

In the first few months, there were quite a few days where nothing was posted
(see the difference between
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=61)
and 62). If /front works for a day, but shows no stories, that means HN
existed but there were no stories that day.

The navigation links work until they point outside the ultimate beginning or
end of the data, and then stop appearing. That was a bit tricky to get right
as I recall.

------
inopinatus
Not essential, but IWBNI date selection respected user timezone. It’s 23/2
here in the Pacific; seeing 21/2 as “yesterday” felt wrong.

~~~
dang
I hear you, but proper timezone support is one of those things we've shied
away from over the years. It's hard to get right and our dev resources are too
limited. So mostly we just work with UTC. I'm sorry—I know it can create a bit
of an outsider feeling, which is definitely not intended.

------
hacym
Can’t stop it from happening but sad that most of the links are broken. Would
be nice to go back on a link and actually read it.

------
z3
Very nice and useful. Well done guys!

------
eevilspock
Could an option be added to change the time granularity? e.g. by week, month
and year?

~~~
dang
Good idea. I'll add it to the list.

------
aunty_helen
Feature request: Filtering out domains that you don't want to see on the home
page

------
colvasaur
Is there a public API for this?

~~~
throway88989898
other than
[https://github.com/HackerNews/API](https://github.com/HackerNews/API) ?

------
m3kw9
There is also a More in the bottom of the front page. This more and that more.

~~~
civilian
Are you sure it's not "this more" and "self more" ?

------
amelius
By the way, I sometimes miss the "parent" link on comments.

------
NKosmatos
Nice, but can we please have a dark theme for iPad?

------
abbiya
My hacker news spin [https://8hrs.xyz](https://8hrs.xyz) does something
similar to this newly added more btn. Why add this now ???

------
artursapek
And thus HN became a perfect museum of silicon valley trends, hypes, and
deaths.

------
dbg31415
By 2026 HN will discover never-ending scroll.

~~~
zapzupnz
I hope not, that's a usability nightmare when you're trying to find something.

------
pmoriarty
How many people actually look at the front page rather than just use the RSS
feed?

[https://news.ycombinator.com/rss](https://news.ycombinator.com/rss)

~~~
badfrog
> How many people actually look at the front page rather than just use the RSS
> feed?

What do you use for RSS? After Google Reader shut down, I assumed very few
people continued using RSS.

~~~
pmoriarty
I use Newsboat[1][2], a standalone RSS reader that I use in the terminal. It's
an actively developed fork of Newbeuter.

[1] - [https://newsboat.org/](https://newsboat.org/)

[2] -
[https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat](https://github.com/newsboat/newsboat)

