
Ask HN: What is your content discovery daily routine? - smorac
I&#x27;m quite curious about how people on Hacker News find interesting content along the day. What are the topics you are interesting in? What are the websites you go to? (HN is probably in there) Do you have some mailing list you are counting on to deliver you good content? Are there some tools you like to use to store and read later?<p>On my side, I like to read HN and getting a lot of information on subreddits that are related to my favorite topics :  MachineLearning, LanguageTechnology, Node, GoLang, Cooking, Baking, CheeseMaking, Beer. In my perception, the more niche the topic, the more you can find quality stuff on.<p>When I find a link of interest I bookmark it on Chrome where I have Google&#x27;s Bookmark Manager plugin to make it more sexy. Personally I&#x27;m not a fan of Pocket but I know a lot of people like it.<p>So, what about you?
======
jonathansizz
I gave up on Twitter, as even after massive ongoing curation the signal/noise
is far too low. There's no way to filter tweets from sources I'm following,
and it's a constant source of anxiety leading to compulsive reloading of the
feed. Other social networks are worse. Life's too short for this.

I've also cut down on the web sources I follow, as information overload is a
real thing, and we rapidly run into diminishing returns.

For news, I now just peruse the FT, Guardian and Atlantic (+HN via
[http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) using the 'top 50%' setting) a
couple of times a day, and Politico Magazine once per week. This covers a
decent section of the political spectrum and if there's anything important
going on I'll find it amongst those sources. I probably read half a dozen full
articles each day.

For non-immediate information, I browse A&L Daily, and I have print
subscriptions to the following: The Atlantic, Harper's, Sky & Telescope,
American Scientist, Foreign Affairs, Philosophy Now, and The Philosophers'
Magazine.

Additionally, I listen to a selection of podcasts when I'm in the car. These
cover international relations and news analysis, history, philosophy and
comedy.

That just about covers it; since I hit 40 and had a son my priorities changed,
as did my outlook on life. Other than my family, I'm spending much more of my
time on real hobbies and interests (in my case a bit of astronomy and
photography, occasional writing, some cooking, and a lot of cycling and
serious reading (books)), and less on time-wasting activities (social
networks, web forums, television and video games).

It's amazing how much extra time you can find if you cut useless things out of
your life.

~~~
kthejoker2
What international affairs podcasts do you listen to? It's an area I would
like more analytical insights into.

~~~
jonathansizz
CFR (the publishers of Foreign Affairs) have The World Next Week and The
President's Inbox (and other more specialized ones)

Carnegie Endowment does The Carnegie Podcast

FT has World Weekly

BBC (e.g. Global News, Newshour, The Inquiry), NPR and PRI (e.g. America
Abroad) all have a few to try out, and CSIS also have a good one. Universities
like Oxford and Harvard have their own podcasts as well.

Try them all and pick your favourites. I just listen to CFR and Carnegie these
days.

~~~
mathperson
I also recommend war college by reuters [http://www.reuters.com/podcasts/war-
college](http://www.reuters.com/podcasts/war-college)

------
LoudogUno
I don't really have an answer for the source of good content but could tell
you one of my logistical solutions.

I use BetterTouchTool to remap the "Three Finger Click" gesture to my Chrome
keyboard shortcut for the "Save to Pocket" Extension and the "Four Finger
Click" gesture to "Clip to Evernote"...

As I browse HN, read emails, and generally surf the web, I identify what
content I might be interested in reading or might be useful later and click
accordingly. Pocket for things I want stripped of styling and organized in a
nice little FIFO list I can quickly pull up on my phone while waiting in line
at Costco. Evernote for things I want the presentation in kept intact and
searchable

My time at my workstation with a full keyboard and 4 monitors is a much better
time to find content while processing content I could easily do on mobile
during the day's numerous downtimes: listening on the ride to work, on the
bike at the gym...

Pocket has a useful "Listen To" feature with variable speed settings and some
other simple thoughtful additions.

Evernote for all its problems has the "Jump To" quick search and reliable
multi-device platform-agnostic syncing secret sauce.

The system feels really good when I'm perusing an article with a bunch of
hyperlinks to content that I should probably read eventually but will distract
me from the task at hand if I were to follow them now.

Thanks for asking this, I love hearing about other peoples solutions.

------
dchuk
I built this site: [https://engineered.at](https://engineered.at)

It's like HN, but powered by hundreds of startup tech/engineering blog feeds.
It pulls in some really good stuff! Not a lot of users yet, just barely
getting it going so far, let me know what you think.

EDIT: Lots more planned for this site, just only able to spend free time on
it:

1\. Following users/messaging them privately

2\. Notifications when users reply to you, follow you, etc

3\. Self-curated front pages. I realize not everyone cares about all of the
feeds in the site, so give the ability for people to hide certain feeds if
they want.

~~~
harigov
That's a great idea and something that I would love to use. You should
probably give some weight to blogs known for kick-ass engineering so that they
surface up lot more. That would be a good way to seed articles to this
service. Also, you need dark mode!

~~~
dchuk
Both great suggestions! I think the weighting will be dependent on getting
more engagement on the site overall, which is a tricky thing early on, but
working on it!

------
otterpro
This is how I discovered contents throughout history:

* Late 80's - pre-WWW era: Books, word-of-mouth, computer magazines (Dr. Dobbs, etc), snail-mail newsletters, USENET / newsgroups on internet via shell terminal

* 1990's: Web forums, Slashdot, IRC

* 2000's: Slashdot, Digg, RSS feeds from blogs / Google Reader

* 2010's: HN

~~~
danesparza
Ahhh yes. I remember the good old days when tech books were half decent. Good
times.

------
godelmachine
I regularly read Adrian Colyer's blog. -> blog.acolyer.org. Every single day.
Simply reading through his reviews has increased my knowledge about Computer
Science by leaps and bounds. Also, I see for new uploads in "Emerging
Technologies" and "Hardware Architecture" section of Arxiv everyday. My daily
ritual.

~~~
ice109
the arxiv tip is a very good one indeed

~~~
qorrect
You might also like [http://www.arxiv-sanity.com/](http://www.arxiv-
sanity.com/)

~~~
myth_drannon
Looks amazing, thanks!

Is there HN for arxiv papers?(I saw the parent link has top hype sections, but
it's not the same)

------
appleflaxen
I find that the more efficient my daily content discovery routine is, the less
efficient my life is.

And my daily discovery routine is very efficient :(

------
sabasedighi
Since 60% of my job is finding content for our audience, this is what's been
working for me:

1\. Quality newsletters - they help you know what's important and aggregate
commentary around it. My favorites - Mattermark's Daily Digest, Pocket hits,
JS Daily/Weekly, Quartz Daily Bried

2\. BUZZSUMO (paid but worth it) - helps you sort through the noise and see
share volumes for each channel based on a domain (ex. wired.com) or you can
set topics where it aggregates most trending pieces based on virality of
shares. Also has content analysis tool that allows you to see what keywords
are most common for a domain and analyze FB page content for shares and
popularity. Does much more but that's the quick and dirty.

3\. Of course HackerNews is great, especially if you cater your content to a
techie audience.

4\. Twitter Lists + Nuzzel

------
mjleino
I read the Economist on paper to keep up with the world. There are multiple
upsides I like about this approach.

\- There's only so much to read per week, I can't unhealthily binge news
through night. \- There's a delay, most of the news are at least a couple of
days old when the paper comes. I find it's a calming influence in the hectic
world. Also, the reporting tends to be a bit more balanced vs. minute-by-
minute live coverage. \- It's on paper. There won't be any notification on it.
I can throw the paper away, once done with it.

~~~
kerbalspacepro
*recycle

Right??? =)

------
deepakkarki
I had the same problem of finding interesting blogs to read, so made a side
project - [https://www.discoverdev.io](https://www.discoverdev.io)

Curated and tagged list of top engineering blog articles everyday! Do check it
out :)

~~~
mrleinad
Looks like a really nice project, but since you've been running it for a month
now, I'd recommend switching to a weekly post. Otherwise, I think you might
get burned or start skipping some days. Weekly is much more manageable in the
long run.

~~~
deepakkarki
Most of it is automated - I just do a final quality check. Takes about half an
hour a day. Ideal case is to automate it completely via ML. It's just that
it's hard to create a model that can tell a good blogpost from a spammy one.
So as of now little bit of manual intervention is required.

------
garysieling
I try to follow interesting people on twitter and Instagram - this uncovers a
lot of book recommendations, which I save in an amazon wishlist.

For technology topics, the Cooper Press email lists are great -
[https://cooperpress.com/](https://cooperpress.com/)

I also subscribe to the Economist and Nautilus - with Nautilus sometimes the
authors are active online (e.g. giving talks). Sometimes it is also
interesting to follow citations in books or articles.

For talks, I "bookmark" good things I find by including them in a search
engine I built: [https://www.findlectures.com/](https://www.findlectures.com/)

~~~
gorekee
> including them in a search engine I built

Awesome idea. Is the content of the links also evaluated when you trigger
search?

------
stefek99
OFFTOPIC: avoid it at all cost. Energy, time, attention, focus = the most
valuable resources out there.

Valuable content will find you anyway.

~~~
pjc50
Valueless content finds you. Worthwhile content you really have to go looking
for, or have a good social network funneling stuff to you.

My own answer is mostly HN, Twitter (including a couple of people/bots who are
great link sources), and a mailing list of some old friends for this purpose.
The latter is very good and low volume; eg latest post was from 18 July on org
structure for software projects and lists

[https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-
cult...](https://labs.spotify.com/2014/03/27/spotify-engineering-culture-
part-1/) [https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/10/no-spotify-
model#](https://www.infoq.com/news/2016/10/no-spotify-model#)
[https://www.slideshare.net/AliKheyrollahi/microservice-
archi...](https://www.slideshare.net/AliKheyrollahi/microservice-architecture-
at-asos)

~~~
ashark
> Valueless content finds you. Worthwhile content you really have to go
> looking for, or have a good social network funneling stuff to you.

Really valuable content usually comes in batches, points directly to other
valuable content ( _i.e._ good things tend to discuss and cite other good
things), and/or is long form. There's no need to look for valuable content
every day, or even every week. It might be entertaining, but it's not a good
use of time. Exceptions for people who _have to_ keep up with news-cycle
garbage and up-to-the-minute trends, of course. Those poor souls.

I waste more time than I should on Internet garbage (ahem) and sometimes I
find good new stuff, but if I stopped doing that it'd still take me _years_ to
get through the great stuff I've already found but haven't yet engaged with.
Plus many things could do with a second look. I'm 100% certain that'd be a
better use of my time than looking for even more good stuff on the Internet.

~~~
npsimons
> Really valuable content usually comes in batches, points directly to other
> valuable content (i.e. good things tend to discuss and cite other good
> things), and/or is long form.

Bibliographies are highly underrated. Find a good book? Look to it's
references for _really_ good sources of information. Fuck, _that 's_ one of my
content discovery routines: bibliographies.

> There's no need to look for valuable content every day, or even every week.
> It might be entertaining, but it's not a good use of time. Exceptions for
> people who have to keep up with news-cycle garbage and up-to-the-minute
> trends, of course. Those poor souls.

I can't second this enough, and I feel no one _has_ to keep up with the
transient data that wastes so much time and energy. I've cut out TV,
newspapers, magazines, twitter, podcasts, and all sorts of wastes of time and
worry; I haven't missed it. The last addictions I haven't been able to kick
are things like HN and certain other websites. HN I still get the occasional
value from, but I honestly feel depressed after wasting time online, and I'm
no better informed. I would argue no one is better informed by transient data
- most people I ask can't remember something they learned from transient data
from two weeks ago, and even if they can, it's valueless data.

------
rufb
My strategy pretty much consists of subscribing to good creators and curators
across all channels.

I have a bookmark folder (aptly named 1) which opens:

    
    
        - My Gmail "newsletters" filter view
        - My AOL Reader
        - HackerNews
        - MetaFilter
        - My Facebook "Must read" user list
        - My Twitter "Must read" list
        - My Reddit "Must read" list
        - My Youtube "Subscriptions" page
    

In each one of these there's my selection of profiles that reliably create or
flag good content (to my standards).

If I have the time, I also go for the noisier and long-form channels in 2:

    
    
        - Newspapers
        - My YouTube "Watch Later" list
        - My Pinboard "Read later" list
        - HN Explain (in case I missed something big)
    

Being able to prioritize what comes into my "inbox" and being able to defer
longer or more exhaustive content for later helps me always get a pulse of
things quickly without spending too much time or mental energy.

Podcasts have a routine of their own because I listen during commute and
workout but I treat it like my inbox: two daily scrubs of new content, and
what seems interesting goes to the "Up next" playlist.

~~~
tgb
What is HN Explain?

~~~
rufb
A satire page that reviews HN's weekly top posts in a very condescending
manner (the humor to me very much welcome but you may be put off by it)

~~~
tgb
Is this it? [http://n-gate.com/hackernews/](http://n-gate.com/hackernews/)

~~~
thirdsun
If it is, it's actually quite funny and well written. Thanks for the link.

------
youzesix
HN and Reddit mostly, friends/colleagues

I've been wrestling with this issue, though.

If I'm being honest, I still love RSS feeds, but I'm unhappy with all the
implementations.

What I want to be able to do is seed an RSS reader with a set of sites I want
to be aware of, and then have it recommend other sites and stories based on
what I give it, maybe even pull in random things from time to time. I want to
read what I'm interested in, but also to be made aware of things I wouldn't
otherwise because of the myopia that kind of comes from a human left to their
own devices.

I haven't found anything quite like that. What I have found has either (1) is
great at letting me customize it, but then doesn't suggest anything, or (2)
suggests crap I'm not interested in at all, or (3) has some other problem,
like eating up bandwidth with no way to control it.

It seems like you could take an open-source RSS reader and slap some sort of
p2p recommender system on top...

------
hypercluster
I always was a religious RSS user and put all the interesting feeds in there.
But I realized that it just becomes too much work to get to "inbox zero".

So now I have some feeds left with acceptable volume (games: Eurogamer,
Polygon, Kotaku..; Apple feeds; Webcomics; Deals).

The rest I just browse throughout the day: Guardian, Arstechnica, Reddit..
Little exception for HN: I use hckrnews.com now because there I can choose
whether I want to see all homepage entries or -if I don't have the time- only
the top 20%. (every site should have that!)

I used to use bookmarks as well but now I just dump it into iOS Notes although
I'm not fully happy with that.

------
kendallpark
"All problems in computer science can be solved by another level of
indirection."

I have a friend that is a collector. Every now and then I ask him what's new.
By far the most efficient use of my time.

------
Dowwie
This has been asked in a variety of more targeted ways, such as:

Favorite Podcasts:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207360](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9207360)
Favorite Tech Podcasts:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747563](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13747563)

Mailing Lists:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14086259](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14086259)

etc etc

------
1337biz
Since RSS is not a mainstream thing anymore, it is getting harder and harder.
My best strategy so far is creating twitter lists on topics that I am
interested in an curate them with people who are engaged in their focus area.
Still tricky to discover interesting people who don't just hype their personal
angle. More and more the conversation seems also to shift from Twitter to
LinkedIn.

~~~
smorac
Yes, it used to be quite easy with Google RSS Reader and Feedly to keep track
of the stuff thanks to RSS, but a lot is happening on not in public anymore
going to Facebook Groups, LinkedIn Groups. I gave up on Twitter a year ago
because to much ads and feed got too crowded too quickly but I'm going back to
it and their algorithm is doing a better job at curation for now.

~~~
dchuk
As former heavy RSS users, what do you think of a site like this one I put
together? [https://engineered.at](https://engineered.at)

It sort of "hides" the RSS feeds behind a social news interface, using a
ranking algo like reddit/HN.

------
Balgair
Mind if I turn the question upside-down? What would be features of a site that
you would like for news?

In browsing the comments:

Personalization is super important. How would that be defined? How personal?
How impersonal?

'Signal-to-noise' is important. What does that mean for you? What is signal?
Do you know before hand? Can you rank a few items that are more 'signal' than
'noise'? What is noise? Does that vary from day to day for you?

Addiction is important. What is 'addictive' to you? Is that a good thing
during some parts of the day and not others? Do you want your nephews to have
access to that addictive news service? Do you want ot have a 'stop it' button
to stop yourself?

New content is important. How new? What is content to you? What type of
medium, like videos or text? A mix of many media? What languages and from what
countries?

Any other ideas/important things to grep from this comments section?

------
idlewords
My daily content discovery routine is a slowly mounting sense of horror.

------
danesparza
Tech stuff:

Hacker News

Pinboard Popular [https://pinboard.in/popular/](https://pinboard.in/popular/)

Podcasts (specifically Hanselminutes)
[https://hanselminutes.com/](https://hanselminutes.com/)

Stackoverflow

Reddit (occasionally)

Food: Good Eats [http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/good-
eats](http://www.foodnetwork.com/shows/good-eats) (and I'm happy to hear it
may be coming back on air soon:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovc2Q-zdoyM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ovc2Q-zdoyM)
)

~~~
Dowwie
Good Eats is coming back? You just made my day. If they replaced Alton I won't
watch, in protest

~~~
danesparza
Watch the video. Pretty sure that's Alton (and his old props)

------
jansho
I have the standard list of newspapers and magazines that I browse right after
hitting the morning alarm.

Instagram for design. A few other art publications..

My bookcase is also extremely well-stocked. Not that it reflects my intellect
- most of them are unread! But it makes an excellent discovery engine as I can
pick up any book of any subject I happen to fancy in moment x. Which is why as
amazing Google is, it can never be _that_ kind of discovery engine, heheheh.

And I rationalise to myself that surely, given half a century of dipping in
and out, I'll eventually read all of them.

------
arcbyte
My daily go-to source is a custom RSS reader I built a few years ago and host
on Amazon's free tier. It is still the best for me and I haven't had to touch
it's code in years. I follow the run of the mill tech blogs and I always like
finding new independent bloggers to add.

I find myself visiting HN on a daily basis as well. I believe there is a HN
RSS feed so I will probably work on adding that my reader at some point.

I visit (sub)Reddits only when I'm looking for something specific, but not for
periodic news.

------
lettergram
This is going to come off like a plug, but I really enjoy the webapp I wrote:

[https://projectpiglet.com/](https://projectpiglet.com/)

Im developing it for investing, and am about to release the first version of
the robo-financial advisor.

However, in the process of developing it, I added the feature to follow
topics. Then it sends users email updates of top news articles when either:

(A) Opinions on those topics change

(B) A spike in discussion occurs

That is to say, if bitcoins price goes up, the sentiment will be positive, but
if the sentiment was already positive I wouldn't get notified. However, if for
instance there was a recent coin split - I'd get notified because the
sentiment would change.

Think of it as automated and accurate news curation.

To get the most recent news I used to visit HN every day, subreddits, and I
follow blogs on Feedly. Now, the system I described actually targets my
interest and sends me topics super well, so I don't have to scan HN or Reddit.
Better than I thought it would, actually. I still visit HN obviously and will
visit Reddit, but much less so and only when the topics I'm interested aren't
changing (i.e. I'm not receiving an email of curated content).

The only pattern that hasn't changed are specific blogs such as
loweringthebar.net which is still content I'm interested in, but not one that
the piglet app I wrote can identify as interesting for me.

------
nexxer
After many years of RSS (Google Reader, then Feedly), I gave up on it due to
sheer volume and now get my daily fix from curated email newsletters, a mix of
news and tech-related ones. This post lead me to make an inventory of them:

[http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/morning-briefing-
europe](http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/morning-briefing-europe)

[https://qz.com/](https://qz.com/)

[https://webopsweekly.com/](https://webopsweekly.com/)

[https://www.finimize.com/](https://www.finimize.com/)

[http://ben-evans.com/newsletter/](http://ben-evans.com/newsletter/)

[https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-macro/](https://blog.ycombinator.com/the-
macro/)

[https://labnotes.org/](https://labnotes.org/)

[https://aeon.co/](https://aeon.co/)

[http://softwareleadweekly.com/](http://softwareleadweekly.com/)

[http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/the-
interpreter](http://www.nytimes.com/newsletters/the-interpreter)

[http://www.phpweekly.com/](http://www.phpweekly.com/)

[http://www.hackernewsletter.com/](http://www.hackernewsletter.com/)

[http://www.electricdreaming.com/](http://www.electricdreaming.com/)

[https://www.dpreview.com/newsletter](https://www.dpreview.com/newsletter)

And a few Greek ones, might as well add them:

[https://insidestory.gr/](https://insidestory.gr/)

[http://factnews.gr/](http://factnews.gr/)

[http://www.georgakopoulos.org/2014/05/newsletter/](http://www.georgakopoulos.org/2014/05/newsletter/)

------
PeanutCurry
Over the course of my day I skim Reuters, Bloomberg, The Wallstreet Journal,
Vice, Reddit(Front page, news, and worldnews), and Hacker News. I'd say 70% of
the time I'm browsing those sites I'm just skimming headlines. On websites
like Vice or Reddit's frontpage, I'm really just there to see what topics are
generally hot and rarely read too deeply into the articles. I do something
similar for the r/news and r/worldnews subreddits but more on that in a
moment. For hard news, I go to Reuters, Bloomberg, and WSJ. If I recognize a
topic from r/news or r/worldnews I'll give that article priority over others
that look appealing. This strategy is generally enough to maintain an
awareness of pop-news while allocating more attention to news that matters
with regard to the economy or international events. The rest of my time is
whimsy reading which might include articles I passed over before or it might
be browsing articles from other sites like BBC or Al Jazeera. Whimsy reading
comes at the end mainly to keep myself from wasting too much time reading
appealing/popular but ultimately vapid articles about things like what the
President just tweeted.

------
da_n
Tl/dr Hacker News, Podcasts, RSS, YouTube and Reddit.

Perhaps because I've been on internet since early days I still use RSS (self-
hosted Stringer + Unread app). I keep RSS feeds as selective and few as
possible. I have a couple of dozen podcasts I listen to, some of which deliver
daily episodes. I subscribe to a fair number of YouTube channels which is
(mostly) good for conference talks and tutorials. Reddit I am getting close to
ditching.

------
hackermailman
I bookmark the personal pages/blogs of professors and follow their grad
students pages/blogs in fields I'm interested in like Robert Harper's blog
_Existential Type_. Once a week I'll go through stallman.org too, sometimes
RMS will write a really good historical analysis on something in the news and
also to keep up with the state of free software.

Local news I listen to the radio for a few minutes during the day,
international news I read journals (through sci-hub) like Oxford's Foreign
Policy Analysis journal, a good recent article to check out is _Analyzing the
Foreign Policy of Microstates: The Relevance of the International Patron-
Client Model_.

On the weekend sometimes I'll go through the NY Times weekend edition or Wall
Street Journal physical copy. Daily news for me unless it's local is a waste
of my time resources. As for daily content discovery it's pretty much just
this site, stallman.org, and my friends who feel the need to spam text me
every single article they find that I've tried to ignore to get work done.

------
markusweimar
I’m using my own site redigest.it
([https://www.redigest.it/](https://www.redigest.it/)), which is a
configurable digest for HN and Reddit. It’s nice not to miss anything relevant
without regularly checking these sites and to easily limit how much content I
see.

In addition, I’m following the work of specific people regardless of where
they publish (e.g. their own website or YouTube, mostly by RSS). I find the
signal to noise ratio to be higher than on HN and Reddit. Discovery also
happens via linking, endorsements, collaborations, recommendation algorithms
(e.g. YouTube).

Sites like HN and Reddit seem to reinforce daily routines to not miss out,
which is exactly what I’m trying to avoid. I’m also questioning how effective
the popular voting systems of these sites are in bringing content to the top
that I find relevant. This is probably the main reason why my content
consumption shifted away from them.

------
angelinemm
I do like Pocket a lot. I have a few IFTTT recipes that automatically enqueue
articles from RSS feeds I like into my pocket, and at any point in the day if
I read something interesting (from here, from reddit, from something sent by
someone), I just add it to my pocket queue and I read it as the day goes.

------
kureikain
I relied on Mailling List. I subscribe and create rule to tagged on of them
wit `devnews` tags.

Then during my commute to work I started to checkout them.

Then later on, I personally paste links into a Evernote note to make them
searchable for later. I then decide to share with the world and start my own
mailing list[0]

I also use Hacker News as a way to keep up with development trend and
technology. I learn so much stuff on Hacker News by researching on thing
people say that I don't understand.

One thing I found really helpful is I stopped worrying about how to find
content but more about how to consume content. We're never lack of content
nowsaday and if thing is good or worth to know, they will appear in your eyes
at some point in some form.

\---

[0] [https://betterdev.link/](https://betterdev.link/)

------
alanctkc
Breaking the cycle of compulsive checking and distracted browsing is important
to me.

There are two places I consume content:

    
    
      1. When working at the computer, I read from Pocket
        (or Kindle Cloud Reader), and
      2. After hours, I read only my Kindle Paperwhite.
    

The discovery and delivery for me:

    
    
      - Stream RSS feeds (HN[*], Xkcd, local news, etc.) to Pocket
        (possible with IFTTT)
      - Add links from coworkers to Pocket
      - Buy books for Kindle
      - Subscribe to The Economist[†] weekly on Kindle
      - Use Pocket to Kindle nightly[‡]
        p2k creates an e-book from random unread articles in Pocket
        archives them, then delivers to Kindle at a set time.
    

So, in the evenings on my Kindle, I have a mix of articles to read from Pocket
(delivered at 5pm) and The Economist, plus other books, but much less rabbit-
trail browsing and wandering the web.

* I filter HN by points using [https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/](https://edavis.github.io/hnrss/)

† The Economist has a "The World This Week" section that sums up the world's
politics and business from the previous week with a paragraph for each
subject, and it's more refined and less sensational than the daily news cycle.
It's enough to keep me in the loop, and there are more interesting articles
deeper within the magazine.

‡ [https://p2k.co](https://p2k.co)

------
PascLeRasc
Pocket is really great for saving articles and they have some good
recommendations too. I listen to a lot of podcasts like 99% Invisible, Planet
Money, Reply All, Up First, WWDTM, Why Oh Why, and Embedded.fm. I also follow
a lot of PhD students on Twitter who can write really well.

------
ctw
Pretty much only HN at this point. I've been trying to also use Feedly to
follow plain old websites with RSS feeds, but the content is much slower to
come out, much less exciting usually, and there are no comment sections, which
are the best part of HN imo.

------
lukaszkups
I've reduced my twitter followers to 15 - I follow only these accounts who are
sources of new content that belongs to my interests - all of friends and other
accounts has been moved to twitter lists.

I've follow @newsync150 - a HN feed that tweets about threads that has +150
points. If there's a day where I feel unsatisfied with amount of content, I go
straight to first 1-2 pages of HN and read what seems interesting.

I also follow some inspiration accounts, such ash TheUltralinx etc. and local
(Polish) Tech websites - don't really like TechCrunch or Wired - they're
focused too much on business side or things that I'm not interested in.

------
matt_s
I have found content on HN and if deemed worthy add it to my feedly list of
blogs/sites.

Feedly is great in that you can scan headlines and mark as read and if there
is something of interest read it in depth.

I don't do twitter since it seems like 99% noise or echo chamber. Same with
Facebook lately other than seeing what actual people I know are up to it is
just noise.

I have subscribed to a few Youtube'rs and do the same (scan titles of vids),
if it is of interest I'll watch them. Mostly those are DIY types of things so
at some point searching thru them will become handy depending on a project.

------
BlackjackCF
I subscribe to weekly newsletters for languages I'm interested in learning, so
right now that's how I find my Go, Rust, Ruby, and Elixir stuff.

HackerNews and the programming subreddits so far have done the trick for me.

------
crucio
I've built Anders Pink ([https://anderspink.com](https://anderspink.com)) to
help with content discovery. It allows you to follow topics just by entering a
search term, or by creating something more specific (e.g. must contain term X,
but not term Y). New articles get pulled in every few hours, and get emailed
to you every morning in a digest.

It also allows you to pull in content from rss feeds, then filter it. There's
boards to save articles to, and team features to allow collaboration if
needed.

------
chasely
I subscribe to The Browser [1] and Audm [2], which are both story aggregators.
The editors pick higher-quality, often longer-form writing. Audm provides
articles read by audiobook narrators, and I've found it a good alternative to
podcasts.

Both of these will email you with recommendations so the discovery "work" it
outsourced.

[1] [https://thebrowser.com/](https://thebrowser.com/) [2]
[https://www.audm.com/](https://www.audm.com/)

------
drnickr
I recently re-discovered newsletters as a good source. Let the news come to
you!

Things like [https://www.cronweekly.com](https://www.cronweekly.com) etc. are
gold.

------
Bobbleoxs
Echo most what mentioned - add:

The Economist audio version - to cover a broad view of world affairs for
general awareness but not in-depth analysis

Pocket - I use Pocket app which recommends based on articles I saved into it.
Their AI seems good for relevancy.

Google/trends - hit and miss but occassionally useful stuff Medium digest -
even less hit and miss but occassionally Project Syndicate - again,
occassionally [https://www.project-syndicate.org/](https://www.project-
syndicate.org/)

+HN of course - this is daily must

------
john_mack
I built Virwire to auto curate news from thousands of sources worldwide 24/7.

[https://virwire.com](https://virwire.com)

Original motivation was to to scratch my own itch for news. I found I was
spending far too much time foraging for content so decided to automate
discovery and relevance filtering. The app is web based but formatted for
mobile.

The story stream is increasingly global, random and tolerant of competing
biases, I hope a new way to experience news and see the world.

~~~
moretai
This is cool.

------
TySchultz
I've had a hard time finding a news source like yahoo news digest once it had
shut down, so I've been working on a side project:
[http://bluebookcasedesign.com/Pages/AktaDigest.html](http://bluebookcasedesign.com/Pages/AktaDigest.html)

For tech it's all the usual; Hacker News, reddit, Also I enjoy going through
GitHub trending to see what is currently popular/new.

------
saucow
For listening to Hacker news in the car, or during your commute try:
[http://hackerwave.com](http://hackerwave.com)

------
thefreedomfight
Obligatory: HN, Reddit

I also use a Discord chatroom with me and a couple of my mates where we all
post links from our various feeds. I introduced a Discord chatroom at work too
and everyone seems to love it so it might be a good idea for you as well.

Also I do another music discovery / link discovery chatroom on
[https://www.jqbx.fm](https://www.jqbx.fm).

Long story short, I just realized I'm not very productive...

------
blacksmith_tb
Before I settle into a day of staring at screens, I like to listen to the news
on the BBC World Service[1] (it's an old habit, I used to listen to it via
shortwave years ago), as I find most of the news outlets in the US lacking.

1:
[http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_world_service](http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/player/bbc_world_service)

------
pgeorgep
I usually browse through HN & different subreddits. Random articles also get
saved to Pocket, but I never actually read any of them.

There are always 'spur of the moment' articles I find throughout the day using
a handy Chrome extension that gives me hand curated content everytime I open
up a new tab ([https://zest.is/](https://zest.is/))

~~~
pgeorgep
Oh, I forgot podcasts too!

------
jrvarela56
Reddit and HN. There's more quality content in those two sources than I can
consume. My problem is the opposite: how can I manage/organise the huge amount
of stuff that's out there. Posted this to get some input from HNers
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14919027](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14919027)

------
jes5199
I do my best not to read the internet, but I have compulsive habits and I find
myself looking at sites like this one without really intending to

------
urahara
I don't have any specific routine. There is a large list of various sources in
my head, which I check randomly when I feel I need to read something. I don't
bookmark things, but occasionally write down my impressions from some sources
and posts, which helps me to remember them.

ps Oh, I actually bookmark links on HN, probably this is the only place where
I bookmark anything

------
i_r7al
I've been using this lately [http://serializer.io/](http://serializer.io/)

------
wiremine
If you're interested in developing good content habits, and not just content
tooling, I highly recommend The Information Diet. Short read and very
thoughtful. You won't likely agree with everything (I didn't), but it's worth
your time:

[http://informationdiet.com/](http://informationdiet.com/)

------
jklinger410
1\. Feedly

2\. Hackernews

3\. Google News

4\. Refind (I am in marketing)

I have a blog post about what I read via RSS here
([http://bit.ly/2s6ghd4](http://bit.ly/2s6ghd4))

Also as a side-note about Twitter: I find that if you only follow human
beings, and create lists of brands and other accounts that you like, your feed
narrows, your engagement goes up, and real networking can occur.

------
kayman
Hacker News Wall Street Journal New York Times If I had more time, I'd read
the economist.

Newsletters: Javascript Weekly Python Weekly

------
aloukissas
Mattermark Daily ([https://mattermark.com/category/mattermark-
daily/](https://mattermark.com/category/mattermark-daily/)). Best curated
startup/VC news, once a day in your inbox, done in 5 minutes or less. No
affiliation.

~~~
chmike
This service is not Free. It's quite expensive in fact. What do we get for the
free service ? Advertisement for mattermark ?

------
djKianoosh
Prismatic was awesome at this. I mean really amazing. Nothing I've tried since
they shut down has been anywhere near as good. Nuzzel, the News app on ios,
flipboard, whatever. None of those had the right combination of
new/interesting/important/high quality/etc...

------
Joeri
Mostly podcasts, because they boil a week's worth of info on a particular
domain down to an hour and also tell me what i'm supposed to think about it. I
tried giving up hn for 6 months and didn't feel less informed. I'm here for
the proceastination, not the information.

------
beejiu
Tweetdeck is a useful tool for this kind of thing. You can just set up some
keyword searches.

------
Vaanir
Frontpage of HN, reddit, then check certain subreddits. Browse Twitter to
check up on what certain devs/companies are saying.

During the day I periodically check certain Discords, IRC, HN, and reddit (I
add items to Pocket if I see anything interesting).

------
lauretas
RSS, email subscriptions (mailing lists), and content aggregators for specific
topics like HN or www.freepo.st

I used to read reddit years ago, but nowadays it's just too much noise and bad
content (even the slower subreddits).

------
etelej
I have a hn clone at [https://hn.etelej.com/](https://hn.etelej.com/) quite
minimal, mostly on frontpage items I wouldn't want to miss

------
adityar
HN, Reddit, Imgur, Newsblur - [http://www.newsblur.com/folder/global-
blurblogs](http://www.newsblur.com/folder/global-blurblogs)

------
molestrangler
FeedBin and constantly updating the feeds (adding and removing) when I come
across an interesting feed.

I only visit actually websites if I really need to.

So spend most of the time in FeedBin.

What RSS feed I have is my competitive advantage!

------
boardmad
>> Twitter on the train >> Internal chatroom & microblog platform once in the
office >> HN in a permatab in Chrome thorughout the day on a 10min refresh

------
adamc
Mostly, I browse HN for random tidbits, then do directed searches for things
that come up in my work. I don't have time to spend much more of it surfing
randomly... :-(

------
portpecos
Someone submitted a Show HN where the site showed the top HN articles sorted
by points for each day. Anybody remember the name? It was like an HN daily
best of.

------
charlieegan3
About 2 years ago I made [http://serializer.io](http://serializer.io) \- I
still use that

------
fsloth
HN, Economist, Amazon. What? Yes. The fact is, there is an amazing amount of
high quality literature on the most amazing of topics. I'm currently on a 'I'm
soon 40, I have a MSc in an STEM subject and I don't know shit about how the
modern world works or was built' reading binge. Much more interesting than new
stuff to consume, IMO.

------
Davetron
I've found Blendle quite good (after HN). Based on your interests, it offers a
somewhat curated selection of articles from a variety of magazines and
newspapers via micropayments so you don't need a load of subscriptions. I
think it's better reading a few in-depth articles than trying to keep up with
the random fire-hose of social media.

------
vivalapython
This is something I've recently restructured in my own life. While I am aware
that reading on a laptop display does not cause any harm to your eyes (1) I
rather like the entire experience of consuming longer text on e-paper. So I
went out an bought a Kindle. My favorite part with the Kindle is that I can
email myself articles which are interesting, as well as browse text-based
websites on the experimental browser.

I essentially have the following setup: \- Laptop runs my 'morning coffee'
script before work, scrapes my favorite few blogs + HN for the latest articles
and adds them to a queue \- All the articles I shared (via email) to family
and friends get added to the queue as well \- Script sticks top news headlines
and content together in 1 PDF file and emails it to my Kindle

Now I can read comfortably with my coffee in and hand and even see how much
"progress" I've made with the content I plan to consume.

(1) NYT blog post on e-reader eye -strain _behind paywall_
[https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/do-e-readers-
cause...](https://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/12/do-e-readers-cause-eye-
strain/)

~~~
evek
I use Instapaper for similar purpose. I set it up so it sends me 10 articles
from Unread every morning in a digest form.

------
bmcusick
Twitter Lists that I curate myself, The Old Reader (RSS), Hckrnews, Google
News

------
forkLding
HN, Datatau.com, Reuters, Software Engineering Daily, SwiftedNews and Youtube

------
tomc1985
A bunch of poisoned waterholes: HN, reddit, Facebook.

I need to reevaluate my habits...

------
karai
shameless plug: I run a weekly, curated newsletter for keto/low-carb
enthusiasts. Niched, interesting content.

[https://keto.fm](https://keto.fm)

------
redorb
hacker news > TheOldReader (RSS) which includes, Techcrunch, Verge, Smashing
Magazine, Signal vs Noise .. sub reddits /options > tastytrade (more options)
..

------
omarkn
I use news.ycombinator.com and tiplash.com

------
emcf
HN and Purpose driven internet search.

------
vladimir-y
HC + some specific audio podcasts.

------
miguelrochefort
Daily:

\- Messenger

\- Email

\- Hacker News

\- Reddit

Weekly:

\- YouTube

\- Pocket

\- Chrome tabs

------
cJ0th
rss feeds and mailing lists.

------
dhp1161
-Daily WSJ 10 point newsletter

-WSJ

-New Yorker

-NYT Magazine

-Bloomberg Businessweek

-Economist

-HackerNews

------
Olshansky
The only addition I want to make that I haven't seen in the comments yet is
[http://nuzzel.com/](http://nuzzel.com/).

------
johnsmith21006
Google alerts every morning works well for me. Then Reddit and then HN.

------
Froyoh
Reddit, HackerNews, and Facebook.

