
Ask HN: How do you get your daily HN brief? - surds
I need to, and am trying to, reduce the number of times I visit HN and also the amount of time I spend on it.<p>What is your preferred way to get your daily summary? I do realize the folks who use this approach to limit time on HN might not be here right now to share their approach. :)
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Yetanfou
Add the HN RSS feed to a feed reader, use it to skim the subjects (HN doesn't
put anything but the subject line in the feed) and only open those subjects
which are of interest. Never hit the main page. This does two things:

1: it allows you to only look at those subjects which are of interest, either
through the comments or by opening the page link without seeing the comments

2: it somewhat protects you from the effects of the HN echo chamber/popularity
contest in that it shows you everything which made it to HN, no matter whether
it was directly pushed off the front page due to
flagging/downvoting/overactive moderation.

I'm using the Nextcloud [1] News app [2] as a feed reader, there are others
but this one works well and handles large volumes without problems.

[1] [https://github.com/nextcloud/server](https://github.com/nextcloud/server)

[2] [https://github.com/nextcloud/news](https://github.com/nextcloud/news)

~~~
arsham
Yes, feed reader is definitely a good way to read items you haven't already
and don't miss anything. I'm using [1] innoreader, which has both free and
paid subscription. You can do with free version.

[1] [https://www.inoreader.com](https://www.inoreader.com)

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Confiks
I use [https://hckrnews.com/](https://hckrnews.com/) to get a view of
everything that has been on the frontpage. Stems all FOMO that allows me to
review posts once per so much time, usually about every day.

~~~
torbica
For me the frontpage view is working only for today and does not work for
previous days (and again only for 6.4.2018). :(

~~~
wvl
That's what is intended -- it shows the items currently on the frontpage. So
it will not show entry from the previous days because they are no longer on
the frontpage. (The UI should not show the previous days in this case, and
maybe there is something more I could be doing to make more obvious what is
supposed to be happening).

Curiously the entries from April 6 that do show up is a bug due to an issue I
had with the process going down for a number of hours, leaving those two
entries not being properly updated to remove the 'homepage' flag.

~~~
torbica
Thank you for the clarification. For me personally it would be useful to have
following feature:

\- show the list of all stories that were on the homepage any time during that
day.

Maybe there is a way to do that even now but I did not found it.

~~~
no_protocol
That's what the 'all' option does. It shows all items that made the front page
that were submitted on any given day, whether it was on the front page for 2
days straight or for just a few minutes.

------
DanAndersen
I use [http://hnapp.com/](http://hnapp.com/) to set up a custom RSS feed to
filter out various topic keywords I find uninteresting/irrelevant, and then
use Feedly to view the RSS feed.

If you are looking to reduce the amount of time you waste, I've found some
success in using the Strict Workflow extension (
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/strict-
workflow/cg...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/strict-
workflow/cgmnfnmlficgeijcalkgnnkigkefkbhd?hl=en) ) which combines a browser
blacklist with the Pomodoro timer.

~~~
surds
That combination is probably what I would need if simpler corrective attempts
don't work. Thanks!

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mohitmun
I have created two IFTTT applets with some custom rules. For example if any
showhn post exceeds 10 points, it will send message on my telegram
channel([https://t.me/mohithn](https://t.me/mohithn)). Applet link link:
[https://ifttt.com/applets/GfnePAhL-if-new-show-hn-
with-10-po...](https://ifttt.com/applets/GfnePAhL-if-new-show-hn-
with-10-points-then-send-message-to-private-chat-with-ifttt)

I'm using this amazing [https://hnrss.org](https://hnrss.org) feed for
applets.

------
charlieegan3
I use my own site I built while I was learning Rails.
[http://serializer.io/](http://serializer.io/)

It has a mark as read feature which I really need.

I moved it to a subdomain of my personal site to save renewing the to domain
for another year. Upon doing so I immediately got about 10 emails from users
asking about the domain. One offered to PayPal me the cost for it and now
we're back on the original domain!

------
0x54MUR41
I use Hacker News Daily [0] to get daily top stories and Ask Hacker News
Weekly [1] to get weekly top questions from Hacker News. I found this very
useful because you can subscribe to the mailing list or add the RSS feed. So,
you don't need to visit HN frequently (others have already told about this).

Another site I rare to visit is n-gate.com [2]. It gives you brief summary of
the story. This site also has RSS that you can subscribe.

[0]: [http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-
daily/)

[1]: [http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-
ask/](http://www.daemonology.net/hn-weekly-ask/)

[2]: [http://n-gate.com/hackernews/](http://n-gate.com/hackernews/)

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rajacombinator
Look at HN. Click through any interesting posts. Not too hard.

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angersock
Weekly summaries are pretty good...check out n-gate.

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0x4f3759df
/etc/hosts

127.0.0.1 news.ycombinator.com

127.0.0.1 hckrnews.com

~~~
thijsvandien
Your summary is "Cannot connect to server"?

------
teilo
The RSS feed in Newsblur.

