
Ask HN: More tech-oriented HN alternative? - gtirloni
Sometimes I think the amount of political&#x2F;social&#x2F;sales submissions is just to great and I would like something more technical to read.<p>What are your suggestions?
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DoreenMichele
Lobsters is more tightly focused, but has a lot less traffic and submissions.

So depending on what one means by "an HN alternative," maybe that fits. Maybe
not.

I bet some folks could also recommend some good Reddits if you list what type
tech is your thing. Some Reddits are really good, I just try to stay off the
main front page which tends to be all the drama for which Reddit is infamous.

\---- Generic Lobsters invite info:

[https://lobste.rs/about](https://lobste.rs/about)

 _The quickest way to receive an invitation is to talk to someone you
recognize from the site or request one in chat._

Chat info: [https://lobste.rs/chat](https://lobste.rs/chat)

~~~
qbaqbaqba
Lobsters has working tagging and filtering system so you may simply filter
"culture" out.

------
snowwrestler
One option for a more tech-oriented alternative to HN might be to try surfing
the “new” page of HN. Quite a lot of tech stuff gets submitted but never makes
the front page.

This also gives you a chance to help make the front page more of what you want
by upvoting what you like.

Another option is Twitter. It puts the burden on you to do the curation, which
is hard at first. But if you get following a good mix of people and accounts,
it’s a great way to find new tech content.

~~~
karmakaze
I've also found this to be a pattern and made a rendering[0] that orders by
time or points independently rather than mixed. I can quickly scan down to
around the low double-digits to see deeper stories of interest to fewer
readers. Clicking the heading switches views, clicking clock/triangle changes
ordering (in some places).

[0] [https://hackerer.news](https://hackerer.news)

~~~
dang
> I can quickly scan down to around the low double-digits to see deeper
> stories of interest to fewer readers

That sounds cool. Can you give some examples of interesting stories that you
found this way, which you wouldn't have found otherwise.

~~~
karmakaze
By the very niche nature anything I choose will likely not be of interest to
most but many may find something else interesting with similar age and points.

~~~
dang
I think you might be underestimating how interested other people would be in
those stories, and overestimating how much attention the newest page gets.
Many fine submissions never reach the front page. We do a lot to try to
mitigate that, but more is needed.

~~~
karmakaze
I'm just trying to find a way to increase the s/n ratio to how HN used to be
where the front and subsequent pages had so much interesting content not
reported elsewhere. Not complaining everything evolves but different people
want different things.

------
tluyben2
The are a lot of niche subreddits which are very technical. Making an account
and only adding those will get you a very tech home page. I am not talking
about the mainstream ones like r/programming but more like r/haskell r/idris
r/agda r/dependent_types etc (if you like programming; there are similar niche
groups for other interests). They are low volume but together they are about
the same throughput as HN but only technical.

It will take a while to find all that interests you; some only have posts once
a week but are still worth it.

------
barrowclift
I tend to agree and solved this for myself by building a small, self-hosted
service that auto-hides Hacker News stories by title keyword/regex, site, or
user. That way you can have more control over auto-curating your Hacker News
page, instead of having to invest time in a whole new community. If you have a
Raspberry Pi or small VM somewhere, consider giving it a try!

[https://github.com/barrowclift/hacker-news-
cleanser](https://github.com/barrowclift/hacker-news-cleanser)

~~~
_rpd
I'll also suggest [http://hckrnews.com/](http://hckrnews.com/) which helped me
tremendously.

~~~
newscracker
I always start looking at HN through hckrnews to reduce clutter. But I also
check HN directly after this so that I don’t miss something (more so when I’m
just generally browsing around).

------
jefflombardjr
What do you consider 'more technical'?

HN has a decent amount of breadth and depth. I imagine you'd be able to find
more depth (read: technical discussion) in listservs, subreddits, slack
channels, and some niche forums. For example:
[https://elixirforum.com/](https://elixirforum.com/)

But as far as breadth, every field can get technical. Person A might consider
Physics and Math technical, while person B considers quantitative finance to
be technical, while person C considers organic chemistry technical. Heck even
farming can get technical[0]. There are few places that have quality posts
from diverse backgrounds. Have you tried filtering out stuff you don't want to
see on HN?

[https://hn.algolia.com/](https://hn.algolia.com/) is a great tool to do that.
You can avoid terms using the `-` character see examples here:
[https://hn.algolia.com/help](https://hn.algolia.com/help)

[0] Energy Discussions on a Permaculture Forum:
[https://permies.com/forums/jforum?module=search&action=searc...](https://permies.com/forums/jforum?module=search&action=search&forum_id=-1&search_keywords=joules&match_type=all&search_in=ALL&forum=&groupByTopic=true&sort_by=time&sort_dir=DESC&search_date=ALL&member_number=&member_first_name=&member_last_name=&member_match_type=memberPosted)

~~~
ImprovedSilence
I think he means there is too much NYT and WSJ, and not enough cool project or
tech hacks.

------
nelsonic
[https://blog.acolyer.org](https://blog.acolyer.org) reviews a computer
science (scientific) paper each week day and gives decent insight. Not really
an alternative to HN, but the comments are usually high standard and often
highly technical. As others have said, HN is good for serendipitous discovery
of topics you may not have been looking for. However it can sometimes be an
echochamber of superficial/similar comments.

------
davidjnelson
Would love to see more tech / entrepreneurial stories. It does seem there are
a lot of political/privacy/bigcorp posts compared to back in the day (2009).

Edit: perfect example currently on the front page -
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20179511](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20179511)

How is this related to tech or entrepreneurship?

~~~
dang
Please read the site guidelines. The first paragraph explains that HN is not
just for tech and entrepreneurship ("includes more than hacking and
startups").

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

Re that example, it wasn't a great HN submission because it stokes indignation
without teaching us anything new. Indignation is always good for upvotes, but
it didn't last long on the front page.

~~~
davidjnelson
Thanks Daniel! The site guidelines are great. I have read them previously but
it seems I had forgotten the details of the relevant section:

“On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity.

Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're
evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters,
or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-
topic.”

------
kjeetgill
Like most others, I'd step in and say Lobste.rs has fantastic submissions but
quite thin in conversation compared to Hacker News, even in highly technical
subjects. I suspect that's because you need to ask someone for an invite right
now. Maybe they'd be better off just letting your HN account be enough social
proof. Or maybe they're happy at that size, how am I to say otherwise?

It's hit and miss, but reddit is kinda nice in that you can subscribe to
pretty narrowly focused, well moderated subreddits. I'm only familiar with the
case of r/java. You actually get a really weird mix of really low and
incredibly high quality posts and discussion. Half of what you get is what I
assume are beginner programmers coming out of school or early junior
programmers while the other half are \ _big names\_ in Java-land. Like people
who work on, design, build and decide what goes into Java 10, 11, 12 etc. I
know I'm biased and a bit of an HN snob about it, but that odd mix is part of
why I never became a redditor or frequent the technical landscape there.

------
_ah
[https://lobste.rs/](https://lobste.rs/)

~~~
baroffoos
Highly recommend this one. Has a really tight focus on high quality tech
topics only.

~~~
mraza007
I need an invite to this website

~~~
baroffoos
Let me know your email address and I can send you an invite

~~~
jgaphne
Can I get one too please? jgaphne at gmx dot com

------
tonystubblebine
Strong recommendation for [https://dev.to/](https://dev.to/)

They have great content and a great community and enough traction that they're
not about to disappear.

~~~
Ayesh
It probably started as a way to _discuss_ more tech, but ended up being an RSS
aggregator for Git hello world posts.

~~~
tonystubblebine
Might be changing a bit over there. I've been sending a lot of Medium authors
there. Medium's paywall is a good deal, but not necessarily a fit for
everyone. Of the programming oriented sites to publish on, Dev.to has the
biggest community and the best community leaders.

------
tvvocold
I would recommend [https://diff.blog](https://diff.blog) and
[https://lobste.rs](https://lobste.rs)

------
coleifer
Yeah, the community/demographic seems like it has changed quite a bit since
even a couple years ago. It's so politically charged these days, hardly
anything that interests me (and what the fuck is the deal with this Boeing 737
fetish?). Privacy shit, security shit, cryptowankery, JavaScript shit, and the
weird "motivational" posts? Seriously, my time wasting has really suffered
under these changes.

Forgot to add: sleep shit. What's up with that?

~~~
brodsky
I don't want to sound like a snob (but will go ahead and do so anyway) - there
has been a noticeable Redditification of HN over the past year. More so in
comments than the submissions. We're not into the puns and meme trains
territory just yet, but the shifts to conversational style and vibe are
unmistakable.

To actually answer OP's question - Lobste.rs is worth a look. It can be quite
technical, if a bit on the dry side. It's public, but accounts are by invite
only. That said, if anyone might be able to extend an invite (to myself, OP,
or both), that would be much appreciated indeed.

~~~
majewsky
> Please don't submit comments saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a
> semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

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

~~~
brodsky
> It's a semi-noob illusion, as old as the hills.

I know the source says that, but wouldn't mind seeing some elaboration on why
that is the case. If the `newsguidelines` made a point of mentioning it,
there's perhaps some merit to this "illusion".

------
germanlee
There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. The
problem is that once a platform gets slightly popular, journalists, NGOs, PR,
foreign actors, think tanks, etc sneak in and push their wares ( sometimes
with the help of the forums themselves ). Slashdot might be worth a look but I
gave up on them years ago.

The problem is that so much of "tech" forums, magazines, sites, etc are not
run by "techies" but agenda driven media people masquerading as "techies".
TheVerge, arstechnica, etc being prime examples.

My advice is to browse the "new" section of HN for the interesting
tech/science/hack stuff. But unfortunately, most of the interesting stuff has
no traffic or discussion. But maybe that's a good thing.

~~~
dang
HN has never been "all tech oriented".

~~~
germanlee
I didn't say HN was "all tech oriented". Please stop misquoting me. I said
"There was a time when reddit, HN, digg, etc were all tech oriented. Meaning
"HN was tech oriented", "reddit was tech oriented", "digg was tech oriented",
etc.

I didn't say HN was all tech. My point was that HN was tech oriented like
reddit, digg, etc.

~~~
dang
Ah, I see that I misbound that pesky "all". Sorry! But the point is more or
less the same. Actually, let me reply to all your points.

HN isn't less tech-oriented now than it used to be. The mix of topics
fluctuates, but within a stable range which has been about the same since pg
renamed Startup News to Hacker News 12 years ago:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/hackernews.html).
That announcement is where this language originated: " _That includes a lot
more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the
answer might be: anything that gratifies one 's intellectual curiosity._"
Anyone who's read the HN guidelines should recognize that.

We've put a ton of effort into countering wares-pushing. If you think you see
a story that is only on HN's front page because "journalists, NGOs, PR,
foreign actors, think tanks, etc" are sneaking it in, you should let us know
right away at hn@ycombinator.com.

I don't know if we count as "techies" in your book but if there's one thing
I'm sure we're not, it's "agenda driven media people".

If "most of the interesting stuff has no traction or discussion", you could
help out a lot by upvoting it. That's at least an easier problem to solve than
interesting things not getting submitted in the first place.

