

Ask HN: (meta) How do you find real hacker news? - akumpf

I used to love Hacker News.<p>Don&#x27;t get me wrong, I still enjoy its simplicity and straight-forward approach, but increasingly it doesn&#x27;t seem to really be about small startups and experimental hacks.<p>What I used to enjoy about Hacker News was the focus on awesome things coming out of small teams -- an awesome mix of creative tech, smart people, business advice, and inspiration from their tiny beginnings.<p>But more often today, &quot;big news&quot; stories get submitted and then upvoted like crazy because they&#x27;re from companies we already know about.<p>For example, the current top 25 HN stories include the likes of Microsoft, Vice, ArsTechnica, EuroGamer, Aljazeera, Valve, Apple, and Comcast. Sure, those companies and efforts are part of the larger tech landscape, but it&#x27;s just not what I was looking for (read: there are lots of other places to read those stories).<p>So, sincerely I ask, how do you find real hacker news today? No disrespect to this fine, growing establishment :)
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toni
Try the "Classic"[1] page, which only lists stories submitted by HN users with
higher karma/early adopters (although I am not sure what the exact criteria
is). The idea is that people with higher karma or those who hang around here
much longer will post more quality links.

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

~~~
akumpf
Nice! That goes a long way in the right direction. Still lots of big company
stories, but interesting to see a different take on the same submissions.

Any other easter egg HN views we should know about? :)

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toni
You could find a link to classic page from the "Lists" page (first link from
left in every page's footer), but somehow it was removed from there. I
wouldn't really call it an easter egg, maybe a hidden feature :)

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freehunter
Does lobste.rs fit your need? It's still quite small and has a barrier to
entry (invite-only), but it's much more open in terms of why things happen
(moderation, voting, sign-ups, etc). They've also got categories, so you can
look at just the articles you care about.

Sometimes it just mirrors HN's front page, but there's further potential
there.

~~~
akumpf
Thanks. Interesting to see all the variations on Hacker News out there.
Definitely a ton of HN mirrors, but agreed that there is potential in seeing
an alternative view of what's already been upvoted.

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ChikkaChiChi
I get my hacker news from Hacker News.

Democratic upvoting may create slightly more noise on the "Top" page than I
would prefer, but I rarely find myself linkbaited into reading a story I'm not
interested in.

I'd rather have a few articles I'm not interested in than the be in an echo
chamber where I'm not exposed to trends others find useful (no matter how
pedantic some may be).

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sepultura
Try [http://skimhn.com/](http://skimhn.com/)

Filter and adapt it to your taste

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akumpf
Seems like an interesting idea, but none of the submissions are populating for
me. I'll try back later and hope it's resolved :)

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sepultura
hm, lots of errors here too, dang. Another option:
[http://www.skimfeed.com](http://www.skimfeed.com)

and there's one focusing only on marketing growth:
[http://growthhackers.com/](http://growthhackers.com/)

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ewest
I try to keep it simple - use the rss feed with something like newsblur and
click stories I find interesting. So you can skip the big company stories and
focus on what _you_ prefer.

Plus, who knows, by reviewing all of the headlines you just might find a gem
of a story.

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e15ctr0n
I look for stories that have between 5 and 50 points. Anything more than 50
points signals "big news" stories or general interest ones like you would find
in the mainstream press.

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dserban
Someone wrote a machine learning script that separates the wheat from the
chaff on HN. It's here:

[http://hn.njl.us/](http://hn.njl.us/)

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xpressyoo
I completely agree. It would be great to add a subsection to Hacker News
dedicated to this kind of stories, e.g., "discover" or "showHN".

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tronium
I understand what you're looking for, and producthunt.com really matches
you're description well. It's all about new startups.

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akumpf
Looks cool; although it feels a bit gated and sparse on first read.

I really like the democratized submission process on hacker news.

