Those are 5 top headlines from various sources. They may or may not include the top 5 headlines you need to start the day with. To get them, you’d need some work of curation, either by AI or (probably better) by humans.
I’d rather suggest one of the countless daily morning newsletters that give you a heads up of what’s going on in the world with links to read more. There are also podcasts that do the same. I can’t suggest anything in English but in Italian there’s the 'Good Morning Italia' newsletter and the 'Morning' podcast from Il Post. The latter does a good job trying to actually explain and give context on the current news rather than just repeating the headlines.
The Week (UK/US) has a briefing "10 things you need to know today" that works similarly. They presented 10 news (mainly US-based) and a short snippet of the content, with the links to news sources they used. [1] is an example of the latest edition.
I used to have it saved to my Pocket daily using IFTTT, but since I left IFTTT for awhile back, I don't have a reliable way to get it pushed to me every day. Fortunately, they have a newsletter that will send just that to my inbox, so it works out somewhat.
Number 10 for March 6, 2022 is a piece from the Huffington Post about SNLs cold open. I'll never understand how something like this makes a Top 10 list of things I need to know today.
At least the UK edition https://www.theweek.co.uk/daily-briefing doesn't feature that... though it has other items that you might feel are similarly unnecessary.
The "Some Facts" panel presents a meta joke by repeating a brain claim:
Some Facts..
The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terabytes.
The Ramses brand condom is named after the great pharoh Ramses II who fathered over 160 children.
The storage capacity of human brain exceeds 4 Terabytes.
I hope the next refresh will be three claims that a goldfish has a 3-second memory
That's the opposite of clickbait titles. Actual information communicated in few lines. This is the kind of summary I would like to start my mornings with.
Might be a stupid comment, but United States being first in the dropdown seems like quite a US-centric decision when the site features news sites from around the world. May be better to stick to alphabetical to make it more country agnostic?
This looks more like an RSS reader app for some major news sites tbf.
Fyi, there are various "start site" services that let you customize RSS feeds, together with other items like to-do lists, market charts, weather,... considering how many things can be turned into an RSS feed (HN, YT channels, podcasts,...), you've got a pretty well-rounded source of news if you invest a bit of time into the setup, which is actually fun. I've set up a site on start.me five years ago and been using it ever since.
Surprising to see so much negativity here. Limiting to a small number of headlines is a useful mechanic. I can see this going in a number of interesting directions.
Agree. The places I go on the web have become more and more centralized/limited. I think projects like this that help to surface and aggregate interesting content from the web (which is really what I come to HN to find) are great.
Sure, and once it goes in an interesting direction, I think people would be more positive. This idea, poorly executed, undercuts its own claimed value, wasting time instead of saving time.
Pointing that out is useful feedback, and I'm sure it would have been done in a much harsher way 10 years ago.
Cool site! But, I would very much challenge the premise that the news is the proper thing to start your day with, under normal circumstances. (Obviously, right now is an exception for a lot of people, because of the invasion of Ukraine).
The problem is not "reading the news". The problem is "reading the news first thing in the morning". Cannot be very healthy for the mind, especially these days.
GP phrased that quite ambiguously but I think he meant "Reading the news is not the problem". At least by reading the second sentence that's the only logical interpretation.
I do as well, but I feel like I can do that more productively by reading about current developments once a week or less. The current situation with the war, where daily updates are crucial to a lot of people and where things really are changing daily, highlights how in more-normal times, that just isn't true.
I prefer trying to find news on my own whenever I do. I just try to look around a bit, get different views - even the ones that would rather disgust me and I give up often midway to articles and opinions but that exposure is needed.
I try not to equate news with that one truth - it can't be - but rather something towards the truth - or let's just call it "knowing about some event or something in somewhat detail" - and that rather unsavoury exposure often reveals some parts of that perceived truth/knowledge that wouldn't be exposed to me if I didn't read views that are actually exactly opposite to mine, which I can't reconcile with. No one writes absolutely.
Also, being from India I do not try to limit myself to the "English only" news sources -- that is one way to read views which are extremely limiting in the sense of being from within an intellectual ghetto for both - Right and Left; and even the Centre. In fact more so for the Left and Centre because the Right had figured out that the vernacular is where the mass is and that's where their propaganda machine attacked almost a decade ago and then won the country in a swift propaganda coup of lies, deceit and misinformation. While the progressive intellectuals kept bickering in English, often among themselves.
What I meant is -- we should not try to filter news too much, limit our scope and sources for ideas. It's okay to go to and through a mishmash of sources.
And last one 1-2 years has taught me - nothing beats paper sources, even now; print magazines. Online, apps, Twitter, lists and all those shiny gaudy and minimal websites, and what not are just fancy tools to play with or are the refuse for the news obsessed/addicted. Okay, this is taking it a bit too far, but online sources do indeed distract too much and encourages you to scan, rather than absorbing, is too quick, and often leading to endless click/search-athon.
And some weird Oprah Winfrey quote in the middle? And a list of people born and died on this date? I was expecting five headlines I could quickly scan to keep up with important events, not this.
It would be nice if there was a service that would give one headline per thing going on instead of 100s of different angles. An ideal top 5 headline app would be as follows:
1. War in Ukraine still not over, causes massive spike in worldwide commodity prices.
2. COVID cases and deaths falling. Covid measures being cancelled in many jurisdictions including yours.
3. Something important happening locally. New law passed, etc.
4. Most important science news of the day that will impact my life within the next year. No cancer studies that might cure cancer in 20 years. I don't care.
I have long wanted a layered, hierarchical, curated aggregator for the most the most important news articles.
It should be be browsable by region (world - continent - country), by timeframe (year - month - day), by topic (economy, politics, ...) and should group multiple articles for the same event.
Right now it's very hard to find info for questions like "what happened in Africa last month", "what changed in Taiwan last year", etc.
Unfortunately that would probably require a lot of human curation for now.
FYI if creator is reading: Links to articles on Verge are not working. A new tab opens, but the content is the same justfive.news page. Tried in Chrome/Safari in Mac.
Why? Honestly, who cares? I'd rather have a dashboard of my personal health metrics to start my day with - that way I know how to improve my life and how things are going for me.
Just 5 metrics I want to know every day:
1. Sleep hours / sleep rating for the previous night (good, ok, bad)
2. Projected personal net income this week (total incoming - total outgoing expenses)
3. # New users of my SaaS startup
4. Project company net income this week (total incoming - total outgoing expenses)
5. Birthdays of family / close friends today & this week
Okay? So get off here and go build that for yourself then.
A guy builds a news aggregator and shows it on HN, and you purposely click on something you know you are not interested in just to comment that you are not interested in it? Why?
I used to think that. Then I realized that during the last 5-10 years, international developments have impacted my life far more than what's happening in my neighborhood/municipality. Remote working, covid restrictions, crypto, etc. What happens in the world ends up knocking on your door sooner or later.
> I’d actually see early crypto news as a local interest but local meaning a technical niche instead of geographical.
Interesting point, I had not considered that. Locality not just in the geographical sense.
> I still think 99% of major daily headlines won’t affect your daily life.
I agree for the majority of people in other countries. In my case, I live in a developing country with >50% annual inflation. Sometimes headlines here really affect your life, like the govt suddenly prohibiting importing US dollars (e.g., if you work remotely), or requiring 1/3 women to form a LLC so I can't open a business with a male friend when I could yesterday. And this is clearly just following trends from USA/Europe. There are countless other examples.
I'd agree, though, not that these are not strictly "international" news but not local either.
Most of the French feeds are actually in English (although from French news agencies). And there's something off about the Twitter panel because half of the feeds are in Japanese.
just 'x' item that you can view but not interact.
for instance screenshot of top x posts from hacker news (not that i mind spending time here), or screenshot of x memes from that reddit sub .. and so on
the idea is to keep you from falling down the rabbit hole (doom scrolling or link hopping) and still deliver some value/dopamine
Did you know Wikipedia has a "current events" page? It's surprisingly good, containing only particularly notable events and therefore not constantly updated in real time. Which I think is a positive.
I think what's great about it is that while it is high level, the embedded hyperlinks take you to the full historical account via the relevant wikipedia entries which go way in depth.
I think the problem with 24 hour news cycle is that the soundbite interviews with experts often give me a superficial, one sided view into what is usually a multi-sided, complex problem/conflict (if it were so simple then it would have been solved already). Usually the pundit/news source has a strong opinion about the topic and is easily able to steer my opinion through their interpretation and through the inclusion/omission of certain facts.
With this page I can't delude myself that I'll know anything beyond the superficial unless I'm willing to invest in a couple of hours digging through the wikipedia entries.
I agree with your approach but I think that, unfortunately, Wikipedia is extremely unreliable when it comes to political content (or anything that can be politicized).
I mostly use it as a starting point to collect references, but even those will be biased as only the sources that comply with WP definition of reliable will be included.
I suggest always looking at the talk page in controversial topics if you want to look at the other side of the argument.
Wikipedia Current Events is great. But it's just like plain oatmeal and doing exercises every day. Most of us just don't have the willpower and go for the sugary cereals and slouching in front of on screen streaming entertainment, instead of doing what we know is better for us.
If you're not into cryptocurrencies, then the volatility won't induce any anxiety since you don't care. And if you are into cryptocurrencies, you're already aware of the extreme volatility, some headlines won't change how you feel about that. So not sure what's the loss for reading some cryptocurrency headlines.
I don't care for cryptocurrencies too much (I don't have any myself), but I do check out what's happening in the developer community a bit from time to time, as some of the computer science that is happening there is interesting even if you don't work on cryptocurrencies (or own any).
There's almost nothing non-hyperlocal that you 'need' to hear about to start your day. You seem to be singling out one topic because you have an axe to grind.
And that's pushing the intended meaning of "need" to extremes. But the site indeed features "Cointelegraph" near the top of the page, just next to Reuters.
Having worked directly for a Reuters subsidiary, I would never pretend they're not biased. All news is biased. The only question is whether or not it matches the bias of the reader at the time.
Same experience here with the German DPA. Bias starts at the selection stage. Every editor selecting what is important to them or what they think is important to the readers of the media that has a DPA feed subscription.
Then when doing a write up naturally include personal point of view and experience.
If subscribing to the online xml feed like many web portals and online news sites do, the order is defined by the order of topics in the top 10 media sites in Germany (as defined by the editors of the DPA).
So selection bias, personal biases and echo chamber effects. Even with every great intention these editors have (and knowing a few they really do) it just isn't possible to have neutral/unbiased news.
I’d rather suggest one of the countless daily morning newsletters that give you a heads up of what’s going on in the world with links to read more. There are also podcasts that do the same. I can’t suggest anything in English but in Italian there’s the 'Good Morning Italia' newsletter and the 'Morning' podcast from Il Post. The latter does a good job trying to actually explain and give context on the current news rather than just repeating the headlines.