Ask HN: How do you keep up with HN these days?

In the last 2-3 years, mostly because of AI, keeping up with interesting articles on HN has become harder and harder.

How do you deal with it? Besides the simple solution of simply ignoring interesting stuff more and more.

25 points | by simonebrunozzi 1 hour ago

26 comments

  • romaniitedomum 29 minutes ago
    Same way as always. Open the page, glance down it to see if there's anything that interests me, hit hide on the domains that I never want to see anything from. Lather, rinse, repeat.

    But I'm guessing you have more of a FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) kind of problem, which admittedly I don't have. However, you could look at something using RSS, maybe in combination with an agent told to find and show articles based on some heuristics.

    Personally, I'm OK with missing something. If it's good, I figure it'll surface somewhere else and impinge on my notice sooner or later.

    • nreece 4 minutes ago
      > hit hide on the domains that I never want to see anything from

      I don't thing 'hide' applies to the domain of the post, but only the post itself: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html#:~:text=What%20do%...

    • aryehof 16 minutes ago
      > hit hide on the domains that I never want to see anything from

      I thought hide just hid that particular entry. Have I been wrong all this time?

    • mschild 15 minutes ago
      > hit hide on the domains that I never want to see anything from

      Ive been on hn with one account or another for close to a decade now. I have never used that feature nor did I think it would permanently hide the domains entirely. Super good to know though.

  • matsemann 13 minutes ago
    I mainly press "past" in the top menu and skim the top posts of the previous days. It doesn't surface every interesting post/discussion, but most of it.

    There's also the "hidden" https://news.ycombinator.com/best which is a bit the same, but not per day

  • nreece 1 minute ago
    I occasionally use https://hckrnews.com to catchup on the top 20 daily posts.
  • x______________ 37 minutes ago
    Just focus on what you enjoy and don't worry about the rest.
  • 0x696C6961 15 minutes ago
    That's like asking how to keep up with your Instagram feed. Framing it as a goal is strange.
  • stagas 31 minutes ago
    I've made a bot[0] for HN that posts whatever enters the top 10, summarizes it with AI and posts it on textlog[1], and so I get the fresh news like little summary notes and decide if it's worth my time. Bonus is I receive a notification on my phone because I follow it.

    [0]: https://github.com/stagas/hn10

    [1]: https://textlog.cc/u/hn10

  • Leftium 10 minutes ago
    My HN client has made HN easier to keep up with, even before AI: https://hn.leftium.com

    I call it "Seeking Orange" because interesting posts are highlighted. Features include:

    - Point/comment counts become increasingly more orange with higher counts (50+, 100+)

    - Orange accent bar on left indicates new items since last visit

    - Support for several different feeds including: HckrNews (chronological front page appearance time), Classic Stories, Best Stories, Active Stories

    - Thresholds to de-emphasize posts from users with low karma/recent creation dates: https://hn.leftium.com/newest?min_karma=500&min_age_years=5

  • l5870uoo9y 20 minutes ago
    The weekly newsletter is a great way to get the most important information: https://hackernewsletter.com/
  • socalgal2 18 minutes ago
    I don't. I fact I wish I wasn't checking now. I need to curb my addiction. this place is getting more toxic by the week.
    • supriyo-biswas 3 minutes ago
      Set noprocrast=99999 on your settings page.
    • qsera 14 minutes ago
      It can be done. I have done it many times!
  • jjp 26 minutes ago
    RSS to only see new links that hit 100 points https://hnrss.org/newest?points=100. And then selective reading of those.
    • tarinedier 17 minutes ago
      thanks that will help cut things down. yesterdays stats comparing the feeds was 117 posts vs 29
    • jochem9 21 minutes ago
      I do this as well. I scan the titles (not just HN, but all my rss feeds combined) and only read what grabs my interest.
  • ochrist 35 minutes ago
    I've started following other websites/media more - like Slashdot, Reddit and others.

    A few weeks ago several HN users presented solutions for filtering out AI results, but I haven't used any of those solutions much.

  • omer_k 16 minutes ago
    easy with my keyboard, change themes with 1, 2, 3 on keyboard

    or hit "v" to change views

    https://hckrnight.com

  • aquir 38 minutes ago
    I just open the page and scroll through the first couple of pages…
  • aryehof 12 minutes ago
    I typically use hckr news (https://hckrnews.com/) set to show only the top 10 or top 20. It also has the advantage of showing those i missed overnight or earlier.
  • pmdr 15 minutes ago
    > open HN

    > ignore all posts about MCP

    > ignore all posts containing "agent"

    > also ignore everything frontier labs bragged about hacking this week

    > ignore AI psychosis posts praised as being the future

    > check out everything else

    > close HN

  • ivanmontillam 33 minutes ago
    Well, don't. I follow the HN Telegram channel (not official), and if anything interesting appears, I read it.

    If I tried to keep up, I'd be run over. It's too much input for the normal individual I am.

  • dibbsonline 29 minutes ago
    brutalist.report these days
  • NordStreamYacht 19 minutes ago
    RSS
  • s1artibartfast 40 minutes ago
    Im not aure i understand your question. If you cant dind it, how are you ignoring it?

    At any rate, I find AI interesting, but have a similar opinion that most of the HN discourse has become low quality. My solution is to follow individual users I know are high quality with similar interests.

  • sifex 34 minutes ago
    Octal (iOS)
  • Apocryphon 33 minutes ago
    Anecdotally it feels like comment threads are a lot like "megathreads" on forums now, where there might be hundreds of replies. Wonder if there's been a surge of users over the last three or four years.
  • OutOfHere 37 minutes ago
    We are strongly in the AI acceleration phase, so it'll keep getting harder. I use an RSS reader for the top posts only. In the RSS reader, I "star" what I want to read, and read what I can from among what I have starred. Of course I miss a lot, but I get the broad picture of where things are going.
  • firemelt 25 minutes ago
    u are not missing out of anything bro
  • dvh 39 minutes ago
    What?! Your RSS/Atom reader does not support filtering?
  • ekjhgkejhgk 21 minutes ago
    > In the last 2-3 years, mostly because of AI, keeping up with interesting articles on HN has become harder and harder.

    I'm curious to hear why AI made it harder to read HN. Is it because there's lots of it and you don't like it?

  • itake 35 minutes ago
    [dead]