Ask HN: How do you consume Hacker News?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=956286

by volare • 17 years ago

62 107 17 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Although I enjoy reading hacker news, I haven't found a satisfying interface for doing so. I have major gripes with both the website interface and the RSS feed.

Why I dislike the website interface:

--Front page stories are not in chronological order (I can't keep track of which stories I've already read)

--Stories are limited to the latest 210 (if I don't visit frequently, I can't see which stories I've missed)

--Links to comments are too small and not not in a consistent location horizontally (I almost always want to read the discussion before I click through to the external site)

--I would also like to be able to filter stores that are below a certain points threshold.

Why I dislike using the RSS feed:

--Does not show the number of points or the number of comments (crucial for selecting what to read)

I'm not just trying to be a hater; I think these things significantly harm my experience here.

So, am I just ignorant of better ways to consume HN? Do these things not annoy you too?

ptn• 17 years ago

--Front page stories are not in chronological order (I can't keep track of which stories I've already read)

That's kind of the point. Instead of seeing a bunch of stories, you see them ordered by the opinion of users. Visited links are painted in a different color, use that to keep track.

mattmaroon• 17 years ago

Unless you automatically clear your history, as I do, when your browser closes.

randallsquared3• 17 years ago

Your browser history is one of the best tools you have for making your web experience better, not just here, but on every site. It's hard for me to imagine any otherwise-tolerable situation in which I'd want to cut off my browser history every time I pause for a bit.

algorias2• 17 years ago

Browser history also fails when you use more than 1 machine on a regular basis.

volare4• 17 years ago

I understand that the front page is showing popular stories, but I would much rather have them be chronological also (a la Digg).

The problems with just using the link color to keep track are that it's very inefficient (instead of scanning a solid block of new stories I have to pick them out across multiple pages) and that I clear my browser history frequently.

RiderOfGiraffes2• 17 years ago

There is a strict chronological version: http://news.ycombinator.com/newest

albertsun• 17 years ago

I wish I could sync my visited links between my laptop and my mobile to make this easier.

runinit• 17 years ago

I believe you can do that with Firefox and the Weave extension.

jwallz• 17 years ago

Google Reader

volare4• 17 years ago

The problem is I usual select what to read by the number of points and/or comments. I don't want to click through every item to see those things.

benwr• 17 years ago

I use Google Reader, but you're right. There isn't enough information in the RSS feed to make it really enjoyable to use. You have to judge what you want to read based solely on the title. One thing that helps, for firefox users at least, is the "Better GReader" extension. It lets you open the link in the article header in an iframe, instead of a new window/tab. This makes perusal of the actual article much faster.

One other useful feature for the RSS feed (beyond the current rank) might be the top comments on an article, instead of just a link to the comments page.

tptacek3• 17 years ago

I really wish the RSS entries had score and number of comments in it, along with the domain from the story.

tinio• 17 years ago

I've been using an RSS feed I created for a while now which also "tries" to include a summary of the article.

feed://ynewsrss.appspot.com/

It's not perfect, but it helps out quite a bit in getting a little bit more context before deciding to click through a link.

nfnaaron2• 17 years ago

I could be wrong, but I also could be pretty close to right.

I think the RSS feed tracks http://news.ycombinator.com/newest , the new link in the top menu bar. The feed and new link appear to me to be in reverse chron order.

If you don't visit often, your rss reader should keep track of everything until you check in; without the points/comments, as you point out.

If you check in often enough, following the new page should be the best of both worlds: chron, and points/comments.

In answer to your title question, I: - click on interesting stuff in my rss reader - then look through the first couple of pages of the front page to see what's gathering comments that I'm interested in - then, if I still haven't found enough to keep me from working, I look at the new page to see if there's anything I haven't seen yet.

tptacek3• 17 years ago

Unless I use a different RSS feed from you, I'm pretty sure it doesn't track "New"; things usually need a few upvotes until they hit the feed.

nfnaaron2• 17 years ago

Ah, looks like you're right. "New with points."

ddemchuk• 17 years ago

excessively

riklomas• 17 years ago

I made a Twitter-bot a while ago for HN, I find it useful and there's over 7000 people following it now. It's only new stories in the top 5 though, mainly to stop information overload.

http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/

jonathandeamer• 17 years ago

I'm a big fan of this, mainly because of the top 5 filter, but also because I tend to use Twitter as a centralised hub for much of my media consumption, rather than visiting different websites, so it suits this use.

I have a "reading material" Twitter list set up, including @newsycombinator, and I regularly scan this for this to add to Instapaper, which I then generally read when travelling.

Admittedly, the problem with this is that it means I'm a less active participant in the community here than I'd like to be.

wallflower• 17 years ago

Impressive. Your little robot is on 388 lists. Note: CNNBrk has 18k listings.

http://listorious.com/top/listed

http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/lists/memberships

http://followcost.com/newsycombinator

bootload• 17 years ago

"... I made a Twitter-bot a while ago for HN ..."

Thanks for making this Rik. I use this as my primary feed. Works well.

anatoly3• 17 years ago

I don't consume HN at all.

I read HN through the website. The things you mention are a little annoying, but not something that worries me a lot.

timf2• 17 years ago

I would like to respond by saying "instead of griping, show us your counter idea as a demo" but that currently seems like a steep hill to climb. I have been curious for some time when/if a read-only API (with access to all information past/present) might be introduced to let people easily create alternate 'views.'

Everyone seems to start with building their own screenscraper + polling infrastructure (see two cool sites, for example, http://hntrends.com and http://searchyc.com/ ) which seems like a demotivating and fragile obstacle in the way of getting at the problem space where people actually want to experiment.

The SearchYC site (which is great don't get me wrong) has a JSON interface but only for search queries, not the more comprehensive and notification-based system that a definitive API could be.

My comment that there is no API could also be seen as a "gripe" I guess, but I am not really complaining about anything. I love HN and will continue to excessively visit the current website as-is. I also don't even know how PG feels about the issue (i.e., is it "will never happen" or "no time"?).

RiderOfGiraffes2• 17 years ago

Why doesn't someone build the site-scraper, and provide an API to its results?

timf2• 17 years ago

I assumed it would be worse technically. Perhaps if it was OK to relentlessly poll, it could be a good service. Things like votes and comment edits would be hard to capture quickly unless every single item was relentlessly polled.

On the other hand I am not trying to rule out viable alternatives by suggesting it comes straight from HN, I even considered making what you are saying at one time. I just don't think it would be as good as an HN one.

tdupree2• 17 years ago

I was thinking the same thing a while back. An API for HN would be awesome. A problem with that though is that it is really only a one way street and only allows for passive consumption rather than easily interacting. While a site-scraper API implementation would be handy, I think people would lose out on the functionality and community interactions that can only really be had at news.ycombinator.com.

Still though, I suppose some sort of site-scraped data (perhaps hosted on google apps for everyone to use) could be used in tandem with a greasemonkey script to further enhance the site without taking away the interactivity, that could be interesting...

anigbrowl• 17 years ago

Website. Yeah, it's imperfect but I've gotten used to it. Your life won't suffer that much if you miss stuff, anything sufficiently significant will get reposted somewhere else.

DanielBMarkham• 17 years ago

Shameless plug time: I've got a temp site up that pulls current articles from all the major tech sites and gives you 1) more stories, 2) movement in comment count, votes, and rankings across each site, and 3) emphasis on fast-moving stories at the top.

http://project-management-methodologies.net

I could add sorting, but it's only a lark right now. (I set it up to gather test data for another app I'm writing.) But if anybody wants sorting by time, let me know.

That's currently the way I consume HN. I still visit the comments feed and branch off from there occasionally, but not as often as I used to. I find it more interesting to watch relative movement of stories (sinking or rising?) and movement of stories across the major boards.

vaksel• 17 years ago

1. Visit site 2. Hit Threads 3. See if my words of wisdom got voted up(heheh) and if they need a response 4. Scan the front page for Ask/Tell HN type questions. 5. Scan the page for posts with a lot of comments and see if the topic is interesting enough to check out.

I usually just check once an hour or, and it takes like ~10 minutes.

gills• 17 years ago

I just use the web interface. Skim the front page first, then the new page. I check out articles with a high comments/points ratio first (or only) because the discussion of the intelligent folks here is what I value.

RevRal4• 17 years ago

No matter what, you'll always miss good stuff.

For example, most of HN missed the great article by unalone: http://journal.rinich.com/post/249408496/god . Both of the submissions on the article were flagged, killed.

I've been reading here for a very long time, but only recently signed up. I've always tried to ignore the amount of points a submission has. Instead:

1. Get to know the websites that consistently have good articles.

2. Find the users who submit good stuff. Click on people's profiles, and look at their karma.

3. Learn to recognize link bait. A lot of users try to use titles that aren't link bait.

4. When a submission looks questionable, click the user profile and see if they have good cred. Look at how long they've been a user and if they have good karma. If the user seems to have good cred, then bite the bullet and check out their submission as it is probably worthwhile.

5. Start up-voting submissions that you like. Get yourself involved.

You'll get better at scanning through the submissions and getting to the good stuff quickly.

araneae5• 17 years ago

I can see why it was killed. What a load of drivel...

I mean, seriously, who ends a blog post with "[w]e’re in this together"?

RevRal4• 17 years ago

Maybe I shouldn't have mentioned what I thought of the article, instead just said that it didn't deserve to get killed.

I am a very discerning reader and the article resonated well with me. I'm glad I read it and I'm sure there are more people who would have enjoyed it.

That's why I brought it up. It was killed before more people could have read it. The only reason I found my way to the article was because I'm also discerning on HN, using the five "tips" I outlined more than the points on submissions.

unalone13• 17 years ago

I do. Since that post went up, I've received quite a few emails from people thanking me for that drivel, too. So I guess it's not drivel after all?

If my goal was to write simplistic, overemoting drivel, I'd have namedropped Bukowski instead of Joyce.

wglb• 17 years ago

Whether or not the referenced article is a great article, it is not the kind of article I look for to read on HN. I sometimes flag articles that might be otherwise good, but are misplaced on HN.

scythe• 17 years ago

>(I can't keep track of which stories I've already read)

Most browsers will color a link you've clicked on differently. I know I've read a story because its link is gray.

Of course, if I didn't remember them most of the time, I'd wonder if I wasn't wasting time in a more heinous way that I'd originally imagined.

petercooper• 17 years ago

I visit the site every day or so, scan the front page for interesting things, then read those. I definitely don't care for seeing every single article. It's a river, I take a dip.

I don't care about "missing" anything because new stuff is always coming along. The "missing" attitude leads to information overload. E-mail's the only thing I don't want to miss, not inane news on the net.

volare4• 17 years ago

I don't want to read every article either. But if there was a story last week that got 300+ points and is no longer on the website, I want to be able to find it.

s-phi-nl• 17 years ago

You can do that using the best list at http://news.ycombinator.com/best. This is the best recent stories, for some value of recent (I believe 10 days).

simonista2• 17 years ago

Two things that help to see what you've missed in the past several days are http://news.ycombinator.com/lists (specifically best and bestcomments, although all are useful), and http://ask.searchyc.com/ which unfortunately is only for Ask NH posts, but is chronological with points and comments.

simonista2• 17 years ago

Another thing which I don't personally do, but which might be helpful is to come up with a list of HN regulars who often comment on stories you enjoy, and then check out their comment history (eg for pg: http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg)

jonny_noog• 17 years ago

I've often wondered why http://news.ycombinator.com/classic is not on that lists page... Are there any others missing that people know of?

reidab• 17 years ago

I use Nirmal Patel's neat republishing of the RSS feed that uses Readability to extract content from target links.

http://www.nirmalpatel.com/hacks/hnrss.html

skorgu• 17 years ago

Wow, this is exactly what I never thought to wish for.

cschep• 17 years ago

everything you never you always wanted.

protez• 17 years ago

Thank u so much! It's a real gem!

caf• 17 years ago

I just use the RSS feed and pick the stories based on the title. Seems to work OK.

robotron• 17 years ago

Yep. It would be nice if the body of the story was included also since they're usually fairly short.

jlees• 17 years ago

With reluctance, of late.

I tend to click through to showcased items via the twitter @newsycombinator feed or on IRC. Other than that, the website, but I don't visit as much as I used to. I just find less of interest lately.

tptacek3• 17 years ago

Via SearchYC RSS subscription to patio11's comments.

k0n2ad• 17 years ago

With smoked Gouda and a side of caviar.

josephkern• 17 years ago

Twitter.

Xichekolas• 17 years ago

Like this:

http://andrewfarmer.name/screenshot.png

Using this:

http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039

Not sure it really addresses any of your issues though. Just know that it wouldn't be hard to implement some of your ideas with a GM script.

diN0bot• 17 years ago

i like your script. Ask HN are the best part of HN.

jarsj2• 17 years ago

I would rather love to see it go more complicated and geeky. Hackers would figure it out and non-hackers would get filtered away.

unalone13• 17 years ago

Being a hacker doesn't mean embracing unnecessary clutter. In fact, many people would argue it's the opposite.

I don't do complicated and geeky. I'm smart enough to figure it out, but I have better things to do than subscribe to an asshole designer's ego trip. I stick around on Hacker News in part because its design respects me.

jarsj2• 17 years ago

I do not embrace that too. I have spent a good deal of my last 3 years out of college learning usability and can not agree more on what you said.

However, I do believe if hacker news was more obvious and followed all those principles, it would attract - Hey, we got a job for you. - How do you read the contents of the file in a string in Java ?

and other such things.

thaumaturgy• 17 years ago

I consume HN as a light snack between projects throughout the day.

I'm not too bothered by it if I miss something.

Concours• 17 years ago

that's almost how I also do it, but reading the question above, I've tried to work out a solution and set a Hacker news subcategory here: http://bit.ly/4WxNeI on mcsquare.me (category: Technology, subcategory: Hackers), you can not just check hacker news titles, but also Paul Graham's blog and the Y combinator posterous Blog, and track back old stories very fast. The bad part of this is just that, external links won't bring you to hacker news, but the original post, for Ask HN, it works very well, I've tried to figure out how to find the rss-link for new items and for the discussion tread (or comment), couldn't figure it out, I suspect there's no such a thing (Admin ?), so if one of you find out how to get it, thanks for sharing, or the admin may try to put those datas on a feed. Hope this can help some folk here, and if they are additional Y combinator feed I'm missing and you may want to see there, let me know.

edw519• 17 years ago

Hey volare, I can see how it can easily happen, but please don't let any of these things confuse you:

  - the links to current hacker related content
  - a fairly sophisiticated way to present those links in an "optimal" manner
  - discussion like you'll find nowhere else
  - content from which to learn better hacking
  - content from which to learn better business skills
  - friendships & business contacts tough to make other places
  - people who put in a lot of TLC to maintain all of the above

Hacker News is not a destination. It is an excellent resource to augment the main thing that you should be doing.

Make no mistake about it, this is supposed to be a community of doers, not lookers.

You have made some astute observations and provided interesting feedback, but I'm concerned that you're missing the point...

If you notice so much about Hacker News that needs refining, then you're probably paying too much attention. Come here for your break then leave and put that energy of yours where it belongs, on your own project.

This site, although not ideal, is pretty good. Let's all stop worrying about what we might be missing here and focus on what we are missing with our own sites.

volare4• 17 years ago

Hacker News is not a destination. It is an excellent resource ...

Sure, but I want a better resource. I'm not looking to spend more time here. I'm looking to see all of the good content while spending less time here.

bayareaguy• 17 years ago

I often read HN when I happen to be at an impasse away from my laptop or desktop. I'd like to HN's interface offer better support for mobile browsers.

For example, http://m.ycombinator.com could be a version of news.ycombinator.com with margins, indentation and other settings appropriate for a Blackberry or iPhone.

Also I don't know what's up with Viigo, but it doesn't seem to work with HN's RSS url. Anyone else have that problem?

andyking• 17 years ago

The simplicity of this site makes it far more conducive to mobile browsing than, say, BBC News or the NYT. Some of the indentation on comments can be a bit of a pain, but it's perfectly workable on the Opera Mini browser I use.

r11t• 17 years ago

If you need a mobile version of HN which displays nicely on the iPhone : http://www.icombinator.net

kijun• 17 years ago

Try using hn-filter, a feed that I made last week.

For example, http://hn-filter.heroku.com/rss?cmt_gte=2&point_gte=5... gives you 10 HN articles with more than 1 comment and 4 points in RSS format.

It also gives you the number of comments and points.

The source is at http://github.com/kijun/hn-filter

Hope it helps.

tdupree2• 17 years ago

I always thought a HN API would be awesome, would give us a lot more freedom to mold HN into different interfaces. I have toyed with the idea of a scraper but I think that ends up being a bit of a broken solution.

I wrote a greasemonkey script for HN a while back that I can't live without now. There are actually a couple great HN greasemonkey scripts out there. You could always try making a mashup of those that have your favorite elements. You may end up making something that a lot of people find useful.

If you like, give Hacker News OnePage a whirl: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512

IgorPartola• 17 years ago

I mainly use the RSS feed from NetVibes. I wish clicking on the link there took me to HN, instead of to the source article. Sometimes I am more interested in comments to a feature than the actual feature (the title might say it all, but the reaction is what's interesting). I am to the point where I might create my own wrapper around HN's RSS feed.

windock• 17 years ago

I use http://hacker-newspaper.gilesb.com/ That's just a nice newspaper-like layout.

mhartl• 17 years ago

I recommend "hnweekly: this week's top stories from Hacker News" at http://hnweekly.chibidesign.com/ to find good stories you might have missed.

rosshill• 17 years ago

I consume HN through a feedmyinbox.com subscription, that takes the most popular articles of the day and emails them to me at 3pm each day. I then click the interesting ones into new tabs and go through them.

prakash• 17 years ago

Here are some links that might be useful:

- http://hackerhackernews.com/

- http://news.ycombinator.com/lists

- http://hnsort.com/

adrianwaj• 17 years ago

I consume on Twitter via hackerlinks: http://twitter.com/hackerlinks - (personally over Twitya http://twitya.com/#hackerlinks) ..parses the new comments for links and posts up the result - check it out, over 500 followers and stabilizing -- it is a bit of a hosepipe so open wide

jgamman• 17 years ago

left to right, top to bottom. other standards exist in the world but YMMV

chengas123• 17 years ago

I'll tell you how I don't - via Chrome. The site looks awful in it. I have to switch to FireFox.

selven• 17 years ago

What's so bad about the site in Chrome? I'm looking at the site in (Linux) Chrome and Firefox side by side and, aside from the extra 4 lines of vertical screen space that Chrome gives you, they look exactly the same.

sabon• 17 years ago

If you want to come rarely but don't want to miss the most important stuff, this should help: http://news.ycombinator.com/best

Pistos2• 17 years ago

I used to use http://twitter.com/newsycombinator/ but then became dissatisfied with its choice of links, so I made my own:

http://hn.purepistos.net/

which takes http://news.ycombinator.com/active and filters for a minimum vote count (currently 40). I provide the title, the link, and a link to the HN thread. Consumable via FriendFeed, Twitter, RSS and Atom.

Ask HN: How do you consume Hacker News?

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