Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 91 posts

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

#71

Post by leereeves »

rickydroll wrote: post #60
balanced2 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Filtering out news with (probably more than) some bias seems dangerous in encouraging echo chambers. I have been extremely happy to find https://www.allsides.com/ Especially when it surfaces a topic with three articles from across the bias spectrum, it feels very rewarding being able to get a fuller picture.

Sometimes there aren't multiple sides, especially when it comes to science reporting. You have fact-based reporting, and then you have conspiracy theories. How would you handle news where there is sufficient evidence to show one set of reporting is accurate and relatively unbiased, but another report is all made up and designed to inflame its audience?

That's rarely the case with science reporting. The subjects that are sufficiently rigorous to allow no reasonable debate (the physical sciences) are rarely political enough to inspire unreasonable debate.

On the other hand, the subjects that are politically contentious are not rigorous and leave plenty of room for reasonable debate.

If anything, science reporting tends to err the other way, uncritically reporting sensational results that contradict one other, have not been confirmed, or fail to replicate.

I rarely see a popular science article that doesn't report the results of a single experiment as if they were instantly established fact.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

#72

Post by leereeves »

fake-name wrote: post #17
bufferoverflow wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck with that. Their moderation is too insane and not transparent for my taste. And, considering HN is quite far left, you won't create anything new really.

You think HN is left ? Ha. HN is at best center-right.

HN is definitely left of center by American standards. For example, it's generally anti-Trump, while half the country supports him.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

#73

Post by browningstreet »

kamranjon wrote: post #21
wewewedxfgdf wrote: post #10

lobster.rs is good and tech focused. I think it should discard any submissions that are already on Hacker news because it's often same/same. If I think it was reliably different I'd visit it more.

Ditto on lobste.rs - I’ve found myself browsing it more and more when I’ve run out of HN stories to peruse.

lobste.rs is always called out in threads like this but what I see on the homepage, per usual, is dead threads..

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

#74

Post by const_cast »

leereeves wrote: post #71
rickydroll wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sometimes there aren't multiple sides, especially when it comes to science reporting. You have fact-based reporting, and then you have conspiracy theories. How would you handle news where there is sufficient evidence to show one set of reporting is accurate and relatively unbiased, but another report is all made up and designed to inflame its audience?

That's rarely the case with science reporting. The subjects that are sufficiently rigorous to allow no reasonable debate (the physical sciences) are rarely political enough to inspire unreasonable debate. On the other hand, the subjects that are politically contentious are not rigorous and leave plenty of room for reasonable debate. If anything, science reporting tends to err the other way, uncritically reporting sen…

I agree with what you say about sensationalist science reporting. It's very common to take one study and then have dummies who aren't scientists report on it as if we've just found out how to live forever. Science is very tricky because it's complicated and the barrier to entry is high - you can't just extrapolate things out like that.

However, there's also the other side of things, which is mostly established science. Which, you're right, don't typically spark political debate... but they do sometimes. Vaccines, climate change, cholesterol, seed oils. The RFK Jr faction of anti-science is rife these days.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

#75

Post by const_cast »

bufferoverflow wrote: post #22
fake-name wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think HN is left ? Ha. HN is at best center-right.

Try posting anything right-wing, like government crime stats of black vs white people. You will get banned.

Because that's not right-wing, that's just explicitly racist. I mean, are we really going to sit here and pretend to be so stupid that we might legitimately think someone is posting that for not racist purposes?

Look, you can be as right-wing as you want and get away with it, nobody cares. The problem is a lot of right-wingers just... can't do it. They can't. They have to throw in something racist, or something sexist, or say something disparaging about brown people. It's like some kind of compulsion, I don't know.

You can talk about immigration policy allllll you want. You can. What you can't do is call Puerto Ricans trash. That's off the table.

So, if your example you're looking up to is someone like Trump and his cronies, that basically means yes, you're censored. Not because you're right-wing, but because you're crude and don't know how to express your views in a way that isn't disingenuous. Just be normal, be good faith, don't race bait, and you know... I promise it'll work out. I promise.

Re: Ask HN: Does anyone know of a general news site akin to Hacker News?

#79

Post by leereeves »

const_cast wrote: post #74
leereeves wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's rarely the case with science reporting. The subjects that are sufficiently rigorous to allow no reasonable debate (the physical sciences) are rarely political enough to inspire unreasonable debate. On the other hand, the subjects that are politically contentious are not rigorous and leave plenty of room for reasonable debate. If anything, science reporting tends to err the other way, uncritically reporting sen…

I agree with what you say about sensationalist science reporting. It's very common to take one study and then have dummies who aren't scientists report on it as if we've just found out how to live forever. Science is very tricky because it's complicated and the barrier to entry is high - you can't just extrapolate things out like that. However, there's also the other side of things, which is mostly established scienc…

I'm not familiar with all the details of RFK Jr's position, the public debate about it, nor how many of the things reported in the news are accurate (truth being the first casualty of politics).

But I just looked for those topics in the official Make America Healthy Again report [1].

The positions in that report on those topics were not so unreasonable. It says seed oils are a concern because they are ultra-processed fats, only mentions cholesterol in the context of PFAS, and says "vaccines benefit children by protecting them from infectious diseases" but we may not need to give children nearly 30 doses of them.[2]

I do think his general position that processed food is unhealthy is not only reasonable, it generally matches conventional modern medical thinking, even if he is wrong about a few details.

And of course people looking for political ammunition only look for details they can use against him.

1: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...

2: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/index.html

Post reply on HN