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Consuming Hacker News

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Re: Consuming Hacker News

#21

Post by hkai »

canada_dry wrote: post #20

I use an old FF version running greasemonkey just to browse HN. My GM script concats two pages of posts, filters out any posts that have less votes than x/hr since being posted, and highlights ones that have a list of keywords I'm interested in. I love FF, but it's a constantly shifting target esp wrt greasemonkey! I gave up trying to convert my old scripts.

Sounds like a lot of work. There's a Telegram channel that posts all links when they hit a score of 50, so you don't need to filter and you know what you've read and what you haven't (@news_ycombinator on Telegram).

It's basically the same idea as the good old Google Reader.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#22

Post by yoodenvranx »

Jun8 wrote: post #12

I think aggregators like SkimFeed miss an important point, often made on HN: for a lot of people, including me, a lot of the value of HN is in the comments. In fact, going to the extreme, some posts have little learnable content other than TIL. First example that comes to mind is a post I recently upvoted: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946989 ) which had a small number of…

> for a lot of people, including me, a lot of the value of HN is in the comments

If I have enough time to kill I usually read the comments first in order to figure out if the article is worth reading

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#24

Post by octosphere »

I wrote a script which opens a bunch of random HN links in new tabs. In firefox you have to over-ride the default amount of tabs you can open and change it to something like 9999. I once shared the script on HN under a different account, and it got no interest at all. The idea behind the script is that it presents random articles, so there is no bias behind the webpage you are reading. I use the script all the time and it's great to be presented with articles you otherwise would not have clicked. It's not hard to write such a script, but it gets trickier when you start to add filters to it. So for example, you may want to omit opening links with 'Soylent', 'Drone' or 'Trump' in the title.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#26

Post by gfo »

I'm confused about the mention of filter bubbles in this context. Generally, they're only bad when they're highly customized to what the individual user wants to see (because it will heavily bias toward their current beliefs).

Maybe it's the negative connotation I have to them due to Facebook so I'm wondering why this is mentioned here. I would expect the "proper" use of a filter bubble to be the application mentioned: not tailored to each individual user but rather highlighting what the entire community will find relevant, in this case based presumable on votes (though we wouldn't know if clicks are also a factor given the proprietary algorithm).

Of course, I suppose an entire community like HN could develop a macro bubble but one might presume an entire community should already have diverse perspectives which could keep it more balanced.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#27

Post by whenchamenia »

barbecue_sauce wrote: post #18
Jun8 wrote: post #12

I think aggregators like SkimFeed miss an important point, often made on HN: for a lot of people, including me, a lot of the value of HN is in the comments. In fact, going to the extreme, some posts have little learnable content other than TIL. First example that comes to mind is a post I recently upvoted: Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19946989 ) which had a small number of…

My process with HN articles is 1. Find a topic that looks interesting or important based on the title 2. Read the top two comments. 3a. If they are incredibly polarized, read the article. 3b. If they are in agreement, just read the comments.

That is a recipe for a powerful bubble. HN, while being above average, collectively gets many, many things wrong.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#28

Post by whenchamenia »

chrisaycock wrote: post #8

I like Hacker News Daily, created by @cperciva: http://www.daemonology.net/hn-daily/ It lists the 10 highest-rated stories each day. I added the RSS feed to my news reader so I can see the biggest items even if I don't happen to read HN that day.

I perfer the 'unlinkable' digest myself.

Most know what I mean.

Re: Consuming Hacker News

#29

Post by la_barba »

whenchamenia wrote: post #27
barbecue_sauce wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My process with HN articles is 1. Find a topic that looks interesting or important based on the title 2. Read the top two comments. 3a. If they are incredibly polarized, read the article. 3b. If they are in agreement, just read the comments.

That is a recipe for a powerful bubble. HN, while being above average, collectively gets many, many things wrong.

Well a bubble is an imagined abstraction. Like most abstractions, it doesn't actually exist. Its just a way to simplify things. Also, there isn't a clear definition of it either, making things even more muddy.

>HN, while being above average, collectively gets many, many things wrong.

That is to be expected. I mean we have programmers opining on quantum physics, bio-chemistry, economics, sociology, and whatever else hits the front page. I don't know of an online community that restricts their opinions to their own domains.

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