How do you browse Hacker News? • Hacker News Board

adityamwagh wrote: post #42

I use Octal, Free with $5.99 for paid features (commenting, etc) Great UI, performant app and the developer is quite active in pushing updates. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...

You have to pay to comment? That's ridiculous. Just make it a paid app

Re: How do you browse Hacker News?

#44

Post by anonomousename » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 9:26 PM UTC

kevviiinn wrote: post #43

adityamwagh wrote: post #42

I use Octal, Free with $5.99 for paid features (commenting, etc) Great UI, performant app and the developer is quite active in pushing updates. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/octal-for-hacker-news/id130888...

You have to pay to comment? That's ridiculous. Just make it a paid app

I assume the free version is meant to be used as a trial to evaluate the quality of the client. There is a “Share HN Link” option for each comment where you can comment on the webpage. After using it for free for a year or so, I paid because it’s one of my favorite clients on iOS.

Re: How do you browse Hacker News?

#45

Post by hollerith » Wed, Mar 15, 2023, 9:55 PM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #35

hollerith wrote: post #8

I don't like how the home page at http://news.ycombinator.com/ sorts by a combination of score and time-since-posting because that means that I end up scanning each entry (story title) over and over. In contrast, if they were sorted strictly by time-since-posting, I would probably quickly be able to tell once my scan of the list reached the part of the list I had already seen. Someone else (many years ago) had the sa…

> if they were sorted strictly by time-since-posting Isn't that exactly what you get on the “New” page? https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

That page shows all stories whereas hckrnews.com shows only stories that are or were on HN's front page.

Re: How do you browse Hacker News?

#46

Post by yesenadam » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 10:54 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #8

I don't like how the home page at http://news.ycombinator.com/ sorts by a combination of score and time-since-posting because that means that I end up scanning each entry (story title) over and over. In contrast, if they were sorted strictly by time-since-posting, I would probably quickly be able to tell once my scan of the list reached the part of the list I had already seen. Someone else (many years ago) had the sa…

Or you could press hide once you've seen a story.

I sometimes use hckrnews.com, but not for that reason - it's good for catching up on what's been on the front page if I haven't been here lately.

Re: How do you browse Hacker News?

#47

Post by CRConrad » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 8:41 PM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #45

CRConrad wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> if they were sorted strictly by time-since-posting Isn't that exactly what you get on the “New” page? https://news.ycombinator.com/newest

That page shows all stories whereas hckrnews.com shows only stories that are or were on HN's front page.

Ah. But... If you don't want to trust the front page's ordering of items, then why trust its choice of which to include? Seems a bit weird to me. Or, well, at least arbitrary.

Re: How do you browse Hacker News?

#48

Post by hollerith » Thu, Mar 16, 2023, 10:41 PM UTC

CRConrad wrote: post #47

hollerith wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That page shows all stories whereas hckrnews.com shows only stories that are or were on HN's front page.

Ah. But... If you don't want to trust the front page's ordering of items, then why trust its choice of which to include? Seems a bit weird to me. Or, well, at least arbitrary.

It has nothing to do with trust.

Re: How do you browse Hacker News?

#49

Post by hollerith » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 2:09 AM UTC

yesenadam wrote: post #46

hollerith wrote: post #8

I don't like how the home page at http://news.ycombinator.com/ sorts by a combination of score and time-since-posting because that means that I end up scanning each entry (story title) over and over. In contrast, if they were sorted strictly by time-since-posting, I would probably quickly be able to tell once my scan of the list reached the part of the list I had already seen. Someone else (many years ago) had the sa…

Or you could press hide once you've seen a story. I sometimes use hckrnews.com, but not for that reason - it's good for catching up on what's been on the front page if I haven't been here lately.

I hadn't considered that.

Re: How do you browse Hacker News?

#50

Post by CRConrad » Fri, Mar 17, 2023, 10:17 AM UTC

hollerith wrote: post #48

CRConrad wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah. But... If you don't want to trust the front page's ordering of items, then why trust its choice of which to include? Seems a bit weird to me. Or, well, at least arbitrary.

It has nothing to do with trust.

OK, so let's use another word: If you're satisfied with letting HN's front-page algorithm select which posts you even get to see, then why not with the much smaller matter of ordering? (But of course it does: You being OK with an algorithm doing something for you is just another way of saying you trust the algo to do it for you.)

Anyway, trivial problem: The post IDs in the URLs are monotonally increasing over time. Just sort by ID and the lowest is the oldest, the highest the newest.