Silencing Hackernews

blog.notryan.com

2 pointsdiablo13 comments

May 20 his reality hits home, experiment ended. HN is the best and only decent forum for tech on the internet that isn't overrun with garbage posts and comments being jammed down my eye holes by an "ai" "ad" negative feedback loop machine.

Thanks for being great HN!

Maybe the key points are

- single shared feed

- all post start out equal*

- no following or social features other than comments

* HN companies have some special privileges

See

https://ontology2.com/essays/HackerNewsForHackers/

and

https://ontology2.com/essays/ClassifyingHackerNewsArticles/

Later on I built a workflow system for handling a job application workflow based on the same principles. The first article was a big hit on HN (e.g. a good use of the "No True Scotsman" trope) but the second has never really appealed to people for some reason.

I have made a habit of mining HN's Algolia search engine. You can uncover some real gems if you just put in the effort to narrow down your search to the particular topic you're interested in. Also: to avoid bias I wrote a script that opens random stories from the HN main page in my browser tabs, and am often surprised and refreshed by what I read (As most stories that gain popularity on the main page have vague titles)

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