Ask HN: What do you think of my newsletter of Interesting Things?
I'd like to introduce, and ask feedback for, my newsletter Interesting Things [1][2].
It's a response to the notion that many interesting stories posted to Hacker News flies past and are not seen. Well, if they don't get seen, but deserve to be, then maybe they could be surfaced again somehow. A newsletter seemed like a good way to do it.
I experimented by trawling through the 'newest' section of Hacker News. The first few times were mind-numbing. Gosh, there's so much noise in there! . Eventually I learnt to be more selective and efficient and it became repeatable. Then I added some other sources of content. Now, whilst a large portion of the stories are still from Hacker News, it's not only from there.
The criteria is 'What I find interesting' but, since I'm a typical Hacker News reader, the interest profile ends up similar to Hacker News. It's mainly tech but with splashes of startups, science, productivity, etc. Like Hacker News, I omit politics. Unlike Hacker News, I try to omit product/press releases, big corp stuff, and stories that would be covered by the mainstream tech press.
Whilst the interest profile is similar to other Hacker-News-based newsletters and digests, there is little overlap in stories. This is intentionally so. My newsletter does not focus on the top stories from Hacker News.
So anyway ... if you'd like to read interesting stuff that went unnoticed by Hacker News, please have a look at Interesting Things. I hope you guys like it and find it good for some weekend reading.
I'm also looking for criticism, feedback and suggestions for improvement. Some sample questions: What do you think of the (boring) name? Do you like the one-two liner blurbs? Are the blurbs useful? What do you think of the distribution of topics? Please let me know. I'm happy to talk.
Thanks for reading!
[1] https://bengtan.com/interesting-things
[2] https://bengtan.com/newsletter/sample (redirects to the latest public edition)