Hacker News Classic | Hacker News Reader

Hacker News Classic

news.ycombinator.com

66 pointsrob30 comments

Posts by pg about /classic:

HN Frontpage ranked using only votes from accounts over a year old - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=607271 - May 2009 (107 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=611251 (May 2009)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=830485 (Sept 2009)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1619602 (Aug 2010)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1809683 (Oct 2010)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2073513 (Jan 2011)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3166229 (Oct 2011)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4025810 (May 2012)

I posted this about it a couple years ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25787385 (Jan 2021)

Edit: maybe we should add a query param so you can decide how ancient you want the contributing upvoters to be

Ancient? Am I an artifact now?

it's all relative!

See the `Lists` section at the footer for more options, but the `/classic` endpoint seems to be an easter-egg? (not in the "documentation" links possible in the footer):

https://news.ycombinator.com/lists

front Front page submissions for a given day (e.g. 2016-06-20)

pool Links selected for a second chance at the front page

invited Overlooked links, invited to repost

highlights Particularly interesting comments

shownew The latest Show HN posts

asknew The latest Ask HN (text) posts

best Highest-voted recent links

bestcomments Highest-voted recent comments

active Most active current discussions

leaders Users with most karma

noobstories Submissions from new accounts

noobcomments Comments from new accounts

whoishiring Monthly "Who Is Hiring" threads

launches Launches of YC startups

I've put /classics on there now.

*/classic

Thank you! Are there any more that could be added ;) ?

Doubtless there are but they're not in my cache.

Edit: well, there's /topcomments - but I'm going to recycle that name for /bestcomments, since those aren't the best comments, just the most-upvoted ones

How do you get more classic with Hacker News? Back to plaintext via BBS/Telnet?!

It's the algo, not the display

read on one of these: https://terminals-wiki.org/wiki/index.php/Teletype_Model_43

no css. strip out everything

I'd be surprised if nobody's hacked together an interface for that. Some light googling didn't lead me to anything though.

What's the difference?

It seems like it uses a different ranking system.

Edit: found this answer from an older post, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1833242

And to the authors final point that it’s a slower changing version of the homepage then….what’s the point?

Giving people time to read stuff before it disappears.

Quoting the answer (by pg): "It's what the frontpage would look like if only the votes of users who joined in the first year counted. I made it to check if the site is declining. In practice it's usually just a slower-changing version of the frontpage."

The irony of change over time being seen as decline on a tech forum. Let's all put our brains in glass jars in virtual static universes so our thoughts and behaviors don't change

That doesn't seem like a meaningful takeaway unless those first-year users are also only seeing the "classic" homepage.

Most people aren't individually reviewing new-page submissions, they're voting for stuff that's already popular on the default frontpage. First-year users aren't immune to this— they're primarily voting up stuff that others already voted for. So it makes perfect sense that "classic" under this model would be a delayed version of default; indeed, one should expect that result with any randomly selected 10% of the voting userbase.

I had forgotten about the best list. It deserves a spot in the header IMO.

https://news.ycombinator.com/best

It's the same ranking algorithm but only votes from users who registered in the first year count.

can we have a /dark next?

Dark Reader does the job. Can be used on mobile via Firefox for Android as well.

https://darkreader.org/

I use dark reader, but I just know one day I'll wake up to news that it had secretly been sold a month prior and had been doing all kinds of nefarious things. This is inherently a problem with browser extensions that both auto-update and basically require access to every website.

I feel your pain.

Good thing that more and more site and apps are supporting dark modes as time passes. Many supports automatic switching based on OS/browser setting as well, what is great.

I dream with the day where this extension won't be needed anymore. Hopefully HN itself will support it someday.

Modern HN does it as well: https://www.modernhn.com/

I do like it if for no other reason that the permissions are actually razor-focused to:

- Access your data for news.ycombinator.com

- Access your data for extensionpay.com

- Access your data for hacker-news.firebaseio.com

As opposed to every other extension that claims to enhance Youtube.com but requires access to all of your browser data, etc.

darkreader doesn't look perfect without some tweaking, plus more CSS changes are necessary for mobile.

Smart invert on iOS can do the job for you (can be enabled as an option for the accessibility shortcut from settings).

How about all <site> posts by <user> over <points> ?

I realize this isn't about the diplay, but for those of you looking for a different UI, I use https://hckrnews.com every day.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com