6 ms·

A curated list of FOSS tools to improve the Hacker News experience

77 points by bminusl 6y ago

hivacruz 6y ago
I would love to see something to exclude or ignore some patterns in titles or links. I browse HN every day to read good tech posts and comments but I'm a very anxious person (especially these days of course) and seeing articles about death, cancers and other things make me start the day quite badly. I know this is not a solution to ignore this, I should fight it, but I would gladly like to see (sub-)categories or tags on HN to browse wisely what I'm interesting in.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hirundo 6y ago
  I view HN titles via RSS and filter out phrases with Feedly. It's better than a beta blocker for blood pressure control.
  - hivacruz 6y ago
    Thanks for the tip! I will check. I'm already on beta blockers, unfortunately.
- brokenmachine 6y ago
  >I know this is not a solution to ignore this I don't watch any network news and I'm much happier for it. Seeing lots of horrible stuff that you can't do anything about is not healthy. It's the same with bad stuff in your social media feeds.
- nathanasmith 6y ago
  I use a Chrome extension[0] that filters articles and comments by keyword. It's a bit coarse and something something group think but my sanity is preserved. [0]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-keyword-filter/ooablmjjcdbdjhhjkaffpbjnanonjgnm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-keyword-filter/...
  - hivacruz 6y ago
    Exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much!
- freediver 6y ago
  Try tinygem.org for personalized HN experience.
rolls-reus 6y ago
Lack of a license does not make code FOSS by default.
- bminusl 6y ago
  The lack of a license on small projects is often an oversight. And anyway, when the authors are notified, they choose the first license they see --- often MIT.
jonplackett 6y ago
I have an idea for a HN add on that I don’t have time to make yet. I’d like to make a ‘social media’ version of HN that notifies you every time anyone upvotes your comment or post and generally bugs you in all the ways social media normally does. Just to see what it would be like.
- cyberbanjo 6y ago
  https://hnnotify.xyz/ https://hnnotify.xyz/
  - jonplackett 6y ago
    excellent! thanks!
invisiblerobot 6y ago
I would like a sentiment analysis of the comments posted beside each article link. A kind of temperature reading. So you can guage if the comments are generally positive or negative and use that as a proxy for whether the article is considered valuable enough to click on. It's not perfect as conversations evolve away from the articles. But it would be useful I think.
- asadlionpk 6y ago
  This looks like a good weekend hack, if nobody else is doing this I will do it. I have developed a similar extension for facebook feed.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  In natural language processing and Hacker News in particular, it's often incorrect that a submission with mostly positive comments imply an article is valuable, and conversely a submission with mostly negative comments imply an article is not valuable. That rationale just leads to even more groupthink than usual for an online community.
  - creamynebula 6y ago
    Maybe the quality of submission is not what's being judged, but whether or not the discussion itself is valuable. I for one prefer to read discussions in a positive tone...
  - clairity 6y ago
    more pointedly, comment sentiment is a naive and misleading signal of either submission or discussion quality. most simply because it's a poor proxy for why, but also because quality is an amorphous concept that defies direct rationalization (i.e., being numericalized), among other factors. naive heuristics are also gamed more easily, especially because they have a tenous relationship to the desired signal in the first place. slightly more interesting would be absolute value of comment sentiment, which would be a (still naive) measure of controversy/engagement. to really get at quality and value, you'd have to consider comment semiotics/semantics (the symbolic meaning and content), which complicates the effort exponentially (perhaps impossibly so).
screamingninja 6y ago
My favorite FOSS Android HN client is Materialistic- https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic Available on f-droid- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialistic https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialist...
- interestica 6y ago
  Same. Except for some weird reason it won't let you click on URLs from hacker News when posted in a thread (eg when someone is linking to an older thread). Other than that, it's the best HN client I've come across for Android. I suspect it's some kind of recursion thing going on where I'm already in the app assigned to HN URLs.?
  - ciferkey 6y ago
    Yes I love Materialistic as well. The link problem is also the only annoyance I have. Sadly it looks like many issues have been opened for the bug but I don't see any discussion on the tickets: https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+link https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...
- m-p-3 6y ago
  I do like it, but not being able to edit a comment is kinda annoying, and I find myself needing to on the website to do so.
- SomeHacker44 6y ago
  Also do not like being unable to downvote on those really rare occasions it is warranted. Beyond that I use it daily and right now. Nice piece of work!
- webmaven 6y ago
  Agree with the sibling comments (no editing, no downvoting, can't open hn links from a comment), and here are a few more: When looking at a comment from a user profile and viewing the thread, it only shows the chain of parents, and no replies to the comment (much less any replies to the parents). Several top level navigation options (most notably 'threads' and 'past') have no representation in the app's navigation menu. Many sites don't display in the 'article' tab at all, they have to be opened in a browser. Some sites that do display are squashed vertically, though this can be remedied by maximizing the article.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
seoguru 6y ago
also chrome extension to toggle only showing comments that contain links: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-show-links/phckhodapplnokiepnaneoglleghgpfi https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-show-l...
enobrev 6y ago
I use an android client for HN, but the _only_ feature I actually want is for the collapse and vote buttons to be big enough for human fingers on mobile. Being able to unvote helps, but one of the only reasons I ever need to unvote is because the vote buttons are microscopic.
PeterWhittaker 6y ago
I'm a big fan of https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com
nathanwallace 6y ago
Use SQL to query Hacker News with Steampipe - https://hub.steampipe.io/plugins/turbot/hackernews https://hub.steampipe.io/plugins/turbot/hackernews It's an open source Postgres FDW using Go - https://github.com/turbot/steampipe-plugin-hackernews https://github.com/turbot/steampipe-plugin-hackernews
throwawaysea 6y ago
Will one of these make grayed out comments easier to read? I often find it very hard to read those even when I intend to, which I feel like is a design flaw. It would be better if there was a toggle button to let me read a specific comment with normal coloring.
- dang 6y ago
  If a comment is faded and you're having trouble reading it, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, and in that case it should be rendered normally. I know it's an extra hop, but hopefully better than nothing.
- yesenadam 6y ago
  If you click on the "X minutes ago" it takes you to that comment's page, where it's not greyed out. Or use this bookmarklet to ungrey all comments on a page: javascript:(function(){var i,x=document.querySelectorAll(".commtext");for (i=0;i<x.length;i++) x[i].className='commtext c00'})();
tartoran 6y ago
I would like to be able mark off all the stories I read or am not interested in so at the next visits I can quickly scan whether there's any change. I know I could use the 'hide' for stories but I'd still have to scan a list of 30 (older) stories so that won't work so basically zero inbox isn't working out for me. Also I like seeing the how the rank changes for the top 30 stories, I just want to visually be able to know I checked that off.
- iptrans 6y ago
  Use the front page RSS feed.
brokenmachine 6y ago
Is there anything that gives a "parent" button to comments? Like a tampermonkey script or something? Whenever there's a deep tree, I sometimes find it hard to know what comment people are replying to. A better visual indicator of the depth of the comments would be nice as well.
m_j_g 6y ago
I am fan of some niche technologies, I would love the functionality of “white list”, which would show “new stories” on the main page if new story contains some specific keyword from predefined set (ideally not only in title but also in content of linked page)

77 points by bminusl 6y ago

I would love to see something to exclude or ignore some patterns in titles or links. I browse HN every day to read good tech posts and comments but I'm a very anxious person (especially these days of course) and seeing articles about death, cancers and other things make me start the day quite badly. I know this is not a solution to ignore this, I should fight it, but I would gladly like to see (sub-)categories or tags on HN to browse wisely what I'm interesting in.

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hirundo 6y ago
I view HN titles via RSS and filter out phrases with Feedly. It's better than a beta blocker for blood pressure control.
- hivacruz 6y ago
  Thanks for the tip! I will check. I'm already on beta blockers, unfortunately.
brokenmachine 6y ago
>I know this is not a solution to ignore this I don't watch any network news and I'm much happier for it. Seeing lots of horrible stuff that you can't do anything about is not healthy. It's the same with bad stuff in your social media feeds.
nathanasmith 6y ago
I use a Chrome extension[0] that filters articles and comments by keyword. It's a bit coarse and something something group think but my sanity is preserved. [0]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-keyword-filter/ooablmjjcdbdjhhjkaffpbjnanonjgnm https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hn-keyword-filter/...
- hivacruz 6y ago
  Exactly what I was looking for, thank you so much!
freediver 6y ago
Try tinygem.org for personalized HN experience.

rolls-reus 6y ago

Lack of a license does not make code FOSS by default.

bminusl 6y ago
The lack of a license on small projects is often an oversight. And anyway, when the authors are notified, they choose the first license they see --- often MIT.

jonplackett 6y ago

I have an idea for a HN add on that I don’t have time to make yet. I’d like to make a ‘social media’ version of HN that notifies you every time anyone upvotes your comment or post and generally bugs you in all the ways social media normally does. Just to see what it would be like.

cyberbanjo 6y ago
https://hnnotify.xyz/ https://hnnotify.xyz/
- jonplackett 6y ago
  excellent! thanks!

invisiblerobot 6y ago

I would like a sentiment analysis of the comments posted beside each article link. A kind of temperature reading. So you can guage if the comments are generally positive or negative and use that as a proxy for whether the article is considered valuable enough to click on. It's not perfect as conversations evolve away from the articles. But it would be useful I think.

asadlionpk 6y ago
This looks like a good weekend hack, if nobody else is doing this I will do it. I have developed a similar extension for facebook feed.
minimaxir 6y ago
In natural language processing and Hacker News in particular, it's often incorrect that a submission with mostly positive comments imply an article is valuable, and conversely a submission with mostly negative comments imply an article is not valuable. That rationale just leads to even more groupthink than usual for an online community.
- creamynebula 6y ago
  Maybe the quality of submission is not what's being judged, but whether or not the discussion itself is valuable. I for one prefer to read discussions in a positive tone...
- clairity 6y ago
  more pointedly, comment sentiment is a naive and misleading signal of either submission or discussion quality. most simply because it's a poor proxy for why, but also because quality is an amorphous concept that defies direct rationalization (i.e., being numericalized), among other factors. naive heuristics are also gamed more easily, especially because they have a tenous relationship to the desired signal in the first place. slightly more interesting would be absolute value of comment sentiment, which would be a (still naive) measure of controversy/engagement. to really get at quality and value, you'd have to consider comment semiotics/semantics (the symbolic meaning and content), which complicates the effort exponentially (perhaps impossibly so).

screamingninja 6y ago

My favorite FOSS Android HN client is Materialistic- https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic Available on f-droid- https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialistic https://f-droid.org/en/packages/io.github.hidroh.materialist...

interestica 6y ago
Same. Except for some weird reason it won't let you click on URLs from hacker News when posted in a thread (eg when someone is linking to an older thread). Other than that, it's the best HN client I've come across for Android. I suspect it's some kind of recursion thing going on where I'm already in the app assigned to HN URLs.?
- ciferkey 6y ago
  Yes I love Materialistic as well. The link problem is also the only annoyance I have. Sadly it looks like many issues have been opened for the bug but I don't see any discussion on the tickets: https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+link https://github.com/hidroh/materialistic/issues?q=is%3Aissue+...
m-p-3 6y ago
I do like it, but not being able to edit a comment is kinda annoying, and I find myself needing to on the website to do so.
SomeHacker44 6y ago
Also do not like being unable to downvote on those really rare occasions it is warranted. Beyond that I use it daily and right now. Nice piece of work!
webmaven 6y ago
Agree with the sibling comments (no editing, no downvoting, can't open hn links from a comment), and here are a few more: When looking at a comment from a user profile and viewing the thread, it only shows the chain of parents, and no replies to the comment (much less any replies to the parents). Several top level navigation options (most notably 'threads' and 'past') have no representation in the app's navigation menu. Many sites don't display in the 'article' tab at all, they have to be opened in a browser. Some sites that do display are squashed vertically, though this can be remedied by maximizing the article.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

seoguru 6y ago

also chrome extension to toggle only showing comments that contain links: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-show-links/phckhodapplnokiepnaneoglleghgpfi https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hacker-news-show-l...

enobrev 6y ago

I use an android client for HN, but the _only_ feature I actually want is for the collapse and vote buttons to be big enough for human fingers on mobile. Being able to unvote helps, but one of the only reasons I ever need to unvote is because the vote buttons are microscopic.

PeterWhittaker 6y ago

I'm a big fan of https://hckrnews.com https://hckrnews.com

nathanwallace 6y ago

Use SQL to query Hacker News with Steampipe - https://hub.steampipe.io/plugins/turbot/hackernews https://hub.steampipe.io/plugins/turbot/hackernews It's an open source Postgres FDW using Go - https://github.com/turbot/steampipe-plugin-hackernews https://github.com/turbot/steampipe-plugin-hackernews

throwawaysea 6y ago

Will one of these make grayed out comments easier to read? I often find it very hard to read those even when I intend to, which I feel like is a design flaw. It would be better if there was a toggle button to let me read a specific comment with normal coloring.

dang 6y ago
If a comment is faded and you're having trouble reading it, you can click on its timestamp to go to its page, and in that case it should be rendered normally. I know it's an extra hop, but hopefully better than nothing.
yesenadam 6y ago
If you click on the "X minutes ago" it takes you to that comment's page, where it's not greyed out. Or use this bookmarklet to ungrey all comments on a page: javascript:(function(){var i,x=document.querySelectorAll(".commtext");for (i=0;i<x.length;i++) x[i].className='commtext c00'})();

tartoran 6y ago

I would like to be able mark off all the stories I read or am not interested in so at the next visits I can quickly scan whether there's any change. I know I could use the 'hide' for stories but I'd still have to scan a list of 30 (older) stories so that won't work so basically zero inbox isn't working out for me. Also I like seeing the how the rank changes for the top 30 stories, I just want to visually be able to know I checked that off.

iptrans 6y ago
Use the front page RSS feed.

brokenmachine 6y ago

Is there anything that gives a "parent" button to comments? Like a tampermonkey script or something? Whenever there's a deep tree, I sometimes find it hard to know what comment people are replying to. A better visual indicator of the depth of the comments would be nice as well.

m_j_g 6y ago

I am fan of some niche technologies, I would love the functionality of “white list”, which would show “new stories” on the main page if new story contains some specific keyword from predefined set (ideally not only in title but also in content of linked page)