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Show HN: Synthical – Like HN, but for Science
- NetOpWibby 3y agoEhh, not really. - too much design (I like it) - requires account to view more than homepage (don’t like this)
- dndndnd 3y ago> I like it Thank you :) > requires account to view more than homepage No worries, I've just removed this. Now you can read all articles with no account needed. Thank you for the feedback :)
- TheHumanist 3y agoCan't click to view any categories without login though, so have to scroll the homepage hoping to find things of interest.
- elashri 3y agoUnlike HN, you need an account just to see the content.
- dndndnd 3y agoNo worries, I've just removed this, now you can read articles with no account needed. Honestly, thanks a lot for the feedback, that's the most valuable thing to have at this stage :)
- jugoetz 3y agoI would love something like HN for science, but this is not it. Most crucially: - login necessary - All sorts of content that distracts from the main message (AI, job boards, you name it)
- dndndnd 3y ago> login necessary I have just removed it, now you can read articles with no account needed
- amadeuspagel 3y agoHN is also a job board, the only difference is that the job ads are in the feed.
- Gualdrapo 3y agoI wish HN had a visual design that good.
- jedberg 3y agoOne of the best parts of HN is the information density. The design on that site is the exact opposite.
- dndndnd 3y agoJust curious, how would you increase an information density at Synthical without loosing readability?
- MattPalmer1086 3y agoI find HNs design much simpler and easier to use, and fits more content on a screen. That design was slicker for sure, but was more confusing and had less information on the page. I guess we all value different things.
- dndndnd 3y ago> more confusing Could you please elaborate? > had less information on the page Is it a bad thing? I mean, I can add some sort of a setting to display more / less content in different density, is this what you'd want?
- SanjayMehta 3y agoLogin required? No thanks.
- dndndnd 3y agoNo worries, I have just removed it, now you can read articles with no account needed
- SanjayMehta 3y agoThank you. Much appreciated.
- anomaloustho 3y agoOn mobile, about 70% of the screen real estate is dedicated to searching and filtering UI. At the bottom 30% of the screen, I can see 1 headline for an article. When visiting HN about 90% of my mobile screen real estate is dedicated to content and I’m able to see the first 13 results.
- dndndnd 3y agoThis is a really good point, thank you! Probably our mobile layout sucks
- TheHumanist 3y agoIf you need help with that, let me know
- chrisandchris 3y agoAlso, keep in mind that one of the biggest advantages of HN is how lightweight it is. HN: https://tools.pingdom.com/#629fe03213000000 https://tools.pingdom.com/#629fe03213000000 Yours: https://tools.pingdom.com/#629fdff48e000000 https://tools.pingdom.com/#629fdff48e000000 Its HN vs yours 25 KB vs 305 KB and 7 requests vs 44 requests. Besides that, looks very promising!
- dndndnd 3y agoHuhuh nice, no worries, I plan to work on this "44 requests" part (just had no time to do that) > looks very promising Huh thanks! Do you have any ideas about features or anything?
- nsesites 3y agoDo u think the small font on the HN header impacts useability?
- jwuphysics 3y agoAs others have said, forcing a login is a huge barrier. I wanted to see if any astronomy posts were on the front page, and when I didn't see any, I tried to check out the categories. But when prompted for a login/sign-up, I lost interest.
- nsesites 3y agoWhat do u think is the best login option with least friction? Google login, email link?
- jwuphysics 3y agoAlthough not the point of my comment (I don't want to sign in at all) -- I personally like a username/password the best.
- Obscurity4340 3y agoDon't use assisted login services. Use a password manager with autofill if you need convenience.
- lying4fun 3y agoCare to elaborate on using assisted logins?
- Obscurity4340 3y agoAssisted logins are any "Login with ____" options. Google, Facebook, Apple, et al offer this. Its a bad deal because they (to a degree) take control away from you and contribute to further unnecessary tracking. I have anecdotally also found it to be annoying in terms of disabling if I changed my mind and wanted to use my own username/address and generated password to more directly control my account associated with it. Additionally, if your account with the assistee was ever terminated or restricted, you may have a bad time trying to (as I remarked about) get back in direct control of your account. I don't like having all these things daisy-chained. Its like to digital version of being under conservatorship or babysat. If you're not prone to phishing I would advise against it, although I would prefer resolving that cardinal sin in shorter order where possible and practicable.
- serial_dev 3y agoA similar project popped up 6 months ago, "HN for research papers", I found it interesting as a physicist turned software developer, and still casually interested in science. It had traffic for a couple of hours and now the site is not even up. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34780579 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34780579 There's also a "HN for Golang", that site also has practically no traffic and discussions. https://golangnews.com/ https://golangnews.com/ The challenge with all these sites is always the same, how can you attract enough people so that there's a healthy discussion on at least some of the top items and how will you make people's attention worth it over HN / Reddit / Twitter. So far, only seen it working out partly for lobste.rs, there, at least there's some discussion, but TBH I still ask myself how is that better than just going to HN or even Reddit, as the conversation is practically the same as here.
- dndndnd 3y ago> now the site is not even up Well, we're up, no worries > than just going to HN This is true, but HN is not focused on science
- jrm4 3y agoNow, where's the "It's like HN, but for hackers?" :)
- throwaway45467 3y agoOn iOS 15.3.1 Safari —- ‘’’ Application error: a client-side exception has occurred (see the browser console for more information). ‘’’ Was this site implemented using Reflex? I see the same error here: https://reflex.dev/blog/2023-08-02-seed-annoucement/ https://reflex.dev/blog/2023-08-02-seed-annoucement/
- dndndnd 3y agoWhoops! Nope, this is actually thanks to NextJS 13 and its hydration
- throwaway45467 3y agoWould love to see the site when this is fixed.
- dndndnd 3y agoIs it fixed or not? I cannot confirm because I cannot reproduce
- throwaway45467 3y agoIt’s not fixed
- neltnerb 3y agoIs there an article explaining how it is like HN? I thought the algorithm here was upvotes plus some time constants and flagging mostly, what does "Let AI simplify articles, clarify terms, and help you do research" mean? I like the idea of trying to produce decent composite review-level datasets of scientific papers if that's what you mean. I have way less objection to this than most AI because the results are supposed to be public and accessible in exactly this way. Is it something revolutionary and amazingly useful like that, or is this more just deciding what to show you in a feed based on past history?
- dndndnd 3y ago> what does "Let AI simplify articles, clarify terms, and help you do research" mean? If you select a text from a paper and click on "Simplify" in a popup, it will try to tell you what it means. The "help you do research" is a more broad part thought huh > Is it something revolutionary and amazingly useful like that We (right now a team of two) plan to develop an AI-assisted peer review. What I mean is that we can use LLMs to check for some "bad things" in paper (like small sample size or some weird hypothesis etc) + analyze the comments and the users behind these comments. > just deciding what to show you in a feed based on past history? Surely not, but this is what we already have in the product right now
- neltnerb 3y agoSounds reasonably handy, do you rely on users to tell you if the LLM generated simplifications are misleading? It is clearly doing more than just popping up definitions of confusing words, kudos for that. This makes me want a tool that lets the scientists (who obviously are fine writers but don't specialize in writing) write at whatever level of detail they want, and then shorten or lengthen it to different audiences. EXCEPT the actual authors would verify and publish specific alternates. I think it's great to have a 3 page short paper for super experts in a short journal article (though I don't see why journal articles have page limits in 2023). I think it's better if that three page paper can be turned into a ten page paper that's way easier to read and which the authors actually vetted as accurately representing what they did.
- amadeuspagel 3y agoThe streak thing is kind of patronizing.
- dndndnd 3y agoI think we will redesign it in a way Apple Books does this (they also have a streak)
- the_third_wave 3y agoOne of the first things I do when I test aggregator sites like this one is to look for the RSS feed. I may have missed something but I did not find one here - could that be added? It would make it much easier to integrate into my normal 'news flow' which is more or less entirely built around RSS feeds presented through Nextcloud News [1]. I can scrape sites which do not provide their own feed but that is tedious and just increases the load on those sites. [1] https://github.com/nextcloud/news https://github.com/nextcloud/news
- gardenhedge 3y agoIt's not like HN at all really
- puppycodes 3y agolooks cool! rss would b great ;)
- corethree 3y agoBe honest. As a scientist do you find all these titles readable at all? I don't think so.
- dndndnd 3y agoMe too! We actually want to display simplified/summarized abstracts (using LLMs) instead of actual titles
- gorenb 3y agoThe UI was great.
- dndndnd 3y agoThank you :)
- smcleod 3y agoNice idea, it has an incredibly narrow column for the content though - it makes it very hard to read and it's something like 80-90% waste screen real estate - @dndndnd check out https://i.imgur.com/XTx0jjc.png https://i.imgur.com/XTx0jjc.png which I just took on a standard monitor and Firefox, no zoom / adjustments made.