Another "Hacker News" with less AI and more human-focused hacking news?

63 pointsby weird_trousers43 comments

Discussion summary

Some users discuss alternative hacking news sites like Lobste.rs, which focus less on AI and more on human-centered topics. Lobste.rs is invite-only, which some find elitist, and there are concerns about platform accessibility and content quality.

What the discussion says

Lobste.rs is preferred for human-focused hacking news.
Invite-only status may be seen as elitist.
Concerns about content quality and accessibility.
Hype around AI and crypto/NFTs is cyclical.

“Lobste.rs is better for human-focused hacking news.”
— throwaway_7678

“It's invite-only, which feels elitist.”
— Cyberdog

Comments

Hacker News

Try https://lobste.rs/, not completely without ai news but much better.

by throwaway_7678

I like Lobsters' design and would love to switch over, but it's still invite-only… I guess it works for them but it feels elitist to an anti-social nerd like me.

by Cyberdog

How do you get invited?

by inigyou

I hoped so but there's a well-used "vibecoding" tag there and an admonishing/narrow focus that excludes many other interesting topics. A site needs some of that but they are strict to the point the place is kinda barren.

e.g. I recently submitted a page about new FOSS-oriented hardware and it was rejected as "business news - offtopic." Well, no wonder this place is a ghost town.

by mixmastamyk

You might want to refine your question. The real problem is the author not having something interesting to say in their own voice. The lack of perspective and insight to share is disrespectful to the reader.

With this broader definition, you'll find there's a ton of other slop we've long since needed to clean up. It's one thing to at least share something mildly interesting, but there's still a lot of points farming and ragebait that has brought down the enjoyability of reading HN.

by sublinear

Good luck with that. If something is easily accessible, it will be accessed by easy people, and if it can flood a platform, it will. Easy people don't care. Easy people will never care.

by KenographerPrim

The answer to that is make it too hard for easy people.

by PaulHoule

https://hcker.news has an optional AI filter. I don't know how accurate it is.

by OnionBlender

Hm. The first link is about GPT-Live, from openai... I don't think it is accurate haha.

But thanks for the link, I did not know about it :)

by weird_trousers

Just wait a year. It will die down just like crypto and NFTs did. Hype goes in cycles.

by dmitrygr

I agree with the hype argument, but the time-frame seems optimistic. We had to endure many years of crypto hype (nice way of saying lies and delusion really), and even now you have the shattered remnants pretending that everyone swoons they talk about "replacing fiat".

There will also be a next hype cycle, and they seem to be coming faster and faster, with similar people behind them. "Oh look, NVIDIA found a new way to turn the US economy into a paperclip factory, I can't wait to see what the brain trust thinks about this. Oh they dream of getting money as a result so they're all-in for the next half-decade... fabulous."

by EA-3167

Lobste.rs is very much still active, more than ever I think. They have a `vibecoding` tag that you can remove from your page, if you'd like.

by miloignis

Related (with some suggestions within):

We need tech news sources which exclude AI

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48713041

Hacker News but for independent blogs

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48567155

by ChrisArchitect

I think the interesting thing is that if you look at /new, actually the community and moderation system is already holding back a fantastic volume of AI slop and “slop about AI”. It would be fair to say “HN has too much stuff about AI” and “the HN community is hostile/skeptical of AI”, in fact you hear both in the comments all the time.

by PaulHoule

Thankfully we (as humans) don't have the same brain and the same interests :)

Some people are excited about all that stuff, and I can understand. But, personally, I am just getting bored of having an anthropic news per day, two from openai, and another one that claims "eeeh, developers are dead!".

Actually, Hackernews feels more anxious for me now, that's why I wanted to take a look elsewhere...

I remember the time when I did read "Ray-Tracing in One week-end", or discover some new cool websites and blogs like The Old New Thing, some interesting discussions about Android hacking and vulnerabilities, or hacking old idTech stuff from Fabien Sanglard.

I really miss that time when I was reading and learning at the same time.

Now, most of the articles published here do not have any fresh news to provide, and I don't learn anything. Except people think I will be obsolete in a few months. (Nice. /s)

by weird_trousers

comp.lang.c

by robotswantdata

maybe chaos.social mastodon server? You can follow it through relay.fedi.buzx if you can't actually join it.

by inigyou

This doesn't really answer your questions, especially as AI is permeating the field, but:

https://engineeringblogs.xyz/

https://lobste.rs/

by runjake

https://bubbles.town/ is fun.

by willmeyers

Hum, indeed! Thanks!

by weird_trousers

current front page: out of 6 posts viisble, 3 are about AI

by theamk

I like a lot of things about bubbles but it seems to surface a lot of negative posts that are mainly just rants. A good chunk of articles in the daily/weekly briefings kind of feel like an indie blogging spin on the negative posts/articles you'd see a lot on microblogging sites.

It regularly surfaces some good stuff so it's working but it's also kind of depressing in ways that made me leave microblogging sites. There regularly is a lot of anti ai rants, USpol rants, the web is dead, defeatist/nihilistic posts etc in the weekly/daily digests. The entire culture section are these types of posts currently.

Makes me wonder if the use of microblogging accounts to log in is partially biasing the userbase towards that kind of writing? I don't have a solution for this though and limiting to fediverse accounts probably has some upsides too.

Ultimately bubbles still gets a big thumbs up from me but I'd love to see these kinds of posts deprioritized a bit. Outside maybe a few deeper more constructive ones that link out well I don't think they represent the best of indie blogging. Anyways if you made it this deep into my ramble I hope you have a nice week.

by rdmuser

You could always... vibecode your own :)

by summarybot

Maybe there could be an AI-generated HN mirror: the AI would monitor HN continuously, and filter out the AI related news. Fight fire with fire.

by not_your_vase

Ooh but then would the AI filter out discussion of itself?

by dullcrisp

I thought about writing a Firefox extension that would just auto-click the Hide button for any story containing a keyword from a configurable list. Haven't gotten around to it.

by coldpie

Sorry for the shameless plug, but I just did something similar for displaying only substacks: https://hnsubstacks.com/. I'm pretty sure something like this can be adapted to filtering out AI news, repo here: https://github.com/ariroffe/hnsubstacks/

by cartucho1

Might come off like a flippant joke, but it might give you what you're after.

https://web.archive.org/web/20210201005447/https://news.ycom...

by tyingq

https://hackaday.com/

by ben30

Oh nice, I didn't know this one. Thanks!

by weird_trousers

Join the discussion

Write your take first — we'll ask for email only when you're ready to publish.

Hacker News
Try https://lobste.rs/, not completely without ai news but much better.
by throwaway_7678
I like Lobsters' design and would love to switch over, but it's still invite-only… I guess it works for them but it feels elitist to an anti-social nerd like me.
by Cyberdog
How do you get invited?
by inigyou
I hoped so but there's a well-used "vibecoding" tag there and an admonishing/narrow focus that excludes many other interesting topics. A site needs some of that but they are strict to the point the place is kinda barren.
e.g. I recently submitted a page about new FOSS-oriented hardware and it was rejected as "business news - offtopic." Well, no wonder this place is a ghost town.
by mixmastamyk
You might want to refine your question. The real problem is the author not having something interesting to say in their own voice. The lack of perspective and insight to share is disrespectful to the reader.
With this broader definition, you'll find there's a ton of other slop we've long since needed to clean up. It's one thing to at least share something mildly interesting, but there's still a lot of points farming and ragebait that has brought down the enjoyability of reading HN.
by sublinear
Good luck with that. If something is easily accessible, it will be accessed by easy people, and if it can flood a platform, it will. Easy people don't care. Easy people will never care.
by KenographerPrim
The answer to that is make it too hard for easy people.
by PaulHoule
https://hcker.news has an optional AI filter. I don't know how accurate it is.
by OnionBlender
Hm. The first link is about GPT-Live, from openai... I don't think it is accurate haha.
But thanks for the link, I did not know about it :)
by weird_trousers
Just wait a year. It will die down just like crypto and NFTs did. Hype goes in cycles.
by dmitrygr
I agree with the hype argument, but the time-frame seems optimistic. We had to endure many years of crypto hype (nice way of saying lies and delusion really), and even now you have the shattered remnants pretending that everyone swoons they talk about "replacing fiat".
There will also be a next hype cycle, and they seem to be coming faster and faster, with similar people behind them. "Oh look, NVIDIA found a new way to turn the US economy into a paperclip factory, I can't wait to see what the brain trust thinks about this. Oh they dream of getting money as a result so they're all-in for the next half-decade... fabulous."
by EA-3167
Lobste.rs is very much still active, more than ever I think. They have a `vibecoding` tag that you can remove from your page, if you'd like.
by miloignis
Related (with some suggestions within):
We need tech news sources which exclude AI
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48713041
Hacker News but for independent blogs
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48567155
by ChrisArchitect
I think the interesting thing is that if you look at /new, actually the community and moderation system is already holding back a fantastic volume of AI slop and “slop about AI”. It would be fair to say “HN has too much stuff about AI” and “the HN community is hostile/skeptical of AI”, in fact you hear both in the comments all the time.
by PaulHoule
Thankfully we (as humans) don't have the same brain and the same interests :)
Some people are excited about all that stuff, and I can understand. But, personally, I am just getting bored of having an anthropic news per day, two from openai, and another one that claims "eeeh, developers are dead!".
Actually, Hackernews feels more anxious for me now, that's why I wanted to take a look elsewhere...
I remember the time when I did read "Ray-Tracing in One week-end", or discover some new cool websites and blogs like The Old New Thing, some interesting discussions about Android hacking and vulnerabilities, or hacking old idTech stuff from Fabien Sanglard.
I really miss that time when I was reading and learning at the same time.
Now, most of the articles published here do not have any fresh news to provide, and I don't learn anything. Except people think I will be obsolete in a few months. (Nice. /s)
by weird_trousers
comp.lang.c
by robotswantdata
maybe chaos.social mastodon server? You can follow it through relay.fedi.buzx if you can't actually join it.
by inigyou
This doesn't really answer your questions, especially as AI is permeating the field, but:
https://engineeringblogs.xyz/
https://lobste.rs/
by runjake
https://bubbles.town/ is fun.
by willmeyers
Hum, indeed! Thanks!
by weird_trousers
current front page: out of 6 posts viisble, 3 are about AI
by theamk
I like a lot of things about bubbles but it seems to surface a lot of negative posts that are mainly just rants. A good chunk of articles in the daily/weekly briefings kind of feel like an indie blogging spin on the negative posts/articles you'd see a lot on microblogging sites.
It regularly surfaces some good stuff so it's working but it's also kind of depressing in ways that made me leave microblogging sites. There regularly is a lot of anti ai rants, USpol rants, the web is dead, defeatist/nihilistic posts etc in the weekly/daily digests. The entire culture section are these types of posts currently.
Makes me wonder if the use of microblogging accounts to log in is partially biasing the userbase towards that kind of writing? I don't have a solution for this though and limiting to fediverse accounts probably has some upsides too.
Ultimately bubbles still gets a big thumbs up from me but I'd love to see these kinds of posts deprioritized a bit. Outside maybe a few deeper more constructive ones that link out well I don't think they represent the best of indie blogging. Anyways if you made it this deep into my ramble I hope you have a nice week.
by rdmuser
You could always... vibecode your own :)
by summarybot
Maybe there could be an AI-generated HN mirror: the AI would monitor HN continuously, and filter out the AI related news. Fight fire with fire.
by not_your_vase
Ooh but then would the AI filter out discussion of itself?
by dullcrisp
I thought about writing a Firefox extension that would just auto-click the Hide button for any story containing a keyword from a configurable list. Haven't gotten around to it.
by coldpie
Sorry for the shameless plug, but I just did something similar for displaying only substacks: https://hnsubstacks.com/. I'm pretty sure something like this can be adapted to filtering out AI news, repo here: https://github.com/ariroffe/hnsubstacks/
by cartucho1
Might come off like a flippant joke, but it might give you what you're after.
https://web.archive.org/web/20210201005447/https://news.ycom...
by tyingq
https://hackaday.com/
by ben30
Oh nice, I didn't know this one. Thanks!
by weird_trousers