YHK - yet another hacker news clone

Im not sure i understand your question. If you cant find it, how are you ignoring it?

At any rate, I find AI interesting, but have a similar opinion that most of the HN discourse has become low quality. My solution is to follow individual users I know are high quality with similar interests.

What?! Your RSS/Atom reader does not support filtering?

I just open the page and scroll through the first couple of pages…

We are strongly in the AI acceleration phase, so it'll keep getting harder. I use an RSS reader for the top posts only. In the RSS reader, I "star" what I want to read, and read what I can from among what I have starred. Of course I miss a lot, but I get the broad picture of where things are going.

Just focus on what you enjoy and don't worry about the rest.

I've started following other websites/media more - like Slashdot, Reddit and others.

A few weeks ago several HN users presented solutions for filtering out AI results, but I haven't used any of those solutions much.

Octal (iOS)

Well, don't. I follow the HN Telegram channel (not official), and if anything interesting appears, I read it.

If I tried to keep up, I'd be run over. It's too much input for the normal individual I am.

Anecdotally it feels like comment threads are a lot like "megathreads" on forums now, where there might be hundreds of replies. Wonder if there's been a surge of users over the last three or four years.

I've made a bot[0] for HN that posts whatever enters the top 10, summarizes it with AI and posts it on textlog[1], and so I get the fresh news like little summary notes and decide if it's worth my time. Bonus is I receive a notification on my phone because I follow it.

[0]: https://github.com/stagas/hn10

[1]: https://textlog.cc/u/hn10

brutalist.report these days

Same way as always. Open the page, glance down it to see if there's anything that interests me, hit hide on the domains that I never want to see anything from. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But I'm guessing you have more of a FOMO (Fear Of Missing Out) kind of problem, which admittedly I don't have. However, you could look at something using RSS, maybe in combination with an agent told to find and show articles based on some heuristics.

Personally, I'm OK with missing something. If it's good, I figure it'll surface somewhere else and impinge on my notice sooner or later.

RSS to only see new links that hit 100 points https://hnrss.org/newest?points=100. And then selective reading of those.

u are not missing out of anything bro

> In the last 2-3 years, mostly because of AI, keeping up with interesting articles on HN has become harder and harder.

I'm curious to hear why AI made it harder to read HN. Is it because there's lots of it and you don't like it?

The weekly newsletter is a great way to get the most important information: https://hackernewsletter.com/

RSS

I don't. I fact I wish I wasn't checking now. I need to curb my addiction. this place is getting more toxic by the week.

easy with my keyboard, change themes with 1, 2, 3 on keyboard

or hit "v" to change views

https://hckrnight.com

> open HN

> ignore all posts about MCP

> ignore all posts containing "agent"

> also ignore everything frontier labs bragged about hacking this week

> ignore AI psychosis posts praised as being the future

> check out everything else

> close HN

That's like asking how to keep up with your Instagram feed. Framing it as a goal is strange.

I mainly press "past" in the top menu and skim the top posts of the previous days. It doesn't surface every interesting post/discussion, but most of it.

There's also the "hidden" https://news.ycombinator.com/best which is a bit the same, but not per day

I typically use hckr news (https://hckrnews.com/) set to show only the top 10 or top 20. It also has the advantage of showing those i missed overnight or earlier.

My HN client has made HN easier to keep up with, even before AI: https://hn.leftium.com

I call it "Seeking Orange" because interesting posts are highlighted. Features include:

- Point/comment counts become increasingly more orange with higher counts (50+, 100+)

- Orange accent bar on left indicates new items since last visit

- Support for several different feeds including: HckrNews (chronological front page appearance time), Classic Stories, Best Stories, Active Stories

- Thresholds to de-emphasize posts from users with low karma/recent creation dates: https://hn.leftium.com/newest?min_karma=500&min_age_years=5

I occasionally use https://hckrnews.com to catchup on the top 20 daily posts.

Depends on what your goals are. If you want to be well-informed for the nerdy water-cooler talk in the office kitchen, then you need to read a lot. Otherwise, just don't worry about it, because important topics get re-posted. If you missed something the first time, then you still have good chances to catch it the second or third time.

? the front page moves at the same pace

I use https://hckrnews.com

Skip everything AI and it moves at a leisurely pace.

This is a very apt right now. The amount of AI posts is... boring to say the least.

I've always used the comments to upvotes ratio to workout if an article is worth reading. If the comments are higher than the upvotes, it's poor. Vice versa it's worth looking into. I skip all AI posts.

  The UC Berkeley Study (2026): Researchers coined the term "The AI Treadmill Effect". They found that because AI fills knowledge gaps, workers began absorbing tasks outside their original scope (e.g., product managers writing code). Instead of saving time, it eliminated natural breaks, blurred work-life boundaries, and sharply increased cognitive fatigue

  Harvard Business Review Research (2026): A survey of 1,500 workers highlighted a phenomenon called "AI Brain Fry." Employees forced to constantly juggle, monitor, and fact-check multiple AI tools experienced severe decision fatigue and mental strain

  Research shared by the Future of Work forum found that employees gaining the highest productivity from AI experienced 88% higher burnout rates than their peers

  Management sentiment vs Employee sentiment disconnect: An analysis of 10,000 corporate earnings calls found that corporate leadership remains overwhelmingly optimistic and enthusiastic about AI. In stark contrast, peer-reviewed data from The Conversation shows widespread employee hostility and resistance. Workers resent AI tools when companies use them as an excuse for downsizing, forcing the remaining staff to work at an unsustainable, machine-like processing speed

There's an infinite amount of interesting stuff out there. The subset of that which appears on the HN front page is small, and not selected in any especially curated way. You really have no choice but to ignore interesting stuff, even if you read the entire HN feed. The only answer that preserves your sanity is to stop worrying.

As time goes by, the volume of “interesting articles” drops significantly anyway. LLMs have little to do with it IMO.

It used to feel like that for me even before AI. The trick I use is when glancing through the homepage, I just open all the tabs that interest me and move them to OneTab. Eventually I sift through the threads on a lazy weekend. Many weren't that interesting, so they end up getting closed on the spot, same for those that didn't gain traction. Others are keepers, those get bookmarked.

But be careful, compulsively bookmarking isn't a good idea either. I see my AI bookmarks from 2023, most are irrelevant now. Same for a ton of new releases at that time, whatever homelab config, rumors around silicon architecture, geopolitical events, retrocomputing, etc.

So what actually helped me was realizing that after any ramp up period there's stabilization: you let the world figure out what works, then eventually you will see what sticks mentioned everywhere when going back to that topic.

There are also some evergreen discussions here. Those get more than a thread a year, like the tinnitus stuff, and they tend to stay up for a good part of the week.

When you say "mostly because of AI", do you mean because there are so many posts about AI (and it's hard to keep up with the latest coding harness or version of a model, which seems to pop up at a rate close to js frameworks back in the days ?)

Or is it because of AI-generated posts ? (I have to admit I'm not good yet at "guessing" when a post is slop...)

This has been the case even before AI. One can never keep up with everything and catch every interesting or useful story.

What I’ve been doing for several years is to use hckrnews.com as my default first level filter. I rarely go to the HN front page directly. I never visit the New or other pages either.

Sometimes I notice, after weeks or months or years, that there was a very interesting topic I missed out on. But such is life. It’s ok not to keep up with anything.

Inoreader rss.

I then miss a few days and get overwhelmed with the backlog.

I am in ##hntop on Libera.

RSS

https://hnrss.org/active

A quick occasional glance through https://serializer.io/ has been serving me well for a few years now!

Fyi, https://hcker.news/ has an "AI" filter... and RSS feeds too.

Use hckrnews.com

Browsing by time is easier rather than popularity. There's no FOMO if you can't keep up, just scan the latest headlines and if it catches your eye click it.

I don't. Most things don't matter.

Like the news, you'll find out; except it'll be through Slack channels or co-workers or maybe even IRC channels, as opposed to HN.

> Oh, X company got hacked and you are in the cybersecurity circle?

> You'll find out.

> Oh, AI is the new thing?

> You'd be better without that.

> B-but what if I want to understand topic T?

> Then I'd tell you that HN offers free fast search and you can just type topic T and do your own research and hey you may just learn something!

Don't worry, you will be fine.

Happy HN'ing!

EDIT: Formatting.

I find the amount of things interesting to me is about the same, or reduced.

Some comments mentioned hcker.news, and apparently you can just use this URL: https://hcker.news/?ai=exclude

https://hckrnews.com/ most days, has a good line which tracks what you saw last. Sometimes filter by top 10/20 when I've been more busy and to catch things I may have glossed over as being more popular.

I use the bookmarklet below.

It jumps to the newest story on the frontpage. And when I click the bookmarklet again (or press "n") it jumps to the next. So I just click it until I land on a story I have already seen and know I have seen them all.

If you want to use it, you can convert the code into a bookmarklet with my bookmarklet editor:

https://www.gibney.org/bookmarklet_editor

The bookmarklet:

    if (!location.href.match('ycom'))
        location.href='https://news.ycombinator.com';

    doTheMagic = function() {
        if (typeof e!=='undefined')
            e.style.background='#c0c0c0';
        e=Array.from(
            document.querySelectorAll(
                '.age a:not(.seen)')
        ).sort().at(-1);
        e.style.background='#ff0';
        e.classList.add('seen');
        e.scrollIntoView({
            behavior:"smooth",
            block:"center",
            inline:"nearest"
        });
    }

    function addShortcuts() {
        document.addEventListener("keydown", function(evnt) {
            if (evnt.key === "n") doTheMagic();
        });
    }

    function addStyle() {
       let style = document.createElement('style');
        style.type = 'text/css';
        style.textContent = `
            .noshow {
                display: initial;
            }
        `;
        document.head.appendChild(style);
    }

    if (typeof theMagicIsActive=='undefined') {
        addShortcuts();
        addStyle();
        theMagicIsActive = true;
    }

    doTheMagic();

Think about what problem HN solves in your life. To achieve that solution, is it required that you "keep up"? Or does HN serve its purpose in your life when you casually browse some stories once in a while?

I suspect that when you think about those questions, you'll realize that it really doesn't matter if you keep up or not. If something comes to this industry that is big enough to impact your actual life, you'll hear about it regardless of how often you read HN.

Odds are, there is no problem you need to deal with. HN is here when you have time for it, but your life is there all the time. Focus on the right one.

I don't and it's great

I check HN a few times a day. Anything I miss is probably not worth it anyway. Never felt I need to "keep up" with it.

file it (eg in obsidian). tag it. next time you are interested in topic x, there are all the stuff you at least once thought might be relevant to it.

I have vibe-coded a HN RSS feed reader and plugged an LLM into it to learn my preferences. So far it's been in the training mode over the past week and half but it's been getting better at predicting and I hope eventually to have it filter news according to my interests. It's been tracking all the news I have opened and trying to build my taste profile. If my experiment doesn't work out, given that it's a naive training without any special methods, I will try to come up with more advanced approaches for the next iterations. Took about an evening to build it to my liking, so not going to share it unless I am happy with the result.

Here's the screenshot for inspiration: https://imgur.com/a/TszTHQb

I don’t. HN is a fine place where to waste time when I have nothing better to do