Hacker News, Sans AI

(elijahpotter.dev)

85 points | by chilipepperhott 1 hour ago

18 comments

  • millerm 50 minutes ago
    I can deal with a launch problem. I am looking forward to being able to check it out. I stopped coming to HN as often as I used to because there has been too much AI talk. It's like a dang AI subreddit. I don't want anything to do with AI. I have lost 2 jobs to AI budgets and stupid executive decisions. It's no longer part of my personal and professional life.

    I hope it works out.

    • andrewjf 13 minutes ago
      I agree with you, but haven't really left yet since there's still a good amount of discourse outside AI related topics. Seems a significant amount of contributors here are all to eager to fall over themselves putting themselves, their juniors, children, and colleagues out of work, long term.
    • chilipepperhott 7 minutes ago
      I've addressed the issues. It should be usable now. I apologize to everyone who encountered an error page. Have a good weekend, everyone!
  • theflyestpilot 1 minute ago
    ^how about just be a devoted AI section at the top?
  • henriquemaia 48 minutes ago
    I've been training to naturally ignore AI mentions that I thought this entry was about some HN ui font change (Sans).
  • 866-RON-0-FEZ 1 hour ago
    Interesting this keeps moving up the front page when the site is inaccessible because it's hosted on a baked potato.
    • chilipepperhott 55 minutes ago
      Yep. My single core Proxmox machine sitting in my living room with horrible cache invalidation is struggling.
      • 866-RON-0-FEZ 47 minutes ago
        Sounds like a great use case for serving plain HTTP over cloudflare tunnel. Why terminate TLS when you don't have to?
        • chilipepperhott 43 minutes ago
          You know what's funny? Most of this site is exactly that. The _one_ time I do something dynamic…
    • chilipepperhott 3 minutes ago
      It should be accessible now.
    • consumer451 51 minutes ago
      73% of users vote prior to reading TFA, according to this research. (I am sometimes guilty of this myself)

      We live in a world being dimished by confirmation bias, but this isn't a new thing. Those who wrote/approved the headlines always had more power than those who wrote the articles.

      https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315096490_Consumers...

      edit: disclaimer, no hate on TFA. Just responding to the comment.

      • 866-RON-0-FEZ 38 minutes ago
        This submission should be studied by people holding clipboards. It needs a follow-up:

        "How I made it to the top of HN with zero content beyond a catchy title"

        It further proves the key to getting your stuff on HN is not to post interesting content, it's to post something that sounds interesting.

      • LearnYouALisp 30 minutes ago
        Huh, I didn't even remember to vote for posts, i just scroll down to read (and vote sometimes on comments)
    • parliament32 32 minutes ago
      Just goes to show how much demand there is.

      HN really needs a containment board.

    • kylecazar 57 minutes ago
      I'm curious to find out if they're using a model to detect AI content. I'd be more amused than disappointed. But, alas, potato.
      • ofalkaed 53 minutes ago
        I got a partial load and what it looks like it does is just search each submission for a list of key words and discards any that hits, so it would discard this submission.
        • chilipepperhott 52 minutes ago
          I would argue that in a small way, this post _is_ about AI, so it wouldn't be a false positive.
          • ofalkaed 32 minutes ago
            I was not suggesting that it would be a false positive, I was suggesting that this will filter out many submissions that would be of interest to those that want less AI on HN. This would flag a blog that has nothing to do with AI if some random person mentioned AI in the comments of that blog post, right?
      • chilipepperhott 56 minutes ago
        It's not an LLM.

        Why use big program when regex do trick?

        • Bolwin 38 minutes ago
          You can get the best of both worlds with a small embedding model
          • chilipepperhott 25 minutes ago
            Show me an embedding model that runs as fast as an optimized regex engine and I'll buy you a beer.
        • 866-RON-0-FEZ 44 minutes ago
          But I like using em-dashes?
        • kylecazar 52 minutes ago
          Master of efficiency
  • simonw 52 minutes ago
    I built (well, vibe-coded) a version of this a while back that runs against the Hacker News API, it's static HTML on GitHub Pages so I don't have to run a server for it: https://tools.simonwillison.net/hacker-news-filtered
    • phildenhoff 45 minutes ago
      How often do you use it?

      Immediately I started thinking how nice it would be to use natural language to have LLMs generate a deterministic filter for stories matching content I DO care about, filtered from New. Instead of filtering it out.

      • simonw 33 minutes ago
        I don't use it myself. I built it for a Hacker News thread where someone else was saying "I wish I could browse Hacker News without all the AI stuff".
    • zuzululu 33 minutes ago
      interesting but i rarely use any HN reader

      there's just something about this UI and its consistency

      I also don't mind all the AI related news

      If anything I just wish they had a mute/block button. its not fun when somebody is stalking you replying to every comment you make.

  • 0xbadcafebee 53 minutes ago
    I have an app that does Hacker News with AI; it analyses all the stories and comments for a number of criteria, and tags them so you can skip stuff you don't want to see. I should get around to actually publishing it but I've been lazy.

    One of the fun things I noticed is the psychological impact of framing. A comment that might've made you feel the need to reply before has less emotional weight if it's highlighted in red and a diminished font. Same thing for stories; if you would normally disagree with a story and it would make you want to comment, you feel less like commenting if the story is rated as 'lacking evidence', 'unsupported by research', 'personal anecdotes only', etc. It drives down the feeling of needing to engage. Which is horrible for site engagement, but good for mental health (I think).

  • flexagoon 45 minutes ago
    I've been thinking of making something like this for myself for quite a while now, glad I'm not the only one who had the idea and someone actually did it before I got to it
  • factorialboy 36 minutes ago
    For one sec, I got excited for a new font!
  • cliche 15 minutes ago
    Love this. Really nice to see a HN front page without AI, the fatigue is real.
  • pkage 45 minutes ago
    The filter doesn't appear to be perfect, one of the top posts right now is "My Agent Skill for Test-Driven Development"
    • rsyring 31 minutes ago
      I guess they could run the titles through a (flash) LLM to catch ones were keyword detection won't cut it.

      Have to love the irony. :)

    • chilipepperhott 28 minutes ago
      That should be fixed as soon as my server has a chance to catch up.
  • Polizeiposaune 1 hour ago
    Was hoping it was a new font.
  • chilipepperhott 49 minutes ago
    Hopefully fixed the cache invalidation. I'm crossing my fingers.
  • mkw5053 30 minutes ago
    Are you using AI to figure out what's about what's AI and what's not?
  • 9021007 1 hour ago
    Hug of death?
  • hirako2000 41 minutes ago
    A problem is it doesn't load as fast. Could it be helped?
    • chilipepperhott 37 minutes ago
      Yes, it can. I am having a major cache invalidation problem. One of the major blights of programmers everywhere.
  • ares623 30 minutes ago
    I've been thinking the same. Couldn't this be done with a browser extension that hides elements that matches a regex?
    • chilipepperhott 8 minutes ago
      Not quite. Lots of articles don't mention AI in the title, even if that is their core subject.
  • edgarvaldes 21 minutes ago
    Yes, please. A general-purpose filter like the one on 4chan would also work.