[HN Gopher] Show HN: Hacker Herald - like HN but with crowdsourc...
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Show HN: Hacker Herald - like HN but with crowdsourced pics and
subtitles
Hi folks this is a project I worked on with some of my students
when I was running an online JS programming course. Although the
online course is no more, I finally got around to releasing Hacker
Herald with a former instructor and student - thanks Arnav and
Archis! To those wondering if there is a need for such a Hacker
News front end, I would just point out that most newspaper websites
are laid out like this - clearly some people like this kind of
layout! Also for some stories a picture really does help -
currently there is a HN story titled, "Portland airport grows with
expansive mass timber roof canopy". But IMO it's better to actually
see a picture of the timber roof while scrolling rather than having
to click through to the article.
Author : MarkMc
Score : 183 points
Date : 2024-12-06 10:22 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (hackerherald.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (hackerherald.com)
| lukasfoisy wrote:
| I suspect many folks here enjoy the minimalist Hacker News UI but
| I, for one, really enjoy what you've put together. It somehow
| makes me more interested in checking out stories/posts I might
| have otherwise skipped on the normal UI. I'll give this a spin
| day-to-day.
|
| What are your plans for this project?
| voodooEntity wrote:
| As someone from the "minimalist prefered" guys, im just curious
| - what articles sparked your interested through this layout and
| why would you have skipped them on the normal layout?
|
| (inb4 i think the herald is a very well done thing i just cant
| think of a reason why an article there is more interresting
| than on the normal layout)
| lukasfoisy wrote:
| From today: "Portland Airport Grows With Expansive Mass
| Timber Roof Canopy" is a good example. I wouldn't have opened
| this story on Hacker News, but the image displayed on Hacker
| Herald had me open it.
| alt227 wrote:
| That is an extremely impressive roof, and I agree that the
| title isnt grabbing. I too clicked on the picture but had
| previously skipped the article on HN.
| MarkMc wrote:
| Thanks! No fixed plans for future development - it kind of
| depends on how much traction it gets. If it gets a lot of
| interest I might add a 'AI editor' that chooses images and
| write subtitles (or deletes boring ones which have been written
| by the article's author). But even if it gets little use
| besides myself, hosting costs are minimal so it will be around
| for a while :)
| mr_mitm wrote:
| My first reaction was: this is super cool. I can't say whether
| I'll stick to it as I often read HN via newsboat and
| https://hnrss.org/frontpage, but I'll give it a try! Thanks for
| sharing!
| eigilsagafos wrote:
| A love that HN doesn't have pics and that they strive for short
| meaningful titles, so I'll stay here :)
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| I agree about the no pics, but come on, HackerNews has
| extremely cryptic titles more often than not.
|
| Half of the frontpage is always made of titles that are either
| referencing ultra-niche products, clickbaity, misrepresent the
| content of the article, try to be smart, etc.
|
| If anything, HackerNews would be BETTER if it did not have post
| titles but only excerpts.
| dang wrote:
| There shouldn't be titles that are either clickbaity or
| misrepresent the article. The site guidelines call for
| rewriting those (" _Please use the original title, unless it
| is misleading or linkbait._ ") and we're pretty active in
| doing so.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| But I think this is not enough. Not misrepresenting is not
| enough, they should instead represent the content of the
| article.
|
| If I take a random one on the front page right now, "The
| square roots of all evil", it doesn't describe at all its
| content. Yet if I flagged it, I know it wouldn't be
| renamed.
|
| Another example is an earlier post that got a lot of
| traction: "The correct amount of ads is zero". This is
| borderline misrepresentative to be fair, but even being
| lenient on that aspect, it is not at all helping me
| understand what I will be reading if I decide to click on
| this article.
|
| Those articles thrives on HN because even if it's not
| exactly clickbaity, the titles have a "shock factor" that
| makes people click on them.
| uwemaurer wrote:
| Always great to see alternative hackernews frontends!
|
| I really like the newspaper like layout.
|
| My own hackernews frontend project is this:
| https://news.facts.dev/interests
|
| The goal was to add a quick way to filter by interests
| nlvraghavendra wrote:
| Nice!
| redm wrote:
| The saying, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it," comes to mind. I'm
| all for progress, but Hacker News's simplicity and density are
| its major features.
| mouse_ wrote:
| IMO it's not fixing something, it's offering an alternative
| perspective.
| PeterHolzwarth wrote:
| Very true of course, but I find that at this point, I use
| https://hckrnews.com/ as much as I use vanilla HN now, at this
| point, as often I want this a bit fresher and raw. Of course,
| hckrnew also uses the same minimalist front end style of
| vanilla hackernews, so I'm sure that contributes.
| mertysn wrote:
| ^ hckrnews.com replaced vanilla HN for me years ago: you
| never miss popular articles if you don't visit the site for a
| while, and you can change the filtering to include more
| results if you have more time to browse. It's been wonderful
| for my browsing habits.
| lastdong wrote:
| Dark theme option comes to mind.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| One tip, it might be an idea to create permalinks, so that people
| can open up the page at any specific date instead of just the
| past week. I don't know if that's feasible though, is the data
| for each page generated statically or kept updated?
| mrbluecoat wrote:
| Adding search would be a nice value-add
| jasfi wrote:
| The pics help to disambiguate some of the titles, but its nowhere
| near as lean as HN.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I like it. I think you need some kind of ... mascot. Like a town
| crier with a smart phone up by the banner.
|
| Is this one scenario where perhaps you should reverse the order
| of the "tabs" along the top? Like put "Today" on the far right
| with "Yesterday", etc. following from right to left?
|
| Or honestly ditch them altogether -- adding "Yesterday" is more
| than enough. Who wants to go back several days to read old news?
| croisillon wrote:
| i would suggest to add unpaywalled links where relevant
| supriyo-biswas wrote:
| I'm not sure of some of the feedback being given here - the
| magazine layout seems to get me focused on stories that are
| interesting but that wouldn't have caught my attention otherwise.
| voodooEntity wrote:
| While i have to admit, from all the alternative frontends i have
| seen over the years (and there have been alot) this is by far the
| best.
|
| Tho as many others mention, one of the great things on hackernews
| is the minimalism / simplicity - and i have to admit its one of
| the reasons why i always like to go on hackersnews. Just a simple
| textlist, easy to read, no visual clutter.
|
| Tho for people that like a more colorfull/stylish layout this
| might be a good alternative
| cloverich wrote:
| For me, I think the lack of more generalized appeal of the
| interface is a net benefit, because it limits its appeal to
| only those that are most interested in the content. When it
| becomes too nice, and the audience too large, it will probably
| lose the thing that most of us are here (as opposed to reddit)
| for.
|
| So even though I really like (and will bookmark!) this new
| interface design, I hope HN proper never changes.
| amelius wrote:
| It is ironic that the people responsible for most of the UX
| cruft on the internet (i.e., us programmers) prefer such
| minimalism in their interfaces.
| dbtc wrote:
| The dealer knows best what the drug will do.
| swyx wrote:
| > Something went wrong Please try again.
|
| did we hug it to death?
| Sn0wCoder wrote:
| Same issue need to turn off VPN / AdBlock....
| password4321 wrote:
| Thanks for being willing to stick your neck out by putting your
| own spin on things!
|
| I'm always interested to hear more about the sustainability of
| alternative HN frontends... the initial time investment, ongoing
| hosting costs, etc.
|
| Maybe it'd be worth doing the research to find out what the
| probability is of lasting longer than the domain renewal year,
| especially for those such as this offering the chance for users
| to invest additional value.
| phendrenad2 wrote:
| In retrospect, I should have expected the goatse as soon as I
| clicked to vote on images.
| shahzaibmushtaq wrote:
| Thumbs up for the effort, I prefer the default HN outlook.
| redeux wrote:
| Personally, I don't care for the images on the articles. I find
| them distracting from the information I actually want, the
| headline and content. It seems that their purpose is purely
| aesthetic in this UI, but not a pleasing one for me.
| Retr0id wrote:
| I notice you're hotlinking the images from their respective
| sources.
|
| This isn't ideal from a privacy PoV, because you're basically
| announcing your presence to tens of different orgs even if you
| don't click on anything.
|
| And, some hosts might not appreciate their images being hotlinked
| - the big sites probably don't care or even notice, but someone's
| personal blog without a media CDN might end up getting hammered
| with traffic.
| rfl890 wrote:
| If you're posting content on HN, you should always expect a
| traffic increase anyways. And Cloudflare CDN is free anyways
| (unless you don't want to use it for political reasons, your
| choice)... Although I understand hotlinking is frowned-upon in
| a general context
| wmeredith wrote:
| I had the same thought. Hot linking images has been bad form
| since like 2004, if not earlier.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Copying images is a copyright issue.
| more_corn wrote:
| Is it?
| Retr0id wrote:
| It isn't.
| ipaddr wrote:
| Until you get a dmca notice. Taking other people's photos
| without permission violates copyright.
| Retr0id wrote:
| No, using them without permission (potentially) violates
| copyright. Copyright does not concern itself with the
| specifics of the mechanism by which the rights-holder's
| content enters your user's web browser, so long as you're
| not circumventing DRM.
| sjf wrote:
| The site is neat, but the airport article is really the only one
| that benefits from an image though. It'd be nice to not have to
| scroll past logos, stock images, etc.
| MarkMc wrote:
| The presence or absence of an image depends on user votes. If
| you feel an image is not useful, click the '...' button and
| select 'Suggest or Choose an Image' > 'This story does not need
| an image'
| rkagerer wrote:
| Is there a way I can raise the threshold?
|
| Not every story is deserving of a photo, and if their
| presence felt more curated it might significantly improve my
| experience on your site.
| badcppdev wrote:
| I like how this looks but I have a feature suggestion....
|
| Could you crowd-source categories/tags for the stories and then
| try and implement an opt-in / opt-out function that lets us
| exclude certain categories. I'm not even sure if it's possible
| but you're some of the way there.
| MarkMc wrote:
| Thanks that's a good idea! I think I'd need to use AI to
| categorise each story, then maybe have different tabs on the
| page for each category...
| kirubakaran wrote:
| You might like this: https://histre.com/hn/
|
| (Disclosure: I made it)
| jack_riminton wrote:
| Maybe have an option to view the main page as a list (ie copies
| Hacker News) but then each individual page has the photos?
| tunnuz wrote:
| I love it, I wonder if LLMs couldn't be used to generate some
| pictures.
| internetter wrote:
| LLMs cannot generate pictures
| Sn0wCoder wrote:
| Think you are being downvoted because technically an LLM stands
| for Large Language Models, while image generation is something
| like LDM latent diffusion models or most people just say Stable
| Diffusion. If you would have said the more generic ChatGPT then
| the answer would have been maybe since its supposed to be
| Multi-Modal. If you are asking if Stable Diffusion could
| generate pictures based of the article description the answer
| is most likely yes given the prompt correctly parses the
| context correctly (maybe using an LLM for getting the prompt
| before feeding into the next tool).
|
| I hear almost everyone call everything ChatGPT no matter what
| they are using (MS, Google Gemini, Ollama, etc...) ChatGPT made
| me a PP, ChatGPT made this image, so maybe if you want a
| general term ChatGPT would be more correct. I typically say
| ChatGPT for LLMs and Stable Diffusion when talking to normal
| people since most are familiar with the big two. Predicting the
| next pixel to draw is sorta like predicting the next word
| (token) I guess
|
| Most people know what you mean, but still good to use the
| correct term. Disclaimer so I do not get downvoted with you:
| Please do your own research as I just wrote how I understand
| these concepts and am not an expert.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| One of the best HN redesigns I've seen in that it's not just "add
| whitespace" but is a totally different layout.
|
| My take on social media is that you have to have an image in a
| post if you want people to engage with it.
| sourcepluck wrote:
| You're writing that on a medium which is social which gets tons
| of engagement which doesn't have any images.
|
| I don't get it. Surely every single thread that got even modest
| engagement on HN since the beginning of the place disproves
| your take?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| HN is unusual because it is that way. There's nothing wrong
| with that.
|
| But let's put it this way. If I find a popular article on a
| ScienceX site I often find it links to a journal article
| which may or may not be open access, let's assume that it is.
|
| Posting to HN I will usually post the open access article.
|
| Posting to Mastodon or Bluesky I will usually post the
| ScienceX link because those platforms can find an image in
| those articles but can't find an image in a paper in
| _Nature_. (Note on those platforms I get replies like "this
| is over my head" when I post a real paper whereas nobody in
| HN wants to admit that vulnerability)
|
| If somebody makes an HN clone which merges in images, those
| images are going to have a big impact on people's engagement
| with that clone.
| InMice wrote:
| Very nice. My compliments to you
| justmarc wrote:
| I like it, but I also like the simplicity of HN because I can
| simply scan all the headlines super efficiently, without any
| distractions and quickly see if something is of interest.
| yoda97 wrote:
| Good effort, but tbh the absence of pictures is actually what I
| like about HN, that's why I could never get into daily.dev
| TripleChecker wrote:
| I like the re-design. Maybe including the actual date instead of
| 'Tuesday', 'Monday' in the header might be clearer. Just a
| thought.
| olegrumiancev wrote:
| I think this is beautiful
| rkagerer wrote:
| I want to thank you for doing this, but for a different reason:
| it reminded me how much I appreciate the vanilla HN layout.
|
| I viscerally HATE all the news sites that look like your project.
|
| I've sought alternative sources of news with a more old-school
| look, without success.
|
| I used to think it wasn't _just_ the pictures. I found the
| average quality of reporting went down, along with a rise in
| clickbait headlines and stories, around the same time mainstream
| outlets adopted the new format. I figured that may have been part
| of what conditioned me to hate it. But now I realize the cosmetic
| factor really is quite substantial.
|
| I like being able to digest lots of information in front of me at
| once, and the words on the HN site pack in better density (I
| guess it turns out not every photo is worth a thousand of them).
| Yes, the timber roof photo looks great. But too many of your
| crowdsourced pictures feel almost generated, rather than
| authentic to their associated piece, and I find them distracting.
|
| Thank you YC, for sticking to your guns and keeping the 'boring'
| layout all these years!
| Andrew6rant wrote:
| > "I've sought alternative sources of news with a more old-
| school look, without success."
|
| There are a few news sites that have barebones/low-bandwidth or
| HTML-only frontends. For example:
|
| https://lite.cnn.com/
|
| https://text.npr.org/
|
| https://www.cbc.ca/lite/
| alecco wrote:
| It would be interesting to have some highlighter over the
| titles to make it easier to scan. Could be some very simple AI
| in a browser extension. Maybe even have some color tags while
| there. Pretty simple.
|
| The extensions I've tried added a bunch of features I don't
| care about.
| woleium wrote:
| use feedly or theoldreader or another rss tool?
| Sn0wCoder wrote:
| The UI is very nice. Congratulations on the release, with all the
| articles about releasing the last few days must feel good.
|
| Does not like my VPN / AdBlocker, getting a few CORS errors
| connecting to the Amazon S3. If you really want people to use the
| site would recommend proxying the request through the server. If
| you are already running a node.js server straightforward to do,
| if not still a huge leap but would also want to configure Caddy
| (NGINX) [or run on the same server and block the port] to run the
| proxy locally and forward only your requests so it does not get
| abused.
|
| A lot of the audience here is running AdBlock and / or VPN so
| others are most likely to hit the same issue.
| vunderba wrote:
| Nice - reminds me of an old RSS reader for iPad that would build
| out a newspaper looking aesthetic called "The Early Edition" from
| nearly a decade ago.
|
| https://www.macstories.net/ipad/the-early-edition
|
| Sadly it's no longer around.
| cjsawyer wrote:
| I prefer the density of the original, but your addition of
| "Today", "Yesterday", "Wednesday"... buttons is excellent. That
| is much more useful than the infinite scroll on the vanilla
| homepage.
| kayge wrote:
| This other alternative interface might interest you:
| https://hckrnews.com/
|
| Fairly high density, divided by day, and able to reduce down to
| groups of Top 10 / Top 20 / Top 50%.
|
| This is my go-to since Top 10 is about all I have time for
| these days :)
| h1fra wrote:
| We really need a hacker news dedicated to hacker news redesign
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| A great example of how little information preview images add to
| the news/article websites. This is the reason why HN feels so
| good to read.
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