hackerer-news VS refined-hacker-news

Over the years, I've written many apps and utilities for myself or others (that didn't end up get used). These are the interesting ones I remember. Many not quite complete/usable. Other than hackerer.news none of them are 'up' and running. Some have and others haven't been published as opensource.

- https://hackerer.news HN viewer (source[0]): I use daily so I can see today's top stories in reverse chronological order with mainstream topics sorted to the bottom.

- qwickly[1] keyboard layout: I use all the time as an easier to learn and more comfortable to type than Colemak/Tarmak

- safeql[2]: Java type-safe SQL expression composer that reduces constant expressions and eliminates N+1 queries loading associations by always operating on set relation or array of models.

- moja[3]: Composable computation pipelines for Java: Async, Lazy, Option, Try, Result, Multi (List), Stated, Reader, Logger, Writer.

- gitgrep.com[4] Opensource SaaS version of etsy/houndd (now called hound-search).

- statuspages.me: Status page aggregator with dynamic javascript for scraping each source using selector expressions.

- movies to watch aggregator: with links to sources to watch. It was hard then to get 3rd party deep links into streaming sites so included some torrent links. Got a DMCA phone call, so took it down. Combined thumbnails, summaries, actors(?), imdb ratings, links.

- java2cpp: Translate a moderately sized java app with test suite to c++, not 100% required final manual fixups.

- swift2java (or maybe it was java2swift, it's fuzzy now): translate Swift to Java obviously, using ANTLR4. Not 100% required final manual fixups.

- gui2log: to make an ASCII rendition of on-screen GUI widgets into an application log file when form submitted, so users couldn't complain that they saw X, but got Y.

- some basic stats/ML algorithms: k-nearest neighbour, RNN back-propagation, etc?

- Java in-memory DB: Small SQL-like memory tables with indexing/searching.

- wwwsqldesigner: This exists as opensource and I extended it to infer foreign key relationships based on naming conventions used in a MySQL schema. It was great for zooming around a large ERD.

- tracelog: combination of microservices parent/child span logging and generated high level events shown as a sequence diagram. Integrated with Loggly for full/verbose logs of selected high-level events.

- pcl2bmp downscaler: Reduce high resolution HP LaserJet (PCL5) printed to file to lower resolution bitmap pages for screen display (before retina DPI was common). It aimed to shrink same-color areas and preserve black/white transitions while reducing.

[0] https://gitlab.com/karmakaze/hackerer-news

[1] https://github.com/qwickly-org/Qwickly

[2] https://github.com/karmakaze/safeql

[3] https://github.com/karmakaze/moja

[4] https://github.com/gitgrep-com/gitgrep

https://hackerer.news viewer that shows stories by day so I don't see yesterday's stories today interleaved with today's and avoid the slot machine dopamine hits.

[0] https://gitlab.com/karmakaze/hackerer-news

You can checkout this repo and see if something is more appealing to you: https://github.com/cheeaun/awesome-hacker-news

I personally just use Stylus and have a custom css for making things a but more readable and user friendly.

There's also this extension that just refines a couple things: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

Speaking of checking people's profiles, on mouseover with Refined Hacker News [1] installed, I see you don't have a bio set up.

[1]: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

I also have HackerSmacker [2] and Momento for Hacker News [3] user tagging. I've only really used Hacker Smacker to make a note to self about propensity for great contributions, and probably installed Momento with expanding that intent in mind.

[2]: https://github.com/samuelclay/hackersmacker

[3]: https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/momento-for-hacker-...

It seems that HN has a lot of anti-user features for the sake of it. Perhaps the rationale for graying out self posts is to make them not stand out (so that the post from OP doesn't get any undue advantage over the comments), but it's just an accessibility nightmare. It's as if people with poor eyesight were not welcome here.

I use Refined Hacker News https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news which alleviates some pain points, but unfortunately it doesn't fix this issue.

Sequoia: Sam Bankman-Fried Has a Savior Complex–and Maybe You Should Too https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33527047 (November 8, 2022 — 18 points, 7 comments)

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[0] https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news/blob/main/...

I find https://hw.leftium.com/ much more readable, but it's read-only (can't vote/comment/submit). And due to caching some recent comments are missing.

So for those rare occasions I use news.ycombinator.com. https://hw.leftium.com/ has links to the original HN page. Plus I have a bookmarklet that toggles between the two.

Refined Hacker News[1] makes the original HN site a little nicer to use.

[1]: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news#readme

Not that this should be the answer, but there are a lot of HN browser plugins. Most have at least some level of theming and inline commenting. I'm currently a fan of Refined Hacker News (no affiliation) - https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news - but I'm sure there are others just as good out there.

Hacker news on y Combinator seems like an OK option, at least for those who are tech focused and prefer the old interface. There's the Refined Hacker News which, while not as good as Reddit Enhancement Suite, does make it a lot more bearable. But I don't think Hacker news will really appeal to the masses. There's no communities or subbreddits or any other grouping of users/posts.

Great extension. I use it heavily. The problem is that the developer seems to have given up on it.

You'll need this PR to use it without errors: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news/pull/125

I just go to my profile -> comments page and take a few seconds to check my most recent comments.

I have this extension that highlights any new comments, which makes it a lot easier. https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

Note the Refined Hacker News browser extension does this automatically, and more: https://github.com/plibither8/refined-hacker-news

This bookmarklet might be a nice option on mobile. I prefer to view via my own HckrNews web app, which also highlights the OP: https://hw.leftium.com/#/item/35076225