Very small, curated community posting thoughtful political, general, arts, gaming, etc news (specifically not just tech and “nerd” focused) that has some level of commenting functionality?
I LOVE hackernews but I am finding that I really don’t get a lot of non-tech news here (and I understand that...
I LOVE hackernews but I am finding that I really don’t get a lot of non-tech news here (and I understand that is the point) and so I am looking for something to replace Reddit, TikTok, and google news at getting regular stories.
Some things I have tried:
RSS feeds: don’t really see a practical benefit to this over google news
Google News: want to get away from it as I am trying to excommunicate Google from my life as much as possible, and it misses the comment functions
Apple News: not happy I have to pay money for half of it, and the other problem I have is I could give a rats ass about their “curated” stories and audio news.
Reddit: generally, too mainstream and filled with a bunch of chaff I don’t really want to sift through to get to the nuggets, when the nuggets are quite common on here
TikTok: the world news I have gotten on here is great! But often filled with other videos that distract me or are not something I want to actively fill my time with
Thoughts? If this doesn’t exist, would people be interested in it being created, and does anyone think it has a chance of taking off (and not immediately falling to the slop that is public Internet forums)?
Comments
By loveparade 2025-06-085:451 reply The funny thing is that I find HN especially useful for non tech news. It's highly biased for tech news, but only the most important normal news make it to the front page, so it's a great filter.
By OtherShrezzing 2025-06-086:481 reply I don’t find HN to be a particularly good filter for general news. It’s got political, economic, geographical, and social bias alongside its topic bias.
This is very true.
But perhaps the more important filtering is on quantity as opposed to neutrality? Perhaps filtering out a large amount of news, even with some bias, is the lesser evil, as compared to news outlets that depend on stirring the emotions of their readers every single day?
Wikinews used to be okay in this regard, but the German version I used has died down a bit, and the English one is even more centered on the Anglosphere than HN.
Filtering out news with (probably more than) some bias seems dangerous in encouraging echo chambers.
I have been extremely happy to find
Especially when it surfaces a topic with three articles from across the bias spectrum, it feels very rewarding being able to get a fuller picture.
By rickydroll 2025-06-0814:452 reply Sometimes there aren't multiple sides, especially when it comes to science reporting. You have fact-based reporting, and then you have conspiracy theories.
How would you handle news where there is sufficient evidence to show one set of reporting is accurate and relatively unbiased, but another report is all made up and designed to inflame its audience?
By balanced2 2025-06-090:37 In this example it sounds like there are multiple sides, just that one is baseless. Even these though I have found come from somewhere, maybe a misunderstanding or a conflation of unrelated topics. While not unlikely intentional on the author's side, the readers are not so sinister I think. Being able to read this while grounded with the other more factual side helps when discussing with those I may otherwise generally disagree with. It has felt somewhat like language learning, understanding it helps with communication with people with a very different background.
Admittedly it takes more time to do this, and I can see not being able to invest that in a general sense. I personally think it's worth it.
That's rarely the case with science reporting. The subjects that are sufficiently rigorous to allow no reasonable debate (the physical sciences) are rarely political enough to inspire unreasonable debate.
On the other hand, the subjects that are politically contentious are not rigorous and leave plenty of room for reasonable debate.
If anything, science reporting tends to err the other way, uncritically reporting sensational results that contradict one other, have not been confirmed, or fail to replicate.
I rarely see a popular science article that doesn't report the results of a single experiment as if they were instantly established fact.
By const_cast 2025-06-0820:411 reply I agree with what you say about sensationalist science reporting. It's very common to take one study and then have dummies who aren't scientists report on it as if we've just found out how to live forever. Science is very tricky because it's complicated and the barrier to entry is high - you can't just extrapolate things out like that.
However, there's also the other side of things, which is mostly established science. Which, you're right, don't typically spark political debate... but they do sometimes. Vaccines, climate change, cholesterol, seed oils. The RFK Jr faction of anti-science is rife these days.
I'm not familiar with all the details of RFK Jr's position, the public debate about it, nor how many of the things reported in the news are accurate (truth being the first casualty of politics).
But I just looked for those topics in the official Make America Healthy Again report [1].
The positions in that report on those topics were not so unreasonable. It says seed oils are a concern because they are ultra-processed fats, only mentions cholesterol in the context of PFAS, and says "vaccines benefit children by protecting them from infectious diseases" but we may not need to give children nearly 30 doses of them.[2]
I do think his general position that processed food is unhealthy is not only reasonable, it generally matches conventional modern medical thinking, even if he is wrong about a few details.
And of course people looking for political ammunition only look for details they can use against him.
1: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/MAHA-R...
2: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/hcp/imz-schedules/index.html
By rickydroll 2025-06-0914:09 > even if he is wrong about a few details.
https://www.notus.org/health-science/make-america-healthy-ag...
By zvr 2025-06-0920:54 That's an interesting approach. Unfortunately it's too US-centric (probably by design).
Does anyone know anything similar covering international news?
By Eddy_Viscosity2 2025-06-0811:54 I think you may be on to something here. When it comes to news, none is bad but so is too much. This would be true even if all the consumed news was politically neutral and completely objectively factual and accurate. But of course all news is biased, and much very deliberately so to the point of obscuring the truth of it. LLMs are not going to make this situation better.
I want to be aware of what's happening, but not to drown in it. How to achieve that is not only a good question but the right question.
Oddly enough I had been considering making a similar thread but asking for something akin to HN but with less non-tech news. Perhaps the question that both I and OP are asking is, does anyone know of a site that stays on topic?
>Thoughts? If this doesn’t exist, would people be interested in it being created, and does anyone think it has a chance of taking off
There is absolutely a market for it but it will eventually become a tech forum.
Edit: I apologize for the meta posting, Saturday night, what can I say.
Edit: Prepended "Edit:" to my apology even though it wasn't an edit, it seems more appropriate as an edit. Once again, I apologize for the meta posting, Saturday night, what can I say.
Of the top 10 HN posts atm, 8 are closely related to software, one is about tech but not computers (Coventry Very Light Rail), and just one is really non-tech (My experiment living in a tent in Hong Kong's jungle).
Is that too much non-tech? Or are the tech posts not news-like enough? Or do you dislike side-tracks in the discussions?
By ofalkaed 2025-06-087:11 I have already asked for that post to be downvoted into oblivion, see my reply to myself. I despise most side-tracks in internet discussion, they have a tendency to become the main track and uninteresting. I don't expect or want HN to be purely tech but I would love it if people would not use upvoting as a like/agreement and use it to make sure anyone who opens a thread does not have to wade through irrelevant nonsense, pedantry, virtue signalling, etc before getting to the discussion of the thread's topic.
People complain about the lack of humor here but it served a purpose.
By dinkumthinkum 2025-06-085:16 People have made many such curations of HN over the years. I can't recall any names of them or if they still exist but just commenting to say it has been done. Honestly, you could probably just have some AI based chrome extension do the filtering for you.
By ofalkaed 2025-06-086:32 To those that upvoted me, I appreciate the sentiment but I should have been downvoted into oblivion. Upvotes are not likes, they are curation and moderation; upvote comments which produce good discussion even if that comment is terrible and low effort and downvote those comments you love or agree with but will never produce any worthwhile discussion. Sometimes it it hurts to do but it must be done if we want to maintain quality.
With that said, I have had fun tonight, thanks for humoring me but my previous post really should not be top post. If you feel bad about downvoting it or unupvoting it for what ever reason than just upvote this one and downvote my previous, no harm, nor foul, but lets not have my previous post be top post in the thread and lets make sure top post in every thread is good solid, on topic discussion.
By ipcress_file 2025-06-085:212 reply I think lobste.rs stays on topic (computers and programming).
By ofalkaed 2025-06-085:48 Every time I go there the only threads which have any discussion tend to be AI/LLM threads, so technically on topic but I think my previous post should make it clear I am a humanities sort and as a humanities sort I have certain expectations of the STEM community and expect them to stay on their side of the fence. This seems completely reasonable and fair.
By jemmyw 2025-06-093:22 They banned the Brave user agent I use, for a transgression from many years ago and hasn't reoccurred, and has nothing to do with the way I use that browser. That's their choice of course, but not one I respect - different if it was an ongoing issue. Why don't they ban Chrome or Firefox for their various and more recent privacy violating problems?
By ksec 2025-06-085:08 It doesn't exist yet. I would argue even HN has its bias. For example for a long time anything MySQL or Java dont get much upvote.
I actually want something that sort of combine the both. I want something that tells me what everyone is reading. Because I dont even consume mainstream news any more. And something that is not mainstream but interesting.
I also think the design of HN is a giant filter for 80 to 90% of internet users.
