150 pointsby chilipepperhott6 hours ago30 comments
  • millerm5 hours 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.

    • andrewjf5 hours 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.
      • freetime23 hours ago
        My personal stance is that the genie is out of the bottle, and there's likely no putting it back. Kind of like nuclear weapons: I wish they didn't exist, but since they do I'd rather be on the side that has them.

        Honestly it's an incredible technology the likes of which I never thought I would see in my lifetime. It's definitely not perfect, but it is improving at a frightening pace. Some days I am optimistic for how it might shape the future, and other days I am scared.

        If goverments wanted to make a credible effort to limit how they are used, I would support that. But I'm not terribly optimistic that can or will happen.

      • archagon4 hours ago
        TBH, I'm mostly here out of spite at this point. It's unhealthy but I can't seem to stop rage-reading.
    • block_dagger4 hours ago
      Would love to hear more detail about the job losses you mentioned, if you are willing to share.
    • chilipepperhott4 hours 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!
    • johnfn4 hours ago
      It’s interesting how, as someone more pro-AI, I feel the exact opposite way - every comment thread just devolves into people saying AI is stupid (OK, perhaps modulo new model releases from frontier labs, those tend to be fairly positive). Like we had a thread about what your AI workflow is and people were coming in and saying they didn’t have one because AI is bad. Really? Do these people enter threads about what your favorite Rust library is and say they don’t have any and Rust is a bad language?
      • bigstrat20032 hours ago
        Sure, but not to the same extent. Because the industry isn't experiencing a trend where it tells everyone that if they don't use Rust, they are obsolete. And because nobody is saying "Rust is going to take all our jobs" to all the other programmers. And because most of the threads on HN aren't about Rust on a daily basis.

        Sure overly enthusiastic Rust fans exist and they are annoying. But it's nowhere even close to the AI mania gripping the industry.

        • johnfnan hour ago
          Just because some people are contributing to bad discourse doesn't mean that you also get permission to contribute to bad discourse. If you don't like it when people say you're going to be obsolete -- tell them! Don't hop into random spaces where no one is saying that and act negative! This just lowers the discourse quality everywhere. Very few people on HN are saying you are going to be obsolete if you don't use AI (I basically haven't seen a single person say this who hasn't been massively downvoted).
      • krapp4 hours ago
        > Do these people enter threads about what your favorite Rust library is and say they don’t have any and Rust is a bad language?

        Yes. And Rust people enter threads about other languages and projects not written in Rust and say they're bad because they aren't Rust. Welcome to Hacker News.

        • johnfn2 hours ago
          If you can find me even a single example of this I’d love to see it.
    • 7e4 hours ago
      [flagged]
  • henriquemaia5 hours ago
    I've been training to naturally ignore AI mentions that I thought this entry was about some HN ui font change (Sans).
    • altairprime5 hours ago
      The style is a bit off for the usual HN fare: 'sans' should be lowercase here, or otherwise it's easy to confuse for a font. It's still pretty swell :)
    • geniium5 hours ago
      Was about to write the same
  • simonw5 hours 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
    • zuzululu5 hours 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.

    • phildenhoff5 hours 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.

      • simonw5 hours 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".
    • maxkosty3 hours ago
      Love that this is configurable unlike OPs version. That way I can exclude "I rewrote ____ in Rust".

      Would be nice to have "include" option... for those of use who may want to ONLY read posts about AI or whatever else niche interest.

  • 0xbadcafebee5 hours 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).

  • factorialboy5 hours ago
    For one sec, I got excited for a new font!
  • amelius3 hours ago
    My immediate thought was already expressed in one of the few comments:

    > Does this use an LLM to categorize "AI-related" vs "not-AI related" articles? Would be ironic. Lol

  • flexagoon5 hours 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
  • 866-RON-0-FEZ6 hours ago
    Interesting this keeps moving up the front page when the site is inaccessible because it's hosted on a baked potato.
    • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
      Yep. My single core Proxmox machine sitting in my living room with horrible cache invalidation is struggling.
      • 866-RON-0-FEZ5 hours ago
        Sounds like a great use case for serving plain HTTP over cloudflare tunnel. Why terminate TLS when you don't have to?
        • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
          You know what's funny? Most of this site is exactly that. The _one_ time I do something dynamic…
    • consumer4515 hours 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.

      • nozzlegear4 hours ago
        73% of Reddit users vote prior to reading TFA:

        > In the present work, we introduce and make available a new dataset containing the activity logs that recorded all activity for 309 Reddit users for one year.

        • consumer4514 hours ago
          n=309 is better than n=1, but yeah...

          However, tracking over a year might make the subject forget about the whole thing, and act naturally. As far as HN vs Reddit, not much difference really. I mean that as more props to reddit users than anything against HNers.

        • paulnpace4 hours ago
          Reddit "users"
      • LearnYouALisp5 hours ago
        Huh, I didn't even remember to vote for posts, i just scroll down to read (and vote sometimes on comments)
      • 866-RON-0-FEZ5 hours 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.

    • parliament325 hours ago
      Just goes to show how much demand there is.

      HN really needs a containment board.

    • kylecazar5 hours 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.
      • ofalkaed5 hours 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.
        • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
          I would argue that in a small way, this post _is_ about AI, so it wouldn't be a false positive.
          • ofalkaed5 hours 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?
      • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
        It's not an LLM.

        Why use big program when regex do trick?

        • Bolwin5 hours ago
          You can get the best of both worlds with a small embedding model
          • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
            Show me an embedding model that runs as fast as an optimized regex engine and I'll buy you a beer.
        • kylecazar5 hours ago
          Master of efficiency
        • 5 hours ago
          undefined
    • chilipepperhott4 hours ago
      It should be accessible now.
  • pkage5 hours ago
    The filter doesn't appear to be perfect, one of the top posts right now is "My Agent Skill for Test-Driven Development"
    • rsyring5 hours 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. :)

      • szatkus4 hours ago
        At least the blog post was proofread by an AI.
      • 4 hours ago
        undefined
    • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
      That should be fixed as soon as my server has a chance to catch up.
  • kindawinda2 hours ago
    Coincidently he uses AI to solve this problem
    • soraminazuki2 hours ago
      Do you have evidence? I see no indication of this.
      • vitus2 hours ago
        I have evidence that it's not AI. It's just a regex.

        https://github.com/elijah-potter/blog/blob/master/pages/hnsa...

      • consumer4512 hours ago
        What would be the worse non-semantic alternative? Regex?

        LLMs are the holy grail for getting beyond string matches. I would hope one was used to solve such a problem, otherwise that would be a poor product, right?

        I did not investigate the product, but my point here is irony. The correct solution to implement the TFA product is to use an LLM.

    • yubblegum2 hours ago
      Sometimes a little poison is medicine.
  • Polizeiposaune5 hours ago
    Was hoping it was a new font.
  • postalcoderan hour ago
    I built a filter for AI (inclusive and exclusive) for hcker.news a while back and continue to maintain it. It’s quite robust, and does more than just keyword filtering.

    https://hcker.news/?ai=exclude

  • 90210076 hours ago
    Hug of death?
    • chilipepperhott6 hours ago
      yep. standby
      • cliche5 hours ago
        A lot of demand for ‘Sans AI’ :)
        • almogo5 hours ago
          Probably by bots :)
          • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
            Our AI overlords don't want an AI-free Hacker News
    • 6 hours ago
      undefined
  • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
    Hopefully fixed the cache invalidation. I'm crossing my fingers.
  • dtrav4 hours ago
    While you are at it can you filter out posts to subscription only sites eg economist NYT $&c. We're all here to escape click bait
  • uniclaude4 hours ago
    Oh. A little bit of a let down. I was expecting "HN without comments and posts written by LLMs".
    • chilipepperhott4 hours ago
      That would be cool. Although your username is a little suspicious…
  • mkw50535 hours ago
    Are you using AI to figure out what's about what's AI and what's not?
  • kordlessagainan hour ago
    Says the guy that uses a man-in-the-middle service to "protect" his website. So dumb. I seriously hate Cloudflare.
  • theflyestpilot4 hours ago
    ^how about just be a devoted AI section at the top?
  • hirako20005 hours ago
    A problem is it doesn't load as fast. Could it be helped?
    • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
      Yes, it can. I am having a major cache invalidation problem. One of the major blights of programmers everywhere.
  • 4 hours ago
    undefined
  • BinaryMachine4 hours ago
    Welp, it was only a matter of time. Thank you
  • edgarvaldes5 hours ago
    Yes, please. A general-purpose filter like the one on 4chan would also work.
  • bakugo2 hours ago
    I have my own version of this as a browser extension paired with a backend that runs all new submissions through a small LLM to classify them, which catches more than a simple word match. Fight fire with fire, as they say.

    Though I haven't used it much lately, because seeing half of the front page disappear when I enable it is a bit disheartening.

  • wewewedxfgdf4 hours ago
    Maybe HN could have a filter button that hides ANY threads for keywords you choose to filter.

    I would instantly hide anything about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

  • nubinetwork4 hours ago
    Okay, now filter out the VC stuff too...
  • ares6235 hours ago
    I've been thinking the same. Couldn't this be done with a browser extension that hides elements that matches a regex?
    • chilipepperhott5 hours ago
      Not quite. Lots of articles don't mention AI in the title, even if that is their core subject.
  • booleandilemma4 hours ago
    [dead]
  • 5 hours ago
    undefined
  • cliche5 hours ago
    Love this. Really nice to see a HN front page without AI, the fatigue is real.