Show HN: HN Update – Hourly news broadcast of top HN stories

Brilliant idea. I think this has real value as well: as I get older, I find that I have less energy for reading, but I also notice I often miss really cool stuff that was briefly on the front of HN.

I like that it summarizes the comments too. There are often real gems buried in there. (I assume you're only taking a few top ones?)

I think a great improvement could be made with personalization. Most of what's on the front page isn't personally relevant to me, and there's a lot of cool stuff on the new submissions page that never catches on. So it would be nice if a system could learn what kind of stories I personally respond to, and show me (a summary of?) those -- even if they aren't currently trending.

Last.fm came out 20 years ago (proving you don't even need AI for amazing recommender systems), but it seems personalizing your experience never really caught on. (Yeah, the YouTube algorithm kind of does this, but you unfortunately have no real control over it.)

> as I get older, I find that I have less energy for reading,

As I get older (50 now), I have 0 patience for anything else than reading; it's much faster than listening and rereading stuff I didn't get the first time is easier and faster. I listen to stuff (including zoom/calls) to stuff that doesn't hold much importance/value; maybe it triggers something, then I go read about it instead.

I think people have different definitions of "reading":

- Skimming: In my day job this is 95% of "reading". I think this is unavoidable, since (even if the material is well written) there's very little chance that two consumers need the same information. In papers I read the abstract, jump to the conclusions, maybe go back to the intro if I'm confused, or check out the methods if that's what matters to me. I get frustrated with any medium where skimming isn't possible, and similar when search isn't possible.

- Reading as in reading a book: this is more for fun or to cool down. Video / podcast seems like a drop-in replacement here. I don't read HN this way. Does anyone?

I think people who create content should be aware of this dichotomy. If you are communicating with experts, make sure your information is well structured. If you are writing literature focus more on the flow.