other?"

468 points bookofjoe | 3 comments | 15 Jul 25 14:51 UTC | HN request time: 0.242s | source

I would very much like to enjoy HN the way I did years ago, as a place where I'd discover things that I never otherwise would have come across.

The increasing AI/LLM domination of the site has made it much less appealing to me.

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simonw ◴[15 Jul 25 15:11 UTC] No.44571983[source]▶

>>44571740 (OP) #

I built you this: https://tools.simonwillison.net/hacker-news-filtered

It shows you the Hacker News page with ai and llm stories filtered out.

You can change the exclusion terms and save your changes in localStorage.

o3 knocked it out for me in a couple of minutes: https://chatgpt.com/share/68766f42-1ec8-8006-8187-406ef452e0...

Initial prompt was:

  Build a web tool that displays the Hacker
  News homepage (fetched from the Algolia API)
  but filters out specific search terms,
  default to "llm, ai" in a box at the top but
  the user can change that list, it is stored
  in localstorage. Don't use React.

Then four follow-ups:

  Rename to "Hacker News, filtered" and add a
  clear label that shows that the terms will
  be excluded

  Turn the username into a link to
  https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=xxx -
  include the comment count, which is in the
  num_comments key

  The text "392 comments" should be the link,
  do not have a separate thread link

  Add a tooltip to "1 day ago" that shows the
  full value from created_at

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1. simpaticoder ◴[15 Jul 25 15:26 UTC] No.44572167[source]▶

>>44571983 #

An interesting example of both LLMs' strengths and weaknesses. It is strong because you wrote a useful tool in a few minutes. It is weak because this tool is strongly coupled to the problem: filtering HN. It's an example of the more general problem of people wanting to control what they see. This has existed at least since the classic usenet "killfiles", but is an area that, I believe, has been ripe for a comprehensive local solution for some time.

OTOH, narrow solutions validate the broader solution, especially if there are a lot of them. Although in that case you invite a ton of "momentum" issues with ingrained user bases (and heated advocacy), hopelessly incompatible data models and/or UX models, and so on. It's an interesting world (in the Chinese curse sense) where such tools can be trivially created. It's not clear to me that fitness selection will work to clean up the landscape once it's made.

replies(2): >>44573755 #>>44574160 #

2. azath92 ◴[15 Jul 25 17:36 UTC] No.44573755[source]▶

>>44572167 (TP) #

Not sure what a local solution would look like when what you see is on websites, maybe a browser extension? we just made a similar reskin as a website, and it works great, but is ultimately another site you have to go to. Its another narrow solution with some variation (we do use AI to do the ranking rather than keyword filtering), but im interested in the form factors that might give maximal control to a user.

3. aorloff ◴[15 Jul 25 18:10 UTC] No.44574160[source]▶

>>44572167 (TP) #

It is strong because you believed it created something of value. Did it work ? Maybe. But regardless of whether it worked, you still believed in the value, and that is the "power" of AIs right now, that humans believe that they create value.

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