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Show HN: I built a tech news aggregator that works the way my brain does

(deadstack.net)
142 points dreadsword | 2 comments | 23 Oct 25 17:48 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source

An honest to god, non-algorithmic reverse chrono list of tech news that passes my signal-to-noise tests, updated hourly.

A lightweight a page design as I've been able to keep; simple, clean, fast. No commercial features or aspirations - this is a passion project, something I've been fooling around with on and off for decades.

There's a "Top" view too with an LLM edited front page & summary, and categorized views for a large number of topics - see the Directory. A few more buried features to explore, but the fundamental use case is pop in, scan, exit - fast and concise.

Your feedback would be appreciated!

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taftster ◴[23 Oct 25 19:33 UTC] No.45685935[source]▶
I'm not sure, something about the "Recent Stories Summary" section (first view) is hard to read. The spacing is wrong. And the blue font. Someone mentioned Garamond too.

It's creating a "wall of text" effect to me and I'm not able to quickly skim and allow my eye to catch the bits that are interesting to me.

As a comparison, the HN homepage is very accessible to me for skimming and finding things to click into (like this entry).

UI is often quite subjective, understood. But I can't really "scan" the first view fast enough. It's all blending together and causes extra processing on my mind.

replies(2): >>45686001 #>>45686041 #
dreadsword ◴[23 Oct 25 19:40 UTC] No.45686041[source]▶
How about now? Story titles are still clickable links, but are black. Made the story count a link as well, and kept it blue as a visual cue.
replies(2): >>45686093 #>>45686463 #
taftster ◴[23 Oct 25 19:44 UTC] No.45686093[source]▶
Better, to be honest. Keep refining of course. But this is definitely more readable.

I admit that straight black is not quite the right answer either. A slightly toned down dark grey would be nice. And again, subjectively, I like how HN has a row of non-link smaller (lighter shaded) text under each listing, which I think plays nice for the white space between each item.

replies(1): >>45686329 #
1. bcrl ◴[23 Oct 25 20:02 UTC] No.45686329{3}[source]▶
Personally, I far prefer black over grey. Grey is really hard to read across a variety of lighting conditions and devices. The older you get, the more important contrast becomes.
replies(1): >>45687052 #
2. taftster ◴[23 Oct 25 20:59 UTC] No.45687052[source]▶
Fair and good point. Sharp black bothers me, so just adding in a little hue is nice for my eyes. But that's me, of course.

Noting also that this text is #000000 black, per the CSS. Maybe the background color helps soften it a little? Like contrast white/black is hard on the eyes, but HN is not?