“All the big news”? That’s quite a stretch. If it were true, it would mean the most of the other 27 stories on the HN front page could conceivably be found on a newspaper front page, which is clearly untrue. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that some news is so big — such as the potential creation of a new European country — that HN users want to discuss it.
Indeed. For years now I've been using HN as a proxy news filter, based on the assumption that if something actually important happens - like a war or a deadly earthquake - it'll get on HN, and all the rest of the news can be safely discarded. It generally works pretty well for me.
I do enjoy the HN comments perspectives on that stuff, though.
Re:Hacker News for Hackers
by optimuspaul on Friday October 27, 2017 @12:49PM
(#15570072)
Honestly I go to hacker news for the comments. Hearing what people with similar interests to me think about a variety of topics is the value point for me. While having a somewhat curated list of things is nice, I like that it's maybe 5% things I'm interested in.
That would be nice but unfortunately in practice all the big news make their way to the top of HN, despite the fact that we've already read and heard about them from countless other sources. For example some of the top posts at the moment are:
- Catalan parliament declares independence from Spain
- New Zealand to ban foreigners from buying existing houses
- How to Read the JFK Assassination Files