Hacker News is basically slowly but surely converting me more into a technical person. When I came here first, I mostly looked at the psychological articles and some web articles. But when I felt a bit more focused and bold I'd go for more technical articles. I have been doing this ever since and I have noticed there are two types of technical articles I really like:

1. any computer graphics reverse engineer article, or reverse engineering regarding a game console, or the posts about Dolphin the gamecube emulator.

2. any security article. Especially about exploits or vulnerabilities.

I was surprised at how well I understood them. But I think in part it has to do with that I sometimes venture out and expand my comfort zone. I keep on expanding my comfort zone through Hacker News, it really supplemented my computer science education quite well.

I also use it a lot as a search engine to find high quality educational content. All those upvotes matter. And if the upvotes don't matter -- the educational resource is quite bad -- then there's always some insightful comment about a good resource. I learned a thing or two about deep learning this way and how it relates to topology. I've never read anything about topology before! That's just really cool that some resources can give you a basic intuition about it.

100% this. Steeping your brain in high-level and advanced thinking slowly but surely teaches you how to think in new ways, even if you don't absorb and comprehend it all at a detailed level.

You'd like this then: https://medium.com/webmr/n64-vr-with-javascript-e188de42ced5

N64 games in VR with JS.

Really interesting point. Several years ago I started browsing out of some cargo cult mentality (everyone cool is browsing, I should too) and found a handful of interesting articles. But many titles looked impenetrable or like gibberish (or both). Slowly over the years I've gained enough familiarity with a varied subject matter that I recognize and understand what everything will likely be about, and can dive into many technical articles that I couldn't before. Of course, many are still way over my head.

I've also found that the comments give me some ground truth on articles, whether they're good or not, and what points the article made that don't hold up in the real world or are super opinionated.

It's surprising what you can learn by osmosis! You don't necessarily have to understand everything but you absorb over time, just like how children learn their first language I suppose

I found that following humor blogs about certain specialist area's also help a lot with the osmosis. One example is DBAreactions. I'm Dev/Ops, so naturally I have to touch on DBA tasks but not enough to get fully involved in the field. Following the humor blog and sometimes stumbling upon a joke I don't get tells me there is some knowledge that must be so common (ie important) in that field that I miss. So then a task arises for me to learn to laugh at the joke.

I've found that when there are a decent number more comments than upvotes (say 1.25+ comment / upvote ratio) it is generally a controversial topic, probably with a huge amount of subcomments under the top comment. If it is in my domain, I tend to ignore it, as I've often heard both sides many times before and its draining to see debates play out again. If it isn't in my domain and it is interesting, I'll check it out and often learn something. If its outside my domain and not a particularly interesting topic, if i'm bored i may check it out to entertain myself for a bit

for Ask HN, the comment / upvote ratio seems like it indicates a topic that people are interested in and want to share their two cents (like this one), rather than a controversial one

i also click on most links from wikipedia, as any wikipedia entry that gets to the front page seems like it must be very interesting / esoteric. however they turn out generally to be hit or miss

Why is it draining to see debates play out again? I know what you mean though, I feel same way, but just curious your take on it.

For me it's most draining when observing debates about the field I work in where the comments involved display a mixed level of knowledge of the subject. A lot of times the consensus opinion will in my eyes be under informed or missing some context, and actively harmful to a productive dialogue. So I feel a sense of frustration and helplessness. i work in biotech, and biopharma is an incredibly politically visible and controversial industry now, and I feel like a lot of the public discourse is driven by people who mean well but haven't taken the time to understand how the field works

Of course, it is absolutely critical to have diverse perspectives, but I feel like everyone could row in the same direction if we were on the same page

Applies to journalism, not only HN comments.

I almost never click through on the source link initially. The only times I do are if the topic is something very specifically related to my personal interests / work, and/or from a reputable domain, and possibly only if it has a lot of upvotes. I'd say that links to github.com, and arxiv.org are among the top ones that I'm likely to click through to immediately.

OTOH, anything that looks even vaguely interesting gets an upvote, since that is the easiest way to "save" a HN link for later (the "favorite" feature requires you to at least click through to the discussion page first, which is just enough friction that I mostly don't bother).

Anything in between those two extremes, my heuristic is to click through to the discussion page, spend some time reading the comments, and then decide if the source article is worth reading or not. I feel like you can usually tell a lot about the quality of the underlying article based on what kind of discussion it generates.

> I almost never click through on the source link initially.

Too many on HN use this "hack" to avoid reading the article. It can become somewhat humorous when an entire comment thread debates points clarified in the first sentence of TFA.

Yep, totally agree. One problem is the way many articles are written. People want efficiency, but the relevant information is buried and scattered in the article full of pointless drivel. I'm not generally interested in how this journalist met the interviewee on a sunny day at a certain cafeteria, or that this interviewee wore this or that kind of dress, etc. First and foremost, I'd expect to get a very short summary on the whole thing in order to be able to decide if this article is worth using mental energy at all. But at the moment this kind of possibility of hierarchically expanding the content from high information density to low information density is not available.

Edit: bad english

Everybody's guilty secret? Occasional awareness of not having read the article then adds restraint to active participation in on-topic discussions ("I might make a fool of myself for not having read TFA") that is absent in the inevitable off-topic subthreads, hence more participation there. It's amazing that hn is still so good despite all this!

Back to the original topic (no article to not read in an "ask hn", it's safe) : an exception are stories that reach a very high number of posts, that usually means that:

a) TFA will be something I should not completely miss, even if it's just another Macbook announcement

and b) the comments that might be interesting to me will be buried, I won't bother finding them unless the topic is something I specialize in

Therefore, if comment counter at 300 and up, straight to TFA

That is a fair point.

I think reading the comments first is a fine strategy if you haven't decided to post a comment of your own. If you do comment, as a good citizen you should probably check the article before submitting your reply.

i always read comments first because the comments page will load superfast, whereas the article will be slow and a challenge to find/scroll through the content.

if the comments reflect an interesting article, then i'll click through and put up with the slowness.

1. anything crystal / ruby related

2. rust and golang related stuff, so I can further justify my choice of crystal

3. security exploits

4. dramas, like angry co-founders duking it out on HN, love that stuff

5. philosophy of mind / consciousness related stuff

6. stuff that tells me when I can get a consumer-grade quantum computer (never happens, or can only multiply 3 * 5 for 50 million dollars)

7. anything that sounds like a horizontally and vertically scalable database solution -- been looking for something like citus or google cloud spanner, but with a $5/month starting plan since forever ago. Note: a $90/month starting plan != scalable imo, as it doesn't allow me to justify developing with it.

8. "here is a super fast hash table implementation"

9. "new data structure" (happens almost never)

10. "programming language performance benchmark"

11. microsoft/google/facebook/apple/amazon hating never gets old

12. news that [language I care about] now runs on web assembly (never happens)

13. "RSA encryption broken by efficient factorization of large semiprimes" (world would end for a few days)

14. proof or disproof of p = np

15. autonomous driving stuff

things to avoid:

1. anything related to react/vue, though I might click if it's vue just for them sticking it to react

2. anything about VC stuff, because I don't come here to read that

3. news that [language I don't like] now runs on web assembly (every day)

4. x new javascript framework

I click on most things that start with "10 ways to..." and then immediately regret it. I then repeat the process with "Kubernuts (is/isn't) the best thing ever" and then immediately regret it. And then I click on the comments of any article that I have industry specific knowledge on and tell everyone why their opinion is wrong without reading the article.

Gosh I need a new way to kill time.

Sounds about like me. Except I mostly lurk in the comments. I keep HN as my home tab though, so every morning I scroll through top posts and look for what appeals to me. Generally articles that are either a) dumb, and then I regret reading them, or b) too technical or too long, so I save them to Pocket, and then never read them. (I do actually read some articles, it just seems like a majority of the time I save articles to read and then never get around to it)

- Anything with >500 upvotes that isn't general news, the more technical/esoteric, the better.

- "How to write/build a [something]" if that "something" is fairly low-level, like a compiler.

- Just about anything involving bees.

- Highly-voted threads with mundane headlines -- i.e. either the content is good enough to not need a catchy headline, or its headline has been changed to be less clickbaity -- which might mean the mods thought it was worth saving rather than flagging into oblivion.

- Virtually any Show HNs that happen to make it to the front page

- Ask HNs that have > 50 comments.

> Ask HNs that have > 50 comments.

Apparently you make exceptions for interesting cases:D (currently this thread is at 21 comments)

> bees Gosh, that's exhilarating to me you mentioned bees! I have read and know way more about bees than I could of ever planned for, or wanted to, due to HN!

How do you find stories which meet your vote or comment thresholds?

Click on:

- stuff I know a bit about, and can perhaps offer some anecdata on rather than commentary (because you're all far smarter than me on everything, and that's wonderful) - stuff that reminds me that working for all these hours is worth it after all (because I need it) - stuff that tells me that working for all these hours is preposterous and I should re-assess what I'm doing (because I need this, too) - Ask HN posts that show some human humility and a wanting to learn

I wrote a simple extension for hckrnews.com to hide submissions based on words and domains: https://gist.github.com/ivmirx/66a0015884d44297ea05a8c54d935...

I filter out all the languages and tech that I don't use, corporate news, US news, crypto news, and some bad journalism.

This seems like a great idea which I wish was in higher prevalence - designing a simple algorithm yourself that you can understand easily and which can't be gamed, because it is unique.

This seemed to be the promise of spam filters - you get to train them yourself! The difficulty is that it becomes so complex and vague that you can't undo its biases easily. It also reinforces the past at the expense of closing openings for the future to leak in.

Thanks for the code!

If you want pure technical crunchy hits of great goodness (no pol no fluff no bs) the best heuristic I've developed is to look for the things that reach front page with 30~40 pts but have almost no comments. These usually tend to be PDFs of research papers describing some awesome but highly advanced or technical cool thing, right on the edge of comprehensibility.

My theory is, we're all crouched around like proto-humans before the Monolith, upvoting and hoping someone bold and clever will touch it, or better yet, that one of the aliens who put it there will show up and tell us what it is. ;-P

I start by scanning through the front page and clicking "HIDE" on:

  Betterridge Headlines
  Articles with a (YEAR)
  Articles with a [PDF] 
  "Do X in Language"
  Blockchain-related
  Mac-related
  "Ask HN: List things"
  Hiring notices

- Specific domains:

  All newspapers
  All longform sites
  All clickbait sites
  All health information
  Medium
  Github
  Wikipedia
  Stratechery

This usually clears out all the time-sinks, ads, "Github spam" and clickbait. And sometimes you find a Tesla article or 2 that's been pushed back to the 2nd or 3rd page.

I HIDE:

"X" the good parts

"X" driven design

Building a toy "X" in toy language "Y" in Z minutes

How to interview [another random internet opinion]

Anything that's crawling with cp-grey types.

Anecdote about hallucinogen curing every psychological problem

2-week Microstudy on nootropic improving attention

> Anything that's crawling with cp-grey types.

Is this like CGP Grey?

> Articles with a (YEAR)

Why do you consider content from the past to be clickbait?

Not clickbait, but a rabbit-hole like longform articles. Consuming information dumps can too easily become a form of procrastination.

I've basically learned web design and development through HN.

The only links I click on are related to making static websites without any frameworks. Otherwise, if the websites domain is a new one, I'll click on it to see if the website has an interesting font or layout.

I never check the comments on HN for many things non-STEM, more specifically economics, philosophy, psychology, education, academic research, political science, fashion, and more. Those comments are generally filled with people trying to use first principles poorly to speak on subjects they don't have industrial experience in.

The best resources I've gained via HN

1. practicaltypography.com - Basically my foundation when it comes to designing any text in personal documents, websites, video games and more.

2. worrydream.com - The best HCI resource freely available on the internet. It opened my eyes to the sorry state of software with respect to usability.

3. Data Oriented Design - Research into this field gave me a definitive answer on the merits of continuing to struggle with learning functional programming versus going all in on traditional C style development.

You rock. This is possibly one of the most interesting questions I periodically ask myself... And never thought of asking the HN community! Bravo.

- Golang.

- “X is dead/dying” just because I want to see if there’s any sort of logic to it and to see the comments (which can actually be pretty useful)

- Psychology-related things (especially about depression, PTSD, burnout)

- Tutorials that I may find useful

- Security/exploits (like the latest ESLint issue)

- Apple-related articles (because I use Apple products but know they aren’t perfect and want to see both sides)

A post with a few comments ranks much higher for me than one with just upvotes. The main reason I upvote something is because I want it to have more exposure so more people will comment on it. Having an expert in the field or the author of the paper etc just pop in and start answering questions is my favorite thing about HN.

Unsurprisingly, I check the comments first, unless it specifically piques my interest (which isn't hard), and then I leave the comments open as a parent tab to check later because if I'm interested in a topic I'm interested in opinions of it.

These are more likely for me to click through to:

* Databases and programming languages: theory, standards, etc.

* Specific languages I like reading about: rust, go, .net

* A little bit of general world news

* Psycology

* Security

* Anything really technical. I like picking up on new modes of thought even if I don't understand the topic.

* Anything that stays on the homepage for a while I'm likely to check out

I tend to (as others have mentioned) focus on languages or fields I'm familiar with. Lots of articles on frontend stuff, and JS libraries, even ones I don't use. Mainly just to get a feel for what is out there. A lot of the time I like to read comments more than the actual article on a lot of things, because I find opinions on HN (specifically comments that have long threads with multiple replies) to offer a better understanding of things than the actual article. A lot of articles are somewhat biased, intentional or not, and reading the comments (most of the time) offers a better perspective from people actually using/working in/experiencing, things the articles are talking about.

When in doubt from the title:

unknown domains, blogspot.com, some known high-quality sites > Github > general news/media sites > medium.com, hackernoon.com, dev.to

I tend to look at Show HN. I look at the new queue a lot, less so at the front page.

I don't consciously or systemically apply any heuristics, but if I think back on the topics that tend to pique my interest: Business and VC, economics, infosec, tech politics, FL/OSS drama, psychology / human nature, and oddities that seem out of place here (because those stories must be especially interesting!). Occasionally web dev tools if they look like something I might use — for example, new static site generators.

I nearly always read the comments first and rarely click through to the original story. The comments are the point of HN for me.

I find myself thinking about whether the comments will have anything interesting in them. If I think there will be then I click on the comments page and read through the top few comments. If there's a lot of discussion about the OP link itself only then will I actually click the link. I do the same for reddit.

Side note: I think that there are many articles/blogs on the internet that have less information than a good reddit/HN comment and this is why many users of HN and Reddit go to the comments first.

Posts that are either Ask/Show HN, or links to articles/tutorials of tools and services of personal usage - personal backup articles, a nice little desktop/mobile app, a new messaging service of note, or a new mobile or laptop that is trying to something new etc. Comments are where I look for interesting content on such posts.

I almost always avoid those yet another JS and JS/Native/web/blogging/static site framework articles. Android dev, my bread and butter, is rarely shared and discussed on HN and since I don't (usually) browse HN during work I would anyway be not interested in things related to my work (I try to compartmentalise it like that - leave work when I leave office). Most of the tech discussions here are of backend, dev ops, and web dev which don't really interest me. I also avoid discussions or articles which have low level implantation details.

I also avoid those list articles - "best way(s) to….", "best/most X..", "Y is X…" etc. Or an article that sounds like a rant from the title unless it's by someone like DHH or the Pinboard founder or has a large number of comments. Or posts about something from my country or this side of the world.

I also look for one of those rare excellent non-tech article (preferably a long-read) - on policy, on history et cetera. And articles related to policy, privacy etc - comments are pretty informative on such posts, even though the posts are overwhelmingly US centric but that I think is just the website demographic. Actually I think I prefer non-tech articles.

- Technical things that have nothing to do with how amazing or bad Rust, Golang, or a new js fotm is. Hype distortion is bad.

- Math stuff

- Bug fixes and security things

- Career related things

I try to avoid flamewar topics and articles that debate gender/race/politics/psychology for the 309838th time. They usually just make me angry, everyone has the same opinion coming out of it as they did going in and when I'm done reading I've learned nothing new. I wish they would be posted less.

I find it amusing that my approach is almost the exact inverse of the OP.

- If it has the word "quantum" in it, I almost always click it. I like things that are too technical for me. I really enjoy challenging scientific/ mathmatical articles, they are fascinating & humbling at the same time.

- certainly click on very specific programming language links, especially languages that I don't use. I am curious, and try to expose myself to a wide range of languages.

- won't read anything from certain domains, anything of questionable quality or click-baity/ tabloidy, eg. buzzfeed.com. Also, go on rants in comments about said questionable websites & how mad it makes me we are driving traffic & ad revenue to those jerks :p

- will click on the latest iteration of "MLS tutorial for beginners". I AM the right audience, and am highly interested in the applications of training models.

Basically I use HN to learn about things I don't know. I try to expand my horizons, and glean any useful knowledge or information I can from people way smarter and experienced than me.

Inversely correlated to number of comments.

Fluff article on bike shedding? 500 comments by know it all.

Technical deep dive into exciting new area? No comments.

I rarely click on anything not on the front page from a domain I don’t recognize. Even with all the noscript and ad blockers in the world there are too many baddies out there to justify the risk.

As far as the front page goes I lean toward titles that are about (in no particular order):

Infosec

Politics

Databases

Kernel / OS

News about major tech corps

I upvote stories that I want to see a discussion about or stories that I want to have a discussion about.

I look for keywords regarding the tools I use and that describe myself. For me, it's C, C++, random Javascript libraries, databases, certain computer hardware, companies I use, and certain startup business terms. It can be a keyword soup that doesn't make sense and I'll still click on it.

I also click on words that appear to be made up, because I've been trained that I'll usually get to read about a cool new library, programming language, or programming tool.

In your example, "quantum" is too vague. Even though I've worked for years in quantum-whatever areas, I feel that the word "quantum" doesn't describe myself due to being too general, so it doesn't trigger my attention.

So basically, I just scan the front page for words that are attractive to me, never fully reading headlines until I've already decided I'll click on it.

One predictive signal is submitter name, based on experience with their past submissions and HN comments.

I tend to be a "comments first to see if the source may be interesting" type; this has some subtle effects on my heuristics.

1) I tend to avoid (the more obvious) clickbait. Useless information aside it usually spares me the inevitable thread about it being clickbait.

2) I tend to avoid political links. The source is usually politically bent, the comments are polarizing, and it's often unnecessarily toxic.

3) I tend to avoid failure/scandal articles. They are usually just people acting smug because it was obvious that reboxing pizzas at cost was not a sustainable business model. No substance.

4) I tend to enjoy reading technical articles on languages/tools that I use or aspire to use. They're often full of very interesting discussions. I especially like release candidates/patch notes as people often have uses for new features that I hadn't quite considered or groked which makes the value-add all the greater for me.

5) I like a lot of articles about potential futures; where we're going with DNA, with space, with physics, etc. These are things well at the periphery of my own knowledge but seeing passionate people talk about what the future could hold excites me for what I have to look forward to in my life.

6) Beyond those heuristics I also often do a lot of thread-collapsing when I see things start to devolve into zealous/crude mentality. That being said, I often do follow witty retorts and quips, so there's that.

7) I also check out a lot of new languages and tools, not particularly because I want to use them but because I want to know the kinds of problems they perceive with existing tools and how they went about determining solutions to them. It's fun to see some of them start to mature and turn into real things, though (like Rust, which I do explore).

As far as actually clicking on the link goes, I usually click on anything that has a few decent comments (or, occasionally, very few comments) and will often read it if it seems highly interesting or opens well and is long-form.

I always click on anything on the front page where I don’t understand the headline. If it’s good enough to get votes _and_ I don’t know what it is, then it’s likely to be a good opportunity for me to learn something new.

If its anything I expect their will be fights and complains. Hell yeah inam clicking those l. For now my mind looks for

1. Uber screwed up in a new way.

2. How interview process sucks.

3. Why this X language / framework sucks or we are leaving this.

Lol, I'm right there with you. I find arguing online to be really stressful, but a lot of the time I enjoy reading other people's online arguments. Drama voyeurism.

I try not to click on nytimes, washingtonpost and all the corporate/state propaganda junk. And most importantly anything with a question for a headline ( except for Ask HN obviously).

Other than that, I'm open for anything CS/programming/tech/internet related topics.

I hate seeing so much anti-facebook, pro-vegan, climate change, etc obvious agenda pushing by organizations here. Though the mods do a good job of filtering much of it out, but it's obvious there are organizations dedicated to spamming HN to push their agenda.

If it’s trending on the front page and I have no idea what it’s even remotely about, then I’m definitely clicking. Why else am I here if not to be exposed to things outside of my day to day?

1. Will click on anything with the number of comments more than 100. 2. Then will read the first couple of comments 3. Then will decide whether to read the original article

For the main page:

1) Anything which has high number of votes and moderate amount of comments is a good technical post.

2) Anything with high number of votes and more or less equal (or higher) amount of comments is a controversial post.

3) Anything with very high votes and a few comments is a very niche tech post I generally keep an eye on.

For everything else, I just keep an eye on my favurite topics: Emulation, Systems Level Programming, Gamedev

There are some posts which do not cross 100 Mark, but still seem to be gold. Trust your favourites

Security vulnerability articles are often good. You get an in depth look at a piece of technology and problem solving related to it.

Announcements of company shutdowns can be interesting. The posts themselves tend not to be informative, but the comments can be quite insightful. There are almost always customers who chime in.

I'd fully ignore hype of the moment topics like cryptocurrencies or AI. Good articles on these subjects exist, but they are drowned out by noise.

I love reading anything related to JavaScript(ideally React) and cryptocurrencies. I am probably the worst kind of techie in the eyes of quite a few people here.

i think i used to have some inherent heuristics around avoiding content that i assumed would be a little too technical etc, but at some point i kinda dropped all preconceptions and decided to click on random stuff and exit within ~30 seconds if it seemed boring -- i think it's exposed me to a lot of content that has actually been super interesting that i'd otherwise have avoided for fear of not understanding much.

I check the comments for any link which looks vaguely interesting. If the top few comments aren't slamming it, I take a closer look.

I'm pretty similar. I especially do this when the title has a click-baity title.

I will usually open a topic if it has a lot of comments, even if it's something I normally have no interest in. I've learned more than a few things from fellow Hackers.

I thought I was mainly looking at two numbers: points and comments. However, after I've built a scatter plot of HN, I realized that's not enough. I still visit HN frequently to look for links with interesting keywords, or from specific domains.

But one thing is sure, I seldom look at the user, whether it's green or not.

If the domain is a mainstream tech/political/general-interest/news organization, then I ignore it.

I’m a non-technical founder, so I click mostly on:

Accessibility-related articles (my field)

Education/edtech articles (my field)

Most Show HNs that I’m in the target demographic for

Political articles that have lots of upvotes or comments (though I won’t always have the patience for diving into the comments)

Science videos or novelties that appear not to require background knowledge

1. Major events and tech news. I don’t read or listen to many news sites so it helps keep me up on the world.

2. New programming languages, especially the hobbyist ones. I like to see what other people think is useful in a language.

3. Mainstream psychology articles. I find stuff like biases and decision making fascinating.

I almost never click on a link where the title is the same as the domain name, e.g., "The Story of Foo" where the link is "thestoryoffoo.com"

Such links seem to me to be usually publicity-seeking rather than information-providing.

- subjects that I know nothing about

- subjects I work on daily

That covers everything so needless to say it can be quite addictive.

Mostly I click on things that teach me something about programming, things that make me feel like my comment will add to the noise, or things that instinctively make me angry.

I avoid everything about startup entrepreneurship like the plague.

I don't actually ever click on links from the homepage— I usually look at the comments first, then apply some heuristics like the types of discussions that are being had to see if I might like the article.

I actively avoid anything to do with geopolitics/US politics/social justice wars/fads (cryptocurrency), and as a result, I find HN (still) useful and informative.

If the title fits one line and I understand every single word from it and can guess what it is about I click. And believe me, it doesn't happen all the time

Usually the comments will help me decide to click or skip.

see the source code of: https://hackurls.com/

Ask HN? Just click! I have almost always found some good advice in these threads.

If it interests me. Oh, and I always click through to the comments first

The science articles are usually pretty interesting. Also, it's a nice place to catch up on tech announcements from Google, Apple, Facebook etc. In fact I'd be happy if these were the vast majority of news items.

I tend to avoid links to NYTimes and other paywalled articles. Could be interesting material but usually all I see is "You have read 5/5 articles. Please subscribe or wait until next month."

Follow your bliss.

[dead], because it shows a very interesting bias of the "unbiased" moderators.