Post your HN tricks.

88 pointsby vakselvor 17 Jahren47 comments

Seems like there are a whole bunch of features that a lot of people don't know about. So I'd like to get a list of everything in one place.

23 comments

tomsaffellvor 17 Jahren

If you want to catch up on the last ~week, then you'll want: http://news.ycombinator.com/best

megancolinvor 17 Jahren

ok thank you! http://www.newsguide.us/art-entertainment/movies/Todd-DiRobe...

vakselvor 17 Jahren

To start off:

Search: http://www.searchyc.com

Submissions by new members: http://news.ycombinator.com/noobstories

I know there is one to only see submissions by old users but I don't remember the url

bjoernwvor 17 Jahren

http://news.ycombinator.com/classic

[deleted]vor 17 Jahren

jeroenvor 17 Jahren

And comments by new members: http://news.ycombinator.com/noobcomments

kirubakaranvor 17 Jahren

1. Absolutely love http://ask.searchyc.com/ to check if I missed any AskHNs

2. In my personal wiki, I have a list links to people whose comment threads I follow closely. [http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=*username*]

3. http://www.gabrielweinberg.com/startupswiki/Ask_YC_Archive has not been updated recently, but still a good resource

4. http://news.ycombinator.com/classic and http://news.ycombinator.com/lists of course

5. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039 modified to help me not visit one aggravating unethical "blog" (you know which). I don't hide it altogether as I value the discussion here.

Xichekolasvor 17 Jahren

FWIW, the new version of #5 allows you to apply arbitrary styles to each item, rather than just hiding them.

I put a blue background on all the Ask threads for instance.

To do so, the 'banlist' is now a textbox. Each line is in the format:

  *regex*->*style*

The default style is to hide anything that matches. Both titles and urls are matched. So:

  valleywag.com
  Ask HN->background-color:red;

Would hide anything from valleywag.com and put red backgrounds on all the Ask threads. The styling is pretty rough, so not sure what else works beside background colors... feel free to complain if something needs fixed. ;)

kirubakaranvor 17 Jahren

Cool! background-color works but color does not.

text-decoration:line-through; works and that is what I use for marking the websites to avoid. Thanks for the cool tool.

fallentimesvor 17 Jahren

PG's microblog:

http://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg

jwintervor 17 Jahren

PG's other microblog:

http://ycombinator.posterous.com/

[deleted]vor 17 Jahren

zackattackvor 17 Jahren

IRC channel: #startups on irc.freenode.net

tdavisvor 17 Jahren

NOTE: #startups is about 30% startup/hacker stuff and 70% utter nonsense. I contribute mostly to the nonsense portion, but a few of us regulars were/are in YC and frequently answer YC-related questions.

jacquesmvor 17 Jahren

I'll just pretend I didn't see that, HN is a large enough timesink as it is.

dylanzvor 17 Jahren

Was about to post the same thing... <plugs ears and says "la la la la la">

mcavvor 17 Jahren

RSS feed that includes HN's comments:

http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=23159aed1a913917f8...

iamwilvor 17 Jahren

I dunno, I kinda like the idea that people learn about it as they participate and lurk on the site--kind of like leveling up in an informal way, instead of getting it all at once.

DTrejovor 17 Jahren

They'll have to learn to search for this, once it falls off the homepage.

mahmudvor 17 Jahren

The [X] button in the top right corner does wonders for one's productivity. As a bonus, use a different browser for work than you usually do for "surfing". My Firefox is crawling with gadgets that each light up and pulsate with every "must see" action that happens in my extended family of RSS feeds, contacts, and bookmarks. My work browser is a light, crisp little Opera thing that has 10 tabs open all set to to various sub-URLs of http://localhost:8080 :-)

swombatvor 17 Jahren

I don't have an [X] button in the top right corner. I do have 3 brightly coloured pill buttons in the top left though.

SwellJoevor 17 Jahren

I think that means there's something wrong with your computer. It could be serious. Is your mouse also missing two buttons?

dkerstenvor 17 Jahren

I don't have any buttons at all. I dont even have window borders or a title bar. Yeah, I use a tiling window manager.

GeneralMaximusvor 17 Jahren

I have a yellow tab in the top left corner. Go figure :)

mahmudvor 17 Jahren

Be?

GeneralMaximusvor 17 Jahren

You're pretty close :)

http://haiku-os.org

jobeirnevor 17 Jahren

http://hackerne.ws -> http://news.ycombinator.com

SwellJoevor 17 Jahren

While I guess the folks who registered this name have nothing but legitimate intent, this is pretty much text book man-in-the-middle attack technique. It would take one change to the DNS record and a simple sniffing proxy, and every user to use that address would be compromised.

As long as it is not owned by pg and rtm, I would strongly suggest you use news.ycombinator.com

Actually looking at the registration data, I'm extremely suspicious of this name. If I had ever used it, I would be changing my authentication details.

whois for hackerne.ws:

1234567 lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus

Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com) Domain Name: HACKERNE.WS Created on: 27-Nov-07 Expires on: 27-Nov-09 Last Updated on: 28-Nov-08

Administrative Contact: man, europe [email protected] none 1234567 lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus 35799123456

Technical Contact: man, europe [email protected] none 1234567 lemesos, lemesos 12345 Cyprus 35799123456

jacquesmvor 17 Jahren

yep.

And even if the folks who registered it are 'legit', if they let the domain lapse who knows where it will end up and it's not as though you'll get a warning the next time you point your browser to that address.

brianto2010vor 17 Jahren

Not really a 'trick', but here are two cool bookmarklets for for visualizing polls:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=700669

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=528172

vakselvor 17 Jahren

Don't forget the bookmarklet, makes posting stories a piece of cake: http://ycombinator.com/bookmarklet.html

lionheartedvor 17 Jahren

One general writing trick I learned - after writing a long comment, I'll usually go back and edit it so in the first sentence people know what they're going to read. Some of the best comments I've seen on here are detailed, long ones, but if it jumps right into the middle of presenting the argument and evidence and statistics, a lot of people will glaze over it. So the short intro that lets people know what you're writing about helps a lot.

swombatvor 17 Jahren

You can use this "trick" successfully for any form of writing.

As the rule goes: tell'em what you're going to tell'em, tell'em, and then tell'em what you told'em.

riffervor 17 Jahren

I highly recommend a slightly modified version: tell them what you're going to show them, show them, then tell them what you showed them

tomevor 17 Jahren

I've heard that rule before, and like it a lot. Do you know anything about its origins or who said it?

jimmvor 17 Jahren

This reply will let you know that I don't know anything about its origins or who said it.

Sorry, I don't know.

We've just learned that Jim doesn't know anything about the origins of that writing advice, or who said it.

swombatvor 17 Jahren

Nope, no idea, sorry.

Herringvor 17 Jahren

Autopager: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/4925

Ajaxy loading of next pages

david927vor 17 Jahren

To get italics, use asterisks (*).

streetyvor 17 Jahren

If you want more than just the link in your RSS feed there was http://nirmalpatel.com/fcgi/hn_feed.fcgi

It looks like it is now just a redirect to http://andrewtrusty.appspot.com/readability/feed?url=http%3A... which if you de-construct the url leads to a more generic solution.

The content from there can also be fed into Yahoo Pipes for any filtering you want to do. Given the plethora of HN related pipes it seems like everybody just creates their own. Having said that if you want somewhere to start I use http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.info?_id=c0d729843a9b9e8de...

GHFigsvor 17 Jahren

noprocrast: on maxvisit: 20 minaway: 700

[deleted]vor 17 Jahren

jacquesmvor 17 Jahren

To bypass the anti flame-war controls click 'link' when the 'reply' link isn't visible yet.

Pistos2vor 17 Jahren

Noob question: What anti flame-war controls?

tdavisvor 17 Jahren

The idea was to make it impossible to reply quickly to deeply-nested threads in order to let the flames settle (the assumption being that deeply-nested threads are generally just flame wars). It appears it was only made less convenient.

eddvor 17 Jahren

If your an iPhone user this works well on your homescreen: http://www.icombinator.net

ilitiritvor 17 Jahren

GM Script that enables foldable comments:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=747786

tsondermannvor 17 Jahren

The HN Onepage Greasemonkey script. http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/30512

Allows me to load pages in a separate frame and then vote and/or comment on them. Saves me the trouble of loading up 15 tabs and forgetting to vote up the stories that I like.

delanovor 17 Jahren

What is the trick for getting active URIs on profile pages?

Examples:

* active: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=mqt

* inactive: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=iamelgringo

bayareaguyvor 17 Jahren

While working I use this strategy to limit my HN reading to compile cycles: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=447077