alt.hn

6/5/2026 at 8:38:40 PM

Hacker News, Sans AI

 https://elijahpotter.dev/articles/hacker-news-sans-AI

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 9:41:21 PM

I can deal with a launch problem. I am looking forward to being able to check it out. I stopped coming to HN as often as I used to because there has been too much AI talk. It's like a dang AI subreddit. I don't want anything to do with AI. I have lost 2 jobs to AI budgets and stupid executive decisions. It's no longer part of my personal and professional life.

I hope it works out.

by millerm

6/5/2026 at 10:18:27 PM

I agree with you, but haven't really left yet since there's still a good amount of discourse outside AI related topics. Seems a significant amount of contributors here are all to eager to fall over themselves putting themselves, their juniors, children, and colleagues out of work, long term.

by andrewjf

6/5/2026 at 11:27:35 PM

My personal stance is that the genie is out of the bottle, and there's likely no putting it back. Kind of like nuclear weapons: I wish they didn't exist, but since they do I'd rather be on the side that has them.

Honestly it's an incredible technology the likes of which I never thought I would see in my lifetime. It's definitely not perfect, but it is improving at a frightening pace. Some days I am optimistic for how it might shape the future, and other days I am scared.

If goverments wanted to make a credible effort to limit how they are used, I would support that. But I'm not terribly optimistic that can or will happen.

by freetime2

6/6/2026 at 5:42:17 AM

> Kind of like nuclear weapons

True, but you're not being bombarded 24/7 with irrelevant -- and most likely false -- information about nuclear weapons.

by stodor89

6/6/2026 at 12:12:28 AM

How a post about "Hacker News, Sans AI" became about .... AI !

by PaulDavisThe1st

6/6/2026 at 6:12:43 AM

Distinction is perfect continence.

by classified

6/6/2026 at 12:24:16 AM

[dead]

by onetokeoverthe

6/5/2026 at 10:49:48 PM

TBH, I'm mostly here out of spite at this point. It's unhealthy but I can't seem to stop rage-reading.

by archagon

6/5/2026 at 10:52:31 PM

Would love to hear more detail about the job losses you mentioned, if you are willing to share.

by block_dagger

6/5/2026 at 10:24:23 PM

I've addressed the issues. It should be usable now. I apologize to everyone who encountered an error page. Have a good weekend, everyone!

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 10:56:59 PM

It’s interesting how, as someone more pro-AI, I feel the exact opposite way - every comment thread just devolves into people saying AI is stupid (OK, perhaps modulo new model releases from frontier labs, those tend to be fairly positive). Like we had a thread about what your AI workflow is and people were coming in and saying they didn’t have one because AI is bad. Really? Do these people enter threads about what your favorite Rust library is and say they don’t have any and Rust is a bad language?

by johnfn

6/6/2026 at 12:57:44 AM

Sure, but not to the same extent. Because the industry isn't experiencing a trend where it tells everyone that if they don't use Rust, they are obsolete. And because nobody is saying "Rust is going to take all our jobs" to all the other programmers. And because most of the threads on HN aren't about Rust on a daily basis.

Sure overly enthusiastic Rust fans exist and they are annoying. But it's nowhere even close to the AI mania gripping the industry.

by bigstrat2003

6/6/2026 at 1:49:05 AM

Just because some people are contributing to bad discourse doesn't mean that you also get permission to contribute to bad discourse. If you don't like it when people say you're going to be obsolete -- tell them! Don't hop into random spaces where no one is saying that and act negative! This just lowers the discourse quality everywhere. Very few people on HN are saying you are going to be obsolete if you don't use AI (I basically haven't seen a single person say this who hasn't been massively downvoted).

by johnfn

6/5/2026 at 10:59:42 PM

> Do these people enter threads about what your favorite Rust library is and say they don’t have any and Rust is a bad language?

Yes. And Rust people enter threads about other languages and projects not written in Rust and say they're bad because they aren't Rust. Welcome to Hacker News.

by krapp

6/6/2026 at 12:29:10 AM

If you can find me even a single example of this I’d love to see it.

by johnfn

6/6/2026 at 5:15:17 AM

The rsync thread has the requisite comment saying a Rust rewrite would fix everything.

by badc0ffee

6/6/2026 at 7:41:13 AM

I really miss n-gate

by picofarad

6/5/2026 at 10:49:07 PM

[flagged]

by 7e

6/5/2026 at 9:43:52 PM

I've been training to naturally ignore AI mentions that I thought this entry was about some HN ui font change (Sans).

by henriquemaia

6/5/2026 at 10:22:15 PM

The style is a bit off for the usual HN fare: 'sans' should be lowercase here, or otherwise it's easy to confuse for a font. It's still pretty swell :)

by altairprime

6/6/2026 at 5:07:48 AM

> The style is a bit off

A much better option, in my opinion: https://hcker.news/?ai=exclude

by DavideNL

6/6/2026 at 6:11:15 AM

Yeah, that doesn't work either. E.g. it has the following stories:

- Nordstjernen 1.0 (built with Claude)

- Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

by ochrist

6/6/2026 at 6:48:14 AM

The only way to fully detect and remove AI posts from HN is using human curation by a human-selected few. Everything automated will have a higher review rate (postsReviewed / postsTotal) and also an higher error rate (incorrectReview / postsReviewed) in return for not being subject to puny human weaknesses like sleep, sickness, and (until curator selection is itself automated), spam/troll malice. To misquote my favorite blooper reel ever, “That’s not something that code can fix, that’s gonna be a little harder to fix”.

by altairprime

6/6/2026 at 7:08:46 AM

I don't see the "Claude" story. Did you change the filters? (i can clearly see a message that the AI filter is active in the top of the page.)

"GenAI" is not filtered indeed. Maybe it's not working perfectly, but it does work for most/many AI stories. Good enough!

PS. You can just add the word "GenAI" to your manual filters, in settings...

by DavideNL

6/5/2026 at 9:51:10 PM

Was about to write the same

by geniium

6/5/2026 at 9:40:09 PM

I built (well, vibe-coded) a version of this a while back that runs against the Hacker News API, it's static HTML on GitHub Pages so I don't have to run a server for it: https://tools.simonwillison.net/hacker-news-filtered

by simonw

6/6/2026 at 5:49:54 AM

It is a little ironic coming from the most prolific AI poster here

by Bolwin

6/6/2026 at 12:12:53 PM

I have a quirky sense of humor.

by simonw

6/5/2026 at 9:59:12 PM

interesting but i rarely use any HN reader

there's just something about this UI and its consistency

I also don't mind all the AI related news

If anything I just wish they had a mute/block button. its not fun when somebody is stalking you replying to every comment you make.

by zuzululu

6/5/2026 at 9:47:11 PM

How often do you use it?

Immediately I started thinking how nice it would be to use natural language to have LLMs generate a deterministic filter for stories matching content I DO care about, filtered from New. Instead of filtering it out.

by phildenhoff

6/5/2026 at 9:58:25 PM

I don't use it myself. I built it for a Hacker News thread where someone else was saying "I wish I could browse Hacker News without all the AI stuff".

by simonw

6/6/2026 at 12:01:06 AM

Love that this is configurable unlike OPs version. That way I can exclude "I rewrote ____ in Rust".

Would be nice to have "include" option... for those of use who may want to ONLY read posts about AI or whatever else niche interest.

by maxkosty

6/5/2026 at 9:39:04 PM

I have an app that does Hacker News with AI; it analyses all the stories and comments for a number of criteria, and tags them so you can skip stuff you don't want to see. I should get around to actually publishing it but I've been lazy.

One of the fun things I noticed is the psychological impact of framing. A comment that might've made you feel the need to reply before has less emotional weight if it's highlighted in red and a diminished font. Same thing for stories; if you would normally disagree with a story and it would make you want to comment, you feel less like commenting if the story is rated as 'lacking evidence', 'unsupported by research', 'personal anecdotes only', etc. It drives down the feeling of needing to engage. Which is horrible for site engagement, but good for mental health (I think).

by 0xbadcafebee

6/5/2026 at 9:55:31 PM

For one sec, I got excited for a new font!

by factorialboy

6/5/2026 at 9:23:13 PM

Interesting this keeps moving up the front page when the site is inaccessible because it's hosted on a baked potato.

by 866-RON-0-FEZ

6/5/2026 at 9:36:34 PM

Yep. My single core Proxmox machine sitting in my living room with horrible cache invalidation is struggling.

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 9:45:00 PM

Sounds like a great use case for serving plain HTTP over cloudflare tunnel. Why terminate TLS when you don't have to?

by 866-RON-0-FEZ

6/5/2026 at 9:48:23 PM

You know what's funny? Most of this site is exactly that. The _one_ time I do something dynamic…

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 9:40:22 PM

73% of users vote prior to reading TFA, according to this research. (I am sometimes guilty of this myself)

We live in a world being dimished by confirmation bias, but this isn't a new thing. Those who wrote/approved the headlines always had more power than those who wrote the articles.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315096490_Consumers...

edit: disclaimer, no hate on TFA. Just responding to the comment.

by consumer451

6/5/2026 at 10:34:47 PM

73% of Reddit users vote prior to reading TFA:

> In the present work, we introduce and make available a new dataset containing the activity logs that recorded all activity for 309 Reddit users for one year.

by nozzlegear

6/5/2026 at 10:57:38 PM

n=309 is better than n=1, but yeah...

However, tracking over a year might make the subject forget about the whole thing, and act naturally. As far as HN vs Reddit, not much difference really. I mean that as more props to reddit users than anything against HNers.

by consumer451

6/5/2026 at 11:06:05 PM

Reddit "users"

by paulnpace

6/5/2026 at 10:02:06 PM

Huh, I didn't even remember to vote for posts, i just scroll down to read (and vote sometimes on comments)

by LearnYouALisp

6/5/2026 at 9:53:19 PM

This submission should be studied by people holding clipboards. It needs a follow-up:

"How I made it to the top of HN with zero content beyond a catchy title"

It further proves the key to getting your stuff on HN is not to post interesting content, it's to post something that sounds interesting.

by 866-RON-0-FEZ

6/5/2026 at 9:56:20 PM

D1 hater right here.

by chilipepperhott

6/6/2026 at 2:55:46 AM

Shows that there is demand for this. It works for me now btw.

by ShinyLeftPad

6/5/2026 at 10:00:13 PM

Just goes to show how much demand there is.

HN really needs a containment board.

by parliament32

6/5/2026 at 9:34:38 PM

I'm curious to find out if they're using a model to detect AI content. I'd be more amused than disappointed. But, alas, potato.

by kylecazar

6/5/2026 at 9:38:26 PM

I got a partial load and what it looks like it does is just search each submission for a list of key words and discards any that hits, so it would discard this submission.

by ofalkaed

6/5/2026 at 9:39:22 PM

I would argue that in a small way, this post _is_ about AI, so it wouldn't be a false positive.

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 9:59:42 PM

I was not suggesting that it would be a false positive, I was suggesting that this will filter out many submissions that would be of interest to those that want less AI on HN. This would flag a blog that has nothing to do with AI if some random person mentioned AI in the comments of that blog post, right?

by ofalkaed

6/5/2026 at 9:35:24 PM

It's not an LLM.

Why use big program when regex do trick?

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 9:54:11 PM

You can get the best of both worlds with a small embedding model

by Bolwin

6/5/2026 at 10:06:50 PM

Show me an embedding model that runs as fast as an optimized regex engine and I'll buy you a beer.

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 9:40:03 PM

Master of efficiency

by kylecazar

6/5/2026 at 10:29:03 PM

It should be accessible now.

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 11:48:22 PM

My immediate thought was already expressed in one of the few comments:

> Does this use an LLM to categorize "AI-related" vs "not-AI related" articles? Would be ironic. Lol

by amelius

6/5/2026 at 9:46:23 PM

I've been thinking of making something like this for myself for quite a while now, glad I'm not the only one who had the idea and someone actually did it before I got to it

by flexagoon

6/5/2026 at 9:27:32 PM

Was hoping it was a new font.

by Polizeiposaune

6/5/2026 at 9:47:04 PM

The filter doesn't appear to be perfect, one of the top posts right now is "My Agent Skill for Test-Driven Development"

by pkage

6/5/2026 at 10:01:07 PM

I guess they could run the titles through a (flash) LLM to catch ones were keyword detection won't cut it.

Have to love the irony. :)

by rsyring

6/5/2026 at 10:46:05 PM

At least the blog post was proofread by an AI.

by szatkus

6/6/2026 at 4:02:49 AM

[dead]

by soraminazuki

6/5/2026 at 10:03:49 PM

That should be fixed as soon as my server has a chance to catch up.

by chilipepperhott

6/6/2026 at 5:59:36 AM

Great idea. But the first thread I opened (Nordstjernen 1.0) is according to the comments about a project built with Claude. So it doesn't remove all the AI stuff.

by ochrist

6/5/2026 at 9:16:42 PM

Hug of death?

by 9021007

6/5/2026 at 9:19:52 PM

yep. standby

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 9:24:38 PM

A lot of demand for ‘Sans AI’ :)

by cliche

6/5/2026 at 9:31:08 PM

Probably by bots :)

by almogo

6/5/2026 at 9:32:52 PM

Our AI overlords don't want an AI-free Hacker News

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 10:34:35 PM

Oh. A little bit of a let down. I was expecting "HN without comments and posts written by LLMs".

by uniclaude

6/5/2026 at 10:36:21 PM

That would be cool. Although your username is a little suspicious…

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 10:01:51 PM

Are you using AI to figure out what's about what's AI and what's not?

by mkw5053

6/5/2026 at 9:43:11 PM

Hopefully fixed the cache invalidation. I'm crossing my fingers.

by chilipepperhott

6/6/2026 at 12:29:52 AM

Coincidently he uses AI to solve this problem

by kindawinda

6/6/2026 at 12:40:59 AM

Do you have evidence? I see no indication of this.

by soraminazuki

6/6/2026 at 1:02:43 AM

I have evidence that it's not AI. It's just a regex.

https://github.com/elijah-potter/blog/blob/master/pages/hnsa...

by vitus

6/6/2026 at 2:56:04 AM

I thought as much. With the sheer amount of flagged comments in the comment history turning up with showdead on, it looked very suspicious.

by soraminazuki

6/6/2026 at 12:54:47 AM

What would be the worse non-semantic alternative? Regex?

LLMs are the holy grail for getting beyond string matches. I would hope one was used to solve such a problem, otherwise that would be a poor product, right?

I did not investigate the product, but my point here is irony. The correct solution to implement the TFA product is to use an LLM.

by consumer451

6/6/2026 at 3:30:21 AM

Yes, keyword-based matching is more than good enough for the use case. It doesn't justify bringing in trillion dollar companies to subsidize the costs.

Even if you wanted to go beyond simple keyword matching, there are ways to determine relevance before jumping to the shiny new overkill solution.

Also for everyone's sanity, please don't turn a troll's false accusations into a cynical argument for more LLMs. That's what drives to people to reach for solutions like the one in the article in the first place.

by soraminazuki

6/6/2026 at 1:01:55 AM

Sometimes a little poison is medicine.

by yubblegum

6/5/2026 at 10:34:09 PM

While you are at it can you filter out posts to subscription only sites eg economist NYT $&c. We're all here to escape click bait

by dtrav

6/5/2026 at 9:50:18 PM

A problem is it doesn't load as fast. Could it be helped?

by hirako2000

6/5/2026 at 9:55:10 PM

Yes, it can. I am having a major cache invalidation problem. One of the major blights of programmers everywhere.

by chilipepperhott

6/6/2026 at 1:00:58 PM

Great idea. I too have been worn out by AI talk on HN.

Right now, number 3 is an AI slop tutorial released by Microsoft.

I guess there is no real escape

by wodenokoto

6/5/2026 at 10:30:18 PM

^how about just be a devoted AI section at the top?

by theflyestpilot

6/5/2026 at 10:41:21 PM

Welp, it was only a matter of time. Thank you

by BinaryMachine

6/5/2026 at 10:10:25 PM

Yes, please. A general-purpose filter like the one on 4chan would also work.

by edgarvaldes

6/6/2026 at 2:05:18 AM

I built a filter for AI (inclusive and exclusive) for hcker.news a while back and continue to maintain it. It’s quite robust, and does more than just keyword filtering.

https://hcker.news/?ai=exclude

by postalcoder

6/6/2026 at 6:16:17 AM

Someone mentioned this in another comment, so I'll just copy/pasta my own comment:

Yeah, that doesn't work either. E.g. it has the following stories:

- Nordstjernen 1.0 (built with Claude)

- Ask HN: What was your "oh shit" moment with GenAI?

by ochrist

6/6/2026 at 4:46:52 AM

Thanks, love it!

I'm now wondering, what the default filter of https://hckrnews.com/ is exactly. I can't seem to get the same result on https://hcker.news/ ....

:/

by DavideNL

6/6/2026 at 5:01:44 AM

...so i think its just a cumulative view of the Hacker News front page, except grouped/ordered differently? ¯\_(ツ)_/

by DavideNL

6/6/2026 at 12:53:00 AM

I have my own version of this as a browser extension paired with a backend that runs all new submissions through a small LLM to classify them, which catches more than a simple word match. Fight fire with fire, as they say.

Though I haven't used it much lately, because seeing half of the front page disappear when I enable it is a bit disheartening.

by bakugo

6/5/2026 at 10:56:17 PM

Maybe HN could have a filter button that hides ANY threads for keywords you choose to filter.

I would instantly hide anything about Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos.

by wewewedxfgdf

6/6/2026 at 1:51:28 AM

Says the guy that uses a man-in-the-middle service to "protect" his website. So dumb. I seriously hate Cloudflare.

by kordlessagain

6/5/2026 at 10:01:52 PM

I've been thinking the same. Couldn't this be done with a browser extension that hides elements that matches a regex?

by ares623

6/5/2026 at 10:23:37 PM

Not quite. Lots of articles don't mention AI in the title, even if that is their core subject.

by chilipepperhott

6/5/2026 at 10:47:56 PM

Okay, now filter out the VC stuff too...

by nubinetwork

6/5/2026 at 10:33:02 PM

[dead]

by booleandilemma

6/5/2026 at 10:17:10 PM

Love this. Really nice to see a HN front page without AI, the fatigue is real.

by cliche