News.YC Greasemonkey script to hide iPad articles(secure.grepular.com)
secure.grepular.com
News.YC Greasemonkey script to hide iPad articles
https://secure.grepular.com/projects/yc_ignoreipad.user.js
A greasemonkey script to hide all of the annoying iPad articles when viewing news.ycombinator.com. You can modify the regular expression in the script to hide other articles as well if you know regex.
44 comments
There is a Greasemonkey script called 'HN Toolkit' which performs a lot of useful functions, one of which is blocking articles based on regex matches. So all you have to do would be to enter 'iPad' into the toolkit options and it'll hide all links with the word in it.
Apart from this it also adds a searchYC box and has support for split view.
Link: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039
Apart from this it also adds a searchYC box and has support for split view.
Link: http://userscripts.org/scripts/show/25039
I managed to make it work in Chrome (well, Chromium) by splicing in some support functions from another script, and tweaking a line at the bottom.
http://gist.github.com/355697
To install, click the 'raw' link at the top right of the source.
http://gist.github.com/355697
To install, click the 'raw' link at the top right of the source.
really, guys? In less than a week it'll be back to normal.
I don't understand why people are all "not in MY HACKER NEWS" - this is what people are talking about. In 3 days we'll be back to Clojure and Haskell and "rate my startup" and "I built <clone of popular site> using <new technology> in <some trivial number of hours>."
I don't understand why people are all "not in MY HACKER NEWS" - this is what people are talking about. In 3 days we'll be back to Clojure and Haskell and "rate my startup" and "I built <clone of popular site> using <new technology> in <some trivial number of hours>."
Well, the great thing about this is that it is a welcome change from the "HN is being overrun, please stop posting/upvoting articles about X or from site Y" complaint. This makes a point by distributing a tool, that seems very hacker-ish.
I'm upvoting it for the spirit even though I probably will remove it after seeing whether it works in Chrome.
I'm upvoting it for the spirit even though I probably will remove it after seeing whether it works in Chrome.
It does. Works under GreaseKit on Safari too.
Some people like to put their heads in the sand and ignore things they don't like. Heck, that's why Fox News manages to maintain its entire audience share.
Silly analogy. If I wrote an app which removed all celebrity and sport related news from my favorite news site, leaving just politics and business, would that also be classified as me sticking my head in the sand?
Filtering out stuff you don't want to read != sticking your head in the sand.
Filtering out stuff you don't want to read != sticking your head in the sand.
Filtering out stuff you don't want to read != sticking your head in the sand.
Except you don't know you don't want to read it if you're using something as crude as looking for a string in a headline. I maintain that blindly ignoring content that has a single mention of a particular term is sticking your head in the sand (but everyone's entitled to interpret the situation as they like!).
Your fictional app would likely rely upon categorization as an indicator. On news sites, content managers determine the interest areas for a story and you can then filter them. Stories that are really important will spill over to other categories (such as, on most news sites, the "main"/general category) and stories that seem to be about one topic but are really about another should, ideally, be categorized appropriately (e.g. "iPad Designer Jonathan Ive Dies" isn't an iPad story - crude example, but just to make a point).
Filtering out items based on a string of letters in a headline (as suggested in this case) is not as elegant or robust. You might filter out "football" but still be interested if the plane carrying the Dallas Cowboys went down wiping out the team. You might filter out "health care" to avoid political discussions on HN but miss out on a story about a healthcare entrepreneur. It's as crude as early spam filtering. (And like spam filtering, could be improved by software that analyzed the content of the destination pages.. but relying on the headline alone is too flaky.)
As a temporary measure to filter out a glut of stories (as with the iPad affair), it can work, but as a mid/long term strategy, filtering by headline is crude and prone to covering up stories you might actually find interesting. The quickest and most precise filtering device out there is the one connected to your eyes.
Except you don't know you don't want to read it if you're using something as crude as looking for a string in a headline. I maintain that blindly ignoring content that has a single mention of a particular term is sticking your head in the sand (but everyone's entitled to interpret the situation as they like!).
Your fictional app would likely rely upon categorization as an indicator. On news sites, content managers determine the interest areas for a story and you can then filter them. Stories that are really important will spill over to other categories (such as, on most news sites, the "main"/general category) and stories that seem to be about one topic but are really about another should, ideally, be categorized appropriately (e.g. "iPad Designer Jonathan Ive Dies" isn't an iPad story - crude example, but just to make a point).
Filtering out items based on a string of letters in a headline (as suggested in this case) is not as elegant or robust. You might filter out "football" but still be interested if the plane carrying the Dallas Cowboys went down wiping out the team. You might filter out "health care" to avoid political discussions on HN but miss out on a story about a healthcare entrepreneur. It's as crude as early spam filtering. (And like spam filtering, could be improved by software that analyzed the content of the destination pages.. but relying on the headline alone is too flaky.)
As a temporary measure to filter out a glut of stories (as with the iPad affair), it can work, but as a mid/long term strategy, filtering by headline is crude and prone to covering up stories you might actually find interesting. The quickest and most precise filtering device out there is the one connected to your eyes.
The sort of filtering this script employs is the same sort of filtering you apply by not reading the titles of every news article on every news site each day.
There are countless articles on countless news sites that you would love to read, and by not attempting to filter out the articles which you don't want to read, you're missing out on them. You should stop sticking your head in the sand and start trying to read the news more efficiently.
There are countless articles on countless news sites that you would love to read, and by not attempting to filter out the articles which you don't want to read, you're missing out on them. You should stop sticking your head in the sand and start trying to read the news more efficiently.
You should stop sticking your head in the sand and start trying to read the news more efficiently.
That's always my goal, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a cavalier sort of "efficiency." As I previously discussed, context is crucial in filtering news and a regex on headlines is a poor way to infer it.
Our discussion, though, has missed that HN is a filter already - a contextual, human-powered one. I like what HN users vote up and find it an efficient way to get tech news. If HN users frequently voted up items I was not interested in, I should not frequent it.
That's always my goal, but throwing the baby out with the bathwater is a cavalier sort of "efficiency." As I previously discussed, context is crucial in filtering news and a regex on headlines is a poor way to infer it.
Our discussion, though, has missed that HN is a filter already - a contextual, human-powered one. I like what HN users vote up and find it an efficient way to get tech news. If HN users frequently voted up items I was not interested in, I should not frequent it.
Given a theoretical million articles, it makes perfect sense to try and remove the articles which you're least likely to be interested in so you've a higher chance of seeing the articles which you will be interested in. You can't brain filter them all, so you will always end up applying some sort of automatic filter which is not context aware.
Why do you care if the rest of us read iPad articles? This makes no sense. Is it an extension of the Apple-controls-everything philosophy?
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3 days? I think even 3 months would be an optimistic claim.
About 24 hours after the launch, only 20% of the FP items mention the iPad: http://skitch.com/petercooper/n78ty/ipadreality
If you fancy matching a wager, I'll put down $50 to a charity of your choice that 10% or fewer of the front page items on July 4, 2010 have "iPad" in the title :-)
If you fancy matching a wager, I'll put down $50 to a charity of your choice that 10% or fewer of the front page items on July 4, 2010 have "iPad" in the title :-)
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A magical and revolutionary script at an unbelievable price.
This is the future of computing.
I sympathize with the substantive criticism, but let's not pull a Reddit.
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It's a game-changer.
The irony is this script would hide this post.
Which would be good since it would already be installed.
I guess I should thank you before I install the script.
It's pretty easy to modify it to hide other types of articles too if you understand regex. At the moment it hides all articles with a title matching this:
/\bi-?pad\b/i
/\bi-?pad\b/i
And if there's anyone here who doesn't know regex - go and learn regex. It will take 30 minutes max and the investment in time and brain space will pay off countless times.
Thank you for providing this script, for all those of us too lazy to do it ourselves. :)
Now if we can have one that filters the functional programming posts, and the "I'm stupid enough to think I achieved something by cloning this trivial, yet major web service with this terribly unscalable new web tool" posts.
I'm all for the random tech news and bitching about DRM and software patents though. :)
Now if we can have one that filters the functional programming posts, and the "I'm stupid enough to think I achieved something by cloning this trivial, yet major web service with this terribly unscalable new web tool" posts.
I'm all for the random tech news and bitching about DRM and software patents though. :)
I debated not even reading HN for the next week, because I actually had a dream about an iPad last night. Apple, that's just crossing the line :)
imagine being able to walk down the street and not see anything you don't like
i think i'd be bumping into a few things :-)
i think i'd be bumping into a few things :-)
Unfortunately it doesn't automatically fetch news items from the following pages. Anyway, it's an improvement.
Nice to know that Greasemonkey scripts like this work as a Google Chrome Extension.
Does the script hide this item from the front page as well? Hmmmm....
Can you write a more general version that excludes ALL relevant and topical submissions?
THANK YOU!
anyone have one for google reader??
I need a script to hide lame news like this one.
I need a script to hide lame comments like this one.
Can I have this script running for the hole internet please?