This a small side project I built a few months ago and I find myself using it quite often to stay up to date so I thought I should share.
Its updated every few hours.
Feedback welcome.
I do like the simplicity and interface, however.
I beleive staying informed about world events and geopolitics is important, but some of these stories don't even have that redeeming value. The 4th story is about the death of 5 Russian mountain climbers in Nepal. In what world is that one of the most important stories for a mainstream English speaking audience?
I agree the design of the site is good, but the specific news chosen leaves a lot to be desired.
Given the magnitudes of those involved, it seems likely they'd fill the headlines.
That said, perhaps you meant, "I would prefer to not know" or "I would prefer to not be reminded" about these genocides?
You aren't disconnected from those things.
So yeah, keep yourself and your government accountable.
We will encounter, as our awareness of the world expands, turbulent and traumatizing information. This isn't something to be criticized--it's unavoidable up to and including our own mortality. The responsible adult does not bury their head in the sand but, instead, interrogates the foundations of their own security.
Smell a flower. Take a bubble bath. Listen to some jazz. Hug your loved ones.
But don't cork the fountain of truth.
For example, if I wanted to cultivate an anti-immigrant readership I might publish all of the crimes that immigrants commit. It’s not that these stories are false, they are just not a representative sample of all stories.
> don’t cork the fountain of truth
There is an opportunity cost to every moment you spend reading about far away conflicts.
So my question is, what is the actual purpose of exposing yourself to the gory play-by-play of that framing of world events? There are plenty of other stories to read. Reading about conflicts in far-away places feels important but the reality is that anything more than a passing understanding won’t improve your life in any meaningful way.
Edit: You appear to be scraping it, actually?
From the feedback here are the next steps.
1. Making the titles shorter with an ai model.
2. Tagging articles and putting the tags / topics on top bar for filtering.
3. Attributing sources like wikipedia in the footer.
4. Adding some more sources and have a minimum amount of positive stories. There are ongoing wars at the moment but it cannot be too depressing to read news either.
5. Improving contrast of the subtitles.
6. After titles are shortened have a way to see a very short summary (similar to the current title) somewhere
7. And finally add login and upvoting so we can rank stories better.
From what I understand people like the design so that will remain unchanged.
Feel free to suggest anything I missed
Right now it seems heavily weighted towards world politics with a sprinkle of Victoria's Secret
Specifically I'd make it like little tags that you can click on to filter for or click on an x to filter out, something like that (think like how you can "solo" or "mute" any given track on a DAW)
> 10. Attorney General of Spain Álvaro García Ortiz is charged by the Supreme Court for revealing secrets about a tax fraud case involving the boyfriend of the president of the Community of Madrid Isabel Díaz Ayuso. However, García Ortiz announces that he will not resign. (RTVE)
becomes
> Spain AG García Ortiz Charged with Tax Fraud Leak, Won’t Resign (RTVE)
Journalism is work.
The current site is a nice and fair summary (though I think the attribution to the original sources rather hidden) with easy links to the original source.
If yu start doing automated summaries, you are taking nearly all the value of someone else's work.
For me it seemed like more effort to skim than HN but I am not sure why that is.
My first impression though is this is better than anything I use currently for news. Really a testament to what complete trash "the news" has become.
For me it's the length of the headlines. HN headlines tend to be 10-12 words max. Headlines on this site are 3-4 times longer, and are significantly harder to parse (for me at least). The headlines on the actual article look to be more concise. For example, the first link right now is "At least 16 people, including the mayor of Nabatieh, Lebanon, are killed in an Israeli Air Force airstrike on a municipal building in Nabatieh, with Lebanese Prime Minister Najib Mikati condemning the attack. (BBC News)" and when you click it you see the much more concise "Mayor and 15 others killed in Israeli strike on Lebanon council meeting". If it's trying to be a 1-sentence summary of the article, instead of a headline, I don't find that very helpful.
Still early alpha, https://www.stonkys.com
Feedback appreciated
How do you choose which articles go where?
At least one is outdated - the launch of Europa Clipper.
For me, clustering articles by topic would make it much more efficient, so I could browse by topic. Easier said than done, of course, unless you are manually curating it.
Otherwise it's a nice job, congratulations.
For example, you have
"Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy says North Korea has become directly involved in the war, with a senior Ukrainian intelligence official saying around 3,000 North Korean troops are now in Russia, and are training for deployment to Russian-occupied territories. (Politico)"
which I have no clue if this is factual. How did you determine that it's factual?
The "is it factual" rule here is simpler than you may think* - in your example, can it be verified by multiple credible sources that
* Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said "as quoted", and that
* A senior Ukrainian intelligence official said "as quoted"
If so then it's fine to report that .. it's factual that they made the statements, whether what they said is also true is a seperate matter that may or may not be addressed in another reported snippet.
In the aggragator case here they're not even making the claim that "Volodymyr Zelenskyy said {X}" .. instead they are asserting as fact that "Politico reported that {Y}" .. which can be verified by a secure link to the Politico source.
* Until recently ...
Today, of course, there's highly credible in appearence generated video of public figures saying things they never said - this is the current challenge.
The means to address that is to chain reported news to sources and develop better tools to probe that chain for BS. A work in progress.
#666 on #ddd is a contrast ratio of 4.2:1, which might be difficult for some readers. Even moving to #555 on #ddd would move you into passing WCAG AA. Moving #454545 would pass WCAG AAA contrast ratios, and you could be pretty confident that nearly all readers would find it much easier to read!
Human judgement calls cannot be free from biases.
This is not news this is propaganda, fix your filters if you want people to use your service.
> a senior Ukrainian intelligence official says Y and Z
Do you doubt the veracity of these two claims? The headline there actually reads as very clear statements of fact -- two people made several claims. The headline, notably, does NOT make any claims about the veracity of what Zelenskyy or the intelligence official said.