Hacker News Reader

Can someone give me a Hacker News that is based on the last time I saw the home page? So if I haven't been around in a week, it shows me the top articles of the last week, but if I was around one hour ago, it focuses on what happened since then?

Imagine I have been out the week of Thanksgiving. What did I miss? A site should be smart enough to adapt the top stories to my rythmn. Store a cookie.

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Well, it's not automatic, but http://hckrnews.com/ does have that functionality, since that's why I built it. I do store and highlight the last visit time, which is useful for visits of a day or less. For a longer timespan, filter down (top 10 or top 20), then "Get Next Day" lets you page back through days you've missed.

It's an interesting idea to make it adaptive, but I see a number of challenges. For example, you want just the highlights if you've been gone for a while, but perhaps someone else wants to scan through everything? Then there are the UI challenges -- making it obvious what is happening (and being able to change the default behavior) could be a challenge.

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