Hacker News Reader

i would often use `site:news.ycombinator.com` to search a topic to see if it has been talked about, and what comments that topic has.

It's good, but not really _that_ often useful.

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Hacker News has a really good dedicated search engine:

https://hn.algolia.com/

except the date picker is horribly, horribly broken.

That's how a search engine should work: it returns only what you asks of it, knows how many results there are, can be forced to use your query verbatim.

Yes I use that and site:reddit.com as well.

Yep, those are my two modifiers i often use -- that and since:2021

This has recently been my desperation move when e.g similar bugs to what I'm facing were solved a decade ago (but were irrelevant) were coming out as top results rather than bugs for a recent version

We also have recent github issues as an app within you.com to solve for that.

(you.com founder here)

I want a comprehensive list of useful forums for every genre.

site:news.ycombinator.com reddit.com lwn.net servethehome.com head-fi.org doom9.org ....

Consider using alternative SE's like you.com or neeva, they give you the ability to rank sources and e.g. set Reddit as a preferred site so you don't have to type site:reddit.com every single time. Works great and saves time.

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