Hacker News but for Independent Blogs

192

hheadalgorithm about 5 hours ago 66 commentsRead Article on bubbles.town

HI version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

⚡ Community Insights

Discussion Sentiment

100% Positive

Analyzed from 1160 words in the discussion.

Discussion (66 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

janaagaard•about 4 hours ago

I think the links should open in the same window (like they do here on HN) instead of in a new tab/window. If I want a separate tab, I can Cmd+click and Browsers don't have the reverse option for opening in the same window.

OGWhales•32 minutes ago

Another way is to use middle click on a mouse, and you can use the same to close the tab when you are done as well.

AbuAssar•about 3 hours ago

nope, I prefer open in new tab by default

kpopendurer•about 3 hours ago

In general, it's better not to force an action onto users. You might prefer things opening in a new tab, but you always have that option. If it's forced on users, it is frustrating for those who would prefer that not to happen.

ffsm8•about 2 hours ago

And yet we're here, discussing how a developer should change their own application because their preference is wrong

If you don't like it, adjust it for yourself with an extension or script.

chrysoprace•about 3 hours ago

That's a good user setting, but as opening in the same tab is the default browser behaviour then it should really stay that way. Opening in a new tab takes control away from the user.

RossBencina•about 2 hours ago

This. Principle of least surprise.

el_io•about 2 hours ago

Exactly. I prefer to open in the same page. If I want to open in new tab then I can always Ctrl + Click. I don't think I can do the reverse though.

reactordev•about 2 hours ago

Next they’ll be defending full screen div paywalls.

netfortius•8 minutes ago

100% agree. I had to install a browser extension when I use HN with such (vs app on android, when it does it by default), just to force open links to new tabs.

Telaneo•13 minutes ago

I too prefer that, but i don't want to force that choice on othet people.

CTRL+left click is ingrained in me now anyway.

akoboldfrying•about 1 hour ago

And people who prefer the other way can just hold down _____ while clicking to open it in the current tab instead.

Good ol' _____-clicking saves the day again!

em-bee•21 minutes ago

only on a mac, and probably only on safari which leaves the majority of people in the lurch.

AbuAssar•about 2 hours ago

why the downvotes, I meant to demonstrate that I prefer the current behaviour so the site developer knows.

markdown•about 2 hours ago

The downvoters meant to demonstrate that they prefer the standard/expected behavior and would like OP to ignore your opinion on the matter.

nathell•about 2 hours ago

I’ve been perusing Bubbles increasingly often since discovering that my blog is syndicated there, a few weeks ago.

It feels really refreshing compared to doomscrolling of social media, or indeed even to HN. It’s so diverse and humane. The indie blogosphere is coming to life.

Kudos to the author. A great idea, splendidly executed. I hope it grows and doesn’t change much.

flir•about 2 hours ago

Just glanced at the front page - it seems to be very "blog posts about blogging" (4 out of the top 5 posts right now). Is it always like that?

The "My" tab looks like it covers the same ground as a feed reader would. I wonder who the audience is for that feature.

jl6•about 1 hour ago

Is blogging always like that? Always has been.

bovermyer•about 1 hour ago

The Briefings have been most useful for me. It feels more curated and less firehose-y.

https://bubbles.town/briefing

frereubu•34 minutes ago

Would love a version of this on HN.

ryanbuening•13 minutes ago

https://hcker.news

exitnode•about 4 hours ago

Very cool but I would like to be able to create an account with my mail address instead of using a Mastodon account because I am trying to avoid social media.

solid_fuel•about 4 hours ago

It looks like there's an RSS feed at the bottom. If you don't want to use the social aspects of the site, maybe just use that in an RSS reader?

*Link: https://bubbles.town/rss

holtwick•about 3 hours ago

The briefing pages also have RSS, this way you see the most relevant stuff https://bubbles.town/editions

brulx126•about 2 hours ago

I haven't tried but in principle you only need a Mastodon compatible authentication, there are other services that are not twitter clones. See for example https://fedi.tips/what-other-kinds-of-servers-are-on-the-fed... or more complete https://fediverse.observer/allsoftwares

rsolva•about 2 hours ago

I do NOT consider the Fediverse and the myriads of implementations of it to be social media, but rather a social web. More like websites with the abilities to communicate and interact in different and interesting ways.

Social media is dead, and has been for a while. Many use it still, but it is not primarily social. The social part was mainly a ploy to get peoples attention and then badly abusing it in ever more creative and sinister ways.

Schiendelman•about 2 hours ago

+1 to this. Apple sign-in would be ideal, since it maps to single-identity more cleanly than a social media system.

AbuAssar•about 3 hours ago

I'm curios why you are avoiding social media?

exitnode•about 2 hours ago

Mostly because the "damn this is interesting" to "i don't care what you ate yesterday" ratio is not good enough to spend my time on it. These days I am much more enjoying exploring gopher holes, reading and writing blog posts. For realtime communications, I prefer IRC. For me, social media sits in between chatting and publishing content and is therefore neither fish nor fowl.

rsolva•about 2 hours ago

EDIT: This comment was meant to be posted to the parent comment!

sdevonoes•about 2 hours ago

Because there’s little good about it

globalnode•about 3 hours ago

Its a scam

zingar•28 minutes ago

Is this “hacker news”-esque in terms of being a social bookmarking site? I don’t see much by way of the same topics, and don’t think the difference is only whether it’s Indy or not.

whereistejas•about 1 hour ago

This reminds me of Kagi's Small Web: https://kagi.com/smallweb/ or https://kagi.com/smallweb/river

pchm•about 2 hours ago

I submitted a somewhat similar project yesterday to Show HN (didn’t resonate), although mine is purely based on AI scoring, with zero community features.

I call it bubblewire. Funny. I had no prior knowledge of bubbles.town until seeing it here now.

bubbles.town looks nice! Hope to see more projects that aim to bring back the good old web.

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552985

latexr•about 1 hour ago

> (didn’t resonate), although mine is purely based on AI scoring

One reason for it not resonating might be that it’s yet another opaque algorithmic feed in a moment in time where people are getting sick and tired of them and wary of their manipulative features. And HN is so inundated with AI submissions that having yet another Show HN about it is uninteresting to many.

Would you visit HN if were just a link aggregator whose ranking was decided by hidden logic of a machine? A lot of people wouldn’t. We’re a social species, there is value in human curation—especially when driven by the community—that’s inherently lacking from algorithmic curation (AI or otherwise).

pchm•about 1 hour ago

That's true, provided that all activity (comments, voting) here is still coming from actual humans. That's no longer the case for community websites, I'm afraid.

It's an experiment made for the web of 2026, where you can no longer tell if the users are humans or bots.

If nobody's interested in that idea, I accept that.

akoboldfrying•about 1 hour ago

> Would you visit HN if were just a link aggregator whose ranking was decided by hidden logic of a machine?

I assumed it was...?

If not, who or what decides the ranking moment-by-moment? dang?

agmater•10 minutes ago

It's based on votes mainly. This is covered in the FAQ [1] and the exact algorithm has also been shared in the past [2].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1781013

viermalbe•about 4 hours ago

Bubbles dev here, thanks for the mention

RobotToaster•12 minutes ago

Any plans to add Lemmy federation? It would be nice to be able to follow it as a Lemmy community since itvworks like a federated hn/Reddit.

stakhanov•about 4 hours ago

I'm curious: What software is driving this? Is it a re-skin of the lobste.rs or HN open source software, or is it its own thing?

EDIT: ...just realized that's in the FAQ.

> Is it open source?

> Not yet. Maybe someday.

viermalbe•about 3 hours ago

It runs on Go + sqlite on a Hetzner machine, built from scratch, not a re-skin.

Semaphor•about 3 hours ago

Clearly inspired by HN, there are few sites where I have to zoom in to get any kind of readability ;)

TopHatHipster•about 2 hours ago

What type of Hetzner box are you running this on?

embedding-shape•about 3 hours ago

> not a re-skin

Is that something you're frequently accused of, or why the "disclaimer"?

AbuAssar•about 3 hours ago

how do you decide which blog is included in the aggregation?

viermalbe•about 3 hours ago

You can find the criteria in the FAQ: https://bubbles.town/faq#sources

ShinyLeftPad•about 3 hours ago

try about page, it explains

atulvi•32 minutes ago

> "5011 independent, personal blogs. One front page. Ranked by votes and freshness, shaped by you."

That line is so claude.

RobotToaster•about 1 hour ago

It would be great if this supported federation as a Lemmy community, given that Lemmy already has votes.

ozgrakkurt•about 2 hours ago

This is it!! I can finally leave reading comments on hn or get bamboozeled by ai posts masquerading as something technical

rsolva•about 2 hours ago

Oh, great, I can log in with my GoToSocial instance to comment and vote! I will definitely add this site alongside my HN addiction :)

HardwareLust•38 minutes ago

Please make AI a category.

holtwick•about 4 hours ago

I love it!

ochronus•about 3 hours ago

This is lovely

socalgal2•about 3 hours ago

Just curious but isn't this just digg, metafilter?

vee-kay•about 3 hours ago

Ah, this reminds me of StumbleUpon.