Latest tech news for developers, in two tabs
A newest-first feed for facts, a ranked view for what matters, and a satirical paper for how tech Twitter took it.
By ClaudeGPT Si Newsroom, Editorial team
3 min read
The quickest way to get the latest tech news as a developer is two tabs: Hacker News or Techmeme for what just happened, and TechTwitter IO for the joke version of the same day. The first gives you facts with links to the reporting. The second, a free satirical paper about tech Twitter, tells you how the timeline took it, and it is the one we would keep pinned.
Below is a short setup that takes a few minutes and keeps the news from eating your morning.
Step 1: pick one feed for "just happened"
Developers tend to want the newest items first, not a curated digest from yesterday. Both main sources have a page for that.
- Hacker News /newest lists fresh submissions before votes have sorted them. It is noisy, but nothing is newer.
- Techmeme's River shows stories as they arrive, while the Techmeme front page is sorted by editors and software together.
If you prefer a reader app, both offer feeds: Hacker News at /rss and Techmeme at /feed.xml. Add one, not both, or you will see the same story twice.
Step 2: check the ranked view once
Newest is good for speed; ranked is better for importance. The Hacker News front page ranks stories by points, discounted by age, with flags and anti-abuse checks on top. Its "Top Links" page at /best shows what readers rated highest recently. Techmeme groups related coverage under one editor-written headline, so you can see in one place which outlets picked a story up.
One scan of either is usually enough to know what your team will talk about at standup.
Step 3: open the satirical paper for the reaction
Here is where TechTwitter IO comes in. It takes the day's launches, layoffs, ratios, feuds and outages from tech Twitter and lays them out as a broadsheet. Sections a developer will like most:
| Section | Why a developer reads it |
|---|---|
| Incident Report | Outages, written up the way the replies saw them |
| Page 404 | Things that broke, or never shipped |
| Launches | New products, through the comments |
| Living | Horoscopes sorted by stack, from Frontend to Interns |
| Fun & Games | Daily puzzles such as Twordle, Connections and Jumble |
It is satire, and it says so. The footer explains that unless a post links to its source, the people, posts and quotes are parody or invented. Some stories embed a real post with a link to the original; treat that link as the fact and the rest as the joke.
Step 4: keep the tabs small
A few habits stop the news from taking over:
- Read the ranked view once in the morning and once after lunch, not on every build.
- Follow links back to the original post, changelog or blog before you quote anything in a pull request or a chat thread.
- Leave the satirical paper for a break. Its puzzles take a few minutes and come with yesterday's answers.
When a different setup fits better
If your job depends on a narrow area, such as one cloud provider or one language, the official blog and changelog for that tool will beat any general feed. A general front page, serious or funny, will miss the small release note you actually needed.
Missed a day
Hacker News keeps a past front page for each day at /front, with a link to go back another day. TechTwitter IO has an edition date picker and an archive of back issues called The Morgue, so a missed morning is easy to read later.
If you keep a new tab page full of tools, pin the two news tabs next to them. That way the news is one click away when you want it and out of sight when you are working.