Show HN: Forty.News – Daily news, but on a 40-year delay

[foxbarrington]

This started as a reaction to a conversational trope. Despite being a tranquil place, even conversations at my yoga studio often start with, "Can you believe what's going on right now?" with that angry/scared undertone.

I'm a news avoider, so I usually feel some smug self-satisfaction in those instances, but I wondered if there was a way to satisfy the urge to doomscroll without the anxiety.

My hypothesis: Apply a 40-year latency buffer. You get the intellectual stimulation of "Big Events" without the fog of war, because you know the world didn't end.

40 years creates a mirror between the Reagan Era and today. The parallels include celebrity populism, Cold War tensions (Soviets vs. Russia), and inflation economics.

The system ingests raw newspaper scans and uses a multi-step LLM pipeline to generate the daily edition:

OCR & Ingestion: Converts raw pixels to text.

Scoring: Grades events on metrics like Dramatic Irony and Name Recognition to surface stories that are interesting with hindsight. For example, a dry business blurb about Steve Jobs leaving Apple scores highly because the future context creates a narrative arc.

Objective Fact Extraction: Extracts a list of discrete, verifiable facts from the raw text.

Generation: Uses those extracted facts as the ground truth to write new headlines and story summaries.

I expected a zen experience. Instead, I got an entertaining docudrama. Historical events are surprisingly compelling when serialized over weeks.

For example, on Oct 7, 1985, Palestinian hijackers took over the cruise ship Achille Lauro. Reading this on a delay in 2025, the story unfolded over weeks: first they threw an American in a wheelchair overboard, then US fighter jets forced the escape plane to land, leading to a military standoff between US Navy SEALs and the Italian Air Force. Unbelievably, the US backed down, but the later diplomatic fallout led the Italian Prime Minister to resign.

It hits the dopamine receptors of the news cycle, but with the comfort of a known outcome.

Stack: React, Node.js (Caskada for the LLM pipeline orchestration), Gemini for OCR/Scoring.

Link: https://forty.news (No signup required, it's only if you want the stories emailed to you daily/weekly)

[jonplackett]

> Secretary Rejects Emergency Antibiotics Ban in Animal Feed Health and Human Services

Secretary Margaret M. Heckler on Wednesday refused to impose an emergency ban on the use of antibiotics in animal feed. Mrs. Heckler denied a petition filed by the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which had sought to shorten the process by asking the secretary to declare an 'imminent hazard' to public health. Declaring an 'imminent hazard' would invoke emergency powers and allow an immediate ban. The NRDC contended that routine, low-level use of antibiotics in animal feed is allowing drug-resistant bacteria to enter the human food chain, weakening the ability of drugs to fight human disease. The NRDC sought a ban on the use of small amounts of penicillin and tetracycline. Mrs. Heckler's decision does not end the matter permanently, as the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) still can ban antibiotics in animal feed through administrative regulations. The issue of antibiotics in animal feed has already been under review at the FDA for more than eight years

Antibiotic resistance predicted all that time back

[culi]

It's funny that this site's tagline is "Exactly 40 years back, these felt huge. See how they landed with time." but so many of these stories are still just as alarming. If anything it often feels like we should've cared more. At the very least done more

[JuniperMesos]

> For example, on Oct 7, 1985, Palestinian hijackers took over the cruise ship Achille Lauro. Reading this on a delay in 2025, the story unfolded over weeks: first they threw an American in a wheelchair overboard, then US fighter jets forced the escape plane to land, leading to a military standoff between US Navy SEALs and the Italian Air Force. Unbelievably, the US backed down, but the later diplomatic fallout led the Italian Prime Minister to resign.

From the perspective of 2025, I can't help but think about the people I know today getting vocally angry about Israeli violence in the Gaza strip, and suggesting that this violence has implications for US politics - and I wonder how many of those people would be happy to throw an American in a wheelchair off a ship in the name of the Palestinian cause.

Reading the wikipedia article about this incident, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achille_Lauro_hijacking , it seems like the hijackers murdered the guy in a wheelchair before they threw his body off the ship, and it's possible but unproven that they picked him in particular either because he was Jewish or because he was in a wheelchair. The hijackers involved were given long prison sentences, but many of them were released decades ago and have fought against US in other ways since then.

I mostly think of the Israel/Palestine conflict as one that I have no dog in - I'm not Jewish, Israeli, or Palestinian myself and have no ties to the region. Nonetheless, pro-Palestine political messaging is something that happens around me all the time today, and knowing that the conflict was happening 40 years ago and that some of the same things that were happening then are akin to what is happening now colors my opinion of what is happening now.

[V__]

Maybe this is just my bubble, but the messaging I get is that Israel should stop murdering Palestinian civilians and not that Hamas is somehow righteous in their actions.

[jl6]

News is often highly decontextualized, to our detriment. This site is a nice idea, because seeing echoes of today in old news is a starting point for adding a little bit of context back in. A lot of people live in a permanent rage-state induced by the simple good vs evil narratives that are so easy to spin when the context is obscured. These narratives break down when you start to piece together why events unfold the way they do.

[squigz]

It's been going on for a bit longer than 40 years https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israeli%E2%80%93Palestinian_co...

[mastazi]

I am Italian, that was one of the proudest moment in our history.

The Achille Lauro episode was an example of Italy choosing what's best for the region rather than what's best for the people across the Atlantic. Hundreds of hostages' lives were saved by the actions of the Italian Government that day.

For context, in the post WW2 era, hundreds of Italian civilians were killed in accidents caused by US military operations in Italy, and our spineless leaders did nothing. In many cases they actively helped covering up the truth. Two of many examples:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Itavia_Flight_870

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1998_Cavalese_cable_car_crash

[andrepd]

> From the perspective of 2025, I can't help but think about the people I know today getting vocally angry about Israeli violence in the Gaza strip, and suggesting that this violence has implications for US politics - and I wonder how many of those people would be happy to throw an American in a wheelchair off a ship in the name of the Palestinian cause.

I'm quite unsure what this is trying to imply. Israel committed genocide in Gaza, this much is established, and even the skeptics about the word "genocide" admit at least "war crimes". How does knowing that there terrorists from that place murdererd a person in a wheelchair in 1985 change one's view about that?!

May I remind you that Israel murdered over one hundred people in Gaza for over two years. Some of those were even in wheelchairs. Would you like a link to videos, uncensored ones? Double-tap attacks on hospitals? Maybe the screams will not let you sleep at night.

--

Nobody sane would perform the reasoning "Irish terrorists killed hundreds of British people in the 70s and 80s" ergo "the British army should destroy 85% of buildings in Ireland". But apparently s/Ireland/Palestine/ and it's a normal acceptable thing to say!

Finally, "suggesting that this violence has implications for US politics", of course it does. Israel is a major US ally and gets billions of dollars in funding. Of course it has implications on US policy, from diplomacy to finance.

[delis-thumbs-7e]

With that same logic me objecting to Iraq War I supported Saddam’s terror regime. Just because you think Israel actions are bloody genocidal war crimes does not mean that Hamas terror is justified or that some guy in a wheel chair should be killed. Yes, there is some young people who seem to get all of their information from social media and have absolutely no understanding of what is happening - they support Hamas, or claim that US have no dog in the fight.

Palestina-Syria was a term coined for the region by Emperor Hadrian after the destruction of the Second Temple, so 40 years is nothing in the timeline of this whole conflict. The modern Zionism goes back to the 19th Century and the Israel occupation and oppression of Palestinians at least to 1948. So no, this skirmosh at the sea gave you very litlle understanding of why things are like they are, why the violence continues and how US has been funding this conflict the whole time.

If you actually want to understand what this conflict feels for a regular Palestinian just trying to live, listen this interview: https://pca.st/episode/4f0099d2-2c6e-4751-b1e1-e0913fa25734

[komali2]

> From the perspective of 2025, I can't help but think about the people I know today getting vocally angry about Israeli violence in the Gaza strip

It's really just a question of if collective punishment is ethical, which I say it isn't, and whether genocide is ever justifiable, which I say it isn't.

[muzani]

I remember someone sharing news about companies like Shell fearing boycotts. So they restructured and sold or moved the companies they had out of Israel. Turns out the news was dated several decades ago.

There were always peaks where different people held different opinions about the conflict. When they were startups, they'd be vocal about genocide or say, renting out stolen land on Airbnb. As they become bigger and raise more money, they start taking selfies with Voldemort.

[nashashmi]

> I wonder how many of those people would be happy to throw an American in a wheelchair off a ship in the name of the Palestinian cause.

Not sure I follow. Are you upset at the Pro-Palestinians? Today? Do you think that throwing a person in a wheelchair off a boat makes it ok to be silent about Israel's genocide? or makes Pro-Palestinians bad?

Your opinions of what is happening now should be a bit more comprehensive and in-depth than the opinions and perceptions of the public from 40 years ago. Social media as it is known today was non-existant. And news in mainstream media was well controlled and manipulated, and less independent, yet had the facade of professionalism and integrity. So there was a lot of news about Palestinians that just were not reported, and if they were reported, were in subdued form.

[sillyfluke]

I'm trying to wrap my head around coming to this bizarre conclusion from these two news items that are 40 years apart. It is incredibly difficult to come to anywhere close to similar conclusion when considering it with any seriousness.

Ok, so I'm squinting my eyes and trying to imagine...Ok, so I'm an American in the 1940s just reading a news article about the discovery of extermination camps in Germany by allied forces. They just discovered these camps and they don't know yet quite how many people were killed. WW2 has just ended, information is just coming out, slowly. Incidentally I also subscribed to a magazine that prints daily news from 28-30 years ago and I coincidentally also just read, in a news items from 1915-1917, that some group of people calling themselves Zionists, whatever that means, killed a Swedish anthropologist in Palestine who was living with a Arab tribe that was being harrased by the group when attempting to intercede on the tribe's behalf.

And I'm supposed to think what exactly from these two tidbits of information? That Jews seem to have been on this violent chosen people gambit for a quite a long time and that the Nazis had a point?

Or maybe instead of answering that you can just ask the one in three Jews in New York who voted a pro-palestinian mayor into office why they didn't know any better. New York, incidentally a city that supposedly only rivals Tel Aviv in the number of Jewish residents residing in it.

[com]

I opened this, only to be confronted by an article about the investigation into the downing of Air India flight 182, a terrorist attack that killed hundreds of people, including my childhood neighbour friends Brinda and Arti and their dad, Vishnu.

Forty years. What lives they could have led, people they would have loved and been loved by. For their family, so many years of grief.

Thank you for this project.

[xp84]

It’s especially painful to read about that again, with another horrific Air India tragedy having happened this year in India :(

RIP to all those innocent people.

[andix]

Without mentioning the source of the articles, it's completely useless. It would be hard to detect completely AI hallucinated articles, without a possibility to check the authenticity of the content.

[bdangubic]

> It would be hard to detect completely AI hallucinated articles, without a possibility to check the authenticity of the content.

you can check in a public library or https://google.com

[IshKebab]

I agree. Why does this need to be AI?

[treetalker]

“To be completely cured of newspapers, spend a year reading the previous week’s newspapers.”

― Nassim Nicholas Taleb, The Bed of Procrustes: Philosophical and Practical Aphorisms

[TrevorFSmith]

A similar result can be found by reading coverage of events you witnessed or topics you know well.

[yen223]

Reminder that you can see last week's (or any day's) HN front page using the `past` link

https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2025-11-16

[ycombinete]

A great way to do this is to subscribe to a weekend edition of a good newspaper.

[qnleigh]

I've always wanted a news source with a 4 week delay. This would filter out so much of the noise: rage bait articles about what a politician said, articles about what -may- happen that just promote doomscrolling... Wikipedia sort of does this, but you have to know which articles to look at (though on the upside, you get a lot more historical context).

If something isn't worth knowing about one month later, it probably wasn't news in the first place.

[o_pax]

Well, there are monthly international newspapers and magazines. That you can even pay so they can afford not to have to rely on AI and have (hopefully) real journalists do the work. That are also available in digital form. I agree with you that the flood of streaming news is neither healthy nor helpful in creating priorities and perspective. Let's not starve the obvious alternative, as long as it still exists.

[graemep]

Ragebait sells.

If you really want to understand issues you will do it by spending the time (probably less time) you spend on reading the new on reading books instead.

[muststopmyths]

Source or country of origin would be nice.

“Opposition leader Aquino” in article without any other context could be confusing

[tclancy]

Are you under the impression there were a lot of opposition news back in the day if one was just brave enjfffff?

[captn3m0]

> India's director of air safety announced that an explosion in the cargo hold apparently caused the crash of an Air-India Jumbo jet last June, killing all 329 people aboard the flight from Canada to Bombay

I forgot what tab opened and I assumed that the report for https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Air_India_Flight_171 was out. Took me a few minutes to realize this wasn't the same crash.

[darkwater]

I like the idea vrry much, also because it brings up news from my childhood so it is cool to see them again now and compare with what I remember from back then. BUT, as others mentioned, you really need to publish the sources of each article.

[pryelluw]

Good idea and execution. Adding the metadata mentioned by others in the thread would improve. Otherwise this is a legit cool project.

[hu3]

> The system ingests raw newspaper scans and uses a multi-step LLM pipeline to generate the daily edition

This is neat! But I wonder about longevity of the project if it relies on scanning newspapers.

Do you have an endless suply? Perhaps there is some digital archive you could use?

[culi]

My Wikipedia Library membership gives me access to some cool resources that might be of interest:

- Arcanum is the largest and continuously expanding digital periodical database from Eastern Europe, which contains scientific and specialized journals, encyclopaedias, weekly and daily newspapers and more

- NewspaperARCHIVE.com is an online database of digitized newspapers, with over 2 billion news articles; coverage extends from 1607 to the present from US, Canada, the UK, and 20 other countries.

- Newspapers.com includes more than 800 million pages from 20,000+ newspapers. The collection includes some major newspapers for limited periods (e.g., first 72 years of the New York Times), but mostly consists of US regional papers from the 1700s to the late 1980s. Free accounts through the Wikipedia Library include access to Newspapers.com Publisher Extra content.

- ProQuest is a multidisciplinary research provider. This access includes ProQuest Central, which includes a large collection of journals and newspapers, Literature Online, the HNP Chinese Newspaper Collections, and the Historical New York Times.

- Wikilala is a digital repository consisting of more than 109,000 documents in printed form, including 45,000 newspapers, 32,000 journals, 4,000 books and 26,000 articles concerning the history of the Ottoman Empire from its founding to the modern times.

Also most newspapers maintain their own archives, usually accessible online. Here's some I get access to: The Corriere della Sera (one of Italy's oldest and most read newspapers); The Corriere della Sera (a century of historical archives); The Times of Malta (Founded in 1935, it is the oldest daily newspaper still in circulation in Malta); ZEIT ONLINE (online version of Die Zeit, a German weekly newspaper) — and quite a few more

[andix]

Copyright issues will stop this soon. 40 year old newspaper articles aren't public domain yet in most countries. A gray area could be a newspaper that went out of business decades ago. Or maybe some government run newspaper that was public domain in the first place.

[squigz]

As long as news was published on this day 40 years ago, why would supply matter?

[nutjob2]

I like this because I can read the newspapers of my youth, when I couldn't read international papers like a can today, not that I read any papers.

Fun fact: I emigrated on the Achille Lauro , half way around the world, over a decade before it was hijacked.

[jonathanstark]

Wow, that's wild

[inatreecrown2]

This is great! but in my opinion it needs the links to the original stories. Also a version without AI generation would be preferred by myself. I could be interesting to have I toggle button on the page to toggle on /off the AI stuff.

[airstrike]

this is pretty awesome! would love to see a few different "sections" like Business, Culture, etc.

Also mixing and matching typography, especially for article headings, would go a long way. See e.g. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/elections/...

Or for a direct link to (a small) 1984 image: https://static01.nyt.com/newsgraphics/2016/11/01/front-pages...

Also maybe making the layout wider and more compact. And maybe, just maybe, picking 1-2 articles to have pictures.

You should probably also use a masonry layout like https://piccalil.li/blog/a-simple-masonry-like-composable-la...

[Forgeties79]

Given some of the ways we are still paying for the decisions of the Reagan administration to this day, this is not as reassuring as you make it out to be. If anything it just demonstrates how destructive a president and their administration can be and how the repercussions can be felt for decades.

Yeah many of the things people thought were a big deal turned out not to be, but plenty of things did…

[andrepd]

The local daily newspaper has always a small column, somewhere in the middle, with the front page title from 10, 20, 30,..., 90 years ago.

It's always "funny" because it's often something like

90 years ago: 4kg onion found at local farm

80 years ago: Allied troops suffer massive casualties in a German counter-attack at Messina

70 years ago: The ren faire opens tomorrow

[kseistrup]

Related: On https://olduse.net/ you can replay Usenet News with a 40-year delay.

[_dain_]

>The Senate on Thursday approved a nuclear cooperation agreement between the United States and China, allowing U.S. firms to provide China with materials and technology for its civilian nuclear power program. The Senate approved the agreement via a voice vote passage of a resolution with no debate before its passage. This approval happened amidst a long-running debate on a farm bill. The agreement had been shelved due to fears about China using technology to help other nations build atomic weapons. President Reagan's trip to China marked the initialing of the agreement last year.

china in many respects a better steward of american nuclear technology than america

[firtoz]

Yeah... caused me to read up on the cold war and Mutually Assured Destruction, and it was just plainly insane. Something like, "If you built missile defenses then that would mean that you could be more motivated to attack first so if we even think that you're building missile defenses then we will have to build more nukes to compensate and that'll be worse for both so please stop researching how to defend yourself for both of our sakes"

[tech2]

The one that should probably really freak you out was/is the Soviet "Dead Hand" system. Who needs people deciding whether to launch?

[netsharc]

I remember seeing "Germany 9PM News 30 years ago" reporting about the quite accidental opening of the Berlin Wall.

This YouTube channel posts the news bulletin of 45 years ago, daily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OS7E58zLcws . For our American readers, it has the exoticism of 70's/80's Europe.

[crossroadsguy]

Weird to see two wildly different news related to India.

One about a famous Indian charlatan (a.k.a "guru"; the guru industry is most flourishing these days):

> Rajneesh Pleads Guilty to Sham Marriages, to Leave U.S. Immediately

> Indian guru Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh pleaded guilty Thursday to arranging sham marriages, agreeing to leave the United States immediately. In a plea bargain, Rajneesh received a suspended 10-year prison sentence and was fined $300,000, which includes $140,000 in prosecution costs.

and another about a well known (I guess across the world?) plane crash:

> Explosion Implicated in Air-India Jumbo Jet Crash

> India's director of air safety announced that an explosion in the cargo hold apparently caused the crash of an Air-India Jumbo jet last June, killing all 329 people aboard the flight from Canada to Bombay.

Note: this ^ was unseated as the deadliest act of aviation terrorism until 9/11 decades later.

[anthk]

I just use this script in a terminal. It needs curl, lame and minimodem. Easy and quick on any GNU/Linux or BSD distro, or WSL2:

    #!/bin/sh
    curl -s http://internet-tty.net:8000/ITTY \
      | lame --decode --quiet --mp3input - - \
      | minimodem --rx rtty -f - -a --print-filter -i

[squigz]

What does this do?

[jvm___]

I like doing this with my local paper but from a hundred+ years ago.

It's funny to read that the electric street car opening day was delayed because they built the tracks at the wrong gauge for the street cars. Beaurocratic mismanagement in the 1890's.

[BHSPitMonkey]

That must be what inspired them to approach San Francisco's Central Subway in a similar fashion!

[oezi]

Some years ago I had a similar thing happening to me based on a friend who would gift me his finished The Economist issues with usually a 1 or 2 week delay.

When you read the news even one week later you already realize which stories didn't stay in the public's interest or didn't develop further and you just skip them, while those which did allow you to actually read the first hand accounts without much of the spin added afterwards.

It also removed most of the urge for being angry or sensational about stuff because you realize many stories aren't as bad as it seems on the day they are published (The Economist as a weekly publication does a lot of filtering of course anyway due to their publishing schedule).

[Aperocky]

There's one front page new that allude to events happening in December 7th and 8th despite dating to November 22nd.

I assume you select the stories automatically, but the time of the story might not be correct.

[nashashmi]

  Police Open Fire as 50,000 Protest Outside Pretoria
  L.A. Times Archives
  Nov. 21, 1985 12 AM PT

https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-21-mn-2106-s...

Makes me recall a similar story happening in our times in the world. The headline does not mention "Black". [Security force] indiscriminately is killing. World says nothing.

[jrmg]

It’s in Pretoria, South Africa, so the context would’ve been immediately obvious to anyone reading at the time.

[frizlab]

Cool concept!

I have a pet peeves to report: the dark vs. light mode switch should have three choices: light, dark and system. I just can’t believe how many sites don’t do that properly.

[technothrasher]

> wondered if there was a way to satisfy the urge to doomscroll without the anxiety.

Hmm, I like the idea. But interestingly, it immediately brought back my 40 year old anxieties.

[philsnow]

Also (unrelated to my knowledge): https://olduse.net/

[jayknight]

I've wanted a way to listen to a local radio stations broadcast--including ads and dj banter--from this day X years ago.

[mh-]

That would be really fun. Unfortunately, I'd be surprised if the recordings still exist from the pre-"it's all digital" era, which is more recent than most people would think.

[nrhrjrjrjtntbt]

We didn't start the fire... as a service.

[smallmancontrov]

"We Didn't Start the Fire" covers 1949-1989, it just barely manages to avoid both WWII and the fall of the USSR and therefore _understates_ its case, if anything.

[wizardforhire]

You know the rules… and so do I

[jonahx]

I like it.

An interesting twist would be to somehow (not sure how) have a followup on the later importance of the news item, which was so worthy of news at that time. I'd guess the vast majority would be "not important by next year". You'd need a creative way to define and convey it, while still being accurate.

[beezle]

I remember Leon going overboard. Too bad this is not adjustable, fifty years ago (the 70s) would be more interesting. Certainly a lot more bank robberies, hijackings and both domestic and international terrorism. Not to mention all the political and econ stuff.

[tehjoker]

This is really cool, but the tone about not feeling urgency is weird. These are monumental events worth studying and reviewing and reading these headlines even today feels like an adrenaline rush. All of this is still relevant for understanding our world.

[npteljes]

>A reminder that urgency fades, context grows, and perspective is a habit.

That is such a great line. I also feel like 99% of the news is just noise, in terms of not adding anything actionable to our lives, nor is it growing our perspective.

In contrast, I really like Wikipedia articles about current events. They feel much more to the point than news articles.

[matt3210]

Guys.. 40 years ago was the 80s :(

[lsllc]

It says "Weather: Partly cloudy, 72°F". Normally, I'd ask "where" (not here in New England!) ... but in this case, "when"? Is this the weather from 40 years ago also? (and if so ... I guess "where").

[maddmann]

Love it! Interesting to read these, and you must have a good prompt underneath

[jrm4]

Wow.

Given that I was around (though young) for that and still mostly forgot about it, I imagine "Star Wars," as a reference to the US/USSR missile thing is probably mostly COMPLETELY unknown to the youngsters?

[skylurk]

TIL. Who was who?

[fortran77]

40 years ago I was 2 years out of college so I remember these stories well. It may be interesting to do 24/40/60 years ago so people of different ages can get a similar effective experience.

[evanjsx]

I would like to add an RSS/Atom feed for this into my Elfeed setup without context/proper tags so I can confuse myself.

[mpercy123]

this is a great app. it's equal parts fascinating and terrifying to think what could have been, and how little headlines have changed over the years. well done with this! definitely gonna bookmark and visit often :)

[susiecambria]

Love this.

Any way to left justify the text? The full justification is a bear to read.

[tptacek]

Semirelatedly: if you're in a major US metro, your library card (which, where I live, you get online and in real time) gets you the archives of a bunch of major newspapers, plus your local newspapers. The suburban Oak Park, IL take on Nazism pre-WW2 was wild to read (online, after a very brief search). If you haven't, I recommend taking the 10 minutes to figure out what you can search through your library system.

[moralestapia]

One of my favorite website is the one that replays 9/11 live on 9/11 every year.

[sandblast]

Can you share the link?

[graemep]

It requires access to HTML canvass to generate shareable links. Why? Fingerprinting?

[tacone]

Woha! Cool stuff. Would be fantastic to be able to configure the number of years back.

[lukasm]

I'd be good to see a top news of the months in the past 100 years :)

[muzani]

40 years from now would be fun too. What would President Zuckerberg do?

[andrepd]

> The system ingests raw newspaper scans and uses a multi-step LLM pipeline to generate the daily edition

Why would such a project possibly benefit for using LLMs to garble the text? Jesus christ the news are right there, just print them without rewriting them using a chatbot -.-

[jonathanstark]

Wouldn't the NYT or whoever object to someone reposting their articles?

[1vuio0pswjnm7]

Otherwise known as "history"

[andai]

This is super cool. Can you make one that does 140?

[NaOH]

Just a reminder that HN has a similar function with its 'past' link in the header/nav bar shown on most pages. For example, here is 15 years ago to the day:

https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2010-11-22

[LoganDark]

I'm not as interested in news from 40 years ago, but for years I've been wanting a news website that only talks about things that have already happened and not just things that are so promising or going to change the world or definitely absolutely going to come out eventually but that never actually do. I get so fed up of hearing for so long about promising exciting new stuff that never actually happens. And even of the stuff that does happen, the wait kills me. I'm so tired of getting excited and having to wait. Hacker News is practically my only source of any current events because of how everything else is full of hype and speculation and just exhaustion.

[narrator]

I've read political books from the 70s. Nothing has changed at all in politics since then. Just what was going on in San Francisco at the time took over the whole country.

The last big change was the death of Stalin. He was a genuine threat to the world order being so incredibly capable and ruthless. After that things settled back into the current long slide to "the end of history." Xi's China seems to be opening up a new era of great power conflicts.

The Israelis and the Palestinians have been doing awful shit to each other for 80 years. All the arguments are the same as 50 years ago. Little has changed. Boring.

[almosthere]

I guess it makes sense to skip the hurricane

[lexoj]

News cooldown

[another_twist]

I will pay for this. Thank you.

[maverick98]

amazing idea, and the UI is very cool!

[Agraillo]

> Apply a 40-year latency buffer. You get the intellectual stimulation of "Big Events" without the fog of war, because you know the world didn't end.

Sometimes, a sense of time and real social interactions comes from small reflections found in nonfiction books of that era. Not 40, but 50 years ago-taken from a nonfiction book unrelated to politics: Lost! by Thomas Thompson , written in 1975. [1]

> Though he had opposed the Vietnam war, he considered himself a political moderate, certainly not a knee-jerk liberal who cried “fascist” at everything attempted by Richard Nixon

Honestly, I’m not expecting anything good from Trump in the coming years, but this line genuinely gave me hope that American democracy is still not in danger.

[1] https://archive.org/details/lost0000thom_j3f3/page/124/mode/...

[loloquwowndueo]

> uses a multi-step LLM pipeline

LLM? Ok thanks but no thanks.

[samdoesnothing]

clicks on home page

> FBI Agents, White Supremacist Leader Engage in Deadly Standoff

> Police Fire on Black Protesters in Pretoria Suburb; Deaths Reported

> Something about Jewish people

> Communism

I guess the more things change, the more they stay the same eh.

[komali2]

I feel like the implication here is "see, it's not so bad, the world didn't end, not a big deal!" But plenty of these articles describe small events that absolutely contributed to world changing, and often world degrading, things. For better or worse the collapse of the Soviet Union completely changed the world and I've heard compelling arguments this had consequences as faraway as the weakening of Unions in America and the subsequent degredation of labor protections. Or the fall of one of the three world lowers led to one becoming far too powerful (USA) rather than having a somewhat more balanced tri-hegemony.

There's articles about the ongoing conflict against Palestine, the failure to resolve which through choosing escalation of settling and apartheid we still obviously feel today and which led to tragedies such as 9/11 and Oct 7 having fertile grounds to occur.

We see the application of "Reaganomics" (neoliberalism) in Western democracies so we can watch real time as regulations are turned into tools of Capital or defanged to allow corporations to run rampant, the dismantling of labor protections, and the beginning of privatization.

If anything this just teaches the lesson of "no actually the things that are happening really do matter." I say that as someone that doesn't read the news and believes that that makes me much less stressed out than other people I know who daily read the news. But for me it's less about reading the news or not and more about accepting lost causes - for example, I see the USA as a lost cause for a comfortable and safe life for the duration of my lifetime, and so I left, and now I don't really care about internal politics there the same way I don't care about starving children in Africa - well of course I care in my heart but in my mind I don't stress day to day about it because what can I do other than the occasional donation? So too for daily suffering in America and so I don't read about it to uselessly add to my sadness or stress.

[sylens]

Yeah like one of the top articles today is Reagan arguing for tax reform, the spark that kicked off the insane inequality we deal with today.

[samyk]

sweet