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.
Bubbles dev here, I've heard you loud and clear and follow the discussion closely.<p>I will change the default behaviour to open links in the same tab like on HN or Lobsters soon. But first the HN visitor wave needs to calm down.
Too bad it's so hard to submit a suggested blog.
nope, I prefer open in new tab by default
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.
[flagged]
And yet we're here, discussing how a developer should change their own application because their preference is <i>wrong</i><p>If you don't like it, adjust it for yourself with an extension or script.
Exactly. This is a design choice and there’s no right or wrong here.
Yes there is a right and wrong. The default browser behavior is the design that every user expects, so unless there is a very strong argument for a different way, this is the _right_ design.
the difference is that with tab-open default, there is no way for me to open the link in <i>this</i> window<p>with this-window default (or actually, the browser-default-default), I can middle click and it'll open in a new tab regardless<p>pretty funny to have this discussion though, takes me back to the HTML4 and XHTML days
> Exactly. This is a design choice and there’s no right or wrong here.<p>I don't agree. If your design choice forces a user flow that is surprising, awkward, and redundant then it's definitely the wrong choice. It's still a call to be made by the design team, though.
i mean, is a small user preferences page out of the question here? the majority of web users arent going to write a js extension.
You don't need to write one? Just write a ublock origin rule, use grease monkey or whatever is used nowadays.<p>Or just configure your browser to ignore the target param, eg browser.link.open_newwindow_restriction 0 in about:config<p>The fact I've gotten so many down votes for my previous comment really nails the point down how HN isn't really used by technical people anymore. It's mostly idiots with opinions.
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.
This. Principle of least surprise.
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.
Next they’ll be defending full screen div paywalls.
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.
I'd rather have an icon next to the link that implies "Open in new Tab" like one of these with the arrow:<p><a href="https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/new-tab" rel="nofollow">https://www.flaticon.com/free-icons/new-tab</a>
I too prefer that, but i don't want to force that choice on othet people.<p>CTRL+left click is ingrained in me now anyway.
I do as well, but I think it's good practice to put something like in a user preference setting somewhere if you are going to stray from default browser/system behavior.
And people who prefer the other way can just hold down _____ while clicking to open it in the current tab instead.<p>Good ol' _____-clicking saves the day again!
why the downvotes, I meant to demonstrate that I prefer the current behaviour so the site developer knows.
I’ve been perusing Bubbles increasingly often since discovering that my blog is syndicated there, a few weeks ago.<p>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.<p>Kudos to the author. A great idea, splendidly executed. I hope it grows and doesn’t change much.
Ah, I love a good classic curated-authors aggregator. The days of yore have returned! Gives me hope. And thank you for having posts open <i>to</i> HN, that’s a brilliant way to augment rather than displace.<p>On first glance, the first several posts are more interesting than HN; that’s a good sign. But there’s no hide link to mask the AI posts I don’t care about; perhaps one appears after signup?<p>But. HN’s single-post mute method is treading water at best versus the flood, and with the sixth post on the homepage being outsourced-to-AI, clearly that will persist at Bubbles. Can I mute specific blogs that are just repeatedly posting ‘I subcontracted my project to AI and am now taking credit as if I did the work myself’ on this site? If so, I’d give this a full week tryout immediately.
The Briefings have been most useful for me. It feels more curated and less firehose-y.<p><a href="https://bubbles.town/briefing" rel="nofollow">https://bubbles.town/briefing</a>
Would love a version of this on HN.
Also, showing the excerpts from the post text is vastly superior to just showing the post titles.
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.
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?<p>*Link: <a href="https://bubbles.town/rss" rel="nofollow">https://bubbles.town/rss</a>
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 <a href="https://fedi.tips/what-other-kinds-of-servers-are-on-the-fediverse/" rel="nofollow">https://fedi.tips/what-other-kinds-of-servers-are-on-the-fed...</a> or more complete <a href="https://fediverse.observer/allsoftwares" rel="nofollow">https://fediverse.observer/allsoftwares</a>
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.<p>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.
To me, social web == social media.<p>I don't use Facebook but use it for auth when I have no other option.<p>Even worse, I don't want an external service federating my identity when I can avoid it. We have all heard of people getting locked out in cases where Google decided to ban a user from their platform.<p>I'm never trusting an external provider again.
+1 to this. Apple sign-in would be ideal, since it maps to single-identity more cleanly than a social media system.
I'm curios why you are avoiding social media?
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.
> I'm curios why you are avoiding social media?<p>You make it sound as if that's undesirable.
Because there’s little good about it
Its a scam
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.<p>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.<p>EDIT: This comment was meant to be posted to the parent comment!
This reminds me of Kagi's Small Web: <a href="https://kagi.com/smallweb/" rel="nofollow">https://kagi.com/smallweb/</a> or <a href="https://kagi.com/smallweb/river" rel="nofollow">https://kagi.com/smallweb/river</a>
Bubbles dev here, thanks for the mention
Any plans to add Lemmy federation? It would be nice to be able to follow it as a Lemmy community since it works like a federated hn/Reddit.
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?<p>EDIT: ...just realized that's in the FAQ.<p>> Is it open source?<p>> Not yet. Maybe someday.
how do you decide which blog is included in the aggregation?
You can find the criteria in the FAQ: <a href="https://bubbles.town/faq#sources" rel="nofollow">https://bubbles.town/faq#sources</a>
try about page, it explains
Curious on your "Top" algorithm? I see many 1-voted items there.<p>Also, how do you vet your blogs?
It would be great if this supported federation as a Lemmy community, given that Lemmy already has votes.
I was there, literally, 5 seconds and already saw a headline that pissed me off.<p>No thanks, I don't need any extra stress in my life.
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.
> <a href="https://tuesdaynight.blog/i-want-to-go-to-a-furry-con/" rel="nofollow">https://tuesdaynight.blog/i-want-to-go-to-a-furry-con/</a><p>Ok. I think I'm good without this.
Visually difficult to read with all of the colors, but I thought the content was good.
Content aside, not my thing either, I actually did really like this one. It has so much personality it reminded me of the early MySpace days before we all became identical looking Facebook timelines.
> "5011 independent, personal blogs. One front page. Ranked by votes and freshness, shaped by you."<p>That line is so claude.
Oh, great, I can log in with my GoToSocial instance to comment and vote! I will definitely add this site alongside my HN addiction :)
This is it!! I can finally leave reading comments on hn or get bamboozeled by ai posts masquerading as something technical
I like it, but shouldn't this be part of "Show HN"?
Search doesn’t seem to work.
It's not stated explicitly, but I would assume that 'independent' blog means no Substack, no Medium, etc? Is that the case?
Independent does not mean self-hosted. Blog platforms are ok if the content is not monetized, no adverts, no paywalls, no self-marketing. For full criteria see the FAQs.
Isn't the whole point of Substack, etc. monetization, one way or another? Maybe I'm just a cranky old man, but that to me goes against 'independent'. But then, I'm not just old enough to remember when blogs weren't monetized, but remembering perusing Factsheet Five to see if there were any interesting new zines to trade with. Maybe you could mark the Substack blogs with a little swastika like an asterisk.
looks quite nice, but i always find myself disappointed that all the content on the "small web" is just posting /about/ the small web, rather than doing anything interesting on it<p>14/30 of the posts on the top page are just about making websites
[delayed]
I can say from experience that the small web has considerable breadth. I think what you're seeing here is a product of the small, curated list of sites combined with the recency bias of a feed data view.<p>You'll see similar results from the various indieweb indexes that primarily use the kagi RSS list from github; this list attracts a specific segment of the blogosphere.
Please make AI a category.
Ao refreshing that new links open in new windows - such a time saver dor those pf us who open hundreds of windows.<p>Top does not sort? Also "top" is what exactly? All time? Today?<p>How do you defend against brigading?
Just curious but isn't this just digg, metafilter?
No, those are general-any link posting. This is more like Planet Mozilla, which used to be maintained as a curated aggregator of the personal blogs of contributors to the Mozilla project, which was <i>not</i> filtered exclusively to their Mozilla-content posts. Bubbles accretes on a different criteria than that, but at its core is similarly centered <i>first</i> around ‘curated authors’ rather than ‘curated links’, and then <i>second</i> around publishing all posts by a curated author. That curation is what makes it more valuable than a generic-any site aggregator like Digg or HN: a post by a curated human is much more likely to be interesting than the majority slop of /new on any content-first aggregation site (Imgur is a great example of this!).
Came here to say this. Perhaps it will work this time if it tries not to scale wildly, take investor money, and just do one thing well with a smaller group? But this kind of site has been around.
The title is wrong as they are not just different in sourcing but topic.<p>A better title would be "Hacker News but for general content from independent blogs."<p>Hacker News but for independent blogs would be the same topic as HN but only stuff from independent blogs.<p>This is avowedly broad: "Hacker News and Lobste.rs have community voting figured out, but non-tech content gets drowned by the tech majority"<p><a href="https://bubbles.town/about" rel="nofollow">https://bubbles.town/about</a>
I love it!
first thing that caught my eye was "Bubbles mentioned in Verge newsletter" .... that's a post from a "Hand-picked blog"? Thought it was supposed to be non-tech? Definitely don't want to see posts about tech posts from the sloppy tech duplicating press. We have HN for that!
This is lovely
Ah, this reminds me of StumbleUpon.
Holy smoke the bullshit I see upvoted on that site frontpage mate! Fitness is "white supremacism"!?<p>A few lines from that "the girly wellness aesthetic as a white supremacist dog whistle" frontpage articles (that title, already):<p>> I cannot help but see that “Pinterest clean girl fitness and fruit bowl gua sha yoga mat pilates in the forest” content as covert white supremacy and eugenicist ideals<p>Let people live ffs!<p>> it’s always white or racially ambiguous people,<p>"Racially ambiuous"? For a start it's an attempt at manipulating thought by manipulating speech. Then it's deeply racist: it's wanting to categorize people by race, to hate on them. In this case putting, for example, latino-whites (I'm not saying it, TFA is) or half-asian/half-white (like my nephew) as "white" to hate on whites. It has a name:<p>racism.<p>Anti-white racism, but racism (usually double-down by explaining that it's impossible to be racists towards whites for anti-white racism is impossible).<p>And at the gym and among my friends, I see a lot of these "yoga girls" are with... asian genes. Same online among the fitness "influencers" with many subscribers.<p>There are also a huge lot of incredibly muscular and fit... Blacks. What a surprise: blacks ain't white.<p>How can someone be filled with so much hate (including, potentially, hate for its own race) to write such hateful texts?<p>Despicable author, writing hateful words, to please people with really dark hearts.
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.<p>I call it bubblewire. Funny. I had no prior knowledge of bubbles.town until seeing it here now.<p>bubbles.town looks nice! Hope to see more projects that aim to bring back the good old web.<p>[1] <a href="https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552985">https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48552985</a>
I think it's great. I don't mind the AI ranking system (it beats a free for all), though it's a bit like HN where only a few posts appeal to me.<p>I'd have upvoted you but I think you got eaten by /new.
> (didn’t resonate), although mine is purely based on AI scoring<p>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.<p>Would you visit HN if it 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).
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.<p>It's an experiment made for the web of 2026, where you can no longer tell if the users are humans or bots.<p>If nobody's interested in that idea, I accept that.
> Would you visit HN if were just a link aggregator whose ranking was decided by hidden logic of a machine?<p>I assumed it was...?<p>If not, who or what decides the ranking moment-by-moment? dang?