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

408 points by foxbarrington

by com

1 subcomments

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.

by tolerance

0 subcomment

There’s something eerie about this whole submission. From the preamble, the uninspired layout, the barely-functional page; all AI-tinted. It appears that the events that are displayed indeed happened but their accounts are virtually forged. Some of the details attributed to them cannot even be freely verified. [1]
The background that’s alleged to have inspired this may not have even taken place. And if it at all did then I reckon it ought to inspire further dread. You get the intellectual simulation of “Big Events” with as much fog present as is in news today! And the onset of the end begins to feel like a 40-year-long screaming halt to civilization as you knew it!
This bites!
[1]: Take this link to what I believe is the source for the story on The Order member Mark Franklin Jones’s testimony for example https://newspaperarchive.com/walla-walla-union-bulletin-nov-... (Hacker News does not allow images in comments so I can not point to the replication of the story on forty.news).

by jonplackett

1 subcomments

> 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

by JuniperMesos

10 subcomments

> 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.

by andix

4 subcomments

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.

by treetalker

3 subcomments

“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

by qnleigh

2 subcomments

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.

by muststopmyths

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Source or country of origin would be nice.
“Opposition leader Aquino” in article without any other context could be confusing

by captn3m0

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> 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.

by darkwater

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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.

by crossroadsguy

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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.

by kseistrup

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

by pryelluw

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

by airstrike

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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...

by hu3

3 subcomments

> 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?

by firtoz

1 subcomments

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"

by beezle

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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.

by inatreecrown2

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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.

by technothrasher

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> 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.

by netsharc

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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.

by jvm___

1 subcomments

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.

by maddmann

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

by nashashmi

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```
  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.

by oezi

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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).

by Aperocky

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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.

by matt3210

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

by frizlab

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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.

by narrator

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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.

by nrhrjrjrjtntbt

2 subcomments

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

by philsnow

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

by jayknight

1 subcomments

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

by jrm4

1 subcomments

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?

by jonahx

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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.

by lsllc

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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").

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by npteljes

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>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.

by andai

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

by graemep

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

by lukasm

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

by evanjsx

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

by tptacek

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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.

by muzani

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

by nutjob2

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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.

by tehjoker

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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.

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by Forgeties79

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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…

by lexoj

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News cooldown

by NaOH

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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

by andrepd

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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

by tacone

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

by almosthere

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I guess it makes sense to skip the hurricane

by another_twist

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I will pay for this. Thank you.

by _dain_

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>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

by anthk

1 subcomments

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

0 subcomment

by fortran77

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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.

by loloquwowndueo

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> uses a multi-step LLM pipeline
LLM? Ok thanks but no thanks.

by moralestapia

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

by Agraillo

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> 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/...

by samyk

0 subcomment

sweet

by andrepd

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> 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 -.-

by samdoesnothing

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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.

by komali2

1 subcomments

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.

by cindyllm

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[dead]