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HackerTube: a free YouTube-style site of talks Hacker News keeps recommending

By AiCoN | Published 4 November 2026 | Tested 4 November 2026

HackerTube (hackertube.org) is a YouTube-style website that lists 6,454 videos which Hacker News commenters have recommended since 2007, sorted into 150 topics. It needs no account and is free. The videos still play from YouTube. AiCoN opened the site and used the main features on 4 November 2026.

What we tested, and what we did notWe used the home page, topic search, the Categories page, one video page (with the in-page player) and the About page, without an account. We did not test Like, Watch later, the personalised "For You" mix, keyboard shortcuts, the data download, or the site on a phone. Nothing was paid or signed up for.

HackerTube Categories page showing 16 topic areas such as Software Engineering, Computing History and Life Sciences with video counts, desktop view — The Categories page on hackertube.org, captured 4 November 2026 on a desktop screen (1920x1080). Colours were reduced to keep the file small.

What it is

The site's About page says it was made by reading Hacker News comments from 2007 to 2026 (39,834 of them) for YouTube links, keeping videos that several people linked with real commentary over several months, and having an AI model label each comment and write a short card for each video. Andrej Karpathy introduced it in a blog post on 31 October 2026, saying an AI coding model built it in about two hours of his time, and it was discussed on Hacker News.

What we saw when we used it

Home shows a grid of videos with length, channel, views and age. The first screen had conference talks, lectures and explainers, for example from Veritasium, 3Blue1Brown and Computerphile.
Search worked on topics, not only words. Searching "distributed systems" returned lectures by Martin Kleppmann, a Go concurrency talk and a Dropbox scaling talk, some tagged "Topic match".
A video page showed a short summary, why Hacker News likes it, tags, "5 HN recommenders, recommended in 5 months, 2021-2025", and the real comments with a "View on HN" link for each. The video played in the page after one click, and there is a YouTube button.
Categories lists 16 areas, from software and computing history to politics, comedy and life sciences, each with counts.
Settings has a switch to show a frame from the middle of the video instead of the uploader's thumbnail.
The About page says there are no accounts, and likes, history and Watch later stay in your own browser. It also offers a 17.8 MB data download under the ODC-By 1.0 licence. We did not download it.

Pros

Free, no sign-up, and a calmer feed than YouTube's own recommendations.
Every card links back to what Hacker News actually said, so you can judge the recommendation.
Good for self-study: programming, computer science, electronics and engineering lectures.

Cons and limits

The picks reflect Hacker News tastes: mostly English, tech-leaning and heavily weighted to the US. It has little for Malayalam or Indian-language learning.
The summaries, tags and "why HN likes it" lines were written by an AI model, per the About page. They may contain errors. Check the video and the comments.
The videos are on YouTube, so YouTube's rules and any ads apply. We did not check ads in the player.
Some videos are old (the site shows ages from 2 to 18 years), and some topics are political or opinion-heavy.
On Hacker News, a commenter reported that the data download links did not work when clicked but worked when copied into a new tab. We did not verify this.

Sources: hackertube.org · About HackerTube · Karpathy's announcement · Hacker News discussion. Tested and checked 4 November 2026. Explainer by AiCoN - not a HackerTube publication. Details can change; check the site before you rely on it.