# Forty.News

19 Hacker News commenters recommended Forty.News and 7 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 2 of 13 months.

**Verdict:** People enjoy reading news from 40 years ago as a window on the past. Critics most often say it lacks links to original sources.

## Why people recommend it

- Historical view of past news (3 comments): "equal parts fascinating and terrifying to think what could have been" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46050251)) "All of this is still relevant for understanding our world." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027067)) "I like this because I can read the newspapers of my youth" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018326))
- Interesting concept and clean UI (3 comments): "Interesting to read these, and you must have a good prompt underneath" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46022995)) "amazing idea, and the UI is very cool!" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46031730)) "Hmm, I like the idea. But interestingly, it immediately brought back my 40 year old anxieties." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46022717))

## What people warn about

- Missing links to original sources (3 comments): "This is great! but in my opinion it needs the links to the original stories." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019664)) "you really need to publish the sources of each article" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018291)) "Without mentioning the source of the articles, it's completely useless." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46018136))
- Unclear whether content is AI-generated (4 comments): "Why would such a project possibly benefit for using LLMs to garble the text?" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46019655)) "I can't tell if these were pulled from real newspapers or AI generated" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46919952)) "the uninspired layout, the barely-functional page; all AI-tinted" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46027285))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [CNN Lite](https://hackerapproved.com/p/cnn.md): 34 recommend
- [The Guardian](https://hackerapproved.com/p/guardian.md): 33 recommend
- [Ars Technica](https://hackerapproved.com/p/ars-technica.md): 32 recommend
- [text.npr.org](https://hackerapproved.com/p/text-npr-org.md): 23 recommend
- [The Verge](https://hackerapproved.com/p/verge.md): 16 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Forty.News", https://hackerapproved.com/p/forty-news/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).