# antirez/lamernews

Lamer News -- an HN style social news site written in Ruby/Sinatra/Redis/JQuery

Repository: https://github.com/antirez/lamernews
Canonical: https://ross.abutalabs.com/products/lamernews
Homepage: http://lamernews.com
Language: Ruby
License: NOASSERTION
License Family: other
Last push: 2022-05-27T17:53:02+00:00

## Health v2 (maintenance only)
Score: 32/100 (v2, computed 2026-09-03T02:20:16.233290+00:00)
- activity 0, release rhythm 35, longevity 100
- inputs: {"age_days": 5436, "days_push": 1559, "days_rel": null, "gap_med": null, "n_releases_24m": 0}
- flags: no_releases, no_license
- formula: round(0.45*activity + 0.35*rhythm + 0.20*longevity); archived -> min(score, 10)

## Adoption (not part of the score)
Stars 1356, forks 200 (observed 2026-08-28T04:04:29.251571+00:00)

## What it is
Lamer News is a Hacker News/Reddit-style social news web application written in Ruby with Sinatra, using Redis as its sole database and jQuery on the frontend. It is designed to be simple to understand and modify while handling high load with low latency on a small server.

## Use cases
- run a hacker news style link aggregator
- self-host a reddit-like social news site
- learn how to build a nontrivial web app with Redis as the only database
- create a community news site for a programming niche
- fork a simple voting and commenting platform
- study a low-latency high-load Sinatra application example

## When to choose
- you want a minimal, hackable HN/Reddit clone you can fully customize
- you want a real-world example of Redis as a sole database for a web app
- you need a lightweight news aggregator that runs on a small virtual server
- you prefer simple, readable code without heavy frameworks or templates

## When to avoid
- you need a modern, actively maintained stack (it targets Ruby 1.9-era gems)
- you want a turnkey product with ongoing support or updates
- you need features like rich media, moderation tooling, or mobile apps out of the box
- you prefer relational databases or conventional ORM-based architectures

## Facets
- artifact type: application
- maturity: maintenance
- function: web-framework, http-server, auth, caching, database-driver
- domain: web-development, backend, social-media, self-hosted, developer-tools
- platform: ruby, self-hosted
- tags: hacker-news-clone, reddit-clone, sinatra, redis, social-news, jquery, karma-system, link-aggregator, web-server, linux

## Member repositories
- antirez/lamernews (main) score 32

## Provenance
- Observed fields: from GitHub, fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:29.251571+00:00.
- Health v2: computed from the inputs above; adoption is never an input.
- Inferred fields (summary, facets, guidance): AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, on 2026-08-30T04:41:53.372067+00:00, confidence not recorded.
  - readme: https://github.com/antirez/lamernews (fetched 2026-08-28T04:04:29.251571+00:00, sha ebd8084891b1)
  - homepage: http://lamernews.com (fetched 2026-08-29T12:00:10.897794+00:00, sha 5ab790b42330)
  - site_page: https://www.hugedomains.com/about.cfm (fetched 2026-08-29T12:00:10.905029+00:00, sha 1a435281be75)
- Data as of 2026-08-30T08:39:29.467469+00:00.