LSN News: every story, as the whole world tells it

On the afternoon I wrote this, one story was covered by 2,670 news sources in 57 languages. Local papers, national broadcasters, news portals and agencies. Same event, 2,670 ways of telling it.

Most of us read one or two of those. I wanted to see all of them at once: who covers a story, from where, in which language, how fast it spreads, and what else is happening around it on the planet that day.

So I built it. It is called LSN News, it runs on one machine, and from today it is open to everyone as a free public beta: lsn-news.shuffle-on.com.

Contents · 9 sections

TL;DR #

• LSN News reads around 340,000 articles a day from 13,000 sources in 67 languages and 148 countries, and groups them into stories, across languages.
• For each story you see who covers it: countries, languages, how many sources, when it was first reported. You also get a short summary written by AI, in English and Romanian.
• The stories sit on a world map next to what the planet is doing: earthquakes, storms, floods, fires, volcanoes, weather, the ocean, ships and power.
• It is free during the beta. A 5-minute preview needs no account. Press “Peek inside”.
• It is one person’s project, on one machine, with no investors and no ads.

What you see #

Open the home page and the first thing you get is the world, right now. On the day I’m writing: 339,488 articles, 13,010 sources, 67 languages, 4,732 stories, 11 earthquakes, 3 storms and 27 active volcanoes. These numbers are not typed by hand; they are counted live.

The map shows today’s biggest stories as circles. The more sources cover a story, the bigger its circle. One click switches the map to earthquakes and storms, with a list of what is active right now and where the data comes from.

Click a story and you get its page:

• The coverage: which countries and languages report it, and how many outlets in each.
• When it started: when it was first reported.
• A summary in our own words, written by AI and clearly labelled as such, with the headline translated for the bigger stories.
• The articles themselves: headline, a short snippet, and a link to read the full piece at the publisher.

With a free account you also get:

• Today: the stories that matter for your country, and a short digest for the busiest places in it.
• Follow: up to 10 countries, places, people, organisations, topics or saved searches. LSN tells you what changed.
• A morning e-mail, around 07:00 Romanian time, if you want it.
• Every live map layer: weather, ocean, space weather, fires, hazards, power plants and dams, and the news layers, over the last 30 days.
• Search across everything, with filters.
• API and MCP keys, so your own scripts, or an AI assistant, can ask LSN News questions on your behalf, within the same daily limit as the website.

The site is in English and Romanian. Romanian is not an afterthought: headlines, summaries and the local digests are written for Romanian readers too.

The 5-minute preview #

I don’t like sign-up walls before you know what you are signing up for. So the home page has a button called “Peek inside · 5 minutes”. It opens a real free account for five minutes: the real map, the real stories, the real Today page. Nothing you do is kept. When the time is up, you are back on the home page. You get three previews.

Previews are for people. Automated or abusive use of the preview is detected and blocks your network from LSN News for a while. I would rather not, but this is a small machine.

How it works, briefly #

Every few minutes, collectors fetch new articles from news sites and from the GDELT event stream. Each article is cleaned, its language detected, its places, people and organisations extracted, and it is indexed for search. Articles about the same event are grouped into one story, even across languages, so a story in 57 languages is one story, not 57.

On top of that, AI writes a short summary for the articles in stories that matter, and a one-sentence brief for smaller ones, in its own words. Busy places get a daily local digest. Big stories get their headline translated.

Next to the news, separate collectors keep the map alive: earthquakes from USGS, disasters from GDACS, fires from NASA FIRMS, volcanoes from the Smithsonian’s Global Volcanism Program, weather and forecasts from NOAA, the sea, space weather, ships, power data. Every layer credits its source.

All of it runs on the same machine as the rest of my lab: a single-node Kubernetes cluster with PostgreSQL, ClickHouse and Elasticsearch, monitored, backed up, and documented in this blog when it breaks.

Respecting the people who write the news #

LSN News is not a copy of anyone’s newspaper. For each article it shows the headline, a snippet of at most 120 characters, and a link to the publisher. The summaries are our own text. The full text is used to understand and summarise an article, and then deleted after 30 days; what stays is metadata and our own summary.

If you are a publisher and you want something changed, there is a page for you, For publishers, and I answer every message.

What it is not, yet #

It is a beta, and I’d rather say so plainly:

• The summaries are written by AI. They are usually good. Sometimes they are wrong. Every summary is labelled, and the original articles are always one click away.
• Story grouping is automatic. Now and then two stories get merged that shouldn’t be, or one story is split in two.
• Public pages show headlines at least an hour old. Signed-in users see everything live.
• Some sources are slow. A few large publishing platforms limit how fast anyone may read them, so their articles arrive later than others.
• The interface speaks English and Romanian. The news comes in 67 languages, but the buttons don’t, yet.

Who it is for #

• Curious readers who want to see how the rest of the world tells the story they just read.
• Journalists and researchers who need coverage counts, first-reported times and sources in many languages, in one place.
• People who follow a country, a region or a topic and want one short e-mail in the morning instead of twenty tabs.
• Anyone building with AI who wants an assistant that can read today’s news through MCP, with real sources behind every answer.

Frequently asked questions #

Is LSN News free? #

Yes, during the beta. A free account gives you the stories, search, every live map layer over the last 30 days, follows, the morning e-mail and API and MCP keys.

Do I need an account to try it? #

No. Story pages are public, and the 5-minute preview on the home page needs no account.

Who writes the summaries? #

AI does, and every AI-written text is labelled. The summaries are written in their own words, not copied from the articles, and each one links to its sources.

Can I use it from an AI assistant? #

Yes. A free account can create MCP and API keys. An MCP client can then search stories, read summaries and check hazards on your behalf, within your account’s daily limit.

Who is behind it? #

Me. One person with one machine and no company behind it, the same lab that runs the threat-intelligence dossiers and the library on this site. No investors. LSN News has no ads and no tracking.

The lesson #

You would think the hard part is the volume. It isn’t. A machine can read 340,000 articles a day. The hard part is deciding what a reader actually needs: not more news, but the shape of it. Who is talking about this, where, since when, and what is happening around it.

That is what LSN News tries to show. Open it, press “Peek inside”, and tell me what is missing: lisneanucristian@shuffle-on.com. I read every message.

LSN News is free during the beta and runs on one machine in a village in Romania. If you find it useful, you can support the lab.