[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What was your favorite comment in 2020?
Comments on Hacker News can be very well thought, I'm often
impressed with the quality of discussion, although I don't
participate much. I'm curious, what do you think was the most
insightful comment of 2020?
Author : gftsantana
Score : 61 points
Date : 2021-01-01 17:25 UTC (5 hours ago)
| mrkwse wrote:
| Perhaps not the most insightful, but definitely my favourite:
|
| > I'd rate the news as "vibing" on a scale of clickbait to party
| for the world - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25035508
| brundolf wrote:
| I got a really good laugh out of this one:
|
| > By the way, I decided to also quick summarize the usual HN
| threads that have the trigger word iPhone in it...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23003595
| ipnon wrote:
| This anonymous comment on how to be a better sandbagger,
| minimizing the work you do at your job so you can maximize your
| salary to time spent ratio.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25300272
|
| The ethics are obviously debatable, but its an elaborate
| application of the hacker ethos to the problem of feeling like
| you're wasting away 9 to 5, Monday to Friday on a job that in the
| grand scheme of things no one really cares about or makes any
| real difference.
| SilasX wrote:
| Great summary of all the things websites do wrong, which break
| accessibility and your general ability to build upon them with
| other tools:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23324718
|
| And a related, more recent comment from 2020 that identified a
| key failure mode:
|
| > We need to actually coin a word to describe "company solved
| their use-case wonderfully and can't resist fiddling around with
| it for reasons that don't align with their user-base"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25489203
| jds375 wrote:
| This top level comment chain explaining quantum teleportation was
| great and insightful:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25466836
| wallflower wrote:
| > On the way home from last day of school before summer holidays
| I saw some bird chick on the ground, next to a closed wall of
| bricks, on the walkway, between one-way street with heavy traffic
| and a steep hill on the other side...
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24002955
| ra7 wrote:
| From https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045384:
|
| > I sometimes find myself thinking, "why would you do that!?" and
| that's when I realize that what that really means is I'm the one
| who's not understanding something. I should be asking myself,
| "why would they do that?"
|
| This is my favorite because it's simple, but so powerful. I've
| tried to stick to this advice since I saw that comment. And I
| think it has made me kinder and much more willing to empathize
| with others and give chances.
|
| Every time I find myself judging or criticizing others, I keep
| reminding myself of this comment and almost always end up with a
| different perspective.
| Bakary wrote:
| As a corollary to that person's insight, I've noticed that the
| reflex to judge and criticize is very strong. Avoiding
| unnecessary criticism and judgment and focusing on your own
| life takes constant conscious effort, even though it's probably
| one of the most logical choices you can make. This is
| particularly true when the people whom you criticize are
| manifestly doing quite well in general compared to you.
|
| Commenting online can be an exception of course. Let's not rid
| ourselves of ever sin...
| tutfbhuf wrote:
| Can't remember the Headline, but it was something regarding
| Microkernel usage on constrained devices. In case the most
| stripped down version of linux does not fit.
| sigil wrote:
| This comment explaining that no, AlphaFold really is a
| breakthrough:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25306954
|
| This comment on EUV fab processes sent me down a rabbit hole. I
| had no idea how much the state of the art has improved!
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25131424
|
| Another rabbit hole comment, this time on compact nuclear fusion
| and REBCO tape:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24632653
|
| This comment that reined in the hyperbole around GPT-3, while
| still leaving space for fun and exploration, struck a nice
| balance:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23346972
| egberts1 wrote:
| "I don't work for you".
| adamredwoods wrote:
| Not from 2020 but I discovered it this year: from oraguy on
| making a change in the oracle source code:
|
| > - Submit the changes to a test farm consisting of about 100 to
| 200 servers that would compile the code, build a new Oracle DB,
| and run the millions of tests in a distributed fashion.
|
| > - Go home. Come the next day and work on something else. The
| tests can take 20 hours to 30 hours to complete.
|
| > - Go home. Come the next day and check your farm test results.
| On a good day, there would be about 100 failing tests. On a bad
| day, there would be about 1000 failing tests. Pick some of these
| tests randomly and try to understand what went wrong with your
| assumptions. Maybe there are some 10 more flags to consider to
| truly understand the nature of the bug.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941
| pmiller2 wrote:
| Not terribly insightful, but this is definitely my favorite
| comment that I made:
|
| > Yeah, TIL _Mathematica_ knows what a goat is, and can recognize
| one on sight.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24489614
|
| I had fun writing that. :)
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2021-01-01 23:02 UTC)