[HN Gopher] Hacker News Classics (2018)
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Hacker News Classics (2018)
Author : katzeilla
Score : 148 points
Date : 2021-05-10 11:55 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jsomers.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (jsomers.net)
| lt wrote:
| I've long had this notion that there are two kinds of content on
| a site like HN:
|
| - temporal, like news, announcements, analysis and discussion on
| current events. It's usually irrelevant after a while, it gets
| stale fast.
|
| - atemporal, like essays, history, theory, articles, knowledge in
| general that while it may get superseded, expanded or invalidated
| over time, it's interesting content that you learn from, from a
| current or historical perspective.
|
| While the first kind tends to get more attention due to the
| clickbaity nature, I much prefer the second kind and wonder if a
| site focused solely on that would be more interesting.
| Majestic121 wrote:
| A similar concept is the book serie 'A Map that Reflects the
| Territory' : https://www.lesswrong.com/books.
|
| It's a selection of essays that were written for the LessWrong
| community, and the community voted for the best essays 2 years
| after publication, ensuring that only the 'atemporal' ones got
| into it.
| pr0crastin8 wrote:
| I feel much the same way but I'd like to add some support for
| having the former type of content on HN.
|
| You do get a large response of unqualified opinions, anecdotes
| and repetitive arguments/flamewars but, amongst the 'noise',
| you can roughly cluster voices, average out within clusters and
| get an idea of the range of (mostly) intellectual opinions
| held.
|
| This 'fuzzy' information won't be neatly laid out as with the
| atemporal articles but to me it acts almost like a primary
| resource surveying what the HN community (whatever that
| represents in reality) believes at a point in time.
| scyzoryk_xyz wrote:
| MetaFilter might be for you then
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Agree, and while the former might best be represented on a
| dated "timeline", esp as an ongoing thing of related events;
| The latter is maybe best as a "slow journalist"/"community
| wiki" style of aggregating useful comments.
| davnicwil wrote:
| I know where you're coming from, but I think the shallower
| current events type discussions bring a lot of value in holding
| a mirror up to the deeper, more theoretical and timeless
| pieces.
|
| It's about keeping them honest. You know the latter have value
| if you see their themes and lessons play out frequently in the
| former.
|
| A decent test of the most useful theory is how often it's
| relevant and referenced in shallow quick fire current events
| discussions.
| hyperpallium2 wrote:
| Yes. I think this also aligns with the origins of HN as
| "startup news" ( _news_ is temporal), which was expanded to
| "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" (timeless)
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| Suggest: two sites
| dredmorbius wrote:
| You can generalise this to much document-style information (in
| the Paul Otlet sense).
|
| Nothing has the lack of persistence that news does. (Though a
| surprising amount of "news", for reasons closely related to
| this rapid-staling and unpredictable nature of it, is actually
| repackaged evergreen or procedural content.)
|
| At the same time, there's little that's as timeless as highly-
| insightful observations or commentary. These can live on for
| years, decades, centuries, or millennia.
|
| (I suspect that copyright attacks both ends of this equation,
| by creating moats around current material to keep it in flow,
| and by denying markets to older material, which would otherwise
| compete with the new. This has limits imposed by works which
| were in fact subject to copyright in the first place, which is
| most works published since January 1, 1926, in the US.)
|
| I'm finding classic works, philosophy, and much academic
| publishing to be far more interesting than news, of late.
| [deleted]
| freetonik wrote:
| A somewhat related shameless plug: Timeless Hacker News
| https://thn.rakhim.org/
| calpaterson wrote:
| > the web is the greatest library in the history of the world
|
| I think this is web-boosterism. Consider another candidate for
| greatest library in history of the world: the British Library.
| 200 million items, most of them available to read at 45 minutes
| notice, centrally located in one of the worlds most important
| cities.
|
| I'm bet that 99% of what is on this page is in the BL. Is 99% of
| what is in the BL on the web?
|
| EDIT: For context, here is some of the stuff in the BL:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Library#Highlights_of_...
| movedx wrote:
| How do I access the British Library from India? Or perhaps from
| Australia? New Zealand? What about Canada?
|
| The Internet offers a unique value proposition the British
| Library does not: it's globally available, for free _, and in
| the case of Wikipedia might even come in your native tongue. It
| also offers video content, live or otherwise, on any Internet
| connected device you happen to own.
|
| The British Library doesn't compare, but it sure is an
| exceptional resource.
|
| _a lot of the time
| calpaterson wrote:
| > How do I access the British Library from India?
|
| You clearly can't (though India no special shortage of
| excellent libraries). But how important is access? Is the
| chip shop down the road from you the Worlds Greatest
| Restaurant just because it's the easiest to get to? Or is
| that place in Paris with 3 Michelin stars better?
|
| The web-as-a-library relies on people creating good stuff and
| paying for it to be on the web for free. It just doesn't
| happen that often and Wikipedia is, I'm afraid, not the last
| word on human knowledge.
| rvieira wrote:
| Well, the web has some obvious advantages over mostly-paper
| libraries.
|
| I'm sure a certain library in Alexandria would have appreciated
| off-site backups :)
| tutfbhuf wrote:
| > centrally located
|
| That's not necessarily a good thing. Think of a fire.
| divbzero wrote:
| I know everyone is wondering when Hacker News Classics (2018)
| will appear on Hacker News Classics (2018). From the underlying
| code it looks like this depends on: (a) _fetch.rb_ to be run
| again to regenerate _stories.json_ ; (b) the definition of
| "classic" to be expanded beyond 1900-2010; (c) the Algolia HN API
| to update which it hasn't yet. [1] [2]
|
| [1]: https://github.com/jsomers/hacker-classics
|
| [2]:
| https://hn.algolia.com/api/v1/search?tags=story&query='2018'...
| swyx wrote:
| This is very inline with the Lindy Effect - things that have been
| around for a while can be expected to be relevant longer than
| things that were just created yesterday. Our information diet is
| only as useful as is relevant in future, and tends toward too
| fleeting.
|
| So I think people should make Lindy Libraries - reading resources
| that have stood the test of time. Here are a few I have been
| collecting: https://codingcareer.circle.so/c/lindy-library
| xavierlint wrote:
| > Our information diet is only as useful as is relevant in
| future
|
| I think there are situations where ephemerous knowledge is
| useful. For example, knowing about a security vulnerability:
| its profitability is much higher before the issue gets fixed,
| which can happen anytime (be it two hours or two years).
|
| Another example: imagine you know insert-influential-billonaire
| is going to tweet about insert-trendy-currency, this
| information is completely irrelevant for the future, but you
| can certainly use it to make money.
|
| It's worth mentioning these two examples, however, can provide
| longer-lasting knowledge as a by-product too.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| I enjoy this idea. Always nice to look at the "classics."
|
| I wonder if maybe the Y logo top left should be removed as it
| might mislead users into thinking it's a legitimate extension of
| HN?
| Tomte wrote:
| It would be cool to have a version sorted by (parenthesized)
| date.
|
| Oh, and "(1900..2010).each do |year|" is not good:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16444460
| k__ wrote:
| Half-OT:
|
| HN could optimize the layout for mobile a bit. I'm mostly reading
| on my smartphone and the links are all sooo small, I can barely
| hit them with my thumb.
| Kelamir wrote:
| You could use Materialistic or any other apps that make it
| easier to view HN.
| thamer wrote:
| Not to be confused with Hacker News' /classic:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/classic
|
| /classic uses the same ranking system as the regular front page
| but only counts votes from early users, defined as accounts that
| were created before Feb 13, 2008.
|
| I'm guessing this is an attempt at getting around the Eternal
| September phenomenon, or at least an experiment around this idea.
|
| Source: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24401292
| Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
| And I was thinking "Hacker News Classics" would refer to well-
| known posts/comments on HN, like the comment of the guy
| completely dismissing Dropbox.
| tantalor wrote:
| Unfortunately HN locks the comments after a while.
|
| Mods: we need a way to fix deadlinks
|
| Example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1140283 redirects
| to wrong place.
|
| Correct new link is
| https://lockhaven.edu/~dsimanek/hollow/tamarack.htm
| dang wrote:
| We updated that one -- thanks!
| Wowfunhappy wrote:
| Dang has said this is done as a way to preserve history. I
| think that's more important than some of the links being
| outdated.
| dang wrote:
| That's generally true, but if it's a historical source that's
| still available elsewhere, then the particular link doesn't
| have so much historical value.
|
| Occasionally I'll post archive.org links or similar
| alternatives as pinned top comments, so readers looking at
| the old thread can have access to the article. In the past
| we've changed the top link to archive.org also, but I'd
| rather not encourage that.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| mensetmanusman wrote:
| Unfortunately some dead links, e.g.
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512288
|
| Would be cool if HN had its own web archive after 100 comments or
| so.
| niea_11 wrote:
| Or a bot that browses discussions and if any recent ones have >
| 100 comments automatically sends the link to archive.org to be
| archived and then add a comment with the link of the archived
| copy
| ashtonbaker wrote:
| Are bots allowed here? I've never seen the kind of utility
| bot that is common on Reddit.
| gus_massa wrote:
| Bots are heavily discouraged here. (Almost totally
| forbidden.)
|
| Perhaps if the bot sends the page to the archive
| immediately but instead of posting the comment immediately
| waits a few days (until the last day comments are allowed),
| it will not so controversial because it will add no noise
| to the conversation.
|
| It's better to send an email to the mods with the idea
| before implementing it, because the bot may get banned.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Found a replacement for the (broken) video link in "WATCH THE
| VERY FIRST FILM VERSION OF 'ALICE IN WONDERLAND' FROM 1903":
|
| https://youtu.be/zeIXfdogJbA
| dgellow wrote:
| That's fantastic.
|
| "Linux is obsolete (1992)":
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8942175
| 0-_-0 wrote:
| Linus says:
|
| "If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have
| bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't
| and still isn't. Linux wins heavily on points of being
| available now."
|
| Is he referring to GNU Hurd that is still unfinished?
| bombcar wrote:
| Correct - the general assumption at the time is that GNU Hurd
| was about to bust out and become the main free software
| kernel. Remember that computers that COULD run practical Unix
| for home use had just become relatively available - and Linus
| wanted to play with his new 386 and the fun instructions
| provided therein.
| aidenn0 wrote:
| > Linus "my first, and hopefully last flamefest" Torvalds
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Some more discussion from a year ago:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066
| dang wrote:
| Yup - plus an earlier:
|
| _Hacker News Classics (2018)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22004066 - Jan 2020 (42
| comments)
|
| _Show HN: Hacker News Classics_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16442888 - Feb 2018 (107
| comments)
| the_arun wrote:
| It is not on https
| vaylian wrote:
| The submission link needs HTTPS. But the website itself
| supports HTTPS.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| collecting stories that have (year) on them once may have been a
| nice way to surface archive essays and interesting pieces. These
| kinds of posts are submitted daily now and it's getting
| annoying/ridiculous when things are submitted less than a year
| apart, sometimes even monthly!
|
| Old articles that have been discussed heavily, improved upon,
| circumstances changed, technology evolution especially, are
| mostly lame to revisit on a site that still should weigh heavily
| towards current events/news developments.
|
| I'm just getting tired of sifting thru resurfaced old posts from
| 2016 or whatever
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(page generated 2021-05-10 23:01 UTC)