[HN Gopher] Happy 15th birthday Hacker News
___________________________________________________________________
Happy 15th birthday Hacker News
Author : andrelaszlo
Score : 1314 points
Date : 2022-02-18 11:39 UTC (11 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (news.ycombinator.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (news.ycombinator.com)
| ziml77 wrote:
| dang, that's an impressive amount of time to maintain quality
| content and discussions on the internet.
| launchiterate wrote:
| Dang 15 years! Happy birthday and congratulations PG!
| Red_Tarsius wrote:
| Fifteen years gone by watching tech fads come and go.
| Was that time well spent?
|
| This website had a huge influence over my worldview and I often
| find myself searching through the archived comments for all sorts
| of topics. Here's to 15 more years!
| BaldricksGhost wrote:
| HN is one of my favorite daily reads! Here's to the next 15 years
| and many more.
| sharmin123 wrote:
| zapjpn wrote:
| Happy Birthday!Dan Sheng Ri omedetou
| wilmoore wrote:
| Happy birthday HN. I absolutely love this community. Once I
| started reading HN somewhat frequently, there is no question that
| I became a better developer, thinker, researcher, and writer. The
| topics shared here seem to have no rival anywhere else on the
| internet ... at least, not as far as I am aware of.
|
| I think this is a good time to admit that when I first came here,
| I was a bit shy to post anything about tech or programming, but
| by hanging out here and practicing what I learned here, I
| eventually felt worthy of contributing.
|
| Thank You.
| [deleted]
| ColinWright wrote:
| The actual start was some time before that:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09
| hsn915 wrote:
| Interesting. The first post was on that date (October 9)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1
| guiambros wrote:
| Ha, almost no comments! I'm glad this has evolved over the
| years; the comments are the main reason I keep coming back.
| jeffwass wrote:
| Whoa! So weird to see pg and sama usernames as green!
| 11thEarlOfMar wrote:
| And Arrington voted down to 'dead'.
| dang wrote:
| I've been meaning to do something about those troll
| comments because they were posted several years after the
| original threads and people are still getting confused by
| them. (Needless to say they had nothing to do with
| Arrington.) There were 500+ comments all posted within an
| hour, so obviously by a script. Edit: They were dead not
| because they were voted down, btw, but because we killed
| them much later. I thought that would be sufficient but it
| wasn't.
|
| I have a hunch that was what prompted pg ("I never write a
| line of code unless I have to") to close old threads to new
| comments.
|
| Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30387562
| Melatonic wrote:
| I have no data or examples to back this up but very
| recently I have been noticing what seems to be a lot more
| comments with what seems to be intentionally divisive
| language and/or generic comments that do not seem to have
| much to do with the OP. Nothing this obvious but it was
| setting off some of the same flags in my head as some
| Reddit threads. Could just be that I am paranoid though
| :-D
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| Fun fact, I'm pretty sure that was the first troll account.
| I.e. the first account made explicitly to troll.
|
| Arrington was something of a meme back in those days.
| tmvnty wrote:
| Yes it is. Also for reference, here's list of number 1 posts on
| HN since that day: https://hnhd.io/
| avg_dev wrote:
| Hard to remember that YouTube was once not owned by Google.
| divbzero wrote:
| HN didn't exist yet before 2006-10-09:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-08
|
| Here are all the days with posts from 2006-10-09 through
| 2007-02-19:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-10
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-11
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-12
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-13
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-14
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-15
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-17
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-22
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-12-14
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2007-02-19
|
| What happened in between? Was HN tweaked and then relaunched?
| upopoli wrote:
| thatguyagain wrote:
| Love this site
| mfrw wrote:
| I think what I owe to this place is me transforming from a dumb
| fellow who would say "This ${shiny_thing} solves world hunger &
| ${everything_else} is wrong!" to "Yeah, naah ... everyone has a
| point of view and is right from their vantage point"
|
| tl;dr I think this platform made me more humble!
|
| A big "thank you" to the community :)
| woldenron wrote:
| So how many more until we get dark theme?
| InCityDreams wrote:
| 'Materialistic', on android/ playstore. Love hn, and am greatly
| appreciative I can't (or can't find how to....not that I want
| to) vote down!
|
| Asking for my apple friends...is there a similar app in the
| walled garden?
| yakochakri wrote:
| Actually, I came here to submit my link but after seeing the
| interaction rate I found that I am wrong. Happy Birthday, HN.
| eezurr wrote:
| Thank you to the moderation team for keeping HN a pleasant,
| educational corner of the internet.
| HHalvi wrote:
| I discovered HN around 2012, been visiting this site the first
| thing every morning for a decade now.
|
| Happy birthday HN :)
| atum47 wrote:
| I've been coming here daily since 2018, before that I use to go
| to /g/. Difference is that over here I can get insights from
| highly intelligent people without being called a ret*d.
|
| Thanks Dang
| seandoe wrote:
| I know people are always talking about the downfall of the web,
| but doesn't hackernews show that the spirit is alive and well?
| And further, great sites don't have to devolve into shit. I don't
| use social media, so to me the web _is_ places like hackernews
| and the great resources it typically references. Cheers and thank
| you all.
| anonu wrote:
| > On Having Balls, Part II: Staying Hungry (hotornot.com) > 67
| points by matt on Feb 19, 2007 | hide | 3 comments
|
| Was curious about this post. Found it here [1]. Reading this was
| interesting and felt a bit like going back in a time-machine. Hot
| or Not was a fantastic site -because it inspired a lot of my
| friends and myself in the early 2000s to build similar things.
| One thing I didn't realise is how much money the site was making
| then. Wikipedia claims it was doing $7m in revs in 2008
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20070419061100/http://james.hoto...
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| Took me a while to find out where the cool kids had gone from
| Slashdot back then ;)
|
| Speaking of which, let's keep HN a liberal and welcoming place
| also for corps/startups (but not astroturfers) where key
| developers, experts from non-IT, CEOs/CTOs can have a voice as
| that's what makes HN unique IMO.
| jillesvangurp wrote:
| Ah, I miss the old Slashdot. It took me a while to become a
| regular here as well. Slashdot got a bit too serious/corporate
| at some point and the founders eventually got out and at some
| point I just moved on as well. The last time I left a comment
| there was twelve years ago or so. I actually just logged in
| just to see if my account is still there. Karma still excellent
| :-).
|
| I like HN, but it could do with people being maybe a bit less
| uptight and a bit lighter sometimes. The comment section seems
| to have quite a few pedantic know it-alls taking themselves way
| to seriously; just like slashdot used to. Welcoming is maybe
| not a term I'd necessarily use for this.
|
| Anyway, happy birthday HN!
| mindcrime wrote:
| _I like HN, but it could do with people being maybe a bit
| less uptight and a bit lighter sometimes. The comment section
| seems to have quite a few pedantic know it-alls taking
| themselves way to seriously; just like slashdot used to._
|
| That's a fair point, but at least the one thing we don't have
| here (for the most part) in comparison to /. is the steady
| stream of comments of the
|
| - GNAA
|
| - In Soviet Korea Only Old People Spy You With Email
|
| - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of those
|
| - X is dying, Netcraft confirms it.
|
| - etc.
|
| sort. Not that some of that stuff wasn't funny for a moment,
| but it definitely grew stale after a while.
| echelon wrote:
| "Hot grits", obscene ASCII art, homophobia, racism, nazi
| jokes... The comments section on Slashdot was downright
| offensive. I never understood why Slashdot tolerated these
| things. They killed their own community.
|
| HN was immediately the opposite: a place you could read the
| comments _before_ the article.
| allochthon wrote:
| There's definitely a contingent in the HN comments with a bit
| of an antisocial streak. I wish people approached comments
| they take issue with with more of a pedagogical approach,
| starting with interpretive charity and trying to help the
| commenter see things in another way.
|
| I'd actually use the term "welcoming" in this context.
| fartcannon wrote:
| People get paid to promote shit on HN. It's a job you can
| get. There's no hope for the old internet these days. You
| can welcome the spammers, if you want, but all you're gonna
| get is spam.
| [deleted]
| ignoramous wrote:
| > _...welcoming place also for corps /startups_
|
| news.yc, like all other mimetic communities on the web, has its
| flaws. For ex, it reserves plenty wrath and fury for a certain
| type of corps and upstarts. Not sure if that's a good or a bad
| thing; but, It is _a thing_.
| ilamont wrote:
| Slashdot at the time was turning into a bit of a swamp, partly
| from its bad threaded commenting system, but mostly because of
| a constant addition of low-value "first" comments, needless
| attacks, and dumb links (Goatse, Rickrolling, etc.)
|
| HN came around at the right time, and really had a better
| community with a good signal:noise ratio. The moderating system
| (flagging, up/down votes, and of course @dang and his
| predecessors) really helped.
|
| One thing that's really impressed me as time has gone on is how
| far the expertise has expanded. I have bookmarked a bunch of
| users who consistently add solid insights, often with deep
| domain expertise sometimes from very unexpected quarters
| (diesel technicians, biologists, farmers, artists, musicians
| ...). They include @Animats @jdietrich @bkohlmann @nonbel
| @tptacek @zackmorris @jurassic @tamilama @patio11 @ries
| @nimbius @breakingcups @noduerme @300bps and many more.
| jacquesm wrote:
| We even got the root node ;)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cmdrtaco
| CSMastermind wrote:
| Wow that's a name I haven't thought about in a long time.
|
| I was in high school in the early 2000s and Slashdot was like
| a haven for me.
|
| I grew up in a town where I didn't know anyone in technology,
| let alone professional programmers.
|
| But thanks to the internet I could get onto Slashdot and talk
| to other nerds and interact with real live professional
| programmers.
|
| I haven't logged into my account in years but in hindsight
| that site meant a huge amount to me.
| kevwals wrote:
| Started from the bottom now we're here.
| gstipi wrote:
| HN is the only place where I feel truly comfortable and at home.
| Through divorce, addiction, and desperation of all kinds. Thank
| you and to another 15 years.
| rdl wrote:
| This remains my favorite forum on the Internet without
| customizing things. Curated set of twitter or fb or other friends
| are pretty good too, but the new user experience without
| customization here is amazing.
| mmaunder wrote:
| Happy birthday HN and shout out to all the OGs still here. Thanks
| to the founders and the mods for creating a more cerebral space
| on the web.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Wow. I've been hanging out here for 15 years.
| rglullis wrote:
| Today I learned that I joined HN before jgrahamc. I think I
| will substitute my Slashdot 5-digit UID for my HN join date as
| my favorite nerd-humblebrag.
| jgrahamc wrote:
| Me and my 6-digit /. UID bow down before you. Now, how many
| digits in your CompuServe ID?
| rglullis wrote:
| I can't win them all. You got me there, but only because I
| never joined it in the first place?
|
| Now I am trying to remember if there was anything special
| about BBS's that could be used to identify old-timers.
| mindcrime wrote:
| Oldest dated Fidonet message maybe? :-)
| mindcrime wrote:
| Hah... I remember feeling shameful about my 5 digit /. UID
| because everybody knew the _real_ OG 's had 4 digit ones!
|
| God that brings back memories. I checked my /. profile just
| now and see that I still have an AIM id and an ICQ id listed
| there. Yikes. And the email address points to a domain I
| haven't owned in like 15 years. At least the jabber address I
| had listed is actually still active.
| sophacles wrote:
| I remember refreshing slashdot to see the announcement
| introducing accounts. Teenage me decided to be one of the
| "the concept of accounts on this site is dumb" folks. (For
| months after slashdot introduced accounts there were all
| sorts of AnonymousCowards talking about how dumb the idea
| was). Eventually I relented and got my 5 digit uid. Years
| later I would cringe thinking about it, knowing I had an
| opportunity for a 3 or 4 digit one (when it was still cool
| and relevant to have such a thing). These days the fact
| that my reddit account is almost old enough to drive, and
| my HN account is 14.25 just makes me feel old :D.
|
| The place I really miss is kuro5hin. That site was a gem.
| elihu wrote:
| Kuro5hin was amazing until the trolls took over. I really
| liked the idea of people writing stories and have them
| subject to editorial comments before they go live. That's
| sort of what my mental model of what citizen journalism
| should look like, and what modern scientific journals
| should be like. I haven't seen anyone do anything quite
| like it since, which is a shame.
|
| Another site, less known than kuro5hin that was great for
| awhile was called Jyte. You just post whatever random
| statement you want, and people can vote "agree" or
| "disagree". The community was amazing. It was kind of
| like a game where you try to find some issue where
| reasonable people are roughly equally split. It was also
| something where you could just interject any topic you
| like for any reason. Maybe that's what people get out of
| twitter -- I don't use it myself.
| raphlinus wrote:
| You rang?
|
| [3148]: https://slashdot.org/~raph
| mindcrime wrote:
| Daaaaaaaaayum! You could sell that user for a lot of
| money!
| paganel wrote:
| Same here, even though in the early years I was still trying to
| hang out more on programmning.reddit.com. But I don't think
| that extended into 2008 and I'm too lazy to check now.
|
| Also, checking now I can't believe I joined so soon after this
| website was announced. Now I wish I had invested in BTC when it
| was considered as expensive at $100.
| jacquesm wrote:
| It'd be interesting to see how many of those first cohorts are
| still active.
| msb wrote:
| Never been much for commenting, but absorbed a lot from the
| knowledge you dropped back then.
| phrozbug wrote:
| Happy birthday!
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| Happy Birthday HN.
|
| Obligatory and much warranted shouts of thanks to Dang.
|
| Trying to find my 'green' posts now for memory lane
| hailpixel wrote:
| Oh wow, I've been on here a long time.
| lvl100 wrote:
| I've been coming here from the beginning. Off and on. Different
| handles because I rarely saved my passwords. I absolutely
| appreciate all the gem comments especially from insiders. This is
| the only place that reminds me of 90s newsgroups.
|
| I want to especially thank Dang for keeping this place
| consistent.
| globile wrote:
| Was also here on the 1st day, the same day I decided to start-
| up 15 years ago!
|
| Took me 7 years to create an account though. Wish I had done it
| sooner!
|
| Especially ALWAYS reading the comments BEFORE the actual
| articles! Thanks!
| misiti3780 wrote:
| how did people hear about it back then?
| karlzt wrote:
| From PGs blog, O'Reilly's feed and/or Slashdot.
|
| /.
| capableweb wrote:
| I've only been on HN since around ~2009 or something like
| that (11 years), but most people I've met in real-life who
| are also on HN have been recommended to visit the site
| first time from fellow hackers, rather than via other
| websites.
| jedberg wrote:
| From reddit and/or PGs blog.
| bound008 wrote:
| We need Dang as a Guido style BDFL[1]. At least until the
| community has grown to fully take on and continue the culture.
| (Which I am assuming why Guido felt he could step down)
|
| Hope they are taking great care of you at YC!
|
| 1. For those unaware, Guido, the creator of Python, who
| remained the Benevolent Dictator for life until 2018.
| known wrote:
| 12ian34 wrote:
| Three things I enjoy the most about Hacker News:
|
| - Simplicity
|
| - Open-minded, ego-less debate
|
| - A great community, moderated just right
| melenaboija wrote:
| I have no doubt that the first page of HN made me the
| professional I am now and the comments helped me to forge strong
| opinions. It has been a while since I started using the HN search
| engine to know better about technical topics.
|
| Not sure who to but thank you.
| [deleted]
| tomrod wrote:
| pg, dang, and all others who work behind the scenes, as well as
| the scores of commenters and submitters who challenge by
| seeking to understand.
|
| I too am a beneficiary of this neo-polis of tech and
| philosophy.
| melenaboija wrote:
| Yup, that could be interpreted wrong.
|
| Sure I am grateful to dang and all the members. of the
| community. I guess
|
| I have a bit of conflict on the origin of the community, not
| saying there is anything wrong in what it is but maybe no
| connections with a private initiative would make me feel more
| comfortable, but I guess that it is what it is and I should
| say thank you to Y Combinator too.
| tomrod wrote:
| In this context, "behind the scenes" == keep the place
| running, like moderators I did not name, IT support, etc.
| zoover2020 wrote:
| HBD HN! Thanks for the amazing 15 years so far, sounds corny but
| I'm not sure if I'd be in the same place today without you.
|
| Love this place, thanks to all for making it possible. Let's keep
| it great for at least another 15 years.
| d3nit wrote:
| Happy Bday HN! Since I come here I think I spend too much time of
| my workdays with reading :D
| billylo wrote:
| I really enjoy HN and slashdot.org type of community. Makers
| talking about making things.
|
| The longevity and quality of HN discussion is much appreciated.
| sidcool wrote:
| With all its quirks, HN has had a big impact on my life for more
| than a decade.
| bartwe wrote:
| Was glad hn got started right around the time r/programming
| collapsed
| raxxorrax wrote:
| Why did it collapse? I use reddit from time to time, but never
| for programming related stuff.
|
| Did read HN for quite a while, not 15 years though and started
| spamming it just a few years ago.
| cyanne wrote:
| Happy 15th birthday then!
| minusSeven wrote:
| Maybe an unpopular opinion here but I am finding HN to be more
| and more like Reddit everyday. I normally only read HN articles
| that have atleast 500 points or more and have notifications setup
| for it. In the past I used to get only 1 or 2 notifications a
| week. Now I get atleast 4 a day. I find it hard nowadays to keep
| up.
| nicky0 wrote:
| Perhaps you could increase the notification threshold.
| Minor49er wrote:
| The New section also has plenty of interesting submissions that
| don't make it to the front page, though it would be easy to
| lose hours reading them
| inglor_cz wrote:
| I only visit HN sine September 2020 and yet the growth of the
| user base in just 17 months seems obvious to me.
|
| Covid and WFH probably contributed to that growth as well.
| sbayeta wrote:
| Maybe there are more users now?
| RubberMullet wrote:
| Slashdot -> F'd Company forum -> MetaFilter -> HN
|
| Big thanks to dang and everyone involved.
| mathgenius wrote:
| Slashdot -> Technocrat [1] -> HN.
|
| I think Bruce Perens shutdown technocrat.net because it's just
| a p.i.t.a. running a forum like this [2].
|
| [1]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20080110105629/http://technocrat...
|
| [2]
| https://web.archive.org/web/20090104214806/http://technocrat...
| epa wrote:
| We have had our ups and downs over the years but this is still is
| my favorite website.
| bkfh wrote:
| 2007 is... 15 years ago OMG
| stillblue wrote:
| Checking HN is the very first thing I do after waking up. It has
| been that way for years now. Amazing community!!!!
| lngnmn2 wrote:
| We must acknowledge that it went from the free speech place for
| nerds and autists with zero censure to a safe space for mediocre
| imposters where everything slightly unconventional is being
| flagged.
|
| Congratulations.
| smugkot wrote:
| What website would you say is better?
| jacquesm wrote:
| Yes, even in a thread like this there are people that don't
| know how to behave. FWIW I did not expect to flag a comment in
| this thread, but you managed to cross my threshold.
|
| And if it is so aggravating to you, why do you keep coming
| back?
| seumars wrote:
| Ha! lots of interesting headlines:
|
| >YouTube: "identifying copyrighted material can't be an automated
| process." Startup disagrees.
| adpcm wrote:
| Wish they would have said that DMCA claims can't be an
| automated process. Not that that is really on YouTube alone
| though.
| unixhero wrote:
| The most important website om the Internet.
| jll29 wrote:
| Thanks, HN, for continuing being one of the few islands of ideas
| and expertise in an over-commercialized WWW.
| drumhead wrote:
| HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started. Links to
| interesting Tech, programming and science stories and high
| quality discussion compared to something like Digg.
|
| Thankfully HN hasnt dropped in quality on that front unlike
| reddit. Its still so good I dont even click on the link I click
| on comments to get a HN summary which gives me a pretty good idea
| if its worth reading or not. Most of the time the comments are
| even better and more informative.
| cakeman wrote:
| I have to agree with berkut. I had to stop using a previous hn
| account because it was so incredibly frustrating when people
| would downvote me with no explanation. I would cite my comments
| with reputable sources but that never helped.
|
| It was enough to prevent me from contributing to the discussion
| until recently.
|
| Certain beliefs or opinions in the minority are not very well
| tolderated here. It's still certainly better than other sites,
| but from my perspective it is slowly sliding downwards.
|
| If I do post, it likely would not be anything remotely
| controversial.
| 1_player wrote:
| I don't blame HN, I blame the invention of the downvote
| button.
|
| I find it easier to hold a slightly controversial opinion
| here than it has ever been possible on Reddit, especially the
| programming and tech subreddits which are very low quality in
| general.
|
| The downvote button is awful, but why is it surprising that
| controversial opinions are downvoted? Being downvoted is the
| proof the opinion is controversial. It would be better if
| people weren't cancelled because they go against the grain,
| sure, but we don't live in a perfect utopia of perfectly
| rational beings.
| derefr wrote:
| Ah, but if you think about it, the upvote button has the
| same dysfunction as the downvote button, just at the other
| extreme. The downvote button punishes controversy; but the
| upvote button _rewards orthodoxy_. So even without a
| downvote option, orthodox comments rise to the top.
|
| The upvote button _also_ acts a bit like a Rotten Tomatoes
| score, in that it compresses the full range of "scores"
| people might give something down into just "did you like it
| or not." So something that a thousand people can like _just
| enough_ to vote for, will end up upvoted much more highly
| than something that 100 people absolutely love. The things
| you see rising to the top are thus whatever is "blandly
| agreeable" to the most people, rather than what is
| "seriously amazing" to a non-negligible subset of people.
|
| ---
|
| IMHO a "proper" solution for both of these problems would
| be entirely different than what we've got now.
|
| * The primary factor for ranking posts/comments would be an
| "engagement score", coming from how long in aggregate users
| spend actually looking at/reading the comment or linked
| page (which is in fact practical to observe _if_ this
| social-bookmarking service is interacted with primarily
| through a browser extension / app, as would be the modern
| trend.)
|
| * Posts (and comment threads) would additionally gain some
| (diminished) bonuses from the aggregate scores of their
| child-comment subtrees. So boring posts/root-comments with
| engaging comments subthreads would still rise to the top,
| to ensure that those subthreads are surfaced to appreciate.
| (Probably there'd have to be UX for this case, highlighting
| the aspect of the post+comments that's so engaging.)
|
| * Something upvote-like would still exist (though it'd be
| optional for the system's functioning, because of the
| engagement score); but adding one would require a proof-of-
| work (e.g. solving a CAPTCHA.) This signal could thus be
| factored quite _strongly_ when available (presuming the
| service has sufficient anti-botting measures in place.)
|
| * You can actually upvote things _multiple times_ -- but
| the proof-of-work required would be exponentially-
| increasing. One CAPTCHA for one point; another two for a
| second point; another four for a third point. This solves
| the "Rotten Tomatoes" problem.
|
| * No downvotes; instead, comments can mark themselves as
| being a "rebuttal" to the post/comment they're responding
| to. (Maybe entirely-separate "comment" and "rebut" UX
| flows.) The aggregate engagement+upvote scores of all
| "rebuttals" to a thing, would then be inherited as a
| "malus", i.e. a bonus with the sign flipped; high-scoring
| rebuttals lower the rank of the thing they rebut, which
| means that that thing then has less of a score to
| contribute as a bonus to its own ancestors.
|
| * This down-ranking would be applied recursively from the
| leaf nodes up; the malus of a rebuttal on its ancestors
| would be "weakened" if the rebuttal was hit with a malus
| from high-powered rebuttals of its own.
| kshacker wrote:
| Talking of Reddit downvoted, I am not sure it is that bad.
| I have been downvoted to hell and I have downvoted. But my
| observation is that downvoted comments get hidden quickly
| so only the truly extreme comments are downvoted big or
| only the true believers go and find comments to downvote.
| Net net it happens but it is easier to get a 100 votes than
| to lose them and I think it may be easier to get 1000 votes
| than to lose 1000.
| 1_player wrote:
| Fair enough, the problem with Reddit downvotes is dwarfed
| by the fact that Reddit's "etiquette" is to promote witty
| and sharp one liners, compared to deep and thoughtful
| comments, and it is the opposite of HN, where you can
| have the witty but shallow takedowns but the amount of
| thoughtful comments is above any other discussion forum
| this size.
| romaniv wrote:
| It's not just Reddit's "etiquette", it's the general
| direction where most social media comment sections are
| pushing their users via design and algorithms.
|
| 1. Click on the next thing in the feed.
|
| 2. Upvote/downvote.
|
| 3. Leave one-liner comment.
|
| 4. Got to #1.
| slingnow wrote:
| > HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started.
|
| That's exactly the problem -- HN is now reddit-lite.
| laumars wrote:
| The quality on HN has dropped massively in the last 5 years.
| It's still better than Reddit but it's definitely not where it
| once was.
|
| I also think the peer moderation on here is broken. Again, it's
| better than Reddit but I still think HN can improve things. I
| have a few ideas on how that could work but I don't think
| there's any incentive to change the status quo (and I
| sympathise with why too).
| UI_at_80x24 wrote:
| I've always thought HN was more like the spiritual successor to
| Slashdot then (most of) Reddit.
|
| On /. it was COMMON to be participating in a discussion about
| (for example) a camera problem on one of NASAs' probes, and
| very soon you would discover that the actual people from NASA
| that were working on it were in the forum talking about what
| they were actually doing and getting to the core issues rather
| then the press-release fluff.
|
| If there was a science/tech story you could almost guarantee
| that the authors of the paper themselves would show up, and all
| of a sudden you would get 10PHD's from different fields all
| "working together".
|
| There was another thread that I remember a bit better because I
| was involved in it. Somebody had an old/obscure bit of computer
| hardware that was last used in a 386. (A tape-drive backup that
| used the floppy-controller to read/write data to the drive.)
| The person was desperate to get a copy of his thesis off of the
| drive, but there was a hardware failure on both the drive and
| the old PC.
|
| Well in the thread one of the old engineers that had designed
| the drive at his old company chimed and said he had the part
| that was broken and would ship it out to him. Then another
| person offered to send a USB to Floppy controller so that his
| "new PC" (sans floppy interface) would be able to work. THEN
| the tech director of a major backup company (software) offered
| his labs to have the the whole PC & tape drive shipped to their
| headquarters where the lab would get the files off the drive
| for free because "I want my team to have the chance to train on
| this, and learn how to restore it all."
|
| In the end it was a happy story for the end-user. But I see a
| similar gathering of the minds on HN as I once did on Slashdot.
|
| My /. ID was 5 digits.... The internet was different back then,
| but it's nice to see that people can still be the same.
| tgv wrote:
| Not having "sub-combinators" might have contributed to that,
| and the relentless moderation by dang, who has mildly
| reprimanded me too. I think it works very well indeed!
|
| Happy 15th!
| zzleeper wrote:
| I always thought it was the opposite. That subreddits allowed
| the community to expand without catering to the lowest common
| denominator, and reddit would have fallen off the cliff
| faster without those.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| In my view Reddit and Twitter occupy the same rung with
| respect to discourse. There's a lot of variation between
| the subreddits and between the various pockets of Twitter,
| but on average the lowest common denominator is not an
| inaccurate characterization of those communities.
| jgwil2 wrote:
| I think that Reddit is a degree better than Twitter: it's
| still possible to find long, substantive discussions on
| Reddit, but the artificial length constraint on Twitter
| really pushes all users toward pithy "burns" and other
| toxic forms of discourse.
| throwaway894345 wrote:
| As a counterpoint, Twitter "threads" are a thing and you
| can find a lot of good discourse on them. I don't know
| how I feel about the length constraint--part of me thinks
| that the people who for whom the constraint is a toxicity
| trap are going to be the same people who don't avail
| themselves of Reddit's lack of length constraint and thus
| come across as baity and otherwise toxic no matter the
| platform.
|
| Similarly, I think that Reddit optimizes for groupthink
| even more than Twitter does. Good luck having an
| insightful conversation in /r/pol or /r/conservative or
| even some technology subreddit.
|
| And mind, I think Twitter Inc is absolutely awful and
| Twitter is a societal ill. I just don't perceive a
| significant degree of difference between it and Reddit
| _with respect to discourse_.
| eldaisfish wrote:
| I tend to agree with this. Subreddits are fantastic for
| hobbies and specialised interests. Unfortunately, reddit is
| increasingly becoming a hub for astroturfing at the same
| time as search results become more unreliable.
| TigeriusKirk wrote:
| There are still subreddits with much better discussion than
| happens here. Narrow focus and consistent moderation are
| the keys.
| sillysaurusx wrote:
| I guess I'll chime in and say that I, too, have noticed more
| downvotes when I wouldn't normally predict them.
|
| Unlike the other commenters, I'm not worried about it. It's
| just a sign of growth and HN going mainstream. The mods keep
| everyone on a tight leash, so I think the content will remain
| good.
|
| It is a bit frustrating to post something that feels high
| quality but people disagree. But that's the price you pay for
| not being perfect to everyone all the time. (You see? It's
| impossible.) So don't let it bug you.
| berkut wrote:
| Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree...
|
| Things aren't _that_ bad, but I 've definitely noticed a lot
| more cases of downvoting of "against the grain" comments or
| opinions with often very few responses in the last couple of
| years.
|
| Previously, I rarely noticed heavily downvoted comments, and in
| the cases they were, there were almost always reply comments
| explaining the opposite side, leading to IMO much better
| discourse and discussion.
| larrik wrote:
| Maybe, but 5-10 years ago Apple-bashing was a karma death
| sentence (never guess how I learned that). Now it seems to be
| more of an active discussion (mostly due to the MBP keyboard
| situation I guess?).
| modeless wrote:
| Big Tech bashing is in fashion, is that really a surprise?
| It's totally mainstream now. That doesn't mean HN is more
| accepting of alternative viewpoints in general. Maybe even
| the opposite.
| fouc wrote:
| When I see a lot of downvotes I usually ask myself "what do
| they know that I don't?" I would assume some portion of
| downvotes are due to a knowledge disparity. And if there's
| a lot of downvotes against my comment, then there's a
| chance I'm missing some key knowledge.
| rubatuga wrote:
| Damn that used to be such a big deal a few years ago. You
| don't see it anymore.
| Covzire wrote:
| I've only been browsing here for about 10 of the 15 years,
| but I remember a time when the discussions closely matched
| what I and the public at large could discuss in private
| without fear.
|
| But there has been a chilling effect in recent years where
| more and more topics become verboten and someone will get
| downvoted, at a minimum, for even bringing them up.
| Interesting topics and child threads go missing on the
| regular. We're even at a point now where certain corporate
| press releases cannot even be questioned at all, despite the
| same corporations being stuck with heavy fines for similar
| past behavior they're being accused of now.
|
| I still like HN for the purely technical aspects, but I don't
| know anyone who still views it as a place where complex ideas
| that affect society can be discussed anymore.
| ineptech wrote:
| "Verboten" is a strong word; to my mind that refers to
| things that can't be discussed because they would challenge
| the power structure, like how you can't talk about Tank Guy
| in Chinese social media.
|
| That's not HN. When you get downvoted for hot-button
| political stuff, that's like getting shushed for talking
| about football in church. It's not censored, but this isn't
| the place for it.
| dang wrote:
| > certain corporate press releases cannot even be
| questioned at all
|
| That doesn't sound right. What is an example?
| unethical_ban wrote:
| I've been thinking of building an HN clone for politics and
| society. The requirement to post would be an account of the
| same name on HN, validated through something like a code on
| your profile, and only for users above a certain karma
| threshold.
|
| It basically outsourced the work of making sure users are
| of decent tech savviness and good faith.
| Terry_Roll wrote:
| There is online manipulation here and pretty much everywhere
| else where people can discuss things.
|
| It can come in a variety of forms. https://mpra.ub.uni-
| muenchen.de/109634/1/MPRA_paper_109634.p...
| https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-
| op...
|
| Reputation Management
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management which
| obviously protects income streams for entities, but the
| military also protect businesses online because they are
| protecting money coming in from abroad, this is what politics
| is all about, placating the public which business gets its
| way, stuff you probably dont need to know about and so wont
| be taught about it.
| dang wrote:
| Such things of course exist but the problem is that
| internet users are inclined to see astroturfing, shilling,
| brigading, state actors, and so on in every comment they
| dislike. Then they react aggressively as if they are
| uncovering crimes, which pushes discussion quality
| downhill. That's why we ask people not to post that way
| unless they have actual evidence (in which case they should
| be sending it to hn@ycombinator.com so we can investigate).
| Someone else having a disagreeable view does not count as
| evidence.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comm
| e...
| Melatonic wrote:
| Agreed
| bluedays wrote:
| I have noticed the same, but when I have mentioned this in
| the past I have been downvoted and told that I am being
| "conspiratorial". This is definitely a problem on Hacker
| News, because it is a website beholden to a company
| (YCombinator). This company has a vested interest in
| ensuring that the messages on Hacker News reflect what the
| popular narrative is as it reflects upon them personally.
| In other words as long as large companies control the
| medium the messages will be controlled by said company.
| There is only the illusion of free speech on the Internet.
| You can say whatever you want, but don't be surprised if
| nobody can hear you.
| [deleted]
| sbayeta wrote:
| I suspect this is what most of us do
| slap_shot wrote:
| > Thankfully HN hasnt dropped in quality on that front unlike
| reddit.
|
| I've heard these sorts of shots taken at Reddit since I
| started using it in 2011 (I was late to the game) and I'm
| fascinated by it. I use Reddit every day and am in constant
| awe of how it is populated with such a wide breadth of people
| with such a strong passion and expertise about virtually any
| subject I enjoy.
|
| Many times a week i type "reddit <some topic I'm curious
| about>" and the top threads/comments are almost always
| someone with better knowledge on that subject than anything
| else I can find on the internet.
|
| It's just funny how everyone's perception is different, but I
| think Reddit is a modern marvel.
| alickz wrote:
| I like Reddit but I think you have to be very careful about
| trusting any information on it, it's a populist's wet
| dream.
|
| There have been multiple times on Reddit I saw a comment
| about something I personally had deep knowledge of, and was
| astounded at how inaccurate the comment was relative to the
| thousands of upvotes and dozens of awards it had.
|
| This has made me wary of comments relating to subjects I
| have zero expertise in, as I can't properly evaluate if
| they're correct and I can't trust the responses or upvotes
| because those might come from people with as little
| expertise in the subject as me.
|
| Since upvotes don't correlate with truthfulness, they only
| correlate with popularity, they're useless as a measurement
| of how accurate a comment is. This is usually exacerbated
| by how popular a given subreddit is, with smaller niche
| subreddits being better (in my experience).
|
| That said I do indeed go to Reddit first for most of my
| purchasing or entertainment decisions, just have to be
| careful to take any info there with a massive heaping of
| salt.
| aaronsimpson wrote:
| This may just be my confirmation bias, but I started using
| Reddit in 2012 and that felt like the big heyday and the
| peak of the site. It had reached critical mass to be
| interesting, but the new UI design hadn't come yet and it
| still felt niche enough to have the weird, interesting
| corners.
| forbiddenvoid wrote:
| I think the sad reality may be that the majority of folks
| out there don't want niche, weird and interesting.
| ellis0n wrote:
| Happy birthday HN! 10 years ago, I accidentally found HN and left
| the local pirate community, which translated many posts (for Non-
| English speakers) from HN and never gave links to original
| content.
| zriha wrote:
| As a newcomer here, well I am wishing everybody a happy birthday!
| :)
| aiisjustanif wrote:
| God I feel old. Started reading HN in 2012.
| zwieback wrote:
| Happy Birthday, I love HN but I still miss Usenet...
| edmcnulty101 wrote:
| I just have to say,if you ever start to get down on hacker news
| just go to Twitter and try to start a reasonable discussion.
|
| It will inspire great gratitude for HN.
| sebow wrote:
| Barely even 5 here but here's to 15 more good years.Happy
| anniversary
| raverbashing wrote:
| If you go one day forward, there's this:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=189
|
| But the actual YC link is 404
| Jaruzel wrote:
| Archived copy of the 404:
|
| https://web.archive.org/web/20140625052305/http://ycombinato...
| mikezhdev wrote:
| Happy birthday, HN!!
| erwincoumans wrote:
| Congrats, a great place to discuss interesting topics.
|
| Wonder how HN moderators deal with spam? I have a phpBB3 (was
| phpBB2) forum for 17 years, still running, and had to be
| inventive with spam: for the last 5 years you have to solve a dot
| product and answer a logic question during registration. It may
| exclude some genuine visitors unfortunately. Also migrated the
| server to different VPS companies, it takes energy to keep a
| forum running, a popular site such as HN in particular.
|
| So thank you HN admins!
| smrtinsert wrote:
| One of the first to use bayesian spam filtering techniques if I
| remember correctly. Probably only gotten better since then.
|
| Still using spacer gifs though hah.
| nhoughto wrote:
| Wasn't there a thread recently (can't find it) about the limit of
| paging back to the earliest posts and that it actually started in
| October or similar? And feb is just the earliest the UI will let
| you click to, so anniversary is actually past already? Not to be
| a party pooper =|
| headalgorithm wrote:
| The first day of HN frontpage:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30200626
| jointpdf wrote:
| Top comment from the post announcing HN
| (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=124):
|
| > _Well its not a totally useless link submission..._
|
| Even our earliest comment ancestors had the signature HN
| venom.
| tomrod wrote:
| Venom? Characteristic wit of people who have no time for
| silliness :)
| pfarrell wrote:
| 2006-10-09. Using the "past" link doesn't include dates around
| this time.
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816110
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09
| Sebb767 wrote:
| I guess it's like Christmas; it's the tradition that matters,
| not the exact date.
| chris123 wrote:
| The good old days, most fantastic. Now it's to degenerated into
| some combination of echo chamber and safe place, with no lively
| debate, certainly not about anything controversial. Very sad.
| Kye wrote:
| You're baiting flags and downvotes here, intentional or not. It
| will seem to confirm your faulty view of HN. Isn't that handy?
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I agree with him partly, and at least two other users voiced
| the same concern, one albeit in an abrasive manner. It's
| still the best place to have a debate though.
|
| There are some topics that are very predictable, some of them
| are noticeably left issues, some things more loosely
| connected. Crypto, Tesla, Brave, Facebook, Israel, etc. are
| all subjects you'll most likely get heavily downvoted and
| probably flagged if you don't view the common (to here)
| opinion.
|
| HN is not immune to group think and talking points get
| parroted here often, dissenting views flagged and downvoted.
| But not always, it's definitely nowhere near Reddit bad.
|
| Like I said at the top, it's the best place on the internet
| to have a discussion, but not perfect, and seemingly getting
| a worse slowly, the way it always seems to go.
| Kye wrote:
| I've been around since near the start in one way or
| another. The only big change I've seen is the near complete
| disappearance of casual bigotry. People still voice a wide
| range of views, but now it helps to not be an ass about it.
| It used to be someone could just go on a screed about the
| right topics and get lots of upvotes. Now they have to
| launder it a bit.
|
| The flipside is I can actually share my somewhat left of
| center views without being flagged and downvoted into
| oblivion as long as I practice a little decorum. If
| anything, the quality is _up_ because people have to put a
| little effort in now.
| hunterb123 wrote:
| I haven't seen bigotry at any scale really, but my
| definition isn't as loose as it is for some people.
|
| Decorum is always welcome, but that's not really what I'm
| talking about, my main observation has been the group
| think, parroting of talking points, downvoting without
| disputing, and most importantly flagging to disagree
| with/hide dissent.
|
| Some topics draw it more than others, I mentioned the
| obvious ones, it seeps into others though.
|
| It doesn't matter how cordial you are, sometimes you will
| be flagged for your contrarian views.
|
| Honestly user flagging and possibly even downvoting
| should be removed, it's abused too much.
|
| A simple block button that would hide all posts from the
| user for that client would suffice, mods could look at
| block rates of a post/user and review if it is spam or
| breaks the rules.
|
| I'm sorry but I don't need another person's opinion of a
| post to grey out or hide a comment. I can make the
| judgement for myself whether I disagree with it or not.
| soheil wrote:
| If instead of coming here for 15years and leaving a comment every
| other day you invested the dollar amount equivalent to the time
| you took to write that comment instead you would have $100k.
| 10 mins(time to read/write comment) x $120/hr = $20 x 30
| days/mo x 0.5 (every other day) = $300/mo x 15 years x 8%
| (compounded annually) = $100k
| lucb1e wrote:
| Amount of time spent on the site is too low I'd estimate, but
| then the income too high. The real problem is probably that, if
| you'd actually do this and try to value all your time like
| this... you'd burn out by the time you got to $1800 or
| something!
| samgranieri wrote:
| Happy Birthday HN! This is one of my favorite online communities.
| I enjoy popping in here a few times a day
| a4isms wrote:
| Dug into the "archives..." My first post on HN was 15 years ago:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1901
|
| Happy birthday, HN! And thank-you dang, for all you do.
| kaeruct wrote:
| A lot of people hate on Hacker News but personally it's been very
| helpful for my life. Thanks for everything <3
| tkanarsky wrote:
| It's remarkable how unchanged the community feel has been on HN
| -- those headlines would not be out of place on today's front
| page if you change the company names and tech stacks a bit :)
| Doesn't seem like there's been an eternal September moment in the
| past decade and a half (like Reddit's push for mobile adoption,
| for example). Really a testament to the mods' consistency, thanks
| @dang!
| [deleted]
| sharken wrote:
| Dang is a key factor in the success of HN, no doubt about it.
|
| Another part is the consistent website design, it helps in
| focusing on the essentials, i.e. the articles and the
| discussions.
|
| And last but not least i try to be the best I can when posting
| here.
| dncornholio wrote:
| The consistent design is what's holding HN back. The worst is
| when the top comment has so many replies, the first page is
| only reactions on that comment. Someone actually needs to
| sticky a comment saying there's a next page button with links
| to it. Oh and the links are unclickable on mobile.
| robryan wrote:
| Sure there are some tweeks that could be made. I'll take
| what we have currently though over having a designer decide
| what we really need is something like new Reddit.
| streamofdigits wrote:
| It feels like HN still upholds the early promise of the internet
| (along with Wikipedia and very small number of other websites).
| But what will the next 15 year bring about?
| UweSchmidt wrote:
| What's the "early promise of the internet" to you?
|
| The Venture Capitalists and startuppers that made HN like the
| internet to be Free enough that new businesses and services can
| thrive, and Open Source for the accessible and reusable
| building blocks for their projects, but clearly like
| commercialization and being the middleman, like in the good old
| offline days. The headache of moderating their platforms feels
| more urgent than thinking about Freedom of Speech.
|
| The early internet, to me, was the promise to remove those
| middlemen and have us directly connect, and, while using mostly
| free and low-overhead websites or services, contribute back. I
| expected real estate classifieds posted in an open format to
| open databases by now, and the job description of "real estate
| agent" retired.
|
| When I think if "upholding" anything I might think of Slashdot
| clearly preaching Open Source and the Evils of Microsoft. Naive
| by today's standards but hey, it kept the old ethos alive for a
| little longer.
|
| Edit: No doubt many other excellent values were upheld by HN
| and the moderators, so thanks for that!
| mindcrime wrote:
| _What 's the "early promise of the internet" to you?_
|
| That should probably be a whole separate post of its own! In
| fact, I'd encourage you, if you're interested, to consider
| writing up something on the topic and submit it as a new
| post. I think there's a lot to dig into with regards to what
| we all thought the "early promise of the Internet" was, and
| analyze it in terms of where we were wrong, where we've
| fallen short of the ideas, and - maybe most importantly -
| where there's room to take specific action(s) to get "back on
| the rails" so to speak.
| Melatonic wrote:
| I agree - this could make an excellent discussion on its
| own. I bet we would see a large variety of opinions - the
| internet enabled all kinds of new methods of communication
| which in turn inspired different dreams in different
| people.
| [deleted]
| sharkweek wrote:
| Don't forget Zombo.com, a bastion.
|
| In a billion years, when an alien species reaches earth and
| sees the ruins of human civilization, somehow one of the last
| remaining transmissions is that voice, calmly reminding
| everyone that anything is possible... at Zombocom
| gambler wrote:
| I disagree. HN is definitely less insane than Reddit these
| days, but it's not representative of what Web 1.0 was like and
| felt like.
|
| Everyone here would do well to read and understand this essay
| by Jaron Lanier:
|
| https://www.edge.org/conversation/jaron_lanier-digital-maois...
|
| I also recommend people revisit archives of some high-quality
| web forums and websites like Geocities. There is a lot of
| revisionism going on in tech sector right now. Conveniently,
| it's nearly impossible to challenge in a space where a handful
| of people can disappear your posts by downvoting and a
| conversation stays "relevant" only for a few hours.
| Melatonic wrote:
| There was also a lot less diversity (in some ways) however
| with Web 1. You were fairly likely to be talking to someone
| quite nerdy or at least with similar hobbies. The barrier to
| entry is also of course much lower now generally. I agree the
| upvote / downvote system can SOMETIMES disappear a valid
| opinion but I cannot currently think of a better way to self
| moderate discussions like we have here.
|
| The same thing does happen to an extent during in person
| conversations but the barrier for both making a challenging
| statement and "downvoting" a challenging statement or action
| is higher.
|
| HN may not be able to actually BE what Web 1.0 was but it
| seems to make an honest attempt at it in the modern world.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| Possibly people wishing the internet was back like it was in
| 2022, :D
| ignoramous wrote:
| See also,
|
| 1. _Eternal September_ :
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eternal_September
|
| 2. (and what I like to call) _Eternal October_ :
| https://googlepress.blogspot.com/2000/10/google-launches-
| sel...
| dmonitor wrote:
| 2016 was the third impact
| mccada wrote:
| Happy birthday Hacker News! It's usually the first site I pull up
| everyday, and even though I mostly just lurk I've learnt a lot of
| interesting info from the site. I appreciate the linked articles
| and insightful discussions on here.
| onion2k wrote:
| Happy birthday!
| hahamrfunnyguy wrote:
| Wow, it's been that long? When I created my account about 8 years
| ago, it seemed like HN had been around for ages already!
|
| Thank you to Dang and the HN team for keeping this site quality.
| ayi wrote:
| Bear in mind that English not my main language so I can't
| possibly transfer what I think clearly. This is also the reason
| of why I don't comment regularly (like never).
|
| HN is still my go to source of news about almost anything.
| Ukraine crisis, health tech, startups, computer history, new
| technologies... anything. Right now, I literally have hundreds
| (yes) tabs open to just read the comments.
|
| But HN also made me learn something. It was first 3-4 years ago
| and I still see the same signals every month or at least at 2-3
| months. It is: "even if you have %98 correlation between things
| you and other people like there can be some fundamental
| differences between you and them and if you dig these things you
| will just drift apart"
|
| We have a lot in common. A lot of us believes on tried and tested
| technologies instead of latest SmthJS. We still advocate Firefox
| instead of Chrome to serve libre software. We think that the
| power and money is highly concentrated on a handful of people and
| the distribution is not fair (but not the "5 families are
| managing the world" shit). We want free flowing data. We want the
| soul of web 1.0 back. Etc..
|
| But what's detail and what's fundamental is different per person
| and I think the things we agree on is the details. We are
| different in fundamentals. We have very different world views and
| we fundamentally want different things from life.
|
| Ok, 2 paragraphs ago I said that I noticed these things 3-4 years
| ago and here is the samples I remember:
|
| * It was first started with GDPR. I possibly can't find the
| comment but I literally read a comment saying: "These are the
| reasons why Europe can't have successful startups. For a 3-4
| people startup there is no way to delete PII from db. There is
| too much foreign keys in db to do that. Also we have sharding,
| replication etc. This increases the costs for smaller startups".
|
| MVP and "over engineering" are not binary terms. There must be a
| middle ground. But we can't agree on that because the middle
| ground changes based on our opinions. And in my opinion Privacy
| is not something you can gloss over for mvp or because you are a
| startup. For example can you save clear-text passwords just
| because you are startup? What about SSL? Even letsencrypt
| requires some work. Do you thing this is a "burden on startups"?
| What about people in Germany who wants their home to be blurred
| on maps software? If you can't satisfy their demands then maybe
| you are not in their market to sell your software. Just please
| stop pretending you are immune to the problems because you are
| not "big enough". What's the difference between the news from
| 2010s that Facebook employee reading old girlfriends private
| messages and your developer can do a select * from users where
| gender="female"?
|
| * Contemning people who prefer a more work-life balanced work and
| a hand of government on "free market" is another thing bothers
| me. By the way I'm from Turkey and I don't have a horse in EU-US
| game but "oh, you make 60k in 1 year? what a loser", "EU don't
| have startups because they go home at 5pm", "They don't have
| startups because they don't do hackathons" or "They don't have
| startups because they have unions" is a just a very myopic way of
| looking at life.
|
| The United States is the only country among the 38 member OECD
| nations that has not passed laws requiring businesses and
| corporations to offer paid maternity leave to their employees.
| Netherlands will send a nurse for 1 whole week to the home of the
| mother and they will even do the groceries so the mother can get
| at least a little sleep. I will just rest my case here. Oh sorry,
| I also think that no one in Germany gets bankrupt just because
| they call an ambulance.
|
| * Why can't we have businesses? Just normal businesses without
| obsession over growth, being a unicorn, getting bought by FAANG
| or IPO? Why don't we have more pinboard, screenjar, nomadlist,
| simpleanalytics or lunchmoney? I learned all of this sites from
| HN and I'm pretty sure they are operating like normal businesses.
|
| I can understand that after you become successful, someone or
| some company can approach you to buy you. But starting with that
| idea from day 1? I can't understand that. Linode got acquired,
| redis also, lastpass too. Why do I have to constantly follow the
| blog/news pages of the companies I work with so that my
| information does not fall into the hands of companies I do not
| want? Why can't you silicon valley guys can't just have an idea,
| execute that idea with a couple of developers, employ some
| accountant, hr manager etc and call it a day? Raise the prices
| yearly a little bir more than inflation and live a life? Maybe
| answer some customer mails yourself so thay can also feel a
| connection. Maybe just meet some of your customers? I can't
| understand the obsession with growth. That's the reason why our
| planet is in this situation. You can double your growth
| infinitely and keep a healthy relationship with anything.
|
| But, I love you guys. I can say that in the last 10 years
| possibly %40 of the things I learned was from HN. I wish you a
| happy weekend.
| lgvld wrote:
| Happy B-day! Thank you to everyone involved in HN (including
| people submitting and commenting). One of my favorite place of
| the Internet! ;-)
| rishabhd wrote:
| The site which changed my life. Happy Birthday HN.
| TacticalCoder wrote:
| Big thanks to pg, dang, all the others involved and all the HN
| community.
|
| Happy birthday!
|
| P.S: I think it's one of those threads that can have the old /.
| or reddit feeling, posting messages without much substance but
| that do still feel good and even with an oldschool smiley ; )
| wildlogic wrote:
| Wow, been lurking for 12! Feels like a few lifetimes... Getting
| old... Thanks for everything.
| ahelwer wrote:
| People (and myself) can rag on this website a lot but it really
| has changed the trajectory of my professional life. It's where I:
|
| * first learned about CRDTs, kickstarting an interest in
| distributed systems
|
| * first learned about TLA+, kickstarting an interest in formal
| specification
|
| * first saw the book _Quantum Computing Since Democritus_
| recommended (in a post about Professor Sussman's reading list),
| kickstarting an interest in quantum computing
|
| * first learned about the LEAN theorem prover, kickstarting an
| interest in machine-checked proofs of correctness for
| mathematical theorems
|
| * first learned about tree-sitter, leading me to write a tree-
| sitter grammar for TLA+
|
| All of these (well, except quantum computing really - that
| remains a pleasant side-hobby although I did work in Microsoft's
| quantum program for a bit) are now things I use in the contracts
| I work on as an independent software engineering consultant, and
| the open source work I do in between. TLA+ especially has had an
| enormous impact. Five good posts over the course of ten years is
| still a pretty good signal/noise ratio!
| iib wrote:
| Is your tree-sitter grammar for TLA+ public somewhere?
| ahelwer wrote:
| https://github.com/tlaplus-community/tree-sitter-tlaplus
| wofo wrote:
| Hey thanks for this comment! It reminded me that I wanted to
| play with TLA+ some years ago. Now, for the first time, I got a
| couple of models checked :)
| rbolla wrote:
| HBD HN!
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Even for topics that have subreddits, I feel HN discussions are
| often better -- r/MachineLearning for example.
| dgellow wrote:
| Happy birthday orange website. Lot of love to all and big thanks
| to dang for maintaining the community the way you've done all
| these years.
| sgt wrote:
| 15 years - and most of the links are dead.
| lucb1e wrote:
| Sometimes I wonder how many years I'm going to keep maintaining
| ancient pages on my server with PHP upgrades and stuff. I feel
| bad for letting them go dead. And then I turn around and click
| another link from three months ago and wonder why I even
| bother...
|
| And that's when I make another donation to the vital Internet
| Archive
| Zealotux wrote:
| Sharing a small snippet I made to convert all links to web
| archives from 2007:
|
| document.querySelectorAll('.titlelink').forEach((link) =>
| link.href = "https://web.archive.org/web/20070601000000*/" +
| link.href);
| ficklepickle wrote:
| If you are entering this into the browser console, you can use
| $$() as shorthand for document.querySelectorAll(), with
| chromium-based browsers at least. As a bonus, it returns an
| array so you can map/filter.
| chrismorgan wrote:
| Firefox dev tools also have $$ be document.querySelectorAll
| as Array.
| deadbyte wrote:
| Longtime lurker, but thanks to everyone. I get so much value and
| enjoyment from this community.
| [deleted]
| Brajeshwar wrote:
| Nice. Got in about 14 years go but not active for a long time in
| the beginning. Hackernews is a really nice place.
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