[HN Gopher] Show HN: This Hacker News Does Not Exist
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       Show HN: This Hacker News Does Not Exist
        
       Author : gravitate
       Score  : 227 points
       Date   : 2022-12-03 18:29 UTC (4 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (coxomb.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (coxomb.github.io)
        
       | forgotmypw17 wrote:
       | I know it doesn't exist because there are too many titles which
       | start with an interrogative.
        
       | idrios wrote:
       | "Why Your Pacemaker Might Be Spying On You" is one of the most
       | stressful headlines I've seen in a long time
        
         | harryVic wrote:
         | I'm incredibly mad my pacemaker is completely unusable if I
         | disable JavaScript.
        
         | pfdietz wrote:
         | I don't have the heart to disagree with you.
        
         | kace91 wrote:
         | Coming from a Spaniard, "Spain considered dangerous" is also up
         | there.
        
         | sph wrote:
         | That's the headline immediately following "Ad-supported
         | pacemakers are now available for people on lower incomes"
        
         | manmal wrote:
         | Fun fact, most of the type 1 diabetes looper scene (open source
         | artificial pancreas) relies on an improperly secured insulin
         | pump that allows third party software access via an exploit.
         | The firmware has long been patched of course, but the pumps
         | with the old firmware are still being sold among community
         | members, for 4-5k.
        
       | BulgarianIdiot wrote:
       | I legit got excited for "You May Not Need React". For shame.
        
       | IfOnlyINewMore wrote:
       | While the headlines may not be real, many of these are totally
       | worthy of Hacker News style conversations. Maybe we need a static
       | version of this that we can add comments to?
        
       | bhaney wrote:
       | "Pants Considered Harmful" (cnet.com)
        
       | forgotOldLogin wrote:
       | I saw the first page and it had the classic HackerNews headline
       | format: "<name> has died."
       | 
       | AI is gonna win, y'all.
        
         | picture wrote:
         | Well, this isn't really an AI. It just scrambles from pre-
         | fabbed assets, afaik
        
           | jodrellblank wrote:
           | So are Reddit comments[1]. Once there are sufficient comments
           | on the internet that you can't read them all in a lifetime,
           | who's to say the one you are reading is novel and written by
           | a human, and not a pre-fab comment scrambled from dozens of
           | previous posts on the same topic from years ago, or the same
           | topic on another site?
           | 
           | [1] you can't prove otherwise!
        
       | yborg wrote:
       | At this point HN is more or less a parody of itself. The same
       | thing happened to Slashdot. Maybe inevitable with any long
       | running community site.
        
         | enraged_camel wrote:
         | I think this comment itself could be a part of the parody site,
         | to be honest.
        
           | yborg wrote:
           | You're right, which is the worst part of it; realizing you
           | are part of the problem. I think the karma system is a big
           | driver of it, you quickly learn what you "should" or
           | "shouldn't" be posting.
        
           | manholio wrote:
           | An AI comment bot trained on past HN comments that can be
           | unleashed on the actual HN to whore karma sounds like a great
           | meta-humorous project - it would prove that as far as upvotes
           | go, we have achieved the singularity.
        
         | Brendinooo wrote:
         | It's not, though it certainly does have identifiable quirks.
        
         | alex_young wrote:
         | So, Hacker News is Dying?
        
         | thegeomaster wrote:
         | I've seen this comment ever since I started reading Hacker News
         | some 10 years ago. I've noticed myself getting warmed up to the
         | argument over time, so I believe it's more an artifact of a
         | user getting older than any real objective change in the site
         | itself.
        
           | bnegreve wrote:
           | Well, I am not saying you're wrong, but it could also be true
           | that communities are in fact getting more dull as they get
           | bigger.
           | 
           | The fact that you've been reading this comment forever does
           | disprove it since hn has been growing steadily for the past
           | 10 years.
        
           | californiadreem wrote:
           | The necessary issue with gradual decline is that by
           | definition there is never a point where you can definitively
           | say it declined from one moment to the next. If you could, it
           | wouldn't be a gradual decline, it would be a sudden decline.
           | 
           | Secondarily to this, if everywhere is in decline, there's no
           | real way to tell as everything is relatively the same. In
           | this context, HN is still ahead of reddit in terms of quality
           | and content; reddit is still ahead of Facebook. Facebook and
           | reddit however are _very_ different beasts than they were a
           | decade ago, let alone 15 years ago. Has HN had a similar
           | decline as everywhere else? I don 't really have a strong
           | opinion on that, but it's a hard point to prove either way.
           | 
           | Personally, as someone that's been lurking HN since about
           | 2010, the only differences that I can see is that HN seems
           | less about startups than it was a decade ago and the comments
           | are shorter and with less implicit good faith. The latter two
           | though are happening everywhere, so I don't think HN is
           | unique in that regard.
           | 
           | As an intellectual exercise, I went to a random date from the
           | front page from 2009 and found someone complaining about
           | Google's tracking and the degeneration of its search results:
           | 
           | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=979033
           | 
           | So in that regard, nothing's really _changed_ but the
           | severity of the problems.
        
         | mdp2021 wrote:
         | If at the top of the list I see "Your appliance may be spying
         | on you", it is not the platform that is a parody of itself -
         | the farce is in this dragging world.
        
       | _mway wrote:
       | > Ask HN: What Happened to Sausages?
       | 
       | Asking the important questions.
        
       | theGeatZhopa wrote:
       | Pls add "how X does not work" too.
       | 
       | How does the architecture of 8086 not work
       | 
       | How does work not work
        
         | seydor wrote:
         | I believe hn removes the word 'how' from the beginning
        
       | buzer wrote:
       | > New Vulnerability Discovered in Opera (neocities.org)
       | 
       | (2002)
        
       | coletonodonnell wrote:
       | "Ask HN: What's the purpose of North Dakota"
       | 
       | I ask this everyday.
        
         | bombcar wrote:
         | Without North Dakota South Dakota would make no sense.
         | 
         | And yes Virginia should be renamed East Virginia.
        
           | kube-system wrote:
           | But Virginia goes further west than West Virginia. Virginia
           | should be renamed _South_ Virginia.
        
             | fragmede wrote:
             | I propose we name that one Other Virginia. Which makes the
             | other Other-other Virginia.
        
               | bombcar wrote:
               | East and West Dakota are available, let it be done.
        
         | gjsman-1000 wrote:
         | I ask the same question about Rhode Island. ;)
        
       | rikroots wrote:
       | I clicked on the Parody Hacker News link which took me to
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/IHopeMyMaxVisitHasntBeenHit and got
       | the response "Unknown" and now I'm struggling to convince myself
       | that I exist...
        
       | koliber wrote:
       | Poor Marjory. Bless her heart.
        
       | k__ wrote:
       | _" FTX owes $288.05 to Binance"_
       | 
       | At least, lol
        
         | TrackerFF wrote:
         | Post 27 seems to always be some variation of _" FTX owes
         | $xx.xxx to XYZ"_
         | 
         | FTX owes $13.68 to Robin Hood (substack.com)
         | 
         | FTX owes $997.43 to Binance (nationalgeographic.com)
         | 
         | FTX owes $264.32 to Robin Hood (theverge.com)
         | 
         | etc
        
       | bonney_io wrote:
       | Absolute gold. Some favorites:
       | 
       | - Olive Considered Dangerous (techcrunch.com)
       | 
       | - Profound 4th Generation Hardware -- an all-time nothing
       | headline
       | 
       | - Ask HN: What Happened to Keyboard?
       | 
       | - FTX owes $445.61 to Coinbase -- four hundred dollars
       | 
       | - I'll Program The Auxiliary RAM Program, That Should Circuit The
       | THX Circuit (washingtonpost.com)
        
         | benj111 wrote:
         | If got $29.xx that ftx owes
        
       | churchill wrote:
       | A big block of text with no paragraph breaks. It seems like the
       | author is trying his hardest to provide something insightful and
       | well-written, and while it seems on-topic it is hard to relate to
       | the original article. None of it looks wrong, but it doesn't seem
       | very informative either. Most people will just skip right over
       | it. There will be a semi-obscure Wikipedia link somewhere in
       | here.[1]
       | 
       | [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
        
       | ginnungagap wrote:
       | I am quite sad that "The secret life of videocassettes in Iran"
       | is not a real article
        
         | anigbrowl wrote:
         | It is, it's just from a different source.
         | 
         | https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/the-secret-life-of-videoc...
        
           | sedatk wrote:
           | It's always a different source on HN.
        
           | ginnungagap wrote:
           | That's amazing! Thanks for the link
        
       | smrtinsert wrote:
       | Humorous. I won't be laughing that much though when ai generated
       | news by bad actors goes mainstream
        
         | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
         | It technically has already been happening albeit on a smaller
         | scale. It is frankly for the best in a sense that it will force
         | mainstream to recognize it as an issue.
        
       | nurettin wrote:
       | As a Ruby guy, does this really matter for 95% of the world?
        
       | nine_k wrote:
       | This page brings fun twice: when you first load it and read the
       | headlines, and next when you reload it a few times, see the
       | pattern, and start to anticipate.
        
         | busymom0 wrote:
         | Don't forget to click the link to the comments page too.
        
       | bitwize wrote:
       | C-f gut
       | 
       | Nothing. No gut bacteria this time, but they did have "In Praise
       | of Tasty Wooden Salad", which is in line with Hackernews dietary
       | recommendations if you don't want cancer, heart disease, violent
       | mood swings, etc.
        
       | kangalioo wrote:
       | Oh man I wanted to read What to Love About Incredible Fresh Bacon
        
       | anigbrowl wrote:
       | I miss n-gate
        
       | churchill wrote:
       | Relevant XKCD: http://dynamic.xkcd.com/random/comic/
        
       | DoubleDerper wrote:
       | I disagree with the author. I know he's incredibly successful and
       | right about pretty much everything he's ever said, but I've had
       | some experience in this area and just finished reading through
       | some of the archives and I think his focus is wrong. I'm going to
       | ignore the technical issue and talk about the bigger picture and
       | higher level things than what was said in the blog post. If the
       | OP thinks that the process is most important, it's really about
       | end results. But if he thinks it should be about the end results
       | then he's an idiot for not thinking about the process. I'll
       | weasel in a reference the startup I co-founded even though it's
       | not directly relevant.
        
         | briandear wrote:
         | But considering climate change, having people sized sidewalks
         | and taxing the externalities of the process is really the point
         | you failed to consider. Nuclear might work but there is a lot
         | more to it that doesn't get addressed in the article. Estonia
         | really gets this correct and proves the point that the American
         | city isn't going to be well designed if we don't consider the
         | impact of the rail system and electrification.
        
         | poulpy123 wrote:
         | No, OP is correct.
         | 
         | * You omitted hist point X.
         | 
         | * You misunderstand point Y.
         | 
         | * Here's point Z you didn't account for.
        
           | MichaelZuo wrote:
           | Well the OP could be both correct and incorrect.
        
           | Justin_K wrote:
           | This.
        
             | kreeben wrote:
             | Is.
        
               | kreeben wrote:
               | Not.
        
               | kreeben wrote:
               | Reddit.
        
           | goosedragons wrote:
           | Continuing the discussion of point Z, here's an interesting
           | way[1] it relates back to the OP. And here are some unknown
           | facts[2] the OP didn't include.
           | 
           | [1]: http://SomeScientificJournal.com/141421
           | 
           | [2]: http://SomeNewsSite.com/11235813
        
             | JumpCrisscross wrote:
             | Curiously, while examples of metacoentary stretch back to
             | antiquity, the concept having a name is modern [1].
             | 
             | [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meta-reference#History-
             | of-th...
        
         | mv9 wrote:
         | > tangential statement
         | 
         | I'm honestly really curious about this. Could you elaborate?
        
       | notahacker wrote:
       | Haha, I always wanted to make one of these. Was going to call it
       | Slacker News.
       | 
       | Amused by the way the random domains interact with the headlines
       | (a NY Times exclusive on working every day for two years with
       | Tailwind CSS, Microsoft blogging to say you may not need Svelte,
       | Nature shilling Dogecoin)
        
       | felipelalli wrote:
       | It would be nice to use GPT3 to generate the headlines and even
       | the content of the links.
        
         | TobTobXX wrote:
         | Using the new ChatGPT from OpenAI:
         | 
         | > Generate 10 typical Hacker News headlines.                 1.
         | "New open-source project revolutionizes web development"
         | 2. "10 tips for optimizing your website's performance"       3.
         | "The future of programming languages: what to expect"       4.
         | "Big tech companies accused of stifling innovation"       5.
         | "The rise of artificial intelligence in the workplace"       6.
         | "Successful startups share their secrets to growth"       7.
         | "Why it's time to switch to a privacy-focused browser"       8.
         | "The top programming languages to learn in 2021"       9. "How
         | to build a strong cybersecurity strategy for your business"
         | 10. "The importance of ethics in the tech industry"
         | 
         | IMHO it's a bit too clichee (there are rather few "10 tips
         | to..." or "top XXX in 2021" on HN), but other than that, quite
         | accurate.
         | 
         | EDIT: It seems like ChatGPT agreees:
         | 
         | > Can you do the same but less clichee?                 1. "The
         | surprising benefits of using a text-based interface"       2.
         | "Exploring the potential of blockchain technology beyond
         | cryptocurrency"       3. "Why the gig economy may not be
         | sustainable in the long run"       4. "The role of virtual
         | reality in distance learning"       5. "The future of work: how
         | technology is changing the job market"       6. "The ethics of
         | using facial recognition technology"       7. "How to protect
         | your online identity from cyber threats"       8. "The
         | potential of quantum computing to solve complex problems"
         | 9. "The impact of automation on the job market"      10. "The
         | rise of low-code development platforms"
         | 
         | These seem like exactly what I'd expect from HN.
        
         | benj111 wrote:
         | What if you get stuck in the gpt3 generated internet? What if
         | we already are?
         | 
         | (Come to think of it, that would make more sense).
        
           | drKarl wrote:
           | What if we already are, indeed. And early next year they will
           | release GPT-4
        
       | caxco93 wrote:
       | Nice project!
       | 
       | Suggestion: Remove the "#" from the href value or normalize the
       | color style for a:visited. Otherwise if you click one link, they
       | all change to the visited color and it's really hard to read.
        
       | navane wrote:
       | Are these comments real though?
        
         | kagevf wrote:
         | "It works in Firefox nightly" has got to be real!
        
       | ronsor wrote:
       | I like that the guy who wants more technical articles is named
       | "asm."
        
       | merb wrote:
       | Here's a long detailed, objective explanation of everything
       | related to this issue. It's probably more useful than the actual
       | link and it may serve as one of the best efforts to consolidate
       | information on this subject on the entire Internet. If it
       | contains original research only a couple of readers will be
       | qualified to tell. Half the people who upvote this won't
       | understand more than the first two paragraphs.
       | 
       | Edit: I anticipated the potential questions and added more
       | information. Add some graphs and this could be a master's thesis.
        
         | burtekd wrote:
         | > high-level statement about a relevant side point
         | 
         | Here's how it really works. I'll write a couple paragraphs on
         | all the exceptions I can think of, explaining how you should
         | have said "often" instead of "almost always".
        
         | luispauloml wrote:
         | I don't know why this isn't at the top.
        
       | benj111 wrote:
       | Why your pace maker might be spying on you.
       | 
       | Slate.com
       | 
       | Checks out.
        
       | briandear wrote:
       | Non pay-walled link: ...
        
       | hexagonwin wrote:
       | Fun site. Cool!
        
       | antihero wrote:
       | "The Scary Truth About South Africa".
       | 
       | Awkward ha
        
       | red_Seashell_32 wrote:
       | > Your Smartphone May Be Making You Lazy
       | 
       | This, and many more, are more than believable. This one is
       | actually quite sad.
        
         | marshmallowmad wrote:
         | Yeah this one is right - the only issue is it's an
         | understatement
        
       | baxtr wrote:
       | Nothing about Rust or Kubernetes. Instantly realized that this
       | must be fake.
        
         | pohl wrote:
         | If you refresh a few times and search for "Rust" with your
         | browser, the word "Rustic" will keep appearing.
        
           | mdp2021 wrote:
           | > _and search for X with your browser [then X-reference] will
           | keep appearing_
           | 
           | Through which mechanism exactly?
        
         | xg15 wrote:
         | Missing a random rachelbythebay or ACOUP post and an in-depth
         | analysis of some medieval book collection also. (Though "The
         | Scary Truth about Egypt" and "What to love about Small, Frozen
         | Sausages" come pretty close)
        
       | myself248 wrote:
       | This is definitely good for a laugh, on the first page-load.
       | After that, some patterns emerge that really deflate the
       | experience, but I definitely chuckled multiple times.
        
       | xg15 wrote:
       | > _Candy Crush Has Been Removed From Google Play (reuters.com)_
       | 
       | The world is truly coming to an end.
        
       | coxomb wrote:
       | Hi Hackernews! This is a little project I made in my free time.
       | It's a fun and whimsical parody of Hacker News. I wanted to
       | experiment with Faker.js and other JS libraries.
       | 
       | It randomly generates Hackernews headlines. You get new results
       | each time you refresh the page. I spent about 4 days making this,
       | and learned a lot in the process, and it was my first open source
       | side project in a long time.
       | 
       | It was inspired by This Person Does Not Exist and other 'Does Not
       | Exist' projects which you can find here:
       | https://thisxdoesnotexist.com/
       | 
       | If you spot any bugs or have any ideas on maybe how to improve
       | it, post your thoughts here.
       | 
       | The source code can be found on GitHub, where it's hosted:
       | 
       | https://github.com/coxomb/This-Hacker-News-Does-Not-Exist/tr...
       | 
       | I hope you enjoy the project :)
        
         | josephcsible wrote:
         | One thing I noticed that could be improved: The headlines in
         | isolation are reasonable, and so are the websites, but the
         | pairings between them are not. For example, "Snapchat Has Been
         | Removed From iOS App Store (mitpress.mit.edu)" and "Hstr: Bash
         | And Zsh Shell History Suggest Box (reuters.com)".
        
         | jandrese wrote:
         | On the first page I loaded I could tell it was fake
         | immediately, there were no mentions of Rust at all.
        
           | raphlinus wrote:
           | I really wanted to get into Rust programming, but was turned
           | off by the toxicity of the community. Their smug attitude of
           | superiority really turns people away. I've been programming
           | in C and C++ for decades, and I'm not sure I've ever once run
           | into a problem with undefined behavior.
        
         | blondin wrote:
         | this is super cool :)
         | 
         | this one got me laughing: "Chicken version 5.0 Alpha Released"
        
           | nerdponx wrote:
           | Chicken Scheme is currently on version 5.x so this could very
           | well have been a real headline at one point.
        
             | TheSpiceIsLife wrote:
             | No, not Chicken Scheme, it's about Chicken[1].
             | 
             | 1. https://youtu.be/yL_-1d9OSdk
        
         | A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
         | Ask HN: Whats's the Purpose of Action-Items?
         | 
         | I chuckled. Thank you:D
        
       | Aardwolf wrote:
       | > 16. Ask HN: What Happened to Sausages? (news.ycombinator.com)
       | 
       | I'm really curious now what did happen to the sausages!
        
         | cpsns wrote:
         | This dude happened https://www.youtube.com/@OrdinarySausage
        
       | [deleted]
        
       | yawnxyz wrote:
       | Look how fast it loads! I love how this was written in vanilla
       | HTML, JS, and JQuery, without any use of modern frameworks.
       | 
       | Does it work offline?
        
       | Jensson wrote:
       | I got
       | 
       | "Sperm Counts Worldwide Are Plummeting Faster Than We Thought"
       | 
       | We saw that thread just 2 days ago:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33816861
       | 
       | I guess HN titles doesn't have enough data for this.
        
       | DIARRHEA_xd wrote:
       | Headline copied exactly: https://www.imgpaste.net/image/KW42FT
       | 
       | See item #10.
       | 
       | This is a real headline, see:
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33816861
        
       | return_to_monke wrote:
       | I am waiting for the day where someone makes a "this `this X
       | doesn't exist`" . example outputs would be
       | 
       | `this coffee maker does not exist`
       | 
       | `this private jet does not exist`
       | 
       | etc etc etc
        
         | hcs wrote:
         | `this self referential joke does not exist`
        
       | gjsman-1000 wrote:
       | As a PHP guy, does this really matter for 95% of the world?
        
       | waterpowder wrote:
       | I miss n-gate
        
       | redbell wrote:
       | Really cool submissions with catchy titles..
       | 
       | I'd like to join the party with some fantasy..
       | 
       | 1- Twitter files for bankruptcy (twitter.com/elonmusk)
       | 
       | 2- Apple's new M3 chip outperforms Nvidia H100 (geekbench.com)
       | 
       | 3- India to surpass China's GDP by 2025 (scmp.com)
       | 
       | 4- Tell HN: I am quitting Hacker News
       | 
       | 5- Google to revive Stadia (theverge.com)
       | 
       | 6- Japan wins the 2022 FIFA World Cup (espn.com)
       | 
       | 7- Hacker News to be acquired by Reddit (twitter.com/paulg)
       | 
       | 8- Tesla Roadster hits 1.1 sec acceleration in early tests
       | (electrek.co)
       | 
       | 9- Microsoft outbid Adobe and offers $43.6B to acquire Figma
       | 
       | 10- Facebook had died at 19 :)
       | 
       | Just imagine if one (or some) of the above comes true.. who
       | knows? The world is changing fast -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
         | pleb_nz wrote:
         | Raspberry pi 5 out Performs m3
         | 
         | Now there's a dream and headline
        
       | AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote:
       | "Washington Considered Dangerous"
       | 
       | Yep, it's pretty much nailed HN's front-page concerns.
        
         | stuartd wrote:
         | I got 'Cambridgeshire Considered Dangerous' - much less HN
         | front page but it made me laugh
        
           | xeonmc wrote:
           | I got "Florida Considered Dangerous". You don't say?
           | 
           | https://imgur.com/a/vxQooID
        
       | Aulig wrote:
       | "Ask HN: What happened to Fish?"
       | 
       | The really random ones are quite funny :)
        
         | NovaVeles wrote:
         | "Ask HN: What happened to gloves?"
         | 
         | That is a title that would drag me in!
        
         | jraines wrote:
         | I got this and:
         | 
         | "In Praise of Sleek Wooden Tuna"
        
       | dheera wrote:
       | The comments appear the same on each article. Is this intended?
       | 
       | I had the hope that they were some sort of GPT generated internet
       | bickering or something but if not that's OK, I know it's a lot of
       | work.
        
         | stingraycharles wrote:
         | It's actually from a different parody, linked by the original
         | author in the intro.
        
       | humanizersequel wrote:
       | From the comments, might just start posting this everywhere:
       | 
       | No, OP is correct. * You omitted hist point X.
       | 
       | * You misunderstand point Y.
       | 
       | * Here's point Z you didn't account for.
        
         | happytoexplain wrote:
         | If this is the average HN conversation, then HN probably has
         | the highest quality conversations anywhere on the internet!
        
           | Jensson wrote:
           | > HN probably has the highest quality conversations anywhere
           | on the internet!
           | 
           | Do you know a better place? Maybe some small ones, but I
           | doubt there are larger internet communities than HN with
           | better discussions.
        
             | [deleted]
        
       | petarb wrote:
       | A bunch of headlines on there could totally be on HN. Love it!
        
       | leobg wrote:
       | Is it written in Rust?
        
       | ablatt89 wrote:
       | Strong work!
        
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       (page generated 2022-12-03 23:02 UTC)