HN Explorer

Ask HN: What's your favorite HN post?

692 points by rkhraishi ↗ HN
Been asked several times but interested to see references to more recent posts.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2158116 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3996652

154 comments

[ 3.2 ms ] story [ 216 ms ] thread
oli5679
This is my current favourite:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12496558

gxespino
Totally confused for a second or two. Such is recursion.
jswrenn
My YC app: Dropbox - Throw away your USB drive https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8863
valarauca1
This is great. The HN crowd amusingly isn't the audience most startups should cater to.
minimaxir
At the risk of being off-topic, I hate the fact that many modern entrepreneurs use the hilarious-in-hindsight comments on Dropbox's Show HN as an example on why startups should ignore criticism to be successful. Dropbox is the exception, not the rule. (Additionally, the demographics of HN today in 2016 are much, much different and more technically diverse than in 2007, so the irony would be less likely to be repeated)
scrollaway
I of course agree that you shouldn't ignore criticism. But that's not what quoting that comment is about.

That one particular dropbox comment exemplifies why a large portion of the tech crowd is generally clueless about UX, and about the impact of UX on a product.

It exemplifies why Linux is having such a hard time being relevant on the desktop. Why a technically-superior product will not necessarily win over a well-marketed one. Why ideas and implementations don't matter, execution is key.

It's beautiful and enraging at the same time.

nikatwork
A vocal percentage of the HN crowd assumes you are working on a personal machine with full admin rights, not behind any firewall, and that you have the expertise, spare time and patience to setup and maintain a system.

Ironically these criticisms are largely thrown at consumer apps, while server apps (eg third party monitoring and reporting) rarely cop it at the same level.

A recent example that comes to mind - I'm not affiliated and tbf plenty of comments point out valid use cases - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10289673

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rudedogg
Not sure how it was received, but I could imagine Slack being mocked in a similar way by tech people for basically just being an IRC client.
SteveNuts
"you can already build such a system yourself quite trivially by getting an FTP account, mounting it locally with curlftpfs, and then using SVN or CVS on the mounted filesystem. From Windows or Mac, this FTP account could be accessed through built-in software."

Yeah... that would have been a lot easier than Dropbox!

danso
That's funny...I always remember the response to the Dropbox post as "Why don't you just use rsync?". Which is something I actually do for things I don't want to put on Dropbox. Not sure how that FTP solution is manageable, though.
gravypod
It's navigable on the web. Most browsers can navigate through an FTP server.
danso
Ah, I guess I see Dropbox purely as a sync between my multiple computers. I almost never use the web interface. IIRC, Dropbox was announced mostly as a synced file server. It didn't have all of the features that I take for granted now, such as third-party interoperability and public-file sharing.
mhurron
No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame.

First thing I thought of.

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bicknergseng
I'm wondering if there's any correlation between idea "quality" and how far down the first supportive comment is or the ratio of positive to negative comments in general.
sandinmyjoints
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5397797
eitland
First comment is wonderfully deadpan as well:

> Don't feel bad, you just fell into one of the common traps for first-timers in strong AI/ML. I know some lawyers in Silicon Valley with experience in this sort of thing, and they say that usually by now the code has rewritten itself so many times that the original creator can't even claim partial ownership;...

sandinmyjoints
True -- very similar tone to the parent. conrad24 appears to have been a throwaway account, maybe bo1024 is the author of both?
eitland
In that case I'd vote to pardon the sockpuppeteer anyways. :-)
danso
When the favorites feature was introduced this year, there was mention of maybe aggregating it to see which were the most favorited types of posts. I wonder if enough people have used it since? I use it and find it to be a great filter on top of what I normally upvote.

"RapGenius Growth Hack Exposed" basically solidified the effectiveness of using HN as a complaints forum: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6956658

Ask HN: Just got an innocent man out of prison. What now? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12010760

Aaron Swartz's initial appeal for help: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4529484

And the difficult discussion when someone pointed out that thread after his death: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5056279

I enjoyed this discussion on Margaret Hamilton, particularly because it for me epitomizes how anonymous the comments usually are. I remember reading Peter Norvig's comment about working with her and thinking, "Wow, this HN user must be pretty senior" before I looked at the username https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8735912

edit: In terms of recent, this discussion about "Strange bug workarounds" was just a day ago but had a lot of great laughs in it: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12476855

hornbaker
Google's long-game response to RapGenius: http://imgur.com/a/TLOuX
cabbeer
RapGenius (not genius) is more about the annotations than the actual lyrics.
[dead] cabbeer
RapGenius (not genius) is more about the annotations than the actual lyrics.
mtmail
There was first some drama when an earlier post was labeled "How Hacker News saved an innocent man from life in prison" (it got flagged for being an attention-seeking exaggeration). Then followed "I freed an innocent man from prison. Hacker News failed him." which wasn't well received (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11958567)
bshimmin
This is the only HN comment I have bookmarked: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7932261
mewm
Am I stupid if I don't understand that post?
maxerickson
It's riffing on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cISYzA36-ZY&t=1m24s

(I "got" what the post was about but took a minute to dig up the actual scene, I didn't know what the item was in the movie)

DarkTree
Wow, that video also has one of the best comments I've seen:

> Slime green, Comic Sans, all caps. Oh my god, it even has clip-art.

mewm
Thank you for elaborating, makes sense now :D
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eitland
If we are into comments anyway, the "comeback of all times"[0] is a winner, a reminder to treat all those pseudonymous or even semi-anonymous handles carefully : )

[0]:https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

sanj
This is my quad-yearly moment to hang my head in shame.

(and full props to @cperciva for being a good sport!)

hacknat
>quad-yearly

You're not reading enough posts these days. I think this I've seen your exchange with Colin referenced at least once a month for the last year.

noonespecial
Don't feel too bad.

I thought "Just the once, though, huh?" was a fantastic duck-and-cover when getting nuked from orbit. I laughed.

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veddox
Is that the rms responding a bit further down on that thread? Great comment either way:

> News.YC does flame wars a whole lot better than the rest of the internet...

snowwrestler
This comment, from a parent to the one you have bookmarked, is something every startup should think about if they get traction and start to grow.

> you need to re-evaluate whether you are actually building a company 'culture', or just some random agglomeration of the personality traits of the company's earliest employees.

rexreed
This one - because it's now a meta aggregator of favorite links. Thanks!
yla92
Here are a few that I quite like, digging up from my bookmarks.

  - #define CTO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8516777
  - Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma -  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9049208
  - Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10395046
  - Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143266
  - How to stop feeling lonely - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044690
  - We only hire the trendiest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940
  - The days are long but the decades are short (my personal favourite post and comments all the time) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440
sandis
Clickable:

- #define CTO - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8516777

- Ask HN: The “I want to do everything but end up doing nothing” dilemma - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9049208

- Ask HN: How to Be a Good Technical Lead? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10395046

- Ask HN: When you feel stuck in life - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12143266

- How to stop feeling lonely - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7044690

- We only hire the trendiest - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11326940

- The days are long but the decades are short - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9454440

vcool07
That seems like quite a neat list....thanks !!
goshx
Thanks for your list! I tried the first link but it is giving a 404. I looked it up in his blog and found this: https://blog.gregbrockman.com/figuring-out-the-cto-role-at-s...

Could you please confirm if this is the same one?

cypherpunks01
YC post was 688 days ago. date.today() - timedelta(days=688) is 2014-10-27. Blog post you linked was published October 27, 2014. I'm gonna go ahead and say it's the same one!
bertan
yep, it seems the title has changed.
[dead] stevenwiles
That list betrays how lonely you are and the self-esteem problems you have. Might I suggest mental help?
beachstartup
uh, really? how do you know what his situation is?

maybe op had a son, or daughter, or parent, or friend, or co-worker, or co-founder, go through loneliness/depression/etc? and these are some of the resources mustered to help?

maybe op was depressed himself, and found a way out, and now wants to help other people?

maybe op is a psychologist or psychiatrist. you know, a professional.

maybe op is venture capitalist with a portfolio run by executives who exhibit these symptoms?

maybe op is a line manager who deals with this issue on his staff reports, or manages "up" to his overworked executives?

what a shame. i expect more from the hn crowd.

striking
Your comment history is a stronger indicator of your projection.

Maybe if you went outside instead of leaving mean comments on HN you'd be a nicer person.

yla92
Here are a few more - How to Deploy Software - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11204736

- Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8881811

- How I wrote a self-hosting C compiler in 40 days - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10731002

- Who Y Combinator Companies Want - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10698009

- Why I quit my dream job at Ubisoft - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10953381

- Ask HN: How do I start being a consultant? (Thomas's comment there is gold!) - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4245960

- Request For Research: Basic Income - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10982340&utm_term=comme...

tptacek
There's an HN feature for this! In the timestamp line under the title of your favorite story --- and, after clicking the timestamp, in the same place for comments --- click "favorite". HN will bookmark these stories for you, and let other people see them.
inputcoffee
Postmodern comment:

My favorite HN post is now this one because it lets me amalgamate all the best posts that I missed.

blakesterz
I can't think of a favorite post... My fav comment was from a few years ago I think? And I can't remember everything, but one commentor said something like "You can't brag unless you won The Award" (the award being some bit deal contest or award. Was it math or programming?) and then the response was something like "Oh yeah, won that when I was 14" (sorry, wish I could remember the details, but the thread was funny)
3pt14159
Not a post, but a comment.

I can't find it right now, but it lead me to purchase the book "Permutation City" which is now one of my favourite novels because of the way it comings CS, philosophy, and writing that isn't stilted like a lot of the stuff you find in this realm.

The reason I can't find the comment is that there are pages and pages of them that mention Permutation City on Google. See for yourself, Google:

permutation city site:ycombinator.com

JadeNB
> I can't find it right now, but it lead me to purchase the book "Permutation City" which is now one of my favourite novels because of the way it comings CS, philosophy, and writing that isn't stilted like a lot of the stuff you find in this realm.

If you haven't already, then don't wait to buy the rest of Greg Egan's œuvre. It was "Quarantine", a lovely plot but arguably one of his weakest stories, that got me into his work, and since then I've found no-one except possibly Ted Chiang (whose work is very different) who comes anywhere near him in the world of hard sci-fi. Almost everything of his is rewarding, and I believe a lot of it was relatively recently (within the last 5 years or so) released as e-books after a long period of unavailability. He also has generous excerpts from selected books and stories at his web-site, and—my favourite—proves his non-fiction science bona fides as a regular contributor on the n-category Café (https://golem.ph.utexas.edu/cgi-bin/MT-3.0/mt-search.cgi?Inc...).

skykooler
I got into Greg Egan from a StackOverflow post somewhere, where one of the comments referenced Dark Integers.
wlievens
Did you read Schild's Ladder? It's basically about quantum cellular automata consuming the galaxy.
JadeNB
I think that I have read everything pre-Orthogonal trilogy. (Nothing against the Orthogonal trilogy; I just haven't got to it yet.) If I recall correctly, Schild's Ladder was the first long one I read (after the short-story collection Axiomatic). I liked it a lot, although I think I preferred Distress.
MichaelGG
Greg Egan and Iain M Banks don't seem to have equals. Greg's stuff is incredibly hard (in both ways: he says to use a pencil and paper while reading). Iain's stuff is ... uplifting, but still coherent. It's not hard, but it still feels coherent somehow (unlike some books that just start making up weird shit just to put the "fi" in scifi).
JadeNB
My first exposure to Banks was The Wasp Factory, which remains one of the only books that has ever literally nauseated me. It was excellent, but it's been hard for me to pick up another book of his since.

Oh, actually I did read The Business, which introduced me to the delightful question "how do you count to 1000 on your fingers?" (without using 'intermediate storage' like keeping track of 10's in your head). I still use that when teaching elementary number theory.

arethuza
That means you are in the lucky situation of not having read Use of Weapons yet - I'm jealous. It really is very very good!
JadeNB
Is that your recommended entrée into the Culture universe?
jackgavigan
No, my advice would be to read the in order of publication.
arethuza
No - definitely not. I would recommend publication order.
RachelF
I think that "The Wasp Factory" is by far his best book. Sometimes unsettling but a great short read.
Uhhrrr
I piled on along wfn's recommendation of the book here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7267811

The story (https://qntm.org/responsibility) was really fun, and there were good comments too. It's certainly one of my favorite HN posts.

Re: OQ, I don't have a single favorite, but I like whenever the hivemind hashes out what's going on with a big tech issue, like Facebook's post denying complicity in NSA spying.

raajg
Yeah, I stumbled upon Greg Egan too in one of the HN posts - I think it was about 'Best Science Fiction Books' or something.

I've never read anything like Greg Egan. While reading 'Diaspora' I could feel my skull expanding - he pushes you to think at a magnitude we're not used to. The last few chapters of Diaspora are something I often read myself to bed.