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 =|
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!
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.
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.
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.
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, Arrington wasn't Arrington.) There were 500+ comments all posted within an hour, obviously by script. They were dead not because they were voted down, but because we killed them years 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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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 :)
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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.
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.
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.
> 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
I agree and I would also like to see more encouragement for solopreneurs. As financial independence through solopreneurship has a better probability of being achieved than creating an unicorn startup; especially when not having a safety-net.
So maybe less of 'Why are you making money' when an indie showcases their product, While defending bad practices of Trillion dollar mEga corps. as 'They have to make money'!
P.S. Happy birthday HN, Congratulations & thanks to P.G, Initial set of users, Current users and of course Dan.
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
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.
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.
I was a reader of Paul Graham's essays and website, which I believe is where I heard about it. Or it might have been reddit (which I'm sure I heard about via PG). I joined Reddit on January 25, 2006 and HN on February 21, 2007.
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.
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.
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.
213 comments
[ 0.27 ms ] story [ 236 ms ] thread>YouTube: "identifying copyrighted material can't be an automated process." Startup disagrees.
> Well its not a totally useless link submission...
Even our earliest comment ancestors had the signature HN venom.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28816110
https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09
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.
document.querySelectorAll('.titlelink').forEach((link) => link.href = "https://web.archive.org/web/20070601000000*/" + link.href);
https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2006-10-09
Arrington was something of a meme back in those days.
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
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1
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?
Now I am trying to remember if there was anything special about BBS's that could be used to identify old-timers.
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.
[3148]: https://slashdot.org/~raph
The place I really miss is kuro5hin. That site was a gem.
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.
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.
* 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!
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.
https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=cmdrtaco
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.
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!
I'd actually use the term "welcoming" in this context.
Do you mind sharing more information about this, please?
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.
HN was immediately the opposite: a place you could read the comments before the article.
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.
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.
I agree and I would also like to see more encouragement for solopreneurs. As financial independence through solopreneurship has a better probability of being achieved than creating an unicorn startup; especially when not having a safety-net.
So maybe less of 'Why are you making money' when an indie showcases their product, While defending bad practices of Trillion dollar mEga corps. as 'They have to make money'!
P.S. Happy birthday HN, Congratulations & thanks to P.G, Initial set of users, Current users and of course Dan.
And that's when I make another donation to the vital Internet Archive
I want to especially thank Dang for keeping this place consistent.
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!
/.
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.
Not sure who to but thank you.
I too am a beneficiary of this neo-polis of tech and philosophy.
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.