The best comments are at the bottom. I’ve been twaddling here long enough to know what the most upvoted take will be, so unless it’s a personal anecdote it’s not worth reading. The real juicers are usually buried near the bottom of the page, a few comments above where the apathy and sarcasm start bleeding into grey.
>the servers that run HN are surprisingly modest: just two machines with quad-core Intel Xeon E5-2637 v4 CPUs, running FreeBSD
Very nice. I used FreeBSD on my server until Version 9, I think I left for 2 reasons. The server experience heat death (my fault) and its Laptop support.
I heard v15 became alpha + its Laptop support has improved a lot. I will keep an eye on v15 and give it a try when released.
FWIW, I had to replace the power supply on the server and I forgot to plug in the CPU fan, doh. The machine was over 10 years old at the time.
I've always been curious what the front page of hn would look like if you filtered out all the tech posts. I'd love a rss feed for that. Maybe make it top weekly or monthly instead since that would cull a large % of posts?
One site I've been really enjoying for filtering through feeds including all hn submissions is https://scour.ing/about. You input interests and it filters rss based on that. You can even follow your profile using an external rss reader. It's inspired by sites like bear blog and seems to be trying to do everything right re treating users well. I'm a long time rss user and rarely find new rss projects interesting enough to use but scour instantly hooked me because it works and is trying to do everything right by its users.
> There were many large forums that hit a tipping point where low-effort posting and polarization drag everything down. How does HN resist the slide?
It doesn't.
Admittedly, HN discussion is generally of higher "quality" than Reddit, at least for large subreddits, but that's a very low bar to hurdle.
> The HN welcome page lays out two cardinal rules: don’t post or upvote crap links, and don’t be rude or dumb in comment threads.
These cardinal rules are routinely violated.
A rational person would just read the linked articles and ignore the comment section. HN is still the best link aggregator, I think. Unfortunately, I'm irrational and prone to pointless argumentation, which is why I sometimes show up in the comments. (Duty calls.) I usually regret it, though.
IMO one of the things that makes HN so special is the "culture" here. Having been on here since 2018, most folks here are acutely aware of the issues that other sites like Reddit have and we all collectively work to preserve this space so it doesn't become like the other places.
If I see a meme on Reddit I would probably upvote it, but if I see that exact same meme on here I would downvote and probably report it too. That decision comes from a place of wanting to preserve this space and I'm sure many other folks on here would very much agree.
The most difficult thing to protect against is the down-voting of posts you disagree with on HN. That’s the culture of Reddit, but it’s here on HN more and more.
I think that recently, I've been seeing more snarky and dismissive messages than compared with several months ago. They are always very brief, gotcha-style replies. Is it just me? It sometimes makes me doubt if there isn't a coordinated attempt at destabilizing the otherwise orderly (no doubt after some heroic wrangling by dang & co.) discourse taking place. Those posts get downvoted rather fast, but I feel that there's been a quantitative difference in their occurence.
I don't like the word "karma" because it's often, for better in worse, group affinity (and we are most often trajectories rather than pure insight). I often find minority views and unexplored paths interesting, even when they're obviously wrong.
One time I made a negative comment about Lord of the Rings, and I think I lost a thousand points. Does it really make sense that my karma as a complete user drops so much because of one specific comment? Blasphemy, but maybe Reddit's per-subreddit score makes more sense.
I can promise I don't craft my comments for karma, though many people deserve their high 'karma' because they offer genuinely great contributions.
(if someone can suggest a way to merge those 2 CSS selectors into one to avoid repetition, I'd be immensely grateful, as i failed while trying to learn about that arcane syntax)
> a chronic dilemma for any online community: scale, topical breadth, and discussion quality form an unstable triad
I always wonder about the scale part -- why do we want a community to grow? Is it to reach more like-minded people, to enrich the collective knowledge, etc? That would be so great, and not dilute the other two aspects. But so often it seems that "growth" is just for its own sake, a bit like cancer -- consuming the host in the end, and at best reducing what was a vibrant community to a barely palatable sludge that appeals to the common denominator just enough to warrant eyeballs-to-dollars conversion.
It's a testament to HN that it has, so far, resisted this (to borrow a term from mr Doctorow) enshittification.
This post recommends the Newsit extension to view Hacker News discussion associated with a page.
In the same vein, a few years ago, I made a Firefox extension for users who want a privacy-preserving way to see if pages have associated HN discussion:
Most other extensions probably hit an external API (such as Algolia) to check submission status, which means they send every page you visit to that API. Instead, my extension uses Bloom filters compiled from every link ever submitted (updated daily from the Hacker News BigQuery dataset) to check the current page's submission status. By using Bloom filters, my extension only hits the API when you click the button to view the discussion.
I think the main difference between HN and other forums is the moderation. I have been a moderator and I know what difficult and thankless task it can be. Thank you Dang.
Love the article. I’m here to register as a “randomly scroll the front page” kind of user.
I’m a digg expat from back in the days. HN is the only icon on my phone that is mot an app. It sits on my first page and I keep a tab open until I read the entire article.
But HN content is special to me. I have an ArchiveBox instance to keep all very good content from HN. It’s hooked to a vector database and an AI to quizz me on the many topics so I don’t forget.
At year’s end I close all my unfinished articles, normally around 200-300 on my safari and the cycle repeats.
I don’t much engage with the community but HN is a special place and the only place that can clench my thirst for knowledge and learning.
For me, HN is distinct and special because (despite its scale) it doesn't reflect the internet. HN, as a discussion forum, has its own distinct norms, "vibe" and specialisations which give it value. Places like Facebook and Reddit are so large that they (kind of) reflect the whole internet, with all of huge variation in expectations and behaviour that represents.
It's the narrower scope of subject matter and the ruthlessly-cultivated culture which create the value proposition of HN. It's for this reason I've continued using the site for years after largely abandoning discussion on other social media sites. Long may it flourish.
> Finally, demographics matter. HN is dominated by American tech professionals. That can tilt discourse toward elitism, rationalism, and a kind of intellectual performance, creating an echo chamber
As an European, not working in technology or even with computers, i can relate to. HN comments can sometimes feel out of touch with reality.
I’d say it’s more about the way Americans tend to see the world, where the world ends at the border of the USA and not consider that there are other way of life.
Although despite its flaws, this forum is still one of the brightest side of the internet.
Having RTFA, I am happy to discover the rss feeds options. Sadly, they do not seem to match how I prefer things: checking yesterday’s top posts.
While it can still move around despite the passing of the day, it has been quite a stable way to see what made it to the top and stayed. I am just too lazy to automate it myself.
About the regional bias in the discourse here, I have come to accept it in public, English-based communities at this point. The content does speak for itself, and despite the noise, one comes out better off.
TBH, many articles on the front page are not for everyone, and reading the comments is more fun to figure this out. I don't judge those who comment based on the conversations instead, but it does derail things at times.
While I am ways away from getting to downvote, just lurking without being logged in has been quite effective in staving off distractions.
22 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 50.1 ms ] threadVery nice. I used FreeBSD on my server until Version 9, I think I left for 2 reasons. The server experience heat death (my fault) and its Laptop support.
I heard v15 became alpha + its Laptop support has improved a lot. I will keep an eye on v15 and give it a try when released.
FWIW, I had to replace the power supply on the server and I forgot to plug in the CPU fan, doh. The machine was over 10 years old at the time.
One site I've been really enjoying for filtering through feeds including all hn submissions is https://scour.ing/about. You input interests and it filters rss based on that. You can even follow your profile using an external rss reader. It's inspired by sites like bear blog and seems to be trying to do everything right re treating users well. I'm a long time rss user and rarely find new rss projects interesting enough to use but scour instantly hooked me because it works and is trying to do everything right by its users.
It doesn't.
Admittedly, HN discussion is generally of higher "quality" than Reddit, at least for large subreddits, but that's a very low bar to hurdle.
> The HN welcome page lays out two cardinal rules: don’t post or upvote crap links, and don’t be rude or dumb in comment threads.
These cardinal rules are routinely violated.
A rational person would just read the linked articles and ignore the comment section. HN is still the best link aggregator, I think. Unfortunately, I'm irrational and prone to pointless argumentation, which is why I sometimes show up in the comments. (Duty calls.) I usually regret it, though.
If I see a meme on Reddit I would probably upvote it, but if I see that exact same meme on here I would downvote and probably report it too. That decision comes from a place of wanting to preserve this space and I'm sure many other folks on here would very much agree.
Ive noticed this as well.
One time I made a negative comment about Lord of the Rings, and I think I lost a thousand points. Does it really make sense that my karma as a complete user drops so much because of one specific comment? Blasphemy, but maybe Reddit's per-subreddit score makes more sense.
I can promise I don't craft my comments for karma, though many people deserve their high 'karma' because they offer genuinely great contributions.
Oh waits it’s read the article…
https://hackernews.betacat.io/
(if someone can suggest a way to merge those 2 CSS selectors into one to avoid repetition, I'd be immensely grateful, as i failed while trying to learn about that arcane syntax)
I always wonder about the scale part -- why do we want a community to grow? Is it to reach more like-minded people, to enrich the collective knowledge, etc? That would be so great, and not dilute the other two aspects. But so often it seems that "growth" is just for its own sake, a bit like cancer -- consuming the host in the end, and at best reducing what was a vibrant community to a barely palatable sludge that appeals to the common denominator just enough to warrant eyeballs-to-dollars conversion.
It's a testament to HN that it has, so far, resisted this (to borrow a term from mr Doctorow) enshittification.
In the same vein, a few years ago, I made a Firefox extension for users who want a privacy-preserving way to see if pages have associated HN discussion:
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/hacker-news-d...
Most other extensions probably hit an external API (such as Algolia) to check submission status, which means they send every page you visit to that API. Instead, my extension uses Bloom filters compiled from every link ever submitted (updated daily from the Hacker News BigQuery dataset) to check the current page's submission status. By using Bloom filters, my extension only hits the API when you click the button to view the discussion.
Source code here:
https://github.com/jstrieb/hackernews-button
Feel free to pull the Bloom filters from the "Releases" section of that repo on GitHub to use in other projects if you'd like!
I’m a digg expat from back in the days. HN is the only icon on my phone that is mot an app. It sits on my first page and I keep a tab open until I read the entire article.
But HN content is special to me. I have an ArchiveBox instance to keep all very good content from HN. It’s hooked to a vector database and an AI to quizz me on the many topics so I don’t forget.
At year’s end I close all my unfinished articles, normally around 200-300 on my safari and the cycle repeats.
I don’t much engage with the community but HN is a special place and the only place that can clench my thirst for knowledge and learning.
Thanks for the article and thanks HN
It's the narrower scope of subject matter and the ruthlessly-cultivated culture which create the value proposition of HN. It's for this reason I've continued using the site for years after largely abandoning discussion on other social media sites. Long may it flourish.
As an European, not working in technology or even with computers, i can relate to. HN comments can sometimes feel out of touch with reality.
I’d say it’s more about the way Americans tend to see the world, where the world ends at the border of the USA and not consider that there are other way of life.
Although despite its flaws, this forum is still one of the brightest side of the internet.
While it can still move around despite the passing of the day, it has been quite a stable way to see what made it to the top and stayed. I am just too lazy to automate it myself.
About the regional bias in the discourse here, I have come to accept it in public, English-based communities at this point. The content does speak for itself, and despite the noise, one comes out better off.
TBH, many articles on the front page are not for everyone, and reading the comments is more fun to figure this out. I don't judge those who comment based on the conversations instead, but it does derail things at times.
While I am ways away from getting to downvote, just lurking without being logged in has been quite effective in staving off distractions.