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Ask HN: What has HN given you?

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Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#481

Post by mazumdar »

subroutine wrote: post #351
mazumdar wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nearly 5 years ago, a few months after being rejected from YC for the first time, I came across your Show HN and started using Webflow to build a mockup of my product's sign-up page (I did not know how to code at that time). Over the next 2.5 years, I reapplied to YC five more times. I interviewed twice in the second round. I eventually got rejected every time. From the ideation stage, to $1M in revenue, YC has an ap…

There are some really amazing stories in this thread about how HN helped launch some really great products. And such a variety of innovation. Really the only thing I can find in common is that their websites allow you to enter a discount code. I can only assume these benevolent entrepreneurs pass out these codes to give a little back to loyal customers, or maybe even a small community who helped spotlight their compa…

Try “HN” in the next 24 hours ;)

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#482

Post by hestipod »

dang wrote: post #477
hestipod wrote: post #406

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually find this very unsettling as I was about to post a last ditch "advice or help" post with lots of potentially identifiable details required to relate the story (and would have had to ID myself to anyone helping anyway) and don't feel safe doing so now, because the police being called to my home would result in more problems for me and potentially total loss of agency. Even if I could avoid being taken in ag…

You could make a throwaway account. It's legit to do that when there's sensitive information in a post, and many people have reached out to the community that way when in a hard spot. tevlon didn't do it that way, which is fine too of course, but you could.

I appreciate the input dang (your username always makes me chuckle in a good way), but I have said enough already on HN it would be trivial to connect the dots. I need to think about how to proceed. I probably shouldn't have said anything and in the end the OP is better off so that's a win, things seem to poke me a little harder than they probably should anymore and I know my perspective is not some universal truth.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#483

Post by tevlon »

TAAndreas wrote: post #362
tevlon wrote: post #297

1,5 years ago, i was suicidal ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13051611 ). 1 week after posting this. I got a visit from the police. Apparently, someone gave them the ip and it took them a week to locate me. They wanted to take me to the hospital to check if i had mental problems. Of course they couldn't force me to go. I assured them that i would fix my problems and make a therapy. It was a wakeup call for me.…

Great to see you here again and particularly great to hear these news! I was already relieved to see your HN submission in May and now I see that was the time when the first public contributions after your AskHN appeared on the GH profile you used here (What I didn't see is that you already used reddit again only some 3 weeks later) The reason I contacted the police was that I wanted to delegate taking care of this t…

hi TAAndreas

you are right, the police was not very professional and it might have ended badly. Luckily it didn't. First i was scared that my ex send them to me and i was in trouble (althoug i did nothing illegal). Then i was relieved that it was about my post on HN.

Reading this made me uncomfortable, but also happy. A Stranger from the internet cared (about my life) and took action. I got 80 messages on that thread. Most of them were upliftig. But taking action is another level. Thank you for that! Faith in humanity restored.

You could have reached out to me directly. I would be happy to have a coffee with a fellow HN and "talk about it". I'd rather talk to a stranger with an open ear than a psychologist who listens because he/she gets paid for it.

If there is anything i can do for you, you can contact me at: tevlon84@gmail.com .

You did the right thing.Thank you!

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#484

Post by ficklepickle »

Quenty wrote: post #471
jdminhbg wrote: post #434

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even better for that purpose is neverssl.com. As the name implies, it’s http-only, so misconfigured WiFi portals will still intercept and load their captive login page.

I use example.com which is also guaranteed to not be https. If I'm asking someone else to type the URL in, it is easy to say "example.com" and know they can spell it correctly. It's also very light weight.

I use www.com because it's the shortest to type non-https site I know of.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#486

Post by dang »

hestipod wrote: post #482
dang wrote: post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make a throwaway account. It's legit to do that when there's sensitive information in a post, and many people have reached out to the community that way when in a hard spot. tevlon didn't do it that way, which is fine too of course, but you could.

I appreciate the input dang (your username always makes me chuckle in a good way), but I have said enough already on HN it would be trivial to connect the dots. I need to think about how to proceed. I probably shouldn't have said anything and in the end the OP is better off so that's a win, things seem to poke me a little harder than they probably should anymore and I know my perspective is not some universal truth.

Ok. If there's anything we can do to help, let us know at hn@ycombinator.com.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#487

Post by kuschku »

Majora320 wrote: post #168
chipperyman573 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You wouldn't even need to mine it - https://github.com/HackerNews/API

Good luck downloading 16 million records...

Why? 16 million isn’t much, maybe 10 to 20 gigabyte if compressed.

I’ve seen IRC bouncers that have more messages stored for a single user (270 million, in fact).

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#488

Post by yesenadam »

TheLML wrote: post #467
yesenadam wrote: post #25

Great question. So far.. links to so many interesting websites, books, papers, blogs—mostly linked to in comments and in AskHN. (And then, maybe even more, the sources mentioned in turn by all those.) Way too many really. Already I'm thinking of having a break from here for a while to actually read all those books (have read some..e.g. just the other day got Crucial Conversations thanks to a mention on here, started…

any great books in particular that you would suggest of those you've read already?

Oh that's hard to answer, sorry! - I didn't keep a record of which things I got from here or elsewhere, or from mentions in the stuff I learnt about here. Or from searching topics I learnt about on here. And I was checking out everything I could get from "best programming/mathematics books" lists online for a couple of years before coming here regularly. Youtube videos too - e.g. Matt Might's "Winning the War on Error: Solving Halting Problem, Curing Cancer" and Rich Hickey's talks were..elevating; Julia Evans, Doug Crockford I probably heard about on here. I googled quite a few AskHN lists of fav books, books that changed your life, books you wished you'd read earlier, books you wished your co-workers had read etc and looked at anything that sounded interesting. Sorry I can't be more specific. Well, what is great depends on the reader too. Good luck!

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#489

Post by dang »

ex_amazon_sde wrote: post #340
innocentoldguy wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN is an echo chamber, to some extent. For example, try making valid criticisms against Go or JavaScript and you will be downvoted without explanation. I think HN would be better if it required an explanation in order to downvote something. At least then it would be clear to everyone reading whether the negativity was legitimate or not.

Also make a pointless, positive statement about a popular technology and you get upvotes. Point out that a clever solution is not that useful or applicable and you get a lot of downvotes. I wish I could have a comment ranking system not based on sheer popularity.

> Point out that a clever solution is not that useful or applicable and you get a lot of downvotes

I have exactly the opposite impression, that this is one of the easiest ways to get cheap upvotes. So much so that we have to moderate to prevent such subthreads from choking out others.

Re: Ask HN: What has HN given you?

#490

Post by sytse »

NightlyDev wrote: post #369
sytse wrote: post #31

It gave me a job, a company, and a sense of purpose. In 2012 I did a Show HN for GitLab.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 Today we are 1800 contributors and a company of 220 on a mission to ensure that everyone can contribute.

I really enjoy GitLab and I've used it for five years now. I really like what GitLab is doing with the community version: free with all the features that makes sense for small to medium sized companies, or just a group of people. Thank you for an awesome product! :)

Awesome, your comment means a lot to me. Deciding what functionality to open source is very hard and it is good to hear you like what we are doing.
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