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Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

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Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#141

Post by Balgair »

dang wrote: post #78
superasn wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish dang could make it into an auto-updating list!

Good idea. Actually we should add most-favorited stories and comments to the lists page (linked at bottom). Edit: anybody want to suggest any other lists for the lists list?

Yeah, I read the bestcomments on the weekend, to see what I may have missed in the last week. But I've no idea what the time frame those are under. Having a selectable time frame would be nice. Like, not just: past week, past month, past year, etc. But more like oct/2013-dec/2013, though that would not be as 'clean'.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#142

Post by jlevers »

chris_st wrote: post #126
dgellow wrote: post #60

"The contrarian dynamic" by dang, from around a month ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24215601 > The "contrarian dynamic" is that HN threads (and internet comments generally) are largely propelled by people making objections. Cunningham's Law touches on this [1]. The objections come in waves. In the earliest stage of a thread, they tend to be rapid negative reactions to the article. It's not that these are…

I wonder if there's any value in having a post to HN be, in effect, a "Draft", with a timeout of (say) half an hour. You write it up, but you have time to reconsider and edit before it "goes live" and you're (at least psychologically) committed. Perhaps you have to come back after half an hour and officially approve it? This is starting to sound like work :-)

I think this is a great idea, with one issue -- it seems to me (and I haven't looked at this quantitatively, it's just an impression) that later comments sometimes get buried, so there's an incentive to comment sooner rather than later.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#143

Post by surfsvammel »

slazaro wrote: post #107
saboot wrote: post #10

A commenter talked about his experience with testicular cancer and encouraged other 20-34 year old men to check themselves. So I did, found a lump, and because I found it early it was removed with no further issue. So that's definitely one of my favorite comments! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7120102

Are there any other checks that one could easily do that could help with detecting these kind of random diseases early?

When you are in your thirties, get a colonoscopy. Screen for cancer. The screening isn’t very accurate unfortunately, it’s easy to miss. But it still way better than nothing.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#144

Post by spacedcowboy »

kqr wrote: post #94
superice wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is ~250 cycling related traffic deaths per year in the Netherlands. Some 60 of those are e-bike related. Normalized per capita that is well above the EU average, but you shouldn't forget that we cycle a lot in the Netherlands, which means that per cycled kilometer, cycling in the Netherlands is still ridiculously safe even without helmets. It has been argued that forcing people to wear a helmet in law will redu…

Head injuries are more common in cars than bicycles. Before someone tells me I "must" wear a helmet when cycling, I want to see them strap on a helmet when entering a car.

I’ve been hit by a car three times when cycling (only when cycling on an e-bike, car-drivers seem to have difficulty assessing the different speeds involved). The last time, and the time that persuaded me to give up the e-bike resulted in [this](https://0x0000ff.uk/imgs/hit-by-car.png).

That top impact is my head, smashing the windscreen. The lower impact is my arm (broken in two places). The side of the car was my knee, breaking the my thigh in the process.

I was cycling along, in my cycle lane, with the right of way on a main road. A woman turning left across my path into a side road either didn’t look or didn’t see me. I had time for “Oh Shi” before the impact and the pain.

I was wearing a cycle helmet, actually one issued by my work, which is what saved my life that day. The ER nurse said a young woman had also been admitted because of a car accident that evening, but she’d only been wearing a climbing helmet. She died.

My body was broken, but I didn’t even get a bruise on my head. I remain a fan of cycle helmets.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#145

Post by rjkennedy98 »

dlkmp wrote: post #34

Oracle code base and test cycle description: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18442941 I've referred to this comment a couple of times in discussions with people I've worked with. It is a great example for many problems of old code bases.

I was going to share this myself. It's really great knowing that it stuck a chord with others.

So much to takeaway from that post. For me it is 1. Its important how you structure your code (flags and global state can wreak havoc on a program) 2. No matter how bad your code base is - it can at least be functional if you have good testing

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#146

Post by anderspitman »

AlchemistCamp wrote: post #3

It's very short and not at all in-depth, but this was my favorite comment. It was one of the greatest troll shutdowns I've ever seen: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35083

I recommend following the thread back up. Very interesting. Anyone know if cperciva ever made it big?

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#147

Post by Waterluvian »

SwiftyBug wrote: post #133
saboot wrote: post #10

A commenter talked about his experience with testicular cancer and encouraged other 20-34 year old men to check themselves. So I did, found a lump, and because I found it early it was removed with no further issue. So that's definitely one of my favorite comments! https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7120102

Testicles are naturally lumpy. How can you tell the regular lumps apart from a potentially harmful one?

I was once told, “as long as you check regularly you’ll know it when you find it.”

I’ve also been told it’s very hard and dense feeing. Sometimes rough feeling.

I think this helps a lot but it sure feels like insufficient training.

This also gave me an app idea. I have very mole-y skin. Doctor said to keep an eye on new ones of significant size. I have a terrible memory. Maybe I need an app that I can snap photos of my major moles and it will tell me if future photos match or are possibly new, based on my mole constellations as pattern matching.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#148

Post by totemandtoken »

StavrosK wrote: post #123
totemandtoken wrote: post #118

From Nostrademons: "I predict that Libra will work for a while, but will eventually be overshadowed either by competitors or by the new markets that it enables. There's this pattern I've noticed where every major tech company, once initial traction has been established, gets three pivots. You can think of them as adolescence, mid-life, and rebirth. The first pivot happens when the company is 5-8 years old (since the…

Generally interesting, but it's somewhat telling that the one prediction it made failed miserably.

I agree, but I still think the idea of looking at a company through its pivots is an interesting analysis. There is a lot of survivor's bias in this comment, but that's generally the case when talking about companies

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#150

Post by MrXOR »

aleem wrote: post #109

On what should you be: > This guy has gone to the zoo and interviewed all the animals. The tiger says that the secret to success is to live alone, be well disguised, have sharp claws and know how to stalk. The snail says that the secret is to live inside a solid shell, stay small, hide under dead trees and move slowly around at night. The parrot says that success lies in eating fruit, being alert, packing light, movi…

@mechanical_fish! please come back
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