Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#151

Post by chubot » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:14 PM UTC

combatentropy wrote: post #11

One of my favorites is a super-long one by a user named bane, about three solutions to speeding up computing: (1) "high" (more RAM, CPU), (2) "wide" (more machines), and (3) "deep" (refactoring), which is what he recommends first. More than once he has rewritten something that was running slowly even on the latest and greatest architectures (perhaps partially because of that), to running on a single machine, even an…

Very nice, reminds me of a quote from this very related paper:

You can have a second computer once you’ve shown you know how to use the first one.

–Paul Barham

Scalability! But at what COST?

https://www.usenix.org/system/files/conference/hotos15/hotos...

http://www.frankmcsherry.org/graph/scalability/cost/2015/02/...

Interesting it also involves graph processing, which Bane's comment did. The point is that distributed graph processing frameworks were mostly parallelizing their own overhead, not solving the problem, which could be done on a single machine!

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#152

Post by leafboi » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:15 PM UTC

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…

Great analogy, but analogies can be deceptive, because while the snail can coexist with the tiger, for every two animals that coexist hundreds still have to fail the natural selection process.

We like to view the world through an idealistic narrow lens of an analogy but the truth is often far more complex.

I would go further to say that analogies and quotations are dangerous and deceptive. These quotations don't actually offer any new information. You usually only like analogy because you already agree with it, no new information or insights are being offered other than the comparison that is part of the analogy itself.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#153

Post by turnerdhooch » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:18 PM UTC

Waterluvian wrote: post #147

SwiftyBug wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Added a calendar reminder to check my round boys every week. Thanks mate.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#154

Post by chubot » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

jl2718 wrote: post #89

ananthrk wrote: post #41

The legendary "Putnam" one, of course: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35079

Okay, so, what do we think about TarSnap? Dude was obviously a genius, and spent his time on backups instead of solving millennium problems. I say that with the greatest respect. Is this entrepreneurship thing a trap?

I'm pretty sure he also made a ton of money on it, since lots of YC startups like Stripe were early customers. I don't think any of them had time to migrate off tarsnap (not to mention they don't need to). They probably just accumulated a bunch of data and tarsnap grew as Stripe did, which I imagine was very lucrative.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#155

Post by cercatrova » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

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…

I will have to agree with the dead comment by @leafboi, it is not that every animal can live harmoniously, indeed every animal is in competition by the laws of natural selection, and each animal can be seen as the outlier in its species. In the case of humans, there may be multiple paths to success, but it may be that many of them lead to failure while producing certain outliers.

Unrelatedly, does anyone know why certain comments immediately become dead, they don't really seem to break any HN rules but I see often that some comments die quickly.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#156

Post by leafboi » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:26 PM UTC

cercatrova wrote: post #155

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…

I will have to agree with the dead comment by @leafboi, it is not that every animal can live harmoniously, indeed every animal is in competition by the laws of natural selection, and each animal can be seen as the outlier in its species. In the case of humans, there may be multiple paths to success, but it may be that many of them lead to failure while producing certain outliers. Unrelatedly, does anyone know why cer…

Negative karma. I'll have to switch accounts.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#157

Post by jeffreyrogers » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

p1mrx wrote: post #18

ivars wrote: post #13

User mikekchar on the value of ideas: My advice is to lower the value of ideas. A lot of time people think, "If only I had a good idea I would be successful". You will see other people saying things like, "Buy my good idea!". But really, good ideas are a dime a dozen. Good ideas, bad ideas... it actually doesn't make much difference. What makes the difference is execution and timing. For things that take a long time,…

It can be fun to think of "new" ideas, and then search the Internet for them. This week, I wanted a handheld device to push buttons and open doors without touching them; found several for sale (though the models without covers seem useless.) Later I wanted a 3D support structure to fit under a mask and increase its usable surface area; found several for sale.

I think I'm fairly creative, but I've only had one or two ideas that weren't reinventions of something someone else had already done. Doesn't matter what it is: software, electrical circuit, some clever mechanical thing, it's almost always already been done. Even if you look at patent grants, almost none of them are truly novel.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#158

Post by narwally » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

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

The best part is, he ended up being justified in his self confidence. He was talking about his company Tarsnap, which still seems to be going strong 13 years later, and now has Stripe as a customer.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#159

Post by narwally » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:35 PM UTC

anderspitman wrote: post #146

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?

Tarsnap was his startup in question. It looks like it's still going strong. Even has a testimonial from the CEO of Stripe on the website.

Re: Ask HN: Your Favourite HN Comment?

#160

Post by tlb » Sun, Sep 20, 2020, 4:37 PM UTC

op03 wrote: post #110

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…

Usually people who design interaction spaces know something about human behavior, spectrum of personality types/needs, social psychology, group dynamics etc and then design the space. But what has happened in the tech world, is obviously the reverse. All kinds of contrived/arbit spaces have been created and then behavior of the lab rats within are studied.

Could you point to a good example of an interaction space designed this way?