Live data from Hacker News

Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

news.ycombinator.com

121–130 of 214 posts

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#122
> On Having Balls, Part II: Staying Hungry (hotornot.com) > 67 points by matt on Feb 19, 2007 | hide | 3 comments

Was curious about this post. Found it here [1]. Reading this was interesting and felt a bit like going back in a time-machine. Hot or Not was a fantastic site -because it inspired a lot of my friends and myself in the early 2000s to build similar things. One thing I didn't realise is how much money the site was making then. Wikipedia claims it was doing $7m in revs in 2008

[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20070419061100/http://james.hoto...

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#124

It feels like HN still upholds the early promise of the internet (along with Wikipedia and very small number of other websites). But what will the next 15 year bring about?

What's the "early promise of the internet" to you? The Venture Capitalists and startuppers that made HN like the internet to be Free enough that new businesses and services can thrive, and Open Source for the accessible and reusable building blocks for their projects, but clearly like commercialization and being the middleman, like in the good old offline days. The headache of moderating their platforms feels more ur…

What's the "early promise of the internet" to you?

That should probably be a whole separate post of its own! In fact, I'd encourage you, if you're interested, to consider writing up something on the topic and submit it as a new post. I think there's a lot to dig into with regards to what we all thought the "early promise of the Internet" was, and analyze it in terms of where we were wrong, where we've fallen short of the ideas, and - maybe most importantly - where there's room to take specific action(s) to get "back on the rails" so to speak.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#125
post #110

HN is what reddit used to be like when it first started. Links to interesting Tech, programming and science stories and high quality discussion compared to something like Digg. Thankfully HN hasnt dropped in quality on that front unlike reddit. Its still so good I dont even click on the link I click on comments to get a HN summary which gives me a pretty good idea if its worth reading or not. Most of the time the com…

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree... Things aren't that bad, but I've definitely noticed a lot more cases of downvoting of "against the grain" comments or opinions with often very few responses in the last couple of years. Previously, I rarely noticed heavily downvoted comments, and in the cases they were, there were almost always reply comments explaining the opposite side, leading to IMO much better disc…

There is online manipulation here and pretty much everywhere else where people can discuss things.

It can come in a variety of forms. https://mpra.ub.uni-muenchen.de/109634/1/MPRA_paper_109634.p... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2011/mar/17/us-spy-op...

Reputation Management https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reputation_management which obviously protects income streams for entities, but the military also protect businesses online because they are protecting money coming in from abroad, this is what politics is all about, placating the public which business gets its way, stuff you probably dont need to know about and so wont be taught about it.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#126

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…

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.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#127
post #117
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I'm going to have to disagree... Things aren't that bad, but I've definitely noticed a lot more cases of downvoting of "against the grain" comments or opinions with often very few responses in the last couple of years. Previously, I rarely noticed heavily downvoted comments, and in the cases they were, there were almost always reply comments explaining the opposite side, leading to IMO much better disc…

Maybe, but 5-10 years ago Apple-bashing was a karma death sentence (never guess how I learned that). Now it seems to be more of an active discussion (mostly due to the MBP keyboard situation I guess?).

Damn that used to be such a big deal a few years ago. You don’t see it anymore.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#129
post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not having "sub-combinators" might have contributed to that, and the relentless moderation by dang, who has mildly reprimanded me too. I think it works very well indeed! Happy 15th!

I always thought it was the opposite. That subreddits allowed the community to expand without catering to the lowest common denominator, and reddit would have fallen off the cliff faster without those.

There are still subreddits with much better discussion than happens here. Narrow focus and consistent moderation are the keys.

Re: Happy 15th birthday Hacker News

#130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You rang?

[3148]: https://slashdot.org/~raph

Post reply on HN