I bet most people who frequent HN grasp it. And who else would?
Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
51–60 of 170 posts
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#52Earlier quoted context omitted.
here’s the deal: HN is a tiny forum which basically runs on a single machine with a single backup. There are surely only a few people monitoring it. It’s used by about ~1 million people a day, and nobody really “relies” on HN. GitHub, Facebook, Google, AWS etc. are massive clusters of over 1000 servers spread across continents, with multiple failure modes and run by many DevOps. Many people and services rely on them…
"Yet HN has more uptime than these behemoths, and way more uptime than e.g. Slack." That's because HN does a lot less, and is a lot simpler.
> and is a lot simpler
I think that’s a feature not a bug.
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#53Earlier quoted context omitted.
here’s the deal: HN is a tiny forum which basically runs on a single machine with a single backup. There are surely only a few people monitoring it. It’s used by about ~1 million people a day, and nobody really “relies” on HN. GitHub, Facebook, Google, AWS etc. are massive clusters of over 1000 servers spread across continents, with multiple failure modes and run by many DevOps. Many people and services rely on them…
"Yet HN has more uptime than these behemoths, and way more uptime than e.g. Slack." That's because HN does a lot less, and is a lot simpler.
> That's because HN does a lot less, and is a lot simpler.
Complexity is not a virtue. HN has a lot of depth when you look beyond its interface. The abstractions don't always have to exist in code, operations or UI.
What % of the Slack feature set is actually used by a majority of its users at least once a month?
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#54'sillysaurusx -- I respect your opinions. I know that I respect your opinions because you're able to use HackerNews as a bully pulpit to reach a very wide audience and I personally both enjoy and look forward to seeing your participation. I've often wished I had better opportunities to learn from you and always silently wish you well on your personal journey. I also see from your Twitter reply that you feel HN hasn't…
Context that I had to look up: sillysaurusx on HN is theshawwn on Twitter, whose replies to the submitted tweet this is a response to. (What makes that relative clause so hard to parse?) Meta: Is that an apostrophe as a username sigil? Where did it come from? Another instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17681886
> Meta: Is that an apostrophe as a username sigil? Where did it originate?
It's a LISP-ism. It means don't evaluate the symbol before passing it.
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#55'sillysaurusx -- I respect your opinions. I know that I respect your opinions because you're able to use HackerNews as a bully pulpit to reach a very wide audience and I personally both enjoy and look forward to seeing your participation. I've often wished I had better opportunities to learn from you and always silently wish you well on your personal journey. I also see from your Twitter reply that you feel HN hasn't…
Context that I had to look up: sillysaurusx on HN is theshawwn on Twitter, whose replies to the submitted tweet this is a response to. (What makes that relative clause so hard to parse?) Meta: Is that an apostrophe as a username sigil? Where did it come from? Another instance: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17681886
The aforementioned replies:
https://mobile.twitter.com/theshawwn/status/1282058054754799...
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#56I hope he’s well-compensated for the job?
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#57I'd like to think that more than a few people grasp this. He's some kind of machine - in the best, complimentary way. His replies to emails are succinct, helpful, educational, and still personable. No idea how he retains his equanimity across hundreds/thousands of interactions, mostly with strangers. IMO it's a worthwhile lesson (and a free one) to peruse his comment history: https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=d…
I like to think he's some kind of monk, a zen master of human forums, and a genuinely good person. At least any exchange I had with him or observed with all kinds of people have been full of humanity, while firm in his mission. I don't know how he does it, and I wish we'd celebrate him and people like him far more.
I've always just hoped that he's not just one person.
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#58Posts like these, for me, highlight the class divide. PG thinks "few people" grasp how much effort dang expends, when in reality, a whole class of people working in customer service roles expend roughly the same amount of effort. Sure, dang might be uniquely efficient, but the expenditure of effort is on the same order.
I once witnessed a Delta employee in ATL process a queue of customers, all with issues regarding their seat number. Without knowing too much about the process, it seemed to me that she took everyone's story and fixed the seating arrangement so that everyone would be seated together by group. I was impressed, but she doesn't get any applause for solving (well, approximating) an NP-complete problem, and I doubt she focused on math during her years in education, and certainly she won't think to write a blog focused on "Solving the N-passengers, K-groups problem 30 minutes before boarding time." Most importantly, she could have easily said "not my problem," but didn't.
That is anecdata but it does not stand alone. I regularly witness about 10% of customer service personnel giving it their all to represent their company and keep customers happy. They are the "dangs" of those organizations, and they keep everything running smoothly. So it would seem "few people" is not accurate. Instead it's an huge lower-middle (under)class cohort keeping capitalist dreams alive.
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#59Sometimes when I see an especially good comment on hacker news I click on the name and read through other things they've written. You find really insightful stuff this way.
One day I see dang write a comment that was really interesting about how threads tend to develop over time, like some kind of law of webforums.
I thought "ah ha! I'll go read a bunch of Dan's comments. I bet those are good."
But if you go look his profile is just nonstop very politely moderating people. All. The. Time.
Dan please write a book some time, I'd read it.
Re: Few people grasp the amount of effort Daniel Gackle expends running HN (2020)
#60I've been banned by Dang before, but of all the moderators on the internet I still like him the most. He tries hard and after all these years still works in good faith as far as I can tell. HN wouldn't be what it is without him.