suddenly this post disappeared from HN first few pages?
why down-vote me? I have a legitimate reason to ask this question, no?
HN better show whoever just down-voted, hate lurking jerks.
(Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
101–110 of 111 posts
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#102HN has its problems for sure, but I think it's currently the best general tech/interest site on the Internet at the moment. If I find I'm getting jaded with the mindless groupthink here, I just usually take a couple weeks off. Usually by then, whatever hot topic that was irritating me is out of the news cycle and the hive mind has moved on. At least once a week I find something on the front page that is unique, inten…
There really did used to be more tech discussion (code tips, tech stack discussions etc.) and ShowHN/AskHN posts. But those have either been overwhelmed by more general topics on the front page, or in the case of the HN posts, purposely pushed off quicker than normal posts (which I think is a tragedy).* Agreed. The Show:HN posts are some of the best and most important posts of all, but they disappear so quickly now..…
A weird quirk of the way the site works is that the more popular it is the shallower it tends to be, because more users means more story turnover, more flagged stories dropping off the front page in minutes, and so forth.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#103HN has its problems for sure, but I think it's currently the best general tech/interest site on the Internet at the moment. If I find I'm getting jaded with the mindless groupthink here, I just usually take a couple weeks off. Usually by then, whatever hot topic that was irritating me is out of the news cycle and the hive mind has moved on. At least once a week I find something on the front page that is unique, inten…
There really did used to be more tech discussion (code tips, tech stack discussions etc.) and ShowHN/AskHN posts. But those have either been overwhelmed by more general topics on the front page, or in the case of the HN posts, purposely pushed off quicker than normal posts (which I think is a tragedy).* Agreed. The Show:HN posts are some of the best and most important posts of all, but they disappear so quickly now..…
Actually, one of the big issues with Show HN is that people will tag posts with Show HN for literally anything. I've seen more product announcements tagged Show HN than general hack projects.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#104Earlier quoted context omitted.
There really did used to be more tech discussion (code tips, tech stack discussions etc.) and ShowHN/AskHN posts. But those have either been overwhelmed by more general topics on the front page, or in the case of the HN posts, purposely pushed off quicker than normal posts (which I think is a tragedy).* Agreed. The Show:HN posts are some of the best and most important posts of all, but they disappear so quickly now..…
Actually, one of the big issues with Show HN is that people will tag posts with Show HN for literally anything. I've seen more product announcements tagged Show HN than general hack projects.
> I've seen more product announcements tagged Show HN
I'm okay with that. It used to let me know a bit more about what was going on in the tech space by giving me a direct to source link and some background about the product.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#105Earlier quoted context omitted.
There really did used to be more tech discussion (code tips, tech stack discussions etc.) and ShowHN/AskHN posts. But those have either been overwhelmed by more general topics on the front page, or in the case of the HN posts, purposely pushed off quicker than normal posts (which I think is a tragedy).* Agreed. The Show:HN posts are some of the best and most important posts of all, but they disappear so quickly now..…
Actually, one of the big issues with Show HN is that people will tag posts with Show HN for literally anything. I've seen more product announcements tagged Show HN than general hack projects.
Yeah, I don't have a problem with that. In fact, product announcements (especially brand new, first launch products from new startups) are exactly what a Show HN should be in my opinion.
The ability to expose your new thing to a knowledgeable and diverse crowd like this, and get quality feedback on your project, is (or was) a big draw to posting stuff here. But now the "Show HN" posts disappear off the front/new pages so fast, they tend to generate very little actual discussion, more often than not.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#106I miss Paul Graham's influence on HN. My impression is that since he "retired", the topics now are more uniformly focused on core hacking/startup stuff and HN lost its "good hackers are interested in anything" approach that I so fell in love with when I first discovered the site.
So I thought about quitting too, but there are still enough gems hidden beneath the avalanche of Haskell vs Lisp vs Erlang threads that keep me wanting to come back.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Considering that I quit for almost a year in much the same way I disagree. The best customers are the ones that leave and tell you why. I never learned anything as an entrepreneur from the people that just left. But I listened very well to those that left and told me why. Of course HN has no direct commercial incentive to retain Matt or me or anybody else, as long as we're contributing it's fine and when we're not th…
I did quit for real. I had been in the top 10 for a long time. Eventually it got better (in some ways anyway) and I started sniffing around again.
> I did quit for real.
Oh, I believe you. Been there, done that. I figured I'd absolutely never be back here.
> Eventually it got better (in some ways anyway) and I started sniffing around again.
I'm really happy that you're back.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#108I recently sent them an email about a thing I really find frustrating at HN: Hi all, I use a lot HN a lot and too often I receive this error: You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks. The most frustrating part is that I receive it after I submit the link, wouldn't be elegant to have a status icon or label that would signal that my account status is available for submitting. This way I will not submit stor…
> You're submitting too fast. Please slow down. Thanks.
is the answer. That message appears when you're hogging the new page with your submissions, which means you're pushing other submissions out.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#109Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've wondered the same thing. He returned under the same username, so it looks like he recovered his password somehow. Matt is a Y Combinator alumnus, so it's possible he talked to PG directly.
There is a password reset feature. It works via typing in the wrong password. Go to the login page, type in a wrong pwd, and it magically appears. If I recall correctly PG told me that at a YC event. Damn you PG! :)
Aha! So there is. So it's not bad implementation, just bad UI design.
So the trick is:
- Change your email address to something like kjghoyvgljhbvljhvkljhbv@mailinator.com.
- If you get a confirmation message to your old address, delete it.
- Change your password to jkhvouyflkjbv7897t^%REjhvljyyf.
- Go to the mailinator address to confirm the change.
- Clear your browser history.
Then you're free of HN forever! ... Or until you make a new account.
Re: (Why) I quit Hacker News (2010)
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've never noticed abundance of Apple articles, until this morning. Out of 13 top articles over half of them were leading to apple.com. Some feature to filter out unwanted links might be useful here. On the topic of voting, I've been thinking about two parallel scores - one could be traditional up/down vote, which, alas also traditionally, signifies agreeing/disagreeing; the second could be valuable/not valuable scor…
I'm a pure Apple-basher, but most times when they have their big to-do, and especially if they release something as significant to many computer people's future plans as Swift, IMO HN should have a lot of Apple on the front page. I don't miss the Gruber at all, though.
> most times when they have their big to-do [...] HN should have a lot of Apple on the front page
That's certainly what was going on yesterday. Microsoft had even more stories on the front page when they held their big to-do a month or so ago. It's a side-effect of the major tech companies stockpiling their big announcements for annual conference days.