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Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

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Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#111

Post by noduerme »

caslon wrote: post #71
noduerme wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're totally right, we all see that happening as far as it goes. But how far does it go? I've only ever posted on controversial topics. Usually when I post, I'm prepared to be downranked, and I'm mildly surprised when I get upvotes. I try to stay away from the dang-hammer. And on code or business subjects, I only ever go deep into things I have obsessive opinions about, popular or not. And that seems to rank OK. I…

"The point" is because it's fun to farm points. This is the same reason people play in competitive video games, or even why people posted videos of themselves online before there was a financial incentive to. It's fun to do something inherently collaborative, like being viewed by an audience. Hacker News fills the same niche for me as competitive video game tournaments do (during a certain time of the year, an easy w…

Gotta say btw, reading back on your HN posts, this one was freakin outstanding http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/pgwrong

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#112

Post by baxtr »

DenisM wrote: post #73
baxtr wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By now, there should be enough data to automate dang? On a more serious note: Is he really doing this all by himself? If so, I am sure he could train some junior people to off-load the work.

Proper moderation requires strength of character to moderate evenly people you do and do not agree with. Not something you can impart on others, even less so on juniors.

Yes you're right that it requires strength. And, at the same time, people have been training other people in every profession to do their jobs for ages. It's how we have survived and thrived as a species.

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#113

Post by hirundo »

noduerme wrote: post #75
hirundo wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Also, I'm surprised and a bit ashamed to be #415 in this list." "humblebrag, transitive + intransitive: to make a seemingly modest, self-critical, or casual statement or reference that is meant to draw attention to one's admirable or impressive qualities or achievements" -- https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/humblebrag

No, I'm actually both surprised and somewhat ashamed. I wouldn't brag to people here . And I certainly wouldn't mention it to anyone I know in real life. ("What's Hacker News? Oh you're on some internet forum where you have points? Wow.") Is there somewhere deep, deep in my cockles, or sub-cockles, where I'm proud of myself? eh. I don't know. Being ranked definitely rubs me the wrong way. I guess it means some of my…

It's a problem that we've made a reasonable amount of bragging into a social error. Your HN rank is in fact a substantive accomplishment, acknowledging that you're in the top small fraction of contributors to one of the most valuable communities on the web. Thank you for making it richer for me. And there's also nothing wrong with speculating about better uses for your time.

I don't think its assholery to make a legit brag or to bow to tall poppy syndrome. I think it's sad that the bow to the all too human neurosis has become required by etiquette.

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#114

Post by baxtr »

bambax wrote: post #23

This only measures the number of comments; it would be interesting to know the karma difference accrued in a year. It may produce the exact same ranking, as intuitively karma is probably heavily correlated with comment frequency... but maybe not?

Karma is interesting. But also comment length. A short comment like mine is much less effort than a well thought out proper in-depth answer.

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#115

Post by xiphias2 »

noduerme wrote: post #54
peoplefromibiza wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Literally the entire functioning of the last somewhat civil, fully moderated, independent, anon-friendly board on the internet in 2021 I recognize an hyperbole when I see one, but this one is kinda of a big one.

Name one that's apolitical, anonymous, and personally moderated post by post? Some reddit subs might fit the bill, or some car enthusiast forums or something where wide-ranging conversations are banned. But this is a hard, hard thing to mod. I don't think we have anything else like it these days. That's why I'm actually here.

r/science is not that bad, well moderated...I know it because I was banned there quite fast for not being scientific enough :)

Though the psychology part of r/science is too much, much less scientific and more biased to a political view

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#116

Post by noduerme »

xiphias2 wrote: post #115
noduerme wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one that's apolitical, anonymous, and personally moderated post by post? Some reddit subs might fit the bill, or some car enthusiast forums or something where wide-ranging conversations are banned. But this is a hard, hard thing to mod. I don't think we have anything else like it these days. That's why I'm actually here.

r/science is not that bad, well moderated...I know it because I was banned there quite fast for not being scientific enough :) Though the psychology part of r/science is too much, much less scientific and more biased to a political view

A life of banning and being banned makes you who you are today. It's called civilization. And of course, when you get your first lesson you yell about other people having bent a rule or two; then later bending some rules is something you earn as a privilege. I was an angry child in the 80s ;)

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#117

Post by noduerme »

baxtr wrote: post #112
DenisM wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proper moderation requires strength of character to moderate evenly people you do and do not agree with. Not something you can impart on others, even less so on juniors.

Yes you're right that it requires strength. And, at the same time, people have been training other people in every profession to do their jobs for ages. It's how we have survived and thrived as a species.

Ok. But where does one learn this strength, and subtlety? This is an amazing idea. For me it was as a waiter, and a taxi driver. Lots of people are assholes, but they're all people. You have to treat them with respect; but you have to be willing to ban them. How do you teach such a thing? Okay. Here's my great idea. Let's make a site where people can mod HN. Use an algorithm to coach them to be better moderators. Train them to learn patience.

How long do you think it would take to write that? How good do you think your trainees would be in the real world? Or would it just be better to have someone go live in the world for a long time?

If so... doesn't that mean it's a rarely acquired skill?

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#118

Post by ignoramous »

capableweb wrote: post #89
WA wrote: post #50

Interesting observation: I'm place 3501, I have been reading HN since 2009 and I only recognize 2 handles in the top 10. I guess this is because HN de-emphasises usernames.

> I guess this is because HN de-emphasises usernames. Not sure I agree, HN makes the username visible right next to the post? What I think (granted, I grew up with mailing lists and forums without images), is that we're so used to associating people online with pictures nowadays, that when there is no picture, why don't pick up the usernames anymore. Because I do recognize a lot of the usernames in the top 100, some…

> Not sure I agree, HN makes the username visible right next to the post?

Yes, but grayed out, in the background, so to speak. I usually do not notice the username at all (capableweb, hi! this is the first time I've noticed you...). Especially the usernames next to topics/stories are completely ignored by my brain's eyes.

Re: Top Hacker News commenters of 2021

#119

Post by jrockway »

noduerme wrote: post #65
jrockway wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I shilled my own product once and it didn't get downvoted, but that day people started signing up with thousands of stolen credit cards. Dealing with the fraud that was a result of that post was probably one of the most interesting things in my career though, so I dunno, I guess HN delivered as always.

if you ever post your project on HN ... [[sucking in air]] ... just be sure you don't know of any way it can be hacked. It will be hacked, and that's what you'll learn from the experience. But HN is like putting out to sea in a canoe. You can't go back, and it's going to leak, so be more than ready.

What's amazing to me is that you can't pay someone $8 to find weaknesses in your system that let people mine crypto for free, but people are happy to do it and mine $8 in crypto before they get shut down. I don't really understand it.

What surprised me about this incident was how many script kiddies are out there. The sophistication of the attacks were so low. Very poor opsec (using compromised machines as jump boxes, but still logging into the site with their desktop browser with no VPN or Tor), very poor understanding of attack tools (LD_PRELOAD to make certain processes not show up in "ps", except we don't use a dynamically-linked binary to do that, so it has no effect), etc. I feel like I never converse with that type of person on HN, so I just forgot they existed.

I kind of assumed that whole field of specialization died off when people started getting aggressively prosecuted for this sort of thing, but apparently not. If anything, the crypto craze has really increased the demand for hacked Linux systems. I was very surprised to see thousands of compromised machines on major cloud providers attacking us, as well as a long tail of tiny hosting companies that I assumed didn't exist in the world of Linode and Digital Ocean. Like you can get a server in a rack somewhere and sell it to someone, and there are customers that buy that service. Mind blown!

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