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Hacker News Classics (2018)

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Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#21

Post by hyperpallium2 »

lt wrote: post #6

I've long had this notion that there are two kinds of content on a site like HN: - temporal, like news, announcements, analysis and discussion on current events. It's usually irrelevant after a while, it gets stale fast. - atemporal, like essays, history, theory, articles, knowledge in general that while it may get superseded, expanded or invalidated over time, it's interesting content that you learn from, from a cur…

Yes. I think this also aligns with the origins of HN as "startup news" (news is temporal), which was expanded to "gratifies one's intellectual curiosity" (timeless) https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Suggest: two sites

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#22

Post by 0-_-0 »

dgellow wrote: post #12

That's fantastic. "Linux is obsolete (1992)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8942175

Linus says:

"If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't. Linux wins heavily on points of being available now."

Is he referring to GNU Hurd that is still unfinished?

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#23

Post by davnicwil »

lt wrote: post #6

I've long had this notion that there are two kinds of content on a site like HN: - temporal, like news, announcements, analysis and discussion on current events. It's usually irrelevant after a while, it gets stale fast. - atemporal, like essays, history, theory, articles, knowledge in general that while it may get superseded, expanded or invalidated over time, it's interesting content that you learn from, from a cur…

I know where you're coming from, but I think the shallower current events type discussions bring a lot of value in holding a mirror up to the deeper, more theoretical and timeless pieces.

It's about keeping them honest. You know the latter have value if you see their themes and lessons play out frequently in the former.

A decent test of the most useful theory is how often it's relevant and referenced in shallow quick fire current events discussions.

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#24

Post by dredmorbius »

lt wrote: post #6

I've long had this notion that there are two kinds of content on a site like HN: - temporal, like news, announcements, analysis and discussion on current events. It's usually irrelevant after a while, it gets stale fast. - atemporal, like essays, history, theory, articles, knowledge in general that while it may get superseded, expanded or invalidated over time, it's interesting content that you learn from, from a cur…

You can generalise this to much document-style information (in the Paul Otlet sense).

Nothing has the lack of persistence that news does. (Though a surprising amount of "news", for reasons closely related to this rapid-staling and unpredictable nature of it, is actually repackaged evergreen or procedural content.)

At the same time, there's little that's as timeless as highly-insightful observations or commentary. These can live on for years, decades, centuries, or millennia.

(I suspect that copyright attacks both ends of this equation, by creating moats around current material to keep it in flow, and by denying markets to older material, which would otherwise compete with the new. This has limits imposed by works which were in fact subject to copyright in the first place, which is most works published since January 1, 1926, in the US.)

I'm finding classic works, philosophy, and much academic publishing to be far more interesting than news, of late.

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#25

Post by Majestic121 »

lt wrote: post #6

I've long had this notion that there are two kinds of content on a site like HN: - temporal, like news, announcements, analysis and discussion on current events. It's usually irrelevant after a while, it gets stale fast. - atemporal, like essays, history, theory, articles, knowledge in general that while it may get superseded, expanded or invalidated over time, it's interesting content that you learn from, from a cur…

A similar concept is the book serie 'A Map that Reflects the Territory' : https://www.lesswrong.com/books.

It's a selection of essays that were written for the LessWrong community, and the community voted for the best essays 2 years after publication, ensuring that only the 'atemporal' ones got into it.

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#26

Post by JKCalhoun »

mensetmanusman wrote: post #17

Unfortunately some dead links, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512288 Would be cool if HN had its own web archive after 100 comments or so.

Found a replacement for the (broken) video link in "WATCH THE VERY FIRST FILM VERSION OF ‘ALICE IN WONDERLAND’ FROM 1903":

https://youtu.be/zeIXfdogJbA

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#27

Post by bombcar »

0-_-0 wrote: post #22
dgellow wrote: post #12

That's fantastic. "Linux is obsolete (1992)": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8942175

Linus says: "If the GNU kernel had been ready last spring, I'd not have bothered to even start my project: the fact is that it wasn't and still isn't. Linux wins heavily on points of being available now." Is he referring to GNU Hurd that is still unfinished?

Correct - the general assumption at the time is that GNU Hurd was about to bust out and become the main free software kernel. Remember that computers that COULD run practical Unix for home use had just become relatively available - and Linus wanted to play with his new 386 and the fun instructions provided therein.

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#28

Post by ashtonbaker »

niea_11 wrote: post #19
mensetmanusman wrote: post #17

Unfortunately some dead links, e.g. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6512288 Would be cool if HN had its own web archive after 100 comments or so.

Or a bot that browses discussions and if any recent ones have > 100 comments automatically sends the link to archive.org to be archived and then add a comment with the link of the archived copy

Are bots allowed here? I've never seen the kind of utility bot that is common on Reddit.

Re: Hacker News Classics (2018)

#30

Post by ChrisArchitect »

collecting stories that have (year) on them once may have been a nice way to surface archive essays and interesting pieces. These kinds of posts are submitted daily now and it's getting annoying/ridiculous when things are submitted less than a year apart, sometimes even monthly!

Old articles that have been discussed heavily, improved upon, circumstances changed, technology evolution especially, are mostly lame to revisit on a site that still should weigh heavily towards current events/news developments.

I'm just getting tired of sifting thru resurfaced old posts from 2016 or whatever

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