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Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

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Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#81

Post by foresto »

rdmuser wrote: post #78
foresto wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That sends every page you check to Algolia's API, which is what jstrieb's extension is designed to avoid.

Oh totally I wasn't suggesting that as a direct replacement but more an alternate approach and that privacy factor is important to consider. Apologies if that wasn't clear. Personally I don't check that often so the occasional connection on click isn't serious vs the complexities of adding another extension even if it's a neat one. I think you may be overlooking some nuance related to that extension vs my solution th…

> I think you may be overlooking some nuance related to that extension vs my solution though. Extensions like that check every page you visit whereas my approach only checks on click so there is a much greater need for privacy solutions with extensions like that since they would normally be sending out your entire browser history in real time to the api.

I'm not overlooking; this extension doesn't do that. That's what's so cool about the Bloom filter approach: all the checks can be done locally, never revealing your interests to a third party. So if the metric is privacy, it's superior to the bookmarklet, even if it checks every page you visit in real time.

(In principle, that is. I haven't reviewed the implementation. :)

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#82

Post by mettamage »

fragmede wrote: post #79
mettamage wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, for me Hacker News is just about being reasonable. Consequently, I find all other online places so far unreasonable. I am on Reddit, but honestly, it’s more of an anthropology thing rather than anything else. Sometimes I see if I can vibe with the subreddits, and I can. The problem is usually I feel awful because a good faith discussion generally can’t be held. To me, vibing in many subreddits just means…

What's been a learning experience for me is seeing Reddit, HN, Facebook, discords, private slacks, and the mainstream media discuss some thing I went through, and the different faces they all have about it. Reddit was just a barrel of negativity about it. So was half of TikTok. Facebook however was mostly full of positivity and happiness, but obviously my Facebook feed is curated to be my Facebook friends. Maybe it's…

> Reddit was just a barrel of negativity about it.

Oh, I can relate to that one.

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#84

Post by joe_the_user »

hermitcrab wrote: post #83

I think the main difference between HN and other forums is the moderation. I have been a moderator and I know what difficult and thankless task it can be. Thank you Dang.

Other forums are good and have moderators. But moderators absolutely make a difference, disproportionately to the amount of moderation actually done. Aside from overt actions, a moderator imposes a flexible but noticeable ethos on a group's debate.

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#85

Post by lopatin »

_fat_santa wrote: post #9

IMO one of the things that makes HN so special is the "culture" here. Having been on here since 2018, most folks here are acutely aware of the issues that other sites like Reddit have and we all collectively work to preserve this space so it doesn't become like the other places. If I see a meme on Reddit I would probably upvote it, but if I see that exact same meme on here I would downvote and probably report it too.…

Yeah, memeing on HN makes about as little sense as trying to have a frank conversation or indulging in a contrarian view on a hive mind subreddit. Not that it can’t be done, but requires so many defensive qualifiers that it takes all the fun out.

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#86

Post by ryandrake »

matheusmoreira wrote: post #33
ThrowawayR2 wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reading the comments on non-tech submissions that a person has some basic knowledge of should make them aware that the vast majority of comments are simply confidently pronounced ignorance. (This is particularly evident on medical and health related submissions.) Then they should start to notice that, to almost as high a percentage, the comments on tech are just as much confidently pronounced ignorance.

> This is particularly evident on medical and health related submissions. HN users, tech people in general, are biased against doctors and medicine. I don't think that can be generalized to technology discussion. I've seen a few doctors posting here on HN. I'm among them. Medical discussion is useful to me since I can gain perspective on how medical practice works in other countries.

Absolutely. Anything nutrition or fitness related too. The quackery floodgates open every time! Something about these topics brings all the laymen "dOiNg ThEiR oWn ReSeArCh" out of the woodwork.

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#87

Post by joe_the_user »

Igrom wrote: post #21

I think that recently, I've been seeing more snarky and dismissive messages than compared with several months ago. They are always very brief, gotcha-style replies. Is it just me? It sometimes makes me doubt if there isn't a coordinated attempt at destabilizing the otherwise orderly (no doubt after some heroic wrangling by dang & co.) discourse taking place. Those posts get downvoted rather fast, but I feel that ther…

I've "felt like hn is declining" many times in the last fifteen years. Notably, when I find a whole page of slanted, snarky bad-faith posts of various sorts.

The thing someone pointed out, however, is you get particular bad threads through the process of them being seeded that way rather than things always being bad. I think that's why hn's moderation is often thread-by-thread rather than comment by comment.

And I can find some threads here with quality comments still. So quality is a difficult thing to measure.

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#88

Post by tempestn »

_fat_santa wrote: post #9

IMO one of the things that makes HN so special is the "culture" here. Having been on here since 2018, most folks here are acutely aware of the issues that other sites like Reddit have and we all collectively work to preserve this space so it doesn't become like the other places. If I see a meme on Reddit I would probably upvote it, but if I see that exact same meme on here I would downvote and probably report it too.…

Agreed, though the culture doesn't persist by accident. Without ongoing moderation (which has been excellent), I believe it would eventually be lost.

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#89

Post by tempestn »

HankStallone wrote: post #51
m101 wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My karma gets hit for having views against green energy and conservative leaning economics. There is a problem here with high karma correlating with being in the same echo chamber as everyone else. I mainly want to get to the downvote threshold so I can also exert an alternative influence (as I'm in the minority I think). It's been many years...

I find that following a few rules helps to keep my heterodox views from hurting my karma too much. 1) Keep them to myself most of the time. Pick my spots, in other words, and don't just toss off quick replies every time I disagree (who's got that kind of time anyway). 2) Don't make a factual claim without a link to back it up, even (maybe especially) if it's something everyone knows. There seems to be enough respect…

Those are great points. As well as backing up facts with references, I would add, don't state an opinion without facts and reasoning to back it up.

And I agree that without doing these things, some opinions are more likely to draw down-votes than others. TBH I indeed probably am more likely to down-vote a badly made point if it's one with which I disagree. But really, everyone should be doing these things, regardless of karma concerns.

Re: Beyond the Front Page: A Personal Guide to Hacker News

#90

Post by glimps »

Love the article. I’m here to register as a “randomly scroll the front page” kind of user.

I’m a digg expat from back in the days. HN is the only icon on my phone that is mot an app. It sits on my first page and I keep a tab open until I read the entire article.

But HN content is special to me. I have an ArchiveBox instance to keep all very good content from HN. It’s hooked to a vector database and an AI to quizz me on the many topics so I don’t forget.

At year’s end I close all my unfinished articles, normally around 200-300 on my safari and the cycle repeats.

I don’t much engage with the community but HN is a special place and the only place that can clench my thirst for knowledge and learning.

Thanks for the article and thanks HN

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