
Hacker News Highlights: January 2017 - craigcannon
https://blog.ycombinator.com/hacker-news-highlights-january-2017/
======
WA
If I tell people about HN, I always say something like this:

"HN is this news aggregator. If someone posts a link to a story about the mars
rover, or a breakthrough in fusion reactors, or anything like that, you can be
sure to read a comment from someone on the inside with additional insight,
like 'yup, I've been on that team and this is what really happened ...'"

The comments are the beauty of HN (most of the time). That's why I keep coming
back. Thanks HN!

~~~
wallabie
Agreed - time and time again I'm surprised by the people that read HN. It
seems to comprise of people who did some cool stuff 10,000 years ago, people
who are doing cool stuff today, and everyone in between. Alas, all good
communities are doomed to become shit as time goes on...

~~~
GuiA
_> Alas, all good communities are doomed to become shit as time goes on..._

I see that your account is roughly 4 months old. From
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html):

 _" If your account is less than a year old, please don't submit comments
saying that HN is turning into Reddit. It's a common semi-noob illusion, as
old as the hills"_

I've been on HN for almost 6 years, and I don't think it's gotten quantifiably
worse. The tone has changed, but it's hard to say much beyond that. In fact,
the moderation has gotten much better; and 'pg not commenting anymore has (in
my very subjective opinion) improved things (any of his comments would
dominate a thread's discussion).

~~~
dukeluke
How would you say the tone has changed?

------
tabeth
I love HN, but it really is bittersweet for me.

One one hand you have some really interesting and intelligent people talking
about complex issues. Issues I would either fail to know about, understand, or
realize the gravity of without their insight.

On the other hand, being on here is almost abusive: for those of us who aren't
in the before mentioned group, hanging around here is akin to being an inner
city kid from Harlem going to MIT studying physics. "You might be good, but
you're not going to know what hit you." Needless to say, inferiority complex
ad nauseum.

~~~
andyjohnson0
A couple of years ago I went to a party at a neighbour's house. We ate
pancakes and drank beer. Unlike me, most of the other people there were
physicists or similar academics, so there was a lot of interesting talk going
on. I'm not a particularly gregarious person - certainly not in a large group
of people - so I mainly listened.

One of the people there was a Nobel Laureate. A cool, very down-to-earth guy -
but there's not really much I can say thats going to be useful in the
conversations he was having. But just being in the same room probably made me
(temporarily) smarter. And I found some people who I could talk with about
things like 3D printing, which I kind of get.

And thats kind of how I think of HN. Most people here may be cleverer than me,
some enormously so, but I can still listen and learn and occasionally
contribute something useful.

~~~
ukyrgf
You never want to be the smartest person in the room.

------
saycheese
Might be wrong, but this is more like HN comment highlights. Here's the top
stories for January 2017:
[https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix=fals...](https://hn.algolia.com/?query=&sort=byPopularity&prefix=false&page=0&dateRange=custom&type=story&dateStart=1483228800&dateEnd=1485907200)

Also, feels strange to be highlight comments/posts that now in some cases
locked; that is further comments/votes are not possible.

~~~
makmanalp
To be honest the rare and in-between in depth and/or insightful comments are
the main reason I come to HN.

------
strgrd
I'm still trying to get BoHN off the ground... reddit.com/r/BoHN

~~~
vmorgulis
I'm doing something similar on Twitter:
[https://twitter.com/vmorgulys](https://twitter.com/vmorgulys)

We should try something in common. What do you think of a formatted markdown
file?

Like:

    
    
      #title
    
      - excerpt/remark/subtitle
      - tags
      - hn link
      - reddit link

------
andyjohnson0
I get a weekly HN retrospective email from Kale Davis's excellent Hacker
Newsletter [1]. It often points me to interesting stuff that I missed.
Recommended.

[1] [http://www.hackernewsletter.com/](http://www.hackernewsletter.com/)

~~~
hyperdunc
Nice! I made a simple site a while ago that performs a similar function. [1]

The difference is that it goes by the number of upvotes rather than being
curated by a person.

[1] [https://hotonhn.com/](https://hotonhn.com/)

~~~
tedmiston
Thanks for sharing. Added both to my list of HN Apps & Tools [1].

[1]: [https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker-
news/](https://pinboard.in/u:tedmiston/t:hacker-news/)

------
minimaxir
> Two MDs who are HN users discover they agree.

HN users agreeing is indeed cause for celebration. :P

~~~
mholmes680
is that true? I'd like to see one of your awesome infograms to prove/disprove.

~~~
seanp2k2
Let me just jump in and play devil's advocate here.

