
Satirical Summaries of Hacker News - yumaikas
http://n-gate.com/hackernews/
======
Inconel
I stumbled across this site from one of those "/g/ acts like HN" threads a few
months ago and it's quite funny. I think my favorite summaries so far are:

 _The Muskonauts figured out why their shit exploded. Hackernews, literally
all of whom are actual rocket scientists, wonders if unit tests could have
helped._

 _Russia addresses their worst nuclear contamination problem by putting a shed
on it. Hackernews trades photos of the devastation and bitches about people
getting paid money to work on the shed._

 _An astronaut has passed away. He retired from NASA in 1976, since which time
humanity has been phoning it in with this whole space-travel scene. Half of
Hackernews recognizes this as the massive failure it is; the other half seizes
the opportunity to virtue-signal about all the other problems nobody 's
fixing._

~~~
WillyOnWheels
> Russia addresses their worst nuclear contamination problem by putting a shed
> on it.

Ukraine would like a word with you.

~~~
yellowapple
That's Ukraine's problem now, not Russia's :)

~~~
shshhdhs
The rest of the world helped pay for the shed, so it became all of our
problems.

------
bitwize
Surprised I didn't see this one:

"Some people Instagram their food. On Hackernews, foodie cred is earned by
bragging about what you _don 't_ eat. Sugar. Bread. Dairy. Meat. Caffeine. All
of these are linked by science to early stroke, heart attack, cancer, and/or
obesity. In addition, to live a long healthy life you need to tend to the
bacteria living in your intestine like a Sea Monkey colony -- and don't forget
to meditate frequently. I bet you can figure out where all this is headed --
and yes, when a very scientific study was published indicating eating _nothing
at all_ gave you regenerative superpowers, the Hackernews dietary virtue-
signalers lost their collective mind."

~~~
perishabledave
Can't find that quote anywhere, can you link it?

~~~
y4mi
isnt that bitwizes original loosly based on the nutritional threads on hacker
news such as [1] and [2]

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155504](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13155504)

[2]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13686671](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13686671)

~~~
perishabledave
Ah thought it was one of the summary satires from the website. Nevermind :)

------
periram
I rarely post. Have been laughing nonstop for the past 10 minutes.

Right on point: Hackernews resumes a previous thread, wherein they admonish
each other never to 'roll your own crypto', but rolling your own public-facing
internet service, database backend, programming language, kernel, messaging
protocol, orbital launcher, autonomous war robot, or legal document is
completely fine.

~~~
MrBuddyCasino
Yeah this one hit home a bit too close.

------
vortico
This is fantastic. To the author: Don't stop summarizing these because this
will be my new source of Hacker News posts and if you stop, I'll be living in
a vacuum.

------
Steko
_DDOS From IoT Cameras ... Hackernews is a very experienced IT professional
and has predicted this. They hold up Google products as models to follow. It
is not clear why. Hackernews believes Cloudflare will solve all their
problems. Cloudflare agrees this is likely, please click here to apply for a
job figuring out how._

...

 _Google Analytics silently notes which citizens have been contaminated with
toxins inimical to surveillance capitalism._

...

 _A user is unironically directed to Reddit for reliable information about
illicit pharmaceuticals._

...

 _Upgrade Your SSH Keys ... Nobody has useful input, but a least one user is
coherent enough to win Crypto Buzzward Bingo. Nobody upgrades their SSH keys._

...

 _a Hackernews with 'hacker' in his username admits defeat before the
inconquerable task of installing three packages._

~~~
hodgesrm
I was one of the mad fools who _did_ upgrade keys after reading the "Upgrade
Your SSH Keys" article.

Eclipse git checkins stopped working immediately after going to a 4K RSA key
size. I should have seen it coming.

~~~
DiabloD3
Eclipse broke for me when I stopped using RSA altogether.

Does that make me a hipster because I stopped using <4096 RSA keys like 5+
years ago, and quit using RSA on hosts that support better keys?

------
justaguyonline
Oh, God. I'm pretty much dying here from reading this. Some of it feels too
true, but the best is just too witty not to laugh at.

I'm not sure if it's intentional, but it's raising questions once again in me
about how useful the comments in aggregator sites like this end up being.
Comments are almost always made by the 10% of people whose barrier to
commenting is the lowest and judged and voted on by just the average
hackernews reader. Assuming knowledgeable comments even happen, what gets
upvoted is what seems reasonable or just pleasing to the average hackernews
reader, not what is actually representative of the best available knowledge.

And, as hackernews gets bigger and bigger, the average user becomes more and
more like the average internet user in general and the contributions become
more and more like if you just talked to a group average person, not experts.
If I wanted that kind of knowledge I'd just go talk to people in my daily
life, listen to some rumors, etc.

I often suspect that hackernews exists partly because of the idea that
conversations and comment sections like this are going to happen anyways and
spew ill-formed opinions regardless and ycombinator figured they should at
least have a finger in the place where they happen if nothing else.

------
hkmurakami
This is amazing.

"The Rust Evangelism Strikeforce" is particularly brilliant.

~~~
clock_tower
I'm still breathing a sigh of relief that it's no longer the Haskell
Evangelism Strikeforce. People can preach Rust all they like, but Haskell
scared me.

~~~
pvg
They aren't that dissimilar. Both promote ambitious languages in which lofty
ideals somewhat get in the way of convenience, practicality and available
brain capacity. Both consist, for the most part, of disturbingly enthusiastic
but generally friendly disciples. They _want_ you to believe, to suffer
meaningfully, to achieve one-ness with the borrow checker, to _be_ (or Maybe)
The Monad.

They're not, say, supercilious lispers who have guarded the bucket of
unvarnished truth since 1958 or rubyists promising a path to happiness in this
life (and also something about monkeys).

~~~
jacobush
"supercilious lispers" \- I wish I could disagree because I love the
language(s). Why is that?! What mechanism forces lispers in recluse from the
world?

~~~
derefr
It's the easy accessibility of macros, without any cultural aversion to their
overuse.

Any truly-large Lisp codebase ends up as an entire Lisp-derivative language.
(If not in truth, then in practice: once you've created and employed enough
macros in a given project, you've forced anyone who wants to contribute to
said project to "learn" the project as if it were its own language anyway.)
This effectively isolates the project by the same degree as having been
written in an entirely-novel language.

~~~
kazinator
_This effectively isolates the project by the same degree as having been
written in an entirely-novel language._

Not any more than the special vocabulary of a project consisting of functions.
Or of classes in an object framework.

If I see (foo x y z), and do not know what foo is, I have no idea what
happens, regardless of whether foo is a macro or a function. If I know it's a
function, then I know that x, y and z are expressions reduced to values; they
are not analyzed as syntax. However, that is far from a complete
understanding; I still don't know what foo does.

If foo must be a function (I may not use macros), then I have to figure out a
way to package everything into the values that x, y and z denote so that foo
can do whatever it does. That will likely be harder to understand than a
macro.

Anyway, Lisp macros can be expanded. If you think some macro is hard to
understand, then invoke macroexpand on the quoted form; see if you like that
better. That's what you would have to write if you didn't have the macro.

Just because macros are not allowed doesn't mean that everything is magically
understandable and that you don't have to spend weeks, months or even years
learning the structure of the code and its vocabulary.

Code without macros still extends the language.

When we define a function, we are extending a language; just like we extend a
natural language when we invent a new noun or verb.

~~~
pvg
It's interesting you're arguing over macros when the (joke) theme was 'why
lispers are jerks'.

------
bigiain
This would have been a much better submission if it were hosted on my
experimental port of Wordpress written in Rust, instead of legacy html on
Werk...

~~~
kibwen
No need to port WordPress to Rust. Didn't you hear that WordPress runs on C#
now? Just port the CLR to Rust and you'll get WordPress-on-Rust for free!

~~~
iamdave
_Didn 't you hear that WordPress runs on C# now?_

I just threw my computer out a window reading this. An invoice is on the way
to your mailbox :P

~~~
yellowapple
Turns out Wordpress only runs on .NET because C# was rejiggered to be a
superset of PHP.

~~~
H4CK3RM4N
Somehow, I don't doubt that.

~~~
iamdave
I've got a bridge to sell you. Plenty of Rust.

oh hang on (what's that Mike?)

Sorry, _Built_ with Rust.

------
thunderbong
Fantastic!

Humour is generally downvoted on HN, because us programmers (mostly) take
things too literally. But, seriously, tech really is the biggest laugh because
we take each generation of software, language, platforms so seriously,
completely ignoring the fact that we are just glorified typists trying to find
patterns where none might exist even without having the necessary background
to do so.

~~~
throwanem
> Humour is generally downvoted on HN, because us programmers (mostly) take
> things too literally.

No, humor is generally downvoted on HN because most of it is lazy, and no one
wants HN to turn into another Reddit. Lazy humor is a Reddit staple, and
there's already far too much Reddit around as it is. Good humor tends to fare
reasonably well, and considerable allowance is made for attempts which fail to
be funny but still show effort - otherwise, I doubt I'd get away with doggerel
in rhyming couplets [1] and similar such excesses.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13546379](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13546379)

~~~
iamdave
I keep seeing this refrain "we don't want to turn HN into reddit because of
low effort jokes"

I also see some pretty good, very nuanced jokes (the kind you chuckle about at
first, then the second level of the joke hits and you chuckle a little harder)
getting voted down heavily _as well_.

Dunno if I can buy the "most of it is lazy" line here.

~~~
grzm
While there may be some clever jokes out there, the more it becomes acceptable
to post jokes, the more people will post jokes in their own, often good
intentioned, effort to contribute humor to the site. Unfortunately, they're
not all going to be clever.

~~~
iamdave
Well of course they're all not going to be knee-slappers, humor is subjective.
So what's the answer to this? Is there one? Should there _be_ one?

We're just going to downvote jokes-even if one is made completely within
context of discussion? Even if it's an absurdist take on a topic that actually
manages to get a laugh-while also / potentially bringing up a valid point?

I'm not asking to argue this with you specifically, I'm just kind of curious
in general where that line is drawn with the community.

~~~
grzm
I think as you observed above that the HN community as a whole tends to
downvote even good jokes because it wants to ensure that the number of jokes
doesn't increase, that HN remains for the most part more serious and
substantial. As you mentioned, humor is subjective, and many people realize
this. It's tough to litigate which jokes should be downvoted: was this one bad
enough to warrant a downvote? It's arguably easier from a practical
perspective to downvote all (or a majority) of jokes.

One thing to keep in mind is that if there's good humor in a comment that has
good substantive content as well, it's likely not a bad thing and won't be
downvoted. It's comments that are posted for (mostly) humor value alone that I
think many in the community are trying to avoid.

Edit to add:

I want to be clear that I'm not anti-humor in general. I do highly value
having a place where more serious discussion can be had. And I'm glad HN tends
to be that kind of place. There are other places in the world (some of them
even on the internet :) where more jovial times can be had.

~~~
iamdave
I maintain the firm position that humor can in-and-of-itself contain
substantive points.

But alas, I'm fighting windmills here-this is a subject I've discussed in
other threads; I understand the want for the community to remain at a certain
level. "Jokes"/"Humor" however seem like boogeymen/scapegoats to that end; at
least in my opinion.

Edit: Caught your edit here-

 _One thing to keep in mind is that if there 's good human in a comment that
has good substantive content as well, it's likely not a bad thing and won't be
downvoted._

One would think. I've definitely observed the exact opposite with a frequency
that's hard to put aside as 'outlier'. But I get your point.

------
sverige
I find it strangely pleasant that one of my comments was (apparently) called
out in a summary, for it means that I have truly been absorbed into the HN
hivemind.

I guess it's finally time for me to learn Rust.

~~~
jacobush
Indeed. Jag är inte sjuk, bara svensk.

------
tyingq
Pure gold all around. My favorite bit:

 _" the Rust Evangelism Strikeforce stages a sortie, but meets resistance."_

~~~
K0SM0S
Indeed! Lost my ~~~~ on this one, 01/26:

> 1.1B Taxi Rides on Kdb+/q and 4 Xeon Phi CPUs

An internet posts a resume-building exercise with no practical value or
interesting results or useful methodology. Hackernews debates the relative
merits of software designed to execute bad programs as quickly as possible.
The Rust Evangelism Strikeforce makes a tactical decision not to get involved,
since people are talking about _fast_ code.

------
kibwen
In accordance with federal law, I must dutifully inform the author that there
are at least _five_ Mozilla employees working on Rust, thank-you-very-much.

------
partycoder
There is another community devoted to make fun of sites like Hacker News, that
I found by accident:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/](https://www.reddit.com/r/programmingcirclejerk/)

~~~
i336_
See also: [https://redd.it/3hn5gx](https://redd.it/3hn5gx)

------
WillyOnWheels
Satirical Summaries hasn't noticed my favorite yet!
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13750778](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13750778)

~~~
sverige
Well, that one didn't get enough votes to become a top story. Not that the NSA
isn't above using the backdoor they probably have installed on HN to reverse
enough upvotes to keep it from getting so big that people noticed it and began
intentionally altering their behavior patterns to skew the dossiers the NSA is
building.

------
ivm
Reminds me of amazing [http://webcomicname.com/](http://webcomicname.com/) and
[http://todaysgamingdrama.tumblr.com/](http://todaysgamingdrama.tumblr.com/)
(abandoned)

I wish some day there will be AI-generated summaries like these for news and
stories.

------
johncolanduoni
I'm really impressed by both this and people's responses here. Perhaps the
common notion that HN has no sense of humor is an oversimplification ;)

------
simplehuman
This is brilliant. Thank you so much and do not stop writing :) any way to
follow this on RSS?

It would be so meta if you summarized this post.

~~~
janklimo
I'd subscribe to this if it was a newsletter! OP where do I sign up?

~~~
mrkgnao
I'm writing an NaaS in Idris as we speak.

------
chrismealy
They forgot "Billionaire Has Opinion."

~~~
yellowapple
Or "Corporate personhood confirmed as company develops the ability to want".

Every time some article has a headline in the format "$company wants to
$verb_phrase", Paul Graham huffs a kitten.

------
Vivtek
I didn't see anybody swooning over Elon Musk on this page. Is that passé now?

~~~
clock_tower
Scroll down to "The end of the level playing field" on 2/06/17.

------
hyperpallium
It's more bitter than funny. Yet... the bitterness itself is funny.

~~~
veli_joza
It's actually great sense of humor, but too cynical and dismissal of other
people effort. There's nothing wrong with pointing out occasional HN hive-mind
tendencies, but his summaries of FOSDEM talks paint a different picture. He
seems to get real kicks of belittling people's years of work.

------
caoxuwen
hey I don't see deep learning anywhere, that's not the hackernews I know

------
ckastner
This is great! Hacker News was ripe for disruption.

------
vuldin
Well looks like I'm done with hacker news, I have found a better news source.

------
reitanqild
Could have been quite a bit better if whoever hadn't had to call everyone
idiot.

Now, poking fun at HN culture and feeling of self-importance however that is
funny IMO.

------
TLLtchvL8KZ
Reminds me of funroll-loops (Gentoo is Rice), love it.

------
AKifer
[https://www.scribd.com/document/337471737/Proof-of-the-
Riema...](https://www.scribd.com/document/337471737/Proof-of-the-Riemann-
Hypothesis-utilizing-the-theory-of-Alternative-Facts) VERY important! before
further reading, look at the author

------
onion2k
This reminds me of segfault.org and some of the great satirical riffs on
typical Slashdot stories.

------
mynegation
Please, people, let's push this to the top weekly posts just for the sheer
pleasure of watching this thing go full meta!

------
rcarmo
This is awesome, but the RSS/Atom feed seems broken (I get unescaped HTML
source inside it). Using Feedly+Reeder.

------
galfarragem
'Only the truth is funny.'

------
aantix
Please tell me these are algorithmic satirical summaries...? And the source is
on Github. :)

~~~
steffan
In Rust

~~~
yellowapple
Per Federal law.

------
DrScump
Is it sort of meta joke that nobody has duped this link yet?

------
antisthenes
Are these generated by an algorithm or not?

~~~
greenhatman
I doubt it. It looks too well written. If it's an algorithm I'd be seriously
impressed.

------
Endy
Oh my goodness, I love this.

------
curuinor
seems to be same guy as sciops.net, one kurt h maier

~~~
cpu
so what.

------
kodfodrasz
I wonder if the _Founder_ of n-gate has thought about _scaling_ the site with
the help of _deep neural networks_ and increasing profitability with
_blockhain_!

------
ucaetano
Does it use convolutional recursive space invariant artificial deep neural
networks?

~~~
sidlls
Yes, implemented in Rust.

~~~
hodgesrm
Except that we don't really have time to implement it because we're too busy
posting to the resulting Rust vs. Golang foodfight.

~~~
yumaikas
And this Gopher would rather build stuff than argue about Rust.

------
ucaetano
I'm looking forward for the summary of this post.

------
WayneBro
> Microsoft posts a low-quality video attempting to get Hackernews to boot
> Windows on their Macs so they can have bad implementations of modern Linux
> tools instead of the bad implementations of outdated Linux tools that ship
> with MacO's.

Satire is funnier when it's accurate. "bad implementations of modern Linux
tools" is incorrect here because the tools are the same binaries that come
with Ubuntu.

------
gydfi
If only we had basic income so everybody could be paid to produce content like
this.

------
frik
The summaries look like generated by markov chain algorithms.

You need some training articles, and then it generates such sentences.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Markov_chain)

~~~
yumaikas
I've seen what comes out of a markov chain, and can assure you that it would
not be nearly this funny, or on point. These are definitely the work of a
human.

Don't forget that @horse_ebooks was a human as well.

------
marze
This is truly the most awesome thing ever.

------
contingencies
Faintly facetious: sarcasm-satire seems a very earnestly US spectacle.

Now read the first letters of each word.

Now go do something useful.

~~~
yellowapple
FfsssaveUsNrtfloewNgdsu?

------
Kostchei
Kurt, I mean, you are ,occasionally, a funny chap, but I get the impression
you are too cynical to even _breathe_ damn it breathe! *commences CPR on
n-gate

edit: spellin

------
KirinDave
I'm so excited an anonymous and angry member of the tech community is having
such success at acting like everyone else is dumb and they are smart. This
novel format is not at all tedious chest-beating that is then retroactively
"satire" because snark verging on feral rage is fantastic. To whomever started
the rumor that it's yet another didn't-and-never-will member of the community
here should be ashamed of themselves. This is art.

I especiky like how they meticulously avoid the majority of social issues to
really drill down on the arbitrary tech decisions. That's how you know it's
true satire and time we'll spent.

~~~
Inconel
_HN links to satirical website poking fun at HN. Some HN users find the
summaries to be quite humorous. One HN user, in true HN virtue signaling
fashion, takes the opportunity to be outraged that the satire doesn 't
adequately address broader social issues and is therefore a waste of time._

